#tem my short king you are tall to me

[thirsty-boba-fett-posts]

A TALL KING AND A SHORT KING WALK INTO A A CANTINA

Chewbacca and Boba Fett

[spinach-productions]

Wilted Spinach, part 7.1

This one is in two parts because I'm not a good person.  Also because I like the way it breaks this bit in half.

Summary: But the front door was open when I got back and he was gone and I don’t know where he went!

Papyrus is worried, Sans is drunk.  Undyne is so done.

Word count: 1453

Captain Undyne has been head of the Royal Guard since she destroyed the last captain at arm-wrestling and took the title as her prize. She hand-picks and trains civilians into hardened soldiers ready to give their lives to protect the king.  She can lift three times her weight, she can catch a projectile out of mid-air, she can hit any target within a hundred-foot radius with only one eye to aim.

She is also part fish, and Hotland is made of lava.  

The heat either cooks or dries out anything that steps off the Waterfall docks, which is why Undyne is currently topping off her water bottle at the community 'Welcome to Hotland' water cooler before she continues the walk to Alphys’ apartment.  She could, technically, ask the Riverperson to drop her off at Alphys' house.   Undyne could also, technically, give up her post at Waterfall and start a career growing turnips in Tem Village. They're equally likely to happen.

Undyne first met Alphys while on security detail for an experiment that needed to be moved from Alphys’ personal lab to the royal lab.  She’d volunteered, hoping to see some cool magic or weapons the royal lab might be developing.  Turns out there were neither cool magic nor weapons, but there was Alphys, who stuttered and stumbled and blushed bright red when Undyne shook her hand. They struck up a conversation when Undyne mentioned she’d been hoping to see a giant sword, and agreed to hang out to watch some movies involving giant weaponry.  A few months later, anime night began.  Alphys is interesting; Undyne likes that.

“How can I ever know your heart/ If my magic kiss is keeping up apart—”

Undyne's pulls the ringing phone from her pocket as she passes the reception area for the lab.  The caller ID reads Tall Weenie; she taps the talk button.  “Yo.”

“UNDYNE THANK GOODNESS,” Papyrus screams from the other end.  He's loud enough that Undyne fumbles the phone to get it away from her ear.  “I’m so glad I could reach you, something terrible has happened and I don’t know what to do!  I put Sans to bed an hour ago but now he’s not there—”

“Paps—”

“—gone somewhere else but I don’t know where that is, what if he’s wandered off and hurt himself or fallen off a cliff or made friends with the neighbors—”

“Papyrus,” Undyne says, invoking her stern Royal Guard Captain voice, “Slow down and take a deep breath.”

Papyrus gasps in a huge breath and lets it back out.  It sounds like a sob.

“Good.  Now, start from the beginning: what’s going on?”

“I’m sorry for shouting.  It’s just, I found Sans (he was at a bar, a BAR of all places) and I put him to bed, and since there wasn’t any food in the house I went out to get some.  But the front door was open when I got back and he was gone and I don’t know where he went!”

“Where have you looked?”

“EVERYWHERE!”  Papyrus’ voice sounds like it’s coming from inside a washing machine.  “He’s not in our old apartment, he must have gone somewhere else!”

“Calm down, Paps.  You said he was short, right?  He must have short legs, he can’t have gone far.”

“I'm just so worried, Undyne, what if something happened to him? He wasn't himself at the bar (actually he was really drunk, which is pretty strange—”

Undyne hears a shuffling noise, followed by something crashing loudly to the ground.  She looks over her shoulder and sees that the door to the lab is ajar.

“Ow,” says someone from inside.

“—since he doesn't hardly drink at all as far as I know),” Papyrus continues, oblivious to the possible break in.  “You need details about him, right?  That’s what happens in all the police shows when they look for missing brothers.  He's four-foot-nothing, smells like ketchup and bad puns, last seen wearing a blue jacket and fuzzy slippers—”

Whoever is in the lab apparently doesn't care about stealth, since they’re muttering to themselves as they stumble around.  “Where the hell is Gerald when you need him...?”

“—and make sure he eats something, please!  He keeps condiment packets in his second left-hand pocket at all times, so that will be easy enough—”

“Papyrus, I'll call you back.”

Undyne hangs up.  She stalks to the entrance and peers carefully through the open doors.  The royal lab is dark and empty, since the intruder apparently doesn't care about lights and seems to have tripped over the main monitor’s cord on the way past.  They've also knocked all the papers and pens off the reception desk and left a long line of displaced furniture on their way through the building, but nothing seems to be irreparably broken.

“Huh,” says Undyne.

She follows the trail of clumsiness through the building to the exit (stopping briefly to straighten a figurine on Alphys' desk).  The automatic doors open on one of the many platform paths that lead through Hotland. 

A sad pile of bones and blue fabric lies a few steps further down the path. It’s muttering to itself.  It sounds annoyed. 

Undyne approaches the pile.  “Hey,” she calls, prodding it with the tip of her boot, “Are you Sans?”

“Who’s askin’,” the pile grumps back.

She lowers herself to sit on the ground.  “Friend of Paps’.  He’s pretty worried about you.”

The bones and fabric slowly resolve into a short skeleton wearing a dirty hoodie.  He rolls over and glares suspiciously.  “What do YOU know about Paps?”

“I know he doesn’t deserve what you’re putting him through,” Undyne replies.

Sans lays back down.  “He doesn’t deserve any of this.  He’s gone in most of the times, and I, I didn’t even protect him.”

“From what?”

“From the kid. Or the future, or from grieving everybody, or anything.”

“You’re drunk.”

“YOURE drunk,” Sans accuses without sitting up.

Undyne decides she’s not getting any more answers from this guy. She grabs Sans’ jacket and uses it to haul him to his feet.  “Okay, time to get going.  Paps is probably checking the pipes for you by now.”

Sans knocks her hands away.  “Don’t touch me.”  He starts to stagger away from the lab.  “I remember. I have to go.  Everyone’s waiting for me.”

Undyne watches him go.  It feels like watching a small child who insists they can do something clearly beyond their abilities.  She weighs the pros and cons of leaving him here.  Pro: she wouldn’t have to deal with this.  Con: Sans is heading towards the core, and Papyrus would be devastated if something happened to his idiot brother.  Undyne sighs and follows Sans down the path.

“Come on, buddy,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder to stop this sad two-person parade, “It’s time to—”

There’s a sudden crackle of energy, and Sans is no longer under her hand. Undyne gets the impression of blue-white light racing across the landing away from her, and when she blinks, Sans is standing on the other side of the path.  From this distance, she can see how much effort he’s putting into holding himself together.  He looks worn out and worn down, but on top of that, he looks furious.

“I have been punted out of my own timeline,” he says with angry sobriety Undyne hasn’t seen in him until now, “I have been yanked around dozens of different possible futures.  I’ve seen the Underground fall, I’ve seen the royal family murdered.  I’ve had to live under your regime, and under Metatton’s conspiracy government, and under Alphys’ best guess, and under Papyrus’ best guess, and in complete anarchy, and at several non-linear points in time I have even lived under the rule of a SMALL DOG. Do you know what having a small dog as monarch does to people?!”

Undyne, who is the local authority for both Snowdin and Waterfall, has heard her share of tipsy stories.  This one is not impressive.  “Okay, what I got from that is that you’re drunk and you need to get out some of aggression before you go home.”  She summons a spear and slams the blunt end into the ground.  “So consider this a favor for Paps.  Let’s go.”

One of Sans’ eyes has gone out.  The other lights up bright blue, illuminating the socket from within. “You want to fight, huh,” he grits out.  Sans mimes grabbing something out of the air with both hands and yanking it violently upward; an enormous canine skull materializes in a blaze of blue magic.  It emanates a staticky roar that makes the dry ground rumble.

Undyne grins.

“Okay.  Let’s fight.”

 Author’s note: when this was planned as a comic, Sans was going to speak in typos.  It was Jinny’s idea, and it didn’t work out in writing but I wanted you guys to know because it’s hilarious.

- Wilted Spinach - PART 7.1

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