[open] Perfect weather for a game of catch.

[gainedlove]

Who: Frisk, Asriel, Chara, and YOU
When: Sssssssometime this month, wibbly wobbly have fun with it
Where: A park in Kauto R1
What: Kids having a picnic, what could be better?
Warnings: Chara, will be updated as needed


It's been a long trip.

Definitions of 'long' are a little variable, but all three children have been anxious to see an end to their travels. It didn't start when they crossed through the Ingress, but long before that.

Someone climbed a mountain for an unhappy reason.

Someone carried a body to a field of golden flowers.

Someone took a long journey, just wanting to live their life.

But now they've come, not to The End, but an end. It's not perfect, not quite what any of them were expecting. But it's better, it's theirs, and...they can stay. What it means to each child, what they think of it and what they have to say, it all varies. But no one and nothing can or will take this from them.

The three of them are gathered together in a park. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming...a blanket is laid out on the grass, and in a cooler drinks and snacks are kept on hand. A few toys lay nearby, but it seems that for now the trio is content enough to relax and talk amongst themselves. Smiles adorn their faces (though one face in particular wears theirs a little sharply), and the scene is...nice. This is nice.

Even if they may not agree, they have long since earned this respite.


(( ooc: Feel free to come and pester the kiddos! Everyone will be responding separately, though there may be threadjacking or some doubling up. Have fun! ))

Comments

[shiro2hero]

He looks in the direction of their gesture, nodding after a second. It's weird how much more relaxed Frisk looks from the last time he'd seen them. That's good, though. Weird in a good way.

Something in his expression softens. He nods.

"Hey, that makes two of us."

An obligation to his friends, to his team. The people living in that house. That... he understands. Whether or not this particular kid wants him to.

[inconsequence]

Their eyes narrow accordingly. He persists in finding means to bridge this gap, as though there is some aspect of them that is fundamentally relatable. Kids like them, creatures like them, are nothing but abominations, smears across the surface of a world that utterly disgusts and is disgusted by them. There is no rational means to step around the implication they have just set upon the playing field.

An irrational one would doubtless raise too many questions.

"Yes, well." They despise filler words, stepping about the question and stalling for time. This is Frisk's doing; of this they are certain. "Someone must keep those two from throwing themselves atop every sword that comes their way."

[shiro2hero]

"Funny..." he says, though his eyes don't leave Frisk and their alien friend. "I'm pretty sure most people on my team say that about me."

He should be feeling some kind of trepidation here. But nah. They're just talking, far as he's concerned. Maybe this kid is from some world where they've seen too much. Where it's aged them too much -- making them this cynical.

Boy. There's something he can understand, if that's true.

Then he glances back at Chara, a little wryly. "Do they tell you to 'relax and take a nap', too?"

[inconsequence]

"Frequently."

The word is drier than bone but that does not, in point of fact, make it any less true. Relax, Chara. There's nothing left to worry about. Except they know full well what platitudes such as that mean, do they not? Those are subtle lead-ins into narrowing in on the problem in everyone's lives. One could never predict YOU, Chara. The last threat to everyone's happiness!

"What a shame one cannot simply turn such impulses off." Out comes the smile once more, cultivated and polished into a reddened curve. What a shame, that there is no thing as a helpful number to track your ability and willingness and capacity to hurt.

Oh.

Wait.

[shiro2hero]

"Gets old after a while, huh?"

But there's no real malice or annoyance in the question. Not from him. He knows it's because they all care. As much as it grates on him at times, it's from a good place. They wouldn't do it if they didn't worry.

He can't help but shake his head.

"Hey, believe me, if I haven't found a way, there isn't one. Sleep happens." A beat, before he adds, scrunching his nose up thoughtfully. "Usually when you really... really don't want it to."

[inconsequence]

At that, their smile widens. Usually when you really, really don't want it to. How very true that turns out to be, in certain routes for those who smile so very easily.

"Believe me, I understand this pitfall quite well." They cannot say they are personally acquainted, for demons - do not sleep, or eat, or require such things. Most certainly not. "From a purely...external perspective, of course."

Of course.

[shiro2hero]

He quirks his eyebrow. All right, that's... a weird way to answer him. There's something here beyond just smalltalk.

"Right..."

Because, really, what are you supposed to say to that?

"Hopefully, it'll be easier for you than me. They seem like easygoing people to be around."

[inconsequence]

"Demons do not sleep." They've yet to abandon that point, succeeded as they have on pressing it upon several unsuspecting humans in succession. Frisk may deny it all they like. Creatures like them only understand one thing.

And they understand their place.

Easygoing certainly is a word for it. Their tone chills somewhat, their gaze sliding away from the pair of them, partner and best friend, broken promises and walking betrayals granted sentience.

Absurd, of course. A selfish thought, of course.

Children should not be selfish.

"Friendly to a fault, some might say."

[shiro2hero]

Okay then. That... jumped off the deep end into some significantly darker territory than expected. Either this kid was way older than they looked, or... they were some kind of other race entirely. Something with bad history. Enough to where they'd call themselves that.

"I'll keep that in mind." Maybe it's stupid to keep thinking of this person as a kid. But... it's hard not to. And he can't say why.

The next part though -- he might as get mood whiplash for his own reaction to it. The shake of his head, and the huff of bemusement.

"Yeah, but, you know. Most kids are. Some don't ever grow out of it."

[inconsequence]

"Some do not grow up at all."

Significantly darker territory is rather Chara's personal specialty. They would apologize, but they find they aren't sorry at all, really. The onus is never upon them to present their pain in a palatable and acceptable fashion.

It should not be on Frisk's shoulders, nor on Asriel's. But they take that burden upon themselves regardless, of course.

Children are knives. They don't mean to, but they cut.

They cut so very, very deep.

[shiro2hero]

For a long, silent moment, Shiro just looks at Chara.

He's probably thinking something deep, something inspiring and charismatic. Something to spur this conversation into a revelation. Or rally the metaphorical troops around them.

Instead, there are visions of teens and grown-ass adults slamming each other with broken pieces of doors and using pastries as fake eyeballs. And getting handcuffed to alien trees because they could not keep their hands to themselves.

He looks over at where Asriel and Frisk are harmlessly doing something wildly more appropriate than any of those aforementioned memories.

And then, he says, with the gravity of a person who has looked after people far more trying and far more exhausting than a monster and their sibling:

"Buddy. You have no idea."

[inconsequence]

He looks at them. He speaks with a weight and gravity that is, all things considered -



Precisely the opposite of that which they were implying.

They meet his gaze evenly, and for a long moment. Perhaps cursing the bounds of humanity, of the body that took so very long to die; that even now, clings to life with an unfair tenacity.

They take the words as they are likely to take everything: as a challenge, deep and implicit. And they smile.

"Try me."

[shiro2hero]

"If you want to talk immaturity?"

He pushes both hands through his hair, blowing out a breath into his palms.

"A guy my own age... who decided our commander's pet mice insulted him... and tried to hit her with a door." Now he's just ticking things off on his fingers. "One of my team, who has access to an incredible weapon, couldn't keep his hormones in check and got said weapon hijacked... another teammate almost getting herself killed because of her temper... all three of them screwing around in training..."

Another deep breath.

"And a guy several hundred years older than all of us combined faking an alarm drill to see whether or not we'd all die."

[inconsequence]

Immaturity. Whether that was deliberate on his part or not, it is a cunning maneuver. Twisting things about, subtly, so they land far from Chara's macabre machinations, and injecting them with a brand of absurdity, of humor.

Something of that, its sheer unpredictably, appeals to them. They could tear things down and strip them to their CORE and draw everything back to the origin, the End. Or they could play the game.

The only winning move is not to play at all, a lesson they should have learned long ago. But perhaps the Game has changed.

(The Game never changes.)

"A true test of Patience, then." A SOUL wrapped in cyan, perhaps. They all resonate on frequencies of that sort, do they not?

[shiro2hero]

Cunning? No. Misunderstanding? Yes. But if there's no opposition, he'll just keep going with it. It is sort of absurd in a way. How many people he has to juggle and look after. And then still be expected to look after himself.

How does anyone have time for that?

"Or stubbornness. I'll be honest with you, I don't know which it is, some days."

Metal fingers gesture toward Asriel and Frisk.

"So... maybe I'm biased. But they seem like decent kids, in comparison."

1/2

[inconsequence]

Decent kids. That is, in and of itself, its own joke. They couldn't stop laughing. That ugly sound ripping from their throat that they do not register immediately as anything but the awful, hateful impulse it is; that laugh that shakes their shoulders, stretches their composure into a thinning veneer.

It is in moments like these - moments of laughter, of that giddy, sickening reflex that curdles out from their throat - that they know they must be that hateful thing they claim they are, that they know they are. What sort of creature laughs at another person's pain? What sort of abomination hates every inch of itself? It knows, unquestionably, that it is utterly beyond redemption, some demonic hiccup, a cosmic joke spat out across the face of a world that does not want or require them, and never did. A blight, a ravaging thing that takes too much, too fast, and in doing so destroys every inch of what should have been pure and unsullied.

They are decent kids, he says.

They are decent kids, he says.

Which one, they wish to demand, breathless with horrid mirth, do you think is better? The one that spun the world back to its beginning, again and again, until they got the result they liked best? Oh wait, they would have to clarify, that refers to both of them! The one they turned into a soulless anomaly of a weed that ruined people's lives simply because he could, because he was desperate to feel something, anything, even if it was enjoyment at the behalf of everyone's suffering? The one they led along a dusty, barren path, hunting down monsters step for step until the Underground went empty?

They are decent kids, he says!


Don't make them laugh.


They are decent kids.

[inconsequence]

They couldn't stop laughing.



But stop they do, eventually. They stop. They are nearly doubled over, an icy exterior overflowing with an unpleasant stream of insincere, awful, awful laughter. They stop. They stop.

They just




Stop.

Rearrange their features into something pleasant, and polite. Smile. Smile, and breathe as though they have not just heard the worst and funniest thing they have heard in a long time.

"Yes," says Chara, their tone far too thin and airy, their careful, polished poise fraying into nothing with such despicable ease that it is, quite frankly, cruel. "Yes. They are - decent kids. No doubt."

[shiro2hero]

Okay, well. That sets his teeth on edge. That is something familiar that grates up his spine and along down to the wiring replacing nerves in his right hand. Conjures up imagery of other twisted smiles. Trapped behind glass. Mocking. Panic flooding every inch of him until he couldn't think clearly and --

No.

That face is gone. Dead. It won't be coming back.

He has to stop. Focus. There's sun and grass. There are birds (or bird aliens) singing. Flowers. This isn't the Castle. He's not trying to interrogate a tube, an old enemy he couldn't remember. Sendak is dead. Gone.

He feels cold when he pulls himself back. Staring across the space to where the presumed child is still. Now he knows why it felt like something was passing under their words -- because it was. But... why? Why would a kid remind him so strongly of ... ?

"Something you want to share with the class?"

Dry and quick. Like he never lost control for a moment. Like he never slipped at all.

[inconsequence]

Perceptive as a small, silent, cruel thing they may be, they are too breathless, too frantic to reclaim that which has been lost, to catch his drifting and snapping back to himself.

But - smile. Smile and do not laugh, because nothing is wrong. Nothing at all! Work everything back into its core, into its CORE, and condense it into the center like something molten. Do not slip, not for a moment.

They know what happens at one's most vulnerable moment.

"Oh," says Chara, far too breezily, with not nearly enough dullness and flatness that would indicate a complete and utter lack of interest, "I just remembered something funny!"

Bright and quick. Like they never lost control for a moment. Like they never slipped at all.

[shiro2hero]

"I don't buy that."

There could be a lot of annoyance in the sentence. He could say it sternly. Bordering on a lecture. On something potentially commanding. But he doesn't. It doesn't. It comes out tired.

The voice of someone who's too used to making excuses of his own. Who does make those excuses, because he can't slip. He has to stay in control of himself. To command himself.

And others.

"But I'm not going to make you talk about it, unless you want to."

[inconsequence]

They slipped. They slipped, and he has the receipts to show for it. Irritatingly clumsy of them, to make such an elementary error. They could press back with equal or greater emphasis, a flash of teeth or twin melting streams of black dribbling from the empty pits of their eyes, streaking their cheeks with a sickening, tarlike substance.

But.

They would pushing too hard, would they not, emphasizing the fact that they slipped at all.

No.

They will play the Game they have always played, with a knife's edge of a smile and a willingness to match every word thrown their way, step for step, and skewer each one with SOUL-red contempt.

"How very magnanimous of you."

[shiro2hero]

"No. Not really."

It's not even depreciating. It's completely honest. His eyes flicking from somewhere beyond Chara to focusing on them. Tired. Lined, and a little sunken from strain.

He pushes his hand through his hair again, gone grey already.

"I know how it goes." And broad shoulders shrug. "So if you want to talk. You know what I go by. If not, that's none of my business."

[inconsequence]

"I feel obliged to suggest that you save it for someone who requires it of you." Drawing too heavily from a script whose pages they should have torn to shreds and burned a long, long time ago. Did, in some timelines, in some diverging possibilities.

But that is not for them. System information can only take a demon so far.

SAVE it, rather, for someone who asks. Because that is not how it goes, between the two parties in an encounter. The hero slays the demon, or the triumph at the battle's end. There is no in between. There is no looking at this hideous creature and finding something worth talking to.

[shiro2hero]

"You can suggest it."

It's a free planet and everything. He can't stop them from doing that. But at the same time...

At the same time, is this what he sounds like? When Angela prods at him to speak up? Or when the rest of his team asks him if he's okay? He never thought it was that bad. That he was that bad.

"But offering doesn't cost me anything." His expression is steady. "So... here it is. Just an offer. If you want to talk, I'll listen."

1/3

[inconsequence]

The subtle curve of a smile and the curling of hands, fingers, into tighter fists, a locked coldness and precision to their stare. Offering does not cost him anything. Just an offer, he claims.





Does he really think they are that stupid?

"Perhaps," says the child, serenely, "I did not make myself clear, Mr. Shiro."