I Jest [Morning :: JOKER]

The strange thing about odd or unexpected happenings was that they often ended up making people's lives more mundane than they were before. While it was true that they piqued interest and provided momentary excitement, that sudden rush of exhilaration made returning to one's ordinary routine all the more difficult and taxing a task. Once you had bitten into the forbidden fruit, you wouldn't want to stop eating it; its intoxicating flavor would drive you to the brink of madness and leave you yearning for more. Variety was the spice of life and the moment one caught a whiff of it they'd find themselves desperately hooked. Things such as change, surprise, excitement... in a sense they were like drugs. And if a comparison of that nature was to be made, then it could be said that Miyuki was currently in withdrawal. After her recent interaction last night with that harmless robotic poodle and the shocking discovery that had come with it, she had found her life to be taking an intriguing turn, for better or for worse. But when she woke up and found herself forced to repeat the daily grind, the surge of adrenaline faded, and in its place emerged an all-consuming boredom.

She sat alone in her class, a dozen or so chairs away from the protagonist seat, with her eyes resting lazily upon a nearby group of chattering second-years. The bell hadn't rung yet and there was still plenty of time before the school day was to officially begin. Normally she would have slept in a bit longer, but the Media Sorority had needed her to come in early, and there was no real point in returning home after having attended to her duties at the club. After all, by the time she'd walked all the way back to Sunlake Palms, the class would have already started. So Miyuki simply sat at her desk, tapping her fingers against the surface of it, and skimming her mind in search of ideas for how to pass the time.

The girl ended up trying many things. She made makeshift doodles in her notebook, she aimlessly wandered from daydream to daydream, she eavesdropped on the conversations occurring around her, so on and so forth. None of it managed to really, truthfully entertain her though. It got to the point where she found herself dialing her own phone number just to see if something would happen (predictably, nothing did). Just as all hope seemed lost though, inspiration struck her. Rumors of an infamous user on the SMILE Web Forums echoed through her head and she found her eyes drifting downward to the smartphone in her hand. The school's wifi wasn't anything special, but for something as simple as browsing a forum it would suffice.

A grin would dance across Miyuki's face as the notification popped up. With a flourish she aimed a vertical swipe at her phone's touch screen and tapped on the inbox icon to go view the private message. The tab with the chatbox remained open, but currently it was of no interest to her, and she'd turn her focus entirely to the private message she had received. At first the strange symbols appearing would be a surprise, but it only took a second or two for her to catch onto what was going on. The existence of wingdings was common knowledge and, for someone like Miyuki who was familiar with the internet and who had toyed around with coding and decoding messages in the past, there was little challenge to be found in deciphering them. All she needed to do was pull up a chart on Google Images and within just a few seconds or so she had already dealt with the issue of the communication barrier, changing the private message's contents to English and letting out a light laugh, then proceeding to send a mockingly, similarly typed response his(?) way.

-> 0xWannabeJesterx0:

Relevant(?) Strengths/Weaknesses:

"Onjeupp yeep craxapt hiro ug chirr caxan. Seen whorr dis kennaxa fo laxaisow din zo citupp." What kind of gibberish was that? Maybe there was some kind of hidden message contained within it? That seemed to be the case. Why though? Was it some kind of cry for attention; another gimmick employed to try and give off the illusion of uniqueness? She wasn't sure whether to grin or groan at that thought. Hadn't she just poked fun at this guy for that sort of thing? Or perhaps there was some other reason for this kind of behavior? Maybe it was a test or, more likely, maybe he was trying to bait her into wasting her time attempting to decode a meaningless, random jumble of letters. After all, JOKER was supposed to be a troll; it wouldn't be surprising at all to discover this was all just being done to fuck with her. "Joke's on you. I see right through your games."

After getting everything typed out, Miyuki would finally hit send and a response would arrive for the would-be troll.

-> 0xWannabeJesterx0:

Ugh. That could have been much better. But whatever. It got the point across and that was good enough. So she'd lean back in her chair and await the next message quietly.

...or, well, that was the plan. She noticed something odd though as she examined the private conversation. That death threat -- it had been in normal English, right? It wasn't anymore though; now it was in wingdings like the first few ones. Her eyebrow instinctively raised and after a few seconds of staring dumbfoundedly at the screen she decided to scroll up. And she now saw that the one he had just sent was in wingdings too. What was going on here? She refreshed the page a few times in swift succession, but once again it continued to remain the same. Was this some kind of glitch in the system? He couldn't have been editing them, at least not after she saw them, so what was happening?

The mystery of it made her heart start to race and she felt a chill run down her spine. On its own right this wouldn't have necessarily been anything noteworthy; weird, but nothing to dwell on. But her memory of last night was still fresh; her mind was still set on it and as she gazed at the phenomenon before her, she couldn't help but consider the possibility that something more was going on here.

The Eternal Divide... It was a hellish experience and one she was far from keen on reliving. If it had taught her one thing though, it was to keep an open mind. Almost anything was possible within this world; you could never be entirely certain that the "truth" you perceived on the surface was the actuality of things. Sure, it could just be a bug or some kind of very strange fault on her part, but this also had the potential to be so much more. And the thought of that was terrifying.

-> 0xWannabeJesterx0:

Relevant(?) Strengths/Weaknesses: