#comicdings

NPC to meet you // Accepting

Sans was doing his best not to lose his marbles. Papyrus was peering out of the alleyway, a long thin shadow in the night. His hat was cocked at an odd angle, making his brother look even more terrifying than the big ol’ softie he actually was.

“I DON’T SEE IT,” Papyrus admitted. Sans squeezed into the minute space between brother and wall, frustration lining every inch of his face. 

“there! look, look! right. there! see, he’s there!”

“THERE’S NO ONE- OH!” Pap’s face lit up like the fourth of July. “OH! IT’S THE NICE CREAM MAN! SANS, GIVE ME YOUR CHANGE, I’LL GO GET SOME! WHAT FLAVOUR WOULD YOU LIKE?”

“papyrus!” Sans wheezed. He was not typically a skeleton who lost his cool. In fact, Sans made it his business to keep cool at all times, but Papyrus was about to make him lose a gasket and truly, his brother had no one but himself to blame. “don’t ya think there’s something about the nice cream man that ain’t adding up?”

His brother met his gaze.. Sans could see him thinking about it.

“IT DOES SEEM LIKE A POOR LOCATION.”

“it’s four in the morning!” 

“HE’S CLEARLY GETTING AN EARLY START,”

“in the middle of winter!?”

“IT’S THE BEST TIME TO ENJOY NICE CREAM. UGH, IT GETS ALL MELTY IN THE SUMMER...”

“conveniently next to the warehouse we just ‘liberated’ of all its trimmings?” Sans said. He gave the bag at his feet a pointed jingle.

“WELL,” Papyrus said, waving his hand. “CLEARLY IT’S JUST COINCIDENCE. WE’RE HARDLY THE ONLY MONSTERS IN THE CITY,”

“oh my god,” Sans said. He buried his head in his hands. “i can’t believe it. bro, he’s clearly a cop, or a...some kind of mook, or enforcer. i bet he’s just waiting for us to come around the corner. i bet he’s just ready to pull a gun on us and bust us for grand larceny or worse,” Sans voice fell to a whisper. “loitering.”

Papyrus looked at him with an expression of grave concern. He turned away from the Nice Cream man, still innocently filtering around his vending cart, to place both hands on Sans’ shoulders.

“SANS, PLEASE DON’T GET UPSET. I BELIEVE YOU-”“thank god, finally-” 

“ARE WORKING FAR, FAR TOO HARD.” Papyrus finished. Sans felt the whole of his being deflate. “I KNOW, SCANDALOUS, REALLY, BUT THERE’S NO OTHER EXPLANATION FOR SUCH WILD FLIGHTS OF PARANOIA. THE NICE CREAM MAN IS JUST...THE NICE CREAM MAN! HE’S NICE! IT’S IN HIS NAME!” Papyrus beamed. “SO COME ON. IT’S BEEN A LONG NIGHT. WHY DON’T WE INDULGE. IT’LL MAKE YOU FEEL BETTER.”

[txt] *

His mind was hazy, stress and panic and exhaustion mixing together into a cocktail designed to suppress any thoughts other than how he had to get out of the situation he found himself in.

Dings had kidnapped him, grabbed him and hauled him into the void. Now, his code laid bare under the parasite’s fingers and the void was steadily leeching away at his magic pool, adamant about consuming him whole. He was just an experiment now, a repository of coding for the Gaster to tweak and test before discarding. Glitchy had already resigned himself to the fact that no one would be coming to even try to distract his captor—he was an awful, murderous little creature, why would they?

That was what he thought before the grey door appeared.

Unfortunately for him, the new intruder to the void was none other than his father, arguably an even worse person to have around than Dings.

‘Oh, it is merely you.’ The words formed from bones above his father’s head stood out in stark contrast against the darkness of the void. ‘May I ask what you are doing with my son?’

“GREETINGS. CURRENTLY TRYING TO REPAIR THE GLITCH. THOUGH THE… PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECTS ARE DOING A NUMBER ON HIS PSYCHE. IF YOU WANT, I WILL RELEASE HIM AND REVERT TO THE BACKUP I MADE.” Dings’ explanation was punctuated with a burst of his eerie, unsettling laughter.

‘I DID have someone who I wanted you to meet...’ His father mused, tipping his head slightly to one side. ‘But I believe that she will be quite alright with waiting a short while.’

That typical Gaster smile that his father wore grew even wider and, abruptly, teeth appeared in the formerly empty space, long, needle-like ones that crowded for room in his mouth.

YOU EAT BLOOD!!!

     It’s only been a week since the New Year bells rang out across the multi-verse. Honestly, Death wasn’t expecting to see this mortal again so soon. If anything, he would have hopped to have some sort of upper hand, considering the last time they spoke with one another... Oh well...

[txt] * host?

The soul was gone, consumed by the ravenous Void. With it, the body had no way to remain in one piece and it too was lost, crumbling to dust that spread across the “floor” of the Void. But... he kept the code, the true essence of every creature’s being, intact.

And, with it, his son could be salvaged.

Although... even he could tell he would need help in this endeavor. So, reaching into his inventory, he retrieved his phone and texted a very special someone.

Something was wrong.

He had set up code-based sensors in timelines where he thought his little bastard son might show up... Which really just included the Criminal Court one and his own native timeline. They operated akin to his asterisks, though instead of constant monitoring, they simply sent him an alert whenever a sudden large change in coding was detected, a potential sign that “Glitchy”, as he seemed to be called now, had entered the timeline.

And now the one placed within his native timeline had gone off.

A quick slip into the void and he arrived back at his timeline without too much fuss, ending up in a lesser-traveled area of Snowdin. With a flick of a lesser hand, he opened the code of the timeline, scrolling down until he reached the codes of beings present in the timeline. There was still the skeleton code (pun not intended) of Sans, left behind when he left the timeline to keep things somewhat stable, but... right beneath it, where the code for Papyrus should have been, it simply skipped to the next monster in line. There wasn’t even a single trace left of him.

He froze for a moment before reaching into his inventory and retrieving his phone, the hands still on the code beginning to tremble violently as he sent a text to Dings.