Chapter 4: Hide and Seek

Error fell through the other side of the portal a few feet above a pile of snow, which he was thankful for since it didn't aggravate the arrow injury in his sholder. He stayed lying in the snow for a few minutes letting the cold from the snow numb his body so that the pain was less prominent before even attempting to get to get up. The destroyer barely got into a seated position before gasping in pain and griping the shoulder where the arrow is embedded, his eyes scrunched shut as he tried to breath through the spike of pain.

Eventually the pain ebbed to more manageable levels and Error breathed a sigh of relief as he opened his eyes to see the extent of the damage. Sadly though other then the magic staining his jacket, which was barely visible due to the mostly black fabric, he couldn't see anything about the injury. Error groaned as he realised this before glaring at the arrow, he didn't dare brake the arrows shaft to attempt to take of his jacket in fear that it would move the arrow head and cause more damage. In addition he couldn't just cut off his jacket ,and fix it later, because he didn't have either his supplies or his magic to do it.

He sighed in anoyence at how bad this situation had gotten in a few minutes, but it's not like he could do anything about it now beyond either getting something to eat to replenish his magic reserves or getting some rest to let his body attempt to make some magic. He was happy he didn't have any magic to puke up at the moment else he would have have found himself throwing up again, instead he took a few deep breaths as he waited for the nausia to dissipate. After which Error decided it would probably be a good idea to figure out where he was so he knew how safe he was.

A swift look at the snow told Error that he was at least in one of the safer AUs if only for the fact that their was no dust mingled with the snow. After a bit of fiddling he managed to get out his glasses pocket with the hand not connected to his busted shoulder and put them on to notice one big glaring detale, everything was flipped. He could see the door to the ruins from where he was, which was between the last Snowdin century station with him being on the same side as the station, and it was to his left not his right like it should be, same with station albiet to his right instead of his left. This could only mean one of two things, he was in an underswap or he was in one of Inks weird backwards AUs. Considering their we're more copies of underswap then there were backwards AUs Error guessed that this was most likely an underswap.

Error groaned as he realised this because all swap papyrus, didn't matter if they were the one from the original swap AU or one of the many copies, mostly because Stretch, the original swap papyrus, told all of them about his abduction of Blueberry, the original swap Sans, which he must add was completely unintentional. He had been extremely tired at the time and thought he was in a copy, in addition he thrown up in front of Blue when the other offered him "tacos". He really was just going to leave the AU for ink to find half destroyed at that point with whoever was left alive for Ink to find , at least that was the plan till the Sans asked it he was okay. He had told the other it was normal, which caused the other to panic and say that he to go rest because if this was normal then something had to be wrong. After throwing up a second time in a few minutes he for some reason decided something along the lines of "oh s***, I can't let this guy talk to ink about this!" And for some reason his sleep deprived mind decided that it was better to kidnap the other then to just dust them. Pulling them through a portal he had quickly opened to the Antivoid right there on the outskirts of Snowdin right as Stretch turned the the corner and pulled Blue into the portal.

He had eventually returned the Sans after the other convinced him that he wouldn't tell Ink anything unless the other litteraly knew something was up, but that didn't help put him in Stretch's good graces. So Error dreaded going anyway near an Underswap AU because he knew that the minute the Papyrus saw him he was going to be beaten up. And with the fact that he had no magic to defend himself at the moment and no way out of the AU for the foreseeable future... Well, he was going to get beeten to a pulpe if he was found.

So with an annoyed sigh Error forced himself to his feet gritting his teeth against the pain and walked towards the forest with a tight grip on his injured arm to keep it from moving and causing more pain as he walked into the forest to find somewhere safe to lay low till he had enough magic to get out of there.

-meanwhile-

Ink slipped away quickly from where he had just remade another monster before the monster gained back enough since to realise he was there. He wasn't entirely sure why he created the lust universes they put him on edge thanks to the blaten asks if he wanted... Well he didn't want to think about it. The Creator wondered if the nervesness he felt here was what Error felt everywhere he went. But he couldn't focused on that now as he rebuilt the last monster before quickly making a portal to the Doodle Sphere so he could do some thinking on we're Error was in peace.

The doodle sphere it's self was nothing impressive, pieces of paper floated everywhere in a limitless, cream colored, area depicting the many AUs, though a few were his own paintings of randome things. In the center of it all was a beanbag with a drawing board and a box full of randome art supplies next to it.

Ink didn't waist any time and got comfortable so that he could do some thinking by plopping down in his beanbag and staring at the endless ceiling. First off he need to figure where Error would have gone, which was basically anywhere Underfell, Underswap, the Antivoid, Swapfell, Outertale, Medictale, Mafiatale, Undernovelia, Farmtale, Outerfell, Underlust, Ecotale... Ink shock his head to refocuse on the issue at hand.

No, he didn't think Error could be anywhere, Error had looked panicked as he had sommoned his portal. Meaning that he likely didn't have a destination in mind when sommoming it, so it would randomly chose somewhere Error knew at least vuagly to open the other side to. Which greatly reduced the number of AUs since most AU's Ink knew Error visited we're gone since Ink couldn't undue the complete destruction of an AU just create a new one. So that ment that his original list of billions of AU was knocked down to a few hundred.

While still an annoyingly long list of AUs that could take Ink a month or so to go through it was better then searching though every AU in existence which could take him multiple life times if he was a normal Sans. Then it hit him, what was he going to do once he found Error? Ink knew for a fact he wasn't going to attack the "Destroyed" after everything he had seen, but if not that then what? Kidnap the destroyer to get answered? No, that was going to far, pluse Error was injured and likely without magic for Dreamer's sake! The other would have no way to fight back to make it fair and Ink was positive that Error would trust him even less if he did that, though he didn't think Error trusted him in general.

No, he needed to think this through. First off he needed to get Error some help, even if it wasn't publicly, the glitch needed to at least recover from the arrow in his arm. He was going to have to convince the other that he wasn't a threat and that he only wanted to help the other. If that worked Ink was going to try and move on to try and help Error with his anxiety. After that... He would try and learn about why Error destroyed. But only after he gained Errors trust and learned more about him. He wanted to not make any more assumptions about the "destroyer" he needed to give Error a chance like he had given everyone else.

So with a sigh Ink forced himself up from his beanbag and opened a portal to the first of many AUs to search for Error.