Chapter Twenty: Stealing One's Own Identity
It was a beautiful day outside. Birds were singing. Flowers were blooming. On days like these, skeletons like him, should be anywhere but here.
His surroundings appeared as nothing more than blurry shapes, the lovely array of colors going unnoticed. He didn't look behind at the creature giving chase. There was no need. The unholy insect-human combination wasn't far. It filled the air with terrible screeches vaguely resembling the pterodactyl he'd dealt with yesterday. Multiple limbs pounded against the earth, producing a thunderous noise. The anomaly had wrenched the gun from his hands, leaving him defenseless.
"Agent Gaster, respond!"
"Sans? Ya there?"
He yelled into the handheld device, "where are you?"
"We done met up at th' waterfall. Y' okay?"
He glanced at the creature. It was gaining on him. "Uh-" A skull-splitting scream. "Define 'okay'."
"Location?"
He jumped over an arching tree root. "I dunno; th' middle of nowhere?" He took a sharp turn. A quick look around as he sprinted. "No landmarks!"
A voice growled a number of obscenities. He wordlessly agreed. The pain in his chest grew sharper as the device slipped from his hand. His body hadn't grown much more accustomed to exercise. The unseen force propelled him onward. It fueled his exhausted limbs. His soul pulsed with its influence. He charged through a tangled mass of undergrowth. He struggled for air, and called upon the force for help. It came as a mild surprise that his ragged breaths grew steadier.
The trees disappeared. Water. He spotted a boat the river had wedged between two stones. He leaped forward. A tearing sound rippled faintly through the water's roaring. The being's grasp was enough to slow his trajectory. Sans hit the rock with a crack and a painful jolt surged through his face. He clambered onto the stone and stepped carefully onto the decaying wood. He didn't dare look at the lifeless body the vessel held. Instead he hurried to reach the other stone, hoping to finally put some distance between the thing and himself. He neared the edge, carefully readying himself to scale the taller rock.
A screech, one that was too close within a couple of soul pulses. The boat's rim lunged upward. Pain, and a horrible tingling that coursed through his leg. He flew through the air with a yelp, landing spine first on a wooden seat. His vision darkened. Air wouldn't come. He fought with his bones, willing them to move. They refused to. He scarcely heard the being's calls over the ringing in his skull.
Breathe.
The blurry mass moving about would simply have to wait. He focused on forcing his lungs to cooperate. They expanded, just barely. They would hardly exhale. With the force's help, he coughed, expelling more magic-filled air than before. He dragged an equal amount of the element into the faintly-glowing organs. He counted the frantic pulses in his chest. One. Two. For the most part, he could breathe again. Three. Four. The haze melted away from his vision. Five. The feeling returned to his battered form. He clearly heard the anomaly's calls and the liquid churning around them.
A horrible smell to his left. He looked to the decaying body, thinking to himself about the dead end the human's boat had reached.
One of the creature's many legs was lodged between a rock and a hard place. Literally. He pushed himself backward from the preoccupied being. He sat with his back against the shifting end of the vessel. He stared at the rock he'd been attempting to reach, then the one he'd gotten to first. He considered making a run for it. It wouldn't be easy; not with the creature rocking the boat as it was.
He didn't get the chance to act. He wasn't fully aware of what happened next. The anomaly noticed that he was still alive. It lunged at him, and from then on they existed in a confusing flurry of movements. He almost found himself underwater a number of times before realizing their surroundings were different. Somewhere along the line, they had managed to free the boat from its rocky prison. He dodged a pair of fangs before a thought of it could cross his mind.
Amidst the chaos, there was a deeper, stronger roaring growing near.
Things persisted in the same manner until it was too loud to ignore. In unison, monster and anomaly froze in their tracks. They turned their heads, finding that the river was about to vanish from beneath them.
"Welp. Nice going, genius. Now we're both gonna die."
OoOoO
"But-but the s-stone's not responding to-to anything, so we…. We woke y-you up."
"Two weeks."
"Y-yes."
"Two. Weeks."
"YES."
The group observed, not previously aware that a skeleton's "eye" was capable of twitching. For two weeks an anomalous creature had taken his place, living his life, existing under the same roof as his younger sister. He struggled for air as discretely as possible. How in the multiverse had these creatures managed to pull off such a feat?
"We'll find a way to switch you back," said one of the humans. "It's just going to take a bit longer than we hoped."
There was a pause. He tried to ascertain their motives for keeping him alive, as one of their own gathered forbidden information. A backup plan of some sort? "So whaddo I do 'til then?"
"Well… Um…. I-I-the-"
"Alphys, breathe."
She did so at the Undyne's reminder. "There is a-a guestroom here, but it's-it's kinda full of junk I meant to put somewhere else. Th-there's the other part of the building w-where-where you woke up, but it-it'll probably get uncomfortable after a while."
"WAIT! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, HAVE JUST GOTTEN A BRILLIANT IDEA!"
The overly-loud voice caused him to jump. He glared at the weird alternate version of his sibling, responding with an unfriendly, "what?"
Papyrus dropped the theatrical pose he'd taken on. "YOU CAN STAY IN MY SANS' ROOM! IT WILL LIKELY BE FAR MESSIER THAN YOU'RE USED TO…. BUT! IT SHOULD BE A LITTLE FAMILIAR, AT LEAST?"
"I dunno if that's such a great idea," said the fish monster, turning to him with a suspicious glare. "You still haven't told us how you got all that EXP."
Perhaps his mind remained a little off from the coma. Still, he was sure she'd mentioned a different acronym before. Yes; LV. Without the faintest clue of what they stood for, he searched for an explanation that would satisfy the powerful beings. He looked down at his own form as the anomalies waited in silence. Whatever it was, he found nothing unusual on his person, meaning it was either internal or merely something he was blind to.
"Ugh. Okay, uh, EXP? An' that LV ya mentioned before? It don't mean anything. People jus' have it." Not enough oxygen. His heart refused to cease its pounding. "Nobody could ever figure out what it means. People jus' have random amounts of it in my world, an' it don't make any difference in anything. People ferget its even there."
"Not buying it!"
He attempted to move from his position in the recliner, finding that oppressive weight present once again. Sans gripped the armrests, sweating as he stared at the manifested weapons. These creatures were going kill him. Their agent would gain sensitive information, which they would use against the ATTF. His sister would be left alone with nothing more than three large guns, moderate training in how to use them, and a short fuse! His home world would be overrun by-
"U-Undyne, please calm down. We don't-we don't know that much about th-that world. Maybe he's telling the t-truth?"
"But-"
"Now, now. That is quite enough," the goat commanded gently. "Violence is not the answer, Undyne. Have you learned nothing from Frisk?"
The mere notion of another being made him feel like bursting into tears.
"If you are going to stay with Papyrus for the time being, I am afraid I must request a favor," he continued as Sans felt the weight vanish along with the spears. "You see, Toriel, Frisk, and I only arrived back home a few days ago. We have been speaking with the human leaders. Things are a little more…. Tense than we first thought. They will not take well to a monster scientist preforming these experiments without permission."
The human male piped up: "They don't really like it when humans do stuff without asking. So, yeah. We thought it'd be okay, because it'd be really successful and stuff but that didn't turn out so great. So to make things public now…."
He met that nervous gaze and finished, "ya want me t' pretend t' be him."
"Yes. I am sorry to ask you this, but I must."
"PEOPLE HAVE BEEN ASKING WHERE HE'S BEEN. I TOLD THEM YOU WERE NAPPING, BUT EVEN MY BROTHER CAN ONLY NAP FOR SO LONG!"
What choice did he have? Something told him there wasn't one.
"All right," he answered with a sigh, in desperate need of something to calm his nerves. "Y'all got any barbecue sauce?"
Long chapter. How did I accidently type one thousand five hundred something words what the heck brain. Now I'm gonna get writer's block for the next billion years. :(
