Ace in a Hole (Undertale x Hazbin Hotel)

Chapter 28

Walking around hell, with Alastor, was sitting in a clearing at night. Stars littering the sky, the moon blank and faceless, with only a thick fire to keep away the beasts around. And that fire, that protection that persisted, was Alastor. The only light in the vast nature, consuming and protecting all at once. Despite the groaning of the wolves and the gnashing of teeth, Sans pulled himself to the more familiar of dangers, and basked in it.

Sans switched from his more modern and plain outfit to something a bit more refined, courtesy of Alastor and Alastor's tailor. Whoever the tailor was, they worked fast. Sleep had come for Sans only for a brief hour and a half, and in that time, Alastor had managed to take Sans' sizes down to the tailor, let the genius work, and returned on the cusp of Sans escaping the bed to look for him.

The outfit was a more casual, stylish approach to Sans' typical wardrobe. Which Sans didn't mind too much. Alastor had seen to it that the clothes were comfortable.

Hell was the concept of red itself, as if the pentagram above constantly bled down its emboldened color until nothing was bold anymore. The hotel at least had the golds and whites to circumvent a headache, but outside had none of that. The few colors that came out of the red were so jarring that it made Sans' head spin; the colors primarily posted onto billboards or signs to draw people in.

It worked. The blues and greens always drew Sans to them, starved of other colors only a week into hell. Alastor's chest rumbled with laughter when he caught sight of Sans' gaze.

"They do that on purpose, you know," Alastor chimed in. "Overlords tend to hog the other colors and use them for advertisements. It tends to draw in new souls."

"So overlords control why it's all so red?" Sans asked.

"Red is the only consistent color hell has access to, other than white and black. We can sometimes get green from flower stems and blue from electronics, but red is the only color of dye we can grow consistently. The rest of the dyes are gathered from clothes and accessories sinners drop down with."

"Huh," Sans said. "So sinners that have more fun colors are probably prioritized, just like the colder ones, right?"

The two men crept along one of the quieter streets of hell, devoid of any travelers. Alastor had apparently managed to slip Sans out on the cusp of one of Vox's most popular show times onto unpopular streets, leaving only Sans and Alastor as bodies along the thin and chipped sidewalks. The few sinners that had dared to be outside gawked at Sans like he was a circus freak.

He wondered if it was obvious he was a mortal or not. Monsters would easily blend in here compared to a normal human—but Sans was a pure-blooded skeleton. He was nothing like the odd, heterogeneous people roaming about. A tall, thin lamp post with bright eyes, a short stump of a person with horns and wings. Anything that would even stick out amongst the monster population as unusual. Head smoldered against his bones as Sans watched the passersby sinners, mostly red or pink, bulge their eyes at the sight of Alastor and Sans together in stilted silence. The humor twinged at his chest, just as an uncomfortable danger did.

It was the first time in his entire life that Sans was entirely dependent on someone else for safety from others. The foreign feeling didn't quite fit into him right—a puzzle piece trying to stuff itself into an already complete puzzle.

"It's why Angel Dust is a bit popular—he's mostly white and a light pink; they're softer colors," Alastor said. "I've heard quite a few of his clients say he reminds them of angels."

"Ah."

"Though, if any of his competitors were cold, I doubt he would be ranked first anymore."