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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They know the feeling. How long will it last? How long until everyone figures out you aren't human, you're just pretending to be one? How long until they're bored with you because you've stopped being unpredictable, or they've gotten tired of you because you still aren't fixed yet? How long until you slip up, wreck everything, use buttercups instead of cups of butter? Makes so much more sense to skip right to the inevitable conclusion. Don't waste hope on puzzles and stories that don't even need to be resolved. Don't feel at all.

And Frisk... has power, they know. Power Chara didn't have until the two of them met. The kind of power that Chara had called out before: does anyone really love you if you've only shown them what they want to see, Frisk? Does anybody know you at all if you go back and pick the answer that they like best instead of the answer you really want to? The pretending can last so much longer, with power like that.

They think again about... about their birthday. Try not to think about how it ended. Focus on the odd sensation of knowing you're the one who knows when their birthday is. Being the person who gets asked what a good present would be, because everyone knows about getting Frisk to join in on things they like - spaghetti and anime and puzzles - but nobody really knows what Frisk likes. Think about falteringly announcing they don't want Frisk to be alone either, and realizing how... how absurd that sounds, when everybody likes Frisk, when Frisk's never met someone who they didn't become friends with, right?

"You don't have to pretend with me," they mumble, even if it feels redundant at this point. The one constant who remembers no matter what, the presence who follows along whether the road is pristine or dusty, the leech that cannot be pulled off. "I've seen it all already, right? There's no formula." Not a problem to be solved, not here to be SAVED, not a variable to be set to its proper value. It's got to be vexing, how often there is no right answer when dealing with Chara, but maybe... not imposing the expectation of a right answer can be a relief, too?

"But... you see why I don't want to call this love. Why it's so..." Why they're scared of it. Deeply, utterly, wholeheartedly afraid.

They're right. It is both. It's terrifying, leaves them floundering and directionless because there's no right answer, and there's no wiping clean the slate, because they remember everything. And then it's, it's a relief, because Chara - they've seen the best and the worst of Frisk. They've seen them burn every book and read every book, value everyone and treasure everyone, and they choose to stay by their side anyway. They tell people they're friends. They are friends, despite...hah, despite everything, right?

And they don't want to be alone. Neither of them do.

"It's scary," says Frisk, nodding. Toriel is right to be wary of them, and there's that not-so-small part of them that believes, completely and viscerally, that if anyone else came from that horrible timeline, where they cut everyone down without a second thought, their reactions would have been similar. And they would've been justified. If they could just see Frisk for who they are...they wouldn't love them so much, would they?

"I don't know what else to call it," they say, with a weak little laugh. "But you...we've seen each other at, at our best and worst. Right? And we, we don't...we just keep caring about each other anyway."

Isn't that how love is?

"I don't know what else to call it either," they have to admit, an air of defeat in their words. What do you call it when you want to get to know a person so much, you even want to see the ugly, dark things you aren't supposed to want to know? Their anger, their sadness, their mistakes. Their before they fell. What do you call it when a moment when they're overflowing with life and excitement makes you grasp at the empty space where your heart should be? What do you call holding hands and never wanting to let go? Sort of even liking how solid and fierce a too-tight grip around their own hand feels.

Still feels... feels foreboding, to give that name to it. Like it... dooms the pair of them. Like it cements the idea that they're going to drag Frisk down, inflict pain whether it's intentional or not, contaminate them like toxic waste buried in a clear pond.

"We could call it fate," they offer shakily. A nicer word for a scary reality. Why did you climb that mountain? For an unhappy reason. But maybe.... maybe if you just say it's foolishness, or it's fate... maybe then you can pretend it wasn't a death sentence, right? "But I don't want to call it love. I want it to be something that lasts longer than love. No tricking each other or having to earn it or... anything that makes love scary. I just... want us to be us."

Fate. A nice word, soothing, but not the least bit true. Not now that they know how things go. Someone forces their hand, or they simply...happen. It takes someone like them to have that resolve, the will to change fate, so-called. But not really. The pieces fall into place, and Frisk will have always fallen down, and Chara will have always been dead, and Asriel will have always been a flower. There's no altering what's already been set in motion. Just the steering of things into a better outcome.

Love without calling it love. Or even LOVE. Just...the way things are, now. The way things have always been. The way things will continue to be. Persistence, determination - that's their bread and butter, isn't it?

Frisk nods.

"Okay," they say at last. "It's just however things are, then. We don't have to pretend anything otherwise."

It's imperfect, and clumsy, and they don't know always how to resolve whatever crops up between them. But it's also their anchor, and they wouldn't trade it in for anything else.

It's probably cheating, not calling a spade a spade. But whatever short-lived understanding Chara ever had of love... this maybe is better than that. No tally marks. No tormenting yourself with how you're ever going to really measure up to what the Underground thinks you are, how you're going to be as perfect as the family who took you in are, how there's only one thing about you that doesn't feel worthless, so that's... what you have to give, isn't it?

Maybe it's not different. Maybe it's exactly the same. But it's kind of nice to lie to yourself. Pretend that you have the same predictable, constant standards everyone else does. That you can have promises that are kept, that you can have relationships that don't turn to dust. It's not really hope at all if you're just covering your eyes and pretending not to see how doomed love feels, but... it's kind of close, isn't it?

"The more I try and put words to it, the more formless it seems to get," Chara laughs. Shoulders their trident, tugs Frisk along to continue the quest for candy. They don't want to be the first to let that hand go. Small touch is... it's not... uncomfortable. Not skin-crawling, not suffocating. They can be okay with some things. They can be okay. "But... secure. That's one worth aiming for, is it not? Stable. A constant. That's what I'd like to... I want to stay with you, right?"

No more scares. No more alone. Just one thing that's real. That... can be safe for Frisk, even if Chara could never even begin to call themselves safe.

Chara leads, like they always do. Frisk lets them. Ever the assertive one, the one who forges ahead. The resolve to change fate. Frisk follows, hands still clasped tightly. Back to the task at hand.

"I want to stay with you too," says Frisk. Like selecting an option, with Toriel. I want to stay with you. They mean it. No more running away, no more pretending that things are okay when they aren't. No more breaking promises. No more making unilateral decisions on anyone's behalf and acting like they've got the right to do it. No more breaking promises.

No more breaking promises.

"We really are like twins," they laugh, then, because it's like Mabel and Dipper are, practically inseparable, joined at the hip. And Dipper looked torn when he said he had to live a week without Mabel, said he didn't know how to be alone, never thinks about it, never talks about it. Sounds familiar. Strikes a little chord, doesn't it? Not sure how to be alone. Not sure they want to know how to be alone. Alone is terrifying, and they've got someone who's gonna stand beside them. And they'll have their back too, whatever it takes. "Like Mabel and Dipper are."

"Except Mabel and Dipper are nerds," Chara points out, grinning.

It's... sort of an appealing idea, though. Like twins. Some Lost Souls were so closely intertwined, cared so much about each other, that Frisk didn't have to utter a word to them. Watching the other soul be SAVED was enough to bring them back too. They can see the comfort in that, a little, right? The idea of not needing anything. Of it being enough to experience things... vicariously? To just see someone else be happy. Being able to love someone so much that it's completely unselfish. That "you" doesn't matter at all.

It'd be nice, they think. If they could be that kind of person. Not manipulating, not controlling, no ulterior motives, no forcing people to feel things or think things or do things. Wishful thinking, but... as long as they're resigned to the fact they care, right? Might as well go wild.

"I guess... I mean, that kind of proves it's fate, right? We aren't related at all, we were born years apart, and we're still practically twins anyway."

Oh, like they aren't both nerds. Chara knits, Frisk spends their time doodling and writing in their notebook, and the two of them bend the fabric of spacetime on a semi-regular basis. If that doesn't make them nerds, Frisk doesn't know what does. They keep following, mirror Chara's smirk with a wide grin of their own.

"I guess it might be," says Frisk, though they can't scrub the dubious note from their voice. "People already seem to think we're related. Some people even mix us up sometimes!"

There's certainly quite a few similarities, right down to their preferences of wardrobe. Asriel wouldn't have mixed the two of them up the way he did otherwise, after all. And it wasn't just him, either. Toriel doubtless saw Chara, and six others, in the footsteps of the eighth human who fell, and Asgore looked at them with a sort of fond melancholia as he spoke of the same hope in their eyes.

"It's probably the haircut," Chara giggles. They know it's definitely not the personality. One pulls inward, the other projects outward. Hard to mistake those two coping mechanisms! But... maybe it makes sense for twins to be opposites? Kind of strange to think it could be differences instead of similarities that make them fit together in people's minds, Chara thinks, but... they maybe don't have the greatest understanding of anything but the darkest side of human behavior. If they'd been normal, if they'd been like everyone else, if they understood things... they'd probably never have fallen at all.

"If I'd done everything right..." They mumble, the idea seeping in all of its own. "Or if I'd been able to SAVE like you could... we'd never have met at all." A... a weird thing to think. Right? "The Underground might've already gone empty the good way, so everyone who believed the legend about Mt. Ebbot... ha, it'll be like everyone else who climbs it after you. You'd just have... you'd have fallen into an empty pit and smacked against the ground and..."

Fallen like Chara did. No flowers breaking falls. Only there'd be nobody hearing them cry out for help. Nobody would come.

...Wow! Listen to yourself, Chara! They... got like this again. Took a perfectly cheerful conversation and turned it incredibly morbid. Their smile fades and they pale a bit, realizing a minute too late that discussing the grimmest possible outcome of Frisk's attempted suicide is... what are they even going for with this? All the suffering and heartache their plan caused was totally worth it if they get to hang out with Frisk? Cripes!

"Anyway!" They spit out, fumble, avert their head and busily distract themselves with knocking on a door. They hardly even register what they get, just shove it into their sack. "I'm... I'm glad you didn't... I'm glad we met. That's what I... um. Let's keep going, shall we?"

The hair and the stripes, both. Plus, Mabel and Dipper seem rather...diametrically opposed, ideologically, but they're undeniably twins, right down to how scarily in-sync they are.

If I'd done everything right, says Chara, like Frisk did things right the first time or even the tenth time, like Frisk didn't keep scrubbing the slate clean over and over and over. If things had turned out different, Frisk would have never...well, maybe that would have been for the best. Even if Chara's intentions might've been the best, the end result still left them dead and sleeping in the soil, Asriel trapped in a flower, monsters' hopes and dreams shattered. The death of one child with no attachment to any monsters isn't such a huge price to pay in exchange for the happiness and togetherness of the Dreemurrs, is it?

It's a question to contemplate, but never one to act upon. They anchored after they landed on the flowers. No going back before that moment.

"I'm glad we met too," says Frisk, ducking their head a little sheepishly, too afraid to say what's on their mind. Instead, they choose to be amused at Chara's slapdash forging ahead, the clumsiness of their compliments, the fact that they just crammed what appears to be a snowman wind-up toy into their bag. "And I'm glad we can live here together."

It's a quiet bolt of relief, that the morbid tilt seeping into the very roots of their thinking... that it didn't ruin things this time. They don't... they don't even know what they were thinking. Isn't it selfish to say that the way things turned out wasn't all bad if it meant Chara got to meet Frisk? They aren't the one who suffered the most. What right do they have to make calls like that?

But the alternative... if they really did have the power they most wish they could have. The True Reset they really want. The chance to go back and prevent all of this... is that worth it, if it means the eighth child falls onto an empty, unyielding patch of earth, with nobody to mend the cracks in their SOUL or take their hand and guide them through the ruins?

See? The more they think about things, the more lost they feel. The more they care, the hazier the path gets. Why do they even bring up things like this? Just... erase that train of thought. Better off without it.

"Literally. You got used to sharing a room pretty quickly, huh? Remember when you... the first thing you did was establish a truce? Hey, no killing each other in our sleep! That's not sportsmanlike at all."

It feels like...forever ago. When Chara was more of an enigma, when they left plates of buttercups beside Frisk's bed and called it a joke, when they didn't work together with SAVEs but warred with them in order to keep from being locked out of the room by a perpetual time loop. It feels horribly distant. Even if it was...February, wasn't it? When Chara showed up? Barely a week after Frisk did. They'd fought, scratched, kicked, even headbutted.

And now look at them. Matching costumes. Sharing slices of pie, laughing as they weave been thickets of adult legs at some kind of fancy dress place, dancing and tackling one another, with memories of birthday parties and bad nights on the floor of the room they share where one or both of them trembles and tries not to admit that they're crying.

"I did headbutt you," says Frisk, their tone landing somewhere between amused and apologetic. "I think it was a fair promise for both of us."

It must say something, they think. That even the person they'd shared a body, mind, soul with had assumed them a threat. Scary. Dangerous. Not so much a whole person as the culmination of their mistakes. They still... they don't really understand what made it change so much. They're still the same person they were in that moment, aren't they? Still Chara? Despite your best efforts, you continue to be yourself.

Maybe even a worse person, honestly. Could have been LV1 too if they really wanted to be a better person. Could have done literally anything but fight. Didn't.

...Is there something they have now that they didn't before? Do those few jittering, broken fragments of a SOUL, stuck in perpetual death throes... do they make that much of a difference?

"Well, there you go!" They blurt brightly. "That's a promise we've both kept. Don't know how I'd ever manage to sleep at night, knowing I've got a dangerous archnemesis like yourself sitting at the other end of the room. You know. Assuming I ever slept."

"I know you sleep," says Frisk with a laugh. "And I know back then you tried not to sleep but everyone needs sleep sometimes. And I know you can taste, and enjoy things, and like drawing and knitting." And maybe gardening. The Worn Dagger was, after all, good for cutting plants, and they seemed to like Asgore. Living with him in a long-term sense must've entailed a lot of gardening, they think.

Not a demon, not a lost soul or an empty shell. A wonderful, mischievous, determined friend. A human child. A child who fell, just like Frisk.

Their heart feels full, fuller than it did when they SAVED everyone. And they think that, maybe, the both of them might be okay. For a little while, anyway.

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

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