The Time Before (Undertale)

40 ~ Black

Another month passed, and they were suddenly ready to start building the space folding machine. The blueprints had been made and checked, after an extensive planning for errors, miscalculations, and freak accidents. Everything had been readied and gone over twice, three times, four times.

So they started building.

They were still in the lab. The machine was big, yes, but not so big that they couldn't fit it into one of the larger lab rooms located on the sixth floor. On top of that, the True Lab was directly connected to the CORE-- the only building in the whole of the Underground with higher priority power access was the New Home hospital.

As it was, the folding was going to take a lot of power. One fold should have been fine, but they had to be able to make two folds- an entry fold and an exit fold. Gaster said he wouldn't be surprised if it completely put the power out everywhere else.

But, before that, they still had to build.

And, despite all this, the pranks contined.

~o0o~

They had been working on building the machine for three days. It was slow going, as they double, triple, quadruple checked their work as they went, but so far, everything had gone smoothly.

Today, Sans had skipped out on lunch. His ketchup bottle had provided enough of a meal to keep him going for the time being, and he had something he wanted to work on.

About thirty minutes later, Gaster came into the lab. When he pushed open the door, it toppled the bucket which had been carefully balanced on top. Said bucket fell downwards, landing squarely over his head, its contents- a mass of neon pink slime- drenching Gaster's shoulders and slipping downwards to soak the entire upper half of his lab coat.

Slowly, Gaster lifted the bucket off his head, looking down at his pink-covered coat. Then he looked up to Sans, who was doubled over, snickering.

As the rest of the Spacefold team returned from lunch, Gaster just stood in the doorway, looking at Sans. Finally, lifting his hands to watch the blobs of the stuff dripping between his fingers, he asked, "... Sans, what... what exactly is this?"

Sans just shrugged, still snickering a little. "slime, i would assume. you'd know better than i would, you gave me the recipe."

Gaster just stood there a moment longer. There had been only one recipe for slime in the prank book he had given Sans, and while the stuff wasn't dangerous, really, it did stain clothes at an alarming rate.

Gaster looked at his formerly-white lab coat. The Spacefold scientists were beginning to understand what had happened, and were starting to laugh, too.

Gaster refused to be humiliated by this.

He gestured to the pink goop on the floor. "You will be responsible for cleaning this up, understood?"

Still laughing, Sans just nodded.

"Good." And then Gaster turned and strode away.

~o0o~

It was several hours before Sans saw his creator again. He was checking over some wiring schematics when a distinctly familiar shadow fell over him.

Afraid of something most likely landing on him or falling down his collar, Sans spun around with a yelp.

Gaster was standing there. He didn't appear to be doing anything other than looming creepily, though, hands folded behind his back, a small grin on his face.