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hadriel_logs2016-11-01 10:44 am
hadrielmods) wrote in hadriel_logs2016-11-01 10:44 am
Event Log: Fourth Wall, Part Two
Who: Everyone in the city + Fourth Wall visitors!
What: Part two of the fourth wall event, hosted by Sorrow, Rage, and Hope!
Where: All around the city
When: November 1st-November 7th
Warnings: Visitors from other worlds!
What: Part two of the fourth wall event, hosted by Sorrow, Rage, and Hope!
Where: All around the city
When: November 1st-November 7th
Warnings: Visitors from other worlds!
Welcome to Hadriel! Or, for those who have been here, please continue enjoying your stay. Perhaps you arrived here last week, and have been wandering around since then, making new friends. Or perhaps you've just arrived, and have no idea what's going on. You may have woken up in the colosseum, or near a temple, or in one of the numerous other locations in the city. You might be confused and frightened to find yourself in this underground city, or maybe you're just wondering why you haven't been sent home yet, when others have.
Whatever the case may be, the situation in the city has changed somewhat. There is still a gently glowing path leading you to a nicely-outfitted party, but the specifics of it have changed. If you're a new arrival, it'll be easy to follow the path and find the party - if you're not, well, the color of the light has changed, signalling that something's different. Maybe you want to check it out?
Around the clearing are gently glowing flowers, illuminating both the tables and the rest of the area, bright enough to make things clear even when the larger light at the apex of the cave is gone. On the tables are an array of different kinds of food - however, sampling this food will quickly make it clear that nearly everything is spicy, whether subtly so or with a burning heat. The cookies seem to have chili oil in them, the dip has jalapeno-like peppers. It's hard to find anything that won't burn your mouth a bit. If you're lucky enough to find something that doesn't, though, it will most certainly be somewhat bitter or quite sour. That doesn't mean the food tastes bad - if spicy and sour are your sort of thing, they're delicious! If you're looking for something more normal, though, you're out of luck.
Also on the tables are a variety of drinks, and these at least are not spicy. Instead, they're the sort of warm, comforting drinks that might remind you of home, of curling up in a soft blanket while rain falls outside. Warm cocoa, hot cider, teas of various flavors. Just the sort of thing to soothe a worried newcomer.
Decorating the area are various banners with welcoming messages saying things like 'HADRIEL' 'THIS IS A PARTY' 'EAT FOOD' and 'DO NOT DIE'. They are all identical, with large black block letters on plain white paper. They look very similar to something that you might print out on a standard office laser printer at the last minute if you have no discernible sense of humor or fun.
Scattered around can be found exciting party games such as pin the tail on the donkey and musical chairs. Here and there can also be found various pinatas of different types. Break them open, see what comes out! If you're really lucky it'll be candy - if not, it might be full of bouncy balls or cherry tomatoes. Good times!
_
Or maybe you don't like parties? No worries. The rest of the city has plenty of places to explore- maybe you'd like to stumble in our Silent Hill zone, have a quick look around the alien orchard, or check out any of the god temples that can inspire their chosen emotion. Be careful not to get lost in the tunnels leading away from the cave- none of them can actually move you above ground, but you may run into a few monsters on the way.
For those of you who came last week, here's your chance to help out newbies along with the people who have been here forever! Join in on the festivities if you like, or try to orient as many of the others as you can. Rule the newcomers at musical chairs, continue your fight club, pick up a second weird cave girlfriend and then watch as they dump you and hook up with each other! There's no end to the possible fun.
_
Enjoy the fourth wall event at Hadriel! Once you're settled in feel free to explore the rest of the city! Find a house, find a new monster, or simply scavenge for supplies.
Fourth wall characters do not enter with phones so they cannot reach the network- however, if you'd like to handwave that they somehow got ahold of Mello's Newcomer guide to avoid the 'where am I/what is this' sort of questions, then feel free!
Good luck, and enjoy your stay in Hadriel!► This log covers November 1st-November 7th.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well! Fourth wall characters will not have posting access, so grab an in-game friend if you wanted to do anything separate from the main log.
► Fourth wall characters will be in the city for at least one week. If you want them to stay longer, our applications are now open!
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
i say (a)gain. just Fuck Me Up
Still, though. All things considered, it was awful nice of his Wonderlandian double to give him a warnin'. Impossible things happen, and impossibilities, he's long since figured, just tend to up and do their own thing. That's the nature of anomalies. Outliers, they'll just up and scribble all over your carefully-recorded observations like the abstruse, atemporal little fucks they are. He despises them on principle, he's pretty sure. Or he would, if he wasn't such a mess about those goddamn kids.
Not that he's ever not a mess. That's nothin' new.
Still, he's been keepin' an eyesocket out. Doin' his best to, in any case. He's pretty sure some important stuff slips through the cracks (always does), but there's no way in hell (hah) that he'd miss this.
Heh.
Heh heh heh.
All right.
This is happenin' now.
Fine.
Cool.
He wants to drag his nonexistent coccyx into Hadriel, that's fine. It's all good. Sans will handle it. He don't handle a lotta things, but this pretty squarely lands on his shoulders, and he, uh. He's overdue to take a little responsibility, maybe. It was awful nice of this problem to up and vanish for him, all neat and tidy and convenient, but now they're gonna play this game.
And that's. Fine.
Sans shows up behind him with a leisurely grin, hands in his pockets. Maybe a bit older, a bit wearier than this version of the doc might remember. And there's somethin' to his eyesockets. Somethin' icy and flinted.
'Cause he thinks, he thinks about Chara, about the way they just straight-up broke when they saw those pages, and if that's how they reacted to one tiny, inconsequential piece of him, god only knows what either of the kids would do - what would happen to either of 'em - if they laid their eyes on this.
And he's screwed 'em both up enough as it is, don'tcha think?
"Heya, Doc," Sans rumbles, cheerfully. "Long time, no see."
i'm so shaky with this guy tbh but i will do my best
It's been awhile since Sans caught him off guard.
He turns back to him, closing his journal with a snap. A joke, he thinks, but not a very funny one, and not even in the usual sense that Sans's humor leaves...something to be desired. There just doesn't seem to be an appropriate punchline. Or maybe that is the joke. They just saw each other...was it yesterday?
It must have been yesterday.
"Sans."
His tone is mild, detached, and there's a visible aspect to his speech; movements of hands, gestures. Something hard to define or translate, like everything else about him. Not that Sans ever had any trouble.
He looks tired. This is nothing new. But it's a different kind of tired. More thorough, all-encompassing, marrow-deep. Not the tired of ten cups of coffee and eighteen straight hours of watching simulations on computer screens. Something...else.
He looks older.
Occam's Razor. This is an adjacent dimension, some kind of locus or nexus, a knot in spacetime exerting a force akin to gravity, drawing in pieces (people) from neighboring branes. It is easy enough for a skeleton to tell when another skeleton has aged, even if other monsters might find it difficult. The simplest explanation, therefore, is that this is a different iteration of the monster he knows. Possibly from further along in his timeline.
How interesting.
His journal disappears into a pocket, and in the same smooth motion he folds his hands behind his back. Peers down at the smaller monster, his expression cold and appraising.
"I must admit: despite the theoretical potential for this meeting to cause some degree of spatiotemporal collapse, I find myself intrigued."
Curiosity is part and parcel of his current...condition, after all. It is insatiable.
i believe in u
He might be tired, tired down to his bones, but he's still got it in him to radiate an air of...what's the word? Eh, he'll get back to it. It'll find its way to him. Unwanted thinks always do. Birds of a Snowdrake, or somethin' along those lines. Flockin' together.
Still, there's somethin' about his demeanor that...well, infinite potentialities, infinite possibilities, right? He'd recognize his guy anywhere. That pomposity, that elegant cut to his coat that flared behind him, batlike, when he was tryin' to be sufficiently dramatic. And his face weren't all hacked up like that. Not 'till stuff started damn near fallin' apart to the point where cardinal directions were meaningless, the clocks on the walls had all but dissolved, and the room was more antispace than it was honest-to-god matter.
So, yeah. Not his guy. Not the doc he knows. Nice to have got the starter pack there. Check that one off, file it away. Very helpful to know, very intuitive. Pat yourself on the back, Sans, you did yourself a whole science for fucking once, A-plus.
"Right," says Sans, jovially indolent as ever, "so I dunno about you, but I don't really wanna do this right now. What say we take a raincheck on the whole shillin' out of blame or background-checkin' or whatever it is you feel like doin', and you can hippity-hop your way back into nonexistence for the rest of oh, say...ever. Sound good?"
Ah, right. Now he remembers the word for the tone he's usin'.
Disgust.
That's the one.
Plenty of room in his hollowed-out fluttering husk of a SOUL for that one.
thank
How interesting that he needs it now.
Not quite one of his little outbursts--it's infinitely more subdued, a resigned sort of exhaustion, like this meeting was some kind of unavoidable annoyance.
"How fascinating." He taps his chin, studying Sans like he's an interesting equation, which is all this Sans is. "I don't believe I have ever heard my iteration sound so scornful."
What does he do, he wonders, to warrant this degree of derision? How different is the Dr. W.D. ▯▯▯▯▯▯ of this Sans's reality? Is he even in the same field of research? Does he have the same plans and motivations? This Sans might be evidence for the plan's failure, or perhaps evidence that the plan itself was different.
He is from the future. Cliched and absurd though it might be to couch it in such language. He is from a future, and only in relation to his own current position within his own timeline.
He could be ten years older. He might as well be twenty years older, considering how he looks.
Nonexistence, he says.
"What I feel like doing now is seizing upon the rare opportunity to study what appears to be material transference across branes. I cannot imagine that the opportunity presents itself with any regularity. It would be remiss of me not to observe and document the causes and effects. And you would have agreed." He raises a brow ridge. "You seem still too young to be retired."
One never truly retires from science, anyway.
no subject
All he's still got is the doc as a concept. The doc as a concept, and nothin' else. Names and faces are blurred, obscured in bright streams of static. But he sure as shit remembers some things. He remembers enough to know his type.
"I ain't your iteration," Sans says shortly. "And your material transferal ain't real rare, either. 'S been happenin' to pretty much everybody. Nah, actually, your little crisis here ain't all that unique"
That, uh, that rankles a bit. You would have agreed. Doc's got no right, no goddamn right, to presume to know him now. He got most of what he was claws out, scraped clean, sheared away. Burned out through a flaring eyesocket, 'cause he didn't duck his skull behind his hands quick enough.
But we're gettin' off track here.
"This ain't even the first time the Door's brought somethin' in that don't exist. First it was your research. And boy, was that a fun one to explain." He chuckles, mirthless. One hand is flexin' in his pocket, real low-key, imperceptible. "Fun one to explain to everyone who could stand to look at it for more than two seconds. Before their brains short-circuited."
no subject
"I meant in the sense of personal experience, Sans." This Sans seems content to let his disdain get in the way of objective reasoning. "An awareness of other universes is one thing. Finding myself abruptly elsewhere is quite another. Whether it happens regularly to other people is irrelevant. It has never happened to me, nor do I imagine it will happen again soon."
He thought at first that it might be a hitherto unknown effect of Save. A Save is understood to exist only within the timeline in which it is placed, but perhaps it acts instead as some kind of multiversal constant. Nailing not just spacetime in place, but the quantum foam as well. But it seems more that this is just how nexii like this "Hadriel" function.
Still worth studying.
"My existence seems to be a point of concern for you." He frowns slightly, a headache starting to form behind his left eyesocket. A good deal of what this Sans is saying just...isn't making sense. His research? He can't imagine it would have such a dire effect on someone, esoteric though it is. His font is more complicated to hear than it is to read.
"Despite your insistence that my arrival here is not unique, the implication seems to be that it is an impossibility all the same. You appear to be several years ahead of me, Sans. So you will forgive me if I point out that you are making very little sense."
The simple conclusion would be that his own iteration does not exist for this Sans and yet, paradoxically, Sans knows who he is.
This conversation continues to prove intriguing.
no subject
A world where everything is exactly the same, only you don't exist.
The thought doesn't terrify me anymore.
Sans laughs again. It's even less amused than before, if that's even possible. But, uh, impossibility seems to be the order of the day, so. Impossible it is.
"If I were talkin' to anyone else, I'd just say 'spoilers' and be done with it," says Sans, wryly. Several years ahead of him, huh? Well, hell. The guy ain't the doc he remembers, and even if he were, he wouldn't give a damn if he was spoilin' the hell out of whatever future he's got in store for him. He don't exist. He don't exist, even if he can perform the illusion of it for the sake of temporal consistency.
"But, uh. Yeah. Sure. Let's go there." His shoulders hunch a tad as his skull dips lower, the lights buried in his sockets sparkin' like a pair of hot coals as they stare him down. Stare down the pompous bastard, 'cause that seems to be the common thread there. Arrogance. Being unable to foresee the inevitable fall.
Maybe Sans saw it happen before it did since it never happened at all.
"You don't exist, Doc," says Sans. "You did a little skip-fall into your creation. Y'know what happened next? What happens if you touch on somethin' like that?"
Spoilers, it don't end with sunshine and rainbows.
(Nah, that was the photograph he ain't allowed to remember the story behind.)
no subject
Sans is...angry, perhaps. This goes beyond simple disdain. Always was stubborn, and though it's a weary version of the stubbornness he is familiar with, it is still there. It's as if he believes that he is putting himself between the doctor and something else, something he believes to be worth protecting. As if he believes the doctor is some kind of threat.
Which he is. That part is not arrogance; it is fact.
He doesn't exist, says Sans. He falls into his creation.
The doctor blinks.
He has many creations, several of which his own iteration of the skeleton is not yet aware of. Certainly must not be aware of, otherwise things would have become a lot more complicated a lot faster. He has many creations, but not many that carry such an existential threat. Only two, in fact, and one of them is not the sort of thing one can easily fall into.
He doesn't say "dead." He says, "don't exist."
His fingers curl.
"I see."
Quantum variation. Perhaps this is not something that will be in store for him; perhaps it is only this Sans's particular iteration who met such a fate. And yet. And yet, hadn't he felt something strange upon waking up here? He had dismissed it as an effect of the eye, an effect of Determination, which always seems pleased to make new and interesting side effects known. The last few years have been quite the learning experience, and even he has had to scramble at times to stay ahead of the curve.
His creation. Yes, negation was certainly a potential outcome. If the experiment failed, or if the machine was not completed in time. They are getting down to the wire after all.
"If your iteration does not exist. Why is it that you know me, I wonder? You have never been one to so thoroughly resent something that does not ostensibly exist."
Sans is more down to earth than that. Or he was.
no subject
"'Cause I know your type," he says easily, and it's true. He knows his type all right. Sometimes it comes in the form of a tall and spindly scientist with intentions sheathed in gold, a pair of spectacles perched on the hollow bridge of his nasal cavity and an idea big enough to rattle the entirety of the Underground, the world. Sometimes it comes in the form of a kid with a knife that hurts to look at, a slice of glarin' red, who drives at the end of all things like it's the most important thing in their life.
Some people are just determined to see things unfold. See the unspooling of things, the unraveling and reraveling of plans.
"'Cause sometimes when things get burned outta space and time," says Sans, "there's collateral damage, and some stuff. Heh. Well, some stuff sticks."
Some of it sticks so hard and so deep to your bones, the hollow pits of your sockets, the interior of your skull, that you can't ever claw it out, no matter how you try.
And he kinda gave up on tryin' a long, long while ago.
Don't change the fact that there are echoes. Doors that ain't supposed to be there, slivers of gray the corners of his vision. Flickers of something black and white and gaping and impossible. And he knows it ain't real. He knows it ain't, 'cause reality wouldn't be so kind as to give him that kinda variation.
But, hey. Like he said.
Some stuff sticks.
no subject
But that would be petulant, and he is not quite so... Rather, he does not need external forces in the shape of small, brilliant and annoying skeletons to keep him in check, not yet. Not yet.
I can help you. You just need to let me.
Just recalling the words is a comfort, enough to settle him, but he is not there yet. He is still in control.
He looks at Sans. Tries to remind himself how to think past sheer analysis, sheer data. This is still a Sans. Irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, particularly considering how far removed this one is from the doctor's point in spacetime, but...
He is difficult to ignore. Always has been. A personality like his makes it nearly impossible to stay entirely cold and removed. To stay objective. He drew attention, despite himself.
Truly, the only thing worth Saving.
Hard to stay objective, yes, even with this iteration, standing before him and looking at him with such scorn, such...anger.
Collateral damage.
"What," the words and symbols slow, drag, as he is not certain he should be asking this, not sure he has the right, "did he do to you?"
no subject
Sure. Sure it did. Sans grins, and it's the emptiest thing that's appeared on his face all week.
"What did he do to me?" His sockets lid down halfway, the pinpricks of light little more than minute glows of white peerin' out beneath. "Wasn't what he did to me. Sure, the doc was a real piece of work where I was concerned, but that ain't what took it things to the next level."
He's still smiling. Smiling as though nothin' is wrong.
"He just kinda decided that he'd rather risk the dissolution of space, time, and spacetime instead of admit that he was wrong."
Couldn't bear to admit defeat. Couldn't bear to relinquish an inch of control over his little project. Couldn't stand to just - just stop, just learn how to quit, just release the hold he had on the world and leave it the hell alone. A lotta the details are murky. Always have been. Bein' in the eye of that hurricane grants him the privilege of insight into some of what really went down, but it ain't by any means a permanent thing.
All he's got is nonspecifics. Lines of dialogue fed into his ossicles, whispers of things that never happened, phantom sensations of bone turnin' to powder, his clavicle dissolvin' beneath his phalanges, his skull crackin' open on the corner of a table.
Weirdly vivid, sometimes.
But not real. Can't be real if it never happened.
So. Whaddaya say to that, Doc? Sound familiar?
no subject
He is doing it again. This is not even his Sans, not that it should really matter. Hates this about himself, hates how it can never fully be scrubbed out, how all of his efforts to deny all attachment to his timeline and everything in it constantly falls just slightly short. Attachments. He despises them.
He is not given over to easy laughter, but he almost feels he could at the next thing Sans says. Isn't that exactly what he's doing, has been doing, has been planning for hundreds of years now? It wasn't a risk. It was intentional, the entire goal.
Tear the pages out, start fresh.
He imagines that Sans will react like this when he figures it all out.
"Some things are worth a sacrifice. Even a very great one."
But he was always so resistant to sacrifice. So attached.
no subject
Such injuries don't hurt, and it's in their nature to withhold all insight of their existence from ya. You don't even realize they're there. And you smile. And you feel fine.
But anyway. He's gettin' off track. Back to the delightful realm of pedantry, 'cause that's always a hoot for everyone involved.
"It implies a trade of some kind," Sans continues pleasantly. "It implies that you're riskin' somethin' for the sake of some kinda reward, and not burning it all down simply because you can."
And because you "can," you "have to," right?
Stop me if you've heard this one.
'Cause it's startin' to sound real familiar.
no subject
It's hypocritical of him to say. He knows it is, after their argument some months ago...but that was a different Sans. And hypocrisy does not truly matter, pure social construct, and he has never had the patience for such things. Better to use everything at your disposal to achieve your goal, even if it means your words don't match your actions.
The judgment of others means nothing whatsoever.
"If your iteration was truly attempting something with no discernible positive outcome, then he must have been a very poor scientist."
Though he very highly doubts this.
"Or. It is a problem of perception." His head cants to the side again. "The Sans I know is willing to risk everything for the sake of monsterkind. Were you not the same?"
no subject
Pettiness. Pettiness, says the guy who straight-up doomed space, time, and spacetime out of a bullheaded refusal to just sit back and try again instead of pushin' an agenda that wasn't meant to be pushed. That would'a wrecked everything, and he's, uh. Well. Let's say it's a good thing that he ain't real prone to anger. It prickles hotly under his proverbial skin, or it would if he had any, but he simply grins. Learned how to shove all that shit to the posterior of his skull a long, long damn time ago.
"Maybe," says Sans. "Or maybe he was a guy who just didn't know when to QUIT."
That's frankly the more likely of the options. And it rankles a bit, or it does in a phantom sense - a prickle of unrest along his spine, of residual bitterness. He ain't real sure what it is. It's hard to say when your skull's all scrambled and you can't really put together why it is you feel the way you do, not all the way. Half the pieces got burned and the other half got scrambled beyond recognition, and that's if he's bein' generous about the proportions.
"The Sans you know?" He laughs. It ain't a real pleasant sound, and his expression is about as close to grim as it can get for a guy like him. "Maybe reconsider how much you really know him, pal. 'Cause we Sans-es, we might have a lotta faults, lotta flaws to our name."
It's somethin' he's always been up front about, and he thinks most other Sans-es are the same. They're more or less garbage, and they know they're garbage, but they more or less reached the threshold where stuff like that sticks and prefer to simply roll along with it. And roll along he does.
"But one thing we do know?"
Somethin' in his tone hardens, almost imperceptibly. So subtly that he's damn sure that no one but the doc would get it.
"We know your type."
no subject
Only it hadn't been Sans saying it that time. Hearing it turned around like this is...unsettling. Something flickers through him, a ripple of Determination. He grabs it, clamps it down. The vision in his left eye stutters. Sans duplicates exponentially, fractalling away into endless nothing.
He blinks slowly, calming.
"Quitting is not an option. Not for people like us."
Not arrogance. Fact. Quitting is not the realm of the Determined. Even if it was, it is far, far too late now.
There's a certain degree of paranoia, and he knows it is paranoia. Of course he knows Sans. Of course Sans will not betray him. After everything they've been through, after everything he has done for Sans. The idea is unthinkable.
Nothing is truly unthinkable, though.
"So you keep saying. You purport to know so very much, Sans."
He takes a step closer.
"Rather, you certainly believe you know me and yourself well enough to make such claims. And yet it smacks of confirmation bias. No, it smacks of pure emotional subjectivity. Not befitting of a scientist."
Another slow step.
"It is disappointing."
no subject
The quiet bracing of everything he is. The silent, nearly imperceptible hardening of an idea, the metastasizing of all the associated ephemera into one compact intention. What's it gonna be this time? Space? Time? Spacetime, just up and goin' for the twofer?
Sans utters a sharp bark of laughter, far more edged than is typical for him.
"Cut the crap, Doc. You and I both know that objectivity ain't all it's cracked up to be." He taps a phalanx against one ocular ridge with the quiet tick of ivory against ivory, grinning mirthlessly. A dig, a deliberate snipe, a low blow, but here's the funny part, the real funny part - he really don't care how low of a blow it is.
"Askin' a monster to be objective is like askin' a monster to report on the weather. It just ain't possible. Not teleologically. Not logistically. Not literally. It ain't in our nature. And I think you know that."
He's walkin' closer. Advancin'. He keeps a select amount of his awareness narrowed in on that fact, but he don't budge just yet. He can snap himself outta the way if he needs to, unless the doc follows. He's, uh - not really sure how much he's capable of at the moment. Might be they'll find out sooner or later. He's thinkin' "sooner" is more likely.
"And I know you know that," Sans continues pleasantly, "'cause if you really were, uh, as 'objective' as you say? You wouldn't be passin' judgment on me now. 'Objective' don't have room for disappointing. Objective don't have time for sacrifice, 'cause sacrifice suggests that you got somethin' to lose, and we can't have that."
He's always said that he don't listen to hypocrites. Makes not listenin' to himself a helluva lot easier, don't it?
Makes it easier to disregard everything the doc is sayin' now. It ain't nothin' he's not already told himself, innumerable times over.
"And before you get on my coccyx about my confirmation bias?" He closes one socket in a wink, cheerfully. "How 'bout you turn 'round and start takin' a real close look at your own?"
no subject
The problem is that Sans always knows how to press back.
He stops a foot or so from Sans and stares down at him, unwavering.
Sans judges and argues and stares right back at the doctor, his voice falsely cheerful. He digs, a superficial swipe at the physical effects of the doctor's experiments. Petty. There's a look in his eyesockets as if he's expecting something. Something in the skeleton is bracing. For what?
What does he think the doctor is going to do?
There was a time before, when he almost--The worst part is that Sans is right. There is always some truth in what he says. That is the problem. Because monsters cannot be truly objective. Because he himself is not as objective as he wishes. Because the doctor has something to lose. He has plenty to lose.
And it seems that he is going to lose all of it.
Another iteration of him failed.
Another iteration of Sans hates him.
"You always talk so much."
Is this the only way to make you shut up?
His phalanges itch. Sans had been right then, too. He's done this before. He's done this before. He's done this before.
"Sans."
His eyesockets close, slowly, for just a moment. He is in control. He is Dr. W.D G̶̙̯̭̰a̺͎ͅs̻͍̼̬͔t͙̼e̡̫̝͈̤̺r. Controlled. Objective. Determined.
Old. Very old.
"...This future is not an inevitability. No future is an inevitability. Not even when observed."
no subject
That Sans could be so lucky. Nah, it's gotta be strategy, pure and simple. The doc don't do things by half-measures. Can't take the chance that he might be pullin' some kinda ruse. Can't ever take any chances. The human's a liability, the anomaly's always capable of makin' things worse, and the doc's always got plans within plans. He's brilliant. Making calculations on the fly.
So maybe he talks too much. It's one of his failings. He's got no problem with that. He's got a pretty solid conceptualization of his flaws, profound and manifold as they are, and that's one aspect him that's nigh untouchable, he's real damn sure. Can't take somethin' away from a guy who's got nothin' left to lose, can you?
Yeah. He's not an easy guy to insult. Not real easy to make someone feel small when they've spent most of their life belittling themself until none of that is news anymore.
"You wanna believe that?" says Sans, tipping his skull to one side on an almost imperceptible axis askew. "Hell, I can't stop ya. But the real interesting thing about absolute erasure from spacetime?"
He lifts his shoulders in an incremental shrug, far less exaggerated and broad than his usual gesture of the very same.
"It kinda occurs on all levels. You disappear, Doc. You disappear from time. You disappear from every time. That's just how it is."
And given the way he's difficult to perceive even now, like peerin' through a fuzzy lens or a window misted over with condensation, Sans is willing to bet good solid G that it's already started to happen on some level.
He's just not that easy a guy to look at.
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Total erasure. The elimination of an object from all points not just in time, but in space as well.
There is, of course, the possibility that Sans is lying. Sans is something of a liar, after all. But disregarding the fact that he can see no real gains to be made from such a lie, given its scope and severity, there is also observational data. Since coming here, he has felt...odd. Off.
Sans played a prank on him one time. Sneaked into his office while the doctor was collecting data and moved everything a centimeter to the right.
This feels like that.
No future is inevitable. But this is not a matter of a future to be avoided. This is not a temporal matter at all. It has already happened. Is happening. Will happen.
The Royal Scientist does not exist.
He stares at Sans. Older, more exhausted than the doctor has ever seen him. Scornful, disgusted, voice falsely cheerful, in a way he has only heard once before. Braced for some kind of inevitability, as if he thinks the doctor is about to turn Blasters on him.
His scientist. His one last anchor to the world. The one last material thing he did not want to lose. But he has already lost him. Losing. Will lose.
And look at him now.
"Then." He draws himself up slowly. "This conversation is functionally irrelevant. If my nonexistence is a determined eventuality, then there is no purpose to even informing me of it, let alone any attempt to alter the course of events. Regardless of whether I can retain knowledge of this dimension once I return, and regardless of whether I could, theoretically, be talked out of the final experiment, the outcome is apparently such that it cannot be altered. According to you, none of this can be changed."
His hands slow, then pause before starting to move again.
"Which begs the question. Why bother? You did not come to warn me. You did not come to try and change my mind, as you know how improbable such a thing would be. I do not believe you are petty enough to try and rub my face in my failures, so to speak. And you very clearly would rather be anywhere other than in my presence right now. You do not go out of your way to engage with unpleasant things, Sans. Indeed...if I thought you capable of hating anyone, I would say that you hate me now."
But maybe Sans is capable of it now. Maybe whatever has happened over the last several years has pushed him that far. The doctor supposes that, even now, before the worst can happen, he would deserve it.
And yet he looks too tired for hate.
"So what is it, then? Why are you here? Why approach me at all?"
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Does he miss him?
Maybe. Maybe he misses what the doc represented more than anything else. A chance, more than a chance, the man who came from the other world, the man who spoke, speaks, will speak, is speaking in hands, the man who took his life and turned it into something extraordinary. The man who could do a dozen calculations in his head in less than a minute, who wanted a sounding board of people like Sans and Alphys to bounce his own ideas back to him, who had a flair and polish and poise that was simply too dramatic to be wholly genuine.
Somewhere, he thinks (he knows) it's raining.
It was raining when he met him.
Ain't that a laugh.
No point in beatin' around the bush. So he doesn't. He starts to laugh a little, 'cause god damn but he didn't expect this sitch right here to ever be one he'd have to be front and center for. Not any one aspect of it.
"Okay," says Sans amiably. "All right. Why am I here, Doc? Well. Lemme tell ya about the last time a little something of yours came through the Door."
He draws one of those folded-up pages from his jacket, more for the look of it than anything else. It ain't anything special; just a scrawl of data, directionless theory consigned to paper, all written in that familiar font of his.
"Remember how I said some people who looked at it just kinda short-circuited?" He stares up at the doc with his sockets hooded, and it's like gettin' a spike of molten metal to the skull, because he's starin' at somethin' that defies conception, that ain't even really there anymore. "One of those people was a kid. Red SOUL, striped shirt. Actually, there's two of 'em now. A pair of kids I'm gettin' to know pretty well."
He slips the paper back into his pocket and looks at the doc squarely.
"So right now, I wanna make somethin' pretty clear. I ain't askin' ya to leave 'em alone. I ain't askin' ya to leave either of those kids alone, or my brother on top of it."
That's assumin' he even knows who his brother is. He lets his sockets flick shut.
When they open, they gape hollowly, and his grin stretches for far wider than it should.
"I'm telling you to."
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Isn't there some human quote about such things?
And yes, humans. It always comes back to them, it seems. So Sans has appointed himself the guardian of two human children, has he?
How utterly, utterly ironic. He wonders if Sans is even aware of the irony. Something in him almost wants to laugh.
Something in him almost wants to laugh, again, because something in him is contemptuous at such a dramatic display of, dare he calls it backbone? Sans would enjoy the pun, to be sure. Not that Sans was ever lacking in a backbone, not like the others, but it was more a stubbornness. And look at him. Look at this weak little thing, trying to look intimidating. Telling the doctor what to do. Telling him to stay away from a child, because perish the thought that some human brat have some sort of psychological reaction to the nonexistent.
The irony.
"A shirt with green and yellow stripes. Yes? I did not see their soul, as I had no cause to." Easy though it would have been. "Though their eyes were certainly red. I met them in the coliseum before I left to explore the city. They were quite helpful. They did not seem to mind my presence overmuch."
How will Sans react to this, he wonders? The sad little attempt at intimidation, and yet he has already failed. Failed before the words even left his skull. There is something very Sans-like to that fact.
But he never was very good at protecting humans, now was he? At least the doctor's iteration was not.
His tone is neutral, his hands as controlled as ever, but there's a vicious joy twisting in his soul, and he hates it. Truly hates it, because he knows why it's there, and he did not used to be cruel. Distant, reserved, manipulative, he was never too proud to admit to his own faults. But never cruel. Not until after.
He hates it.
It does not matter.
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Guess that puts a nail in that ol' coffin, huh? Yeah. He's real pleased about that one. His smile more accurately approximates a grimace in that moment. The doc - well, if he didn't know any better (he does), he'd say he's leering right about now. He'd say he's enjoying this on some level.
Always could read people real well. Sometimes it's a blessing. Mostly it's just a point of irritation he wishes he didn't have to read all the damn time.
They didn't seem to mind his presence, he says. His hands almost curl into fists in his pockets, tips of phalanges pressing into bony palms, but he don't give the doc the satisfaction of looking away, and he don't let up for a second. Not gonna let the doc know, not for even an instant, that he might be gettin' to Sans.
He won't.
That ain't in the cards.
So he keeps his sockets locked onto his, and he keeps smiling as though nothing is wrong.
"Guess that makes everyone pretty lucky," he says, knowing that the doc, contrarian that he is, tends to hold a certain measure of distaste for concepts such as luck, lumping it in with fate or destiny. He'd call it a superstitious desire to impose some means of order or control on a life that utterly lacks it, or somethin' along those lines - tryin' to pretend a correlation exists to make it seem like there's some aspect that could, hypothetically, be influenced to alter the trajectory of things.
"Lemme give ya a bit of friendly advice, then." He closes one socket in a wink. The right one. "Maybe think of steerin' clear of 'em in the future, and any other kids you might find. Wouldn't want anyone to get hurt, would ya?"
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He has gotten better at this. Has immunized himself against the doctor, though that is perhaps an overdramatic way of putting it. Much as Sans claims that whatever his own doctor did to him is irrelevant, there is something very personal to all of this.
Luck, he calls it, and the doctor almost rolls his eyelights. But he does not move or make a sound. His hands are still.
They twitch at the next thing he says. The doctor bristles.
"Are you threatening me now, Sans? Is that what this has devolved into?"
There is a certain incredulity to his gestures.
"I have no ill intentions here whatsoever. I have been brought here against my will. This place is a curiosity, the people here of middling interest. What is it you think I am going to do? Attack them? Absorb their soul? Drive them mad with my mere presence? You underestimate the common mind's ability to shut out that which threatens its stability."
Though he is not a psychologist in any sense, nor does he particularly care if a few human children suffer a mental breakdown or two.
"More than that, you underestimate your pet humans. As you always have." He jabs a finger at Sans, perhaps a bit more sharply than he intended. "Years later and you have yet to excise that naive streak of yours."
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He has no idea what kind of wreck his skull is in right now. He has no idea what kind of wreck any of their minds are in. He can't have any idea. Such injuries don't hurt. They don't leave marks, and they can't be traced. And how d'you fix something that ain't even really there? What kinda specialist could possibly take a look inside and recognize the sheer carnage that must be there - the shattered memories, the fractured shards of times he can't remember. He knows why he disparages the doc, intellectually he knows why - but the specifics? Nah. He don't even know the specifics. He remembers the doc's steadfast refusal to quit, the way everything unspooled around him, but the specifics are, as always, lost.
The only real common thread there is that tingling, burning resentment. And emotions might not be rational, but when that's all you got to go off of -
Well, heck. Maybe he shouldn't tell the other Sans-es, right?
He almost bursts out laughing at that, his sockets drooping closed. Naive, is he? Heh. Reminds him of a conversation he had with a certain hedgehog, don't it? You're so naive, Shadow had spat, with next to no conceptualization of anything goin' on in that skull of his.
And look how well that turned out, right?
"They ain't my pets," he says shortly, letting the word curl out with more venom than is strictly necessary - matchin' the doc's rancor step for step. "They're my friends."
And he...huh. He actually feels all right sayin' it. About Frisk, about Chara, about Arya - they're friends. Weird friends, sure, but...friends. They talk about heavy stuff, and they watch each other's backs. He talks Chara down from an incipient panic. He tells Frisk he should'a been right by there from him. He sits down next to Arya and puts a hand on her shoulder as she loses herself, hacks up blood, scared, so goddamn scared but not wantin' to admit it.
They're friends.
That's new.
It's enough to give him the push he needs, to crack open his eyesockets with a vague, vindictive glint to his stare.
"You remember what those are, Doc?" says Sans, arching a supraorbital ridge with a smooth upward glide of bone. "Or were they all just a few too many attachments for ya?"
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my heart
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