sevenvirtues | (no subject)

(no subject)

You awaken to blackness. Frightening, although familiar--this is the same terrible thing you narrowly avoided during your first trip into Lebensbaum. The pain of your death is still real, echoes of the wounds you suffered appearing on your skin. Inspecting your surroundings will tell you that you've woken up inside of the cooled, empty bonfire pit....and the town as it was is nowhere to be seen.

The sky is a whirlwind of blank, dark void. What previously acted as roadblocks on either side of the town seems to have moved upward, blocking out most of the sun's light. The street is barren, filled with piles of broken concrete, shattered glass, and smoking craters where many of the buildings used to be. Old bloodstains dot the pavement, mixing in with overturned cars and crumbling brick walls. Lebensbaum is a dead town, in more ways than one.

Except for the hotel. It stands, as dusty and abandoned as it ever was, but no worse for the wear. Scorch marks can be seen on the ground around it in a clear border, as though it had a barrier protecting it from whatever destroyed the village. If you venture inside, everything is in its place, as though the outside wasn't completely obliterated.

The living can be seen walking around, going about their daily lives, and if you concentrate, you can even see the buildings as they once were--in working order, clean, and in one piece.

As of Monday on Week 10, however, there is a door, seemingly pasted into the middle of the street. As the days tick by, the doors will increase in number, one for each victim.

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Ask them, not me! All I know is that Break was super paranoid about not letting a single person know.

[EXCEPT THEN IT TURNED OUT THERE WAS A WHOLE GROUP OF MOLES???]

so. how long did you know they were "moles".

[moles in quotation because that's not what being a mole even is wtf]

The night I died, I caught Break stealing my armor and he filled me in...super vaguely. Actually, he didn't tell us shit aside from 'trusting him'. I didn't know Rhys and Alisha were part of it either until a few days after.

[She raises an eyebrow at him.]

I did tell you to talk to Break, didn't I? [SO YEAH REALLY SANS THIS IS YOUR OWN FAULT FOR BEING A DUMB LONER]

[undyne, he already blames himself for most things, you don't need to add onto it.]

i thought you meant about--

[time travel, which he's still not discussing in public, so, y'know, whatever, he gives up. he gives the fuck up. life is pointless. he just... sighs.]

y'know what. yeah. my bad.

[WELL GREAT now she feels guilty again. She sighs back, rubbing the back of her head.]

I didn't want to keep anything from you. I couldn't come out and say what it was really about, but you'd figured so much out already even without being part of their dumb group that I was hoping if Break knew how smart you were, he'd invite you or whatever.

I asked him to fill you in. After Papyrus died. [AND THEN SANS DIED RIGHT AFTER whoops...] But I don't think I managed to get the message through clearly enough.

[sans's grin taking a turn for the extremely strained. honestly, it sucks to figure out that even when he tried here he was still useless and fucking up, but-- y'know, that's his lot in life.]

look. i don't care. all i want is for papyrus to get out of here alive. that's all i've wanted from the start. and yeah, right now i'm thinking maybe if your friends-- [that's said a bit venomously, oops] actually knew what the fuck they were doing, it would've been possible. and it would've been fine. no skin off my bones if i wasted my time-- s'pretty much all i'm good at.

but right now these humans are about to kill each other and get this stupid ritual over and done with because they couldn't think of one way to call themselves that wasn't "mole" and their whole plan hinges on someone who's stuck in a basement, so... i guess what i'm sayin' is my hopes for this plan working out are underground.

[LIKE THE BASEMENT]

[he huffs because he's not mad at undyne, just... himself and team mole for SUCKING?]

i guess what i'm saying is this sucks.

[ oh, sans. oh.......... sans. peanut gallery is here to "help". ]

Welcome to my life for the past eleven weeks.

[ he hates miata soooooooooo much wow ]

[he's just gonna. plop down. RESET ALREADY, FRISK????]

yeah, well. now it's "welcome to death", bud.

That's what I've wanted from the start too. [It's no longer all she wants, not with the friends and enemies she's made, but it's still her priority.]

And you can get mad at me for keeping this from you, I deserve it, but don't insult the others like that. You didn't see Break and Rhys towards the end there like I did. They both tried their damn hardest and never gave up for a second, even with the weight of this entire town and its dead on their shoulders. [she says right before she punches Break in the face...]

It sucks and the plan sucks and relying on Miata sucks, but it's not all we can do. With everyone finally on the same page here, we don't need her. I refuse to give up now, not when we're so close to finishing this!

i don't-- look, if keeping stuff from other people was a sport, i'd be the best athlete in the underground. i told you, i don't care about that. i just--

[he doesn't want it to be all for nothing again? but believing otherwise requires a trust in life and people sans simply doesn't have. ... and he'll have to suck it up, because he can't exactly stop doing shit with papyrus still on the line, odds of it working out being stupidly low or not. time to put his big boy shorts on and repress how this makes him feel like throwing in the towel again, because that's how he feels like all the time anyway. he groans as he rubs the back of his skull]

it's not an insult if it's true. i'm a professional in fuck-ups, so i can recognize one when i see one. [that's an admission of letting it go as good as any for sans.] but alright, sure. let's all try to coordinate this stuff so it works.

[She stares at him for a few moments, then reaches out to awkwardly ruffle the top of his skull.]

Don't say that about yourself. We don't know for sure if it was a fuck-up, and if it was, there's nothing we can do about it now. At least they've gotten one of the demons on our side.

Right! Any ideas?

[ugh??? what is this physical affection bullshit?? but sans is just going to ignore that comment about his self-depreciation humor. undyne, please. it's the only thing he's honest about.] welp. first thing first: if we're really dealing with having to trust miata to do her magic stuff-- an' since i figure none of us know the exact magic needed to do it at this point, it's probably safer to not try it on our own at the last minute-- we're gonna have to get her out.

[he looks thrilled at the prospect. thrilled.]

so that's my bad news.

[Look at how thrilled she also is at this. Spoilers it is zero. She is zero thrilled.]

Well...we can save that for last if we have to. Taking care of Katerina and her demons should be our first priority, since they'd apparently just kill the hostages if we break them out too soon.

Maybe by that point we'll have figured out how to use the magic without Miata.

did she tell any of them the details? all i heard was something about a book. if it's just deciphering, there's enough of us here who use magic that we might be able to figure it out if it comes down to it.

[they can read books right. it can't be that hard... or no it probably is]

speakin' of the demons, though-- i wouldn't trust leviathan that much, either. from what sloth said, any one of those guys being around is bad news. best case scenario, they might take each other out, but i doubt we'll be able to just leave if leviathan's 100% victorious, no matter what was said. i'm sure that was always on the table [...HE HOPES] but, y'know. just saying.

According to Rhys, all Miata said was that only she could pull off the magic for some reason. Even though half of us here are magic-users or literally made of magic. [ADDING TO THE SALT LEVEL HERE...] You'd think she at least have mentioned how it worked just in case she got put out of commission, but noooooo....

Yeah, I'm with you on that one. They only got Leviathan to agree by giving her their 'energy', which sounds super sketchy to me. If we're making a demon that much more powerful, what's to say she won't turn on us after she's done with the rest?

then unless we get anything more than that, we really will have to rely on her help.

[undyne & sans's collective hell, right there.]

last time some of the demons were around they caused a plague on the humans. so, we probably shouldn't let her stick around even if she doesn't turn on us directly.

Tch. How much do you wanna bet that she just told everyone that so we'd be forced to save her and keep her alive if anything happened to her? [Wow these past few months sure have turned Undyne cynical!! Nah, just kidding, she's always been this cynical about humans.

She groans and rubs her face.] I'm really sick of getting pulled into some other world's problems that has nothing to do with us! As long as everyone here gets revived and goes home, maybe we should just let Leviathan have the rest of this shitty place. It's not like it can get any worse than this.

[Okay, she doesn't actually mean that completely, but it's a good sign of how tired and bitter and furious Undyne is underneath all those optimistic shounen speeches that the Heroine of Justice would even consider sacrificing countless people to save a few.

But then again, they're humans, so...maybe not that surprising after all.]

as much as i love you tellin' me we could totally do nothing and leaving it be-- and trust me, if i could've recorded it for future uses, i would've-- they're not limited to just this dimension, obviously, if they managed to pull us out of ours. leaving her free here's got a possibility of endangering all of us in the long run.

[sans feels you undyne but he is definitely not talking about saving all the humans of this world, ok, he gives no shit about lebensbaum's universe, c'mon.]

[Papyrus CAN HEAR YOU]

WE'RE ALL GETTING OUT OF HERE ALIVE!!! DON'T BE SUCH A SOUR BONES, SANS.

[ok he MAY have forgotten that... in a moment of one single emotion... he's looking away and sweating a bit.]

heh. right. sorry, bro. guess i wasn't feeling so hot, so i got bitter. you sure savored that situation though.

[really, sans. taste puns are all you could come up with.]

[that was lazy even by Sans standards]

[but Papyrus will graciously ignore it and give his brother another hug after this whole emotional thing. THAT'S TWO!!!]

THE HUMANS ARE DOING THEIR BEST.... SO WE'LL DO OUR BEST, TOO!! EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT VERY GOOD AT IT, THEY CAN GET BETTER!! AND WE ARE THE BEST. SO WE'LL SAVE EVERYONE.

[how is papyrus so cool? sans can't handle it. he doesn't hug back this time, because it's a bit embarrassing to be caught ranting at undyne by his brother, but he kind of... leans into it.]

heh. yeah. you're the best.

[he... doesn't... agree with the we part, but everything else is Real, so. he pulls away to grin up at papyrus. it is like 75% real, which is a general vast improvement for sans.]

sure. let's save everybody. it'll be pretty sweet.

[LET GO OF THE TASTE JOKE, SANS]

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