Cherry blossoms swirl through the air like flurries of bubblegum-pink snowflakes, obscuring a blue dome that doesn't look so much like the sky after standing under the real deal thirty seconds earlier. A Whimsun peeks out from behind a tree branch.
"the hell are you lookin' at?" says the guy in the black hoodie.
The Whimsun bursts into tears and flees deeper into the forest, shrieks, then reappears ten seconds later, wailing what sounds like the Japanese equivalent to oh shit what the fuck as it zooms past.
The guy ambles off toward the direction the Whimsun just fled from and finds a certain crackhead skeleton sitting under a tree with a plastic sack of sunflower seeds on his lap and a notched axe sitting beside him. The red light from his left eye socket glows so huge and bright that it shows through the gaping hole in his skull like a bare lightbulb through a broken lampshade, and he has a handful of sunflower seeds hovering halfway to his mouth, uneaten.
"sup, big dude," says the guy in the black hoodie.
The big dude in question considers his handful of sunflower seeds. "i didn't mean to... scare them."
shoulda wore your hood up, then, the guy in the black hoodie almost remarks. Instead, he shrugs and says: "meh, who gives a fuck. they're scared 'a everythin'."
Crackhead allows the seeds to sift between his fingers and back into the bag. He very much does give a fuck about the Whimsun, as a matter of fact.
It's funny. Crackhead used to be one of the more twitchy and fucked up people in the guy in the black hoodie's acquaintance, and although he's still plenty fucked up, he's actually a real nice fucking dude, almost toonice, except that his past behavior proves he's no softie. The guy in the black hoodie can count on one hand the number of people whose presence doesn't make him suicidal and/or homicidal after a few minutes, and if it wasn't so hard to look at Crackhead's cranial catastrophe without wanting to gag, he would've had a real shot at making the list.
Nice or not, however, Crackhead's given name is unusable and none of the other alternatives are as funny as Crackhead, so Crackhead he remains—albeit only in the mind of the guy in the black hoodie. There's no guessing whether the big dude would laugh at his nickname or decide to axe a question about it, and the guy in the black hoodie doesn't actually want to die. Not like that.
Crackhead scoops up more seeds and dumps them in his mouth. "you... came back quick," he says between bites. "didn't... find that guy you were... lookin' for?"
"nah."
"too bad. you, uh. hungry?" Crackhead rustles his bag of sunflower seeds.
"you already gave me some b'fore," says the guy in the black hoodie. That's the other weird thing about Crackhead, he's always snacking or talking about food or asking the guy in the black hoodie when he last ate, like an old lady fretting that her grandkids will starve if they've been left alone for five minutes. Crackhead is tall as fuck and the two of them both have red eye lights, so maybe he thinks the guy is a tiny malnourished baby version of himself. Or he just does shit for no reason whatsoever. The guy in the black hoodie has no idea what goes on in the three quarters of a skull Crackhead still possesses, and he has no interest in finding out.
The guy in the black hoodie flicks a stray flower petal off his shoulder. "where's everybody else?"
Crackhead points with a phalange as long as a pencil. "...that way."
The guy watches as Crackhead painstakingly rolls down the top of his sunflower seed bag and stuffs it in the pocket of his tattered blue hoodie. It forms a crinkly lump in addition to the existing lumps from all his other snacks, the candies and granola bars and colorful gummies shaped like cutesy-wootsy cartoon characters. No beef jerky, though. No meat products in general. "i was just askin' so i can find 'em. wasn't an invitation."
Crackhead nods. There are flower petals fluttering inside his skull. They tickle. "i know. it wasn't." He's survived worse things than a few unkind words, but he and this little guy have spent enough time in each other's presence that it seems like his friendly overtures should have borne fruit by now. Maybe he's just not capable of normal social interactions, no matter how much he feels like the same person he's always been on the inside. Maybe the little guy never learned how to recognize friendliness in the first place. Both possibilities are depressing to consider. "'m gonna go... um. uh. see how that... whimsun's doing."
"better not let 'em see the axe, then."
Crackhead grunts and shambles off like some kind of hideous cartoon lumberjack on his way to harass a talking woodland critter. If he actually finds that Whimsun, the little sucker is gonna have a heart attack and keel over for sure.
The guy in the black hoodie snickers at the thought.
In the midst of the cherry blossom forest is a clearing where the ground curves up and down, its gentle slopes softened by the long grass swaying in the breeze, and at its center is a pond with placid waters dotted by floating petals. In front of the pond, a guy in a pink hoodie poses stiffly while a tiny skeleton paints his portrait, a smudgily impressionistic dreamscape of blue sky and water, pink flowers and fabric, creamy-white bone, and tree trunks and leaves in tastefully understated hues of green and brown. The painter's scarf waves lazily in the wind as he leans here and there to keep his body between the drifting petals and the wet canvas—covered in normal paint, not the magic stuff.
The guy in the black hoodie sidles close enough to enter the painter's field of peripheral vision. He's the smallest adult skeleton monster the guy has ever seen, not much more than three feet tall and dressed in clothes that must have been made for a doll, with bare feet like little chicken claws, but he has the guy in the black hoodie trained, you could say; he hates being interrupted unless the two of you are buddies, and since friendship is for babybones and Saturday morning cartoons as far as the guy is concerned, waiting is the only safe option.
Speaking of buddies, a guy in a blue and yellow hoodie with pompoms on the strings leaning against the trunk of a particularly big tree, somewhere between snoozing and spaced out, while a stubby skeleton with a blue bandana happily taps away at a cell phone game. Judging by the sound of snoring and the glossy black wings dangling from a lower branch, it seems like somebody's roosting up there. (crow bro, that's what i should call 'em, the guy in the black hoodie thinks.) Closer by, a doughy human with white hair sprawls near the pond with an arm flung across his eyes to shade them from the pseudo-sunlight. He's snoring too.
The guy in the pink hoodie's eye lights dart from the guy in the black hoodie to the human to the painter. He says something in Japanese and gestures, then flinches as if expecting a slap to the face when the painter squawks: "Hey! Why do you keep moving? You're ruining the—oh HEY!"
The painter's scarf flutters as he dives into the guy in the black hoodie's personal space to grab his hands like they're schoolgirls playing ring around the goddamn rosie. "You're back!" he squeals, swinging the guy's hands back and forth.
The guy grits his teeth. "No fuckin' shit, sherlock."
"Where's uhhhh? Fresh? Didja find him?"
The guy in the black hoodie pulls free. "yeah, i found 'em and shoved 'em in my pocket for safekeeping." Just as he feared, there are pink stains all over his hands. Scraping all those little cracks and crevasses between the metacarpals clean is going to be absolute hell. He growls and swipes at the sides of his shorts. "'course i didn't fuckin' find 'em."
One of the painter's eye lights turns into a swirling squiggle, the other into a blue teardrop shape. He frowns, closed-mouth and anatomically unlikely. "But that doesn't make sense! He was in that timeline for sure... did you LOOK or just laze around? Be honest."
"i looked. i even found the host, but—"
"You what?"
"wouldja lemme finish one goddamn sentence?" snarls the guy in the black hoodie. "as i was sayin', i found the host on his own. alive an' all. only he didn't know jack fuckin' shit—"
"HEY, WHO ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?"
The stubby skeleton, phone still in hand, bounces up at the guy's elbow like an overly friendly puppy. The guy shoves him away. "nobody, don't fuckin' touch me."
"AWWW, DON'T BE A JERK!" the stubby skeleton whines.
The lights in the eye sockets of the painter turn, briefly, into plain pinpoints. "Keep talking."
"i'm trying! sheesh! anyways, i asked 'em questions and he bitched at me. totally useless. almost wondered if he mighta did fresh in—" the guy stops and glares at the stubby skeleton's needlessly dramatic gasp of shock. "—'cause he was real pissy. real real pissy. but he didn't have any exp."
The stubby skeleton puts a hand to his face, his eye sockets wide with distress. "WOWZERS! WHOEVER YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT SOUNDS LIKE A JERK! WHY WOULDN'T HE BE NICE AND HELP YOU FIND YOUR FRIEND FRESH?"
"fresh has never been and will never be my friend. i don't have friends. fuckin' scram."
The stubby skeleton turns beseechingly to the painter, but the painter isn't paying attention, so he patters back over to sit with his friend. The crow bro is still snoozing and so is the albino, though the guy in the pink hoodie guy has either camouflaged himself against some flowers or jumped in the pond and drowned like that painting of the redheaded human chick, he's nowhere in sight. The painter folds his arms and unknowingly smudges paint across a shirt that, if ancient legends from eons before recorded history are to be believed, might have actually been plain white at some point.
"Fresh's death would be... unfortunate," says the painter, striding back to his unfinished canvas on those little baby legs. "The loss of such an interesting creation. Did you ask how they were separated? You did, right?"
Ah, fuck. "yeah," says the guy in the black hoodie. It only might be a lie, he's forgotten half the conversation already. "he didn't know shit 'bout that, either. musta been someone else who did it."
"Someone else," the painter murmurs.
The guy in the black hoodie feels a trickle of sweat run down his vertebrae, suddenly way too warm in his bulky jacket and the thick turtleneck sweater underneath. "you, uh... think glitch bitch coulda finally got 'em?"
"I don't think he would have bothered to spare the host. A Classic in the wrong timeline? No, I doubt that. Are you SURE the host didn't say about what happened to Fresh?"
"go ask 'em yourself, see if yer luck is any better than mine. all's he did was bitch at me. said shit that made no sense. i dunno what his problem was."
"Hmmmm."
The painter dabs at the canvas, not at all deterred by the escape of his portrait's main subject. A smudgy branch sprouts new leaves.
"you want me to try again or what?"
"Huh?"
"askin' the host 'bout fresh, i mean. findin' where he went. lookin' around, i guess."
With an ebullient giggle, the painter drops his brush and leaps backwards, executing some weird flippy gymnastic move that would have landed him right on top of the guy in the black hoodie had it not been sidestepped. Undeterred, he bounces up and flings his arms around the guy's neck, clinging like a lemur. "Awwww," he croons. "The cool, tough loner is worried about Fresh! You must have a heart after all, waaaaay deep down, you're just way too tsundere to admit it!"
The guy in the black hoodie clenches his teeth until his jaw hurts. "you're the one who said to find him, jackass."
"Ehehehe! Too late, I already know your secret! You're a real softie, so soooofffffft!" The painter clambers around to smush his face against the front of the guy's black hoodie, which wrecks his balance and sends him stumbling to his hands and knees. After they hit the ground, the painter's hand flies up to the glass vials on the bandolier over his shoulder; finding them unharmed, he bursts into fresh peals of laughter as the guy in the black hoodie scrambles backward.
Before the guy in the black hoodie can escape very far, the painter bounces over and plops down on his lap. Suddenly the guy is grateful to be wearing an extra layer, even if he's going to have to do some laundry if he wants his hoodie to remain perfectly black.
"get off."
"Whaaaat?"
"i fuckin' hate you."
"Aww, no you don't." The painter inflicts another hug on the guy, craning his neck at what must be a painful angle and pressing his his into the guy's sternum to maintain eye contact. Now the lights in his sockets are shaped like cartoony human hearts. "What's the magic woooord~?"
"here, i'll give ya two: fuck. off."
A tiny fingerbone needles between the guy's ribs until he squirms. "Why are you being so mean to me? If Fresh is really... well who KNOWS what could happen? And consider how this alters the balance of power throughout the multiverse... what should we do if we can't find him?"
As if the painter gives a flying fuck. The balance of power? What absolute fucking horseshit.
The guy in the black hoodie briefly fantasizes about snapping off that bony little finger and snorting the dust. "if you're so torn up 'bout fresh, go back to that timeline and find the host."
"Who?"
"the sans he was, yannow. occupying."
"Oh!" The painter blinks owlishly. "Does he know anything?"
Between Crackhead and this rabid little chucklefuck, it's a wonder that the guy in the black hoodie hasn't acquired some kind of amnesia through osmosis. "i already told you he didn't, but he's like fiddy percent 'a tha guy ya want." And arguably the more important half, though the guy in the black hoodie isn't sure whether the painter has any actual preferences in that department.
The painter sighs one of those long, long sighs, the kind that comes from the very depths of a person and takes the space of a whole spoken paragraph, as if to convey without words a lifetime of wisdom and heartache. "Of course you don't understand. There's more to a person than their physical body. What matters is their inner uniqueness, their soul."
The guy in the black hoodie barks out a laugh. "since fuckin' when does that freak have a soul? he doesn't even have the fake shit like you do."
Like a switch on a thermostat being slowly, slowly pressed down, the painter's stare turns steadily colder, and the guy in the black hoodie knows he fucked up.
"I've been so patient with you, I'm being nice, but I don't have to keep doing that if you're mean to me," the painter says, leaning in close enough for a smooch. His voice has gone very soft. "I'm pretty tired of putting up with it, actually."
Over the painter's head, the guy in the black hoodie can see the stubby skeleton and the space cadet watching something on a shared phone screen. Crow bro is probably pretending to still be asleep. The albino human by the water has himself propped up on one elbow, looking back at the guy in the black hoodie with those weirdly colorless eyes and a smarmy look on his face.
A rule of life that the guy in the black hoodie learned before he was old enough to talk: except to the extent that a badass reputation might deter other monsters from messing with you, dignity isn't worth shit.
"sorry," he mumbles. "m'sorry. i shouldn't've said that. ya know i'm a dumbass, i don't even mean any of the shit i say. sorry."
The painter takes an eternity to judge this apology, then reaches up to pat the cheekbone of the guy in the black hoodie. "Awwww," he says, his eye lights changing into bright squiggles. "Of course I forgive you, hee~!"
Across the clearing drifts the sound of snickering, a squeaky MWEHEHE! from the stubby skeleton while tinny music emanates from his phone. His laughter sounds nothing like that of the guy in the black hoodie, not even like the laughter of his younger self. It brings to mind a completely different skeleton monster.
Suddenly the guy in the black hoodie can't stand this place, he can't stand these people, the sight of them all makes him sick. He wishes he had the balls to really let loose, to flip his shit and scream at them all, scream at the painter, to tell him he's glad Fresh is gone and hopes he's dead, good fucking riddance, he hopes the painter and glitch bitch are next, or else he'd like to shove the painter away and summon some blasters and go the fuck to town, but you don't do that shit in front of the protector of the multiverse. Not if you're the guy in the black hoodie. Not without strong backup. And he doesn't have any friends.
"thanks," he forces himself to say, slithering out from under the painter. "welp, anybody needs me, i'm takin' a smoke."
As the guy in the black hoodie slouches away, the painter hollers dire warnings about lung disease and bad smells and the chemical damage of nicotine on good paint while the stubby skeleton chimes in with a vague agreement. The space cadet hums, the crow bro shuffles his wings. The albino guy stretches luxuriantly and goes back to sleep, feeling quite glad to not be a skeleton monster.
The guy in the black hoodie plops his bony ass down on the first rock he finds, which thankfully isn't the talking kind that bitches at you if you fail to ask first. He cradles his skull between his hands, thumbs pressing into his temples. Days like these are almost enough to make him homesick.
Out from his pocket emerges a crushed carton of cigarettes plus a lighter he snagged from some human a while back. Nicotine doesn't actually do anything for skeletons, at least he doesn't think so, but smoking provides an excuse to keep his hands busy and it looks cooler than sitting around chugging mustard. Or booze. Anyway, it's less bad for his health than the potential consequences of pushing his luck with the wrong people.
Just as he takes a first drag, he spots the guy in the pink hoodie lurking in the shade of one of the zillion trees composing this endless forest, staring at him. Of fucking course.
"i didn't follow you," says the guy in the black hoodie. Hot smoke tickles inside his ribs and streams out between his teeth with each word.
On further inspection, the lights in the pink guy's eye sockets aren't just dots. Tiny stars maybe? No, they're flowers. Like the ones on the trees. Real fucking cute. This pansy-ass timeline is such a fucking joke, it's a wonder nobody's wrecked it already.
The guy in the black hoodie digs through his memory for Japanese vocabulary he might have picked up that isn't just, like, the name of a food. He once asked his Alphys to teach him some swear words, but she said the language doesn't work like that and laughed at him for being a filthy baka, then refused to explain what that even meant. He's got nuthin'. "bet your alphys is in heaven here. or does she obsess over somethin' else instead? tea n' crumpets? kangaroos?"
The guy in the pink hoodie perks up for a fraction of an instant at the sound of a familiar name, then goes straight back to poorly-hidden anxiety (by skeletal standards of emoting, anyway). He points toward the direction of the clearing where he and the other guy came from and practically whispers something, as if he expects the painter and his little entourage to come storming through the trees at any moment. They found this pink guy in a snowy area that must represent this world's version of Snowdin and they've kept him around since then—"they" strictly being the painter et al., since the guy in the black hoodie doesn't give a shit and has no interest in playing petting-zoo with some random nobody from a random nobody timeline—so he's probably sore about not seeing his brother or neighbors for a few days. Boo fucking hoo. He'll be left behind as soon as the painter gets bored of this place and the guy in the black hoodie hasn't seen anyone kicking him around or whatever, so he has no excuse for acting like such a pathetic little victim. At least that bitchy guy from earlier showed some aggression, kinda.
"i don't speak your language, dipshit," says guy in the black hoodie. He doesn't know if flipping people off is a universally recognizable gesture, so he goes ahead and tests the hypothesis.
The guy in the pink hoodie says something, which is a functionally identical response to not saying anything.
"fucking leave me alone. you're not so dumb that you're not getting the message. fuck off." The guy in the black hoodie snarls.
The other guy says something back and shrugs, his grin curling up into the shaky beginnings of a nauseatingly familiar smirk. Whatever the Japanese equivalent to if you're gonna keep talking to somebody who you know can't understand you, then hey, why can't i? may be, he definitely just said it. As if they're buddies, co-conspirators, something like that. Equals. Or maybe he thinks the guy in the black hoodie is so pathetic compared to everyone else that he must be the one most likely to offer help, the least likely to pose a threat.
Slouched on the rock, with the last bit of his cigarette loosely resting between his fingers, the guy in the black hoodie snaps his fingers and summons a pair of blasters, plus a dozen bone attacks hovering between them like a splintered halo. The red light in his eye socket flares red, a furious burning red, even as every other aspect of his posture remains slumped and nonchalant. "still think i'm gonna be your friend, you dumb little fuck?" he asks, grinning wide, enjoying the way that shit-eating smirk vanishes and the guy in the pink hoodie retreats, hands up and mumbling something vaguely appeasing before realizes that he's just making it worse and quits. Fucking pansy.
The guy in the black hoodie flicks aside the cigarette butt, grinds it under the heel of his sneaker, and goes for a new one, leaving behind a singed spot on the grass. When he looks up again, the other guy is gone. Ran back home for crying for his mommy, or at least for Toriel or Undyne or somebody. Maybe they'll all freak out once they hear the pink guy's story and send their royal guard to try and avenge his honor by taking down the oh-so-evil intruders. That would be hilarious to witness, though the painter is one of the main good guys within his tier and probably wouldn't wipe out all the monsters in this world as retaliation.
Flower petals drift past. It seems like the trees should start to run out of them at some point, but they never do. The guy in the black hoodie dispels his magic, allowing the bones and blasters to fade as if they had never been there at all.
He exhales another stream of gray smoke and squints up through the tree branches, through the eternally swirling petals. It looks like this whole forest is underneath a big bowl, really so much emptier than open air would have been. There aren't any clouds, there aren't ant birds, it's just solid blue.
"doesn't look a goddamn thing like th' real one, that sky," the guy in the black hoodie mutters to himself. "not a goddamn thing."