Checking his watch for the fifth time in five minutes, Nathan looks around the lot by his dorm for his friend. He was starting to get impatient. Checking over himself again, his bright, fire red hair is set in its natural messed style. He traces his deep green eyes over his clothes. His outfit of a pair a black cargo pants, white t-shirt and dark blue hoodie is freshly washed and clean. He is wearing a pair of black fingerless gloves with a white heart outline on each and a pair of black combat boots.
Most would see him as either a goth or something like that, but in reality he just liked black. Most would also think that Nathan would be one of those loners that doesn’t talk to anyone, but really, he was rather popular in his college. He was taking psychology and medical science classes with his hopes of being a health care aid. He is also a pretty good athlete, having won a hometown martial arts tournament when he was younger.
But aside form all this he was one thing above all else. A fan of Undertale. And by a fan, we mean an super fan. He has played through the game itself nearly a hundred times, gotten plenty of merchandise like shirts, figurines, and fan made comics. Also he was an avid reader and watcher of online Undertale AUs comics and shows, like Glitchtale and Ask Frisk and Co.
He looks away from his outfit as he hears a car entering the lot. Looking around he finds his friend Sam come driving in with his pickup. Nathan crosses his arms as Sam drives up to him.
“Your late.” Nathan says annoyed. Sam raises his arms in defence as his friend gets in.
“Dude, chill. I was five minutes late. Remember the con doesn’t open its doors for another hour or so.” Sam says back, driving out of the lot with his new passenger. Nathen sighs.
“Yeah, I know. Sorry. I am just super excited to go. This is my first gaming convention and I really wanna meet Toby Fox.” Nathan says with excited. Sam just laughs as they get close to the convention hall nearby.
“Yeah. I know how crazy you are about Undertale related stuff. But you should try to reign it in otherwise you might embarrass yourself.” Sam says, looking for a good parking spot.
Once the duo finds a good spot, they walk out to the entrace hall and wait, a few gamers already there.
“So why couldn’t your brother come again?” Nathan asks his friend. Sam shrugs.
“Jason got sick with something. We think the flu, but considering all the bugs going around, he may have gotten something worse. For now he is staying home and mum and dad are taking care of him.” Sam says, and after a few minutes the doors to the building opens.
Going in, Sam and Nathan join a crowd going to the main floor where some new games are being unveiled. They spend about an hour there before moving on and finding the next area which had a large amount of merchant booths with at least one booth for every major gaming series each. CoD, Battlefield, Halo, Fallout, XCom, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Even some for some older games like Left 4 Dead and Warframe.
Going past the major company area, Nathan finds himself in the area sectioned off for Indie and Fan made games. FNAF and its spin-offs, Shovel Knight, LISA, Pokemon Uranium, Pixelmon and TABS just to name a few. But Nathan was looking for one booth for its specific items.
After wandering the sea of gaming booth he finds what he is looking for. He finds what looks like a guard station from Undertale, but it is full of things from the fandom. Looking around the booth he finds plenty of things he would love to get for his collections, but the only problem is there was no one there. Checking in front of the booth there was a sign that said ‘be back in five’.
Nathan sighs and takes out his phone to watch some videos to pass the time. After a few minutes he feels a tapping on his shoulder from behind. Turning, he sees some guy with white hair and blue eyes, a blue winter jacket overtop a white t-shirt and black shorts with a white line down the sides, pink slippers and dog tags. All in all, he looked like a human version of Sans the skeleton. Odd, Nathan didn’t see anyone walking up.
“Hey there bud, don’t ya know how to greet someone?” He says raising his hand. Nathan can see where this is going and smirks. Shaking his hand, he get rewarded by the sound of a fart. They both laugh a little at the gag.
“Hehe, the old whoopie cushion in the hand trick. Never gets old.” Nathan says to him with a smile.
“You said it bud. So what are you buying from my humble shop?” The human Sans asks, leaning onto the counter. Nathan then trails his eyes over the booth and finds several pieces that would do well in his collection.
“I’ll take the Delta!Sans Tough Gloves, the Xtale Sans scarf, the mini Gaster Blasters, Betty’s Kumu hair clip, the Chaos Sabres and the book on monster/soul magic and heart locket please.” he says, pointing to each item in turn. Sans nods and grabs the items and brings them to the front of the booth for Nathan.
“Is that all?” Nathan searches the shelves of the guard post and his eyes settled on one item he looked over. On one of the shelves are what look like a bunch of hearts in their own separate jars. There are ten in total, each being their own color. Red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple, white and black. The last one however, was different. It was changing between the colours of the others at steady intervals, like the color was changing with a heartbeat. Nathan points to it.
“How about the SOUL?” Sans looks to it then gets a slightly worried expression.
“Look bud, that thing is pretty expensive, so I’ll make you a deal. If you can answer three of my questions about the Undertale multiverse, I’ll let you have it for half off. You will still be paying for the other things in full though.” He says, grabbing the soul in a jar and placing it on the counter. Nathan smirks at the man.
“Bring it on.” he says, as said song was beginning to play through his headphones. Sans gives a very good impression of the skeletons smile.
“Ok, first question. In Glitchtale, how was the Bête Noire or Betty created?” He questions.
“Many centuries ago, the wielders of the Determination and Bravery were having an argument on if they should release the monsters still trapped under Mount Ebbot. Determination wanted to release them while Bravery wanted to reinforce the barrier. Their fight eventually lead to a dual between the siblings and Determination won. Bravery was scared after that, losing her trait and running away for a time. While she was away she found a spell that inverted her very trait, turning from using a soul of Bravery to one of Fear. She returned, Determination welcoming her back. Some time later, Bravery and Determination got into another argument and Bravery attacked him. Determination was forced to fight back against his mad sibling. While they fought, their younger sibling was forced to run, but Bravery wouldn’t have it and attacked her. After temporarily knocking Determination down, she turned her attention on their sibling and killed her. Determination lost his trait in the shock of seeing their little sibling dead and Bravery struck him down. Bravery was soon beset by the side effect of inverting her soul and used her magic to turn the corpse of their younger sibling into something else. The Bête Noire. The SOUL of Fear.”
Sans looks to him and smile at the story answer. “Correct, but you could have just said that she was made from a foolish wizards spite.” He says with a smirk.
“Where is the fun in that?” Nathan says back with his own smirk.
“Fair enough bud, next question. In Underverse, why is Cross stealing things from other universes?”
“Cross came from a Genocide timeline without reset possibility. During his final battle with Chara, their souls merged and Chara became trapped in Cross’s head. Cross goes to other universes and steals certain aspects to rebuild his world after being told by Ink that he could not bring his universe back.” He answers without problem. Sans nods after checking his phone for a second.
“Correct again. Now for your last question.” Sans suddenly loses his smile and looks to Nathan with a serious expression not unlike the skeletons eyeless glare.
“Who is W.D Gaster?”
That caught Nathan off guard and he had to think and remove fan theories from canon material.
“Well, canonically he is the royal scientist before Alphys. He was the one in charge of the creation of the Core which provides the Underground with magical power. While working on it one day he ‘fell’ into his own creation and was shattered across time and space. You can only find him in there game behind the grey door in Waterfall.” Nathan pauses and thinks again, Sans not reacting.
“There are a lot of theories about who Gaster was and is right now. Most say he is in some way connected to the skeleton brothers Sans and Papyrus. Some say he is their father, some their other brother, others their creator. After his incident, most agree he gained the ability to look into the other timelines and that he was trapped as a type of ghost in between the timelines.”
Sans closes his eyes for a moment, seemingly thinking before his goofy smile breaks his face again. “Nice job Bud.” He says before going to the register on the left of the booth and ringing up the items.
“Ok, all together that is about $650 dollars.” He says, and Nathan has to do a double take before remembering that the soul itself was apparently very expensive. Good thing he just got paid from work and that his parents send some money for his birthday last week. Taking out a few hundreds and a fifty and hands it to Sans before putting the gloves, scarf, locket and clip on before putting the book and soul in my pockets in my coat and holding the sabres in hand.
“Well, nice meeting you bud! Enjoy your trip and good luck!” Sans says as Nathan begins to walk away.
Nathan turns back and finds Sans no longer at the booth. Suddenly, Nathan get a pain in his chest. He lets go of the sabres only for them to disappear and then for the him to hear the sound of entering a fight from the game. His vision begins to blur and then feels like he is falling, losing his consciousness with the sound of a soul breaking.