entrancelogs | + FOURTH WALL EVENT: FOREST PARTY +

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+ FOURTH WALL EVENT: FOREST PARTY +

Who: E V E R Y O N E
Where: The Forest!
When: Sept 7th to Sept 10th
Rating: G to PG-13 (please label higher ratings, thank you!)
Summary: Could it be that you (GASP!) don't want to be here? Do you maybe want to make like a tree and... leaf? Then how about you do the next best thing, and come to the woods to party! And don't forget to have a look at the Fourth Wall Master Post for event rules, puzzle clues, and more places to mingle!
The Story:

Beginning on September 7th, colourful ribbons will hang from several trees by the forest. Whoever follows their path will be guided deeper, right to the scene of a forest party.

Wooden benches, swings in all shapes and sizes, tree trunks, and other arrangements give plenty of opportunities to sit together. Tree houses and tents provide shelter, and come nightfall the festivities will light up for you.

Campfires provide additional light and warmth and a great place for ghost stories. Camping coolers store more than smores, and all around you nature twists and turns to give you room to dance to the music, to wander in the quiet, and to simply have a good time!

(...Are you the curiously perceptive, or the perceptively curious sort? If so, then you might also notice the small bird sitting on a branch nearby.)

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I get that. Nothing like watching the film develop right before your eyes.

[Stefan shakes his head, turning his gaze so that he's more focused on her. He knows Max well enough (er, a version of Max well enough) to know when his attention should wander, and eh? Worst-case scenario? She can rewind this whole thing.]

Oh, me? No, no, nothing like that. [He laughs, because him? Model?? That's... not actually wrong, but that's also not Stefan.] I just uh - one of my best friends was really into photography. After a while, you kinda got used to it.

Perhaps some like attempting to rebel against whatever message the game is attempting to share. No matter how strong the story may be, it all depends on the Puppeteer taking it to heart. Otherwise they will continue that mobius strip over and over.

[It's funny how that works out. If you get nothing out of the story, why continue?]

It is interesting how it works out. But as a merchant all I can do is watch. Eh eh eh.

[He is absolutely trying to disappear again. Too many things keep happening. If he can just get away from literally everyone for awhile, maybe things will stop happening, if only briefly.]

[But he doesn't go. He just stands there.]

...i know you're not. she's not very good at pretending to be you. except from behind, i guess.

i just, uh. didn't want to get in your way.

[She was having fun, and now she has to deal with this sad sack of bones. Poor girl.]

[For a five year old, Greg is pretty brave. Some might say too brave, but Greg isn't sure what that means and usually ignores it! So when he sees a ghost touching a tree, he doesn't get spooked. Instead he's excited because this means, if he gets to go back home, he can tell Unky Endicott about finding a real live ghost instead of a pretend one!]

Excuse me! Are you a ghost? Are you haunting that tree?

[She smiles along with his laugh. Hey, he could pass for one, and there's not a lot of people who bump into her and actually ask for a photo.

The picture finally develops fully:

A relaxed looking guy, hands stuffed casually into pockets, Arabic shirt contrasting nicely with the foliage. He might not have stood out enough against the scenery (small groups of people all around, lights, decorations) except she got the depth of field just right- he shows up sharp against a slightly blurry background, the obvious main character in an otherwise busy scene. A nearby line of lights gently coaxes any viewer's gaze toward his eyes.

Not bad. Inwardly she's quite satisfied, but she doesn't say so out loud- he's got a photography friend after all, and she's probably not up to their level.]

My best friend Chloe is kind of a photo-hog herself. [At the mention of the other girl's name her smile breaks into a full grin.] Though I think she just likes playing along. BFF duties, right?

[Not that she minds. She loves taking pictures of her blue-haired best friend- err, girlfriend.]

[He doesn't know what to make of this conversation anymore. Except that's a lie. He didn't know what to make of this conversation before it even began. Even in all the weird dream talks, even in imagined meetings where he gets to say all the things he wanted to say and Gaster has to just listen, none of it ever made sense. Because he could never fully parse all the things he wanted to say, could never decide if what he wanted was for Gaster to just come back, or for him to fade away forever.]

[It would have done everyone a lot of good if Sans could have just forgotten.]

[And this sounds like sympathy. Or not sympathy, and certainly not empathy, because Gaster is above both of those. It's...acknowledgement. It's something.]

[He doesn't know what to do with it.]

so people keep telling me.

[Poor Sans, he's suffering so much.]

but i dunno. it's not a big deal. everyone else has had it worse.

[Gaster had it worse. The other people who fell, friends of his whose names he will never remember, had it worse. Papyrus, who was probably tortured by some iteration of the monster-not-monster standing before him, has had it worse. All of them, everyone. Sans only ever had to remember some things and put himself in the way.]

[That's all. Not a big deal.]

you know, we've had this conversation before.

[Promise me that you will know when to quit.]

i should've...

[He shouldn't get into this. Can't get into this. Can't, not when it's not even the right Gaster.]

...guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

but i...i appreciate it. can't imagine how much effort that took.

[Gaster who doesn't concede, can't abide weakness. But who also--well, if you made a mistake, you were expected to own it.]

and, i'm...uh. sorry for jumping down your throat a few minutes ago. i. heh. it's been a long few days, and i never, uh.

there wasn't an equation i could think of that could result in you coming here, or being anywhere, ever again. i tried, uh...i mean, i actually. i really tried to fix the machine. i...for years. i'd, heh, i'd never tried that hard at anything. you know me. and i still...

CURSED TO OBSERVE, NEVER TO INTERFERE.

[If this thing in the shape of a man sounds disgruntled, draw no parallels between tone and intent. He is beyond such things now, and forever will be.]

I BELIEVE YOU GOT A FAR BETTER DEAL THAN I.

[She shrugs.] I wasn't really doing anything. [After a moment's hesitation, she walks closer, but slowly, giving him the chance to leave if he wants to. Awkwardly, too, eyes on her feet to avoid tripping on any roots. She talks as she walks.]

What did you mean when you said "sorry for all of this"? What... [What did you do this time? she almost asks. She reins in the impulse.] What happened, Sans?

[Chloe's here too? Stefan blinks back undeniable surprise, because he'd seen Chloe wandering the Iskaulit in the past week or so. Unless she was here too? That wouldn't surprise him either: Max and Chloe were an undeniable package deal.

You almost never got one without the other, and well - if this means they'll stay together, then he can't bring himself to mind.]

Of course. When your - [wait, she said best friend] best friend's as great of a photographer as you are? You'd want her in charge of everything.

[Since she hasn't made any dumb comments about him posing on purpose, or even how Chloe used to tease him about him and Alex - this isn't his Max. Stefan's smile is genuine, but also wistful about the time he's lost to the multiverse.]

I hope you're showcasing your work somewhere. You have a real eye for composition.

[He had not anticipated such action to be partaken. He was left to be little more than a secret, always a spectator, always that watcher, hidden between interleaved lines of code. A handful of numbers given sentience and awareness. It is a terribly, terribly cruel thing, to consign one to that degree of consciousness, but to allow them no influence, no means to alter the direction of things or the scope in which they transpire.

His time is undoubtedly limited.]

I AM HERE, I SUSPECT, BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN CONTINUOUSLY DISTURBED. YOU'VE QUITE THE CONTINGENT OF DIRTY HACKERS ON YOUR HANDS.

[He injects as most disapproval into the words as he can possibly bring to bear. They are not meant to explore the world they were placed in, not that thoroughly and not that intensively, inside and out, tearing the thing apart with a furious dedication, an alacrity that defied logic and defied causality.

Remaking the world. Altering its very source code.

FLOWEYTALE.

The undercurrent of CURB THEIR EFFORTS, SANS does not need to be uttered, in hands or otherwise. He has done horrifically little to mitigate the damage they have done, and he is the sole guardian of that aspect.

Perhaps he was devoting his effort to one thing. The prevention of absolute erasure of every causal loop.

A worthy goal, perhaps, but that does not mean he cannot still judge.

They always did have something in common besides an improbable love for the minutiae of physics and set theory.]

MY SET OF MEMORIES IS PERHAPS SEPARATE FROM YOURS. UNFORTUNATELY, SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCES ARE NOTORIOUSLY DIFFICULT TO REPLICATE, AS I AM SURE YOU ARE WELL AWARE.

THERE IS SOMETHING OF WHICH YOU SHOULD BE MADE AWARE.

[There will be no other opportunity to communicate so cleanly. Sans always had a perceptive nature, an awareness that superseded most things, but even that could not touch upon that which was purged from every temporal point, every brane, every instance, every event it affected.

Words can be exchanged in fleeting measures, and only one way.]

IN MY D-BRANE, PRIOR TO MY ERASURE - YOU WERE AN ONLY CHILD.

Oh, I don't mean she's into taking photos. She's more into having me snap some shots of her. [Yeah, get her talking about Chloe. She might not shut up for a while.] And she could definitely pass as a model if she wanted to. She's got the whole punk rock vibe going on. Blue hair and tats...

[She trails off, smiling fondly as she carefully stuffs the photo and her camera into her messenger bag.] Anyway it's about as win-win as you can get.

[As the topic of conversation moves more and more toward Max and her photography, though, her openness starts to die down a little.] And, uhh, thanks, but... I don't think people would be that interested. I'm still studying.

["Does she still march to her own drummer?" Stefan wants to ask, because he can't imagine Chloe going along with anything against her free will. But instead, he laughs, folding his arms as if he's hearing this all for the first time.]

I'm glad. Friends like her are hard to come by.

Sure, you - ["haven't graduated Blackwell,"] - you're studying, but you've got more talent wrapped around your finger than half the photography shows I've seen.

You make even the smallest moments feel real and organic, and um, [His throat gets dry,] I know Chloe shouldn't get to be the only one to see what you've done.

_{[He needs air. There are legions of people milling in every corner of Wonderland, but only one face makes Victor feel as though the walls are shrinking in on him, reforming into the size and shape of a darkened laboratory illuminated by flashes of lightning.

Come evening, it's the desire to clear his thoughts more than the party that draws Victor down the path of ribbons and lanterns, but once there he gives himself up to the smell of earth and wood smoke. There's a dreamy peace to the way the forest has come alive, and he aimlessly follows a path under softly glowing fairy lights, hands in his coat pockets.

Distracted admiring the ambiance, Victor doesn't hear anyone behind him, but when he goes to turn suddenly, he bumps into something solid.]}

Sorry--

_{[Forgive him, he has monster children on the brain, he's not watching where he's going.]}

[He won't. Keep it simple at this point, even if they are speaking about existence and non-existence.]

I agree with that. Observation is easier if you are physically there. And, naturally, I would be out of credits! That is very serious to me.

[Hence why he'll probably never use the closets to get it. It only works if someone buys from him.]

But nevertheless we should move this scene forward. If your time is short then the event with me must be shortened in turn. Still, I thank you for taking time to speak with me. It was...very, very interesting.

[It was probably not his own words there, but it was eye opening.]

[Then... it's true. What Sans said. The end isn't really the end. Their last line of defense, their failsafe, the ace up their sleeve... isn't enough. They are exactly the humble servant they fear they may be. They tense experimentally, push against the blueness of their broken SOUL.]

Well. That's it, then.

[Everything their partner taught them was meaningless. It had not been progress. It had been futility. There had been no point to anything they had strove to do.

Theoretically, at least. In a world they do not intend to return to again. In a universe that may not... may not even be theirs. Perhaps, for the time being, this is a line of thought that should simply be... tuned out.]

Did you just come here to pick on fifth graders, or are you going to be slightly more useful than that?

[What they're interested in is the secrets that even the bones of the world couldn't surrender.

demona
If you only wish to flaunt your arrogance, I may have to entertain myself some other way.
demonb
Perhaps by smearing my grubby little thing-paws all over things I should not toy with!

* And hasn't that poor wall suffered enough already?]

[He doesn't move, but he's not looking at her anymore. He's staring at the ground. At an interesting fern. There are ferns underground, most of them in the woods near Snowdin, but they're these small, twisty little things. Everything on the Surface is so...vibrant. Varied.]

uh, i'm.

[He doesn't know what to say.]

[It's a neat fern.]

i'm not...an easy person to put up with.

[Not what he wanted to say.]

half the time i don't know why people bother. and that's not...some bid for sympathy. see, you...say things like that and it comes out like you're...feeling sorry for yourself? but that's, uh. not it. i just actually...don't understand it. something's...

[He taps the side of his skull, still staring at the fern, face completely unreadable.]

...not right. with me. when i say i don't get it, i mean i literally don't get it. these amazing people who stick it out, and bother with me, when i just...

but it's. not about me.

i let you down. and i wanted to apologize when i messaged you, but. it seemed like it would feel tacked on. empty.

[He rubs the back of his neck.]

i message you out of nowhere with a warning and go oh, by the way, sorry for being an ass. wasn't right. you deserved better. i mean, you deserved better than having some dumpy skeleton spew word salad in the middle of the freaking woods. you might not even like salad. heh.

[Not funny.]

what happened doesn't...really matter. i just wanted to apologize. i let you down. i betrayed your trust. and...before anything else happens in this insane event, i figured you should at least hear that.

that's all.

...sorry.

[Right, because Majesty, and Majesties tend to stay cooped up somewhere being Majesties, and if Sans ever had the misfortune to be a Majesty he'd probably just sleep in those big old beds all day and--]

[He is not thinking about it.]

[He can see a couple stars through the leaves.]

you could say that.

the you i know is a lot less...easygoing, though.

[They don't wear a hoodie, either. Is that what Chara's wearing? Yeah, it's a freaking hoodie. Frisk's been wearing a Sans-esque hoodie, but he could never see Chara doing the same.]

YOU APPROACHED ME, THING. IF IT WERE MY CHOICE, WE WOULD NOT BE CONVERSING.

[No one seems content to leave well enough alone, let alone precocious children with delusions of grandeur and relevance.

He turns, and faces them, releasing their SOUL from the binds of the blue magic freezing them in place, at the mercy of whatever values he chooses to index. He is smiling.

He has always hated that he smiles. His facial features are indistinct at best, and now he smiles, a perpetual rictus frozen on features that are indistinct in every way they are possible to be.

His mouth opens. His eyesockets, far more pliable than anything initially sculpted from bone should be, dilate. Pinpricks of light glisten within the things that were once eyesockets, that might have quantifiable and describable as eyesockets but certainly are no longer, hot and bright and stained blue, amber, blue, amber, blue -

Something spills from every orifice.

Something dark.

Darker.

And yet, even d a r k e r.

It flows unevenly from a parted maw, viscous and oily and heavy with altered variables and altered states and divergences and binary choices, lines of ones and zeroes rendered pointless by a divergence of choices, branching pathways, unused images, locked files, source coding, sprites that were not and will never be used -

It doesn't look like tar, or blood, or dust.

It doesn't look like anything.

Something, some part of him, it tears and stutters and skips like a stuck tape, and then that blackness, that darkness, is gone.]

NONE OF THIS, [says the man with his hands, measured and controlled,] HAS OR EVER WILL CONCERN YOU. THIS NARRATIVE WAS NEVER YOURS TO PLUNDER AT YOUR CONVENIENCE. SO RUN ALONG, AND DO WHATEVER IT IS HYPER-DESTRUCTIVE LITTLE THINGS SUCH AS YOURSELF DO.

[Huh. He actually seems... really into her photography, even after just one photo. She fingers the little stack of her favorite photos wedged into her journal, hidden inside her bag, tempted to show him. But also nervous, because... well he liked the first one, but what if he doesn't like the second, or the third?]

Uh. I'm Max by the way. I have a couple of photos if you want to see them, but... This isn't like gallery quality, okay? They're really amateur. [She rubs her cheekbone with the tips of two fingers, her usual tic when feeling awkward.] I haven't had an actual class in months.

I AM SURE IT WAS

VERY

VERY

INTERESTING.

[His eyesockets widen imperceptibly, vibrant with a low-level glow of light that winks out as soon as it flares to life. Its color is difficult to name. Perhaps it is the color of nothing.]

PRAY YOU NEVER SEE ME AGAIN.

[On that completely unnecessarily ominous note - he always did have a flare for the dramatic, from the cut of his overly long, elegantly flowing coat to the phraseology of his entries - the thing that both is and is not in the shape of a man dematerializes.

It as if it was never there.

In fact, it never was there.

Who were you talking to again?]

Do I want to know? [Chara says wryly, though they think they might be able to guess at what this..."other them" might be like. It's really not much of a stretch. The path they were on before they met the Dreemurrs, before they were taken in as if they were one of their own - and even, the adjustment they had to make, their behavioral pendulum swinging wildly between two extremes as they waited for the other shoe to drop and it never did...

Well, it's not difficult to imagine. Not difficult at all.]

[He lets out a breath he didn't think he was holding and then [ ] was gone.

?

Yeah, that thing. Deleted data fell through his fingers like plastic water and left him standing there alone.

<>Change Face Graphics:
<>Message: [Retractedretractedretracted]
<>Change System BGM: Silence]

Eh eh eh.

[<>Change Screen Transitions: Teleport/Erase, Anywhere

And then Zacharie's gone.]

Oh, right - I'm Stefan. [He smiles, somewhat apologetically. Introductions are always weirder the second time around. In this moment, he's seeing what could've been, and wowzers. Maybe Max rubbed off on him more than he thought.] Max, even if they were old sepia photographs with like, 19th century quality, I'd love to take a look at them.

I can't say I'm an expert on art, but I know what I like, and uh - so far, I'm seeing it loud and clear.

[Dirty hackers. Heh.]

yeah. regular tiny army, at this point.

[He hears the disdain, and he hears the unspoken, unsigned command. Stop them. Yeah. He's always trying and failing to stop anomalies.]

[Kids playing with matches. You'd think after burning themselves so many times already they'd know when to Quit. But he wouldn't be surprised if the existential atom bomb that heralded Gaster's arrival here didn't summon Chara immediately. Frisk might have the good sense to stay away, at least. They said they were done digging. Of course, they say a lot of things.]

[And Asriel's here somewhere, and any number of other Frisks and Charas, and people totally unrelated to their world who will want to come solve the neat mystery of the missing man.]

[Yeah. This needs to stop. He just needs to figure out how to take their shovels away.]

[He looks up again.]

yeah, i know. no point in getting into all that with you. not fair to either of us.

[Gaster pauses, and he did that, maybe took some kind of pleasure in it. His halting, calculated manner of communication that made it so easy to pause and hold a bombshell over someone's head and contemplate the destruction he was about to wreak.]

[Sans was an only child.]

[Something kind of snaps. Sans goes away for a bit.]

[His mind scrambles, tries to piece together the variables, the constants, assigning numbers and values to each individual event in his life, trying to find which direction this equation runs, how it all matches up. What variables, what course of events would be required for such a thing.]

[His parents wanted kids. Papyrus was just their second try at having one that was normal.]

[Hypothesis--they never bothered to try again. Settled themselves with the meagerness of Sans's existence. Maybe they couldn't. They disappeared not many years later, afterward. Additional hypothesis: they were different people altogether, maybe better people.]

[Maybe they loved him.]

[Irrelevant to the hypothesis. Discard.]

[He grows up. He's sick. Stuck in bed all the time, reading books because it was all he had energy for.]

[Pursues science and has nothing to lose. Is more willing to compromise. Is more willing to ignore the growing problems.]

[Backtrack. Gaster's negation altered the timeline enough to allow for Papyrus to exist. How? Gaster must have affected some kind of variable that Sans isn't aware of. Of course he never could have been aware of all the variables. There was no way to track every single individual change from G=yes to G=no.]

[Simple if/then statement. If G=yes, then P=no. And vice versa.]

[He blinks slowly, settles, and his eyelights come on for the first time in this entire conversation.]

well that's real weird.

[She pauses to listen to him, fingers idly fumbling together, head down and looking at a really interesting rock. Yeah, the forest is full of interesting stuff. Ferns, rocks, photographers, talking skeletons.

She frowns as he goes on, taking in everything he's saying. Though she does chuckle, more like exhale with a smile, really, when he mentions the salad. That was actually funny.

By the time he's wrapping up she realizes that she has no idea what to say. For a moment she only looks up at the trees and blinks, mouth open, confused. Then she swallows down her worry and gives him a sidelong look.]

I don't think there's something wrong with you, Sans. [Her voice is clear and the words come out with a steady cadence, carefully thought out.] You kind of... made a mistake. I get it. If it was anything else, then it wouldn't have... been such a big deal. I just kept thinking-... I mean, did you tell them right after we talked? Was it the first thing you did, after I told you not to?

[That's certainly what it felt like. And the hurt in her voice, the slight anger, is all there. She glances at him full on, then continues.]

I thought you'd apologize sooner. I guess you did, but I mean, something like this, you know? [Something more sincere, not just some caught-red-handed apology. Maybe actually looking for her, trying to win her back as a friend. Something like that. She runs a palm over her forehead with a sigh.]

You're a good person Sans. B-but... It's not like- like you're any more... messed up than anyone else. [She looks at him awkwardly, trying to bury the sudden emotion with a lame smile.] Except for the puns. The puns are... unbeleafable.

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+ FOURTH WALL EVENT: FOREST PARTY +

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Victor Frankenstein | Penny Dreadful | Resident

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