From Murder to Dust

30 - Average

I had been with Nightmare's gang for three years and six months by now. Cross was warming up quickly to the thought of a family, but he still found it weird calling Nightmare 'Dad'; we didn't force him to, of course, but we knew he would give in eventually. Cross had also taken to going to school with me, Killer and Horror, and did well in class with us; he attributed that to the fact that Ink used to get 'angry' when he didn't understand something, which made him understand as much as he could instinctively. He did live in Nightmare's house with Killer and I, since he didn't have a universe of his own; Killer lived there because he didn't want to go back to his universe, and I lived there because my universe was uninhabitable. I had even tried to leave food there in case I went back, but it disappeared by itself; my universe truly was impossible to survive in. At the moment, we were in school preparing to learn about another universe; we did learn other subjects, but this was probably our favorite part of the day. We had already learned about Killer's, Horror's, and Nightmare's universes, only leaving mine, which we would learn about today. Nightmare started the lesson.

"Good night, everyone." Nightmare greeted - it was always night.

"Good night." We responded together. 

"The next AU, as you all know, is Dusttale, from which we received Dust."

"That sounds so wrong." I groaned.

"Sounded wrong for the rest of us, too, Dusty." Killer comforted.

"If I get anything wrong, please correct me, Dust." Nightmare requested, receiving a nod. "Right, then. Dusttale is an AU that diverges from the original Undertale story in which the judge, which is the Sans, takes it upon himself to do anything in his power to kill Frisk after countless genocides after genocides. He resorts to doing his own genocide route, killing everyone he can in order to overpower Frisk, even when they still have the power to reset. Interesting facts about a Dusttale Sans would include these: he can see a ghost resembling his brother, he has a certain harmless amount of determination, and after a while, he begins to actually enjoy resets, because he can kill Frisk over and over. Sound about right?"

"Yep." I confirmed.

"In that case, are there any questions before we move into phases?"

"I h-have a que-question." Cross still couldn't get over his stuttering.

"Yes, Cross?"

"A-are we going t-to take a field tr-trip th-there too?"

"Actually, Dust has requested that we don't visit his AU due to his own reasons and a few he has told me. Anything else?"

"I got a question." Horror announced.

"Horror?"

"Why's i' called Dusttale?"

"That would actually be one of the reasons. Do you mind, Dust?"

"Go ahead." I allowed.

"Dust believes that the sheer amount of dust in the air would probably blind somebody if they stayed for too long; he could only see because he was made that way. Any other questions?"

There were no more questions.

"Very well then." Nightmare moved on. "Phases. The beginning phase: what happens before Frisk falls into the underground. Normal life with his brother Papyrus, just like a normal Sans. The early phase: Frisk falls and the original story of Undertale is started. The middle phase: Frisk becomes purely genocidal and refuses to do a pacifist or neutral run, no matter how much it is pleaded for them to stop. The late phase: Sans eventually breaks and takes matters into his own hands, doing anything to stop Frisk, and becoming attuned to killing. Finally, what Dust calls the too late phase: Sans succeeds in stopping the resets, but only because Frisk wanted to torture him further, and we eventually found him after that; he won't tell us how long that took, but he says it wasn't too long. Any questions about phases?"