Another day passed, and Gaster was back on his feet. Sans and Papyrus wouldn't let him out of the house, however, until the day after.

Gaster was happy to return to the lab. Sans had gotten wind that Gaster had started a new experiment with Determination, and injecting it into inanimate objects. Sans, however, was content to not be a part of any experiments involving DT, and didn't even ask Gaster about it. He figured he would just keep an eye on Gaster's Lv, and intervene if things got bad.

While the Spacefold project had produced some interesting results, such as the ability to fold space, it had been a flop in terms of its goal, and the team was disbanded.

Sans still came into the lab every so often to poke around at the projects there, but he actually went back to his job as a comedian at the fancy hotel restaurant. He was going to pick up the hotdog business again, but he found that, as he had stopped using the small stall, his business had actually been shut down by some Royal Guardsman or other who had finally taken it upon themself to stop the illegal stand.

Sans considered opening a new h'dog stand in Hotland, maybe. Or Waterfall.

But, for now his time was split comfortably between the lab, home with his family, and working the comedy gig. All in all, things were pretty good.

Then one day, when he was working on something in the lab with Jeff and Alphys (who still called him "Dr. Sans"), Gaster burst into the room, shouting for them to follow him.

They did so.

Eventually, he had rounded up all of the former Spacefold team members and led them back to the formerly Spacefold-dedicated lab.

Once they had all gathered around the central table, Gaster leaned forward, hands on the table, grinning. "I've figured it out."

"Oh no." Jeff said.

"We're not just going to fold space."

"Oh no."

"We're also going to fold time."

"... What."

Gaster grinned at the cat monster. "We've already proved that we can fold the plane of space. So we just do the same thing with the plane of time, and go back to when and where the Barrier was first created."

"what, and just stop it form ever being made?"

"No." Gaster looked at Sans. "No, because then there's the possability of creating a time paradox where we go back to stop the Barrier from being made, but then the Barrier isn't there, so we don't go back to stop it, thus it's there, so we do go back to stop it, and so on. No one likes it when that happens."

"That implies that it's already happened." Jeff crossed his arms.

Gaster glared at him. "Maybe it has, and we just don't know it."

"Or," Jeff raised one eyebrow, "it hasn't, because no one is stupid enough to mess with time in the first place."

Gaster made a rude noise, and waved off Jeff's argument. "Regardless, we don't want to create a time paradox. So we can't just go back and stop the Barrier from being created. Instead, we go back and... modify it. We include some kind of backdoor in the original spell, one we know we couldn't find in any of the research we've done on the Barrier leading up to now so it doesn't create another paradox, then come back to our time and open the backdoor and let monsters go free."

Everyone was silent for a moment, mulling on that.

Then Sans shrugged, grinning at his creator. "welp. i'm game. where do we start?"

~o0o~

As they were no longer simply folding space, the team was just the Folding team. Almost everyone found that to be absolutely hilarious.

But, aside from that, and the scope of their work,  not much was different from the first time around.

Until they hit a snag.

"we can't build here in the lab."

Gaster looked up at what they were doing. "What do you mean?"

Sans gestured at a set of calculations and some blueprint sketches. "the size of it. there's just too much equipment with space folding and time folding machinery. there isn't anywhere in the lab that could fit it."

Gaster looked over the plans. "... So we build it just off the side of the lab."

Sans shook his head. "but see, that's another problem. the sheer amount of energy it'll be using'll make it heat up real fast, especially in the middle of a giant magma-filled cavern."

"What about Snowdin? It's pretty cold there. Natural cooling system."

Sans shook his head again. "we'd have to clear out a lot of trees in the forest. there's no big enough clearing in there that's not inhabited. on top of that, that's getting a little far from the core. power necessity, remember."

"So, that leaves Waterfall."

This time, Sans nodded. "yeah, that's what i was thinking. it's not so far that we shouldn't be able to get enough power from the core, and if we choose the right spot, then, in the event of overheating, we can just flood the place to cool it down."

Gaster nodded. "That should work, yeah. Send someone out to find somewhere to build."

Sans' grin widened, just a bit. "way ahead of you, dings. i've got six plausible spots, two of them more optimal than the rest." Sans offered Gaster a few papers.

Gaster accepted them, and started to flip through them. "... not here. Too inaccessible. ... Sans, a benefit of Waterfall is that we could flood places easily in the event of overheating, but that's a little hard to do if the room is already flooded... too small. If we're leaving the True Lab for need of space, then we might as well make sure we have plenty of it. ... too public. I'd prefer-... ooh... Now this one looks good. It's in a quieter area, out of the way... Lots of water nearby, that could easily be channeled into aqueducts, while the room itself seems pretty dry... decently sized, too. This one. I like this one."

"you know where it is?"

"Of course!" Gaster grinned. "It's right next to where I took you and Papyrus, and set up that old telescope for 'stargazing'." Gaster paused a moment, smiling, lost in the memory. "... That was a good day."

Sans grinned. "yeah, it was. so, this's the one?"

Gaster gave a sharp, decisive nod. "Yes. We'll build here."

~o0o~

So they had chosen a location to build, but that didn't mean they were ready to build yet. Sure, they had folded space already, but space and time, while similar, were still two different things. On top of that, Gaster was busy trying to figure out what sort of rune-spell exactly had been used to make the Barrier, so that he could come up with the backdoor modification.

So there was still a lot of work to be done before they could build.

Gaster also put his other project, the injecting-inanimate-objects-with-DT project, on hold.

"I need to take a break from it, anyway." He told Sans one day at lunch. "See, I need to find the right thing, the right candidate, the right-"

"test subject?"

Gaster looked at Sans. "... Yeah. But I need to make sure it's the right one. Because on the off-chance that the DT actually brings it to life, it can't be anything too dangerous. I don't want to bring a beast to life. As useful as that would be against humans, we know what happened the last time I tried to control my living creation." Gaster gave Sans a look that was somewhere between joking amusement and pride, then continued. "But at the same time, thinking along the same lines, I don't want to use something like, say a block of wood. Can you imagine how pitiful of an existence that would be? A living block of wood? It couldn't... do anything. Except, just... be. Which would be no more useful than as a not-alive block of wood. Which would be a pathetic existence indeed."

Sans snorted a minute at the thought, then grinned at his creator. "... wow, dings. i'm proud of you."

Gaster stopped, half-biting into his sandwich he had made for lunch. "Huh?"

"you're actually thinking about the ethics of what you're doing before you do it! you're not creating a beast because of the danger, and you're not creating a sentient block of wood because of how bad it would feel about it's own existence!"

Gaster snorted. "Out of context, I think that's one of the most ridiculous sentences I've ever heard."

Sans chuckled.

"Regardless," Gaster went on, "I still need to find the right subject. Something harmless, but not something totally just... 'oh, wow, that's just sad' type of thing. Something like..." he suddenly smiled. "Something like a flower."

Sans thought about that, a sentient flower. He imagined a flower with a cute, cheery smile. "a flower? heh, sounds pretty good to me."

Gaster's grin widened. "I think I know which flowers to use, too. Special flowers."

Sans' mental-image flower got a sparkly aura. "oooh, sounds wonderful."

Gaster nodded, grinning. "It will be."

~o0o~

Eventually, they figured all the time-folding stuff out (Gaster still had work to do on the backdoor, but he figured the sooner they got the folding machine up and running, the better they could test it.) and they had started building in Waterfall.

In order to deter spectators, Gaster had the entryway to the room they were working in fitted with a door. It was a nondescript, plain door. In fact, Sans thought it was so plain and nondescript, it was one of those things that stood out by fitting in so extraordinarily.

Nonetheless, they built inside the room.

First was the overflow aqueducts. It was quickly proven, multiple times in the construction process, that the room could, in fact, be flooded quite easily in a matter of seconds. The Fold team quickly learned to build things efficiently and well, as well as to always bring a dry change of clothes or two to work.

Sans also pulled a good few pranks that involved thoroughly dousing Gaster, and suddenly, the prank wars were back on.

This time, it was Sans who got slime dumped on him. Gaster was careful, though, because he still really liked that jacket he had given to Sans, so the slime was non-staining, and still the same blue color as the jacket. Sans retaliated with more pink slime, but Gaster's black lab coat refused to be stained neon pink, just as Gaster had predicted.

Nonetheless, construction continued. It went ridiculously slow, as Gaster wanted absolutely no mishaps this time around. That meant no explosions, and no Sans-es falling into the folds.

After finally finishing the aqueducts, they began to run the CORE's power to the room. This wasn't so much difficult as just tedious and painstakingly slow, but things went on.

And then, eventually, they could start on the spacetime folding machine.

§

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