"Enclosed Spaces"
Author's Note: I recently discovered Undertale, and this idea popped into my head earlier today. I'm not sure if I'll write for this fandom after this, but I'm having fun so far! I normally see Frisk as being female, but I'm going with gender-neutral Frisk here. Frisk is about eight years old here. For my Dark Cloud 2 readers (all two of you XD), I haven't given up on ITF. I will continue it eventually.
Papyrus was normally a very optimistic skeleton. The first thing he laid eye sockets on upon leaving the Underground was a beautiful sunset. He and the others-Frisk, their human friend, Undyne, Alphys, Asgore, Toriel, and not forgetting Papyrus's own brother, Sans-had climbed down from Mount Ebott to take their rightful place alongside the humans of the world. Monsters once again roamed the surface of the Earth, and life was good.
Well...for the most part, it was. As much as Papyrus wanted to believe that everyone was inherently good, despite any behavior that indicated the opposite, he had to admit that the humans weren't what he thought they would be. It seemed that every day there was a new disaster in the world; a robbery here, a murder there, and then there was the anti-monster commentary that would have made his heart sink if he actually had one. As it is, this barely disguised hatred of his kind made him very sad, and it was sometimes a bit of a struggle for him to put a good face on things. He had never had that problem before! He didn't even watch the news anymore because it was depressing; Mr. Rogers was more his speed. He loved that guy! It was a shame the man had passed away quite some time before, because meeting such a kind human would have been quite a treat.
Speaking of speed, Papyrus had learned the hard way that racing Sans (Papyrus in his car and Sans on a moped) on a busy highway resulted in the two of them being pulled over and receiving speeding tickets. Sans, as usual, was cavalier about the whole thing. Papyrus, on the other hand, was mortified, and through some great miracle he had managed to keep his car and his license. Sans received a sound scolding after this. "THE GREAT PAPYRUS HAS NEVER IN HIS LIFE GOTTEN A SPEEDING TICKET BEFORE!" he complained, speaking in the third person as was his wont, his normally boisterous voice filled with shame.
"well, there's a first time for everything, bro," Sans had shrugged, crumbling up his own speeding ticket and tossing it over his shoulder. "it's not that big a deal. people get speeding tickets all the time."
Papyrus had simply picked up his brother's speeding ticket, unfolded it, and put it in the glove compartment with his own. The honeymoon period was definitely over. The human world was larger than the monster world. Larger, more complicated, and, in a way, much colder than Snowdin. Oh well. At least he still had his car.
It wasn't until he and Frisk decided to go shopping at the new super-mall that he found himself in a sticky situation that he couldn't just walk away from. It had been raining hard all day, but the mall's interior was toasty warm. Papyrus himself couldn't really feel the difference in temperature, but Frisk evidently liked it.
The two of them checked out the toy store...then got kicked out of the toy store for sword fighting with pool noodles. Papyrus bought Frisk and himself each a large, sticky cinnamon roll from one of the kiosks, and without a second thought he bit into his, chewed, and swallowed. Wherever the food went, it most certainly did not enter his stomach, for he had no stomach at all. Frisk once asked him out of curiosity where the food went, and Papyrus hadn't quite known how to answer them. Sans had interjected and explained that monsters didn't digest food the same way humans did, and that anything they ate was immediately converted into magic, which was essentially what monsters were. Frisk seemed to accept that answer, and neither Sans nor Papyrus had found the question offensive. Curiosity was natural, and the question hadn't come from a place of malice.
Papyrus sat beside Frisk on a bench and remained oblivious to the stares he received as he ate the treat, at least until a group of teenagers started heckling him about it.
"Where the hell did it go?" One of them demanded, getting a little bit closer than was proper, tilting his head to look underneath the skeleton's mandible.
Papyrus stood up and took a step back, wiping his hands on a napkin and automatically putting himself between the strangers and Frisk. "THAT LANGUAGE IS UNNECESSARY, HUMAN. THERE IS A CHILD PRESENT!"
"Well, shouldn't it have, like, fallen out of your ribs or something?"
"Freak!" one of the other teenagers called, "Go back to Mount Ebott!"
"Yeah! We have enough problems without you monsters making things worse!" This came from a man.
Papyrus heard Frisk whimper, and he decided that this wasn't the right kind of environment for his little friend. "THE GREAT PAPYRUS REFUSES TO DIGNIFY THAT WITH A RESPONSE! COME, FRISK. NOW, NOW, DON'T CRY! WE'LL GO DOWN TO THE BOOKSTORE. I HEARD THEY HAVE PUZZLES THERE! WON'T THAT BE FUN?"
Frisk scrunched up their face as the tall skeleton monster used a corner of his cape to dry their tears, and they slipped their small hand into his gloved one, mustering a tiny smile.
The rain picked up, sheets of water spraying the glass skylight above them, and the sky was turning an angry shade of slate gray. Papyrus didn't want to look at it, and Frisk cringed at the muffled rumble of thunder. Actually, neither of them was very fond of storms. Papyrus found them rather unsettling, but he wasn't about to show it when Frisk was so clearly distressed by the rain and the rudeness of their own species.
Frisk mumbled something as they approached an elevator, and Papyrus halted and leaned forward to hear better over the roar of the deluge. "WHAT WAS THAT?"
Frisk looked down. "I...I'm sorry."
Papyrus's expression softened into a confused smile. "FOR WHAT, FRISK?"
Frisk mumbled something else, and Papyrus had to tilt his head so that the child could speak into his earhole. "They...they...make me...embarrassed to be human..."
"OH, FRISK..." Papyrus nearly felt like crying himself, but his smile never wavered. Really, it was hard to do anything other than smile when one was a skeleton! "DON'T YOU EVER BE ASHAMED OF WHAT YOU ARE! THOSE OTHER HUMANS...WELL...THEY WERE QUITE RUDE, ACTUALLY. BUT MAYBE THEY WERE JUST HAVING A BAD DAY."
It was when they got on the elevator that Papyrus wished he had tried harder to solve his horoscope that morning. A human female was already on the elevator, and she stared at Papyrus with unabashed shock. A man, one who looked rather familiar, got on after them. Ignoring the man, Papyrus met the woman's stare with one of his own. She was starting to make him a little uncomfortable, and he worried that she had taken one look at him and gotten the wrong impression. "THE GREAT PAPYRUS IS FLATTERED BY YOUR INTEREST, HUMAN FEMALE, BUT IT'S VERY RUDE TO STARE AT A STRANGER."
"O-oh!" the woman, who wore glasses, and looked to be in her early thirties, focused her attention on her shopping bags instead. "I'm sorry about that, I just wasn't expecting...um..." Giving an embarrassed laugh, she looked back up at Papyrus and gave a little half-shrug. "I'm married, though, so you're out of luck. Sorry."
Papyrus liked her at once. He didn't have time to dwell on this, however, because the man made a disgusted sound and pressed the button labeled 'G', standing as far away from the monster as possible. And, just as the elevator began moving, it shuddered to a stop and the lights went out.
Frisk gasped and tightened their grip on Papyrus's hand, the man cursed, the woman sighed, and Papyrus glanced around in confusion. Not that he could see anything; it was quite dark.
"The power must be out," the woman surmised.
The man, who Papyrus belatedly realized was the same man who had joined in with the teenage hecklers, snorted. "No shit, lady. Real genius we got here!"
Papyrus's jaw dropped at the use of such a vulgar swear word, but he hardly had time to gather his wits before dim illumination filled the car; the woman was using her cell phone as a flashlight, which she trained on the man.
"Don't shine that thing in my eyes!"
"Sorry," the woman responded, though there was a smirk in her voice, and whether or not she actually was sorry was up for debate. "Well...this is shaping up to be an interesting afternoon..."
"Interesting? I'm stuck on an elevator with Captain Obvious, one of those monster freaks, and a snot-nosed little kid! 'Interesting' isn't the word for it!"
An odd smell slowly began to fill the elevator, and Papyrus recognized the smell of alcohol. He wasn't a drinker himself, but he knew what the stuff smelled like. This man was, to quote Undyne, 'totally hammered'. This was bad!
"You're drunk," the woman observed.
"And you're ugly!" the man shot back.
Frisk hid behind Papyrus, who was growing more and more uncomfortable with the situation. The last thing he wanted was for a fight to break out in a dark elevator, and this man was frightening his little friend! "NOBODY PANIC. THE GREAT PAPYRUS WILL FIGURE THIS OUT...SOMEHOW..."
"Why are you yelling?" the man raised his voice a little more, almost yelling himself. "And why do you keep calling yourself that? You're not a great anything! You're just a...a bag of bones! We don't want you here!"
"YELLING? WHAT DO YOU MEAN?" Papyrus scratched his head. This was just the way he normally talked!
The woman moved to stand closer to Papyrus and Frisk. "Why're you giving him such a hard time? He never did anything to you."
The tension was palpable. Frisk burst into quiet tears, and Papyrus and the woman stood on either side of them, a hand resting on either of their shoulders. Before things could go any further, the power came back on and the elevator resumed its trip to the ground floor.
"Thank God..." the man grumbled. The elevator doors opened, and before he stepped out he got in Papyrus's face. "We don't want you here! There's not enough room in this world for monsters! Go back to Mount Ebott!"
Papyrus was, for once, speechless. He knelt down and pulled Frisk into a hug. The drunken man's words had stung, but more upsetting to the skeleton was how much the man had upset his little friend. And, seeing how Frisk's day had been ruined, Papyrus needed this hug almost as much as the child did.
"I am so sorry, Papyrus," the woman sounded quite upset herself, and she laid her free hand on Papyrus's shoulder. She had set her bags down in order to do this, and the elevator doors closed again. The car began to rise. "If there's enough room in this world for a blockhead like him, there's certainly more than enough room for monsters. Not all of us are like him, I promise."
Frisk smiled through their tears. That quickly, Papyrus shed his blue mood and favored his new possible-friend with a confident smile. "TWO OF YOU, AT LEAST, ARE NOT. YOUR KINDNESS GIVES ME HOPE, HUMAN!"
"Sandy," the woman corrected.
"WHAT?" Papyrus looked down as if expecting to see sand on the floor. "THE GREAT PAPYRUS DOESN'T SEE ANY SAND! SILLY HUMAN."
"No, no," she laughed, "I was introducing myself. It's my name."
"OH." Papyrus, Frisk, and Sandy got off the elevator and moved aside so that they could chat without blocking the doors. They were on the top floor again. "THAT'S...ER...AN INTERESTING NAME." Truthfully, he thought it was a strange name for a human, but he didn't want to be rude and tell her so!
"It's short for 'Cassandra', but I think that sounds a bit pretentious." she wrinkled her nose a bit, offering Frisk a tissue. "So, I tell people to call me 'Sandy' instead."
"NONSENSE! IT'S A WONDERFUL NAME. FOR A HUMAN." Papyrus rubbed the back of his skull. "THIS IS FRISK, BY THE WAY."
"Hello, Frisk," Sandy smiled at the little...boy?...girl?...it was hard to tell what the child's gender was, actually, but she decided that it didn't matter. "Listen, I'm supposed to meet my husband at the coffee shop in about..." she looked at her watch, and gasped, "ten minutes. Yikes. Would the two of you like to join us for some hot chocolate or a latte? Our treat."
Frisk bounced on the balls of their feet and clapped, and Papyrus knew he couldn't refuse. This day had almost gone completely wrong, shaking even his legendary confidence. It was, of course, impossible to destroy it, however. He was, after all, the Great Papyrus!