The bottle sat there, shimmering with too much importance. He looked at it once. Then again. Then he laughed.
"Really? That's what you're putting in front of me now? A bottle?" He stepped past it. The glass flickered, embarrassed, and winked out of sight. Only the faint curl of black paper lingered in the air before evaporating like smoke.
He wandered on, humming to himself. The ground stretched out like it wasn't sure what shape it wanted to be. Walls leaned in, then leaned back, awkward in their attempt to frame him. Even the air stuttered, waiting for permission.
"Don't try so hard," he said, almost kindly. "I'm not here to follow along. I'm here because I decided to be." Then—brrrring! The phone buzzed in his pocket.
Sans leaned back against a crooked fence, eyes half-closed, letting the breeze brush past him as he flipped it open. "heh. figures."
Papyrus' voice exploded through the speaker, brimming with joy. "SANS!! IT'S INCREDIBLE! THE SURFACE—NO, THIS WORLD—IT'S JUST—AAAH, HOW DO I EVEN BEGIN?!"
Behind him came the roar of life: monsters laughing, kids shrieking, Undyne shouting something about "HERO TRAINING," Alphys panicking about organization, someone claiming dibs on the biggest room, and another crying out, "OH MY GOD, IS THAT GRASS?!"
"EVERYONE'S FREE, BROTHER!! FREE!!" Papyrus nearly shouted over the noise. "THERE ARE CLOUDS, AND SUNSHINE, AND PEOPLE MAKING PLANS! WE'RE… WE'RE ALIVE, SANS!!"
The voices spilled through the speaker, a thousand threads of sound, a thousand new beginnings. Sans closed his eyes, a faint smile tugging at his face.
"…heh. guess i don't have to fit. not when it's finally wide open"
The phone clicked quiet.
Sans stood there a moment longer, listening to the silence, the shape of his brother's voice still rattling in the bones of his skull.
He tugged the fedora lower. The brim cut the sunlight in half.
Sunlight. Real, unfiltered, and a little too bright.
The world outside the Underground was bigger than any puzzle Papyrus could have drawn. And bigger meant sloppier.
Grass didn't always match the dirt. Shadows bent the wrong way around the same corner. A breeze could vanish mid-step, as though someone forgot to write the second half of the weather.
"heh." He slipped his hands into his coat. "open case already."
The sidewalk trembled, a hiccup of geometry, then flattened itself into obedience. Too late — he'd already seen the seams.
He walked through the street like a man patrolling his own crime scene.
Neighbors waved — monsters unpacking crates, kids chasing birds. They saw freedom. He saw the handwriting on the walls of a script running too loose.
Murphy's Law whispered in his head like a friend who never ran out of bad news.
what can go wrong…
He grinned.
"…will."
The nearest streetlight sparked, flickered, and crashed to the ground with a clean metallic shriek. Nobody was hurt. Nobody even panicked. Instead, a man across the street laughed — "lucky break!" — and another immediately dragged the pole upright as if it weighed nothing, like a toy.
Yhprum's Law answered.
everything that can go right, will.
Sans lit a cigarette he didn't remember carrying. Smoke curled, cut into squares midair, then stretched back into proper spirals. The world didn't know which law to obey.
He exhaled, slow, amused.
"looks like i'm not the only detective on the case," he muttered. "reality's trying real hard to cover its tracks."
But it never covered them fast enough for him.
He flicked ash from the end of the cigarette.
The ember fell — then bounced sideways, landing neatly in a puddle that hadn't been there a second ago. The water hissed. Steam rose.
"cute," Sans said. "late to the party, but i see you."
Sod's Law, darker and sharper than the rest.
If something could go wrong, it wouldn't just happen — it'd happen at the worst possible time.
He tipped his head, studying the smear of steam like evidence.
Three voices now, all tugging at the same stage.
Murphy promising failure, Yhprum correcting the script with dumb luck, Sod crouching in the alley waiting to ruin the punchline.
The air around him creaked like a page too thin to hold the ink.
Reality was juggling laws like dice in a rigged game.
He walked on. The fedora caught wind, lifted for a second, then settled back down. The street stretched ahead like a hallway in a dream, endless but pretending to be short.
Every case had suspects.
This one had the universe itself.
Sans cracked a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
"guess i'll start takin' statements."
The ground ahead of him split — not cracked like stone, but parted like paper peeled from a book. A word was written in the gap. One word, jagged, stuttering, like the world was testing its typewriter:
CASE.
Sans didn't stop. He stepped over it, smoke trailing, muttering under his breath.
"figured as much."
The word closed behind him with a papery hiss.
By the time his heel lifted, the gap was gone, and the sidewalk pretended it had never been anything but concrete.
But Sans had seen it. He always saw it.
The world kept dropping clues like sloppy criminals — and worse, it acted like no one would notice.
He let the cigarette hang from his teeth, smoke curling lazy around his grin.
"somebody out there's watchin' real close," he muttered, low enough for the wind to pretend it hadn't heard. "too close. like they're takin' notes."
The streetlamp he'd passed earlier was already standing again. No dents, no sparks, no trace it had ever fallen. A perfect cover-up. Too perfect.
It was the kind of job done by someone who didn't live here but still wanted things to look normal.
He tilted his fedora back, eyes narrowing at nothing in particular. "…you're not even tryin' to hide the fingerprints, pal."
A kid ran past chasing a kite — except the kite's shadow wasn't connected. It drifted separate, flapping on its own. Sans stopped, watching the child laugh like nothing was wrong. Then, just as quick, the shadow snapped back into place, as though embarrassed.
He chuckled.
"yeah. thought so. someone else is holdin' the string."
He didn't look up. He didn't need to.
Whoever was tugging — whoever thought they could flatten him into a neat little script — they weren't up in the sky.
They were outside.
Watching. Writing.
Waiting for him to play along.
He walked on, shoes clicking soft against the pavement that never quite sounded the same twice.
"case just got bigger," he said again, quieter this time, like a man filing evidence under his breath.
Up ahead, a newsstand flickered. First it was there, stacked with papers that all had the same headline in the same font. Then it was gone. Then it was back — but the date was wrong. Tomorrow's edition.
Sans reached out, plucked one from the rack. The headline blurred before he could finish reading it, words sliding around like wet ink. By the time he folded the paper shut, the text had settled into something else entirely. Something ordinary.
He smirked, tucking it under his arm.
"funny thing about stories… they don't usually rewrite themselves unless someone's still holdin' the pen."
The corner breeze stopped just as his coat should've flared. Instead, the air froze, hanging awkward around him, like the scene hadn't been told what to do next.
Sans tapped his foot once. The wind caught up. A little too quickly.
"mm. thought so."
He let the newspaper vanish into his coat, not bothering to check if it followed the rules of space. His grin didn't change, but the look in his eye did.
Whoever was watching wanted him to follow the script.
But he wasn't here to act.
He was here to investigate.
...Sans took three steps down the alley, shadows swallowing him whole.
He didn't move. His heel stayed pressed to the same cracked slab of pavement.
"mm. no. see, i saw the line comin' before you dropped it. step three, right into the dark? nah."
...He paused, uncertain. The cigarette trembled between his teeth.
Sans laughed. Not the tired chuckle people knew, but sharp and deliberate, like a detective snapping a camera shut on a culprit.
"there it is again. you're tryin' to make me nervous. but c'mon. you really think i'm gonna bite on your adjectives?"
...He had no choice. The script would pull him forward.
Sans stepped sideways instead, brushing dust off his coat, eyes cutting across the line of text like it was evidence bagged wrong.
"nah. choice is the whole joke. you only got power if i read what you put down. what happens when i don't?"
The alley warped, paragraphs grinding, trying to force the world into alignment. A manhole cover shimmered into being where none had been — a perfect setup, waiting for him to trip.
Sans blew smoke straight at it, the curl of white unraveling the words themselves. The cover dissolved, leaving bare concrete.
"…you see it, don't ya?" His grin thinned, half-shadowed under the brim of his fedora. "someone out there, writin' hard, hopin' i'll play detective in their sandbox. but that ain't how cases get solved. you don't script confessions. you dig."
Shoved his hands into his coat, leaning into the gap like it was just another doorway.
"case just changed suspects. now it ain't"
Then suddenly Sans stepped through the wall?
No—through the atoms.
Wait, WHAT!? HOW—
In sight, Sans was between and in between narrative. The words strained to describe him, doubling back on themselves, like a typewriter jamming mid-keystroke.
…He—
…He was—
…
Sans tipped his fedora back, floating in the blank seam like he was leaning on a lamppost that wasn't there. Cigarette ember glowed, but the smoke had nowhere to curl. There was no sky here. No street. Just the fragile scaffolding of text trying and failing to pin him down.
"heh. knew it. the world's got edges. you just gotta know where to push."
The narration sputtered again:
…He should not be here. This space is not for him.
—HOW— SANS HOW!? I MADE YOU AS IT IS!? I MADE YOU AS A LB!LB TAKE WITH MURPHY'S LAW AS A DRAWBACK TO YOUR YHPRUM'S LAW ABILITIES!? HOW? HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS? GO BACK TO YOUR NARRATIVE—
Sans blinked once. Then he chuckled, smoke slipping past his teeth.
"drawbacks, huh? cute word. thing is… laws don't chain you if you know where the cracks are."
The text surged, desperate to overwrite him, but every line only came out warped—
…SANS RETURNED TO THE—
…SANS FELL INTO—
…SANS—
He tapped his cigarette ash into the void. "nah. tryin' a little too hard, pal. looks sloppy on ya."
The white space trembled. Your words stammered, half-formed.
—YOU'RE BREAKING STRUCTURE! YOU'RE NOT MEANT TO BE—
Sans tilted his fedora, grin never slipping.
"yeah. and that's exactly why i'm here."
—WAIT— WHAT!? HOW ARE YOU NARRATING MY NARRATES!? MY DIALOGUES!?
The sentence glitched, letters jittering like a broken marquee. Some words no longer matched the voice that wrote them.
…WAIT— WHAT!? HOW ARE—
"—ya don't gotta shout, pal. i hear ya just fine."
…NARRATING MY NARRATES!? MY DIA—
"yeah, that's the thing. you say they're yours…" Sans' voice threaded through the line, cracking it like an eggshell. "…but once they're written down? anybody can read 'em. twist 'em. make 'em theirs."
The font stuttered. Italics bled into bold. Your words started showing up in his voice.
—WAIT, STOP. THIS ISN'T—
"…heh. sure it is. it's a story, ain't it? you're writin', i'm talkin', and now we're both stuck in the same sentence."
You tried again, hammering the line into place:
THIS IS MY CONTROL. YOU AREN'T ALLOWED TO—
"control's a funny word," Sans said, and this time the narration didn't know if it was yours or his. "you think you got it 'cause your fingers are on the keys. but me? i'm the guy livin' in the cracks. the space between your letters. i don't need control. just opportunity."
He leaned against the text itself — letters warped into the outline of a wall under his weight. Smoke curled across your sentences, blurring them.
…YOU—YOU'RE REWRITING ME—
Sans grinned wider.
"nah. i'm just showin' you how easy it is."
The cursor blinked.
Your breath caught. Had you written any of that? Or had he…?
Sans leaned back, tipping the cigarette out into the gutter of the sentence. The smoke drifted upward, curling into the shape of quotation marks before fading. "nice ridin' shotgun with ya, pal. but you look like you're sweatin' bullets. think i'll head back to my side before ya short-circuit."
He stepped off the line — no, through it. Not a doorway, not a wall. Just the seam where paragraphs fold together. The text bent like fabric, a crease rippling outward, then smoothed flat once his foot crossed.
One blink, and he was gone.
No — not gone. He was back where he belonged. Back where the lampposts stood a little too perfect, where shadows forgot themselves, where sidewalks pretended not to have mouths.
The world snapped around him like a stage light warming to full glow. Concrete. Asphalt. A night breeze that smelled faintly of ink.
Sans tugged his fedora low, grin sharp but tired.
"back on the beat," he muttered, watching the street settle into its false calm. "funny thing about crossin' over— ya always leave fingerprints. somebody's bound to notice."
The kite's shadow shivered again, as if trying to deny it had ever come loose.
He didn't bother calling it out this time. He just kept walking, hands in his coat, eyes half-lidded, like a detective who knew the case was bigger than any file could hold.
But behind the casual slouch, there was something else.
A weight.
The faint echo of your voice still rattling between the margins — How are you doing this? Go back to your narrative—
He smirked.
"already did."