[It's a reasonable enough treatment, as some of them act a little like weird pets when Papyrus isn't actively directing them. Even with the general schedules and task priorities he's given them, they all tend to re-prioritize and add extra steps to their days, sometimes moving things around or autonomously following the skeletons through the house. It's just as well Papyrus doesn't have a box of bones stashed anywhere - he half suspects that, if he did, the drones would conspire to steal them.
But the drone on the couch doesn't wander off to emulate a certain dog, instead staying on the couch and watching the TV for Papyrus while he jostles the cables to test the signal. Jostling does nothing, the screen's still flickering - but now that he's closer to the speakers, he can hear the audio's overlaid in a strange way.]
Is it... picking up two channels at once? [That's usually more of a radio problem - it's possible, if not likely. But it's a first idea to check, as he steps back around to watch the static and record more of it, setting a few processes to analyzing the video as well as the audio.] Or some piratical broadcast...?
[Sans is silent, staring at the television. The eyes in the living room are all called to attention as well, each one's gaze settling on that same point. Piratical broadcast is probably the best description, except maybe everything else is a pirate broadcast? Okpaza was here first, right? So maybe this is all just borrowing things that belong to it, and--
There's a tug on his soul.
All of Sans's extra arms flare to painfully bright life, coiling themselves around his soul like he means to hang onto it. His left arm flings itself out wildly, and the television lifts up and smashes into the wall, tearing some cables out and sending the more tightly attached accessories skittering across the floor alongside the ruined television.
Sans is pressed as flat as he can get against the back of the couch. Light is dripping out from under his hoodie, pooling where he's sitting.]
Whoa!? [Papyrus startles at the sight - of the arms, light and aggressive for the first time since the void god incident. He outright recoils at the crash of the television against the wall, the smashed machinery and wildly torn cables feeling entirely too much like a pile of dust to his mind, and he only stops backing away when he hits the wall next to the hallway.] S-Sans, what, why did...
[Thanks to the (undamaged, for now?) drone still on the couch, he has an ongoing line of sight to the destruction even while he glances Sans's way. Seems like they're both recoiling and panicking about something. Different somethings.]
[Sans remains flat against the couch, wings all ruffled, dripping light. Most of his eyes are locked on the remains of the television. Something in him is waiting for it to turn on again, or to start crawling, or something else way more horrible than that, but it's just a TV. It just sits on the ground.
The eyelights in his skull flick over toward Papyrus. All his eyes, and he hadn't registered that Papyrus had moved until this moment. Papyrus looks scared, and Sans's already frazzled emotions twist up even more.] It was pulling on my soul, so, so I just-- [That wouldn't be very clear, except there's only one thing that's ever tried to pull out Sans's soul in the canyon.]
On your sou- the TV was?? [Papyrus is panicked enough to be backed against the wall, emotions reasonably close to full power (unfortunately). He's not so panicked to forget how to multitask, multiple trains of thought running concurrently. Sans is dripping light which means scared or pained or something needing self-soothing, so he believes what he's saying, something tugging on his soul. A glance at the TV with his own eyes - he's not so panicked as to keep eyes on his brother, which is something - shows the same just a TV that the drone is seeing. No activity, nothing obvious. But, then...] Is it still?
[It's hard to relax, even as he reasserts indications that his brother isn't a threat, because Sans's sudden aggression isn't the only potential danger here. He doesn't feel anything tugging at his own soul, that is to say. He doesn't entirely know what it would feel like, even with some of Sans's memories, given his soul's differences. Would he feel something like that? Is this some angel-specific problem?]
No. [And saying that, acknowledging more fully that what he has left of his soul is still sitting safe in his chest and there's no more pulling, settles him enough to loosen his posture somewhat. It doesn't stop the light from dripping out of him, but he isn't pressed against the couch anymore.] The static was whispering, and then, uh, it got worse. [Very belatedly, it occurs to him that Papyrus had been examining the television, and even if Sans hadn't thrown it at Papyrus, he could have been wirelessly connected to it or something when it smashed.] Are you okay?
A little startled. [It's dry, very deliberately so, as Papyrus even more deliberately directs his body through a sequence of movements to shift his posture to something that seems more relaxed than pressed against the wall in fear as he has been. A couple of relaxing, chill skeletons they are.] I didn't notice any soul stuff... But, I was analyzing the glitches.
[And still not entirely sure he would have noticed if there was any. But the cable signal isn't the same as the network access he's always reflexively grabbing for these days, and he isn't noticing any actual gaps in signal strength even with the wrecked devices. Opening himself up to the more conscious awareness of all the various electromagnetic signals... Well, he hasn't touched that yet. The subroutines that do the monitoring haven't flagged him about anything, anyway.]
I heard the whispering. [Sans's hands work their way into the feathers of his largest wings. With one of his smaller ones partially broken, he's mostly careful to leave that one alone. No pulling, just preening. More self-soothing that Sans doesn't look fully aware of.] I'm sure. I... Could understand some of it. [He doesn't want to admit that even if it has a reasonable explanation. He's not connected to Okpaza, and he's not going to be its messenger. He refuses.] Sorry. I'll warn you before I break anything else.
[Not that he even consciously decided to break the television. It's just acknowledgment more than anything.]
Warnings are always appreciated, when they're available. [The airy concession is a bit dry too, but he's taking in the various signs of sincere distress on Sans's part and accepting them as truth. Panicked accident, not a sudden violent hatred of machines, okay.
...He flags that fearful theory as something to examine later, and mutes it for now, because it's unpleasant and surely entirely unnecessary! And a moment of fresh fear isn't the moment to unpack it, anyway.]
I guess I should ask. It was just the TV whispering? And, not all machines. Like, not your phone? [Or Papyrus's own digital voice, whichever speakers it happens to be emerging from at the time, more importantly.]
It was the static. [Just the television, but specifically whatever was wrong with the television. Well, now Sans is pretty sure Okpaza was what's wrong with the television. He's keeping his responses to the point, here, not just because he's nervous but also because he can tell he's upset Papyrus at least a little.] The static was the whispering. I think I started saying something? But then it got worse real fast.
I see... Well, I'll be sure not to replay that static anywhere near you. [Because, you know, he recorded some of it and could do that. Was planning to dissect the audio and listen to it, maybe aloud through speakers to emulate the experience again, but no. Just in his own head, if at all. It's something of an olive branch, or an apology, or just a promise. One that, with that one tangle of unexpected sharp fear shoved aside, lets him add:] If I do sound at all staticky... It won't be on purpose! And would be better dealt with, with a little bit of physical distance. Like me taking a walk. Or you popping off to one of your hideaway spots for a few.
[He's not asking for a promise from his brother here. Partly, because it's almost never worth doing, Sans hates making promises. Partly because no promise can really be guaranteed, when voidgod thoughts might trickle in and forget that Papyrus's chassis is actually an important part of him and not something to swat aside to free his soul or something. But... he'd really like Sans to promise to try to, anyway.]
[Sans's eyes widen just a little when Papyrus implies he recorded it. That can't be a safe recording to keep around for very long. He's quiet while Papyrus continues talking. It sounds like Papyrus is worried Sans is going to try and throw him into a wall. He remembers the last time he went really strange, the way he'd gotten into Papyrus's head and rearranged things, and anything he might say by way of protest dies in his mouth. Carefully, because re-injuring his broken foot won't help a single thing here, Sans stands up.]
If you want to check it out now, no big deal. I could use another nap anyway. [He grabs his crutches. (He should really just be teleporting. He doesn't know why he isn't, but it doesn't yet occur to him to wonder why.) The hardest part of working with the crutches was figuring out where to put his wings, but he's done enough test walking to know how to keep them up out of the way. He doesn't actually wait for Papyrus to reply before he starts making his way to his room.]
[His brother, Papyrus reflects, is an insightful pain in the ass. Here Papyrus hasn't yet pulled apart his feelings to figure out what that fearful thought was about, even putting the obviously relevant trains of thought on pause to wait for privacy to do so... And there Sans is acting like he's been kicked, presumably because he saw Papyrus tilt his head an extra 2 degrees or something, and from that microexpression managed to deduce everything he's thinking and feeling. And then, of course, he's ignoring the nicer parts like promising not to prank with static sounds, the better to focus on feeling wounded.
Or, maybe that's just a side effect of one's soul getting jostled around, and the fear and pain that goes with it. Especially with significant lingering injuries to add to the whole pain thing. Papyrus can be the bigger skeleton here, and put this conversation off too.] ...Sleep well, enjoy the prime napping spot.
[Sans has been putting his avoidance to work; it's the only thing he works at regularly. (Okay, that's not true. It's even less true lately. Seems a shame to drop a good bad joke, though.) If it was just that one incident, just the television, then maybe that would be one thing. But as time goes on, Sans realizes he just keeps walking around. Flying around. Taking the stairs. He should be teleporting. He wants to be teleporting. He isn't.
It's weird. It's a problem. So, as he walks into the kitchen in the morning for breakfast--walks, instead of just appearing either in the kitchen or somewhere nearby--he decides he should probably bring it up. He's been trying to do that more.]
[With how quiet Sans's teleports are these days, Papyrus has come to more than half expect no warning at all before his brother turns up just about anywhere. (He suspects it hasn't helped him with calming down lingering fears of that light spreading to reach into him, in fact. But with the way their minds can get changed on them... There's not much point asking Sans to promise not to.) In that regard, his brother's antsy physical activity has been a help - at least he can hear footsteps and crutches approaching.]
Yeah, but I still can't prove it.
[Not that Sans asked him to, or expressed any doubt in Papyrus's claims about them. But despite the last couple days of silent avoidance, the complaint isn't that kind of defensive. It's more frustrated than anything, petulant irritation with effort that's gone nowhere - or at least not given him results he can show. At least whatever porridge-resembling mush he's experimenting with is something tangible.]
Yeah, something weird's going on again. [He'd rather have a break after last month, but he doesn't expect that here. He saw Papyrus asking around on the network about strange happenings, and Sans does believe Papyrus's mirror issue even if there's no actual evidence for it, but he hadn't noticed anything in himself until now. Might as well provide another data point.] Y'know how I keep going on walks and stuff? I don't actually want to be doing that.
[Sans not wanting to do extra exercise: not a shock. Sans doing it even when he doesn't want to: the actual issue here.]
You... Have been moving around more than usual. [It's a slow concession, especially as Papyrus takes a few full seconds to consider the rather confused flag the tracker had sent him a day ago.
More than 300% increase in physical activity compared to all those months of monitoring, not to mention whatever it retained of his summary of Sans. But it is the first time his brother's injured a leg quite like this, and there's a difference between choosing not to walk around and being unable to do so... Papyrus figured it finally goaded his brother into choosing activity for the sake of choosing. Apparently... not?]
Not walking my hot dog cart all the way into the city. [That one was really a big hint to Sans that something was wrong, happening just the other day.] I want to just go back to taking shortcuts. It's faster. But I can't. [Not most of the time, anyway. Sometimes he can convince himself, but it's getting harder to get his body to do what he says, exercise-wise, as the days go by.]
...Your shortcuts aren't working? [That's a worry, if their new kinds of magic start faltering on them. Papyrus has a lot of things he's juggling on the basis of his mechanical skills, some of which would be hard to stop - like his job - and, well... Knowing that Sans can usually get himself out of any manner of emergency is a big factor in his ease of mind.]
They're working. [When it's in the name of demonstration rather than getting somewhere, the magic comes to life easily; Sans vanishes and reappears on the other side of Papyrus, easy as he always has.] But when I want to go somewhere, I just... Get up and walk. Can't convince myself to just teleport.
That's... strange. [Baffled, rather than disbelieving. Sans has very visibly been active, while injured, and that's not really prank material. Not to mention, he can return the belief in things they can't prove.] That's so the opposite of normal, it sounds like someone flipped a flag on you.
[Just one flag, the decisions about physical exertion. The rest of Sans's programming - the rest of Sans's mind, and mannerisms, and behaviors, he means - seem to be about as normal, looking at it from the outside.]
They should un-flip it. [That Papyrus is using a term like that, even to describe Sans, is hardly even worth thinking about at this point. It's just how Papyrus speaks now.] You're not supposed to walk around on a broken leg anyway. [Of course, for this place, it's a pretty benign issue. For now. He doesn't trust it at all.] Has the mirror thing just been staying the same for you? Like, it's not... I dunno, spreading, or getting worse?
[Papyrus hums agreeably, because yeah, the antsy-seeming walking probably hasn't been helping the slow healing process, not if there's chances of jostling and re-injuring things. But what he knows about bones is... starting to fade, without ongoing personal experience, so who knows.]
No, not for me. I don't know if it's spreading... Nobody's mentioned anything like that. [Another worrying thought, one he flags to follow up on with coworkers and neighbors and other places he's visited the last several days.] But for me it's the same. Drippy mirrors... Outdated reflection.
[He's torn over whether to call it his real reflection or not. Outdated works, sort of - acknowledges the once-realness of it, acknowledges the updates and revisions since.]
Other reflections look like they should? Like, I still look like--how I look now. [A brief expression crosses Sans's face, a here and gone shadow, because he almost said "I still look like me", and this isn't the best time to try and work on what "like me" is supposed to mean. Better to just put that entire issue aside.]
[Papyrus absolutely catches that shadow and hesitation, because it's the same one he's made a couple of times since this started up. It's the notion that's outright haunting him in reflections, the conflicted feeling of a reflection that's no longer the right kind of familiar and the dysphoria of it. It's not a feeling he wants to be spreading.]
Uhh. You did before. [When Papyrus first discovered it and tried to show his brother, first with a mirror and then with pictures of his memories.] I haven't... seen your reflection today. But we could check!
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spaghettimonster) wrote2021-07-31 02:32 am
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But the drone on the couch doesn't wander off to emulate a certain dog, instead staying on the couch and watching the TV for Papyrus while he jostles the cables to test the signal. Jostling does nothing, the screen's still flickering - but now that he's closer to the speakers, he can hear the audio's overlaid in a strange way.]
Is it... picking up two channels at once? [That's usually more of a radio problem - it's possible, if not likely. But it's a first idea to check, as he steps back around to watch the static and record more of it, setting a few processes to analyzing the video as well as the audio.] Or some piratical broadcast...?
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There's a tug on his soul.
All of Sans's extra arms flare to painfully bright life, coiling themselves around his soul like he means to hang onto it. His left arm flings itself out wildly, and the television lifts up and smashes into the wall, tearing some cables out and sending the more tightly attached accessories skittering across the floor alongside the ruined television.
Sans is pressed as flat as he can get against the back of the couch. Light is dripping out from under his hoodie, pooling where he's sitting.]
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[Thanks to the (undamaged, for now?) drone still on the couch, he has an ongoing line of sight to the destruction even while he glances Sans's way. Seems like they're both recoiling and panicking about something. Different somethings.]
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The eyelights in his skull flick over toward Papyrus. All his eyes, and he hadn't registered that Papyrus had moved until this moment. Papyrus looks scared, and Sans's already frazzled emotions twist up even more.] It was pulling on my soul, so, so I just-- [That wouldn't be very clear, except there's only one thing that's ever tried to pull out Sans's soul in the canyon.]
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[It's hard to relax, even as he reasserts indications that his brother isn't a threat, because Sans's sudden aggression isn't the only potential danger here. He doesn't feel anything tugging at his own soul, that is to say. He doesn't entirely know what it would feel like, even with some of Sans's memories, given his soul's differences. Would he feel something like that? Is this some angel-specific problem?]
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[And still not entirely sure he would have noticed if there was any. But the cable signal isn't the same as the network access he's always reflexively grabbing for these days, and he isn't noticing any actual gaps in signal strength even with the wrecked devices. Opening himself up to the more conscious awareness of all the various electromagnetic signals... Well, he hasn't touched that yet. The subroutines that do the monitoring haven't flagged him about anything, anyway.]
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[Not that he even consciously decided to break the television. It's just acknowledgment more than anything.]
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...He flags that fearful theory as something to examine later, and mutes it for now, because it's unpleasant and surely entirely unnecessary! And a moment of fresh fear isn't the moment to unpack it, anyway.]
I guess I should ask. It was just the TV whispering? And, not all machines. Like, not your phone? [Or Papyrus's own digital voice, whichever speakers it happens to be emerging from at the time, more importantly.]
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[He's not asking for a promise from his brother here. Partly, because it's almost never worth doing, Sans hates making promises. Partly because no promise can really be guaranteed, when voidgod thoughts might trickle in and forget that Papyrus's chassis is actually an important part of him and not something to swat aside to free his soul or something. But... he'd really like Sans to promise to try to, anyway.]
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If you want to check it out now, no big deal. I could use another nap anyway. [He grabs his crutches. (He should really just be teleporting. He doesn't know why he isn't, but it doesn't yet occur to him to wonder why.) The hardest part of working with the crutches was figuring out where to put his wings, but he's done enough test walking to know how to keep them up out of the way. He doesn't actually wait for Papyrus to reply before he starts making his way to his room.]
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Or, maybe that's just a side effect of one's soul getting jostled around, and the fear and pain that goes with it. Especially with significant lingering injuries to add to the whole pain thing. Papyrus can be the bigger skeleton here, and put this conversation off too.] ...Sleep well, enjoy the prime napping spot.
a few days later
It's weird. It's a problem. So, as he walks into the kitchen in the morning for breakfast--walks, instead of just appearing either in the kitchen or somewhere nearby--he decides he should probably bring it up. He's been trying to do that more.]
Hey, are mirrors still being weird for you?
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Yeah, but I still can't prove it.
[Not that Sans asked him to, or expressed any doubt in Papyrus's claims about them. But despite the last couple days of silent avoidance, the complaint isn't that kind of defensive. It's more frustrated than anything, petulant irritation with effort that's gone nowhere - or at least not given him results he can show. At least whatever porridge-resembling mush he's experimenting with is something tangible.]
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[Sans not wanting to do extra exercise: not a shock. Sans doing it even when he doesn't want to: the actual issue here.]
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More than 300% increase in physical activity compared to all those months of monitoring, not to mention whatever it retained of his summary of Sans. But it is the first time his brother's injured a leg quite like this, and there's a difference between choosing not to walk around and being unable to do so... Papyrus figured it finally goaded his brother into choosing activity for the sake of choosing. Apparently... not?]
What... do you want to be doing?
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[Just one flag, the decisions about physical exertion. The rest of Sans's programming - the rest of Sans's mind, and mannerisms, and behaviors, he means - seem to be about as normal, looking at it from the outside.]
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No, not for me. I don't know if it's spreading... Nobody's mentioned anything like that. [Another worrying thought, one he flags to follow up on with coworkers and neighbors and other places he's visited the last several days.] But for me it's the same. Drippy mirrors... Outdated reflection.
[He's torn over whether to call it his real reflection or not. Outdated works, sort of - acknowledges the once-realness of it, acknowledges the updates and revisions since.]
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Uhh. You did before. [When Papyrus first discovered it and tried to show his brother, first with a mirror and then with pictures of his memories.] I haven't... seen your reflection today. But we could check!