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Gaster didn’t think he’d ever get used to it. Never, not in a million years. The smell of smoke and dust. The pain and anguish, the noises as monsters bled, broke, died. The taste of ash in the air, of discharged magic fizzling out. The sight, the sight, the smell, the sounds. Because he often saw nothing. He saw a wall. He saw a closed door. He saw his own fingerbones, the floor. He saw the aftermath. So much was left to his imagination, and his imagination was terrified and cruel.
He saw in his mind’s eye a million things. Flashfire, afterdamp. A blaze so hot as it rolled across the ground, ceiling, walls, it looked nearly fluid. A wave that melted flesh, that tore apart opposing magics. Fire that still managed to be cold, unforgiving. Living fire, thoughtful, personal, intentful, choked with smoke and searching embers. Fire followed shortly by gunfire, knife blades. Fire stifled not by water but by blood that permeated the air with its wrought-iron stench and cloyed the back of Gaster’s mouth and watered his eyes.
The sounds, the smells - he cowered before them. He hid in the farthest corner of the room behind a metal computer desk. Grillby had told him he’d be safe there. Just wait here, wait for me. Hush, it’ll be fine. He’d left Gaster a pistol, just in case he said. Just in case.
Gaster’s hands shook and his whole body flinched with every noise that blasted itself across the room. Gunfire, the half-choked noises of someone meeting their end, the muffled wet of a fist meeting a wound. And that gods-forsaken stench kept him company, growing stronger. Singed hair and boiling blood and smoke, coated in the unnerving tunes that Grillby hummed while he worked, the eerie reminder that the guard was still there, still alive, still fine. It should be a comfort.
It wasn’t.
Just in case he’d said and he’d stalked behind the door. It was a small room, an office. They’d been caught running - when weren’t they - and with bitter blitheness Grillby hastened them to a defensible place to make a stand. A bottleneck. That was important. A bottleneck is the best strategic advantage one or two people can have, Grillby said, like it was a lucky charm once spoken aloud. Repeated every time this sort of thing happened. Bottleneck them. Because the bodyguard had limits, and those limits exerted themselves when enemies crowded in on him in threes, fours and fives. Because once the fire started flying it got hard to see, and even Grillby couldn’t kill what he couldn’t see coming. That’s why he carried guns and knives. Freedom of choice, diversity. It kept his enemies off-balance, it made things more manageable. More interesting. It forced people to get close. Too close. Hot breath on your neck close. Blistering skin and knives so hot they cauterized their own wounds and deadly hands whose most delicate touches could render flesh to bone. Bottleneck. Keep them close. Keep it interesting. One adversary at a time.
This will be interesting. He’d muttered it, darkly sarcastic, that gallows humor that Gaster still didn’t know if he should be taking seriously or not. This will be interesting. This will be fun. It would never be fun, but Grillby laughed anyway, joked anyway, hummed anyway. Because this was his job, his mundane. And it didn’t matter how terrified Gaster was in every single situation. It didn’t matter that the smells made him wretch and the sounds made him flinch. It didn’t matter that the voices that cried out in pain were so incredibly normal to Gaster, that he felt empathy for them when they choked and screamed and any other number of noises Gaster had never fathomed a creature could make. Because this was Grillby’s job, and he did it well.
And then it was quiet. The final slump as a body hit the floor, the final tink of a bullet casing, the final crackle of fizzling magic, the final gasp as something died.
The final measure of a song, hummed under an unnervingly steady breath.
Gaster’s hands still shook around the pistol that was clutched close to his body, fingers curled tightly and uselessly around the hard plastic grip. His breathing was erratic, shallow and soft, his gaze wide on the far wall where he’d found some clean tiles to direct his attention while he listened.
Listened as Grillby walked, steps shuffling through the fresh grit that coated the ground. Gathering thrown knives, reloading spent ammo and pilfering more from the remains of the creatures who’d believed so foolishly they’d cornered him. Not cornered. Bottlenecked. Because they’d had to come through the doorway one-by-one, and Grillby was an easy match for any one of them, or any two. If they’d caught him in the open, if they’d rushed him quickly, if they’d made him reach for his magic and blinded him in his own light and smoke - but no they’d thought he was cornered.
Dangerous, dangerous. Never cornered. Incredibly mundane.
Gaster didn’t move until the elemental finished parsing through the room for items. Didn’t take his eyes off the tiles on the far wall until that flickering flame was stepping intentionally into his line of sight. And so it was rather by accident that Gaster held the most dangerous thing in the room at gunpoint. A dangerous thing that smiled at him warmly, as though his boots weren’t coated in dust and his shirt spattered in blood.
“It’s safe to come out now sir. Let’s get moving, shall we?”