AUs: Underfell, Underswap. There was never a barrier.
There may or may not be ClassicCherryBerry content, it is planned but that's not the main plot of the fic. There may be violence, there will definitely be food insecurity and starvation. If more warnings are needed I will add them both here and in the relevant chapters.
Sans grumbled to himself as his hand blindly fumbled for his phone, intent solely on turning off his loud, annoying alarm. After knocking what seemed like everything on his dresser off (what did he even keep up there and why?), he finally managed to find his phone and shut the noise off. Then he just lay there, phone clutched to his ribs, sprawled out with his eyes still closed.
Sans's bedroom door burst open. "Good morning, brother! It's time to get up and face the new day!"
"'M up," Sans mumbled sleepily from his prone position on the bed.
Papyrus huffed and crossed his arms, "You may be awake, and I have my doubts about that, but you most certainly aren't up! Let's go, out of bed with you! No time for lollygagging if you want a real breakfast and coffee before work."
Sans cracked open an eye socket to blearily stare up at his exceedingly tall baby brother, "Who made it?"
"Made what? The breakfast or coffee? Worry not, breakfast is still in the works and I made the coffee, of course! As if either of you is able to wake up earlier than The Great Papyrus."
"Yeah, yeah, sure. Whatever you say." Sans sat up and yawned as he stretched.
Satisfied that Sans was now "up," Papyrus left him to finish getting ready as he headed loudly down the stairs. Sans stood and scratched his sacrum, then set about getting dressed. It took a bit of digging through the piles of clothes scattered in different corners of his room, sniffing the tunics and trousers he pulled out before finally finding clothes that were acceptable, a bit more digging to find a pair of (mismatched) stockings. One last stop before the mirror inside his closet door to make sure he was presentable enough, then Sans was ambling casually down the stairs.
In the kitchen Sans's little brother was manning the stove top while his littlest (and tallest) brother was setting the table. Sans yawned again as he slid into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. "'Mornin'," he mumbled sleepily.
"Good morning," Wingdings responded cheerfully from the stove.
"Oh good, you actually got out of bed," Papyrus said cheerfully as he a placed a steaming mug in front of Sans.
Sans looked up at Papyrus and sincerely said, "Thank you."
"You're quite welcome, I know how useless you are before your caffeine fix." Papyrus patted Sans's head like he was one of the dogs, then went back to bustling about the kitchen.
Soon enough Wingdings was sliding some sizzling bacon and eggs onto his plate while Papyrus was setting out bowls of oatmeal. Sans couldn't help watching in familiar horror as Papyrus added spoonful after spoonful of pure sugar into his own bowl, then dropped in a handful of little candy stars. Papyrus looked up to find both his brothers staring at him like he'd suddenly grown a second head. "I like the crunch!"
"Yes, well… the amount of sugar to go with the crunch seems a bit excessive."
"No kidding, my teeth hurt just from looking at it!" Sans exclaimed with a laugh.
"Just because I don't like my breakfast to be bland and flavorless," Papyrus grumbled. "I don't see how it's any weirder than flavoring it with maple syrup or butter and salt."
The two older brothers shrugged as they did just that. The usual jabs at each others' eating habits out of the way, the conversation could now move onto much more interesting topics, mostly what the three brothers had planned for the day. Well mostly it was just Wingdings and Papyrus talking about their plans, Sans's job was boring and he had no real control over what happened from day to day.
"… that reminds me," Wingdings was saying, "Asgore has approved my request for a sample of the latest human technology, so when the scouts arrive capture me the latest one Sans."
"Sorry bro, Undyne's already informed me I'm gonna be training one of the newbies this round."
Papyrus snorted, "Really? But she's always going on and on and on about how lazy and useless you are, that you just barely manage to do enough that it's not worth firing you."
"I know, I said pretty much the same thing, but she seems to think I do a pretty decent job training the new guys." Sans shrugged at that.
"I have told you repeatedly that you'd make an excellent teacher," Wingdings said in a voice that was carefully, delicately gentle.
"Wouldja look at the time, I gotta get going if I don't want to be late." Sans picked up his half finished meal and stood up.
"Wait!" Papyrus said desperately, "At least finish your breakfast!"
Sans looked Papyrus right in the eye socket as he held the plate up to his open mouth, then tipped it so the rest of his food slid right in. Then he poured the coffee right in on top, everything glowing brightly as it was absorbed and incorporated into his mana pool.
Papyrus huffed, but didn't fight any further as Sans unceremoniously shoved his dishes into the sink, then strolled to the front door. He had slipped his shoes on and was half way out the door when Papyrus came running up, a colorful metal box in his hands. "Don't forget your lunch!"
"Huh? Oh, uh… thanks." Sans took the box, weighing it in his hands. "So… what's in it?"
"My famous spaghetti, of course! With meatballs!"
"Nice. Well I'm off, have a good day."
"You too." Papyrus leaned down to plop a kiss on top of Sans's skull.
Wingdings had come out of the kitchen and leaned down to give Sans a kiss too. "Be careful out there."
With one final wave Sans finally slipped out of the house. He ambled through a copse of trees just past their porch and shortcut right to the entrance to his work: a re-purposed human building right on the edge of The Scar. He waved to the receptionist and made it all the way to the break room before allowing himself to slump against the nearest wall. He took a few deep, calming breaths, then with a scowl he went over to where everyone kept their lunches and started hunting through them.
"What're you doing?"
Sans looked up to find the very person('s lunch) he'd been looking for. "Hey Undyne, gimme your lunch." He shoved his own lunch box at her.
"What? No! This is mine, punk!"
"Papyrus made more of your spaghetti, this is your fault so you can eat it."
Undyne laughed as she traded lunches with him. "You sure you really wanna do that?"
Suspiciously Sans opened up the lunch box Undyne had just handed over, inside was a pile of limp, burnt noodles swimming in crushed vegetable guts and slightly red tinted water. Sans groaned, "Are you serious?"
"You bet I am, punk!" Undyne laughed at Sans's dismay, great big belly laughs that echoed off the walls and had a few of their coworkers peeking through the doorway.
Sans sighed and poked at the mess before him. "What? No meatballs?"
"Nah, Papyrus isn't ready to learn something as advanced as meatballs yet, these are just leftovers from our last lesson."
Sans immediately closed the box and switched back with Undyne. If she hadn't taught him how to cook meatballs yet then they were probably edible at the very least, certainly no worse than Sans's own attempts at them would be.
"I don't see what you're so fussy for anyway, it's all just mana once you eat it."
"Indigestion isn't fun."
"What? You get indigestion? Only babies and the wimpiest of weaklings get indigestion!" Undyne looked down at Sans, then burst into more laughter.
Sans grumbled as he found a spot to shove his lunch box, then stalked out the break room and into the locker room. He couldn't help the way the corners of his grin twitched, like he was trying to hide a genuine smile.
Once in the locker room he quickly opened his own locker and started putting on his gear. First the heavy duty, dark gray pants with reinforced patches over the knees, second a little cowl over his neck that hung down his front, next a heavy duty, faded blue overcoat with the hood left down for now, then the tan brown utility belt, and the off-white, knee length boots with his pants snuggly tucked into them. Lastly he grabbed the matching gloves and full face mask, attaching them to his belt. He dropped his slip-on shoes, wallet, and other personal affects into his locker before shutting it. That taken care of, Sans meandered over to the storage room. It was more like a warehouse, a large echoing room that used to be a hallway attached to many smaller rooms that had their walls removed to make this large space. Along the edge of the room were the remnants of those smaller rooms, partial walls left to partition off sections for different kinds of equipment to be stored.
Undyne was already barking orders from the middle of the room, their coworkers milling about listening and a few even already pulling out some of the equipment. Sans went to go hold a wall up, as one of the trainers he was going to be in the last group. The other designated trainers all leaned up against the wall near him, watching as the crowd around Undyne dwindled down to just the greenhorns.
"Last group!" Undyne hollered.
Sans and the others pushed off the wall and went to go cluster around her.
"Sans!"
"Yo," Sans replied with hand raised.
"You'll be training Blue here."
"Oh! That's me!" A bundle of eye searing cyan, shiny gold, and bright white bounced up to Sans. "Oh wow! Another skeleton, I didn't know there were any other skeletons working here."
"Neither did I," Sans said looking the other monster up and down. Not that he could tell the other even was a skeleton, they were already covered head to toe in protective gear. Most of the other newbies had at least learned not to put on the last layer of PPE until just before leaving, poor kid had probably spent the last half an hour with their face completely covered for no good reason. Sans also thought it was odd that instead of a hood their head was covered in what appeared to be a scarf wrapped around their mouth and head, tucked into their bleached white top, and held in place by the goggles strapped around their head. Through the goggles Sans could just make out a pair of brightly glowing, star shaped, cyan pips against a dark void. Huh, they really were a skeleton. Their gloves, belt, and boots were a matching shade of eye searing cyan as their scarf and eye pips. Even their pants had a tint of cyan to them. Geez, this kid was way too excited about their job if they infused that much matching magic into their clothes.
Sans was too himself to deal with that kind of energy.
"You know which sprayer to use," Undyne barked at them before moving onto the next name on her list.
Sans took Undyne's yell as the dismissal it was and motioned for Blue to follow him towards the line up of equipment. While they walked he slipped his mask on, tightened the straps, then pulled up his hood and pulled that tight as well, until not a millimeter of bone was showing (save for his hands).
"Wowee! I haven't seen anyone with a mask like that before, you even have the weird breathing things." Blue motioned to his own face, notably lacking in breathing apparatuses.
Sans activated the little gem on his belt buckle that would project his voice. It was a little weird to talk out of his crotch, but it was better than trying to yell through the mask. "Better safe than sorry. Anyway we gotta go pick up our sprayer and get to the transport or Undyne's gonna kick our sacra." Sans slipped his gloves on as he spoke, tucking his sleeves into them. "So this little beauty is the Soio 3 gal. back mounted pump action pressure sprayer. It's one of three and the smallest size they have, so it's great for little guys like us." Sans motioned to the bottom shelf of the little half room full of sprayers, the upper shelves used to store the larger ones modded to fit larger monsters.
"So should I put it on or?"
"For the first half of the shift I'll be wearing it and showing you how it works. But before that we gotta do a quick inspection, last thing anyone needs is herbicide dribbling all over them." Sans ran Blue over how to inspect the sprayer then strapped it on while Blue watched, the noise of the other trainers going over things with their own newbies a background buzz. Then the group filed out of the room, down the short hallway and out to where their transport was waiting for them. Like most of their work equipment it used to be human technology, something called a "tour bus" back when humans were still around. It'd since been stripped down, refurbished, and re-purposed with what was then the latest and greatest magitech available. It was still a pretty impressive piece of work, two and a half centuries of upkeep and upgrading will do that.
"Everybody on board!" Undyne hollered gleefully.
Sans clambered into the thing and moved as far back as he could, then sat facing sideways on the seat, his feat dangling in the widened aisle. Blue sat across from him, his own feet swinging while they waited for everyone else to get seated. Pretty soon the transport was full, the door closed, the engine started, and they lifted up into the air. Sans was glad he was facing away from his window, through the far windows he could only catch a few glimpses of the tree tops sinking below them and not watch as they left verdant greenery behind them and traveled out into the heart of a blasted, ruined, broken wasteland.
The transport touched down and everyone filed out, most thanking the driver as they got off. Everyone was quick to head out in different directions the moment their feet touched broken asphalt.
"Remember," Undyne yelled at their retreating backs, "stay in pairs! See you lot in four hours or you're going to miss lunch!"
Sans waved his hand to show he heard her, but didn't slow his pace as they wandered off into the decaying ruins of what was once a human city. They watched a rusty robot trundle up to them, pause, then eventually go around them. It squeaked and creaked up to some garbage laying around, piling rusty metal, broken plastic, crumbling rubber, and soggy paper into its empty body before wobbling unsteadily to the next pile of garbage.
"Ugh, haven't they ever heard of separating their garbage?" Blue asked indignantly.
"Yeah," Sans said with a sigh. "So kid-"
"I'm an adult," Blue shot back defensively.
"Uh… yeah? You gotta be to get hired for this job?" Though with an attitude like that Sans wasn't so sure.
"Yes! Right! Just so we're clear."
"Ok ki-… buddy, they go over what exactly we're doing?"
"It's our job to keep the humans from ever coming back!"
"Right, but I bet you knew that even before signing up for this gig."
Blue sighed and started reciting like he was reading from a school book, "Every five years a ship carrying scout robots returns to look for signs that Earth is recovering, it's our job to maintain The Scar as a 100 mi. sq. area of untouched desolation because for some reason it's the one and only place the humans send the scout bots to."
"Right, so if you see anything living that isn't one of our coworkers you let me know."
"Right!" Blue replied cheerfully, bouncing along besides Sans as they headed further into the ruins, ready to mess up some poor plant's day.
End notes: Stockings may not mean what you think they mean. Most people think of them as pantyhose: partially see through women's underclothing, but here stockings actually just means tall socks.
Okay, so I know this chapter was all just set up, but we get into the action next chapter I promise.
Also! Yes, this fic is heavily inspired by WALL-E, though since the characters from WALL-E will be played by Sir Not Appearing In This Fic as well as major differences in plot and setting I have decided not to mark this as a crossover.