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

[determinedest]

[Is he...afraid? Afraid? Not afraid? Afraid should be afraid. Even they are afraid of them. Always have been.

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What is he talking about? A child? A child.]

Hah.

[Short, breathy. The laughter begins to spill out and out and out. Soon, laughter isn't the only thing that floods from their open mouth. Something wet and dark and thick starts to dribble down also.

▒█▓▓░: * Smells like flowers and rot.]

Ha...ha. Ha! Ha̱᷇ͮha h̲͍͋a͛̔᷇ h̘͍̔a͓̝͆ h̦̺᷾a͗͠͡ h͕᷀̄ḁ͟͠!̴͔

[They stand, sloppily. Their knees dig into the empty air, feet braced against the dirt. Their shoes flicker between spr_balletshoes_0.png and brown, nondescript sneakers, their movements shambling, lurching, practically zombielike.]

09703: You&IDIOT./
09704: You&haven't&learned&a thing./%%
09705: Hee&hee&hee./

[catinthemask]

Perhaps so. But have you learned anything, Frisk?

[If this goes where it goes, it was getting old. Technically they could attack him right now. Zacharie wasn't a merchant so it could happen (and besides, it wasn't like Wonderland cared about such things) but he just didn't want to, if his personal opinion was asked. Oh well.]

Apologizes if I descend into loquacious, but if this is a path you choose then it cannot be helped. So? Where are you going to go, amigo?

[determinedest]

[If they choose it, it makes it their fault. It makes it their fault. Why doesn't he understand this? Why is he allowing them to do this? Can't he stop them? What if he could?

Or has he simply sunk too deep into apathy, into casual observation, to care? A skeleton who smiles too much and a man who wears a mask, who laughs as if nothing is wrong.

Shop interface. Cannot attack.

So break the rules.]

St▒p...

[Hands drag up through their hair. Where's their weapon? They don't have one. Not even a Stick, nothing, they have nothing. Lunge at him with their bare hands, rip the mask from his face, pulverize him into dust or whatever fleshy pulp he'd yield.

Something else starts to leak from their eyes. Something that is not black putrescence, something that is not blood or determination.

05645: One being with the&power to erase&EVERYTHING.../

Stop it. Stop it, please.]

Stop ▓t. Make ▓█ s▒op.

[catinthemask]

[If Frisk is fast enough, if they can somehow reach him then they can try. But they will also discover it'll take more than one good yank and then they'll have to endure whatever happens next. But that comes later.]

Then cease throwing yourself upon swords if you are not equipped in handing it in a physically and mentally sound manner. A martyr's death does not suit you, dear ailing progeny.

[The masks gave Zacharie a chance to put himself in other people's shoes but that didn't mean he was good at mimicking them, hence why his dialog was more relaxed as The Judge. But in this case perhaps he was just hit with something that belonged in a long corridor with a switch at the end. Either way, it passes.]

You have obtained ending after ending in your search for the perfect one. That ending where everyone can smile. Ah ah ah, it is commendable that you have picked the game back up again and again to fix whatever you have broken.

[Some of them hoped there was a better ending in OFF. But that came down to interpretation yet again. Which was better, to live in a world that was completely corrupt or to pull the switch and end it for good? Now or eventually?

It's not in his place to speculate on those answers. Abruptly Zacharie is no longer where he's standing but farther back, far enough that he can still see them, one thumb on the FLEE command. Wherever this goes...it goes. Because there was one thing the Puppeteer knows that Frisk does not.]

Again and again you pick the game back up. But do you remember how to put it back down?

cw body horror, gore

[determinedest]

[Frisk...

stutters.

They can't move. Can't or maybe - maybe won't. Might as well be plastered here, welded, awful black thickness flooding from their eyes. It's black and then it's red and then it's salty and hot, and they can't see why he even bothers anymore.

Why is he still here. They lurch again, again, as if spurred into motion before their action stutters and sets them back to the start again. Step forward, stutter, back to the start. Step forward, stutter, back to the start. Like their life. Like their life. Like everything, everything, everything. Can't put it back down. Can't even pick it up.]

Not for us. [The words are ragged, tired, wearying.] We don't get to QUIT.

We die. And we die. And we die.

[A hot, pulsing redness suffuses the front of their shirt. Gashes scored across their arms, their cheeks, a gaping pit in their chest. As if they've been flayed by thorns. A thin line of redness ripping across their throat. He cut their head off. Severed it neatly with a well-placed thrust of those massive, crablike arms, spiked with red and green.

I couldn't stop laughing.

It dissolves. They're sound and whole again. Whole, but for the black-red-saline streaks on their face.]

[catinthemask]

[He watches as something tears Frisk apart - or maybe Frisk is tearing themselves apart. But it's that same shudder that sometimes saw him see The Batter walk out of a room he wasn't in awhile ago. Auto was certainly a useful thing but you needed to pay attention to HP and sometimes a swap was too slow.

Game Over. Load again.]

Mens rea, but we are not in a court room. So you are incapable of quitting your game. Yet I will quote something that you said to me upon my own arrival. This isn't your game anymore, you can be more than your roles. This has yet to apply to myself but you were very insistent.

[Zacharie was never going to take it, because everything was shelved and one day even OFF would lose its last Puppeteer. Until then he'll remain as himself.]

But none of your words apply to yourself, Frisk. The protagonist is never excluded from all that happens. So why do you do it?

[determinedest]

[Stop talking.

It makes perfect sense, that's why they hate it. It makes perfect sense and it means what they're saying and thinking and doing makes no sense and there's no rational out to this so they'll have to take an irrational one.

Their teeth are bared, their brow sloping low in an expression of unmistakable anger.]

Because I'm not like everyone else.

5643: \E1There is one thing./
05644: \E3One last threat./
05645: One being with the&power to erase&EVERYTHING.../
05646: \E1Everything everyone's&worked so hard for./
05647: \E6You know who I'm&talking about^1, don't&you?/
05648: \E1That's right./
05649: \E4I'm talking about YOU./
05650: \E7YOU still have the&power to reset&everything./

[So why can't you do it, Zacharie? Be the hero! Give them what they deserve! Just - just -

Let them sleep.]

[catinthemask]

Do you fa...no, 'fancy' is the incorrect word, isn't it? Do you feel you are a tyrant with your powers? Another monarch? Ah ah ah, I don't believe so. I believe you are just a child who accepted the consequences and continues to accept them even if in the end they are out of your control.

[It's not to say there aren't any at all. Those bad endings Frisk had gone through still weighted upon their shoulders and whatever they had done should, if they were going by other people's standards. But they picked up more and more, things they had no control over. As he said, Frisk needed to learn that there were only so many swords that they could impale themselves with.

But. In this case...Frisk was like Japhet. And Zacharie was still Zacharie. Just slot in a new bit of dialog beginning with "Greetings." yet again.

He reaches up and feels the grooves in the mask he made in honor of a dead cat. A smile that was fixed in place but it wasn't to hide his own. Oh no, Zacharie was always smiling.]

<>Change Face Graphics: le bateur, 16, Left.
<>Play Sound: ZachMaw
<>Message: This is undeniably cruel, isn't it dear friend?

[Drops his hand and laughs again because spilling out more code wouldn't help. But they all had a path to go down and if it was to be that Frisk will sink here, then it is. One way or another...it'll play out as it's meant to.

Doesn't mean he can't say anything about it.]

'Tarde venientibus ossa.'

["For those who come late, only the bones."

And, once again, Zacharie is abruptly gone. Good luck, dear Frisk.]

[determinedest]

[Can't hear those words, garbled as they are. They can't translate on the fly. Nothing about other languages is compressed between the lines of code, interleaved with asterisks and bizarre punctuation.

Are they? Are they just a child? Sans called them a "finite god" - and isn't that what they are? A danger to everyone, as long as they exist. This - this just proved it. Look at what they've done. What they're continuing to do! Shredding the world apart, carving great swathes out of it.

He vanishes in the same way Sans does. No flaring of static or magic dust. No fanfare. He simply is one moment, and is not the next.

He doesn't give them what they want. What they truly want.

But then, no one can.

They start to laugh, and they keep laughing, laughing and laughing at the empty air. Nobody comes, because nobody ever comes. And when they're certain nobody ever will come, the laughing becomes something else.

They curl over and around themself, on their knees, bent over with their forehead pressed to the dirt where they belong. Full of messy things, blood and mucus and thick black putrescence.

* Disgusting.]