The Perfect Nightmare

Chapter 3

"$0 ¥0u t-Th!nK h-h€'$ T€lL-l!ng Th-H€ tr-RutH?" Errot asked.

"My SOUL finds what he said sincere enough, but I still doubt some of it." Nightmare replied as he looked at the papers on his desk. He sighed, why did he have so much paperwork?

"It-t'$ N0t @n U-unB€l!€V@bL€ T-tH€0r¥, b-BuT !t-T'$ $T!lL Ju-U$t @ t-Th€0R¥ t0 U$ f-f0R N0w-W."

Nightmare nodded in agreement and worked on finishing the papers. Why did he even need to do them? It's not like he was running a business or anything so there was no need for him to do it. Well, his alter ego ran a small business so he had to do these otherwise people in the AU the business was set in might get suspicious. Only Error knew about Eclipse since he had his own alter ego as Static, Eclipse's secret "investor".

Earlier on they had decided to make a business in case anything went wrong and they needed to go into hiding for a while. So as Eclipse and Static they started a small bookstore in UnderTale 48, a pacifist timeline that had the monsters living happily on the surface with humans. They didn't want to have a large business since it might draw suspicion and make Nightmare too busy dealing with the paperwork that came with it, which was exactly what he was doing right now.

Nightmare groaned and slammed his head on the desk, causing some papers to fall off.

Stupid responsibility.

"Knock knock." A low and lazy voice said as a knock was heard on the door.

Nightmare sighed and lifted his head. "No knock knock jokes please, just come in."

"Aaww, you're no fun." The voice said before the door was pushed open and a skeleton entered. He wore a dark cloak tied at the neck and waist by rope that was held together by a skull pendant. There were small bags under his eyes and he had no eyelights, his sockets an empty void. He stopped close to the desk and leaned against against the wall with a smirk. "You know that you should answer the door when Death comes knocking."

"Well I'm not exactly in the mood, now what do you want Reaper?" Nightmare answered as he went back to his paperwork, his tentacles picking up the ones on the floor.

"Can't a guy just visit his buddies?" Reaper teased before his face turned serious "But to answer your question I'm here to tell you about something weird that's been happening."

"W-w€!rD h0w?" Error asked though he didn't look at him.

"Just... weird." Reaper replied.

"Care to tell us then." Nightmare said rather than asked.

"First off, did you guys get a new member?"

Nightmare glanced at Error, who shook his head no before looking back at Reaper and doing the same thing. "No we haven't, didn't have the time or need to do so."

"Then have you guys been trying out a new killing method?"

Nightmare looked at him weirdly. "As far as I know no one in the gang has been doing anything new with how they kill. Why?"

Reaper sighed and rubbed his eyes. "There have been some strange deaths happening lately. A couple of weeks ago there were some SOULs that I collected from other Multiverses. The first few looked pretty normal to me. I didn't see their dust when I got there so I just assumed that they just burned alive. But when I got to the rest I noticed that they were all similar." Reaper paused and leaned his head against the wall. "Normally when monsters die I would see what causes their deaths just as theu die, but that hasn't been the case for the past few weeks. Grim also said that it was the same for him. If this had just been in nine or ten AUs then it would've been fine, but hundreds? That wasn't exactly a normal thing for us. So I decided visit a SOUL that was a bit farther back on the list to see what they're dying from. It seems like there's someone that's killing them but I don't know if they're doing it on purpose because of how it happened."