So...college comes with homework, which means unintentionally pushing back updates. I'll try to get a new one out at least once a week, but it's going to be tricky. I am NOT, under any circumstances, giving this story up, though. I've had the most fun writing this out of ANYTHING I've ever done, and it's NOT gonna stop just because some homework is keeping me from writing for a few days.

Anyway, now that that mini-rant is over, I guess it's time to answer reviews.

crazy dragon ninja: Mistral and Plum already had a vague awareness of there being other universes from what Sans and Papyrus (respectively) had told them during their visions into alternate timelines. They'll definitely meet others later on, though.

Kawaii Tofu: His soul's green with the occasional dark blue visible. To be honest...I just had to stop myself from spilling a chunk of plot to explain something. Nice job, Kawaii.

Thank you to Ender the multiverse Detective, FluffySheepLion, Curious Kit, Spyash2, and OmegaJudge for reviewing as well!

Mistral cleaned his (not his) bedroom, partially to have some semblance of neatness, partially to find his Monster Gaming console so he could play something, anything, to help calm his nonexistent nerves. Any semblance of normality, even Hermione picking on Asriel again (well, maybe not that far), would be a welcome sight compared to the foreign place he was in. Even his cloak, which he never took off, was a dark blue violet instead of its bright plum! It just wasn't right!

He had just finished picking up all the books in the room and placing them on the bookshelf in alphabetical order when the a lazy knock came from the door. "Come in," the skeleton called out, doing his best to keep his voice from wavering in fear.

The door opened to reveal the skeleton that was like Sans, but not. Sure, he was big boned and only a few inches taller than him, but the hoodie-wearing skeleton was more like Papyrus than Sans.

It freaked Mistral out to see his oldest brother NOT acting super hyper and instead see that personality in his laid back, smoking brother.

"heya plum," Sans said, his voice low. "me and carrot've gotta plan to get you and misty back where you're supposed to be."

Mistral cocked his skull, widening one eye socket more than the other to mimic raising an eyebrow. "Uh, my name isn't Plum, and I have no idea who Carrot is."

"s'your nickname around other versions of mistral, so no one gets confused. carrot's your version of paps."

"Why Plum, then?"

"reasons," Sans said, his perma-grin less forced. "like how your sans is blueberry."

Mistral blinked. "...I still don't understand why are nicknames are Carrot, Blueberry, and Plum."

Sans chuckled. "it'd take a while to explain, but we don't have the time. someone'll explain all this later, but if we wanna get ya home, we gotta do it as soon as we can."

Mistral frowned, his eye sockets narrowing. "And how do I know that you're going to help me?"

"plum." Sans sounded dead serious, all joking gone from his voice. "i promise that me, your bro, misty, hermy, and frisky bits have a plan to get you home."

The younger skeleton's mouth fell open. He...promised, and if he's like Papyrus, then... "Okay, fine, I'll go with you, but who are hermy and frisky bits?"

"...ulna, radius, humerus, clavicle, scapula, rib cage, femur..." Mistral listed as a way to calm himself, gesturing halfheartedly at the bones as he said them. Despite how mind-numbingly boring it could be to do, it gave Mistral something to focus on that wasn't the current situation. So far, he had gotten through his axial system as well as his arms, hands, and torso, but it was only a matter of time before he ran out of bones to count. After all, out of his 121 bones, he had already said over half of them.

Carrot gave a yelp, startling Mistral from his recitation. The hoodie-wearing skeleton quickly activated the machine dominating the lab, bringing up Sans on the screen, as well as...

"this is very confusing to see," Mistral said, staring at what, for all intents and purposes, was him. The skeleton had his cloak's hood down as well as the main part of it shoved back behind his shoulders, as if it were a cape.

"You're telling me," the other Mistral said, trying to figure out why the other him had his hood up and cloak covering his body.

Sans and Carrot both chuckled at the shock on the two skeletons' faces. Frisk and Hermione, who were standing off to the side, were focused more on the exchange. After a few moments of a silence only broken by the laughter of the older skeletons, Frisk frowned and signed, Hoodie, we need to start.

"right," Sans agreed before waving Plum to move towards the screen. "ok, so plum, what's the last thing you remember before universe-hopping?"

Plum grinned widely. "I was heading over to the park to meet up with Ron and Chara, but my skull started aching, so I sat under a tree for a few minutes to rest my lights. When I opened my eye sockets, I was at the park and people were different."

Carrot nodded. "good. we have plum's side of what happened. misty?"

Mistral ducked his skull slightly. "i...i went ahead of frisk and hermione to the park, s-so i thought i'd wait under one of the t-trees. i closed my eye sockets to take a nap, and when i opened them, something seemed...off."

"wait a sec..." Sans said lowly, his pupil lights fixating Plum. "why was your skull hurting?"

Plum frowned slightly before perking up again. "Ron scared me out of my chair in the Great Hall a couple weeks ago. I cracked my skull on the ground, but Papyrus and Sans were more than happy to heal it."

"misty, y'know we weren't able to do it fully, right?" Carrot asked, looking awkward about Plum talking about the crack,

Hermione gasped. "If Ron is the other version of me, then that means...Mistral, you really did get hurt!"

Mistral grinned nervously, his voice becoming quieter and more mumbled as he spoke.

Sans narrowed his eye sockets. "look, misty, if it was bad enough on the other side that plum hadta get it healed, we need to check it out here, too. thought you two had an injury in common, but this...plum, c'mere for a sec."

Hesitantly, Plum walked over to the older skeleton. "Yeah, Sans?"

"mind turning for me? i just wanna confirm somethin'."

Mistral's already stark white skull seemed to pale even more as Plum turned, making Sans's eye sockets narrow. He slowly began backing away only to have a hand land on his shoulder. Looking up to see who it was, he was surprised to see Carrot's pupil lights staring down at him, both glowing a bright orange. "don't. y'need t'fess up, misty."

He flinched before feeling his pupil lights glow green and blue in return, releasing a good amount of pent up magical energy that he had accumulated. Relaxing into the skeleton's side, he watched as Sans fumed over the hole in the back of what was currently Plum's skull.

"misty, the hole's big enough for me to see into your skull. you shoulda told someone!"

The hooded skeleton flinched again, seemingly trying to get as small as possible. "i...i didn't wanna bug you guys over something not important. there was no reason to-"

"no reason to what, misty?" Sans said, wishing that he could frown. "me and paps? we care about ya! it's our job ta make sure you're ok!"

The room fell into an awkward silence on both sides of the screen, no one wanting to speak. Finally, grinning widely, Plum asked, "Hey, is it okay if I turn around? I'd like to see my brother."

Sans blinked. "huh? oh, yeah. sure." He took a step back, giving Plum enough room to turn around.

Plum grinned widely at his brother, as if he was trying to mimic Undyne. "So Papyrus," he said, "what's the plan? I'm pretty sure Sans and Misty aren't going to spill it any time soon."

"...That's seriously it?"

"yep."

"All the build-up you've put me through, all the panicking from being in a different universe...and all I seriously need to do is call on my magic and fall asleep at the same time as Misty?"

"pretty much, yeah."

"That's...so simple."

"trust me, i didn't believe them at first, either."

"...Okay then, why not? Let's give it a shot!"

"jeez, for someone who's supposed to be a lot more optimistic than me, you sure are doing a good job at being sad."

"Pff-fih-fih...it's not my fault that I've been freaking out almost every second that I've been here."

"pffih, yeah...i know the feeling. hopefully, this won't happen again."

"yeah, it won't, 'cause the second you're back, i'm healing your skull, or at least going to get paps to do it."

Short chapter is short, sorry about that, but I was trying to wrap up the Mistral/Plum swap as soon as possible, because, to be honest, it worked its way into the story before I had the chance to backtrack and THEN decided to make itself into a several-chapter-long thing.

Sans isn't too happy about Mistral hiding the crack, but he understands that Mistral still has trust issues with those he believes to be above him.