WARNING: If you wish to read a fanfiction that WILL be updated, please start reading from Chapter 25 onwards.
The fanfiction written from this chapter up to chapter 24 is an old version that will not be updated again
due to the new version being now worked on, hopefully with a better plot and a more agreeable writing style.
I decided to keep it here for the sake of memories and for the sake of readers that would be curious or nostalgic,
but its storyline won't be continued. The new version's storyline is basically the same, although it introduces
a few changes regarding the characterization of some characters, and some elements regarding the world-building.
How to fast-forward to chapter 25 when you're on a cell phone:
The URL of this site ends with "/s/11908154/1/Learn-When-to-Quit" for now. The "1" in bold indicates the number of the chapter: in order to fast-forward to chapter "25", you can change the "1" in your current URL into "25", or into any other number if you wish.
How to read a WAY more readable version of the new fanfic:
NEVER MIND IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO PUT THE LINK HERE UGH. The link to the AO3 version of the fanfic is available in the Summary/Description of this fanfic. Don't ask me why I was able to put it there but not in this chapter, I have no idea.
Due to the formatting limitations of this site, even putting links is nearly impossible. While I wouldn't care too much about posting my fanfics here, this specific fanfic has a lot of formatting originally put into it, and this formatting is sometimes mandatory in order to better understand what's going on in the story. As such, the AO3 version (accessible through the link above) offers more proper links towards the original chapters, the way they appeared within my original document, as PDF files that you can read online all you want.
Formatting changes introduced by the PDF version include:
- Fonts for the characters and for other proper uses.
- Color is used in some parts of the text when useful. This effect is used sparingly, but most of the moments when it IS used are much more intuitively understood when the color is in use.
- Images when useful or needed (for example, chat logs and discussions will show the users' avatars)
- The width of paragraphs is modified depending on the type of paragraph it is. This may not seem like it's much for now, but I believe it makes the chapters a lot more readable, and... This may actually better help understand some plot points, to be honest.
- And other changes could always appear.
Learn When to Quit
— Act I —
Don't Let Him Find Out
— Scene 1 —
She woke up.
Well, no matter how quickly she surprisingly managed to recover her consciousness a couple of seconds right after this first realization, she still was pretty stunned to realize then what had happened.
Or, well, to be more accurate, to realize that she actually had no idea what had happened. At all.
This realization came along with another one which, despite being completely cliché and in spite of the fact that she was all-too-well aware of it, still managed to freak her out when she realized it was actually happening for real.
Losing consciousness for some mysterious reason and then waking up in a dark (probably locked) room with no idea how they had arrived there was just so typical, she had read it –slash– watched it in films or novels so many times, she had for a long time been almost sniggering at the lack of originality that was put into those scenes. It was always the same comedy: the protagonist would first freak out all-too-dramatically, and yet pretty fast enough they would still manage to regain their calm and badass attitude and already be able to figure out with the not-so-many little hints they could look for in their surroundings how they would eventually manage to solve the problem, or at the very least figure out what had happened in the first place. That cliché had just been done to the bone.
Well. One thing she learned there, was why those scenes were all that 'identical' — at least when it came down to the "freaking out" phase.
She sat up so quickly that she almost lost her balance and fell over… whatever she had been lying on. It felt like some kind of couch maybe, or something of the like. Not that she really cared at the moment— the first thing she started looking for, desperately turning her head and eyes in all possible directions, was for a door, a vent, or anything that could be an exit. It was really dark so it took her some minutes, but she finally noticed what looked like a rectangular-shaped hollow in the wall, implying the hypothetical existence of a door at this location; and without any surprise, she didn't even think before racing towards it and predictably trying to open it— to no avail, of course.
She was not particularly suffering from any kind of claustrophobia, but it didn't prevent her from starting to hyperventilate.
So she was stuck in a locked dark room without any windows or vents — she deduced it probably was some kind of basement then or something. She had woken up in there, without any idea about where she was, what the heck had happened, and why that was happening to her, of all people. Not that she had anything in particular— and that was pretty much the point. She had done nothing in particular. That just made no sense. Was this some kind of kidnapping? Where and when had it occurred then? The latest thing she could remember about was when she was in her room randomly wandering on sites on her laptop, and— oh yeah, starting that video game, after her friends had literally forced her to. It wasn't that she didn't want to play it, she had been actually sort of excited at the idea of finally playing it on her own (even though she would never admit that out loud), but she just really didn't have much faith in her own playing skills anyway. She could tell from experience.
So, in a nutshell — there was absolutely no reason for this to happen. She grunted under her breath, hardly muting an ever growing nervous and awkward snigger intended to her own silliness and former traces of hope in trying to comprehend the reasons of her presence "here" (wherever "here" was) when there logically weren't any.
Well, that was pointless.
And even more than this, it just wasn't even making any sense in the first place.
Her breath finally started to slow down, though it still was breaking the surrounding silence each time her chest was rising and lowering in panic. Her sight started to slightly adjust to the darkness, as she slowly could distinguish a desk and… some kind of giant curtain covering something that probably was just as big.
She carefully tried to grope along towards the desk, blindly seeking for a lamp or anything that could at least help her see a little more where she was. After a few minutes her hand finally felt some engine whose shape seemed familiar enough, and she immediately turned it on— but no, this had pretty much no effect at all.
Oh come on. Was the lightbulb out of order or something? She carefully tried to inspect the little treacherous thing when she noticed something rather different than what she had first expected: something had been attached on the top of the lamp, next to the hypothetical place where the lightbulb should have stood, and when she pressed the little button on it… The flashlight lit up, filling the room with a cold and dim light.
A flashlight. On top of a non-working desk lamp. Somehow this felt remotely familiar, but the absurdity of the situation pressed a much stronger impression on her mind.
Well… uh, why not?
That was not much and she couldn't distinguish clearly the whole room with as many details as she wanted to, but that already was some kind of improvement. I mean, better use what you got and move on instead of complaining, right? So she detached the little torch and moved around with it… But the part of the room which was monopolizing her attention was definitely the desk: as soon as her eyes got accustomed to the new brightness, they widened in surprise when she noticed what was lying in a giant mess on the desk, right before her eyes.
Paper. Blueprints. There even was a closed photo album, right in the middle of the table. And heck, there was a freaking computer. Maybe it was a very old one, but still, just what the heck!
Well. If I really was kidnapped, then those guys really suck at their job.
That was just all too perfect, if she wanted at least to figure out a little more about her captors. Maybe she was locked in this room for now, but she hadn't even been tied to anything and could move completely freely, and now she had this. An open door to knowledge about pretty much… anything. Hey, maybe if she loaded Google Maps then she would even figure out where that room was and how far she was from her home!
She reached for the switch and waited for overly long minutes before getting the old dinosaur to wake up… But then again, nothing. She did not hear the thing grump noisily as it would have been forced out of its slumber, as she would have expected from a dinosaur like this one; and she definitely did not see any single LED bulb or anything turn on if only for one second. She tried a few more times to press the main button, only to get over and over the same disappointing result.
Maybe there really was a general blackout actually, now that she was thinking about it. That would explain quite a few things.
… Welp, here goes the map. Dang it.
As she sighed and tried to weigh her remaining options, her eyes stumbled onto the photo album. She quickly glanced around absent-mindedly, then pouted childishly.
Heh. Not my fault if they forgot it there.
Not that she had many more options left to pass the time. She could have maybe tried to read those blueprints and messy notes here and there, but the amount of lines she could understand was pretty low; otherwise she could see in the opposite corner of the room the giant bluish blanket covering something weird, but the stuff kind of scared her when she perked a glimpse under the sheets to reveal some very complicated engine she decided not to mess with (what, she did not want to accidentally send a nuclear bomb to Korea! Strange unknown machines like those ones can really do anything).
So yeah, the photo album actually seemed to be the most relevant piece of evidence she was able to study. She opened it without any more hesitation, but was immediately stunned upon seeing the actual pics.
The first thing she could think of was, well… Halloween. Or, more accurately, cosplaying in general. Because those monsters she was seeing there in the photos were pretty familiar after all, and because it couldn't be anything but a bunch of people in costumes anyway. But this probably wasn't a convention, the photos were taken outdoors.
She sighed. So those kidnappers or whatever were fans of Undertale, okay, why not after all. They liked to cosplay, and they just pulled a ridiculously pointless prank on her with an album where they were just in their costumes.
Well, okay, maybe I just got dunked on. Those guys can be trolls, after all! Heh. At least they have a sense of humor.
Yet, for some reason, she couldn't help but feel curious. Maybe if she looked closer she could distinguish some traits from those people under those disguises, and… Well, no, actually that was not the real reason she was genuinely fascinated by those photos.
They were all identical.
Or at least, so it seemed at first.
They were depicting the exact same positions, in the exact same location, even at the exact same time and –probably– date in the year, because even the background was not changing to the slightest, or almost.
Except that sometimes some characters were missing. One, or two. Occasionally three.
And in practically all photos except for the first one, she couldn't help but notice, Frisk was missing.
Welp, guess they just couldn't get all the cosplayers to come every time…
But seeing all those same faces in the exact same location each freaking time still felt quite eerie, though. Many photos seemed almost identical, sometimes just down to some really minor details, and… well, that was just unexpected from an album, especially one whose theme was "Disguise yourself as an Undertale character." What was the point in taking the exact same pic of the exact same people in the (almost) exact same postures, anyway? Wasn't the point in cosplaying to, well, 'roleplay' on some scale? At least to get original and different photos or something…? She always thought it was part of the fun when cosplaying, every time she was seeing all those snap shots some fans were showing about their costumes and everything.
Well, she didn't know much about roleplay anyway, so why not after all. It's just that it was… weird, to say the least.
She kept flipping through the pages, one by one, quickly glancing at the photos but gradually stopping to really look at them and hardly trying to find differences between them anymore. They were just identical. And yet all different. And that was seriously becoming creepy.
She stopped. That was the last page to be covered in photos— the following ones were just blank.
Or, well, almost blank.
do you still think it's funny, now?
Her eyes were frowning and widening at the same time, no matter how paradoxical it sounded and how weird it would probably look.
Well, that was just getting creepier and creepier. Just what she needed right at the moment.
Okay, now I really don't like where this is going.
She suddenly started to hear footsteps behind her back. They were still about a dozen feet far behind, but she immediately turned around, brandishing the flashlight like a deadly weapon. She immediately heard a muffled grunt from the stranger, probably momentarily blinded by the torch's unexpected Powerful Beam. It's super effective!
Or not. But it's enough for the stupid girl to smirk in victory. What's she thinking, that she's the hero beating up the bad guys or that she'll make a brilliant escape with that stupid stick? Besides, this is basically stealing. But who am I to judge, eh?
Ha, take that! she ironically mentally grinned. Next time, don't leave dangerous weapons lying around, you jerk.
Anyway, the guy had a quick adaptation to the new brightness of his surroundings, and as soon as he lowered his pale arm, the girl couldn't help but slightly lower hers as well, facing the stranger with a blank expression.
"… heh. already throwin' in the spotlights, kid?" the guy chuckled lightly. "i didn't realize you'd want to get enlightened on the truth so soon."
Upon realizing who it was… Actually, what really had been surprising her was her complete lack of reaction, in fact.
You know, it's that kind of thing when you've got that quota of strange things happening to you that you can handle at a time. Once you've got past the line, you just reach that point where practically nothing can surprise you anymore. You just stand there, mouth slightly agape, staring at the thing and mentally nodding in that 'okay' gesture, because it would just need too much from your neurons to process an explanation or just muster the energy to say that this is not supposed to happen.
So yeah, basically, this was the state our little pseudo-protagonist was in.
"… 'enlightened.' a'right, maybe that one was a lil' bit of a stretch." He rolled his eyes and shrugged overdramatically. Then he paused and his grin expanded. "but don't tell me it completely left ya in the dark, eh?"
… Aaand he threw the finger gun. Damn it.
He finally seemed to notice that the teenage girl wasn't reacting at all. No laughs, no smiles, not even grunting. Only… well, that same face of utter shock as from the beginning. Except that by that time she had gradually stepped back until she bumped into the desk and couldn't go any further, and that now she appeared to be holding on to it for dear life.
It was plausible that by that time, the girl had just completely disconnected from reality for a minute or two. Or six.
Well, by now I guess it should be someone else's cue to say something among the lines of: "Sans, I think you broke the human."
"uh… hello? did your power black out, too…?" He seemed a little desperate for an answer, by that point. Whether positive or negative. Nevertheless, he still obtained none.
Yeah, even you can see that this one was the lamest of all, buddy.
"… ugh. too soon for puns, got it." He buried his hands further into his pockets and seemed to sink his head into his shoulders, as he looked away in disappointment and mumbled under his breath: "tough crowd."
She quickly stared at the skeleton, rising and lowering her gaze down to all the details she could perceive. Despite his still being pretty much hidden in the distant shadows, far away from the silly little Trustworthy Flashlight's brightness now that it was not focused on his face anymore, she immediately noticed the blue hoodie that she would have recognized anywhere, especially after seeing it so many times in the photos she had been looking at for minutes just moments ago.
If there had been one character to be present in every single print…
She couldn't help but smile awkwardly. She hated it when she couldn't understand what was going on. Nervous smirks didn't really help, but she couldn't stop them from appearing on her face whenever she was tense and anxious.
And especially when she was mocking herself for actually starting to seriously consider some dumb and random option that simply was not possible.
This, simply, was not Sans. There basically was no way. Some random pile of pixels could not magically all of a sudden become corporeal and sentient and be facing her right now in the four dimensions of space and time. She would not discuss that science fact, that was simply out of the question.
She had no idea why that random creepy guy would want her to think otherwise, though. Well, she had a few hypotheses, but none of them really seemed to conveniently justify all the trouble the man must have come into just to order everything in place to the slightest details. That was necessary if he wanted to be convincing of course, but…
Just, what was that for?
Well, on second thought, no matter what reasons she could think of, that whole mess would have just been unnecessarily overcomplicated and frustrating to prepare, in comparison with the results they would have got anyway. She almost thought for an instant to fake actually falling into the trap and improvise some kind of roleplay or something out of pity, but she quickly felt very uneasy about it. She had been kidnapped after all. There was no room for jokes with your kidnapper.
And yet, she would not raise her arm back and try to cover his face with the light once again. Nah, his face was very good the way it was right now in the shadows, thank you very much.
Her hand was a little shaky and cold, raising the light stick would only make things worse.
"Heh. Really good impression of Sans." she eventually uttered in a voice that sounded much less confident than she had intended to. "Also his lab. Honestly, I'd almost buy it if it weren't for a few details. Like, you know. The fact that he's not real maybe. Just saying."
There was no response from Definitely-Not-Sans, still standing in the shadows, staring at her with an unreadable total lack of expression, both his hands deeply buried into his pockets. Well, when his whole face was engulfed in the dark, it was quite difficult to distinguish it clearly anyway… But she thought she could see that little glimmer of a confused and slightly embarrassed "… uh, what?" in his shining pupils— even though she completely ignored it.
"The computer is new, uh? I-I've never seen its sprite, u-unless it's supposed to be Papyrus's. And I was sure there only was one or two photos at most— a-and you forgot Undyne's eye-patch! … O-oh, and the thing I was sleeping on, too. It's the green couch, isn't it? W-well, too bad, it wasn't supposed to be in this room." She tried to cross her arms and puff out her chest as an attempt to increase her confidence. The effectiveness of such act was debatable. "So. See? If y-you wanted me to think that I'd somehow got drawn into the game or whatever, you got another thing coming."
For at least a good dozen seconds, the guy simply stared at her in disbelief, not knowing how to react. Was there just any way to properly react, anyway? He wondered. He refused to regard this possibility at first, but— actually, yes. That girl was serious.
Yeah, pretty much feeling you there, buddy. I think we reached the jackpot.
Definitely-Not-Sans finally decided to get on the move, muffling what sounded like some kind of (almost) amused chuckle while… slightly shrugging, maybe. It was hard to see what he really was doing in the dark. And yet she still would not raise that torchlight.
He wondered whether he should directly tell her or just roll with it and let her realize on her own. But seeing how potentially unstable (and arguably hilarious) she could get, the second option seemed to present itself as the most appropriate.
"heh. i see you're well-informed. yes, that's the couch from the living room. put it down here a few weeks ago."
He would let her deduce the real facts at her own pace. At least, he would try.
Still, he feared that this would take a while.
Now that she was lending another glance at the sofa, she could indeed realize that its shape seemed familiar, somehow.
But of course the stupid girl had to guide the flashlight towards the oh-so-fascinating piece of furniture she had already inspected mere minutes ago anyway and leave the skeleton without surveillance, if only for just one freaking second.
I kinda hoped at some point… But nope, we'll have to cope with the Ultimate Dork kind of character. Well, not everything can be perfect, huh?
Still. How much do you wanna bet this is gonna backfire on her within the next seconds?
And indeed, as soon as her eyes strayed away from him, a blinding yet short flash of light suddenly caught her attention from behind, and when she turned back her gaze and Trusty Torch towards the spot where he had been standing until then, she noticed he wasn't there anymore. Instead, she found him a few seconds later… lying lazily on the couch, his left arm idly stretching over its soft (supposedly greenish) back. His right arm hadn't moved at all though, still engulfed in his hoodie's pocket.
Well, role-playing all along, wasn't he? He sure was enjoying this.
… Still, how the heck did he get there so quickly?
The Trusty Torch started to shake, shadows dancing around its cold immaculate white.
"By the way, uh, wow. You really must have put a lot of effort into making all this. And I don't know that much about quantum physics, but, uh, those blueprints are quite convincing. You really must be a hardcore fan, aren't you?" She chuckled unconvincingly. "Can I just ask you, uh, why you did all this exactly? You do realize this is technically a kidnapping, right?"
She was trying to take it lightly and make it sound as if it were a joke, but it felt obvious that it definitely wasn't. This masquerade had been lasting for long enough.
Besides, all this really was starting to get on her nerves. She simply could not understand. That was just making no sense whatsoever, that place was starting to freak her out and yet she was still sort of glad that guy disguised as a skeleton was keeping some distance between them because that really was the last thing she could be getting to complete the scheme even though those were definitely not real bones—
Oh gosh, she was starting to hyperventilate again. It kept getting harder to hold the stupid stick, as if it were now made of lead. Viscous and wet lead.
… Wait, no, the humidity was just the cold sweat. Nothing strange here. Hahaha.
"hey. you alright kiddo?"
It felt odd that he genuinely seemed slightly concerned, even if he was good at hiding it on his face. But no, his tone could not fool anyone, he had picked on the nervousness surrounding her and seemed almost on the edge of rushing towards her if she were to collapse because of her shaky pale legs, squishing the sofa's cushion in his left bony fingers. He did not particularly care about that stranger (heck, he didn't even know that kid to begin with), but still, seeing anyone in that state was concerning enough as it was.
Not like she had noticed any of that, though, as it showed in her fast and winded voice as soon as she caught her breath back.
"As alright as could be any normal person trapped in a dark room with a hardcore Undertale fanatic dressed as one of the characters for whatever psychopathic reasons, thanks." she retorted bitterly with a desperate sarcastic grin.
… Well, if she still had enough energy for sarcasm, then her case probably wasn't that worrying after all. He could relax.
"ha, yeah, right. sorry, the main lights went off two days ago. too lazy to replace them. they hadn't been used for years or somethin', so i guess they didn't like it when i kept them on all the time lately." For a short instant, he seemed to actually hesitate, as if he were measuring his words and trying carefully to choose the exact ones. Though it seemed that beyond the mere words, their repercussions were what truly bothered him. "been using that basement a lot, y'know, since i've been working on some pretty crazy stuff recently. and it all allowed you to get here, in the end. you'd find it pretty fantastic if you only tried to believe it and stopped waving that torch at random. so uh, guess you could say it's time to see the light, now. ain't i right?"
… Seriously, is that all you've got? Even I can tell that this pun was objectively lame.
She pouted ironically as her grip on the torchlight tightened. Seriously, that guy's attitude was starting to really annoy her. Couldn't he just, maybe, shift to the "kidnapper" part and potentially start to explain what was going on, instead of just pseudo-roleplaying by sitting on the couch and saying meaningless 'pranks' that weren't even supposed to be funny to the slightest?
Sorry, but I have better things to do.
"Seriously, I am wondering. Why me? I mean, if it has anything to do with Undertale or something like that, then I can't be the best fan you could have ever found or anything anyway. Hey, I haven't even played the game in the first place."
For some reason, she almost felt that guy's sudden overwhelming silence the very instant she had uttered that last sentence. She was not completely sure why, but it was almost as if she had just sensed his sudden tension without even needing to turn her eyes and watch it on his face, in spite of the distance between them.
And even though she simply dismissed this feeling as a mere coincidence or some kind of "predictability" she could have intuited in his excessively silent reaction, she still was slightly taken aback by how seriously he seemed to take that revelation, feeling this rising… was this confusion or anger? Or both?
The skeleton's grip on the sofa tightened once more, but for a completely different reason this time.
So this was how things were. Of course, this all made so much more sense now.
Well, if this was the way things had started, then he could just as well play along, huh.
"… Wait. Really?" he uttered as calmly as he could, though probably a little too fast and eagerly.
It was the first time she really paid attention, but since the beginning she had noticed that there was something peculiar about the timbre in his voice. Until now she had assumed it was only due to the fact that his mask (he was wearing a mask after all, this was the only possibility) had to be muffling his words, but this time… She couldn't help but notice that his last words really had sounded even stranger than before.
If it really had been Sans in one of his in-game dialogues, she could have almost guessed that he would have put some capitals in his speech, for once. And one thing she had learned fast enough through the fandom was that with that monster, proper capitalization was never a good sign.
Good thing that option is unquestionably out of the way.
"Yeah!" she shrugged obliviously. "Honestly, I suck so much at video games, it's just hilariously ridiculous. I've even been wondering sometimes if there was something like a world record for that. Seriously, even if I wanted to play the game, I wouldn't even survive five minutes."
And there came back that exact same awkward silence. He was uncomfortably staring at her without even moving the slightest from his seat, narrowing and twitching his eyes, which from that distance could only be distinguished through what was supposed to represent a pair of eye sockets.
With that giant smile stuck on his mask (it had to be some sort of latex mask or something, right?), it was somewhat tricky to really know what his real expression was supposed to be. But… he really somewhat seemed to be deeply confused, if not… shocked.
"but… You must have at least tried, right…?" he eventually asked hesitantly.
It would eventually spill the beans. It had to. It did not necessarily have to be a completely rotten apple. Or if it was, it would betray itself at some point, seeing how much it loved to talk. All he had to do was make it talk until the truth came out by itself.
Still, that innocent tone had been amusing him at first, but now that he knew this was just a façade, this was only making him sick.
"Well, yeah, I was gonna try to play it since my friends had been literally begging me on their knees for weeks, but I somehow ended up here before I could actually get started. So, uh, nope, I basically never played the game."
Both his eyes twitched once, very furtively, both at the same time. Besides that, he stayed perfectly still for what felt like whole minutes now.
If that wasn't some kind of "internal scream" or something, then she really didn't know how to interpret that expression.
"Hey, you okay? You almost look like you're about to collapse or something." She was not even hiding her nervous yet slightly genuinely mocking chuckle.
He paused, nervously running a white hand along his face and slowly burying his eyes into his fingers, as to try to rub off some kind of nausea. The rubbing let out a little rattling sound that gracefully put the teenager even more at unease, as she unconsciously stepped back and bumped into the desk once again.
On the other side of the room, he had now had it. If now it was faking to care about him, this would really be the last straw.
"n-never mind. l-let's just… change the subject. how do you happen to know that much about that, uh, game, then?"
Her eyes suddenly widened in what would seem to be genuine surprise, but some discreet eerie sparks of anger could twinkle in the corners of her flickering eyelids.
"Oh yeah. You kidnap me and then all you do is start some random cosplay and lie in that couch and such, and now you're just expecting me to tell about my hobbies just like we're talking about the weather around a cup of tea." She crossed her arms in annoyance. Her patience really started to reach its limit now. That was just starting to make way too much weirdness for her standards. "How about we actually talked about things that really matter, for a change? Like, I don't know, what the heck am I supposed to be doing here?"
She hardly waited for an answer, because she already knew that whatever he could say, she wouldn't be contented with it anyway. She didn't even care whether or not he was still there watching her; if he wasn't getting to the important part, then she would be.
Starting with the first logical thing she could think about, she looked around again and again, sometimes gesturing some discreet lines as if she was trying to figure out some sort of trajectory. Then she started to approach the desk again, lifting random blueprints and sheets before replacing them approximately in the same mess as before.
Well wasn't this the face of one big desperate girl there.
"what are you looking for?" he eventually asked tiredly, but with what seemed to be some little spark of curiosity and amusement. No way this was needed to be reckoned with, this now really was pure silliness. Not like it would find anything dangerous in there.
"The camera." she answered immediately, without even turning her eyes towards him. "You can't be an actual kidnapper, seriously, you made way too many mistakes, and this stupid act is just preposterous. So this is some kind of prank, right? And there must be a camera somewhere in this room, recording us right now, and we'll become internet famous or something. I'm sure the result must be hilarious."
Definitely-Not-Sans seemed to widen his eyes in genuine surprise, for once. Though he still was obviously amused by all her –indeed– pretty much hilarious gesticulations and movements here and there, messing up his desk with an ever growing annoyance.
Not that he seemed to care, though.
"wow. so you really are of the conspiracy theory type, eh?"
"Well, usually not that much, but it's not like there were many other options left." She had stopped her search for a few moments, only to turn to him and let shine that big cocky smirk that was supposed to look sarcastic, but which really was just sad actually. So silly.
"haha, yeah, you're right. not like i really could be the real sans or something. that's completely stupid."
Now staring at the desk and the things lying messily around it, she opened her mouth to confirm in the most confident and cynical tone she could get— but she never got time to actually say anything.
Something had caught her shoulder from her back.
It felt so thick and cold.
"nah, just kidding. this is real, kid."
That voice, that same voice that was coming seconds ago from the couch, was now sounding right from behind her back. She shivered and, as a reflex, looked at her right shoulder—
But then she met, in the dim light, hardly a foot away from her eyes, her "kidnapper's" actual face.
His left eye was still flickering an eerie blue, coming from the depths of his eye socket. The light magically stopped a split second later, but its striking impression remained. His stuck and still giant smirk slicing his whole face in half somehow still seemed to enlarge itself in an eerily edgy forced grin of pure anger.
Bones.
Her eye fell on that white hand still clutching her shoulder, its holes and its so fragile yet so strong phalanges and its iron grip on her flesh and the cold—
BONES.
She let out a sudden hysteric cry, but she could not even hear it herself. She didn't even feel her vibrating vocal chords shaking and struggling in an attempt to escape it, threatening to be torn apart any instant.
The whole room started to turn around her at an ever growing speed, flickering lights and orange and red and dim yellow in pitch black and skulls and claws crawling on her back and the dark ceiling and low yells resonating like distorted laughs of…
She passed out.
The skeleton watched with bewilderment at the suddenly unconscious body that had fallen down on the tiled floor, without any warning and apparently not about to move again for a while.
He started to tremble in annoyance as his left hand ran upon his skull, slowly covering his eyes darkening with a reasonably controlled exasperation, yet feeling his patience starting to run out.
… seriously?