April 2020

(Not all of this is reflected accurately on the wiki, friends. I intend to work on the wiki more soon, and change up a lot of things on it) 

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“Daddy?”

Sans, standing behind Aliza with a hairband between his teeth and a pair of slightly rusty but extremely sharp barber’s scissors in his hand, raised a single brow bone, tugging on his daughter’s ear gently with his free hand to stop her fidgeting.

“stop moving, precious, i don’t wanna cut you. what’d you need.”

Aliza, pouting out her lower lip but stilling obediently, folded her hands in her lap and twiddled her thumbs, letting out a soft exhalation.

“I was wondering if there was… more to the Underground. Besides in the places I came from. I saw the place you called the Ruins, and that old city, before coming out into the snow… saw all those empty houses in the forest on the road here… the road going out into the forest. Is there other stuff out there? Other cities? Other people?”

Sans, letting out a sigh of his own but quirking a small smile at her curiosity, set aside his scissors and picked up a comb, carefully parting the girl’s hair evenly.

“there’s a lot more. the underground’s a pretty big place, and in it’s heyday, it housed nearly five and a half million monsters. not nearly as many as there were above, but… well. the war was hard, and monsters take a lot longer to reproduce than humans do. that was after fifteen hundred years of rebuilding, and to be honest… it was a good thing we were close to escaping.”

“Why?”

“we were runnin’ out of space. not for monsters, but to support the economy. there wasn’t always enough food in the poor seasons, when the water above froze and the crops withered, and even when things were going well, we were only scraping by at best. there was unrest, and panic, and a significant loss of hope… the thing that keeps monsters alive. in darker corners, there was talk of sending a monster to the capital to take one of the souls that the king was guarding and going out to find more… something another monster, long ago, had failed at, in an attempt to end our imprisonment. it never happened though. your mom came instead.”

Aliza’s eyes sparkled, jumping in place and upsetting Sans’ careful parting.

“She made friends with everyone, changed their minds about humans, and helped find a new plan to escape! Right?”

Sans chuckled, smoothing her hair flat again with the palm of his hand, before sobering for a moment, reaching up to tap a single finger against the pendant of his locket.

“…right. but that’s not what you asked about. you wanted to know what else is out there.”

She nodded exuberantly, casting her father a sideways glance at his change in tone, but he turned her face away again with a gently curled knuckle and a shake of his head, resuming his combing as though nothing had happened.

“well. to start off with, there’s four main sections of the underground, each named for its respective climate. you may’ve noticed by now, but the guy that named all this stuff… well. imagination wasn’t really his gig. he figured it would remind people of things that they missed, above, make ‘em feel more at home. nice sentiment, but it really kind of just made the ones that remembered sad. i wouldn’t know. i’ve never seen the surface to miss it.”

Something in his voice revealed a lie, but he pressed on before Aliza could ask about it, seeming to finally be satisfied with the part in her hair and setting aside the comb to take up the scissors again.

“first is the autumn refuge. you saw at least part of the ruins; they were here before we were imprisoned, an old, old city from an ancient civilization of humans and monsters. half the city was sunken in water when we arrived, the buildings all but useless. old home was made from the parts of the old ruins we could salvage. slowly abandoned, when it became too small, remote, and, honestly, depressing to contain the growing population of survivors and their needs. across the river are the fields and farms of fallholm, where most of the food and livestock of the kingdom was grown and kept. they get bits of natural sun, from cracks in the mountain, filtering through the barrier, and its one of the few places non-magical animals would thrive. the threshold of the bulwark, a sunken human fortress from an age before even gerson, our oldest monster, could recall, lies on the border between fallholm and the snow-locked lands beyond, where we are now. it was repurposed into a trading hub, most roads through the kingdom leading to and from it. last i’d checked, it’s been pilfered clean.”

With a clean snip of his scissors, Sans started to trim the girl’s hair, holding the locks between his fingers to measure them expertly.

“which brings us to the frigid arboretum, encompassing all of the land frozen under the iceberg covering half of mt. ebott; name’s a bit long, so most of us just called it the fridge. the fridge was the raw goods harvesting and processing center, producing lumber, ore, stone, ice, various consumables, and the occasional tourist location. the only monsters that lived outside of the largest city, winterrest, were workers, furry creatures tired of city living, and members of the kingdom’s royal guard; it was just too cold for anyone else. we had a few small towns, lumberton to the north, ferron to the south, and snowdin, of course, a small trading post that sprung up around the ice machine required to cool the core in hotland. winterrest, like i said, is the biggest city, and drew in crowds of city slickers with its rustic "charm”, along with students for our magic college, the one pap went to. it’s up towards the cavern’s northern wall, surrounding the edge of a lake of waterfall’s runoff.“

He paused for a moment to judge his cuts, tilting his head and stepping to the side to eye the rest of her hair, before continuing, tilting her head a little to the side with a light touch of his hand.

"waterfall itself is, objectively, the most beautiful section of the underground. the bio-luminescent fungi that grows on the roofs of the rest of the caves won’t grow in the persistent humidity there; instead, a peculiar sort of crystal formed on its walls and ceilings, and they glowed, lighting the way through the maze of caverns. there’s one room so densely packed with them that it was called the wishing room… monsters used to go there to make wishes. our form of prayers, to the only gods we’ve ever known. the stars.”

He quieted, laying a hand on Aliza’s shoulder, and she raised one of her own to touch it, leaning her head back against his chest. They stayed like that for a moment, silent and still, before Sans slid his hand out from under hers, squeezing her fingers appreciatively, and continuing her haircut.

“the, uh… the caves in waterfall range from entirely flooded to only slightly moist, but all of it is persistently wet from the runoff of the glacier, and so the plantlife there is not just abundant, it’s kind of taken on a life of its own. it was home to the amphibious, the fungal, the amorphous, the weird, and the completely aquatic alike, and housed and grew our more water based crops, most especially echo flower. it had a city there that’s completely underwater, coastharbor; had it’s own economy and everything- no one really knows what happened to them, after the sickness came. besides that, there was a few smaller towns, puddlemire and tem village and backwater row, besides the major accessible city, springhaven. it was… a sight to see, precious. my favorite city down here. it’s always raining in springhaven; it’s right under the lake on the surface, and the entire thing was built up like a castle. you could see it from almost anywhere in the swamps, just… glittering like a jewel. ‘s where i went to college, an age ago, at the magitech university… your mom loved it there too. insisted on going to the wishing lantern festival every year, spending every weekend she could there. …it’s where we were married.”

Aliza, sober and quiet, with crystalline tears on her lashes, tried to turn in her chair, shivering slightly.

“Dad, you don’t have to-”

Sans coughed under his breath, shaking away his momentary melancholy.

“’m fine, aliza. ’m fine. sit still, or it’s gonna be uneven.”

She complied, though one of her tears streaked her cheek unheeded, staring at the light switch on the wall with a determined set to her jaw, as though attempting to keep from shedding any more.

“…where was i. waterfall, right. there’s also an enormous garbage pile in a section of the caverns, below the humans’ landfill above. it sounds gross, but it’s how a lot of monsters stayed up to date on technology and things from above. some things we invented, but without the help of a book that fell around thirty years ago, we would never have had the undernet. i go out there sometimes, look for useful things for traps, packaged food, things that might entertain paps.”

“…could I come next time?”

Sans blinked, scissors mid-snip, then smiled, smoothing some strands of cut hair from her overlarge, stained t-shirt onto the floor dotingly.

“course, precious. it’s pretty safe, the only monster that lives there is scared stuffingless of me.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“i really can’t. anyway… hotland is next. hotland is… a strange place. even back then it was. most of the monsters that lived there were caught up in what is considered high end business, like technology and entertainment. everyone was either a rising star, a wanna be, an agent, or someone making something for the stars, it seemed, and it was all drama there, all the time. the worst of them all, though, was mettaton.”

Aliza perked at the familiar name, moving her gaze to the faded, ripped poster just in sight through the kitchen doorway, above the battered couch.

“I know him, Papyrus loves Mettaton~”

Sans made an audible sound of disgust, pulling a face and rolling the blue light in his whole socket.

“believe me, i’m aware. he commended himself for not just saving the core, the main power facility for the underground, but for keeping everyone in the caverns entertained, despite his abysmal reviews. …i have to admit his buying and re-purposing the buildings around the core’s facilities into his resort did bring it back from decommission. he was a flamboyant spectacle, and a constant nuisance, given your uncle’s obsession, but i can give him that much. didn’t do much for alphys’ career, or the trashed reputation of royal scientist, after what happened to… uh. the people that came before her. but, at the very least, the core survived.”

Sans shrugged one shoulder, shuffling to the side to move on to a new section of hair.

“there aren’t many towns or cities in hotland to speak of… most of it is too hot, or covered in lava. summerset city is the largest, the hub of most media and entertainment, like i said, and where most of the monsters lived… there’s another school there, the tech college; that’s where my friend alph went. there’s the lab, where the royal scientist resided, supposed to be working on solutions to escaping the underground. the resort is part hotel, part apartment building, after mettaton bought the residences of the remaining workers still living there, so i suppose that counts. …muffet’s lair. muffet was a spider monster, and has a section of caverns pretty much to herself, holed up in the core’s maintenance paths where no one can disturb her "genius”. she was a baker, you see. insisted people were always trying to steal her recipes. she and her sisters all lived there. great pastries… but they cost an arm and a leg, heh.“

With a final snip, Sans finished off her hair, and set down his scissors, picking up the comb again to brush away any stray clips of hair he might have missed.

"and after that is new home. the end of the underground, and where over half of us lived. it was one giant city, overlooked by the wealthy and the palace, and it’s where, i have to assume, most of the monsters still are, honest. it’s where everyone said they were going, at least. …anyway. the palace is pretty grand, too grand for my taste, but i’m not a monster made for that kind of life. i had a job there, when they needed me, but mostly i was just there to report on things that went on in the other sectors. have some tea with the king, talk shop, that jazz. past the palace is the barrier room, and the only natural exit to the caverns that exists. we don’t know when the one in the ruins opened; we were sealed and trapped inside with rocks when we were imprisoned. we only know it’s too steep to climb to bother with.”

Seemingly pleased with his work, Sans held out a mirror to Aliza, and she took it from him to inspect his work, admiring her, for the first time, even and trimmed locks. She’d never had a haircut that either she or gramma hadn’t given to her, and neither of those had ever turned out well.

“Thank you, daddy, it looks great! How did you learn to cut hair?” she asked before thinking, holding the mirror behind her head to try to look at the back of her head, and Sans, putting the scissors and comb away in a drawer beside the stove, gave her an ironic look.

“your mom couldn’t cut her own bangs either, and tori always gave her a bowl cut. so i learned how,” he explained, and Aliza, setting the mirror down on the table, let out a giggle, spinning over to his side and, pausing a moment first (Sans nodded, looking appreciative), leaning in to wrap her arms around the monster’s shoulders tightly.

“Well. Thank you for not giving me a bowl cut. …and for telling me all that. It must hurt, to remember all that, and know its… gone,” she whispered, setting her forehead against his arm, and Sans, raising his own arms to hug her back, let out a tired sigh, his sockets shuttered but his smile still present.

“it sucks. but it’s been and done. ask me anything you need to know, precious. it’s what i’m here for.”