Undertale Multiverse

Dream didn't remember much of the fight.

Only that Ink, who'd be experimenting with his paints beforehand and forgot to switch to his offensive ones, had accidentally hit him with a blob of extra-shimmery white paint. He heard Ink swearing at himself, and saw everyone backing away from him before he blacked out.

Now, he woke, and something felt...different.

He sat up, holding his skull. It hurt. A lot.

"Ow..." he whimpered.

"You're so dead," Nightmare growled. "This is your fault, you fucking goldfish!"

Dream opened his eye sockets and found himself staring into an almost exact copy of his eye lights. They looked as confused as he felt, but he noticed that his clone's body was...shadowy. And his outfit was pretty darn edgy.

"What the hell?" His shadowy double asked. It's voice was strangely echoey. Dream didn't much like its choice of words.

"What...happened...?" Dream asked. His voice seemed higher-pitched than he remembered it being.

"Ink," Blue said flatly, "you're grounded. Give me you brush."

Dream and his clone watched Ink try to hold on to his husband while everyone helped Blue in wrestling Broomie out of his grip.

Dream glanced at his clone. He seemed to be trying to process what just happened.

"What are you?" Dreams asked it. "You look like a shadow version of me."

The shadowy thing blinked at him. His eye lights, Dream realized, we're two broken stars. The shadow laughed, but it somewhat creepy. The other stopped scuffling and turned to them.

"You know," the shadow said, "I think I like that. 'Shadow Dream.'" Shadow stood, grinning in a rather evil way. "This is going to be interesting."

Dream leaned away from him. Shadow was scary, okay?

"Can someone please tell me what that stuff did?" Dream asked. "I'm so confused."

Everyone turned to Ink, who shrugged helplessly.

"How do you not know what your own paint did?" Shadow asked, clearly irritated. "You are a moron."

Dream frowned at him. "He was messing around with it. Of course he doesn't know; he hadn't tried it out yet."

Shadow scowled at him. "Why are you defending him?"

"Why are you so mean?" Dream shot back.

"Oh god," Ink realized, "I created Fanon Dream and Edgy Dream."

"...Dream, get off."

Dream opened one eye socket to peer at his brother. "Why?" He whined.

Nightmare, who was getting brotherly cuddles against his will, groaned. "I'm trying to do something; please."

Dream pouted, but he did as he was told.

Nightmare sighed and returned to planning evil.

Actually, he was texting the group chat someone-probably Blue-had put together to figure out how to fix Sweet and Dark-er, Dream and Shadow.

In it was Ink, Blue, Nightmare, his boys, and Sci.

Apparently, Ink has snatched some experimental substance from Sci's lab and put it in his paint. Ink thought it would be interesting. Sci, who had just found this out, was screeching. In text. But Nightmare could feel the young Sans's panic and anger all the way over here.

Oh, and uh...Nightmare adopted Dream. Seriously; this guy was precious. He didn't want to do anything except hang out with his brother and generally be a kid.

How anyone thought someone like this could at all fight evil such as himself, Nightmare had no idea.

Freakin' fandoms; always exaggerating personalities.

Then there was Shadow.

Shadow...was a legitimate problem.

He-

CRASH!

"Son of a-"

Nightmare turned into a puddle and raced of to the window that was just broken.

He hoped Dream knew better than to follow him.

"HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO FIX THE GOD DAMN WINDOW?!?" Killer screeched. "DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO FIND WINDOWS THAT FIT THERE?!?"

"Nope," Shadow said, a dark blue arrow knocked in his shadowy bow; "and I don't care."

Killer growled and attacked, his knife in hand.

Nightmare appeared from his puddle and slammed Shadow into the wall with his tentacles.

"You know," he growled, "if you calmed the fuck down, we could maybe get you and Dream back to normal. Killer, go get the others."

Killer nodded and ran off.

Shadow, somehow, slipped out of his grasp and drove his elbow into Nightmare non-existent gut. Nightmare grunted in pain and stepped back, letting Shadow go.

The dark Dream aimed an arrow at Nightmare.

"I'm not going to let you go," Shadow growled. "And since it won't happen when we're 'normal', I'm going to make sure it happens now!"

Nightmare flipped him off.

"Your arrows aren't made of 'pure' positivity," he snapped. "They can't hurt me."

Shadow's grip tightened on his weapon. "We'll see about that."

"Hey!"

They both turned to see Dream standing in the corner, his big innocent, yellow, starry eye lights full of irritation.

"Can you guys please stop fighting?" He asked. "It's 8AM on a Saturday."

Shadow deadpanned. "Seriously?"

Dream gave him a very unthreatening glare, that Nightmare sensed was the best he could do. "Yes, really! I'm still tired, and so is everyone else! Can't you take a day off?"

Shadow scowled at him.

Nightmare felt his phone buzz in his pocket. Then it buzzed again. And again.

It was probably Ink spamming the chat.

Bzzt. Bzbzt. Bzbzbzzt.

They're going to drive me crazy faster than dealing with Shadow, Nightmare thought.

"You know, he has a point," Nightmare said. He grabbed Shadow around the waist with one tentacle, opened a portal to some random AU, and threw him into it.

Shadow screeched in surprise, the sound being quickly cut off when the portal closed.

Killer came back with Dust and Horror in tow.

"It's fine", Nightmare sighed. "I kicked him out. He'll probably be back later though."

The Insanity Trio blinked, then shrugged. "Okay," Dust said. "Food?"

Horror raised his axe. "Fooood-!" He agreed.

"Food," Killer nodded sagely.

"You're all insane," Nightmare noted.

"You're just now noticing this?" Dream said, sounding genuinely confused.

This guy.

"So," Sci said, making his papers neat in front of him, "I can't tell you exactly what happened with Dream and Shadow; since the compound being mixed with Ink's paint-" he gave artist at the table a hard glare.

Ink shrugged, not at all ashamed.

"-seems to have changed its effects," Sci continued, addressing the rest of the assembled skeletons. Blue, Nightmare, and Dream. They invited Shadow, but he said something along the lines of 'buzz off'. "Originally, it was...kind of a Jeckyll and Hyde thing, y'know? Just to see if it could actually be done. But it looks like with Ink's magic, it took Dream's happy-go-lucky, inner naïve kid traits, and his, uh..."

"Bad-assness?" Blue offered.

"Competency?" Nightmare suggested.

"Edgy side?" Ink said.

"Hey!" Dream complained.

Sci sighed. "Yeah, basically all of those. It separated those and made a sort of shadow of him for the quote-unquote 'edgy, competent, badass' qualities."

Dream scrunched up his face. He was offended, as much as Fanon Dream could be.

"I'm fairly sure the only reason Shadow has a body of his own is because of the nature of Ink's paint," Sci continued. "Of course, I can't say for absolute certain; the substance was only supposed to, like, give someone a sort of split personality, but it wasn't the final product by far."

Dream, who was sitting on one Nightmare's tentacles for some reason, seemed indignant that he could so rude.

"Huh," Nightmare said. "Next question: why is Shadow taller and [nickname] here shorter than regular Dream?"

Dream realized that he was, in fact, shorter than he had been. Where he was once almost Nightmare's height-how did Nightmare get taller after goopifying, anyway?-the top of his head now reached his shoulders. And Nightmare only stood up to Shadow's nasal cavity.

Sci and Ink shrugged.

Blue finally spoke up. "You can get them back to normal, though; right Sci?"

Sci scratched his head. "Maybe."

"Maybe?" Blue asked. His tone was polite enough, but his eye lights had a dangerous gleam in them. "Shadow is practically doing Nightmare's job for him, minus the murder. Dream is too nice to even call someone a heck if they cut in front of him in the lunch line. And-"

"I know," Sci said tiredly. "But it might take a while." He eyed Ink hopefully. "Unless a certain someone, against all odds, actually saved some of my compound and didn't use it all....?"

Ink blinked. "Uh...Ink think I used it all."

Sci sighed in exasperation. "I really need to start locking up my stuff," he muttered. "One day, it's going to be something really dangerous."

"Shaaaadoowww," Dream whined, "That kills people!"

Shadow glared at him.

"Could you not?"

Dream had summoned his bow, but there was no arrow in it and it was forgotten by his side.

Shadow had just shot at Nightmare. Nightmare was currently stuck to a wall, with the rest of his gang hanging out with him (sorry; that was bad). Shadow was threatening to shoot Nightmare again, but Dream had showed up and complained.

"Leave them alone!" Dream said. He was trying to be fierce, he really was, but he was too damn cute.

Sadly, Shadow was the only one immune.

Shadow flipped him off, and fired his arrow at his other self.

Dream yelped and moved quickly out of the way.

"Why don't you go find your friends and stay out of this?" Shadow hissed.

"No!" Dream yelled. He knocked an arrow in his bow, but it wasn't as bright as Shadow's arrows. It was a mire pure shade of blue, but that was about it.

Shadow snarled at him. "You won't-"

"Fight me!"

"Who said he was allowed to be a meme wannabe?" Nightmare grumbled. "This is illegal."

Shadow shot another arrow at Dream. In a moment of fear, Dream instinctively let his own fly.

The projectiles hit each other head-on.

There was a sudden explosion of light-

...

And then, Shadow was gone.

In his and [Nickname]'s place, was a Dream, looking annoyed, in pain, and his regular height.

"Ow," he groaned. "That was extremely painful."

He snapped his fingers, and the arrows pinning up the Bad Sanses dissipated. They dropped to the floor, eyeing him warily.

"Right," Dream announced, "Ink is never allowed in any lab ever again because that was awful."

"So you're back to normal now?" Killer asked. "That was a lot easier than I thought it would be."

A flash of light above them, and a paper airplane cams spiraling down to the floor. It landed in front of Nightmare.

He picked it up and unfolded it. "It's from the author," he said.

"How the hell did you even know it was a note?" Dust asked.

Nightmare was silent. Then he said, "Convenience?"

"Anyway," Horror coughed. "Note?"

"Oh, right." Nightmare squinted at the writing. "Moonfur says she can't brain well enough to come up with a legitimate solution, so she decided to make everyone's lives easier and solve the conflict this way."

"I feel like I'm going to have a split personality disorder from now on," Dream grumbled. "Lovely."

"Hey," Nightmare said, "At least you're normal again."

"Define 'normal'."

"An ideal that is literally impossible," Killer said. "Can we get on with our lives?"

Moonfur closed the document.