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

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."

1/3

[skelebro]

Ushahin! That's the guy's name! See, now it's comin' to him 'cause he remembers how many damned syllables it is and how impossible it is to come up with a reasonably short and ridiculous-sounding nickname. Seriously, what's he gonna call him? Ush? Ha? Hin? None of those lend themselves particularly well to the nicknaming biz and -

And he is -

He's -
















Ah, fuck.

[skelebro]

It slams into him like - well, he's never actually seen a freight train in his life, much less been ran over by one, but if he was? He'd imagine it'd feel a little somethin' like this.

Hard. Intense. Immediate.

And so. Very. Painful.

It spills into his too-full skull before he's got any means of clawing it out and there is no end to it and even if it clamps shut for a moment he's havin' a lotta trouble comin' up with who he is and where he is and he peers dazedly at the ceiling and tries to fucking think.

[skelebro]

So. When the pain train has ceased and he's all well and good and back to himself, Sans blinks his eyesockets, hard. Once. Twice. Flexes his phalanges. Just kinda works the feeling back into himself. And that takes a little while, but he's - he gets there, all right, he's approaching some kinda equilibrium here, it's all good.

"Yeah," Sans says at last, low and raspy and bemused. "Yeah, I'd say so."

[ushahin]

"It hurts," he says simply. No other words are really needed. Sans got to experience that for a grand total of five minutes. Ushahin's been dealing with this all day. He hasn't experienced pain on this scale since he was young and still testing his powers out. Back then, it was easy to let himself just drown in the voices, forget where he was, only to emerge days later with no memory of the time in between.

His mind has a thin veneer of sanity to it, glue that holds him together, but right now, it's all melting away. What lies beneath is the darkness of insanity just waiting to engulf him and never let him go again. Fractured half-formed thoughts that spiral away into nothingness, memories dissolving until they're completely gone, and all that's left for him are thoughts that are never his own. That and pain, the constant poisonous friend that never leaves him. There's no one to pull the mad one back from the edge this time and he's falling.

Ushahin has very little that scares him anymore. Everything that he has ever feared has already come to pass. He's lost his home, his god, everyone he ever cared about. What else could he lose?

The answer is comically simple: his mind.

Already, he can feel himself slipping away piece by piece. "If you see anyone else...tell them to stay away." He'll hurt someone. That's one pattern that always repeats over and over again. He's the villain in his own story and always has been.

[skelebro]

It hurts, does it. Yeah, Sans would fucking well say so. Thanks. Thanks for that, Ushahin. He'd be more frustrated, outraged, scornful, if the emotion itself didn't take so much outta him on principle. He don't have it in him for anger. He just as it in him for the weary acceptance that, yep, this sure is his life now. This sure is his life, and his life is hell, and he's still reeling from that psychological hit he took.

He lies where he is, and doesn't move. Doesn't have the energy to move and, what's more, doesn't trust himself to get snapped off somewhere else at the slightest twitch of a fingerbone. Not that this would necessarily be such a bad thing but - yeah, he kinda don't want the hassle.

"Gee," Sans finally manages, resigned, staring dully at the ceiling because, yep, this is just...this is just his life now, "ya think?"

Maybe that ain't fair. He's havin' a lotta trouble focusing on fair right now, on account of the fact that he might've just thoroughly destroyed any hope of positive association with his former roommates. Nah, he's pretty sure he just definitely rendered things pretty much irreparable. Yeah. Sounds about right. Great.

"Seems everything's misbehavin' today," Sans says, wearily. "Best get used to it."

[ushahin]

"Stop thinking so loudly," he snaps, louder than Ushahin's voice ever gets. The tolerance he usually has for Sans' sarcasm right now is nil.

His aching fingers coming up to knead his temples, as if he can force the voices out by sheer force of will. Sans' emotional state, or lack thereof, is bleeding over into him. He's done something he regrets, something very bad. He can't see the specifics of it. That's too far out of Ushahin's tenuous grasp.

"It's all just a spider's web." His powers have always worked off the pain he feels. Now it's the other way around, the pain he feels caused directly by his powers. It's always been a delicate system. Now all that is gone and all he's left with is a hundred voices in his head. What a cruel cosmic joke this is. "One thread destroyed and the whole thing dissolves."

[skelebro]

"I'll make an effort," Sans retorts, who already has a dearth of energy where his thoughts are concerned and can't exactly force himself to think one way or another. His mind's about all he's got goin' for him, and he ain't about to relinquish that at anyone's behest.

Spider's web, he grasps faintly. Thread. Dissolves. Mixing metaphors, are we? All right, that's just where they are now. Dealing in abstraction because what is physical and immediate just ain't doin' it for either of 'em, looks like.

"Don't suppose you got some kinda radius," he says tiredly, honest to god not trying to turn this exchange into a horrible pun about skeletons but just kinda endin' up that way through habit alone. "Gettin' far away from people to make sure you don't end up hurtin' them or yourself, yeah?"

[ushahin]

Ushahin shudders in pain, a full-body one that leaves him trembling before he can collect himself enough to answer. It hurts so much. A lesser being would have died under the force. It was a tempting thought, though Ushahin knew better than anyone how strong his will was to live.

"Maybe if I put an entire continent between myself and everyone else, it might work," he replies sardonically. Ushahin has always been very proud of the amount of power he has, but right now, he wishes it were of a lesser degree. When he had been young, his powers were just as difficult to control, but his range had been significantly less than what it is nowadays.

[skelebro]

"All right," says Sans, reasonably. "Then I'd suggest maybe gettin' used to it, 'cause it ain't goin' away any time soon. Trust me on that."

Not that he's given Ushahin a lotta reason to trust him as of late. Or, uh, ever. But he's gettin' pretty damn used to the way things are goin' thus far, what with Confusion turnin' them all into walking, talking, ticking time bombs. But, uh, it's fine, really. It's baller. He loves it.

He's just gonna keep lyin' there. Don't mind him.

[ushahin]

Any other time, he would take Sans' blithe suggestion under consideration. But not when he feels as if his mind is about to drown in the current of a hundred voices, all strong and not letting up.

"Sans, you know that I consider you to be..." Well, friend is such a strong word, and he's loathe to put such a label on their complicated relationship. "...someone that tolerates me." That's more of a compliment than he's ever given Sans before.

His eyes snap fully open, awake and alert with the barest threads of sanity he's still clinging to. "But keep making idiotic suggestions like 'Get used to it' and I will lose what little good will I feel towards you." There's a low warning tone to his voice, the kind that promises an immense amount of pain if it's not immediately heeded.

[skelebro]

Someone that tolerates him. Oh, that's nice. Sans, uh. Well, he can't really bring himself to be overly bothered, truth be told. Everyone's got about as much control over their self-control as a coin does over which side it lands on. That is to say, none at all. Random chance. It's a hell of a thing.

So Ushahin can make all his fancy threats all he likes. It's pretty damn apparent that he won't have the means to follow up on them for a while yet.

He chuckles, the sound dragging out like stone ground over stone.

"All right," he says tiredly. "Well. Can't say I'm very well-versed in the psychic's manual."

[ushahin]

"You are of absolutely no help whatsoever," Ushahin says, sounding almost as tired as Sans. He'll find no solace here. He has to wonder if Sans is even capable of the feeling of compassion or if laziness outweighs all emotional states. He stands up, making no move to help the skeleton off the ground. "I suppose I shall see you once more when this madness ends."

He makes for the door of his house. He won't reach it, of course, but he won't realize that until he's all the way over by the clinic. Soon after that, he'll be drowning in a sea of voices, unable to care about finding his way back home until Confusion lifts the clouds from their minds.

[skelebro]

"Yep," says Sans, hazily, starin' idly at the patch of grayish ground directly in front of his sockets without really seein' it. "I'm sure I will."

He's, uh...not lookin' forward to it, to put it lightly. He almost says something else, but before he can - yep, the other guy's gone.

Well, good enough. Sans is just gonna lie here like a supremely bony lump and think about nothing for a little bit. Seems like a plan.