Steven resumes observing Ilo's proceedings after tying his shoelaces to the bottom of his char so he doesnt run through the window next time a chord is sturck.
You wisely decide to tie your shoelaces to the chair in preparation for the rest of the night, and sit down, expecting something similarly impressive as the next note. Sadly, it's not quite as impressive. In fact, it looks pretty horrible, as your frame rate suddenly completely drops as low as you've ever seen, with about a distinct image being received by your brain about every second, and everything feels really slow to the point where you can't quite tell what Ilo is doing, except for how he's holding a set of two keys while his hand wanders off around the keyboard, lightly brushing up against several other keys in its curious quest for bright new ideas.
On the other hand, you do notice how two people suddenly appear out of nowhere on a couple of bleachers, on account of how incredibly goddamn huge they are, subjectively speaking. The low frame rate, despite its annoying nature, does appear to let you irritably appreciate each individual moment a little more, you note.
"That's Todd for you. Without the awful smell at least. How he smell like cat litter without apparently owning a cat I will never understand."
"Maybe he eats it?" New Todd wonders, and you narrowly avoid considering the possible implications of this. "Anyway, want to go anywhere in search of clues or whatever, or will you be okay for now?"
"Um... w-w-we c-could go to a l-l-library sometime... a-a-and I can show you." She says slowly.
"But I'd like you to
tell me now," she says, tilting her head a little as she smiles playfully.
"Hey, you stay away. Now, get the fuck out of my pocket universe."
She walks off in a not very particular direction. You briefly wonder why the fuck she's doing that, but then realize that it's probably the most literal interpretation of what you told her to do.
A short time later as you stand there feeling a bit exposed, both of you reappear in the stadium in the exact position that you left it. Namely she's got your phone in her greasy little kid mitts, while you're sitting down on a bleacher, only partially aware that pretty much everyone else appears to have gathered in a messy pile in the center of the field.
Suddenly, you feel incredibly, utterly slow, with life passing you by at a horrendous 1.2 fps. That's a bit strange, you think, as so far life's been running optimally at what you believe to be reasonable settings, and a sudden lag spike such as this is surely cause for alarm. Maybe there's some background process in your brain you could turn off to speed things up?
"Fine... don't go on a murder spree like the last time." Carrie shrugs as the walls fall and she walks away, "Loser."
You sure show him, walking away into the distance on the ridged plain all around you for all of a minute or so before the two of you reappear in your former position in the stadium. You've still got this deadbeat's phone, and you are quite aware that most of the people around are gathered in a half-crowd, half-pile in the middle of the stadium, and that you two appear to be the only ones still on the bleachers.
Moreover, your power informs you that this fact is not at all unnoticed by Ilo and One-Eighty, who are both looking your way, both of their expressions unreadable on account of One-Eighty's motorcycle helmet and Ilo's general expressionless nature (being the only Eddite who doesn't actually mask himself in any way, his face is very conspicuously expressionless indeed, though the extremely colorful and distracting onion suit of his seems to work adequately at distracting people from paying attention to his face much). They don't appear to be tempted to raise an issue about it just yet, although a gesture Ilo makes tells you in no uncertain terms that he's got his eye on you two now.
Of course, the very next gesture he makes is to demonstratively press several keys on his podium, which results in a feeling of immense slowness overtaking you, almost as if life itself were experiencing lag, with all moving things spontaneously beginning to move choppily, jumping between individual frames at a snail's pace, judging from the very slow response of your movements.