lostcarnival | You may ask yourself [closed]

Who: Papyrus, 9S, & Foster
When: S2: D23
Where: Wismuth
What: Star Guardian 9S and familiar Foster confront one of the Harbingers
Warnings: Foster, discussion of murder & mind control & torture, general harbingering

It's been a week, and their orders are still the same. Go out and use your powers. Cause confusion, chaos, and fear without killing. Distract the people who might interfere with CY-Ren's plans.

...Well. Even that's a generous outline of her orders. It was closer to, "go out, and see what you can do! Cause some messes! Just don't destroy the city, I'll need them later." Some simple throwaway order for people who wouldn't really contribute. Papyrus added the rest himself, to make it seem like more, fill in the obvious gaps she just hadn't bothered to say.

It's not that he minds being some afterthought aid, or that she seems to be dragging her feet. He doesn't, really. Because she's CY-Ren and she's so cool and he loves her, somehow. Not that love or loyalty mean anything, anymore, but when he wants to go up to her to ask what's going on, what can he do to make this go faster, anything that reeks of questioning her or doubting her... Something in him clenches up in dread and self-disgust, in a way it didn't even when he dusted his own brother, and he can't.

So he mostly avoids the penthouse. Travels around, mostly untransformed, and watches how the people of the city respond to what everyone's done so far. The scattered conversations wondering, what's going on? There's been so many mysterious disasters, should they leave? Laughing the rumors off, surely the stories are exaggerated. Talking enthusiastically about the upcoming charity concert, marveling that they managed to get tickets, they get to see her...

And, occasionally he does transform. Like right now, striding out into the street, glowering at the people around him and posing impressively tall... before he shoots a couple bones up into the air to crash together and rain small shards of dust, piercing into peoples' hearts and letting them see his nightmares. Fireworks of bad waking dreams, without the fire, or color, or explosions.

Once, he would have called them pointless, and laughed about the pun, and made sure they didn't hurt anyone. Now, well. It's just fair to share.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Papyrus notices the lasers first, the bright lights casting a field, burning away the falling shards... stopping the fallout from his attack. He twists to look for the culprit, cape billowing and tail flicking irritably behind him, and skims the crowd. There's plenty of people, but before he's hardly started to look there's a familiar voice calling out and drawing his attention.

He hones in on that voice, even though he hasn't recognized it yet, because so far it seems like everyone with new powers is from the Carnival.

And there's 9S, still posing from sending the attack off, the biggest apparent threat. But that wasn't 9S' voice. There must be somebody else, another Star Guardian or a familiar. Like... that stuffed animal, that... teddy centaur, laughing uproarishly with Foster's voice.

"Huh? Foster?" Papyrus boggles, the angry, relatively fearsome demeanor he's simmered in these last few days stuttering and fading at the sight of familiar Foster.

An inexplicably cute and cuddly-looking Foster, who just shouted out Papyrus' name with more good cheer than any previous time combined. A particularly pastel-hued android, surrounded with almost flowery robotic aids. They're... working together? "Is Creation getting desperate?"

Good, good, it worked. The people weren't hit by the bone shards. That's one less thing to worry about. "Go on, get out of here!" he urges the crowd. "This area isn't safe!"

How seriously the people of Wismuth take him, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.

Besides, apparently Papyrus isn't taking him (and Foster) seriously at all!

"What? Hey!" Insulted, 9S points one of the lasers at Papyrus. "I'm not any worse a pick than you!"

Because CY-Ren picking the weird skeleton as one of the people to serve her? Really? He's nice enough, but it's hard to imagine him actually being a threat of any kind.

Foster isn't offended. In fact, for once he and Papyrus agree--but his agreement runs both ways along that axis.

"9S is right, you know!" He returns immediately, with a sharp little smile.

Whether that retort is genuine or just the enjoyment that comes from spite doesn't matter; he's taking this opportunity to flank Papyrus, if possible. He doesn't know if Papyrus is anything like his brother in power, but if he chooses to trust information that came from Flowey, then this skeleton can't teleport.

Or he couldn't.

But who knows what he can do now!

It's in a much more frank tone that he continues,

"You have some room to talk...!"

At least some of them flee - with the skeleton walking around, the explosions of bright lights, and the exchange of insults between strangely costumed people, they do get the hint that things are getting unsafe. Others, as people do, loiter on the edges with phones out to record what all's going on.

Fortunately Papyrus ignores the bystanders entirely, in favor of glancing between 9S and Foster.

Being flanked isn't great. A Star Guardian's powers are nothing to scoff at, especially with backup. Sure, they're just talking now, but those lasers... nothing that hovers as threateningly as blasters comes out for just talking. And the sight of teddy centaur Foster... is as distracting as he is a dumbfounding mystery.

"About what?" He wonders, and guesses, "me... being picked by the Void?"

There's other things they might want to yell about - what happened to Sans, for instance, as it's one of the biggest things on his mind. But the surprise of who's on what side, that's currently even bigger.

9S isn't a complete curveball; he seems a sort to want to help people, naive enough not to know how futile running around patching up the world is, stubborn enough not to want to hear it.

But Foster? Who so openly fakes every smile and laugh that it's like he wants everyone to know he's lying, and almost constantly puts himself down? From what Papyrus has seen of the ones chosen to defend this broken Creation, somebody more willing to embrace positivity and hope for better would make more sense.

"Being loud, and foolish, and obstinate... selfishly prolonging peoples' suffering, pretending things are hunky-dory..." Papyrus continues guessing, barbed words he's finally really letting himself admit to thinking. "The Void showed me what I'm like. But, none of that's an obstacle, to what I have to do! The important thing is, I don't want people to suffer. So I'm really the perfect pick."

He smiles too-widely and too-brightly, glancing between them so they both get a chance to see it. Summons a large, pointy bone to his hand, as... emphasis. Not quite a threat.

"Someone who'll end it."

Edited (this is much closer to what i'd wanted, thank you for your patience!) 2018-03-18 18:36 (UTC)

"End it?" 9S almost laughs, his hands curling into fists. "Everything that lives is designed to end."

What does that make him? He has life -- he believes he has life -- but androids are supposed to be able to keep going and going and going, if they're properly maintained. But death dogs his heels and YoRHa models like him were designed to be replaceable. He could in theory, live forever, but he never will.

He knows one day he'll probably either decide to end it... or he will be ended.

"Sometimes... I wonder why we're here. Why do we have to suffer so much? Why is living so painful? But there has to be a purpose to it, a reason for living."

But more importantly...

"And I like being alive!" So uh, let's not destroy everything?? "So you can't just decide for me that I'm better off dead with the rest of the world!"

Papyrus doesn't know him! Papyrus doesn't get to make that decision for him! He's tired of people deciding whether he lives or dies! He won't take this!

Someone who will end it.

Foster would laugh, but there really is no form of laughter that captures the magnitude of that statement. It's a lot all at once, and Foster has never in his life felt more confronted by the reality of how empty the people around him actually are.

And, of course, that precious truth, which is core to existence--to Creation, the Void, and all the multitudinous, miserable masses occupying the space between beginning and end.

There's more--Papyrus' stunning confession of self-awareness (hypocrite though he may be!), 9S' faux-philosophical interjection about suffering.

"That's it?" he asks, directing the question to Papyrus--though he's never heard a shallower protest in his life than 9S'.

That declaration: I like being alive!

Everything that lives is designed to end.

"So now you're gonna save us from... what? Creation? Each other? Ourselves?" Foster isn't here to argue with 9S about his convictions. But it's hard not to--how is 9S going to stop others from deciding his life for him? For most people, that's what being alive is.

Papyrus is so confident! Like he has any idea what the end of suffering looks like. As if it were ever that easy! As if what has already passed could be so erased.

"It's too late for that." What has been done cannot be undone. Unmade, yes. But the words, those lines were still writ.

"So what are you going to do with that bone?"

"Better late than never," Papyrus says loftily. "It isn't complicated, just... difficult to take."

He gestures a hand at 9S to demonstrate the difficulty of taking it - just listen to those familiar protests! Clinging to life, and love, and friendship, as though any of those things can make up for the nauseating horror of being...

So fragile. So easily lost... They hardly make for consolation prizes, in the face of it all.

No, this is a begrudging duty, rather than any sort of enjoyment, and an increasingly necessary one. All the things he normally chooses not to do...

It doesn't matter anymore.

"And, so! I am not getting your permission. I'll do whatever I have to do."

He adjusts his hold on the bone in question, still mulling over just what approach to take here, what dreams and dreads to push on them... Memories of those they've lost, maybe?

"I have defended myself before, even from Star Guardians."

Admittedly, that may mostly have meant endangering civilians and bolting for it, blue magic lending him speed for the getaway... But the point is, they can't take him down so easily. Even if there's two of them.

Probably.

You may ask yourself [closed]

in another round; right now he's shocked

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