Kids, Dogs, and Anatomy (Robin's POV)
Posted: December 29, 2024

🠜 Chapter One / Chapter Nine

Chapter Word Count: 1,793

Robin really wished they could just have a break from all the FIGHTs. She was exhausted at this point, and she knew Steve was too. (Who knew, though, how much farther it would be until they reached the town, and whether or not they would be able to get some rest there either.)

The black and white dog popping out of the sentry station and pulling them into combat had spooked her a bit, but it wasn't too bad in the end. What had shocked her the most was the use of a different color of magic. They'd only seen white so far, but this dog was swinging light-blue magic swords at them.

Just in time, she'd remembered the sign (Absolutely NO MOVING!!!) and what the dog had said before he initiated the FIGHT ("I can only see moving things." and "Don't move an inch!"), and she gripped Steve tight and held him still as the swords came right at them.

For a second, he pulled against her grip, trying to move them out of the way, then sagged into her hold. (He always trusted her more than anything, just like she trusted him.) Then the swords moved right through them and their SOUL, feeling like nothing.

Robin let out a deep sigh of relief as it became their turn. "Oh thank Jesus I was right," she said, thinking of what could've happened if she'd been wrong. (She felt a bit queasy at the thought of being sliced open by a sword.)

"Yeah," Steve said, sighing too. "Okay, now how do we appease a dog?" he asked her in a whisper.

Her face scrunched up in thought. "… Pets?" she said, unsure. (Did dog monsters work like regular dogs?)

He seemed to think it over for a second, then shrugged. "I guess it's something," he said and reached forward, rubbing the dog on the top of its (his?) head.

Then, he snatched his hand back as the dog started barking frantically. "WHAT!!! I'VE BEEN PET!!! PET? PAT? POT? PET?"

The swords came at them one more time, but once back on their turn, she could feel the ability to spare the dog, and they were out of the FIGHT.

Ahead of them, the dog threw a handful of gold on the ground and quickly went back into his sentry station and crouched down behind the counter, and she heard him mumble something about ‘dog treats'.

When she bent down to gather their winnings, she saw a small pile of burnt dog treats on the ground ahead. (Was he… smoking them? Today was just full of weird stuff going on.) Shaking her head, she dumped the coins in the side-pocket of her bag as they kept going.

"I really sincerely hope it's not too much farther to town," she said to Steve.

He scoffed and shook his head. "With our luck it's going to take all day to get there. If it even is day. Sans said that Papyrus has a bunch of puzzles for us to do along the way. Who knows how long those'll take."

"True," she sighed.

Up ahead, she saw Sans again, standing before a large patch of ice.

"Seriously," she said, once they were close enough for him to hear. "How do you keep getting ahead of us? This is the only trail I've seen so far."

Sans looked over to her and winked. "i know a shortcut or two…"

"That makes absolutely no sense," she told him bluntly.

All he did was shrug in response, then he looked past them to where they'd just come from. "whoops… shoulda warned you about doggo's special attack. did you get past his blue attack okay? … well, i suppose you must've, since you're standing here."

"Yeah," Steve said sarcastically, "thanks for the heads up."

"sorry, pal," Sans responded, sounding maybe a little insincere. "i'll try to do better next time."

"Anything else ahead that we should know about?" Robin asked him.

"the rest of the dog guard's around here and there like i said earlier. none of the others have special attacks, so…" Sans said and shrugged.

Robin just sighed and nodded. Sans had been helpful so far, but she was also picking up that when he didn't want to talk about something, he'd just avoid it like the plague, and nothing they did would get him to talk. (At least this was a little more information to go off of.)

She went to ask him another question, but before she could, a small, pale-blue and yellow, feathery dragon monster came running up from the path ahead.

"Mr. Sans! Mr. Sans!" they were yelling.

As they got closer, she could see they were wearing a little striped sweater. The kid reached the patch of ice and, without breaking stride, slid all the way across to where the three of them were standing. (Was she jealous of a child now? … Yes. She would never be that cool.)

Sans gave them a look she couldn't interpret (all of his expressions were a bit hard to read since he wouldn't stop smiling) and turned to the kid.

"hey, kiddo. ice to see ya," Sans said. "how's it going?"

Robin smiled at the little peals of giggles the small dragon released at Sans's pun, and she saw Steve do the same.

"Mr. Sans! You use that one all the time!" they squealed.

"what can i say? no bones about it, it's a good one," he responded, setting the kid off again.

"Who are your friends, Mr. Sans?" the kid asked, after they got their laughter under control. Then they turned to the two of them and said, "I haven't seen you around before."

Before he even did it, Robin knew what Steve was going to do. Just like she predicted, he crouched down to get eye level with the little dragon, saying, "Hey, buddy. I'm Steve, and this is my friend, Robin. What's your name?" (He was always so sweet with kids. She was a little on the fence about helping him raise half-a-dozen of them like he wanted, but he'd be such a good dad.)

"I'm Snowdrake!" the kid said enthusiastically. "My friends call me Snowy, though."

"That's a neat name," Steve said, nodding. "And your slide across the ice was pretty cool."

"Thanks! I came to tell Mr. Sans my new joke. Do you want to hear it too?"

Steve barely started to nod before the kid launched into telling it to them all. "What do snowmen eat for lunch? Iceberg-ers!" he said loudly and in that way kids tell jokes, with no sense of comedic timing, but it was adorable all the same.

She gave Snowdrake a big smile, and Steve let out a polite laugh.

"heh. good one, kid. you're gonna be coming for my job soon if you keep that up," Sans said.

"I'm glad you liked it! I'm gonna go tell Mr. Doggo my joke now! Bye, Mr. Sans, Mr. Steve, Miss Robin!" Snowdrake said, running off toward where they'd just come from.

"I thought you manned a sentry station?" she asked Sans after Snowdrake was gone, feeling confused. "And sometimes sell hot dogs? Or hot cats?"

"hey, a skeleton can't have multiple jobs? i moonlight as a comedian sometimes… got a stand-up routine and everything," he told them. "more jobs means more legally-required breaks…" Sans winked.

(She… wasn't sure they really tracked. Sure, it meant more breaks, but it also meant a lot more work?)

"If you say so," Steve said, standing up from where he was crouched in the snow, knees popping.

If Robin hadn't been looking directly at Sans when it happened, she wouldn't have noticed the lights in his eyes going out for a brief second or his little recoil at the noise. Just a fraction of a second later, his expression was back to normal blandness.

"ew… did that noise come from you?" Sans asked, leaning forward and looking at Steve's legs. (She thought maybe he looked a little intrigued. Maybe.)

"Uh…" Steve said, looking at her with a lost and confused expression on his face.

She just shrugged. (It was his ‘weird' human bodily noise. He can explain it himself to the skeleton.)

"It was my knees popping?" he said to Sans.

"for the monster, what does that mean?" Sans asked.

Steve looked even more lost now. (She might or might not have been laughing at him just a little in her mind.) "I… I don't know? I got a D in biology. They just make that noise sometimes?"

(Okay, okay. She wasn't so mean she'd leave him really hanging like that. She didn't do great in biology either – the dissections were a bit much for her pre-Upside Down self to handle – but she did manage okay in the human anatomy unit.)

"There's fluid pockets in between some of our joints, and sometimes they get air bubbles in them. Then the air bubbles pop during movement and make a noise," she explained.

That expression that she couldn't parse earlier got stronger on Sans. She could tell now, it was partly disgusted, partly intrigued. 

"oh, wow," he said. "that's so gross. humans are so weird."

"I mean," she said, "we have to have the fluid there, otherwise the bones rub on each other and get damaged, and we get arthritis. What do monsters have?"

"… magic?" Sans said, like the answer was obvious.

 (What did that even mean???) So she asked him, "Like, concentrated magic in your joints?"

"no?" he said, looking confused. "we're just… made completely of magic."

Beside her, she heard Steve just say, "Huh," but she still felt very lost. (Did he mean monsters didn't have any physical make-up? Like at all? Just 100% magic from head to toe. That, even though he looked like he was made of bones, none of them would have calcium? Just magic? Of all the things she'd learned so far since they got here – even SOULs – this for some reason seemed the most bizarre. Maybe it was because everything living on the surface had some sort of physical make-up, even if it was alien, like the various creatures of the Upside Down?)

(This was going to take her some time to wrap her head around.)

"you two seem alright enough. keep it up," Sans said out of nowhere, interrupting her thoughts.

"Thanks?" Steve replied, sounding unsure.

"you guys should get moving again now," Sans continued, not addressing his earlier statement. "my bro's up ahead with the first puzzle. don't want to keep him waiting too long… otherwise, he'll probably come track you down."

"Straight ahead?" Robin asked for clarification.

"yup. straight east towards town," he confirmed.

So they headed east.

Chapter Eleven 🠞

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