Updates Pending
By: RaddaRaem
Incredible arts by gravewalker
PREVIOUS, -
Eyes fluttering open, Rivet wiggled under his bed sheets as natural light poured in through his apartment windows. Rolling over onto his side, rumpled mane coiled around his neck, the lion's sleep crusted eyes blearily looked out over the Commonwealth skyline. Whispers of steel, mortar, and the controlled encroachment of nature carried in through the gaps in the blinds.
Hand cupped to his mouth Rivet stifled a jaw straining yawn. Today was... Saturday? Sunday? Monday, even? Wrinkles formed along his brow as he pondered. Feh. It was irrelevant all the same. Grunting, Rivet slid his legs over the side of the bed and stumbled to his feet.
BZZZT
The lion's rounded ears fwipped to attention at the crackle of white noise and radio static. He paced up to the door of his bedroom, his padded feet sinking heavily into the carpet fibers that molded around his weight, and peeked out into the living room.
Upon his television screen Rivet eyed a pinprick of pixels condensing in on themselves smack dab at its blackened center. They promptly vanished without a trace as did the faint, albeit telltale, buzz in his ears that accompanied active electronics.
“...Strange,” Rivet mused aloud while he idly scratched at back of his head. Curiosity piqued, he moseyed out to investigate. Dipping down to retrieve the remote off the coffee table, fingers brushing aside his forgotten phone alongside it, he papped a padded finger repeatedly upon the Power button. Clicks registered yet the television failed to answer.
So preoccupied was the lion he failed to notice his phone screen flickering to life before him. A brief flash of light, courtesy of the activated lock screen, was subsequently smothered. The Brightness settings were furiously, and forcefully, cratered to their lowest.
Rivet repeatedly clapped the hard plastic against his palm and papped anew. Still nothing. Biting down on his lip, the lion committed to going all out. Sliding off the back of the remote's plastic shell, revealing its beating battery heart, he dared to slide it out and back in again in a last ditch effort. Breath held, and arm extended out before him, Rivet dared to pap the Power button one last time.
Muted rumbles echoed out from Rivet's phone as unseen forces correctly tapped in the password. The Camera app activated. The View settings were hurriedly changed to Self Portrait. Live video recording initiated. Shrouded in shadow and dead pixels something, someone, watched Rivet's trials and tribulations.
The lion's shoulders, ears, and tail drooped. Nothing. “Dammit,” he mewled as he continued to slap the remote against his palm. He doubted any spare batteries were to be found lying around.
A grin, devious and wicked, spread wide upon the face of Rivet's unseen observer.
BRRZZZZZT
“Hmmm?” To Rivet's surprise the television screen flickered back to some semblance of life. A thin thrumming pulse of static coursed through its center. Drawing close, the lion gently slapped a hand against the side of the screen.
VRRRRRRRRRRZZT
The flat lined static vibrated violently. Flicker by flicker it pulled itself apart revealing a wall of white noise. In short order the whole of the screen came to be swallowed up by it.
With some trepidation, his heart murmuring in his chest, Rivet started to back away. Features, unmistakably facial features, slowly came into focus as a cacophonous buzz came to fill his ears.
VEW
And then the screen went silent and black.
Rivet, teeth clenched, nervously considered his next course of action. H-h-he would grab his phone. Get dressed. Then run like-
BRZZZZZZZZT
A massive set of eyes, pixelated and blue, came to fill the entirety of the television screen.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHohhhhh. It's you.”
“Boo!” Tera teased with a giggle.
Hands clapped against his face, the lion's fingers dragging along his cheeks, Rivet stifled a heaving sigh. Wait. Digits splayed, he looked down over himself. Specifically at the sweat stained undershirt and the form fitting underwear he had gone to bed in.
The television speakers crackled to life as faint red blush lines appeared on screen beneath Tera's eyes. A sharp and biting cat call promptly echoed throughout the whole of Rivet's apartment.
“TERA!” Whining, the lion tugged his undershirt down as far as he was able before rushing back into his bedroom.
“Psh. What's the fuss? You see me naked day in and day out!” Tera giggled.
Groaning, Rivet stumbled back out into the living room as he patted down his bedhead. “So does everyone else for that matter!” he snipped back. His lips wavered irritably at the sight of the synthetic's eyes dimming in brightness, and flickering in resolution, as she idly fumbled with the television's display settings. “Can I help you?”
“If you wouldn't miiiiind...” Tera said with a playful roll of her peepers. “Could you do me a favor and switch from Cinema to Game mode? It's subtle but there's definitely some lag between my audio and video outputs.”
Sighing, Rivet reached for the remote and grudgingly obliged.
“Much better!” The reptilian synthetic's bright blue eyes bobbed side to side on screen as an unseen smile pressed up against them.
Pinching at his forehead, Rivet clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Tera. Look. It's not that I don't enjoy spending time with you... but I was really looking forward to-”
“A quiet day inside, right?”
Rivet's brows flattened as he reached for the remote once more and hovered a thumb over the Volume button.
Tera simply narrowed her eyes in devilish delight. Stifled snrks filtered out of the speakers as Rivet repeatedly tried, and failed, to make good on his implied threat. “If it's any consolation it isn't broken. Just disabled for the time being! So now you have to hear me out!”
“I can just unplug the television you know,” the lion snarked right back.
“You're no fun,” she pouted. “Fine, I'll get to the point! I get that you made it loud and clear you wanted to indulge in a proper staycation...”
“Sure did. Repeatedly, even.”
Tera's pixelated eyes rose, and fell, in tune with an inhale and heavy exhale that crackled through the living room. “And I get that! But I was hoping to, you know, share it with you...”
Rivet plucked up his phone and waved it at his talking television. “You act like I wasn't going to give you a ring and put you on speaker after I had freshened up for the day.”
“Not like that!” Tera huffed as the tops of her eyes contracted into a frown. “That's... different. That's just talking the day away with you. I want to, you know, hang with you.”
Blinking dumbly, Rivet's jaw parted and closed repeatedly while he tried to politely parse her contradictions. “Is that not what we do?”
Slanted red lines bunched up against the bottoms of Tera's eyes as pointed brows pinched against the tops of them. Flustered and stammering, the synthetic looked off to the sides of the screen. “Not physically, I mean,” she embarrassedly tapered off. “And given the difficulties involved with inviting myself into your home...”
Rivet kneaded solemnly at his forehead. He sincerely doubted the architects of this high rise, or any other for that matter, had dared to ponder the question of what would happen should an Earth-Shaker class Synthetic shove her snoot into an apartment unit. Fortunately, for himself and his neighbors, the answer was NOT complete structural collapse.
“Don't give me that look!” Tera mumbled. “It was an accident and you know it!”
“How you haven't been decommissioned yet is anyone's guess,” Rivet morbidly thought to himself. “So... what? This is the next best thing?” He gestured dismissively at the pair of pixelated eyes that had since taken to bouncing around the liquid crystal display as if they were a screensaver.
“More or less!” the synth chirped as the interior of her eyes darkened such that all that remained on screen were a pair of raised carats. The television crackled and promptly collapsed into a pool of static once more as Tera's voice somehow carried into Rivet's kitchen.
Brows cocked, the lion dutifully followed the bread crumbs being left for him. He watched, with a mixture of resignation and grudging respect, as the tablet embedded into his refrigerator door underwent multiple forced reboots and restarts. “Damn smart appliances,” he muttered to himself as Tera's gleeful visage came to replace the standard logo for the Commonwealth's operating system.
“Pretty clever, huh?” the synthetic teased as her avatar, pixel by stylized pixel, made itself manifest.
“What? You breaking and entering through my digital backdoors?” Rivet asked.
“Psh. One of these days you'll bite when I go fishing for compliments.”
A shy smile crept up along the lion's muzzle when he stepped up to the refrigerator and pressed his palm against the screen embedded into it. With a blush he watched Tera's body, for an instant, flicker into being and mirror his movements. Even though multiple layers of glass and plastic separated them Rivet's spine still shuddered at the muted sensation of Tera's digits longingly clasping at his own.
“Until then...” Rivet trailed off with a cough as he reluctantly disengaged and papped a finger against the synthetic's simulated snoot. “Just what did you have in mind?”
“You tell me!” Tera chirped as her body fizzled away. Nothing save her floating, and extremely expressive, head remained. “What's a day in the life of Rivet look like?”
Rubbing at the back of his neck, the lion shamefully regarded the cleanliness of his quarters. Dishes, balanced precariously atop one another, spilled over the sink. Batter caked skillets lay atop his stove. Piles of dirtied clothes gathered before his washer and dryer. Weeks worth of mail sat unopened on his counter. Chores a plenty, ever growing at that, awaited him.
“Anything but exciting,” Rivet answered with a strained smile.
“Then what are mine?” Tera responded with a crackle of static as light and color thrummed to life upon the television. Recordings, of the world seen through her eyes, flickered rapidly across the screen. “How much of your day, and mine, is spent on maintenance again?”
Brows arched, Rivet wordlessly watched on as Tera removed the plates of plastic and polymers that coated her forearms, shoulders, ankles, and thighs. Exposed musculature, pitch black and densely coiled together, pulsed and thrummed with electricity. Interwoven among them were countless tubes carrying air, water, and heavens knows what else.
“You honestly think I look forward to this?” she tutted. The synthetic impatiently fast forwarded through her footage, of the countless checks and self diagnostics she had to perform on herself daily, until a familiar someone came into view. “Course not! What I look forward to is... you,” she bashfully trailed off. On screen a rumpled feline, sharply dressed and stained with oils, carefully tended to Tera's pneumatic joints.
Rivet couldn't help but blush even as his shoulders sagged. “I'll never be rid of you at this rate, will I?”
“Not with that attitude,” Tera snarked as the refrigerator door swung open of its own volition and gently bapped against the lion.
Brows pulled flat, Rivet rubbed out the wrinkles in his smarting snout. “Well if that's the case...” Allowing a subdued smile to crease his lips the feline took to fumbling through his kitchen cabinets. “Why don't I put you to work then? As say... my sous chef?” Dual wielding a measuring cup in one hand and a waffle maker in the other Rivet weakly shrugged.
“Sous chef, huh?” Loading spinners came to replace Tera's eyes as she mulled her response. Blinking repeatedly, her pixelated peepers contracted into flat lines while she noisily smacked her lips. “Head chef rolls off the tongue so much better though...”
Rolling his eyes, Rivet shoved aside long neglected rice cookers and crock pots that crowded out his kitchen counter. “I'm sorry whose day off is it?” sassed the lion. Plugging in the waffle maker, sparks erupting out of the dust caked power outlet when he did so, Rivet propped it open and sprayed down the crumb lined grid plates.
Tera's digital avatar playfully hum hum hummed in response. Eyes unchanging, the synth sported a sly smile as black pixels bubbled and frothed along the bottom of the tablet's screen. From its depths a blindingly bright white obelisk arose and came to command the bottom half of Tera's commandeered terminal. With a tap of her chin the hieroglyphics of HTML and CSS that spanned it rapidly rearranged themselves into readable text.
“You just like bossing me around don't you?” snorted the lion.
“Somebody has to,” Tera teased. Creaking open an eye, or at least tilting a pixelated line at enough of an angle to reveal the beady blue iris hidden beneath it, the synth began reading the returned recipe aloud. “First and foremost we'll need... two whole cups of flour!”
“Yeah yeah...” Rivet replied while he dutifully fished out a mixing bowl and a whisk.
“Rivet? Rivet! Rivetttttttttttttttt.” Eyes bunched up against the sides of the television screen Tera tried, and failed, to peek into her boyfriend's bedroom from her stationary window into his world. She could spy wisps of steam wafting out from beneath the door to an unseen master bathroom and... little else.
She had been calling out to him, unsuccessfully at that, for well over an hour now. This was ridiculous. Showers, even at her true skyscraper shaming size, took nowhere near this long!
“Hrmph.” The synthetic's grunts, pocked with static, grumpily echoed about the lion's living room. As beads of white noise collected upon the liquid crystal display angry eyebrows, in the form of a backslash and a forward slash, made themselves manifest.
VBEW
The television clicked off when Tera's nonplussed expression jumped to Rivet's refrigerator. The freezer door violently slammed itself open and shut, akin to the synthetic impatiently tapping her foot, while she mulled her options. If she could access his apartment's appliances then surely it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to access its infrastructure...
Tera's eyes transformed into asterisks as an idea, a particularly devious one at that, struck her.
BRZZZT
Success! ...Kind of.
Tera's digital likeness, compressed into far fewer bits than she was accustomed to, chafed at the limitations abruptly imposed upon her. Her avatar, reduced to a side profile, impotently wiggled side to side upon the plastic plane that was Rivet's thermostat. “Eugh! This firmware is friggin ancient...” the synthetic disgustedly mumbled to herself as sine waves undulated along her maw. Her lone visible eye clenched shut into a carat while she, with great difficulty, tried to flip her sprite horizontally
VRRRRT
The whole of the apartment shuddered. Avatar spinning in place, Tera groaned as a swirling at sign came to fill the visible half of her face plate. Blech. Fine! She'd meet this dilapidated tech on its own terms. Sliding her avatar into reverse, the top of her head brushing along the undersides of the temperature readout, Tera crashed into the side of the thermostat's panel.
A pronounced click sounded out as it forcefully swapped settings. “Let's see now...” Tera pondered aloud. “Heat settings? No.”
CLICK
“Cool settings? Nuh uh.”
FWICK
“Cmon! Give me something to work with here!”
CLACK
Tera's lone eye contracted into a pinpoint when, rather unexpectedly, a dropdown field unfurled before her. Blinking, she curiously regarded the options available.
>CENTRAL HEATING
>HYDRONIC SYSTEMS
Gasping, Tera's primitively pixelated face plate immediately adorned an exclamation mark. This was it!!! Cackling maniacally, the synthetic nosed at 'HYDRONIC SYSTEMS' and granted herself unfettered access to Rivet's water heater. Bouncing about in place Tera's avatar giddily clamped onto the temperature readout by her teeth. As she ravenously chewed through the numerals, pixels spraying out from her cheeks like a fire hose, the water piping out from Rivet's shower went from burning to bone chilling.
“AHHHHHHHHH!” The rattle of a sliding glass door, hurriedly hurled open, accompanied the scream ringing out from Rivet's master bathroom.
“Much better,” Tera cooed to herself.
Sinking back into his couch cushions, controller in hand, Rivet's thumbs idly spun the analog sticks. His player character, a lion in his likeness adorned with heavy armor and a hooded helmet, circled round a camp fire at the mouth of a misty and moonlit forest. A suspicious string of runes, inscribed into the ashen earth, glowed at his feet. “Say Tera?”
“Hmm?” Rivet's wrists rattled when she spoke. The synth's voice, booming out from the speakers embedded into the controller itself, caressed his palms. “What's up?”
Great sword propped up against his shoulder, the grizzled knight pointed a free hand accusingly at the player character preview that appeared above the summon sign. Its ethereal and transparent form was, suffice it to say, well beyond the bounds of what should have been possible via character creation.
“Would you relax?” Tera raspberried. “It's client-side only. Nobody'll ever know!”
Smirking, Rivet repeatedly opened and closed the summons menu. Every time he did so Tera's visage, its smooth and lizard like features sharply contrasting with the high fantasy cloak of crow feathers wrapped around her neck, appeared.
>Teradactyl
>Summon this cooperator?
>OK >CANCEL
“Would you. Give me just. Rivet!” she impatiently whined.
The feline couldn't help but snicker while the face buttons on his controller mashed themselves of their own accord. Tera, desperately trying to invite herself into his game session, huffed and harrumphed while Rivet took to playing keep away with her ever shifting summon sign. It flickered in and out of existence, just beneath his feet, all while he wrestled with her for control of the analog sticks. His character, and camera, spun wildly as control of both lurched back and forth between them. “Alright alright...” he finally relented with a laugh.
>Summoning cooperator
Brow cocked, Rivet watched on worriedly while his player character lost definition and polygons by the second. His console noisily whirred, fans spinning at full speed, as it buckled under the load. “...Tera?”
“Uh oh,” the synth guiltily mumbled.
>Teradactyl summoned as a cooperator
Slinking down along the cushions Rivet could but wryly watch as the game's frame rate plummeted to a crawl. His character, reduced to a mere wire frame, clumsily ragdolled across the screen when a fraction of Tera's likeness finally generated. Her blocky toes, spanning well past the skybox, bulldozed over the campsite and casually ran roughshod over the game's very geometry.
Surprising absolutely nobody the game crashed in short order.
“Somebody forgot to scale down their custom character model didn't they?” Rivet dryly asked.
“Nooooooooo.”
The television screen went dark when the console followed soon after.
Rivet cleared his throat when his console initiated a safe mode reboot. Tera's piercing pixelated blue eyes, squeezed between the margins of the screen and the walls of text explaining what went wrong, blinked wearily as her sighs carried through the controller.
“M-maybe.”
Acking, Tera pinched her eyes shut when Rivet highlighted her with his cursor and repeatedly papped her. “...Yes.”
“Soooooooooo.”
“Soooooooooo?” Covered in suds up to his elbows, Rivet scrubbed away at the last of his dishes. Pink and purple streaks of light, the last vestiges of the sun setting over the Commonwealth, slowly retreated towards his windows.
“Whatcha think of having a plus one for your staycation?” Tera excitedly asked. Her eyes bobbed side to side along the television screen while understated instrumentals gently thumped from the speakers.
“It was...” Lips scrunched, Rivet tried to shake off the bubbles spanning the gaps between his clawed fingers. “It's. I mean. Normally when I plan to do nothing for the day I like to keep it that way?”
“O-oh...” Tera's pitch deflated as she allowed herself to be drowned out by the music.
“You're always...” Rivet ruffled at his mane. “You're always deciding my day for me.”
A pregnant pause hung heavily within the air. As the last of the light receded past Rivet's windowsill Tera's eyes steadily dimmed.
“You're always dragging me out of my comfort zone whether I like it or not. Not that that's... a bad thing,” the lion quietly amended with a blush. “Today was nice. This is nice. Just... I wouldn't mind a little more heads up next time is all?”
One by one the individual blotches of crystal that comprised Tera's eyes went dark.
Drying his hands off on his undershirt, Rivet bit down on his lip as he sauntered into his living room. The windows into her digital soul had disappeared. “Tera?”
THOOM
Flecks of paint rained down from Rivet's popcorn ceiling as the lion uneasily steadied himself against his coffee table.
THOOOOOOOM
Tail flicking warily behind him the lion grimaced as his drying dishes clattered along the counter.
THOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
Pulling up his living room blinds, Rivet squinted incredulously at the billboard sized wall of black plastic inexplicably hovering just beyond his patio. “This is exactly what I'm talking about,” he mused aloud in irritation. “When were you planning on telling me that you were going to swing by?”
“When you asked me,” Tera nervously laughed through Rivet's speakers. The outline of an eye, its iris alone capable of swallowing the lion whole, slowly came into focus as the hundreds of LEDs within Tera's face plate flared to life.
Whiskers twitching, Rivet wordlessly trudged through his apartment as a pale blue spotlight followed his every step. Or... was it more accurate to say it lead him? Lost between his couch cushions, and the focus of Tera's gaze, the lion blankly stared at his vibrating phone. With a wordless shake of his head he fished it out and accepted the incoming call. “Yes, Tera?”
“I know it's short notice and all but uhh...” Her digital avatar, speaking on behalf of her physical platform, readjusted its eyes into semi-colons. “You up for a rooftop rendezvous?” Tera meekly asked. Snoot smudged against the screen she pitifully nosed at his padded thumb.
“...Better,” Rivet smirked as he slid on his sandals. Door locking shut behind him, he playfully brushed away Tera's crocodile tears while he sauntered towards the high-rise's stairwell.
Ominous rattles, powerful enough to pop windows out from their framing, shook the surrounding city blocks as Tera excitedly rose from her crouch.
Stepping out onto the rooftop, Rivet tucked his arms close to his chest as a bitter wind whipped across the high-rise.
TATOOM
A set of segmented fingers, each as thick as the lion was tall, came to rest beside him. As Rivet clasped a gargantuan fingertip his phone began to smolder within his pocket.
“Cat got your tongue?” he couldn't help but tease.
“He's got something of mine alright,” Tera's voice stammeringly cooed back through the fraying denim wrapped around his thighs. Her body proper, mute and towering over the skyline itself, tenderly curled her digits close so as to shelter him from the elements.
“Soooo...” Locking his eyes with Tera's own, Rivet's heart rattled against his ribs at the sight of the neon pink blush lines buzzing to life on her face plate as she leaned in. The tiles and gravel lining the roof buckled and churned when the synth's cleavage, which could only be described as cavernous, pressed against the side of the swaying structure.
“What's on your mind?” Rivet dared to ask. Lips wavering, the feline leaned into the synthetic's subtly shifting palm. With practiced trepidation he stepped back into it, planting his heels into the faintest wrinkles in the pliable metal and plastic that defined it, and allowed himself to be scooped up into her grasp.
Hands cupped together, Tera brought her rounded snout to rest against her insignificant other. “You,” she whispered. Far off sirens serenaded the couple as they tenderly embraced what they could of one another. Throat tightening, Tera allowed her eyes to swivel along the bottom of her face plate. “Sorry about being so... spontaneous today. I know it's, I know I'm, a lot.”
A barely audible smack sounded out above the whipping of the wind as Rivet locked lips with her. “Just a little heads up. That's all I ask for,” he reassured her. “That and it's been... fun, even. Learning to go with the flow.”
“Really?” she asked. Tera's artificial heart skipped a beat at the grudging yet flustered nod she received in repsonse.
“W-who knows...” Rubbing at the back of his neck, Rivet fitfully tried to channel the bundled nerves coursing through his limbs. “Maybe sometime I can swing by your place and see what a day...”
Clearing his throat, Rivet pounded at his chest and gave it another go. “See what a night in the life of Tera is like?”
“N-night?” Tera's ovaloid eyes positively radiated at the realization of what was being proposed. “As in... tonight?”
Nostrils flared and at a loss for words, Rivet stumbled forward further still. T-t-turnabout was fair play after all! If Tera could invite herself into his home... why couldn't he invite himself to hers?
Tilting his head back, the love struck lion cupped a hand against the side of her massive maw and pressed his unfamiliar advantage. “...I can't think of anyone better to spend it with. Can you?”
PREVIOUS, -
By: RaddaRaem
Incredible arts by gravewalker
PREVIOUS, -
Eyes fluttering open, Rivet wiggled under his bed sheets as natural light poured in through his apartment windows. Rolling over onto his side, rumpled mane coiled around his neck, the lion's sleep crusted eyes blearily looked out over the Commonwealth skyline. Whispers of steel, mortar, and the controlled encroachment of nature carried in through the gaps in the blinds.
Hand cupped to his mouth Rivet stifled a jaw straining yawn. Today was... Saturday? Sunday? Monday, even? Wrinkles formed along his brow as he pondered. Feh. It was irrelevant all the same. Grunting, Rivet slid his legs over the side of the bed and stumbled to his feet.
BZZZT
The lion's rounded ears fwipped to attention at the crackle of white noise and radio static. He paced up to the door of his bedroom, his padded feet sinking heavily into the carpet fibers that molded around his weight, and peeked out into the living room.
Upon his television screen Rivet eyed a pinprick of pixels condensing in on themselves smack dab at its blackened center. They promptly vanished without a trace as did the faint, albeit telltale, buzz in his ears that accompanied active electronics.
“...Strange,” Rivet mused aloud while he idly scratched at back of his head. Curiosity piqued, he moseyed out to investigate. Dipping down to retrieve the remote off the coffee table, fingers brushing aside his forgotten phone alongside it, he papped a padded finger repeatedly upon the Power button. Clicks registered yet the television failed to answer.
So preoccupied was the lion he failed to notice his phone screen flickering to life before him. A brief flash of light, courtesy of the activated lock screen, was subsequently smothered. The Brightness settings were furiously, and forcefully, cratered to their lowest.
Rivet repeatedly clapped the hard plastic against his palm and papped anew. Still nothing. Biting down on his lip, the lion committed to going all out. Sliding off the back of the remote's plastic shell, revealing its beating battery heart, he dared to slide it out and back in again in a last ditch effort. Breath held, and arm extended out before him, Rivet dared to pap the Power button one last time.
Muted rumbles echoed out from Rivet's phone as unseen forces correctly tapped in the password. The Camera app activated. The View settings were hurriedly changed to Self Portrait. Live video recording initiated. Shrouded in shadow and dead pixels something, someone, watched Rivet's trials and tribulations.
The lion's shoulders, ears, and tail drooped. Nothing. “Dammit,” he mewled as he continued to slap the remote against his palm. He doubted any spare batteries were to be found lying around.
A grin, devious and wicked, spread wide upon the face of Rivet's unseen observer.
BRRZZZZZT
“Hmmm?” To Rivet's surprise the television screen flickered back to some semblance of life. A thin thrumming pulse of static coursed through its center. Drawing close, the lion gently slapped a hand against the side of the screen.
VRRRRRRRRRRZZT
The flat lined static vibrated violently. Flicker by flicker it pulled itself apart revealing a wall of white noise. In short order the whole of the screen came to be swallowed up by it.
With some trepidation, his heart murmuring in his chest, Rivet started to back away. Features, unmistakably facial features, slowly came into focus as a cacophonous buzz came to fill his ears.
VEW
And then the screen went silent and black.
Rivet, teeth clenched, nervously considered his next course of action. H-h-he would grab his phone. Get dressed. Then run like-
BRZZZZZZZZT
A massive set of eyes, pixelated and blue, came to fill the entirety of the television screen.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHohhhhh. It's you.”
“Boo!” Tera teased with a giggle.
Hands clapped against his face, the lion's fingers dragging along his cheeks, Rivet stifled a heaving sigh. Wait. Digits splayed, he looked down over himself. Specifically at the sweat stained undershirt and the form fitting underwear he had gone to bed in.
The television speakers crackled to life as faint red blush lines appeared on screen beneath Tera's eyes. A sharp and biting cat call promptly echoed throughout the whole of Rivet's apartment.
“TERA!” Whining, the lion tugged his undershirt down as far as he was able before rushing back into his bedroom.
“Psh. What's the fuss? You see me naked day in and day out!” Tera giggled.
Groaning, Rivet stumbled back out into the living room as he patted down his bedhead. “So does everyone else for that matter!” he snipped back. His lips wavered irritably at the sight of the synthetic's eyes dimming in brightness, and flickering in resolution, as she idly fumbled with the television's display settings. “Can I help you?”
“If you wouldn't miiiiind...” Tera said with a playful roll of her peepers. “Could you do me a favor and switch from Cinema to Game mode? It's subtle but there's definitely some lag between my audio and video outputs.”
Sighing, Rivet reached for the remote and grudgingly obliged.
“Much better!” The reptilian synthetic's bright blue eyes bobbed side to side on screen as an unseen smile pressed up against them.
Pinching at his forehead, Rivet clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Tera. Look. It's not that I don't enjoy spending time with you... but I was really looking forward to-”
“A quiet day inside, right?”
Rivet's brows flattened as he reached for the remote once more and hovered a thumb over the Volume button.
Tera simply narrowed her eyes in devilish delight. Stifled snrks filtered out of the speakers as Rivet repeatedly tried, and failed, to make good on his implied threat. “If it's any consolation it isn't broken. Just disabled for the time being! So now you have to hear me out!”
“I can just unplug the television you know,” the lion snarked right back.
“You're no fun,” she pouted. “Fine, I'll get to the point! I get that you made it loud and clear you wanted to indulge in a proper staycation...”
“Sure did. Repeatedly, even.”
Tera's pixelated eyes rose, and fell, in tune with an inhale and heavy exhale that crackled through the living room. “And I get that! But I was hoping to, you know, share it with you...”
Rivet plucked up his phone and waved it at his talking television. “You act like I wasn't going to give you a ring and put you on speaker after I had freshened up for the day.”
“Not like that!” Tera huffed as the tops of her eyes contracted into a frown. “That's... different. That's just talking the day away with you. I want to, you know, hang with you.”
Blinking dumbly, Rivet's jaw parted and closed repeatedly while he tried to politely parse her contradictions. “Is that not what we do?”
Slanted red lines bunched up against the bottoms of Tera's eyes as pointed brows pinched against the tops of them. Flustered and stammering, the synthetic looked off to the sides of the screen. “Not physically, I mean,” she embarrassedly tapered off. “And given the difficulties involved with inviting myself into your home...”
Rivet kneaded solemnly at his forehead. He sincerely doubted the architects of this high rise, or any other for that matter, had dared to ponder the question of what would happen should an Earth-Shaker class Synthetic shove her snoot into an apartment unit. Fortunately, for himself and his neighbors, the answer was NOT complete structural collapse.
“Don't give me that look!” Tera mumbled. “It was an accident and you know it!”
“How you haven't been decommissioned yet is anyone's guess,” Rivet morbidly thought to himself. “So... what? This is the next best thing?” He gestured dismissively at the pair of pixelated eyes that had since taken to bouncing around the liquid crystal display as if they were a screensaver.
“More or less!” the synth chirped as the interior of her eyes darkened such that all that remained on screen were a pair of raised carats. The television crackled and promptly collapsed into a pool of static once more as Tera's voice somehow carried into Rivet's kitchen.
Brows cocked, the lion dutifully followed the bread crumbs being left for him. He watched, with a mixture of resignation and grudging respect, as the tablet embedded into his refrigerator door underwent multiple forced reboots and restarts. “Damn smart appliances,” he muttered to himself as Tera's gleeful visage came to replace the standard logo for the Commonwealth's operating system.
“Pretty clever, huh?” the synthetic teased as her avatar, pixel by stylized pixel, made itself manifest.
“What? You breaking and entering through my digital backdoors?” Rivet asked.
“Psh. One of these days you'll bite when I go fishing for compliments.”
A shy smile crept up along the lion's muzzle when he stepped up to the refrigerator and pressed his palm against the screen embedded into it. With a blush he watched Tera's body, for an instant, flicker into being and mirror his movements. Even though multiple layers of glass and plastic separated them Rivet's spine still shuddered at the muted sensation of Tera's digits longingly clasping at his own.
“Until then...” Rivet trailed off with a cough as he reluctantly disengaged and papped a finger against the synthetic's simulated snoot. “Just what did you have in mind?”
“You tell me!” Tera chirped as her body fizzled away. Nothing save her floating, and extremely expressive, head remained. “What's a day in the life of Rivet look like?”
Rubbing at the back of his neck, the lion shamefully regarded the cleanliness of his quarters. Dishes, balanced precariously atop one another, spilled over the sink. Batter caked skillets lay atop his stove. Piles of dirtied clothes gathered before his washer and dryer. Weeks worth of mail sat unopened on his counter. Chores a plenty, ever growing at that, awaited him.
“Anything but exciting,” Rivet answered with a strained smile.
“Then what are mine?” Tera responded with a crackle of static as light and color thrummed to life upon the television. Recordings, of the world seen through her eyes, flickered rapidly across the screen. “How much of your day, and mine, is spent on maintenance again?”
Brows arched, Rivet wordlessly watched on as Tera removed the plates of plastic and polymers that coated her forearms, shoulders, ankles, and thighs. Exposed musculature, pitch black and densely coiled together, pulsed and thrummed with electricity. Interwoven among them were countless tubes carrying air, water, and heavens knows what else.
“You honestly think I look forward to this?” she tutted. The synthetic impatiently fast forwarded through her footage, of the countless checks and self diagnostics she had to perform on herself daily, until a familiar someone came into view. “Course not! What I look forward to is... you,” she bashfully trailed off. On screen a rumpled feline, sharply dressed and stained with oils, carefully tended to Tera's pneumatic joints.
Rivet couldn't help but blush even as his shoulders sagged. “I'll never be rid of you at this rate, will I?”
“Not with that attitude,” Tera snarked as the refrigerator door swung open of its own volition and gently bapped against the lion.
Brows pulled flat, Rivet rubbed out the wrinkles in his smarting snout. “Well if that's the case...” Allowing a subdued smile to crease his lips the feline took to fumbling through his kitchen cabinets. “Why don't I put you to work then? As say... my sous chef?” Dual wielding a measuring cup in one hand and a waffle maker in the other Rivet weakly shrugged.
“Sous chef, huh?” Loading spinners came to replace Tera's eyes as she mulled her response. Blinking repeatedly, her pixelated peepers contracted into flat lines while she noisily smacked her lips. “Head chef rolls off the tongue so much better though...”
Rolling his eyes, Rivet shoved aside long neglected rice cookers and crock pots that crowded out his kitchen counter. “I'm sorry whose day off is it?” sassed the lion. Plugging in the waffle maker, sparks erupting out of the dust caked power outlet when he did so, Rivet propped it open and sprayed down the crumb lined grid plates.
Tera's digital avatar playfully hum hum hummed in response. Eyes unchanging, the synth sported a sly smile as black pixels bubbled and frothed along the bottom of the tablet's screen. From its depths a blindingly bright white obelisk arose and came to command the bottom half of Tera's commandeered terminal. With a tap of her chin the hieroglyphics of HTML and CSS that spanned it rapidly rearranged themselves into readable text.
“You just like bossing me around don't you?” snorted the lion.
“Somebody has to,” Tera teased. Creaking open an eye, or at least tilting a pixelated line at enough of an angle to reveal the beady blue iris hidden beneath it, the synth began reading the returned recipe aloud. “First and foremost we'll need... two whole cups of flour!”
“Yeah yeah...” Rivet replied while he dutifully fished out a mixing bowl and a whisk.
“Rivet? Rivet! Rivetttttttttttttttt.” Eyes bunched up against the sides of the television screen Tera tried, and failed, to peek into her boyfriend's bedroom from her stationary window into his world. She could spy wisps of steam wafting out from beneath the door to an unseen master bathroom and... little else.
She had been calling out to him, unsuccessfully at that, for well over an hour now. This was ridiculous. Showers, even at her true skyscraper shaming size, took nowhere near this long!
“Hrmph.” The synthetic's grunts, pocked with static, grumpily echoed about the lion's living room. As beads of white noise collected upon the liquid crystal display angry eyebrows, in the form of a backslash and a forward slash, made themselves manifest.
VBEW
The television clicked off when Tera's nonplussed expression jumped to Rivet's refrigerator. The freezer door violently slammed itself open and shut, akin to the synthetic impatiently tapping her foot, while she mulled her options. If she could access his apartment's appliances then surely it wouldn't be that much of a stretch to access its infrastructure...
Tera's eyes transformed into asterisks as an idea, a particularly devious one at that, struck her.
BRZZZT
Success! ...Kind of.
Tera's digital likeness, compressed into far fewer bits than she was accustomed to, chafed at the limitations abruptly imposed upon her. Her avatar, reduced to a side profile, impotently wiggled side to side upon the plastic plane that was Rivet's thermostat. “Eugh! This firmware is friggin ancient...” the synthetic disgustedly mumbled to herself as sine waves undulated along her maw. Her lone visible eye clenched shut into a carat while she, with great difficulty, tried to flip her sprite horizontally
VRRRRT
The whole of the apartment shuddered. Avatar spinning in place, Tera groaned as a swirling at sign came to fill the visible half of her face plate. Blech. Fine! She'd meet this dilapidated tech on its own terms. Sliding her avatar into reverse, the top of her head brushing along the undersides of the temperature readout, Tera crashed into the side of the thermostat's panel.
A pronounced click sounded out as it forcefully swapped settings. “Let's see now...” Tera pondered aloud. “Heat settings? No.”
CLICK
“Cool settings? Nuh uh.”
FWICK
“Cmon! Give me something to work with here!”
CLACK
Tera's lone eye contracted into a pinpoint when, rather unexpectedly, a dropdown field unfurled before her. Blinking, she curiously regarded the options available.
>CENTRAL HEATING
>HYDRONIC SYSTEMS
Gasping, Tera's primitively pixelated face plate immediately adorned an exclamation mark. This was it!!! Cackling maniacally, the synthetic nosed at 'HYDRONIC SYSTEMS' and granted herself unfettered access to Rivet's water heater. Bouncing about in place Tera's avatar giddily clamped onto the temperature readout by her teeth. As she ravenously chewed through the numerals, pixels spraying out from her cheeks like a fire hose, the water piping out from Rivet's shower went from burning to bone chilling.
“AHHHHHHHHH!” The rattle of a sliding glass door, hurriedly hurled open, accompanied the scream ringing out from Rivet's master bathroom.
“Much better,” Tera cooed to herself.
Sinking back into his couch cushions, controller in hand, Rivet's thumbs idly spun the analog sticks. His player character, a lion in his likeness adorned with heavy armor and a hooded helmet, circled round a camp fire at the mouth of a misty and moonlit forest. A suspicious string of runes, inscribed into the ashen earth, glowed at his feet. “Say Tera?”
“Hmm?” Rivet's wrists rattled when she spoke. The synth's voice, booming out from the speakers embedded into the controller itself, caressed his palms. “What's up?”
Great sword propped up against his shoulder, the grizzled knight pointed a free hand accusingly at the player character preview that appeared above the summon sign. Its ethereal and transparent form was, suffice it to say, well beyond the bounds of what should have been possible via character creation.
“Would you relax?” Tera raspberried. “It's client-side only. Nobody'll ever know!”
Smirking, Rivet repeatedly opened and closed the summons menu. Every time he did so Tera's visage, its smooth and lizard like features sharply contrasting with the high fantasy cloak of crow feathers wrapped around her neck, appeared.
>Teradactyl
>Summon this cooperator?
>OK >CANCEL
“Would you. Give me just. Rivet!” she impatiently whined.
The feline couldn't help but snicker while the face buttons on his controller mashed themselves of their own accord. Tera, desperately trying to invite herself into his game session, huffed and harrumphed while Rivet took to playing keep away with her ever shifting summon sign. It flickered in and out of existence, just beneath his feet, all while he wrestled with her for control of the analog sticks. His character, and camera, spun wildly as control of both lurched back and forth between them. “Alright alright...” he finally relented with a laugh.
>Summoning cooperator
Brow cocked, Rivet watched on worriedly while his player character lost definition and polygons by the second. His console noisily whirred, fans spinning at full speed, as it buckled under the load. “...Tera?”
“Uh oh,” the synth guiltily mumbled.
>Teradactyl summoned as a cooperator
Slinking down along the cushions Rivet could but wryly watch as the game's frame rate plummeted to a crawl. His character, reduced to a mere wire frame, clumsily ragdolled across the screen when a fraction of Tera's likeness finally generated. Her blocky toes, spanning well past the skybox, bulldozed over the campsite and casually ran roughshod over the game's very geometry.
Surprising absolutely nobody the game crashed in short order.
“Somebody forgot to scale down their custom character model didn't they?” Rivet dryly asked.
“Nooooooooo.”
The television screen went dark when the console followed soon after.
Rivet cleared his throat when his console initiated a safe mode reboot. Tera's piercing pixelated blue eyes, squeezed between the margins of the screen and the walls of text explaining what went wrong, blinked wearily as her sighs carried through the controller.
“M-maybe.”
Acking, Tera pinched her eyes shut when Rivet highlighted her with his cursor and repeatedly papped her. “...Yes.”
“Soooooooooo.”
“Soooooooooo?” Covered in suds up to his elbows, Rivet scrubbed away at the last of his dishes. Pink and purple streaks of light, the last vestiges of the sun setting over the Commonwealth, slowly retreated towards his windows.
“Whatcha think of having a plus one for your staycation?” Tera excitedly asked. Her eyes bobbed side to side along the television screen while understated instrumentals gently thumped from the speakers.
“It was...” Lips scrunched, Rivet tried to shake off the bubbles spanning the gaps between his clawed fingers. “It's. I mean. Normally when I plan to do nothing for the day I like to keep it that way?”
“O-oh...” Tera's pitch deflated as she allowed herself to be drowned out by the music.
“You're always...” Rivet ruffled at his mane. “You're always deciding my day for me.”
A pregnant pause hung heavily within the air. As the last of the light receded past Rivet's windowsill Tera's eyes steadily dimmed.
“You're always dragging me out of my comfort zone whether I like it or not. Not that that's... a bad thing,” the lion quietly amended with a blush. “Today was nice. This is nice. Just... I wouldn't mind a little more heads up next time is all?”
One by one the individual blotches of crystal that comprised Tera's eyes went dark.
Drying his hands off on his undershirt, Rivet bit down on his lip as he sauntered into his living room. The windows into her digital soul had disappeared. “Tera?”
THOOM
Flecks of paint rained down from Rivet's popcorn ceiling as the lion uneasily steadied himself against his coffee table.
THOOOOOOOM
Tail flicking warily behind him the lion grimaced as his drying dishes clattered along the counter.
THOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
Pulling up his living room blinds, Rivet squinted incredulously at the billboard sized wall of black plastic inexplicably hovering just beyond his patio. “This is exactly what I'm talking about,” he mused aloud in irritation. “When were you planning on telling me that you were going to swing by?”
“When you asked me,” Tera nervously laughed through Rivet's speakers. The outline of an eye, its iris alone capable of swallowing the lion whole, slowly came into focus as the hundreds of LEDs within Tera's face plate flared to life.
Whiskers twitching, Rivet wordlessly trudged through his apartment as a pale blue spotlight followed his every step. Or... was it more accurate to say it lead him? Lost between his couch cushions, and the focus of Tera's gaze, the lion blankly stared at his vibrating phone. With a wordless shake of his head he fished it out and accepted the incoming call. “Yes, Tera?”
“I know it's short notice and all but uhh...” Her digital avatar, speaking on behalf of her physical platform, readjusted its eyes into semi-colons. “You up for a rooftop rendezvous?” Tera meekly asked. Snoot smudged against the screen she pitifully nosed at his padded thumb.
“...Better,” Rivet smirked as he slid on his sandals. Door locking shut behind him, he playfully brushed away Tera's crocodile tears while he sauntered towards the high-rise's stairwell.
Ominous rattles, powerful enough to pop windows out from their framing, shook the surrounding city blocks as Tera excitedly rose from her crouch.
Stepping out onto the rooftop, Rivet tucked his arms close to his chest as a bitter wind whipped across the high-rise.
TATOOM
A set of segmented fingers, each as thick as the lion was tall, came to rest beside him. As Rivet clasped a gargantuan fingertip his phone began to smolder within his pocket.
“Cat got your tongue?” he couldn't help but tease.
“He's got something of mine alright,” Tera's voice stammeringly cooed back through the fraying denim wrapped around his thighs. Her body proper, mute and towering over the skyline itself, tenderly curled her digits close so as to shelter him from the elements.
“Soooo...” Locking his eyes with Tera's own, Rivet's heart rattled against his ribs at the sight of the neon pink blush lines buzzing to life on her face plate as she leaned in. The tiles and gravel lining the roof buckled and churned when the synth's cleavage, which could only be described as cavernous, pressed against the side of the swaying structure.
“What's on your mind?” Rivet dared to ask. Lips wavering, the feline leaned into the synthetic's subtly shifting palm. With practiced trepidation he stepped back into it, planting his heels into the faintest wrinkles in the pliable metal and plastic that defined it, and allowed himself to be scooped up into her grasp.
Hands cupped together, Tera brought her rounded snout to rest against her insignificant other. “You,” she whispered. Far off sirens serenaded the couple as they tenderly embraced what they could of one another. Throat tightening, Tera allowed her eyes to swivel along the bottom of her face plate. “Sorry about being so... spontaneous today. I know it's, I know I'm, a lot.”
A barely audible smack sounded out above the whipping of the wind as Rivet locked lips with her. “Just a little heads up. That's all I ask for,” he reassured her. “That and it's been... fun, even. Learning to go with the flow.”
“Really?” she asked. Tera's artificial heart skipped a beat at the grudging yet flustered nod she received in repsonse.
“W-who knows...” Rubbing at the back of his neck, Rivet fitfully tried to channel the bundled nerves coursing through his limbs. “Maybe sometime I can swing by your place and see what a day...”
Clearing his throat, Rivet pounded at his chest and gave it another go. “See what a night in the life of Tera is like?”
“N-night?” Tera's ovaloid eyes positively radiated at the realization of what was being proposed. “As in... tonight?”
Nostrils flared and at a loss for words, Rivet stumbled forward further still. T-t-turnabout was fair play after all! If Tera could invite herself into his home... why couldn't he invite himself to hers?
Tilting his head back, the love struck lion cupped a hand against the side of her massive maw and pressed his unfamiliar advantage. “...I can't think of anyone better to spend it with. Can you?”
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Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Gender Any
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Once again I'm in love with the character concept! The ideas and how these two interact and hang out is simply too wholesome!!!
The dialogue and descriptions only add to the wonderful setting that you're laying out
And I'm really getting an appreciation for the onomatopoeias that you're giving us ;P
That and the art really doesn't leave much to be imagined =W=''
The dialogue and descriptions only add to the wonderful setting that you're laying out
And I'm really getting an appreciation for the onomatopoeias that you're giving us ;P
That and the art really doesn't leave much to be imagined =W=''
I am a sucker for silly sounds and noises and trying to capture them within my stories. |D
That and so happy to hear you enjoyed my attempts at stretching how and what Tera can interact with! Tried to think of how a gremlin ghost in the system might conduct herself and this futuristic setting really lends itself to it.
That and I am a fan of scribbling stories to accompany amazing arts. >w>
As always thank you again so much for reading. ;w;
That and so happy to hear you enjoyed my attempts at stretching how and what Tera can interact with! Tried to think of how a gremlin ghost in the system might conduct herself and this futuristic setting really lends itself to it.
That and I am a fan of scribbling stories to accompany amazing arts. >w>
As always thank you again so much for reading. ;w;
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