The Everyday Papyrus was sitting on the ground away from them looking quite sorry. Pinkie let Sans and Gyft have Toriel’s tired form so she could make her way over to him. She bent down and looked up him with a bit of worry.
“Are you alright Pappy?” The now upset Pinkie asked of the sad looking skeleton man who turned his head to meet her eyes before sighing.
“I’m such a loser and Undyne is going to be so disappointed in me.” The Dismal Papyrus answered.
“Hey, Pappy… can you please pick me up. I want to give you a big hug!” Nobody got sad when Pinkie was around, no exceptions except for completely evil entities which The Lawful Good Papyrus most certainly wasn’t. The skeleton did as asked and Pinkie got her hooves around him and she snuggled the adorable silly bone guy. “By the way, you’ve captured me now.”
“What! I um… wow… you let me capture you even though I ‘The Mighty Papyrus’ stopped attacking you and your close friend entirely, I don’t exactly think this is how it’s supposed to work. You see you are supposed to go on by me now that you’ve won.” The Pony Capturing Papyrus was a little more than confused about this turn of events as Pinkie snuggled up against him; he tried to let her go only for her to cling to him. He had to admit that even if she weren’t as great as being him, she was really nice and cuddly.
“And I didn’t exactly think a nice guy like you could feel so warm, we’re not in any hurry Pappy.” If Pinkie was going to get silly about this, then things were about to get ridiculous. The pony followed this up by whispering at the air. “Oh like things aren’t ridiculous enough already as it is? I can make it worse and push things into even more ridiculous territories you know!”
“Wowie, we haven’t even had a date and I’m already in the friend zone! Well I give you permission to pass on through. Once we let your friend get some rest that is, she looks rather exhausted! Come on, we can have that date at the house where I live while letting her rest! Sans and me are the Font family and our home is where we’ll be going!” Managing to get Pinkie to let go of him, The Obviously Last Named Papyrus Font started move awkwardly into the air defying gravity as he ran along back towards town. “Nyeh heh heh heh!”
“San’s, you’re brother is so cool.” Pinkie liked him and his reality warping abilities, because she didn’t think it was normal for a skeleton to walk or run on air like that.
“Yeah, he better stay ‘frosty’. He just wouldn’t be the same if he were actually hot blooded about hurting others, as I said before he’s not really a violent guy and just wants to be useful and have friends. So, Pie Face, are you making dinner for us tonight? I would, but I’m too lazy and I usually eat out at Grillby’s, Papyrus only barely knows how to make a passable spaghetti meal. That should tell you a lot about his cooking talent and how we both live.” As Sans spoke, he and Gyftrot were both carrying Toriel between them as they headed back for Snowdin. “You know, he wouldn’t have seriously hurt either of you.”
“Yes, but it was still a serious situation to us, it let us both know what’s in store for the future. My Pinkie Sense isn’t exactly working at the moment, but when it was it told me when to look out for danger or misfortune. Here in the Underworld, I have to actually think about things and focus on what’s important. Like how Tori’s going to be in a lot of danger from now on because of me and I really don’t like that as I love her as friend and possibly more.” Pinkie didn’t like the idea of the goat lady’s heart breaking to keep her safe. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt because of me, I like making others happy and it’s kind of my one mission in life you know. Tori needed a lot of cheering up to come this far and she was so afraid of losing me that she pushed herself a bit too hard there and now she’s out ‘cold’.”
“Hey, you’re looking a bit ‘blue’ yourself there Pink, who’s going to make sure you’re happy as well? Maybe I can cheer you up; since you’ve cheered up a close friend of mine and my brother. What I just saw was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before down here, though everyone’s favorite goat mom seeing ‘red’ was also a new one on me.” Sans looked towards the ceiling while trying to think of a joke that’ll swing Pinkie’s dampened mood around. “I’m sorry I forgot to say ‘yellow’ to you two as you were leaving town, but I was busy at the time. I’m feeling like ‘violet’ you down somehow. So ‘orange’ you going to take care of dinner or what? Oh we’re here so ‘indigo’.”
“Did you just use all seven colors of the rainbow? I really like rainbows you know, but I guess monsters of the Underworld haven’t seen one in a very long time.” A giggle escaped Pinkie’s lips followed shortly by a snort as she entered the domicile of the Font family. “Of course I’ll do some cooking for you two. I just need you to get some ingredients together for me and I’ll bake lasagna for five.”
“I know this may be asking a bit much of you, but could you also teach Papyrus about dating and how to cook while you’re at it? I worry about him sometimes, his friend Undyne isn’t exactly a good cook and her house catches on fire every other day. She’s also not the best monster to go to for dating advice.” Sans was actually willing to help out Pinkie, since his brother did just hurt his friend’s souls a bit and they didn’t do much too really deserve that. “So what kind of ingredients do you need? I can make a grocery run if we don’t have the necessary stuff.”
-
“I’ve heard the name mentioned once or twice before Sans, but who exactly is Undyne?” They were now in the kitchen where Pinkie was currently wearing a chef toque and teaching The Lethal Chef Papyrus how to make lasagna. In the living room a short walk away was Toriel snoozing on the couch while Gyftrot was laid out on the floor in comfort. “Papyrus, you focus on spreading the sauce like I taught you. Yes, that’s right, nice and even.”
Pinkie was making sure to give The Tall Cook Papyrus a step by step knowledge of how to make lasagna and was even showing him everything she was doing slowly, just to make sure he understood what she was doing and why.
“How should I explain Undyne? She’s not exactly of the friendliest sort. If there was anyone who gave two hundred percent to a job, then it’d be her. You’re definitely going to run into her as she’s the current head of the royal guard and a little too gung-ho about her job. She’s leader of the royal guards for a reason and I have plenty of reason to doubt that she’d care little if the queen told her not to attack you. She’s not exactly going to be supportive of your friendly ideals and she responds to violence and justice better than anything else.” Sans had already noted that Toriel had quite a lot of monsters around here that were willing to support her and Pinkie, it was almost to the point that those monsters were ready to fight a civil war for a peaceful solution to the entire Underworld problem. “She’s been training my brother for the royal guard, but the only reason why he isn’t one is because he doesn’t have a killer instinct. Our cousin Spinal had that, but he accidentally got lost in an alternate dimension and we have no idea what became of him.”
“He never taught me to do a skele-port and Sans does it all the time!” The Jealous of His Brother Papyrus stated. “I Papyrus deserve to be capable of Skele-porting too!”
“Why didn’t you ever ask me how it was done? I would have told you, its quarter circle back and kick.” Sans saw a sudden look of pure joy showed up on Papyrus’s face and he smiled. If he had known earlier that Papyrus was sore about that, then he would have told him sooner. Ah well, he was also too lazy to tell Papyrus until now, he was going to have so much fun watching his brother learn how to control where he skele-ported to. He was already plotting the positions of the banana cream pies.
“Oh my goodness, I always thought it was quarter circle forward and punch, but all that made me do was launch large balls of spirit energy. I could never figure out what I was doing wrong.” The Button Input Challenged Papyrus looked quite flummoxed with himself.
“The absurdity of the direction this conversation has just taken is not lost on me at all and I wish I can join in with my own joke related to button combinations. I wish I could, but I’m not Button Mash and fighting games with more than two buttons are hard to play with hooves. I apologize profusely to all of you out there who expect me to say something funny in this situation.” The pony in the kitchen stated flatly with an annoyed look on her face as she stared up at the air, Pinkie was just now putting the lasagna in the oven as it slowly warmed up. “Anyway, aside from the lasagna, do you guys want a cake or a pie for dessert? I think I might even be able to replicate Toriel’s super tasty cinnamon butterscotch pie recipe, but I’m not sure if I’ll get it right.”
-
Toriel’s nose scrunched up slightly and she started slowly rise up as a strong scent of food filled her nostrils. It smelled good whatever it was; opening her eyes she noticed she was on a couch and her green robe was a bit rumpled up.
“Papyrus you really need to stop jumping through windows all the time because it’s a ‘pane’ in the ‘glass’ to repair them.” It sounded like Sans was still spewing puns as often as he ever was. “Oh hey, you’re awake. Thanks for repairing the restaurants window for me earlier Tori, I also heard I missed seeing Flame Face. That guy sure knows how to give someone a ‘bright’ smile.”
“Well of course he does, his head is on fire!” The Shouting Papyrus shouted with exclamation in redundancy!
“Dinner’s almost done, now we need to let it cool for five minutes and then I’ll dish out a bit of lasagna for each of us!” Walking into the room Pinkie turned to Toriel and immediately hopped on to her lap after seeing she was awake. The goat ladies fingers were immediately on Pinkie’s ears causing her to visible melt into the goat ladies lap. “So what do we talk about until then?”
“What about how if you ask nicely, the king just might let you through the barrier without a problem?” The Optimistic Papyrus responded, wanting to believe the best in everyone to the point it was bordering on blind faith.
“How about we don’t after the last six children I let past me that just wanted to go home and ended up having their souls ripped out. Pinkie’s an adult and I think he’s more than made it clear he’s willing to have her captured for the same reason as what happened to them, if not that then for some horrible experiments I’ve only barely heard of.” It looked like Toriel’s words made Papyrus take on a thoughtful look. “I wouldn’t have minded if we were at war and they were all adult souls killed in battle, but we’re not and they are not. We lost horribly sure, but we’re currently in a time of peace and the ones he’s taking are as innocent as Pinkie is. There was once a time of peace when we were even coexisting with the humans, I wish the war never happened in the first place.”
“I am sorely sorry for bringing up that sore topic of debate.” The Unhappy Papyrus seemed muted now; he didn’t seem so sure of himself or what he was doing anymore.
“To think this was all caused by the adoption of an orphan. All it took for them to incite hatred against us was that one act of kindness.” Sans smile wasn’t there anymore and Toriel didn’t answer his words as he seemed to be looking towards her. “It was a good deed, but good intentions lead to a lot of horrors none of us were prepared for.”
Toriel sat there looking at the floor, Sans seemed more familiar to her than just a voice on the other side of a door. He obviously knew about her adoption of the human child and the events that led to the death of her own child by birth. It didn’t sound like he could have done anything to have stopped what happened either. That human child had been filled with so much anger at his own race and so much love for the monsters that took him in.
“Why is it that when I look at you, I get this sense of familiarity that’s not associated with your name?” The mood was quickly dropping into depressing territories for Toriel and Sans. It was also beginning to bum even the positive Pinkie and Papyrus out; Gyftrot continued to listen on in a neutral fashion.
“I don’t know, but it’s the same for me and I’m talking outside all of the conversations we shared through the door.” Sans could have been hiding something behind his smiling facade, but he was left to his secrecy when Pinkie abruptly stood up.
“Okay, can we get this mood back on track with something a little more upbeat; I have some tasty lasagna to give out!” Pinkie hopped to her hooves and made her way to the kitchen. “Come on Pappy; let me show you how to serve this meal you helped to make!”
-
Four monsters and a pony sat around eating the wonderful lasagna made by Pinkie Pie and The Great Assistant Papyrus, she brought them out of their funks readily enough with just a taste of a perfect home cooked meal.
“Just think, by the time we’re done eating the pie should be cooled off!” Pinkie’s attitude really wasn’t strained as she preferred to think in the here and now instead of the past, she couldn’t do anything about what has already happened. Gyft was a hard read, but he too was a little bummed out by all this talking about the past and she almost hadn’t noticed it. She needed all these sad sacks to focus on the present and to stop living in the past. “Hey Pappy, do you want to learn more about dating?”
“Oh this should be interesting.” Sans couldn’t frown, his face was now in its perpetual smile once more thanks to the food.
“Of this I actually have no doubt.” Toriel wondered what kind of uplifting shenanigans Pinkie was going to cause this time, she crunched a softened cucumber in her baked noodle meal. It was apparent that Pinkie wasn’t just good at baking sugary goods, but she’d see whether Pinkie’s pie was actually tasty or not. After thinking that, the goat lady sported a huge blush on her face for the next few minutes.
“Of course I would want to learn how to go about dating, so I can have many friends!” The Wrong Idea Papyrus answered with a childishness not befitting his apparent age.
“Well the first is that you have to know the several kinds of dating, there’s calendar dates, carbon dating, play dates, date trees or the one you need to know about which is called actual dating. Dating is more about romance than it is about friendship.” Pinkie started off before she took some lasagna into her mouth, after she swallowed the morsel she continued. “You make friends by actually talking to people until you get to know them better, you know what being friendly is all about considering you’re really friendly yourself. To make friends you have to be a friend, but if the other person doesn’t agree then they aren’t very nice at all. Are you with me so far Pappy?”
“I do believe so, so dating isn’t about making friends?” The Suddenly Shy Papyrus was looking a bit thoughtful.
“Not always, it’s usually about deepening an already existing relationship. You can make friends outside of dating you know. So what kind of sexuality do you have?” Well that wasn’t a loaded question from Pinkie at all. The pony was suddenly aggravated at the air. “Hey, you be quiet! I’m trying to help my new friend here, he’s actually really sweet guy now that I’ve gotten to know him and I don’t need you causing any trouble by implying its trouble that I asked that!”
“Who is she talking to Sans?” The Whispering Papyrus whispered to his brother.
“Oh, just something only I and her can see apparently.” It was obvious that Sans could also read between the lines, like most comedians and individuals of great humor could.
“Right then, ahem, ‘The Humble Papyrus’ shall ask. What is that exactly?” As if that wasn’t an even more loaded one coming from the The Great Friend Papyrus.
Sans and Pinkie let out a chuckle and shook their heads for whatever reason while looking upwards.
“Right well… sexuality determines the kind of person or being you would like to date as a personal preference, especially in a romantic sense. It tells you the kind of individual you more easily want to get closer to that isn’t family.” As long as it doesn’t tank the T rating, Pinkie could continue on with this topic of discussion. “I’m not really that bad am I? Anyway, ignoring my griping at the nameless entity that absolutely no one cares about at the moment in any capacity, there are several types of sexuality. For instance the usual sexuality most start out as having at a young age, asexuality. Most who are asexual can be romantic, but can’t rise to the challenge like bread dough. Then there’s the sexuality usually termed straight or heterosexual, which involves a male and female gendered being of the same species.”
“Can I have an example of this? I think I understand the meaning of Asexual, it sounds boring and not for the likes of Papyrus.” The question was quite sudden, but The Intrigued Papyrus would get his answer.
“Me and my husband were a heterosexual or straight couple, I was a nanny and he was a buck.” For the life of her, Toriel couldn’t understand why Pinkie had a strange look on her face.
“I didn’t think your husband was that cheap, but I’d buy that!” Sans earned a bit of laughter all around, except from a confused Papyrus.
“Tori I know you dislike you’re husband, but did you have to imply that you just used him like that? Well provided we survive to get me back home intact, I think you’d be a great nanny for the Cake’s foals!” Okay this is getting a bit too silly Pinkie, get back on topic or else. “Fine, be a spoilsport. See if we crack any more jokes for you this chapter why don’t we. Moving on there is gay sexuality; we apparently can’t legally call it by its name since there haven’t been any humans in this story so therefore I wouldn’t even feasibly know the word homosexual, given that the prefix doesn’t exist in the pony language. So ponies like to call it filly fooling and colt cuddling. It’s a sexuality based on sharing stronger feelings for someone of the same gender as you. Like me and Tori!”
“Oh like me when I watch Mettaton, he is so awesome!” Yeah, there’s no getting any of deposit back on the words for this chapter now after The Story Breaker Papyrus got this inanity started.
“Then there’s Pan and Omni Sexuality. I’m personally a pony of pansexual preferences. Being pansexual means that gender or species doesn’t matter to me, I will likely be able to fall in love with anyone if I can form an emotional attachment with them like how I like you for being so lovable.” Pinkie moved over to The Embarrassed Papyrus and rubbed up against him.
“I am very sorry, but I can’t say I feel the same way. I can’t match the burning passion you have for me Pinkie, even then you’re dating prowess overwhelms me! I would just prefer for us to be friends.” The pink pony nodded to The Ever Friend Zoned Papyrus.
“That leads to omni-sexual, the likelihood that you’d have a romantic interest for multiple people at the same time. That concludes the lessons on sexuality and as I told the guy upstairs earlier, I can drive this to being even more ridiculous.” More ridiculous than the conversation Pinkie just finished off? Perish the thought of this ever actually happening. “Thank you for letting me down gently Papyrus, it’s better to tell someone that you don’t feel the same as soon as you possibly know of their feelings and your own in conjunction. Though those feelings can change, you don’t want to lead anyone on thinking that there could be something between you more than friendship if you can’t bring yourself to feel the same way. This was a nice date, thank you very much.”
“I’m now thinking that my brother is actually ‘gay’ and I’m okay with that as long as it makes him ‘happy’.” Sans was the best and only brother Papyrus has ever had. “Yeah, I’m a real nice guy, but if this all leads to a bad ending I will come up there after you and dunk you.”
“Well this has been an interesting evening, if we can really call it that down here.” Toriel had a large drop of sweat sliding down the side of her head.
“Huh, so I can still be friends with girls even if I don’t feel any kind of attraction for them?” The Understanding Papyrus got two flat looks from the pony and the goat lady.
“Well of course you can, you can be friends with anyone!” I think everyone can understand Pinkie’s exasperation quite clearly.
“Oh goody, the friendship power of Papyrus has increased by oodles in the last few minutes! Now if only I can get Sans to stop with the pranks on me from me across time and space, then things would be just perfect around here!” Yep, the exact day Papyrus stops getting pranks from his brother is the time that space collapses in on itself.
“Is everyone done with the lasagna? The pie is probably cooled off by now.” After she said this, Pinkie stuffed the last bit of her deep dish veggie lasagna into her mouth and chewed. She was bound to be ready for dessert now; given how much she can eat. “Do you honestly think I can spread as much happiness as I do on a normal diet? My friends never bothered to figure out how hyperactive my metabolism actually is, but I need all the energy I can get you know!”
“Pinkie, please stop yelling at the ceiling and go get the pie.” Toriel couldn’t help but laugh at Pinkie’s antics looking at it the way she did. If she didn’t know Pinkie was actually responding to someone then she would have thought the pony as being completely bonkers.
-
“I’m not actually in this story.” A cartoon bobcat wearing what appears to be a police uniform stated quite clearly, despite the very irony of the statement.
-
“Well here’s the pie. I hope I got it right, I guess I’ll just have to taste it and see.” Setting the pie down on the table the monsters were sitting around and taking up her seat next to the goat lady, Pinkie was about to slice into the pie when Toriel gently took the knife from her and started doing it herself.
Five slices of pie were divvied up by Toriel and she gave a soft smile to Pinkie before trying her slice, the other monsters followed and Pinkie waited for the results before trying her own.
“So how does it taste Tori?” She was hopeful that her skills in baking were good enough to meet up with expectations of the dessert in question.
“It’s good, but it’s not quite my cinnamon butterscotch pie Pinkie. I’m surprised you even managed to get this far having tasted it a few times between two pies.” Toriel smiled at Pinkie’s expression as the pony tasted her slice of pie.
“Yeah, it’s definitely missing something.” Pinkie said after a minute of rolling around pie chunks on her tongue. Being a connoisseur of baked goods, this disturbed her slightly. Quickly forgetting the pie that was only slightly off in flavor, but still very much palatable, she turned to Sans. “So your family name is Font?”
-
"Meow?" The demonic fruit cake cat gave off questioningly.
"Stop looking into other dimensions Pal, I got your dead spaghetti monster all warmed up!" The ex-villain who was once the Mane-iac was currently feeding her cat in an entirely different story altogether.
-
“I ‘Font’ you to know that is correct, I’m Sans Font and this is my brother with Font named Papyrus. I believe we’ve previously met.” That smug smiling skeleton Sans verbally let out, then he visibly winked at the air before he started drinking from a bottle of ketchup. “Yeah this stuff is smooth.”
Pinkie wasn’t about to comment on Sans ketchup drinking when she personally was a hot sauce drinker who ate cupcakes between ingesting the spicy stuff. Toriel might have, but she preferred to just sip at the tea she and Papyrus were having. At least The Tea Maker Papyrus wasn’t bad at making a good cup of royalty fodder.
“So are we actually going to talk about it?” Everyone looked to Pinkie with a raised brow. “You know, how Tori’s um… now different from other monsters.”
“I would rather we not discuss the elephant in the room.” Queen Toriel so did not want to go to that topic or even think of what her ex-husband would do. Especially once he found out about her body and soul having been mysteriously warped in an odd manner.
“Really there’s an elephant here, where?” The idea that there was a pachyderm in the room had Pinkie looking around everywhere for one.
“Sans we can’t really afford an elephant in the house; why we can barely afford to even feed your pet trash tornado!” The Tornado Feeding Papyrus was now also looking around for the elephant.
“Hey, Trashy is a self contained class five tornado and he always picks up after himself!” It was Sans best effort at defending his pet tornado of trash.
“I am surrounded by silly people.” Toriel giggled at that and continued to eat her pie.
“The silliest your majesty, though I haven’t exactly found a niche yet.” Gyftrot just bit down on his slice of pie with his sideways opening mouth. “I find myself more of a quiet and contemplative monster like Mr. Snow Guy.”
“Yes, speaking of elephants, what did you do before we came back to the inn Trot?” She was happy to spend time around so many friends who were now becoming like family to her.
“Well I met with a bear that said you told him about me and we had a lot to talk about, apparently my suffering spawned a holiday around happiness. Eh I can’t complain about it Toriel, all I ask is that they leave adorning my body and The Jerry out of it. Speaking of that horrid thing, they have seen sighting of The Jerry slowly crawling up the cliff so I’m definitely leaving with you two after another resting period. I want to be as far away from it as possible.” That was about as much motivation as Gyftrot needed to follow Pinkie and Toriel around. “I don’t know of what use I can be to the both of you, but I wish to be there for either of you in any capacity you’d have me.”
“I think you’re doing good so far as a friend, your quite an intelligent monster and I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to support us on your own merits. I however don’t see combat as something you should involve yourself in. Might you even take up the Monster Compendium written by a friend of ours to read while we’re busy dodging attacks?” It was just a suggestion that Toriel thought might be helpful in giving Gyftrot some ideas about what he could do on their journey.
“Tori, I’m going to need some money!” The shout from Pinkie caused Toriel to flinch slightly as she came up to the goat lady while looking up at her innocently.
“Please don’t tell me you’re going to buy a tornado.” Toriel thought Pinkie would want something like that, considering she already had what would eventually be a dangerous pet already in the form of Gummy.
“No that’s not what I need the money for, Pappy was just telling me about how strong Undyne was and I think buying a shovel would really help us out in the long run!” Okay this would have anyone curious, but why in the world would Pinkie need a shovel of all things? “Also I’m going to cross pet tornado of my list of things to ask for since you obviously aren’t going to let me have one.”
“Pinkie tornadoes are highly dangerous things, so of course I’m going to say no to that.” It was to be sure that Toriel wasn’t the only one confused. “Now back on topic, why a shovel?”
“Because I’m a rock farmer’s daughter and I know how to use a shovel, you already have the shield for it. So it will make perfect sense that I get one!” It certainly didn’t, but we’ll go with Pinkie and rock farm logic on this one. “Really you don’t know the reference I’m trying to make here? You know those two with the guy in the blue armor and the girl in the red armor?”
Well somebody could probably get where Pinkie is going with this now.
“Pinkie if I get you the shovel, will you try to avoid the topic of me having a soul that is capable of being pulled from my body? Not forever mind you, but just for a while until I can get my head around it.” It took a moment for the pink pony to think over Toriel’s offer, but she eventually nodded and Toriel reached into her backpack to hand over some money to her. Pinkie set off immediately out the door for Snowdin’s shop to get a shovel.
“So can we stay here and get some sleep before we try to set out again?” Traveling was not a thing Toriel wanted to do right this moment.
“Sure you can crash on the couch, if it’s okay with Papyrus.” Sans crossed his arms and turned to Papyrus.
“Well of course they can stay! I think Mettaton’s show is about to come on, I don’t want to miss it!” Papyrus ran up the stairs to presumably get something out to watch his show with.
“Thank you Sans, you and your brother are very kind, friendly and funny individuals. Should anything happen to me, I want you to look out for Pinkie to make sure she gets back home alright. There’s a higher possibility of that happening now than there ever was.” Toriel took up the lasagna dish, plates and the empty pie tin before going over to the sink. “I’ll just take care of these dishes.”
Sans smiled at the feeling of being a part of a bigger family again, he was really missing someone but he couldn’t recall who.