11. Backtrack
[[File 11.1 IH-20150701-3-5]]
He could only allow himself a few seconds to grieve her.
Thin white bones reached up. His hand hovered a moment in the air before he placed his palm gently on the door. He could feel the indents and imperfections of the material beneath his hamate and capitate. Somewhere, on the other side of this door, lay the dusty remains of his joking partner. He doubted anyone else would be around that side of the Ruins to perform an official funeral ceremony and sprinkle her dust on what she loved most, but at least the woman had fallen in the comforts of home, hopefully near something she had held dear. It was not much to hope for, but Sans could do nothing for her now.
i'm sorry, old lady.
He rotated away from the door.
Half a second later, he teleported.
He could not leave the human alone.
Hopefully they had not stumbled upon Papyrus.
Sans collapsed in the snow a quarter mile from where he had been half a second ago. Though somewhat disoriented, he immediately pulled himself onto his feet and began rushing up the pathway – a pathway conspicuously absent of life.
shit, where's the human?
They weren't where he had left them.
Now regretting his choice of slippers for footwear, he stumbled past rows of trees. He stumbled through a clearing covered in nothing but snow and the tracks of someone who had wandered this way before him. He stumbled past the frozen ice pond. He stumbled over the well-packed snow of Snowdin Forest's main trail. All this time, he noticed no sign of the human… not a glimpse of their sweater… not the sight of one dark brown hair from their head. He hoped the recent tracks he sighted on the pathway belonged to the child.
He needed to find them.
He could only keep running and trust he raced the right direction. Trees flashed by. A surprised Snowdrake standing on the road jumped out of the way before being bowled over. Sans could not even find the breath to shout out a frenzied "sorry" – gasping for air, he just continued charging. The incline of a hill wore him down, but he continued huffing, puffing, and forcing his feet to propel him forward. The urgency of the situation provided him extra stamina.
He raced up the hill… to find the child standing just a few feet from Papyrus, musing over a puzzle. So innocent the child appeared now, leaning up to stare at a white orb in Papyrus' hand, while the tall skeleton hunched over to peer more carefully at the sphere himself. Together, the two muttered about electricity, mazes, and a lack of instructions, apparently attempting to discern how this puzzle worked. Both seemed confused. Papyrus furiously scratched the top of his skull while the child reached up to take the orb from his gloves and weigh it in each hand. Nothing about the scene indicated the true, horrendous nature of the child – that they had just moments past slaughtered one of Sans' friends and mentioned it in casual conversation.
He could not allow something similar to happen to his brother. No, way, no, chance, not, now, not, ever.
Sans stomped forward, straight toward Papyrus and the human.
"you stay the fuck right there!" he demanded, pointing accusingly at the human. The child's dark cheeks paled to the color of snow, and they froze. Wide eyes dared not blink. Sans, tramping straight past the stalled human, clapped his brother on the back and ushered him resolutely away from the child toward a copse of trees. "papyrus, get over here, c'mon." Even as he pushed his brother, he craned his neck backward to fixate a direct eyesocket on the human. Although Sans' harsh voice had traumatized the child, and they had not yet moved a muscle, he could not let them out of sight one second. Not when they had killed before.
"we needa talk."
Unsurprisingly, Sans' firm actions startled Papyrus. The skeleton protested, waving his gloves in the air. "SANS! ! ! WHAT ARE YOU DOING! ? !" He removed Sans' hand from his back. Overexcited, he announced, "EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL! WE WERE JUST ABOUT TO ENGAGE IN THE MOST ENTHRALLING OF PUZZLES, THE –"
"no. quit it. quit the puzzles. quit it all." Sans' speech lacked its characteristic casualness. Instead, he shot out each word crisply, firmly, sharply, quickly. "get backup. get undyne on the phone. we've gotta get this kid taken care of immediately."
"BUT WE ARE TAKING CARE OF THE HUMAN!" Papyrus countered. He sounded completely baffled. Perhaps a little hurt, too – both brothers knew how long Papyrus had awaited an encounter with a human. Sans could not pull this moment of success away from him now. "I AM TAKING CARE OF THE HUMAN RIGHT NOW! THE REASON WE HAVE THE PUZZLES IS TO BAFFLE AND BEFUDDLE THE HUMAN INTO SUBMISSION SO WE CAN CAPTURE THEM. ONCE THEIR MIND IS WEARIED FROM THE TRYING WORK OF PUZZLE-SOLVING, THEN –"
"alright, look." Sans rubbed his hand briefly to his forehead before snapping it forward toward his brother. "the puzzles don't work. that won't capture a human. just… they're dangerous. we gotta treat them more carefully than…"
"I KNOW HUMANS ARE DANGEROUS, SANS," Papyrus huffed, crossing his long-limbed arms over his ribcage. "BUT THEY ARE NOTHING THAT I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, FUTURE FAMOUS ROYAL GUARDSMAN, CANNOT HANDLE!"
Sans glanced at the human. They still had not taken one step toward the skeletons, but… they had dropped the orb, and now grasped a stick firmly in one of their trembling hands. A weapon, no doubt.
That instilled no confidence in Sans' SOUL.
"trust me, bro, i believe you. i believe you can handle the human." Words tumbled over one another more quickly now. One letter smashed into the next as they rushed out Sans' mouth. "but think about how excited undyne would be to capture the human with you? you've always want her to be proud of you. here's your chance. nothing would thrill her more than getting the opportunity to watch you beat up the human with her own two eyes." Anything he could say to convince Papyrus to avoid confronting the dangerous creature for a few minutes. Anything he could say to bring proper, well-trained backup to handle a confirmed monster murderer.
"WELL…" Papyrus' eyesockets shifted to the side, a tell-tale sign he was considering Sans' idea. "YOU ARE RIGHT, I DO WANT UNDYNE TO SEE MY GREATEST MOMENT. I WANT TO BATHE IN GLORY AND HAVE SPECTATING MONSTERS SHOWER ME IN ROSE PETALS! BUT…"
Papyrus paused.
He reached his decision.
"IF YOU ARE SO WORRIED ABOUT THEIR DANGEROUSNESS, THEN THEY MUST BE THE DANGEROUSEST!
"WE CANNOT WAIT FOR UNDYNE!
"IT IS OUR DUTY AS SENTRIES TO ACT! !
"THIS HUMAN MUST BE HANDLED INSTANTLY! ! ! !
"NO DILLYDALLYING!
"NO DELAYING!
"AND NO 'BONE'DOGGLING! !"
The skeleton's face grew into a wide, overexcited, toothy grin. "JUST IMAGINE WHEN I MEET WITH UNDYNE AND ANNOUNCE I'VE JUST SUCCESSFULLY CAPTURED A HUMAN, WITHOUT ANY OF HER ASSISTANCE!
"THAT WILL MAKE HER EVEN MORE PROUD OF ME! ! !
"THAT WILL BE EVEN BETTER THAN HAVING HER WATCH ME FIGHT! !"
Papyrus stretched up to his full impressive height, spine proudly straightened, fists valiantly planted on his hips. A gentle breeze rose up, pulling at his scarf and flapping it like a superhero's cape.
Spinning on the heel of his boot, Papyrus made one gallant step toward the human, who cowered, shaking, too frightened to move, almost ready to cry.
For all Sans had attempted to convince Papyrus to leave the human alone, instead he had incited his brother to capture them now.
He threw himself forward to block his brother's path. It meant turning his back to the human, but better that than allowing his brother to stride straight up. Hands raised and spread widely like two twin spider webs, Sans insisted, with greater urgency, "no! you can't do that, papyrus, you can't!"
Papyrus halted mid-step. "SANS? SERIOUSLY, WHAT'S GOING ON!? YOU'RE ACTING EVEN WEIRDER THAN USUAL! IF THIS IS ANOTHER ONE OF YOUR JOKES, I AM NOT QUITE ENTIRELY WHOLLY COMPLETELY ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THIS IS THE BEST TIME FOR IT! IN FACT, I AM ENTIRELY WHOLLY COMPLETELY ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THAT THIS IS NOT THE BEST TIME FOR IT."
"i'm being serious this time, too. this is not a prank. i honestly don't think it's a good idea to get near that human." Sans glanced back at the child, who remained still and white-faced.
"I AM NOT A DISTANCE CAPTURER, SANS! I AM A CLOSE, HAND-BONES-TO-HAND-BONES SORT OF CAPTURER! IF I AM TO CAPTURE THE HUMAN, I MUST BE NEAR THEM!"
Spinning wildly like a pinwheel, Papyrus whirled toward the human with a zany eagerness to confront them. This time, he successfully passed his brother before Sans could block him.
"shit!
"no!
"papyrus, they've killed people!"
Papyrus' shadow halted over the child. Though the human had stood, transfixed and traumatized, during the brothers' entire conversation, this last moment impacted them too much. The human finally burst into the wail they had barely been repressing, small sweatered form crumpling in a ball, shaking and shrieking. "No no no no no no no no no don't hurt me don't hurt me I didn't mean to do anything!"
Apart from the child withering in the snow, no one moved. No more did Papyrus trot toward the child, no more did Sans rush to block his brother. Together, the skeletons stared at the bawling kid before them, listening to their screeches, Sans' last words sinking into the situation.
they've killed people.
"THAT'S… AWFUL…" Papyrus said at last, staring with new, worried eyesockets at the human.
There were no more words from the brothers, but the human incessantly babbled.
"No no I didn't mean to – no no no – no, I'm no meanie I'm not a meanie at all I'm not a bad guy I didn't know what would happen I didn't know at all I wasn't even trying to hurt her I proooomise – I promise I wasn't trying to hurt her I didn't knowwwww don't hurt me don't hurt me."
Papyrus, observing the general gist of the wailing, remarked, "IT LOOKS LIKE THE HUMAN DIDN'T KNOW WHAT THEY WERE DOING, SANS." No longer did exuberance sing through his sentences. Concern soaked through his voice, his dreams of glory and entering the Royal Guard vanished from his thoughts. Sans knew Papyrus would never have anticipated this sort of situation the day he encountered a human. Likely, Papyrus had imagined the day to be one of thrilling adventure...
…not… this.
"i…" Sans' voice trailed off after a single word. His eyesockets roved down to stare at the human, whose eyes had reddened and swollen to the size of golf balls. They had dropped the stick to rub tears from cheeks.
Papyrus asked, quite uncertainly, "DO… I… STILL CAPTURE THEM! ?"
The child's ramblings rushed onward. "I feel so awful and bad and I didn't mean to and I'm so bad I mean I mean I feel so bad and…" At this point in time, a horrible fit of sobbing overwhelmed the child, so much that they almost appeared to seize, limbs thrashing, body jolting, mind overcome in terror. Words were lost in the screams.
A pink slipper took one step backwards.
Papyrus stepped the opposite direction. Though his motion appeared as hesitant as Sans', he clenched his fists determinedly to his sides, and murmured, as softly as this loud skeleton had ever spoken, "PERHAPS IT IS NOT THE PROPER TIME TO CAPTURE YOU, HUMAN."
Then, with a bit of a troubled smile, he completed, "IT LOOKS LIKE RIGHT NOW YOU NEED A HUG OF COMFORT."
Sans and the human flinched simultaneously. But the taller skeleton jerked himself forward. With equal amounts of nervous hesitation and bold conviction, he bent down and knelt on the snow with both knees, leaned forward toward the child, pulled them up to his chest, and embraced them tightly. The human's head smooshed against his chest. There, they shook in the security of his arms.
But… maybe… the violence of their shaking… was beginning to subside.
Sans' feet tread backward a few more steps. However, while he distanced himself from the human, his eyes latched onto them and Papyrus.
"THERE, THERE," said Papyrus, at the same time thumping the human's back in a well-intended gesture. "THERE IS NO REASON TO CRY. I WILL ONLY TRY TO CAPTURE YOU WHEN YOU ARE HAVING A GOOD DAY!"
None but Papyrus could switch from threatening capture to embracing that same individual he had threatened. Yet Sans held no doubts Papyrus' actions arose from complete, internal sincerity. "YOU ARE BEING HELD BY THE GREAT PAPYRUS! YOU ARE VERY LUCKY! NOTHING COULD BE BETTER THAN THAT! !"
For half a second, the human might have giggled on top of their sobbing.
Sans continued staring, though he could not consciously register what he saw. Dazed. He felt dazed. And… something… else…
He felt…
…guilty?
Papyrus was still comforting the child. "THERE IS NOTHING MORE SOFT AND CUDDLY THAN A SKELETON! AND THERE AREN'T ANY SKELETONS THAT ARE MORE SOFT AND CUDDLY THAN ME! THIS IS THE BEST CUDDLE SESSIONS OF ALL POSSIBLE CUDDLE SESSIONS YOU WILL EVER EXPERIENCE."
With a lot of sadness, but perhaps also a little relief, the human squeaked out some words in a high-pitched voice. With their face still smashed into Papyrus' chest, the humans' comment sounded indistinct, yet Sans still believed he heard, "You're silly," between the muffled sobs.
The lady on the other side of the Ruins door was dead.
And yet…
Yes… that feeling… definitely guilt.
Sans missed Papyrus' reply, yet he heard the human speak again. They had finally pulled themselves up to look Papyrus in the eyesocket, though they were still nested on the skeleton's lap. They choked more words through the tears. "You… don't… you don't hate me?"
"VERY MUCH I DO NOT!"
The child reached out and clutched onto Papyrus' glove.
"I FOUND OUR EXPERIENCES SOLVING PUZZLES TOGETHER QUITE BONDING, EVEN IF THEY WERE BRIEF! MAYBE ANOTHER TIME, WHEN YOU ARE FEELING BETTER, WE CAN RESUME OUR ESCAPADES, AND I CAN TRICK YOU WITH CAPERS AND JAPES!"
For sure this time, a little giggle danced on top of the tears.
Sans' feet continued propelling himself backwards. He could not stop. A thought. the human killed the old lady by accident… Thoughts in motion with his feet. …it was by accident, no other reason for the child to burst into tears like that… Stumbling, stumbling. Nearly trip. and… yet…
…what have i done?
The first human he had encountered… obliterated by a blast of magic, before even finding the chance to speak. Without closing his eyes, Sans could see that past. The bones scattered on the floor. The magic strewn throughout the room. The throbbing, broken human SOUL before him.
That human had been little older than the one before him now – the one sobbing in the snow, clearly traumatized by what had occurred.
Guilt sunk like a stone inside Sans' ribcage.
Between the human and the monster, who actually had caused the greater harm for the least- provoked reason?
He knew the answer.
He reversed directions. Shuffling forward, eyes downcast, body stiff, Sans approached his brother and the child. He forced himself to reach out and ruffle the child's hair. For a second, he feared this would end him, yet nothing occurred except a quick shock of static electricity sparking his fingers. His bones rested lightly, safely, on top the human's head.
"heya kid," he murmured, voice even lower than typical. He forced his smile to appear comforting, though he could feel it wobbling from the gravity of many pained emotions. "don't you worry. there's two of us who know you've got a good heart."
After staring calculating at the human, a short study, he finished, "and in fact… i think we might be able to fix your problem."
[[File 11.2 GA-20060829]]
He wandered into the basement. As he walked, his hand slid down the staircase railing idly. To his left, in the first main room, he could already see the shadow of his sparring partner. Gaster had leaned forward to push against the wall, pulling back on one calf to stretch it. Odd as it seemed, even skeletons needed to stretch.
Gaster stood straight when Sans entered the room. He peered at Sans' face with interest and remarked, with almost an air of levity, "You managed to wash off the permanent marker? Impressive."
"no thanks to you." Sans' cheeks still felt raw from last night's intense scrubbing. Papyrus had spared no enthusiasm helping his brother clean something. "i still can't believe my boss pinned me to the floor and drew on my face."
"Just retribution."
"you can't even draw."
"To be fair, you were wiggling."
"i wonder why."
With a sudden, tactical topic shift, Gaster dismissed, "Get warmed up." He took several steps away from Sans and continued stretching further away, as though intending to ignore him.
"wait a minute, doc. you are so not getting away with this."
"Already have, thank you very much." That was smugness in his eyesockets. He could not deny it. Gaster was feeling smug. "You may also want to check the community bulletin boards and main laboratory halls for the photograph of your makeover."
Sans, chuckling despite the fact this meant he had more pranks to suffer through, remarked, "when i first started messing with you, i had no idea you'd be the sort to fight back."
"That one sock was your life's greatest undoing," said Gaster with great severity. Then, switching the subject and peering intently over at Sans, he commented, "anyway, you should warm up now. We will be attempting something new today with the blasters, and a little more challenging than typical. Tell me, Sans. Which eye is your dominant?"
"left."
"That should make things slightly easier. Mine as well. Watch."
An enormous canid skull materialized to Gaster's side. It hovered there, in the dim light of the room, with a magic glow of its own.
"We've practiced control with the blaster, but the true key to mastery is becoming one with the blaster. It is an extension of your magic, and consequently…"
Gaster's right eye suddenly winked out. It took Sans a little more time to realize the orb-like left eye of Gaster's blaster had also disappeared.
"…become one." And Gaster placed his hand forward, directing the blaster, and it responded. An enormous pulse of energy erupted out of its jaws.
"Your vision becomes shared with the blaster," Gaster explained, even as he let the weapon disperse. As though it were dust, it puffed up and floated away. "In a way, it becomes a second head. The blasters are not everyday conjured magic, the typical passive bullets we organize into shapes… but the blasters operate as an extension of oneself. It is a firmer mode of magic with which one can become conscious. I can carefully concentrate, and see out of both my own eye – the one glowing – and the eye of the blaster – the opposite eye, explicably enough. I have not one but two visions. I have not one body but two. With this heightened level of sensitivity and perception, one can control the blaster minutely, as well as harness magic powerful enough… that one blast from it could even kill a human."
He had been following along eagerly enough, but Sans pulled his neck back in surprise at the final statement. "whoa. that's nasty stuff. and you think im ready for that?"
"Ready enough to begin learning. Now…"
Sans sucked air into his mouth and at the same time forced his blaster to appear. It wavered for a long moment before visually stabilizing. At the same time, he concentrated, imagining his mind as one with the blaster. Gaster calmly instructed Sans on how to proceed, hands moving slowly and carefully. Over time, it was hard to see Gaster. Vision blurred. Vision…
"You nearly had it there, Sans. I know. The sensation of two parallel visions is overwhelming at first. Focus, and it will become less daunting over time."
Inhale.
Two visions, two simultaneous visions…
Raised up a hand…
This was it.
The power.
The moment.
Kkk-chew!
His blaster hiccupped. What may have been a spark squeaked out of its throat before it disappeared in a bouncing spasm.
A strange throaty noise tickled Sans' right. Gaster's shoulders bobbed up and down, and his cheekbones pulled up in a smirk. He was laughing. Not much more than a chuckle, but he was laughing.
"you're laughing at me?" Sans protested in mock indignation.
Gaster forced a stoic expression back on his face. Amusement remained readable in his twinkling eyesockets, however. "That actually was quite good for a first time. It is extraordinarily challenging to control." And, in a rare progression of events, Gaster cracked out a joke, "looks like you won't be killing any humans, though, will you?"
[[File 11.3 IH-20150701-3-6]]
The small human child sat on their couch, feet dangling off the side of a cushion. They periodically swung their shoes and banged their heel against the sofa's side, causing the poorly-maintained furniture to jangle like a tambourine. The longer they waited, the more they improvised with their rhythm, as though composing a classical duet for couch and shoe. They were already drafting the third movement.
Sans knew the child's impatience would only escalate as he leafed through his old notes. However, the child needed to wait. His memories felt as dusty as the file cabinet from which he had retrieved these documents. Before addressing the human and proposing a solution to everyone's problems, he needed to refresh himself on some important information. Therefore, Sans lay on his belly on the floor, papers spread out in a fan all about him, and carefully perused through the information.
Hopefully, this would provide the solution to everyone's problems.
even you, old lady.
He struggled somewhat to decipher his notes, long unpracticed reading an alphabet of hand signs and squiggles. Often, by the time he finished decoding the end of one paragraph, he needed to backtrack to its start, having since forgotten the text's beginning ideas. Nor did it help that the transcript, even if it had been notated in straightforward Roman letters, consisted of extraordinarily dense documentation of scientific procedure. Almost no one could understand this. At the time the document had been composed, three – maybe four – monsters would have comprehended it. Now, Sans wondered if there were even one.
He mumbled at last, "welp, good enough." He turned to the human, now beginning to jingle the couch in complex syncopated rhythmic patterns, and addressed them, "heya, you wanna know how to fix all this?"
This sparked the human's interest, and, as Sans hoped, they quit pounding their feet against the cushions. Papyrus also meandered into the room at this point, and while Sans felt awkward discussing his old research with his brother in the room, he knew he needed to proceed and explain his planned solution.
Focusing on the human, he said, "Alright. So. Listen carefully.
"What we're going to try today is a little time travel.
"You're lucky, because that's, uh, something I've happened to study."
Numbed from the day's prior exhaustive ordeal, the human only nodded, believing Sans and not at all questioning the bizarre mention of "time travel". Meanwhile, Papyrus, milling in the background, frowned. Of course. Papyrus never knew what his brother had investigated in the laboratory. It was only natural he stared at Sans with puzzlement now.
sorry bro. the research was classified back then.
He concentrated on the human and began to speak, slowly and methodically, with a somber intonation he rarely used.
"So, humans are made mostly of water," Sans stated. "And monsters are made mostly of magic.
"This means that monsters are very strong with magic, but humans aren't.
"It's a fair give-and-take, because humans have stronger SOULs than monsters.
"Human: strong SOUL, weak magic. Monster: weak SOUL, strong magic. Get it?"
Both the human and Papyrus nodded.
"Except that's, uh, not quite the whole story." He held up both hands and shrugged.
"Monsters, when using magic, can create all sorts of magic attacks and manipulate the elements. There's fire magic, water magic, gravity magic, bone magic, magic pellets, all sorts of things. It's magic in the present, manipulating matter. That's what monsters are best at. There are other uses of magic, of course, but that's where it's strongest.
"Humans can also use magic. It's not as natural to them, and only a few human magicians ever learn to use it effectively. Like monsters, humans use magic by tapping into energy from their SOUL. They have a tiny amount of the type of magic that monsters use. But mostly, human magicians use their own unique SOUL energy that has a different… type of strength than monster magic. It's its own essence. It's different and it has different strengths. Instead of working with matter like monsters, humans are better with time.
"That's why I'm bringing this up. You might not know it, but you, uh, should have the ability to time travel. You've got so much… energy, of a kind… lingering inside your SOUL … that you should be able to will yourself into the past."
"I dunno how to do that," the child remarked, skeptical confusion painting over their high-pitched voice.
"no, I imagine not." Sans chuckled. "as i said, most humans don't know how to do this. and, in most circumstances, you would need a lotta trainin' to get there. humans aren't very attuned to their SOUL and what abilities they can use it for.
"here's the thing – this underground is full of human SOUL energy. it's residue from when the they made the barrier."
The human appeared completely perplexed at Sans' comment, and he realized, belatedly, the human knew nothing about the barrier, let alone the details of how ancient magicians erected it. With an embarrassed snort, Sans backtracked.
"a long time ago, seven human magicians sealed us monsters into the underground forever.
"they used so much magic to seal us here that a lot of residual human SOUL energy has been mingling here ever since.
"it's given this place a lot of strange properties. like, wow, believe me, it's wild.
"i don't have time to go into all of that, but let's just say that… timelines have gotten a lot wonkier since.
"now, the person with the most of that human magic, or SOUL energy, or whatever you wanna call it…
"…they've got an ability to harness that residue and go back in time.
"all it takes is something as simple as the thought, 'i want to go back in time.'
"now, probably only one person at a time can use the underground's residual energy. there's only so much energy to go around, ya know? it's sort of like playing a game of catch with a small ball… only one set of hands can hold onto, and control, the ball at any given time.
"but you. you're a human.
"if anyone's gonna be able to use it and go back in time, it's def you.
"with all the natural energy from your soul, PLUS all this stuff floating around from when the barrier was made, i'll bet that even with no training at all, you can figure out how to do it."
He could offer no better explanation than that, especially to one so young. With a wink and his most winsome smile, he finished, "so, whaddya say? wanna give it a shot?"