Author's Notes:
Bitty quirks! An exciting newly discovered field of expertise. Total community in the field: Uh, just Mabel?
-Bitty monster types can be unusually naturally adept at inventiveness, and sabotage.
-To avoid the more destructive part of their leanings, considerations such as -Basic Freedom- is crucial to Bitty welfare, and engagement with plentiful safe activities may be beneficial to all parties.
-Bitties generally suffer from lower magic levels than normal monsters; size not being the sole cause, as monsters such as mouse types still have average magic levels. As such they can require plenty of sleep, large food portions for their size, and oddly, seem to benefit from contact with larger souled monsters and humans. Further understanding needed.
When Sansy first came into the world, nearly one day ago, his first impression was of thinking he should be worried about something fairly important, seeing an expanse of absurdly plush carpet and odd architecture, and immediately sinking down to unconsciousness from where he was stood next to a polished wooden pillar. He might have slept successfully for much longer, but for a persistent muttering of disjointed comments he thought might have been directed at himself.
It took him a little while to process what he was seeing was a very, VERY large human, talking away not to him, but to herself as she spoke her mind amusingly to what appeared to be online comments on an also stunningly large computer tablet. Did humans sometimes get this size?
He knew somehow that he didn't have any urgent business, so without much worry about life just went about finding his way up the giant's bookshelf by laying down loose books to climb up improvised staircases, and heading over from behind the chair to see what was so interesting.
Others, meanwhile, weren't so disturbed in their much needed sleep.
The tiny Blue thought he was watching a big screen, but it felt like he blinked and was instead looking at a confused Papyrus, who had thought he was working on his convertible in the garage. Both sunk down to the soft floor together to continue the weird dream this must have been. And they really did share the same dream, racing each other through a field of huge flowers and jumping from one to another, adopting fluffy pet bumblebees together.
A few feet away Fell was already curled up sleeping. He wasn't at work and was on a bed that seemed suitably impressive to his standards, so took the hint and didn't question his body knowing best in it clearly being time for bed.
His brother, Red, was further away but still just about in the same room, at a high enough vantage point on top of a dust caked platform that what he was looking at was much more clearly identifiable as an oversized bedroom. Which was odd. But why should he care about that?
Seeing his brother drop down and curl up did have him worried enough to fall back into an old habit with a small cry of "boss!", then a teleport over from his position on the wardrobe down next to him, where after hearing his Papyrus respond to him in his sleep with "FLUffy Bunnny…", he promptly dropped to sleep right next to him. The two didn't take long to end up cuddled up in their sleep.
So until the trip three doors down, and into the early hours of the next day, the house remained blissfully oblivious of much change.
This morning, Mabel was quite refreshed and had luckily made it back downstairs, padding her slippered feet to retrieve Sansy from his improvised bath set when the house-shaking 'CRASH' and 'WHUMP' upstairs happened.
She had a state of fitness for her age that included a strong heart, but it wasn't something anyone would want to test in themselves with what sounded and felt like an avalanche boulder paying a friendly visit.
As you do in moments like this, Mabel stood for a minute to process that she was still alive, and no other house destroying crashing, possibly imminent death from stray random boulders was continuing, so she slowly unfroze to look in the direction of the ceiling where dust and paint flecks were drifting down, then did a shuffling rush through the kitchen to find Sansy quickly before anything else.
He had climbed out by the sink chain already earlier after a very nice soak in a chunky bowl which would have made a pretty fancy ceramic bath for his original full sized self, overflowing with lemony dish-soap bubbles, So he was to be found peeking from behind a sugar canister up on the lower shelf nearest the sink, clutching the dishcloth towel like a pauper's humble cloak. The hide and seek prank he'd been brewing amongst the assorted caddies, jars and recipe notebooks was abandoned as he had been jolted off his feet before having to immediately scrabble to dodge a falling recipe book.
He hopped straight into the outstretched human's worried reach once she found him, and clambered up the thick plaited cable-knit to her shoulder, managing to do so mostly one handed while hanging on to his towel.
Sansy and Mabel cautiously eyed the ceiling and up the stairs as they slowly rounded the door to the entrance hall. No debris was apparent apart from the new layer of plaster dust speckling the formerly shiny-clean wooden flooring, and a couple of family photos fallen from the walls. The house was quiet as they waited and listened…
Both of them jumped at the doorbell breaking the pregnant pause.
They looked at each other wordlessly, and Mabel automatically turned to open the door, as the ringing was followed by heavy knocking. Sansy nearly forgot to hide, until the worried male voice of a neighbor added to the knocking through the door, to which the bitty snapped out of it and looked side to side for somewhere to go, and made a hasty teleport to a spot he could see directly.
"Mabel! Did you hear that?... Are you okay in there? I heard a bang or something smashing and it sounded like it came from your house… Mabel?" Charlie from next door had started knocking again as the door was unlocked the other side of him.
The door swung open to bring the two silver-gray haired neighbors face to face, the little man smiling as "Oh hello Charlie!" came from a slightly flustered looking Mabel. No sooner than she spoke, she startled with suddenly wider eyes and looked at her shoulder. The reaction passed in a moment as she turned the odd jump into brushing off some dust from her arms, adding to the stuff already floating down in the hallway's air.
Charlie said with a relieved chuckle, "I think I got the right house for that noise. Did, uh, something happen?"
Staring blankly a second before answering, Mabel replied, "Yes, you could say that, but I'm not sure what that noise was." She looked around in thought, "I was just about to go look upstairs."
He looked up the stairs too, "Well let me go with you at least." He followed that with a rapid hands-up movement, "I know, I know, you can look after yourself Mabe. It's just, uh, just in case you need two people?" His voice elevated in hopeful diplomacy with the question.
He knew her too well, and she smirked as her eyes twinkled at her old friend. "Oh come on then, before you let the cold in." She stepped in for him to follow and closed the door, knowing that the old boy's pleased-with-himself look meant that he knew, that she knew, that he knew she was actually glad of the help right now.
In the unlikely event Charlie had stopped to peruse her hallway radiator's ornaments, he might have seen one of the smaller photos frames wobbling, with little skeletal fingers making a bizarre detail to the sides of the silver frame as the stand of Sansy's hiding spot had collapsed when he squeezed behind it and left him propping up the item in front of himself like a mover struggling with a wall painting.
They both trudged up the stairs side by side, and Mabel looked over her shoulder back down, taking a second glance to brush off the leaves from her neighbor's ripped old sweatshirt. He'd been outside in his back-yard again.
"Charlie you look like you had a fight with your hedge."
Charlie just laughed lightly, opened his mouth to make a comment and seemed to think better of it, with another "Heh!" coming out instead.
At the top of the stairs the culprit of the explosive noise was immediately apparent, in the form of a smashed bedroom door and the edge of a polished chestnut wardrobe sticking part-way out.
It was laying on a mix of scarves, sweaters and jogging pants which, where not now stretched and ripped, were tied together from one to the next, leading around the top of the wardrobe like someone had made it a big bandanna. Tied and trailing all around the clothing and leading through the door were many strands of stressed and frayed yarn.
They looked at each other and approached the escaped furnishing slowly. The door, as Charlie inspected it, had come away along with a chunk of the frame, and while there was splintered wood strewn across the landing, the remains of the lower half of the door had managed an admirable attempt of holding together to swing outward together with its hinges and shiny round doorknob, which left a nice dent in the plaster-work.
"Well… Your floorboards look okay from here. I cant see how on Earth this happened though." He assessed as he peered into the room and Mabel came closer to do the same.
It looked like an explosion in a craft store.
Plaster littered the room from the door and chunks from the ceiling, and on a few places where they hadn't been torn out there were strands of yarn hanging down from what looked like eyelet hooks for hanging the net curtains she never got round to putting up. They had been screwed into the lower walls and ceiling it appeared. Almost every ball of yarn she had purchased over the years was now decorating the bedroom in a rainbow of unraveled webbing. Books were piled on the floor just beyond the wardrobe's base, along with a couple of old hockey sticks and some of her dearly departed old Marvin's never-used old hand weights with yarn connecting it all to the chaos. A light, rhythmic tapping could be heard faintly dying down, likely the hanging lightbulb in the linen closet next door finishing its swinging from the impact.
It didn't appear to make any sense, but Charlie was chewing on his knuckle in deep thought, like he was piecing something together.
"... It's like a pulley and lever system." He tapped the wardrobe softly as he thought. "Or it was, maybe… "
"Here… to there… hmm. Up there?... Then…round, huh." He said to himself, getting one knee on the side of the door blockage to peer further in the room. He climbed in fully and checked the room for occupants, even opening and shutting the wardrobe door as far as it could crack on the way out.
Mabel was also starting to put things together in her mind, eyes narrowing to revisit an assumption of how she had one little look-alike version of one of her monster neighbors turn up out of the blue. And a niggling question striding center stage in her brain; why would there only be only one? An indulgent passing whim she had yesterday coming back as she had wondered how cute the other skeletons would look in miniature. No…
No.
Probably not…
But. Maybe just in case.
She looked at the mess, with Sansy in her mind's eye, then at the rounded doorhandle on the formerly shut room as Charlie clambered back out and wandered to look out of the window the other end of the landing where the view favored his yard.
"Is there anyone else in your house Mabel? Do you want me to che-"
"NO!" I mean no! Don't worry about it Charlie I know what this was now. Ahah ha… My, uh, grandchildren. They… " she ended with a doubtful mumble.
He turned back to face her questioningly but thankfully the view of his well tended garden drew him back like a magnet stronger than the explanation after only a moment.
He stood on tiptoe to peer further out diagonally, noting distractedly, "Well, gonna love to hear how you're gonna say they managed this one. Did you ever tell their parents the truth about the bathroom?"
"No." Came the happy reply. "And I never intend to. If I have to be the senile old bat who forgot to turn the taps off, so be it." They both gave a laugh at the event she'd filled him in on after last Thanksgiving.
There followed a small grumble of; "Though did Tom really have to assume quite so easily that his mom's mind's starting to go already?"
They broke into further laughter.
"Well if you're sure you don't need any help right now…"
She seized the opportunity to shoo him out, "No, it's okay now the mystery prank or whatever they were up to's been revealed. It must have been Noah,-" Mabel reasoned.
"Little Noah?"
"Not so little now. He's twelve now, and a very clever little boy, even if he gets bored a bit easily," she noted. "Actually wants to be an engineer… or something like that I think. I bet Evi helped and the little one encouraged them. Must have been trying to prove they could move that big old thing… "
As Mabel readily worked up the unfairly traitorous, incriminating story against her beloved grandchildren, a flash of the scene of her quickly shifting them to the side and assuring the very teary three of them that she would take the fall, just before she had done just that to their parents, came back to her mind.
They'd scared the pants off themselves when forgetfully playing in the bathroom turned into a sagging ceiling and then a waterfall into the living room making itself a central feature after Thanksgiving dinner that year. The family had exited the dining room having earlier ignored sweet little Cole happily babbling that the ceiling was biiiig in there, and come out just in time to all stare mutely at the bulging down area before it burst.
As Mabel lovingly joked with a wagging finger at the time to get the three to smile, while the older family members were busy paying attention to either racing upstairs or frantically saving the living room items; 'You three owe granny BIG time!'
Well, here was the perfect time even if it wasn't really a debt she was ever truly going to call in. Her children wouldn't need to hear about the fallen wardrobe or any other damage she might want to link to any supposed escapades, Charlie was already on-team for keeping her grandkids Thanksgiving secret from her kids in case it ever came up, and she could tease Noah next time that she was calling in the favor with 'we're even for Thanksgiving now, so if any neighbor here asks about a wardrobe you are very sorry!'
Now to shift Charlie out the door… "Well thank you so much for your help Charlie, I can get a handyman or two in to sort out the wardrobe and woodwork, I've been meaning to have a few odd jobs here and there done anyway." She added that last part preemptively.
He took the cue surprisingly fast, starting to walk swiftly back to the stairs as she joined him on the way down, pausing to shake her head at a big dopey bumblebee boinking off the stairs window. No you cant hibernate in here, she thought. It was a good sign Charlie must already be busy working on his autumn prep work around now. Mabel didn't have much patience for all that. Just plant whatever will look after itself year after year and throw some bulbs in the ground in spring. The shrubs and trees Marvin planted years ago didn't need much pruning.
"Oh yes! You're right Mabe, it looks like a pretty minor repair, I know you can handle it, heh, I best be getting home hun."
He opened the door before she could get to it, and stepped outside in view of a couple more neighbors, Jo-Ann and her husband Travis who she had probably dragged out to see what was going on, who was chatting casually to Sans while both had their hands in their pockets like they were mimicking each other. They looked like the two most hypnotically laid back denizens of the street, from the conversation sluggishly droning between them as Jo-Ann smiled, politely bored. Along with Sans, leaning one long arm on her chest-high stone postbox was Rus, who looked up as Charlie strode out calling in a sing-song tone; "Found the culprit, nothing to worry about just a bit of a wardrobe malfunction!"
Mabel rolled her eyes and glanced behind her before stepping out in her slippers and pulling the door to, accompanying her next door neighbor up the path for a quick word to show all was fine. She pulled her cardigan around her and folded her arms to make a show of how cold it was so she could make a quick escape back inside.
"Hope I didn't worry anyone with the banging, it was just some furniture fell over, grandkids left something a bit unstable. No-one tell my kids! Ha! Hello Jo, cold out here isn't it? Ooh I'm going to go back inside, Charlie I'll call you if I need any more help, thank-you so much again dear." A few quick hellos to Travis, Sans, and Rus, and she was gone again, leaving them all outside her front yard to carry on chatting if they were so insistent on doing that there.
Back inside, leaning against the front door, a look to her left showed a picture frame laying down on its own. She turned and leaned to peep out of the peephole, saw Charlie had also turned to head back next door already, decided Rus couldn't possibly be making eye contact back at her like that and was just happening to be looking at the front door, then clicked the lock and went looking for Sansy.
The first call of his name was quieter, with a small pause to make sure her neighbor version of Sansy outside wouldn't overhear, and god forbid, think she meant to call him that.
After a few tries raising her volume more each call, a soft call back came from the hallway, and she found Sansy halfway up the stairs, dressed back in his clothes and huffing in frustration as the little skeleton turned from his effort to climb his current stair, releasing his phalanges from their grip in the plush threads.
"pff, harder than it looks." He sat down with his legs hanging over the small carpeted drop.
"Well," Mabel started to plod steadily back up the stairs, "You did pretty well if you started climbing when I stepped out." She smiled up at where he'd reached.
A little shrug. "eh, if i got a few steps higher before you got back i could see the top of the hallway light-shade, then maybe could see a path to make it to that window" He inclined his head to the stairs window to his right above him, then added sheepishly, "was kinda hopin' to be chilling at the top by the time you got in. i am really missing making that look effortless… it was kinda, my thing"
Mabel paused and quirked a brow in bemusement. "Lot of jumping around! Don't say you've got yourself a grappling hook to get around with? Heh!"
It occurred to Sansy with a widening of his eye-sockets that she hadn't actually noticed yesterday how he got back to the armchair, and he brightened up and bought one foot up followed by the other, then straightened up to stand. He made eye contact down at the approaching human and as much as he tried to play it off with a careless shrug, he couldn't help a small blush and a huge grin as he stuck his hands in his pockets, winked, and vanished.
Paused in a forward lean of walking up the stairs, a pair of irises moving was the only sign that gave away the lady who was doing her very best impression of a very lifelike human statue. They slid from the now empty step she had been talking to, to the left side of her lined face, where the little skeleton had suddenly appeared in her peripheral vision, leaning in looking smugly happy with himself on her shoulder.
"OHH!" She exclaimed.
He managed to grin wider.
"OHH!" She grinned too and finally stood up straighter. "Well I'll be, you really are magic aren't you?"
In her delight Mabel didn't even consider it could be socially inappropriate to do this as she automatically reached her right hand to, well, not ruffle his hair, but the same sort of petting motion. And Sansy took a whole three seconds after, as he still basked with closed eye-sockets in the afterglow of the affectionate contact, to wonder if he should feel silly or embarrassed.
They both avoided comment on the topic by jointly looking back up the staircase, to then continue up and discover the true source of the breakout.
End Notes:
*Saw movie music plays* "There are roo-els"
To clarify what has been hinted at; in this fic shortcuts are teleports where the monster must either have been before (within reach of any magic limits), or where they can make a direct line of sight to.
Sans wasn't outside because of being a nosey neighbor as such. But with some of what goes on around the monster house, they hear an odd sound of destruction and the first thing they tend to think is 'Was that us?' So he's hanging around to keep up good standing between monsters and humans in the community plus possible damage control.
Got a Tumblr link in my profile for questions, requests, and anything.