maskormenacelogs | I can move mountains, I can work a miracle [OPEN]

[He shrugs, but doesn't seem to see a point in arguing anymore. There's not really anything that comes to mind right away, which just helps feed his new self-evaluation.

But yeah, sure, he'll be here. That's all he's doing. Existing.

In the same space as someone else, at least.]

[Hazel seems perfectly content with this arrangement of quiet coexistence. after a moment or two of waiting to make sure he has nothing else to say, she pulls out her comm and starts playing one of the six million games loaded on there.

it doesn't always have to be talking, after all. sometimes a presence is just as reassuring as actually carrying on conversation. Hazel's just not really sure who's feeling most of that reassurance right now.]

[It takes five, maybe ten minutes before Tetsuo looks up to the ceiling again, over to Hazel, to the bed..Hazel again. As dedicated as he is to feeling miserable for himself, boredom creeps in. It's one thing to be miserable alone. Another to be miserable with someone else doing something.

He edges just slightly closer to try to see what she's doing.]

[if Hazel notices (and of course she does in this dead silence) she makes no indication of it. even if she wanted to, the game's got her full attention; it's some sort of tower defense thing, and judging by the intense battle going onscreen she's made pretty good progress in it so far.

if he angles himself right he's got a pretty good look at the action...right as another wave hits, much to Hazel's inner chagrin. god damn monsters.]

[This isn't a game style he's encountered yet. There's a lot to discover past pinball or pakkuman out there, and he's not spent as much time as he'd like exploring the depths of this strange new virtual world.

He even moves around a little on his perch to get a look at it, almost curious despite himself.

It looks like she's not really doing much. Stuff shows up and gets shot. What kind of game IS that.]

[the kind of game that immediately gets more difficult as soon as those enemies destroy one of her shooters and she realizes she doesn't have the resources to replace that particular kind.]

Shit.

[it's enough to get her to break the vow of silence they've got going on with a low curse as she scrambles to mitigate the sudden influx of problems.]

[Oh. Well. Now she's doing something.

The simple thing would be to just ask what she's doing, but Tetsuo's never been about the simple, sane solutions. He instead gives a glance to the back of her head, then back to the screen. He'll just quietly sit here and see if he works it out instead of talking.

Even when she clearly makes a mistake that he'd normally be fast to leap on her for, all he does is watch.

Okay, so she put something in that place, that's launching cannonballs at whatever those things are. Enemies,he's pretty sure.]

[she's got the situation up at the front stowed away (for now) but a bunch of assholes managed to get through in the scramble, and from experience in the past couple levels she knows some flying baddies are going to start filtering in any time now.

Hazel decides to kill two birds with one stone and set up some catapult-type stuff further down the line to finish off the stragglers and prepare for the horrors that lie ahead. she's frowning quietly at the screen, having almost completely forgotten why she was here in the first place. this game was so damn addicting.]

[By now, Tetsuo's got an idea what the basic premise might be. Blobby guys wander in, and buildings shoot at them. She added a few buildings, so that's the player's job in this. It seems pretty easy, actually.

Don't mind him edging just a little closer as he gets into a slightly less uncomfortable position.

The blobby things aren't even all gone by the time flappy things take their place. You could very generously call them bats or something, but they really look more like saggy furballs with comically undersized wings. Unlike the blobs, they're fast. Twice as fast. As a colorful swarm, they flood in en masse, completely ignoring one of the buildings altogether. Another on the frontlines just doesn't seem to be fast enough, but when it does hit, a lot of them drop and vanish.

They'll probably break all her stuff.

What's the point of this?]

[you want to keep talking mental shit about the quality of the enemies she's mowing down, Tetsuo? how about you try your hand at this and see how well you'd do!!

is what Hazel would be saying if she knew about all that shade he was throwing around in his head. but she doesn't, thankfully, and so her steady stream of muttered grumbling is directed exclusively at the game as the swarms descend upon her machinery and begin to systematically tear it apart. she just doesn't have the resources of prime placement available to keep up with this unless something changes - why the fuck did she think she needed so many cannons when she knew this was coming?? stupid stupid stupid.

the only thing that would make this worse would be-]

Fuck!

[THE REAPPEARANCE OF THOSE BURROWING ENEMIES FROM SIX LEVELS AGO. SHIT THERE GOES SOME OF HER REAR FLANK.]

[So, in other words, this is where Hazel's defense adventure ends.

Or so it really seems. Brand new buildings crumble as blob moles with long claws appear out of the ground. Old buildings fall to the wave of winged cotton balls. But the numbers are thinning. If Hazel can hold out-

Oh, wait, no, that's a tank enemy. Just one, massive and ponderously slow, making its laborious way across the ruins of the first tower...

Meanwhile, Tetsuo watches all this, trying not to be interested. He's supposed to be miserable. He's supposed to hate everything. And he is, and he does, but this is at least something else to think about...]

[the minute that tank rolls onto the scene Hazel is forced to pause the game for a moment. she leans her head against the bed behind her, screws her eyes shut, and lets out a softly strangled scream. why this? was it because she was playing a freemium game without making any purchases? was this her karmic vengeance??

but even if it was, that didn't mean she was going to give up without a fight. tantrum finished, she unpauses and returns grimly to her work. this game isn't an endless runner - it has a finite number of levels and she's approaching the end of them - so she'd been saving something for a particularly dire turn in the last or penultimate stage. this isn't either of those, but did it matter when a loss here would mean setting herself back two or three levels?

(she really needed to be more judicious about saving)

the answer, of course, is no. and so Hazel drops her secret weapon, some kind of fullscreen bomb that takes a huge chunk out of the remaining forces and staggers the others. she doesn't have a lot left to place but sets them up as best she can, trying to at least slow them down so the damage can rack up-

three tiles away from her final structure, the last enemy finally melts into some sort of amorphous corpse. she did it.]

Jesus shit fucking christ almighty.

[the save is immediate because like hell she's going through that again. but Hazel lingers at the main menu rather than charging on to the next level, because man does she need a second to recover from that. stupid phone games.]

[Against all odds, she won anyway. He almost has to take it back now; despite earlier appearances, that was definitely a battle, and it left her whole screen in tattered ruins.

One structure remains. Technically, that is a victory.

He angles his head a little, trying to sound out in his head what the title is, but he's got no clue how you begin to pronounce that. So much for finding it later; it's hard to remember what he can't keep in his head. He wouldn't admit it, but he's almost curious to find this one and try it.

Of course, his face might say that for him. He's not paying attention.]

[he's not paying attention, but Hazel certainly is. she's careful not to look it, of course, busying herself with using the exp she'd gained from that slim victory to upgrade her units. and then once she's finished, she tilts her head like she's just noticed that he's crept closer and quirks an eyebrow.]

What, you think you can do better?

[and just like that she's holding the phone out to him, easily carrying the frustration from that harrowing level over to make for a genuinely grumpy expression. it's probably not the best idea to toss him into the middle of her game with how far she's already gotten, but Hazel doesn't really care. he's a smart kid...and she'd just saved so it's not like she'll lose anything if he eats ass repeatedly.]

[Competitive banter is far beyond him right now, but he actually takes the phone when offered, poking at it. Confusion spreads across his face, then a flat look.

Right.

It's all in English, so much for figuring out what anything means.

Time to poke more - considering changing the language again..]

[oh come on Tetsuo, there are so many pictures in this game. surely you can just figure shit out with a little trial and error without having to force her to GET SOMEONE TO RESET HER LANGUAGE AGAIN

but of course Hazel doesn't realize what's going on since she's below the bed and also a little too trusting right now; he's in pretty bad shape, she figures he doesn't have it in him to get up to any bullshit. so instead she just leans against the bedframe, listening to the music and sound effects and trying to gauge his progress from that.]

[He's in no mood to even try. The knowledge of how to set the language is permanently lodged in his brain. It is too late now.

A few minutes later, he's back to the game that suddenly makes a lot more sense. He scrolls around on the options before trying to buy or place anything, familiarizing himself with the various towers and structures. The cannonball ones cannot hit fliers, slingshots are best for fliers... okay, he can try this.

After about five minutes, he starts quietly placing some things on the battlefield, runs out of money far too quickly by opting for the best things instead of the most things. Hazel's last run didn't leave her in the worst possible shape, but not in one that can afford too much nonsense.

There's a very predictable massacre in his future.]

[she behaves for a respectable amount of time, but as soon as the sound of the level starting tinkles through the air there's some shifting going on down near the bed. don't mind her, she's just turning around to try and subtly creep a look over the top edge of the phone. you keep doing you, Tetsuo.

do you really fast, though, because that is one hell of a first wave coming on. there's definitely at least one tank.]

[He mutters a soft, mild curse in Japanese, seeing that. Not all those enemies look familiar -what do the yellow blobs with rabbit ears do? - but he knows a few from the run Hazel did. There's that thing that took every ounce of Hazel's stuff to take out.

His eyes look over his battlefield, with half the structure slots empty and his wallet too low to purchase more. The paltry offering of stuff at the front is demolished with barely any dents in the oncoming death swarm. And the middle is undefended; he'd been going methodically from the back to the front, not really catching where the funds were until way too late.

The screen fills with mayhem. Channels of maze are merrily ignored.

How does he get more--

His answer comes when they finally reach his rearguard. Oh. That's how. Killing stuff, why didn't he realize-

Mistakes were made today.]

[Tetsuo is having a rough time with everything lately, and so she's not going to make fun of him. even so, Hazel can't help but let an amused exhale escape from her; hopefully it's quiet enough that he won't notice in all of his concentration.

hey, remember how this was a pretty high level to start off in? that's becoming abundantly clear as a new enemy type slowly makes itself known: looks like the bad guys can chuck bombs right back at you now.]

[Dammit.

Urgently now, he's trying to replace the few structures that have any chance of stemming the tide. Too many have gotten too far; they're bashing down the gates at the end already. Those bomb throwing enemies take so much of his health bar away, it's impossible to even build something completely before they have thoroughly overrun the area.

That's it.

That's game. So...at least he knows what he's protecting exactly, now..

The phone sags down to his legs as he stares at it. Even in Japanese, this is incomprehensible. How do you even win something like that?

So.. is he just terrible at this, too then, or..]

There's a level selection, you know.

[this helpful tip comes from Hazel and probably looks a little comical considering you can only see her eyes and up from over the bed.

just because she let him go through the superhard later level doesn't mean she's going to torment him with it. let the kid get his ass kicked at the appropriate learning speed.]

Hunh?

[Oh.... he'd not thought about that. Ordinarily, he'd have balked at the suggestion and tried to forge ahead on the hardest level anyway, just to prove the point.

Instead, he shifts back to the menu quietly and finds level 4. Because some small part of him just has to be edgy. Maybe it's just instinct by now.]

[wow, Tetsuo. level four? slow down there before you burn the entire room down with your uncontrollable fiery passion.

four's about when they start introducing the more complicated stuff, so it's actually not a bad pick. Hazel tries to keep the amused smile off her face as it starts up...although she has to admit, she's going to miss his grappling with the burrowers.]

[YES LEVEL FOUR. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW. FOUR IS THE COOLEST NUMBER. DUH.

He quickly tries to get something on every place now. Truth told, he's expecting the same bullshit nightmare that previous wave gave him.

When the wave comes in groups of countable ten at first, he's earnestly surprised. The towers take the first wave out fine. And then... then, like small winged puffballs riding the apocalypse, in come the fliers.

His structures are wrong. They didn't GIVE him anything that could hit them beyond the very basic one! What is he-

Oh.

The game pauses. There's a tutorial now.

..

He may have been able to puzzle this out from context, but it being in Japanese makes everything so much easier.]

I can move mountains, I can work a miracle [OPEN]

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I lose it every time I see that icon

i don't know what you're talking about, it captures her kawaii nature perfectly