mostdangerousbird: (108 well it was what i wanted now)
mostdangerousbird ([personal profile] mostdangerousbird) wrote in [community profile] metalogs2022-09-30 09:25 am

CLOSED to Kon | Click here to find out if you're a Betty or Veronica

Who: Tim Drake [personal profile] mostdangerousbird & Kon-El [personal profile] lowercase_el
What: Tim wants Kon to check out this super cool and in no way suspicuous personality test.
When: Today
Where: Their apartment
Content Warnings: Will update if needed



[ It's quite late. 7 AM, actually, and Tim is usually in bed by 4. Instead, he's at his computer, juggling browsers and tabs to get everything arranged just right. Websites that shouldn't be open, but he may want to come back to are timmarked It's like bookmarked, but instead of clicking the icon, he copies the URL to a plain text file on his desktop so the links won't accidentally follow him around on a phone or other device. The general idea is looking like he stayed up late reading up on something and then got caught up in something fun and interesting to people named Tim, but just a bit boring. That seems to fit with how Kon views Tim's interests.

The personality quiz - What Are Your Chances of Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse - is on the last question and ready to be submitted when Kon wakes up. Tim has already taken it multiple times to fully troubleshoot it and knows that he will receive a 64% chance of survivability, which will label him as Zombie Snak: White Castle Edition with a couple sentences explaining that he's probably still dead meat, but they're going to have to work for it. It's a good, but not unbeatable score, and the result is funny despite having to get through 100 sometimes dry questions on this, the self-proclaimed "MOST ACCURATE ZOMBIE QUIZ EVER".

He's not sure if he's on his fifth cup of coffee, or his first, that's how far the lines between Wednesday-Thursday-Friday are currently blurred. Between patrols, work, and designing a third online quiz capable of spitting out a meme results and sending Tim a copy of the responses to certain questions so that he can use them to complete an application to immigrate to Xinthal on Kon's behalf, just in case.

It's pretty tricky to create a quiz thats land on fun and interesting and a bit boring but not tooboring, and this is the . If Tim nails the snore too hard, Kon won't make it through the quiz, and this is his best opportunity to sneak in more agricultural questions tucked in amongst the "real" questions, stolen from various other online quiz makers. The first two quizzes he made - I Can Guess What Kind of Soup You Like Based on Where You Want to Vacation (he hates himself for that one because that is not something that equates, but he did want to make sure that an island nation wouldn't be too much of a reminder of Hawaii and CADMUS) and Are You a Geordi or a Data - had built up to this one, both in length and dryness.

Tim sips his coffee. If this works, he should probably do it for Bart as well. Even if he's in the Alliance, there's no guarantee that everything will go smoothly. The metahuman climate is escalating quickly towards what Starling had described, and Tim would prefer his friends have a legal exit strategy.

For now, all that's left is to wait for Kon to wake up, click submit, complain about the results until Kon takes it himself and then, finally, sleep..
lowercase_el: (002)

[personal profile] lowercase_el 2022-10-19 03:08 am (UTC)(link)
That's why in a real zombie apocalypse people would only survive in communities. Gotta have the guy who knows how to create a chokepoint to kill zombies and someone that knows how to milk a cow.

[He finally puts his coffee down and comes over, acting curious.]

[He is curious but it's not really about the quiz. But Tim's guiding questions seem related to it.]

So, what, does it ask stuff that's more than just about foraging and fighting zombos?
Edited 2022-10-19 06:26 (UTC)
lowercase_el: (011)

[personal profile] lowercase_el 2022-10-20 05:50 am (UTC)(link)
Fuel economy's because most farm equipment runs on gas or diesel. When it's gas you need the right grade for that kind of equipment and need to know how much fuel stuff is gonna use.

[Now feigning interest, Kon puts his coffee down and finally comes over to take a look.]

I've never seen a quiz like this that actually asks farming questions. I wonder if it was made by some 4H nerd.

[He takes over the mouse and clicks on an answer to see more questions.]
Edited 2022-10-20 05:52 (UTC)
lowercase_el: (008)

[personal profile] lowercase_el 2022-11-13 04:05 am (UTC)(link)
Scoot, I wanna see if I can out-farm-nerd this thing.

In a way that my past self would be horrified by.

[He wants a closer look at this weird quiz without Tim breathing down his neck. He needs space to dig around.]
lowercase_el: (007)

[personal profile] lowercase_el 2022-11-30 12:34 pm (UTC)(link)
[So he wants to look at it after. Hmmm.]

[Kon know he can just wait this out. Tim's exhausted and if anything is going on with this, Tim thinks he's drawn him in. He'll know that Kon might get distracted by the internet and plan to look at whatever is going on with this quiz in the morning.]

[So he just takes his good ol' time so that he won't be able to do anything but fall asleep. Tim's beddy bye is Kon's morning and afternoon, so he can do this allll day.]

[Kon's handled him as much as he needs to get a good look at this computer so he takes his time with it.]

[Sometimes he wonders how much like Lex that makes him now, the being good at handling difficult people and seeming natural, but the good thing is he'd have pretty damn far to go. Slowly backsliding into bad habits is never going to let you catch up with the guy who no-scope 360-ed his way into the pit in a earnest desire to someday be Satan's roomie.]

[Besides, reporter's instincts tripping, snooping through someone's stuff, and play-acting a little at being disarming is a time-honored Super tradition, too. No harm in letting this timid, flattery-effusive bespectacled reporter near the hallway with your technically-public filing cabinet, right Mr. Mayor? Isn't it Lois Lane you need to watch, making a racket with hard-hitting questions to your campaign manager over there? (Or sometimes it was the reverse and and Clark was the one being distracting by awkwardly spilling a drink on someone. He'd heard quite a few of their stories, Ma and Pa thought it was hilarious).]

[It'll be years before he fully sorts it all out but he's starting to finally realize he's some of the good and maybe some of the bad from both of them - and a few things all his own.]

[He answers the quiz and gets to the end. The result is that he scores high because of the farming and how homesteading would be necessary yada yada yada.]

[The questions are...weird. He starts with googling them, changing up the wording in different ways and using the right search terms to account for variations.]

[The writing style is a little...different on some of them. Like someone needed extra questions and plagiarized them but didn't have the time or energy to worry about converting them to their use.]

[Like...maybe someone putting together a quiz with a ridiculous number of searching questions. Someone aiming for enough of the questions to be very colloquial and informal to offset a bunch of very precise ones about farming.]

[And so, the possible creator of the quiz becomes suspect and he has a suspect for it. But why?]

[There are a few other quizzes in the quiz-maker's profile but no dates listed. Not much work was done on them, they seem to be basic, like they're just there to fill out a profile. He clicks "View source" and digs around in the source code of the page to see if there's something flagging them with a date somehow and finds it folded into the actual quiz number in the link for each. It's not that Tim isn't smart enough to hack the server of some quiz site to change it, but he probably didn't expect Kon to go ham with trying to suss it out.]

[They were all made after the recent shift in the stuff with the guilds because Tim's not a time traveler. He'd have to have hacked it to change any of them and didn't bother because he never expected Kon to look.]

[Kon then searches for other zombie quizzes on both the same site and on the greater web at large, looking at the questions of the first ones that pop up as he goes. And he finds some that were on the quiz Tim handed over, just worded differently. But not differently enough, hence why it sounded like some questions were copied from other sources.]

[They were and he didn't take the time to reword them that much.]

[But Tim doesn't have the advantage of a billionaire's wealth backing him anymore. He's back to an annoying day job outside a board room (in the place of school), back to spreading himself thinner.]

[And Kon knows that, as much as his best friend clearly cares about him, and holds him up as one of the best people he knows, it has never been a secret to either of them that Tim is smarter. Especially since Kon has often outsourced the brain stuff to Tim when they're doing hero stuff together.]

[Tim's never seen him have to figure out something alone. He always does it even if it's harder.]

[It takes him a few hours, but he manages to figure out what other quizzes most of the questions were stolen from. And it becomes clear that the farming questions are standing out because none of the other zombie quizzes mention farming and there just aren't a lot of farming-based quizzes on the site. What normal internet-savvy person made farming quizzes? Nobody. What farmer doodled around making quizzes? Again, none of them.]

[So he turns to the internet at large for those. Clark taught him the more fiddly search terms one time, when he was working on a paper. How you can narrow things down with certain phrasing, or leave things set up as blanks to fill in. He also showed him alternate search engines that those kinds of terms still work on since google is a bust anymore.]

[Altering the phrasing enough is how he finds the citizenship application online, and the specific questionnaire for immigrant applicants that are farmers, a very long pdf that asks variations of a bunch of those farming questions.]

Tim.

[He huffs it under his breath.]

[But still, it could be coincidence right? Unless...]

[Was he so confident Kon wouldn't snoop that it's somewhere in the stacks of junk on his desk? Kon stands up quietly and looks down at the stacks of papers, his eyes briefly glowing blue. He's able to look layer by layer with X-ray vision to avoid the sound of any papers shuffling.]

[When he's done looking, when he finds it, he's not angry enough to wake him up but he is very, very angry. At Tim doing this behind his back. At Tim trying to handle him and manipulate him into doing the quiz.]

[But he waits and lets Tim sleep because he needs it. He doesn't want him to not get it and then be out there fighting crime even more sleep deprived than usual.]

[He takes the time to read about this island country of metas. He doesn't actually have anywhere to be today, it's a day off from work and he has no other plans beside normal patrols.]

[No, he waits until the afternoon, when Tim is finally stirring a little. That's when he pulls the half-finished application out of the stack and tosses it on the blanket near Tim's feet.]

[When Tim wakes up he'll see the papers on the bed and that Kon has pulled the wheely chair around to be right in his line of sight when he wakes up. He's sitting with his arms crossed. He does not look pleased.]
Edited 2022-11-30 12:54 (UTC)
lowercase_el: (035)

[personal profile] lowercase_el 2022-11-30 03:08 pm (UTC)(link)
[Because Tim is just waiting for him to, what, actually confirm what he knows? Kon picks the papers back up.]

"The Applicant states that the above is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge" - that'd be that I know all that farming stuff you fished around for answers to - blah blah something something and wow, I gotta say, kinda weird I don't remember signing this but that sure is my signature, huh.

[He flips the page around and wonders if Tim got it digitally or just practiced so well he could mimic it perfectly.]

I don't know why I actually need to say this, but you can't just change someone's citizenship without their knowledge! Why do I need to say this, Tim?! Who does that?!

Am I that bad of a roomie you want to emigrate me to another country? You could've tried passive-aggressive post-its first!

[He knows that's not it, that this is not because he needs to do the dishes more, but the joke is there and he's feeling very sarcastic right now.]
lowercase_el: (026)

[personal profile] lowercase_el 2022-11-30 07:33 pm (UTC)(link)
I get that you think this is going to protect me, I get that. But it doesn't change that the way you do this stuff sometimes is so messed up!

[The "so messed up" is more emotional than angry. It's frustration at being manipulated and hurt that Tim would try it knowing about his issues of being controlled.]

It's not even just doing the stupid application without me knowing. You set up a fake quiz to get me to answer the questions, then tried to manipulate me into taking it. Do you really not get how screwed up that is?

[Sometimes it feels like Tim is inches nearby but somehow a million miles away.]

I don't like to be tricked, Tim! I don't like being manipulated. I don't like people trying to control me and decide what I'm doing. It's my life.

I get to choose the direction. I get to choose the risk. That's mine.

[He hates when people try to control him. The whole rebel thing is what his friends know as being an essential part of him and the truth of it is that it was just basic necessity. It wasn't something he learned to do to try to be a stronger person, he had to learn to rebel just to control his own destiny and be his own person, in a way none of his friends will ever be able to fully understand.]

[What had Waller said that one time? "Let him speak. It'll help me learn if he's gone defective and needs to be locked in a warehouse with the rest of our damaged property."]

[ He'd become a rebel to be allowed to just...be.]

Your heart is in the right place, but tricking me into it? That's a Luthor move. [Shots fired.] And I'm not putting up with it.

[There's a flash of blue teke and the papers erupt into shreds in his hands, then fall to the floor.]

[And he's not the one that's going to pick them up.]

If you try it again I'll just have it revoked.
lowercase_el: (035)

[personal profile] lowercase_el 2022-11-30 08:25 pm (UTC)(link)
[It's the equivalent of a nuclear bomb dropped on the conversation.]

[Maybe if it weren't so personal, maybe if Luthor hadn't broken him so much to bend him to his will, maybe if it wasn't a hotbed of semi-recent trauma he'd catch the "get what they need" part. Maybe then he'd understand that doing something like this is emotional armor for someone deeply, deeply traumatized.][But it's still too much of a grenade drop. There isn't just anger, there's actual hurt. When Kon said it, he was trying to get Tim to understand what it was making him feel like, and yes, that meant it was dramatic. But this feels like Tim just intending to hurt.]

[His expression makes it clear the hit landed. His voice is quaking with emotion when he speaks.]

I know you want to wrap me up in cotton, but you can't.

I'm going to take risks and it's probably going to suck. Like I'm going to out Guardian as a clone and tell people why I'm not joining a Guild. Because the clones here need to see they deserve to come out of the dark.

I don't do hiding in the shadows, Tim. Because I can't live that way and be me.
Edited 2022-11-30 20:29 (UTC)
lowercase_el: (029)

[personal profile] lowercase_el 2022-12-01 06:06 am (UTC)(link)
Tim...

[ His expression softens. ]

Look, I know it's -

I know it's risky, I just -

This is what we do. Anyone that wears the S. This is who we are. Sometimes, someone has to be the example, and stand up for people that barely anyone else is helping...

[And he can't argue this while Tim's crying.]

Tim, I'm sorry. I just need to do this.

[He goes over to hug him. Slowly, to see if he even accepts it.]
lowercase_el: (018)

[personal profile] lowercase_el 2022-12-02 05:41 am (UTC)(link)
[ Since Tim is pretty much curling in on himself, Kon doesn't feel right about going in for a hug, but he does place his hand on his shoulders. ]

[ It's close enough to make a grab for the phone - and Tim probably would succeed if Kon hadn't always decided he was going to sticky the thing in his pocket with teke for the next little while. Just in case. ]

It doesn't have to just be thoughtless, okay? Like if you want to put gps trackers in my socks - provided you don't already have some in there - I'm all for it. Anything that'd let Bart be there in half a heartbeat we can do.
lowercase_el: (014)

[personal profile] lowercase_el 2022-12-03 02:11 am (UTC)(link)
[Kon doesn't go after him. It's pretty clear he hadn't want to be touched and he can only imagine how much worse his reaction would've been if Kon had outright hugged him, held him the way he wanted to.]

[He doesn't have long to feel terrible about it before he feels the tug on his phone and knows that yes, he had reason to keep a tight hold on it.]

[ Anger flares on top of the guilt of making Tim cry. ]

[ Is this really where they're at? ]

[Why is this so hard? He thought all he had to do was get back home, with his family, and with his friends, and then everything would be okay again. It'd be like it was before. Or at least a different he could adapt to like he had to adapt to everything.]

[But it hasn't been like that at all. The world forgot him and moved on. The thing he'd been waiting his whole life for, had dreamed about, got handed to someone else and it seemed like it happened without a thought. (Someone more legitimate, someone who was actually wanted.) And things with Tim are...fraught sometimes. Hard.]

[It's easier with Bart because he and Bart don't have multiple timelines bouncing around their heads. Things have changed over time, especially after Bart became Kid Flash, but navigating the new Bart isn't impossible even if sometimes it's deceptively more difficult than it seems.]

[Also, most importantly, Bart wasn't the one left alone in his grief. He felt one loss, but he was the second. (Or really, the fifth, when you count the others like Steph and all three of Tim's parents.) ]

[Kon stands there, shoulders drooping, too angry to just cave into Tim's demands or forgive the boundaries he crossed, but also not wanting to make him more miserable.]

[So he just...lets him go. Without a word. Instead he bends off to clean the shreds of the application off the floor.]