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

[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.

[skelebro]

The cave lights up with an unholy blaze. Sans half-curls there on the ground, sockets screwed shut, his grin frozen in an agonized arch. He can feel the low charging hum of blasters vibrating the ground beneath his hands, the sharp, crackling smell of ozone as they fire off.

He's not real sure what happens next, but he don't feel the purple tick of KARMA leaching away Shadow's HP, so he's gonna assume that means he made it out okay. He pushes a skeletal hand to his head as he feels his left eyesocket crackle to life with a sparking, cerulean flame.

He can feel his magic latch onto the nearest SOUL that ain't his, and it's a SOUL that happens to be right behind him.

Ah. So that's where he went.
Ping.
The quiet chime of a SOUL being turned blue rings dully in his ear canals, applying the heavy weight of increased gravity to Shadow's SOUL, practically rootin' him to the ground.

[skelebro]

Fuck. Fuck. It's impossible to get any sorta handle on this - everything is sparkin' to life all at once without his knowledge or input or consent, and the collateral damage is just gonna be everyone who happens upon him.

"Don't move," Sans hisses out, the tremor in his low tone so subtle it's nearly imperceptible. "I'm not - I'm tryin' to stop this. You're gonna - "

He breaks off. A sine wave of blue bones have snapped into existence, scything through the ground directly for Shadow. God and he - he hasn't even called any of this into being. He hasn't conjured anything. It's simply manifesting without his say-so.

So, you know, that's goin' great.

"Don't move," he says again, twisting halfway around to train Shadow with an intent stare, his left socket crackling with a hellish amber light. "They won't hurt ya if you don't move. Just keep still. All right?"

[skelebro]

Sans doesn't have an answer for that. Why should he trust that? Well shit, 's not like Sans ever gave him a reason to. He don't make himself a very trustworthy person, just out of necessity. Out of necessity, out of habit, 'cause it's just plain easier to not risk openin' yourself up. If you never care, you never get hurt.

Maybe he cares more than he wants to admit to himself. But then he does shit like this, and his primary worry is just straight-up not killing the hedgehog because he doesn't want that blood and that LOVE on his hands.

The cold blue bones sluice harmlessly past him with that familiar shuddering chill, like bones bein' frosted over, and then he jolts back, releasing his gravitational hold on Shadow's SOUL with a sharp jerk.

"'S Confusion," he manages thickly. "'S not usually - can't usually - "

Can't usually do this, or just don't see the cause to? Yeah, it's the latter, pretty much entirely. His eyesocket fizzles out again and he can only hope to god it won't flame back to life at an inopportune moment. He don't feel drained out and dried yet, so all he can do is brace himself for whatever his magic decides to do next.

[skelebro]

Sans understands hate pretty well. He knows how to read into the subtleties of expression. He knows how to count the values and the flags and the minute shifts in facial muscle, the increasing shock and frustration on the human's face as they died to him, again and again and again, unwilling or unable to believe that he, utterly innocuous skeleton with barely any health or notable stats to speak of, merrily cracking his stupid jokes to the last, could possibly give them as much trouble as he did. And he did give 'em trouble. He gave them so much trouble they lost count, he and them both. Their burning outrage and cold-tinted fury softened into something slow and boiling beneath the surface with every failure, with every forcing of a return to that same moment in the gold-tiled hallway.

He understands hate. He understands rage. He sees it and knows it precisely for what it is. Ain't easy to really trace back the etiology, but he don't have to. He can guess well enough. It's for the same reason his roommates have struck that distance out between them. It's pretty glaringly obvious, and he could be wrong about that, but he doubts it. He's usually on the money with these sorts of things.

Shadow stands, and fumbles, trips and lands flatly on the ground. Evidently Confusion ain't just messin' with abilities of the preternatural variety, but of the musculoskeletal and dexterous variety as well. So that's just peachy.

The guy wants to get away from him, does he?

Well, Sans can help him with that. His magic wants an outlet, does it? He'll just have to give it one.

His left eyesocket spits to life with a sparking cyan glow, and Shadow's SOUL is blue again. Only this time, he ain't gettin' pinned to the ground, nah.

He's gettin' thrown across the length of the cave as his personal gravity switches to the wall farthest from Sans, carryin' Shadow across his very own x-axis.

Well he wanted to get away from Sans, didn't he?