Chapter Text
Sans woke up.
He wasn't expecting to wake up. Well he did, but he didn’t expect to still be in the same timeline, principally with his memories still intact, much less in what he was sure was his own mattress.
He considered the situation, but the only possibility he could think of is that he somehow sleep-shortcutted into his room, and on his mattress, but that still didn’t explain why the human hadn’t either reloaded, or resetted yet.
Maybe it was a way of torturing him, or maybe it really takes this long for whatever they do to work and Alphys readings are a bit skewed.
It wound’t matter in the end anyways, not like he could go and tell her now, well he could, but she wouldn’t remember it, he wouldn’t remember it, no one would, so it would just be a useless waste of free sleep time, so he wouldn’t.
Sans groaned in annoyance and turned to his side, shutting his eye sockets in frustration, completely missing the fact that the traits he gained with absorbing the human soul were missing.
He also failed to notice the footsteps approaching his door before a loud bang of it being opened abruptly, taking him off guard. A loud voice that he was sure could shatter windows and sometimes makes his thoughts go to the possibility of him being adopted shook the room and brought him to full attention and extreme confusion.
“WAKE UP BROTHER, I HAVE MADE BREAKFAST AND YOU MUST FINISH CALIBRATING YOUR PUZZLES, WHICH YOU FAILED TO DO AGAIN!” His brother said, way too loud for the hour in the morning.
Sans’s only response was an incredulous chocking noise and wide eyesockets directed at him.
He gaped for a second before shoving his thoughts away and automatically responding like he does most mornings, working his morning routine like he would usually do, but on the inside his mind was reeling with everything, Papyrus was alive and no worse for wear, but Sans saw him die.
It didn’t make sense, every possibility he could think, was itself an sort of an impossibility, there was only three theories that he could think off that were kinda plauseable, one, this is a sick joke from the human and they somehow make this possible to mess with him, 2 he was dreaming and he would soon wake up alone in a corredor, or three, he really was here somehow with Papyrus, and he couldn’t know which.
In a moment of intrusive thought, he pinched himself, nothing happened, it didn’t disprove the dream possibility but lowered the chances, and the idea the human could do this would kill him slowly, and honestly he didn’t care, he was believing it.
There was a second that he settled that in his mind, then he choked on his own non-existent spit and thought of something, what if he somehow kept the memories of the resets. There was no way right? It couldn’t be, why him?
Then he had an epiphany, something he had somehow forgotten in the time between the event and now, he had absorbed the human soul.
Sans checked his head for the horn there, but of course it wasn’t, or Papyrus would have at least commented on it.
He wanted to berate himself for the memory loss he had, how could he have forgotten about having literal horns.
The simple act of absorbing a human soul and gaining cool stuff didn’t seem so simple now, it’s not a full explanation, but it’s enough to make the impossibility plausible.
Human souls are weird and complicated, and it opens a lot of doors for weird things happening.
He should tell this to Alphys, the importance of telling her stuff went from barely no need to ‘We could save the underground faster’ in one morning.
He gave Papyrus an excuse for missing breakfast, between ‘I should finish calibrating my puzzle’ and ‘a human might wanna get early today’, he knew they were bad excuses and that his brother was most likely not buying them, but it didn’t matter that much compared to the remembering resets thing.
While it wasn’t the same length as having the power itself, he could know exactly when and how the human did what it did, he still was useless to stop them, but he wasn’t the only person here, and now he could inform someone who was more capable to save the underground, or someone that could at least form a plan for others to do it themselves but prepared.
He made a shortcut directly to the lab and hurriedly said “Alphys!”.
The lizard monster was startled from where she was looking at some paperwork and almost fell out of her chair.
“Wha- Sans? Wh- what are you doing here.” she stuttered confusedly.
“You remember the timelines and resets we were talking about last week? That you theorized would happen around this now?” He asked the importance of having it known, making his bone rattle in what wasn’t excitement, but was something way more awake than he normally was.
She looked a bit worried, maybe from the out of characterness of how he was acting “W-well, yes, it was las- last week after all, why -y?”
“It happened today, and I can remember them.” he said matter of factly, the adrenaline of realizing everything slowly leaving his body.
Alphys blinked slowly, processing what he said, then gave a startled “WHAT!?”, Sans winced but continued “A human fell down, I think they are the anomaly, because by their expressions they knew who we are, they killed almost half of the population” Alphys eyes grew wide, but he ignored her, “And by their fighting skills they had at least a bit prior experience doing so” He paused.
He awkwardly looked away and continued, “I’m not a hundred percent sure why I can remember the reset, but I’m guessing it is because I absorbed their soul.”
The scientist slowly turned to his direction, with a startlingly calm “What.”.
He moved his hands in front of him “Look I know it was a stupid thing to do, but I was curious and it was a spur of the moment decision." he defended.
She breathed in and out for a second, “Ok, o-ok, so you’re telling me that a reset has already occurred, and you believe more than this time, and that you remember it by absorbing the human soul, instead of giving it to Asgore.”
“Yeah.”
Then he remembered something that didn’t really matter right now, but would probably be important in the future, “Oh, and the theory that only boss monsters would get changed was wrong, actually I’m pretty sure it was making me like a fake boss monster, I got a horn, and a longer tail, though I didn’t get any fur.”
Alphys blinked “Huh.”
It was silent for a while.
Sans looked at her “What time is it?” he asked, she checked her phone, “Uhh, it’s almost nine”.
“The human appeared around three, so you probably should warn the monsters over the human coming to probably murder us all.”
There was another silent pause until his word was processed “Oh-h, why didn’t you say an-anything before!” she scrambled to find communication with Asgore, the skeleton waited if there was anything important for him to do.
Alphys was the only one who knew about his ‘Royal Judge’ job, because it was a mostly low-key job, so it wasn’t too important for others to know, but Alphys had known him since they were in college, and worked with him in the lab when he was there, so she took no time to find out, but that means that Asgore could pass something for him to do through her, so it was best to wait for the information.
It was a bit awkward though, and he was slowly becoming antsy, the human could be better and faster, what if they came much earlier than he had given and when he came back to snowdin it was only dust.
He looked around, there was nothing of interest, well until he remembered Alphys handy cameras around every part of the underground, while a bit creepy, he knew there was one in the path to get to Snowdin.
Finding the cameras was easy, Alphys had shown how to do this more times than needed, but he was already on the camera in under a minute.
There was nothing, just fluffy snow everywhere, not paths of footprints the shape of small humans, no nothing.
Sans sighed a breath of relief, just then Alphys came back, a bit of determination in her eyes.
“So,” She starts, “T- the king’s orders are to firstly evacuate the p- people of Snowdin, then Waterfall, and make it- t as calm as possible to not attract panic in case the h- human doesn’t come back this time.”
She takes a breath and continues, “A- at the same time there-e will be a tr- trope of guards including Undyne guarding the fro- ont of the ruins.”
The lizard monster started pacing now while continuing the explanation, “He to- told me that he w- would be the one notifying Undyne of this, h- he is referring you as an monster informant from the rui- ruins, and you had seen the human d- dust a monster. He wants me to be the one organizing a place for the evacuated monsters, and yo- you to help with the evacuation- n efforts.”
“Well that’s mostly what I expected, but you should make sure it’s not just Undyne going there, last reset, while the human looked like death after the battle, they were the only alive in their case.” He warned.
“That might be a good idea.” She said worriedly.
Both scientist and ex-scientist discussed the plans, which didn’t take long, he wouldn’t be the one to announce what's happening, that's Undyne’s job, but as an official sentry he is obligated to help on the evacuating, so that part will be mostly normal, and Alphys had a plan in mind already.
So shortly after, Sans teleported back to Snowdin and took his place at the post like nothing had even happened, and waited for the announcement, falling asleep before he could even notice how tired he actually was.