Chapter 8

Birds of a Feather

Amber went through the motions of orientation day again, but this time instead of sitting on the chair that was going to break she instead lightly pressed down on it with her foot, causing the whole thing to collapse again. Well, some worm-eaten wooden beams still knocked into her, but it didn't hurt as bad as falling on her butt.

So, here she sat on the bench, waiting again. She had to relive this boring useless day of sentry duty, though this time new thoughts occupied her mind.

She wondered what the difference was between a royal guard and a sentry. They seemed to be different positions, but they also seemed to somewhat overlap in purpose. The royal guards seemed to be some sort of warrior class, while the sentries were the punchclock goons that just sat around and watched for humans. Yet, in the handbook she was given (which she was actually bothering to read this time), it said that sentries were expected to apprehend any humans they saw by engaging them in combat.

So, the guard job was difficult to get, the sentry job was as easy as applying to work for the dollar store, and yet both required the monster to fight. That…didn't make sense.

Amber's thoughts idly wandered back to Papyrus. He wanted to be a royal guard so badly. It was his lifelong dream. Yet, if he started as a sentry and trained himself, it shouldn't be hard to get the position he wanted. Even Sans was a sentry, for crying out loud! If that lazy bag of bones could get this job, then it should be no problem for a driven and energetic monster like Papyrus.

Something about his situation didn't add up.

Amber was still thinking about it on her way home. This time she was careful while traversing the bridge. In fact, she was hyper-vigilant all the way home. Dying was a frightening and painful experience, and she'd rather not have to do that again.

As she walked to the edge of Snowdin, she passed by Sans and Papyrus's house. Part of her considered knocking, considered apologizing about the Flowey incident. She just wanted a friend, someone in this lousy new world that would care whether she lived or died. Sans was friendly in his own cagey way, but something about Papyrus felt so welcoming and honest. She just had to knock…

Sighing, she just kept walking back to her tiny little corner of Waterfall. Getting attached wasn't a smart idea. She might still be able to leave. She might be able to get home; to see her friends, her family, her world. Papyrus wasn't real. None of this was real. They were just characters in a video game.

Yet, could she really still feel that way, knowing what she knew now? Wherever this was, it was an active world full of sentient beings that had thoughts, feelings, and desires. She hurt Papyrus when she insulted his friend. If he wasn't real, then he wouldn't feel anything.

Did he really feel that way though, or was it scripted? Was this just how the game normally played out, or was something different? Amber didn't play Undertale. She didn't know enough about it to know how much of this was staged and how much of it was candid.

She shook her head, tired of these thoughts that just went around in circles. She'd spent so much time trying to figure out what was real or not, and it was starting to eat away at her a little. She decided that it was better to not worry about it. Just live in this, whatever this was, and hope for the best.

Sans had a spreadsheet in front of him as he sat at his station in Snowdin. He was supposed to watch for humans, but he had a feeling there wouldn't be any. The anomaly was tired of cosplaying as a human, tired of hiding itself any longer. It spoke to him, came to an agreement with him, and if Sans was going to keep his new promise then he would have to work harder than he had in a while.

His spreadsheet contained every female monster he knew, which was admittedly most of them. He made sure to know every monster he could since he needed to identify who the anomaly was. It took a long time to get a handle on who could be trusted, if trust was the right word for it.

Along with their names, Sans wrote down all pertinent information he knew about them. Any detail could be important. Any one of these female monsters could be the anomaly's lost sister.

For the woman in the ruins, he wrote "?" because he didn't know her name. Could she be the one? Would she tell him if she was? It was as good a place to start as any, since he had the least information on her as opposed to the others. Strangely enough, it was his care for her that kept her a mystery to him. He respected her privacy and enjoyed her company. Every monster he met was a means to an end for him, a clue to a puzzle, every monster except for Papyrus…and her.

His mind made up, Sans walked up to the big locked door that led to the ruins. He rapped on the door and began his knock knock jokes, knowing she would show up soon.

"Knock knock…" Sans said out loud, and then a few seconds later replied to himself with, "Who's there? Wafer. Wafer who? I've been a wafer a while, but now I'm back! Heh heh heh heh."

He didn't hear her soft footsteps yet, so he waited a minute before doing another one.

"Knock knock… Who's there? Mint… Mint who? Mint to tell you I was stopping by. Heh heh. Uh…knock knock…"

"Who is there?" The familiar feminine voice finally replied.

"Waddle."

"Waddle who?" She asked.

"Waddle you give me to stop doing these bad knock knock jokes?" Sans replied cheekily.

The woman laughed boisterously, just as she always did. Sans had been telling corny jokes his whole life, but he never made someone laugh like her. Either she was starved for entertainment, or she was the nicest monster he'd ever met. Sans liked to think it was both.

"Knock knock," The woman started.

"Who's there?" Sans grinned, ready for a doozy.

"Doris," The woman answered.

"Doris who?" Sans inquired.

"The Doris locked. Why do you think I am knocking?" The woman said, barely able to contain her own giggles.

She and Sans laughed together, both of them finding comfort in each other's company, even if it was on the other side of a door. As genuinely happy as Sans was basking in her attention however, he knew he couldn't put off the real reason for being there forever.

"Uh, can I ask you a question?" Sans asked carefully, "A serious question."

"Only if I may ask you one as well," The woman replied, her tone becoming more somber.

"Me first," Sans insisted, "Do you have any siblings?"

"Siblings? No, I do not," The woman replied, "Is there a reason for your asking?"

"Eh, it's not a big deal," Sans shrugged, "So what was your question?"

"I must ask you…remember what I said before? About if a h-human appears near the ruins?" The woman's voice trembled as she spoke.

"Yeah. What about it?" Sans asked, his brain on high alert.

"Have…have you seen one? Lately?" The woman asked shakily, "Please, my dear friend, be honest with me. Have you seen them?"

"Did a human leave the ruins?" Sans asked sharply, but then calmed himself down and added, "I, uh, I haven't seen anyone."

"Oh, I fear the worst has happened to them!" The woman wailed, her voice one of pure heartbreak, "My child…my child has left me! It is my own fault! I didn't eat for a long time. I have been trying to save the food down here. Only so much can grow here. When my child arrived, I became even more afraid of eating. I wanted them to have everything they needed to survive for as long as possible. I knew we could not leave this place. My child would be killed if anyone but you found them first. So, I held off. I did not eat, and because of this I passed out in the hallway. It must have scared my poor child. They must have left to find help for me, but now I cannot find them anywhere!"

By now the woman was sobbing, and Sans didn't really know what to say in this situation. He knew he should feel sad for her, even sad for the poor confused human child, but something about this situation felt wrong. In every other time loop a human left the ruins, Sans found them, introduced them to Papyrus, and then…everything went up in smoke.

Something corrupted this timeline. The human was never seen. Not by Sans, not by Papyrus, not by anybody. Yet the child clearly did exist, because this woman was their caretaker.

"Can I ask you a question about the human?" Sans interjected once the sobbing had calmed down a little, "Was this human a male or a female?"

"I…I do not know," The woman admitted, "Humans are very difficult to tell apart at such a young age. Their hair was brown, and they wore a blue and purple striped shirt. Oh please, my friend, please find my child! Please bring them back to me! They must be so frightened and alone! I should have been a better mother to them! Asgore must not be allowed to take their soul…"

She began to cry again, and Sans wished a knock knock joke was enough to fix this. It seemed like he was getting a lot of quests lately. Find the anomaly's sister, find the ruins woman's missing human child…

Sans couldn't help but feel like these inconsistencies in the timeline were connected. Was the human child the anomaly's sister? It would make sense if Sans's research was accurate. If the anomaly was the flower, and the human showed up at the same time as the genocide timelines took place, then…wait…

The human always caused the genocide timelines. Sans's other selves wrote about fighting and killing the human. Over, and over, and over again. 137 times. Sans killed the human 137 times. The human couldn't be the sister, because it was the anomaly. The flower couldn't be the sister either, because it insisted on masculine pronouns when Papyrus spoke to it.

So, the sister was a new entity. The flower and the human were both likely the same creature, the anomaly. Perhaps the human disappeared from the woman in the ruins because it finally got tired of playing around with her. It was now speaking to Sans from a safe location far from the known universe. He would never find the human, not if the plan actually worked.

Still, despite these grand cosmic undertakings that Sans was involved in, there was still a matter here in the underground that required his immediate attention. One thing that he could still do to help someone who needed him.

"Don't worry," Sans told the woman, "I'll do everything in my power to find the human child. If I can get them to come home to you, I will. I promise."

The next day, Amber showed up at her broken station, sighed at the sight of the thing, and took her position on the park bench again.

She flipped through the Royal Sentry Handbook, which was tucked under her sheet with her. She wished there was better lighting under this thing, but she couldn't bring a flashlight in here lest she expose her human form underneath.

As she got to the chapter about evacuation procedures in case of multi-human breach, she heard the flapping of large wings above her. She groaned, thinking it was bats, and ducked her head a little just in case.

When she saw someone land near her broken station, she realized that flapping was the wings of a monster. Amber saw a large blue bird-like monster with a toolbelt and large black eyes that looked like they'd seen better days. With nothing else to do, Amber walked over to see what was up.

"You the carpenter Dogaressa called?" Amber guessed.

"Oh, yes. My name is Martlett," The bird introduced herself, "This job shouldn't be very difficult. I'm not surprised the Royal Guard let this staton go like this. Nothing really happens around here…"

Amber couldn't help but notice the strange way the bird said that last sentence. Something about her face looked a little distant, and her movements in general seemed kind of listless.

"You know, I think it's almost time for my legally required break," Amber said, quoting her handbook, "You look a little tired. You wanna sit with me a while? We can discuss the job, or something more lighthearted if you want."

"Thank you, but I really need to do this job quickly," Martlett hurriedly replied, "I have to fly to the north end of town today to patch the roof for the shopkeeper. After that I might see if the River Person is there to take me to Hotland."

"River Person? You couldn't just fly there?" Amber asked quizzically.

"I could, but I really enjoy riding on the river," Martlett replied, perking up a little, "The water is so calming…most of the time. The River Person is very good at their job. I'm a little concerned about the original base for this station. I might have to replace the entire thing. Do you think your superiors will sign off on it?"

"We can always say they did and figure it out later if they didn't," Amber shrugged.

"Oh no, that won't do. I'll call them. Just bear with me."

Amber sighed, knowing that bureaucratic red tape could make this project take hours. Then again, even after the bird was done with the project, all it would change was where Amber was going to sit and be bored. For a video game where she was allegedly the main character, she sure did feel like an NPC these days. Just sitting around hoping the adventurer would show up and make life interesting. Man, what a lousy way to live…

After getting clearance to replace the entire station, Martlett got to work, and Amber just stood nearby and watched. She would've helped, but she didn't know the first thing about construction.

"So, how long have you been in Snowdin?" Martlett asked, "I've never seen you around here before. It's always nice to have a new friendly face."

"Oh, um, I haven't been here long. A little under a week, I guess," Amber shrugged again, "What about you? What's your story?"

"Oh, not much of a story to tell, I'm afraid," Martlett replied humbly, "I've always loved to build things, and I've been in business for myself for about…I want to say 50, maybe 60 years. It's kind of hard to keep track of time after so long. Believe it or not, this used to be my station."

"You were a sentry?" Amber asked casually, idly kicking some loose wood.

"Back then there was no difference between sentries and guards," Martlett explained, "I think the king separated the two when inexperienced guards kept getting posted in positions that, in his words, they weren't qualified for…"

there was a slight edge to Martlett's tone in that last sentence, and Amber knew a story was just under the surface of that. She might not have known construction, but she could smell gossip a mile away.

"You don't agree with the king's decision?" Amber asked slyly.

"Oh, I don't want to talk out of turn," Martlett backtracked quickly, trying to focus harder on her job.

"I won't tell," Amber assured her, "After all, nobody's perfect. So he made one bad decision? So what? Everyone makes mistakes."

"The king's decisions go far beyond mistakes if you ask me," Martlett said bitterly, "Of course, nobody asks me."

"Did you get fired or something?" Amber guessed.

"No, I quit," Martlett informed her, "And if I'm being completely honest, you should probably quit too. The Royal Guard isn't the glamorous easy job everyone tends to believe it is. I was young when I joined the guard. Young and naive. It never occurred to me what could happen if a human ever did actually fall down to the underground. It never occurred to me…"

"…Did the human hurt you, or someone you love?" Amber asked apprehensively, now wishing she hadn't brought it up.

"No. Worse," Martlett said softly, her head hanging low, "That human became someone I loved. Not in a romantic sense or anything, but…they were special. The human was just a child, and yet they had such a heroic quality to them. A strong sense of justice, yet a peaceful diplomatic way of handling their problems. I was so impressed with them, and we quickly became friends. I didn't know them long, but we went through so much together. Then…then we went to see the king…"

"Oh…" Amber could guess where this was going based on the game's story.

"I presented the human to the king. I told him about how kind they were, how brave they were, how…how they deserved to go home. King Asgore didn't listen to me, and in the end, neither did Clover."

"Clover?"

"The human," Martlett clarified, "I begged the king to let Clover go home, or if not that, at least let them live with me here in Snowdin. Clover was a peaceful human. It could have worked out. It didn't, however. The king killed Clover, and took their soul. The 6th human soul…"

Martlett gripped her hammer tighter, and whacked a nail in place to attach two pieces of new wood.

"I could never be a member of the Royal Guard again," Martlett said, anger clear on her soft feathery face, "Not after that. I saw an ugly side to monster society that day. I saw monsters that wanted to use Clover, wanted to kill them, wanted to further their own agenda with the dust of that innocent child."

"Dust?" Amber asked.

"Oh, right. Humans don't have dust," Martlett blushed, "Um, what do humans have again?"

"Crippling anxiety?" Amber joked.

"No, I mean- Well, I suppose it doesn't matter," Martlett stammered, "Just…be careful with this job. I know you're a ghost and can't get physically hurt, but this job can hurt your soul. It can make you into someone you don't want to be. Please, understand, not all humans are evil. Even King Asgore knew this once. He once had a human child that he adopted as his own, and yet behaves as if that doesn't matter. Acting like his own child, Himbo, didn't exist."

"Wait, what!?" Amber snorted laughter, "What did you say his kid's name was?"

"Himbo. The first human child to fall down," Martlett explained, not understanding what was so funny.

"OMG! That is so…dang it, James!" Amber howled with laughter, "I, hahaha, I know you have something to do with this! Hahahahaha!"

Martlett didn't know what Amber was laughing about. She just shrugged and assumed she didn't understand ghost humor. After all, there weren't that many ghost monsters to interact with in Snowdin. Amber went back to sit on the park bench, and Martlett went back to work. Amber probably should've been more afraid of Asgore, a king that would kill even an innocent human child for their soul, but she was too busy laughing at the stupid name her brother had selected for what she assumed was his player character.

As Amber watched Martlett work, her mind brought back happier memories from home. Like the time their Uncle Jim showed them how to build a treehouse. James actually had fun doing work with his hands, but of course it didn't last. Uncle Jim had a nice big tree for a treehouse, but their own townhouse was nowhere near trees or nature. Once they returned home, it was back to screens and escapism. It was back to trying to pretend that a lovelier world didn't exist beyond their doors. It was back to basic survival.

Martlett's pain over losing a friend should have touched Amber on a deeper level than it did, but she couldn't help but feel like it was just the type of melodramatic pain that comes from a virtual world. Everything was starting to feel less real to Amber the longer she stayed here. She could rewind time, death wasn't real, and most of these monsters only existed to serve a purpose some game designer programmed them for. Clover didn't exist. It was just a programmed memory, like that one blonde chick from Wreck-It Ralph.

When Martlett finished her work, she wiped the sweat from her brow and turned to Amber, smiling despite having a beak instead of a mouth.

"Your station should last another hundred years," Martlett announced, "I just hope you don't need it to. I hope…I hope you can find a job devoid of cruelty someday. I know it's hard to escape peer pressure, but please, just think about what I said. Humans don't deserve to die just for us to be free. It isn't fair."

"Yeah, it's not, I guess," Amber replied noncommittally, "I'm glad to meet someone with a conscience, for what it's worth. Say, maybe I can get your phone number, in case something else goes wrong with this stupid toll booth."

"Oh, certainly!" Martlett readily agreed, "If you need anything else done, my rates are very fair."

"Sure, sure," Amber nodded, "Um, listen. About the whole human thing. If I find one, do you want me to…tell you? Like, I know what my job is, but…I get paid whether I find one or not. So, if there's one around, do you…wanna know about it?"

Amber watched Martlett's face carefully to see how she would react. Amber knew another human wouldn't show up. The game was programmed for one human: Her. That being said, if her poorly planned out ghost disguise ever failed, she might need someone to help hide her. Martlett seemed like she would be a good ally, but she had to be sure.

"Are you-!" Martlett exclaimed, but then caught herself and leaned in to whisper, "Are you suggesting telling me instead of the Royal Guard? To…hide the human?"

"Interesting idea. Wish I'd thought of it," Amber winked.

"Well…I…I would have to know the human isn't a threat to anyone," Martlett hesitated, "If the human is a monster killer, then I think…I think the king should take that soul. We could still be free, and a dangerous person could be stopped from doing something horrible. That being said, if the human is peaceful…like Clover was, then…then maybe…I could help them."

"Just remember, it's our secret," Amber whispered conspiratorially.

"I'm surprised you are so receptive to my ideas," Martlett smiled gratefully, "I was afraid you would be some human hating fanatic. The captain of the Royal Guard is usually so careful about who she hires these days."

"Yeah, for guards," Amber pointed out, "I'm just a sentry, remember?"

Amber winked again, and Martlett chuckled softly to herself.

"I'll see you later!" Martlett called out as she took off, flying away a moment later.

"Bye!" Amber shouted up at the bird monster.

Once Martlett was gone Amber took her seat at the new and improved sentry station, smiling in satisfaction at what she managed to accomplish. She had a new ally, and a new backup plan in case her first plan failed.

She was starting to gain a new perspective on this world, though she wasn't sure it was one she liked. Even if this universe was merely modeled off the video game Undertale and not the actual game, it still mostly played by Undertale's rules, and the characters' lives were mostly dictated by Undertale's storyline.

Knowing that everything came from a script in her universe made Amber realize that she shouldn't be treating these monsters like unpredictable humans in her own world. Most of them were programmed to serve as either obstacles or assistance to the player, and right now that was her. All Amber had to do to survive was say the right line of dialogue, own the right McMuffin, make the right moves, and know friend from foe. She just had to learn the game.

Amber knew this was probably true, but she hated viewing these people that way. They were all right here, solid creatures speaking right in front of her. They didn't know their world was so fragile, that they were all so easy to manipulate. This also meant she could never really view any of them as friends. How could she form a real connection to someone so predictable, someone she knew she was using as a tool? How could she feel real when nothing else did?

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe this world was nothing like the game. For all she knew Undertale could be some platformer where she had to collect 50 different types of fruit to progress. She doubted it, but thinking that would make everything easier. She just wanted to feel real, and she wanted her relationships here to be real, especially since she might be here forever.

Notes: Yep, in this story James has the fan game Undertale Yellow installed. He got the flawed pacifist ending last.