((I wrote this chapter months before the Tumblr Sexyman contest, by the way. The reference to Tumblr is just irony. If you know what I'm talking about.. then you know.))

Walking into the warehouse, Sans could see all manner of merchandise and booths set up, even a few small shops around the place. The floor was a cold stone, possibly polished granite or concrete, and even wilder outfits were roaming about. He could see a few.. cone shaped bots with orbs placed on their bodies that flashed and glowed white, faces consisting of cameras and.. sticks. They were absurd, yet seemed to be a favorite.

He ducked around a small group of humans dressed in shaggy brown furred outfits as Frisk did an internal double take.
Those are Chewbaccas? What? I thought this was some kind of.. OC con.
I don't know what anything is. Sans stressed.

Someone dressed in green with purple painted skin darted past him, shouting at someone as she ran. Sans was bewildered at the chaos, tempted to nap through it.

...And then they spotted it.
The stand at the end of a row, looking somewhat rushed in construction and posted in photos instead of art. The people manning it were dressed mostly in purple and largely casual clothing, instead talking about.. oh. Oh no.
Sans shrank into his hood, pulling it as far down as he could. He didn't have any desire to be discovered.

It was some sort of news stand or just general info, except it was focused entirely on everything the humans knew about monsters. Media, clips of videos, pictures, news articles, and of course he was in there.

I just had to get involved before all this, huh?
That crazy guy deserved a bad time, though.
Don't. Don't say that.
Frisk retreated, sensing the pain the comment brought him.
I'm sorry.
He shook his skull, walking past it and peering at the other stalls and menagerie.

"Hey you!"
Oh no. He turned, seeing the eyes on him. The human walked over, waving a packet.
"Did you know monsters are real?"
"Oh yeah, I'm quite familiar with the subject, thank you!" He explained quickly, speeding up.
"No, there's no reason to be afraid, they're quite friendly! They come from a miniature civilization under a mountain! Just look!"

A pamphlet was thrust into his face from behind, forcing the skeleton to slide to a stop.
He pushed it downwards and sighed.
"Buddy, I'm not afraid of anything. I have personal reasons for not wanting to get a paper packet in my face, thanks."

"Oh, I'm sorry I pushed. Most people are scared, you know? Think it's demons coming out of the pits and the apocalypse is coming. That's all a bunch of christan nonsense! They're like people- and they really want out of their tiny cave, they even have missing folks that just disappeared into the wild like animals, hah!"

"That phrasing's a bit rude, isn't it? Monsters aren't animals." Sans pointed out somewhat defensively.
"Oh no, they're not. They're like human/animal hybrids. A lot of people are calling them the real furries, if you get what I mean."

".. They're not hybrids either. They're just people. If anything, by direct comparison most humans act more feral than the typical monster."
"What, you think you're an expert?" The man asked genuinely.
Sans hesitated. "Not really, but you did make a factually incorrect and slightly offensive statement."
"I'm just talking about their version of people running away from home."

"What?" He blinked, bewildered. "It's not a version of running away from home- hell, a good portion of those missing may have gotten lost in their excitement to explore the place. Imagine living your whole life in a small.. country and then realize there's a country next to you that's more than a hundred times bigger than what you can even fathom. It's easy to underestimate distances that way."

"..I get the logic, but I think you're missing some details or something. There's literally information where several of them explicitly said they were leaving and left before anyone could stop them." He seemed proud of himself after saying that. Sans went silent, baffled by the statement.
"I.. did not know that, I'm sorry."

"Yeah. Actually, look. They all look so different from each other. The leaders don't look like the population at all, it's like a dozen different species!" He opened the booklet and pointed out something near the back. Sans winced at the sight of his face before freezing at the one next to it.

Whatever else the human said was lost on him as he ripped it away and started reading everything around the image.
Papyrus? What happened to- "Oh no. Oh no-no-no. No. Please."

Last seen around Spencer, Kentucky with several others looking for a brother that was supposedly transformed into a dragon. The validity of these claims is currently unknown and the king of the Mountain Monsters has urged for both his and his brother's whereabouts to be uncovered and returned if possible.

He couldn't help but reread it one more time, turning on the other pictures of the missing and finding many of the skeletons he'd met before had apparently been seen with him. He distantly registered the dragon on the beach taking off, deciding to find him in the city as he read.
Oh thank the stars, he's not alone.
"You're not even human." A voice quietly ripped him from his musings.

Sans flinched, remembering the human who'd given him the pamphlet.
"Huh?" He tried to play dumb, a desperate play at the very most.
The attempt had his hood tugged off.

"Oh you little-" He fumbled to throw it back on even when it was too late.
"Hey, you're not a dragon. Go figure."
"Oh screw off." He snapped. "He probably misread the situation. You think you know anything about us because of a few words likely twisted by your media?"

"How are you all the way down here, though? It's been just days since you all climbed out. It really took centuries?"
He could not help the bewilderment.

"You think.. we just climbed out? Buddy, it was a lot more complicated than that. Did this thing say we climbed-" He flipped through it to the front, reading the first page. "It does. It actually says we climbed out. How hard does the Barrier's existence need to be stressed for you to understand it wasn't that simple at all?"
"Barrier? Were there rocks in the way?"

"No! No. It was a magical construct. Humans used to have access to magic and used it differently from others, they started a war and locked our remaining populations in the mountain. The power of it drained magic from the outside world over time. That's the short answer of the Barrier."

"What's the long one?" The other immediately spouted off, not appearing to be fully paying attention at all.
Sans gave him a look from under the hood.
"We would be standing here for hours, and I'm not feeling that patient today."

"Okay, why are you here instead of somewhere further north?" The man asked more irritably.
"Gee, maybe I have a personal reason to be." Sans stonewalled.
"How do you even know where you're going? Actually, do you know?"
"Yes, I'm in Florida, and I'm heading further south than that. I need to get to Haiti. Does that satisfy you?"

"Wait, how did you know where that is? I don't even know where Haiti is!"
"Well that's for me to know, isn't it?" Sans snipped, arms crossed. "I have personal business to attend to, and when I'm done I'm going home. With the addition of finding my brother and his friends." He glanced at the booklet in apprehension, a dragon landing in an alley near the pavilion, staring at the tent.

"Let me guess, you can do that with magic."
"Magic isn't a perfect workaround like you think it is, you know. It has limits and natural rules it follows. Like physics."
"It literally defies physics."
"It interacts with physics. Yes, in some cases it appears to break it, but it really only manipulates and twists it at worst. Everything that happens is in fact perfectly possible. It's just complex. Like this."

He quietly summoned a bone, holding it out. "It may look like I just created matter from nothing, but everything this is made of did in fact come from the surroundings." He let it dissipate. "And when I do that, the atoms are returned to their point of origin."
"What did you just do, though?"

"It's basic magic. Any race of magic can do something similar. Human's closest equivalent would be varying art forms. Does that help?"
"Creating bones out of thin air is similar to art to you?"
"...You completely misunderstood." Sans sighed into his hand.

He then gestured vaguely. "That's just what they look like at their basis- for my race in particular, at least. And since I'm honestly too lazy to go into depth on our cultural differences, I'll just leave it at 'you'll learn about it later'. So. Can we just pretend we never met already?"

"It's not like I can travel to Jersey and ask others of your kind myself, so how am I supposed to find out?" The man retorted. Sans squinted at him, hood falling back somewhat as he did so.
"Well that's really not my problem, is it? I'm not a teacher or ambassador or any of that. I'm just a guy."
"You're a skeleton."
"At this point you're being racist."
"No I'm not.. wouldn't it be speciest?"

Sans groaned. "You humans didn't want to add another word to your lexicon, so you went with racism anyway. There's not much difference anyway. People are people, and different kinds of monsters are known as races anyway."

He glared at the human for a moment, then turned to the side and pressed his gloved hands to his face for two seconds, letting out a long sigh.
"Okay." He breathed, facing the other again as a dragon began crawling in a stiff, awkward manner towards the convention.

"I feel like we just got off on the wrong foot here. I was upset because of how insultingly incorrect these things are. And you seem to be under the impression that I'll be here to answer all your questions when it's far more complex than a simple conversation can remedy. I'm a manaphysicist and comedian, not a teacher. So I'm sorry. I understand that you're probably here because you wanted to clear up misunderstandings for humans, right?"

"Yes." "Okay. Well. I personally think it's still much too early for humans to try and educate others on these subjects when a lot of facts and details are getting lost in translation. You get what I mean, right?"
"..Yeah, I actually do."

"So maybe, at least, you could try not to share these booklets and just share what you know is true and most importantly, what the populace needs to know. Personally, I'd stick with none of us mean any harm and magic does not render physics entirely false. Just manipulates it. Now I know you don't know how magic and physics interact, and since there is literally no way to dumb it down enough to something comprehensive at the moment, you'll just have to trust me, alright?"

"I see.." The other replied, staring at the pamphlet with a frown.
"Do you think you can manage that?" Sans asked, faintly aware of a dragon edging through a crowd as humans gasped and shouted in excitement at the incredible "mech."
"I mean, I don't think anyone would believe me if I just walked up and said we're doing everything wrong."

Sans paused, realizing this.
"I didn't account for that, no."
"How?"
"Well I'm not used to how humans react to things, am I?" He pointed out while thinking.

"..Can you temporarily close it down? For an hour at most."
"I don't think so, no."
"...Even if I helped?" He winced as soon as he said it.
"Why?" The human understandably is questioned.
"Well I just can't stand misinformation. It leads to distrust and anyone can just call their own thoughts fact when surrounded by information without knowing what's true or not."

"I thought you had some kind of business?"
"I do, but I consider this important. Humans are the reason we were put in that damn hole, and if you chose violence this time around, we'll likely not survive at all. I." He hesitated.

"I want a future where we can live together peacefully. Every monster does."
The other had no response, though seemed confused. "..I can see what we can do? I need to talk to the others about a temporary shutdown, though."

"Alright, that makes sense." He stepped back, curious as to what the human would do.
The other hesitantly glanced back, then at the skeleton. "You mean now?"
"Sooner the better."

So when the human started hesitantly walking back to the highly inaccurate news stand, Sans not far behind with his hood down. He stood and watched as the other quietly addressed someone behind the desk, taking in the immediate disbelief from the stranger as they both glanced at him.
Sans deliberately lifted his hood with a phalange, giving them a serious look. The humans both stared for a moment, then appeared to discuss things between themselves.

It was at this time that the dragon was finally coming into view, along with the crowd following it in amazement. It really was impressive how easily fooled some humans were. Sans shook his skull at the sight, regarding the table again as the group was talking to each other and beginning to wave off visitors, the line dissipating in disappointment.

To further empathize that it was closed, the dragon slowly moved directly in front and plopped on the floor. This unfortunately upset the workers, the one that had been behind the desk getting up and shouting if they would please move.
At this, Sans hopped over the tail and shook his skull. "It's just temporary, relax."

She regarded him, still bewildered. "Are they working with you?"
The dragon turned and looked at her directly as he spoke.
"You could say that."

The woman stuttered. "Who are you? You looked-"
"Lady, you're literally passing out booklets and have my face pinned to that board behind you." He deadpanned, removing the hood entirely. She flinched.
"But you're- you live up in New Jersey?" She stammered, taking a step back.

"Yeah, that's where Ebott is." Sans said nonchalantly, walking over to lean on the table and peer at the papers spread across it.
"And I'm now here. No biggie. I won't be long. Why not do a good deed while I'm at it?" He snorted before the humor faded.

"In all seriousness, you have a lot of your information wrong. Who did you contact when you got it together? Honest question."
"I- we- several websites and news stations in Jersey." She fumbled. Sans frowned, flipping a page.

"You should have aimed to find someone communicating directly with one of us. I know trying to get a hold of a monster is difficult, but at least find someone who's been talking with one of our own? It's not like we're trying to keep secrets. There's no reason for this to be so inaccurate."

"And you just happen to have appeared all the way down here in less than a month to tell us this?"
"I just ran into this.. convention thing and you guys. My intention was to head further south than this." He explained while idly reading a report that said monsters were trapped behind dense rock walls.
"How? You can't have just taken a plane."

He looked back up at her, then at the dragon Napstablook was currently piloting.
"Don't worry, I took the next best thing. It's free."
They all immediately backed away from the blue reptilian.
"Relax, we don't bite."
"You're saying that's alive?" The man from earlier demanded.
"And I said we don't bite." Sans reiterated seriously.

After a long time staring at one another, Sans sighed explosively.
"Look, I'm trying to help you here. You clearly want to advocate for peace just like every monster, but you just have your information twisted around. That's it. I just want to help you get your facts in order and be on my way. Does it bother you to have help?"
"No, but.. you have a missing brother that says you were turned into a dragon." A quiet voice in the back spoke, holding up the pamphlet.

"I'm not a dragon." Sans insisted. "But. I understand where Paps got confused. That situation is complicated and confusing for me as well. It's a lot to explain to a human, but in short us monsters can create extensions of ourselves like, say, bones. I can create bones and a specific kind of skull."

He quietly summoned the smallest Blaster he could manage, keeping out of sight of the crowd. It was only the length of his femur as it hovered by his arm. "That's for context." He pointed out before letting it dust away. "It's a part of me that I can choose to keep out and about or not. Now a friend of mine, who's a pretty shy and incorporeal ghost, accidentally got himself trapped in one of them by accident and has been stuck since. Now the complicated, confusing part is it somehow gained and entire body and some ghost traits like illusory magics. This dragon right here? Yeah."

He let the illusion fall away on the side facing the humans, revealing the skeletal beast beneath, staring at them with ringed eyelights. The humans stared back in disbelief, Napstablook blinking.
"Now I can still do whatever if I want, I just.. have two different selves now? It's a bit jarring, so a majority of the time I let Napstablook possess this.. whatever. The point is it's a new, developing situation."

"That sounds entirely fake." A human stated honestly.
"Hey, I get it. It really does sound fake, but you asked. It doesn't help that everyone started saying I turned into a bone dragon. Excessive if you ask me."
"Did you get that from an anime?" He caught someone asking.

Sans sighed into his hand. "Do I look like a liar to you?" He asked the speaker in question.
"You look like a walking skeleton."
"And you look like a walking bag of meat and skin on bones, do you see me making that a problem?"
The human went silent.

"Thank you." He muttered, straightening. "Now, can we please get back on track? I'm sure none of us want to be here all day."

"Sure, just tell us to rework everything we had set up here."
"I thought the point was to spread the right information. If your facts are wrong, then you're misinforming the public." Sans pointed out, not understanding why they wouldn't want it accurate.

"We can't reprint a hundred new booklets on the fly!" One gestured irritably. "And we just finished these flyers before the con started- we were late!"
"Why did you rush all of this? You could have fact checked and organized far better if you had just waited for a different event than this one." Sans explained stiffly.

"The next Villicon is next year!"
"Then present a year later in a more respectable manner. This- all of it- is just insulting and the opposite of helpful. Do you have any idea how dangerous misinformation can be? False beliefs are what led to the old war in the first place. If there's another conflict now, your governments will restrict our rights as a people and deny us sanctuary or maybe just say fuck it and wipe us out of existence! It's not that hard for you people." He spat with more venom than he liked.

The human held up their hands, others startled and nervous as Sans sighed into his hands.
"I shouldn't have gone off like that." He muttered before looking up.
"It's a really personal subject to me at the moment, I.. worry."

"No one's going to wipe a sentient race off the map." Another tried to assure him.
"I'm sure you're familiar with the term, 'Actions speak louder than words', right? So please, tell me how I'm supposed to believe you when the human race has already committed multiple genocides on their own ethnic groups and countries. I'm sure Germany is popular among the more hateful of your kind, right?"

Several of them winced, none able to argue against that argument save for one.
"Humans have learned from the pa-"
"I know your history, Germany wasn't even the first or the last, just the most famous. Even this country did it against its original natives, it's happening in other countries against aboriginals all the time. You know what my only hope is? That we'll endear ourselves enough to the general human populace that we'll be spared. I know I can't prevent a bunch of hate driven murders. It'll happen eventually. Just like there will likely be a case where a monster defends themself from an attack and is labeled as the instigator. You still do that to your own people."

Silence before he continued. "Look, I.. have nothing against you. I'm afraid, yes, but only of the violent and hateful individuals of your race. I know plenty of individuals are better than that, you being great examples of what I'm talking about, but I just.. you can't take your biased and uneducated opinion and pretend things have changed without looking more in depth, all right? I'm sorry."

The gathered humans seemed to either reluctantly agree or be searching for a decent argument against his statements, thankfully. He had been afraid they would turn to belligerent violence and assertiveness, but they were decent and respectful.

"How do you plan on fixing all this since it's so wrong, then?" The woman asked, running a hand through her hair. "We spent a lot of money on this."
"Then I'll try to pay for that." Sans sighed, pulling out his bag of G.
"You have money?" The one he was most familiar with perked up.

"Not your currency, but I'm aware that it's valuable by comparison." He explained while pulling out a few coins. Several pairs of eyes went wide at the sight. Sans placed a little over a dozen on the table, separating it into sets of two for each human present. "That should cover whatever you put into this and probably more, right?"

"Actually, I think four would be more acc-" Most of the humans turned and shot him a look as well as Sans, the speaker withering under the judgment and swiftly taking the coins.

"Now, the best plan I've got is to throw out everything with misinformation. You can still say what you need to say without them. Since this is so early and visibly rushed, it would obviously not be all so weird. Got it?"

Some shared looks as they crowded nearer, listening. Sans sighed internally, part of him wishing he had never entered this building if only to have not ended up in this situation.
It didn't stop him from working out a plan with them all.

In the end, it came down to copying a few pages for them to study full of facts and answers to all manner of questions, including those that they hadn't even had the chance to ask before. It surprisingly had most of them grateful for his intervention before the skeleton stepped away and tugged his hood over his face again.

"Thanks for giving me a chance, at least." He smiled at the one named Will and Rebecca at the table from beneath the hood.
"No, you're a little harsh, but you're right. I don't want to spread misinformation either." Will pointed out, glancing back at the hand copied papers.
"Handwriting could use some work, though.."

"What?" Sans grinned, spreading his arms. "It's fontastic!"
Most of their faces soured at the pun, only one of them burying their face in their hands, two not getting it.
"Why?"

The skeleton only winked and backed away. "Because why not?" He fired back. "No one likes a guy who can't appreciate good humor."
"I can't take you seriously." Someone muttered near the back.

"If you can't, then at least take the help seriously!" Sans called, much to said human's shock and embarrassment as he hopped over the dragon's tail and under a wing, teleporting to a silent corner he'd spotted a while ago as the dragon stood. The action startled several guests walking by, the paparazzi suddenly multiplying as passerbys stopped and gawked. The original crowd that had followed the dragon there had long been replaced by others that simply admired it.

Alright, you can drop the act. He finally sighed, Frisk's mental insistence fading into excitement as the dragon stopped pretending to be mechanical, staring directly at a cosplayer painted ruddy orange and yellow and dressed in a reptilian outfit, fake wings sticking out the sides.

Humans started backing away, giving it space to move as some started getting weirded out by the slightly too realistic movements. Napstablook abruptly decided to return to the act, wimping out much to Frisk's great disappointment as the dragon gave a meaningful look to the booth and crawled away.

Sans just snorted derisively, finding it all hilarious as the reptile shuffled through the crowd.
When the tail vanished from sight, he pushed off the wall and returned to his wandering from before.

Much to his surprise, he spotted a few familiar faces in the crowd, heading the same way the dragon had gone, posing and being partly in character as they went.
Jogging after them, Sans quietly arrived between Hesutu and Osaka. "What's up?"

Both of them jumped, the girl yelping in surprise as Nigel/Hawthorne spun around so fast he fell over.
"Oh shit-" Osaka swore, moving to help his friend up as Hesutu blinked owlishly.
"Are you okay?"

"My fucking hand." Nigel hissed, shaking the offending appendage.
"I'm sorry, didn't think you'd fall for me." Sans couldn't help but joke.
"Dude. Seriously?" The cosplayer shot him a look. Sans grinned under his hood. "I saw an oppuntuity."
"Really?!" Hesutu spun to glare at him. "Did you actually just say o-pun-tuity?"
"Couldn't pass the chance."

She groaned, throwing up her hands in disbelief. "How do you not cringe at yourself?"
"Buddy, I am the cringe. Face it and embrace it, I say."
Osaka snorted, shaking his head. "You sound like a tumblrite."
"Only you would say that." Hesutu sighed.
"He does, though."
"I'm sure I'll be a riot on Tumblr eventually." Sans shrugged, remembering Resets in the past where he'd gotten it and became infamous on the hellsite.

The tall one started laughing, Hesutu groaning in exasperation as Nigel huffed in amusement. Sans was grinning wildly the whole while, face still entirely unseen as they all came up on the crowd.

"Unrelated but, I didn't think we'd actually see you again." Nigel pointed out.
"I was thinking the same thing." Sans agreed. "Pretty neat to be wrong for once. Y'all are a fun crowd. Unlike this one." He indicated the dense wall of bodies blocking the path.
"What's with the jam anyway?" Hesutu grumbled.

"Oh, y'know. A big ol' friend of mine. Kinda hard to miss." He winked, momentarily forgetting she couldn't see it before he ducked between a few humans, finding the trio close behind.

He eventually wormed through the paparazzi and stood next to the dragon's tail, Napstablook turning to look at him pleadingly. Sans snorted at the expression as people with cameras yelled at him for getting in the way of their shot.

We gotta scare them. Frisk stated intently.
Please. I swear, I'll never ask for anything again I just have to pull the greatest prank of all time-
Excuse me? You trying to outprank me?
Sans, come on-
You challenging me?
Pleeeese-

He leaned on a shoulder below the base of a wing, flinging the hood off to wink at the crowd. "Don't worry about me, I'm just a nobody!"

The crowd practically roared in response, mostly at just the sight of him as he hopped up to the dragon's back, bathing in the excitement as he regarded the familiar faces in the crowd, giving up the act and just winking yet again, gesturing slightly for them to follow before the dragon tensed, leaping straight over the the crowd to a clear space ahead and landing on outstretched legs, wings flared slightly.
Many voices in the crowd screamed.

Unlike what he had predicted, instead of fleeing and/or freezing, most of the crowd ran after the dragon in excitement, the sheer cacophony of shouts, cries, feet and cameras quickly becoming overwhelming as the dragon started moving away. The small walkways full of humans made it impossible to move any faster than a quick trot, but at this size it was still faster than the crowd and they managed to lose them.

Hundreds of faces turned and stared as the dragon sped by, but none that tried could quite keep up. This, at least, Sans was grateful for as Napstablook exited through large bay doors and out onto a crowded lot covered in smaller tents and food trucks.

They made their way over to a quiet area and sat down, Sans slipping off discreetly midway through and turning back to see if his.. newfound friends could find them, which was something he doubted.

With that information, he ducked into hidden places and started teleporting back in short jumps, traveling from one hidden area to the next until he was back to the crowd, walking forward and blending in with his hood hiding his face again, locating the three and grabbing Hesutu's arm.

She cried out in alarm before gawking at him, the other two now both pointing or stuttering.
"Follow me." The skeleton said quickly, pulling her away.
The trio, mute in confusion, complied, linking their arms to keep up with his quick pace, the girl only stumbling once or twice on the way outside.

As soon as the noise had died down to casual murmuring around them in the summer heat, Nigel spoke up.
"Dude, what the fuck was that? Just.. everything there?"
"Where are you taking us?" Hesutu added somewhat shrilly.

"I figured since I kinda sorta lied to you that you deserved an explanation. Just had to pull an epic prank first, comes with the package, after all." Sans explained with a smirk, hood slipping off his skull.

He led them around, heading to the back fence until a foot stepped on the back of his shoe, his own foot slipping out immediately after a jolt, the sudden imbalance on still unfamiliar feet sending the skeleton crashing to the ground.

Hesutu gasped, bending over. "Oh my God I'm so sorry- I didn't mean to step on your shoe!" She held out a hand but he declined, getting back up.
"Chillax, I'm fine." Sans grunted, finding and putting the slipper back on.
He ignored how Nigel's eyes bulged upon glimpsing his inhuman foot, Osaka still staring at his face intensely.

Even though she hesitantly offered her arm again, Sans shook his skull. "It's fine now." He explained, walking slower than before. "I was previously just worried about being followed. You get what I mean?"
"Yeah, I guess." She muttered, studying his face.

Sans huffed in slight amusement before they stepped out into the wide space between the start of the tents and the temporary fence around the area, dragon resting and watching silently.
"Whoa shit, that looks real." Nigel blurted as Napstablook blinked.
Tsking, Sans replied awkwardly. "About that."
"What."