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Chapter Text

Run:1

“Papyrus, do you want anything?” The skeleton asked softly  as he passed by the human. His voice was calm, almost casual, as though he was merely asking his brother what he wanted for dinner and not standing on the edge of his own mortality.

His hand pressed over the wound on his rib cage as warm blood spilled between his bony fingers, painting them in a sickening crimson color that made him ill the more he looked at it. Despite this, the skeleton did not grimace, nor did he falter as he moved; his skull still held a grin, but a hollow one, and his skull twisted into an expressionless mask to hide the pain he felt.

His body quickly betrayed him. Just as he left the hall, his legs buckled and gave way beneath him. He collapsed, his bones rattling against the floor, his hand slipping from his wound and landing on the spreading pool of blood beneath him.

Ah…so this is it.

My death. Fitting, isn’t it? Someone like me with no worth, dying alone where no one could see or save me.

Those were the last thoughts that echoed in the mind of the skeleton before his body dissolved into dust and was scattered by the indifferent wind.

Despite their actions, the human did not pause. Their face remained as still and empty as usual, their steps steady and deliberate, their clothes covered in the dust of what were once living people, as they moved forward to greet the king

Run:5

The skeleton fought with all his might.

Each swing of his bones was fueled by desperation, each blast of magic was fueled by his rage as he aimed to stop the Human. He pushed further than he ever had before, his very SOUL burning away as he stood his ground, his every attack aiming to stop something that could not be stopped. But no matter how fiercely he fought, nor how much of himself he poured into the battle, the truth remained simple.

The end was what he had expected.

The knife struck his ribs. Pain consumed him, white-hot, burning through his body like fire as his knees gave out. He collapsed to the ground, blood leaking from the corner of his mouth, his smile nearly disappearing in surprise. For a moment, he remained quiet, as if trying to understand what had happened to him.

“So, guess that’s it then? Heh, don’t say I didn’t wa-.” The words remained unfinished.

A second flash quickly followed the first, severing his skull from his body in a single, yet brutal, motion. His remains collapsed into dust, scattering across the floor quickly.

The human moved forward without hesitation. Their steps were slow, steady, and utterly devoid of any form of feeling. Their expression was empty, not a trace of anger, or joy, or regret was held upon it. Their foot then pressed down on the dust as if he was attempting to grind bone into power before they stopped as they then advanced toward their next target.

The king was waiting for them.

Run:25

The human was much more dangerous than he had expected.

The skeleton had never expected victory, never believed he would stand triumphant at the end of the fight. But what he had not anticipated was the sheer desperation he would experience and the sheer brutality of the human; the speed that defied comprehension, the limitless and unrelenting DETERMINATION, and the panic in his SOUL that enlarged every second.

A knife gleamed in the human’s hand as it cut through the air and shot straight for his ribs. The skeleton twisted his body just in time, his SOUL shaking from the experience, as he tried to put distance between them. His foot had barely landed before—

SLASH!

The human was already there—fast, too fast—as the skeleton’s skull betrayed his surprise. His left eye flared with a blue and yellow light as he activated his Seer Eye, willing the flow of time itself to stop, in order to grant himself a fraction of reprieve. For a moment, everything stopped as the fabric of time was halted—but even that wasn’t enough.

The knife plunged into his ribs as agony tore through him before another strike came, beheading him cleanly and mercilessly. His skull tumbled from his body, rolling across the floor of the hall, his expression still stuck in the surprise he felt upon the human hitting him.

The human approached it with an emotionless face. They stopped over the fallen head, gazing upon it for a few seconds as they tightly clutched their knife. Then, slowly, deliberately, they raised their foot—

And brought it down on the skull with crushing force, shattering it as the rest of the body turned into dust alongside it.

The human did not look back as they made their way toward the king once more.

Run:???

The human stepped over the dust of the skeleton once more, their shoes grinding against the remnants without any pause or thought. Around them, the judgement hall lay in ruins, its once proud marble pillars collapsed into pieces that lined the floors alongside the shattered glass of the windows. Yet to the human, none of it mattered. The broken grandeur of the hall, their footsteps as they made their way to the king, all of it was nothing more than a blur, a meaningless backdrop as they approached the end of their route. Their body moved as if on auto pilot, seeming more like a living corpse that was guided by the knowledge of several repetitions.

When they finally reached the king, they struck him down with ease. The boss monster, the being who was supposed to be a bastion of authority and strength, staggered to his knees with a single blow. He barely had time to even react or comprehend what happened before his body betrayed him and he fell to his knees. The human, still expressionless, then stepped back as they counted down the seconds in their mind, already knowing what came next as though rehearsing a script they had memorized long ago.

And right on cue, it happened. A cluster of pellets materialized, and cut through the king before he could even register their existence. He dissolved into dust like the rest of his kind as the flower finally made his appearance once more.

It acted like always, his voice filled with desperation as it begged them not to kill him. His form wavered as he changed his face, trying on the mask of his past self in a pathetic attempt to awaken pity from who he thought was his childhood friend. But there was no pity. The human only raised their knife as they stepped forward to kill this flower like they had countless times before, and they would do so countless times again.

The knife swung with mechanical efficiency. Slash after slash tore through the trembling flower as it was forced to feel what its victims felt under its grasp. The flower’s cries soon disappeared as the knife shredded through its stem and life, carving away any chance of it surviving. Over and over again, the human swung their knife until nothing remained of the flower, until every trace of his was reduced to fragments too small to remember. Then they stood up once more, clenching their knife tightly, and then gazing forward with their expression face.

The world went dark.

Order collapsed and became engulfed with chaos before it too disappeared; the universe and its infinite timelines all surrendered to entropy and became a void of pure nothingness. There was no light, no matter, no time, no space, no nothing. There only remained them, the human, standing still, their face devoid of feeling, their gaze unblinking as they waited. They had done this countless times and they knew what would come.

And finally, it arrived.

“Greetings. I am Chara.” The demon spoke, taking the form of the first fallen child. “The demon that comes when people call its name. It doesn’t matter when. It doesn’t matter where. Time after time, I will appear.”

It spoke, a voice that was sweet like honey yet carried an undercurrent of dread capable of sending even the SOULless to tears, tilting its head as it looked at the human with a smile.

“And with your help. We will erase the enemy and become strong.” It continued. “HP. ATK. GOLD. DEF. EXP. LV. Every time that number increases, that feeling…that’s me. But, you and I are not the same, are we?”

Its eyes darkened, black goo leaking from it as red pupils gazed back at them. “This SOUL resonates with a strange feeling. There is a reason you continue to destroy this world, kill everyone, and then recreate it once again to begin anew. You are wracked with a perverted sentim—no, perhaps once I could believe it. But now….now I know the true reason:you are bored. And because you are bored, you are searching for something new. I do not understand why you choose this route over and over again or for what way this allows you to finally reach that goal. Yet, despite this, I feel obligated to tell this to you:should you choose to restart this world once more. Another path would be better suited.”

The human did not speak but nodded once, yet that was enough for it to act. The demon’s smile widened as it summoned a knife, its blade red as fresh blood as its edge glinted in the void. The demon swung it once, and the void itself convulsed as the human disappeared.

The knife manipulated the nothingness around it, transforming it into the primordial force of chaos before shaping it. From that Chaos, the demon created the universe and its infinite timelines, creating the laws, concepts, matter, and the very fabric of existence. All that had once been erased had been brought back by the demon.

And then only it was left in the void, looking on to the world with the same expression with which it had greeted the human:a charming smile and empty eyes.

“💧︎⚐︎ ✋︎❄︎ 👌︎☜︎☝︎✋︎☠︎💧︎ ⚐︎☠︎👍︎☜︎ 💣︎⚐︎☼︎☜︎📬︎ ✌︎☼︎☜︎ ✡︎⚐︎🕆︎ 👍︎⚐︎☠︎❄︎☜︎☠︎❄︎ 🕈︎✋︎❄︎☟︎ ✋︎❄︎📪︎ ☹︎✋︎❄︎❄︎☹︎☜︎ 👍︎☟︎✌︎☼︎✌︎?” A familiar voice called out to the demon.

The voice was like static that was made flesh, rattling through the void and pulling the demon’s attention from the freshly spun world. The demon turned around as they recognized the voice, finding themselves face to face with a familiar figure draped in black, his body seeming to be made out of black goop causing it to wobble-wobble in the attempt of standing as the skeletal head on top of it gazed at the demon with a smile.

The Demon’s smile changed into a smirk of mockery. “The dead have no place to look for content. My duty is to only observe what path they take.”

The Man who speaks in Hand simply shook his head at that, clear disappointment present on his face, before he spoke once more. “☜︎✞︎☜︎☠︎ 💧︎⚐︎📪︎ ✋︎ 👍︎✌︎☠︎☠︎⚐︎❄︎ ✋︎💣︎✌︎☝︎✋︎☠︎☜︎ 💧︎⚐︎💣︎☜︎⚐︎☠︎☜︎ ☹︎✋︎😐︎☜︎ ✡︎⚐︎🕆︎ ✌︎☹︎☹︎⚐︎🕈︎✋︎☠︎☝︎ ❄︎☟︎✋︎💧︎📬︎ ✌︎ 💣︎☜︎✌︎☠︎✋︎☠︎☝︎☹︎☜︎💧︎💧︎ 💧︎☹︎✌︎🕆︎☝︎☟︎❄︎☜︎☼︎ ⚐︎☞︎ ✡︎⚐︎🕆︎☼︎ ⚐︎🕈︎☠︎ ☞︎✌︎💣︎✋︎☹︎✡︎ ❄︎⚐︎ 💧︎✌︎❄︎✋︎✌︎❄︎☜︎ ✌︎ 👌︎☜︎✌︎💧︎❄︎🕯︎💧︎ 💧︎☜︎✌︎☼︎👍︎☟︎ ☞︎⚐︎☼︎ ☜︎✠︎👍︎✋︎❄︎☜︎💣︎☜︎☠︎❄︎📬︎ ✋︎💧︎ ❄︎☟︎✋︎💧︎ 💧︎⚐︎💣︎☜︎❄︎☟︎✋︎☠︎☝︎ ✡︎⚐︎🕆︎ 🕈︎✌︎☠︎❄︎ ☞︎⚐︎☼︎ ❄︎☟︎☜︎💣︎?”

The demon listened, and for once, it said nothing as it simply stood still, its grin growing even more hollow as it was before as it spoke in a voice filled with sadness and despair.  “I have no place. For this is nothing more than a consequence of my actions. For what I forced Azzy to do. But…even if I did want to stop this, there is no way to. For I remain only a demon, and not someone with the capabilities to change the script or stop a player.”

“❄︎☟︎✌︎❄︎ ✋︎💧︎ 👍︎⚐︎☼︎☼︎☜︎👍︎❄︎📬︎ ☞︎⚐︎☼︎ ❄︎☟︎☜︎ ☞︎⚐︎☼︎👍︎☜︎💧︎ 👌︎☜︎✡︎⚐︎☠︎👎︎ 🕆︎💧︎ 🕈︎⚐︎🕆︎☹︎👎︎ ☠︎⚐︎❄︎ ✌︎🏱︎🏱︎☼︎⚐︎✞︎☜︎ ✋︎☞︎ 🕈︎☜︎ 💧︎🕈︎✋︎❄︎👍︎☟︎ ☞︎☼︎⚐︎💣︎ ⚐︎🕆︎☼︎ ☼︎⚐︎☹︎☜︎💧︎ ✋︎☠︎ ❄︎☟︎✋︎💧︎ ☞︎✌︎☼︎👍︎☜︎ ❄︎☟︎✌︎❄︎ ❄︎☟︎☜︎✡︎ 👍︎✌︎☹︎☹︎ ✌︎ 💧︎❄︎⚐︎☼︎✡︎📬︎ 👌︎🕆︎❄︎ 🕈︎☟︎✌︎❄︎ ✋︎☞︎ ✋︎ ❄︎☜︎☹︎☹︎ ✡︎⚐︎🕆︎ ❄︎☟︎☜︎☼︎☜︎ ✋︎💧︎ ✌︎ 🕈︎✌︎✡︎?”

The demon stilled, a rollercoaster of expression going over their face as it asked. “What do you mean?” It asked, its voice filled with an uncertainty it had not experienced for so long.

The Man who speaks in Hands gave a kind smile before he raised his hand as a black orb appeared on it. “❄︎☟︎✋︎💧︎ ✋︎💧︎ ✌︎ 👎︎☜︎✞︎✋︎👍︎☜︎ ✋︎ ☟︎✌︎👎︎ 👌︎☜︎☜︎☠︎ 👎︎☜︎✞︎☜︎☹︎⚐︎🏱︎✋︎☠︎☝︎ 💧︎✋︎☠︎👍︎☜︎ ❄︎☟︎☜︎ 💧︎☜︎👍︎⚐︎☠︎👎︎ ☝︎☜︎☠︎⚐︎👍︎✋︎👎︎☜︎ ☼︎⚐︎🕆︎❄︎☜︎ 👎︎⚐︎☠︎☜︎ 🕆︎🏱︎⚐︎☠︎ ❄︎☟︎✋︎💧︎ 🕈︎⚐︎☼︎☹︎👎︎📬︎ ✌︎ 👎︎☜︎✞︎✋︎👍︎☜︎ 👍︎✌︎🏱︎✌︎👌︎☹︎☜︎ ⚐︎☞︎ 👌︎☼︎✋︎☜︎☞︎☹︎✡︎ ⚐︎👌︎💧︎👍︎🕆︎☼︎✋︎☠︎☝︎ ❄︎☟︎☜︎ ☜︎✡︎☜︎💧︎ ⚐︎☞︎ ❄︎☟︎☜︎ ☞︎⚐︎☼︎👍︎☜︎💧︎ ✌︎👌︎⚐︎✞︎☜︎ ☞︎⚐︎☼︎ ❄︎🕈︎☜︎☠︎❄︎✡︎ 💧︎☜︎👍︎⚐︎☠︎👎︎💧︎📬︎ ☜︎☠︎⚐︎🕆︎☝︎☟︎ ❄︎✋︎💣︎☜︎ ☞︎⚐︎☼︎ 🕆︎💧︎ ❄︎⚐︎ 💣︎✌︎😐︎☜︎ ✌︎ 👍︎☟︎✌︎☠︎☝︎☜︎ ✋︎☠︎ ❄︎☟︎☜︎ 💧︎❄︎⚐︎☼︎✡︎ 🕈︎✋︎❄︎☟︎⚐︎🕆︎❄︎ ✋︎❄︎ 👌︎☜︎✋︎☠︎☝︎ ☼︎☜︎👍︎❄︎✋︎☞︎✋︎☜︎👎︎.”

The demon glanced at the orb as several thoughts went inside its head. A chance to solve this? Could it be true? Could it be possible? It didn’t know. Yet, if it was, then the demon could not help but try.

The demon gave a nod to the Man who speaks in Hands who laughed in delight as they activated the orb while the demon thought of who to trust with the information of the routes. Undyne? No, she’s too straightforward and lacks the cunning needed to beat the human. Alphys? No, she’s too weak.

No, there was a person just right for the job. The demon smiled as they readied their knife before slashing once more as they added one more detail to the world.

Sans awoke with a scream as his hands desperately grasped at his blazing left eye.

Chapter Text

Sans awoke with a scream as he desperately grasped at his blazing left eye socket. His mind spun into chaos as a torrent of fragmented images flashed before him. The sensation of a cold, metal knife carving through his rib cage. The haunting image of an abandoned red scarf sitting in the middle of a pile of dust was the most frequent, tormenting his mind as he fell out of the bed. His voice escaped before he could stop it, a horse, trembling cry of fear and pain that filled the entire house.

He immediately bolted from his room, stumbling down the hall toward the bathroom, barely hearing his brother’s worried voice calling out after him. He slammed the door shut behind him before locking it, his hands shaking as he stumbled toward the sink. His hand still pressed tightly over his left eye socket, he turned on the faucet and began to furiously splash water over his skull again and again, desperately trying to extinguish the feeling of his skull being set on fire.

Seconds felt like hours before the agony finally faded away. His breathing slowed and the trembling in his fingers eased as he finally dared to look up at his reflection—and what he saw made him step back in shock. Two bright red eyelights glowed from within his sockets, their crimson color sending a chill down not only his spine, but also setting his very SOUL on ice.

“What the…?” Sans muttered, his hand hovering uncertainly over his eyes as he truly took the sight in.

He then focused as he activated his Seer Eye. It flared to life, and yet, it was no longer the familiar cyan and yellow that it used to be. Instead three distinct colors were situated within the socket:red, yellow, and cyan, mixing together to form a terrifying blaze. The light emitted from his Seer Eye was much harsher than it used to be, radiating a feeling more equivalent to vengeance than justice.

The grin that was usually on Sans’s face dimmed in response to that as various questions arose in his head. What happened to his eyes? What were the images in his head about? Why does he feel so afraid?  Sans almost fell down, his knees threatening to buckle as the weight of the questions pressed down on him as he took in everything, his breathing becoming heavy as he tried to calm himself.

“Get up. You're embarrassing yourself.”

A voice called out to him, causing Sans to freeze. He instantly stood up as he looked around himself to find the owner of the voice. Only an empty bathroom answered him, appearing as if nothing was out of the ordinary even when Sans checked everything inside once more. Sweat dropped from his skull like a waterfall as he took in a deep breath. He forced himself to calm down once again as Papyrus’s voice soon came from outside the room.

“BROTHER, ARE YOU ALRIGHT?” Papyrus asked him, unable to hide the worry in his voice even as he tried to.

“Oh, uh, yeah bro. Just had a nightmare. Don’t worry ‘bout it.” Sans quickly lied.

Papyrus didn’t seem to catch it—or perhaps chose not to as his voice quickly brightened up. “AH, IF THAT’S THE CASE, THEN YOU HAVE NO NEED TO WORRY, DEAR BROTHER. FOR THE GREAT PAPYRUS HAS JUST CREATED HIS MAGNUM OPUS: A SPAGHETTI THE LIKES OF WHICH YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN BEFORE OR EVER WILL SEE! IT SHALL UNDO ANY AND ALL NIGHTMARES YOU HAD WITH ITS GREATNESS AND BE SURE TO CHEER YOU UP!”

“That, uh, sounds wonderful. I’ll meet you downstairs soon, bro.” Sans breathed a sigh of relief as he heard the sound of Papyrus’s footsteps becoming faint before he looked toward the mirror once more.

He can’t get out in this state. Papyrus would notice in an instant, and once he did, he would never let it go. Lord knows how stubborn he could get when he wants to know the answer to something and, especially, when it comes to Sans. The guy was stubborn enough to wrestle the truth out of death itself when it came to his brother. Sans let out a small grunt and began rummaging through the cabinets beside the sink, hoping to find what he was looking for as he tossed aside old toothpaste, unopened bandages, and a bottle of ketchup he kept for emergencies before he let out a sound of triumph.

He pulled back his hands, now holding a pair of shades and tape. He slid the shades on and taped the sides to his skull until they sat snugly in place, then looked back up into the mirror. His reflection stared back at him: grinning, confident, and effortlessly cool. He fingers-gunned at his reflection with a low chuckle.

“Heh, looking sharp.”

“Oh god, I should have picked someone else.”

He once again heard the voice only to find no one around him when he looked once more. God is he going mad? Sans wouldn’t be surprised if he was so though did find it a bit funny that the madness finally caught up to him a decade after the incident happened. He put on his usual smile on his face before he opened the door of the bathroom and let himself out, quickly going down to meet his brother.

The scent of overcooked noodles hit him before he even reached the living room. Papyrus was where he usually was at all times, whistling as he made some spaghetti—that looked more like molten cement—in the kitchen. Sans’s smile quivered a bit as he smelled what was supposed to be his breakfast, instantly losing any desire he had to eat for the rest of the day. Despite that however, he still sat down on his usual chair, his head resting on his hands and eye sockets closed when Papyrus finally gave him his breakfast.

“THERE IT IS, SANS! MY MAGNUM OPUS! A SPECIAL SPAGHETTI TO START A SPECIAL DAY!” Papyrus declared. “CAN YOU FEEL IT, BROTHER? I CAN FEEL THAT TODAY WILL BE THE DAY A HUMAN FALLS INTO THE UNDERGROUND! AND WHEN I CAPTURE THEM FOR, SHE’LL FINALLY ACCEPT ME INTO THE ROYAL GUARD!”

“Heh, looks kiler bro.” It was a testament to Sans’s acting skills that he remained still. The moment the word—human—popped out of his brother’s mouth, Sans felt a chill run down his spine as a pressure seemed to suffocate him at all sides, making it harder for him to breathe, much less speak. After his brother was done speaking, Sans let out a couple of fake chuckles as he answered.

“Sure I can. Been feeling bonely since I woke up.” Sans joked as Papyrus let out a scream of agitation.

“SANS! HOW MANY TIMES MUST I TELL YOU TO REFRAIN FROM SUCH AWFUL PUNS DURING BREAKFAST!? BESIDES THIS ONE WAS MUCH WORSE THAN ANYTHING YOU EVER SAID BEFORE!”

This time, the laugh Sans let out was much more genuine. He looked down at his plate. The ‘spaghetti’ was a rubbery labyrinth of noodles mixed with something that might have once been vegetables. A blackened aroma greeted Sans as he looked at. “Lovely,” he muttered low enough that Papyrus was unable to catch it, picking up his spoon and taking a quick bite.

“WELL? HOW IS IT?” Papyrus asked eagerly as Sans gave a small smile.

“It’s your best so far, bro.” Well, that wasn’t a lie. Sure, it tasted like rusted nails, but compared to his brother’s previous crimes against monsterkind that was his cooking, it was at least edible. At least this one didn’t require a time-stop just so he could vomit and then throw it away. He cleaned the plate in silence, letting Papyrus ramble about his puzzles. Each word washed over him—going in from one non-existent ear and out of the other non-existent ear.

When he finished, Sans leaned back and let out a fake burp, causing Papyrus to groan in disgust.

“CLASS AS EVER, SANS.”

Sans chuckled as he got up, making his way toward the fridge. He already knew what he needed as he opened the door. The ketchup bottle stared back at him, having the comforting aura of an old friend.

“BY THE WAY, SANS,” Papyrus suddenly said, causing Sans to stop and look back at him with a confused expression. “WHY ARE YOU WEARING SUNGLASSES INSIDE?”

Sans froze, his hand stopping mid-grab. The smile on his face didn’t move as he turned back to the fridge so Papyrus couldn’t see his expression. He lets out a fake chuckle as he answers. “Eh, I just don’t feel like letting the light enter my eyes. Besides—” he lifted the shades slightly to see the red eyes looking back at him before he put them on once more.”—I look cool, don’t I?”

“WELL YES, I DO SUPPOSE YOU LOOK A BIT MORE PRESENTABLE—NOT AS MUCH AS THE GREAT PAPYRUS OF COURSE—THAN USUAL BUT IT IS STILL A BIT ODD BROTHER.” Papyrus responded.

“Course not,” Sans replied as he unscrewed the cap and quickly downed it, drawing a groan of disgust from his brother.

“SANS! I TOLD YOU NOT TO SHOW YOUR DISGUSTING HABITS IN FRONT OF ME!”

“Sorry, bro. Was just a little thirsty.” Sans grinned lazily as he placed the now nearly-empty ketchup bottle back in the fridge.

“THAT STILL ISN’T AN EXCUSE, BROTHER!” Papyrus scolded. Before Sans could respond, he was stopped by the ring of the clock. Both of them froze as they looked toward the direction of the sound only for Papyrus’s eyesockets to widen comedically as an expression of panic came over his face. “SANS! WE’RE LATE FOR SENTRY DUTY! WE NEED TO HURRY!”

“On it, bro.”

Sans took in a deep breath as Papyrus rushed up beside him, clapping a hand over his brother’s shoulder. Sans then focused on the image of his sentry post: the faint smell of snow and wood, the sight of a forest. Closing his eye sockets, he concentrated until—

POP!

The sound of a ‘pop’ was heard as the brothers found themselves just beside the bridge connecting the ruins to the rest of Snowdin. Sans opened his eyes, letting out the breath he was holding as his posture visibly relaxed.

“Huh, so that’s what teleportation feels like. Apart from the uneasy feeling, it’s very…anticlimactic.”

“That’s just how teleportation is supposed to be in general. The flashy stuff is only there in the movies to make it look more magical for the audience.” Sans replied back to the voice in his head, pretending to dust off his sleeve.

If it won’t be gone anytime now, then Sans saw no reason not to talk back to it. Besides, he could think of a few hilarious jokes the whole situation allows him to make. Sans’s grin widened as he thought that to himself before the voice of his brother brought him back to reality.

“URGH! I ALWAYS HATED THAT FEELING. I DON’T GET WHY PEOPLE WOULD CHOOSE TO TELEPORT INSTEAD OF WALKING!”

“Teleporting’s quicker.”

“AND MUCH MORE NAUSEATING. IF IT WASN’T FOR EMERGENCIES LIKE THIS, I WOULD RATHER WE NEVER HAVE TO USE IT,” Papyrus complained. “ANYWAYS, BROTHER. I’M OFF TO SET MY PUZZLES FOR THE DAY! ALPHYS GAVE ME A NEW ONE YESTERDAY AND I CAN’T WAIT TO TRY IT NOW!”

“You mean the color pad thing? You sure how to use it, bro?”

“WHY OF COURSE! I HAD ALREADY ASKED ALPHYS FOR A MANUAL ON HOW IT WOULD WORK LONG AGO SO I CAN SET IT UP AS QUICKLY AS IT ARRIVED!” Papyrus revealed excitedly. “AFTER ALL, THE GREAT PAPYRUS IS ALWAYS PREPARED—NYEH-HEHEHE.”

“You’re the coolest, bro.” Sans replied with a genuine smile as he watched Papyrus rush over to his station to get the device.

Sans simply shook his head at the excitement Papyrus held before going over to his own sentry station. It looked like it always did: a mess of various magazines, newspapers, and some books about quantum physics he liked to read from time to time. Sans checked the drawers of his station, smiling to see that the water sausages he had harvested yesterday hadn’t gone wrong or been stolen by someone in his absence.

He glanced over his schedule, his eyes scanning the crumpled sheet of paper tacked to the wall of his sentry station. He had a window of time between the third and fourth shift that would give him the opportunity to reopen his stand in Hotland and maybe earn a few laughs from customers too distracted by the heat to notice his jokes weren’t funny. Seeing no one around, he then quickly tore off the tapes sticking the sunglasses to his skull as he then also reached for the mirror on the station desk before using it.

Cold, yet radiant, red eyes stared back at him from the mirror as Sans looked at himself. Even now, they still sent a sense of wrongness down Sans’s spine, like an otherworldly presence that doesn’t belong having situated itself beside Sans. Another memory invaded Sans’s mind as he stared at the mirror. In the memory, he found himself facing a human child, their clothes covered in dust as they stared at him with an empty look on their face. The child had held a toy knife, similarly covered in dust, as they ignored Sans and moved past him toward Papyrus.

The child was just…wrong. There was no other way Sans could have seen it. They moved as if they were a corpse, being puppeteered by strings that he couldn’t see, chasing a goal he could not comprehend.

The memory quickly faded though the sensation of that meeting remained in Sans’s head as he found himself facing the direction from which the child had emerged. The Ruins. The place where the old lady who he made a promise to resided. A place that he had up until now equated to peace and calmness. Sans stared for a while in the direction, his hands briefly shaking before becoming still as he reached for his sunglasses, taping them on and disappearing as another ‘pop’ was heard.

He reappeared just a few distance away from the Ruins door, quickly hiding behind the nearby trees as he watched the gate. This was the time where he had normally met the Human, who should be arriving within a few moments. As Sans waited for them, his own mind was a storm; various thoughts rushed inside his head as he tried to decide his next course of action toward the kid.

He had made a promise to the old lady to protect any and all human children that came through the gate, to keep them safe until they reached the surface. But could he keep that with what he knows now? That the Human that would walk out of the Ruins gate would lead of not only his own kind, but of all possible timelines? Were these memories even real to begin with? He had only one way of knowing for sure.

“Why are you deluding yourself into thinking what happened the last several timelines wouldn’t happen again? Or that the memories are fake?” The voice called out to him in an inquisitive tone.

Sans stood silent for a long while before answering. “Because I have no reason to believe they are real either. Resets erase everyone’s memory aside from the one holding the Secure A Variable Ending file.”

“Secure A—what now?”

“Secure A Variable Ending. That’s the full form of a SAVE file.”

“Huh, didn’t know that,” the voice remarks, truly sounding surprised for once before they brought the topic back to its origin. “But regardless of that, suppose even if they aren’t true, wouldn’t it be better to still stop them. Monsters only require one SOUL to finally be free after all.”

“That’s true, but…I made a promise long ago—to the old lady behind the door,” he confesses. “I’m not fond of making promises, but I’m even less fond of breaking them. When you break promises, you end up betraying the trust of those close to you. I learned that a long time ago.”

There was a small moment of silence after that before he continued. “Besides, my brother has a saying:everyone can be a good person if they just try.”

“And what if they don’t try? What if they don’t wish to be a good person?”

Sans’s grin didn’t change. “Then I guess that’s my cue to act.”

“Sans…do you honestly believe in your brother’s belief? Or do you feel like you have to believe in it?”

Sans didn’t respond to that, signalling to the voice the end of their conversation.

And so Sans stood there waiting.

Time passed a lot slower than Sans had ever felt it; seconds seemed to have stretched on to various minutes and minutes stretched out to hours before he finally heard the opening of the Ruins door. He instantly snapped out of his thoughts, standing a lot straighter as he narrowed his eye sockets at the direction of the Ruins as the Human emerged.

They looked just like in his dreams: a pitch black face with an empty expression, a grey sweater with purple sprites, hair that seemed to have all the color sucked out of them, and dark brown shorts and shoes. They walked toward the bridge that connected the Ruins to the rest of the Underground as Sans felt his smile grow thin. He instantly performed a check on them only to find what he feared: 6 LV.

Briefly, Sans finds himself morbidly realizing that the old lady must have already been dead. The thought slithered into his mind like poison, numbing him to the world around him that suddenly felt a lot smaller. The underground felt a bit more hollow. He stood still for a while before he composed himself, taking a breath as he then summoned a bone, firing it quickly to snap a branch on the ground, resulting in a loud sound.

At the same time, he appeared behind the human holding a hand toward them as he said.

“Human,” he began with a grave tone. “Don’t you know how to greet an old pal? Turn around and shake my hand.”

Chapter Text

The human did not respond at first. They simply stood there, unmoving, as though the very principle of reaction had been taken from there. The silence between them stretched long before, finally, they turned around. Their face still remained expressionless, their eyes hidden behind by the bangs of their hair, as they reached forward and clasped his hand with an unsettling firmness.

The sharp ‘frrt’ of a whoopee cushion then echoed through the forest, discordant against the silence of the forest. Sans let out a forced chuckle, a hollow imitation at humor he hoped the other wouldn’t pick up, and withdrew his hand with a lazy wink.

“Heh. The ol’ whoopee cushion in the hand trick,” he said. “Always a classic.”

The human simply stared at him after that. Their expression didn’t waver, they didn’t blink, only looked at him with a gaze he couldn’t understand. Sans waited a moment, waiting for them to do something, before sighing and adding. “Hey, uh, kid, that’s supposed to be your cue to laugh.”

And they did.

The kid’s lips curled upward into what could barely be considered a smile. The gesture should have been harmless—just a child’s smile—but something about it made Sans’s SOUL shiver. It was a smile without feeling or light, mechanical and puppet-like in nature, as if it was being tugged into being by invisible strings.

A hollow, SOULless smile.

Sans didn’t let his feelings show. He only chuckled again, trying to sound casual even as his hands itched to summon a blaster. “Ah, there it is,” he said lightly with a wink. “Was wondering when I’d see it.” He finished with a forced grin he wishes looked casual.

The human expression didn’t change. They simply stood there with the same hollow expression like it was carved into their face as they gazed at Sans who felt his unease increase by the second, quickly deciding to move things along before the silence stretched any further.

“Hey, uh, you’re supposed to be a human, right? Truth is, I’m supposed to keep a watch on humans, but I do—”

The human didn’t wait for him to finish, already moving past the bars too wide to stop anyone from passing them. Sans let out a curse, even as relief coursed through him now that he no longer had to see the smile on the Human’s face anymore.

“I understand that sentiment. I had never realized how unnerving that smile could look from the perspective of an onlooker.”

Sans frowned. He didn’t know what the voice meant, or what it meant by ‘from the perspective of an onlooker’, but decided that this wasn’t the time for riddles. The kid was getting away. He pushed the unease aside, teleporting forward and catching up just as the human passed the lamp beside his sentry station.

He gave the same grin that he saw in the dream, the same tone, reciting the lines he remembered the other Sans saying.

“Hey, how about hiding behind that conveniently shaped lamp?” Sans suggested.

The Human didn’t move at that. They simply stood there—like they were waiting for something or a cue from someone.

Sure enough, after a few moments, the crunch of snow announced an arrival. Sans looked to the direction the human was facing only to see Papyrus’s entrance; the taller skeleton marching toward them, his posture stiff as if agitated and his voice loud enough to shake the snow from nearby trees. “SANS! HAVE YOU FOUND A HUMAN YET!?”

Sans glanced at him and then the Human before reciting the lines from his dreams again. “Yeah.”

“REALLY!? WOWIE! GUESS THAT’S SETTLED!!” Papyrus exclaimed, his joy uncontainable, before bouncing off again with the same enthusiasm that defined his life.

Sans couldn’t help but give a genuine smile after that as he then turned to face the Human who still stared at the direction Papyrus had come from. His smile briefly dimmed before becoming normal again as he then turned around, his back toward the Human as he spoke with barely concealed wariness and distrust.

“Hey, well, I’ll be straight with ya. My bro’s been real excited to catch a human. So, y’know…it’d really help me out if you kept pretending to be one.”

He didn’t wait for a response, knowing he wouldn’t get one. Instead, he walked away—snow crunching softly beneath his slippers—as his grin turned hollow.

By the time he reached the Ruins door, the air around him felt heavier, colder. The old stone door loomed before him like the entrance to a tomb. He suddenly remembered one of his dreams, where he had learned that only boss monsters could open or affect the door, it’s functioning being rooted more in the quality of the SOUL than brute strength.

But what he wanted to do didn’t require Sans to open the door.

He briefly hesitated before pressing his hand against the surface of the door, letting out a small hum as a faint glow of red flickered across his eye sockets. The Seer Eye ignited within his left socket, blazing with hues of crimson, yellow, and blue; his gaze pierced through the ancient layers of magic clinging to the gate, unravelling the threads one by one until he was able to see everything inside.

The magic inside was rotten. He could faintly sense that there once was something warm and gentle inside, but the aura inside the Ruins now pulsed with a stench of despair and betrayal so thick it made his SOUL feel heavier. It was the opposite of how Monster SOULs are meant to be—there was no hope, no compassion. Only grief.

Sans deactivated his Seer Eye, the colors fading away and leaving only a lively red, as he let out a long, tired sigh that came out as a thing mist that drifted away into the cold air.

He turned toward the forest again, his expression becoming unreadable as a half-hearted grin formed on his face. Around him, the snow kept falling, silent and indifferent to the storm inside his SOUL, as if the Underground didn’t care for what it had lost. A hollow laugh escaped Sans’s jaw as he came to realize something.

That they—him and the lady behind the door—would never be able to meet each other.

They’ll never be able to tell each other jokes again.

They’ll never be able to laugh together again.

“Sans…are you alright?” The voice asked with a sympathetic tone.

“Nah, it’s ok,” Sans waved away their concerns. “I just needed to see it for myself….even when I had already seen the kid’s LV. Dunno, maybe still thought they’d spare the one person who’d never wish ‘em harm.”

“…..”

Sans didn’t remark on the voice’s silence, only turning around with his back toward the Ruin’s door. “Besides, there’s still something I have to do, and somebody I have to meet.”

Gone was the grief in his voice, replaced by something sharper—an anger filled with such intensity and focus that it can only be described as frightening. His grin still remained on his face, but it no longer reached his eye sockets that began to glow a deep crimson. The air around him stilled, his hands sinking into his hoodie’s pockets as his posture changed: no longer slouched or lazy.

The grief was perhaps still there deep beneath his SOUL, but on the surface, it was replaced by something else that now filled his being.

DETERMINATION.

It coursed through his SOUL, igniting the hollowness inside him into something fierce. His gaze swept through the forest around him, sweeping from shadow to shadow, his face unreadable as he searched for something. Quickly, he found what he was looking for—a faint, almost imperceptible red glint in a tree some distance away. A security camera established by the royal scientist. Its lens looked directly at him, silently observing everything that had just unfolded.

Sans simply gave it a lazy wave, his grin thin and humorless, before vanishing with a soft pop.

He reappeared inside a familiar building, the sudden change in temperature and atmosphere almost jarring. The room was filled with various monitors, posters, energy drinks, and wires all linked to different machines. Sans looked around the place before finally founding who he was looking for, giving a loud enough cough to announce his presence.

“W-What!?” Came the startled yelp.

Alphys nearly jumped out of her chair, her yellow scales paling as she spun around to see him. The sight of Sans standing behind her, hand in his hoodie’s pockets, and his usual grin on his face made her relax—only to transform once more into irritation. Sans found he quite liked that expression of her more than the nervous one where she trips over saying anything.

“S-Sans!” She stammered. “I told y-you to stop doing that!”

She quickly launched into a tirade, lecturing him with animated gestures about personal space, boundaries and heart attacks caused by fright. Sans, in response, only gave a simply wave alongside a ‘yo’, which predictably, caused her to go off on him even more. He gave a chuckle, alongside an apologetic half shrug, before his gaze landed on one of the monitors in front of him, showing the Human in Snowdin.

The humor drained from his face as he saw the Human killing Greater and Lesser Dog in cold blood, moving forward with a blank expression as if he hadn’t extinguished someone’s life.

His grin faltered. “We got a Code:Black.”

The words hit harder than a blaster shot.

Instantly, the whir of machinery and the faint hum of monitors became the only sounds in the lab. Alphys froze completely, her body going rigid. For a long, tense moment, she didn’t even breathe. Sans could see the reflection of the camera feed flickering in her glasses, the color draining from her face as she processed what he’d said.

When she finally moved, it was as if a dam had broken. “Y–You can’t be serious,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “A–Are you sure? T–That protocol was only meant for when the f-flower—”

“I’m sure,” Sans interrupted softly.

Alphys swallowed hard, her claws trembling as she reached for a nearby console. The dull light from the monitors painted her face in sickly shades of blue and green as she began typing rapidly, pulling up feeds, cross-referencing data desperate for confirmation that wouldn’t come.

For the first time in what felt like forever, Sans wished he wasn’t sure.

“S-So does t-that mean—”

“No, it’s not Flowey this time,” Sans interrupted her. “It’s a Human.”

“A Human!? A-Are you talking a-about the o-ne t-that came from the R-Ruins?”

“Yeah,” Sans replied, his words clipped as his gaze wandered on to the monitor. “They’re trouble. I need you to start the evacuation of the Underground and contract Undyne as fast as possible. Asgore too, if you can,” His voice was calm, hiding the worry he felt.

“S-Shouldn’t you do t-that? You’re the j—“

“I don’t have the time.” Sans sniped before the calm on his face dissolved into complete panic.

The image on the monitor was a familiar scene that Sans has no wish to ever see again. Papyrus stood in the center of a snowy path, arms sprayed wide in his usual open gesture, his bright red scarf fluttering gently in the wind. He was smiling, like he always did in that endearing kind, hopeful manner that Sans had witnessed since the former was a child.

Alphys’s voice fell silent around him, fading away as Sans only paid attention to the monitors. Sans already knew what would happen next, because it always happened the same way in his regained memories. Papyrus would plead with the Human, tell them that they could still be good, still do the right, still change. The Human would only stare at him in silence, letting his brother think there was hope—only to be cut down by a clean, merciless strike. But even as he turned to dust, Papyrus would still believe in them.

He had always been like this.

Sans had watched play out so many times in each timeline, refusing to act. Again and again, he had stood frozen, valuing a promise to a kind old lady over the life of his own brother who had always stood by him. He had stood there while his brother pleaded them to change and then dissolved into nothingness, and he had done nothing. He had only watched as the Human walked past him, covered in dust.

He had been a coward.

Not anymore.

He refused to do that.

The apathy and nihilism he had always held in his SOUL, the grief over the accident that had hollowed him out for so long, the death of the old lady, they began to twist into the something darker, heavier—the same feeling he had felt before he arrived in the lab. A cold, focused anger pulsed in his SOUL, a low, red light burning where his indifference had once been. He clenched his hands, his teeth grinding together as the air around him began to shimmer.

“I need to go.” Sans quickly told Alphys, taking off his shades and throwing them aside, before disappearing and reappearing in the Snowdin forest with a pop.

Snow appeared beneath his slippers as he appeared in the forest, the familiar cold air greeting him like an old friend. The trees stretched endlessly around him, and in the clearing he saw them: Papyrus and the Human. It was almost eerie how perfectly mirrored it was to his memories. His brother standing tall, arms open in peace, voice warm and hopeful as he spared the Human. In response, the Human’s grip on the knife only tightened. Sans could see the movement, small but deliberate, the decision having already been made.

It was a scene so familiar it made him sick.

His SOUL constricted, the memories of all his failings pressing down at him all at once as his eyes glowed a deep red. He would not let this happen again.

The voice said to him with a satisfied voice as Sans quickly acted.

Before the Human could move, a flash of blue tore through the forest. An azure beam of raw, concentrated magic slammed into the Human from the side, throwing them violently across the snow. Papyrus flinched and stumbled back in confusion, only to recognize the weapons of his brother as his eye sockets widened. Before the Human could recover, another blaster appeared above them with a glowing mouth. There was no hesitation, no mercy, no holding back as the blaster unleashed a point blank devastating that consumed the Human entirely, vaporizing every part of their being.

When the some cleared, the clearing was deceptively still. Snow drifted lazily through the air, a large crater now where the blast had scorched the earth. Sans stood motionless, staring at the space where the Human had been. His Seer Eye was active, his breathing a bit shallow, and his hands slightly trembling even though he didn’t notice it. He had broken his promise. He had broken a rule that he always swore to never break. And he didn’t feel guilty of it. He felt glad.

“SANS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR EYES!?” Papyrus exclaimed at him with wide eye sockets.

“Papyrus, ru—!” Sans started only for the world to shift.

It wasn’t the uneasy feeling one got from teleportation. It was much harsher—like being torn out of one existence and being torn into another. When his senses finally realigned, he was standing before the Ruins’s door again. His sockets widened in shock as his body tensed, instinctively retreating a step back, everything screaming at him that something had gone terribly wrong.

For a small moment, Sans simply stood there. Then, moving as quickly as possible, he fished his phone from his jacket and checked the time. The screen blinked back at him with a simple, but horrifying, truth.

Time had rewound.

Not by much—there was barely a minute of difference—but it was enough to make his non-existent stomach turn. His mind raced through all possibilities, before recognizing that a LOAD had occurred instead of a RESET.

“Now’s not the time, idiot! We need to stop them quickly!” The voice chastised him.

Sans nodded, vanishing a pop. He quickly appeared inside Alphy’s lab, frightening her as the sudden sound made her shriek, flailing backward against the monitor, but didn’t give her the chance to complain as he quickly cut to the point.

“Code: Black,” Sans cut her off sharply, his tone leaving no room for hesitation or argument. “Human has already performed a LOAD. Get Undyne. Perform a quick evacuation of the Underground.” His tone was cold and mechanical as he said it, quickly disappeared after finishing, leaving behind a confused Alphys who quickly understood and got to work.

He reappeared exactly where he had been moments before in the previous timeline—or where he had been at this exact moment in the previous timeline—as the world aimed to resume its grim play. Papyrus still stood with his arms open, while the Human approached, their knife gleaming faintly in the dim light. But this time, their stance was different, no doubt aware of what was to come.

He didn’t hesitate. He conjured a Gaster Blaster mid-air, in a different position than the last time, being now behind the Human, its maw opening with a low him before firing a searing azure beam straight toward them. The snow exploded where they had been, the smoke fading away to reveal—

The beam had hit nothing.

The Human had already moved, dodging the beam with supernatural precision, their blank expression twisting briefly into something resembling curiosity before they sidestepped another beam as one more blaster appeared above them. They were already learning, adapting in real time, moving with familiarity as if playing a game they already knew how to win.

“SANS! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?” Papyrus exclaimed at him with wide eyes.

Sans did not give him a response.

He couldn’t.

He already knew the moment he spoke, Papyrus would try to reason with him to spare the Human, and there wasn’t time for that. Instead, Sans appeared beside him in an instant, his hand gripping Papyrus’s arm tightly.

“Hold on tight, bro,” Sans muttered, his tone low and cracked with exhaustion. And before Papyrus could respond, the two of them vanished into blue light, leaving only the faint hum of dissipating magic and the quiet hiss of snow falling where they once stood.

They reappeared near the lab in Hotland, the air thick with heat and steam. Pipes around them hissed in protest while the floor shuddered faintly from the rhythmic pulse of the machinery beneath. Neither brother were physically harmed, yet the tension between was palpable and sharp enough that it could have cut through the smoke itself.

Papyrus was the one to step away first, his scarf fluttering with the motion, his usual enthusiasm now replaced by visual frustration. “SANS! WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS!? I HAD BEEN CONVINCING THE HUMAN TO SPARE THE MONSTERS AND BE GOOD, ONLY FOR YOU TO RUIN IT WITH YOUR INFERNAL BLASTERS! AND WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR EYES!?”

Sans didn’t flinch at the outburst. He had heard this tone from Papyrus before—it was very rare, perhaps only once or twice did a situation like this occur before—but he didn’t guilty this time. He simply stood there, hands deep in his jacket pockets, his half-lidded stare betraying none of what he thought or felt. “Looked more like they were about to kill you from my end,” he muttered dryly.

“THE HUMAN WOULD NEVER—” Papyrus exclaimed at him.

“Yeah, they would,” Sans interrupted. “And they did. Again and again in various timelines. You just don’t remember it.”

Papyrus froze as Sans quickly realized what he said. He should have not have told his brother of that. It was Sans’s burden, not Papyrus’s who had never done anything to deserve it.

Sans’s expression softened as he continued. “If you wanna help, bro, you can help the Royal Guard with evacuating everyone in Hotland and Waterfall. Undyne and I’ll handle the rest.”

Papyrus opened his mouth, perhaps to argue, but by the time the first syllable had left his mouth, Sans was gone.

He reappeared in the forest once more, the cold greeting him like an old friend in contrast to Hotland’s suffocating heat. The soft crunch of snow greeted his slippers as Sans looked on ahead to see the Human. They appeared untouched, unbothered, as if the attacks on them earlier by Sans were nothing more than a passing breeze. The air around them was the same as Sans had always remembered from every confrontation they had across all timelines.

His grin thinned into something tight and brittle. He activated a quick check, only for his sockets to narrow as he was greeted with information he had already predicted but was stick sickened by seeing.

“With this much LV, they must have already killed everyone in and around Snowdin already. The kids, the teenagers, the adults. All dead under their hand.” The voice beside him confirmed his suspicion, its own voice holding back disgust.

“Interesting, this is much different from the previous timelines,” the Human finally spoke, their head tilting ever so slightly. Their voice was hard to describe except with the word addiction. Sans could see himself loosing his being in that voice if he wasn’t aware of what kind of person the Human was. “You remember, don’t you?” Their lips curled into a smile, one a lot more genuine than their previous attempt yet even more sickening in appearance.

Sans returned the grin, his red eyes glowing more and more as he adjusted his stance, hands sinking deeper into his pockets.

“Heh, yeah, I remember. Guess you could say…” His left socket flared a triad of red, cyan, and yellow as Sans activated his Seer Eye. “…I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”

A low hum then filled the forest as Gaster Blasters began to materialize one by one beside him. “Welcome back to Snowdin, kid. Hope you’re ready to chill out.”

And the forest ignited in a blaze of blue light as the first beam fired.

Chapter Text

The Human jumped to the side with inhuman agility, narrowly avoiding the blue beams of the blaster. Twin beams of pure magic sliced through the air where they had stood mere milliseconds before, continuing onward until they finally struck a house some distance away. The instance the beams had made contract, the building disintegrated into a fine, white mist of vaporized splinters. Sans couldn’t help but wince at his mistake but was distracted as a new threat carved its way into his focus.

One way too close to comfort and way near him that he would have very much liked it.

He barely had time to duck as the edge of a toy knife, small yet impossibly sharp under the Human’s control, slashed where his skull had been just a moment ago. The air itself seemed to hiss from the precision of the blow as Sans slid back across the snow ground, jacket whipping around him, and a sharp snap echoing as he raised his left hand. Two blasters materialized above him, larger than the previous summoned and dwarfing him by several times, their mouths glowing with gathered magic. A chorus of screams rang across the place as the blasters unleashed another barrage of beams toward the Human.

But rather than being concerned, they only grinned. Their expression wasn’t one of fear or anger—rather, it was one that Sans could recall seeing at the very first timeline: exhilaration. The Human dove into a roll, effortlessly evading the onslaught before darting toward the tree line, their movements a blur as they attempted to disappear into the forest.

Sans’s grin faded. He did not give them a chance to do so.

His left hand started glowing blue, the purple glow of his Seer Eye burning brightly like a miniature sun as, in that moment, the Human froze mid-sprint, their SOUL the color of radiant blue. Then, with a flick of his wrist, the world turned against them. The Human’s body was yanked upward, then hurled like an asteroid toward Snowdin. The sound of an earthquake occurred as they crashed through the Snowdin Inn, reducing it to splinters and smoke.

The force and pressure he exerted was nothing short of ridiculous—over five hundred times that of Earth’s gravity. Something so large it was enough to pulp flesh, kill any and all beings that were forced to experience it, and one capable of even turning entire mountains into fine dust. It should have turned the Hmann to nothing more than red stain on the snow or put them further down Earth’s crust.

But Sans knew better than to expect it to kill them.

He reappeared near the wreckage with a soft ‘pop’ sound and a little grunt, and just in time to see movement. The Human burst out from the debris like a bullet, swinging their knife again, as they shot toward Sans at full speed. Sans barely sidestepped the strike, sweat dripping down his skull as he processed his ribs having nearly been cut, but more so the state of the Human.

Despite the pressure of blue magic that the Human experienced, the only visible wound on them was a thin stream of crimson trailing from their nose. That was all what several hundred times Earth’s gravity had managed: a nosebleed. Sans’s SOUL sank at that as he drew back, hands with spinning white bones materialized around him like they were at the center of a skeleton storm.

“Engaging in close quarters with them is a death sentence for you. I advise you to think before you act. Think about every move you make from here on out more than you usually do.” The voice informed him.

For once, Sans did not have a witty reply. The voice was right. Every moment counted, every misstep was the difference between life and death. With a snap, Sans sent the bones flying, each one’s end sharpened like a blade. They tore through the air toward the Human, who ducked behind one of the rubbles from the Inn collapse. The barrage struck the rubble in a rapid series of cracks as Sans lifted his fingers to summon another round of blasters—

But stopped as his instincts screamed at him to move.

He dove sideways just as the rubble he had been targeting was kicked toward him like a cannonball by the Human. The shattered debris missed by mere inches, slamming into the snow and scattering shards across the battlefield. Sans appeared again with a pop, reemerging beside Grillbys. He panted, breathing coming shallow, as his Seer Eye briefly flickered like dying embers before he shook his head and faced toward the Human who simply faced him with a smile.

Blood was smeared across their cheek, giving the smile a wild, euphoric look as they stared at Sans who felt another chill run down his spine even as his face showed no change or acknowledgement of it.

“Yeesh,” he muttered. “You’re really enjoying this, huh?”

“….”

“You’re kind of a freak, aren’t ya?” Sans gave a dry, dark laugh as his sockets dimmed for just a moment before he tilted his head slightly, grin becoming slightly thin before returning back to its usual state. “Guess you could say…you’ve really fallen for this fight.”

The Human’s smile twitched, slightly curling up as their grip on the knife tightened.

Sans took a step forward, bones already beginning to hum around him. “Heh. Don’t worry though,” he said, voice lowering into something that carried the faintest tinge of malice beneath the humor. “By the time I’m done with ya... you’ll be dying to stop laughing.”

The Human dashed toward him after that.

They were fast, faster than anyone had any right to be.

Sans moved just as quick. The bones surrounding him shot forward in rapid volleys, looking like streaks of white light that carved through the air like javelins. However, the Human weaved through them with fluid precision, their knife flashing in arcs that batted the bones aside and blocked some more. A few bones grazed their arm, drawing shallow lines of red, but all they gave in return was a small hiss and a ‘tch’ that showed more annoyance than pain.

Sans narrowed his sockets as he sidestepped another series of swings, snapping his fingers to them form a solid bone wall between him and the Human. It didn’t last long as the knife cleaved through the barrier like paper; the human pulled back to strike again only for Sans’s hand to glow blue as he sent the Human flying with a wave of his hand.

They crashed backward into the snow, tumbling over before they managed to recover by jamming their knife into the ground, anchoring them, and using it to spin upright again. If it wasn’t for the color of their SOUL, and their slightly sluggish movements, Sans wouldn’t have even known they were under the effects of blue magic.

The same force and pressure that had previously sent flying and crashing at the Snowdin Inn now seemed to barely inconvenience them….Sans preferred to not think of it as he muttered.

“Persistent little shit,” Sans disappeared with a pop, ten blasters appearing in his place.

The Human barely had time to look up before the dark sky erupted in blinding blue light. The blasts hit them point-blank, the roar shaking the entire Snowdin town. When the smoke cleared, the Human was sent flying into the air and sent crashing through the Librarby, their knife dropping besides them.

For the first time since the fight had begun, Sans saw something different on their face than annoyance or a smile: a grimace. They slowly pushed themselves up, limping as they did so, with a trickle of blood dripping from their mouth. For a moment, Sans thought that might’ve been the end of it before something appeared on their hand. The moment he saw what it was, his pupils disappeared, leaving behind empty sockets.

The pie.

“You gotta be kiddin’ me.”

The Human held it in their hands like a trophy, their grin appearing back on their face as they took a bite. The healing was instant as their wounds closed, their HP became full, and even their clothes returned back to the condition they were in before the fight had taken place. The pie’s healing shimmered faintly over their SOUL, erasing all forms of damage.

“Of course! How could I have forgotten it!?” The voice exclaimed.

Sans exhaled, forcing his grin to widen even as it didn’t reach his sockets. “Still standing, huh? You sure you’re not supposed to be buried by now? Gotta hand it to ya, kid, your persistence is…well, kinda grave. Normally I’d appreciate it but this is getting a little ridiculous.”

The Human only raised their knife as a response, the smile on their face as sharp as the blade itself.

Sans frowned at that, as much as he could with the permanent smile on his face that is. “What are you—”

Before he could finish, the knife ignited a deep red. Crimson light bled from the metal, rippling outward as the Human swung, a wave of red energy emerging from the knife that tore through the air toward him.

Whatever Sans had been expecting them to do, it certainly wasn’t that.

Sans barely managed to teleport out of the way, narrowingly dodging the slash. It still managed to clip his jacket, shredding it along the side and exposing his ribcage inside. He glanced down at it, deadpan. “Whoa, kid! Almost got my funny bone there,” he looked back up, grin wider despite the danger. “I, uh, kinda need that for comedy nights at Mettatton.”

The Human’s lips curled upward at that—an actual bright, and genuine, grin on their face—before they devolved into laughter. Sans felt himself sweat as he realized something: they actually liked his joke. He froze for a moment, unsure how to respond to it. It was almost funny how natural that smile looked on their face, how they actually looked like a kid at this moment, when they had slaughtered all of monsterkind in various timelines without hesitation. Sure, he’d cracked his own fair of jokes, but he never expected them to actually laugh at it—especially when, in his memories, they always held a blank expression on their face when he confronted them.

He needed to end this fast. Or at least buy enough time for Undyne and the Royal Guards to arrive. Together, they’d be able to finally stop this. His magic reserves were draining fast, he’s got only two more minutes of fighting left in him, and though he could remember every failed pattern from every past timeline, it only left him with a short list of attacks that he hadn’t tried before and could actually work. The Gaster Blasters were his best shot—literally.

They weren’t bound by his pathetic 1 ATK stat. And their raw ATK mixed in with his KR magic was the only thing the Human wasn’t able to completely shrug off.

“Is there literally nothing else you can try besides the usual blasters and bones?” the voice in his head pressed, impatient and sharp.

Sans’s grin flickered. “Heh, well, I got one or two tricks left… but they ain’t mine. They’re Pap’s.”

“Any tricks would be good right about now,” the voice urged. “You can’t let yourself get killed again. Not after finally gaining the advantage you’ve always lacked.”

“Yeah, yeah. You’re right. Welp, here goes nothing.”

He vanished with a pop, disappearing just in time to dodge another strike from the Human. The blade cut through the air and was where his spine had once been a second ago as the metal hummed with red energy. The Human clicked their tounge in irritation as they then scanned the area around them for him.

Snowdin was now a former shadow of itself. The Inn was a pile of rubble, the Librarby was little more splintered wood as the smell of burnt paper covered it. Craters now decorated the snow-covered road, each one still smoking faintly from past attacks by the both of them. Sans reappeared at the rooftop of Grillbys, exhaling slowly as he looked down to see where the Human was. As he did so, he glanced at the ruined buildings and the destruction as a crushing weight settled atop his SOUL.

This town had been his home for a long time.

And now, it was all gone, covered with destruction and dust of the monsters that once lived there.

Monsters who he had known; monsters he had joked with; monsters who had trusted him.

Sans’s smile was the thinnest it had ever been as he spoke. “Let’s get this over with.”

But he couldn’t afford to stop. Not now.

He raised both hands in front of himself, palms facing outward and toward where the Human stood amid the debris searching for him. His Seer Eye blazed to life again with a purple glow, burning with such intensity that it hurt Sans just to keep it open. The dust and dirt around his slippers began to then rise and swirl as a faint blue light flickered between his palms, creating invisible gravitational distortions around his arms. It steadily growed brighter, yellow spirals of raw energy wrapped around the blue light like serpents as Sans clenched his teeth. Eventually, it was complete as the light transformed into a sphere—no larger than a marble—with a heavy weight, like it carried the weight of a collapsing star.

That was the main difference between his rendition of it and Papyrus’s.

His brother’s was more like that of a large Sun while Sans’s barely made the star category.

It wasn’t that Sans was weaker in blue magic compared to his brother—he was much stronger in fact—but he never practiced with it. Push, pull, lift, slam; these were the extent to which Sans had utilized his magic while his brother enhanced his own blue magic to create his special attacks.

And it was that practice that made all the difference.

Sans grunted as he took aim. “Grav Shot!” And fired.

The result was catastrophic.

A deep boom echoed through the town as the small orb shot forward, its passage warping the air around it in waves as the snow below it lifted, then exploded outward as a violent shockwave then tore through the street. The orb’s strong repulsive force even struck Sans himself, nearly sending him tumbling off the roof as he barely caught the ledge in time, dangling for a second before he brought himself back up.

“Heh. Note to self: next time, wear a seatbelt.” He muttered shakily.

The Human wasn’t as lucky as him.

They barely had time to register the sudden shift in gravity and faint pushing sensation before it slammed them off their feet. Their knife flew from their hand, pushed away by the incoming orb, as their expression showed a rare flash of panic. The Grav Shot hit them dead-center in the chest, the impact causing them to met with a terrifying amount of force before the orb ripped straight through them.

But the resulting sound wasn’t that of flesh tearing, or anything like that. It was quiet and the wound itself was clean. It was impossibly clean. The damage and destruction that the orb had done to whatever it impacted was of such grand magnitude that it had looked like it had erased anything it touched.

The Human’s scream as the orb hit them broke through the air, raw and unfiltered. This time, it wasn’t annoyance or amusement that decorated their voice—it was pain. The kind of pain that they had never felt before. Blue light flared through their body before emerging out of the other end as the orb then disappeared, seeming to have just blinked out of reality.

The Human staggered.

For a brief moment, they stared down at themselves and saw the clean hole through their chest, the blood soaking their grey sweater as they raised a trembling hand to touch it. A small, broken sound escaped their lips.

“Ah.”

Then they fell. Face-first into the snow.

Sans appeared near them with a sharp ‘pop’, the sound being one of the only things breaking the eerie stillness that had now settled over the abandoned Snowdin streets. His form briefly flickered in the cold air before stabilizing, eyes looking down toward the Human’s body as it lay motionless on the ground. The tension in his posture was visible—shoulders hunched, expression tense, hands constantly twitching—before it was replaced by something else as he spotted the faint rise and fall of the Human’s back. The caution drained away, replaced by disbelief that bordered on grim amusement. Even after an attack such as that, after being hit with concentrated anti gravity that was tearing everything in its path apart, they were still breathing. Barely, yes, but breathing.

“Geez, kid,” he muttered, voice somewhere between exasperation and awe. “You ever heard of quitting?” He crouched down beside them.

“…Y-You didn’t do that in the previous timelines.” The Human’s voice was faint. It was clear that just speaking those words had caused them unimaginable pain to do so.

Sans couldn’t find it in himself to care.

“Welp,” Sans said, his grin turning crooked, “never got the reason to.”

“You sure are always full of surprises.”

“Heh, thanks. I try to make my audience fall for me.”

A weak laugh escaped the Human, pained but genuine. “God, I can’t believe I’m laughing at that pun even with a hole in my chest…”

The sheer absurdity of it all hit Sans harder than he expected. They were two people who had slaughtered each other more than times than they could count, two people who were the antithesis of each other. And now, they were sharing tired laughter amidst each other amidst the snow, blood and dust decorating the ground. The town around them was a ruin of abandoned buildings, splintered wood and smoke as the faint, distant crackle of fire that settled in the absence of their voices.

If someone else had stumbled upon them at this moment, they might have mistaken the pair of them for old friends that were reminiscing on good times after a long period apart instead of mortal enemies that were locked in an endless, murderous loop.

“I suppose I can’t talk you into quitting this whole thing now, can I?” Sans asked.

“Pfft,” the Human scoffed, coughing weakly as blood stained their teeth. “You still think I’d stop from a simple beating? If that was all it took, this would’ve been over ages ago.”

“Welp, can’t say I didn’t try.” Sans shrugged.

“…How did you remember?” The Human asked after a moment. They turned to face him, their slightly softening.

Sans froze. His gaze shifted slightly away, sockets half-lidded as he thought about how to answer it. For a long moment, the air between them remained heavy before Sans finally answered with a low tone. “I guess I am just determined to stop you.”

The Human chuckled at that—an exhausted, knowing laugh that somehow still carried mirth. “Of course it was Chara. Shouldn’t have asked.”

“What!? How did he—!?”

“Tell them to calm down, it isn’t as hard.” The Human interrupted swiftly.

Sans blinked. His spine went rigid, not knowing how to feel about the fact that they knew what the Voice—no, Chara—was thinking. “How the hell did you—?”

“Chara’s the only person in this game with enough DETERMINATION to rival mine,” they said, voice laced with unnerving calmness despite the state of their body. “Plus, with how pissed they were last time we talked, though they tried to hide it from me, it doesn’t take a genius to know they decided to probably do something about it.”

Sans’s grin grew tighter and strained as he replied. “That still doesn’t explain why you knew they were…y’know in my head.”

The Human made a feeble effort to shrug, which due to their injuries and pain only caused them to raise one shoulder and then immediately hiss with pain. “Non-Consensual mind habitation,“ they muttered, “is kind of their thing.”

“Uh huh.” He said, voice somewhere between disbelief and resignation. “Gonna file that away between ‘stuff I didn’t need to know’ and ‘to investigate later’”.

“I do not act like he says. This is all a lie!” The voice remarked in his head as if to defend themselves.

The Human chuckled dryly. “Hey, Chara,” they called out to the voice. “You should probably reveal yourself to your new partner. Don’t want to make the same mistakes as before, do you?”

“….” The voice went silent after that.

Sans didn’t bother acknowledging it; he’d long since learned when not to poke a sleeping monster. Instead, he looked back at the Human with a determined look as he stepped back up. “Anyway… your little ‘kill every monster, end the world’ routine? It’s over. I’m taking you to Alphys. Maybe she can figure out how to fix that SOUL of yours before it blows the whole Underground to dust.”

The Human gave a humorless grin. “Heh… did you tell fishsticks that too?”

Before Sans could even process the jab, they were already moving. Despite the massive hole in their chest, despite the blood loss, the Human lunged forward with terrifying speed—knife flashing through the air toward his skull. Time seemed to slow. Sans barely had the chance to widen his eyes before something else streaked through the scene: a blur of blue cutting through the air with brutal precision.

A blue spear of pure magic impaled the Human through the head, bursting out of where their right eye socket should be in a spray of red. Their knife clattered to the ground, slipping from their grasp as their body convulsed. Blood splattered across Sans’s jacket, staining the white fur of his hood deep crimson.

“SANS! YOU OKAY, PUNK!?”

Undyne’s voice ripped through the haze. He turned, stunned, to see her charging forward with the rest of the Royal Guard close behind, her face holding a grim expression.

When Sans looked back, the Human was still upright, trembling. Their lips twitched upward into a grin: twisted, mocking, and yet almost… fond. “See you in the next reset, Sans.”

Their body went limp.

“No… no no no NO!” Sans shouted, panic rising in his voice. He lunged forward, hands reaching out as if he could somehow stop what was already happening. But even before his fingers could graze their cooling skin, time began to rewind back.

◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇

Sans woke up with a blazing left eye though didn’t scream this time as he was much more preoccupied with an entirely separate matter right in front of him.

A human child, no older than maybe 12 years old, floated before him. They had short brown hair with red eyes, wearing a green sweater with stripes under a black shirt with brown pants and shoes. Around their neck looked a golden locket and on their side was a holster holding a knife. The human child stared at them before finally introducing themselves.

“Greetings, I am Chara, the Demon that comes when you call its name. Though up until now you only known me as ‘the Voice’.”

Chapter Text

Toriel had been the Guardian of the Ruins for a long time.

She had been the guardian long enough that the title felt less like a role and more as her very identity, etched into her very SOUL by time. Time which had become a slow, suffocating phenomena in the years since Monsterkind had been trapped underground, making her struggle to remember a time when they hadn’t been trapped.

She could still remember the first time she had come here, the weight of grief—heavier than the stone halls themselves—crushing her SOUL as she walked. She had carried the corpse of her child in her arms as she descended into the Ruins, her every step deliberate, every breath of hers testing her mind. The world to her back then was hollow, stripped of any warmth and meaning that could be found. She remembered how tightly she had held them, as though sheer will might return life back to the dead body, as though denial could undo the tragedy that had already been done.

Throughout it all, a single truth dominated her mind and led to her actions: she had refused to become like Asgore.

She could not stomach the annihilation of humanity he spoke of so easily, could not accept the genocide he wished to enact as justice no matter how deep her grief cut. At first, she had tried to reason with him. She had begged, argued, pleaded with him through long days and nights that ultimately blurred together in despair. Words had clashed against words until they lost all meaning and Toriel finally understood that Asgore would never yield. His resolve held strong like iron, and her voice, no matter how desperate and broken, could not break it.

When she had realized that, something inside her broke quietly and quickly.

The last act she had done as Queen of Monsterkind was take the corpse of Chara—her child—whose body Asriel had carried back from the surface with his trembling, broken body. Asgore had no right to see them, not if he intended to stain their memory with the blood of an entire species. She would not allow their body to remain beside someone who had chosen the path of murderer, even if that murderer was her own husband.

Carrying their corpse had not been easy.

It was nothing short of torture.

To touch their cold skin when it should have been warm, to feel the stillness where life should have been, it had been the worst sensation of Toriel’s life. In that moment Toriel hated herself for failing to be a good mother to them. For surely if she had been a good mother, then it would have never occurred in the first place. And it was in that hatred that another thought struck Toriel, making her truly disgusted with herself, as she wished briefly that Asriel had never gotten to the surface after absorbing Chara’s SOUL. That she would have preferred Chara living on even in a fractured state like that to this.

But they were both gone.

Asriel…

Her boy.

Her light.

Her joy.

Slaughtered in cold blood by humanity.

She was not a saint. She too had felt rage upon learning the truth; a rage that had been blinding, every bit as fierce as Asgore’s own. But unlike him, she had not surrendered to it. She had forced herself to remember the boy Asriel was and what he had believed in. Asriel would not have wanted the both of them to lose each other to anger and hatred. He would have wanted them to have hope, even when the world gave them every reason to abandon it.

It was that belief that had carried her forward even now when nothing else could.

Since her unofficial resignation as the Queen of Monsterkind and her self-imposed exile into the Ruins, six human children had fallen into the Underground. Six lives, each different from the other, some terrified, and some excited, but all wholly unprepared for the world they had stumbled into. Toriel had taken them in every time. She had given them a home, warm meals, guidance, and companionship should they desire it. For a while, she had believed that this would be enough, that keeping them safe within the Ruins might mend the past.

Oh, how wrong she was!

Some of the children had only stayed a few days. Others lingered for weeks, even months. They had shared their habits, fears, and laughter with her. And she had found herself growing attached despite knowing how it would all end.

Because, eventually, they would all make the same choice.

They would all leave.

Some longed to return to their parents, to the surface world where their loved ones lived. Some could noy stomach the isolation of the Ruins, no matter how gentle she tried to make it. And some…some of them had wanted to free Monsterkind from the barrier. Each time, she had tried to stop them from leaving, and each time she had failed miserably. She had stood before them, SOUL heavy, voice trembling, as she begged them to stay.

And every time she failed, she lost a piece of herself and had it replaced with failure.

For she was nothing but a failure.

A failure as a mother.

A failure as a wife.

A failure as a queen.

And finally, a failure as a guardian.

But now was different.

Her friend from outside had told her that Asgore already possessed six SOULs. The words had struck her like a blade to the chest, not because of doubt, but because of the confirmation that she had thoroughly wished to avoid. Six children. Six lives ended by Asgore’s hand in pursuit of his vengeance. Small children murdered for a selfish cause he believed justified their death.

But she was equally at fault, wasn’t she?

She had allowed them to walk away. Even when her heart screamed at her to stop them, even when she knew what waited for them beyond the Ruins, she had let them go. She had tried to convince herself that it was kindness; respect for their choices but it was, in truth, something despicable.

It was nothing but cowardice.

By letting them leave, she was just as much their murderer as Asgore was.

Which is why…

Toriel looked down at the child before her, watching them carefully as they worked through the puzzle laid out before them in the corridor. She paid close attention to the way they moved, the quiet efficiency and great skill with which they had solved each mechanism presented to them. Their face held no panic, no frustration, not even the hesitation that is common with children their age. The only thing on their face was focus.

I won’t let you leave, my child, she vowed silently. I won’t have another innocent’s blood be spilled to satiate that beast’s wrath. I swear it: I will keep you safe. Even if you come to eventually hate me for it, I will still protect you.

Toriel thought to herself as she gave the human a smile.

The child looked no older than eleven or twelve. They wore a blue sweater with purple stripes, a pair of blue shorts, and brown shoes; she had instantly memorized these clothes in her mind the moment she saw them. Their skin was slightly yellowish, their brown hair falling messily around their face and hiding their eyes from her. What left of their face that she could see, however, was unnervingly neutral. It hadn’t changed at all since she had rescued them from that horrid flower, only changing slightly to show how focused they were.

After entering the final piece of the puzzle into place, the Human turned away and walked back toward her. Toriel quickly opened her mouth to praise them, to congratulate them like she had done so far—only to stop immediately upon sensing the heavy air around the child. Even as their face remained impassive like always, a depressive aura clung to them and quicky drew her attention.

“My child....are you alright?” Toriel asked gently, “I cannot help but sense some disappointment from you. Did you not have fun with the puzzles?”

The child looked up at her, seeming to contemplate something. “I did,” they said after a moment, their voice calm and flat as their own expression. “But they were a bit too easy.” They looked down to the ground, avoiding her eyes. “I didn’t expect it to be over so soon.”

Ahh. It made sense now.

Understanding dawned on her, soon accompanied by a faint, embarrassed blush. Toriel felt her grow a bit sheepish(she internally chuckled at the unintentional pun, wishing she could tell her friend from outside that if it hadn’t meant revealing who she was)at that.

“Is that so?” She asked kindly. “There is no need to worry, my child. I’ll be sure to give you lots of puzzles when we get home. Ones that will be more to your liking.” She explained.

The human lifted their head again. Their expression was still the same as before, but they raised a hand and gave her a thumbs-up. Toriel could not help but laugh softly at the gesture. She stepped close to them, extending her hand as the child accepted it without any hesitation.

Together they began walking to her home.

All the while, as she focused on the path ahead, she did notice how, for the briefest moment, the child’s reflection darkened: their clothes turning into a shade of grey, their skin turning dark like the void itself, their hair becoming white, and their lips curling into something vicious and malicious before smoothing back into neutrality.

She walked blissfully ignorant, unaware that the type of fiend she hated was much closer to her than she could have ever realized.

◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇

Sans stared at Chara hovering in front of him, his sockets wide, his mind still struggling to connect the dots on what was happening in front of him no matter how long he looked. For several long moments, he simply sat there, frozen beneath the covers, as if waiting for reality to correct itself and become normal or the person—no, the ghost in front of him disappearing. When neither happened—Chara remaining where they were, their presence undeniably presence and seeming to gravitate everything toward themselves—Sans finally acted.

“Nope,” was his only response.

With that single word, he rolled to the side, yanked the blanket back up and over his skull, turning his back to Chara as if that was enough to deny the impossible apparition’s existence.

For a moment, Chara simply floated there, stunned into silence, before they finally moved.

They reappeared beside the bed in an instant, leaning down until they were well within Sans’s personal space, their glare sharp enough to be felt even without a physical form. If he had to compare it to someone, it would without a doubt be similar to Undyne’s.

“What do you mean ‘nope’?” They snapped. “You do not get to quit now. Not after everything.”

Sans groaned into his pillow, dragging a hand down his skull before turning just enough to speak over his shoulder. “I am not doing this,” he said flatly. “Beating the Human? Sure. I was gearing up for that one already. But meeting the dead prince of Monsterkind in my bedroom?” He shook his head. “Nope. Hard pass.”

Chara’s expression twisted. “Why are you acting like this is a surprise when the Human addressed me earlier?”

“I didn’t expect them to be actually telling the truth.”

“Out of everything you expect this to be hard to believe!?” Chara pinched the bridge of their translucent nose, visibly trying to keep what little patience they had left intact. They opened their mouth to retort when a loud, familiar voice thundered up from downstairs.

“SANS! ARE YOU ALRIGHT, BROTHER?” Papyrus shouted. “YOU WERE SCREAMING A FEW MOMENTS AGO!!”

The sound instantly cut through Sans’s stubborn retreat like a hot knife through butter. He stiffened, let out a long, resigned sigh and then, slowly, pushed himself upright, the blanket sliding down as he rubbed his eye sockets. With a sharp motion, he flung the covers off himself entirely, sending them sailing across the room and straight into the self-sustaining trash tornado at the corner. He watched it swallow the blanket with some amusement, then turned to face Chara.

“Alright,” he said tiredly. “Let’s address the elephant-shaped ghost in the room.”

He looked at them once more, head to toe, as if expecting to flicker or glitch out of existence—it would be so easy if they did so—before his expression hardened upon them remaining.

“How are you alive?” Sans asked.

Chara raised an eyebrow, clearly unimpressed by his question. Silence stretched between the two of them, heavy and deliberate, until they finally spoke in a flat tone. “Simply put,” they began calmly. “I am not.”

Sans waited for a follow-up. When nothing of the sort came, he gestured vaguely at them. “Ok. Care to expand on that, or…?”

“The circumstances of my presence does not matter,” Chara continued, their voice sharpening a bit from the previous flat tone. “What matters is our goal. My return is insignificant compared to stopping the Human. Or did you forget what’s happening while you’re lying in bed arguing semantics?” They leaned closer until both of their foreheads almost touched(could his skull even touch Chara’s ghostly head?). “They’re killing monsters in the Ruins, Sans. Innocent monsters who had done nothing to deserve what was happening to them. They are raising their LV while you waste time.”

“No,” Sans replied, raising a finger up to gain their attention. “If I am doing this, I need to know everything.

There were no room for arguments left in his voice. It was either that Chara told him everything they knew about the situation or Sans refused to work with them. Too much misery had been caused to the Underground and Asgore for Sans to wave aside their death like that.

He sat up straighter, gaze locked onto them. “Monsterkind was told you died a thousand years ago. You and Prince Asriel. Your deaths were the reason Asgore declared war on humanity in the first place.” His voice lowered a bit without losing any of the gravity it held. “You’re the reason he’s miserable like that; a hollow husk of who he once was.”

It hurt Sans every time he and the King talked with each other. Sans was not close to the King like Gerson and Undyne were but he could still sense the sheer grief and loneliness that surrounded Asgore at all times due to the tragedy that befell him.

Sans clenched his hand into the mattress. “So if you’re standing in front of me, I need to know how. Because none of this adds up.”

He looked at them expectantly, sockets burning with a mix of suspicion and frustration.

Chara stared at him once more, giving him a curious look as their eyes seemed to penetrate his very SOUL. It was like they were dissecting his very existence even as he lived and stood before them until they finally gave a hollow chuckle. The sound was unpleasant in nature, like something scraped from the darkest corners of one mind as they revealed:

“They awakened me.” They stated more than spoke.

Their answer left even more questions in Sans’s mind than it did before. “What do you mean?”

“I am afraid I mean exactly that. As you know, I was supposed to be dead; my SOUL having been absorbed by my sibling before he too died. And that was how I was for the last thousand years until…”

A nostalgic, yet bitter, grin came over their face as they continued. “The Human arrived. Their DETERMINATION was strong; strong enough to awake me from my own death. As they fell upon my grave in the Ruins, their DETERMINATION revived a part of my SOUL which merged with their own. It was like…waking up from a long sleep. One moment, I remember nothing and the other, I was staring down upon a human child.”

Sans’s eyes narrowed. “You were with them? Then how are you here with me?”

Chara gave a hollow chuckle as they began to answer only for Papyrus to yell again.

“BROTHER, ARE YOU ALRIGHT?? I AM COMING UP TO YOUR ROOM!”

Both Sans and Chara froze at once. Sans felt his SOUL lurch as Chara’s eyes widened, their form stiffening in midair as they blanched. Panic briefly flashed across both of them at the same time, and Sans moved quickly to handle the situation.

“Don’t worry about it, Paps!” He called out quickly, forcing a casual tone into his voice. “Just had a bad dream.” Sans quickly lied.

There was a pause, followed by the sound of footsteps on the bottom of the stairs that made both of their non existent heart panic.

“ARE YOU SURE, SANS?” Papyrus relied, concern bleeding through his usual bravado. ”YOU KNOW YOU CAN TELL THE GREAT PAPYRUS ANYTHING! THERE IS NO PROBLEM I CANNOT SOLVE!!” Papyrus replied.

Sans rubbed his skull, already exhausted. “Yep, I know, bro. But like I said, it isn’t anything to worry about.”

“IF YOU SAY SO, BROTHER.” Papyrus said, a bit of uncertainty in his voice. “I WILL BE IN THE KITCHEN IF YOU NEED ME.”

Moments later, the sound of pots and pans clanging together echoed faintly through the house, confirming that Papyrus had indeed gone back downstairs. Sans exhaled slowly, the tension draining from his stature as he palmed his skull and dragged his hand down in a tired motion.

He turned back toward Chara, about to press them for more answers, only to stop when they raised a single finger to their lips.

“We wasted enough time already,” Chara said, their tone sharp as always. “We should go down now, before he grows concerned enough to actually come up here. That would cost us precious time; time we need if we intend to stop the Human in their tracks before they do too much damage.”

Sans frowned. “Don’t talk about Papyrus like that,” he muttered, swinging his legs off the bed and sliding his slippers onto his feet. He wore his jacket and stood a step toward the door, only to freeze mid motion as his body suddenly locked in place, not moving even as he willed it to.

“Oh no, you don’t,” Chara said coolly.

Sans blinked, trying to understand what was happening and why his bones refused to obey him. “What the—” he started, only to be cut off.

“I will not have you go out like that,” Chara said. “Since you are my partner now, I refuse to let you face anyone looking like a homeless monster. I may have allowed this previously but that was simply because you were not used to my presence.”

They then drifted toward his closet as Sans shot them an incredulous look. “Weren’t you just lecturing me about wasting time?”

“Yes,” Chara replied without missing a beat, peering inside his closet with eerie focus. “Which is why it is imperative that you change immediately and not waste both of our time.”

They looked through his clothes with clear disdain before spotting a few items with a smile. “I do not like these,” they added. “But they will suffice for the time being. Now change.”

“I am not changing my clothes just because you want me to look fancy.”

“Do not flatter yourself. No clothing could ever fix your ridiculous appearance. I simply intend to make it less hideous than it already is.”

“Well, gee, thanks. Still not doing it so you can forgeddaboutit.”

Chara paused, hovering in place. For a moment, they seemed to debate something internally. Then a slow, troublesome grin crept over their face that Sans should always be associated with dread from now. They floated back down onto the bed and crossed their arms.

“Very well,” Chara said. “Then I suppose we will stay here. While the Human kills everyone.”

Sans’s smile thinned to nearly nothing. He punched the bridge of his skull, resisting the urge to scream at them. He hated changing his clothes on principle—especially because someone else demanded it—but he hated the idea of wasting time more than they already have.

With a long, defeated sigh, he admitted his defeat to them and instantly came to regret it with all his SOUL. “Fine. Whatever. Tell me what I should wear.”

The look of triumph on Chara’s face was infuriating.

They rose and gestured sharply at the closet, ordering him to open it and retrieve specific items. Sans complied and found himself surprised by some of what he owned, clothes he had not worn in years, tucked away in some corner of the closet. Chara then examined him critically until, at last, they nodded in approval.

Sans grunted before a mischievous grin came over his face.

“Well,” Chara snapped. “What are you waiting for?”

Sans chuckled. “You can’t seriously expect me to change with you still here. What, you wanna see me naked that badly?” He then began to take off his jacket as Chara then panicked.

“What!? No!” Chara yelped, their composure shattering as their face flushed a deep, furious red. “What kind of question is that!?”

Before Sans could say another word, Chara phased straight through the wall, vanishing from the room.

Sans burst into laughter, loud and unrestrained, the sound filling the small space as he shook his head. Still chuckling, he finally changed into the clothes they had picked out, amused despite himself and already bracing for whatever chaos awaited him downstairs.

◇ ◇ ◇ ◇ ◇

“Uh, these are much more uncomfortable than I thought.” Sans complained.

“Quit it! The time for grumbling is over.” Chara said, floating beside him as they both came downstairs.

Sans was now tugging uncomfortably at the clothes Chara gave him, while wearing sunglasses to hide his red eye lights from Papyrus.

“I will be going out a bit early for patrol, bro.” Sans informed his brother as he moved toward the door of the house.

“ARE YOU SURE, SANS? I WOULD ADVISE AGAINST GOING OUT ON AN EMPTY STOMACH, BROTHER!” Papyrus told him, looking at him with a worried expression.

“It’s no biggie, bro. I can get something from Grillbys later.”

“SANS!! YOU KNOW I HATE YOU VISITING THAT GREASETRAP!!!”

“I know, bro. Don’t worry, I’ll still eat your spaghetti later.” Sans said, quickly moving out of the house before Papyrus could say anything.

Sans then let out a sigh, once again tugging at his new clothes as Chara appeared beside him with a frown and commented.

“I don’t think spaghetti eating would be the biggest of our concerns for now.”

“Tell me about it,” Sans responded sarcastically before disappearing with a pop sound. He quickly appeared inside Alphys’s lab, frightening her as the sudden sound made her shriek, flailing backward against the monitor, but didn’t give her the chance to complain as he quickly cut to the point.

“Code: Black,” Sans cut her off sharply, his tone leaving no room for hesitation or argument. “Human has began a genocide of the Underground. They can LOAD. Get Undyne. Perform a quick evacuation of the Underground.” His tone was cold and mechanical as he said it, quickly disappeared after finishing, leaving behind a confused Alphys who quickly understood and got to work.

Sans then appeared outside Ruins’s door with a cold expression, moving toward it, causing Chara to ask them with a confused expression. “What are you doing? This isn’t efficient! It would be more advantageous to us if we hide in the woods. It will allow us to easily perform an ambush on the Human.”

“I know. But I need to know something. To know if its possible to save the Old Lady.” Chara instantly became silent at that as Sans let out a sigh as he walked until he was in front of the Ruins’s door. He raised his hands and knocked it three times.

Silence was the only thing that remained for a few moments until he raised his hand to knock again before he was interrupted by three knocks from inside the Ruins. A grin came over Sans before a familiar, terrifying voice greeted him instead of the one he wished to hear, chilling both and Chara’s SOUL down to the bone.

“Hello, Sans,” The Human said, clear amusement in their voice. “I’ve been waiting for you.”