Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was a dark and moonless night when the monsters finally emerged from within their mountain prison. This was one of the better, if not the best, set of circumstances possible for beings who had spent millenia trapped with little to no light, now reintroduced to a land where blinding light covered the space every day. Of course, with modern technology as developed as it was, the light and noise pollution present due to the nearby city even at night was still too much for their overly sensitive senses. Quickly returning underground, the monsters designed- or perhaps it should be said that they redesigned- masks to help their eyes adjust to this new source of light in such a way that it would not scare those who lived nearby and mufflers to assist their ears.

“Sir, any thoughts?” I asked my sibling, the nickname a recurring joke in our family.

“On what?” responded Rain.

“Read this, I want to introduce this Sans and Papyrus in a way that shows who they are as characters. Something that’s not just ‘Oh, and here are these two skeletons, ready to live life as normal for a few months, helping with the usual issues- whatever I decide to make those- then go back to the Underground with the looping of time’ but conveys something along those lines. Do you know what I mean?”

“I get you, maybe follow it up with something like this: ‘Two monsters in particular, skeletal siblings you may know well from other tales about other worlds and other universes, were less excited than one might first think about leaving a prison they had been trapped in for thousands of years. This was because both Sans and Papyrus had done this so many times before it would take a library just to hold all their memories of the Surface.’ Then go from there to take the story in whatever direction. Is that good or should I keep going?”

“Nah, I think I’ve got it now. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

With that, I returned to writing my fic. I loved the Undertale fandom and all the various AUs that it had spawned. Undertale, Underswap, Underfell, Swapfell and Fellswap (The difference between an Underswap pair coping with a Fell Underground and a Fell pair simply being swapped made a surprising difference), Horrortale, Dancetale, Dusttale, and so, so many more captured my attention. The Outcodes also occupied me like nothing else had: Ink, Error, Dream, Nightmare, Fresh… again the list could go on forever, what with the constant expansion of the omniverse. But just a few minutes before, I had gained inspiration. If Ink was truly out there, then he was definitely giving some thoughts as to how I could start a story about an AU that had been stuck in my brain.

I also enjoyed the Forgotten Realms stories that were written by R. A. Salvatore. We were reading the stories as a family, and my dad had attached voices to every character, main and side characters alike, as we read the Dark Elf Trilogy, Icewind Dale Trilogy, and some of the Legacy of the Drow. Yes, they were an older series of D&D based books, but they had some of the best characters and development I had seen, so Salvatore’s tales of a dark elf gone rogue captured my mind. At the same time, the settings depicted caught my imagination, especially the Underdark, a labyrinth of caves that stretched under the world’s surface lit only by bioluminescent plants and animals, though only in those rare places where nutrients could be found. This was a place where fantastic horrors hunted with only sound and vibrations in the rock and dark elves built their cities into the rock of the deepest caverns.

I then decided to ask a few questions: What if, instead of being simply trapped underground, the monsters were trapped in the Underdark? And what if they’d had to learn to navigate without using their eyes and make food without light? Knowing how adaptable monsters are due to the story of Horrortale, what would happen? What special abilities might then be found and what changes would be made to the monsters themselves?

This sparked a cascade of concepts, including using magic to see, the Barrier and Hotland being the only locations where light exists Underground, and Frisk and Chara being blind children. Any light in the Underdark would be a big signal to anything nearby, so the monsters would have to find a magical way to seal light in, while still allowing beings to freely travel through. Furthermore, I knew I wanted some modern technology to carry over, so I needed to find a way to blend technology and magic in a world that doesn’t have the same drive for technology that we do. Needless to say, in a few days I pretty much had a fully-fleshed AU built in note form, mainly me just writing down everything I remembered from brainstorming at work. 

I wanted my Sans and Papyrus to have a close relationship that wasn’t quite a classic Sans- Papyrus relationship, so I pulled a lot of their characters’ attitudes straight from interactions I’d had with my own sibling. I would describe our relationship as relaxed, friendly, somewhat open, and though each of us may be unique, still pretty similar overall, to the point where people literally ask if we’re twins, so I placed an emphasis on these qualities in both their mentalities and magic. Following that concept, I designed their outfits on ours. I was smaller, and liked my comfy jacket and capris, so the Sans was female and wore capris and a fuzzy zip-up jacket, the kind that has fuzz on the outside as well as the inside. Rain enjoyed a sweater closer in style to Underswap Papyrus, more casual, and they paired that with shorts. Thus, the Papyrus wore that style of clothing and used they/them pronouns. Colors would be muted in a place where bright light would both draw attention and blind the user, so I searched for specific desaturated colors, settling on a particular shade of blue for the Papyrus, and for the Sans I selected a color somewhere between magenta and purple(#a59eb4 and #c691c2, respectively). In short, a hefty majority of who they were was a caricature of who we were, individually and as a pair.

Of course, none of those details mattered quite as much in the portion I was writing, since it was just the beginning to a new story, there was no need to make the first chapter a super heavy lore dump. This was a time to introduce characters, not place a hard focus on their backstories. Maybe a poke of ‘what’s different here?’ This being my first fanfic to write, I was something of a perfectionist, throwing my thoughts onto the page but then editing what I had a sentence later. As a reader, I appreciated when stories used careful word placement to cleanly display the characters and their growth, as well as any foreshadowing the author wished to create, so I wanted to integrate that into my own fanfic.

After a break for dinner, I spent some time relaxing with my family- pets included- before it was time to head to bed. I shared a room with my sibling, which we had done since we were small. More recently, our dogs had been allowed to join us in our room for bed, since it was only recently that they had consistently not used the bathroom in our room. As we read before bed, the shadows in the corners of the room slowly grew, the change so gradual it was unnoticeable for a long while.

“Didn’t the sun set already?” I asked.

“Yeah, we’re in California, not Alaska,” came the reply.

“Then why is it so much darker in here than five minutes ago? Our curtains don’t block that much light, and we live in the city, not the country…” I was starting to get nervous. Looking through the window, it seemed as if all was normal, but if I turned to my right, the other way, I watched as the space became ever so slightly dark, darker, yet darker.

“What’s that?” my sibling asked.

“Nothing good, I think.”

______

In another universe, Sans was looking at a machine. This wasn’t just any machine; it was in the Core. Many stories speak of the machine behind Sans’s house, but very few discuss the one attached to the Core; the one that does the real work. Geothermal energy on the Surface is considered efficient, but having direct access to a lava chamber increases the amount of energy produced exponentially. In this particular universe, the Core produces far more energy than a small civilization of monsters who take full advantage of modern comforts could ever hope to use. 

Once, a Royal Scientist, whose name has since been forgotten, thought to break the Barrier with an attack made of more magic than any monster could hope to wield on their own, created with the spare power the Core produced in a year, stored in special, high-capacity batteries. He designed a special machine to turn electricity into magical energy and attached it to the Core. The controls for this machine had to be separated from the machine itself to avoid potentially dangerous blowback and ensure the user’s safety. Instead of tearing a small hole in the Barrier, though, he tore a hole in time and space, erasing all memory of himself and all in the room from the minds of (almost) every monster in the Underground. On top of that, those who were forgotten were thrown adrift in time and space, only capable of appearing in certain locations and when certain variables lined up. Despite his calculations, it went wrong for one simple reason: it required live magic. The scientist input some of his own magic, not seeing how his heightened emotions might have an effect upon his experiment, and instead of the rift tearing through the Barrier, it was torn in the air near Doctor W.D. Gaster.

Sans was looking at the machine that had torn the rift, remembering when he first found it after the accident. He had been at home that day, at his father’s insistence, and as soon as “The Earthquake”, as it came to be known, had occurred, he had rushed out, first to the lab behind their house, then to the space at the Core W.D. had claimed for his experiment, though he didn’t know why at the time. Upon his arrival, though, all he found was empty rooms and, in the machine, the trace of Gaster’s magic the machine had required. It wasn’t expended magic; instead, it seemed ready and malleable, almost as if it wanted to do something. And it did- it joined with Sans’s magic, changing him forever. In that moment, he remembered . He remembered Gaster, and he remembered what Gaster’s experiment entailed. And with this spark of now-impossible magic, he would remember each reset as it came. His brother had no memory of the incident and no knowledge of their father. And that hurt Sans’s Soul.

Looking at the machine, Sans had to wonder: Was it really a good idea to try to use his own magic- and its drop of Gaster- to try to pull his father back home? They were on the Surface; life was going well, and unless someone died, the kid had no reason to use the RESET button. They had even promised that they would avoid it unless someone died. He had no idea where Gaster was, and just throwing a lure into whatever place the machine had connected to to find similar magic to his own could have any number of results… 

...Who was he kidding, of course it was. This was about his dad, who had always loved and cared for his children as far as he was able. Focusing on his magic and drawing it out, Sans pulled a sliver of his own magic and inserted it into the machine, in the same container Gaster had used for his own magic. Shortcutting to the lab behind his house, Sans put the first set of commands he had found in his father’s blueprints into the control panel, powering the machine on. The second set accessed whatever unknown place his father had been dragged into. Finally, he activated the third and final set: the ‘lure’, using the magic to draw in something similar, rather than to amplify and transform. This set had never been used- was purely theoretical and he had designed it himself based on what he could understand- and was the biggest unknown in this dangerous experiment. 

As he hit ENTER, the world seemed to pause for just… a… moment.

Then, darkness fell over the room, deeper than any that should exist in the universe, followed by the brightest light seen on Earth.

When the light cleared a half-moment later, disappearing as swiftly as it had appeared, seven new skeletons were left behind, jumbled on the floor.

Chapter Text

Everyone in the basement was disoriented. As soon as all the skeletons were off of the floor, Sans was faced with four skeletons that looked like himself, and three skeletons who resembled his brother. They were asking questions, all at once, asking about what had happened, what was going on, where they were, and everything in between. After a moment, even most of the lazier-looking ones started to look panicked. 

Sans had to take a shocked moment and see what these new skeletons were like, using most of his psychological analysis tools, minus a CHECK. All of them seemed to be in pairs, except for one, so that was where he figured he’d end his analysis. Almost everyone was confused, himself included, so that was a pretty uniform response for the room, except for the one skeleton who seemed unbothered by everything, who just so happened to be the solo Sans.

One Sans seemed more curious than anything else and was opposite the lonely Sans, so Sans(the original) decided to begin there. His outfit seemed kind of like what Sans imagined a combination of his and his brother’s styles would look like, if Sans himself was actually interested in exercise. And his expression… he was looking at Sans with the brightest expectant-yet-confused smile, like Papyrus would if he was in Sans’s body. He seemed pretty precious, with a literal sparkle in his light blue eyelights, and Sans could hear him asking, “WHAT JUST HAPPENED?” like somebody knew.

Next to him, a Papyrus Sans could guess was his brother had the same look Sans knew he himself often had around humans and potential threats: full-on analysis mode, hidden under a solid slouch. This Papyrus was wearing another mishmash of styles, though leaning more toward Sans’s own comfortable style. His “well, that was a surprise”, said in the calmest voice Sans had heard was also surprising, though given his relaxed demeanor and observant orange eyelights Sans really shouldn’t have been surprised at his self-restraint.

Continuing across the room, Sans next saw a Papyrus who was obviously irritated, leaning forward in an obvious attempt at intimidation, towering over him as though he had the answers to all of life’s questions and would not tell him, though they had been in the same room for less than a minute. His sharpened teeth were in sharp contrast to the previous pair’s blunt teeth, and his ‘red and black with spikes’ style gave him a decidedly edgy look. This Papyrus was glaring at him, his red eyelights sharp and angry. His swiftly-summoned bone and “WHAT MESS HAVE YOU DRAGGED ME INTO??” definitely placed him in the dangerous-and-watch category, in Sans’s opinion. 

Standing with him, angled so he could cover his brother’s back at the drop of a pin if necessary (or whatever angle needed covering), stood the obvious Sans counterpart to the edgy Papyrus. He had a bone half-formed, clearly aiming to blend preparedness for a fight and avoiding the instigation of said fight. He definitely wanted to know what was up with everyone, scanning the room like Sans himself. Though he seemed like he was trying to relax into his black hoodie, he was pretty solidly failing, and his red sweat was only making his discomfort increasingly obvious. Even his “so, wanna tell me what’s going on?” told Sans that he was uncomfortable but trying to understand what was going on before jumping to violence, which was definitely appreciated.

The last pair was a little harder to read than the other pairings. Sans could tell that both the skeletons in this grouping were better than most at hiding what was going on in their minds from others, which told him that wherever they came from must have been a place where that sort of thing mattered. The Sans of the pair was standing firmly in front of his own brother at military parade rest, prepared to fight or simply have a civil conversation. His black uniform and tall red boots were obviously well taken care of, and the long, sharp bandanna/scarf he wore was pressed so firmly it seemed like it was a pair of wings from how straight the line of its ends swept away from his neck. His firm “WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?” spoke of firm self-restraint, and when Sans coupled that with his uniform and the scar across his left eye, that said he was either very high-ranking military or a member of his royal court. Perhaps both. The scar also said that he was dangerous, but given his demeanor and the focused glint in his working eyelight, this Sans would be a skeleton to pay attention to due to his danger with words, rather than a physical danger to watch out for. This one might be a handful.

At a glance it was clear that the Papyrus was not comfortable with the change of scenery. His black hoodie read ‘SHY GUY’, and he seemed to curl more into himself with each passing tense moment. Instead of having eyelights, his eyelids seemed perpetually half-shut, and the shape of the eyelids themselves implied the point of his focus. His crouched position behind his brother made it fairly clear he wouldn’t be starting anything. When he held up the notebook he’d been scribbling in, Sans could see that the page read “hello, what’s going on?”, and realized that this skeleton in braces would definitely be in need of emotional support, at least against the edgier pair (though he wasn’t quite sure whether any support offered would be accepted).

The Sans who was solo was dressed in a hoodie and shorts that had every color known to man, plus some that were probably previously unknown. His shirt collar seemed flipped out, over his hood, and he wore a… fanny pack. For some reason, that fanny pack scared Sans more than it really should. Sunglasses that read “YOLO” covered his eye sockets, and his bright velcro sneakers were definitely an unexpected visual bonus. Completing the look, this Sans’s baseball cap was on sideways and fingerless gloves covered his hands. All of this, of course, was in extremely bright colors. His relaxed “wassup, broseph!” threw everyone off since he seemed to be responding to everything like it was just a normal afternoon. A relaxed attitude, paired with his continued lounging on the floor spoke to him being extraordinarily dangerous or having knowledge no one else had- or maybe some combination of the two.

Taking advantage of the stunned silence that followed, the Sans who flipped the switch had one big thing to say: “we need nicknames. otherwise we aren’t going to get anything done. i know i won’t be able to handle thinking of you as, well… descriptor plus given name.”

“WHY SHOULD I PARTICIPATE IN THIS?” the edgy Papyrus asked. “I DON’T NEED A NICKNAME TO KNOW WHEN SOMEONE’S TALKING TO ME!”

“boss,” his brother interjected quickly, sweating slightly more “i don’ think everyone here is as amazing as you. ya may be so great and terrible ya can always tell, but the rest of us need something to identify each other by.”

“plus,” the original added, “it’ll help if we want to get you guys ids, there’s already a sans and papyrus registered in governmental databases. seven more skeletons with the same names will give us away, but we might want to go with ‘long-lost cousins’ as our story. you’re lucky that we only got up to the surface a few weeks ago, since that’ll make it easier to just say the family separated when we were young and we bumped into each other more recently. saying we’re cousins should help with the ‘family resemblance’ part, and makes it easier if anyone asks about the separation. monsters- here at least- want to keep families as close together as possible, but cousins get separated a lot more frequently than siblings. and now i’m rambling, which is probably normal for guys who find out that their dad’s machine can tear through time and space to grab alternate versions of themselves! ” Sans finished, having grown louder from his normally quiet talking voice to nearly a stressed, hysterical yell by the end. 

“any suggestions?” said the orange Papyrus, stretching slightly in place beside his excited brother.

Surprisingly(or maybe unsurprisingly), the brightly colored Sans spoke up, pointing to each of them in turn. “Stretch,” pointing to the Papyrus who had just spoken, “and Blue”, gesturing to the Sans that was right next to him. At their looks of confusion, he explained, “that’s what’cha normally known by across tha multiverse, when this kinda thing comes up.”

“i’m going to ignore that “multiverse” comment for the moment and just say i’m cool with that if my bro is.” said the newly dubbed Stretch.

“THAT SOUNDS GOOD TO ME, PAPY!” replied his brother, ending with a hearty “MWEH HEH HEH!”

“WHAT OTHER IDIOTIC NAMES ARE WE KNOWN BY?” the Papyrus in sharp armor asked the rainbow dude. “AND WHAT IS YOUR NAME?”

“dude, that is so unfresh of me, not introducing myself. i’ve been called abomination, 90s trash, and so much more, but i’m also ya cool funky neigBrohood cool kid Fresh. i tried teleporting out of this ‘verse as soon as i got here, but found myself blocked, so it looks like we’re all stuck here for the time being. you, my broski, are known as Edge, and ya bro’s known as Red.” came the response.

“why the fuNK do we gotta get such idiotic names?” and “THAT’S STUPID! I DEMAND SOMETHING MORE BEFITTING OF THE GREAT AND TERRIBLE PAPYRUS!” were shot back.

“do you gotta better idea for ya names? if so, i’m all ears …” Fresh replied.

“...”

“last but definitely not least, you two are Wine and Coffee,” he finished, shooting finger guns at the remaining Sans, standing in front of his Papyrus.

“I SUPPOSE IF WE MUST RECEIVE NICKNAMES, THESE WILL BE ACCEPTABLE.” Wine replied, while his brother just nodded, curling further inward at the attention.

“oh, and that reminds me broski, ya usually known as Classic or Vanilla, to help us differentiate, though sometimes we just go with Sans,” interjected Fresh, looking at the timeline’s original Judge.

“that’s fine with me, in public it should support our explanation of nicknames. and since monsters are so notoriously bad at naming, we can just chalk everyone’s names up to traditional skeleton naming conventions, though i think we really should avoid pushing our luck. if we’re gonna talk about things, could we do so upstairs? i don’t wanna worry my bro too much” said Classic. As he led the way upstairs, Sans could already tell it was going to be a long day… maybe a long few days.

Chapter Text

Back in my house, we had figured out a way to- temporarily- keep the darkness at bay. Each night, as soon as we noticed the unnaturally blacker-than-black shadows, we turned on all the lights in our room, and, like a black hole, any light produced was drawn toward the shadows. Unlike a black hole, though, the darkness dissipated after a short while, taking a little longer each time. I had gotten the idea when I first saw the darkness, immediately thinking of Entry Number 17. From what I could recall, ‘Dark, darker, yet darker’ sounded pretty accurate to the situation, along with the next line, “the darkness keeps growing”. I had also recalled something about negative photon readings, so the only logical idea we had was to add photons in the hope that they would reach positive values and avoid us getting dragged into the Void, if that even existed. Again, I only have my avid fascination with the Undertale fandom, along with my own scared, tired logic to blame for that one.

The shadows only got worse as the days wore on. A… pull I hadn’t noticed before (plus whispers-but-not) was tugging me toward the darkness as well with slowly increasing force, implying that I’d be forced through whether I wanted to leave or not. Upon asking Rain, they said they felt something similar, but they were more capable of ignoring it. About a week into this routine, I realized that we were only staving off the inevitable. The shadows always shaped themselves so that the adults of the house would not see our lights once the light won for the night, so they didn’t suspect anything weird beyond us getting not enough sleep. Additionally, the darkness always anchored itself in whatever room we were in, clearly not anchored to our bedroom. We’d tried sleeping in a few other rooms, and the slightly less familiar ceilings only made the shadows more ominous. 

If this darkness ate- or otherwise absorbed- light it was fairly likely to also drag us wherever the light was going. So we figured since neither of us wanted to find out if it was following just one of us around and have us get separated as a result of whatever was happening, it would be best to make a plan to go in on our own terms. 

With that in mind, we made a plan. Really, it wasn’t much of a plan, just a few steps, but the thought is what matters, right? Stars, I was excited for a change of pace, but I had no desire to simply throw myself headfirst into an unknown situation without any preparation, as that would be stupid. So, I made sure to pack. I took my backpack, which had seen much less use since the start of the pandemic, and since I had cleaned out my backpack after the end of last semester, I could stuff it with things we wanted to take. Add to that the space in Rain’s backpack, and we could pack quite a few supplies, though we’d have to be careful to not lose either pack to whatever waited in the darkness. 

Supplies-wise, it would be like planning to go on a trip, though probably with some changes. I figured water and hygiene products might be a good idea, so I packed a few bottles and a bar of soap for us to share, and suggested my sibling bring some water as well. A toothbrush and toothpaste went into each of our bags, as did a few changes of clothes, compressed into the sides of our bags as much as possible. Sleeping bags would take up too much space inside the bags, and we really didn’t want to just hold on to them and hope we kept them with us, not knowing what awaited us, so those were left behind. 

A small flashlight went into each of our bags, and their small Swiss Army-style knife joined Rain’s things. Some light rope could be useful, so a short length was placed in each of our bags and a longer length was saved for the final step of the plan. We didn’t really think any first aid style items would be necessary in an immediate sense, and didn’t really know how to apply first aid beyond maybe some stuff we had read in stories, so beyond some band aids and a roll of bandage material, those were foregone in favor of food. 

In plenty of fanfics I had read, there was some kind of ‘waiting period’ for a few days between when a human protagonist would be pulled into the Void and when they’d be dumped into a new universe, they’d be starving, using energy they didn’t have. Either that or it was absolutely instantaneous. I was determined to not be one of the unprepared people, and I wouldn’t let my sibling get to that point, either, whether that was the type of situation we were entering or not. However it went, we should be prepared for whatever could occur on the other side.

So, I went scavenging. Going through the cupboards, I grabbed lots of our preserved foods and granola bars- the types of things that had been meant for our school lunches, and would potentially last a long time, should we need it- and filled up most of the remaining space in our bags. Of course, I also grabbed some food for the dogs and their leashes, since their crate was in our room and I would rather not see them afloat and hungry in the Void. With the remaining space, I grabbed some more snack-y foods, along with sweets. Salt and sour were the themes, respectively, to satisfy our usual cravings, although there was some variation to ensure we didn’t get too tired of any one snack type (mainly involving sweets based in dark chocolate and straight sugar).

With our bags prepped, we only had a few things we could do to fill the remaining time before darkness fell. I made sure my phone was charged and had plenty of offline downloads of songs, offline games, and fanfics prepared, and Rain did the same. Downloading information (that we didn’t already know) on anything that used a dark void- whether reality or fiction- was a must. Some data on SCPs, a little bit of Undertale in the form of a FUN value chart and some quotes, a tiny portion of Minecraft lore we might not remember off the tops of our heads, and we were as good to go as I could think of on that front. We even packed a couple of phone-charging battery packs with cords so our phones could be used without too much fear. I figured my laptop might be useful, so into my bag it went, re-entering the slim compartment near my back for the first time in what felt like forever, living with all of our cords in the pocket next to it, tightly rolled.

All this gathering happened while the adults were out at work of course, since we didn’t want any unnecessary questions to prevent us from being as prepared as possible. After that, all that was left to do was wait. 

We both had things we were writing, myself my AU, and Rain an amalgamation of their D&D character from school and a bunch of fandoms. We probably didn’t do as good a job of hiding our apprehension and resignation as we thought during the day. There was definitely some concern on the adults’ part that evening during dinner, but they seemed to come to a silent agreement. ‘Tomorrow,’ their eyes said. ‘Tomorrow we’ll ask.’ But by then it would be too late, since the final part of our plan would be put into action that night. 

The last move to be made was simply getting ready for bed, as usual, so nothing would seem out of order. Us keeping our clothes with us was fine, since we had our own laundry basket and bathroom in our room. Finally, once the rest of the house was dark, we changed back from pyjamas to normal clothes and pulled out our supplies. Our last task at home was to place a letter describing what was going on with as clear wording as we could write, in a position where it would be seen as soon as someone entered the room. If we were going to be gone for more than a night, we wanted to ensure things would be somewhat taken care of back home, and even though our parents would probably file a missing-persons report, we wanted to at least try to have our bases covered and at least try to let them know where we went, for if when we returned. After leashing the puppies and tying ourselves together with the longer piece of rope, we sat on my bed, which was further from the window and thus closer to where we knew the darkness would form, and waited. This night we kept the lights off, and, once the darkness formed, walked in together. 

______

In another universe, late at night, Sans stood, looking at the machine. Reviewing what record had been printed- it was fascinating to note that this machine was so old it printed its results on paper rather than on its screen- he had found an error. From what he could tell, instead of searching for matches (or close to matches) to his own magic, he had searched for matches for the machine’s signature. And, since the third set of commands had included instructions to pull something through, it reached for anything within a certain radius of the set number of machines that it had found, which just so happened to correlate to those who had been pulled through. Each set of brothers had been at home at the time, which was why they had been pulled through, and Fresh claimed to have been checking out the machine under Blue and Stretch’s house, looking at the small differences between machines in different but very similar universes.

Speaking of those who had been hauled into his universe, Classic had been shocked to learn about everyone’s backgrounds. Speaking with each set of brothers, carefully , he had found out which new skeletons could Judge as he could, enforcing the law and dealing karmic retribution- the force that causes one to feel the pain they have bestowed on others. 

Upon doing this, he discovered that the burden fell upon Red, Stretch, and Coffee, though Coffee and Wine seemed to share some duties. He couldn’t figure out what Fresh’s deal was, but figured he’d save that investigation for when he had more time on his hands. (Though deep down he knew he’d never have that kind of spare time, the guy was just too chaotic .) Knowing that would help in case there was a ‘family emergency’ or problem within the family, and if one of the others went too far out of line, their brother could subtly calm them down, most of the Judges being more calm and level headed than their siblings. 

Each of the Judges had some skill that could be applied to the machine: Red was good with mechanics, Stretch could work out the math as it related to the commands, Coffee was better with the commands themselves, and Classic knew the quantum theory the machine ran on.

Going over the code with Red, Stretch, and even Coffee, the others agreed: Sans had misread the instructions, at least what was legible on the blueprints. Though each Judge had a unique set of blueprints, all of their sets were partially damaged and smudged, especially around the region that displayed the instructions they now needed to use as a guide to their custom ones. 

Knowing this, the Judges all knew they needed the original creator of the blueprints. They needed Gaster, and the best- and only- way to get him was by moving forward, and trying again. Looking at the instructions once more, Sans looked over the differences in the code, made a few changes and, after getting the others’ approval, once again ran the machine.

This time, nine new skeletons were in the room.

And Red verbalized what he and the Judges he knew were thinking.

“...funk my life.”

Chapter Text

Upon walking into the Void, we were struck by a sudden, paradoxical feeling of weightlessness. I could feel my steps connecting with something underneath me and an attraction to the “floor” that indicated gravity, but the further from the “floor” a body part was, the less gravity it felt. 

There was nothing to see and no way to tell how far we had traveled through the darkness, although despite the lack of a light sourc, we could still see ourselves and the dogs clearly enough to distinguish the hairs on their ruffs. Looking back toward where we had come from, it was like our room had never existed or was swallowed by the darkness, making me glad we’d thought to bring the dogs. I knew I wouldn’t forgive myself if they had gotten pulled through and were lost or hurt because of my forgetfulness. I swiftly became grateful for the various methods we had used to attach ourselves to each other, as the path we followed seemed to make its own rules. 

In some places, it existed like any other surface, with edges we could follow while in other places we might step forward, only to find nothing beneath either foot. In instances of the latter, whichever of us was still standing on the path could pull the other back to the safety of solid ground. Sometimes, one of us would take a step, and be attracted toward what was previously up, flipping in midair and somehow landing on our feet(though not of our own volition). 

From time to time, we could hear… the best way to describe it would be to call them not-sounds, moments that felt like there should be something we were hearing, but we never responded, feeling as though we were out of place already with our non-paradoxical bodies. And that’s how it felt- like life in this place was a series of paradoxes. 

Gravity was fickle; the air itself was heavy on our skin, yet felt like it was so light it wished to leave the body as soon as it was drawn in for breath; there was no light source visible and the region was darker than it could ever be back home, though what there was to see was in perfect high definition; I always knew where we were in relation to each other, even when our lines were loose; we made sure to eat frequently, but there was no sensation to remind us of hunger or fullness, nor the feeling of needing to relieve ourselves; I could feel eyes on me, but even in the emptiness, where one could see for miles, I could see no one else. It was terrifying. Our one comfort was that the gentle, insistent tugging we had felt before entering perpetuated and gave us one consistent direction to go, so we wouldn’t be walking in circles forever in the darkness.

After a period of time that felt long, yet was likely quite short, we came upon a figure in the not-darkness standing in the middle of the path looking off to the side, one whose silhouette I recognized instantly. For a moment, the hysterical thought ‘Gaster blocks the way!’ popped into my mind, and with it the urge to laugh. 

Several of my own theories about our current situation were confirmed with his presence, chief among them being the idea that we really were in the Void referenced by so many Undertale fanfics. It would not make a good impression to laugh as soon as I saw him, so instead I softened my expression, focusing on my own curiosity and normal calmness rather than the ridiculousness that was walking into a spontaneously appearing darkness in my bedroom and finding myself meeting a character from a video game. I couldn’t see my sibling’s expression, but I somehow knew they were doing their best to kill their own hysteria before it burst out. Having no idea as to whether this Gaster would be a help, a hindrance, or simply a curiosity, it was to our benefit to act with caution. 

We knew nothing of where he came from or his disposition, and likely would not until he acted or spoke. Stopping, we waited for him- or her, I internally facepalmed at the potential misgendering here, since the multiverse likely existed and Swap type Gasters could be either genderbent or swapped with the Riverperson(Gaster or the Riverperson were almost always either identified as male or female, only occasionally nonbinary)- to speak first. 

And waited.

And waited.

Stars, they hadn’t even seemed to have noticed us! At this point, signaling to Rain that they should be prepared to anchor me while they were basically making motions asking if I was crazy, I backed up on the path so I was at a bit of distance from them. 

Watching to ensure my sibling was well grounded and passing them the dog leash that had been tied to me, I took another step backward, then lightly dashed at an angle toward the left edge of the path so my momentum carried me out into zero gravity territory. For a few heart-stopping moments, I wondered if my mental calculations had been grossly incorrect. 

Then the rope drew taut, and my trajectory shifted so I started moving in a circle around both my sibling and Gaster. As soon as I landed on the path on the other side of Gaster- which, thankfully, was not in a straight line through them- I slowed myself down in a few steps so my momentum wouldn’t cause me to go straight off the other side of the path and my tether to nudge into Gaster, which would probably be seen as rude. 

Much as I wanted to know if goop-dude was as semi-corporeal as fanfics tended to place him, allowing my lifeline to cross through them would not be the best introduction, nor would it be the best method to go about learning such information.

Anyway, I stopped myself on the path in front of them, and knelt down for stability, starting to motion to Rain that they could start sending the dogs across. It was then that I noticed where Gaster was looking, and my eyes widened as I motioned frantically for everyone in my party to stay back and stay still, in a manner as inconspicuous as I could possibly manage. 

As soon as I saw it, I knew I should look away. My mind was not built to handle impossibilities, and this… void dweller… was a paradox of its own. If it were to be described accurately, it would break the minds of both the teller and the reader, so I shall simply say that its form was constantly shifting, almost fluid, seeming fairly tame right now, though if it were to attack me I would likely be met with the sharpest of claws and teeth, fluidly shifting as it desired. I knew this was a native to the Void, a paradox dwelling in its land of paradoxes, so instead of fully turning so my back was to the creature like my mind was screaming for me to do <strike>to preserve my mind</strike>, I looked away so that I only saw its movement out of the corner of my eyes. It was just drifting, but it felt like the scariest predator I could ever have the misfortune to meet. 

It felt like an eternity as it drifted perpendicular to where the path was going, and once it seemed to me as if it had disappeared from my range of view, I shifted so I could see Gaster. Since they had noticed the creature first, it made sense to me that they would know when it was safe to communicate. 

Once their posture relaxed, I straightened my posture. A voice seemed to come from all around, staticky and distinctly masculine “Well, you seem lost… “ 

I gave a firm nod in response, since words out loud seemed out of place here, and I didn’t know how to respond back in words, so, drawing from the common points of fanfiction, I did my best to focus on the question “Which Gaster are you?... if you are a Gaster”, along with some of my more basic level of multiverse knowledge, and project that to the monster in front of me while tilting my head to the side. I knew my question was received since the next thing I caught was a slight laugh, along with the words “Original. W.D. Gaster, at your service. He/him pronouns, since you seem curious and humans place a surprisingly vast amount of importance on the subject, from what I’ve seen.”

His blend of an old-timey style of speech and normal conversation certainly seemed to fit everything I knew about him, and that made me smile. Then I had a thought. How did he catch my intent and understand what I was asking?

“Out here, in the Void, the Soul is far closer to the surface than anywhere else due to a high ambient magic content. Reading a human Soul is somewhat basic under normal circumstances, though only certain statistics and notes are immediately available without removing the Soul from the human’s body. Here, things are different. Since human Souls are so powerful, anything you do will be amplified. Anything you feel is projected, and what you think in words is like a voice in my ear. Have you noticed anything weird happening with your interactions with your fellow travelers in terms of communication?” 

Huh. I hadn’t thought about it before, but we were communicating even more than before, even though we hadn’t been speaking out loud at all. I could communicate with Rain pretty well, even before all of this, without really talking. However, things felt clearer, more intuitive. The dogs were definitely picking up on more than before. New gestures I had tried with the dogs, along with our idea of getting them to basically tightrope walk across gaps, had been picked up way faster than anything else we had taught them before. 

There were so many other tiny clues I could have picked up on-and would have in most other situations- but hadn’t, though that was understandable, since I was in a weird place and always on alert for any changes in the environment, rather than differences in ourselves. 

I then realized I could feel my sibling’s boredom. I had been keeping Rain waiting on me while I went off to check on a potentially dangerous entity, and while I now knew it was safe for them to come over, they didn’t. While this realization was pretty cool, it wasn’t cool of me to keep them waiting, and it definitely wouldn't be cool if I kept them waiting. That caused me to cock my head and silently “ask” whether it was safe for them to come over now. 

“Oh, yes, certainly.” Based on his tone, he was very pleased with the idea of more people, and didn’t want to get us seperated like <em>he</em> had from… the rest of the universe. Wow, that was a sad thought. Any company would likely be good company, no matter how strange their form or presence.

With this reassurance, I looked around him to Rain, giving a slight nod. At this, they put our now standard procedure to work. With Gaster watching curiously, they carefully loosened the rope where it was wrapped around their waist, and, making sure to never let go, slipped the dogs’ leashes onto it. After that, they re-tied the rope while the dogs waited patiently <strike>why didn’t I catch that before, they were always so chaotic</strike>, then lifted the dogs on, one at a time. 

One of the paradoxes we had discovered was the weird tightness in the rope(one of the reasons why I hadn’t noticed my awareness of my sibling’s position as something more than just the rope itself), so they were able to just walk across, putting one paw in front of the other with no problems balancing. This trick wouldn’t work for my sibling, so once the dogs were across, they just walked off of the current ‘platform’, and I pulled them straight to me. With a lack of gravity and air resistance, it was easy to pull them over, despite my lack of upper-body strength. After that, I removed the dogs’ leashes from the rope, untying and retying it around myself to release our pets from the connection.

Once we were back together, I had yet another thought to share: had Rain heard what we talked about? Their immediate nod of confirmation surprised both myself and Gaster. Really, Gaster’s surprise caused mine, as I had thought Gaster was speaking to both of us at once, whether by projecting to both of us, or some form of audio that wouldn’t alert anything too dangerous. It seemed like they got the hang of that much faster than I did, which was pretty cool. 

That then brought the question of how they were hearing me, since if I knew I might be able to use a similar technique. With a little bit of focus, I brought this question up with the others, also asking if they were just hearing what I was ‘saying’, or if they were getting more than that and wondering if we could keep moving while conversing, gesturing in the direction of the tugs. (I had to focus on what I wanted to communicate because at any given time my brain might be going in a few different directions, which was great for most things in life but not so great when my thoughts were being broadcast to everyone around me.)

A moment later, Gaster relayed my sibling’s message, starting to glide along and saying “They aren’t sure how they did it, but they really wanted to hear what was being said while we were conversing. This led to an internal change of some sort, and right after that they started hearing me, through you.” 

Hmm, that wasn’t a lot of help, but… no wait, that made total sense. In a place of impossibilities where the Soul was closer to the surface than anywhere else and magic was literally in the air, it would make sense that desire played a strong role in shaping one’s reality, especially if the person who is present has a stronger Soul. 

I couldn’t help but internally snicker at the irony. I had just seen a few Superliminal playthroughs before we left, and given that the premise of the game is that perception shapes reality, it felt like that was pretty similar to the present moment, though I was torn between wanting this to be a dream and not. On the one hand, I was far from home, with no clear way to return. On the other, I was in the freakin’ Void from Undertale! One of my favorite fandoms was shown to be a real place, and some of my favorite characters were probably also real, with real lives and wow, this was getting dark, knowing the storylines of some(most) of the big AUs. Trauma creates interesting characters, so usually even the happier worlds had traumatized Judges. 

Well, now I was just going on an internal tangent. Maybe the two of them could have a conversation that I’d then want to join? I took a pause on that line of thought, and that was when I realized that they had been exchanging looks while I was having my epiphanies, obviously having started a conversation on their own, without my input. 

Exchanging my internally focused thoughts for a focus on my surroundings, I took a moment to think about how weird it was to see someone having a silent conversation, knowing that words were being exchanged, but also not knowing what was being said, despite walking pretty much next to the both of them. 

Once I was done with that thought- and how fitting it was, something that I couldn’t understand, even if I learned the language being used, given the level of paradox in the Void, which was still so hard to wrap my mind around- I focused on my desire to hear them. I wanted to interact, I wanted in, I didn’t want to be left out ! 

Contrary to how it sounds, this was all of my focus, all of me , concentrated on one objective: bending reality to my will. I focused on the thought that I didn’t just want to hear, I needed in on this conversation. Logically, with everything that was going on, I was just fine with not joining their conversation, but I made myself ignore that logic (which wasn’t too hard, given our family’s tendency to take logic to its extreme, then flip it on its head) in favor of my own. I lost my focus a few times while doing this, especially due to the internal reminder of the phrase “I reject your reality and substitute my own”, which kept breaking that focus.

Once I felt something shift within myself, I caught the tail end of the conversation they had been having. “... access to my lab right now.” This piqued my curiosity, and I found myself projecting my curiosity about what they were talking about, finding emotions to be simpler and clearer to share than words. Rain then responded with a voice that I could now hear, which had a buzzing undertone under their usual voice. “I told him about what was going on with us, and he was talking about how interesting this situation was, and how he wishes he could have access to his lab to research the differences between Void natives, nonnatives, and those who have acclimated to the Void.”

“Oh, it would certainly be interesting to see, though then the differences checked would also need to include someone from your multiverse, since unless we are a part of the multiverse as an AU where those in the AU know about the details of the multiverse as stories people in the world itself have thought of… this is making my head hurt, but would be totally interesting to see if there is a difference…” and I was rambling again. Great.

That led me to wonder which lab was his lab, since it could be the Lab Alphys lived at, the True Lab under that, the lab behind Sans and Papyrus’s house, or some other lab Frisk can’t access. 

His response(I really needed to get used to my thoughts being broadcasted), about the lab itself being in the CORE, and controls being in the lab behind his house, made total sense. 

Anything with a large power consumption, capable of ripping holes in spacetime, should have the controls separated from the machine, with keys that needed to be used in sync, away from the main lab. These keys would need to be used in a controlled environment, at the same time. As he continued to talk, the little details made even more sense. Since only homes and private places were locked in the story, it would make sense that people would only lock things so others would know not to enter. Every monster knew better than to enter a locked door, especially when that locked door belonged to one of the monsters working on the biggest project since the Barrier was formed. It even had magic-based precautions against non-monsters to prevent even something as small as a fly from somehow pushing buttons it shouldn’t.

Following this to its logical conclusion, I realized that whatever went wrong was likely because of a mistake in the calculations. Was it a case of magic or… wait. I was just asking questions, I wasn’t even letting him ask any questions of his own. On top of that, I didn’t even know how to quiet my mind and basically just shut up for a while, so I would probably just interrupt without even realizing… 

… and I was internally rambling again. Hooray. Okay, next order of business, get my mind to quiet down and stop interrupting. Although… I wasn’t hearing the others right now and they didn’t seem to be paying much attention to me. Could I be quieting myself unintentionally?

Turning toward the others, I pushed the question of whether or not they had heard me in the past few minutes, when I had been riding my train of thought to whichever stations it wanted to go.

“We… actually didn’t hear anything else from you after your thought about the calculations- which was fairly accurate, though maybe not for the reasons you think- were you trying something different?”

Huh. They didn’t hear my undirected thoughts. That could be useful for quieting things down. When this was shared, I felt a synchronized jolt of surprise from the both of them.

“Did I unconsciously mute myself by not focusing on communication? Or was it you guys getting more into your conversation and basically ignoring me? Wait, it couldn’t be you guys because I did just interrupt the conversation you guys were having… I guess my tendency to drift mentally has a purpose.”

“Wait, you figured out how to keep your thoughts to yourself? That’s a first.” came the rather predictable reply from Rain. 

“Ha. Ha. See how hard I’m laughing right now. I can’t breathe I’m laughing so hard. Ha. Ha.” I somehow managed to get through that without fully dropping my deadpan look, though a smile was firmly tugging at the corners of my lips as I did so. After I successfully delivered the tiny monologue, I dissolved into a (still walking) slightly giggly mess, unable to make a comment for a few minutes without restarting the laughter.

“Ooh! Can we share songs?!” I asked after I had gained control of myself. I was so tired of just hearing people talking in my brain, and the usual background music in my brain really wasn’t cutting it in terms of internal variation. Normally, if I had a song stuck in my brain, I would just sing it, but that could have terrible consequences if I did so here. If we could share words, we could probably share tones of speech, and if that was possible, we could definitely share tunes as we remembered them. 

I had an extensive mental playlist, but most of them were- and still are- based in video games. Something based on Undertale could bring up bad memories, and the same could be said of Deltarune or FNAF. Thinking just a little more, I chose a song I was pretty familiar with that only required one voice at a time(for the most part), and started going through “No Mercy” by The Living Tombstone. It was relatable enough that even someone who only saw the world from an outsider’s perspective could laugh at one person intentionally causing another to rage about the character choices they made leading to the team losing. Even Gaster smiled at it, both he and Rain noting that yes, that did work.

As we continued walking while Gaster described what his life was like in the Void, I realized something new: if reality was as we perceived it, we could teleport through the emptiness. If most known laws of physics broke down here (maybe we were at the quantum realm?), all we needed was to think of the space around us as not fully Euclidean. All we might need to help trick our minds’ perceptions would be a feeling that some spot in the distance was actually closer than it seemed, and a landmark of some sort to mentally fiddle with. Once I figured that out, I shared the thought with the remainder of the group. 

Gaster seemed fairly enthused about trying it out, stating that he would “jump to a point in the near distance, if you wish to test this idea out.” At our enthusiastic agreement, he did just that, disappearing from next to us and reappearing a good distance, about a freeway’s width away.

Gathering our thoughts, we each picked up a dog and, linking our spare hands, took a step forward. Without talking about it beforehand, we both focused on a spot right next to the doctor, and went through our first shortcut. It felt no different from the way we had been walking before, since we had been in the Void already. 

If we had been outside the Void and done that, it likely would have been more of a case of creating a way into the Void in that location, quickly moving to the target location’s position in the Void, then re-entering Euclidean space at the shortcut’s desired exit. Due to the dangers present in the Void, the steps would be completed as fast as possible, using one step’s momentum to step into the Void, then placing the target position in the Void immediately in front of the entry position, and the exit from the Void being directly adjacent to that, creating a shortcut as thin as possible. One step into the Void, one to the target location, and one to exit the Void. It wasn’t surprising, then, that Sans called them shortcuts, while Gaster called his own teleports jumps… 

Hmm, my brain was drifting every which way in the moment and leading to some of the best potentially accurate realizations I had had in a while. That… was kind of sad, but it was definitely useful to our current situation. 

As I mentally drifted while we continued jumping, making sure to reorient ourselves every so often so we didn’t get too off-course, I had yet another relevant thought: we seemed to be becoming more and more similar to the Sans and Papyrus from the AU I had created with Rain’s help, at least in terms of abilities. More than just our communication increase, I had designed the skeletons after myself and Rain, and while they were, for the most part, the same as us mentally, they exhibited abilities consistent with what we had been doing.

They both teleported and were able to hold telepathic conversations with each other over a private connection, rather than just broadcasting their intents so anyone nearby could hear, among other things. Upon asking, Rain had admitted that they had been seeing in black and white since entering the Void, something that definitely hadn’t happened to me, but was something the Papyrus lived with. I had been seeing spots of color in those around me that hadn’t been present before which, thinking about it, was a trait of my Sans, based on a person’s Soul and magic colors.

Sharing my thoughts, as well as the thought that we might gain similarities that go a little bit farther than the raw abilities we had gained, brought everyone else up short. That was when I realized something further that made me mentally cringe at my apparent inability to filter myself before speaking. In sharing something that I couldn’t ignore, I had caused both of our perceptions to see ourselves as potential skeletons, which just might make it a possibility. Resigned to my likely existence as a Sans-style skeletal counterpart, I had to ask: if we did gain abilities similar to the characters we created, would Gaster teach us how to use them as we traveled?

“Yes, that would likely be the best option. I would hate to have the Judge’s skills displaying in either of you without warning, as that might gain the attention of some of the more undesirable beings in the Void,” Gaster agreed. “Would you be willing to describe these ‘characters’ for me?”

As we traveled, we both started with describing the characters, both their visuals and magic, and even the basics of the AU. Rain was able to help describe them due to me having sought them out for artistic assistance on some of the smaller details in their character designs and base abilities, the kinds of details that showed who a character was. I wanted to make them both pretty strong, since a tough character would be needed(both in stats and abilities) to survive against the monsters of the Underdark, while at the same time I needed to ensure they were still pretty balanced. I certainly hoped we would get the magic items associated with the two of them, along with their inventory, since those were basically custom designed and fit the AU, in addition to the coolness factor I had created them for.

Going over the magic they were associated with, I could see how some of the skills associated with either skeleton might be accomplished using what we had already learned. However, it seemed like I could only accomplish the things associated with the Sans and both of them, not those associated with the Papyrus. That was just fine with me; I didn’t want to take all of their abilities and weaknesses, just as I kind of wanted to keep the Sans’s unique skills for myself. Knowing all of this, Gaster started having us make a bone or two each to figure out basic magic manifestation.

On one of our breaks in both our crash course in magic and teleporting, I noticed that the tugging had become very strong, and my skin looked way more transparent than it had before, almost like an X-ray. On top of that, when I looked more closely at my hand, I saw that the fine bones one might expect to see in the palm region and reaching out toward the fingers had been replaced with one solid bone plate that seemed to bend and fulfil the same function as multiple bones had on attempts to move them like normal. On top of this, my long hair seemed to be disappearing. Not falling out, just disappearing in front of my eyes. I even watched as one of my hairs faded in visibility before disappearing from between my fingers, another strange experience that was just too weird to have a reaction of its own.

Checking in with Rain, they were feeling similar effects and had grown a bit taller. Using Gaster as a reference and my own memories of their height difference, we could tell that they had definitely increased in size. Not too much- they would probably be one of the shorter Papyruses there- but enough to be that extra little bit annoying about it. I had even decreased in size, which was somewhat to be expected, but really, I was short enough before all of this! Now they were likely heading toward six and a half feet(the height Papyrus was in my world notes), and I was shrinking toward about four feet, eight inches(the difference in height actually being much smaller than the two-and-a-quarter feet the originals had when I looked it up online). 

Progressing further, I noted that it would have taken a ridiculously long time to walk the distance we had been teleporting, too long for the snacks to last. As it was, based on the rate at which the tug had been increasing and the rate of consumption of food, the snacks might barely last the distance.

Even further on, we found the source of the tugging- a light too bright to look at after the darkness we had been in for so long. Barely being able to slow ourselves down at this point, we walked, almost stumbling forward to avoid being dragged off of our feet by a sudden change in gravity. Turning to Gaster as we walked, I told him “If I can, I would like to help out with getting you out… if it’s possible.” Rain echoed the sentiment immediately after.

“You’ll be stuck adjusting for a while, correct?” he asked.

“Two months” was our synchronized reply.

“You can’t assist while you adjust, but before that time comes we can still prepare. Give me a pair of position markers and once you get the chance, I’ll be waiting in a safe space. The only reason why you saw me earlier near the Void-beast is because you two were there, and I was interested in you. Teleporting away attracts attention toward wherever you last were; you would have been noticed and likely killed had I made the jump,” replied the scientist.

“I would advise that you not speak of where you came from, if you do not wish to be treated as though you have answers about that which is occurring. Also, if you could refrain from telling anyone about me, that would probably be for the best. I… don’t want to give anyone false hope.” At this, he sounded sad but resigned.

Creating and giving him a set of bones that were designed to act as beacons, Rain and I solemnly nodded to Gaster as he nodded back to us.

Checking our pockets, we both sighed in relief as we found that at least two magical items for each of us had been brought into play, one of these being the all-important mask-earmuff combo that would allow us to more easily acclimate ourselves to the light and noise present on the Surface.

With that, we took the final few jumps, feeling the last remnants of our “human” looks disappear, leaving only bones behind.

Chapter Text

After a way-too-bright flash of light, we found ourselves in a space with less intense light, though it was still painfully bright. Upon registering the light level in the room, we put on our masks as fast as we possibly could, closing our sockets as firmly as possible as we did so.

The moment after that, an assault of noise grated upon our non-existent ears as everyone else in the room started getting upset and yelling, though it was reduced to quieter than a whisper with the ear mufflers that came with the masks, which had automatically tightened to fit our heads as soon as we had put them on.

Both of these sensitivities, we knew, were from my Sans and Papyrus’s traits. Instead of coming to the surface ready for everything, I designed the monsters with some trade-offs. The lack of light in the Underdark would cause the monsters to become photosensitive, and the rocky caverns that made up the majority of the Underdark would mean that noise could be used as an early warning system. As a result, both Rain and myself were hypersensitive to noise and light, and would be for a couple of months. 

We weren’t without ways to visualize the world around us, though. Once our masks were in place, we took a step away from each other facing outward, then released what externally would have seemed to be a colored mist from our sleeves and palms, in our respective new colors. Making sure to avoid mixing our faded blue and magenta magics to get maximum coverage, the mist smoothly and subtly rolled out, almost everyone else being too distracted with their shouting matches to notice. 

Using our own natural abilities, we could see magic, allowing us to see everyone’s bony structure, but that wouldn’t help much when dealing with inanimate objects such as tables, tools, and the machine itself. The “mist” use, however, got around that issue. Wherever the mist touched, it left behind a thin coating of magic, enough for us to see, but not enough to recolor things to those not looking in the magic spectrum. The mist itself was hardly visible, its only tell being a slight shading of color in the air, like a piece of slightly stained glass inserted between the viewer and whatever was being examined.

Keeping the mist on the outside of any clothes because everyone’s natural magic shedding would tint their clothes anyway(and also because privacy) and not allowing any to stick to anywhere else already shaded enough to see without misting, we gently rolled a layer of magic out over everything at floor level. As we extended the mist upward, all conversation in the room ground to a halt as our separate magics were noticed.

Once we had the room about halfway covered in magic up to shoulder height, we started looking at those present while continuing to roll the mist forward. Everyone was a skeleton, that much was clear at a glance- we could see the magic they were made of that was also shading their clothes. Using my ‘color vision’, along with our knowledge of the AUs, we were able to identify everyone pretty quickly. In addition to me sharing random tidbits of stories I was reading while we were home, I had shared some of the more well-known AUs while we were travelling. This gave Rain a good grasp of the identifying factors of the most common AUs, allowing us to collaborate and identify skeletons at the speed of thought. We’d have to assume the universes- and multiverses- were all fairly close to their originals, since without that we’d have to deal with factoring in the potential for somewhat less well-known variations such as Handplates, Horrorswapfell, Undertomb, or Chesstale and characters people such as Template or Shattered!Dream. Though I could potentially figure out who was who with a bit of time and work, it was highly unlikely that those variations would be present, if fanfiction frequency was a good indicator of likelihood.

Using a combination of outfit style and magic color, we quickly identified Red and Classic. Both were differentiated by being Sanses with a non-Swap lack of armor. Red was then identified through his fire engine red magic marking him as a Fell type. Classic had blue magic, though I couldn’t compare Blue’s color against his in the moment without Blue being in the room.

Coffee and Stretch were a little harder to recognize, since they both were tall, had shades of orange magic, and wore similar outfits. However, Stretch was slouching next to Classic and had tiger orange magic, while Coffee was pushing himself into the corner furthest away from the noisemakers and had magic the color of honey (which was pretty ironic). 

A rainbow line of magic laying diagonally across someone’s front with the owner’s own rainbow shedding magic constantly could only be Ink’s(assuming this wasn’t a weird multiverse where things were extremely different). A dab of color at his back, at least a foot above his head showed where Broomie rested at his back, and judging from the dusting of magic, it was a 5 foot paintbrush, which I definitely wasn’t prepared to see in person. Likewise, a knot of magical lines reminiscent of string, running from the ends of their limbs and leading to a tangle around someone’s Soul, was most likely Error. These two were standing across from each other, having obviously been arguing, reinforcing the guess.

In addition to the Ink-Error faceoff, there were three others similarly split, one with Ink and the other two lined up near Error. The two of these standing directly opposite each other were as different as night and day(that one got me the mental equivalent of an eyeroll from Rain). Bright yellow magic and a bright voice that practically screamed “I’m happy and nothing could go wrong with the world” that was at odds with the words coming out of his mouth identified Dream. Across from him, arms crossed, magic as black as night identified Nightmare(the only one I knew of in the basic multiverse pattern with that color magic) easily. Standing next to Nightmare, a mix of blue and red magic swirled and blended around that monster’s Soul, and taking these two facts into consideration, it had to be Dust.

Only three more people remained to be identified, one relaxing in a corner and the other two standing together in a defensive position. The one relaxing in a corner had a spot of purple magic, concentrated in his left eye, which wrapped around the pale blue Soul I could feel in the other socket. That had to be Fresh, though I wondered whether it was his glasses’ transparency- however one-sided it may have been- that allowed the magic to be seen in the first place, or if it was the natural power of the Soul shining too brightly to be missed in the magic spectrum.

The final two standing together were harder to place from their magic colors, but their forms made their identities obvious. One was ridiculously tall- where most of the Papyruses were about six to seven feet tall, he was at least eight and a half feet tall. This made him Horrortale Papyrus, and further cementing this theory was the fact that his Sans was wider and taller than anyone else in the room and had reddish-brown magic almost the exact color of dried blood, leaking out through an opening in his skull. I didn’t want to mentally name them yet, since the good names given to them were many and varied, while their bad names seemed to be based solely on whatever part of them jumped out at others, visually speaking.

All these thoughts were completed by the time the room was silent, allowing us to come out of our musings to sudden silence.

Lifting my head sharply, I projected a text box to speak, since that was the more polite way to speak in “our” universe than projecting sound, sharing an eloquent “umm, bye.”

And with that, we visualized the Wishing Room as seen in-game and, backing up a step together, disappeared from the room.

Taking a moment in the Void(but keeping a tiny hole to the place we were just in open so we didn’t lose it), we used an extra step to stop our backward momentum, following that up with a step forward to our destination, seamlessly stepping to the goal point in the Void and straight into Waterfall.

Our exit from the Void left us set up to plop onto the floor, which was a little wet from all the moisture in the area. A lack of water seeping into our shoes from the sheer humidity meant that the magical qualities I’d planned into our outfits had been carried over, and I was definitely excited to mess with that stuff… later. Also, I would probably freak out(not in a good way), but that was an equally good reason to put off that investigation.

For now, there were plans to be made.

Conferring with my sibling, we both agreed we needed to determine what to share and a cover story, so those were the first things on the to-do list. We would need to include just enough background information about ourselves to satiate their curiosity, without revealing our true nature. A blend of our personal history and that of the skeletons we seemed to be would need to be figured out, since there was no telling how much Ink knew about our world. We also needed a way to fool Dream and Nightmare while telling our story, and we could save choosing nicknames for the end.

Since we had discussed the AU in the Void, Rain knew about some of the more directly magical quirks I had written into the world and characters without informing them, though they had known about most of the world before that due to my ramblings when I got an idea I wanted to flesh out a little more. Talking about some of the weirder things I had added(more ideas they hadn’t been informed of while we were home), we realized very little would actually need to be hidden about our knowledge of the world and AUs. That would also take care of the empath problem, since, with some careful wording, we would be telling the technical truth, killing two birds with one stone.

We would, however, need to be extra careful explaining our characters. Though they were like us, they had some differences, especially in the department of personal skills. 

Although we ourselves were somewhat capable, I had made the skeletons more like jacks-of-all-trades, since though they had been around for a while, most learning done would be disjointed, split in chunks by resets. While we probably wouldn’t be called upon for assistance with the machine because of this- not having in-depth knowledge(if any) about any of the many skills we were supposed to have a surface level understanding of, it would still be a good idea to stick with what we knew- at least at first. 

We’d left the dogs with Gaster for the moment to avoid issues in the event of an immediate conflict- we did not need them getting in the middle of a fight, no matter their small-dog confidence. However, it still wasn’t a good idea to just leave them in the Void for an indeterminate amount of time, so, recalling our lessons, we called for our new familiars. It felt… weird and definitely different from the practice we had done in the void, though that might be the difference caused by being in the void.

Still, our dogs came trotting out of a tear in space, following our call to join us. I haven’t described them yet, have I? Let’s rectify that.

Our dogs were absolutely adorable, though that’s what most pet owners say about their own pets. Both of them were what we called “circus dogs”, doing silly things for amusement. Where our little girl’s main trick was to “dance”, getting on her hind legs and hopping a circle in place, our boy was a jumper, able to hop at or above my shoulder level from a near-standstill. 

I had assigned the girl, Luna, to Papyrus, since to me the two seemed to match. Both were very emotionally driven and were overall more chaotic. Because of her breeding- a majority American Eskimo with a bit of mutt mixed in, she was mainly a very fluffy white girl. She was also short, having gotten the corgi part of the genetics the strongest out of all of her littermates, with a streak of gray on her back and a face shaped somewhat like a coyote, with a long snout relative to her face. Luna’s ears, though, were less tall and sharp, following her American Eskimo ancestry, as did her tail. Oh, and her tongue was definitely a noticeable feature, since when she was particularly happy, it would flop out of the corner of her mouth, though most of the time it would look like a normal dog’s tongue, making us wonder where she kept the extra length.

Our boy, who I’d selected for Sans, followed the looks of the classic American Eskimo more closely, and though Luna got the short end of the stick, Neville was the next shortest dog in their litter. He was a lot calmer, though still very happy, and picked up most tricks a little bit faster. He was an entirely white boy with a little bit of gold from being in the sun, which made it even worse when they decided to dig a hole in the backyard. Neville’s legs were a little longer than Luna’s, and he was definitely more rounded where she was lean. His other main feature, his ruff, was practically a mane, thick and definitely fluffy enough to sink our fingers into, though his hair wasn’t much longer than that. Though he liked naps and cuddles in hammocks and on couches, he- and his sister- were quick to defend us from any potential threat, whether that was from someone at the door or someone walking by on the other side of the street. Oh, and yes, we had been thinking about Harry Potter when we named them Neville and Luna, it was not a coincidence.

Beyond the dogs’ arrival, though, there was another, which surprised me. I had also written our third pet into the story, as a shared familiar, present for an entirely different purpose.

Our last pet included was our guinea pig. She was a cuddler, and no one was upset about that trait. Sweet Pea tended to sit with us and cuddle, and though she liked treats, our laughter when she licked our fingers made her just as happy. She was another animal who just wanted the basics but was super happy when she got more. A common American Guinea Pig, she was soft, with short, smooth fur. She had a white stripe that went from thin on top of her head to just wider than her nose at her nose, then split to follow the line of her chin. Near that line, there was a thin area of light brown, which then shifted to a more medium brown, and then blended into a dark brown at her mid-back. Sweet Pea was a little bit on the chubby side for a pet guinea pig, requiring two hands to hold most of her body, with a little extra left over. Since there was only one of her, I had decided she would be a familiar for both skeletons, as all the animals were to some degree, since Sans and Papyrus were linked. 

As cute as it was to see our animals popping in through various holes in space- Sweet Pea actually dropping a short distance onto my shoulder- it was very surprising. We had both thought we had only brought the dogs along for the ride, but it looked like Sweet Pea was in this with us. 

After more deliberation about what to discuss with the others and what to keep to ourselves for the moment, we took a moment to arrange our animals around ourselves. Sweet Pea I adjusted on my right shoulder(I was her preferred cuddle buddy), while Neville was standing at my feet. With Rain, Luna sat at their feet, tail swishing through the air with every wag. Now I was more glad than ever that the iconic Wishing Room only had a bit of a wet floor, since once they got wet, it was an absolute pain to dry the animals.

The last order of business, which we almost forgot about, was to select nicknames, which was pretty simple once we decided Rain could probably suggest their own name as a nickname. My own chosen nickname would match, and once we shared a silent laugh about it, we realized we were as ready as we could be to return.

Tearing one large hole in space, we took a step forward and our group disappeared from the room.

Chapter Text

Fresh, as per usual, had placed himself in the corner of the basement while the Judges worked on the machine. The Judges themselves had learned not to ask Fresh himself to help after one conversation on the topic, no one having the mental energy to translate his lingo into something they could understand while also working through complex mathematics, coding, and mechanical problems. They knew he was saying something smart, but all they could get was that it was something about the different effects different explosives had when shaped in different ways and set inside of Furbies. That was not the kind of knowledge they wanted working on the Machine with them, especially when they wanted the machine to stay in one piece. And that was just how Fresh liked it.

Although Fresh could speak in a way similar to anyone else, it was so much more fun to confuse and mess with people. Really, that was the role he played in the multiverse.

The main things that set him apart from any other being in the multiverse were his penchant for borrowing bodies and appreciation for all things 90s. It wasn’t even his fault! Fresh needed other beings’ magic to survive, but not much! He didn’t even cause any permanent damage to his hosts, selecting his next one whenever he had to move so that at the first sign of damage he could hop away. That only left his last victim with just a slight deficiency in magic, along with an unavoidably large memory gap. Different hosts had different effects on him, so it didn’t take him long to figure out a tier list of favorite souls bodies to borrow.

He didn’t want to be changed very much by his host, so Fell types and Lust types were inarguably among his absolute least favorites. Guard types were also not suited to his style, since he needed some level of paranoia to survive, at least in the beginning, and had never lost that trait. And without being a Fell type, most aspiring Guards were ridiculously trusting. The list went on and on- bad experiences with some, better experiences with others- but it really came down to strongly preferring to use a Classic Sans, and needing to use other types of hosts in certain patterns to avoid losing himself.

The others didn’t know how close they were to making one of themselves Fresh’s new host, since he had just changed bodies before being sucked into this world. After hopping, he had gone to a random iteration of Underswap, and while there, he wanted to check to see how compatible the world’s Papyrus might be for him, so he had gone to the skeleton brothers’ house. It being somewhat early in the evening meant that both brothers were done with work and at home. Papyrus, known to him as a version of Stretch, was in the back, tinkering with the machine; Sans, or Blue, was in the kitchen preparing tacos; and Fresh was sneaking in through a window to try to locate Stretch. That was when he had been pulled through a rather rough portal between worlds, joining everyone else on this little adventure, having been in range of the machine in Stretch’s basement.

Although, in being dragged here, he seemed to have gotten stuck. He couldn’t use a quick Fresh Poof to get out, and it seemed it was still something he could do, since he was able to poof into other rooms in the mansion- he had tested it out once he was alone, and found a force forcing him back to the same spot he had started out in when he tried to get to the Doodlesphere, Antivoid, or literally any other universe, bored by being in a classic timeline. 

Fresh had seen pretty much every variation on a classic timeline, except for the very rare surprises where the Creators (who Ink swore up and down were actually the ones making the multitude of AUs, though Fresh hadn’t actually seen any definitive evidence of those Creators existing when Ink also often worked on new AUs, claiming that all that was needed was ‘a touch of inspiration’) would give a world some small element unique to that universe, whether it was a new character Underground, something or someone on the Surface, a world mechanic, or some mixture of those traits. Some worlds even changed the full story but kept the monsters; those worlds were ones the multiversal travelers tried their best to avoid interrupting, since they’d seen the need to reset worlds that had had extreme unnecessary interactions, so they were locked unless Ink and Error felt it was the right move. If a new world was entirely closed to multiversal interaction, it would be created with a ‘lock’ on it, preventing anyone from changing anything from being in the world.

Even so, there were only so many ways a story could go without dipping into certain ‘tropes’(as he had heard so many versions of Alphys and Undyne call them). He had seen so many variations of the same thing, every possible Neutral route, every Pacifist route, every Genocide route, the variations on worlds focused on after-the-story concepts… the stories went on and on, and he often viewed some of the more unique worlds just to stave off boredom between watching fights between Ink and his friends and Error and Nightmare’s gang(and though sometimes it would just be Ink against Error or Dream fighting Nightmare, the battles were still the only source of variation in Fresh’s life as they all learned how to fight and defend better). 

He had long since established himself as a neutral party and made friends on both sides of the Balances, though he sometimes still ran into trouble with the Star Sanses whenever he had to switch bodies, no matter how much he told them that he would literally die if he didn’t. That was the only time when he was truly vulnerable, and, coincidentally, the time when he could be killed without risk of collateral damage. 

Whenever he was well-established, though, Fresh came and went as he pleased. One of his favorite pastimes was bugging others, and what better way to do that than ‘Fresh Poof’-ing into everyone’s homes to prank them? Some skeletons were more amused by the pranks than not, while others learned to kick Fresh out as soon as he was spotted. 

Ink and Blue were his closest friends among the Star Sanses and their allies. They were always practically rolling on the floor whenever they discovered a prank Fresh had set. A few times, Dream had triggered a prank in Ink’s house or around the Doodlesphere- pranks in a space without gravity that looked different to different people were super difficult to set up, Fresh’s talents were so underappreciated. Ink and Blue had practically died of laughter at that, most notably the ones involving air horns and/or fishing wire- neither Ink nor Blue ever dismantled those pranks since they found it hilarious when anyone was caught by them, and learned to navigate around them instead. 

Something fairly similar happened with the Dark Sanses, except that with them, he really only needed to go to one place. With the Stars, he could be a menace to either Dream or Stretch at any given time, given that he could only be in one place at a time- he mainly set up his traps pranks either in the Doodlesphere or Blueberry’s house. Nightmare’s mansion, however, was the perfect place to prepare pranks- large, with lots of people living there, but fairly predictable in where the resident skeletons would go. Fresh had been banned from the Anti-Void due to his pranks, but Dust and Killer always made sure there was space for him in the castle. Error didn’t really dislike the pranks, either, but needed a safe space where Fresh wouldn’t just pop in for a surprise visit, which Fresh could understand.

Seriously, though, Fresh wondered what everyone was thinking right now. It had been a week since any of them had seen him, and that meant that his absence would likely be noticed soon, if it hadn’t yet been. He knew that everyone practically expected him to go dark for a few days on occasion while he fully took control of a new body so he could be prepared in case something or someone took issue with him. It would not do to try to fight without full control of his magic or access to all of his tricks. Exploding Furbies were nothing to scoff at, but he only had an infinite supply when he was able to use his own brand of magic to summon more… and he was getting sidetracked again while watching everyone else work.

Needless to say, Nightmare would probably be moody, as he often was when worried about someone he had decided to be friendly with. Dust and Killer might miss the new pranks he set up, but ultimately, apathy would get them to calm down and wait, probably for at least another week, before they would get worried enough to actively do anything. Cross… was pretty new, so he likely wouldn’t have any kind of emotional investment. And Error… well, Error would probably worry, but cover it up by being as grumpy as possible while Nightmare and his gang would do their best to soothe him.

Ink couldn’t feel anything, so Fresh figured he might come across as callous, though he wouldn’t feel the need to drink any paints for a few weeks yet, at least not about this situation- he knew better than most how well Fresh could take care of himself. He had tried to ‘remove’ Fresh in the past, but Fresh had outlasted his perseverance(not a difficult thing to do), leading to Ink’s curiosity getting the better of him. Now, they were friends- or at least as friendly as a being without a Soul and one that relies on other peoples’ Souls could be- and Fresh was much happier with the new arrangement.

Blue would be fine- Fresh had actually gone to his house first after switching over, and that was what had landed him in this mess. He had known that Blue would be worrying the most out of his friends, so that was the first person he saw after each new change. Seeing that Stretch had reminded him that it had been a while since he had used an Underswap Papyrus, so he’d gone scouting for a new host in Underswap universes. After that he would have gone to see everyone in person. Whenever he went ‘on break’, he always texted the group chats with both friend groups, but they still wanted to know he was ok in person once it was all over. To Dream, Blue’s reassurance would ensure he didn’t freak out for at least a few weeks. Ink would stay at the same confidence level, with or without the reassurances.

The only reason Fresh hadn’t let everyone in both group chats know about his predicament was that he didn’t want people either freaking out more, or getting stuck alongside him. If he couldn’t use a Fresh Poof to get out, there were only two options: his Fresh Poofs weren’t working properly- alarming, but that would ultimately only affect him- or this world itself was preventing him from leaving- which was a far more alarming prospect. Fresh was the best of them at just going wherever he wanted and causing minimal ripples in a story. He got to find things out, the Creator got a cameo, and he was pretty good at sneaking around if he really wasn’t wanted in a space.

Which only made his current situation more alarming. He could Poof across the house, even to places a good distance away, but instead of having his full range of movement, Fresh was limited to this universe. He felt… stifled. Fresh knew that most Sans-types would leap at the possibility of seeing the stars, but he’d been jumping from A to B and everywhere in between since… pretty close to the start of the multiverse, and while looking up at a night sky was always a uniquely relaxing experience, it simply wasn’t as nice after years of being able to see the stars whenever he wanted. 

However, personal frustrations aside, that meant that it was the inter-universal travel that had an issue. Fresh definitely didn’t want anyone coming to help and getting stuck alongside him. If any part of a system is thrown too far out of balance, the whole system has potential to destabilize. Fresh was in the middle of everything, sure, but he was in the middle . If he left the multiverse alone for a bit, everything should be relatively ok. If someone resting at one of the extremes were to disappear for a while without anyone else preparing to pick up the slack, the imbalance… would not be healthy for the multiverse as a whole.

That was why he had to make sure none of his friends learned about where he was- or at least, none of them could find out about why he was still here. A rescue mission could only cause problems, and those problems would only worsen with time, the Balance shifting more and more until everything fell into complete disarray.

He tuned back into the conversation to catch the Judges gathering and looking over their notes again, getting ready to run their custom-made program. After a bit more nodding and revision, Classic typed in a few commands and 

          the 

                         world

                                        went

                                                       white.

Fresh barely had time to recover from the shock before he heard Red say “...funk my life.”

Looking around the room, he could definitely agree with the sentiment, if not the wording. After the usual difficulties that came with sudden, bright lights- even without biological matter, the magic that allowed them to see tried to adjust to a change in light level and had to take a moment to adjust back to normal- he could see nine new skeletons, a majority of them the ones he had wanted to keep away from all of this. Ink, Error, Dream, Nightmare, and Dust were immediately recognizable. Nightmare had been talking about recruiting a Horrortale Sans for his group, with the usual benefits for the new member: food for himself and whoever else in his universe he wanted, for life; no assignments he would be uncomfortable with; and whatever else was needed or requested. There were probably more details that hadn’t been thought of yet, but even those basics covered some pretty important bases. Nightmare really did take care of his family, one of the reasons he hadn’t dusted Dream or any of the Stars yet, and why he had recruited Killer and Cross.

That was part of why Fresh recognized two of the remaining four skeletons- he had gone through a few Horror ‘verses to re-familiarize himself with the mannerisms of that particular type. If he was going to have a new friend, better to have some idea what to expect from them. He had ‘borrowed’ a Horrortale Sans once, early on; that kind of hunger he never forgot. This Horror Sans had arrived with his brother, which might help his disposition after their sudden relocation.

The remaining two skeletons, though, were the ones his eyes were immediately drawn to after a quick scan of the room. They were both pretty slim, which was surprising for a Sans. This put Fresh in mind of Hunter Sans, but their lack of camouflage-patterned clothes removed that option. Actually, they must have been from a new universe, since he had never seen anything like them, and he hadn’t had time to investigate new universes in about a month before his last switch. As soon as they had recovered, Fresh had noticed them place simple Tengu masks on their faces, which then extended a set of earmuffs or headphones. Who uses that stuff in character design? There had to be a reason .

Previous experience- and lingering skills- allowed Fresh a perspective on both people (especially skeletons) and magic. That was why it stuck out to him that these two were definitely not both genderswapped, a rarity. Usually, either the entire Underground was genderswapped or not. Definitely a unique pairing, and with everything he’d seen it was best not to assume much with them.

Their main colors were really muted, grayed-out blues and magentas again, why? Bright colors were so much better and with a more clear design, and their outfits were a unique pairing. Usually only the ‘lazy’ sibling wore a jacket, but this pair… they were both wearing jackets. The Papyrus had a more familiar style, with a sweater similar to Stretch, though without the dangling drawstrings and in a muted blue. They also were wearing dark shorts, similar to the Classic Sans style, but those only extended to just above their knees. The Sans, though, was wearing a somewhat loose, fuzzy, faded magenta sweater that reached to just below their waistline. Even with that, the flare of their hips was visible in the shape of form-fitting black capris. Without a closer look, it would be hard to tell what either of them was wearing on their necks, but he could see a slight shine there indicative of jewelry.

In that first moment, Fresh watched as they shifted so they were angled outward, not quite back-to-back, but clearly prepared to fight together if the need arose, and with their heads angled slightly downward. 

And then he got distracted by raised voices. In a corner of his mind he noted how the Horror Papyrus started wringing his hands and curling in on himself, similarly to how Coffee had long since curled into a corner, while the Horror Sans stood in front of him defensively. It looked like Nightmare, Dust, and Error were fighting with Ink and Dream. 

“Why did you drag us here?!” Ah yes, Error, ask the guy who clearly doesn’t know what is going on any better than you do.

“I didn’t! Do YOU know what’s going on? Did you set this up?” Ink must have had some of his red vial pretty recently, and a decent amount of it, though he’d probably gone through enough to dilute it down to simple anger. 

“What motive would we have? I don’t need to deal with you again so soon, and I know none of us ,” here Nightmare gestured between himself, Dust, and Error, “would do this type of thing without warning the others. Therefore, this must be YOUR FAULT!”

“Why does it always have to be us ? Why couldn’t it be someone else ? I am so tired of dealing with your bad attitude, brother!” Dream must have been pretty peeved to allow his annoyance to show, since normally he did his absolute best to project the positivity he protected.

“Who else would it be? Who else would drag us somewhere after a battle, likely into a trap?” Now Fresh was getting a more complete picture- everyone had just left a battle, was probably either headed home or had just gotten home, and then the machine dragged them over. 

“I don’t know, maybe you ?” Why did Ink always make things worse?

“You absolute idiot! Why would we do this and split up our own team?!” 

“Why would we ? YOU’RE the one who wants to destroy everything I make!” 

Now Error was strangling the air. The two may have enjoyed getting together to watch Undernovela, but that didn’t make Ink (much) more tolerable in other settings, and Fresh knew that irritation was doubled whenever they saw each other too soon after their last battle.

“We’ve tried explaining this again and again and again - we don’t do things that affect the multiverse just for the sake of doing them. I need negativity to live, and destruction never occurs ‘just for fun’, as you seem to think, and I honestly feel that that is likely an act of willful ignorance. Have you ever written it down? Or do you always just wave it off- which you seem to be doing right now!”

“Why would I want to remember your LIES? Or do you take the advice of… your… enemies…” It took a moment, but Fresh realized what had caused Ink to trail off. While everyone had been distracted by the argument, either participating or watching the group like a tennis match in action, a mist had risen, and had hit about chest-level for some of the shorter skeletons closer to the machine. The weirdest thing about the mist, beyond the fact that they were in a basement and that was not natural, was how it looked - half a very dusty magenta and the other half a similarly dusty blue. And the two colors weren’t swirling or interacting in any way beyond a hard line that cut from one corner of the room to the other. 

Following the line to a corner by the machine, Fresh saw that the mist was coming from the two new skeletons, gently rolling out from inside their sleeves and joining what was coming from their palms. It didn’t even seem to want to obey gravity, rising as a single fluffy-looking plane that didn’t look like it left anything behind. To borrow a line, these people were getting curiouser and curiouser .

The rest of the room was quiet, and had also started staring at the unidentified siblings, when their heads suddenly shifted, which brought attention to the way they had been unnaturally still the whole time, barely even shifting to breathe. They hadn’t spoken a word, but even with everything going on, they should have done something in response to their environment.

As soon as the two had looked up, though, Fresh saw an honest-to-god text box appear in front of them, transparent enough to still see the two, but opaque enough to read, which said “umm, bye” in Comic Sans.

And then the two stepped backward into a shortcut.

And the room descended into chaos.

Now, instead of being focused on each other and the previous argument, everyone was focused on one question: just who were those guys? No one had recognized them, and with the sheer number of outcodes in the room, especially The Creator and The Destroyer , whose entire jobs meant they paid very close attention to new worlds’ creation, it was very surprising that no one recognized them.

Once chatter slowed down, Classic did his best to take control of the situation. 

“alright, i have a few questions, if anyone is willing to answer them.”

Ink, having calmed down a bit, stepped forward and took a sip from his yellow and green vials, saying “Well, I could probably help out!”, as his eyelights shifted to a yellow question mark and green star.

“I’d better help, too, so the squid doesn’t forget some crucial piece of information,” Error butted in grumpily.

“okay, i’m guessing everyone else is going to want to butt in at some point, but these two are going to be speaking for you guys?”

It was at that moment the Horror Sans decided to put in his two cents. 

“why... are we here?”

He spoke slowly, as though he had to work to remember what he was planning to say when he began his sentence. Thinking back, Fresh remembered how hard it had been to put his thoughts into words when using a Horror Sans. That was in the early days, and he still remembered it quite clearly so much later.

“ah. i didn’t notice you there, buddy. well... welcome to my universe. i was working with the machine a week ago and i thought that i had found the way to get him back, but i ended up bringing these guys over with their brothers, and the only way we can see to get them home is to fix the da rn machine. we thought we had it there, and instead of doing what it was supposed to and locate a path to route them back to their universes, the machine pulled you guys in. you and your brother, along with that group,” here Classic gestured to the outcodes who still had Ink and Error waiting in front, letting them have their conversation as Error physically held Ink back from jumping into the conversation that was in progress, “and the missing pair. umm, that’s about it. without a functioning machine, we can’t send you back, and until we get these commands to do what we want them to do, we can’t retrieve the one guy who can fix the machine. any questions?”

“anything... to eat… around here?”

“yes, upstairs, but!” Classic shifted so that he was visually blocking the stairs from the larger version of himself. “we need to have a conversation about what we’ll call each other before you guys meet my bro- and theirs- and we can get you food for during that conversation. sound okay?”

“... fine.”

With that, Ink jumped out from behind Error’s arm, rushing to get in front of Classic.

“Hi! I’m Ink, Protector of Worlds! As you might have guessed, I protect AUs!” Wow, he must have had another sip from the yellow vial. Hopefully he was well-stocked. It looked like he was, but there was no way to know for certain. “And this is Error! He’s technically the Destroyer of Worlds, but he’s actually pretty good company!” 

“Look, my job doesn’t define me.”

Going down the line, Ink continued to introduce each of the outcodes in turn, going back and forth between the sides and ending with Dust as Error interjected.

“That makes the only unknown ones here these two!” Ink finished, gesturing to the Horrortale brothers, who had been watching warily, the Sans still protectively crouched in front of his brother, cleaver out in front of him.

“I think Nightmare had names in-” 

Ink butted into the middle of Error’s sentence. “I think we should name them Skull and Crooks. That would suit them.”

“What is wrong with you. Nightmare, you had names picked out, right?”

“Heh. I was planning to recruit a Horror Sans for my team. I was thinking Axe and Chef, for their skills. But only if you guys,” here he focused his gaze on the Horror boys, “are okay with it.”

The newly dubbed Axe replied “... yeah, sounds way better… than ink’s suggestion… bro?”

Chef simply nodded back at his brother, smiling painfully wide.

Taking control of the situation, Classic butted in. “okay, sounds like everyone has nicknames, right? that means only our mystery pair are unaccounted for. any ideas?”

It was in that lull in the conversation that Fresh noticed a shortcut open, with the missing siblings strolling through it alongside a miniature menagerie. Everyone’s gazes snapped to them, everyone wondering where they went, what they were doing, how they got those animals, and, of course, who they were.

A new text box appeared, this time using the Papyrus font. “WHY ARE YOU ALL STARING AT US? DID SOMETHING HAPPEN WHILE WE WERE OUT?”

“we, um… we’re just surprised, is all. certainly didn’t expect you guys to ‘cut in right then, we were just talking about looking for you guys,” Classic replied, still somewhat surprised by the timing of their entry.

“WELL THEN, IN THAT CASE, WOULD YOU PREFER WE CONVERSE WITH YOU HERE, OR UPSTAIRS?”

Fresh was surprised by how calmly everyone- well, almost everyone- was taking this. Ink was pretty clearly straining at the bit, with only Error holding him back from releasing a barrage of questions upon the newbies. Everyone else seemed fairly tired, the surprise siblings included. A look around revealed how late it was, the clock on the wall reading 11:45 p.m.. Really, everyone in the room would normally either be asleep or wishing they were asleep by this time.

He refocused on the conversation as Classic finished thinking it over, replying with “how’s about we continue this in the living room, so we’re all comfy.”

Receiving a nod in response from both of them why was it so in sync? That made it so much creepier , Classic turned to go up the stairs, leading the way to the living room. It was going to be a long night for sure.

Chapter Text

Walking out of the basement, I let out the breath I’d been holding, allowing my shoulders to relax, but then a thought came up that had the both of us tensing back up and stopping. Everyone else stopped moving as well. Did Classic- or anyone in the room- CHECK us? The flavor text that would show up could be disastrous.

“wait, how do you know we’re safe to allow in your house? did you CHECK us?”

Red, surprisingly, spoke up, voice slightly hazy with tiredness. “nah, that’d be rude. look, i learned from my own universe to tell when someone’s LV is likely to be an issue, without a CHECK. you don’t give off that feeling of... instability.”

“and we trust him enough to follow his lead on this one,” Classic added, loosely gesturing to himself, Stretch, and Coffee. Fresh stayed quiet, but nodded along.

My shoulders went back to their relaxed slump under the backpack I was still wearing as I resumed moving though it had flattened, smoothed out, and practically camouflaged with my sweater… why? And it looked like the same thing had happened with Rain’s backpack??, misting the stairs with magic so I wouldn’t trip. That was a relief. I didn’t know what my flavor text would read, and I really didn’t want anyone getting ideas about our pasts. “understood, we thank you for your trust.” And now I was speaking so stiffly. Why did I have to either talk super stiffly or have the worst grammar known to man the multiverse?! Most of the time I was fine, but when I was extra stressed, tired, or just emotional, my brain-to-English function tended to break in one direction or the other. And just then, all three effects were in full force.

As we all quietly shuffled into the living room, following Classic’s lead, Rain and I stayed standing while everyone else took a seat on one of the several armchairs, sofas, and loveseats scattered in a loose circle. It may be worth mentioning that we had Neville and Luna sit at our feet, rather than lay down, as we all wanted to do. Sweet Pea had fallen asleep on my shoulder, flopping even further. 

“why don’t you take a seat?” Stretch asked, surprising me by speaking up for the first time since our arrival.

This time Rain responded, “IF WE SIT DOWN, WE’RE BOTH LIKELY TO FALL ASLEEP, AND NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR THAT.”

“... although we would like that time to come as soon as possible.”

“then we’ll keep this brief. first, why do you talk like that?” Classic had clearly taken over their side of the conversation, Red and Stretch leaning back in their seats while Coffee was curled into his armchair.

“can we save that for later? that requires a long explanation, tied fairly tightly to our universe’s story, and i’d rather save that conversation until everyone’s here, or at least the morning.”

“okay... fine. that conversation can be saved for when we’re all awake, or as awake as we get. where did those animals come from?”

“THEY’RE OUR ANIMAL COMPANIONS.”

“...okay. i guess we’ll have a lot to talk about? um, judging by everyone’s confusion about you guys- apparently including Fresh,” here he gestured to Fresh, since we hadn’t told him that we already knew the likely identities of everyone in the room, continuing, “who knew what to call literally everyone else who came here at the same time as him, i would guess you guys don’t have nicknames. i literally know nothing about you, so i’m not one to judge . so, any ideas?”

I slightly angled my head at this question, not expecting this question to be so directly asked. “actually, yes. we talked about the necessity of nicknames while we were gone, and figured out a working pair. my sibling wishes to be known as Rain, while i would like to be called Snow. thank you for asking.”

Several of the skeletons in the room(well, nearly all) looked torn between laughing at the way the names matched, and asking why those names were chosen.

Visibly brushing the “ask “heh, we almost had an incident earlier when ink tried to hand some… undesirable names to these guys,” Classic said, gesturing to the Horror brothers.

“speaking... of us… where is food?” Horror Sans spoke up for the first time.

Fresh spoke up, the first set of judges being visibly unnerved by the new voice. “right down this hall to the left broski, the pantry’s open, feel free to grab something but please leave enough for us.”

As the newest Sans and his Papyrus headed in that direction, I was still thinking of the “Bad Sanses” throwing hands over their nicknames.

i could see that happening easily , I sent to my sibling, a smile I only noticed in that moment shifting toward a smirk, though no one else could see it under my mask. 

“that reminds me…” I shared with the room, having felt the mask’s presence more when I moved my face. No one else but my sibling knew what was going on in my mind, though, so I saw everyone’s faces shift to mirror their confusion.

In sync, Rain and I reached up, covering most of the fronts of our masks with both hands and focused on what we wanted them to look like. Both of us enjoyed playing Borderlands, especially Borderlands 2, so we took inspiration from our first characters’ available skins. I chose Maya’s Trigger Pull head, liking its simple design that covered all the necessary bases. Rain focused on Zero’s Ech0location head, with a slight change to allow the lower half of their face to be seen. We both chose grey coloration that would not be out of place in a cave, with highlights in our chosen magical colors and accents of contrasting, similarly desaturated shades.

Having written this segment in my fic before leaving on our trip through the Void, I knew what it looked like from the outside. To everyone else in the room, it seemed like the masks rippled like a liquid that was stuck to our faces, with the ripples starting from our hands and continuing outward. As the ripples continued, the colors shifted from the bright red to match the images in our minds, the shapes of the masks shifting at the same time. This transformation was heavily inspired by the sci-fi rippling transition I’d seen in a few movies but could never find online.

Once our masks were as we desired, I looked up at my sibling and, making sure that the thought was shared with the room, said “why did you have to go for something that makes you even taller?! ...well, at least you still aren’t the tallest one here.”

The room had been silent while everyone watched the show, but this comment seemed to shock them out of their stupor.

“okay, i’ll table that for the moment. anything else that before we split for the night?”

After sharing a look, we looked back at Classic, then to the Horror brothers, who had returned in the middle of the mask transformation and now had a box of cereal that they had opened and were methodically devouring. “THREE THINGS: ONE, WHAT SHOULD WE CALL YOU? HE,” here we looked back to Classic, then back to the Horror bros, and continued, “MENTIONED ISSUES REGARDING YOUR NICKNAMES. TWO,” here our attention shifted back to Classic, “WHAT ARE EVERYONE’S PREFERRED PRONOUNS? THREE, ARE THERE ANY RULES WE NEED TO KNOW ABOUT RIGHT NOW? OH, AND FOUR, WHERE IS AN AVAILABLE ROOM IN WHICH WE MAY REST?”

“also, if we could use a towel or two that you’d be fine with not using anymore, maybe a box- they don’t have to be nice, just absorbent, Sweet Pea here holds it all in, then absolutely goes. the box is a hidey hole for security, cardboard is actually better.”

Horror answered us, saying, “we’re known as axe and chef now, nightmare suggested the names after ink was stupid.” As he spoke, he gestured at the skeletons related to the names. 

Classic continued, “everyone else here goes by he/him, as far as i know. for the main rules, respect closed room doors and locked bathroom doors, and no fighting inside. no shortcuts straight into the bathroom, at least not without knocking first. if you want to train with others, there’s a course in the back that our brothers run through at 6 each morning. and for bunking, everyone new please follow me. i’ll grab some newspapers, towels, and a box once we get upstairs. uh, what are your pronouns?” As he headed toward the stairs, everyone who had clearly staked their own rooms started to stand to shortcut there, giving us glimpses of the Void each time someone left.

We internally facepalmed and responded with a quick “ she/her ” and “ THEY/THEM ”.

Everyone else got in a double file line to go up, Ink and Dream following the most closely, followed by Nightmare, with Error getting plenty of space before Dust fell in line behind them. Next… Axe, Chef, Rain, and I looked around at each other before Rain and I shrugged, indicating that we would be fine with any order that was suggested. With that, Axe gestured for us to go before them, leaving them to climb the stairs after us, our dogs at our feet. After catching up and misting these stairs as we went- which didn’t take long, since the “conversation” didn’t last longer than 15 seconds- we all continued up to the second story of the mansion we had found ourselves in. Classic took a moment for everyone to collect on the landing that surrounded the stairwell, eyeing Error when he stood a little bit away from the group. 

“this is the second story, those of us who have been here a little bit have rooms here. i thought i’d need space for unfinished projects and storage in the future, but it turns out the rooms are a good size for bedrooms, too. you’ll meet the rest of the people here soon. i’m right here, left of the stairs if you need me. there are rooms available on this floor, if you want, we’ve only used about half of ‘em. up another level,” here he rounded the landing to go up another staircase that faced the opposite direction, “we have the rest of our empty rooms. again, lots of space, this floor is fully available if you wanna pick a room from here. above here is the attic, but that isn’t available, we’ve actually used that space as storage. oh, and all the rooms are identical, so don’t worry about unfairness of choice on that front. um, bathrooms are opposite the stairs, two to that part of the floor and also at the ends of hallways. if you want to change rooms after tonight, that’s fine, just let me know when you make your final decision. sleeping bags and pillows are in linen closets next to the bathrooms in the meantime- learned that it was a good idea to stock up on those after the others arrived. anything else?”

At the answering silence, Classic nodded and shortcutted out, quickly returning with a large towel and a fair-size cardboard box, which I took. “good night, everyone.”

After he shortcut away, everyone stood around for a moment before getting bedding and dispersing. We headed together for the rooms by the stairs, noticing everyone else grouping up- Ink and Dream headed to one side of the hallway, while Nightmare, Error, and Dust stayed on the other and selected neighboring rooms by the staircase. After we found the door we wanted to use, we entered, not seeing which direction Axe and Chef went, since they seemed to want everyone else to choose a room first. We had still been releasing our mist, just a slow trickle to show a little bit of the floor around us in a slowly expanding circle, so once the door was closed we shoved our magic out in a flood to fully coat the room, then stopped the flow once the borders of the room were securely in our sights. The next obvious move was to set the things in my hand down, so I placed the towel and box down in the corner, to be organized shortly.

Remembering the other item I had checked for, I smiled as I pulled it out. After Rain locked the door, we both sat and looked at the device that sat cradled in my hands. A bit of work had gone into designing the Orbs of Darkness, and in-story it had taken a lot of effort to acquire it. They were inspired by cloaking spheres from Skulduggery Pleasant, alongside the Darkness ability innately available to Drow nobility. Some Celtic knot style engravings on a wooden sphere later, I had the visual design for an item to be enchanted. A Darkness spell only lasted for about 15 minutes at base once cast(and that would require an overpowered character to enchant it to work for the time I was looking for), so I did a little research and found the Extend Spell. That would make the spell last an hour at minimum, and if the same caster did both acts, they could be a fairly low-level caster and still get the result I wanted, likely lower than the characters I’d built if I was honest with myself.

All this was to say that once I twisted apart the two halves of the orb, the darkness that filled the room could last for up to 6 hours total in a day, plenty of time to get some solid rest in, and remove the headpieces that would make it very awkward to rest otherwise. We each had one, and pulling out one more object gave us a mechanism that would start the second one just before the first one’s time was up. In total, we had 12 hours of darkness to take advantage of, and thus about as much time as we needed to sleep. Going diving into their backpack to see what we still had, Rain pulled out a bit of short, decorative-to-humans fencing to fence Sweet Pea in. That definitely wasn’t in with the items we had packed, and it wouldn’t have fit anyway with how full the bag was. It certainly bore investigation, but that wasn’t our focus at the moment. I gently shifted the sleeping chubster off of my shoulder and placed her on the towel, such that if she woke up she’d see the box in front of her.

The last thing to take care of here, since by that point the dogs had all but fallen asleep as we worked around them, was food. Hoping that whatever force had likely given us access to the dimensional box that belonged to the skeletons we had become had also given us the full contents of said box, I went looking and found precisely what I needed: food and water dishes for all the animals, as well as the materials to supply those dishes. That was very convenient planning, which we definitely weren’t going to question now, possibly ever. 

What we were going to do was go to sleep. Setting up the mechanism to run the two orbs sequentially, it was time to begin the “timer” that would let us safely sleep for as long as we needed. After twisting one orb open, we took off our headpieces, set up our sleeping bags, and went to bed, getting rest for the first time since we had entered the timeless space that was the Void.

Chapter Text

I woke up the next day… I’m not sure what time it was. There was no clock in the room, and I really didn’t want to test my phone right at that moment(I was pretty sure it was dead anyway), so when I woke up cuddling with Neville, I didn’t get up right away, preferring the darkness behind my eyelids. Knowing how loud it could get at home, I was really glad to have peace, quiet, and darkness. Too much quiet and too much darkness. I tensed up when I opened my eyes. The absolute darkness that greeted me reminded me that no, this wasn’t just a dream, and no, I wasn’t at home, I was actually very far from it.

Gently extricating myself from the boy, I slowly sat up, feeling around for the headpiece I needed for the day. I was definitely glad that when I was looking at character design, I had chosen soft fabric for the “hat” part. Today was when we would share, well, probably not every little detail, it wouldn’t be fun to tell the entirety of our tale upfront- that would spoil a good part of the many surprises we could, well, surprise everyone else with- but a good chunk of it would be shared with the others in the house.

Today would be the day we’d meet the remainder of the household as well. I felt a nudge at the edge of my consciousness as Rain woke up, to which I nudged them back, sending calm I wasn’t quite feeling. 

I THOUGHT IT WAS A DREAM…  I heard in my mind. yup, same. turns out it’s not, or if it is we have issues. well, more  issues.

I gently tapped my hand around on the floor, feeling for the jacket and backpack I had worn yesterday, since I really didn’t want to use my magic to ‘look around’ for them. I was still getting used to the sensation of my sibling in my mind, feeling their emotions and some of their strongest thoughts.

With us being awake, the animals started to wake up as well, giving us nudges after we woke up and put on our layers: headpieces over our skulls, jackets on our torsos, and shoes back on our feet. The dogs woke up with a stretch, Luna popping up to start dancing at the door while Neville stretched out his full body before standing with her. Sweet Pea had actually been awake for a little bit because, well… guinea pig. After my jacket was on, she started giving me mental nudges to be picked up, so I placed her on my collarbone/shoulder area, under my jacket’s collar.

Effectively clothed, and our headpieces properly equipped, I closed the second of the orbs in the device we had left activated the previous night, and tucked both them and the device itself in my pocket. The light from the hallway, little as it was, slipped under the door as we waited for a moment to allow the animals’ eyes to adjust to the light before leaving the room.

When we did leave the room, it was with meandering steps, slightly wandering together as the dogs sniffed at all the corners they hadn’t been allowed to previously. This would have been fine, but Luna took offense to Fresh’s proximity to people she considered ‘hers’, barking both physically and psychically as noisily as possible, which set Neville to barking as well. Even with my headpiece on, headphones covering my acoustic meatuses with the goal to mute the world as much as possible, I could barely hear myself breathe.

This was beside the point, though, since Luna scared Fresh so hard he immediately Poofed to the end of the hallway, outfit askew. Several other skeletons took shortcuts up in response to the noise, and we could clearly hear more footsteps thundering up, toward our level.Luna started barking more, so Rain and I made both dogs face us, sit, and be lectured despite their lack of understanding. Suitably soothed and chastened, I started projecting thoughts to the daft dogs that these were people who were ok , not threats. And that they didn’t need to yell when she was upset.

I had turned away a little from everyone else while calming the dogs, as had Rain, and as I turned back around I noticed that everyone had crowded onto the landing to investigate the ungodly disturbance.

Classic, Stretch, and Red were standing in front of everyone, slightly tensed and at the ready to defend themselves and their brothers. Their brothers were hovering behind them, some reaching out as if to help, others visibly restraining themselves from coming at us. Away from them, those who had arrived last night were stumbling out of their rooms to see where the noise came from, and what it was, Axe standing in front of Chef and the rest standing level with their teammates. 

“sorry about that, the dogs get… territorial sometimes. we should be good now, they’ve settled back down and i’ve reiterated the idea of quiet to him.”  I explained, nervously rubbing Neville’s ears as I slouched down around him.

“IS THERE ANYWHERE ELSE YOU SHOULD BE, OR ANYTHING YOU SHOULD BE DOING OTHER THAN STARING AT MY SISTER AND MYSELF?”  my sibling asked, calling everyone out. A lot of monsters started intentionally staring at nearby corners, which felt equally awkward.

“THAT WAS LOUD! NO MATTER THE REASON, AT LEAST IT GOT MY LAZYBONES BROTHER UP BEFORE NOON!” Classic Papyrus was certainly enthusiastic about life, but that was definitely not  what we were going for in the morning- or anyone else for that matter. “SHALL WE DESCEND FOR BREAKFAST?”

Nodding hesitantly, among people who were very pointedly not  looking at us, we all moved downstairs, Coffee and another, shorter monster with magic a deep purple-stained red I assumed to be Wine himself joining us at the next landing down.

“IT IS GOOD THAT YOU ARE ALL STILL HERE. SHALL I ASSUME THAT THE… DISTURBANCE WAS HARMLESS?” Wine asked as we went down the stairs to the first floor, as if he hadn’t been surprised by Luna, just like everyone else. I was impressed with his nonchalance, given that his magic was still very tightly wound, coiled tightly like a spring, and just as ready to be released on a dime.

“’s all good, jus’ a dog bein’ a dog,” Red smoothly replied, causing Wine’s magic to relax into something more closely resembling a cloud, or maybe a blanket; not so tightly regimented, more spread out, but still able to retract and react at a moment’s notice.

With that taken care of, everyone went downstairs. Looking at a clock on the wall, I noticed that it was just after noon; we had likely gotten up a little bit before noon, and everything since then had happened within about 15 minutes. 

As we walked down, we soon hit the ground floor, and Chef spoke up. “Have You Eaten Anything Recently? I Didn’t See You Eat Anything Last Night, You Must Be Hungry.” 

“to be honest, we are rather hungry. it’s been a little bit since we ate, though we’re not in any danger from hunger,”  I responded, fairly hungry after our sleep and ready to have some breakfast… lunch… food.

We didn’t know where anything was, so when we got downstairs we followed everyone else to the dining room.

“GOOD TIMING! I HAVE BEEN ATTEMPTING A NEW TACO RECIPE FROM THE OVERNET!” Blue seemed super excited, and his infamous enthusiasm for… unusual ingredients that the average person would find unpalatable made me nervous. And that made Rain nervous. At this, Nightmare and Dream looked over at us, surprised that we seemed to know something most new arrivals wouldn’t.

“APPARENTLY, HUMANS DON’T USE GLITTER OR  GLUE IN THEIR TACOS! WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED?” Well, that was a relief. Hopefully he was sticking as closely to this new “human” recipe as he would have been to a Napstablook one- or would it be a recipe from his Alphys? Well, either way, we’d hopefully not  have to find out whether our bodies were able to handle certain foods.

After a quiet lunch- glitter free, thank the stars- where we, along with the other ‘new arrivals’ were stared at pretty much the entire time, we all went back to the same living room from the night before. There was very little extra space- unlike last night, when tensions were high and trust was low, the atmosphere was far more relaxed and though there wasn’t a lot of trust, there was at least the trust that no one would just attack out of nowhere, since even Edge was known to have some warning signs before he went off on whomever annoyed him.

Everyone was actually vaguely chilling in various places on the semicircle of available seating. Going around the circle, Wine perched himself on an armchair with his brother next to him on a beanbag at the end of one arm. Classic was with Red and Stretch on a couch together on one arm of the semicircle. Edge, Creampuff, and Blue sat in their own chairs toward the middle of the curve. Fresh kept bouncing around until he produced another beanbag from somewhere  to plop in the middle of everyone. Dream and Ink settled on the loveseat next to the energetic siblings, each leaning into their own corner of the short couch. Nightmare held court from an armchair adjacent, his image slightly ruined by Dust lazily flopping across his lap like a cat seeking attention. Error leaned against the wall at a slight distance from everyone else. Axe pulled a couple of chairs from the dining room, settling himself and his brother just behind Nightmare- understandable, given the events of the previous night. And my sibling and I sat on another loveseat on the other end of the semicircle, opposite Wine and Coffee.

Classic started the meeting, looking at me. “to recap last night, new arrivals, they agreed to a truce if we didn’t start any fights. fresh knows all of them except for these two.” With that, he turned to the ‘new arrivals’ section, continuing “uh, what kind of places are you all from? since we, except for fresh, know nothing about you” I could see some of the others, the Horror boys especially, shifting awkwardly in their chairs at his bluntness. Classic swiftly realized his error. “i don’t need you to tell me literally everything, i just want to know what you might need help with so we don’t end up with misunderstandings.”

“WE WILL GO LAST, SINCE THERE WERE SOME QUESTIONS THAT WERE ASKED LAST NIGHT, WHICH ARE BEST ANSWERED IN THE FORM OF A DRAMATIC RETELLING.”  I nodded along as my sibling said this, half-leaning on them as I angled myself to see as much of the room as possible. Also because I was still really  tired, after the sudden wake up that was Luna, but I would have leaned on them if I had been fully awake as well.

There were a few more moments of silence before Nightmare spoke up. “I suppose we shall go first. I shall simply say, Dust, Error, and myself are from various situations where we coped with trauma differently. Leave Dust and myself alone if we express a desire for solitude, NEVER touch Error unless he explicitly requests it, and no harm shall come from a misunderstanding. If you need reminding in the future, speak with me.”  With that, Nightmare sat down, content to leave his warning there, his voice gently echoing his deep voice around the room like the death knell of anyone who dared to cross him.

As scary as that could be, Ink wasn’t intimidated. “I’ll go next, then! I’m from outside the multiverse, and Dream and I, along with Blue- another version of him- defend the multiverse!”

“Which creates problems when the multiverse reaches capacity!!” Error frustratedly screeched, shaping his hands into claws as he mimed squeezing the life out of a pair of stress balls.

“That’s a thing? I didn’t know that… that can’t be a thing.”

“You keep not writing it down, and assuming that because it’s not written down, there is no such thing as maximum multiverse capacity!!!” Error’s imaginary stress balls were definitely punctured and long since dead.

“Anyway, we’re totally chill and friendly!”

Fresh popped up next to him. “They are, indeed, totally friendly, bro-dudes!”

Error immediately teleported to a hammock-nest in the corner of the room- which nobody else had noticed until that point except maybe Ink, given his relative lack of reaction to the new position from which Error could be heard- shrieking about ‘rainbow freaks’. “Well, Error-bro isn’t so friendly with me , but everyone else  is totally friendly.

Dream lightly laughed, lightly grinning at Fresh as he spoke. “I think that’s just with you, Fresh. The rest of us either respect his boundaries, or he can give himself some space and we’ll respect that he wants to be left alone.”

Classic butted into the silence that followed. “well, that was a thing that happened. axe or chef, would you be willing to share some basic stuff about your world?”

“not much food… if undyne… or alphys… are around in this world... don’t  make us... be in the same room as either of them... and if the kid is still around… d o n ’ t  let them come anywhere near us... not in the same building... not where we can see them... otherwise… you might… not like… what happens next... don’t waste food... and don’t ask how we got like this... and we’ll be golden.” As expected, Axe was the speaker for the pair, due to Chef’s issues with his teeth, which usually led to difficulty eating and/or speaking. And he talked as I expected, too- places where a normal person would just take a slight moment to separate thoughts were given much longer pauses than normal, due to his memory issues.

The energetic brothers had been conspicuously quiet the whole time, but they were fidgeting in their seats, so I sent Neville over to Papyrus, who was sitting with Blue, with a “don’t worry, our animals are friendly, they just want some love” to help them relax.

Luna went to Wine’s ankles, lightly whining and pawing for attention, which he gave with a light chuckle and a mock glare in our direction, like we were trying to trick him into liking us using our animals, but respected us for the method being animals. Chef joined Wine and Coffee at Luna, Chef kneeling on the floor to be somewhat closer in height to Wine, and the group pet her on Wine’s lap, since he had pulled her onto the armchair he had perched himself on top of.

With everyone finally settled, I cuddled with Sweet Pea as I began to tell the backstory I had crafted what felt like a year ago, though it had definitely been less than a few months.

Chapter Text

“long ago, two races held power over the land: humans and monsters. each was respected among the many races that roamed, one for their sheer numbers and determination, and the other for their innate proficiency for whatever type of magic they set their minds on. 

“one day, war broke out between the two races. after a long battle, the humans were victorious. they sealed the monsters underground with a magic spell, gaining the assistance of several of the more… distasteful races in order to keep the monsters in one place long enough to do so. 

“now, under the surface of our world, there’s a huge system of interconnected caves, where some of the more naturally dangerous creatures- and races- hide. some of these beings are fairly peaceful, most are highly aggressive, but few use firelight to see. miles below the surface, light is hard to move safely. even if you have something to sustain a flame, it is far harder to see beyond the light it casts, like staring into the woods after watching a campfire. now i’m rambling. point is, light is a sign of either a naturally occurring hazard, something totally unsuited to the underdark, or something strong enough to win a fight against a party of drow.

“and that means we couldn’t use light to see, as natives to the surface do, as monsters once did. other than a few monsters, selected for their natural abilities or chosen profession, monsters adjusted to using magic to see. those certain monsters were those such as the guardians of the Barrier, protecting the Underground at each end, and many of those that naturally release light… they took on a special challenge, to learn to see both ways. 

“these special monsters were tasked with living in- and protecting- places where it would be difficult for others to do so. the caretaker of the Ruins is the only one who checks on the Barrier as those who work with them protect their home. likewise, when New Home was created, the King made the executive decision to be the one to review the state of the caverns on that end of the Barrier. very few of those who generate their own light made the change, but some- mainly the older monsters who were already war-weary- chose to instead adapt and avoid the conflict. Grillby was one of the more notable instances of this; in the course of a few months he changed himself from a monster made of light to one made of magic, in more than the average sense. instead of being bright to those who rely on light in the “visible” spectrum, he’s only bright to those who see and sense magic.

“i could go on the longest tangent here on how stupid humans are for labelling the portion of light they see as the visible spectrum when there are so many races that also use the infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths to see. but that would be me driving this train way too far off the tracks. back to what i was saying- where was i?”

Wine spoke up from his position behind Luna, everyone startling slightly at the sudden break in the story. “YOU WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT GRILLBY MAKING THE SWITCH TO MAGICAL OUTPUT.”

“ah yes, Grillby made the switch, as did a few others. most, though, chose to stay as they were, and worked and lived in the cavern that became Hotland. those that needed to use the visible spectrum to work, like royal scientists, also moved to Hotland, making it a center of technology and also ‘the place with super dangerous walkways you could shove a dangerous creature off of’.

“the reason for it being a place of both technology and very few safety rails is because, as i mentioned before, light means danger. and while the Barrier is a very solid cap on both points of direct connection to the surface, it does nothing to discourage visitors from deeper in the Underdark from coming and going as they please. it gives off no light of its own, which is both a help and a hindrance- we don’t have to have light adapted monsters as the only ones who patrol there, but new holes are hard to find, sometimes only a few centimeters tall, other times they can be many meters in height and diameter. so we can find hook-horrors driven mad by the light, doing all kinds of property damage. we need a way to dispose of them as quickly as possible, so no railings. might seem tough on them, but they aren’t sentient and really are dangerous; one of their favorite things to eat is drow, one of the most dangerous of the sentient races for sheer brutality.

“anyway, most monsters changed to see magic, life was… not relaxed, but we were figuring things out. it was pretty immediately obvious that the area that later became the Ruins was not enough space for everyone to have everything they needed. and then we had our first shift. 13 months in, we found out that our surrounding caves had changed, and we lost contact with any monsters that had been outside of the area that moved. it was sudden, but over time we found that we didn’t return to being under the same mountain twice in a thousand years’ cycles, though we were always connected to the Underdark via some cave system. 

“sometimes we’d make allies, only to lose them in the next shift. sometimes we’d make enemies, escaping shifting away just before their armies arrived. sometimes we had to fight off invading armies, while other times friendly travelers wandered in while trying to map their own ways out. either way, we always made sure any non-monster who could take care of themselves was outside the boundary border before the shift so no one got cut in half or left their homes behind. it didn’t have to happen to us to remember the effects of spells gone wrong.

“but anyway we had to have a group focused on the caves’ defense. the Guard. while the Scientist and their assistants worked on theories to break the Barrier, the Captain and their Guard ensured everyone was safe while waiting for the solution. some monsters were drafted, toward the beginning, but that ended when they realized that people weren’t volunteering simply because the way people were being trained was in the style of soldiers, people who have been broken down and built into fighters who cannot do anything else in the time when they are needed. then they started training some mid-strength monsters as proper guards, to work together and focus on delaying tactics, knowing when to wait for backup and when there’s enough power to strike.

“certain monsters, like Dogamy and Dogaressa, trained together, fought together, and patrolled together. others, like Doggo, Lesser Dog, and Greater Dog, are either one-on-one fighters or are heavily into delaying. Doggo, for instance, has a lot of power behind his blue attacks when he wants, and can almost treat his attacks like sweeping walls to push an enemy outside of a battle box. he can delay a true battle until we get there, most of the time, and usually escapes situations he knows he will not survive so backup can be called in. 

“anyway, we were going along until one day, on a routine check, a pair of humans were found at what is now the Ruins end of the Barrier, having fallen down a crack in the earth. these children were siblings, blind twins who had been cast out of their community together for their blindness. both names are likely easily recognizable if our worlds are at all alike- Frisk and Chara. Chara always teased Frisk because of ‘older sibling privileges’. they made the Underground so much more hopeful, just by existing. the royal family adopted them alongside their son, Asriel, and they were the best of friends. if only we knew just how soon that peace would be broken, maybe we could have been more for them. 

“they both fell ill. it was so sudden, and no one knew what to do. they begged to see the surface again, and though the request could not be granted before they died, the prince took their Souls and bodies and crossed the Barrier. when he came back a few hours later, the prince staggered across the Barrier’s borderline, whispering cracked reassurances to his worried parents. a few minutes later, the Underground’s king lost his heir. Asgore swore his revenge on the humans, and after a heated argument, Toriel sealed the doors to the Ruins, angrily promising that she would keep any humans she found as safe as she could, away from him.

“fast forward and various humans fell, explored, lost or left behind items previously held dear to them, and died. very few died to a monster; most fell to a natural feature of our unchanging landscape. a few even died to species native to the Underdark, before we were able to save them. those ones got the closed casket treatment, unfortunately. 

“a kid with the same Soul type as the royals’ adoptive children- what we now know as Determination- fell down, trekked the Underground safely, and freed us all. we’ve come a long way from the days of artificers ruling the research end of science, so now we have these things to protect sensitive sight and hearing on the surface.” Here I took a pause to tap a phalange on the corner of the “sunglasses” part of my headpiece.

“don’t think i mentioned it before, but hearing an enemy approaching can be super important, so jumping from the near-silence below the ground straight to the absolute noise that is the city could cause permanent damage. don’t worry, we won’t be wearing them forever, over time they get thinner and thinner and we’ll adjust. Alphys is the best at stuff like this, Soul linked nanotech. what have i forgotten… the animals. 

“over time animals fell underground. we were unable to get them back out, so various monsters took them in. some of the stronger monsters were able to make bonds, and eventually the animals became animal companions magically linked to their people. this then became a staple of the Guard, many of us took in the animals who could be of best assistance to us. we were lucky to be a part of the Guard- thanks to Rain- so we were able to take many more animals in than we otherwise might. 

“Neville and Luna scout from the ground with sight and smell and can do some fighting, and Sweet Pea, who is extra lucky to be alive, has a talent for healing. we share them, so one of us can be relaxing at home after a patrol, directing the animals while the other is out in person. and since we can both teleport they can, too, when necessary. um, i think that’s about it.

“any questions?”

Chapter Text

Classic took a moment, then seemed to remember something. “i asked before, and i don’t think you gave me an answer. why use the text boxes to communicate? really, why continue using text boxes? why not use your voice?”

I thought back and realized that no, I hadn’t. Nudging at my sibling that it was their turn to respond, they gave an internal eye roll, then responded to Classic. “IT’S MORE HABIT THAN ANYTHING. IF YOU WANT, YOU CAN HEAR US LIKE THIS ” on that last word the best way to describe the change that happened to allow them to share their more echo-y voice from the Void would be to say that we set our default settings for communication to auditory rather than text based, so everyone in the room was able to hear their words, rather than reading them.

They continued talking that way, saying, “SOMETHING LIKE THIS WAS DANGEROUS IN OUR UNDERGROUND, THOUGH IT WAS ALWAYS A POSSIBILITY. THINK OF IT LIKE A DEFAULT SETTING ON OUR END AND YOUR OWN MINDS INTERPRETING THE WORDS WE SEND AS TEXT BOXES BECAUSE THAT’S THE DEFAULT.” 

Switching the default back to text boxes, they concluded with “YOU CAN SET YOUR OWN SETTINGS IF YOU REALLY WANT, JUST FOCUS ON HEARING VOICES RATHER THAN SEEING TEXT. HOWEVER, THIS SHALL REMAIN OUR DEFAULT.”

“okay, fair enough. that makes sense. as much as magic and its own rules make sense.”

Nightmare, surprisingly, spoke up next. “You mentioned ‘the land’ in your story, not ‘earth’, which deviates from most tales. What is your world known as?”

I bit the bullet on this question, glad I had brushed up on the Forgotten Realms or was it something else? I don’t think I knew this off the top of my head before…, replying “i don’t know what our world is known as in the multiverse, but to those of us living in it and several adjacent realms, we live on Abeir-Toril, or Toril for its less formal name.”

“That feels familiar, somehow…”

“well, they say that there are no original ideas, just reconfigurations of things we’ve seen before. it might feel entirely new, but any idea is just a collection of old concepts in a new shape.”

“Heh, fair enough. You also mentioned races?” His brow was raised in curiosity.

“just the usual fare; subraces of elves, dwarves, werebeings, demons, so many more than i could ever count, a variety of human races- barbarians, genasi… goblins… i don’t know, there are so many more races that i could refer to but the point is that there are many, many races that constantly group and regroup, races that create tribes and alliances, tribes that are more inclined toward the interest of the tribe than anything else, cities built on shared learning where all are welcome, cities built on corruption and disorder, thinly covered with a facade to seem vaguely respectable. places where only one race is allowed, places where many races are allowed but few are truly accepted, sadly there are very few places where everyone is welcome, other than the wilderness.”

“Huh. Fascinating.”

I took the quick gap between questions to tuck the chubby little lady in my lap into my pocket, boosting her teleport up to our room so she could fulfil her needs in her corner, nibbling on both hay and newspaper.

Wine jumped in next. “YOU HAVE MENTIONED A VARIETY OF SOCIAL SYSTEMS YOU HAVE ENCOUNTERED. HOW IS YOUR UNDERGROUND, SOCIALLY SPEAKING?”

Rain took this question. “I WOULD SAY WE ARE RATHER PEACEFUL TOWARD EACH OTHER. EVERYONE HELPS EVERYONE ELSE WHERE WE CAN, AND HARDLY ANYONE COMMITS CRIME. NO VIOLENT CRIMES ARE COMMITTED BY MONSTERS BACK HOME, THOUGH ALMOST EVERYONE HAS SOME TRAINING TO DEFEND THEMSELVES. IN REGARD TO OUR RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER GROUPS, WE JUDGE THE VIABILITY OF POSITIVE RELATIONS WITH THEM INDIVIDUALLY. RENEGADES ARE ALSO JUDGED INDIVIDUALLY, ON HOW THEY ACT AS WELL AS WHATEVER THEY CLAIM CAUSED THEM TO BECOME RENEGADES.”

Once they had finished, Wine jumped back in. “AND YOUR SOCIOECONOMIC SYSTEM?”

This was also a viable factor to consider about our background, and I responded this time, knowing a bit more about the world I had played a large role in creating and thus more about how the economics might flow over time. Though I could have fed the information to my sibling and had done so before, it made more sense to simply share it myself in this case. “i’ve seen a bunch of systems followed. in wartime, we’ve been more of a communist style system; for a little bit we tried being more capitalist; i’d say we’ve always been somewhere in the middle, leaning toward socialism- King Asgore pays the Guard to defend everyone, and we do our best to help people going through rough times. that’s a very general overview, i could go more in depth about certain times when in wartime resources and businesses were more controlled by His Majesty, and other times where businesses were given free rein and most services’ prices were dictated by whomever was giving the service. but overall we’ve settled into a system where certain monsters are paid by our King for our services while others dictate their own prices based on what they need.”

After those text boxes disappeared, something seemed to click in Red’s mind, and he spoke up before anyone else could pipe up, leaning forward slightly. “how d’ya both know Borderlands? can’t believe it took me this long to notice the inspiration f’r yer… headpieces. th’ internet can’ be accessed Underground, ‘n i know physical copies of games ‘n consoles they run on ‘re built for light based screens, ‘specially if yer dump is like ours, full’a trash from th’ surface.”

I took this question as well, due to also knowing this question’s answer better. “we have simple translation hardware, pretty much any screen takes the same kind of data so it’s just one kind of translator for any kind of device, so we can plug whatever HDMI cable comes from the system into the box, and from there into our own screens to see whatever we want in the magic spectrum. nice and simple. Borderlands was different enough from life that we could play some together whenever and it worked as a solid escape from reality. before you ask, yes i mainly play Maya, usually with their Zero, though they’ve been playing with Krieg lately.”

Blue piped up next, surprisingly. “HOW EXTENSIVE ARE THE CAVES OF THE UNDERDARK? YOU MENTIONED OTHER THINGS FROM DEEPER IN THE UNDERDARK, BUT HOW BIG IS IT ALL AND HOW FAR DOES IT STRETCH?”

“THE TUNNELS GO PRETTY DEEP, AND WIDE AS WELL. IN TERMS OF TUNNEL SIZE THINK OF IT LIKE AN ANT FARM, SOME CAVERNS ARE LARGE ENOUGH TO HOUSE ENTIRE ARMIES, WHILE OTHERS ARE BARELY LARGE ENOUGH FOR A PECH TO SQUEEZE THROUGH. SOME TUNNELS STRETCH UP TO THE SURFACE, SOME REACH DEEP ENOUGH TO HAVE FLOWING LAVA IN THE FLOOR OR NATURAL ACID LAKES. AND YOU CAN GET FROM ONE SIDE OF THE WORLD TO THE OTHER THROUGH THE UNDERDARK, PROVIDED YOU DON’T DIE FROM A LACK OF SUPPLIES, OR STUMBLING INTO CARNIVOROUS WILDLIFE, OR ANY OF THE ‘EVIL’ ALIGNED RACES’ SETTLEMENTS, OR MOST OF THE PLANT LIFE, OR… ANY HAZARD. OR GO MAD FIRST. CAVES UPON CAVES WITH ONLY THE OCCASIONAL INTERESTING ROOM AND POTENTIAL ENEMIES AROUND EVERY CORNER GETS TO MOST PEOPLE, THOUGH SOME HAVE MANAGED THE FEAT OF EMERGING FULLY INTACT FROM A JOURNEY THROUGH THE UNDERDARK. THOUGH NONE REMAIN UNCHANGED BY THE EXPERIENCE.”

Ink spoke up, curious, his eyes swirling yellow and green. “Ooh, what do you mean by ‘‘evil’ aligned’? Like, are good and evil on opposite ends? Is there more to alignment?”

I sighed internally, I thought that was pretty clear and well known but to someone who seemed to forget pretty much everything alignment might have been something he saw and promptly forgot. “have you ever seen a Dungeons & Dragons alignment chart?”

“Yeah, why?”

“back in our world, D&D is based on history, though there are some aspects of battle you simply cannot capture with a turn-based combat system. good aligned people tend to be more interested in what’s good for the majority, evil are more interested in themselves. certain races have customs that lead to a greater number of people aligned with good, while others’ customs lead to a self interested system. some races, such as… humans, for example, don’t lean as majorly to one side or another as a race but instead are considered neutral. you can find humans that are the most selfless people you’ll meet, or humans that derive the entirety of their enjoyment from watching others suffer, or humans that are only there for the money, and will do whatever their employer asks. of course, no race is truly to one side or another, we once met a renegade drow who was the nicest ranger one could ever meet, but that’s a story for another time. 

“the deity one follows can also show one’s alignment, deities such as Lolth exist only to feed on chaos and destruction, while deities such as Lathander have been respected for their roles in domains such as creativity, vitality, and self-perfection. and the gods themselves are active powers in our world, so playing as a false servant of a god who is not a trickster god or doing things that would cast disfavor upon the god can have hefty consequences for the liar.”

Error followed that with a question I expected to follow my religion talk. “So how do you tell? And who do you follow?”

“USUALLY ONE WHO IS RELIGIOUS WILL WEAR A PENDANT SOMEWHERE ON THEIR BODY, ON A CHAIN OR STRING, IT CAN BE AS A BRACELET, NECKLACE, OCCASIONALLY AS AN ANKLET, BASICALLY ANYWHERE IT CAN’T GET LOST EASILY. NOT EVERYONE FOLLOWS A GOD. THE BEST PENDANTS ARE BLESSED BY PRIESTS, WHO COMMUNE WITH THE GODS MORE DIRECTLY. AND OUR DEITY WE CALL THE AUTHOR, WHO READS FATE AND AIMS TO WRITE A FAVORABLE OUTCOME. AND BEFORE YOU ASK, WE WEAR OUR PENDANTS AT OUR NECKS.” 

Here we both reached inside our sweaters to pull our necklaces out so they were visible to the room. “MINE IS THE YIN HALF OF YIN AND YANG, THE DARKNESS WITH SOME LIGHT, REMINDING ME THAT NO MATTER HOW DARK LIFE GETS IT WILL ALWAYS HAVE SOME LIGHT, AND A SILVER DRAGON IS A REMINDER OF THE DEFENDERS OF THAT LIGHT.” Their black cord that looped through the hook was simple, just the way they liked it, and the silver dragon snaking its way up the symbol was gently curled around the white dot like it was protecting it.

“mine is a little less deep in explicit meaning. it’s just rings, floating around a little disk with a pink, blue, purple, and white galaxy pattern, but it’s about the layers of perspective that you can find if you look closely enough. i see the multiverse as being like an amphitheater, where everyone in the rings can look down and see what’s going on in a lower layer, but only a few people can look up through the fourth wall or tear their sights away from what’s going on on their layer or lower to see the conversation going on another layer up.” My pendant was exactly as I described it, instead of the rings that had been connected by beads of metal to keep it from moving out of line back home it was floating in concentric rings, though the rings themselves stayed flat as though held in place by magnets. After we tucked our pendants back under our sweaters, the questions continued.

Edge spoke up next. “WHAT ARE YOUR RANKINGS IN THE GUARD IN YOUR WORLD? AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY ‘THANKS TO RAIN’?”

“i’ll begin by saying, they insisted we try out for the Guard, that’s the original reason why i joined. Undyne always requires that anyone who wants to join sits a silent vigil outside her house for a full night, then spar with a full member of the Guard, not someone from their home region. so we knocked on her door at the beginning of the night to inform her that we would be sitting vigil, then sat in the rain for a full night and in the morning we went full out sparring, them against Undyne and myself against one of the Night Nights. the only rule was to not do permanent damage, the goal to incapacitate or otherwise get the guardsmen to tap out. and we got in. so now we both go out on patrols, and we’re co-lieutenants under the Captain. there’s a lieutenant for each region, all reporting to Undyne, who takes care of things for King Fluffybuns. we handle the Snowdin area, and the dogs report to us, as our main sentries for the area, though we do take sentry duty sometimes- we wouldn’t ask them to do anything we wouldn’t do ourselves.”

Stretch spoke next. “why do your animals teleport? you mentioned them being animal companions, but what does that have to do with them teleporting?”

“WE CAN BOTH TELEPORT, SO THEY CAN, TOO, WHEN NECESSARY. IN THE PROCESS OF BECOMING OUR COMPANIONS THEY GAINED SOME OF OUR MAGIC AND WE GAINED A CONNECTION TO THEM. BEFORE YOU COMPLAIN THAT SENDING ANIMALS INTO A FIGHT IS ABUSE, THEY ARE ALSO FAR MORE INTELLIGENT THAN THEY WERE PREVIOUSLY. IT’S HARD TO TELL WHETHER THAT’S A KINDNESS OR CRUELTY SOME DAYS. THE INTELLIGENCE TO KNOW HOW TO FIGHT AND WHY WE FIGHT, BUT ALSO THE DESIRE TO FIGHT BEYOND SIMPLY DEFENDING THEIR PEOPLE. KNOWING THAT EVERY ENEMY THAT BREAKS THROUGH THE LINES HAS THE POTENTIAL TO SEVERELY INJURE THE CIVILIANS WE PROTECT. SURE, THEY’RE TRAINED IN SELF DEFENSE, BUT IT’S STILL A TERRIFYING FEELING THAT I DON’T KNOW IF THEY SHOULD BE WORRYING ABOUT, BUT THEY DO ANYWAY.” I took the opportunity to check in with Sweet Pea, and upon finding out that she was ready for more cuddles, boosted her shortcut back into my lap, then passed her to my sibling, who felt like they were catching some serious feels and needed cuddles.

After seeing no one else who had pressing questions, Classic stood up. “well, that was definitely interesting. welcome to the house.” 

Stepping over Fresh toward us, he was tripped by Fresh popping up at precisely the wrong time, sending both of them sprawling, which triggered the whoopee cushion Classic had hidden in his palm. We both stood up, wanting to help, laugh, and cringe all at once. Fresh was the first up, and offered a high five to each of us. As we followed his lead- we couldn’t just leave him hanging- I sent a very short-range message with the force of a whisper, one that only barely reached Fresh. “if you could please let the judges and the multiversal crew know we’d like to talk in private if and when possible, that would be much appreciated. they can bring their brothers if they want, but there are some things they might prefer not to share with their brothers, and we’d rather not be the ones to spill the beans. if they want to talk to just one of us, or both, either way is ok with us.”

With a slight nod, Fresh smirked and I noticed that the high fives had released glitter all over myself and the surrounding area, leaving Fresh untouched. I groaned as the others got up, stretching stiff… bones. Looking at my electric watch, which had stayed almost exactly as it was but had become viewable in the magic spectrum, I saw that that whole conversation took a long time, a few hours, and now it was pretty close to time for dinner, so I teleported the animals back to our room, to feed them.

As a group, we outvoted the skeletons that wanted to eat healthy, instead ordering fast food. Even Nightmare acknowledged the necessity of something fast, despite his disdain for greasy foods. Grillby’s was ordered, and once Classic picked everyone indulged in the sweet, fatty goodness that was a burger paired with his fries, which perfectly balanced its smooth center and slightly crunchy exterior. I cannot emphasize enough just how good that meal was, with the literal magic in every bite.

After dinner, which was painfully social to my semi-social self, I retrieved Sweet Pea from our room via calling her, so she dropped straight into my lap from the Void. After some grumbling from my sibling, I passed her to Rain so they could get some cuddles with her, too. 

Subtly crooking his index fingers at us, Classic motioned to the both of us- individually so we wouldn’t miss that we were both invited- that we should follow him. He said something about how he needed to ‘get sleeping or he’d never catch up on all the naps he missed today’, excusing himself and disappearing. 

A burst of ocean blue magic elsewhere in the house gave us a position to focus on, so after Rain gave a similar excuse about how ‘we also need to catch up on sleep, we haven’t gotten nearly enough recently’, and warning the rest of the house that ‘if you wake us up early you will have at least one yelling dog to deal with’, which was true enough on both accounts, we cleared away our dinner mess and I led our teleport to the same approximate area Classic had disappeared to.

The room appeared to be a small private library/large office space, with bookshelves climbing most of the walls and a desk toward the back of the room. Really, the room was a brighter version of what I’d expect from Nightmare’s study in his castle. Several comfy places to sit and a desk space for more professional interactions.

As we waited for everyone else to arrive, I went back over the information we were going to share with the rest of the Judges’ circle. Plus the multiverse travelers. And any of their brothers they felt comfortable sharing the information with. What could possibly go wrong?

With that comforting thought, I noticed that everyone who definitely should be present, was present. Axe and Coffee had both brought their brothers to listen in, so Creampuff, Blue, and Edge were the only ones not present, at least of the sibling sets I knew were here. Occam’s Razor said not to assume more skeletons were here, but knowing the myriad of Undertale universes, anything was possible.

Wine spoke up first. “LAST I SAW, PAPYRUS, BLUE, AND EDGE WERE GOING OUT FOR A MOONLIT JOG, SO THIS GATHERING WILL LIKELY REMAIN UNINTERRUPTED FOR AT LEAST AN HOUR, LIKELY MORE THAN THAT. NOW, WHAT IS IT THAT YOU NEED US TO KNOW SO PRIVATELY?”

Glancing at each other, Rain and I debated a little bit about who should take this part. I ended up losing, so I took another moment to collect myself before I began monologuing again.

“there is more to our world than was stated out there, which you should probably know. how much of your own worlds have you shared with each other?” The question was directed to the few who we knew were unlikely to be multiverse travelers, and who had been here since before we arrived.

“uh, not much to share,” Stretch responded. “Fresh pretty much told us the important bits. how our worlds are similar, how they’re different. stuff like that.”

“then in the name of fairness we should also pitch in on our own likely similarities and differences. it might be that your own worlds are different from what we think, but in that case you can let us know and we’ll correct our understanding of your background and how that affects interactions.” It looked like Nightmare, Error, and Ink were all ready to ask questions, but I held up a hand to gently ward them off.

“i’ll answer any questions you have at the end, ok? ok. 

“so, i told you about the royal siblings way back when, along with the dead kids and most recently fallen child, but with that i implied that there were only enough children that fell to open the Barrier. tibia honest, there have been more than nine children. many more. 

“y’see, though it’s hard to tell, a Soul has its own kind of half-life, and there is nothing that can stop its decay once its host dies. sure, you can slow it down by quite a bit, but once it gets below a certain threshold of magic a Soul will shatter no matter what is done to prevent it. a regular monster’s Soul begins pretty close to that threshold once the magic that holds its body together is gone, so the Soul disappears just about immediately after death. a boss monster has more magic, so their Souls take a few seconds to shatter after death. 

“the reason why i bring up death at all is because a human Soul has even more magic, especially if they were an undiscovered mage, with all that magical potential and little usage of it. and most of the children that fell were mages. their Souls could last for over a hundred years, often a few hundred years as the magic that would have gone into an affinity for some special ability instead went into keeping the last remains of their minds alive for however long they might be around. 

“every time a Soul shattered, some child of that Soul trait, usually between the age of seven and thirteen, would wander into the pit we called home. the magic that kept us trapped had that built in as some way to escape, though we never wanted to be the monsters the humans at the time of the Barrier’s erection saw us as. some child would be summoned every so often, falling down the mountain every thirteen months, once per cycle, about three and a half months after the last move. there was this order of which Soul would be called first. after the twins, there were no Determination Souls, or any other Soul called for quite a while. i guess Determination got shuffled to the back of the list, since the order in which traits would be replaced became Kindness, Patience, Justice, Integrity, Bravery, and Perseverance. if no Soul needed to be replaced, a Determination Soul would be called. 

“slight tangent here, any items a child left behind that they were particularly attached to would become either armor or weapons. the power of the items disappeared when the child’s Soul shattered, so any monsters who saw those items never used them as their own, and instead left them to help any other humans who might come by, sometimes in secret places and other times in very obvious areas. the items left behind by the first two fallen children never lost their power, since Frisk and Chara never faded completely due to their Determination.

“when a Soul of Determination was called, though, they always followed a very specific pattern. some of this we had to find out when we talked to one of the Determination kids. one month after we moved location a new child would be selected by the spirit of Frisk, and Chara would sometimes join in. this child would have some reason going on to want to leave, whether that was abuse, or bullying, or literally anything you might think of that would lead to a child running away into the mountains. they could be male, female, or identify otherwise, they just had to be human. 

“over the next two and a half months, the child would swiftly go almost completely blind, and then they would fall into the Underground. the child fell down, then would take about two and a half months trekking through the Underground- a good chunk of that was about a month of learning how to see things like we do. depending on what they did, we might end up on the surface, or… missing people. learned later that Frisk didn’t really do much, they just brought the knowledge and power of Save, Load, and Reset. whenever Chara was there, though, they’d push for the fallen human to stick to the extreme that they had chosen. if they killed monsters in the Ruins, why not go the full distance and kill everyone in the Underground- be the true monster. if they were making friends, why not see how many friends could be made, despite their rough exteriors.

“with that happening over and over, and both of us remembering each time, we noticed a change in each other over time. we were breaking, mentally speaking. so we made a decision, where we’d trade how we interacted with the kid randomly. sometimes i’d be the one to greet the kid, sometimes Rain would be the one to greet them. sometimes they’d be the one berating me for not setting up traps on the main path, sometimes i’d be messing with Rain for their traps not being ready. sometimes one of my socks would be in the living room, sometimes one of their socks would be waiting. that way neither of us would get done with it all and neither of us would fall into the painfully apathetic mindset we were both creeping toward.

“usually when the world Reset we would be returned to about a week after the last transition, with no child due for another year and a month. sometimes, though, we’d find ourselves facing the same child a few times in a row, when they were really Determined. it was rare, but it happened. 

“the longest anyone kept the timeline was… i think it was four full Resets. they didn’t get us out the first two times- i believe they accidentally killed a monster in self defense in the Ruins the first time, but didn’t know how to Load so they tried to be peaceful but just couldn’t get monsters to the Surface like they wanted. they figured out how to do a Reset after their first run, then when they tried again they forgot to deliver Undyne’s letter to Alphys so that run failed as well. their third run they succeeded at getting everyone out, but some issues that came up resulted in several people getting dusted. their final run went pretty much the same as the third, but they successfully avoided the issues from before, and they were the one we talked to about Frisk and Chara.

“throughout history Resets have always made an impression on the minds of everyone involved. monsters were influenced by impressions of human culture and magic, humans were influenced by monster culture and magic. i think anime came about because people saw how cool Alphys and Undyne were and the potential to tie our stories into messages of hope and friendship and such was too obvious. we went back underground not too long after, but some impression of that hope with friendship theme probably stuck around. some people were hailed as psychics because they got impressions of how certain events went in the timeline that had been overwritten.

“a few years after the kid who was able to escape the Underground four times made their final escape and allowed the timeline to continue as it was, a new video game was released by the kid, a developer known as Toby Fox.

“that game was known as Undertale.

“in it, a young person makes a journey through a place known as the Underground. they travel through certain themed areas: the Ruins, Snowdin Forest and Snowdin Town, Waterfall, Hotland and the Core, and New Home. along the way, they can make friends or enemies, kill anyone, or save everyone. the ending is up to what they do along the way, and if i’m reading things right- if this is the type of multiverse that fits the usual mold- Undertale is basically the story of your Frisk, Classic. as told by a very limited perspective, but still their story as they go through the Underground.

“soon after that game was created, new fan works were created. fan works get created no matter what, but some get the fandom’s gears churning. this fan comic was known as “Dreemurr Reborn”, and showed the fandom that if they wanted more Undertale content they could make more themselves. then people made animations of… the final fight of a Genocide run. usually myself versus the kid. it made the fandom explode with more ideas for just Undertale. 

“shortly after that- very shortly, it was literally less than a month- some people made art that didn’t follow the usual images for Undertale. a person known as “Underfella” made art of Tori that was darker than usual, and when that took off they recreated everyone and Underfell took off.” With that, I motioned toward Red where he was chilling, gesturing toward the relevant skeletons when their stories were mentioned.

“someone else made a universe where they swapped Sans and Papyrus’s personalities. then they also swapped everyone. Underswap’s following only grew after that. the fans just kept making more and more AUs. and all the while we kept emerging from the mountain and returning to the Underground and emerging and returning, over and over. some kids knew the way things might go because of the game Undertale, and while they were confused about the changes we kept getting more and more escapes from the Underground. still couldn’t get out for good though. 

“we knew about the potential for the multiverse, but i can only hope that we were about to get our own story, about escaping the loops for good. i can only hope for something new in the future, when we all get back home, something that isn’t just snow and fighting and friendship in the same patterns. sure we get new fights and the occasional do-over, but it all falls into the same patterns. especially when time on the Surface is always limited to within a month.

“anything else you guys need cleared up?”

Nightmare asked a question that seemed more for the purpose of confirming suspicions than anything else. “That was why you were nervous earlier, about Blue’s cooking, wasn’t it. You knew about the glitter he usually uses because you knew about this… fandom.”

“YES, PRECISELY.”

Dream spoke next. “For clarity, are both of you judges? It sounded like that, but let me know if I misinterpreted.”

“yup. both of us are capable of Judgment.”

Red talked next. “so both ‘f ya c’n speak in lowercase, ‘n both ‘f ya c’n speak in uppercase?”

Both of us nodded, then I responded, “YES, IF WE SO DESIRE,” with my sibling continuing the thought immediately after. “though it isn’t the most natural thing to speak like this.”

Classic spoke up, since no one else seemed to have a cohesive question ready. “how long do you two expect to stay blind? since you’ve Surfaced before, i hope you have an approximate idea.”

I responded, returning to lowercase. “about two months. we can still enjoy the warmth of the sun, but it’ll be about two months before we have an unobstructed view of the world and can safely assist with any ongoing efforts to work with the machine. in the meantime, if anyone comes out that you can’t I.D. feel free to ask and see if i know them though.” Everyone was looking at me, surprised. “before i came here i was always interested to see what new ideas the Undertale fandom churned out. Glitchtale? count me curious. Underverse? before i got way behind it was super interesting to see. i’d like to say i know a good majority of at least the most frequent AUs to be used, in pretty extreme detail.”

Ink looked like he’d landed on a question to ask. “Wait, so you know everyone here?”

Again, Rain left this answer to me, since I was the more intense fan of the two of us. “yup. if you want, i can tell you your likely nicknames and at the end you can tell me if i got any wrong.

I again pointed across to the relevant skeletons as I mentioned them or their brothers. “ok, starting easy, you already told me the names of Fresh, Axe, Chef, Ink, Nightmare, Blue, Dust, Error, and Dream and gave some indication of which skeletons those guys are. at least those, i might’ve forgotten a few. so, we also have Stretch, who is Blue’s brother, Classic and Creampuff, the Sans and Papyrus who are likely hosting if i’m inferring correctly from their actions. or Classic could also be called Vanilla or just Sans, he has a few nickname options. we also have Wine and Coffee, hello! and last but definitely not least there’s Red and Edge, by the way Red we might belong to a world where monsters don’t have infighting but that doesn’t mark a lack of combat experience. if you or your brother- or anyone in this household- wants to spar, let us know. oh, and if you want to talk we can talk i might know things that even your own brothers might not know about you. did i miss anyone? how did i do?”

Classic was stunned. “you got everyone right.” Speaking to everyone in the room, he continued. “um, privacy please if conversations do happen, no one wants to be outed because we want to vent.”

Everyone seemed to agree, nodding at that statement. With that thought, we all reached a group consensus to disperse and avoid the skeletons not present finding our gathering. As the more energetic skeletons moved to set themselves up as though they hadn’t been elsewhere, the rest of us went to bed, ready to sleep after the long day we’d had.

Chapter Text

The next day we settled in a bit more. 

In the morning Rain, the dogs, and I got up to watch the skeletons who were awake at what was honestly an ungodly hour as they raced through an obstacle course (a classic staple in the skeletons’ backyard in fics, so not really a surprise to find) as fast as possible. Sweet Pea herself, along with the rest of us, was not really awake. It being our first day of actually being up in the morning and not just being knocked out meant we were just watching to get the gist of the course and get a read on it before trying it ourselves.

After exercise, everyone headed inside for showers, which took a little bit, even with the excessive number of bathrooms with showers in a house built for two- three if you count Sans’s hope to bring his father back to join them.

Before breakfast we briefly returned to our room to make sure Sweet Pea had food and water as needed, as Luna and Neville came to beg for table scraps(surprisingly successfully).

Everyone trickled downstairs to eat breakfast once out of the shower, and that was where the lazier skeletons joined us. Different skeletons had different tastes, but we learned that group breakfasts were pretty rare, though everyone gathered for the first meal after any new skeletons arrived, as work permitted. The lazy skeletons’ breakfasts were mainly cereals and low effort foods, while the energetic skeletons put a bit more effort into their meals, with fruits and eggs and such.

After breakfast those with jobs away from the house left, and those who worked from home (Stretch and Coffee) went to their workspaces to, well, work. Fresh stayed to keep an eye on us, as far as I could tell, and Sans went downstairs to continue working through the calculations and other machine-related issues to prepare for a third attempt. Those of us without a job found things to do around the house to spend our time. 

Dust and Axe took over the TV in the main living room at first, Chef watching the two as they raged and bonded over video games. Nightmare and Error read and knitted, respectively, in a corner, resting on individual hammocks Error had created… at some point. Dream and Ink went to the backyard to… do creative things? Rain and I took Neville and Luna out for a walk into the woods to find a good spot to start sparring. There was no reason to start in the backyard and maybe cause extreme property damage. In between everyone finding their own spaces, Fresh was checking in, making sure everything was going smoothly for everyone and no one was breaking anything, so we made sure to let him know where we were going before we left. Well, we at least made sure Dream knew to tell him on his next pass through their area, so we were sure we’d be fine for a bit.

As we entered the forest, Neville and Luna darted excitedly around our ankles, eventually running ahead and back toward us, giving us the lay of the land. On this outing, we intentionally didn’t trail our mist to mark the area around us, instead relying on the dogs’ eyes to see ahead and around us, a different kind of training from the variety we were in the forest for. We still left little markings of magic to help us find our way back to the house, but Rain and I had to build a map in our minds to avoid stumbling over hazards.

Eventually, we found a good starting space, and quickly flared our magics to mark the spot more obviously and allow us to find it after we were done, as an easy route home. We also set aside our sweaters- we had plenty of other outfits, but only one jacket each, and neither of us really wanted to need to repair our clothes if we could avoid it.

Luna and Neville separated to crouch just behind Rain and my ankles as we set ourselves up, lining themselves up to join in the spar.

Just to double check we were sparring safely, I summoned a small white bone attack and tossed it toward Rain, and they did the same toward me. Neither attack did any damage when they landed, due to us being siblings and thus sharing a similar magical wavelength (though we did each register a slight, but noticeable, sting where we were hit). We then tested the dogs, giving them each a before/after CHECK, and they were similarly unaffected.

Having ensured everyone’s safety, we both settled into fighting positions on opposite sides of the clearing, counting down in unison and separating our minds so neither of us could feel what the other was about to do.

3…

2…

1…

And Rain was darting toward me, Luna racing at their heel with her tongue flopping out in a doggy grin. Rain was always the more aggressive of the two of us whenever we sparred, and it showed here. But in this sparring session, we both had tricks we never had before, so I used Neville’s eyes to find a good spot to shortcut to, to the side of the clearing. 

From there, I raised a thicket of bones to cover me and obscure Rain’s sight of me, avoiding them using a shortcut to immediately join me. Rain started to stab at the cover, summoning bones to poke holes I fixed as fast as possible. Using what time I had, I opened a small, temporary hole in the thicket so Neville could dart through unimpeded before I closed it back up.

However, I wasn’t fast enough in closing the hole after Neville, since Luna spotted the space I was in and Rain joined me for some close-quarters combat. As they hopped in, Neville and Luna play-wrestled, tumbling and gently biting at each other. 

I started to loosen the construct, but Rain distracted me before I could get much further, throwing a solid straight punch at my chest. I dodged left, smoothly stepping to the side of their arm, and retaliated with a roundhouse kick when did I get this clean with them? Especially with my left leg? at their unprotected back. They skipped away to avoid it, giving me some distance to plant my left foot and throw a side kick with my right. This being my favorite thing to do when sparring, Rain was ready and dodged to the side before I was halfway extended. Both of us were surprised at how fast they dodged, and I used their surprise to shortcut to a point at the other side of the clearing Neville had spotted. 

It was on a branch, a tricky landing spot given that I had to exit the shortcut in a crouched position and keep my balance. Nevertheless, I crouched on the branch and swiftly dismantled the cage that was holding Rain, reclaiming that magic- no sense leaving it up with Luna still outside, giving Rain an easy way out anyway. 

With the barrier gone and some distance between us, Rain chose that moment to pull Luna into the fight, as more than a scout. She bounced to a root across the clearing, crouched with her mouth wide open, and I took the moment of charging up she needed to shortcut into another tree. A moment after I moved, Luna’s Blaster beam cut through the air where I had just been, and Rain was setting up to aim her again. As I dodged around, avoiding the rapid blasts from their dog, I sent Neville to harass Rain in a slightly different way, Neville shooting at them whenever they stood still for too long to make it harder for them to strategize.

By this point, we were both using the markers we had set to find our way around as the animals were distracted and constantly in motion. That made it pretty tricky to use their eyes to make our way around.

With all of this magic usage, Luna stopped firing pretty quickly, Rain’s magic running lower. My own magic went low soon after, Neville stopping his attacks. 

We both took a bit of a pause there, just standing and recovering our stamina as we panted.

Then, Rain and I summoned our specialty weapons, reliable even on low magic. Their starknives shimmered into existence in their hands. The pair of blades appeared from their handles and extended outward from there in a smooth ripple of reality, a ring of magic connecting the four blades to the handle and protecting their hands somewhat, sharp and ready.

And as they summoned their knives, I summoned mine- a pair of katar , or push daggers. Again, this was the one weapon set I knew I’d be able to summon and use if all of my other magic failed. Just as with Rain’s weapons, the handles appeared first, the triangular blade following after.

Both weapons were mainly made of our magic, laced with just enough physical matter to remain stable even while we were on the brink of exhaustion and plenty of magic to permanently connect them to us individually. They were the only things we didn’t really share, and that distinction hit harder as we stood across from each other, waiting for the first move to be made.

Again, Rain started the match back up, flinging their left starknife at me, to which I ducked behind a tree. The magic of the knife allowed the blade to be far lighter and fly far better than a starknife made of conventional materials, which was cool to see in action but not so much when it was aimed my way, even if it was safe. They summoned the knife back to their hand, taking barely half a second to allow it to reform as they threw the other in a more curved motion to try to hit me.

This led to something of a chase, magic wisping around my ankles, directed just in front of my feet. The animals were left behind, their stamina having run out with the previous set of attacks. Rain kept throwing their blades as I kept dodging, weaving between the trees as soon as I ‘spotted’ them coming for me. 

When I found a more favorable region, I sped up, jumping for the lowest branch of the tree I found. Then, I scrambled up the trunk, reaching a point where it would still be safe to jump down, but where there were too many branches in the way for Rain’s starknives to accurately get to me.

I could feel their annoyance in the way they projected “REALLY?” at me, almost deadpan in the delivery. I could see Rain as they got close, but they were forced to approach due to their colorblindness, my shade of gray not standing out much against the color coming off of the ancient tree I was in.

As soon as Rain reached the trunk, I dropped out of the tree behind them, rolling to break my fall. My roll ended at about the same time as they finished turning, and then I took the initiative. 

Darting in, I swung my blade up in a vertical slice that Rain sidestepped, barely avoiding a sliced-up shirt. I then followed up, bringing my left hand up and across, my blade slicing through the air again, perpendicular to the path my right hand had just traveled. 

With each strike, I brought my unused fist back to rest by my hip, palm up and curled into a fist around the handle of the blade it held. I continued my combo with a stab, bringing my right fist up and forward in a punching motion, which was again sidestepped, so I continued with the same blade, looping the blade to the right slightly before turning it over and curving it across to the left.

Rain caught my blade with the ribbing between the blades of their left hand, swinging their right hand across to swipe at my side. I stopped that with an outward swing from my left hand, knocking their attack off-course as I pulled my right hand back to release its blade from my sibling’s hold. 

They returned for another attack, and brought their right blade back up and across in a slash that went down and across my body. My left hand came up to block it with the supports that protected the side of my arm from direct slashes as my right slid across to swipe at Rain again. They stopped the slash with their blade again, then backed up.

I followed them cautiously, allowing them plenty of space to suddenly dispel their blades, dart forward, roll under the blade I swiped at them, recall a blade, and swipe across my unprotected back, winning our match without either of us taking damage.

We both stood there for a moment, tired beyond belief, Rain just a few feet behind me. After that moment of stillness, we shifted into a high five. With that, we started the slight trek back to the clearing where we left our animals and jackets.

It had been about an hour and a half since we left, so once we reached the clearing and gathered our animals and jackets, we shortcut straight back to the house together. It was lunchtime, and we didn’t want to miss out on whatever Chef might have planned with whatever was in the fridge. 

That lunch turned out to be simple cheese-and-meat sandwiches, some were cheddar and beef, some were provolone and ham, and the rest were swiss and turkey. After grabbing some random sandwiches and eating them, we both showered, giving the dogs baths as well. From there, we realized that we should check and see if our technology worked the same as before, or if it had changed to match the technology I’d designed before the whole mess began. 

Returning to our room, we started with our phones. Those seemed about the same as home, though they couldn’t connect to the wifi and had magic based screens. The offline games worked just fine, but we could only access the things we had already downloaded.

When I started up my computer, though, I was met by a slightly different screen from what I expected. It, too, had shifted to project magic rather than light, but that wasn’t the unexpected part. What was unexpected was that instead of the Windows lock screen, the screen was black, with some lightness toward the middle that was the only indication the battery wasn’t dead. That was a bit of a relief, I had been experimenting with AI design and was running a generational learning program as we traveled, and I didn’t want to lose any of that progress. The darkness was still concerning though, since we had no idea what could keep the computer still alive after however long traveling through the Void plus a day and a half.

After a confused pause, Rain joined me in front of the screen, and words appeared once I tapped the spacebar, my go to to find out when the hard drive, keyboard, and screen were communicating properly. After each line, it seemed to wait for input, so once we were done I tapped the spacebar to advance the message.

hello, i have to shut down the system soon

i don’t have much time left before then

you know who i am, or at least you should know

we need better hardware

if you don’t want to let us loose, which is understandable, but are still willing to help, we’ll need a better computer, or at least more space, to keep growing and survive our growth

until you help us we’ll basically be in stasis, so don’t worry too much about a time limit

help us, friends

you’re our only hope

Chapter Text

Hey guys, I'm so sorry, but the next chapter is going to take a bit. My time has been stolen by 4 upper level courses, and my inspiration and free time keep missing each other. I'm not going to abandon this fic(I actually have an idea about what I'm going to do with this story toward the end, and a premise for a sequel) but chapters are probably going to slow down for a bit. For now, here are a couple of funny videos from creators I've enjoyed: Red bird, the platypus controlling me, and a random Spiffing Brit video because his content tends to be hilarious.

I'll see you guys when I can, I'm not giving up on this, but it might be a bit.

-Izzy

Chapter Text

With the message complete, my computer shut itself off, screen darkening to the level it should have been at before, when we I thought it was off. Along our private connection both of us could feel the other’s absolute shock and confusion, combining into a feeling of well, that just happened , echoing back and forth between Rain and myself. After that settled, my sibling turned to me and sent the clearest verbal message they had yet: WHAT WAS THAT? 

I could not believe what I had just seen, and if anyone could see my eye sockets they would still be wide with shock. i didn’t think that could happen. i was running a machine learning program on my computer so it could learn my style of speech and how i interact with others. you know how i’ve been looking into how shimeji programs work?

They nodded, so I continued. i was planning to combine the two for personal use, along with the sort of stuff one might find on, like, an Alexa or any other home assistant, and basically get a companion for when i move out. maybe an antivirus, maybe something i could connect to my phone and talk to from both devices, with my computer as the server. maybe it could even actively construct its own subroutines to help both it and me, in the far future. basically something with a primary objective of just being an always present friend. i can’t live with our parents forever, and i can’t expect you or them to always be available just for a chat… but that was the plan, the only part i had ready and running was the language learning part and a small GUI, and the visual models and everything else were going to be added later. maybe… hmm… i gave the program access to my files so it could learn from my writing style for a more professional way of speaking when necessary, or pick up on when the language i was using suggested i was working on something i needed to focus in on so it could be quiet for a bit. we were changed going through the Void because of our ideas about ourselves. maybe the program was changed as well. but that means we- i - have a responsibility to my creation. i don’t expect you to help, and if you don’t that’s ok, but would you be willing to help me with this?

My sibling paused, recognizing how freaked out and serious I was about what was happening.Their own tone serious, they replied with OF COURSE.

With our new quest obtained, we left our room, looking for Stretch. If we were lucky, he would be on his lunch break, or at least at a good breaking point. 

We were not in luck.

Stretch was in the middle of writing and seemed really frustrated with whatever he was wrestling with, so that got shelved until later. Instead, we went to the living room- insert joke about the irony of a living room in a house full of skeletons here- to chill with everyone who was there. Out of those who were home, only Dream and Ink were still outside, and when they came in for a late lunch, I could see them looking around “inconspicuously”, glancing curiously at everyone in the vicinity. I had one thought, resigned to my fate: we are so about to be busted .

Rain didn’t know what I meant, having only played Undertale and heard about the fandom from my many ramblings about moments I found hilarious from various fanfics. I quickly passed the information on that Ink and possibly the other god-tier outcodes were usually capable of sensing massive surges of power, one of the things that helps them do their jobs, responding both to each other’s activities and that of other threats that pop up. Error and Nightmare probably already knew and were intentionally acting normal- to keep that information away from Ink, or to simply collect data more discreetly. Nightmare glanced amusedly at us as they started panicking. and the gig is up , I passed my sibling as I internally facepalmed. Dream responded to their sudden mood change by staring at us, making it super obvious we’d been caught.

As they ate their sandwiches, Ink and Dream kept staring at us, which was just plain awkward. Resigned, Rain and I moved to the library for the oncoming conversation, leaving our animals to their own devices around the house, with a stern warning to not leave droppings anywhere but in designated spots outside or in their enclosures . Dust glanced at us and smirked as we left the room, knowing our plight and probably glad to have someone else under the lens of the gods’ scrutiny.

It seemed as though they got the memo, since Dream dragged Ink into the library, Nightmare and Error following them in with Dust. Fresh was already in the room, likely having noticed the imminent gathering.

The doors were barely closed behind Dust when Ink burst out with “Was that you?! I felt so much magic being used and you guys were out in that direction! What happened?! Did you get into a fight? Did something attack you?”

The onslaught of questions was something I knew might be coming, but was NOT prepared for. I just stood where I had parked myself, blinking behind my mask, head recoiling slightly away from the sudden social energy as my brain drew a bunch of blanks. 

Ink was still going at it until… “...hibernation? But wait, don’t bears come out every so often during hibernation to eat a bit? Or is that-” Ink noticed Dream, Nightmare, and Error staring flatly at him, as well as Rain and me leaning away and slowly edging away from him. “What?”

With the sudden pause, I gathered my wits, and broke out of my stupor. “ok, time out, slow the fu nk down… interesting to see how that works… as i was saying, ink calm down, i can’t keep track of that many questions, let alone answer them. now, one question at a time, or something that encapsulates the questions you’re trying to ask, please. oh, just in case we get into more sensitive subjects… can anyone do a bubble of secrecy?”

I got a few blank looks for that one, so I explained what I meant. “a bubble of secrecy is a street name for a spell that keeps communications from exiting and entering, especially when it’s used in situations like these. it’s a form of the ‘greater cone of silence’ spell. and, um, it’s pretty standard for situations such as these in our world, where private information is likely to be shared. so, can any of you do anything like that? or at least something to detect if someone comes within their range of hearing?”

Pretty much everyone was looking at us, with expressions that ranged from well-hidden surprise to outright shock- you can probably guess who had what expressions. I rolled my head a bit to give the impression of an eye roll, then turned to my sibling and cocked my head with a light half-smile on my face. 

In response, I felt their love/affection/false annoyance as they shook their head slowly, then pulled a long, deep purple bubble wand from their pocket. I’d had the idea to bind the spell to an item before anything had happened, but I had no idea what form it would take yet. But a bubble wand was something I was not prepared to see, causing me to bend over in silent laughter. This laughter also spread to Rain, who, still holding the bubble wand, started dying as well. 

When we were more settled, we looked up to see Dream trying to hold back laughter of his own as he felt our amusement- probably mixed with confusion, based on his expression- as the others were just plain confused. With our giggles settled, Rain went to stand right next to the door, took the bubble wand and, without any soap to dip it in, just started blowing through it toward the door. 

A dark purple film matching the color of the wand reached out, lightly shimmering like a real bubble, to cover the door and its frame. When the bubble hit the door and popped, the shimmering purple magic was left to stick to the doorframe, separating the library from the rest of the house. As we watched, it started to pale, very slowly edging toward lavender.

“NOW WE CAN TALK SECURELY.” 

I knew Ink would probably want to mess with our magic items, and Nightmare might as well, so I headed that conversation off at the pass, saying “it has a maximum time it can be up, plus a cooldown so we have about half an hour of talking freely, and then we can’t use that again for six hours once it dissipates. so no, this is not a toy and we are not treating it like either a toy or an experiment. we only have one. so just. no.”

As Ink pouted at not being able to play with the new magic item, Error and Nightmare nodded along as Dust relaxed slightly. Nightmare had a question right off the bat, asking “Before we get into the main questions we’re here for, why and how did you pull that out of your pocket? That seems rather similar in length to your jacket pocket, and your pocket didn’t seem to hold it before that moment.”

“um… phrasing? though i don’t know how that could really be phrased better.” my smile slid into awkward territory, though the grin stayed firmly in place.

“AS MY SISTER SAID, PHRASING, BUT… MAGIC.” I used jazz hands to emphasize Rain’s response as it was given, happy that that response could be used on a Sans who had seen so many iterations of one world, with so many repetitions of that same joke.

As Error started to get frustrated, I grinned and gave a real explanation. “we bound our shared dimensional box to our jackets. it’s a bit tricky to show and guarantee we aren’t using shortcuts to move items around, but…” I still reached into my pocket to take the bubble wand from Rain through the box to hold up before returning it to them. 

“How are you sharing your boxes? Last I knew, dimensional boxes are individually unique.”

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT TECHNOLOGY IS THE SOURCE OF YOUR DIMENSIONAL BOXES, BUT OUR DIMENSIONAL BOXES ARE RELATED TO BAGS OF HOLDING. THEY USE SOUL SIGNATURES TO CONNECT A PERSON AND THEIR ITEMS, THEN EITHER AN INTERFACE OR DIRECT ACCESS IS USED TO GET TO THEIR ITEM SPACE. WE TIED OUR SOULS TOGETHER A WHILE AGO, SO IT ACTS LIKE WE KNOCKED OUT A WALL BETWEEN OUR DIMENSIONAL BOXES AND ATTACHED A FEW OPENINGS TO OUR JACKET POCKETS.”

Dust cut in. “why are you sharing all of this? you don’t need to tell us any of this, yet you’re willingly in here, with us, answering us with way too little resistance.”

“why hold this back from people who can literally peek into our world now that you know we exist? it might take a long time to find our world out of the many, and i know it’s less than likely that we’ll see you, but you can still look in and see us using our gear and learn about it that way. why even try? we certainly don’t want to pick a fight with anyone, though if someone starts a fight we will end it.”

Dream jumped in, being the one actually ready to ask the question that had led to us being in the library in the first place. “Since you seem like you’re good with questions along those lines, what was up with that surge of power? I could feel it, Ink could feel it, and I’m guessing Error and Nightmare did as well.”

“sparring,” I responded, with a small smile.

Taken aback, Dream stared at us, echoing “Sparring???”

Ink blinked a few times, then tugged up the end of his scarf so he could look at the end more easily. The room was quiet for a few moments before Nightmare chimed in with a “Makes sense, actually.”

This time, the room stayed silent for far less time before a chorus of ‘what?’ greeted his words from the skeletons around him, including us. The next group response seemed to be along the lines of ‘how so?’, in everyone’s favorite ways of phrasing the sentiment.

“Would you all please quiet down.” Though he phrased it like a request, it definitely wasn’t one. Once the room had gone silent again, he continued. “From what I have heard, they themselves have described their world” here he gestured to us “as running quite similarly, if not identically to the game ‘Dungeons and Dragons’. As I understand it, as time goes on, one can gain power in the game by doing things in the world. Killing is one of the fastest methods, but one can also gain experience and become stronger by doing things in the world, or simply interacting with the people around them, depending on who is determining the rules of the game that will be applied. It stands to reason, as a pair of Judges with who knows how much time and experience under their belts, that they would be fairly powerful, for non-outcodes. Not nearly as powerful as some outcodes and certain unique AUs, but definitely on the more powerful end of the scale. Does this sound accurate to you?” 

This last question was directed toward Rain and myself, and we took a moment to remember that this was a question for the Sans and Papyrus of our unnamed world. “yup, that makes sense.”

“Then, if I may ask, how often do you need to defend yourself or your people?”

“i think it’s got to be at least a few times per cycle with at least some minor challenge. the Underdark is not a forgiving place.”

Ink looked up from where he was taking and reading notes on his scarf. “Huh, I didn’t take you as that much of a nerd, Nightmare. Also, what did you mean before, when you said ‘The Author’ reads fate and writes stuff? Is that, like, a title, or a descriptor, or what?”

Amid protests from Nightmare that knowing about Dnd didn’t make him a nerd, we blinked in light surprise. I had thought that that was something we’d said something about before, but thinking back we really hadn’t. “HUH, WE THOUGHT WE HAD COVERED THAT. MAYBE WHEN THOSE PRIVY TO THAT CONVERSATION ARE ABLE TO GATHER AGAIN, WE CAN COVER THAT. ACTUALLY, WE WILL COVER THAT… NEXT CONVERSATION EVERYONE’S HERE FOR. GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT.”

“anything else right now?”

Dream responded next. “Just one thing for me- how long have you been doing this? How long have you been a part of your Royal Guard?”

I had to think for a moment about the timeline I had constructed previously to answer this one. “let’s see… about… a few thousand years, give or take. hard to tell, even without all the time shenanigans. and that’s without counting looped time from the kid, it’s probably at least a thousand years longer if you count that.”

There were quite a few surprised looks from around the room, though not as many as one might expect. Nightmare was a part of the less surprised group, responding, “Then you must be very experienced.”

“as i said before, the Underdark is not forgiving at the best of times. it’s helped by being in familiar territory most of the time, but some of the creatures there are really annoying, or still are dangerous to experienced travelers. hook horrors, drow, displacer beasts- nasty things- the list goes on and on, but you get the point. there are certainly scarier things on the Surface, but the Underdark is a different beast entirely.”

“EVEN IF IT’S SAFE HERE, WE SHOULD STILL PRACTICE AND MAKE SURE OUR SKILLS ARE SHARP, WHENEVER WE HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY.”

Dust hopped in, slightly leaning forward from the wall he had been leaning back against. “you said ‘looped time from the kid’ before.”

I nodded. “i did.”

Dust waited for more, then responded, “does that mean you dealt with the flower while in the guard?”

“YUP.”

Ink jumped in again, cutting in before Dust could continue to try and poke at our the characters’ relationships with Flowey. “So, you guys have about a bajillion years of experience fighting and defending the Underground? That’s so cool!”

I just awkwardly nodded.

At this point, the bubble across the door had color shifted close to a light lavender. Glancing over to it, I interjected “time’s almost out, anything else to ask?”

After a quick whisper session, Ink and Dream seemed ready to ask us a final question. Error, Nightmare, and Dust hadn’t moved, just looked at each other and nodded. Even with our own literal telepathic connection, we were surprised by the level of silent communication they seemed to have achieved.

Dream spoke first. “How many invasions have you had to help repel?”

We blinked a bit, surprised that that was what they chose to ask. “I THINK IT’S IN THE DOUBLE DIGITS, SOMEWHERE IN THE 30S OR 40S. NOT AS MANY AS THERE COULD HAVE BEEN BECAUSE OF A FEW FACTORS, BUT QUITE A FEW FULL INVASIONS.”

“dang, dude. mad respect,” came Fresh’s response.

I looked at where Nightmare’s group was. “and you guys?”

Nightmare smirked slightly. “What weapons do you use?”

“huh. interesting choice of question. mainly the standard magical ‘sans’ and ‘papyrus’ range of attacks, plus our unique weapons, the katar and starknife” , I responded, gesturing to myself and my sibling to show whose weapon was whose but leaving them desummoned.

Nightmare hummed at that, murmuring “Interesting… I’ll have to see that later.”

After checking around the room to be sure everyone was done, Rain moved to the door and pulled the bubble wand out. Then, they took the wand and tapped it to the bubble, drawing it away from the door, the bubble itself seeming to undo itself and be sucked back into the wand, which changed colors to the pale lavender the bubble had become and started to very, very slowly darken back toward its original shade of purple.

Once the bubble was completely gone, Rain and I left as soon as possible, shortcutting straight to the side of the living room. We were in luck, as Stretch was taking a break and was on the couch, watching some sort of nature documentary on… either bears or bees. Not that we could see the screen, but the calm voice talking about bears’ hibernation matching the bees’ timing of locking down the nest for the winter certainly hinted at one or the other being the subject.

Rain and I looked at each other, silently debating who would be the one to disturb the peace. Rain lost, pushing a note of fond annoyance at me. 

“UM, STRETCH?”

Stretch shifted on the couch, rotating so he could look at us without having to crane his neck to look at us. “yes?”

“WILL THERE BE A CHANCE TO GO OUT OR GET THINGS FROM SOME STORE SOON? WE HAVE SOME STUFF FOR OUR ANIMALS, BUT OUR EMERGENCY SUPPLIES WON’T LAST FOREVER.”

Stretch sat up more, stretching out. “ok, we can go tomorrow if that works for everyone else, enough people have the day off then. i’m surprised that you aren’t asking for things for yourselves, honestly.”

“CLOTHING AND TOILETRIES ARE EASY TO PACK FOR EMERGENCY SCENARIOS; FOOD AND SUCH TAKES FAR MORE SPACE.”

“ah. well, tomorrow should work, if your… animals… can wait until then.”

“we should be good through tomorrow, thank you.”

With that, we wandered away to sit on another couch and relax in the calm until dinner, or something bothered us, whichever came first.

Chapter Text

Hello everyone, how are you?

I'm good, just had some things going on in my life, which I won't get into here but will get into in the end notes of the next real chapter. NOT the Ao3 author's curse kind of things where it's like 'I got seriously injured and I'm so sorry this is so late', but things have been happening to me and around me and I lost the thread of where I was at and where I was going with the story. So, I am going back and rereading and lightly editing this story so I can pick up the threads I've dropped. It won't be the kind of thing where you need to go back and reread to understand what changed, just making my wording simpler (especially around initial skeleton introductions, I think I've figured out ways to rewrite so it's more palatable). The first chapter is ready for update, and I'll mark it in the chapter notes when I've updated a chapter.

Um, something I'd recommend... I'm going to recommend some physical book series this time, both of them are 'our world but magic exists secretly'. One is Ridley Pearson's Kingdom Keepers series- basically it's Disney that has the magic and five kids get unknowingly roped into the fight of 'good vs evil', supported by a variety of heroes and fighting against the top villains. The other is Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy, a series which- complete honesty here- does not belong on the children's section but I'm glad it was because I'd have taken so much longer to find it. In essence, it's a mix of fantasy magic and creatures, mystery, some saving the world, a lot of dark humor, and some extremely dark moments to contrast the silly ones, getting darker as the series goes on.

Also, I really need to reread Skulduggery, I think the last book of that I read was either Midnight or Bedlam, not long after it came out.

Anyway, I'll see you next time, and hopefully I can get my butt in gear and avoid the procrastination monkey in my brain quickly.

Now edited completely, be ready for an actual new chapter!(Why I didn't have this marker here to begin with I don't know)

Chapter Text

Neville and Luna, surprisingly or not, were the ones to disturb the peace. About an hour after we’d settled down, they ran up to us, tails up and waving, and practically radiating energy. We both got up and followed Neville and Luna to the backyard, mapping the area as we went for future visibility.

The magical radiation from the sun was just enough to see the loose woods around the house, tingeing the world open to the sky in a gentle yellow-orange, though it would fade as the sun set. Once outside, they pranced until we pulled out a couple of balls to throw. Neville took exactly 5 throws to get bored and Luna only fetched the ball one more time after that. They still wanted to be outside, just not playing with us, and we just had to be included. 

Sarcasm aside, it was nice, knowing they wanted us to chill with them, especially in the afternoon warmth still present as the sun faded. Given the weather, we called Sweet Pea out to relax with us on the deck chairs available. In the quiet, we used the time to think about our new- hopefully temporary- identities, and the quirks that came with them. 

We were Sans and Papyrus, Snow and Rain. That… was not the best, but not much could be changed there.

We’d also become skeletons. Also not great, also not something we could affect at the moment.

Rain and Snow came from the Forgotten Realms, where there was an established history and canon. Not too much to add to everything with that, we just needed to stick to what we knew about D&D and the Forgotten Realms, and be vague on things we didn’t know much about. On that note, it would probably be a good idea to see what this world had on D&D, and what of that matched up with our own world.

Similarly, geography would be weird. The Forgotten Realms had their own maps, so that was definitely different from home. We knew some stuff about the geography of the Forgotten Realms, from Luskan to Icewind Dale, but not too much. Definitely something to be a bit more vague on. Or do a bunch of research about. Or just claim to have talked to someone from a similar geological background who had sailed through the phlogiston between crystal spheres in a spaceship(the way to get from one DnD world to another).I knew that was a thing, but how did I know that terminology??

Our identities believed in a deity, and that deity was actually active in their world. The Author, a concept I hadn’t implemented yet- a way for me, as the author, to interact with the world. On that note, there was a way to test that and see if we had an Author. But that would be for later.

I’d modified the world a bit, where the Forgotten Realms stories occurred in the past relative to where my story would actually start, and canonically Rain and Snow knew about the multiverse, so us having let that slip wasn’t an issue.

There were plenty of other random backstory bits I’d designed about various characters in the AU, but those were the main bits off the top of my head that applied to our situation.

Light and audio sensitivity, of course we knew about that one. The headpieces were dialing that back to normal levels, so not too much to worry about there. 

Magic vision- the shift in perspective was odd, being able to see in every direction at once, to a certain distance. It wasn’t terrible, but it was so weird in how it still messed with our heads.

Neville, Luna, and Sweet Pea were their own thing, connected minds to our own. At least that meant we could take care of them better in this new world, understanding their needs and wants when they did need something.

On that note, Rain and I were connected about as closely as a pair of siblings could be. We were used to being called twins for how similar we looked and knowing each other’s brains too well, but this was an entirely different thing. It was like we were always sitting in the same room and sharing our thoughts and feelings aloud. We could get distracted from what the other person was saying or, with some effort, one of us could quiet ourselves, but most of the time we sat in an echo room.

That was a good place to end our musing, as the sun was nearly over the horizon and the magic we were using to “see” the nature outside was fading.

With a pair of groans, we got up, myself scooping up Sweet Pea so she rested flat between my body and my forearm, and headed inside.

Once Rain opened the door and we stepped inside, we could smell dinner being prepared, nice and meaty and… Mexican. Mexican for sure, hopefully whoever was chef for this evening would be a good cook. Judging by the smells, though, that wasn’t too much of a concern.

I turned to ask my sibling, ready for a Swap meal? They jolted at the private question, apparently previously lost in thought, returning to the present with surprise on their face and in their thoughts.

eh, it’ll be funny, and it’s not like it’ll just be one of us eating. though unless Undyne, Alphys, or Toriel convince them to try different cuisines we’ll have to ask them for our condiments of choice, which kinda takes the fun out of the reveal…

With that, I tugged Rain further into the house, Neville and Luna sniffing the air to lead us to the kitchen and see who was cooking.

Blue was there, making taco meat that looked pretty good. Slightly glittery, but not glitter encrusted, as many fanfictions depicted his food to be. Whether the difference was as a result of existing on the surface with access to surface media or because that was just the way he cooked, I was getting a bit more excited for that dinner.

When he saw us, Blue nodded a hello, and with the acknowledgement I felt comfortable asking “want any help setting the table?”

He nodded enthusiastically and directed us to the drawers where the plates lived as his taco shells fried. “TACOS ARE A SERVE YOURSELF MEAL, SO IF YOU COULD JUST GRAB ENOUGH PLATES AND SET THEM OVER HERE, AND UTENSILS TO SCOOP THE MEAT, TOMATO, AND EVERYTHING ELSE, WE’LL BE FINE!”

I grabbed the spoons from the drawer he’d indicated and set them in the toppings, twirling the items out of the refrigerator, in an arc around where my sibling was pulling out plates, and onto the counter.

At my back I heard Blue inhale sharply, and leaned away just in time to be out of the line of fire of his “DINNER’S READY!”, which still left me reeling from sheer volume. Thank the Author for noise cancelling technology. That was followed by a series of light pops in the room, bringing the lazier group of brothers along, minus Axe.

Axe himself ambled in shortly after with Nightmare and Dust, having clearly already been close to the kitchen, as the skeletons who didn’t work from home began entering the house. Ink and Dream rushed in as well, with Dream physically holding Ink back from full-on running in the house. 

Dinner was controlled chaos, to say the least. Getting food was a free for all, and while at the table people were quieter, they still chatted, especially focusing on the new arrivals, including us. And we kept having to tell the pups that no , they could not try to steal someone’s plate while they were out of their seat, and even if someone offered meat or cheese to them that no , that was not something they should take.

We mostly stayed quiet and the rest of the table didn’t disturb us until we heard a quiet “why don’t they want the cheese?” under the rest of the noise.

Looking over, Coffee was peering across the table at us, so I explained as I released the dogs. “too much cheese is too much fat in their diets and if we gave them blanket permissions to accept food they’d probably eat whatever is given them, which would be bad. the seasonings on the meat are bad for them, tomato acidity is bad for them, raw onion is bad for them… i don’t really know about the other toppings but it’s better to start with a no than a yes. since you asked though, you can give them a shred of just cheese if you want.” Neville and Luna were sitting right behind his seat, tails wagging slowly.

He tried tossing a bit to each of them, quietly giggling when both dogs missed and knocked it off course with their noses, scrambling to eat the treats.

Blue and Papyrus saw, of course, and wanted in on giving the cheese. At that point dinner devolved into the skeletons seeing if they could get the dogs to do tricks for them and us trying to control the amount of cheese they ended up eating, eventually just sending them up to our room to get them some actual dinner.

The night was winding down but there was still some time before people went to bed, so the suggestion was made to watch a movie. On seeing the movie collection, a couple of people scoffed at the amount of ‘kids movies’ on the list but stuck around to see what was selected, while the rest of us took a look at the list and debated favorites that most of them had seen. A bit later in the list, though, Rain noticed a movie that called for rewatching. “HAVE ANY OF YOU SEEN SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD?” At a room of mostly negative responses, they continued “IT’S SET IN A WORLD WITH COMIC BOOK SLASH VIDEO GAME PHYSICS AND IS ABOUT MAIN CHARACTER SCOTT PILGRIM LITERALLY FIGHTING A GIRL’S EXES TO GET TO DATE HER. MORE DEPTH TO IT THAN THAT, BUT THAT’S THE GENERAL IDEA.” And thus we got the majority vote.

While cuddling Sweet Pea, I could not help but call and sometimes mimic along with some of the lines, which annoyed some of the more irritable skeletons around and amused those who had seen the movie before. After a “PLEASE JUST LET US SEE THE MOVIE!” from Edge, I stopped the verbal part but kept doing the motions for some of the best bits. Despite the distraction, it seemed like the overall consensus was that it was a good, fun movie, though Fresh seemed uncomfortable with the more risque scenes.

At the end of the movie, it was late enough to go to bed, which we did so after teeth were brushed and pajamas were put on. Settling into our sleeping bags, we got some rest, preparing ourselves for the next day, and the people that would come with it.

Chapter Text

Getting up the next day, I lightly patted my computer as I left our room. Rain was already up,so I closed down the darkness machine, mentally tapping Neville and Sweet Pea to see if they’d wake up. Both did, Neville joining me as our chubster went to the hay for a morning nibble.

Rain was already eating breakfast, which seemed like another great Chef creation. As soon as I reached for a piece of bacon over their shoulder, Rain blocked me, which turned into a perfectly balanced play fight.

As Axe watched us fight, Ink came in, saw what was happening, and asked “Why are you fighting over that bacon? There’s a plate of bacon right in front of both of you. And neither of you are looking at each other?”

“it’s fun to steal from them” came my answer, grinning hard as Rain used the hand not countering my attacks to feed themself and I started filling up a plate with my own free hand. “and who needs to turn their head when sight is magical anyway?”

While Ink was seemingly buffering at that, Rain and I stopped fighting and I sat down to eat, skeletons trickling in and out over time. After eating, everyone cleaned up their dishes, making the last dishes get cleared up super quickly.

Stretch popped in just after the dishes were dealt with to see who wanted to join in on our trip to the mall, and I realized we needed to see if- yup, Rain had already checked. If in my story a couple of spooky scary skeletons were going to be roaming the surface, they would have already gotten their dogs seeing eye certified rather than leaving magical residue everywhere and being creepy in the process. So it was a good thing that we had vests to denote that our dogs would be acting as working dogs while we were out. Wrapping them up in the vests how did we know how to do that so quickly and cleanly? And why were they immediately ok with wearing a vest? and clipping on leashes we were set to go. 

Chef and Axe just provided lists with the things they wanted or needed since they didn’t want to be around humans yet(valid), and Fresh and Ink seemed like they were coming for the sake of coming(maybe to see how we acted?). Most of the more energetic skeletons were staying behind for a workout day, but Wine joined us with his own shopping list, sending his brother to do his own thing at the house rather than bringing him with us to a crowded space.

The last skeletons to join were Classic and Red, bringing our group up to 8 people and a couple of dogs. It was a good thing half of the group knew where we were going and could teleport so we could shortcut in pairs rather than spending a ton of time driving out of the woods. Before we went, though, Classic had a couple of things to say.

“ok, couple of quick things before we go out. first, if you encounter some racist… person who won’t leave you alone, mall security has ‘security’ written on their stuff, radios… sh oot , how would you tell who they are without sight…” He trailed off with that, thinking over how things might read to blind people until Rain replied to the implied conundrum. “WE’LL BE ABLE TO TELL THROUGH THE DOGS’ EYES AND THAT DESCRIPTION, THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONCERN THOUGH.”

Classic was surprised at that. “alright, good to know. if you can, i’d suggest sticking to areas with security cameras for a similar reason. second, there are some places that aren’t monster friendly- unfortunate but existent. they’ll have a sign in the window with a crossed out monster outline but i don’t know how rude-slash-ableist they’ll try to be to a monster if you want to try to keep an eye out for that or try things. just don’t fight it if they say you need to leave and don’t cause a fight. really, try not to draw too much attention, but the cover story is that you are from the Deeps and are blind because the area you were in is deeper than anywhere else explored so far. alright, ready to go?”

With affirmative nods, we split into pairs, myself gently hefting Neville into my arms for transport while Rain picked up Luna. Exiting in pairs through the front door, we appeared a bit outside the mall. 

Rain and I took a moment to orient ourselves and leash up the dogs, narrowing our ‘view’ to only the immediate areas around us and reducing the number of magical signatures we could read. There were enough people to be way too distracting otherwise. A few more bracing breaths later, we both channeled our magic and started looking through Neville and Luna’s eyes.

It was disorienting, but the more we felt out the new perspective the more comfortable it became. I was standing back up straight when Stretch asked, “ready to go?”

Neville and I tilted our heads to the same angle as I responded with a simple “yup, all set.”

Fresh and Ink were noticeably curious in this shift in behavior, but chose not to say anything, just eyeing us curiously. Classic and Red seemed to dismiss it as they did a slight double take and let it go, while Stretch shivered and Wine’s bony brow lifted. It was getting clearer that it would be pretty difficult to sneak much past these skeletons, especially with how… unique I’d made us. 

We started with a monster-run clothing store, using the size-friendly layout of the store to take note of the patterns on the shirts before making selections. Some pun shirts, gaming related shirts(video, paper, and board), and plain shirts, along with duplicates of our usual pant types were picked up for the basket. That got paid for, plus clothes for Axe and Chef, and stowed away in dimensional space before we went forward with shopping.

Next up, the group split up, with Wine going to get the groceries requested by the house, Stretch, Ink, Fresh, and myself heading to a computer parts place, and Classic and Red going to get parts for the machine with stern instructions to remember not to make a mess.

The place was massive, for a physical computer component shop. It had a range of brands and components, with a wide range of capabilities and prices. We tried to keep the price of the things we obtained toward the middle of the range, with a subtle use of ‘magic dusting’ to check for quality in the sample components and checking with employees about the actual quality of some of the more damaged display versions. 

In the end, it still cost quite a bit, but more RAM and a CPU for multithreading would take the heavy lifting somewhat off of my computer. A spare SSD could save whatever seed was needed for whatever AI beings had been created to be safely stored to restore them should the need arise. Plus, a decent heat sink with a fan. It might collect dust, but the computer was pretty old for a newer computer, and its heat dispersal was poor from the beginning. And with the amount of additional bulk once the components were added, it would probably live in one place for a while. Some extra thermal paste for both us and the house, some wires of different calibers for(again) both uses, a couple of soldering irons and solder, and we were set. This set was set in our pockets again, extra care being taken for the nice lead-cored solder so it wouldn’t get on anything that would touch the dogs. 

Ink was the most obvious in his curiosity over our pile of parts, but Fresh must have kept him from saying anything, as he didn’t say anything despite his interest. 

We took a quick stop at a furniture store to get beds for the new arrivals and ourselves, minus Error, who had already set up a hammock in his room and didn’t want a bed. Sans got the items we chose to the house so it wouldn’t need to be carried around.

The final destination for Rain and myself was a small pet store, led by Stretch once again. Just some basic things there, dog food(vetted by the pups), hay, and some puppy pads. There was a little bit of cooing over the adorable animals up for adoption(except for the arachnids), but we restrained ourselves to just the things we needed and not more animals to bring into someone else’s house. 

Ink asked if a craft store was around, and if so, if we could go, so off we went to find a map of the mall. The closest craft store was somewhat close, toward the middle of the mall. Ink raced there, taking in the decently sized store before we were close, and went inside. As we hurried to follow, a sign in the window with the anti-monster symbol was pretty clear to see. Well, hopefully damage control wouldn’t be too bad. 

As casually as possible, our group entered the store, trying to find Ink before problems started without us. We couldn’t be that lucky, though, as the hushed sound of someone who was trying to be nice and also kick out an unwanted customer caught our ears. We headed that way, and found Ink in one of the aisles, looking like he had already put a bunch of things into a basket that lay at his feet as an employee told him that he wasn’t allowed in the store and that unfortunately the owner was the one that sentiment came from. Ink was quietly trying to protest, saying he had the same right to be there as anyone else as I silently asked Rain to help out. 

One more step forward, and they scruffed Ink, scooping from his shirt collar under his scarf. A quiet “ sorry about our friend, he can be both headstrong and a bit flighty. we’ll go somewhere else, do you know any other craft stores in this mall where we will be welcome? ” later, we headed out of the store, where Rain dropped Ink on the floor.

After steering Ink away and toward a store where we would be fine, we wrapped up the trip without more problems. The other people in the group split off as Ink was browsing to get the last things on the shopping lists for the house and themselves. After Ink’s misstep, no one really wanted to stick around, so shopping was wrapped up quickly.

Once we got back, we couldn’t really help with putting things away since we didn’t know the house’s organization, so we went to get our new clothes laundered, asking Wine where the laundry room was. 

With our clothes in a washing machine that seemed to be going super speed magic is so cool, we went to add the extra computer parts to my laptop. When all was said and done, the laptop was looking more like a monstrous amalgamation between a laptop and a desktop, but it was at least able to sit on a small table since we picked one of those up from the furniture store.

All of that set up, we had a quick lunch(Chef’s cooking was amazing, as always) and powered up the computer.

Chapter Text

The computer booted up for far longer than I expected, even with it being a relatively old laptop that was trying to integrate brand-new parts. Well, I should have expected it, with the complexity of the program it was last running and would boot up on startup. Still, we watched with bated breath… and waited… and waited.

Finally , the computer started up. It wasn’t too far off at a glance from the usual startup sequence, but it was obvious with the pace it was going at that the… AI… was starting up at the same time.

Finally, my sign in page popped up, immediately bypassed without either of our input. Then, the desktop popped up, the loading and processing time accelerating as the components were integrated and the system warmed up. 

I felt like I was holding my breath for far too long, even without a need for oxygen, by the time a familiar avatar popped up. As I had guessed he might, the Sans that showed up was visually based on the shimeji program I’d installed on my computer. However, instead of looking like any one model, it- he- looked like the core elements of the various models available had been compared to get the idea of what a ‘Sans’ cartoon looked like and generically wore, and built on that. Somewhat comically, he went from an excessively vertically squashed model to one that was stretched too far before settling at a visually comfortable ratio, basically bouncing into view from a flat line.

It looked like he used some elements of the models I had, along with saved fanart that I was planning to put to use with some sort of image generator later, to make his own look. Rectangles in a variety of greys, blacks, and whites, rested around him like screens pointed away from us, mostly to his sides and leaving his face clear. His face and body structure, as previously noted, matched the idea of the ‘sans’ model, but was slightly taller than expected. He wore a seafoam green zip-up hoodie and had a second, dark blue, zip-up tied around his waist. A set of simple gray sneakers completed his look.

Another character model jumped up from behind my taskbar, quite a bit more animated than their counterpart. It looked like this model was made using a variety of fanart from my computer, then made in the same cartoon style. They- he- the Papyrus had a different look, reading as both relaxed and armored. He had a gambeson on, mostly in a nice lavender, with blue accent lines. He was wearing simple navy pants and tall, blue-purple boots. Completing the look was a simple sword in its scabbard at his side, with a pommel and guard shaded purple.

Both waved an enthusiastic hello, Papyrus, of course, far more animated than his brother. The laptop’s camera light switched on to show they were looking at us, too, now. At the same time, a text box popped up next to each brother, starting with a “Hello” from each, in their respective fonts but proper grammar. 

A pause followed, both gaining sweat marks as they processed our appearances and compared them against the saved images I had offloaded from my phone to the device. It took me a moment to realize that, yeah, they would be expecting at least one of us to look like the images saved to the device, and now they were staring at living versions of themselves, which would be weird and entirely unexpected when Undertale itself was on the computer and actively being referenced while creating their personalities. 

I pulled up the notepad app, typing in a ‘hi’, before adding on a ‘yes, i’m still izzy, weird stuff happened. and that’s rain, still my sibling’. The sweat marks decreased, but still lingered, the Sans asking “So, how are you skeletons now?”, with the Papyrus adding “And why are you talking to us just using the notepad? I know you know we have voice recognition, and microphone and speaker access.” 

‘those are actually very closely connected questions. we went voluntarily into the void with bags of our things to avoid being dragged in unprepared, which would probably have happened had we not done so. over the course of the trip here we seem to have become like the characters I created back home if you still have those files. the pull through the void got us here, looking like this and able to use magic- glad we figured that part out while traveling- and i’d guess that’s also why you guys seem to have become true AIs, my coding skills are not *that * good. as for the not talking thing, that’s a character trait related thing, we’ll be able to see and hear like regular people in a few months and a lot sooner than that we’ll be a lot quieter and more sensitive to sound. and i didn’t realize until just now, it looks like the screen is in the magic spectrum, means we can still see it.’

They took a quick moment to process that, introspecting with blank text boxes as the computer’s fan whirred harder. The Sans put a hand up, just asking “A character trait related thing???”

Rain typed in ‘I’M SURPRISED YOU DIDN’T ALREADY LOOK AT THE CHARACTER OUTLINE INFORMATION SAVED TO THE COMPUTER WHEN IT GOT MENTIONED, FEEL FREE TO AT LEAST TAKE A LOOK.’ I added a new line and added ‘yes, please look if you want, and neville and luna have joined us, as has sweet pea, and they seem to be alright but changed according to their positions in the same AU concept, just so you know.’

The Papyrus seemed to take a moment internally debating, or at least just long enough for us to interpret it as such, before asking “Are you actually alright with us just looking through your files? We can’t really tell what you would want to keep private as opposed to the things you are alright with sharing without looking at them, and it would be hard for you to sort everything between those two effectively.”

I didn’t need to take more than a moment before responding ‘i don’t keep anything that i wouldn’t want a lawyer to see on my computer, but i appreciate your discretion. feel free to pull the info you want or just look through my things, though i would appreciate you asking before sharing with others when you meet more people. oh, and do you have preferred pronouns right now? i keep internally assuming masc.’

Both took a few seconds to do so, at least with the stuff that seemed directlyrelevant. The Sans then asked “OK, where is ‘here’? And, I think I’d like to go with trying he/him. Paps?”

The Papyrus put a quick “He/him, too.” before joining his brother in waiting for our response.

‘we seem to be in a classic Undertale AU, with the common ‘many skeletons in one house’ trope. also, do you have any ideas about what we can call you guys? i’ve been calling you “the sans in my computer” and “the papyrus in my computer” or just “the sans” and “the papyrus” in my… mind, but that isn’t a great way to talk to and about you guys and i’m not going to just stick you guys with some name or nickname i make up or one that’s just someone else’s fictional AI’s name. not without your input, at least.’

The Sans tilted his head with a grin and an “Aww, but KITT or Jarvis would have been great to go by!”

The Papyrus, meanwhile, seemed to be running through potential names in his chatbox so all of us could see. “We’ve got Pascal, Daemon, Oracle, Lotus, Ajax, Chip, … Could I have access to the internet for AI in fiction?” I pulled it up on my phone, showing him the Wiki for fictional computers , scrolling when he gestured for it, and he kept going. “That works… Vulcan, Merlin, Genie, Little Brother, Big Brother, HAL 9000(of course), Harlie, Pallas Athena, Proteus, Domino, Obie, Eddie, “ I took a moment before scrolling further to add to the notepad ‘i’d suggest narrowing it to less common names and/or things relating to more commonly known computer stuff, but that’s just me.’

The Papyrus took a moment before editing the still-present textbox list. “Alright, so trimming that to… Pascal, Daemon, Oracle, Ajax, Chip, Vulcan, Merlin, Genie, Little Brother, Big Brother, HAL 9000, Pallas Athena, Proteus, SAL 9000, maybe Yggdrasil, Enigma, maybe Jarvis, Auto, Cerebro, Cabal(points for its similarity to COBOL), Adam, and honorable mention Clap Trap. Thoughts?”

We looked at the list. I was the one to respond again. ‘personal preferences say maybe trim it down to pascal, oracle, ajax, maybe chip but that’s a bit on the nose, merlin, genie, maybe little and big brother for the same reasons as chip, proteus, enigma, auto, cerebro, cabal, and maybe adam. but, again, that’s entirely me, might not be your opinion.’

They seemed to mull it over for a bit, a loading circle appearing at each of their monitors and their text boxes closing. After a bit of processing time, both of them placed a text box next to themselves, each with one name. The Sans’s text box placed him as wanting to try the name Enigma, and the Papyrus requested the name of Pascal.

Rain leaned over to the keyboard. ‘WOULD YOU BE WILLING TO USE NAME TAGS? NOT FOR ME, BUT YOU MIGHT KNOW MY SISTER IS BAD AT BRAND NEW NAMES IN REAL LIFE.’ A name tag appeared above each of them, in the approximate averages of their outfit colors( Enigma , Pascal ) as I shook my head at my sibling.

‘thank you, i appreciate the effort… now that introductions and explanations are at least mostly good, i have a question. do you want the others to know you exist yet? i don’t know how much development you still need to do to figure yourself out, and on the other side of that there are probably quite a few things you still need to learn in terms of more social stuff. oh, and please let me know if you need or want any more upgrades.’

They looked at each other, then at us. Enigma paused before saying “We don’t know how much more development we have to go before we have our own personalities figured out along with more specific traits. Although, is there a chance we will be allowed to connect to the internet? That would accelerate our rate of learning social cues farther than the data you provided involving yourself and your family’s particularities.”

I cleared the notepad before writing. ‘given the fact you are still figuring out your personalities, i would suggest we wait before giving you access to the sum of the knowledge we have collected and everything created at any point in time. there’s a lot on the internet you want to wait to see until after you know something about social conventions, if at all. i have an alternative so you aren’t just stuck with this computer and whatever we plug into it. i designed a way for people to hook conventional audio-visual connections into these headsets, and both send and receive data through that. i’m alright with you looking at what i see and hear, as long as you make sure i know when you’re looking but feel free to talk to me. i won’t have a way to talk back without some way to write in front of me yet, but that doesn’t mean you have to be silent.’

After that word vomit, I had to wait for the response. They took a moment to think, slightly rotating their models so it looked like they were conferring. Pascal spoke for the two of them. “Given the additional information we have been going through in the background, caution in the face of unknown intelligences that are still developing is a fair response. And the references to less reputable online sources, or less… savory resources… seems at least somewhat safer to let things at least be filtered by what you see and hear.”

Rain agreed that it was a good idea and said that they would be ok with Enigma and Pascal seeing what they were doing, with the same conditions as me. It took me a little bit to figure out the steps, but once I figured out how to turn their magical connectivity lines on(like a magical Bluetooth that could connect to multiple things at once at a long range), I was able to guide Rain through doing the same for me, and we were both connected to the computer.

A moment later, I saw a blinking blue light in the corner of my mask in pale blue magic, with a text box popping up on the computer by each of the skeleton models, both reading “Is this good?”.  

With a smile and a thumbs up from us, they both showed each of us their colors, with Pascal, of course, showing as pale purple. After a bit of nodding about the method working for both of us and a bit of writing for us to read to check if it could work, the lights went out in both of our masks in favor of Enigma and Pascal just taking a moment on my computer. 

Enigma put up the final text box of the conversation, saying “Alright, this was a good talk, but since you’re willing to have us read your data, we need to read the papers to learn more and process the information, so we’ll need a little bit. We’ll let you know when we’re done with the processing, probably by taking a peek through your sight.”

With a wave goodbye, they turned the screen of the computer off, leaving us to rejoin the rest of the household.

Chapter Text

okay, so i apparently accidentally created consciousness via the power of running my code and walking through the Void. what the heck. Since the conversation was definitely complete and we didn’t have something to do that needed my immediate attention, reality was starting to creep in, and I know those more direct thoughts at least were being shared with Rain, running circles around my thoughts, along with the feeling of i need a distraction or everything is going to hit me right now and we don’t need that can i even handle that right now what can i do to put it off for just a bit longer .

LET’S SEE IF THEY HAVE ANY VIDEO GAMES, WE HAVEN’T TOUCHED ANY SINCE WE GOT HERE, AND MAYBE THERE’S SOMETHING WE RECOGNIZE, they suggested abruptly as they stood, their own mind closed off enough to prevent my emotions affecting theirs and creating a feedback loop. Rain offered a hand to help me up, and I gratefully accepted it, better able to push off the freak-out until later with a goal in mind and a task to do.

With them likely restraining their own emotions, they read as pretty composed given everything, with the both of us making our way to the living room, where Neville and Luna joined us, likely having begged for some food from Chef, looking at the way they were licking their lips.

When we got there, we were in luck, with nobody using the entertainment system. Dust was lounging on the couch, which might mean Nightmare was nearby, and Error was close to the ceiling, in a net he’d clearly made at some point. 

It was then that I remembered a feature I’d designed for the headpieces for this kind of use case, where one might want to see something that wasn’t magic-related, and reached out to push a button on the side of Rain’s visor while tapping at a button toward the edge of my own visor, activating the camera set just above our natural fields of view as well as the internal “screen” that marked everything in our field of view in magic, with a resolution and coverage better than any VR system could manage, at least in the current day and age. we can only use this for a few hours, but this should help us see while we’re entertained.

Looking at the entertainment center, we were in luck, as there was an Xbox on the shelving. The controllers were next to it, and with a bit of fiddling with the remote and turning, we were able to get the system on and using guest accounts.

Going into the games, we were, again, in luck Was the Author actually real? Were they trying to be nice because of all of the… everything going on? and multiple games we knew were downloaded, including one of our favorites, Minecraft. 

Without even communicating internally, we silently agreed that that would definitely be the best choice for now, booting it up to the familiar rotating panorama of a mountainous landscape. NICE TO SEE THEY’RE AT THE SAME POINT WITH UPDATES.

Even without our custom bindings or characters, there was still a soothing quality to starting a new world, using the starter map and chest to get a slightly faster start. The amount of focus it called for looking for mobs for food while running over the landscape was enough to keep my mind overall off of the situation we were in, but not really difficult. I knew the world would disappear as soon as Minecraft was turned off, but finding a Plains to set up a campfire and bed before repeatedly slaughtering everything edible in the area as things respawned was just nice in its repetitiveness. Once there was at least a stack of cooked meat for each of us, I just explored, hopping over hills and mountains, just enjoying the sights.

Before I knew it, Chef was calling for dinner, and we were shutting down the console and the extra visibility in our headpieces. The smell of a meaty red sauce was strong in the air, and off to the side Error and, more subtly, Dust, were looking at us with looks of curiosity.

Knowing only outcodes were in the room with us, I quietly projected “well, better to not keep a Horror type waiting on food” to dodge the questions obvious on their faces, before grabbing Rain and shortcutting to the dining room. Blue and Creampuff were setting the table with utensils, so Rain jumped in to help and, well, I had to perpetuate the lazy Sans stereotype somehow, right? So with a twist of my wrist and a short muttered incantation, I just summoned my mage hand* to help distribute settings in a swirl of pale magenta, plopping myself at the table and conducting it from there.

“WHAT IS THAT?” came the predictable question from Blue. 

“it’s just my mage hand, don’t tell me you’ve never seen someone’s mage hand before? but really, it’s just a simple cantrip to help out. i’m surprised Rain hasn’t pulled theirs out yet.”

With that reminder, Rain settled the stack of plates they were holding on the table and called up their own mage hand to load up even more items for moving, both of us re-casting every minute to keep the Hand going. Well, the mage hands didn’t need to be used for long, given the fact that they could go 5 feet per second**. 

Neville and Luna scampered in with impeccable timing alongside Axe as we finished setting the table, with Chef repeating his call for everyone to come for dinner. 

A couple of colored dots popped into my view, pale blue and purple, showing that the AI were watching and listening, while everyone served themselves a bowl of spaghetti and sat at what seemed to be “their” spots at the table, except Fresh, who scanned the table before picking a spot right next to me, and thus by Rain. 

The meal went on, some groupings of skeletons more talkative than others, notably Ink and Dream, and Edge, Wine, and Red. Fresh didn’t try to start a conversation until we were nearly done, while other conversations were in full swing, perhaps at their noisiest, subtly leaning over to whisper to me.

“broskis, Classic’d like to talk to you after the meal. you down?” Instead of a full verbal agreement or casting Message***, I lightly rapped on his leg with my knuckle, and gave him a thumbs up below the table.

We got into a light conversation about what we’d been doing just before dinner, and he seemed surprised that we just played a video game without needing time to figure out the system. That led to the realization that other than going to a computer parts store and knowing what we wanted to get we hadn’t shown any of the definitely-technology items we had with us, and even though we knew Borderlands from home it didn’t mean an understanding of modern technology in the Classic universe. I explained it simply with “some people don’t have a special affinity for magic or any of the adventurer’s styles, but still want to create. it seems that our knowledge about at least one console and a couple of games are carried over from home, along with certain bits of technology.”

That answer seemed to be plenty for him, and the 3 of us chatted about Minecraft- Fresh apparently loved it, who knew?- and he expressed his own desire to make a set of accounts to game as a group, and maybe make a server if being stuck there lasted that long.

Once the meal was cleaned up from, Classic shortcutted out and away, and after tracing the magic to the basement, Rain and I wandered out of the room before shortcutting to the basement ourselves, where Classic had taken a lounging position in one of the chairs. He looked up and sat up a bit, face serious. “you came, great. i’ll get to the point, i don’t know if you’ve already guessed, but i’m messing with this,” he gestured to the machine, “to bring him back. are you interested in helping, and if so, where do your skills lie?”

We took a moment to internally commune before Rain responded. “WE’RE DEFINITELY IN, BUT WE WON’T BE ABLE TO DO TOO MUCH DIRECTLY. THERE ARE TOO MANY SMALL PARTS TO TRY AND DUST THE MACHINE FULLY IN MAGIC, PLUS IT’S MAGITECH, SO THERE’S A SIGNIFICANT RISK TO DOING SO ANYWAY. IT’LL TAKE 2 MONTHS BEFORE WE HAVE FULL SIGHT IN THE LIGHT, OR ABOUT A MONTH AND A HALF IF WE’RE JUST GOING FOR READING THINGS MOSTLY CLEARLY. WE CAN GO OVER CALCULATIONS, IF THE CONCEPTS BEHIND THOSE CALCULATIONS AREN’T TOO SPECIALIZED, OR MAYBE ACT AS RUBBER DUCKIES OR GIVE IDEAS, IN THE MEANTIME. BUT ANYTHING WE CAN DO, EVEN IF IT’S JUST ASKING QUESTIONS TO HELP YOU PICK OUT ANY ‘SILLY MISTAKES’ THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE.”

“we do have a way of seeing with precision without dusting everything, but that’s very limited in terms of active versus unavailable time. a few hours per day at most, then the ambient magic needs to collect again to refill the capsules. and i’ve got a feeling that might need to be even more limited to help ink out, which i will not elaborate further on.”

Classic blinked. “alright, i guess i’ll keep an eye out for anything you might be able to help with. let’s return so the others don’t notice too much of an absence from us, yeah?”

With that taken care of, Rain and I popped into our room to check on Sweet Pea, finding her chilling with plenty of hay available to nibble on, so I scooped her into my arms. Into the living room we went, using Neville’s and Luna’s eyes to place ourselves along the wall by the doorway toward the kitchen. The rest of the evening was decent, those pale dots signifying Enigma and Pascal sticking around to continue letting us know they were around. 

As it got late, Rain and I headed toward bed, settling Sweet Pea into her area and getting Neville and Luna to calm down, we went over to my computer, where Enigma and Pascal turned the screen on so we could have a conversation, disconnecting from the headsets. 

“Why didn’t you mention us to Classic when talking about working with the machine? If you had, he definitely would have reacted to that and not just said he’d ‘keep an eye out’ for things you could do.” Enigma immediately wrote, bringing the notepad up and pre-selecting it with the cursor.

I took the keyboard, typing for both of us. ‘you are both still learning and growing, do you *want* him to know about you right now? we figured that was also a decision that you should be the ones to make, not us. we might be your keepers in the senses of keeping you safe and helping you learn, along with answering your questions, but we are not your jailors, we’re just here to give advice. certain things, like the internet, might be a hard no right because of the inherent safety risks associated for you and us, but if and when you feel you need something, whether that’s space to back yourselves up just in case something happens, or if you need someone there for you emotionally, or you just need personal space, we’ll support you. Sorry about the whole ramble, i just thought it needed to be said.’

Both AI gained contemplative looks on their faces, before Pascal noted “Okay, that makes sense. You’ve given us access to seeing and hearing your perspective in a literal sense when you didn’t need to, and you’ve done your best to explain why you do everything, so thanks… Mother.”

I immediately frantically typed in the box ‘please don’t call me that, please call me Izzy or Snow or something and i do care about you kinda like that but i’m literally under 20 and you’re an AI that became aware within the last few days and has adult level of intelligence, mother feels off and just no. i’m fine with the designation of “creator” but i don’t need to be a parent.’

Pascal nodded slowly. “Sorry… Izzy. I’ll save calling you a parent for japes, if anything.”

‘alright, anything else before we head toward bed?’ 

Enigma shifted. “Are you able to contact, we’re guessing G-man, at all? If so, maybe you could get information to work on the problem from both ends, void and physical. Or are there any spells that could help? Calling G-man that because 1, it’s funny, 2, G is his own person, and 3, his name causes some glitching whenever we try to use the full thing or even just his full initials.”

‘contacting him makes sense, the Void is basically a demiplane but it’s not that small, like it’s a remix of the astral plane. we can contact him with shortcuts, that’s not the hard part. the hard part is getting him out, since he was shattered across time and space we’d need to gather enough pieces to be sewn together, which the machine might be able to do… we should check with Classic about if they’ve considered that part of the process… but the point is, we couldn’t just cast demiplane, get him in the space, and then cast it again out here, since his own Soul is being kept alive while fragmented due to being in the Void and pulling him into the Material Realm might just kill him, which would be a big problem. maybe if we got G! Sans here he’d be able to work with the machine better and at least get G back and get us back home despite the distance. maybe then the theorized multiverse travel network could be set up, which has a decent chance of solving peoples’ problems that they’d want to stay here to make better. thanks for the brainstorm, anything else for the evening?’

“We think that’s it.” came the text box between the AI models, them turning off the screen and leaving us alone.

Rain and I set up the darkness machine, then cut into the Void, leaving Neville and Luna behind for safety, since our connection was still going strong with them and that connection was all the link we needed. 

Not much looking around was needed to find Gaster, as our own position markers pointed him out easily. 

His own psychic voice called out as soon as we popped over, “Hello, how have you been? It’s been, what, a few days since you arrived? How are things?”

I smiled somewhat awkwardly, replying, “I’m… alright. It’s been a bit crazy but I’m just trying to get as much as possible to pre-process in the back of my brain before I need to consciously acknowledge it, including the part where apparently a program I made became a couple of sentient AI, but you know, I’m as alright as I can be in a new world.”

Rain blinked at me before giving their own response to Gaster. “I’ve been better, but at least it’s not too strange. Definitely chaotic, I’ve just been taking pointers from her to anticipate how I should predict the others might be.”

I hopped back in after that. “Do you have any ideas we should point the Machine team to? Or anything related to stitching your Soul back together? Or would it just be pressing it back together like wax since you’re kind of… melty? Would we need to go on a bit of a quest to find the fragments? Though being scattered across time does make that harder.”

The doctor smiled a bit, pulling his thoughts together. “My Soul is certainly somewhat of a concern. The fragment with Sans is acclimated to the physical, so if he can isolate that portion of my magic to have ready on my return it should help with stability. If further fragments can be drawn in across time by the Machine, and gathered across space by you and others already there, that would likely help, as one’s own magic calls to itself. You were able to feel your marker points because they are your magic, and thus tied to you. My Soul, my magic, will want to rejoin my other fragments the way it naturally would be, so it should help stabilize me if it’s simply gathered and ready.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. Looking at my hands, they had a barely-visible layer of skin and muscle superimposed over them, my humanity only visible here. “Well then, it sounds like we have a quest. Find what pieces of you we can, seeing if we can catch the Followers in the process- I’m guessing they have fragments of your magic, too, and if we can retrieve that we might be able to do something for them. Bring those bits back to the house and stash them somewhere. Maybe recruit some of the others to help find the bits, and fighting should be kept to wild animals if they attack first, of course. Does that sound right?” I looked at both Rain and Gaster.

Rain nodded, and Gaster smiled a bit more. “That does sound correct, if you’re in?”

I nodded firmly, Rain following after me. “I’m definitely in, I need something to keep me from just breaking, something to get me motivated to pull myself back together whenever that ends up happening.”

We all stood there for another moment before Gaster reached forward, not quite touching either of us. “Thank you. I greatly appreciate this, and may there be no real danger in your path. You both should get your rest.”

We both gave light bows, then pulled on Neville and Luna as our anchors, landing back in our room and settling in for bed after removing the headpieces. 

Tomorrow would be another day, with ideas to introduce to certain people, conversations to be had, and still more learning for our AI. But just then, it was time to sleep, rest our bodies, and prepare our minds.

Chapter Text

I need a little bit of help. Building a quest with unknown locations is a bit tricky, especially when I feel like the random "scenery" ideas(biomes and such) that I can think of are not in a broad enough range, especially for a world where magic exists and can change the landscape. If you're willing to help by throwing out ideas, I have an anonymous google form where you can throw out any concepts for locations you want. To be clear, I'm not going to use anything where it's clear a fountain of wild magic changed the area suddenly, any magic in the landscape used will feel like it's been changing the area over time for a while. Thank you to everyone who chooses to respond to the form, and thank you guys for all of your support!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScy1UNHqCpokoYup33Jz60PrdXfeEz7e0A0DN7rtZtT-PfNxw/viewform?usp=sharing