" So, what do you think..." Started Sans with his eternal grin, waiting for Grillby to come back with their double order of fries, " Of my brother? "
Oh, right.
That conversation already.
Oh well.
Frisk's mind gently drifted to some parallele universe, waiting for him to finish his recuring monologue about how cool his brother was. It wasn't that Frisk didn't care about what Sans had to say, but she'd heard it already a thousand times before and wanted to get on with the story.
Oh, come on. Don't give her that look. Yes' she'd reset. A lot. But she'd never even do as much as a scratch on a single monster during her contless journeys in the underground. She knew already where any misplaced curiosity would take her if she ever got the famous urge to kill, so she'll be keeping her stats clean, thank you very much.
No, her purpose for resetting the timeline resided elsewhere. She was a big fan of the underground community, you see. And that led her into exploring what other people though of said underground community.
Don't make her say it. You know. The written fan-fiction. The fan-comics, the fan-games... All differents variations of the three letter F word that showed how loved and cherished the monsters of this world had become.
You know the one.
And, well, she was more adicted than anyone to the tale of the underground. And she'd been acquainted with quite a number of those parallele realities to feel inspired enough to write her own.
But for that of course, she needed to make sure of certain events, certains dialogues, and that translated into a quantifiable amount of resets until she got it right.
That being said, she thought with a yawn as Sans proceeded to mention a mysterious talking flower, it was a harsh reality that getting the same dialogue over and over damaged time after time her lingering interest towards the original material from whitch all the fiction was inspired.
"hey, kid. if i'm boring ya, you can just go ahead and say somethin'.
Huh...? Oh, sorry." Frisk apalogised, trying to wipe her vacant expression away with a rub of her eyes. "Don't worry, I'm listening."
It wasn't easy to tell whether Sans had taken it personnaly or not; his creepy smile hadn't moved an inch and his eyes didn't even give a twitch. But he went back to blabering about the plot relevent matters anyway, leaving Frisk to sink back into the depths of her imagination.
How boring was this world compared to what people had made of it. I mean just look at plain old Sans. No heart-breaking back story about being a scientific experiment. No nightmarish glitchs with a twisted mind. No adorable little blue scarf around his neck, nor frikish yet adorable little stars in his eyes. No black hoodie assorted to a few pointy teeth. No giant paintbrush in his hands, nada.
The poor man didn't even have a proper love interest.
Sans, in this world anyway, was terribly boring. Thank god for imagintation, and thank god for content-sharing websites.
"welp, that was a long break." Stated the short skeleton as he stood up from his stool, "i can't believe i let ya pull me away from work for that long."
Oh, thank god, the tedious conversation was finally over. Frisk let him lead the way out of the bar, away from the burning bartender who was busy cleaning his eternal glass like that unique piece of container could never be dried. As expected, Sans let out a joke about Frisk having to pay his tab before showing her the way back to Waterfall.
Come on. Be patient, she told herself. As soon as she would make sure of the exact words Undyne shouts right before she gets to Hotland, she'd be able to go back the creating a parallel universe where things were in her opinion far more interesting.
Something, though, stroke her as odd.
Sans... The boring Sans that was silently walking beside her... Was whistling.
And the strange bit wasn't how he miraculously managed to do so without technically any lips. The strange thing was he didn't usually whistled, not in the course this specific event, anyway. Now why would he be so good humored?
Frisk mentally shrugged. The skeleton had always been a little wierd anyway for her to worry about something like that now.
The strange thing was though, he started a conversation.
"hey kid, do you like stories?
- Huh…?" Answered his confused speaker, clueless on how to react to such an unsuspected line of dialogue. "Huh, yea. Sometimes, I guess...
- even if it makes no sense whatsoever? even, like, if in a suprising burst of creativity, the story just retraces one you already know, with characters that already exist, but just in a ridiculous or intimate situation?"
Frisk fidgetted a little, rubbing her arm in discomfort.
"Huh… Not really?
- well, for argument's sake," he continued with the tone of someone who was clearly enjoying himeself, "let's imagine a 20 year old nerd living somewhere on the surface had written a story like that. and another one in another part of the world. and a third, and a fourth, and a fith, until you had like, a few thousand stories, all very different. did you ever wonder what the people in the story would feel like if they knew they were been messed with like that? if they were actually conscious while they had to sit through all the crazy shit the fans come up with, and how helpless it must feel to have to go through all those horrible, stupid, improbable situations over and over, only realizing the only way for it to stop is for everyone to forget you ever existed?"
One of both pair of footsteps froze into the snow, suddenly struggling to breath.
"E-er... Hum… N... No?"
"yea!" Sans laughed, "me neither!"
Then the happy skeleton began walking anew, whistling more than he ever had.
