And now, a new story starts.To be fair, it should have started a bit earlier; but things did not turn out as they usually do. After all, it’s hard to tell a story when its main character is unconscious.How frustrating. How pitiful. Will we seriously need to wait for her to wake up on her own?…Alright. That’s enough waiting.
I’ve been kidnapped.
A few long minutes after she woke up, here was the culmination of her deductions. And really, were she under any other circumstances, she might have laughed at how obvious this conclusion was, and at how ridiculously long the list of clues leading to it amounted to.
She had read a lot of books, watched a lot of movies, and she was a regular of those websites and series whose entire purpose revolves around deconstructing a story’s clichés and mocking it for every little trope that its storytelling has the misfortune of using without enough awareness or justification. As such, the power of Genre Savviness had become second nature to her, and this knowledge was now gladly parasiting her thoughts as she was trying to investigate.As an attempt to slow down her heartbeat and retrieve what little lucidity she could salvage off the claws of her growing anxiety, she took a deep breath and raised a mental list of what she had learned so far.
Her initial, true first thought which came about hardly a second after she came to, was a simple but strikingly frightening question:Where am I?
The simple answer was: a pitch black basement.
A basement so dark, as a matter of fact, that she herself could hardly distinguish her own features, let alone her surroundings; which, you should admit, is convenient when you are too lazy to describe what she looks like for the time being.
Instead of this informed, meta answer, the one she chose was rather:Definitely not a place I know.As she assessed her surroundings, the analytical, sarcastic third-rate film enthusiast in her soon took over. In her defense, it was undeniable that the situation she was standing in was, one could say, a rather stereotypical series of clichés.
Dark and suspiciously silent room, check.
Absolutely no remembrance of ever walking in, check.
No windows, no vents, and the only door available is locked?
Triple check, flawless list so far.
Her first reflex was to freak out for an amount of time she would have trouble calculating retrospectively. After all, when you reach the irrational state of a panic attack, you tend to lose your grip on reality—including all notion of time passing.The entire experience felt surreal due to its pure nonsensicality (she clearly remembered spending her Sunday afternoon chatting online and comfortably sitting at her desk in her room, so how did she even arrive here to begin with?), but still. That, too, was cliché.
When she managed to come back to her senses and remind herself that panicking was going nowhere, she decided to ponder her options in order to actually calculate her next move in a smart way.
Even her own behavior was cliché.
The first conclusion anyone with a minimum of common sense could muster at this point, was that she had somehow been kidnapped, and that she probably had little time before her captor(s?) came back. In just about any story she knew, this would be the moment the protagonist would switch to their badass mode and make a brilliant escape.
…She was not the protagonist of a stupid action movie, and she had no ‘badass mode’, though. She would not leave by blowing the entire building up and putting on a pair of sunglasses (which she did not currently have in her possession anyway) while walking towards an imaginary camera because she would be too cool to give a single look at the mushroom-shaped fireworks raging in her back.
However, she quickly found out with great shock that destiny had decided to give her a hand. As she was pondering her options, she soon realized that she still had her cell phone in the back pocket of her jeans. Granted, there was no reception in the room, so trying to call for help was out of the question; but still, wasn’t that supposed to be the first thing kidnappers would take away from their victims as soon as they had the chance?
Besides, she was not even roped or tied to any extent! If only she were able to pick the door’s lock (a skill she, sadly, did not master), she would have easily been able to escape, at the very least from this room. Maybe her captors were not that stupid and she would have found actual obstacles beyond the door, if she indeed managed to open it; but from what she had seen until this point, all the mistakes they made so far didn’t put them very high up on her personal Scale of Credibility.
That being said, even if her phone could not be used to call one of her relatives or the police, the wonders of technology led to purely brilliant results. Sometimes literally, as her phone’s torchlight immediately became a life savior in helping her figure out a little more details about the room she had been trapped in. And dang, did she find a lot of stuff her kidnappers would probably have preferred keeping away from her.
Whoever it was that had kidnapped her, they terribly sucked at their job. Part of her would be almost pitying them, if her life weren’t potentially on the line depending on which plans they had for her once they would come back.
So, now that she had the means to rediscover the room with her eyes, she recapped. She had been unconscious for some time, and when she woke up, she was lying on an old green jangling couch. Now that she was armed with her phone’s dim light, she looked at the ceiling and noticed that there were big neon lights. She immediately searched for the switch, but even after it was found… she was disappointed to realize that flipping it up and down was useless.
Seemed like the lights were out of order. Just her luck.
After some wandering about with her phone as guidance, she found that besides the tiled floor and bluish walls, there were a lot of littering pieces of random machinery in the corners, a giant curtain in the furthest part of the room that was covering some kind of mysterious engine, and a giant desk. This last detail was what focused the entirety of her attention after that point, since she figured that it was the only thing that would give her relevant hints.
The desk was buried under piles of random papers and notes, and although she had no idea what the writings and calculations were about, she assumed that they were supposed to be parts of some kind of blueprint. She soon noticed a desk lamp, but then again, trying to turn it on had no effect at all. This was when she realized that instead of a lightbulb, a torchlight had been taped on top of the lamp. After detaching it and trying to flip its switch, she smirked and hummed in satisfaction: finally something in this room was working as intended.
Although she did not question it much further, the image of a flashlight being strapped to a desk lamp sent her remote flashes of recognition, as if she had already heard of such situation somewhere before. It was probably a coincidence, though. Nothing to worry about.
To her relief, she could now turn off her phone and save its battery, and thanks to this new flashlight’s powerful beam, her ability to investigate the surroundings became much more efficient. It wasn’t extraordinary, but it was definitely much better than her phone, since at least it had a wider and longer range.
Still… She was not done yet with the desk.Indeed, finally she found, wait for it, a computer.
Her kidnappers had left her all alone, without supervision, with a flipping computer right under her nose. Admittedly that one looked ancient, but still. Whatever little esteem she still held for their kidnapping skills quickly evaporated at that moment.
Then again, when she tried to switch it on, once again, it did not respond either. As it turned out, none of the electric equipment besides the torchlight could be turned on… The natural guess was that there might be a general blackout in the building, and that maybe the reason she had been left alone without supervision was because her captors went to wherever the main generator was so they could fix a problem they had clearly not anticipated.
How long had it been since she woke up? It was hard to tell, but maybe it was around ten to twenty minutes by now. Pretty long time to leave a captive unattended.
Then again, from what she had seen, these guys had no idea what they were doing. She could probably keep nosing around a little bit more.
It was their fault for leaving her alone with everything she needed to do so, after all.
The desk had a certain number of drawers. In the first one, she found books… She thought she saw an album, too. When she opened it on the first page, she found a small photograph that hadn’t been properly put inside of the album and was probably there just to prevent it from being damaged. It was pretty small and far from her torchlight’s beam, so she seized it in order to bring it closer…
Hey, wouldn’t it be a lot more fun if this was the exact moment he came back?
She heard some ruffling at the door. Then went the tingling sound of a key rummaging through the lock.
They were back.
Not even bothering to close the drawer, she immediately turned around and looked for the safest place to hide— hopefully the giant curtain would do, at least long enough for her to find a more permanent solution.
The curtain ruffled and waved after her path.
After making sure that she could keep an eye on the only exit in the room, she turned the flashlight off.
The door opened.
To her surprise, the place right outside the door was just as dark as the room she was in. That helped her make herself less noticeable by hiding in the dark, but sadly, it meant that she would be completely blind as well.Still, she locked her eyes in the direction of the door, trying to keep a mental image of the surroundings and the different objects in the room, for lack of being able to keep sight of them.
Well, well, now this is getting interesting and new.
Maybe it was worth the wait, after all.
She heard footsteps entering the room. They were slow and quiet at first, almost as if whoever they belonged to was trying to avoid making too much noise.
She heard them stop for a few seconds. Then she finally heard one of her captors’ voice.
“…oh boy. uh… hey, kid?” they called out to nowhere in particular. “i take it you woke up? sorry, i prolly should’ve prepared a note or something.”
That appeared to be a man, but there was a strange timbre in his voice that puzzled her deeply. It sounded almost like his voice was being muffled by something, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it and it didn’t really strike her as the most accurate explanation.
Given the manner the sound of his voice came to her in irregular volumes, she realized that he had to be turning his head in multiple directions and looking for her.
Which meant that he hadn’t found her yet.
“look, i probably spooked ya pretty badly earlier, but… i know you’re still here, and i won’t take long to find you, so, you can come out right now and save us both the trouble.”
Ha. He was already admitting defeat. That would be easy.
“i’m sure you have a lot of questions, right now. which is pretty convenient, ‘cause i have a lot of answers to give ya. we can just sit down and have a nice chat. no pressure. i mean, i know you must think that this situation’s way too weird and all, but you’re not in danger, a’right?”
Damn right I’m not in danger, she thought bitterly, rolling her eyes in contempt. She almost huffed in disbelief, but she managed to stop herself from doing that when she immediately realized that such irrelevant act would have given away her position in no time.
Still, was that guy stupid?
Why the heck would you kidnap me, dumbass?
To give me a hug?
She tried to ignore the gullibility and foolishness in his words, instead focusing on how to take advantage of them. She could clearly hear his footsteps and locate him. He couldn’t locate her, but that was because she wasn’t moving or making any sound. Yet.
She clearly remembered where the door was, and she clearly remembered that she had not heard him close it.Which meant that if she could find just the right window in time and space…
All she had to do was assess a few distances and trajectories.
She would be patient. She would wait.
And then she would seize the moment.
The footsteps were now not too far from her, probably around five to ten feet away; but they were pretty far from the door. If she remembered the disposition of the room correctly, he had to be around the desk. Soon…
But then he stopped walking, and silence engulfed the room and left her in total blindness.
She waited, wondering what he was doing since he wasn’t anywhere near her to begin wi—
Something grabbed her arm.
She screamed.
She yanked her arm away from him in a sudden yet strong movement, which seemed to leave him stunned for a split second. Part of her was surprised by how easy it had been for her to elude his grasp, and by how physically weak he had appeared to be in comparison with her — she almost thought she heard him wince in surprise and pain while taking a few steps back, when she had raised and sent her arm flying around without warning.
However, that part of her went completely unnoticed by the others when adrenaline enhanced her reflexes and blinded her thoughts.
Hardly a second after her arm was freed, she took action again. Turning towards him swiftly, she pressed a button and brandished the flashlight at him like a deadly weapon. She immediately heard an additional grunt from the stranger, as he was momentarily blinded by the torch’s unexpected Powerful Beam. It’s super effective!
Well, not really. But it’s enough for the stupid girl to smirk in victory. What’s she thinking, that she’s the hero beating up the bad guy or that she’ll make a brilliant escape with that stupid stick? Besides, this is basically stealing. But who am I to judge, eh?
Ha, take that! she mentally grinned. That’ll teach you not to leave your victims free to do whatever they want, you jerk.
Although he took a few more steps back and now stood right by his desk, and although he kept rubbing his eyes with his left hand for a few more seconds, the victim of her harmless attack had a rather quick adaptation to the new brightness of his surroundings; and as soon as he lowered his pale arm, the girl couldn’t help but slightly lower hers as well, now facing the stranger with a blank expression.
“…heh. already throwin’ in the spotlights, kid?” he chuckled lightly. “i didn’t realize you’d want to get enlightened on the truth so soon. ‘specially since, uh. you didn’t seem so interested by my brilliant idea a minute ago.”
Upon realizing who this was… Unexpectedly, what truly surprised her was not the reveal of her kidnapper’s face, but instead her apparent lack of reaction to it.
You know, it’s that very specific state of mind that makes you realize that everybody has their own quota of strange things that can happen to them, and that the limit to the amount of weirdness they can handle at a time is very personal and specific to each individual. Once you’ve got past the line, you just reach that point where practically nothing can surprise you anymore, if only temporarily.
So when your limit is indeed crossed by the cruelty of fate, you just stand there, mouth slightly agape, staring at what put you in this state and mentally nodding in that ‘This is normal’ gesture, because it would require too much from your neurons to process an explanation, or even do so little as to simply muster the energy to say that this is not supposed to happen.
At any rate, if you fully followed this train of reasoning, this is the state our little pseudo-protagonist was in.
“…a’right, maybe the last one was a bit of a stretch.” he said with a sigh, rolling his eyes and shrugging with overdramatic dejection. Then he paused, and his grin expanded: “but don’t tell me it completely left ya in the dark, eh…?”
…Aaand he threw the finger gun. Damn it.
He finally seemed to notice that the teenage girl wasn’t reacting at all. No laughs, no smiles, not even grunting. Only… well, that same face of utter shock as from the beginning. Except that by that time she had gradually stepped back until she bumped into the wall behind her and couldn’t go any further, and that now she appeared to be holding on to it for dear life, in any way she could.
When he saw her drop the flashlight, he realized that by that time, the girl might have just completely disconnected from reality for a minute or two.
Well, by now I guess it should be someone else’s cue to say something along the lines of: “Sans, I think you broke the human.”
“uh… hello? did your power… black out, too…?”
He seemed a little desperate for an answer, by that point; whether positive or negative. Nevertheless, he still obtained none.
Yeah, even you can see that this one was the lamest of all, buddy.
“…ugh. too soon for puns, got it.” He buried his hands further into his pockets and seemed to sink his head into his shoulders, as he looked away and mumbled something that sounded like a nervous “tough crowd.”
She quickly stared at what appeared to be a living skeleton, rising and lowering repeatedly her gaze down to all the details she could perceive. Despite the fact that he was still for the most part hidden within the distant shadows, far away from the silly little Trustworthy Flashlight’s brightness now that it was not focused on his face anymore, she immediately noticed the trademark blue hoodie that she could have recognized anywhere. And his short pants. And the bones. She did not want to focus on the bones.In conclusion, she quickly realized that she knew exactly who this guy was.
…Or rather, who this guy looked like.
She couldn’t help but smile awkwardly. She hated it when she couldn’t understand what was going on. Nervous smirks didn’t really help, but she couldn’t stop them from appearing on her face whenever she was tense and anxious.
And especially when she was mocking herself for actually starting to seriously consider some dumb and random option that was just not possible.
This, simply, was not Sans. There was no way. Some random pile of pixels from a simple video game could not magically all of a sudden become corporeal and sentient and be facing her right now in the four dimensions of space and time. She would not discuss that science fact, this was simply out of the question.
Whoever she was facing right now was just. Not. Him.
Undertale was not. Real.
She had no idea why that random creepy guy would want her to think otherwise, though. Well, she had a few hypotheses, but none of them really could conveniently justify all the trouble the man must have come into just to order everything in place to the slightest details. That was necessary if he wanted to be convincing of course, but…
Just, what was that for?
Yeah, on second thought, no matter what reasons she could think of, this whole mess would have been unnecessarily overcomplicated and frustrating to prepare, in comparison with the results they would have obtained anyway.For an instant, she almost considered pretending that she actually fell into his trap, by improvising some kind of ‘roleplay’ or something out of pity; but she quickly felt very uneasy about it and discarded that thought just as fast as it came.She had been kidnapped, after all. There was no room for jokes with your kidnapper.
And yet, although she had quickly bent down to retrieve the flashlight she had dropped on the floor at some point (huh, she dropped it? She didn’t notice…), she would not raise her arm back to cover his face with its light once again.Nah, his face was very good the way it was right now in the shadows, thank you very much. Her hand was a little shaky and cold, raising the light stick would only make it worse.
“…Ha. That was a really good impression of Sans,” she eventually uttered in a voice that sounded much less confident than she had intended to. “Also his lab. Honestly, I’d almost buy it if it weren’t for a few details. Like, you know. The fact that he’s not real. Just saying.”
There was no worded response from Definitely-Not-Sans. She thought she might have heard a distant outburst of laughter, but it stopped abruptly and she hadn’t seen him move. He was still standing in the shadows, staring at her with an unreadable total lack of expression, both his hands deeply buried into his pockets.
Well, when his whole face was engulfed in the dark, it was quite difficult to distinguish it clearly anyway… But she thought she could see that little glimmer of a confused and slightly embarrassed “excuse me, what?” in his shining pupils— even though she completely ignored it.(These can’t be pupils, it’s just a costume. He probably just used LEDs or something like that.)
“The computer is new, uh? I-I’ve never seen its sprite, u-unless it’s supposed to be Papyrus’s. And I was sure there only was one big machine at most— the one in the back, I mean. All the other small… whatever tool thingies over there are just decoys, right? Why’d you add them if the game doesn’t show them, it’s just some extra effort wasted on jeopardizing your whole disguise plan. O-oh, and the thing I was sleeping on, too. It’s the green couch, isn’t it? W-well, too bad, it wasn’t supposed to be in this room.”She tried to cross her arms and puff out her chest as an attempt to increase her confidence. The effectiveness of such act was debatable.“So. See? If y-you wanted me to think that I’d somehow got drawn into the game or whatever, you got another thing coming.”
For at least a good dozen seconds, the guy simply stared at her in disbelief, not knowing how to react. Was there just any way to properly react? One could only wonder.
He refused to regard this as a possibility at first, but…
…oh. oh god she’s serious.
He had to muster all of his remaining energy into the sole objective of not openly bursting out laughing at her face. He would not be able to regain a straight face afterwards and he needed to get serious at some point. But– she just…
Yeah, really feeling you there, buddy. I think we hit the jackpot.
The only thing the girl was able to see from her current position was that Definitely-Not-Sans had finally decided to get on the move, muffling what sounded like some kind of (almost) amused chuckle while… slightly shrugging, maybe. It was really hard to see what he was doing in the dark, but she preferred that rather than raising that torchlight back at him.
He wondered whether he should directly tell her, or instead roll with it and let her realize on her own; but seeing how potentially unstable (and arguably hilarious) she could get, the second option seemed to present itself as the most appropriate. She had already fainted once before due to him being too straightforward, after all— to such extent, she seemed to not even remember that it had ever taken place.Well, granted, she had just seen him for less than ten seconds before fainting immediately. There probably wasn’t a lot to remember in the first place.
Either way, he wasn’t willing to reiterate the experience. And, looking on the bright side, maybe doing things her way would give him the opportunity to extract some more information from her if he was lucky enough. After all, he was pretty curious about a lot of things himself.
He would let her deduce the truth at her own pace.
Or at least, he would try.
Still. He feared that this would take a while.
“heh… ok wow. i see you DO know that game in the details. i’ll admit, i’m impressed.” He chuckled a little more, then gave a nod towards the faraway sofa on his right side. “you’re pretty observant. yes, that’s the couch from the living room. put it down here a few weeks ago.”
When she lent another glance at the sofa, she could indeed realize that it did look an awful lot like the one from the game.
But of course the stupid girl has to guide the flashlight towards the oh-so-fascinating piece of furniture she’s already inspected mere minutes ago anyway and leave him without surveillance, if only for just one freaking second. I kinda hoped at some point… But no, we’ll have to cope with the Ultimate Idiot kind.
Oh well. Nothing can ever be perfect, huh?
Still. How much do you wanna bet this is gonna backfire on her within the next seconds?
And indeed, as soon as her eyes strayed away from him, the sound of a few calm footsteps suddenly caught her attention from behind; and when she turned back her gaze and Trusty Torch towards the spot where he had been standing until then, she found that he wasn’t there anymore, nor anywhere nearby.
Instead, she saw him a few seconds later lying lazily on the couch, his arms idly stretching over its soft greenish back as he used his hands as makeshift pillows and grinned trollesquely (wait no it’s just a mask).
Well, role-playing all along, wasn’t he? He sure was enjoying this.
…Still, how the heck did he get there so quickly?
The Trusty Torch started to shake and the shadows of the room followed, dancing around its cold immaculate white.
“By the way, uh, wow. You really must’ve put a lot of effort into making all this. And I don’t know that much about time travel mind-screw stuff, but, those blueprints are quite convincing. You really must be a hardcore fan, aren’t you?” She chuckled shakily, unconvinced. “Can I just ask you, uh, why you did all this exactly? You do realize this is technically a kidnapping, right?”
She was trying to take it lightly and make it sound like a joke, but she knew that she wasn’t fooling anyone. This masquerade had been lasting for long enough, and every single element of her surroundings which she had encountered during the past few minutes (hours?) was really starting to get on her nerves.
She simply could not understand. This entire situation was making no sense whatsoever, this place was starting to freak her out even though she was still sort of glad that this guy disguised as a skeleton was keeping some distance between them because that really was the last thing she could be getting to complete the scheme even though those were definitely not real bones—
Oh great, she was starting to hyperventilate again. It kept getting harder to hold the stupid stick, as if it were now made of lead. Viscous and wet lead.
… Wait, no, the humidity was just her cold sweat. Nothing strange here. Hahaha.
“… hey. you alright kiddo?”
It felt odd that he sounded genuinely concerned for a change, even if he was good at hiding it on his face (duh, he’s obviously wearing a mask, so of course his entire face’s hidden). But what his face failed to display, his tone had shared far too clearly; he had picked on the nervousness surrounding her, and this only increased her wariness in return.
He did not particularly care about that stranger (heck, he didn’t even know that kid to begin with); but still, seeing anyone in that state was concerning enough as it was.
He was squishing the sofa’s cushions in his bony fingers, as if he were on the verge of rushing towards her if she were to collapse because of her shaky pale legs.
Interestingly, it appeared that this last observation was what pushed her to take a step back (well, if you can describe ‘jolting three feet both backwards and upwards’ as ‘taking a step back’) and answer in a fast and winded voice as soon as she caught her breath back. All too self-aware, she stiffened in an attempt to regain control of her tremors.
“As alright as could any normal person be when they find themselves trapped in a dark locked room after being kidnapped by a lunatic dressed like Undertale’s most memetic and creepy-yet-popular character for whichever psychopathic reasons you found, thanks,” she retorted bitterly with a desperate sarcastic grin.
…Well, if she still had enough energy for sarcasm, then her case probably wasn’t that worrying after all.
(Still just a bit.)
“ha, yeah, right… sorry for leavin’ you all alone in the dark. i thought i could leave for a bit and try to do something about the blackout while you were out, but i guess my little experiment might have done a bit more damage than i thought… heh eh.”
For a short instant, he seemed to actually hesitate, as if he were measuring his words and trying carefully to choose the exact ones; but interestingly, it seemed that beyond merely the words themselves, their repercussions were what truly bothered him.
She clearly was not doing nearly as fine as he would have preferred, but she just… had to hear the truth at some point, right? Normally, he would not have bothered with something like this— especially because, at least at the beginning, this had some nice potential as joke material, and he wondered whether she would keep finding excuses to ‘prove’ that he weren’t real, even as she would see more and more about this world. However… he remembered how she had first reacted, and that had not been pretty.
He feared that if he stopped caring about this issue and just rolled with things as they were, the moment everything would click in her mind would just so happen to be the worst possible moment. Namely, the moment she would find some irrefutable evidence that would let her realize everything all at once— just like the moment when he had shoved her through his machine’s portal with blue magic when they met for the first time.
She had freaked out to the point where she fainted instantly and had no later recollection whatsoever about this event, after all. She could totally do it again. So… Baby steps.
“i’ve been using that basement a lot, y’know, since i’ve been working on some pretty… otherworldly stuff, recently. and it all allowed you to get here, in the end. you’d find it pretty fantastic if you only tried to believe it and stopped waving that torch at random. so uh, guess you could say it’s time to see the light, now. ain’t i right…?”
…Seriously, is that all you’ve got? Even I can tell that this pun was objectively lame, and I suck at making those.
She merely glared at him and pouted in frustration as her grip on the torchlight tightened. That guy’s attitude was starting to annoy her to such extent, she was almost starting to forget her instinctive feeling of dread.
She was completely incapable of watching horror movies without being found whimpering in a corner as soon as the first bits of gore appeared, and as a consequence she hardly ever watched any.
Nonetheless, anybody can easily deduce that dark locked basements and masked suspicious men who talk nonsense never make for a good combo; the fact that she was starting to give her annoyance more credit than this primal fear was a pretty talkative fact on its own.
Part of her almost wanted him to shift to the ‘kidnapper’ role and finally start explaining what was going on. That, at least, would have been less frustrating than watching him pseudo-roleplaying by sitting on the couch and saying meaningless ‘pranks’ that weren’t even supposed to be funny in the slightest.
“Speaking of getting me here, I am wondering: why me? I mean, if it has anything to do with Undertale, then it’s not like I could be the ‘best fan you could have ever found’ or some other stupid thing like that. I never even played it.”
…
You can’t be serious.
For some reason, she almost felt that guy’s overwhelming silence the very instant she had uttered that last sentence. She was not completely sure why, but it was almost as if she had just sensed his sudden tension without even needing to turn her eyes and watch it on his face, in spite of the distance between them.
And even though she simply dismissed this feeling as a mere coincidence or some kind of ‘predictability’ she could have intuited in his excessively silent reaction, she was still slightly taken aback by how seriously he seemed to take that revelation, feeling this rising… was this confusion or anger? Or both?
The skeleton’s grip on the sofa tightened once more; but this time, it was for a completely different reason.
“Wait. Seriously?” he uttered as calmly as he could, though probably a little too fast and somberly.
It was the first time that she truly paid attention, but since the beginning she had noticed that there was something peculiar about the timbre in his voice. Until now, she had assumed that it was only due to the fact that his mask (it had to be some sort of latex mask after all, this was the only possibility, right?) had to be somewhat muffling his words; but this time… She couldn’t help but notice that this time it really had sounded even stranger than before.
If it really had been Sans in one of his in-game dialogues, she could have almost guessed that he would have put some capitals in his speech, for once. And one thing she had learned fast enough through the fandom was that with that monster, proper capitalization was never a good sign.
Good thing that option’s out of the way.
“Yeah!” she shrugged obliviously. “Honestly, I suck so much at video games, you have no idea. I’ve even been wondering if there was something like a world record for that. I’m not kidding, even if I wanted to play that game, I wouldn’t even survive five minutes.”
And there came back that exact same awkward silence. He was uncomfortably staring at her without even moving the slightest from his seat, narrowing and twitching his eyes, which from that distance could only be distinguished through what was supposed to mimic a pair of eye-sockets.
With that giant smile stuck on his mask, it was tricky to decipher what the expression on his real face could be; but he really seemed to be deeply confused, if not… shocked.
The small lights in his eye-sockets darkened as he stared at her with always more intensity. That brat obviously knew very specific facts about what could only be background details that most of the common players would have most definitely overlooked without question; and yet, against all laws of common sense, not only had she first claimed that she had nothing to do with it at all, but now she even had the nerve to…
So this was how things were.
This all made so much more sense now. Of course nobody could be dumb enough to stay so oblivious for that long.
Just what kind of human could be so smart and observant that they would remember and point out details so minor that he would have not noticed them himself nearly as fast, and yet be so dense that she wouldn’t even acknowledge the most obvious detail that was lying right under her nose?
It was all so clear now. She already knew.
She already knew, and she had been playing dumb all along.
This was such evil brilliance. He had to hand it to that brat, she had managed to fool him for much longer than most had before her. Fortunately for him, the fatal mistake she had just made immediately exposed her lies.
Well, if this was the way things had started, then he could just as well play pretend along with her, huh. He would need to be more careful with his words and pay even closer attention to hers, but he could always try to squeeze some juicy answers out of her in the process.
“well, maybe. but… you must have at least tried at some point, right?” he asked warily. “you were about to start a very special run, at that. Weren’t you?”
She would eventually spill the beans. She had to. She did not necessarily have to be a completely rotten apple; or if she was, she seemed to be talkative enough that her words would betray her at some point. All he had to do was make her talk until the truth came out by itself.
Her innocent tone and stupid attitude had been amusing him at first, but now that he knew better, this was only making him sick.
What could be lying underneath? Part of him dreaded to find out.
“Well, yeah, I was about to play it since my friends kept trying to make me for the past few weeks. But somehow I ended up here before I could actually get started. So, nope, I technically never played the game.” She turned her eyes towards him and squinted them into a dark glare before continuing. “I wonder who’s at fault for dragging me away from my laptop.”
Both his eye-sockets twitched once, very furtively, both at the same time; but besides that, he had remained perfectly still for what felt like whole minutes now. And even then, his last gesture had been subtle and she reasoned that latex masks could probably not make that sort of motion, so she decided that it had to be her imagination.
“Hey, are you alright?” she called out, mockingly repeating the words he had previously used. “You almost look like you’re about to collapse or something.” She was not even hiding her nervous yet genuinely sarcastic chuckle. “Seriously, I’m the one who was kidnapped here. Are you gonna explain what’s going on or not?”
He paused, tensely running a white hand along his face and slowly burying his eyes into his fingers, as if he were trying to rub off some kind of nausea. The rubbing let out a little rattling sound that gracefully put the teenager even more at unease, as she unconsciously stepped back and bumped into the wall once again. Did latex make that sort of sound when you rubbed it…?
…And wait a minute. Did she just see his mask blink?
No. No-no-no. Not possible. That didn’t happen. Nope. Her fear and tension were just playing tricks on her again.
“n… never mind. let’s just… change the subject. how do you happen to know that much about that, uh, game, then? you sure seem to know an awful lot, for someone who allegedly never touched it.”
Her eyes suddenly widened in what would seem to be genuine surprise, but some discreet eerie sparks of anger twinkled in the corners of her flickering eyelids.
“Oh yeah, sure, that’s more like the kidnapper part to ask the questions and ignore mine,” she snapped exasperatedly, rolling her eyes in growing annoyance. “Are you kidding? You kidnap me and then all you do is start some random cosplay and lie in that couch and stuff, and now you’re just expecting me to talk about my hobbies like we’re chatting about the weather around a cup of tea!?”
She crossed her arms and huffed tensely. Her patience really started to reach its limit now, and that was saying something. But seriously, that was just starting to make way too much weirdness for her standards.
“Well, sorry to disappoint, but I’m not here for casual banter. I want an explanation, and I’m gonna get one.”
He sighed in anticipation, but locked his white lights on her and spied on each of her movements and expressions.
She didn’t even give him a glare, because she already knew that whatever he could say, she wouldn’t be contented with it. She didn’t even care whether or not he was still there watching her; if he wasn’t getting to the important part, then she would be.There was so much waiting could do. Once the right opportunity was found, it was time to get moving.
Starting with the first logical conclusion she could think of, she looked around and brandished her torchlight in various directions, sometimes gesturing some discreet lines as she was trying to figure out some sort of trajectory. Then she started to approach the desk again, lifting random blueprints and sheets before replacing them approximately in the same mess as before.When she seemed to fail to find whatever she had in mind, her gestures nevertheless resumed the cycle at a faster rate. She paced towards more locations in the room, in hopes of finding more things to investigate, which she would in turn search more thoroughly and always more frantically.
Well isn’t that the face of one big desperate girl there. The way she keeps digging her own grave is truly baffling. In a sort of mesmerizing way, almost. Can such mixture between powerful observation skills and incredibly advanced stupidity truly exist?
“what are you looking for?” he eventually asked with lassitude, but also with what seemed to be some little spark of curiosity and amusement.
No way this was needed to be reckoned with, this now really was pure stupidity. She wouldn’t find anything dangerous in there.
“The camera,” she answered immediately, not even turning her eyes towards him. “You can’t be a REAL kidnapper, you made way too many mistakes, and this act is just preposterous. So this is some kind of prank, right? There’s a camera somewhere in this room, recording us right now, and when you post it online we’ll become internet famous or something.”
…Excuse me?
“You know, unless you’re using an infrared camera, I don’t think anyone’s gonna see much on the images; but I’ll admit, keeping the lights out was a good way to better hide your equipment and put the right atmosphere, so maybe you’re not completely an amateur. What are you looking for, YouTube money? Well… I’m sure the result must be hilarious, so maybe you did make a safe bet with that. It’s pretty easy to make Undertale videos viral.”
Definitely-Not-Sans seemed to widen his eyes in genuine surprise, for once. Though he still was obviously amused by all her (indeed) pretty much hilarious gesticulations here and there, he just… The way she managed to make her performance sound so genuine despite the stream of sheer absurdities she was uttering was simply beyond him.
“…ok, wow. so you really are of the conspiracy theory type, huh?”
“Well, usually not that much, but it’s not like there were many other options left.” She had stopped her search for a few seconds, only to turn to him and let shine that big cocky smirk that was supposed to look sarcastic… but which really just looked pathetic.
“yeah. you’re right. t‘s not like there was a more obvious and simple option standing right in front of you.”
Now staring at the desk and the things lying messily around it, she opened her mouth to confirm in the most confident and cynical tone she could get— but she never found the time to actually say anything.
Something had caught her shoulder from her back.
The grip felt so strong and done.
“just kidding. it’s high time you get real, kid.”
That voice, that same voice that was coming seconds ago from the couch, was now sounding right from behind her back. She shivered and, as a reflex, looked over her shoulder—
But then she met in the dim light, hardly a foot away from her eyes, something that was definitely not a latex mask.
His left eye was still flickering an eerie blue, coming from the depths of his eye socket. The light magically stopped a split second later, but its striking impression remained.
His stuck and still giant smirk sliced his whole face in half and somehow seemed to keep enlarging itself in an eerily edgy forced grin.
It was real. Oh this was real. This was Sans and he was staring at her and he looked so done and everything she had said about him and the game he had heard it all and he was real. Her eye fell on that white hand still clutching her shoulder, its holes and its so fragile yet so strong phalanges and its iron grip on her flesh and the cold
She let out a sudden hysteric cry, but she could not hear it herself. She could hardly feel her shrieking vocal cords, even as they were shaking and struggling in an attempt to escape it, threatening to be torn apart any instant.
The entire room started to turn around her at an ever growing speed, while flickering lights and orange and red and dim yellow in pitch black and skulls and claws crawling on her back and the dark ceiling and low yells all resonated in unison like distorted laughs of…
…She passed out. Again.
Sans stared in bewilderment at what had suddenly become an inanimate body, which unceremoniously fell down on the tiled floor without any warning.He kept watching for a few seconds, as if he could have any hope that the disorganized mass of flesh would unexpectedly start moving again by itself… but he quickly came to terms with the fact that the human had, in fact, truly lost consciousness once again, under pretty much the same circumstances as the first time he had witnessed it.
He started to tremble in exasperation as his left hand ran upon his skull, slowly covering his eye-sockets as they were slowly darkening.
He tried to let out a reasonably controlled sigh so he could stay calm, but he could feel his patience run out entirely.
…seriously?
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