The Wretched Rite - Round Three - DSRS Darwin

Originally posted on MSPA by bobthepen.

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MalkyTop has got the jump on all of you with a fantastic example of a character profile which she PM'ed to me (PM's are the best M's):

Username: MalkyTop

Name: Tinder Zebulon Pleasant (He has been trying to dump that name for a long time.)

Gender: Mah-mah-mah-male

Color: This is the color of time.

Race: Human, though he once dreamt he was a chicken if that counts for something.

Weapons/Abilities:

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SpoilerTinder certainly doesn’t have many items on him besides the clothes he’s wearing, the diary he keeps, and the small, old-timey radio that he always leaves on. The radio is pretty musty and has four small dials that spins four number wheels. The first number wheel never seems to end while the second goes up to ’23’ and the third and fourth goes up to ‘59’. It is physically impossible for the radio to contain all of them, large as they must be, but it does. The radio has the ability to send just one message to itself anywhen in time, or at least from when it first turned on. Tinder has never used up this message.

Description:

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SpoilerTinder is pretty scrawny and can be often seen yawning, perhaps because he does not get much sleep. His eyes (dull green-blue) are pretty sunken and may often close just to rest a little, most often when he’s just listening to someone talk. He never actually falls asleep, though. He still may come off as rude, especially because he seems to enjoy it when people snap at him and ask if he’s listening and he smugly replies ‘yes.’ He seems to make it his job to know everybody who lives nearby and then pairs them up with someone else in his head. Other than that, Tinder doesn’t get too involved with others. He keeps an obsessively detailed diary and has developed a pretty good internal clock so that he can accurately guess how much time has passed since he, say, started waiting at a bus stop. Another thing he keeps careful check on is his sanity. For both time and sanity he has gotten into the habit of stopping every hour or so and checking up on them; for time, he writes down everything of note and maybe things not of note and what time it took place, while for sanity, he often just checks in on himself. “Am I insane? …No, I don’t think so.” It’s not a very elaborate test, but he trusts it well enough, going on the assumption that an insane person wouldn’t check on his sanity. He’s been taught to be passive-aggressive and even can counter-passive-aggressive, which is something like aggressively being passive-aggressive at a passive-aggressor. He would rather keep calm and friendly (and thus always seem like the ‘good guy’) and often does this by randomly counting little things. He might count the number of round things in the room or he might go so far as to try to count the number of strands of hair on your head. He doesn’t like people calling him by his name but has yet to figure out a good enough nickname to go by. ‘Tinder’ being the least worst part, he goes by that for now.

It is hard to see Tinder’s face because he wears both a face mask and a maroon hood. The maroon signifies his low class and the thin stripes that are stitched around the shoulders of the hood signifies his job (black – unemployed), intelligence (brown – deemed low), mental fitness (tan with white streak – questionable), and address (it’s just the address stitched on, not a stripe signifying his specific apartment, that would just be complicated, though it is stitched in a puce-looking color to signify his sector). He wears rather loose-fitting clothes and doesn’t have much exposed skin, though it can be hard to tell because everything’s covered in soot, so much so that he can only be described as ‘black.’ Only if he removes his face mask could his skin tone be determined (it’s like hot chocolate with specks of black soot because that damn thing gets everywhere). If he removes his hood, any part of his hair that’s not covered with soot would look slightly brownish but that would only be because, when comparing soot to black hair, soot always looks blackest and the hair always looks brown even if the brown can’t actually be seen. He shuffles about in a way that would make him take up the least room but also in a way that could allow him to firmly push aside anybody that might get in his way.

Biography:

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SpoilerTimber shoved his way through the crowd of similarly-hooded people on his way to work. He considered himself one of the lucky few to be able to get a job in the higher-class district. Once he got past a certain point, the walk wouldn’t be as crowded. Upper-classes never left their homes and even if they did, they would make sure to go out of their way not to touch him. It would just be a lonely walk between the towering apartment buildings. He could raise his arms slightly, trail his fingers against the walls, and not have them collide with someone. Not many of his types got to experience such space.

Timber hustled through the gates into a small hub and rushed to his locker, already ten minutes late because of the crowd. As he fumbled into his soot-free suit, he ended up tripping over something large and clunky. He stifled a curse and muttered darkly at it for a while before actually bothering to figure out what it was.

It was an old-fashioned two-way radio with three dials that didn’t seem to do much. They were all set on ‘0’. The other half of the pair was nowhere to be found. Feeling it his duty to try to help return it to its owner (besides one half of a two-way radio wasn’t useful at all), he picked it up, turned it on, and called out hesitantly, “Hello?”

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As he fumbled into his soot-free suit, he ended up tripping over something large and clunky. Before he could almost-curse at it, it crackled on and a voice that sounded worryingly like his said, “Hello?”

Timber waited for a moment before slowly picking it up and fiddling with the dials. The third dial seemed to move on its own if he left it alone and reset back to the number it was on if he turned it and left it alone for too long. He watched as it clicked to ‘59’, then back to ‘0’. The second dial clicked to ‘1’. He was vaguely aware that now he must be eleven minutes late. He wondered why the voice who sounded like him hadn’t said anything else yet. He fiddled with the dials some more until he set everything to ‘0’ except the last, which he set to ‘5’. He spoke into the radio.

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As he fumbled into his soot-free suit, he ended up tripping over something large and clunky. Before he could almost-curse at it, it crackled on and a voice that sounded worryingly like his said, “Hello?”

Timber waited for a moment and the radio crackled again and the same-sounding voice said, “This is a test. I’m different from that last guy, unless you never heard a last guy, so never mind that. If this is what I think it is, you wait for a second message from me, or you or however this works, the same guy, in about a minute, and if you don’t hear anything, then that means this radio only sends one message and I’ve used up mine. Oh yeah, I’m not sure I remember what conclusions I came to at your point in time so in case you haven’t exactly guessed yet, I think this sends messages to myself. Or whoever’s holding onto this radio. Through time. And stuff. Alright, maybe talk to you in a minute, when you’re me? Maybe? I dunno.”

He watched the second dial tick to ‘1’ and waited a little longer but then realized that it was unlikely, with the dials right there in front of him, for him to be late with the message. He picked up the radio and thought about something for a moment before turning a few dials, pressing the side button and speaking into it.

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As he fumbled into his soot-free suit, he ended up tripping over something large and clunky. Before he could almost-curse at it, it crackled on and a voice that sounded worryingly like his said, “Hello?”

Timber waited for a moment and the radio crackled again and the same-sounding voice said, “This is a test. I’m different from that last guy, unless you never heard a last guy, so never mind that. If this is what I think it is, you wait for a second message from me, or you or however this works, the same guy, in about a minute, and if you don’t hear anything, then that means this radio only sends one message and I’ve used up mine. Oh yeah, I’m not sure I remember what conclusions I came to at your point in time so in case you haven’t exactly guessed yet, I think this sends messages to myself. Or whoever’s holding onto this radio. Through time. And stuff. Alright, maybe talk to you in a minute, when you’re me? Maybe? I dunno.”

Timber waited for a moment before picking up the radio and getting ready to wait until it crackled again and the same voice said, “Hi, this is a different one, I just got that last message you just listened to, and, uh, saving you some time, he doesn’t make a second one. So it’s one message only, and thinking about it, you probably shouldn’t reply either, that’d be using up your message and then the thing’d be stupidly useless. You better go, you’re already late for work.”

Timber continued shoving himself into his second suit, grabbed his all-important bag and clipped the radio to his belt before heading out into the upper-class sector. The radio crackled on again. “There was some sort of freak accident on our usual route, you’ll have to go another way. It was between the place with the flowers and the place that always has that upside-down lamp.” As he carefully inched his way between high-class apartments, his new radio clicked on every few seconds to send him some sort of important message. He couldn’t help but think he would need some headphones. “You’ll need some sort of notepad too,” the radio said.

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Timber would never say that he had become dependent upon his radio, but it was very important. He used it to win lotteries, but then got guilty and stopped after two. He used it to dodge embarrassment and social tragedy. Sometimes it made him uncomfortable to really trust the messages that came out, especially when it once said, weakly and desperately, “Get out of that job, don’t care how, just get unemployed really quickly.” Unemployment was a big thing for himself to ask for and Timber didn’t really want to follow through. He had a great job that he probably would never get again and the whole paperwork and waiting for a new hood to get embroidered was annoying and – “Listen to him, he was serious, it’s bad,” the radio said. Timber never really found out why he had to get out of his job, but he found himself not to curious about finding out. Instead, he lived off his lottery money as well as doing paid odd-jobs on the side for anybody nearby.

Most of his life wasn’t very notable besides two messages. One was very worrying. “KICK IT KICK IT KICK IT stop shouting at me oooooh who are you, really, future-boy, is this all a trap? KICK IT RIGHT NOW no, no no no, I’m stuck in the waaaaallls can you hear me scratching at them? I’m scratching very hard, very, really--“

From then on, realizing he actually had the potential to turn insane, Timber watched himself very carefully, every so often motivated by another rambling message.

The second message went like, “Two days from now, fourteen-thirteen-thirty-two, you’ll be entered into a battle to the death. You’ll kind of disappear from home, so you should probably take care of some business. The food’ll spoil, so you should give it away, and make sure Lasso gets a good home and you better at least kiss Permelia before you go or I’ll be forced to be very angry at you from where I am. Also, change our name because I think the other guys are laughing at us. Change it to something cool.”

Before he could even think this was another insanity message, the radio piped up again. “That last message was no lie. Don’t bother changing your name, they didn’t accept my reason as legitimate. It was a little embarrassing. Also, when you go kiss Permelia, brace your cheek. She hits hard.”

Timber spend the two days preparing, giving out his food and money, tearfully parting with Lasso, telling his five roommates to go ahead and advertise a free space if they wanted, kissing Permelia, dodging her immediate punch, resignedly not changing his name, stuff like that. He also looked for a weapon but found out the easy way that he would get caught and arrested, then did it anyways because it wouldn’t matter in about three minutes. While he was having fun resisting the authority’s attempts to capture him, he disappeared, right on schedule.

She just needs a quick question to round it all out!