entrancelogs | + Trick or treat till the neighbors gonna die of fright!

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+ Trick or treat till the neighbors gonna die of fright! | OPEN +

Who: EVERYONE (if they want to live)
Where: EVERYWHERE (inside the mansion, knocking on doors)
When: 6/24 - 6/27
Rating: PG-13?
Summary: The Summerween Trickster has made his decree - Trick or treat...or die! This is a mingle log for Trick-or-Treating!
The Story:

On the morning of the 24th, everyone will find that the mansion was inexplicably decorated for Halloween...sort of. The idea behind the decorations is mostly the same, except that every jack-o-lantern is made out of a watermelon instead of a pumpkin. No, this is SUMMERWEEN.

For the first day it will be harmless enough, just a change in décor and a little spooky summer fun. However, by the second day there will be sightings of the Summerween Trickster, a creepy fellow made entirely out of unpopular loser candy, and he is not happy. In the entrance hall, there will be a giant jack-o-melon container with a counter and a count-down clock ticking away to the end of the event.

Your job, Wonderland, is to trick-or-treat for your lives. You have until the end of the event to deliver one million pieces of candy to the jack-o-melon before the end of the event, to appease the Summerween Trickster.

What was that? You'll just sit this out and wait for the event to end? I wouldn't do that if I were you. You see, the Summerween Trickster could be lurking around any corner. If he catches someone not fully embracing the spirit of Summerween (refusing to trick or treat, not wearing a costume, etc), they will not survive the experience. The Trickster will kill them and swallow them whole, making them part of his horrible loser candy body.

More details about trick or treating can be found here. This is a mingle post for trick-or-treating, if you'd rather use this than make a post! [Brackets] or prose are both welcome.

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Well, they both know that's not true. No one subsists entirely off determination, not even the Amalgamates. But Frisk doesn't press the point. Today's a day for fun, not arguments regarding the nature of their existence.

Frisk frowns, shrugging their shoulders.

"Because we can, we have to?" They feel a little guilty regurgitating those words again, but it's the thing that springs to their mind most easily. They can, and therefore they should? But then again, it's not...wrong, exactly. They have the power to save people from a lot of fear and potential death. They can solve those problems, and help people with little cost to themselves.

So they turn instead to what else Chara said, knocking on the next door and catching a pair of peanut butter cups neatly in their bag. "I can't SAVE unless I feel determined. You had to give yourself a minute to make your SAVE just now, right?"

"I suppose," Chara answers, reluctantly. "But I had to push back against your SAVE. You'd made one only a few minutes ago, right?"

Perhaps it's paradoxical. A tautology. Because they're determined, they have the power to force change. Because they have the power to force change, Chara can make themselves be determined. Is this just another aspect of being a chameleon? Something more insidious and deeply-rooted than that? Mistrusting what you feel. Forcing yourself to feel. To keep going, even when you don't really have it in you. Being nothing more than your function. Your power.

But... "It seems easy to me. If I were not up against a SOUL like yours, I can't imagine it being hard at all," they reply breezily. "You try a SAVE this time, then. Let's see if my SAVE is a deterrent, or if it's your own self you're pushing against."

"I...guess." Frisk looks at their hands, flexing the fingers open and shut in a fist and out again. Reaching out and forming a SAVE. Sometimes they showed up at different points. Sometimes they only appeared after a monster had spoken to them, threatened them, told them what was to come, and they felt themselves filling with determination.

Synthetic, organic, or what? It's not just a feeling, is it?

"I just remember the last time we...SAVED over each other?" Loathe as they are to bring up memories of that confrontation, it is relevant. "I couldn't SAVE after you did. You being able to do that, it - it wiped away all my determination, at least for right then. It wasn't easy anymore."

It's never easy to SAVE over Frisk. They... decline to say so out loud, however. Same principle that pried control over SAVEs from Flowey, right? There's less of Chara than there is of Frisk, so that whole SOUL produces more determination. Unless... unless they focus? The... soul equivalent of an adrenaline rush letting someone pull a superhuman act of strength off?

But if that's the case... if it's just a short-term fluke, then why did it hinder Frisk's ability?

Funny. All this time, and they only have even more questions about their own abilities.

"Correlation or causation, I wonder. Was it the SAVE itself? Or was my creepy face just that effective?" It really had only gotten better after they'd been buried, forgotten, hollowed-out, hadn't it? They're not going to dismiss the argument itself, or the powerful, intimidating momentum Chara's capable of gathering behind themself.

"Your face isn't creepy," says Frisk absently, fingering the ends of their wire-and-feather wings. "Even when you do that thing with the gunk and stuff."

But Chara did ask, so they might as well experiment. Frisk breathes in, shuts their eyes. Opens their hand again. Move in front of the next door, and before knocking upon the request for treats rather than tricks, fill with determination.

And then there's the warm glow, and it's done.

"I needed a minute to do it just then, too," they say, head to one side. Maybe that's just them. Maybe they're just...sentimental, maybe. Well, they are, they already knew that. But maybe they're more sentimental than they necessarily have to be?

Still doesn't feel clear enough. Was it emotional... how would they describe it? Emotional static interfering? Just the nature of two people trying to maintain simultaneous SAVE files? Is it hard for Frisk just because there's a SAVE? Is it hard because everything that's been happening has knocked their baseline down several notches?

How would they even differentiate? Objectively measure it? How does a person separate emotion from their existence?

...Ha. That's an easy answer, isn't it? LOVE.

Not the kind of answer that lends itself to casual experimenting, though, is it? No, they're thinking in tangents they really shouldn't be.

"Maybe the nature of our SAVEs comes from something different." A completely wild guess. Frisk always had a reason, from the small and silly to the heavy sense of looming dread. Well... almost always. Their save points were silent sometimes. New Home. The True Lab. For Chara...

"* Determination." Spoken, not willed. The red voice. A countdown, sometimes, but it was never the reason. It was numbers. Objectives. Serving their partner willingly and doggedly. Making it easier to finish the job. Not a cause, not a reason, not a feeling. A matter of because you can, you have to. No room for "don't want to" or "why should I" or "don't feel up to it." Become what is necessary, right?

Or are they just telling themselves that to feel like they're strong?

"Maybe the two of us messing around on our own is nowhere near enough to reach any concrete conclusions," they admit, shrug. Don't even try to push another SAVE over top of Frisk's.

"...How do you think creating a SAVE looked for Asriel?" They mumble, and immediately regret so much as uttering his name out loud.

They suppose they could always ask Alphys, but...DT wasn't really her area to start with, was it? Human SOULs were such a rare thing in the Underground that their nature seemed to be largely unknown. Mysterious variables, simply necessities for achieving freedom for monsterkind. Aside from Alphys, who would have devoted any undue time to studying how they worked?

And two human SOULs in one vessel...aside from the memory of a hideous, many-fractalled thing blossoming from the dark to loom at them with bifurcated jaws and technicolor eyes, that's the sort of thing that's unheard of. Even if they hadn't absorbed someone's SOUL intentionally, Chara was still sort of riding along with them. Imbuing them with a determination to match Frisk's. Obfuscating their name until it was nothing but a streak in the dust.

"I don't know," says Frisk quietly. Somehow it feels safer to say it softly, like that may be less upsetting. "He didn't tell us how he made the SAVE, just how he...got back to it."

Attempting to reach that power, the power to ERASE. But then bringing himself back from that brink of death, over and over. Always, simply to see what would happen.

Why did they bring him up? Why can't they just wipe that name from their mind, obliterate it and all the weight it carries, bury his name like the Underground buried theirs? They don't want to talk about him. They don't want to think about him.

They think about him anyways.

Kind to a fault, so eager to please that he'd trip over himself to do it. A bright, vivacious sense of mischief and curiosity. The kind of kid who might be too soft and polite to ask "why" until your patience frays completely, but who would wonder and wonder all the same, probably. Would pick the very world apart looking for something to feed his endless appetite for learning, discovering, seeing something new.

No way his save points would be silent, they decide.

No way he could ever be the kind of person who would lose that fascinated, eager zest for life, no way he could be the kind of person who would follow in their footsteps, who would... who would succeed at it, too.

Ha, ha.

That's not funny.

They go quiet. Start parroting again, even if not intentionally. Grip that stupid toy pitchfork like Asgore held his trident. Head bowed, grip as weary and reluctant as if the weapon was unfathomably heavy. They don't want to talk about it. They don't.

You brought it up, Chara. You're the one who did this to yourself, pal. Already started down that path, so backing out would be weakness. Can't waver. Commit. "If you and I can both still SAVE... do you suppose he can, too?"

A stupid question. No reason he couldn't. But they have to keep going, right?

Chara goes silent. "Dead" silent, and that's a bad joke that they're ashamed they even thought of. There's always that patina of quiet when it comes to Asriel and his name and all his associations, because...it's Asriel. It's the kid Chara sacrificed everything for, the child who tore the world apart at the seams in order to get his best friend back, only to realize that they were long since dead and buried, nothing more than a wisp of a memory riding piggyback on another human's shoulders.

Frisk doesn't know what to say. They let the conversation tide into silence until Chara speaks again, and then they still don't know what to say.

"I...don't know," they mutter thoughtfully. "We're human, so I think that's why we can keep doing...what we do. But he could only SAVE when he was, when he had the SOULs. Otherwise our determination, it was..."

* Somehow, it's even greater than mine!

"I guess we could ask?" Frisk offers weakly.

"No," Chara immediately blurts, as rapid and reflexive as yanking away from touching a hot stove. Sidequest rejected. Not ready to another one-way conversation in the quiet blackness after Asgore falls and the anomaly slips outside the barrier, not ready for the most painful one-way conversation after Asgore survives and everyone can go free. Not ready for him to stand over their grave and pass their final judgment. Not ready for letters slipped under the door and cute fun dates that turn out absolutely perfectly in the end or conversations over empty plates in a deserted restaurant.

This was a mistake, they think.

Can't go a single night just... ignoring the problems, letting things be happy. One wrong thought, one emotion, and it all starts to seep in. The real plan the royal family had in mind for the human in their midst. Asgore's tears in a crowded attic. Asriel. Asriel almost hurt himself. Frisk and locks and scissors.

They smile. Push back against the rushing tide of feelings and regrets and problems. They're strong. Strong enough to shove it all out of sight. Just be normal. Just have fun. You remember fun, Chara, don't you?

"He's going as his stupid OC," they blurt, even if the Absolute God of Hyperdeath isn't stupid at all. It's a cool OC. The coolest. "Embarrassing, right? It's hilarious!"

Okay, never mind. Bad suggestion. Frisk has studiously avoided bringing up anything of the sort to Asriel, partially out of fear and partially because it's doubtful he'd want to talk about it anyway. If they're going to talk about it, he should be the one to bring it up, shouldn't he? No point in prying.

So Chara changes the subject. Frisk lets them. Tries to laugh, even if it sounds forced.

"I saw that video he put up." A bit overkill, they think, but...he's having fun, and it was for Asgore's sake, if what he said held any water. "Little less scary once you know who he is. Pity he can't do all those flashy rainbows!"

Or can he? They...didn't ask. But anyway, it's a costume. Meaning that's not who he is at his core, which is the most important thing.

"...He was scary?"

The question sort of flops out of them before they can think it over. Can't flatten the surprise out of it, can't put a mocking giggle behind the syllables. Asriel...? Scary? Was that...

They reacted, they know that. Nothing they saw in any of the other timelines turned their voice into the jerky, hesitant letters of "It's a voice you've never heard before." Their words shook in front of him, turned the more-or-less mundane warning of "Asriel prepares SHOCKER BREAKER" into something that quivered. They may have been empty, but something was there. Something of their own... or was that Frisk's fear?

Ha. The blurred lines are back again, huh? But... Asriel...? Scary...?

"I mean, a little?" They said something wrong, didn't they. Frisk's shoulders shrink a little bit. "I think 'cause I wasn't expecting it the first time. And 'cause he was so strong and I was just...me."

Just a human with someone else's memories and the shreds of someone else's consciousness, picking up the pieces of someone else's...

Well, anyway. They were just a human, and Asriel was this - this Absolute God of Hyperdeath. Invincible, infinite. What chance could they have stood against him, at least at first?

They know they should be laughing. Making fun, because what kind of baby lets themselves be scared? But they only lapse into... into baffled silence, maybe? How do they even feel about this?

They... were they scared, too? Were they even capable of fear, empty as they were? He was empty, and he was capable of it, so they must have been. But... they hurt him first. They're the scary one. So scary, the words please don't kill me loom ominously in their future. If they reach that level of horrible, if he's afraid of them, then how could they be scared of him? Asriel's the good one. Asriel would rather die than hurt anyone.

The memory of impaling thorns and circles of friendliness pellets and prismatic shots cracking a SOUL in pieces looms, claws its way up their spine. They were afraid? They... might have been thinking please don't kill me too?

"Just me, huh?" Chara echoes, and finally finds their laugh again. Just me. The anomaly. Who wasn't really just me, but just us, right? The unkillable, unstoppable entity. The only one who is judged, because they're the one with absolute power over who lives and who dies in their timeline. A human with the potential within them to dust a monster in a single blow. Or were they just a kid, one with 20 frail HP and nothing but a stolen locket and dagger? It's not possible to be all-powerful and fragile at the same time, right? Is it?

"This is... strange to think about," they admit. They think they're... confused? Trying to look back and actually process the experience... it's... hm.

Just me. Well, no. Not really a me, more of an us, and Frisk wishes they hadn't let their tongue slip like that. Fortunately Chara seems more interested in considering it, the way things happened. The whole world is ending.

Abruptly, Frisk feels horribly out of place with their stupid fake wings and fake halo and fake harp. They tug at them, almost tearing them off, but think better of it - Summerween might interpret that the wrong way.

"I shouldn't be wearing these," they mutter. "I was never the angel. Asriel was."

No matter what they did, the Underground never truly went empty, did it? They could never eradicate everyone, just as they could never be the one to free everyone. No, that title would always be Asriel's. The hero that no one even knows about back home, because it was just white light and Lost Souls and unremembered murmurs and shaking words, and then they were back to where they were, with the barrier broken and monsters free. And Frisk, Frisk gets the credit, of course, even if they've done nothing to deserve it in the slightest.

...They thought they might have been the angel once, too. They'd seen the surface. The future of humans and monsters, everyone had called them. The only SOUL with the potential to cross the barrier, to seek out the power to take it down. But they were never the angel. Asriel was. They were the one who took him to the surface, that's all. The one who got the angel shot down.

Unlike Frisk, they're feeling right at home in their costume. What sort of being, after all, kills angels? What sort of being gets struck down by an angel, again and again and again, without a hint of mercy or hesitation? Pretty obvious answer, isn't it?

They cant their head to one side. Consider Frisk, for a moment. No point denying Asriel was the angel. He was. That's a fact. So... what's the right answer here?

After a moment, Chara twists. Frees the spaded tail clipped to their waist. Holds it out. "Wanna be both?" They offer. Like it makes any difference at all. "I'm glad you're not really an angel," they add, sort of falteringly. They're pretty sure that the actual good answer here is "yes, you are an angel," to remind Frisk that they're the good one, that they've always been the good one. Pretty sure that maybe they're encouraging something that they... shouldn't? Planting a seed of something Chara-ish, and therefore of something evil and poisonous?

"Angels judge mortals, and find them sinful," Chara mumbles. "Angels won't trust demons. Angels are... are kinda insufferable, because they're always just well-behaved and innocent and boring."

They're not sure if they're insulting the blue heck out of Asriel, or trying to speak in grander, more metaphorical tones. Either way, that's... kind of mean, isn't it? They really are bad at this. They redden, turn their face away.

And then Chara does things like this, regularly. Sees Frisk in pain or even just emotional discomfort, and plainly doesn't like it. They hold out their tail, and the absurdity of the gesture prompts a startled blink from Frisk, as they try to wrap their mind around it. An angel with a devil's tail. What does that make them, one-eighth demon? Purely in the vein of the costumes, of course.

How can insist that there's nothing good about them when they do things like this, even if they're embarrassed and shy and clumsy about it? The intent is there. That's always enough.

"You sound like you know a lot about them," says Frisk, and then they fuss about with the halo until they get it unpinned from their hair, and hold it out in turn. There. Now they can both be mismatched. "And anyway, it doesn't matter, right? We dressed up as what we weren't."

So Frisk is no angel - which they knew - but that also means Chara's no demon! Ha-ha, it goes both ways!

Slander and trickery. Chara looks positively scandalized by the mere suggestion! "Asriel gets to be a god for this event, so I get to be a demon. And he really was Hyperdeath, so..." There. Airtight logic. QED. Argument: super totally won.

They kind of want to slap that halo onto the ground, or bend it completely out of shape with their bare hands, or hurl it like a frisbee down the hall. They know it would ruin things. Would just kill any modest little amount of success their fumbling words actually had. But... it's tempting. There's not a single thing even slightly angelic about them! But... just let tonight not have problems, right? It'd take forever for Frisk to get the stupid thing pinned back up into their hair, anyway.

So Chara, begrudging reluctance etched into every inch of them, takes the halo and tosses it haphazardly over one of their plastic horns. They hope it falls off. "Don't get ideas. I'm only taking this because it's... a war trophy," they decide. "And I could probably throw it at people." If they can't be a demon, surely they can be Xena, warrior princess.

Edited 2016-07-02 21:51 (UTC)

"He tried to be." Frisk laughs, clipping on the tail as their halo dangles off of one of Chara's horns. Now that they know him and who he is, his title and appearance is far less intimidating. Especially after that little network post he made.

If they looked ridiculous before, they probably look even weirder now, but Frisk doesn't care. They get a box of gumdrops from the next door, so evidently the mansion has no problem with their minor costume switch.

And then Frisk SAVEs, just to make sure their progress doesn't get rewound.

"These are our SAVEstates now," they say sagely. "It is law."

Alas! No take-backsies!

"I guess now we're... a pair of anvils?" They glance over, smile brightly. "Or maybe not. I don't want to make the mood too heavy." Ha, because... yeah. You get it.

They settle into silence again, just for a bit. Just long enough to drift to the next door, get a handful of the little five-cent bubblegum with the unfunny comics. "He's not scary anymore," they finally say, glancing over at Frisk. He's just sweet and silly, just a kid playing pretend, right? The frightening parts weren't really him. He's just someone who was their friend for a little while.

"...None of them are scary anymore," they add, still watching Frisk.

Frisk rolls their eyes at the pun, because it feels rote, even if it is kind of funny. Their puns always have that groanworthy quality, the same kind that Sans's does. And here they think they aren't very alike. Frisk follows them to the next door, lapsing into wordless tagging along in the absence of finding anything to say.

"No," they say at last. "Not even when they try to be. I guess we just know them too well for that."

Even when his expression morphs and the little wisps of Flowey start to creep through...they know it's not him. Not really. He might not be so forgiving for himself, but it's the truth.

Again, silence. Get to know them well enough, and they aren't scary. Aren't threatening. They're friends. They care about Frisk. Even if they've all killed Frisk, all hurt Frisk, all tried to peel the SOUL out of their body. That potential is outweighed by the capacity for love within them, right?

The question lurks on the back of their tongue. Please don't kill me presses in on their consciousness, crawls down their back, weighs on their neck. They want to ask. They do.

"Then why is Asriel still afraid of me?"

They don't ask. They think they know. It's different when it's Chara, right? Anomaly. Something not quite human, but not a monster. Something that different rules apply to. Something... that maybe doesn't have a capacity for love inside of it at all.

Don't want to make the mood too heavy, right? Badum-tssht.

"You've never been scary," they announce instead. "Not to me, anyway. Too much of a crybaby."

That gets a proper laugh out of Frisk as they shake their head. They can only imagine monsters felt different. The knowledge that the child roaming unchecked through the Undergound was a human seemed to fill different monsters with regret, or shame, or fear, or outrage. Many didn't anticipate them being human at all.

"I guess I can say I'm grateful for that," says Frisk, shaking their head. The next door yields nothing but a few fluttering bursts of confetti, which isn't candy, but isn't worth enough for a LOAD, they decide. "I think I was scary to a lot of monsters. But I like it better when we're all friends instead."

With a grin in Chara's direction, because that includes them, obviously.

A grin that they slap down to the ground. Still don't trust. Easier to not hope, especially when you already know that not a single happy ending has room for you in it. But they're learning. Starting to get clever again. Exploding isn't the only option. They learned to stay quiet and smile so well, before they grew sick of it, and a smile gets you places. You can slap an idea down quietly, acceptably, without ruining it for everyone.

And maybe for now, just not exploding counts for something, right?

"Yeah, you would," they snort. "A crybaby and a cornball. You must really be loving it here, then. Not a single death has been your fault, and there's nothing left for everyone to do but learn how to get along, right?" No barrier to break, and plenty of humans milling around to make it plenty clear that introducing yourself with magic is actually kind of ouchy and unpleasant!

"But that just makes things more interesting!" They can't guess any of what's going to happen, and isn't that neat? It's terrifying too, but the power of the SAVE is enough to draw them back from most of their terror. "I'm glad we're here! 'Cause otherwise, I wouldn't've gotten to know you the way I do now!"

It's not just a corny thing they're saying to make themselves feel better, or to make Chara feel like they're not constantly impeding on Frisk's happiness - it's a genuine emotion, they realize as they say it. They're happy they know Chara now, and they don't want to go back to just being two voices in one body. They want this to be...this. Forever.

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SAVE 4.0

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SAVE 5.0

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