"You're so lazy! You were napping all night!"

"...I'm pretty sure that's called sleeping, bro."

I barely heard the two brothers arguing, or more accurately Papyrus' screaming contest with himself and Sans' occasional one-liner, feeling a lot more distant than before. Why did you take it? I nagged myself, tempted to pull out the snow-filled bottle. And more importantly, why haven't you tossed it yet? I didn't have time to be getting all mushy-gushy with the locals, especially not with the semi-well dressed mound of ice. I should've just chucked the snow piece into the thick woods the moment I was out of sight. It's not like he'd ever know the difference.

What was wrong with me? I could shoot down Snowdrake's puns and leave him stomping away in fury without feeling any remorse myself, I could smack the crap out of frogs and take the money they drop right off the ground without so much as a ping of guilt, so what made this snowman so special? Nothing. Nothing at all.

And yet, I couldn't bring myself to leave the insignificant snow piece behind. A distracting sense of sympathy crowded and beat out my better judgement, no doubt the byproduct of spending time with Toriel. The poor snowman's desires lined up with mine, so, no matter how much I denied it, I felt inclined to help out any way I could.

Or maybe...maybe taking the snow piece had nothing to do with appeasing the snowman's desires. Maybe it was a promise. Not to him, not to Tori, but to myself. As long as I kept it with me, it was a reminder that one day, I would escape the Underground, and I would leave Ebott and explore the outside world, with this little jar of ice as my shining, glistening...in all honesty, pretty lame trophy. But it was my lame trophy, and...and...

...I mean, the stick was pretty cool too, right?

"Oh-ho! The human arrives at last!" shouted papyrus, striking that unbelievably stupid pose with his finger pointed, ahem, 'heroically' at my chest. It'd taken him long enough to notice me, I must have wandered over to them a solid century ago. "In order to stop you, my brother and I have created some puzzles."

I shook my head slightly and quit staring at the ground as if it were about to open up and swallow me whole. There'd be time to reflect on my own stupidity later, for now I had to focus on...oh for the love of God, did he say puzzles? Already?

Papyrus's made that face a deranged psycho killer would wear moments before slaughtering their victim. "I'm sure you'll find this one...quite shocking!"

Only a pun that insufferably terrible could jolt me back to my normal self. Wait, was 'jolt' an electricity pun too?...Dammit.

"Leave the puns to your brother, Papyrus. At least his require half a brain to come up with." I nearly smiled. It felt good to be back in business, although that certainly wasn't my strongest of my insults. I must have needed a little more time to get warmed up.

"Aw, you think I have half a brain?" Sans said gratefully. "I could share some with you too, if ya want."

Papyrus seemed just the tiniest bit shy of grateful. "Human, Brother, allow me to finish explaining the puzzle before we engage in the battle of insults," he snapped. Then, regaining his composure, which only made him even harder to take seriously, he added; "For you see, this is my invisible electricity maze!"

I took a look around the area. Well, at least the dunce got the invisible part right. "Alright. Now all we have to do is figure out what the hell an electricity maze is."

"See, I told you the human would be confused!" Papyrus cackled to his brother. He pulled out a small sparkling blue orb from his chest plate and gestured to the empty space surrounding him as if he were presenting his magnum opus to the Louvre. "When you touch the walls of this maze, this orb will administer a hearty zap!" he explained. "Sound like fun?"

I opened my mouth in a pointless effort to fit even a single word in, but Papyrus was far to deep in the zone by this point. His rambles tumbled out of his mouth like children down a flight of stairs, wild and uncontrollable. "Because the amount of fun you will probably have...is actually rather small I think."

"Smartest thing you've said since I got here," I muttered. Now that Papyrus was finished stroking his undeserving ego, and there was actually a moment of near silence, I was able to pick up the slightest hum of rapidly moving electricity coming from the walls of his supposed maze. He's not bluffing, huh...

I tried to listen for an opening in the static walls, shifting back and forth without taking a single step forward. I could try going around, but there was no telling how much ground it actually covered, and the space was only so big before it took a nosedive off a cliff. After peering over the edge to the inky blackness below, I decided it wasn't worth risking a leap of faith, unless there were another patch of golden flowers for me to land on at the bottom.

"Oh goody, the human is stumped by The Great Papyrus' unrivaled puzzle crafting skills!" cheered the man himself, relishing in my growing frustration. I'm sure I was wearing my aggravation like an ugly sweater.

"I'm not Goddamn stumped! I just need a sec..." I assured the brothers, having flashbacks to a certain friendly boulder I used to know. Sans stared at me and smiled. The bastard was enjoying this just as much as his brother.

What good's a puzzle if there's no indication of how to solve it? I thought, but didn't dare speak a word to assholes running the show. All it'd earn me was another round of taunting. After all, the odds of Sans lending a hand in front of his insane human-hunting-fanatic brother were next to none.

His insane brother...

After a solid few minutes of walking around and doing absolutely nothing, the answer slapped me across the face, so obvious in hindsight that I had the sudden urge to hurl myself off the cliff. Papyrus' exact words a minute ago were 'this orb will administer a hearty zap.'

Smiling to myself, I took the position of a track runner about to start their next race, put one hand over the jar holding the snow piece to keep it from slipping out, and sprinted forward without a second thought. As I passed the point of no return, a booming ZAP crackled through the air like a ticked-off bolt of lightning, but it wasn't my body being fried.

Papyrus, still holding on to the orb, was fidgeting like a cartoon character as bolts of electricity arced off his breastplate wildly. However many volts were running through that orb, they were definitely doing some damage.

I slid in beside the brothers, far enough away from the living lightning rod to avoid getting fried, as the orb slowly died out and halted its assault on Papyrus. "How's that for 'shocking?'" I taunted. A flash of guilt swept over me, but it faded as quick as it came. It was his mistake, holding onto the orb like that. Besides, the bag of bones didn't have any flesh to cook, right? Better him than me.

To my surprise, and in all honesty, my relief that I hadn't completely killed him, he appeared pretty much unharmed, especially when you consider how painful his shock had looked. Sure, his teeth were chattering rapidly, his eyes were wide and literally popping out of his skull, and part of his cape-scarf-thing were still on fire like a tacky piece of firewood, but hey...at least he was still standing? Granted, he was barely able to keep on his own two feet due to all the totally-not-at-all-violent body spasms...

"Paps, you okay?" Sans asked, not sounding all too concerned. I guessed Papyrus did stuff like this to himself a lot when he was setting up his traps. Wouldn't surprise me in the least. Hell, I'd be more concerned if he didn't, because that would mean something was terribly wrong with the universe.

'Paps' shook his head furiously as the spasms died down and huffed. "SANS! What did you do this time!?" He screamed at his brother like a toddler throwing a tantrum over a broken toy.

I scowled at the skeleton, the slight sense of pride from overcoming the puzzle fading. Something about the way he berated his brother for a fault of his own got my blood heated up an extra three hundred degrees. "What did he do? Give him a break, you're the idiot holding onto his own trap!"

That finally seemed to get through to Papyrus. He eyed the orb in his hand with something akin to horror, and tensed up in a brief, incredibly satisfying waterfall of embarrassment. I relished in it, but he broke out of it almost instantly to deliver another one of his soon to be famous lines. "Idiot? Please, human, this is all according to my secret plan!" he assured me, taking a bow for good measure, and chucking the orb to who knows where. The conniving weasel added; "I'll lure you into a false sense of security, and then, just when you're guard is lowered...NYEH-HEH-HEH-HEH!"

I smiled. "Thanks for the heads up. I'll be sure to keep my eyes peeled."

Papyrus didn't seem to grasp the fact he'd blatantly revealed his "secret plan" to me, and ran off guffawing, probably to prep his next equally effective trap.

With Papyrus gone, I started to take my leave when I noticed Sans staring at me, even more smug than usual. "What, I have something on my face?" I challenged.

His response was grinning with the intensity of a thousand suns. "Don't think I didn't see that," he goaded.

See what? I thought, letting out a confused shrug.

"You chewing my brother out," he explained, rolling his eye sockets at my naivety. "Thanks for sticking up for me, but my bro just gets a little over excited. I'm used to it. Besides, he's always had a...thick skull."

Oh. I had defended him? It honestly hadn't even occurred to me I was defending Sans from his dimwitted brother's accusations. Actually...I guess it had crossed my mind as I was spouting the insult, a flash of sympathy for the chubby skeleton, especially obvious to me now that he'd pointed it out. Apparently, a short fuse had its advantages.

A content expression fell over Sans' face, but there was a hint of something else in his eyes. Solemness?

In a fainter tone, staring down at the sparkling surface of the snow, he said dreamily; "I haven't seen him this happy in a long time."

I was at a total loss for words, and this time, it wasn't from the awful "thick skull" pun. "Uh...you're welcome?" I half-asked, not completely convinced I earned the credit. I'd take it no problem, but I can't say I've done much to help beside walking forward and torturing myself with puzzles and puns.

...Scratch that, totally deserved the praise.

"Ya know," Sans continued, seeming to address the ground rather than me. Fair enough, it was probably the better listener. "We made that knight outfit he's wearing a couple weeks ago for costume party, and he hasn't taken it off since." He chuckled to himself, shaking his head. "Keeps calling it his 'battle body.' Man, my brother is the coolest..."

Since when is playing dress-up in a half-assed King Arthur costume twenty-four/seven 'cool?' I nearly asked Sans that myself, but realized I didn't exactly feel inclined to listen to Sans try to glorify his brother. So I bit my tongue at the last moment and stood there silently, waiting for Sans to say or do anything else.

After awhile, Sans snapped out of his blissful state looking embarrassed. "I'll go on ahead," he said quickly, shaking himself back to his usual attitude. "The next puzzle's all mine." I rolled my eyes as he winked at me for the millionth time and followed in Papyrus' crisp ankle-deep footprints, leaving me alone again.

"If it's anything like your brother's, I think I'll come out in one piece!" I yelled after him as I watched the speck of blue that was his hoodie disappear over a snowy hill.

Once the skele-bros were gone, I had hoped that I could relax and forget about them for a moment, applying the "out of sight, out of mind," mentality. But, no matter how much I wanted to keep my thoughts as far away from those two as possible, I couldn't help but stand frozen where they'd left me, dragging my mind by the ankles until I was back to thinking about Sans, amazed at how he came to care about his brother so much. Not because Sans acted overly caring or sympathetic towards the criminally insane Papyrus, but because he did so despite every exchange I'd seen between them feeling hostile, and borderline formulaic; Papyrus insults Sans, Sans retorts with some kind of joke or pun, Papyrus gets angry and yells some more, rinse, repeat, and add me into the loop tearing my own hair out once in awhile, all rolled together in what could easily pass as a great idea for a terrible sitcom. "Dumb and Dumber meets Alice in Wonderland." It didn't seem like Paps gave his brother a semblance of a molecule of a reason to give him the time of day, let alone drift off into a dreamy monologue about how "cool" Papyrus was.

You know what? I don't think I'd even heard the lanky skeleton spout anything to Sans that wasn't either self-serving or some kind of insult or accusation. Sometimes it was warranted, and other times they came flying in completely out of the blue. I suppose Sans didn't seem to be bothered living under constant trial with a mad judge, and he didn't exactly let the jury walk all over him, coming up to the stand armed to the teeth with deadly puns. Regardless, that didn't make me want to strangle Papyrus with his own scarf...cape...thing any less, nor did it help me to even remotely understand Sans' affection.

So then, what the hell was it? What did Sans see in his walking train wreck of a brother that was vaguely redeemable? Maybe he had an awesome hidden talent I wasn't aware of, like...window washing, or...maybe he his whole persona was an act, and he didn't actually have the personality of silly string, or...maybe he baked a mean batch of brownies?

...Welp, I didn't care enough to manufacture any other possibilities, so lets hope I was right about the brownies for now.

Unfortunately, the thought of brownies sent a disturbingly long and low grumble through my stomach, which soon crescendoed until it was just the tiniest bit louder than a series of nuclear explosions on the site of the world's largest brass section. I placed a comforting hand on my stomach as if it actually were about to explode, confirmed that it was holding it together, and started sprinting forward again in a panic anyway.

Damn, I hadn't felt this empty in a long, long time. When was the last meal I'd eaten? The pie I ate at Toriel's table seemed like the last thing I could remember scarfing down, and that was well over a few hours ago. Just that morning, actually...weird. Such a short time, and I was already hungry enough that my stomach was screaming as it imploded on itself, like a star at the end of its life.

Okay, sure, maybe I was exaggerating a tad, but even counting the pie, I hadn't exactly been stuffing myself like royalty recently. I woke up half-dead in an unfamiliar, and as I would soon discover, bat-shit insane place, with no food. After getting knocked out again, I stomached a few awful candies, a cookie baked out of spiders ("just like mother used to make" my ass,) passed out again for a few hours, and finally devoured Tori's mouthwatering pie. After trudging through the...albeit not very harsh, snowy landscape another couple hours, I certainly felt like I could and would gorge myself on literally any bit of food right about now.

Scratch that, anything besides the revolting spider cider residing uselessly in my back pocket, if that even counted as food. Maybe a nice, warm, bubbling bowl of delicious and nutritious sulfuric acid instead.

Trying my best to ignore the mind numbing hunger, I followed the brothers' trail of footprints. Tailing the two wasn't exactly the hardest task, you'd have to have the vision of a wild Helen Keller to miss the tracks Papyrus' heavy metal boots left, and as I turned a particularly barren corner, my luck finally decided to turn around for the better.

Sitting precariously close to the drop-off was a small food cart, wearing an annoyingly vivid red and yellow striped umbrella sticking out of the top. The damn thing couldn't have looked more out of place on Mars than it could out here, wheels half buried in the snow, in the middle of nowhere.

The guy (at least, I thought it was a guy)...the anthro-rabbit running the cart seemed to think that as well. He leaned against it lazily, somehow managing to look bored out of his mind and distraught at the same time, in stark contrast to his lurid outfit that seemed to be screaming, "Please buy something! It's delicious! It's fabulous! If you rub it on your skin, it'll make you live forever!" Must've been standing there for awhile too, if the massive amount of pure white snow laced with his bizarre turquoise fur was any indication.

I slowed down as I approached the vendor, greeting him with; "Dude, your cat get run over by a snowmobile or something? It's bad for buisness to look so down in the dumps. Unless Papyrus stopped by, 'cause then I'd totally get the feeling."

The stranger took time away from feeling sorry for himself to look up at me as I neared him, sighing. "I wish," he whined. "At least then I would've had one customer...ugh, I just don't get why these aren't selling!"

I smirked at him. "I mean, opening up shop in the middle of nowhere probably wasn't your best idea."

"But it's the perfect weather for something cold!" he argued, rearing his leg back. Before I could warn him against it...eh, sure, we'll go with that... before I could warn him against it, he delivered a heavy kick to the side of his supposed beloved cart. The sharp sound of flesh and bone colliding against metal rang out along with a cry of pain from the rabbit, leaving him grasping his foot in pain and muttering some rather harsh words under his breath.

Meanwhile, I was attempting and failing to contain my laughter. "S-something cold?" I chuckled, pulling an arm over my mouth and faking it as a cough. "You mean, food, right? 'Cause I've been out here in the cold starving half to death, so I'm up for just about anything right now." Except the spider slop, I reminded myself. Please don't try and sell me frozen spiders on a stick.

"Yeah, I'll bet...wait." Just as the last word left his mouth, his dreary mood completely vanished, and his long ears shot up in excitement. "Are you a customer?!" he blurted.

I flinched at his sporadic outburst (mostly at the wads of spit he sent flying at my face), wondering if he'd caught on to the fact that I was human, or was so desperate for some business he was willing to cast aside any morality he had left. I certainly wasn't complaining, since fighting for my food didn't sound very appealing at the moment. "I mean, depends on what you call a 'customer,'" I began, waving off his excitement...and saliva, like an irritating fly. "If you consider a customer to be some asshole who's remotely interested in whatever the hell you're selling, then you might just have one on your hands, furball."

Literally faster than I could blink, the rabbit ducked behind his cart, slid open the top, grabbed something out of it, and offered it out to me wearing a grin huge enough to rival Sans'. "Hello!" he bellowed, talking so fast I could barely make out the words. "You seem a little down in the dumps. Would you like some Nice Cream? It's the frozen treat that warms your heart!"

Huh. That was actually...a pretty good tagline. I eyed the frozen treat in his hand, mere inches from my face, resisting the urge to snatch it right out of his grasp. Aside from the extra N, it looked just like a normal, bland...delicious...tantalizing ice cream cone, matching the color of the nice cream guy's fur. Maybe it's blue raspberry...

"Now just fifteen gold!"

Huh. That was officially...the worst follow up to a pretty good tagline in the history of everything.

"Fifteen gold?!" I spat as he shattered my thoughts of icy goodness. "What, you're trying to feed...every sorry mouth...in the Underground..." I trailed off, making sure he wouldn't hear the last part. At first, I was furious he was trying to con me out of my money. Then two things occurred to me; One, I bought both the spider cider and the cookie for about that same amount without any question. And two, how much is any of this shit worth down here? For all I knew, gold was as common as snot, or the 'gold' pieces were made out of fools' gold or something.

On the other hand, maybe he was a con artist making up numbers off the top of his head in hopes of making a quick, scummy buck off the guy he'd never seen before. Just to be sure, I started out pulling out the gold pieces I'd collected from the Ruins to count them, although I didn't remember getting too many off the residents...

"See, you have the perfect amount right there!" said the nice cream guy, pointing to me with his free hand. "Fifteen gold exactly!"

...What has my life become? A TV show for distracting three-year-olds?

I stopped, glancing at the coins in my hand. Only three, I thought. Maybe each coin is worth five gold? If that were the case, and if the heaviness of my pockets were any indication, I had tons more cash than I thought. So I slipped the vendor the coins and took the nice cream out of his hand.

"Hope you enjoy it!" he said cheerily. "Have a super-duper day!"

"Yeah...little bit late for that," I muttered absentmindedly, taking an eager bite of the frozen treat.

Well...it was certainly cold. Sweet too, with a certain sharp bite to it I'd expect from something like a cider. (Ugh. I shudder just hearing the word. Damn you, spider bake sale!) I'd been right in assuming it was blue raspberry, and it wasn't bad for an ice cream cone. Only two problems; it was already freezing out, which made the cone a bit hard to stomach without turning into a human ice cube. The other problem...it just didn't come close to comparing to Tori's butterscotch-cinnamon pie.

Keeping the trend the other food had set, I felt the small wound Snowdrake had left for me on the back of my head begin to close, until it felt good as new.

"So, how is it?!"

I looked at the Nice Cream Guy in between bites. If the healing powers of the food weren't applying, I'd have felt exhausted just talking to this guy. "It's pretty good," I confirmed, putting his eagerness to rest. "Maybe if you moved shop, you'd actually sell a couple of these. Even if you do get a customer, most people won't stomach cold food in cold weather."

"You really think so?" He stopped to consider it for a second. "Thanks! I think I might know just the spot..."

I left him packing up his shop to move to his new location, taking my sweet time on the nice cream since I already knew it wouldn't melt. With my free hand, I counted the rest of my hard-earned cash, totaling at about fourteen pieces. So that would be...seventy gold. Although, some of the coins were different sizes. I'd have to remember to ask Sans about the value of them later.

"Human!" came an all-too-familiar voice. I took the time of day away from my nice cream, spotting the skeleton brothers standing around waiting for me to approach. Again. How many times would I have to keep up this charade? "I hope you're ready for..."

"Hold the damn phone!" I yelled to my new biggest and boniest fan, shoving the coins back in my pocket. Why was everyone down here so frigging eager to shove their noses in my business? I stared down the skeleton brothers with a fire in my eyes, not quite ready for round two of puzzles. "Lemme finish this...nice cream...first?"

Damn, it's already gone? I tossed the last piece of the cone in my mouth, imagining Papyrus' bones getting crushed with each crunch of the cone. "Never mind, let's get this over with."

"Ah, I thought you'd never ask!" The Mediocre Papyrus chattered.

"I didn't ask a question-"

"-Wait, Sans, WHERE'S THE PUZZLE!?" Papyrus looked totally bewildered, scanning the area for any sign of a puzzle.

I did the same myself, and all of a sudden "where's the puzzle" seemed awfully fitting for this situation. Unless it was another invisible maze or there was something hidden in the trees, there didn't seem to be anything relatively threatening nearby. Either Sans was doing me a favor, or he was actually too lazy to be bothered in throwing together a trap.

"It's right there," Sans said casually. "On the ground."

Oh, that slip of paper half-buried in the snow was my puzzle for the hour. I'd noticed it before, but had figured someone had just missed the trash can and been too "busy" to pick it up. "You're serious?" I asked, not totally convinced.

"Trust me," Sans assured his massive audience of two people. "There's no way they can get past this one." And then he winked at me. Again.

"You should really get that weird twitch in your eye checked out, Sansy," I jabbed, bending over to snatch the stray slip of paper.

The words "Monster Kidz Word Search" screamed up at me in lurid neon lettering. I stared at the text for a moment, dumbfounded. Sans' puzzle was literally just a word search, no strings attached, no hoops to jump over, just a piece of paper where you scan a maze of letters to pick out and circle words like "skeletons" or "mermaid" or "giasfclfebrehber." The numbskull didn't even leave me a pencil to attempt to solve the puzzle with even if I wanted too, for whatever reason.

Which I didn't, because these word searches were literally invented by Satan himself. No, I'm totally serious. Look it up.

So, in response to the insulting, degrading, lazy excuse for a puzzle resting in my hands, I stared down the skeleton brothers with an apathetic expression on my face, and slowly ripped the paper in half from top to bottom, reveling in the tear of each individual fiber, casting the two pieces aside when I was finished for added effect.

"SANS! That didn't do anything!"

"Whoops." Sans shrugged off his failure. "I knew I should've used today's crossword instead."

I scoffed at that. "Right, because if I ran into a crossword lying on the ground in the middle of a snowy wasteland, I would've taken my sweet time solving it."

"WHAT!? CROSSWORD!?" Papyrus shouted, baffled at the thought. For once, I thought he was actually going to say something reasonable, and tell Sans that no mere piece of paper could stop me.

Of course, there wasn't enough good left in the Universe to allow that to happen.

"I can't believe you ACTUALLY just said the crossword is harder than Junior Jumble!"

"What? Really, dude?" Sans argued. "That easy-peasy word scramble's for baby bones."

"Un. Believable. HUMAN!" He turned to me as if I should have all the answers, his figure pointed in the air. "SOLVE THIS DISPUTE!"

Guess the spotlight's on me now? In hindsight, the crossword would probably be harder, but I figured if I picked one at random it would get them off my back quicker, so I went with the first one that popped into my head. "I don't know, Junior Jumble, I guess."

"Ha! Yes!" cheered Papyrus. "Humans must be very intelligent if they also find Junior Jumble so difficult!" Just like the last time I'd finished one of their puzzles, Papyrus spun around and ran off laughing to himself, even though he accomplished jack-shit.

Sans eyed his brother as he ran off. "Aaaand there he goes." Then he nodded in my direction. "Thanks for saying 'Junior Jumble' just to appease my brother. Yesterday he got stumped trying to 'solve' the horoscope."

I chuckled as Papyrus vanished and said, "Why does that not surprise me at all?"