Beep Beep, Richie

[mrsklover]

WHO: Richie Tozier and the poor soul here with him
WHERE: Calibrations
WHAT: Also Calibrations
WHEN: Guess. It starts with C and ends in Alibrations
WARNINGS: Homophobic slurs/homophobia/internalized homophobia, child neglect, bullying, drug use, alcohol use, suicidal ideation, and CLOWNS

The room is an arcade. When you first walk in, you see that it has been abandoned, likely for years. There is dust on all the machines and half of them are just blinking 'GAME OVER' without any way to start it again. But near the back, you can hear something. The sound of a fighting game. Street Fighter! And there playing it is a small boy with a grey ringer shirt, thick black glasses, and extremely messy dark hair.

It's Richie. Richie at twelve years old, playing his favorite game and ignoring you completely. There is a blinking button beside him to activate two-player mode. But if you don't want to do that, there are a few other options.

Some other game machines have buttons blinking as well. The closest machine to him is called The Secret and sings almost a circus song in 8-bit. A few aisles away, another game has a button lit up and this one is called Homeward Unbound. It has no music and nothing on the screen except a house, no lights on in the windows. The last game with a play button is all the way in the corner and looks like an old beer tapper game. The screen has a cartoon of adult Richie's face on it, smiling until, for just a second, it changes to him crying. Weird.

There is more in the room that seems to almost glow among all the dust and debris. A token sits in the tray where kids once could get more for the games. A red balloon drifts along the floor with the words 'I <3 Derry' on it. And finally, for the person searching the hardest, they might see a bloody knife stabbed into a carved heart on one wall.

Welcome to Richie Tozier's head. God help you.

Comments

[ziedrich_bearer]

Arcade. Gladio wants to groan. How many of these sorts of places had Noctis dragged him to? Far too many. But hey, there's only so much a guy can do about that. You take it in stride and move on sometimes. He looks around for a while before moving to follow the noises.

The kid wasn't expected. What a weird dream.

"Hey, kid. Where am I?"

[mrsklover]

Young Richie turns and looks at the new person with an air of irritation. "You're in an arcade. Duh." A loud sound from the game tears his attention back to it and Richie groans. "Fuck, dude! You made me lose."

He sinks his hand back into his pocket and slides a token to have the game start up again.

"If you wanna play, you can. But I always win."

[ziedrich_bearer]

Sounds like Noctis as a kid. Damn lazy punk.

"I'm not blind, kid. At the moment. Seriously, where are we? Beyond the arcade."

[mrsklover]

The kid rolls his eyes and gestures widely.

"Welcome to Derry, Maine! Or Hell, if you ask the people who live here."

He scowls and turns back to his game.

"Just another piece of shit town in this piece of shit state. Nothing to see."

[ziedrich_bearer]

Well that doesn't sound like a very good place to be. Gladio sighs as he steps forward, watching the kid play.

"This your home?"

[mrsklover]

Richie turns and looks almost sad when he answers. "More than anyplace else, I guess." He shrugs a shoulder and just sort of shifts the control on the game around, absently. "Where are you from?"

[ziedrich_bearer]

"Insomnia," he answered. "It's a city in Lucis. The capital."

He moves closer and his hand touches the cabinet, the player two button. He's got no clue what he's just walked into.

[wearingthestars]

Billy looks around with a curious smile. This is all very...retro.

He strokes a finger through the dust coating one of the machines before he takes notice of the sounds near the back, heading over and dusting off his hands on his jeans.

He doesn't immediately recognize the kid, watching him play a moment before broaching- "...you mind if I join?"

[mrsklover]

The kid turns and looks at Billy critically for a moment. He turns back to the game and keeps playing, distracted once more.

"Free country," he mumbles. But he pauses right after that, glancing at the button for two-player briefly. "I don't know if you'll like the game, though."

[wearingthestars]

Yeah, given most of the memories this place tended to show off that was a pretty safe bet.

"Do you like it?" Free country's about a close to consent as you can get in these things though, so Billy tentative presses the button despite the warning.

CW: Homophobia/ F slur

[mrsklover]

The game doesn't turn to a two-player. Instead the screen expands and fills the area with darkness before settling back into a memory of the same exact arcade. But this time there is a Richie watching beside Billy while another in front of them plays with a blonde-haired boy.

As it ends with the other Richie running from the arcade, the room returns back to what it had been before and the representation of Richie takes his place back at his game.

"No. Not really. Not here."

[wearingthestars]

It's the sort of scene Billy understands intimately, and even before it goes bad the air feels thick with the worry of what's to come.

He feels himself freeze up much the same way the memory of Richie does, like the years of being an honest to god superhero with magical powers mean nothing when faced with the power people like those bullies wield.

"..." He looks after the retreating Richie, and then back to the other as the room settles, face pale.

"I..." Come on Billy. You're the adult in this situation. At least for now. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

[mrsklover]

Richie's head whips around as he glares at Billy accusingly. "Why would I want to talk about it? He's a liar. A bully. No one cares what Bowers says."

He turns back to the game and starts violently mashing the buttons.

"It was probably Connor, anyway. He's probably the fairy and was just trying to make me look bad so he could get away with it. Fucking loser. He sucked at this game too. I went easy on him so he didn't look bad. Next time I'll destroy him."

[mutedsuspicions]

This was a strange room. Lerith has seen strange. But this room filled with large boxes as tall as he is with strange animated sections and colored buttons is beyond anything he knows. The elf looks around, keeping his hands to himself as he does.

He's about to pass the small kid when he notices that the machine is doing things with the buttons to make things on the animated section move.

[Strange place. What is this place?] Signing is still a habit. His self didn't bring anything to communicate with apparently.

[mrsklover]

Richie turns to look at the newcomer and blinks at what he's doing with his hands. "I don't know that..."

But he knows what deaf is and how to work with it. He rushes off for a second and comes back with a comic book and a pen. "There's nothing inside. I tried reading them but the pages are all blank here. You can write on that."

[mutedsuspicions]

Lerith at least doesn't look offended that this small child doesn't know Sign. Not many did. Just two? Maaaybe three. But he watches the kid scamper off before taking a seat. Animals and children - he wasn't scared of either. Neither had shown him harm like full men had in the past. So being at their level was easier.

He tilts his head at the strange book, but takes it from Richie. 'thank you,' he writes to start. 'what is this place? i've never seen a place like this before.' He hands over the comic book for Richie to read as he looks at the various machines.

'i'm lerith.'

[mrsklover]

Richie takes the note and frowns a little. Who didn't know what an arcade was? But then again, looking at Lerith, he didn't exactly seem like someone who'd be in Derry, Maine.

"I'm Richie. And this is...well. It's supposed to be an arcade. But the games here all suck, trust me." He glances at them with a deep scowl. "They're based on me which is stupid."

[mutedsuspicions]

Oh, oh he was in someone's mind room. Did the Agrii bring children to the city? That must be horrifying for them. For a moment Lerith thinks of Omega before focusing on the kid in front of him.

He finds he wants to look around. Get a better understanding of this 'arcade' place that had beeping, noisy games for Richie to play.

'may i look around?' And with permission given, he does so, getting to his feet to look at the different cabinets. The Homeward Unbound makes me think of his own villa, all dark and foreboding. The screens in general are really weird to him, and he actually startles at the red balloon floating by. The hell was that?

He side steps it and moves on further. All that he sees, but it's the seemingly out-of-place knife that gets his attention. For this room of games and noises, that didn't need to be here. Thinking it was 'wrong' in the room, Lerith takes the knife in hand with the intention of taking it to Richie to ask about it.

[mrsklover]

The knife is the worst one. As the room fades around them, the child Richie grows through the years and stands beside Lerith as an adult once more. His eyes are already filled with tears as the room transforms into a dark sewer. As the memory plays. Ending only with Richie being dragged out, screaming and weeping.

When the arcade comes back, he is as he appeared in the memory. Blood-splattered, broken glasses, and sobbing as he kneels on the floor.

"They should....they should have left me..."

[only_an_echo]

"Kind of reminds me of Cid's parlor. Especially the lights and the screens..."

Echo lets his gaze do the wandering before glancing back to the arcade cabinet where young Richie occupies the first player side. He's careful to approach the kid, but he doesn't touch anything. "...Then again, the interior's almost the same in terms of its condition," he adds, still looking at everything with a furrowed brow.

[mrsklover]

The kid looks over at the newcomer and frowns at him. He doesn't know who Cid is nor does he know if the comment on the interior is a compliment or an insult.

"I know that this is from my memories and last time I saw it, it was pretty rough. But it's also kinda my brain, buddy. So let's maybe not be too harsh on the condition?"

Finding the self-depreciating joke kind of funny, Richie snorts a laugh and turns back to his game, ignoring the stranger once more.

[only_an_echo]

The arched brow becomes a lift when Echo looks at the kid. "Sorry. It's just a vast difference from the other room we were supposed to be in," he explains, watching him play the game for a bit before stepping back to walk the room.

The bright red balloon bobbing along the floor catches his attention. He's familiar with the concept thanks to Billy's alternate reality, and he tilts his head to try reading its print. "...I heart Derry?"

[mrsklover]

"I've always been one of a kind," Richie says with a wink over his shoulder. At the mention of the balloon's print though, Richie stops playing and the smile on his face is gone. He turns around and moves closer to Echo while keeping his eyes on the balloon as though it were something dangerous.

"I definitely don't heart Derry," he grumbles. "That balloon... There was a monster that used it as his calling card. A clown that ate children. He heart-ed Derry for sure; best all you can eat kid buffet."

[only_an_echo]

"Ate children?" Disbelief initially colors his features before turning into concern the moment he casts a sidelong glance at Richie. "Where did it even come from?"

[mrsklover]

"Space? Hell? Space Hell? Hell Space? I dunno, man. One of those, probably. He like came down a long ass time ago and then decided to chow down every 27 years on kids." Richie snorts a laugh.

"God. That fucker traveled a long ass way and all he ever got to see was Derry, Maine. Fucking sad."