reserpentance | Open Post

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"I need you to understand," says Pit Viper. She undocks the laptop screen from its keyboard and passes it over.

"I need just one other human being to understand that I am on my best fucking behavior right now."

On the screen is a cartoon drawing of a squirrel. The squirrel is smoking a blunt. It's wearing rainbow shutter shades. On its head is a hat referencing a meme that is, bare minimum, four years old. The whole thing is honestly hideous.

"This fucker," says Pit, stabbing a finger onto the touch screen with such emphasis it scrolls a bit, "is worth three hundred thousand dollars and I did not stutter."

She looks her audience in the eyes, her intensity of feeling about this somehow overcoming that her eyes are so goddamn weird these days.

"I could take this thing in about five minutes. Four if I go for the speedrun. And that I am not doing that right now is some fucking saintly behavior on my part and somebody has got to appreciate it."

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"Good for you, pal." Jake hints a smile but his tone is completely deadpan "Mind if I steal it, then?"

She rolls her eyes.

"Kind of the point of my good behavior is that I prrrrobably can't just enable somebody else," she says.

"Unsportsmanlike or some shit."

"Aight." Jake raises an eyebrow "You gonna corrupt the file so that they can't sell it or are you the type of goody two shoes that doesn't actually do shit?"

"Look, somebody got through to me about how every time you move one of these around it piles on a fuckton of electricity usage and it's suuuuper unsustainable."

She rolls her eyes and her shoulders slump with irritation.

"But if it was just down to me and whether I care about this dude and his shitty squirrel? I'd have flipped this fucker by now and not said a word."

"Electricity usage?" Jake scoffs "You afraid of bills or something?"

"Global warming, unfortunately," she says with a shrug. "The thing about Earth is I gotta live here."

"There's zombies and biorganic weapons everywhere and you're worried about global warming. I say we nuke this motherfucker, clean it up a little."

"Three hundred thousands? Hell no." Pinky refuses to acknowledge such thing "I got three jobs, and for what?"

Pit nods with great sympathy. "Fucking right? But I'm all responsible citizen now. Gotta leave all my modern art thief days behind me."

She looks wistful.

"Responsible citizen, huh." Pinky outright scoffs "Girl, you gotta love yourself."

She grins.

"Oh, I do. Trust me. But sometimes part of loving you is trying to be like, I don't know, better...?"

She sighs.

"It's like eating vegetables but for the kind of person you're trying to be, I guess."

"That's a good analogy, alright. Still, eating vegetables when you can buy supplements, pulverize 'em and snort 'em like coke sounds like the boring route to me."

She's not completely sure where she is going with this comparison, but she means it.

Pit taps her chin thoughtfully.

"Okay so like, in theory what would that be in terms of being good instead of super evil?"

"Expose whoever made it, create some scandal. You get to bring chaos while still making a good impression, you do something good, and I'm sure the bored housewives worldwide could use some entertainment."

She files her nails with a half resourceful, half unimpressed expression her face.

"Yeah, that looks overpriced." Todd replies with a bored tone, meeting the rant with a mere shrug "Though if you wanna steal it I'm not stopping you. No need to prove you're saintly or whatever."

"I mean, it's kind of the point I guess?" she says.

"Not being a saint, but that I do what I say I'm gonna do. I said I was done with this and I am. Boom."

She mimes dropping a microphone.

"I see..." Todd blinks "Do you perchance do meth?"

Pit Viper answers by just busting up laughing.

"Huh." Todd doesn't understand that reaction, but it doesn't bother him "Guess that's a no."

"For what it's worth, I appreciate it." Mayu replies softly "We need more kind people in the world."

"Pssshh," says Pit. She gives the floor a little kick so she spins in her desk chair.

"I'm not kind. I'm just sticking to my commitments. I'm an asshole but I'm not a quitter."

Mayu is...Perceptive when it comes to energy, for the lack of a better word ~~that doesn't involve possession by evil spirits~~.

"Who hurt you?" she asks blankly.

"Do you want a list?" Pit deadpans.

"I kind of have a whole reformed villain deal going on here. Comes with the territory."

"Reformed villain..." she mumbles thoughtfully "If you want to atone for you sins, you should be sacrificed."

There it is.

Rhapsody looks over Pit Viper's shoulder to see what she's talking about.

"Why is that squirrel smoking?" He squints as if that'll help him understand what he's looking at.

Then he squints at Viper.

"Do I count as a human being?" He's still not sure about these things

Edited 2022-03-24 00:53 (UTC)

"I don't know why weed smoking animals is a whole thing with these guys," says Pit with an expansive wave of her hand, "but it is. It super is. There are so many cringey animals with weed."

The question gives her pause, though. She looks Rhapsody over.

"You're pretty human shaped to me," is her verdict.

"Smoking probably isn't good for squirrels," he says sagely with the wisdom of someone who has only a vague working knowledge of what weed is and may not have actually seen a squirrel before.

Rhapsody meets her gaze. Despite having weird eyes himself he doesn't really understand her shame (or shame in general, if we're being honest).

He smiles proudly at her conclusion, then turns back to the very confusing cartoon.

"Is it... supposed to do something?" things that are worth a lot of money usually do something, right?

Edited (sometimes adhd brain forgets that there are words in between other words) 2022-03-24 03:46 (UTC)

Okay. Good. Talking about NFTs. Not talking about how easily Rhapsody takes her assurance that he's a human being, while Pit can barely assure herself that she is always going to be a human being. She can only clown about one of these topics.

"It's pretty complicated," she says, "but the short answer is no? The technology could do cool stuff, but mostly people decided they're a way to trade expensive pictures. And the pictures are like... some people decided they're expensive and the whole thing holds together cause enough people with enough money agree they're expensive?"

She smacks one palm into the other and slides them apart.

"Bam. Now you understand about art!"

Pit Viper. Snake mutant. Former supervillain. Friend. Philistine.

Edited 2022-03-24 04:13 (UTC)

"Isn't art supposed to be pretty?" he's pretty sure he heard that somewhere.

Wait, maybe that was a bad thing to say.

"Not that I don't think it's pretty!" What if Viper thinks it's really pretty? She did call it art.

Pivot, quickly.

"I appreciate the fact that you're being good!" And there's the painful sincerity; coupled with that soft, painfully sincere smile.

Pit Viper laughs, she bends double and actually laughs hard. She likes the new kid. She can't help it. Nobody else generally approaches Pit with this kind of earnestness.

"Oh hey, I'm not being that good if I'm still looking," she says, recovering a bit. "And don't worry, I think it's butt ugly too. Honestly that's kind of the point? I used to have a collection of them."

"Does it matter if you look if you're not doing anything?" he's still figuring out this whole morality thing. There are a lot of rules and some people give contradicting ones and it's a lot to keep track of.

"No one yells at you if you only look at the last of the Lucky Charms, only if you eat it."

A pause.

"...Please don't tell Stella I ate the last of the Lucky Charms."

She makes a flippy arm motion dismissively. "Pssh, you're fine. If the crime costs less than like ten dollars, it doesn't even count."

Extremely professional villain thoughts on crime. They're clearer for her than her thoughts on morality, anyway.

"I feel like someone probably would yell at me, but it's whatever. I'm used to that."

She is extremely tough and cool and fine at all times and nothing bothers her ever because she is so tough and cool.

Rhapsody makes note of that for later. Pit is always giving him good advice, he thinks she's really tough and cool.

He frowns when she talks about people yelling at her.

"But you've been doing good guy stuff!"

It makes sense that people would yell at her when she was doing bad things, but Pit isn't doing bad things anymore, so people shouldn't be yelling at her.

"And I think you're doing a really good job!"

"....Thanks, Rhapsody," she says. She could just leave it at that. It would be easier.

But for a moment, she's honest.

"Good and evil is not that complicated, I don't think? But what people believe about it is."

"People tell me a lot of different things about what good means, and some of it doesn't make sense with other stuff, but I'm pretty sure that trying not to be bad counts."

And Pit tries really hard! Even when she doesn't want people to think she is. Especially then.

"I was made to be bad and hurt people but you guys found me and kept that from happening. And now I'm trying to be good, and I wouldn't be trying if it wasn't for you. Maybe when you do nice things for people and then they do nice things it's almost like you did two nice things!"

As Pit rants, Stella's eyes flick from the screen to her teammate's weirdly intense stare and then back again, face impassive. Even with the unreadable expression, there's a judgmental air about the way she eyes the stoner squirrel. She absorbs all of it for several moments after Pit finished before sitting back and frowning.

"You're fucking with me," she decides.

"Okay," says Pit. She sinks back into her chair a bit, steepling her fingers and nodding. "That's fair, actually. That's a completely fair assessment of how conversations with me go pretty often. You get points for that."

Then she jabs one finger forward.

"But. You forgot one critical flaw."

Pit leans forward conspiratorially, her grin pointy and ferocious.

"Rich tech bros are dumb as shit."

"That's true," she agrees, though it's with the flattest stare and tone imaginable. "But still not enough to convince me that that is worth 300k. No one is that stupid."

(Oh, you sweet summer child.)

The grin widens.

"Anyone ever tell you there's a sucker born every minute? That's a lot of people! It's like that Shakespeare monkeys and typewriters thing, but with dumb chumps."

She pretends to sniffle and wipe a tear from her eye.

"It's the real beauty of human existence. Be glad, I am pretty sure that's also why superheroes get job security."

"I'm supposed to believe that not only is this worth hundreds of thousands, but that you could break into a place with art worth that much in five minutes?" A disbelieving huff of air, and she crosses her arms. "Since when is burglary even your thing?"

"Ffff, no, I don't even gotta go anywhere. That's what makes it so beautiful."

Pit sighs wistfully. "I would just have to run a little exploit..." she veers directly into some Deep Wizard Speak for a moment.

Pauses.

Thinks.

"...Basically, there's nothing in the system to stop you running a con on a known dipshit," she awkwardly summarizes.

"I'm very proud of you," Prism says dryly, her attention on her phone.

"I'll let the mayor know so he can get the key to the city ready for you," she adds and finally looks up from whatever it is that has her attention. Squints.

"What the fuck? How is something so cringe worth so much money?"

Edited 2022-03-24 11:33 (UTC)

"That is a secret between a bunch of rich tech bro dumbasses and... I don't know, maybe God?" says Pit.

"Which makes this even better behavior for me, because the crime is also funny."

"I know we're supposed to tell you not to do that, but honestly it would be kinda hilarious," Prism admits and sprawls out on the couch a bit more.

"Like, objectively hilarious for a bunch of rich assholes to lose their real money they spent on cringe bullshit."

Pit sinks backward into her chair and lets it spin to emphasize how she is absolutely languishing in a goody two-shoes hell of her own creation. She did this to herself. She is a fool.

"I'm not allowed to do grand theft anymore. It's unheroic. Even if it would be funny as hell."

"We must be having a good influence on you," Prism quips. Closes her eyes.

"You ever have days where you really do not want to save the world?"

"Oh hell yeah," says Pit.

"Also like, I'm seventeen. I should be worrying about like, I don't know, sneaking out to go to concerts and not do my math homework or whatever, right? I feel like my birthright as an American teenager got forfeited someplace and I only know about it because the sitcoms keep me informed."

She is all joke in tone, but this is maybe just a little bit real.

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