Beg notes: This chapter gets the one f-bomb this fic is allowed, so warning for that. 8D
Eventually they had found a quiet corner to sit down and drink their meal in peace. It was just secluded enough for them to feel comfortable dropping their glamours, even if it was only while keeping watch for the occasional human that would pass by. Blue handed the cup back to Sans, who took a drink. The straw made that loud sucking sound that happens when you get to the bottom of the drink.
"So, now what?" Blue asked cheerfully.
"Guess we find someplace to hunker down for the night." Sans stood up and stretched.
"I meant the cup, do you have any plans for it?"
"Find a trash can," Sans said slowly with a confused wrinkle to his brow.
"I have an idea, hand it over, please."
Sans shrugged and handed the empty cup over.
"Thank you!" Blue happily took the cup and pried the lid off. Then he grabbed the clump of dirt under the plant and dropped the whole bundle into the cup.
"Ok, but why?"
"It'll be easier to carry this way," Blue replied cheerfully as he tipped the plastic robot shell up to dump the rest of the loose dirt into the cup.
"That's a pretty good idea."
"Thank you! Now we just need to do something with this clunky thing and find a place to rest."
"How about we head back to the bar? It has to have a dumpster or something and we can follow someone home. If we're really lucky there'll be some abandoned quarters or something we can sneak into."
"Wouldn't it be easier to just stay in the bar when it closes?"
They both got up and started walking back the way they came, glamours already up, as Sans replied, "Nah, places like that got security. Cameras, motion detectors, alarm systems, all that kind of stuff. We'd be too likely to set something off."
"pssst!"
"That's a good point I suppose someplace like that would have to be a last resort."
"hey! pssssssssst!"
"Too bad there aren't any trees we can climb, think they got an arboretum around here?"
"hey! i'm talkin' to youz two!"
"One would hope, or some kind of farm equivalent at least. They have to get their food from somewhere."
"hey! fer delta's sake, youz two skeletons! i'm talkin' to ya!"
Blue and Sans both froze and looked around. "I still have my glamour on."
"Me too. No one should be able to see us."
"down here." A grate over a vent groaned and moved aside, a skeletal hand emerged from within and beckoned them both in.
"Holy shit," Sans whispered with feeling. He couldn't believe it, another monster! Here! On this human built craft! Out in space!
Blue was already eagerly ducking into the vent, "Oh my goodness! Another monster!"
Sans was quick to follow, crowding into the narrow shaft the vent led to. The new monster was small, noticeably shorter than either Sans or Blue even crouched in the air vent. They were a skeleton too, with wide eye sockets and pips so faint that at first glance they didn't seem to exist. Their face seemed strangely chubby or perhaps swollen despite being made of bone, and their grin consisted entirely of sharp fangs save for one empty spot where a tooth was clearly missing. The monster was already putting the vent cover back on with their bare hands, which Sans noticed seemed to be made of unusually thick bones that ended in sharp claws. The immediate drop of light from half to barely twilight when their only source of light was cut off made any further inspection nigh impossible.
"the hell youz two idiots doin'?"
"Oh my gosh!" Blue gushed eagerly, "What are you doing up here? We didn't see you on the ship, you must have gotten stuck a while ago. But why didn't you just leave on the next ship? How long have you been up here?"
"I haven't heard of any other monsters going missing in the Scar in over a decade, and it didn't coincide with the scout ship."
"the hell're youz two talkin' 'bout? up where? what ship? and what're you even wearing?" They looked both Sans and Blue up and down in disgust.
"They're just clothes," Sans said with a shrug.
"Work coveralls," Blue added in.
"Besides, we could ask the same of you." Sans looked the other monster up and down, they were wearing the same one piece body suit the humans they'd seen so far had all been wearing, but this one was loose, patched, and dirty.
"i'm wearin' clothes, youz guys are the weirdos stickin' out like a pair-a sore thumbs. the hell were youz doin' wanderin' 'round where any human coulda seen youz?"
"We have our glamours on," Sans said defensively.
"Actually, is it safe to take them off? I doubt any humans can see us here."
The monster looked at the pair of them like they'd both grown a second head. "waste-a damn magic not to."
Sans dropped his glamour and gave a small sigh of relief, he hadn't realized just how tense his joints were getting until the strain was suddenly relieved. "I'm Sans, by the way."
"And I'm Blue! It's very nice to make your acquaintance…" Blue held out a hand as he trailed off, waiting for the monster to make their own introduction.
"red," he replied as he hesitantly took Blue's hand.
"So," Sans said casually, "got someplace more comfy to chat than huddled up in a vent with humans walking by?"
"yeah, home base's this way, c'mon." Red somehow turned around in the tight space and started moving down the vent at a surprisingly rapid rate. "youz guys are from another station, right? which one? beta? gamma? wait, don't tell me it's epsilon, heh."
"Station?" Blue asked as he huffed and puffed, trying to keep up while crawling through the tight space on all fours in complete darkness.
"We're on a space station," Sans said in awe, already falling pretty far behind.
"Could you slow down, please? We're not used to such cramped spaces."
The sound of Red moving stopped, his voice coming clearer as he said, "whaddya mean youz ain't used to cramped spaces? wait, are youz from one-a the colonies?"
"Colonies? I'm from Old Home," Blue said in confusion as they started crawling again, moving through the vents at a more reasonable speed this time.
"Snowdin," Sans puffed out as he worked to catch up. "But we worked in The Scar."
"those're weird names, which moon're they on?"
"Which moon? There's only the one though?"
"For Earth," Sans corrected gently. "Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos. But Jupiter has over seventy moons and Saturn has over eighty. Jupiter's biggest moon, Ganymede, and Saturn's biggest moon, Titan, are both bigger than Mercury. Not combined, each one individually is bigger than Mercury." Sans would have kept going, but he found himself too short of breath for any more monologuing.
"we're here," Red announced as he slipped through a vent opening with no grate, then stood to the side and waited for Blue and Sans to awkwardly pull themselves out and stand as well. Yup! Definitely shorter than them, Red only came up to about eye socket level with Sans.
"Where's here?" Blue asked as he dusted himself off.
Red just motioned to what looked like a cracked wall panel propped upright in the middle of a dusty hallway, a yard or so behind it and offset to hide the other half of the hallway was another cracked wall panel. He confidently walked around the first panel and for the first time Sans noticed a long, bony tail sticking out the back of his onesie. Sans and Blue looked at each other, shrugged, and followed Red around the panel. the sight on the other side took Sans's breath away.
Monsters. A lot of them, at least a dozen but likely more. Most of them seemed to be dragons of some kind. Or perhaps just lizards with horns of various shapes on their head and trailing down their backs. They were all gathered around what seemed to be a common area with more half busted wall panels dividing the larger area the hallway opened into.
"Holy fuck," Blue said softly.
Sans felt strange as the group of monsters in front of them all moved closer, staring at them with wide eyes. It was a strange mix of his head feeling like gravity was gone again and the weird stomach he'd had to make doing flips.
"these are blue and sans, clearly they ain't from 'round here."
"o-o-oh my god! new monsters!" a short dragon with scales a pale greenish yellow color waddled excitedly up to them and adjusted the pair of ill fitting glasses perched on their snout. "where are y-you from? another station? one of the c-colonies?!"
Sans tried to swallow down the weird pressure in his throat, then realized he could just get rid of it and save himself the hassle. That done he finally croaked out, "Earth. We're from Earth."
"You are too, right?" Blue asked a touch desperately. "I mean, where else would monsters be from, right? It's not like anyone would choose to live out here." He waved wildly around himself, likely meaning the station as a whole and its lack of magic, but the squalid conditions that apparently these monsters had been living in the last two and a half centuries wasn't exactly a bad point.
The other monsters looked just as offended as Sans expected them to at that. A tiny dragon with dull golden brown scales, darker brown spots, and pale greenish yellow spikes on their head scoffed and stepped closer. "you're full of it! no one can live on earth, it's why everyone left in the first place."
"It's why the humans left," Sans said firmly. He had to put a hand out and hold Blue back from butting in again, he had some hard truths to tell right now and Blue was a little too impulsive for that. "Monsterkind always kept safe havens out in the wilderness, far away from human cities and human interference. They were protected when... when The Disaster happened. Then the humans left and monsters have been cleaning up their mess ever since."
"no, that's not p-possible." The greenish yellow dragon adjusted their glasses again with a sharp toothed frown. "the radiation levels should have fallen on their own well before now, at least enough for the humans to go back, but they haven't. how can monsters live in that?"
Blue opened his mouth but Sans gripped his shoulder tighter and pulled him back so Sans was standing in front of him. "We've been doing that. For some reason the humans are only sending scout bots to one specific location, so we've been sabotaging that place to keep them away. The entire rest of the planet is livable, most of it has completely recovered."
"how long?" A dragon with dull olive green scales asked. "how long has it been livable?"
"For monsters? It never stopped being livable, it was humans who decided it wasn't worth the effort fix their mistakes and left."
"so we've been hiding up here and just barely surviving for no goddamn reason?!"
"why're you up here, then? if it's so great down on earth?"
"It was an accident," Blue blurted out. "One of the scouts found a plant someone missed and we got stuck on the ship trying to stop it."
"so... so the humans know now? they're heading back, right? we can go back with them!" A cheer erupted from the crowd.
Sans shook his head, "No, they still don't know. But now that you know, when the scout ship goes back you can hitch a ride like we did and go back to Earth without the humans. We're not sure if they're going to send it back now since the scout ship came back early or wait another five years, but either way-"
"wait! how do they not know? don't they have this plant thing?"
"yeah, what happened to it?"
"Well..." Sans hesitated, he didn't know these monsters, he didn't know how they would react.
"We stole it right out from under their noses," Blue said proudly. "All they have is one blurry picture of something green they have no physical evidence of."
"where is it? what'd you do with it?" The group of small dragons all crowded closer, making Sans feel distinctly intimidated.
"now hold on jus' a minute!" Red yelled as he put himself between the two outsiders and the crowd. "they got a point, youz really wanna be the ones to let the humans back on earth after what they did the first time? they said we can jus' hitch a ride back, so let's do that."
"in five years!" Someone yelled from the back.
"or maybe in a week, we don't know what they're plannin' for the ship yet. and five year's ain't nuthin', we can spend that time learning' 'bout earth and gettin' a plan together."
"Right!" Blue said eagerly. "If Sans hadn't been there I'd have gotten flattened by the ship on the way up, he's great at keeping his cool and thinking on his feet, I'm sure he can help us all get back home."
Sans's Soul gave a little flutter at the compliment. "I... uh..."
"or we can just give the humans the stupid plant and go back now!"
"i bet it's in that cup he's holding."
Blue cringed back, clutching the cup tighter.
"move out of the way, red," the yellow one with the glasses said as they moved closer
Red shove the pair back towards the entrance, "damnit, run!"
End Notes: I know faerie aren't supposed to do the whole please&thanks thing but I just canNOT imagine Blue having anything but impeccable (by our standards) manners. Sorry, I just can't do it. Plus it's not like every single myth is going to actually be true, maybe some are and some a random guy in 1382 made up and it just so happened to be popular enough to be that year's meme.