Mask Or Menace - IC Contact Post

[helpdesk_hero]

This is David Alleyne, I'm not available at the moment.
Please leave your name, contact information, and what this is regarding after the beep.

Comments

[besainted]

I'm sorry to hear it.

[helpdesk_hero]

It is what it is. But thank you.

[besainted]

[ There's a pause; this feels a bit like having overstepped, but this wait sometimes pushes him into being maudlin. And it definitely has his nerves feeling raw, so he can't just stop texting.

After a moment: ] How about mutant boarding school, how was that? I have no idea what to picture.

[helpdesk_hero]

[He will absolutely give Damian this time. Has to be scary.]

Picture a large mansion, the sort you have ‘wings’ in. I lived at the school, roommates with Josh actually. I arrived that summer. Before him.

[besainted]

What were the classes? Was it all relating to learning to manage your powers?

[helpdesk_hero]

Oh it was also a normal high school. My favorite class was drama actually. The teacher was a teleporter. Always made for great entrances.

[besainted]

Drama. What kind of assignments are there in drama?

[helpdesk_hero]

Study of plays. Performances. Soliloquies. All sorts of stuff.

[besainted]

At my school, we called that leisure time.

[helpdesk_hero]

Well we were teens displaced from homes and families. A lot of us couldn’t go home. Me Included. We needed the outlet. The fun. So yeah, it wasn’t leisure time, but it helped.

[besainted]

Well I hope you aced all of the drama tests.

[helpdesk_hero]

I'm perfectly dramatic.

[besainted]

I don't know, you haven't met my boss's dog.

[helpdesk_hero]

I never work with children or animals.

[besainted]

I would usually agree with you, but he's five feet tall and talks, so I'm inclined to cut him a little slack. Even if he is ridiculously dramatic.

[helpdesk_hero]

And... that's not where I expected this to go.

[besainted]

That was about my thought process when she introduced us.

[helpdesk_hero]

At least you lived an interesting life back there?

[besainted]

I enjoyed it. And I guess I'll get back to enjoying it, at some point.

It's strange to think everything has been put on pause, reportedly. It puts me in mind of an entire frozen universe, just waiting for me.

[helpdesk_hero]

Perhaps it isn't waiting on you. Perhaps this place exists in the space between moments of time. But yeah. It's sometimes hard to consider this place when you realize that in the end you go back like nothing happened.

[besainted]

It's like a spare lifetime. Like

[ a pause as he tries to remember this ANCIENT SLANG ]

YOLT

No, that really doesn't get across, nevermind.

[helpdesk_hero]

Wow, you went there. I'm ashamed to say I've gone on dates with you. YOLT. Indeed.

But seriously, I get it. How can one find value in growth as a person if it all wipes when we go home? Instead you have to find it in what you can do for others.

[besainted]

I like that. What you can do for others, and what you create here. There's quite a lot of legacy projects and programs left by exPorted imPorts. I read that in the world that used to draw in imPorts before this one, they even managed to alter the moon.

[besainted]

And by the way, I took it back. You can't be ashamed if I take it back.

[helpdesk_hero]

My shame is something I get to decide, Damian.

I live my life trying to do things for others. Because... because there is only so much time and I really want to use what is given to me the right way.