Sans and Glen sat on the edge of the cliff overlooking the city of Ebott. Jake sat nearby in stand-by mode; he'd used a lot of energy, and was taking the time to recharge.
"So I guess that makes me the last monster, huh?" Sans said, sounding unusually somber.
Glen shrugged and sat down with her legs hanging over the cliff. "Well, Vinta has skeletons. Mind you, they're people who agreed to become skeletons, making them technically undead and not living skeletons like you. Still, kindred spirits."
"Kindred spirits." Sans glanced at Glen. "Kinda like you."
"I'm more of a force of chaos." Glen said with a grin that faded after a few moments. "You all right?"
"Me? I'm always all right."
"Sans."
Sans looked at her and sighed. "Not really."
Glen put her hand on Sans's shoulder and pointed at the horizon, where the sun was just beginning to rise. They watched in silence as the sun rose over the city of Ebott in the distance, where thousands of people were getting up to prepare for their day, unaware of how close they came to destruction.
Glen wasn't sure what to say to Sans, or if she should say anything at all. What do you tell someone who's seen everyone they know die?
"Hey."
Glen looked at Sans to find him pointing at her dimensional analyzer. "You wanted to try that on someone, right?"
"Well, yeah, but ..."
"Lemme see."
Shrugging, Glen handed him the device and showed him how to adjust the knobs. After a few moments, he lined up the wave lengths and a code appeared on the screen.
"A-18." He said, holding it up so that Glen could see it. "You?"
She used the device on herself and showed him the result: J-27.
"So you really are from another reality." He said. "And you live there?"
"Ebott? Yeah. I mean, our Ebott's more homey and less bleeding edge technology, but yeah. Monsters have flourished; hell, some of you joined the Alliance and went out to space."
"And Papyrus?"
Glen smiled at the memory of her eccentric yet very dedicated friend. "Leader of the town guard. It's a mostly for-show position, but he's had the chance to rattle his bones at a few baddies. He also runs a little italian restaurant."
Sans chuckled. "Yeah, that sounds like him."
After a few moments, Sans turned to face Glen. "Why did you come here? I mean, I get shifting into this dimension was an accident, but you came to the Underground for a reason, right?"
Nodding, Glen fished around in her pockets for a few moments before producing the folded up drawing she'd found on the knife. "The flower's Asgore's son, Asriel. My Frisk had to leave him behind, and she was worried about him."
"Ah. I was wondering. Saw him here and there before." After a momentary pause, he said, "He's dead. Ours is, I mean; he tried to stop Chara and ... well."
"Well." Glen said with a sigh. "Apparently, Alphys created him accidentally by injecting flowers with liquid determination. I guess they still had some remnant trace of Asriel; enough to bring him partially back."
Sans frowned. It was a strange look for the normally grinning skeleton. "But he didn't have any of that ichor. I think whatever got Frisk had the same thing; determination without soul."
"Maybe it's different for plants." Glen said with a shrug. "That's why Alphys tested it on them. I dunno, Sans. This whole experience has given me a ton of questions and only a handful of answers. To top it all off, now I'm not even in the right universe ... dimension ... whatever."
"What are you gonna do about that, anyway?" Sans asked. "Are you stuck here?"
"Maybe, maybe not." She said. "Part of the reason I came down here was because of this."
She drew the Inverse Harmonius symbol in the dirt between her and Sans. "It's called the Inverse Harmonius. It's a piece of shattered reality that allows travel through dimensions; I saw a whole one once, but it had already chosen a host. Thing is, because it was a piece of true reality, it exists in every reality. It's something I've been looking for myself, to be honest, and Frisk told me she dreamed of a fragment of the rune before drawing this picture."
She handed him the other picture she'd received from Frisk. Sans looked at it for a moment before asking, "What's this star thing?"
"I dunno. Seems important, but honestly, I've no idea. Something else to ask Asriel, I suppose."
Glen rose to her feet and tried in vain to beat some of the dust out of her clothes. She still felt like she'd taken a ride in a tumble dryer, but she could feel her broken ribs were back where they were supposed to be. "First things first; I need to get back to my reality. Aside from the fact Toriel and the others are probably freaking out about me, I got a funny feeling that dark thing trying to attack Asriel in Frisk's picture has some connection to the ichor. Either way, I need to find the kid as soon as possible."
Glen had only taken a few steps when Sans asked, "Who did you lose?"
"Pardon?"
"You told Asgore you knew what it was like to lose everyone. Who did you lose?"
Glen stared at him for a moment before sighing and walking back over to him. Once again sitting down, she said, "Pretty much everyone I ever knew, to be honest. My friends, my family ... my wife."
"What happened to them?"
"To them?" Glen asked, "Nothing happened to them. It happened to me; I was thrown out of my own timestream. Normally, I'd just time-travel back to where I was; I know a few people who have the means, and in a pinch I might even be able to manage it myself, but my time stream's separate from ..."
She stopped. Sans's eye-sockets were glazed over. If Sans didn't understand it, she knew she wasn't saying it right.
Glen sighed and shook her head. "It's complicated. Long story short, all I can do is wait."
"How long?"
"Eighteen-hundred and thirty-seven years." Glen said, forcing a smile.
Sans stared at her for a moment before shaking his head and saying, "I'm guessing you're not human either then."
"Oh, I'm human." She said. "I'm as human as they come. I'm just ... something else too."
"Something else, huh?"
"I don't wanna bore you with details."
"Hey, if we're gonna be travelling together, I should know everything, yeah?"
Glen stared sharply at him. "What makes you think we're going to be travelling together?"
"Well, you were gonna ask me, and I was gonna say yes." he grinned at her. "You were gonna talk a bit more about your wife and what you lost in an effort to build some empathy, then you were gonna suggest that I go with you, probably banking on the fact that if nothing else, I could go to your Ebott and be among my own kind."
Glen stared at him for a few moments before letting out a chuckle. "I never could hide anything from you."
"Well, what can I say?" He said, shrugging. "You were gonna be very persuasive."
They shared a laugh at this. Glen rose to her feet again and stretched.
"Right." She said after the last of her vertebrae popped into place. "Okay; first step is getting back to J-27. There should be an imprint of where I first shifted in the fabric of reality, so we'll need to scan the tunnel to find it. We might be able to reopen the original rift between realities and-"
She stopped and turned around; she'd thought Sans was following her, but he was still sitting at the cliff, his finger-bones poking at the dirt beside him. She approached and realized he was tracing the Inverse Harmonius.
"Uh, Sans?" She asked.
"Gimmie a sec." He continued tracing the rune for a few moments before moving the and over a few of the lines, leaving a little less than half of the total rune.
"If this were the, uh ..."
"Inverse Harmonius." Glen supplied, crouching down beside him.
"Right. What would it look like? Physically, I mean."
"A glowing rune, hovering vertically in the air." Glen told him, "Anyone looking at it would think it was facing them."
Sans looked her in the eyes. "I think I might be able to help you. C'mon; we need to get back to Snowdin."
"All right!" Glen said, helping Sans to his feet. She took a few steps toward the entrance to the Underground, only for Sans to shake his head.
"I got a faster way." He said, holding out his hand. "That is, if you trust a bone-head like me."
"Takes one to trust one." She said, taking his hand in hers. "Jake?"
Jake jumped to his feet with a loud bark before turning toward them. He quickly trotted over to them and placed one metal paw over their hands.
"All right." Sans said, nodding. "Better prepare yourself; it can get kinda weird."
"Anything I should worry about."
"Nah. Hey, you don't really need your skin, right?"
"Oh, very f-"
With a loud pop, the Dreamer, the skeleton, and the robot dog vanished from the cliff, leaving nothing but tracings and footsteps in the dust.
Napstablook stared at the rising sun in awe, spectral tears shining as they fell from his eyes. "It's ... it's so beautiful."
"It sure is, Blookie." Mettaton said. The form Alphys built for him made it through the crash of his mech body, thanks to the converted lifepod Glen crammed into the torso as a sort of cockpit control center. It escaped from the explosion of the secondary core relatively intact. Unfortunately, Glen had been too pressed for time building Mechaton to do more than basic repairs on Mettaton's body. His power reserves wouldn't last much longer ... but he couldn't bring himself to tell his dear cousin as much.
"I always wondered ..." Napstablook said. "I mean, we heard stories about the surface, but I never imagined it'd be so beautiful."
After a few moments, Napstablook rolled over to look at Mettaton. "Hey ... Mettaton ... what do we do now?"
Mettaton gave Napstablook his best smile. "Whatever we want, darling. For now, though, let's just enjoy the sun."
"Okay ..."
Mettaton closed his eyes. There wasn't much power left; he'd last a few minutes, ten at most. Sure, someone could come and power him up again, but he hated leaving Napstablook alone.
"Listen, Blookie ..." Mettaton said, only to stop as he heard a high-pitched sound he couldn't identify. He opened his eyes to see a small shuttle flying over their clearing, blocking the sun with its metal bulkhead.
"Mettaton?" Napstablook said, sounding worried.
"Easy, darling; there's no reason to assume the worst." Even so, Mettaton couldn't help but be worried as the shuttle slowly landed beside them. "Still, we might as well be careful; go hide and I'll let you know when it's safe."
"Okay." Still looking nervous, Napstablook quickly flew behind one of the nearby pine trees. Mettaton remained lying on the ground, no longer having enough power to stand.
Once it was on the ground, the back hatch of the shuttle slid open, revealing a humanoid figure in what appeared to be a spacesuit, her face obscured by a mask. She glanced at the wreckage for a few moments before shaking her head and turning her attention to Mettaton.
"Hey there." She said, waving a gloved hand. "Can you hear me? Are you the pilot of ... whatever that was?"
Before Mettaton could respond, the woman pulled a small device from her side. The device emanated a blue field that swept across Mettaton's body a few times before ceasing.
"From the scan and the state of that thing, I'm guessing yes. Strange; the complexity in your storage is way more complicated than I expected in a purely artificial construct. If I didn't know any better ... are you an AI?"
Again, Mettaton tried to speak, only to be interrupted. The woman's little device started beeping loudly.
"Oh my ... no wonder you're so quiet, your power reserves are almost gone! Hold on a sec."
The helmeted woman disappeared into her shuttle for a moment before returning with a couple of glowing blue objects. She knelt by Mettaton, slid one of the objects into the back of her glove, and pressed the powered glove against Mettaton's core. Power flooded through Mettaton's system, more than enough to keep him active for hours, days even.
"Oh, thank you, darling." Mettaton said, sitting up. "I confess, I'm a bit embarrassed to be seen like this."
"Oh, don't you worry about that." The woman said, patting Mettaton on the shoulder. "I can fix you right up in no time. Still, I have to ask, what happened here?"
Mettaton thought about the Underground, the fallen child, and ultimately the fight with Asgore. "That, my dear lady, will take some time."
"It always does." She said with a tone of resignation. "Well, don't worry; we'll have plenty of time while I get you fixed up. Are you alone?"
"Not quite." Mettaton said. "Hey, Blookie?"
Napstablook floated cautiously out from behind the pine tree. The woman stared at the ghost as he slowly floated toward her.
"Um ... hi." Napstablook said, his ghostly cheeks tinged red.
"Hey there." The woman said, sounding more amused than anything. "Your friend here's not just a robot, is he?"
"No. Mettaton's my cousin."
"Mettaton?" The woman repeated. "Ha! I like that! And you are?"
"N-napstablook. We're ghosts."
"It's a bit complicated, darling." Mettaton said, waving a hand dismissively. "Plenty of time to tell you all about it later, though. Perhaps even sing it; I'm quite the singer, you know, darling."
The woman laughed. "I bet you are. I'm ... oh, hang on."
She pulled off her helmet to reveal a pretty blue-skinned face. While she had no hair, flat scalp crests that swept over the top and across the sides of her head, coming to a rough point an inch or so from the back of her skull.
Mettaton was instantly intrigued. "Oh, my; you aren't human, are you , darling."
"Asari, actually." She said, giving Mettaton a smile that was every bit as dazzling as his own as she extended a hand that bore a very familiar tattoo. "Glenai Adammans, intergalactic tinker, fixer, and general trouble-maker. Call me Glen."
"Glen." Mettaton repeated, trading a knowing glance with Napstablook, who surprised Mettaton by letting out a giggle. Chuckling himself, Mettaton said, "Well, if you don't mind our company, we'd be delighted to tell you our story ... and perhaps hear yours in turn, darling?"
"Great!" Glenai said, beaming. "It'll be nice to have some company for a change. I tell ya, the universe is way too big to be going it alone, and I've been at it for … two-hundred years? Three-hundred? Bah, I'm rambling; come aboard, and we'll get you settled in."
"Uh, Miss Glen?" Napstablook asked, "We have a dog. He's a bit big, but-"
"Well, bring him along! Plenty of room inside; my shuttle's a lot bigger on the inside."
"It is?"
"Yeah. It's a long story; it all started when I saw this weird blue police box on the sidewalk of Thessia. C'mon, I'll tell you all about it."
Napstablook and Glenai entered the ship as Mettaton whistled for Endogeny. The massive canine came running moments later, passing Mettaton and quickly climbing up the ramp to the cry of, "Oh, wow. You are a big boy … girl … dog, aren't you?"
Mettaton stared at the surface world he'd only just come to know. The knowledge that it was just the tip of the iceberg, that there was an entire universe out there waiting brought a smile to his face. After all, a bigger universe meant so many more fans awaiting the latest and greatest superstar, fresh from the Underground.
"Mettaton?" Napstablook called, "Mettaton, you have to see this! It's incredible!"
"Be right there, Blookie." With a final glance at the morning sky, Mettaton climbed the ramp that he knew would lead him, Napstablook, and their new friend Glen into a future even brighter than the sun.
