Big Kids At Play
And now, I depict one of my favorite Undertale scenarios ever.
Midday on a Wednesday, with his parents and Frisk at school, Asriel was doing what he always did on the weekdays, trying to find ways to pass the time. The house was fairly quiet at the moment, as Alphys and Undyne were in the basement, as usual, and Sans was at Muffet's place.
As he was walking down the upstairs hallway, Asriel heard tapping noises coming from Papyrus's room, curious, hey decided to investigate. The door to the tall skeleton's room was open, allowing the goat boy to look inside.
Inside the room, Papyrus was sitting at the table in his room, on which he kept his action figures; at the moment, the tall skeleton seemed to be cleaning the small, plastic figures.
Papyrus sprayed one of tiny robot figurines in his hand, wiping it down with a cloth immediately after.
"What are you doing?" he heard.
The skeleton glanced over his shoulder and saw the young goat child looking up at him curiously.
"Ah, well," he answered, "I've just finished polishing all of my action figures, like all responsible collectors should."
Asriel looked at the figures on the table.
"Oh, okay," he voiced, "um...what are action figures?"
"WHAA!?" Papyrus responded in shock, "Child, you mean to tell me that you've never seen an action figure before?"
Asriel shook his head.
"No worries, Asriel," the tall skeleton affirmed, petting the goat boy's head, "the Great Papyrus shall educate you."
Papyrus picked up one of the plastic figures.
"This is an action figure, action figures are small representation of a famous person, fictional or otherwise, with jointed limbs, making them posable, usually made out of plastic, though they can be made out of just about any kind of material." He demonstrated the details by moving the figures stiff limbs up and down.
"What do they do exactly?" Asriel wondered.
"Well, physically, they don't actually do anything," the tall skeleton explained, "their abilities and their exploits are whatever you imagine them to be, case in point, I always use my action figure to construe theoretical battle scenarios."
"You mean, you play with them," the goat boy affirmed, "then, they're toys?"
"I mean...if you want to get technical, then, yes, I suppose they qualify as toys," Papyrus responded, "big kid toys, of course."
Asriel picked up one of the action figures and looked at it with intrigue.
"Big kid toys." he mused.
Then he looked up curiously.
"So, if I heard you correctly," Asriel inquired, "these action figures don't actually do anything, you just do pretend things with them, like make them talk and fight and stuff?"
"That is correct." Papyrus affirmed.
"So..." the goat child replied, "they're...dolls?"
Upon hearing the reply, the orange-clad skeleton flinched.
"Eh, heh heh," he laughed awkwardly, "while your confusion is understandable, little one, I assure you, action figures are no "dolls"."
"Boys are allowed to play with dolls." Asriel stated.
"A fact we're not denying," Papyrus voiced, "I'm just making a point, action figures are, in fact, tools, yes, for exercising your imagination."
Asriel looked on blankly.
"Like dolls." he attested.
Papyrus inhaled and exhaled deeply.
"We're making no progress with this conversation topic," the tall offered said patiently, "let's move on to another."
Asriel looked at all of the action figures again.
"How come none of these action figures have shirts on?" he wondered.
"Oh, that's how they're designed," Papyrus explained, "luckily, each action figure comes with its own set of armor I can put on and take off whenever I please, I can even alternate their armor with one another."
"Oh, so you can dress them up?" Asriel responded.
"That is correct." the orange-clad skeleton stated.
"Dolls." Asriel coughed.
Papyrus heard the goat child's response, but, chose to ignore it for the sake of not returning to the previous subject.
"So, is anyone home yet?" he asked.
"No," the goat boy sighed, "school doesn't end until 3:15 p.m., and even then, Mom and Dad don't get home with Frisk until 3:30 p.m.; Undyne and Alphys are still down in the basement and Sans hasn't come home yet either."
"Ah, he must still be over at Muffet's place." Papyrus responded.
Asriel rocked one of the action figures back and forth aimlessly.
"Sans has sure been spending an awful lot of time with her lately." Asriel said.
"That he has." Papyrus sighed.
"What do they do over there?" the goat child inquired.
The tall skeleton was silent for several seconds before responding.
"...I try not to think about it." he said awkwardly.
"Well...Muffet's a baker, right?" Asriel voiced, "And sometime Sans bakes with Mama, so, maybe they're baking."
"Yes, that's it," Papyrus said coolly, "they're probably baking together."
He looked back down at his collection.
"Hopefully not baking anything they'll regret." he muttered.
"What?" the goat child responded.
"Nothing." Papyrus uttered.
He then stood up.
"Hey, I have an idea," he said, "let's go find something else to do."
He picked the goat boy up.
"So, Prince," the tall skeleton inquired, "what do you like to do for fun?"
Asriel smiled as he thought of something.
"I know what we can do." he said, lightly kicking his legs.
Moments later, Papyrus and Asriel were sitting at the kitchen table, making macaroni art, a concept that instantly fascinated the orange-clad skeleton.
"Wowie," Papyrus said, "I had no idea macaroni could be used for artistic purposes."
"You know, if you put string through it," Asriel informed him, "you can also make jewelry out of it."
"Really now?" the tall skeleton responded, "How clever."
"Yeah, Frisk said some of the kids at school do that when they do arts and crafts." the goat child said, adjusting a noodle the paper in front of him.
Asriel picked up the box from which they had dumped the macaroni they used.
"Looks like we used the whole box." he said, turning the empty, cardboard container over to reveal that there was nothing left.
"Well, it was a small box," Papyrus replied, "perhaps we should try it with other kinds of noodles sometime, like that bow-tie pasta."
"Or Penne pasta." Asriel offered.
Just then, they heard the front door close.
"Anyone home?" they heard.
It was Sans.
"In here." Papyrus called.
Sans walked into the kitchen, dragging a lone grocery bag behind him.
"Whatcha guys doin'?" he asked.
"We're making macaroni pictures," the tall brother affirmed, "it was Asriel's suggestion."
"Yeah," Asriel said, "after Papyrus showed me his collection of 'action figures'."
Sans leaned against the table with his arms folded.
"Well, the prince had never seen one before," the orange clad skeleton brother voiced, "so, I decided to inform him on the subject."
"Yeah, though, to me, they seemed awful similar to dolls." Asriel said.
"A matter which we cleared up," Papyrus pressed, "as we agreed that they are not dolls."
"Actually, ya know, if you type 'Doll' into the search engine of Google, 'action figure' comes up as one of the synonyms (This is actually true)." Sans affirmed.
"No it doesn't!" the tall brother responded defensively.
Without a second though, Sans whipped out his phone, brought up the search engine and proved himself to be telling the truth.
An awkward silence filled the kitchen.
"Well...you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet." Papyrus asserted.
"Were you really at Muffet's house this entire time, Sans?" Asriel inquired.
"Not the entire time," Sans said, "she had to go grocery shopping, so I tagged along with her to help her carry stuff."
"Really?" Papyrus questioned, "How much did she buy that six arms wasn't enough to carry everything?"
"Uh...did you forget that she runs a business?" the short skeleton replied, "It takes a lot of ingredients to keep those cases stocked."
"Don't people who run those kinds of establishments have people who buy the supplies for them?" the tall skeleton voiced.
"Probably," Sans said, "but, Muffet prefers to do the shopping herself to ensure that she gets exactly what she wants."
"Let me guess..." Papyrus queried, "you payed for everything, didn't you?"
"No...it was an errand, not a date," the short skeleton attested, "in fact, as thanks for being such a 'gentleman', she even bought me something."
Sans reached into the grocery bag he had with him and pulled out a large container of ketchup, one that someone would buy for special occasions.
"Woooooooow." Asriel responded in awe
Papyrus just looked on awkwardly.
"Are you gonna drink that whole thing all by yourself?" the goat child wondered.
"I might give it a go later on," Sans replied, "wanna watch?"
"Yeah!" Asriel uttered excitedly.
The short skeleton brother put his "treat" in the fridge for later.
"Hmm," he mused, "wonder how Toriel'll react when she comes home and sees this monster jug of ketchup in her fridge?"
"Ah ha, finally," Papyrus announced, "I have finished my creation!"
The teenage skeleton held up his piece of paper to reveal that he had made a slightly askew macaroni picture of his own face.
"What do you think, Asriel?" he asked.
"He he," the goat boy laughed, "looks like we had the same idea."
He held up his own piece, which turned out to be a semi-clumsy picture of Papyrus himself, albeit a full-body one.
"Though, instead of just your face, I did you as a whole," Asriel said, "see, I even made your cape...well, I tried to at least."
"Awwww." Sans sighed.
"I think I may need a little more practice," Asriel voiced, "I've only recently gotten back into this since I came back, so, I'm kinda rusty...Papyrus?"
The stunned tall skeleton was looking on speechlessly.
"Uh...you cryin' bro?" Sans questioned.
"NO!" Papyrus uttered emotionally, jamming his fingers into the corners of his eyes, "I'm not...I just...got an itch! Nyeh heh heh...heh...nyaaaaaaaah!"
After finishing "Voidmate", just like when I finished "The Light That Leads Us Home", I wanted to do a more uplifting fic, so, I did this, because, I really wanted to do something with Asriel and Papyrus bonding.
Now I just need to figure out which concept to go with next: "Asriel's first day of school with Frisk", "Asriel & Sans bonding time", "Frisk and Asriel trying to help make Gaster's presence known to someone else (leaning toward Alphys or Asgore)", or "Sans spending the night with Muffet (fluff not smut!)". All of these (hopefully) will get done eventually, but, I just need to figure which one will immediately follow this one.