#multiverseshenanigans

“-And that’s when I said, ‘B, are you trying to decimate the multiverse through kindness again’- you’re not listening.” Renegade stared at his feline companion, who waved a paw at him.

“No no I was totally listenin-” Willow started, before being cut off.

“No they weren’t!” Aquamarine gave a lazy grin from his perch in Willow’s handkerchief.

“And good bitties wouldn’t do this to their Kind, BELOVED, partners, but we don’t all get what we want ey?” Willow gave a playful huff, before their ears swiveled around, “The fuck?”

Renegade raised a brow bone, “What do your magic ears hear, almighty feline?”

“Shut it. I heard whimpers.” They flapped a paw in Renegade’s general direction in an attempt to make him follow as they proceeded to wander in the direction they heard the cries.

“Huh, I can hear it too now. Be quiet Renegade your thoughts are too loud again.” Aquamarine commented, tilting his head to hear better as Renegade pouted, but obeyed.

Willow led Renegade over to an alleyway, and walked over to a dumpster before getting onto all fours and peering under as he kneeled down next to them.

“Helloooo? Anyone under there? I promise I’m as harmless as a particularly annoying fly.” Willow called out to the darkness under the dumpster. The afternoon shade DEFINITELY didn’t help with the lighting situation, that was for sure.

The only reply Willow received was a soft sob. The white feline frowned, before nudging Aquamarine down to the ground. “Your turn, Aqua.”

The Sansy bitty nodded at his new task, before meandering under the dumpster at a non threatening pace, sliding his hands into his hoodie pockets to help with the non threatening image.

“Heya, anyone under here? We heard some crying, so we thought we’d make sure no one’s hurt.” He squinted at the darkness, before finally giving up and summoning a small, glowing blue bone construct, and widening his eyes at what he saw.

“Oh stars….” He muttered, as he creeped forward. In front of him laid an injured centaur-like bitty. Instead of hooves, though, the bitty had feline-like paws and fur. The poor thing was shirtless, and was curled around, from what Aqua could see, an injury of sorts in its side. Its fur was stained a dark color, and was matted, along with its bones being coated in a thick layer of dirt and grime.

By the time the bitty finally noticed Aqua, he was only a few steps away, and the bitty started up a sad attempt at a growl.

Aqua raised his hands carefully, trying to show he was no threat despite the floating bone construct next to him. “Woah, now, hun. I’m not here to hurt ya. Why not get out from under here ey? It’s pretty dirty, and I have some friends who can help ya out.”

A pair of suspicious eyelights stared him down as he could feel himself being CHECKed. Definitely a Sans-type, then, from how thorough the CHECK felt.

AQUAMARINE

LV 0 EXP 0 HP 1 ATK 1 DEF 1

Only wants to help.

The bitty relaxed slightly, before speaking, “Try ta’ backstab me, and I gut ya.” It growled, before hefting itself upwards, growling when Aqua moved to help it up. “I’ GOT it.” The bitty near snarled. Aqua simply nodded, before stepping back.

When the pair finally exited the shadows of the dumpster, Willow and Renegade had to hold back gasps. The bitty was in a bad shape, and was clearly keeping it together through sheer willpower and most likely spite.

“Heya there, bud. Wanna let us take you to someone who can help out?” Willow gave a soft grin, trying to be as nice as they were capable of to the new bitty.

The bitty hesitated, before replying. “....Yes please. I’m going to pass out now.” It said, before listing sideways into Aqua’s panicked hold.

“Oh shit!” Aqua shouted, struggling a little under the others weight. Renegade was quick to snatch the two up.

“I know a place that’s open nearby here. Adoption center, should hopefully have emergency medical supplies.” Renegade informed, before snatching up Willow as well and breaking into a sprint, careful to keep his fragile cargo stable with some light usage of Gravity magic.

The receptionist was in for quite a shock when the over seven foot skeleton skidded into through the entrance.

“We need emergency medical attention stat.” Was all Renegade said as he let go of Willow (who easily landed on their feet) to get a better hold of the injured bitty.

The receptionist stuttered for a moment, before darting away to grab someone more qualified to deal with this situation. Rather quickly, a monster in nurses scrubs rushed out to take the bitty from Renegade.

----

“How is he?” Willow demanded as the monster walked out of the medical wing.

“Stable, and should recover with proper care and rest. Poor thing had a broken arm among other injuries.” She informed the trio, who had been banished to the waiting room. “Now, what happened to that poor bitty? I only see cases like that in ferals or fighting rings!” She demanded.

“We don’t know, is the thing. We found him under a dumpster in an alleyway, and he was super distrustful and would only follow Aqua after he did a CHECK.” Willow informed the monster, who sighed and ran a hand over her face.

“Might be a runaway, or a feral. What bitty type even is he? I’ve never seen one like him before. Of course, I’ve seen the odd centaur here and there, but one like this? Not a peep!””

“That we ALSO don’t know.” Renegade replied, shrugging.

“Whatever. Listen, are you able to take him home with you tonight? He’s stable enough to move, and it’s probably for the best he leaves. From my experiences, waking up in an adoption center isn’t pleasant for ferals.” The monster asked them.

Willow and Renegade looked at each other, before shrugging. Why not? Besides, they needed to get back to Pearl before they tore up the apartment. “Sure, we can handle it.” Willow decided.

“Good, let me just get him and you can take him with you.” She said, before rushing back into the medical wing to grab the currently-unconscious bitty. She soon returned with him, and Renegade took him carefully into his hands.

“Good luck.” The monster told them, before disappearing into other parts of the adoption center.

“Portal?” Renegade asked Willow, who gave him a grin.

“Portal.” They replied, already opening one up as Aquamarine squirmed from his new place in Willow’s scarf. They stepped through into their shared apartment, which was only slightly chaotic due to Opal, their resident Endogerus bitty, raining havoc. Said three foot tall bitty skidded to a halt in front of them.

“Not now, love, we have an injured with us.” Willow soothed the Endogerus, who let out a whine and head(s)butted Willow directly in their muzzle, who proceeded to splutter, as Renegade made his way to the couch, ignoring Aquamarine’s laughter. He pulled together a few of the blankets kept on the cough to make a small nest for the injured bitty, complete with pillow back support for optimal lounging.

He sat the bitty down in the middle of the middle, careful to mind the injuries. While in the medical wing, they had cleaned him up. His fur now showed cyan patterns on white fur, and snow white bones. Scars littered all exposed parts of the bitty’s body, which is to say, all of it. It made Renegade wonder what clan type the bitty belonged to.

It’s perfectly natural for him to be worried, right? He’s not THAT clingy, so it isn’t like he was obsessing or something weird…. Wait what was he thinking about?

Oh right!

Swap hasn’t contacted him in a while, which is weird and odd for him. The- annoyingly- taller skeleton usually enjoyed spamming his phone with pictures and memes. He’ll never be over the time Swap discovered minion memes from the surface, that was near traumatic.

He grabbed his phone from his pocket, checking it again despite only a few minutes passing from last time. Opening his texts, he gave a frustrated sigh. It had been 3 days since his last text from Swap, and the other monster hadn’t even read his latest texts. He would know, Swap keeps forgetting to turn off his read receipts.

Y’know, now that he’s thinking about it (again), he hasn’t seen several others in his…. “Friend Group”.... Ugh, how cheesy.

Anyway, when was the last time he had talked to Razz? They weren’t super close, and mostly knew each other through Swap, but they could usually bond over coming from Fell ‘verses, and the social impacts that result from that.

….Huh, looks like Razz also hasn’t texted him in 3 days. Razz had texted last, so there’s no way to see if he had read any of his latest messages. Weird.

Nothing from Comet, either. Though that isn’t as odd, the Outertale Sans was never much of a talker in any capacity. The muteness probably doesn’t help, though.

It’s probably fine, though. Swap and Razz had probably got stuck in a RESET loop again, that’s it. Though, didn’t Swap and Honey extract a promise from their human?

Whatever, it isn’t good for him to dwell on things like this. Or at least, that’s what his therapist says. Angel above, being on the surface will always be amazing. Especially after Frisk agreed to no more RESETS. The kid never liked the Underground anyway, too much death and danger for the lil’ scrap.

Oh hello blaring cell phone, nice to be reminded you exist!

His cell phone, disregarding his internal monologue, was blaring Honey’s ringtone. It was quite annoying, so Honey must have gotten his hands on his phone and changed it. Whatever.

“‘Ello?” He spoke into the phone, after answering the call of course.

“Fell! Great to be hearing from you, but I have a very important question.” Honey responded.

“Uh, shoot then. Not like I was doin’ anythin’ anyway.”

“Have you seen my brother lately?”

“Swap?”

“Does it look like I have another brother? Who else, dimwit.”

“Oh hush it sugar skull.”

“I take offense to that.”

“That’s the intention! Lay off the sweets sometime.”

“Just answer the question, Fell.”

He sighed, “No, I haven’t. I was actually wondering if you had been caught in a RESET loop again.”

“If we were, I would not have called you, because I’d know where my brother is.” Honey’s accent was getting thick again, time to abort.

“Chill out, Honey. Knowing Swap, he probably ran off with Razz for a training adventure or something similar.”

“....You better be right, or I will steal all of your left shoes and make them slightly uncomfortably small.”

Damn, this guy is great with threats. In his line of work, too-small-shoes are a special brand of hell. He’d know after growing up in poverty with Edge as children.

“I’m going to let you go now, the house is a wreck currently and if Swap comes back to this chaos he’s going to obliterate every hoodie I own.” Uh oh, it sounds like Honey is about to start stress-cleaning.

“Don’t overwork yourself, I know how you get.”

“Oh don’t worry so much, I’ll be fine dimwit.”

“Fine, fine, sugar skull. See you later.”

Chapter 1

Laying the Groundwork

-

“Several RESETs in a row in Swapfell…. Been awhile since a RESET in Underlust and Underswap…. Interesting.” He noted as he drifted in the Doodle Sphere, grasping the papers representing the various universes to read their code, before letting them drift to their original locations.

“Speaking of Underswap, that reminds me! I haven’t seen Swap in a while, or Dream. I should call them up soon.” He noted, floating in place for a moment, before shrugging. “Meh, I’ll get to it later.” He decided, as he summoned the recent reports he’d had written down. Way faster to go through paper than to check each individual universe for important events.

He quickly skimmed through the reports, checking to see if anything really big had happened. “Looks like Error’s taking a break or something, no universes destroyed lately! Must mean Paperjam is distracted or something, damn I need to see how the kid’s doing…”

He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts, his eyelights changing shape as he blinked. It was always a good day for him if Error hadn’t been destroying anything, it let him have a break to catch up with his friends and help in any fights against Nightmare and his gang.

“Everything looks pretty good at the moment! I’ll have to keep an eye on Swapfell, they usually don’t have this many RESETs this often anyway.” He commented, before shrugging and tossing the papers behind him as they disappeared from existence, like usual.

“What to do, what to do…” He pondered. “Oh! I know! I’ll go bug Error again!” He gave a mischievous grin, putting a hand to his chin. Nodding to himself, he grabbed his brush and opened up a portal to the Antivoid.

As he stepped inside, a feeling of Wrongness swept over him. He raised a brow bone for a moment, before shrugging and making his way over to Error’s usual set up. At first glance, it appeared completely empty. It was almost like Error had left very suddenly.

“Damn, looks like I missed him or something.” He observed, glancing around to see if the glitchy skeleton was waiting to ambush him. He had done it before, so he knew to be at least a little cautious if he didn’t feel like engaging in a FIGHT.

“Maybe he’s in Outertale? He hangs around there right? Though, he could be tormenting Swap again. He loves doing that ever since Swap went home.” He shrugged, pondering where to search next. He tapped his cheek as he contemplated.