Errortale AU By @loverofpigges/@askerrorsans on Tumblr. Inktale AU by @comyet on Tumblr

Enjoy!
-R.

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Have you ever been in the middle of nowhere?

Even if you haven't, try and imagine that "nowhere" with no color. Okay. Now forget your home and forget any thoughts of a destination.

Are you still with me?

Good. Now, let's take away gravity. Float, feel motionless. Take away the ground. Afraid of heights? No worries, just take a nap. Close your eyes and breathe...

Now sleep.

Do you understand now how Sans felt, floating around in nothing, with no knowledge of his destination? Or if there was any destination at all?

Sans had no eyes to close, but even if he did, he wouldn't. Nothing was... Well, something he had never seen before. There was no sound here, no light, no air, no life, no anything.

It was a void, and it went on forever.

He had no heart to beat, but his soul throbbed with what little life he had. It was surreal, hearing something, normally so small and quiet, now loud and clear. He could hear the ruffling of his clothes, and the slight rattling of his bones.

The loudest thing he could hear, however, was his magic. More than just his soul, he could feel, hear, and even see his power here. He looked down at his hands, first at the one that had held onto (Y/n). It didn't look to have changed at all, but now he could see an aura of baby blue surrounding it even though he hadn't summoned his magic. In the other hand, the one still clutching his memory of Papyrus, he saw the same thing. The only difference?

Papyrus's scarf was glowing with magic too. Sans felt a burst of joy and confusion at the sight of the red-orange aura. As far as he knew, or remembered, magic was a soul power. How could this scarf, this piece of cloth, be infused with his brother's power? After a second of thought, it hit him with the strength of a Gaster Blaster. Of course... His ashes had been spread over the one thing he loved the most. Since one cannot spread ashes over things like recognition, adoration, and power, they would have to spread over something that symbolizes those things...this scarf...

"papyrus... are you happy with that? i'm sorry i didn't--didn't..," Sans felt his tears fall again as he clutched the scarf closer to his rib cage.

"G-g-genocide run, huh? Must be just t-t-terrible."

Sans started at the voice. It sounded...glitched, distorted and wrong, but it also sounded eerily similar to his own voice. He turned slowly in the direction of the sound, and sucked in a breath at what he saw.

It was him. Another Sans, but the color scheme was...well, off. Black, dark red and yellow mainly. His left eye seemed to be always glowing, but without the glow, and under his eye sockets were blue tear stains...?

No, wait, those weren't tears. It had to be something else. Looking over what he was wearing, Sans filled with curiosity. Large ERROR messages were blinking around him, and pieces of him seemed to not even exist anymore. Was this a glitch? Or was this the "he" that (Y/n) talked about? How would he be able to stop the resets?

"Oh? Go a-a-ahead, tell me what you're t-t-thinking about. I DARE Y-YOU."

Blue strings suddenly shot out towards him and in a moment of fear he tried to dodge them, but he failed, and to his utter horror he found he couldn't move anymore. It hurt so bad that Sans let out a scream that he never knew he could make.

The strings... they had wrapped around his soul. They tugged hard, and he flew forward with another yell. It felt like gravity had returned, and the only thing that was keeping him up were the strings around his life source. He couldn't move his whole body, but he subconsciously tried to protect his brother's scarf.

"Where's (Y-Y-Y/n)? What did you d-d-do to them!?"

The strings grew tighter, and he couldn't answer over the pain. He wasn't like the kid, he had zero determination, so if this was the end... this was the end.

But he had to save Papyrus.

"let me go, i-i'll tell you! ple-argh! they--chara--frisk killed--"

"WHAT!?" Came the glitched scream. Sans felt his body get jerked down--thrown, more so--and he hit something solid. Hard. He was held up and thrown to the ground repeatedly, but for some reason...He didn't die. It seemed like hours had gone by before the other Sans was satisfied, and the thrashing stopped. Sans looked up, readying himself for inevitable. "Huh...hmph...you're st-st-still alive..? How... y-y-your HP is at one..."

Was it? It sure didn't feel like that. His soul was aching, and his body felt like slush--which wasn't good at all if you're made of nothing but bone. His HP was always at one, for as long as he could remember at least, so if he was still at one now... damn.

"(Y-y-y/n) sent you here...d-d-didn't they..."

Sans coughed when he tried to reply, but eventually said, "i-i don't--know--they...they told me--to find the glitch...glitches--that 'he'...would tell me...what--to do..." There was a pause, and Sans looked away wearily, just noticing that Papyrus's scarf wasn't in his hands anymore. He internally freaked, darting his eyes all around the bleak, white expanse...

Suddenly, the other Sans began to chuckle. "They knew... that's w-w-why they were so AFRAID." The chuckle stopped, but Sans stole a glance and saw he was grinning madly. "F-F-fine, you can be of use to me..," He outstretched his hands and shot out those blue strings for a second time, wrapping them tightly around Sans's whole body. "UnFORTunaTely, I don't trust you, so unti-ti-til then, you get no freedom pr-r-rivileges."

Sans struggled, saying nothing in reply. He looked down to try and get a closer look at the strings, but he got a face full of the smell of spaghetti instead. At some point, he had wrapped the scarf around him...that's why he couldn't find it... He sighed vaguely and buried his face into the cloth. It was relaxing, despite the situation, and it somehow gave him the strength to say, "sure... just...please don't hurt me anymore--i don't even know where i am, pal... some sort of..?"

"Anti-Void? Oh, d-d-definitely not. This is the Void. The Anti-V-v-void is something much...darker..." He didn't seem to want to talk about it, as he changed the topic rather quickly. "I make n-n-no promises; I may hurt you again o-out of frustration..," he tightened the strings to drive his point home, "...very soon."

"but--shouldn't i--rest..?" Sans mumbled quietly.

"Why are you t-t-talking so calmly? Or is your fear so o-o-overwhelmiing that you've lost the ability to scream?" Sans' eye lights flickered out as the glitched version of himself made sense of his silence. He was only afraid because he couldn't summon his magic. The strings around him were strong... strong enough to render his own powers useless, thus making him so vulnerable. The distorted laughter echoed off of nonexistent walls for a second time as the strings lifted Sans off the ground and he muttered, "I'll send you off on s-s-something easy first... See if I can TRUST you..."

Sans buried his skull deeper into Papyrus's familiar spaghetti scent, trying to forget the pain. The other Sans was silent for a moment, before suddenly erupting into what seemed to be a one-sided conversation with himself.

"Why would I do that? H-h-he took (Y/n) away from me....No, not at all. M-m-maybe for a few days, but not much l-l-longer....What about it?... What? No...It w-w-was a bad run, you can't just ask me to....Uh...I-I don't th-th-think...hey...h-hey!...HEY! I said N-n-NO!"

Sans has never been more concerned and confused at the same time. In a way, this heightened his fear, because this skeleton had to be psychotic. Who was he even talking to..?

"Ugh...f-f-fine..," he muttered at last. Turning around, the... error walked back to Sans... Sans flinched and tried to back away. "Hey, look, I'm..," he mumbled something incoherent.

"uh...sure pal..?"

"Good... and that's all you're e-e-ever gonna get... So let's get to the point, shall w-w-we?" please, Sans thought. The strings tightened around him and tugged him towards his other self. "Call me E-e-error. I'm you, but from a different timeline... a v-ve-ery different timeline. There are lots of other v-v-versions, too... you'll s-see. They didn't e-e-exist last year, but ever since o-one of them... Ink...He's been creating new alternate universes and dimensions non-stop. It's been messing with everything... and I've tried, but I can't destroy all of them...by myself... There are glitches in some of them that are stopping me from taking them down. I can't touch them, because I'm already an error, see? Touching one of those would erase ME. (Y/n)...They helped me so much, taking glitches out of several universes. If only I knew what was happening to them... They should have told me... But now that they're g-gone..," that last word wasn't glitched.., "I need someone else to help me. I didn't even see it... but they took the right decision going back to the original universe. You're not a glitch or an unstable creation. You're...you're not going anywhere, which is exactly what I need against Ink."

Sans started to protest the onslaught of new and confusing information, but he knew he had to calm down. Why was he so...scared? This was just another timeline, wasn't it? After this, in a few weeks, maybe months, everything would reset again and...and... None of this would matter. Yet, that final thought got to him. That's why he was here, to stop all of this from happening.

He couldn't afford not to care anymore.

"Then...then what's next? where am I going first?"

"...U-u-underswap."

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You'll notice that Error's long dialogue had less glitches and errors in it. No, he didn't suddenly speak clearly, but it's easier to read this way. It's for your convenience.

Blueberry is going to be so much fun to work with.

-R.

P.S.

I update every weekend...