[network] @ADMIN; Arrival

[snowblindmods]

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Comments

[howdull]

Be more precise.

[About a week. It was like these people didn't want him to solve this puzzle.]

Turn on the camera so I can examine you.

[mrcreamsicles]

youre being pretty rude you know
pretty demanding
ask me nicely and tell me why sherlock

[howdull]

Because there is doubtless evidence on you that you have failed, in your capacity as a normal person with a limited brain capacity, to observe. I would like to see it before it is completely compromised.

video, private;

[mrcreamsicles]

[Oh, is that how it's gonna be? God, what a douche. He'd swap over his username and paste a few feathers to his forehead just for that. But for now, if Sherlock wants to see that badly, stumping the utter fuck out of him seems like a pretty good reason to do so. Because really, what is he going to be able to figure out about what he is?]

[He switches to private, then turns the video on. He's at the school, specifically the cafeteria, and he's dressed as stupidly as ever. The backpack is off his front though, momentarily set down. The tablet gets propped up somewhere so that he can back up for a fuller view. Just look at him, Sherlock. He's hovering like there's nothing to it.]

Okay, Surecock, tell me what you can figure out. What's the big orange mystery right here? Forget Hound of the Baskervilles; I'm bird of the Alaskan hell.

[He turns slowly as he's speaking. Full 360° for you, mister detective! Once his back's to the camera, his wings unfold to full span, as gaudily orange as his skin.]

Have they got this back in whatever grody man hole they keep you in between letting you out for cases? I don't know where Britain keeps it detectives but they're fooling themselves if they don't keep that attitude on leash.

Seriously, though, you got anything like this in your illustrious dicktective career? I want to know, what's my story reflected through smug little jackass eyes? Tell it back to me how I became this.

[Facing front again, he adds in a few strident caws, just to demonstrate he can.]

text; private

[howdull]

[Oh, Christ.

He feels panic well up inside him with the sudden force of a tsunami, crushing his lungs and making his hands tremble so that the image on the screen wobbles and distorts out of focus. He can't be seeing what he thinks he's seeing. This is the Hound all over again. This is impossible, and it terrifies him.

He struggles to think rationally, but his thoughts are chasing one another like spots of water on a hot griddle. His fingers fumble for the button to hang up and get that image away, and it's because of the way his tablet tilts to make the picture indistinct, that he doesn't. That he calms down all at once, like a switch has been flipped in his head.]

You became like that through a computer.

[It's special effects. Just a fool manipulating the image on his screen. Very clever. What was it the digital representations of people online were called? Ghosts? No. Spirits? No, closer. Avatars? Possible. Or was that the film that Mrs. Hudson had rented? S...S something. Sprite! Sprites.]

A sprite of a teenage boy.

[Of course, he means that he thinks there's a real teenage boy and this is just his sprite, his special effect that exists only on the tablet.]

text; private

[mrcreamsicles]

one point since davesprite is my name now
but wrong and extremely simplistic on all other fronts
keep going sherlock
deduct
use that massive genius brain of yours to tell me the rest because you havent even hit the heart of it
can you tell me what a sprite is for

text; private

[howdull]

[The obvious answer is that a sprite is used to represent the original creator in an online forum, but the obvious answer isn't what's wanted here. He still feels slightly shaken and, worse, he doesn't know what the rest is.

So he just hangs up, very abruptly.]