FRISK

LV 1

HP 40/40

G 10

They'd spoken to each other a little since the moment when he'd said he "gave up," but it was only little things. Even the old conversations that were completely one-sided - Sans doing all the talking - had more communication between them than was happening now. For Frisk, it was unbearable. When she asked Papyrus about it, or Undyne, they didn't have a solution at hand. It wasn't like Papyrus was going to bully his brother into talking to Frisk more. He'd bully him into other things, but that was for his own health, and he hadn't even done that since they arrived.

She wasn't going to ask them to.

Unable to stand it anymore, she approached the sleeping Sans at the abandoned MTT Hotel. It took a bit of time, since she had to avoid any of the distorted and discolored spaces in the air and ground. When she reached him, the child had her locket in her hands, so she naturally poked his head using her head. The reaction was tiny and slow to happen; the skeleton only shifted in his sleep a little bit. So Frisk, frowning, hit harder.

Now his reaction was instantaneous, although it made her feel even guiltier. "zzzwhaza-!" he sputtered awake, head whipping in the child's direction. "-dude, did you just headbutt me?"

Frisk blinked. "Uh."

Eyes black and still looking groggy, Sans rubbed his skull and slowly stood up. "rude. what's up, bucko?"

That's right, this would involve actual talking. The words she wanted to say felt like cotton in her mouth, but with another second she let them free, "Are you still mad at me?"

"for clocking me in the head just now?"

She turned red, "N-no-" after struggling for a moment she said, "I mean for- I mean- for earlier, you know- like you've been for, for-" unable to get out anything else without her lips tripping, she gave up. As Sans stood there, listening without moving, her voice grew smaller until it faded into nothingness. So she finished, lamely, "Are you still mad?"

While she'd been speaking, Sans' eyes closed; at the end of it, he shrugged. With no hesitation, he said, "aw, kiddo, i'm not mad at ya."

"Really?"

"yeah, 'course not," Sans opened one eye. "if i was, i wouldn't have much justification. 'how dare you be nice to this guy instead of smacking him into next week,' amirite?"

Despite herself, Frisk snorted and her lips pulled apart. Dropping the expression quickly, she murmured, "Then can we be friends again?"

Sans froze. And then he smiled wider, "woah, you stopped being friends with me? that's a little uncalled for, don't you think?"

"Sans."

He chuckled, "i'm sorry kid, if you thought i was mad at you for being you... heh, well i wasn't trying to give you that impression." He opened both eyes. "it's just been hard trying to process it. you remember what i said, about people who bring out the worst in you."

Nodding slowly, Frisk wondered what he was like, the Sans that lived imprisoned by Dr. Gaster. Maybe he never made jokes at all. Maybe he was always angry. Maybe he was completely miserable, instead of that low-level miserable that she constantly worried that Sans was. In fact, he had to be completely miserable. No maybe about it. She blinked hard as the image came back into her head.

Studying her face, Sans exhaled. "... guess i should really say thank you," he said, and Frisk again had her head patted clumsily, her hair poofing under his hand.

Unsure what this meant, the child gently pushed his hand off and gave him a look with her eyebrows raised. "eh? you wanna know what for?" And Sans shrugged, putting both hands in his pockets. "if you hadn't been here, i dunno what would've happened to papyrus.

"having all this come back again, i was afraid that he'd... well. you saw how he acted at first. ...but... i think being around you," he inclined his head, "someone who's a lot like he normally is, uh, i think it helped. so. what i mean is, thanks for being there for him as a nice reminder." He winked. "a reminicence, if you will."

Frisk's face felt hot. "A what."

He pushed on her and she giggled as she stumbled back, "don't give me a hard time, kid, i'm tired." She grinned at him, nodding. Sans sighed, closing his eyes. "i guess i'm having more trouble because there's no lazy sacks of bones around to remind me of me. it's not easy getting a whole load of bad memories added back into your head, y'know?"

"You're not lazy."

"ehhhhh." he shrugged, opening one eye. "... you look tired too, buddy." Unable to deny it, Frisk drooped. "maybe you should, i dunno, take a nap or something. as kids do."

"..." Frisk shook her head. He already knew why that wasn't a good idea.

His grin slipping, Sans nodded. "bad dreams, right? that's my fault, huh?"

At that, the child looked back up and rapidly shook her head. In her hundreds of bad dreams, none of them were of Sans. "It's no one's fault," she said with a barest smile supporting it.

"ehhhhh." Although he was smiling back, it was just his resting face. "tell you what... what does toriel usually do to help ya sleep? maybe i can do it too."

At this Frisk turned red, and Sans straightened up in surprise as she stammered, "Nnnno-that's-fine."

"what's with that expression? what does she do, kid?" Sans said.

Frisk mumbled something to the floor.

"didn't catch that."

Frisk took a deep breath and said, a little too loud, "She sings me to sleep!"

"what."

Ducking her head down a bit to hide herself, Frisk said, "I don't know she kind of - she just - sings me a lullaby every night when she tucks me in. It's three minutes long. It's nice. She has a nice singing voice."

"she sings you a lullaby? ...oh my god." Sans grinned wide. "you are such a huge nerd."

"I'm not a nerd! You're the nerd!"

"nerd." Frisk covered her eyes with the sleeves of her sweater as Sans laughed. When she finally peeked at him, he laughed again and said, "but unfortunately kid, i can't sing worth a damn. i don't have vocal chords."

The child raised a hand to comment on this, before thinking better of it.

"so, uh, i'll have to make do with music instead."

The child wondered if she was going to get a trombone rendition of Toriel's lullaby, and considered how hard it would be to actually sleep to that, but even as she did she saw bones materializing in the air in front of her. "?"

Gently, one by one, the bones struck each other. The sound that resulted, which Frisk listened to with her hands clapped over her mouth, was similar in sound to someone playing on a xylophone. A big grin was growing on the child's face, under her fingers. Looking pleased, Sans said as he played, "so this is gonna do? so how does the song go anyway?"

" 💣✌ 📪 💧✌ 💧📬"

Gaster.

The noises that made up his speech were sudden and jarring, and by the time they stopped so had the music. The bones, too, disappeared. The lights of Sans' eyes retracted to pinpricks and he came close, at least closer than Frisk had ever seen, to not even smiling at all. It was irritating, more than anything. Just when everything was getting back to normal between them, why... did he have to show up?

Frisk faced the scientist with a neutral expression as he entered, taking out Papyrus' phone and opening the translator. By now it was becoming a reflex.

Still looking like he'd bitten into something bad, Sans grumbled, "oh good, you came out of your cave."

The phone crackled, "I am not here to speak with you." Instead of looking at him at all, Dr. Gaster's glances were reserved for Frisk. "I want to discuss something with the human."

"yeah, their name is frisk."

"Yes, I know that," Dr. Gaster said coolly. "It has no bearing on this."

Swallowing her exhaustion, Frisk took a step forward with the phone in hand, before Sans could get a chance to say anything else. "-What is it?"

"Will you come with me? It will only take a few minutes."

Frisk looked back at Sans, who shrugged. At least he still had pupils. "If it's just a few minutes... okay." She hoped it wasn't the resetting experiment again. The way that this world looked as if it was breaking disturbed her. "I'll sleep afterwards."

"It will not take long."

Dr. Gaster had hardly said so before turning and walking out of the room, leaving Frisk to run after him with another look at Sans. When their eyes met, Sans uttered, "hurry back kid." She nodded, and disappeared from sight.

Sans already suspects, although fortunately he is not acting on it.

...I guess I was interrupting something. I could have perhaps waited until the human was alone, which would only be when the rest are, or pretending to be, asleep... but that would have also looked more suspicious. I am only fortunate that, for our purposes, it will take less than a minute to reach the building that houses the Core.

As for the human, they don't look to be suspicious at all; that is also beneficial, but...

God, I'm so sick of this place.

Even more so, I'm sick of being surrounded by reminders of things that I can't even feel anymore.

If what I do works, then I won't have that problem, although I will still be trapped in this world alone. If it does not work... I don't really care what happens after that. But I'm sure I won't be putting up with this plane of reality anymore.

So, the result that I'm expecting and hoping for is a bit contradictory to the fact that I am sick of this place.

But, even so, there is something "good" that will come of either result. Whether it works or not, it is better than not doing anything at all.

No-

...

It's going to work.

For someone who wanted to have a discussion, Dr. Gaster wasn't doing a whole lot of discussing. The child followed behind him, hands held behind her back, and looked out to the building just across the walkway. There were patches of color all over, huge ones, and they probably ran along the inside of the building as well. There were distortions too, littering the air. Frisk had to take time to avoid some of those fizzing pixels, but Dr. Gaster walked through them like they did nothing.

Whatever he wanted, she hoped it would be over soon. She really wanted to sleep.

Silence didn't bother Frisk, but the silence between her and Dr. Gaster was different. He was looking pretty scary today, now that she was looking at him properly. What was his problem, anyway? Him and his high LV-

"Oh!"

Frisk finally spoke up, and when she did Dr. Gaster stopped in his tracks, just outside the building. "I never asked you my question, did I?"

"... What question?"

"It was before I tried to reset," she rubbed her eye, suppressing a shudder as she remembered it. "You said you'd answer it if I answered something of yours, but I never asked it."

He sighed, turning his head faintly back in her direction. "Well then, ask it."

Rocking back on her heels, knowing that this was a rude question, Frisk took a deep breath and said, "Does it hurt when you gain EXP?" There were no words from Dr. Gaster, just his one good eye staring at her, so she went on with a grimace, "We don't have a word for it - I mean, humans don't. So I was really confused when I first heard those terms. Sans told me what they meant, but he wouldn't tell me much else. And none of the other monsters talk about EXP or LV."

Someone like him, though, probably would be more okay with it.

"Hurt?" He turned his head away from her and opened the door. "Do you mean physically?"

"Yeah."

His head dipped down, and she heard him chuckle quietly, as if to himself. She didn't remember ever hearing him laugh before. It was not at all like Sans' laugh. ...It didn't really sound like a laugh on reflection, but just more noise. She had hardly puzzled over it before he said, "No. It doesn't hurt." Turning back to her, added, "May we go now?"

As he entered, the child unconsciously walked in after him. "Okay - what are we doing, exactly?"

When the door shut behind them, Frisk felt something close hard over her SOUL, the red heart turning blue in the corner of her eyes. Her feet stopped touching the ground below, but she continued to move forward. "Um-"

Dr. Gaster, one hand raised and glowing with magic, maintained a steady pace. "We're going to conduct an experiment."

Author's Note: Thanks for the reviews guys! I got another question to answer about the messed up text I used in the last chapter; basically what I did was use the 2009 Zalgo Text Generator by tchouky to create the scary text, then I copy-pasted it into notepad, and then I copy-pasted it into a word document, and when I uploaded it to FF I was surprised to find it relatively intact 0 0. (I want to just experiment with all the stuff that FF will support sometime.)

On another note I hope you like the cover image I made for the story; it's an illustration of a scene in Chapter 14.

If for some reason you want to see it larger and with text, I posted it on my personal tumblr blog (Octosan) 0o0 It's tagged under "ASL Tutorial", among other things.

Also just one Gaster translation;

1. "HUMAN, SANS."

Next Chapter: An Expected Attack