Lights Like Stars (Sans x Reader)

25 - Colder

In which there is entirely too much winter.

Sans

Wow, the snow's really piling up out there.

I'm sitting on the couch, turned halfway around and watching what the news is calling "a record February snowstorm" cover the world in a soft white blanket. Paps is at work, but I don't know how much longer they'll let him stay there: most of the small businesses in town are closing down, sending people home before the roads get too dangerous. They're pretty bad already, and I watch with interest and a little concern as a car ambles by at about ten miles per hour, slewing slightly from side to side. Paps is s'posed to call me when he's ready to come home, but maybe I should take the initiative. What if he tries to drive in this? I mean, we can pick his car up when the roads are better. There's no reason for him to try and bring it home.

Yeah, I better go get him.

I 'port out to Precious Pets and get a kick out of the way the puppies start to bark as soon as I show up. I can't resist sticking my arm into their little pen on the floor and ruffling the fur of a couple. They go absolutely bonkers, swarming the front of the pen in irrepressible baby-dog joy. Heh. Puppies.

"SANS!" Paps comes up behind me and places an enormous hand on my head. "DO NOT RILE THEM UP! I JUST GOT THEM SETTLED DOWN!" I stand up, sorta wishing I could bring a puppy home with us. But, man, if we don't have legal rights we could become homeless at any time, or worse.

Things have deteriorated rapidly since that little girl got hurt. It's like the mere mention of segregation and registration drove home to some people that there are no laws protecting us. Several monsters have formed gangs with their friends now and are giving vigilante justice their best shot. Of course, this has only helped to convince people that monster gangs are something they should fear. I know Molly Moldsmal, who lives a couple towns over, recently had to move her family back to Ebott to live with her parents 'cause some jerks threw bricks through a bunch of her windows and the house is currently too cold to live in, and way too sharp for a group of monsters that can't wear shoes.

I sigh to myself. It's time to see what I can find out about that little girl and the monster kids that hurt her. I've collected evidence of every "monster violence" incident I could get my hands on, and Alphys has copies of it all. Not all of it exonerates us: anger is what it is, after all, and we're just as dangerous as humans when we don't think before we act. Humans are often meaner than monsters, sure, and that weird thing they have where groups of them start to all feel the same way? That's actually pretty creepy, that hive-mind thing they do. Not that I'm racist, or... or specist, or whatever. But, uh, that creeps me out. And thanks to their emotion-sharing thing, monster-hating humans are quickly becoming more common than human-hating monsters are. But all that still doesn't equal the destructive power of a boss monster on a rampage, and we're just lucky there aren't any boss monsters involved yet.

'Course, Undyne would throw herself right in if she was the sort to notice the prejudice, the drawn faces and muttered comments and the occasional stubborn refusal to sell us things or deal with us in any way. She's great, don't get me wrong, but she's... well, she's not the most observant monster on the planet, and she's inclined to just brush things off as "humans being weird again." Plus it seems like she doesn't get much flak due to being a mass of muscle topped with a bad attitude, a piratical eyepatch, and a smile from hell. If only all of us were that scary. Molly Moldsmal would still have her house, for one thing. Then again, being scary is part of our problem, apparently. Maybe if we were alarmingly Undyne-ish it would just make things worse.