#asgore's not as affected cause hes a boss monster | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

noaltbruh · 3 years

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BUCCI GANG AND HOW THEY WOULD PLAY UNDERTALE

Since I got my friend into the UT fandom, and the brainrot for this game is slowly coming back, I've figured that I'd fuse my favourite franchises and make this post, enjoy!

GIORNO:

-This may surprise you, but Giorno would almost do a Blind Pacifist run

-While at first, he was planning on taking out whoever got in his way, he changed his mind in the moment he saw Toriel

-After she taught him how to resolve the various conflicts peacefully, he decided not to fight, but to show MERCY to every monster

-He finds the multiplicity of choices a very interesting mechanism, especially since he's not much of a gamer, and he's pleasantly surprised to see such an innovative game

-While most of the times he would completely avoid the FIGHT button, if a monster got on his nerves a little too much, he may attack it until it doesn't want to fight anymore

-He takes the time to interact with everything and everyone, he wants to enjoy the game at its fullest

-He was so freaking lucky to meet Gaster on his first run

-Actually brought the piece of snowman with him

-He's part of the "Chara defense squad", and finds them strangely...relatable

-He was just about to do a full Pacifist route, but he couldn't bring himself to SPARE Flowey, and killed him

-"I won't let you hurt her"

-Ultimately, he regretted it, and reset his save file

-After doing a TRUE Pacifist, he left the game, leaving the monsters alone and giving them an happy ending

-Only knows about the Genocide through gameplays

-Favourite character: Toriel, but also likes Chara quite a lot

-Favourite OST: Memories, followed by home, Undertale, Megalo strikes back and Star (he doesn't care if they actually don't play in the game)

-What SOUL would he have: DETERMINATION

BRUNO:

-My man wouldn't hurt a fly if he had the chance to, off to the Pacifist route he goes

-Similar to Giorno, he finds Toriel a very comforting character, but he feels bad for pretty much every monster he meets. He thinks it's unfair for them to be forced to stay in the UNDERGROUND, and wants to find a way to destroy the barrier at any cost

-He's never played a videogame before, but he gets the hand of it quite quickly, even though he still ends up dying a couple of times.

-He would also be the kind of player to interact with EVERYTHING, paying close attention to whatever the passing monster has to say

-Sometimes, he likes to take a break, lay down and listen to the OST of the place he's exploring

-The most challenging enemies for him were Undyne and Asgore. It took him a while to realize that the only way to spare her was to run away, and he just really didn't want to hurt Goat papa

-He lets the bird carrying him to the other side, even if he doesn't actually need to move around. He just wants the little guy to feel appreciated

-Veeeery reluctantly, he decided to SPARE Flowey, it would have been a waste to kill somebody now, after everything that he had done so far

-He almost cried at the Pacifist ending

-He refuses to even acknowledge what happened in the Genocide route

-Favourite characters: Toriel and Asgore

-Favourite OST: Fallen down, but he also likes Heartache, Home and Waterfall

-What SOUL would he have: KINDNESS

MISTA:

-Mista's first run would be a Neutral. It's not that he enjoys killing the monsters, he's mostly just too lazy to think of a way to spare them

-If it's obvious, however, he'll just casually show the enemy MERCY, there's no need to take out absolutely everyone

-The only one who he genuinely looked for a way to spare was Papyrus. Honestly, he couldn't bring himself to just hurt him 'cause he had the chance to. Besides...He was afraid of what Sans would have done

-Speaking of him, he finds his jokes HILARIOUS, and he will use them in real life conversations if he gets the chance to

-He basically wasted all his money fighting Undyne

-He didn't buy the spider donut in the RUINS, and was forced to farm gold for 3 entire freaking days and buy one directly from Muffet

-After finishing the neutral route, he decided to go back and try the others. His next route was a Genocide

-He was about to shoot his computer AND himself while fighting Sans, but he eventually managed to beat him. Of course, after swearing at 3 A. M., drinking 10 cans of Sprite, listening to Megalovania on loop and threatening to throw Narancia out of the window because he interrupted him while he was playing

-His favourite moment during the Pacifist was cooking with Undyne

-He immediately questioned his life choices when he finished the route and saw Chara taking over Frisk's body. Closed the game and never opened it again

-Favourite characters: Papyrus, Sans and Undyne. He refuses to choose an absolute favorite

-Favourite OSTs: Megalovania and Song that might play when you fight Sans. He also likes Bonetroulse and Spear of justice

-What SOUL would he have: BRAVERY

NARANCIA:

-Narancia playing this game would be a total mess. Ironic, considering he's the one in the gang that likes video games the most

-Despite Toriel's guidance, at first, he would FIGHT every monster that got in his way, following the simple "It's an rpg, the more I kill, the better it is" logic

-When he saw the "but nobody came" screen, however, he freaked the hell out and immediately reset

-After that mini heart attack, he went on a full Pacifist route. However, sometimes, he would snap and accidentally kill a monster. He lost count of how many times he had to reload the file

-He also really likes Toriel (she's just very popular among the Bucci gang). The reason for it...Is not a very happy one, like in Giorno's case

-He genuinely tried to stay with her, he didn't want to leave Goat mom

-He's the one who gets emotionally invested in the game the most, he even forgets it's a game at times and just erase the surrounding world from his head

-He LOVES to voice the characters while he plays, it makes the story feel way more alive for him. He makes a very good Papyrus impression

-Speaking of which, his favourite parts of the game were the interactions between Sans and Papyrus.

-He lost his s**t when he arrived at the Temmie village. He stayed there FOR HOURS farming money. Heck, he even bought the Temmie armor

-He refused to open the game for two days after Flowey stole the SOULS

-He wanted to ask someone to play the TRUE lab with him, but he refused to admit that he was scared

-While he's not the kind of player who stops by to read every dialogue, he makes an exception for Snowdin. He really likes that area of the game!

-While he would never admit it, he cried three times during the Pacifist route. The first time when he left Toriel, the second when he heard Chara and Asriel's story, and the third when he finished it

-His favourite fight in the game is the one against Asriel. He kept on repeating the "Don't you have anything better to do" dialogue for 20 minutes, before giving up to the idea that there was really no way to save him

-After giving the monster an happy ending, he was overwhelmed by his own curiosity, and decided to try the Genocide route...Boy did it go wrong

-You thought he cried a lot during the Pacifist? He became a freaking fountain during the Genocide. Every single time he killed a Boss, he cried, with no exception

-He spent days trying to defeat Sans, until he was given the option to SPARE him, and so he did

-...The others could hear him yelling from the other floor after what happened next

-He got tired of Sans' bulls**ts, reset and did a Pacifist again

-He watched a gameplay to know what happened in the Genocide ending. Chara's jumpscare still haunts him

-Narancia gets really involved in the stuff made by the fandom, especially fan made songs and comics

-He listens to "To the bone" religiously, it's part of his routine

-He tried and failed to figure out how AUs work

-Favourite character: Papyrus, followed by Toriel and Asriel. He used to like Sans a lot too...But now he gets Vietnam flashbacks every time he thinks about him

-Favourite OSTs: Bonetroulse, Hopes and dreams and Snowdin. He can't choose between them

-What SOUL would he have: INTEGRITY

FUGO:

-Fugo would categorically refuse to reset on his first run. What it's done, it's done, and he has to take responsibilities for his choices

-He would do a Neutral, killing whoever he encounters, but without specifically looking for the monsters just so that he can kill them

-That doesn't mean, however, that he dislikes to play with the timeline. It's quite the opposite, to be honest

-Fugo enjoys messing around with the save files A LITTLE too much, dude basically became an hacker playing this game

-In his attempt to make a Pacifist run, he fu**ed up and accidentally got the Hacker ending

-"...THIS IS NOT WHAT I MEANT WHEN I SAID I WANTED EVERY ENDING"

-He toned it down a little after that, but he still managed to modify the FUN value enough to meet Gaster and his followers

-He's also the only one who unlocked Sans' room. He doesn't trust him, but he finds him an interesting character

-Neither the Pacifist or Genocide endings particularly picked his interest, even though he did punch the walls a couple of times fighting Sans

-He likes to try the different Neutral endings, he doesn't do all of them, just the ones he thinks that would affect the monsters the most

-The only character he got attached to emotionally was Alphys, he can see himself a lot in her

-He's very interested in the various theories that surround this game, and he's waiting for Deltarune to come out, he just wants to know more about Gaster

-Favourite character: Alphys, but Gaster is a close second

-Favourite OST: Darker, darker, yet darker, followed by Here we are, Waterfall and Premonition

What SOUL would he have: faded BRAVERY

ABBACCHIO:

-MERCY? Is that a food? Yeah uhm...No, that doesn't exist with Abbacchio, nothing but Genocide for him

-It's already a surprise someone convinced him to play this game. He'll play in his own way, and that means killing literally everyone, not simply the ones he encounters, but even looking for them just to earn more Exp

-He was...Weirdly satisfied when he saw the "But nobody came" screen, and he was lucky enough to find every monster almost immediately

-He hadn't found a single character that he liked until he reached Undyne. Her sense of justice reminded him of his old self, which wasn't exactly pleasant at first, but at least he felt something

-He was finally happy to see a monster actually trying to stop what he was doing, and killing her was the only thing in the game that made him slightly sad

-He's still offended for not having the chance to kill monster kid, he couldn't stand that child

-He skipped through pretty much every dialogue in the game, not that there are many people to interact with during the Genocide...

-He'd eat a piece of the snowman right in front of him just to spite him, then take the rest and leave

-He didn't care about whatever Flowey was trying to tell him about his past. That's also because without knowing he's Asriel, most of what he says doesn't really make sense

-In the moment Sans dodged his attack, he realized that he had screwed up REALLY bad. After dying against him a couple of times, he considered resetting, but he wouldn't have let "the lazy skelefu**" have it his way

-He let out a huge "YES" and a sigh of relief when he finally managed to hit him, it took him around a week

-However, little did he know, that the worst still had to come. When he noticed that he wasn't the one who had just killed Asgore and Flowey, he freaked out a little, and Chara staring directly at him made him feel a small shiver down his spine

-Still, he decided to decline their offer to destroy everything, not because he regretted what he had done, he just wanted his revenge on the child for scaring him

-He closed the game after the jumpscare, and never questioned what the hell he had been through

-Favourite character: Undyne

-Favourite OSTs: But nobody came and Battle against a true hero, he also likes The fallen child

-What SOUL would he have: very very faded JUSTICE

TRISH:

-Trish got into this game just because of its music, she kept on hearing it everywhere and wanted to understand where it came from

-She was kinda scared at first, videogames aren't exactly her forte, and her encounter with Flowey didn't help

-She slowly got used to the dynamics of the game, even though she died at least three times in every area, exept for the RUINS. (She only got a game over two times there)

-She doesn't have the heart to hurt anybody, she thinks the monsters (well...Most of them, at least) are adorable! Shyren is her favourite minor enemy, and when she saw the "Taking piano lessons again" text, her heart melted a little

-She refused to take off the faded ribbon until she found she tutu, but she never sold either of them

-She loves flirting with literally ANYONE. You can? Well then...You must!

-Her favourite area is Hotland, including the Core too. She loves the whole "artificial" theme of the place, and she had a lot of fun reading Alphys's posts!

-She would pretend to be an actual part of Mettaton's programmes, but only when she was 100% sure nobody could hear her

-Needless to say, the boss fight against him was one of the funniest parts of the story for her

-Another thing she absolutely adored were the dates with Papyrus and Alphys, especially the latter. After everything that had happened, it was a nice opportunity to relax for a bit

-Similar to Narancia, Trish gets really involved emotionally in playing the game, and she had to take a little break from it before facing Asgore

-The ending genuinely made her cry, but it was the only time she shed a tear through it

-She doesn't care about trying the Genocide, she's worked hard to give the monsters an happy ending, and she wasn't going to throw it away

-She's in love with the Undertale Musical by Man on the Internet, she knows pretty much every song by memory

-Favourite character: Mettaton, but she honestly really likes all of them

-Favourite OST: Death by glamour, followed by Metal crusher, Power of NEO, and Another medium

-What SOUL would she have: INTEGRITY

Yes, I know that Narancia's part is longer, but it's just so funny to write about this baby, bear with me please 😌

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songfell-ut · 4 years

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Chapter 14 is gooo

Taking a short break after this. My hands hurt. Yep

The moment Sans appeared outside of Alphys’ laboratory, he knew he was going to hate this. He took in the good ol’ Hotland ambiance – mostly rocks, lava, and being too damn hot – then kicked the snow from his slippers, brushed off his overcoat, and banged on the heavy door.

It peeked open, and a yellow snout showed in the crack. “C-come in,” a voice said apologetically.

Sans rolled his eyes as best he could. “It’s me, Al. Move it, will ya?”

“Sans!” The door flew open, and the reptilian scientist backed up to look at him fully. “It’s r-really you! I thought the h-humans g-got you!”

“They did. I got better.” The giant skeleton bobbed his head at her as he stepped inside. “How’ve ya been?”

She smiled weakly. “Um...”

He nodded and went ahead into the main area, Alphys shuffling after him. The building was three stories, constructed of brick and steel in order to keep any mishaps contained. Now that he was using his sense of smell, it stank in here; Frisk’s workroom smelled like books and priestess and green things growing, but this was something acrid that made the magic of his nose and throat sting. “I’ve been w-working,” said Alphys, somehow phrasing it as a personal fault. “W-would you like something t-to drink? His M-Majesty brought t-tea.”

Sans came to a halt as he spotted a large shape moving from the back storeroom into the nook by Alphys’ first-floor library. The King of the monsters flipped a witchlight on, and it burned so bright that Sans had to shut his eyes. The humans’ lights really were a lot dimmer. “Welcome back, Sans,” Asgore said jovially, seating himself on a couch and gesturing for the skeleton to take the biggest armchair. “It seems you’ve had quite the adventure. How are you feeling? Would you like some tea?”

“No, thanks, Yer Majesty.” The larger boss monster wedged himself into the chair. “I’ve had a hell of a time. What all did the others tell ya, if I may ask?”

Asgore smiled thinly. His beard was longer than Sans remembered, and his hair looked like something had been nesting in it—as if they needed more evidence of how useless he was on his own, Sans thought. “It was quite a story,” said the King. “Would you mind telling me what happened again, please, from your perspective? But first…” He gestured over Sans’ shoulder.

Sure enough, Alphys was hovering behind him, holding something in one shaky claw. “Um,” she explained.

Sans scowled at her. “Don’t gimme that look, Al. I’m not gonna bite ya.” He extended his hand. “That’s a truth stone, right? I don’t care. I’ve got nothin’ ta hide.” Much.

“It’s m-mostly to check for any residual human m-magic that may be affecting you,” the scientist said, presumably truthfully. She allowed him to pluck the cobalt sphere from her grasp and skittered away with a speed that hurt his feelings a little. He and Alphys had never been the closest of friends, but…well, Frisk and her flagrant lack of fear had obviously spoiled him.

Crap. Whatever was in the stone was pretty damn potent, because thinking of Frisk made him want to say things that he had no intention of letting out until he absolutely had to. Asgore was suspicious enough of him having been around the High Priestess and other humans for so long; what would happen if he found out Sans had fallen for her like a ton of bricks?

“Now…” Asgore poured himself another cup. “How did you come to be in the humans’ grasp?”

Sans hadn’t minded telling Undyne all this stuff, but sitting here fiddling with the stupid rock while the King sipped his tea and watched him as if Sans was going to explode—that, he did mind. But he did it, starting with how he’d been out hunting poachers for a couple days straight without eating anything, getting weak enough to eventually be captured, and failing to kill the High Priestess when she came to make him that fateful offer.

Asgore was frowning, one hand to his chin. “She was sincere about taking you as her apprentice, with no attempt to harm you or steal your magic? Didn’t that strike you as odd?”

No shit, King Fluffybuns. “Yeah, it did, but she never even tried anything like that.” It was true; Gaster was the one who’d purloined a bunch of his magic. Sans wasn’t going to muddy the waters by bringing him up just yet. “I could tell she knew what she was talking about with the potions and stuff. She’s pretty sharp.”

“Yes, of course. Forgive me, but I want to be very clear: she subdued you without harming you, single-handedly?”

Sans’ socket twitched. “Your Majesty is correct,” he said stiffly. “She’s the High Priestess fer a reason. Her barriers are stupid powerful. I don’t think you, me, ‘n Tori put together could crack one.”

As he’d intended, the casual mention of Toriel made Asgore twitch right back. From her position behind Sans’ chair, Alphys cleared her throat nervously. “Are you s-sure? A human sh-shouldn’t—”

The skeleton held up the blue sphere, tapping it with one phalange. “Yeah, I’m positive. If humans had anythin’ like boss monsters, she’d be one fer sure.”

Asgore put down his cup. “And this extraordinary young woman also happens to be the child we knew as Kris? Is that correct?”

“Yep. She’s proven it beyond any doubt ta both me and Undyne.” Somehow, Sans doubted Asgore had made her hold the goddamned rock while she talked. “The others forced 'er to lie about bein’ a boy, but everythin’ else about her was real. She didn’t wanna leave here at all, and as soon as she got her memories back, she started figurin’ out how to come back with me. It happened sooner than we planned ‘cause the King tried ta sell some monsters out from under her. She got so pissed off that she broke the law and brought ‘em here on her own.”

“Got her memories b—ah, yes. Undyne said they were taken from her at the convent.” Asgore’s foot patted the floor a few times. “How old was she when she first visited?” he asked, with a new edge to his voice.

Sans frowned. “She said she was ten. She just looked a lot younger ‘cause they weren’t feedin’ ‘er. Why?”

Another slow pat, pat of fur on carpet. “Undyne overheard someone say the High Priestess was King Stephin’s illegitimate daughter. Do you believe this to be true?”

The giant skeleton looked at the blue stone, studying the patterns swirling in its depths. “I’ve seen how the King acts with her, and the guy I was talkin’ to had no reason ta lie. Puttin’ everything together, yeah, it makes total sense.”

There was no response. Sans glanced up. To his surprise, Asgore was staring into his teacup, his brow furrowed; the King set the cup and saucer down so hard that it sloshed all over the table. Sans had never seen him spill his tea before. “What about her other personal connections?” he asked brusquely. “Other friends and family?”

“Uh…” Sans craned his neck around to see if Alphys understood what was going on, but she was pushing her glasses up and looking at him in equal bewilderment. “Well, she’s got a bunch of half-siblings from the King, but she’s not real close with any of ‘em. One actually tried to kill ‘er while I was there.” Asgore blinked in astonishment, and Sans nodded grimly. “She doesn’t have any other family. She said ‘er mom was dead, and I haven’t had a chance t’ask her any more about it. Not many friends, just some lady she knew from school an’ a lot of guys wantin’ ta marry her.” He wrinkled his nasal ridge. “A lot of guys.”

Asgore nodded again. “I see. Thank you.” He finally noticed the puddle of tea, and used the hem of his already-stained cloak to mop it up. “You’ve spent a great deal of time with her. What do you believe are her true intentions? What does she gain from freeing monsters and antagonizing the other humans?”

“Frisk doesn’t think in terms’a what she can get, Yer Majesty,” Sans said irritably. “I know she sounds too good ta be true. I thought so, too, at first. But she really wants to help us, an’ she can do it better than anyone else. She’s already taught me how ta make fertilizer and a bunch of other stuff to improve our crop yields, and she’s got a whole plan t’get us outta slavery fer good—I’ll let ‘er lay it out for you whenever ya talk with ‘er.” He tossed the sphere from hand to hand a few times, then curled his fingers around it. “Did Undyne tell you about the farm on the river?”

The King stroked his beard. “She did, but I have difficulty believing it. I’ve seen that property myself, and I can’t fathom anyone buying it out of pure altruism.”

“’s not just altruism. She wanted t’do it before she even knew she’d been here as a kid, but now she remembers us an’ how much we all cared about her.” Asgore half-smiled in acknowledgment. With considerable effort, Sans forced himself off that tangent, concluding, “Frisk’s the real deal, Majesty. Turnin’ her down ‘cause she’s human would be the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.”

The King sat back, eyes narrowed, and Alphys made a more-than-usually nervous sound. Sans fidgeted with the sphere. “Anythin’ else, Yer Majesty? I wanna get back home.”

Asgore’s gaze shifted from him to the diminutive scientist. “Do you have any questions, Dr. Alphys?”

For the first time, Alphys came around to stand in front of Sans. “Um…d-do you think she’d let me s-study her magic? I just c-can’t believe a human could be that p-powerful.”

Sans shrugged. “On the way here, she hid us with a barrier that kept people from seein’ or hearing me ‘n the wagons for over ten minutes straight. They couldn’t even tell the barrier was there.”

The King looked him, and at the sphere. Sans was rolling it around on his metacarpals at Alphys’ eye level, daring either of them to say he was lying. When Asgore remained silent, the scientist asked, “What else have you s-seen her do that m-most humans can’t?”

“Be a good person,” Sans mumbled, but the stone’s magic prodded him, and he had to add, “Here’s somethin’ weird. I was checkin’ on ‘er after she used up all ‘er magic on that barrier, and I ended up givin’ her a bunch of my magic by accident.”

Alphys’ jaw dropped. “You did what?” the King demanded.

Fuck. “Not like havin’ a kid or anything,” the skeleton said hurriedly. “I just…she’d been sick right before we left, so she was already a little run down, an’ I didn’t want us ta be stuck out there without ‘er magic.” That was true enough, but he had to physically stop himself from saying exactly how worried he had been. “I picked ‘er up, and next thing I knew, she was fresh as a daisy ‘n I was passing out. The exact same thing happened a few hours ago, right before I zapped us inta the Ruins.”

“I see.” Somewhat mollified, the King stroked his beard again. “Was she able to use any of your abilities, or did she convert your power into magic of her own?”

“She put a barrier up with it, so it was all her.” As he’d told Frisk way back in his prison cell, monsters were useless when it came to barriers; even if a human stole their magic and tried to use it to fuel a barrier, it wouldn’t stick. “Givin’ it away didn’t hurt me at all. It was jus’ like I’d been workin’ really hard, and I was fine the next day. I’m still a little tired from last time, but I feel like I just need ta get home ‘n go to sleep.”

“Hm.” At least Asgore looked thoughtful now, not angry or alarmed. “Has she ever passed any magic to you in a similar fashion?”

Something came into his mind and straight out his mouth: “No, but we did share a dream where she was able t’touch me, even though we were way far apart. Think that has somethin’ ta do with it?” Argh, that stupid fucking stone—

Luckily, this information didn’t seem to make as big an impression. Asgore just shook his head, looking helplessly at the scientist. “What do you think of all this, Doctor?”

“Hmmm…” The reptilian monster folded her arms. “The humans’ royal family has always had the g-gift of magic. She didn’t get any training as a ch-child, did she?” Sans shook his head. “That means it kept growing until she c-came to the Underground, and this environment p-probably stimulated it further. Humans who don’t use their magic as children will usually h-have more power as adults, and her magic didn’t manifest as anything d-destructive, so she was able to w-wait until the optimal time to learn how to use it.”

The King picked up the teapot. “How is she able to turn a monster’s power directly to her own use? And what about the shared dream?”

“I d-don’t think she’d be able to do that with a regular m-monster, Your Majesty. I think it’s because a boss monster’s S-SOUL is powerful enough that he had magic to spare, and his intention for her t-to have enough magic to p-protect them was the impetus.” She turned to Sans. “Have you been in proximity to her at another t-time when she needed m-magic and you wanted her to have m-more, or was this the first time those c-conditions existed?”

The skeleton thought it over, and had to shake his head. “Nah, this was the first time we were in that bad a situation. So, it’s not gonna keep happenin’ at random? It’s just ‘cause she needed it an’ I wanted her ta have some?” And we were cozying up? he managed not to add.

“I th-think so. It doesn’t hurt that you’ve spent so much time around each other, or that she’s been to the Underground and already l-likes monsters. Given that and your naturally strong c-capabilities, that could explain how her body was able to internalize your magic and express it for her own p-purposes. The same factors would facilitate physical c-c-contact in your dream.”

Sans nodded as calmly as he could, clamping his jaws shut as the truth spell urged him to say something about wanting to give her a lot more magic on purpose.

“Fascinating,” Asgore murmured. He absently picked something out of his beard. “All things considered, it doesn’t sound like she poses an immediate threat to any of us, and we may well benefit from her presence. Therefore, I will trust your judgment and Undyne’s, and allow her to stay for now. However, I will hold both of you responsible for her actions. Is that clear?”

“Sure, Yer Majesty.” Sans held the stone out to Alphys, who slipped into her coat pocket. “I’m gonna get goin’ now, if that’s all right.”

“Absolutely,” the King said, getting to his feet. “Welcome back.” He started to extend his hand, but withdrew it as Sans hopped up and started toward the door, hands in his pockets.

“I-I’ll see you out,” Alphys said quickly, covering the awkward moment. “If you’ll e-excuse me, Your Majesty—”

Asgore nodded, sinking back to the couch. A glance over his shoulder puzzled Sans: instead of being mad at the deliberate slight, the King was scowling and staring at nothing again, obviously back to his unhappy thoughts.

For once, Alphys went straight ahead of him, holding the door wide and closing it right behind them. “I didn’t w-want to ask this in f-front of King Asgore,” she stage-whispered up at him, and Sans obligingly knelt to hear her better. “Everything you were saying about exchanging your m-magic—are you…um…”

Sans gestured impatiently. “Spit it out, Al. Like I said, I’m not gonna—”

“A-are you in love with Frisk?!”

…Well, shit. Sans had forgotten how invested Alphys could get in any kind of narrative, and how quickly she’d pounce on any hint of romantic feelings between anyone, fictional or not. When he failed to immediately deny it, the scientist’s face nearly split in triumphant glee. “I knew it! The way y-you were going on, trying not t-to say too much—it was b-better than a whole p-play!”

“Shhh!” he hissed, though no one was even in sight, much less earshot. “Come on, Al! What would that even matter?!”

“Are you k-k-kidding me? Direct magical c-conversion doesn’t happen every day! It’s only possible between m-monsters in a reproductive context, and I’ve never heard of it at all between a monster and a h-human! Y-you gave it to her and sh-she used it twice!” The scientist slapped her own face and rocked side to side so gleefully that Sans thought she was going to keel over. “Everything I said to His M-Majesty was true, b-but there’s n-no way your magic could be interchangeable unless your SOULs had developed an incredibly strong b-b-bond!” Something like a tiny squeal. “I c-can’t b-believe this! You’ve g-g-got to promise me to b-bring her here tomorrow so I can s-see it for myself!”

“She was gonna come visit you anyway!” Sans protested. “I’m not puttin’ a show on for ya, okay? You can just study her magic!”

Alphys dropped her arms and gave him a look that made him more nervous than the entire interview with the King combined. “What?” he asked warily.

She held up one claw, then pulled a small device out of her coat. It was a square of glass set on a rod only a few inches long, framed with stones in eight colors. The scientist rubbed the white one and held it up as the glass came alive, flowing and surging within its frame like a drop of oil on water. “Hold s-still, please.”

Sans allowed Alphys to peer through the glass to check his SOUL, wishing more than ever that he could see it for himself. “How’s it lookin’?” he inquired carelessly, fooling neither of them. “What’s my LV?” A remarkably stupid question: it had been 20 for four or five years now, and LV didn't go any higher than that.

The scientist stared for so long that Sans had to reach down and tap her on the head. “Hellooo? Alphys? Ya there?”

Alphys didn’t move, except to say, faintly, “It’s 17.”

A very long pause. “I must be misunderstandin’ something,” Sans finally rumbled, “‘cause yer makin’ it sound like I lost a few LV. That doesn’t happen.”

“Be honest,” said Alphys, still staring. “How many p-people did you k-k-kill when you were with the h-humans?”

“Uh…one. Just…one. Someone who was tryin’ really hard ta murder her right in front’a me.” It was true, no matter how hard he thought about it. He hadn’t killed that group of poachers on his way back from bringing Snowdrake to the Underground, or even the fucking bastard who’d said something about her and called him names right to his face. “What does it matter? How would I even lose EXP? It’s not like I un-killed anyone!”

Alphys was starting to grin again. “I, er, w-won’t ask too many p-p-personal questions, but…do you feel…nicer when y-you’re around her?”

Sans scowled, but it was hard to keep up. “Are you sayin’ I’m gettin’ so mushy that it’s knockin’ my LV down? Remember the part where that’s literally impossible?!”

“These don’t l-lie, Sans.” The scientist waved the device at him. Sobering, she said, “I don’t th-think we should mention this to Asgore. He’s still a little, um, t-touchy about humans and m-m-monsters.”

“Agreed,” Sans mumbled.

She grimaced, and fiddled with the device, staring at the ground. “Um...d-does she still like p-plays? At all?”

Sans didn't know what to say. “If it'd make you happy, then yeah, I guess she does.”

“Hmm. I think y-you're probably right.” Alphys smiled in a quiet way he didn't usually see, then gave him that knowing look again, tucking the glass back into her coat. “I have a p-proposition for you. Just let me track your LV when you come here with Frisk tomorrow, and I won’t s-say anything strange to her about your SOULs. D-deal?”

He didn’t bother accusing her of blackmail: it was blackmail. Sans tried to look very scary, but she just folded her stubby arms at him until he stood up, said, “It’s too fuckin’ hot out here. See ya,” and was gone.

“Wow,” said Undyne. “That’s…wow.”

“Indeed,” murmured Toriel. She took another bite of apple, dabbing her mouth with the household’s single clean napkin. “You opened the box, and reclaimed your memories?”

Frisk nodded, cheeks glowing. “It’s been very hard,” she said, unable to keep a little quaver out of her voice.

This was honestly not what she'd had in mind. She'd planned to tell Toriel everything that had happened with Sans, explaining her mission and her plans for humans and monsters, and what a peaceful future could look like; instead, the former Queen had asked a few questions about her personal life, and now Frisk couldn't stop talking about it.

Toriel took her hand, breaking her out of her guilty thoughts, and Frisk smiled at her gratefully. “I think I’ve cried more in the past week or so than I have in the past year,” the priestess confessed. Not to mention more hugs in the last three weeks than the past three years. “So far, the second fortune seems to be coming true. Making it to the Underground was one of the hardest parts, so we’ll see how my plan might work from here on. And…” She coughed. “I’m not ashamed of what else might happen, I just…”

The air in the room got a little more heavy, the silence more complicated. They were sitting around the table in the chairs Undyne had charged out to grab from someone else’s house; Frisk had been feeling so emotional in general, and so grateful to have two other women to confide in, that she’d told them nearly everything, including the fortunes and the bit about having a child very soon. Undyne was visibly working up to the giant, inevitable question of “Who?” when the boss monster shook her head. “I hope, Frisk, that you’ll think very carefully before you make any decisions of that magnitude,” Toriel said disapprovingly.

Frisk was about to answer when all three women stopped, looked at the kitchen, glanced at each other, and did a sort of collective shrug. Toriel cleared her throat. “Besides abstinence, of course, do you know the steps you should take in order to avoid that outcome?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Frisk replied. Undyne looked lost, but Frisk wasn’t in the mood to explain human biology and birth control—it was awkward enough having to say why she needed to bring her bag with her to the bathroom. She also planned to never ask Toriel whether she thought a run-of-the-mill contraceptive would be sufficient against a boss monster’s magic.

“Well,” Undyne said firmly, moving on, “if it’s a big damn family you want, we’re not going anywhere.”

“Stop it, or I’m going to cry again,” Frisk scolded her, and they chuckled.

There was a more comfortable silence as they finished the last of the apples. “I hope this goes without saying, but if there is anything I can do for you while you are here, my child, you need only ask,” Toriel said, dabbing at her fur again.

“Actually,” said Frisk, “I would like a favor. We brought two wagons with us. One of them has gifts for everyone, and the other has a few provisions and my herbal supplies. Could you please check whether they’ve been inspected, and when we can go unload them?”

Toriel hesitated. Frisk understood why: it was a more official duty than Toriel had performed in a while. “I know it’s a lot to ask,” the human said, “but…”

“For you, dear, I will.” The boss monster sighed deeply. “I’d better do so now.” She folded the napkin and pushed her chair back. “Will you take her home with you, Captain?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. I—” Undyne’s face fell. “Oh. Uh. Actually, my house is…”

Toriel sighed again. Frisk couldn’t help grinning. “Did you burn it down, or wreck it?”

“It was a training exercise that got too awesome,” the Captain said proudly. “I regret nothing! But, uh, I don’t have a house. I’ve been crashing with Papyrus.” She thumped the table. “Don’t worry, Frisk, I’ll stick with you. I’d do it even if His Majesty hadn’t ordered me to!”

Frisk winced, recalling what Sans had told her about the royal pair’s falling-out. A moment later, the fish monster caught herself and winced.

Sure enough, the former Queen’s hands were now gripping her robe, her eyes distant. “Did he?” she inquired. “How typical. Heaven forfend he speak to you or protect you himself, my child.” The boss monster shook her head. “You may either stay here or at the inn tonight, but starting tomorrow, my child, I’d like you to stay with me in the Ruins. You’re very welcome, too, Undyne.”

“But—” Frisk wished she could stuff the word back into her mouth as the monsters looked at her curiously. Somehow, she couldn’t bring herself to say that that was too far from Sans. “We’ll see,” she said lamely.

Undyne nodded. Toriel studied Frisk for a moment before saying, “All right, then. I’ll check on the wagons before I head home. Good night, dear.” She got to her feet, giving Frisk another hug. “Sleep well, Undyne—” She raised her voice. “I don’t know why you’ve been lurking back there, Sans, but I hope you also sleep well.”

“Yeah, I know it’s your house, boss, but eavesdropping is creepy,” Undyne said in the kitchen’s general direction. “Good night, Your Majesty. It’s, uh…it’s good to see you again.”

Toriel smiled a little, and let herself out.

The giant skeleton emerged from the back room, grumbling something about privacy. “Oh, bullcrap,” the fish monster retorted. “It’s not our fault your magic’s so damn strong. A kid could’ve felt it when you came in.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sans went into the living room and stretched out on the floor, looking at them upside down. “I see Tori got my note. Must’a woke ‘er when I knocked.”

Frisk and Undyne exchanged nods of agreement to not tell him what’d happened. “How’d it go with Asgore?” asked the latter.

“Pretty much what I expected. He made me use a damn truth stone, but at least now he knows I wasn’t lyin’ about Frisk wantin’ ta help everyone.”

Undyne scowled. “That sucks.” She sniffed. “You know what? It reeks in here. I don't mind it, but Frisk deserves better. C'mon, pu—Frisk, we're going to the inn.”

The priestess glanced at Sans, who looked as irate as she felt. “Maybe—”

“That's great. Night, boss!”

It was no use. Twelve minutes later, Frisk was staring at her reflection in the hotel's bathroom mirror, listening to Undyne's energetic nighttime routine in the next room.

The human sighed as dramatically as she could, turning out the light. Oh, well. At least she'd be able to get some sleep.

Frisk was too tired to sleep.

For one thing, her brain just wouldn't stop berating her for not sleeping, and for being at all unhappy. She'd made it Underground! She was home! She'd hugged Toriel just a few minutes ago; Undyne was in the next room; the abused monsters were all safe with their families; Sans and Papyrus' house was in easy walking distance...

It was wonderful. It was everything she'd wanted so much as a child that she'd had to forget it to even function again.

...But she couldn't sleep, because she couldn't scoot over and curl up against her giant, grouchy apprentice, which he...probably still was? They hadn't talked about that. They hadn't talked about several things that they really should have already. She'd been exactly brave and tipsy enough the other night to convey her intentions, but that had been pretty one-sided. Just for fun, Frisk tried saying it to herself: I gave him homework to do before he can have sex with me. It...didn't sound better in her head.

She heaved a sigh and burrowed under the thick hotel pillows to escape her own thoughts. Could this situation be any more ridiculous? How many steps had they skipped in a normal courtship? Was it even a courtship if he was both desperate and terrified to touch her?

She didn't care. She just wished he was here.

Frisk must have dozed off like that, because when she sat up, the pillows tumbled off the bed. “Sans?” she whispered.

Something rustled by the door. The priestess fumbled for the lamp, but her hand encountered bone as he reached it first.

It should have been a lovely moment, but the light clicking on forced her to throw the covers over her head. Sans chuckled, giving her a little shiver. "Nice ta see you, too," he murmured.

Now Frisk was squinty and self-conscious. There had been just enough room in her satchel for her oldest, frumpiest, most easily wadded-up nightgown; she'd also forgotten to pack a hairbrush, and the hotel only had huge, saw-toothed ones for monster fur. “What are you doing here?” she asked, sounding more petulant than she meant to.

Pause. "Leavin', I guess," he said in evident displeasure.

"No!" Frisk flew out of the covers and grabbed for his wrist. "I'm sorry! Don't—"

"Hey, hey, easy," Sans said gently, sitting on the floor and smoothing her hair out of her eyes. Frisk moved over on her knees to bury her face in the white fur of his collar, and he rested his hand on her back. She missed the soft, disbelieving smile that crossed his face. "Just wanted t'check on ya. 's kinda weird bein' back in my stinky ol' bachelor pad with just me 'n Pap."

"I bet," Frisk said, petting the fur on his collar. "I wish we could find another bed big enough for you. Mine's been in that room for a couple of centuries at the very least, so it's not going anywhere."

He snorted. "I don't think my room's even big enough ta hold it. The whole room'd just be bed." They both considered this, and he said, "Honestly, I'd be okay with that," to which she had to nod agreement.

It was quiet, except for the snoring next door. "Is Papyrus still asleep?" asked Frisk.

"Yeah. I hope Tori got the wagons taken care of so we can feed 'im tomorrow." Sans lifted both pillows back onto the bed. "I'd be okay, 'cept ya went an' got me used to eatin' every day, so..."

"I'm not sorry." Frisk yawned. She was getting hungry for something more substantial than apples, but knew better than to ask. It was impossible to forget the fear of not knowing when she'd eat again; she had to remind herself that she wouldn't die from missing a couple of meals, and that the monsters had been living this way for years. If she had her way, it wouldn't be for much longer!

Sans was playing with the ends of her hair. "So..."

"Mm-hmm." Despite herself, Frisk was relaxing, her legs complaining about having to keep her upright. It'd been a very long day, and the little tugs on her scalp felt wonderful.

The giant skeleton nodded vaguely. "Alphys wants t'see ya," he mumbled. "She missed you, a'course, but she mostly doesn't believe me 'bout your magic bein' super-duper amazing." Frisk made a pleasantly indifferent sound. "And..." She felt him tense up. "You were right."

"About what?" she asked, opening her eyes, not quite looking up at him.

"Alphys checked my LV—ever heard of it?" She shook her head. "It stands for 'level of violence,' which is exactly what it sounds like. Monsters figured out how ta quantify it a long time ago, 'n mine's been 20 for years an' years. If it could go higher than that, I'd probably be in the forties or fifties by now. Well..." Deep breath. "It's gone down to 17."

"Hm." Frisk scratched her nose where a few white strands were tickling it. "Is it usually difficult to lower it?"

That must not have been the reaction Sans was looking for: he growled at her under his breath, withdrawing his hand. "It's not 'difficult,' kitten-pants, it's impossible. LV is what it is. There's no take-backs on killin' people. I shouldn't be so spoiled by livin' in a nice place with a nice lady an' nice food that I somehow got less evil. It doesn't work like that."

"You're not evil, Sans. You're not perfect, and you have done a lot of terrible things—" He grunted, and she persisted, "—but that doesn't mean you're irredeemable. If you were, you wouldn't care if you were evil or not."

He grunted again, which was not the answer she was looking for. Frisk poked his sternum. "I think you're looking at it the wrong way. You've been absorbing years of accumulated negativity down here, haven't you? What if you've been...I don't know, negating it with better emotions, or maybe sloughing it off like Gaster said? Would that account for your LV going down?"

He just shrugged, and she retaliated with more poking. "Then tell me this: did you kill anyone yesterday, before Undyne attacked you?"

His massive ribcage swelled, carrying her outward and back in as he sighed. "No. One guy said somethin' gross, so I stabbed 'im in the foot. That was it."

She believed him. "And if you'd encountered him a month ago, would you only have stabbed him in the foot?"

The orange of his eyes dimmed. "...No. I'd'a killed him an' all of his buddies, no questions asked."

"All right, then." Frisk absently ran a finger down his ribs, pausing halfway down as he twitched. Was he ticklish? "That's another thing: if your magic's poisonous, why didn't I get sick and die when you gave me some of it?"

The skeleton laughed, short and harsh, nudging her hand away. "I barely even know how ya got it in the first place, sweetheart. Don't ask me why it worked or didn't work a certain way. 'm still not okay with just goin' for it the ol'-fashioned way an' hopin' you'll be fine."

That was the second time he'd called her that. Frisk's heart was in her throat. There was no wine or home-ground advantage here; she had to jump right in. "So..." She tried to sound playful, and was pretty sure she just sounded nervous. "Is that a 'no' after all? You don't ever want to try it? I know you haven't had much chance to practice what I asked, but..."

He had stopped moving—no breathing, nothing. The priestess pulled back a little. "Sans?"

"Then what?" he rumbled.

Frisk's hackles rose. "What do you mean, 'then what'?"

"I mean, what happens if we do it 'n I don't kill ya? Then what?"

It was a reasonable question, and she'd just been telling herself they needed to talk about it. Now that she had to answer, though, her mind was a roaring blank. "...Then...that would be...good?"

His hand flattened across her back and shoulders. "Yeah. At the very least, you could cross it off the list of stuff that's gotta happen for monsters t'go free. Sucks that gettin' knocked up is part of the deal.” Snort. “Maybe it's not too late ta find someone you'd actually want the kid to look like. You've still got a zillion guys ta pick from. There's, what, a month left before the timing starts t'get—"

The priestess pushed away hard, ignoring the pain in her chest. "What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded, sitting back to stare up at him. "Is it supposed to be some kind of joke? Or are you saying I'd sleep with anyone in order to make everything else happen?"

He blinked, realizing exactly what he'd said. "Uh. When ya put it like that..." The skeleton tried to shrug. "Heh. Nah, I was...I was just kiddin'."

"No, you weren't!" She jerked a hand upward and snapped her fingers twice, creating a bubble in which she could convey her thoughts at the proper volume. "I know what a joke sounds like, and that wasn't it!"

Sans scratched the back of his skull, bone grating on bone. "Fuck. I didn't mean—"

"You didn't mean what?" Frisk was too tired and hormonal for this! "What kind of shallow, selfish, irresponsible moron do you think I am, Sans?!"

"I don't!" The giant skeleton held up his hands, scooting back against the wall. "Wouldja calm down? Yer not dumb, or shallow, or whatever, and ya gotta be the least selfish person ever! Jus' forget about it, okay?"

"No!" She glared at him till he couldn't meet her eyes. "What were you trying to say? Was it, 'Frisk, I am concerned that you're rushing a major life decision for both of us based on something someone told you at a street fair, and I would like to discuss the long-term consequences, such as the ramifications of a child being half human and half boss monster'?"

"Yes! Exactly! ...Pretty much!"

"Then why didn't you say that? Why frame it as me being a shallow, selfish, irresponsible moron?!" The pain in her chest was getting worse. "No, don't answer that! Here's a better question: are you really that insecure? Do you honestly believe that the only reason anyone could ever love you was because they had to?!"

Sans looked as if the universe had crashed to a standstill. His eyes had gone blank, and his mouth moved a little, but nothing came out.

Frisk cleared her throat and swept her hair behind her ears, face burning. "I know you can't change how you think of yourself overnight, but until you do, I'm not going to sit here and let you insult me or you like that," she said, soft but firm. "Is that understood?"

No answer. His gobsmacked expression didn't change; in fact, he wasn't moving at all.

Despite herself, Frisk wanted to laugh. Poor Sans. He hadn't expected that word, had he? Purely to snap him out of it, the priestess said, "If you really can't make up your mind, then tell me so I can find someone e—"

"No!"

It was Frisk's turn to sit very still as the echoes died away. The boss monster glanced up at the barrier. He shook his head violently, scrubbed his face in both hands, and let his head drop back against the wall. "Look, I'm...I didn't think I was still so damn scared, okay? I thought I was gettin' over it, but when we're actually talkin' about this stuff, I—"

"You don't think I'm scared? I'm the one who's having a child!" If she had to spell it out for him further, then so be it: "Listen to me, Sans. I'm not doing any of this because a fortune told me to. It just helped me figure out how to get what I already wanted. Do you understand?"

His sockets slowly widened, his entire skull reddening, and now her face was hot again. "It's your turn to say something," Frisk mumbled.

Her apprentice rolled his head sideways, eyes flicking toward her, as if he'd scare her off by looking for too long. "So...ya really..." His voice faded and didn't come back.

Frisk desperately wanted to hug him again. Instead, she sighed, rubbed her breastbone – was it heartburn? – and summoned all her priestessliness to say, "Here's what I'd like to happen, Sans. We'll still be friends, I'll be your teacher, and you'll remain my bodyguard until we both decide otherwise. If you make up your mind and decide you want more than that,you need to tell me when you're ready. I won't bother you about it again."

Sans shifted his weight, but didn't answer. The priestess turned onto her side away from him, cuddling a pillow to her midsection—stress always made her cramps worse. "It's very late. In fact, at this point, it's very early. Please go and see if the wagons have been brought in, and have the gifts and the herbal supplies moved to Snowdin. The food can be distributed wherever it's most needed." She didn't hold in a yawn. "I'm going to sleep in for as long as Undyne lets me. We'll come to your house as soon as we're both up. All right?"

No response. "All right," she said. A click of her tongue, and the barrier was gone. Frisk got under the covers, rearranging the other pillow under her head. "Turn out the light, please."

Silence. The light clicked off. She heard him move toward the bed; something smooth touched her cheek, and without thinking, Frisk reached up and clasped his forefinger. "Good night, Sans."

His hand slipped away. Her chest hurt so much that she wanted to cry again.

...He hadn't gotten up yet. Could he tell that she didn't mean the calm, logical things she'd said, and how much she wanted him to stay?

No, it wasn't his job to read her mind, and at least one of them had to be sensible about all of this. Frisk stayed quiet, burying her face in the pillow as she heard him climb to his feet.

But instead of the whisper of magic taking him away, there came a shuffling sound and a soft thump, and another shuffle and thump; a whooshing sound, the smell of leather—the boss monster was removing his slippers and his overcoat, tossing them on the floor. Frisk sat up, trying to see him in the total darkness. "Sans, what are you—"

There was a strange feeling in the air, and a sort of grunting sound, analogous to a human trying to break wind. "There. Think I got it," he said after a moment.

That was strange; he hadn't moved, but his voice sounded much closer. Thoroughly confused, Frisk edged away as he sat down on the bed. The pain in her chest had almost disappeared, but she forgot to breathe as Sans shifted even closer. The mattress creaked, and his shoulder bumped hers as he reached across her lap, resting his weight on her other side and bringing his face just a few inches away.

Frisk's heart was thumping so hard that she couldn't think straight; she didn't understand what was so different about him until she reached up to touch his cheekbone, just below the light from his sockets. Suddenly, it hit her: she could spread her fingers and cover almost the entire side of his face. "You shrunk?" she squeaked.

Sans chuckled again, and Frisk felt-lightheaded. "Ya wanted me t'work on that, right?" He placed his human-sized hand on hers. "Ta-da." Pause. "Man. It's like wearin' clothes that're way too tight. Dunno how long I can keep this up."

Still in disbelief, the priestess rubbed her thumb across his nasal ridge, feeling his breath on her forearm. That explained why his eyes were only about a foot above hers now—it was convenient, but extremely disconcerting, to say the least.

"Till then..." He took her wrist. "Here's somethin' else I wanna try."

Frisk shook her head. "What do you mean? Something like—yeep!"

"Shit!" Sans dropped her hand like a piece of red-hot metal. "Did I bite ya? 'm sorry, I—"

"No! No, I just thought..." She tried to look at her palm, which of course she couldn't in the dark, wondering if she was losing her mind.

Sans let his head drop to her shoulder; she had the impression that he was getting ahold of himself before he sat back up and reclaimed her hand. Frisk tried not to jump as it happened again: he pressed her palm to his mouth, and instead of bone, she felt something warm and soft, exactly as if he'd kissed it.

She now had no idea what to say or what to expect. It was a huge relief to be drawn safely against him, his arms winding around her, stroking her hair and down her back. "So, yeah," he murmured into her hair.

At this size, his touch was a little less gentle than usual, not as light or careful, and he was holding her tighter. Her heart was doing the glued-together thing again; like every other part of her body, it reveled in being held like this, but it wanted her to move even closer and let him squeeze her harder. "Yes?" she managed.

"So...what all did you want me t'do again? Fix the size thing, make up my mind, quit hatin' myself?" The bones of his arms and ribs were starting to dig into her as his grip tightened. "Is..." He exhaled. "I still don't like me that much, so...is two outta three okay?"

Frisk's heart soared. She put her arms around him – all the way, for once – and let him bury his face in her neck, nearly crushing her against his ribcage. He was definitely hurting her now, but she didn't care—if anything, it wasn't enough. "Maybe," she said into his shoulder, playing with the folds of his shirt, which he obviously hadn't figured out how to downscale with the rest of him. "You don't have to be as confident as Papyrus, but are you willing to at least tolerate yourself?"

The skeleton shook his head a little, as if trying to rattle the words loose, then raised it enough to say, "I 'unno. 'm pretty lazy, an' it sounds like a lotta work."

"There you go again!" Frisk tugged on the shirt for emphasis. "You're not lazy. You've done so much for me and for the other monsters—would it kill you to do something for your sake?"

A long pause, ending on a shaky sigh. "Can I start with yer sake, maybe work up to mine?"

She closed her eyes, melting a little. "Deal." It was incredibly tempting to tell him how cute he was, but she didn't want to risk embarrassing him enough to start a full-blown pout. And as long as they were doing this... "Would you turn the light back on, please?"

A short pause. "Don't wanna."

"Why?" Inspiration struck: "I know I look awful, but you can just close your eyes."

"Wha—what kind of stupid crap is that? You—"

"Ha! You see?" She poked him in a random rib. "See what it's like?"

"Ha, ha, lady," Sans growled in her ear, making her pulse flutter again. He shifted his weight without letting her go. "'s not you, dummy. 'Sides, I can see pretty well in the dark already, 'member? I just figure I look goofy as hell, all bones and then this fleshy stuff hangin' off my mouth. At least ya can't see my tongue when I've got it out."

"Your...oh." Frisk's face was even warmer. "So that's what that was." Well, that was good to know. If he was worrying about how he looked with lips on, then that meant he planned to keep them on, which meant...

"Yep. I figured it out from bein' human. Wasn't that hard." Sans ran his phalanges over her scalp, and stopped dead at the sound she made. "Wouldja knock it off? I can't think straight when ya do that."

"Do what?" A sudden, kittenish impulse made Frisk run her nail down the back of his skull.

He growled again, much deeper. "That does it." Before she could react. Sans' fingers wound themselves into her hair, metacarpals spread in a loose grasp on the back of her head. She swallowed very hard, but let him tip her face up to his and lean in. His mouth brushed her lips, the lightest touch—

Frisk made another small sound, and to her frustration, his head snapped up. "What's wrong?" he demanded. "'s not my fault I don't know what I'm doin', I'm just tryin' not ta—"

He stopped as Frisk took his head in both hands. "Nothing's wrong. Now do it again," she whispered.

With a blink, and a deep breath, Sans let her pull him down to touch mouths again, but only for a moment before he ducked his head and dropped both hands for the first time. "You know...maybe this ain't such a good idea." She'd never heard him sound like this—not angry, but so self-conscious that he couldn't bring himself to look at her, even in the dark. "There's gotta be other stuff I can do fer—"

"Sans," she said, and when his eyes cut back to her, Frisk rose on her knees, groped around for the back of his skull, and leaned down to kiss him so hard that he had to catch himself before she knocked him over. Whatever magic he was using felt real enough to her: warm and yielding, it offered just enough resistance for him to kiss her back as his arms came up again, almost shyly.

She enjoyed the slow, deliberate movements for several seconds, then paused, silently daring him to stop; she was almost immediately rewarded with a hand threading its way back into her hair, pulling hard enough for a very nice twinge of pain. His other arm circled her waist, and Frisk scowled as his head moved down again. But a moment later, something sharp grazed her neck, and she cried out, grabbing blindly to keep him there.

Luckily, Sans seemed to have gotten the point. He chuckled, an almost predatory sound; something hot and damp trailed up the curve of her throat and along her jawline, his grip on her hair holding her in place so he could lick her neck again, and again, pressing his tongue hard enough to send chills and heat racing through her.

The boss monster let his teeth drift over her skin once more, a little edge of fear sharpening the pleasure. He nipped here and there, careful to lick anywhere he'd bitten too hard, until he misjudged and made her gasp aloud. When he paused to check on her, Frisk shook her head and leaned into him, humming the tiniest bit of encouragement.

That was all the invitation he needed: the world spun as Sans lowered her to the mattress, shoving the pillows aside and discreetly hitching up his baggy trousers. Frisk allowed him to settle himself most of the way on top of her, breathing deeply into the crook of her neck and giving it a few gentle laps. "You didn't mean it, didja?" he said, barely audible.

The priestess swallowed, trying to remember what the hell he was talking about. "I don't—"

He nuzzled her cheek, his phalanges tracing her collarbone. "I know ya didn't really mean it, findin' someone else if I couldn't make up my mind, 's just kinda..."

Frisk sighed impatiently. "I meant literally everything I said except for that."

Tap, tap went his fingers on her shoulder. "Everythin', huh?"

"All of it." Frisk rested her cheek on him. Compared to the incident in the bathroom, when all that had set him off was a glimpse of bare skin, he seemed in complete control of himself; maybe that was another reason he'd wanted the lights off. Either way, she wondered what would happen now. Was he going to go back to his house right away? Cuddle with her till Undyne got up? At this time of the month, it wasn't as if they could—

"'Kay," said Sans, with a different note in his voice. He shifted upward and kissed her again, more confident. Frisk started to speak, but forgot it when his tongue flicked against her lower lip, his hand working its way under her head. Her arms draped around his shoulders as her lips parted, and the feeling of his tongue sliding into her mouth made her whole body turn to plaster itself against him.

Letting him taste her was so absorbing that it took Frisk a minute to realize what his other hand was doing. The backs of his fingers stroked down her neck and along her collarbone, but they didn't stop there; his phalanges deliberately traced the side of her breast, and she was tingling in anticipation when his hand kept right on going to her waist, reaching under her thigh to pull it up so he could—

Frisk went rigid and shoved at his clavicle. The moment her mouth was free, she emitted a steady stream of "Waitwaitwaitwait!"s that brought him up short.

Very reluctantly, he sat up, and she grabbed a pillow to hold between them as an extremely ineffectual barrier. "What the fuck?" the boss monster snarled.

She could have slapped him. "Don't give me that!" she snarled right back. "No one said we were going any further than that, and we can't right now!"

Sans was panting so hard that she could feel it heating the entire pillow. "Okay," he said, trying very poorly to sound reasonable. "Right. Asgore, destiny, can't get knocked up yet blah blah—"

Well, at least she was too angry to be embarrassed. "It's not just that! I've got my period, Sans. You know, menstruation? Did you come across it in any of my books?"

He blinked again, this time in thought. "Yeah. Is that how you say that word? I think I was drunk when I read about it." He shook his head. "So you're...what now?"

God damn it. "I'm bleeding from the exact place where you were going. It's technically possible to go ahead and have sex anyway, but I'm tired, and it already hurts a little, and it would make a horrible mess, and I would completely hate it. That's why the answer is 'no' for at least four or five more days, and then there's Asgore and destiny blah blah. Understood?"

Sans' ardor seemed to have cooled. "Yeah, I get it," he said grudgingly. "Here, close yer eyes."

Frisk thought he was trying to go in for another kiss, but a moment later, the light clicked on. From behind the pillow, she felt another strange pulse of magic. "There. Man, that's better." His clothes shuffled; when her eyes had adjusted enough to look at him, he was back to his usual stature.

She waited, very patiently, and he eventually glanced at her. "So...d'ya want me ta leave?" A beat of silence. "Forever?"

"Of course not, unless you want me to think that you're not interested anymore," Frisk said before she could stop herself.

Squint. Glare. "Is this another thing where you're makin' up stupid crap ta prove a point?" She looked away, and Sans smacked his forehead. "Shit on a brick! No, I'm not ditchin' you 'cause I can't get laid right this second! I just figured..." Squirm. "That was really...y'know..." He sat down again, face glowing. "'m sorry. Did I hurt ya?"

Frisk winced. Now that the mood was officially gone, her neck was starting to feel distinctly chewed-upon, but she didn't want to talk about that. "No, I just meant my period. It's normal to have some pain or discomfort as your body's getting rid of certain things. Basically, it's Nature's punishment for not having a baby yet."

"Wow. That sucks big time." Scratch, scratch. "So...what can I do right now to not get in any more trouble?" he asked slowly.

The priestess gave him a wan smile. "That's an excellent question, but the answer is that you're not really in trouble. If you hadn't stopped when I said to..." She drew a finger across her throat. "But you did, and the rest of it was...fine." She smiled wider, though she couldn't quite look at him. "I think we should go to sleep now."

“Agreed.” Her heart sank as Sans stuck his feet into his slippers and retrieved his overcoat. The lamp clicked off. "Don' mind me," he said abruptly, and turned onto his side, the orange light of his eyes fading.

Frisk sat there for a moment, then climbed over the second pillow, to where his head was resting on the floor. "Good night," she said, and pulled the covers loose from the foot of the bed to get under them from the wrong end.

There was no response, but she felt him reach over to touch her cheek again. She squeezed his forefinger again as his hand rested on the bed; neither of them quite let go as they lay back down, and both swiftly fell asleep.

Bam. Babam. BambamBANG went the door.

Frisk jerked awake as light streamed in from the hallway. "What's wrong?" demanded Undyne. "Are you sick, or—"

There was a perfectly frozen moment as the Royal Guard Captain, in her fish-print pajamas and comfiest eyepatch, stared at the High Priestess, resplendent in her rumpled nightgown and a severe case of bed-head, and then at the bleary skeleton on the floor. Then there was no skeleton on the floor, only Frisk reaching for the lamp. Undyne blinked. "Uh..."

"Good morning," Frisk said, not being casual or sheepish, because why would she? "What time is it?"

Undyne scratched her neck, sweeping her loose hair aside. "It's almost eight o'clock. Don't expect me to let you sleep this late again." She glanced at the floor, as if doubting herself. "Rough night?"

Frisk looked at her, and she said, "Yes."

"That sucks." The fish monster came into the room and opened Frisk's satchel. "Not a lot to pick from, is there? You could borrow some of my stuff, but I don't think anything would fit. You're still pretty shrimpy."

"I'd argue if I could." Frisk yawned. "I'll see if I can go shopping later. In the meantime, I should have at least one clean outfit left."

Undyne did a quick, professional sniff test, locating the gown in question and turning to hand it to her. "Here. We've got a busy day. The wagons are ready to be unloaded, and I already had 'em take out...the food...for. Uh." Her eye widened. "That's...wow."

The priestess had been feeling fairly confident that she'd avoided any awkward questions for the moment, though she was dreading the hints Undyne would drop when they got to Sans' house; that wisp of security evaporated under the Captain's stare. "Wow," she said again. "I...damn! Seriously?!"

Frisk had no idea what she—oh. Oh, God. Oh, no. No no no no no—

Undyne had the decency to let Frisk run to the bathroom and stare at herself in the mirror for the count of twenty; then she sauntered in, allowing the human time to snatch her collar up to her chin. "Yep," said Undyne. "Here's your dress." She set it on the counter.

Frisk had another pathetic little hope that that was it, until she glanced in the mirror and saw that her friend's face was completely contorted with the effort of not grinning her giant, toothy, giant grin all over the place. "Really?" Undyne asked rhetorically.

"Shut up." Frisk stared dully at the bruises and occasional tooth mark ringing her neck. "Please, please shut up."

"Pffft! Like I have to say anything!"

"Shut up, please!"

Undyne was shaking her head, not as a threat so much as sheer disbelief. "I—seriously? No offense, but, Sans? I don't believe this!" Her grin faded a little. "Well...” She shrugged. “Not that it's anyone else's business, but just so you know, this is gonna mess some people up pretty bad." The grin faded to a smirk. "There's no way we can tell Her Majesty about this, or she'll turn him into a million toothpicks." It faded a little more. "I dunno how serious you guys are, but..." The smile was gone. "I don't think His Majesty would take it that well."

"Undyne, please don't tell anyone yet," Frisk said urgently. "Sans and I agreed not to let things get too far before I've spoken to Asgore about a peace treaty, and don't give me that look! This is as far as we got!"

The Captain held up her hands. "All right! All right! I know how serious you are about makin' peace, and about all of us. I won't mess that up." She straightened and gave a sort of salute, looking very stern in her pajamas and comfiest eyepatch. "My lips are sealed."

The High Priestess nodded. "Thank you." She examined her neck again in the mirror. Undyne closed the door, still shaking her head; when she was gone, Frisk finally permitted herself to smile.

#songfell #welp there we go #guess what also happened to me yesterday

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iced-souls · 3 years

Text

So I’ve thought of something.

What if there’s an au where frisk goes through the pacifist route and dies (I’m thinking to asgore), but dies dies. Like no determination in there soul resets them back to their save point. They just die, and asgore gets their soul. Buuuuuut, in toriels next visit with sans, she finds out about it. And when she then she leaves to just go think. At first she’s sad that she failed to save 8 human children, but then she starts blaming it all on asgore, since he’s the one to actually kill 7 of them. And then she starts blaming the rest of monsterkind for not trying to do something to stop it. (She isn’t really being a hypocrite because she tried doing 2 things to stop it, the first being leaving asgore and monsterkind, to try and give some sense to asgore, (which she did and he already knew but he felt he HAD to do something against the humans to show them what THEY did was wrong AND to give monsters hope.) and the second being trying to keep the kids from leaving the ruins. While they may not be the best choices, it’s was still something.) anyways, she kinda stops having any care for monsterkind anymore, and I mean. ANY. And leaves the ruins to start….. giving monsters what she believes they deserve. She does nothing in the ruins cause no monsters in there really did anything in her eyes so ya.

So, for some people this may look like dusttale but with toriel, but no. No it is not. Yes it is one character doing genocide, buuuut there’s still some of toriels…. Personality (?) to take into the story that makes it different I guess. And the fact it’s not to stop frisk but to avenge frisk. Plus ruins gang be sipping spider cider durin all this so ya.

At this time, asgore probably needed to calm himself after collecting the final human soul, and another corpse. So he’s havin tea probably, meaning he isn’t breaking the barrier yet. And probably isn’t going to until he either makes an announcement about what he is going to do, incase something goes wrong I guess.

Basically toriel goes through all the districts killing off monsters one by one. And seeing how she is an immortal boss monster who has been through a war, she’s probably stronger than all of them. There’s only a few she spares. The ruins people. In Snowdin: sans. . . . In waterfall: gerson(old people gang) and Nabstablook.(partially because they can’t actually die but mainly cause their a friend from the ruins I guess so she understands them a little more.) in Hotland: . . . In core: . . . In New Home: . . . In Home: . . . And in judgement hall: . . . .

There’s more to the story for some of the people, like papyrus and a person she meets again in the big hallway. And you could say hotland got a little hotter that day.

She meets up with the only person capable of standing up to her as a fellow immortal boss monster who took part in a war in the throne room. And then they have a UWAAAA COOL EPIC ANIME FIGHT WOOT WOOOOOOT!

Now either I’m thinking she wins cause she got a HECK ton of LV. And she proceeds to maybe i dunno. Bake a pie? She did what she wanted to do. So she thinks. And thinks. And thinks about how she is alone again. And thinks about the lives she’s killed. And now she’s stuck on what to do next. She doesn’t feel like what she did was wrong, maybe a liiiiiiiiiittle bit, but LV can do that ya. Can’t it. So she’s basically living her slightly less regular life. Visiting her past friends death site regularly. And sometimes going to visit the monsters she left alive. The ruins door now left open. The people never ask about getting to the surface. And are left to try and live a newer life in the underground. Riverperson gets found out one day but toriel decides to spare them seeing them as helpful in getting around he districts faster. The ruins gang, gerson, Nabstablook, and riverperson were never particularly fully engaged with the idea of getting to the surface as much as the rest of some monsters were, so no one falls down from losing hope on getting there. Perhaps, another fallen human could help them, or join them. Not the best ending. Kinda dark. Kinda sad.

Or asgore wins and breaks the barrier seeing that that is all he can do next. He kills himself after though because he doesn’t want the look of human souls on him or the new LV he had gained from toriel to affect others around him. Gerson and Nabstablook get the ruins gang out of the ruins to go to the surface together, and find riverperson along the riverbed and they decide to come along too, seeing they are the only ones left in a now ruined underground. Gerson is like their leader considering he’s the oldest and the wisest among them. And humans being kinda wiser in the future see the small group of monsters left and give them mercy. They have their own little town and dedicate it towards the underground. Nabstablook and gerson live together, and gerson decides to run a half garden shop in his last remaining lives to dedicate it to some old friends. When gerson passes on, riverperson takes over, Nabstablook not feeling up to the task, but they aren’t as “rulerly” as you would suspect a leader to be. I suppose it’s a happier ending. Kinda dark. But nice.

Also realize that toriel did more damage then frisk could do in a genocide route. Toriel literally took out monsterkind, every house, the place monsters evacuated to in the lab, everywhere. No one hiding it out lived.

(By the way, flowey isn’t gonna be around cause I’m guessing he wasn’t expecting frisk to die die. Expecting them to reset. Not expecting seeing who he kinda thought was his best friend die (a second time) so he probably just leaves (ha. leaves. As in his plant leaves lol) having kinda given up in a way. Not knowing what to do next. So toriel never interacts with him. But if or when she does, she gonna kill him considering she remembers him from his little interaction with frisk at the beginning.)

But ya. That’s mostly it. I have more thoughts but don’t feel like writing it out today. If you wanna know more let me know!

#au idea #undertale #toriel #have a good day #death~ wooooo~

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underimagines · 5 years

Text

Commission - A Time of Need

Mob/Mafiatale!Asgore, Chara, and Sans’ reaction to their human female S/O going missing for a week. Only to turn up bloody, broken, and near death in an alley, turned into a Boss monster. And what they'd do after getting them home/hospital/whichever while they where unconscious? (i.e. Stay at their side, go hunting for people who did that, etc, etc?)

Fandom: Mobtale/Mafiatale Pairings: Asgore/Reader, Sans/Reader, Chara/Reader Length: 3k (1k per Scenario) Rating: T+

For @jainwolfe! Thank you again for commissioning me!

Mob/Mafiatale-Asgore:

Asgore knew he was lucky just to have you back, but it didn’t stop him from feeling guilt every time he looked at you.

“I’m so sorry…” He whispered, squeezing the hand you offered him tightly. But not too tightly. You were still healing, after all.

“It’s okay.” You replied, smiling kindly. By the stars, he loved that smile. He’d die a thousand deaths just to keep it on your face. “I’m here.”

“How are you feeling?” He asked, wiping the tears from the corners of his eyes. He surveyed the bandages wrapped around your arms, waist, legs, and head. The patch over your eye taunted him, reminding him so much of Undyne.

“Better. Weird.” You shifted in the hospital bed slightly, trying not to jostle the IV in your arm too much. “It’s like, something changed inside of me. But I can’t put a finger on what.”

“It’s the magic in your system.” He explained gently. “Doctor Alphys injected you with some DT. I’m not sure what it stands for. Doing Treatments, maybe?”

You laughed, and he felt his stomach flutter. “Maybe.”

“Do they hurt?” He asked after a moment of silence, gesturing at the horns protruding from your forehead.

You touched them and winced. That was all the answer he needed, even as you furiously shook your head. “Not really.”

“Do you…remember anything that happened that night?”

You looked away, eyes growing foggy. Asgore clasped your hand between both of his. “Please, I need to know what happened.”

“It’s…foggy.” You sighed. “Like a dream. It all happened so fast. I was walking home after work. I was almost at the complex, when this car pulled up. The guy inside rolled down the window and asked me something—I can’t remember what. But next thing I knew, I was being grabbed and…”

You trailed off, biting down on your lower lip as tears built up in your eyes. “They did things to me, Asgore. Horrible things. They told me I was going to be ransom, that they were going to make you pay to get me back. They beat me, when I tried to fight back.”

You shuddered, violently, curling in on yourself at the memory. “I don’t even remember their faces. But I remember what they did to me.”

Asgore felt his brows furrow and his face set in determination. “Don’t worry, we’re going to catch them.”

“How?” You asked. It was half sob, half laugh. “How are you going to do that?”

“I don’t know.” He admitted, closing his eyes. Only to open them a moment later and give you an optimistic smile. “But we have Undyne on the case, so you can rest assured. She won’t give up until whoever did this to you is brought to justice. And I won’t either.”

“Thank you.” You sighed, squeezing his hand affectionately. “I’m…I’m tired. Is it okay if I take a nap?”

“Of course!” Asgore replied. “You must be exhausted, after everything you went through. Please, my dear, rest. I’ll be watching over you.”

“Thank you.” Your eyes grew heavy as sleep swept through you. “Asgore…”

In a matter of moments, you were out like a light. Asgore stayed by your side, clutching your hand tightly in his own. He only looked away from you when a nurse entered the room.

“How are they doing?” The bunny monster asked, her voice quiet and gentle as she crept inside, careful not to disturb you. She shifted the manila envelope tucked under her arm into her hands as she approached Asgore.

“They are suffering.” He replied. “Their soul—how did…?”

“Here are the test results.” She handed him the envelope.

He opened it, gingerly, sliding out the photos of the X-Rays they’d taken of your injuries. A few broken bones. Bruises, cuts, lacerations, gashes. The sight of them made his stomach turn.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

The worst was your soul.

Humans weren’t made to absorb other souls. Or to absorb anything into their souls, really. But somehow, you had. Maybe it was all the time you’d spent with him, that had caused his magic to rub off on you.

But your soul was different now.

Instead of an upright heart, like most humans had, it was upside down. Only monsters had upside-down hearts. And the white glow that patched together the spiderweb of cracks decorating the surface of your soul was far too familiar for him to ignore.

Whatever you were now, it wasn’t human.

“Their readings,” the nurse explained softly, “are the most unusual part of this. They’re not normal soul readings. Even with the additional DT that was added to their system, their body is reacting like that of a monster’s. A human usually has the resilience to face situations like this. But a monster, even a Boss monster, needs a little more help.”

“So, what are they?” He asked, staring hard at the papers grasped in his paws. “Human? A monster? Or something else?”

“The closest similarities we’ve been able to find is that, whatever’s going on with them, it’s turning them into a Boss monster.” The nurse wrung her hands nervously. “The influx of magic in their system is starting to affect them physically as well.”

She gestured towards your sleeping form, and Asgore followed her gaze to the horns poking out of your forehead.

“So, what does that mean?” Asgore whispered, his voice on the verge of breaking. “What should I do?”

“For now,” the nurse laid a hand on his trembling shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze, “be there for them. That’s all that you really can do.”

She turned and left the room, just as quietly as she had come, leaving Asgore clutching your files.

She was right. Whatever was happening, he had to be there for you.

Asgore sighed, gently winding his fingers with yours, watching your chest rise and fall as you slept.

“Don’t worry. I’ll always be here for you.”

And he would always mean it.

Mob/Mafiatale-Sans:

Sans didn’t like the way you were looking at him. It was like you were staring right through him.

“babe…” He mumbled, stroking a thumb over your trembling hand, “what the hell happened to ya?”

Your mouth opened, then closed again. Like a fish out of water, struggling to get the words out. “I…I don’t know.”

“something had to have happened.” He gestured at the spines rippling out of your back, thick and bony, like the scales of a dragon leading all the way down to a thin, limp bony tail. “humans don’t usually…y’know, grow tails?”

“I know.” You snapped, then squeezed your eyes shut, rubbing your temples. Your head was probably hurting like hell, and he didn’t blame you for being testy. After everything you’d went through…

“I’m sorry, Sans. I really can’t remember anything. I was just walking home. It was raining. I was at the bus stop. And then—it all goes black.”

He sighed, gripping your hand tightly between his own. “do ya remember us findin’ ya?”

“Kind of?” You shook your head, hairs plastered to your sweaty face. “It’s fuzzy. I was lying on the ground. Everything hurt. My vision was all red. And then I heard shouting. I got scared. I thought they were coming back for me. But—”

“it was papyrus.” Sans explained. “he was the one that found ya, ‘long with undyne. you wouldn’t believe how happy he was. he couldn’t stop crying.”

Neither could Sans. He cried for hours after they’d found you. It took his brother and Toriel to pry him off of you, as he’d clutched onto your unconscious body and sobbed like a total baby-bones.

He still wanted to cry, watching you sit there in the hospital bed. Looking at all the bandages wrapped around your arms and legs and torso. The gauze taped to your swollen cheek, and the patch over your purple eye. You looked like you’d been through hell and back.

You probably had.

“Do the doctors…do they know what’s happening to me?” You asked, gently pulling your hand out of his. You wrapped your arms around yourself, staring at the bony tail laying across your legs with confusion, and a hint of distaste. “What the hell is happening to me?”

“from what alphys says, it has to do with determination.” Sans scratched his skull awkwardly. He really hated explaining things. “y’know, only some humans usually have it. we have no idea how you got so much of it. but…however you did, it did, uh, this.”

Another gesture towards the tail, which curled inwards, as if shying away from his reach. It made him feel even worse than he already did.

“I think they…did something to my soul.” You admitted, finally. “I don’t know why, but I can feel it. There’s something wrong, inside of me.”

“hey, we don’t know that.” Sans placed a trembling hand on your shoulder. “the docs are still running tests, we ought to just wait to see what they can find—”

At that moment, there was a knock at the door. He looked up. You didn’t.

“Excuse me?” A tiny, fluffy mouse dressed in nurse’s scrubs poked her head into the room. “Is now a bad time?”

“nah.” Sans mumbled, though he noticed how you flinched as she stepped up close to the IV running into your arm.

“Alright.” She said softly. “I’ve got the X-Rays here. I figured you’d want to look over them.”

The nurse offered them to you. You, with shaking hands, took them. But you didn’t open the file. You just let it lay there, on your lap.

“Thanks.” You replied in a small voice. “I’ll look at them later.”

“Okay. Take your time.” Then she glanced at Sans. “Visitor hours end soon, just letting you know.”

“sure. thanks.” Sans couldn’t bear the thought of having to wait to see you again. He wanted to stay with you all night. Until you got better, and then he could bring you home. And things would be okay.

The nurse nodded, slinking out of the room.

“hey, maybe i should take a look at those.” He gestured at the files with an incline of his head. “make sure there’s no ray-son to panic.”

You cracked a tiny smile and pushed them towards him.

Sans took the files gingerly and pulled out the first X-Ray.

You were littered with broken bones. The sight of them made him angrier than he’d ever been in his entire life.

He was going to find who did this to you, and he was going to make them pay for it.

But aside from that. He put that slide back and pulled out the next one. Your soul…

For a second, Sans thought he was holding the picture upside-down. But then he realized, no, he wasn’t.

Your soul had turned upside-down.

He felt his nonexistent stomach flip inside of him. Humans didn’t have upside-down souls. And the white glow that patched all of those horrible cracks together was too bright to ignore.

There was only one answer to this, and it was one he didn’t want to accept.

You weren’t a human anymore.

“Sans? What’s wrong?” He looked up, too fast.

You were looking at him, with so much concern. He looked down at the file and realized that his grip had gone so tight that his finger-bones had blanched. He quickly slipped the papers back into their folder, then set it aside.

“s’nothing. forgeddaboutit.” He offered you a wink and a shrug.

It was obvious, from the look on your face, that you didn’t believe him.

“Is something wrong with me?” You asked, softly. Your voice trembled.

“nah.” Sans took your hand, linking your fingers together. The smile he gave you was genuine. “nothing’s wrong with you.”

It wasn’t a lie. Even if you were changing, in ways that Sans didn’t quite understand, he could still tell you that with confidence.

Nothing would ever be wrong with you, in his eyes.

Adult!Mob/Mafiatale-Chara:

You knew they didn’t mean to, but the way they were staring at you was, quite frankly, freaking you out.

“How does it feel?” They asked, pinning you down with that crimson gaze. “To lose your humanity?”

“I don’t feel like I’ve lost anything.” You sighed. “I just feel…different.”

“Differences can feel good or bad.” They continued. “How does yours feel?”

“I’m not sure.” You admitted, flexing your hands. The claws springing from your nail beds looked so wrong. “Not good or bad. Just different.”

They hummed, leaning back in their chair. Head cocked to the side like a curious child.

“Does it hurt?”

“No.” You shook your head. “Just feels…y’know. Off.”

“I don’t mean those.” Now it was Chara’s turn to shake their head. They moved the finger pointed at your claws to the bandages adorning your arms. “I mean those.”

“Oh. Yeah a little bit.” You rubbed the gauze on your forearm self-consciously. “I mean, whoever got ahold of me, they sure did a number on me!”

You tried to laugh, but it just came out as a nervous wheeze. “I still don’t remember who they were, though.”

“We’ll find them.” Chara assured you. “My Family will make sure of it.”

They weren’t just referring to their adoptive family, you knew. They were referring to the entire Family. The nest of spies and gangsters who held New Ebott in an iron grip.

You clutched the blankets in your fists, staring hard at your bandaged hands.

When you looked up at them, they had their hands folded under their chin, and was surveying you like a scientist conducting an experiment. The only part that didn’t fit was the smile plastered onto their face. It was so fake. Painted on, beneath their dead, red-ringed eyes.

“You know I hate it when you do that.”

“Ah.” They closed their eyes. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I? My apologies.”

“It’s not your fault. This is weird for all of us.”

“I’m just thinking of the things I’ll do once I find the people who hurt you.”

That statement sent shivers down your spine. Though there was no emotion in their face, their eyes were burning like the fires of hell. It made you feel nervous, like a bird trapped under the gaze of a snake.

“I’m going to hurt them. Much, much worse.” Chara giggled. It sounded childish coming out of their throat. “I’m going to make them regret ever laying a hand on you.”

“Chara.” You stated firmly. “I don’t need a quest for vengeance. I just need you. Right here, right now.”

They blinked, slowly.

“I’m…sorry.” They sighed, shaking their head again. “I know I should put aside my personal hang-ups for your sake, but. It’s difficult.”

“Can you try?” You pleaded, offering them your hand.

They stared at your outstretched palm for a moment then slowly, hesitantly, placed their hand in yours. You wove your fingers together. Their hands were so cold, like they’d been holding onto ice cubes the entire time they were by your side.

“I’m scared, Chara.” You admitted. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

“I’ll admit, I’m at a loss as well. This is. Extremely unexpected.”

At that moment, there was a loud knock at the door. You jumped, and Chara’s head snapped around so suddenly that you were surprised they didn’t break something.

A nurse poked her head into the room. The sight of her giant flower face, lined with teeth, reminded you of Audrey 2 from Little Shop of Horrors. Her body was enigmatic beneath the uniform that hung off her misshapen frame.

“Is this a bad time?” She asked in a gentle, soothing voice.

“No,” You said at the same time Chara said, “Yes.”

You shot them a glare and they refused to meet it. They just pouted.

“Well, I’ve got the files from the doctor here. I figured you’d like to look them over.”

She set them on the tiny table next to your hospital bed, and walked around, surveying the IV sticking out of your arm. “How are you feeling, dear?”

“Better than I did when I came in.” You offered with a dry laugh.

Her smile should have comforted you, but instead, you were kind of worried she’d try to take a bite out of you instead. Feed me, Seymour.

“Let me know if there’s anything we can do to make your stay more comfortable.” She adjusted your pillow, tugged the blankets up over your chest, and left with a soft goodbye.

You waved after her, and when you looked back at Chara, they were grasping the manila envelope in their hands. They looked up at you, their eyes following your tongue as it swept over the fangs sticking out from under your top lip.

“Do you want to look through it?” You asked.

“Perhaps it would be best that I did.” They mumbled, tearing it open.

The first image was that of your body. Coated with bruises, cuts, and a few very noticeable broken bones sticking out of odd parts of your body. Just the sight of the photo made them sick. They wanted to rip it into pieces.

Next came the X-Ray of your soul.

No longer was it a right-side up solid heart, brimming with color and energy. Now it was upside-down, much like a Monster’s soul, littered with cracks like a smashed window, and stitched together again with a rich white glow.

It certainly explained the claws and fangs. From what they could guess, this was a transformation of sorts. Your body had reacted to the trauma by helping you survive in anyway that it could: which meant, apparently, turning you into a Boss Monster.

“How does it look?” You asked. They could hear the anxiety in your voice, and as much as they wanted to give you the info straight, that wasn’t what you needed right now.

They looked up at you and the smile on their face finally reached their eyes.

“Different.”

#commission #adulttale #mobtale #mafiatale #asgore dreemurr #sans #chara #x reader #scenario #romantic #angst #body horror #long post #mod mellow #queued post

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askmicrowavegaster · 4 years

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Microwave grapes ending summary

Gaster does jump down the elevator shaft, and uses his magic to craft bones as steps to slow his descent, and finally rip through the elevator at a basement level, far below where the elevator usually goes. Beneath Fig’s arboreum and everything.

And he does find sans, but more importantly--

He finds Ursama and Serptrine’s assistants looking over another skeleton, a little bit taller than Sans, and hidden away in a separate room. He doesn’t have Sans’ odd bone deformity from the DT overdose, but almost looks the same age all the same.

Ursama demands to know what is going on that Gaster burst down like this, clearly destroying the elevator and definitely committing a crime in doing so if nothing else, on top of his kidnapping charges.

Gaster is going to uh. Take those kidnapping charges again. He walls up the room with bones and grabs Sans to run--and Sans talks to the other little skeleton, who todders over, and holds on, too.

Unfortunately, Gaster has only really one place to go, and that is back to his apartment. Which he does. And then barricades the door. And then shouts across the wall to Po-Yo that he needs someone to deliver a letter for him. Po-Yo gets a carrier (from chapter 6, Ava) and Gaster slides the message he needs delivered and the handful of gold pieces under the door.

The letter is addressed to Asgore.

Gaster never thought he would want to call the attention of an old monster down on himself, but right now, he’s the only one higher ranked than Serptrine that Gaster can think of who might object to the discovery of creating child monsters for warfare.

In the meantime, Gaster barricades his wall and sets the kids up in the back room of his house and tells Sans to tell-- the boy’s designation is ‘PS-1’ (Prototype Skeleton 1) rather than ‘CS-1’ (Control Skeleton 1)-- to hide if anyone other than he comes in.

But PS-1 seems to understand his speech just fine. And he doesn’t know what to make of that, except that someone has been teaching PS-1 the same way he taught CS-1.

He makes them tea, and ignores anyone pounding on his door, and hopes no one pulls out magic or the royal guard. But the pounding on the door stops, and he isn’t sure how much time passes, but there’s not quite enough food in his apartment for three people. There was hardly enough for one.

He doesn’t want to leave his apartment and come back to find both skeletons gone.

He tries to pass the time by talking to them and figuring out what was going on. And this is what he learns:

PS-1 has been outside of the building before. PS-1 knows how to summon his magic. PS-1 has a rotating series of caretakers. PS-1 has seen Sans before.

PS-1 has a LV of 7.

Gaster dreams about murder.

Eventually through a lot of hand gestures and struggling conversation, he starts making a plausible scenario:

Sans has been taken from his room at night periodically. This is probably where PS-1 met him and they had a ‘comparison’ between the control subject (Sans, who is not being pushed to learn much or learn an agenda) and variable subject (PS-1, who is being trained very specifically towards a goal.) The mistakes and ‘mistakes’ Gaster makes with Sans are corrected with PS-1 and it’s led to a very strong, dangerous, and unhappy toddler in his apartment, and that toddler is getting very hungry.

The good news is that PS-1 seems to like Sans and will calm down when comforted. The bad news is that while Papyrus (Sans named him) doesn’t seem interested in ‘rebelling’ by attacking his new ‘handler,’ that doesn’t extend to furious pouting tantrums, fits, and crying.

At some point, Papyrus summons the biggest attack he has— a strange, toothy skull sort of thing. It might’ve been dog-ish if not for the horns.

Gaster recognizes someone trying to copy his dragon skull design and has to retreat for… a while. It’s sort of like setting off a firework show at a wake, maybe a ‘celebrating of life’ if you were being optimistic, and then turning around and finding your fireworks being pointed at people.

After a long while of hiding where Gaster can start to feel exhaustion weighing on him and is certain the low-magic meals are really starting to affect the kids, too, there’s a knock on the door and a familiar voice coming through.

Choris is a cat monster with a messed up ear and bad personality, but he grew up under Gaster’s parents and they went through college together. It is not an affectionate relationship by a stretch, but jealousy doesn’t mean you want them to fail, and so they’ve kicked each others’ asses through things a handful of times.

Today, Choris has shown up to say things like ‘I bet you haven’t been outside this whole time’ and ‘do you even have food in there? I bet you don’t. You haven’t even checked your mail. Get your shit together.’

Then the mail is shoved under Gaster’s doorway and the thump of several bags of groceries is heard outside the door. Once the footsteps are gone, Gaster reaches out to grab the food and hurriedly makes the kids a meal before checking the mail.

One of them is a response from the king, alerting him to an investigation and for his testimony to show up at x day. Which is almost immediately. Tomorrow, or in nine hours, even. People probably would’ve shown up to his house and broken in if he didn’t show up, holy shit, he would’ve died (but only emotionally, not literally.)

The idea of showing up in front of a Fucking Boss Monster is absolutely psyching his little traumatized brain out, but he has already kidnapped like two people barricaded himself in an apartment building for several days, so he doesn’t really have any room to say he’s paralyzed by nerves.

Still paranoid that someone is going to come swipe them when he’s not looking, Gaster gets Sans’ crutches and tells him he’s in charge of Keeping Papyrus Chill, and takes them with him (in a backpack for transport) to the castle for a Fucking Hearing.

(Once they’re there, they get out of the backpack, but he is extremely not interested in people spotting them on the street and asking questions, because he has absolutely no doubt that someone has gossiped this all the way back to Snowdin by now. )

Serptrine and, unfortunately, Ursama are there as the ‘hey we need to break the barrier’ team, and Gaster shows up with two skeletons half his height wearing stripes, holding onto both his leg and each other.

It’s pretty obvious who Asgore sides with. Everyone knows the moment he looks over at the kids.

That doesn’t mean everyone is happy. Serptrine is removed from his post as head scientist, the position is suspended, and Ursama is on leave for a bit, or at the very least is no longer Gaster’s direct superior. They also forget to really give him a new superior. Or if someone is assigned, they aren’t claiming him, and when he’s told to return to the lab for regular work, he finds no one is really looking at him or minding him much at all. People he casually spoke to seem to acknowledge him a bit, but that’s about all.

Whether they thought he was in the right to kidnap Sans and Papyrus or not, a lot of people also now view him as The Guy Who Stole Our Best Chance at the Surface.

Yes, humans are falling down, but it’s… taking a long time. And then people are in danger and killed each time. And they’re still relying on the strength of humans when they use that captured power. And what about when they get to the surface, and then there are still humans out there to deal with?

If they’d just Had Someone Who Could Handle the Barrier and the Humans Beyond It…

Haven’t you ever heard of the needs of the many? If five children die to save a city, how is that the wrong choice?

It’s easy to dream big about a project that barely got off the ground, but seemed to have some promise—especially if one of the experiments was successful and managed to end the last human’s rampage.

...but Gaster has a child at home who has just learned about jigsaw puzzles, and who takes the newspaper from him to do the word searches and junior jumbles in pen.

Then again, Gaster has an advantage in being kind, here. He’s never believed they would make it to the surface again, anyway.

As Gaster raises the two and deals with ostracization at work (which started out as just spite, but then was picked up as a hint by others, and has grown into a Habit) he uses the lack of oversight to start building small CORE experiments.

He’s doing his best with the CORE but still works a lot on it at home, which Sans watches him do when he’s not watching over Papyrus.

Because that is unfortunately quickly becoming Sans’ job. He’s still pretty young and needs crutches to stay upright for long stretches of time, but Papyrus has proven to be A Little Troubled, especially since he started talking more.

He’s fond of fighting, which is normal for a monster child, but he’s actually fighting with intent to harm, because that’s what fighting has been for him this whole time, and at LV 7 it’s very difficult to break that sort of habit. You can think of LV as a disability almost— it makes it more difficult to move through life, as you’re on constant “when all you have is a hammer” mode. They had a fun incident where upon getting very frustrated with a puzzle, Papyrus summoned bones from the floor and one of them happened to have Moderate Contact with Sans’ knee.

Sans ultimately has a monster version of hemophilia—a small cut can still cause him to bleed out. This eventually affects his magic to create KARMA, where his max ATK being small still bleeds out a little bit longer than would otherwise be expected.

It is still a very frantic and uncomfortable trip to a healer, where Papyrus ends up left alone in the house because Gaster didn’t know what to do when you had two kids, and one needed the healer, and the other had caused the wound.

Papyrus has been extremely careful about injuring Sans since then, and they’ve gotten him to somewhat release his pent up energy by doing ‘trick shots’ with his magic. Spelling things with his bones, biggest and smallest bones you can possibly make, haha hey kids what about bones that go backwards?

Whatever was in that DT was fucking potent, because Gaster was a pretty good kid with magic for his age, but Sans and Papyrus outstrip him fast enough that at some point theyre just swapping tricks with each other and doing things Gaster is pretty sure aren’t physically possible but. Whatever. Fuck it.

He’s going to do physically impossible shit too if he ever gets this geothermal shit up and running.

...it is definitely not all fun and games. Most of the time, it is the opposite. When Papyrus grows old enough to start to care more, he starts thinking a lot about morality, and LV, and finds that he can’t even remember where all of it came from, and he doesn’t know if he should want to or not. But he still likes using magic. Even though he’s careful now, he still thinks fighting is fun when he goes out and duels kids in the backlots (the monster equivalent of kittens fighting each other) .

He and Gaster eventually work out that maybe it’s okay to be happy, even when you’ve done something bad in the past. Puzzles are very popular now, even though they’re historically military traps. Magic is even more innate and expressive than a hobby, though, and over the years Papyrus can hone it to be something different. Maybe knives aren’t only used for murder. Maybe you can fight to defend, too.

Papyrus decides he’s going to be talented enough he never loses control of his magic ever , and can avoid even the most accidental, normal mistakes.

(Sans, who curls up on the couch and watches Gaster do physics on the coffee table at night, also starts talking about those sorts of things. Some childhood conversations cropping up that Gaster doesn’t know if they’re normal or if it’s because of where Sans and Papyrus come from-- or if they’re the only ones talking about this at all, even, because these talks feel like the only conversations that have mattered in his whole life sometimes. His parents were kind, and supporting, and loving, but no one has ever said ‘I’m sad’ and then followed up with it—with something other than a quip, or a joke. But he and Sans and Papyrus keep talking instead.

The people in the underground don’t like talking about the unfixable. Maybe it’s because of the puzzles, he thinks. Maybe the underground has decided that no one would ever make a problem there wasn’t some way to solve.

He doesn’t think there are ways to solve some of them. He doesn’t think there’s a way to break the barrier that will let them survive outside. He doesn’t think there’s an answer he can give Papyrus about how he can feel the LV in him surging with excitement when he fights. He doesn’t think there’s a way he can tell Sans that no one person can fix everything.

“But I guess I have to try,” he says, like a joke and a quip, and exhausted.

“you just said you couldn’t,” says Sans, who has grown out of his crutches and gained a few centimeters height.

“Yes. But if you’re in a position to do something , aren’t you obligated to try?” Gaster replies, trying his best to stay in this conversation for Sans, who is so distressed lately, and yet he is already so very tired. “If you’ve got the ability, aren’t you obligated to try?”)

(Gaster dreams about finding Serptrine, wherever he is in retirement, and murder. He also thinks about Papyrus, and how frustrated he is at his LV, and his childhood stolen away by other people’s choices, and the cessation of possibility. He thinks about Papyrus who has changed, and so has decided everyone can change if they want to, even if Gaster argues that Papyrus didn’t choose to be a killer— Gaster never chose to be an angry, lonely child. But maybe he did. Maybe he decided going with his emotions was easiest, and maybe he had to grow enough to find the will to reach for something that wasn’t his first impulse. The first impulse to violence.

He doesn’t know. He was just a kid. But he dreams of killing Serptrine, and when he wakes, he does not follow his dreams. For a crime committed only in imagination, maybe that’s the best he can do.)

Gaster talks a lot about Snowdin, when he’s feeling good. He wants to go back some day, because it was such a strange little town, and so much room, and so much more welcoming than he remembers being anywhere before. They never go back to Snowdin.

His work on the CORE gets him promoted to head scientist after several years of the position vacant and in limbo. A lot of the anger has had time to die down, though there are a few brief surges after he takes the position and starts focusing the whole of the lab towards electrical production.

Sans and Papyrus have started schooling. Sans tests well and is good at theory, and is rocketing towards college, while Papyrus gets stuck in the minutiae, and seems to be enjoying himself plenty well refusing to move up until he has gotten a perfect score on every assignment each level can throw at him. Fudging to give him a perfect score does not work, as he only trusts his own grade evaluations, and his criteria are mysterious and vague.

Sans—in a very aggressive move on his part—starts to work at the lab.

Many people have gone and been replaced since he was a child here. He wanders through halls he barely remembers. He rediscovers Fig and Jam (still very young— fish mature differently, though Jam has sprouted some legs and walks on their own sometimes) and helps some in the medical wing before Gaster Very Firmly transfers him into field work and sets him about laying the wires through the underground that will eventually carry their charge. It is an absolutely mind boggling undertaking, especially with something not actually functioning yet, but Sans finds he’s actually a pretty social guy, and laying groundwork gives him a lot of time to goof off some and talk with the locals.

Fig and Jam transfer to the CORE building site. The tubing twists and turns like roots an the central walkway is laid out like a maze. It was almost inevitable, with how more areas grew upon each other as needed, more power rods and catwalks anywhere they could go.

In what seems like a very short time, the CORE starts to tower at the deepest edge of Hotland. It reaches so deep they need elevators to reach the lower floors by the end, and yet they still have to build on the outside around those same elevators. Eventually the moving floors are installed, just to try and keep everything stable.

DT extracted from the atmosphere over the years starts to be moved to the CORE site, because as volatile as DT can be, it’s also one of the few substances that can temper materials steeped in magma, without allowing the metal to melt.

The channel from Snowdin is dug. Wires are laid. Small central generators are set up, to distribute the energy from within the communities—

And Sans gets a feeling one day. Not a bad feeling or an omen. A whim, probably, and goes to visit the CORE, knowing they’re near the end of construction and Gaster is going on three days of nauseas energy and Red Buffalo, and soon he is going to explode.

Sans finds no one on the upper floors, and no one on the walkways. Someone’s been posting motivational posters on the wall, things that started to sound a little like sentimentality and anxiety and a wild hope holding all the mess together.

When Sans descended to the lowest levels of the CORE, on the floors just above the magma, something was wrong. Different.

It was cold, for one. Or chilly, at least. The heat from the magma was always rising, but this wind had a bite of cold to it— and as Sans opened the first door to the observation deck, there was light that shouldn’t have been there. The whole platform down here was lit by magma glow, and yet, this light was shining instead.

For a moment, he thought, perhaps, it was electricity. A lightbulb. The first one to turn on, maybe.

And then he opened the door wider, and he saw oblivion.

It looked like a hole. A white hole, hovering just above Gaster’s head, in the dead center of the room.

He could see other things around that said there should be others in the room— Fig and Jam’s water cooler. Head Guy’s binder of notes. A plate of lightly smoking bagels, partly eaten.

And Gaster, just staring into oblivion as it grew slowly bigger, like a dark drain letting all the world around it just spill in.

And Sans, who was small and lightweight, and who hadn’t had a thought to brace— stumbled forward, and was caught in the current.

It did feel like water. Like the world rolled up around him, and all the air sucked away, and plunged him into a bright, white ocean.

...and like a fish, something hooked him. Caught him right in the soul.

It flung him out, bright purple, and into the elevator a room away, where he didn’t crumble, but blacked out just long enough to miss how The End, losing one mass, took another in his place.

(And for the first time in his life,

Gaster

Saw

Stars .)

#microwave grapes #gaster #sans #papyrus #undertale #ut fic

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washedupfae · 4 years

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What is RomanticTale?

RomanticTale or RT, is an idea that I have been stewing over for about a couple of years now, give or take. Yes it is another Undertale AU, but I do hope that by the time I have finished this brief outline of the AU, it might spark some interest.

What separates this AU from others?

RT has its own unique quirks, mostly centered around the souls of the monsters as well as some humans. A soul is a delicate yet powerful resource, but in this universe, the souls are unstable.

Each soul is encased in a barrier of its own creation, resembling a glass like structure around the soul, allowing it to keep its shape and maintain the flow of magic. Without these barriers, the souls would liquefy and melt away, causing the monster to Fall Down.

The barriers are not perfect however, and gradually magic does deplete and diminish, as this occurs, the barriers become weak and can fracture or shatter completely. To keep this from happening, a monster must constantly be ‘recharging’ their souls, by being in contact with some form of love.

Philia — Affectionate Love. Philia is love without romantic attraction and occurs between friends or family members. ...

Pragma — Enduring Love.

Storge — Familiar Love.

Eros — Romantic Love.

Ludus — Playful Love.

Mania — Obsessive Love.

Philautia — Self Love.

Agape — Selfless Love.

Each type of love brings its own different level and degree of magic it can restore.

Philia, being one of the most common and easily obtained can be given in small doses through simple exchanges. A coffee date with a friend, a hug, really any familiar , kind gesture will do, these are also the shortest lived supplies and thus sought out more often.

Pragma is a precious form of love, I would even go so far as to state this could be found in a Soul Bond. A Soul Bond in RT is a very vital aspect of the monster’s life, if they are fortunate enough to find their soulmate and create this bond, their love will deplete at a significantly slower rate. This is also vital for most Boss Monsters to maintain their heavy consumption of magic.

Storge love is another easily obtained source, created between bonds such as parent and child, during childhood, it is vital that the souls are kept near their parents for protection as well as this source of love. If a child is orphaned or abandoned, they may fail to thrive and Fall Down.

Eros, romantic love. Passionate, fiery, this love can burn bright and die out quickly. It is during times such as Monster Heat, that this love might be the primary focus, though it can also be a gentle, long lasting love. Situational.

Ludus, playful love, puppy love. It is a bubbly sort of affection that can give a rush to the soul.

*Mania. A dangerous, twisted love. Not as common in RT but heavily influences RomanticFell. More on that later.

Philautia. This is a difficult love for some monsters. Monsters such as Papyrus have this in spades, it keeps their souls near full and regenerates their magical stores with little need for outside influence, but if their confidence is shattered, this love can dwindle at an alarming rate.

**Agape love, often found within Royalty and those who serve monsterkind. It is a selfless love that gives and asks little to nothing in return. Sans is actually a pretty decent example of this form of love, giving so much of himself, sacrificing while protecting others (at least within this AU)

Some key points of interest in RT.

I have mentioned monster heats, now while this topic may make some uncomfortable and it can be left out in any stories written about this timeline, I am including it here in this explanation. Monster Heats are deadly, dangerous things. It is a time of great upheaval in their flow of magic and if the situation is handled poorly, they can burn out their magic and Fall Down. Some monsters such as Muffet, have created a network of monsters ready to assist during heats. Your average monster will have one to two heats per year , though Boss monsters can experience them frequently, depending on the level of magic they possess. Some Boss monsters only experience their heats every three months, while others have them happen as often as every other month or so.

Gaster of course has fallen into the Core, but now and again, glimpses of him can crop up. A chill racing down the spine, the feeling of someone just over your shoulder, a shadow in the mirror. During these rare moments, others might remember him for a short period.

Gaster’s influence has touched many lives, and is despised by most. Grillby has a deep well of hatred for him, due to the fact it is by Gaster’s hand that Grillby’s soulmate dusted. Alphys does not enjoy venturing into the True Labs where his influence is strongest, though she does not yet realize that is what is keeping her terrified of those laboratories.

Papyrus/Rose: A hopeless romantic, he has grand dreams of finding his perfect life partner, being the perfect soul mate, and helping restore the balance of magic to the Underground. He also aspires to become a Royal Guard.

Sans/Romeo: A sad case. With each reset, his soul fails to restore, so he is in a constant state of magic depletion and his time is running out, all he desires is to see those he cares for, find their peace before his time is up. He has let go of his comedic ways and is more of a sad poet though he of course fakes that smile as always.

Grillby: A kind and generous soul, his food and drinks are imbued with extra magic for those in need. He has partnered with the Inn to offer sanctuary to travelers or those down on their luck.

Gaster: The prime antagonist of the storyline. It is due to his meddling, though through twisted intentions, that the monsters are in such sorry state. His experiments lead to the imbalance of magic in the Underground. He is also the source of much contention with Grillby (when he can remember Gaster that is.)

Chara: A faceless monstrosity. Former adopted child of the royals, their remains vanished after being placed in Gaster’s care when they were at death’s door due to an illness.

Flowey/Asriel: Another sad story thanks to our mad scientist. With the death of his sibling, he tried to cross the barrier with their soul, promising to let Chara’s soul find peace. He perished in much the same way as this same character has in other timelines. After death, his fractured soul returned, along with Chara’s, to the Underground and was collected by Gaster.

Asgore and Toriel: At one time, the royal couple had been a great source of love for the Underground. The magic that flowed from the capital sustained their race for many years, but with the death of their beloved children, their love fractured and was soon lost.

Frisk: A strange human child who fell into the Underground. They carry (depending on the timeline) great love and friendship, or intense malice and hatred. They can be a vital friend and key to the monster's freedom, or their undoing.

Notes:

*Mania is a twisted form of love that has begun to sprout up with the fracture between the royal couple. It is leaving seeds of envy, scorn, distrust in monsters. It taints their souls and if a monster becomes too dependant on Mania, they can become LV hungry, dangerous creatures.

**I know that Agape love also stands for Higher Power type of love outside of the AU, but I am not getting into religion at this point in time.

Feel free to ask any questions that might come to mind!

Edit: I forgot to mention that the fashion sense of the AU is Neo-Victorian. I will get into RomanticFell later, but it carries a bit of Steampunk.

#RomanticTale

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kryptsune · 5 years

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🌼Here is my version of Horrortale THE UPDATED VERSION! I was not really happy with how I wrote it prior to this but now that I have added more world building I am so much more satisfied with the result. There is a lot more to it now than there was before world wise. A few things to mention before I start. This Horrortale is mainly a Frans or Frisk X Sans AU. It may change in the future but that is the core of it. I also want to warn people that the below content may be triggering or disturbing. This is very serial killer based so keep that in mind as you move forward.

DO NOT REPOST MY WORK WITHOUT MY PERMISSION IT IS NOT FOR YOUR USE. IF YOU LIKE MY WORK PLEASE REBLOG INSTEAD! It helps me so much! It makes such a difference.💙If you want more of these just let me know! It’s the only way I can gauge interest!

Horrortale {FXS}

Alternate “Nicknames” Info:

Sans: Blade Papyrus: Ash ( joke reference to Ash vs the Evil Dead)

Main Plot Synop: Sans timeline has yet to meet their “fallen human”. On the surface the monsters begin to do experimentation learning about the abilities that humans possess. These studies lead to even more advances for the humans and the monsters. They live and coexist perfectly but something goes wrong. The monsters were considered to be pure beings ones with pure white souls to match but humans were flawed. They did horrible things even to their own and eventually that began to create a new threat. One that was easily spread from monster to monster. A black infection that begin to eat away and hollow out ones soul called The Rot.

Sans works in the lab spending more and more time trying to help his associates with their research into human soul traits. Gaster begins to make headway on the research of the soul extracting vials of concentrated soul essence. That includes the essence from a fallen human that died of causes unknown. Their name is Chara. In Chara’s soul The Rot lies in wait festering in a sea of pure red. Like an apple rotted from the inside the hate and hopelessness of this trait resided in that lone soul and ate it alive. All that they had been was no more. Those working in the lab are the first to be infected especially their Royal Scientist Dr. W.D Gaster.

Sans pursuit to rid the others of this rot causes him to become obsessive and resort to using old vials of human soul essence in his own experiments. It begins to become successful keeping away the infection but at high doses it can have some nasty side effects. He begins to cure the monsters but his own rot can only be cured by one source, Determination. The strength of the essence is so powerful that it begins to have some interesting complications.

Kindness- Obsession

Integrity- Moral righteousness/ pride/ manipulation

Bravery- Adrenaline high constantly sweating, rapid breathing and nausea

Justice- OCD (ideologic pride)

Perseverance- Extreme fatigue/sickness/ depression as physical symptoms

Patience- Timid and intense fear/ anxiety

The Rot and the World it forms:

The rot if left “untreated” can cause some rather unfortunate changes within monster biology and the cure to such an infection is not foolproof (in fact I would argue it causes them to start cannibalizing each other). Those that are suffering from the rot begin to make their way through different stages of the infection.

Stage 1: Paranoia and weakness

Stage 2: A shift in biology- Due to the cure being human soul traits the side effect is a change in monster biological structure. They begin to lose some of their magical abilities taking on the traits that are curing them. It alters their make up at the soul level. This also causes them to take on a more physical form. That means that their bodies persist after death and even bleed.

Stage 3: Starvation/ Ravenous hunger- The infection causes a craving in the soul most likely in an effort to fill a hole of some kind. The same one that is eating away at their soul leaving a soulless husk behind. This is usually seen in the form of food but it can also be more worldly things. Money, power, all of those are fair game. They essentially become soulless.

Stage 4: Mindlessness- Almost like wild animals the monsters that make it to this stage become like wild beasts. All predators. They feast on other monsters but they usually turn their sights to monsters that have a high concentration of human soul in their bodies. That includes humans as well.

Stage 5: “Death” (amalgamates)- The typical mindless zombie. They are slow and aggressive only thinking of eating even though they are half dead already. They do not speak, they do not think. They exist. (What a horrible way to “live”).

Monsters begin to eat and kill each other thinning the once thriving monster world. Just like in UT they used to have an overcrowding problem but now with this new situation that is quickly changing. Asgore locks himself away trying to keep the infection at bay and away from those he cares about. It is unclear if the King is dead or not. All they know is that the entire Underground is in ruin.

It would appear that having quantities of these traits can hold off deeper stages of the infection. That is why they begin to formulate ways to lure humans into the mountain, songs, whispers, anything that can be used. The barrier is different in this version as it only requires the power of a human soul and a monster soul to cross it. This means that some monsters have the ability to slip past the barrier to drag humans back for “dinner time”. The human cities have not forgotten about the monster threat and they keep up defenses to keep them out. A zombie apocalypse if you will. That means that some monsters (again not all they have to be strong enough) can cross the barrier and bring back food.

The barrier was also not created originally as a punishment for monsters losing the war but rather containment. It was cruel nonetheless and eventually the humans began to distance themselves from the monsters leaving them stuck in a barrier that provided no room to grow and little food or resources. Eventually as The Rot began to infest the Underground humans quarantined it off leaving them even more hopeless than ever before.

Humans do not “seem” to be affected by The Rot but their world has been significantly altered by the disease. It makes it difficult to live when all your meals are outside of your cities security and large open spaces are easy targets such as farms. In the end the war and caused an even larger problem, the destruction of their world. It is nothing but an apocalyptic wasteland in most parts due to attacks. Food is scarce both in the Underground as well as on the surface. Just as monsters have become hunters of their own

The Effects of DETERMINATION:

Sans begins to see more and more the inner works and the fabric of the world he lives in. It begins to make him think he is going crazy. It has to be due to sleepless nights, heightened stress, and hopelessness that seems to continue to fester in his own soul. In addition to being able to manipulate and see the fabric of his world he also has “visions”. Almost a form of astral projection. His consciousness is able to see through the eyes of his respective timeline counterparts. He is able to see everything they do in multiple timelines. It is a form of timeline hopping or reset. They are all on the same frequency.

He begins to see their happiness and their pains. The good and the evil. At first he thinks they are dreams but as it happens more frequently the more he realizes the nature of it. He sees how happy they are and there is one constant variable for their happiness (the bad timelines begin to heighten his apathy). That constant is Frisk. He continues to help the other monsters and almost all of them are “cured” though the other side of The Rot has yet to rear its ugly head. He however becomes a recluse burying himself in his supposed delusions and madness. He continues to take more and more DT slowly turning his eyes red. It is like the ring of an oak tree. The longer that he uses it the more rings he gets the larger his eye becomes (giving him that classic Horror look). At first they are like the rings of a tree effectively replacing his rot with a new DT addiction. It also begins to cause his face to slowly melt.

Meanwhile the other main boss monsters that have been treated have a similar affliction where the soul traits they were taken have embedded into their souls. It begins to give them a new power. A power rivaling that of a human soul. The power of the 7. The variable that can be used to slip past the barrier. Sans though is becoming slowly obsessed with this Frisk. He sees her not as a variable anymore but rather someone that will make him happy.

Sans madness continues to increase even his associate Dr. Alphys is trying to get him some semblance of help but by this time he is too far gone. He needs an intervention. An explosion happens in the lab. The vials and his research are now gone. All of it has gone up in flames and unfortunately the damage to his soul has already been done. He ends up in solitary confinement sinking further into his obsession.

News reaches him that a human has fallen down from the opposite entrance of the Underground. He goes to meet them only to realize that they look nothing like the human he is obsessed with. He begins to harvest human soul essence hiding his face behind a mask at first since nearly the whole front portion of his face is gone. It is a mask of his own face which makes his gaze even creepier knowing what, or rather what does not lay beyond it. Eventually he learns to easily control his face with his magic rearranging the dust to shift his appearance. His level of insanity shifts to obsessive confusion. He is unhappy his first human encounter is not his precious Frisk but the human does have her eyes from his perspective. His concept of what Frisk actually looks like keeps changing.

His form and control is directly tied to his emotional states. If he experiences any form of heightened emotion be it sadness or rage his composure will falter as will his appearance. If it becomes too drastic he will slowly begin to melt causing the appearance he originally had when this all began to appear. This is why he is called “The man with many faces.” He will sometimes end up completely faceless save for the bottom half where his grin would be.

Blades Madness:

Sans (aka Blade) obsession causes him to steal the various parts of humans to create his perfect human. Each one he makes he sees as an improvement. They are all mindless dolls held together with low doses of soul essence and magic. A macabre shrine to his beloved human. They reside in his shed and sometimes he talks to them but he considers them as failures. He calls them his projects and this continues over and over until his Frisk falls.

He is overjoyed that he has his precious with him now. Papyrus checks on his brother yet he knows he needs help. After all these years he has seen his brothers decline Ash tries to help him. Frisk’s entry into the Underground is by complete accident, though she is not the savior that the rest are known to be. She is a soul of kindness causing her eyes to be a bright jade. Even Sans though overjoyed that Frisk has “returned” to him; he feels as though she is not perfect yet. He takes her and makes her perfect by removing one of her eyes to be a beautiful blue. He even cuts the back section of her hair to satisfy him.

She feels no pain when this happens. Her kind soul wants to help him and slowly she begins to pull the old Sans back every once and awhile. Her soul, just like Charas, is filled with something as well. It turns out that though it looks like Frisk’s soul is one of kindness it is actually a pure white soul of hope. This has the ability to cure The Rot. They are glimpses but it is progress. He has to stop his killing ways and he does after Frisk is with him.

She feels no pain when this happens. Her kind soul wants to help him and slowly she begins to pull the old Sans back every once and awhile. They are glimpses but it is progress. He has to stop his killing ways and he does after Frisk is with him.

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