PersonS [Prose] : Stride (Vermin)

[Xindaris]

It's come to the point where the only one you can be perfectly honest to is yourself. And to be perfectly honest, you've just stopped caring.

You stare at your reflection in the airport bathroom mirror: Male, Caucasian, sixteen years of age, skinny to borderline emaciated. Wearing blue jeans, a blank, sleeveless white t-shirt, a backpack and a pair of phones that arch over your head, wire reaching down to your pocket. It's attached to one of your two real possessions, which pumps obscure, independent techno up into your ears nearly all of the time. The other one is the sole occupant of your backpack, a two-year-old laptop. It was a gift which you kept because it was useful, and it's unlikely you're going to get a replacement for it anytime soon. Your hair is short, a little rough but not terrible, and dyed a very dark blue. The color is easily mistaken for black, and you tend to find you can gauge how much attention a person is paying to your appearance by how long it takes them to notice it. Some people go, "Hey, your hair's blue!" Others just sort of stare at it for a few seconds as if a rat had suddenly fallen on it.

You're in the airport of Greenhaven, a booming near-city in the midsouth that was a quiet farm town five or six decades ago. And you're in the bathroom, staring at the mirror, because you needed a few minutes alone to think. To start, you try to reintroduce yourself...to...yourself. Several psychiatrists have agreed it's a good idea for you to know who you are. Well..you've been traveling a lot lately, accompanied by police officers when nobody else was available, like right now. You don't have much and you don't really have many interests, you just tend to go with the flow of things.
...Right, and there's that other thing. Five years ago, your parents were murdered right in front of you. It was just a common thief with a lot of guts, and the only reason you survived is because the law wasn't any later getting to your house. There isn't much money to be inherited, but as long as you're a minor you can't have it anyway. You've been floating around foster care for a while now, and this time they decided to send you to some kind of boarding school. You didn't even know those still existed, these days, but apparently it's some kind of high-end private school that operates sort of like a college: People who live nearby are free to stay in their own houses, but people who don't typically live in dorms. You don't know the details, but apparently someone rich decided to pay for some foster-care high-schoolers, including yourself, to attend it, as some kind of weird charity decision.

In the years between that event and now, you've received lots of grief counseling and psychiatric advice for free. There's even a psychiatrist in this town who you're supposed to meet with once a month...joy. You've learned a lot about the human mind thanks to the visits; you've learned how to read people in a lot of different ways, get a feel for what's important to them, what their interests are. You yourself, however, have found yourself becoming increasingly inscrutable. If you read a person, and then act how they want you to act, it makes it look like you have something in common with them, even though chances are you have little in common with anyone. You've noticed people are a lot less trouble to be around, and more likely to be helpful, when they think you're like them. But..amid all of this, you have to admit, you've stopped caring about the people as individuals. You don't really even care much about yourself.

The police officer opens the door to the bathroom, interrupting your musings. His voice cuts through the music (which is actually turned low for the specific purpose of being able to hear people over it): "Hey, you done in there--oh. Finish up then, son." You nod mechanically, turn straight around, and walk back outside the door. It's late, about 11:30, and he probably wants to get home and go to bed. You could stay up all night if you wanted, but hey, you're young. You follow him through the rest of the airport, picking up a small suitcase full of clothes and getting in the back of his car. He drives you up to a four-story, residential-looking building; oddly enough, there's nothing that resembles a school in sight of it. "This's the place," he says, "You got a key?" You nod in response, get out of the car and walk up to the door. He drives off, apparently unconcerned about whether you were lying or not. You take a moment to peruse a piece of paper that's been stuck in a plastic, rectangular holder under the porch light. It's got "Dorm Roster" printed at the top in bold, and underneath that, three names with numbers next to them. Oddly, two of them seem to be female names...the other one, you could swear you recognize the last name from somewhere.

You're about to actually open the door when you're interrupted by a small noise to the right. You turn in surprise to find a piece of paper floating in the air. That..isn't normal. At first you think someone must be playing a prank, but there's nothing behind the paper, and there don't seem to be any wires attached to it. Finally you decide to have a look at the paper itself.

It looks like older parchment of some sort, and has some kind of curly font handwritten on it. The top half has a lengthy paragraph which appears to be in Latin, while the bottom has some arrows pointing to an oval-shaped spot on the right side, and two long blank lines to the left of that. You try to grab the paper, hoping to figure out just what is going on, and your thumb happens to cross the oval spot; your name abruptly signs itself onto the blank lines, first name on the first line and last name on the second line. You get just a glimpse of your name before the parchment seems to slip right through your hand, rolling up and disappearing.

What was it again? Your name, that is. (You know it, of course, but I don't).

>

[intangibleInsight]

>Alvin Perell.

[Xindaris]

That's right. You are Alvin Perell. And you have no surviving relatives to query on your somewhat unusual last name. Uh, anyway...

You take a moment to calm down, deciding that whatever you just saw probably wasn't real. If it was real, and not some tireder-than-you-think hallucination or bizarre first-time flashback from something nobody ever knew your mom took while pregnant with you, you firmly inform reality that you'll expect an explanation as promptly as it can manage. Then you take a closer look at the Roster, actually noting the other names this time.

Nene Amayo, Sophomore, Leatrice Therian, Junior, Marcus Radclif Jr., Junior...wait. You think you know where you've seen that name before...the guy who played Harry Potter in the movies? No, that's spelled differently. This is going to bug you. You decide that you've put off going inside long enough, and hit the doorbell a couple of times. Truth is, you don't really have a key. After waiting patiently for a few minutes you hear someone's voice from inside, and then the door is opened.

"Who are you and what do you want? It's almost midnight!" You're caught somewhat off-guard by this girl's appearance: Namely, she's at least a half-foot taller than you are. The rest of her appearance arrives in your brain about a second later: Straight, shoulder-length light brown hair, bright green eyes, complexion's mostly white but with a bit of red to it. She's in good shape, athletic even, with a fairly generous figure. She's fully dressed (blue jeans and an ecru sweater) and doesn't look all that tired, but she is visibly irritated about the intrusion.

You're not sure whether she got the memo about a new guy moving in. What to say, how to word it?

>

[Nez Percé]

Stop being rude and take your headphones off first! That's no way to have a conversation, mister.

[Xindaris]

At the risk of having the door closed before you can answer, you lower the headphones so they lie across your neck, speakers pointed out (because they can adjust that way). The music is faintly audible within a foot or so, since it was turned down.

"I'm Alvin Perell," you say, quickly putting together a nervous/weary/friendly front, "new student. I was told I'd be living in this dorm?"

She lets out a small huff of breath that sounds suspiciously like a sigh of relief. "Oh. Sorry, I sorta forgot. You have any bags?" Her head tilts sideways just a bit in an effort to see behind you.

"My suitcase is on another flight, they said it might arrive by tomorrow." (Which is close enough to the truth.)

"Well, come on in then, I guess." She steps back and to one side, allowing you a view of the room behind her. It looks like a little lounge, with a couch and a couple of comfortable chairs. Most of the floor is carpet, except at the back, where some tiled floor marks off some sort of kitchen area. It isn't big, but it seems comfortable enough. Walking in, you shiver a bit--it's quite cold in here, especially walking in from the spring heat, which explains why she's wearing a sweater in this weather. You close the door behind you automatically, and then turn toward your present host, sensing she's about to speak. "I'm Leatrice--Lea for short. Y--"

"I resemble that remark!" chimes a voice from the middle of the couch, which is facing the back wall. It sounds like the voice of someone with a filter in their mouth that makes 50% of every breath they take in helium. And it's obnoxiously cheerful. You keep your face blank, and thank whoever's responsible that mental groans aren't audible. Within a couple of seconds the voice's owner has turned around and stood on her knees so her head pops up over the back of the couch. She looks to be of vaguely Asian descent, but the first thing that catches the eye is her dark hair arranged in a short, spiky style. "Hey there new guy. I'm Nene! I think Marc's already asleep." She pronounces the name like 'Mark', but it's clear she means the third resident. You wonder if everyone's going to want to call you 'Al', given the shortage of syllables around here.

When she turns back around and goes back to whatever she was doing on the couch, you give Leatrice a small 'is she for real?' look. Lea just shrugs; whatever she has to say will have to wait until the subject is out of earshot. "As I was saying, you must be tired, but we weren't told you were coming until this morning. So your room isn't set up or anything."

There are a few ways to respond to this. You sort of favor just saying you'll do it yourself, but implying that they would have done something about it constitutes an offer to do so now. If you say you can wait, you may get a chance to speak with whoever stays behind in private for a few minutes, but then again...that person might be Nene. You haven't had the time to gauge whether either of these people particularly enjoys doing things for others.

>

[Nez Percé]

Say you'll do it yourself, but that you'd really appreciate some help. Not like they're doing much right now anyways. Also, if you were going to arrive tomorrow morning and they're already up until midnight, when else where they planning to set it up!

[Cheshire Fox]

Say you'll do it yourself, but that you'd really appreciate some help. Not like they're doing much right now anyways. Also, if you were going to arrive tomorrow morning and they're already up until midnight, when else where they planning to set it up!

This but with more woman wooing, get your moves on coldhearted one.

[Xindaris]

You contemplate your chances with either these two, and conclude you don't enough information, and whatever the rest of Nene's body might look like, you're not sure it would be worth it. Anyway, you know better than to flirt with anyone within the first forty-eight hours of meeting them. Something you learned the hard way, to be honest. "I can do it. If it's a lot of trouble I wouldn't mind having help, though." In between sentences you noticed Leatrice about to say something. Now that you're done, she actually does say something.

"I can help you. I think I have your keys anyway." She leads you to a doorless doorway to the side of the kitchen. Inside it are some straight, cramped stairs. "I hear this used to be a cheap apartment building," she says as you follow her on the way up. "I'll never understand how they managed to get what furniture there is up into the rooms." You stop at the second floor and make a sharp turn into a hallway. There are four doors symmetrically arranged, and one more at the end of the hall. "Girls' floor. Guys are upstairs. Sorry, but we did get here first." She opens the first door on the left, goes in and comes back out in a few seconds with a couple of keys, one bigger than the other, and hands them to you. "The big one's to the dorm, it's usually unlocked if someone's in though. Small one's for your room, of course."

You move on up the stairs, to the third floor. It's arranged just about the same as the second story. "I'm not sure which of these is your room, but the left one is Marc's and that one's the bathroom," she says, first indicating the immediate-left door and then the one at the end of the hallway. You shrug and try the first one on the right. It works, and the door cracks ajar when you push it, but stops, stuck against something on the inside. (All of these doors seem to open inward, for future reference) "That's weird..lemme try," she says, and then gives the door a straight karate kick, missing you by about three inches. The door opens to the noise of crunching and tumbling cardboard.

"Could you warn me next time you plan to kick something through me?"

"Uh...yeah, sorry about that." She's distracted by what's inside the room. Namely, all visible space is occupied by empty cardboard boxes.

"...I take it your room wasn't like this."

"No, it was just a little dirty..I think it's stuff that the apartment owner, or whoever rented last, left behind or something." That doesn't quite add up...didn't she say something about them taking furniture up to the rooms? Leatrice is already busy gathering as many boxes as physically possible. You sidestep her walking out with them, and then go in and get some yourself. It takes around 5 minutes, but soon enough your room is clear of boxes, and the hallway is full of them. The room has a dresser, an empty desk with a chair, and a thin, long bed. You put down your backpack on the bed and leave to the hallway.

"I'm sure this can't stay here."

"Nope. No it can't. Guess we can toss 'em downstairs or something for now, look for a good dumpster next Saturday. This place does have a basement. The other choice is to carry all of this upstairs and hope we never need those rooms." You don't have to think about your decision on that.

You start relaying boxes, and Lea takes them and drops them down to the next set of stairs. "I should tell you something about Marc," she says, keeping her voice a bit quieter. You give an inquisitive look the next time you're face-to-face, and she elaborates. "He acts sort of timid, but don't egg him on. The last guy who actually managed to make him mad wound up in a hospital for a week." You can't do much other than nod to that.

When the boxes have all been cleared from the hallway, you notice something left behind on the hallway floor, likely dropped out of a box along the way. It's some kind of stylized black skull pin. "Isn't that from some DS game?"

"I don't know." You haven't been able to afford video games in years. You stuff the pin in your pocket. "You want me to help you getting the boxes the rest of the way?"

"No, I'll take care of it. You probably want to get to bed anyway, right?" The way she suggests it is a bit overeager, like she wants you to be tired and go to sleep soon. "Some sheets and a blanket should be in the top drawer of your dresser." She flees downstairs before you can press her about it.

What does it matter anyway? You go inside, lock your door, and make up the bed. You realize you've started shivering a bit, that's just how cold it is in here. You open the door to let in some warm air. The only thing you bother to take off before getting under the covers are your shoes. Before you fall asleep, it occurs to you that you left your suitcase in the trunk of the officer's car, and then compulsively told an old lie from back when you didn't have any luggage at all. Well, you'll get it back sooner or later anyway....

End Prologue



Part 1: Enveil'd

The next morning, a knock on your door wakes you up. Who's knocking?

>(Leatrice, Marcus, Nene)?

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Pardon any bulldozering through events here, but these are the opening scenes. Choices will hopefully be more frequent/open once the real plot gets rolling. This won't be the only time you get to decide things the player character doesn't properly have control over.

[deificAnuran]

>Nene, with food

[intangibleInsight]

>Leatrice, waking everyone up for a leisurely three-mile jog. Gotta be in shape!

[Cheshire Fox]

>Marcus, he is the most likely to be knocking, being on the same floor
Alternatively...
>ALL THREE!

[Xindaris]

You jerk awake at a persistent rapping on the door. "Hey, Alvin! Alviiiin! Wake up or you'll miss breakfast!"

It occurs to you that there isn't much light coming in from outside. "What time is it, five?"

"Nah, that'd be reeeaally early! It's six! Classes start at eight, you don't wanna be late do ya?"

Today is Friday. You had figured you'd skip and sleep in today to make up for jet lag, and maybe start going on Monday. You don't usually eat breakfast anyway. But now you have an obnoxiously cheerful teenage girl standing at your door who probably hasn't even considered skipping school or even breakfast in however many years she's been alive.

You're tired and you'd like to go back to sleep, but now your stomach has had time to process the fact that you didn't eat anything last night and breakfast actually sounds kind of like a good idea. If you get up now, you're probably going to be on a one-way track to going to school today, but you guess you can sleep through classes or whatever (you haven't actually signed up for any specific classes so you don't really know how that works). It seems like it'd be easier to just go with it, but if you can come up with a good enough excuse maybe you could get out of school for the day and find something to eat downstairs once the others have left.

The decision boils down to: Go ahead to school today, or fabricate a really good and well-staged excuse for not going. If you make up a poor excuse it's almost the same as just going on, except that your dorm-mates will probably see you as the sort of guy who routinely lies to get out of school. It's not inaccurate, but it makes things much harder if people know that.

>

(Write out/summarize an excuse if you vote to do that, or second someone else's if applicable.)

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When there's a tie, I reserve the right to make an executive decision since otherwise you get the horrible adventure deadlock. Some of my reasons for choosing Nene should be evident in this post, and might have even more behind it as we learn more about her.

Also I'd already planned why he was being woken up in the first place, and dA happened to be the closest to it.

[intangibleInsight]

>Make an excuse, and go explore the building.

Say it's the anniversary of your parents' death, and you'd like to spend it alone. You'll get major sympathy points, and arguing with that would be too awkward from most people to try.

[Cheshire Fox]

>Go to school, ain't cool to bunk kid

[deificAnuran]

>First eat breakfast, then say you have to go back to the airport to pick up your lost baggage (which they would have delivered to you but you don't mention that).

[Xindaris]

There is no two ways about this--going to breakfast while intending to not go to school brings with it all sorts of risks to that goal, and besides that, it wouldn't make much sense to skip school to go to the airport and get something that you won't need until tonight at the soonest. No, if you're going to sleep in today a little hunger pain isn't going to stop you. After all, it's not like you haven't dealt with that before.

In any case, you do manage to come up with a brilliant excuse. People can disprove that someone is sick or injured pretty easily, but it's hard to argue when you've been bombarded with awkwardness. You also kind of secretly want to make Nene act a little less infinitely cheerful if you can, for the kind of dark pleasure there is in telling a kid Santa Claus isn't real.

Of course, it has to be a good performance or it doesn't work. "What's today, April 3rd?"

"Um..yeah! Why?"

"D---. Five years already, huh."

"What do you mean? Five years what?"

"As of today, it's been five years since my parents were shot down in front of me. I was eleven at the time." Your tone makes it sound emotional, but honestly you aren't feeling anything right now. Your memory of the event isn't all that vivid, and this is a story you've told so many times that it just has no impact, like a fairy tale on a broken record--one of the original folk tales that doesn't end well and serves as a warning against being stupid rather than encouragement. But now your simile is getting way off track. Detecting her hesitation, you add, "I guess they didn't tell you guys."

"Oh..uh..no, they didn't. D'you need some time alone?"

"I'd appreciate it, yeah."

"Okay. I'll see you later then, alright?"

"Sure." Of course it isn't really the anniversary, that would be too convenient. If anyone is a meticulous fact-checker they can call you out on this later, but what does it matter? In any case, this is one excuse you'll only be able to use once.
It doesn't take you very long to go back to sleep.

------------

The sun is up when you next wake up, and you're pretty sure it's after 8 too. You guess they bought it; you guess you couldn't have hoped for a more sincere, trusting conveyor of the lie than Nene. You don't feel bad about it, though. Now you're starving, and head out your door and down two flights to go get some food. Closer inspection of the lounge part of the room reveals an ancient CRT TV with some kind of cable box on top of it, which is also a clock displaying the time: 9:00 right on the dot. The table in the little kitchen area has a plate with a glazed donut on it. While you eat, you think about how you're going to spend the rest of today.

You guess you could go ahead and see that psychiatrist, since once you do you won't have to again until next month. You suspect you could convince him or her of what you already had assumed and now have made true--that your school doesn't start officially until Monday. Greenhaven has a reputation as the city whose planners tried really, really hard to make public transportation as useful as it is in most European cities, so it's not hard to get anywhere even without a car. You'll just need some kind of map.

You could go exploring the city, to get a feel for how to get to places the easiest. If you ever need or want to go somewhere, it's always helpful to have a firsthand account of where it is. Maps can only go so far, and of course there are always places you wouldn't know to look for from a map. If you stumble across something interesting, you might spend time there, too.

There is also the possibility of just wasting time at home. You've got your laptop and chances are very high that this place has some kind of wireless internet. Speaking of which, that's probably a good way to look for maps.

These aren't mutually exclusive, of course, but you don't have any money, so if you're going to have lunch it will have to be here (assuming there's food in the refrigerator). You're pretty sure a walk-in session with the psychiatrist will at least take an hour, and it might take as much as an hour to get there and back. It's probably a good idea to plan on being at the dorm around 4 or whenever the others might show up. So, how to do this?

>

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I don't write cusses but sometimes characters say them anyway, so that's how I represent them. Feel free to fill in the blanks.

Underline indicates things that may be important to the player, and not any special emphasis, in case it wasn't clear.

[deificAnuran]

1. I'm confused -- how do you already know a psychiatrist in a town that you just got to from the airport?
2. I'm really liking this story, keep it up!

>You hardly know your roommates; why throw away a psychiatry session when it could be useful for bouncing ideas around about them once you've properly met each of them? Speaking of which, you should probably do some snooping around their rooms -- who knows, maybe there's a map in one of them!


EDIT: in reference to post below, thanks!

[Xindaris]

I'll just clarify for you: Alvin knows the name of the office building and the last name of the psychiatrist because he was told that information before leaving. It's enough to look up how to get there on Mapquest or whatever, and even a yellow book should have the number failing that. It's a "Dr." something, which is why the gender isn't clear yet.

(Waiting on more suggestions probably, or at least right now I don't have time to write things.)

[Nez Percé]

Go get your visit to the psychiatrist over with now. It'll be one less thing to worry about, and since you've been inside sleeping all day it'd be good for you to get out and about.

[Xindaris]

These days you don't go to the psychiatrist because you want someone to talk to. You go there because the government feels safer when you do. Anyway, if you honestly wanted to go back to this one you're pretty sure you could. So you decide to go get it over with. First thing's first, though: You go upstairs and pull the MP3 player off its charger, the headphones off the desk, and start it up. It randomly selects a lengthy remix. You'd never waste its batteries sleeping with it on, so obviously you took it off before taking your shoes off. Speaking of which, you put your shoes on. Wait, should you take a shower or change clothes? You do have a spare set of clothes in your backpack, as this isn't the first time your baggage has been missing for a day or so.

>

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I'll note here that if a better reason's given to not go the psychiatrist (or a majority decide against it this time) he'll change his mind. This sort of thing applies generally: Reasons that appeal to Alvin's character win in ties; decisions not yet acted on can be changed with enough votes to do so. Just so I'm not being totally arbitrary.

Sorry if this is kind of short. The reason is I need to do a little planning--shouldn't be too big of a delay though.

[deificAnuran]

>Exposit on killer tunes

(snooping suggestion still stands as well)

[Nez Percé]

Take a shower AND change clothes. What are you, gross? :|

[Xindaris]

There's no particular reason to rush going, you guess, so you go on and take a shower. For no particular reason you think about where all the music on your MP3 player comes from. Obviously, you don't buy it and never have. No, your source for music is the wide and vast array of the Internet, full of some talented artists willing to put up free samples of their music for exposure, and many others who only make music as a self-gratifying hobby or as tribute to media they like such as video games and therefore have no problem putting it up for everyone to listen to free. You guess you tend to prefer music with a more techno feel to it, and preferably not too repetitive or lengthy. Honestly, the song you'll have playing again when you get out of the shower is near your upper limit for song lengths, since an MP3 player only has so much space and you tend to favor multiplicity of available songs for the shuffle to choose from.

That done, you decide to check on the other rooms--starting, of course, with your own floor. The unoccupied rooms are just as locked as yours was last night, the keys presumably being held by a school official somewhere. Marcus's room is also locked. You make sure to lock your room after making a quick check online (the dorm has wireless Internet because nearly everything does these days), and head downstairs. Lea's room is unlocked; Nene's isn't. So you take a look in the former.

It has the same furniture as your room--dresser, bed, desk--and is quite neatly organized, but that isn't what catches your eye first. No, what catches your eye is the array of The Shadow posters that line Leatrice's wall. You wouldn't have pinned her for any sort of collector, much less a fan of something from the 1930's. The blanket on her bed is a solid color with little flecks of something else on it; on closer inspection, this proves to be..fur? You suppose she might have had some on her clothes from a visit home or something, because if she were hiding a pet in here the door would've been locked and it would have reacted to your presence by now. You decide that snooping in her desk and dresser drawers is creepy and unnecessary, and head back out, leaving everything just as it was when you entered.

It's 10:11 now. The whole thing--breakfast, shower, snooping--took a little over an hour. You head off on the route you looked up earlier, keeping your hands in your pockets with your keys and a wallet that contains nothing but identification. A couple of blocks of walking, down to the subway station. The subway is free for students here in Greenhaven.

At the token box, the clerk says, "Shouldn't you be in school?"
"I have an appointment with a doctor," you say without elaboration. He pauses to look at you for a moment, and possibly due to your unusually slim frame hands over a few tokens.
"Be careful," he adds from behind your back.

You take a seat on the subway train, which isn't terribly full since it's past rush hour for both students and wage-earners. At the next stop, a guy walks in and sits next to you. He looks to be in his late to mid 20s, judging by his frame; he's got jet black Cousin-It hair that obscures his face and neck, and he's wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt and jeans faded by age with a few non-stylish rips in them.

It's bad enough he sits by you when there is plenty of empty space, but then he starts talking. "Hey kid. Shouldn't you....uh....." He trails off like he forgot what he was going to say, faces forward for a few seconds (amazingly, you can tell which way his head is facing), and then turns back to you again. "Shouldn't you be in school?"

"I have an appointment with a doctor." No different in wording or delivery from what you said to the subway worker.

"Oh, uh...that's good. Ain't...........ain' right for kids to be skipping school, but you gotta look out for your health, right?"

For a good minute or so, he's silent. Then, as if he just noticed you've been wearing headphones this entire time: "Say..uh....what kind of music you listenin' to?"

You could lie to mess with this guy. You could tell him the truth. You could probably completely ignore him until the train gets to your stop. He'll probably just keep mumbling things no matter what you do. So what do you do?

>

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>Exposit on killer tunes

But that's not The Killers, that's The Bravery!
Seriously though, that particular song is one I discovered while playing some particular Burnout game for ps2. I dislike racing games as a whole, but Burnout is a crashing game, and that I can get behind.

I've actually been thinking of the original form of "Honest Mistake" as theme music for the hypothetical "opening trailer" this would have were it an actual video game. It's a great song, and certain parts of the lyrics have relation to the main character's personality. "People: they don't mean a thing to you" indeed.

[PumpkinMan]

If you're almost at your stop, might as well answer him. If you don't like where the conversation goes, you'll be getting to your stop soon, so you'd have an exit prepared.

If you aren't close, ignore him. As you just noticed, he'll probably just talk to himself, so he won't take offence to being ignored.

[deificAnuran]

I don't always find music in forum adventures, but when I do, it ends up on my iPod
Also I agree with the "opening theme" idea, even if it is hypothetical.

>This hobo seems nice, exposit unto him your killer bravery tunes. Just make sure he doesn't steal your MP3-player.
(optional)>Slowly develop brotherly affection for hobo