Chapter Two: Stress
Blueberry came to his senses again in due time. The first thing he felt was the cold sting of snow pressing against his back, soaking through his shirt and chilling his bones. He must have been unconscious for some time as the exposed bones of his arms were slightly numb. The little guy was grateful that his boots were sturdy enough so that the snow and chilly air did not soak through his socks and chill his feet, lest he'd probably be feeling worse than what he was. As he urged his body to sit itself up, he saw Ink's paintbrush still clutched tightly in his left hand, the other holding his brother's hoodie.
What had happened back there was not a dream. His brother really did die. Alphys, Undyne, Toriel - they really did die too. Ink really did save him from Error. And Ink really was in that other place, possibly dusted...
Blueberry shook his head quickly. He can't be thinking negative now! Ink said people here would help him! If he finds them quickly, he can help Ink fight Error!
"Knock knock!" a voice was heard as the child heard someone knock on a distant door. He turned towards the wooded area behind him, curious.
"Who's there?" came the female's reply.
Sounded like she was speaking through a door. Why couldn't she open the door for her friend? It was cold out here! Surely they must be cold as well! And was it him or did that female kind of sound like the queen of his world? An older, friendly voice, just like the queen's. And the male...his voice oddly reminded Blueberry of his own. Perhaps a few years older though.
"Old lady."
"Old lady who?"
"Heh. I didn't know you could yodel!"
Laughing was heard and then Blueberry huffed, forcing himself up and crossing his arms. What a lame joke. He could come up with a much better one. He was going to find these two jokesters and first tell the old lady to stop being rude and then tell the other guy some REAL jokes. Jokes that were worth laughing at!
He rushed into the snowy forest where he'd heard the sounds coming from. However, before he could even get two steps in, Blueberry yelped as he suddenly felt the warmth of someone else suddenly appearing right in front of him in a strange blue glow.
"A-Ah!" the child yelped, falling into the snow.
The other skeleton merely grinned at him, hands in his blue hoodie's pockets as the glow left. And was he wearing shorts? And slippers? In this weather?!
"Looks like I gave you quite the scare!" he smiled, looking down at the child.
However his smile faded slightly when he saw the paintbrush clutched in the child's hand. He'd seen that paintbrush before though it's only ever been in a holder on Ink's back. What's it doing here then?
"That's not funny!" Blueberry huffed, clutching the things in his hands. "Maybe you should be more careful of where you teleport yourself!"
"That's kind of funny, considering you're the one from an AU who suddenly teleported to this world." the skeleton kept the perpetual, almost smug looking grin on his face as he helped Blueberry up.
"And how do you know about that?!" Blueberry yelped as soon as he got back to his feet, not expecting anybody here to even know about AUs.
"Of course I of all people would know." the older skeleton said cooly, not the least bit even phased".Ya know...keep it between us, but Ink already told me everything about AUs and how Error's ripping 'em apart. And based on the fact you're a skeleton and the only one here who's still alive is my bro, seems to reason you must've come from one of those AUs, right?"
"Ink...talked to you...?"
Blueberry paused a bit, taking this in. He was shocked to say the least. He didn't think Ink went to this place. He didnt expect this other skeleton to be already pretty much expecting him to show up some way or anothet. Everything happenef so quick, so suddenly like a burst of wind. No, more than just a burst of wind - a whole tornado, blowing in at once! He expected everyone here to demand to know his whole story, of which he probably couldn't fully provide, probably be mean to him...
"Yep. And since you've got his paintbrush, guess that means something came up and he needs someone to protect you 'til he can get back to ya, right?"
The child was still frozen with shock. How could someone handle this so...nonchalantly? How did Ink even let this guy know about his arrival if everything that happened happened as a split second decision?!
Unless...this wasn't the first time Ink did something like this..?
Blueberry was aware of a phenominon known as RESETTING. In his world, Temmie RESET many times until the human Chara arrived and overrode that ability. He always remembered every RESET they did but he always kept a cheerful attitude. He always felt that if he remained cheerful maybe, just maybe, the human would do a true pacifist run and never RESET again. No matter how many RESETS happened (he had seriously lost count of them), he beleived in the human. He beleived in them right to the end...right when he felt they were changing for the better..
Maybe other AUs also had RESETS as well! Maybe Ink had taken other AU people here before and managed to save their AU through a RESET? That had to be how the other skeleton came to expect him to show up! Maybe his AU can be saved that way too!
But if this had happened before, had Ink ever been imprisoned by Error?
"What's the matter? Cat got your toungue?" the older skeleton interrupted Blueberry's thoughts. "By the way, since I was curious, I did a CHECK on you while you spaced out and I see you're another Sans. Never thought I'd meet another version of myself in person."
Wait a second...another Sans?!
Of all the people for him to meet in this new world it had to be someone with his same name?!
"Hey! You might be called Sans too but I am the magnificent one!" Blueberry let his pride talk now. "I bet you can't ever hope to become a member of the Royal Gaurd. And I bet you can't make good tacos either!"
"You're acting like my brother..." the other Sans said, chuckling. " I've got you beat though. I'm the original Sans. You're just from some universe Ink drew up, am I right?"
Blueberry suddenly felt offended and glared. How could he just say that?! Just from some universe Ink drew up?! So his universe meant less?!
"Hey, hey, calm down - I didn't mean it like that!" Sans waved his hands as he backed up, seeing the child's right eye glow more than normal for a second.
Blueberry gasped, seeing the reflection of blue on Sans's skull. His magic was flaring. But why?! He was only annoyed...very annoyed...at Sans's. comment. He didn't intend to cause harm. He didn't WANT to cause harm! If he ever harmed someone for real, he would never forgive himself!
"I...I'm SO SORRY!" Blueberry yelled as he somehow was able to deactivate his magic, tears starting to fall from his eyesockets.
Sans grabbed onto the child's small frame gently, trying to ease up how much he had started just shaking uncontrollably and crying. In all honesty, Sans was confused as to why the little child suddenly had a flare up over a small comment like that. He didn't look to be a particularly short-tempered sort of guy. Quite the opposite, actually. His attire and pride in his abilities reminded Sans of Papyrus. It was as if this were what one would get if by some wierd shift of events he was in Papyrus's role.
Gods, just what sort of AUs did Ink make?
In that moment, it occurred to Sans that the reason his new "friend" had such a sudden flare up was clearly stress. The child looked exhausted - bags were under his eyesockets, tell tale signs of exhaustion in skeleton monsters. Granted, this was another Sans and all of them had bags of some sort, but those bags were even worse than his own. The child's face looked a bit pale as well - he must've been in the cold for way too long. His HP hadn't been the best when he CHECKED him either. Luckily this was a Sans who was not cursed with the whole 1 HP thing but his HP was still drained - a mere 20 out of his 620 or so max.
He contemplated what to do. He couldn't let Papyrus see this guy. If he did, he would probably think that he was some child monster who lost his way and would try and get him home. Which would likely, with Papyrus's big mouth, lead to the whole Underground knowing of his presence. Then Sans would have to attempt to explain this whole AU thing to everyone and the result would probably be a huge panic.
Sans had to take care of this monster on his own.
First and foremost though, the guy needed to eat and restore his HP. There was one place where Sans could trust the people to not freak out or open their beaks about anything said in it. He hoped the little guy liked burgers...
"Your HP is really low, kid." Sans told the child once his sniffles had slowed down a bit. He gently let him go, reaching a hand down to help him back to his feet. "How about I get you some food as an apology?"
"...O-Okay..." the response was shaky, the child wiping a few stray tears away.
"Cool. I know a shortcut." Sans said as his perpetual grin seemed to get wider. "By the way, you have a name, kid?"
"...Blueberry..."
" Blueberry? I'll just call ya Blue for short." Sans told Blueberry. "Now hold on."
With a snap of his fingers, both monsters vanished in a flash of blue...
FWOOSH!
Blueberry held his head as he felt a sudden cold wind across his bones then the warmth of a heated building. He hadn't realized just how cold and tired he was until he felt the warm air blowing from a heating vent above him. He felt like he could just doze off...
...If it wasn't so loud in here! And that smell! It made Blueberry want to gag!
Monsters of various sorts that he didn't recognize were packed into the small tavern. Blueberry noticed the majority of the monsters in here were dogs, with some birds, a rabbit, and even a horse. All of them were yelling at each other whilst eating hamburgers, french fries, hot dogs and sipping juice from various types of fancy glasses. The yelling reminded Blueberry of the atmosphere at Muffet's. At least her place didn't stink!
Still. Both places seemed to not have a single taco in sight and to him, no tacos means a bad establishment.
He noticed Sans was already a bit ahead of him, motioning him to come over to the bar area where...
Wait, was that Grillby?! Since when did he get his own place of business?! All Grillby every did in Blueberry's world was set up random hot dog stands and rip people off! How could he ever run a place of business?!
Sans motioned to him again and Blueberry shook his thoughts away, heading towards the empty barstool beside Sans and slowly climbing up.
PPPPPHHPPPPHHHTTT!
Several monsters turned towards the god-awful sound that emitted when Blueberry sat down on the chair. He could practically feel a tinge of blue rush to his cheeks at the attention. Looking behind him, he noticed a whoopie cushion peeking out from behind him, followed by laughter from Sans.
"Sans! Why?!" Blueberry couldn't help but yell, hating to be pranked like this. "Why did you put that there?!"
"I have no idea where that whoopie cushion even came from." Sans shrugged despite still chuckling. "I should've told ya before: watch where you sit inhere. People are always leaving whoopie cushions on the seats."
"Ugh...whatever!" Blueberry huffed, pulling the whoopie cushion out from beneath him and throwing it down onto the floor.
"Hey! Someone's gonna trip on that, you can't have it on the floor now!" Sans said as he got up, picking up the whoopie cushion. "If this were my room I might have just left it but there are people in here. Gotta have some class."
"I don't call putting whoopie cushions on chairs having any "class" either!" Blueberry was still pretty preturbed as he crossed his arms.
"I swear, I have no idea who put that there!" Sans sat back down. "By the way, I went ahead and ordered the food. Hope you like burgers."
Burgers. Blueberry couldn't say he was a fan. However, Sans was being nice so he had better just be glad he's giving him anything. Even though Blueberry would much prefer a taco...
"They're alright." Blueberry replied before letting a sigh escape.
All of this reminded Blueberry of going to Muffet's with his brother. They always sat in this spot at the bar whenever his brother forced him to come to Muffet's with him. Blueberry fondly remembered his feet not able to fully touch the floor and Muffet looming over him, smelly purfume and all, asking for his order. His brother always ordered him a cinnamon bun before Blueberry could answer her. Truth be told, the spider kind of scared him...
Sans was a spitting image of Blueberry's brother. The pranks, the puns, the perpetually relaxed attitude. Blueberry should be happy but he found himself just...not hitting it off so well with Sans. The reminders of his brother made Blueberry remember how he had failed to defend himself against Error, which caused his brother to take an attack meant for him.
How he missed his brother... How he couldn't stand to be dealing with someone who is just like him. His brother would be alive if Blueberry hadn't been so careless!
Blueberry was cut off by a burger being placed in front of him. Sans ordered the same thing as one was in front of him too. Sans held the ketchup bottle to him.
"If you're a Sans, you like ketchup. Don't you?"
Blueberry couldn't help but grin. Next to tacos, ketchup was the best thing to eat. The real best thing to eat was his secret taco recipe - yes, he added ketchup! So good. He remembered keeping some of that new recipe of tacos in his pockets to enjoy later, though he ran out of them awhile back.
"Wowie! How did you know?" the excited monster asked.
"All of us like ketchup. I don't think anyone can be a variant of me without that quirk." Sans said as Blueberry opened his burger, beginning to squirt some ketchup on...
SPLAT!
Blueberry froze as the lid to the ketchup suddenly slid right off. A stream of the red condiment flowed onto his burger. Within a second, his burger was practically swimming in it.
"Be careful with the condiment jars here." Sans said with another chuckle. "Sometimes the lids aren't on tight."
Blueberry stared at his burger for a second before getting up from his seat.
"Not just one but two pranks?!" Blueberry yelled. "Can't you stop for five minutes?!"
"None of those pranks were mine!" Sans kept playing a facade. Blueberry though, wasn't having it.
"Oh, so you just didn't notice a whoopie cushion sitting right ahead of your nose?" Blueberry now had his hands on his hips, his eyes glowing angrily again. "Nor did you see a ketchup bottle was half open?!"
"You're yelling again, Blue..."
"OF COURSE I AM YELLING! YOU'RE ACTING LIKE A TOTAL AND COMPLETE CLOWN, SANS! BY THE WAY, THIS GREASE BUCKET SMELLS LIKE A DOG'S TOILET!"
The noise on the background suddenly came to a screeching hault as every monster in the tavern turns to face Blueberry, who had slapped his hands on the table, right over Sans's burger. Cheese, pickles, and onion were splattered across the bar. Even Grillby looked up from cleaning glasses.
Blueberry's eyes widened as he took in Sans's expression. The grin he had been wearing since they met wavered a bit, his eyelights showing...hurt? Blueberry couldn't look for long before Sans turned away, grabbing at the stool.
"So that's what you think, huh? This place is just a dog's toilet to you..."
"N-no, no!" Blueberry yelped nervously. "I... It just came out...!"
A suffocating feeling came in Blueberry's chest. Sans was only being nice to him, trying to make him smile. Yet he hurt him! All he did was yell at Sans for trying to make him smile, for trying to make the situation he was in not so dark and dreary.
It reminded Blueberry of the one time he yelled at his brother for making too many puns after Alphys called Blueberry a weenie. He had the same hurt that Sans had in his eyes, yet tried to keep a grin on. Blueberry remembered his brother looking just like Sans. Turned away, grabbing at his stool as Blueberry stood over the bar, having spewn honey across it. Everyone had been staring at him then too. Muffet told him to leave and cool his jets which resulted in Blueberry storming out of the bar and slamming the door.
Blueberry stole a glance at Grillby, expecting him to tell him to leave like Muffet had. However, the fire monster did nothing, having returned to cleaning the glasses.
"I'm sorry...I...I'm leaving." Blueberry said as he turned to the exit.
He stumbled as he turned, his legs suddenly feeling like jello. A headache suddenly made itself known as his head began to throb. A stabbing pain was also felt in his stomach making Blueberry topple over and onto the ground. He could hear the gasps of the monsters around him as he felt the hardwood floor against his cheek, vision slowly fading out.
Come to think of it, it had probably been close to a week since Blueberry had anything to eat. He usually kept tacos in his pockets but with Error attacking his home he hadn't been able to restock them. Being generous, he gave more than a few to monsters who had their homes destroyed by Error or were trapped until further notice. He did not know then that it only hurt him in the end. Those monsters still died and Blueberry had been without a food source. Now that some of the direct threat was not looming over him, Blueberry's starved state must've caught up to him...
Heh, what timing. Part of him hoped Sans just left him. He'd been so rude!
The last thing Blueberry felt before blacking out was himself being swooped from the ground and hearing a faint voice saying "Don't mention anything about this to my brother, Grillbz!'
He felt a rush of wind before his consciousness left...