Mettaton (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mttbrandlegs) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thisavrou_log2017-06-12 12:32 am
mttbrandlegs) wrote in thisavrou_log2017-06-12 12:32 am
[closed]
Who: Mettaton and anyone crashing in Rinzler's home, including Rinzler because it is his home.
When: Backdated to 6/10
Where: Rinzler's condo
What: It is time to die from monster sadness.
Warnings: Character death
It's been days since Mettaton's moved. All he'd done lately was sit, charge, and feel sorry for himself. The few conversations he did have all ended rather quickly and his words became progressively more impassive and lacking in any conviction...but to his credit, despite the encroaching despair, Mettaton did try to hold out until he was alone.
He tried to hold on just long enough that no one was around...and now that everyone was exploring the new Earth, it seemed a proper moment.
No one had to see him like this, see him close his eye, go slack, and start to give in.
You can't move anymore. But you don't have to, he tells himself. It doesn't make him feel better, but maybe Asriel and Frisk won't have to see a sad, pathetic excuse for a monster die this way, and that does assuage him, even as his SOUL begins to fracture and give in. It's fine, he'll keep telling himself that.
He'll keep telling himself he isn't afraid like the last time, and that he didn't regret this...
When: Backdated to 6/10
Where: Rinzler's condo
What: It is time to die from monster sadness.
Warnings: Character death
It's been days since Mettaton's moved. All he'd done lately was sit, charge, and feel sorry for himself. The few conversations he did have all ended rather quickly and his words became progressively more impassive and lacking in any conviction...but to his credit, despite the encroaching despair, Mettaton did try to hold out until he was alone.
He tried to hold on just long enough that no one was around...and now that everyone was exploring the new Earth, it seemed a proper moment.
No one had to see him like this, see him close his eye, go slack, and start to give in.
You can't move anymore. But you don't have to, he tells himself. It doesn't make him feel better, but maybe Asriel and Frisk won't have to see a sad, pathetic excuse for a monster die this way, and that does assuage him, even as his SOUL begins to fracture and give in. It's fine, he'll keep telling himself that.
He'll keep telling himself he isn't afraid like the last time, and that he didn't regret this...
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In recrimination of those that failed them.
It's deserved. And that much, Rinzler could weather, could fix himself in place and snarl back his own impossibility. Clu can't be harmed. Clu can't, and he can't let them, and that much is fixed, that much is [true], no matter what it makes him. Anger is always easier, to face or to drown in.
Much, much easier than the other voices. Pleading. Begging. Friend, and the ease with which Frisk speaks the term makes it more clear than anything how little it applies to him. Maybe, this is better. Maybe, it will help to keep them safe.
But Rinzler can't hear it. Not like this.
The enforcer's hand lowers. The coiled edge preceding combat fades, stance slumping to the usual bent hunch. Chara's glare, he holds a moment longer, sound rattling out in hateful, useless return. Threat? Promise? (Or an imperative, maybe: do better than he has.) It doesn't matter. The mask bows, the stance breaks, and Clu's best weapon turns to stalk out of the rooms.
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Chara follows.
Of course they follow. Never did learn when to QUIT, did they? They storm after him, shoulders stiff, jaw clenched. Even if the threat display has vanished, even if the potential for escalation into combat has seemingly dissipated, he's far from done answering their questions.
They were broken. They were glass, fragile - as if they are not now, full well? As if they do not crumble so easily, at the slightest word, the slightest touch?
Let them argue among themselves, then. Let them sing Clu's praises over Mettaton's corpse. Let them love and adore the things that continue to hurt them! It's what they're best at, is it not?
"He cannot be allowed to continue as he has." They're close behind, snapping the words out sharply. "If nothing else he will rectify what he's done. He will fix it."
Again, it is not a question, nor is it a threat.
It is a promise.
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Left, down the hall. A turn, to the staircase and up (always up). He does Chara the courtesy of walking, following the rows of steps instead of taking a more vertical ascent. It takes effort. The enforcer's mask is bowed, frame bent, as close to defaults as he's been since seeing the code disk. But noise is still rough, tense hatred all but crackling down his spine. He wants a target to kill. A fight to win. He wants to move, to break, to pare down past remembering.
He listens, instead, and what hears draw only another staticky oscillation, a mute shake of the head. Those words are Clu's, and they don't mean what Chara's after.
More simply: Clu won't.
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Fine.
They will have to intervene on their own time, in their own way. They are not averse to that.
They follow, because of course they do. The courtesy is wasted upon them, the precise nature of those footsteps, the credit he gives them simply by allowing them to keep pace.
"This is unacceptable," the child hisses, venomous. "Or do you not agree?"
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[Error—]
The enforcer's neck stiffens, another twitch as he tries to shake off the sick pain. It's been decicycles since he triggered reprimand like this—nearly the full half-cycle since Clu last made changes to his code. Since their uneasy truce affirmed itself, promises made and the clutter of old filters brushed aside. It doesn't hurt the way it used to, to remember. To question and doubt, to set his own priorities.
But disloyalty is always [always] wrong.
The rooftop door is up ahead. Rinzler brushes through it, snapping the closed lock. The ragged intake and exhale draws no freshness or new air, only the same recycled breaths behind his shell. Still, outside is better. Lights and stars, space and sky. He reaches for his TAB, turning back to Chara with a quick blur of fingers across keys.
Can't fight him.
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There is nowhere for the boiling tempest of their own nervous energy to go. The urge to pace nearly claims them, but they hold their arms rigid at their sides, standing there, ramrod straight, surveying Rinzler with a thinning, nigh nonexistent composure.
"Do not pretend as if you've not some protest to this," says Chara. Too loud. Not contained, not cool, not in control. "I've seen it."
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Clu is). That doesn't mean he can fix it, that doesn't mean he can set even the slightest fraction of it right.He hates it. He hates it. The thought is sickening and faulty and he loops it anyway, frame locked rigidly in place.
Still.
Doesn't matter.
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Slips.
In the closet, beneath the stair. Wail all you like. Cry all you like. Raise a ruckus. Be disrespectful. Talk back. A pair of scissors through the hand earns a black eye and a broken arm, but it's worth it because you sure showed them! You refuse to be controlled, or perhaps you simply enjoy making it difficult for your poor beleaguered mommy and daddy; is that it?
"Asriel, Frisk - is that how truly little they matter?" They've raised their voice. They've stopped being the patient demon, the ever-present, hovering consequence.
Let them rail, then. Let them burn it, all of it, like it should have blistered and crumbled long ago. Let the entire timeline, every world, every universe, every human, every monster - let them all be dust.
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And it goes no further. Not a step and not a reach. Because this is fair. Because they are right. Because he failed before, and he failed again, and no matter who he kills or how far he runs, Rinzler knows he can't escape this.
"H-he—"
Stuttering. Pathetic. The words choke in his throat, constricted and worthless and Rinzler jerks his head aside, hands uncurling with raw, unsteady gestures as he reaches to reactivate his TAB. Serve some use. Weak enough, without—no. Function.
Protest doesn't matter.
He won't stop.
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Perhaps they've a world of similarity there. They cannot FIGHT. They cannot think. But with patience -
Ha.
Patient. Them. A delightful ironic twist, atop of everything.
"Unless you can fix it." For the first time, something approaching desperation enters their tone, a note of pleading they cannot rub away, cannot scratch out. "Unless someone can, anyone - make them how they were."
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They'll either realize he's worthless for their goals, or flag him as just another threat. Not wrong, in either case. Not helpful, either. Whatever they know, they're here for now, and that means they aren't charging off to threaten Clu.
Removing a threat. See? He is functioning. So very loyally, just like he was made.
(Redirect.) Refocus. A small shake of the head. Rinzler isn't a programmer, and understanding what Clu's done is very different from knowing how to piece them back the way they were. (Assuming they should be.) But...
Other programmers can edit.
Same risks.
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He'd seen fit to play god with their source code, and done as he wished. He'd toyed with them. Glimpsed all their infinite potentials and picked them apart and pieced them back together.
"What else did he change," says Chara, low, not nearly as contained as they should be. "Was that the only - edit?"
It is still unforgivable in every respect. It would be unforgivable had he not changed anything at all, the fact that he had that level of power over the pair of them in the first place and saw fit to exact it as he wished. It is unforgivable now, a fact of which Rinzler is obviously and readily aware, even if he seems, for reasons utterly beyond their comprehension, hesitant at best to act upon it.
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He doesn't. He could have looked for longer. Could have asked to see Frisk's code as well. But access isn't skill, and Rinzler's talent with changes lies at the end of his own disks. Not all edits are obvious.
Or reversible.
'Fix it.' 'How they were.'
...
Still them.
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Despite everything, it's still you. It always is, and always will be; no matter how many edits are applied to someone's source code, they're still fundamentally the same person. Unchangeable. Asriel will always be Asriel. Frisk will always SAVE everyone. And Chara -
Chara will always be Chara.
The worst possible thing for them to be. For everyone.
"And this enables us to excuse what was done to them?" Chara snaps. Their veil has been shredded, their composure lying abandoned, forgotten. As it should. They've no further time to be pointedly, bladedly polite over some scouring over of who Asriel should be, who Frisk should be.
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Means they matter.
They did before. They do now. And if it was wrong (was inexcusable) of Clu to edit them before, if his attempt to (
claim) improve them is an act to be decried...Surely, the same applies elsewhere. To any party working to reset them. To anyone who wants them how they were.
They have to agree.
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Human, program, monster, or otherwise; the specifics, as it turns out, matter very little.
The pair of them have had far too much of their personhood stolen from beneath their feet for this to stand for any longer.
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Still themselves.
They have to be. Enough, at least, to be worth asking. No, they are.
(Is that his opinion? Or is that Clu's?)
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A low, frustrated sound drags out from the back of their throat as they half-turn - away from him, but keeping him well within eyesight. They do not turn their back on people. As a rule.
"If you will not exert the effort to correct him, then I will." That is a promise, if nothing else. If nothing else.
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Edited before you got here.
Before this iteration, at the least. Or was Chara still the same copy, but wiped? Rinzler's wondered, but it doesn't make much difference now, least of all for this. Chara's knowledge of their presence stretches barely half a cycle back. Frisk and Asriel have been edited for twice that.
Still listened to them then. You thought they counted.
As Frisk, and Asriel. As individuals with enough of a mind to make decisions. As people, who deserved consulting before anyone rearranged their code.
(And if he's different, if he's empty, a hollowed-out extension of his programmer's will... that's fine. Chara might find out in time, but he only has to count long enough to make them listen.)
Ask first.
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And then they stopped counting, once the knowledge of those edits came to light. Their eyes narrow to scarlet slits, the rigidity to the lines in their shoulders and chest stark and unmistakable.
"Ask. Of course," hisses Chara, the words snaking out in a righteous exhalation. "But they'll say no, will they not? Because Clu knows best. Because Clu's their friend. Because why should they change what Clu thinks is best for them?"
A familiar tale. The adult knows better than you do, Chara, so don't bother trying to wrap your tiny mind around things you do not understand. Sit down and shut up. You don't understand a single thing about how this world works. How could you? You're just a child.
"How are we to trust that he's not sown some manner of contingency into them?"
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Try.
Can find programmers if they agree.
If not, assess after.
When he's had time. To plan. To approach Clu. To think of something.
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But they're both gone already. Down the hall, strides full of purpose and intent, but--
Frisk turns back around. Asriel isn't the only one left in this room.
"Asriel..."
They should have been here. They should have stayed and waited, should have...why does it hurt so much, even though they've been the one to strike that blow before? They watched Undyne's body, saw Asgore take his own life...wasn't this the least that they owed him? After everything...
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"Frisk. We... we aren't wrong, right? Clu was trying to help..."
He hears the word rectified over and over again. Changed. Loyal.
"Even if Clu did change a few things, he did it for us. Right?"
He smiles weakly, but it doesn't last long. His attention turns back to Mettaton with a miserable look. It wouldn't be the first time they've had to be apart from each other, but seeing an empty robot with no SOUL attached to it anymore didn't make him feel any better.
"We shouldn't just... leave him here, right?"
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He's their friend. He helped them, put them both back together...and he helps Rinzler, too. Isn't that enough?
Frisk looks over to Mettaton as well, and they remember...they remember a lot of things. Different values, different paths, but it all ended in the same place, didn't it? They nod, and quietly walk over to arrange his arms and legs a little better.
"We can...we can carry him together? S...someplace comfortable."
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Uneasiness tries to creep back into Asriel's thoughts, but it's pushed away quickly. He moves closer to where Frisk and Mettaton are, and he swallows a lump in his throat when he sees just how lifeless Mettaton looks.
"Yeah, we should get him somewhere comfortable... for when he wakes up."
Because he will. He has to.