The Cutting Edge
It's a fanfiction of Undertale.
by tashhhh
Sans Lives in the Ruins Now I Guess
The first thing he saw was the dimly lit, purple stone ceiling. Sans sat up and looked over his sides and around himself. A green quilt with hearts and flowers fell from his chest and covered his legs. He was in a cushy, reclining armchair next to a wooden table with his bag placed on top of it. There were other tables and pieces of indoor furniture, even a couch, set up in front of a wooden booth with a pink-laced banner. He wasn't sure what this place was supposed to look like normally, but it appeared to be closed for the day. He shifted his weight in the chair and it slid backwards a bit on rolling wheels. He felt down the sides for the lever which made the chair straighten, and he rolled the quilt up into a ball. He saw his slippers on the floor by the table, so he got up and stepped into them.
Squish.
"ngyeh!" he cringed in surprise and disgust at the cool, slippery sensation of a gelatinous substance squeezing itself into the crevices between the slippers and his foot bones, soaking into the fabric of his socks. The slippers stayed stuck to his socks when he tried to shake them off. He ended up losing the socks as well, leaving his feet bare and slightly sticky.
"ok," he shrugged. "hm… i should probably try to figure out where i am… wonder how long i was out for?"
He felt for his cell phone in the pockets of his shorts and his jacket. Not finding it there, he reached into the crevices of the chair cushion and pulled up the thin, rectangular touch-screen device.
"oh. gee…"
21:58
October 14, Tuesday
43 missed calls
PAPYRUS
PAPYRUS
PAPYRUS
PAPYRUS
PAPYRUS
PAPYRUS
UNDYNE
PAPYRUS
UNKNOWN C
PAPYRUS
PAPYRUS
A bead of sweat formed on Sans's head as he scrolled through the list. He paced away from the tables and noticed some signs on the corner of the wall.
HOME STREET
Toriel's House ^
Market →
"toriel? that name rings a bell…" He heard some footsteps coming from the direction denoted by the 'Market' sign. He was surprised to see a young human wearing a striped sweater come shuffling towards the stand.
"Oh, Sans, you're up…"
"huh? oh, you're that human kid i've been talking to through the door. what was your name again?"
"You forgot? It's Frisk. I let you in through the door. You must have been half-asleep even then." She sighed.
"hm, well let's see, last thing i remember is… i was walking through the forest… and then uh… huh? are you ok? you look down about something."
"Yeah… I don't know whether to call you lucky or unlucky for sleeping through it all. Actually, maybe amazing would be the right word." In hindsight, the depth of Sans's slumber gave Frisk pause for thought. "How can you even sleep through all that?! I mean not just the noise, but we carried you out of there and passed you around a bunch of times…"
Sans smiled and shrugged. "guess i was just bone-tired."
"Well, anyways… what happened was…" she reluctantly drew in a breath to start explaining, when Sans's phone went off.
ring ring ring
Frisk let out her breath and stared at the ringing phone. "Ah. That's been going off all day today. I think you should probably answer it."
"you think so?" She nodded.
"you're absolutely sure about this?" he said, smiling.
"Yes!" Frisk said more firmly.
"you're not really sellin' this to me, kid. maybe you should write down a list of pros and cons—"
"Stop messing around already!" She pressed the green call button for him.
"heh… heya. what's up?"
"SANS!? Hey, he answered! SANS, ARE YOU OK?! ARE YOU HURT?! WHERE ARE YOU?! WHAT HAPPENED?! WHAT WERE THOSE LOUD NOISES?! WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DOOR?! WHEN ARE YOU COMING HOME?!"
"uh… i dunno… hey, maybe frisk can tell you," he chuckled and handed the phone off to the confused girl who took it automatically.
"Huh?!" she squeaked.
"yeah, go on. talk to my bro. it'll cheer ya right up, i pr-i mean, trust me."
"H-hello?"
"Nyeh! The mysterious caller again! So, your name is FRISK?! You wanted to hear my beautiful voice again so badly that you just HAD to steal away Sans's phone?! Frisk, I understand how you must be feeling right now! Really, I do! But you really should not take away peoples' cell phones when their brothers call them! Some people consider that to be bad manners!"
Frisk was a little confused, but the excessive level of passion and enthusiasm in his voice made her giggle in response. "Well, Sans was the one who gave the phone to me and said I should talk to you instead. Right now it looks like he's busy… doing absolutely nothing," she looked over at Sans who was sitting in his chair, picking sock fluff out from between his foot bones.
"Yeah, he tends to do that!" Papyrus agreed. "I still can't believe you got him to do something productive for an entire day! That in itself is pretty amazing! Like, in our house, he leaves his socks lying around EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME, and I can NEVER get him to pick them up!"
"Wait, what? Oh my god, you're right! He's doing it to me, too!" Frisk nodded vigorously and agreed. "Sans, pick up your socks! …Don't pretend to be asleep!"
"You SEE what I have to live with, Frisk?! DO YOU SEE?! Sometimes I wonder what he would do without such a cool guy taking care of him! Nyeh-heh!"
"Hehe!"
"SO… …When is Sans coming home?!"
"Oh… um…" Her voice became small again. The phone shook in her hand as she tried to think of a good answer, but there was nothing to say besides the truth. "He um, probably not tonight? The entrance is kind of… exploded? But we're um… they're about to start working on a new way out, so um… it could take a while, I'm not sure how long…"
"probs at least two or three months, maybe longer if there are any complications," said Sans.
"WHAT?! REALLY?! Can't you just… you know? Come home?!"
"well, that would depend on if i can get back to that door."
"Uh, Sans… it's not just the door. The whole corridor to the Ruins exit caved in, along with half of Toriel's house," she gestured as she spoke. Sans kicked his chair across the floor on its wheels to see around the corner, following Frisk's gaze across the courtyard and noticed the collapsed side of the house.
"oh."
"I don't think you can just walk back to that room."
"uh, well that sucks… if i have no idea what the part from where i fell asleep to where i am now looked like, and we can't go back down there now, then i don't know exactly how far it is… i need the whole map in order to take a shortcut, you see…"
"Does that mean you can't come back?! So then…"
"B-but, like I said, they're building a new tunnel out of the Ruins, so it's just for a little while! You'll see him again soon!" Frisk tried to reassure him.
"But, three months? Well… I guess I can manage… until then…"
"NGAAAH! Papyrus! Gimme the phone already!" A new voice commanded from the background on Papyrus's end. The woman reminded Frisk of one of her gym teachers from elementary school.
"Why are we talking to this PUNK instead of Sans?! You listen here, you little… 'Frisk' person… I don't know who the hell you are or what you're threatening him with, but I swear, ON MY NAME as Undyne, Captain of Asgore's Royal Guard, if you hurt my friend, I will FIND YOU! I don't care how many tons of rock you are buried under, I WILL DIG MY WAY TO YOU WITH MY BARE HANDS, AND I WILL FIND YOU, AND I WILL PIN YOUR BODY TO THE GROUND WITH SPEARS, AND KILL YOU SO HARD THAT THEY WON'T EVEN BE ABLE TO VACUUM ALL OF YOUR DUST OUT FROM THE CORNERS OF THE ROOM, BUT I'LL STILL SWEEP UP EVERY LAST BIT OF IT, AND GIVE IT TO ALPHYS, AND WE'LL MAKE YOU INTO ICE-CREAM AND FUCKING EAT YOU FOR BREAKFAST. YOU GOT THAT PUNK?!"
Undyne must have been imagining that Frisk was some kind of scary, black-tentacled blob monster (wearing a striped shirt) keeping Sans in a dark dungeon full of chains and torture devices.
Sans was covering his face and trying not to let the phone in Frisk's hands pick up on his laughter. Frisk however, calmly held her end and responded politely to Undyne's angry ranting. "No, I did not kidnap him … He's actually here for work ... Oh... Ok ... Ah, is that so? ... Yes … Yes, Sans is fine … So Papyrus is staying with you then? … That's good … Yes … Yes, I understand … Ok … Yes ma'am ... I promise I'll take good care of him while he's over here … You too … I'll tell him you said 'hi'."
She hung up and gave Sans back his phone.
"nice going. so, you're gonna take good care of me? that's great, 'cause i'm starving."
"Me too. Want some hot dogs?"
"yes please."
"Um, it'll take the grill a while to heat up. Sorry for the wait."
"hey no problem. i'll be here all week."
"Heh," Frisk smiled lightly in response. "I don't think I'm gonna be able to sleep for a while anyways." She put on some water for tea and sat down at the table while they waited.
"you still haven't told me what happened."
"Right. Well, you know Toriel?"
"the lady i always talk to through the door?"
"Yeah… so I went down there with Buffet earlier today."
"the spider lady who gave me the survey?"
"Yes, and then I let you in through the door, and then… and then you came in normally. Then we started looking at the stuff you brought together and then you—"
"woah, woah, slow down there, kiddo. what was with that look? what'd i do, huh? did i getcha?"
"You wanna know what you pulled? Me. Right through the door! I was so scared I thought I was stuck in Snowdin for a moment!" Sans started laughing, and so did Frisk. "And now you're stuck here on my side! I'd call that karma."
"heh! i'd call that hilarious. i regret nothing."
"Hehe, well you sure know how to lighten the mood." She stood up and took a keychain out of her pocket. "Although, you probably won't laugh when you hear what Toriel said to you while you were asleep… Uh so, how many hot dogs do you want? They're about this big…" she asked while using her fingers to illustrate.
"one 'dog is fine. my stomach's about this big," he said while pulling up his t-shirt, showing off his middle where all he had was a spine.
"O-okay."
Frisk unlocked the storage room where the foods were packed away for the night. She came out with her arms full of two plates, two sausages links, sauce bottles, teacups and buns on top of the plates. She managed to fit the key and turn it again even with her hands underneath all of the items. tssssssssss… The delicious smell of grilling meats filled the room. She noted, "I hope we don't wake up the neighbors." She poured some tea for them. Sans took a sip. He couldn't help the image of the king's face and the sunny courtyard that flashed through his mind. Frisk finally relayed the full exchange from the door room to Sans.
"oh… ouch. that is pretty harsh. i guess you could say that she overreacted. but, i dunno… it's not wrong to say that you'd be in danger outside the ruins. papyrus would probably try to 'capture' you and end up playing with you instead, but undyne… if she knew you were human, kid… she might have actually done that stuff she said she was gonna do. i think she might even be capable of busting through here if she were determined enough. she's pretty strong."
Frisk stood by the grill and flipped over the hot dogs. "Well, I hope she doesn't… with the state of the walls around here, and that recent blast… I don't wanna how much damage another angry woman could cause to this place." She finished cooking and plating their dinner. His eyes lit up with delight as she approached and set them down on the table.
He looked curiously at the white and brown sauces she had put on it before taking a bite. Frisk tried to focus on her own meal, but couldn't help staring at him.
How does his mouth work? Huh, well he looks happy.
"mmm. kid, this might be… the best hot dog in the entire underground."
"Really?!"
"yeah," he chuckled. "tastes way better than a water sausage."
"Wha—!" She reeled at the insult. She looked down at the table and ate her food silently, contemplating possible retorts.
Sans finished the last bite of his hot dog. Smiling, he looked her straight in the eyes without trace of his earlier sarcasm and said, "thank you frisk."
She paused in the middle of the bite she was chewing and blushed. She swallowed and said, "Y-you're welcome…"
He picked up one of the bottles of sauce and said, "what kind of ketchup is this?"
"Oh that, it's barbeque sauce. It's similar to ketchup, but it's made from a lot more different vegetables and spices. That one is a recreation of a sauce from my hometown. It was served with a lot of popular street foods in the area… um?" She ceased her rambling and looked on in confusion as he opened the cap and started chugging the bottle like a can of soda.
"ah," he said as if it were refreshing. "so, how much do i owe ya for this stuff?" He said, fiddling with a tiny coin purse that he took out of his pocket.
"What? Oh no!" Frisk pushed his hands back so he stopped what he was doing. "You don't have to pay me! It's after hours right now…"
"huh… ok." He regarded the half-empty BBQ sauce bottle. "frisk?"
"Hm?"
"put it on my tab."
"NO, you don't have a tab, you're my guest here so just take it ok?!" She yelled while frantically waving her hands around. Sans imagined that her head was engulfed in bright orange flames.
"kid, you don't have to… but thanks," he smiled gratefully.
She hugged a knee to her chest and muttered, "'welcome." Sans happily guzzled the rest of the bottle.
Food and its enjoyment provided a welcome distraction from uncomfortable topics, but after a few more minutes of relaxing, Frisk's mind drifted back to the unfortunate events from earlier and she let out another sigh.
"Ugh… We're gonna have to do something about this whole mess with Toriel…" she admitted reluctantly, tilting her head towards the house. "Wanna go for a walk?"
"you're putting it off? am i influencing you already?"
"I'm not putting it off. It's normal to give things some time to settle down… right? Besides, it's really nice and quiet out at this time of… evening."
"heh, ok. show me around then."
They walked through a dark, confusing, spiraling maze of corridors full of glowing mushrooms serving as night lights. "A guy I work with lives around here," said Frisk. "Wait, this is house number 3? No, this is the Migosp's side…"
"frisk… you do know your way around here, right?"
"Of course, I know exactly where I am going."
"Hiya Frisk," said a green Loox girl with orange horns. She was wearing a lighter green skirt and she was taking her pet Moldsmals for a walk. "And sleepy skeleton," she nodded to Sans.
"hey," he said.
"Are you looking for our street? It's this way," she offered and led them in the opposite direction that they had just been walking.
"Thanks!" said Frisk.
After a short walk, they were in a room where the walls were full of small windows glowing pink, green, and blue from within. The edges of the room were decorated with gardens of red bushes and blue mushrooms. There were some completely normal bugs buzzing around the foliage. Black dots against luminescence. The green Loox stopped walking and glanced around, indicating their arrival. They stood beneath a tall, glowing mushroom street lamp.
When Sans and Frisk had stood still for a few seconds, the two Moldsmals started to glow in spots of green and purple. Their bodies undulated vertically and they bounced closer to Sans.
"heh?" He shrugged and looked at them, unsure of what to do.
"Pet them," the green eyeball monster suggested.
"uh… ok…" Sans smiled nervously, trying to act casual as he put one hand on each Moldsmal and rubbed their skin a bit. The back of his neck tingled as the thick slime coated his hands and seeped into every contour of his carpals. The Moldsmals glowed pink and bounced faster, before seeming to calm down. Sans lifted his hands up, drawing a trail of slime. He shot at look at Frisk and she quickly looked away, one hand over her mouth as her cheeks puffed up in stifled laughter.
"well… they're certainly a colorful bunch… they're just uh… oozing with love," he laughed half-heartedly, and wiped his hands on the arm of Frisk's sweater before she could stop him.
"Geh! Sans!"
"come on human, you want some love, don't ya?" Frisk tried to run away from his slime-covered hands.
"I work in these clothes!"
"i thought it was after hours?"
"Yeah but tomorrow!"
"i'd worry more about today if i were you."
They bickered while running circles around the eye monster. She tried to turn her body around and keep her eye fixed on them, but the spinning confused her. She spun faster and faster. Sans stopped and waited for Frisk to come back around the other way so he could grab her other sweater sleeve. Irene was so dizzy she fell flat on her back with a small cry of "oomf!" A hard object fell out of her pocket.
"woops. didn't mean to make ya drop this." Sans picked up the blue coin which was worth 5g, and handed it back to her.
"Thanks!" Irene giggled and put it back in her pocket, neither monster paying any mind to the slime that trailed between their hands and flicked all over their clothes, while Frisk silently grumbled, holding her contaminated arms out at an angle away from her body.
Sans suddenly looked at his hands closely and narrowed his eyesockets suspiciously. "hey wait a sec. this slime is… the same slime that was all over my shoes."
The prone Loox giggled again in response and Frisk started to explain, "That's because earlier today, these guys came by while you were sleeping…"
Earlier that day, Frisk had been running her stand together with her light blue Loox friend. The crash from Toriel's house had caused most of the lunch customers to run away, but Irene, a regular and now friend of Frisk's, was not deterred. The Moldsmals were checking out the sleeping Sans. They pursed their openings into narrower tips, like pairs of lips, and prodded the pink slippers with interest. Frisk took notice and stepped over to intervene.
"Oh no, honey… those aren't for you…" She pet them on their rims and gently tugged the slippers out of their mouths, both footwear and human limbs coated in the gooey slime. The Moldsmals glowed pink and jiggled excitedly. Thankfully, they became more interested in each other and they made some distance from the tables to bounce and bump into each others' slimy bodies instead. She put the slippers on the floor beside the table and went back to working.
"so that's why… wait, did you say your name was 'Irene'?" Sans said with a hint of a smirk.
"Yes?" She sat up and answered.
"what was the name of the other monster that works at your place?"
"Allens," said Frisk.
"his name is 'a lens'?" he laughed. "you guys got any family members?"
"Why yes. Allens has quite a large family. There are uncles and aunts… his four younger siblings…"
Irene had somehow acquired a family photograph for reference. It showed Frisk's employee looking his usual round, monocular self. Four other smaller Loox monsters in varying shades of sepia were lined up to his right. Irene went through them one by one.
"That's Blinky… and that's Unica… and that's Mona… and that's Lidya." Sans grinned and snickered all the more at each name.
"nice! so… allens is a big bro too, huh? heh, I bet he's always keeping an eye out for the little ones!"
"Yes, well you know how little siblings are when they've got their sights set on mischief." Irene and Sans giggled.
Frisk looked unamused and said, "They're nothing compared to the trouble that older siblings cause."
He said, "hey come on, aren'tcha glad you got such a great friend to lense you a hand at your restaurant?"
She crossed her arms and thought for a second. "Of course. Eye am very pleased with his work."
Irene said, "Hehe, me too!"
"well kid, Loox like you are getting along great over here," Sans said and winked. They all giggled together.
At that moment, another Loox who was a color between purple and indigo, had shorter horns than Allens, and an eerie black iris with a white ring around the pupil, came along and tried to join in on their fun.
"Heeey. I'm Loox Eyewalker," he said. "… Don't pick on me."
The laughter died down between the three and they stared at him, confused.
"Huh?" said Irene.
"i don't get it…" said Sans.
"I said don't pick on me!" 'Loox Eyewalker' shouted. He blinked some angry tears at them. The tears on the rim of his eyelid expanded into bubbles, as if made of soap, and flew towards them. Irene was a little further back, and the Moldsmals were off to the side, but Sans and Frisk stood in the line of fire.
"What the—" they both said. Sans was totally not expecting anything like that to happen and out of pure instinct he teleported away to a safe corner of the room. Frisk would have noticed and said something to the effect of 'wow you can teleport?', but she was too busy getting hit in the face by the bubbles.
"Nng!" She cried and put her arms in front of her face for defense. They popped and burned her cheeks. At the same time a painful sensation shot up her nose like a very strong horseradish, causing her to leak snot and tears. "Ngyah!" As she stood disoriented, Sans pulled her back by the arm and Irene applied some healing magic to her face.
"W-we're not picking on you…" Frisk tried to explain.
"Ivan! Stop bothering the human and come do your chores this instant!" came the voice of an another, older, female Loox from a nearby window. She was the same purple color as him, but with a red iris and the beginnings of wrinkles in the corners of her eye.
"Ugh. Yes, Mother…" said the indigo Loox whose real name was Ivan and reluctantly trudged off to his house. Now that one made Sans, Irene, and Frisk start laughing again.
"And you kids, keep it down out there!" she scolded them. "It's way past your bedtime! Get back to your homes and go to bed!"
Sans, Irene and Frisk all gulped and said "Yes Mother!"
It was past midnight, but Sans couldn't sleep yet since he had only been awake for a couple of hours. He leaned back in the reclining armchair that was his home for the time being and scrolled through his phone, browsing through Undernet and posting annoying puns. Chuckling lightly, he used a slight touch of blue to nudge his chair a few inches, while he raised his phone horizontally with Frisk in the camera view as she stood and contemplated the half-wrecked house across the dark courtyard.
nah… they don't know she's a human yet. He thought and lowered the phone without doing anything.
Frisk sighed again. Sans said, "wanna see some pics?"
"Yeah." She came over and leaned her elbows on the armrest.
"Ooh, that must be your brother."
"yea."
"And another photo of him… and another… and another…" She raised her eyebrow. "Do you have any pictures of… anything else?"
"'course i do. here's our snowball fight from a few days ago."
"Which one is Undyne?"
"that one."
"What is she supposed to be?" Frisk squinted at the photo.
"a fish."
"Hm… I can't tell underneath all the coat." The human-shaped monster in the photo was wearing a dark-gray winter coat over armored leggings. The white fluff around the hood obscured most of her features except for a bit of her blue skin and sharp yellow teeth.
"Are those dog monsters?"
"yeah, they aren't dog animals. we have those too, though… huh?" He looked curiously as Frisk was hastily scribbling down something in a notebook off to the side while muttering, "Snails, goats, fish, clams, and now dogs too…"
She said, "Hold on a sec, I'll show you some photos too!" She leaned over the counter and pulled out a more modern-looking cell phone than the larger model sitting on the wooden surface.
"got pics from the surface?" he said curiously.
As she turned it on, her face fell in disappointment. "Huh, only 20% battery? It was like 50% last time I turned it off…"
"batteries can leak over time."
"Oh."
"you can't charge it?"
"I have a cable for it, but the power plug is different here."
"if that's all, i might be able to find something for it…"
"Really? You could do that?!" Her face lit up as she spoke. "Could you get it to call the Surface too?!"
"uh..." he shrugged. "let's not make any promises i can't keep now..."
"Ah, right." She sat back and tried to curb her enthusiasm. "Sorry, that was a dumb thing to ask..."
"don't worry about it."
She trailed off and went back to staring at the house. He glanced up at her occasionally as he went back to looking at his phone. He noticed a few minutes later when she came out with some extra blankets and pillows. She gave one to him and put the rest on the couch for herself.
"Goodnight," she said.
"nighty-night," Sans said. He smiled vacantly and went back to looking at whatever distractions the Underground's tiny computer network had to offer him that night.