so i turned Hal into a spaceship because I am totally a sane person

Context

This stupid crackfic AU branches off regular Fate Knows No OneWhich you can read on Github or AO3, a fic in which Hal gets paired to the museum statue instead of the hachling (who is named Firn here, and who is a giant troublemaker, a gremlin, and objectively a little shit to pretty much everyone except Hal). But aside from that, frankly, you don’t really need to know anything from regular FKNO in order to read this. Hal is paired and remembers the loops, Firn isn’t but would do anything to remember if they could, if only so Hal doesn’t end up alone.

So what happens here is simple…ish? idk perhaps one loop Firn wants to try something and they mess with the museum’s statue despite Hal being unsure, but then Firn somehow gets paired with it as a consequence to their tinkering. They both instantly know that this spells bad news, since Hal was already paired with it, but they don’t know what kind of bad news, because they are silly blue frogs and have no clue how the Ash Twin Project is even supposed to work.

So… What happens inside the ATP is that Hal's mask detects a new pairing, knows it has old data that it must keep as well, and ends up moving Hal's data to the part of the mask which is linked to the ship log's statue fragment instead of the museum statue? idk who cares this is just a silly excuse anyway

Maybe one day I’ll write that previous loop for setup, but I’m honestly a bit too lazy for that right now and would rather focus on regular FKNO stuff. Also let’s not lie to ourselves if you clicked this link we all know you’re here for seeing Hal being turned into a ship, not for the part where they’re not a ship yet.

Content warning: Being turned into a spaceship is not a fun experience. I mean, I hope you knew that much, but I’m just saying that what follows delves into the “horrifying” territory on purpose (because I love Hal and every character I love is a character I love to see suffer provided they do still get hugs in the end), so. You’ve been warned. It gets worse before it gets better.

The Part Where It Starts

For the very first time, Hal did not wake to this new loop with the sight and touch of Gossan standing too little too close to their face and holding their chin with concern. For the first time, they did not wake with the urge to gasp for air, either.

…They did not wake with the ability to breathe.

This realization soon came with a trail of others: sight, touch, smell, all of it was just– gone. Hal tried to prick up their ears, hoping to at least hear the distant sound of crickets or even the wind, only to realize that they could not find their ears. That– that they were gone, too, just as much as their eyes, or hands, or legs, or– or their mouth.

Had they perhaps– Had they died for real, this time? Was this giant sea of nothing– some kind of afterlife…?

They were unsure how long it had been, their sense of time already feeling warped by the deprivation of any sorts of frame of reference, by the absence of even a single stimulus to go off of; but regardless of whether it had been a second or a century, what was for sure was that this had been too long. Hal struggled with all they could, not even knowing what they had left—

With a burst of their own panic, a spark ignited their entire self; through something which did not at all feel like eyes, light came through, and an image was transmitted to their mind. Incomprehensibly, Hal realized that they were not seeing— They were reconstructing the sight with their own mind, using as blueprint a series of constant electric signals they received.

They knew that this was how any Hearthian brain technically functioned, at least to some extent: that the brain itself could not see, that it was simply giving the illusion of being capable of seeing because its incredible processing capabilities allowed it to interpret the electric signals provided by the eyes it was attached to, and convert them into what was simply perceived as vision.

But to be aware of the process… It was not normal to be aware of one’s own brain signals, to almost feel capable of identifying them independently. This was new, this was unnatural, and Hal found it uncanny enough to cause them to openly panic, had they any limbs left to flail in the air, or any face and vocal cords to wail with.

At the very least, the image was new. It was static, it was in greyscale, it was rectangular like a screen, and what it represented… They were not quite sure. A circular pad made of wood? Its shape and the angle made it look like whatever was capturing the image was taking it from an aerial perspective, looking straight down. Frankly, Hal found this image quite boring and useless, not to mention the fact that it did not even give any clear indication as to where they could even find their left or right from it. But… It was still better than complete darkness?

Hal was far from satisfied with this, of course; but what could they do? They struggled more, prodding at a thing or two, not even knowing what they were doing, or how they were doing it, or whether it even was doing anything at all. The still image remained unmoving and in greyscale all the same. Eventually, which ended up being a rather rapid amount of time, they gave up, again wishing they had a face to cry with.

And so, Hal waited.

It took a while, again long enough for them to not be able to tell how long it had been; but somehow, the image finally changed.

To be more precise: the image became a moving string of rapid images flashing and blending into quick motion, recording in detail the silhouette of something entering the circle and passing by its center–

No, this was not just ‘something’: this was a person. It was just a little difficult to identify, with the angle being so stupidly vertical. It was not every day that Hal would just find themself staring at the top of another Hearthian’s head as if they were physically floating on top of them and specifically looking at the top, making it hard to even see their faces.

The spot pattern and the shirt did not lie, though, even when the lack of color made both details difficult to notice: this was Firn.

By the time Hal could understand this, sadly, Firn had already walked out of the image. Hal wanted to make it move, to follow their trace, to find some way to get their attention; but nothing happened.

…Until something else gave them a different kind of signal to interpret, from somewhere else— somewhere else which, somehow, Hal could only describe as inside.

It felt– Hal had been deprived of their senses for long enough to somehow fail to register just how true or not it was, but this felt as close to a touch as they could imagine this to be – in the sense that, compared to any of the other senses they knew existed to a regular Hearthian, this felt like the only one which did not… not fit the description.

Regardless. This felt somewhat like something touching them, from inside. One touch, then another just a little further away, then a third almost forming a line with the two others but slightly off, then a fourth– Wait. This seemed like…

If Hal could, they would have long shuddered, jumped and screamed, tried to shake away whatever this was; but the fact was that they could not, and the fact was that they may have finally understood why.

This image, a greyscale rectangle from a top-down view– staring into what they finally recognized to be the launching pad. Firn, who had briefly appeared, then disappeared. And now, the touch–

Hal finally realized that those were footsteps. Firn’s footsteps.

More than ever, Hal wanted to scream; but everywhere they searched, they only found foreign signs in the dark, full with meaning and consequences which they could not fathom. How could this have happened!?

Hal… had a very chilling hypothesis regarding the answer to their question. Firn pairing with their statue in the loop prior– They both knew that something bad would likely happen this loop because of it. Their minds perhaps being forcefully merged together, due to the Ash Twin Project not being able to tell the difference between two individuals, and because the Nomai had never planned for two people to use the same statue? One accidentally receiving the previous loop’s memories of the other instead of their own?

Well. They had both tried to brace themselves for a couple of grim scenarios, but this? This had definitely not been on the list.

Had they truly somehow found themself stuck inside Firn’s ship, Hal could only feel all the more terror. What if they tried to do something to catch their attention, only to– what could their ship even do? Could they accidentally injure or even kill them if they activated the wrong tools now? They could not even see anything inside– They would not even be able to tell if they did something dumb, like– like electrocuting them somehow, or dumping something heavy without even realizing it, or opening a window while in outer space!

…Spaceships had windows, right? They were just glorified cabins mounted on stilts with explosives strapped to them. Sort of.

Before they could ponder any further about the true nature of a Hearthian spaceship or the intricacies of making their presence known without accidentally murdering their best friend, Hal’s thoughts were interrupted when a series of different stimuli coursed through them in quick succession; and soon, the resulting curiosity and apprehension gave way to horror when Hal felt those stimuli lead to more electric signals spreading out of their control, and when those electric signals led to other things which sent back dozens of more signals for Hal to interpret as various things moving.

Those first stimuli had been commands– and the ship– they were responding. Pumps were shifting, cylinders were bouncing, metal boxes full of most-likely-flammable liquid were heated up— two things outside were set on fire. The rectangular greyscale image showed those two flames, growing and growing, and the launching pad shrinking and shrinking, now showing its surroundings with an aerial view of the village, then of Timber Hearth as a whole—

Even without the everything about the machinery, and the fact that whatever was going on was making them be aware of it all as if someone could have attached strings to every muscle in their Hearthian body for someone else to press buttons and just pull those strings at will— Strangely enough, being forced to look at this sight alone from such uncomfortable angle would have been enough all on its own to make them sick, had they still the stomach to throw up with.

Hal could not help it– this had to stop. Surely Firn would understand if they knew— This had to stop, somehow.

On the one hand, unfortunately, getting rid of the distressing sight of space flashing by their underside was not as simple as merely closing their eyelids, since they did not have any. On the other, surely they could do something about the rockets. The ship would stop moving if they found a way to turn them off, right? They only had to do just that, turn them off!

Hal soon followed the trail of signals and found the ones coming at the very source — Firn’s initial demands, probably sent to them through some kinds of button presses. If they could just intercept them…

Intercepting them proved too difficult when there were so many coming at the same time (or was it just a few but the ship was just interpreting them as repeated commands that just kept going every few milliseconds, just in case Firn had changed their mind just a little about the exact force they wanted to put in each thruster independently?), and when each one rapidly led to a cascade of others drowning them with far more stimuli than they could handle.

The next idea— They really just wanted the ship to stop moving. If turning the rockets off was not an option, then— how about turning the other rockets on, in the exact opposite direction?

Yes. Yes this was a terrible idea. Did they have any better idea, though? Absolutely not, and the fact that this entire system kept sending them signals in ways that felt both distantly familiar and far too foreign at the same time, that they had no idea how any of this worked, that they could not see or hear anything save for this very terrifying sight of the stars moving and oh stars above was that the Attlerock that was way too close, and that Firn did not even know— all of this was utterly freaking them out, and by this point, they would do anything to at least make a change of some kind.

Trying to disrupt the commands and reduce the amount of force demanded on all rockets had not worked. Perhaps going on the exact opposite and asking every single rocket to fire at maximum power would be more or less equal to keeping the ship stuck in place for a little bit?

…

Due to their lack of interest, Hal had never taken part in the space program. It was thus with a lot of confusion and fear that they observed a quite strange phenomenon: that being that the ship, in fact, did not stop moving. Hal had never been taught this much; but as it turned out, the laws of physics and motion in space were quite different from those experienced by all from birth on the Hearth.

Namely: space had neither friction, nor any direct forces strong enough to progressively absorb the kinetic energy of a moving object. And thus, no, neither stopping everything at once, nor firing in every single direction at full power in hopes of canceling out the current trajectory, were valid strategies.

That, and with more signals coming up to somehow make Hal do other things they could not even fully comprehend, only knowing that it was either effectively distracting them from manipulating the thrusters or stopping them from manipulating the thrusters, or most likely both— Hal panicked.

They did not know what they could do, they did not know what they were doing— But they could not stand the endless torture, let alone when they knew that Firn would never subject them to this kind of situation on purpose.

And so they carried on. Frankly, they did not even fully know which thrusters they were activating, by this point– only one? Two? All of them? All they knew was that at least, if they were going to have to feel all of this machinery move, then at least they might as well have to experience it on their own accord, as a consequence to their own actions.

Still, there were always more commands, always more thrusters being turned on and off repeatedly— Hal could barely even keep up on which signals were Firn’s and which ones were their own.

In the midst of the struggle and confusion, Hal barely missed the tiny electric signal traversing their entire system, so tiny and inconspicuous as it was; but the next instant, everything was over.

Well– everything, except for the commands still being there, and Hal’s inputs no longer being heard.

Too confused to do anything at first, Hal took a short moment to simply stop and contemplate as their non-Hearthian mechanical limbs were pushed and pulled and ignited— too scared to continue struggling and have their suspicions confirmed.

The desperation soon came back, however, and with it came the will to continue fighting… but this time, nothing happened. They called for Firn to somehow listen, they screamed for that thing called ‘left thruster’ to stop blasting into oblivion, they pleaded for that fuel meter to stop giving them frankly unnecessary information about the amount of liquid left as it was slowly decreasing, and why was a ship even able to detect the jostle of a liquid from inside its casing, but not able to just see its surroundings proper!?

Nothing happened. The ‘left thruster’ continued, and so did the two ‘back’ ones, and the ‘bottom’ one. The fuel tank kept notifying them with unneeded and unwanted information about how a flammable liquid was dancing around somewhere inside what was thankfully not their stomach, but might as well be given the circumstances. The only means they had of seeing anything kept giving them dizzying sights of space and stars spinning around, and they could do nothing but be glad that the aforementioned thankfully-not-their-stomach reservoir was indeed not a stomach they could churn and empty on a nonexistent floor.

Hal wished this prison could have been one made of walls they could at least try to kick, or punch, or bash their head against; but this was not. The strings had been cut– but in such way to not free them, but far on the contrary, to purely and simply deny them access to their own limbs.

At first, it took a little while for them to fully realize. But eventually, Hal noticed that following that moment when they had lost all control, the commands had just become so… steady, all at once. Firm, inflexible, constant. Assertive and confident as Firn was, Hal was shocked to realize just how smooth and regular everything had become, just like that. Firn had found a way to shut them off, and then… Magically found a straight line to follow?

After some time, Hal still hated it. But at least… It wasn’t so bad anymore. The commands were just a lull in the background, impossible to say no to, but they were just keeping everything in place, now. If it weren’t for that blasted image still showing the solar system moving around (even though it was moving in a straight line now, rather than going all over the place like it once had), Hal could have been reluctantly content with leaving things like this.

Not that they had much of a choice now. But then… What? Would they just have to endure this for– for however long there still remained in this loop? Would things just start over from the very beginning in the next one?!

As they were trying to assess their options, Hal felt a new command coming— not for the ship’s means of locomotion, though.

Was that… Was Firn filling their ship log? Before the loops started, they had been talking constantly about how excited they were to use its speech-to-text feature to do their note-taking, and… This entry did feel more like a clean transcript of them talking than them writing it all down. But then again, when did they say all of those things? Hal hadn’t heard them utter a single word since the beginning of the loop. Unless… Oh.

It was… frightening to realize that, yes. Yes, they were completely deaf, and technically blind if it weren’t for that one completely useless… They had been calling it an ‘image’ all along, but it probably was a camera, wasn’t it?

But while they were at it, what even was the point of putting a camera on the underside of a ship, seriously? That was so dumb.

Their thoughts were interrupted by a new command.

…Yeah. Of course they had noticed. Had they really come this close to– to actually crashing? Oh stars. They… They really should apologize for that, if only the ship would let them.

Oh… oh no. They were blaming Slate, now? Come on, why? Did they have to make them feel guilty on top of everything else?

They really wished they could explain themself, if only this ship could just— let them do something, for once! Really, how hard could it be to just say something like, ‘Sorry Firn, that was me, I didn’t mean to’?

…Wait. Did they just– Yes? Yes! Yes, they did!

Oh, this changed everything. What if they could use this to catch Firn’s attention?

But… That being said, Firn had a very bad tendency of only looking at their ship log until after they were done exploring an entire area, if their first six or seven loops were anything to go by. And that was if they could survive long enough to get to that point — judging by the first part of their journal entry, the Attlerock was not their intended destination this time around.

That, and considering the fact that they just received yet another command for yet another different thing, Firn had moved on. What were they doing now?

To their discomfort, this one was for making the ship move again. Not the rockets this time, but something else, like an arm holding something…?

Hal heard music.

They– heard. It had been so long. Gabbro’s flute, as monotone as it was, had never sounded so beautiful and reassuring.

Other signals escaping their control were coursing through them again, but they paid them no mind. If even for just an instant…

It took them some time to realize that the signals were making them play the music. That was the signalscope, then? They didn’t know Firn’s ship had one just… mounted on it.

There was yet another command. And then—

“Gabbro? Gabbro, can we talk?”

Hal wanted to cry. Firn was there, talking. They couldn’t see them, they had been the one to put them through the nightmare of launching, but they didn’t even know, and— their journal notes, at the beginning, and their tired and sad tone just now—

Hal had never heard them sound so… alone.

They just wished they could do something, anything, to tell them that they were here too. How could they both feel such intense loneliness when they were so close to each other?

They could hear the flute twice, now, sort of— One way by listening to the real Gabbro playing, the other by listening to Firn’s radio, which happened to also be transmitting a recreation of it… which was demanded of them, and which they were themself doing right now, somehow. That was weird.

It was both sad and relieving, when the music stopped: on the one hand, Hal missed Gabbro already, even after all the trouble they could have avoided them if only they still had their ship; on the other, well, having anything ask them to do ship things was undeniably weird and uncomfortable at best, so no longer having to do it was a relief. Too bad it was not to last, considering the fact that Gabbro no longer playing meant that they were probably going to talk soon, and that of course Hal would be asked to…

Wait.

Trying to find the good little things in the midst of their misfortune— Hal was fascinated by the way the radio functioned from this new perspective, and pretty much by the way the ship processed sound in general. It was similar enough to how it was processing an image, perhaps, but those sounds contained words, and Hal very much liked words.

They could distinctly feel each vibration of the air which both Firn and the flute created on what had to be the membrane of a microphone. They could then feel that some part within them, which eluded their control and comprehension alike, was compelled to automatically convert those sound waves into digital data, and then into radio waves which they were commanded in turn to transmit somewhere else, through the void of outer space…

…And then, soon, the signalscope detected and sent them foreign waves to transmit back to the pilot, and they were compelled to convert those radio waves through the exact same process, in reverse.

“Firn? Hey, so did it work? You’re in?”

The ship had just compelled them to hear the words, turn them into electric signals, transmit them from the signalscope to the inside of the ship, and turn those signals back into words for Firn to hear.

If Hal still had a face, they would widen their eyes and gasp loudly. They could… They could use this. They could use this!

“I… I am,” Firn made the radio convert into electric signals and transmit through the signalscope again, “but we have a problem. It’s… I think we made a big mistake last loop, and…”

“Breathe, buddy. Let’s talk around some mallows when you arrive. I’ll get the fire ready.”

Firn, Gabbro, I’m here! Please, you have to listen!

Hal shouted as loud as they could, converting their thoughts (they had to be electric signals of some kind, just like everything else, right?) into sound the exact same way they had been forced to a few times now…

But what came out of the speakers was nothing short of louder-than-thunder gibberish. They instantly stopped. Nobody else tried to fill in the silence for a few seconds.

“…Uh, what was that?”

Gabbro had noticed, at least. Not that Hal would have expected anyone to not notice unhearthianly loud screeches like those unless the someone in question was deaf.

…or was stuck as a ship and had the only microphone at their disposal switched off, probably. They… They really had been completely deaf until Firn had turned the radio on and talked into it, hadn’t they…? The same way they were still virtually blind save for that one completely useless camera stuck looking outside, and not even in whichever direction they were going. This still was terrifying.

Firn’s voice had a rare moment of audible nervousness. “I– I don’t know, my radio just freaked out for a second.”

Should they try again…? No, this sound had been awful, and they didn’t even have ears anymore but they just knew that if they had, those would have bled in pain and begged for mercy. That, and it wasn’t like this method was going to let them communicate anything of worth anyway.

They evidently could not yet find the intricacies of the relationships between a phoneme and its electric signal counterpart – especially when they had soon noticed that, even when Firn and Gabbro were using the same word, the corresponding electric signals they had detected had been different. Individual voices and tone had to be additional variables to take into account, after all.

So they could not use their own words, but… Maybe there was something else they could do.

“–̷̼͚̅͗̑̏̇͛͜͝H–Hey, so di–̶̝͙́͗ Hey, s–̷̙͠͝ Hey– Hey, – Firn? – Fir– Firn?— Gabbro, can we talk?”

Hal sincerely hoped that Gabbro would forgive them for butchering their voice like this. At least in Firn’s case, they simply had to repeat the whole sentence and pretend that it was their own.

They also hoped that they were not giving them both a heart attack, stealing their voices like this without warning or consent had to be terrifying. …Probably not as terrifying as being turned into a ship and having someone else make you do ship things, sure, but still.

Oh, wait. They had just hijacked the process Gabbro was using to transmit and convert their voice when doing what they just did, hadn’t they. They could no longer feel the impulse to transmit anyone else’s words, either in or out, so… Had they accidentally kicked them out of the conversation entirely? Oops.

Thankfully, the other side of the conversation had indeed heard them, apparently: “Brambling geysers!?”

These two words from Firn were not able to provide that many new sounds for Hal to use, and this sentence on its own did not provide much to the conversation besides confirming that they were on to them – but they would take it. Tiny victories.

They did not have a lot of samples so far, so they would have to make do, but– they knew how sounds worked. They did not have much, but they had everything they needed.

“ ̶̗͔̃—̸̭͓̪̐e have a p– Let’s tal ̵͔͖̱̓̂̊͂ͅ—̶͙̱͐̓–have–Let’s– Have. Let. Hav–leh. Ha-l. Hal. Hal. – I am, b– I am, Hal.”

Silence. Hal really wished they could somehow see what was going on in there, instead of being forced to just look at dark, boring, old, terrifying outer space – in greyscale, no less.

“–y radio j–can w– talk?— I – can –talk?” they tried to nudge insistently. “Ha– H–leh-leh – He-l-pr. Help. –can we talk?”

There was the sound of… something, probably the sound of Firn unbuckling and jumping out of their seat in panic. Hal thought they could sense them move on the floor and around the pilot's seat, and… They could definitely feel two very local pressures on the two sides of the seat. Their hands, probably?

Yeah, that must be it. So Firn had unbuckled and was now hiding behind the pilot’s seat, clutching it with both hands, and most likely staring in shock at the radio now. Their grip was so tight that, on the one hand, Hal was very glad to not be able to feel pain, but on the other, they definitely felt bad for having spooked them this badly.

“Firn? –so did it– –breathe, b– –so d-brea– –so– –reaaa– –so-reaa. ơ̸̡̬͚̖̪͛̅͂h̸̡̯̼̰͐͐̄ ̴̝̳̿v̶̬̋̈́͝ǫ̴̡̨̩̍i̵̳̼͊̏̓͠d̶̨̧͖̖͠ͅ ̶̧͕̝̓͂̋t̸̨̫̼͎̽̈́̽͘ȃ̷̟̲̲̦̝̋͊̉̓k̷̢̪̱̔ế̸̫́̕ ̴̣̈́m̷̡͋̋̈͆e̸̢̛͕̰̱̝̊͋̒̃́ͅI̸̘̣͋́̊̉͠ ̴͍͓̯͒̐́̑c̶̢̥͆͌̒͐̕a̶͉̞̱͒̐͊̃͠n̸͉͆͆̀̓̋'̴͇̣͒̎͘ț̴͈̤̹͕͋̔̑̎͝ ̵̡̛̯ë̷́ͅv̸̢̩̮̞̓̈́̒͌̌e̸̤̋̍̅̌ͅͅn̴̙̠͇̋̋ – I – Let’s – it – work– Č̸̨͚͋̔̚͜ȯ̷̡͎̻̯̬́m̴̧͉̙̤͔͖͒̍͛͝e̶̝̽͊͋̍̕ ̷͚̗̜̠̾͂O̴̢̲͍̗̗̳̔͝N̶̠͇̪͈͛͜ –SO. RRREA—”

This was when Hal finally heard Firn’s voice again: but of all things, it started with a nervous laugh full of disbelief.

“S– ‘Sorry’? You’re trying to say ‘Sorry’? Oh stars above, Hal, you’re saying you’re sorry!?”

They paused. “–o just freaked out–” they tried to justify, wishing they could make Firn’s echo sound apologetic instead of confidently confused. Twisting the tone in order to modulate emotion surely would prove to be tricky, assuming they could get anywhere near that point anytime soon.

They could hear Firn’s breathing get progressively louder. “Yeah– Yeah, you bet I’m freaking out! How in the void brambling black hole of the Ash Twin’s column sand did you end up here!? A-are you just inside the radio or in the entire ship? H-how did that happen!? Is that where the statue sent your memories this loop!?”

The ‘entire’ ship, they were honestly not sure. They had no idea how many parts there were, or whether they could feel or control all of them, or…

No, no time for doubting. If the feeling left by the fact that they knew they were moving those rockets and that they could not turn them off was anything to go by, then that part most definitely wasn’t the radio.

So… “–re ship?” they repeated, glad that Firn’s tone upon saying the word had been a question.