My Friend Over the Phone

Chapter 34

Killer whistled as he speed-walked towards the castle for the second time that day. They had started brainstorming about a way to stop their Ink problem earlier that day, and he thought he was done working for the day, but apparently something bad happened so he had to go back. He wasn't quite sure how much of an emergency it was, because Cross just texted everyone to come back to the castle now without specifying what was wrong at all. He finally reached the doors after slightly running for several minutes. He didn't walk because he forgot the coordinates to the castle, not at all.

He raised his fist to knock, but a hooded figure ripped open the door from inside before he could. "Where have you been?" The person asked, sounding a little frantic. It was Dust. "I kinda forgot the exact coordinates to the castle, so I had to walk." Dust sighed. "Well, what's going on? What happened??" Dust moved to the side to let Killer in. In the parlour sat Error, Nightmare and Cross, everyone sitting on the couch. Error was rebooting, and the couple were sitting on either side of him. "Killer! Do you think you can snap him out of it?" Cross asked, gesturing to Error.

"Can somebody explain to me what the heck is going on first??" Killer asked.

Nightmare sighed. Killer noticed bandages covering the left side of his face. It probably wasn't possible to bandage the wound without covering his eye socket in the process, but it wasn't like Nightmare could see out of that socket regardless. "Error teleported here in rush a few minutes ago looking panicked. We don't know why or from where, but he's still panicking; he keeps rebooting, over and over again."

"Okay..? That sucks, but what do you want me to do about it?"

"We need some way to distract him. Keep him running just long enough for him to be out of danger from crashing again. We need to know what has him so distressed, because it's probably not good for us."

Killer groaned. It was hard to distract Error, especially when he was like this. There aren't many exciting things Error liked that could immediately take his mind off of whatever's so terrible. Suddenly, an idea hit him. He stared at the slow-moving bar above Error's skull. 96%. It would be another five minutes or so before he's conscious again. He turned on the expensive TV parallel to the couch, and used the remote to switch the channels. It wasn't long before he found Error's favourite, and I'm sure you all know what that show was.

    "Error_Sans.exe successfully rebooted. Launching software..." Called out a female robotic voice. Killer even now wasn't quite sure where that voice always came from, or why it was there whenever Error crashed, rebooted or updated. He really was like an old computer that was barely running in its old age. A dial-up noise played for a few seconds, before a window popped up over Error's eyes with a revolving black circle in the centre of it, with the word 'loading...' below the shape. Stars, Error always took ages to start up again, and he was so loud too. Rebooting must be annoying as hell to go through on a regular basis though, and Killer couldn't be happier he wasn't like Error.

When Error woke up, the first thing he heard was "Como pudiste Asgoro!" He gasped, staring at the TV "You guys were watching Undernovela without me?! What's happening?? What did I miss??" He exclaimed, leaning forward with his orbits glued to the screen. Even though only about five lines have been said since he woke up, and they were three fourths of the way through the episode where it would be impossible to catch on to anything that's happening, Error was immediately invested. Killer grinned mockingly at Cross as he noticed the other's frustration. "I can't believe we didn't try that," he whispered under his breath. They could hear Dust snickering in the doorway. "Good thing you had me, Killer the genius, to help out." The snickering grew.

Nightmare glanced over to Error. He's completely forgotten about whatever had him so worked up earlier. Now, for the hard part. How can they bring up the subject to him in such a way that he won't crash multiple times in a row again? Suddenly, they heard a knock come from the door. Dream must be here. Killer left to go let him in. Error didn't seem to notice anything going on around him, because he certainly didn't give Dream a second glance. "Hey, brother," Nightmare greeted. "Hey guys," Dream replied. "I see Error's back to normal, that's great!" Dream walked over to sit on one of the chairs in the room, just to the right side of the couch.