[open: tw for blood, mind fuckery, suicidal ideation] I guess it's over now

[dr_awesome]

Before:

He just needed something fun. That's what he's been telling himself. After nights of various unpleasant dreams being hijacked by his friends, and then being forcibly shoved into everyone else's weird nightmares like a far less fun version of the Matrix, Watts needs a break. He's not helping Sans with his science. He's not trying to wander the castle and have conversations with people that more than likely are annoyed by him. He just... needs some stupid harmless fun.

And when there's no gaming consoles or wifi in the castle, you have to get a little creative.

Apparently, Neil's codes aren't completely useless in the castle. Sure, he can't reset memories, disable speech or taste, turn off his visibility, or even lure out mementos, but he still has some skill with manipulating data.

He's found a nice little private space in the lounge, and passersby may find him focusing very hard on a patch of air in front of him. Literally a patch, it seems to jut out from the rest of the air, shimmering and shuddering in front of Neil's hand. Eventually, it grows and morphs, changing colours... and in another instant, there's a tabby cat letting out a loud meow as it's suddenly dropped from the air back down to the ground.

"Haha, yes!" Neil gets down to his knees, scratching behind one of the cat's ears. The cat surveys him and lets out another mew.

"Hm... not exactly up to my usual standards, but I'll have to make do. Now, what else can I try..."

After:

Neil's still in the lounge... it's just that now there are more of them.

There seem to be a literal crowd of scientists slouching around the lounge, leaned back on couches, staring out windows, walking in place. They're all mumbling to each other, some of them more clear than others. One of them smiles at a double of himself as you walk past.

"Well, I suppose I had a good run."

The other stares back at him. "Not good enough, it seems."

There's one that has cornered another Neil against the wall, constantly slamming his fist into the doppleganger's gut. "It's how people blew off steam before FPS were invented," he reassures you with a grin.

Still more snippets can be heard if you push through the crowd. "We always succeed, because we're awesome." "The geezers just keep getting crazier..." "I'd be screwed either way."

In the center of the group is Neil. The real one, not buzzing in and out of existence in bursts of static, but... he still doesn't look good. He's curled up on himself, nails digging into the floor, feebly coughing and hacking as blood dribbles down his jaw and onto the collar of his shirt. A few copies of the same woman stand around him, looking down at him with the same mixture of annoyance and apathy.

"Tell me what you see." One says, holding out a pill bottle. She takes off the cap and holds it upside down. Nothing falls out.

"Shut... just shut up." Neil mutters hoarsely, and another one laughs, answering in his own voice.

"'Shut up' isn't my name, you know."

He tries to pull himself away from them, crawling along the floor.

"Why are you working so hard for this? 'All this trouble, just for some girl.' That's what I thought you'd say."

One of them finally turns to look at you, and moves so she can block Neil from view. "Get out. This ain't a movie and you're no hero. You're just being a moron."

There's more coughing from behind her, but Neil doesn't seem to be trying to move anymore. There's no point, is there? He's fucked up enough here already. And he didn't want to be here anyways...

"Why would you waste time like that?"

Yes, why would he? Being here isn't doing himself any good. He's not going to fix his machine, he's not going to make any advances... all he's doing is running out his clock.

Might as well let the batteries die a little early.

Comments

After for now, Neil oh my god.

[lightofthestars]

"I will not. Stand aside."

She knows this room and has spent time in it before. Never has it looked like this, as she thinks a nightmare must. She does not know how it came to be filled with spirits, some violent and all strange, but now, she does not care. That is Neil, lying helpless upon the floor, bleeding from his mouth.

If the spirit will not stand aside, she will try to push it away or step around or, if she must, walk through it. She will not leave Neil to suffer.

He's fiiiine shut up

[dr_awesome]

The woman just smiles slightly, but instead of moving, she seems to flicker for a moment and reappear a few feet to the left. When she speaks, it's in Sans' voice.

"I can do it too."

At least the 'spirits' are cooperating, even if they're getting more unsettling by the second. They don't seem interested in bothering her, more focused on the collapsed man before her.

Everything is NOT all right.

[lightofthestars]

Tauriel turns quickly at that voice--but Sans is not here. This is meant to distract her, and she does not have the time.

She drops to her knees at Neil's side and puts a hand to his shoulder. He is pale, far too pale. "Neil, can you hear me?"

THAT'S NOT HOW THE SONG GOES

[dr_awesome]

He tries to speak, but is silenced by blood slipping back into his throat. He gurgles for a moment, forces himself to cough it up, and then turns out-of-focus eyes on her.

"Tauriel?" He's pretty sure that's her voice, anyways. She's too blurry to properly make out. His glasses are laying on the ground a bit away, one lens cracked. Another one of the women picks them up, musing to herself.

"You know, it's really hard to see your eyes when you wear these. I guess that's the point. Isn't that right... Dr. Lorenzo von Matterhorn?"

IT IS WHEN TAURIEL SINGS IT. NAID BAIN Ú VAER, NÍL. :|

[lightofthestars]

"Return that," she commands the spirit, then turns her attention back to Neil.

"How were you wounded?" Her speech is fast, but gentle all the same. "Is it safe for me to carry you?"

If he has broken bones, she will leave him where he lies and bring healing to him here. If not, she does not want him to be among these spirits any longer than he must.

okay but please imagine tauriel singing a cover of that song ;;

[dr_awesome]

The spirit doesn't listen to her, just continuing to spin them by one of the arms in her fingers.

"He has really nice eyes, you know. No one at school believed me. The most brilliant shade of green... he could have been brilliant. But he just cheated through his entrance exams. He loaded paperwork on me. He did nothing but coast through life! I mean, what's the point of caring?"

Her voice suddenly changes back to Neil's.

"'Not our client, not our problem.' 'It's not like he's real anyways.' 'Worse comes to worse, we can just reset.' Why would you waste time like that? Why would you waste time like this?"

He moves over to his other side, glaring down at him.

"You may as well just kick the bucket now. There's no point in you continuing on like this. You're useless to me."

Neil has his head turned to the side. He doesn't answer Tauriel.

...Don't make me translate the song. orz Also enjoy Tauriel telling the projection to fuck off.

[lightofthestars]

"Ego," she says sharply to the spirit as she rushes to her feet. She seizes the eye-glasses from the spirit, or tries to, then returns to Neil's side.

"I am going to move you now. If the pain becomes too great, tell me."

I won't MAKE you but you have to admit it'd be amazing.

[dr_awesome]

Neil doesn't know nearly as much Elvish as he should, but he does know the swears, as he's constantly relayed them to Eva between giggles when she was attempting to watch movies. Thinking on that makes a pair of data projections appear on the nearby couch. Neil is holding a bucket of popcorn over the side of the couch, away from Eva, nearly laying on top of him in her efforts to reach the snack.

"Stop cheaping out, you stupid owl!"

"I told you, Eva! No popcorn until you name ten characters."

"Easy. Dumbledore, Hairy Feet..."

Neil looks at Eva, now smirking at him with a look of pride. "Oh, ha ha. I meant real names."

"Fine, fine. Gandalf, Bilbo, Fili and Kili..."

The other projection is distracted by watching the two squabble, and so allows Tauriel to snatch the eyeglasses from between her fingers. Neil squints up at the elf, and slowly tries to nod, letting out a shaky breath.

"Y...yeah. Okay."

Yeah, I think it's happening tonight. :D;;

[lightofthestars]

She barely hears the speech behind her; even were she listening, she would hear no names she knows. All of her attention is upon Neil.

With the greatest care, she turns him upon his back. Her lips press together as the blood he has lost becomes easier to see.

He wears a long white coat, and so into it, she places his eye-glasses. Her fingers brush strange material and a too-smooth bottle, but she does not waste time wondering what they are.

"I am going to lift you now," she tells him, still speaking gently. If he does not protest, she will do so, then turn to leave the room.

After because holy fuck.

[sansational]

Oh, this is...this is so not okay that Sans is going to need to sit down and have a long, hard think about new levels of "not okay" to describe this.

Especially after recent events in the castle's collective subconscious, Sans has to give himself a hard rap on the side of his skull to check to see if he's dreaming. He doesn't wake up, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. And even if this is a dream, he's not about to let it go on. Not even just because it's familiar enough to send a very physical chill up his spine.

So Sans takes in the twisted, gruesome scene around him with a falsely casual air, his hands stuffed deep in his pockets. It's easy enough to pick out the real Neil, and he is obviously not having a good time. At last, Sans nods up at the...illusion? Clone? Ghost?

"never claimed to be anything else," he says, smiling his most charming smile. Then he simply blinks himself behind her and hastens over to check on Neil. Sans kneels down to carefully shake one of the human's shoulders. "hey, pal, what happened?"

yeah uh. holy fuck is the right way to put it.

[dr_awesome]

God, Neil can only hope he's dreaming. At least if this is a dream, he can wave it off, pretend it was all based on lies. Just a stupid fear he has. Just like his fear of heights, he has a fear of getting sick. Pretty wimpy for a guy who talks as big as he does, right? Let's all share a laugh at the clown, right?

Right?

The woman looks behind herself in shock, but lets Sans move on without any interference. Neil lets out a soft moan as his shoulder is gripped, blearily blinking up at who he thinks is Sans. Even without his glasses, he can make out a skull grinning at him. He tries to grin back, but his lips are wobbly and his teeth are stained with red.

"Nothin'. Was just... trying something. Was s'pposed to be stupid."

"It's always just a joke. His name screams 'joke' anyways," one of the other Neils points out. "Dr. Neil Watts. Ironic, since he isn't the brightest bulb in the socket. Did I ever tell you I let my partner help me cheat through exams?"

[sansational]

"yeah, well, if you'll take a word of advice, i wouldn't try it again."

Sans has seen some truly disturbing things in his life, but being surrounded by this crowd of bitter clones still has him on edge. Not to mention the sight of that blood. He's more used to it than most monsters...but that isn't exactly saying much. And he has a lot less experience with fixing bleeding humans. It's not what he's for. He can at least get Neil off the floor, except...can he? Sans remembers when he'd demonstrated his powers, back at the party. The doctor had seemed to be in pain, for a moment. He doesn't want to risk that now.

With a faint growl of frustration, Sans tries to *CHECK to see if he can get any clearer idea of the state of Neil in that moment - just how low his HP is, and whether he's actively getting worse. Focused as he is on that, Sans sounds more than a little distracted as he answers the copy. "what's wrong with being a joke? jokes are great. your partner sounds like a pretty cool person."

[dr_awesome]

"Guess... not."

It's not really the fault of his experimenting. It only got out of hand because he was weak in the first place. Weak and out of the one thing that's kept him going this long. Not that he's going to admit to that.

He could almost laugh at himself. He's on the verge of death and he won't tell a single soul about his illness? Eva was right. He is a moron. A moronic asshole who's too stubborn to even save himself. Someone like him would not be missed.

"It actually says that, right here." One of the Eva's brandishes a clipboard. "Would not be missed."

God, he never should have introduced her to that stupid game.

The check shows him the same slightly injured soul Neil had before, only a bit dimmer now. His HP is at a dangerous point, but at least it doesn't seem to be depleting. The one thing that is concerning is his mental state. It's a little hard to tell, but the clones seem to be actually coming from his own subconscious. Even if Sans can't sense that, the wince he wears when the doppelgangers continue speaking might give it away.

"Don't... bother with 'em."

"Oh, that's right. Why would you bother with us? 'It's not like he's real. He's just a program, you know. Worse comes to worse, we can just reset.' I wonder if you'll change your tune when you turn out to be the copy. Because," the copy continues, turning his attention back to Sans, "his life is definitely a joke. And dying alone, without a single friend? Without a single concerned coworker, without his family, without the partner he keeps insisting is just an annoyance? That's the punchline."

[sansational]

Sans glares over his shoulder at Eva. "i don't think it actually says that." Then he turns his attention quite firmly back to Neil, with the air of one who is determined to ignore all over distractions. Though that, of course, is easier said than done.

He doesn't need the check to determine Neil's mental state. He knows those eyes from the mirror, at least when Sans bothers to look in a mirror. At least he isn't actively dying. Getting him off the floor and getting him some water might be a good start, and then Sans can try to find someone who can put back some of that missing HP.

"not planning on it," he says as reassuringly as he can to the real Neil. Sans lifts both hands and closes his eyes. "stay with me, pal. this might feel a bit, uh...weird."

He's just about to turn Neil's soul blue as gently as he can when the clones start off again. Sans grinds his teeth, flexing his fingers in agitation.

"he's got one friend right here. and all of you can quiet down."

Neil will feel that same sort of squeezing in his chest, though still noticeably gentler than before, and slowly he starts to hover up and off the floor.

[dr_awesome]

Easier said then done, which is probably why so many of these data projections keep appearing. Each one finds something to nitpick, some little insecurity to pull away and reveal another spot to jab at. And Neil's stuck here, forced to listen to it all. It's not surprising he looks more than just weak.

To someone like Sans, the look in his eyes may be familiar as the look of someone about to give up.

At least, until Sans says that. That seems to both change Neil's expression rather quickly and shut up most of the doppelgangers.

"You're... you're serious, aren't you? You think you're a friend to him? God, he can't even push people away right. It's so hard to be an smartass nowadays..."

Neil can only continue staring in shock as he starts lifting off of the ground. He only struggles for a moment before he stops himself in order to prevent pain.

[sansational]

That look in his eyes is more than just familiar - this scene is, too. It's just something that usually happens to Sans when he's dreaming, which is only increasing his doubts that this is actually happening to either of them, rather than being just another shared dream.

It's disquieting, to meet someone else who's as corrosively and elaborately hateful towards himself. Sans can't help but think back on some of the things he's literally beaten into himself, in dreams. 'what good are you, what's the point of you when you don't even deserve to be alive. you pathetic failure of an experiment, you're empty inside and your bones just don't know it yet...'

"did i stutter?" It makes him sick to think back to those dreams, especially when they're sometimes some of the less horrifying dreams he's had to face this week. But Sans grits his teeth, and forces himself to keep his eyes on the real Neil.

"easy, pal. you're a pretty tall guy and i'm a pretty small skeleton. this is just to make sure i don't knock you in the head until we get you somewhere to lay down. i'm not gonna drop you." The likely source of the trick is visible as a soft blue and white glow emanating from Sans' chest, where the heart might be in something that had a heart. Both his hands are held out straight in front of him, shaking just a bit with the effort of holding Neil up. But he slowly turns them in midair, and Neil will feel his position adjusted, too, until he's at least not flopping about quite so helplessly. "c'mon. humans like flying, right?"

[dr_awesome]

It's not normally something that should be happening in reality. Even if Watts did experience something like this, it should have been a glitch in memory constructs. It was all an illusion, easily combated by unplugging himself from the system. Bad dreams were common too, but he could wake up from those.

It's a lot harder to wake up from something like this, when your body and mind are so actively rebelling against you and bringing all your internalized hate into reality, or whatever this reality is. It's supposed to be real life, but Watts still experiences moments of doubt when he looks at himself and realizes he's being levitated by his weird lab partner who also happens to be a skeleton.

"He's turning out to be even more of a joke. A terminally ill nerd and a skeleton walk into a bar... something like that, anyways. Guess that makes sense. You don't have a stomach, so you can't get sick of his bullshit!"

There's a chorus of laughter from the clones, but Watts is ignoring them, more focused on the odd glowing around Sans' heart, paying attention to any indication that the strain might be too much and Sans will drop him. "Sure. Humans like flying."

Before, despite being cruelly tempted

[dustless]

Frisk is standing in the doorway, looking startled. They...felt that. At least it wasn't as unpleasant as when Dr. Watts tried to reset them, though.

"...who's that?" they ask, pointing to the cat. Probably not the most obvious question to most, but hey, they are still a kid.

:3c it could always change partway through the thread but this is also good.

[dr_awesome]

Watts looks up from the cat with a grin, and it only falters a bit when they see how shocked Frisk looks. They look like they did back when he tried to reset. But this is just harmless data manipulation...

He looks back down at the cat, now nudging one of his legs.

"Oh, uh, this is Goku, my cat. Well, not exactly... more a fairly accurate copy of my cat."

A GOOD POINT also i am assuming neil heard they're back from someone :V

[dustless]

And they creep in, stopping to crouch a few steps away to look at him better. "...Are you sure?"

I WOULD ASSUME HE HEARD and so he isn't going to make as big a fuss as he could

[dr_awesome]

"Well, as sure as I can be. I mean, how can I be sure I'm talking to you? There's not really such thing as 'logic' in this place, after all."

He knows all about Frisk's death, and their supposed return. As much as he doesn't want to frustrate Frisk with his disbelief, it's hard to flat-out accept this.

=w=b

[dustless]

Frisk really doesn't pay much attention to that. They're not even thinking about how they died, or that he'd known about it, too interested in what he's just done.

"Yeah, but--I mean..." They reach out a hand curiously, beckoning Goku over to them. "You sure he's a copy? And you didn't...pull him here, somehow?"

[dr_awesome]

"Well, uh... I guess that is possible. But it isn't quite acting like the real Goku. But who knows? Maybe he's just shocked from being pulled through time and space."

Neil is pondering this while Goku curiously pads over to Frisk, pressing his nose against Frisk's hand before deeming the child smells acceptable, and then rubbing his body against Frisk's legs.

[dustless]

They know how to pet cats a little better thanks to Duchess, though Goku might get annoyed at his fur being messed up anyway.

"Dunno. Might be good to know, though, 'cause if you can do stuff like that, I think--could help people get home if they want to. Or bring people in from bad places." Frisk is definitely thinking of a certain friend's lost brother here.

[dr_awesome]

Goku is a more relaxed cat, and so he doesn't seem to be bothered no matter how Frisk pets him. In fact, he purrs a few times when Frisk finds the right spot, just to gently guide them to the right way of giving him attention.

"Geez, you're right. I should... I should talk to Sans. Shit, kid, you're pretty smart!"

He can't help but feel a little excited. Not only are his powers not completely disabled, but with the way they're working, maybe they can be used to solve Sans' whole dilemma.