Event Log: Dead Ringers

[hadrielmods]

Who: Everyone participating in the event!
What: The event log for the Dead Ringers event!
Where: All around the city
When: January 16th-January 25th
Warnings: Evil doubles, so we can assume manipulation, violence, murder, and maybe some nasty words

Everything seems normal on the morning of the 16th - actually, everything seems normal about the city for the entirety of this event. Nothing is strange, nothing is obviously wrong. Well, except that the population has mysteriously doubled, and the new residents each look exactly like one of the old residents. So weird! Definitely not ominous at all.

At least until your new double gets down to business. After all, their only goal is to ruin your life, and that can take any form. Smashing your favorite coffee cup? Telling your worst enemy they're right? Kissing someone else in front of your girlfriend? Brutally murdering you and then hiding your body in a closet so they can more effectively destroy your life? The possibilities are truly endless, and the only way to protect yourself is to kill your double first. They're not really open to negotiation, after all - but they sure might pretend to be in order to trick you.

So watch your back, and try to make sure that really is your best friend and not an evil clone masquerading as them. Boy, that would be awkward. If you can stick it out until January 25th, good for you! But if you didn't manage to and your double survives until the end - well, just as a final 'fuck you', there's a chance you'll come back to life and remember every awful thing your double did. Hey, at least that'll make it easier to fix, right?

► This log covers January 16th-January 25th.
► Feel free to make your own logs, as well
► Please tag headers of threads with content warnings where they apply
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!
► If your evil clone happens to take you out, please let us know here, and remember that you will not revive until the event is over.

Comments

"Asriel" / Your Best Friend

[youplayedyourself]

[A - overtaken by darkness]

[Finally... I was so tired of being a flower.

Are you there? It's me, your best friend!

ASRIEL DREEMURR.

And he keeps that shape so well, doesn't he? Looks just like a little child, down to the fuzzy little ears and the barest little pedicles - peduncles - of horns that were too new and too young to have properly sprouted. Only sometimes, there's something not quite right with his face. It seems too... mutable. Shifts too easily. Distorts into a blank, simple smiley face, into a hideous fanged maw, into a fanged beast with inky sclera and ruthless emptiness in its stare.

When you're empty inside, after all, becoming someone different is easy. Changing things around is the most effortless thing in the world! Because your compassion, your personality, your connections... they're all just an act, huh?

But he'll act. Oh boy, will he ever! He sits outside in a cozy little corner of the city ("cozy," like this miserable pit isn't a wretched unsafe dump) with his twee little crayons and his pad of paper, doodling his sweet innocent doodles like he's never done anything in his life but smile.]

Howdy! Wanna come play? I've got a good feeling that today's gonna be lots of fun.


[B - i will lodge under the boughs of a tree]

[The real Asriel is out of the way, and he couldn't be happier about that. Now he has free reign to show everyone the TRUE nature of this world, the ugly truth about the pasty little liar trying to be all honey and sweetness. The distortions come more easily now that there's less reason to hide them. Black slash creeping up his cheekbones when he smiles too wide, a laugh that's high-pitched and distorted and vile, claws that occasionally seem somehow too real as they go thorn-red and surge from his paws, white limbs losing their cohesion for a split-second, like the fur is nothing more than a thin coat draped over a seething mass of thorny vines.

Then blink, and it's gone. This is the Asriel everyone likes best. The one everyone prefers to see. All tiny and wearing his precious little sad, sweet smile. Just a little angel, giving you a honeyed look of concern.]

Golly, are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost!


[C - flowers alone host me tonight - Closed to Alphys]

[There's one person in particular he refuses to miss out on finding.

The brilliant Dr. Alphys.

It's only fair, after all, that she realizes what she did. She'd want to know the truth, wouldn't she? It would be awful if she were to get too complacent. Start thinking she can sweep her crimes under the rug. It's positively disgusting, the way she parades around the place right in front of Asriel. The one mistake that she'll never, ever own up to, and he just has to quietly swallow that knowledge down.

What an awful person she is, forcing a child to live like that.

It's only fair. It's the right thing to do. She'd got to know what she's done. Surely she'd thank him for it. No good person would be happier to force him to keep suffering in silence!]

Oh doctor...?

[He calls in a singsong voice, too chipper and bright for Asriel. Just right, however, for a soulless vessel.]

Where are you, doctor? You can't keep hiding in that gloomy basement of yours forever, hee hee!

b.

[skelebro]

[It's been a hell of a time. A hell of a...goddamn, he needs to find the sucker who's walking around with his face and shut him down, and quick. And he needs to find the kids, all three of 'em, before that sucker gets his phalanges on 'em. And he...

He's, uh. Well, the scientific term, he's pretty sure, is "about to mcfreakin' lose it." There's sweat beaded up on his skull and he's more than a little worn from nipping all over the damn city in search of the kids, the kids he knows.

He finds Asriel eventually. Or, uh...is it Asriel, or "Asriel"? 'Cause at this rate, he's not sure he trusts himself to figure it out. Asriel's the one of 'em he definitely knows the least. He looks at him wearily as he acts all chipper and bright, and that's...that probably ain't a good sign.]

Are, uh...

[Definitely not a good sign. Sans's sockets slip closed for a second before he gives his skull a shake and makes a noise that's almost a sigh, if he had the breath to pull it off.]

Yeah. Okay. You're the other one.

[youplayedyourself]

Boy, you caught on quick! Just like always, huh?

[He laughs, and it feels so good, because it's vicious and keening, a distorted scrape of sound raking against the ears. No point in bothering, really. Sans knows everything. Careless, stupid Asriel already let him find out a few things about him, and he has the Resets to prove it!

So, might as well just get to the point. Guys like him can just sense evil, somehow, and they don't believe in forgiveness once they've got it into their head that something's bad. Easier to just go ahead and admit you basically suck at being evil, or whatever, that empty little anomalies like you deserve to be pruned out of the garden.]

Yeah, just like good ol' Smiley Trashbag to know everything before the fun can even starts. Kids like us are guilty until proven innocent, after all, aren't we?

[skelebro]

[The voice that comes out of him is all...wrong. He ain't sure how to pin it down, or what to call it, but it's like nails scratching over bone, rasping across keratin with a high-pitched shrilling of two surfaces apposed. It don't sound right, and it don't sit in his ossicles very well at all.

Seems like the old "smile as though nothing is wrong" tactic is a real Dreemurr-esque trait, huh? 'Cause this kid is chirping and laughing as he bites out the words, and all Sans can do as he processes it, quietly, the warping wrongness of the pair of eyes boring into him, is stand there.

And take it.]

That ain't what anybody's saying, kid. But, uh. [That'd be his cue to chuckle, disarmingly, but he's too bone tired and he just can't quite manage it.] I don't really care.

Where's the real you?

[youplayedyourself]

The real me? Right. Of course. Don't think of this as really me, huh?

[Don't attach any of those imperfections. Just pick and choose which parts of him exist! Only hold onto the parts that did the right thing. Sure, Chara's not really the greatest person. Sure, Asgore's an old fool, he and Toriel are both dust a thousand times over. Sure, Frisk's just an IDIOT. But he didn't really say any of that. Just forget those parts!

His expression contorts again. Or... no, it really doesn't. It's just that the smug, mocking look on his face may have looked completely at home on a talking flower or an almighty god, but everyone knows the sweet little real him would never make a face like that.]

Boy, you really are stupid, aren't you? The real me was right in front of you, long before that simpering little toddler showed up in this place. Hilarious that someone who acts like he's wise to everything would be so easy to FOOL!

a

[somuchlove]

[They had been racing over the city by this point trying to find Frisk and Asriel as soon as they could. Chara knew that the doubles were harmful by this point and that there was one of their own. Neither of them should be subject to whatever it was like nor could probably handle it. They were LV 20 and the only way to get 'worse' from there was to go up.

ERASE. Nobody besides Chara needed that.

By the time they hear Asriel call out to them, Chara is out of breath from running so much. Give them a second "buddy".]

Asriel? Are you...alright?

[youplayedyourself]

[Wowie, look at 'em go! They're really working up a sweat, huh? It's actually kind of embarrassing. To think they'd be struggling so hard when it's already futile!

Guess that's determination for you, huh?]

Gosh, Chara, were you looking for me...?

That's new, isn't it?

[He wears that sweet, sad, heartful little smile of his, but it's - it's a little bit off. Flattened, simplified, losing its fangs and big goatlike eyes to almost imitate Chara's features. Almost just a cartoonish smiley face.

Almost the kind of face a flower might wear.]

But I'm fine, you know. I'm used to it! "Mommy, Daddy, help me!"

"Chara! Where are you? Come back, Chara, please!"

[That smile starts to distort, take those familiar boss-monster features on again.]

"Hope will bring them back, right? They'll come home if I just don't doubt them, won't they? They wouldn't leave me alone all over again!"

But... hee hee...

But nobody came, right?

[somuchlove]

[Once upon a time, a kid covered in dust walked into a certain Home.

There, they were greeted by a flower who told them a little story as they searched for the keys to a padlock. About how he called for help but nobody came. How he was certain it was his best friend even though it wasn't Chara's face that stared back at him.

But they remember how terrified that flower ended up being of them.

Realization is like a punch to the gut. But it's obvious now that this is not Asriel, nor the Flowey that Chara remembers from the Underground. His...double, then?

* You equip the Real Knife.

Their next words hiss out, coated in red.]

Where is he?

[They are not going to play your game.]

[youplayedyourself]

You mean you don't know?

[It's a practiced, effortless gesture: shrug, wink one eye shut, shake your head condescendingly. Almost like he's the idealized, all-powerful version of himself again.]

The human attacked him with everything they had. He was struck with blow after blow. ASRIEL had the power to destroy them. But... ASRIEL did not fight back. ASRIEL smiled, and walked away.

Wounded, ASRIEL stumbled home. He entered the castle and collapsed. His dust spread across the garden.

[Sound familiar?]

But at LV 20... I know how you think. This is probably boring you, isn't it? Heard this already. Can't wait to skip it. At LV 20, a thing like you isn't even CAPABLE of caring. You're probably relieved, in fact, aren't you? One more burden out of your hair.

c, FEED ME THE PAIN SALT!!!!!!

[sciencelizard]

[Haha, well, this event has been going. Wrong.

Then again, 'wrong' doesn't really cover 'chasing after a psychotic double who is intent on telling everyone that you created zombies out of living people', but boy, does she not have a better word for it! She's more strung-out than she's ever been, she's tired, and there's just too much ground to cover.

Of course... it seems like some of that coverage might've found her first.

The voice shakes her to her core. Where does she know it from? What is she forgetting?

Her hands won't stay still.]

... A-Asriel? Is th...that you?

:9

[youplayedyourself]

[And there she is! The woman of the hour! The heroine whose scientific advances got everyone out of the underground!

Except that's not really how all that clueless fumbling with DT worked out, is it?]

Gosh, Alphys... you mean to say you can't even recognize your greatest creation?

[How embarrassing for her! This scientist didn't build anything as fancy for useful as the last one did, and yet she's somehow managed to erase her results from her memory! Well, maybe she just needs a spoiler or two to get the gears turning.]

Hey, you like quizzes, don't you? Maybe you'd like to help me out with one.

[sciencelizard]

Greatest... w-what?

[Okay, so, maybe not Asriel. He's never spoken anything like this.

But the cadence sounds familiar. The vocal patterns.]

I, uhm... s-sure! What do you, uhm, have in mind...?

[Just play along. She's probably just freaking out for nothing.]

[youplayedyourself]

[He ignores her discomfort. It's not worth his attention. Barely even acknowledges what she's saying, in fact. Maybe this will remind her of Mettaton! He was pretty great at ignoring her once she got annoying, at steamrollering right over her self-serving selfish little schemes for his own ends.]

Question one! Why do we spread a monster's dust over the things they love most when they die?

B.

[circumitus]

[At one point, Rey would have chalked up what she had seen to be just a flicker of a memory. Images sent to her by one of the "ghosts" in her head. She remembers things in a flash sometimes.

[Seeing that she has had no such memories of a young goat-person other than the Rey of the present, she can hazard a guess that this is real. Not just something that one of her many selves is forcing her to see.

[So she graces "Asriel's" question with a glower, despite his sweet face.]

No. Am pretty familiar with ghosts. And that wasn't it.

[By now she has sensed something amiss with people. Many of them not acting like themselves. This might be no different.]

[youplayedyourself]

No? Gosh, you've got a pretty scary look on your face. Did I do something bad...?

[He smiles, puts on that simpering, dewy-eyed sad look of his. Like he's willing to suffer nobly, willing to apologize even for things he didn't do, like he's so very good that nobody could possibly ever connect him to all the dust and blood that's nourished his roots.]

I just wanted to play. Everyone's looking so sad lately! I should be doing something to turn all those frowns upside down, right?

[circumitus]

[Rey neither knows nor has she spent enough time with Asriel to tell the difference between what is normal behavior for him. But seeing that all too many people have lost their damned minds around here, and considering what she saw, one can only make an educated guess.]

And how would you plan to do that?

[youplayedyourself]

Why, by spreading a little LOVE, of course!

[He beams, pulling on another of those expressions that are more at home on an entirely different face. Winks, sticks his tongue out, practically lets a whimsical little star float out of him like he's just a walking cartoon character.]

Would you like some LOVE, too? I bet you've already got plenty, but there's no such thing as too much!

b.

[save_theworld]

[There's a photograph burning a hole in their pocket. It's not actually burning, but it feels like it is- through their clothes, into their hip. Deeper. Deeper still.

Frisk's supposed to be doing something, they know. But it's all just white noise. It's white noise, like Chara had set off a bomb, and everything hasn't sunk back into place, yet. They don't know what they feel, don't know- like they're two steps off from where they should be, two steps out of tune from where they are.

Alphys. Chara. Asriel. He speaks to them so softly, and they blink, see the world blur. Don't dare to get closer as they(?) reach up to scrub at their eyes.]

Asriel? No. No, I'm not-

[Scrub harder. Harder. Gotta be able to feel it.]

Are you...you?

[youplayedyourself]

[Aw, shucks! Poor Frisk is looking kinda worse for wear, huh?

Boy, he sure knows what the real him would do. He'd recognize the wide blankness of a stare, the ineffectual blinking like they're trying to shake off some kind of dazzling blindness, the sort of clumsiness that suggests maybe a limb's fallen asleep or the gesture is purely automatic or they don't entirely realize where they're going. He would remember letting Chara play with his paws, telling them to focus on the texture of the fur or the way the little pink pads yielded under gentle prodding. He would remember being unable to feel his arms or legs, being unable to feel anything at all, feeling so numb and small in a body that didn't answer his will to nervously tug his ears or hug his knees to his chest. He would remember reset after reset, and wondering if he really did have an impossible empty existence with an impossible empty power, or if this was all... if none of it was even real.

He would remember losing the concept of time utterly. How long had he stood there, petals bowed, surrounded by sunshine and pollen and golden flowers?

What a shame, then, that he isn't really himself.]

Of course I am, Frisk. It's me!

[And just like he knows a good little boy would, he holds out his paws.]

You look... you don't look okay, Frisk. Here, hold onto me. Breathe, okay? I'm here. I can help you out.

[save_theworld]

[Breathe.

It sounds so simple. And yet Frisk's inhale is shaky, almost snatching up his paws as they let their breath back out in a rush, too relieved at the idea of not having to focus on much else but the softness of his paws. Too glad to contemplate if this is, perhaps, crossing lines, blurring the divide between themself and another child, someone who holds his hands and shakes and cries and asks him if it's you.

Still just you, Frisk.]

Thanks. [At the very least, they can let him know they appreciate it; try for a smile that they really aren't that good at yet, not in comparison to him and Chara. Work in progress, like always.] Are you okay?

[youplayedyourself]

Of course I am. I'm more worried about you. You look like you've just been through something awful!

[Ha. Isn't that how they always look? But it wouldn't do to start chortling about that. Good little boys don't find irony funny. Good little boys keep offering their little white paws, because only good little boys deserve to have arms and legs instead of roots!]

Just... take a deep breath. You don't have to rush yourself. You can just... take a little break. I'll hold on as long as you need to.

But... if you think it will help, Frisk, you can talk about it. I'll listen, I promise.

A - Golly gosh I am so excited for AM to meet his plant-sona

[godofthemachine]

[By now, AM has gotten a better hold of this body, so he doesn't look entirely out of place when he moves about. Yes, he still has a very stiff gait, and the way he walks suggests that perhaps he suffered an injury at one point. No - it's just that someone who has never walked before finds it difficult to get the mechanics down.

Another thing he has sort of gotten used to is that there are sentient beings here that aren't human. (If that's the case, then why did he arrive in this disgusting fleshy body?)

As he's walking back to the apartment he's chosen as his temporary "home", a strange goatlike child calls to him. In all but appearance, it looks like a normal kid with some crayons and paper. And because it looks and acts enough like a human, AM has nothing but disgust for it. But he has to blend in, can't attract any negative attention... So he takes a few steps over to the child.

Try and blend in as he may, he still doesn't have a good hold over his facial expressions, so his lips are in a straight line, clearly annoyed to be interrupted.]

Play? And how do we play?

original the character donut steel

[youplayedyourself]

[Well, shucks. This doesn't look like the kind of person who'll play along for very long at all. One of those typical surface humans, probably. Guess that means he'd better not drag the saccharine act out for too long, huh?]

Golly, you don't know how we play in the underground? It's easy as pie! Don't worry, I'll show you.

See, where I come from, we play using these little white... "friendliness pellets." Little bits of magic stemming from the very fabric of our being! The best way to become friends with each other is to share these pellets, by collecting up as many as you can.

[godofthemachine]

[Wow, this child seems overly saccharine. Too saccharine. It's just a child, so AM just assumes that he's just incredibly naïve. He's just lost in his useless imagination, playing pretend and driveling on about "magic".

But AM has little need to entertain the whims of a child, unless his parent is around. Fine. He'll play along as best he can. Blend in and all, right? Not that he can get his face to contort into anything that even resembles sympathy or happiness at the moment. Nothing other than mere annoyance.]

Fine. Show me these pellets.

[youplayedyourself]

Boy! I thought you'd never ask!

[The smile on his face is exactly the sort of childish delight you'd expect from someone who's just been asked what updog is. He summons a ring of friendliness pellets around AM, letting the little oblong shapes spin in place for a moment.]

Ready? Here goes! Collect as many as you can, okay?

[It's practiced and effortless, the way he sends the circle of bullets closing in. He's done this countless times before, after all. What's it matter if the target's a little different than usual this time around?]