The monster comes forward, holding its hands in the x-shape over its chest. In monster tradition, the gesture means mercy, a wish to refrain from battle. Sans doesn't want to fight either. For a moment, they just stare at each other, the slime monster looking more than a little desperate. Then, Sans returns the gesture, crossing one arm over his chest. It occurs to him as he does this that the sign is in the same shape of the knife cut and he lowers his arm more than a little hurriedly.

The monster looks around, then sinks down as if it too is sitting, far enough away from him to be out of arms' reach. It clicks out a hesitant hello with its fingers. When he doesn't respond the same way, it falters. "You Called For Help," it signs. "I Have Answered Your Call."

He doesn't dignify that with a response. "you might want to pick up the phone again and find another caller."

"It Does Not Work That Way," the slime monster says. "You Require Help. Do Not Be Stubborn."

"sorry to disappoint, but stubborn's my middle name."

"Your Middle Name Is Serif. Do Not Be Ridiculous In An Attempt To Divert My Attention From Your Plight." The slime monster folds its arms, then drops them entirely when Sans stares at it with his good eye. Its own eyes widen, the drooping one almost resembling an open mouth.

"what."

It hesitates, making Sans certain that he had seen his middle name signed on those spider-like hands, then says "Your Magic Is Reacting To Stimuli In Your Vicinity. Do You Know What It Is So That You Might Remove It?"

"i'm not even in my vicinity. why were you in my vicinity?"

"I Was-" The monster cringes as if caught off-guard before recovering. "Kindly Refrain From Being Difficult." He's pretty sure that its mouth quirks, which only pisses him off all the more.

"ah, another one of the middle names i apparently don't have. how the hell did you know my middle name?"

It looks about. "I Know Everyone And Everything. I Believe That It Is The Consolation Prize That Comes With Being Physically Dead." The slime monster spreads its hands in a 'what can you do' gesture. Its eyes flicker. "Going Wherever You Please, Except For Those Places You Truly Want To Be. Seeing Whomever You Choose, So Long As You Are Content To Remain Unseen."

"you're dead."

"Indeed." The monster inclines its head.

"dust dead?" he clarifies.

"Gracious, Is There An Echo In Here? I Am Hearing An Echo."

"listen, you creep. if i wasn't about to set fire to something already, this conversation would really burn me up."

"True. This Exchange Is Getting Rather Heated. Are We Allowed To Start It Over Again?"

He's unsure if the monster meant the pun, but he feels himself smirk a little, before he shuts it down. "no. try fixing it without a 'get out of jail free' card."

"How About An Introduction Then? I Am Wingdings Gaster. And You Are?" A hand is held out to Sans, fingers first and palm up, waiting.

"not stubborn or difficult apparently, so i'll have to be just sans." He gives him- he's fairly sure this monster's male-presenting, something about the name- a cheeky smirk.

Wingdings curls the fingers of his hand into a trembling fist. "It Is A Pleasure To See You Again, Just Sans. Would You Kindly Allow Me To Advise You On Your Current Problem?"

"guess i owe you after you saved my life. why not? not like i don't trust you or anything. not like you didn't just come out of fucking nowhere." He shrugs. "but hey, guess it's all fine."

Gaster bristles at the ill-concealed hostility in his tone. "If You Are Well Enough To Jest, I Am Assuming That You Are Well Enough To Keep A Civil Tongue In Your Head. Kindly Do So. You Called For Me, Might I Remind You."

Sans considers sticking his tongue out in order to prove that he doesn't have to do anything, but decides that the passive-aggressive back and forth has gone on for long enough. "i didn't think i called for anyone."

"I Apologize Then For My Assumption." The monster gives him a mocking bow, then fidgets when he has nothing more to say. Sans isn't fluent in slime expressions, but it looks like Gaster's ill at ease with his own actions. Ooze begins to drip out of his left eye socket, combining with a stream of it from his ruined mouth and coursing down his face. He doesn't notice it until a drop splashes on his hand, at which point, the long fingers reach up and examine the trail. "Goodness. You Must Think I Am Quite The Drip."

Despite himself, Sans snorts approvingly and Gaster straightens somewhat. "I Mean, It Is Not As If I Have Any Right To Be Solvent These Problems For You." His jokes seem like an apology, one Sans decides to take before either of them can make it any worse.

"i'm not boiling over with any ideas either, doc." The title slips out and when he thinks about it, he remembers where he's seen the name Gaster before. A name, almost completely erased, scrawled in a familiar hand on the corner of his map, the one he had when he worked in the capitol. The creator of the Core. Not quite the drippy looking monster sitting before him. "you're, uh, doctor gaster."

"Ah, Yes." Gaster fidgets again, locking his fingers together. After a moment, he says, straightening them out and pointing them at him, "So You Know Of Me."

Sans eyes his hands. Something's a little weird here. The doctor himself is weird, even if he's not frightening and actually seems pretty cool. "no offense, but i'm pretty sure you're not the kind of doctor that could help with this."

"No Offense Taken. I Simply Have A More Vested Interest In Helping You Than A Doctor Would."

"really. what's that?"

Gaster glances around as if the answer will light up in big neon letters. When no such indicator of how to proceed shows up, he signs "The Simple And Selfish Reason That You Appear Able To Contact Me In The Void."

"you want to help me because you're lonely, is that it, doc?"

"If You Must Phrase It That Way, Then Yes." Gaster shrugs, looking a little relieved that the answer is that easy.

Sans thinks about what he had said, about being able to see without being seen. It sounds kind of lonely to him. "that's fine. i think i can handle it. it's not going to dust me just yet." His eye actually seems to be soothing itself at a much quicker pace than it had the first time, although it's still really uncomfortably warm.

"Are You Certain?"

"well, the first time this happened, i got over it. uh, you know what that thing last night was?"

"I Have My Theories, But, As Of Yet, None Of Them Are Wholly Plausible."

"care to share them with the class?" Gaster throws him a very deadpan look.

"If They Are Not Wholly Plausible, Are You Certain You Even Wish To Hear Them? I Observed It Entering The Town And For The First Time In A Long Time, I Knew I Was Able To Fight It Back. I Chose To Defend This Town."

"big city guy like you defending this place, huh?"

Gaster bristles. "Something Along Those Lines."

"okay, what's it like being dead?"

"I Am Not Completely Dead. I Am Physically Dead. My Soul Still Beats, I Still Think, I Am Still Fully Magical. I Am Alive In Nearly Every Sense Of The Word. I Am Simply Absent."

"dead's just a placeholder, huh?"

"Yes. Something Like That."

The space between them glows, burning a soft yellow color, a saffron curtain that doesn't quite obscure Gaster's panic. He stands hurriedly. "Your Friend Has Come To Retrieve You. He Will Not Be Able To See Me. As Such, I Should Go." His words don't quite match his actions though, for even as the curtain grows brighter, he hovers at the edges of Sans's vision. Just before the light consumes them both, he signs "Goodbye, Sans. I Hope To See You And Your Brother Again."

"see you, doc."

"Sans? Sans!" When he opens his eyes, Grillby burns from anxious yellow to relieved orange. "You scared the life out of me, you screwy skeleton! Didn't you hear me calling you?"

"nope." He squirms a little to let Grillby know that he's holding his shoulders a little tighter than is strictly necessary. The fire elemental gets the message, releasing him with an apologetic wisp of smoke.

"I look up for one minute and you're bulling people out of the way. I thought you were-" He cuts himself off, looking sheepish.

"thought i was going to explode?"

"Yes." Grillby rubs at his neck under his collar, which must have flipped up somehow during his pursuit. "You collapsed out here and I just assumed the worst."

"well, i got it under control, grillbz. it's nothing."

"But what happened?"

"i was cleaning some tables. maybe i'm allergic to work. it would explain a lot, huh?" He gives Grillby a cheeky grin, only for the smile to fall away completely when Grillby burns down to red. "whoa, hey, whatsa matter with you?"

"I don't like this, Sans. Your magic has never done this." Grillby reaches up and takes away the hand still cupped around Sans's eye, wrapping his warm fingers around Sans's wrist. "You're burned. By the dog, you've burned yourself."

"what?" Sans flinches when Grillby touches the area just beneath his eye socket. "ow. you sure it's not just from the fire?"

Acidly, the fire elemental says "I think I would have noticed it between now and then if it was. Hold still." The smell of vanilla wreaths Sans's head as Grillby summons up his healing magic. Grillby has very tricky healing magic, so his expression is one of fierce concentration, his flame temporarily yellow-orange as he works. Sans can't count on one hand how many times Grillby has had to do something like this, especially when they were kids. Sans, who had been a tiny adult in all aspects of his life as a kid, had gotten into a lot of scraps with other kids, often on the matter of his own oddities or the fact that Papyrus seemed to have no magic at all, claiming later as Grillby tried to puzzle through fixing fractures or bruises that it was Sans's responsibility to protect them both. As he had grown older, this fiery streak had died down a little, presumably because Papyrus demonstrated that he did indeed have a handle on magic, provided that it wasn't orange, and that he was very good at controlling it.

Now Grillby rocks back onto his heels. The legs of his pants from the knees down are soaked in snow melt, a hazard for a fire elemental in any sort of cold. As he pulls Sans up onto his feet, Sans realizes that he's in the same boat. The back of his jacket is soaked through, which is rather odd because skeletons don't produce the same amount of heat as fire elementals. Still, any heat would melt snow if present for a long enough period of time and he dismisses it as Grillby starts weaving his way back through the woods.

"Sans?"

"mmhm?"

"Frisk wants to talk to you about something. They're- they're the human, aren't they? The one that killed all of us."

"yeah. i think so. they're so different though. 's weird." Sans tries to step exactly in his own footprints, retracing his steps. It's easier to follow the old path than to make a completely new one. The kid's worrying him a lot really. Everything seems to be important now and he can't figure out what really matters in how the kid acts and what doesn't.

Grillby enters the restaurant and Sans stands outside, staring up at the sign above the door, gathering the patience he'll probably need to go inside. Just as he thinks he has all his wits about him, Papyrus careens through the doors and skids, sending up a fresh spray of snow. "SANS! HELLO! I AM GOING TO PATROL THE EDGES OF TOWN! UNDYNE SAYS THAT THEY NEED GUARDING AND THAT I AM JUST THE SKELETON FOR THE JOB!"

"did she now?" Sans sees a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye, like the edge of a black cloak whipping out of view. He closes that eye and the doctor waves sheepishly at him. He has to suppress a laugh.

Papyrus absently claps him on the back with a frown as he mulls over Undyne's instructions. "WELL, NO. SHE SIMPLY SAID THAT AN INFORMANT SPOTTED SOMETHING SHIFTY OUTSIDE OF TOWN AND THAT SHE NEEDED ME TO PASS ALONG THE MESSAGE TO THE GUARD! I DID THAT, BUT THEY SAY THAT THEY CAN'T SMELL ANYTHING STRANGE! SO I VOLUNTEERED MY EXPERT SERVICES!"

"okay, bro. betta get going before undyne gets impatient."

Papyrus nods an affirmative and leaps into the snow. Halfway down the block, he screeches in realization that Sans's advice was a pun and turns back. "SANS! I'M FURIOUS AT YOU!"

"aw, but look at that big smile!"

"STOP IT! I CAN'T HELP IT! A GOOD ROYAL GUARDSMAN MUST ALWAYS HAVE A WELCOMING SMILE!"

"love you, bro."

"AW, I LOVE YOU TOO, SANS. I'M STILL MAD AT YOU, BUT I LOVE YOU TOO!" With that, Papyrus bounds away, a skeleton on a mission. Gaster drifts after him, looking rather like that dinosaur kid who follows Undyne around whenever she comes to visit.

Sans shakes his head, smiling, then walks into the restaurant. "What's going on in here?" At the mere sound of his voice, the kid jumps, hands pausing mid-sign, and their shoulders rise up towards their ears. Good, he finds himself thinking. They know what they've done and so does he. They don't deserve to be in everyone's good graces. They have no soul left to respond with. Even their appearance here shows that they can't change. If they were any sort of good person, they would have left and never come back.

The kid's sitting on a stool at the counter, the one the hamster kid would have taken had he not been in school. Grillby's standing on the other side of the counter, hands folded. The bar is empty aside from the three of them, the breakfast rush done with. Toriel's nowhere to be found and Sans has a thought, like a little itch at the back of his head, that they've killed her and stored the dust somewhere.

"Where's Toriel, kid?"

"Store," they answer, staring at their lap.

"Huh." Sans sits down "Heard you wanted to talk."

"I want to know what you know about that dog thing."

"Not much."

"That's more than we know."

"Okay. I know that it didn't look like it had a goal. It didn't go after you or me until you lobbed the snowball at it and it looks like G provoked it when he saw it coming in."

"G?"

"Mister Goop, or whatever the hell you called the guy."

"There was a monster there as well?" Grillby glances between the two of them. "I don't think I'm quite caught up to the events of last night. Frisk said there was a doggish creature and that it was bad news."

"Yup. There was a thing that was pretending to be a dog. Then G popped in and went to beat it back. It had a weird symbol on its robe."

"So, it was dressed like Dogamy and Dogaressa?"

"Yes! And it had a bigger white spot on its front!"

"Looked like a pile of snow."

Frisk nods, stopping immediately when Sans puts them in his direct line of vision. Grillby props his chin on his hand. "And time stopped when it entered Snowdin?" he asks. When they nod again, he says "Then something's wrong."

Startled, Sans looks up. "Wrong?" he asks, and he hears the way that his voice goes dangerously monotone. The kid must hear it too because out of the corner of his eye, he can see them recoil. Grillby is unruffled, but then, Grillby is rarely ruffled by anything, especially when it comes to the skeleton brothers.

Now, the bartender gestures vaguely with one hand. "Don't play the fool, Sans. You know better than I do that time is a serious issue. Time stopped when you saw that creature, correct?"

"Before then."

"We're in quite a bit of trouble then. Between your errant magic and those creatures, something is rotten in the kingdom of the Underground." Grillby smirks a little when Sans eyes him. He very distinctly remembers reading that line, in its original form, out loud one night when Grillby was cleaning the dining room and Sans was sitting on the bar with a book. The fire elemental had called him Horatio for a straight week.

"Magic can't do those things. Magic can delay time, but not stop it entirely. It's like the death clause. You know of the death clause, right?" When Frisk looks blank, Grillby continues. "There are around four hundred monsters in the Underground. The population sometimes grows, sometimes shrinks, but no monster has ever been born with the magic to stop death. We've had some fantastic healers, including your mother, the Queen. But no one can stop death entirely. To do so would go against nature. Every fire elemental has to burn out, every skeleton has to crumble to dust, every human has to die. Magic is a force of nature. It can't oppose itself. If magic is doing this, then nature's turned on itself down here."

"How do we fix it?" Frisk signs and Sans feels a twinge of confusion. Frisk turns to him and though they're biting their lip, they sign in big confident gestures "We want to help."

This time, he'd be hard-pressed to miss the plural pronoun, although the first time they had used it, he'd dismissed it as a mistake. Either the kid's become royalty, which, if Tori's actually a queen, might be plausible, or there is more than one person on their side. Instinctively, he looks into the pupils of their big, unmistakably brown eyes, searching for those cold faces that had leered at him in his death throes time and time again. Instead he sees only himself, lit with the warm light of the bar and he wonders again if this time is somehow different.

"Yeah," he says finally. "How do we fix it?" He puts a little stress on the 'we' and sees Frisk's face blanch. It had been a slip-up then.

Grillby sighs. "First step's done. We're aware of the problem. From here on out, I don't know the solution."

Sans lets his chin hit the counter with an audible thump. Before he can really despair though, Frisk knocks on the table. He flicks his eyes over to them and they say carefully "If we can't fix it, can we fix this?" They gesture around themself and Grillby looks offended on behalf of his interior decorating for a split second before they elaborate. "We get everyone out of the Underground. We set the monsters free."