Canon Status: lmao
The day has arrived: every single cool and important character from every AU has gathered in this mysterious place of untold power, where time and space blend together and the fabric of reality is stretched to its limit—this may appear to be an ordinary yard behind a small house in Ebott, but here is the keystone, the fountainhead, the heart of existence. The final battle determining the fate of the multiverse has begun.
They all face each other, poised and ready.
"TACOS!" says Underswap Sans.
"ugh," says Underfell Sans, and wisely skedaddles from this plane of reality.
"wait, i'm canon, what am i doing here?" says Sans Deltarune, before also vanishing.
"yarrr?" says Pirate Sans.
"fml," says Negatale Sans.
"Wait, the author saw somebody rp as me once, I think!" says Blueberror. "should I make some dial-up noises..?"
"i have a fun design, leave me alone," says Outertale Sans, and then returns to his home planet.
"zzz," snores Underdream Sans.
Swapfell Sans points at a cowering Fellswap Sans. "hey, he's the one who was invented for the purpose of fontcest because my au's creator hadn't gotten around to making my design, right? isn't he?!"
Aftertale Sans, Beforetale Sans, and Error Sans all say something very cool and badass, probably.
"sweet, i'm the tallest person here!" says Gaster Sans, and then does a sexy Fortnite dance.
"AUs, timelines, anomalies, et cetera," said Error Sans, then remembers that he's already been mentioned and explodes.
Reapertale Sans, sharpening his scythe, doesn't say anything.
Ink Sans also doesn't say anything because he's too busy fingerpainting.
"uhhhhh in my au i'm the royal scientist, right?" says Altertale Sans, probably incorrectly.
uhhhhhhhhhhhhh in my au i'm the royal scientist except edgy, right?" says Alterfell Sans, slightly less incorrectly, probably.
"kingdom hearts is fun," says Heartless!Sans.
Swapfell!Dustbelief Sans cackles.
"oh fuck what?" says Alterswapfell Sans.
Littlefell Sans and Littletale Sans are playing pattycake. A tiny bird swoops down, grabs one of them in each of its tiny bird talons, and flies off toward greener pastures. They are naught but children, and have done no wrong.
Aviantale Sans also flies away. Birdtale Sans tries to follow, but gets eaten by a hawk instead.
Pokémon Trainer! Fell Sans and Pokémon Trainer! Swap Sans are having a Pokémon battle.
Dancetale Sans dances.
Dancefell Sans dances edgily and then falls over. (Get it?)
Danceswap Sans does a kawaii dance.
Danceswapfell Sans does a kawaii edgy dance.
Dancefellswap Sans does an edgy kawaii dance.
"why was i created?" asks ecto-mermaid-Sans. "fish monsters are already a thing, isn't this super redundant?"
Undynetale Sans, who is actually just Undyne, vanishes in a puff of smoke, reducing the number of fish on the scene to zero.
X-Dust Sans sneezes uncontrollably.
"isn't there somebody selling stickers of us on Depop? they didn't just make us all up, we're a real thing? " said Lamia! Fell Sans, Lamia! Swap Sans, Lamia! Swapfell Sans, Lamia Fellswap Sans, Lamia! Error Sans, and Lamia! Ink Sans, shocked.
Dusttale Sans is using an imaginary lint roller to clean his clothes.
Cross Sans attempts to Naruto-run away, but he trips over Ink Sans and gets ink splattered all over his very cool and badass white outfit, which sends him spiraling into despair. Ink pulls out a permanent marker and draws Dickbutt on his skull.
"yikes, spooky asylum settings are kinda offensive, and some of the other au names listed right after mine are even worse... let's skip past those ones," says Asylum! Sans, gazing through the fourth wall at a certain list lazily copied from a wiki article.
"you're all just jealous that i have a bangin' design," says UnderKeep Sans, then bows with a flourish and leaves.
"wow, i sure hope nothing bad happens to me just because the author is a petty bitch who first heard of my existence from somebody who turned out to be a shitty human being so now she holds that against me even though i have nothing to do with it!" says Paper Crane!Sans, before he spontaneously combusts and his ghost gets sent to the Shadow Realm. Then his ghost also spontaneously combusts, and the charred remains are eaten by a ghost-hawk.
MSTtale3k Sans, granted Cassandra-like insight into exactly what's going on here, laughs hysterically.
"wait, am i different from nightmare sans? dream sans is a different thing, right? won't somebody explain this to me?!" Nightmaretale Sans beseeches the cruel and unfeeling heavens.
Sandra might or might not have been added to the list by a troll.
"actually it's weird that i'm, like, the one variation of this character that you never see, right?" says female Sans. "it seems like the archetypal au 'thing' to draw a male character as a girl. at least it used to be. i dunno man. literally just vibing here." Then she ceases to exist. Again.
"i'm totally plausible," says Whovian!Sans. "at least if by 'whovian' they mean 'is a fan of doctor who' rather than 'is a legit time lord'. not that that would be totally off-base. jelly baby, anyone?"
"you're tellin' me!" said Casino!Sans.
Mobtale Sans and Mobfell Sans, hearing police sirens in the distance, are hiding behind a tree. (K-I-S-S-I-N-G!)
Color!Sans screams incoherently as Horror Sans chews on his shin bone.
"ok now people are just making these up," says Undervoid Sans.
"isn't that true of literally every fictional character ever?" asks Reset!Sans. "like, by definition?"
HandPlates Sans, having suffered enough already, ascends to the Puppies And Ice Cream Dimension.
"fuckin why" says Fresh Ink.
"wow, this joke sure has been driven straight into the ground!" says Dreamtale Sans.
"ok according to google i'm not even a real thing," says Detroit: Become Human (Android! Sans). Cybertale Sans points and laughs.
"i'm, like, x-tale sans but different, right?" says Epictale Sans. "that one black and white and green comic with the kinda neat aesthetic, that's where i'm from, right..?"
Storyshift Sans grins smugly, secure in the knowledge that the author, for all her pretentious tendencies, legitimately enjoyed his AU back in 2017. Then a hawk attacks him and he runs away screaming.
Storyspin Sans, overcome by motion sickness, is barfing into a paper bag.
"wait so who's that other chucklefuck with my name?!" demands Nightmare Sans, wiggling his tentacles.
Empireverse! Anti-Error Sans, EmpireVerse! Sans, EmpireVerse! Fell Sans, EmpireVerse! Swap Sans, EmpireVerse! Ink Sans, EmpireVerse! Error Sans, EmpireVerse! Cross Sans, EmpireVerse! Nightmare Sans, EmpireVerse! Dream Sans, EmpireVerse! Killer Sans, EmpireVerse! Dust Sans, EmpireVerse! Horror Sans, Underfell PaperJam, Underfell! Ink, Underfell! Error, Underfell! Geno, Underfell! Reaper, UnderFell! Cross, Human!Sans, Human!Anti-Error, Human!Dream, Human!Fell, Human!Swap, Human!Ink, Human!Cross, Human!Dream, Human!Nightmare, Human!Horror, Human!Reaper, Human!Paper Jam, Human!Geno, Human!Killer, and Human!Dust look up toward the sky and scream in unison.
A shadow passss across the rooftops, then the yard; from everywhere and nowhere comes an unearthly whirring sound. Before anyone can react, a UFO descends from the sky, and with an almighty
CRRRRRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNCH!
it lands directly on top of the gathered crowd, crushing them all in an instant.
The hatch opens. A pale, skinny human with bad posture, an anime tee shirt, and a deeply unfortunate complexion which is somehow reptile-dry but also oily enough to nourish a bumper crop of cystic acne emerges, coughing at the plumes of dust kicked up by Her landing.
"Sheesh, that was rough," the human complains. "Hope I didn't break anything." She brushes Herself off and shambles toward the house. The hair on the crown of Her head sticks up awkwardly, like it's trying to be a cowlick but too weighed down by its own length. She tugs at the lock of hair as She reaches the front step.
Before She gets a chance to knock, Sans opens the door. "what the hell was..." His gaze slides from the UFO to the human, then to the UFO and back. "...'sup?"
From behind him, the other Sans quietly asks, "who's this?"
The human waves as the Sans who'd answered the door makes room for the second Sans to stand at his side. "Hi! I'm God."
The twins exchange a look.
"huh," says Sans. "god's a human?"
The other Sans shrugs. "yeah, that tracks."
Hearing them speak, Papyrus also comes over to investigate. "SANS(ES)! WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO?"
"god, allegedly."
God bounces from foot to foot and waves furiously. "Hi Papyrus!"
Papyrus waves back. "WOWIE, THIS IS REALLY THEOLOGICALLY QUESTIONABLE! HI, GOD! WHILE YOU'RE VISITING, PLEASE TELL MY BROTHER(S) TO PICK UP THEIR SOCKS."
"Guys, pick up your socks."
"nope."
"nah."
"Well fuck me I guess," says God. "Uhhhh so by the way I love you. Also I—"
Papyrus clips through Sans, Sans, and God, and sprints away.
"Wait, where are you going?!" She hollers after him.
"I NEED TO TELL UNDYNE ABOUT THIS MOMENTOUS OCCASION!"
"Awww, I wanted to talk to him some more." God twists Her hair around Her finger. "Welp, rest in pieces."
"wait," says one Sans. "if you're literally god, then... you're all-powerful, all-knowing? totally in control of everything?"
God shrugs. "Yeah pretty much? I mean it's kinda more complicated than that but basically yes."
"how's my brother?" Sans shoots a guilty glance toward the monster he's come to more or less accept as his twin. "the original one. and everyone else back home."
"Oh yeah they're fine, I think."
"you think?"
"Look I did say basically yes. The only canon-ish info I've ever found about you before you got meatpuppeted was that you had eyebrows and were 'rather strange', and I didn't like the eyebrows thing so you don't have those. This isn't a visual medium but for the record you do NOT have eyebrows."
That answer raises so many follow-up questions, but asking them wouldn't lead Sans anywhere he wants to be. "but you still were... in control? when everything happened? you made it happen? allowed it to happen?"
"Nyyyeeeekinda yes and no, not in the way you're thinking about it? The whole point of this enterprise was that your situation was freaky and not handled in a way I liked so I wanted to give you a better fate and stuff, but that necessitates using your existing status quo as my starting point or it wouldn't make sense, if your situation wasn't an acknowledged thing that happened then this would be a story about something and somebody else. I left things kinda broad and open-ended on purpose, so that readers can assume that anything Fresh can or did do in any other story or canon did happen, but I also threw in various references to specific things I've seen or read which stuck with me. So I guess by incorporating them into this story, I also went out of my way to make them a Thing from your perspective? But I don't know if you can say I made them happen or not? That's super abstract?"
"you could've made me not suffer... but instead, you just allowed my life to be ruined in a way you considered narratively satisfying."
"I mean I guess it sounds real shitty when you phrase it like that..."
"ok sweet, bye," Sans says, walking back into the house.
"WAIT NO COME BACK I LOVE YOU!" God shrieks, but the only answer is the sound of a door slamming and a lock clicking. "No really, I do," She adds quietly, mostly to Herself. "Even before I had any plans of writing a story, the idea of you existed. You have a birthday. Did you know? It's December 9th."
God and the remaining Sans stare awkwardly at each other. The other Sans doesn't return.
"I guess that's fair," God sighs. "Can I come in?"
Sans glances over his shoulder. Behind the locked bedroom door across the house, he can hear a window scraping open.
"sure..?"
God helps Herself to a soda from the fridge and plops down in the nearest seat at the kitchen table, pushing against its edge to balance on the back two legs of the chair. Sans sits across from Her. The other Sans, meanwhile, jumps/falls out of his bedroom window and circles back around the house, following the route Papyrus had taken. Off in the distance, one can still faintly hear an excited NYEH HEH HEH!
"so. any reason for the visit? do you have some divine wisdom to impart?"
"Nope!" God takes Her knee off the edge of the table, letting the front two legs of the chair thunk back down on the floor. She clasps Her hands under Her chin like a cartoon cherub. "I'm here to bitch about Fresh Sans!"
With no further preamble and even less encouragement from poor Sans, God begins:
"I almost subtitled this story 'The Canon Purist's Lament' just to be funny, because I already knew or rather I thought I knew that people would either ignore or hate my story as soon as they saw that I had an axe to grind, and I low-key wanted to piss them off. I... wasn't in the best headspace last spring. But I'm physically incapable of not making a sincere effort in my writing so I guess this isn't much of a troll fic, and at least some readers are legit fans of AU content and Fresh Sans in particular? Which feels weird? I don't wanna be shitty to people who have been so nice just because they happen to enjoy a type of content that I don't, but I also can't lie about why I wrote the story: I hate this character. HATE. Writing has been super cathartic in many aspects but Fresh Sans still triggers a weirdly intense Pavlovian rage response in my internet-addled brain. Well, my feelings were always clear, the parasite dies horribly and its body gets thrown off a cliff in the first chapter. I've never personally enjoyed AU content in the first place so I was unlikely to ever love this character, and I have my own particular hang-ups and I guess I mentally associate him with things and events which other people won't, so on that level I'm also unfairly biased. And I don't want to badmouth the person who created Fresh, I don't think she even did much with the concept before moving on to other projects and then he mutated into a general purpose character within the fandom. But FUCK. The concept is so sadistic and I know he's categorized as one of the 'Bad Sanses' so it would be stupid as hell to be like OMG YOU GUYS HOW DARE YOU ENJOY CONFLICT IN FICTION AND BAD GUY CHARACTERS, I WILL LECTURE YOU ON THE INTERNET BECAUSE CLEARLY YOU DON'T KNOW THEY ARE BAD, but that's the thing! The execution of the concept never seems to acknowledge the particularly disturbing implications which always jumped out at me, and I'm not so egotistical as to think I could be the only one to notice something if it's truly obvious, so I could never tell if it's just an accepted aspect that goes unmentioned by fans because it's obvious, or if I'm a singular weirdo seeing shit that isn't there.
Especially with sexual or romantic content, shipping, whatever. The context is unrealistic, parasitic body-possession and so on, but physically forcing someone to have sex or at least get intimate in some way, not giving them a chance to say no—that's sexual assault. Cute pastel fanart of Fresh and some other character, like, making out or sucking each other's toes or whatever? Yeah that's a cute pastel depiction of assault. The Fresh parasite and its love interest are molesting somebody. Maybe the artist won't have intended that, but, well, therein lies the rub. How can it have been intentional? How can it have been unintentional? I once brought this topic up to a very sweet and lovely online friend who loves Fresh, and it had never even occurred to her, but a single data point doesn't tell me much.
Anyway, the specific trigger for me to start writing this story was this abhorrently disturbing ''''''cutesy'''''' self-insert smut art which was captioned like 'uwu my sinful pawasite boi' where Fresh Sans was lying on his back getting felt up by disembodied hands that represented the viewer, and his glasses were off so you could see the host's cracked soul and the tentacles coming out of his eye socket whilst he was squirming around doing a blushy flustered not-quite-ahegao face, and the person who'd reblogged it typically takes a very, like, 'moral' approach to this stuff, they'll block you if you ship siblings or child and adult characters or whatnot (and fair enough because ewwwww), but with THIS they just left an appreciative comment and no warning tags. The artist hadn't tagged it either. Which leads me to assume that neither of them saw anything potentially upsetting about this scenario where a guy who desperately needs help instead gets held down and groped to the point of physical arousal without any way to express consent or lack thereof? And the viewer is expected to get off on the idea of being the one doing this? It's not like the artist just didn't know about the character, they made damn sure you knew that the parasite was in there!"
God pauses to sip Her soda, giving Herself a chance to gather Her thoughts and also break up an obscenely huge wall of text.
"Like. Whatever. Drawings don't have feelings, people draw stuff and write stuff and roleplay in the bedroom all the time and it's not the same as hurting anyone in real life. I get that. Whatever. I'm not interested in trying to kinkshame random internet strangers, it's not a good use of my time given all the fucked up shit going on in the real world. Whatever. Whatever! But that picture fucking haunted me. Looking at it made me feel so sad and grossed out, I couldn't get it out of my head.
It's hard to properly articulate this, but honestly, I almost wish the general tone of this stuff was flat out like 'lol lol I have a rape fantasy centered on 2015 video game character sans undertale and I love seeing him get violated', it would still make me want to remove my eyeballs with an ice cream scooper but at least I wouldn't have to wonder anymore if I was reading too much into material that was basically innocent. Because it would clarify that the thing is fucked up and the person is knowingly depicting this fucked up thing and they intended for it to be that particular flavor and degree of fucked up? Like, ignore the goofy aesthetic and think about it: you get possessed and taken away from your home forever and you're in pain surrounded by clones of yourself who could help you but don't, and the parasite forces you to get freaky with at least some of them so all these you-clones are either ignoring your existence or ignoring your existence while molesting you. You-clones or random strangers, as the case may be. What the fuuuuuck. Or even if you view Fresh as aroace and uninterested in sexytimes so it's 'just' torture, or even just painless possession, he's still taking away someone's autonomy and every OP badass who could intervene but chooses not to is a complete monster (metaphorically). Is this intended? Are they somehow meant to be sympathetic characters despite being complicit? I'm not asking for an Aesop out of a children's cartoon, goodness knows I enjoy plenty of characters I wouldn't want to meet in real life and it's not for me to dictate the 'correct' way to partake in fiction, but when all I see of Fresh and these other guys is them having sitcom shenanigans or running around being cool edgy badasses or getting shipped with self-insert OCs and all this other fun self-indulgent fandom-y stuff and never doing or saying or thinking anything about the guy getting tortured in front of them, well, that gives a certain impression, doesn't it? Can you blame me for being confused? Fuck, don't get me started on the Fresh ship kids. Like, why. Just why.
If you have an artistic purpose in mind and all this stuff is thematically meaningful, then that's great, or if you're writing an edgy grimdark dealie where everyone's a dirtbag and everything is awful on purpose, then congrats you succeeded, or if you're using a disturbing setup to explore how a certain character might cope after a traumatic ordeal, then... well I guess that's what I've been doing, but to portray this series of events and never GO ANYWHERE with it and focus solely on the parasite as an uwu spoopy 90s Disaster Babey Boi while ignoring the guy he's wearing is just bizarre to me, I swear I'm not judging anyone on a personal level or saying my tastes are objectively better (I'm writing fanfic I have no illusions of literary superiority lol) but I can't understand how it's enjoyable to draw or write this stuff, it seems like the worst of both worlds. If you just want to ship some cute colorful dudes, why not excise the body possession and torture so you can enjoy your fluff without having to tie yourself into knots justifying how it technically isn't depicting sexual assault? (Actually from what I've seen of some fanart, it seems like some people have moved in this direction, so good for them I guess.) And if you're more plot-focused and aiming for morally gray creepy-cute dissonance, why would you leave the dark aspect so unexplored that it's basically just a freaky 'oh yeah by the way' background detail? It's like if the Pokémon franchise was exactly the same as normal except Pokéballs were carved from human baby skulls, and there was maybe one NPC per game who casually referenced this fact, but it was otherwise NEVER addressed and the game's primary themes continued to be about friendship and exploration and whatever. Am I missing something that other people see? Or have I somehow only encountered the weird Fresh Sans stuff and thereby developed the wrong impression?
After I posted chapter two, I looked through some other stories at random to see if I truly was missing something, and WOW it was not an enlightening experience. Some of it was just goofy lighthearted stuff where Fresh was part of an ensemble cast rather than the main focus, and those stories were fine as far as they go, not much to say. Then there was this one fic which was SFW and yet so bluntly exquisitely bleak on an unspoken level that I kind of loved the accidental morbid comedy, but the author was clearly a kid so it would be shitty to mock them. And there was a smut thing where Fresh rapes the self-insert character but it's not his fault because he didn't understand it was wrong. So that's, um. A lot to unpack.
Speaking of which, my understanding is that Fresh's 'canon' arc is/was/would have been about learning to feel emotions... how does that work when he's still possessing somebody? I mean if that's where it starts, sure. But then where are the stories where he gets a robot body, Mettaton-style, or has to learn how to live as just a starfish critter? If a redemption arc solely consists of learning to feel bad about the acts of torture that you've committed and will continue to commit for the foreseeable future, that's... not redemption. If you don't change your actions, who gives a fuck about how badly you feel? Plus you totally can be a good person without emotions! If anything, that's a way more compelling narrative—an instinctually amoral or evil character choosing to do what's right and atone for their past even though it makes life harder and goes against all their innate impulses, so they have to consciously work for the goodness and kindness that would come naturally to someone else... though that's kinda just the Floweypot scenario with extra steps. Like if you're writing Undertale fanfic and you want to do that type of storyline, there's no reason not to just write about Flowey... he's right there... in the game..."
God chugs some more of Her soda and sets the bottle down.
"I looked at a fan wiki article a while back. It had a note which wasn't there before, which basically said the host and parasite are working together on purpose and are both fine with the arrangement. I felt unsatisfied. I guess it's annoying to think that a story I've spent months lovingly writing might have been abruptly invalidated by a retcon, even if the retcon is an improvement by my own standards. And I guess it also feels like the final insult to the host guy in the original version—he's so irrelevant that he got completely erased and this whole topic was never ever ever discussed by anyone except me I guess. But I'm also just plain confused, because there are still people out there making content portraying the original version of Fresh in all its sadistic 'glory'. Maybe there's a distinction between the Undertale and Lucidia versions of Fresh? Or the note in the wiki article was just some random person's headcanon, since it looked like it was rather hastily inserted... ugh. I'll drive myself nuts trying to pin down any 'official' facts about this type of character. Anyway, I guess it doesn't matter how drastically he gets retconned, the version that I first encountered is the version in my head, and at this point I don't think there are any changes you could make which would lead me to find this character's existence tolerable, except for, well, the ones which lead to this story's scenario: the parasite dies and the bonedude finally gets a chance to recover and experience love and validation while he tries to emotionally process what the fuck happened to him.
...Jesus. Why am I like this.
Anyway! So yeah! I'm wildly overthinking all of this! At the end of the day this is a fictional video game AU character born from a joke, and we're well past the heyday of the Sans AU fandom and the Undertale fandom in general so maybe I'm wasting my time and destroying the goodwill of my readers. For the record, I touch grass every day. I pay bills. I'm not nearly as unhinged as I've made it seem. I super appreciate everyone who's read my story. But, I dunno. Fair's fair: other people have the right to create stuff I find personally upsetting and I have the right to sublimate my own weird feelings through my writing, even if the end result is sometimes weird or obnoxious. I wrote this for myself."
God giggles an awkward, fake-sounding laugh which is actually totally genuine: heeheehee!
"Yeaaaah that sounds all noble but I still posted the story online, so like let's be real, I'm no more immune to the siren song of comment-induced serotonin than any other tragically internet-brained weirdo. Sue me."
With Her rant having fizzled out, God's smile drops away and She compulsively twists Her hair around Her fingers, feeling terribly exposed. She suspects She might regret all this.
Sans glances up from his phone. "...did you seriously say 'ooh-woo' out loud?"
"Technically I wrote it. Anyway don't you think I'm right uwu?"
"uhhhhhh." Sans had realized that God wasn't really talking to him somewhere around the part about AU content, whatever that is, so he hadn't bothered to keep listening. "i gotta be honest with you, big g: still trying to cope with the fact that the universe was created by the human equivalent to alphys."
God picks at a scab on Her face. "Oh actually it wasn't! Well kinda yeah but not really, it's complicated. I'm running the show here but like from like a cosmology standpoint your world was created by a small white dog."
"yeah, i'd guessed as much."
"For the record I am entirely in favor of horny fanart provided I do not get untagged creepy stuff randomly thrown at me. Like, some good old fashion tid ole biggies? In and of themselves? Very blessed."
"congrats?"
"Hell, I don't even dislike body-possession as a plot device, you can do interesting things with it. Just... if you're gonna write a freaky torture-filled fever dream scenario, then fuckin commit. That's kind of what I was shooting for. Like 'okay let's take the exact series of events established in canon (such as it is) and certain fanworks, and explore in detail what it would actually look like if you change the perspective and nothing else.'"
Once again, She's lost him.
Wait, if the world was allegedly written into existence by this scabrous and weirdly pretentious self-proclaimed deity, does that mean She knows exactly what he's thinking at any given moment? if you can read/hear this then you just lost the game, Sans thinks.
"Fuck," whispers God.
"thanks for the offer, but i'll pass," said Sans.
God slaps the table to simulate a rimshot, then remembers that She's literally God and emits a perfect rimshot sound effect. Sans appreciates the gesture even if he's not thrilled about Her being in his house in the first place.
God wonders how much of this chapter's word count was taken up by Her fourth-wall-breaking wall of text and shudders in horror, but it's too late to undo it. Well, actually it would take five seconds to erase the rant, but She likes the sound of Her voice way too much to do that. Besides, the text wall might not look so bad in a web browser instead of her Notes app... ...no, it still looks pretty awful. She clears Her throat and tugs Her hair. "Ummm, this chapter is ending soon. In 680 more words, in fact. Got anything you want to ask me about? Or ask me for, I guess? Since I'm all-powerful and stuff."
"cool socks?"
God snaps Her fingers, and a pair of socks drops out of thin air onto Sans' lap. They're thick and soft, with squishy rubber grips on the soles and a dinosaur fossil-themed print. After a moment's consideration, an identical pair drops onto the table next to him. "For your freshly-dewormed self, whenever he shows back up," God explains. Then She thinks some more and claps Her hands. A book entitled SUPER Advanced Puzzle Design For Cool Geniuses manifests on the table beside the second pair of socks. "Also Papyrus!"
Sans examines the socks and whistles. "damn, guess you're the real deal after all. do these glow in the dark?"
"Sure, they do now! So, anything else? Any deep mysteries or philosophical imponderables you want me to answer? I'm probably never gonna pull a stupid stunt like this again in any of my future works, and now there are only 505 words left before the end. I'm saving New Guy's reunion with 'his' Papyrus and friends for an actual legit serious chapter, but if you want, I can bring back G—"
"NGGGGAAAAAAAAGGHHHHHHHHHH!"
Undyne smashes through the window and then through God's physical form, sending glass flying and Her holy head bouncing away like a beach ball before it poofs out of existence with the rest of Her body. Papyrus jumps through the destroyed window with the other Sans tucked under one arm. The other other Sans remains seated at the table. His new socks now have bits of drywall and blood on them.
"damn," Sans mumbles mournfully. "i might actually need to wash these."
"UNDYNE!" Papyrus scolds. "YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO MEET GOD, NOT KILL HER!"
"Yeah, she met someone, all right," Undyne answers, puffing from the effort of sprinting all the way to the skeleton brothers' house. "It was DEATH."
Papyrus sets Sans down on his feet. Undyne glances toward him and softens a little. Luckily for the state of her SOUL, removing God's direct manifestation from the story was such a good and necessary act that it didn't give her any EXP.
"That human was the one responsible for what happened to you, isn't that right?"
Sans nods. "indirectly."
"meh, to be fair—" the Sans at the kitchen table begins, but Papyrus talks over him.
"UNDYNE, THAT WAS EXTREMELY RUDE! AND METAPHYSICALLY PROBLEMATIC!"
"i'm sure god is fine. just, uh, no longer physically with us. which was already the status quo."
"SANS!"
"besides, our creator deity is allegedly that little white dog that hangs out under the sink. so we're good." Sans continues to drink his soda, pausing now and then to spit out the floating chips of drywall.
"SANS!"
Undyne's throat is parched after crossing half the city at a dead sprint, so she rolls her eye and goes to the sink for a glass of water, her boots crunching through the debris strewn across the floor. She looks out the non-destroyed window.
"Guys."
"what's with the socks?" Sans asks Sans, picking up the second pair and squishing them between his fingers. As a sock connoisseur, there's no way for him not to notice their exceptional quality.
"oh yeah, god gave us presents. that book is yours, papyrus," Sans says.
"Guys."
Papyrus picks up his gift and examines it, leafing through the pages. "IT SAYS ON THE COVER THAT IT'S FOR COOL GENIUSES... HOW PERFECT! FOR I MYSELF AM AN EXCEPTIONALLY COOL GENIUS!"
"GUYS!"
The three skeleton brothers turn to Undyne. She's gripping the edge of the sink so hard that the metal is beginning to bend. The Sans at the table drinks the last of his soda as he watches more of their kitchen getting wrecked, while the other Sans shrugs and reaches for the soda which God had left half-finished. Papyrus swats his hand away without even looking, muttering about germs.
"WHAT IS IT, UNDYNE?" asks Papyrus.
"WHY THE HELL IS THERE A FREAKIN UFO PARKED IN FRONT OF YOUR HOUSE?"