[Action] - Fourth Wall Event

[kingofthetoybox]

[Just by a couple homes, a giant, metallic, futuristic bed has found its way smack dab in the middle of the road. It's clear to see that the bed, ominous and imposing with its dark purple color and 'face', though offset just a bit by the pig snout emblem above it, is occupied. Lying in the bed, protected by a glass capsule, is a familiar boy.

... Boy? Was it appropriate to call him that?

He had all the features of a fat, young boy, but over them were all the features of a decrepit man: wrinkled, pale skin and gray hair.

The man lied there, gasping for breath, lounging underneath the sunny blue sky with not a single means available to him to escape it. If anyone approaches him, he'd turn his head, weakly, and say in his tired, scratchy, though bratty voice...]

... Like what you see...?

Comments

[ceasetoexist]

Pretty sure I can talk to you however I want, grandpa.

Yeah, guess what? When you go back - excuse me, if you go back? You won't remember this. These places won't let you. And even if you did? They'd beat you anyway. We kind of got a wide losing streak to keep up, if we want to talk our luck.

[Pokey just grimaces. And then?

He's moving forward again. Not quick, not eager, and not daring to try touching the bed again. But still so Porky can see him as he speaks.]

You're right. The world is sucky, crappy place with a bunch of jerks running around doing whatever they want. But it's...

[God. He can't believe he's going to say this. And mean it.]

But it's full of people just as scared as you, and who feel pain like you do and who...I dunno. Who care about you. Even though they shouldn't. It doesn't make sense, but they do.

...When was the last time you even touched another person, let alone talked with them? I mean have you ever even spoken with a person before? God knows you spoke at Ness a lot, but did you even really care? I mean have you ever just...hung out with somebody, or spent a day with a girl you liked?

Have you ever even liked a person that way before?

Or are you just...you, I guess. Stuck in a friggin' refrigerator and staring stupid at everything in front of him?

[kingofthetoybox]

[It was the same voice, same inflections, but the words weren't right. None of what this other boy was saying was at all familiar to him. These were strange, foreign words and the experiences that he was describing seemed just as strange. He never did hang out with anyone. He never spent a day with a girl that he liked.

He wasn't even sure if he liked anyone anymore.

The thoughts begin to haunt him, just a little. But all of that only translates into more anger for him.]

... You... What did you go through?

[ceasetoexist]

[There's so many ways to try and phrase it. What he went through. He could try telling him what he went through, what he experienced. Try to give this...broken, crippled weird thing some idea of who he was. How they had deviated.

But he can't. Not right now. He's just too damn angry.

So he just glares down at him, the real him, as he says.]

More than you ever did.

[kingofthetoybox]

... But you've only gone, what...? Five, six years traveling through time?

[He glares now, as weakly as he could muster.]

Try thousands. Maybe even up to ten thousand. That's how long I've been alive and kicking. That's how long I've seen the way this world works. You...

You try living that long and tell me people care.

[ceasetoexist]

I haven't been traveling through time, you choad, I grew up!

[You know. After all the time traveling he did for Giegue. ...Oh God. Giegue's here too. He'll need to deal with the possibility of Giegue finding...this, too, but that can wait til later.]

No. You haven't lived that long. You've been existing but you haven't lived. How are you supposed to have seen how the world works if you aren't even part of the world?

[kingofthetoybox]

... You know what I'll see that nobody will? The end.

[His face darkens.]

You can live in the world and die if you want. As the nothing little boy they've always told you you were, turning into just a nothing man. Never in fifteen thousand gazillion-million years will I ever want that life again.

I'll be part of the world, alright. Only when everyone who's ever hated me has gone and died.

And that'll be that.

[ceasetoexist]

...What if it doesn't end? What if you're wrong. I know it's some sissy crap to say that an end just leads to a beginning, but what if it's true?

[Pokey is not a courageous boy, and it'd be hard to say that it's courage that is really in any way motivating him to speak up against the...real him. This him. However you wanted to phrase this flavor. This cold, heartless him that he had been on the road to becoming before Mayfield. This version of him that he had contemplated becoming again when he first got here, and it had seemed to easy to just hide away.

He was an idiot to have even contemplated it. To have thought of going down the road again that could just lead to...this. A bitter child in the guise of a bitter old man, rambling and seeing nothing beyond himself.]

And even if it did end, it wouldn't matter. You can't see the present, I dunno how you're going to tell when the end is here.

You're pathetic.

[Pokey shakes his head, slowly.]

Do yourself a favor: stay here. That's easy enough, right? I mean you kinda have to. Just stay here and don't bother anyone.

I don't wanna waste my time having to deal with you.