"SANS?"

"yeah, paps?"

"WHEN SHOULD FATHER RETURN?"

Sans didn't move from his position on the couch, curled in the fetal position.

"according to the traditional 9am to 5pm work shift... six days ago."

Papyrus clambered up on top of his brother, burying his face in his soft hoodie.

"I MISS HIM. I MISS MUMMY, TOO."

Sans pulled his brother into a hug. "me too. at least i've still got you. i'm gonna go make you something to eat, ok?"

"NO MORE HOT DOGS! HOW ABOUT..." he narrowed his eyes. "SP- SPOOGETI?"

Sans paused, halfway off the couch. Papyrus looked up at him.

"IS THAT A REAL FOOD?"

"yeah, it is. i don't know how to make it, though."

"I WANNA HELP!"

"sure, bro." Sans wandered into the kitchen and began pulling out ingredients.

"I KNEW IT WASN'T A DREAM!"

Sans dropped a jar of herbs, catching it with his magic before it shattered on the ground. "what wasn't a dream?"

Papyrus climbed up on the counter, grabbing a raw noodle to chew on.

"I DREAMED FATHER WAS MAKING SPOOGETI FOR US!"

"when?"

"A MONTH AGO, MAYBE? RIGHT AFTER MUMMY... AFTER MUMMY..."

Sans rubbed his head. "i understand. maybe dad made it once when you were a tiny babybones, and you're just now remembering."

Papyrus sniffed. "MAYBE. ARE YOU SAD, SANS?"

The older skeleton grinned. "me? nah. i'm making spaghetti with the coolest dude around, why would i be sad?"

Papyrus smiled weakly. "THAT'S GOOD. I LIKE WHEN YOU'RE NOT SAD."

"well then, i'll never be sad again."

The power flickered out.

Sans sighed, flicking a few switches on the stove. "so much for that. maybe it'll come back on sooner than last time."

A bone appeared in front of him, shining blue and lighting up the kitchen with an eerie glow. Papyrus glanced at him nervously, palms out.

"I DON'T LIKE THE DARK," he whimpered.

Somewhere down the hall, the door swung open. The glowing bone vanished, and Sans' eyes flashed.

".stay." he signed in Wingdings, pressing the symbols into his brother's hand to avoid saying anything out loud in the dark. Papyrus nodded, shivering as he crawled beneath the counter. Sans crept forward, extinguishing his eye, watching as a tall figure slipped through the doorway into the house.

" ."

The voice was a cold hiss, full of menace, that surprised Sans even as he said it. It was not the voice of a child.

"Sans?"

A purple flame lit up Gaster's hand. Sans frowned.

"it's you."

Gaster blinked. "Of course. Was that your voice? How did you-"

"what are you doing here?"

"I live here."

"where have you been? in case you forgot to glance at your watch, it's been SIX DAYS since you last came home. did you forget that you have two kids?"

"I've been busy. I'm sorry."

"FATHER?"

Papyrus clung to Sans' leg, staring at his father with something bordering distrust.

"Papyrus?"

Gaster knelt in front of him, but the child didn't move. Gaster suppressed a sigh, then stood back up.

"well? what have you been working on, then?"

"Many things. I do not have time to explain them all right now." Sans' eyes grew dark.

"The CORE, for one," said Gaster as he walked into the kitchen. "It's more urgent than the others. Our primary goal may be to get out of the underground, but we have to make sure we're alive to do so when it happens. And I am still running tests on the human soul. In a way, the projects are intertwined. They are both reliant on determination."

"so were you able to figure the stuff out?" Sans' voice was still tinged with resentment, but his father didn't seem to notice.

"Not quite, but I have all the information I need to know about it." He glanced around the messy flat - the lack of an adult figure clearer than ever.

"You have been going to school, haven't you?"

Sans looked away. "papyrus has."

"Sans, your soul is still developing! Your education is so important right now - you'll need a job, you'll need to know how to fight!"

"so what, i can just die over and over again when the next human waltzes through?" His eyes flickered blue, and Papyrus whimpered nervously.

"So you can take care of your brother," said Gaster softly.

Sans picked up his sibling, shifting him so his feet didn't brush the floor.

"glad to know you plan to be involved in his life."

Gaster began to follow his son, but paused as the door slammed shut in his face.

"I'm not good at this, Lucy," he muttered. "I don't know what to do, how to care for them."

"SANS? WHAT HAPPENED?"

"it was a bit of an argument, bro. don't worry 'bout it. everything's gonna turn out fine."

"DON'T FIGHT WITH FATHER, SANS. IT JUST MAKES YOU SAD."

He put a small hand over Sans' chest, right over his soul.

"You must not be sad," whispered Papyrus.

Sans sat down on the floor, curling up with his little brother.

The door creaked up, and he tightened his grip on Papyrus. Gaster stood in the doorway, holding two plates of spaghetti apologetically.

"I-" he began, flickering uncertainly. Sans tilted his head to one side, and Papyrus sniffed the air.

The plates reappeared on the ground in front of them, and Gaster quickly shut the door.

"SPOOGETI?" asked Papyrus cautiously. Sans nodded, spinning the noodles on his plate cautiously with one bony finger.

"FATHER MADE US SPOOGETI!"

"yeah. huh. you eat your spaghetti, i'll be right back."

He slipped out in the hallway.

"dad?"

One Gaster was washing dishes, one standing at the counter writing something down, one was sweeping. Sans paused.

"Yes?" said the one at the counter. The other two disappeared, letting the broom clatter to the floor and the dishes fall in the sink.

"sorry 'bout what i said earlier."

"I'm the one who should apologize. I shouldn't just abandon you. No experiments, no potential breakthroughs, not even the possibility of getting to the Surface should be more important to me than the two of you."

Sans smiled wearily.

"Have you eaten anything, son?"

"no. not hungry. can you tell me more about it?"

Gaster hesitated, watching his son's expression, then they were both on the couch.

"About what?"

"your powers. the FUN VALUE. on... on that day, you said something about how you are 'the master of the friction in the universe'. what was that about?"

"That's what FUN stands for, the same way HP stands for hope and LV stands for level of violence. I... I can sense it. This isn't the only timeline, you know. there's over a hundred. most are nearly identical, but a few..." He closed his eyes for a second.

"I can sense all of them. I know how each of them are different. I'm stretched across space and time, about to snap apart. I know little of the future, but I can sense when something bad is about to happen. You can too, can't you?"

The boy winced.

"It takes most of my energy and HP, but I am able to pull something out of a timeline, if I need to. I could erase them completely, which would shift us, all of us, to a different FUN LEVEL. I can smooth or add friction in the universe. With caution, of course. If you play around with time and space, you can only blame yourself when things start to go wrong."

"why don't you? couldn't you have pushed the human out of this timeline? can't you save mom by, i don't know, pulling her back in, somehow?"

"Because I only tried one other time and it ended in catastrophic failure."

"when?"

"During the war."

Gaster closed his eyes.

"I didn't fully understand what it meant, erasing someone. All the devastating effects it has on reality. I didn't understand my power. Never use your strongest attack first, my child."

"can you teach me?"

Gaster opened one eye. Sans stared up at him.

"school's ok, but all the stuff on fighting's super vague. there's nothing about special attacks, or boss monsters, or any of that. if more humans come, if papyrus turns out to be a boss too..."

Gaster hesitated, flickering. "I can. You have telekinesis, at least, which is incredibly powerful. Have you tried teleportation?"

Sans shook his head. Suddenly, they were outside, a misty light clinging to them in the darkness.

"won't people see us?"

"The power is out. They would all be huddled up in their beds, afraid of any noises they may here from outside. There are beings worse than monsters, after all." His eyes lit up purple.

Sans blazed cyan in return. "and if one of those things shows up?"

"It would be excellent practice. What's your current HP?"

"doesn't really matter, does it?"

"It matters tremendously."

Sans' eyes sparked as he glared at his father. "five."

Gaster blinked. "What? When was your last time getting healed? When was your last battle?"

"no, you don't get it. that's its max. i haven't gotten anything higher than five since mom died."

The light slowly faded from Gaster's eyes.

"I cannot teach you. You can never be a warrior."

Sans lit up the street with his anger.

"FIGHT ME!"

Gaster said nothing, and Sans slammed him against the mailbox. The two giant skulls swarmed up on either side up him, but he quickly extinguished them.

"You can never face a human. If you take one hit in battle, you could die!"

Sans looked back at the house. "then i'll die protecting him."

A bone whistled past his ear, almost grazing his skull. He looked up.

"That was a warning shot. Don't expect as much from an enemy."

Sans grinned, summoning a wall of bones and pushing it towards his father. Gaster teleported through it, sending his own missiles in rapid succession. Sans dodged them, noting with a little annoyance how small they were. He could sidestep them easily.

"how'd you get those blasters?"

"focus on what you love, more than anything else in the world. What you're fighting for. Who you're fighting for. The more you use them, the more powerful they'll become." The two giant, dragon-like skulls reappeared behind the scientist and shot two massive beams of white energy at Sans.

Just before they reached him, he vanished.

Gaster froze the beams, looking around wildly. He would never have let them really reach his son, but now...

A small beam of energy hit him in the back of his head, and he turned around. Sans stood there, still grinning, two smaller blasters of his own floating next to him.

"huh, it's easy. just thinking about something you love, imagining if something bad were to happen to them..." His eyes went dark. "love can produce LV, i guess."

"That's one way to say it," said Gaster. "How did you teleport?"

"i - i don't know. it just kind of happened."

"Well, it worked."

The sky lit up in a sudden blaze of stars. Gaster smiled sadly at the sputtering electric lights - the stalactites just visible through the hazy magic curtain.

"Sans?"

"yeah?"

"I'm proud of you, my son."

"thanks, dad." The blue glow faded from Sans' eyes. "i had a blast."