#so i was thinking the answer to that would be papyrus hitting a creative block

[kittybuckets]

just thoughts abt the concept of underswap (textless under the cut ; underswap was created by p0pcornPr1nce)

[argentdandelion]

Review of "Judgement" | Minecraft Undertale Music Video [GENOCIDE] (Song by TryHardNinja)

(To read about the video's good parts, see "Scene Composition, Shots, and Artistic Choices")

Introduction 1. Bad Expressions 2. Death Animation 3. Route Inconsistency 4. "So I've Got a Question For You." 5. Scene Composition, Shots, and Artistic Choices

Introduction

EnchantedMob(TM) are skilled at animation, as their previous Undertale video, "Hard Drive" illustrates. I was expecting "Judgement" to be of similar quality...and it was not.

While "Hard Drive" wasn't absolutely perfect (I have a few nitpicks about seemingly easy-to-fix parts of Mettaton's face) "Judgement" had a lot more flaws. Or, more precisely, it had only a few flaws, but two of those were so severe it severely affected the quality of the video.

Bad Expressions

The greatest flaw in the video is how badly Sans’ mouth was handled. Rather than having a Glalie-like perma-grin, his mouth is structured and operates like the genocidal human’s. As he is apparently singing the song in-universe, his mouth opens and closes almost constantly, covering his two rows of small, inconspicuous teeth as if he had lips. In fact, at several points in the video his teeth aren’t visible at all with an open mouth, making him look toothless.

The second-biggest flaw is Sans's massive and very unfitting eyebrows. If one looks closely at his sprites, not once is Sans shown with eyebrows, not even minimal eyebrows that show up only for specific expressions.

Between the mouth and eyebrows, Sans is too expressive, and in the wrong ways: his mouth and eyebrows seem to “bounce” everywhere. It is clear from the game’s sprites that Sans emotes primarily through his big eyes, with his mouth largely frozen in place. Here, Sans is excessively expressive, at times looking overly friendly. His out-of-character expressiveness also alters the overall feel of the moment he dies. Rather than giving a brief grimace with a shocked/startled look when the fatal blow is dealt, he looks sad/betrayed/panicked.

Between the behavior of the eyebrows and mouth, he’s so “off-model” (even by the standards of Minecraft’s limitations) and out-of-character that he doesn’t look like Sans at all, but someone poorly cosplaying him. Apparently, though EnchantedMob (TM) does very well with highly expressive characters (e.g., Mettaton from “Hard Drive”) they have yet to learn how to handle inexpressive ones. (Sans here, and Five Nights at Freddy’s robots)

I could go on and on about this (previously this section was 622 words) but, in short, it wasn’t actually necessary to give Sans eyebrows and a humanlike mouth if EnchantedMob(TM) wanted him to convey a variety of emotions. There are other methods---methods EnchantedMob(TM) knows---that could have been used by themselves, such as eyelid-based expressions and shrinking Sans’ pupils in shock.1

Death Animation

How EnchantedMob(TM) handles monsters dying in a serious flaw. Lesser Dog, Undyne, and Toriel are shown collapsing to the ground, but not turning to dust. As some monsters (Toriel, Papyrus) speak a few sentences before dying, one could argue monsters don’t have to turn to dust immediately upon the final blow being dealt. Yet the way their bodies linger on screen, with the screen’s shaking drawing attention to it, just emphasizes how they aren’t turning to dust like they should.

It’s not that EnchantedMob(TM) has to show an impressive turning-to-dust animation: TechnicalAntonym depicted monster death correctly by showing it indirectly: for example, Frisk travels through the Ruins with a pile of dust (probably Toriel’s) in the foreground. Context (an Undertale fan’s familiarity, the lyrics, and characters’ facial expressions) convey how bad dust and being covered in dust is.

At one point, the human fatally slashes Sans, and dusty-looking light pours out from him. When first watching it, I had the feeling they were going to use dusty-looking light beams as an easier-to-animate, aesthetically-pleasing workaround to a turning-to-dust animation. Yet, soon after, Sans’ body breaks apart into some kind of explosion of block-atoms, which is a closer approximation of turning to dust. (I didn’t even think they could do something that complex) The explosion of block-atoms could have worked, and would have been a creative and logical way to depict turning to dust. Yet, the block-atoms don’t turn grey/white, on- or off-screen, as expected2 during the extended death sequence.

Though technically impressive, the way the death sequence was handled made it look more like a nuclear cloud or an “exploded” skull than turning to dust. It has the inexplicable details of Sans’ face being perfectly intact, him having a red human SOUL, and some kind of purple energy circling in his disassembling body.

Now, I have heard of speculation (and read fanfics/fan comics) in which Sans and Papyrus are the reanimated skeletons of dead humans, and I have heard of the idea Sans (somehow) has Determination, but outright showing him with a human SOUL here makes no sense to me. A better choice would be to show a white, upside-down monster SOUL. (While only Boss Monster SOULs persist after death, Sans is not technically dead: the sequence is just an expanded-upon “dying” sequence)

Frisk also tries to covers their eyes at 3:32, suggesting Sans is emitting a strong light as he dies, like a bomb. This behavior might have made sense for Mettaton's death (as he is a magic robot), but with Sans, him emitting a strong, explosion-light light as he dies does not make sense.

Route Inconsistency

I'm not against Neutral routes being referenced in a Genocide Route-based video; TechnicalAntonym's video does so, after all. The trouble here is that there are no cues for which timeline is happening on-screen. (TechnicalAntonym's video, in contrast, has cues, most obviously showing Frisk's LV) Featuring Neutral/Pacifist moments and versions of characters in what seems to be a Genocide timeline makes it seem more like the Leaderless/Queen Alphys Neutral path, or a Genocide Route with Neutral route moments patched on. Route inconsistencies include the fact Undyne is apparently dealt a fatal blow with the first hit, but neither melts (Neutral Route) nor reforms into Undyne the Undying (Genocide Route).

"So I've Got A Question For You"

The video takes an interesting direction with the “so I have a question for you”3 part of the song. In TechnicalAntonym's video, Sans asks this as he sneaks up on Frisk in Snowdin Forest. Frisk, who has gone through the Neutral, Pacifist, and Genocide Routes in that order, turns around with tears in their eyes and hugs Sans in response. In that video, it seems Frisk's answer was “yes”, and Frisk has gone Pacifist because of Sans. (either because Frisk realized the error of their ways or just believed Sans was unbeatable)

In EnchantedMob(TM)'s video, Sans asks the question in a really (i.e., excessively) friendly way in the Judgment Hall while walking up to Frisk. His “so I have a question for you” dialogue seems to be replacing his “there's a glimmer of a good person inside you” dialogue as a friendly ploy to make Frisk stop fighting and make "his job a lot easier". (Who knows, Sans might have been genuinely offering to forgive Frisk...port-mortem) While the dialogue switch isn't perfectly accurate to the game, it counts as a Adaptation Distillation matched to the lyrics.

Frisk's response to Sans' question is to slash Sans, and as he dies, seemingly happy music plays. In this take, Frisk's answer to Sans' question seems to be “no”, or at least “I'm not willing to listen”. Frisk then proceeds to the throne room, and as any Undertale fan well-versed in the Genocide Route would know, from that point mercy is (literally) no longer an option and the world will be destroyed.

Frisk's different answer here re-contextualizes the seemingly happy background music at this point, emphasizing the hints of despair or desperation that chiptune conveys so well.

Scene Composition/Shots/Misc. Artistic Choices

The video’s flaws are so severe, it compares poorly to both EnchantedMob(TM)’s “Hard Drive” and TechnicalAntonym’s version of the song. (Which EnchantedMob(TM) hadn’t seen while making the video) Though predominantly bad, like a curate’s egg parts of it are excellent.

While EnchantedMob(TM) poorly depicted Sans' skeleton-ness in his eyebrows and mouth, there are some aspects they pulled off well. The way they designed Sans' hand (seen most obviously at 0:18) looks good, and could very well be the best way to depict a skeletal hand in this style. At 0:39-0:40, Sans' head swings a little faster than his body, but of course a cartoony skeleton could spin his skull around. It's such a minor detail I think most people wouldn't notice it, and it might even be a tiny animators' gaffe with a handy in-universe explanation.

The “fighting Lesser Dog” sequence (1:03 to 1:08) was animated well. It was an unexpected (but fitting) take to make it from the first-person perspective. 1:57-2:10 was also particularly well-animated and shot sequence.

The sequence where the screen is filled with 9999s and slashing curves is a good, abstract way to indicate the human’s rampage, though toothless-Sans bobbing about and over-expressing himself on the right is a big distraction.

The Judgment Hall is literally pixel-perfect: it looks great in CGI like this, and the zoom through the area at 1:55-1:57 was a tiny moment of perfection.

The left-to-right panning at 2:08 where Sans suddenly appears as the camera moves was an excellent portrayal of Sans' off-screen teleportation, though it is ruined by Sans' bad model and gorilla-like hunching.

The animation of Sans' bone bullets (2:26-2:36) looks a little off. I think it's the way they seem to "wiggle" midair; bones don't wiggle. They may have looked better if they manifested in the air, by Sans' shoulders, and then immediately shot after Frisk.

Sans spreading his arms out as he brings up some Gaster Blasters (2:38-2:40) was a bad choice. Sans never raises both hands while expressing magic; he's not a Mewtwo-like (Super Smash Bros depiction) Full Contact Magic user. If Sans' hands were in his pockets as the Gaster Blasters rose up, it would have looked both more menacing and more in-character.

As impressive as the Sans battle sequence is (though the Sans model and its expressions are a massive flaw) I do have a nitpick: Sans’ eye only flashes blue (and yellow; people often forget that) during his “strongest attack” (the first of his attacks) and his second-to-last attack. It's common for people to show Sans' eye as glowing all the time in the Genocide battle, or even just when angry or vengeful. I understand why it's overused: it's cool, and people might be too busy trying to survive his volley of attacks to pay attention to his expressions while he's attacking.

The technical aspects (animation, cinematography, color composition) of the ending shot from 3:43-3:52 was very good, even if Frisk's sashay-like walk was a little silly and more feminine than I'd like. (Though, who knows, perhaps all attempts to animate humans’ walk as realistically as possible in Minecraft style end up looking like a sashay)

Sans never manifests eyebrows, and his pupils do shrink in shock when finally hit in the Genocide Route battle. [Source] ↩︎

Battle scenes are always in black-and-white, except for rare color accents. Thus, monster dust seemingly being white may just be a product of the black-and-white style. No piles of monster dust are shown in the overworld, and its color isn’t mentioned. It’s just fan convention to depict it as grey/white, and it could easily be the same color as the monster it came from. That being said, I’d prefer depictions of grey/white monster dust to colorful monster dust. ↩︎

The in-game dialogue is actually "so, i've got a question for ya." Most of the time Sans uses "you", not "ya", so it's possible the songwriter mis-remembered it based on Sans' typical word choice. This is not a flaw: I just wanted to point it out for thoroughness's sake.  ↩︎

[monofazz]

Genocide together: Chapter 7- Crystal Stars and Mostly Silent Flowers

Creator of Killer!Sans- @rahafwabas​

Whelp, this took it’s time!

Oh well.

The first thing that hit the two was the smell. The ashy odour in the air almost overwhelmed their senses. Undyne looked around the area and saw piles of grey strewn across the cavern and heard nothing but silence from the Echo Flowers.

The guard beside her whined softly at the sight, ears flattened down.

“The human… it was here.” Amourus mumbled, “Where is it? I can’t…”

Undyne didn’t respond and stepped irregularly to avoid the dust piles and Amourus followed, wide-eyed, “Do you think it’s in here somewhere? Did we go past it without knowing?”

His Captain had seemed to have lost the ability to speak, so he too kept his mouth shut. The eerie silence was suffocating.

If counted, there were five piles of former monsters in this particular cavern, some of them had items left behind in the mortal world by their dead owners. Amourus tried to avoid looking at them too long as he could feel a slow, crawling sensation on his neck every time he failed to resist the awful sight.

He tried to keep his mind of the fallen monsters, using another one of his senses to keep him distracted. He closed his eyes for a moment, head dipped down, praying for something distracting to keep his mind from the horrific carnage. Then… he heard, ever so faint, the sound of crying. His head snapped up.

“Captain?” said Amourus, “I think I hear someone, from over there!”

“What? From where?” Undyne inquired, but before she got her answer, Amourus bolts out of the Wishing Room and out of sight, “Hey, wait!”

Undyne quickly caught up to Amourus, who was standing at the edge of the waterfall that holds the endless rain of stones and boulders. Undyne herself had thrown on countless rocks and boulders at the top of the waterfall.

Though she was supposed to devise a puzzle in the room, she hated puzzles as she does making them. Unlike Papyrus. So instead of crazy puzzles like the ones that littered the Underground, she delved deep into her creative, unique, Undyne-like imagination and created something that’ll end up making passersby have to constantly avoid the falling rocks from above.

Amourus, avoiding the brook, looked at his captain and poked his nose towards the three-split waterfall, specifically at the middle, that holds a secret room behind the wall of water.

“I think it’s behind there,” said Amourus.

Undyne quickly made her way to the waterfall (Amourus still staying on dry-land) and passed through the water-wall and looked around until she spotted a young monster curled up in a corner.

The monster noticed her immediately and he gasped, “Undyne!” mewled the monster and almost slammed into the Fish Warrior, sobbing and recklessly sucking in breaths with no air.

“Undyne! Undyne! Undyne, Undyne, Undyne I, I, I, I’m sc-scared, he, I, it—” he blubbered, “… nearly…g-got me…nearly found m-me…”

Shaking, Monster Kid could say no more, only holler out, expressing fear in sobs and desperate breaths, unable to return to the painless and even breathing that didn’t bring stitches to his sides or threatens to clog his brain towards unconsciousness.

Undyne went on one knee and tried to soothe the tear and snot filled child, “I’m here. You’re safe, ok? Were gonna keep you safe, and away from the human. I’m not going to let it get near you, or anyone. It won’t harm anyone else, I promise you.”

Monster Kid stared at her, wide-eyed, in complete horror, as if he knew something she didn’t, “B-but, there was… there was… he… he was here… helping…”

Undyne didn’t know what he was talking about.

She gently lead him out, using her spears to bounce the rocks safely away from them as they got back to the hyena monster.

Amourus stared at the child, suddenly feeling the need to completely protect the little one from the danger of the situation at hand. Monster Kid whimpered and wept, only giving him a few glances before staring out to the distance, shaking.

Amourus gave him a gentle look before setting his eyes on Undyne, “If I may, Captain…” Undyne turned her attention at him, finally taking her eyes off the young monster. He spoke quickly.

“Can I bring this little one ahead to Hotlands and to Evacuation? It’ll be safer for him if he had someone going with him. The human could be anywhere in the area… and if the human finds him…” Amourus faltered for a second before hurrying on, “He needs someone to take care for him, until he gets to safety.”

Undyne nodded, “I was just going to ask you that,” and she smiled, “I can continue the search on my own. You stay with the kid until it’s completely safe.”

Amourus blinked for a moment, almost faltering, but he gave an obedient nod, “Good luck, Captain, in finding the human.”

He looked down, tenderly giving Monster Kid some reassuring words, although they seemed to have little effect. Monster Kid gradually moved with him into the next room.

Undyne watched them leave, knowing that both of them would be safe.

But was she wrong.

Chara slammed straight into a wall.

They cried out in surprise and flailed, becoming unbalanced and fell flat on their back, with a particularly solid blow to their head. Flipping onto their side, they grasped their head, whining in pain.

“Owwwwwwwwww! What the heck?!” Chara griped.

Sans, who didn’t make a move, just wondered for a moment why did Chara just crash into a very obvious wall. Chara struggled to get to their feet.

“Where did the door go?!” Chara demanded at the wall.

“Uh.” Was all Sans could say. How hard did they hit their head?

Chara snarled and grasped their knife. They started to bash the wall, chipping the compacted earth and loose rock, “Is this some kind of trick? Where did it go?”

Sans quickly took a hold of Chara’s soul in blue magic and dragged them away from the wall.

“Woah, there. I thought we were supposed to be attacking monsters, not walls,” Sans said jokingly.

Chara whipped their head to face him, eyes bulging, “Sans! You saw a door, didn’t you? It was just there, it just disappeared!”

“There’s no door, kid,” Sans said bluntly. But the more he thought about it, the more he felt a crawl of doubt, the more he felt like there was something missing in his mind, a certain event he cannot place. Additionally, he was pretty sure that they were at the entrance of the tunnel instead at its dead end…

Chara was starting to struggle in his magical grip and dragging themselves back to the wall. He decided to try and remember later. So, without any more wasted effort, he zeroed the gravity on their soul and started to drag them out of the tunnel and out in the more open cave, with them swiping at the air in a feeble attempt to get back to mutilating the wall.

They soon slumped in defeat and Sans put them down. They still grumbled about the “stupid, vanishing door”.

Soon Chara became quiet and the silence reverberated between the two, the only sounds being the gurgle of water and their corresponding footsteps. Chara gave a slightly interested glance at Sans’ telescope set up in the corner before admiring the spectacularly glittering wall on the opposite side, and Chara felt glad to be lucky enough to see it at this angle.

The water went back to a luminous blue, almost lighting up the black dirt path. The Echo Flowers in the area were ominously silent, Sans noticed, but really all the Echoes they had passed said nothing at all.

Until one of them produced a loud scream. Sans jumped away from the flower and Chara yelped in surprise. It wasn’t until Sans heard a second voice did he realise it wasn’t coming from the flower at all, but from behind him.

“Kid! Calm down, it’s all right!”

“No! No, no, no! It’s not! IT’S THEM!”

Sans stared at the hyena in surprise before laying eyes on the panicking monster…

Chara swerved to face the two, face twisted in surprise and eyes flashing red. Monster Kid screamed again, “NO! NO, NO!”

Amourus stared at Chara in wide-eyed shock. They could feel the air of wrong all over them. Their stance, those hostile eyes and… their soul. It beat and pulsed inside of them of a deep, pure red. A soul right side up. A soul of a—

He came to a horrid realisation and pulled Sans away from them. He set a shield between the two monsters and him and Chara.

“Human!” Amourus barked and immediately went to attack with his magic driven, white-hot, double-edged sword.

Sans hardly had time to register what was happening before the opponents clashed, Amourus in a flurry of panic as he tried to block each and every one of the human’s attacks, looking for weak points in which he can thrust his weapon into their warm, small body and make them bleed and wither and die.

On the other hand, Chara was already battle ready and shrieked with laughter as they attacked and dodged and attacked, almost like a lethal dance in which they were opponents against death, death promised from each other.

Sans couldn’t intervene, the shield made it so. This was Chara’s battle, and Sans knew they’ll be fine on their own. He just had to take care of that kid, surely he, who saw him kill Grillby will soon tell Undyne what was happening—

Monster Kid was already running in the opposite direction, where Sans and Chara came, going to find Undyne.

Sans quickly went into action, teleporting far ahead of Monster Kid. He can’t let him get to Undyne, if he does, it’ll be Game Over. Sans and Chara weren’t strong enough to take down Undyne, not even close. He had to take care of this.

Monster Kid skidded into an abrupt stop in front of the skeleton.

“Going somewhere, kid?” Sans growled, eyes dark.

Monster Kid backed away from the skeleton, shaking uncontrollably and tears filling his eyes. “Don’t kill me,” he whispered.

Sans’s soul pulsed brightly and burst out a surge of magic, showing no mercy as the ground, which where Monster Kid was standing, glowed a glaring blue. Monster Kid scrambled backwards to avoid the bone that shot out from the phosphorescing earth. Hastily getting to his feet he scrambled away from the danger, but coming to a halt in front of a wall of bones that raised up to the celling.

Monster Kid’s soul flickered with panic, pulsing rapidly and sensing his impending death. Unable to run away. Unable to call for help. This poor monster, this young Monster Kid, cornered in an inevitable fate, completely helpless. Monster Kid felt tears coming to his eyes again, he was going to die… he closed his eyes.

Then, the monster rationalised. Would Undyne do what he’s doing? Stand in place and accept death? Without so much as a fight? This is not what Undyne would do. Undyne would fight. And fight and fight and fight until the enemy was defeated. She will not accept death; she will not accept evil concurring over good. She will not.

Monster Kid had always idolised the Great Fish Warrior, her strength, her determination to protect the Underground from Bad Guys, her passion of her people, and defending all their hopes and dreams that they poured their souls into the glittering crystals that were their stars and lighting up the Underground with their beautiful, adoring souls that dreamed of a Future Above.

An Enemy stands between everyone’s hopes and dreams, an Enemy he can call a Monster no more. This thing, this living, breathing thing in a shell of a Monster that had once loved and hoped. Wearing a blue jacket, black shorts, slipper-sneakers and a crazed smile. Ready to kill at any given moment.

Monster Kid will not go down without a fight. This is what Undyne would do.

Taking a step forward, shaky but determined, he spoke, “I-I-I’m not going to let you hurt any-anyone else! And, and, and… you’re… you… you and that human… are going to destroy them all! I-I can’t… let you do that! Be-because, I have to save Monsterkind! I-I have to… I know I can’t, but I have to try! So, so… I dare you to fight me! I- I-”

Monster Kid’s soul plummeted to a cold blue and a sudden chill invaded them, fear piercing him again. The Enemy seems amused. Gravity, relentless upon him, forced Monster Kid to his knees. He cried out, surprised and fell hard on his face as he toppled, the unforgiving ground greeting him with a burning cold smack.

Then the pull of the Earth lightened as they rose from the ground and flipped, liberated from the sudden, absurd density of gravity, they stilled in space, everything slowed, twinkles of the glinting stones above him seem to take forever to light and fade. Tilting their head down to the ground, they saw the Enemy, left eye glowing like a powerful soul, vapour of excess magic flittering out of the eye-socket like untamed flames. The Enemy’s soul was a shape, ever so slightly, warbling out of the normal upended heart that was a Monster soul, so slightly.

Inclining his head further, they saw what waited below him. A snapped, jagged blue bone. Then everything went into fast-forward. The gravel blue and amethyst and rose quartz jewels blurred and mixed and formed into pointless shapes and colours. It mudded and dumbed his mind until a sharp pain in his chest snapped him back to his last few seconds in reality.

Without another processed thought, Monster Kid was no more and his dust spread across the floor.

The now useless bone attacks quickly dissipated into magical vapour and Sans doubled in on himself, trying to get his breath back. His soul thumped and burned inside of him, a new wave of unexpected pain had nearly taken him off his feet.

Gripping his chest and creasing his shirt, his grasp tight and squeezing, slipping the fabric through the spaces of his ribs, he tried to nullify the pain, the pain. His soul throbbed and flickered, but it soon exhausted itself and behaved. The pain was gone.

Sans had gained a new Level of Violence.

Sans blinked and looked up, hand still wrapped in shirt and curled around bone. And he looked at the pile of dust on the ground. The kid was dead. He wasn’t going to come back, tell Undyne or anything. Sans and Chara are in no danger of a vengeful Undyne when they’re not strong enough. Not for a while now. Obstacle gone.

Still smiling, he stepped over the former monster, leaving the dust undisturbed.

Chara, meanwhile, was enjoying their fight. Amourus tried and tried but kept getting hit, slashed, hurt. In his defence, he did take a good chunk of the human’s HP, but not much. He was slowing down; tiring, shield slowly dissolving and his sword flickered from time to time, rendering it useless for a few seconds. Leaving him forced to resort to physical attacks until it re-appeared.

The murderer seemed to have a limitless energy, a human, and a young one at that, relentlessly going in with their shimmering weapon to tear down his HP bit by bit. Slowly, but surely, Amourus was soon left with his life on single digits and he knew, the next attack, if he didn’t block it, he would surely die.

Panicking now, Amourus started to hastily set up a weak sword that broke from the power of the next attack and Amourus gasped, eyes wide, but the knife missed him by a hair’s breadth. He stumbled back, blinking rapidly, mind trying to process that it was still alive. The human sprang at him in his sudden moment of weakness and got him on his back. Small but horrifically strong, they pinned him by his neck and raising the knife with the other, high above their head.

The hyena monster struggled and flailed, he rolled onto his side, surprising the human. Now the human was on the ground, but they growled and abandoned their knife and set both hands and digging into his throat. Gasping for air, Amourus tried to rip their hands away whist going it for close-combat, using what’s left of his magical offense reserves, he used small versions of his swords on the human’s arms, slicing and making them bleed.

The human screeched and let go, but went in for a powerful punch that set the guard down to one remaining HP. Amourus, from the impact of the blow, skidded across the ground and off the ledge and fell into the luminescent water below.

The human scrambled to the edge to watch him flail helplessly in the water, the bottom too deep, his erratic movement and his inability to swim merged into a lethal mixture of fear and death.

He went under, once, and tried to push himself to the surface. But all his energy had been drained from battle and his body, working so hard against the water, an opponent that he was so utterly weak to he just couldn’t; he sank from the surface again…

And never came back up.

Chara counted the minutes that went by and then checked their Status. He must have died under there. They were now on Level Eight. They grinned and stood up, and found themselves facing into dark empty sockets.

Chara screeched in surprise and jumped away from Sans, clutching their chest, “Oh my Celestial Stars, Sans, you nearly gave me a heart attack!”

Sans gave a lop-sided grin and bright glowing eyes in response, “Well, good thing I didn’t, huh?”

Chara poked their tongue out, “Shut up.”

“Well, at least you got rid of the guy you were fighting, right? Or you would have been under cardiac arrest,” Sans chuckled.

“Sans, no, don’t even start,” Chara warned.

“How? I don’t even have a ticker.”

“Sans I will hurt you,” Chara felt their mouth twitch up.

“Sorry to hear that, I thought my little ice-breaker would have been very heartening.”

“That is it!” Chara shouted and went for the comedian, a sudden laugh bubbling up inside and bursting out of their mouth.

Sans just stepped out of the way as Chara lost themself into a fit of giggles and held their stomach, a sharp pain jabbing them with every breath that they took in, but they hardly felt it.

Sans raised an eyebrow at the giggling child and almost felt a sense of achievement of making them laugh at his watery puns. Sans grinned wider at his unpremeditated gag.

“Guess the little pace-maker worked then?” snorted Sans.

“Yes, yes it… it did… Oh Skies Above, your jokes are so bad they’re good!” they snickered.

“They’re always good, kid,” Sans replied and led them down the path, their shared laughter not being registered to the flowers around them.

Except for one.

Flowey watched them go down the path and frowned slightly.

Sinking into the ground, he popped up right next to the latest victim of Sans’ carnage, Monster Kid. Sneezing from being so close to the dust, he growled. He was a flower, how the hell did he have the ability to sneeze? He didn’t even have a nose!

Putting his thoughts off impractical things, he contemplated of what he is thinking of this new and completely insane route that Chara decided to take on this time. It was the only thing he could do besides watching this whole ordeal unravel into one twist and turn to another (and stalking the two), since he refused to disengage the puzzles ahead of the duo.

Let them get stuck in the puzzles, he thought darkly, You always hated those puzzles, didn’t you Chara? Always made you take the boat or had to go running to Mom and Dad or me to get help. The only ones you ever got right was the 5000 Puzzle Piece that we had. Oh, you never let me touch the pieces, thought that I would eat them or something, like an animal.

But then again, you don’t need me to get you past the puzzles; the Smiley Trashbag could just do it for you, or just teleport you out of the room. You don’t need me for anything, anymore. Boring am I? I’ll show you ‘boring’… Chara, you termagant. Gone and ditched me for a Trashbag…

Flowey’s mind settled onto the skeleton, and he felt something cold slither down his stalk. Chara really did a number on him. He didn’t know what went down back at Final Hall, but it took countless of reloads, far past his botheration to count. He had decided to drop his count around a hundred and thirty or so.

But in those myriads of loads, Chara did something to Sans to make him snap. But what?... What could make him break like that, when he couldn’t make the same results? He did horrible things when he had control over the timeline. He did many amazing, beautiful things, yes. But most of them were filled with experimental chaos that eradicated the Underground many times… almost did anyway.

That damn skeleton was always there to stop him. To make him go back when he pushed it over the line. Manipulation. Murder. Regicide. Attempted Genocide. He never, ever, got passed the Smiley Trashbag. No matter what LOVE he was, no matter how many attempts. Sans always got the upper hand. Always.

And it wasn’t just Sans either. There was Undyne… even Papyrus at times. Papyrus, his favourite monster in the Underground, could almost always talk him out of everything. Not all the time though. But still, he could hold a record of ‘solving tribulations without doing a violence!’ as he would say. Good old Papyrus.

His smile he didn’t know that had appeared had fallen slack.

He didn’t really think Sans would have done it.

What he had done broke everything he knew about the brothers’ relationship into two. He had taken his brother’s life. This was unbelievable. Even for him, who saw and forced many outrageous events to happen, nothing like this had ever shown. This was new… and… and… he couldn't place it. What else was it?

Sans would have never done something as horrific as that. Was he even a Sans, anymore?

Feeling somewhat sick now, he felt himself bury into the earth and rose to find himself in a new location, rocky walls bare but the dome ceiling, sparking with the Underground’s artificial celestial lights.

“What did Chara do to him?” he asks to the crystal stars.

They didn’t answer him. Not that they could, anyway.