Let's get this chapter over with so we can start timeskipping towards the big important stuffs. Honestly my ideas don't have to be done before, they can be done after.

Enjoy!

ProtectorTale, Live Above Ch.10

(sans. – Undertale OST)

The trio entered the building and smiled. It was hard not to recognize the place, considering it was literally the same building, just moved to the surface. The familiar sights, sounds, and smells were appreciated by them after their long days of school and lab work.

Grillby's was more active than usual, now that more monsters had easy access to the place and it was generally viewed as a safe haven from any discrimination. The Royal Guard dogs would occasionally trade shifts with government units to guard the entrance to The Underground, but at the moment they were all at their usual table.

Along with other regular patrons and Ex-Snowdiners, there was also Aaron, Pyrope, and Bob the Temmie, because he's the only Temmie allowed out of the Underground as long as he stays out of sight.

"Hey guys." Sans greeted everyone, and there was practically an uproar in response when the greetings of sans were combined with the realization that the humans they knew had entered as well.

Quite frankly it was a few too many faces in a crowd for the older human to put up with and he pulled up the hood of his cloak and lowered his head in embarrassment. Frisk had no such issues and was enthusiastically waving and saying hi to everyone, while sans just greeted everyone casually.

"Good to see you guys back. It's been what, a week?" The red bird asked as the trio took seats at the bar. Sans sat next to the bird, Frisk sat next to him, and AJ sat next to her.

"Yep. Been a week since they've last been here." Sans agreed as he looked to the humans. "Unless, of course, you guys came here without me at some point." He said jokingly.

"You guys know we love it here, but I just don't have time to come in usually." AJ responded with an apologetic look.

"I like it here too, but I'm usually just so happy to be home that I don't even think about it!" Frisk said with her usual smile.

"Hey, don't worry about it." The skeleton said in response. "We're all here now, so let's enjoy it like we always do. Grillbz, I'll have a burger."

"Fries, please." The older human requested.

"Yes! Fries please!" The girl ordered excitedly.

Grillby soon brought the three their food and it took great effort on the humans' parts to not drool at the sight of it. They had missed these fries in particular, but any magic food was something they loved having. Magic food was always much better than normal food, and they couldn't stop themselves from digging in.

"Whoa, slow down there, guys." Sans said with a chuckle before holding up a familiar bottle. "Don't you wanna… ketchup."

Both humans burst out laughing for a few seconds before being cut off by them choking.

"D-Damn it, Sans! *Cough* *Cough* Don't do that while we're eating, you idiot!" AJ chided. It was hard to take him seriously though with him chuckling and choking. "Yes, I'll take that."

"I want some too." The younger human spoke up.

Sans looked away from the humans to glance at the other monsters, and he chuckled. "Three weeks… three weeks and no one's been hurt. Heck, some of the humans have even become friends with a few of us. It's gonna be a month before we know it. How've you guys been doing these past few weeks?"

"Pretty good." The teen mumbled as he chewed.

"Yeah! Things have been super-duper good!" Frisk answered.

"You still taking care of yourselves?" The skeleton asked.

"Taking care of each other." AJ corrected with a smile.

For sans, that was a yes. "Good."

"And how about you?" The teen asked.

"Yeah! How have you and Papyrus been doing?" The child asked.

"Well Pap has been having a great time on the surface. He's so insistent on making friends with humans that he actually managed to. Got his own little following of humans that like him, most of em kids. Course there are a few who try to take advantage of him, but Undyne or someone else usually fixes those problems."

"Yeah! Monsters take care of each other too, don't they?" Frisk noticed.

Sans looked to the side in thought and let out a hesitant hum. "Mmmmost of the time we just protect each other when we need to. Really taking care of each other like you're thinking is more of a family thing, even for monsters."

"But monsters are made of love and compassion, aren't they?" The girl asked, confused.

"Well, actually, think about it." AJ spoke up. "Just about everyone in the monster race would help out a fellow monster if they needed it, but not every human would help another human. Some wouldn't care, and others just wouldn't want to get involved or whatever so they just don't help."

"Yeah." The skeleton monster agreed. "We may be made of magic, love, and all that other nice stuff, but we don't all love each other like you guys do just because of that. That would just be weird."

The room around them suddenly darkened and sans lost his usual smile. "But seriously, how are you two holding up?"

The teen shrugged. "Really, we're doing fine."

"You have any nightmares, kid?" Sans asked.

She looked down, hesitant to answer. "I-I've had a few…"

"She's had three, and I've actually had one, but it was nothing we couldn't deal with." AJ counted. "We share a room so we don't have to go far to help each other out with anything."

Frisk smiled and nodded in agreement. "Yeah. We can comfort each other if we have any bad dreams, or bad days, or anything like that."

"Good." Sans said with a nod. The area around them lit up again and they noticed the skeleton fix his usual smile again. "Now I've noticed that the media people are usually trying to find different monsters to ask questions, but how do they treat you guys?"

"Well I mean you know how they were at the start. Practically antagonizing everyone all the time and posting daily about all of us till we got tired of it. Turns out when I get with a couple monsters and tell people to stop, they actually back off. I mean I still hate every time I see them walking up to me, but it's really their outrageous claims they make at the slightest interesting event that annoy me the most."

"Yeah, they totally went insane when you stopped that fight." The skeleton responded.

"Right!? Like those guys were out of hand and bothering everyone and I went 'hey, I can totally stop this', so I did! And they acted like that was some insane thing that no one ever does or is allowed to do!" AJ complained.

"And how've they been treating you, Frisk?" Sans asked.

"Pfft. She doesn't even care…" The teen mumbled.

"I'd like to talk to them more! I don't see why they're so bad!" The child said honestly.

"That's cause I keep them away from you." AJ commented.

"Well maybe you shouldn't!" Frisk responded as she spun around in her seat to face her fellow human. "Maybe you should let me talk to them so I can see if they're actually bad or not?"

"I don't want to see you on the news." He responded with an annoyed tone as he angrily ate another fry.

"Then don't turn on the news!" Frisk responded.

"I don't like knowing you're on the news!" He corrected.

"Why!?" Asked the confused child.

"Guys, come on. There's no reason to be arguing right now. Just relax." The skeleton requested calmly. "Besides, I don't want you on TV either."

"What!?" Frisk asked, surprised and annoyed.

"It just… doesn't feel right to me. I don't like it." Sans "explained".

"Exactly!" AJ agreed.

The girl pouted. "That's dumb…"

Sans chuckled at that before patting her on the back. "That's how love is sometimes, kiddo."

The teen let out a quick laugh. "Oh yeah! Now you understand how I feel!" He then leaned close to her to make his point clear. "Sometimes the people we love do things for us that annoy us, but we love em anyway, don't we?"

Shockingly, Frisk immediately got what he was referring to and turned to him with a threatening squint that would terrify most. "My daily quotes are wonderful and amazing and you should take them all to heart."

"Um… what?" Sans asked hesitantly.

"She finds positive quotes on the internet when she can and tells me them." AJ explained.

"And he's not taking them to heart!" The girl complained to the skeleton.

"And I wouldn't really call them 'daily'. She forgets them sometimes." The boy added.

"I'm just busy most of the time!" Frisk corrected.

"Busy? With what?" Sans asked, not believing she had any reason to be busy.

"Looking for just the right quote takes time and effort, so I can't do it when I'm doing homework or playing video games." Frisk answered.

The skeleton just chuckled in response. "If you say so."

"I do say so!" The girl responded strongly.

"As you can tell, she takes it pretty seriously." AJ said with a smirk.

"And what kind of 'quotes' does she find?" Sans asked curiously.

"Just think of any optimistic, overly positive, inspiring thing and that's pretty much what she looks for." The teen answered. "At least some of it is actually good advice."

"And the rest?" Their monster friend asked.

"I disagree with completely." AJ deadpanned. He faintly recognized in his head that some people had walked in, but he didn't look to see who until there was excited shouting near the largest of the tables at Grillby's. He turned and saw three guys greeting the dog guards and pulling up chairs to sit with them. "Um… hi?" AJ said in confusion.

"Oh yeah, some humans came in last week saying they wanted to see what went on in here. Grillby let them stay as long as they behaved, and they've been pretty cool so far. Made friends with the dogs and have been playing cards with them a lot." Sans explained.

"Huh… I didn't expect that." AJ commented. "Nice to see though. More people need to see that humans and monsters can totally get along like that." He noticed one of the humans look up in his direction and he quickly turned away. "As long as they don't bother me…" He added as he pretended to look interested in other things.

"Hey, sans?" Frisk spoke up.

"Yeah, kid?" sans responded, giving her his attention.

"Are you doing alright on the surface?" She asked with a soft and caring tone.

The skeleton smiled in recognition of her caring for him. "Well, it ain't the paradise everyone wanted it to be, but… this is it! Freedom!" He responded as he gestured around them. "This is what everyone wanted. To see the stars, the sky, the sun. To visit the beach, to breathe fresh air. To have the ability to go wherever you wanted to in the entire world. Yeah, realistically we can't right now, but some day we will. I'll be honest though, I've been spending lots of my free time on the internet, learning about our world and… it's kinda scary how much bigger our world got with The Barrier gone. And somehow I'm pretty sure that I don't even know the half of it." He admitted.

AJ chuckled at a thought. "Heh. Yeah to all of you guys the world is this big, massive thing and you never could have imagined it, and for me it's just 'eh, yeah, it's big, whatever.' I just have no interest in going anywhere. I totally get if you monsters would want to explore the world though."

The young girl propped herself up from the table with one arm so she could get closer to the short skeleton. "Sans… you haven't answered my question yet." Frisk noted, clearly not intending to let him slide through without an answer.

Sans gently put his boney hand on her head and pushed her back to her seat with a chuckle and ruffled up her hair. "I'm doing fine, kid, really." As sans continued his answer, AJ quietly waved his hand over her head to slightly fix some hairs that were sticking up. She felt him do it and turned and smiled brightly at him. He couldn't help but smile back. "I'm on the surface, my brother's happy, my friends are all happy. I really don't have a big reason to be doing bad at this point." The skeleton answered with a smile. It was his new smile, his smile that he's had since he's been on the surface. To some it looked the same as his old, but to those who knew better, the difference was clear.

He knew that resets were impossible now. It was scary, knowing that things were permanent now, but he lived a normal life now, him and all the other monsters and humans, and that meant that everything stayed, good or bad. That itself was the good and the bad of living a real life that was free of resets.

"And how have other humans been treating you specifically?" The teen asked.

Sans chuckled as he turned back to his plate. "I'm not gonna tell you any of those problems."

"Why?" AJ asked, confused.

"Because, bud, if we all told you our problems with humans, you'd both try to fix them all. But you guys can't fix all our problems. Some humans will never listen to reason, and they will antagonize any monster they think they can, whenever and wherever they think they can get away with it. It's just something we're all going to have to deal with." Sans answered.

"Putting them in the hospital might deal with it…" The older human commented.

"And that's why I don't have you deal with our problems." Sans responded with a smirk.

"Sometimes I don't know why Kindness is your trait thing." Frisk commented to her fellow human.

"My soul makes me act with more kindness and less hostility, but it can't stop me from having violent thoughts!" AJ responded with a smile for some reason. Probably just to concern them for the heck of it.

Abrupt ending is abrupt. Just assume they enjoyed the rest of their day. I'm out of my ideas. My mind's drawing a blank here while it's already moved on to the next chapters, so it unfortunately was doomed to happen.

I got one more random little bonus chapter that I didn't intend to ever write. It's nothing special so I'll just post it today. Like literally I'm just gonna post it right after this.