Oh oh, it looks like more problems are coming !

Chapter 7 : The highway's house

The children were prisoners of a snowstorm again. They were walking against the wind, holding onto each other to make sure no one got lost. Sans stood behind Papyrus and Undyne, trying to protect them a little from the harsh weather with his shadow. Without anything to warm them up, they were tiring fast. Despite regular breaks, he had the impression they were not getting anywhere. He hadn't seen the Mountain since they left their shed in the morning and he had absolutely no idea of where they were heading. All the trees looked similar and their footsteps kept disappearing behind them.

Maybe they were walking in a circle. That thought ate away at the older one's thoughts. They were traveling for hours now and nothing changed around them. He felt guilty. Maybe he had done more harm than good when he got them out of the cave. He feared he made everything worse. Even more now that hunger had joined the party. Papyrus complained a lot about this, but his brother couldn't do anything to help him. He was hungry too, and very tired because of his power overuse. His magic pained to regenerate and his one health point was not helping.

"Sans ? Are we there yet ?" asked Papyrus with his tiny voice. "My legs are hurting and I'm cold…"

The skeleton put a hand on his shoulder to encourage him to hold on. He couldn't carry him now or they wouldn't get out of this hell without even more hours of pain. Undyne took Papyrus hand to give him some more bravery. He moaned, but accepted to continue a little more.

After one more hour of intense walking, the landscape transformed around them : less trees, more and more signs of civilisation. Some huts at first, then their feet trod on constructed paths. They finally joined the main road, and this news warmed their souls. The blizzard was too dense to see their surroundings clearly, but Sans knew this road was normally leading to Mount Ebott. That meant they were heading in the right direction. All they had to do now was to find a shed and some food to spend a safe and relaxing night.

The solution didn't take long to appear to them when the ruins of a monster's village appeared in front of them, recognizable from the disordered buildings with different sizes and textures. Monsters built their home based only on their needs, they didn't care about aesthetics contrary to humans. That was comforting. Falling on a human village after all they had been through would have been the worst scenario.

The children entered the village's enclosure with caution. Their feet squeaked on a thick layer of gray dust, macabre testimony of the tragedy that happened here. Sans tried his best to not think about it and held his brother and Undyne close in case they had to run off. He wanted to take as few risks as possible.

Most of the houses had been burned and fell in ruins. However, in the back of the small city, they found some, still intact. Sans pushed the door of one of them. It opened without resistance. Monsters didn't really know the concept of intimity. Even if everyone had their own house, it was open to everyone in need. The living room that appeared in front of their eyes had been ravaged. Furniture had been knocked down, broken, like a tornado had passed and destroyed everything inside.

Sans closed the door and blocked it with a big wardrobe that they pushed all together. Then, they explored the living-room, relieved to finally be safe. A huge sofa took centre stage of the living-room, in pretty good shape. Sans sat the children on it and helped them to get rid of their wet clothes. He found several old blankets and wrapped them in so they wouldn't catch a cold.

"Stay here and rest for a while." he said with a more relaxed voice. "I'll try to find some clothes and food. Don't make too much noise and everything is going to be alright."

The two children nodded before they installed themselves more comfortably on the couch. Sans left them to rummage through the adjacent kitchen.

Modern, it was built all upright. Cupboards, wardrobes, even the refrigerator's handle was way too high for his small height. Sans growled, frustrated, then got back into the living-room to drag a chair behind him. His first choice was the fridge, which opened without difficulty. Immediate deception. Except for some weird colored and scented vegetables, there was nothing left. Tough, he didn't lose hope and pushed his improvised stepladder next to the work surface to reach the higher cupboards. But here too, the handles were far away above him. While cursing about the adults being so tall, he escalated the furniture, legs shaking under him. One fall and it was over for him. The thought scared him but with a deep breath, he got over it. He grabbed firmly the handle above him and opened it, in fragile balance at the edge of the surface. But his hard work paid off : it was full of biscuits, cakes, cans and pastas. One by one, he threw the packets at his feet, then got down himself. With all of this, they could survive several additional days. That was good news.

He brought everything on the coffee table in the living-room. A light snoring told him Papyrus and Undyne finally sank into sleep after this exhausting day of walk. He smiled and let them rest to explore the rest of the house. He needed everything useful he could find including bags to carry everything.

He opened the first door in the corridor following the entry, which led to a sweet bedroom with blue tints. Like in the rest of the house, everything had been torn up. Hanging to the ceiling, two cords swang under the wind escaping from the broken window, above a huge pile of dust. Sans swallowed. Those who didn't die in battle or ran away fell into madness. Some others couldn't bear to live in a world like this anymore. That was what his dad said to King Asgore on the phone one day. He couldn't have understood more of what he meant than at this instant.

Uneasy, he quickly searched the wardrobes, avoiding at all cost the monster's rest. He found a flashlight in the bedside table's drawer, and some money on the ground. Meager consolation. The wardrobe was big and well-stocked, but the clothes were far too big and heavy for children, and even more for a skeleton who didn't weigh that much. The monsters who lived here seemed tall, even more than his father. In the next door bathroom, he grabbed some toiletry items. He tried the bathtub's tap and quivered with pleasure when warm water flowed between his fingers. They would finally be able to scrub themselves. Sans's bones were covered in dirt and dust, and were not so white anymore. He needed this terribly.

But before that, he still had one last room to explore. It was another bedroom, where two children's beds were facing. Everything looked comfy and he even thought he could bring Papyrus and Undyne here. Until he spotted that weird movement under one of the sheets. Cautionnely, he got close, then lifted the blanket quickly. Two scared brown eyes turned towards him, then the little human who found cover here screamed out of terror and retreated against the wall.

As surprised as he was, Sans stepped backwards against the opposite wall to leave a bigger gap between that probable murderer and his one health point. He never saw a human that close before and it was even more ugly than what his dad taught him. It was flabby, covered by opaque meat and Sans had no idea what he was supposed to do with it. Killing him seemed the only right thing to do, but something was wrong. This human was smaller than the ones they met early in the cave. Could it be a child, like him ? What was it doing alone here ? Why did they have to enter the only house which contained one of these things ? As scared as the human, he didn't want to get near.

The human calmed down when he realised the skeleton didn't attack them yet. Slowly, they put the hand that was covering their face down, and Sans could see their face more clearly. It looked young. These round cheeks, these tearful eyes and these blond dirty hairs, it almost looked like Undyne in less blue and less scaly.

"Please don't eat me." begged the human. "I don't want to die."

Sans opened his eye sockets wide. Was it talking to him ? He never agreed to this ! He didn't know how to communicate with a human, his dad never taught him ! He knew he should have been more attentive reading these boring books about humanity instead of playing with Papyrus and his puzzles.

Anxious, he looked at the door. Maybe it was not too late to escape. But by the time he would have woken up Papyrus and Undyne, it might have blocked the way out or worse. What he saw in the other bedroom was still in his mind. What if it was not a suicide ? What if that thing forced them to do this ? He had to leave this place, now.

"Sans ?" called Papyrus, entering the room like nothing was happening. "Are you alright ? I heard screa… WOWIE ! Is that a human ?!"

Excited, he immediately walked toward it. Sans panicked, grabbed his arm and pulled him backwards. He pressed his brother defensively against him. The human didn't seem scared anymore, more curious. Sitting on his butt, it was looking at Papyrus, his head slightly leaning on the left.

Unhappy, Papyrus struggled in Sans' arms and managed to free himself, slipping between his brother's hands and the wall. Powerless, Sans saw him get close to the human, a hand outstretched in front of him and his chest puffed up with pride.

"Hello Human ! I am the great Papyrus and this is my brother Sans. As a future member of the Royal Guard, I shall kidnap you and take you… Uh… Somewhere. But I'm not in the Royal Guard yet so I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. Do you want to be my friend ?"

Oh nice, thought Sans. Now that Papyrus had established contact, he wouldn't let go of the idea of taking the human with them. He would have to think of something. If he wanted to get rid of that thing, he had to do it quickly and discreetly, before his brother got too attached.

But the human took his brother's hand with a warm smile and shook it.

"Nice to meet you, Papyrus. My name is Charlie."

Sans tightened the fists when Papyrus' face lightened happily. If this human ever hurt him, he didn't know what he would do to them. He had to intervene, now. Then why wasn't he moving ? He tried, he really tried, but seeing that smile back on Papyrus' face for the first time since they left home, he couldn't possibly tell him to back off. Sans gave up. He couldn't hurt that human either. They were going to have a problem.