A/N: ...Somebody should probably stop me.
(Rated for bad language and eventually some weird stuff. No straight-up smut, I promise.)
The weirdest part, she thought, was that she was getting paid to do it.
Not that she ever did this for free—there was always compensation of some kind, from hard cash to more mundane currencies. A client once paid her with a "po boy" sandwich, which should have been an insult, but she was hungry at the time and mercenary enough to do a small job for it.
Those were always direct exchanges, though: a client approaches her, offers payment, and receives her... services. Person A performs job for client B and gets paid. There was very little confusion regarding how each side was benefiting from the deal.
For this deal, however, everything was confusing. The man who approached her in that alley behind the hotel didn't want her services—not for himself, anyway.
'I was told you could help me.' Or, she was told so by a couple of stoner idiot felines across the street. She was scraping the bottom of the barrel for help in this god-forsaken place.
'You want to go to the surface.'
'I want to get the hell out of here.'
'You don't look like you need help reaching the barrier. Why don't you give it a shot?'
'You think I didn't already fucking try that? UP is not a goddamn option.' The fall back down had hurt quite a bit.
'You have another way, but it's not working, is it? You want me to fix it.'
'You're pretty damn intuitive. You an em-reader, too?'
'I will help. What do you have to offer me?'
She told him. An immediate disinterest ('Don't you FUCKING judge me. It's the only thing I've got down here.') was replaced by a long, hard look at something... crazier.
He told her what he wanted, instead. She asked why in the world he'd want such a thing.
'It's an experiment,' he said ghoulishly, grin cut in plaster with the elegance of a serrated knife. The mask and bowler hat left all his motives to the imagination. He paid her half up front (and it was a lot—the bag was dripping with gold coins) and simply said pick one.
Pick one, she ruminated, rapping her claws on a tall mug as she squatted in a booth at a local pub.
GRILLBY'S was a gross place to wait, much less eat. The dogs playing "Go Fish" around the next table were gross. The grease and slobber on the tacky floor was gross. The fish-lipped, scaly old man eating chili fries out of a paper trough was gross. The bird slouched in a stained white shirt and picking its beak with a primary feather was gross. Even the air smelled like deep fried gross, but the only thing more gross was the permafrost outside, so she pulled the hood of her cloak over her brow and tried to be invisible.
She bent a look into the mug of "Shocker Topper" she ordered. The foam never died down, and it still tasted like the sweat of an orange rind filtered through a gym sock.
Everything she'd seen about this world had been weird, gross and insular. The people even called themselves monsters, as if that's a label worthy of identifying one's race and culture. She didn't mean to spend a lot of time acclimatizing to Snowdin's arctic climate and bizarre denizens, though. She just had to do this job, and maybe the shady man will have an answer to her predicament.
Or he's just screwing with-
"I DON'T KNOW WHY YOU'RE DRAGGING ME BACK TO THIS PIGSTY OF AN ESTABLISHMENT."
"you told Lesser Dog you'd play cards with him today."
Like a bad joke, two skeletons walked into the bar.
The taller of the pair swatted his red scarf behind him with an indignant bark. "WHAT? WHY WOULD I AGREE TO ANYTHING LIKE THAT? I'M FAR TOO BUSY. THIS RUGGEDLY HANDSOME ROYAL-GUARDSMAN-TO-BE ISN'T GOING TO TRAIN HIMSELF. OR GET MORE RUGGED."
The short one stuck his hands into the pockets of his blue hoodie and shrugged. "oh, right. I was the one who told him you'd play cards."
The taller's, "WHAT-" was drowned by scuffling chairs as the pack of dogs gravitated towards the pair. Most of them were wearing large armor plating that sounded like a kitchen drawer turning inside-out as the pack moved in.
"Sans!" exclaimed one, nearly biting his own lolling tongue. "You brought Papyrus. Are we getting bones today?" The others' ears perked at the prospect.
"Bone?"
"Bone~"
"Bone?!"
The taller skeleton wagged his leg furiously, one of the dog's canines already stapled to his shin. He turned and wobbled back out the door, Lesser Dog in tow. "NO, I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR YOUR FLEA-BITTEN AMUSEMENT! LEAVE MY POOR BONES ALONE!"
"huh, i guess that training's paying off. you're looking more rugged by the minute, brother!" the short one called after him. The other dogs raised some chortle-like barks to the ceiling and returned to their table of cards.
She watched the remaining skeleton walk to the bar and wave down the proprietor with mixed bemusement. Two skeletons, the man had said. Pick one.
She didn't know where to begin. She wasn't sure what she was expecting—perhaps not literal skeletons, made of real bones and walking and talking around. As a traveler she'd seen many strange things, though—magical and not—and she could probably guess these things' true nature if she studied them hard enough.
Necromancy was on the table—but the reanimated dead usually didn't hang around very long without a puppeteer, and even then they weren't very... lively.
A powerful spirit could hold on to a vessel for a while, but it was a less fruitful venture for the spirit after decomposition. Still, while digging through a nearby garbage dump she thought she heard a stuffed dummy talking, of all things, so—possession, maybe.
A third possibility—one that happened to mind as soon as she saw the pinpricks of light in that skeleton's eye sockets—was golems. Back where she came from, any enchanter worth his salt could create a golem. They were useful in a variety of industries, were easy to feed and upkeep, loved to work, and could last practically forever, depending on the components and strength of the enchanter's seal. Human goddamn remains had to be one of the most disgusting things to build a golem from, but possible...?
She wasn't sure. They weren't the least biologically sound monster she'd seen in these parts, at any rate. Hell, the barkeep (Grillby himself, she presumed) was actually made of fire, for all appearances, so she couldn't rule out even the oddest explanations.
However, this was going to make her job difficult. A human's soul was easy to play, but these things were so far nested in the maybe/other category that she'd have to come up with something truly inventive to even get her foot in the door. And then...?
God, she didn't want to think about the next part.
"Fucking hell," she grumbled. If the shady man was screwing with her, he paid a lot of gold for the jape. She took another (terrible) sip from her mug. Well, a mark was a mark. She'd just do this job... somehow.
Pick one.
The short skeleton sitting at the bar was served the sloppiest blob of a hamburger she'd ever seen. He held it up like a raw fish, unhinged his jaw, swallowed the whole mess and still got grease all over his cheekbones and brow, even after wiping his fingers on his pants.
From outside, the other skeleton's whinging filtered through the door. "NO, YOU CAN'T HAVE *THAT* ONE! I NEED ALL MY RIB BONES FOR MY CALISTHENICS! IF I CAN CURL ALL THE WAY INTO A BALL, WHAT'S THE POINT? ... NO, I WILL NOT LICK MY OWN—THAT'S DISGUSTING! DO I LOOK LIKE A DOG? WHAT- NO, GET BACK HERE! IF YOU BURY THAT BONE IN THAT MUD, I'LL BURY MY BOOT IN YOUR-" There was a sharp squeak, followed by crunching ice. "-OW!"
This was going to be a tough choice.