and i'm telling myself that i'm going to hell [open]

[skelebro]

Who: Sans and YOU, yes YOU
What: Confusion arrives! Sans's powers go haywire! Fun for the whole fam!
Where: Literally anywhere. LITERALLY, ANYWHERE.
When: The duration of the Dazed and Confused event, September 24th - October 2nd
Warnings: Since this is Sans, I'll say warnings for depressive apathy and mild suicide ideation are pretty much a given. Will add more if necessary! ETA: additional warnings for PTSD, flashbacking, and bodily trauma.



no magic; another small reminder from the daily grinder

He knows something's up the second he wakes up. Mostly 'cause he hasn't felt like this in - god, in years, probably? Maybe relative to everything. Maybe...

His thoughts fractal, torque in on themselves, and shatter for no reasons he can really discern for himself. But that's fine. He...he can't really move, really. The heaviness has seeped into his bones, all the way to the marrow, as if his body simply picked up on the way things were and prematurely abandoned him to the merciless press of gravity, just to be a dick.

Much as he'd love to be dragged into the molten core of the planet, or whatever passes for it here, he knows that he - shouldn't. He shouldn't and he can't and it weighs on him so. Incredibly. His eyesockets shutter. Stay awake. Stay awake.

He can't.

He can't move.

He -

It's not just sleepiness, drowsiness, the familiar things he understands and knows. Sleepin' because there's not much else for him. Sleepin' because he needs something, anything as a buffer between himself and death, that 1 HP doin' him no special favors. Sleepin' because not being conscious for the slow, inexorable destruction of the world is about all he can ask for, the only reprieve he has.

It's the fragile flutterings of his SOUL in his ribcage, stripped of everything that gives it any of its minimal drive. It's the sheer impossibility of moving, kicking his coccyx into gear, that has him rooted to the spot. If he had breath it'd be hitching. If he had a heartbeat it'd be stuttering. But he don't have either of those things. All he can do is screw his sockets shut and count backwards from ten thousand by intervals of seventeen, perform all those little tricks and things that he did to keep his mind off it. Off the very worst of it.

That's when everything shifts.

He's snapped out of his bed and slides laterally onto - somewhere, he don't know. Outside, maybe. Space bends and distorts and takes him out of it. He sure as hell knows he didn't mean to skip through antispace like that but, hey, seems like it's just a day for this kinda thing. Why not go the whole hog, right? All he knows is the floor beneath him is rock and he tries to push himself upright, tries to flex his hands with the cold press of phalanges to stone and lever himself to his feet, but the most he can do is twitch a finger here and there, his smile frozen in trembling, panicked irresolution. He can feel every part of him practically vibrating, oscillations of muscle that don't exist, as the magic of his body strains, strains to hold itself together, so much that there is no room for anything else, much less movement.

The world bleeds out into grayness in a pulsing tide of strange colors and then sepia-toned emptiness as he tries again and again to focus on the stone beneath his hands.

Then his SOUL jerks and he manages a strangled, startled sound before he's wrenched along the metaphysical pipeline of another shortcut, and he ends up someplace else. Maybe on top of someone. Maybe in someone else's house.

He's a bit too out of it to rightly tell just now.

TOO MUCH MAGIC; i feel like an atom bomb, blowing me out of my mind

It comes and goes in waves, it turns out. He feels about as close to Falling Down as one can actually get without actually succumbing to it, and then he feels normal. Except, nah, he doesn't really feel normal. Because it turns out he don't have to put any conscious thought to the way things are before they start to shift.

His left socket burns like someone drove a red-hot railroad spike into it, the blue-and-amber flaring trailing from it in irregular surges of scintillating magic. It don't seem to matter where he is, who he's with, or what he keeps trying to do, trying to quell his magic, puttin' actual real effort into it for maybe the first time since he got that whole mess of it dumped on him, but nothin' seems to be doin' what it's supposed to today. All right.

The world turns upside down. Not literally, mind, but kinda in the sense that gravity gets a bit funny and turned over, and suddenly he's on the ceiling and so is everything and everyone else. And then, oh boy, looks like he's over on the left wall now, pinned to a building.

Every time he focuses on someone to warn 'em away, it seems like, he just ends up turnin' things even more wrong - ain't that just how it is with him? But, heh, yeah, there's a bright, nearly inaudible ping of magic curling 'round their SOULs and then he turns 'em blue, completely without input from the one who's ostensibly meant to be in control of his own magic, and that's when they go sailing. Into walls, ceilings, driven into floors. And, just 'cause apparently his magic is feelin' inventive today, a host of bones spring up from the ground, soaked to the marrow in pink, poisonous KARMA, intermingled with a couple blue attacks, just for kicks.

He'd apologize, but he's havin' a lotta trouble keepin' everything together right now. He's mostly just got one hand clamped over his eyesocket as he tries to make the damn thing stop sparkin' off and switchin' up everyone's personal gravity, to no avail.

But goddamn, this is why he voted for Tranquility.

gaster blaster disaster; can't take it anymore, tearing me from the inside

He ends up slumped against a wall, tryin' to keep himself upright between the tiding floods of too much magic and not enough, and that's when it looms into being just over his head. A massive canid skull, its eyes bright with a blistering hum of magic. It opens its maw, and it's all he can do to frantically direct the bright pillar of searing energy upwards instead of horizontally, where it might damage the ceiling some or break some detritus off the roofs but it won't completely disintegrate the integrity of most of the buildings via application of unintentional, crackling, surging, shearing, white-hot thermal energy and bolts of magic.

More of them start to roar into existence with low, charging hums. And now it's a fun game of pick-up sticks for Sans to play, desperately tryin' to redirect the things so they do as little damage as possible. Only it's real tough, it turns out, 'cause they ain't supposed to be moved once they're set down. Sweat pours off his skull in sheets. He ends up on his knees, on all fours, just - just tryin' to stay ahead of 'em. Tryin' to keep the things from tearing the damned place apart.

Some people call 'em grotesques. Some might call 'em skulls, plain and simple. He just calls 'em blasters. It's what they are, and it's all he can do to keep the things from burning out whatever unfortunate soul passes by, sending 'em plummeting on a high-velocity, ionized slide of electromagnetic agony, where warring heat and energy meets flesh in a ragged, painful smear.

wildcard; hit me with whatever my dudes, i'm ripped

I'll match whatever format! Feel free to contact me at arcaneswearwords on AIM or arrpee to hash out details if that's your poison!

Comments

[somuchlove]

Chara was not having quite the same Bad Time that Sans was. As powerful as Saving, Loading and Resets were, they weren't quite as flashy. Their destructive abilities took place instantly, without thought and afterwards without memory - save for the obvious deja vu and other such special cases. Save for the loops of death. But in terms of flashy then Sans wins out. They remember how the bones tore though the ground and the blaster sanding down stone and their own flesh. His abilities could border on nightmarish if they were in the hands of someone with much looser morals.

But in their case, it was the skips. They had taken many different paths. Gained or didn't gain different amounts of LOVE. And while they knew that they still stumbled down one of the many roads of Hadriel, Chara was somewhere else entirely in their mind.

Ruins. LV 1.

Snowdin. LV 3.

Waterfall. LV--

Hotland. LV--

The golden hallway. LV 1. LV 2. LV 3. LV 4 5 6 7 8 9---

The golden hallway. LV 2. That's where they stand as they turn the corner when KARMA catches up to them. Chara throws themselves to the side to dodge the bones and the Worn Dagger is in their hands in a second. And they see Sans and they know their partner isn't here and---

"Sans!" Because, despite being LV 2 at the moment, there is some care left. That's why they call his name.

[skelebro]

A sine wave of bones ripples out from a hand that was meant to be outflung to steady himself, but instead it erupts out in waves, ripping through the air and over stone, and a green-yellow blur wrenches to one side, barely evading the white fence of them snaking out from the stone floors.

He braces himself shakily against the nearest wall - where is he, anyway? Armory? Library? Outside the bar, maybe? His awareness has tunneled down to what is immediate and what he abruptly cannot control. He knows, of course, that he's never - he has never had control of his own life, he's never had illusions of that. But this - this is just a whole other level. He's at least had control over the variable of his interference, whether he steps in or does not (not, always not except in those specific sets of circumstances where he does and gets cleaved in half for it), and now that's dissolved underfoot and left him in metaphorical free-fall.

Ain't that just the way.

The eye lights up again with a blazing spark of amber staining the left side of his vision, as he notes that kid number two is here - Chara, Chara, he knows their name now, Chara - and what's more, a cursory check of the LOVE packed in their SOUL indicates that they're at a weak and meager LV 2.

An LV 2 that cannot possibly tank the hits being thrown at 'em.

His hand again goes over the flaring spark of blue boiling out from his left eyesocket as he locks his gaze on the kid, tryin' to track them, tryin' to direct the next wave of bones away from them.

"Kid," he breathes between gritted teeth, his smile a frozen, palsied rictus. "Y'gotta get outta - it's not lettin' me, kid. It's not lettin' me."

[somuchlove]

* Keep dodging.

Their own words come back to haunt them as they dodge the next wave with a skillful precision they don't yet possess. At LV 2 their FIGHTS may have been accidents as they and their partner tried to work their way though the Underground. Maybe gaining that LV had been out of spite, one to many Reloads trying and failing and getting frustrated.

But it only had been LV 19 they took on Sans. Chara's knowledge of how to dodge his attacks had become permanently integrated in their mind so even if they were stuck in the golden hallway of another time, they still knew. Certainly it would take going down a void that was darker than darkness to make them forget.

Bones come to close and they feel KARMA singe their skin and then...their LOVE climbs. A jump to level 6 and questionable acts of self-defense. Of Waterfall and their fight with Undyne. The howling of the wind drowns out anything that was said as they face their opponent head on and words tumble out of their mouths.

"Attack fifty. Defense twenty. You are...you are the heroine, aren't you!"

TOO MUCH MAGIC

[verinumeri]

Most of the barricade is down by now. Not that it would have helped or hindered efforts to keep Mr. Sans in one place, and it wouldn't have felt a nice solution, preventing senseless wandering by locking everyone inside. He's here now, at least, and looking about as well as one might expect. Which is to say, terrible. It is barely noon and he's not sure Mr. Sans could cogently quantify how many places he's been pulled due to the malfunctioning of his 'shortcuts'.

Given how a few tires the skeleton, Hermann feels duly concerned.

Yet, because the cause is easy to infer, a process of logical elimination, he knows there isn't much he can do. (Typical.) Perhaps some trick of mental focus, a restraint with an appropriate material, but so much of that would be in Mr. Sans's control or knowledge.

As is becoming too often the case, it leaves Hermann puttering around the kitchen, glancing warily over his shoulder at Mr. Sans, prone on the couch. Hermann fusses until he finds he's, in large part inattentively, gripping three steaming mugs. Tea, coffee, cocoa. Stupid. Might as well. Balancing them with his cane, he turns toward Mr. Sans, and notes then the flare of his eye.

Which is new.

Hermann understood and understands all the more now that Mr. Sans likely had more he could do, the capacity for something besides his shortcuts. He had never pried. It had never come up. It is about to come up. Hermann opens his mouth, but before he can shape a word -- Mr. Sans isn't on the couch. The couch isn't on the floor. Globs of liquid wobble beside his face, steaming and radiating heat, and he -- the ceiling bumps against his head, then his shoulders, and when he drops the cups in surprise, they don't drop.

They float casually away as he grips at his cane and coffee bobs against his cheek, scalding. Hermann hisses, trying to pinwheel away.

"Mr. Sans!" A squawk. "This--"

Of course, Hermann cannot see his own soul turn blue. He does, however, feel it when he's slammed into the still hot stove top, cutting him off.

[skelebro]

He's been casually just...yeah, collapsed on the couch for what he's assumin' is the past few hours now, idly contemplating the ceiling when his awareness of things tides back to him. He's okay with this, though. He's been okay with this before. Hermann don't ask too many questions, which is nice, and seems content to just let him recline there until his 1 HP stops being the weak little live-wire death-wish it is.

Only that doesn't exactly happen. Nah, see, what happens instead is his left eyesocket erupts.

That's really the only word for it. The light spills out from it and the entirety of his frame tenses as what little strength he has rushes back into his bones, contracting into a pained, startled concave arc as one hand jerks up to brace itself against his left temple. It hurts, it always hurts, and that's why he doesn't ignite the eye all the damn time willy nilly, because it fucking -

Ping.

Hermann's SOUL goes blue with absolutely no input from Sans himself, and the world flips, gravity turning upside down so Sans nearly crashes onto the ceiling, barely managing to catch himself on his feet and one palm braced flat against the ceiling-turned-wall. And Hermann crashes onto the stove and he doesn't need to hear the bright sizzle to know that is not a thing that can be good for the human body, and he tries to - shit, he can reroute this. He has to reroute this. His roommate doesn't deserve to get burned alive for his concern and so he tries to re-index Hermann's values but the calculations come out garbled in every sense of the word, slashed through with irrational variables and negative arcs, and instead of redirecting him to the floor, the gravity of the room instead switches to the left wall.

The cup smashes against the wall, spattering hot liquid everywhere. Sans catches the arm of the couch that is now sliding toward the wall, using it to mostly prevent his slow, protracted, and likely fateful collision with the window.

He needs to get out. He needs to get out before he winds up killing them both so he seizes the edged fabric of space and pulls and -

Ends up flipping the room's gravity 'round to the right wall instead.

[verinumeri]

It's all so quick. In the nature of rapid events, when the mind struggles to process accelerating and magnifying improbabilities, fractional seconds feel extended. The first flash of blue that becomes an explosion, flaring, the agonized contortion of Mr. Sans's bones, pain, the floor detaching from his feet, the texture and impact of the ceiling, the heat of the liquid and the subsequent heat and crash of the stove.

As his shoulders crack against the left wall, fragments of glass and loops of liquid join the other debris filling the air. He grunts, probably, or shouts, too disoriented and distracted by what aches and singes to discern.

"Mr. Sans," he manages again, in a gasp, as if Mr. Sans could do a damn thing about it, the glimpses he can then puzzle into a whole completing an expression of wretched struggle. Hermann hasn't the luxury of sympathy. He hasn't the luxury of his mind raging against the insanity of it, either. Nothing on the left wall for him to grab securing hold of, and he's thrown right. Thrown. He attempts to twist, grab, cushion, but it's all too fast, hard, and there's the innocuous sound of a large twig snapping, made less innocuous by the blinding realization it was his left wrist, caught at an odd angle on collision.

Now he's sure he shouts.

No luxuries. Hermann forces open his watery eyes, tightens his right hand on his cane, and stabs it against the wall, estimating first an angle as best he can. He knows the math's right, but he must rely on his battered body exerting enough force to propel him to the stairs.

He'd rather not leave Mr. Sans behind, but he's not yet certain he can pull this much off.

"Can you -- speak? Would it be a distraction?" His voice taut with pain and his eyes unveering from the stairs, the rail there, not daring to look back.

not nearly eno̕ug̛h̴; its far too͝ ̷m͜u҉c͝h

[funnybird]

Crow would like to start this experience by expressing that he strongly disapproves of magic.

It causes nothing but trouble, honestly. From turning people into inanimate objects to empowering insane witches or warlocks or skeletons. To this day he still has no idea why he let April Ryan talk him into some magical adventure across the world. Even worse, convince him to go with her into some magic realm where he could have died. (That's not true. He knows exactly why he did it...) Rest assured, if there's magic around, Crow flies the opposite direction.

Except the 'opposite direction' seems to be 'directly toward it' today.

The small bird swoops down after seeing Sans— ...apparate and suddenly disappear again? If he was there then, he isn't there now. The entire street is as quiet as before. Just as Crow is taking off and go look for his boney friend someplace else, Sans appears almost on top of the bird. He's about to start shouting at him for scaring the actual crap out of him but Sans is instead very still. Crow is concerned, which seems to be the trend, as he approaches in small hops.

"Hey, buddy— Hey, friend? Hey! Sans! You awake in there?"

He leans to peer closely into one of those dark eye sockets.

[skelebro]

There's not much to discern in terms of general surroundings - his perception of things is pretty well narrowed down to "everything hurts" and "he's lying on a surface of a sort." He can feel the hood of his jacket pillowed atop his skull, the sleeves scratching gently against bone, but every tiny fragment of sensory input is both too dulled and too sharp. It comes like it's comin' at a distance, shouted down a long dark tunnel, but when it reaches him it echoes far too loud, a vibrating, clattering aural agony that would prompt a sharp flinch if he had the energy.

He doesn't.

So that's all well and good.

Hey, buddy!

His sockets slit open, dark and depthless, as he stares hazily forward. Something sharp is opening and closing in his direction.

Hey, friend?

His sockets close again.

Hey! Sans!

With an immense effort that feels more like dragging himself through a viscous liquid the consistency of honey - seriously, did air density just up and make itself ten times heavier than normal, just to dick around with him? - his sockets shutter open again.

You awake in there?

His left socket slides shut, closing over the eye that almost sparks to life in response to a stimuli that it must've assumed was hostile, even if he knows he can recognize that voice, if not quite pin down the owner of it yet, not by name.

"Yep," he says, the word cracking out slowly, excruciatingly slowly, almost distorted beyond recognition by the glacial pace of it. "'M fine."

[funnybird]

"Bullshit."

While Crow can be quick with jokes and dense with everything else, he's starting to notice a trend here. Of the gradually worse degree. Where his bud was exhausted and wanted to sleep off the zombie apocalypse, now he's... well, kind of dead looking. Enough to convince Crow that this really ain't good this time.

"Talk to me. What's going on?"

No magic

[ushahin]

Ushahin is only a few houses away from his own. This doesn't mean a whole lot to him. Every time he's gotten this far, somehow, he ends up practically on the other side of the city and has to begin his trek again. Everything inside is hurting and he can't keep the voices outside of his head anymore. It's tiring to try and keep them out. He's fast running out of energy and the will to continue. Maybe he should just go into one of the other houses and rest for a moment.

Then suddenly there's a bony little skeleton on top of him, causing Ushahin to collapse on the ground. Ow. That hurt. Great, now his physical body is hurting in addition to the mental one. That's all he needs. He blinks, trying to sift through the confused jumble of thoughts that are inside his head, sorting his own out from the roaring tide. He tries to focus on the physical world in front of him and figure out what just happened.

He feels the skeleton's bony head close by and the contact jolts him back to the physical world only for a moment. "Sans?" He asks, trying to figure out if the monster is really there or not. He can't tell, physical and mental worlds colliding and melting into one another. It hurts, it all hurts too much, and he just wants it to stop.

[skelebro]

Aaaaaand he's ended up on top of someone. This is fantastic. Truly this is a good and nice day and he is having a great time dealing with the fallout of it.

Heh, the fallout.

Gettin' the equivalent of a bag of bones dropped over your head can't be very comfy, though at least the body beneath him cushions his fall and keeps it from being utterly fatal. It takes him a moment to organize his thoughts and his body and which limbs are his and how to move and possibly stand up except he can't really stand up he's just kind of sprawled there on the ground, ungainly, and the word "boneless" would come to mind except that is, heh, that is patently untrue and semantically inaccurate.

He recognizes the timbre of the voice that addresses him, though he's havin' a bit of trouble extricating the name of its owner from the brackish mental sludge that seems to be all his mind's comprised of these days.

"Heya," he says, then adds, "you," for good measure, because he can't really distinguish who that might be. Human...nah, not human. Complicated? Yes, he thinks, real complicated, but he don't make a point of having simple relations with anybody, not even his brother.

[ushahin]

He tries to focus on the words he hears, but it's like trying to hear someone in a crowded room. The rest of the voices form a roaring in his head that's impossible to wade through. It hurts so much, he feels like it might be better to just let them overwhelm him. Maybe it won't hurt if he lets himself drown. Focus, he tries to tell himself. Sans is right there.

Being in close proximity with him means all of the skeleton's thoughts are bleeding over into his mind, the loudest of the crowd of voices he's hearing right now. Just a sluggish train of can'tmovetooslowthisisagreattimebonelesswhoisthat that Ushahin wishes would just stop. For such a lazy fellow, there's certainly nothing wrong with the train of thought he has going.

Stop. That's what he means to say, just a nudge to get him to stop projecting quite so loud. Instead, he finds a whole torrent heading straight into Sans' head, not so much words as just a scrambled up notion of pain without end. There's echoes there, a murmur of indistinct words that never stops or lets up. He struggles to get it to stop before it will do real damage to the other mind. Finally, he reels it back in, more from the sheer exhaustion than actually being able to do anything.

He blinks, trying to focus on Sans' eyes. "Sorry. It's far too loud right now." At least he'll know what that means. Sans is one of the few aware of just how bad it can be inside the psychic's head. "My control has waned."

cw serious injury TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELL

[save_theworld]

Some people call 'em grotesques. Some might call 'em skills, plain and simple. Sans just calls them blasters. There's another word that should go in front of that, but that's for another time and another place.

They don't even mean to come across him. They just round a corner, only to come face to face with something large, with pits for eyes and a gaping maw that grows brighter within split fractions of a second, a humming vibration of magic that goes off like a cannon, so very, very loud.

And Frisk would like to say, they're excellent at dodging. It would be better for everyone involved if that was why the child dropped to the ground, pieces of flyaway hair sizzling as the top of their head heats up with the ominous threat of a near miss.

Except- that's not what happened.

Frisk still drops, and the blast still misses; by a hair's breath, by literal inches from the top of their skull, but their fixation and their breath is held elsewhere. Stuck on the hands clutched over their stomach, and the fizzling blue spear lodged in it. It's readily apparent when they buckle that it has managed to push all the way through to the other side.

A crackle of a different kind, and it's like it never happened. A helping of air sucked in through wheezing lungs, and Frisk's staggering upright again, pupils dilated and skin slightly more waxen than usual, but, hey.

They haven't even died once, right?

Apparently he's scared of them. Another blaster goes off, this one aimed elsewhere, and the resounding sound is enough to pull a flinch from them, a half step back before they take two forward.

"Sans-"

He thinks he's scared of them, at little bit.

"Are you okay?"

Isn't it a bit silly, to be scared of a child?

[skelebro]

Oh. Oh, shit. Him tryin' to keep on top of these things is like tryin' to lay down railroad tracks at the same time a train rushes over 'em. He keeps tryin' to redirect them to fire off in harmless directions - ceiling, floor, ceiling, floor, into a building that looks empty, that should be empty, god please let it be empty -

And then.

Then Frisk rounds the corner.

And he nearly obliterates them in one go.

Thank god the kid's good at dodging, though that ain't enough to save their skin entirely. Fuck. Fuck. God. He's trying to twist the things around and a circle of 'em line up around the kid prone on the ground and he slides onto his knees, collapsed on all fours, as he barely manages to adjust their values so they fire at a forty-five degree angle, a cone of white energy and roaring noise surrounding the kid's nearly-prone form but not one of 'em touching 'em.

"Kid," Sans manages, barely, peering up blearily. "Kid, y'gotta - I can't keep this up. It's not lettin' me shut 'em off."

too much magic; i decided to bring the pain after all

[hasitsthorns]

The idea of weightlessness had always been a pleasant one until now. Rose figured it would make her think of space, of the stars she'd always longed to reach. Maybe there'd be a place out there in the vastness of the universe just for people like her who didn't have somewhere to call their own. No more involuntary world hopes and horrors. Just somewhere that she could be herself and hopefully the people she loved. Wouldn't that be nice?

It was such a serene thought.

Turns out actual weightlessness is absolutely horrifying; it's a heart-pounding, anxiety-inducing kind of vulnerability that she wasn't prepared for. That might be because of how unexpected and disorienting it all is. She's free-falling, suddenly, and can't tell if it's up down or sideways. It just happened. The blond tries to orient herself best she can but it's hard with her curls in her face and no idea what direction is what anymore. Her breathing hitches as she struggles against, well - She's not actually sure at the moment.

It doesn't take long to realize that she's not alone; nor does it take long to figure her company and the cause are the same thing. She tries to relax because, hey, Sans seemed like a reasonable dude from the brief interaction they'd had. Newt and Hermann got on with him too. She trusted their judgement and, to an extent, trusted Sans. He didn't seem hostile and this (if how he's also suffering the effects is any indication) doesn't feel entirely intentional either. He's not doing this on purpose, he's not trying to hurt anyone.

Yet there's fear on the fringes of her otherwise placid expression and in the tiniest details of her body language as she catches a glimpse of that eye now alight. A knot in her gut sits heavy as a rock - call it animal instinct, maybe - telling her 'It's not going to be okay.'

[skelebro]

So he's kinda ended up turning this bystander's SOUL blue and his skull jerks up in time to glimpse that he's just kinda - holding her there. Suspended animation.

The eye burns and burns and burns in his socket and won't shut off, no matter how viciously he attempts to cut that off, kink the metaphorical tubing feeding magic through his bones, coursing off him in the form of hot droplets of sweat and runoff - body's gotta shrug off that residuum somehow, don't it?

Well, Sans has time to think calmly as he regards her with a gaze too bright and too focused and too uncontrolled, a grin with an agonized, wild edge he can't seem to file away, shit.

He realizes he must look quite deranged. Manic, even.

"Brace yourself," he says, frozen on the spot, hardly daring to twitch a phalanx for fear that the confused, contorting magic boiling in his system might interpret that as a command. "I'm tryin' - tryin' to let you down. I'm really - really tryin' here, okay? Doin' my best here."

Yes. He probably looks incredibly - unhinged.

His left socket lids, a reflex he can't seem to prevent even as it does nothing to contain the magic that fizzes out of it wildly in a flaming amber burst, and then she - she kinda gets launched up at the ceiling.

The exact opposite direction he was aimin' for, it turns out.

Again, those two little words come to mind.

Well. Shit.

@ no magic

[krasnayapautina]

Natasha, like everyone else, can't find her way around this place any longer to save her freaking life. Not for lack of trying to get a sense of direction, though -- however, she's slowly turning around in a circle to try again, when all off the sudden a ... skeleton collides with her, and she's caught so uncharacteristically off guard that it sends her to her feet. She's not sure if this being is looking for a fight and decided she was a threat for some reason, but she's preparing to fight unless there's a really good explanation for this.

[skelebro]

All righty, this sure is happening now. He fizzles back into reality so abruptly he straight-up slams into another person, someone human or human-shaped and he can't reasonably tell, the only real thing he's aware of is the fact that he's about to fall and probably crack his skull open on the rock floor, effectively dusting himself, and he does the only thing he can think of to do, which is hook phalanges into the fabric of her shirt in the hopes that it'll keep him upright.

"Ah," Sans manages, because like most humans, she is really kinda tall compared to him, four feet of bones and magic that's crackin' out too brightly and too hotly, when it bothers to show up at all. And since she's real tall, his grip slackens and weakens almost immediately, dragged down by the weight of his own bones.

"Crap," he says, by way of apology, and promptly keels over.

too much magic you stupid pile of bones

[missionfail]

Jasper has just now, just now, made it back to her little spot under the broken bridge and she doesn't even need to be there. It's enough for her that she's been able to locate it again and hasn't been left to wander the streets forever. Ironically, it had been the moment she stopped looking for it that it came into sight, but taking on an attitude of not even trying feels so wrong she can't even wrap her mind around it.

So when the skeleton shows up she isn't at all pleased to see him, though it's doubtful she would have been pleased to see him under any circumstances, much less one where she'd just properly relocated herself. The gem slides a large rock slab over the storage compartment she'd dug and glares in his direction.

"You. Endoskeleton." He has a name, but she doesn't care enough to think back on what it is. "I don't have time for you right now." She would point out that this is her bit of land she's claimed, but then he'd know where he might be able to find her.

friCK

[skelebro]

He lands heavily, heavily enough to jar his joints in their sockets with a painful tug. He's - he's got no clue where he is, frankly, 'cause location recognition is just not very high on his list of priorities at the moment, if he's honest here. He's not highly aware of much aside from the fact that his SOUL is a red-hot spike slammed through his ribcage, the magical residuum boiling off in the form of sweat sliding off his skull. And he can't - keep it in, it just keeps tearing on outta him.

Sans hears something that sounds like someone callin' out to him, addressin' him possibly, but his mind can't get a handle on what. He glances up, staring hazily ahead until the orange blur in front of him resolves into the shape of -

Of, uh, her.

He's having trouble with name recognition too, it turns out. He's kinda got a lot on his mind, don't judge.

"Uh," is about all Sans has time for, raising a hand with the palm out in a gesture of surrender, or maybe with the intent of communicating something like get back.

Instead, it sends a veritable fence of bones bursting out from the ground beneath her, apparently intent on impaling her.

it's in the tunnel vision that affects decision; closed to chara (and frisk if they want)

[skelebro]

So Frisk gets him back to their place. Let him crash on their couch like some kinda interdimensional refugee. The kid's got a heart too big for their own good, honestly, but it's not like he's any better - not after he told himself to keep a rounded opinion of 'em, keep himself and his interactions with 'em objective and careful as far as they're concerned.

Well, that little goal is shot to hell, he thinks. He's let himself care about 'em, and there's not a damned thing he can do about it. Them and their roommate both.

No question about it. He ain't really surprised, though. Not really. He's gotta habit of failing every objective he sets for himself. Terrible habit. Hermann would tell him to break it.

He tells himself to stop thinkin' about Hermann, and that don't work out too well, 'cause now he's thinkin' of both Hermann and Newt, and now he's thinkin' of Wade on top of it, and what they're gonna tell him and what he might think. When did he stop caring about people's perceptions of him? Well, that's the thing - he doesn't, not really. There's him, and then there's the lie he feeds everyone, that he's really just a lazy, friendly skeleton chum, the one everyone eventually always sees past. Only a matter of time, really. And when it happens, welp, things just kinda end right there. No point in continuing correspondence with a guy you don't much like to know, is there?

He's been in and out of sleep for the past...well, he don't know, actually, his perception of time has just kinda been fucked over from the way things played out back home. Days, maybe? Or just hours? Doesn't matter, much. He thinks it might be what passes for nighttime down here when he wakes up again, and stares hazily at the ceiling, and thinks for the umpteenth time that he should probably figure out a better living situation than this - anything.

And then remembers, also for the umpteenth time, that he doesn't deserve it. But the kids? Yeah, the kids do, so he's gotta get his tailbone outta here at some point.

Yeah. At some point.

[somuchlove]

A marker snaps closed with a loud click.

Chara has been having the opposite problem. Sleep was never something that came natural to them and thanks to this event, it was even less so. So many thoughts swirling around in their mind and it was near impossible to shut it off. Perhaps a little while back they may have used this as a way to prove they were a demon, something not humans. Demons didn't sleep. But right now they were too tired to keep up that front.

Too tired to pretend but too awake to sleep. How annoying.

So they had been trying to find ways of keeping themselves busy. Cleaning when they normally didn't and when they had nothing to clean in their room. Coloring. Coloring on Sans. Cooking, until they probably got banned from it. Chara with fire and lacking sleep wouldn't exactly end well they suspect. Nevertheless they keep moving. A considered drawback with Determination. You can't just not, if that made any sense.

Probably not. But as it stood right now, they were seated near the couch and actually coloring on paper this time. They weren't a mind-reader despite the whole narration thing but they hear movement coming from the direction of the couch and not Frisk's door. The can make an assumption, they think.

"Are you awake now?"

/calmly leaps in here

[save_theworld]

They owe him and Chara a great deal.

It's kind of like...growing pains, they guess. Once it stops, once their sheets stop running red every few hours, and the sounds of their SOUL fragmenting in two die (ha) away, Frisk couldn't imagine being more sore than they are now. It leads to some heavy sleep, practically dreamless, and the next time they open their eyes, it's to Chara and coloring books and a hearty, if not slightly burnt, meal.

And then it's back to sleep. For another day, maybe less, until they're awake enough to know that they won't go back to sleep even if they want to, sitting up stiffly and wondering if this is how it feels when you get old. All creaky bones and jelly legs, and they consider their wardrobe for a moment before pulling down the not even used pole for hanging clothes on, and using that to shuffle about with.

Mostly because it's entertaining.

A few experimental circles around their room, and they're ready. It's a matter of opening the door and shuffling out, listening to the wooden pole plonk against the ground with no small amount of satisfaction- they are Frisk, and they are old.

At least- for today, they are old. Old enough to be Chara's grandparent, and Sans', and everyone else's too. And what else makes a good grandparent than checking on your whippersnappers?




For 9999 G, they will stop.

[skelebro]

Somewhere beneath the running commentary of goddamn, goddamn, goddamn, Sans is more than a bit concerned over the fact that he's gonna have a whole mess of people that'll be up in his business once this is all over. Y'know why he never does a good job of anything? Because more often than not, the reward for doing good work is just more work, and who's got time for that, really? That ain't what he's here fore. He ain't here to be badgered at and asked questions he don't much feel like answerin'.

He tries to switch the trajectory of the open-mawed blaster as it belches a hot stream of blazing white energy, and he does so too late. He sees the force of the blast shear through that familiar dark form, sees the parabolic arc he cuts as he falls, lands in a blackened heap on the ground.

A low, angry rumble begins to pitch as another skull materializes with a silky fluidity. And then another. And another.

A circle of them begin to surround Shadow in a slow, deliberate pattern.

Sans, for what it's worth, is currently on his hands and knees, the sweat boiling off his skull as he apparently loses thread of whatever preventative measures he was takin' to ensure the blasters didn't just exterminate whatever came across 'em.