Dave Strider - Adstringendum Application
Name: Ryuuto
Livejournal: dblrainbowfairy
Contact: AIM - felledjustice
Other Characters Played: None
Are you 18 or over? Yes
Canon: Homestuck
Character: Dave Strider
Timeline: Just after the god tier lesson Terezi gave him
Personality: Dave is cool, in every meaning of the word. He's "the cool kid," and he learned from the best, his Bro. At the same time, he keeps calm and impassive, even if on the inside he might be panicking. Dave is calm and collected, but may seem to be like he's laid-back. He takes his time and goes at his own pace. His cool kid persona is what gives him confidence, and it feeds into his "don't give a shit" attitude. Dave looks like he could care less, and it's hard to tell if he's being sincere at times. However, if a friend of his needs his help, then he'll sure as hell do whatever he can to help them. He also loves music and is considered an amateur photographer.
His sense of humor, likes, dislikes, practically his entire life revolves around irony. This is something he picks up from his brother, the king of irony. It's normally his humor, likes, and dislikes that are ironic. For example, he calls Terezi's art pretty shitty, but the shittiness is what makes it cool, at least for him. Perhaps ironically, Dave has a pretty bad memory. He forgets things right and left. He's forgotten about his Timetables, and consequently forgot he could time travel in general, almost forgot when John's birthday was, and has even forgotten to forget something.
Dave's got a strange relationship with his brother. Everything he knows comes from Bro, and there's a healthy sibling rivalry between them. He loves his brother, though the puppets Bro's obsessed with creep him out. Dave never expects to be as good as him, but he seems okay with that. He's learned to deal with jealousy in a better way thanks to his brother, though granted it's by "not giving a shit." After his death, any questions regarding it is either dodged or vague.
While it's not too often that he flips out over anything, there are times in which he does just that. When he tries to get Bro's copies of Sburb, he keeps running into puppets or getting covered with them. He warns Rose that if he sees another one, he will fly off the handle with style. Dave has even pestered John in capslock to tell him that puppets are still awesome, though it's obvious at that point that it's a lie. Otherwise, he honestly doesn't show any anger or just general flipping out all that often.
He's a skeptical and fairly logical fellow, something he shares with Rose. For example, when John was telling him about what the Medium was like, Dave pretty much thought that he was pulling his leg. It's only after much insistence that he even plays Sburb to help Rose get to safety. He also questions how a game could save anyone's life just by him playing it. However, with Jade's precognitive abilities, he just doesn't question it anymore because it normally comes true. This is one of those times in which he just goes with the flow instead of trying to apply logic to it.
There are two weaknesses in his personality: his stubbornness and his mortality. He completely ignores the advice and warning Karkat gives him about Terezi and Vriska's rivalry. This also ties into his skepticism when John told him to get Sburb and help Rose. Dave also has trouble dealing with dying, both for himself and to a certain extent to his friends. This is seen when he has to push a dead Dave into the lava of his planet, and stares at the blood--his blood--on his hands for a long while. This comes up again when he realizes that he has to die on the Quest Bed in order to become god tier like John. He also has an outburst when Rose tells him that she has to die in order to destroy the Green Sun, until she clarifies that it'll be her Dream Self who will die.
Background: Dave lived in the big city somewhere in Texas. His home was an apartment that he shared with his older brother, and was raised by said brother. Growing up, Bro taught him how to take care of himself, and that "training" started since he was an infant. They forged a friendly sibling rivalry, and shared many common interests.
Somewhere along the way, he met three certain people over the internet: John Egbert, Jade Harley, and Rose Lalonde. Eventually, they became his closest friends. On his 13th birthday, Dave received new shades from John, a pair that was an authentic version of Ben Stiller's. He wore it for irony's sake, which made them awesome because of that irony. As repayment, Dave gave John the real-deal rabbit stuffed animal used in the movie Con Air for his 13th birthday present.
It was also on John's birthday that everything began. There was a beta game that was released called Sburb that would bring about the end of the world. Both Striders and Dave's friends had received copies of the beta, but Dave and Bro weren't ever planning on playing the game. Dave called it a waste of time, and only got it as a ploy to keep up with the one-upmanship he had with his brother. He told Rose that he would only play that game if her life depended on his playing it. Unfortunately, that would turn out to be true.
He was told by John that Rose's life depended on him installing and playing Sburb. After a bit of hassling by both of his friends, Dave relented and went to get his brother's copy of the game. His copy had been lost due to a mishap with the sylladex, resulting in the loss of a shitty ninja sword and a poor bird's life when it tried to steal his beta. Before getting the beta Bro owned, Dave had to have a battle with him on the roof of their apartment. Needless to say, Bro kicked his ass pretty soundly, but on the bright side he had gotten the copy of the beta!
After installing Sburb, Dave went and saved Rose from a huge meteor storm that almost completely destroyed her home. Then Jade had to save him from the same fate, though not without completely trashing his apartment. He had time before impact, at least. First, he would have his kernelsprite prototyped with a dead bird that had a sword through its body thanks to Jade. Then they would pretty much waste time with punchcards and alchemizing and other stuff like that.
During the time waste, he encountered two trolls. One was trying and failing spectacularly at trolling Dave since he basically turned the tables and trolled the ever living daylights out of that troll, who was named Tavros. He was trolled twice by Tavros, the first time making the troll block Dave, and the second time he was completely ignored by him. The other troll was a girl named Kanaya, who only spoke to him to gain insight on how to better interact with Rose.
Eventually, Dave made it into the Land of Heat and Clockwork. There, he encountered a version of himself from a doomed timeline. The Doomed Dave told him that in his time, John died because Terezi, another troll, had convinced him to go flying off to the seventh gate before he was ready for it. It took a little coaxing, but the two Daves managed to keep John from going there. Then Doomed Dave went and prototyped himself into the kernelsprite, completing the sprite. Well, not until after he left his sweet equipment for Dave to have.
After John went through Gate 2 instead, and subsequently crashed into Rose's house, Dave had him snoop around her room (not that John really knew what he was doing). Specifically, he wanted to take a look at her notebooks. Before he could, however, he fell asleep, and his Dream Self became aware that he was awake thanks to Rose throwing a ball of yarn at his head.
A little bit later, Dave woke up in the waking world. As soon as he did, he started alchemizing some more stuff. He eventually alchemized Rose's notebooks, and used his recovered copies of his version of the beta as a bookmark. Dave put them on the toilet that Jade had allocated to his room on accident, and then they got stolen while he was out of the room. He had meant to go back and burn the copy of the MEOW book he had alchemized, since Rose had burned it and said that it needed to happen. But somebody stole it before he could get back. His first idea was to go back in time, until he noticed his own dead body lying in his room. Dave decided against it, and proceeded to throw the body out of the window.
After staring at his bloodied hands for a while, he had his first encounter with Terezi. He then followed her instructions to go through his Gate, and almost got eaten by some crocodiles, which was apparently their way of being friendly to him. Once he got out of the cauldron, Dave attempted to simply ditch Terezi, not wanting to go along with her plans. However, his future self came along and gave him the thumbs-up, which told him that he could trust her. Then, the two seemed to bond after getting passed the hurdle of trust issues. Dave made his way down a passageway while talking with Terezi, and stopped near the entrance to the crocodiles' village.
Before entering, he was interrupted by Karkat, who basically told him and John to stop interacting with Terezi and Vriska. Dave ignored him, for the most part, and continued with what he was doing. That was when he got swarmed by Terezi and two other trolls, Gamzee and Equius. Gamzee he knew from months ago, apparently, and after talking to him he moved on to troll Equius. While speaking with him, Dave went to go pull a sword out of a stone, but the sword wouldn't budge no matter what he did. Thus, Dave decided that the best way to get it out was to cut a stone column clean in half. It fell onto the legendary sword (piece of shit in Dave's words), and snapped it in half.
After doing that, he talked to Terezi some more, and learned that he was going to fall asleep soon. Not only that, but while he was asleep he would be attacked, and that Davesprite would be needed to defend his sleeping form. After talking about what Davesprite was going to do after keeping Dave safe, he fell asleep and awoke on Derse, the planet Dream Dave and Dream Rose dwell in. After doing that, he took off his sunglasses, and looked up at the sky, like Rose had wanted him to do. He next went to Dream Rose's tower, and picked up a book she had, reading a random page in it to take his mind off of the rather disturbing experience.
Present Dave woke up when Jade started teleporting all around in her fight with a Uranium Imp, and fired her gun about a foot and a half away from his eardrum. He then spoke to Rose, and told her about his experience in seeing the horror terrors. That they were pleading for help because something was butchering them, and they needed to stop it or else reality itself would cease to exist. She then told him that Dave needed to listen and see what the horror terrors wanted him to know, which would be like a star chart without the stars. They wanted her to plot a course for the Green Sun, located in the Furthest Ring. Rose also told him that what they would do next would hinge on whether John was successful in removing The Tumor in Skaia, which was a bomb.
Rose's plan was to use The Tumor to destroy the Green Sun, and thus destroy the rogue Jack Noir, who had become invincible after being prototyped with a First Guardian. Her Dream Self was going to set it off, but it would be at the cost of her life. As the Knight of Time, Dave could just avoid it for a little while, and then go back in time to do what Rose needed him to do.
After the discussion, Dave went back in time to get a ridiculous amount of money to send to Terezi in the past. Not too long after, he would discover the body of his older brother, killed by Jack Noir with his own sword. Davesprite was also dead. Unable to bring himself to pull the sword out, Dave judo kicked it in half.
Then Dave pestered Terezi about what it took to become god tier like John. Eventually, she relented and decided to show him what it'd take. Terezi flipped a coin, and if it was good heads he would be told right then and there, but if it was bad heads, then he would wait. Bad heads came up, and thus Dave waited a day before she told him. He would have to kill his sleeping self on his Quest Bed. The one on the bed was a Doomed Dave, and the Alpha Dave couldn't go through with killing him. He temporarily ended his collaboration with Terezi afterward. That was when he was snatched up into Adstringendum.
Abilities/Additional Notes:
Dave is the Knight of Time. This means he can go from the future to the past and back however he pleases. His responsibility is to create 'stable' time lines, and to keep the alpha line going strong. If not, then time starts getting a bit fucked up, at least in the world of Homestuck. In Dave's words, "dead daves start piling up and dead daves are the enemy." He also uses his time traveling in battle by going forward or backward in short spurts. Since time is kinda screwed up, he either won't be able to access any of this time abilities or he will only be able to do trips that are seconds rather than hours and days.
He uses the bladekind and 1/2bladekind Strife Specibi. This means he can use a wide variety of swords, even broken ones.
Dave's got insanely fast moves thanks to sparring with his ninja of a brother. He's nothing compared to Bro Strider's speed, but he's certainly much faster than normal, and in that vein he likely has more stamina than normal.
Just a fun fact, but he knows words that most people don't even know about. He uses them in his figures of speech occasionally.
Sample Journal Post:
ok so like
a pretty cool dudes just walking down the street minding his own business
all of a sudden this other guy comes careening down the sidewalk like he stole something and almost bowls down the cool dude
collision never happened crisis averted
but the weird dude took the time to just fucking toss an iphone at the cool dudes head which he caught awesomely
the dude got away though
so heres the cool dude hoping that this totally sweet iphone he just got wasnt stolen and it was just given to him out of some fucked up charity that involved abusing random peoples heads
so anyway
sup
anybody mind filling me in on what kinda crazy city i got all wizard of oz'd into is
Sample RP:
After putting out that text post, Dave decided to burn some time waiting for responses by wandering around the city. He passed by some shops, casually glancing at what was on display through the windows every now and again. Nothing really caught his interest, and even if it did he doubted he could afford any of it. What kind of currency was being used in here, anyway?
It took him a few minutes to become consciously aware of the fact that something felt off to him. The city wasn't the problem, as far as he was aware of. The residents weren't it, either. Dave could still access his sylladex and strife specibi, so that surely wasn't it. When he tried to bring out his Timetables, he was surprised to find that he couldn't. He tried again, but nothing happened.
Well shit. That was a problem. Without the Timetables, he couldn't jump forward or backward into time, at least not by hours or days. It was possible Dave could still jump seconds, but that was useless outside of battle. He wasn't going to stress so much about it, though. His inability to use his time powers could mean one of two things. Either time was stable enough that it didn't need him meddling or so unstable that he simply couldn't because it would be so unreliable. Either way, it wasn't too big of a deal for him, and really was just one less responsibility on his plate. It just felt weird, like being left out of the loop in a conversation.
So deep in thought was he that he accidentally bumped into somebody. After readjusting his shades, Dave gave a half-hearted "sorry" and made to walk away, but something made him stick around. Something about the person seemed different from the other nameless people he saw milling around, minding their own business.
Livejournal: dblrainbowfairy
Contact: AIM - felledjustice
Other Characters Played: None
Are you 18 or over? Yes
Canon: Homestuck
Character: Dave Strider
Timeline: Just after the god tier lesson Terezi gave him
Personality: Dave is cool, in every meaning of the word. He's "the cool kid," and he learned from the best, his Bro. At the same time, he keeps calm and impassive, even if on the inside he might be panicking. Dave is calm and collected, but may seem to be like he's laid-back. He takes his time and goes at his own pace. His cool kid persona is what gives him confidence, and it feeds into his "don't give a shit" attitude. Dave looks like he could care less, and it's hard to tell if he's being sincere at times. However, if a friend of his needs his help, then he'll sure as hell do whatever he can to help them. He also loves music and is considered an amateur photographer.
His sense of humor, likes, dislikes, practically his entire life revolves around irony. This is something he picks up from his brother, the king of irony. It's normally his humor, likes, and dislikes that are ironic. For example, he calls Terezi's art pretty shitty, but the shittiness is what makes it cool, at least for him. Perhaps ironically, Dave has a pretty bad memory. He forgets things right and left. He's forgotten about his Timetables, and consequently forgot he could time travel in general, almost forgot when John's birthday was, and has even forgotten to forget something.
Dave's got a strange relationship with his brother. Everything he knows comes from Bro, and there's a healthy sibling rivalry between them. He loves his brother, though the puppets Bro's obsessed with creep him out. Dave never expects to be as good as him, but he seems okay with that. He's learned to deal with jealousy in a better way thanks to his brother, though granted it's by "not giving a shit." After his death, any questions regarding it is either dodged or vague.
While it's not too often that he flips out over anything, there are times in which he does just that. When he tries to get Bro's copies of Sburb, he keeps running into puppets or getting covered with them. He warns Rose that if he sees another one, he will fly off the handle with style. Dave has even pestered John in capslock to tell him that puppets are still awesome, though it's obvious at that point that it's a lie. Otherwise, he honestly doesn't show any anger or just general flipping out all that often.
He's a skeptical and fairly logical fellow, something he shares with Rose. For example, when John was telling him about what the Medium was like, Dave pretty much thought that he was pulling his leg. It's only after much insistence that he even plays Sburb to help Rose get to safety. He also questions how a game could save anyone's life just by him playing it. However, with Jade's precognitive abilities, he just doesn't question it anymore because it normally comes true. This is one of those times in which he just goes with the flow instead of trying to apply logic to it.
There are two weaknesses in his personality: his stubbornness and his mortality. He completely ignores the advice and warning Karkat gives him about Terezi and Vriska's rivalry. This also ties into his skepticism when John told him to get Sburb and help Rose. Dave also has trouble dealing with dying, both for himself and to a certain extent to his friends. This is seen when he has to push a dead Dave into the lava of his planet, and stares at the blood--his blood--on his hands for a long while. This comes up again when he realizes that he has to die on the Quest Bed in order to become god tier like John. He also has an outburst when Rose tells him that she has to die in order to destroy the Green Sun, until she clarifies that it'll be her Dream Self who will die.
Background: Dave lived in the big city somewhere in Texas. His home was an apartment that he shared with his older brother, and was raised by said brother. Growing up, Bro taught him how to take care of himself, and that "training" started since he was an infant. They forged a friendly sibling rivalry, and shared many common interests.
Somewhere along the way, he met three certain people over the internet: John Egbert, Jade Harley, and Rose Lalonde. Eventually, they became his closest friends. On his 13th birthday, Dave received new shades from John, a pair that was an authentic version of Ben Stiller's. He wore it for irony's sake, which made them awesome because of that irony. As repayment, Dave gave John the real-deal rabbit stuffed animal used in the movie Con Air for his 13th birthday present.
It was also on John's birthday that everything began. There was a beta game that was released called Sburb that would bring about the end of the world. Both Striders and Dave's friends had received copies of the beta, but Dave and Bro weren't ever planning on playing the game. Dave called it a waste of time, and only got it as a ploy to keep up with the one-upmanship he had with his brother. He told Rose that he would only play that game if her life depended on his playing it. Unfortunately, that would turn out to be true.
He was told by John that Rose's life depended on him installing and playing Sburb. After a bit of hassling by both of his friends, Dave relented and went to get his brother's copy of the game. His copy had been lost due to a mishap with the sylladex, resulting in the loss of a shitty ninja sword and a poor bird's life when it tried to steal his beta. Before getting the beta Bro owned, Dave had to have a battle with him on the roof of their apartment. Needless to say, Bro kicked his ass pretty soundly, but on the bright side he had gotten the copy of the beta!
After installing Sburb, Dave went and saved Rose from a huge meteor storm that almost completely destroyed her home. Then Jade had to save him from the same fate, though not without completely trashing his apartment. He had time before impact, at least. First, he would have his kernelsprite prototyped with a dead bird that had a sword through its body thanks to Jade. Then they would pretty much waste time with punchcards and alchemizing and other stuff like that.
During the time waste, he encountered two trolls. One was trying and failing spectacularly at trolling Dave since he basically turned the tables and trolled the ever living daylights out of that troll, who was named Tavros. He was trolled twice by Tavros, the first time making the troll block Dave, and the second time he was completely ignored by him. The other troll was a girl named Kanaya, who only spoke to him to gain insight on how to better interact with Rose.
Eventually, Dave made it into the Land of Heat and Clockwork. There, he encountered a version of himself from a doomed timeline. The Doomed Dave told him that in his time, John died because Terezi, another troll, had convinced him to go flying off to the seventh gate before he was ready for it. It took a little coaxing, but the two Daves managed to keep John from going there. Then Doomed Dave went and prototyped himself into the kernelsprite, completing the sprite. Well, not until after he left his sweet equipment for Dave to have.
After John went through Gate 2 instead, and subsequently crashed into Rose's house, Dave had him snoop around her room (not that John really knew what he was doing). Specifically, he wanted to take a look at her notebooks. Before he could, however, he fell asleep, and his Dream Self became aware that he was awake thanks to Rose throwing a ball of yarn at his head.
A little bit later, Dave woke up in the waking world. As soon as he did, he started alchemizing some more stuff. He eventually alchemized Rose's notebooks, and used his recovered copies of his version of the beta as a bookmark. Dave put them on the toilet that Jade had allocated to his room on accident, and then they got stolen while he was out of the room. He had meant to go back and burn the copy of the MEOW book he had alchemized, since Rose had burned it and said that it needed to happen. But somebody stole it before he could get back. His first idea was to go back in time, until he noticed his own dead body lying in his room. Dave decided against it, and proceeded to throw the body out of the window.
After staring at his bloodied hands for a while, he had his first encounter with Terezi. He then followed her instructions to go through his Gate, and almost got eaten by some crocodiles, which was apparently their way of being friendly to him. Once he got out of the cauldron, Dave attempted to simply ditch Terezi, not wanting to go along with her plans. However, his future self came along and gave him the thumbs-up, which told him that he could trust her. Then, the two seemed to bond after getting passed the hurdle of trust issues. Dave made his way down a passageway while talking with Terezi, and stopped near the entrance to the crocodiles' village.
Before entering, he was interrupted by Karkat, who basically told him and John to stop interacting with Terezi and Vriska. Dave ignored him, for the most part, and continued with what he was doing. That was when he got swarmed by Terezi and two other trolls, Gamzee and Equius. Gamzee he knew from months ago, apparently, and after talking to him he moved on to troll Equius. While speaking with him, Dave went to go pull a sword out of a stone, but the sword wouldn't budge no matter what he did. Thus, Dave decided that the best way to get it out was to cut a stone column clean in half. It fell onto the legendary sword (piece of shit in Dave's words), and snapped it in half.
After doing that, he talked to Terezi some more, and learned that he was going to fall asleep soon. Not only that, but while he was asleep he would be attacked, and that Davesprite would be needed to defend his sleeping form. After talking about what Davesprite was going to do after keeping Dave safe, he fell asleep and awoke on Derse, the planet Dream Dave and Dream Rose dwell in. After doing that, he took off his sunglasses, and looked up at the sky, like Rose had wanted him to do. He next went to Dream Rose's tower, and picked up a book she had, reading a random page in it to take his mind off of the rather disturbing experience.
Present Dave woke up when Jade started teleporting all around in her fight with a Uranium Imp, and fired her gun about a foot and a half away from his eardrum. He then spoke to Rose, and told her about his experience in seeing the horror terrors. That they were pleading for help because something was butchering them, and they needed to stop it or else reality itself would cease to exist. She then told him that Dave needed to listen and see what the horror terrors wanted him to know, which would be like a star chart without the stars. They wanted her to plot a course for the Green Sun, located in the Furthest Ring. Rose also told him that what they would do next would hinge on whether John was successful in removing The Tumor in Skaia, which was a bomb.
Rose's plan was to use The Tumor to destroy the Green Sun, and thus destroy the rogue Jack Noir, who had become invincible after being prototyped with a First Guardian. Her Dream Self was going to set it off, but it would be at the cost of her life. As the Knight of Time, Dave could just avoid it for a little while, and then go back in time to do what Rose needed him to do.
After the discussion, Dave went back in time to get a ridiculous amount of money to send to Terezi in the past. Not too long after, he would discover the body of his older brother, killed by Jack Noir with his own sword. Davesprite was also dead. Unable to bring himself to pull the sword out, Dave judo kicked it in half.
Then Dave pestered Terezi about what it took to become god tier like John. Eventually, she relented and decided to show him what it'd take. Terezi flipped a coin, and if it was good heads he would be told right then and there, but if it was bad heads, then he would wait. Bad heads came up, and thus Dave waited a day before she told him. He would have to kill his sleeping self on his Quest Bed. The one on the bed was a Doomed Dave, and the Alpha Dave couldn't go through with killing him. He temporarily ended his collaboration with Terezi afterward. That was when he was snatched up into Adstringendum.
Abilities/Additional Notes:
Dave is the Knight of Time. This means he can go from the future to the past and back however he pleases. His responsibility is to create 'stable' time lines, and to keep the alpha line going strong. If not, then time starts getting a bit fucked up, at least in the world of Homestuck. In Dave's words, "dead daves start piling up and dead daves are the enemy." He also uses his time traveling in battle by going forward or backward in short spurts. Since time is kinda screwed up, he either won't be able to access any of this time abilities or he will only be able to do trips that are seconds rather than hours and days.
He uses the bladekind and 1/2bladekind Strife Specibi. This means he can use a wide variety of swords, even broken ones.
Dave's got insanely fast moves thanks to sparring with his ninja of a brother. He's nothing compared to Bro Strider's speed, but he's certainly much faster than normal, and in that vein he likely has more stamina than normal.
Just a fun fact, but he knows words that most people don't even know about. He uses them in his figures of speech occasionally.
Sample Journal Post:
ok so like
a pretty cool dudes just walking down the street minding his own business
all of a sudden this other guy comes careening down the sidewalk like he stole something and almost bowls down the cool dude
collision never happened crisis averted
but the weird dude took the time to just fucking toss an iphone at the cool dudes head which he caught awesomely
the dude got away though
so heres the cool dude hoping that this totally sweet iphone he just got wasnt stolen and it was just given to him out of some fucked up charity that involved abusing random peoples heads
so anyway
sup
anybody mind filling me in on what kinda crazy city i got all wizard of oz'd into is
Sample RP:
After putting out that text post, Dave decided to burn some time waiting for responses by wandering around the city. He passed by some shops, casually glancing at what was on display through the windows every now and again. Nothing really caught his interest, and even if it did he doubted he could afford any of it. What kind of currency was being used in here, anyway?
It took him a few minutes to become consciously aware of the fact that something felt off to him. The city wasn't the problem, as far as he was aware of. The residents weren't it, either. Dave could still access his sylladex and strife specibi, so that surely wasn't it. When he tried to bring out his Timetables, he was surprised to find that he couldn't. He tried again, but nothing happened.
Well shit. That was a problem. Without the Timetables, he couldn't jump forward or backward into time, at least not by hours or days. It was possible Dave could still jump seconds, but that was useless outside of battle. He wasn't going to stress so much about it, though. His inability to use his time powers could mean one of two things. Either time was stable enough that it didn't need him meddling or so unstable that he simply couldn't because it would be so unreliable. Either way, it wasn't too big of a deal for him, and really was just one less responsibility on his plate. It just felt weird, like being left out of the loop in a conversation.
So deep in thought was he that he accidentally bumped into somebody. After readjusting his shades, Dave gave a half-hearted "sorry" and made to walk away, but something made him stick around. Something about the person seemed different from the other nameless people he saw milling around, minding their own business.