Sans ducked as a barrage of attacks hurtled towards him, only just hitting the ground in time to avoid being hit. Then lunging back to his feet, he summoned two Blasters, one in front of and one behind his opponent.

Gaster responded by summoning two of his own Blasters, the Magic of Sans' Blasters funneling straight into their mouths. "Come on, Sans. I told you that wouldn't work yesterday, and it still won't work toda-urk!"

Sans cheered as the bone he had summoned behind Gaster hit the taller skeleton square in the ribs. His victory was cut short, though, when  Gaster set up a ring of bones around him, each rocketing towards him in quick succession. Sans ducked again, but Gaster was suddenly grabbing onto the collar of his shirt with a summoned hand, hauling him back upwards.

Sans struggled free with no time to spare, only just lunging away from Gaster's vicious attack.

As he sprung again to his feet, Sans reached for his Magic, trying to do what he had been practicing for months-- Blue Magic. He reached out with the Magic, feeling for Gaster's Soul, before giving it a tug.

Sans saw Gaster twitch slightly- not really fully under the affects of Blue Magic, but definitely feeling something.

And then Sans was running up towards Gaster, a bone in hand like a sword. He leaped forward, swinging with all his might.

Gaster, in turn, summoned a longer bone, and used it like a staff, blocking Sans' swing. The pair of them tussled for a moment, locked together in combat.

For a moment, it looked like Sans might actually overpower Gaster, but then Gaster shoved back with his bone staff, sending Sans sprawling.

With a vicious grin, Gaster strode over to Sans, setting a foot on his chest and the end of his attack on Sans' collarbone.

"I win."

Sans just huffed. "yeah, well, you're also a lot stronger than i am."

"Indeed. That is the purpose of these daily sparring matches, however. You only get stronger by fighting someone stronger than you." Gaster stepped back, dismissing his attack and offering Sans a hand up. Sans accepted the help up, simultaneously wiping a bit of sweat from his brow with his sleeve.

"if only i could get the blue magic down."

"You'll get it."

"but i've been working on it for almost a year! you said i should be able to get it in four or five weeks."

"Sans. It requires patience."

Sans just sighed.

As the pair of them walked out of the weapons testing room, Gaster began to speak again. "So. Twelfth birthday's tomorrow."

"uh huh." Sans nodded, a little curious where this was going. Gaster had never really made a habit of celebrating birthdays or anything, and it was unlike him to start that now.

"I have to work in the upper floors. We're testing one of the new CORE prototypes."

"oh. cool. let me know how it goes."

"Or, you know, I was thinking you could come with me, see for yourself."

Sans stopped dead in his tracks. Gaster took half a step before turning around to look at Sans and laugh.

"you're kidding."

"No. D'you wanna come?"

Slowly, Sans grinned. "yes. yes i do."

Gaster nodded, smiling as they entered his lab. "Good. It's... Nine thirtyish right now, so I'll let you get to bed early. I want you up by six tomorrow, understood?"

Sans just nodded, his grin widening.

"See you in the morning, then."

It took Sans about ten minutes to get ready for bed. It was a good thing that he went so fast, as that meant he could fall asleep sooner, which was already going to take long enough as it was.

Because for the first time in his life, he was going to be allowed out of the tenth floor. For the first time in his life, he was going to be allowed to go out into the world.

~o0o~

Morning found Sans already awake, dressed, and ready to go. After a quick breakfast together, Sans and Gaster walked over to the elevator.

When the doors slid open, Gaster stepped into the box. Sans, however, hesitated, the toes of his shoes just at the edge of the door.

Gaster looked at him, confused. Then, "Oooooohhhhh, right. You've never been in the elevator before."

Sans shook his head.

"Well. Come on. There's a first time for everything."

Slowly, Sans took a step forward, into the elevator. It was mostly just a small box with nondescript walls, a panel of buttons with floor numbers one through ten, and a checkered floor. And, despite what he had kind of expected, Sans felt no different from how he had before stepping into the elevator, which was more or less nervous.

Gaster hit the button for the seventh floor. "It's where," he explained, "the best explosion-proof rooms are. Well. Explosion-resistant. There have been... a few... incidents."

Sans flinched, then realized that the room was supposed to be moving. "like... like what?"

Gaster gestured dismissively. "Oh. You know. Nothing special. Explosions."

Sans rocked slightly on his toes. "sounds like a blast." He murmured.

Gaster chuckled a little, indulging in Sans' method of tension relief. "It'll blow you away."

Sans glanced up at him. "i'd rather not get blown up."

"Heh. Right. Yeah, no, that's not a good thing." He looked down at Sans. "Just be careful, and you'll be fine. Don't get in anyone's way."

Still fidgeting nervously, Sans just nodded.

And then the elevator stopped moving, and the door slid open. Gaster let Sans hesitate a moment, watching vaguely amused as Sans took slow step forward...

In all honesty, the seventh floor looked more or less exactly like the tenth, just a bit of a different layout.

"... i thought you said other people worked here...?" Sans prompted slowly.

Gaster chuckled. "It's still a little early. Most of the employees arrive between seven thirty and eight thirty. It's... seven right now."

Sans nodded.

Gaster led him down a hallway to a large room. It was one of the more workshop-type rooms, with diagrams and blueprints hung on the walls, various half-built mechanisms, tools, and odds and ends littering the tables.

"This," Gaster said as they entered, "is the main location where we've been working on CORE designs. I have a few other teams working on it around the lab, but this where the more important things happen. Probably because this is where I work most of the time."

Sans laughed at that last bit.

Gaster gave him a quick tour of the room. For the most part, it was all things he had already explained to Sans, as he had been keeping Sans updated on the CORE project for the last year or so.

And then, a few minutes before employees began to arrive, Gaster gave Sans free reign of the lab.

"If anyone asks, tell them you're doing a trial run for the newly opened intern position. What with the growth serum and all, you don't look too young to be here, and Annoying Dog knows you're definitely smart enough, if not in factual knowledge, then at least in logic. Just stay on the seventh floor, stay out of people's way, and don't touch anything you don't already explicitly know how to use. Unless someone's helping you, and has given you a clear reason why you should be doing it." He paused a moment. "... We're going to be testing the CORE prototype after lunch, so be back here around eleven forty five, and I'll take you to the cafeteria."

After being made to repeat each of these conditions to Gaster, Sans was allowed to explore.

As he was leaving the CORE development lab, he ran into Jeff, who was presumably coming to help Gaster.

"Wha-! Sans?! What are you doing here?"

"He's trying out for that available internship." Gaster called from one of the tables he was working at. "So he'll be around the lab, now."

Sans grinned up at Jeff.

"Well, uh." Jeff hesitated, then returned the smile. "Good luck, then. Have fun."

With a nod, Sans was slipping by, out into the hallway, into adventure.

~o0o~

Sans' morning was spent well between exploring the halls and talking to monsters.

He found that most of the labs were much neater than Gaster's lab, and almost all the rooms were designated to one specific project, and one project only, unlike the clutter of Gaster's lab, where projects often spilled over onto one another, mixing with the half-built bits of machinery and mechanical things. No, here, it was much more organized, even within each individual project.

Another thing was the scientists. Everyone he met seemed incredibly shocked that someone as young as sixteen had gotten the internship. (he let people guess at his age and just kinda nodded absentmindedly whenever they made a guess, and never told anyone he was really only just twelve. It seemed like Gaster had been right about the growth serum.) But, other than that, they were all reasonably kind and helpful, explaining to him whatever he asked about. They found that he was a quick learner, and easily caught on to even some of the more complex ideas.

One thing that confused him, though, was how everyone, everyone warned him to stay away from Dr. Gaster.

When he asked someone, a tall, birdlike monster, she looked surprised. "You mean you got in here without hearing about him?" She twittered. "Ah well. You seem like a nice boy, and it'd be a shame to kick someone so smart as you outta here, so I'll pass along the warning. He's very... eccentric. Don't get me wrong, I respect him immensely. He's insanely smart, and when it comes to the big projects, there's no better leader, but... he's got quite the temper. Sort of a 'failure will not be tolerated' type thing.  It's not rare to see him scolding people for not doing their jobs right, and he usually ends up firing at least two people every month."

Sans thought on that for a minute. To be honest, it didn't really surprise him. Gaster was a rather wild person.

So he grinned up at the bird monster. "huh. well, thanks for lettin' me know, but i'm not gonna get kicked outta here."

She laughed. "That's what they all say. Just be careful, alright?"

He nodded, thanked her again, and was on his way.

Lunchtime rolled around, and he found his way back to the CORE development lab just as Gaster was leaving it.

"Ah, good. I was just coming to find you. Come on, the cafeteria's on the third floor."

So Sans followed Gaster to the elevator, and up to the third floor.

The CORE prototype testing was pretty uneventful. Nothing blew up, but it didn't work, either. So the development team, which was Gaster, Jeff, and five other monsters, plus Sans, all went back to the development lab.

~o0o~

"so why exactly is everyone so afraid of the doc?" Sans asked two of the monsters. Gaster was currently not in the room, called away to deal with an issue in some other project. "he doesn't seem so bad."

"Are you kidding?" Skiffyn, a monster that might have been feline, if not for her deep purple fur and scaly, barbed tail, said. "He's like, the most difficult boss there is. If you just slip up a little, you can rest assured that he'll put you out of a job."

"really?"

"Oh yeah." Wallek, a naga monster, agreed. "Last week, Duna got a royal chewing out just because she accidentally mixed a few chemicals wrong. It wasn't even like they were dangerous or anything, and the mixing order didn't even matter, but he practically told her she had killed everyone!"

"Or that time that Hass just so happened to be in the same room as one of the CORE prototypes when it blew up. He didn't do anything to it! But now he doesn't work here anymore."

"And he doesn't tolerate anyone 'wasting his time.' Unless it's something that's really, really important, he'll yell at you just for talking to-" Wallek suddenly snapped his mouth shut as Gaster walked back into the room. Gaster, though, evidently hadn't heard, and walked over to the table he had been working at near the back of the room.

"wow." Sans murmured, then grinned. "ten gold says i can talk to him." He whispered.

Both of the scientists looked shocked. "You can't-!"

"then what do you have to lose?" Sans' expression was the skeleton equivalent of a raised eyebrow.

Skiffyn suddenly got a very ferocious look in her eye. "Fine." She whispered back. "You're on."

Sans grinned and walked over to where Gaster was working as the two scientists watched nervously. Pulling himself up to sit on the edge of the table, Sans peered at the sketches and blueprints and calculations on the table. "so. how's it goin' over here?"

"It's not, really." Gaster grumbled. "We're running out of ideas."

"well, how's this one supposed to work?" Sans pulled one of the blueprints out of the mess and looked at it. When he glanced over the top of it, he saw Skiffyn and Wallek looking quite astonished.

"That one was going to use the geothermal energy from the lava in Hotland, and turn that into Magical power. And while we can get the heat into electricity, there's no way to turn that into Magic energy."

"...hhhhuh." Sans thought about that.

For a minute or two, they were both silent.

Then, "hey, what about runes?"

"What about them?"

"why couldn't you use runes to make something?"

Gaster hesitated. "I... To be honest, I've never made anything with runes that's not directly operated by a monster."

"well, that's a part of science, right? figuring out how to do new things?"

Gaster was silent, one hand rising to his jaw in thought. "... I suppose you do have a point, there."

"and, i mean, it's not like we would just go build the thing. you're already making a ton of prototypes weekly, so it's not like you'd really lose anything if it didn't work."

Gaster nodded slowly. "...Right..." He dug up a clean sheet of paper, and began sketching things out. "We'd have to make sure there was a proper containment system-... -emergency overflow here-... Unless this was too small. Then-..."

As Gaster got deeper into his work, lapsing in and out of speech, voicing halves of ideas, Sans recognized that his creator wouldn't be responding to much more conversation.

So he hopped off the table and walked over to where the two scientists were standing, wide-eyed.

"see?" He laughed as Skiffyn handed him the gold. "i told you i could talk to him."

§

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! Remember, votes and comments are not only always welcome, but always appreciated, too!