Placeholder | Arty + Viper | Lost Letters Car

Viper

Maybe Viper should look through some of these letters. Or, she could do something much more entertaining. Viper scooted a huge pile of letters to one side, taking her time to arrange them neatly into a taller and taller pile, with a gap for someone to sit inside in the very middle. Who knows what she was making.

Very little consideration for the names on the letters, Viper… shifted to sit into the middle of her uneven letter pile. It was like… a bowl. A bowl for a loser. Hm. This was more boring than she expected, how sad.

Perhaps she should find someone to annoy instead.

Viper scanned the surroundings over the top of her letter pile den, and spotted Arty. Oh. Perfect, an unfortunate victim.

“Arty!” She popped up, wincing as she nearly injured herself with how quickly she did so, “Found anything cool yet?!”

Arty Takenaka

Arty is definitely not expecting someone to call her name, and is expecting even less for it to be called in such a peppy manner. That much is clear by the way she turns around, both hands full of letters, with a startled look in her eyes. Her gaze falls on Viper, and things both make more and less sense. Mostly less sense. Arty left the game developer to die on the ice alone; why would Viper want anything to do with her now? Unless…

…No, Arty, relax. There’s thirteen other people in this room. Viper’s not going to attack her.

…Well it didn’t stop Atsuko—

RELAX, she practically screams at herself, trying to cut out that line of thought. Being jumpy is just going to make her more of a target. She has to be chill. Just answer Viper’s question. What did she ask, again? Arty has to think about it.

“…Just mail,” she says blandly, holding up both fistfuls of letters to illustrate. She sighs and drops her hands to her sides, letting the envelopes fall to the floor. “I thought you weren’t allowed to build forts once you got past a certain age.” Maybe you can still do that in your 20s?

Viper

Viper most vertainly had not forgotten about Arty’s abandonment of her. In fact, perhaps there could be something said about it being part of why she was determined to interact with her now, a determination to make her feel like she owed her something as an apology. Well, motive aside, Viper clearly wanted a new victim.

“Mail can still be exciting!” Viper grins, “Even if it’s someone elses! You can read it if you really wanna!” She tilts her head a little at the comment about fort building.

“WHAT? I have no clue who told you that, but they are, like, so wrong! There is no age too old to be making forts!” Viper seems mortified by the thought that forts could be banned for anyone considered ‘too old’ for them. She was not too old, whatsoever!

Arty Takenaka

Arty wrinkles her nose. “Why would I read someone else’s mail? That just sounds stupid.” She’s less accusatory here and more just… confused. “I mean, pretty much everything’s online these days. The only things we get in the mail are bills and ads and stuff. And, like, birthday cards, but those wouldn’t be fun to read for other people.” Her shoulders raise in a slight shrug. “Unless they have money in them, I guess.” Okay… that would be pretty cool.

“…You think any of these are birthday cards?” Arty, no. She does look like she’s considering this for a solid moment… before grimacing to herself and shaking her head slightly. If she did that, and Roni found out, ze would kill her, and by ‘kill her’ Arty means ’look intensely sad for a moment in which Arty gets the impression that ze’s really disappointed but doesn’t want to make her feel bad, and is instead searching for the right encouraging words to inspire her to make the decision to be better on her own, rather than being told what to do, which makes Arty feel just as bad so she might as well just not do it at all.'

This scenario plays out in Arty’s head often—whenever she’s considering something she knows Roni would never do—but this time, she experiences an almost physical pang of emotion. It’s like someone punched her in the chest, and that someone is a mannequin wearing a t-shirt that reads “YOU MISS YOUR FAMILY.” Arty looks at the fort, and suddenly it seems less the product of an immature adult and more the product of a playful nature that might possibly be reminding her of multiple siblings.

“Whatever. It’s not any of my business. But seeing as I’m still technically of acceptable fort-making age… move over. We’re expanding the castle.”

Viper

“I’unno.” Viper starts, “But maybe yeah… sometimes there’s money in letters, too!” She…couldn’t remember the last time she ever received a letter, let alone a text from some people. Nor could she remember the last time she sent a letter or text to some people. Maybe she shouldn’t think about that. “I just wanna read some of ‘em just to see what people got goin’ on.” Because you’re nosey, Viper.

Arty Takenaka “…You think any of these are birthday cards?

“Ehhh, there’s probably at least one birthday card in here somewhere.” Viper doesn’t care too much, really. She’d open it regardless. Seemingly catching Arty’s moment of crisis, she tilts her head to the side almost questioningly, but when Arty agrees to join her in the fort, the facial expression that comes over Viper is even more than her usual smug grin.

“YEAH! That is what I’m TALKING about!” She wastes no time in scooting half of the letter pile over to make a little more room, cramming herself up against the other side and continuing to pile more letters onto the top of said pile. “I knew you couldn’t resist how much FUN I’m having in here!” She grinned at Arty, handing her a pile of letters so she could repair her side after it had been moved over.

Arty Takenaka

“Yeah… fun.” It feels so weird to be trying to have fun here. But… she’s gonna. Maybe if Arty can accomplish ‘fun,’ for one moment, it’ll feel like her family’s with her.

Arty crouches down by the empty space and sweeps over a big pile of letters to use as further bricks for the wall, in addition to accepting the pile Viper hands her. She’s decided it’s easier to work from the outside for now, as it gives her more space and easier access to raw materials. It becomes clear after a little bit of this that Arty is approaching this with a lot of focus and strategy. Her eyes train in on whatever she’s doing in a way that implies a lot of calculating is going on behind the scenes. She starts to ramble on a little bit, too, about what she’s doing, and the decisions involved behind it.

“So I think the flatter ones work better for stacking on top of each other—thick ones have a little bit of curve on the edges from the envelope stretching, right? So we should put those on the top where they’re not as, like, load-bearing? Is that the word? Yeah. But it sucks because you can stack faster with those. But it’s not worth it if the whole thing falls over so I think maybe it’s better to do slow and steady than try for a quick payoff that’s less stable.” …And so on.