You feel like something is very wrong.
She could rely on facts, even here in this dark world where most people betrayed one another. Facts, after all, were more sincere than smiles. They just were a bit more difficult to determine, that was all. It took her weeks to learn enough to survive, for the most part, on her own- to not get killed at every opportunity.
An easy fact for her to figure out was that Sans, as harmless as he was, was still an asshole. That fact, she had thought, was reaffirmed today when he not only forgot to bring her some lunch (again,) but when he finally showed up at his sentry outpost with food he started eating it as if she didn't even exist. She wasn't surprised by that. She wasn't going to tolerate it, the taste of stolen sauce still on her tongue, but she wasn't surprised.
But he'd been different, and now Frisk didn't have her facts straight. She trembled where she stood, weapon out, unsure if it might be a trap. Maybe today he'd finally decided that he was sick of her and several members of the canine unit were going to come running into the trees at any moment. The smile that he was giving her was so completely alien. Intrusive thoughts whispered that she should attack now, before he did, but like usual Frisk ignored them. Still, as she faced him her SOUL burned and became visible just outside of her chest, a pale red.
Her blood was running and she took a deep breath. Surely one of them was going to attack soon, although since it was him it would probably not be a magical attack, so she could handle it. She knew she could. Sans was an easy fight, unlike everybody else. He only had 1 HP and he was unable to use magic. But that was exactly why she was so nervous. It was an easy fight, but she wasn't going to have an easy time of it. And that was even more true if he had "help" in the form of the canine unit.
Although even as her imagination was getting away with her...
Oh look, Sans is sparing you.
"i don't want to fight, kid," said the bizarre, friendly smiling Sans. "why don't you put that thing away?"
Frisk tightened her grip on the pan instead. Whatever his game was, she wasn't going to get caught in it.
Sans is still sparing you.
"please? please put that thing away, frisk," he was saying, no longer stepping forward, and the child's eyes widened. "i... know you must be upset, but i promise i'm not gonna-"
Everything came together for her, out of all the facts that she knew, and for the first time in days she spoke without being prompted as she blurted out, "You're not Sans."
Following that, there was a silence between them. The monster standing in front of her, who looked like Sans, watched her with his soothing, trying-to-reason-with-an-idiot-friendliness startled right off of his face. So she guessed that even that blurted out statement was correct. The pan went a little bit limp in Frisk's hands when she realized this, and her first scenario for why he was acting so strange was at least proven wrong. But her gaze and her mouth turned hard, her hold becoming stronger, when more scenarios filled her head. Whoever this imposter was, she wasn't going to get drawn into his game either.
The imposter didn't seem to be too upset, though, that she had found him out. "heh heh heh heh." He shoved his hands into his pockets, grinning at her. His eye wasn't the harsh, angry red that she was used to, both of them white pupils instead. Come to think of it, that had been her first clue for Frisk that something was off. She had only seen him look that way twice in all the time she'd known him. "you're pretty smart. nope, i'm not sans."
Frisk gritted her teeth, taking a step closer with the pan. But as she did, the imposter continued, "at least, i'm not the one that you know. so although my name is 'sans the skeleton,' i uh, don't think it means the same thing to you as a means to me and my friends. am i making any sense?"
The child growled at him, "No. What did you do to the real Sans?"
He laughed again, and her fear spiked as he winked lazily at her. But so did her anger. What was wrong with this guy? "it's not what i did to your sans, kiddo, it's what he did to me."
You should-
Frisk wasn't even listening to the intrusive thought; she was acting on a reflex that told her to fight dirty. She ran at the imposter Sans with the frying pan in her hand, her teeth bared. But as she ran, taking a swing at him, he suddenly wasn't in front of her anymore. "god damn," he said from behind her, and Frisk whirled on her feet, flipping lots of hair around her face. She tried again, as if encouraged by the fact that her weapon couldn't connect with anything, and again he was gone before the frying pan could make impact. "you're a little snot, arent'cha?" Again, his voice came from behind her. Frisk turned a little more slowly- she could only swing her pan for so long before her arms got tired- and this time she just ran at him.
"look bucko," he said as he disappeared from in front of her again. "this is only going to end one of two ways, and something tells me that you don't want either of those ways to happen. so why don't you put that thing away and we can talk like civil people?"
She was about to turn around and take a swing, that voice seeming a little bit closer than before, when she felt a familiar tug on the SOUL in her chest. She was just able to whirl around again and see him smiling placidly at her before, in another second, that SOUL turned blue. Suddenly unable to move froward, Frisk's body flew back several feet instead and she skidded into a tree. "!"
Seconds passed as her SOUL remained blue, and pinned to the tree by an unseen force Frisk could only growl and squirm in vain, having dropped her weapon upon impact. It was like Papyrus's attack, but clearly the direction was different. Her Sans was capable of this, too. While the child struggled and snarled, this one approached her with the smile still big on his face. "there. now was that so hard?"
"Let go of me shithead!" Frisk snapped as she tried to push herself off with her palms, only succeeding in moving a few inches before thudding back into place.
"uh wow language," the imposter Sans remarked, and Frisk let out a scream of frustration. "i'll let you down after we talk."
"No!" Frisk shouted, her voice getting louder, "Let me down now!"
"do, uh, you seriously want to keep drawing attention to yourself like that? because this place doesn't seem that kid friendly to me." At that, Frisk's struggles became smaller and she stopped screaming, although still glaring. "that's better... ? i guess."
"What do you want?" She asked, roughly throwing hair out of her face with her arms.
And he sighed. "i just wanna go home, kid. but from the look of things that seems to be nearly impossible." Frisk stopped moving, huffing and narrowing her eyes. She knew that feeling. But that was only if he was telling the truth, which she had no reason to believe when he wasn't even who he looked like. So with no input from the child, the imposter Sans went on, "uh, where do i start? your sans... is the prick that wore this coat, right?"
"Don't call him a prick, you dick!"
He laughed at her. "oh okay. the dick that wore this coat?"
"Don't call him a dick, you prick!" She accidentally smiled, and immediately forced her face back into the ugliest frown she could manage.
The imposter Sans relaxed, chuckling. "whatever he is, he... uh... listen, do you know anything about parallel worlds or alternate realities? alternate dimensions? a world aside from this one where everything is similar, but also different?"
That strange gray monster child that she saw when she was in Waterfall cropped up in her mind, but the meeting had been so terrifying that she tried to sink a little deeper into her sweater instead of responding. She could hear the imposter saying, "something tells me that you do. y'see, i come from that kind of place, originally. i'm a sans from another world, one that's... marrrginally like this one."
"That sounds like a load of b-"
"not done talking kiddo," he said, cutting in easily. Frisk gritted her teeth, but continued to listen. "your sans is a pretty smart guy. a bit smarter than most people give him credit for, i think. did you know that? ...heh ...well, anyway, he created a machine that could take him to these other worlds- or mine, anyway. Slipped me something and tossed me in here before i had the chance to figure out what was going on. meanwhile i'm guessing that he's in my world right now pretending to be me. kind of like something out of a storybook, isn't it?"
On the tree, still rooted in place, Frisk had started to curl up, knees out and heels against the bark while she folded her arms over her chest. While she stared at the ground in silence, he finally added, "otherwise how else would i know... that your name is frisk, right?" A bead of sweat appeared on his skull. "'cause it seems like that's not something he's supposed to know. the frisk in my world, though, told me their name."
That had been proof that he wasn't Sans, but that didn't mean that it was proof he was a Sans from somewhere else. Even though she'd told literally no monsters here her name, and he was still so similar to Sans despite the clear changes in personality... Taking his claim at face value also seemed stupid, except that he was also correct about one other thing. Sans- her Sans, the Sans- was pretty smart. But she didn't think that he was this smart. She didn't think that he was scientist smart. She also didn't take him for the kind of person who would just leave without warning. ... Except, that was pretty much all he ever did, now that she thought about it. Just on a smaller scale. "...Why would he...?"
"uh, i still have his note here if you wanted to read it. the short of it is that he's sick of this place, and, uh, that's an actual quote."
To that, Frisk at first had no reply. She absolutely did not want to read the note that he left; her stomach was as curled up as she was, she glared even harder than she was already glaring, as if willing daggers to fly from her eyes. No matter how hard she tried to be intimidating, though, the Sans imposter just kept up that big smile. She buried herself in her overstretched sweater. It wasn't like she could accuse him of actually being the one to drag Sans out and replace him, because honestly, who would do that? Who would willingly come here?
Before she'd even noticed, her butt was back on the ground, and the hold on her SOUL released as gravity returned to normal. No more of that blue magic was being used, and overall the imposter Sans was looking a little more tired than a moment ago. Without looking at him any further, without saying anything, Frisk snatched up the frying pan and put it back where it belonged on her person, although no longer wielding it.
"hey."
She looked up.
"wanna hear a joke?"
For the briefest of seconds, she thought that this Sans didn't look that much like hers after all, wearing a face without quite so many harsh triangles for teeth. Shooting him a look of disgust, Frisk stood up and started brushing snow off her pants. She wasn't going to dignify that question with a response; the only sound that came out of her was her stomach growling, not satisfied with the half-eaten magical hamburger, and the little grunt and cough that she made trying to cover it up.
"knock knock," the speech was punctuated by an actual knocking sound, which Sans- the fake Sans- achieved by gently rapping on his own head. Frisk looked at him in disbelief, and he added, "this is where you ask 'who's there?'"
"Go away," she snapped, walking around him. "I don't want any."
"aw c'mon kiddo," the crunching of snow Frisk heard from behind meant that he was shuffling after her. "he may have been a jerk, but i'm sure even your sans told jokes."
"Yeah, well they weren't funny," she growled. Which was a lie- only the ones that he said she was too young to understand weren't funny- but he didn't need to know that. He didn't seem the type to make those kinds of jokes anyway.
He was still following her. "hmm. well if it makes you feel better, i'm told my jokes aren't funny either."
This time Frisk looked back, though that was only to stick her tongue out at him and then keep walking. She had already picked the sentry outpost clean before he got there, and the most there was was condiment packets. Surely she could find something to eat somewhere, or if she asked really nicely Flowey would be brave enough to go buy or steal something for her instead- whichever one it was depended on how much of her hard-earned money she was willing to part with today. So while she was banging her heel against the ground, in the code she used for "get up here immediately," she unbelievably heard the imposter Sans start talking again. "okay then, what do you call a flower that kisses you?"
She turned her head half a fraction and he took that as incentive to continue. "tulips."
A pause, and then Frisk slapped her hand over her face. "That was retarded."
The voice behind her laughed anyway, although whether it was at his own joke or at her reaction she couldn't tell. Speaking of flowers, Flowey wasn't showing up when he was called again. Was it because there was someone new here? Or just because he thought Sans was here? He was probably watching from a distance like he sometimes did, so Frisk turned her head in multiple directions while trying not to look back at the imposter Sans. "why didn't the bicycle work?"
A grunt.
"because it was two-tired."
Why. Why was he doing this?
"why did the chicken cross the road?"
She snorted. She had heard this one before. "To get to the idiot's house."
"... ..." That threw him, and Frisk felt a little glow as he halted the dumb joking for a second. "... actually it was to follow the turkey. but, uh, sure, maybe that was both their destinations."
Sans tells a joke about poultry. You don't understand it because you're an idiot and he didn't tell it right.
Frisk snarled and finally turned all the way around, but in the snow and thickness of the trees she still couldn't see Flowey anywhere. Standing in one place, even though she had protection from the wind she was starting to feel very cold again. "Stop."
But Sans just put his hands into his pockets and leaned forward. "knock knock."
Suppressing a scream, the child put her hands over her eyes. Fine, fine, if he wasn't going to leave her alone she would play along. "Who's there?"
"it's the chicken."
Quiet, except for the wind rustling the dry tree branches above them. Frisk peeked out from between her fingers, studying the face that was in front of her. It took her a few seconds, while it processed in her mind, but then she flashed an uncontrollable smile and giggled at him. That also only lasted a few seconds, and she murmured through her hands "This time I'm the idiot..." in dawning.
"heheheheh."
Now that she took her hands away and viewed him a little more closely, the things about his face that reminded her of her Sans weren't visible anymore. It was as if, now that she was looking for differences, they were presenting themselves to her; the rounder, softer eye sockets, teeth that weren't spikes, and not a gold tooth in sight. The only thing that he had in common was the jacket he was wearing, and his small skeleton stature. Even the way he talked, which she had noticed quickly, was different. Not as strained, not as harsh.
Frisk tilted her head left and right and then laughed again, but this time she gave him a nasty smile. The imposter Sans tensed. "I don't think that you're going to last very long here~," she sang, turning to resume her search for food in this forest.
"... we'll see about that, kiddo," he said behind her. Frisk only laughed again, but then she heard, "but you stay out of trouble now. i'll probably be talking to you again soon."
"?" She turned her head back, but he was gone.
Stomach growling, and scowling nervously, the child kept moving.
Author's Note: 0w0/ Thanks for the reviews! I don't have much to say here except that Frisk did not know all those words before falling underground. :P
Next Chapter: Goddamned Phone Technology
