Disclaimer: I do not own Undertale.
Iterations
Catching Up
Sans woke up to his brother yelling to him from downstairs.
"SANS! I AM LEAVING TO PREPARE MORE TRAPS FOR HUMANS! TODAY WILL BE THE DAY! FOLLOW MY EXAMPLE AND RECALIBRATE YOUR PUZZLES!" he called, slamming the door behind him.
Sans rolled out of bed. It seemed he was back at the beginning. Again. He stared at the ceiling and tried to remember what happened in the last run. His mind drew a blank and he knew he would need to go through his faithful black box to jumpstart whatever memories he could actually recover. Opening the box, he found the usual slightly crumpled papers among other things he had saved. This time, they were arranged around a notebook and pen he did not remember. Examining the pen and journal, he laughed harder than he had in a long time. Whoever gave this to him really got his sense of humor.
''their drawing skills could use a bit of work though," he mumbled to himself.
He flipped the page and could recognize his own handwriting. It said:
gift from the kid
cause of death: undyne
check hotland
protect the kid
There was a folded up piece of paper taped to the paper. There was a arrow drawn towards it with the caption:
get ready to be angry. go to the next page to calm down.
He unfolded the piece of paper and read it. 'Be Happy Please.' It was always disorienting regaining memories. One by one, memories flitted through his skull. Frisk sleeping on their couch. Frisk doing all his work at the hot dog stand. Dropping Frisk into odd situations with the promise of laughs when she found her way home. Waking up wrapped up so tight in her blanket that he considered teleporting out of it. Frisk face down in the snow with a blue spear through her back. A gift basket.
The fury returned with the memory. He barely held himself back from leaving to find the fish woman. Gritting his teeth, he obeyed his notes and flipped the page. Written on the page were two words that had been penned so hard that they left indentations on all the papers behind.
visiting undyne
The memory that returned was a violent one. His grin turned sadistic. Good. He had already taken care of it. Tucking the journal and pen back into the box, he hid it once again under the bed. It was time to check out Hotland.
Frisk was worried as the door to the Ruins closed behind her. She was more prepared this time. She was wearing a long-sleeved sweater and jeans. It provided a much better defense against the cold than what she was wearing last time but it was still unbelievably cold. Her worry grew as she walked passed the gate and the sentry station without seeing Sans. She wondered how much he remembered. She entered the clearing of the first puzzle and walked right through. It seemed that Papyrus had not created his puzzle yet in this iteration.
"hey kid."
She jumped and turned to see Sans standing behind her. "You scared me!"
"yep," he said, grin widening. He extended his arm out to her, familiar black hoodie folded over it. "thought you'd want this back, seeing as you wore it almost every day."
She blushed but took it eagerly, pulling it on right over her sweater. "Wait, you remember then?"
"everything important i think. and as for what i didn't remember, it was all explained on this little thing." he replied, waving a tape recorder in his hand.
At her questioning gaze, he pressed play. Their first serious conversation in Hotland played back. She gaped. "You recorded that?"
He shrugged. "easier than writing everything down."
They began walking in the direction of Snowdin.
Frisk suddenly realized something. "Wait! Where's Papyrus? We should have run into him by now."
"nah. we'll get to him eventually. i convinced him to make his puzzles starting in snowdin before moving over this way instead of the other way around. i needed some time to get memories back but i still wanted to meet with you first."
She nodded. It made sense.
"want to do something different this time?" There was an odd note of humor in his tone.
She looked at him in askance. He took the look as agreement and pulled a blanket out of thin air. He immediately rolled her into it and picked up the resulting Frisk burrito. He kept walking as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
"Sans, what are you doing?"
"making pap proud."
"Wha–"
"SANS!" Papyrus called, barreling through ten trees into the clearing. "HAVE YOU FOUND A– A HUMAN!"
"yep."
"YOU'VE DONE IT! WHAT DEVIOUS JAPES DID YOU EMPLOY TO CAPTURE THE HUMAN?"
"junior jumble."
"THAT'S... THAT'S BRILLIANT! I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT IF YOU TRIED! WAIT UNTIL I TELL UNDYNE!" Papyrus was overjoyed.
"actually, can you not?"
"WHY?"
"i kind of like this one. since i captured her, i think i should get to keep her if i want."
Papyrus' eye-sockets went wide with surprise. "KEEP HER?"
"yeah. we're friends."
"FRIENDS?" She had no idea that eye-sockets could get that big.
"yep. in fact," he paused, turning to look at her meaningfully. "she's very friendly. she'd probably want to be your friend, too."
The tall skeleton looked at her hopefully.
She easily took the opportunity to skip a couple of steps. "I'd love to be your friend. You're really cool. Be my hero and teach me how to make puzzles?"
He made an airy high-pitched noise of excitement. "OF COURSE, HUMAN! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, WOULD BE DELIGHTED TO DO THAT FOR YOU!"
Sans stepped in. "if you're her hero, she'll have to stay with us too."
"GLORIOUS! I SHALL PREPARE THE COUCH FOR HER!" He bolted away.
She wriggled about until she could look Sans' in the eye-socket. "You know, I'm really glad your brother takes everything at face value. It really speeds thing up."
He nodded and resumed walking.
"Are you going to let me down?"
"nope."
She squirmed deeper into the blankets.
"you're not going to insist i put you down?"
"Nope. It's warm."
A/N: A new run has just started and everything is more or less already back to how they should be. Good for them! I wanted to show everyone how Sans memories work. Hope I did it well. Also, I really hope there is fanart somewhere of Sans carrying a Frisk blanket burrito though I doubt it. Actually, I just like the idea of any of the Undertale characters wrapped up as a blanket burrito. Maybe I should learn how to draw.
Thanks for reading.
Until next time friendlies,
Dfsemina