Sneaking In

Four months? I'm not waiting four months just to get a drink. Rust leans against the building across the street from Grillby's club, tapping his teeth together in irritation. He watches the bouncer rebuke a few Sanses at the door. He can hear the music from here. Whatever they've got in there, it's gotta be pretty awesome.

He frowns as he watches a tale Papyrus skip past the line and enter the building. Of course. He gets to waltz right in and I'm stuck out here. Fucker probably doesn't even drink. Rust's eyelights flick up to examine the roof of the building. He crosses his arms over his chest. He can't teleport inside, of course, but there wasn't anything stopping him from getting up on the roof...

Honey has only been to the Tale district once or twice before, and always finds himself feeling distinctly out of place. His worn hoodie and dirty sneakers are an embarrassing contrast to all the Tale-verse Papyruses in their pristine battle bodies and heroic looking capes. Most of them have modified their armor in some way to better differentiate themselves, but each clearly takes great pride in their appearance. Most of them have an accompanying Sans, watching protectively and looking on their brother's antics with pride. Honey's curious stares are tinted with envy.

He'd hoped that maybe this district would be a good place to find a sympathetic Sans -- one who might invite Honey to stay in their nice house with good, fresh food instead of the dregs that ended up in the sin district -- but he should have realised that most of the Sanses here already have a brother of their own, perhaps even their original Papyrus. They all look so happy, so content with themselves, and Honey tries to tamper down on his jealousy.

The one place that was positively teeming with lone Sanses was Grillby's, but whatever expectation Honey might have had about getting lucky there was quickly put to rest. All the Sanses are too focused on the building, shuffling through the long line, pushing and pranking each other to get ahead. Honey resigns himself to from watching from across the street, frowning when he sees the Tale Papyrus carelessly make their way to the front of the line.

"Lucky bastard, right?" he remarks to the small Sans beside him, who oddly enough, looks equally out of place. Not many Underfells in the Tale district, and especially not lone ones without a Papyrus to show off to their tale-verse counterparts.

I wonder how much sec-

Rust pulls his eyelights away from the roof of the building, turning to look at the other skeleton. He clenches his teeth upon catching sight of Honey, but relaxes after a moment. Didn't even notice him coming over. You're getting sloppy, Rust. Don't let it happen again. He looks the taller skeleton up and down, noting his ratty appearance. Rust was familiar with swaps, but this one in particular seemed like he was down on his luck, which surprised him a little.

"Yeah, that's one way'a puttin' it. Cheatin' bastard's good, too. No waitin' in line, no waitin' four months...must be nice." He cocks his head to the side slightly. "Bein' a Papyrus an' all," he says pointedly.

Honey makes an exaggeratedly wounded expression. "Hey, it's not all sunshine and roses being a Papyrus. Pretty sure they wouldn't let me in like that."

He gestures down at himself, wordlessly encompassing all the stains and blemishes. His hoodie really could have used some mending, not to mention a wash, but all his loose change tended to get spent on drinks and smokes instead of being saved for the laundromat, and he certainly wasn't going to wash it by hand.

He sighs, looking dolefully back at Grillby's. "Does it really take four months to get in? What the hell are they serving?"

Real honey, maybe? His mouth waters at the thought. The closest someone like him can afford is the weird, yellow-tinted substitute that he's pretty sure is just made from sugar and water. It doesn't taste anything like the real thing.

"Surely there's another way," he muses, more wistful than hopeful. He gives the Sans a sideways, slanting look. "I'm pretty sure you're not on the guest list either, so what are you doing here? Just window shopping?"

Rust snickers at the wounded expression, and looks back at the club. "I dunno buddy, it's a pretty sweet deal, even if you're swapped. After all, 'Papyruses are precious and no harm should happen to them.'" His grin widens. "Go up an' tell them it would harm you if they don't let you in. A real emotional wound."

He nods at the club. "Yeah. Four months. Minimum. And I bet you gotta grease a few wheels to even get on the list in the first place." He shifts, uncrossing his feet and recrossing them the other way. "It's a racket. An' blatant discrimination. You'd think the fuckers who made this place would set things up in their own favor. Sanses're supposed to have made this place, and then they go and set up shit that makes us second-class citizens. s'fuckin' dumb."

Rust looks up at the roof, and then back at Honey, grin becoming more mischievous. "Nah, I'm on the list. But I don't plan on lettin' that stop me."

Honey snorts in amusement. "Yes. I'm deeply traumatised. Only honey can ease the pain in my soul."

His voice is deliberately inflectionless as he pantomims talking to the bouncer at the door. Somehow, he has a feeling they wouldn't buy it. Hell, he's pretty sure they might pull out that 'no harm' rule as a reason for why he shouldn't be drinking. That's how his brother would have interpreted it.

The wicked expression on the smaller skeleton's face makes his sockets widen. "What are you...?"

The significant glance towards the rooftop suddenly makes sense, and Honey lets out a startled laugh, incredulous. "No way. What are you gonna do, scale the building? That idea might be a little out of your reach. Short lived, you might say."

Most Sanses aren't really athletically inclined, and neither do they have the statue for impressive feats like climbing sheer walls. Honey wonders if condiment-deprivation might be driving this Sans to impossible recklessness.

He watches Honey's 'performance' with amusement. "I can't see how they could turn ya down after a performance like that, heh heh. How could they say no to you, an innocent Pap who just needs his honey? Only a soulless bastard c'turn you away."

Rust winks at him. "Oh yeah? Y'think it's too tall an order, huh?" He points at the top of the building, but doesn't take his hand out of his pocket. He ends up just sort of making his jacket bulge in the general direction of the building. "Well, buddy, lemme let you in on a little secret: I know a shortcut."

"You really think they have anti-magic set up on the roof? On all the roofs around the place? Not a chance. Most people don't even think 'bout the roof."

"A shortcut," Honey repeats, skeptical. He looks dubiously between the Sans, and the roof of Grillby's. It's not the biggest building on the street, but it stands well apart from any similarly tall neighbors. There's no way to jump from an adjoining building, no poles or beams to scale, and certainly no exterior stairwell for easy access. None of that seems to have phased the Sans, whose fierce, gleeful expression conveys absolute confidence.

"No way," Honey challenges, intrigued by the other's confidence. "Five gold says you can't yet up there in anything less than 30 minutes."

If he can't manage that, it wouldn't be much of a shortcut. Unless that was meant to be another pun of some kind, but he didn't thin the Sans was taking a jab at his own height.

Rust wiggles his brows at the other skeleton. "I'll take that bet. You're practically givin' me money at this point." He pushes off the wall, continuing to eye the building. His left eyelight flickers from white to a deep red, growing larger as he examines the building for the telltale signs of barrier magic.

As expected, the entire building is surrounded by it. It's a ritzy place. They can afford it. But... He grins. The magic reaches up to the roof, like most places, they didn't protect their airspace. "Watch this." He blinks out of sight, aiming his teleport for right above the building. He gives himself a few feet of extra room, just in case. Which causes him to fall that extra few feet. He bites back a curse and lands on his hands and knees, attempting to put most of the impact on his prosthetic leg. He looks up and glances over in the direction he'd come from.

Well. That wasn't exactly the coolest way to get up here, but maybe he didn't see that. He raises one hand and waves at Honey.

And hopefully, none of the patrons lining up outside had noticed the roof was now plus one Sans. He had aimed for the middle of the roof, so that anyone close enough to the club couldn't see him very well. I hope nobody heard that...

Honey stares agape at the empty spot that had been occupied by the Sans just a moment ago. His brain simply stalls at the impossibility; there one moment, gone the next. Numbly, he waves his hand through the empty space, vaguely expecting to find that the Sans had just turned invisible, or hidden behind some illusionary trick. It's only out of the very corner of his peripheral vision that he catches sight of something shift over the roof of Grillby's, so fast he'd have thought he'd imagined it if not for the cheeky implications of the other skeleton's claim.

"What the..." He stares intently, and sure enough, after a moment of pause a familiar face peers over the rooftop edge and waves cheerfully down at him. Honey splutters, torn between awe and utter indignation.

Shortcut!? What kind of joke was it to call it that instead of what it was; freaking teleportation! Could all Sanses do that? Could his Sans have done that!? The implications leave him reeling.

But more immediately, one poignant thought takes precedence over all the others.

"Damn," he mutters under his breath, shoulders slumping in realisation. "I owe him 5G."

Rust gets to his feet and dusts off his knees, pleased with the flabbergasted expression on the other skeleton's face. He looks around the roof, spotting a service entrance. He walks over and tries to open the door, but it's locked. Of course. He grunts and starts to look through his pockets. He probably brought his picks today, right? Fuck. No. Of course not.

Rust sighs and looks forlornly at the door. I wonder if I can break it down. And more importantly, if I can do it quietly. He can hear the thrum of music through his feet, but he's not sure if that would be enough to cover up breaking down an entire door. He looks around, wondering where the Papyrus is. He assumed he would follow him up.

Rust walks back over to the edge of the roof, making a 'come here' gesture at him. He frowns though. Wait can he not shortcut? Is that why he looked so- dammit I should have bet way more than 5g. He can't teleport directly from the roof back to him though. He considers his options, and walks out of sight again, and jumps off the roof, teleporting as soon as he's out of range of the antimagic.

He lands next to Honey, this time better braced for the drop, and doesn't fall over. He straightens and looks at Honey, quirking a brow up at him. "Are ya not coming?"

When the Sans disappears from sight, heading further across the roof, Honey can only watch forlornly from the street, wondering what the other must have found up there. A way in? Entry to the condiment heaven that Grillby's was reputed to be? The lucky bastard. Dejectedly, he readies himself to leave, resigning himself to another lonely night of lost opportunity in the Sin District, when suddenly the Sans returns just as inexplicably as he'd vanished.

"Holy shit!" he exclaims, startling back from the other's unexpected appearance, soul pounding in shock. "What the hell, dude!? Don't do that!"

It takes him a long moment to register the question, and when he does he can only gape in bewilderment. "Coming? How!? I can't do that! I can't believe you just did that! Is that teleporting? Where did you learn it? Can all Sanses do it?"

In his excitement, it's hard to keep his voice down, and a few curious Sanses begin casting odd looks in their direction.

Rust steps back slightly at the yelling, more surprised than anything else. "You can't teleport?" He squints at him and narrows his eyes, looking Honey up and down. He sure looks like a swap. And he's loud but not that loud. "I thought the swappy Papyruses had shortcuts?"

He stares at Honey like he has starting growing a second head when he asks about teleporting. "What- dude, are you like, new? Ya gotta be new. Like, every Sans can teleport." He glances over at the curious Sanses, alert for any trouble, but as far as he can tell, they're just eavesdroppers. He keeps an eyelight on them anyway. "Seriously, I believe you don't know about it...didn't your-"

He pauses. This guy looked like he was practically falling apart at the seams, and that was a sign that his brother, fro whatever reason, wasn't taking care of him. Dead, an asshole, lost, or any number of other things. Which probably meant questions about his Sans would get a bad reaction.

"Didn't you notice all the other Sanses 'porting around?" He grins. "Did you really think we were actually walking everywhere?"

"Every Sans," Honey repeats, the words a numb statement rather than a question. Even if the Sans's teasing seemed mostly good natured, Honey still flushes, embarrassed by his apparent ignorance. "I never thought...I mean, how would I even guess that's what was going on!?"

Sure, he's seen any number of strange things since coming to the Citadel, and the often mysterious movements of Sanses was one of those things, but Papyrus had just shrugged off any oddities and assumed he hadn't been properly paying attention, or he'd made some sort of mistake. Given the amount of time he spent in bars under various levels of inebriation, it was easy to blame his own drunken confusion.

...Maybe he should think about cutting back on the booze in future, if this was the kind of thing he could manage to overlook.

"Geeze, why don't they put out a handbook on these things, if it's something everyone knows," he grumbles, kicking desolately at the pavement, until suddenly the other fragment of what the other had said came back to him. "Wait, you said swappy Papyruses...that's a swap thing? The teleportation?"

His sockets go wide, boggling. Truth be told, he's always felt a little disgruntled about how the characteristics of his universe were considered the 'Swap' attributes. Who had decided that? Why is the Tale-verse considered the baseline? Apparently it makes the most sense to the other universes, but he's always had trouble figuring out which traits he's expected to have and which he isn't. Tale Papyruses are outgoing and Tale Sanses are lazy...that part seems easy enough, and the reverse was certainly true for himself and his brother, but there's a bunch of other things that don't quite fit. The odd polarity between spaghetti and tacos, for one. Or how all Sanses, even his brother, never  have trouble finding friends and admirers while many Papyruses are solely reliant on their brothers.

"So swap Sanses don't teleport, but swap Papyruses do?" he asks, testing this newfound knowledge, seeking confirmation. "...wait, you mean I've been walking all this time, and I didn't have to be!?"

Rust's face falls slightly at Honey's reaction. He hadn't been trying to make the guy feel bad. Don't be a dick Rust. "Uh- well- I mean- I guess we can't really do it as much here, with all the magic barriers n'shit." He waves at the club across the street for emphasis. "So it's not that crazy you didn't notice."

He snorts at the handbook comment. It sounds almost...bitter? "Yeah, there's really no guide or anything. Or even a map. It's kinda a mess. But uh- don't feel bad about not noticing, dude. It's not like I told people back in my universe. It's a really good trump card, y'know? But with everyone here bein' like...another me I kinda figured we all had it."

Rust chuckles when Honey expresses outrage about walking, but his brows knit together as he considers the question. He didn't know if this guy could learn to teleport, but it made sense. He's just like a Sans in a Papyrus body or something, right?

"Well...uh..." He tries to think back. He knows at least one swap Papyrus with shortcuts, that's for sure. But he has to admit to himself he hasn't exactly been paying that close attention to everyone else here. "At least some do? Maybe you just don't know y'can. I didn't figure it out until I was like...fourteen? Plus, like, I don't think all the teleports work the same, from universe to universe, so- uh. You might need to experiment or something? See what works?"

Even if Rust sounds unsure, Honey is practically vibrating with repressed excitement. It feels unfamiliar; he'd assumed that by now, he'd be too jaded for such a pure, uncomplicated feeling, but compared to all the other Papyruses he's always felt he in some way lacking. He doesn't have their energy or conviction or dedication...but maybe he has something else that he can definitely claim is 'great'.

"If you've been doing it for that long, I bet it's a breeze for you," Honey says, looking back towards the roof. "I mean, you made it look super easy! So you can probably teach me, right?"

He puts every ounce of earnest pleading into his expression, even bending down closer to the Sans's height to put them more on equal footing. "Just...tell me how you do it! Maybe it'll help knock something loose and I'll figure it out?"

Rust's grin returns with Honey's enthusiasm. He looks a little relieved. Honey seemed nice enough, and he didn't really want to be responsible for ruining the guy's day. A little voice in the back of his mind whispers That's what you thought about them too. He forces himself to stay present, though. Alts were all different people. If everyone was a psycho this place would fall apart.

Even so, he almost draws away when Honey gets closer, but manages not to flinch. Chill, Rust. "Oh..." [i]Right now? "Well- it's just- uh..." He needs to think for a moment. He's been doing it so long it was a breeze. He didn't need to think about it anymore.

"What I do is...imagine the place, right? And then...you know th'feeling when you're you're dreaming and you try to walk down a step or somethin'? But there's nowhere to go cause you're actually asleep and shit? It's like that. So you jus' kinda...imagine where you wanna go, focus your magic, and then- step, but don't step." He blinks out of sight, to appear right behind Honey. "An' then you're there."

The seamlessness of Rust's relocation almost manages to startle Honey again, but now that he knows what to expect, it's more like an exhilarated jolt than an unnerving shock. He turns, eye-lights dancing with anticipation. The fact that Rust is taking his request seriously only makes him more eager to succeed.

"That doesn't sound too hard," he says, glancing between Rust and the roof of the building. Now that he's paying attention, he can feel the aura of the magical barrier shading the exterior of the building. He'd thought those wards were to keep patrons from getting rowdy on the inside, but he can guess that's why Rust's first attempt onto the roof had aimed a little higher than necessary. He'll have to do the same if he wants to get up there.

(It'll only occur to him belatedly that it would have been much safer for his first teleportation attempt to take place on a closer target, located at ground level. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.)

"Okay. Let me try this." He shuts his eyes, concentrating. He's very familiar with the unnerving sensation of a lucid dream -- the bewildering disconnect between his physical body and his mental self. The fact that he can usually fall asleep anywhere, with very little provocation, makes it especially easy to drop into an almost trance-like state. He pictures the top of the bar in his mind's eye, focusing on the empty space right above it.

Step, but don't step.

A shock of sudden cool air makes his sockets pop back open. The bright lanterns that highlight Grillby's exterior and the blanket of warmth from the street is gone. Around him is only empty air, and below him is the flat expanse of the roof. There's a moment of lingering dizziness that's quickly overshadowed by the euphoric delight of success...until a split-second passes and he realises that his mental projection of the roof only envisioned the part that he could see from the ground -- the edge -- instead of where he should have aimed, more fully over the building. The space beneath him only barely encompasses the rooftop ledge, but otherwise is a sheer drop back down to the ground.

"Shi-!" The curse doesn't even make it to completion. Panic steals most of the air from his lungs, and a moment later the rest is forced out by the impact of his ribcage against the ledge. It was only a short drop, not enough to break anything, but he's too stunned to immediately claw his way over the parapet. Instead he can feel himself start to slip backwards towards the much more deadly drop to the street below.

Rust spots him eyeing the club. He's not gonna try his first jump on the roof, is he? He can think of about five reasons that was a bad idea. "Hey, wait, don't-" But Honey is already gone. "Fuck." He turns to look over at where Honey had been staring. "Fuck."

Below, a few of the Sanses outside the club look up. Honey wasn't particularly sneaky.

Rust shortcuts forward, closer to the building, left eye blazing red. That certainly attracts the attention of the other Sanses in line, as well as the bouncer. The ones who hadn't spotted Honey can now follow Rust's gaze to the roof. Rust tries to grab Honey with blue magic, but the barrier extends too far. He's still halfway in it.

"You gotta be fucking with me!" Rust steps again, cutting it close to the edge. Time was of the essence, and he'd already been up there once. He lands on the roof with a grunt, making sure to take all the weight onto his prosthetic this time. For a second, he thinks he's going to fall onto all fours again, but uses the momentum of the fall to scramble towards the edge of the roof. He gets to the edge and grabs at Honey wildly. He gets a handful of hoodie in one hand, and Honey's wrist in the other.

"What the hell man!?" he shouts, not really thinking about it. Fuck fuck here I am not built for this. Can he even pull Honey up? He wasn't the strongest monster. He grits his teeth and pulls anyway.

As well deserved as the yelling is, it's not at all helping Honey's in-progress freak-out. He transfers his grip from the smooth, frictionless ledge to Rust himself, clinging desperately to the smaller skeleton's ribcage. There's a perilous moment where their combined weight threatens to send them both toppling, Honey's greater mass pulling them towards the yawning drop, but then one of Honey's sneakers manages to find purchase on a jutting brick and Rust's frantic efforts manage to pull their center of gravity back towards the safety of the roof.

Inch by laborious inch, Rust's furious tugging helps Honey manage to crawl his way back over the rooftop. His phalanges dig in with unintentional force, clawing mindlessly at Rust's back, but he doesn't dare let go when Rust's smaller body is the only thing anchoring him against gravity. Finally he's dragged high enough that he can hook a leg over the ledge, and from there one last pull has them both toppling into a drained and panting pile on the floor.

"Dude," Honey gasps, his soul racing fast enough that it feels like it's ricocheting around inside his ribcage, trying to break free. "Bro...did you see that? I totally teleported."

He breaks out into a titter of relieved, almost hysterical giggling, still clutching Rust's chest like he's afraid he'll fall again if he lets go.

"Dude." He's equally drained, breath ragged. He doesn't move his arms from where he's grabbed onto Honey, not really thinking about it. "You- yeah!? You did and we almost died!?" He sounds more shocked than angry. "Fucker- why did you do that!?" He sort of bats at his chest in admonishment. "We almost died."

He lets out an exasperated breath. "You know we're totally not gettin' in now. I'm pretty sure they all know we're up here." Sure enough, they can hear raised voices from below. "Ugh. An' I wanted some of that fancy booze." He sighs. "Well what're we gonna do now?"

"Oh," Honey says, still sounding more shell-shocked than devastated by either the near-miss or their utter failure in their mission. He's belatedly becoming aware of the commotion drifting up from the street below. "Oh shit."

It takes him several long second seconds to find the will to move. Rust doesn't sound pissed enough to galvanise him into shifting, and he's not that uncomfortable to be sprawled over despite being entirely made of bone. Eventually, though, he forces himself to sit up and peek over the roofledge. There's a small congregation of Sanses down there talking with the bouncer. As Honey watches, one of them points up, prompting him to draw back from the ledge and out of sight.

"Yep. We're totally boned," he announces. He gives Rust a sheepishly apologetic smile. "Well, uh. This isn't the only place in town to drink. Wanna try someplace else? I'm pretty sure I owe you a round or two after that."

"Yeah. You do. And my 5g." He sits up, and then grabs his foot, examining it. "Ugh. Piece of shit." There's a slight crack in the prosthetic, but it's not that big. He lets go of it and stands up, looking over the edge. He flips off the crowd idly. "Yeah, we gotta move. But." He turns to Honey. "I'm doin' the porting this time, bud. I would like to not go splat, or end up halfway through a wall're something."

He starts to walk to the back of the bar, and gestures for Honey to follow. "We're gonna have to jump." He looks longingly at the door to the bar. Man I really wanted to see whatever bullshit they've got in there. "There's a nice one by where I live unless you gotta 'nother bar in mind?"

The glint of metal and magic that make up the prosthetic draws Honey's concerned stare. He hadn't even noticed it at first, not because it's especially subtle, but he just isn't used to looking down that far. It's not the first time he's seen a magi-tech replacement on a monster, and it's often the Fell-types in particular who use them, but watching Rust walk across the roof with a prominent limp makes him feel especially guilty.

"Shit, dude. Is your leg okay?" Honey heaves himself up, following a few steps behind, eyeing the unbalanced hitch in the smaller skeleton's gait. It's on the tip of his tongue to offer support, maybe even to carry the Sans like me might have done with his own brother until he remembers that apparently Sanses don't need to walk anywhere they don't want to. Teleporting is gonna be so damn convenient, assuming he can figure it out without any more mishaps.

"We can go to yours, but are you sure you don't wanna get that checked out first?"

Most of the bars Honey's familiar with are at the opposite end of the class spectrum from Grillby's, but even if he might have saved a few G on the watered down drinks, he's slightly more worried about getting Rust back safely to wherever he's staying.

Rust, on the other hand, seems completely unphased by the leg. He'd had it a while now. Magitech limbs were expensive, especially if you wanted one that would work past a barrier. So it broke a lot, and he found himself patching it up on a regular basis. He wishes he could afford a nicer one, but he's been having trouble finding a job at all, with his very low magic reserves and obvious...flaw. ANd he certainly wasn't going to let Black spend any more money on it.

"What?" He stops at the edge of the back of the bar, turning his head and looking at Honey. He glances down at his leg and snorts. "What? No, s'not okay. It's gone. But the fake leg is fine. S'just a little crack. I can fix it later." He waves a hand dismissively. "Doesn't hurt. S'not fancy enough to be hooked into my magic. I can't feel a thing. It's not a big enough deal to go rushin' home. I still haven't gotten my drink yet."

He waves him over more insistently. "C'mon I wanna get outta here before they come looking. You ever been to Snuffed?" He holds out a hand. He needs to be in contact when they jump.