entranceway | Juego [video]

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Juego [video]

[The video opens up to the beach. Still just as pretty as anything else Wonderland has to offer on the surface. Nice weather, beautiful and clear waters. And a masked, 4th wall breaking merchant.

He's sitting in the sand near the edge of the water, back to the camera and a little ways from it. One might think he set it up so he was filmed this way but judging from awkward angle it's more likely Zacharie simply dropped it and it turned on randomly, as Wonderland's communicators tend to do. Zacharie himself seems fairly relaxed yet is dripping wet. Evidently someone decided to go for a dip, even though one might question why you'd go swimming in a sweater and jeans.

Then again, Zacharie's a weird guy. He claimed to be from a video game so maybe he just like swimming in heavy clothing.

The feed continues to record him simply staring at the sea before him. Nice weather today. Always nice.]

....A-a-a query, Wonderland. [Was he someone who stuttered like that?] Would you all leave here if you could? Could? Switch strings to something else? I know some of you won't leave. Won't walk away or Qu-

[Whatever Zacharie was about to say is cut off by a sudden burst of static. If any Wonderland's residents remember a certain man and a certain entry he made a long time ago might recognize it.

Something is wrong here and something is very wrong with Zacharie.]

--at is fine. That is why we are here. So we are fine and we should not worry. Everything is fine. It's okay, it's all okay. I promise, I mean it I͟ ̴̧͝me̸a̕͢n͞ ͞͡i̛͏t̢ I̴ ̷̛m̴̡ęàn ͝ì́̕t̵̀͜ ̢I̶͠ ̵͢͢m̴e̵an͘͟͡ ̴i̷̧͘t͞ ̡̢I̧͘͞-̸͟

<̴͢>͜͠M̨̕͟e̸s̡̛s̡͠͞a͞g̷̀e:̶̴ ͜T͞ó̡ ̶͝m͘u̸̵c͟҉̀h.̴ ͢͞Th̵͡er̛e'̴̢̀s͝͡ ̷to ḿ̡u҉ch҉͜ ̛o͜f̵ ̢̨i͢͠t͢͢. ̢Į̶ ̴̷t̨͘h̶͡i̷̛͏n҉ḱ̴ ̶̛I͞ ̷̷un̛d̡̛ę̵͞ŕst̢̀á̴́nd̶ ̧t̢̨h̵̀͠e̢͜m̕ ̵̢ņoẁ̴.͞

[The audio begins to glitch out as another distortion kicks in as Zacharie sharply turns to look at something that's behind the camera before it cuts out. Quickly words flash on the black feed:

'HELLO AGAIN'

The feed re-appears and Zacharie is walking down one of the many hallways of the mansion using the camera as a recorder. He turns to one of the doors, although the camera fails to catch the number, and tries to yank it open. Locked. Then the camera freezes and the action repeats. Still locked! An unpleasant screech distorts the audio as it cuts out once again.

It picks up in the forest. Zacharie walks through it quietly but there's still something wrong the audio. For some reason it sounds like there are two sets of footsteps despite the merchant being the only one there. He doesn't seem to be looking for anything in particular and at one point Zacharie turns around and the camera catches the still-visible mansion in the background.

He's not that far away. But again a distortion corrupts the image and a few more words appear before it ends for good.

'DtDtDt

* HERE WE ARE

SWITCH IS off']

[ooc: as the links suggest, thanks to an overdoes of DT and interactions with the Operator Zacharie's not doing so good. Zacharie may or may not respond to this, so feel free to threadjack if you like!]

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[Shit. Shit.

He's seen this before. The letters on the blank screen, the speech torn through with static, the way nothing makes any linear sense - it's all too glaringly familiar. He hadn't been able to find him after the shit with that machine, but he'd figured it would've been fixed with the way things went back to normal, right?

Not all of it makes sense. Tim's code-breaking days are behind him, and he's not about to go poking around at something that'll only stir old, damaged memories.]

zacharie
where are you
what happened

[What happened after, rather.]

[Tim gets a reply...about half an hour later.]

I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here I am here Behind you. Always.

[Of course he really isn't. But as Tim now knows, Zacharie can apparently warp around at will. And didn't it look like during the hallway part he was trying to get inside a room? The room number wasn't shown but...

Well. Who's to say it wasn't Tim's room?]

fuck you

[God. He needs to get a handle on this. He needs to. This is his fault, all of this. His nightmare, his tangle with the fucking machine, his fault, always his fault. He was right. They were all - right.

Goddamnit.]

where ARE you
cut the cryptic bullshit

Not on purpose hard to do this. look youll see.

[The feed is turned back on, just to give Tim a view of Wonderland whipping past over and over with some distortion. Zacharie is warping around uncontrollably.

Can't exactly give you a location when it's currently impossible to tell where you are at any given moment.

And the feed cuts out again.]

[It isn't treating him well. It's bad enough for normal people like him, like Alex, like Jay, but for someone who's completely transparent about his status as some kind of fucking video game NPC?

It's just gonna get worse.

The feed cuts. His heart thuds sickeningly, and it takes him a moment to eke the words out despite the trembling fingers.]

how long
how long has this been happening

[Well this is. A whole, whole lot worse than what Sans was expecting. He has to watch the whole thing twice, partially because after watching it the first time he had to sit back and stare at a wall and breathe for a solid minute.]

[He doesn't really expect an answer, at least not a coherent one--their last conversation wasn't exactly encouraging--but he tries anyway. For all that shit keeps going wrong with Zacharie, especially between Zacharie and those from the Underground, Sans does like the guy.]

zach, uh. where are you now? listen, you probably shouldn't be out there alone.

[Instead of a text response Sans gets a quick video.

He's still in the forest, still near the mansion if the background is anything to go by. The NPC flips the camera around to face him and, although his face isn't shown, it should be obvious what's wrong.

His body is glitching. One of the words that flashed on the original video was Dt.

DT.

Sans is smart. Although it's clear that's not the only problem here he can still put two and two together.

The camera jerks and abruptly Zacharie is somewhere else in Wonderland. And then it happens again, and again, and again and....

The feed suddenly ends.]

[Tim will have to wait awhile before he gets a response.]

dont knwo lost track of time dream since dream adn more since a little back. i think

( jay spent a lot of time in the past few years scouring over video tapes, repeating them over and over and over again to try and get a glimpse of — something. a clue to whatever happened to his friends, to whatever it was that was chasing them, to whatever It was Itself. a clue to find out how to stop it, or just because of how surreal it all was, to recover lost memories.

the static is all too familiar. it's something that haunts the back of his mind, replays itself over and over, a haunting memory that won't leave him alone, as if it's somehow infected him despite being through tapes (or maybe it's just because of how often he's come into contact with It, and with those who have also been stalked by It.) it's familiar enough that this whole thing makes him start,

it makes him uncomfortable and scared and horrified and angry. wonderland isn't exactly a safe haven, but he thought he would have some time here at least before the memories started returning and the Thing made itself known here---

but tim is already here. he's been here longer, and of course jay should have seen this coming. It would never miss an opportunity to carry on haunting them.

for a long while, he simply watches. has no idea what to say, but eventually, with a shaky voice and even shakier hands— )

Are you okay?

( of course not, but he needs to get a feel of the situation, of what's going on—— maybe tim knows. hopefully tim knows. because jay is as lost as he was back home, and the phantom pain of being shot courses through him at this sick reminder, even worlds away. )

this whole time?
jesus

i need you to try and hold still ok
try and stop

doing whatever you're doing

[He needs to fix this. He needs to fucking fix this, and clean up his goddamn mess for once.]

Zacharie, you are all a jumble today.

[Their powers are very similar, so the Judge is able to pinpoint his location and casually walk into the current screen. That's just what he does, you know cats, appearing where-ever they please.]

[However, Zacharie's current predicament is a little beyond what the Judge can fix, or even comprehend. It looks like he had gone too far into the "clockwork", as the Judge liked to refer to it as, for his own good this time. Digging too deep into the numbers and commands can rattle the brain.]

It looks like you've been hit by a particularly nasty aneurysm. I'm not familiar with this type of ailment. Can it be cured with Belial's meat?

Edited 2017-03-24 02:39 (UTC)

[Mettaton watches the whole thing in abject horror. He doesn't understand the intricacies of what is going on, but the glitching... he remembers the glitching. Poor Frisk. And now poor Zacharie.

He tries to make sense of where the merchant is but he's not getting heads or tails of it.]

Zacharie! Zacharie, darling, are you ok???

[There's no answer, not really. It's like...]

[It reminds him of several things.]

[There's the glitching. Zacharie is glitching. Like Frisk did when they got hit by Chara's Spell. Like Sans did in a dream that wasn't even real. But Spell came from Zacharie's world to begin with--it shouldn't affect him like that. It wasn't really about the Spell, anyway, it was what it caused.]

[What it caused was...]

[DT can only mean one thing, huh? God damn it. Alphys and Frisk told everyone to stay away from the damn thing, but of course a warning is never enough. Someone has to go poke the dragon in the eye. No one ever leaves well enough alone.]

dammit, zach.

[But this reminds him of something else, too. The structure of the original video, the text, the static. Kinda...reminds him of Alex.]

[Alex was so afraid of static. Tim too, come to think of it.]

[Whatever. That's not something he an help with. None of this is something he can help with, because he doesn't think he can help build another Extractor, doesn't think he can watch Alphys do it either.]

...dammit.

[What.]

[Did he.]

[Just watch?]

[Dorian did NOT need to see this on his feed, thank you. Dorian is going to leave the device on the table and continue with his supper.]

[Too bad the device has a funny way of recording things when you don't want it to.]

[Zacharie tries for video but he's carding through Wonderland far too fast and can't stop.

So Mettaton gets a text about twenty minutes or later.]

No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No No you can't help me this time

[Gone to far into code and there was something else that had Its metaphorical hand in this as well. But at the end of the day these were consequences. His. His alone.

The Judge speaks and Zacharie disappears and reappears a little ways away, although judging by the fact he also stumbles suggests that wasn't on purpose.]

Not this time. Don't know how to fix it. Or maybe It can be fixed but I'm not paying attention. But it's okay, I promise. It'll be okay.

[Jay will have to stick around for awhile before he gets a response.

It's a video of the world whipping by, but there seems to be a pattern. First is the forest, then one of the hallways then the beach and finally into the water. One thing to note is that when Zacharie hits the water, he doesn't struggle.

This repeats a few times before the feed quits. If Jay has a little more patience, he'll get a text.]

Not here or there or somewhere else. I am fine. But not fine. Everything is fine but we're not.

sorry will try

[Tim will get one last text. A hint. It's the best Zacharie can do to tell Tim where he is now and where he'll try to stay.

Not likely. But he'll always go back.]

Look back at the video. the first place there will be the last place over and over. i will not move even if I'm under. i will leave and come back. But we will never leave you.

[Between the cryptic bullshit he can't seem to stop spouting, he's still giving him a hint. And that's something. It's not much, but it's something.]

do your best to stay there
we're gonna fix this

[He made it all go wrong. The least he can do is make it better.]

[That's fine. Zacharie's honestly not paying attention to the device, since warping around Wonderland at random was making it hard to tell what was going on. He's not even sure if he's touching the phone.

So no random video. However, the next time Dorian checks his phone, he'll find someone's been spamming it with texts.]

Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch Watch SEE YOU.

try to stay

dont have to help

Its not really here no 0

my head just my head

i promise

one way or another

I will stop. I promise.

[He's got nothing to say to that. That's all the confirmation he needs at the moment. For now, he's gonna have to contact a few people.

Sit tight, Zacharie. Or...don't, since he seems fundamentally incapable of actually staying anywhere. At least now if he needs him, he'll know what to look for. And where.

This is his fault.]

[That's not how Zacharie normally talks to him. The friendly cadence is gone, and there is an edge of fearful desperation. The Judge ceases to smile.]

You can't continue popping in and out right in plain view. You'll frighten some poor puppeteer. They don't like it when things acts out of their control.

[Of course, Zacharie doesn't need a lecture, but the point must be made.]

You know that I can't see the things you do, but can I be of assistance somehow?

[He is sorry that he's causing this sort of distress and he knows the Judge doesn't mean to lecture. Jokes about Zacharie's quirks were made often sure, but the cat's sharper words went towards a different man and not the merchant.

Zacharie kneels down to dig his fingers into the ground to keep himself there. Sometimes it was better to hold onto something.]

I know. Can't not know.

[He's omniscient. The day something happens in their world that Zacharie can't predict is the day the Puppeteer actively messes with the code. Which could be good or bad and he doesn't want to think about that too hard.]

Don't know. I may...may have to ride this out. Go forward until I find the place I went back to. Very, very...ahaha. Painful.

[Also dizzying.]

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Juego [video]

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please tell me if this is going too far!

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