Luna counted on his fingers for a few moments, mumbling to himself, "And after subtracting the damages that trigger-happy kid caused, that leaves me with a disappointing 243 G. Darn it."
After their performance, Luna and Asriel stumbled around in the CORE for a while before ending up in a yellow corridor. The faint flickering of lava shone through rows of mosaic glass windows fashioned in the style of the Delta Rune, illuminating marble pillars with red-orange light.
Asriel tugged on Luna's borrowed robe, whispering, "Something doesn't feel right here. This is the same hallway that I've walked through countless times, but it feels a lot colder and quieter than normal."
"heya, Azzy. this your friend?"
A short skeleton in a blue fur coat was standing at the opposite end of the corridor. The two goat monsters looked at each other, but neither of them knew when he arrived or how he entered without making a sound. He was just...there, watching them with the same look reserved for children caught stealing from a cookie jar.
"Yes," Asriel replied. Sans was acting normally, but there was still an unshakable sense of dread lingering in the corridor. He was smiling from ear to nonexistent ear, but his tone of voice didn't seem particularly joyful.
"You just wanted to stop by and see how the tour was going, right?" Asriel continued nervously.
"sure, kiddo. just gimme a sec."
Sans took a good look at Luna before jumping back in shock. Regaining his composure, the skeleton took a deep breath in and began a very familiar monologue. With the first few words, Asriel's stomach dropped like an elevator.
"it's a beautiful day outside."
"Sans! Wait! No!"
"birds are singing..."
"Don't fight him!"
"flowers are blooming..."
"Asriel, why does he want to fight me?"
"on days like these, 'kids' like you..."
"Kids." Plural. Reflexively, the alien telekinetically shoved Asriel away from the skeleton, but despite his speech, the prince wasn't Sans's focus. A Gaster Blaster appeared behind Luna and fired a white beam, knocking him to the floor.
"should be burning in hell."
Sans 1 AT 1 DF HP: 1
*You tried to flee through a wormhole, but nothing happened when you snapped your fingers.
Whether this was true hell was a matter of debate, but something certainly smelled like it was on fire.
"Asriel! Run!"
But the prince didn't move an inch. He refused to believe that the skeleton who took him to Grillby's every week; who had an infinite collection of jokes to cheer him up with; who always looked at life with a light heart, could be serious about this. There must have been a misunderstanding somewhere, and he had to fix it. Even Sans seemed surprised by how adversely the laser affected the goat.
"huh. didn't think that would happen. if that stung, then how many SOULs must you have slain to go that high?"
"What are you talking about? I'm no mass murderer!"
"Stop doing this, Sans! He's saved me before and he's done so much to help the monsters! He's not evil!"
Sans responded with a volley of hundreds of bones. Luna defended himself as with Papyrus, but while the other guardsman's attacks delivered their payload of blunt force and bounced away, these bones were different. Each impact didn't only bump and bruise, but left itching, burning sensations crawling under his hide.
Luna 127 AT 56 DF HP: 244,009/275,000 (KR)
*Checking yourself, you feel as if every fibre of your being has been dunked in acid. Something about that beam weapon is harming you even after the blinding light has dissipated.
Luna hastily produced a badge.
"This must be some kind of misunderstanding. I'm a C.O. of the M.B., and we're dedicated to saving lives, not ending them."
Sans summoned a wall of magical bones headed straight for Luna. He jumped out of the way, but Sans telekinetically grabbed him and threw him back into the wall's path. One crunching faceful of bones later, he found himself lying prone on the floor again.
"but you've killed plenty of times, haven't you? sure, intention has a little to do with the number, but that coldness in the back of your eye…"
I'll never forget the terrified looks on their faces when they turned around and saw me. I felt a surge of energy in my fingertips and a tingling shock arcing between my claws.
"I...I'll tear you all to shreds! Eat this!"
I thought of a five-pointed star as hard as I could, just as my parents taught me to when I was learning how to use magic for the first time, but instead of a white star shooting out of my fingertips, there was a massive explosion and then a purple flash filled the alleyway. I knew for sure I didn't mess up, so why did it come out so strong?
"But they were all criminals! Evil beings, some of them humans, who took pleasure in causing others suffering! You can't possibly judge me for killing someone who's murdered others! And some of them murdered my parents. Are you really going to punish me for avenging their deaths?"
Sans answered with five Gaster Blasters narrowly missing Luna.
"ehh, i won't pick on you for that one, but they weren't the only ones who died at your hands. well, space detective? wanna tell him how many or should i?"
My neck and paw burned from the supercharged magic attack I just performed, and it slowly dawned on me that whatever I just did, I had just vaporized two people. A lot of things were racing through my mind—fear, adrenaline, hatred, but I didn't mean to…
"…stop it! He doesn't need to know!"
Luna cast a flare, but Sans easily warped away from the explosion.
"The rest were murderers, rapists, torturers, and the scum of civilization everywhere. Believe me, I tried to spare all of them, but they forced me into doing what I did, and frankly, anyone who's horrible enough to commit such atrocities doesn't deserve to live."
Sans telekinetically threw Luna through one of the mosaic windows before throwing him back into the hall through a second window. A horde of Gaster Blasters was waiting to fire another intense white beam down the corridor.
"and what gives you the right to decide whether they live or not? sure, criminals are criminals, but some of them still have families who never caused anyone 'pane'. what gives you the right to 'shatter' their families for the sake of dishing out some justice?"
Opponent outmatching him at range and overruling his telekinetic abilities, staying at a distance was clearly losing him ground. Luna swiped at Sans with a sword, hitting nothing but thin air with each strike.
"They made that choice for themselves!"
"how do you know that murder is the right way to react to a murder?"
"So, would you prefer if a gazillion assorted murderers, rapists, and thugs were still roaming the Earth right now? If they were willing to do what they did to fellow humans, what do you think they'll do to monsters?"
"a 'gazillion'? come on, you know you're painting with a fire hose there."
"Well, forgive me for a little pessimism given my circumstances!"
"they can't all be frisks and charas up there. that's something we can see eye-to-eye on. but, thinking the way you think…you and your herd are going to butt heads with the wrong humans sooner or later, and if that happens, monsters'll be getting the horns.
"i won't let you lead us into another war."
Sans flung Luna into a wall lined with bones, impaling him in several places and leaving red splatters on the wall he was pinned to. Eye glowing a brilliant shade of turquoise, the skeleton started taking deliberate, heavy steps toward the alien with a fleet of floating skulls following closely.
"lemme tell you about a timeline that almost came to exist, 'kid goat'. in this timeline, frisk is a genocidal maniac and slaughters every single monster in the Underground. this includes you, prince goat kid, and your sister too."
Even Asriel, cringing behind a pillar, started to wonder about the things his guest was shouting. Remembering back, Luna always seemed willing to talk about even his darkest days, but he also remembered Sans hardly ever being wrong. Come to think of it, it wouldn't have been impossible for Luna to block certain details from his relatively inexperienced magical scanning. The latest earful, the thought of that gentle human who saved him playing the role of a mass murderer instead, froze him in horror.
"but that hasn't come anywhere near happening. know what did happen? you space goats show up, and then a whole army of humans chases your tails straight into our living rooms. if frisk hadn't channeled her inner acrobat when she did, they could have shot asriel…and something about your face right now tells me what you would've done if he hadn't dodged a bullet."
The itching and burning had spread to places he couldn't scratch, driving him insane from the inside out. Unlike the other attacks, the alien couldn't simply shrug off the damage from this one. The bones were magical, technically, but they were as sharp and solid as metal blades. It took all of his willpower just to free himself from the calcified nails without blacking out from the pain, and the blood-soaked floor started to look much more comfortable than staying standing. Luna broke free of the bones, only to be thrown into the ceiling shortly after. But Sans was right. No sane commander would have led the royal family out onto a bridge exposed to sniper fire from every direction but the magma ocean below. Even more disturbingly, Luna realized that no matter his thought process or justifications at the time, he had effectively tried to sacrifice the Dreemurrs' well-being for the sake of provoking war.
"well? are you a goat or a hawk?"
With that one icy sentence, Luna dropped the sword from his paw and froze where he stood. The possibility was never as remote as he had hoped. Their battleships existed for a reason. In the desire for interstellar peace, full-scale wars against civilizations deemed nonredeemable were declared every few millennia. Inevitably, some of these led to genocides, black marks collected over the years as they punished the hateful; the oppressive; those absolutely incapable of coexisting with their neighbors unless they were stripping them of rights, enslaving them, or outright perpetuating their own genocides against them. It seemed unthinkable to the alien that he would have fabricated such a terrible contingency, but if Sans was telling the truth; that such a timeline was possible, then there truly was a part of him prepared to live up to his name.
Luna 90 AT 0 DF HP: 152,000 (KR)
*smells like a breakdown.
A single massive Gaster Blaster appeared behind Sans and filled the corridor with a single solid beam. There was a cracking noise coming from Luna's direction. The alien, on one knee and breathing heavily, began to address Sans in a desperate, nearly pleading voice.
"He's right, okay? There. Are you happy now? Hear that, Your Highness?"
"that's what i thought—"
Kneeling, trembling, and cradling a pulsing white heart like a baby bird, the alien kept whispering, "I'm sorry…I'm so sorry…," one-third to himself, one-third to the little light he was staring into, and one-third to anyone listening.
There was a whoosh from the end of the corridor. A single, glowing bone punctured through the SOUL and stopped a finger's width from Luna's head. His gaze unfocused. A single red drop dripped out of his mouth and splashed onto the tiled floor.
"welp…guess that's it."
A horned, toothy, jagged wolf's skull crystallized out of thin air, white light intensifying in its jaw cavity as its caster aimed for one last attack.
"No! Stop!"
One small, teary goat monster willed himself away from the pillar and latched onto a puffy, blue sleeve. Focus interrupted, the skull shut its mouth and turned around like a confused dog before vanishing completely.
"what the…aww, kid…don't be like that…you win, okay? no more fighting. see? poof. gone."
Asriel buried himself in Sans' jacket, letting out an occasional muffled sniffle, while Sans reached around to gently stroke behind his ears and quietly comfort him. He snuck a glance over his head; all there was left was a pool of liquid quickly evaporating into a pile of fine, white powder. The prince definitely didn't need to see that, but with the subtly nervous expression forming on Sans's face, he couldn't stop him from turning around quickly enough.
"…Sans! Did you really…"
"this is real baa-d, kiddo…you need to 'hoof' it out of here as fast as you can. you weren't involved, you won't get in trouble. anything they chuck my way, i'll handle myself."
"We'll go to my Mom and Dad; they always know what to do. They'll fix it, Sans; they always do!"