"Hello? Person? Ma'am?" A voice anxiously tugged at his consciousness, murmurs surrounding him.
Sans blinked, the brightness of everything around him almost blinding as the other voices resolved into clarity.

"That's just a normal person, they're not going anywhere."
"This is a really bad idea, Essence."
"Shut up Nigel."
"Mrs?" The gentle rocking continued.
"Urh.. Yeh? Uh. I'm a dude." He mumbled, adjusting to the bright sun.
"Oh shit, I'm so sorry." The girl's voice apologized.

"Nah.. it's cool. I didn't pick the best sleeping spot. Heh." He stood up, wobbling on strange legs before stretching, regarding the small group of.. oddly dressed humans gathered in front of him.
"What's up?"

"Um. I know this sounds weird, sir, but you're the only one around and we got lost.. um, do you know where the Villicon is?"
He blinked, having no idea what that was.
Don't look at me, I don't know either! Frisk defended quickly.

"Uh. Nope. No clue. I'm actually lost too, figured I'd take a nap and now we're here." He answered honestly. He could easily get back to where he needed to go, but.. this seemed interesting.

"Oh my God, were you going there too?" The girl gasped excitedly. Sans shrugged. "Maybe." He replied ambiguously.
She turned on the one in the dramatic brown trenchcoat that draped to his legs.
"I told you it was a good idea!" 

Oh shit, it's a con. Frisk realized. Sans kept a straight face.
What's a con?
There's a lot of them, but I only really heard of Vidcon and Comicon. People dress up as random characters and meet content creators and stuff.

That sounds like something Alphys said before. He noted as the brief spat between the two humans was interrupted by a third, even taller human with black hair and green stripe, wearing an eye patch and a grey coat over a greyed out shirt with straps from his black pants going up to his shoulders. He appeared to have stepped directly out of an anime.
"What's your name? And character. Is it an OC?"

Holy shit. Sans, you could pretend to be some kind of sona and nobody would suspect anything. This is awesome. You gotta do it, please-
He blinked, then shrugged. Why not, let's see how this goes.

With that, he pulled back his hood, keeping an easy smile fixed on his face.
"I'm Sans. Sans the skeleton." He held out a gloved hand while all their jaws dropped.

"HOOLLY SHIIT!" The originally somewhat irritated human yelled in amazement.
"Where'd you get that thing?! It's so cool!"
"Fuck that's the coolest mask I've ever seen-" The tallest blurted in shock.

Sans let his hand fall, shrugging. "Eh, I've worked part time with engineering districts before, I can build a thing or two." He excused, looking off to the side.
"It's so coooooll!" The girl squealed, her hands raised in excitement. "Is it a mask or an entire helmet?"

He blinked, not expecting that question. Unfortunately that further excited the group.
"It can blink? Holy shit I didn't even see eyelids!"
"..Yep, I can blink." Sans nodded, deciding to go with it.

"Those little lights, how'd you fit them in there? Oh crap, do they track your eye movements or something? That's insane!" The girl pointed out giddily.
He shrugged, still uncomfortable with the concept of blatantly lying about himself. He'd rather let them fill in the gaps with whatever they thought of.
"Well, you know. Technology has lots of cool things to offer when you know your way around it."

She giggled a few more times before putting a hand on her hip and flashing her fake fangs and speaking in an accent.
"Well I am Hesutu Sipatu, vampire of the Miwako people. I prey on mortals of evil in their hearts and protect my people."

"....Neat." Sans nodded appreciatively. He was admittedly grateful for at least partly tuning into Undyne and Alphys's rants on human culture, for it gave him enough of an idea on what was going on to react semi-appropriately.

The dark-haired human with the brown trenchcoat and goggles made of plastic gears shoved his hands in his pockets and stepped forward. "Time Traveller Hawthorne, was a scientist in victorian era who got abducted and sent to the future."
"You could write a book on that." Sans grinned.

"Oh it gets better." The tallest stepped up and posed as well. "Osaka Tadinaka, from the future where magic is widely used alongside technology and japanese and american cultures merged and time travel is a novel invention. I was a history student who decided to travel back in time for help in a history lesson- but! I did so without permission! I didn't know how to use it, so I broke the machine upon arrival at the wrong time period and kidnapped the wrong person- Hawthorne- and tried to go back, but ended up in modern day without a way home until it's fixed."

"Yeah, and I'm helping supply the magic." Hesutu supplied, though Sans knew none of those were real names.
"You could make an anime out of that story." He pointed out, mildly impressed and simultaneously confused.

"Oh it's very in-depth, we're making a manga out of the RP." She added, the boys nodding.
"And an analog series." 'Hawthorne' supplied.
"Maybe it'll be picked up by studios. We have high hopes for the project, it's why we planned on advertising at Villicon, but shit just.. went sideways."

"Our uber literally crashed and we had to leave because he said we were close anyway; we got lost instead." Hesutu explained with an exasperated sigh.
"What's your story?" Osaka asked.
Sans blanked at that, realizing he hadn't thought this through.

Then he decided to just keep going with it, see how far he could take it.
"I'm just your everyday skeleton, I guess. Previously worked as a manaphysicist with my dad. There was an accident, pops got himself scattered across literal space and time itself right in front of me. Goes to show the importance of rails, amirite? Heh. Heheh. Uh. Yeah, I just coasted along until I found that apparently dragons could help bring him back, so I guess I'm just trying to wake up the ancient assholes in a modern human society until I find the Big Guy I'm told can help me. All in all, I don't actually know for sure if it's possible. Seen bits of the team I worked with recently that insinuates it is, but yeah. No way of knowing for sure until I meet the important guy." He shrugged, screaming internally.

All three humans stared at him in shock for a few seconds, then Hesutu started slowly clapping.
"...Dude, that is the coolest OC I've ever heard." Hawthorne murmured, lifting his goggles.
"..Right. Thanks. It's a lot to take in."

"Yeah! Like, why skeleton? Is it just easier to cosplay? Are they all skeletons?" Hesutu asked.
"Uh. No. Actually kind of not many left- for a while I thought me and my bro were the last after Dad went and fell in the Core."
"That's so cool. Did you get superpowers because it happened in front of you?" Osaka asked.

Sans hesitated, finding this all uncomfortable.
"Uh.. slowing time to imperceptibly slow levels counts, right?"
"Holy shit why don't you have a time motif?" Hawthorne blurted.
Sans blinked. "I don't really need a motif. I guess.. if I had one, it's basically 'Lazy Short Guy Gets Put in Situations He Really Doesn't Want to Be in'." He indicated invisible words in front of him as if outlining a title.

They all stared as he remembered. "Oh! Don't forget 'Completely Underqualified and Depressed'! Wow that sounds pathetic now." He realized, looking down.

"..Why don't we walk and talk? Pretty sure we wander around enough we'll find someone who does know where to go." Hawthorne explained awkwardly.
"Sure." Sans agreed.

Then they all started trudging in the same vague direction, skeleton somehow ending up in front as they decided to ask more unknowingly invasive questions.
"So does the time power involve reversing time or anything? Or is it restricted to only slowing?"

Just so you know Frisk, I am blaming you for this.
Hey! It was an on the dot idea!
Absolutely your fault, I'm a character now.
H- I don't know what the cosplaying community is like! And you decided to just tell the truth instead of making up something!
I couldn't make up a convincing story on the spot, what do you expect? He grumbled, but finally deigned to answer.

"No, I can only slow it or speed it up in specific areas. I can make it appear stopped, but that and actually reversing it is impossible. It's basically altering gravity in an extreme and otherwise impossible case, which likely stems from my decent grasp on bl- uh.. telekinesis, which in and of itself is at its basis, a manipulation of gravity." He stopped himself, realizing he'd rambled.

"Are you actually a physicist, man?" Hawthorne asked, bewildered.
"Yes." Sans answered. It was technically true, though he was specifically a manaphysicist. His study was in how magic interacted with physics and required extensive knowledge of both subjects. Semantics.

"So if you're a magic skeleton with telekinesis and time powers, do you have other magic powers to aid you on your journey to saving your scientist dad? And is your mom in the picture or something?" Hawthorne interrogated.
"My mom's dead. I didn't know him."

"Don't you mean her?" Hesutu asked.
"Nope."
"Oh my God it's gay, too?" She snickered in amazement.
"More like we're not human." He slowly grinned wider. "..Fuck genders, love who you want. Humans have it all overly stigmatized for no reason."
"Words to live by, man." Osaka quietly agreed.

The conversation almost lulled before Osaka changed the subject. "Did you get inspired by the actual magic stuff and real dragons that started showing up recently? I heard it's because of a single dragon that originated from the mountain of animal people in like.. Jersey or something."

Sans tensed momentarily. "Oh. Where'd you hear that? Is it on the.. news or something?"
"How have you seriously not heard about it? It's literally everywhere. There's like a hidden ecosystem that's coming out all at once and they've been under our feet for thousands of years! It's kind of terrifying. What if all myths actually had a real thing that just disappeared? It's like all science is being debunked!" Hesutu ranted excitedly.

"Nothing's being debunked. Magic just interacts differently with physics than physics on it's own. In a mana-void environment it acts the way you're used to, and in a mana-rich environment it's different. At its basis, it's not really that difficult to understand. You're just looking at all of the complexities at once instead of one thing at a time." Sans explained carefully, remarkably at ease.

"I.. didn't think of it that way. Are scientists actually researching this stuff already?" She pondered, impressed.
"I imagine so." He shrugged. "I think the general populace just isn't looking at it in the right lense. I get why, no one could really imagine all of this happening- and with religions that talk about apocalypse involving demons and whatnot, I can guess that there's a lot of fearmongering and demonization of what's going on when the reality is a lot more innocent and complex."

"You have high IQ or something?" Hawthorne asked. Sans turned and winked at him.
"Maybe you just brought out my nerdy side."
The human frowned. "I didn't know scientists could be into cosplay."
"Nigel, don't be an asshole!" Hesutu snapped, elbowing him. He turned on her. "I'm sorry, it just kinda slipped out!"

"Chillax, I haven't actually done any science things in years. I gave up the career for personal reasons. I do have a comedy hour, though." He held out a hand, grinning wide.
"Tibia honest, I'm pretty thick-skinned for a skeleton."

Hesutu stared in disbelief for a long moment while Hawthorne- now revealed to be really named Nigel- slowly took his hand.
There was only enough time for a small ptoot before he snatched his hand away.
"What's in your hand??!"

Osaka bust out guffawing in realization as Sans dramatically turned his hand.
"I am, quite literally, carrying a whoopie cushion."
Then Hesutu broke and laughed too, Nigel going slightly pink with restrained mirth.
"I was not expecting that."
"No one expects the whoopie cushion in the hand trick, and it always works."

"I don't know if you have a well-developed character or are just half in character." He admitted.
Sans winked again. "Maybe I'm just me and you've been duped by an unbelievable truth."
Hawthorne/Nigel pointed at him. "You're good. You're really good."
"Thank you, I don't try."

The human finally snorted, doubling over in the effort to not explode in laughter. The action only encouraged the skeleton.
"I'm telling ya, I'm a bonafide lazybones. Call me a skele-tato, 'cause I'm forever on the couch. Why would I have anything to do with dragons? Fuck if I know, I have a showing in an hour and haven't showered in two weeks."
He took sincere delight in the raucous laughter surrounding him, bouncing on his feet.

Osaka abruptly yelped, slipping backwards and landing hard on his back with an oof.
"Oh my God are you o- are you okay?" Hesutu managed to get past her explosive giggles. The taller just laid on the concrete for a minute, silent.
"Wheelie deployed." He stated quietly.

The others reignited in cackling, almost drunk with the apparent hilarity as Sans regarded the two.
"Wheelies, huh?" He queried.
"Yeah." The one on the ground huffed, still amused. "They're janky, keep popping out at random."

With a pained grunt, he heaved himself up and dusted off his lab-like trench coat with a careless shrug before his eyes went wide behind his slightly lopsided glasses.
"Hey wait is that the con??"

"What?" "What?"
Two voices said at once, all laughter cutting off as they spun to look.
Indeed, there was a sort of pavilion ahead, more strangely dressed humans wandering around, chatting amiably. He even spotted a few wearing fake wings, ranging from glittery and fairy-esque to dramatic feathers of many colors or dragonic bat wings in the crowd. There was also a good deal of trench coats and crazy dresses.

A skeleton walks into a fantasy con… I'm not cut out for jokes. Frisk sighed internally.
A skeleton walked into a convention and wondered how sane the human race really was. Sans proffered drily.
I can see distortions in the air, aren't you prone to, gee, I dunno, heat exhaustion?
I'm not anymore, lol.
... I'm talking about humans in general.
I don't know how they do it either!
He shrugged to himself, shaking his skull as the others sped up to meet more of their kind.

Sans watched them go, debating his choices. On one hand, he was curious about everything happening here, on the other, he did have important business to attend to.
Decisions, decisions.

"Ah what the hell." He sighed, half jogging to catch up. It was a bit startling how his altered feet not only kept slipping out of his shoes, but gave him natural speed he never had before.

He arrived a little behind them, watching the group wait in a line to have.. cards screened? Well, he had no card, so he had to take the technically illegal shortcut and.. not teleport.

It was too much of a crowd to risk popping in and out of places without being seen, so he chose the alternative.
Literally sneaking in.
Sans snuck in around the line while no one was looking.
His genius truly knows no bounds.

Pulling his hood down, Sans glanced around the makeshift building, finding it was only an outdoor section to a large warehouse whose entrance was a row of sliding doors. A few hundred booths or stands of sorts were scattered throughout the crowd, likely advertising from what he could guess. It seemed the humans here were having a great deal of fun- hell, he even spotted some elaborate suit that looked like a sort of dragon wandering through the gathering.

So of course, Frisk got the idea to 'crash the party', so to speak. How would a bunch of humans playing pretend react to the real thing?
And of course, the idea was infectious.
Not to Sans, no, he was reasonable for once. Which made NAPSTABLOOK'S agreement all the more bizarre!

What do you MEAN you want to try it?? Who are you and what did you do with Nappy???
𝙸 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚔𝚗𝚘𝚠.. 𝚒𝚝 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚜𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍𝚜 𝚏𝚞𝚗?
Sans, he agrees we have to do it- it is literally two against one.
Okay. OKAY. Let's just scope out the place a little before we commit to terrorizing about a hundred humans in one place, okay?! He pinched the bone between his sockets in exasperation.
Thankfully, Napstablook found this reasonable as Frisk whined.
We could get away with so much here..

He started meandering about the place, keeping his hood down as he took in the sights.
Eventually someone gasped at him, dressed in a white hooded cloak.
"Is that Assassin's Creed?"
Sans blinked at the question.
"..No?" He offered.

"Oh, my bad! Looked like it a bit."
"..Sorry, I'm kind of.." He made a split second decision, tugging the hood back.
"Just your friendly neighborhood skeleton."
The other gasped, hands to his face.
"Shit, man! That's so cool! Wait, can I get a selfie with you?"
"Uh. Sure?" He agreed in confusion, watching as the other pulled out a phone and walked over, posing beside him.

Sans just stared confusedly at the phone as it flashed and the stranger thanked him, walking away with no further comment.
... Maybe he's a minor influencer. Frisk suggested. The skeleton just shrugged it away, continuing on his aimless path through the glorified community tent.

After who knows how long, he was pausing at the entrance to the warehouse. The cooler air blew past him, nipping at his clothes as he faced the crowd again, glancing through it in slight hopes of catching sight of the trio he'd found before, but they were lost in the crowd.

With a disappointed shrug, he ducked into the building and breathed in the variety of actually not-so pleasant smells.
Sweat was prevalent, and it wasn't a welcome scent. Sans coughed, not expecting a smell to be so overwhelming as he held his hand to his face to shield it until he was more accustomed to the odor.