Chapter Text
It was a dark and moonless night when the monsters finally emerged from within their mountain prison. This was one of the better, if not the best, set of circumstances possible for beings who had spent millenia trapped with little to no light, now reintroduced to a land where blinding light covered the space every day. Of course, with modern technology as developed as it was, the light and noise pollution present due to the nearby city even at night was still too much for their overly sensitive senses. Quickly returning underground, the monsters designed- or perhaps it should be said that they redesigned- masks to help their eyes adjust to this new source of light in such a way that it would not scare those who lived nearby and mufflers to assist their ears.
“Sir, any thoughts?” I asked my sibling, the nickname a recurring joke in our family.
“On what?” responded Rain.
“Read this, I want to introduce this Sans and Papyrus in a way that shows who they are as characters. Something that’s not just ‘Oh, and here are these two skeletons, ready to live life as normal for a few months, helping with the usual issues- whatever I decide to make those- then go back to the Underground with the looping of time’ but conveys something along those lines. Do you know what I mean?”
“I get you, maybe follow it up with something like this: ‘Two monsters in particular, skeletal siblings you may know well from other tales about other worlds and other universes, were less excited than one might first think about leaving a prison they had been trapped in for thousands of years. This was because both Sans and Papyrus had done this so many times before it would take a library just to hold all their memories of the Surface.’ Then go from there to take the story in whatever direction. Is that good or should I keep going?”
“Nah, I think I’ve got it now. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
With that, I returned to writing my fic. I loved the Undertale fandom and all the various AUs that it had spawned. Undertale, Underswap, Underfell, Swapfell and Fellswap (The difference between an Underswap pair coping with a Fell Underground and a Fell pair simply being swapped made a surprising difference), Horrortale, Dancetale, Dusttale, and so, so many more captured my attention. The Outcodes also occupied me like nothing else had: Ink, Error, Dream, Nightmare, Fresh… again the list could go on forever, what with the constant expansion of the omniverse. But just a few minutes before, I had gained inspiration. If Ink was truly out there, then he was definitely giving some thoughts as to how I could start a story about an AU that had been stuck in my brain.
I also enjoyed the Forgotten Realms stories that were written by R. A. Salvatore. We were reading the stories as a family, and my dad had attached voices to every character, main and side characters alike, as we read the Dark Elf Trilogy, Icewind Dale Trilogy, and some of the Legacy of the Drow. Yes, they were an older series of D&D based books, but they had some of the best characters and development I had seen, so Salvatore’s tales of a dark elf gone rogue captured my mind. At the same time, the settings depicted caught my imagination, especially the Underdark, a labyrinth of caves that stretched under the world’s surface lit only by bioluminescent plants and animals, though only in those rare places where nutrients could be found. This was a place where fantastic horrors hunted with only sound and vibrations in the rock and dark elves built their cities into the rock of the deepest caverns.
I then decided to ask a few questions: What if, instead of being simply trapped underground, the monsters were trapped in the Underdark? And what if they’d had to learn to navigate without using their eyes and make food without light? Knowing how adaptable monsters are due to the story of Horrortale, what would happen? What special abilities might then be found and what changes would be made to the monsters themselves?
This sparked a cascade of concepts, including using magic to see, the Barrier and Hotland being the only locations where light exists Underground, and Frisk and Chara being blind children. Any light in the Underdark would be a big signal to anything nearby, so the monsters would have to find a magical way to seal light in, while still allowing beings to freely travel through. Furthermore, I knew I wanted some modern technology to carry over, so I needed to find a way to blend technology and magic in a world that doesn’t have the same drive for technology that we do. Needless to say, in a few days I pretty much had a fully-fleshed AU built in note form, mainly me just writing down everything I remembered from brainstorming at work.
I wanted my Sans and Papyrus to have a close relationship that wasn’t quite a classic Sans- Papyrus relationship, so I pulled a lot of their characters’ attitudes straight from interactions I’d had with my own sibling. I would describe our relationship as relaxed, friendly, somewhat open, and though each of us may be unique, still pretty similar overall, to the point where people literally ask if we’re twins, so I placed an emphasis on these qualities in both their mentalities and magic. Following that concept, I designed their outfits on ours. I was smaller, and liked my comfy jacket and capris, so the Sans was female and wore capris and a fuzzy zip-up jacket, the kind that has fuzz on the outside as well as the inside. Rain enjoyed a sweater closer in style to Underswap Papyrus, more casual, and they paired that with shorts. Thus, the Papyrus wore that style of clothing and used they/them pronouns. Colors would be muted in a place where bright light would both draw attention and blind the user, so I searched for specific desaturated colors, settling on a particular shade of blue for the Papyrus, and for the Sans I selected a color somewhere between magenta and purple(#a59eb4 and #c691c2, respectively). In short, a hefty majority of who they were was a caricature of who we were, individually and as a pair.
Of course, none of those details mattered quite as much in the portion I was writing, since it was just the beginning to a new story, there was no need to make the first chapter a super heavy lore dump. This was a time to introduce characters, not place a hard focus on their backstories. Maybe a poke of ‘what’s different here?’ This being my first fanfic to write, I was something of a perfectionist, throwing my thoughts onto the page but then editing what I had a sentence later. As a reader, I appreciated when stories used careful word placement to cleanly display the characters and their growth, as well as any foreshadowing the author wished to create, so I wanted to integrate that into my own fanfic.
After a break for dinner, I spent some time relaxing with my family- pets included- before it was time to head to bed. I shared a room with my sibling, which we had done since we were small. More recently, our dogs had been allowed to join us in our room for bed, since it was only recently that they had consistently not used the bathroom in our room. As we read before bed, the shadows in the corners of the room slowly grew, the change so gradual it was unnoticeable for a long while.
“Didn’t the sun set already?” I asked.
“Yeah, we’re in California, not Alaska,” came the reply.
“Then why is it so much darker in here than five minutes ago? Our curtains don’t block that much light, and we live in the city, not the country…” I was starting to get nervous. Looking through the window, it seemed as if all was normal, but if I turned to my right, the other way, I watched as the space became ever so slightly dark, darker, yet darker.
“What’s that?” my sibling asked.
“Nothing good, I think.”
______
In another universe, Sans was looking at a machine. This wasn’t just any machine; it was in the Core. Many stories speak of the machine behind Sans’s house, but very few discuss the one attached to the Core; the one that does the real work. Geothermal energy on the Surface is considered efficient, but having direct access to a lava chamber increases the amount of energy produced exponentially. In this particular universe, the Core produces far more energy than a small civilization of monsters who take full advantage of modern comforts could ever hope to use.
Once, a Royal Scientist, whose name has since been forgotten, thought to break the Barrier with an attack made of more magic than any monster could hope to wield on their own, created with the spare power the Core produced in a year, stored in special, high-capacity batteries. He designed a special machine to turn electricity into magical energy and attached it to the Core. The controls for this machine had to be separated from the machine itself to avoid potentially dangerous blowback and ensure the user’s safety. Instead of tearing a small hole in the Barrier, though, he tore a hole in time and space, erasing all memory of himself and all in the room from the minds of (almost) every monster in the Underground. On top of that, those who were forgotten were thrown adrift in time and space, only capable of appearing in certain locations and when certain variables lined up. Despite his calculations, it went wrong for one simple reason: it required live magic. The scientist input some of his own magic, not seeing how his heightened emotions might have an effect upon his experiment, and instead of the rift tearing through the Barrier, it was torn in the air near Doctor W.D. Gaster.
Sans was looking at the machine that had torn the rift, remembering when he first found it after the accident. He had been at home that day, at his father’s insistence, and as soon as “The Earthquake”, as it came to be known, had occurred, he had rushed out, first to the lab behind their house, then to the space at the Core W.D. had claimed for his experiment, though he didn’t know why at the time. Upon his arrival, though, all he found was empty rooms and, in the machine, the trace of Gaster’s magic the machine had required. It wasn’t expended magic; instead, it seemed ready and malleable, almost as if it wanted to do something. And it did- it joined with Sans’s magic, changing him forever. In that moment, he remembered . He remembered Gaster, and he remembered what Gaster’s experiment entailed. And with this spark of now-impossible magic, he would remember each reset as it came. His brother had no memory of the incident and no knowledge of their father. And that hurt Sans’s Soul.
Looking at the machine, Sans had to wonder: Was it really a good idea to try to use his own magic- and its drop of Gaster- to try to pull his father back home? They were on the Surface; life was going well, and unless someone died, the kid had no reason to use the RESET button. They had even promised that they would avoid it unless someone died. He had no idea where Gaster was, and just throwing a lure into whatever place the machine had connected to to find similar magic to his own could have any number of results…
...Who was he kidding, of course it was. This was about his dad, who had always loved and cared for his children as far as he was able. Focusing on his magic and drawing it out, Sans pulled a sliver of his own magic and inserted it into the machine, in the same container Gaster had used for his own magic. Shortcutting to the lab behind his house, Sans put the first set of commands he had found in his father’s blueprints into the control panel, powering the machine on. The second set accessed whatever unknown place his father had been dragged into. Finally, he activated the third and final set: the ‘lure’, using the magic to draw in something similar, rather than to amplify and transform. This set had never been used- was purely theoretical and he had designed it himself based on what he could understand- and was the biggest unknown in this dangerous experiment.
As he hit ENTER, the world seemed to pause for just… a… moment.
Then, darkness fell over the room, deeper than any that should exist in the universe, followed by the brightest light seen on Earth.
When the light cleared a half-moment later, disappearing as swiftly as it had appeared, seven new skeletons were left behind, jumbled on the floor.