A Physics Problem
“It’s just Resilience,” you had explained to yourself...
Colors. An abundance of colors. Colors you had never even comprehended, now sharp and vivid and saturating even the air!
“My body already creates it,” you had reasoned.
Your entire body buzzed; your lungs expanded, your heart pounded, your eyes widened. You could hear and see and smell and feel everything!
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
Everything was sharp, but smooth, there but not. After Images flickered around everything; your bed was here and there and there at the same time, your computer danced around the room, sitting on the desk in this corner, pressed against the wall in that corner, or sometimes missing altogether. Your hands were moving before you recognized it, reaching for the edges of the bed, pressing your hands against the bedside table, hoisting yourself up and out of the bed.
You crashed forward and down, your head smacking into the ground, legs still uselessly hanging off the bed; you were sure, just for a moment, that you could walk! Your hands were pressing against the ground, moving you around till you were on your back, staring at the ceiling, eyes wide.
Your body tingled, roared with energy, screamed at you to move! Use the energy! It’s too much! DO SOMETHING!
“G-Hhhh!!” You choked and coughed, back arching as your hands clawed at the carpet to your sides, which flipped from both long and short hair at the same time, vacillating between rough and soft.
I don’t know what to do! Gaster’s frantic voice hit your consciousness in waves that washed over your mind. Your head buzzed, each heartbeat bringing a new fuzzy crash of sensation against your brain, powerful and unbearable and
Euphoric.
Your entire body buzzed with energy, pooling power that collected bliss in your head, pulled ecstatic tears to your eyes, washed over you in crashes of mind-numbing everythingness.
You tensed with energy, your very fingertips shivered with power, and just as you were sure you couldn’t handle anymore of this overwhelming amount of sensation, it collected, somehow, pulling from your limbs and pooling into your throat, like heat, heat, HEAT, and then-
You screamed.
Violent, raspy shrieks tore from your throat, garbled and breaking but loud and grating on your ears and wonderful! You could hear Tooth somewhere in the house shout your name, and begin running toward you; you could hear Tooth already running toward you, reaching the door; you couldn’t hear Tooth, they weren’t home. Tears spilled from the corners of your eyes as every yell ripped from your mouth like a call to the Gods, blurring the vibrant world around you as howl after howl left your lungs. It felt like the very air that left your lungs teemed with magic, filling your mouth with tingling, tickling something, and then spewing into the air with volume! You were! You were making noise! The incessant screeches coming from your mouth quickly transformed, turning into laughter that bubbled from your very soul. It left you breathless, staring at the ceiling, mouth agape as Gaster flickered in and out of your awareness.
Dear! He whimpered; you could almost see him reaching out for you, panicked. Why, though? You felt... you felt-!! Your breaths were heavy as the energy coursing in your veins became more bearable, but still tantalized your every cell. Dear! Speak to me! You heard him again, but paid him no heed. His worry meant nothing to your over-ecstatic brain. Everything was still so sharp! You could see each tiny little hole in the ceiling dancing like it could be there, or there, or there! You could smell the remnants of all of yesterday's possible dinners in the air, you could hear the different timbres that played together to create the hum from your computer or none at all because it wasn’t on, you could hear Tooth’s frantic footfalls grow louder and louder, or softer and softer, you could feel each individual fiber in the indecisive carpet splayed between your fingers... Please! Gaster called your name, voice frantic, and then his consciousness poured from the little corners of your mind, spilling and flooding your brain till every bit of you could feel all that was HIM, and oh lord!
You could feel it pulsing through your entirety; For this one moment, you were no longer sinews and bones and blood, but one. Solid. Object. Your heartbeat was gone, replaced by this pleasant but erratic pulsing thrum that you inherently knew was pure magic, and you could feel it in your body, in your soul, flowing through the air like unseen channels leading to who knows where.
You and Gaster, for just this moment, felt like one.
We have to remove some of this magic, You heard Gaster again, and you were suddenly sinews and bones again, but the magic in the air remained, like some unlocked part of your brain now saw as Gaster saw. You have too much in your soul right now! It could be disadvantageous unless we remove it!
“A-Ah!” You squeaked, feeling the magic in you twist and churn at Gaster’s prodding, transforming from aimless wonder and euphoria to something with a purpose, and then...
One soft shimmer of magic in a color you could not explain in words called your attention with its familiarity, and you -Gaster- reached for it. Your hand reached your peripherals, and you were somehow expecting to see the white bones of Gaster’s, but it was still flesh. Your own flesh reached out, and plucked the stream of magic from the air, and Gaster tugged.
You felt the drain of magic from your own soul, a nearly nonexistent echo of the regular dizziness, and then there, once again, was Penultimate, slowly opening its gaping maw; fangs of the upper and lower jaws, large as your upper torso, slid past each other with a resounding “shhhhk!”
“AAAH!” Tooth’s voice rang from the entrance to your room, and your head whipped around to see them standing in the door-frame, jaw open wide in horror at the skull-creature hovering over you like Death. They- Tooth cried out your name, hands reaching out toward the skull hesitantly, fearfully, but with a purpose- at this moment, were real. There were three, ten, fifteen, a thousand afterimages of Tooth splayed out in front of you, each one doing exactly the same thing, but ever so slightly different.
Tooth would reach out for you, try to snatch you from the skull’s reach. But. In that one, Tooth was an inch to the left, and got caught in the incisor of Penultimate’s maw, somehow tearing apart as the beast blinks away, and you die. In that one, Tooth was a few feet closer, and grabs you away from Penultimate, but as they pull, the skull lunges, and it’s fang pierces your heart and you die. In that one, Tooth is already by your side, and tosses you across the room, away from the beast, and the energy in your soul continues its course, and your heart gives out and you die.
But this one- The one with Tooth standing right there, their left foot 4 inches from the left side of the door, their right foot a foot from the right side, their hands just like that- This one was the real one.
This one was the one where you survived.
It was as simple as that. Every afterimage, every possible placement of objects that could happen at this exact moment was played out in front of you like some physics problem, where everything had to be just right in order for the ball to hit the dot.
And you were suddenly a physics major.
You knew they were going to try and snatch you away from Penultimate. You knew each of their steps would be a foot and 7 inches, that their hands would reach out, the left a bit further than the right, and you knew they wouldn’t reach you.
The skull’s jaw snapped the rest of the way open, and then lunged forward, snagging you in it’s mouth, large teeth sliding under your back and knees, tearing holes through your clothing in it’s haste. Tooth wailed again, lunging forward as Penultimate lifted off the ground, you now clutched in its grasp. Right as Tooth’s hands reached out for yours, though, they were gone.
Your room was gone. The house was gone.
You were somewhere, for a blink of a blink of a second that's cloying familiarity rang alarm in your blissed out mind, and then you were unceremoniously dropped onto a grassy field that seemed to go on forever.
You squeaked, eyes wide at the sudden change, but barely had time to register your new environment before your transportation whipped around, facing away from you, and unhinged it’s jaw.
The power blissing in your veins collected once more, now flooding your chest until bliss became concentrated, pooling and pooling and collecting and collecting and it was too much- Too Much! TOO MUCH!!!
And then it was gone. Fled from your chest as if it were plucked, lifted and tossed, heading straight for the waiting animal-
With blaring sound and blinding light, the beast in front of you released the energy in your soul in the form of an all-too-familiar blast of white hot energy, tearing into the ground in front of it for forever and for no time at all, until just as quickly, it stopped, leaving you to finally sag in the grass, mouth gaping open, eyes staring at nothing.
Dear! Gaster whispered frantically in your mind.
That was...
I’ve removed the excess energy, but i’m afraid that- he rambled, voice fading in and out of your cognitive capabilities.
That was...
-an overload such as that, your mind may be unable to continue creating-
THe world, without the excess RSE coursing through your veins, seemed so... dull! Colors didn’t scream at you anymore, instead being muted, fuzzy replacements of perfection. Potential stopped dancing, everything seemed so awkwardly set in stone that you felt sick to your stomach. Just as the computers danced around your room, shouldn’t this grassy area be both grass and dirt at the same time? Shouldn’t those grains of grass be here and there?
-ous to you if the levels get too low, you could fall again. Gaster continued talking, but his words were so unimportant.
You had just had more power than you knew possible. You had seen, you had felt, you had known magic in a way you never thought possible...
And...
You already wanted more.