To Kill A Killer

Chapter 7: Nothing Better To Do

Killer liked to think of himself as a fairly talented guy. His extensive list of skills included fighting, bad puns, lockpicking, pranks, knife tricks, murder, and being a general nuisance, just to name a few. Being humble was notably not on that list, but he didn't care much for humility anyway.

He did, however, care quite a bit about a second thing he wasn't very skilled at, since it was directly applicable to his current situation.

Waiting.

He had no idea how he'd managed to be so patient back before his deal with the dark-eyed demon child. All those RESETs, timelines upon timelines filled with waiting for the kid to finally reach him, to face his judgement – waiting for the cycle to break. For something new to happen, something that he hadn't already seen countless times before. Patience and justice – two traits he hadn't possessed for a long, long time.

Consequently, he was bored out of his mind.

Horror and Cross had left hours ago, sent on one of those missions to spread negativity on the boss' behalf. He'd been informed of them by Nightmare, of course, but he hadn't seen any actually happen in the – what was it, nearly two weeks? – that he'd been at the castle, so naturally, he was curious about them. Unfortunately, he hadn't gotten to go on this one, leaving him stuck at the castle without anyone who would talk to him. He'd received nothing but cold silence from Dust and Horror lately, Cross was gone, and Nightmare was shut up in his office doing 'paperwork'. Killer had his doubts about that, since he couldn't think of a single reason why the stars-damned King of Negativity would need to do paperwork, of all things. The castle didn't even have a snowball tax, much less bills, and as far as Killer had seen, most of the food and other supplies they needed were just stolen.

He wasn't bothered by the lack of company, exactly – he wasn't there to make friends, after all – but the lack of entertainment was grating on him. He'd already sharpened his knives, disembowelled a dummy in the training room, and watched a movie. What the hell else was he meant to do when nobody had bothered to inform him of the Wi-Fi password? And that was if there even was proper internet in the castle, something he was beginning to doubt.

Currently, he was lying on the saggy, faded green couch in the lounge room, absently flipping a small pocketknife as he pondered whether or not it would be worth the trouble to go bother Nightmare. That, or he could find something else to watch, but he couldn't find many films in the castle that he hadn't already seen before, and he didn't feel like sitting still anyway.

I knew I should've grabbed some of Alphys' anime DVDs before I left.

Just as he was beginning to seriously consider going to Nightmare's office and finding out what he was actually doing in there, two pairs of footsteps echoed faintly from downstairs, accompanied by voices similar to his own. He immediately sat up and swung his legs off the couch, shortcutting as he stood so that his feet landed on the cold stone floor of the throne room. He stumbled with the momentum, quickly reaching out a hand to the wall to steady himself, then grinned up at his two teammates. Both had their respective weapons in their hands, and the last traces of a portal were vanishing behind them.

"Thank the stars. I was so bored."

Horror pointedly ignored him, turning towards the door, his large axe on his shoulder and a slight limp in his step.

If Killer's eyelights were still there, he would have rolled them. Sometimes, empty sockets could be quite limiting in terms of expressions. "Yeah, yeah, you're still mad. Remember where my knife is yet?"

He didn't receive an answer as Horror disappeared in a flash of blood-red magic. He shrugged it off and focused his attention on Cross.

"Sooooooo," he drawled. "How'd your mission thingy go?"