Now, he didn't do this anymore since going to the surface, because he was actually trying to do more with his life as time passed up there, but in the past when he wanted to get away from things, Sans went to Grillby's. The shortcuts there he knew by heart. Everyone there knew him, and liked him, and although Papyrus often complained about the grease he thought the food was pretty good. And Grillby was a good enough sport that he didn't- or at least pretended not to- notice when he swiped some of the ketchup.
Taking the shortcut to this spot was, then, just a reflex. Who knew if the same was true in this parallel Snowdin. For all he could guess, the local hangout here was some kind of cesspool where everybody wore red and black and gold and snarled at each other. Sans sat at the side of the building for several minutes, still shaking a little bit as he physically recovered from Papyrus' attack, and weighed the pros and cons in his mind of trying to go inside. For one thing, he was starving- hadn't had anything to eat since lunch yesterday- to the point where he almost wished that he had not thrown out the rotten hotcat in his other's jacket pocket. For another, it was still freezing outside and it was getting to a point where it was actually starting to bother him. There was no way he was going back to take shelter in his own house.
The third pro was that, seeing as it was red, the likelihood that this version of Grillby had ketchup was high enough for him to want to risk it.
The con was that he might actually get beaten up again, with his luck, if he stepped foot in there. Sans shivered again, down to his bone marrow, and wondered how long he could stand out here before inevitably walking inside. The list hadn't said much about Grillby, just warning him off from one of his favored magical condiments. Was mustard okay? How about relish?
"hup," he took a breath and stepped through the door, the cold wind on his back vanishing immediately as soon as he was inside.
As far as changes went, this one wasn't too dramatic, at least not at first. Nobody called his name when he walked in, and in fact Sans was sure that he got a couple of glares, one hiss, and a few even stopped talking. That was fine. He wasn't really in the mood to socialize, especially not with these people. Many of them were wearing black, as he had expected and hoped, but surprisingly he did see some wearing white or not wearing clothes at all. A large percentage of them were smoking. Someone was passed out in the corner.
And... At one table he saw gathered a group of wolflike, feral dog monsters all wearing glistening dark armor, armor that reminded him of the Papyrus he had met recently. They probably weren't asking for pets when one of them walked up to him, looking a bit like Dogamy with a black hood over his face and a huge (bloody) axe in hand. He had a lot more crooked teeth than usual.
Sans stood completely still as the parallel Dogamy pressed right into his personal space, sniffing. "...d'ya mind?" He said as the canine guardsman's nose went into his jacket on both sides, sniffed his sneakers, and pressed against his back. What could he possibly be smelling for? He just got here.
At his retort, Dogamy growled at him, raising his head a little. Sans could see bloodshot eyes under the hood, the eyes of somebody who was very cranky and tired. He resisted the urge to raise his hand and just watched as the dog monster went back to the table with the others. Sans heard him mutter, "I got nothing," to Dogaressa.
A part of him wanted to ask what the hell that was about, but the rest of him was smart enough not to. Probably the other version of him had gotten in trouble with the law more than once; he wouldn't be surprised. With a grunt, Sans shook the experience off before walking to the bar. His regular stool was unoccupied, so he sat down and resisted laying his head on the counter, instead resting it on one hand propped up by an elbow. There was a heat coming from the other end of the bar, one that, he had joked back in his own world, took the chill out of his bones. But this time it was almost unbearable, like he was sitting too close.
Sans glanced to the side and took notice of the source for the first time since walking in. Even Grillby, it seemed, was affected by all this. He was a different color than Sans was used to. In fact, the fire monster was looking a bit more well groomed at the top, too. The previous Grillby was comprised of a lazy orange and yellow flame, which flickered constantly at customers like a hand waving. But this one burned with an intense blue flame that made his head into more of a teardrop shape; it stayed still for the most part, but as Sans watched Grillby mix up drinks he saw that flame still give an occasional encouraging flicker.
After Sans had stared long enough, Grillby turned his head in his direction and approached him with no change in expression- not that fire monster's had much of an expression- as if he had known the skeleton was here the whole time.
Sans knew that he shouldn't do it.
Too late. "hey grillbz, why so blue?"
Someone snorted nearby.
Although Grillby had looked like he was about to say something, now he stopped and blew out a little fire from within like a pent up breath. Sans stiffened; don't tell him that he had crossed a line again. But apparently that particular worry was not the case; instead, the blue bartender took off his glasses and squinted at his new customer for a few seconds, before cleaning them on his shirt and squinting again with them on. Sans shifted uncomfortably, unsure what these people were looking for. As far as he knew, his altered appearance was still the same- he even touched a finger to one or two of his teeth, and sure enough they were all still as sharp as earlier.
But Grillby didn't persist, apparently preferring to picking up a beer mug and clean out with a rag than squint at Sans any longer. In a familiar voice he said, without looking up. "I hope you, at least, are going to pay me on time."
"yeah, i-" oh, well crap. Did even have money on him? "wait." Sans dug through his pockets for a second. There wasn't any in his pants pockets. He rifled through the jacket, while, standing across from him, he heard Grillby utter a low sigh. Maybe he was used to this kind of routine. sorry bucko, i'm not trying to do this on purpose.
10g. That was all he had, in the end, tucked in an inner pocket of this stupid fluffy jacket. With a sigh of resignation he flipped it in Grillby's direction; without missing a beat, the fire monster caught it out of the air and nodded, smirking at his customer in a way that Sans didn't really appreciate. "What will it be?"
"i just want something to eat. i dunno. one hamburger, please." If Sans cared to glance around, he would've noticed that some of the other bar patrons were giving him strange looks by now. It was lucky for him that he did not care to glance around. Lethargy was setting in.
Grillby nodded, "One hamburger, then. ..." Something seemed to catch his attention from the other side of the bar and he turned sharply, sighing.
Two teenagers were leaving, and as Grillby scowled and the kids tried to practically dash outside Sans wondered if they were not as upfront about paying as him. The bartender made a gesture to somebody who stood at the back of the big room, a white Snowdrake, and it hissed with a bound forward. While Sans watched, it caught the teenagers just as they stepped outside of the bar. Although the door was already closing, he quickly looked away when he heard them start screaming through the door, offering apologies and excuses between cries of pain.
Grillby tilted his fire covered head, listening to the noise, and then all of a sudden it stopped. He looked back at Sans. "They were on their third strike," he offered as the only explanation, when taking notice of his customer's expression. "Your food will be out shortly."
"... thanks," was all the skeleton could think to say, not caring if somebody looked funny at him for his manners. The white Snowdrake walked back inside and everyone else acted as though nothing had happened while it tracked dust to the corner it stood in.
Keeping his eyes on the counter, Sans resisted the sudden urge to start laughing- and not because he thought any of this was actually funny. At least he knew now why the other version of him was so sick of this place; by the same token, he himself couldn't wait to get out here and back to the normal Grillby's where everybody paid their tab and nobody got killed for not doing it.
He just had no idea how he was going to get back. The machine was already destroyed. He had no idea how the other him had got it working in the first place... And working for a purpose it was entirely unintended for. Sans put his hands over his eyes, sockets going black, and groaned.
In almost no time at all he heard a clink on the counter, and he peeked between his hands to see his food on a clean white plate in front of him, a fat juicy burger with all the fixings and half of it wrapped in wax paper. Sans felt a little bit of warmth return to his soul; he hoped that it looked as good as it tasted. He had a feeling he wouldn't be enjoying it too much with all the smoking everyone else was doing, though. He took two bites and was unable to separate the smell of nicotine and the taste of the burger- or the filthy language of the monsters around him, for that matter. The air and atmosphere in this place was suffocating him. Which was really a shame because apparently both Grillbys were pretty good cooks.
Grillby had gone back to mixing up a drink for someone else; Sans called to him, "you mind if I eat this outside?"
"It's your food now," was all he said, with another shooting glance in Sans' direction. "Don't take the plate."
"can do." He didn't want anything close to a strike. On that note, getting clean bottles of condiments was probably going to have to wait until he got back home, too.
As he took the burger into his hands, Sans thought he heard Grillby mutter something like "-n't believe it worked-" before going silent again.
... The burger in his hands better not be poisoned; his ribs and back still ached. As suspicious as Sans was now, though, his not-stomach was still growling, even more so now that he had actually taken a few bites of real monster food. So he would take the chance that this world was not so screwed up that someone trying to run a business would poison the food.
Even being right outside the bar wasn't good enough. He could still hear them. On the broken footpath that lead into the bar, dust was scattered through the cracks that the wind had yet to take away, and the grains were blending with the off-white snow in color. His stomach turned, and Sans took another shortcut with the burger in his hands dripping sauce onto the mix.
In Snowdin, one of the other areas he inevitably spent a lot of time at was his sentry post, even if he usually ended up sleeping at it instead of doing actual sentry work. So that his Papyrus didn't catch him away from it too often when he used to be "watching for humans," he knew how to get there quickly. He had apparently misjudged where the outpost was in this world, however. He was in the clearing in Snowdin forest where it used to be. Where it still was, actually. He hadn't taken the time to move it up to the surface yet.
The actual outpost wasn't here in this world. All he arrived at was a clearing in a dark, spooky woods, without any place to sit or store snacks. Grumbling, Sans took another bite of his burger and started moving. He would find a place to sit and enjoy his meal, even if his bones froze first.
The excess sauce that was dripping from the burger froze as soon as it touched the ground. What a mess. He caught a little of it into his mouth while he walked, trying to pretend that this was the regular Snowdin forest- although it was hard when there were so few evergreen trees, everything looking dead instead. But he tried. Tried to pretend that he was going to go back up to the surface soon, and had only dropped by to visit the snowman or some of the monsters that were not ready to leave yet. Or tried to pretend that if he turned around and walked the other way he would find the door to the Ruins, where he could go knocking and talk to Toriel. The real Toriel. He wasn't interested in seeing what the parallel world Toriel was like, especially given what was written on the list.
At last, closer to the river he saw the sentry outpost, tucked behind the couple of crooked trees with branches like gnarled fingers. If he hadn't been looking for it, it would've just melted away into the shadows, no sign attached to the front or anything. Off the path, and in the trees... although it was dark the wind wasn't quite so harsh, and Sans felt less like he was being watched by eyes he couldn't see. He had to congratulate his other self on picking a secluded spot for him to eat at.
It was his outpost all right. For one thing, it was filthy and covered in stains from what looked to be countless dinners at Grillby's. The surface was also scratched with names and notes, dug into the wood with a penknife, although most of them had already been made illegible by the elements. Along with a half-empty mustard bottle just lying at the bottom. Sans took a couple curious swallows and then grimaced, gagging on the taste. It was spicy.
Sans sighed and took another bite of his burger before moving to sit down. The gentle burbling of the ice cold river not far from where he sat was lulling him into a false sense of security.
Right before he was able to sit, something jumped on his back. Startled and forced to double over from the weight of this sudden creature, Sans screeched, his eye flashing blue and yellow. Small hands were pawing at his jacket and grabbing at his arm, something sharp knocking into his spine and catching in the back of his ribs. Was it a trap? Was he not allowed to enjoy a burger by himself? The skeleton growled and straightened up with force, throwing whenever it was back on the ground.
Before he could even turn it had scrambled back and crashed into him again. His blue magic flaring, Sans searched for the SOUL of this monster before realizing that those small hands were grabbing at his burger, and with one hand occupied trying to cast blue magic he was helpless to stop them from tearing the sandwich out of his unprepared bony fingers. "Hey."
The creature scrambled back, and Sans whirled around, "I was eating that," he snarled, half lamenting the loss of his food and half concerned that he was about to get into another situation that required effort on his part.
But the magic in his hands faded; both of his eyes took in the small child munching on what remained of his burger as if it was the only food they had eaten in days. And if this is where they had been hiding the whole time, that might actually be true.
"... kid?"
In appearance they were almost identical to the one in his world, but there were differences. Their bowl of dark hair was a mess- Sans doubted that it had been combed in all this time- and it did a good job at first of concealing their face while they ate. The rest of them didn't look that much better, and the colors on the clothes didn't match. The sweater that they wore, this one orange and black, was badly stretched out at the collar and one sleeve, and even from where he was standing he could see that their undershirt, this one a dark grey, was stained by something dark. Their pants, a similar grey, looked tattered and resown at the bottoms, while the shoes were falling apart. It was clearly different, but...
The child- the parallel Frisk- looked up to hear him speak again. Finishing off the rest of the hamburger, their dark eyes narrowed and they stood up, sticking their tongue out at him. Playing the quiet game that his Frisk had often played, back when they were first getting to know each other. Sans took a step forward. "human, don't you know it's rude to take someone else's food without asking?"
Their expression changed immediately, and the child took a step back. He felt guilty in his core, because he could read that look well and he knew that they must be afraid of him. Their eyes kept darting warily forward while they licked sauce off of their grubby little hands.
Sans sighed. "guess you were pretty hungry, huh?"
"..." Now their expression became just a little bit different, although the fear was still there and they took another step backwards. He couldn't quite tell what this one was. The way that they cocked their head at him, probably he wasn't acting very much like this world's Sans. He loosened his shoulders and tried to smile at them, as friendly as he could manage with a mouth full of uncomfortable sharp teeth. "hey, take it easy kiddo..."
Now the child trembled, eyes searching his for something and not finding it.
What? What did they want from him? "i'm not gonna hurt you."
But this Frisk didn't seem to take any comfort from that either, and as he took another step nearer their stance itself changed from one cowering in fear to one prepared to do something about it. Something swung into their hand from somewhere, pointed at the ground like a sword.
It was a... frying pan?
"kid?"
They glared in his direction. Was even this Frisk... evil? Or at least, a foe? Sans cringed. He really didn't want to fight them.
It was a fight he couldn't win.
Author's Note: All the reviews are back! 0W0
(Look at me making easily dated comments in the Author's Note ayyyyy)
Next Chapter: Imposter Sans
