Ricochet

# Ricochet

Ricochet / "dragonrichard" is not Rich / DragonRich, which is useful because the minute you stop making him wear somebody else's Amaurot résumé, an actual person finally walks onto the page.

He is not built out of command titles or institutional history. He is built out of whatever is already in front of him: a game screenshot, a phone with a stupid battery, a review, weather behaving incorrectly, somebody else's food order, one ancient Snow alias that absolutely should have been allowed to die and was not.

GONE FOR WEEKS. BACK FOR RAMEN.

January 2022 gives the cleanest Ricochet scene because almost nothing happens and everybody somehow tells on themselves anyway.

Ricochet says it is his first time on the Wall in a while.

Syv does not let him sand the absence down into "a while":

"You disappeared for weeks"

Ricochet's explanation is three words:

"I'm busy"

And then, roughly five seconds later:

"Also syv send me ramen"

Syv needs about five more seconds to close procurement:

"I'm broke"

That is an entire relationship rhythm hiding in ten seconds of noodles. Syv noticed he was gone. Ricochet knows she noticed. Nobody turns it into a hearing. He gives the minimum status update required by civilization and immediately resumes asking her for shit.

The absence mattered enough to be counted. The return is comfortable enough not to need ceremony.

IMELDA IS NEVER GETTING PAROLE

Ricochet has another relationship where memory is less a warm keepsake and more a reusable weapon.

In May 2022, he explains why Imelda is permanently attached to Snow in his head. Ricochet says that when he first knew Snow as a member of another guild, Snow was using the name Imelda. Then they got into voice chat and Ricochet had the little *oh* moment that apparently deserved to survive forever.

Snow answers the story with an angry GIF.

Ricochet responds:

"Lol hi Imelda :Cute_smug:"

And then, because the prosecution would like intent entered into the record:

"That one I’ll probably never let go of🤣"

That last line is what turns later Imelda / grandpa / Granny Imelda nonsense from random drive-by teasing into a long-memory button. Ricochet is not merely remembering an old display name. He has consciously selected it for permanent reuse, and Snow's reaction works because both of them already know exactly which ancient file has just been reopened.

The exact guild and absolute first-meeting date stay off the page because Ricochet did not give us those. The better part is already complete: Snow acquired one embarrassing old label in Ricochet's memory and Ricochet explicitly declined to release it back into the wild.

IF HE'S LOOKING AT IT, YOU MAY BE LOOKING AT IT NEXT

Ricochet does not only bring *news about himself* into Whiskey. Very often he brings the object that started the thought.

A One Piece canon-character list. A Black Shark phone with a ridiculous battery. A Mini Cooper review. A pile of game screenshots introduced with "Basically the games I have". Another game's nearly 100,000 battles, translated for the room as "Y’all think playing raja was bad". A Family Feud clip with the verdict "God love family feud roast it’s host".

And when the object creates a question instead of a verdict, he hands that over too. One image-backed game post goes straight to Gilli with "when you think the game coming out??"

That is the recurring motion: bring the thing, add the handle. Ricochet does not need to deliver a TED Talk about every link or screenshot. He gives the room enough to know why this one escaped his screen and landed in theirs.

The ordinary-life material works the same way. South Texas is too cold, so now Whiskey knows. His family is getting a puppy, so now Whiskey gets the puppy announcement. A video gives him a hypothetical future-wedding idea, so that thought comes through too. Whatever crossed his field of view has a respectable chance of becoming communal property for thirty seconds.

HE CAN FIND THE CANON LIST. HE CANNOT CATCH THE FUCKING STEELIX.

All of that outward curiosity would become suspiciously tidy if April 2020 had not preserved Ricochet being publicly defeated by a Pokémon bot.

He tries:

"!!catch steelix"

Then:

"p.catch steelix"

Then:

"P.catch"

Then, because perhaps capitalization was the constitutional crisis:

"P.catch steelix"

Finally the interface has reduced a grown human being to:

"HOW DO YOU CATCH THESE POKEMONS??????"

And then he starts trying help commands.

Excellent. Much better.

The guy who later knows where to find lists, reviews, gadget links and game screenshots is not presented as some frictionless information oracle. He is curious, persistent, and perfectly capable of learning in public while the machine humiliates him. When the command does not work, dignity is apparently less important than finding out how the stupid thing works.

OTHER PEOPLE KEEP PUTTING HIM IN THEIR DAY TOO

The traffic goes both ways.

Panda eventually reports that Ricochet got him Cheesecake Factory — followed immediately, because apparently customer satisfaction had to be documented, by the complaint that there was no cheesecake.

The exact logistics are less interesting than how casually Panda says it. Ricochet is simply inside an offscreen errand somebody else remembers, and Panda's first instinct is to credit the favor and prosecute the dessert failure in the same breath.

Gilli gets a smaller version of the same ease from the other direction: when Ricochet wants somebody else's estimate on a game's release, he asks her directly. Nobody needs a preamble establishing why Gilli is in the conversation; she is simply the person he chooses to ask.

That is the nice thing about Ricochet's smaller footprint. He does not need a giant myth to feel socially placed. People notice when he vanishes. He comes back without reintroducing himself. He asks Syv for ramen. Panda files a Cheesecake Factory grievance. Snow gets dragged back to Imelda. Gilli gets handed the game question. Normal life keeps leaving fingerprints around him.

PETTY CRIMES

Has apparently used Dragon Raja as a universal measurement unit for how cursed another game's grind is.
Can locate One Piece canon lists, phone specs and game reviews; was still publicly defeated by "p.catch steelix".
Explicitly informed Snow that Imelda is probably never being released from memory jail.
South Texas being too cold was deemed worthy of room notification.
Family puppy plans made the chat.
Can go missing for weeks and reopen business with "I'm busy" + ramen procurement.
Has been implicated in a Cheesecake Factory delivery that somehow failed to contain the one food named in the building.
At least once brought a Family Feud clip to Whiskey specifically because the host was getting roasted.

The useful version of Ricochet is not a shadow copy of Rich.

He is the guy whose absence gets noticed, whose return can skip straight back into banter, and whose life appears mostly in little movable pieces rather than titles. Games, reviews, weather, family plans, food, a thought he had because something passed across his screen: if it catches his attention, he has a habit of putting enough context around it that somebody else can catch it too.

He also remembers exactly the wrong old thing about Snow and has already announced that clemency is unlikely.

And if the machine itself becomes the problem, there is always the Ricochet fallback: try four syntaxes, yell at the concept of Pokémon, ask for help, keep going.

He can disappear for weeks and still come back to a relationship where the next meaningful question is apparently whether Syv will finance the noodles.

She will not.