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

[sciencelizard]

[Of course she didn't mean it that way. She has no moment of thought towards his physical capability, but she knows this is eating her up inside. Even looking at the blueprints makes her want to throw up and sends her head swimming. She doesn't even know how he can stand to be here without feeling like his SOUL was going to vibrate apart from sheer stress.

Then again, he's always been better at holding it together than she was. For better or for worse.]

Y-Yeah. I mean, uh, I'll take your word for it. Here.

[She gestures to the blueprints spread out on the table, if he'd like to take a look.]

I just need to, uhm, figure out an order for this. I sort of just, d-did things as they came together last time, it was a lot less, uh, organized. Which, uh, isn't g-good right now, so...

[God, she's awful at this. She's just awful.]

Okay. Okay. Y-You get toolkit. I'll figure out sizing and placement and m-make sure this thing's gonna fit in here.

[punful]

[He's not even sure himself. Maybe because for the first time in, god, years, he feels like he actually has something worth working hard for. Worth putting in real effort for. This is the only way he can think of to help Frisk.]

ah, yeah. gotta refresh my memory.

[In a pretty literal sense, since it's also been years since he saw the blueprints at all. He steps closer to he can look them over. It's, uh. It's kind of incredible, seeing his writing all over again, and seeing all the notes and detail work done by...by whoever the third person had been.]

[No time to think about it all now.]

got it covered. be right back.

[He spends the next half hour or so just teleporting things from his closet to Alphys's lab--tool boxes, tool chests, some heavy duty machinery, everything he can think of that she might need that she doesn't already have.]

[sciencelizard]

[He leaves, for even a moment, and it takes everything she has not to break down. She knows this, she knows this, but the uncertainty to it's design and the modifications she made in the past were gone and replaced by entirely new anxieties. The amalgamates, always seeming drawn to it, as if it would be their salvation. Her own worries about if these are legitimate, if they're her finished model, if there's going to be more work than she thinks. If she's going to make it worse.

God, if she kills Frisk doing this, she won't be able to live with herself. She knows she won't.

So she busies her mind, and her hands, shuts it all out with algorithms and lists. Takes stock of everything she has and needs, organizes the things Sans is bringing in, measures and clears the right amount of space. Thankfully, Wonderland is rather accommodating. If they weren't here, she doesn't know how they could've fixed this.

Her mind also helpfully reminds her that death and rebirth is an option here, and she should be thankful for that, too. Alphys cringes, just a moment, and keeps going.

Finally, it seems like they have everything, minus perhaps an IV drip for coffee that she knows she'll need in about two days' time. At least the kitchen isn't far. She turns from her desk, blueprints spread across it and a small notepad and pen in her hands.]

Okay, so, b-by my calculations, with you, me, and Ford, we might be able to assemble this in a week and a half. A w-week if we're fast and nothing goes wrong with the calibrations.

[And she knows something will go wrong.]

Plus we'll probably need a test run or at least, I d-don't know, zap a chair or something. We'll get there.

[She looks up at him, finally meeting his eyes instead of looking at her notes.]

Is that o-okay? I mean, uh, we can tag-team sleeping, or uhm, coffee breaks, and, of course you don't have to be around for the whole thing but, it'd...

I'm g-glad you're here. I don't want to do this by myself.

[punful]

[He's quiet as he's shuttling things back and forth, making a cursory attempt to keep things a bit organized. At the very least, he's not just dumping things in piles. Tools go with tools, parts go with parts. He tries not to clutter her workbenches, eventually just grabbing a folding table and setting as much as he can there instead.]

[He also brings an entire coffee pot at some point and gets it going. He has a feeling neither of them are going to be sleeping much all week.]

a week, okay. jeez, that's a good time frame. is ford assisting with the engineering side, or?

[Ford strikes him as a somewhat Gaster-like multi-disciplinary scientist, so he's fairly certain Ford will do well wherever Alphys decides to put him.]

do you know if...

[He pauses in sorting through some nuts and bolts and rubs the back of his neck.]

is there any way to run a simulation for what kind of effect this will have on a living soul? because we...i mean, we never had live subjects, the first time.

[Put it in scientific terms. Sanitize it. Make it palatable. Subjects, not dead children.]

but yeah, that's fine. like i said, feel free to just order me around. i'll do whatever.

[Whatever it takes.]

[sciencelizard]

[Piles is about as organized as Alphys gets, but it's better for things to at least be in a general area with each other. That way they're less likely to lose things.]

Ford said he'd b-be by later. I figure if he can build, and you and I can do the magical calibrations, we can probably make this work out.

[But then, he asks the real million dollar question, and she stops.]

I don't... I've thought about it. I didn't run these t-tests with living souls either, so there may be side effects, but... t-there's the variable of it being from our world. We don't know if testing on another human SOUL would change because they're from somewhere else. The only real way to test would be on Chara, but... y-you've seen their SOUL. And I don't want to drag them into this, anyway.

[They've been through enough, she thinks, still remembering their glassy-eyed stare as the vendor took the memory.]

I'm sure we could f-find a volunteer, but... we have no way of knowing if it would ensure their safety. If other worlds have determination as we know it. If the physics of their p-planet are even one inch to the left it would change our entire spectrum.

[punful]

makes sense. [He's pretty sure Ford knows his way around magic, but not monster magic, and not to the degree of two literal monsters.

[He's quiet as he listens to her reasoning. Yeah, uh. That's what he thought. She wouldn't have had the time or capacity to test it on living monsters, because after all monsters have no Determination to extract. Testing it on any other human in Wonderland might not yield the same results, since Determination might manifest differently in them. And Chara is completely out of the question.]

yeah. yeah, that's what i thought. just flying blind then, i guess. heh, like usual.

just gotta...hope for the best, right?

[He thinks at least Alphys is better at hoping than he is.]

[sciencelizard]

[Hope. She feels like she's been running most of her life on hope. Blind prayer that everything's going to work out in the end, because everything she touches crumbles and dissipates into nothingness. Heh. Not even, in this case. Determination kept it all too real, too present, too... this. Everything she is, and was, and is re-creating.

If this works out... she should probably start studying determination in other worlds. See if other humans know about, or have SOULs, and if they can access that magic. In case this happens again.

Provided there's going to be an again. And once more, her SOUL feels like it drops to the very bottom of herself.]

Yeah. I... I g-guess so. I wouldn't do this, if it wasn't... I mean, what other choice d-do we have?

[She puts a hand on her face, presses between her temples, blinks back tears.]

All I can hope is that this works and... and that it's okay, a-afterwards. That Frisk is ok. I don't... I don't want to hurt t-them. Especially not like this.

[punful]

[It's a nightmare, honestly. This whole thing is a nightmare. It all even has that tinge of unreality to it, the sort of floaty, distant sensation that's been there since Frisk mentioned an image file.]

[He's been doing a very good job of not thinking about that.]

[He heaves a sigh and rubs the spot between his eyesockets.]

damned if we do, damend if we don't, right?

[The only other option would be to kill Frisk, and that's simply not an option at all.]

yeah. i know what you mean. next time something like this happens...we'll be more prepared.

[He tries to mentally steel himself. It's an old, unfamiliar sensation. The deep breath before diving into an intense project and a heavy workload.]

well. let's get to work.

[sciencelizard]

[She takes a breath. Looks over the parts, slowly amassing. Smells the coffee starting, the feeling of balling her fists in her coat, things that weren't foreign but feel so long ago. Maybe it's the surreal nature of Sans standing there with her. It feels like everything in her life has been shifted a little to the left. Though maybe it's more like everything being thrown into a dryer while she tumbles along with it, the dizziness amassing behind her eyes and rattling her SOUL around in a hollow chest.

His words wash over her. She flexes her fingers.

It's time to work.]

Yeah. Let's get started.