Black opted to not go back to his brother's room. He could leave the others to their own conclusions from having watched the the live-feed of the Watchman at the door.
Fell found him sat in one of the recliners, glancing over a shoulder to eye the taller skeleton as he was heading by, then turning his focus back to the empty room. He had undone the top buttons of his white shirt and rolled up the sleeves, and was now cradling a wineglass in his encircling digits, inspecting the contents distantly. Fell frowned, but said nothing, staring at the back of his housemate's skull.
"WELL? I AM SURE YOU ARE AWARE THAT DESPITE OUR SOMETIMES RIVALRY, I HAVE COME TO RESPECT YOUR INPUT, FELL. YOU ARE IN AGREEMENT?" He prompted fairly quietly, without looking.
Fell's posture sagged very subtly as the frown sank deeper in consideration, looking away with one ungloved hand resting on his black denim clad leg. Then he straightened up with a confident decision; "I AM NOT CONCERNED, BLACK. ONE PUNY HUMAN'S POSTURING AND A GOSSIP SESSION COUNT AS NO MORE THAN A SMALL INFATUATION WITH US. IF THEY ARE LOOKING TO PROVE THEMSELVES THEN WE CAN INVITE HIM TO ONE OF OUR ULTIMATE FITNESS TOURNAMENTS." He added, "THE MAYOR ONLY BROKE AN ARM BECAUSE HE DIDN'T FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS LAST TIME."
Black's eyes widened a moment, and he turned his head again to side-eye Fell for just a second. "I SEE…"
A red eyelight in a scarred socket flicked back towards the living area, as Fell reached to grab a tassled leather bike jacket on his way to the door. "I'M GOING TO PICK UP Y/N FROM HER EVENING CLASS, AND WE'LL BE BACK LATER." He exited the house with no more comment when Black didn't respond.
The previous afternoon.
Rus climbed out of what looked like a over-engineered, futuristic shower, leaning down to click shut a circuitry compartment as he went. "everythin's lookin' good here," he patted the top of a console, "nothin's broke since you last used the thing on us, or from the move, so good ta go this end"
He sauntered over to where Sans and Orange were leaning over the main console screen checking the gauges against numbers flashing up, and leaned in too. Orange yelped and nearly dropped the sucker that was intently ground between the flat line of his teeth, as Rus slid his arms around his counterpart and into the hoody pocket. He pulled out another wrapped candy with a smirk that stretched his fanged grin and wrinkled the edges of his eyesockets. Orange refocused on the machine with a grumble as Rus stood back to examine the calculations from behind the two others.
Red was sat in his own chair in front of the retrieval monitor, done with his own checks a while ago. His arms were resting on his legs, and he was wearing his own fur lined hoody again, with the hood covering his skull to almost touch his arms from how far forward he was hunched. Rus couldn't see the guys face, but had an idea of how he felt right now. Playing it off as he might.
If this test went as expected today there was nothing left to stop them from heading back to their own universes. Back to where they mostly wanted to be. And leaving Y/N. There was no reason there shouldn't be a version of her in each of their original universes, but it was still a leap in the dark to be certain of finding her again for sure. Maybe still stuck living with the same scuzzball ex without them to intervene… And no more of their other selves to hang out with either. He'd grown kinda fond.
It was different for him and Red though. Both of them had relentlessly flirted with Sans' friend-not-quite-girlfriend as soon as they met her, entertained by how aghast Sans was at that. Both had surprised themselves by catching feelings for her for real after a while.
Only while Rus had somehow found himself genuinely bonding, Red had ended up retreating back into superficial flirting after their date. Y/n was kinda hurt and confused when Red started making excuses and dodging anything other than that. It took Rus to corner him on his own, in an angry confrontation out the back of Grillby's Bar to get the truth. "Y/n didn't really like him, y/n couldn't really love someone likehim, she was just falling for his fake charming act."
Rus hadn't failed to appreciate the irony of pointing out to someone so freakin' alike himself how emotionally constipated he was, and how all the self hate was based on fear, how he needed to forgive himself for the dark past he did his best with.
Red had finally clocked on when Rus started to struggle, pausing mid-argument before finally, pointedly switching it up to say "iuse the flirtin' like a shield sometimes…iact like it's all a joke and i don't care…ineed to forgive myself. Red had dropped his fists and hugged it out. Until the ex turned up he had still been helping Red work on it. The two confided quite a lot these days.
"hurry it up already" Came gruffly from within the hood, as Sans and Orange glanced his way. "th' parameters were fine th' first two times we went over 'em… it's time"
Black got home from work to an empty house. It shouldn't be too concerning. He just had a tendency to keep aware of where everyone was.
Papyrus at least was in the garage, banging around and talking to what sounded like his own car as he worked on it. Fell was finishing up in the office. Both had come to an agreement and would unfailingly message each other if they were going to be even minutes later than expected. According to the note he found in the kitchen, Blue had taken Y/N to that movie they had been planning to see the past week, and the human had sweetly thought ahead to set out the slow cookers for dinner, so everyone could get to it at different times if need be.
A second note, from his own brother, signed 'Rus', informed him that they were working on Gaster's machine again today. They had been working for months on calculations for switching the machine from bringing, to sending them to their linked worlds. They were apparently getting nearer to the testing stage, without full activation. "ABOUT DAMN TIME." He had said to them, hoping to at least sound flippant about it, while considering ways to keep Rus too busy for that a while longer.
The first slow cooker was nearly done, so after he came back downstairs from getting changed, Black stuck his head in the garage side door to tell Papyrus, so the oil splattered skeleton had time to go wash up, then set to preparing some sides for those who were home, and finally strode out of the patio doors to retrieve his brother and make sure he couldn't get out of taking a break for a proper meal. And the other three wouldn't get away with it either. If they were home it was family time.
Whirring sounds spilled from the metal outbuilding in increasing volume as Black approached. He raised a browbone. Was the machine usually running when they worked on it? Light lanced out from the vents in the sheds sides in alternating directions. The machine was running.
Eyelights were focused on a couple screens and boney digits tapped keys mostly in silence. "… your bros keep on your asses about working on this thing too right?"
"eh? heh… yeah. pap keeps telling me to make sure i go over the calculations again, to be safe. even erased a bunch 'n made me start over 'cos he said i had a decimal wrong"
"blue's let up lately but he was on my back for a while. he's got friends there he misses, especially chara"
"fell is worried our undyne's gonna kill the brat, hehe. i told ya right? bro hadjustmanaged to convince 'er to play nice with frisk when they both got a front row seat to fell gettin' dragged into that portal thing. lil' stripey wimp was just startin' to develop an attitude too"
"our chara hadn't got as far as alphys yet. th' lil shit survived gettin' dragged all round town and then blacks friendship-ass-kickin' and was headin' outta snowdin. wings jumped outta his damn river boat. ya gotta understand he never usedta do that often. right as we got portaled wings shouted 'DoNt WoRRy! I sHaLl BaBySiT!'. kid's doomed, hehehe."
"'Targeting', read Sans, "here we go."
-Bling- A few wary looks passed round. A faint whirring seemed negligible.
"'Surplus Artifact'?" Orange raised a browbone from the little computer window that ran progress bars marked 'Storing', then 'Processing', then 'Allocating'. "could be just some slight anomalous code… or by-products 'cos it cant do its whole thing"
"red? is that the coordinates?"
-Whhhiiirr- "wait, it might be. says target world located, target located." Cut in Red. "that's what we're after righ- oh, wait the coordinates are changing. that doesn't look-"
"what?! no that's not right-"
-Bling- "shit"
"what?"
-WHHHHIrrr- "location just changed. different coords." Red dived out of his seat towards the other monitor, to be replaced by Sans.
-Bling- "but that's fine, right? target world, target -oh. oh no"
-WHHHRRRHHRRHHRRRHHRR -Bling- "its drawing power!"
"yeah yer seein' it now. target world and target located are two different things. it's processing something!"
They were yelling now, as the noise ramped up. "we can still- we gotta adjust the quantum firmware layer!"
"ok i got it- where's the wrench? where's the damn wrench?!"
-BlingBlingBling-
A wrench flew through the air, disturbing wisps of smoke starting to come from a few panels, and it was stopped in a blue glow by Sans, with Red then grabbing it out of midair to bring down to where he was laying with his head under the main console.
-WHHIRRWHRWHRWHR-"hit the shutdown."
-WHRHRHR-Blingblingblingblingbling- The processing windows zipped onto the screen in rapid succession now.
"i did!" Orange nearly tripped over Sans to dive for the plug itself as smoke started pouring out from under the machine, and on his hands and knees looked up to see Rus passively holding it by the dangling plug already, with the blaisé expression of someone who did their job but was clocking out of office now thanks. He'd already lit up a cigarette.
-WHRWHRWHR-Bling-Storing-Processing-AllocatingWHRWHRWHRBling-Storing-Processing-AllocatingWHRWHRWHRBling-Storing-Processing-AllocatingWHRWHRWHR-the coordinates briefly flashed 0-0 in front of Reds eyelights.
-Bling-Storing-Processing-Allocating-... Black burst through the door as streams of energy from the receiver pod began to whip around the room and everyone dived to avoid them. Something glass exploded as they all flinched and ducked in avoidance.
"I DIDN'T SAY YOU COULD RUN IT YET! WHO GAVE YOU PERMISSION?!" A purple tinged bone appeared in the air to fly with deadly precision, embedding itself in the Off-button on the main console.
Four sets of skulls turned to the flickering button in the brief hope thatthatmight work, but it didn't. The shed did, however start shaking, and a final, higher pitched, slightly more worrying whirring starting to grate from it along with billowing smoke. Orange teleported, Red teleported, Sans looked at Rus diving for Black and teleported out with a sigh.
-WHRWHRWHR-Bling-Storing-Processing-AllocatingWHRWHRWHRBling-Storing-Processing-AllocatingWHRWHRWHRBling-Storing-Rus teleported Black out as the machine went boom.
The targeting screen, which hadn't been part of the destruction, had stopped on completing its latest 'Storing', with a little pop-up curtly stating 'Allocation interrupted. Process shut-down.'
The five of them stood inside the house in time to watch the boom. It wasn't a very big one. The shed made a muffled sound and belched a bunch of smoke as it stopped shaking. Papyrus stepped in behind them in fresh shorts and T-shirt.
"WELL!" He merrily started. "THE SAFETIES WORKED THEN? RUS; CIGARETTE."
That got them out of their stupor at least, so he carried on, "ARE WE TO TAKE IT THAT CONTINGENCY PLAN: 'ALPHA-B-ONE' IS IN EFFECT?" He finished with a disco style pointing pose at that.
Sans looked at his brother and nodded stiffly, and everyone got moving in different directions.
Prisha's house was on fire.
End Note:
I could swear I've seen "Alpha-B-One" before. Not sure if I was being clever or my awful memory yoinked it from another fic - so forgive me if so!
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