Sans wasn’t sure what time it was when he woke up since it was still night, naturally. His clothes were frozen solid and practically cracked when he tried to move. Not much reason to bother moving, though.

He reached out to teleport and realized a bit of a problem. It was, uh, a bit long range. Roundabouts 4,500 kilometers to the nearest memorized teleport spot was kind of an insane distance. Like the complete length of Canada, kind of distance.

Whoops.

Damn it. He normally took the time to think things through, but with the whole dead-end timeline thing, it didn’t seem like it mattered.

This was gonna suck. Welp, nothing for it. He reached out, trying to snag onto the Punta Arenas teleport point that was strongest in his mind. He could have tried to force it and teleport despite the distance, but he’d never tried a teleport anywhere near that long range before. The important thing, though, was that it pointed him in the right direction. He faced that way and took a breath.

He focused on a spot just above the horizon and reached out, teleporting as far as he reasonably could. He found himself a huge distance above the ground, maybe a dozen kilometers, but not all that much closer to his destination. Not great for breathing, but he’d fall enough to get some decent air soon. He was probably only getting about two hundred kilometers per jump - which sounded great, if he weren’t four and a half thousand kilometers away from his destination.

With memorized teleport points, he could manage about four hundred kilometers in a single jump, but like this… especially since he was falling in between jumps… ugh. And then he’d have to stick the landing when he stopped doing this. It’d be fine, normally - gravity magic was handy that way - but he’d be pretty damned tired by the time he arrived.

Wind was whistling through his bones as he quickly reached terminal velocity, his arms spread wide to keep his fall as slow as he could. He needed to pace his jumps, and as long as he teleported before hitting the ground, he’d be fine.

Another surge of power, another couple hundred kilometers, and that mountain range he’d passed came into view. Nice, a landmark. Hard to see at night, and if the ground was closer, he might have to aim higher. Still needed to breathe, though, so he couldn’t aim too high.

He grumbled to himself as he lined up another teleport. This was way less fun than flying. Especially since, without any soul-powered defences, he couldn’t afford to botch a landing. He was going to push it harder than he normally would, since it wasn’t that big a deal if he died, but he’d really rather not. He’d never take that risk normally… but then, he’d also never strand himself at the south pole without a plan normally, either.

By his fifth teleport, he’d decided that, no matter how “consequence-free” the timeloops were, he was never doing something like this without a plan again.

By his fifteenth, he was getting pretty toast and second guessing his decision to hold out till he hit the ocean. It’d make his landing easier, but exhaustion would make it harder. Fifteen long-range, sight-based teleports in five or so minutes was kind of ridiculous. Especially since he was so far from the rift, draining him further. Plus he was light headed from a lack of oxygen. The higher he teleported, the longer a break he had between teleports, but the less air he had. At least he didn’t have to worry about depressurization issues.

Two more teleports later, and he just had to call it. He let himself fall and watched the ground as best he could. Another surge of magic grabbed him and slowed his fall, but gravity magic on himself was always a touchy prospect.

He accidentally launched himself upwards a few times as he tried to break his fall, but he eventually touched down. It was a harder hit than he preferred, with more horizontal movement than he’d aimed for, but he managed to survive the landing. He collapsed onto the ground and groaned, pulling out some food. He ate it all in short order, but fatigue still tore at him. He was probably less than halfway to Punta Arenas, and that was only about a quarter the way back home.

He didn’t think his phone would do well in these temperatures - and honestly, he wasn’t sure if he’d completely killed the battery - so he had to do something else to amuse himself. Mental math would do. If he was managing 200km per teleport, and he was right about it being only about five minutes for fifteen jumps, then that would be… let’s see, 200 times fifteen, so he went about 3,000 kilometers. Five minutes was a twelfth of an hour, so times that by twelve would be 36,000 kilometers per hour. Not bad. Technically faster than his flight by a long shot, if vastly less sustainable. And vastly less fun. Falling was fun, but flight was just better.

He recovered as best he could over an hour or so before dragging himself to his feet and trying again. He needed to take another two breaks on the way there and by the time he’d arrived in Punta Arenas, he was desperately ravenous.

It was probably around early afternoon or so, and businesses were open, so he could theoretically get some food… except for the fact that he didn’t pass muster as a human from up close. Restaurants weren’t going to work, and he doubted he’d get things from a grocery store without trouble, either. He could steal from either, of course. But that also had the problem of being human food – while often delicious, it was a little bit slow to digest. Not a problem normally, but he’d like to get back home today.

Partially because, while his excursion was fun, he really missed Frisk. Especially certain things he could do with Frisk. He might be exhausted enough that desire didn’t press on him directly, but he also happened to know how trivial that problem was in light of what they could do. Pleasure, restoration, strength, companionship; it was all his as soon as he made it back.

So then the question was… did he kill someone else to get the power to make it back quickly?

He really felt like he was pushing things already. Maybe crossed a line, even though he’d been careful about his targets.

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Ugh. He was too tired and hungry to think. He went to the main commercial area he’d wandered through last time and saw a food truck. Perfect. It was kind of a dick move, but he stood next to an alley and teleported someone’s order to his hand. It was a hotdog, loaded absolutely to bear. He teleported some cash to the stand and slipped into the alley to avoid any drama. He was sure they were deeply confused. It shouldn’t take long to make a second hotdog and while he had no idea how much it cost, he was confident he’d overpaid by a huge amount, so it wasn’t that bad.

He devoured it greedily and then leaned up against the wall, trying to think. He felt like taking a nap, honestly. But no, he wanted to make it back.

He sighed as he stood there. It was annoying how hypocritical he was feeling. It just didn’t feel important to kill anyone right now. That sense of nihilism that had dominated his mind for those last eight months he’d lived in the underground was pushing at him again. Different now, of course; he himself wasn’t going to lose anything, and damn was that an improvement.

Even then, he’d known everything that happened didn’t matter. He bet he’d felt the same in Frisk’s evil timeline, too - pissed off and hurt, no question, but also with a measure of apathy, since he expected it to all be undone. He’d only have seriously cared about permanent things, like the actual destruction of time itself, or the worry that Frisk would never stop, or making sure Papyrus would have a real future somehow.

Now he was the permanent thing. He hated to admit it, but Frisk was right - it felt a hell of a lot different on this side of things. He could step out into the street, kill the first person he saw, steal their soul and teleport off, getting home within an hour. And, in the scheme of things, the only impact it would actually have would be on him. Not even in the normal sense, of layering LOVE on him, since that’d just be undone with the reset, too. If he decided it didn’t matter and didn’t let it affect him, then… then it meant nothing.

Yet, if he thought that way and acted accordingly, he was no better than Flowey. He didn’t want to become that. Flowey had shared some details of his activities with Frisk over the year and a half they’d been friends, and Frisk had occasionally shared tidbits with Sans, when prodded to do so. He hadn’t pushed Frisk to tell him the worst things they knew - though he might want to rethink that now - but even the glimpses he’d gotten were moderately terrifying.

On one hand, there seemed to be a huge difference between temporarily killing strangers for practical purposes and tormenting friends for knowledge, but in the scheme of things, they were identical - either he considered them real people or he didn’t. If the people in a dead-end timeline were real, then he shouldn’t murder them. If they weren’t, then it didn’t matter if someone killed Papyrus. That made him feel like he needed to treat them as real, and yet…

At the same time, sheer practicality was saying there was no difference between hunting down a random stranger versus putting in the effort to kill someone who kinda deserved it, since in the end, neither of them would die or even be aware of anything. So putting in the effort seemed even more pointless, and he’d never been one to put in effort where it wasn’t needed.

Yesterday hadn’t felt like extra effort - it’d been a fun diversion. He enjoyed giving assholes a bad time.

The reason it mattered in this exact moment, however, was because he was too tired for that effort. If he was going to hunt a mugger or gang member or something, he’d need to take a nap and make a whole thing of it.

Or… he could just get what he needed and go now.

He stepped to the edge of the alley and watched the people walk by.

It would be so easy.

And Sans had never been all that great at resisting temptations.

He felt frustrated with himself, mainly, as he made a few small teleports to alleys, looking for a target unlikely to make his life complicated in the short term. He found one, alone, in the third alley he checked. An old man passed out under a blanket, surrounded by bottles. A sense of guilt prodded him to check and Sans’ eye flashed - no LOVE on the guy at all.

Not like that was the only measure of moral worth or anything, and most people never killed anyone. Still, part of Sans had hoped he’d stumble into someone who happened to deserve it. Most likely, this old fart was just down on his luck and didn’t deserve to be in this situation at all.

Not an enemy in war. No promises, orders, or other compulsions. No excuse of self-defence, crafted or otherwise. No reason or justification whatsoever, other than to save Sans a few hours of inconvenience.

Was that the value of a life in dead-end timelines?

Papyrus would take the time, sparing the guy’s life. Flowey would kill him without hesitation. Frisk…

Sans chuckled to himself dryly. Frisk had offloaded the moral weight of their actions onto Sans. Frisk had run so far away from the moral questions that they refused to accept being their own person, didn’t want to be in charge of their own life. Hell, he actually kinda understood that now - this was morally nuanced in a way that was way more complicated than it’d seemed before. Well, maybe not more complicated… more that the “evil” side of things was a hell of a lot more tempting, and the “good” felt a hell of a lot more pointless.

Compassion, pragmatism, avoidance. What was his choice going to be?

He stared at the old guy, torn for a time.

In the end, he was who he was. There was a reason he tried to hang onto moral lines… it was too easy to step over them. And he just couldn’t bring himself to care enough about this one, not really. Even if it made him a hypocrite to some extent… in dead-end timelines, he cared about the people he cared about, and that was all.

And fact was, Frisk would understand. He didn’t have to hide a thing.

He summoned a few bones. He was too tired to make a decent showing, and so this would hurt more than necessary. But if it didn’t matter, then… so be it.

Two bones launched into the guy’s throat. He startled awake, trying to scream, but they’d partially torn his flesh, making him bleed into his lungs. A gurgling sort of screech was all he was able to manage, and Sans doubted it could be heard outside of the alley. The man tried to get up, clawing at his throat and coughing, looking at Sans in horror. Desperation and terror covered his face. Sans simply watched him dispassionately as he struggled. After a few seconds to let the corrosion sap his life, Sans launched the last bone.

Terror and despair were frozen on the man’s face as it drove into his heart and he died.

The soul felt damned good as its power flooded him. Sans sighed in relief as the fatigue eased and strength filled him. With added clarity of mind, he pulled out his phone, turned it on and fired off a quick text to Frisk.

He left the corpse where it lay as he began to make his way back home.