Chapter 1: The Great Divide
It all began with a single slice, a whistle of a blade through the air and the thunk as it hit home. Sans staggered back, blood spurting from the wound on his chest.
Again. Again he'd failed to stop them. Again he spoke to Papyrus even though he knew he was gone. Again he began to turn to dus-
A jerk in reality, a twisting Sans felt to his very core as time reversed its course and then a soft thud as he hit the floor. He pushed himself up expecting to see the comforting walls of his room only to see the golden light that streamed through the stained glass panes of the judgment hall.
He started looking around. Had he been wrong? Had the human not reset? But no there was no dark shadow at the other end of the hall. Puzzled he gathered his energy and teleported to his post near the ruins.
A few minutes later he heard the crunch of snow as someone approached the station and he teleported behind one of the tall snowy trees. Glancing out from behind the trunk he saw the human, stick in hand happily skipping through the snow.
Behind them walked a dark shadow. Sans squinted and had to hold back his surprise. It was him. Sans was the one following the child.
In shock he watched as his doppelganger went through the motion hiding the human, distracting his brother with jokes and then asking the favor of the human before taking off.
Sans slowly walked out from behind the trees after the human had left to face the first of Papyrus' puzzles. How was this possible? Something must have gone wrong. He brought out his soul to check and almost dropped it.
As usual it was gray tinged with blue and yellow. However now half had a more glitched look to it and as he ran his hand over it his vision distorted and he found himself standing beside papyrus as the human crossed the electric puzzle.
Sans drew his hand back and his vision snapped back to his body. With shaky hands he carefully slipped his soul back under his ribs. Something had gone very wrong with the last reset but before he figured out what he would need to check something.
A few moments later he was in the king's castle in front of the mirror. Gathering the rage he'd felt at his brother's death he allowed his eye to glow. With dismay he saw his eye had grown dim. Where it had once been a vibrant blue mixed with yellow it had now faded. The blue was almost gone now just a dull ring around his pupil and the yellow had faded to a murky brown color.
Sans sighed. He'd had an inkling that this had happened. When he'd split in two the clone had gotten most of his magic power. He tried summoning a gaster blaster and, after a little concentration a mangled wreck popped into existence in front of him.
The blaster was practically falling to pieces as he watched. He dispersed it with a flick of his hand. There would be no fighting with THAT. He would just have to wait and see what happened, without interfering.
Sans teleported back to his lab and, through his counterparts eyes he watched as the human proceeded to free all monster kind. A pacifist run. The human reset and did the same thing again and again until finally it happened.
The camera in Snowdin picked it up first, the ruin doors opening in a rush of dust. Then out stepped the human, toy knife in hand.
At the sight Sans nearly lost it and teleported right there. However he managed to restrain himself and watched as the human proceeded to kill everything that moved. Finally the human got to him. It took a couple tries but all too soon his clone was lying on the ground bleeding until he inevitably turned to dust.
As he did so there was a peculiar tug at Sans soul and static filled his ears. He resisted, refusing to diffuse into nothing, until he felt a familiar darkness. A reset.
And in a split second he was back, still in his lab. So he could survive a reset, but what was that weird feeling he'd gotten?
He reached into his rib cage and gently pulled out his soul. The glitched area was going wild images shifting across its surface in quick succession. Even as he watched the images slowed and stopped, his soul fading again to a dusky color.
Sans looked over his soul carefully before concluding that the glitch hadn't progressed. However in order to gather more data on his condition he would have to observe more. He settled into his lab chair. It was gonna be a long night.