Summary: Sheet-

Ink enthusiastically trod the snow-laden terrain of the Underground's resident winter wonderland. A cheery grin stretched across his face, and his eyelights flashed various bright shapes and colors, signaling his excitement.

After all, what wasn't there to be excited about? New AUs were a rare joy to run across. Even more so when he had never stepped foot in them before or seen so much as a hint of them, leaving a plethora of possibilities: foreign nooks and crannies to explore, familiar yet unfamiliar monsters and humans to meet, a whole new story to witness, and all sorts of fun trash to sift through. The only thing that made the situation even better was the fact he had the time to explore it. All of it.

Usually, Error or Nightmare got in the way of such adventures. But, today, neither evildoer appeared to be hellbent on making their misery other peoples' problem and were tucked away in their quiet little corners of the Multiverse.

The artist's stride gained a skip to each step as he noted, Which means there is nothing to stop me from exploring this place down to the last trashcan... Unless Dream gets moody about me leaving him with the paperwork again and drags me back to the base.

Or the local Sans mistakes me for a demon and chases me out of the AU. But what are the odds of that happening for the 147th time?

He soon began humming - a tune slow and deep, ominous to anyone other than himself - and scanned the area.

The trees were the standard pine typical to the Snowdin region, pinus strobus or the northern white pine. (Dream could never say Ink didn't learn anything during his extensive lectures about trees.) Snow adorned their upper branches; A majority of the lower ones had lost their white coat due to the weight pulling them down and causing the icy blanket to fall. Thus, leaving a collection of snowpoffs beneath almost every tree.

Ink squinted passed the vast stretch of green, brown, and white. Between the trees, he spotted a distinct sloped structure sporting a red hue that acted like a shining beacon, cutting through the dense colors of the forest.

The soulless skeleton's grin spread even wider.

"Oh, the sentry station! I wonder what this universe's Sans is like!" He excitedly murmured to himself and giddily bound through the snow at a less-than-natural pace, stopping in front of the old wooden structure before the oldest snowflake fluttering in the air could hit the ground.

His expression fell upon examining it.

Much to his disappointment, the local Sans did not appear to be there. In the skeleton's stead sat a stained white sheet draped over the chair behind the sentry station and atop the lump sprawling over the counter.

Ink pouted. "Aw... I really wanted to meet him. Now, who's going to join my cult- I mean, team of completely normal monsters that want to help others!"

The blanket-covered lump adorning the sentry station partially rose. Following its movement, a tired voice rasped from beneath the sheet, "Bud, no matter how you try to rephrase that, it's not going to sound any better after you called it a cult. And even if it wasn't, I wouldn't be interested in joining. I have enough things to worry about- and I don't need more."

"GHOST!" The artist shrieked, spinning on his heels only to disappear into the woods in the blink of an eye. Or eye socket-

"Rude," Sans the "ghost" mumbled before laying his skull back down and closing his eye sockets.

Working for the Royal Guard paid him nowhere near enough to motivate him to go after the other.