video/action (forward-dated to 4/20); while collecting the stars, i connected the dots

[skelebro]

[The video wobbles a minute before it steadies, locking onto a grinning skull. It's your friendly neighborhood skeleton, Sans, looking undeniably pleased with himself as he comments to someone just off screen:]

'S lookin' great so far.

[There's a fumbling tapping as the feed gets jostled, and Sans is forced to set the thing onto the ground, face-down. At least the audio filters through, unimpeded if a bit muffled.]

All right. We ready?

[There's a distant sound of affirmation - two, actually, though one sounds a mite more stammered than the first. Kate, it seems, hadn't much wanted to take part in the announcement itself. So when the feed swings up again, there's two distinctively non-human shapes in the periphery - a yellow, lizardlike creature and a small black hedgehog that sharp-eyed cave-dwellers might recognize as Alphys and Shadow, respectively. The video jerks again, blurring the twin blazes of color into smeared linear streaks, and the cave gets a lovely shot of Sans's pink fuzzy slippers in preparation for the finale.

There's a click of fleshless fingers snapping; hundreds of tiny, glowing objects being displaced and then replaced, buried into the rock of the ceiling. Takes a lot out of a skeleton and leaves him a bit stooped from the effort, but it's worth it.

The camera swings up again to pan across the ceiling, now lit with a vast array of blue sparkling stones.]

It ain't Tranquility's illusions, but... [One last whip-pan back to Sans's face, and he winks at the camera, lookin' just a tiny bit more on the edge of exhaustion than usual. Just a hair.] You can consider it a good constellation prize.

[Enjoy the night sky, Hadriel. It'll last for quite a while. Sans, for his part, plans to be stargazing all night. Feel free to find him at the lake, if you're real interested.]

Comments

[skelebro]

[Exactly. See? He's a good-for-nothing bag of self-absorbed, selfish bones, and no one's ever gonna think anything else of him. Probably.]

Got it in one. [Paired with the wink of an eyesocket and cocking of a bony fingergun.]

Anyway. Can't say I'm any sorta expert on what a sky's supposed to look like, but hopefully this'll count for one.

[survivethis]

[How a skeleton can wink an eye-socket is beyond Jill, but she's not going to ask.]

You don't know what a sky should look like?

[Maybe he was buried. He is a skeleton, after all.]

[skelebro]

[Don't sweat it. It's probably magic - just like how his grin is perpetual, and how he can shift his supraorbital ridges for a minute display of emotion, if he really wants to. Bone ain't supposed to be that pliable, but magic allows an easy breakin' of the rules, provided it's funny enough. Or dramatic enough but, hey, c'mon - why would he ever do that when the lowest form of humor is consistently in easy reach?]

Monsters live Underground where I come from.

[survivethis]

Given how helpful you are, you don't fit my usual definition of a monster.

[That's meant to be a compliment. She hopes he doesn't take it the wrong way or anything.]

[skelebro]

[Yeah, he's kinda used to that sorta response by now. It's one part bolstering and two parts vaguely perplexing, but at least he don't have the mental energy to get offended just now.]

'S just a species. 'Least back where I'm from.

[survivethis]

Well, I wish they were more like you where I come from.

[skelebro]

You got monsters back home?

[Not very pleasant ones, from the sounds of it, but he's used to that. Distressingly used to it.]

[survivethis]

We do. Well, not like you. These are not good monsters. They're the.. people eating kind.

[At least, she presumes he doesn't eat people.]

[skelebro]

Ah. ['Nuff said.] Like the lovely little fellas we got livin' in our tunnels 'round here?

[survivethis]

Yeah, sort of like those. I'm sorry you have to suffer being compared to them.

[He's clearly nothing like them.]

[skelebro]

Eh, could be worse. Most of 'em can't take a joke, much less tell one.

[A pretty obvious indicator from the get-go, he would think.]

[survivethis]

I've definitely never heard them tell a joke.

[Jill might drop dead if the zombies suddenly started a stand-up comedy routine.]

[skelebro]

[He makes an expansive, sweeping gesture with one hand, as if to say - there, you see?]

Exactly. No sense of humor, those guys?

But me? I'm plenty humerus.

[survivethis]

[She chuckles softly.]

You sure are.