[UNKNOWN] - UNKNOWN
DATE
ERR ??TH, ????
TIME
?? ??:??:??
CHAPTER 2.0
DIGGING
They were back here again.
The stranger was still there, interestingly enough. So that did mean they were here for something, or else they would’ve left already. But what? What were they here for? She wished she knew.
She blinked and frowned.
There was buzzing in the back of her head; an unscratchable itch that appeared whenever she was obviously missing something. She never thought it could come back.
So that couldn’t be right.
It couldn’t possibly be right.
Yet it was there, being annoying, loud, and bright. Pinkie wished that it would specifically tell her specifically what she had been missing. All her others sensors were terse and offered succinct instructions to what was happening, mostly because they were synced with a single, specific outcome. Which in itself was strange, since none of those predetermined outcomes could come true in her current environment.
Out of all of them, this was the only outcome that had broad activation criteria. Once it was on, it simply buzzed in the inferior-occipital region of her skull. It would then proceed to intensify the further she got away from what she was blindly looking over. If she were to home in on the subject in question, it would lower itself to a lull. It was a game of hot or cold, except it was replacing the temperatures with a fly in her head.
So what was she missing that would warrant its activation?
What was so glaringly obvious that this sensor would bother her so?
“This is un-fun. Super-duper uncool,” she murmured to herself, crossing her legs above her chest. “There’s nothing I should be missing! There’s nothing here to miss!”
Well, all except the stranger.
“There’s nothing strange about them… they’re a mystery wrapped in an enigma and covered by a conundrum… a… a mysmadrum..!” But as she looked at you, the buzzing subsided just for a moment, before it rumbled back full-force. “That… that just… what?”
She was in disbelief. She had possibly just closed in on the thing bothering her so. But that simply wasn't possible. It didn't compute. Somehow, somewhere, she had missed something obvious about you. A piece so clear yet so obscure to her that it was enough to trigger the one response she rarely got a use of. However, this conflicted with what she knew. A mystery was a mystery because it was confusing and difficult. Unless the difficulty lied in its simplicity…
They were currently in downtime and the buzzing wouldn’t stop until she settled this, so there was nothing to lose, really. So she began with a quick scan of the many other senses. Which sadly turned up nothing as the buzzing remained the same, constantly droning at the same steady hum. Okie-Dokie. So it’s not anything that can be gleaned straightaway from that… which makes sense considering that I never picked up anything. Unless something changed drastically in the time I first discovered them…
She sighed. Was it too much to ask why it was even on?
The only other option she had left now was to observe the connection. Attempting to bring up a digital image of the stranger only got her distorted images of… some creature. Sometimes it would look like a recognizable species, only to turn into a crude approximation of another. This also played havoc on the biosensor, which didn’t even match up with what the display was presenting. Any other data trying to come through was garbled as well!
There was nothing for her left to check, yet the buzzing remained adamant as ever. What was she supposed to do now? Check if the internet connection was bad!?
Wait.
If Pinkie recalled, did she ever bother to do just that? She did… except she had only glanced over it.
It can’t be that simple… don’t tell me it was that simple… The noise suddenly got a lot quieter.
That only urged her to move with renewed vigor. Everything began falling into place. She had missed something. In her haste, she had missed something. In her excitement and her sorrow, she missed something. She opened up the menus.
Each and everything that connected to her location could be found in her central hub. Connecting to her location on this scale required an almost direct uplink. So it should be… right there…!
Her mouth fell open. The ID for the connection was mangled beyond disbelief, the text flowing out of the box and spilling into the sides as a glitched mess. Addresses and ports kept switching numbers as they attempted to keep up with the flow and understand the (corrupted?) data. Several programs were working overtime to keep everything in check.
But that wasn’t the thing that shocked her to the core.
It was the fact that there something trying to come through. She pressed her face to the window, eye staring at the packets. A flow of data that would never register with her system mainly because it simply wasn’t compatible with her software and hardware. All this time she had spent sulking and wallowing in defeat thinking she was being ignored out of spite… or worse… when in reality…
The stranger had been attempting communication all this time. At least, they weren’t intentionally blocking anything.
Her mouth moved but no sound came out. Pinkie’s eyes flicked to the ground.
She was the one who was being ignorant.
She was the one who was so blind.
Pinkie turned to face you once more. “Y-You didn’t really hate me now… did you? You didn’t even have a choice in saying anything… and I just started assuming things…” she said, lip quivering. “All this time…”
