8. Mentor

[[File 8.1 GA-20060317-0-# MW]]

"I have n-n-never, in all my life, thought I'd see someone t-t-T-T-TACKLE Doctor Gaster!"

"i'm sure not. hey, i'm pretty impressed with myself too."

A young lizard, younger even than Sans, had timidly crept alongside him. He recognized her from last week's collision, the poor doctor who accidentally stumbled in way of Sans and the head Royal Scientist. Even if the stutter in her voice had not betrayed her nervousness, the manner in which she hunched herself over – as though bending in a constant cringe – manifested her current level of discomfort. Sans wondered how she even found the nerves to approach him at all.

"uh, sorry 'bout knockin' you over," he added belatedly, hoping his prior flippant joke would not set the fragile soul running.

"It's f-f-fine." She twisted her lips into a bucktoothed grimace. She probably meant to produce a smile, but in her state of social unease, could not successfully grin. Instead, her entire face, from thick round glasses to the tip of her lips, contorted awkwardly. "You were obviously in a… rush?"

"yyyyyyeah. gaster was, anyway." Sans' words morphed to chuckles halfway through his comment. He would be laughing for years about that incident. Unfortunately, he could not relay the entirety of the incident to this other doctor; though she worked beneath the Royal Scientist, too, only Sans, Gaster, and Rain were authorized to know about the current time travel experiments.

He switched the conversation. "so. hey." Sans slipped his hands into his laboratory coat pockets, carefully feeling along the edges of the lining to ascertain he carried a needed item. He found it there, in his left pocket, inflated as he hoped. "i know i've seen you around in the labs before, but im not sure we've actually met."

"N-no, I d-don't think we have."

He held out his hand. "the name's sans. sans the skeleton."

"Doctor Alphys." She grabbed his hand. The whoopee cushion delivered, an enormous fart sound ringing through the halls.

Eyes widened, she jerked backwards, nearly stumbling onto her rear.

Sans laughed. He twisted his left hand, revealing the toy in his hand. "whoopee cushion in the hand. sorta funny, huh?"

"Uh. Y-y-y-yeahhhh." The wince on her face was genuine now. "You… like… teasing people, don't you?"

"all in good fun. so long as it doesn't hurt anybody, i enjoy finding a couple o' laughs. "but anyway.

"alphys, was it?"

"Yeah."

"that's a cool name. what do you do here, alphys?"

"Oh, I only j-just begun." She appeared to be relaxing slightly, though, given that Sans had taken interest in her. "I finished up my d-d-d-doctorate last spring, and just got hired to work here in the Royal Labs."

"congrats."

"Well, I'm little more than an intern, right now." Her eyes fell to the floor, a little abashed.

"hey. it's a big deal getting here at all. you'll do just fine. gaster doesn't hire anybody, you know." Sans swept his hands around the entire laboratory, taking in the hallways they could see, and the windows bordering the outside of one of the main research facilities. "if he picked you, it means you've got great promise."

She scooped her eyes off the floor and used them to stare bug-eyed at Sans. Though she should have comprehended the importance of her position upon becoming hired, the skeleton's remarks apparently impacted her. "You think s-s-s-s-so?"

"i know so. i've been working here almost four years, and in that time, i've been way lucky. i've worked closely with gaster and gotten to know the ole doc real well."

"I've only s-spoken to him twice, m-m-maybe. Once since the interview. He seemed really… c-c-closed off to me… and I guess it makes me… worried… he…"

Sans clapped her on the back before she could trail down a path of uncertainty and self-doubt. "don't worry about it," he insisted. "he's the most introverted person i've ever met. he doesn't wear his soul on his sleeve, either. …more like, keeps the same expression on his face 99 percent of the time.

"but that doesn't mean he's cold. he cares. in fact, i'd say gaster cares more than most people. he might be untalkative, and he might be awkward, but he'd do anything to get us out of this hole. i've never seen someone so determined to break the barrier and reach the surface.

"i came straight out of grad school to work here, too. just like you. he didn't care about my age. he saw my thesis. found it interesting. hired me right away, and… well… we've been working together ever since. dare i say it, he's become somewhat of a mentor to me. definitely a friend.

"so if you're here, he believes in you. he thinks that you can change the future for the better.

"you'll be fine, alphys. trust me."

She remained silent, soaking in his words.

"i, uh, accidentally rambled there. didn't i?" Sans shrugged and pulled out a sheepish grin. He was unaccustomed to talking so much at once, and only now realized he had gone off on a long lecture.

"N-n-no, no, it was g-good. It was good," she responded. Her voice was soft. "I needed to hear that."

They looked at one another, both surprised the conversation had delved so deep. With a renewed cringe, Alphys mumbled, "I sh-should get going back to w-work, n-now."

"same. see you around?"

"See you around."

[[File 8.2 CO-200X-0-# MW]]

"I'M TELLING YOU, SANS, UNDYNE IS THE COOLEST!"

Sans turned his attention from the quiet Snowdin streets to his brother's wide grin. As always, he cherished these calm, relaxing moments with his counterpart. "heh. ain't no one cooler than you, papyrus."

"WELL." Papyrus paused, mulling through this challenging speculation. "I HATE TO ADMIT IT, BUT MAYBE YOU'RE RIGHT FOR ONCE! ? ?

"THERE IS NO ONE COOLER THAN THE GREAT PAPYRUS!

"NYEH HEH HEH HEH HEH! !

"BUT UNDYNE STILL IS VERY COOL! ! !

"YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN HER AT MY LESSONS TODAY! !"

The brothers approached their house, and Sans stepped forward to open the door for Papyrus. Snow covered Sans' jacket head to toe, but dripped to the floor as he shuffled through the entryway. A minor avalanche entered the house behind him. "i take it you learned some cool tricks today?"

Typically, Papyrus would have scolded Sans for trailing wet snow into the house and damaging the carpet. However, in such a state of elation, Papyrus appeared not to notice, dancing outside as he stomped the snow off his own boots, and responding, "I DID! ! ! AND UNDYNE TELLS ME I AM A NATURAL!

"SHE TOLD ME, TO QUOTE, 'WELL, THAT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE, I SUPPOSE.'"

Chuckling, and not daring to correct Papyrus about the actual semantics behind Undyne's message, Sans responded, "papyrus, that's great. you should show me sometime. maybe teach me a few moves?"

Papyrus' brows furrowed. Of course he seemed suspicious at the suggestion. "YOU? LEARN SOME SPARRING MOVES?"

Sans tried to appear natural with his shrug. It caused another enormous snowball to slide off his shoulders and splat to the floor. "sure, why not?" he answered. "you've said it yourself i could do with some training and exercise."

He began to saunter up the stairs toward his room. His fingers fumbled with a small device hidden in his coat pocket. He needed to check the number on the meter. "just don't… work me too hard, will ya, bro? i'm not looking to be in the royal guard like you are."

[[File 8.3 GA-20040515-0-# MW]]

"Attention everyone!"

A small monster with a self-important puffed-up chest marched to the center of the laboratory and shouted those words as loudly as possible. A few curious heads poked out from offices while others casually paused their work. Not everyone paid heed to the speaker, though; some individuals continued to step about their business, carting stacks of paper to their desks, or elsewise peering closely at the materials in their lab station.

The next words, though, caught everyone's attention.

"Gaster's practicing."

Scientists threw printouts to the floor. Experimenters shoved themselves away from countertops and researchers rocketed out of desk chairs. Everyone immediately stampeded to the same stairwell, charging downstairs with animated whoops. Sans shuffled behind the main populace, though even his step quickened at the thought of watching Gaster in action. It always excited everyone – and for good reason.

He could hear the shudder of wall supports and feel intense, earthquake-esque vibrations even before he reached the basement floor. That noise strengthened into dramatic high-pitched cracks, whip-like snaps, baritone blasts, and an overarching screech from hell. An underground tornado ripped through the laboratory, and everyone hustled to watch it. Crowds squeezed through the door into a medium-sized chamber, and all scientists lined themselves up against the wall around the outer edges.

No one had considered the room would be used for sparring. Sans suspected the basement had been designated as extra storage space originally, but once Gaster had begun this personal "side project" of his, monsters had hastily cleared the room for practice. No furniture, no equipment, nothing except a perimeter of people occupied the space. Sans, finally reaching the room, sneaked along the edges and placed himself next to Rain, the only scientist sitting cross-legged on the floor, and murmured a quiet, "hey." Rain seemed to be drawing idly, glancing somewhat at Gaster, but mostly attempting to draw a cat. Maybe it was a cat.

Sans could not care what his colleague sketched. His eyes gravitated to the center of the room, where indeed, he could not glance away from the cyclone in action. No electric lights lit up the room, but bright, bursting magic exploded through the space in arrays of shooting stars. Gaster shot firecrackers into the room's center; they erupted forth like mushroom clouds; and then, twirling on a foot, left arm outstretched, he let loose a string of gaping-jawed skulls. Twenty pinwheels simultaneously blasted beams of laser light. Skulls snapped at magic pellets in a shark-like feeding frenzy. A universe of battling magical heads cycled in fast-paced, rotating galaxies. The spectacle overwhelmed the eyes.

And in the center of it all, Gaster danced. Not fought, but danced. Feet lightly trotting through the midst of Armageddon pellet wars, fingers delicately slipping around skulls vomiting death rays, the scientist orchestrated every movement. He conducted rapid orbits around his head, streaming in circles from foot to head. He directed complex corkscrews of blasting jaws. Everywhere he pointed, the shooting skulls attacked dancing magic pellets, striking and successfully demolishing every target. The whole world lit in white as his blasters whirled like hurricanes.

With one final, dramatic clap of light, the skulls and their quarry vanished.

Everyone burst into applause. Hands outstretched, the scientists wildly clapped for the Royal Scientist's incredible display. Gaster nodded, a polite but genuine smile coming across his lips, and he took the moment to bow three times: once to the west, once to the east, once to the north.

"That was an enjoyable diversion," he signed, though not everyone understood the language. Those who comprehended his message quickly translated for the others. "Back to work now, I'm afraid."

No one seemed disappointed to return to their workspaces. Instead, they happily gabbed as they filed out of the room. "He could beat twenty monsters at the same time!" "What incredible control!" "Those Gaster blasters are going to completely revolutionize Encounters!"

"Sans."

Before the skeleton could leave the room himself, Gaster hailed his partner, and gestured for his colleague to approach.

"ME?" Sans pointed to himself, uncertain, but when Gaster again beckoned, Sans obliged. He had heard Gaster speak about this project, but Sans had never been involved with it. He did not quite comprehend the nature of the hailing.

At least Gaster was always blunt and quick to the point. "What do you think of the blaster project?" Despite the nature of the question, Gaster seemed in the mood for casual conversation, not professional evaluation. Sans would not be able to explain how he could tell, other than that he had spent so much time with Gaster both at the laboratory and in casual settings, that he could tell the subtle distinction. Here, he was being approached as a friend.

"it's very dramatic."

Gaster rolled his eyesockets, unimpressed. "…Besides that?"

It took a little time for Sans to contemplate a response. At last, though, he signed, "to be frank, i just want to know how you have time to do everything. you're working on the time travel project with rain and me. you're supervising five other team research projects. you have your own 'free time' projects like this one. yikes. that's crazy bones. you keep telling us to take breaks so we'll feel rested. how do you manage?"

"I don't overwork myself, if that is what you mean to imply." The glare turned into something more… concerned… though. Gaster glanced down at his hands, took a few paces idly around the room, and then continued to sign. "Though I do admit I have increasingly little time patience for rest or recreation."

"rain would like that pictionary game about now, doc. i know your art's even worse than his, but…"

"What can I say?" That was as much frustration as Gaster would ever self-express. He might not have intended to vent to Sans, but now he was signing the full unrestrained barrage. "Sans, I can't afford to idle. Downtime bores me, and if I ever find free time, I make up my own projects to fill in the gaps. You know I can't do nothing. And yet, I am forced in a tiny, claustrophobic corner of the underground where there is nothing to do except try to escape. In this short life that I will live… I need to make it fulfilling. I need to make it count. I need to do something."

"you've done more than a hundred monsters combined. believe me. people revere you as much as gerson."

"But it's not enough." Fervor – and frustration – overtook Gaster's eyesockets. He frowned behind his glasses. "You? Your brother? Sunny? The kids? They deserve better than this. We all deserve better than this. I have dedicated my life to scientific exploration in order to break the barrier and give us that betterment. That is my one goal in life. If I can do that, I will be satisfied." He stared about the room, now empty, but memories remained of the magical chaos which had ensued a moment before. It was still so easy to see hundreds of blasters cycling in a fast-paced rushing constellation.

Sans did not know how to respond.

"As much as I hope our time travel experiments will be successful, there has been a halt in progress. A dead stop, if I may be honest. It appears as though there is no method to generate enough power for what we would try to do. Even if we did move Rain's machinery to the CORE and break safety protocols to boost energy levels, there is no guarantee that the next step of the experiment would work."

"and that experiment would be dangerous, too," Sans said. Their experiments with macroscopic nonliving objects had proven to be a success. They had successfully transported large objects to parallel worlds. Yet the next step would be to attempt the process with something living. If they failed… well… there would be no guarantee the test subject survived the process.

"I hesitate to pursue this forward. You understand I may cancel this project?"

Sans nodded.

"I know that this approach might fail. Most research ends this way – with inconclusive results or some other motivation to pursue a new path. That is why I prefer a multifaceted approach. If we cancel this project, then I need to be prepared with other options that might break us free from the underground.

"These blasters are one such option."

"but those are only needed if you see a human. right?" Sans asked.

The answer came after hesitation. "Yes and no," he admitted. "I mentioned to you before it would assist in acquiring the final SOUL if a human arrives. That is not entirely the point of the blasters, though. I did not mention it because we were in public, and the nature of this development is on a… sensitive topic."

The war. He meant the war, didn't he? As much as the monsters found great aspirations hearing Asgore talk about his plans to defeat the humans, the sentiment usually only went so far as leaving the underground. There was some confusion regarding whether or not the war with humanity would continue after Asgore acquired the seventh SOUL. Fighting humans on the surface was a taboo topic, carefully avoided, hastily smoothed over, and almost never directly mentioned. Some people would begin talking about the Angel of Death before this.

Gaster signed, "A human may fall into the underground before we finish our research on time travel, yes. If that human arrives, we will have our seventh and final soul needed to break the barrier. Nevertheless, I believe Asgore will defeat the human, just as he has acquired the other six souls before this one. He does not need the blasters for this.

"But what then? Once the barrier is broken, monsters will travel to the surface and encounter more humans. We will need to be prepared to face them and survive.

"These blasters are designed as an augmentation of magical strength. Through control of my blasters, magic users can apply even greater power than before to their attacks. ATK damage output multiplies by a factor of eight to ten for standard attacks with average INV frame usage. This changes everything. Monsters won't be so vulnerable against humans the second time the two species comingle. I won't let them be vulnerable. You or anyone else in the underground might need to fight a human someday, and if you do, I want to ensure the monster race survives. In cases where a monster needs self-defense, these blasters will guarantee their victory against a human attacker."

At this point, Gaster idly conjured one blaster. Now that there were not hundreds of skulls rotating about the room in an overwhelming light show, Sans could study the details of the invention. What hovered in the air appeared to look like an oversized canid skull. A low yellow light throbbed deep in its mouth. It could have been any magic attack, but at the same time, gave the impression of being more… real… more solid… harder to dissolve into magic dust.

"well. you're not wrong. no one could beat you with those things," Sans commented. After a pause, he asked, curious, "so. if you made them so anyone can use them… does that mean the blasters are easy to control?"

Gaster studied him closely. Whatever the Royal Scientist observed in Sans, he seemed pleased, nodded succinctly once, and then invited, "How about you try them out?"

"are you serious?"

The expression on Gaster's face suggested he had meant to ask this since he had called Sans over and begun their conversation. Of course. Wings Dings planned everything.

"I need secondary testers at some point. The bulk of the blasters' development is complete. Some new users would help me ensure I have crafted the exact weapon I have intended to. It therefore would be of great profit to me if you spent a little time with the blasters, too."

"alright then," Sans answered, hands shaking a little nervously. He had never been much of an athlete, much less a fighter, and felt more than a little uncomfortable harnessing indubitably powerful magic. But if it would help Gaster… if it would help his friend… if it would help the entire underground… "just tell me what to do."

"Stay calm," instructed Gaster, "and don't worry. We'll start with something easy."