wait i forgot i can just write it out. okay, okay hear me out.
----
Split scene. On the right, a room in heavy shadows, maybe a library of some sort, cluttered with papers and gadgets and stacks of records -- on the left, a brightly lit plains biome with exposed mechanical bits strewn broadly about the place.
Starre (its eyes stained purple, brass-and-tinted-glass goggles glinting in the sunlight) speaks from the left side --
Starre: Listen, I'm going to make it work. I just need more time, it's not -- I know this is possible! The pieces are here somewhere, I just need to find them, and-
DJ (face in shadow, hair in disarray falling over their eyes) speaks from the right side --
DJ: -and then what, you'll finish another diversion? I'm running out of time.
We continue switching, left-right --
Starre: That's my line.
DJ: Not anymore it isn't.
Starre: Look, you know what to look out for, I've given you those pieces. Stay out of danger-
DJ: -Stay out of the limelight. Yeah. You're killing me here. I'll rot in obscurity if I listen to you much longer.
Starre: You can't take the risk.
DJ: You don't follow your own advice.
Starre: I -- that's different!
DJ: Oh, yeah, it's real different when you hog the spotlight, yeah.
Starre: I can't fly under the radar. It already knows I'm here. I might as well call the attention of everything else while I'm at it. Like I said, it's different.
DJ: Yeah. You're different. You'll be remembered.
Starre: If it finds you, you're dead.
DJ: What were you working on, again? Some immortality machine? When it finds me, I won't need to live forever.
Beat panel.
Starre: ...No. You're not seriously-
DJ: -What else am I supposed to do, Starre, just give up? We're not the only ones! Millions of others, suffering in similarity, in utter conformity, and I could break through. Break their chains, just one split, just a single wedge-
Starre: Nobody else in your world faces the same dangers! DJ! Think about what you're doing! Someone else can carry out your crackpot plan!
DJ: Nobody else. Nobody else can. Nobody else knows the extent of what I've seen. Nobody else but our other selves, scattered across the multiverse.
Not a beat panel this time, rather, each person's background changes. The speech timing here is exactly the same, as if the two are talking over each other.
Starre stands isolated within a dark stone hallway lined with pillars, cold and echoing and imposing, utterly alone --
Starre: An empty expanse. The Song gets closer, not louder. It's not looking for anything else other than us. It affords a unique opportunity, knowing what you're doomed by. You can call on all sorts of other things, knowing they can't offer to save your skin, and get a feel for what they're really like.
DJ stands at the center of a crowd, clustered and choking, everyone's back turned to them --
DJ: Countless faces, crowded until you can't make yourself out anymore. Nothing to set them apart from the pack, no way of knowing they'll never amount to something. The weight of never being special, never being anything important, I could lift that. I could drag people up out of the mire with me.
Back to the usual backgrounds again.
Starre: You're going to kill someone.
DJ: You're not going to get enough people killed.
Beat panel.
Starre: Well. Enjoy your fame.
DJ: Well. Keep staying low-profile.
Final panel. There's a cracked record in Starre's hand -- it passes the object through the panel barrier to DJ, who takes it in the same panel.
SOMEDAY SOMETHING'S COMING
FROM WAY OUT BEYOND THE STARS
TO KILL US WHILE WE STAND HERE
IT'LL STORE OUR BRAINS IN MASON JARS!
alex starre, folks -- professional demonologist, occultist, and researcher of the arcane. it knows exactly what it's doomed by and is so normal about that.
(ID in alt text, plaintext ID in first reblog if that's preferred!)
redtree's fear response to creepy singing being "sing another song back at it EVEN LOUDER" will never not be funny to me btw. imagine you're trying to stalk some big bulky guy with a spooky nursery rhyme and you think oh yeah you've got him now, he takes a deep breath in and you are so ready to hear him scream really high-pitched and it's gonna be so cool
and then he just starts singing something like "ALL I WANT IS A PROPER CUP OF COFFEE MADE IN A PROPER COPPER COFFEEPOT I MAY BE OFF MY DOT BUT I WANT A PROPER COFFEE IN A PROPER COPPER POT--" at the top of his goddamn lungs. somehow he's even in tune. how the fuck would you, a creepy person, know how to deal with that. start throwing things probably but then he knows he's gotten a rise out of you and that's kind of worse
which of these Alexes canonically owns a gun. like. an actual handgun that shoots bullets.
dimensional archeologist who spent two years in a hell world
authorizes and arranges dimensional destruction for a paramilitary organization
researches demons, eldritch entities, and the otherworldly
lives in swamp hell and works for the embodiment of entropy/decay
sci-fi universe resident who's half fused with a planetary god
zero escape character who is also a danganronpa mastermind
Voting ended onMar 27, 2023
song-haunted archaeologist/fallen london alex not included because he's too obvious. like of course he'd own a gun it's flondon. there is in fact only one correct answer
