((PLEASE NOTE that the following story contains potential spoilers for all aspects of Undertale. Be aware of the basic story on neutral, genocide, and pacifist routes in the game. Undertale and its characters are copyright of Toby Fox, and I claim no ownership of its content or characters. The Errortale AU of Undertale, that of which this story builds from and utilizes, was created by loverofpiggies ( askerrorsans) on Tumblr. You should also be somewhat aware of her stories and creations, she can explain her characters better than I can. Any other Undertale AUs used in the story will be credited when they are mentioned. Those that weren't (Six-Feet-Under-Tale and upcoming AUs) were created by me in collaboration with user Pastrinator64. Without further ado, welcome to Only, an Errortale fanfic.))

Only

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It was a quiet night. Outside the window, snowflakes drifted down from nonexistent clouds, the white crystalline specks only visible in the light of the lampposts lining the snow-covered streets. Underworld's residents, the monsters, were all safely at home with their families, most definitely fast asleep. However, in the largest house on the block, only one room was lit. If you were standing in the street while looking up at the window, you may have been able to see the tall figure of a skeleton moving about and, behind him, the glow of a computer screen.

Papyrus had said goodnight hours ago, but he'd only spent a few minutes attempting to sleep. He knew he was the only one awake in the house; his brother Sans, the only other monster living at the house, was fast asleep in his room, his snores carrying through the vents. But Papyrus could not sleep. No, curiosity was eating away at his brain. It wasn't uncommon that he listened in on passing conversations as he recalibrated the puzzles leading to Snowdin, his hometown. It was a daily routine: get up early, set up puzzles, listen to passersby for local news, as if he was awaiting something. Everyone, Papyrus especially, was waiting on the arrival from the other world.

The conversation today had been between two kids, a Snowdrake and an Icecap, who had been discussing the latest trend on social media. Now, Papyrus highly regarded himself as a seasoned spaghettore, or at the very least, a master chef. Naturally, his attention was snagged like spaghetti noodles in a fork when he heard a reference to his favorite dish. The children were discussing the latest of Undernet fads: creepypasta.

That night, Papyrus plopped into his seat before the computer, the browser already up, the blinking cursor waiting for him to type his request. As he typed in the word, he spoke quietly to himself.

"CREEPYPASTA, HUH? NYEH HEH!" the skeleton exclaimed in a half whisper, a grin of childish curiosity lighting his face. "I CERTAINLY THOUGHT I HAD TRIED ALL SPAGHETTI RECIPES. I HOPE IT'S EASY TO MAKE." The results loaded, and he clicked on the first link, titled Six-Feet-Under-Tale. Then, expecting a recipe, he began to read:

"Long ago, two races ruled over the Earth: HUMANS and MONSTERS. One day, war broke out between the two races. After a long battle, the humans were victorious. They sealed the monsters underground with a magic spell. Many years later…

...nobody came. For decades, the monsters were plunged into darkness. The first human to fall had also been the last. They'd torn up the monsters' hearts enough as it was. Nobody climbed Mount Ebott. Nobody survived the fall. Nobody came. And the monsters, each day growing more and more hopeless, slowly lost themselves."

The story went on in excruciating detail as the monsters' mental states slowly deteriorated over the generations. The streets weren't safe, the shops weren't safe, the houses weren't safe. Blood and dust stained every cobblestone and every cavern wall. The world really had become "kill or be killed," and as desperation mounted to return to the surface, it became an all out civil war. Families against friends, monsters against monsters. The goal was to find enough monster souls to shatter the barrier even if it meant total genocide. This goal was like chasing smoke; every time a murderer stood over the victim as they turned to dust, the soul went with them. There were no souls to collect.

As he read, Papyrus grew more and more disturbed. He didn't even manage to get to the end before his skeletal hands were shaking, clattering against the surface of the desk. He shut his eyes, calling out the only way he knew how.

"S-SAAAANS!"

The shout had done its job. The steady snoring abruptly stopped, and his brother's eyes shot open, empty and dark in reaction to such a scared scream. At the same moment Sans jolted into a sitting position, his door opened, slamming against the wall. Papyrus was silhouetted in the doorway.

"SANS!" Papyrus cried, flinging himself into his older brother's arms. Reflexively, Sans's arms went around his brother, just like when they were kids.

"hey, bro, what's the matter?" Sans asked, the white of his glowing pupils returning to his eye sockets, rubbing his brother's shoulder. Papyrus was much taller and lankier despite being younger, making the position slightly awkward.

"I-IT WASN'T PASTAAA!" Papyrus wailed, tears, tinted an orangish red, involuntarily slipping down his cheekbones and onto Sans's sweatshirt, which he hadn't bothered to change out of.

This vague statement, of course, only confused him even more, but his panic for his brother's safety quickly ebbed. "are you saying it was an...im-pasta?" Sans joked lightheartedly.

Papyrus immediately let go of Sans and looked down at him, sniffing, his eye sockets narrowing. "SANS, YOU'RE HORRIBLE," he said blatantly, but a smile played on his mouth all the same, recognizing the attempt to cheer him up.

Sans grinned, motivated by the fact that his joke had some effect. "why don't you tell me what frightened ya," he amended, "and ol' sansy will take care of it, capiche?"

Papyrus nodded, pointing to his room. "SOMETHING I READ ON THE COMPUTER… I COULD HAVE SWORN CREEPYPASTA WAS A TYPE OF SPAGHETTI, BUT THE INTERNET LIED TO ME!"

Sans's eyes brightened ― literally ― in understanding. He pushed his brother off him with a playful shove and stood up, stretching. He really was short; his head didn't even reach Papyrus's when he was kneeling on the bed. "you can sleep here if you want," Sans offered. "i'll make sure it doesn't come up again. that's one kind of pasta that just makes my blood boil."

Sans strode out of the room, ignoring the pillow thrown at his skull from behind and the angry "NYEEEH!" that followed. He crossed the hall to his brother's room, where the computer was still on the same page it had been. But as soon as he got near, the website began to jitter. Lines of static streaked the page, colored boxes popping up here and there every few seconds, temporarily warping, splitting, and distorting the image. Sans furrowed his brow, leaning over the chair to try and move the mouse, but the cursor was frozen in place as if it were a part of the website, occasionally twitching and jumping with the screen. The glitches were escalating until the words on the page were nothing but an agitated mess of static and errors. A faint but high pitched buzzing was coming from the computer, and just when the whole screen was filled with distortions, the whole system shut down. The monitor went black.

Sans was taken aback, leaning a bit away from the computer as if something might jump out at him. His eye sockets had gone dark, his pupils gone, a natural response to his confusion and troubled reaction. "...what the hell," he said under his breath after a moment. Sans slowly sat down in the chair, reaching over to the console and pushing the power button.

At first, instead of the normal startup, the screen brightened just a bit as nonsensical text occasionally interrupted by a bout of static scrawled across the screen.

"01000001 01101110 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101111 01101110 01100101 00100000 01100010 01101001 01110100 01100101 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100100 01110101 01110011 01110100 00001101 00001010 01000001 01101110 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101111 01101110 01100101 00100000 01100010 01101001 01110100 01100101 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100100 01110101 01110011 01110100 00001101 00001010 01000001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100001 01101110 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101111 01101110 01100101 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101110 01100101 00101100 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100001 01101110 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101111 01101110 01100101 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101110 01100101 00001101 00001010 01000001 01101110 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101111 01101110 01100101 00100000 01100010 01101001 01110100 01100101 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100100 01110101 01110011 01110100 00001101 00001010 01001000 01100101 01111001 00101100 00100000 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01100111 01101111 01101110 01101110 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111 00001101 00001010 01000001 01101110 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101111 01101110 01100101 00100000 01100010 01101001 01110100 01100101 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100100 01110101 01110011 01110100"

Over the speakers, a faint jumble of words, speaking just above a whisper, could be heard. They were too faint to make out the words. Sans's breathing hitched. That voice was too familiar. He heard it every time he spoke. It was his.

Just as suddenly as the voice began, it was cut off and the 0's and 1's disappeared. The computer began to boot up normally, bypassing the screen that usually came up when the computer was shut down unexpectedly. Sans attempted to regain his composure, but only managed a shallow breathing rate. When he opened the browser, it asked if he wanted to resume the search that was lost when the computer shut down. He clicked yes, and it brought him instead to a page reading in big, bold letters; "404 Error: page not found." Sans huffed a sigh, slouching in the chair, unsure if he should be relieved or scared. He reached up to the mouse from his position in the chair and clicked the arrow to take him back to the search results.

The link to the story of Six-Feet-Under-Tale had completely disappeared. In its place was what had been the second result, as all of them had moved up. There was no notice detailing that it had been removed. No indication that the page, or the story itself, had ever existed.

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((Hello! So I've kind of taken a break from my other stories because of this little trend going on right now. Yep, Undertale. I've been following and participating as a member of its fandom since November and, needless to say, am obsessed. I am a huge fan of loverofpiggies's work and how well she develops her characters, so I'm curious to see how those characters will fare in my weeby but capable hands. This story is being primarily created for and posted on my Undertale Tumblr, geeettt-dunked-on (3 e's and 3 t's), so follow me there for updates. I will get back to my other stories for the Sonic fandom as soon as inspiration hits. Also, I'll be setting up a soon that you can support me at! Thanks for reading, and follow and favorite so you don't miss the next chapter! Reviews are nice too. :3))

~STH-N (ignore the Sonic-weeb-heavy username)