hey skull, what the hell?
Verde watched the server in fascinated awe as he carefully noted the different interactions. He had only found it a few days ago, courtesy of their uneducated civilian fool managing to break his phone. As always, he brought it to Verde so he could fix it— and he had —but he’d also discovered an innocent looking (slightly unsettling) app.
It was named discord, and it functioned as a kind of instant messaging app, specifically for larger groups of people. Verde only had the intention of exploring the app itself, until he came across it. One specific server, placed above the rest, with an innocuous purple d20 icon, named Cloudy With A Chance.
Cloudy.
With the skill of a professional white hat, Verde duplicated the server files and managed to connect a back door to his laptop, allowing him to view the server, even if he couldn’t interact with it.
Skull had come back not a day later, taken his phone, and scampered off without any suspicions at all.
That had been 5-ish days ago, and Verde’s curiosity had become a full on Fixation.
So here he was, documenting his observations of these mystery people who befriended the arcobaleno cloud. Verde may not like Skull, but he’s not going to let their weakest link make the rest of them look bad. At least, that's what he told himself.
It came as a surprise then, when there were a surprising number of things that Verde didn’t, couldn’t, understand; some were obviously inside jokes which he had no context for, but others just straight up made no fucking sense. There were words in foreign languages, talk of meeting in locations that didn’t seem to exist, strange acronyms, and concepts that were never explained.
Additionally, none of the server members used their legal name, or even a known underworld moniker; instead, they had uncanny names that likely referred to their own personality or were personal nicknames, making it even more difficult to pin down any of their potential identities.
[——/10/13, 14:09]
2bagels: im going to stab a bitch
A CHILD: do it
god?: why /genq
clownboy: owo?
dedevil: aniki r u ok?
Ah, yes, there was that other thing, as well…
[——/10/13, 14:11]
2bagels: this light fucker keeps grabbing at me in a “new specimine” kinda wau
2bagels: and hes trying to sway bon from my pack
2bagels: idk how i havbt gutted him alrdy
…they all had their “things,” whether it was people or places or possessions or even ideals. It would have been another account of their anomalous behavior, if not for two things: Skull’s presence in the server, and the server name itself.
Verde was convinced that against all likelihood, every single user in the server was cloudy, and they were all getting along.
[——/10/13, 14:11]
god?: petition to debone and eat lewin light
A CHILD: siGNED
hibirb: ^
clownboy: eheehee, oh i know a wonderful chef~ i’m sure he’d love the challenge!
pickpocket: I would eat him raw.
dogfather: every time i come back here it gets more bloody violent
dogfather: you lot better not influence my son!
ELK: padfoot thats so hypocritical
ELK: you say that like you didn’t try to kill wormtail immediately after he turned
dogfather: THAT WAS ONCE
ELK: WAS IT?? HMMM IDK BETTER GET THE LIST
dogfather: NO WAIT NIT TGE LIDTS
clownboy: rip in pieces, starship no. 2
god?: regardless, @2bagels youre managing rn?
2bagels: somehow
god?: ok, thats good, can you leave?
2bagels: the vatican says no
While Verde wasn’t able to find their identities, he was able to start piecing together personal details based on the conversations he was able to analyze.
The age range, for example, was massive; the oldest was between god? and dogfather, which he estimated to be older than the current arcobaleno by 10-15 years, leaving them in their 60s. On the other hand, the youngest were around 15, and were still attending school, based on the times they were active.
pickpocket and clownboy were similar ages, and both had a strong but flexible moral compass, whereas dedevil and 2bagels were much more stubborn and strongly against murder or torture.
ELK openly stated that he and dogfather were war vets and genocide survivors, that they were family, and were caring for a child together but not involved.
hibirb and god? were a bit harder to figure out. Neither used emphasis or accented their text with anything he could understand, only using the occasional punctuation. Regardless, they both had a tendency to speak literally or in metaphors, no inbetween, and didn’t care for social norms in the slightest.
Verde could feel electricity lancing across his skin as he examined each new message. He was both so very excited and unbelievably frustrated; on one hand he was forced to reevaluate everything he thought he knew about clouds. On the other hand, he has so much more material on clouds, specifically in an uncontaminated environment, free of other people, and able to observe clouds in a way that was previously impossible. His observations were making him question everything he was ever told about clouds, and wondered how often someone actually managed to befriend a cloud, rather than simply being tolerated…
Some of the clouds were more like the stereotypical mafia cloud: guarded, stoic, and aggressive. It was in hibirb, who rarely gave any kind of linguistic message, quietly supporting the others from a distance, and becoming irritated at pings. It was in ELK, who was talkative, even friendly, but reserved, a level of restraint he’s only seen in Fēng before. He could see it in god?, who was harsh and tired, but always willing to give advice or encouragement.
Others, Verde could see, were surprisingly similar to their own cloud; cheerful, energetic, and playful. There was dogfather, mischievous and joking, but never hesitating to drop everything to help one of them. There was bagels, excitable and young, but also cautious, capable of maturity when pressed. There was also Skull, who Verde was beginning to actually see; Skull who was cunning and sharp, so easily bored, and always looking for entertainment. Skull annoyed their contemporaries because it was fun.
Yet there were also the inbetweens, those who had both sets of traits in equal measure. pickpocket was easily bored, quiet in nature but with a playful, sometimes slightly malicious, edge. clownboy was manipulative, clever, but acted childish and immature as a ploy. Then there was dedevil, the only one that he suspected to not have a cloud primary; they were soft, kind, unendingly generous, but there were times that they were sharper, more gleefully vindictive than reprimanding. The behaviour from dedevil was so surprisingly sky-like, that Verde had to double check his notes.
(Verde wondered how this sky, young and by all likelihood a cloudy sky, hadn’t been stolen away by some desperate famiglia.)
One thing they all had in common, something that Verde now suspected to be the actual cloud-binding flame trait, was their hatred of control. The cloud server was ruled by the desire of freedom and adherence to their personal individuality. Not only for themselves either; discrimination against others seemed to irrationally anger them, specific types of crimes that invalidated the will of others, that imprisoned them, and prolonged their suffering unreasonably, were seen as horrific and abominable offences to the group’s collective integrity.
(Verde was still trying to piece together what their concept of “reasonability” was. It was a headache and a half to parse through past logs while keeping an eye on the current conversation; now he had to read through philosophical rants about socio-anarchy and how the concept of police forces and prison internment were originally instigated as a form of institutionalized racism in the USA. He regrets everything he ever said about Skull being uneducated.)
[——/10/13, 14:16]
god?: k. are you at TCr?
2bagels: ye
god?: i can get to u in 10-ish mins
2bagels: thank
dogfather: awwwwe, how wholesome~~
god?: go back to being murdered slut /j
dedevil: asdfghjkl
A CHILD: FUCKING OWNED
clownboy: :wheeze:
ELK: hA, gET REKT OLD MAN
pickpocket: r/murderedbywords
A CHILD: ew, filthy redditor
A CHILD: go back to ur trash heap nerd (/j)
pickpocket: you literally started r/skulldemort for the sole purpose of getting your own bf unsolved episode
A CHILD: yea, and it worked
(Verde made note of that little tidbit; if Skull thought that using his own disappearance to get a reaction was entertaining, what were the odds that he’d always known more than he let on.)