FEBRUARY 2021 EVENT: PART TWO

[robbies]

 

CHAPTER TWO, PART 2: THE LIVING ISLAND

Everything you never wanted to see.

YOU CAN’T DO A LITTLE BECAUSE YOU CAN’T DO ENOUGH | JUST A DREAM FROM YESTERDAY | DARKNESS HELD ITS BREATH | YOUR FRIENDS WHEN THINGS GET ROUGH | COME AND PLAY WITH ME

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YOU CAN'T DO A LITTLE BECAUSE YOU CAN'T DO ENOUGH

Perhaps you’ve been on tenterhooks since you woke up to find that your friends, your family, your neighbors somehow went missing in the night. Perhaps you’ve been hitting the pavement and knocking on doors trying to find them. So far, your efforts have been for naught. There’s been neither hide nor hair of the missing, and every attempt to find them has met with a dead end.

Until February 13.

In the afternoon, a strange, unsigned message goes live on the network. What is the meaning of “Living Island”? Does it have anything to do with what’s going on? There’s no elaboration… until midnight, when every neighbor’s television set turns on at full volume, hissing static and garbled noise as the dials turn and adjust. Several disjointed clips follow, ending on a mural that depicts the same words from the post.

“Living Island.”

The following morning, you’ll find that stranger things are beginning to happen. Some of you will be woken up to the blankets and sheets being yanked off your sleeping bodies by a powerful force. Others will find that when they step out of their morning shower, a message has been written in the steam on their medicine cabinet's mirror. Depending on how quickly you shower, you may only be able to see part of the message — but running the hot water longer and allowing the steam to fill the room will reveal it in its entirety:

“LIVING ISLAND.”

As time passes, you’ll find that the same message shows up every time the bathroom steams up, whether you’re in the shower or not. The same force that turned your TV on seems to insist that you pay attention to what it’s trying to show you, and its behavior escalates the longer you refuse. Characters will find that books go flying off of bookshelves, drawers are yanked out of dressers and desks, and breakable objects are smashed. Trying to prevent the spirit from destruction won’t go your way: If you try to catch or grab something that’s about to be thrown, you’ll find it ripped out of your hands anew and smashed anyways. If you tried to take all of your chairs down from where they’ve been stacked on top of the dining room table, you’ll find they’re back atop it the instant you look away.

All that’s to say nothing of the rumbling. It doesn’t start until the end of the first day, but from time to time you’ll feel the house beginning to shake on its foundations, a dull groan as it struggles to keep itself from collapsing in under its own weight. As time goes on, this will get louder and louder until the house seems to roar of its own accord, an unyielding shriek that can’t be stopped until the force causing it backs down.

Attempts to make contact with the spirit will never go well. It does not seem to be able or willing to communicate with you beyond its own tantrums, and characters who try may find that the attempt rapidly goes out of control. Candles flare up and burn wildly, Ouija boards are ripped into pieces and planchettes go flying, offerings of food are knocked over or thrown, and the lights flicker manically in turns. While you may be able to get some sleep at night if you’re lucky, the only thing that will reduce the poltergeist activity is to pay attention to the message it’s sending you and figure out what it means.

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JUST A DREAM FROM YESTERDAY

Living Island. If ever there were a first step to stopping this madness, it’s figuring out what those words mean. But starting is always the hardest part, and with nothing else to go by than two seemingly unrelated, nonsensical words left behind by a force you can’t see much less communicate with, an already arduous task seems even more impossible. This is furthered by the reactions you get when you hit the street and start asking people if they know anything about Living Island. Most of them can only look back at you blankly, as if waiting for a punchline that never comes. Others actually take you seriously enough to consider the question, and to their credit, they do take their time racking their brains to remember where they’ve heard that name before, why it sounds so familiar. But the most you’ll get back from them is a sheepish shrug of the shoulders and a reply that it sounds like something from TV. It gets to the point where their answers blend together, each one more unremarkable than the last. Save for the one you get from the last person you haven’t asked. Living Island. I’m sorry, what was that? What the fuck did you just say? Dale Harding and Rosemary Craven might be as far away from each other as possible, doing things around town that couldn’t be more different, but their reactions are the same. When they overhear you asking what feels like the hundredth person you’ve seen that day about Living Island, they look your way — Harding in the middle of his patrol or lunch break, Rosemary in the middle of grocery shopping. Harding looks honest-to-God surprised. Rosemary simply looks confused, even somewhat concerned. That's such a... strange name. Where did you hear that from? When they hear your explanation, they go quiet, mulling it over. Rosemary’s expression turns thoughtful. Harding’s, suspicious. If I remember correctly, that was a clubhouse the children around town used to play in. I haven’t heard about it in… goodness, I can’t even remember. Years, perhaps. It’s a play on “safety island” — another name for a bomb shelter — and the name of this… stupid kids show that used to be popular. I guess they thought it was cute, calling a place like that something fun. But where is it? Well, most of the shelters in town are still in use, and children aren’t allowed in them unless there’s an emergency. The only place I can think of is… The grade school. Administration ran out of funding before they could finish it, so they just scrapped it. Closed it off and just hoped for the best. Didn’t stop people from sneaking in. I used to bust them for playing down there all the time, the little shits. Harding’s mouth twists into a sneer that doesn’t reach his eyes, which are soft and miserable, while Rosemary waits patiently for any other questions and, when you have no others, excuses herself to go back to her groceries. Now you have something even better than an explanation: you have a destination.

Finding Santa Rosita Elementary is as easy as a fifteen minute drive from North Santa Rosita to Shadyside. Getting in is a different story. By day, the school is open for business and humming with activity, so you can’t very well go barging in and not expect to be reprimanded for disrupting class. This leaves you with three options: go before it opens, wait until school is over, or come in the middle of the night. Each have their own pros and cons, but all of them will get you the same result.

After hours, the school is desolate and still. The wind, the occasional slap of a naked branch against a window, and the squeak of your footsteps on the shiny, clean floors are the only sounds you’ll hear as you navigate the empty hallways. Most of the classrooms are locked, and the ones that aren’t don’t have anything any more unique or worthwhile to them than the occasional lunchbox left behind by a student or the classroom frog croaking in its tank. In a way, this is a good thing — it doesn’t leave that many places to investigate and makes your path that much more linear as you finally, inevitably and silently make your way downstairs into the bowels of the school.

The long corridor that awaits you in the basement is, in theory, not very different from the hallways upstairs. There are lockers lining both sides, dented and darkened with age and dust. The tiles are cracked, dirt and pieces of stone kicked up from exposed areas of the floor. Seemingly, this appears to lead to a dead end. But look closely at the wall and you’ll see the impression of a door, painted to match the walls. The lock is flimsy — in fact, depending on when you find it, someone may have already broken it. All that’s left is to enter and descend down the tiny room’s only feature: a ladder under a rusty steel hatch door, stretching down into darkness.

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DARKNESS HELD ITS BREATH

CW: gore, surgery

Stepping into the old shelter, the first thing that hits you is the stale, uncomfortably moist air. This first room is cavernous and dark, and your footsteps and whispers echo in spite of how quiet you might try to be. There’s a faint smell in the air, a trace of copper and rubbing alcohol that might make your eyes water, making your mouth feel unpleasant as it hits your tongue. As you get your bearings and begin to pick your way through the dark, you’ll notice traces of another smell — something simultaneously spicy and cloyingly sweet, a scent that seems to assault your senses and leaves you with a headache pounding at the base of your skull. Thankfully, there isn’t enough to do more than make you nauseous, but the smells warn of what’s still yet to be found.

As you continue through the labyrinthine warren, you’ll begin to find signs of human presence — some of the trashed rooms may be fitted with tables and supplies one might expect to find in a laboratory, meticulously labeled with typewritten strips. Several of these boxes appear to be old, covered in grimy layers of dust, while others are fresh and clean. All of them contain medical supplies. Eagle-eyed investigators might note that the untouched supplies tend to be the type contained in first-aid kits — acetaminophen, antibiotic ointment, simple adhesive bandages — while the ones that have been opened are for heavy duty surgical work — coiled IV lines and tubing, empty syringes, surgical gloves. One room in particular seems to have been fitted out for someone’s personal use, boasting a stripped-down bed, a chair and desk, and a comfortable recliner.

The trickle of water can be heard in the depths of the shelter, and as you emerge from one corridor that filters into a large chamber, it becomes immediately obvious where you are: This is an operating theater, with a table stationed beneath all manner of lights that can be adjusted and moved. A faucet drips monotonously in the back of the room, over a sink stained with blood with bits of grey, pulpy matter stuck in the drain. A bucket filled with blood and viscera ferments on the ground beside it. There are smears of blood, both dried and fresh, on the cloudy tiles, and a cabinet full of surgical instruments is slightly ajar. Looking at the instruments, characters will find that a couple of scalpels and a pair of tongs have dotted blotches where the metal was cleaned with water; whoever used these tools last didn’t dry them before putting them away. A small table near the operating area has a turntable sitting atop it, with a record already set under the needle: a single of Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel.” There are a few other records sitting in the cabinet beneath it, including Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog,” Frank Sinatra’s “Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely,” and James Brown and the Famous Flames’ “Think!”

In a separate area of this room, an oversized desk is piled with books and empty food containers that look as though they’ve been repurposed for one reason or another. These books are chiefly on anatomy and the medical sciences, though there are a number of books on psychology and how the brain functions. Though some of these books are water-spotted and dog-eared, there aren’t any notes written in the margins, nor are there any papers to be found. You can turn this area as much as you'd like, but all you’ll find is a couple empty cigarette boxes and some broken and bitten pens; the trash can next to the desk, filled with soggy ashes, seems to suggest that any papers that might have given you a lead were destroyed before you got here.

But the lab, with all its instruments, isn’t what you came here to find. There’s still at least one more room to be found…

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YOUR FRIENDS WHEN THINGS GET ROUGH

CW: gore, surgical trauma, amputation, lobotomy, brainwashing and interrogation, mouth trauma, eye trauma, ear trauma, body horror

The missing are being held in small, sturdy cages in a single room connected to the back of the operating room, dim and dank. The cages are placed equidistant around the room, ensuring that even if you try, you can’t reach out and make contact with your neighbors. The missing will find that they wake at approximately the same time, curled up on the ground in uncomfortable positions. Unlike your rescuers, your nightmare began far earlier than when you first awoke in this room, sore and disoriented. In fact, you could argue it started the moment you went to sleep on February 9th, leaving empty beds and concerned family members behind.

With no clocks or watches available to tell the time, you may not be able to tell how long you’ve been here. You sleep and wake, sometimes to a bowl of what looks like sticky rice lying in your cage that wasn’t there before. Sometimes, an overpowering smell will fill the room, faint at first; by the time you register it, it’s already overwhelmed you and sent you into a deep sleep. And when you wake, one cage will be empty. The inhabitant will be returned the next time you go to sleep and wake up, but not quite the same as they were before. They seem heavily drugged, discombobulated — or perhaps there's something visibly different about them. Whoever has taken you is doing a lot of work in their lab — and from the smell of things, meat work — and before long almost all of you will be sporting dressings of some type or other, fresh red seeping through the sterile cloth within a matter of hours.

Maybe you should try to keep each others’ spirits up. You don’t know how long you’ll be here, after all.

All of this goes on for a while — days, although it won’t be easy to count them given that there are no windows in the room. But nearly a week later… you wake to find that the front of your cage is unlocked. Unlatched. Open just an inch. Looking around the room, you’ll find that yours is not the only cage to have been opened — all of your cages have been unlocked.

Is it a mistake? Or are you really free?

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COME AND PLAY WITH ME

CW: blood and violence

Whether you’ve released yourself from your cage, or were discovered by a well-meaning friend before you could, or you’ve simply had your fill of exploring the shelter-turned-laboratory, the time has finally come to leave. Unfortunately, if things were that easy, you wouldn’t even be around by the time the scuttling sounds begin — somewhere down the hall, in the room behind you, fleeting and sly. It’s not an animal sound, a creature picking its way through the garbage and debris littered around the shelter. No, with the way it stops and starts every time you start and stop walking, this is a very deliberate, human sound. And if you don’t believe that, you’ll see soon enough when you see the naked, bone-white figure walk into view at the end of the hallway as casual as you please, their body smooth and sexless like a department store mannequin. They turn (your) their head and stare directly at you with (your) their wide, glassy eyes crinkled in thousand-yard delight. You hear your voice echoed back at you, airy and chirpy and so indescribably wrong it makes your blood run cold.

"Hi!"

Much like the Doppelgangers you encountered in January, these ones look and move like dolls, their limbs connected with ball-joints. However, whereas those ones were near perfect imitations of you and your friends, these ones look like they just fell off the assembly line. Their faces are unnaturally flat and plastic, like all the imperfections have been ironed out of them, but they are unmistakably yours. And when they open their mouths to squeal at you before running with all the unnatural speed not having a pair of lungs affords them, you’ll find that even their voices are perfect imitations — and not necessarily of your own either.

There’s no way to tell how many of these Doppelgangers are down here with you, hiding in the dark. They’re stealthy and sneaky, only coming out to attack when they’re sure you’re alone. Even if you’re not, they’re intelligent enough to come up with ways to separate you from your group, calling to you from another part of the shelter, mimicking a voice from someone they know you’ll listen to. Even if there’s no possible way they could be in Santa Rosita.

"Help me!"

"Is that you...? Oh thank God, I've been looking everywhere for you!"

"Please, don't leave me!"

Other times, they’ll take a more aggressive approach, allowing their limbs to pop out of place so they can sprawl on the ground, imitating a heap of discarded doll parts. Once you get close enough or turn your back on them, they’ll pull themselves together and attack, speeding towards you on fours like a crab.

There are two ways out of the shelter. The first one is the hardest: go back the way you came. With the low visibility, the number of Doppelgangers, and the confusing layout of the area, you’re more likely to get turned around and go in circles than you are to find your way back to the ladder — a location made even more difficult to discern since the hatch door has been lowered, blotting out all light from the room above.

The second way is the longest but also the easiest: head deeper into the shelter, past the operating room, through the rooms filled with broken furniture and ruined floors that are very easy to trip on — especially when you’re in the middle of running away. Eventually, you’ll come to another ladder, this one leading to an open hatch that deposits you into a dark passageway. The air up here is more fresh, but not necessarily pleasant smelling. There’s only one way to go — forward.

After what feels like an hour of walking, you’ll see a light at the end of the passage. Follow it and you’ll find yourself exiting a storm drain that drops you into the heart of Old Growth, just outside of West Santa Rosita.

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OOC INFO

Welcome to the second part of February’s event! You can use this entry to top-level for the event, but feel free to utilize the log and network communities as well.

There will be a top-level posted for NPC interaction tied to the second prompt below, wherein you can request to play out your character’s interaction with Harding or Rosemary. If you would like to have your character interact with either one of them, comment to the top-level with the name of the NPC you would like to thread with. You may only thread with one NPC. The mods will respond to NPC tags until February 28th.

Any questions can go in our FAQ thread below. Try to check and see if your question has already been answered on the plotting thread first here.

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SETTING INFO	calendar | setting | housing | npcs | death and tranquilizing | the story so far | event suggestions/engagements

Comments

[spaghettimonster]

O-oh.

[A couple days in the dark hasn't been long enough for him to forget how expressive his brother's human face is, but Papyrus is freshly aware of it, seeing that unfamiliar expression. His hand drifts up toward his cheek, as if to wipe away the reason for staring... but there's nothing to be done with it. Not here and now, and without healing magic, maybe... not at all.

He shivers, and immediately takes a bolstering breath to cover the reaction, then shifts his stance to something more confident - the sort of pose he'd come to setting a cape fluttering behind in. The mask doesn't help with the look, though, still in the same bland expression.]

Well! A-as second-best timings go, this was, pretty good!! I needed some help, just now. [Even trying to be confident and reassuring, there's still hints of everything amiss. He's speaking a little more slowly than usual, enunciating more carefully, to make up for the way the mask presses against damaged muscles.]

[ribticklers]

[Even with that confident stance, Sans zeroes in on the way Papyrus reaches for the mask, the slowed down cadence of his voice. Sans relies more on facial expressions to get the subtler implications behind what someone's saying, but this is obvious. Sans's expression shifts deliberately into something looser, and he manages his lazy grin. His jaw is set tighter than he'd like, but there's only so much he can do with this human body.]

It was nothin' you couldn't handle. I just sped things up a little. [Sans offers this tentative sort of almost normal conversation, even though he doesn't think it's going to last long down here. He stops staring at Papyrus's face in favor of trying to get a better look at the rest of him, to see if he can pick out anything else that they did to him.]

[spaghettimonster]

[The face is by far the most obvious thing. He's moving stiffly, thanks both to the days in the short cage and some run-ins with mannequins in these tunnels so far. A bit of a limp, but mostly, the other strange thing is how he's holding his arms just a little away from his torso, not letting them rest against his ribcage. His clothes aren't tight enough to reveal why.]

Nyheh heh... heh. Yes, of course I did. Any moment then. [There's a windedness to his forced laugh, and his heart isn't quite into the self-aggrandizing praise. It feels like he's been running around for hours, and he's tired and running low on the little stockpile of bones he's managed to build over the days.

He doesn't dare be as sincere in his relief at seeing Sans as he feels, because if he starts crying again it'll make escape that much harder. And he doesn't even dare hug his brother to make this feel real, because his sides already hurt. But he can let on to his relief a little:]

But, I appreciate it anyway. Especially if, um... you have a way out. You have a way out, right?

[ribticklers]

[Papyrus sounds exhausted. By the way he's carrying himself, it's clear something more than just his face is wrong, but this isn't the place to stop and do a detailed assessment.] I came in through the elementary school. Guess this place used to be a bomb shelter, before it got turned into--whatever all this is supposed to be. [A makeshift medical science lab. But it being the way it is means Sans has a leg up on navigating it.]

There's probably more'n one way out, but I could get us back the way I came. Through the operating theater, then the part that's mostly not used. [Sans is sure Papyrus would just follow him, if he'd said they were going back that way without specifying the path, but he isn't taking Papyrus into that operating theater without Papyrus being fully aware of it. Does Papyrus remember being there? Did they at least give him anesthetic? Sans doesn't want to think about this.]

Dunno how many of those weirdos are runnin' around. We could try goin' further in, too.

[spaghettimonster]

[As Sans talks, Papyrus turns to check down the hall again. The doppelganger's still down where it was flung, a little shifting, but the pieces seemingly not gathered enough to charge at them again. Yet.]

Further in sounds like, exactly the direction I don't want to go. [He's a little more vehemently earnest in that than anything else he's said this reunion, more than he meant to be. But his face doesn't twist in a grimace, his nostrils don't flare - it's mostly only in a flinch around his eyes and shoulders than give it away.]

Going back sounds fine. Even if... there's a mysterious opera theater, in a bomb shelter...? [He's not clear why there'd be a theater devoted to opera specifically, instead of just some kind of entertainment room for people to distract themselves from the bomb threat, but then he's not used to life in a world where shelters from bombs are needed. Coincidentally, he hazards a guess why Sans bothered to mention it:] I wonder if that's where the music was coming from...

[ribticklers]

Uh--yeah, actually. [God, that's not the point. Sans doesn't want to explain this, though, and he does remember the music, distant in his ears as he surveyed the room. He feels the grooves in his hands where he'd gripped onto the sink.] But it's like--where you'd sit to watch surgeries, if you were training to be a doctor.

[If Papyrus remembers the music, does that mean he was awake, or did he just hear it from where he'd been kept? He couldn't have been wandering around this entire time, right?]

[spaghettimonster]

Watch surgeries... oh. [Papyrus goes still, nearly as still as his new face, with just the slight rising and falling of his chest interrupting it. His shoulders relax, arms falling to his sides, then he flinches and stiffens up again with an unhappy laugh.]

Well! I can handle that, too. I barely remember any of it! [Just a moment, here or there, notable for being moments of bright lights in what was otherwise a very dim and damp few days.] And, I definitely wasn't in any audience. [Purely hypothetical audience, he hopes. The idea of there being one is brand new and unwanted.]

B-Better the path, we know. Than getting lost. [Even more than he already has been.]

[ribticklers]

[Sans doesn't disagree--a second way out is theoretical, the one Sans came in through is certain. Sans squints at his watch in the dim light; the elementary school should be empty again by the time they get out. This place could expand on and on forever in a warren of corridors if they keep going deeper.]

Alright. We'll walk back. [Maybe they'll even make it back before dinner. Have they been giving Papyrus food?] You want a snack? I brought granola bars. [Those are somewhat healthy. He's already fussing with the backpack he borrowed from Sayori. All the bows aren't exactly his style.]

give him a minute to realize

[spaghettimonster]

[If there's anything Papyrus didn't expect Sans to offer before they got going, it was some sort of healthy food stuff. Apparently his brother's done some prep for hikes in the woods after all - or maybe, some thoughtful and considerate prep for this rescue.]

Oh my god, yes please. [He steps closer, voice going eager and a little wry, as he adds:] All we've had is rice, and water. [Which likely hasn't helped his stamina, to have little opportunity for exercise and very minimalist sustenance.]

true tragedy approaches

[ribticklers]

They really need to work on their accommodations, huh? [Sans fishes a granola bar out of the bag. Under different circumstances, he'd just toss it, but between exhaustion and whatever else has been done to Papyrus Sans doesn't want to risk hitting him in the face or something, so he just holds it out.]

:pensive skele:

[spaghettimonster]

No need! It's a zero stars review. I'm not coming back. [Not if he can help it, anyway, which... if there's spicy knockout smells and home invaders spiriting people away, maybe there's nothing he can do about it. Besides take that one guy up on the offer to replace and/or install better locks on literally everything. That's a home project to look forward to.

For now, Papyrus gladly accepts the offered granola bar and raises it halfway to his mouth - then hesitates, frozen midway. He'd almost forgotten. The last time he'd had rice to eat was after, and he'd had to eat it slowly, pushing the small bits of rice through his mask while leaning back, to let gravity drop them into his mouth... because the gap's too narrow for his fingertips.

He draws the granola bar up, as if to examine its ingredients skeptically, but the mask doesn't show his attempt to furrow his brows with feigned judgement. Just the moment of trying to subtly measure the bar with his finger tip, and swallowing when he realizes. Maybe if he squeezes it in his hand, flattens it...]

I-I... [He shakes his head, glancing every which way but his brother's face.] I'll eat on the go. No sense standing around here, watching me eat!! You should just, lead the way, Sans.

[ribticklers]

[Sans's jaw tightens again. He's going to develop some tooth issues at this rate. The gap in the mask, once Sans's attention is drawn to it, looks ridiculously small. Sans finds himself again trying pointlessly to figure out why someone would do something like this, with the only answer being simple cruelty. And would expanding that gap even be possible or safe? He knows Papyrus doesn't have skin under there.

But he heard what Papyrus said, and he can give his brother the mercy of Sans not staring at him even more than he has been, so he turns to look back down the hallway.] Yeah, we should get moving. It's kind of a long walk.

[What does he have at home Papyrus could eat? Soup, if he can fit a spoon in there. Oatmeal should work. Pasta, probably, which feels ironic in some vague way.]

[spaghettimonster]

[Papyrus heaves a relieved sigh as his brother turns away. More a release of air than relief in truth, but it's something, to have that privacy with his misery. It's not like the present circumstances are permanent, after all! What was connected can be removed, with care and the right tools and skills. And if removal's too challenging... they can always adjust it. Somehow.]

It must have been. You said, you came in by the school...? We haven't, um. seen any children running around. [Though maybe that doctor training would make a little more sense, if this complex is connected through a school. He doesn't want to think about that. Or his face. Or his ribs. Or, he concludes as he starts squeezing the granola bar in his hand, any of the things they can't change this moment.

But he can't focus very well on lighter things, while keeping braced for more doppelgangers. So the next best thing, is giving Sans some info on the generals of what happened.] Or anybody, really... except the mannequins, once we got out.

[ribticklers]

[Of course, the problem with not being able to see his brother is--well, just that. He has to rely on sound to make sure Papyrus hasn't been lured away by some other doppelganger or something. But if it's just a matter of talking, that's fine.] The entrance was down in the basement, I don't think the kids know about this place. [But if Papyrus is saying he didn't see anyone until the doppelgangers started showing up, then who is it who was doing the surgeries? Unless it was the doppelgangers... One of them did have Papyrus's face. But it could have just--have just taken it, later... Ugh.] There's some ghosts up there tryin' to make all of us real aware of it, though. Not ghosts like at home, think human movies.

[Spooky poltergeists that Sans, honestly, had only been marginally aware of outside of the message they were trying to deliver. He'd been--distracted, since Papyrus got kidnapped.]

[spaghettimonster]

[Unknowingly, Papyrus shares the concern. It's part of the reason he wants to keep the chatter going, even if talking at length is going to make his face hurt even worse - to make sure they both know the other's still there. Even if this isn't some kind of Orpheus situation, and his brother can perfectly well turn around, he'd really rather Sans didn't need to. Papyrus keeps gently squeezing the granola bar between his forefingers, trying to find the balance of squashing it without crumbling, the better to fit through the mask's gap like a key in a slot.]

Human ghosts, like dead souls? Rattling chains and saying boo? [Maybe cartoons aren't quite the place to start, but it's easy to bring to mind. He's disbelieving of it, and a little indignant.] Human zombies, human ghosts... Why are all the 'monsters' here, just humans who've gone off somehow.

[ribticklers]

You could count those deer things, if you want to mix it up. [Sans is fine with separating all the weird things here from monsters, though, even if everyone besides the two of them is happy to call them monsters.] But if they want all of us to look human, that probably includes the ghosts and stuff.

[...] Well, I guess I can't prove they're human ghosts. I haven't seen 'em. They just like opening doors and throwin' stuff around and writing "living island" on the mirrors in steam.

[spaghettimonster]

[He hadn't seen a lot of those deer things, in all honesty. They hadn't frequented the neighborhood, seemingly put off by the Christmas Cheer, and by the time he'd been infested with cheer, he hadn't really paid any attention to things like them. So he just hums indecisively at the idea, not sure how he wants to count them, and more baffled by the ghostly message.]

'Living island'...? What does that even mean. [It's somewhat rhetorical, somewhat fishing for continued chatter, as he continues slowly musing aloud.] An island that fits in a basement... That's a big basement, to have a lake.

[ribticklers]

Oh, uh, it's this place. They wanted us to find this place. [So these ghosts are mischievous but possibly helpful, if in a vague way.] Something about calling bomb shelters safety islands and living island being a reference to some show...? [Normally, Sans would be more sure about the details there, but he hadn't been paying attention to anything beyond where this place was.]

[spaghettimonster]

Really? How mysteriously helpful... [It's hardly a stretch of the imagination for a monster to assume that a ghost watches TV sometimes, even if it's a little stranger to imagine maybe-dead-humans continuing the habit.

He slows his pace a moment to concentrate on attempting to put a corner of the bar to his mask's mouth. But there's a brief crumbling sound, as the corner breaks from the friction of the walls, and then a grumbling as he returns to the task of squishing it down a little more.] I wonder...

I didn't see any 'living island' notes. But that's no surprise. No mirrors... and no steam... but when we woke up, earlier, all the cages... were just a little open. [Maybe the ghosts visited to get the doors open, too, once they knew a rescue was mounting?]

[ribticklers]

Pretty convenient timing. [Ideally it was helpful ghosts, but there are any number of other reasons, from some sinister attempt to get more people wandering around down here to whoever had done this to Papyrus and the others deciding they were done and wanting to show their efforts off to everyone else. But even if it were some sort of trap, Sans couldn't have just left Papyrus down here, so maybe it doesn't matter.

Sans pauses at the corner of a particularly long hallway. This is where he'd run into that Papyrus doppelganger before. It seems quiet now, but he stares critically down the hallway without moving for a few more long moments anyway.]

[spaghettimonster]

Pretty convenient, anyway. [The timing could have been better, if you ask him. Like maybe before anybody had a surprise unwanted surgery. But maybe the ghosts had to wait until the surgeons let down their guard, or... something.

The pause at the corner is baffling, but a good opportunity to hold still and try again to eat. Part of the granola bar is finally thin enough, and he carefully feeds it in through the gap, wincing at the sensation of it brushing his lips before using teeth and gravity to get it. It tastes wonderful, after days of sticky rice and water, and he savors the flavor for a moment.

But the pause goes on longer, seeming less and less like Sans dallying to give him a chance to eat something, and maybe more like... figuring out where to go? He grinds his teeth, the gratitude of escape and reunion not enough to heal frayed temper and fears from this last weeklike-time.] ...Sans, don't tell me we're lost already.

[ribticklers]

[Under better circumstances, Sans would tease Papyrus about his lack of faith in Sans's navigational skills. The thought even flits through his mind for an instant. But it's really not the time.] I ran into one of those doppelgangers here, but it looks like it's gone now.

[Sans has no idea if Papyrus's face is on the floor here, though. It's too dark to start scrutinizing everything on the floor from a distance. Sans left someone else to handle the latter half of the fight, so he can't be sure of the ultimate outcome, but there is definitely a mannequin arm, half-cracked, left abandoned in the hallway from when Sans slammed it into the wall.]

[spaghettimonster]

Yeah, they just keep getting back up. [The first look-alikes did back up in town, and the ones in these tunnels do too. Breaking that other one into pieces slowed it, but he has no doubt it's scuttling about somehow. As durable as humans are, he guesses, with a sour laugh that turns into a cough.] And climbing in the ceiling... or something.

[ribticklers]

Must be a whole tunnel network up there, then. [Sans half intends it as a joke, but actually the idea of countless doppelgangers crawling around in the ceiling is a bit too possible for Sans's taste. It's encouragement to get moving again, if nothing else.] They look sort of like dolls, so maybe someone made 'em.

[Someone who also did terrible surgical experiments on Papyrus? A theory Sans is going to have to keep in mind.]

[spaghettimonster]

[Papyrus drags his feet briefly at the idea of a network, and looks up at the walls and ceilings like he'll catch telltale bits of dust dropping as mannequins scurry in unseen tunnels. He only falls behind a couple paces before scurrying to catch up, and doesn't notice the hint of an echoing scurry somewhere.]

At least the doll part. [He has to agree with that much, there's probably not any doll parents making doll babies. Not in this world.] But however they're moving... they're really good at voices. Did you hear...?

[Not to name names, but he's heard some voices he hasn't heard in months, and thinking of it is just another pile of unsettled on what's already an uncomfortably large heap of unsettled.]