Shell belongs to Firehedgehog, and I just had to bring him into this story, plus, do you really think that 'The Crush' wouldn't just affect the Multiverses that it stole AUs from?

Something like that would get a lot of attention from someone like Shell, so there is a good possibility that Shell would be running around in the background, outside of 'The Crush', trying to help free everyone that was trapped inside of it.

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Cross stared at the melting chocolate smothered mess in his hand. He would normally be shoveling his ice cream in his mouth by now, but time had changed things....

He sighed, before he dumped the sticky mess in the nearest bin. He wasn't hungry...

"That was a waste of a pretty good ice cream..."

He looked up, only to freeze when he saw Ink, but there was something different about him and now that he had a chance to look at him carefully, this Skeleton looked like Ink but he didn't feel like Ink and he wasn't dressed like Ink...

"What are you?" He asked. "Who are you?"

"I'm Shell." The Ink lookalike said. "And before you ask me, I am Ink, but I am not the one that you know, I'm from another Multiverse."

"What..." Cross whispered. "How is that possible?!"

"Well, the Ink here doesn't have a Soul right?"

"Yeah?"

"Then how do you explain me having one?" Shell asked as a floating heart appeared on his chest, before it disappeared.

Cross was silent.

"You can't, can you? The only way that it could be possible would be if I was telling the truth, right?"

"Yeah..." Cross mumbled. "But what are you doing here? Are you here to help Dream out?"

"Nah, I'm not here to help him."

"But you work for him!"

"You are confusing me with my Counterpart here, and I don't work for my Dream, because AUs are not the only ones that have differences, Multiverses can have them too, it's how you tell them apart from each other.

In my Multiverse, Nightmare was the one to eat the Apples, and unlike your Dream, who ate a lot of the Golden Apples, he ate a lot of the Negative ones, and he was covered in black goop because of it."

Cross giggled at the mental image of Nightmare covered in black goop.

"And he has tentacles as well."

"He's a hentai octopus?" Cross asked, and he was laughing at the same time.

"Yep." Shell smiled. "And my Dream is a fluffy short Skeleton with a bow, instead of a sword. Justice Regins doesn't even exist in my Multiverse.

Error and Blue are different as well, my Blue can break the fourth wall and he has a Warhammer of Doom and as for my Error, well, it's rather difficult to explain..."

"Why?" Cross asked.

"To make a long story short, I did something stupid and I lost my Soul, and well, Error had to find a way to make me take it back from him." Shell shrugged his shoulders. "It's confusing, but basically, I am Ink and Error, at the same time, I would tell you the full story but that takes a lot of time and I'm on a schedule that I have to keep."

"Schedule?"

"Yeah..." Shell sighed. "But, maybe you can help me, you see, about two years ago, about ten different AUs from a few Multiverses, were crushed together into one single AU, and one of the Multiverses that the AUs came from was yours, but the most troublesome part of this 'Crush' is that you can go in, but you can't get out, and I don't know if anyone has managed to escape from it, and time has frozen in there, so while it has been two years for us, it could have been a lot longer for those trapped inside, since some Multiverses may be ahead or behind yours when it comes to time..."

Cross was silent.

"And while it does have a Sans to keep it's coding from becoming even more corrupted and twisted, it doesn't have a Frisk or a Chara to Reset it, because the humans killed each other with their weapons and because of that, the AU looks like that it came right out of a post apocalyptic movie, complete with the mutant feral beasts running around, and I have been running around, trying to find a way to help them from the outside, because I can't take the risk of getting trapped in that AU, because bad things would happen if I got trapped in there...

So, did anything strange happen about two years ago?"

Cross was silent for a few seconds, before he answered Shell. "A friend went missing, a really good friend..."

"It sounds like this friend was more then a friend..." Shell grinned as he wrapped an arm around Cross's shoulders. "Come on Dreamswap Cross, tell your Uncle Shell about this friend of yours...."

"You're not my Uncle, and why are you calling me Dreamswap Cross?!"

"Because Dreamswap is the name of your Multiverse, now tell me about this friend of yours."

"No!"

"Yes!"

Cross crossed his arms over his chest and he huffed, but after a few minutes of this, he sighed, it could be good for him if he could get this off of his chest...

"Her name is Chaos and she's a Swap!Sans. She's a really good friend, and to be honest, if you asked me about two years ago, if I thought of her as more than a friend, I would have said yes, but now, I'm not so sure about that..."

"Why?"

"I was forced to suppress my hormones for quite some time, and when I finally managed to break that suppression, my hormones were all over the place. I don't know if I mixed the feelings towards a good friend with the feelings towards a crush. We clicked together really well but..."

"You clicked together a bit too much." Shell said. "And in time, it would have been like dating your sister."

"Yeah, and she wasn't the only one that I like more than a friend. I have feelings for Nightmare and Error too, but those two are together and I didn't want to ruin one of the few happy things that Nightmare has in his life, so I didn't tell them." Cross buried his face in his hands. "I am so confused, I find Chaos cute but Nightmare and Error are hot! I just don't know what to do!"

"Have you ever considered that by hiding your feelings for Nightmare and Error, you may have worried them?" Shell asked as he grinned, he could see the purple and the multicoloured eyelights in the bush close to them. "They could have feelings for you, but they don't want to say anything about it because they don't want to ruin your happiness as well."

Cross frowned, removing his hands from his face. "Then, what should I do?"

"Talk to them, tell them about your feelings." Shell said. "Or you can try the other method..."

"And what's the other method?"

"Spike their drinks, get drunk, play strip poker, and have a drunk threesome."

"SHELL!" Cross yelled, even as his blush covered his face.

"What? Sometimes you won't know if it's possible unless you try, and if you guys are willing to have a drunk threesome with each other, then that means that there is a possibility that you guys really like each other."

"Oh, it's not like you have been in love once!" Cross snarled at Shell.

"I have. I know what it is like to have a love so deep, that when you lose that one, you never fall in love again. You recover from their death, but you never recover from the love that you lost.

You never take another partner, because against the one that you loved so much, they can't hold a candle to their flame and when you thought of forever, you saw them by your side.

I am a God Cross, but Gods can fall in love too, and some love is so strong that it lasts long after it ends, especially if the other half is mortal. You treasure the memories from that time, because they are some of the most precious things that you have and you hold onto any physical items that remain from that time."

"Shell..."

"When you think of forever, who do you see by your side Cross?" Shell asked.

"Nightmare and Error." The Oreo answered. "Even though I know that Nightmare will live on after we die..."

"Then give him memories to help him through that time, give him hope that everything will be okay, one day." Shell told him. "And if you were to die tomorrow, do you want to take your regrets with you?"

"No... I don't." Cross said.

"Then make sure that you have none to take with you."

The two of them were silent for a few minutes, as Cross thought over what Shell had told him.

"Cross, how did your friend disappear?"

"She was on the way back home after she had visited her home AU and Dream ambushed us, and at the end of that ambush, he sent her flying into her half closed portal which had to have sent her somewhere else, and knowing her luck, she must have ended up in the AU that you was talking about."

"Do you believe in her? That she will find her way home?"

"Yes. We do all, we even have a lit candle that we place in the front window, at night, to help her find her way home."

"Then hold onto that belief and everything should be okay, I don't know how long it will take for everyone trapped in that AU to get home, but I know that they will find a way." Shell stood up. "I have to get going now, I have somewhere else to be, I'll see you around Cross..."

Cross nodded his head, even as Shell disappeared. He needed to think about what Shell had told him, he was about to get off of the bench when Nightmare suddenly sat in his lap.

"Hello Cross." Error sat next to them. "We need to have a talk."

"About what?" Cross asked.

"We actually need to try something first." Error said, before he pulled Cross into a kiss.

Cross was blushing when Error let him go, but it got worse when Nightmare pulled him into a kiss.

"We heard everything Cross."

"And we have feelings for you too idiot." Nightmare said as he let Cross. "In fact, after she moved in, Chaos asked if we were a triad."

"What..." Cross whispered.

"And if you are willing to try and see if this will work out, then we want to try too."

"But..." Cross was interrupted by Nightmare.

"Cross, Chaos was stubborn enough to claw her way back from Death for me, so what do you think will happen if she has to claw her way back from that Crush for all three of us? She's just too determined to just roll over and die. She will be okay and when she gets back, she will hit all three of us for being idiots and being worried, to the point that we put our lives on hold, for her, when all three of us know that she can take care of herself."

"Okay..." Cross frowned.

"So, we are going to follow Shell's advice, and have no regrets for when the day comes, for when we die..."

"And even if she doesn't survive, Chaos would want us to be happy." Nightmare told him. "She wouldn't want us to get lost in our grief and sorrow, she would want us to move on and be happy.

So, for one night, Cross, let's be happy and move on with our lives."

"Okay."