black then white are all i see in my infancy [closed + open]

[determinedest]

Who: Frisk and a few closed prompts + a few open ones!
Where: Alphys's lab, by the vendors, maybe more?
When: 11/01 - 11/08-ish (may be subject to change)
Rating: PG-13 for children in peril, suicide ideation, depressive mindset, and bad decisions
Summary: Shit happened. Someone give this cast an intervention.
The Story:

[A hot oil-slick of numbers running through their mind in a burning cacophony does not lend itself to anything but pain, bright and blazing. It cuts into their teeth and their tongue and the inside of their cheeks - or maybe that is simply them biting deep into the flesh in their mouth to taste the warm tang of it to remind themself that they are not simply numbers they are not simply numbers they are not simply numbers they are real.

It crests in a burgeoning wave. There is no tide there is no pattern there is no regularity there is no respite it simply is and it tears through them, every jerk and wrench of their body shuddering in its place like hot marks shearing them open.

They can taste blood.

Is it yours?

Or mine?

It does not matter.]

Comments

FRISK + YOU; EVERYWHERE; to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human

[determinedest]

[I am gone, and inside it's...it's just you. Only it's not just you, not really. Numbers still spill into them in broken cords of text, lines of numbers and words and ones and zeroes that they can't possibly parse. It aches. They're used to that, but they're not used to how everyone stares, how they're a thing that's dangerous, uncontained.

It's a constant string (const string:) tearing them inside and out. Sometimes it's the small things. The color of their shirt, the color of their eyes. Sometimes it's LOVE, sometimes it's GOLD, rocketing up and then down again, like riding some sort of absurd metatemporal high. Sometimes their LOVE spikes, sickeningly, and it hits 20, and they feel nothing at all.

Sometimes they end up ripping away from the space they occupy. They end up on the roof, starting to fall before they're decoupled from space again, landing on the ground in a soft whump of flesh hitting grass.

Their HP has been frozen on -99999999999/10 for some time now. They're not sure they can hurt what's already been broken.

Not sure if they can hurt anything that doesn't already ache beyond the telling of it.

It probably wouldn't hurt as much as this does now.

People try to watch them, but it's easy to get away when they only half-exist. As the week progresses they start to try and fix things their own way. Wading out into the water of the beach, snapping themself up to the roof, only for something to invariably shred their resolve or - no, actually, not their resolve.

* Something else.]

[catinthemask]

[A whump of a body hitting the ground and then the sound of beat up sneakers shuffling through the grass. A ridiculous and convenient sense of timing, but when didn't that summarize Zacharie?

The NPC stares down at the fallen child with hidden eyes. He has that convenience too, to be able to hide like this. The cat mask had black fabric covering them up because Valerie had large eyes. But that was getting into the mechanics of mask-making and only one person had asked that of the merchant. Moving on.

It was likely that Frisk was still alive. The displacement wasn't high enough to kill a child, even if their HP was at the base level. Or maybe Zacharie shouldn't think of this in RPG terms. Maybe shouldn't be--

No.]

Good evening, dear reckless accomplice. Have you fallen?

[determinedest]

[12783: Oh^1! You've fallen&down^1, haven't you.../
12784: Are you okay?/
12785: Here^1, get up.../

Only n-no, that's not right at all. There's someone here familiar, a sprite they don't recognize? There are no golden flowers to cushion their fall, nothing of the sort. They scramble upright regardless. The color of their shirt shutters between purple-blue and green-yellow, inversions, negatives. Cheerful pinkish blots on their cheeks and a wide, arcing smile that dissipates in the same moment it forms.]

11788: * Not a scratch..^1.&*\E0 Impressive^1!&*\E1 But still.../

[Oh. No. That's incorrect. Try again. Lift a hand and wave hello. That's what good little children do.]

[catinthemask]

[Zacharie returns the wave, although he's more interested in the strings of dialog and code that Frisk was slipping out, that scratch a particular itch from an event he can't remember. He observes the flickering of colors, blots and a face that can't seem to decide on a proper Character Graphics: Face.

Shrugs his backpack off. He fiddles around inside until a certain jar is open and one Eye later

Frisk(?)
The Protagonist of another world.
HP: -99999999999 / CP: ???

The NPC's laughter is a little different as he straightens up, pulling his backpack on again and the magic of the Eye vanishing from his fingers like a broken egg.]

Eh eh eh. We really have gone down the rabbit hole. So what caused this sudden and radical change within and without you, dear friend?

[determinedest]

[Something inside them roils up, the flaring of a half-remembered file: 19982: mus_sfx_eyeflash.ogg, but that's not what's happened at all. Can't they just...

Something about it is odd, maybe. Different. Peculiar. But it's, it's difficult to really discern what is truly OFF based on how things halt-skip-stutter. Their INV fills with G, with Dreams, with Bad Memories.

And then they're gone again.]

02571. SPELL.

[That's all they know how, it - it isn't supposed to be like this. It isn't supposed to be like this. It was torn out of the code, ripped asunder, and this is what happened to them as a result.]

[catinthemask]

[The game shifts easily. Things pop out of the air and then you do and then everything that belongs to you does. A background written in ink and data. Ect, ect.]

Ah. A give from a reluctant resident of this world or the item you purchased from me the first time?

[Perhaps this may turn out to be a conversation that didn't matter in the long run, but interesting nonetheless.]

[determinedest]

10540: * No data available./^

[Hee hee. Guess that's what happens when you try to cheat the system? Real impatient, aren't you? Well, these are your consequences. Take them! Take every one of those consequences, nothing after nothing, until it all hurts so badly you might as well just ERASE.

05421: \E4* you're just a dirty& hacker^1, aren't you?/

No better. No worse.]

Shouldn't've done it.

[normandysbest]

[She's... not sure what's going on. She figured out their encounter around Halloween was because of the candy, a Wonderland trick, but she means to go see if they're alright afterwards anyway. It's a busybody type of thing. She's trying to keep herself occupied. But when Frisk literally falls onto her when she's outside at one point, she's at least thankful for the moment that she finally found them.]

Kid, holy he...ck. Did I interrupt a flying lesson or something?

[determinedest]

[Frisk...lies there. Lets the vibrating hum of pain fill their bones, if they have any that are still bones and not simply code or the digital tearing of something clawlike across a video screen. Tries, tries to discern if it's any different from the agony's that's become ever-present since it happened.

Since it happened. Their brain thick with white fuzzing static, impossible to think through. Like peering through snow.

They look up, and their eyes are too many colors and every color, flicking through every single one until they settle upon - black. Black pupils, black irises, black sclera.]

15059: SCR_TEXTTYPE
15060: Frisk!/
15061: This is all just& a bad dream...!/
15062: Please^1, wake up...!/%%

[normandysbest]

[Uhm. Holy shit. Double holy shit. The eyes and the voice.]

That's, uhm, not what I was expecting. Jeez, Frisk, what happened?

[A small pause.] If it's too hard to tell me, you don't have to. Just, uhm. Guess this was why you were midair, huh?

[determinedest]

[Having trouble laying down an identifying factor. She doesn't have a sprite. Nothing to latch onto, focus on. Eyes screw shut, and they shake their head, furious. Think. Think.

Numbers string together into letters and then away again. scr_texttype - no. Make it make sense.]

S-sorry. Sorry.

[normandysbest]

[Sorry, Frisk. Her graphics are a little past sprites and soundfonts. But she is concerned]

Hey, you don't need to apologize to me. I just, ah... anything I can do?

[She realizes, also, that she's still holding them.]

Er, I can put you down, too. Sorry about that. You can just point, if that's easier.

[determinedest]

'S okay.

[It's not so difficult to index their map values. Or maybe their map values index themselves? It's not entirely clear, but the fact of the matter is that Frisk simply - ceases to be in one spot, and reappears in another in a flare of multicolored bars of static.

They end up sitting on the ground with their knees drawn up, head bowed.]

midway through the week

[punful]

[A shortcut leaves something like a wake through the quantum foam, or at least that's how his Mirror described it, back when the guy was chasing him all over Wonderland. Real good times. At least he learned something he hadn't known before--shortcuts can be followed, if you know what to look for.]

[These are not shortcuts. Not in the way he's familiar with. As near as he can figure, this is more like what happened when Max's Mirror rewound him through a shortcut. You're temporarily nowhere, while both you and the world catches up and tries to figure out where you're supposed to be within space. It happens in such a short amount of time that anyone watching would just see you in one place and then another. It had fucking hurt just the one time. He's not sure if this is hurting Frisk, but how can it not be? How can having the stuff that makes you up, makes you exist, suddenly go haywire and shoot off in all directions--the code--how can that not hurt?]

[It's not easy to follow, either. There's the hole left behind where they were and then the shred of particles wherever they end up. He can generally only guess the vicinity.]

[It's been exhausting, but whatever. This is worse for Frisk. This is a million times worse for Frisk.]

[He thinks they're on the roof somewhere, so that's where he goes. He ends up almost thirty yards away from them. Close enough. In more ways than one, because they're awful close to the edge.]

[He blips himself over to them.]

almost seems like you're starting to have some control over it.

[determinedest]

[Contemplation of things below them. They've tried this before - tried launching themself off this upper stratum of Wonderland, let the plunging height take them. But it - doesn't yield anything. Nothing. The world twists or they do before anything can come of it. Someone calls, font lower-case, words with softened, unseriffed, rounded edges, and they turn around. I turn around. You turn around. We all turn around together.

Gosh. Look at you. Getting better at stringing words together, are you not?

Do we get to do the hokey pokey next?

I'm not here right now. I never was. Stop pretending you aren't alone.

Their eyes are a clouded gray, currently. Their shirt is cast in shades of sepia. Can almost see the words ticking gently across a string. 04810: Many years later^2.^2.^4.\E1 ^1% - a human perches on the edge of a long, dark fall.

Falling is a terrible way to go. You get too long to think about what you've done, and regret it.]

Since when was I the one in control?

[The flash of rosy cheeks, briefly flickered over their face, and then away again. Still just you now.]

[punful]

[The glitching--and it still makes his head feel funny to think of it in those terms--doesn't seem to be as bad as it was at first. They're sepia now. Like an old photograph.]

[He stuffs his hands in his pockets and shuffles a bit closer. Just in case he...just in case.]

don't think anyone's in control right now, sorry to say.

[He glances down over the edge. He hasn't liked coming up here, not since the thing with Mirror Max.]

we're about half done. won't be too much longer. you think you can hang in there a few more days?

[He's honestly not sure how much they can even hear right now. He's just been...trying to talk to them like normal. Just in the vague hopes that it might help ground them a little.]

[Though, heh, grounding them isn't really on the agenda right now, haha, yeah, that sure is a long drop...]

[determinedest]

[Maybe they'll just disappear.

That's the thing they can hope for. Hate themself a little for hoping it, but that's nothing new. They could just disappear. They could disperse, bit by bit. Every time they die, their grip on this world slips. And it was...raw data. EXPUNGED. REDACTED.

Maybe it'll carve them out of the world completely.]

I'll...

[Their words are lost, for a moment, in a swelling fuzz of static, either in their head or spilling from their mouth like broken code or both. They can't say. It burns in their head, that fly-in-a-jar buzz of too many things and not enough places to put them. Too much data. No data available.

They lose track of what they're supposed to say, and end consequentially say nothing at all.]

[punful]

[Something gets lost. They go fuzzy for a bit, hissing like a TV set to the wrong station.]

[This hasn't stopped being familiar.]

[He's quiet for a bit, watching them.]

how about...you at least step back from the edge a bit. yeah?

[He holds out a hand.]

[determinedest]

[A cruel, horrible impulse tugs at their lips. Tells them to laugh, and smile. And that's no way to talk about someone who's listening, is it?

They draw their hands up and curl their arms around their midriff, hugging themself. Don't touch. What if it spreads? They can take it; they've always been an anomaly. They can stand there and take it. What about something like him, who's been touched by things unseen and unknown and strains still to not be devoured whole by it. They are not so cruel as to submerge him in that hell again.]

Doesn't matter. Won't kill me.

[Won't grant them what they're desperately, desperately seeking now, now more than ever. Hoping that the things tearing them apart will finish the job before Alphys and Sans and Ford can.]

Dying is a luxury. Not for us.

20128: mus_fallendown2.ogg before we do.

here come dat blook

[rlynotfeelinup2itrnsorry]

uh....

[they float upsoundlessly to the child. something doesn't feel right. something feels wrong]

hey..... hey fris k.....

oh shit

[determinedest]

[Something is indeed, very...very...wrong. Frisk's head tilt back as their eyes settle upon the ghost for a moment. Then they -

Their body skips. It jolts back a few paces, and then forwards again. A dark, black, gelatinous grin creeps across their face for an almost imperceptible second, and then they're gazing blankly at them again.

Then their mouth opens.]

06562: * Napstablook is wishing they& weren't here.

[rlynotfeelinup2itrnsorry]

i...

[they back up a little. they've heard those words before, whispered into frisk's ear]

um.... are you.... what's going on?

can i....

can i help?

[determinedest]

No.

[And they start to l͖ͧ͜a̖ͮ͞u̥̿ͭg̫̳ͭh̼͈̙.͊̇͝

Then they...aren't laughing anymore. Maybe they never were. It spurted out of them, a harsh pang of sound that's hastily muffled, a smile that twitches with a profound wrongness.]

No!

N̪̰͆o᷈͝ͅt̠᷄̀h̋᷾ͯi̯᷿̋n᷾̚͜▓ c̊᷄̌a̭̾ͪn̬͔᷅ S͕ͯ̋A̢̩͒V᷅͗ͦE̅᷾᷀ ░░oͥ̔́u͉ͧͣ nͭͣ͆ŏ̸̭w͊͑ͩ.̧̗̾

[rlynotfeelinup2itrnsorry]

[they back up a little more]
um.... ok uh sorry i just.....

what happened?

[determinedest]

I happened.

[They keep drifting back and back and back, like that will SAVE them. Nothing can. Nothing can. It's leached up into their head, coiled around the base of their skull and sunk into their spine.

Frisk's fingers creep up to their hair, sinking into a hank of it to yank at it, agonizing.]

N-no. That's not true. It wasn't...

It was a mistake. It was a mistake.

13134: * You might be mistaken for& a trash-can./%%
00012: fhuehfuehfuehfuheufhe/%