A Tale of Consequences
Reset?
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Chapter 7
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Flowers.
Why didn't they say anything?
Would you even remember if they had?
"Oh—hi—Sans—hi—I'm sorry I didn't realize you were coming and oooh I haven't cleaned and—tea! Do you want some tea? I think I have tea! I—I'll g-go—make some! Yes!"
Alphys wanted to dive into the garbage can and not exist until her hide stopped being an unflattering shade of orange. She felt utterly embarrassed. She wasn't sure why she—she'd essentially given him an open invitation to come visit! Why hadn't she prepared? When you have a guest that can instantaneously teleport, it's not like distance is an issue—
Where did you put that tea? You can't have a guest without tea. What would Undyne say if she knew?
It'd been so long since she'd actually seen Sans that the entire thing felt incredibly awkward. She—she didn't even have a proper table or chairs for guests—Alphys usually just ate at her desk. Or on her bed. She almost unfolded the cube just to give him somewhere to sit, but then reddened at the mere idea of another person sitting on her bed—geez calm down, he's already napped on it, remember?
Not that he seemed bothered in the slightest by her lack of preparation. He seemed content to just lean against the wall with his hands in his pockets and watch her run in confused circles like a madjick with its head on backwards. While normally such attention would make her feel uncomfortable as it was, the dead gaze in his right-socket just repeatedly sent shivers down her spine, leading her to cast glances back at him as she bustled about and banged through the cabinets looking for another container to use as a makeshift mug.
...at least he noticed and made an effort to keep it closed. Although it just made her feel terrible for staring.
...did Sans even drink tea? She suddenly realized she didn't know. She wasn't sure why she thought he would. She hoped so. She had some seaweed tea that she had been keeping for whenever Undy—er—special occasions. Yes. Special occasions of anyone visiting. Not just Undyne. Not that Undyne would visit. She hated hotland. Even the walk from the River Person's dock to the lab was enough to make her irritable and grouchy and Alphys why are you thinking about this now—
"Breathe doc."
She did. Her mind blanking as she took in a deep breath of air. Quieting the constant noise of her thoughts.
That helped. A little. And also was accompanied by a distinct sense of deja vu. One so strong it nearly made her head spin.
"How do you always dothat?" She grouched, before flushing with embarrassment. No. Bad. No grouching at the guest.
...and then immediately the battered old kettle whistled, and Alphys was sent scrambling again, juggling a proper mug (for sans as the guest, although she wished she had anything else on it besides Mew mew's adorable face blowing a kiss.) and a beaker (for herself) AND the tin of tea leaves as she rushed to remove the water from the heat.
And...of course she tripped. Tripped over her own too big too clumsy feet and tail and while she managed to keep a hold of the mug (with her claws hooked around the handle), the other two went flying. She scrunched her eyes shut, waiting for the crash of broken glass and the clang of metal rattling against the tile and the disaster of her special tea scattering everywhere and why was she so horrible at this—
And…
And…
...Nothing?
She cracked an eye open.
And then stared.
The beaker and tin were wreathed in a faint, light blue aura, suspended off the floor. A bony hand directed them up, and over, settling them down on the counter she'd been aiming for in the first place. The aura fizzled. A glowing cyan eye flashed and then faded back to a white pinprick.
She needed to convince him to let her scan that. If she could finish a profile for cyan magic, then she'd be one step closer to a full spectrum.
"Ya'know, you don't need to go outta your way for me, Alph. I was the one to waltz in uninvited."
"N-no!" She shook her head, quickly scurrying off to grab the battered old kettle off the heat, "I-I was the one to send y-your brother that m-message. I j-just f-figured w-we'd uh t-talk online s-since Snowdin is so far a-away—Well. Maybe n-not f-for you b-but…"
"You know about that huh?" Of course she remembered. It was the first time she'd ever seen pure cyan magic! The free-form telekinesis application was often misattributed to blue magic, which was often one-directional, but she'd never seen anything like the telepor—wait.
When had that been?
...she hadn't seen him since Papyrus' party right? When Undyne dragged her?
A glowing blue—no cyan eye in the dark. A lazy wave at the camera.
"Seriously Alph. Try not to think about it too hard. It'll just give you a headache." His grin looked a little more...resigned somehow, although she could swear it didn't actually change, "It's weird but you get used to it."
Why did it feel more recent than that?
"Oh god oh god. Was he hit? Asgore! You have healing magic right!?"
"I—uh—about what?" Strange. Her hands were shaking. She probably shouldn't be handling boiling hot water if they were shaking. She set the kettle on the counter.
No dust. Not yet thank god. But he wasn't moving.
"The reason you sent that message this morning." That blank eye was...intimidating. At least when he was channeling, the magic was distracting enough. Alphys looked away. Staring intently at the dirty tiles beneath her feet.
She…
She didn't want to remember.
She didn't...
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It was draining. Why? None of Asgore's hits had landed!
The King's hands were on the skeleton's shoulders.
Green magic wreathing his large paws.
Just...a nightmare right?
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Had...had he just...fallen down?
Unless she was missing something.
Was she missing something?
Without him—
Without him—she'd be the only one left.
The only one…
"S-sans…" Her voice cracked as the full implications dawned on her. If he'd fallen—and his HP just kept falling, "P-please. N-not you t-too"
Ping
Alphys jerked back to the present, shivering and shaking her head. There was a pressure about her chest, as if a large, firm hand was holding her soul. A faint blue light shown, shimmering before her chest.
And then it faded, the strength holding her on her feet fading with it. She caught herself on the counter, tea kettle forgotten.
"Sorry 'bout that." Sans took a step back, the magic fading from his eye and hand. He slid to the floor, folding his legs under him. He wasn't much taller than she was normally, but sitting on the floor put him slightly below her. It was...odd. She was used to being towered over. Not on nearly equal levels. "You looked like you were about to faint."
"T-thanks. I—I think…"
She'd…
He'd…
"Y-you'd...after...t-the king..."
Her throat closed.
She was expecting him to burst into laughter.
But he just closed his eyes.
"Yea. That was the first time." He shrugged, "This is the third time since then."
"T-third—Sans it's CRAZY." The words just tore out of her throat. She flushed, and then curled in on herself, burying her claws in the folds of her stained labcoat, "It was just a strange dream! I—I shouldn't h-have even sent anything! I don't k-know w-why I-I did. I-It's n-not l-like w-we're—"
"What? Friends?" The skeleton slipped his hands into his pocket, opening his good eye.
She flinched. But said nothing.
Said nothing. Thought nothing.
Static filled her mind.
"Look, Alph, I don't particularly care if you believe me or not—it ain't worth the effort. Not tibia downer," A bone white hand withdrew again, holding it in front of his chest, palm upward, "but there's a decent chance you won't remember anyway, next time. "
"T-then why?" She squeaked. Why her? SANS had always been the main assista—
"Because you noticed." He shrugged, "And I think I need a second opinion."
Heneeded help?
Something fluttered over San's hand. Small. No bigger than his fist. It shone with a soft light. She knew what it was immediately. A monster soul.
Manifestation. No big deal. It normally didn't happen without a FIGHT, but...not...
...monster souls should be white. Smooth. This was was littered with cracks, running through the entirety of the soul. That would have been unusual, but not impossible. Soul injuries could be visible…
But the red.
Unlike human souls, monster souls didn't...display their magical affinity.
Or they shouldn't. The soul Sans carefully cradled was littered with red. Red ran like tiny veins through the soul's scars, branching out from the very center. In the center…
Upright and beating and glowing with magic.
"T-the red s-soul." She stumbled back, only there was nowhere to stumble to. She had her back up against the cabinets. She knew that soul in a way that struck at her at the core. She'd studied it for days, while she and Sans poured over diagrams written in gibberish that she'd apparently known how to read once because it was so damn familiar.
Only...it had never happened...hadn't it?
Ping.
Glass breaking. The now blue soul flying through the air. Bone closed around it.
Then they were gone. Metal screeched behind her.
Don't ever steal from me again
"Y-y-you s-stole i-it—" She was hyperventilating now. She knew it. She knew it and she tried to breath and it didn't work. It didn't work.
"They would have all stayed dead if I hadn't." The soul fluttered. The red pulsing outward, streaming through the cracks in white. And then faded away, the manifestation ended. But that had just been an image. Inside it was still bleeding.
They would have all stayed dead.
Now they aren't.
Don't cry Alphys darling.
She...she desperately wanted to call Undyne.
"So yeah. No regrets." He opened his dark eye, revealing red magic pooling in the dark socket, threatening to drip down his skull, "Didn't expect the consequences though."
Oh god. She'd never actually seen it red before, but unrefined DT was usually the color of the soul she extracted it from. There was a long and complicated series of processing phases she usually needed in order to make it even remotely safe for her own experiments but that wasn't important now because Sans was leaking raw DT from his skull.
She'd need to dig out her specialty made bio-hazard gloves to go near it.
She'd tried so hard to save them.
She shuddered.
"I—I just. I just can't—" How. Why. This was insane.
And yet…
-static-
Breathe.
She took a deep breath.
It isn't...that again. Not the amalgamates. Not—
H-had he—fallen down?
"I—we—downstairs. Now."
Sans pushed himself to his feet, slipping a red stained hand into the pockets of his jacket.
"Lead the way, Doc."
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"T—this is impossible. The r-readings th-they must be wrong. W-we'll need to scrap this and t-try again."
Okay. This was getting silly.
"You've done it three times now Alph." Sans pointed out, trying to ignore the dread crawling up his spine being down here. They weren't even in the room they'd repurposed into a containment cell in another timeline. He was sitting on one of the many empty beds in the main hall, absently petting the Endogeny's head as it drooled all over his lap. Alphys had made displeased noises at its presence, but it refused to heed her attempts to shoo it away.
Honestly, Sans was glad it was here. The simple act of petting it seemed to ease some of the nervous flutter in his chest. Most of the dread probably wasn't even his.
"Y-you should be dead if it isn't wrong." Alphys snapped at him. And then realized she snapped at him. "I—I—oh I'm—sorry. N-not d-dead dead per say. J-just...t-the amalgamates b-began to lose coherence at around—3 DT. A-and none ever p-pushed beyond 4—a-and yours i-isn't even denatured. It's raw and...and..."
"I got the gist, Alph." Sans shrugged, scratching the Endogeny behind the—ears? He thought they might have been ears once. "But if you get the same answer three times, sometimes you gotta start considering it's true, eh?"
"Your soul is currently sitting at a 5, Sans!" She waved the tablet frantically, where it was being fed information from the more mobile monitoring equipment on the small cart beside the bed "It's overflowing. I don't—I can't—it just doesn't make sense! Somehow the magical focus in your eye is managing to process the soul's raw DT into a more physical red-magic based form, but even that isn't enough to lower your levels back down to even moderately safe—"
The pressure in his skull was deepening with every word she said, and he could feel the build up behind the closed eye. Well. At least they wouldn't have to wait too long for the sample.
He nudged the Endogeny's head off his lap, much to the...dog?'s displeasure. It whined at him, but ended up resting it on the bed anyway. The bed was at about the thing's shoulder height. Not that size was too much of an obstacle to something so...amorphous.
"Doc? I appreciate the worry, but I'm just happy to be holding together. " Dust. Slipping through a child's fingers. Think you can last?
He hadn't survived past day three. Who knows, she might still be right.
"H-how are y-you s-so calm?" Clatter. Crack. Her shaking claws slipped. The tablet rattled against the tile floor. Green error messages began flashing across the shattered screen. The sudden sound had startled the Endogeny, the large amalgamate making gargled barks and rocketing out to one of the nearby hallways.
Heh. Calm?
How many times had she asked him that question now?
Sans slid off the bed, peeling the tiny censors away from his skull as he did. The magic-conductive gel felt cold when exposed to the air. He knelt down, knees scraping against the tile floor.
"Honestly?" The other monster stared uncomprehending at the tablet he was holding out to her, "I'm just too much of a lazybones to worry about myself."
There were more important things, after all.
"I—I—B—but…" Alphys tentatively accepted it, running a claw across the large crack in the screen. "It-it's so much. I—already feel like I watched you die. And s-stuff like this...makes me think it'll happen a-again."
You want to tell her it'll be okay.
"It'll work out, Alph. I—"
He refused to make another promise. Even if it would probably make her feel better.
SANS! I HEARD YOU WERE IN TROUBLE.
His counter was up to three, and he already felt like he was stuck.
Alphys took a deep breath when he didn't offer anything more, pinching her nose. He could tell she was counting. Trying to talk the panic down.
What else was there for him to say?
The magic pushing against the back of his skull had been steadily increasing, but now he could feel it beading under his closed eyesocket, beginning to leak through.
Looked like time was about up. At least this would probably distract her.
"Uh. Doc? You wanted a sample right?"
"I—I—ah! Yes!" That startled her out of her funk. It always had. She scrabbled to place the broken tablet on the cart, snatching a pair of heavy reinforced gloves and slipping it over her clawed hands. "H-how long has it been? T-twenty minutes? I—I didn't expect the build up to be this fast."
"It comes and goes." He'd be out of her easy reach if he sat back on the bed, so he just sank back onto the floor. He didn't want her reaching with the metal implement she was using to carefully scrape the near-liquid magic from bone into a containment jar. "Hey, Alph? Is this stuff dangerous?"
"H—huh?" The metal tool got dangerously close to the socket. While it was technically empty, Sans didn't like the idea of something poking about in there. It was his head, thank you. "O-oh. The gloves. Uhm. Well. Sort of? A portion could b-be absorbed t-through contact, but n-not enough to c-cause a notable difference in someone's l-levels. N-not without prolonged exposure, or accidental ingestion. I—I'm just—being careful."
So...Pap was likely alright. That was good. His brother had been acting weird this morning. And he'd routinely come in contact with the stuff as he healed, but Sans supposed it was quite handy Papyrus favored gloves.
...Except that second time. When Sans had woken him before he had a chance to get ready for the day. Bone white fingers had come away red.
It felt like forever before Alphys pulled away, screwing the cap tightly onto the container she'd been collecting the nearly-liquid magic into. It started humming as soon as the lid clicked. A soul container. His skull still faintly burned where it had been scraped away. At least the build-up seemed to have eased. Damn this was annoying. It seemed like it got worse each time.
"I—I'll need to do some m-more tests, b-but s-so far it seems consistent w-with my observations on determination. I-it probably wouldn't hurt to use a pad to absorb the overflow but i-it should destabilize fairly quickly o-once removed f-from the source. I-it's not bleeding from anywhere else, is it?"
"Nah. Just the eye." Unless he got hurt, but she didn't necessarily need to know that part. It would make her ask why.
You consider being honest.
No one needed to know the entire truth.
The pressure began to build again.
He would stop them before they reached Snowdin.
Over.
And over.
If he needed to.
"S-sans! H-here." She was offering him a folded piece of white cloth. Probably to wipe away the new flow of red currently rolling down his cheek, "W-why is it—oh! Oh why did you take off the monitors—I-it's—gotta be the focus—shunting—"
He took it from her, pressing the soft gauze against bone to help soak up the near-liquid magic. Hadn't they just gotten rid of most of it? "Doc?"
Alpyhs had bustled over to the monitoring equipment, and was frantically fiddling with it "Ah—dang—I don't think I can—not without the tablet—ooooh. FINE."
She spun on her heel and stalked back towards him. If Sans had an eyebrow he would be raising it. Instead he just furrowed his skull and tilted his head, "What s'up doc?"
"You—just—keep doing what you were doing!"
Yellow magic sparked around her claws.
What? What had he been doing?
The magic around the sparking claws began to solidify into yellow glass.
"The thing! Something caused the increase in volume. Keep doing it!"
You think about a dust covered scrap of purple cloth.
The pressure behind his eye pulsed sharply. Sans winced, squeezing the gauze between palm and skull.
Knock, Knock.
But nobody came.
...why did he suddenly think of the door-lady?
You think about a sunset you don't remember.
Pulse. It felt like his skull was about to burst. The gauze was too full. It was leaking between his fingerbones now.
"O-okay! I—I've got it! T-that's enough!"
An ink stained photograph, bleeding from a scrawled promise.
"S-sans! S-stop!"
-Blackness. Had he fainted again?-
Snap.
The pressure eased.
He deflated, slouching back against the heavy frame behind him. His shaking hand met tile, the same grooved and chipped and probably not the best maintained. He was lucky he was already sitting on the floor.
Everything was black.
"Oh god—oh god—are you okay!?" A faint glimmer of yellow in the black. Felt like Alph's magic. Nervous.
Sans winced against the headache that returned in a full force, rushing to fill the void.
"Think so. Are my eyelights out?"
"I—yes—both are dark. Y-you've done it before on purpose, r-right?"
"Not this time." He grunted, trying to tease out a spark of yellow magic. Mixing the perception-based magic usually cleared it up enough to make it bearable.
Nothing.
He defaulted to cyan.
Still nothing.
Even with his main affinity, his magic wouldn't respond.
Well. That was a problem.
"W—what was that? Y-you—that completely overloaded both of your magical foci! I-I had considered your body was overloading your right-focus, which would explain the bleed-over but—how did the levels surge so much to knock out both?"
"You asked them to keep doing it."
He heard her gasp as a sharp intake of breath. Sans sighed and closed his eyes. They were useless right now anyway. At least until he stopped feeling like a fire had just swept through his soul and charred everything black. Overload. Sounded about right.
He hadn't felt this bad since he'd first managed one of the blasters. Raw. Aching. And just overall burned out. Like the stove after Pap's first few cooking attempts, when the entire room was perpetually covered in a thin layer of soot. From boiling water. Sans never had understood it. His brother was talented.
"Them?!" She squeaked.
"What? You think I can be that determined alone?" He wanted to laugh. It was so obvious now.
That focus. The constant push forward. The pressure to continue. A pressure so heavy it overwhelmed him at times.
"T-they—it's listening!?"
"It's a living soul, doc. It ain't gonna stop existing just because it's hitching a ride."
Ain't that right kiddo?
Flowers.
Why didn't I say anything?
All I seem to do is hurt you.
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A/N: Hopefully some of the weirdness makes sense now! Don't worry, Sans' magic will be working once the focus recovers a bit. They just…overdid it. It's actually happened before, Frisk just managed to stop before he fainted this time.
As for anyone wondering why Frisk stayed with Sans despite the reset. I'm not sure if it'll get properly explained in story, but think about where Sans teleported to at the end of Continue. And where he keeps waking up. We already know some things stay the same there despite the resets.
Reviews and comments are always appreciated!
