The problem with most of Papyrus' day job, the skeleton reckoned, was that so very little of it was actual puzzles. He knew how to perform the terrible alchemy of turning plain English into inscrutable legalese, he'd grown used to judges (and the local judges has grown used to him), and he was well-versed in putting cases together, but the job had lost any joy it ever had. Even complicated civil suits weren't 'here's why this hitherto-unknown fact is true', they were 'here's all the reasons why this extremely obvious fact is true and you should give my client lots of money for it'. The Dreemurrs really did protect their copyrights and likenesses from corporate ill-doers, even in places like China where the national government had specifically forbade cheesing Their Majesties off but local governments tended to overlook it. (The Chinese government had taken it as a dire threat when the Dreemurrs first sent, of all things, a skeleton to represent their interests. More than once, Papyrus had wished that he could change form like his dad, but only a few monsters could substantially alter what they looked like.)

So, when the Queen of Monsters called him to the school with a disturbed, puzzled note in her voice, his ribcage leapt for joy. Finally! Something cool to do! The Great Papyrus packed up his reams of paperwork (the Harbatiflobber case could wait- it was Friday, after all), leapt into his car, and drove from his office at exactly the speed limit, passing school buses going the other way. Toriel was at her desk as promised, although there was substantially less paperwork on it, and her face was scrunched up into a deep, concerned frown. Papyrus felt kind of guilty at being happy for something interesting to do, but he was around guilty people all day so it didn't affect him much.

"Thank you for coming, Papyrus," Toriel said as politely as she could, although a frown of dismay crept across her large snootle. "There is a... problem with some of my students. There have been some unpleasant accusations of activities occurring away from school grounds. I would like you to meet a group of parents and children on the third floor of Grillby's tomorrow for lunch," she explained, handing him a list of names and phone numbers, carefully written down in exceptional longhand. A human would have emailed him, Papyrus realized; then again, a human would have had this conversation over the phone. "I would go myself, but..." She shook her large head. "Humans find me too imposing, and I do not wish to inadvertently force a false confession." Her eight-foot height was part of that, but adults were scared of her because of her children; children were scared of her because she was the principal. But she was only made of magic and softness, and she found it mildly amusing being constantly feared by people who could easily lift her with one hand. Papyrus- who was physically composed of bone minerals, like his brother- was among the densest of monsters.

"NEVER FEAR, YOUR MAJESTY! I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, WILL SOLVE YOUR PUZZLE! PLEASE, TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU KNOW, AND I SHALL SOLVE IT IN... HMM, WHAT'S LESS THAN A JIFFY BUT MORE THAN TWO SHAKES?"

Toriel chuckled, her mood lightening a bit. "No, Papyrus, I do not wish to color your investigation with my own thoughts. The only thing I will tell you is that I have discussed the matter with my students, and all three of them seem honest." Toriel's combination of superhuman hearing and long exposure to children made her an excellent- but not infallible- lie detector.

So Papyrus was left to mull over the unknown mystery, although there wasn't anything to mull yet. That night, Sans read him the true bedtime story of the bunny monster who laid eggs, and he woke up for a fun-filled day of puzzle solving. It was a wonderful, sunny day for a drive to Grillby's, totally unlike the cold, pouring rain that had hammered the entire East Coast all day Thursday. The place was crowded as usual, but of course the skeleton got the bone-white glove treatment.

"It wasn't me. I don't even know where you live!" Papyrus heard a boy protest as the elevator to the VIP section opened. Papyrus always made a point of being right on time, and he was used to dealing with both early and late clients; these four families, sitting in the center, were all early, both lured by Toriel's promise of a compensated meal at Grillby's and worried for the sake of their children. Four families? Papyrus was briefly puzzled before the puzzle began; Toriel had only mentioned three.

"Then he was wearing your clothes!" a girl replied, just as loudly, before her father shushed her and pointed to the approaching skelawyer. Of course Papyrus was wearing his lawyer suit; he was, after all, appearing on behalf of Her Majesty and needed to look the part.

"Greetings, humans," Papyrus began in his lawyer voice. "Your principal has sent me to end this mystery and discover the truth, whatever it may be."

"There's no mystery," a large man said. "We just have a man who can't admit when his daughter's lying through her teeth."

"Those plants were destroyed, and she wasn't dirty!" her father shouted in response. "Now, maybe she didn't see things right, but somebody is harassing her!"

"Ahem," Papyrus said. "Can we please begin the introductions before the accusations and the recriminations? As you know, I am Papyrus, representative of the Dreemurrs and solver of puzzles." It had taken a lot of annoyed judges for Papyrus to stop introducing himself as 'The Great'. "There are more people here than I had expected." Among the group sat four boys and one girl who were all a bit younger than Frisk, and the skeleton idly wondered if they were in any of her classes. The girl pulled on the chair of the boy next to her to help scoot it over, and Papyrus pulled up his own chair to sit.

"Oh, I should have called you," a woman said. She and her husband were dressed to the nines; probably not Dreemurr or Trump wealthy, but clearly rich. Their similarly dressed son sat brooding between them, a small scowl on his face, arms folded. "My name is Vanna Carslyle. This is my husband, Bruce, and my son, Shane." Papyrus surmised that Shane's allowance was probably only four orders of magnitude less than Frisk's.

"Hector Smith," a man introduced himself, holding out his strong hand for Papyrus to shake. Papyrus was certain he worked with his hands every day, although he surely augmented his trade with magic. "My wife, Barbara, her son, Chris, and our son, Jonathan." Papyrus wondered what having the name of 'John Smith' would do for the kid's future life, but it couldn't be any worse than having a half-brother five years older than he was.

"Robert Gustav," the large man said. "And this is Michael. Our wife's at home with our other children." Robert was fat but not slovenly; his son was slovenly but not fat.

"Max Longfellow," the girl's father said, also shaking Papyrus' bony hand. "This is Debbie. These boys have been giving her trouble." Max was another blue-collar sort, but Debbie was dressed somewhat like Frisk on a formal occasion, although Papyrus would surely never tell Frisk that.

"Drinks are ready," the waitress said before anyone could respond to that, having taken their orders before Papyrus got there. "Waters, orange juice for you and you, vodka, and hot chocolate and whipped cream for the two of you," the waitress said, handing cups to Debbie and the boy next to her. "Sure you don't want anything else?" she asked him.

"Yeah, I'm fine, I ate before," the kid replied. He looked a bit dressed-down for the occasion, in just a shirt and jeans, but at least they fit him perfectly. "We had a big breakfast." Debbie smiled at him.

"That's William," Debbie said. "His dad has to work a lot. He doesn't go to our school." William nodded at the skeleton, as both his hands were occupied holding the cup. He drank slowly, savoring the taste.

"Glad you're here," the waitress said to Papyrus, with a light subtext of before these people killed each other. "The usual?"

"The usual," Papyrus said, somewhat wistfully. Grillby could cook fire spaghetti that Papyrus could never even come close to. "With ice water." The waitress left, glad that she was, in fact, getting paid enough to deal with this. "Now, before this gathering dissolves into a horrible mess of threats and violence that is best resolved with the presence of a bailiff, I would like to know the story as the accuser tells it. In chronological order, as you experienced it." That last sentence was commonly used for rememberer testimony.

"Go on, Debbie," Max said. "Do Wednesday and Thursday. I'll talk about Friday."

"Michael egged our house before Dad got home," Debbie explained. "Then he ran down the street before I could get my shoes on."

"It wasn't me, I don't know where you live," Michael explained again.

"It was you!" Debbie replied angrily. "It was your shoes and your hair! I know it was you!"

"You can't tell from shoes!" Michael replied.

"CEASE!" Papyrus demanded, and they ceased. It took effort to return to his lawyer voice. "Your arguing isn't helping my puzzling. Continue... to Thursday." He made it sound like Doomsday.

"Before we do, I want to explain something about where we're at," Max said. "We live in kind of a rural part of town. Streets are safe, Debbie's out on her bicycle a lot, and we've got plenty of land and a big dirt field outside our back porch. I keep saying I'll plant something there, but I never do. Sorry, keep going, Debbie."

"On Thursday, a boy was out back of our house, smashing our long flower planter. When I heard him, he ran across the field, and he had his hood up, but his clothes looked just like clothes I saw him wear," she said, pointing at John.

"This was when I was home," Max explained. "I tried to find him, but I couldn't tell which way he went," he lamented. "It's a good thing my daughter could fix that whole planter back together again."

"Can I say somethin' now?" Chris said, turning to the skeleton. "He was with me. My friends were all there. Whoever you saw, and whatever clothes he was wearing, it wasn't him."

"You're very nice to hang out with your kid brother like that," Bruce pointed out.

"You kiddin'? He's a spellcaster," Chris explained. Human mages were more powerful and flashy than monsters, unable to do certain subtle things without long verbal spells, but at Chris's age he loved powerful and flashy stuff. And his little half-brother would, Papyrus reasoned, cast spells their father wouldn't.

The waitress came by with their food then, serving plates of fish and steak and lobster, and, to Papyrus' surprise, his fire spaghetti. Then again, Grillby had probably started on it once he saw the skeleton walk in the door.

"And what of... Friday?" Papyrus asked, as the group dug into their meals.

"I got a call from Toriel yesterday morning," Max explained. "She warned me that somebody would set a trap for my daughter, dumping ink in her hair, just when she'd gone over to meet her friend after school." In another timeline, it had been bad enough for him to call the principal; being a rememberer, she could tell him what had happened. "He'd come by about fifteen minutes before she left. He was setting up a pretty sophisticated system, right over our front door. When I saw him, he ran for a ways, then the little turd ducked behind some bushes, an old guy pointed which way he went, but I lost him. The back of his head looked just like yours," he said, glaring at Shane.

"I told you, I was playing League with my clan!" Shane replied angrily, bits of smoked herring flying from his mouth. "Do I need to get my clan leader's phone number or ask the server admins where I was?"

"That's where he is, every Friday," Vanna agreed.

"It no longer matters what anyone has to say!" Papyrus proclaimed. "For I, the Great Papyrus, know the truth!"