Chapter Text
Alphys sighs heavily as she pushes away from her desk, loose papers falling everywhere with the suddenness of the movement. She looks pretty tired. But hey, that’s what staying up for three days straight will do to a gal.
“I have- good news and bad news,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose under her glasses. You lean back in your chair and net your fingers together behind your skull.
“good news?”
“I figured out what’s wrong! And how to fix it.” She gestures with her claws as she pushes herself to the other side of the lab, her chair wheels squeaking. Her voice muffles behind a wall of papers. Draws open and shut. “It turns out that- that fusing the machine with magic was good in uh, in theory, but they’re incompatible. Physical matter like metal, and then magic, it’s like...friction. They rub against each other, and um, wear each other down, and it all breaks down eventually either way.”
“what about mettaton?” you counter. “i don’t see him comin’ in for new parts every year.”
“No, well, it- it’s different,” she says, and reemerges. The blueprints to the machine are folded up in her hands, and she spreads them out over the desk. “Mettaton acts as a sort of, uh, intermediary between the magic and the physical matter of, of his body. With him there, it all sort of, syncs up?” Her nose scrunches, and you know she’s going to be obsessing over the specifics until she can get her hands on Mettaton’s body herself. “Um. Anyway. That’s the good news.”
“so the bad news?”
“This,” she says, and points at a very specific point on the paper. A brief flare of magic pushes your chair over next to hers.
Welp.
“welp,” you say, and she sighs again.
“Yeah.” Alphys looks wearily down at the specific part her finger is poised over. “Sorry, Sans. But um, you kind of have to go. I can’t really, uh, talk to them, and I think they like you better anyway.”
You scratch your jaw. And here you were hoping to just hang around the lab and do nothing today. But the machine’s been broken for almost a month now, and the King and Queen are getting real antsy, which, hey, you can understand. If there was a soon-to-be active volcano not a couple miles away threatening your entire kingdom and you had no way to measure it, you’d be pretty tetchy too.
Oh wait.
“guess there’s no helping it then,” you say, and stand from your chair. Alphys blinks up at you. Her eyes lag a bit behind each other. Blink, blink. You make a note to have her get some sleep when you get back. “tell g where i am if he surfaces before i’m back, will ya?”
“You’re going now?” she balks. “But it- it’s going to be late soon!”
“the sooner i get this over with the better.” You shrug. “also, i--”
“Know a shortcut,” she finishes for you, rolling her eyes. You grin. “Yeah. How could I forget. Just, um.” Her claws drum on the desk nervously. “Be careful, alright? I have my phone on me if you need anything.”
“psht. i’ll be fine. but i’ll give you a ring if something comes up.”
She nods and rolls up the blueprint. “Good luck!”
“heh. thanks.”
She rolls back to put the prints away. You kick your own chair in the general direction of your desk before turning around towards the door, hands stuffed in your pockets. The late afternoon sun warms your bones the second you step outside. Alphys was right; it is gonna be late soon. But you have a couple hours until dark and about the same amount of time until your contact closes up shop, so it shouldn’t be a problem.
You lift a foot up from the pavement and bring it down on soft grass a good two miles away, earth and buildings and sky blinking in and out around you.
Yup. No problem at all.
You whistle as you walk. You’ve still got maybe half a mile to go from here, but it’s pretty nice out today, and despite the urgency of your reason for being out here in the first place, you’re not exactly in a huge rush to reach your destination. Things tend to get, uh. Iffy, this close to the border. It’s not really a surprise. With how tense things’ve been between the two races, the border of your towns are gonna be pretty tense places to live, too. There’s really no helping it.
But there are some places here where the residences are so smushed up against each other that there might as well be no distinction between Ebott and the human town at all. That part is pretty helpful. Especially if, for example, humans have access to metals and parts that monsters don’t, and might maybe sometimes be willing to sell ‘em for a good price.
Sometimes.
It’d taken a lot of charm to get that part for the machine the first time around.
You pass a few monsters on the way, most of ‘em walking by with the single-minded purpose of someone who has a place they need to be, but they still return your nods. Some of them even smile. It’s a miracle. It’s also getting darker, the shadows cast by the high arches of the buildings making it seem later than it actually is, but. Eh. Might as well just get it over with. You turn onto a sidestreet. You lift your foot up and
Clang!!!
The noise startles you enough that your foot comes down hard on the same ground you brought it up from. You turn to face the source of the noise, wondering--
Oh.
Okay. Alright then.
The human kid stares at you, frozen mid-step, the lid of the trashcan they must’ve kicked just rolling to a stop behind them. Neither of you move for a hot second. They’re small -- smaller than Chara at least, even a little smaller than you -- and their sweater has probably seen better days, but you can’t tell much else about them just yet. Not dusty. That’s important.
“uh,” you say, and they jump at the sound of your voice, and you wonder if they’re gonna bolt. They don’t move still, watching you. “you lost, pal?”
They fidget with their fingers, not saying anything. Maybe they didn’t hear you or somethin’. You’re about to repeat yourself when they nod their head, once, their shoulders slumping.
Hm. “why don’t you walk with me,” you suggest, and the kid blinks up at you. “gettin’ somewhere is less lonely when you’ve got someone with you. even if you, uh, don’t know where you’re goin’ in the first place.” They hesitate. Understandable. You shrug as disarmingly as you’ve ever shrugged before. “i don’t bite. promise.”
That, of all things, seems to reassure them. They nod and walk up closer to you, and you make a point to not look them over before grinning and heading back the way you came. The sound of their footsteps follow.
“i used to get lost all the time,” you say, not looking back at them. “i had the most awful sense of direction, lemme tell you. goin’ in circles, getting stuck at dead ends, tracing the wrong steps. all of it.” You pause for a moment as you make a turn. “whenever i got lost i’d have to call my brother papyrus to come find me and pick me up. he’d get all worried, y’know? but he’d find me every time, and he would make me spaghetti to apologize for taking so long. isn’t he cool?”
They blink when you look back at them, but they nod, a small smile on their face. You look forward again.
“heh. yeah, he’s pretty awesome.” You turn down another street. “anyway, i’m sans. sans the skeleton. i don’t usually come over to this part of town. kind of close to the border and all. plus, it’s pretty far from where i live.” You pause. “come to think of it, i should probably get heading back soon. papyrus gets real cranky when he doesn’t get his bedtime story.”
You don’t say anything else after that, giving them plenty of time to speak. They don’t. Guess they’re the quiet type, then. You’d almost wonder if they were even following you, if not for the sound of their boots crunching on the sidewalk. You’re not gonna break first, though. You’re a pretty patient guy. Especially when you want to be.
After a while, the tug on your jacket you were waiting for comes. “y’need somethin’?” you ask, looking back to them. They don’t say anything still, but they point to a tiny wares shop tucked between a couple of houses. You consider it. “it’s a shop. what about it? you wanna go in?” They shake their head and point at it again more insistently, their lips thinned into an impatient little line. “oh, you sayin’ you’ve seen it before?” you offer, because you’ve been waiting for them to point it out for ages now. They give a short little nod. “huh. now that you mention it, i think you’re right. guess that means we’ve been goin’ in circles then. oops.”
They make a face, which is about the reaction you were expecting. You laugh a little.
“heh, sorry bud. let’s try this way. guess i still get lost sometimes. but even so...” You head off in the other direction, towards the border. Time to get to the point. “it takes a lot to get lost so bad you end up in a completely different town, doesn’t it?”
The sound of their footsteps stop. Their shoulders are hunched up when you look back at them, gaze fixed on the ground. Their fingers flex at their sides.
Got ‘em.
“listen,” you start, turning to face them, “i get it. you get curious, want to see what things are like on the other side, maybe sightsee a bit and find out if things are really all that they say they are. but, uh, bucko. this isn’t exactly the place for that. the people ‘round here are real antsy, you could get hurt if you’re not careful.” You watch them, hands in your pockets. You don’t miss the way they wince just slightly. Makes you wonder if they haven’t already found that out for themselves, but, no dust, so... You sigh. “look, i was heading to the border anyway. why don’t we get you back home and--”
They snap their head up so suddenly that you cut off despite them not saying anything, and they shake their head violently enough that their hair flies everywhere as they take several fast steps back, nearly tripping. You raise your hands as placatingly as you know how.
“woah woah woah, hey, kid, no, it’s okay,” you say, and they stop, to your relief. They still look tense though, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. “it looks like you, uh. really don’t want to go back, huh?” They shake their head again. Not as hard as before, which is probably good; kind of looked like that hurt. You consider your options as they wrap their arms around themself.
You could always take the kid back anyway. It’s not like they could outrun you, what with your shortcuts and all, and it’d be the easiest option for everybody. But if they were determined enough to sneak over the border on their own in the first place, there’s no doubt they’d do it again if they wanted to. You can’t have that. They could get hurt, or they’d hurt someone else, and that’d bring up a whole series of problems no one needs right now.
Sighing again, you take out your phone and send a text to Alphys, letting her know you’re gonna be late. She replies in a matter of seconds asking if everything’s okay, and you nearly exit out before you think better of it and tell her yeah, you’re fine. something came up is all. She replies, ok, but that one you do ignore. The next number you pull up is familiar.
“Toriel speaking,” comes a familiar voice from the other end of the line, and you watch the kid as they shift nervously on their feet.
“hey tori. you guys take in strays, right?”
That gets you another face, and you figure, yeah, you probably deserve it.