hello, worlds.

* I must have fallen asleep at my keyboard again.

* My everything aches. How long was I out for…?

#drwingdings #[[loop two]]

* Wing Dings?

* It’s good to hear from you. Uh, the Messenger’s just... spitting out stuff.

* I don’t, I don’t think it’s glitched, uh, output, it’s more like pages and pages of... documents, and um, I think you should...

* ...I’ll try and organise some of it, and bring it down to you. Are you, are you all right? Did you sleep?

#[[out of space]]#[[ we're sort of rebooting!! ]]#[[ we're gonna try to see this story through this time ♥ ]]

[ooc; new guidelines]

[hi is anyone… still here…

so yeah empty hands is comin’ back, but with a few adjustments! my dash seems p quiet so i doubt it’ll be a hassle, but still

The Empty Hands blogs are now semi-closed canon - we’re still welcoming blogging/message interactions and anons and etc (with the right to delete anything that could cause issues), but we’re cracking down a bit more on people who just kind of… show up. If you were already established as an EH multiversal guest, or were playing a canon character, just send me an IM and we can work out if you still want to play with that after… like… a year, but in general in-person interactions are gonna be a lot more limited. (In-story, void Gaster’s found a timeline where the Interdimensional Messenger was just, like, way less messy in how it worked.)

Similarly, less magic anons, less in-person RP with anons, quicker to delete stuff like SUDDENLY THE ROOM FILLS WITH MAGMA, etc.

Cats are wonderful. Please send me them.

That’s about it, I think? All other rules remain about the same!]

falling backwards [closed]

#[[loop one]]#drwingdings #[[ hhhhh this took for ever ]]

- drwingdings:

“[And let him know how long I’ve failed for?]”

Gaster’s hands hung on the end of the sentence for a few seconds, then dropped. He pushed himself out of his chair, started to pace, signing, not looking at Alphys. Barely trying to angle himself towards her.

“[I’ve been at this for years - too many years - and only recently have I managed anything approaching contact. If I had been faster, been better, he could be here right now, we could have void travel technology, we could have ways to stop the human. But instead it’s been nothing but failed attempt after failed attempt, and I–Papyrus doesn’t need to be part of that. Papyrus doesn’t need to see every false start, doesn’t need to be getting his hopes up along with me. Better that he just… see the finished product, when it happens. It will happen but–it may take a while. Longer than he needs to be waiting.]”

A pause, for a moment, in the frantic motions. Gaster lowered his head.

“[And I don’t want him to take responsibility. I don’t want him to feel like this is his fault. Sans took the weight of the world on his shoulders, took on all the responsibility himself, and–now–]”

This time, he stopped dead, realized what he’d said.

“[Never mind,]” he signed, hands dropping to his side as he slumped against a table.

Alphys took a couple of steps towards him, going for another friendly touch - then thought better of it. Because she’d just tried to tell him that this was wrong, that a lot of this was wrong, and he wasn’t listening; or he was, but he didn’t understand; or he understood, but he didn’t want to; and he wouldn’t want some one to comfort him while telling him he was wrong, but he was wrong.

Alphys folded her hands together, wrists bent downwards, dithering. This was - it was a false dichotomy, it had to be, two options presented as the only options. It was a generalisation, it was catastrophic thinking, it was a lot like the way she thought about things she didn’t want to do, to be honest. But not this time, not this time, because she’d been on the couch next to Papyrus on a Sunday evening more times in the last two months than Wing Dings had in the last year, and she knew - she knew - she couldn’t say how but it had to be different. Wrong. He cared about Papyrus and when you cared about some one, this wasn’t meant to happen.

“[Leaving Papyrus out like this isn’t protecting him from anything,]” she insisted, with a little more certainty than she had believed she was capable of. “[He’s waiting. He’s still waiting. He’s still getting - false hope, and having to ignore it - to - to push it away. He’s still blaming himself. It’s just that instead of waiting to see Sans, he’s waiting for you.]”

She hesitated.

She scratched her finger with a claw, the way she did when she was double-checking sums.

“An-anyway, never mind what?” she asked, aloud.

seissouls

♥ Listen close to everybody’s heart, And hear that breaking ｓｏｕｎｄ. Ｈｏｐｅｓ and dreams are shattering a p a r t And crashing to the ground.

♥ There’s good in everybody’s heart; Keep it safe andｓｏｕｎｄ. With ｈｏｐｅ, you can do your p a r t To turn a life around.

Undertale RP + Ask Blogs for the Fallen Humans of

Bravery

&& Integrity et al.

#[[out of space]]#[[promo]]#[[ wow!!! ]]#flashing -

falling backwards [closed]

Alphys nodded, nodded, nodded. That - that made sense, didn’t it? It was a good reason not to press this too far. She’d been talking too much, anyway. Except.

Maybe it was just residual worry, maybe it was just how she felt about basically everything and there was nothing wrong, but she felt as if - as if -

“[Wing Dings,]” she said, each sign hesitant, “[maybe - if you wouldn’t ask me to do it - if you wouldn’t ask him, ask Sans, to do it, then - ]”

She stopped, her claws trembling in midair. Wing Dings was trembling, too, like a flickering illusion, like a machine about to break down, like a person who was too exhausted to be told everything he was doing was wrong by some one who was supposed to be his friend.

But it was a bit too late. She turned what she was going to say into a question and hoped that somehow made it nicer.

“[Why must it be you?]”

Gaster looked away, not able to meet Alphys’ eyes. He knew it was stupid, reckless. He knew it would likely be a stopgap measure at best even if it worked. He knew that the only way it could end was with his death, whether it succeeded or failed.

So why?

(Because Sans had been willing to suffer something worse than death for him, and Gaster could do no less.)

(Because it was the entire Underground at stake, because his life didn’t matter against the grand scheme of things.)

(Because if he succeeded, he would have managed something right at long last.)

(Because maybe, just maybe, with determination and magic flooding him, he’d be able to reach out beyond the time stream and at long last save someone.)

“[It was my idea, wasn’t it?]” he said at last. “[My reckless plan, my responsibility.]” He smiled crookedly. “[Who else is there?]”

Who else would be able to shoulder the weight of the Underground on their own?

“[Alphys–listen, please. This is only a worst case scenario. It won’t come to this unless every other measure goes wrong. If we do have to go through with it, I’ll need you running support, checking the balances, sending out our notes again.]” He lowered his head. “[I–I need you for this.]”

“[Yes. I know that. I know that, and I’ll be here no matter what, I promise, but - ]” she wrung her hands in frustration. Tiredness or irritation or coffee or something was buzzing in her head and stopping her from thinking properly, but -

“[It isn’t just about that plan,]” she signed. Still not the right words - but close enough that there was no taking them back, now.

“[The Messenger - ever since you got the Messenger working, you’ve had a way to tell people about Sans. Me. Everyone. Papyrus. He... um. Especially now, with everything that’s happening, he’s trying his best to understand. And I know it’s my fault, too, that he doesn’t know, but even so... you’ve never even suggested telling him what’s going on. And - and he’s the person who needs to know the most, out of everyone, why you’re doing this.]”

Alphys chewed on her lip, her eyes fixed on the wall behind Wing Dings. The silence was unbreakable by now; it hung on her neck like a millstone. “[I don’t know. I don’t know, I just... think... he’d support you. He’d understand, and you deserve some one apart from me supporting you.]

“[I’m - I’m not really making sense, I know, but it’s - stars, I’m making it sound like a bigger deal than it probably is - even if we, if you can do this alone, I feel like it’d be better if... we didn’t. Saving Sans, stopping the human - you're under a lot of pressure right now, and it really feels like you're - you're not - letting things out? I don't know.]"

She held the last sign for a few seconds, then let her hands drop.

#[[ask]]#[[loop one]]#Anonymous

[a variety of things appear on one of alphys' work tables - a water tank with a few cute decorations, containing a fuzzy green ball of moss; a little pamphlet of information and care tips for marimo balls; and a small note reading "Hey, Alphys! I know things have tough lately, but here's something I thought you'd find cute! Have fun!" There is a small doodle of Mew Mew winking.]

* Hey, that wasn’t there before.

* Oh.

* Wow, that’s cute! Um, does it... belong to...

[* Alphys reads the note.]

* What?

* No? I can’t take care of a living thing? I can barely take care of myself?

* Like, I appreciate the thought and everything, but...

* I’ll, um, I’ll have to...

[* Alphys reads the pamphlet.]

* Okay. Um.

* We have a water supply. And, uhhh... yeah, it should be okay.

* Right, and... plant bulbs? There are household ones, right?

[* Alphys starts looking things up.]

* They’re a bit expensive, but not really...

* I shouldn’t need any- anything really powerful, anyway. I’m not growing a vegetable garden or anything. Maybe I can just use a n-normal fluorescent one.

* And. Um. Salt, right, and a brush...

* Is that everything?

* ...

* You know what. I can do this.

* L-let’s do this.

* Yeahhh, sounds good.

* Just.

* I’ll, uh, pack everything up, and… hey, have you had breakfast?

* I’ve had coffee?

* ...

* I was gonna get a snack anyway, so, um, if you can get me coffee I’ll just heat something up real quick?

* Y-yeah, we’ll. We’ll get it next time. Or we’ll get something next time.

* I usually just add it under. Um. “Repair and maintenance costs”.

* It doesn’t really add that much on, does it…?

* Okay, um, maybe it does?

* …I’ll figure it out. If, um, when we get to the end of the month.

* That works.

* …When we get there, yes.

* Also, would you like a mocha or anything now that the machine’s running again?

* Yeahhh, sounds good.

* Just.

* I’ll, uh, pack everything up, and... hey, have you had breakfast?

* I, um, want to put on semi-public record? That I did not check the espresso machine for technical soundness before it was… activated.

* And that this is the first time this has happened.

* And that we, uh, totally didn’t damage anything seriously. From. What I can see.

* We don’t really have time to run full checks right now but, uh, we have redundancies! It’ll be. Fine.

* Don’t worry so much, Alphys. What is science if not testing brilliant new ideas at the cutting edge of what we’re capable of?

* The instant quadruple shot still evades us, but not for long, I promise.

* …Although, ah.

* How do we list ‘ceiling repair’ in the budget?

* Y-yeah, we’ll. We’ll get it next time. Or we’ll get something next time.

* I usually just add it under. Um. “Repair and maintenance costs”.

* It doesn’t really add that much on, does it...?

* Okay, um, maybe it does?

* ...I’ll figure it out. If, um, when we get to the end of the month.

#[[dash commentary]]#[[loop one]]

ooc meme//

[[

RULES: TAG 9 SOME PEOPLE YOU WANT TO GET TO KNOW BETTER. TAGGED BY: @drwingdings

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: single! PETS: i would not trust myself with a pet, so! none. WAKE UP TIME: varies depending on requirements! i have no sense of discipline or scheduling so if i don’t need to wake up for anything i can sleep in till noon. |D CATS OR DOGS: cats are soft springy vibrating friends but dogs are also very cute! COKE OR PEPSI: coke? TEXT OR CALL: text please! i stutter a lot and am generally bad at verbal coherence. CHAPSTICK OR LIPSTICK: i have. never actually tried either up till now but i’d like to at least... try... lipstick at some point!!

TAGGING: um @seissouls, @bonedoggles, and i’m not sure about anyone else but if you want to, you can do it! <3

]]

#[[out of space]]

* I, um, want to put on semi-public record? That I did not check the espresso machine for technical soundness before it was... activated.

* And that this is the first time this has happened.

* And that we, uh, totally didn’t damage anything seriously. From. What I can see.

* We don’t really have time to run full checks right now but, uh, we have redundancies! It’ll be. Fine.

seissouls

Pierce asks the question with the same type of stiffness as their posture; the words leave them heavily, but carefully, as though each syllable carried enough weight to crush the child’s lungs.

#seissouls #[[loop one]]#[[ ohhhhh. my god. this is the best thing. this is the best thing ever. oh my god ]]#[[ the ]]#[[ the everything ]]#[[ the suspense ]]#[[ the light and colour ]]#[[ the mechanical clutter ]]#[[ hhhhhhhh ]]#[[ you're completely incredible and your art is amazing and what did i do to deserve this ]]

[[ ooc message because i want to remind you, before you reach the end of this post, that you are amazing and i am yelling ]]

Alphys doesn’t respond straight away. The silence is deafening, the sigh of motors whirring to a halt and the bubble of the wand-fluid and the shrill buzz of magic circuits venting as light, the incessant thudding of her heartbeat, the chill on her skin as the sweat dries off it. Ew.

She fiddles with the cuffs of her latex gloves, pulling them tight and rubbing her wrists as she tries to marshal her thoughts. This is... weird.

Being on the other side of everything.

Just like with any other project, almost.

It worked. It worked it worked it worked. The temperature held stable, the spells didn’t fizzle out halfway, none of the auxiliary power banks failed, and it must have worked, it must have worked because Pierce is alive and in there and the body is shining with its own gentle light and she just heard the little pip-pip-pip of the onboard system starting up, and the motors are moving the neck-joints are turning smoothly the voice synthesiser just slipped straight into Pierce’s standard modes of elocution without sticking halfway like it usually does and maybe some of that is successful SOUL rooting but! even then!!! that is also something she did!!!!!

It wasn’t all for nothing. She's given a SOUL a body.

Alphys heaves herself up onto the nearest work-table and collapses face-first onto it in a bundle of frayed nerves.

“Oh,” she says, after a few seconds.

“Yeah, um, go ahead,” she says. “Everything looks... everything looks good. Um. Tell me if you feel like anything’s wrong. The body might feel unusually heavy for a bit if you’re used to incorporeality, but... yeah.”

frisking-in-time-and-space-blog

Delayed Introductions

frisking-in-time-and-space-blog

Nervous and messy, clad in a crumpled lab coat and glasses askew, with a wreck of an office behind her. Between this Alphys, her own Alphys, and Queen Alphys, Frisk was beginning to think that their dear friend and sister was a lovely Multiversal constant all on her own.

“ Ah, um, no. No, not me. The Frisk that’s trying to kill you is, like, twelve and short.” The teenager chuckled nervously and shifted the pot in their hands. “ I’m Frisk Dreemurr…I’m the one helping Dr. G with the Odessa and your current issue. Gods, I sure hope he’s told you about me, or this is going to be awkward…”

Another awkward laugh.

“ We, uh, actually talked once before. You probably don’t remember though; it was a conversation on UnderNet right before the end of your last timeline. Actually, it’s good if you don’t remember, because the subject mater wasn’t…wasn’t pleasant.”

Especially the stuff about Sans, because Christ, I didn’t think I’d accidentally be right.

“ Well, basically, I figured that it wasn’t fair that I’m kind of a secondary part of your life and you haven’t even met me face to face? So I brought you lunch. I know how busy you two must be…” Frisk held the pot out to the dinosaur scientist. “ It’s ramen–completely homemade, noodles and all. I didn’t really have anything to go on, so I just made my own Alphys’ favorite flavor, so if you don’t like miso I’m really, really sorry.”

#frisking-in-time-and-space #[[loop one]]

With the subject of imminent death put to rest, Alphys managed to remind herself to pay attention to the rest of what this human - Frisk, that Frisk, she should really have known - had to say.

And what they looked like. They were a lot taller than Alphys, of course, but that was true of most people with upright spines. They had... how do you describe it? Human depictions rarely went into the details, you could see how they took the fine cell-tissue texture and the near-invisible coating of fine hairs and the puckering around the joints for granted, all the special features of human skin. Egg-shaped nostrils, tapered eyes with mobile lids, five (five, Alphys mentally confirmed) jointed digits on each hand with broad, flat nails, the clump-clump-clumping casual solidity of matter in their footsteps just now, the faint but palpable, palpable pressure of SOUL power permeating the air..

A human. Living, breathing, standing right here in front of her. Conscious, animate, sapient flesh. Not the disembodied SOULs they’d - well, maybe she shouldn’t be thinking about that right now, maybe she should go back to the topic before that.

“You’re amazing,” Alphys blurted, then rallied herself in time not to say anything else. Frisk had met... a version of her before, right? So they’d already know her, sort of, by this point, and saying anything more would just be retreading old ground, and anyway she wasn’t anything special compared to Frisk, oh, stars, Frisk who had helped design the device she’d given up on trying to grok after a few hours, Frisk who had broken another timeline’s Barrier somehow at the age of twelve or something if she remembered correctly, Frisk who -

It started to occur to Alphys that she might have been a little rude. And was being rude, right now, by staring wide-eyed and not saying anything.

“Um-um-um,” she stammered. “I mean. Uh.” Food. “Thanks! Thank you. Wow! That smells, that smells great, you didn’t have to, I’ll just... clean up the mess inside, ahaha, and - sorry about, sorry about that, by the way! About the mess.”

She glanced back inside, scanning for a place far enough from the edges of her semi-organised workspace. Only now did the fact that the food actually did smell really, really good. Homemade ramen? Right, that was a thing, wasn’t it? It just wasn’t the sort of thing that happened to her.

Surreal.

“Yeah,” said Alphys, as her brain, agonisingly slow as ever, caught up to the conversation. “Yeah, he’s, um, Wing Dings told me about you! We’re really happy for all your help. Really. Our plan - I mean, this timeline’s plan, I guess, haha - it’s all, um, a-all thanks to you, isn’t it?”

She did remember getting mentions of some sort of conversation back in her notes, but the details were jumbled and she was pretty sure she’d forgotten to record large chunks, and basically she wasn’t sure what they’d talked about at all. “I don’t really remember much about talking to you directly,” she summed up sheepishly.

“But, um, really, thank you for, for coming! I’m - ” she searched for the right words, then gave up - “I’m really, really happy to meet you. Not that you, uh, had to, or anything! I’m sure you, uh, have lots of stuff to do, as well...”

She trailed off, and shuffled towards one of the mostly-unoccupied corner tables, heaving it off to the side to make space for Frisk to actually get into the lab. “But, uh, if you want to, feel free to co- to come in!”

Was she being friendly? She really hoped she was being friendly.

falling backwards [closed]

Gaster visibly flinched back at the mention of Sans’ name, drawing back against his chair. His shaking only got worse.

“[Sans would, Sans–]” He hesitated. “[That’s why I have to. I–I appreciate it, Alphys. I really do. But this isn’t something I can ask of you. I’ll… You’ll help. Ideally, it won’t come to this, and I need you running the puzzles and strengthening the defenses and helping me finish the Odessa so that we can do this cleanly. But I’m not making you risk your life directly.]”

Alphys nodded, nodded, nodded. That - that made sense, didn’t it? It was a good reason not to press this too far. She’d been talking too much, anyway. Except.

Maybe it was just residual worry, maybe it was just how she felt about basically everything and there was nothing wrong, but she felt as if - as if -

“[Wing Dings,]” she said, each sign hesitant, “[maybe - if you wouldn’t ask me to do it - if you wouldn’t ask him, ask Sans, to do it, then - ]”

But it was a bit too late. She turned what she was going to say into a question and hoped that somehow made it nicer.

“[Why must it be you?]”

frisking-in-time-and-space-blog

Delayed Introductions

(closed starter for @royalsciencedeptofficial)

Whenever Frisk wanted to do something nice for someone, cooking was the first thing that came to mind.

From the moment Frisk had their first slice of warm butterscotch-cinnamon pie nearly nine years ago (and even beforehand, when Miguel offered them their first ever fruit snacks), the ambassador had come to associate food with warmth and kindness. Pie and snails from Toriel, hot dogs from Sans, spaghetti from Undyne and Papyrus, instant noodles from Alphys, glamburgers from Mettaton, golden flower tea from Asgore…the mere thought of those dishes filled Frisk to the brim with love, and the only thing better than feeling love–in their opinion–was spreading it.

While desserts were the ambassador’s specialty, Frisk had become quite adept at making a variety of foods, both Monster and human. They never returned from a trip abroad without a cookbook and a word document file brimming with the best local recipes, and when they and Toriel weren’t fighting, they would take a day every week and make a new and different meal together. While all food was interesting (in their opinion), the teenager had a special place in their heart for their family’s favorites, and they’d long since turned making their favorite dishes into an art form.

Frisk had not yet met the Alphys of Dr. Gaster’s file, and really, if they were constantly tromping through her file all willy-nilly (albeit with good intentions and during extenuating circumstances), they should at least introduce themselves. They could’ve just knocked on her office door and gotten it over with during their last visit, but given the state Dr. Gaster was in, the ambassador was slightly worried that Alphys was in a similar state of exhaustion and starvation. So, what better way to kill two birds with one stone than to make the reptilian scientist something to eat?

Therefore, several days after their last visit to Dr. G’s file, the ambassador was once again walking through the familiarly unfamiliar halls of the Royal Laboratory, clad in their battle body (just in case a certain murder child decided to show up) and carrying a medium-sized, covered pot in their hands. Steam wafted up from the thin gap between the lid and the rim, and if one took a big whiff of it, they would easily be able to smell a savory, umami-like aroma.

Hopefully she likes miso ramen as much as my own, Frisk mused, gently kicking the closed door of Alphys’ office in an imitation of a knock.