#giantfell

[daisy-the-spider]

AU Cagematch: Doc, GiantFell, & Sprocket

[Me]: I sometimes like to picture all my guys across all AUs in a cagematch setting.

Like, for whatever reason, they’re all participating in an event where different pairs get pitted against each other. They can’t leave–or maybe they don’t feel like it if the stakes are low and nobody can die in the setting. But they can still take lasting damage. They can’t influence whatever force is administrating this, so they play along out of curiosity. None of them intend to really hurt each other anyway, treating it like sportsmanlike sparring.

There are three rules:

1) Any challenger must have an opponent, and one will be chosen at random if no one volunteers.

2) The challenger stays until they’re defeated. No one can interfere unless they’re tagged in.

3) The match doesn’t end until one or the other is defeated, which could mean getting tagged out or incapacitated or quitting.

[My friend]: omg the dbz tournament

[Me]: YES EXACTLY

Anyway, everything’s pretty chill until a very big, very mean Underfell!Papyrus arrives as a challenger.

This Papyrus is from a thing I made up called GiantFell, which is just Fell but more apocalyptically fucked up. Sans ‘n Paps have a real bad dynamic that usually ends up with them getting in a big fight and never speaking to each other again. So, that’s where this guy’s coming from.

And he looks like this:

He bares his teeth and barks and hurls insults at all the people on the bleachers, egging them on to provide him with a worthy challenge. His voice rumbles out like sharp heavy gravel. Chainmail shudders from under his gnarled armor with each step. Nobody looks eager to volunteer, but knowing that the weaker among them could be chosen instead makes them nervous.

Then, another huge lumbering Papyrus gets to his feet.

He goes by Doc. He’s a sort of perma-fusion of a Fell!Paps and an Outertale!Paps. He’s part of a settlement of survivors who had their worlds destroyed through various means, trying to carve out a living in a very expanded version of the Void on a floating chunk of land with some houses and part of the Core left on it. These two Papyruses never got along at first, but slowly grew to be best friends over time. When they developed a fatal corruption that slowly ate away at their HP and functionality, a friend stepped in to help. (It was Blinker, if you remember him.)

Blinker rewrote their code and made them one person in order to save their lives. And it worked. Largely. They’re plenty stable now–it just takes a lot of energy to keep them going. Being one was strange at first, but it allowed for an unparalleled level of introspection. He sees himself as a more complete version of the people he was before. The whole event also persuaded him to pursue physiological studies of magic and medicine, hence the name.

So, the two Papses inside this guy’s head take a look at this other guy and see the malicious insecurity and self-concerned overconfidence that used to plague them as individuals.

Doc is chosen and approaches the arena. His brothers, a Fell!Sans by blood (well, “blood”) and Mafia!Sans by circumstance, try to stop him. But he won’t listen and refuses to let either or both of them take his place. His opponent looks him up and down and smiles.

GF!Paps: What weak stock. A friendly challenge compels only a shambling amalgam to step forward as sacrifice.

Doc: Actually, it’s because I’m ashamed of you.

The challenger isn’t smiling anymore.

A bell dings.

[My friend]: SLAAAY GET HIS ASS

[Me]: The fight doesn’t last very long, however. Doc makes a few clever and surprising moves that needle the small weaknesses in his opponent’s brutal fighting style. But he gets hit, thrown, and stunned much more often. Despite being a little bigger than GiantFell, Doc just doesn’t have the constitution for this kind of seasoned predator. His brothers call forfeit before anything serious happens.

GF: You can’t do that. He has to call it.

Doc: I forfeit. I’m done. You win.

The unseen hand of the organizer pulls the victor away from his exhausted opponent. The latter grumbles as Doc’s family helps him back to the bleachers.

GiantFell stomps around the ring, calling for a real challenge. He acts unfazed, but Doc can’t help feeling satisfied with the chip he put in the ogre’s chin that must still be smarting.

Another spectator, Sprocket–

glances at the motionless crowd around them and stands up.

Sprocket: Sure, I’ll give it a shot.

Hearts sink into stomachs all around the arena. None of them know this guy, but they’ve been a really sweet and charming person in the time they’ve been here. Their matches have all been amicable, ending with handshakes. They even lost a couple by ring-out–just from getting shoved unexpectedly. The fact that they just witnessed the last match and are throwing their hat in like this is baffling.

The only thing easing the unrest is the fact that their… they must be their cousins…aren’t doing anything about it.

(Not that they could. Unbeknownst to the crowd, the twins are literally unable to FIGHT, ACT, FLEE, or do much of anything in battle. They always have been. They’re just bugged like that. And intervening now would technically count whether they like it or not.)

The two of them only raise an eyeridge and watch as Sprocket takes the stage. Sprocket’s metal exoskeletal body shines dimly in the light where it escapes the faded denim of their clothes. They must be made of very low-grade salvage. Dingy green and grey that’s been forged and folded a dozen times, and then polished to high heaven. Their plated shoes tink against the floor, like they’re made of aluminum.

GiantFell scoffs.

GF: Now what? Head of the goofball team?

Sprocket chuckles.

Sp: Hero of the Underground, actually. :)

GF: Hm. Are you sure you want to do this?

Sprocket lolls their head and shrugs.

Sp: Hey, I’m game. But you can back out, if you’d rather. No hard feelings.

GiantFell’s sour smirk grows wider. He sets his feet apart. So does Sprocket.

The fight begins. GiantFell throws some barbed bones at Sprocket, who ducks and hops around them with the flexibility of a wobble board. One of them narrowly misses their shoulder. They run half a circle around their opponent to get at an unprotected side, but he instantly clocks what they’re trying to do. He turns and rushes at Sprocket. Sprocket dashes back on their heel and tries hard to counter the savage monster that lunges with its claws over and over, closer and closer. His pinprick red eyes stare into Sprocket’s acrylic ones.

GF: I confess, I’ve never seen anything like you before. But I can guess at what’s hiding inside that ramshackle suit of armor. However much skeleton you may have in you, you’re just a paper-thin little ghost playing the brave knight.

A heavy clenching sound makes the spectating crowd jump. The two combatants stand at the edge of the ring. GiantFell towers over Sprocket with a claw wrenched down on their left arm. The same arm has its fingers wrapped around the giant’s breastplate in a desperate gesture of control. Their other arm is splayed to the side for balance. They’re leaned back past their center of gravity by over a foot, and their feet are an inch from a ring-out.

GiantFell leers for a moment.

GF: Don’t worry. I won’t let this end that easily.

He steps back to pull Sprocket in for more punishment.

Or, he tries. His legs go, but the rest of him doesn’t. He tugs harder. Sprocket doesn’t move a bit.

Still holding onto the ribcage, Sprocket takes two steps forward to straighten up. Each step lands with the full weight of Sprocket’s metal body–heavy thuds against the stone floor. Tiny pebbles leap from the vibrations. As the giant strains to retract, Sprocket pulls him closer as if to share a secret.

Sp: And ghosts… can float.

They reel up a knee and kick GiantFell to the center of the ring, letting him take the arm with him. A long attached chain simultaneously unravels from Sprocket’s shoulder. Then, it suddenly runs out, yanking GF harshly in the opposite direction. The crowd can’t help jeering a bit as the beast comes very close to falling on his face. Sprocket’s left hand lets go, pulling the chain away a little with their right. They wait for their opponent to regain his footing. He looks up with daggers where the pinpricks were. Sprocket looks back at him with a stone face and eyes laced with something all too familiar. Contempt. Ridicule. Scorn.

GiantFell snarls and raises a wave of sharpened bones from the floor that thunders toward Sprocket. Long before it can reach them, they send a signal down their chain-arm. In the blink of an eye, it expands, exposes a layer of hidden components, and reforms as a flail head. Sprocket draws it across the arena with all their might. It shatters the bones and almost catches the sender by the ankles. They throw it again. And again. They hit the giant. They miss. They hit again. It shouldn’t be this easy to hit a target this way, but Sprocket has clearly had practice. GiantFell slings a metacarpal dart whenever he can, but they all whiff. He tries to grab the chain once, but it’s electrified. The wrecking ball doesn't let up until a stray sweep lands it buried in the floor near some spectators. Everyone’s okay, though.

Sp: Oh! (Crap.) Sorry!

GiantFell has already taken his opening. He body checks Sprocket’s left side at top speed. They hit the floor with a short ear-splitting skid. Their shoulder is dented, and they’re disoriented. The chain struggles to retract. They get their wits back just in time to block a flurry of vengeful attacks. They keep it up as they slowly pull their arm back in place and get to their feet.

Combat becomes much closer quarters. They trade bones and blows with equal ferocity. Between the snapping of his jaws in Sprocket’s face, GiantFell finds time to banter.

GF: What a surprise! You’re more interesting than I thought.

He sweeps a leg at Sprocket, who springs back light as a feather.

GF: Your prowess is adequate and… creative, I’ll give you that. But what I want to know is where you got that look in your eye.

Sprocket ignores him.

The giant springs a floor trap of curled bones on them. They leap back again, less gracefully than before. The sound of joints finessing 2,000 pounds of metal rings out. Music to his ears. They’re getting tired.

Sprocket takes the defensive for a while, giving GiantFell more room to talk.

GF: You know, I think I like it here. Most of you weaklings will never know the true challenges of survival until a child with a knife comes to your door. But this at least gives you a taste of what it’s like to wonder when you’ll be thrown into the ring with death. They all cower and shiver and take their stand before me like they’ve already lost.

Sprocket bashes a barbed bone club with their wrist, raining white shards and dust before their determined face.

GF: But you… You get it, don’t you? What have you lost? What have you seen that killed the part of you that cowers?

Sp: You talk like a flower I know.

The two wind up in a grapple, struggling to overcome each other’s strength. Sprocket’s rivets and coils groan.

The giant narrows his eyes.

GF: Why hold yourself back?

He glances at Sprocket’s cousins, still watching placidly from the bleachers.

GF: It only weakens you further.

Sp: The people I protect are what make me strong.

The giant nods almost imperceptibly.

GF: While your resolve lasts. But there are bigger things out there. In the dark. You’ll see sooner or later, if you haven’t already.

Sp: You disgust me.

Sprocket gives him more of that cold stare. Then, it turns into a smile. A powerful electric shock cracks between the combatants’ palms, prodding GiantFell to back away.

Sp: Ha! I got you twice!

GiantFell recalculates as Sprocket approaches. Magenta lightning leaps between their cheek and temple, chin and chest, ribs and spine, and any crack he’s managed to make in their armor. Their black synthetic hair begins to stand on end. Their ruby soul glows hot in their chest.

This is where the fight gets feral. It’s a blur of magic, bones, boots, and fangs. The aura around Sprocket grows so heavy that it looks like GiantFell is trying to tear apart a dying sun. Electricity arcs everywhere, within feet of the spectators. The combatants throw all of their remaining strength and agility at one another, pushing themselves to top each other’s moves without thinking much about the one that comes after. GiantFell isn’t unused to this kind of reactive combat, letting instinct carry him through. It isn’t until he catches Sprocket’s eyes again that a full thought forms.

He can see the magic of their soul burning through the acrylic. His other opponent’s colors were green and blue. Kindness and integrity. Weakness. Anyone where he comes from would be afraid and ashamed to show anything but red–determination, survival, power. He’s seen lots of shades of red in his time.

He’s never seen a red quite like this.

Away from his line of focus, Sprocket prepares a sucker punch with white hot knuckles. It rockets toward him with as much sureness and weight as it can carry. GiantFell then leans–or falters, hard to say–out of the way and shoves his foot upside Sprocket’s jaw instead.

Steel bends and snaps throughout their torso. The crowd cringes with sympathetic pain.

Sprocket stumbles backward, holding their neck like it needs the help to do its job. They’re fighting to stay standing. GiantFell laughs maniacally.

However, before anyone can get too worried about Sprocket, the laughter trickles away. The giant passes out and lays still on the floor of the ring. Sprocket has won. The entire arena cheers.

As the unseen hand picks the loser up off the floor, the victor manages to find enough balance to walk. Being made vertical helps GiantFell regain consciousness, though he’s still groggy.

Sprocket approaches with calm light steps and extends with their better arm to shake.

Sp: Good match.

The giant just starts laughing again, maybe misunderstanding or unbelieving that he lost. It doesn’t matter. He’s out like a light again before Sprocket can put their hand back down.

They head to the bleachers, glad that’s over. Sitting down, their overworked armature finally gets a rest. The twins, free from the spell cast by the fight, instantly start assessing damage.

Kanover: You okay?

Cronus: Happy you got that out of your system?

Sp: Yeah, yeah.

Pretty much everything is bent or dented or scratched, but that’s no big deal. Sprocket’s always been a rough-and-tumble kid.

They look deeper. Sprocket rolls their eyes patiently as their head is pushed aside to make it easier to see down their collar.

Cr: Oh, wow. Did he detach your back muscles?

Kanover reaches in and pulls out a cluster of load-bearing contraptions of greasy rough steel as thick as your wrist.

Ka: Like three of them.

Cr: Okay, better hop out so we can fix it.

He taps Sprocket’s shoulder with the flat of his hand. A pink ghost with most of a blue skeleton inside phases out of the metal suit and hovers nearby. They wait, glancing back at the ring as the unseen hand removes GiantFell from the arena. After loitering quietly for a bit, they decide to leave and disappear between the bleachers.

This is when Doc realizes he’s been staring at them since the match ended.

He goes looking for them. There are corridors behind the rows of seats in this big weird unfamiliar space they’ve all found themselves in. He heads down the one where Sprocket went, follows it around a few corners, and finds the little ghost sitting alone against the wall.

They look… sad. Curled up with their head on what would be their knees, staring at nothing. Doc considers leaving them be, but they notice him before he can back away.

Doc: Hello, there.

Sp: Uh, hi. It’s you.

Their voice is so much higher and thinner without their body. Doc can’t guess them being older than 16.

He tries to be unintimidating (hard for a guy his size). He crouches down.

Doc: That was impressive. You’re a clever fighter.

Sp: Thanks.

Doc: And a brave one.

They look away.

Sp: I know a bully when I see one.

Doc: What’s the matter? Is it that you didn’t get the final blow?

Doc can remember a time when that would’ve kept him awake fuming all night.

Sp: No, I don’t care about that. The stuff he said was just stupid, that’s all.

Doc waits, sensing that there’s more.

Sprocket weighs what to say. Maybe this one, of all people, might understand.

Sp: He’s right, though.

Doc: About what?

Sp: I like fighting. I shouldn’t, but I do.

Doc: I don’t think that’s bad, necessarily. It’s been keeping us all sane here so far.

Sp: No, I mean… violence. You know? Whatever makes humans the way they are and makes us act like they do.

Doc was hoping they didn’t mean that.

Sprocket’s soft skeleton face twists bitterly.

Sp: My home is… We’re long past where we should have had our happy ending. Things are bad, and there’s no one left to save us. I have to be what people need and help them, but the harder I try the more this… evil thing comes out of me when I get mad. And I hate it when people know how to get it out of me. That guy was spoiling for an ugly fight, and I gave him one. He wanted to mess with me, and I let him. He won.

Doc: I doubt he feels that way now.

Sp: Then we both lost.

They bury their head in their knees again.

Doc watches them for a moment, then sits next to them against the wall.

Doc: Well, if being scared and frustrated makes you evil, I guess I’ve been pretty evil too. Even the part of me that wasn’t already like that guy in there.

Sprocket refuses to be cheered by that.

Sp: I have to be better than this.

Doc: Or else what? The world will end?

Sp: Basically!

Sprocket splays their hands with exasperation.

Doc: And nobody’s trying but you?

Sp: Of course everyone’s trying, but what if it’s not enough without me? Nobody has power like I do. I have to use it for something worthwhile, don’t I? Especially with all the problems and changes and… freaking evil flowers that keep attacking my cousins.

Doc: But then using that power too much makes you “evil”.

Sprocket gets quiet again.

Sp: I just don’t want them to see me not… not the way I want them to. I want to just be good. The twins kind of already know, and I don’t even know any of the people here. But there have been a few times at home where I almost got found out.

Doc: Found out being “evil”.

Sp: Yeah.

Doc: Found out feeling frustrated and scared in a time where everything is frustrating and scary?

Sp: …

Sp: I–But what if–

Doc: Do you wanna know the secret to getting under people’s skin? How they keep getting the “evil” out when they want it?

Sprocket just looks at him.

Doc: It only works if they know you’re scared of it.

Sprocket leans back against the wall as that sinks in.

Sp: Oh.

Doc: I used to be really afraid of what people would see. If I wasn’t all determination and power. Or if I wasn’t actually filled with as much boundless confidence and brilliant strategy or whatever it was I thought I was supposed to have. But even in difficult times, trying to keep all of it up ended up making me a much worse person than just letting people know what I really am.

Sp: And what are you?

Doc: Silly.

Sprocket can’t fight a smile.

Doc: And not always very bright or brave or tough. But I do get to be me more often, and I haven’t had any complaints or apocalypses yet. And I’m sure your cousins would appreciate not having to put you back together again.

Sp: It does kind of happen a lot.

Doc: So you agree?

Sprocket lolls their head to the side again, feigning deep thought.

Sp: Fine. You win.

Doc extends a hand.

Doc: Good fight.

They shake.

Sprocket heads back to their family, gliding through the air with youthful energy. It makes Doc feel the aches and age in his bones.

As he walks back, a thought occurs to him. Was there anything to that last thing GiantFell said? About Sprocket having seen something that would make them give in to malice entirely? Something the flower would know. Something outside the world they were meant to see. Sprocket’s reaction at the time makes him uneasy. As does the fact that they kept up a facade of weakness and naivety even before any real threat emerged. Just in case.

He looks up at the absent roof of the arena, at the endless blackness of the Void.

For the sake of his own family, who now live outside of any normal world, it may be worth finding out. But he supposes now may not be the right time to ask.

Problems for later, he tells himself.

He goes to find his brothers.

----

So this was a casual idea-vomiting session with a friend that got away from me real quick lmao. (My friend loved reading it, by the way. I didn't just leave them in the dust with thousands of words.)

As it turns out, I enjoy coming back to this era of au madness a whole lot. I may do it more often in the future.

Many of the characters I play with are regulars pulled from other people's aus and hcs. But Doc, GiantFell, Sprocket, the twins, and Blinker are all of my own invention (with consideration for obvious influences like regular Fell and Inktale). Feel free to play with them yourself if you want, though.

Anyway, thanks for reading.