Well, here goes nothing. Here I am, posting the first chapter for DT, an Undertale AU inspired by the stories of Sherlock Holmes. A longer description with some spoilers can be found here. Basically, Sans and Papyrus work together to solve mysteries! If you have any comments or questions for me, please send them in. Just be gentle with me.

Chapter 1 (you are here)| Chapter 2|Chapter 3|Chapter 4

Sans woke with a grumble to the sound of his roommate’s phone voice. Well, Papyrus really only had two voices, an outdoor voice that cut through any jungle of ambient noise like an especially keen machete, and a slightly softer stage-whisper that was more suited to an outdoor amphitheater than to the intimate setting of Sans’ favorite comedy club. The only indication that Papyrus was on the phone at all was the clatter that drifted upstairs when he exuberantly shoved it back into its cradle. Sans groaned while the sounds of Papyrus’ heavy footsteps (much too heavy for the skinny skeleton’s actual weight) made their way through his bedroom’s thin walls. There was a split second of relative peace, where Sans allowed himself to actually think that he might make it back to sleep that morning, before Papyrus threw his door open with a deafening bang.

“Sans, get up! Captain Undyne needs to see us in only fifteen minutes!” he crowed. His teeth were set in a proud grin. As abruptly as he had come in, he pranced out again, but he didn’t stop his earsplitting announcement. “There is another mystery, just for us, Sans! And Undyne sounded so nervous over the phone, that I daresay this will be the best puzzle I’ve ever seen.”

The shorter of the two skeletons finally flopped out of bed at the same time that Papyrus re-entered his bedroom moments later. Papyrus finished knotting his scarf, then scooped a pair of pants off the stain-spotted carpet and tossed them over to Sans. “‘kay,” Sans said, as he shooed his roommate out. “I’m awake. You call the boat.”

—

Twenty minutes later, the two skeletons were seated at Undyne’s table, each with a mug of passionately prepared, if insufficiently caffeinated tea. The table had recently been wiped clean, and it was still a bit damp, but Undyne hadn’t managed to remove the various scratches and dents across its surface. Papyrus could recall the impassioned tabletop rants that had spawned about two-thirds of them, and he assumed that the rest of them were the product of Undyne’s particular cooking techniques.

“So, this is Sans? I was wondering when I would meet your new roommate, Paps. I heard about how you’re working together now, but I gotta say, I thought he would be taller,” Undyne said. She sized Sans up with one yellow eye and flipped the fins on either side of her head forward in a gesture of curiosity.

Sans didn’t quite look like he had just rolled out of bed, but his shirt was suspiciously rumpled, and the tea wasn’t strong enough to erase the ever-present bags under his eyes. He met Undyne’s good eye and gave her a grin: “Yeah, it’s been great. Moved in almost a month ago. And yeah, skeletons usually are taller. I just got the short end of the stick there.”

“Oh, god, a funny guy,” she said, as she gave a snort. Papyrus rolled his eyes. “Well I hope you can handle working with the royal guard today. It won’t be like finding lost cats up in Snowdin.”

“Excuse me,” Papyrus said, with an air of indignation. “I only take on the most serious investigations. That’s why we’re here today! And if I thought Sans couldn’t handle it, then I would have let him sleep in. His insight has been invaluable for figuring things out.”

“Are you sure? He kinda looks like a clown,” she shot back. “In fact, I heard he did shows down at the MTT resort for a while.” Her grin widened, and she showed her impressive set of knifelike teeth to Sans, who only shrugged.

Papyrus took a gulp of tea, and then turned to defend him. “What he looks like is unimportant. And even an atrocious sense of humor is no indication of stupidity! Sans is just as smart as I, even if he needs motivation to actually use his intellect!”

“Heh, thanks dude,” Sans said, and he shrugged again. “But if we’re just going to listen to the Captain dance around the job at hand today, then maybe I should have stayed in bed, yeah? Small talk is great, but we can do that over the phone.” He smirked across the table at Undyne, whose pleasant grin had soured considerably.

Undyne tapped her foot impatiently and cut in, “Alright, enough goofing off, now let me tell you the case! This one is super important, and it really needs to be solved, okay?” Each of the skeletons quirked a brow at her, in the peculiar way that skeletons have of showing their feelings through solid bone. Papyrus moved his hand in a “go on” sort of gesture, and she continued, “The Royal Scientist had a break-in last night, and she says some valuable stuff was taken. She needs it back as soon as possible, so I was hoping the Great Skeleton Detective could come by the labs with me and help find out where it is.” She put extra emphasis on Papyrus’ title, and he seemed to preen slightly the gesture.

“Well, what are we waiting for, then?!” Papyrus said. He stood up with a flourish of Undyne’s lizard-shaped teacup. “TO THE LAB!”

—

A dry heat rose in waves off of the magma that churned below, and Undyne wiped the sweat from her upper lip self-consciously once the trio arrived at the Hotland Labs. Papyrus had been eager to get to the crime scene, and she and Sans had had trouble keeping up, for different reasons. Sans, because of his miserably short legs, and Undyne because of Hotland’s oppressive heat. Papyrus had removed his coat to keep up appearances and to make Undyne feel better, but the scarf stayed around his shoulders.

The door to the lab opened with a satisfying swoosh, and Papyrus grinned down at the pale yellow lizard who had come to let them in.

“Um, h-hello Captain, hi Sans, and you must b-be the detective?” she stammered, and peered back up at Papyrus through a pair of thick glasses.

Sans answered for him, “Nah, doc, the Great Skeleton Detective is really me. Papyrus here is just my decoy, and stand in for official functions-”

“I beg your pardon!” Papyrus turned quickly and threw his hands to his hips. “I have not worked tirelessly for a decade just to be mistaken for you, you slob!” He turned back to the bespectacled young woman, and introduced himself with an air of supreme importance: “Papyrus Holmes, Skeleton Detective, at your service, ma’am. Mister Sans Watson has only begun assisting me recently, and I hope you will forgive his manners and his awful sense of humor while we’re here.” Sans chuckled heartily from behind him.

“Oh, it’s fine, really. I-I’m used to it,” she said, “And I’m A-alphys, the, uh, the Royal Scientist…” She trailed off, and dropped her gaze to the rocky ground.

Undyne had been grinning widely through the whole ridiculous exchange, but now, she elbowed Papyrus, and said, “If we could come in and take a look, Doctor?”

Alphys jumped aside, and mumbled, “Oh, uh, of course.” She tucked her tail back nervously and led the trio into the cooler interior of the lab. It was half-lit by a large monitor on the left wall, and the right wall was plastered with a large number of brightly colored posters. A good portion of the floor was covered in debris. There were two tall figures in dark armor; one stood between the main entrance that Alphys had just unlocked and a softly whirring escalator that descended from the rooms above, and the other waited next to a door marked with a unisex bathroom sign. A yellow can of soda had been overturned on the desk, soaking the bottoms of two tall stacks of paper. “Sorry that it’s, um, even more m-messy than usual. The thief left a big mess when they went through everything, and your g-guards didn’t let me touch anything down here. I-it was kind of inconvenient.” She gave a nervous sigh, and began polishing her glasses on the hem of her lab coat.

“Alright, well, it’s cool now guys,” Undyne called over to the pair of armored guards who were overseeing the crime scene, which seemed to include the entire ground floor of the lab. She motioned them back to the emptier half of the lab to discuss the situation with them, and Sans ambled past them to start checking the lab’s other entrance.

“Now, Doctor,” Papyrus said, “You say the thief left a mess, but what exactly did they take? Your computer is still here, and it looks like the thief wasn’t interested in any food.” He glanced pointedly at an opened package of ramen noodles on the floor. The brick of pasta was still inside, but the flavor packet was nowhere to be seen.

“Ah, well, y-yes, my computers all have very tight security. Th-they’re practically unhackable without my passwords. The thief d-did make off with most of my c-collection, though. My f-figurines, and I had a b-box set of the K-Kissy Cutie series…” She blushed heavily when she heard Sans give a snort from across the room. His search around the lab’s other door had come up empty. “Hey, you know, s-some of those figures are in mint condition! Th-they’re really valuable and p-practically irreplaceable.”

Sans held his hands up in a pacifying gesture and moved closer to the conversation. “S’okay, I get it. We’ll find your collection. If anybody can do it, Papyrus can.” He cocked his head for a moment, in thought, then said, “But aren’t there some security cameras in here? Could we check out the footage from last night?”

Alphys looked downcast and shook her head. “The power to the cameras was cut last night, and nothing shows up in the footage that they did record. Now I have to replace the chords to get them working again,” she said.

Papyrus cut in, “Well, we’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned way, then!” He produced a comically large magnifying glass from seemingly nowhere, and began sweeping it around the room. “Sans, if you could check under the desk for clues, I would really appreciate it! The thief might have knocked something under there in their haste to get out!” he called over from where he was now inspecting a lone unopened bag of dog treats.

“Alright, man,” Sans said, and he tossed a mocking salute back to Papyrus. Papyrus was busying himself with one of the seams in the wall, however, and he never caught it. Alphys let out a nervous giggle and followed Sans back to her desk. She seemed preoccupied, though, and glanced over to the three chatting guards several times. Sans ducked under the desk for a minute or two and came back up with a few scraps of paper and the caps to no less than five ink pens. “Looks like your dust bunny collection is safe. Maybe you should keep your valuables under here next time,” he told Alphys. She only rolled her eyes.

“Sans! Come have a look at this!” Papyrus hollered. His sudden excitement was all too obvious. Undyne left her conversation to rejoin the detective where he was kneeling on the floor. He had swept the trash from several tiles, and now his nasal bridge was pressed close to a set of prints. A string of messy pawprints had been left on the floor in dusty orange clay.

Sans whistled through his teeth when he caught sight of the prints. “That’ll narrow it down,” he said, and got down to examine them more closely. “Looks like our thief had four paws at most, and they weren’t too big and heavy, either.”

“But the soil obviously came from just outside the labs,” Papyrus frowned. “That’s not very helpful; the thief probably picked this dirt up as they entered.” He drew a hand across his skull and pondered the prints for a few moments. “I can’t see any claws in these prints, but that doesn’t mean anything either.” He drew his brows together in thought while Undyne and Alphys shared an impressed look.

He sat like that for a while. Undyne moved to tap him on the shoulder, but Sans slapped her hand away, and gave her a look that said, “He’s busy right now.”

Finally, Papyrus drew himself back up, and shoved the magnifying glass into his pocket. “I think I’ve got it!” he said. “But I will need to do some more investigating to know for sure. Undyne, can you bring your guards to the mushroom room in Waterfall in a few hours? And Sans, I’ll need you to get a picture of these prints, before you meet us there, too.” He stood quickly and moved toward the exit with long, purposeful strides. He was almost out the door when he called back to Sans, “Oh, and remember to put something down next to them for reference!” With a swish of his scarf, he was gone.

Undyne’s eyebrows were nearly at her hairline, and her fins were pulled back in a way that looked just as uncomfortable. She glanced to Sans and Alphys, on either side of herself, and then cleared her throat. “Well, I don’t know if he has it or not, but I guess that’s all we can do here,” she said. Undyne signalled over to the guards, and the three of them made to leave for Waterfall, using the exit that Papyrus had neglected. She nodded to Sans and then addressed the Royal Scientist: “You have a good day. Uh, I’ll be by with your collection if we manage to get it back tonight. Otherwise, I guess we’ll just continue the investigation some other time.”

Alphys flushed slightly, and said, “S-some other time, yeah! I-I mean, I, uh. Good l-luck in Waterfall?” Undyne nodded, gave Alphys a smile, and then she was out the door, her long red ponytail swishing behind in an echo of Papyrus’ scarf.

Sans broke the silence once the guards were gone. “So, ya got a tape measure or something?” he asked. Alphys quickly obliged with a soft hum. He looked to the scientist and then asked another question: “Correct me if I’m wrong, Al, but getting your collection back wasn’t the only reason you called the guard today, was it?”

“I-I’m sure I don’t know w-what you’re t-talking about, Sans,” she stammered. She shoved the tape measure into his hands, and then continued, “My c-collection is worth a lot of m-money, and those figurines have a l-lot of sentimental value t-too.”

She was blushing heavily, and Sans saw through her in a second. “But that’s not the only reason why you wanted to see the Captain, was it?” he asked. His grin was taking up about half of his face, now, and he winked flirtatiously in her direction.

Alphys covered her face with shaking claws and gave a few squeaks before she managed to speak again. “S-She’s so hot!” Alphys confessed. “ I really want to get to know her, but what if she j-just thinks I’m some p-pathetic nerd? What if she doesn’t like me at all? Sans, you know her r-right? Can you find out if she l-likes me? I have to know! I can’t keep going on like this-” Alphys’ voice grew higher and higher, and her words came faster and faster until she seemed to verbally trip over herself.

Sans left the tape measure on the floor and moved to comfort her. “Woah, calm down. Breathe with me, ‘kay?” he said. Sans made a show of going through the motions for drawing deep, slow breaths until Alphys’ face returned to a more normal, custard-like color. Once she smoothed out the hitches in her breathing, he continued their conversation. “I’m sorry about that, but I, uh, don’t really know Undyne. Just met her this morning, actually. If you want, I could ask Papyrus to look into it?”

“N-No, don’t do that,” Alphys said. She waved his suggestion away. “I don’t want everybody to know about this. I g-guess I’ll just have to move slowly and t-test the waters as I go.” She looked back to Sans, who had returned his attention to the task at hand, and missed a good opportunity for a terrible joke. He was carefully lining up a shot of the prints with the lens of his phone’s camera. While he snapped the picture, she sighed. It was better to drop it now; Sans could only focus on so much at one time, and right now, her stolen property was more important. Still, she couldn’t help but ask for details on how his own life was going. Alphys cleared her throat quietly, and said, “But uh, w-what about you, Sans? Are you still, uh…”

“What? Oh, yeah, I’m still not interested,” he said back to her. He spent a moment studying the picture on his screen, then snapped the tape measure back up and returned it to Alphys. “Yanno, it might be too early to tell, but I think Papyrus could be the same way. Wouldn’t that be funny?” he continued, somewhat absently.

“W-Well, I don’t know if it would be funny…” Alphys said. Sans wasn’t listening too intently; he stood up and cracked a few of the discs in his lower back with a loud stretch.

He gave a drawn out groan that ran right into the rest of the conversation. “Ah, man, now I’m exhausted. I should get going and prepare for that meet-up later.” He grinned lazily back at Alphys and started toward the door.

She flooked just the tiniest bit distressed at the thought of being left alone again. “Oh, but- but this was nice. Do you want to g-get together again sometime? Just to talk or, or…”

He stopped for a moment to look back at her. Alphys look a little bit pitiful just then, with her glasses slightly lopsided, and her lab coat splattered with some light-colored stain. “Oh, uh. I guess maybe?” he managed. Alphys’ lonely expression was pulling on his nonexistent heartstrings, but the atmosphere around the two of them still made him uncomfortable. Sans never planned to turn that “maybe” into a “yes”, but she didn’t have to know that. “Anyway, later,” he said, and he turned and left the room in an awkward solo-silence.

As he left the lab, Sans wondered for a moment who of the two of them had changed more over the years. Then he snorted softly to himself when he decided the answer was kind of obvious. Alphys might be a tad more extreme these days, and being alone all the time certainly wasn’t good for her, but she had always been awkward, nervous, and excitable. Sans, on the other hand, hardly recognized the skeleton he saw in the mirror some days. Life had worn him down in ways he had never expected.

—

Papyrus had spent the afternoon running between a few different locations in Hotland and the Capital, but he had never so much as broken a sweat while doing his rounds. When he was on the hunt for truth, absolutely nothing could deter him. Now he returned to the darkness of Waterfall to wait for the others to arrive so he could wrap the case up for good.

When Papyrus reached the mushroom room, he stopped for a few moments to shake the water from his skull. The room was nearly pitch black, illuminated only by the dimmest of crystals hanging from the ceiling. Papyrus knew how to rectify that, though, and he kicked a boot out in front of himself calmly. The mushroom that had been waiting in the darkness lit up immediately, and it gave a small squeak, like a mouse that had been accidentally stepped on. The light blue color spread from the mushroom to illuminate a carpet of glowing crystals set into the floor.

The light in the crystals spread across the room, but only along the narrow confines of a short footpath. A portion of the room was lit up now with the dim mushroom light, and Papyrus could see a pair of “trees” with elegant blue stalks and darker, feathery tops, another cluster of un-kicked and unlit mushrooms, and the silhouette of a short skeleton sitting against a knee-high boulder.

Papyrus cleared his throat theatrically before kicking the darkened mushroom and lighting up another section of the path. Sans, who was now fully visible in the gloom, grunted and cracked an eye socket open. It was his left eye. Papyrus had noticed three weeks ago that the left was always the first eye open when he got up in the morning (or the afternoon, depending on the day). Otherwise, Sans didn’t move.

“I hope you got those pictures before the Royal Scientist wiped them away with her tail. They’re going to be valuable evidence,” Papyrus said.

By way of an answer, Sans held his phone up, with the image of the dirty red pawprints on the screen. “Relax,” he told Papyrus. “I think I know what you were going for, bringing everyone out here, but how did you know it wasn’t one of the-”

Sans didn’t get a chance to finish his question, because the sound of Undyne stomping through the crystal fields cut him off. Papyrus winced at the sound of shattering glass that came from the footpath under her armored boots. “Alright nerds!” she called, “I hope you have a monster for me to arrest tonight, because I really want to get that stolen property back, y’hear?” The two uniformed guardsmen who flanked her slumped slightly, relieved that their captain had slowed her breakneck pace in favor of demonstrating her impressive vigor.

Papyrus looked immensely proud as he offered Undyne a confident half-smile. “We should have two for you to arrest tonight, Captain. One Temmie could never carry Alphys’ entire collection!”

“Temmies?” Undyne looked impressed, and a tiny bit lost. “Those bastards are hard to catch. How did you know it was them?” she asked the detective, who was currently posing with one boot on Sans’ boulder.

“It was simple, really,” he obliged her. “No dog could resist the unopened bag of kibble Alphys was keeping next to the fridge, so it couldn’t have been any of Snowdin’s finest, or any of those wolves that they’re related to.” Sans nodded along to the explanation. Apparently, he had also guessed as much. Papyrus continued, “And a cat monster would have shown up on Doctor Alphys’ cameras. Only a Temmie, one with light paws and the ability to teleport, could pull off a heist like this one!” Undyne looked impressed. “Alphy’s collection should still be somewhere in the village. I spent the afternoon checking all of the shops in the capital that are known to deal with Temmies, and saw no sign of the stolen merchandise. That leaves the Tem Shop by process of elimination.” Papyrus finished his explanation, then helped Sans to his feet.

Undyne took a moment to strategize, then she took over. “Alright then. Watson, can you watch the entrance to the village and make sure none of the Temmies escape?” Sans nodded, and gave her a chipper salute. “And Papyrus,” the captain continued, “I’ll need you to look through and gather all of the stolen items. Don’t engage any of the Temmies, please? Leave them to the Royal Guard.” Papyrus looked just a little bit annoyed, but he nodded, too. “Let’s get to work, then, boys!”

Undyne summoned an iridescent spear with a short flourish, and led the charge down to the village. Her two foot soldiers jogged behind, and Papyrus followed them with long strides and the sound of flapping from his scarf. Sans just stationed himself along the path and waited for the raid to end.

—

“And Undyne said that Doctor Alphys was very happy to see her return all of those anime figures!” Papyrus said, from the kitchen. “So it looks like this case was another job well done for the Great Skeleton Detective.” Something hit the floor with a crash; no doubt Papyrus had knocked a pot off the shelf with his vigorous posing.

Sans put down his book and looked up from where he was sprawled on the couch. “Yeah, okay. You good in there?” he said.

“Of course!” his roommate answered. “Oh, and that reminds me! I meant to ask when we were back at the labs, but how do you and the Royal Scientist know each other?”

Sans looked around for a moment, then answered Papyrus. “Oh, you, uh, you picked up on that? Well, you know that hotdog stand that I run sometimes? It’s right near the labs, and I guess we’ve run across each other one too many times or something. She’s alright.” The barest trace of sweat lingered on the back of Sans’ skull.

“Hmmm. Well, you might be interested to know that Captain Undyne has become interested in her,” Papyrus said. He wiggled his brows in a knowing manner.

“Ya don’t say?” Sans said. “That’s kinda funny,” he added before he relaxed back onto the lumpy couch.

