"Your really think that I'm the best option for her to go with?" Sans asked, far from convinced.
"Yes" Grillby said. "You know each other, you know everywhere in the underground"
"I'm still not sure" Sans said. "Wasn't I the one who messed up so badly in Waterfall, and with Papyrus?"
"You can learn from the mistakes" Grillby said. "If you don't want to, why not at least show her the Riverperson? You know that he could take her past Waterfall straight to Hotland"
"I'm not to sure about that either" Sans protested. "Frisk really hates water, and I don't want to put her in a position where she has to trust another monster to keep her dry"
"Then take her on the exploration yourself!" Grillby said, frustrated. "There's only two real ways that this can go, and you're the better option"
"Why not just let her go on her own?" Sans asked, frustrated. "She's doesn't need anyone to guide her through it step by step"
"No, she really does" Grillby said, trying to explain without being overly embarrassing. "She doesn't know how to read or write with the consistency needed to navigate on their own. She doesn't know how to use a phone, even though she's carrying one around with her for whatever reason. She has absolutely no knowledge of her basic limits, let alone where she's going. Even if she outgrew them aboveground, she really still needs to be in stripes until she learns the way that things work here" he tried to explain delicately, wincing at the reminder.
"She can't have been happy about that" Sans said, wincing almost more that Grillby was. "She nearly pitched a fit at me when I just called her a kid when I first saw her coming down the path, and she only calmed down about that description when she saw Papyrus's… les mature behavior"
"Ugg, may God give her patience if that was the only thing that could calm her down then" Grillby said, shaking his head. "But I do know why she reacted so strongly. Apparently, kids were captured to work at other people's farms and houses and do all sorts of things back on the surface. Once you were an adult up there, people couldn't steal you from your home anymore, even though they could still hurt you in other ways… Some of the stuff she had to say about life up there just makes me feel sick. I honestly can say that I'm glad that Chara didn't manage to free us from the surface now. Living up there sounds like a nightmare" he said, shuddering.
"Come on, I doubt that it could really be that bad" Sans protested, but Grillby shut him up with a glare.
"She didn't know what her kind was when I first saw her. She told me then that her mother knew that she was 'contaminated' but didn't know more about it then. There was no way that she would have known that term otherwise"
Sans shrugged. "I don't know what that term means, so don't expect that to mean anything to me"
"It means that when a Fire Elemental passed a bit of their flame down with a human, it wasn't with their consent. It would pretty much be taking someone else's child or just someone else and suddenly making them like you. It takes a lot off effort out of the Fire Elemental, and it always upsets the other person involved. If that was happening and Frisk wasn't being told anything more, I can assume that the situation was pretty bad for her parents… and for the monsters that were trapped up there"
"Wait, how on earth could any have survived up there?" Sans asked, horrified.
"I really don't know" Grillby said. "By the way that Frisk talked about it, the way was over eighty years ago. She seems to think that monsters have died out on the surface, even the ones that were left up there, with enough time for part human monsters to gain and lose favor with the various kings and queens. It's barely been enough time for one emperor to die of, unless there was another revolution. I don't quite understand it myself…"
"I actually have a possible explanation for that" Sans said, wincing. "Various tests have indicated that time sometimes flows differently in and outside the barrier. I'd rather not go into all of the depressing things that time has also been shown to do inside the barrier, but I can pretty much guaranty that whatever they think happened on the surface could easily have happened"
Grillby found a fault in Sans' logic. "You both believe whatever they said happened sense the war actually happened for them and you don't believe that things on the surface were awful for children?"
Sans really thought it over. "Well, yeah, that is a bit paradoxical of me. I'm agreeing that multiple generations could have passed on the surface, not saying that they weren't exaggerating"
"I don't see why they couldn't be telling the whole truth if you have an explanation for part of it" Grillby said, trying to poke a whole in Sans' logic. "If that much time could have passed up there, then who knows what actually changed?" he asked Sans. "Do try and find a rational answer for this one, Sans"
"If people really were doing that stuff to their kids…" Sans said, and then he had to stop. He remembered an abnormality, one that he was the only one to remember. The timeline had switched around three times when Gaster was still alive, and one of those times he'd done some pretty cruel things to his sons himself. The timeline had gone back after that, and it was like those tests never happened. Papyrus didn't remember, and no one else had remembered what happened that time. It very well could have happened on the surface… and that added a whole new layer to what the barrier was actually doing to everyone. This merited study, and lots of help from Frisk. "Yeah, I'll take her"
"Wonderful" Grillby said, smiling. "When would you be willing to go?"
"Actually, I was going to see about altering my work hours with Mettaton tomorrow, once Papyrus fills in the forms for my resignation as a sentry" Sans said. "It would be no hardship to take her along when I do that"
"You're resigning?" Grillby questioned. "I've been advising you to do that for months, everyone knows how board you are with it. What made you agree so suddenly?"
"It was Papyrus" Sans said, looking down. "He said that I'm overshadowing him and that he would be better off without me hanging around"
"That is a lie" Grillby said, upset. "You're letting him push you around, Sans, and I don't think that it's good for either of you. He's getting more spoiled almost by the day, and you are just letting him walk all over everything that you do, other than keeping up the jokes that keep you around"
"I can't stop them, Grillbs!" Sans said, distraught. "No matter what I do, life feels pointless unless I keep making a few jokes here and there"
"You don't need to quit them just because he asked you to" Grillby said, harsh with his attempt to make the message stick. "You don't have to do everything that he tells you to do"
"Mabey the separation will be good for both of us then" Sans said, helpless. "I can't make myself act differently around him, and he probably will do better not having someone to shelter him from the realities of life"
"I suppose" Grillby said. "I still think that you give him way too much control"
"I know, but that's why this move is going to be a good thing" Sans said hopefully. "It will stop both of us from enabling each other's bad habits"