Ace in a Hole: Collaborative Shenenigans

Chapter 1

The man who's selling the house to Sans is a broad-bodied type with an awkward, pinched smile and the overanxious accidental racism he's come to dread, if he could even call it that. Most humans aren't inherently racist against monsters, much to their discovered delight after government negotiations were made once the Underground was escaped. But if there was one thing worse than outright misery, it was little inconveniences.

This guy wasn't trying to be racist, he's just an overthinker. The same stutter as Alph, the awkwardly hunched shoulders, and the constant "Uh, not because you're a skeleton or anything!" being thrown into random statements. And Sans knows it's not. It's not a conversation where he feels insulted, it's more so the conversation where he just wants the guy to take in a breath and know it's fine.

Clearly, this retail man has never interacted with a monster before. Which is understandable. Sans was born Underground, just seeing the sky alone was still jarring to him, a month and a half after they'd all escaped to the surface. This was a very new thing to both species. Interactions were going to be stilted and all over the place. Tiptoeing around to figure out cultures and differences. This man was just the kind to overthink every single sentence because he wasn't sure what was considered rude or not to Sans. The type of person who goes so far the opposite way that they just loop right back around to where they shouldn't be. Honest at heart, anxiously terrible in practice.

So Sans mostly tunes out the squeaks of overcompensation as he glances up at the old-styled building hovering above the two of them. Radio station, to be specific. One of the classics, with vintage poured into every brick of its architecture. Sans isn't really a radio person - he's fixed a few of them in his college years for an engineering class he was all but dragged into kicking and screaming (never again), but that's the extent of his knowledge. Not that Sans isn't a fan of the olden times, but he isn't inherently outwardly interested in it either.

New Orleans, Louisiana wasn't the best place to settle down, but prices were cheap and it's just a few hours away from Mount Ebott. The building showed that. The amazing thing about older things, as Toriel - the vintage queen - would attest to, was that personality practically dripped from every relic of the past. On the downside, so did time.

The place is rotten with age, half of the right side completely caked in vines and overgrowth. The windows are completely dusty and he swears there's some sort of animal stench he can't figure out. At least it's standing, though, with four walls and heavy, functional doors and locks. While looking a bit sad and miserable, it's functional and doesn't have spores or mold. Old and definitely in need of some work, but classic and styled. Not that Sans intends to stay here forever, but a few years wouldn't hurt as long as the inside wasn't something to cry about.

"... functional water, heat, and electricity!" The man to his left was continuing, "I, um, don't know if you really need heat - not that you don't deserve it, of course, or that I'm in the right for making any assumptions! I, uh, sorry, um -"

Oh god, this poor kid. Looks to be about twenty-three, maybe twenty-four? Probably fresh out of training or whatever real estate realtors have to endure to sell the property. The worst of timing to be thrown into the business, right when monsters trampled out of the Underground in masses to demand instant surface housing. Humans had homes, but they didn't have that many free buildings for the sudden uptick of need. Combine that with both of their generations being the first to interact with the other species in almost one hundred years, and you had a recipe for not disaster, per se, but more so stumbling about. Like a fish out of water.

And this poor kid clearly had some overthinking issues, had to try and sell Sans this run-down abandoned building probably assumed to be haunted by the locals, and Sans was probably the first monster he's spoken to before in his entire life.