Salacious Ephialtes

{2} Cross

"Three weeks?!"

"I want you to know that this time I'm not actually being lazy. It'll just genuinely take that long to get it, since it's in a locked AU I need to hack into it, break the firewall in a secure way so that Ink doesn't realise something's up.. actually go there without triggering any traps or alarms that could cause my capture-"

"But that won't work, because even if you don't trip any alarms Ink will still notice your presence!"

"What if Dust goes instead then?"

We all turned to Cross, who seemed to be deep in thought about something.

"I can't break firewalls or anything like that."

"Well, obviously Error would break the firewall and stuff, but if Ink would just notice him straight away wouldn't it be better to send somebody else?"

"Great, no hard work for me~!"

"Well, whatever. Error, your new job is to just focus on getting me in and out of there safely."

Dust let go of Error as I raised a brow-bone towards the duo.

"Horror? I need you to, well, there's no easy way to say this.. we need thirteen skeleton teeth. You can either attack some Papyruses and take their teeth, or go the hard way and attack some Sanses."

"..I'll attack some Sanses."

"Someone needs to stay with Nightmare."

"Shit, that's true. Alright, how about this then.."

Dust looked like he was thinking for a few seconds.

"Cross can stay behind for a while with Nightmare. First person to collect their item can then come back and switch places with Cross, so Cross goes and gets an item whilst that person takes care of Nightmare."

"You should probably print off the list of ingredients and give one to each of us then, since they have no idea of the full list."

"Ugh, I'll just text it to the groupchat. Anyway, let's get going. Error, take me to the Anti-Void. Killer and Horror.. I expect you two to actually do your missions and behave!"

And just like that, we were all teleporting away to our separate missions.
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Cross's POV
Finally, some peace. It's not that I didn't like them.. it's just that they aren't taking this as serious as it is. Nightmare, stuck in a loop of eternal negativity which is most likely slowly drowning out any rational thought of his? That's a bad situation. Standing up and beginning to walk over to his room, I sighed thinking about all the bad possibilities staying with Nightmare could bring. If he lost control of himself..

You wanted to stay behind because you like seeing him like this, right Cross?

What a nuisance. Nightmare and I were in the middle of getting rid of Chara, but because of this incident.. everything we worked up to was undone, so now I have this annoying little prick to deal with again.

"No, Chara. I didn't choose to stay behind, you literally heard Dust tell me to."

Yeah, but you could've spoken up and asked to go out and find one of the ingredients. Dust and Error could've easily stayed behind and looked after him.

"Ugh, whatever. I don't need this right now, I need to look after--Night..mare..?"

Opening that damned door was a mistake. Nightmare was sitting upright on his knees, his jacket and shirt thrown to one side as he gently rubbed his sternum.