Sans looked at his sandwich. Human sandwich. He never had human food before. What would it do to him? The aroma of it was holding his attention. Even as a skeleton, he could sense the aroma and deliciousness of that sandwich. Why not? Human sandwich it is.
He took a bite. Okay. I'm on the surface. Pulled out of a game, somehow. Frisk is gonna go back, grab the most powerful monsters, and we're all gonna be saved. Heh. Likely story. How did that ridiculous guy really think a couple of kids could accomplish that?
There was just no way it could happen. Sure, the little sprite he remembered, it liked to accomplish the impossible, but that was just a little sprite. A little character. Probably made from a tiny bit of magic they could use to control things from the outside. The Frisk he saw behind the fake sprite didn't look like she was going to be able to accomplish the impossible.
And it was impossible. It wasn't just a power thing, it was just impossible.
Then, that guy. Ben. He was ready to leave his kids behind in a land of monsters, for as long as it took. For honor?
Shouldn't care. Don't care. Won't care. Except for that promise he made Toriel. I can't just let it get killed. Nah, wait. It betrayed me. Well, the sprite. Sort of. This is messed up.
Yeah. It crossed the line. It went too far. He just couldn't . . .
If they had picked any other monster besides him, Ben wouldn't have been successful. The monster would have picked a fight and the human soul would have killed it. Anyone else . . . Eh. Good food. Human food or not, it's good. Different. New. Couldn't beat that.
He watched as Ben's murderous/blessing of a kid walked past the kitchen in a hurry to the front door with Ben tagging along behind her. Looks like Pops told her the new role. Sans got up from the table and looked out the kitchen door, peeking around the corner to watch the strange kid and it's dad.
"I can't do that," Frisk said to her father as he rounded her and stood in front of the front door, preventing her from leaving. That kids eyes were nothing like the sprite. While it had always kept it's eyes closed, hers couldn't have been more open. The constant relaxed state was gone too, with this girl's legs jellified. "You want me to not just play the game, but get inside the game with T.? And play it for real?"
Her father kept his body against the door but addressed her question. "It's your duty to save the monsters. The character, Frisk. Your last name. The way you dress. The way the character dresses." He gestured toward the sweater she'd been wearing. "Even the way you speak. Everything I ever taught you was for this moment. It's your destiny to do this with your brother, Frisk."
"I don't know how to survive to get them." Frisk moved from him over to the back of the dilapidated looking couch. "I'm sorry. Okay, I'm sorry. You've kept me in the dark all these years, dad. I can't -I just- it's dangerous."
"You have a human soul. You are more dangerous to them then they are to you," Ben said to her. "Remember that from the game? What they are like in the game. The experiences they had before the character Frisk showed up? That was them. That was their knowledge. That is their world."
"But." Frisk paused. Sans looked back toward his burger on the table, but ultimately went back to watching the humans work it out. "But you want me to basically go in there and try to defeat monsters to pull them out!"
"You owe it to the monsters," Ben said.
Ooohh . . . I knew it. That's why Ben Nation made them do it. So when the time came, he could use the guilt against them.
"You knew though and you . . . but I didn't . . . but it wasn't . . ." The girl stammered. It didn't like he was going to miss much so he moved to the fridge, getting some relish. He closed the fridge again, adding the relish to his hamburger.
"It was necessary," Ben's voice came from the other room again. Sans took another bite but brought the sandwich over this time to the side of the kitchen door to eat while he peaked out. "It's necessary to take care of that too. The guilt will eat you alive, Frisk. Killing Undyne. Trying to kill Monster Kid. Killing Toriel. Papyrus. Everyone."
"It was a game, I thought it was a game." The mumble could barely be made out from the girl. Meanwhile, the relish wasn't half bad.
"They are real, and only you can get them out," Ben said to her. "You need to go down there with T. This is what you've been training for."
"This?" Frisk braced herself against the couch, her hands holding to it tightly. "I was a gamer. I trained to win games. Complete games."
"The ultimate game. This is your destiny, Frisk, to beat the ultimate game," Ben said to her. "How many times did you play that game Undertale? Master it? Learn every single secret. Talk to every single character. Visit the man who spoke in hands? Who mastered all the classic games out there, from Bubble Boy to Mario? Who was the first to beat those first coming out games before anyone's even heard about them? Got early access before anyone else ever could. No one is more qualified than my Frisks."
Sans brought himself completely back into the kitchen, but he kept eavesdropping as he went to dress up his second burger.
"I can't do this easily," he heard Frisk say to her father.
"Yes. It will take several rounds. A monster isn't just going to let you grab them, but once you are fully ingrained, you will keep starting over from the beginning. You'll remember, but otherwise, you'll get as many tries as you need to. That's the power of your human soul. It will never quit until you are ready to. With your determination, you'll never quit."
"Asriel?" Frisk asked. "Can I get him as Flowey?"
"No. All the way to the end for him."
Douche of the year award goes to . . . Sans grabbed his second hamburger now and moved over toward the door again. Ben Nation. Take a bend, Ben. Really bend over.
"And if I die? I get hurt?" Frisk folded her hands one into the other, pressing them down on the back of the couch. The edge of the couch was already started to unravel and she wasn't helping it. "I was hit, by Toriel. Even afterwards, it hurt. I just got smacked a little too, but it . . ."
"Yes, you can be hurt. It is real for you. The queen may have even been holding back on you, so it wouldn't hurt as much. And, I'm sorry, yes, you'll feel pain, but that's why you were chosen to be my daughter. I was one of the world's best gamers, and I know that my kids won't let a little bit of pain stop them."
"Death might be kind of hard to avoid."
"When you die, you start back over at the beginning."
"Not a save point?"
"Are there save points in our world, Frisk? Don't be stupid. You'll start back at the Ruins."
"Over and over, until all the powerful ones are out?"
"Yes."
"This . . . this isn't . . ."
It betrayed me. It came closer. I was letting it pass, but it pushed the envelope. But, as Sans looked at his empty platter on the table. How much like a game was it? He finished the rest of his burger and snuck out of the kitchen while Ben was coaxing his daughter to enter the Underground again.
Ah. He found Frisk 2. Around the same age, same kind of hair, and even the same frickin' sweater. Sans watched from the doorway. He was playing some pixel game. Room was just the same as the girl almost. Devoid of any kind of personality.
"There was nothing any different in Undertale today," he said, not noticing Sans' presence yet. That was easy. "So Sorry or not."
Undertale? That . . . is what they saw? That was in no way close to his world. That was cute. Fun. Pixely. His world was screwed up beyond belief. He came closer and watched as the other Frisk hit something else on his computer. A tab.
Sans read it down the line. Undertale. Oxygen Not Included. Don't Starve. Little Nightmares. He leaned against the top of the chair.
Humans. Didn't they have any sixth sense at all? His mind went back to how often he was able to watch the weird sprite without it knowing. The kid was more interested in tabs then the game that was his home. "You gonna play that any? I kind of want to see more of it."
Frisk looked above himself and saw Sans. "Okay? I see my sister won some prize dragging along a zombie for home?"
Zombie?
Frisk held his hand straight up to Sans. "Name's Frisk. How's it going?"
Interesting. There was the boldness he was used to. Sans gripped the human's hand. "Good. I want to see Undertale."
"That game?" Frisk shrugged. "Alright." Frisk loaded it up. "Give it a couple of minutes, you can't do anything at the start. So, was there any competition at all or did she just mop the floor of everyone?"
Sans didn't answer at first. Home. Was. A game. As the beginning went away, he started to watch him play. Everything was just game. Dialogue boxes. "Seen enough."
"Okay?" Frisk closed the game again. "So, who exactly are you?"
"Me? Ah. Let's just say, your dad knows." Sans moved away from it.
His world. Reduced into pixels, played like it was nothing. He actually swayed a little in the hallway. Sans was good at adapting to changes, but this was heavy. His world was entered and displayed as a video game. He was living the same day over and over again. The kid that saved the day and murdered his entire kind was supposed to be a pair of young kids that thought they were playing a game.
Up the other side, he saw the female Frisk kid again. She stroked her ear.
Sans didn't do anything. He had a feeling none of the humans were going to kill him, but he didn't know what else they expected of him up there. He couldn't just go out in the world and start living.
And he wouldn't. Even if that was the surface and freedom, he couldn't do that alone.
"Uh?" The female Frisk wanted something. "I'm."
What? What did it want? He just waited. It was slowly getting over its fear of monsters, and he had nowhere else to go.
"You being here is my fault, and I'm sorry," she finally managed to say. "No one even knew anything."
"Yeah. I saw what you saw," Sans admitted. Still. "You still crossed a line. Pixelated or not." She took a step backward. Funny. She was the one who could kill him, not the other way around.
"I know. I'm still sorry." She tried to meet his eye sockets but couldn't hold the gaze for long enough.
Huh. Well? At least it seemed to have sympathy. He tried to catch when she looked at him. It was tough. She had a lot of guilt eating her up inside. It was high, real high. Higher than the feeling of being scared now.
"I." Still slow on talking. "Did you want a shower?"
Sans tilted his head. Fresh water. He nodded while he thought of how nice that would be. He never needed many of those. He was a skeleton, and before he was shoved down into that bitter abyss of darkness, he stayed reasonably clean.
He watched her enter another room. She turned some switches and he watched clean water coming out. She pulled out a cloth and placed it on a counter.
"Here." She backed away and left the room.
Sans moved closer to the running water. He placed his bony hand in it. The sensation made him close his eye lids. Not only was it water, but it was relatively warm and comfortable. He could feel the sludge of the Underground starting to come off of his bones. Zombie. Boy called me a zombie.
He watched all the sludge of the Underground fall from his hand, and slowly the white color of his bone, that he hadn't seen in years, was starting to surface.
When his hand was all white, he squeezed it. He felt none of the caked on muddy sludge that had inhabited it for who knows how long anymore. Clean water was a gift. The best anyone could get was Waterfall, but the Underground wasn't allowed to bathe in it. What little water they did use for survival had to come from there. There were only a couple spots Underground where someone could bathe, and those were so bad after all of it, that it was impossible to call it clean water.
He moved his whole self into the little tub and hit himself with water. He had no idea just how much sludge had really accumulated over him all that time. He moved his arms through it, and even left his coat on so it could get a decent cleaning. He moved his skull up and down in it.
Every inch. He cleaned every inch of his skeleton off. The only thing filthy now was the bottom of the tub and his feet that was in the tub. He stepped out. Half that tub was now covered in, well, muddy sludge. What used to be on him. He took the cloth she laid out and used it on his feet.
As he threw that rancid thing away after cleaning his feet, he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror. He moved closer to it. Hey there, Sans. He looked like his old self, who he used to be before mankind just pitched him over. He touched the mirror. A reflection he thought he'd never see.
When was the last time he saw such a clean reflection? From the area they left, the improvement of the cars, all of the amenities in the human's house, and now bathing with water that was even comfortable.
Monsters deserved to live up there too. Monsters deserved it so much more. He moved from the bathroom and saw the female Frisk standing in the hallway. She had a coat next to her and a pair of slippers. The coat was slightly lighter, but the slippers still looked pink.
She took several steps forward. "Here. Dad said these are for you." She placed them on the floor and backed away.
Sans scooted forward and took them.
"Um? Do you feel better?" she asked him.
"Ya mean casting hundreds of years of gunk that got on me being imprisoned in a mountain?" Sans asked. "Relatively."
"What do you want?" she asked him quickly. "I. I owe you, not my dad."
Ah. There was some logical thinking finally. He took off his soaked slippers. As soon as he did, the magic that managed to keep them together let them disintegrate to the ground.
Warm and fuzzy new slippers. Felt like at least fifteen years since he had a cozy pair, but it had probably been centuries.
"Are you sure you wouldn't rather have shoes?" she asked him.
"Nah." Sans dropped the furry slippers on the floor and stepped in them. "These cushion bone better." She still wasn't looking at him quite direct. He couldn't blame her.
He was having a hard time figuring out how to react to anything either. "What I want, huh?"
There. That got her to refocus.
"I want us to all to get what we should have had on more than one occasion, and then I want humanity to leave us the hell alone." She nodded toward him.
"I'll try to do the first then," she said more in a hushed whisper. Then, she moved away.
Sans looked at the coat. It was cushiony. Like his coat used to be. Such a small guy when I was first thrown in. Hell I was . . . the little Frisks age. He had used his magic to stretch his coat, shorts and slippers as much as possible as he aged. It was all he had of the surface anymore. As soon as he took off his coat, the same thing would happen. Such small, fragile things would never have survived without his magic.
Making up his mind, he shrugged his old coat off. It dissipated like embers before it even hit the ground. He slid the new one on. Once he found something for his shorts, he'd be all surfaced out in new wear.
Sans went back down to the fridge to get some catsup. Two burgers wasn't nearly enough to deal with all the shit. He watched as the boy Frisk started to run toward him in the kitchen.
"Sans?!"
Sans held the bottle of catsup, flipped the lid off with his finger and downed it before answering. "What?" He looked toward the trash and tossed it away.
Frisk T. just stared. "Aw, this could only happen to me."
At least this Frisk wasn't fainting on him. "Not really in the talking mood right now."
"Holy Moly." Frisk looked back toward his sister and his dad. "And were supposed to what?"
"Go into the game again," his father said, "and just yank out the most powerful."
"Dang dad, that would include Asriel. That would, I mean, we would have to do everything," Frisk T. said.
"Yeeeeaaah, a little different there now, isn't it?" Sans the Skeleton said toward him. "Moving out from behind a computer and puttin' your real soul into the game. That'll be fun. You enjoy that, human."
"Aw, lay off." Frisk didn't care for Sans' bull right now. "Not right now, I'm havin' a small crisis here."
"Yeah? What, you got a bone to pick with me?" Sans asked him. "So how many times did you cross that line, huh?"
Frisk just shook his head. "Tell ya what. Why don't you fight yourself and see how you feel? I'll even boot up my sister's game account for you."
"What? No!" His sister warned him.
"You know what?" Sans moved away from searching for catsup. "I'll do that."
No music. Small black figure on a screen. Sans scooted the sprite forward on the computer. He watched the little representation of him come out and words in a dialogue box displayed themselves. The words he said. The warnings he gave.
The words he said. The warning words. Some of the most important words he ever said about anything. The most important moment, the moment he practically knew that he was going to die.
Wrapped up in pixels and dialogue boxes.
Wrapped up.
His life.
Soon his death.
In a game.
"See?" Frisk T. gestured toward the screen. "That's it. That's how powerful we were. People in front of a computer." He looked back toward his dad. "Screen verses real life. Big difference." E. wasn't looking him in the eyes at all. "There's a difference, E., we can't really-"
What?! Frisk T. just stared at what was once his computer. It blew up. "Talk about overkill. You roasted the game room computer."
Sans stood up from the chair. He didn't say anything. He looked at his bony hand and made it into a fist.
"Frisk, get out of there," his father demanded. "Now!"
Frisk couldn't move though. He was frozen.
Frisk E. moved over toward the other side of her brother and spread her arms out over him. "Sorry. Please. Mercy."
"Stop," Frisk's father warned Sans. "You can't win and you know it. Don't lay a single finger on his soul."
"Wasn't. Gonna." Sans didn't let go of him though. "My life. My. Life. No one had that right."
"There's nothing anyone can say," Frisk E. said to him. "No one can. I can't even put into words how you must feel seeing such a hard time in . . . a dialogue box. Sorry."
Sans didn't move.
"Sorry," she said again. "Sorry." It was her only move. It was the only thing she could say.
Being the only thing left to hold off the human from losing the Underground. His words. His warning. His worst moments . . . all reduced to text on a video game.
"You have to, Frisk T.," his father insisted. "The monsters have always been trapped. It's time to let them come back."
"Sure, because that would turn out really well?" Frisk T. scoffed. "Oh come on. Every monster down there always wanted to fight except Sans. We let them out, we are dead. Especially if they react even half as bad as Sans just did about his life being a game." He held his hands up. "I'm all for being equal, but I kind of want to live too."
"T?" His sister looked toward him. "Dad already has all that figured out. He's been doing this for awhile. Will you just . . . help me?"
"I don't know," T. answered. "I mean, to die? To keep coming back after we die until we grab a strong monster? That's not gonna be like a tiny sunburn you know." He looked back toward Sans. "I'm sorry. I thought if you could see that things were just different from this side, that it would be easier."
Sans understood, but it wasn't nowhere near easy. "My life's a game," he said. "I'm a thousand years old, but only about fifteen years or so passed Underground." He shook his skull. "I don't know what to think."
"Oh. Yeah. Everything piled up quick on you," Frisk T. noted. "Sorry."
"Catsup. Plenty of it," Sans said as he started to leave the room.
"Wait." Frisk looked back at his dad. "What's going to happen to him?"
"I'm going to enslave all humans," Sans said, trying to lighten the mood and get the focus off him, "to listen to my comedy for the rest of eternity."
Frisk T. watched him leave. "Well? Sans still seems like himself. "I guess, if the monsters deep down are all the same as they were from the game-"
"They are," his father insisted. "Everything is the same. Your access was just . . . limited. However, it's all the same. The personalities. Everything."
"I don't know." Frisk T. went downstairs toward Sans. He knew E. would probably ignore him because of the whole game, but he wouldn't let it go that way. Especially if he had to hang around. He went into the kitchen, toward the lower cupboards and grabbed an unopen bottle of catsup. He went toward the fridge and handed it to Sans. "I want to help, but at the same time, dying over and over doesn't sound like a fun time."
"Thanks." Sans took the bottle, popped it open and downed it like before. Yeah. That was a decent part of the Frisk he remembered. "You the one who tried to buy my fried snow?"
"Hey, we are completionists, gotta try everything," the boy Frisk said. "Heck, I even got your prank call."
"Did. Everything." Didn't quite feel like it though.
"Well? The way it works," Frisk T. said, trying to be real careful, "you can only choose one way without messing up your game. If you do the bad way, then you can never really do the good way. So, my game's pacifist."
Yeah. Huh. So, this one never stepped over the line? Or he just didn't play me, so he ain't got no guilt. He easily looked into that Frisk, he wore his heart on his sleeve and didn't divert his attention away. Good-hearted. Casual guy. Seemed okay. His sister though?
She was the one of the pair that kept fighting him without end. It was her account on that computer that led him to the sprite stepping up on the sprite of Sans. She was the one who kept tormenting his world. Yet? It looked like just a game. But. Forgiveness for that was hard, and she still wouldn't give him a straight look to get a good judging.
For now, from the attitudes and what he'd known, he'd have to assume one thing. Boy Frisk was the one who tried to help the Underground before. The one him and Papyrus had joked with. The one who ate the spaghetti.
And the girl was the one who played to kill. To murder everything around her. To not let a single monster live if she could help it. That kept pushing the edge. Except. She still didn't quite feel . . .
"How long would this take?" Frisk T. asked his dad as he and his sister entered the room. "I mean?" He breathed long and hard. "Every strong monster. How many strong monsters are there? How many times would we have to play?"
"To play to get them out, you must be in the 3d Beta simulator," his dad said. "So far, there are eight planned per year." He gestured to Frisk E. "The winner of competitions will also get more shots. I need to get you into that circuit too. Frisk will hit six rounds that way, if she survives through it all."
"So, fourteen per year. How many monsters would we have to get?" Frisk asked. He looked toward Sans. "How many really powerful monsters are down there, Sans?"
Sans stroked his bony chin and then held out his fingers. "How strong is strong?"
"You should go for the strongest," Frisk's dad insisted. "The monsters you've encountered, the monsters you think would probably be strong, and move down from there."
"Ummm?" Frisk T. looked over toward Sans. "How . . . bad do you all really want to be on the surface?"
More than he would ever know. However, this Frisk hadn't done anything to him, and . . . and Sans didn't trust magic with humans who had no idea what they were doing with it. Call it tech if they want, anything that opened up his world completely to pull them out was some kind of magic. "Hey, it's all your decision."
Frisk T. looked toward his sister. "You're already involved, Frisk. So. I mean. Maybe it won't be too bad?"
Frisk E. gulped and looked toward her father. "Starting at the next competition?" she asked.
Hmm. Scared, definitely scared, but she had some guts. She also didn't hide her actual emotion well. Once he got a good chance to get her, he could look into her clearly. "Uh. Who?"
"Try the queen," her father said.
What? "Nah, nah, my bro," Sans said, ignoring her now. No way. Tori was great, but he didn't want his brother separated from him. "He'll be worried about me already."
"I don't know." Frisk's father looked toward her. "Have you played the pacifist side at all, honey?"
"Yes," she said. "Just not the ending."
So. She was both. Boy Frisk was pacifist, but she was pacifist and genocide?
Well. Well, well, well. He should be switching to beer soon.
Yeah, he should feel bad snooping, but that girl Frisk did kill him countless times, so not really. Daddy was talking to his Frisks right now, so Sans decided to head on off away from the game room, to check out Miss Genocide and Pacifist's room.
Sans couldn't tell at first it was a girl's room. Gaming posters were on the walls along with codes and it looked like notes on stuff. When he went in, he saw consoles lining the ground. He went over towards the computer and saw the big red heart that said Undertale. Again. Of course she had her own computer in her own room for the same thing. Obsession. Then again, look at what their dad was like.
Home. He steeled himself. He had to face it. Had to do it.
He grabbed the mouse and clicked it. Instead of continuing, he chose reset. He wasn't going to go straight to a version of the worst day of his life again. He heard some music and then watched a simple scene he saw with the boy Frisk. When it was over, he was controlling a simple sprite that looked like the kid he remembered.
Tiny. Couldn't tell whether the character he was controlling was a boy or a girl. Left, right, up, down. Sans remembered that Ben had put the tiny dimension inside of the other computer and he probably hadn't placed it inside Frisk's again. Still, he was careful.
But . . . this was it? This simple up, down, left, right on this computer is all it had been? What's that? Oh. The flower. Pixel. Really low class. Anyone could be a murderer. Anyone could be a savior. Press of a button.
"There you are, Sans the Skeleton." Frisk's dad peered in on him. "I am going to have to speak to you briefly."
"What, agree to make the monsters trust you for my continued freedom-O or kill me-O?" Sans asked. "I got good hearing. Haven't you heard? Skeleton's got the best ear formation around. It's bar none."
A strained chuckle. Ben didn't care for it, just being polite. Humans had a horrible sense of humor after all. That one would have lit up Grillby's. "Will you?"
Will he? "Listen, Benny Ben," Sans began. "I was on patrol, maybe half sleeping, no out on . . . well, I was doing something and then I was here. Met the kid I murdered more than once and murdered me. Also met the kid that liked to have fun with us and tried to do good. So, right now? I don't know."
Ben looked at the screen. "You are trying again?"
"Reset. Your technology sucks, dude. Been a thousand years but that ain't even close to shit."
"It wasn't supposed to be. Part of the allure of the game. Well?"
"Allure?" Whatever. "I'll see. I need to rest on it."
"Fine. I can show you to the room I have for you. Sans? Sans the Skeleton? Hello? You slept almost the entire time in the car. You can't just . . . well, nevermind then."
