lieutenantantichrist | [6] Action for Violet/Everywhere [Fourth Wall Event]

[6] Action for Violet/Everywhere [Fourth Wall Event]

[Blake is in his apartment minding his own business when there's a flash of light.]

When it fades, nothing seems different for a minute. All's normal and as it should be, everything in its place. After a second, it sinks in. There's something that's been out of place for months, and all of a sudden the feeling of nakedness is gone.]

[He pats his side, and there's the good, reassuring weight of his gun, right where it should be. He takes it out to give it a look over, and it's exactly as he remembers it. He puts it back and feels more himself than he has since he got to this damn place.]

[That's when he notices there's a lot of strange noises outside.]

[Blake opens the door and steps out.]

[He takes a good look at around.]

[He thinks it over.]

Nope.

[He turns around to go back inside.]

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[In this case, it's only one-way; Apollo only needed to let Blake hear something that he otherwise couldn't, and assumed that Blake wouldn't have anything to say that couldn't be spoken out loud, so he didn't ask Solrock for two-way communication.

There's definitely some mild confusion coming from Apollo though.]

You just heard what it had to say. It's not the same kind of talking and feeling as humans do, but it's still talking and feeling.

[And the answer to that question is "yes". The moss can indeed feel things, just less than the tree.]

[Don't really need any fancy telepathy, anyway. It's all right there on Blake's face.]

[What's in his head is long stretches of blankness with occasional profanity.]

[The kid looks (feels, but he can't actually be feeling that) puzzled, and that takes some fucking gall.] You're confused?! How the fuck do you think I feel?

[He grabs his coat from on top of the rock and sits down heavily on another rock, one without a face.]

Where I come from, trees don't think.

[Once Solrock is no longer being used as a coat rack it slowly rotates until it's floating upside-down. Fortunately it breaks the link before Blake has to experience the sensation of his viewpoint rotating for more than a second.]

I'm confused because you just heard the tree's story and you're still saying that they can't feel anything.

[He pauses for a moment and frowns slightly.]

All of the people who I've talked to here have said that they've never heard of anyone being able to talk to trees before. The trees in your world can probably think too, there just aren't any humans who can talk to them.

[He's dizzy enough to begin with.]

Maybe...maybe not can't.

[Even after seeing it for himself, it takes effort to make that admission]

[He's just gonna hold on to this rock for a while. It can't think, right? Right?]

Shouldn't.

[No, no the rock can't think.]

Why shouldn't they?

[And Apollo's confused again.]

[Anybody else Blake would think was fucking with him, but he knows this kid is genuinely asking.]

Because they're things. You cut them down and use them to make tables. They're not supposed to have opinions.

[He can still feel the ancient alienness of the thing. Sap and sunlight. Fuck.]

[Wait, wait, hold up.]

Humans cut trees down to make things!? They don't just use the dead wood that falls!?

[He's only ever had to deal with poachers. Loggers have never shown up.]

[distantly, half paying attention to Apollo, distracted by the unnerving sensation that the things around him aren't really what he's always thought of as things]

Yeah, that's how they make houses and shit. Can't just wait around on luck, you'd never get enough.

[Grumbling.]

They probably waste parts of the trees too, just like they do with animals.

[Well there goes his good mood.]

Yeah, not everybody uses every part of the damn buffalo, it's a tragedy.

[It doesn't come out quite as sharply sarcastic as it should. Blake can still feel leaves.]

Nobody else knows about all this. There's no such thing as tree psychics back in my world. They're just things. Shouldn't be able to think. No brains in wood.

If you're going to waste the life that you take you shouldn't take it to begin with.

Just because they don't know it doesn't make it okay.

I guess that you don't need a brain to think.

Good luck enforcing that. We can't even get people to stop killing each other.

Fuck. I didn't need to know that every bookshelf had a life story.

[He's not gonna go and feel bad about it, but it's weird.]

[In quiet, bemused amazement] The looniest of the hippies were right all along.

...I'm not really surprised that humans would kill each other. Is it from fighting over mates and territory?

[Humans = Animals in his mind. And yet he's drawn a reasonably accurate conclusion from that premise.]

[Blake's about to snap back that of course it isn't. Then he leans back on the rock and thinks about it.]

[For the first time in a long, long time, his brain's been smacked hard enough to knock it out of its calcified habits and make him see things differently. It's an uneasy feeling.]

You know what? It is, isn't it.

[One must wonder how much of this Blake will remember after 4th wall is over.]

Lots of animals fight over things like that. Pokémon and humans are the only kinds of animals that I know about who fight for other reasons.

[He hopes not much.]

[This is firmer ground for him. Something he knows.]

Mates and territory. People are always killing each other over that kind of thing. Sex and money. Then every once in a while somebody thinks up something new and different out of the goddamn blue.

Hey. If plants and animals can think, can they be crazy, too?

I've never met a crazy plant or animal, but Grandpa told me that there's a kind of disease that mammals can get that makes them attack anyone who they see and makes them afraid of water. I've never met any animals with that disease though.

[Blake puts that together after a second.]

Never seen Old Yeller, huh.

[He gives the kid a long look.]

You probably shouldn't.

Though even that's for something like a good reason. People, they kill each other for the craziest bullshit, and most of the time there's nothing extra to blame.

I haven't, no.

Do the humans who do things like that like to hurt other people?

Old classic. Probably not up your alley. One of those where they first break it to you that growing up means the dog dies at the end.

[Not one of Blake's favorites as a kid. Sure it's true, but that doesn't mean you have to put a sappy soundtrack with it.]

[He looks over at Apollo to see if he's serious. He lets out an ugly, humorless laugh at the honest look on his face.]

Kid, have you ever met people?

Everyone dies eventually.

[He looks annoyed at the laugh.]

I've met humans here. Back home the only human I ever talked with was Grandpa. All of the other humans didn't want to talk. They just went around hurting everyone and trying to hurt me when I tried to stop them. I used to think that they didn't care that they were hurting the animals, but when I came here I found out that most humans can't talk to animals, so now I don't know if they even know that they're hurting anyone.

Good to know that one still holds.

Yeah, nobody else can do that. It wouldn't help as much as you think if they could. People hurt plenty of things they can talk to, too. Some of them like it better that way.

[Blake leans back on his hands on the rock, looking up at the leaves.]

You can't change the world or stop anybody from being bastards. Let your heart start bleeding and everybody'll just step on you and steal your shoes after you pass out.

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[6] Action for Violet/Everywhere [Fourth Wall Event]

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