hadriel_logs | Event Log: Dead Ringers

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[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.

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.]

[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?

[... Why is he asking this. Shouldn't he know?

... maybe he was just too young. Please. Just let this be a big misunderstanding.]

So, uhm... t-their essence will live on, with, that thing that they loved. W-Why do you ask?

Wowie!! That's exactly right! See? You can actually manage to do something right, for once!

[He claps his hands - real nice to have hands, isn't it, Alphys? Would sprinkle some confetti, if she'd actually ever followed through on that hollow garbage-talk on building a confetti launcher. He could always settle for his real-self's dust, maybe, if anyone actually bothered to find it.

Ha. He already knows nobody did.]

Question two! Ready? When ASRIEL died at the hands of humankind, what did his dust land on? You'll have to think real hard and be mighty specific for this one - it's not good enough to just say "a garden!"

[Because he knows she'd just say that much, without thinking about what was in the garden, what he was carrying, without bothering to recall that she'd noted for herself how sticky golden flower seeds could be. Spend a few minutes in a flowerbed, and it's enough to get coated with the things, huh?]

[Haha, okay, no, this is something bigger.

But she thinks, really does, because she wants an answer for this and really, really isn't sure what she did wrong this time. What's the story, again? The monster who absorbed the human soul brings the body back. Falls in... the throne room? There's a garden there. But they were leaving in the first place because the human wanted to see the golden flowers, the flowers that only grew in their village. But then, were they the same flowers that were in Asgore's throne room? It's not possible. Unless they brought them back, somehow--

The seeds always stuck to her hands.

No. God, please, no. Not this. She can't have done this.

She steps back, shakily, hits a wall, can't keep moving. No. No no no no no no--]

It... n-no, it, it c-can't be. The vessel disappeared. It didn't... i-it didn't...

[The first golden flower, the seed on a coat, sprouted when it fell when the thing it carried in on went to dust, none of the testers responded because there was nothing to respond to, but essence, monsters could live on in essence, but this monster was combined with a human.

This monster's soul could have lived on. Just enough.

What had she done.]

There... I didn't, I d-didn't know, where the dust fell. I didn't know.

[Her words are light, breathless, and terrified.]

[The vessel. Ding ding ding! Again, he claps, and again, it's too loud, too sharp, a vicious bark of noise designed to elicit a flinch.]

"The flower from the surface." But you didn't know where the dust fell. Aren't you scientists supposed to be smart?

[Like he can buy an EXCUSE like that! What, flowers just crawl through the barrier totally on their own, unrelated to the being who went to the surface and back? Or maybe with his last few breaths, he just lobbed those seeds in ahead of him, so they'd stay nice and sparkly-clean when their shared body turned to nothing? Maybe he mailed them 6-8 weeks ahead of time!

There's nothing but seething contempt behind his smile.]

You know... at first, I cried out for Mommy and Daddy. I couldn't move my arms or legs, could I? I couldn't move at all. It was like I was trapped inside my own body. And for weeks and weeks, I hovered around each of them in turn. I let the king carry me around our empty, silent house in a stupid planter. I tried so hard to feel happy. To feel like I was home. To feel like I was loved, and I had someone I loved, too.

Nothing happened.

Can you imagine how that would feel, Alphys? To feel like a stranger in your own home? To completely lose the ability to connect to your own parents?

I couldn't stand it. I decided... that life wasn't worth living anymore. I had my family. I had my home. I had all my toys and books and all my favourite places. But it felt like I was viewing everything behind a dirty window. Like nothing could really reach me anymore.

And you know what? It's all because of you.

[She's shaking, down to her core, as he speaks. Feels like her SOUL is just going to crumble to pieces and she'll cease to exist right then and there. But that's too easy, isn't it? It was too easy for him. It was too easy because she wanted to do something nice for the King. Because she wanted to see a symbol of hope move forward from tragedy, because he always loved those golden flowers.

Because it would be like bringing his son back to him.

And she did.

But not good enough. Not in any way she should have. Not in the way she wanted.

Nothing quite goes the way she wanted.]

I didn't k-know. I j-just-- Asgore always loved t-those flowers, I thought, it would make h-him happy, I didn't know they were from-- f-from you, it-- it wasn't s-supposed to be that! It wasn't supposed to w-work that way!

[She feels like she might be crying. And here we are again, Alphys. Where you can't do anything right, where you just cry and beg forgiveness. Because that's where she is, now. Crying and begging forgiveness.]

I'm sorry, I didn't-- I didn't m-mean to do any of that. I wouldn't if I h-had known.

Event Log: Dead Ringers

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