Suddenly flashmob

[stridercentric]

Who: Bro Strider and anyone who happens to bear witness to this phenomenon.
When: Monday, april 1st.
Where: The plaza.
Style: Action.
Status: Open to all and most suitable for mingling!

[Vatheon plaza. Everything is calm and everyone is going about their business, as usual. The only thing out of the ordinary is the coral giving an occasional flicker. As the clock turns to noon, one man purposely strides towards the center of the plaza. The boombox, which he's carrying on his shoulder, is set down on the ground. He stretches leisurely, adjusts his shades and cracks his knuckles. Then, finally, he hits the button on the boombox and this starts to echo through the plaza.

Bro starts to dance along, and for a few moments, he just looks very silly all by himself. Then a few more people rush out from nearby buildings, getting up from benches and basically dropping whatever they were doing to join him. The locals just stare, unsure of what they're watching, but as the dancing crowd grows their herd insticts begin to stir. So they join in as well. The dance is easy enough to copy and that's exactly why Bro chose it. The entire incident is being recorded with his SFC so that anyone who can't be there in person will know exactly what's going down in the plaza.

Happy April Fools day, Vatheon!

The song ends and the dancing comes to a halt. The crowd's supposed to scatter and go about their business now, but with so many people unfamiliar with the concept of a flashmob, Bro's hopes of it happening aren't that high. Either way, he puts a small distance between himself and the crowd, scanning it. They got a good number of people in the end, but he's a little sore that a few of his closest companions missed out on this. Ron DeLite has a good excuse, what with being in a coma, but Dave... Where the hell is Dave? He made sure to tell all the Striders that participation is mandatory.


Feel free to either congratulate/scoff at Bro for a job well done, or just have characters discuss the incident amongst themselves!]

Comments

[cawcawmthrfckrs]

[Really, Davesprite isn't at all surprised that this even happened. He's not even surprised that his participation was not only mandatory, but that Bro even got him to do it in the first place. Granted, he'd do a lot for Bro and by extension Dirk, so that's not really saying much.

His life.

Still, after it's all said and done, he has to tell Bro about Dave. This is...uncomfortable. Not to mention unfortunate because it's April 1st and this is a horrible time to tell Bro. Davesprite really doesn't want to do this, but it's better to get it from him than from someone else, right? Right. ...Maybe. Not really.

His fucking life.]

Caramelldansen will forever be a classic, and I think we just solidified that.

[A slight pause.]

BythewayDave'sgonehome.

[...Wow, he didn't think he could even speak that fast! It's like he flashstepped his words.]

[stridercentric]

[Hell, Bro isn't really focused on the fact that he managed to persuade Davesprite into engaging in embarrassing shenanigangs with him. It's more the fact that Davesprite was there to share the moment. If that makes sense. Bonding over ironic hijinks is the best kind of bonding.

And he was just about to fist bump Davesprite for a mission accomplished when the cascade of words gets slung at him. It happened so fast, it takes Bro a few additional seconds to separate the syllables into words and process the sentence itself.

His grin fades into something far less cheerful and he raises his pinky to his left ear in one of those trademark cleaning motions.]

... Come again?

[cawcawmthrfckrs]

[The sprite actually looks a little pained. He doesn't want to say that again. It was painful enough the first time.]

Dave's gone. He flew the coop. He moved on to bigger and better things. He went back to SBURB to do whatever he needed to do. He's not on the contact list anymore and I neurotically check that at least three times a day.

[stridercentric]

[He sure did hear what he thought he heard, there. The expression on Davesprite's face isn't helping much, either. Dave...

The magnitude of it is halfway through sinking in when Bro remembers what day it is. April Fools. Yeah, it's probably just a really shitty April Fools prank. No way is he going to fall for that. Then he'll look like a moron for sure.]

Man, you know that ain't funny, right?

[cawcawmthrfckrs]

I would've waited until tomorrow, but I'm pretty sure you would've appreciated that even less.

[He sighs a little.]

Just...check your SFC contact list. You can't remove anybody off of it manually. There's not even an option for that.

[stridercentric]

[If it's a prank and he checks, then of course he's the gullible one, but... Davesprite's expression is pretty damn sincere for a prank, so he'll pull his SFC out of his pocket to skim through the list.

Dammit. Goddammit Davesprite, why couldn't it have been a pank?

The corners of his mouth twitch for just a second and his eyes narrow behind his shades. She squeezes the SFC so hard his knuckles turn white, but it's slipped back into his pocket so fast that anyone would have a hard time noticing that one.]

... Oh.

[cawcawmthrfckrs]

[He really really really really wishes it is a prank. But it's not, and there's no use wishing for something like that.

Davesprite is quiet, not sure what else to say to that. Or if there is even anything to say.]

[littleboytrap]

[Czes didn't participate, but instead watched the dancing with a faint frown. When everything starts to break up, he approaches Bro cautiously]

How did you do that?

[stridercentric]

[Bro tears his gaze away from the crowd, turning to face the boy with a proud grin. Let's hope Czes wasn't expecting an entirely seriously response, here.]

It's the magic of the dance, lil' dude.

[littleboytrap]

I don't think there's dance magic. [Though he's really not sure. That grin is something he mistrusts, though, so he doesn't get any closer] Why'd you do it?

[stridercentric]

[He gives a mild shake of the head, still looking thoroughly amused.]

See, that's the wrong question to ask. You should be wonderin' why I wouldn't do it and there lies your answer. Because when you think about it, there's no reason not to do it.

[littleboytrap]

[He frowns a bit] Well. I guess that's true. But people usually don't.

[stridercentric]

But they should. It's boatloads of fun, am I right?

[This is clearly logic no one can refute.]

[shippingmath]

[Living alone means that you have a lot of time to dick around on the internet. Especially weird random corners of Youtube. What this means is that, in addition, to knowing a lot about the horrors of modern dance, Dirk knows Caramelldansen really, really well. Which is why he's one of the first people to join in.

He does, at least, understand the concept of a flash mob, so when the song stops, he just stops dancing and flashsteps to the other side of the Plaza. If he can catch Bro's eye, he shoots him a thumbs-up.]

[stridercentric]

[Bro didn't expect any less from his other self. Alternate or not, he's pretty sure the rad dance skills are genetic. Grasping all the ironic aspects of the flashmob and abiding by them without fail is a given talent too.

He watches Dirk move away from the mob with impeccable speed and shoots him the thumbs up in return. They did good.]

[shippingmath]

[Hell yes, they did. Dirk lingers casually- after all, the point is to go back to what you were doing before it started, and what he was doing was just hanging around. He doesn't especially care for it, thanks to Rainbow Dash- his hair is a pretty obvious shade of blue right now, thanks to her April Fool's day prank- but he's trying to pull it off as happening on purpose. As an ironic gesture for the day.

What he's going to do about it after today, he has no idea.]

[stridercentric]

[Flashmob success aside, Bro really wants to ask about the hair. It's ironic, he knows it's ironic, but damn if he isn't curious what made Dirk decide to turn his hair blue- If indeed it was a decision at all.

He'll just casually put the boombox back in his sylladex, take his sweet time talking to other people, then see if he can hunt Dirk down again. Of course, Davesprite gets to Bro first to deliver some pretty shitty news, meaning he'll be in a bit of a mood when he does finally run into Dirk again.]

[shippingmath]

[Fortunately for Bro, the hair makes him pretty easy to pick out of a crowd. Dirk's verging on the edge of a mood himself, because of the hair, so he isn't just going to comment on Bro's apparent irritation. Instead, he just shrugs and gives a casual wave.]

Good work.

[stridercentric]

[He returns the casual wave with one of his own, though he can't quite manage a smile.]

Thanks. For a place that ain't too familiar with our internet memes, I'd say we got a good number of people to join in.

OOPS LATE

[symmetrophile]

[It's easy to determine who planned this. After all, it's only expected that a leader would start them all off. That's the sort of assumption Kid has made, when he approaches who he had first thought was Dirk, until he looked again.

He's more filled out than Dirk, the bulk of muscle that speaks of more advanced physical development, taller.

But the resemblance is still uncanny.]

If you're going to incite a mass performance, the least you could do is make certain the other participants are exactly coordinated with each other.

[There's always a critic.]

BUT YOU CAME

[stridercentric]

[Always a critic, indeed. Bro just peers down the kid, not entirely sure what to think of him. He looks pretty damn serious for the bullshit that just came out of his mouth. Well, nothing else for it but to accept that remark and roll with it.]

My humblest apologies, Your Highness. I did the best I could, but as your expert gaze must've noticed, I was workin' with fucking amateurs. Please withhold your cricital review, I promise I'll do better next time.

[symmetrophile]

[He's just an inch over six feet, skinny in that way where people joke about being invisible if you so much as turn sideways, a real beanpole for his apparent age. Strange eye colors in shades like red and orange aren't unusual to the Striders, but there's usually something unsettling about the reaper's concentric rings of gold in his stare.

It's invasive, like he's stripping off the layers of a person and having himself a good, long look at all the metaphysical viscera. That he has to still look up to meet Bro's gaze is significant.]

That's no excuse for a sloppy first impression.

[R U D E, Kid.]

Do you have some relation with someone by the name of Dirk Strider?

[stridercentric]

[Invasive stares is exactly why Bro wears shades in the first place. He got sick of people staring at his eyes and with a nice shady barrier there, it's just so much easier to make eyecontact. He sees them, they don't really see him. That's how it's always worked.

Except this kid is different. He seems undeterred by the shades and is staring right into Bro's eyes anyway. It's a little unsettling, yes, but he's not going to cave and break eyecontact. He won't. He'll just put up one hell of a grin.

The question is unsurprising. He's heard variations of it quite a few times already since arriving here, and always people assume he's related to his younger self. The only one to actually assume he was Dirk was Jake English, but even that conclusion isn't entirely correct.]

What tipped you off? Is it the striking good looks or the smooth accent?

tagging from mobile yeahhhhh

[symmetrophile]

Your mutual and utter absence in good taste.

[Kid smiles then, cool and a little sly.] Except for the pleasing aesthetics of your nearly identical choices in sunglasses.

[Um. Kid, you don't genetically inherit fashion sense, JSYK.]

[stridercentric]

[Pleasing aesthetics, what? He's never heard anyone refer to his shades with fancy words like that. A soft chortle escapes him.]

Well I'll be. That sounded like an honest to God compliment, right there.