I felt inclined to make a sequel.
And somehow, it ended up looking like a continuation of Errortale crossed over with other AUs rather than just a silly parody. I apologize in advance for possible out-of-character-ness. It also has a totally different mood than the last story… it just kinda happened.
PREVIOUSLY ON AWFULTALE, Princess Blueberry, with the help of Fairy Godmother Ink, escaped from the evil witch Error. Blueberry was returned to Underswap, his home world, ecstatic to reunite with his brother Papyrus. Blueberry was sure that his brother would be worried sick and plotting a bad time against Error, but when he arrived at his house…
… Papyrus was no where to be found.
"Papyrus? Where are you?!" Blueberry called.
He and Ink searched for Papyrus for hours in the abandoned world, but to no avail. There wasn't a single soul left in the underground of Underswap.
They returned to Blueberry's old house.
"Ink… My brother…" Blueberry cried, collapsing onto the couch of his empty house. "Where did he go…? You don't think… He thought I was dead… A-And he…"
"No! That can't be it," Ink told him. "I think I know where he might have gone."
Blueberry looked up hopefully. "Where?"
"I can only assume that, if he was the only person left in this world… Core Frisk took him to the Omega Timeline."
Blueberry leapt to his feet and grabbed the front of Ink's shirt. "How do we get there?!"
Ink looked down.
"… Ink…?"
"… I don't know," Ink said.
Blueberry slowly released his hold on Ink, his arms falling to his sides. He felt tears starting to prick at his eye sockets, and soon they were flowing down uncontrollably. "P-Papyrus…" He fell to the ground. "Why did this have to happen…?"
Ink got down on one knee in front of Blueberry. "Sans… I'm sorry…" he said quietly. "I promise I'll stay with you until we find him, all right? We're gonna find that timeline."
"… Thank you, Ink," Blueberry choked out.
Ink jumped to his feet and held out a hand. "Now come on! I know where to start!"
Blueberry smiled in his tears and took the hand.
Meanwhile in another villain's castle that wasn't Error's, a certain melty skeleton with tendrils coming from his back was boredly spinning around in an office chair. He was none other than Nightmare, the King of Darkness and Bad Stuff… or something.
He suddenly started hearing Skype ringing from his computer.
Nightmare rolled his chair over to the keyboard and smashed on it with his foot. Somehow, it opened up the call.
"What is it?" he asked.
It was Cross, his latest ally. "Hey Nightmare, I was looking through these AUs when I came across something really weird," he explained. "I found a world that's totally empty. Mostly. It's kinda like… the world is there, but there's only one person."
Nightmare sighed. "Cross, that's obviously just a genocide route world that never got destroyed. That one person's the human, right?"
Cross shook his head. "No, they're not. It's a Sans. And he's flipping out for a few reasons I can guess. Well, thought you'd wanna know. Later." He ended the call.
"Man, that kid is so nice, telling me about more lives I can ruin more than they're already ruined," Nightmare thought. "It was a good idea to give them that opportunity to join the dark side."
He spun around his chair and stood up.
"Welp. Better get to that world before Error does. Sounds like it'd be easy for him to trash if there's hardly anything there. Ah, and Core. Ugh. So many nuisances."
Nightmare teleported away.
Two minutes later, the evil witch Error barged into the room.
"GOING SOMEWHERE?!" he shouted, shooting strings at the tall office chair. He pulled it over, only to find that the chair was empty. "… frick. Well, since he's not here…"
Error threw the chair out the window, shattering the glass.
"Yay for pointless vandalism," he said, leaving to go wreck other things in the castle.
Some time passed, and within that time, Nightmare was able to find his victim in the world Cross had mentioned, and was in the process of terrorizing the lone Sans.
"WHAT'S THE MATTER? BECOME ONE WITH MOTHER NIGHTMARE," Nightmare's voice echoed off the walls of the judgement hall. He was relatively large by that point, and his tendrils were taking up most of the space around him. There was pretty much no way around him.
"Hetalia references are OVERRATED!" the fleeing Sans yelled back without turning around. He tripped on a random rock and slammed into the floor, several of his bones cracking from the impact. "Augh. Ow, ow, ow. Not good."
"HEHEHEHEHEHEHE!" Nightmare laughed like a psychotic old lady for some reason.
"Stop!" a child's voice called out from nearby. A greyscale Frisk with black eyes stepped out from what seemed like the wall, and they stood between Nightmare and the Sans. They held their hand out towards the one from that world. "Sans! This way!"
"I have no idea what's going on but I'm not arguing right now!" The Sans scrambled to his feet, somehow ignoring his severe injuries. He and Frisk ran into a nearby portal, which instantly closed behind them.
"Are you. Fricking. Kidding me," Nightmare said.
He proceeded to throw a temper tantrum and knocked down a bunch of pillars.
"I'VE ONLY BEEN HERE FOR FIFTEEN MINUTES!" he shouted. He teleported out of the world as the hall collapsed down.
But when he returned to the entrance hall of his castle, he was greeted with wreaked havoc. Almost every piece of furniture in the hall was tipped over, blue strings covered the ceiling and hung from the chandelier, and graffiti reading "Error rulez" was sprayed onto a large portion of the wall.
Several parts of his body twitched. He was feeling many things.
"Heyyy, buddy!" a familiar glitchy voice called out. Error slid down the handrail of the stairs, down to Nightmare. "Heheh. Funny how much I can do in short trips, huh?"
"WHAT THE FRICK ARE YOU DOING HERE?!" Nightmare screamed, picking up a table and throwing it at Error, who casually ducked under it.
"Nice to see you too," Error said. "Wish you coulda been here when I got here, but… apparently you had better things to do."
"HOW DID YOU GET HERE," Nightmare growled. "WHAT HAPPENED TO MY SECURITY?!"
"Oh, yeah, that was so annoying to get past, you know?" Error stated. "But I learned some new tricks."
Randomly back with Ink and Blueberry, Ink had taken Blueberry to what he liked to call the 'overworld', his world-between-worlds, and his gateway to all AUs, as long as a large amount of liquid art supply had been spilled somewhere. It was confusing, but it didn't really matter.
In attempt to locate Core Frisk, the two of them began to search through the floating AU spheres, hoping that they might come across the child rescuing someone from a 'dead' AU. Unfortunately, they had not been so lucky.
But in their search, Princess Blueberry came across a strange world that seemed to be emitting some kind of dark aura.
"Hey Ink, what's this AU supposed to be?" Blueberry asked, stopping in front of it.
The fairy godmother turned around, looking confused, before walking back and taking a look at the AU Blueberry was referring to. "Huh? That's weird," Ink began. "It looks like… Nightmare's castle. He's the King of Darkness and Bad Stuff or Something. Normally it's completely hidden from the overworld…"
Blueberry looked closer into the AU for a few seconds. "… Is that Error?"
"Welp, that would explain it," Ink said.
Blueberry pointed to the visible melty skeleton in the sphere. "If that's Nightmare then he and Error are fighting…"
"They never liked each other."
In the AU sphere, Nightmare and Error seemed to attack each other at the same time, creating a shockwave that sent both of them flying into opposite walls, Error breaking a table that had a random can of paint on it in half in the process.
The paint spilled on the floor…
"HOLY FRICKING AGKJLDHAKJLHS!" Ink suddenly screamed, making Blueberry jump.
"WHAT?!" Blueberry yelled.
"WE GOTTA GO IN THERE. SHOOT. OH GEEZ! FRICK FRICK FRICK-"
Blueberry started to shake the fairy godmother by the shoulders. "INK, CALM YOURSELF! WHY DO WE NEED TO ENTER THE SPOOKY CASTLE."
"I-I had zero connections to this world! And now I suddenly do and now I can see that SOMEONE I KNOW IS IN THERE AND IN DANGER AND WE'VE GOTTA SAVE HIM. YOU ON BOARD WITH THIS SANS?!"
"UH?!"
"GOOD! DON'T MAKE ANY NOISE!"
Ink touched the sphere, turning it into a door, grabbed Blueberry and pulled him through the newly made portal.
Inside the castle, he stepped out of the paint puddle and zoomed into a nearby hallway, still holding onto Blueberry, and somehow didn't get noticed in the process.
"Okay. Made it," Ink said, catching his breath.
"What exactly is going on?!" Blueberry asked quietly but frantically.
"We need to get to the dungeons, Blueberry," Ink told him. "There isn't much time. We've gotta do it while Nightmare is distracted."
"So he has a prisoner and you know who it is?"
"Yeah! His name is Dream! We'll talk about it after we save him! Now follow me!" Ink ran off, down the ominous hallway.
Blueberry sighed. "What happened to looking for Papyrus…?" he thought before running after Ink.
"Down here!" Ink declared, pushing open a heavy door. Behind it was a staircase that led right into darkness.
"How do you even know where we're going?" Blueberry asked.
"I've been here before… once," Ink told him. "Yeah, uh… right down there."
They started carefully making their way down the stairs.
"He's captured you before?" Blueberry questioned. "Oh… this place is so dark and dreary, it seems like it would be a lot worse than being captured by Error… At least Error didn't put me in the dungeon, let me watch TV with him and shared his stolen junk food with me…"
"Yeah, Error is also fun to pick on sometimes," Ink continued. "He's kinda messed up and tries to kill me every time he sees me but at least we can exchange some dry jokes. Nightmare is just angry most of the time and when he's not he's like hardeharhar I'm the King of Darkness I'm so scary blah blah blah."
They reached the bottom of the staircase, and Ink started feeling around the wall for a light switch. He found one, and flipped it, but literally all it did was turn on a bunch of dim electric candles on the walls.
"Well that's close to useless," Ink commented.
Ink began to run down the narrow hallway in front of the cells. All of them were empty except the one on the very end. Because it's always the one on the very end.
On the inside of the dungeon cell, there was a skeleton wearing a cape and some kind of fancy head accessory, and whose clothing color scheme was rather warm. Although his clothes made it seem like he'd be a cheery person, he looked like anything but that, locked up in the cell.
Ink tapped on the bars, and the prisoner was snapped out of his trance.
"I… Ink?" the prisoner stuttered. He blinked. "INK?!"
"Don't worry Dreamy, I'll get you out of there!" Ink told him. He walked over to the metal door and KICKED IT DOWN.
Blueberry stood there, utterly speechless.
"INK!" Dream cried, leaping into the fairy godmother's arms. And then he kept crying.
"Dream, why didn't you tell me that you got captured? You know I don't have automatic access to all worlds!"
"Nightmare took away my phone!" Dream said.
"Dang. I guess he's not stupid enough to make the same mistake four times. Now, come on! Nightmare and Error got caught up in a fight upstairs and we have to get out of here before-"
Suddenly, all three of them were forcefully slammed into the metal bars of the cell.
"BEFORE WHAT, INK?" a familiar dark voice asked behind them all.
"… Frick," Ink muttered.
"You idiots," the King of Darkness and Bad Stuff or Something said, a huge grin on his face. "I rigged the space under the door so I'd know if anyone crossed it. Don't even ask me how that's possible because I'm not the one who set it up."
Behind him, one of his tendrils was restraining Error and holding him in the air.
"PUT ME DOWN ALREADY!" the witch shouted.
"Not happening, Glitch," Nightmare told him.
"HOW ARE YOU EVEN ABLE TO HOLD ONTO ME?! WHY CAN'T I TELEPORT AWAY?!" Error looked over at the other three skeletons. "Oh hey, Blueberry."
"You know, I'm getting really sick of all these unwanted visitors," Nightmare stated.
He picked everyone up and threw them into the cell on the left.
"Good luck getting out of this one, it's made specially for Error," Nightmare said, slamming the door of the prison. He began to walk away, but then stopped. "Ah, almost forgot."
Several of his tendrils shot through the bars and took Ink's sash and brush.
"There we go." Then he left.
Error waved his hand around, but no portals appeared. "Great. Just fricking great," he grumbled. He shook his hands, and couldn't get any strings to appear either.
Blueberry sat there on the ground, and let out a growl as he visibly twitched.
Error raised an imaginary eyebrow. "… What's your problem?"
"… Why am I involved in this?!" Blueberry hissed, his irises beginning to glow brightly. "I thought… I thought I was just going to get home, and then get back to my normal life with my brother… but NO! NO I CAN'T!"
He got to his feet and stormed over to Error.
"BECAUSE OF YOU! THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!" Blueberry pushed Error into the wall. "YOU RUINED MY WORLD AND MY ENTIRE LIFE!"
"Blueberry, what's gotten into you-?!" Error started as Blueberry raised his fist-
Ink looked over in shock. "Sans, no!" he exclaimed, racing between them. "Stop! Sans, you're being influenced by the castle!"
Blueberry shoved him out of the way. "Shut up, Ink! It's TRUE!" he growled. "LOOK at him. He's useless right now, unable to use his powers. This guy has ruined COUNTLESS LIVES. We should kill him while he can't fight back."
Blueberry raised his hand, lifting Error from the floor with his power, and summoned a pointed bone in his other hand.
"I'm doing everyone a FAVOR," Blueberry said.
Something flickered in his eye socket…
"NO!" Ink shouted, running straight into Blueberry, making him drop Error. They both crashed straight into the cell door.
… And the door fell down under them.
"… What the actual evening frick," Ink said.
"GET OFF!" Blueberry yelled, flailing under the taller skeleton as his weapon disappeared. Somehow, he stood up, Ink still hanging off his back. With his knees shaking, he grabbed Ink and threw him across the hall. "WHY WOULD YOU DEFEND HIM?! GOOD GOING. NOW-"
Suddenly, he froze. His soul was tied in strings.
"Sorry, what was all that about?" Error asked.
Error walked over and kicked Blueberry into the wall, then slammed his hand next to the smaller one's head, looming uncomfortably close behind him.
"I think I'm going to have a good time dragging you back with me and psychologically torturing you for a little while, Blueberry," Error said. "And this time, no one will EVER rescue you."
Blueberry struggled fiercely against the wall. "GRRR! NO!" he growled. "I'M GOING TO FIND MY BROTHER!"
"Ha! Blueberry, think about this. You think I haven't been back to your world after all this time? It's totally empty," Error told him. "All I can guess is that Core picked him up and took him to their stupid hidden timeline. I bet there's already a version of you there from another world similar to yours and your brother's totally forgotten about you because of it."
Blueberry stopped moving as much. "Papyrus… He… He would never…"
"Sans! Don't listen to him!" Ink said, trying to run over, but Error held his hand up and caught him in strings.
"Come on, Blueberry… there's nothing else left for you," Error spoke, smiling widely. "Just me. Why even bother fighting?"
"OKAY EVERYONE STOP," one last voice called from in front of the prison. It was Dream, the one who had been sitting back, not knowing what to do. But he couldn't do it anymore. "Can we all stop acting like characters from the angsty half of this fandom and get out of here before a certain someone comes back down here? What if he put a sensor on this cell too?"
"Oh, I'll gladly leave," Error said, waving his hand.
Nothing happened.
"Uh. I'm just gonna. Do this." He waved his hand again. Again, there was no result. "Ha… that's… probably just because I'm too close to the cell. Yep, that's totally it!"
Error dragged Blueberry and Ink several meters down the hallway towards the stairs, and waved his hand again. Nothing.
"Maybe I just have to go upstairs…?"
"Look Error, we clearly have to work together to get out of here," Ink said, being dragged on the floor. "All we have to do is get my brush, which makes pathways in a completely different way you do."
"No! No we don't! There's clearly just something blocking me down here!"
As Error went up the stairs, pulling Blueberry and Ink behind him, Dream sighed, and followed as well.
Even in the hallway the staircase led to, Error's portal-making powers weren't working.
"What. WHAT. WHY ISN'T IT WORKING," Error said. "Why the heck was I able to get into this world and I can't get OUT."
"What did I tell you," Ink spoke, crossing his arms.
"I have an idea of where Nightmare is keeping Ink's stuff," Dream stated.
"WHERE?!" Error yelled.
"Dude. Do you want to make our escape even more obvious?" Ink asked.
"He's probably keeping it in that room over there," Dream told Error, pointing to a nearby door that had a sign that read 'storeroom of prisoner belongings'.
Error walked over and kicked down the door.
"Geez, all are the doors in this castle old as frick?" Ink wondered.
"Look, it's Ink's stuff!" Error stated, throwing the brush and the sash out of the room, right at Ink. "Get us out of here."
"Can't move my arms, man," Ink told him. "Untie me."
Error groaned. "Ugh. Whatever. Fine." The strings holding Ink fell down, and Error pulled them back to him.
Ink picked up his brush, and painted a stroke on the floor. "All we have to do is just stand here… and everyone has to hold onto me. But I've never done this with four other people before so I don't know what to expect."
"Ugh… physical contact," Error grumbled. He pulled Blueberry over, who was in the middle of a major trance. The small skeleton fell into Ink's arms.
"… What's going on again…?" Blueberry mumbled.
Ink's expression suddenly turned serious.
"THIS," he said, cutting the strings attached to Blueberry's soul with a pair of scissors he was hiding behind his back, and kicking Error out of the paint area.
Grabbing hold of Dream and Blueberry, Ink made the three of them fall into the paint, leaving Error dumbfounded as to what just happened.
"… Did they…" he stammered. "Did they just…"
"Hahaha! Hilarious!" someone laughed off in a distance. It was Nightmare, looking incredibly amused. "I know I should be angry that they all just escaped but you just kinda got betrayed, sahn."
"H…HA! YOU THINK I CARE?!" Error shouted defensively, storming over to him. "NOW TELL ME WHY I CAN'T TELEPORT!"
"New security, obviously."
"ALREADY?!"
The three skeletons flew out of the door to Nightmare's castle and fell into the AU overworld. It transformed back into a sphere behind them.
"That was… kind of close," Ink said.
"You don't say," Dream mumbled. "I was not expecting that…"
Blueberry lifted himself to his hands and knees, shaking slightly. "What… what was that…?" he asked. "How… how could I do that… Even to Error…"
Ink immediately came over to him. "Don't worry about it, Sans," he said. "It's just how Nightmare's castle works. I'm sorry. I should have warned you. There's just something about it that brings out the worst in people and…"
Blueberry looked up, tears in his eye sockets. "But that means… that means I want to hurt people, doesn't it?"
Ink didn't know how to respond.
"Of course not!" Dream answered instead. "It's the opposite! You want to protect everyone!"
Blueberry shook his head. "There… there's no way…" he said quietly. "I know what I said, and what I felt. I felt… distorted. The way I was talking… it sounded like… like Error…"
"No! No it didn't!" Ink insisted. "You were just…" He trailed off.
"Ink. Do you… do you think my brother has really forgotten about me…?"
Ink sighed. "Sans, practically everything Error says is BS and you don't have to listen to it. We're still going to look for your brother, and we're still going to find him. I swear it."
"So that's what this was about!" Dream exclaimed. He smiled. "I'll help too! But I don't think we've been officially introduced, have we?"
"Right," Ink said. "Sans… this is Dream. In the same way that I stand for people's creativity, he stands for their hopes. He's like… the prince of hopes, or something. Dream, this is Sans, from Underswap."
"Why does 'or something' come on the end of both me and my brother's fairy tale titles?" Dream asked.
"Uh. Okay then. Just Prince of Hopes, then."
"… Does that mean Nightmare represents people's fears or something?" Blueberry questioned.
"Pfft. Again with the 'or something'," Dream said. "Anyway, come on guys! We've gotta find Sans's brother as fast as we can!" He jumped to his feet and ran off.
Ink stood as well. "Come on," he said, holding his hand out. "I promise there won't be any more distractions."
Blueberry looked down. "I'm… sorry about how I acted," he apologized. "That was really terrible."
"What did I say? Don't worry about it anymore!" Ink reassured him. "I should be the one apologizing, honestly. I brought you into that world against your will, dude. I screwed up big-time."
Blueberry let out a little laugh and took Ink's hand, the artist pulled him to his feet, and the two of them followed after Dream.
Ink was made by Myebi/Comyet
Error was made by Crayon Queen/loverofpiggies
Underswap was made by Morty/popcornpr1nce
Dream and Nightmare were made by Jokublog
Cross was made by Jakei95