10. Celebration

[[File 10.1 SA-20150708-#-#]]

"OH SANS," a voice proclaimed behind his back, dripping in so much sorrow a puddle of it formed on the floor, "THAT IS NOT HOW YOU PACK MOVING BOXES!"

Sans glanced to the boxes resting to either side of him. While the living room downstairs boasted an enormous, well-populated urban city center, Sans' bedroom appeared more a modest cardboard village. A modest, run-down cardboard village. The slums of a modest, run-down cardboard village. After all, instead of meticulously packing items, Sans simply threw wads of random junk into each of the packing boxes. An unorganized landfill exploded out from the opened container nearest to him; he had shoved together several wadded, dirty shirts; a broken flashlight; a crumpled stack of accordion sheet music; an old coffee mug; unmatched socks; a two-legged tripod; a rubber duck; a handful of batteries; and something that may or may not have been a spare lampshade. Or maybe it was part of a telescope? The box beside him, ready to be taped and hauled downstairs, possessed a similarly random collection of useless miscellanea. Papyrus leaned over and fished through it now with both of his hands, moaning as he picked up each object.

"WHY ARE YOU PACKING THIS, SANS?" bewailed his far-tidier-and-more-organized brother. "A FLOPPY DISK? AN OLD, SLIMY TENNIS BALL? EMPTY VACCINE SHOTS? AND WHY ON EARTH DO YOU NEED SIX BOXES OF PLASTIC SPORKS! ? ! !"

"heya, sporks are underrated," Sans defended quickly. "they're both spoon and fork. two pieces of silverware for the price of one. you can slurp soup broth and stab your meat chunks without switching silverware. i'll be honest. i don't get why we don't throw all our spoons and forks away. sporks do all the work ya need."

"NO THEY DON'T! YOU FORGOT KNIVES! WE NEED KNIVES TO CUT OUR SPAGHETTI NOODLES INTO SHORTER SPAGHETTI NOODLES!"

"welp, then maybe we can make a new type of plasticware that's spoon, fork, and knife in one?"

"SPLENDID!" Taken with the idea, Papyrus trumpeted, "A FORKNISPOON!"

"howzabout a knispoofork?"

"FORKSPOOKNIFE?"

"spooknifork."

"SPORKNIFE!"

"yeah, that's it. perfect name for our 'ware. now all we need to do is market it to the humans, and we'll be rich." Sans closed his eyes and held out his hands as though he could already feel the gold jangling inside his palms. "best invention since mustard." He paused, thinking about other clever potential innovations, and decided, "we should also create mustchupnaisse. ketchup-mustard-mayonnaise combo to go with our bratburgdogs."

"THAT IS UTTERLY REPULSIVE, SANS." Instantly disenchanted, Papyrus dropped the sporks back into the cardboard box and backed away from the clutter. Still, he remained lingering at the edge of the doorway.

"fine. maybe i'll start my own company for that," Sans teased. He glanced over at his brother, gestured toward him, and inquired, "so. you didn't come into my room to complain about my packing style, didja? or brainstorm the best 'wares people have ever seen?"

"DID I HAVE SOMETHING TO TELL YOU?" Papyrus puzzled. His forehead, though bone, somehow creased. "OH! I DID HAVE SOMETHING TO TELL YOU! ! TOMORROW NIGHT IS THE EVE BEFORE ASGORE OFFICIALLY BREAKS THE BARRIER! SO ME AND UNDYNE WERE THINKING WE COULD HAVE A PARTY TO CELEBRATE, AND YOU SHOULD COME! !"

"a party, huh? gee, i usually do like a party…"

Sans' voice trailed off, pinched in discomfort as he wondered how his changed reputation would alter his old party fun. Would he be able to enjoy himself with the crowd when everyone hailed his name and called him hero? Potentially not.

"ALL THE ROYAL GUARDS ARE INVITED! AND THEY ARE BRINGING ALL OF THEIR FRIENDS! ! I AM INVITED, OF COURSE, SINCE I AM BASICALLY A ROYAL GUARD, AND I CAME UP WITH THE PARTY IDEA WITH UNDYNE! OH, ALSO, ALL THE SENTRIES ARE INVITED, WHICH MEANS YOU! !"

The thought of intermingling with so many other monsters enticed Papyrus. His smile today seemed wider than usual, so wide it crowded the door frame. Sans recalled, with a bit of guilt, he had not been hanging out with his brother as much as custom lately, so that the already-lonely skeleton would have felt rather deprived of companionship. Situations were still a little odd since that one day in the kitchen.

woops.

"i'll, uh, think about it," he answered with some guilt. He should probably attend the party, even if he might not enjoy it. A shame – he really wished he could enjoy himself in other company, instead of rush away from excited monsters hailing his name. In truth, the only reason he had chosen to work and pack today had been to avoid his new admirers. "when and where's it at?"

"TOMORROW AT SEVEN! IT'S AT GRILLBY'S, WHICH WAS NOT MY FIRST CHOICE! IT WAS NOT MY SECOND CHOICE! IT ALSO WASN'T MY LAST CHOICE, BECAUSE I WOULD NOT HAVE MADE THAT CHOICE EVER! BUT UNDYNE SAID THAT SHE THOUGHT IT WOULD WORK BETTER THAN SOME PLACE IN WATERFALL."

"grillby's, seven. got it." Shrugging aside his discomfort, Sans recalled all the enjoyable moments he had spent in the restaurant. This would be his last opportunity to enjoy it before leaving it behind. "yeah," he nodded to both himself and to Papyrus, settling on a final decision. "i'll be there."

[[File 10.2 GA-20050826-#-#]]

"Doctor, you… might want to look in the mirror."

Rain signed his comment with a cringe. That cringe sorely differed from how most other scientists had been behaving around Gaster today – with quivering, poorly-held-back grins.

"What is it?" Clear exasperation dripped through the response.

Rain's hands fumbled. Finally, he returned, a little nervously, "Just look in the mirror."

Gaster did not spend time stepping to the mirror in the restroom, but did swivel in his office chair to peer at the nearest window's reflection. He immediately recognized why the other scientists – even Alphys! – were laughing at him. His usual stoic demeanor had been ruined… as someone had drawn a sharpie mustache on his lip.

"Lately you've been working so hard and so late in the lab, you know? So you fell asleep in the office, and…"

"I can guess what happened."

"I told him not to."

"There is only one correct course of action to do now."

"Which is…?" Rain fretted.

"Do you still have that two dozen colored sharpie set in your office?"

"Yes." Rain always stored art supplies near at hand for his periodic doodles.

"Grab a handful and meet me in Sans' office. The brighter the colors, the better." To most individuals, Gaster's facial expression would have been neutral. To those who knew him well, something… mischievous… twinkled behind his lenses. "Pin Sans down with all your strength. I'm going to turn him into a cat."

[[File 10.3 GA-20060801-#-#]]

"So, let's suppose, just for a moment, that this works and I go back in time."

Rain paused his work, staring at the mostly-installed device. Though dwarfed beside the high-reaching complex CORE interior wall, Rain's improved machine wielded its own impressive mass of wires, panels, and buttons interconnected by sophisticated engineering. The main equipment still looked like a wire-infested box, perhaps even an advanced copier machine overgrown in hardware mold. However, the cables connecting it sprawled like a maze across the high-ceilinged room, stretching horizontally at a distance nearly equivalent to the far-away ceiling.

The inside of the CORE baffled the eye on its own. Tubes ran like amok like a labyrinth, walls looking more like a pipe organ gone wrong than a building. Lighting always disconcerted, too: lava light cast flickering red hues throughout the interior. Shadows danced with as much life as flame. The combination of the CORE's eerie basement floor plus the Machine dizzied the senses, and yet Sans still watched his companion hard at work on the machinery, pretending the visuals did not bother him.

Sans lingered further away from the device than Rain did, instead chilling with the miniature mountain of construction tools at the back of the room. He looked up upon hearing Rain speak. "yeah?" Sans prompted as he swung a wrench idly around with his left hand.

"The goal is for us to travel so far back that we come to a point in the timeline when the humans hadn't built the barrier."

"yup."

"So I go back in time, to way before I was born… doesn't that seem… unnatural to you, Sans?" Rain did not wait for a response, but continued babbling. "I'm still not sure that can work, given what we know about time travel and parallel worlds – seems inconsistent with the theory, is what I mean. But, regardless, whatever, that's what we're trying to accomplish. And if I succeed, I'll be wandering around a world where nobody I know has even been born yet, in an environment I don't understand, trying to make things better in a timeline I don't know how it went in the first place?"

Sans pointed out, "well, we know what happened in our universe's past. humans got scared of monsters. started a war. drove monsters back. shut us underground with the barrier."

"It's still not enough information to go off to do things right," Rain protested worriedly. "What if we screw up again?"

"then we can go back in time again and retry. we can make yet another parallel world. now that we know how to do it once, we can do it again, as often as we need to."

"And what if I die first?"

"…"

Sans, sighing and setting the wrench down, remarked, "buddy, you worry too much sometimes." Hopefully Rain would not remark that Sans' response avoided his question.

Instead, his colleague simply sighed, a noise similar to the one Sans had emitted a moment before. "I know, I know, I know. I'm just… well… nervous for tomorrow." Rain's shoulders slumped so much his lab coat almost slid off. Hastily, he rightened his shoulders and arms, though his body language remained anxious.

"i am too. gaster believes it'll work, though. and how often has he been wrong?"

"True." For the first time, Rain quit staring at the machine, and instead rotated his torso to look at Sans. He attempted to reassure himself with some optimistic data. "All our preliminary tests have passed. I'll finish tweaking the machine by the end of tonight. Everything's in place for tomorrow. We couldn't be more ready."

"tomorrow's test also only sends you back in time five seconds. not five years, not five hundred years."

"I just am imagining the point of the experiment where we do go back five hundred years." Rain's voice drifted. "Gaster's plan complete. Everything we've been working for, researching in secret, accomplished. Asgore makes the news public that we have a way of escaping the underground, we send everyone back to a time centuries before their birth… and we all get there together… I'm trying to imagine what that'll be like."

"really odd," said Sans. Despite the fact he commented with a mere two words, his mind also whirled with the imagination of infinite possibilities.

"You're telling me! I don't know if we'll be completely freaked out, or completely overjoyed, when it's finally happened."

"both?" Sans suggested, at about the same time Rain himself mumbled, "Probably both."

They exchanged a glance, amused at the verbal overlap.

"I'll want a party before I leave," Rain continued, somewhat tangentially.

"before? why not after, when we get there?"

"Because…" Rain gestured around to the entire room. He swiveled about, pointing at the pipes and darkened monitors and panels overdressed in flashing buttons. "I know we're working so freakin' hard to get out of this place, but I'll sort of… miss… this."

"i guess i won't, too much."

"You won't? The thrill of the research, the dogged clamber for knowledge, the exploration, physics hypotheses proved, a whole new world opening up to us? We've been together so many hours working on this, Sans. You, me, Gaster. We're a team. We're all friends, even. I know I get a little caught up and worried a lot –"

"all the time," Sans coughed, none too discretely.

Rain ignored him "– and yeah, I am worried. I am stressed. But this is also the purpose of my life. My biggest adventure? It'll be strange to have it done, and even if it's been hard work, I'll miss it. You really won't?"

"well…" Sans shuffled his feet. The black shoes, as always, felt uncomfortable to him. Why couldn't he work in slippers? "i love physics. don't get me wrong. and i love research. always have, always will. wouldn't get a phd in something if i didn't enjoy it. then there's you and gaster's company. wouldn't exchange it for anything.

"but… i'd like to do some new things with my life, too. i know we're going back in time to a world with simpler technologies, but i still wanna do what i can to study astronomy. look at the stars. and… welp… this constant research to try to get around the barrier… it's eaten into the time i could've been spending with my lil' brother. i get, uh, no time with him. ever. i'm lucky if i see him get ready in the morning before i run to work. sure, i know we're not close. just. i feel like we could be, maybe… if i had some time to put effort in to talk to him? all i have the time to do now… is make sure the kid has food in the fridge. i want more than that. he's my brother. and he's so cool. that's why i don't think i'll miss this crazed science race too much. in the future i can do cool new things. i like what i have now, but the future sounds better to me. stars, my bro, a life on the surface. can't get better than that."

The CORE grumbled in the background, but the two scientists stood, unmoving, unspeaking.

"I can understand that," Rain nodded. "Still. We'll be leaving life as we know it behind us, and that's a little scary."

"it is," Sans agreed.

"So I want to have one final party before we leave it all behind. Celebrate what we've done, celebrate everything we've known, before going out on a new journey. I know everyone's SO ready to rush out of the underground, but I think that would be something meaningful, don't you?"

"i'd go to your party," said Sans.

"It'd probably have to be Gaster's. He's the Royal Scientist. He could invite everyone from the science team for one final event. All the researchers together, Calibri, Margaret, that one… umm, intern you're becoming good friends with?"

"alphys." Sans supplied the name.

"Yeah, her. Everyone. Mostly, I'll want to spend the night with you and Gaster." Rain smiled. "Ah, ah, sorry if that sounds mushy! I mean – I've just spent all my lab time with you two. And since we're going to be the three victors of this crazy research, we should celebrate what we've accomplished together!

"Sometimes…" And Rain really had dived into his imagination now. "…it's so hard for me to believe that anything we do will work. What are the chances this can happen? It sounds far-fetched, like a poorly written science fanfiction. Science fiction fanfiction? Uhh…"

Before Rain tripped too much over how he could eloquently phrase that thought, Sans prompted, "anyway…"

"Anyway," Rain continued, "sometimes it seems impossible anything we can do will work. But other days, it's so easy to imagine! It feels real! Right now I can see the three of us together, Sans. You, Gaster, and me. At the party. We're raising our glasses together as a team and clinking them, celebrating our breakthrough and success. Celebrating… the… end of the long road together.

"Think… think it can happen, Sans? That it's not just some crazy fantasy in my head? That we can get there, the three of us, to the end of our quest?"

"we'll get there," Sans dreamed, even though he also harbored uncertainty in his soul. With a nod toward his colleague and friend, he resolved, "we'll have that party and celebrate the end of the road together."

[[File 8.4 SA-20150709-#-#]]

Sans avoided the River Person as he wandered into Grillby's behind Papyrus and Undyne. Thankfully, the greater height of his two companions blocked the River Person from view, and Sans could slip into Grillby's unperturbed.

Somewhat unperturbed, anyway. Papyrus' sequins-bathed "Party Boy" shirt and Undyne's slick black outfit could not detract restaurant regulars and Royal Guard partygoers from recognizing their short skeleton hero. Though the River Person remained outdoors, staring vapidly at snowflakes falling in the fading light, everyone inside Grillby's erupted into a single word excited shout. "SANS!"

welp, there it is.

Typically when he entered Grillby's, he received a hearty welcome. Sans had in fact cultivated a culture of bawdy exclamations and loud, cheerful times within the restaurant; his near-constant presence there interacting with the other regulars ensured that everyone cheerfully greeted him when he stepped through the doors. He greeted them just as happily in turn. However, instead of receiving the usual excited but everyday exchanges between drinking companions, tonight Sans was catapulted with a resounding hero's welcome. The single word, "SANS!" contained such a different timbre than typical he almost did not recognize his own name.

Sans deflated at the same instant his brother straightened tall and proud. Papyrus, glittering in a horrendous, disco ball-like spectacle, reacted as though he himself had received the welcome. "IT IS I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS!" He stormed straight into the center of off-duty Royal Guards, all of them impressively tall, and vanished in their midst. Undyne charged off after Papyrus with an amused hoot and shouted above the already-noisy crowd – something about how Papyrus needed to try the "amazingly bad" cheese fries.

Yet even while Papyrus and Undyne glibly threw themselves into the mob, a mass of monsters churned toward Sans. In an instant, he was overtaken with animated welcomes and galvanized thanks. Most of the people Sans knew, though many had only exchanged a few casual words with him in the past. Others, the Grillby's regulars who happened to hang out in the restaurant at the time of the Royal Guards' party, clambered toward him, too, with an excited, "Hey Sans! You haven't been in here the last week! Glad to see you before we all head up to the surface!" "Thanks to you!" "A toast to Sans!"

He scrambled into the nearest booth. It would save him from being knocked over by the throng. His long-time drinking companion, who already had stockpiled tonight's collection of liquor bottles on the tabletop, greeted him with an ecstatic, "Sansy! ! !"

Before she could begin adulating on his recent heroics, Sans butted in. He shouted loudly above the hectic din, "heya! one last drinkin' contest before we all leave this underground for good?"

"I'm in!" the rabbit, of course, responded. Several others denied participation but clambered around the booth for the anticipated event. Most of the spectators were the regulars, Sans' old crowd, rather than the Royal Guards. Good. He preferred it that way.

"Grillbz, can we get two ketchup bottles over here!" his friend cried out.

"naw, naw, let's make it big," Sans said, still attempting to play it casual, though all eyes were upon him. If he continued the party this route, focusing on age-old restaurant regulars' traditions, maybe the night could feel like old times moreso than hero worship. "hot sauce. your hottest stuff, grillby."

A round of "oohs" filled the room, coming from those accustomed to the drinking contests. Sans caught his brother's face in the crowd, though. Papyrus was rolling his eyesocket in disgust. Undyne seemed entertained and filled her face with a fiendish grin.

Grillby did not speak, yet slipped wordlessly toward the back room to grab his hottest hot sauce. He returned a moment later with two bottles dramatically set on his finest platter. The swarm solemnly parted for the restaurant owner. A moment later, two tall, full plastic bottles rested on the table, one before Sans, and one before his companion. Both of them tried to ignore the intimidating ingredients on the label.

"I'm going to win this one, Sansyyy," she taunted, ears twitching with cocky resolve. Her cute button bunny nose scrunched into a competitive sneer.

"oh yeah? like you always do?" Sans boasted the highest number of wins by a long shot. Though she ran second in the competitions, she placed far below Sans' soaring score. Once the regulars had maintained a scorekeeping board on one of the walls in Grillby's restaurant, but after they ran out of room for Sans' tally, they opted to take down the board and pretend not keep score.

"Oh, brag your numbers all you like, Sansy. This is the one night that counts."

"winner takes all the glory?"

"You bet."

"what's the prize?"

She cocked her head to one side, and as often occurred when hard in thought, her left ear flattened while the right one remained upright.

"Dip in the river!" someone in the crowd shouted.

"Dunked with ketchup!" another hooted.

"Snort wasabi!"

"Loser must do an embarrassing dare!"

"Draw on the other's face!" This would perhaps work better if Sans lost than his friend.

"Piggyback the winner around for the rest of the night!"

"Dress the other person up for a week!"

"hey hey." Sans raised up both of his hands to either side, slightly higher than horizontal to the floor. Immediately, everyone around the table quieted. A buzz of conversation rose from the other side of the store, where the Royal Guards appeared to be participating in contests of their own, but every regular from Grillby's held an excited, anticipated breath. "i got it."

In a low, serious, dramatic intonation, Sans proclaimed, "no hot dogs for a year."

Everyone gaped. One white dog threw her paws in front of her face to stifle her startled gasp. Sans, from the corner of his eyesocket, could see Papyrus frowning, clearly suspicious about whether or not his brother could follow the rules of his own proposed punishment.

"That's… a hard punishment." The rabbit put her paws on the edge of the table and pushed herself back into the booth's cushions. Her fingers kneaded the table's edge for a moment as she pondered such a horrific bet, and then finally slammed a fist down on the table. Her entire forearm, elbow to knuckles, whacked the surface. She reached out her fingers to shake Sans' hand. "But I'm not gonna lose. It's a deal, bonehead."

Sans' jaw tightened into a devious smirk. "then it's official."

They reached out and shook hands. Furry paw grasped smooth phalanges.

"It's on," she snarled.

Grillby stepped aside while Greater Dog trundled to the edge of the table. Initially, the restaurant owner had presided over the competition, but because he was soft-spoken, that had created complications in the competitions. Greater Dog, with its big "boofing" voice, could clearly, effectively bark the start and stop of the competition.

Two left hands reached toward the hot sauce bottles. The rabbit placed the bottle tip right at the edge of her lip. Sans' teeth nearly tapped the top of his own bottle. The two stared at one another in a dead stare, prepared for their life-altering duel.

"Bwuff," Greater Dog began, counting down to the start of the competition.

Sans' fists tightened.

"Bwuff."

Arm bones tensed.

"BOOF!"

They tipped their bottles skyward, rapidly chugging the hot sauce with an intense fervor that almost made the stinging spiciness palatable. Sans instantly choked on the taste, mouth burning. It took him a moment to recover. His companion moaned as hot sauce assaulted her tongue, yet she doggedly chugged, eyes watering through the pain. Sans suffered so much from the spice he almost could not hear half the room shouting, "CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!" in competitive camaraderie.

He forced himself to squeeze the bottle. To continue guzzling the painful sauce. He could feel it slowly, slowly, slowly emptying… as hard as he tried… still such a prolonged process…

He could do it, could do it, almost there…

"BOOF! ! !" the Greater Dog announced.

His companion threw a triumphant paw down on the table, plastic hot sauce bottle emptied. "HA!"

Everyone instantly rose into a shout. Several dogs jumped up and chest-bumped, others turned their snouts to the ceiling and howled, many other monsters screaming in shocked awe at the upset. "Ohhhhhhhhh!" a number of voices hooted in devious enthusiasm. Sans' drinking partner threw herself up onto the table and dived into the crowd to bodysurf. Someone hoisted her up into a piggyback ride, where she waved her emptied trophy so high up she almost crashed it against the light fixtures.

"OH MY GOD! ! !" Papyrus exclaimed, eyes bugging.

Undyne, in a hysterical hoot, shouted out in stereo, "OH MY GOD! Fuhuhuhu, your brother just lost! !"

Sans set down his nearly-empty bottle. He certainly had lost, though not by an exorbitant amount. In a few more gulps, maybe two more seconds' time, he would have finished. Playing it cool, and taking the loss in stride, he chuckled and said, "fair's fair. good job." Then he immediately stretched for a water glass – not his own – to save his sore palate.

Papyrus also appeared sore, though in a different respect.

"GREAT!" he began to rant. "NOW MY BROTHER IS GOING TO EXPLODE!

"I'VE TRIED TO GET HIM ON A DIET FOR YEARS! IT WOULD BE GOOD FOR HIM!

"BUT THE LAST TIME HE TRIED TO QUIT EATING THINGS LIKE HOT DOGS AND BURGERS, HE ENDED UP EATING ALL MY CAKE SPRINKLES IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND COVERING HIS SALADS IN LEFTOVER GRILL GREASE!"

"and mayonnaise."

"AND A HOST OF OTHER NIGHTMARES! !

"THIS ISN'T GOING TO WORK! SOMETHING BAD IS GOING TO HAPPEN, I JUST KNOW IT!"

"heya, grillby?" Sans raised up a hand and flagged down the restaurant owner. "you got any cold 'dogs on you?"

About a dozen individuals gawked at him.

In casual explanation, he said, "i only said no hotdogs."

Undyne glared. "You want to order cold hotdogs! That's cheating!"

"It's just an oxymoron." Sans winked.

"NOBODY IS A MORON!" Papyrus darted in, quick to defend.

Undyne, continuing to storm, ranted on, "You're still cheating! ALREADY! Do you cut corners in work AND everywhere else? !" She had apparently become engrossed in the competition. Though she had never entered Grillby's during one of the prior contests, this fervor came as no surprise. From what Sans knew of the captain, she had always been rather competitive. Of course she had become quickly passionate over the event.

To placate her, he changed orders. "fine, how 'bout some coldcats? opposite of both hot and dog, y'see?"

Grillby, deciding not to enter this dispute, simply turned around and strolled back to his counter. He would not be retrieving cold hotdogs, coldcats, or anything involving temperatures and animals. It wouldn't matter if it was a lukewarm fish or absolute zero ostrich. Opting to ignore Sans, he began arranging the liquor bottles behind his counter.

The crowd, still babbling over the dramatics of the competition, slowly dispersed.

"heh, it was worth a shot."

Undyne now stood alongside Papyrus near Sans' table. Papyrus had enthusiastically entered into a one-sided conversation with another Royal Guard, and while he yakked away, Undyne seized the opportunity to say, "Hey, Sans?"

"yeah?"

"I want to apologize for my harshness earlier. You know… in your house… when we were investigating…"

"hey, it's okay."

"I was just frustrated I didn't know everything. But now," and her face turned into a gleeful grin, "I'm quite excited about what you did! You beat that human's ass, and now we're getting out of here! !" She whacked him heartily in the back in what she intended to be a celebratory gesture, yet it nearly knocked Sans into the table. "OUR HOPES AND DREAMS ARE GONNA COME TRUE!"

This last exclamation caught the ear of most of the monsters in the restaurant. They turned to their captain. "Let's have a toast!" Undyne exclaimed.

"I DON'T HAVE ANY BREA-" Papyrus began, but was cut off.

Glasses clattered about as party attendees distributed them about the room. Bottles turned downward, liquor splashing into glasses.

A moment later, Undyne raised her filled glass above her head, and shouted out, "A TOAST TO HOPES AND DREAMS!"

"Hopes and dreams!" every guard, sentry, and regular chimed, and downed their drink with a hearty upturned glass.

Only Sans heard the River Person, standing at the corner of the restaurant in the entryway, mumble something else. "Tra la la. The snow is very wet today. That is a bad sign…"