CS: In which we get a glimpse of Sans' past and... some other stuff. ~w~
We also get introduced to a weapon of the organization (remember the snipers at the conference?) via documentary.
AN: The first halve of this chapter was interesting to write. Then there's the brainiac part of this chapter. I had to do MATH to get it right. MATH! (I'll put all my process in the end notes for the other brainiacs out there. Man, I feel like I'm a part of the game theorists channel now, only it's a fanfic edition XD)
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-insert words- Is for written text
insert words Is for Miranda's mind talk and thoughts in general
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_*insert words Is for battle commands
"InsertName" & INSERT STATS & *insert soul script Is for checking Soul Stats
+insert name and timeframe+ & +insert text+ Is for texting.
~insert lyrics~ Is for songs
=insert words= Is for Mirbot speaking
=insert words= Is for Rajbot speaking
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Chapter 36: I Was Fine...
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-Sans' POV-
Sans was fine.
Perhaps he hadn't always been fine but he became fine.
He hadn't been fine when one of the fallen humans had killed his mother. But he had trained hard to become stronger and stronger to be capable of protecting his family, even though he was but a small child, and he became fine.
He hadn't been fine when father started spending more and more time at work. But he had studied hard and eventually had gotten a job as a lab assistant and got to spend more time with father and he became fine.
He hadn't been fine when his father was pushed into the core and every memory of him aside from Sans' and the murderer's was erased but he delivered the culprit to the Capital, to the king in person, who still had a vague recollection of him, was offered the job of Judge, got to buy a bigger house for him and Paps and he became fine.
He hadn't been fine when the anomaly started playing time lord with everyone's life but he found the Weed and fought and fought and eventually the Weed became bored since all was the same and he stopped for a while and he became fine.
He hadn't been fine when another child fell underground and Flowey became once again interested in all the possible outcomes but he fought once again until the weed became bored and he became fine.
He hadn't been fine when yet another kid fell down and made Flowey interested again and the kid killed Papyrus most of the resets but he endured it quietly and killed and killed and killed until Papyrus stayed alive and he became fine.
He became so fine that, when yet another kid fell down and the cycle restarted, he stayed fine… in the beginning, at least.
But then that kid wasn't a regular kid. And Flowey no longer was the anomaly. He could tell that the kid was learning from each reset and might even be in control of them.
He hadn't been fine when the kid treated all of monsterkind like toys, simple playthings to distract them from their boredom.
He hadn't been fine when the kid started going on short killing sprees.
He hadn't been fine seeing the kid killing his brother, knowing full well that there was nothing that he could do about it, having tried so before for several times when the Weed was still the anomaly.
He hadn't been fine, but he had no choice in the matter.
And so, when the kid became genocidal he was ready. And he was as fine with everything as he was capable to be.
He lived so long with the resets that he began to rely on the predictability of it all. And he became fine.
The first few times, aside from the very first one, they would all go outside the kid would end up killing someone and then reset but, around the time when the genocides stopped for good, the kid seemed more and more invested in keeping them above.
Those times the resets had been brought by someone else killing a monster that Frisk was close to, or a human law that dehumanized the monsters was approved, or terrorist attacks on the monsters, but it always led to just after they left the underground instead of being stuck underneath it.
Afterwards, they had managed to somehow circumvent all of the violence from the initial and more vicious anti-monster groups until they settled down as they finished discussing the finer details with the human government. It was the first time they had lasted so long without a reset...
And he began to hope for actually having a future.
He got a job. It wasn't a job he liked but it was a job. And he started saving to someday buy a house. Technically Sans still had all his gold from underground but Frisk and Dan had explained it was best not to flood the market with all the gold at once or it would lose its value fast, so all the monsters were stuck converting the gold little by little until all gold was turned into dollars.
He started watching the houses for sale, trying to choose the perfect one for him and his brother. He had seen some he liked but they weren't the perfect one. He wondered if he should just build one from scratch. It would leave him tired but he could certainly save a lot of money by using his magic to help along the construction work.
Things weren't going great, per say. He doubted he could ever feel great about anything other than his brother. But things were going just fine in his book.
He, admittedly, had been worried when Miranda entered his life. There were so many things that could go wrong with yet another human in the mix and he had never quite forgiven Frisk for all that he had done in the first place. Accepted, yes, but completely forgiven? How could he when he remembered every single reset. At least the kid was making up for it now. But Miranda...
She had a way of getting under his skin, or would have if he had any.
She saw right through his bullshit and had no problems calling him out on it. But just as she was quick to point out his mistakes, she was also quick in finding out ways to compromise. And she always made sure to consider other people's point of view, no matter what the subject was.
Sans had no idea how she could have remained so calm when Flowey started spouting his life story. He knew he hadn't been and he had dealt with a lot of hard stuff along the years. Eavesdropping on the Weed revealing he was the soulless reincarnation of the prince of the underground had jarred him quite a bit. Yet she calmly listened and diffused the situation.
He didn't like keeping that secret to himself but he knew that he shouldn't have been spying on them in the first place.
Then again, how could he not do so? Not where Miranda was concerned. How could he simply trust the Weed not to hurt her? She was too bright and kind for him to simply stand aside as her light was snuffed out!
And she was smart. Boy, was she smart! She might not be a genius but she had a spot-on quick thinking and was capable of thinking carefully about pretty abstract things. She had no mind for math, though -as he came to find out one of the nights he found her awake in the living room-.
She was also great with Papyrus. He admitted he was never capable of telling his brother that his cooking sucked, even when it tasted like death back in the underground, so it was refreshing seeing someone deal with teaching his brother in the ways of cooking without undermining the confidence and cheerfulness that Sans loved about him.
And she had helped him.
She had helped with one of his nightmares even though she didn't need to. She could have just as easily left him alone. And she didn't even mind that he tossed her about in his room. She just… held him.
She must have known what it was like. Having nightmares constantly, remembering awful stuff from the past. She must have known.
His theory was confirmed later when his friend Grillby was attacked by some douchebag humans. He had never seen her so… he had no words for it. He couldn't say she was enraged, not really. As much as her body had done enraged motions filled with violence, her face had been lifeless and cold. That night she would have had nightmares hadn't he been there to sing to her.
One thing was for sure, though. She might look like a pushover but when she got angry she had a nasty bite. Sans had to make sure never to go too far pranking her again. He shouldn't pry too deep into her secrets either. He had never expected to see such a gentle woman act so angry before. And fearful. That had been fear that he saw there too. Fear of having to talk about why she had to give up such a great amount of money each month.
He was still worried about all of that but he knew that she would only tell him anything about it when she wanted to. He doubted he could pry anything out of her even if he'd really, desperately, wanted or needed to. And Rajani freaked him out a bit so that was a big no in prying anything else out of her. He could understand why Slasher acted the way she did but she still freaked him out.
He hadn't expected to become friends with Miranda but here he was. He had seen her doing the greatest acts of kindness. Even if the spark he now saw more and more often from her soul still had no discernible color to it he was pretty sure she had Kindness as soul trait. She had to! He still didn't understand the gray and the Selflessness 'trait' but he was sure there was Kindness buried underneath it all.
And she was funny too. Not a Toriel, by any means, but she was.
And… she was… q-quite s-sexy too.
Not that he held any special feelings towards her or anything…
Who was he kidding? He most definitely was feeling something for her! Not love. Or at least not yet, anyway. But there was something there. If he had to name it he would say it was more akin to a crush at the very least.
And that was why he was no longer fine.
He had been fine before he realized his feelings were becoming too deep for comfort. But then he had seen how her eyes sparkled as she laughed at his jokes while they were dancing and he was lost. And now he was afraid of the situation he was getting himself into.
He had spent those six days after the Halloween party trying to stay away from her. Alphys and Undyne had made it easy for him to have an excuse to do so. Their shipping got so extreme even Frisk disapproved. So, he didn't hurt Miranda's feelings by staying away.
…
Unfortunately, he couldn't get her black lacy bra out of his mind after getting a glimpse of it in the bathroom. If he already had feelings leaning towards romance for her before, he now had other sort of feelings clouding his mind in unison with those.
And the other situations the scale-duo had dragged him into only made it worse.
Miranda was mostly annoyed with it and didn't seem to care the slightest about being that close and personal with, or being seen by, him.
That was a bit disheartening.
And then yesterday, with Undyne's proposal… She had to distract Alphys…
The way she leaned into him and practically purred her lines. He knew she was acting. He knew it was just for show. But still… He had to fight off the lewd expression he was sure was trying to crawl into his face as she pouted with her pretty little mouth.
She wasn't the kind of woman who pouted. But damn was it attractive on her! Just as much as the adorable smirk she sported when she used all those puns about his blue blush back when she had 'the talk' with Toriel.
And then Papyrus' double entendre had knocked him flat on his ass and partially killed the boner he was about to pop. But on the other hand… Stimulating her to the point she wouldn't be able to sleep the whole night…
Oh, he didn't have stimulating conversations in mind. Not at all.
All he had on his mind was nibbling on her delicate neck, taking advantage of the weak points Slasher had revealed about her. He could just imagine her moaning underneath him, straining for more. He wanted to run his hands all over her body. Her breasts weren't too big. If he had to guess he would say a C cup. But her hips? They were wide. She had gained some weight and was now on the healthy side, but even when she had been too skinny her hips had been wide. It was the bones underneath, she had said.
She hadn't seemed to like that fact much, though. It came up in conversation that wide hips were a common trait in her family. Supposedly it made for an easier childbirth but she wasn't certain she liked that, considering she was still afraid of the labor pains and had no one she wanted to have children with, so it was a moot point anyway.
He loved them, though. He imagined grabbing her by her fleshy hips as he plunged into her warmth over and over until they were both sated.
So, having her tackling him to his own bed, sitting on top of his pelvis while restraining his forearms at his sides? That just brought too many of those sinful scenarios to mind and he had to get her out of there before he actually popped a boner.
Oh god! How mortified would he be if she felt it, rigid and standing to attention! She would hate him, wouldn't she? She clearly hadn't tackled him with sexual intents! She would be disgusted by him getting turned on only with her pining him down. She had to!
…
She looked awesome in his clothes.
They were short on her and she had a strip on flesh in her belly showing, because his sweatpants hanged low and tight on her hips and his old turtleneck barely got down to her waist. And they were HIS CLOTHES!
He had to concentrate very hard on keeping his mind away from any more sexual fantasies trying to come out. Thankfully she wasn't sitting on his lap anymore.
She was complaining about him calling her a kid again as she wiped his face. God, he loved having her hands on his face!
And then, like a switch had been turned, she was sad again. That was enough to clear any remaining sensual daze from his mind and awake his need to nurture her.
"so… why skelly bear?"
"Hmm? Oh! The nickname! Because you're a skeleton but you are also comfortable to hug like a giant teddy bear." She said smiling cutely and he couldn't help but blush at that.
No wonder he was falling hard.
… if Frisk reset he wasn't sure that he'd be able to keep himself away from her. He wouldn't be able to follow the script… and he would scare her away. She wouldn't know him from anywhere and she wouldn't trust him. She would suspect him of stalking her. And none of those things would be her fault.
Miranda wasn't someone who trusted easily and had only done so with them because she was living there and exposed to their antics every single day. And the only reason she was living there in the first place was because she had to. If, for some reason, Frisk had to reset and he couldn't keep away from Miranda so as to let everything unroll the way it was supposed to…
And that was why he had been trying to keep away from her and not let his feelings grow deeper.
…
Sans had been fine.
But now he wasn't.
He had to nip these feelings in the bud before everything went too far. He had to make sure they would just be friends and nothing more.
And friends helped each other out, didn't they?
"welp!" He said so as not to let the conversation die and to keep her distracted from whatever was tormenting her. "this means I have to come up with a cutesy nickname for you too, doesn't it?"
"Well… If you really want to…"
"what about brownie?"
"…why?"
"because of the sweet brown-e you made me the other day." He still had the E cutout she had presented him with, not that anyone needed to know that… most especially not her. It was also the color of her lovely eyes that he adored looking into whenever he could… another thing she didn't need to know about.
"I… suppose it's cute, in a way… I'm not sure it's a 'me' nickname." She said hesitantly and he knew she was actually being honest about her opinion. She didn't hate it, but she didn't really like it either.
"it's better than skelly bear at least. so, i'll keep calling you brownie." He said.
It was a lie. He had loved the nickname, especially since she said hugging him was comfortable. But he knew that she wouldn't call him that if he didn't give her an incentive to do so. So, he pretended not to like it while claiming he would still call her the nickname he had picked. That was a fool proof way of leaving her all bristled up. Her response was predictable.
"Just because of that I'll keep calling you Skelly Bear!" She said.
He shrugged as nonchalantly as possible and then winked as he said his next line.
"whatever you say, brownie."
She turned him around and started scrubbing the back of his skull with too much zeal. It was worth it, though, if it ensured she kept calling him Skelly Bear. And he also considered it a win for him because it had scrubbed off for good the despondent expression she had been exuding previously.
Once she was done with the scrubbing she kicked him out of his own bedroom so that she could put on her clothes again. It saddened him that she was no longer wearing his clothes with his scent on them but he got her to keep calling him Skelly Bear permanently so he wasn't too sad.
She quickly left his room back in her clothes and seemed a bit surprised at seeing him still there waiting but didn't seem to mind it much in the end and had walked down to the living room with him in tow.
"AH! I SEE THAT YOU HAVE FAILED TO MARR THE SKINNY HUMAN'S SKIN! AS EXPECTED OF ONE AS GREAT AS SHE!" His brother said to him and Miranda went on to collect the leashes of her dogs.
"you're right, bro. tibia honest, i should have expected this."
"SANS!" His brother shouted before he made a resigned expression.
When Miranda entered the living room again he was quick to dodge away from hearing anymore puns.
"SKINNY HUMAN! LET ME ACCOMPANY YOU OUTSIDE!"
"Ok." She nodded and glanced at him, probably realizing that he was about to 'torture' his brother with puns.
"I'm gonna go with you!" Undyne said rushing out from the kitchen to join them.
Sans ignored the noise and took hold of the remote since everyone else was in the kitchen eating breakfast. He zapped for a bit before coming across a documentary about an antimatter bomb that had detonated a couple of years back.
He hadn't realized someone had come up with a way to create an antimatter weapon. And how did they get enough antimatter to just squander it just like that? From what he had read of the humans' science books on the subject, antimatter was extremely difficult and expensive to create.
The documentary went on to explain that even though the most logic candidate for the explosion would have been Antimatter-Catalyzed Micro Fission/Fusion, which easier to produce and was something that NASA Was trying to create for the purpose of creating spaceship fuel, but was still very much expensive.
Unfortunately, lab tests had indicated that it had been, indeed, an antimatter explosion. According to their calculations the bomb had to have had an amount of 1,2553 micrograms of antimatter to destroy the 20.000 meters building without damaging the surrounding area much. Considering that in the 30 or so years that scientists began studying antimatter only an amount as small as ten billionths of a gram was ever created that meant that someone had managed to covertly create more than a hundred times that amount easily enough to squander it in bombs, which was very concerning to say the least.
Apparently, an anonymous person had claimed that the target of the bomb had been a renowned war veteran from America who was visiting Lisbon on vacation with his family but several other theories were being circulated on the internet about it.
"It w-w-wasn't b-because of him, you k-k-know?" Alphys said and he almost jumped up from his seat.
Apparently, she had returned from the kitchen for some time but he had been to focused on the documentary that he hadn't noticed.
"huh?"
"T-t-the antimatter b-bomb."
"oh. how do you know?"
"T-the group t-that attacked us in t-t-t-the c-conference. I r-read t-their chat l-log as f-far back as I c-c-could. T-t-they ment-t-tioned it."
Sans gawked at that information, wondering how they had access to such advanced science and yet still chose to do what they did.
"you mean that the people who detonated the antimatter bomb and the people who attacked us at the conference are the same ones!?" He asked flabbergasted.
That was bad. Even though monsters were mostly made of magic they still had matter in them.
"T-t-they used t-the veteran as an ex-x-x-xcuse. T-t-they wanted t-to show an w-w-war leader t-t-their prowess. A d-d-demonstration. It was j-j-j-just business t-t-to them. Lives m-m-mean nothing t-to them." Alphys shivered.
"why didn't you tell anyone about that?" Sans asked.
He had known that the group was looking for profit when they attacked them. He knew that the only reason they had done it in the first place was to kill Frisk and injure some monsters and then offer their services to keep everyone else of monsterkind safe… for a pretty hefty price. He had known they knew about all the gold that monsters had and wanted to get some of it.
He did not know that they had antimatter weapons hidden on the backstage!
"I d-d-did! I t-told the k-king. I wasn't s-s-sure you would w-w-want to know." Alphys explained.
...
He supposed he could understand why. He had practically cut off all his interest in science after the sixth child fell, not counting Chara, which was something not even his father's death had managed to do. Sure, he had refused the position of royal scientist, but he had still remained interested in science. After Alphys was elected he even helped out for a bit, especially when it came to dealing with his father's projects.
He had cut himself off form everything he used to care about slowly in his point of view, but he was the only one who really remembered the resets so, from her point of view, his change was sudden and abrupt.
…
It was the first time he realized that. He had never really considered anyone's point of view aside from his brother's. No wonder Alphys had become desperate to find a solution, suddenly all by herself… He hadn't really blamed her for it before but this was the first time he actually felt a semblance of guilt.
…
He guessed that Miranda was rubbing off on him after all, though not in the way his lewd mind kept wanting her to.
"oh. …i understand why… but still! this is a serious threat!"
"Don't worry Sans. We are taking precautions against the antimatter weapon." Asgore said as he entered the room with Toriel. "Alphys has been trying to get in contact with the Portuguese scientists that studied the leftover material from the blast as well as the NASA scientists but there's still too much red tape to get through."
"why investigating the leftover material from the blast, though?" He asked feeling a bit confused. They already knew what antimatter was. They needed to find a way to fight it off instead.
"W-w-well, they are j-just about t-to talk about it." Alphys pointed to the screen.
In it Sans saw and old photograph just after the explosion. He could clearly see the hallowed out building with barely any walls standing, completely wrecked… aside from a strip of it that extended from around ten meters from the epicenter of the blast to the outer wall… as if… something had blocked the effects of the antimatter and protected all that was behind it? How?
"what is that?" He asked.
"N-no one knows f-for sure, b-but something blocked t-the effects. T-they think it m-might have been t-the B-Banshee." Alphys explained.
What did she mean, something blocked antimatter? There was a reason antimatter was called that. Whatever matter it hit would fade away in almost the same amount! Nothing material could withstand antimatter! And…
"banshee?" He voiced feeling very much confused. What did a mythical screaming lady from Irish culture have to do with antimatter?
"T-they might s-show her in a m-m-moment but…" Alphys took out her phone and handed it to him after a quick search.
It was a photo of a woman in a beautiful yellow dress stained in blood, with long brown hair clutching the limp body of another woman, surrounded by gore and wreckage, as she appeared to be screaming to the skies in pain.
The text below the picture detailed that no one knew who the woman was and that she had vanished after the incident. Because no one knew her name some Mexican kid online had called her la llorona, which basically translated to 'the weeping woman'. Someone else had then suggested Banshee because the legend of a woman who cries upon a death fitted the scene more than a woman in white that lost her children in a river. The text went on to explain that she had been sprawling on the floor just in front of where the wreckage stopped in that thin stretch of land unaffected from the blast. That she might have had something to do with whatever had stopped the devastation from the antimatter in that place and, consequently, saved the lives of the people behind her, as few and they had been. And then she'd simply disappeared in the midst of the chaos that followed, as if she was never even there.
He hoped that they were overdramatizing that last part. It would do no good to have someone else that could travel through the void the way he did. But if she could, did that mean she used magic?
This time he heard Papyrus, Miranda and Undyne entering the living room so he wasn't so surprised when his brother noticed the gruesome image now reflected in the television, this time with a lot more blur covering the gory bits so as not to traumatize the audience' and gasped in horror.
"BROTHER! ARE YOU SEEING ANOTHER HORROR MOVIE? IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY WITH THE KIDS AROUND!?"
"no, paps. This is very much real."
"What happened?" Undyne asked.
"An ant-t-t-timatter b-bomb." Alphys informed her.
"I'm going to go upstairs, ok?" Miranda announced a bit abruptly.
"O-oh! Ok! I'll have t-the s-soulbot r-r-r-ready by t-this afternoon, i-i-is that ok?" Alphys asked.
"Sure."
"SANS… WHAT IS THAT BOMB AND WHY ARE YOU SO WORRIED ABOUT IT? IS IT THAT DIFFERENT FROM REGULAR BOMBS?"
Sans hesitated. He really didn't want to tell him but he deserved to know.
"antimatter is a material that cancels out all matter it comes into contact with. and the people that planted that bomb are the same that attacked us months back."
He proceeded to try to stress across the point of how dangerous antimatter was. After Papyrus' foolish act at the conference, Sans really needed to make sure his brother stayed safe. They kept discussing the antimatter until Toriel affirmed that conversation wasn't one they needed to have in front of children.
He changed channels to something far more innocent but, deep inside, he couldn't help but feel threatened by that knowledge. Who's to say they wouldn't gun for the monsters again. Who's to say that this time they wouldn't bring an antimatter bomb instead of rifles? They didn't have way to defend against that yet! And if Miranda tried to play hero again and ran away with the bomb and died alone? What if they all died?
…
He really didn't want the kid to reset again.
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EN:
BONUS: dah math! (insert sarcastic 'yey!' here)
It comes to no surprise that I had to calculate some shit for this last part of the chapter. So… the information I had was that 1 pound of antimatter had the power of 19 megatons of TNT. To make a comparison, Hiroshima's bomb only had the power of 15 kilotons of TNT so it's a pretty hefty difference… and way too big for what I needed. For an area of 20.000 square meters (around 4,9 acres) I would need way less.
So, first I had to calculate how much destruction TNT caused and came across a site that showed the radius of destruction caused by 1 kilogram of TNT (around 2,2 pounds) was around 11 meters (around 36 feet) away from the epicenter of the blast to be somewhat safe from insta-death and most serious injuries (unless there were metal parts being projected). Having that eleven meters' mark as reference. I imagined it was the radius of a circle and calculated the area of it. The result was around 380 square meters (around 4090.28 square feet).
Having that number (recap, meaning that 1kg of TNT wrecks 380 square meters) I calculated via proportion how much TNT would be needed for 20000 square meters. The result was around 53Kg (around 117 pounds).
Now I know that a pound of antimatter has the same power as 19mt of TNT (I converted it to kg to make the calculations easier which is 19000000000kg) and I need to know how much antimatter would have the same power as 53kg of TNT. The solution was 0,000000001255263157894737kg or, to simplify, 1.2553 micrograms (mcg). The amount of antimatter that has been created in all 30 years of it being studied is 10 billionth of a gram (or 0.00000001g). Measured in micrograms it would be 0,01mcg. Yep, the difference is big.
Lesson over! (sorry to go all game theorist on ya, guys. ^_^')