"If I let you out of there, do you promise to get right back in?" He asked. "Before anyone notices?"
"I promise."
"...You said that too fast. Forget it."
"I said it because I mean it. Please?"
"No, I don't trust you. What kind of idiot is okay with letting themselves be caged?"
"The answer is exactly the reason why you should let me out of here."
Frisk took a second to catch her breath, the unfamiliar voices of just seconds ago vanishing once she stood back up on her feet. They were banished by a new melody playing in her head, another one that she had never heard before. It was surely because, here and now, she was standing in a battle with Sans. He stood in the middle of the street, like he was getting ready to throw her again.
There was no dirt to dig her feet into, so Frisk could only brace herself. The first move he made had resulted in no lasting damage- in truth, it only amounted to startling her. That didn't mean that he wouldn't do something worse with his next turn.
Sure enough, her SOUL flashed blue and he tossed her down on the ground; this time, while she was lying there like that a range of sharpened magic bones materialized overhead. The child rolled and scrambled out of the way, and they only shot harmlessly through the pavement.
Through these first few seconds, neither of them said anything. For Frisk, it was taking her time to process that Sans was fighting her. Sans, for his part, may not be feeling his most chatty. He stood in place waiting for her turn to be over, waiting for her to stand up and act against him. Frisk didn't feel particularly injured, and attacking Sans directly wasn't an option unless she wanted to turn him to dust right then and there. So naturally she did the only ACT she tended to do in a battle, her heart pounding and stomach twisted with numb hurt.
You taunt Sans.
"You-you blunderhead, what makes you think you'd even stand a chance against me!?" She shouted, smacking her pan against the building that her little body had just crashed into. "I know that if you could have killed me you would have done it at the start!"
Sans stared her down, studying her with his wavering eye. "well, some things happened while i was over here. needless to say..." A giant skull head appeared over his shoulder, shaped roughly like a dog's- it looked exactly the same as Blue Sans' cannon attack, save for one of the teeth being gold. Frisk swallowed. "i realized that i can dish it out if the other person won't."
The blaster fired, and Frisk was in too much shock to make a relatively simple dodge. The searing heat of the blast made her think, for an instant, that she was going to be reduced to a cinder and she screamed.
-1 HP
A moment passed, she was still standing there. Sans had started laughing at her stunned expression, standing there and smoking slightly as though she were a cartoon character. Cheeks flushing red with embarrassment, all she could do was shout, "Are you kidding me!? This is nothing!"
Sans wiped a tear from his eye and grinned big, still chuckling raspily, "goddamn don't just stand there, move out of the way next time!" and then his expression darkened, several more of the cannons materializing and aiming right at her face in a semicircle. He stopped laughing. "...didn't you tell me once that i have two tallies on that little scoreboard you made?"
He did, but neither of those tallies meant much at this moment. "Only two-" she started to say, and then yelped as she hit the ground, the blasts from the cannons shooting harmlessly overhead. Even as she hit the pavement, however, she felt something else shooting upwards into her stomach, practically knocking the wind out of her. The cage of bones that rose around her body and sank back into the ground gave her an idea as to what it was, and all the child could do was utter a grunt. Well played, Sans.
-1 HP
-1 HP
It hurt a little more than she expected it to. Sucking in air Frisk struggled back to her feet, glaring, and took in her surroundings. There wasn't a lot of space where she was standing, she had to move, get out into the street empty of cars. She wiped her face and again chose to ACT, shouting at Sans, "So this is your big plan to stay here!? Killing me in public where everyone can see?! You're even stupider than I thought, shithead!"
You taunt Sans.
He shook his skull. "callin' me shithead now?" Bones flew in her direction, and Frisk yelped as she tried to evade, recognizing the rhythmic pattern of attack that Papyrus had used on her time after time in battle- only much faster. "boy, guilt-slinging is not even a THING with you, is it?"
She couldn't even ask what "guilt-slinging" was before a bone smacked her in the forehead and she rolled off balance. Reeling, Frisk leaned forward instead into a run out onto the wider street. A wall of bone shot up from the ground and caused her to skid to a stop in the center.
-1 HP
-1 HP
-1 HP
-1 HP
"maybe that's one of the reasons i like you so much."
The cruel irony is starting to dawn on you.
She only got hit three times, and already she felt so much weaker. Breaths coming in hard and fast, Frisk dug into her pocket and brought out the first thing that she could get her hands on, an Iscream that she had forgotten to eat earlier, and she chomped down without a care for how much it hurt her teeth.
Your HP was maxed out.
"and no, to answer your question," Sans said after his turn was up again, a ring of blasters surrounding the child. "don't want you to die. can't promise it's not gonna happen, though. i just want you to give up."
The blasters all began firing in sequential order, and she practically danced to keep herself out of the searing bright light. She got dizzy fast, as with each blaster to disappear another one took its place, and she'd ended up spinning in a circle three times before the attack was over. This was another kind of thing that she expected Sans to start laughing at her for, but by the end of it, he wasn't making any other noise- he did, however, send more bones her way, so she began to cry out and swing her pan wildly in a bid to keep them from hitting her.
-1 HP
-1 HP
One hit, and she stumbled. They were coming faster, each attack. The cracks and booms that came from his magic, and the cracks that came from her pan, were additionally starting to attract more attention than she was comfortable with. A blue rabbit with a striped shirt and a polar bear in a purple scarf came running around the street corner, and her heart-rate spiked not only for the battle but how it must look to everyone else that might be looking in.
Sans didn't react to them, at least not to her ears and eyes, but began summoning more and more bones that sliced along the ground like Jaws sharks. The magic moving through the air looked to be enough to send bystanders back to a safe distance. At least she wasn't going to have to talk to them, and maybe none of them would do something stupid like try to intervene and attack him or her.
-1 HP
-1 HP
-1 HP
-1 HP
"Ow!"
Something sharp sliced open the sleeve of her sweater and her arm bled from the opening, a sharp bone flying past. The weakness that she felt growing in her body started to worsen. Even though she was only being struck by these minor attacks, why...?
Every turn, she was expecting the pain to disappear, for her energy to be rejuvenated. But she jumped and danced over an array of spinning bones under her feet, rolled out of the way of three blasters in a row, and at the end of it her arm was still bleeding.
Sans must have caught sight of her narrow, confused eyes. "'why isn't my temmie armor working?'" He said, mimicking her voice in a falsetto. "that's what you're thinkin'... right?"
Frisk's blood was dripping down the handle she held ever tighter in her little hand. She didn't say anything, didn't make any noise except to rip open the package of instant meatloaf she took out of Papyrus' fridge and eat it raw.
Your HP was maxed out.
She was beginning to understand. She could not be hit, period. Or, somehow, somehow Sans, with his 1 HP and 1 ATK and 1 DF, somehow he would drain the life out of her like a vampire or Muffet with her poisonous spider-bites.
Easy.
He started talking again at the widening of her eyes and the increased speed of her dodges, racing from side to side of the street in an attempt to stop being such a stationary target. His voice was low and wavered, so that she almost didn't hear it. "you couldn't even kill one person. not even to save your own life. you're some kind of freak is what you are." A freak with freakish jumping, albeit a talent that had been perfected over weeks of battles, as the child leaped over a literal wave of bone clubs. "if you had just... killed... one person..."
This wasn't the first time this topic came but, like every other time Frisk couldn't think of anything to say to it. So, like the other times that it did, she said nothing at all, only holding out her weapon and staring down her opponent. The bitter smile on Sans' face twitched and he surrounded her with blasters, which she tried to run away from rather than go through that dizzy dance again.
It took just a slight adjustment of the blaster pointed in her direction, and another searing blast struck through her body. "Ow!"
"but you didn't. and that's killing you."
Frisk's knees buckled and she hissed, standing quickly. She threw her head up and struck pavement, but this time when she did Sans didn't flinch. It must be that that trick was getting old. "I'm not dead yet. All I have to do is wait for you to get tired. And when you do-"
You taunt Sa-
Her turn wasn't even over yet and tiny bones began flying towards her. Frisk yelped, startled, and was knocked off balance yet again. As the battle went on a myriad of cuts, bruises, and scrapes were beginning to accumulate over her body, the impacts blunted by her clothes but not enough to prevent injury. "Ow! Shit!"
"don't stop moving, twerp," said Sans. "not everyone fights fair."
Sans slid down the banister, barreled out the door, and tripped and fell on the front step of his own blessed house. His vision was blurring and getting blacker at the edges, which was slightly worrisome- or it would be, if his mind wasn't already occupied. He slowly stood upright, coughing and harshly rubbing his face with the bony palm of his hand; the adrenaline from his earlier fight with that insane king was definitely rubbing off now. His body felt like it was on fire.
Stumbling backwards, he quickly regained his balance and called out, pinprick eyes darting in every direction, "PAPYRUS!"
He hadn't been in the house, and there was a broken salad bowl lying on the ground.
Naturally Sans assumed the worst. "Papyrus!"
Until this whole misadventure in a new world, he'd never not known where his brother was.
Suppose that he was somewhere else in the city or even beyond, somewhere that he wouldn't be able to find in time? Or suppose that he was trapped somewhere, or that his other self had decided to take his rage out on Papyrus completely like he said and his little brother was cracked open or completely turned to dust? Or suppose that-
A little bit of adrenaline left; Sans straightened and started running down the sidewalk. "YO PAPYRUS!" He shouted louder than he ever had, even as much as his throat was beginning to hurt. He had an idea, and it was a little bit of a mean one, the likes of which probably came from living in a hellpit for so many days. Sans took a big deep breath he shouted out all the same, "I'M GOING TO EAT EVERYTHING IN THE KITCHEN AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP ME!"
He waited, huffing, wiping his skull of sweat, for any response. There wasn't one for ten long, excruciating seconds. So Sans waited ten more, looking left and right down the sidewalk in quick, frenzied motions.
Then and there he gave a start, uncomfortable with how badly his heart was racing, for the first time in a long time. Everything that willpower had pushed back fixing the machine was crashing back in on him, a whole heap of things that he hadn't felt in a long time. This was the kind of thing that he hadn't missed in the days where he felt so little. Hoarsely, Sans tried again in a volume more his speed, "... paps, i said i'm gonna-"
"OH HO NO YOU'RE NOT!" A big hand grabbed him by the hood of his coat, lifting him into the air; Sans yelped, sticking his hands in his pockets to keep the coat from being ripped off. "THAT FOOD IS FOR OUR SECRET ORGANIZATION MEETING!"
He was face to face with his brother, whose eyesockets became filled with his huge eyes when he took in the face of the one he was chastising. Sans grinned at him in winded relief. He croaked out, "what secret organization is that, bro?"
Papyrus pulled him into a tight, equally-as-winding hug in that next second, rivers of tears flowing from his eyes. "SANS! SANS! IT'S YOU! IT'S THE REAL YOU! YOU CAME BACK! I KNEW YOU WOULD! I KNEW YOU'D BE OKAY!" He squeezed him even tighter, and for a moment Sans couldn't even breathe. "OKAY ACTUALLY I WAS A TINY TINY BIT WORRIED THAT YOU MIGHT HAVE GOTTEN HURT, B-B-BUT I THINK THAT'S ONLY FAIR, RIGHT!? BECAUSE YOU'RE S-SO SMALL, AND HOW COULD YOU MAKE IT WITHOUT ME TO LOOK AFTER YOU!?"
Sans grunted, struggling in his brother's viselike grip. "y-yeah, that's why i came back."
"YES, YOU DID! I KNEW THAT YOU WOULD!" Papyrus held Sans away from him at last, looking him over with an attentive eye. "YOU DON'T LOOK SO GOOD, THOUGH! IT'S A GOOD THING I SAVED ALL THAT ORANGE JUICE! I HOPE THE POINTY SANS WON'T MIND!"
The pointy Sans. He knew what that meant. Sans struggled and Papyrus, expressing waning, set him down quickly. "yeah, that other me, have you seen him lately? did he hurt you? where did he go?"
With a little look of regret, Papyrus put his red gloved hands together. "WEEEELL, HE WENT TEARING OUT OF HERE HOURS AND HOURS AGO AND ACTUALLY HE NEVER CAME BACK." Something occurred to him, and he brightened. "OH! WAS IT TO GET YOU? DID HE CHANGE HIS MIND."
"no-er-something like that happened-" he sputtered, now trying to find any cracks or injuries, particularly in the vicinity of his brother's head. "w-where did he go? did he say?"
Papyrus shook his head. "NOPE! HOW COME HE ISN'T WITH YOU?"
"uh, i don't know. uh, are you sure that he didn't hurt you?"
Again he shook his head, giving a somewhat weak smile in return. "NOPE! THERE WAS THIS ONE TIME A LOT EARLIER, BUT, UH, I'M FINE! AND I THINK IT WAS AN ACCIDENT BECAUSE-"
he hit you the motherfucker actually hit you i'm going to pulverize him-
"SANS?"
Sans looked up. Even this feeling, at least in intensity, was vaguely unfamiliar. He retained his usual smile by a thread, "i'm pretty tired, paps, sorry. did you say something?"
"OH! WELL, IF YOU'RE TIRED, YOU SHOULD GO REST!" Papyrus mused, putting a gloved hand to his skull. "AND I CAN GO LOOK FOR THAT POINTIER SANS AND... UH..." He looked away, squinting, embarrassed. "BURN THAT COAT YOU'RE WEARING BECAUSE IT SMELLS LIKE SMOKE AND ROTTING MEAT."
That made him laugh, which restored some of his earlier self beyond all the crap he'd been going through. And so did realizing that despite his fears, Papyrus didn't look any worse for wear. "no, no... i'll be just fine, i promise. i just need to... catch my breath. i think i'll try doing that 'throwing up' thing that humans do."
He made like he was really going to, bending over the grass, and Papyrus screeched. "EW NO DON'T, YOU'LL JUST GET IT ALL IN YOUR MOUTH!"
Another set of frantic voices grabbed his attention, however dizzy and full of regret he actually was getting from leaning over. Sans straightened up, turning his head in the direction of the shout, and saw a familiar kid in a striped sweater racing towards them.
Well, well, that was two bursts of relief, to see that Frisk was still at the very least alive. Even if it was mitigated by the fact that they had a very noticeable splash of dried blood running down their head.
"No!" They dived at him, too, and almost knocked him off his feet. "You leave Papyrus alone!"
"aw c'mon bucko, i haven't seen him in like a week," he said, the child's small hands grabbing at the sleeves of his jacket. "gimme a break!"
They looked up at him, their brown eyes huge for once. "Sans...?" They asked, far more experimental than Papyrus. There was a little bit of an accusatory look to their eyes, Sans wondered which person they were currently mad at.
He flashed his smile, "eyup, i'm afraid it's me, buddy."
"Oh!" They released him, only to give him a hug almost as soft as Papyrus' one from a minute earlier. "You made it! And you're wearing the coolest jacket ever!" That was their opinion, at least, before smelling it and stepping back to hold their nose. They gave him a sheepish smile.
"well i didn't want paps here to be sans a brother, now did i?" He said, and he heard Papyrus groan loudly beside him. "but, uh, how's your head?"
Frisk raised a hand to the closed wound and took a breath, but then their eyes lit up and they blurted instead, "Did you come through the grey door in your room like that Flowey said?"
"which flowey? i don't see him with you."
"OH! THAT'S THE FLOWEY I SAW BEFORE! AND HE WAS WITH ANOTHER FRISK!" Papyrus piped up with pride, and immediately he became the kid's primary center of attention. "DID YOU MEET HIM TOO, FRISK? HE SEEMED VERY NICE!"
"Yeah but he ditched me," Frisk admitted, scratching her bloody head. "When did you see him?"
Sans cleared his throat, just a tiniest bit anxious. "kid?"
"Uh?"
"i asked how's your head?"
"Oh!" They scratched harder at the caked on blood as though it was just a bad case of dandruff, making a disgusted face when some of it got off on their nails. "I'm fine! Leo healed me already. I'm hoping that he'll be back with Alphys soon..."
"even so don't pick at it like that, eww," Sans said, grinning big at them.
They laughed, embarrassed, and at last Sans was able to go back to feeling like himself. He was back on the surface, the sun shining down low in the sky, and fresh air breezing through that was nowhere near as harsh as that other Snowdin's.
However, there was still a lot to do, as evidenced by how the ground between him and Frisk and Papyrus suddenly burst open and a little flower popped up from it, his body shaking with undisguised fear.
"You two! You've got to stop him! He's going to kill Anna!" The other world's Flowey yelled.
Woozy and no longer up to speed, Sans blinked. Frisk frowned, squinting in just as much confusion. "Who's Anna?"
Flowey gulped, blanching, and quickly stammered, "-Frisk, I mean Frisk, he's going to kill Frisk."
"But I'm right here?" Frisk said, pointing to herself.
"Not you!" The plant shivered indignantly, before turning to Sans instead. "You can stop him, right? I'm very very very sorry about before if you can save the human for me!"
Frowning, Sans nudged the thorny stalk with his foot. "you're talking about the other Sans, right? Why don't you do it?"
"OH NO! WHY IS POINTY SANS TRYING TO KILL FRISK?"
Perhaps Flowey expected him to answer Papyrus first, but Sans kept his gaze firmly on the trembling flower. The expression on its face shifted, becoming increasingly indignant as he sputtered for a reply to the question. Finally, and bowing his head in shame, he said, "-I'm afraid. Sans is scary."
So Sans sighed, "wish i could help, but, uh, i was just planning to take a nap right about now." If he fired at himself, could he even see straight enough to aim? Evidently everything that he had was taken up from defeating Asgore in battle. "yep goodnight." He lay down in the middle of the sidewalk, to more yelling from his brother.
"SANS AT LEAST GO INSIDE!" He puffed out his chest, then, turning to the little thing in need before him. "DON'T BE AFRAID, OTHER FLOWEY! THE GREAT PAPYRUS WILL TAKE CARE OF IT FOR YOU!"
like hell you will, Sans thought as he pretended to sleep.
Flowey's continued hemming and hawing, uttering a plain "U-h-uum-" at the offer, was cut off by a thundering crash next to them all. "AAAH!" Still squealing, Flowey dug back under the earth before the debris had even begun raining down on the grass. Frisk, in the meantime, dived down to the sidewalk covering their head, while Papyrus did the same. Sans cracked open an eye.
There was a hole in the building across the street. From its trajectory, a small body crashed into a building and knocked loose bricks and chips of brick alike, falling along with them into the grass. They hit their feet and their knees buckled, but they stood a second later.
Torn and stretched sweater and hair that really needed washing. Now the Frisk of that darker world could add bruises and scratched up pants to the list, the child rubbing their head with gritted teeth. To have survived a collision like that, they must be made of iron. Or in the middle of a monster battle.
Sans stood quickly, and so did his own Frisk. His kid, in fact, let out an astonished gasp before ducking behind him. "It's that other-!"
His Frisk clasped their hands over their mouth. The messy Frisk's eyes shot in their direction and widened, their back stiffening at the sight of them all.
But even surprised, their mouth was in the grimmest line and their eyes carried the sharpest glare. They began to brush dust off themselves as if being tossed through a building was the most natural way to make an entrance in the world, keeping their glare steady. At first Sans wasn't sure what he did to deserve that glare, until he realized that her eyes weren't looking at him, but rather the kid who was currently clinging to the back of his jacket and peeking over at the other Frisk.
"-Oh fuck you!" The other Frisk spat at them at last, before turning back in the direction of the hole they just made with their body.
Following their gaze, he saw finally what everyone else had been talking about. Himself, with a mouth full of fangs- one of them glinting gold- and a fluffy blue coat that looked like something with the kind of zipper that he was too lazy to figure out. The so-called pointy Sans.
He didn't mind his Frisk being in hiding; in fact, he was wondering if he could inconspicuously stuff Papyrus behind him too.
The other Sans took one looked at the scene he had caused and began to laugh, a hysterically charged sound very unlike his own. "welp, what do you know. its your blue sans. i guess that works out well for you, huh?"
His Frisk, rather the one holding onto their burnt frying pan, only turned their glare his way.
Beginning to sweat, the bizarre new Sans croaked, "well if he's already here you can just leave me alone then."
And Frisk said, taking out what looked like jerky and gnawing at it, "No."
Sans watched the expression freeze on his other self's face, and then warp into something terrifying, his sockets empty. "oh." Without waiting for anyone or anything, Frisk swallowed their snack and ran at their opponent. He disappeared from right in front of her, but reappeared in the air a second later behind her. "fine, then, that's fine for me. I'll do this the hard way you little shit."
He surged with magic once he landed, and right before Frisk turned around two blaster cannons solidified and fired. Sans, and perhaps only Sans, could hear the grumble coming from his other self. "hell, doing it there would be ten times harder anyway." The kid had the sense to duck from his attack, but after the next moment passed the other Sans grabbed their SOUL and tossed them away down the street. Scarcely could Sans' own Frisk, who was no longer cowering, shout at his other self to stop had he vanished. Clearly he was not concerned about cheating in front of people anymore either.
In the distance they all could see the two figures, the orange and black figure of Frisk continually racing towards Sans only to be thwarted, as they moved slowly farther and farther away. Cannon blasts and rattling bones punctuated each turn, and Sans knew that the kid had to be due for getting hit soon.
"They're going towards the forest!" His Frisk said, clasping their hands on their locket. "Papyrus, you gotta tell Alphys and Leo that there's been a change in plans!"
"BUT THAT MEANS YOU WANT ME TO STAY HERE AND LET YOU GO ALONE?!" His brother shouted, before glancing in the direction of the huge indentation that Frisk made in the wall earlier. "ERRR, I MEAN, MAYBE WE SHOULD BOTH STAY?"
Frisk whimpered, and watched the huge flashes from the distance. "I don't understand, why is he attacking his own Frisk?"
Sans wiped his skull, also keeping a close eye on them. "i think i know what he's doing. it's really stupid, though."
"What is-ah!" The other Frisk disappeared from view, thrown through the window of Grillby's seven blocks away, and Sans' own Frisk yelped. "-That looks like it really hurt."
To be honest, he was not all that worried about them being hurt. He was more concerned with them being something worse. Because as he thought about it, if that Frisk was being attacked by their Sans after just arriving, that meant that his Frisk had probably not saved before the battle. Or, really, any time after this Frisk entered this world.
That Frisk hadn't SAVED this world, and no one had SAVED them.
So if his Frisk reset, even to stop their counterpart dying...
"hey kid," he spoke sharply, startling them. "no time to explain, but we're going to mt. ebott."
The child, to their credit, only nodded, but Papyrus began to immediately lecture how inappropriate it was that he wanted to go out on a date at a time like this, and especially with it being so far away, and a bunch of other things that made him really wish his little brother was not watching for this next part. He said his apologies and grabbed onto Frisk's hand. The magic he had left he summoned into his eye, into the CHEAT CODE.
"i can at least do this much," he murmured, and his eye flashed once before he and Frisk vanished.
The Frisk who had just been thrown into a bar window, on the other hand, was imagining how cool that must have looked to the patrons as she stepped out of the broken shards, hands and cheek bloody but little else injured by the monster-built pane of glass. Dizzy, she ignored their shocked stares and grabbed the nearest hamburger right out of a duck man's hands, growling, "Gimme or I'll dust you."
Although encountering no resistance, Frisk had to grip the table with both arms to keep from falling over. She chomped on the sandwich until the cuts and bruises disappeared, and looked quickly out the broken window.
He wasn't there.
-1 HP
A brief curse. Frisk wiped the remaining blood from her cheek and turned to the bartender, who was stopped mid-glass-wipe and staring just the same as everyone else. He was a monster with a chill orange flame instead of the uptight blue one, but she didn't have time to appreciate it. "You! Do you have a back door?"
Without a word alternate Grillby nodded, pointing to one beside the bar that Frisk wished she had noticed first. Nodding with a flushed face, the child snatched another burger from a fanged plant monster, "Gimme or I'll dust you!" and stuffed it in with the rest of her healing items.
She wrenched open the back door and stepped out onto the other street, and soon enough she found him standing on that new street as if simultaneously waiting for her and yet hoping she would not find him.
"Hey fucktard!" Frisk barked. If he didn't see her, he would now.
"shit are you still doing this?" Was what he said, and she ran at him across the pavement with a yell, pan ready to strike. Of course when she did strike, reaching him just as his eye flashed, it didn't even come close to hitting him. It wasn't just because she dodged, but it was a matter of her own aim as well. Her target was always the ground by his feet.
You try to intimidate Sans by faking an attack at him.
He flinches.
The sound of his breathless voice alerted her that he was far behind her again, and she spun in his direction. "yeah, yeah, always striking but not actually trying. what, are you afraid that you'll kill me or something? that's funny."
-1 HP
"why does that scare you so much?"
The flinch just before he vanished rattled her, for once. While her health still was dripping from the last time an attack connected, nonetheless she felt strong enough to stop for a moment. Stop and pick an action she'd not picked before.
You try to reason with Sans.
"Look, Sans, I know how you feel, trust me-"
But she felt instantly, with a sinking heart, that it was a mistake. Something in Sans' smile twitched horribly, he made a wheezy breath, and he grabbed Frisk tight by the SOUL. Instead of throwing her away, though, this time he dragged her closer to him, her shoes scratching the road. She struggled and kicked in his grip, and with his eyes burning into hers Sans growled, "no. you have no idea how i feel."
He threw her down in front of his feet and she jumped right back up, evading a circle of bones that would have surely jabbed where her stomach was a second before- with her weapon, Frisk snapped them in half for good measure. "you're the one that can reset. you're the one who can go back if things don't go your way."
-1 HP
His voice was full of tremors. "Sans-" Frisk darted to him and he jumped backwards from her grasp, a good several feet, like some kind of Chinese acrobat.
"you die to me? you can reset. you die to papyrus? you can reset. break a puzzle on accident? you can reset. waste some food? you can reset," he said, punctuating each sentence with another blaster at another angle, and Frisk had to fight not to get hit by a single one. "you reset, and you keep a goddamn tally each time, and one day you won't even have enough space for them all."
With no words to say to such a proclamation, Frisk just stood there and fished for the hamburger from earlier. How many tallies did she have? She used to know the number right off the top of her head.
And Sans, lifting Frisk's SOUL up along with a cage of bones over her head, just chuckled humorlessly. "so, in the end... you think that this route is too hard? you can reset... all the way back to the beginning, right? you can take the easier path, the path that probably hasn't occurred to you yet." His smile dipped. "... don't know what's worse. that i wouldn't be able to stop you from doing it, or that sometimes i want you to." The cage of bones began descending over Frisk. "i'unno, for some ungodly reason i just prefer that scenario more."
-1 HP
Ripping the hamburger up into her mouth, kicking her way back down to the ground before the cage of bones could smack her in the head, Frisk snapped "What the hell are you babbling about?"
"you can do that!" Sans snapped with a choking gasp of air, tossing her away from him. "ah fuck it, nevermind. you can't reset now, so why don't you just give up on me already?"
Once her SOUL was out of his hold Frisk ran at him again with a growl, and incidentally ran into the blast of a trio of skull-shaped cannons.
Mt. Ebott was chilly today, or at least it was because of a furious wind that was blowing. Losing her grip on Sans, Frisk wobbled and fell on her knees while the disorientation of the shortcut took effect.
Sans offered his hand, and it was with some effort on the part of her legs that she stood up. "Woah, you went really far. I didn't think you could."
"yeah, well, it's not fun," he wheezed; the noise made Frisk glance at him in a sudden anxiety- shamefully, it was not because she was worried for his health, but more because she had heard his look-alike make similar noises over the last week or so. "please tell me that the SAVE point is close."
They stood on the very same ledge that Frisk had walked on as she stepped back onto freedom with her friends. "It should be just inside. I'll be right back!"
At that Sans hesitated, as if he was about to say that he wanted to go back in with her. Typical Sans, though, eventually he ended up lying on the ground instead, smile weak and closing his eyes. "ughhhhh okay." Frisk hoped he could recover enough for the return trip. She patted him gently on the head before running into the cave alone.
The soonest point where she could SAVE really wasn't that far. She walked through the entrance into the cave where the barrier used to be, giving an involuntary shudder while she did as though there was still something magical there to forbid her passing by.
From there, through the black cave, she walked until she found herself going through another entrance into a black hallway. It was right in this spot where she had once stood trying to get her willpower up for her upcoming fight with Asgore.
This spot was one filled with a lot of painful memories. There was a SAVE point there, yes, but Frisk kept on walking from that spot in spite of herself.
She walked until there were no more black hallways, the black hallways only reminding her of the same things that she saw in her dreams every night. She wanted a change of scenery, desperately so. A change of scenery and a SAVE point wasn't that far away. It wouldn't make that much of a difference where she did it; this castle was riddled with them.
Farther still. She walked over a wilting golden flowerbed where it was possible to see the sun again, to hear the singing of the birds that flocked to the mountain in droves. Even beyond that throne room she walked, on and away from the same old scenery.
If she had the time, Frisk suddenly felt as if she could walk forever until she was back at the Ruins door.
But she didn't. It was important she SAVE soon, she could guess from Sans' own urgency- even if she wasn't doing it as soon as he probably wanted. Oops.
She eventually came to a stop, though, in the grand and brightly colored hall, lit with the same twilight that it was lit by the first time she walked into it.
The Last Corridor. There weren't any nightmares surrounding this room. Only fond memories of having an inexplicable, if tense, meeting with Sans, one that they never actually discussed afterwards. She always thought it was a beautiful room, colored in alternating orange tiles and decorated with gold pillars, big butter-colored windows, and flower patterns etched on the ceiling. On her first entrance the scale of all of it intimidated her, but that wasn't true anymore.
Frisk walked through it with a hand out to touch each pillar, and she wondered what this room was like in Red Sans' world. Would it be anywhere near as pretty? Was he going to say the same kinds of things to Frisk as her Sans said to her? She doubted that.
The SAVE location waited at the very end of the hall. There used to be a chest in this spot, as well, but someone had removed it.
Frisk stood where she remembered to stand and reached out, clenching her hands tightly together. It wasn't hard to muster her determination, drawing on everything that had happened to her in this room alone. This time, she would use that determination to SAVE while someone else was fighting outside.
Well, she would, but nothing happened.
The tranquility of this hall and the sun outside it washes over you.
But that was it. Frisk blinked. "Huh...?"
She tried again, and then again, to SAVE, putting herself through the same thoughts as she always did before. "Uhh?" It didn't do anything. She was just a kid squeezing her eyes shut repeatedly. "W-why-"
Even though Frisk longed to hold the world she stood in within her hands again...
"Karma's not very nice, isn't it?"
That voice was all too familiar, and she screamed and turned around.
It wasn't Asriel she was looking at.
It was Flowey, curled on one of the corridor pillars.
Her Flowey. She saw no fear in his face, only cruel amusement, while he took her for in the first time since she had faced him in the barrier room. "Hey!" He said, laughing at her horror, "It's me, remember? Flowey! I bet you were expecting someone else, weren't you?"
Trembling, Frisk held the locket in her hands. "W-w-w-what did you do? Why can't I SAVE anymore?"
He tossed his head like a shrug. "Oh, you got me! I didn't do a thing, hehe!" His smile curled up on his little buttercup face, his eyes sinking back. "I just know that if you can't do it anymore... then there must be someone else out there like you. Someone equally as powerful... and equally as determined."
The other Frisk came to mind. "O-oh..."
"It's a shame, isn't it?" The flower said, tendrils lacing across the floor of the corridor in a boxy pattern, his stalk growing to extend him out to where the child was. "Having the powers of a god isn't a first-come, first-serve deal after all. And losing that power, having no safety net... not for you or anyone you love..." Flowey stuck out his tongue in a big silly grin. "Now you're just like me! Hehe!"
The locket grew warm with her pulse, the child unable to move or speak as vines grew and snaked about in the space around her. The maniacal flower continued. "Now you're just like me... waiting for them to die or get the heck out of here!" His smile turned into a skull before her eyes and Frisk squeaked, taking a step back. "...So, who is it?"
"U-uh..."
Flowey retracted, laughing. "Aww, you don't know, do you? Golly, that's alright! And hey, if you're feeling upset, I know one way that you can have enough determination to SAVE everyone again."
If she couldn't save, she couldn't reset either. If she couldn't do either of those things, then that meant she couldn't control for things going wrong with Red Sans and Red Frisk, or for anything else for that matter. Struck with fear, she looked to Flowey in frozen expectation, waiting for him to give his solution as if it may somehow be worth it.
He came close to her, eyes sunken holes and mouth jagged and sharp. Frisk could feel prehensile vines picking at the sleeves of her sweater, rising behind her slowly, and he said. "I could take your SOUL."
A vine grabbed her arm. Chills ran down Frisk's spine and she screamed, louder than she might have ever screamed before. Before she knew it, she had equipped her dull knife and slashed it down at the offending vine. It dug deep into the plant flesh, and Flowey retracted all overgrowth with a loud hiss.
Frisk didn't spare him another look, the soles of her shoes pounding over the tiles of the hall.
"Come on!" Flowey cackled behind her, "I was just kidding!"
Tears streaming, heart sinking into her gut, Frisk wouldn't stop running until she found Sans again. The flower's resounding laughter echoed in her ears the whole way.
But Flowey himself didn't follow her. His smile dropped off and he merely slunk away through the darkness, deeper into the abandoned castle.
After what felt like ages and ages of fighting, the next thing that Sans threw Frisk into was a cluster of trees just outside of New New Home. And bless their rude little heart, that goddamn kid got caught in the branches. He couldn't help snickering while they fought to get down, only succeeding in getting more entangled, like a mindless animal in a trap. "Shit! Shit! Fuck! Ow! Fuck!" An animal with a funny vocabulary.
It was a good opportunity to catch his breath, to try and get it out of his ribs where it was stuck. Eventually, when he had recovered a fraction, he used the force of gravity to pull them down himself.
Their face turned bright red and they stood up, reaffixing their hold on that old frying pan they loved to swing so much. Still no giving up out of them, huh? It was his turn, so with no hesitation and a little difficulty breathing Sans summoned a fleet of bones and threw them their way. One in particular sailed right towards them; with a crack! that rang out in the forest they smashed it in half, only to get knocked clear off their feet and carried away by the next set. Winded and injured, they groaned and lay there for a moment.
Sans almost hoped that that would be it, and their next move would be to surrender. After all, by counting he was pretty sure they had run out of all their healing items and their HP was running lower and lower. but that was before they sat up, and he got a good look at the emptiness in their eyes. A single-minded vacancy, such as he had seen in every battle he was witness to. Most clearly, it had appeared on the day they defeated Papyrus- a battle that was only fifteen minutes long for both of them, but for the kid had taken unimaginable hours. The vacancy only filled when they smashed his little brother's legs.
ah, you're insane, pipsqueak. Maybe they always were, or maybe it was because a little human like them went through all kinds of crap that most monsters only go through gradually.
Which gave him a thought.
Frisk ran at him again and he vanished, reappearing behind them. It was clear by how they turned, shouting, and stumbled from their own movements. They were not any closer to giving up.
But they were also obviously getting tired, and he was getting tired, and he hadn't gotten anywhere with this yet. He had to do something.
He extended his hand to them, giving a wavering smile. "look at you, kid, you can't even stand up right. and you're just gonna get weaker from here."
"I'm not giving up just because you tell me to!" They growled. Fucking hell.
"i know you're not," Sans murmured. "but i'm getting really tired of all this. to be honest, outright fighting someone isn't really my style... and you know that, right?" They took a step back when he stepped forward, face twitching in utter confusion. "that's why you won't let up, right?"
"-Uh- right," they said.
Sans took a deep breath, sweat beading on his skull. "s-so... how about we just forget about all of this, huh? i- i give up. i'll come back with you, if th-that's what you really want. okay?"
The pan lowered little by little, and Frisk looked at him in shock. But, of course, they flinched as another point of HP was sapped out of them. Sans flinched too. It would be nice if he could use Cruel Irony on someone who deserved it, but that would defeat its function. Still, whether it was because of that or because of him talking, they didn't move away while he approached them. "thanks. it doesn't look like i'll be welcome back in town anyway, right?"
They were close, now, and Frisk let their pan dangle from their hand entirely. Sparing him in gesture. "... Yeah. You fit in better... back in our world."
Chuckling dryly, Sans rested a hand on their head. "...you have no idea how hard this is." All that planning, all that deception, all that work...
Frisk sighed, but they gave him a grudging smile; they were calm.
So was he.
It was strange how calm he could be on the outside in service of being cruel.
"get dunked."
And with that hand on their head he jerked them facedown into the dirt, taking a shortcut to a few feet away right as he did. Frisk let out a startled yelp when they hit the ground.
There were no bones, no cannons, no letters, no attacks. Just that.
Sans laughed and laughed, and some of it was because he thought it was actually funny. "oh my god you're so fucking easy hahahahAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
He watched Frisk stand up slowly, brush themself off, their little body shaking. His howls didn't stop until they turned back around, the sound finally fading into tiny chortles. But after they turned they showed him their expression, and what little of his mocking laughs were actually composed of mirth died too.
Staring at the ground the child's expression trembled, as did the rest of them, while they stood in place. Their eyes sure weren't empty anymore.
That was the expression of someone remembering the rest of the cruel things that he did to them, too. Each time he tricked them, each time he pranked them, each time at the beginning when he led them right into his brother's traps with a big grin on his face. Probably they were remembering the two tally marks as well, whatever the hell it was that they were caused by.
Maybe they were even remembering the terrible things that other monsters had done to them over the weeks, outside of him.
Their face screwed up while they played with the pan in their hands. Watching that his heart stuttered- not for the usual reason. It was the same kind of reason that made him scrape all the hot sauce off his burger when Frisk stole it from him once in what would become a routine; they had started gasping in pain at the spicey condiment, and then kept right on eating through their tears, ruining a perfectly good joke by causing that feeling in him. And it was the same kind of reason that was why he tried to heal them, even when they were the one who startled him and so it was technically their own fault. Those times too, his heart stuttered.
But in a second, as their eyes brimmed, Frisk's face twisted harder. It turned ugly, as they filled with a rage that canceled out all the sorrow.
Then Sans' heart stuttered for the usual reason. The reason it stuttered when Papyrus smacked him to the ground when he was in an especially bad mood, or when some other monster decided to be a hot-shot and take them on. His stuttering heart told him what he already knew when Frisk ran at him screaming, swinging their pan at his face.
Which was, in his own fashion, You're kinda boned (heh.)
The pan connected and she didn't know what it connected with. The blood was rushing through her ears, she couldn't breathe, she couldn't see or hear anything even with her eyes and ears open. Only seeing red, Frisk kept screaming and screaming and screaming and slamming her pan into whatever it was. She wanted it to snap, wanted it to crumble away before her rage. She wanted everything to disappear, she wanted everyone to suffer, she wanted to just thrash and cry and bite until she got her way.
She never, ever, ever ever got to have her way. She wished that everyone else was dead.
You're a lunatic.
But not even her intrusive thoughts could stop her now. Each hit resounded in her hands and in her ears, and even in the ground under her feet, until the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet tingled. Until she couldn't breathe.
Until, like every other time she saw red, she slumped down exhausted and struggling to catch her breath, her tear-stained face flushed and hot. By then, she realized that she couldn't see Sans anymore.
-1 HP
The irony has worn off.
The drain that she'd felt for almost the whole battle stopped, and Frisk almost stopped breathing with it. She looked left and right, tried to take step, tried to speak, and couldn't do any of those things. Searching the grass for dust, she found nothing, and yet her first thought was that the wind must have blown it away. She had actually tried to hit him.
She actually tried to...
But even as the child was agonizing like this, dropping the pan and covering her mouth with her hands, she heard him. Her bloodshot eyes opened and she whirled around, this time falling on her butt.
He was just fine, albeit much sweatier. "i have so much more respect for you now."
The child stared, unblinking.
He continued, huffing, grinning, "...uh, and boy, uh, i'd hate to be that tree right now."
A tree... that was what she'd been hitting all that time? Sure enough, she'd really scratched and indented the bark over the course of her tantrum. Unable to summon her voice, Frisk made a question with her paling face while she gulped for air, and Sans shrugged.
"what? you thought i was just gonna stand and take it?" He closed his eyes, smirking. "i'm too chicken, you know that already. heheh, but not you, it looks li- ahfuck-" He hadn't even finished talking when Frisk barreled into him, tripping over her shoes while running over to the sweaty skeleton and almost knocking them both over. "fuck-fuck what are you doing?"
He wobbled back a step, but it just brought Frisk along with him. She rolled with it, digging her arms under his coat and around his waist while she pressed her face into his shirt. (It was quickly creeping her out that she could feel his ribs jabbing her as she did this.)
"uhhh get off we're not done-" she could hear him wheezing, could feel his body shuddering with each one. "we're uh we're still fighting-"
"Don't want you to die," the girl whimpered into his shirt.
Sans stopped moving, inhaling sharply and painfully. "ah, twerp... c'mon, don't take a swing at me and then take it back."
Frisk said something unintelligible, muffled by her own closed throat and Sans' shirt. They both stood still for a second, the only noise being Sans' raspy breathing. He rested a hand on her head; from habit she tensed up, tightening her grip, but he didn't end up throwing her off balance this time. When he felt her flinch, he stuck both hands deep in his pockets.
When next Sans spoke, his speech cracked. "h-h-hey... if you can't even kill me with a straight face how are you going to get home?" He wheezed. "don't you... don't you know what you'll have to do at the end?"
When she didn't respond, he rasped, "you're not gonna make it."
Frisk finally lifted her head; Sans' eyesockets were firmly empty, without even a white pair of pupils. The only thing on his face was a sad, pointy smile. "you're not gonna make it," he repeated, breathing faster. "you're not... gonna... you can't do it. you can't do it..."
Her lips parted, but she pressed them together. "Yes I can," she said.
His eyes flickered back to life and stared at her.
"I can do anything." Frisk said. "And you know that already too."
One wheeze turned into a chuckle, which grew. And Frisk finally took a step back when Sans let out a more genuine laugh. It didn't last very long, but whatever had started looked like it stopped with that laugh. When he talked again his voice was merely hoarse. "you say that like you believe it."
Frisk put the pan away, grinning. "I do. I beat you, didn't I?"
The pupils in his eyes shrunk, ten times more expressive than a human's pupils could be. She was always so jealous. "oh. we're not fighting anymore are we?" He gasped. "ohshit you won didn't you-"
"Yeah I did fartface," Frisk said, sticking her tongue out at him. "You better be prepared to pay my hospital bills back home."
"ha. ha. ha. fuck." Sans put a hand to his skull, sucking air, and even looked like he was going to nibble the ends of his claws- although how, she didn't know. "i don't want to go back, i don't wanna-"
Frisk rubbed the dirt off her cheeks and grimaced. "We're going back. The Sans you gave me instead sucks balls."
And in spite of himself he was laughing again at that, but he was also freaking out at everything else. "i fucking hate this why're you making me do this-"
"Because you beat the shit out of me!"
"you tried to kill me!"
"Because you pushed me down!"
And it was an argument that she was carrying on deliberately, even if she believed it was an argument that she could win, In truth, above all else Frisk had never felt more relieved in her life that this was a battle she won. And only with an HP of 3 left at that. The overworked and underpaid Temmie Armor was little by little restoring it to her previous 20, but the dried blood was still all over her and her clothes were torn to all hell. But she won. She wasn't even mad anymore.
She might have been stalling with this argument, however, because deep down she believed that maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't do as well getting out of this world.
And that wasn't because she would be fighting anyone.
In the end, though, her other self and Blue Sans arrived on their increased shouting match too quickly.
Among other pointier people.
Author's Note: Special Tale!Flowey guest appearance.
Next Chapter: It's Not That Kind of Story
