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Sans rubbed his eyes wearily with the sleeve of his white laboratory coat. It was going to be a long night. He silently ran a finger bone down the long list of algorithms, mentally checking them off one at a time. He slid his hand over his bald head and let out a long, uneven breath that sounded a dozen times louder in the silence of the basement.
Three days left until the end of the world.
Sans let his gaze wander over to check up on Alphys's progress, and he was quietly impressed with her work. Before her stood a short, stubby machine shaped like a huge metal doughnut, letting off sparks as she welded on another piece. She worriedly removed her safety gear every thirty seconds to check, double check and triple check to ensure that she was performing well, constantly going over Gaster's notes that she had personally transcribed from the blueprints that Sans had given her. Sans stared back up at his own contraption, sullenly blinking up at the bullet casing shaped device. The phase distortion generator could be exactly what they needed to ensure that another timeline spike never occurred again.
Then again, that could also be the worst possible scenario.
Sans brushed the thoughts from his head, forcing himself to resume work despite his aching body and weary mind. He could feel the exhaustion weighing on his shoulders like an anchor, and every passing moment was another that he fought off sleep. It was hard to believe the sheer amount of progress that the two had made in the past few days, but it would appear that Sans and Alphys shared common traits when it came to important work. Undyne had tried again and again to pull the dinosaur away from her work even for a little while but to no avail, as Alphys worked just as single mindedly and tirelessly as Sans did. The skeleton was in the laboratory at almost all times, constructing his oddly vertical bullet case shaped device imprinted with a number of magical sealing runes and odd wards written in hands. She mused quietly that the ex royal scientists's skill in manipulating blue magic and science was just as impressive as they day they had met. It went on like this for hours, Undyne sitting or leaning uncomfortably against one of the unused gurneys, watching the two work .
"You dorks finally gonna take a break?" Undyne handed a small clipboard to Alphys that she motioned for, and she slowly shook her head.
"Can't stop," she answered breathlessly, hooking a huge pipeline up to the machine. "We need to have the generator operational before the next spike!"
"I don't get what's so important about this 'spike' thing," Undyne rolled her hand through the air as Sans levitated a wrench past her in a grip of blue magic.
"In layman's terms?" Sans said quietly. "If we fail, it could spell the end of the entire world as we know it."
Undyne paled considerably.
"That's... bad."
"Agreed," he nodded. "But you can rest assured, we're working ourselves... down to the bone. Eh? Eh?"
Neither Undyne nor Alphys laughed.
"Yeesh, tough crowd," Sans loosened his collar. "Listen, Undyne, we're working as fast as we can here."
"At least some of us are," Alphys heaved a large scrap of metal onto the generator and began welding it on.
"Right, right, sorry," Sans stuck his hands back into the pockets of his lab coat, grinning. "You know how I am about –"
"- slacking off again, Sans!"
Sans bolted upright in his swivel chair at the sound of Gaster's voice. The joke book that he had meticulously hidden behind the quantum physics book was beginning to slip into his lap when he had fallen asleep, and he futilely struggled to hide it from Gaster's scrutinizing gaze.
"What's up, doc?" Sans struggled to maintain composure as he slammed the books shut.
"We've had another invasion," Gaster grabbed him by the hand and was pulling him down the long narrow hallways before he knew it.
"A human?" Sans blinked, straining to keep up with the skeleton's long strides. "So soon after the last one?"
"This is magnificent," Gaster clapped his holed hands together before readjusting his spectacles. "I need your help in testing the new Gaster Blasters."
"You named it after yourself?" Sans asked skeptically before freezing.
"... Sans?" Gaster paused and turned on the spot, staring down at the smaller skeleton.
"Doc," he breathed, trying to keep his hands from shaking. "You-you can't seriously mean you're going to test that thing on a human-"
"What else would we test it on?" Gaster rolled his eyes. "We need to move quickly, the security cameras already picked it up moving toward Snowdin, I need you to-"
"No, no way!" Sans shook his head fiercely, jamming his hands in the pockets of his lab coat to keep them from shaking. "You literally cannot be serious!"
"Sans, you're being unreasonable..." he frowned, turning his weary gaze away for a moment. "We cannot allow the king to force himself through another... incident with a human child."
"It's a kid?" Sans breathed, holding a hand to his head. "You said it would only be one! You want to murder another freakin' kid?!"
"Sans, calm down!"
Sans took a deep breath, his head feeling light.
"I – we – need you to be strong enough to handle the situation," Gaster rubbed a circle around his holed hand. "I cannot do this by myself anymore."
"That's why you made me," Sans said quietly, staring up at him. "To do... this for you."
"That is not why you were created, Sans," Gaster replied softly, looking away. "You were never designed with combat purposes in mind."
"So in the end, it doesn't really matter what I am..." he crossed his arms. "I'm still the beta. The fragile accident. The failure."
"So make yourself into something different!" Gaster snapped. Sans blinked, unsure of how to respond. "You are your own monster, Sans. You are not me. You are not your 'brother'. You are not what you were meant to be, so it's up to you to make your own meaning out of your life."
Sans was quiet for a long time. Gaster stuffed his hands in his lab coat pockets, and there was a weariness hanging on him that Sans had never seen.
"This... this simply isn't ethical," Sans said after a long time.
"It's not about what's ethical, it's about what's efficient."
"I can't keep doing this; you can't keep making me do this!" his voice rose and he felt a tightness in his chest. He pulled deep for the magic, feeling the tingle in his bones as he summoned Gaster's pet project.
"Sans-"
"No! I mean it this time, I-I can't do this anymore, consequences be damned!"
"Sans! Just put it down, we can still talk about this!"
"No!" he screamed, feeling the bone rattling hum of the blaster floating behind him. "No more dead kids!"
"SANS!"
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"Sans!" Undyne shook him awake forcefully. "Sans, snap out of it!"
Sans blinked awake, the dream already fading away. It had felt so vivid, like he was reliving it all over again...
"What?" he looked between the shocked ex royal guard and Alphys, the color drained from her face. "What happened?"
"You fell asleep standing up," Alphys stuttered. "A-and you started shouting ab- t-things."
He rubbed his temple with one hand, feeling hot and clammy simultaneously.
"... I know we're running short on time, but... I need sleep," he murmured quietly, but they both seemed to pick up on it. "All do. Need to sleep. See you in the morning, guys."
"Sans, it is morning-" Alphys began, but he was already gone.
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