.
Love in Plastic
Chapter 01
So it Begins
"Are you certain it was him?"
"They couldn't have sealed the fountain without a human, and he is the only one in this town of yours. Yes, I am certain. It was him and the dragon from his class."
"Oh goodness..."
"However they found their way to the dark world, they did so together. We must separate them so that it doesn't happen again."
"Yes - yes I - I'll see what can be done."
Kris couldn't see. "Where...where am I? Hello...? Anyone...?" It was dark. He could feel nothing, he could see nothing. He expected to feel frosty air glide along his cheeks, but he didn't feel his cheeks either. "Is...is anybody there?"
Only slowly, he began hearing something other than his own inner voice. It started off completely silent, but more and more, he could hear a repetition of something. Sometimes, there was variation. "...and siman tov, up the hill and down the hill, test, test, one, two, three, the wheels on the bus..."
As soon as he realized that it was an actual voice, he shouted. Or at least he tried to. "Hello? Hello!"
"...oh, can you hear me?"
The endless, random ramblings had come to a stop. Who or whatever that was, Kris at last had its attention. "Yes!"
"At last, we are connected. We had some unexpected trouble."
"Where am I? It's cold, and I can't feel my..."
"At the moment, you are nowhere at all."
He was feeling more agitated by the lack of change in how much he knew about what happened, when suddenly his surroundings changed. He could finally see something. It was just that it wasn't anything specific. Just an endless, white-purplish blur that extended endlessly in every direction. "Don't leave me alone! Where am I?"
"This isn't important. What matters is the change."
"Change? What change."
"They are gone. I can't read them anywhere. And yet we are talking. The dog must have been lazy."
"Who? Talk to me! Give me some answers!" Something about all this was making him panic. He just wanted to get out of here.
"You are on your own it seems."
"On my...stop this! Where am I?" He was avoiding giving him clear answers.
"No need to worry. What matters is that they are gone. You are without guidance."
"Does...does that mean I can do what I want again?"
"Indeed. If you are up to the task. Tell me, when you are faced with a tough decision, will you be able to make it?" Kris thought about the answer. Perhaps it was his own fault for being too slow, but before he could, the voice went on. "Neither of us have a choice but to see for ourselves." Suddenly, Kris felt something scratching the side of his head. He tried to reach for it, but he couldn't. He couldn't feel his hand.
Then the scratching began to grow stronger. It penetrated the surface of his head and while it expanded across his body, filled him with painful jitters. Faster and faster, it went way beyond his head, until he could feel the pain in his arms, his legs, his chest, everywhere. And then, with a slam, a feeling as if he had fallen down a building and crashed against the pavement, it all ended.
Still with his heart racing from the shock, he slammed his eyes wide open and began breathing heavily. It was over. At least he thought so. But a quick look around had him calm down, as while the bed sheet was pushed away, he was still back in his room. And he was fine. His hands, his face, he could touch and feel everything. He got up. Asriel's alarm clock listed ten past seven. He had twenty more minutes before it would wake him up to go to school. Just enough to get some pie for breakfast.
The door to the bathroom was closed. And he could hear water running from behind, Mom was already awake and in the shower. Half the pie was already eaten. Nonetheless he cut himself a piece of it and sat down at the table. To think about the dream he had just had. He often had these nightmares. Usually, it would end the same way.
Being given options to create a 'vessel', only for it to be thrown away and him to be thrown back into his own, human 'vessel'. Something was different on the previous day though. He was looking at everything, sometimes staring and thinking about things he knew perfectly well, and talking to everyone he saw.
His choices were not his own. But now, he got up early enough, checking for the time was his choice, not looking at every single thing in his room was his choice, walking straight down the hallway and the stairs without inspecting the crayon box was his choice. He was free, he could do whatever he wanted. Cutting only as small a piece of the pie for himself to eat wasn't necessarily his choice, he did that to not draw his mother's ire.
The entire day was surreal to him. And all the more did everything after leaving the class room. Fantasy creatures, magic, suddenly pulling weaponry out of nowhere, the entire thing being chronically jumbled up as if he had just 'gone back' to repeat things from time to time, and in the end, they both 'woke up'. Especially the part about going on a magical adventure with Susie confused him, that entire part felt more like what he expected a drug trip to be like, than an actual series of events.
His first opportunity to clear his mind on what it was, came his way when his mother was done taking a shower and, dressed in a bath robe, got herself a leftover piece of the pie and sat down next to him at the round table. He was startled when she leaned in and planted a long, drawn-out kiss on the left side of his forehead. "Good morning. You seem up a lot sooner today."
Kris tried to laugh off the slight uncomfortable feeling. "I'm sorry you were worried yesterday. I didn't mean for that."
She began stroking his back with one hand while holding a big spoon of pie ready for herself with the other. "It is all right. If you made a friend, that is worth all the worries." So yesterday was an actual day that happened. "So how is this friend of yours? Is she nice?"
He smiled. "Yes. "
"It was irresponsible of Alphys to just let you wander off for so long. I will have a word with her over this."
He knew there was no point in arguing. Mom was right anyway. As always. For now, while he had time, he had to focus on the bits of the previous day that he was more willing to believe. When he was made to wander through town and talk to everyone. Absolutely everyone. And he came up with someone that might get him further on that. "So how's uncle Rudy been lately?"
Merely hearing that name immediately lowered the corners of his mother's mouth. Bringing him up startled her and she shifted away a little. "Oh my..ahem. Fine. he is recovering I believe. But you should know." She took a sip from her too strongly flavoured tea. "He called to thank me for sending you over. It was nice of you to surprise him."
Not long after that, Asriel's alarm clock went off. Kris quickly got up, ran upstairs and stopped it before grabbing new clothes, another set of his wide collection of mutually identical, green striped shirts and brown pairs of trousers and heading downstairs to take a quick shower in the bathroom, too.
When he came out, clean and with new clothes, Mom was already back in her dress and coming down the stairs to get ready to head to school. He only noticed on the way out, that in their rush on the previous day, they had forgotten his school bag in the car. A sudden, deeply uncomfortable thought, but a fleeting one, since everything was fine.
Holding hands as family always did - their family at least - they walked through the morning light of their comfortable town. On the way his mother made sure to remind him several times to apologize to Mrs. Alphys when she got to class.
He didn't talk back at her for repeating herself, but by the time she was at it for the fifth time, she must have noticed him getting annoyed, seeing as she stopped. Inside, with all the fellow students walking in and around, in front of everyone's eyes, she led him in by the hand and gave him his daily 'good luck at school' hug before moving on to prepare her own classes.
Only about half the class was there by the time he arrived. He only minimally greeted Berdly and Noelle, who were early and fully awake as always. He was mostly absorbed in his own thoughts on how to proceed.
His next step in tracing the steps of the previous day, was to ask Berdly and Noelle how their project was coming along. As usual, the bird grinned. "We got it done before class was over. You better get going this time. It's due tomorrow and you were lucky enough to survive Susie yesterday. I don't think she's going to help you at all."
He put on a smile, but he didn't answer. He didn't know how to feel about Berdly's comment about Susie being unwilling to help. On one hand, it somehow upset him, on the other, he couldn't blame him for thinking that way. He for himself actually felt a lot more confident now. And she would be the last missing piece. The one part of the previous day he really, really, really felt inclined not to believe that it happened. And to his positive surprise, before Jocks or Snowy, Susie appeared. And with a school bag, too.
Everyone else had their things neatly sorted out so that they had everything they needed for the day in their lockers, and as always, she took her seat right in front of him. She even greeted him and he greeted her back. He tried to not be too obvious about paying particular attention to her - and to stare at the pens and the block of paper he was sorting instead.
That was, until she turned around and very strongly, so much so that it was painful, pressed the tip of her index 'claw' into his right shoulder. First, he only raised his head slowly, then he quickly shifted to sit upright. Susie sat with her elbow on his desk and was pointing right at him and then herself with an evil grin that made him uneasy. She got a bit closer and began to whisper. "After classes?"
He preferred not to answer, he just smiled and nodded. With a smile that was, unlike most of the time, genuine. When he turned back around, he figured that this feeling wasn't uneasiness. He was excited. Quietly enough to not be heard, he couldn't suppress impatiently tapping his foot while waiting for Alphys to come. She was late. Which wasn't unusual, but somehow now more than on any other day, he really noticed it.
And when she at last came, she looked more like she was stumbling in. As always with a jacket that didn't quite fit and a tie that wasn't quite tied properly. She even gasped because she almost tripped on her way to her desk. "Good morning everyone."
"Good morning, Mrs. Alphys.", everyone replied in sync like grade schoolers.
"Y-you're all here!" She noticed it as well. "...and...actually in one piece." That part, she whispered to herself, but Kris could guess it was something like that. In a demonstrative manner, she reached into a bag of her own and placed a box full of chalk on the table. She learned from her mistake. Biology class went over with nothing unexpected happening. But for the very next subject, physics, the one they were about to start off with yesterday until that abruptly ended for him, it wasn't case.
"Oh, so-u-uhm. Right class." Alphys slapped her claws together in a known attempt to give herself some new confidence. "I'm - I'm afraid I've got some bad news. We're going to call your current projects short. You can hand in what you have if you want to..." As expected, Berdly and Noelle already had a neatly stapled-together pile of paper with all the results, how they got to them, and graphs to explain each problem laid out in great detail. Kris on the other hand, had nothing to show. And for a second or two, everyone was indeed staring at his desk.
"...but if you have nothing, that's okay, too. Just place them right here after class." Looking back, the choice of this person Ralsei spoke of in the dungeon, this 'player's, to use what little time he had left before going to bed early to start a conversation with EVERY SINGLE PERSON THEY COULD FIND was a bad decision and he really hoped this loss of control would never happen again.
Luckily for him, this hope would prove well-placed in the long run.
Then again, Susie didn't have anything either.
Alphys couldn't help but stare with a forced grin at all the upset students. "Sorry again for the inconvenience. Was a bit of a...surprising change of plans. But I already put together new papers for all of you." She pulled up another pile of sheets like she always did for group projects. On each one would be a list of problems you had to solve together with your partner, and the common result would be graded for both of you.
She went on while she walked from desk to desk to hand one to each student. "I'm going to need you to form new groups of two. Groups with partners other than your previous ones. We can't always work with the same people, right?"
Once done, she turned around to the class and was shrugging and forcing a smile onto herself. She was looking for approval and she got none. People didn't say anything, but you could feel it in the mood that filled the room. Even Kris slightly pressed at the back of Susie's chair to get her attention and see what she was thinking about it, and she just shrugged.
"O-okay. Why don't we just do it randomly?" She fumbled about with her bag again. Other teachers would have just either written scraps of paper with each student's name on them, or had the students write them, and then drawn all the names one by one. Mrs. Alphys on the other hand, for some reason, always had a little box of dice and a plastic cup with her and 'rolled' them instead, by assigning each one a number and then rolling the dice, loudly and again and again.
When her arduous exercise was finally done, she announced each name and had every pair of two form one group. He had to say, none of them really matched. All the pairs from before and from most of their assignments made sense in some way. They worked. However they did, Jockington and Catti did seem to hold up, but now Jockington was winding himself around one of Snowy's wings and Catti had to team up with Temmie's boiled egg. As for the four of them, Kris was teamed up with a now devastated blue bird, while Noelle got to look after Susie. Upon hearing it, very slowly, with terror in his eyes, Berdo turned around, with his lower beak hanging down.
Kris couldn't help but mimic Susie's previous shrug. Berdo snuck a glance at Noelle and then went back to glaring at Kris with his trembling index finger raised. Not even bothering to remove the tiny, loosely hanging feather that made his fingerpointing look a lot more awkward than it was supposed to. It all happened in a span of mere seconds, and as soon as he gave up and sighed, he opened his eyes and came along to sit at Kris' desk, with his smirky old face back to how it was supposed to be. "Hey there. Looks like it's the two of us now."
Kris maintained a slight smile, worried about what Berdly might read into it if he didn't, and agreed with his new colleague. Berdly on the other hand, placed his elbow on Kris' desk and shifted a little closer with his hand covering the other way and whispered. "But hey, on the flip side, you got rid of Susie, right?" Kris' smile was already vanishing.
"What even happened yesterday anyway? Got lost on the way to the supply closet? How does that happen? For hours?" He was beginning to put on this exaggerated smile that almost made his head look like it had a different shape and he had to catch his glasses to keep them from falling off. "Makes you wonder what you were even doing all this time."
On the outside, nothing about Kris' mannerisms changed. On the inside, he was now in overdrive. Assuming that either everything was true, or that they were on some weird substance-related trip, what excuse could he come up with to avoid Berdly bombarding him with innuendo for the rest of the year? "Uh..." he finally stammered. "...we didn't find any chalk, and then found out there was an empty classroom nobody is using."
At last, the smile was vanishing but he still had to look Berdly in those narrowing eyes. "Really?"
"Yes. With playing cards and a chess board, and a checkers board..."
Now the bird was raising his head and pointing at Kris with pistol hands. "Ah, now I get it. Wandering off and lazying about with board games all day. Yes, I can believe it. Sounds like something you two would do." He just raised a hand to fire a pistol hand at Berdly and take it down again to acknowledge he was right. This was in fact, the best thing he could say. He didn't believe the 'truth' himself. Not for a second. "Okay, I'm seeing how it is. Now let's take a look at what we got here."
The sheets were printed with more thin paper, which tricked them into believing it was one, when they were actually three. In fact, upon closer inspection, the new group assignment didn't only contain more than three times as many problems to solve, but they were much more difficult as well. At least one of them involved material they hadn't actually covered yet. And on top of it, they didn't have two days to complete it, but one.
Why was this sudden new paper so much more difficult than the previous ones? The one from before, he could sort of imagine completing with Susie if they sat down and did it. But with this one, other students were complaining from time to time and Berdly was clutching a pencil with his beak and twisting it, scraping pieces of wood off with little care. Even the two of them didn't really get anywhere with it, and when class was over, Kris was happy to think about something else.
And after that, and a few hours more, soon enough, the bells were ringing and their last class for today was over. With his things already packed, Kris almost immediately got up and went for the door. "Hey! Wait up!" Berdo was already calling after him, but Kris had little patience for him. "Where do you think you're going?" Susie, who had run past them, was now waiting for them in the middle of the busy hall.
She just plain told the bird: "To the supply closet."
She was very excited to go and led the two of them onwards down the hallway and into the one that led to the closet. Kris was excited as well, he just couldn't believe everything about travelling into a magical dark world. They were going to open the closet and it was just going to be a supply closet. "I can see where you're going.", the bird went on while still spurting after the two of them. "But why?"
Once they had passed most students and there wasn't anyone to really attentively listen in, she did turn around, but wound up stammering her answer. "Because there'll be a...well a...a thing! You just watch." Kris somehow felt skeptical about it. There wasn't going to be a 'thing', was there? With a proud grin, bearing her teeth, she marched up to the closet, grabbed both handles at once and pulled it wide open.
"Behold! The dark world!" And a mere half-second upon presenting it to him, her bravado was gone. "Oh wait, there's nothing there." What they had in front of them was just a supply closet, with boxes full of hygiene products, a few supplies for first aid, chalk, large crayons, and further down a lot of asymmetrical bottles of various detergents. The ground was full of pieces of fallen-down and broken off chalk. A feast for the kinds of people that liked to eat it. "No...there's nothing here."
Convinced that she was going off the deep end for good, Berdo folded up his arms and shook his head. "Of course there's nothing there." On the other side of it, but covered in shelves nailed over it, was a door that led to a corridor in the back.
That didn't stop Susie from kneeling down and scrambling around among those detergents and other cleaning utensils. "No, no, no, no, it was real! I could have sworn - Kris!"
She pointed right at him and he froze. She got up and came closer and closer until she loomed over him. A bit too close for comfort. "You remember it, too right? It must have been real."
He looked up at those jaws and stayed as not-panicked as he could. "I remember something. Why?"
"It couldn't have been a dream, it was way too...I made a friend in there. Little blue guy. What's his name?"
A little blue guy? Well for one, their recollection of what happened had a similarity right there. "Lancer?"
Immediately she stepped back and pointed at him. "See? It was real!"
He didn't seen quite convinced. Maybe she was just telling herself whatever answer he gave was correct. "Was there anyone else?"
At last, when he engaged her, she calmed down a bit. "Uh yeah, little guy in green. He was as much of a little wimp as you."
"And his name?"
"Ralsei!"
Berdly came around to place a hand on Kris' wrist to get his attention. "What kind of 'board games' were you playing exactly?"
"Hey! Where are you heading off to now?" Kris began wandering off, down the hallway, to the classroom they came out of when all this was over. After he was a bit ahead, he stopped and turned around and soon enough, all three of them were on their way to the abandoned class room. "Okay, good idea. They'll all be where we left them."
When they opened the door, while the light from outside did reveal a little bit, Kris immediately noticed how it was very impractically designed given how from either of the two doors that led to it, you had to walk straight through the entire room in the dark, just to get to the light switch on the other side. The room was untouched. Everything was the same as before.
Berdly couldn't help but stand in the middle of the mess on the floor and look at Susie with his head tilted. "So, what exactly am I supposed to see here?"
A little confused and at a loss for words, Susie looked all over all the boards, board game pieces and playing cards strewn across the floor and the shelves of the cupboard. Kris walked straight past most of it and picked up a little, worn plush animal that lay next to a joker card off the floor. It was made to look like a cat, or some other mammal, with arms and legs like a monster, and with a button sewn onto its face, possibly to replace its right eye.
"Now wait a minute!" When she saw Kris take an interest in him, she started paying attention to the plush, marched right his way and pulled it out of his hand. "I recognize that face, it's Seam!"
Another face and name she recognized just like he did. If this was a dream, they were both having an at least near-identical dream. "But if this is Seam...then..." She knelt down to pick up one of the playing cards. A two of hearts. And she remembered the heart-shaped soldiers Lancer threw at them when they were in the purple fields. And Seam and the heart cards were both on a purple carpet.
Slowly, she began tracing a route through the room, along the checkers board with all the pawns, building block pieces and playing cards that led up to the cupboard and wound up walking over to it. Inside, she picked up one of the three rules cards that were strewn around. "If that's Seam, then that was the field and this is Card Castle."
"Really now? 'Card Castle'?" Berdly placed both hands on his waist and looked over to his silent partner, expecting the same smug dismissal. Kris on the other hand, was curious to see what Susie would find.
"If this is the castle, then those are the floors and that means this..." She reached into the upper shelf within the cupboard, past the half-open door, grabbed what she found and put a few cards back. From an area still visible from outside, she had pulled out and kept a jack of Spades that lay on another box of cards. But from around the corner, she found something that immediately drew Kris' attention. "What the hell is that?"
His horns! The headband with those little pinkish, forward-bent devil horns he used to wear when he was smaller. "Those look like mine."
She looked up at him with disbelief. "Say what now?"
"I used to have horns like that. They were from a Halloween costume. See?" He took it right out of her hand and tried putting on the piece. It didn't quite fit any more. But upon looking at the inside of the headpiece that connected the horns, he could still see his name, written on with nigh irremovable marker with his mother's handwriting. Those weren't just any pair of horns like his. They WERE his. When he lost them, he looked all over for them and they never turned up. How did they get here?
When he looked back up from them, he saw two monsters staring him down with a very wide smile on both their faces. Berdly wasn't a bird, he was a bird monster. And his beak deformed to match all the mean-spirited smiles it could throughout every school day. And now was no exception. "Krissy, Krissy. You didn't wear those at school, did you?"
He froze. And didn't say a word. A similar smile crept up the dragon girl's jaws while she looked down at him with her head still raised. "I'd believe it in an instant." He was absolutely upset, but at the same time, he had no idea how to react to this. He thought she was changing yesterday, but on the first chance to humiliate him, she turned on him again. He thought she called him her friend, but if she turned on him so quickly, the notion felt hollow to him. He clenched one of his fists and knocked it into Susie's upper arm.
"Oho." She immediately took two menacing steps his way. He backed off, but she kept following and staying a little too close for comfort. "Wanna try that again?" She smiled in a deliberate way that bore all her teeth, especially the upper jaw was right within his eyesight. They stayed like this for a while. Berdly just watched. "Naaah no worries." She backed off a little and began scratching Kris' scalp with her knuckle. Perhaps not as much about her had changed as he had hoped. "Come on, the least we can do is use this room."
When she turned around, one of the few times he actually looked at her when she had her back turned ever since yesterday evening, he noticed something. Something tiny that didn't quite fit with her. "Stop."
"What?"
"There's something in your hair."
"You're messing with me."
He looked her right in the eyes and simply shook his head.
That seemed enough to convince her, so she turned around again and started randomly grasping for whatever there was with her own hands. But she kept missing it, because she wither went through her hair to her right, or to her left. "It's in the middle." He eventually walked up to her himself and carefully reached closer to touch a single, very thin strand of hair. It was bound together by a tiny hairpin. Mostly flat and barely noticeable, but it was there nonetheless.
"Then get it off me already!" When he had pulled it off, she apparently felt the tug and release and turned around to examine it with him. Her hair was so voluminous and she had so little care for it, she must have not noticed it at all in all this time. The hairpin had a little image attached to it. An image of a scythe, with a purple-yellow striped hilt. "Now wait a minute!" She shrugged back for a moment. They both recognized the design.
As far as he was concerned, it was definitive proof of their journey to the dark world. A devilsknife. Like the one Jevil the nigh-unbeatable jester gave them as a trophy for 'beating' him. Either that or the design came from somewhere else and it only became the scythe an imprisoned fool used in a shared feverdream.
At least a shared dream was something he was more willing to believe than that it really happened. It also would have explained how everyone they met in the dark world was spread out here.
"All right, what am I supposed to see here?" Berdly had long settled for believing that Susie - and possibly Kris - had lost her marbles for good.
"Oh, you wouldn't get it, you weren't there." Now confident for herself, that it all really happened, Susie smiled with no shred of doubt.
The bird just turned his head Kris' way with one eye-brow raised further than the human expected him to be able to. "And you were there? What is she on about?"
A smile not put on, but a real one, crept up his face. "I'm not sure either."
"Okay, enough of this. Come on, Kris. We've got work to do. Time's short on this one. And I'm not letting you slack your way out of this, if I get my grades dragged down by you, you're going to suffer with me." He agreed, said goodbye to Susie, and left school with Berdly. Even now, Kris had trouble understanding why Berdly was acting this way.
For one there was how upset he got about Alphys re-shuffling the groups. So what if he didn't get to work together with Noelle for once? They were going to solve this. Somehow. On the other hand, something strange he noticed that seemed relevant here was the way he reacted yesterday.
If he didn't get to work on this with Noelle, being upset was still somewhat understandable. But yesterday, Noelle offered for the three of them to group up and he was very opposed to that as well. He didn't even sound hostile, but nervous rather.
Kris wasn't sure, but for the time being, by process of elimination, it had little to do with Noelle and instead, the least far-fetched conclusion was that Berdly really despised Kris. Then again, he was mean, but it didn't feel like he had a chip on his shoulder. Okay that wasn't true, he definitely did have one, but Kris didn't get the impression that it was directed at him.
They didn't stop marching, until they were far enough outside for the late summer sun to douse them in new warmth after the cold of the tiled school halls surrounded them before. "We're going to my place of course. You're not getting away from this." It dawned on him that Berdly wouldn't leave him alone until they were done with physics, and considering the difficulty and the deadline, he couldn't blame him either.
"We're not working in whatever mess you have for a home. I bet you don't even have a table or work desk in your room." There was that wide smile again. As usual, Berdly was right. Asriel's desk was only just big enough for his computer's utilities, you couldn't really work on it.
"Okay, I just have to do two things first." He turned around and ignored the bird's protestations about abandoning him. He was just heading over to Mom's classroom. And as expected at this time of the day and on this day of the week, she was here and not in the teacher's lounge. "Mom, I have some difficult school work and want to work on it at Berdo's."
"Ah, is that another friend?" She seemed touch, but he wasn't sure what seeing her like this made him feel.
"Something like that."
"I hope this other thing won't take so long, or you're going to have to stay overnight." Speak of the devil, Berdly had followed him here. What? He gave the bird a questioning look. "I'm serious. We can work for a lot longer like that."
He turned back to Mom, who understood that he was about to ask her if he could and nodded. She was still softened by him 'making friends'. "Of course, shall I drive you two home and pack some things together?"
He didn't want to inconvenience her like that. He could take the initiative. "I've got a key. I can go and..."
He was pushed aside mid-sentence. "Yeah, we'd very much like that." He stared at his clueless classmate, but all he could do was shrug. "Hey! If she's offering help, be thankful and take it." Unfortunately, Berdly didn't know what Mom helping entailed. Kris did.
"Actually, before we go home, I'd like to take a detour. I heard you know Sans."
"Yes, I may have visited his store." He didn't like how she was hoarding chocolate kisses when she knew those were his favourite.
"I promised I'd spend some time with his brother today."
"All right. You two go along. I will be waiting at home."
All three of them left got ready to leave school for the day. Mom went for the car and Kris went for Sans'. Berdly for some reason followed him. Once they were outside of Mom's earshot but on the way, he tipped on Berdly's shoulder to get his attention. He was silent, but Berdly had been his classmate for long enough to know that didn't account for much.
"I don't want you to drag down my grades. We're staying at my place overnight and pulling an all-nighter. No-one's going to bed till we're done. My parents aren't home, so they won't get in the way." Kris really didn't like the sound of that. "Oh come on, me and Noelle do that all the time." Really? That was one subject she avoided when talking to Kris. They had to wait for a bit before crossing the street. At this time of the day, it was a lot more heavily used.
"You have sleepovers all the time?"
"Of course! I thought you two were like family, did she never talk about that?" She really, really didn't. It seemed much too banal to keep secret from him, but he didn't have a lot of time to think about that, since they already arrived.
They didn't even need to approach the store's door, when a short skeleton in a hoodie came outside and quickly turned the recently added 'open' sign to read 'closed'. "hey there. didn't think you'd come, and now we got two."
"Of course."
"i'm really thankful for you guys doin' this. not sure how it'll go, but there goes nothing." He sped over the concrete in his pink slippers over to the taller wooden house, unlocked the door and led the two of them inside. It was a bit of a messy living room they first came upon. The table, the floor, the carpet, the kitchen floor in the distance, everything was full of big open books, wires and scraps of metal.
They all had to stare at the floor to avoid tripping on anything. "pap! pap i got you some visitors! hello?" He led them up the stairs. Both doors were closed, but one had a strange aura to it that shone in multiple colours, that Kris had seen somewhere before. The other, the first one you came across right after walking up the stairs, was plastered with a whole range of 'hazard' signs and other warnings not to enter.
From behind it, loud music was playing, consisting almost entirely of xylophone tunes. Without further asking, Sans opened the door and immediately had to cover his mouth and gesture the two teenagers to take a few steps back. Some very unhealthy-looking green fumes came out of the inside of the room, and soon thereafter, were sucked out of the room by vent shafts installed right above the door. Apparently, this wasn't the first time this happened.
"IT'S SAFE TO COME IN NOW!", they heard a loud, screechy voice announce. There were more fumes inside the room, and vents above to funnel them out. How in the world did he get away with this? "SANS, WHAT IS THIS?" Inside a smaller room, just as messy and stuffed to the brink with scientific-looking literature and machine parts, stood a skeleton the full size of a grown man, on his two legs as if alive, just like Sans, and wearing a buttoned-up lab coat and a white pair of trousers.
"got you some friends to spend time with. maybe get to know our new neighbours and all."
"SANS FOR THE LAST TIME, I DON'T NEED FRIENDS! I NEED RESULTS." He turned around to get back to working on something he seemed to be working on since before they came here. It was a lengthy contraption with white plastic plating at all sides, but its internal components had extended themselves to move the white casing apart which allowed the skeleton to make some adjustments.
He was about to begin welding a metal component, with sparks spraying everywhere, right above the wooden table, in a makeshift laboratory with a flammable carpet in a house made of wood. "IF I CAN JUST GET THIS METABOLIC ACCELERATOR TO WORK, WE WILL MAKE MILLIONS!"
Sans tried to take a step closer and gestured him to calm down. "pap, come on, let's get some perspective here."
Pap put the welder down and faced him. "HOW ABOUT IF WE GET SOME AMBITION INSTEAD?"
"pap let's just try to be normal, at least for a week."
"NONSENSE, NOW GIVE ME SOME SPACE AND LET ME GO BACK TO WORK."
Resigned, Sans just opened the door again and left. "idiot baby..."
"I HEARD THAT, YOU'RE THE IDIOT BABY! NOW NEVER WASTE MY TIME LIKE THIS AGAIN!" He was long gone, by the time Papyrus was done. He did acknowledge the two of them though. "I'M SORRY FOR WASTING YOUR TIME, LITTLE CHILDREN."
Berdly immediately raised a hand to correct him. "We're not little chi-"
"AS A CONSOLATION, TAKE THIS." He reached down beneath one of his tables and pulled up another lengthy contraption. It had a grip and a trigger at its end, a bit like a gun. Except it had no barrel, or anything to pull or manipulate to release it. "DON'T WORRY, IT'S PERFECTLY HARMLESS, LOOK!" he pointed at the wall to their left, but when he pulled the trigger, instead of firing something, a bright, golden light came out of its front end.
The brightest part of this light seemed contained in a slowly extending 'blade' like a light sword from a popular sci-fi series. It went on and on, until it hit the wall, then shone a little brighter. But that was all it ended up doing. The wall didn't catch fire or was welded through or melted or anything of that sort, so Papyrus turned it off again by pulling the trigger a second time.
"IT'S A PROTOTYPE THAT'S SUPPOSED TO CREATE A RAY OF SOLID LIGHT, BUT I NEED A SPECIAL KIND OF GLASS FIBRE THAT'S OUT OF BUDGET TO MAKE IT, SO IT'S USELESS." Both of the skeleton's guests exchanged a perplexed look. "GO AHEAD. I DON'T NEED IT."
The bird extended his hands to accept this unexpected gift. "Uh...thanks?"
"MY PLEASURE. AND TELL SANS NOT TO DO THIS AGAIN."
Perplexed and with little answers, they left the room and went down the stairs. "This something you do regularly?", the bird asked, only to receive another shrug for an answer.
When they arrived back at home, Berdly's beak dropped. Kris saw what they faced coming from a mile away. "Ah, you're already back." Mom was happy to see them. She had packed his bags. Four very, very big bags and was gesturing them to help her load them into the van.
"Mrs D...Toriel, he's not moving in with me, he's just staying overnight."
"Oh, I am aware. I just wanted to make sure he has anything he might need." They barely all fit into the vehicle and even after they were done, Berdly would spend the ride to his place squashed in his seat. While the two of them helped her, Berdly already had a very bad feeling about pulling an all-nighter with Kris.