A/N: WARNING: Some violence and gore appears in this chapter y'all. Gaster ain't playin' around. Enjoy!

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Frisk nearly laughed out loud. If it had been any other situation, she might have. Instead, she focused her attention on the humans in front of them, trying to decide which one would have the most information. She looked around, making sure to get a good view of every face in the room.

A person on the far left, wearing the customary camouflage uniform, raised his hand.

Papyrus nodded. "Speak, Human."

"Wh-who is your b-brother?" he stuttered, clearly afraid of saying the wrong thing.

"He is a skeleton like me. Well, like me but smaller than me. His name is Sans. If I don't get him back, you will all pay."

A few of the people perked up when Papyrus said 'skeleton'. Frisk caught their reactions and felt a little euphoric; they still had a chance to get him back!

"I know where he is!" a girl in the front shouted.

A few others tried to shush her, but she refused to let them; she wanted to live, dammit.

"He's in the experimentation lab."

Frisk flinched. She could see Gaster do the same.

"And where is that?" Frisk demanded. She stepped up on the rubble next to Papyrus. She wanted to look dangerous, but she knew there was no chance in hell when she stood next to the second tallest monster she knew. For good measure, she cocked the weapon in her arms.

"It's just down the hall. I can show you!" the girl ran forward. She skidded to a stop when one of Papyrus' bones leapt forward toward her. "I want to help," she said honestly. "The things they do here…they're not right. Please, let me help."

Papyrus pulled the bone back and nodded. "Lead the way. The rest of you, stay here. Alphys, do you have a way to seal this door?" he asked into his comm.

"N-no, Paps. You literally destroyed it."

Papyrus frowned. "Dang it." He sighed and looked at his dad. "The Great Papyrus shall wait here to make sure they cooperate. Please find my brother."

Gaster put a hand on Papyrus' shoulder. As much as he wanted to take his son's place, he knew that what lay ahead was more dangerous. It was better that Papyrus stay where he was safer.

"I will, my son."

As they walked away, Frisk caught the sight of a wall of bones surrounding the humans. She was scared for the skeleton, but she had to trust that Papyrus knew how to take care of himself.

Frisk walked in the front with the woman who was leading them. She was only an inch or two taller than Frisk with chin-length blonde hair, blue eyes, and freckles.

"So what's your name?" She asked.

The woman looked at her warily. "Megan."

"Hi, Megan. I'm Frisk."

Gaster groaned. "We're not here to make friends," he all but growled.

Megan flinched.

Frisk attempted to growl back. "But it doesn't hurt anything if I try, now does it?"

"How do you do that?" Megan asked.

"Do what?"

"Talk to them like that. Aren't you scared?"

Frisk snorted. "Of Gaster? Well, yes, a little, but he's my boyfriend's dad."

Megan looked confused. "Your boyfriend is a monster?"

"Yep, the one we're here to save. Are we close?"

Megan nodded. "Yeah, just up here and to the left. I have to warn you—"

The hall suddenly exploded with sound as a gunshot rang out. Megan dropped to the floor. Frisk turned quickly to see a man in uniform holding out a handgun.

"She has to warn you that you're about to die," the man said.

In an instant, he was surrounded by what Frisk would describe as the most beautiful purple light. It swirled with incandescence for a moment before the man began to crumple in on himself. Frisk cringed at the sounds of bones crunching, flesh dripping to the floor, and the man's screams as they turned to gurgles. Eventually, he was nothing more than a pile of bloodied carnage of the tiled floor.

"What was that?" She demanded. "We're not here to kill people. I could have shot him in the leg or something."

Gaster shrugged. "He was going to kill us, so it was self-defense. You're welcome. And that? That was just a small taste of my magic." He smirked at her.

Oh shit. Maybe she should be more scared of Gaster.

She swallowed and decided it would be best not to say anything as they continued down the hall. She felt bad for just leaving Megan and the mess of what used to be a man just laying there, but she had a bigger goal.

Finally, they were at their destination. The double doors had no windows. They were solid metal with a sign on either door that read 'LAB.' Frisk sucked in a deep breath before she pushed on the door. Of course it was locked.

"Allow me," Gaster said with a smile. A swirl of purple magic slipped through the cracks near the lock, there was a thick, hard click, and then the doors opened.

"You could have done that with the other door," she accused.

"I could have, if Papyrus hadn't destroyed it first. I did not want him to do that, Frisk. I'd rather he was here with us where I could keep an eye on him. If you think I'm not worried sick about both of my boys, you are very wrong."

Without another word, Gaster entered the room. He had surrounded himself and Frisk with a purple force field that sheltered them both from the rain of bullets that met them. It appeared they had been expected.

Frisk looked around, stunned. It was nothing like what she had expected. Instead of tables, beakers, and white everywhere, the room was painted a dull gray. Pods lined the room on either side, most open and empty. There were two with occupants. She looked at the first on her left briefly, not understanding what she was really seeing, before she caught sight of the one across from it.

"SANS!" she screamed. She removed the safety from her firearm and ran toward Sans' pod. She had to shoot three people, two in the leg and one in the arm, before she finally made it. She could feel Gaster's magic still surrounding her and silently thanked him because there was no way she couldn't focus one hundred percent on the skeleton in the pod.

He laid there, his eyes closed and his hands and feet strapped down. He looked frail. He was wearing only a white sheet over his hips, and Frisk figured he was probably actually naked in the pod.

"Baby," she whimpered. "Baby, look at me." She pressed her hands to glass surrounding him.

Sans didn't respond to her.

She curled a fist and pounded it against the glass. Still no response.

"Gaster, what do I do? How do I get him out?" She screeched the words, terrified that they'd come all this way for nothing.

Gaster was already beside her, staring at something to the side of the pod. She looked up at him, frustrated that he wasn't helping.

"What do I do?!" she demanded again.

He reached out and gently touched a jar with a white heart in it. Frisk was confused. The heart was upside down.

"They did it," he said softly. "I'm so sorry, my son."

"What? They did what?"

Gaster looked at her, and the pain in his face made her gasp. "That's his soul," he cried.

Before the words could settle and make sense to her, she watched his face scrunch into a terrifying mess of hatred. He turned and screamed as he threw an attack of some sort.

Frisk couldn't see what it was. She couldn't really care at that point, because his words finally made sense. Sans' soul was in the jar beside him.

Tears that had welled in her eyes finally began to fall. She reached out and gently touched the jar. What did this even mean? Was he dead? She thought monsters turned to dust when they were dead. Maybe that meant he was somehow still alive.

She found a button that looked like it might be a switch and pressed it. The pod hissed and began to open. She wanted to feel triumphant, but she only felt hopeless. She took the jar and managed to get it open. She searched Sans' body for any kind of scar that they might have created getting his soul out of him. She only cried harder at the sight of the many wounds covering his body. Finally, she found it: his sternum was cracked in half.

She reached inside the jar, not sure what else to do, and grabbed his soul. For a brief moment, she thought the pain might kill her. She'd been shocked before, small instances when she turned on a light or even when she'd touched Sans' flower. This was nothing like that. She felt like she had put her hands on a live wire.

She could handle it, she told herself. She had to put Sans' soul back where it belonged. She didn't even know this would work.

She put his soul down on the crack and prayed it just…reabsorbed. It didn't.

"Gaster! Help me please!" She tried pushing on it, but nothing happened. She couldn't let herself push too hard. "GASTER!"

"What the hell are you doing?" Gaster shouted.

She looked up, and he took a step back. Her eyes were glowing.

"Help me put it back. Please!" She tried again.

"Let me handle this," he said softly as he took his son's soul from her grasp. "You hold them off." He gestured to the human army behind him.

She nodded and wiped her face. "I can do that."

She turned and looked at the faces of the men and women who were there to kill them all. She noticed a few shocked expressions. She really hoped they were all prepared to die, because if Sans didn't live, she was going to massacre the place.

One person raised their rifle, then another. Fear tore through her insides. This was it. She and her friends were all about to die.

She thought of the pain Sans must have felt when they ripped his soul from his body, and her anger was renewed. As a few of the people began to run forward, she held up her hands. She couldn't say why she didn't use her weapons. She felt the same electrocution from Sans' soul rushing through her entire body as the edges of her vision began to turn blue. She heard herself screaming, and suddenly her chest burst open. She was sure she was dead.

She fell to her knees and wondered how that could hurt if she was dead.

"What was that?"

Gaster's voice sounded muffled. She looked up, attempting to focus her vision. It took a moment, but finally Gaster's face came together.

"What was that?" She asked, not realizing he'd just asked her the same question.

Gaster looked at Sans for a moment before he met her eyes again. "I think…I think I know what happened. Oh…this is a development, isn't it? We have to get him home so he can fix you."

She furrowed her brow, even more confused.

"Why don't you get the other one. I've got Sans. His soul is back where it should be, but it will take him a while to heal."

She had forgotten there was another monster in the room. She stood on shaky legs and looked around her. Bodies lay all around her, but there was no blood. Nothing new, anyway. She wasn't sure if she'd killed everyone, but she let herself hope that they were just stunned.

She stepped carefully over people as she made her way to the other monster. He was tall, nearly as tall as Gaster, with white fur covering every inch of him save for two small black marks under his eyes. He had a pair of gray shorts on, and Frisk wondered why this monster was allowed modesty when Sans was not. She unlocked his pod. His soul was not in the container beside him. She hoped that meant it was still inside him.

"I think we might need to switch," she said as she turned to Gaster. "There's no way I'm gonna be able to carry this guy."

Now that his son was going to be okay, Gaster could allow himself to pay attention to the other monster. One look, and he knew the entire world was about to change.

"I think you're right."

He carefully handed Sans over to Frisk, making sure she was okay with his weight, before surrounding the other monster in purple magic.

"Not like that!" Frisk shrieked.

Gaster laughed. "I'm not going to hurt him, Frisk. He's…I must be very careful, and this is the only way I know how to make sure he doesn't get hurt any further."

She watched in horror as the furry monster was lifted out of the pod. Even with Gaster's words, she still expected him to begin to crumple like the man in the hallway. Instead, he began to float peacefully beside Gaster as he walked toward the exit of the room.

As she followed him, something dawned on her.

"You know who that is?" she asked.

"Yes, I do."

She waited, hoping he would say something else. When he didn't, she huffed and followed in silence and turned her attention back to Sans in her arms.

He was heavy, but not too much for her. She just wished he'd open his eyes. She placed a gentle kiss on his frontal bone and stepped closer to Gaster in case they were to get attacked again.

~LM~

They all made it out. As soon as they made it to Papyrus, he lowered his weapons and took Sans from Frisk's hold. She wanted to protest, but just the look on his face made her shut up. He seemed happy again, if not worried.

He gave another warning to the people in the room, stating that if anyone tried to stop them from leaving, they'd get a bone in the head. He demonstrated what he meant by sending a bone flying into the wall.

Alphys and Undyne met them out by the Jeep.

"Was there a two for one deal?" Undyne asked as they set the furry monster in the backseat of the vehicle.

"No," Gaster said seriously. He didn't comment further.

Alphys seemed agitated at seeing the extra passenger.

"Who is that?" Frisk asked as Papyrus gingerly placed Sans in the seat.

"Never mind who that is, what the hell's wrong with your eyes?" Undyne demanded.

"She touched his soul," Gaster explained.

Frisk wasn't sure how that was an explanation, but the other three seemed to understand something important.

"I don't get it. What happened?" She asked. "What is wrong with me?"

Undyne insisted then that they get the hell out of there. Frisk grunted with impatience and climbed in next to Sans. Why were so many questions going unanswered today?

She found herself looking over the unknown monster. If she looked at him a certain way, he looked like a goat. The thought made her smile. His hands were weird, she thought; three fingers ending in claws. Hmm; not very goat-like. She had to wonder if he was magical like Sans was; maybe that was why he was there to begin with. On his head, above his long ears, were two filed-down horns that she hadn't noticed before.

She tightened her hold on Sans and kissed his head. She really hoped he woke up soon.

A/N: Thanks so much for reading! Answers will be coming soon!