thecapitol | open!

Who| Carlos and anyone
What| He's been a sad scientist lately, and a reclusive scientist, and an obsessive scientist. He is a scientist who is bad at remembering that he has friends, and he can do things with friends, and that the world does not revolve around memorizing a blueprint.
Where| The coffee place on the ground floor of the Tribute Center.
When| Late this week/possibly this weekend, any time you feel like finding him
Warnings/Notes| None so far.

I almost have it. I almost have it. Just a few more days, and I'll be able to recreate the blueprint completely accurately.

Carlos can't make an actual recording of his progress, since the Capitol would both confiscate his recording device and record him making the recording itself, but that doesn't mean he can't pretend to take voice notes in his head.

Steve, Tony, and Bruce have been a huge help. Steve especially. Between the three of us, I'm sure we can reverse-engineer this machine.

He sits at a small table, hair artistically mussed and one shoe half-untied, and sips a cup of coffee. The steam makes his glasses fog up, but he only seems to notice so much. That is, he is repeating a cycle of actions: he takes a sip, his glasses fog up. He wipes the lenses with the sleeve of his lab coat, and sips again. He does not seem to get agitated, nor does he seem to realize that he could avoid this by removing his glasses. He just repeats the motions again and again, too lost in thought to take any further action.

I'll be ready when I go to District 13. If I go to District 13.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It takes seven minutes and seventeen seconds, just in case anyone's counting, for Carlos to stir, blinking three or four times, and start to look around him.

"Dave?" he asks. "Terezi? ...what are you doing?"

By this point in time, the school has already been constructed, complete with someone's wrist watch hung on the front of the can-building. Terezi is in the middle of drawing a twisty, winding road outside of the schoolhouse that leads through a bunch of scribbled trees and off into the distance of the yet unfinished city.

She lifts her head upon hearing her name and sniffs at the schoolhouse clock. Almost seven and a half minutes--which is almost either minutes. That's close enough for her. "Building a civilized community for the vegetables of the world to reside in," she responds, flashing a grin up at the scientist. "And fruit, I guess, if they can manage to cohabit our great can-olopolis with the other goods. They may smell sweet, but they can put a knife in your back if you're not careful!"

Inwardly, Dave curses the inaccuracy of his guess. He hadn't lost track of time, even as he worked on the intricate details and flourishes of the garbage dump.

He lets Terezi answer, looking from her to Carlos and back to his drawing until she's entirely finished with her dramatization. He nods along, because this is all very legitimate. "Morning sunshine." He says plainly, before he reaches for another chalk colour to begin his next project. "We're fucking with you." Say it ain't so.

Oh.

He's being fucked with.

It takes Carlos a moment to process that -- that, for the sake of messing with him, Dave and Terezi have made a city out of cans and chalk. It takes him another second to try to remember how to react. It's been so long since Carlos has been playfully messed with that he's not sure he remembers what to say.

"...how long have you been doing that?"

He knows the answer he gets is probably going to be inaccurate, but he asks anyway.

The length of time that it takes Carlos to understand what is going on around him is pretty much everything that Terezi could hope for in a reaction. (No, that's a lie. She could hope for more expressiveness, but bewildered confusion works just as well.)

"What? Fucking with you?" Terezi grins, picking up on Dave's cue. At the very least, Carlos's personal hypothesis isn't wrong. "I don't know. How long have you know us? That is probably your best guess."

Meaning that there is never a time when they are not fucking with him--or anyone else for that matter. Fucking around is pretty much their sole purpose in life as accidental teenage deities and such.

"Twenty three weeks. One hundred and sixty one days. Three thousand eight hundred and sixty four hours. For me, anyway" Look, someone knows big numbers. He's bouncing of Terezi and goes from when he first met Carlos.

"Since we started, though? Seven minutes and forty seven seconds." He punctuates that by drawing a nice apple on his tree and popping down the chalk and focusing a little more attention on Carlos. "What has science done this time to take your brain captive?"

"You know I can't tell you that," says Carlos, only a little sternly. "It's all very technical. Very scientific. It's hard to explain."

He's stalling for time. He can't tell them he's thinking about District 13, so he's going to pretend he was thinking about very complicated science instead.

"It's hard to explain because he makes the science up as he goes," Terezi explains to Dave without missing a beat. "That is why he does not actually know what kind of science he practices."

It's a joke that never really gets old for her. She can also smell a stalling tactic as obvious as that one, so if Carlos wants to avoid what he was thinking about, then it's probably for the best. She refocuses her attention on him:

"But that's okay. I hear the Can community is looking to hire a new scientist of dubiously vague study! We've already forged an application and submitted it in your name. You should hear back soon."

"I had a feeling." Dave admits, and it's as sarcastic as it is sincere. There's something about Carlos that is just so earnest and honest that it's hard to believe he'd be lying, but he also seems to ass pull a lot of his profound logic. Maybe that's why Dave likes him so much.

"Ah, yes. The professor of I can't tell you right now but I definitely know what I'm talking about. Everybody gets an A, nobody knows why. That's science, bitch." He nods agreeably, pointing his finger at some drawn building with can accoutrements around the outside. "Why don't you take a seat inside?" He suggests, tapping his chalk on the ground outside the sketches.

"Well--" On the one hand, he could refuse. He's clearly being fucked with, and there was no real reason to play along.

On the other hand, Carlos really likes Dave and Terezi, and acting like he's too cool to play along here seems...mean-spirited. Spoilsport-y. And besides, it keeps the two of them from inquiring further about what he's been working on.

"I don't know. What jobs do you two have in this can city? Are you even going to school?"

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