Impasse Imperfect

This rhythm game is pretty neat.

Frisk had spent the night in Alphys' laboratory after leaving MTT Resort, and had gone to bed earlier than he expected, despite Alphys telling him it was "totally cool if he wanted to stay up late and eat cookies." A tempting offer, but the past twenty-four hours had left him horribly drained. When he woke up, Alphys was already busy making breakfast...of pancake-flavored ramen noodles. He didn't hate instant ramen, but he passed on the offer; he'd take a Glamburger over that any day of the week.

Once he'd eaten two stale bags of chips (along with nutritional supplements provided by Alphys to aid in healing his bones completely), he got a call from Papyrus, and to make a long story short, he and Alphys arranged for him to go home later in the day. An hour later, Frisk found an odd program on Alphys' computer, and when he asked her about it, she explained that it was called "isa!" It was a rhythm game that had no actual goal other than to get a high score and impress other Monsters with hand-eye dexterity; with no other options available to him, Frisk decided to give it a go.

Before he knew what he'd done, it had been three hours and he was now able to play through one whole song almost flawlessly. It was called "Renegade." This was his thirty-sixth try, or at least he thought it was. He'd lost count.

Speaking of losing, Frisk slipped up his concentration for one moment, and his hand jerked abruptly to the right, thanks to his iron grip, in the exact opposite direction it should have gone. His score multiplier got reset and when he noticed, he gritted his teeth and paused before slamming the desk with one hand. It didn't take much for Alphys to notice.

"Oh, gosh...!" She paused for a moment to study what Frisk was doing before she continued, "Um...are you okay, Frisk?"

"Yeah. Sorry," he replied. "I just got a little...carried away."

"Oh, uh...n-no problem!" Alphys replied. "Uh, truth be told, I wouldn't mind if you...if you broke that mouse. Uh, I've b-been thinking about getting a n-new one for...for awhile."

Frisk shrugged nonchalantly and would have gone back to playing if his phone didn't start ringing. He had two guesses as to who it was; either one was bound to come get him later on. "Hello?" he said as he put the phone up to his ear.

"HELLO AGAIN, HUMAN!" Papyrus exclaimed from the other end. "TELL ME, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEAS FOR WHAT I SHOULD PUT IN TONIGHT'S SPAGHETTI? IT IS FOR, ERM…" He trailed off. "A VERY SPECIAL REASON THAT MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE TO DO WITH YOU COMING HOME TONIGHT. YOU CANNOT PROVE ANYTHING."

Frisk chuckled into his hand, but quickly adopted a more serious tone. "Uh, not really…?" he replied.

Papyrus was silent for a moment before he heard him mutter to himself. Frisk could practically hear the gears grinding. "HRMMMM...THEN I CAN ONLY SUPPOSE I MUST...WAIT, HOW DID SANS PUT IT?" he asked himself. "'BOUNCE IDEAS OFF OF YOU?' SEEMS A BIT DANGEROUS! I MEAN, HOW HEAVY CAN THOUGHTS BE? DO THEY EVEN BOUNCE, FOR THAT MATTER?"

"No, Papyrus, Sans is right," Frisk replied casually. "...I just can't imagine how high the phone bill's gonna be after this," he joked.

"IT WILL BE EXACTLY ZERO GOLD, FRISK! BECAUSE I AM ALREADY HERE!"

"...Seriously?"

The door to Alphys' lab flew open as Papyrus barreled inside, still holding his phone up to where his ears should be. "INDEED!" he exclaimed loudly. Frisk almost threw the receiver away from his head, considering Papyrus had not only belted his voice across the room, but was doing so with his own phone up to his mouth. The only thing that was half as loud as that was trying to open a pound cake tin in the middle of the night. "QUICKLY!" Papyrus continued, "WE HAVE SPAGHETTI TO PREPARE...! OH, HELLO THERE, DOCTOR ALPHYS!"

Alphys had ducked down to avoid anything that might fly at her head. When she looked up, her face was rose-colored, as if she couldn't decide on being embarrassed or petrified. "...H-h-hi, Papyrus…"


Papyrus and Frisk had gone home quickly after that, or more accurately, Papyrus had carried Frisk home. Under his arm like a package, no less. Frisk would have been a bit more indignant if he didn't find it kind of funny, along with being impressed Papyrus carried him like that all the way from Hotland back to Snowdin. He'd taken the Riverperson's boat instead of walking the whole way, yes, but still...impressive.

"AND HERE WE ARE!" Papyrus declared as he skidded to a stop in front of his house. "MY HOUSE! AGAIN! EXCEPT NOW IT'S YOUR HOUSE, TOO!" He dropped Frisk, who was utterly beaming, and they both walked in to find…

"oh, hey, guys. didn't think you'd be home this early," Sans said as he leaned on the entrance to the kitchen. He looked down at Frisk and asked, "feelin' better, kid?"

Both Papyrus and Frisk were surprised to find him here, but Frisk spoke up first. "Yeah! Way better!"

"AND I AM FEELING BETTER NOW THAT FRISK IS FEELING BETTER!" Papyrus added. "OH, THIS IS GOING TO BE SO GREAT! I FINALLY HAVE SOMEONE AROUND THAT I CAN TUTOR IN THE ART OF MAKING SPAGHETTI! AND THE FINER POINTS OF CREATING THE MOST MIND-NUMBING PUZZLES KNOWN TO MONSTERKIND!" he paused to take a breath before he finished, "WOWIE...! I HAVEN'T EVEN DONE ANYTHING WITHFRISK YET AND I FEEL EXHAUSTED!"

"what am i, chopped liver?" Sans asked with a wink.

Papyrus whipped his head around and squinted at him a moment before answering flatly, "I TRIED DOING FUN THINGS WITH YOU ONCE, BUT SOMEONE KEPT FALLING ASLEEP IN THE MIDDLE OF MY LESSONS."

Sans shrugged. "meh, you can't prove it was me."

"SANS!"

He chuckled, as did Frisk, before he sighed happily and continued, "anyway, we gotta focus on the important things right now anyway."

"...What's that?" Frisk asked as he raised an eyebrow.

Sans look back up at papyrus and said, "where's the kid gonna sleep? we only got our two rooms."

The three of them fell silent for only a second before Papyrus exclaimed, "I KNOW! THE HUMAN CAN SIMPLY USE MY BED, AND I! SHALL USE THE COUCH!" He settled down from a heroic stance and added, "UNTIL WE CAN...ERM, BUILD A NEW ROOM, I GUESS."

Frisk frowned. He wasn't going to throw doubt on Papyrus' offer being genuine, but in all honesty, he wouldn't care about sleeping on the couch. "What? No!" he replied, which earned surprised looks from both Sans and Papyrus. "I'm not gonna just...take your bed! I can sleep on the couch for as long as I got to! Really!"

"NONSENSE!" Papyrus exclaimed. "I KNOW A LOT ABOUT HUMANS THANKS TO THE SNOWDIN LIBRARY, AND I KNOW THAT FIRST AND FOREMOST, HUMANS NEED A COMFORTABLE PLACE TO SLEEP!" He pointed back at the couch. "THAT COUCH MAY SEEM COMFY, BUT IT IS A HORNED DEVIL IN DISGUISE, I TELL YOU! IT EATS MY SPAGHETTI WHEN I AM NOT LOOKING! ONCE, IT ATE THE TV REMOTE!"

Sans leaned in and whispered, "he still doesn't suspect i swiped it to change the channel away from mettaton's show for a couple days," into his ear. Frisk nearly broke out into a giggling fit.

"THEREFORE, YOU SHALL USE MY BED! THE GREAT PAPYRUS CAN HANDLE A HUNGRY COUCH, AND I DO NOT WISH TO SEE MY LITTLE HUMAN BROTHER FALL VICTIM TO IT!"

"Seriously Papyrus, it's fine!" Frisk protested. "I'll sleep on the couch!"

"NO!"

"Yes!"

"NO!"

"Yes!"

"NO!"

"Yes!"

"NO!"

"Yes!"

"NO!"

"No!"

"YES!"

"No!"

"YES!"

"No!"

"YES!"

"No!"

"YES!"

"No!"

"ENOUGH!" Papyrus cried, which managed to make even Sans flinch a bit. "IT IS DECIDED! THE GREAT PAPYRUS SHALL CONTINUE TO USE HIS OWN BED, AND FRISK WILL SLEEP ON THE COUCH! AND THAT'S FINAL!" Silence returned to the house, although Sans seemed to be grinning a bit wider now that his brother's minor outburst was over. It only took Papyrus a moment to work out what happened. "WAIT...YOU…!" He reared up for a moment, but relaxed after a second and cleared his throat. "WELL, I WAS...JUST ABOUT TO SUGGEST FRISK TRY OUT THE COUCH FOR ONE NIGHT ANYWAY! IF THEY'RE OKAY WITH IT!"

Frisk grinned up at him and ran over to the couch before he threw himself on it. Once he touched down, he felt his body weight sink him into the cushions. It was a lot softer than he remembered or expected; so soft, he could feel himself slowly going in between said cushions for a moment before he stopped sinking and grinned up at the two skeletons.

"...that gonna hit your sleep schedule too hard, kid?" Sans asked.

Frisk shook his head. "Nope!"

Papyrus nodded once and made for the kitchen. "GOOD! AT ANY RATE, DINNER IS ONLY A FEW HOURS AWAY! I NEED SOMEONE WHO HAS AN EYE FOR MAKING SPAGHETTI!" he declared. Frisk wasted no time in jumping off the couch (after some squirming free) and rushing after him.


Another late night, another long session of research. Alphys thumbed through another issue of Time Restaurant Delta. She squinted. She was missing the one hundred forty-fifth and ninth books, but she could piece together what was happening, more or less. Basically, the owner of the aforementioned restaurant, Chikusa Yosome, had been deposed or otherwise exiled in some way by the ancient Demon Archon Tsuchemon (because of the aforementioned issues she didn't have), so now the three leads, Kanenobu, Umame, and Masabi, had to track her down on top of balancing their personal lives, keeping the restaurant afloat, and most dangerously of all, dating. "Hmm…" She tapped her chin a moment before she looked back at the paper on her desk. She'd written several paragraphs of her "research thesis" already. "As it stands…" she eloquated to no one but herself in the dim light of the lab, "I have reason to believe...that if we could correctly harness the...gamma beams...of the starlight that...filters in...from the surface…" She paused a moment to scratch her head with the pen. "We could...probably...find a way...to break the barrier…"

She checked the last few sentences she wrote and grimaced. "...I dunno if Asgore will buy that…" she muttered. "But I don't know how else to make it look like I'm busy anymore…" She stood up and kept running through ideas. "Maybe if I...no, that'll be too obvious, um...maybe try to make some sort of...force field…?" She started pacing. "For when we go back to war...ugh, no. B-but I've got to do something."

Alphys would have gone over a thousand different options if she hadn't heard something strike the lab door twice, and a voice call, "knock knock," from the darkness. She froze.

"Wh...who's...th-th-th-there…?" she stammered.

"candice."

"...C-C-C-Candice who…?" Alphys turned slowly to see a short, bald figure standing in front of the lab doors, who took his hands out of his sweater pockets and took a couple steps forward.

"...candice door open, or what?" Sans said as the shadows concealing him disappeared. "i tried, but i think it's stuck." Alphys shrieked and jumped back, and she froze herself in a rather awkward pose where she stood on one foot with both arms twisted around to shield her from anything unpleasant. "...weird," Sans said, "your scales just went whiter than i thought was possible. you must not get out much."

"...Are you Sans?" Alphys asked.

"papyrus' bro? yeah," he replied. "sorry about all that. like i said, door was closed and wouldn't budge, so i had to take a shortcut."

"Oh, uh…" Alphys slowly relaxed until she was back into her usual, hunched-over stance. "Right. I, uh...can't afford distractions." She paused before elaborating, "B-but that's not because I'm a shut-in! A-actually, it's um, official policy! I like having company, it's just that...um...it, you know, interferes with work, ha-ha-ha…!"

She trailed off into strained laughter, but Sans didn't seem to care. "hey, i get'cha," he replied, "scientists gotta do what scientists gotta do...whatever it is that they do. i'm really out of touch."

Alphys froze and cocked her head, forgetting all the awkwardness. "...You're a scientist?"

"yeah. and no." Sans paused. "i stopped walkin' that road a long time ago for...personal reasons," he sighed. after another moment, he looked up. "but i decided to come back, just for one last project. and that's why i came to talk to you."

"Me?"

"i need your help."

"Me…?" Alphys cried again. "...Uh, well, actually...okay. I guess. This is totally n-normal, right? Just accepting help from someone I've only heard about in passing who turns up in m-my house at...at whatever time it is at night."

"trust me, you could get roped up in weirder," Sans chuckled. "anyway, i'll cut to the chase...there's an old machine i got lying around that i've wanted to see fixed. problem is, i can't do it. there's just some stuff that's way beyond my mechanical knowledge, what with the electrical rigging, the gear needed, and obviously, who to trust with it. you might even say...it's been a seven gear itch."

"Oh," Alphys said flatly. "Just one machine, though, r-right? Sounds...easy." And that was what she was worried about, although, if she could understand what it was supposed to do, she could probably whip something up. "What's it do, then, Sans?" It was at that point Sans' smile faltered and he looked away. "Uh...Sans…?"

There was silence reverberating off the walls as Sans turned almost completely around. Then, he heard him mutter something. "W-what did you say, Sans?" He muttered something else, a little louder this time, but still mostly unintelligible. "...S-Sans, you're freaking me out, please…"

"...i don't know."

The lab went quiet again for a few minutes before Alphys said, "...You d-don't know?"

"nope."

"Sans, why-"

"my old man left it behind. said it would come in handy one day, but never left instructions for how to make it work," he explained. "i worked on it off and on for some time before…" He stopped himself abruptly and paused for several seconds before he finished, "before i just kinda gave up."

The lab was silent for a moment before Alphys turned away from him and said, "W-well Sans, I, uh, can see th-this is...really, really important to you, but…" She sucked in a breath; she also didn't notice Sans giving her an aside glance. "But I can't help. Unless, uh, y-you...you know how the machine works," she added quickly, "but even then, I-I-I don't know if I'll b-be all that useful."

More silence. It lasted for minutes; so long, in fact, that Alphys debated with herself if she had said something wrong, but eventually, a voice cut through the dark. "a'right. I understand."

"L-listen Sans, it's not that I d-don't trust you or anything, it's just that I've b-been kind of b-busy lately with my own r-reasearch and development, and I need the time to-" She turned around to face Sans, only to cut herself off when she found that he wasn't there anymore. Alphys' eyes widened and she began to nervously glance around the lab. It was dark. Morose. Hollow. Alone and empty. She sat down at her desk and placed her head in her hands as her breath grew uneven and shallow.

"I can't tell them about the experiments," she whispered. "I can't."


A/N: Kind of a short filler chapter while I shape up things to come.

"Renegade" made by SharaX: watch?v=pbOz-QrVLWk