It's a beautiful day outside. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming. The familiar script has been burned into Sans' memory by now, after the hundreds of timelines where he fought that demon. It's a horrible cycle of fighting, killing, dying, and watching his friends and loved ones die to the child over and over again. Especially his brother. Watching his brother die so many times was the last straw in the cycle of resets for Sans, and the sole reason why he was standing in the corridor right now, fighting a fruitless battle against a possessed child.
He regrets not doing anything sooner.
"on days like this, kids like you," he lowered his voice a little, adding a threatening undertone to it—not like that did anything to deter the ghost. "Should Be Burning In Hell." Here we go.
The fight starts out easy enough, both sides having done it many times before. Sans casually dodges a swipe from the knife, sending a wave of bones towards the child.
"what? you think i'm just going to stand there and take it?" He shrugs playfully with a feigned and slightly pained grin.
Technically the child isn't the one he knows, Frisk, as they are being controlled by...something. The king and queen's adopted human child, that had been dead and reborn into a demon-ghost has possessed the eighth human that fell into the underground and gone on a killing spree for their own amusement, as far as Sans knows. Taking over the kid's body meant that they also got a hold of their determination.
"you can't understand how this feels." Sans summons his blasters, shooting them in a random array of patterns. The kid dodges the blasters with a practiced ease, having died to them dozens of times. It's easy for them now. After all, whenever they die, they'll just go back to how they were before. Which, unfortunately, means that they will stay alive until they QUIT. The effects of the aforementioned determination.
"knowing that one day, without any warning, it's all going to end." Sans continues with his monologue. Summoning bones in random ways, he watches with a little bit of sadistic glee at how Chara stumbles at the unfamiliar patterns. The bastard deserves it, after all.
"look, i gave up going back a long time ago." His eye sockets go dark. "we'll just end up back here, with no memory of it, right?"
The child takes another ferocious swipe at him and Sans dodges it with ease. Stars, he's getting tired already. You would think that going through this exact battle so many times would at least increase his stamina, at least a little.
Chara doesn't know that Sans remembers, at least not fully. He gives little hints, but nothing more than that. They knew that he at least knows about the resets, at the very least. All his time-space shenanigans during the pacifist runs hinted at something at least.
In truth, he doesn't remember. At least not fully. Sometimes, he'll just be hit with a sense of deja-vu. Other times, the notes that he writes to himself just don't disappear when the loads happen. Over time, bit by bit, he figures out the rest. And that's why he's here right now.
The wraith ignores his offer for mercy, just like the other times and slashes with their knife. Sans barely dodges that one with one of his shortcuts, seeing that he was distracted and sent his blasters after Chara. The knife slashed a gash across one of his sleeves.
The familiar battle continues for some time.
Sans attacks.
Chara dodges.
Chara attacks.
Sans dodges.
It's a long and tiring battle that seems like it's going to go on forever. Inside the child, Sans can sense their SOUL, overpowered. Frisk is fighting weakly from inside, but is unable to get any progress. The demon's cage holds strong.
The fight was coming to an end, and Sans let his shoulders slump with exhaustion. He turns their SOUL blue and throws them around the corridor, smashing them into windows and pillars. His movements grow slower and slower as he gets more and more spent. Sans can feel Chara's breathing speed up with anticipation.
This is it. This is when Sans should die. Except this time, he's prepared. As he pretends to fall asleep, Chara slowly inches towards him, holding their knife out cautiously.
They strike.
Sans slides to the side and grins cheekily. This only angers them further.
"heh, did'ja really think you–" He sends up a wall of bones on their second strike, trapping their wrists together and leaving them imobile.
"hehehheh. not gonna happen, kiddo. not this time." He turns Chara's SOUL blue and sends them flying towards him, making them drop their knife in the process.
Keeping them still, Sans closed his eyes, focusing on the image that he had only seen once before. The void, also known as the save screen, was where Frisk and Chara were able to reset the timeline. He knows what the place looks like, although he's never been there himself and while usually he needs the precise location to be able to teleport there, he was determined to do so anyways.
Grabbing the child's arm, he sends his magic swirling around them in bursts of blue and yellow and disappears.
The demon rematerializes in the save screen, disoriented from the teleport and the sudden change in scenery. Looking around, they spot the floating icons that allows the other one to load and reset. They walk over, smug that Sans wasn't able to carry out his grand plan.
They reach over to the buttons, but was stopped by a faint glow of blue around their arm. Blue magic.
"not so fast, chara"
Sans appears behind their shoulder, startling them. His left eyelight's glowing with a mix of cyan and yellow.
Patience and Justice.
The demon is still registering the use of their name when Sans attacks. Grabbing their SOUL, he turns it blue and sends them hurtling towards the black background of the void, far away from the buttons. He incases the icons in several layers of glowing white bones.
From their place on the ground, the demon, Chara, laughs. How funny. He really thinks he has a chance to stop them in the save screen. The inky black of the void stops him from being able to hide, and running won't get him very far.
Oh, this is going to be fun~
Recovering, Chara dashes forwards, intending to catch Sans off guard while he's looking over at the floating buttons. To their surprise, instead of dodging, he catches their wrist as they tried to punch him, and lifts them up to avoid their kick.
Sans, with a flick of his hand, brings out Chara's SOUL, revealing the darkness that's covering the child's bright red heart and summons a blaster.
Charging it, he sends it to blast the SOUL. This is a risk. He doesn't know how well this poorly thought out plan will work. To his surprise, however, the dark red instinctively slides off the soul to try to form back together, revealing a glowing red cutting through the darkness. The soul vibrates lightly, just barely holding on after the damage it took but it worked. The kid is free.
Chara was sent flying as Sans tends to Frisk, sending their soul back into their body and healing them with the little amount of green magic he knows until Frisk is sitting around a terrible 2/20 HP. It isn't great, but it's all Sans can do with the time he has. And all the skill he has.
Now back to the wraith.
Chara's SOUL had formed a spectral body in the vague shape of a human child, which flies over and tries to grab onto Sans's neck as soon as he looks up.
Well, as much of a neck a skeleton can have. It's vertebrae that connects the skull to the body.
Either way, it doesn't work because Chara's pretty much a ghost now. They scream in frustration and fly off somewhere in the void. Sans uses his blue magic to animate the child's body to press the reset button. The hand slams down on the icon and they disappear.
Sans stands up, dusts off his jacket and teleports behind Chara. They're much farther away from the buttons now. He turns the wraith blue and drags them towards him. They glare at him and struggle but his grip on them is strong. He summons another blaster. It takes a second to charge and it fired.
Chara's expression before the beam tore them apart is torn between anger, irritation and a little bit of relief. Well, at least they're content now. Hopefully.
Now, to get out of the save screen. There isn't much to lose at this point, so Sans just ends up sending his shortcut magic anywhere he could to escape awful, endless darkness that makes up the void .
Peter Parker is a normal student. He had friends—correction, friend. Singular friend—his name's Ned, and he's the greatest thing to happen to Peter at this horrible high school. His grades are good, his aunt May is the best aunt he could ever ask for and he is content, if not a little bored. The only annoyance in his life is the school bully (because really, every high school needs one. Otherwise, would it really be called a high school?) Flash Thompson, but he isn't much of a threat. Or anything else, really.
Peter is with Ned at his house right now to build a giant lego death star that they both had been saving up to buy. Lego is damn expensive, and the piece has 4,016 bricks and a lot of intricate instructions. But the boys are nothing but determined to finish what they had worked so hard to buy. The plan is after they finish, they would take turns displaying it in their rooms like a trophy.
"Where is….. the Darth Vader figure?" Peter asks as he looks around the carpet looking for a very specific piece of lego. Ned hands it over to him silently, still focused on the instructions.
Peter makes a triumphant hum as he places the piece in its place. "Woo!" He says with (mostly false) cheer. "We're finished… half of the star!"
Ned groans as he surveys the mess on the floor of Peter's bedroom. "I should probably get going. My Lola is probably getting impatient."
"Alright. Same time Wednesday?"
Ned nods as he stands up, stretching after a few hours crouched on the floor. He glances at the digital clock in the corner of the room. 9:42 PM. Startled, as he realizes just how late he is, Ned rushes out of the front door calling a brief goodbye to Aunt May as he leaves.
May turns to look at the clock as well, before looking back at Peter sitting in the mess of lego bricks and one barely finished death star.
"Peter, you'd better start cleaning up. Remember, you have school tomorrow." She says gently. Peter nods and frantically starts to scoop the lego into one massive bin, then shoving it into a corner. He changes and crawls into bed, pretending to fall asleep.
Around thirty minutes after Aunt May came in and wishes him goodnight, he tiptoes out of bed and changes into his homemade costume, before slipping out his bedroom window.
You see, Peter is only a normal kid on the surface. He has a secret: he is the vigilante known as Spider Man. He was bitten by a genetically enhanced spider at a school trip to the science center, when one of the 15 that exist escaped its container and bit him. Peter had found himself with super strength, speed, reflexes and the ability to crawl up and stick to walls.
Most nights, and sometimes during the day too, the "Friendly Neighborhood Spider Man" can be seen swinging on homemade web shooters, scouting out the city of New York for crime to stop.
Of course, if you attract attention, you attract both the good and the bad. One certain news reporter seems dead-set on trying to figure out Spiderman's identity.
One day, Spider Man is out during the day, swinging over the city in search of crime—really, it was amazing how his webs seemed to anchor onto nowhere and his body rush past the city windows like it defies gravity—when his eyes seem to play tricks on him.
A lone figure, dressed in blue and black, had suddenly appeared on the top of the empire state building. It's like they weren't there one second, and there the next. With no indication that they were about to just exist in that particular spot.
Most people would willing to dismiss it as a hallucination, and Spider Man is about to do the same until he swings closer and spots a flash of blinding, bone white under the large grey hood of the jacket.
Come to think of it, the figure is quite short. They could be no older than a high schooler.
Curious, he swings to the other side of the building and lands with barely a sound. It's quiet enough that most people wouldn't hear it, but that mysterious person startles and turns around. Except, that isn't the face of a human.
It was a grinning, round, white skull.
"sup?"