"Howdy, Jett!"
Flowey's roots were planted in the ground between the two vines that held Jett up by her legs, the upside down girl glaring at the yellow flower in front of her while his fake smile lay plastered across his pale yellow face.
"Flowey…" She spit his name out like poison on her tongue, disgruntled noises following as the vines painfully curled their way up and around her hips. The thorns dragged across her skin effortlessly, leaving behind irritated cuts and marks as they traveled across her delicate body.
"Awe, aren't you happy to see me? Personally, I'm VERY happy to get to go see you again, and so soon from our last visit too!" He narrowed his eyes right back at Jett, throwing her a smug grin. That cocky look didn't stick around for too long when Jett's hacked a loogy straight into his face.
Flowey's face creased up as he attempted to shake the saliva off, swears of all kinds filling the air as he did so.
…Probably not the brightest idea on Jett's end.
Moments after Jett's assault, two more vines came flying out of the ground beneath her, the first one wrapping itself firmly over Jett's mouth as the second one bound both of her dangling arms together.
"Are you stupid?!" Flowey yelled with a toothy snarl, visibly pissed beyond belief. "What makes you think that you are in ANY position to do something as ballsy as that?!" Jett only responded with muffled, displeased grunts as Flowey calmed himself, letting out a small sigh before regaining composure. "That's alright though, at least you're shut up real good now."
Jett's eyes widened when she felt warmth build up in her chest, her soul now being summoned from inside of her bound body by Flowey. She started to panic, wriggling herself in Flowey's grasp as a poor attempt to break free from the vines that had embedded themselves into her skin. She helplessly watched her soul hover unprotected in front of her, upside-down along with her body. Flowey simply laughed as he watched her continue to struggle before him.
"You know, I really misjudged you! I really did think that you weren't as braindead as you looked when we first met. But boy, was I wrong!" He extended his stem slightly up towards Jett, his smirk unmoving from his face. "You were warned by that foolish woman in the Ruins to keep your precious soul safe, and yet you let your guard down the second to step out of there!"
The little shit was listening in on her and Toriel's conversation?! Flowey cackled at his dangling victim while Jett continued to struggle in his grasp, reading Jett's expression with ease.
"That's right, I listened in to your sickening conversation with her. I watched you two fight it out by the way. It sure seemed like a touching moment, you two making up after your pathetic battle." His face crunched up bitterly. "Ugh, it really made me sick... But now I have the answer that I was looking for, and I know for sure that your soul is a powerful one. Probably more powerful than any soul I've seen!"
Flowey extended even further up from where he was rooted, his stem growing with ease out of the snow to position himself right in Jett's face. Her eyes widened while her body continued to lightly tremble in fear.
"Awe, what's the matter? Where did all that feistiness go?" He twisted his features around to something more sinister, his tongue nearly hanging out of the sharp edges of his mouth. "Pathetic. Now, I'm going to let your body rot away in the snow and absorb your soul to see how powerful it REALLY is!"
Flowey laughed loudly in her face, drowning out Jett's muffled cries even more than they already were. She was so unsure about what to do anymore. She tried her best to break her arms free from the vine's grip so that she could at least try to protect her soul from Flowey, but that only made him hold on to her even tighter. She wanted to do something, anything at all to try to stop him, but she was far too weak against the plant's tight grip on her limbs.
Another vine rose up from the Earth and headed straight for the floating white soul as it slowly snaked its way up in to the air, Jett watching it grow dangerously close. Her heart was racing inside of her chest, and her breathing was loud through her nose as she continued to powerlessly watch. Is this really how her life was going to end? At the hands of a flower?
Images of Frisk ran through her mind as her tears started to brim along her waterline. She's failed, all because she was careless, and now she'll never get to see her brother ever again.
The vine finally reached its target, positioning itself to curl around the white heart, ready to rip it away from Jett's body. Flowey cackled, showing his excitement in this terrible act before the vines violently came crashing inwards towards the soul… only to be met by a small shield that appeared around the white soul on its own free will.
"What?" The startled vine backed off for a moment and the laughing stopped. Jett was just as startled as her attacker was, confused and relieved at what had happened. She didn't command it in any way to do that, she didn't even think that it was a possibility for a shield to form around her soul, and yet it did it out of its own free will and instinct to survive.
Flowey glared at the barrier surrounding the soul, growling and clenching his teeth together in utter frustration before going to grab it once more. Jett's relief ended and panic returned as he wrapped his vine around the shield that Jett's soul was protecting itself with, the plant getting a firm grip around the solid magic before giving it a tight squeeze. If it weren't for the fact that Jett's life were on the line, it would actually kind of be a funny sight. He strained his face and kept repositioning the vine around the bright barrier, almost as though he were trying to open a tricky jar.
"You really do have a resilient soul..." A small crack started to form on the shield once he found a weak spot to wrap around, the thick vine continuing to squeeze down harder. "It'll make this victory so much sweeter once I break this pitiful barricade of yours!" The crack was quickly growing as the shield started to reach its limit against the vine's wrath.
Jett's panic was skyrocketing with the combination of the dragged out scene unfolding before her and all the blood rushing to her head, making her feel queasy and light headed. The pain from the tight vines around her limbs turned into a cold, numbing sensation as they grew snugger, presumably due to Flowey's excitement with getting what he so desperately wanted. She closed her eyes, bracing herself for whatever pain she may feel, for whatever void she may enter, waiting for this torture to finally end.
Snap
Jett's eyes flew back open upon hearing Flowey scream out in pain, her pupils immediately darting to the vine that had been trying to break the shield to see exactly what caused this outburst to happen. Looking down, Jett spotted Flowey's vine that was assaulting the barrier, now wriggling around in agony with a generous amount sliced off. The part that had been broken off was lying on the ground, the vine slowly turning into a light gray dust and tainting the color of the white snow over the course of a few seconds.
Not even a second later, four objects that Jett couldn't really make out whizzed by, Jett flinching at the loud snapping sounds as each one of the projectiles hit the remaining vines that held her up in the air. The vines began to turn to dust, just like the first one had, and Jett let a small yelp out as her mouth was finally freed along with her arms and legs.
She was absolutely done with falling at this point, but she shut her eyes tightly again and braced herself for her decent to the ground that was to be expected after being freed… But a few tense seconds went by without the feeling of gravity or the impact of the snow, and instead a weird fuzzy feeling had engulfed her body.
Confused, Jett hesitantly cracked her eyes open and saw herself hovering above the ground with a faint blue tint radiating off of her body, likely the cause of the tingling she felt. She gasped out in shock and wriggled in the air like a fish out of water, letting out little panicked sounds as she was turned right-side up and placed gently on her bottom. The blue tint faded away soon after, the tingling feeling fading away with it as well. Jett tried to support her own weight with her sore arms as she hissed in pain from the cold substance against her bare, abused legs.
Her fatigued body didn't want to comply with her however, and instead of sitting herself up right to get herself back up on to her feet and the hell out of there, she fell back softly into the snow and gave in to the exhaustion she felt looming over her. Panting as she stayed lying on the ground, her soul receded back into her slowly rising and falling chest, safely away from the threat in the area.
Her vision was blurred and head fuzzy as she starred up at the falling white specks of snow against the dark cavern sky, her thoughts running wild on what in the hell was happening. Did someone save her? Her question was answered with the sound of someone approaching behind Jett, the crunching snow mixing in with Flowey's cries bringing her back in to her dazed reality.
"Hey there Flowey, long time no seed." A deep male voice now cut through Flowey's shouts. This person, despite the situation that was unfolding before him, sounded way too calm as he casually threw a flower pun in with his greeting to the sniveling plant.
"Sans." Flowey tried to regain his composure as he hissed out the newcomer's name with as much spite as Jett had spoken Flowey's name earlier. "It' just like you to come and ruin my day."
"Not too happy to see me, huh?" The mystery person let out a low chuckle before continuing. "I hate to burst your bulb-ble, but I think you need to leaf, before things turn ugly."
Dear god. This person with their puns. They're bitter-sweet in this moment since they were absolutely amazing for being on the dime with no hesitation, but there is a time and a place for those kinds of things, and now was definitely NOT one of those times. The voice let out a low chuckle before continuing his casual chat with her attacker, his voice lowering to a more intimidating level that sent chills down Jett's spine.
"I know you don't want to fight this battle just as much as I don't want to have to waste my energy on ya'." Flowey made a dissatisfied sound at the pun-filled threat that was being directed towards him as Jett continued to listen to the two's conversation, goosebumps dancing over her skin from the mixed tension and cold, still just as confused as ever and slightly dazed.
"Tch… Fine! You go ahead and take your victory, skeleton… Take your crappy puns with you, too. I'll just steal back my prize later when there isn't anyone around to save it." Flowey let out a wicked laugh before disappearing back into the ground as this new person, who is apparently named Sans, let out a long sigh of relief at the Flower's retreat.
Jett tilted her head to the side a little to try to get a better look at her savior, her mind and vision were still in a blur but working well enough to get a slight glimpse of the person that was casually strolling over to her.
He was bald with skin that looked nearly as white as the snow around him. His hands were stuffed into the pockets of his large blue coat that he wore with, what Jett was assuming to be, a furry white collar wrapped around the hood of it, keeping his neck warm from the weather. Underneath the coat laid a plain white crew cut shirt, oversized just like his jacket looked to be. Under the blue and white blur of clothes was a pair of black, loose fitting pants that ended right below the knee, a single white stripe going down the outside of each pant leg.
Jett noticed that his legs were surprisingly thin in comparison with the rest of his covered body, which may be why Flowey had referred to him as 'skeleton' earlier. Kind of a poor insult to make to someone, but that plant obviously didn't have any tasteful insults. Finally, at his approaching feet were, strangely enough, a pair of white house slippers. She couldn't tell if this person was trying to stay warm or freeze to death with their odd attire…
"Wow, he sure did a number on you kiddo." This Sans guy was now standing above Jett, her eyes fixated on his ankles as her brows scrunched up in confusion, her vision quickly improving with the passing seconds as she kept focus on this man.
Wait… hold on… His legs look like they're just... bone?
"Looks like I really got you out of a thorny situation." Sans crouched down in front of Jett. Her eyes slowly traveled up to his face since he was close enough to get a good look at. She kind of wished she didn't at this point though.
Jett's entire body tensed up as she started to sweat bullets, her eyes widening and jaw dropping. She now understood that Sans being called a skeleton wasn't because he was thin.
It was because he was literately a skeleton.
A walking, talking, skeleton Monster.
Her panicked eyes met with Sans's nearly empty eye sockets, two white pin-pricks that acted as his pupils starring directly back into her constricting ones. "…Uh, are you okay, pal? I mean, you're probably not after all that, but you look like you've seen a ghost."
This was all way, way too much for Jett to mentally take anymore. Toriel being the goat Monster of some kind was one thing, but this is something straight out of a haunted house attraction. Her eyes rolled back into her head as she finally passed out from the shock and stress of it all.
"Uh, are you okay, pal? I mean, you're probably not after all that, but you look like you've seen a ghost."
And just like that, the lightly bloodied and beaten human girl's eye rolled back and her lids fluttered shut, fainting right before him.
Sans closed his eye sockets and shook his head, a long sigh leaving his mouth as he starred down at this new human from his crouched position.
"Welp… That could have gone better." He mumbled to himself as he took his hands out of the comfort of his pockets. He placed them behind the passed out human's knees and upper back before scooping her limp body up with ease.
Sans looked down at her tired, bruised face as the snow landed against her hair, standing out against its dark color before beginning to melt away. Thoughts of why Flowey would risk exposing himself on Snowdin's Route just to take a single human soul rattled through his mind. Flowey damn well knew that if Sans saw him on any other occasion, he'd be met with an unfortunate end. It was like that in every single timeline that flower dared to show his face at the wrong time.
However, this timeline seemed to be changing course from its original routine.
Sans refocused his attention away from why the new human could be here and put his first priority on getting them off Snowdin's route. He let out a sigh and closed his eye sockets, and within a second or two, he effortlessly teleported the two of them back to the safety of his home in Snowdin.
The house was empty, as he had expected it to be for another few hours. He was aware that Papyrus wouldn't be home for a bit since he had left to go meet up with Undyne, either to try to formulate a plan to capture Frisk or for another one of her 'cooking classes'. Because of this factor, he didn't need to worry about his brother getting excited around the injured human that Sans had brought into their home.
Papyrus wouldn't by any means do anything to try to harm her, everyone who really knew him knows that he doesn't have the heart to even hurt a fly. Even though he was a soon to be royal guard in training with the main purpose of capturing humans that wander down here, if he had come across this girl on his own, he would probably end up trying to help her out instead of trying to capture her.
Just like how he is with Frisk time and time again, always ending up making friends with him each and every timeline instead of capturing him like he was expected to do in his position.
His nature was always too innocent to be told what really happens to the captured humans, assuming that the ones that have been caught in the pass just go 'somewhere safe'. Sans planned on keeping his brother's mindset this way. He would be distraught if he knew what really happened…
Anyways, it would just be a handful to have him panicking around the house about her injured state right now, and Sans needed some quiet for himself to really figure some things out right now.
He walked over to the green sofa that stayed a few feet from the entrance of the home and carefully placed her down on to the beaten cushions, keeping her head propped up on a pillow to put as little strain on her body as he could. Her unconscious body fell limp out of his arms, Sans repositioning her arms to rest on her stomach to try to make more room the rest of her body. He brushed away the stands of hair from her face, his pin-pricks surveying her still face, looking at the small cuts from the vine that had covered her mouth earlier.
Sans eyes then traveled down to the exposed skin of her legs, examining the damage that Flowey had done. Her legs were covered in scratches, bruises, and specks of dried up blood, and trailing up to her clothed areas he saw that her shorts had little snags here and there. Other than those little snags, her clothes did a fairly good job with protecting her from the vine's wrath. Her zip-up seemed to also have some damage throughout the sleeves, but held up against the vines about as well as her shorts did.
She was lucky that she didn't have any life threatening injuries from what he could tell. Flowey, despite being an innocent looking flower, can do some serious damage if he really wanted to.
Sans turned his head back to study her face like he was seconds before, her expression now more relaxed than it had been earlier as she rested safely. Her pale pink lips were parted slightly, Sans watching as she softly and slowly breathed in and out through the opening. She looked almost peaceful, despite her beaten body, and if not for her rising and falling chest, could be easily mistaken for dead.
He walked to the end of the couch where her feet rested and propped himself up on the arm of the sofa with a grunt, eye sockets still planted on her still body as his thoughts brought him to the real question at hand. This thought ran through his mind ever since he came across this strange new person that he found dangling in Flowey's constraints during his usual patrol.
Why is she new to this particular timeline?
Every single time the timeline had reset, it was basically the same events and interactions with little differences here and there. Frisk would 'fall down', go through the Underground to Asgore's Castle, and free the Monsters. Every time though, even though Frisk would break the barrier open and set everyone free, they would just 'Reset' and redo the same trails over and over.
Sans had no idea what they would accomplish from resetting and re-trapping everyone back down in the Underground, and his memories of other timelines weren't always clear, but maybe this new human is the answer to the question that had been sitting at the back of Sans's mind. Maybe she's the ticket to get the resets to finally end.
The sleeping girl snapped Sans out of his thoughts as she grumbled something under her breath, adjusting herself slightly before continuing to snooze comfortably on the couch. Sans stared at her some more as she laid there before him.
Despite her current state, he thought that she looked kind of nice for human standards. He hasn't really seen that many of them, ya' know, being trapped Underground and all that jazz, but there was something about her that struck him in an odd way.
Her brown hair was very thick, splaying out in a mess on the couch cushions and framing around her face, shorter strands curling up slightly and lying against her cheeks. Her features were pretty basic with nothing really standing out, but nice nonetheless, hiding underneath the bruises and dirt he was sure he saw some very light freckles that would be easy to miss, scattered sparingly across her cheeks and nose.
What really stood out to him however is what was currently hiding behind heavy eye lids. Even though they had made eye contact for only a brief moment before she passed out, it was enough to take Sans breath away. Her eyes were such a striking blue color, something that he had never seen before. They almost seemed comparable to the glow of his left eye when he dared use his magic.
Starring at her right now as she laid out in front of him, Sans felt things that he hadn't felt in a long while. He felt relieved in a way, that this may be the answer that he was looking for. The anomaly that was needed to get things moving forward again. Now, there was always the chance that this wasn't going to be the case, but this girl… he just had a good feeling about her.
Earlier, when he was lying around at this 'sentry stand', which really was just a place for him to sleep without Papyrus being any the wiser, everything was fine and normal. Just another lazy day, waiting around for the right times to pop in on the kid to check in, just to make sure that previous mistakes weren't remade... but then something woke him up from his dozing. He felt alert, even though there wasn't anything in his sights but he heard a quiet echo throughout the trees.
"How does it snow Underground anyways!?"
He wasn't sure exactly where the noise was coming from, waiting a few minutes to see if the strained voice would shout out in to the nothingness once more. Nothing else but the silence of the snowfall was heard the strange voice, and Sans shrugged it off as some weirdo in the woods, but out of nowhere he had the sudden urge to get up and take a walk over to The Ruin doors overcame him. He'd frequently go that way to make knock-knock jokes on the door with Toriel, before the resets that is, so it wasn't necessarily odd for him to want to do such a thing again. What he didn't expect when he was on his way over, was to see the little spat between new girl and Flowey in the distance.
He probably should have immediately intervened, but he had never seen this happen in any other timeline before this. He especially didn't expect to see Flowey down this road at all, since he knew well enough to not show his face around here. So why was he risking it? It was intriguing to him, so he stood behind one of the nearby trees to survey what would happened next. Flowey had her held up by her ankles, her back to Sans, as he listened in on their dispute.
"-I'm VERY happy get to go see you again, and so soon from our last visit too!"
Sans snickered to himself when he saw the girl spit on Flowey's face, impressed by her aim. Flowey visibly didn't like that, and Sans watched as a few more of his thorny vines shot out from the ground to bind her arms and cover her mouth before the flower let out another one of his outbursts.
"Are you stupid?!" Flowey yelled with a pissed off, toothy snarl. "What makes you think that you are in ANY position to do something as ballsy as that?!" Sans watched the girl wriggle around as Flowey calmed himself down. "That's alright though, at least you're shut up real good now."
Moments later, a bright glow was visible between the two of them, and upon closer inspection Sans could see that Flowey was beckoning her soul out of her body. This didn't make sense to Sans at all. A single human soul is strong, and absorbing it would give any Monster stronger magical abilities, but Sans knew that Flowey ultimately didn't care about one measly human soul to the point where he would risk his own life to retrieve it. So maybe there's something more to this new girl than meets the eye…
Sans pondered on the thought for a while, his thinking ceasing and attention back on the scene playing out in front of him when another vine shot up from the ground and straight for the girl's soul. Shit, he shouldn't have spaced out like that. He started to run behind the cover of the tree to where the girl was, his pin-pricks disappearing and his blue eye appearing in his left socket. He needed to stop this before Flowey actually gets this girl's soul.
Sans raised his hands up to summon a bone out from the ground, his blue aura surrounding the object as it hovered next to him in the air. Right as Sans pulled his hand back to shoot his projectile at Flowey's vine though, something interesting had happened. The girl's soul had actually protected itself with a magical barrier.
Sans froze mid-attack, the bone still hovering next to him as his sockets grew wider at the sight. Never has he seen a soul protect itself like that, Monster or Human. That's when he further understood what this girl could mean to The Underground and why Flowey was after her.
She, of course, still needed Sans's assistance in the end, Sans was able to get a closer look at the girl lying in the snow after he had scared Flowey off. He saw her starring up at the sky, dazed with her soul back in her body, and when he started making her way over to get a better look is when she tilted her head his way.
Even with the short distance between the two of them, her tired eyes pierced into him, almost enough to make him stop in his tracks. Only almost, of course. This made him only want to observe her up close even more so.
That, obviously, didn't work out as well as he expected. With Frisk being the only Human that's been around for a while, he forgot exactly how Human's aren't quite used to seeing Monsters just walking around. They've always been a species that was quick to judge right away as is.
Sans shook his head slightly, shaking his thoughts away and starring back at the girl in front of him. His pin-pricks traveled from her face down to the area on her chest where her soul would be resting right now, hiding away from him. He was very curious about it, and he never had a chance to really get a good look at it back by the Ruin's door.
He thought that maybe he should summon it out, just to get an idea with what he was dealing with. Morally, it was defiantly wrong. One's soul is an extension of themselves, and to force someone's soul out like that would be violating to that person. On the other hand however, in this situation, he should probably know what he's dealing with exactly.
He never had a chance to actually decide on whether or not he should do that or not though, a loud clicking noise ripping Sans from his internal debate as the front door slammed wide open.
"Brother, I'm back early from my meeting with Undy-" Papyrus entered through the doorway as he loudly stepped into the house, only growing silent and stopping dead in his tracks with his jaw dropping open at the sight of the unconscious human lying on their couch. The taller skeleton looked at the Human, then back to Sans, then once more to the human.
Papyrus's facial expression changed when he looked back over at sans, now looking irritated with his brother as his brows furrowed inS
"SANS!"
Oh boy...
Updated: 5/17/2018