You Can Lead A Horse To... Oh God

[criticallyfucked]

Who: Foster von Horsebody and YOU
When: D16-D18
Where: Anywhere!
What: Thanks, I hate it!!
Warnings: You'll hate it too!



There you are, minding your own business.

Maybe you've just been shopping (again), or finished a particularly pitched snowball battle (again), or maybe you just wanted to go for a short, bracing walk after a long, luxurious soak in one of the available hot tubs (again.)

And everything is peaceful: the moon is calm and quiet, the wind is cold, the snow is the perfect blend of powdery and fresh.

Until you see him.

See it.

It looks like a horse, at first--striding long-legged through the snow, its neck arched, mane and tail billowing. But only at first. There's something wrong with its face. With its head.

But no, it can't be...

...Can it?

Yes.

Yes. It can.

This horse. Has a human face.

And not just any human face.

This face.... this horse...

..... is Foster van Denend.

He's wearing a look of unmistakeable intensity, an expression that's no longer a smile, but it might have been one just seconds ago. His blue eyes are brightened by the reflection of light on virgin snow. A little bit of saliva glistens on his lower lip.

It is, undoubtedly, the worst thing you've ever laid eyes on.

You're welcome.

BONUS A: ON THE JOB

This isn't what he asked for. He asked to become a beast of burden, describing the horses at the manor and the idea of a body that would perform such labours unassisted.

No. That's blatantly untrue. It's not what he intended, of course. But what he intended or not, what he wanted or not, it is--word for word--what he asked to be. And thus certain that the fault lay with him (what had he said? he couldn't even remember, whatwords exactly he had used to convey his meaning), he didn't complain. And having accepted (or resigned to, or resolved to) his new form, his initial alarm, regret, confusion, and excitement... are all in the past.

Once he got his footing (literally), he realised that he had to learn to live with it--because that's when it occurred to him that he was going to have to work with it.

Or there would be consequences.

Which is his motivation for attempting to do just that--a sponge pressed under one hoof, another gripped in his teeth. There's look of fierce desperation determination on his face.

If anyone returns to the Carnival, for any reason--

Well. He's just knocked over a mop. He's... doing his best to corral it (har har), pawing at it with one hoof, then scooting it with that same hoof, going the other way. He bends, trying to seize the wooden handle in his teeth, but his human face is too short, and he has to drop to his knees--

"Fuck. Fuck--no. Fuck. Fuck."

If nothing else, he's hard to miss.


BONUS B: FEAST DAY

Foster is hard to miss, but he's equally hard to watch.

Without thumbs--without hands, or paws, or really any appendage even remotely designed for anything but standing on--he can only add servings to his plate by asking for them. Which isn't too terrible.

The problem is that he has also no way to put that food in his mouth. Not without bending that majestic, horrible equine neck gracefully over the table and putting his awful, uncanny human face directly into his plate of food.

Which is what he's doing right now to a slice of cake, and the cake has icing, and he might be doing his best, but--

Honestly, it's a crime scene. The act of forcing other people to see him eat is a criminal act. This is disgusting. I'm so sorry.

Maybe it's time for someone to complain to the Ringmaster.

Maybe several someones.

Comments

Bonus A

[scientificist]

Herbert has been travelling back and forth between the Moon and the Carnival for the entire length of the vacation so far. He has his work to do, after all, and it's not exactly feasible to transfer all of his supplies up to the Moon and then back at the end. Easier to transport himself back and forth.

Safer to keep his purchased items in his trailer, too, where they're secure, and no one can just walk in and take them. He misses Foster on the way there, but runs into him on his way back to the portal to find him on the Moon-- although he's not sure, at first, that it's Foster he's run into. At first... it just seems like a swearing horse--and it's a little irritating that that's just something he accepts now--but no, the accent is unmistakable. He frowns as he draws nearer and ends up absolutely bewildered by the time he's fully approached.

"What..." he begins but trails off, momentarily at a total loss for words. 'What is your aversion to hands?!' is the first thing that comes to mind, but he doesn't really want to ask that.

OK, he does a bit but he doubts he'd receive a useful answer.

"A spell gone wrong?" he asks instead. It's all he can manage. Honestly, it's all he can assume. Julien said this sort of thing tended to be related to magic, somehow.

[criticallyfucked]

Foster looks up from his fruitless attempt to corner the mop, and for a moment he's at a complete loss for answers. He just stares at Herbert, dazed and frustrated and exhausted and just generally at his wits' end. Not that he had a lot of wits to begin with. Or that those wits tended to last for very long.

It's a struggle at first.

"A what--no. No, no." Foster has to think about it, how to get back on his feet--such as they are?--from his position down on his forward knees. Are they knees? That... that seems wrong, but he has no idea what else to call them. It doesn't matter. He belongs down here--on his knees, in the dirt and grime; incidentally, that same dirt and grime is smudged on his face, smeared across his nose and generally just making him look a much sweatier, more-spittle-flecked mess than he otherwise would be.

"This was the Ringmaster," he corrects more quickly, "But it was my fault. I asked for this! I asked for it, I asked!! Hahahaha--" His eyes flash a bit colder, his look a bit more purposeful. "Ask and you shall receive, right?"

[scientificist]

"Yooouuu....asked. To be a head attached to a horse." He walks around the Foster thing, stopping by his side to approach and examine the seam between Foster's head and the horse body, straight up reaching forward and pushing away Foster's hair to look. Definitely magic, he doesn't see any evidence of surgery. Fascinating. But still incredibly odd, he can't imagine ever wanting to be like this. Some sort of strange idea from Foster's ill brain?

No, ok, he has to ask. "Is this not disagreeable to you--first bear paws and now this--do you enjoy inconveniencing yourself? Inconveniencing our work?"

Just the general. Starter thing

[periphrasing]

Peridot hates it.

Peridot hates it in such a complex way that no word in any language could ever possibly hope to describe her feelings on this sight. The thing is: Regular Earth horses already fill her with a kind of dread that is hard for her to explain. They're so big and just. WRONG looking? How is one supposed to engage with a horse? How do you make meaningful eye contact with one? their eyes are on the sides of their head, their faces are long and weird shaped and it's just not?? Okay?? Pig is the only horse she can easily tolerate, and even then it almost doesn't even count because Pig is a Pokemon.

The point is, this is basically what Peridot's worst nightmare would be, if Peridot were the kind of gem who slept a lot and therefore ever experienced nightmares. The poor engineer is transfixed by the sight, and definitely not in the positive sense of the word. She's dumbstruck, rooted to the spot at the deeply troubling sight of one of earth's most ungodly creatures trotting vaguely in her direction, it's approach only made worse by the fact that, instead of a regular horrifying horse face at the end of the creature's alarmingly long and muscular looking neck, it's the humanoid face of a fellow carnie who makes her nervous and who she hasn't talked to in weeks.

She's just... trying to make sense of what she's looking at, first of all, but in that time it's easy enough for Foster to walk up to her, if he should so desire. AT LEAST FIGURING OUT WHERE TO MAKE EYE CONTACT ISN'T AN ISSUE, WITH THIS INDIVIDUAL HORSE,

IT'S KARMA FOR ALL THE EDITS I INFLICT ON OTHERS

[criticallyfucked]

Honestly, Peridot's feelings about horses almost totally oppose Foster's. He hadn't given them much consideration until the manor, to be fair, but once he did, he was impressed immediately by their size and strength of form, how powerful the simple act of walking seemed in their giant frames, how effortlessly speed came to them once in motion. The only thing he didn't like about them was really the same thing he dislikes about every animal.

Foster hates other living things as a sort of blanket rule, and attempting to negotiate with the mare he'd been handed reins to was a uniquely frustrating experience that the act of actually riding did very little to compensate for.

He had perhaps been a little too honest with the Ringmaster about his disgust for horses as living things, though it hasn't really dawned on him as him as a motive for her.... misinterpretation of his request.

Anyway, he's still new to this quadrupedal locomotion thing, but not so new that he cannot stride up to the tiny green Engineer and regard her, briefly, muscular neck arching to the side while he studies her from a sideways angle before he lowers his head. Attached as it is to his long equine neck, this is sort of the equivalent of lowering a meat-and-bone elevator, and he one which stops only once he's reached actual face level.

"Peridot," he says, like he's not something directly out of everyone's nightmares.

"Hello!"

and then I took like 6 days to respond with just. This.

[periphrasing]

Oh stars the closer he gets the worse the sight becomes. She's transfixed, and when Foster greets her all she can do is stammer dumbly for a moment before finally spitting out: "Wh... What are you doing?"

She asks this like walking around as a deeply unsettling combination of horse and man is an activity that Foster might have chosen to partake in.

[tacosgay]

Taako has seen many things in his hundreds of years. He's seen his home world consumed by a sentient darkness; he's watched the person he cares about most in the entire multiverse shed her body and join the undead. He's watched, helpless to stop it, as a fireball consumed an entire city, incinerating everything it touched.

That fucking horse is, without a doubt, the single most deeply terrifying sight that he has ever laid eyes on.

The second it crosses his vision, he stops short, mid-step, his foot hanging in mid-air. A cold kind of tremor spreads over his body, sweeping through his veins and settling, cold and hard, in the pit of his stomach. It takes him entirely too long to realize that what he's seeing is real, that it's not a joke or a statue, and that it's actually Foster, for real, despite how bullshit every single sense of his is declaring that conclusion at the moment.

"... what?" His voice is so high that it's nearly a hysterical squeak.

BONUS B...

[soft_focus]

He should, frankly, Be Sorry. Reira is standing there with her own plate of food, a large eagle at her side craning and trying to take said food, and her own attentions are quite thoroughly distracted enough that the eagle is going to be nabbing a delicious chunk of rare steak, frankly. That's not really important though, right now. What's important is...This. What she's looking at. Tall. Enormous. It looks so much like what was on her book from Strange-something she fortunately already read through, because she's not sure she can look at the cover again and not see.

This.

That head does not belong, on that body, and Reira stares. "...............f....Foster...?"

Why are you....This?

[criticallyfucked]

Foster turns his head at the sound of his name. Which, unfortunately, means he bends his entire equine neck, all supple muscle and flowing mane, to looks directly at her with his horrible, unnatural, totally mundane human face.

Well, mostly mundane human face. He has those lethal-looking stapler-remover plates in his mouth instead of human teeth, and there are fungi still--an array of velveteen, solid-looking shelf mushrooms extending down the right side of his face and scaling his jaw. But that, if anything, is even worse.

"Yes," is all he says by way of confirmation before getting distracted by the monstrous eagle weighing down one entire half of her body.

He raises his head--lifts his neck--a little so he's at eye level with it, shifting the front half of his body, crossing his hooves over each other in the process to align better. (He finishes with them in their right places, he's just not very good at this yet.)

"What's this?"

[soft_focus]

Oh, God. It's not scary, per say, but there is something decidedly horrifying about this. Not even something simply, like 'they're taller now' or 'bigger', rather the sheer polarizing contrast between Horse and Head despite matching colours is...wrong.

.... "...Frisk gave me an eagle," she explains, leaving it at that. Eagle is not on her for long however, quickly remembering that tiny shoulders cannot support its weight. Now. "...What did you do..." YOU HAD AT LEAST SOME HAND IN WHATEVER THIS IS...SIR.

BONUS A

[spaghettimonster]

Everyone's officially been given the task of going to the moon and having fun. Their jobs are being temporarily covered by others. With so clear an instruction, how could Papyrus refuse?

But when he makes a mess in the trailer, putting some of the paints away now that he's nearly done making gifts, it's his responsibility to clean it up. After all, the private living spaces are for people to deal with themselves. See: Amethyst and Sans' trailer. Freedom from the underground for everyone might not be enough pay for Papyrus to clean that mess. Especially when he knows neither of them wants him to.

So he went in search of one of the mops, only to find it was missing.

And searching for that led him to... this.

"Ummm," he offers.

Why is he a horse with his own old face. Why is he nearly a horse, changed like people at the manor were instead of the patchwork way most carnival people are.

Why is he cleaning the floor in this room??

"Are... Foster, what are you doing?"

[criticallyfucked]

It was precisely because of those instructions that Foster believed himself in the clear to secretly practise the basics of his job; he knew he would be even more of a disaster than he already was, so better not to inconvenience others with his gross incompetence, right?

No.

Clearly not.

Because of course it was Papyrus who proved incapable of leaving the supply closet alone, even on vacation. Of course it was Papyrus, who Foster had somewhat hoped he'd seen the last of for a while--

He stares at Papyrus for a long moment, visibly struggling with his conflicting instincts, before arching his neck to put his face back down by the ground, his nose literally pressed into the floor as he bites down on the mop with those savage prehistoric teeth.

This time, they sink into the wood and he raises his head as if in triumph--or just spit(e)ful defiance, his chin slick with saliva, a wet spot left on the floor where his... uh, spit made contact with it.

His eyes are bright with determination.

And so brandishing his tool, he plants one hooved foot on the floor and pushes himself up, using the momentum from his rise to keep him upright until he can get his other foreleg underneath himself.

Now his mouth is full of mop, which means Papyrus can't get an explanation after all. Unless he wants to take that drool-soaked tool out of Foster's awful mouth...

Ew.

[spaghettimonster]

One of the things with Papyrus and facing Foster, as opposed to any of the humans of the carnival, is that he's a monster. The underground is full of all kinds of people, with an enormous range of shapes; from skeletons to dogs, gelatin molds to sharp-edged polygons, giant hands to planes.

Foster's drooling, scary intense smiles, and fungi... none of these cause Papyrus the visceral unsettled disgust that others very likely feel.

But the deliberation of this staring, the way Foster slowly fills his mouth with something so that he can't answer...

Well, Papyrus stares back.

Unblinking, of course, because he's a skeleton and doesn't ever need to blink. Or, his agitatedly swishing tail demonstrates, because he's part skeleton cat and this is how staring goes.

At least he can resolve one of the worries clanging around in his skull; that's definitely Foster in there. Almost nobody else has this sort of stubborn determination to do their... thing.

"So... This is a new look," he tries next, with a trying-too-hard conversational sort of tone. "Did you... meet somebody, like the Prince, who did this?"

Please don't tell him that moon vacation is ruined the same way that the Celebration was, Foster. But if that's what's happening, please do tell him. So he can warn people. With words. From his mouth.

Bonus B

[hippocarnival]

At first, Yuya doesn't even make out Foster with his face shoved into cake. He look like some horse that... somehow got into the feast hall? He's pretty sure the carnival doesn't have any horses, so was it from the caravan?

He starts to approach, intending to shoo him away and find someone to take responsibility for the horse. But then Foster lifts his head, and Yuya stops and drops his own plate as he looks over Foster once, twice, thrice--what the hell is he looking at?!

"F--Foster?!"

[criticallyfucked]

Good fucking question, Yuya!

You should really ask the Ringmaster that, because the human face staring at him has no clue: it smiles, though, bright and wide and totally covered in cake and icing. And it talks. Which is probably not unexpected, since Foster talks, but still. It fucking talks.

"Yes?"

His deadly-sharp piscine teeth are not any help in making him any less unsettling. His bright-eyed beaming smile probably isn't either. There is cake literally all over him: his chin, his lips, his cheeks, his nose. There is icing in his nose, actually, along with flattened pastry pieces and stray crumbs--for gods' sake, there are crumbs in his eyelashes.

The only thing you can say about this nightmarish apparition is that it's not drooling.

Then again, how would you even know?

[hippocarnival]

This is probably one of the worst things Yuya has ever seen in his life.

"What happened?" He's not even sure he wants to actually know the answer, but it's the only response he can get out to Foster's current state. Really, what do you say to this? He's equal parts worried and horrified. It's uncanny, and frankly not an improvement at all from bear hands. Please go back to the bear hands.

A

[reflash]

Yukio is new here. Very new. The sort of new that hasn’t met many other people yet, and especially hasn’t met Foster.

Less than 48 hours into his contract, and he comes face to... face with a... horse(?)

Yukio is used to demons, used to dealing with looking at the subtle (and blatant) wrongness of something forcing itself through dimensions and trying to establish a form that makes sense. This... is not that. This is just Bad. Yukio is deeply concerned, not just by the sheer impossibility of what he’s seeing in front of him, but by the potential that this will be his life eventually. Does everyone risk becoming a human head attached to an animal body?

“Do you... need help?” With the mop, he probably means. Or with existence in general.

Seriously, what the hell???

Horse(?) is a good way to describe it, tbh

[criticallyfucked]

Foster has needed help with his existence since he was born, but that's not especially related to being a horse with a human face. Well, it kind of is. Regardless, he looks up from the floor, arching his powerful equine neck to look up at Yukio and making the overall effect of his nightmarish appearance that much worse.

He looks like he's considering a response, but then glances back at the mop.

It is distinctly... wet... where his mouth has been, as his overall frustration has resulted in a lot more drooling. So he looks at it, then back at this... well-dressed human. And he laughs, just a little, scathingly.

Which is all the answer Yukio will be getting for now, except:

"You don't want to touch that mop. You don't, hahaha... you don't know where it's been."

[pullingamiko]

...Okay, so. Miko has a few questions. First of all, what the fuck. Second, why the fuck.

It takes her a few moments to get herself to even approach, honestly, because this is one of the worst things she's ever seen, and that includes the disembodied zombie robot hand.

"Hey, uh... so, hadn't really expected that this would be what you were gonna ask for, but you do you, I guess."

[criticallyfucked]

One really has to wonder what that zombie robot had did to be classed with the likes of this. Even Foster is aware he's something of an abomination now, and not in the sense that he usually is.

But he supposes it's fitting, too. For that reason alone, if not a plethora of others. He paws the snow with a front hoof, leaving a triple furrow in the icy soil as his tail switches with something that might almost be self-consciousness--but is more likely self-reproach.

"It... uh, it isn't what I meant to ask for." His ears swing back slightly; they're still bovine, weirdly, but they do match his body in colour. Whatever magic the Ringmaster used was apparently respectful of his existing colour scheme and all its yellow.

"But it might be what I deserved, in any case."

??? this is going to be a hit and run tbh ???

[whattaprick]

Lambert has been given a pool noodle. Trouble is, Lambert has no idea what a pool noodle even really is. It's apparently meant for hitting people, but it's so floppy and unstable that he doesn't see how that's possible. The few times he's casually knocked it against a wooden post have done nothing to impress him, even if there's enough magic concentrated around the thing to convince Lambert it's possibly cursed.

He's still fiddling with the thing, absorbed, and that's really his only real excuse for not immediately catching on when something comes up in his peripheral senses. Though it's not Pig, the sound of hooves on snow is distinct, and he wonders idly who might have gotten a horse on the moon when he turns his head.

What he's looking at hasn't even fully registered before he's grabbing the pool noodle and instinctively swinging it at the intruder. A monster? Here?!

tw: various... pains... and a past suicide? He got better from it, but.

[criticallyfucked]

God knows what Foster was hoping to say to Lambert. Maybe it doesn't matter, because after what happens in the next few seconds, his disease, rot-pitted brain won't even remember the seconds leading up to it.

'It' in this case is Lambert's reflexive assault, which is 100% justified and frankly deserved just for the act of his existing.

Which is how he'd have felt about it even if he wasn't a nightmare equine from beyond the blackest void of human comprehension.

The good news is there's really no way to inflict permanent physical damage with a pool noodle, no matter how powerful its wielder. The bad news, is... well.

The noodle smacks the side of Foster's face with a foam-padded plasticine bapf, a comically underwhelming impact for the amount of pain that explodes across his face and down his beck and spine.

Foster is normally fairly quiet about pain--groans, gasps, uncomfortably wet little moans, maybe something approaching a sob if it's good bad enough--but this time he actually cries out in a tortured voice while he staggers, having reared up purely on reflex, forelegs kicking out blindly. One back hoof steps back into the snow before he pitches over completely, thrashing and kicking even before he hits the ground--and he hits it hard, there's a bit of a crunching sound that is hopefully ice and not bone, and he's grinding his face desperately in the snow for relief, gasping and weeping with some kind of agonised... delight...?

It is overwhelmingly worse a pain than almost anything he's experienced--far worse than the pain of broken bones, and worse than the deepest and most numerous cuts. Worse than the time his girlfriend tased him. Worse than his own death, the sputtering, agonising failure of his own heart as it pumped his blood out of his body through his opened throat. Worse than the hazing, pulsing, excruciating spikes of adrenaline and desperation as his mind died with his body. Maybe not worse than the pain of being turned into a vampire, but even that was a different kind of pain, one spread across his body, accompanied by the corruption and torment of the soul and not in his nerves and nerves alone.

Which...

Well, you beat the monster, Lambert.

Good job.

Maybe.

[sunflowerfields]

It's been so peaceful here, it's really helped Hinawa recover from the horrors of the manor. In fact, being here makes it easy to forget that there are monsters and darkness lurking everywhere. It's safe, and she feels comfortable again.

At least until she rounds a corner and comes face to face with this. Hinawa does the first thing she can think of: Scream. And then, she holds up her camera and mashes the button, causing the flash to go off in Foster's face.

[criticallyfucked]

If she had done that to an actual horse, there is a very good chance that Hinawa would have regretted that action very quickly. Then again, being from the country, she probably already knows that. Luckily(?), her victim is a magically transfigured changeling man with extensive brain damage, and his reaction to being both ambushed and blinded is not to bolt or kick but to freeze up completely.

It happens so fast he has no idea what even happened to him. He's temporarily stricken; his ears are still ringing from the scream, his eyes pressed shut from the camera flash--a reflex that came a picosecond too late, because he's seeing not just stars but entire suns, meaning he's seeing effectively nothing at all but the remaining flash itself and the ghost of that light.

"Fffffuck," is all he manages around the lurching wave of nausea that follows.

[fourthscribe]

There is no way to react to this.

Quite literally, no way.

Much as Foster stands frozen on bone-thin legs staring into the glaring white of the snow, Tanyuu stares on in horror from where she had just emerged from a thick cluster of trees that had, at least momentarily, hidden this...sight...from view. Haruki buzzes from inside her scarf, and Keiko is staying right up in the trees far away from that monstrosity, thank-you-very-much.

"...why?!"