Is it cool with you guys if Frisk comes along?
Do you think they can contribute to the discussion?
Doesn't matter. I'd like to bring them.
I don't see why not, then. Whatever makes you comfortable.
…
February 6th, 213X
…
Sans pocketed his phone with a sigh, leaning back in his chair at Frisk's kitchen table and smoothing his still-damp hair back. He could hear Frisk in the shower, the water soon shutting off but their humming continuing. Sans glanced down at his cup of coffee, finding it unappetizing as his head throbbed with a hangover. What a fucking night to drink too much. He was already dreading meeting with his father, and now he was in a terrible mood too. The ibuprofen was taking its sweet time kicking in.
Sans closed his eyes, willing the headache to just kill him rather than drag out the torture. He only opened his eyes again when Frisk's arms wrapped around his shoulders and they pressed a kiss to his temple without a word. Sans sighed again, leaning his head back on Frisk's shoulder.
"I don't wanna go…"
"I know. But it's important."
"… He said he didn't mind if you come."
"Good. I'll make it a little more bearable." Frisk stroked Sans' cheek, knowing he didn't feel well. "And we'll come back and relax afterward, okay? Just you and me lazing around all day."
"Don't you have work tonight?"
"Nope." Frisk kissed Sans' forehead before standing up straight. "Temmie and I switched up with the others after last year's classes ended, so we work together every other day, four days a week."
"She keep you entertained?"
"Always." Frisk ruffled Sans' hair and went to go get a cup of coffee.
"What do you guys even do?"
"Sans, you know I teach."
"Yeah, but I never got how that worked, teaching at a store."
"People come in to learn new art forms, and I teach them. Pottery Monday, sewing Wednesday, photography Friday, and illustration Sunday. Temmie's my assistant, and then we're cashiers at the art department for two hours after the class until the next shift comes in." Frisk returned to sit down across from Sans.
"Business any good?" Sans asked, having never really wondered much about Frisk's career.
"My pay is based on how many students I have, and I've been able to save up a lot lately, so… yeah, I'd say it's going well. I'm getting some second- and third-timers now. Apparently they like me."
"You gonna teach there forever?"
"Hopefully not. I'd like to be a proper teacher, honestly. A professor, even… but I have to finish my degree before I can bother applying."
"Y'know if you need help…"
"You're not paying my tuition, Sans," Frisk told him firmly. "You're already supporting Papyrus."
"Eh, I don't spend much money… might as well put it to good use."
"No. I'll get there on my own. It just might take a while…"
"Or you could do it now and just pay me back. I won't even charge interest." Sans gave Frisk a little grin. He wanted to see Frisk fulfill their career goals and dreams. Teaching had always been near and dear to their heart, and they had often gone in as a substitute teacher at Toriel's little school between Echo and New Home whenever they needed extra money or had time to spare.
Frisk took a little longer to refuse this time, but they couldn't bring themselves to accept that kind of money from Sans, even if it was going to be paid back. Sans reached out to touch their hand with a smile. "If you change your mind… let me know. The offer'll still be there as long as Pap and I don't have any expensive emergencies. I wanna see you succeed, babe. And if we're gonna stick together, we oughta support each other, right?"
Frisk gave him a little smile. "You're not right often… but this time, I'll concede that little point."
"Gee, thanks." Sans chuckled, feeling suddenly better despite his headache, though that too was finally beginning to lift. It was so cheesy to think about, but Frisk never failed to make Sans feel better, even if it was as simple as sitting down beside them in silence after a long day. Frisk loved abundantly, and their very presence was welcoming and calming. They were a far cry from what they could've been if they'd listened to Chara.
…
Frisk's black Volkswagen pulled into the laboratory parking lot and shut off, both Frisk and Sans emerging. Frisk was dressed in black jeans and a heavy duffle coat, while Sans had opted just for his jeans, a sweater, and his usual hoodie despite the cold. Gaster was waiting for them in the reception lobby, watching the two approach. The two receptionists were stealing glances at Gaster, not used to seeing him outside the lab or CORE. Aria entered from the hallway to the lab just before Sans opened the door for Frisk and all four came to face each other.
Gaster straightened his lab coat over his sweater and dark slacks, his single emerald eye focusing on Sans. When their gazes met, Gaster finally stepped forward and slowly offered out a hand. A hug was too much considering how rocky his relationship with Sans was. To his credit, Sans didn't hesitate to shake his father's hand. "Hey, Dad," Sans muttered, and Gaster nodded.
"Thank you for coming, Sans. Aria and I appreciate it." Stepping forward, Aria surprised Sans with a hug. She'd always adored Gaster's sons. They were sweet despite everything they'd been through, and she had often looked after them when they were young.
"Hiya, Ari," Sans chuckled, hugging the woman in return. "I've never introduced either of you properly to Frisk, have I?"
"We've… met. Barely," Gaster shrugged slightly. "But that was a long, long time ago."
"No time like the present, then. This is Frisk Shale… my partner."
"Partner?" Aria asked with a little smile. "Oh, Sans, I didn't know…" She greeted Frisk with a hug too. "It's good to meet you properly without an emergency waiting for us all. Alphys has talked about you so much, but I haven't spoken to you since you were just a child."
"I'm sorry it's taken so long. We always seem to miss each other." Frisk wrapped their arms around her with a smile in return. Finally they turned to Gaster. Gaster offered a hand to shake, surprised when Frisk took his hand in both their own in such a warm gesture. "And it's nice to finally get to meet you directly. We've only ever seen each other in passing."
"Likewise. I… didn't realize Sans had a partner, though I knew you two were close."
"We don't really flaunt it, so I'm sure half our friends don't even know."
"Ah, well… please, follow us and we'll take you both into my lab. Would you like anything? Coffee, water, tea?"
"Coffee. For both of us, I think," Frisk smiled to Sans who always looked tired. "We had a late night."
"Aria, would you take them to-"
"I'll get the coffee," Aria insisted, deciding to give Gaster a moment to speak to the two on his own, even if Gaster didn't want to. When she touched his arm lightly and walked away down the hall, Sans raised an eyebrow at his father, who watched her go.
"Uh… lead on, Pop." Gaster caught the look on Sans' face, his own unamused expression telling Sans not to comment. And that made Sans smirk to himself.
Gaster guided the two through the halls to the double doors that opened into his lab, and then he led them along the wall aisle away from all the tables and machine setups to his personal office. Extra chairs had already been brought in from the conference room outside the lab, and Gaster had set up a folding table and laid out a few folders and files for Sans' consideration and discussion. Each took a seat and Sans sat back in his easily. Frisk knew it was an act. Sans liked to pretend he was unbothered and relaxed in all situations, even when he was uncomfortable.
Gaster adjusted his glasses, unknowingly brushing his hair aside to reveal the awful scar and missing eye for a minute until the strands settled back into place. He had perfect posture and Frisk couldn't quite read whether he was uncomfortable, or just always that serious. Perhaps it was both.
"So what's been up with you lately?" Sans finally broke the silence, looking at his father through half-open eyes.
"Work, of course. I've been trying to develop some more efficient cooling methods-"
"Dad, I meant outside work. I already know what you're up to here, I get updates every time the CORE staff call me."
"Most of that is meant to be classified…"
"Not to the guy they call for help when you're unreachable."
Gaster sighed and shook his head. "Still… if they wanted to keep you up to speed properly, they would've asked me to do it."
"You still haven't answered my question."
"I don't do much outside work," Gaster murmured. "There's too much to do."
"How about you and Aria?" Sans finally asked directly, and Gaster raised an eyebrow.
"What about us?"
"I saw that look between you guys."
"People regularly share 'looks,' Sans."
"Mhm."
"So what made that one so special to you?" Frisk listened to the two in silence, and they could feel the tension rising already. But it wasn't their place to cut in and stop it.
"You haven't looked at anyone like that in years, not that I know of."
"We haven't been around each other much for the past decade and a half. For all you know, son, that's a common look for me."
"Bull. You never change. So rather than running around the topic, just answer one question and I'll shut up."
"What, then?"
"Are you two an item?"
"That's a strong term for it."
"So it's casual?"
"Even that's too strong."
"Is that just you, or does she agree?"
"I answered the one question. Moving on."
"Barely… but fine."
The conversation ended just in time for Aria to enter with four cups of coffee on a tray she'd borrowed from the nearby kitchen and break room. Noticing the silence between the three, Aria glanced over them all and spoke up, "Why don't we get down to business…" Gaster could've met with Sans alone, but he'd insisted she come too to keep things from getting too tense or awkward. Both men respected her and she could break up any arguments or fill the silence.
"Agreed," Sans nodded, and Gaster picked up a folder while Aria laid out the cups and set the tray down with cream and sugar. Frisk took a couple packs of each while Sans and Gaster each only took a single cream packet.
"I went through all the maintenance reports and checks since the first portion of the CORE was operational, to see if I could find where these… anomalies started. Frisk, to catch you up, the CORE has been experiencing rising heat and pressure for an unknown reason, and a number of seemingly unexplainable failures in strange places. Burst pipes with no damage elsewhere along the same line, isolated capacitors-"
"Sans told me quite a bit yesterday and on the way here. I might not understand the technical stuff, but... I can keep up."
"Very well, then. I first noticed a change back in January of 212X, and then a steady but slight increase in heat and pressure to the point that I had to open up Stage Two ventilation. These signs and the power surges and breakdowns all seem to be stemming from something outside the CORE itself. It's not a fault in the machinery… it's something coming from underground that is either being conducted or carried up. But whenever we tear the pipes and cables apart… we can't find anything."
"So it's electrical?" Sans asked.
"That seems to be the logical answer, but it comes with two glaring questions- what could be underground sending electrical surges up the pipes, and how could it not be dissipated along the way? We have grounding cables all over so that back surges don't hit the power storage."
"Do you have any theories as to what it is?" Frisk asked.
"My current theory is that it is electrical, just too strong to be completely blocked. That's the only thing that makes any logical sense."
"And it's not just heat and friction and static?" Sans asked, and Gaster shook his head, laying out several papers. With a quick skim, Sans recognized them as the readings from gauges that monitored temperature and electrical activity in the cables and pipes. None of them showed any spikes, even where Gaster had marked that catastrophic failures occurred. "Shit…" Sans sighed, picking up one page that detailed the bursting of a pipe whose gauges never read an increase of internal pressure, and then the gauges stopped working just after the pipe sheared open.
"It's… a puzzle, to say the least," Aria murmured, taking a sip of her coffee. "There's just nothing to work with…"
"Have you considered something outside electricity?" Frisk asked quietly, and Gaster glanced over.
"Such as?"
"Sabotage?"
"We haven't found a single failed piece of equipment with evidence of tampering."
"Can we go look at those capacitors that died?" Sans asked, and Gaster nodded, rising from his seat.
"They're in my lab awaiting study." They all left their coffee behind to walk out into the huge open lab, and Gaster led them to where a veritable tower of rubber-skinned boxes waited, a miniature forklift parked nearby. One capacitor- a cube about the size of a basketball- was already sitting on a metal table and rubber mat, tools laid out beside it even though it was still unopened. Sans didn't hesitate to pick up a power drill with a screw head attachment, not waiting for Gaster to explain anything. He unscrewed the cover and revealed the inner workings of the power cell. Seeing nothing wrong at first glance, Sans began digging around through wires and cables. Gaster watched over his shoulder, occasionally reaching in to check something for himself while Aria and Frisk looked on.
"This is practically brand new," Sans murmured. "I can't see any damage. Can we hook it up to power?"
"We can," Gaster nodded, going to a locker on the wall near his office. Unlocking it with a keycard, he opened the box to reveal thick cables with electrical clamps. He unfurled the cables and brought the clamps over, attaching them to the capacitor. Aria went to the box and flipped on the power once Gaster and Sans backed off just in case a problem arose. But nothing happened. Sans raised an eyebrow.
"Gotta multimeter?"
Gaster disappeared briefly into his office, returning with a handheld current tester. Clamping it to the output cable, reading a safe and steady amperage and voltage, and the stored power was rising at a perfectly normal rate.
"That… doesn't make any sense," Gaster murmured. "There was nothing wrong with the cables in the storage bay, but none of these would hold a charge. They were hooked up properly…"
"Let me look at the others," Sans muttered, flipping off the clamp power on his way to the stack of other capacitors. He opened up several more, but found them all exactly the same. Even hooking up two more to the power and meter, Sans found them all working just fine. "I have no idea… sounds like we need to take a little field trip."
"I'll call up to the CORE and let them know we're coming," Aria murmured, pulling out her cell phone. Gaster put away the charging clamps and Sans and Frisk re-affixed the back plates on the capacitors. Soon they were all on their way out to Aria's SUV, Frisk and Sans climbing in the back seats. Frisk was a little overwhelmed by how serious Sans suddenly was, watching him pull out his phone and type in a note app. Frisk didn't know much about electricity or how anything related to the CORE worked, but they could understand some of the pieces Sans was writing down. Possibilities for pressure and heat buildup like magma getting closer to the deepest geothermal pipes, or unnoticed natural gas getting into the CORE's main chamber.
Frisk remembered the CORE well, having spent some time there as a child in the middle of the fights between Delta and other countries. Most of the fighting had been about the CORE and how it could be used to control half the world's power supply, but it was also about a complete embargo placed on Delta by Arida and the old White Dove Union in order to twist Asgore's arm and make him submit to the powers of larger countries and alliances. But that was long past.
From the lab, the CORE was only a fifteen-minute drive up a manmade switchback up Mount Under. The huge power plant was built into the dead volcano's chambers, extra space carved out here and there by machines as needed. While the volcano was indeed dormant and had been in all of human memory, there was still magma under its floor, and that was where a good portion of the geothermal energy came from. But other pipes extended far deeper to the hottest pockets. Unlike other geothermal plants that used steam from hot water already beneath the earth's surface, the CORE funneled water from the surface down and then back up as steam to turn massive rows of turbines and generate electricity, and the cycle would continue as the steam condensed. Gaster had built it with such efficiency that the CORE practically ran itself. It just needed supervisors and maintenance.
Aria parked in a reserved spot close to the front door, the summit of Mount Under looming some fifteen-thousand feet above them and casting a massive shadow westward as the sun drifted higher. The main doors led into a square building which then cut into the side of the mountain. A few steam vents stuck out along the mountain here and there, but the CORE itself was completely hidden from sight.
Upon their entry through the automatic doors, the four were immediately approached by a tall, wiry man with a hard hat. "Sir, we have a problem," he spoke up before Gaster could even ask what he was doing waiting for them.
"What happened?"
"'Nother freak accident in power storage, sir… one of my boys got fried."