Sans has a very particular routine that he follows (almost) every morning.
He wakes up pretty late in the morning, though he couldn't determine an exact time due to not having access to an alarm clock or a clock at all for that matter. Apparently, humans hadn't invented clocks yet, which was horribly inconvenient at times. Sans got used to it though.
He'd get up from bed, mark a day off of her calendar, and splash water from a wooden bucket onto his skull before preparing breakfast for him and Undyne. Undyne practically guffawed at the mention of the skeleton making breakfast, which made seeing the fish warrior's expression of surprise at his above sufficient cooking skills all the more satisfying. Breakfast wasn't at all what he and Undyne were used to, but it wasn't like the two of them had much of a choice. Humans didn't have things such as stoves or ovens and apparently, old-age marketplaces were finnicky things, so Sans didn't really have access to all the necessary ingredients for a proper breakfast that he would normally. Still, even Undyne admitted that his cooking was better than her own.
Then, the two of them would get started with their days.
Undyne would go to the backyard space behind the cottage she and Sans bought and were living in (but just because the G they had on them, apparently, was only enough to afford one house) and chop wood that would be used later for cooking and sometimes heating if the temperature dropped a bit too far for Undyne's liking at night (but not Sans, because he was a skeleton. He wasn't capable of feeling hot or cold.)
While she did that, Sans would laze around and be useless despite Undyne's attempts to get him to do something useful around the house.
After an hour or so, she would then follow him out of their house and down the path to the village where the two of them would do various jobs for the villagers in exchange for money.
On that day, Sans got up from bed and went straight to the calendar beside the doorway of his bedroom, making sure to swipe the quill and ink bottle on the bed table beside his bed. He noted that it was getting much easier for him to wake up now without having to be woken up now, which he thinks is a good thing. It was annoying to learn that he could no longer make himself sleep in.
Upon seeing that all the boxes on the calendar had been filled out, Sans takes the calendar off of the nail that it was hanging from and flips the fully-marked August page back to reveal a fully-unmarked September page.
It had been a month since Sans and Undyne appeared in the human village of Rulid.
Sans doesn't remember what place he had fixed in his mind when he teleported after the whole Asgore-breaking-the-barrier fiasco. All he knew was that he grabbed Undyne's arm and teleported somewhere before the Underground could collapse. When he next opened his eyes, he found himself staring directly at a large, glowing yellow orb in the sky which he later found out was the sun.
He didn't know why exactly, but he had somehow teleported Undyne and himself onto the Surface, somewhere beside a river. He was quick to wake up Undyne and the two of them just stared around at their surroundings in awe. Undyne was almost like a giddy child, questioning everything she saw and felt.
The two of them then decided to walk along the river and see where they'd end up. Their first encounter with humans ended up with them nearly walking up on a few human men with swords who were having a pretty spirited discussion of how many monsters they thought they could kill before . After listening on that particular discussion, Sans and Undyne decided that it was best to cover their faces whenever around humans.
Once the swordsmen leave, Sans and Undyne continue walking down the river which leads to a hill. At the top of the hill was the largest tree stump that both Sans and Undyne had ever seen in their lives. At first, they thought that large trees like these were the norm on the Surface, but there were no other trees like that one. At least none as far as the eye could see.
From the top of the hill, both Sans and Undyne spotted a village not too far away from the hill. After a short argument that involved some very heated whispering, they both decided to go down to the village to see if they could find a place to stay in the village.
The village practically screamed Medieval Ages. The clothing the villagers wore and all the buildings were all exact duplicates from kingdom dramas that Undyne and Alphys liked to watch. And so did the streets and the oil lamps hanging from wooden posts and...everything else. Right down to the single large church towering over all the other buildings.
When Sans and Undyne attempted to find lodging, they were met with a pretty sufficient amount of suspicion. Sans realized that his current clothing wasn't exactly something people wore during the Middle Ages, so he did attract quite a lot of attention. Undyne received even more attention than Sans did though, because according to a couple of the villagers, the Integrity Knights, a group of thirty-one humans sent down from the heavens to strike back against the forces of darkness (read:monsters), should've been the only existing knights in the Human Empire.
Nothing like two very shady individuals that kept their faces hidden all the time to cause village-wide suspicion.
However, the villagers learned to warm up a bit to the two. Sans's very social personality was something that the Rulid villagers had taken a liking to and he soon became an attraction as the village chatterbox. Whenever he'd drop by a bar, not fifteen minutes would pass before a group of the other villagers would gather around him to either chat up a tsunami or listen to his storytelling. The villagers seemed to like that he seemed to always have a story to tell.
Another thing that the villagers came to him for was advice.
The villagers soon learned that Sans wasn't just a mindless chatterbox, but also probably the wisest person in their village. No matter what the situation may be, he always seemed to have advice that would turn an otherwise terrible-sounding situation to the villagers' favor. Whenever a villager needed to know how to approach a certain situation, they would almost always go to Sans. This along with his seemingly flawless character judgement earned him the nickname "Judge."
Undyne, meanwhile, just stood silently behind or beside Sans wherever he went, dressed in full armor at all times.
The villagers didn't seem to know what to make of Undyne. She was definitely intimidating, seeming to always at least be a head taller than everyone she comes across. She was always completely silent despite the villagers' attempts to get her to say anything and she had a look that seemed to be able to pierce through one's soul. That along with the glowing, light blue spear that perpetually stayed in her right hand made her a positively terrifying figure. Everything the villagers knew about Undyne was from what Sans would say.
However, it was clear to them that she was just intimidating, not aggressive. She was a completely passive figure, seeming to be content with just following him around wherever he went. On one occasion, one of the villagers attempted to touch Undyne's spear. Although she caught him in the act of creeping up behind her, she didn't react angrily and instead, even offered her spear to the villager. The confused villager takes it in his hands, but soon drops it, yelping in pain. The glowing spear clatters to the ground, the cement under it steaming when it falls to the ground. When Undyne picks the spear off the ground, there was a spear-shaped char mark left on the road.
Soon, rumors about what their faces looked like seemed to circulate throughout the village. Some of the villagers suspected that Sans had a nasty wound on his face that he was embarrassed to show the world. Others suspected that he was some part of religious cult that hid their faces from their world as part of their religion. Despite Sans not being observed to show any signs of religious activity, that was a pretty popular idea amongst the villagers. None of them suspected him or Undyne being monsters, which was good.
The villagers seemed to all be completely normal people. However, what Sans found weird was that every single one of them, all the children, women, and men, even the guardsmen who defended the village's supply barns, all had no LOVE whatsoever. There had never been incidents of thievery, or murder, or any other form of crime in the village. It was as if all the villagers were sinless. And although this fact confused Sans for a bit, he didn't put too much thought into it.
As for them, the two monsters soon moved out of the inn room they had initially lived in and bought an abandoned cottage sitting on the top of a hill. They've called that place home ever since.
Adapting to the Medieval Ages-lifestyle was a bit of a struggle, but the two of them managed to learn to live without the conveniences of the life they had in the Underground.
Speaking of the Underground, the two of them didn't know what had happened to it after Asgore had broken the Barrier. However, both knew that all of their friends and family, along with the rest of the Underground, were most likely completely gone. The two of them grieved for their loved ones for a couple of days, but they refused to let the grief interfere with their brand new lives on the Surface.
Soon a problem arose for the two monsters: they needed to find jobs to make money so that they could buy necessities such as food. Fortunately for the two monsters though, that problem was soon solved.
One day, a man, a woman, and two young boys approached the monsters' cottage. When Sans offered them to come into his house for a cup of tea, the man and woman declined. Instead, they offered Sans and Undyne a business proposal.
Sans recognized the man and woman as two very busy merchants who ran several of the more popular stalls in Rulid village's central marketplace. Apparently, they were too busy running their stalls during the daytime to take care of their children, so they needed someone to oversee their children when they were out on their business. And they were willing to pay Sans and Undyne to do just that.
That's when the villagers learned of how good Sans was with children. Soon, Sans and Undyne would become Rulid Village's resident babysitters. The money that parents were willing to pay to have their children taken care of for them was more than enough to support their basically- primal lifestyle.
Sans never knew, until then, how exploitable laziness was. It wasn't like he was complaining though.
After marking off the first day of the new month, Sans walks into the kitchen to make a simple breakfast for Undyne and himself. Undyne was already in the backyard, already starting with her daily wood chopping.
Sans makes a simple breakfast of just a sandwich for both of them. A sandwich may seem like a pitifully small breakfast, but it was a sandwich of human food. Sans discovered that, to him and Undyne, human food was much more filling than monster food, since it was more physical than the chunks of food-shaped magic the monsters called their food. That made meal times much easier for the skeleton.
As he was eating his half of the sandwich, the loud clacking of an axe hitting wood stops. Undyne walks into the house, dressed in black blazer and simple jeans, before sitting at the table to feast on her half sandwich for breakfast. Being a much faster eater than Sans, Undyne finishes just as Sans was wrapping up with his own breakfast.
"So, what're we gonna do today?" Undyne asks, wiping her mouth with her arm.
"i think imma go down to the village for a bit," Sans says.
"Huh? What for?" Undyne asks. "We don't need to go shopping in a while."
"to declare that we're gonna be closing our childrens' nursery for today," Sans says.
"What? Why?"
"just yesterday, i found this beautiful field of flowers not too far from here," Sans says. "what i plan on doing is going out there, laying myself on that bed of flowers, and taking a looooong nap."
"Sans, beside taking care of children all day and chatting up the villagers, you don't do anything," Undyne says. "You're not exactly in need of a break."
"of course i'm in need of a break," Sans says. "taking care of children works me to the bone. it's harder than you think to keep those little monsters from wrecking the house. you wouldn't know anyway. you scare'em all away."
"That's not true!" Undyne exclaims. "Children love me."
"as we could obviously tell from the omelet incident that happened just yesterday."
"That was an accident!"
"first of all, you nearly burned down our house. not just that, at the end of the day, the children were literally running out of our house bawling their eyes out so their parents didn't even bother to pay us. and, arguably the worst of all, the omelet was...i don't even know how to describe that thing. one thing i knew for sure was that thing was not, by an definition, an omelet."
"Well…"
"yeah...no," Sans says, holding up his hands. "if ya don't wanna come sunbathe with me, that's fine. just don't do anything involving children while i'm gone."
"Fine."
"aight, let's get headin' down to town," Sans says.
Undyne was beside herself with loneliness as Sans left her at the village to go to his supposed flower patch.
He had just finished telling everyone that he was taking the day off, which was, frankly unsurprisingly, accepted easily among the villagers. After all, they were all model citizens and gratefulness was a pretty common trait amongst them.
However, she didn't really have anything to other than wander around rather aimlessly throughout the village. The villagers all waved and greeted her as they walked past. Undyne, in kind, didn't verbally respond but waved back at them.
Undyne chose never to speak not because she hated the villagers (quite the opposite actually, they were all very nice people), but because the complete silence thing was making her feel like an anime character. Plus, it made her appear more intimidating. Maybe that was a bit overkill considering that the full suit of dark grey armor, being-taller-than-everyone-else thing, and the spear-always-being-in-her-hand thing should've been more than enough, but she liked it, so she was going to keep on with it.
"Hey!" she hears a voice shout from behind her.
Undyne turns her head to see a medium-height, green-haired boy walking up to her from behind, a simple, iron sword slung across his back. At his sides were two other boys around his height and age.
Zink, the captain of Rulid Village's guardsmen.
Undyne didn't really like Zink. Zink was a petty, arrogant, envious of everything he didn't have, etc. Basically, he had all the qualities of a bratty rich kid. And although he and she never dueled, Undyne was confident that she was his superior in terms of combat.
"Whaddaya say about us having a little duel?" Zink asks. "Right here."
A crowd of villagers were starting to gather around the boy and Undyne. Amused, Undyne turns to him.
"Not with the spear though," Zink says, pointing to the glowing spear in Undyne's hand. "That wouldn't exactly be fair. We'll be dueling with real swords."
Undyne shrugs before opening her spear hand, making the spear disappear. One of Zink's friends tosses Undyne a scabbard with a sword in it before he and Zink's other friend back away into the gathering ring of spectators. The knight catches it with one hand and draws the sword from the scabbard, dropping the wooden scabbard beside her.
"Whoever lands the first strike wins!" Zink shouts, suddenly dashing at Undyne. "May the best swordsman win!"
Undyne's and Zink's swords clash, sending sparks flying.
It had been a pretty long while since Undyne had done any form of fighting, more than a month actually. It had been even longer since Undyne had laid hands on a sword. As expected, her swordsmanship was more than a bit rusty and as she fought the greenie, she was battling more off of reflexes and instincts than actual technique. All she had to work from was what Asgore taught her about sword fighting, but that proved to be more than enough.
As she had expected, she was his superior, even with a weapon she wasn't used to wielding. She was stronger, faster, and more experienced than Zink, who actually fought as if he had never gotten into a fight to the death before. Undyne knew that the boy was fighting solely off of the techniques he learned from his mentor, not actual combat experience.
Zink swings his sword in a sideways slash, but suddenly pulls his sword up to bring it in a downward slash instead. However, Undyne saw through the poorly-hidden feint and side steps the slash. As fast and smooth as a fish in water, Undyne swings her own sword widely from her side, stopping it right before the blade could touch the side of Zink's neck.
Cheers arose among the villagers as Undyne withdraws her blade from Zink's neck. Zink just shoots her an angry glare and huffs an angry "hmph!" before putting his sword back into his scabbard and pushing through the ring of civilians.
Geez, what a sore loser, she thinks to herself.
Soon, the civilians around disperse and get back to whatever they were doing before the duel. Undyne just sighs before tossing the sword and scabbard back at one of Zink's companions. She holds out her hand and a glowing, light blue spear appears in it.
"Hey, good job on that duel!" Gasupht Zuberg, Rulid Village's village chief, says as he approaches the knight. "Zink is always a real bastard all the time, so it's nice to finally see someone put him in his place."
Undyne just nods and shakes the village chief's outstretched hand.
Undyne really did like Gasupht Zuberg. He was a good man and a good chief.
Suddenly, she hears a loud whoosh sound from above her. She looks up to see a large, light blue dragon soaring in the air above Rulid.
"Oh, that's probably an Integrity Knight," chief Zuberg says, noting Undyne's curiosity despite her helmet hiding her face. "Only Integrity Knights are allowed to own dragons. I wonder what they're doing here, though."
Undyne looks to the direction where the dragon had flown off to. She didn't know why, but she felt that seeing the dragon held something significant involving her.
Then she remembered that that was in the direction of the flowerfield Sans had said he was sunbathing in.
"Hey, Undyne, you okay?" chief Zuberg asks, waving his hand in front of Undyne's helmet.
It might be nothing, but it couldn't hurt to check.
Undyne suddenly dashes right past the village chief and down the street, startling him. As he watches the knight dash down the street and take a right turn at a speed of a very, agile runner, he couldn't help but find himself in awe. How can someone in such heavy armor possibly run so fast? Chief Zuberg than shakes his head and makes his way towards the town hall, where Mr. Barbossa, Rulid Village's economist, had yet again, called for a meeting to probably complain more about the economic matters in the village.
"Why do I even keep him around anymore?" he mutters to himself.
Meanwhile, in the skies above the small village, two teenage individuals sit upon a large, light blue dragon.
At the reins was a girl with long, golden hair and sky blue eyes dressed in a full set of elegant, blue and golden-colored armor. At her waist was a golden scabbard with a golden sword inside of it. Sitting behind her was a boy with short, blonde hair and green eyes dressed in a full set of elegant, blue and silver-colored armor. At his waist was a light blue scabbard with a light blue, crystal sword inside of it.
"He shouldn't be in the village," the boy says, looking down at the cluster of cottages from his seat on the dragon.
"I'm aware," the girl says as the dragon flies past the village.
A few minutes later, a small field of yellow flowers comes into view, hidden by a couple of hills just past the village. In the middle of that flower field was a small tree, just barely coming out of its sapling phase of growth.
Lying underneath that tree was a figure in an unfamiliar-looking dark blue garment, almost like an ant from the height the two of them were at.
"That's him," the male rider says, pointing down at the figure.
The female figure just nods before steering her dragon downward and towards the flower patch.
A/N: Basically more canon divergence? idk. Anyways, fight scene coming up next chapter.