When Sans stepped out of his room, he also looked wildly throughout the house for Papyrus. Since it was so late in the day, and since from what he'd seen Papyrus was always so busy, it was unlikely that he would find him here. All the same, he was eager to find him. He didn't know what he would do yet-it depended on how he was feeling and how this version of his little brother was acting-but he knew whatever it was would make his day. Sans poked around the house looking for traces of him, traces of Papyrus and of his own alternate self which he had seen only through a blurry screen.
It wasn't just out of his own curiosity; unlike the Sans of this world, no one had graciously left hints for what he should do to blend in. He had a few ideas from watching this world, but it was a limited view. Just from the house alone, though, he could tell things were radically different from his own world. For one thing, he would never have picked out the silly-looking carpet, and he knew Papyrus wouldn't have either. That and everything else about the decor choices made the house almost unrecognizable. His old one was so austere.
There was a mess in the kitchen, too, which surprised him. He had no idea which of them had been cooking, but it smelled faintly of garlic in that part of the house, and there were some uncooked noodles still on the floor. Come to think of it, the mess looked recent. There was still a pot on the stove, a little bit of water left inside, although it wasn't boiling anymore. Pieces of vegetable were scattered on the counter. It was unlike Papyrus to let a mess go uncleaned, even if he himself refused to become a maid no matter the universe; maybe he had to go somewhere in a hurry.
There wasn't too much to comment on otherwise, except for how different the styles were. There was still a rock in the living room, although this one was covered in sprinkles. "heya bub," he said. The rock ate sprinkles and didn't reply to him, moving a little bit to the left. Sans sneered; standoffish bastard. Some things stayed the same no matter what world he was in, eh.
Papyrus' room was locked, which disappointed him greatly. Although all the signs telling him to keep out were... interesting. He think he remembered having signs like this when he was a teenager. Obviously not by the time they moved to Snowdin. He was still chuckling about this by the time he stepped outside. But when he stepped outside, all of that stopped. Instead, he stared at the ceiling for a long while, his jaw (if he had one) slack.
He was staring at the ceiling for so long because he realized in another second that there was no ceiling. He blinked several times, seeing a sky of blue and white clouds drifting lazily overhead. A blue that seemed to go on forever, no cavern walls cutting it off. A blue that couldn't be reached no matter how high somebody threw you, that couldn't be touched even if you yourself flew up to it. There was a bright light from somewhere, and it illuminated the whole street in a warm way that magic light couldn't do.
The wind that blew through him was also warm.
He knew where this was. He knew what that was. Above him right now was the sky, a sky that he'd never seen for himself, only in books stacked in piles at that moth-eaten library.
In his head, he said it. I'm on the surface. Everybody was on the surface. All around him was a city, full of monsters that kindly ignored him and chatted with friends as they walked down streets lit by sunlight. There was no cold and no snow, there was no screaming and no ruins.
From where he stood, Sans was faintly shaking. There was an awful moment where he feared he might fall into that sky if he didn't hold onto the ground tight enough. Awful moment as it was, it was soon replaced by a faintly real smile on his part, as he continued to look. Then, surely conscious of what an idiot he was starting to look like, he directed his eyes back towards the city around him. He was sure that he would've been living in Snowdin with just some cosmetic changes, but this wasn't even a wintry town.
Was this a world where the war never happened? Did that explain all the... the... Things he couldn't describe right now? All of the differences between this world and his. He supposed it was possible; he hadn't expected such a huge change, though. It made it difficult to proceed from this point. Was there even another human like his? Was Asgore still the king? Did he still know Alphys? How did things work around here, on the surface, between humans and monsters? All of these questions that he would have to get answered quickly before he was found out. Right now Sans really, really didn't want to be found out.
He was still thinking it over when he heard a "Hi, Sans!" From across the street. It was one of the monsters passing by, one that he didn't recognize but looked to be a Snowdrake. Normally he would be shocked and irritated by the gall of the monsters here, as nobody in Snowdin got his attention unless they wanted to get a beating. But now he gave a stunned wave; this at least satisfied the monster and they continued on their way happily. Well so far things weren't that bad; he had gotten over his first hurdle, and he had even met Papyrus yet.
That wasn't going to last long. "BROTHER!"
Hearing that voice -that voice- even knowing what he did about this world already, Sans froze where he stood. His magic, impotent as it was, flared up in his body and his eyes changed as a result, one of them flashing red. He struggled to suppress it before turning, grateful at how easy it was to keep the smile on his face. He could see the Papyrus of this world running towards him, dressed in his ridiculous costume. There weren't as many spikes as his own. He tried to ease the tension in his shoulders, suddenly anxious that this one would know something was wrong. "h-hey bo-" shit, shit, "Papyrus."
"YOU'RE UP EARLIER THAN USUAL!" Papyrus said with a big smile on his face, "I'M PROUD OF YOU!"
Really? He was proud of him for getting up early? Not even that early, seeing as the sky was so bright already. The immediate contrast between this world's Papyrus and his own was enough to make him laugh, "well uh, all that water on my window earlier woke me up."
Papyrus frowned a little, and the tension rooted in his back- did he say something wrong? "SANS, IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR THROAT? YOU SOUND DIFFERENT."
The heart in his not-chest was already beating too hard, and Sans cursed himself repeatedly for being this easy to scare. There was a very easy explanation for why his voice sounded different, he already had it in mind, in fact it had already been said by "his" little brother. But he didn't reply for what he felt was way too long. "uhhh..." Calm down. He didn't know. He was too stupid to know. After all, it was Papyrus. "uhh i... think I might be coming down with a cold. so. so. yeah. sore throat or something."
"I WARNED YOU THAT IT WAS COLD AND FLU SEASON," Papyrus began to say, as Sans let out a deep breath that he had been holding in. He hoped that nobody would notice how much he was sweating. "OR IS IT ALLERGY SEASON? MAYBE YOU HAVE ALLERGIES?"
"allergies?" He better not be allergic to anything on the surface; that would really suck. "i dunno b-ro. do I have allergies?"
"I CERTAINLY HOPE NOT?" Papyrus was saying, eyes wide at the thought. "YOU SHOULD STAY AWAY FROM ALL THOSE SURFACE PLANTS JUST IN CASE, THOUGH." He gave a shifty glance towards the grass that grew between the sidewalk and the street, and in the yards of many of the houses around this area. There were flowers blooming in a lot of them, flowers he had also never seen in person before, ones that didn't mock you as you walked by.
Sans smirked. "i have a feeling it's just a cold, boss." Shit, why couldn't he get that right?
The effect on Papyrus was instantaneous, and Sans wished with all his might that he could take it back. "SANS! DID YOU JUST CALL ME BOSS?"
All he could do was sputter ineffectively. "uh."
"YOU'VE NEVER DONE THAT BEFORE!"
"uhhhh."
"DOES THIS MEAN I'M YOUR BOSS?"
"uhh?"
"HMMMM." Papyrus made another shifty glance to the side. "YOU'RE BEING EXTREMELY NONVERBAL. COULD IT BE? YOU ARE FINALLY RECOGNIZING HOW AWESOME I AM AND IT HAS PUT YOU BEYOND WORDS?"
The tension suddenly broke for him, and Sans burst out laughing, almost doubling over with the strength of it. This Papyrus-this Papyrus-ah, he was too good. He wanted to flush his head down a toilet. He wanted to noogie him until he begged him to let go-if only they were the same height. "ha ha ha! nope it's definitely just a cold, ahahahaha!"
Again, as his laughter died down, he worried that this behavior was out of character for the Sans of this world. Papyrus looked some odd mixture of hurt and something else, and Sans had never seen his Papyrus make such a face ever. "ehhh, uh, maybe someday buddy."
"YOU DEFINITELY SEEM SICK TODAY," his older brother said with a sage nod, returning to normal. "YOU SHOULD DRINK MORE FLUIDS!"
If he was sick back at home, his own little brother would start yelling at him about how inconvenient it was, as if it was his own fault that he had caught some virus when the whole town was a dump. And being sick wouldn't keep him from sentry duty. Did he even have sentry duty in this world? What did he even do? From across the street, another monster called to him to say hello and Sans waved at them with another glance towards Papyrus. "i'll... get on that. what's... uh, on the agenda today? i could just sleep in."
"REALLY? BUT YOU ALREADY MADE SO MUCH PROGRESS WAKING UP TODAY," Papyrus said, and it almost got on San's nerves. He wasn't that lazy, if only because no one ever let him be. Heck, he had built a machine that took him across dimensions (albeit that wasn't what he intended it for at first,) waking up in the afternoon was actually a step backwards. "BUT MAYBE REST IS BETTER?" Papyrus scratched his chin. "I'M GOING TO THE HUMAN STORES TO FIND THIS 'NOODLE AISLE' THAT I'VE HEARD SO MUCH ABOUT! I'LL PICK UP SOME ORANGE JUICE FOR YOU!"
Holy Jesus. "aw jeeze, thanks papyrus."
"YOU'RE WELCOME! I SHOULD GET GOING! UNDYNE WANTS TO COME WITH ME SO I DON'T GET 'CREAMED' BY THE HUMANS OR SOMETHING? I MIGHT BE THERE A WHILE, BUT I'LL SEE YOU WHEN I GET BACK, BROTHER!"
Undyne was here. And she still talked to Papyrus. Knowing that much was almost enough to put Sans in a bad mood, although everything that he had heard from this goofy taller skeleton was giving him some pretty good clues as to how things worked here. Maybe even this world's Undyne wasn't as bad, wasn't as cruel, as the one that he remembered. He grinned and nodded, trying to look cheerful, "okay. see ya paps." He just had to not choke on the nickname part. Maybe he could practice while Papyrus was away. He waved as this version of his brother walked down the street, until he disappeared from his sight around the corner.
Then he stuck his hands deep in the pockets of his hoodie and let out a deep breath. Second hurdle passed. It was okay. He could do this. Nobody was going to know that anything was different. Or even if they suspected, they wouldn't know that he was a different person entirely.
Judging by how suspicious his brother was of plants, Sans was going to hazard a guess that they had not been on the surface for too long. Maybe they were set free somehow. Maybe the kid that fell into this world was actually dead, and the King's plan did work after all, although he would've expected this world to look more like a wasteland if it had. Whatever the case, it was nice. "lessee..." he muttered to himself. "let's look for familiar faces while we're up, shall we?"
All he really wanted to do was wander around the city, keeping a snapshot in his mind of where their house was situated so that he could get back there before Papyrus returned.
As he was walking he thought that he heard somebody call this place "New New Home"? Asgore was probably still the king. Not everything was going to be as nice as this neighborhood, surely. But... from the look and feel of things, everybody was nonetheless a lot friendlier. Didn't matter who they were, whenever they spotted Sans the monster would give a wave, or call out a hello, or some other greeting that he was only starting to get into a routine of returning, although at first it really caught him off guard. Everybody knew him back in Snowdin too, but this was because he was the brother of a royal guardsman, Papyrus. And because he had a penchant for picking on anything smaller than him.
Looks like even this version of himself was friendlier. As he walked, smelling pleasant smells and enjoying the warm sunlight, Sans wondered how that version of him was doing in his Snowdin. Had he met Papyrus yet? The thought made him chuckle, quietly and to nobody. That must be a pretty nasty shock after living in this place.
He would feel bad, if it was even possible for him to feel bad, except that while that version of himself was there, he was here. Eh.
After a while of walking, he was surprised to see the laboratory that rose above some of the other houses, looking a little bit like the one that he remembered if not for the fact that it was clean and not covered with soot from Hotland-although, seeing as it wasn't in that magma infested hell in the first place, that only seemed natural. Despite the knotting in his stomach, Sans made the decision to walk up and knock on the door. He just had to know what everybody was like, after seeing Papyrus. Surely the Alphys who answered would not be as... bad.
Sure enough, she actually answered the door instead of shouting from the other side of it or passing notes. The little yellow lizardlike creature looking back at him blinked several times through her thick glasses, while all Sans did was look her over. Finally she said, in a tremulous voice, "O-oh, hey Sans!"
"sup."
"I w-wasn't expecting you today. I-is there something you need?"
What was up with that stammer? Was she afraid of him, or just afraid in general? Sans grinned a little bit wider. It was a nice reversal. "nope. just thought I'd drop by and say hi." Was that not something that the Sans of this world did either? It figures if he didn't want to spend time with this loser. The only reason that he knew her in his world was because she was the most useful of any of the monsters. If not for her help, he would never have gotten the machine running, after all. Some of that gratitude, he was all right with letting it spill over onto this world's Alphys. So for now, the smile was genuine.
To his amusement, she smiled back. "W-well, hello! U-uh, did you want to come i-inside, or-?" She took a step back from the door, allowing him a little bit of a view into her laboratory house. It was pretty messy, from what he could tell, which was also the same as his Alphys. Friendlier or not, should he really risk going inside? There had to be reason why she was so twitchy.
"actually..." He paused, giving a shrug. "i've been feeling a little out of sorts today."
"R-really?" Her expression went blank, and then sympathetic- albeit also confused. "Why's that? I-is there anything I can h-help with?"
"well that depends," he said. How much help she was going to be would directly correlate with how much of this world she knew and how much of it she was willing to say without wanting anything in return- to say nothing of asking him why he wanted to know, or why he didn't know it already. He was going to have to play it by ear. He could already feel his heart rate going up, and just hoped that nobody would notice. "sure. i can step in for a moment."
Alphys stepped obediently back to give him room to walk in, and Sans shuffled inside. It was weird; only wearing slippers, he could feel every change in the ground that he walked on. This house was covered in tiles. It was probably easier to clean that way, and knowing her as he did she probably got crumbs everywhere. He kept a lookout for TV Dinners and junk food splattered and crushed on the floor, although if she had any hard lemonade lying around he would be happy to take it off her hands for her.
While that was a no to the TV Dinners. Instead, what Sans saw were empty cartons of microwave ramen littering every surface possible, although there were stains on some of the surfaces indicating that she had been trying to clean up recently, or at least put some of the trash away. On a desk was a half-finished two liter of something yellow and fizzy titled /Lanta Cola/, which was, to his disappointment, probably not hard lemonade. It was just like his own house; in layout it was identical, but in decor...
He couldn't help a grin, relaxing just a little bit. "nice place."
"A-aha, thank you," Alphys said as she shut the door behind them. "I-I-I'm sorry for the mess, you see I didn't know a-anyone was going to come over today."
"i've seen worse," was all he said with a shrug. "it's a place to live, am I right?"
Her response to that took a second, which he spent sitting down on the nearest chair he could find, sweeping a few empty cartons off. Seriously, was he saying something that the other version of himself wouldn't? Alphys was so ill at ease. "Um- right?"
"right," he repeated, scratching the back of his head.
Finally she seemed to calm down a little bit, taking a deep breath and following him deeper inside. "Is there anything you want? I-I mean to e-eat or drink...?" As Sans shook his head, she nodded and then asked, "S-so... uh, then, what c-can I help you with, possibly?"
Here came the hard part. He had to decide how to phrase this in a way that wasn't too suspicious. Trying to keep the smile neutral, Sans uttered, "uhhh i guess i just find it... hard to believe that we're on the surface. it's… uh, taking a while to sink in." That was a good place to start, right? Anyway, it was true. But it was partially because he had no idea how they ended up on the surface to begin with.
"Well it wasn't that long ago," Alphys said, some of the tremors in her voice gradually smoothing out. "It's only been a few weeks, after all."
"a few weeks..." That struck a chord with him for some reason, but he would not dwell on it yet. "yeah. not a long time." Time to probe a little further. "and... to be honest... at the time, i didn't think that we would ever..."
When Alphys took over, Sans let out a breath that had building in his chest, "Yeah, I- I kind of think no one really believed that the barrier would be broken. And if we did, I certainly didn't think it would be this way. ...I am glad it was, though. Being able to actually live n-near humans, instead of destroying them all..."
"uh yeah, that part's great," he said, perhaps too fast. "although also... extremely hard to believe, if you get what I'm saying."
"No, I... Understand," Alphys said with a small smile. How understanding this one was. Or at least, how eager to be a yes-man. Yes-woman. Something like that. The other Alphys was the same, provided the person speaking to her had an advantage. "You kind of feel like you'll wake up one morning and it will all be gone. We'll be at war."
Sans had actually had that kind of feeling before, but that probably wasn't what Alphys was talking about. "...yeah."
"But I don't think that will ever happen! After all, we have a pretty good ambassador," she was chuckling. "We don't have to worry about the humans anymore. We should thank Frisk for that."
Everybody in this world was somebody that he knew. So when that name came up, which he had never heard before, like an idiot Sans asked, "Who's Frisk?"
And cold spiked through his spine as he realized his mistake, Alphys blinking slowly at him through her glasses. "They're the...? Human that I was just talking about?"
"OH." He grinned big, trying to make it look as if he had just woken up, trying not to show how badly he was shaking. "sh- crap, i completely forgot... their name. wowww i am really out of it today, aren't i?"
"I-I-I mean, you do sound a little bit different. Are you coming down with something?"
Was everybody that he met going to comment on his voice? Sans took another deep breath. He tried to laugh, but it came out a little bit shaky. "ha ha, maybe. papyrus said... he was going to bring me back some juice from the store. maybe i should check to see if he- came back."
"Oh..." Standing up, clasping her hands together, Alphys put on a smile that was even faker than his. "W-w-was there anything else that you wanted to talk about...?"
Not up to this not up to this. "there was, but uh. uh, jeeze, just about everything is falling out of my head lately. hey, uh, if you could-give me directions to... toriel's place, that would be great," he said somewhat hoarsely. "can't seem to figure out where it is again." Unless she was also a crazy woman sitting behind a door all day.
But Alphys didn't regard the request with any suspicion, only affected by the first slip-up. "O-oh! R-right, this place is... pretty big, so I understand! It's not far though. It's a few blocks away fr-from Asgore's castle, um- let me just-" She glanced left and right. "... Get you the address."
Asgore's castle. Greeeeaaat.
Sans gritted his teeth as he continued to smile, no longer speaking while she scribbled the address down on a sheet of paper. He was glad that he had magic to mask a little of the hostility he felt for this stammering, sweating monster. When she handed him the note, he made his grin bigger, "thanks a bunch."
"N-no problem!" Alphys nodded, finally letting out a breath and trembling less. "Feel better, Sans."
"i'll try," he said with a mocking salute, which fired off all kinds of alarm bells when she looked at it strange. "...see you later, alphys." Get out of there get out of there get out of there.
The worst part of that all was probably that he couldn't even laugh that the kid's name was, apparently, something as nonsensical as Frisk. He was too busy trying to regain his composure before he even tried to find Toriel, taking deep breaths behind the first house he could reach. Hoping that he didn't ruin it all. Going over multiple scenarios in his head as to how he most certainly did not just ruin it all by showing he didn't even know the human's name.
Idiot.
He'd be more careful. He swore he'd be more careful from now on. When he visited Toriel, and found the twerp apparently named Frisk, he'd be more careful. He'd make his own list of things to do and not do here.
Then he'd start having his fun.
Just had to be more careful, that was all.
Author's Note: I've decided, with the current speed I'm writing chapters at, to tentatively make updates a bi-weekly thing. So instead of just updating on Sunday, I'll be updating on Sundays and Thursdays for now. Today is a little early, seeing as its just past midnight here. I feel so unprofessional ;w; Anyway, I hope you enjoy UF!Sans dicking around.
Again apologies to the people who left reviews and FF ate them. It seems to be a larger and more widespread problem then the occasional glitch, now. 0 0
Next Chapter: Should Have Kept that Hot Cat
