callbacks | 4 ∅ [Video]

[The video starts on an unsure-looking Kirlia. He starts to edge away, but Dave--apparently behind the camera--speaks.]

Naw, go ahead, dude. C'mon. Don't be shy.

[The Kirlia sighs, extremely put upon, and then ballet-toes back into place. There's a Dawn Stone on the floor nearby; the Kirlia bends primly at the waist to pick it up, and:

Presto.

Wart the Gallade examines his arm-blades for a moment, then shoots Dave a look as if to say, "If we're quite done now." Dave chuckles quietly.]

Yeah, yeah, thanks for humoring me, bro. The moment has been secured for posterity. Duty discharged. [The relief on the Gallade's face is palpable before Dave turns the camera towards his own movie star mug. Hello, Johto.]

So, hey. I get that baby's first evolution is probably ancient headwear for most of you, but he's the first guy I got all the way to his final form. That's worth some kind of jokey home video.

[Yeah, because he's obviously being ironic about this. He's not Proud Dadding all over his starter, no sirree.]

Anyway, I've been hearing about a bunch of different evolutionary paths our Poképals can take, and, I dunno. I'm curious, I guess. If you ever made a choice like that, what made you pick one way or the other?

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[YEAH SHE'S JUST GUNNA FOCUS ON THAT OTHER THING SO SHE DOESN'T START GETTING FLUSTERED AGAIN]

Just okay? That sounds amazing, though! The things you could do, how you could change events in the past for the better...

[God, if she had the ability to go back in time and stop that accident from happening... or to try and help her past self understand what the trolls' words of warning really meant... she'd do anything to have that chance.]

It--

[He blurts it out almost on top of her words and stops, checks himself. Puts that unseemly hair-trigger reaction aside, lets his voice settle again.]

It doesn't work like that. Or, well. I guess it does, sometimes, but not the way you think. Crazy powers are never that easy, you know?

[Her smile falls a bit at the way he says that, because... yeah. She can understand it. Her own powers are like that, after all. And that just makes her think of how Anna gushed over her powers, despite how much Elsa struggled with controlling and mastering them.]

... I do know. Very well in fact. But... just how bad things get with your powers?

[Dave looks away from the feed for a couple seconds, visibly takes some time to get his thoughts in order. After a while, he breathes out quietly.]

Okay. So, like. From the perspective of someone who's just going through time properly--you know, linearly, with a one-to-one ratio--fate and choice and all that shit, it doesn't really matter, right? You're making your decisions in real time and whether or not you're cosmically "supposed" to doesn't play into what you ultimately choose to do.

[It's a lot of preamble, but, well, he's never really been good at explaining the time stuff.]

Right. I'm still following so far.

[It's a lot of fluff for saying "you're just living your life like normal", but she can still understand.]

When you start playing with time, that all goes out the window, 'cause then, like. You meet versions of yourself from the future, and they all already know what you're supposed to do because they've already done it, and from their perspective they also know what THEY'RE about to do because they witnessed it when they were the past them that you are now. So there really isn't any kind of choice at all, you're just following along the script you yourself set out, except even the scripting is something that's been predetermined.

And if you deviate from that in any way, you end up making a offshoot timeline, because from the alpha timeline's point of view, the thing you were supposed to do is the thing what you already did, and the only way an alternative can exist is in this runty split-off reality that's doomed to collapse in on itself eventually.

[Okay, so... a lot of that doesn't really go over Elsa's head, but it's a bit difficult to grasp. She thinks she gets the gist of it, though.]

So no matter what happens, you can't change anything.

[...]

Then... what's the point of such a power?

I mean...I could, as long as it's supposed to happen. A couple of me have come back to the past from bad timelines to fix what went wrong. But it doesn't turn out so well for those guys.

But how do you know what you're doing is supposed to happen?

If you're trying to change something that's far away from the you that's living in that point in time, there's a chance that you won't find out about it. So how are you supposed to know if you're allowed to do it or not?

[GEEZ, ELSA'S GIVING HERSELF A HEADACHE HERE...]

If a future me doesn't loop back to tell me about it and let me know what I should do, then.

[He shrugs.]

I don't, I guess. I gotta go by intuition, and if I'm wrong, well, fuck me.

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