Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

-Welcome! This AU is a little bit complicated to grasp on the fly and the fic has no formal intro, so I thought a little bit of introduction would do no harm. This includes a Q&A and an overview of some of the important things, along with some casual notes. Hope you find this enlightening. If you want to just jump to the thick of it, well that’s good too! You can always come back and check it out whenever you want.

This fic was born out of my own personal-use AU. It’s a way for me to imagine all the characters of Undertale, Deltarune, and Undertale Yellow interacting and experiencing life in a universe where things like being different games doesn’t matter. It’s like my own personal sandbox for me to play with. Of course I sometimes enjoy thinking about more specific narratives, but when I want freedom? This universe comes to scene. It is not linear, or constricted by time, but rather just episodes of their lives and all the interesting shenanigans they go through.

So UDY on the Surface is, as its name indicates, a slice-of-life AU that follows the lives of the characters of Undertale, Deltarune and Undertale Yellow on the Surface. At first I wanted to call it “Deltatale Yellow” but uh… I searched and of course, being too good of a name, it’s already taken, hehe. The same with “Underune.” So I ended up just naming it “UDY on the Surface” with UDY obviously standing for Undertale-Deltarune-Yellow. Pretty dumb, I know. It could be worse I guess. Now, I searched for this and couldn’t find any pre-existing AUs that seemed to do exactly what I am doing… If there is another fic out there about a slice-of-life crossover like this one, I didn’t know of its existence, but I would be happy to hear about it!

You might be wondering how does this actually works in lore terms. What’s the story? What happened? First of all, the fic will not focus on the lore of the AU, mainly cause it’s pretty simple, really. Undertale and UTY have no problem at all coexisting. (if we ignore the pesky topic of Flowey technically not being alive when the yellow soul fell…?) Of course we are talking Pacifist ending here, both in UTY and Undertale, with UDY officially taking place quite some time after they all got to the Surface. But where is Deltarune in all this? Darkners? Lightners? Fountains? Eggs behind trees? And the answer is easy: They are all just monsters. I mean, not Kris, hope that’s clear, but for the rest there is no distinction between Lightners and Darkners. They were all monsters living in the Underground who then got into contact with some of the characters of Undertale and UTY. Also noteworthy: for characters that premiered on Undertale but returned in Deltarune, (e.g., Undyne, Alphys, Toriel, Sans…) I will only take into account the Undertale versions of said characters history-wise, though there will be parallelisms, like Toriel still being a teacher (and Kris mother), Undyne wanting to become a police officer (before settling for something less risky in the fic) or Sans just being Sans.

All the action takes place in Hometown: a small town under the shadow of Mount Ebott, situated in British Columbia, Canada. Yes, the real name of the mountain is “Abbott”, I know. One of the questions in the Q&A explains my choice of scenery. I'm kind of specific in geography: When I say it is in there I really mean it, I am saying Hometown is a town almost bordering the Glacier National Park, in the Columbia-Shuswap Regional District. Now, for purely convenient reasons, the population and size of the nearest city, Revelstoke (to which the characters will many times refer to just as “the city”) will be a little bit exaggerated due to the need of having some kind of “big city” for the characters to go to from time to time, and I am afraid the big cities of BC are a little bit too far from the Glacier National Park and therefore, the fictional Hometown. Apart from that, I like to be as precise as I can. Unnecessary, I know, but I like it.

What to expect on the inside of the fic? For starters, you might notice it doesn’t have that much of a linear narrative. It is structured in a way similar to a sitcom. Does that mean there isn’t any character growth, or that the characters won’t change? Nope. They will for sure. Some chapters will have less emotional content and some will have more, that’s all. As a matter of fact I prefer to call the chapters “episodes”, because chapters kind of give some vibes of direct time continuity, at least to me. There isn’t necessarily a main character, and different episodes will center around different characters and relationships.

-Q & A Many of the answers are literally “because that’s how I imagined the AU” but it’s useful nevertheless.

-“¿Why British Columbia? There is another Mount Abbott in California.”

Yeah, but I just preferred good ol’ Canada. I’m not even Canadian but hey, it doesn’t matter. I think I actually got this from another fic or comic that placed the action of the Surface on Canada and I guess the idea just stuck with me. Which brings us to the next question:

-“Hey, you totally got this (insert X idea about a character or an event) from this other fanfic! Have you read it?”

Now, hold your horses. I have read a lot of fanfics and comics and sadly enough, I can’t remember most of the names. What I mean is; maybe, yeah, maybe I read it or saw it somewhere else and then it just stayed along inside my headcanon, but the line between what’s “truly original” and what’s influenced is blurry to say the least. I will try to credit everything I can if I do remember clearly getting inspiration from something, there are a LOT of incredible artists and writers out there that have shaped elements of this fic, if you think you found one, leave it in the comments and I will check it out and see if I read it or it’s just coincidence, which is also pretty plausible taking into account how big this community is.

-“How long are the chapters/episodes?”

Depends on the episode. Some will be short, and others will be long. I don’t have a minimum nor a maximum of words per episode.

-“Will there be ships?”

No, you silly! Hometown is nowhere near the sea! Haha, now being serious, yeah, there will be ships. Most of them are absolutely common except for one… two…? that are a little bit rarer, but whatever. They aren’t going to be the main course. I guess there will be episodes dedicated to the ships, but I wouldn’t qualify the fic as centering around romance. HOLD IT! Important warning. All of the ships are pointed to in the relationships category BUT this doesn’t mean they are going to end together. It isn’t bonding. It just means there will be allusions to the possibility of that ship. Maybe it doesn’t work out. Maybe it is one-sided. Who knows?

-“Is the fic’s Hometown the same as in the game?”

Nope. I just take the name. Some buildings, like the Holiday’s house, or the hospital, or the cemetery, or even ICE-E will be there, but the Hometown of the fic is supposed to be different. It’s just a small town where monsters and humans live together in harmony.

-“Is that Flowey? And Asriel? at the same time? And also Chara? and they are older now? And Clover is alive too? AND OLDER TOO?”

First of all, remember that the lore and explanation of the magic system aren’t the priority of the fanfic. Still, those stories will be mentioned and explained in some episodes, as they are important to the characters.

-“(X character) would never speak with (Y character)!”

Alright, be a little bit understanding. There are a TON of characters. Many of them don’t even know each other in canon, being from different universes. This forces me to make any connection I can between characters to have everyone interact with everyone (or almost) This is the reason why, for example, Martlet is an older cousin of Berdly (Yeah, cause they are both bluebirds) Still sometimes I must resort to the fact that hey, Hometown is a small town. People know each other. Characters like Spamton or Jevil don’t necessarily have too many relationships, but they are still known in the town and thus, by other characters that would otherwise ignore their existence.

-“Why do Flowey, Asriel and Asgore speak like southerners? And why is Ralsei a brit?”

I love studying English around the world. English isn’t my first language, but I sincerely love it, and like to learn about big and small differences and variances between its dialects, accumulating vocabulary specific to those regions in the process. You may notice that in the case of Flowey, Asriel and Asgore they already showed small indicators of a southerner accent in canon (howdy, golly…) but that in the fic they speak even more clearly in this jargon. As for Ralsei, that’s just headcanon (though he does say “lift” instead of elevator once) but also an opportunity for me to dig more into specifically British lingo. I don’t know if any other characters will have a marked dialect. Maybe some extras.

-“Why do some monsters still don’t know key elements of human culture? haven’t them been out for some years now?”

Yes, and those years aren’t enough to catch on with thousands of years of culture and history. That’s why sometimes the human characters will still need to explain some things to the monsters.

-“Are there any OC’s?”

No… Yeeees? I mean, you could count Ralsei’s adoptive dad as an OC. He isn’t that much important… Well, sometimes… By the standard definition, yes, he is an OC, but he is not my OC, he is not a character I made long before and then inserted into the story, but rather a character I made for the story specifically to fill some gaps I had (i.e., Ralsei’s father and Chara’s boxing coach) And then there are the extras. I guess they’re also OC’s??? I just like to give personality to my extras.

-“Content warnings I should know?”

I’m not good with tags and things like that, so I will also specify about its content here, just in case. This fanfic will not have any kind of sexually explicit content. This fact will stay consistent through the whole fic. It will, however, have a few small jokes that might have a sexual meaning, along with occasional curses, swear words and general profanity, so it is not intended for kids. The fanfic will also sometimes tackle some heavy topics (e.g., depression, suicidal intentions, mourning, etc.) I will always warn if any topic as such are present in an episode. Also you can rest assured that none of the characters will die or suffer any traumatic events. There will sometimes be a little bit of angst, but nothing too extreme.

-“Number of planned episodes?”

I’ll be sincere: I don’t know. I plan to write quite a lot of episodes, but I genuinely don’t know if some day the flame of passion will die or I won’t be able to continue due to some other reason. I do swear solemnly to not abandon it without warning, and to actually try to wrap it up and give it a last chapter in case I were to finish it, as long as my motive for abandoning the fic wasn’t any kind of disabling emergency, such as a major accident.

-“And the frequency of the new episodes?”

At the moment this fic is being released it has a total of five episodes that I pre-wrote plus the pilot. I promise a minimum of an episode per week, reserving for myself the right to not publish one week due to an emergency or work overload, though these cases will be (I hope) extraordinary.

-“Will more characters from other AUs/fangames be added?”

Nope. I already got enough, haha.

-“Hey, you forgot (X character)”

First of all, I still got enough. Second, maybe not everyone appears in the fanfic, I think it’s pretty comprehensible. Maybe they’ll appear as extras on some episodes.

-Overview

It’s been a few years since the Monsters returned to the Surface and lots of things have changed…

The Dreemurr family is bigger than ever, with Frisk, Asriel, Kris, Chara, Flowey and Toriel living under the same roof. Managing two kids, two teenagers and one foul-mouthed flower isn’t a mean feat, so our favorite goat mother will have to do her best to keep things in order.

Frisk and Asriel, currently in their last year of primary school, tandem with Monster Kid and Lancer and end up running into as many fun problems as they possibly can.

Kris, along, of course, with Susie, Ralsei, Noelle and Berdly, tries to navigate their high school years and not lose sleep hours in the process, with mixed results.

Chara and Clover have developed a lasting friendship in college, as the vicissitudes of adult life loom over them.

Our friendly Monsters have adapted to the rhythm of modern life in many ways. Sans has his grocery store and Papyrus works as a waiter. Both Undyne and Alphys help out Toriel with her school, as P.E. and Science teachers, respectively. Asgore still has his not-too-profitable flower shop, and Mettaton has taken the world by storm, with his cousins by his side, Napstablook as his DJ and Mad Mew Mew as… His secretary.

Mayor Holiday is as strict as ever, and Rudy, as irreverent as always. Rouxls has found a new passion in theater, and while King is finding surprising ways of hitting new lows, Queen is the founder and CEO of an important tech company. Tenna and Spamton are as much old glories as Gerson, and that’s saying something, and Jevil… He’s just jevilishly jevilish.

Martlet is back at living with her uncles and cousin while she saves money working as a parking manager, and Dalv now dedicates himself to writing children’s books and playing the organ from time to time. Ceroba must return to her work as a barista, Axis has found a most fitting role in being a security guard, and Starlo has strangely returned to being a sheriff, (except he’s a real one now.)

And last, but not least, Temmie finally goes to college. For real. You’re welcome…

I think I am not forgetting anything? Well, I already held you long enough. If you have any doubt, you can ask in the comments. Probably some of those doubts will be later explained in the fic. Thank you for giving this a read!

Chapter Text

A crack of light shined through the door as it slowly opened. Frisk opened their eyes and grunted, their body shifting under the bedsheets. But for as much as they moved to face the wall in a vain attempt to evade the inevitable, school didn’t wait for anyone.

Asriel also shifted in the bottom bunk, probably as much annoyed as Frisk.

“Good morning my children! Time to prepare for school!”

Toriel’s usual overtly animated tone didn’t especially help. She saw each morning as an exciting opportunity, or at least she tried to instill this feeling into her offspring, with a varying degree of success ranging from zero to… a little bit sometimes. It’s hard to see life on the bright side when your only concept of a good morning is: “The one when I don’t have to get up early to go to school.” Important to note anyway, Flowey didn’t have that problem and still, in a similar way to Garfield, disliked Mondays with all his soul, which wasn’t much, but at least was something.

The room was filled with even more light when Toriel opened the window’s curtains, generating a new series of growls from the children’s beds.

“I am making pancakes for today. Hope this helps to get you moving a bit faster than the last days.” Toriel abandoned the room, not before giving the kids a last-warning kind of glare, leaving them to struggle between the intense desire to engulf pancakes with maple syrup and the black hole that inevitably glued them to their beds, most commonly known as “laziness.”

While pondering this important question, Frisk patted the bed to see if everything was in order, only to realize that something was, in fact, not in order.

“Asriel, where’s Roosevelt?

I know, I know. A fitting yet generic name for a teddy bear. Frisk had been sleeping with Roosevelt the Bear almost since the day they returned to the Surface, and it was now a permanent staple on their bed. When choosing a name, Frisk was presented with this option by a newly-introduced-to-Wikipedia Alphys and didn’t think much of it. It’s not like the kid understood anything about 20th century American politics anyway, they just found the name to be pretty.

“You silly… It’s in your bed.” Answered a still half-asleep (or rather three-quarters-asleep… Or even 90% asleep) Asriel.

“No it’s not.” Frisk fully sat up in the top bunk and frantically searched for the stuffed animal under the blankets. Suddenly, the sleepiness didn’t matter that much.

“Uh-huh… Fine then…” Muttered Asriel before covering himself with the bedsheets to avoid further interruptions in his procrastination.

Frisk started growing preoccupied when they realized it was definitely not in their bed. After a few more seconds of desperate checking they climbed down the bunk’s ladder and started looking around the room with no results. So they passed to more extreme actions.

“Hey, what are you doin’? Just five minutes more!”

Asirel fought for the control of his blanket as Frisk looked around in his bed for any sign of the bear’s whereabouts.

“We have to wake up now anyway. I’m just looking for Roosevelt.”

“It’s not here, I would’ve noticed, and last time I checked he couldn’t teleport. Now let me enjoy a little bit more.” Asriel finally snatched the sheets from them before covering himself again.

It didn’t matter to Frisk at all. They had just enough time to check all of his bed. He was clean. But their worry launched them into planning a whole investigation till the bear appeared, so instead of just going to the bathroom before breakfast as always, they turned to the window’s sill, more specifically to the pot that rested upon it.

Frisk poked the pot a few times.

“Flowey. Flowey. Flowey. Flowey!!!”

The flower finally emerged from the soil with an expression that was a mixture of pure disdain, hatred and general nuisance. He probably already woke up by the noise when Toriel entered the room, but he had as always planned to sleep for much longer.

“What do you want now…?” Grunted Flowey.

“Have you seen Roosevelt around the room?”

“Here’s a better question, why do I always need to wake up when you two go to school??? BECAUSE IT’S DRIVIN’ ME NUTS!”

“Shush, Flowey, some of us are tryin’ to sleep here.” Mumbled a voice from the mishmash of bed and fur that was now the bottom bunk.

Flowey ignored Asriel’s comment and continued “And why are you askin’ me this anyway? I’m not the one in this house that’s always hidin’ things and going a larkin’ on everyone!

“I’m pretty sure I would have noticed if Kris had entered the room while we were sleeping.”

“Ah, but was Roosevelt with you when you went to sleep?”

Frisk rushed to answer, but discovered that they couldn’t really assure that fact, not finding anything in their memory that pointed to it.

“…”

“That’s what I thought.”

The prospect of Kris stealing Roosevelt to play a joke on Frisk wasn’t illogical or surprising in any way. It wouldn’t be the first time they did it, hiding Frisk’s things, that is. But never the teddy bear. That one would be new.

With a possible lead, Frisk left the room and walked across the hallway, leaving behind a still asleep Asriel and a now satisfied Flowey, because even if he had been abruptly awaken, he had managed to get something good out of it and spread a little bit of discord in the family.

Three knocks resonated in Kris’ closed door before the kid took the liberty to open it anyway. Hey, they had the courtesy to knock, but not the patience to wait, we can’t all be perfect.

The room was unsurprisingly still dark when they entered. Kris was sitting on their bed, letting time go by and probably wondering if a coffee would be enough to stop them from falling asleep in class again, or if more extreme measures were in order, like, who knows, even 2 coffees?!?

“You and Asriel are going to be late again if you keep going like this.” The tone in Frisk’s voice wasn’t judgmental at all, but plainly informative.

Kris took their time to answer, rubbing their eyes.

“Don’t equate me to Asriel. He is just lazy. I am, on the other hand, forced to survive through the day with four hours of sleep. We are not the same.”

“You could maybe fix your sleep schedule then?

“You are too young and naive. Someday you will understand, Frisk. Enjoy your easy exams till then.”

Frisk huffed. They didn’t like when their older siblings played the “You have it so easy” card.

“Chara is doing university and they sleep more than you.”

“It’s not fair. Chara has actual discipline. That’s almost like cheating.”

“Maybe if you stopped playing that many jokes and started organizing yourself you would grow some discipline.” Alright. Now their tone definitely was judgmental.

Kris looked visibly confused. “What does that even mean? What does that even have to do with…? Wait, you think I’ve done something, right?”

“I don’t know, you tell me. Where’s Roosevelt?”

Kris rubbed their eyes once again. “I haven’t done anything to your bear, Frisk. Now let me sleep my precious extra ten minutes.”

Frisk believed them, at least for now. But they still didn’t want to go through Toriel’s harangue about punctuality only because the goblin of their sibling wanted ten extra minutes of sleep, so they acted accordingly.

“Let me think about it… Nope. It’s time to wake up.”

They turned on the light, and observed with amusement how Kris turned into a vampire for some seconds, trying in vain to protect their eyes from the blinding rays of the lamp.

“Ugh— Frisk!”

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it, it was too easy.”

And so Frisk continued their investigation, wondering where the stuffed animal had gotten itself. The next stop was only a few steps more down the hallway: Chara’s room. They key difference with their last brother was that Chara had been perfectly awake for quite some time now as they had to leave a little bit earlier to get the bus to the city with Clover, and so they found them finishing the important ritual of backpack-preparing, browsing through books that probably were too big for their own good.

“They are still trying to sleep, aren’t they?”

Frisk nodded. It probably wouldn’t be too late till Toriel lost her patience anyway, so it’s not like Kris had much time left, and they might as well enjoy it.

“It’s because they can’t get enough hours of sleep.”

“Well, that sounds like a COMPLETE SKILL ISSUE TO ME!” Chara raised their voice to make sure Kris could hear them from their room.

Before Frisk could ask the question, Chara continued, now with a normal volume.

“No, I haven’t seen Roosevelt, sorry kiddo. For what I know, he never leaves your bed. Except for when Toriel demands it to be cleaned from time to time, heheh.”

The kid suddenly had a cathartic moment and rushed downstairs.

“Okey, cool, bye I guess.” Chara sighed and proceeded to determine whether they would need the “Participatory Research and Development” book for today.

Frisk ran through the kitchen, where Toriel was just finishing the pancakes. She lifted her eyes from the pan to look at them.

“Oh, Frisk, finally someone comes down! Do you want to— Oh, no. There you go.”

There was no time for stops. The laundry room awaited them, kind of hidden, a small chamber almost entirely covered by the washing machine and the dryer. Frisk searched inside both, only to find defeat. They sighed and got out looking down all the way, now starting to feel a little bit worried.

“Mom, have you seen Roosevelt?”

Toriel was caught by surprise by that question. “Well, no, I cannot say I have my dear. Is he lost?

“Yes, and I have looked everywhere.”

“Perhaps we can leave this for when we are back from school?” She eyeballed the clock on the wall.

“… Fine.”

Great. Now Frisk would be all day thinking about where Roosevelt could be hiding.

They helped their mother finish the pancakes and set the table in silence. At that moment Chara left to catch the bus. They had already had breakfast, not pancakes, obviously, probably some fruit or some cookies, a sacrifice that had to be made when you left earlier than the rest, but that didn’t seem to bother them too much.

When Asriel finally came downstairs with Flowey in his arms, the pancakes were all ready. Toriel muttered something under her breath and went upstairs to fetch Kris, and when everyone was sitting down at the table, the usual exchange of questions about the day ahead commenced. Toriel explained she had many exams from other classes to grade today, and then added that she was “gradeful” that there weren’t even more. Kris went on a lengthy explanation on how their science project with Susie was going (only because Toriel asked) and Asriel received many warnings from her mom about talking with the mouth full before deciding that the pancakes were more important than petty conversation, and thus dedicating himself to breakfast. Flowey… He always preferred the food to the talking, and Frisk had their mind stuffed with their beloved teddy bear, and their mouth also stuffed with pancakes. Yep, when it was pancakes day speaking was a luxury.

After the silence that followed the breakfast’s end, everyone scattered to get ready for a long day in school, except for Flowey, of course, who would resume to what he called “guardin’ the house” which usually meant playing videogames all morning.

Frisk entered their room with Asriel, who didn’t waste any time wanting dibs on the bathroom. A last look through the objects of the room followed: First on Asriel’s side, which was easy because of how tidy it was, and then on their side, which was… A little bit harder. They had already abandoned all hope when their eyes caught a glimpse of something brown under the bunk bed.

There it was. Slightly dusty, but alive, or at least as much alive as an inanimate object can be. Roosevelt the Bear, undisputed President of the Bed. It probably had fallen from the top bunk and rolled under the bottom one. Frisk grabbed it so fast that the whole house trembled with the blastwave generated by the sonic boom. A hug put an end to all the problems clogging their mind: now they could go to school at peace and put their complete focus into the classes. Or maybe half the focus. Or… Or a quarter. 10%? Damn, this thing of percentages again… Let’s leave it at focus. They could put some focus into the classes.

The math homework taunted Frisk from the table. Hours had passed and the list of exercises didn’t seem to get narrower. Math homework was undoubtedly the worst part of school life, except maybe those days when the teacher was late, so for a moment it seemed like they didn’t come, but they, as a matter of fact, did, and all your hopes got crushed the moment that one teacher passed through the door. To decide which one is worse I leave it to you, dear readers.

When Frisk was finally about to make a move and solve one problem, they found their hand grossly naked without the customary homework-making pencil. And it wasn’t anywhere on their desk either.

“Where’s that pencil now…?” They muttered to themself

“Have you looked under your bed???” Flowey’s squeaky voice answered.

“…”

Needless to say, Frisk wasn’t amused at all.

Chapter Text

The wind carefully blew down a young leaf from its branch, as if it had taken special care not to harm the vivid-green leaflet. After a wearisome trip to the soil below to reunite with its brothers and sisters, the wind proceeded to take upon itself the task of transporting yet another leaf to their final destination, working as Charon on his boat. A perfect and bucolic day brightly shone outside to cherish this whole ritual, while a humble caterpillar crawled through the old trunk…

And then a soccer ball impacted into the tree, shaking the small treehouse on its top, and most probably deleting in one fell swoop all of the caterpillar’s limited hopes and dreams. Well, there goes that. Forget about the Locus Amoenus.

“Hehe, you also missed that one!”

“Now you’ll see!”

Frisk rushed to pick up the ball from the tree’s base as Asriel awaited patiently in their homemade goal, composed of their two backpacks posted in front of the garden’s fence. They used to make it with the dining room’s chairs as they were taller, but Toriel banned this usage the moment she started seeing suspicious dents on the wood. Now it would need to suffice with the hard-to-see backpack system, which usually led to disputes over the validity of some goals. It’s not like they played soccer that much, anyway. Maybe this was the reason why Frisk was failing almost every shot.

“You do know where you should be aimin’ to, right?”

“Yes, Asriel, I know how this whole thing goes, I just need some time to warm up.” They answered while reading the ball again in its predefined shooting distance.

They had been going on like this for quite some time now, but when Frisk gets their mind into something, there’s little that can be done. I guess determination goes both ways. Luckily for them, the afternoon was still somewhat young, and advances could still be made if they put enough effort into it. Although at the current pace the treehouse would crumble and fall to the ground before that happened, given the looseness of the nails barely holding it together.

“You could maybe try bein’ the goalkeeper for once?”

“Shhh, This one’s the good one, I swear.”

Of course what poor Asriel was trying to say is that maybe he wouldn’t mind being the striker instead of standing in front of the dubiously defined goal doing nothing, but it was already too late, as Frisk was already swinging their leg dramatically and projecting maybe too much strength…

Aaand the ball described a weird parable over the garden’s fence and ended up graciously falling on the other side, getting stuck in the process between the branches of the neighbour’s tree. Yeah, you can tell it was too much strength.

“Alright, now we’ve really messed up.” Said Asriel sheepishly.

“Nah, we just got to go and ask for them to get it down.”

“We should at least tell Flowey we are goin’ out.”

Frisk nodded and the two entered the house to report their escapade to the only responsible adult currently in the house, which was no one, so they turned to the only surrogate they had at hand, who happened to be Flowey. He fitted the description at least to 33 percent: behaving like an adult most of the time and being responsible none of it. But seeing that Chara was helping Toriel with the groceries and Kris was out with their friends, it’s not like they had other options.

Frisk frowned as they climbed up the stairs. “Now that I come to think about it, I have never met the owner of that house.”

“Me neither. They moved here not so long ago, didn’t they?” The stairs crackled a little bit with each step. The house was silent apart from that.

“Yeah, I can’t remember exactly how much time, though.”

The door to their room was ajar, and Flowey’s pot was at its usual place, at the window’s sill. The flower was playing chess against himself, something he would usually do only when extremely bored. He wasn’t even keen on chess in the first place, but one day he asked for a board and some pieces and started playing. Frisk thought that with all the matches he played against himself he must at least have gotten mildly good at it, though they also thought it must be horrible to play against yourself all the time, because you know your rival’s next step at every point of the game.

Flowey slightly tilted his head in their presence before sighing loudly.

“What is it now? Can’t you see I'm busy ‘round here?” One of his vines moved a knight to a tile in what he would soon discover was a really, really bad move. And a good opportunity for the rival vine, I suppose.

Asriel pointed at Frisk. “They got the ball stuck in the neighbor’s tree.”

The flower scoffed. “Golly, Frisk, at least call me when you get summoned for the World Cup!”

“Yeah, really funny, thank you, but it isn’t the McKinley’s house, it’s the other one, the one with the blue roof.”

Flowey stroked his chin (Or at least the part of his face directly under his mouth.) without interest “Ah, that old fellow, well just go and ask him to bring it down.”

The two kids were already leaving before an idea crossed the plant’s mind and made him smile in such a way that would have made the Grinch himself jealous.

“Hold your horses! You mean… The House? That house?”

Frisk blinked twice, “Uh, sure?”

Flowey looked around as if what he was about to say could get him in trouble, closed the window and drew the curtain. “Gather around, quick, get the chairs over here.”

Frisk and Asriel complied out of curiosity and awaited attentively while Flowey wrapped up his plan.

“Have you ever heard the story of… The Man who Speaks in Hands???” Flowey smirked, “I reckon not, it isn’t a popular story around this neighborhood. Folks prefer to silence these kinds of things… You see, The Man who Speaks in Hands used to be the Royal Scientist before good ol’ Alphys took the role. He served durin’ the war and all up to the construction of the Core, and everyone knew of his expertise and wisdom. Yeah, that old man was really somethin’ else…” A dramatic pause followed, one that could have been more scary if it wasn’t for the fact that it was a beautiful, shiny day outside and the room’s lights were on. “But he had some shady stuff goin’ on, somethin’ was just out of kilter, he had a secret, and it was dark! Asgore grew tired of his sinister intentions, and the doctor lost the confidence of the Underground! Not that it mattered because one day, one fortuitous day, he suffered an accident… A terrible accident; and his pure essence was scattered across time and space themselves!!!”

“Cut it off, Flowey, you aren’t scaring Asriel again.”

Judging by Asriel’s reaction to the start of the story, yes, he was already getting scared, but the goat stuck out his chest and replied.

“Y-yeah, it won’t work!”

Flowey ignored both of them and raised his vines, wiggling them dramatically. “Everyone forgot about him, everyone forgot he ever existed! And now, he is back from the Underground to deliver his vengeance! No one is safe from his wrath! Who knows what kind of maniacal experiments he is makin’ in his basement???”

“None, because the houses of this neighborhood don't even have a basement maybe?”

“You are no fun, Frisk, anyone told you that?” The flower focused his sight on the game of chess again. “Do as you want, just don’t come later sayin’ I didn’t warn you.”

A grasshopper lazied somewhere around the garden’s grass, while Asriel absentmindedly poked the ground with a stick. The two kids had been sitting there for some minutes, with their legs crossed, looking at the stuck ball, trying to think of something. Behind them, Monster Kid was nervously walking back and forth. They tagged along with the two when they were just about to go ring the house’s bell, and when informed on the situation, decided to illuminate them with their vast knowledge on haunted houses and paranormal activity, surely the fruit of hours and hours of watching crappy scary videos on the internet.

“So, what now?” Asriel looked around in clear boredom. There was only so much fun a stick could give you.

“Dudes, I already told ya, we can’t just ring the bell! It’s like, the worst of the worst thing to do! And I have literally seen strange lights coming out of that house, I swear!” Monster Kid started kicking a small pebble around, because it seemed that frantically walking around wasn’t enough activity for their body.

“People turn their lights on during the night, MK, it’s a normal thing to do. I still think we should just ask nicely. Flowey just made up all that stuff to scare us.” Said Frisk.

“And how was he so specific about it, huh?” The pebble flew too far from their reach and they quickly put their focus back at the ball.

“Because he has more than enough hours of boredom to think about these kind of things, that’s why.” Frisk sighed. “Too many hours, actually…”

“Still not worth the risk, we should search some other way.”

“Azzy?” Frisk ventured.

“… Sorry sib, I'm with MK this time.”

“Alright, alright, as long as we don’t disturb him… What do you propose?”

Asriel thought for a little bit. “We got a ladder in the garage, right? We could try that?”

Frisk shook their head. “It’s not tall enough. Also, mom would kill us if she discovered we used the ladder without her around.”

“Then we just grab a really big stick!” The lizard got in front of the fence and jumped a little bit trying to see something over it.

“Do you see any big sticks around here?”

“Then we go search for a big stick?”

“The stick wouldn’t work. It would be too heavy and hard to control with that size anyway” Argued Asriel, finally throwing the pocking stick at his side after giving it a look.

The ball stood there, as if it was mocking the kids, for as much wind it would receive it didn’t bulge even a bit.

“And what if one of us jumps over the fence and shakes the tree? It looks like with a good shake the ball would actually fall.”

“We are not going to break into their house, MK.” Frisk said severely.

“Yeah, don’t count on me for that…” Added Asriel, though probably more because of cowardice than morality.

Monster Kid stopped for a moment, surprisingly. “Oh, c’mon! It’s a good idea! Asriel, you stay under the fence and help Frisk jump to the other side with your hands. Then Frisk just shakes the tree a little bit, grabs the ball, passes the ball over here and then returns safely with your help again. Easy as pie!”

“…”

“… Asriel, no. I don’t like that face.”

“Well, when they put it that way it does seem like a good idea.” The goat scratched his head.

Frisk rolled their eyes in disbelief. “I can’t believe you are pushing me to do this… Fine, but let’s be quick. Someone could see us.”

Monster Kid jumped filled with adrenaline. “Yo! Let’s do this!”

Asriel insecurely placed himself in front of the high wooden fence, making a spoon with his hands to help Frisk get up. The human sighed before putting one foot after the other and with quite some effort and grunting from both parties, getting over the fence and rolling through the garden’s grass. The neighbour’s grass. They eyed the window uneasily: The light of the day made it a little bit better, but it still definitely felt both wrong and somehow scary. Frisk knew Flowey’s story was just a prank, but couldn’t get a weird feeling out of their chest. They moved with caution, always keeping an eye on the closed window, without having sight from the interior due to the thick curtains covering it.

“Are you ok, Frisk?”

“Shhh! I’m fine, it was just a rough landing. Frisk patted their knees looking for any scrapes; If Toriel saw something she would first get worried and then curious. And they didn’t want her to worry nor to go around asking questions about their little adventures.

They got to the tree and looked up at the top branches: the ball was still there, defiantly. Frisk slowly started shaking the trunk, gaining some speed with time, but with no effect. No matter how strong they tried, the ball wouldn’t move.

Suddenly, the three of them heard a faint yet distinguishable sound coming from the front door of the neighbour’s house: it was being opened.

“Run! Forget about the ball!”

Monster Kid didn’t need to tell them twice. Frisk rushed to the fence to jump and grab Asriel’s hand, and, once again not without effort, fall to the other side, knocking over their brother, who was standing on the lizard’s shoulders to be able to reach, thus causing a rough fall for everyone and ending up with their right elbow on Asriel’s chest.

“Owww! My ribs!”

“I’m sorry. Here.” The human helped Asriel get up and so followed Monster Kid. The three of them looked at each other bewildered and sharpened their ears in search of a new, fatal sound from the neighbour’s house. After what seemed like hours, they all eased up a little bit, breathing slowly.

“Geez. That was close.” The lizard still looked at the fence with glaring intensity, as if something was about to breach it and chase them down.

Frisk grunted with annoyance. “Alright, we tried it your way. Now it’s my turn.”

Monster Kid’s face reflected how much they disliked that idea. “Are you sure? What if you are wrong, and Flowey was right, and they experiment on us or something? I don’t want to be experimented on, Frisk!”

“I’m doing it. You two are coming or not?”

Monster Kid rapidly nodded, not allowing their courage to be put into doubt, and Asriel, though certainly warier, ended up nodding too. And so the three kids entered the Dreemurr House through the sliding doors, right into the main door and out to the neighborhood.

The short distance that separated both houses was covered in a tense silence, only broken by the sound of Asriel’s loud and almost comical gulping once they stood in the front lawn of “The Man who Speaks in Hands.”

Asriel looked at the mailbox and frowned at the name. “Gaster?… That name sounds familiar… A bad guy wouldn’t have a mailbox right? It’s not something bad guys have.”

“Right, so… Go on… Ring the bell…” Monster Kid seemed ready to either fight or run for their life, with the eyes glued to the door.

They moved towards the entrance painfully slowly. Frisk hands trembled a little bit when they rang the bell, out of an irrational fear, and they knew it, but it still trembled. The buzz was short and generic. Inside the house, nothing special could be heard, not that the kids could have heard anything over the frenetic thumping of their hearts.

The air was so dense a knife could slice through it. The door started to open; everybody held their breath and…

And there stood W.D. Gaster, a slim, tall and dark figure, but not brooding at all. His half-melted face looked more confused than filled with homicidal intentions, that’s for sure. It was awkward for the four of them. When it became clear that no horrible kidnaping would take place anytime soon, Frisk had the initiative to start a conversation.

“Uh… Good afternoon sir.”

Gaster responded by signing something in ASL.

“Ooooohh… The Man who Speaks in Hands… That makes sense now.” Asriel seemed satisfied with his incredible ability to connect the dots.

“Hold on, I know a little bit of sign language, I think he is asking us why we are here.” Gaster proceeded to nod at what Frisk said, furthermore confirming their intuition.

“Yo! I mean, sir! Do you have a big stick by any chance?”

Gaster thought for a bit before answering. “Thirty??? Oh, no, sorry. He said no. The signs are very similar, my mistake.” Frisk turned to Monster Kid, utterly confused “Why are you still thinking about the stick?”

“Because it would be epic!”

Frisk turned back to Gaster. “You see, we got our soccer ball stuck between your tree’s branches. Could you help us remove it please? Sorry for the inconvenience.”

The doctor opened the door and gestured for them to enter. His living room was strangely cozy and average for a haunted house. It was full of old furniture, and a wide variety of gizmos and science books covered the shelves. Gaster left the kids on the couch and disappeared in his hallway, only to return a minute later with a large ladder. They followed him to the garden, where he calmly placed it on the tree and with some struggle, climbed it up. The ball was pretty high but the size of the ladder combined with how tall Gaster was were enough for him to grab it and pass it to the ground, with Asriel catching it mid-air. Frisk felt bad because the doctor was clearly old and probably shouldn’t be going up and down too many ladders.

“Thank you for your help, sir. We will try to prevent this from happening again.”

Gaster interrupted them, signaling something and pointing to the kitchen.

“He is offering us a snack.”

“If we eat now, we won’t have an appetite for dinner. Mom’s makin’ stuffed eggplants, Frisk. I’m not riskin’ anythin’”

“Yeah, same.” Monster Kid corrected themself, grimacing. “I mean, not the eggplant part, eggplants are absolutely gross… I can’t come home too late or my parents will get mad.”

“Alright, guess we will be leaving then. Thank you again mister Gaster. What? Oh, doctor, sorry. Doctor Gaster it is. Goodbye!”

The three kids left with their ball, as Gaster watched them from the door. Although his facial expression was hard to read, it seemed like he had enjoyed the unexpected visit.

The sound of the front door opening startled both Frisk and Asriel, who were in their room upstairs, the first trying to finish their homework before dinner and the second reading a comic. Flowey was still playing chess against himself. The current match was pretty obviously about to end in a draw, but that didn’t stop him from playing with all the passion he could reunite towards a game he didn’t even like. Outside, the day was already getting dark… Darker yet darker we could even say.

They were all waiting for Toriel to arrive and make dinner. Most of the elaborations of the eggplants were ready and they only needed to be put in the oven. Both Frisk and Asriel scolded the flower for lying when they got back from Gaster’s house, a scolding to which he of course didn’t pay any attention.

“Mom is back. Let’s tell her about Gaster, but skipping the parts where we broke into his lawn.”

“Oh, C’mon Frisk! When did I…?” Asriel sighed. “Ok, I swear this time I won’t tell anythin’.”

“Tell anything about what, my child?”

Toriel had already gone upstairs with Chara behind her carrying the groceries.

“Mom, we have met the other neighbour. The one house with the blue roof behind ours.”

Toriel smiled warmly, apparently entirely forgetting what Asriel said. “Oh! You met Doctor Gaster? How wonderful! He moved here about three months ago.”

“Did you already know him?”

“But of course, Frisk! He was a great friend of the Royal Family, and used to be the Royal Scientist.”

“Why did he stop?” Asriel asked.

Flowey put on his best scary voice and took the liberty of answering. “Uh, because he fell into the CORE and disappeared forever, living only as a time paradox in an alternate universe!”

Toriel giggled. “Flowey, you are too funny sometimes.” She looked back at Asriel. “He just retired, my dear.” She sighed loudly. “Everyone gets older…”

“Well, Flowey told us a whole scary story about a supposed Man who Speaks in Hands to scare Asriel.”

A visible frown appeared on the little goat’s face. “As if you weren’t also scared!”

Chara couldn’t help themself any longer and burst into laughter. “The Man who Speaks in Hands??? That’s a new low, even for you.”

“That is not very nice of you Flowey. Something you would like to say to Asriel?” Toriel, unfortunately, didn’t take it with the same spirit as Chara.

Flowey growled and muttered something under his breath.

“I have not heard you, Flowey, would you mind speaking louder?”

“… I’m sorry.”

Toriel seemed satisfied. “That is better! Next time do not go around spreading misinformation about nice people. Gaster has not hurt a soul in his whole life.“ Toriel’s face suddenly got sadder. “He must be so lonely now. He was never too much of an extrovert, but still, everyone needs some conversation from time to time. I almost haven’t talked with him since he moved.”

“We could visit him sometimes!” Said Frisk with a smile.

“Could we? I mean, yes, of course, we could visit sometimes… Some of them, I guess.” Their brother, on the other hand, didn’t seem so thrilled by the possibility.

Toriel lightly clapped “That would be great! Come now, we need to get the eggplants into the oven.”

The two kids followed their mother downstairs, leaving Chara unable to hold their punctual giggles, staring at a growingly irritated Flowey.

“What? Do I have somethin’ on my face?”

“Hehehe… The Man who Speaks in Hands…”

“Oh, cut the crap! Hey, at least close the door when you leave! You f—… Ugh.”

Chara had left the door wide open just to annoy Flowey. He looked back at his chessboard; he had been absentmindedly making random movements as he was more focused on the conversation around him.

Yep, it was a draw.

Chapter Text

“…And then Alphys left us watching an anime movie for the rest of the class so we could learn about friendship or something like that.”

Susie took another bite of the apple she was eating along the way home from another good day of not doing anything at high school, an occupation in which she was already an expert. The apple had a pretty big imperfection: it looked as if it had hit the floor repeatedly, but it’s not like Susie was a picky eater.

“And she sent us an essay about what we had learned from the movie. I'm already quite advanced on it!” Added Ralsei, proud of his progress on the subject. He was planning to name the job: Mew Mew Kissy Cutie: The Implications of a hypothetical mind control from applied sociology’s point of view.

“Ralsei don’t tell me you have done that essay about anime.”

“I have and you should too. For some reason I get the feeling that Miss Alphys is going to be proper serious when grading this specific essay.”

Susie huffed. “Whatever. That movie sucked anyway.”

“I can’t believe the one day that I stayed at home for being sick all you do in Maths is watch a movie…”

Kris had their hands inside their pants’ pockets, not to keep them warm but out of not knowing what to do with them.

“Awww don’t worry Kris, I’m sure that won’t be the last time we will be watching a film in her class!”

“It will be if my mom takes notice of this. I’m sure she wouldn’t like hearing about it… It’s not like she is against movies in class, but Mew Mew Kissy Cutie doesn’t have much to do with maths…”

“C’mon, Kris, who would be snitch enough to tell this to your mom?” Susie stuffed her mouth with what was left of the apple.

The trio kept walking in silence for some seconds before reaching a conclusion.

“Berdly?” Ventured Ralsei.

“Berdly.” Affirmed Kris.

“Hgm, burgdley, of gorse.” Re-affirmed Susie, or at least tried to.

“Susie, what did I say about talking with your mouth full?” Although trying to hide it, Ralsei was visibly annoyed.

Susie swallowed. “That it’s rude.”

“Exactly!”

“Heh. Cool.”

“No???” Not cool???”

Kris smiled and zoned out for a bit as Ralsei embarked himself in the laborious task of trying to explain good manners to Susie. The prospect for the day seemed pretty sweet: no big responsibilities and just a full afternoon of goofing around with their friends.

They saw the glint of blonde hair and immediately recognized Noelle walking down the street some meters ahead of them.

“—And that’s why it’s important to respect the people around you and not speak with your mouth full. Do you—?”

“Shh, look, there’s Noelle. Let’s catch up.”

Ralsei sighed and followed Kris and Susie as the two of them scared the reindeer while greeting her from behind.

“Oh, it’s you guys.” Noelle exhaled with relief “Hum, pretty boring classes today huh? I preferred yesterday’s movie.”

“Yeah, rub some salt on the wound.”

“Sorry Kris! I forgot you were sick. How are you feeling now?”

“Way better, thank you.” They still felt some reminisces of a headache but nothing further.

“I must admit I was confused when the protagonist’s magical parents told her she was a cat girl, but then I started understanding the plot! It was pretty cool…”

I mean, who’s gonna blame Noelle, you don’t expect cat girls in your average math classes.

“Nah. I snoozed through the whole thing. Not enough blood, it was boring as hell.” Said Susie.

“Y-y-yeah right? I totally thought that too! It sucked. Completely boring, right Kris???”

“Still haven’t seen the movie.”

“R-ralsei?”

The goat blushed. “Well, I liked it—“

“NO WAY!”

It seemed Ralsei didn't have enough interruptions for the day, but this time it was well deserved.

“What?”

“Kris look over there!”

Susie pointed at three kids that were probably around 12 years old, all riding bicycles. They were your ordinary boys, with no special characteristic whatsoever: they wore shorts and printed t-shirts, had the most trending haircuts and probably only played popular shooter videogames.

Ralsei gasped at the sight of the kids and froze. Kris was quicker to react; they pointed at a nearby thick bush and signaled for everyone to follow them in their hiding.

Seeing that Noelle was reluctant to move due to something called “lack of context”, Susie grabbed her by the wrist and ducked her behind the aforementioned bush, from where Kris and Ralsei were already peeking over. This at the same time caused Noelle to be reluctant to speak or move or do anything due to something called “Susie having touched her wrist”, a wrist which, rest assured, was not going to see any water nor soap in a long, loooong time.

Once the reindeer had overcome this immobilizing problem and snapped out of her frantic thinking, she found herself crouching in a most uncomfortable way and with her antlers getting stuck in the bush. She knew how she had got there (not like she was going to forget) but not why…

“Guys can anyone tell me why are we hiding from some kids???”

“Don’t let them trick you, Noelle. These aren’t kids, these are evil creatures we are talking about.” Kris put their hands over their eyes resembling binoculars, a technique they had learnt from years and years of watching cartoons. One could argue it was a placebo effect, but they could swear they saw more this way.

“They seem pretty normal?”

“They aren’t especially nice…” Ralsei fashioned an almost fearful countenance that felt out of place with his general happiness.

“Alright? I have never seen them around.”

“That’s because they are from the city. They just come to Hometown once per year to visit a relative on their birthday.”

“And one day is enough for them to wreck your whole week.” Susie added to Kris’ info.

“What did they do last year?”

“Mainly insulting us, but they even got to the point of throwing rubbish.”

Ah, yes. The scene that the fluffy boy just described was very differently seen in each of the trio’s minds. Ralsei was focused on not getting hit, Kris was distracted looking at what kind of things people threw away and Susie was also focused, but on getting as many banana peels as she could inside her mouth.

“And they kept getting my name wrong over and over again! I’m not Tom and I’m not a boy! Tschh… It’s not that hard to understand.” Grumbled Susie.

“Oh… Well I should get going. I'm already late to Cross-Country.”

“If you leave now you will blow our cover!”

Kris’ pleads were met with silence. Noelle pondered what to do while the three of them kept observing through the bush.

“Uh… Kris I don’t know if I feel comfortable spying on kids???”

Noelle looked at Ralsei. He used to be the responsible one. You know, the one that thinks about the implications of hiding behind bushes to watch three apparently innocent kids. But this time he seemed as interested in the matter as Kris and Susie.

“Noelle, no.”

But she was already getting up, drawing attention to the hiding spot with the sound of rustling. The three kids turned their heads at the same time, staring at Noelle without paying attention, but then their eyes met with those behind the leaves and branches and smirked. Oh, boy…

The reindeer saw this and, thinking that the trio’s stories were probably exaggerated, walked to greet the bicycle riders, who were now pedaling toward the bush.

“H-hi! I’m Noelle. My friends here said that you did some—“

“Shut up, Rudolph, we are not interested in you.” announced the one who appeared to be the leader, with the face full of freckles and dark hair, as the other two snickered. God his voice was sooo annoying… I could try describing it, though I don’t think it would do any justice… Here we go… You know the sound of chalk creaking against a blackboard? Well, now mix it with a car’s alarm and the noise that your neighbour makes attempting to drill a hole in the wall during nighttime for literally no reason at all. And a plane flying over your head. Constantly. Oh, and the plane is blasting whichever genre of music you find the most annoying.… That’s his voice.

“That… That wasn’t very nice of you…”

“Do we care?” Freckles searched for the opinion of his fellows, which we will call from now on Glasses and Blondie. You can already guess, it was three shakes against zero nods. “You can leave now.”

There was something unexplainably intimidating in his almost comically high-pitched voice.

Noelle giggled nervously. “W-well look at the hour! I should really get going…”

She didn’t even look at her watch, so the excuse lost any kind of confidence that you could have charitably granted it after ignoring her trembling voice and sweating hands. It wasn’t entirely false though, Jockington had already been waiting for her for a while, certainly doing cool things while at it, because if you could trust Jockington with something it is being cool doing anything at any time.

The reindeer tried to express how much she felt sorry dedicating an apologetic glance to her three classmates, but it ended up being more of a “I’m severely constipated” or “I’m suffering from an allergic reaction” or even “I’m giving birth” glance. Luckily the message was somehow understood, and none of them held any grudges against her as she wisely decided to make an exit.

And now nothing stood between the Annoying Kids and the Fun Gang, as this last one slowly got out of their improvised hideout.

“Well, Well, Well. Look at what we have here!” Freckles really seemed to be a loyal reader of “Weekly Bully Magazine”, given with how much passion he spelled that absolutely cliche line. “If it isn’t the anthropologist freak, his goat lackey and the testosteroned beast…”

“… I think the word you were looking for there was androgynous, not anthropologist…” Ralsei sheepishly corrected.

“Shut up nerd, I know the words I use.”

The three kids started describing circles in their bicycles around Kris, Susie and Ralsei. I know I said the whole thing about the Bully Magazine as a joke, but seeing how far they had gotten into their own stereotypes, It might as well be completely real.

“Do you really think we’re scared of you, brats?” Susie growled at them.

“Taking into account how much of a chicken you were last year, yeah!” Oh look, this time it was Glasses talking, because the secondary bullies always needed to get some lines too! His voice wasn’t any less vexing, though…

“We decided to ignore you, which is very different.” Said Kris. They weren’t even bothered with their insults, as a matter of fact, they always liked it a little bit when people tried using “androgynous” as if it was an insult.

“Then do the same again and stay out of our territory…”

“Dudes you stay here for half a day PER YEAR! What the fuck are you even talking about? What territory???” Susie asked.

“Everything that we want. But why are you still here?”

Kris nodded to their friends and the three of them made a strategic withdrawal, leaving the street.

“That’s better. Back to the bushes, you weirdos.”

Susie clenched her fists all the way across the little path of humiliation they walked, till ending up in a bench some corner turns farer from the kids.

“Kris what the hell was that? Why would we allow them to treat us that way? We were going through that street, who are they to tell us to turn around?”

“You are right. We must do something about it.” Kris adopted their thinking pose.

Susie scoffed. “Ohohoh, I’ve got a great idea for you…” She then proceeded to crack her knuckles in a most menacing way.

Ralsei flinched a little bit. “Susie, we aren't hurting kids! You can’t do that!”

“C’mon… It’ll just be a small shake… I won’t even touch them that much, just a scare…”

“We are still not intimidating kids!”

The lizard huffed. “Huh… Killjoy…”

“I’ve got three ideas to claim our vengeance” It seemed like Kris had finished their official Thinking Pause and were now ready to share whatever weird plans they had created.

“I like that word. What’cha waiting for? Spit it out!”

“Fist one: we manage to cram some glitter bombs into their bicycles—“

“But that’s dangerous though??? They could have a serious fall…”

Susie muttered something at Ralsei’s comment.

“Alright, second one: we follow them to the city, find their houses and hide a player in between their walls, then proceed to play random fart noises 24/7. They will never know what hit them.”

“I think breaking and entering is a crime…”

Now Susie emitted a sound that was a hybrid between curmudgeon grumbling and a primal growl.

“The third one is more in the long run… We will need lots of time… Who is willing to seduce one of their parents?”

“No??? Just… Wrong in so many ways???”

“Ugh, Ralsei! Can you stop being such a— Wait, no, Kris I’m not doing that!”

“Let’s hear Ralsei’s ideas then.”

“I swear if it’s something boring I’m going to… Huh… Break something around me!”

Ralsei took a deep breath. “What if we… Just talk it out with them?”

The time stopped for a few seconds. The only thing that could be heard were the birds singing on some trees around. And then they went silent when Susie slammed her fist against the nearest tree.

“Damn it! Look, now I’ll be pulling splinters out of my hand for days! All thanks to you!”

“I’m sorry?”

“Can’t you see, dummie?” Susie grew more frustrated with each word. “They’ll chew you up, and then spit you out, just to pick you from the floor and chew you up again! Why bother when I can do the same to them but LITERALLY???”

“I’m with Susie this time, Ralsei. Noelle already tried that.” In reality, Kris was just worried that Ralsei couldn’t take whatever the kids would throw at him.

“It’s still worth a shot. Dialogue will always be the best way to end a conflict.”

Susie sighed. She would never admit it but she was also worried for him. “Whatever. Just don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

And that’s how our favorite fluffy boy found himself walking towards the kids’ last position, planning what he would say, and how to fix the problem. He probably should have also thought about some insults they could come up with, just to be prepared, but he didn’t have enough rudeness to think of anything, let alone think of an insult toward another person. Kris and Susie had been teaching him sarcasm though. He was still getting the hang of it.

The Annoying Kids were also sitting on a bench, apparently reading class books, but truth be told, they had the mobile phones inside the books! Such young gangsters… Why they were pretending when there was no adult around, only the gods of the bullies knew.

“Oh, look! The goat lackey comes back for more!” Freckles put his mobile phone in his pocket.

“Hi! I think we got off on the wrong foot. Let’s start over, shall we? My name is Ralsei.” He offered a handshake in a universal sign of peace. But for our wild specimens of bullies, that was a universal sign of nerdiness. They surrounded the goat, in a scene that could only be described as bizarre. Ralsei was still a bit higher than the tallest of the kids, that being Blondie, and we are talking about Ralsei here, so yeah, not specially the tallest.

Instead of accepting the handshake, the kids started playing their favorite game: Round of insults. They practiced for that, no kidding.

“Heh. Did you hear that, guys? Start over. Why don’t you go and shove your pathetic horns up yours?”

Ralsei was shocked, but they needed more than that to get to him. “T-that would be anatomically impossible…”

“C’mon, little goat! Bleat for us!” Wow, amazing addition, Glasses, everyone’s clapping at your intelligence right now…

“I would prefer not to, thanks.”

“Nice make up, did your mommy do it for you?”

“I don’t have a mother, I did it myself. Thank you for saying it’s nice! It’s a start…”

“I wasn’t serious, it’s gross and girly!” Blondie crossed his arms.

“I’m sorry that you have such a closed view of the world.” He answered with patience.

“So the goat lackey has no mommy, huh? Probably escaped once she saw your ugly head.”

“C-can we steer the conversation toward other topics?”

“Or what? Or you will invite us over for some tea and pastries?”

“I could if you wanted to! You just have to put a little bit of effort on your end…”

“Listen up, nerd. We don’t want your stupid friendliness. Now go get back to the Underground where you belong, freak!”

Ouch.

“Hum…” Ralsei stared at the ground. “T-that last one was a bit too deep… I… I think I should go now…”

“Think so? Really? What you gonna do, cry?”.

But Ralsei was already leaving, shuffling. Contrary to what Freckles said, he didn’t cry. He was strong. But to say that the kids’ comments didn’t affect him in any way would be a lie.

Kris and Susie had been watching everything from the corner. Ralsei wished they hadn’t; It would make things easier. Susie patted his back. “Huh… Are you ok, Ralsei?”

“I’m fine… I know I shouldn’t listen to them. That really went all to pot, though… Susie, Kris, you were right. You can’t solve everything by being nice.”

“Great, now can I kick their asses? Because after that last comment they made, I really, really, really want to…”

“Hold on. Maybe there’s another way…” Kris intervened. “They only come here once per year to celebrate the birthday of a relative, right?”

“And…?”

“Then their parents must be here too…”

Susie sighed. “Kris we talked about this, I’m not seducing anyone’s mom.”

“Nah. There is no need for that. Now, let’s find that party.”

The Annoying Kids had enjoyed a perfect day this far. Skipping school for a birthday party? Man, wasn’t that blissful. Freckles could pretend to care about his uncle and then eat as much cake as he wanted and then go have some fun with his cousins.

They were now lazily riding their bikes around the streets near the party’s house, doing the best thing they knew: being annoying to everyone.

Nothing had happened since they cruelly bullied Ralsei, so now the morale was low. If Freckles didn’t find anything to do quickly, Glasses and Blondie could just lose their focus and turn to other activities, like actually spending time with the family, and that couldn’t happen.

Fortunately for him, the usual trio was moving towards them again from across the street, so he rallied his loyal servants and raced to meet them.

“Suicidal again I see… It’s about time you learn your lesson.”

“Look behind you, kid.”

“Haha! Do you think I’m stupid enough?“

But Glasses and Bondie had already looked behind themselves.

“Uh… Biff you should look at this…”

Oh. Of course Freckles’ real name was Biff. I’m not surprised for some reason.

Behind them, a small crowd of parents, of ill humor as reflected by their faces, advanced at a steady pace, not too fast but also not too slow. They had all the time in the world.

“No… No! What did you do???”

“Easy. We snitched on you. Found the party and told your families everything, and without forgetting any detail. You are in for a long scolding…”

“But how???”

“This isn’t too big of a town. It didn’t take us much time to find a backyard with balloons and garlands.”

Freckles looked at the parents, then at Kris, and then at the parents again. “You… We’ll have our vengeance!”

The kids tried to escape on their bicycles. The parents just grumbled a little bit, with some “these kids…” being heard and turned around back to the party. It’s not like they had any form of escaping their destiny. Gosh, the ride back home would be pretty uncomfortable.

Ralsei giggled a little bit at the scene. “Kris… Thank you for finding another solution.”

“It was the correct thing to do.”

Hey, at the end, no one finished up buried in trash again. Legends say Susie’s still getting splinters out of her hand, though…

Chapter Text

The air had something strange that morning. Something disturbing. That morning no flowers blossomed, no animal gave birth, and no egg hatched. The whole nature seemed to be mourning, for an inhumane murder had been committed.

“Holy cow…”

Before Starlo’s incredulous eyes spurted from the earth what once was a beautiful corn plantation and now could only be described as a mangled aberration of broken stalks and crushed kernels covering the soil. The crime scene was fresh: sap still gushed from the victim’s wounds, flowing down through the few leaves and husks that still remained intact. Such a nightmarish scene was the one that welcomed the Sheriff into the day. Hours of hard work poured into the plants, and right when it was almost time to harvest, Bum!… You lose everything you had…

I mean, not exactly. The small corn plantation in his backyard was only a hobby. And whatever did that to his poor cobs only took approximately one third of the whole. The rest had been miraculously spared from their fatal destiny.

“What in the actual—…”

Starlo approached the destroyed plants and kneeled to see the damages done. Nothing from the affected corn could be saved… At least it could be scrapped for some compost.

After the farmer in Starlo had its fun, it was time for the Sheriff to come out. His coffee would have to wait: It was investigation time.

He looked around the crime scene for any trail that the culprit, be it animal or person, may had left. The fence didn’t have any sign of trespassing, and he remembered clearly that he locked the door before going to sleep… Naturally, it wasn’t that hard to jump over the fence, so that possibility couldn’t be ruled out. But what really caught the Sheriff’s attention was the soil… It showed clear signs of having been smeared and scoured following a sweep pattern: An animal didn’t do this. Someone had brutally attacked his corn and hid their footprints before leaving sheltered by the night.

Starlo stroke his chin. He didn’t have a Watson, but he would have to do without one… The investigation demanded more thoroughness!

Being sincere, this was pretty exciting for him. Not that he didn’t lament the loss of hours of work, but that only fueled even more his desire for justice. Was it a real crime? Nope. Would that stop him from treating it like one? Hell no. He had some hours before his shift began and he wanted to make the most of them.

The day had started pretty well for Rachel Morin. The kids were still peacefully sleeping and she had some valued time for herself while they were at that. She was sure anxiously eating ice cream while watching a series wasn’t what many people would consider a healthy Monday morning routine, but she respectfully gave a fuck about that. She would do this until stumbling with a lengthy article online about how eating ice cream in the morning was horrible and it utterly destroyed parts of your stomach you didn’t even know existed and raised your chances of skin cancer by 0,003%. Then she would stop out of a “what if” fear, at least till she forgot about the article, or decided that enough time had passed that another different scientist would have already proven this absolutely wrong, as eating ice cream in the morning actually benefited your skin (In a study casually funded by an ice cream company). Such was the cycle of life.

So you can imagine her surprise when the Sheriff (her neighbour) appeared at her door fully dressed in his customary attire with a serious expression on his face.

“Morning, Miss Morin. I wanted to make you some que—“

“I swear, whatever they’ve done this time they are both really sweet children and surely didn’t mean to—“

“Your kids have done nothing, Miss Morin. At least not for now. A crime has been committed at my house…”

“Oh, shit…” She finished swallowing the ice cream spoonful she kept in her mouth. “Is it serious?”

“My… My corn has suffered an attack.” Starlo couldn’t keep his voice from showing a little bit of a broken pride.

“Oh. I'm sorry I guess?”

Starlo took a notebook out of his pocket along with a pencil. “Miss, did you hear or see anything unusual last night?”

“… Are you sure it wasn’t an animal or something?”

“It was a premeditated attack.” Rachel nodded the same way a doctor nods to the nonsense of a sedated patient. “… The culprit hid their footprints and left no trails, and… Judging by your face, you don’t believe me, do you?”

“I mean, you are the expert here…”

Those last words weren’t intended to reassure him but that’s what they did anyway.

“You are right. I am. I am one hell of a professional.” He smiled. “So nothing to report?”

“No, nothing at all, not that I remember.”

“Alrighty then. Thanks for your collaboration.”

And so Starlo left to interrogate more of his neighbours, who would probably soon hate him a little bit more than yesterday, though one could not get angry with that nerdy face of his for too long. He checked his notebook while he walked down the street. So long he had nothing, apart from Mr. Long affirming that he had seen an UFO, which was interesting and told many things about Mr. Long but was effectively useless in his search for the truth.

Desperate, our lawbringer had to use methods that his wallet would resent, but the safety of his precious corn had no price at all.

“a camera?”

“Bingo. Just any camera you have.”

Starlo was hunched over the counter fidgeting with something he had found while navigating through Sans’ grocery store. It was some kind of kids’ toy resembling one popular character from a Marvel movie. You could open the head as if it was a lid and there was candy inside the stem. It was a strange combination of grotesque and funny.

“hold on lemme check on the back.”

The Sheriff could have sworn that the door behind the counter led to a pitch-black void once Sans passed through it. It was weird how he always seemed to find almost anything in that backroom of his.

Sans returned half a minute later with a dusty white and blue box. The image at the front showed an old videocamera, and the cheap cardboard edges were all scuffed up. All the text was in a language which Starlo didn’t recognize.

“You… Only have that?”

Sans patted the box. “state of the art european technology.”

“It seems a little bit old. It must have a minimum of thirty years.”

“it's vintage.”

It’s not like Starlo had many other options. In a real tech place they would only sell new cameras and the price would be prohibitive. Also, he wanted to leave everything prepared before getting to work. He sighed in defeat… This is what he deserved for asking for a camera in a grocery store.

“How much for it?”

The skeleton checked the box for a few seconds. “it’s only 5,000 hungarian forints.”

Starlo rubbed his face and let out another loud sigh.

“Sans, what makes you think I have any Hungarian forints on me right now?”

“too bad. then it’s 50 dollars”

“What? Why?”

“read the sign.”

Sans pointed to a big sign in bright neon colours that said: “All Hungarian cameras for 50 dollars” hanging on the wall behind the counter.

“… That wasn’t there before…?”

“didn’t see it? maybe you should go get your glasses checked.”

“I’m not paying 50 dollars for some old camera.”

“hey, no problem. i get it. not everyone can invest 75 dollars in a camera.”

“Why would you raise the price? I said I’m not buying it!”

“100 dollars is a big amount for some people…”

“Sans, I don’t think you understand how bargaining works…”

“ok, ok. i’ll give you a special discount. 19,35 dollars.”

“That’s oddly specific.”

“i know right?”

“Fine. I hope it works.”

Starlo left the candy dispenser on the counter and drew his wallet like he would draw a gun.

“are you also buying the pez?”

“What? Oh, the candy dispenser. No, sorry, I was just curious.”

“are you sure? it’s just 300 indian rupees.”

Starlo placed the money on the counter and looked at the skeleton without being able to keep a straight face. “Goodbye, Sans.”

The Sheriff left the store with the box under his arm. Now he only had to place the camera in some spot where it covered the garden and leave it recording the whole night. That is if he managed to get it to work in the first place, of course.

“Oh, hell no…”

The next day Starlo woke up to a new show. Another third of his plantation had been torn down without remorse. The damages were similar to last day’s attack; entire stalks slit in two like twigs, half-devoured cobs littering the ground and leaves probably crushed under the weight of some cruel criminal’s boots.

At least he would have compost for months, right?

Another murder and just the day after the first one. If this continued like this he would be out of corn just about tomorrow. He had to put a stop to this.

Luckily this time our valiant Sheriff should have more clues than enough, as the improvised camera had been successfully installed in his wall with duct tape last night, not without some hardships. Starlo never thought he would actually be grateful for the multiple languages that manuals usually included, but there’s a first time for everything.

Now he only had to retrieve the half-melted camera and check the recording… Wait… Have I written that correctly?… Let me see, “half-melted…” Oh yeah, it was half-melted indeed. It was a mess. Burnt beyond recognition. It didn’t serve for scraps, let alone had a retrievable recording.

“You must be kidding me…”

He used a stick that he found to push what remained of his loyal camera. The poor little one had died in action, defending the corn with its life. Alas, it deserved the highest of honors: to be recycled, so that the few electronics that had survived could go on and live a new life.

But there was no time to weep. How could the camera have ended like this? His first reaction was to think about the small thunderstorm that took place that night, but wouldn’t he have heard if a lightning struck so close to his house? to his bedroom, even?

Now that’s what Starlo thought. The reality is that with how big of a heavy sleeper he was, had a wild herd of buffalos performed the worst of any stampede ever heard or seen by any human or monster, he wouldn’t have even batted an eye.

The Sheriff left that possible clue apart from a moment and searched for any other sign of the intruder’s identity, but just like yesterday, the culprit had carefully erased his footprints.

For a moment he thought about calling his contacts over the Scientific Police to have a sample of soil tested in search for anything meaningful, but he was enough of a weirdo to go around asking for favors because someone had attacked his corn plantation.

Then he looked over the fence and found the jackpot: a cloth fragment had gotten stuck in the fence.

Starlo picked it up and analyzed it. It was soft and smooth, probably of a good quality fabric, though he didn’t have the expertise needed to say that for sure. It was tinted with a dark purple dye.

He lastly licked the cloth to masterfully commit a stupidity.

“Yuck. Why the hell did I just do that?”

Sometimes Starlo remembered he had seen too many movies, a harsh fact that he usually decided to cope with through the watching of even more movies.

Anyway, those two aforementioned factors were all he found. Not that it wasn’t enough to securely point towards a main suspect… The investigation was getting close to its climax and only one last step was left to do: Waiting.

The night was precious that day. The stars (not all of them, but at least way more than in the city) shone openly in the sky, and the moon had… Something magical, just magical. Oh, no, tick that off. Starlo checked it on his phone: According to the news it was something called a supermoon, and it was completely explainable by science.

“The technical name is a perigee… Syzige? Siz—… Syzegy? Ugh. Damn scientific names.”

As you can observe, Starlo was slowly spiraling into madness as he read through the supermoon’s wikipedia article. The lack of sleep had started to get to him, and very badly. Now all that kept him awake to watch over his crops was the comforting presence of the blue light of his mobile phone, with the brightness set to its highest, and kept at a distance from his eyes that most respected doctors would strongly advise against maintaining.

He just knew the murderer would appear if he stayed awake enough. So he, in preparation, had drank amounts of coffee that once again most respected doctors would strongly advise against drinking and just sat in the entrance to the garden, focused as a hawk, at least for the first two hours, then it just started getting harder and harder to keep the eyes open.

The worst came when his phone died. As if not enough inanimate objects had died those days, Starlo’s phone decided that brightness at its maximum setting was something it couldn’t stand, so it just… didn’t stand it I guess.

Without his endless fountain of useless information about supermoons, the Sheriff had nothing to entertain himself but his own thoughts, which soon showed they were not enough entertainment. He tried to recite the whole script of “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” in his head, but got stuck at the part when Eastwood was abandoning Wallach in the desert. He then tried to repeat the process with several other westerns but with each film the quantity of lines of dialogue he could remember ran thinner and thinner, as one can’t stay so tired for much time.

What was the problem with a short nap anyway? It’s not like the culprit would appear right then no? Thirty minutes would be enough to stay the rest of the night fully awake, right? Oh, Starlo, so naive.

He thought about setting an alarm on his phone, but it was still dead. He just fell asleep thinking that the mere act of imagining yourself setting an alarm was enough, as the line between what was real and what was imaginary blurred.

And so, Starlo happily drifted into the marvelous land of the dreams, where everything was possible. So the next thing he knew he was rapidly galloping through the oneiric realm in his trusty steed, the warm sun bathing the Mojave desert, which extended as far as the eye could see. And look! There, right there was Burt Lancaster, with a polished six-shooter on his hip, saluting the Sheriff as he passed. And John Wayne! Lazily reclining on a cacti, something that would probably be extremely painful if all of it wasn’t a dream. Every single legend of the western was there, paying their respects to the victorious Sheriff… Fonda, Murphy, Stewart, Ford, Eastwood, Dalv…

Dalv? Didn’t hear of that one… Wait a moment…

“Dalv???”

Starlo opened his eyes, abruptly thrown into the real world by the noise that Dalv had made by heavily and clumsily falling on his side of the garden.

When the vampire saw he had been spotted he muttered something and quickly hid behind his cape.

“… Dalv I can still see you.”

Dalv lifted his cape and sighed. “I know. I just don’t want to be here right now.”

Starlo felt sympathetic towards his clearly distressed friend, and kneeled in front of him. “Are you hurt, pardner? That was a quite rough fall you just had”

“… I’m fine.”

He sat beside him. “Something you want to tell me?”

Dalv doubted for some moments before shyly lifting the cape again. “I’m sorry I ate all your corn. And… blasted your camera with magic. That wasn’t very nice either.”

“I’m not angry or anything, Dalv. I already knew it was you. I just had to make sure before throwing any accusation.”

“Was it so blatantly obvious?”

Starlo showed him the cloth piece and the vampire nodded. “I see.”

“Why did you do that? I already give you some cobs each time I harvest.”

“But not all. It wasn’t enough. Your family’s corn is way better than any I can buy… Or that I can grow myself for that matter. I’m sorry, really. My weakness shames me.”

“You could just have asked for more, you know?”

“… I was scared of what you would think of me.”

“Well, tell me next time. I’m not going to judge you or anything for wanting more of my crops.”

“Ok. I will.”

“Thanks for telling me my corn’s good, It really means something coming from an expert like you!”

“Thank you for not getting angry at me…”

“… Hey… Dalv?”

“Yes?”

“You owe me 19,35 dollars. For the camera.”

“Fair enough…”

The two of them just laid down in the soil and watched the night sky in awe, chatting about corn-growing techniques. Maybe sleeping could wait some more.

Chapter Text

It was a perfect Sunday morning, or at least it would be if it wasn’t for the menacing History exam that loomed in the distance, as an evil stain, smearing the Monday’s timetable, right there, right after English class. And this one was a biggie, yes sire! First World War and Interwar Period. It got all the students scared to the bone…

All the students except for Berdly of course! Being the Official Number One Student, he had nothing to fear of a mere History exam, nevertheless of the contents. And that’s exactly why the bluebird in question was waiting for the big, iron doors of the Holiday’s estate to open. Armed only with the concerned books and other studying utensils under his arm, our brave knight masterfully decided to hit the buzzer again in case Noelle didn’t hear it for some reason. Once the door was opened from inside the house thanks to the magic we now call modern technology, Berdly ventured into the massive garden and patiently awaited again, this time at the house’s door. His approximately four seconds of waiting had their reward: Noelle opened and greeted him with a clearly forced smile.

Noelle Holiday wasn’t at her best moment, that was clear. Eye bags had formed under her eyes and her shoulders were slouching. She was still in her pajamas, a behavior quite rare in her, and even if her grin told the contrary, she actually wanted nothing more than to see Berdly out of her house. Well, maybe she did want something more.

She sighed involuntarily. “Hello Berdly. What do you want?”

“Greetings, my dear Noelle! I have come for us to commence our planned joint study session as agreed per yesterday’s conversation. As for the customary snack, I prefer either normal crackers or doritos, although seeing how devoid of such food was your pantry last time I visited, anything will do.” Berdly moved, making an attempt to enter, expecting Noelle to gently let him in. Which didn’t happen. Instead she silently clenched her fists and stood there stiff.

“O-oh, right. That. The study session. I don’t think it’s a good moment, really.”

“Fear not! I have, in a quite shrewd manner if I may, deduced from your current state that you are affected by some kind of sickness! I will let you know that my immunological system is rather strong (it runs the family) and I am not scared of being infected.”

Noelle scoffed, genuinely finding it funny. “Berdly I don’t think you can get infected by this.”

“So I think too, friend! See? Nothing to worry about. With that out of the way, shall we…—“

“I-i… It’s still not a good time. It doesn’t change anything. I just want to rest.”

Berdly paused for a moment. He needed the study session. Well, he didn’t need it of course, it was all mainly to help Noelle…

“Haha! No problem at all! I will take most of the burden! You can… You can rest while I study, and then maybe in the hypothetical case that I had any doubt, I could…”

And then Noelle lost the little patience she had.

“Berdly could you just get out of my house??? Please???”

“B-but Noelle, I don’t understand! What is it with this hostility towards my figure?”

And then an imaginary lightbulb illuminated the bird’s head. He was THIS close to actually shouting “Eureka.”

“Ah! It must be one of those days of the month when women—“

“Yes. Yes, Berdly, it’s one of those days of the month. Now can you get out???”

“It is a common case of “dysmenorrhea” then…” Berdly stroked his chin, striking a pose which he thought made him more intelligent. In reality he had read that term in one of his mom’s medical magazines. And he probably mispronounced it severely, too.

At this point, Noelle wanted to unapologetically choke Berdly till he suffocated, but as the last time she checked that action was a crime, she contented herself with puffing in disbelief, throwing a killing glance at the bird and then shutting the door in his beak.

The bluebird was confused as to why Noelle took it that way. He was just trying to be helpful with a specific diagnosis of her problem!

Now he was left with no one to study with. Absolutely no one. His exam was ruined… Well, not ruined, because he would still get a tremendous mark, of course!… Nah, who am I kidding, the bird was terrified. He knew he was going to fail without Noelle’s help. And that’s why he resorted to extreme measures: other study companions. Surely someone from their friends group would be available, right?

The noise of a vacuum cleaner came from inside Ralsei’s house. The doormat represented a smiley face with the words “welcome!” at the top. That had to be a good sign, right?

The bird knocked on the door a few times before the vacuum cleaner stopped… huh… vacuuming, and the doorknob turned.

Ralsei stood there with his face covered by a mask. He had a duster under one arm and a glass cleaner under the other. The aforementioned vacuum cleaner was left unattended in the middle of the living room, waiting for his master to return. You couldn’t see his mouth, but knowing Ralsei enough you could perceive he was smiling.

Berdly’s heart missed a beat when he saw the mask. “Please, oh please don’t tell me you are sick.”

Ralsei removed his mask. “Oh, no! I am fine! Wow, thank you for caring so much! It’s… odd coming from you, but I appreciate it!”

“Phew! Well then are you free to study with me for tomorrow’s history exam?”

Aaand the fluffy boy’s face lost its original brightness. “Ah… It’s because you need something… right… Well, you see, my hands are a tad bit full right now. I’m doing spring cleaning.”

“But we are in September?”

“Every season is a good season for spring cleaning!” Ralsei cheered himself up.

“And if you aren’t sick why the mask, if I may inquire?”

“I am quite allergic to dust. I sneeze a lot, even with this mask…”

“Then why don’t you let your father do the cleaning?”

“Because that’s no fun!”

Two ways of seeing life clashed. One couldn’t understand how someone could enjoy cleaning when videogames existed and the other one couldn’t understand how someone would let their parents do all the work around the house. Truly the battle of the year…

“Well, I had decided that since you are mildly intelligent—“

“Excuse me???” (Is that a compliment or an insult?)

“—That I would come to your house seeking to offer my services as a guide in the laborious task of studying. But as I see that you need no help—“

“I do! You could help me with cleaning!”

“—I will be taking my leave. Goodbye, Ralsei.”

“Uh… bye?

And with that another person was crossed out of the list. Berdly had no option but to recurre to the… Lower levels, as he called them.

And as for Ralsei, he was still figuring out if he should feel offended or flattered by Berdly’s comment. And sneezing. He was also sneezing like crazy.

“Screw off, you nerdy chicken, Kris ain’t home.”

Nothing like Flowey shouting at you from the window, huh? Berdly didn’t even had the chance to knock or ring the doorbell before the flower was already kicking him out.

He stretched his neck to look up and put a hand at the top of his eyes to block the aggressive sun.

“What did you say?”

“I said KRIS AIN’T HOME!!!… SCREW OFF!”

At that time the door opened. Berdly had to look down… Nope, a little bit more. Almost, but not quite… There, perfect. To see Asriel, with the perfect bliss of infantile ignorance on his face.

“I’m sorry for his hollerin’, he can be really mean sometimes. But he’s right. If you are lookin’ for Kris, he’s at the city right now, helpin’ mom buy some small furniture and plants.”

Berdly couldn’t believe his bad luck.

“I assume they are not coming back anytime soon?”

Flowey interrupted Asriel before he could answer. “Yeah, that’s right! Such a genius! Now get back to the Twitter logo or somethin’! You are spoilin’ my view!”

“Sorry again.” And Asriel closed the door, shutting down any already vain hope that Berdly conserved about passing that exam.

The bird wandered the streets of Hometown, looking at the floor, absolutely defeated. Without Noelle’s inestimable help, he was bound to miserably fail that History exam, and what would his parents think then? “What a disappointment of a son, fetching us an F in History.” A totally credible and logical reaction that was not in any way fueled by Berdly’s inner fears. It was the end for him…

Or wasn’t it? There was a life-zero, a last option that he had hoped not to need, a name at the end of the list, so low-level that she would probably provide nothing of worth to the study session:

Susie.

Berdly felt goosebumps only by the thought of it. Nah. He would never beg for help from Susie. He would never be so desperate to humiliate his superior mind with such an act…

Albeit his feet were already moving on their own in direction to Susie’s house.

It was getting late. If he didn’t hurry, there would not be enough time to study sufficiently before the meal. So maybe waiting in front of her porch wasn’t the best idea.

The bluebird breathed in, and breathed out. He had beaten the entire Elden Ring DLC with almost no help. This was nothing compared to that accomplishment, and yet he was scared. His relationship with Susie wasn’t exactly optimal, to say the least, and it’s not like she cared enough to actively improve it. The concept of having to spend time with her alone, in a small room, with not enough space to run to safety in case something happened… It was unnerving. But he had no other option.

The buzzer sounded somehow grim, as if it marked Berdly’s demise. He thought for a moment about the possibility of just running away. And then Susie opened up the door.

Eye bags had formed under her eyes and her shoulders were slouching. Oh, and she was still in pajamas. But unlike Noelle, this was just how she looked like every Saturday morning, so at least nothing bad had happened to her.

“You.” She didn’t sound very excited to see the bird.

“Indeed.”

“What the hell are you doing on my porch?”

“I was wondering if you would be interested in a joint study session?”

Susie snorted, unimpressed. “Ask Noelle, she’s the smart one.”

“She is… indisposed.”

“Huh. Then Ralsei.”

“Spring Cleaning.”

She laughed loudly. “In September? Yeah, sounds like him. What about Kris?”

“They are currently at the city.”

“Damn, you got bad luck.”

Berdly sighed. “Tell me about it”

“So I'm your last option? Makes sense. I would also be my last option. That exam got a shit ton of things to remember… No way I'm studying.”

“Wait! What if I could promise you you wouldn’t fail? I’m sure some of my intelligence can spread to you if we spend enough time together.”

Susie thought for some seconds, then a little bit more, before grunting and punching the doorframe.

“… Ugh… Damn, I really need to get something more than a F… If I agree, do you guarantee me I won’t get a F?”

Berdly knew he was taking a risk, but he just couldn’t get himself to study alone.

“Yeah, sure, you will have your desired grade, whatever that is.”

“Then count me in.”

“Good! Let’s get to work!” He once again started crossing the threshold without asking, a habit he would soon learn to avoid. “I will have you know that I prefer doritos over any other—“

Susie grabbed him by the collar of the shirt before he could take another step.

“Hold on, hold on. You? Eating MY food? Hohoh, fat chance dude. We are going to your house.”

“B-but my parents aren’t home, there’s only my cousin Martlet, and she will be an annoyance, c-can’t we???”

“No. Your house.”

Berdly gulped.

“Yes! My house! It’s perfect, I-i got no problem with that!”

“Good.” The lizard let him go and patted his back with way too much strength to his likening. “Let’s go.”

Susie juggled with a pen. No sign of any profound thought was reflected on her eyes. To this point, all she had done was sit in silence and let Berdly go through the book to “asses the menace”

“This is boring. Dude, I’m not an expert and all that, but I think I’m supposed to do something if I want to improve my marks.”

“I already told you, I’m scouting what we have on our hands.”

“And I can’t have a look?”

“We will study when I understand the main topics!”

Susie sighed and got back to doing nothing.

The contents of the exam were heavy duty, that’s for sure. Berdly’s plan was to learn it and then teach enough to Susie so that she could get her C- and along the way, he would learn something teaching. That’s what his father told him, you learn more teaching than studying. But it was just sooo much and so many names and dates. The figures and the letters started dancing around inside his head, in an unpleasant party to which he wasn’t invited to.

Fifteen minutes passed and nothing changed. Well I mean, nothing important. Susie started chewing on the pen, if you are interested.

But there was a moment when it was enough for her.

“You think I’m stupid???”

“Pardon me?”

“You are just studying on your own. I thought you wanted me to help, but you don’t even give me a book!”

“Susan, this is important, please! I can’t allow myself to fail this exam! I will help you once I'm finished.”

“Finished my ass. If you think you are gonna fail just because I try to help you, why even invite me over?”

“I mean… Technically you invited yourself?”

“Jeez, Berdly. Next time tell me you will waste my time this way… I’m leaving.”

“Couldn’t you recons—?”

The smell of fresh doritos inundated Berdly’s room. Martlet had entered with enough snacks of varied types to bury a person.

“Who’s hungry? Hi Susie! I didn’t know if you liked Doritos so I put some mini-pretzels along, but then I thought that maybe you also didn’t like mini-pretzels, which would be weird, because, who doesn’t? It’s ok if you don’t like them, I didn’t mean to say you would be weird if you didn’t, except if you actually do like mini-pretzels and think it’s weird not to like them? In which case, I completely agree! Oh, and there are also some normal chips!”

Susie looked to the snacks, then to Berdly, and then to the snacks again. “Maybe I can stay over a little bit more.”

Berdly didn’t even look up from the History book. “Thank you, Martlet.”

“Do you need any help with the study?”

“No, Martlet, we are fine, you can go now.”

“Okie-dokie! Tell me if you need anything, I’ll be downstairs.”

“We most probably won’t.”

But the bluebird didn’t hear that last part, or at least acted as if she didn’t, as she left the snacks on the floor and returned to her natural habitat: A couch with a cozy blanket and some animal documentaries on the TV, interesting enough to cater to her limited attention span but not too exciting to over-stimulate her.

“You’re an asshole. Why would you hate her so much?” Inquired Susie.

“It’s not that I hate her, she’s just too much, and she’s always on my back, as if she had no life of her own. You should have seen her some weeks ago trying to connect with me using “gamer slang.” Hah! Pleeease. The only game she has played is Animal Crossing and we all know that’s not even a real game.”

“…Yeah, well, I would kill for someone like that in my house.”

“You wouldn’t understand…”

Susie extended her arm as if she asked for something.

“What?”

“The book. Or you think I have forgotten?” Susie stuffed a handful of mini-pretzels into her mouth with her other hand. Berdly obliged reluctantly and handed her the book.

From that moment, things started going better. Or at least, more efficient. It turns out two heads think more than one! Who would have guessed? The two of them passed through the morning at a good pace, subsequently decimating the doritos and mini-pretzels population, and leaving the chips untouched.

“Verdun… Verdun…” Berdly said to himself as he searched for the date he needed.

“That’s December 1916.”

Berdly continued searching for the date anyway.

“No. Don’t do that. There is no need. I already told you, it’s December 1916, I just saw it. Trust me for at least once!”

Although doubting at first, the bird defeated his impulse to double-check Susie’s info and passed to another page.

“Alright. December 1916. Got it.”

A silence of some minutes fell before she continued the conversation.

“So, how’s Noelle?”

“Huh?”

“You told me she was indisposed. What happened to her?”

“Oh, it’s nothing really.”

“… Ok, but what is it?”

“It’s… You know… Her P.E.R.I.O.D.”

Susie blinked rapidly, genuinely flabbergasted.

“…Then just say so?”

But poor Berdly seemed to think she didn’t understand the topic enough to treat it with the mysticism it deserved.

“You see Susan, when a woman hits a certain age— I… I see now I shouldn’t be explaining this to you. Sorry.”

If looks could kill, Susie’s would be a professional hitman.

“You know, it’s funny, sometimes I forget you are a —“

“Shut up. You are not improving it.”

“O-ok, I apologize.”

The rest of the morning went on without any new disturbance. When it was time to go, they had studied so much even Susie believed she had a good chance at the exam. And that’s hard to achieve.

After saying goodbye to Martlet it was time for our unlikely studying duo to separate. Berdly stood awkwardly at the doorframe, not knowing what to say.

“Well, it wasn’t that bad, right? We made some advancements here and there.”

“And some dis-advancements too.” Susie smirked.

“I don’t think that word exists…?”

“Don’t ruin the moment, Nugget Boy.”

“Ok…”

Ah, the awkward silence. Always there when you need it. Precise as a Swiss clock.

Susie collected her thoughts and talked. “I don’t think I like you too much. But that’s fine, we can work it out. At least for Kris, Ralsei and Noelle. They wouldn’t want us growling at each other.”

“Yes, they most surely wouldn’t…”

“Goodbye Berdly.”

“Farewell Susan.”

“Don’t call me that. Just… don’t. I’m Susie.”

“Then farewell, Susie.” The name sounded alien in Berdly’s mouth.

“Oh, and one last thing…” She was already walking down the porch’s stairs. “Try to explain what a period is to me again and I’ll bite your face off, capiche???”

“C-crystal clear… Susie…”

And so, the lizard left.

The deep voice of Mr. Robinson echoed through the class as he announced that he had finished grading last day’s exams. This message instantly put the class to the brink of collapse, as each and every one of them had reasons to fear the little letter that they were about to see.

When it came down to Susie’s turn, the History teacher placed the paper on her table with a determined slam.

“C-, Susie. It’s an improvement from last exam. Congratulations.”

Ralsei clapped at the back of the class and gradually stopped when he realized he was alone. It’s not like he was the only one happy, Susie was also kind of proud of herself. A little bit.

“You surprisingly got almost every date correct, but your writing skills were conspicuous by their absence.”

“What do you mean? I wrote a lot, look, it’s all over the page!” Complained Susie.

Mr. Robinson picked up the paper and cleared his throat. “… Ehem… That one Australian guy named after a rock band got his brains blown off and everyone started shooting at each other. And the rest is just a collection of extremely graphic descriptions of violence.”

“Well… it’s a quick overview…”

“And then we got Berdly. Another C-. I expected more from you.”

Berdly was at the same time relieved that he didn’t fail and irritated that he didn’t get minimum a B. “But how???”

“I will give you a tip; historical videogames aren’t history.”

Susie and Berdly looked at each other. After all that time studying (and trapped together) this seemed a little bit bittersweet.

Then again, they achieved their objective of not failing, right? Learning? What’s that? Who cares about WW1 anyway?

Chapter Text

“Remind me why we are here on a Saturday morning?”

“The auditions, you dummy!”

“I didn’t have any auditions scheduled for today…”

“Now you do!”

Emerson sighed, not knowing if it was worth it to call out Mettaton’s lack of professionalism at this point. He had worked as his director in some of his other projects before and knew exactly what he would be getting into the time he accepted that call.

“Auditions for what, exactly?”

Mettaton ran a hand through his hair. “The role of my cooking sidekick.”

“I thought we had already gone over this… Why do you want a partner anyway?”

The robot shook his head. “Ah, Emerson, as unimaginative as always… We need to add dynamism! Tension! DRAMA! And you need two to tango…

“Please, I beg you, don’t tell me you actually plan to dance tango in a cooking show…” The human surprised himself with how much he knew the robot.

“Oh, no, darling. I would never.”

“…”

“Until Season two, that is!”

“Ugh…”

The director had a long day ahead.

As the two of them turned around the corner appeared in front of their eyes the imposing silhouette of MTT Studios. The complex at the outskirts of Revelstoke had been bought for a conveniently cheap price from a minor regional network and had been since remodeled to better adjust to the necessities of Mettaton’s various productions. It had its flaws, but it did the trick. And more importantly, it was a bus ride away from Mettaton’s house in Hometown.

Emerson pulled a handkerchief out of his jacket’s pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The sun had been beating down considerably hard that day. If we made a contest to find out which reflected more sun between the human’s pale bald head and the monster’s shining, carefully polished body, the results would be at least controversial.

“Mettaton, are you… Sure about this whole thing?”

“Last time I checked you weren’t the producer.” Answered him sarcastically.

“I know. That would be you.”

“Executive producer AND leading star AND Co-screenwriter. Make sure all of those are reflected on the credits.”

Ah, that’s what the director hated about working with Mettaton. He always leaned downwards to talk to you, making you feel like a baby. One thing is being tall and the other is making the others feel small while you are at it. Emerson couldn’t avoid getting nervous when he talked to the star.

“I’m just saying that all of this has been really rushed, and one can only wonder if you making a cooking show has something to do with losing Chef at Home…”

“Emerson, you insult me! I started working on Cooking with a Killer Robot in the Underground. This is merely a sequel at the Surface, bigger, better, and with way more chainsaws. Plus, I didn’t lose Chef at Home. I was just replacing Michael Smith while he recovered from that accident! And doing an amazing work at it, if I may…”

“Amazing work, eh? My friend over at Food Network Canada said they lost audience when Smith took the leave.”

Mettaton gasped, acting like he was offended. “Oh! Please Emerson, be a little bit professional! Some things are better unsaid…”

They entered through the studios' main door as the security guard nodded at them. Everything was eerily silent, not that it was surprising being so soon in the morning; Late Night with Mettaton didn’t start till 12:00 a.m, and it was the only thing they made on Saturdays.

“Also, this, this is GOOD! I don’t know how you can’t see that. Back in Chef at Home I always had those gargoyles of Ocean Entertainment in suits telling me what to do and what not to do. But now I have full creative liberty!”

“That’s what I fear…”

They had reached Studio 3, where the set for the new show was prepared. Mettaton decided to make the auditions more interesting by actually giving the examinees some random ingredients and seeing what they could get done, all while being recorded. A measure the accounting team will surely be completely fine with, right?

The set’s team was giving it the finishing touches. Mettaton checked his phone: he had one lost call from his associate producer. He called him back immediately hoping for good news.

“Hi, Sharon, darling, how was the meeting?…—Oh, alright… —They said what about me??? Then they didn’t deserve the show in the first place!… —No, no, I get it, it’s fine, I wanted something smaller, keeping it exclusive… —Yes, we settle for the first one… —Alright, bye.”

Emerson observed the cameras getting set and the lights getting lit one by one. This was going to be interesting for sure. Maybe he even enjoyed it.

“Now that I think about it… I don’t even know where this is airing. Is it regional or national?”

“Regional. CHAN-DT.”

“Hey that isn’t that bad actually… Wait… Tell me you didn’t just close the deal right now.”

“You need to be fast in this world, darling. You should know that, you probably have worked on it more than me… What are you, sixty?”

And then the unprofessional one was him.

“Old enough to already be tired from this…”

“Oh pleaseeee!” Mettaton slid across the floor gracefully, ending up behind Emerson and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Ralph. Ralph. Ralphie… Can I call you Ralphie?”

“No.”

“The thing is, I need you, Ralphie. Because it turns out that as much as I like to do whatever I want on set, assuming the role of director may be… Too much for my fabulousness to handle.”

Emerson reflected on his last projects without Mettaton. All pretty fine on their own, but absolutely uninspired and dull. This was an opportunity to stir up his life with some challenges in line with his experience in the field.

The human cleaned the sweat off his forehead again. The handkerchief was now too sweated to clean anything, but he cramped it and put it in his pocket again, ready to be used with less efficiency.

“… Fine. Count me in.”

Mettaton clapped, producing a metallic and unpleasant sound. “Wonderful! You won’t regret this.”

“But I want you to actually listen to my ideas this time, and to pay attention to my notes. Last time we worked together all I did was shouting Action. And you even stole that sometimes…”

“Sure, sure, whatever, darling! There is no time to lose. We will have the CBC begging on their knees for a contract before the airing of the second episode.

All was pitch black. That’s it. The End.

Oh, sorry, all was pitch black from Mettaton’s perspective.

My main theory is that is because he had dumped his upper body into the table, resting his head against the thin wood.

“—aton!”

“Huh…?”

“Mettaton!”

But nobody came.

“METTATON!”

“Ah!” The robot looked at his surroundings. “I was totally awake.”

“Damn it! We haven’t even got to Number Six and you are already napping?”

“Sorry, I couldn’t recharge last night. I had to practice my poses for today’s Late Night.”

Emerson sighed and shook his head “Anyone catches your eye yet?”

Mettaton checked his notes. They consisted of some doodles of dinosaurs moonwalking, his signature repeated at the margins with different styles to see how it would look and a trans flag carelessly painted with markers running out of ink.

The robot rubbed his eyes. “Fine… They were just fine… But I need more glamour. They all were… It just wasn’t the correct vibe, darling.”

To this point, they had all been ok. Most of them were local small actors that wanted to make it big. Some of them knew how to cook, others were more or less funny. Oh, and then there was this Top Chef guy from the bakery back at Hometown. I think if Mettaton heard “Mama miba” again he would get back to the whole extermination machine thingy once more.

“Next one is interesting. Try not to fall asleep again, please.

“No promises.”

He was about to get back to doodling dinosaurs when, to his surprise, Toriel walked through the door.

“Toriel??? Are you here for the audition?”

“Why, yes!” The goat seemed quite excited.

“How did you find out about this?”

“Hee hee! You told me, remember? And almost half the town, if not more.”

That explained Top Chef’s appearance then. Mettaton scribbled something in the only empty space of his notes (next time DONT TELL) and answered her “Well, you can start whenever you want.”

Emerson leaned over to talk with him in private. “Isn’t you knowing her going to be a problem for fairness?”

“No way. If anything, I’m being tougher with her.”

Toriel looked at the ingredients he had at her disposal for a while as the two of them finished talking.

“Alright! I am making a mushroom stew! First we put some leeks and garlic in a pan, preferably a skillet. I would usually add some olive oil, but I do not see a bottle around here.” She grabbed the leeks and looked at them for a while before giggling. “You know? Leeks always remind me of Chara. Back at the Underground they always complained when I made something with leek. I can still remember one day in which Asgore and I…”

Mettaton felt his head becoming heavy again. Oh no. If she started so soon with embarrassing stories about her children, he had no option to survive without falling asleep.

“… They would always scream and make a fuss about it, even when we tried to feed them some without them noticing, by putting some in a dish they liked, but Chara always noticed— Oh, do not forget to add some salt and pepper while sautéing!… Anyway, when they came from playing…”

Her voice was sooo kind and nice you felt like you were being telepathically hugged. But at the same time it was naturally soothing, maybe too much for Mettaton’s good.

“… And then Asgore tried to get them to like leek by stuffing one in his mouth and doing a funny voice, he made a whole character about it! His name was Mr. Leekathon and he would…”

That was too much for his sleep deprived brain. A quick travel to Wonderland followed, while Emerson continued to take notes and sigh repeatedly, most likely wondering when it would all end.

“… Now they do not care about it being on anything… I sometimes do not know… Well, Chara changed a lot the time they were not with us. Some things are small, like this one, but others are quite noticeable… —Oh, look at that! The stew has already thickened. We now serve it on a plate, add some parsley and enjoy!”

Emerson poked Mettaton’s shoulder pads with his pen.

“Wake up at once. She’s done.”

“YEAH! What? Oh, she’s done…”

He sighed. At least It had been a good nap.

“I’m sorry to be the one to break this down for you, darling, but this isn’t your kind of show. I’m sure there’s demand for cooking shows with a lovely lady telling anecdotes about her children as a host, but this one’s about explosions, and chainsaws, and passive-aggressive metaphors about deep aesthetic topics, like how wonderful can my legs be.”

“That’s fine, Mettaton.” She smiled. “I do not know if I would have taken the role even if you offered it to me. I have enough with the school… I am here because Frisk encouraged me to do it, nothing more. But it was fun!”

“Of course it was fun! You can’t spell Mettaton without fun! That’s going to be the motto for the new MTT Glamburgers Kids Menu, by the way.” He turned his head to his colleague. “Ralphie, remind me to hire a better marketing team.”

“I’m not your secretary, Mettaton.”

“You’re right, you aren’t.”

The robot picked up his phone and moved it to his ear… Or… Auditive canal in general.

“Mew Mew… No… I know it’s your annual day off… I just need you to remind me to hire a better marketing team… Yes, AGAIN… Bye!”

Toriel stood there awkwardly without knowing what to do.

“Oh, you can go now, Toriel. Thank you for your time and all that.”

She nodded and left the set. Her mushroom stew was retrieved by the show’s team, and in its place, new random ingredients were placed. Don’t worry, the stew won’t be just thrown away. The team knew quality when they saw it.

“Okay, let’s go with Number Seven, we don’t have much time left.” Emerson signed one of the crew members to go retrieve the next candidate.

And oh, did said candidate enter.

“Alphys?” Mettaton looked back at his super duper important notes. Another dinosaur was moonwalking. “I appreciate you coming all the way here, but now it’s not the time for visits, darling.”

“You also know her???”

“U-uh… That’s funny… Mettaton I’m actually here for the auditions!”

The robot tried to contain his laughter but failed miserably. Emerson looked at him not knowing what to do, and Alphys copied him, but even more nervously.

“Heheh… Sorry… That’s not too nice of me, I know. I guess there’s no problem with you trying… Wasn’t Undyne the one interested in cooking, though?”

“Yes! But… she doesn’t like appearing on TV. It’s not like I enjoy it anymore than her, actually…”

“Then why are you here?”

“S-she convinced me to get out of my comfort zone. I’m already regretting it…” The lizard looked down to the floor.

Emerson felt excluded, so he rushed to intervene before anyone started talking about their children again. “Do you have any experience in cuisine, Miss Alphys?”

“Once I made a fried egg and added it to the instant noodles! D-does that count?”

The director sighed and scribbled something in his notebook. This didn’t help with her nervousness at all.

“You can start whenever you want.”

Mettaton made a lazy thumbs up to cheer her.

“S-s-o… You are already recording?…”

“Yes, the camera’s rolling, you can start.”

“…”

Emerson probably couldn’t answer how much time it was ok to do nothing, but Alphys probably passed that undefined threshold.

“Miss Alphys?”

“So I am being recorded right now?”

“Yes, you are, for purely technical reasons. We need footage to revise once the auditions are finished. It’s standard procedure.”

Alphys searched through the ingredients on the table, knocking some things down. “…W-where are the noodles?”

“There's no shame in retreat, Alphys. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.” Mettaton helped out his friend before Emerson could drop the bomb on her.

“Thanks… Yes, I think it will be for the best.”

“Say hi to Undyne for me, will you darling?”

“Y-yes, I will. bye!”

This time, the crew members only had to put back up the various things the lizard had clumsily hit.

“Next time we encounter someone you know, maybe step off a little bit, alright?”

“Darling I’m not having any conflicts of interest, believe me.”

“We’ll see…”

He made the sign again, and a tall, skeletal shape occupied the doorframe.

“Oooh… Fuck…”

“HELLO METTATON!”

This was going to be hard for him.

“Hello, Papyrus.”

“What the heck, Mettaton, you also know him???”

Mettaton told Emerson to be quiet with an extremely stylish wave of his hand and sighed.

“Here for the audition I guess?”

“I WOULD NEVER LOSE A CHANCE TO SEE MY FAVORITE TV STAR IN THE METAL!”

“Papyrus, our houses aren’t even far away. We see each other at least thrice per week.”

“I KNOW, RIGHT??? I STILL CANNOT BELIEVE IT!”

Emerson cleared his throat aggressively and pointed at Papyrus with the pen. “You can start whenever you want. You have some time to decide what to cook.”

The skeleton looked around and soon grabbed a package of fettuccine.

“WELL, THAT WAS EASY!”

Papyrus started cooking and talking about different kinds of pasta while at it. He always kept a smile on his face and actually explained the process quite well, seasoning the explanation with a joke or a pun from time to time.

Mettaton, on the other hand, was engrossed in his own thoughts. His attention was focused on his pen as he fiddled with it. He couldn’t allow Papyrus to take the role. He just couldn’t. The world of television was a dangerous and cruel one, a world that wasn’t for everyone, a world that would spit you out without mercy if you weren’t enough. He imagined Papyrus reading negative reviews about himself. How would he affront it? No, he was too pure for this world. It was up to Mettaton to protect him…

… Plus, he sometimes found him to be… Obnoxious. The whole “dedicated super fan” part got old really quickly. As a star, he had obviously dealt with many eccentric admirers during his career, but it was different when that admirer was a friend who lived a short hike away from your home. For him, Papyrus was like a child: an innocent, cute little person that was funny and heartwarming in small doses but lethal when you suffer a prolonged exposure.

And he would be having a truly prolonged exposure if he got the job.

“ET VOILA! FETTUCCINE WITH PESTO!”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Papyrus, you will receive news from us soon.”

“THANK YOU! IT WAS A PLEASURE.”

Emerson had the plate of pasta brought to the table as the skeleton left the set. A crew member also brought them some cutlery. The director didn’t waste any time tasting it.

“The pasta is… Not very good, actually. It needs a lot of improvement. But he as a host? We got one heck of a candidate here, don’t you think?”

Mettaton crossed his arms. “Not at all.”

“Why not?”

“He has been a fan of mine for a long time. Our dynamic… Just wouldn’t work on screen.”

“…Huh…”

“What, Ralphie?”

“When I thought you would be conflicted I didn’t guess it would be in this direction.”

Mettaton scoffed, not having enough mental energy to answer and just wanting to wrap it up for the day after the last audition.

“Whatever. We are finished here.”

“No we aren’t. It seems we have a last one, look.”

A short but still skeletal shape occupied half of the doorframe.

“Sans???”

“Oh, you must be fucking kidding me… Him too???” Emerson slammed his hands against the table.

“what’s up.”

“Sans what are you doing here?”

“i’m papyrus’ emotional support brother. thought i would get around, see how tv’s made.”

“Look, now is not the time, alright?”

Sans ignored the comment and grabbed an eel that was lying around the kitchen. “so this is your new cooking show? then when i’m getting served? i don’t have eel day.”

“Sir, please, if you are not a—“

Mettaton invited Emerson to kindly shut up.

“hey, i’m in my element. i cook a killer quiche, just so you know.”

“Then, could you at least show us that killer quiche?”

“…nah. i don’t feel like it.”

Mettaton made a rectangle with his fingers and placed Sans in its center. “Do you see it, darling?”

“You can’t be serious right now…”

“We need to pick one, no? I think it could work. He has something… Photogenic.

“I beg you to reconsider.”

“C’mon! It could be a double act. He’s the goofball and I’m the straight man.”

Emerson chuckled. “You??? The STRAIGHT man???”

The robot giggled. “Oooh, my. Who would have thought you had a sense of humor buried somewhere in there, Ralphie?”

“so what? do i get the roll?” Said Sans with, you guessed right, a rolling pin on his hand.

Papyrus finished making himself some popcorn before hopping on the couch. He wasn’t going to watch any movie, but he had misunderstood that particular human tradition and now thought that eating popcorn was if not customary, at least acceptable during any TV session. He grabbed the remote and…

“— No, Sans, you are not supposed to get the oven inside the fridge!”

“whoops. my bad. it was getting too heated in there.”

Mettaton struck a scandalous pose as Sans shrugged and looked at the camera. At that moment a laugh track was heard. It seemed like the creators didn’t really understand the genre of their own work.

Papyrus stared at the screen with his mouth agape. Sans hadn’t told him anything about the job, probably out of laziness. Who knows how he would react to such fraternal treason???

“WOWIE! SANS, YOU ARE ON TV!”

“no, i’m upstairs in my room, bro.”

Well, never mind.

Chapter Text

“Someone’s been drinkin’ my milk again.”

Ed’s enormous hands weighed the milk carton. It was half-empty. Or half-full, depending on how optimistic you preferred to be. He definitely saw it half-empty in this case.

Mornings in the house that the Feisty Four shared to pay the rent usually were slow and dull. Everyone just stuck to their routines and sleepily exchanged conversation topics such as the weather or the latest news. It hadn’t always been like that though, and it definitely wasn’t like that the last few days. Making honor to their name, the mornings had turned into a battlefield.

Ace sighed across the room. “Ed, no one’s drinking your milk.”

The ogre’s gaze darted towards the couch. Benefits of having an open kitchen, I guess. Just as all those house-flipping shows always say. Moray was lazily stirring their morning coffee with a spoon.

“Moray?”

They giggled. “Haha! Nice try, but no. Lactose intolerant, remember?”

“Hum. I guess that checks. Then it must be—“

At that point Mooch graced them all with her presence, descending the stairs with an almost permanent yawn on her face.

“… Morning.”

Ace clicked his tongue. “Bad timing, I’m afraid.”

“For what?”

“Mooch have you been stealin’ my milk?” The ogre shacked the carton in front of the squirrel’s face.

“What?… Ugh… No… Whole Milk? Just… Ewww. Get that outta my face.”

“I’ve told you before, Mr. Headstrong. No one likes whole milk.”

Ace finished preparing himself an avocado toast and sat along with Moray to watch the news.

“Then what? I’m sleepwalkin’ or somethin’?”

“There’s no possible way you could sleepwalk without any of us noticing.”

“And why’s that???”

Moray turned their head to look at Ed from the couch. “Don’t take it the wrong way, Edward, but you are quite big. I know you think we don’t notice when you have to use the bathroom during the night, but believe me, we do.”

“And probably the whole neighborhood with us!” Mooch attempted to pick up the cereals from the upper shelves, but while it had its upsides, being short also had its downsides.

“And that’s supposed to mean?”

“The earth rumbles. It’s like an earthquake, but pinker.”

“What color is an earthquake supposed to be, if I may?” Ace was just genuinely curious.

“I don’t know… Brown?”

“Nah. It would be red 100%” Said Moray.

“Are we really having this conversation right now?” Mooch was now making a few small hops, lengthening her fingertips in a both pathetic and inspiring attempt to claim her breakfast.

But Ed was still bent on the topic of his not-so-sneaky bathroom night pauses. “Yeah, well, at least I don’t snore…”

Ace left his toast on the plate and looked back offended. “Hey. I don’t snore.”

“You do, sometimes. It’s really cute, like hearing a kitten purr. But it’s also really annoying.”

Mooch would know better, she slept in the same room as him. That’s how they got the two rooms of the house divided: One for Moray and Ed and the other for Mooch and Ace.

“I would have already realized…”

“How? You’re snoozing.” The squirrel was so desperate she was now trying with a spatula. Hey, at least it was a clean spatula.

“… Touché…”

“Hey, Moray, pass me your sword.”

Seems like the spatula wasn’t enough.

“I’m not giving you my sword for that!” They set the coffee cup on the small, wooden table in front of the couch.

Ace stared at Moray intensely. “Forgetting something…?”

“I don’t think so…?”

He pulled up a coaster up his sleeve and placed it under the cup. Why have a coaster in your sleeves, you may ask? The real question is why YOU don’t have one up your sleeve at all moments.

“Fine, sorry, the coasters…”

“It’s not the only thing you forget about, you know?”

“What now?”

Behind them, in the kitchen, Mooch was now combining the spatula with the little hops. She reached this way, but didn’t have the methods to properly take the box of cereals.

“Your guitar. On my desk. Always.”

Ace’s desk, or as he styled to call it, “office”, was a solitary table in the middle of the living room where he neatly accumulated all of his documents related to his work as a private investigator. This included full rows of alphabetically-ordered cases, stacks and stacks of notes piled on top of each other, mysterious envelopes filled with photos of may-be-adulteres and last, but not least, an acoustic guitar: an essential part of the kit of any self-respecting detective.

“I mean… It’s in the living room. And it isn’t hurting anyone.”

“But that’s my desk—“

“A little help here?” The box was just at the edge.

“Ed, what do you think?”

He stroked his chin. “… I mean… I would also like to place some of my things on that table, ya know Ace?”

The alleged owner of the desk looked to the floor. “Great. Just great. Can’t have even one desk for myself in this damn house…”

“Yeah, nobody move a finger, I can totally do this alone, just keep ignoring me…”

“Really? Because each time I enter your room Mooch’s side’s a bit smaller.” Ed toyed around with the milk carton.

“Oh, that’s because I’m a very low-maintenance monster. You could even say I only need SOME CEREALS to work properly.”

Ed finally took the explicitly implicit hint and effortlessly grabbed the box of cereals, and then inspected it.

“… Fruity Pebbles? Aren’t these for small kids?”

Ace snatched the box from the ogre’s hands. He didn’t hear him coming from the living room, an experience that was normally reserved to Mooch.

“No, they are for dead people. Have you looked at the amounts of sugar?”

“Geez, sorry for not eating Cascadian Farm Organic Raisin Bran with you… Some of us actually have taste.” Mooch re-snatched her cereals to begin the preparation ritual. At least she was tall enough to get the bowl. “But it’s true, though. You always invade my space.”

“Sorry for not allowing you to hoard stashes of thrash, I guess…”

Mooch gasped, exaggerating her reaction. “It’s not thrash! They are my things!”

“Hum… Sorry to burst your bubble, but most of those things aren’t actually yours…” Moray had finished their coffee and joined the rest in the kitchen, which now felt overcrowded despite being quite big.

The squirrel stuck out her tongue. “Finders keepers…”

“Oh, right, truly mature…” Ace sighed. It was his favorite activity after staring at you judgmentally.

“Well, and what? Last time I checked traffic signs don’t have price tags…”

“Someday we’ll wake up with some cops on our door.” Ed shook his head.

“Edward, you’re technically also always borrowing my sword without my permission… So…” Moray found the words “You are one to talk” too strong.

“… My back needs special tools for scratchin’”

“Alright, that’s just gross… I didn’t need to hear that.”

“Haha! Not so uppity now, huh, big guy?” Mooch crossed her arms. She didn’t manage to strike neither seriously nor threateningly.

“Actually, none of you respect my sword at all…”

“What? How???”

“Mooch you just asked me for it to get your cereals like less than one minute ago.”

“… I mean… Comparing that to Ed’s back…”

“What’s wrong now with my ba—???”

“Ed, do me a favor and don’t yell in my ear.”

“I don’t think he yelled too much, Ace.”

“Didn’t know you had got a job as an audio engineer, Mooch. How’s not being unemployed for the first time on the Surface?”

An awkward silence befell the room. Only now they could realize how much everyone had truly started raising their voices till that point.

“…Jerk…” She muttered looking down.

Ed raised his hands in defeat. “I ain’t copin’ with this whole thing. I’m out.”

“Finally someone said it…”

Ed went upstairs making even more noise than usual with his stomping, and Ace followed him suit, though notably quieter. Mooch stared at the kitchen floor and tapped her feet nervously. Her expression was hard to read. Moray had their gaze fixed at the bottom of the coffee cup, as if the used grounds could tell them something important. Thing is, tasseography had nothing to do with this.

“…I need some fresh air.”

Mooch left the house without saying any other word.

The house was now too silent for anyone’s liking, but what were they going to do, talk about it?

Only Moray remained in the kitchen, reflecting.

“What the heck just happened???”

Or attempting to do so, at least.

Hometown’s park was lovely that day. Kids played catch with their parents, dogs smelled each other’s butts, and the elders who at that point could constitute a regional landmark were, just as every day before that one and all the days that would follow, leisurely playing chess.

Under the shadow of a tree, with their bottoms stuck to the grass, four monsters formed a square. The distance between them was bridged by a few furtive glances from time to time.

“I assume you know why I convoked you here?”

The other three nodded at Moray’s question.

“Whatever happened this morning can’t be ignored. We all can’t just sweep it under the carpet and make believe everything’s fine. The first step to solve a problem is to recognize it. Are we all on the same page?”

They were answered with another wave of three nods.

“Good. Then, let’s start from the beginning. Any idea about which were this morning’s problems?”

Mooch lost no time in pointing to Ace. “He started it obsessing over that stupid desk of his.”

Ace scoffed. “Here we go again… If anything it was Ed with the whole milk thing.”

“Ye’re the one drinking it, aren’t ya?”

“I didn’t tell you to point at someone as the reason… I mean, which was the problem, in general? What can we learn from this?”

“Moray, what are you reading on your mobile phone?” Ace questioned.

“Totally not a wikihow article about solving group problems, why?”

Ed plucked a few blades of grass and then threw them away. “This is stupid.”

“That’s not the mentality we need right now! I’m doing my best with no experience on these things, ok? The one who always solved all the quarrels was—…”

“Starlo…” Ed grumbled.

Each of the members of the Four forgot about eye contact.

“… You want me to recognize the problem, Moray? Well, there it goes. All is his fault. He’s the one to blame.”

“You know that isn’t fair, Edward. He made a decision and we have to respect it.”

“He thinks he’s better than us!”

“That’s just not true!”

Mooch adopted a relaxed fetal position. “True enough for him to leave us in the lurch.”

“He only wanted to move out and get some space for himself! Ace, help me out here!”

“…”

“Ace? C’mon?”

“We were a team…”

“We still are! You just talked to him about two days ago!” Moray rubbed their face.

“And it wasn’t the same.”

“Please guys… I only want to make this easier for everyone. If we just calm down for a moment—“

“He kept us together. He always found something to do in that dumb roleplay in the Underground.”

Nostalgia covered everyone’s minds at the same time. It could be different things, it didn’t really matter. Starlo discussing prices with Blackjack, practicing alone in a hill of the Dunes like a fool, marathoning the same westerns one time and another and another, without an ending…

Moray shook their head. “Can we stop talking like he’s dead, please? His house isn’t even that far away from here.”

“It wasn’t so bad, was it?” Mooch ignored Moray. “The Wild East. What we built there… It was pretty neat.”

“… I guess it had its moments.” The ogre monster shifted uncomfortably.

“It’s what got us together in the first place…” Added Ace.

A soccer ball appeared from apparently nowhere and rolled behind Ed. He passed it back without interest to the bunch of kids that appeared to ask for it while blurting a mixture of “sorry mister” and “thank you mister.”

“… Hey, you remember those first days of the Feisty Four? We didn’t know each other that well. I think I managed to steal an entire drawer full of Ed’s bowties the first week.”

Ed chuckled. “So that was ya? It makes sense now that I think ‘bout it. More sense than my first theory, anyhow…”

“Which was your first theory?”

“It involved humans livin’ in the house’s walls… Heheh… Once I even left some food to see if I could get a look at ‘em.”

“And then we discovered humans didn’t really live in walls, they just had bad trigger discipline and were keen on drinking sulphuric acid…” Ace shuffled the cards in his deck distractedly. He always did it when nervous; his hands couldn’t be idle for too long.

“Right… Those were interesting days...”

A quick trip down memory lane couldn’t hurt anybody, right?

”I plead no mitigating circumstances. They deserved to die, as I deserve to die. For I long since killed a person much superior to either of them - myself. I killed that person the day I gave my family’s name to the woman who became my wife. And since I believe the punishment should fit the crime... I suggest you hang me by the neck until I am dead.”

Graphite ran over the paper as the Mighty Sheriff, adopting a completely dignified and glorious posture (with that being hunched in front of the TV), took some important notes on peacekeeping and lawbringing. It was a peculiar sight, to see the difference between North Star: The Sheriff, and Starlo: The Western Nerd. Of course, the Feisty Four would soon become accustomed to his oddities, but at that time, the contrast was stark.

Besides him, an engrossed Mooch, fidgeting with a coin, with her eyes glued to the screen. She had never seen any Surface film before, so questions about the plot were common. Luckily for her, this was clearly not North Star’s first time, and he explained the events with as much understanding as he had.

“So this Scott Chavez’s the bad guy?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“He seems kinda finished, no?”

“It gets complicated later on. Just focus on his daughter.”

Mooch nodded and stared in awe. Maybe now she understood him slightly better.

A loud groan startled the two of them. On the floor, a bunch of cards were lying around, with the deck tipped over by Ed’s tantrum. In front of him, Ace giggled satisfied. To him, Ed was as readable as the cards he had in his own hand.

“It’s not fair. You must be cheatin’.”

“It’s rather simple, actually. You get some long-term strategy, add the reading of the rivals’ body language and mix it up with great amounts of luck. If you’re feeling daring, you can even spice it up with some tricks…” He adjusted his hat and collected the cards one by one. “Tricks always make everything better.”

“Bah… One more match.”

“I wouldn’t keep trying if I were you.”

Moray strummed a few chords on their guitar, sat in the Sheriff’s bed.

“And why that?”

“I already tried with all I knew about cards. He’s just too good. You should just be happy he doesn’t do bets! We would all already be butt-naked, wandering through the Dunes with nothing to fill our stomachs.”

“Be damned, where did you learn to play that way?”

You could barely guess Ace was smiling faintly under the hat. “Back in my home there was not much to do. Started learning a few tricks. Testing my luck with some of the townsfolk…”

“… And…?”

He shrugged and continued picking up the cards. “I guess I’m just a natural.”

Ed wasn’t content with that answer, but he sighed and laid down on the firm floor made of old wooden planks.

Moray played some chord progressions more, making sure to adjust the machine heads after each one in their search for a perfect tuning. They still had much to learn. The music was accompanied by the punctual sound of cards being shuffled, a coin being tossed, paper being written on and the creaking of the floor. The sounds mingled in fascinating combinations, and thus a singular tune was created.

The dim lights were the only thing that illuminated the small house. Outside, the mantle of the night covered the Dunes, and most of its inhabitants opted for the comfort of their beds and the sweet embrace of dreams. But in the Feisty Five’s house, that hour had to wait. In the end, justice never sleeps, or, at least, that was what North Star had told them, though his concept of justice involved watching movies.

“Boss…” Ed yawned a bit, not bothering to cover his mouth.

North Star continued to take notes indiscriminately.

“Boss…?”

“Yes, Ed?” His eyes alternated between the screen and the paper at an alarming speed.

“I still ain’t got a bed.”

“Oh, you can sleep on the couch.”

“No way! The couch is mine! I’m not sleeping on the counter again!” Mooch objected.

“Bah, you’ll end up likin’ it eventually.”

“No, I won’t.”

Yeah, sure, we know how that ended up!

“Alrighty… Then you can… Hum… Don’t worry, I will go to—“ North Star tried to defuse the situation.

The Sheriff’s words got cut by the earsplitting noise of wood breaking and rusted metal nails giving up, as Ed made a hole in the floor with his bare hands.

“Or you can do that??? Whatever floats your boat… Make yourself comfortable.”

When finished displacing the planks, the ogre changed his laying down posture, but apart from that, returned to the incredibly important activity of being bored, only interrupting it to glare across the room at Mooch from time to time.

After some time, the team’s ability to fight sleepiness met its end. North Star concluded that they needed to be fully charged tomorrow to make justice across the Wild East and fight wrongdoers (which wrongdoers exactly, they didn’t know.) But right before everyone went to sleep, Ace decided to breathe some of the Dunes' dusty air and left the house.

The Sheriff paused the movie, promised a grumpy Mooch they would watch it tomorrow, and followed Ace.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

“Why not?” Ace extended his arm with his palm expecting to receive something.

“Uh… It wasn’t… You know?… Forget about it. What’s on your mind?”

“Fine, but just because I’m feeling generous today… (And I don’t even know what a penny is…) You can drop the accent, by the way.”

“You noticed?”

“Please.” He rolled his eyes. “It’s insulting.”

“Okay, okay, you got me. But you still owe me that thought.”

A long breath came from where his mouth would be if you could see it.

“… Why us?”

“What do you mean? We are the best of the best! United to defend this town against the forces of evil!” North Star hit a dramatic pose.

“Ugh. Can’t have a normal conversation with anyone…” Ace leaned his back against the wall of the house and put his hands in his pockets.

“What do you mean then?” He relaxed his pose.

“Look at us. We are a bunch of misfits with nothing in common.”

North Star opened his mouth to say something, but refrained himself. He proceeded to lean his back besides Ace and looked at the town and its empty streets. A confident smile appeared on his face.

“I think we are more than that.”

“Yeah, right, I get it, lawbringers and all that… Whatever.”

“No. Apart from the Feisty Five. I think… No, I know we can be way more than that. I wouldn’t have started this if I wasn’t sure.”

“… Do you?”

“I do. You’ll see, it’ll all be fine.”

Ace stared at the horizon. “We’ll see then.”

Moray smiled. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start. Now they just had to walk that path, and, rest assured, they would do it together.

Chapter Text

Mice are commonly considered a pest in most households around the world independently of cultural context due to their unique capacities to be as much of an annoyance as possible: They eat your food, make holes all around your walls, and, according to an exhaustive investigation I made myself, may also sometimes throw pies at your cat’s face, or smash their tail with a plank, which, last time I checked, wasn’t good for their health.

So, usually the poor mice have it bad when being tasked with the mission of finding a safe home for them and their possible offspring. Studies show that the most common reaction to encountering a wild mouse in your house is either trying to kill it or screaming bloody murder and then calling someone that will surely kill it, and leave a nice stink in your house while at it.

And if you think that’s bad, there is one house where they have it even worse… One so horrible that rats and mice have instinctively learned to evade…

Queen’s mansion in Hometown.

And that’s all thanks to just one single person…

Tasque Manager opened her eyes instantly the second her alarm clock (The phone’s default one) started to sound. This is the moment when, in all movies, one typically yawns and stretches their arms in that one specific way. Thing is, she abhorred the first ones and lacked the second ones, so, in order to increase productivity, that action had to be cut.

Her bed was almost perfect even after her sleep, because she limited her movements to the minimal once inside to streamline the bed-making process.

The maid’s room was so symmetrical you almost couldn’t tell where you were at each part. Two gigantic bookcases dwarfed the room, reaching the ceiling. In those bookcases she found one of her greatest challenges, obsessed with the search for the perfect shelving order, yet to be found. It needed more skill than you may think, because it encompassed an absurd amount of factors to take into account; Is the mixture of shelving techniques considered organized? If so, is there a limit? should there also be an order for the alternation of shelving techniques? (Ex. Alphabetical-Color-Size-Alphabetical…) The answer was always yes, and something could always be improved, though hardly without making something else a tad bit less orderly, thus repeating the never-ending cycle.

Not that there was time for that now. It would have to wait for TM’s daily Five Minutes Break for Leisure.

After a quick (maybe too quick???) visit to the bathroom Tasque Manager changed her clothes, and once she was clad in her official work attire, rushed down the second’s floor hallway to check if everything was in order before the rest of the service (and then eventually Queen) woke up.

Due to her master’s extremely kind patronage of the arts, there wasn’t an inch of the walls that didn’t enjoy the rectangular shape of a painting. She had tried to explain to her several times that the whole Horror Vacui aesthetic was slightly outdated, and that perhaps a less baroque decoration would suit the mansion better, but Queen just answered that her “Art Keeping warehouses” were already at full capacity. From time to time, a new one appeared at their front door, and it was up to TM to find an empty wall across the house’s many corridors.

Her eyes scouted the pictures; An oil-on-canvas equestrian portrait of Queen, dressed in a full-plate armor and armed with a glass of battery acid; a lovely Fête galante of a masquerading Queen, with a grape cluster on her hand; a Futurist rendition of a car driven by —you guessed right, Queen (or at least four blue and black lines that presumably represented her) and an Pop Art-styled poster of Queen, no wait, THREE Queens, all of them waging to the viewer.

Everything seemed fi— Wait a moment!… Cross that, something was wrong. Her maid-senses had activated at the last second.

Tasque Manager stared intensely at the Pop Art painting before pulling a spirit level out of one of her many hidden pockets, because you never know when you could need one of those. She muttered some numbers under her breath while placing the level on the top.

“Not Refined at all…”

After what would have felt like hours to an external observer but was truly half a minute, the frame’s straightness was judged to be enough by her demanding obsessions.

“Perfect!”

She continued into another hallway, and, just to make sure, peeped through the big windows overlooking the gardens. You never know when a crazed jester could be sleeping under some tree. It wouldn’t be the first time Tasque Manager had been forced to escort Jevil out of Queen’s property, and she always detested with all her soul each second she had to pass along such an individual. This explained the sigh of relief she left out after effectively discovering there were no hidden jesters in the gardens this time.

Now, off to one of the hardest parts of her job…

The maiden liked to check all of the mansion’s rooms and that included Queen’s office, or as she called it, her “Throne Room” The furniture did something for the room to deserve that name, despite as pompous as it may sound at first, because instead of a normal and ergonomic office chair, she preferred to use a literal throne, all covered in gold and silver. Had her back not been metallic as well, the throne’s cruel and merciless shape would have caused her a severe case of scoliosis by now.

But what bothered her was not the poor taste of the interior design, but the state in which it was.

Queen didn’t allow anyone from the service to touch her throne room. Anything from it. And for Tasque Manager, that might as well be torture. Because Queen’s office was always extremely chaotic; with important documents thrown around the ground, files crammed into full shelves without any kind of categorization, and shocking amounts of thrash in its various forms.

And even if her desk was full of dry battery acid stains, she said she needed a space for herself. So TM tried to convince her to take the time to clean it herself if she really didn’t want anyone to touch… Whatever that was. But Queen never had time for it, though most of the time her tasks as the CEO of an international tech company were just being chronically online and playing with her son’s toys.

Though this time the room was different. Did she clean it up? Oh, no. She would never. But she was just lying on the desk with an absent expression. And it was soon in the morning. Surely this weird event had a completely rational explanation…

“Miss Queen?”

“My Loyal Tasque Manager. Just Been Searching For You.”

“Weren’t you here?”

“No I Was At My Bed—“

“Ah that makes more sense.”

“Searching For You. From My Bed.”

“Uh-huh…” She nodded complacently.

“Oh My Non-Expendable Pawn What A Horrible Tragedy Has Befallen Us…” Queen shook her arms dramatically

“What happened???”

“I… I…” Queen brought her hand to her forehead and raised her leg. “I Just Discovered Some Persons Out There Still Buy Newspapers. But Like, Paper Newspapers. Paper-Made Newspapers. Made Of Paper. They Put The Paper In Newspapers.”

“And…?”

“Don’t They Know About The Internet???”

“Perhaps they just prefer paper?”

“Over The Sweet Embrace Of A Digital Light? I Think I’m Fainting. I Can’t Breathe!”

“You never breathe, Miss Queen.”

“Oh. Wow. That Information Is True. What Would I Do Without You?” Queen sat herself on the desk with her legs crossed. “I Would Be So Lost…”

Tasque Manager figured out she wanted something from her. Not that she could say no anyway.

“Tasque Manager! The Arrival Of Such Devastating News Has Left Me Utterly Defeated. I Don’t Think I Can Resume My Standard Day Functions With Such A Burden On My Shoulders.”

“Will you be taking the day off then?” Uff. That meant problems for Swatch and his subordinates. When bored, Queen’s antics could manifest in original ways to keep them in a permanent state of work. And it also usually meant having to clean a LOT of melon wastes from the floor overnight for her.

“Now That Is A Fantabulous Idea My Cat-Shaped Inferior. Never Would Have Thought Of That. I Could Use A Day At The Spa… My Joints Are In Dire Need Of Lubrication…”

Well at least that meant no melon scrubbing. TM debated between being relieved for having less work or sad for having less things to clean.

“However.”

Ah, hold on, there was a setback.

“I Am Receiving A Few Important Calls This Morning. Boring Business Calls. Right Now The CEO Is Needed.” Queen swiftly jumped from the desk and got to a distance that TM would consider boundary-breaking. “Listen To Me Tasque Manager This Is Very Important.”

“Yes?…”

“From Now On You Officially Have The Metaphorical CEO Crown.” She crowned the maiden with a good handful of nothing. “You Are The Queen For The Rest Of The Day.”

“Excuse me?”

“That Is: [Correct], Queen. Now I Am Just Q5U4EX7YY2E9N, A Normal Peasant Planning To Spend Prohibitive Amounts Of Money On A Spa. REGAL INC. Is Yours.”

“I… I couldn't possibly accept such a task!” Tasque Manager looked around the filthy office. If it meant spending some time cleaning it up, MAYBE she could accept the task.

“Nonsense. It’s Easy. All I Need You To Do Is Pick Up The Calls Do A Silly Voice And Tell Them To Double Up Everything.”

“It’s the silly voi-“

“Absolutely Mandatory.”

“…May I take some notes on what to d-“

“Oh I Feel It. The Despair. It’s Coming Back! I Must Have The Spa Day Before This Negative Energy Turns Me Into A [Two Dots-Opening Parenthesis]. Farewell, New Queen.”

Queen marched to the doorway elegantly dodging piles of trash on the floor, but turning around one last time before disappearing.

“One Last Thingy. I Know You, Indiana Purrs. You Still Can’t Touch My Throne Room… Wait! I Forgot I Am A Simple Plebeian. Then I Strongly Recommend Not To Touch Anything.”

“Alright…”

“Ok Bye Toodles Ciao.”

And so she left, sprinting but not enough to be considered running, just… walking at an uncanny speed.

But now Tasque Manager found herself sitting in the CEO’s literal throne, inside the CEO’s figurative Throne Room, surrounded by so much disorder she could feel her stomach churning.

“Oh, well.”

She looked around her. Her feet touched something, it was a brand new portable console. Queen had the habit of buying them for Lancer as if he needed more than one, and that resulted in the mansion being riddled with them. One time Tasque Manager found one inside a cistern. How it ended up there I leave it to your interpretation.

Her feet also found something wet in the carpet. Maybe it was the water from the cistern that had befriended the consoles and was now following them around.

“This is fine.”

Her eyes bounced across the room. Papers crumpled beyond recognition. USB flash drives scattered throughout the desk, all of the same model, lacking the most minimal identification. Sticky notes all over the computer’s various screens, filled with either insultingly easy passwords or some of Queen’s business ideas, such as “Air-pods But With A Wire” or “Shaver With A Small Screen And With Games” or whatever the hell “Robot Faces. World Domination?” was supposed to mean. Empty glasses that still held a faint green shine and were probably steadily making the room inhabitable with each drop that seeped down to the floor. And… Holes. Holes dug through the carpet and the parquet, with a small shovel at the side… The strength necessary to pierce the wood would have needed to be of incredible proportions! Or maybe you could just forget it was wood altogether and keep digging, I guess.

It needed cleaning. Organization. Finesse… It needed HER. And she needed IT.

TM tapped her fingers on the desk repeatedly.

“This is all fine…”

The life of a head butler wasn’t easy. You had to excel at labour delegation, task distribution and personnel managing, all while running a tight schedule. You needed to be patient and have nerves of steel, because if something got to you, the whole service could go down. And you had to be the perfect example for your subordinates; elegant and imposing yet warm enough to be close to them, but not too close as to make them think you are the same. Swatch gathered all of these qualities and did it in a way only pros can.

But service can’t depend only on the Head Butler, and the Swatchlings were… Laborious but eccentric. And one of their eccentricities had something to do with… Rodents…

“Where did you see it last time?”

The terrified Swatchling raised an arm strong like a tree trunk and pointed at some point of the kitchen’s checkered floors.

“Hmm…”

It was the third sighting of a mouse since the service had woken up. The Swatchlings could be paranoid sometimes but not that much. He would usually need to notify this accident to the maid with immediate effect… If he could just find her. But she wasn’t around the hallways dusting the paintings as she used to do. There was something fishy about the whole thing... Well, not that he was too enthusiastic about telling her anyway.

His answer came (quite literally) via the kitchen door, as another Swatchling appeared with a small note on his hands. “I found it on the entrance, sir.”

Swatch picked up the note and looked at the one that had just seen the mouse. “You can come down now. We won’t encounter the rodent again.”

“Do you have any guarantee?… See, you don’t. Then I prefer not to take any risk, thank you.”

The Head Butler sighed and read the note. It wasn’t even handwritten, but rather printed. It said “Tasque Manager Is The Final Boss Now.”

He didn’t like the direction this was taking.

“Search for the mouse. We can’t allow Miss Manager to know about this.”

“Understood sir. We are already on it.”

Why the secrecy? Truth is, Tasque Manager’s personality was kind of scary and antagonistic when faced with mice. She got the job swiftly done and deposed the cadaver placing it inside a sanitary thrash bag. But the methods she used to achieve such a result were always unorthodox at best and potentially lethal for the others, and she never stopped till her mission was complete. Swatch had managed to confiscate all of her flamethrowers, but he had substantiated suspicions about the existence of other incendiary or chemical weapons in her room.

Without her owner and caretaker to put order, the Tasques were invading each corner of the house, while also at their own private investigation to find the mouse’s whereabouts. One of the butler’s favorite plants had been thoroughly ransacked due to this, the guilty feline laying over the spilled soil as if they didn’t do anything wrong at all.

He reached Queen’s office and knocked on the door. His manners kept him from entering without a vocal approval from the room’s inhabitant. Inside, some faint noises of objects being rearranged could be heard. He knocked with more strength, this time prompting Tasque Manager to finally open the door with a bewildered expression on her face.

“Swatch! Perfect timing. Find me some bleach, there should be some in the East wing’s washroom…” She went back inside to continue ordering alphabetically the company’s records.

“Miss Manager. It has come to my attention that you are… Making some adjustments to the master’s Throne Room.”

TM lifted her head. “Am I?” She looked at the books in her hands. “I am…”

“An action which would be in direct opposition to the master’s desires, for as far as I know.”

“But I haven’t got to the computer yet! I have seen her desktop, it’s full of outdated documents and memes that she downloaded years ago!”

“Ehem”

“… Fine.”

She left the record books on the desk (perfectly aligned with each other) and walked towards the door, defeated. Or… Not?

“Wait a moment.” She smiled. “I am the boss now!”

“Please, we both know how frivolous Miss Queen can be at decision making sometimes. That means no—“

“That means I can do whatever I want.”

Swatch crossed his arms in disapproval. “I’m sure she had given you clear ins-“

“She just strongly recommended me not to do it.”

“… I don’t like where this is going.”

Tasque Manager picked up the books again and returned to the shelves. She looked at the bird with a smug face.

“So… I think I told you to fetch me some bleach?”

He sighed. “I beg you, Miss Manager. I know you are above this.”

“That’s Lord Manager for you.”

Power was an addiction. Once you had a taste of it, getting hooked up was easy, and rejecting a fix, hard. And when you had spent your whole life receiving orders? Well, giving them for once was refreshing.

Swatch was about to quietly leave the room when a Swatchling entered running.

“Sir! We have located the mo-…”

Tasque Manager stared at the servant.

“Please continue with your sentence.”

The Swatchling looked at Swatch searching for answers in his inscrutable face.

“It’s an order, not a suggestion.” Said TM with a straight face.

“The… T-the… The mouth. On that one statue you told us…”

“What statue?”

“The… Queen statue… I-in… The gard—“

At that moment, a small, grey mouse crawled his way through one of the holes in the floor. Everyone fixed their attention on the rodent. After a few seconds of silence, the wise animal sensed that they would be in great peril if they stayed and returned from where they came from.

Swatch looked at Tasque Manager. Her eyes were wide open.

“Swatch…?”

“Yes, Miss Manager?”

“Forget about the bleach. There should be a flamethrower hidden behind my wall mirror.”

The Swatchling held her helmet with her hand as she sprinted across the hallway. They couldn’t find one of her size. On her other hand, a handwritten letter in the form of a scribbled serviette.

Only a few meters more and she would be safe again…

“Open the doors! I come with news from the Western front!”

“Password?”

“Huh… Order Order Order!”

Behind the imposing barricade primarily made of repurposed expensive furniture, the two guards moved the refrigerator that acted as the door, allowing the messenger to come inside what was known as the Main Command Post. A table equipped with the mansion’s original floor plans presided over the segment of the aisle that had been enclosed by the barricades. Two Swatchlings were loading mousetraps into a wheelbarrow, most certainly obtained from the tools’ shed. Tasque Manager was hunched over the plans, caressing her whip. No one knew where she found the peaked cap she was wearing, but it only made her more formidable.

“Ma’am, the dining room’s outpost has reported three sightings since we last checked. No casualties noted. They do report they are running out of ice cream, though.”

“That’s worrying…”

“I don’t think we have any ice cream in our mini-fridge either, ma’am. There’s not much we can do.”

Tasque Manager didn’t know what to feel: disappointment or pity. “I meant the sightings.”

“… And I definitely already knew that…”

The Swatchling withdrew, stumbling a little bit and barely holding her helmet. Tasque Manager returned to her plans, massaging her temples.

“You must—“

TM jumped out of fright, hissed a bit and almost hit Swatch with a crack of her whip.

“Curses! It’s just you! That’s…” She composed herself, tightened her cap and lowered the weapon. “That’s not very elegant of you, General Swatch.”

“You must stop this nonsense, Miss Manager. Look around you, look how ridiculous all of this is… Does this seem organized to you? Not to mention the military paraphernalia.”

Swatch grabbed his own helmet and threw it into the floor as a sign of protest, but also because its horrible monochrome green destroyed the aesthetic of his attire. But mainly as a conscientious objection!

“That is no way to speak to a direct superior, Private Swatch!”

“I thought I was general some seconds ago.”

“Well, you…. You have been… Uh… Demoted! Are you happy now?”

“You have gone too far. Stop this now.”

“Or what???”

Swatch shrugged. “Nothing, I guess…”

“That’s what I thought. We must find that mouse. I can’t loose my perfect streak.”

She was talking about her mouse-hunting streak. Every time a mouse put one of their filthy little paws on Queen’s property, they were dealt with within a day. Never had she broken that streak ever since the first mouse, when they were still moving into the mansion from the Underground.

Almost like fallen from the sky, a shout was heard.

“The mouse! We got it cornered!”

Tasque Manager ran as fast as she could, leaving the barricade behind her. The guards had strangely conveniently already opened the fridge-door for her.

The voice came from a bunch of Swatchlings, all holding brooms, that gathered around a door.

“It’s right there… Inside the service closet…”

“Say no more. Time to finish this. I just need to whip it into shape.” She tensed her whip and fearlessly entered the dark closet, tripping over some tools in the process.

“There, there, little mouse… I just want to play!…” She scouted all the shelves but found nothing. It was too dark. The light switch was outside the room.

“Turn on the lights and stay sharp. It could come out at any moment.”

The Swatchling didn’t do that.

“Sorry, madam.”

They closed the door and latched it, leaving Tasque Manager in total darkness.

“What the??? This is not funny Swatch. Open the door now.”

“…”

“I know you are there Swatch.”

His voice was hard to hear over the sound of furniture being dragged. “Consider this a coup d’état, Miss Manager.”

“But you can’t do this! That beast is still there!”

“We will manage, trust me.”

The sound of furniture became closer.

“Are you really placing a table to block the door?”

“One is never too sure.”

“Oh, I feel flattered…”

Tasque Manager picked up her peaked cap and looked at it. Although the space inside the closet was scarce, she managed to sit on the floor with her back on a crate. She sighed.

“Are you still there, Swatch?”

“Still here, Miss Manager.”

“… I have really messed up, haven’t I?”

“Indeed.”

She left the cap on the floor, to then pick it up again and examine it even closer.

“This cap is horrible. Doesn’t complement me at all.”

“Indeed.”

“… I’m sorry.”

“Apologies accepted.”

“May I get out now? It smells like strong chemicals here.”

“No.”

“… Fair.”

“You Did Quite The Show TM.”

“It won’t happen again, Miss Queen.”

Back at the Throne Room. Tasque Manager sat in front of Queen. From that perspective, the size of the throne made you feel small. Although she had cleaned and fixed a lot, due to being interrupted by the mouse, the office was still pretty messy.

“I Know It Won’t.”

“… Am I going to get fired?”

Queen laughed in her characteristic way, and then took another sip from her acid glass. Her metallic skin was so polished from the spa day that it hurt to stare directly at it.

“LOL No. If I Did That The Whole House Would Be History Before Five Minutes. And The Mansion Is Quite Expensive.”

“Then what?”

“Oh I Have Realized the Wrongness Of My Actions. If The Utter Chaos Of My Office Is Enough To Drive You Into Becoming A Dictator, I Guess I Should Clean From Time To Time.”

“Really?”

“Well Not Me Of Course. I Have A Maiden For That.”

Tasque Manager smiled. Good times loomed on the horizon. “I would be honored, Miss Queen.”

What? Why are you still here? The episode’s over. Ah, right. The mouse.

The mouse was wise enough to leave before anyone had a chance to get to them, escaping the mansion through the garage. They found the love of their life, married them, formed a family and moved to the United States, where they happily spent the rest of their lives, living in an old woman’s cottage. There, happy ending.

Chapter Text

It was a lazy day inside the Humanities Faculty of the University of Revelstoke. Activity in the faculty’s hallway was minimal. It was a Friday and last day had been a regional holiday, so many of the students took the liberty to abstain from attending the lessons and make a homemade long weekend, filled with useful time to rest, or in most cases, advance some of the work in the form of various assignments that usually piled on the students’ shoulders.

That option wasn’t available for teachers (except for the dean it seemed) and this meant that Sandra was stuck with her lectures. She could also have used some time for herself, but she was prone to fall ill, and there was a limited number of times you could call in sick in a month without being suspicious.

She didn’t even have that much work to do, so she soon found herself staring at the screen of her laptop, incapable of thinking of anything to entertain herself. Yep, it was going to be a loooong day.

And for some reason, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was forgetting something important…

Feeding her cat in the morning? Done. Washing the last day’s dishes? Also done. Organizing her wardrobe? Undone, but she had been procrastinating that one specific chore for so long that to do it would feel wrong at this point.

Did she take her pills? Oh, great, now she was hesitating.

Being an axolotl-like Monster wasn’t easy once you didn’t have a water source around five steps from your house. Sandra couldn’t say she didn’t miss Waterfall a bit each time she had to take one of her skin-moisturizer pills for the day. During Revelstoke’s hot (for Canadian standards) summers she spent around half the time in one of the city’s pools. And with “in” I mean inside the water. Let’s just say sunbathing wasn’t for her.

Hey, if she didn’t remember, it couldn’t possibly be important, right?

Clover sat in the middle of the hallway with their back on the wall, well, on their backpack carefully placed between their back and the wall, because having back pains at their age would be a serious blow to their morale. They scrolled through pages and pages of a laughably bad historic article on their laptop. One advantage of studying for a history degree was that now they could read click-bait trash like that article and dissect how many inaccuracies and biases it had, thus getting filled with a strange notion of pride in their career path.

They were eating a ham sandwich while at it. They had made it themself. Once another thing that filled them with pride; somehow managing their life alone and not dying in the process. Some days ago that ham sandwich would be something bought from any of the many vending machines the university counted with, but no, they actually took their time to grab the ham from the fridge and!… Alrighty, now that I'm writing that aloud, it sounds pretty pathetic…

The thing is, ham sandwich in their hand, waiting for Chara’s lecture to end was, if not any less boring, at least more tasty.

“What are you reading?”

“Holy cow!— Chara?”

There went the ham sandwich, claimed by the cold, bleak floor. Clover rushed to rescue it… Was it three minutes or three seconds? You know, the time a foodstuff can spend on the floor before being invaded by bacteria? Whatever, they already took another bite out of it…

“No, I’m just their evil twin from an alternate timeline, Arach.”

“Well, I know you are lying because an anti-Chara wouldn’t be so sarcastic and also wouldn’t sneak up on me like that.”

Chara raised their arms. “You got me. I’m the real Chara. Would you prefer it to be otherwise?“

“…”

“Clover, no.”

“I mean… My arms would thank it… They wouldn’t be so sore”

“Who says evil Chara wouldn’t punch you too? You’re really punchable.”

“Is that a compliment or—

“Compliment.”

“Thank you then?”

Chara seemed satisfied. “You’re welcome.”

Clover got up from the floor and stowed the laptop in their backpack. “Where to now, pardner?”

“Library as always, C’mon.”

They spent the rest of their route to the faculty’s small library discussing where would an evil Chara go after the lectures with an evil Clover, and tried to figure out what could be considered the direct contrary to a library. The two friends had no rush; they enjoyed the silence that wasn’t usually native to the hallways.

“You know? I’m surprised to see you so relaxed. I thought you had a pretty big exam closing in.”

“Well, this one I had time to study, actually, so I now feel really confident.” Explained Clover.

“You did? Hey, nice multitasking there. I’m impressed.”

“Haha, thank you!… Wait, huh, what multitasking?”

Chara looked at the wall’s clock. “You know. Doing multiple tasks at the same time.

“I know the definition, Chara, what are you talking about?”

“The two tasks. You know. The exam and that one essay on pre-columbian civilizations you told me about last week.”

“The WHAT?”

“The… essay?”

“Ooooh Fuck. Hell no. No, no, no, no no!….” Clover shook their head. It seemed they weren’t the only one that had forgotten something.

“Let me guess, you forgot about it…”

They were now frantically searching for their phone somewhere inside the infinite void of their pockets. “I UTTERLY forgot about it.”

“Well, bad luck. You’ll have to put extra effort on that subject’s exams.“ Chara was the kind of person that had a twisted positivity and thought that at least all bad things made you learn.

“YES!!!”

“Hey, now the scared one is me. What happened?”

Clover updated the university website but nothing changed: It was true, the teacher hadn’t closed the delivery time window for the essays and the system was still accepting them. They lost no time explaining this to Chara.

“But I thought that was automatic. Why isn’t it closed already?”

“Because it only closes if you set up a date and an hour for it to end. Luckily, this one teacher hasn’t got a good memory and is always forgetting about setting it up, so she needs to do it manually each day.”

“Then you still have some time?”

“Ugh!… No I don’t.” Clover was experiencing sudden emotional changes by the moment. “She may be very forgetful but it has a limit. I have it measured. She usually realizes somewhere around these hours in the morning.”

“Well, as I said, bad luck. Now can we—“

“Doable.” Clover stared at their watch.”

“Did you say something?”

“Doable. It’s doable. I can make it.”

They scoffed. “No you can't. You said it yourself. Just accept defeat, Clover.”

“I won’t! I know I can do it!… With some help…”

“Absolutely not.”

“You didn’t even listen to my plan!”

Chara said nothing and just crossed their arms.

“You call that friendship?”

“…”

Clover got out their phone and pretended to dial some numbers. “Is this the friendship police? Yes, we got a bad friend here, officer…”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Clover, grow up! You screwed up, you accept the consequences, that’s all!”

“Ever heard the term give and take? You owe me a favor since I helped you train for that one boxing fight.”

“You didn’t help me train! You kept me company, which I appreciate, but it’s still different.”

“But I was there, wasn’t I?”

“…”

Chara made a grumpy face.

“C’mon…? And we’ll be even…?”

“I’m not dumb, I want to hear the plan first.”

“The plan is I run to the library and create a new category of speedrun and you go find my Pre-Columbian America teacher, named Sandra, and distract her for as many hours as I need.”

“But I don’t have any class with her, I don’t know her, how am I supposed to distract her?”

“You’ll make up something, I know it. Use your magical sociology powers to socialize with her!

“…”

“This is the part when you laugh.”

“Go write that stupid essay, and you better be quick.”

“I’m all over it!” And they ran down the hallway.

Chara sighed. “Why the hell did I do that…?”

Sandra completed her fifth match of Solitaire in a row. And at the same time finished her sixth bottle of water for the day. Hydration was important.

Solitaire wasn’t the only thing she had been doing though. She had also been looking into travel agencies. She always did this out of curiosity and interest, more than any real desire to travel the world. Who needed Malibu anyway? With its pristine beaches, and the pristine water in the pristine beaches, with all that ambient humidity…

Travels weren’t for her. They weren’t since a group of friends and her, wanting to see more of the Underground, had tried to visit Hotland. Bad idea. No more travels since then. Looking was sufficiently fine.

A knock on her door triggered a hidden knee-jerk reaction, prompting her to close the solitaire’s window and adopt a focused pose on her chair, because having the legs on the table apparently wasn’t deemed too professional by some.

“Come in!”

Now, normally, she would expect the visit of one of her estimated colleagues, or in rare occasions, of a student invested enough in her work to come and ask questions about it. The individual in front of her was in the age correspondent to the second group, but if Sandra could take pride in something it was having a good memory for faces and she was sure that person hadn’t put a foot on one of her lectures ever. Nevertheless, everyone committed errors from time to time, so she racked her brain in an attempt to find any sign of a memory with the stranger at all.

On Chara’s end things weren’t much better. Reading Sandra’s non-verbal language told them she was a pretty serious and firm woman, keeping a perfect posture on her chair and now for some reason staring at them with her eyes clenched. They couldn’t guess if she was trying to recognize them from something else or if she was just being plainly rude.

At that moment Chara realized they should probably say something. “… Is this Professor Lee's office?”

Sandra pointed at the nameplate that featured her name with a golden font. She kept a poker face but was probably thinking about how cool and mysterious she had looked doing that.

“Oh… Sorry. I just had some doubts I wanted to check about an essay…”

“What’s the essay about?” Sandra liked curious students. The ones that took the time to talk with teachers.

Bingo. She had taken the bait, and with extra fries.

“Oh, I’m a sociology student. I’m doing it on behavioral patterns and societal traits of various pre-contact cultures in South and Meso America.” Chara smiled. This was almost too easy.

Sandra’s face lit up instantly “Really??? Well those cultures happen to be my specialty! I’ll be more than glad to help!”

“That’s great!” Chara took a seat and took out a small notebook and a pencil. “Mind if I steal you time? I’m sure you must be pretty busy.”

“Nah… I’m good. Don’t worry about that, I think I can make room in my schedule… Did you want to learn about something in particular?”

Oh damn. Chara didn’t get this far in the conversation in their imagination. They thought that just saying “the Mayas” or “the Aztecs” would be too cliché. Fortunately, Flowey was a proficient consumer of historic documentaries, and by extension, some of that information had passed down to them through hours of bonding time together, which consisted of Chara being bored with their mobile phone on the couch and Flowey watching the TV, in this case, you might have guessed, historic documentaries. They could spend hours like that without saying a word except to fight over the control of the couch’s only blanket when it was cold.

“What can you tell me about the… Olmecs?” They said without much confidence.

“Interesting choice! Very little is known about the societal or political structure of Olmec society—“

“Nevermind, let's stick to the Mayans for now…”

“Aaaalright? Yeah, I can do that.”

The axolotl started to talk enthusiastically about Maya customs and hierarchical divisions, progressively relaxing her once stiff posture and interrupting her own speech with interesting yet out of place weird facts about Maya culture. She sported a fully blown smile during the whole process and gesticulated perhaps too much.

Meanwhile, Chara listened attentively and wrote some notes from time to time to keep up the appearances. They didn’t know how much time exactly it would take Clover to finish their essay, but they needed as much as they could, so the plan was to keep her talking with strategically placed questions for as long as it was possible without raising any alarms.

As interesting as it was, Chara’s patience had a limit. For them, human history was always the same. So they ended up begging for Clover to rush in no time. How hard could it be to write that essay anyway?

“I’m screwed…”

“Shhhh!”

Some things in life rarely change. One of those things was the head librarian of Revelstoke University’s library.

Henry Alderdice was there the day Newfoundland was integrated into Canada (by a slight margin), and there was never a day he wouldn’t remind everyone around him. It didn’t matter that he was a newborn baby, because the sole fact that he could credibly say that he was born in the Dominion of Newfoundland and not in Canada was enough pride for him. He refused to hear the national anthem and only accepted the Pink, White and Green as his flag.

To his secessionist antics his colleagues responded with indifference. The old man had to retire at some time, and when not fervently extolling the virtues of his island, he was generally a sweet and kind person, though severe on his job. Nobody knew why he lived all the way across the country if he liked so much Newfoundland, and nobody dared to ask. His presence was just taken for granted by both the teachers and the students.

But right now Clover wanted his presence to be a bit less… presential.

Due to the homemade-long-weekend we talked about in the beginning, the only ones between the gigantic bookshelves were Clover and Alderdice. The first one typed so fast and loudly in their laptop that the second one dedicated himself to glaring at him from across the room with those small and permanently squinting eyes of his.

So long Clover had been filling the Word document with the biggest amount of facts about Mesoamerican civilizations he could gather. But he needed references. And searching for references was time-consuming. And his time was scarce. And it was hard to concentrate when you were being judged by a grumpy librarian who looked like the human version of Yoda.

He wrote something down and then erased it immediately. He had been stuck for… Two minutes now. Way too much time already.

Oh dear, this would be fun.

“So when we talk about Maya social mobility we must understand it was always within the borders of the commoner-elite dichotomy, and we haven’t really understood yet how much political influence you could accumulate if, for example, you proved to be an exceptional warrior…”

At this point it had been approximately fifteen minutes since Chara had stopped taking notes out of pure tiredness. They, just as Sandra, had lost any kind of manners they could probably have sought to follow and were resting their feet on the table and biting their pencil while looking at the ceiling. When they realized what kind of posture they were in, they instantly repositioned, feeling slightly ashamed.

“Oh, shit— I mean, sorry for that.”

Sandra took her time to understand what the problem was.

“Aaah! The feet on the table? Don’t worry about that, if I’m being honest with you, I always do the same. Well! As I were saying—“

Chara interrupted her. They couldn’t care less about Clover’s essay, they just had a thought they couldn’t get out of their head.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course!”

“Why human history?”

“Huh? What?”

Chara left out a deep breath. “Years and years and years of being oppressed under their boots and the first thing you do when you get to the Surface is studying their history? I… I can’t understand that.”

“…”

“The… Passion you talk with… All for a history that doesn’t belong to you, happening in a land stolen from you…”

“I… Heheh… You got me by surprise there… I don’t know what to answer, really. I have never seen it that way… I guess I just liked the topic.”

“… Forget about it. Sorry for bringing this up.”

Sandra’s phone buzzed. It was a friendly reminder that she should have closed the essay’s time window some time ago.

“No! It’s an interesting question!…. Just…” She looked at her phone and cringed. “Wait a minute ok? I got something I need to do.”

Chara panicked. They knew exactly what was that “something”

“I, huh, I have more questions about the Maya.”

“And that’s great, and I’ll be happy to help you the moment I finish this…” She tapped the screen, logging in to the university web. “Just a moment…”

“You… You… There is a spider crawling on your phone! You have one right there!

“Do I? Sandra checked without interest. “No, I don’t, no need to worry…”

“(Well at least I tried.)”

Clover was sooo close to the end. Their mind raced with all the possible words… Just enough to fill the bare word minimum established in the guidelines…

Two hours and a half of non-stop historic action, a race against the clock where they had to invest even the smallest strength they had left to put together a mediocre (at best) university essay.

They finished and saved it, rushing to the tab with the university’s webpage, clicking that hand in button and!…

Successfully handed in.

“YEEES!!! WHOOOHOO!!!”

“SHHHH!!!”

“Finally…”

Clover had been waiting for Chara. Least thing they could do after the favor.

“Please tell me you could hand it in in time.”

“Yep! Everything’s fine! I hit that button seconds before the time was cut.”

“Then are we even now?”

“What do you me— Oh yes. We’re even. For the training thing. Yeah, we’re even now.”

“So how was the experience of writing an essay in two hours?”

“Horrible. I think I need a nap. Also now the librarian hates me…?”

“Nah, he’s just a bit grumpy. He’ll come around.”

“What about you? How was your talk with Professor Sandra?”

“Not that bad actually. We ended up talking about some interesting topics…”

“Like…?”

“The stupidity of humanity.”

“Yeah, conversations with you frequently end up on that topic… —Auch!”

“Deserved.”

“That one’s going to leave a bruise…”

Chapter Text

Martlet wasn’t too good at cooking, but if there was something she enjoyed that was following recipes. Not every recipe, though. Some of them, much to her annoyance, seemed to be purposefully vague and ambiguous in many steps. Like how they said “add salt to your liking” or “Stir till you can feel it has mixed properly”… How was she supposed to know how much salt to add? What if she completely ruins the whole recipe by adding too much salt? And what about stirring till it’s ready? When is it ready? How do I know? WHY DON'T YOU GIVE ME NUMBERS???

Ehem Sorry, I got carried away. To the expert’s eye (or to anyone with minimal culinary training) there are clear reasons why those steps are vague. But for Martlet they just meant more things to worry about. So she always made sure that the recipe she chose was 100% specific, except perhaps for the last “enjoy!” part that was so common on online recipes from all over the world.

And why would it need to be different? For her, cooking was chemistry; There was a manual, and so, you followed it. If she perfectly followed the steps, the recipe would turn out perfectly perfect, at least in theory. And it was that perfectly perfect perfection that encouraged Martlet to perfect her cooking skills to perfection.

This time the selected recipe had been of a lasagna, which was already in the oven. The bluebird was in a squat glazing through the door’s glass, as the layers of cheese, meat and béchamel withstood the heat.

It was too much for her, waaaaay too much, and that’s why she planned to invite Ceroba over. The fox had been kind of gloomy the last few days (more than the average levels of gloom anyway) and there was nothing like enjoying a homemade lasagna with a friend to make you forget your problems.

And in the case Ceroba said no… Well, having to eat it all wasn’t that much of a drama. Or she would maybe have to share with her uncles and cousin, seeing how much of a mess she had made in their kitchen while making the dish.

It was a matter of 45 minutes for it to be ready. Martlet was about to put the time in the kitchen timer, which was chicken-shaped (The Superior Shape) when she remembered she should send the message to Ceroba first or she would growl at her for not warning her with enough time. And she would also probably have to clean a little bit in the kitchen, because it was hard to look at it without cringing. There was flour in places where there should never be flour; in fact, flour was everywhere except inside the flour jar, and she got the feeling that’s where flour should be.

45 minutes. There was no way someone could mess everything up in 45 minutes.

… Yeah, no, we all know where this is going.

There are certain times when all you could ask for was to have a blunt object in your hand, preferably a hammer. Perhaps because of an extremely obnoxious or outright mean person. Or maybe it was a movie or series that had committed the high treason of not developing its plot to your exact likeness. OR MAYBE it was just to truly hammer a nail. But I doubt it.

For example, in this case, Ceroba didn’t want it for a nail. It was a small wooden sign that said “Home, sweet home.” There, polluting her wall. She didn’t even remember when or why she had bought that horrible, bland, boring and generic sign, nor how it had ended on her wall. But now it greeted her each time she came back from work. And she didn’t have a hammer around!

Hey, could be worse. The sign could say “Live, Laugh, Love.”

The fox was absurdly tired, and her bed was absurdly comfortable. Not really, the mattress was pretty bad, but with these things it works like hunger and food. When you were really hungry, any kind of food tasted glorious, and in a similar fashion, when you were really tired, even the worst of the couches was a gift from the heavens.

Therefore, she just plopped down on the bed. And what a skill… Such dexterity… That savoir-faire was from out of this world! Had there been a lumberjack in the room they would have yelled “timbeeeer!” at the sight!

She reflected in silence, looking around her small flat. Overcrowded, claustrophobic, stuffed with a heterogeneous concoction of cheap, new furniture and raw, ancient art pieces inherited from the Ketsukane Estate. She thought it was awful and sad, but what could she do? She had already brought with her almost everything she could muster, either the most valuable and elaborate pieces or the ones with a story behind, the ones with dents; marks from all the games played, from all the silly accidents that took place, scars, yes, but scars of a whole life. And the rest? left to gather dust in the Underground. If something had thriven down there after the Barrier broke, it had to be dust. A grim symbol, if you wanted to see it like that. But this one was just normal house dust… Tons of it, covering the now-abandoned infrastructure of the insides of Mount Ebott.

Ceroba didn’t hate the wooden sign because it was unsavory. She hated it because it was false. That flat wasn’t “Home sweet home.” It was just someplace to be in between the unending shifts at the Café and her visits to Kanako in her… Err, current state.

She could try with a nap. It wasn’t a good idea all in all, at least not a very realistic one. The caffeine in her system would make quick work of any sleep attempt, ruthlessly keeping her eyes open and her mind sharp; the few perks of working as a barista also came with consequences. She had developed a great resistance to the effects of the drug, but a large enough quantity would far surpass any possible defense, and oh, she had taken for sure a large enough quantity.

It was a weird time to take a nap anyway. Still, she didn’t want to keep staring at the ceiling for a second longer.

As by divine intervention, her mobile phone buzzed in her pocket. She checked it without interest. It was Martlet.

“Hey Ceroba.”

“Wanna come over and have a girls’ night?”

“I’m making lasagna. It’s in the oven. Like 45 minutes.”

“My uncles aren’t home. They have dinner at a fancy restayrant.”

“*restayrant.”

“*RESTAURANT.”

“My cousin isn’t here too. Plays something called Magic the Gathering with sum friends at the Games Club. Still don’t know what they are gathering for.”

“Do you happen to know what a mono-blue deck is?

“He told me he would crush the competition with one.”

“I guess it was bc the box was blue?”

“Sorry, going off-topic again.”

“It’ll be fun.”

“Pretty please?”

It seemed Martlet ignored the existence of audios or perhaps just decided to ignore their existence on purpose. She instead was keen on the “gatling gun” tactic; Dozens of small-medium messages typed at alarming rates, dozens or hundreds if it was needed, anything before taking the time to write a long text. Can’t blame her, it’s exactly what I do, too.

Ceroba sighed in the loneliness of her flat. She didn’t feel in the mood for too much kerfuffle, and she wasn’t hungry enough for dinner yet. She was about to reject the offer when she realized that doing so would mean more time staring at the ceiling and thinking about things she didn’t want to think about, so suddenly, the more lasagna-like alternative seemed a lot better. It’s not like she had anything better to do.

“Yeah, why not?”

She threw the phone at the side of the bed. It bounced and almost fell over to the harsh firmness of the floor. Close enough to scare her.

45 Minutes. She would need to move and get ready at some point. She was still in her uniform.

Eventually…

Any minute now…

“You are here!”

Martlet greeted her with a big smile. She had a hammer in her hand for some reason. I can assure you it wasn’t for a person this time.

“Sorry for being late” Ceroba closed the door behind her.

“Are you?” Martlet checked the clock on the wall. “Oh! It doesn’t matter, really!”

“What’s the hammer for?”

“I was cleaning the kitchen and then I went to the bathroom because I was searching for the glass cleaner and then I found a loose drawer in the vanity unit—“

“The what?”

“The thing that’s under the sink! Well, Uncle Grover’s always talking about how he would fix it when he had time, but he never does it! So I thought it was about time someone did it.”

“And you need a hammer for that?”

“A hammer?” Martlet looked at her hand. “Oh, no! A screwdriver does! It’s just that I took the chance to reorganize my tools! I kind of have them scattered across the house? And now I can’t recall where I was going to…? Right, the toolbox’s at my room… Get comfortable on the sofa!”

“Alright. Thank you for inviting me.”

“No problem!”

Martlet left the living room in her search for her toolbox and Ceroba sat down on the sofa, not knowing what to do. Would it be okay to turn on the TV? It felt weird to be there… Since it technically wasn’t Martlet’s house. It wasn’t the first time she had seen it, but it was the first she was staying for a long enough time. It felt kind of invading.

She opted for not doing it. She didn’t even want to watch TV in the first place, she just needed something to distract herself.

tap tap tap , her fingers tapped her leg. She hummed a melody. Where was it from? She couldn’t remember the title of the song, nor how it continued, so the humming was finished soon.

There was a faint smell in the air. It was bad. She couldn’t place where it came from, but it was from inside the house. She was about to go check on it when—

“I’m back!”

At last.

The bluebird wiped her hands with a cloth. “Just stay there! The lasagna should be ready. I will go get it then we can set the table.”

More waiting, great!

Martlet got into the kitchen. In some seconds, the smell grew in size and pestilence, clearly reaching Ceroba now. It smelled like burnt.

As if she needed any more signals, a small screen of black smoke could be seen escaping out of the room. She made amends with the fact that she wouldn’t be having lasagna anytime soon.

Martlet got out coughing a bit and looked at Ceroba with nervousness.

“Hey Ceroba, you aren’t supposed to eat the black part in baked food right?”

“No, you are not.”

“humm… Quick hypothetical question, do you like pizza?”

“That’s not a hypothetical question, though…”

“Oh, right… Let me rephrase that… Would you be disappointed if I told you we were eating pizza?”

“No, I wouldn’t. It’s fine Martlet.”

“Alright!” And she disappeared, entering the black smoke again. She didn’t take too long to be back.

“Hey Ceroba, another hypothetical question, what’s your favorite pizza breed?”

“That still isn’t a hypotheti— Pizza… Breed?”

“Do they have another name?”

“Forget it… I like Margherita.”

Martlet scoffed. “You might as well ask for it without cheese and tomato…”

“Should I call the pizzeria or…?”

“Why? We are having lasagna.”

Ceroba raised a furry eyebrow. “… Are we?”

“Maybe I can scrap something from the molten mass?” Martlet coughed again.

“You shouldn’t be breathing that. Don’t worry, really. Pizza is fine.”

Martlet accepted her defeat and sat alongside the fox. “I’m sorry. I wanted to make this special.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know… I saw you kind of down last time we met.”

“It’s nothing. Just work… It’s horrible, alright? I hate everything about it. Of course I already had to work as a barista at Café Oasis when… When Chujin left. But…” She looked down. “It was different. Almost everyone was nice. Here on the Surface? You wouldn’t believe how stupid and mean clients can be.”

“I… Well, we are here now, right? So we can just have fun! If you allow work to get to you when you are trying to relax, then you will never truly relax. You must work hard, but also rest hard!”

“I guess that makes sense. Where did you get that from?”

Martlet proudly pointed at her head. “It’s all mine. (Most likely from some movie but I can’t remember right now.)”

“Thanks for the advice.”

“No problem. I should order now…”

“Alright.”

The bluebird typed for some seconds on her phone and whistled in surprise.

“What’s the matter?”

“Well, I have good news and bad news.”

“The good ones first?”

“According to this google review from one month ago they make an amazing Margherita.”

“And the bad?”

“… According to this other google review from last day, their kitchen has exploded"

“What???”

Martlet cleared her throat and began to dictate the review, unnecessarily modulating her voice a bit. “1 Star. I was eating my pizza without any worry when suddenly the kitchen literally exploded. I received no physical damage but my pizza got blasted into pieces. I asked for a refund and the owner told me I should call the fire department. Horrible service, very unprofessional; dropped a tray full of drinks when the explosion happened. Still the pizza is fine and the attention to detail in the interiors was astonishing. The open kitchen was beautiful, it’s a shame it no longer exists. Wouldn’t recommend.”

Martlet stopped there for a moment and raised her head to look at Ceroba. “The owner answered the review, but it was taken down by Google. I don’t think it was a very kind response.”

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know. Oh, geez, now this is going even worse, isn’t it?” She crossed her arms.

“We can search for some other place.”

Martlet rubbed her chin. “Or… We can make our own pizza! Maybe I don’t have ALL the ingredients, but I’m sure we can find worthy substitutes!”

Ceroba looked at the kitchen. Most of the smoke had disappeared but you could still see some coming out of it. “ I’m not… I don’t think… Bah, whatever, why not?”

The two of them spent the next hour and a half fusing their scarce cooking knowledge into a barely-enough cooking knowledge, which would have to do seeing how things were. After some polemic decisions were made, like trying to compensate for the lack of flour with less water, the resulting process was as smooth as it could be, although Martlet always felt she was making a mistake each time they deviated from the steps of the random recipe they had found on the internet.

They covered the mass with the bare minimum toppings so that they could call it a rightful pizza, got it into the still hot from the last use oven and waited on the coach, with Ceroba being in charge of time-managing this time.

“Martlet?”

“Yes?”

“How do you do it?”

“Well, I don’t like to brag about it or anything, but, flying? It’s really hard. So, the basics are—“

“Not that… I mean liking your work.”

“Oh!” Martlet blinked a few times. “It just happens naturally?”

“But you work at a parking lot. In a bar gate.”

“And?”

“All you do is raise and lower a bar when people enter the parking!”

“… I don’t get it. Is there something wrong with that?”

“Don’t you, I don’t know, want something more fulfilling than that?”

“Why, it’s almost like my old post at Snowdin! There’s a manual, and I get to take naps when no one comes for a while.”

“But you wanted to be more. Rise through the ranks of the Royal Guard, no?”

Martlet’s face grew serious. “That was a mistake. I didn’t fully understand what the job entitled me to do. Maybe that’s why I like my actual job? It’s like the Royal Guard without the whole… Human killing part.”

An alarm went off on Ceroba’s phone.

“Pizza’s ready.”

The pizza was… Ugly. But maybe it was one of those things that looked awful and yet tasted great!

…

It wasn’t. Its taste accompanied the looks.

Ceroba chewed through the hard crust with difficulty. “How is it… So dry…?”

Martlet did the same. “I told you it needed more water.”

The two of them stayed in silence, with only the sound of their loud crunches to make them company.

“Ceroba?”

“Yes?“

“Hypothetical question… Do you want to grab Chinese?”

Ceroba smiled. She really had to teach her what hypothetical meant. “Yeah. That would be great.”

Chapter Text

Glacier National Park! Before the Monsters came back to the Surface, it was commonly marketed as the home to the Roger Pass National Historic Site. No one had any reasons to care about Mount Ebott that much anyway. 2.465 meters of height, a route considered a relatively easy scramble… Nothing special if you ignore the legends around kids disappearing on it. But after the breaking of the barrier? You can bet there was nothing else to talk about. It makes sense, but I can’t help but feel bad for the Roger Pass…

With its high peaks, active glaciers, extensive cave systems (extensive indeed if we count the Underground) and dense, bear-populated forests, the park was a nice location to go both hiking and camping, and had several examples of infrastructure to support these activities. That’s why, taking advantage of the proximity, many Hometown residents visited it frequently. It was just a matter of taking the car, making camp, spending the night watching stars and burning s’mores and bum, perfect afternoon! Next day’s morning you pack up and that’s all folks…That, of course, if you reserved a camping place with enough earliness. If you didn’t, well, at least the sights from the car’s windows were nice?

But last day, Papyrus and Sans had done everything right, and after a great time doing the aforementioned activities (including Papyrus trying to drag his older brother into a small hike) they had to perform that one part you always hate to think about when setting up the tent: taking it down. All that effort, and look what you’ve got to do…

“i’m done.”

“WHAT?”

Papyrus stopped carefully folding his tent and looked at his brother, or rather, tried to look at his brother over the crumpled small tent he was holding.

“all done.”

“SANS! FOLD THE TENT AND GET IT INTO THE BAG OR IT WONT FIT IN THE TRUNK!”

Sans blinked and one of the poles fell to the ground. “I think it fits fine.”

“IT DOESN’T.”

“it does.”

“IT DOESN’T!”

“it does.”

“IT DOESN’T!!!”

“aight, it doesn’t.”

“THANK YOU—“

“but i’m still not folding it.”

“UGH! AS EXASPERATING AS ALWAYS…” Papyrus shook his head and extended a bonny arm. “HERE, LET ME DO IT.”.

“thanks, paps.”

Papyrus finished folding his and passed to the next one without ceremony.

“YOU KNOW, IT DOESN’T TAKE THAT MUCH EFFORT TO FOLD A TENT! I COULD TEACH YOU!”

“i dunno if i could be too attentive during that class.”

“NOW’S NOT THE TIME FOR PUNS, SANS, I’M SERIOUS. YOU ALWAYS MANAGE TO PUT THE MINIMAL EFFORT INTO EVERYTHING YOU DO!”

“you can do great things with minimal effort.”

“LIKE YOUR TENT???”

“yeah, for example.”

Papyrus sighed and kept folding his brother’s tent.

“YOU’RE LUCKY YOU HAVE SUCH A GREAT BROTHER…”

“yep. i am.”

“COME ALONG NOW, LET’S GET BACK HOME.”

After packing up everything, the two skeletons returned to their car. Papyrus’ car specifically… A red sports model, old but well-maintained, standing out between the greenery. It was the first thing they saved money for after breaching the Barrier, and one of Papyrus’ personal dreams while he lived in Snowdin. Though a bit slow to start and roughed up around the body’s edges, it fulfilled its duty with exemplary diligence almost always. Most of the time… Fine, almost most of the time, if that makes sense…

But that didn’t mean it wasn’t the skeletons' trusty companion, and when push came to shove it never let them down.

And so they were soon on their way to Hometown.

Papyrus gave the wheel a few pats as he put nearly all of his thinking power into an important task. Oh, and the rest of it into driving, I guess.

“HMM… I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE SOMETHING BEGINNING WITH… D!”

“…imma go with dirt."

“YOU ALREADY SAID DIRT LAST TIME! ARE YOU EVEN TRYING???”

“you’re too good, paps, it’s not fair.”

“NYEH HEH HEH! TELL ME SOMETHING I DIDN’T KNOW! THE WORD WAS DEVIL’S CLUB, ALSO KNOWN AS OPLOPANAX HORRIDUS, BY THE WAY.”

“damn, it was on the tip of my tongue.”

The bright vehicle darted through the forest’s road with haste, though always respecting, of course, the speed limit, because the day Papyrus went even a kilometer above the specified number would be the day the world would come to an end. Otherwise, the road was surprisingly empty for a weekend, so perhaps that zone was just less frequented, or perhaps there was a 50 dollars discount in the sky resort, and everyone was skiing instead of playing “I spy” in a car. Pfff, their loss…

“IT’S YOUR TURN!”

“i spy… i spy with my little eye, something beginning with d.”

Papyrus frowned and made a turn right.

“SANS, PLEASE TELL ME IT ISN’T DIRT.”

“see? too good at this. i’ve got not options.”

“… UNBELIEVABLE! I MUST DO EVERYTHING MYSELF… LET’S SEE… I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE SOMETHING STARTING WITH… SMOKE!”

“that’s not how you play the game, bro, you need to say the first letter—“

“NOT THAT! LOOK! THERE’S SMOKE COMING OUT OF THE HOOD!”

There was indeed smoke coming out of the hood, and albeit I’m no professional in the mechanical sciences and the most I know is that tires should be vaguely circular, I understand that it is not a good sign, and shouldn’t happen if the car was functioning correctly.

Papyrus pulled over at a side of the road and stopped the engine. The two of them got out of the vehicle and opened the hood for it to vent. The younger brother looked at the damages crossing his arms. Then again, he would look at the damages better if he knew which were the damages, because it wasn’t as easy as just finding something obviously broken.

“HMMMH…” He stroked his chin.

“what’s the matter?”

“I EXPECTED TO SEE A RED LIGHT OF SOME KIND, OR A BIG SLIT SOMEWHERE. THAT WOULD’VE BEEN EASIER.”

“i don’t know if i want the engine to have a big slit anywhere.”

“TRUE, TRUE… WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

Sans held his phone close to his… To the place where the ears would usually go.

“i’m calling a mechanic. i know a gal. has a tow truck. She’ll help us.”

Papyrus looked at the phone and had an idea.

He snatched it and dropped it to the side, not with enough strength as for it to break into the soft soil covered in underbrush, nor for it to travel a long distance, just… Enough.

Sans stared at his brother confused.

“hey paps, i think my phone fell from your hand.“

Papyrus put his hand on Sans’ shoulders.

“SANS, I’M TEACHING YOU A VITAL LIFE LESSON.”

“can you teach it after i call the mechanic?”

“NO, BECAUSE WE’RE FIXING THE CAR OURSELVES. ENOUGH TAKING THE EASY WAY OUT, PUTTING ON AS LESS EFFORT AS MONSTERLY POSSIBLE!”

“i’m not too sure ‘bout that… maybe we should make the call this time. trust the professionals.”

“NONSENSE! WE CAN BE PROFESSIONALS IF WE WANT TO! COME SEE IT, COME!”

Papyrus pushed Sans near the engine again.

“TELL ME, WHAT’S YOUR PROFESSIONAL OPINION???”

“my opinion…? well… two handsome skeletons like us, looking into a car’s hood? y’know, here they would call it a bonnet. ”

“…”

“c’mon. it was good.”

“FINE, FINE, THIS ONE WASN’T THAT BAD… BUT NOW’S STILL NOT THE TIME! WE MUST FIND WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE CAR.”

“yeah, you do that. i’ll be right ‘round, searching the bushes where you casually dropped my phone, for no reason at all.”

“OH, TELL ME IF YOU FIND ANY MUSHROOMS. I NEED THE FRESHEST OF INGREDIENTS FOR MY COOKING!”

“sure, mushrooms, why not?”

A small songbird, a golden-crowned kinglet, perched on a branch. You could recognize it by the characteristic yellow crown on its head, the black strip through the eyes and the white wing bars. Common across all of North America, a rookie could maybe confuse it with the very similar goldcrest, though anyone with enough experience (or unlimited access to the internet and the willingness to skim through Wikipedia for a fanfic) would be certain than the aforementioned never resided or bred in America, as it did so in Europe and some parts of Asia.

Sans watched it fly away from a distance and just thought it was a really small bird. (Which, to be true, it is.) This would be the closest thing to bird-watching Sans would do in his whole life.

He found his brother hunched over the open hood. Near his feet rested a basic tool box that had been forgotten on some inhospitable corner of the trunk since the car’s purchase, and in his hand was a fat stack of printed paper stapled together.

“BACK AGAIN, SANS? DID YOU FIND ANY MUSHROOMS?”

“i did, actually. but i don’t remember if it’s allowed to forage here, sooo…”

“AWW, ITS A PITY.”

“i could have searched for it but my phone’s lost. in the forest. remember?”

“HMM… RINGS A BELL.”

“so, how’cha doing?”

“GOOD NEWS! I FOUND THE USER’S MANUAL. I AM SLOWLY BUT SURELY REDUCING THE NUMBER OF POSSIBLE EVILS THAT COULD BE AFFECTING OUR ENGINE! SO FAR I HAVE DISCARDED PIRATE RAID…” He looked around him suspiciously and whispered “BUT NOT NINJA AMBUSH. NOT JUST YET.”

“ah, cool. hey, think i could use your phone? to see the mushroom thing.”

“I TRY TO USE THE PHONE AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE WITH THIS KIND OF TRIPS. THE GOAL IS CONNECTING WITH NATURE, YOU KNOW?”

“oh, i connect with nature just fine. it’s just for the… mushrooms.”

Papyrus looked away from the manual, where they were eloquently describing how to fix a resonance cascade on your engine, and looked at his brother.

“YOU DON’T TRUST ME, DO YOU? TO FIX THE CAR.”

“hey now that’s not right. i know you’ll fix it. you’re the coolest guy i know. but calling the mechanic is way easier and would save us lots of time.”

“SEE, THERE IT IS AGAIN! ALWAYS THE EASIEST OPTION! SOMETIMES YOU MUST DO THINGS THE HARD WAY…”

“and why this one?”

“BECAUSE I SAY SO!”

“fine, fine, keep at it all you want, paps. i guess i’ll get back to searching for my phone.”

“YOU WON' T CALL IF I DON’ TELL YOU TO, RIGHT?”

“relax, i don’t play dirty. ”

The golden-crowned kinglet that we saw before watched how Sans returned with a slow pace. This would be the closest thing to skeleton-watching than the kinglet would do in its whole life.

Papyrus was… a bit overwhelmed. Nothing that the Great Papyrus couldn’t tackle, as he had made sure of letting Sans know, but with each minute that passed the choice of calling someone looked more and more popular. There were lots of metallic rectangles, and metallic tubes, and metallic bolts, spheres, triangles, indescribable… Thingies? Some things were hot and Papyrus didn’t know if they were meant to be cold and viceversa. There was also his secret stash of marinara sauce, but he knew it couldn’t be the problem because, have you ever seen marinara sauce hurting anyone? That’s what I thought.

Seated with his back against one of the vehicle’s wheels, his brother rested his legs, alleging that he was tired after searching for his phone. It had been, what, thirty minutes? forty five? Since they had stopped at a side of the road to take a look, and as much as they didn’t have much to do, they still didn’t want to stay carwrecked in the forest for the whole day. No, carwrecked is not a real word, don’t search it up…

“how’cha doing up there bro?”

“I’M… MAKING PROGRESS. SLOW BUT STEADY WINS THE RACE, RIGHT?”

“not gonna lie, if this was a race i think we would be pretty disqualified already.”

“WELL, IT ISN’T A RACE, SO QUIT RUSHING ME!”

“no rush, take your time, i know you got it.”

“I WOULD GO FASTER IF YOU DID SOMETHING! YOU’RE THE ONE SUPPOSED TO BE LEARNING A LESSON!”

“nah thanks, i would just be a burden”

“AND YOU WON’T SEARCH FOR YOUR PHONE ANYMORE? YOU’RE JUST GIVING UP?”

“i tried. it will appear eventually.”

Papyrus sighed. This is what he got for trying.

“LET’S TRY WITH… THIS!”

He manually moved a piston that probably shouldn’t have been moved manually, which caused the engine to make a sound similar to popcorn in the microwave and to expel a bunch of grey smoke. Papyrus pulled his hands away from the noise and expected the worst, but no further eventuality happened.

“all good paps?”

“…YES?”

“don’t sound too convinced.”

“ACCORDING TO THE MANUAL, THIS MIGHT BE BECAUSE OF WORN GASKETS, BAD CYLINDERS, DAMAGED RINGS, POOR CRANKCASE OR THE USAGE OF THE WRONG OIL GRADE…”

“what is a gasket?”

Papyrus shrugged. “WHAT IS A CRANKCASE?”

Sans also shrugged. “what is a cylinder?”

“OH, YOU KNOW WHAT THAT ONE MEANS, DON’T MESS WITH ME. IT’S… A CYLINDRICAL SHAPE!”

“you’re using the defined word for a def—“

“YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS.”

“heheh, maybe.”

Their highly intellectual conversation was interrupted by the sound of an engine, one that was actually running, and running just fine. A dark red jeep appeared on the road, and slowly stopped when reaching Papyrus’ stranded car.

The window was rolled down and the affable, round face of an old lady greeted them from the inside of the jeep. The contrast between the powerful, bulky car and the person driving it was stark to say the least.

“Do you need any help, younglings?”

“yeah—“

“NO, I HAVE EVERYTHING UNDER CONTROL, THANK YOU!”

Sans looked at Papyrus.

“Are you sure about that? I know my way around cars, I could give it a look!”

“NOPE. ALL IS GOOD HERE. NO SMOKE COMING FROM THE… SQUARY-PIPE, THING… NONE AT ALL.”

“Oh, dear. It would’ve been nice to have some action for a while…” The old lady sighed and put on her incredibly stylish sunglasses. “Well, younglings, the nursing home staff gets itchy if I don’t come back at my hour. Duty calls. See you later, alligator!”

And the elder put the pedal to the metal, the tires of her massive car kicking up gravel and soil while turning, till the vehicle disappeared in the distance at speeds surely higher than the allowed and signaled.

“why would you do that? the metal grandma could have helped.”

“THAT’S THE EASY WAY OUT, SANS. ONCE WE FIX THIS BY OURSELVES, WE WILL FEEL GREAT INSIDE!”

“hey, there’s nothing wrong with asking for help.”

“EXCEPT IF IT’S ASKING FOR YOUR HELP?”

“that’s it, you got it.”

“UGH…”

Papyrus returned to his futile attempts, and Sans leaned back further.

…

Ehm?!? What??? No, I wasn’t napping. What’re you talking about? Why would I? It’s not like Papyrus and Sans had been stranded in the middle of the road for one hour, forty minutes, 34 seconds and 12 milliseconds. Fine, It is exactly like that. Maybe I was just sleepy, after all, writing is tiring, so what? Sue me.

Where we left it…. There. Papyrus, one hour and forty minutes yada yada yada into the car’s breakdown. At this point, he was losing his patience. Who wouldn’t? Ah, Sans, I guess. He didn’t really care that much. Still resting, chanting some positive message from time to time, like—

“you go, paps, give’em hell.”

Yeah, like that.

Papyrus huffed. He had tried everything. Everything he could try without many vital mechanical tools, that is. The tool box he had found in the trunk was missing many parts, and the ones that remained were rusty and ineffective. However, it came with an extra; unidentified grey sludge. Was it a gum? Was it the slag from an exhaust pipe? Was it BOTH??? Nobody knew…

He still had something to try out. It involved forcedly moving a spark plug that the manual clearly instructed not to manipulate if not with extreme precaution. Nevertheless, the skeleton had feasible proof that it could be the one thing causing the problem… This proof was; discarding method. It was one of the few things he hadn’t touched. So, time to move plugs it was!

What was that saying about curiosity and a cat again?

Suddenly, sparks flew everywhere, a fact frankly predictable if we take the name, spark plug. Papyrus duked from the dangerous energy outburst, which lasted about three seconds before something inside the engine exploded, bringing silence to the forest again.

“woah— Papyrus, are you ok?” You know things are serious when Sans gets up.

The younger brother looked at the now-really-messed-up engine and sighed loudly, looking down.

“I’M FINE.” he pulled out his mobile phone. “WHAT WAS THE NUMBER OF THAT MECHANIC YOU TALKED ABOUT?”

The rattling of the tow truck being driven through the rocky and uneven road startled Sans from time to time, being shaken with each bump and pothole. At his left side, sharing the two seats in the back of the vehicle with him, was his brother Papyrus, who else could it be?

Papyrus had his arms crossed and a half-disappointed expression on his skull. Now Sans was just trying to find out whether he was disappointed in him or of himself.

“maybe we should have done this from the beginning.”

“MEH.”

“Oh, you should have, definitely, that was one ugly mess back there.”

From the driver’s seat, the mechanic pointed at the back, right at the red vehicle her tow truck was carrying, without taking an eye off the road.

“I DON’T GET IT, LADY MECHANIC, I TRIED EVERYTHING! WHICH WAS THE PROBLEM???”

“Wha—? You didn’t see—? I mean, the radiator was full of marinara sauce. The only surprise is it working fine for as long as it has. Ah, what a beauty of an engine…”

Papyrus looked down. Turns out the marinara sauce did make some things worse. Like the radiator of your car (don’t do that at home.)

Would you look at that, he was the one learning the lesson!

“YES…” He rubbed his face. “PERHAPS THERE WAS A SMALL CERTAINTY IN YOUR WORDS, SANS.”

“see? minimal effort’s the best.”

“BUT NOT ALWAYS! SOME THINGS DESERVE EFFORT… AND A BIT LESS OF MARINARA SAUCE.”

“fine, fine, i’ll put my effort to ten percent next time we end up in this situation.”

“TWENTY FIVE PERCENT!”

“twenty.”

“SEVENTEEN AND A HALF!”

“fifteen and that’s my final offer.”

“DEAL!” They shook hands. “WHAT A BARGAIN! NYEH HEH HEH!”

“i can’t shake off the feeling we have forgotten something…"

“WHATEVER! AT THIS POINT, I JUST WANT TO GET HOME.”

“me too, paps. me too.”

The golden-crowned kinglet descended into the soil in his unending search for nutrients in the shape of worms and various insects. Jumping around with his little bird legs, he stumbled upon something unknown and alien.

A small black rectangle.

The kinglet pecked at it a few times, testing its consistency. The black glass illuminated: Alphys had sent a message. Most surely a reaction to one of the many memes Sans shared with her.

The bird took a few pecks more before losing all interest.

Bah. It wasn’t a worm.

Chapter Text

“I don’t get it.”

Susie rested her feet on the small table in front of the couch as she scratched her head.

“What is it that you don’t get?”

Kris was sprawled out on the other side of the main couch, with their feet mere centimeters from Susie, which meant they sometimes couldn’t resist the temptation to lightly kick her lap from time to time, to remind her of their annoying existence.

“The show’s called Invincible but so long all this guy has done’s getting his ass kicked for like three episodes straight!”

“I mean it’s just a name?”

“But he’s clearly vincible!” She gesticulated towards the screen the same way a football fan would at a mildly polemic arbitral decision.

“It gets better.” An annoying voice answered from the right.

Flowey’s pot was seated on one of the smaller couches. The flower wasn’t really paying attention to the TV, instead checking an old newspaper with boredom in his eyes.

“What, the series?” Asked Susie.

He stared at her intensely before gathering all the sarcasm he could find. (Which wasn’t a few.) “No, my fuckin’ life, the hell do you think gets better?”

“Jeez, ok, ok…”

With Frisk and Asriel playing outside in the park and Toriel attending a meeting in high school, they could watch the series without any fear of scandalizing any mother or traumatizing any Asriel. And Frisk? Probably would have insisted on watching it as a grown-up to then leave when the gore-parts come in. Not everyone liked guts and blood flying all over the screen, even if it was just an animation.

And Susie? She had spontaneously crashed Kris’ house as she styled to do when bored, or when she had to study for something she didn’t want to, or both at the same time, or even just if she wanted to. She called them “Surprise Visits” and after Ralsei told her it was good manners to bring a small gift when visiting, she appeared at Kris’ doorstep with pebbles, or with a cool-looking stick, things that she definitely didn’t find along the way to their home.

Kris poked Susie’s lap again, prompting a retaliatory slap to their feet. They liked having her around. Flowey, not so much. He just disliked having visitors in general.

Even with constant reminders that it would be fine, Ralsei was still more apprehensive of visiting out of his shyness and fear of overstepping boundaries. In the end Kris knew he would come around; Susie was also unsure until she tasted their mother’s cake for the first time, then any kind of fear was lost.

And the lizard wasn’t the only visitor, too.

“Hey, Alphys! Why didn’t you tell me about this show before? It rocks!”

Undyne was sitting at the edge of the third couch of the living room, with a big grin on her face. Turns out you didn’t need too much to get her excited, especially when it came to violence and powerful displays of strength.

“Well, western animation is usually beyond my area of expertise.”

Alphys on the other hand was seated at the dining table, with her pointy head surrounded by a jumble of scattered papers and an enormous paperback book.

Undyne looked at her and sighed. “C’mon, leave that stupid book of rules and have some fun!”

“I-it's important for Toriel!”

She crossed her arms. “Yeah, right, Toriel doesn’t trust us, that’s all…”

“My mom wouldn’t trust anyone to babysit at all, it’s nothing personal.” Said Kris, who wasn’t really paying attention to the screen anymore.

“You are like eighteen—“

“Sixteen.”

“—Sixteen years old! Not that I don’t enjoy spending time with all of you, but… Why?”

“I know, I know. Unnecessary. Especially taking into account that with you here, the chances of the house burning down are actually higher than if we were alone.”

“UGH! Of course that little punk told you about that… When they come back for lunch I’m gonna have a serious talk with them…”

“Talking about that, they must be here soon, right? And Chara too.”

Alphys intervened from the table. “Yes, they should. If not, the lunch schedule could be affected negatively, and the consequences on the general timing could be n-notorious!”

“Nah, they’ll be here, don’t worry.”

A knock was heard on the door. Everyone looked at Kris.

“… See?”

Susie and Flowey scoffed at the same time.

“You lucky bastard—“

“That was just luck…”

They looked at each other and Susie giggled. Flowey appeared more upset about the situation, not finding it funny.

“It’s anyone going to open the door?” Asked Kris from their comfortable position on the couch.

“Shouldn’t they be totin’ their own keys?” It wasn’t like the flower would have to walk to get the door, but he asked anyway.

“They don’t like to carry them around when they go out to run. Says they are just always jingling in their pockets.”

“How do you know it’s Chara?” Susie asked.

“The way they knock.”

“I’ll go get it.” Finally Undyne got up and opened up the door. So entered a sweaty Chara, panting all the way.

“You were out for quite some time.” Kris pocked Susie again. At this point she didn’t even answer.

They took a breather before speaking. “I’m training for a combat next week.”

Undyne patted their back. “You’ll sweep the floor with your rival as always.”

“That’s what I hope for.”

Chara slumped into the couch formerly inhabited by the ex-Royal Guard, but surprisingly she didn’t say anything about it

“Can I get you something cold? Some water? Soda?”

“No, thanks. I’m not thirsty, just hungry. Who’s making lunch?”

“I will!” Undyne rushed to the kitchen, unnecessarily somersaulting over the countertop.

“Uh… A-about that…”

Alhpys searched for a page on the rule book, squinting her eyes. “Here it is. Section 12, subsection C, paragraph 2; It is not allowed for Undyne to engage in any kind of activity related to cuisine under any circumstance.”

“WHAT??? That’s bullshit! that rule is targeting me!”

“Ummm… Actually all Subsection C talks about you…”

She slammed the counter she had somersaulted seconds ago with her fist (how cruel can life be for a countertop) “It was just ONE house! Only once! It isn’t fair…!”

Chara got up with some effort. “Relax, I’ll make something quick, there’s no problem.”

“But we are the ones supposed to take care of you!”

“Well, she definitely didn’t expect you to make lunch.” Intervened Kris.

Undyne made a pouty face and crossed her arms, but otherwise didn’t say anything further.

“I can help if you want. With lunch I mean.” Susie started to get up but was interrupted by Chara.

“Nah, you are a guest—

“ Ehem, Uninvited guest…” Grumbled Flowey.

“—It wouldn’t be ok to ask you to do that.”

Although the human had declined her offer with the best of intentions, this actually just filled Susie with worry. She liked to make herself useful whenever possible when in someone else’s house, to not be a burden.

“Alright…”

Things got slow after that. Chara looked up for recipes online and got everything set up in the kitchen while Undyne stared; Alphys kept searching for a rule that explained what to do in the situation they were, but got tired halfway and distracted herself with her phone, Kris had a pretty deep debate inside their head on why eating moss was socially unacceptable, Susie released some small “hell yeah.” anytime something cool happened in the series and Flowey…

Flowey was bored. And there were few things more dangerous than a bored Flowey. He looked at his surroundings in search of something to appease his tedium, and it didn’t take him long.

“Say, Susie, those are some pretty hefty muscles you’re sportin’, huh?”

Susie didn’t know what to do with that sudden display of friendliness. “… uh… Thanks?”

“You sure are fit as a fiddle… Gee, one can only wonder what you could do with such strength…”

“Oh! One time this guy here dared me to punch a rock. It was awesome…” She pointed at Kris.

“I can vouch for this” Said the guy in question.

“And they gave me candy at the hospital. Like, actual candy. It was free, can you believe it?”

“She was the sole reason they had to replenish their candy jar two times the same day, and it wasn’t a small jar.” There was a hint of pride in Kris’ voice.

“We need to repeat that sometime, dude.”

“Ralsei would kill us if we did.”

“Yeah, that’s true… Well, the thing is, that rock suffered more than me, heheh…”

Flowey faked a smile, just as he had done countless times. “Golly, now that’s something else! Hey, maybe you could even have a chance with our little boxin’ star over here!”

Chara scoffed from the kitchen. “Yeah, sure thing buddy…”

“They’re right, I don’t think I could.”

And everyone returned to their activities… Hold on, there’s a “but”. There’s always a “but.”

“Though you didn’t have to answer so fast.” Susie continued. “I mean, if there’s something I’m good at is punching things.”

“Well, there’s more to boxing than that.”

“Look, I’m just saying you could have said it better, alright?”

“Sorry, but I’m not acting like you would have a chance against me.”

Oh, Flowey was having so much fun.

Susie tensed her stance. “You know what? Flowey is right. I have the muscle and the size on my side. What’s keeping me from winning, some weird postures, fancy hit names and cheap tricks???”

“Wow. You describing it that way only confirms the fact I would win.”

“Now you are just being arrogant. I don’t like arrogant people.” Susie got up and squared up.

“I’m not being arrogant. I’m being objective. Tell her, Undyne.”

Undyne, who had been watching the discussion with a mixture of excitement and concern, knew she couldn’t take a position; that would be bad pedagogy. So she did the most responsible thing and… Allowed the excited part of her to win over the concerned one.

“I think we only have one way to solve this… A BATTLE IN THE GARDEN!!!”

Everyone went silent for a moment.

“Fine by me.”

“Let’s do this.”

“Eeeeh… N-no?” Alphys barely made herself heard. She searched for a specific page and cleared her throat. “Section 4, subsection A, paragraph 4; No kind of fight nor battle will be held under any circumstance, even with an adult’s supervision.”

“NGAAAAAAAHHH!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? I can’t organize fights in her garden? What’s next? I couldn’t even cook from the start… I can’t believe it…”

Her eyes opened a lot. She had thought of something.

“Wait… That’s it! It’s the perfect solution! We will have a COOKDOWN!!!”

“… And that is?” Asked a sheepish Alphys.

“Like a showdown, but with cooking! Let them make their best dish, we’ll rate it and whoever wins asserts their superiority over the cruelly-fouled-by-destiny loser. This way we settle this score and everyone has lunch while at it!”

Now that idea got a lot more positive response for some reason…

“Fine, whatever it is, I don’t mind.” Said a cocky Chara.

“You’re in. You don’t know who you’re cooking against.”

“Sweetie?” At this point Undyne was praying for the book to omit cooking-based duels.

“…There doesn’t seem to be any rule against that…”

“Then it’s done! Prepare yourselves, because this is gonna be LEGENDARY!!!”

There was a knock at the door. Undyne sprinted to open it and Frisk and Asriel peeked into the room to see the strange scene that had formed.

“… Did we miss something?”

“You’ve been awfully quiet, Kris.”

Susie and Chara mentally organized their recipes while they prepared everything they would need. Toriel always made sure that the pantry was in good condition, so they had variety to choose from, and quantity wouldn’t be a problem. Undyne had also divided the kitchen into two parts with tape, so that the contestants could have their own zones, with enough separation between the two.

And for the rest, they chilled in the living room without much to do. Asriel was messing with his videocamera settings on the floor with Frisk on his side making a crown out of paper straws and the leftovers of the tape Undyne was using. Kris and Flowey hadn’t moved an inch. The organizer of the cookdown was frantically walking up and down the room and Alphys checked the last update of Mew Mew Kissy City, the official city builder game of Mew Mew for mobile phones. (She was just one day away from claiming her last weekly reward, and it would give her just enough gems to do absolutely nothing, but feel a bit closer to whatever unrealistic objective she had that needed gems.)

“Didn’t know you worried so much for me, Flowey.” Answered Kris knowing very well this would tease the flower.

“Just curiosity.”

“I was just thinking this is going to be a really tight duel. I’ve tried out Susie’s cooking before. She isn’t bad.”

“Whatever. This wasn’t what I was expectin’, but I guess it is what it is. I’ll just be happy to be able to screw up one of those two marks.”

“And who appointed you as one of the judges?”

“Wait, aren’t we all the judges?” Asked Frisk

“No, actually. Kris is right. We should reduce the number of judges to three, so we don’t have any tie. Don’t worry, you’ll still have lunch! And I’m sure they will give it their all.” She kept going from one point to the other.

“Then who are the judges?”

“One of them it’s me, of course! I know enough about cooking and I don’t have any conflicts of interest.”

“What about PE? Can you imagine how she would stare at you the next day if you chose Chara over her?” Kris scrolled through Amazon Prime without any interest.

“Bah! She would come around eventually. I want to be a judge.”

“Well I want to as well, and I hate everyone equally so maybe I should be the second one?” Proposed Flowey.

“And I’m the third one then.”

Frisk laughed at their sibling’s remark. “Kris, I don’t know if you are the one for the job. You and Susie are always eating… Anything.”

“And that would only make my fine palate even more precise and developed.”

Frisk and Asriel giggled at their occurrence.

“Then we are set, we just have to wait for the contestants to be ready.”

“Don’t know what’s the hold up… It’s just some ingredients, can’t be that hard.” Flowey was eager to exert his newfound authority as judge.

“Y-yeah, and we should finish before Toriel comes back. I don’t think she would like this too much…” Alphys expressed.

“That doesn’t matter right now…. It’s gonna be great! The definitive duel between two souls! The maximum expressions of their determination battling to please the taste of us judges! Heart to heart, with no weapons but your kitchen utensils! Can’t you feel the energy???” Undyne surely took it seriously.

Flowey yawned. “I can feel I’m hungry.”

The voice of Chara filled the house. “We are ready to start over here!”

“Azzy, don’t get that thing so close to my face, I’m focusing right now.”

“I’m makin’ a video to have a record of the fight!”

“That’s fine, just don’t put it over my face, ok?”

“What are you choppin’ those vegetables for?”

“For the garnish. I’m making some classic steaks and they don’t have much variety without a good salad to make them company.”

“Won’t Flowey complain? I’ve never seen him eat anything green before.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure to skip that part when serving the plates. His vote’s an easy one; you just get him some rare meat with loads and loads of some sugary sauce and he’ll be satisfied… Actually, edit that last part out.

“Oh, I have no idea on how to edit a video.”

“Then nevermind. What is he going to do, bite my ankles?

“Hehehe!”

“Do me a favor and pass me the olive oil, will you?”

“I’m sorry, Undyne has told me I can’t intervene.”

“Then at least get out of the way, please.”

“Sorry!”

“…”

“Are you confident of your victory?”

“Pretty much, yes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Susie will do great, just… Not enough to beat me. I’ve been here helping mom since I… Came back. You end up learning a lot.”

“Yeah, I know. I wish I could cook like you do. Last time I tried Kris got an indigestion.”

“You’ll get better, just wait and see.”

“Hey! I already told you I don’t like it when you pat my head that way.”

“Apologies. I couldn’t resist.”

“… You said Susie would do great. How do you think she’s doin’ right now?”

“Let me see… She seems confused. Not that I blame her, in the end, this isn’t her kitchen. But she knows what she’s doing. More or less… Could you step aside? I’ve got to pick something.”

“Sorry again! I’m already takin’ my leave. Thank you!”

“What’s up, buddy? What’s the camera for?”

“I’m filmin’ the cookdown so we have a graphical record.”

“Wow, that’s really cool…”

“Thanks! What are you makin’? It smells nice!”

“It’s curry chicken and rice. At first I decided to go safe, cause who doesn’t like rice or chicken? But then I knew I needed something to add some actual substance to the dish, so I’m making the curry.”

“I see. Can I try it?”

“Sure thing…”

“ASRIEL DON’T INTERVENE IN THE COMPETITION!!!”

“Sorry, Undyne! Well guess I won’t have any curry till you’re done. Do you think you can win?”

“Uh… Not too much? I really don’t know what got into me before. Was I really thinking about getting into a fight with them??? And now I’m cooking, which is cool, I guess. At least I do something useful.”

“I didn’t expect you to know much about cookin’, but it seems like you’re real good!”

“I don’t know if I would use “really good”. It’s just that I always have to make something for myself back at home with what’s around the fridge. That’s good, taught me how to improvise. Pretty useful when in sudden cooking duels like this one, heh.”

“I guess it is. How do you think Chara’s doin’?”

“Well, they are a fuc— Uh… I mean, frigging Terminator in the kitchen. Look how fast they are.”

“Yeah, right? they make it look so easy, to move through the kitchen all lickety-split.”

“A what now?”

“Oh, nevermind!”

“Alright, Time’s up! The two contestants must present their plates!”

They had set the table just some moments ago and everyone (except our “contestants”) were already seated, and, being as late as it was, hungry. The three judges were seated together so they could deliberate with discretion just as they always did in those fancy cooking shows.

Chara was the first one to come with their food.

“Uuuuh. Steaks. Now we’re talkin’”

“Indeed. I’ve made steaks with a simple salad garnish.”

“I can see you skipped the fixin’ on mine. Good choice. Nice attention to detail, too.” Flowey nodded slowly.

“What are we waiting for??? Let’s start judging!”

At Undyne’s order the three judges tasted the meat with a varying degree of satisfaction appearing on their faces. Undyne tried to keep a poker face, Flowey gesticulated all he wanted and Kris was as emotionless as always.

When they had finished trying it (They had to retire Flowey’s plate by strength.) It was Susie’s turn to impress the strict judges.

“I, Uh, I made curry with chicken and rice.”

Once again, the judges gave it a try. That meant it was time for the most awaited moment; the results. Flowey was the first one to speak after a loud burp.

“Alright let’s get this over with: The steak just hit the spot perfectly. It doesn’t get much better than that…”

Chara smiled faintly with their arms behind their back.

“However… I want to piss off Chara, so my vote goes to Susie.”

The smile disappeared from their face. They mumbled something, probably not flattering.

Undyne shook her head. “Nah. I prefer the steak. I just can’t feel your passion, Susie. You were too doubtful! But Chara? Now that’s something else…”

Kris looked at their two colleagues. “Are you kidding? You leave the final choice to me?”

“You were the one who wanted to be judge, pal. Now deal with it.”

They heavily sighed, feeling the stares of their friend and their sibling fixed on them. Susie seemed confident of herself, sticking out her chest, with a smile on her face.

Now, Kris was in a pickle. Whatever they chose they would be angering a person they spent a lot of time with. It seemed like there was no correct option with that basis, so they ended up answering with honesty.

“Sorry, Susie. I like the steak more.”

Susie deflated like a balloon, gave them a murderous look and shook hands with Chara. From there on, lunch went mostly smoothly. Undyne crowned them “Monarch of cooking” with the crown Frisk had made and declared the cookdown finished. Everyone was having their laughs, enjoying both dishes, when suddenly the door opened and Toriel went in with a smile on her face.

“Hello everyone! How have you been? I think I—“

She looked at the kitchen. It looked like they just had Christmas dinner for nineteen in that house. To say it needed a clean up would be an understatement, it needed a purge. That’s what happens when you recreate the hectic timing of a cooking show in your own house; You don’t clean up anything. Not to mention the fact that someone had adorned the walls and the counter with two tape stripes that would surely be hard to remove without damaging anything.

“Toriel, I can explain—“

“… Undyne what happened to my kitchen…?”

“… A…” She blinked nervously. “A cookdown… Ma’am…”

Toriel would usually correct her and say she wasn’t queen of anything anymore, and that her being the director of the school didn’t mean she had to use “madam.” Well, not this time.

“A… Cookdown…?”

“Uh-huh….”

“A cookdown… Of course…”

She sighed and gave up on trying to understand it.

Susie, Kris and Ralsei were walking down one of the many hallways of the school. The lizard had bought a trail mix in one of the vending machines and was, as per usual, eating everything except for the raisins because she “Didn’t ask for any vegetables in her nuts.”

Usually, Kris would eat all the raisins so they opened their palm for the stipulated tithe.

“What? Oh, really? You want some of MY FOOD?” Susie scoffed “Damn, and I thought you preferred YOUR SIBLING’S STEAK!”

“Uhm… Wha—?” Ralsei was deservedly confused.

“Please, Susie! Seriously? It’s been three days!”

“Three days since what?”

“You think I’m forgetting so easily? You dumped me for a STEAK!”

“Which steak???” He didn’t know who to look at while begging for answers.

“I just chose honestly!”

“Hello? Could someone answer me, please?”

“Then face up your consequences, dude!”

“You aren’t even eating those raisins!” Kris tried to take one, but Susie used her height advantage to put it out of their range.

“Yeah, uhm… Ralsei is! Here!” She put the bag in his hands.

“Well, I actually don’t like raisins…?”

“HOW? Literally how??? You’ve the most raisin-eating personality I know!”

“T-thanks???”

“Just give me the raisins, Ralsei…” Kris’ intentions were fifty percent not wanting him to eat something he didn’t like and fifty percent wanting to eat raisins. Perhaps forty-sixty.

“No! Don’t give them to Kris!”

“C’mon, she isn’t eating them, and you also aren’t!”

“Don’t give them to Kris, Ralsei! They don’t deserve them! They had enough with the steak!”

“Could you please stop yelling at me? It’s not very nice…” Asked shyly Ralsei

“Fine…”

“Fine…”

“Now, would you tell me what happened?”

“Oh, nothing, just Kris is a dirty traitor, that’s all…”

Kris sighed. They wouldn’t be having raisins anytime soon.

Chapter Text

It was a slow day in the Flower King.

—No, that’s not right… Allow me to correct myself. The mere act of saying it was a slow day would effectively imply that the lack of customers was an exception and not the norm, but truth is, in the Flower King, every day was a slow day by general standards, and therefore, in a quite paradoxical manner if I may, no day was a slow day. We are talking about quantum superposition applied to flower shops: The shop was having a slow day and was not having a slow day simultaneously.

Schrödinger’s florist. Sounds nice doesn’t it?

And inside the shop, a tall figure (and not a cat) which was, in this case, definitely alive; Asgore Dreemurr, behind the counter, with his elbows pinned to the wood and his hands gently stroking his beard.

A beard which was becoming dry. He had started using a hydrating beard oil but ran out of it and didn’t buy more since, because he always forgot about adding it to the shopping list and most importantly because it was devilishly expensive.

He had been left without songs to hum long ago and found himself bored for the first time in months. He usually always had something to do around the shop, as the quantity of plants he hosted wasn’t easy to take care of. That day he had already done everything in the chore list… All of the list was occupied…

All of it? No! For there’s one area vigorously resisting the invader, a small area surrounded by entrenched roman camps…

Hold on… That’s from another universe… This is not Gaul and we are not in the 50 B.C, but the original idea remains. There were some things that Asgore considered simple and entertaining chores, like watering the flowers following their strict timetables and guides, or even cleaning the shop. And then… Then there was bookkeeping, which was more of a mandatory torture.

He wasn’t very fond of numbers and math. They swirled around his head, dancing, taunting him, all dressed in red. Those books contained things he preferred not to see, and so, their destiny was to be procrastinated till death (or till it reached a point where it was plain necessary to do them.)

So now he was stuck with a counter full of paperwork, and pens, and paperclips, and staplers, and calculators, and he swore that if he saw the words “sign here” again he would go crazy.

Legends say that there was a special group of people, brave warriors with square glasses and checkered waistcoats, who received the name of “bookkeepers”, specializing in defeating mathematical dragons. But these intelligent heroes didn’t work for charity, and if Asgore paid one of them, they would come the next day, tell him he was bankrupt after getting their share of money, and leave, never to be seen till someone needed their helpful yet expensive services once again.

Minutes turned into an hour. His hand hadn’t moved a bit, hadn’t even made the slightest attempt at starting.

Without thinking too much, and maybe moved by the primal, although seen as infantile and innocent, desire to play, the ex-king grabbed one of the paperclips, put it in front of the stapler and tried to talk with his best silly voice.

“Howdy, Ms. Stapler. How are you doin’ this fine day?

“Very well, thank you Mr. Paperclip!”

When the realization about what he was doing came to him he sighed and dropped the paperclip.

What was he doing? There, wasting his time, procrastinating as a kid… No, no… If he was to play pretend with the things over the counter… He had to at least have a plot!

Once upon a time…

Burgerpants couldn’t feel happier at that moment.

He strolled around town with a wide smile on his face. Life hit different when you weren’t dressed in a uniform and forced to say “Have a SPARKULAR day.” and “Sparkle up your day!” or even the new one for the kids menu “You can’t spell Mettaton without fun!” (seriously who had thought that would pass as professional marketing???).

And best of all, he had arranged a date with a, quote; “hot chick” for the next day. And in a fancy restaurant no less, with candles and real plants and everything. So he put some thought into it and determined that the most optimal way to present yourself as a true gentleman was to bring flowers! Thus why he was walking to a flower shop close by, to acquire some classic flowers. There was no way that could possibly fail!

As long as his date wasn’t allergic to any of the flowers, that is.

Oh no. He had forgotten to ask her about a situation like this. But if he did it would be too obvious! “Hey, I was just wondering, are you allergic to any flower? Just curiosity.”… No thanks. He would look like a fool!

He had no option but to take the risk. He couldn’t allow himself to miss that chance. The number of single conventionally attractive females in his surroundings descended at alarming rates with each one that rejected him.

This time would be different, though. They had been talking through a dating app for days, and who couldn’t love that eternally miserable face of his?

Yes, this time would be different, and yet somehow his smile was still miserable.

Once upon a time, in a mysterious land of legend called “Counterland”, there lived a family that was not like the rest. It all started when the king of the land, Blue Pen, married the queen of a neighboring state, Calculator. It was a day of great pride and happiness for all Office Supplies.

It was peace for their time. Under their rule, the Office Supplies prospered and thrived. They built new cities, elaborated marvels of the arts, and developed a strong sense of unity and partnership. No Supply was left behind. The wisdom of their king and the kindness of their queen pushed the people to be better versions of themselves… To strive for the best together.

As for our monarchs, life could treat them better. They had everything they wanted… Except for love. They slowly grew bitter of each other, day by day, the conversations were shorter, not wasting any drop of saliva that could be saved for better uses, day by day, their motives to be together grew scarcer. But it was a royal marriage, and some things just weren’t allowed…

One of their main topics of discussion was the child. Queen Calculator wanted to have an offspring… King Blue Pen didn’t. It was a matter of survival and keeping power. But once again, it was a royal marriage, and tradition was the rule… The people whispered behind the king’s back. The norm dictated that at least an heir was to be born. Rumors started to spread, and Blue Pen was forced to concede in order to keep his influence.

And from that event, Prince Paperclip was born…—

“H-hey?”

“(Holy crap holy crap holy crap why is the fucking king in the flower shop???)”

Burgerpants didn’t know at which part it all went wrong. He saw the flower shop. Saw the name, didn’t think twice of it. Entered it and a moment later he was looking at the King of Monsterkind behind the counter.

Well, Ex-King actually. Did that make it even weirder? Probably yes.

He had never seen King Asgore in person before, only on his small TV back at the Underground, and later on a barely bigger TV in the Surface, not long after the breaking of the Barrier, with all the events appearing on the news. And the king was even bigger than on TV. He had also gained weight? Or was it just the lack of armor?

Burgerpants was sweating. He had entered the shop and Asgore hadn’t noticed him. He seemed to be completely focused on a pile of papers on the counter. The young man stayed there without knowing what to do for one minute straight. Should he just go away? What if he made a noise and the king caught him randomly entering and leaving without even saying anything! That would be weird as fuck! Was he really going to buy flowers from his ki– Ex-King? Were there any other flower shops in Hometown? Should he say something, or leave him to finish his important paperwork?…

He ended up saying “Hey.” To his Ex-King. Who does that?

Asgore snapped back to reality like a spell was broken and looked at his first client of the morning.

“Oh, Howdy! Sorry, I didn’t see you comin’ in. Can I help you with somethin’?”

“Err, No, no, don’t worry, I was just, huh… Looking.”

“Oh… I see. Well, feel free to holler if you need me.”

That face… Yep, there was no doubt, Asgore was disappointed. Almost sad.

“(Why is he making that face??? Did I say something wrong??? Have I broken some unwritten etiquette rule??? Am I losing my head for this???)”

But then the king just went back to his papers.

“(What do I do now? I don’t know shit about flowers. What do I pick? There must be roses somewhere! But there isn’t anything more cliché than roses! But what if I risk it with some random flower and then that one kind is supposed to be given to grieving parents or something like that? She’ll think I know nothing of flowers! Which is true! And if I pick a random one, will HE judge my taste? Is there any taboo in flower shopping? WHY IS THE KING IN A FLOWER SHOP IN THE FIRST PLACE???)”

Oh, was he screwed. All these years suffering as staff and now he was also suffering as a client.

Where were we? Ah, yes. Prince Paperclip, the protagonist of this story.

Prince Paperclip was a ray of sunshine for everyone. They all loved him, including his mother and, after some more time, his father. They really loved him, they just… Didn’t love him together.

His first years in this life were full of innocence and glee. He soon showed more traits akin to his mother’s, having a big heart and caring for everyone. Of his father’s wisdom and intelligence, unluckily, he didn’t inherit so much. He had to have some flaws.

He spent the afternoons playing outside the castle, surrounded by nervous caretakers always behind his steps to keep him from hurting himself running around the gardens. Yet he didn’t need them. He was strong from the very beginning. Never cared about bruises that much.

He didn’t enjoy that toughness emotionally speaking, though, and King Blue Pen took it on himself to “make him stronger.” So, under his father’s stark guidance, the young Paperclip learnt not to cry, not to complain, not to listen to his feelings. “One day you’ll be king, my son. Kings don’t cry.” He told the prince.

This infuriated Queen Calculator, who didn’t approve of the king’s emotional manipulations. So she told the opposite to the prince, told him not to listen to his father, told him to cry as much as he wanted when he stepped on a flower by accident…

The cycle repeated itself, and the queen’s intervention infuriated the king. The weak and fragile truce they had forged to protect their only son faded away. And the young Paperclip, not so young anymore, slowly understood everything that happened around him, and, without anyone to tell him the contrary, concluded that it was his fault.

So he cried. And tried not to cry. But cried anyway.

The time after that seemed to distort itself. It all happened so fast. Moments ago, he was a kid, now, his parents aged rapidly and feared the breaking of the bloodline. So one day he was a kid and the next one he was a man and was about to get married.

With whom, he didn’t really know. He just knew her name: Stapler. The next queen.

Paperclip accepted his fate and continued training for his destiny. It was all he did, pleasing his parents, as hard and contradictory as that could be sometimes.

And then, his father died. Old king Blue Pen reached his end. Queen Calculator didn’t take too long after that. His death affected her in ways one would have never expected judging by their relationship. But with or without love, with or without will, she had shared her life with him, and losing him was losing almost everything.

Alas, now Paperclip was not a young prince, but a young king, with a whole kingdom to manage, and still a long life to live—

“Sorry, could you tell me where the bathroom is?”

Burgerpants needed some time to withdraw and regroup. But a quick gaze around the big shop didn’t tell him where the bathroom was. So he went and asked.

That’s something normal people did right? He wasn’t asking his king, he was asking the florist about the location of the bathroom in his fine establishment. Which was normal.

“It’s just down that corridor, you can’t get lost.”

“Thank you.”

He rushed through that corridor as if his life depended on it and closed the door of the bathroom with a slam. He was safe for the moment.

He inspected his surroundings searching for something that could help him… The window! There was a small window up in the wall and it was open. Burgerpants looked at himself in the mirror to see if he would fit through the window, discovering that indeed, his weak arms and small complexion facilitated the task. This fact pleased him and devastated his self-esteem at the same time. He reminded himself he had to lift some dumbbells and tried to reach the window. But he was soon discouraged when he thought about the poor king seeking him worried sick about the random client that had disappeared in his store.

With the window option discarded, he fixed his attention in another part of the bathroom.

“(Why is there a basin full of water in the middle of the floor???)”

There was, indeed, a big, plastic basin full of water, with some private label soap, a sponge, and what appeared to be anti-dandruff shampoo. Burgerpants guessed it was for cleaning something, though what use could the shampoo have was unknown for him.

Let’s be real, he had nothing. Nothing but a basin I guess. He washed his face on the sink and reflected on his situation.

Ehem, King Paperclip didn’t think he was ready to reign. And he surely wasn’t. Turns out it wasn’t a walk in the park, who would have said. His first months were… Troubled.

And then, his pre-arranged wedding with Stapler came, not long after his mother’s death, and things got considerably better. The new queen had real talent, the talent that was needed. What Paperclip lacked, Stapler complemented perfectly. Soon the people got used to the pair’s ruling mechanics; The king was the voice, the soft, kind and merciful ruler, the popular figurehead. The queen was the brains, the backroom director, and the one that would actually get strict when needed.

But what about their relationship? Well, Paperclip realized he didn’t want to end up like his parents, so he figured out that if the chance of real love was dubious in an arranged marriage, then he might as well try and be her friend, someone she could trust and enjoy living with.

At first, Stapler was cautious with his attempts at socializing. She had received a rigid, exquisite education as a noblewoman, and the king’s manners left a lot to be desired. She found his ways simple and his accent laughable. But at the same time it was… Refreshing. An anomaly in a life full of protocol and diction straight from the academies. As a kid, Stapler had received an education to be the “perfect queen”; Intelligent, discreet, elegant, parsimonious in her words… To her, Paperclip was freedom. The years passed, and he showed her a whole life apart from palace etiquette…

One day, he gifted her a book full of jokes and puns. The first one of many. She still owns it to this day.

Simultaneously, Stapler’s stability and calmness were the psychological anchor that Paperclip needed to overcome his recent loss. During a time where any minor and mundane task had become a mountain to him, she offered another pair of hands, someone to talk to, and even more importantly, a shoulder in which to cry, to freely cry.