Kitchen Krieg

Silence and warmth. Peace. It almost felt foreign to him as he cracked one eye open. He sat up and stretched, and for a moment, Frisk had no idea where he was; he thought, upon feeling how soft the blankets were and how the surface below him felt, that he was still in Toriel's home in the Ruins. But as his vision focused, he made out the shape of a television on the wall, and bright lights coming from a room to the right. Then he looked down and saw he was on a couch. He quickly remembered he was not in the Ruins, and was instead waking up in Sans and Papyrus' house. It was another morning in Snowdin, according to Frisk's internal clock; he had no idea what the surface world looked like by now, and he didn't really care. All that mattered was that he was where he belonged, with people that knew him and with friends that he loved.

Frisk threw the heavy blankets off and slipped his shoes on as he trotted into the kitchen, where Papyrus was leaning over the stove, covered in pots, perfect for cooking spaghetti. He heard Frisk enter the kitchen and turned almost fully to smile at him. "GOOD MORNING, TINY FRISK!" he exclaimed. "DID YOU SLEEP WELL ON THAT COUCH? YOU ARE STILL VERY WELCOME TO USE MY BED IF YOU WANT!"

"Nope," Frisk replied curtly, "I'm good. Probably the best I've slept in…" He had to pause and think. When had he last slept? The SAVE points he could see revitalized him, but come to think of it, he hadn't actually gone to sleep since...since the night before he first fell. "Forever, I think," he said quietly, as if ashamed.

Papyrus didn't seem to care about his confession, which was slightly relieving, at least. "GOOD! YOU WILL NEED THAT ENERGY TO SAMPLE MY BREAKFAST SPAGHETTI!" he proclaimed. "NOT BECAUSE IT WILL SAP YOUR STRENGTH OR ANYTHING, BUT IT WILL KNOCK YOUR SOCKS OFF! AND YOU WILL NEED BACKUP ENERGY TO MAKE IT THROUGH THE DAY!" As he boasted, Frisk noticed the pot behind him start to bubble over; it only took Papyrus a second to stop short and whirl around before he said, "UH-OH," and quickly threw the pot off the stove and then hurried over to the sink and began draining it.

Frisk noticed, after Papyrus was done, that he put not just marinara on it, but also...syrup and jam. What kind of jam it was, Frisk couldn't read the label, but no sooner was the last drop of jelly out of it's canister than Papyrus picked up two plates of the stuff, one for him and one for Frisk, and slid Frisk's plate to him. He took a quick look at it and shrugged. He'd eaten weirder. "WHAT DO YOU THINK, FRISK?"

"Looks as great as you, Papyrus," Frisk said. The skeleton straightened himself up and beamed while chuckling to himself. "...You know where Sans is?"

"I DO NOT," Papyrus answered. "I'D SAY HE'S BUSY BEING LAZY AGAIN, BUT I HAVEN'T SEEN HIM SINCE I WOKE UP! MUST BE EXCEPTIONALLY BUSY DOING SOMETHING EVEN LAZIER THAN I THOUGHT!"

Frisk cast an aside glance out the kitchen window. Must be working really hard on that machine he has in the workshop, he thought to himself. He was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell, and, upon noticing Papyrus was already at the stove and cooking again, Frisk jumped off his chair and said, "I'll get it." He marched over to the front door as the doorbell sounded off again, but Frisk paid it no mind. He grabbed the knob, turned it, and opened the door.

And he was immediately greeted with a very familiar black tank top, red boots, and blue jeans. Frisk's eyes slowly panned up to Undyne's face.

Uh-oh.

Truth be told, Undyne looked about as surprised to see him as he was to see her. She wasn't so much glaring down at him as she looked like she was trying to figure out why the human who broke his back was in Sans and Papyrus' house. By this point, Papyrus had noticed the silence and exited the kitchen, still holding a pot of spaghetti. "HELLO! THIS IS THE HOME OF THE GREAT...PA...PAY...RUS…" The pot nearly fell out of his hands and he started at both Frisk and Undyne blankly before his brain rebooted itself. He swiftly cleared his throat and declared, "OH, HELLO UNDYNE! WHAT BRINGS YOU HERE THIS EARLY?"

Undyne herself seemed to snap out of her shocked trance and replied, "Right, uh, Papyrus, I've had to scramble some of the detachments today. You and Sans will be patrolling the south side of Snowdin forest instead of the north." She paused and glanced around. "Where is Sans, anyway?"

"HEAVEN ONLY KNOWS!" Papyrus cried as he threw the pot into the air. He quickly realized what he'd done, as his eyes suddenly popped out of his skull and he sidestepped the pot as it came crashing down on the floor, spilling wet spaghetti everywhere. Frisk flinched as he looked from it and slowly back up to Undyne, who was grimacing more out of pity than disdain.

"Well, when you see him, let him know what I told you. It'll last until...about next week," she explained.

"EXCELLENT!" Papyrus exclaimed, "IN FACT, I WILL DO THAT RIGHT NOW!" Before Frisk realized what he was going to do, he could hear the sound of shattering glass and managed to catch the toe of Papyrus' boots sailing out the kitchen window. He looked down at the floor to see no glass and he scrunched his face up. Why did the glass in Undyne's windows do that and not Papyrus'?

Before he could ask himself any more questions, Frisk felt Undyne brush him aside and walk into the kitchen herself, most likely to inspect the damage. After another moment, he shrugged and plopped himself back down on the couch and he turned the TV on. There were only three channels (like how it was back in the stone age), and all of them were related to the MTT brand. Channel One was for cooking, Channel Two was documentaries, mostly on human life or whatever misguided facts came close, and Channel Three was the news as well as public broadcasting services. Frisk always found Channel Two to be more enjoyable, if only to scream at Mettaton (or whoever was hosting) that his facts were objectively wrong. However, he hadn't watched more than three minutes before he saw Undyne turned her head to side-eye him.

"Listen, just 'cause I saved you doesn't mean I want you sticking around. First chance I get, you're coming with me back to New Home. Asgore will decide what to do with you then," she said.

Frisk glanced at her, then quickly looked back at the TV. "...Okay."

"'Okay?' Just 'okay…?'" Undyne asked. She sounded insulted. "No begging? No crying for your life?" For a moment, she lost her upset expression and grinned from ear to ear. "No 'fight me one-v-one, nerd?'"

Frisk couldn't help but chuckle. "Of course not," he said. "You'd send me into orbit."

"Fuhuhuhuhu! You're right about that, punk!" She laughed for a minute before her expression fell back to serious. "Wait, what the hell am I doing, talking to you? Sheesh…"

Frisk looked down at his lap and considered his options. He still had to befriend everyone; it was like part of his nature now, but the fact he had thrown everything out of whack meant he couldn't rely on all his old tricks. He furrowed his brows and looked up from his shorts to Undyne, to the stove behind her, and he grinned. He couldn't use his old tricks, but maybe he could use his old knowledge. "Hey, I, um, know you taught Papyrus how to cook."

She whipped her head around and stared at him wide-eyed. "How…?"

"He's always really proud of mentioning it," he lied.

Undyne remained stunned for a minute before she coughed and cackled, "...Well! Joke's on him! I can't cook for beans!" Her laughter rang out through the house, and Frisk debated his next action. He'd learned some sparse recipes when he reached the surface when he decided to stay with Toriel. That never lasted. He always felt like he was intruding on someone else's childhood, so he'd reset after awhile. Frisk kept thinking for a moment before he sighed and hopped off the couch and waltzed into the kitchen. Undyne was eyeing him with a mix of suspicion and surprise.

"I...don't know much about cooking either," he admitted as he opened up a few cupboards. Nothing but spaghetti noodles. "But I think I can make some...decent spaghetti."

"What!?" Undyne stepped back and glared at him. "Wait, are you telling me that, just because I'm here with you, you think you can just...act all buddy-buddy with me all of a sudden…?"

Frisk closed the cabinet and ran over to the table and began sliding a chair over to the counter. "Yeah."

"Absolutely not!" Undyne half-shrieked. Frisk covered one ear, since he was busy clambering up the counter to check the ceiling cabinets. "The two bone bros may have accepted you, but I sure haven't! And it'll stay that way until Asgore gives his opinion on the matter!"

"In that case, let's just pretend, hypothetically, that Asgore pulls a surprise out of his pocket," Frisk said as he rummaged through more boxes of noodles and jars of tomato sauce. "What if he lets me stay?" Nothing worth cooking so far. The spaghetti was always better when Papyrus made it, and he didn't have the patience for it right now. Also, if it went anything like the cooking lesson in Undyne's house, Papyrus and Sans would be homeless for about a week.

Undyne, in response, actually had to lean her weight on one leg as she rested her head on a closed fist. "'Hypothetically…?' Well, if King Fluffybuns does decide you're worth having around, I sure won't have a say in anything." Her one good eye met Frisk's and she glared at him. "But I still won't like it."

"...Hmm," Frisk muttered absentmindedly.

Undyne kept glaring at him until she finally broke the silence again. "What is it with you? I've see humans fall down here before. None of'em were doormats…at least not doormats of your caliber."

Frisk shrugged as he closed another cabinet. "I just don't like fighting anymore."

"For some reason…" She shook her head and huffed. "God, why do I feel like you're telling the truth? I've never even seen you before!" Frisk opened up the last cabinet on his far right, and grinned. "Like, when I was chasing you across that boardwalk? So familiar. And when you were trying to fight me–trying, I'd like to note–it felt wrong. I mean, not like totally wrong, it felt natural, like what I was gonna do, but I guess...out of order…? Jeez, you're a walking-" She cut herself off when she realized Frisk standing right in front of her, holding a box of...brownie mix. "...What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm thinkin' I'm gonna make brownies for Papyrus and Sans!" Frisk declared with a grin on his face. "Wanna help me?"

Undyne stared at him for a moment before she spluttered and shrieked with laughter. "Fuhuhuhuhuhuhu! As if!" She even went so far as to bend over and slap her knee before she continued, "Brownies? Really!? Cooking those is like asking you to fight someone! You can't do it right!"

Frisk didn't even flinch at Undyne's mockery; there was more than one way to gut a fish. "What, is it too powerful for you?" Frisk half-taunted. "Is its aura too overwhelming? Would you be…" His grin twisted into something devious as he pointed to the instructions on the back of the box. "Batter off leaving it alone…?"

Undyne remained transfixed on Frisk, staring down at him with her one good eye wide open before she shook her head and replied defiantly, "Not if you taunt me with terrible puns! Alright, punk! Let's see what you got!"

Frisk grinned up at her and ran over to the counter and slid the box on top of it before he ran over to move the chair he used to get up to the cabinets over. Undyne joined him and picked up the box and read the back. "Okay, so what's this thing need?" she asked no one in particular. "Eggs, sugar, milk, butter, yadda yadda yadda, whatever!" She proceeded to rip the box open, grab a bowl from a nearby cupboard, and poured it all out into said bowl. "Human!" she exclaimed. "We need ingredients, stat!"

Frisk saluted and ran around the kitchen. He started cracking open cupboards. It was true that Papyrus only made spaghetti, but as anyone could expect from him, he would often mix different ingredients into his pasta; sometimes, they actually made sense. He rummaged through twelve different cabinets before he had a load of what they needed, and he arranged them on the counter next to the bowl. "Alright…" Undyne cracked her knuckles and grabbed the carton of eggs. She proceeded to open it and throw three of them into the bowl. Yes, shells and all. Frisk was not surprised in the slightest. "Let's get cracking!"

Frisk reached across the counter and grabbed an egg, which he smacked against the rim of the bowl. He did this twice more for the other eggs in the bowl and then opened them up all the wa, and the yolks slid into the powdery mix. "Normally, I would've let that pass, but I don't feel like getting my throat cut up by eggshells," he said good-naturedly.

"W-well...fine, then!" Undyne spat. "Since you're such a stickler, why don't you beat the eggs, then?"

Frisk stared at her for a moment before he reached over to a can filled with kitchen utensils and fished around in it until he had a large whisk; he shrugged. "If you say so," and he stuck it in the bowl.

Press [Z] repeatedly to stir!

Frisk grimaced. Not funny.

All the same, Frisk went about stirring the eggs. It was tough at first, but that was a given. After about two minutes, Frisk felt the eggs and powder becoming one, and he began to put more power into his left arm as he spun it around the bowl. Undyne saw this, and dashed around him to get to the fridge. Frisk couldn't see exactly what she was doing, but he didn't need to wonder for long; she slammed the door with a bottle of milk in her hand. Frisk kept concentrating on whisking the batter, but it got harder when Undyne ripped the cap off the milk bottle with her teeth and began pouring it into the bowl. While he was stirring, of course.

She seemed excited, at least. "Yeah! Yeah! Beat those eggs! Those eggs were gossiping about you behind your back!" Frisk stirred a little harder as old memories of spaghetti and a broken table resurfaced. "Those eggs insulted your best friend!"

Frisk suddenly felt himself whisking harder and faster than before.

For a moment, it was all a blur, but eventually, Frisk came back to his senses to see the batter was, more or less, solid and complete. He could even feel Undyne inspecting it over his shoulder, but she said nothing for awhile. Not until he slowed his arm and lifted the whisk from the bowl, and set the bowl on the counter again. Undyne bent over the countertop and almost shoved her face into the bowl to get a good look. "Well, I'll give you this, punk, ya did good there…" She whirled around and grinned maniacally at Frisk as she clenched her fist. "But can you handle adding the butter!?" Before he could even answer, Undyne vaulted over the table and swung the refrigerator door open again, and this time, he saw her throwing plates of spaghetti covered in saran wrap out, along with bones, jars of marinara, that one annoying dog again…

Eventually, she stood back up, holding a tub of butter in her hand. "Fuhuhuhuhu! Got it! Now we-" She stopped herself and suddenly took to squinting at the tub. Frisk couldn't tell what she was looking at; he could barely read part of the label that was facing him. "What the hell!?" she yelled, "This is margarine! NNNNGGGGGAAAAAAHHHH!"

One moment, the tub of margarine was in Undyne's hand, the next it was nothing more than a pale yellow smear on the wall of the living room, next to the door. "Human!" Undyne yelled at Frisk. His eyes widened in shock and he almost started to cower behind the chair. "We have a mission! We need butter! Right freakin' now!" Before Frisk realized what was happening, Undyne had gripped his shoulder and was dragging him out the door. "Come on!"

She kicked the front door open, nearly taking it off the hinges, and she kept dragging Frisk behind her. She walked down the main boulevard, but then, she took a right and just like that, Frisk was at a street he had never noticed before. When he looked back, however, he saw the intersection they had turned on, and there were Monsters standing around on the sidewalks; this certainly wasn't a strange pocket dimension like the one he had found Gaster in once.

They kept walking down the road until Frisk could see some sort of...grocery store? That's the best thing he could ascribe to the building. It wasn't supermarket sized, though. In fact, it looked like a larger than normal Snowdin house. Undyne pulled a sharp left and she threw the door open, causing several customers and clerks to jump back and stay out of her way as she marched into the back of the store, where the freezers were. She only let go of Frisk's shoulder when she stopped in front of a dairy section. It was rather hard for Frisk to take it all in; even after some two hundred, maybe three hundred-odd resets, he still didn't understand how Monster food worked. Not for the fact that it wasn't physical, that much was easy to understand, but he couldn't help but wonder...how was it all made? He looked over the bottles of milk and cheese and other assorted goods. Were they synthesized? He scratched his chin and was content to think before he heard Undyne yell and grab his shoulder again. "...Can't find it…!" she seethed as she marched back up to the checkout lines.

As soon as she saw a free lane, she strode up to the cashier and demanded, "Hey! We need butter for some brownies we're making, so where is all of it!?"

The clerk cowered down behind the register and stammered, "We...W-we're out…"

"What do you mean you're out of butter!?" Undyne yelled.

The poor grocery clerk, some sort of dull maroon lizard wearing a polo shirt and thick-rimmed glasses, stuttered, "I'm sorry...I'm sorry, Miss Captain...I mean, sorry Undyne, but we...we just ran out, we...I think the stock got miscalculated-"

"NGGGAAHHH!"

Undyne picked Frisk up under her arm and charged out of the grocery store and back into the streets of Snowdin Town. "Well, kid, looks like you and I got some walking to do!" Frik himself would have been more indignant if he didn't know Undyne better, and he figured it wasn't a good idea to antagonize her for suddenly being all buddy-buddy with him all of a sudden. Couldn't chance anything at this point, if if he could still SAVE; he was far too scared to try. Anyway, Undyne walked clear out of Snowdin still carrying him, and got almost halfway through Waterfall before she stopped suddenly, shook her head, and kept walking.

"...Something wrong?" Frisk asked.

"No," she replied curtly. Frisk shrugged and shook his head and fell silent again, which lasted all of sixty seconds before Undyne said, "Okay, so you can talk, but I've never heard your name before and it's bugging me."

"Frisk," he said. He smiled, but he doubted Undyne could see it.

Undyne took a quick glance down at Frisk again as she tramped through tall riverbed grasses. "Is...is that really your name?"

Frisk suddenly found his face heating up and dreading what might come next. "...Yeah…"

"'Frisk?'" she repeated with grin plastered all over her face. "Pffffffffftt! What kind of name is 'Frisk?'"

His jaw hung open for a moment before he cried, "A good name! Shut up!" indignantly.

Undyne kept laughing for awhile as Frisk pouted. "Nah, I'm just messin' with you," she chuckled. He was glad Sans wasn't around to see him like this, until a worse idea struck him: what if Flowey was watching him right now instead? He squirmed a little bit to swing his head around, trying to see every possible angle Flowey could take. He didn't see a flash of yellow disappear into the ground, which was good. If events panned out like he hoped–no resets, no dying–and Flowey saw him like this, there was a good chance there would be a lot of teasing directed at him when her form was restored at best, and blackmail at worst. But with Undyne holding him, the best he could do was abide and hope and pray.

Sans and Papyrus walked back down the main avenue of Snowdin Town to their house, arguing as usual. "SANS, I'VE TOLD YOU THIS BEFORE, BRAIN PUZZLES ARE NOT ACTUAL PUZZLES!"

"brain 'teasers,'" Sans corrected. "and how so?"

"THERE IS NOTHING PHYSICAL TO THEM!" Papyrus cried. "ONE CANNOT SIMPLY RECITE A PUZZLE TO STOP SOMEONE IN THEIR TRACKS! ITS LIKE YOU AND THAT JUNIOR JUMBLE PAPER YOU USED TO TRY AND STOP FRISK! IT JUST DOESN'T WORK!"

Sans reached into his hoodie and pulled out a book and he flipped it open to recite, "and the definition of a puzzle says, 'puzzle: noun. a toy, game, or problem designed to test ingenuity or knowledge.' problems can either be physical like a toy or a word problem."

Papyrus reached over and snatched the book out of Sans' hands and took a closer look at the page he was reading. He stopped short and glared down at him. "SANS, THIS IS A JOKE BOOK!"

"but my definition is on point. go look it up yourself."

"OH, FORGET IT!" Papyrus cried as he threw the book into the air and it refused to come back down. "ARGUING WITH YOU IS LIKE ARGUING WITH AN ICE CUBE...SNOW USE!"

Sans chuckled. "good one, bro."

"NYEH-HEH-HEH-HEH-HEH! I'D CERTAINLY LIKE TO THINK SO," Papyrus replied as he puffed his chest out. They approached their house and Papyrus dropped the subject of their previous argument as he said, "GEE, I HOPE FRISK IS DOING OKAY. I FEEL...KIND OF BAD FOR LEAVING THEM WITH UNDYNE."

Sans would have freaked out more when Papyrus first told him that when he found him on the south side of Snowdin Forest if he didn't know Frisk could make friends by so much as breathing in their direction. "...well, the house is still standing, so i guess it could be worse."

He opened the door to find the house was, in fact, perfectly okay; the kitchen, on the other hand, looked like a war had been fought in it. There was batter of various colors coating the counters and the stove, marinara sauce dripping down the wall, the kitchen table was covered in several layers of flour, sugar, and non-stick pan spray, and in the middle of it all, Undyne and Frisk were punching two balls of dough on said kitchen table. They stopped when they saw Papyrus and Sans, but Frisk waved to them after a minute. "Hi, guys!" His hair was covered in flour as well, on top of batter stuck in it and coating his face and shirt. Undyne didn't look much better; in fact, she almost looked like a walking batch of raw cookie dough.

"...i feel like there's a really good story here, but i dunno if i wanna know it yet," Sans said after awhile.

"Frisk here found some brownie batter in a cabinet and challenged me to swallow my pride make it with'em," Undyne explained with a huge grin showing through the mess of dough on her face. "We had to go get an extra stick of butter, though."

"And it kinda got out of hand from there," Frisk finished.

Sans laughed. "wow, really? i was savin' that stuff for a rainy day. or the next time papyrus got sick, but whatever, i can always get more." He looked up at Papyrus. His jaw was hanging lower than the living room curtains and his eyes were popping out of his head. "...you okay, bro?"

"...I DON'T KNOW WETHER TO BE HAPPY LOOKING AT SUCH A BEAUTIFUL MESS OR CRY ABOUT CLEANING IT UP," Papyrus said.

"Yeah, I kinda figured," Undyne said as she grabbed the still unfinished loaf of dough on her side of the table and chucked it into the oven."But, hey! Since I'm at least partially responsible for this disaster, I'll help you punks clean it up! I'll suplex this mess into oblivion!"

If there's one thing that can be said for Undyne, she was a fish of her word. It did take awhile to scrape some of the harder stuff off the walls and stove, but the kitchen eventually got back to working order. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, especially since Sans was more content "supervising" than actually helping out (but he helped sporadically). It wasn't until early in the evening that they finished most of the work.

Frisk threw himself on the couch, where Sans had stayed most of the day, and let the cushions almost absorb him. Sans peeked over at him with one eye and said, "tired, huh?"

"Try exhausted," he gasped.

From the kitchen, he heard Papyrus walk out, accompanied by an aroma of tomatoes. "DINNER TIME!" he exclaimed as he sat down on the arm of the couch. Undyne followed him soon after while Frisk slowly pushed himself up and clambered over Sans to get closer to the food. Papyrus handed him one of the four forks he had in his hand for one of the four plates of spaghetti he was balancing on his arms.

"Thanks, Papyrus," Frisk said wearily as he crawled back to his side of the couch.

"DO NOT MENTION IT, HUMAN!" Papyrus declared. He looked up at Undyne with a hopeful smile and held out another fork. "WOULD YOU CARE FOR SOME, TOO, UNDYNE? I KNOW YOU'RE PLENTY BUSY WITH ROYAL GUARD THINGS, SO IF YOU CAN'T STAY, THAT'S FINE! I'LL HAVE THE EXTRAS!"

"Yeah, sorry guys," Undyne began, "but I gotta book it back to New Home and file a couple more reports."

Frisk stopped sucking on the singular noodle that was hanging out of his mouth and his expression fell. "...Awww…"

Undyne glanced down at him for a moment, then back up at papyrus, down at Frisk again, and she said, "Then again, it's not like those reports need to get filed right away," as she sat down on the floor and held out her hands. "Give it here, Papyrus."

They ate for awhile, at least until Sans eyed Frisk and said, "think the real question is, how're we gonna get you cleaned up? it's not like we have a shower or proper laundry equipment in this house." Frisk glanced down at himself. Sans was right, his clothes were still caked with dried batter, as was his hair, and his skin still had some traces of flour on it.

"Uh…" Frisk trailed off. "Is there a laundromat close by?"

Sans shook his head. "closest thing we have to somethin' like that is all the way up in new home, and it costs a few gold to use," he explained. "do i look like i'm made of money?"

"You can't just put it on your tab?" Frisk asked.

"only grillby's does that," Sans said. He leaned over and grinned wider at Frisk. "you gonna get a job to help pay?"

Frisk gritted his teeth and his face flushed red. "Uuuhhhhh…"

Undyne spoke up before Frisk got a chance to explain himself. "Hey, he could join the Royal Guard! We always need new recruits to boss around–I mean, help train." She coughed and grinned to let Frisk know it was a joke, but after a moment she started to laugh. "Man, would you listen to me? If I went back in time and told myself I was gonna end up giving a human a shot at the Royal Guard one day, I would've called myself crazy and suplexed future-me into a coma! Fuhuhuhuhuhuhu!"

Somehow, that suggestion made Frisk more uncomfortable. That implied he'd have to fight someone at some point. "Uhh...no thanks…?" he said tentatively. "I'll, um, find another way to pay you back, I guess.." he said to Sans.

The skeleton only laughed. "i'm just pullin' your leg, kiddo. we got some soap and a washboard, we can go out to waterfall in a couple hours and get you and your stuff cleaned up."

Undyne left a few hours ago, which left the three of them to their own devices. Sans teleported Frisk out to Waterfall and to a secluded pool where he took a quick bath, sped along quite nicely by a helpful Woshua, and went back home. They spent almost the entire evening watching television after that, until papyrus decided it was a good time for him to go to bed. "YOU TWO HAD BETTER NOT STAY UP TOO LATE!" he called from the top of the stairs. "WE STILL HAVE A LOT TO WORK TO DO TOMORROW! PUZZLE RESETTING! PATROLLING! NONLETHAL TRAP-CREATION! TOO MUCH TO LIST!"

"relax, bro," Sans replied from the couch. He gestured over to Frisk with his head. "kid's practically half asleep anyway."

"Am not," Frisk yawned.

"ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT." Papyrus rolled his eyes and opened the door to his room before he said, "GOOD NIGHT."

"oh, wait a minute," Sans said as he slowly got up off the couch. Frisk, who had been leaning on him the whole time, started to fall over, but he caught himself and looked around before he laid down on the couch fully. "you want me to read to you first?"

Papyrus took a moment to process what he said, but his face lit up after a moment. "THANK GOODNESS, SANS! IN THE HASSLE OF THE DAY, I THOUGHT YOU'D FORGOTTEN! I CERTAINLY DIDN'T, THOUGH!"

"you'd get cranky if i didn't," he replied. "i'll be up in a minute. lemme get the kid situated first."

"TAKE YOUR TIME, SANS!"

Papyrus disappeared into his room and Sans took a few steps into the kitchen after he left. He came back out with the blanket Frisk used last night and he draped it over him. "nice to know you had a productive day. almost like you planned to get friendly with undyne," he said.

"I'll be totally honest; it was a spur-of-the-moment thing," Frisk replied.

Sans shrugged. "coulda fooled me." He disappeared after Frisk blinked and came back a split second later with a pillow, which he gently placed under Frisk's head.

"Hey, did you...talk to Alphys?" Frisk asked.

"...yeah."

His eyebrows furrowed. That wasn't a very confident answer. "How'd it go?"

"she didn't buy it. you're gonna have to do what you did before and break down her walls, too," Sans sighed.

Frisk turned and affixed his half-lidded eyes to his pillow. "She's worried about the Amalgamates," he muttered.

"...those weird things you told me about before in your life's story, huh?" Sans asked. He sighed again and stared ahead. "well...on the bright side, it's nice to know we're not the only ones keepin' secrets, huh?"

There was a long pause before Frisk asked no one in particular, "How am I gonna get Alphys to open up without being...intrusive?"

"hmm…" Sans looked down and stroked his chin for a minute before he said, "think i got an idea."

"Which is…?"

Sans pushed himself up and off the couch and said, "you do you. earn her trust, help her out. like what you've been doin'." He turned walked to the stairs, but he chuckled. "heh. thought you knew better by now."

Frisk chuckled to himself as he felt the tiredness of his body start to melt. "Hey...I know this is out of the blue, but…you know what I always wanted?" Frisk asked sleepily.

"what?"

"I went to a fair on the surface once, and I saw a hot-air balloon ride. I always wanted to ride in a hot-air balloon since then," he murmured.

Sans paused...and laughed. "kid, when we get outta here, i'll do my best to find the biggest, brightest balloon this side of the country for you to ride in. now get some shut-eye."

Frisk barely heard him, for sleep had already laid claim to him. And now, in its vastness he felt himself reaching back, to places he had already explored, things he had already seen. A side effect of his constant repeats of events? Perhaps. No matter what, though, they always felt real...