Undertale AU Oneshots

between the lines (of code)

An old enemy returns, and unlikely team-ups occur.

_____-_-·-·-_-_____

Someone was messing with the code of the Multiverse, and Error wouldn't stand for it.
Whoever it was was skilled, too, they evaded his grasp masterfully. Darting between files, never letting more than faint traces of their passing be felt. A ghost in the code leaving Error to futilely chase the mere impressions of their presence.

Annoyingly competent.

Alarmingly dangerous.

Error's concentration was broken by a wet splatter, announcing the creator himself appearing in his Anti-Void. He huffed and closed his access screens. No sense in giving his enemy more of an idea of his abilities.

"Not now Ink, I've got bigger things to worry about."

Uncharacteristically, Ink neither shouted at him nor made any move to start a fight. He stayed where he had come in and only looked at Error, with a pleading tilt of his head. Error just found it creepy, considering that that expression must have been practiced. The creator had no natural empathy.
Ink, in an uncharacteristic even tone, pleaded: "Error, just... have you seen Blue? He's missing."

Error froze so hard glitches covered his vision in a wave of static error messages.

That wasn't what he'd expected.
This... was terrible. He might have told the whole multiverse otherwise, but a part of him still cared for the kind little Blue. He whirled around.

"Kidnapped?!" he demanded of the other. Ink stayed unfazed, if a bit puzzled at Error's ferocity.

"Not just him. Fellswap too!"

Swap and Swap? Oh. Oh no. That sounded like a far too familiar motive.

A puzzle piece that fit perfectly to the other.

Combined with the fact that he'd been having trouble with a hacker...

He got up close to Ink, who stepped back warily at last.

"Tell me everything."

___--(-0-1-0-)--___

Error found himself in a highly unsettling position. One he would have, only hours ago, bet his doll collection on that he would never be in.

Error was sat at the grand table of the Universal Council.
The building itself was situated in a backup AU Error had been grudgingly allowed in, yet it was still as grand and pompous as he imagined the original to be. All high ceilings and long hallways, and this meeting room was no better. It was circular and bright, with a long wooden table in the middle.
Error was placed directly in the center of it and yet he was the farthest from anyone else. He could see the wide divide between him and the rest of the Sanses, a chasm of more than the physical few meters, filled with all the things he'd done and embodied.
It was clear that no one was comfortable with him here, but they had been forced to accept Ink's assurances that he had come, just like the rest of them, to solve the mystery.

Ink himself had been surprised that Error had insisted to come with him, even with the truce Error had offered as a guarantee to his sincerity. Ink had relented, but not without eying him with a suspicious glint in his gaze.

Error didn't care. This was more important. Even if the prospect of so many dangerous fighters in the same room as him made him incredibly antsy.

The atmosphere was tense, and he was getting constant wary and more than a few hostile glances, which he expertly ignored by focusing on the way his multicolored hands contrasted wildly against the white marble table and the lemon green table cloth.