IC Contact/Voicemail

[ardent]

[VOICE/TEXT/VIDEO; OPEN TO ALL]

"You've reached Kiyotaka Ishimaru; I seem to have missed you! My sincerest apologies for that - but if you leave your name and state your business, firmly and concisely, I'll return your contact as soon as I can!

Until then, I look forward to speaking to you; do what you can to make your day pleasant and productive, and be sure to keep your head up!"

[Please state in the subject line if OOC planning is preferred and we can handwave like the wind, but otherwise IC will be assumed!]

Comments

[nostabbing]

Hey, Ishimaru, can I tell you something?

[ardent]

Yes, of course!

Would you prefer to do this over the device, or in person?

text; forward-dated to the 25th

[digitalorunknown]

[Guess who just crawled out of not-exactly-hiding-but-he's-been-awfully-quiet-lately.]

Are you nearby? I want to see you.

[...Guess who can't edit himself to avoid sounding vaguely dire.]

[ardent]

[Oh my god, Dorumon, why...

...oh well, he needs to at least try to be productive today, anyway, as tempting as remaining flopped in bed for the entirety of the day sounds; the last five days have been ridiculously draining and he's been trying to recover, but clearly this is...more than enough recovery. Let's get up, then, and try to words...]

I just returned last night; I'm back in the inn for the time being. Is something the matter?

text; 1/?

[superordinary]

[ Around two in the morning, Ishimaru gets this lovely text message: ]

vghhdftsedaeduikijf dffglgryyörsrwrllfts

text; 2/?

[superordinary]

[ Less than one minute later, he gets another equally lovely message. ]

fgvddfsadfsdf hfgdfssmatiogfghjk

[freshprints]

Ishimaru-kun.

[ardent]

Kirigiri-kun...? Is everything all right?

text; 9/27

[superordinary]

i can't reach fujisaki-kun
the number's no longer in service
i think he's gone

[ardent]

[...it takes him a moment to respond to that; what on earth - ]

What?

Are you sure?

9/25 video (backdated)

[beholdmydemons]

[Beep.]

"That's all", was it? [HEY TRAVEL ADVICE DUDE it's like 7:00 PM and Walter looks and sounds tired but thrilled (and a little bit awed).] You sold this city short! 'Tis like the center of the whole world!

[He sits himself down, and the inn-room background jostles around accordingly.]

Hoy, what should be done first? There's so much to see, it's dizzying - we've already gotten lost once.

GOD I'M SORRY rl ate me but I'm here now

[ardent]

[Oh, it's you! ...very...enthusiastically, too, um.]

Ah, so you've made it to Goldenrod City, Walter-kun? It's like most big cities are in my world, so I guess I'm used to that sort of thing - it's good that you're enjoying it, though!

[That much is genuine, at least.]

There are a lot of things to be done there, if I'm remembering correctly - it depends on what sort of things you're interested in!

october 10;

[nostabbing]

ishimaru help i can't find my cat

[ardent]

Your cat?

Where was it last?

Text

[struck_out]

Hey Ishimaru! I saw somethin' the other day and he kinda reminded me of you. Check your PC when you got the time. And no need to thank me either, I'm just that swell of a guy.

[And inside the PC waiting for him is a certain red fish...that has had some black lines scribbled around its eyes. They almost look like eyebrows.]

Text

[ardent]

[And...some time later...]

Kuwata-kun, do I really want to know where you got that?

voicemail;

[nostabbing]

HEY ISHIMARU WHERE ARE YOU GET YOUR STUFF YOU HAVE TO TALK TO A GUY I KNOW

HE'S A GUNDAM PILOT GUY

[ardent]

[GOOD...MORNING????]

Aneki, what are you talking about?!

action, backdated to the beginning of december

[superordinary]

[ It's been a few days since the 4th wall event ended and things went back to normal. As normal as Johto could be, that is. It's been on his mind since then -- he saved the mastermind from dying horribly. He doesn't regret doing so, but he feels like he has to talk to someone about it because he can't keep it to himself forever.

'Sup, Ishimaru, hope you weren't busy. ]

Hey, can we talk?

[ardent]

[Well, given that it's Ishimaru, he's almost always busy; today, however, it's a familiar sort of busy, given that he's got study materials all over the table in the kitchen, hands closed tightly around a cup of something that steams in front of him. It's been a little warmer for the past few days, but there's no telling when the temperatures are going to start to dip again; judging from the boots and the tight white pants he's got on he's still rocking the school uniform pretty hard, but that trendy-as-hell hoodie (with the white and the red-and-black and the...zippers, um) is making another appearance.

All in all, he seems pretty content, going over one of the books on the mythology surrounding the Ruins of Alph in front of him when Naegi approaches him; he seems a little surprised but generally unbothered, though the usual severity in his expression isn't really lessening any. But then, that's pretty much par for the course.]

Of course, Naegi-kun! Did you need something in particular?

12/25

[superordinary]

[ What's this? Someone left a piece of paper on Ishimaru's bed. There's a red paw print on it; looks like someone dipped their paw in paint for this lovely and thoughtful Christmas present. ]

[video message - 2/14]

[nostabbing]

Hi, Ishimaru.

[The video here is only slightly wobbly; from the background of the shot, it looks like she's got her gear propped up against something on a countertop in the kitchen, and she's resisting the urge to fiddle with it to adjust the angle as she sits on one of the chairs and positions herself as best she can to make this recording.]

I was going to just call, but I thought...you know, since you're off with Makoto and everything right now, maybe I could just make you a video and then you could watch it when you wanted. And see me. One time Sophie left the team so she could go find herself and sometimes she'd video chat with us when she could get to an internet cafe. It kind of made things a little better, I guess. Seeing her, even if she wasn't right there with us.

[She glances behind her, then sits back down and shuffles around again.]

We're doing okay! It's pretty quiet here, I guess. I mean, there are the Flubber-blobs everywhere, but the Eevees don't chase them too much. They caught one in the backyard on the tennis court yesterday. They circled it in and just kind of closed in on it and then sat there looking at it like they were trying to figure out what it was. Have you seen them yet? People keep saying they're everywhere but maybe they aren't where you are, I dunno.

[A glance to the side; she blinks, like she's just remembered something.]

Oh, right.

[She reaches off to the side, and then brings a plate of vaguely YOU TRIED chocolates into focus, arranged neatly on a piece of wax paper covering the dish.]

Creepy Eyes was making chocolates because I guess she's sending Makoto some? So I made you some chocolates, too. I didn't know you could make chocolate on a stove. I didn't have a stove in the...you know, where I live...at home and everything. But it didn't look that hard. I'll try making you some other ones when you get back. But you can have these right now, for Valentine's Day. Some of them have strawberry in the middle and some of them have caramels. Like...they're dipped. In the chocolate.

[She lets out a quick puff of breath, lips angled so it goes upward and fluffs out her bangs in an unmistakably socially-awkward reflex.]

I hope you come home soon. I miss you a lot.

[...]

But I want you to stay there if you're okay there. Or if it makes you feel better. Or if it...just. You know. Makes you feel something at all.

[She waves a little.]

Okay. Have a really good day. Remember to stay away from bees and make sure to eat the chocolates instead of just looking at them or giving them away to Makoto or kind of staring at the wall and thinking too much about them instead of putting them in your mouth.

[Parker...]

...

I miss you.

[She kind of half-smiles, and then after a second of delay, she leans forward and reaches for —

click.]

[video message - later that day]

[ardent]

Hello, Parker! ...It's okay if I just call you that, right? I tried calling you Parker-san before but Hardison-san said it was "just Parker", so...I can go either way if you want.

[It's a couple of hours later when the video gets sent out, though it's not for lack of trying; it's just been a matter of sorting out exactly where he can do this that isn't, you know. All up in Naegi's face as well.

But for now Naegi is distracted by a gooball and trying to work out how to get his Bronzong to quit with the rain because we are in the ice caves what the hell, and Ishimaru has a few minutes to himself and he seems to actually be kind of focusing on the camera today, so here he is.]

We've been doing all right over here - we made it to those caves all made of ice the other day, and I think we're...

[...]

A bit less lost than we were yesterday.

[Ishimaru.]

But Naegi-kun is doing well, and he's making sure I'm doing well also; he...makes sure I eat things, and he keeps talking to me so I don't just go quiet and not say anything at all. He wants to make sure everything is okay.

He's gotten a couple of badges, and I got one as well a few days ago. Oh, and we found one of those blobs, too - or I guess it found us...it's sort of hard to tell. I don't really like it that much, but we're helping it anyway. I think it probably got separated from whatever...herd? Are they called herds, do they...move...in herds...

[ ... :|a ]

...Its friends aren't anywhere around here and I think that's what we're doing, we're trying to find them. Things like that...it's probably not good for it to be somewhere so cold anyway.

[He kind of fidgets a little after that, though.]

Ah, and thank you for making chocolates - I'm not...

[Um.]

Well, I've never...really...

[His gaze flicks off to the side before he returns his attention to the camera.]

This is the first time I've ever gotten chocolate from a girl on Valentine's Day, and I really...appreciate it...

[It's genuine, it's just awkward as hell.

Moving on.]

Maybe I can make you some too, sometime. I've never really tried, but like you said, it doesn't look too difficult.

[Is that weird, he thinks it might be weird. OH WELL.]

I miss you too, aneki; we'll be back soon, though.

Valentine's

[puppetnurse]

Even though their last conversation didn't go spectacularly, he will still find a small bag of chocolates from Tsumiki in his PC today. Happy Valentine's Day, Ishimaru-san.

[voicemail]

[cobraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

This is Cobra Commander sssspeaking. I believe you agreed to purchase my leftover ssstock, so I would suggest contacting me immediately if you sssstill plan to do so.

[ardent]

[...Oh boy.

Well, you can have that call returned, Cobra, hello there.]

I'm here - how many were left over?

text; March 10th

[awesmazings]

Hi, Ishimaru! I got to Violet City ok, but I wasn't there long cause I'm actually traveling with Joker and his friends right now. We'll be at Goldenrod in three days. I'll be able to check the PC when I get there.

Oh, by the way! Cherry evolved this morning!

[ardent]

[Oh, hey, look who it is -

...

yes okay but how does he go about addressing you because Two-Shoes-kun just sounds strange

...foreign-classmate-protocol is go]

Ah, Jimmy-kun - it's good to hear from you! It's also good to know that you aren't by yourself; maybe I'll see you in Goldenrod soon, then. I'm not going anywhere at this point, anyway.

Give Cherry my congratulations as well!

1/4 text; sometime the morning of the 29th | I'm sorry in advance

[codeforhope]

[Ishimaru might be surprised to find a very strange string of texts on his Gear this morning, a bit disjointed and...none of them particularly seeming to make much sense at all.

In fact, they're not actual words at all. It's all in binary code.]

01010101010100110100010101010010001000000100101101001001010110010100111101010100010000010100101101000001001000000100100101010011010010000100100101001101010000010101001001010101000011010000101000001101000010100100100001000101010011000100110001001111001000000100100001000101010011000100110001001111

2/4

[codeforhope]

0100100100100000010010000100111101010000010001010010000001011001010011110101010100100000010000110100000101001110000011010000101001010011010100000100010101000001010010110010000000101111010000100100100101001110010000010101001001011001001011110000110100001010000011010000101001001001001000000100110001001001010010110100010100100000010000100100100101001110010000010101001001011001

3/4

[codeforhope]

01001101010000010101001101010100010001010101001000100000010101000100000101001100010010110101001100100000010101000100111100100000010011010100010100100000010010010100111000100000000011010000101000101111010000100100100101001110010000010101001001011001001011110000110100001010000011010000101001010011010011110010000001001100010011110100011101001001010000110100000101001100010011000101100100001101000010100000110100001010010011010100000101010011010101000100010101010010001001110101001100100000010001100101001001001001010001010100111001000100010100110010000001010011010010000100111101010101010011000100010000100000000011010000101001010101010011100100010001000101010100100101001101010100010000010100111001000100001000000100100101010100001000000100000101010011001000000101011101000101010011000100110000001101000010100000110100001010010000100100100101001110010000010101001001011001001000000100100101010011001000000101001101010101010100000100010101010010010010010100111101010010

4/4

[codeforhope]

0100000101001110010110010101011101000001010110010000110100001010000011010000101001001000010010010010000001001000010001010100110001001100010011110010000001000111010011110100111101000100001000000100110101001111010100100100111001001001010011100100011100001101000010100100100101010011010010000100100101001101010000010101001001010101001000010010000100100001

[With that the rampant bombarding of NUMBERS seems to eventually subside.

...good luck deciphering all that.]

[ardent]

[...is he supposed to be able to decode the Matrix here, because while whomever's sending him this is probably seeing blondes, brunettes and illicit cakes or something, this is pretty much Greek to him, hold on.

He takes a moment to kind of...headtilt at it before checking the ID of the sender.

Chihiro Fujisaki.

...um. Okay, that's...new. It's possible that this is another really surreal Kagura-chan style text, sent by a Pokemon of some sort; he supposes strings of binary are probably better than random keysmashing and the occasional HYDROGEN and MOON PIE, but...]

Hello...?

Backdated to March 31

[nostabbing]

Hey, Ishimaru, can I tell you something?

[ardent]

Of course you can - anything.

action; april 20th

[superordinary]

[ When Naegi regains consciousness, there's this weird disconnect in his memories; he's been in Johto for over a year, but the sudden new memories of the school contradict the time spent in the world of pokémon. Five minutes ago Naegi was inside Hope's Peak and Kiyotaka Ishimaru was dead and nothing could change that undeniable fact. Pokémon weren't real and there's no way he ever could train them.

That's why the time spent in Johto suddenly feels out of place, like the extra piece of a puzzle that doesn't fit with the rest no matter how many times you rotate it. You end up moving all the other pieces around and readjust your entire way of thinking as you scramble to figure out where the fuck the piece is supposed to go.

He slowly opens his eyes to see a ceiling he doesn't recognize (his brain is still trying to make sense of his memories but he's pretty sure he went to bed at an inn in a place called Cianwood) and he finds himself clenching the sheets of a bed he doesn't remember sleeping in. What...exactly was going on here? ]

Uuh... Huh...?

[ardent]

[Ishimaru is fortunate enough to be on watch when Naegi wakes up.

It's fortunate for a few reasons, really - the first being that it cuts down on the time he's spending freaking out, because he's been more or less beside himself for the last week; another is that it prevents the inevitable screaming interrogation that would have happened when it came to whomever was on watch, and the last thing anyone needs is Kirigiri being annoyed or Fujisaki in tears.

He had been reading a bit when Naegi came to, in the loosest possible definition of the word - he has a book open across his lap and he's pretty sure the book contains words, but hell if he can remember what any of the words actually are. Or, you know, what subject he's even reading about. (He's pretty sure there's a subject, but don't take his word for it.) Naegi actually making noise for once snaps him out of his thoughts immediately, however, and he straightens up a bit where he's sitting. He knows coming out of these things can be...sort of unpleasant; he has no idea what he's supposed to be expecting.]

Naegi-kun...?

text;

[superordinary]

[ So immediately after talking to Carmen, Naegi decides to text Ishimaru. ]

I think we need a way to track each other if something happens. What if somebody ends up in a coma and we have no idea where they are?

text; my apologies, rl punched me again

[ardent]

[good lord, naegi-kun, hello and thank you for this sudden bit of foresight.]

That's a valid point, yes - I make sure to check numbers from time to time when we're travelling, just to make sure none of them have gone unresponsive, but that doesn't tell us anything regarding location.

text; june 3rd

[superordinary]

Ishimaru-kun, are you busy right now? There's something I want to talk about.

[ardent]

I'm not too busy to talk to you! What's going on? Did you want to talk in person, or...?

[text] night of 6/7

[crystalballer]

hey ishimaru-chi? i don't know how to put this lightly but i just got attacked in the city and i'm really freaked out to leave the police station. would it be cool if you helped me home?

[Just...have fun with that uncharacteristic typing but very characteristic vagueness Ishimaru.]

[ardent]

You got attacked?

[You know, it's probably really good that this is via text, there's a lot less volume and screaming which no one needs right now. BUT HE'S DOING IT IN SPIRIT...]

By whom? Was it someone you know? Are you okay??

text; 8/14

[superordinary]

[ Alter Ego would apologize for sending out something that's full of poor spelling but she doesn't want to get sprayed by a Skuntank, okay. :c ]

DON'T READ THIS u will get kissed on the nearest possible wednesday by ur crush. Tomorrow will be the best day ever and u will catch a rare pokemon. HOWEVER IF U DONT FORWARD THIS TO AT LEAST 5 PEOPLE bad luck will rear it's ugly head at u!! THIS IS NOT A JOKE. There are consiquences for ignoring this, u will get chased by 50 beedrills and sprayed by a skuntank!!!!11!

**NOTE** The more people U send this to, the better luck you have!

P.S. I did not make this up, someone sent it to me so I am passing it on!

ENCRYPTED ATTACHMENT: pory-con-invite.txt