Get It Over With
- Chpt 4 -
"My favorite quote is rather unsurprising and bland: 'Go with the flow.' It's a phrase for procrastinators and children that hate responsibility. Something that gives those that sweat constantly with stress to find a sort of meshed peace for the moment. Also rather unsurprisingly, it is all I can think of to keep my head above the waves of confusion and the ferocious pull from a metaphoric rope snarled around my waist, pulled by a person whom is not a friend, but not a no one.
"Let me just be done with this." ==========================================================
==========================================================Disclaimer: I do not own any characters or names of the cast from the game Undertale, it all belongs to Toby Fox. The only thing I own is the AU, and the main character, I guess.A.N: If you all haven't guessed already. My take on Chara is an AU one. She is not silent and internally caring about people and worrying about if she had hurt someone with her actions (b4 genocide), but insane and apathetic. This will show in this chapter, and I hope during the one's you've already read. Chara is not like the one you see in the game, maybe a bit alike, but still different. That is because her background of never falling into the Underground hadn't changed who she initially was like. (And also b/c of this World AU). So please note that Chara is not exactly 'OOC', but simply part of an AU.
I feel the furrow in my brows and the dull narrow of my eyes. I am unamused and it clearly shows.
The problematic child snickers, well versed in my ways. Morning light showers through the floor windows of the school with jarring warm hues of the color spectrum, turning the white tiles below our feet to a strong shine of orange and gold. Our bodies are blocking the flow of students in the hallways, but no one says anything, or gives us a glance. We are some of the oldest in grade, and in age - the top dogs. Not only that, but we are the weird ones. I may not recognise my own reputation, but I grant hesitance before approach. I have seen it in the eyes of freshmen and above, even in my own grade. Chara is in a whole different world of popularity than me - she is labeled the insane one (which I think ironic because we all hold our own monsters inside our heads. She is just the only one who lets them show). No one will approach Chara, and I find that understandable. Even reasonable.
However, I am not concerned with blocking traffic, or who I am to everyone, but at the suggestion pushed onto me in the very early morning. (She always has something to say whenever I walk inside, and sometimes I cannot keep up because of the distraction of eye crust from sleep that had escaped my notice when I first awoke).
There is the cheshire smile brushed onto her expression and I am considering asking what thoughts had brought her into such an insane idea, then I wonder that if I don't she'd tell me anyway.
Nevertheless, I ask, because there has to be a reason, and I have to know it. Whether or not it will be simple and stupid (it always will be because this child is strange and always chasing at stray ideas like a stereotypical dog to a car's bumper).
"Why?" It's a simple three letter word, but it can be misunderstood easily. Despite my simple question, unconsciously I am asking two. A silent doubt and confusion.
The first one is the most obvious, 'Why are you interested in going into a holding camp filled with beings that are beyond our understanding? One that could potentially be empty and a lie so to direct the public's attention away from the restless fight between the Factions?' A breather from the tense clench of cautious diction behind locked teeth, fingernails puncturing blood from underneath white knuckles, and flamed eyes, staring down over upturned noses.
The other is subdued, puzzled, and skeptical, 'Why take me along? What sort of entertainment am I to you?'
I have a fleeting fear that she may be able to hear the quieter one, and it is a real fear on account of her strange ability to see the unseen. I am not weak, or superstitial; I am simply realistic.
A shrug is her response, and I find it answers both of my questions.
Her deep red eyes glide back onto mine and she asks again if I would like to come along on an adventure.
I say sure, because I am bored (the world is all the same, everything has been discovered or left to be ignored. There is no more beauty left), and because I am not afraid of punishments or death.
Maybe I should have been. However, this body and mind I have is close to empty, and with blind eyes it is easy to ignore blaring orange warning signs that litter the sides of a road.
. . .
The nights of summer show when it is after nine and still there are specks of orange light lingering in the faraway clouds. We are suited up, for me a dark overbearing jacket whilst Chara had found some sort of cloak. We take a moment to stare at each other, easily noticing our getups were strange on either person. She snickers at me. I don't laugh, but there is something funny about children attempting to sneak into a government-secure camp and expecting not to get caught.
Moving swiftly through the forest that hugged the edge of the mountain, I keep my eyes trained on the flowing cloak ahead of me. Though I may live next to the woods, I am not familiar with it. I have never spent my extra time in meandering around it and looking for hidden things like so many of our past generation kids once upon a time. However, it is obvious after only a few minutes of the start of our little illegal scheme that she is, and perhaps the fact is made more clear when she has yet to pull out some sort of map. As the time crawls on I wonder if this is truly the first time she has come to check out the camp, or perhaps she has already scoured it and wants to come back, but this time she decides to bring me, possibly just for the entertainment of having someone else experience something you find interesting.
The thought of being a simple add on sparks in my mind, but I find that being anything else would be as false as the friendship between us, so I let it go.
Unfortunately, the trip wasn't as silent as I'd expected. Chara had decided that this espionage treak, trying to remain hidden but going towards a government camp that was most likely better at spying than us, wasn't enough to keep her mouth shut, and proceed to continue to chat back to me like we were out on our regular hangout. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised.
"I wonder how damp and dank it is in the camp," She starts, her pace swift, yet slower than running, and jaunts easily over forest roots. "Maybe it's barren of plant life, like those Japanese internment camps way back when. Gray mud sloshed on the ground, mobile homes and trailers. Or maybe they only have tents and stuff, and lanterns and campfires. Heh, wonder how the monsters are dealing with that."
I glare in the child's back, miffed by how nonchalant they were on the subject. But my tongue is held back, stopped by the memory of the movie night: dead eyes and dead minds. A world that doesn't care. Chest strangled with silent shadowed eyes, I let the subject slip from my grasp.
Staring down with blank eyes onto the ground, I watch as time slows down and see my reflection break apart under my feet, sending me into a quick jolt of shock before realizing it was just a puddle. A shadow passes over my eyes as the water source comes and goes in an instant, but it felt like a small eternity.
I tell myself it isn't a sign and to look forward.
For a second, I couldn't tell if my mind had meant looking forward toward a hope for the future, or just keeping a sight on who I was following.
With a grimace twisting up my face, a pitiful smile smeared on like graffiti paint, I break back into the one-sided conversation that Chara was having all to herself. Seems as though she hadn't minded talking to herself, or perhaps she had asked beforehand and I had been occupied. She is strange and patient, or maybe she's fine with the company of only herself.
Uncaring of what she was rambling about now (something about monsters and conspiracies), I broke back with a coarse: "How did you know where the internment camp was. Surely no one would be thick enough to show it on television."
I see and hear her pause, mouth clicking shut audibly from being interrupted. "They didn't, and don't call me Surely." The frank remark forced me to trip on air. I squinted at their back in blatant confusion as I steadied myself, annoyed (and unsurprised) she could tell jokes at a time like this and about a subject like that as well.
Also, that joke was crap.
Exasperated, I burn her back with my stare. In turn for her quick and unhelpful answer, I go in for more information. "What, so you just happened upon them wandering through the forest, moving undetected from possible hidden cameras that the government could have placed? They could be watching us right now, maybe our identities have already been placed and they're already at our homes billing our parents through the roof, and then they're gonna find us and take us back so that our parents can show us we've all been bank robbed out of our homes. Oh, and then we go to juvy, insane fucker."
Is what I want to say, but it comes out in a more callous and simple, "Okay."
Chara laughs at me, and I let her so that I can laugh at myself through her voice. Push over, I berate myself, for once annoyed that my fingernails are filed down too low to punch through the skin in my clenched fist.
At this moment, I hope we get caught. A nice punishment for keeping my mouth shut when logically I should've said something.
Abruptly, Chara held up a hand in the symbolic 'halt' like a soldier. Unconsciously, I obey. It's the familiarity of following my mother's own hand signs that control my autopilot, and I carefully slink behind her, eyes lidded and searching.
"It's up here some yard ahead, so we gotta go quieter from now on." Giving her a 'no shit' look to the back of her head for the obvious cautionary quip, they both continue onward at a much slower pace. My eyes slide from both the surroundings to our feet, making sure not to step on anything to create a stir. Though, I'd never practiced sneaking, especially in the woods, so what was I to know about what not to step on besides the stereotypical branch or patch of dry leaves?
"Have you been up there already?" I ask in a hushed voice, knowing I should have asked earlier when silence wasn't needed as much.
Her cape flutters softly and Chara captures it to hold it against her sides. "Kinda. I found it, just to make sure. And I found a possible way in, buuut..." She stretches out the words with a bored tone. "Going in alone is boring."
I wait for her reasons on why it's boring and realize that she would say no more, as if it being boring alone was as good a reason.
A small annoyed snarl pulls on my lips. I hate her small responses that she expects it to answer the world and explain everything.
As my chest trembles with my irritation, the vexatious child ahead of me stops and my eyes shift upwards to catch a tall fence, no color except for the dull material of white plastic and intertwined metal, linked with steel spikes of circles above so to discourage the idea of climbing. It looks temporary, as flimsy as the fence was propped up, and a glint of curiousity gleams in my eyes. Unable to resist the lure of finding out what is on the other side.
Chara turns back to me, a triumphant grin of teeth refracting the moon's light through the filters of the tree leaves. "Told you." She says mockingly sweet, probably just to get on my nerves once more.
And it works, I am unable to hide the distaste off my face from her words.
She cackled quietly, eyes rimmed like a sideways crescent, and shifts back around, now moving along and keeping to the cover of the woodland. My steps follows hers as the red eyed menace glances around, looking for something along the edges that we prowled. Then I hear a huff of delight from her and I know she has found whatever it is that she was been searching for.
With a slight prance in her pace, the enigmatic child wanders over to a tall fir tree, its branches thick and matured whilst also grown closer to the ground. A flash of understanding flies through my mind, however, this child is not so simple, it is always hard to figure out what she is thinking.
Even though the thought plagues my mind, I ask to clarify with a lowered tone, "Are we going to climb the tree to get over? Wouldn't that be too obvious from the other side?" What if we couldn't see through the thick pine needles and dropped down to be discovered? Better yet, what if we drop down, and cant get back up? Concerned about my last though, I raise that up as well. "How will we get back up?"
She turns back towards me, her cloak twirling along with her movements. Somehow, she seems more mysterious than before.
Her eyes smile, gleaming with hidden knowledge. "We'll get one of the monsters inside to help us back up, of course."
My eyebrow twitches. "...Are you joking?" I ask this anyway, though knowing that she hasn't lied to me before, and I can tell that she is somewhat serious about this. I just futilely hoped that she was simply being a pest and had a better plan in mind.
The red eyed child just smiles and turns away from me, gripping hold of the tree's low branches, as thick as a fist, and starts to haul herself up without so much as a grunt of exertion, too wrapped around her own excitement and glee I suppose.
I stare at her back which gets slowly higher every second, the lid of my right eye twitching with annoyance and aggravation. Only her, I think as a stream of spite runs through my veins, only she could anger me and make me contemplate murder.
In spite of that, I climb up after her as well, with only the furrow of my brows and a snarl maaring my mouth to show my displeasure. I hated her, and yet I did not want to leave.
Perhaps that was my mistake.