OFF: I have writen a new fanfic! It's been so long since I did. And well, it's an AU for that game that everyone seems to like.

I won't spoil anything but I'll reveal two points, for those who read author notes. First, I will skip over redundant scenes. Scenes that go exactly like in canon or would otherwise be tedious will be skipped. In short, I will not be writing about every single random encounter Frisk run into.

By extension, this story begin a bit earlier than canon, showing off Flowey's final run before moving on to Frisk's quest. I hope the prologue will make it clear why I begun at this point.

Finally, I am using an unique format for chapter titles. Hopefully, will not break the formatting for it. If so, I will edit the chapter with a corrected, less fancy title later on.

Enjoy!

6FeetUnderTale

Determination is not enough

"Why are you standing in my way? Don't you get it, you idiot? I have DETERMINATION! You cannot hope to kill me!"

"kill you? all i need is to stop you."

Outwardly, Asriel screamed with a mix of confidence and hate as another barrage of his bullets smashed against the endless tidal wave of bones from his opponent. The golden hall was in ruins, glass shards and smashed tile fragments covering every inch of the damaged floor. The entire castle shook as two of the most powerful monsters in the underground fought.

But inwardly, terror gripped the flower-shaped monster. Something inside him was churning and he knew very well that nothing should be churning within his plant body. This feeling, he knew, was death. A death that DETERMINATIOn could not undo. Final, absolute death. And it horrified him to the core.

"Why do you even bother? You can't SAVE or RESET anymore! Don't think I didn't notice those dropplets that periodically flow from your head! That isn't sweat! Do you take me for an idiot?"

The short skeleton held out a hand and clenched his bony fingers on thin air, his left eye flaring into a blue inferno. Asriel found himself uprooted and lifted high into the air, losing control of his body. The Judge swung his arm to the left and immediately, the plant was sent screaming into the wall, smashing into it with unbeliveable violence. The impact tore petals off his head and inflicted wracking pain. Despite his diminutive weight, the collision was so brutal it caused a cratter into the brick wall, dislodging many stones and sending dust all over the place.

Before he could recover, the Judge pointed to the ceiling, sending Asriel slamming straight into it. Then downward, back into the floor. And then, Sans opened his hand. Magic poured out of the floor, materializing into long, thin bones, sharper than any known blade. They pierced Asriel's delicate flower skin like a hot knife through butter.

"You MIN-MAXING CHEATER!" he cried out, in a mix of frustration, rage, pain... and though he did not admit it to himself, also out of despair.

"now now, i gained that level 99 LOVE level the hard, honest way. you, on another hand, it's clear as day that you cheated quite a few innocents out of their lives to gain yours. so don't come complaining to me, you dirty murderous dandelion."

"I'm a buttercup, not a dandelion!"

"either way, weed like you is not welcome on my lawn."

His roots dug through the solid tiles. It was hard, it was painful, it took almost all he had. He was shaking incontrollably by now and he felt control over his magic slipping. Despite his best efforts, his magic surged through him. For a brief moment, the non-descript face on the flower turned into a detail child goat head as Asriel's eyes bulged and he found his stem bending against his will. He found himself hurling, deep crimson splattering on the floor, the edge of his vision blurred and darkened by the coldness of death.

That wasn't blood. That was magic, which for a monster, was even worse. He had been mortally injured. It was only because of pure determination that he didn't let himself collapse as agony gripped every cell of his tiny body, his true identity humiliatingly revealed by his weakness.

Not that it mattered. The smiling bastard had, after all, once been the most determined monster in the entire underground. Though his father had tried to keep it classified, his long time as a flower had allowed him to learn just how many times Sans had LOADED and SAVED, undoing the countless disasters that had threatened the underground.

Well, until his time machine broke down and he ran out of determination.

"Y-you can't save anymore. I-I can still do it. You know that DETERMINATION, even more than LOVE, determine who wins in a fight..."

"i saw through your bluff, kid." If the skeleton had been shocked by Asriel's face being revealed, he did not show any sign of it. "you're out of DETERMINATION, it has exceeded your LOVE or nearly so. if you could LOAD without melting and dying for real, you probably would have after i cracked your SOUL like that."

The Judge slipped his hands into his shirt and grinned even more widely. Asriel only hated him more for it.

"how about it buddy? if you have the strength, do one last RESET. how about you try gathering some love instead of LOVE? you're clearly out of balance and i think a bit of friendship might do you some good. who knows? maybe you'll like not being a murderous little shit and start behaving."

Sans's words cut deeper than he could possibly imagine. Asriel was far too aware of what he was talking about and how he knew about it. Though only one with DETERMINATION retained time ripple-proof memories, there were some habits that never went away even once you stopped messing with the timeline. The Judge had spent enough time in flux to know the signs and to connect the dots together.

Most importantly, it deeply shamed the prince to realize that his agony, his weakness was so apparent that anyone with a knowledge of DETERMINATION could now tell that he was dying.

He knew he could melt. But if he remained in this hall, if he fought Sans further... he would definitely die. What happens when someone who lost his SOUL die? He didn't want to find out. The world was blurry around him. Everything was dark.

He didn't want to die. He didn't want to die. He... he didn't want to die!

The desire not to die filled Asriel with DETERMINATION.

It hurt him more than anything he had ever felt before. He screamed as the world spun around him. His entire body shook so hard, he felt as if it was falling apart and knowing how serious his DETERMINATION overdose was, it probably was. He felt sticky his face over, as if someone had splashed goo all over his face. A feeling like a thousand small needles and oven heating elements slamming into his skin tore at every nerve his plant body had, even those he never knew he had. He wasn't sure if his eyes were popping out of their orbits or if he even had orbits to begin with but regardless of the anwser, they certainly did.

RESET! He must RESET again!

He launched a vine toward it. Desesperately, despite his body screaming at him, begging him to give up. He wanted to live, he needed to live. The vine folded upon itself before reaching it, losing shape, splashing like a sickly tiny splash of water near the button. With absolute and horrifying clarity, Asriel felt the sticky feeling again and instead, felt a dry, dusty feeling in his mouth. He felt himself coughing dust and knew, his mind suddenly awfully clear and calm, that he was dying, truly dying.

He was so close. So close. He couldn't overdose now. He couldn't return to dust. At least, when he had a SOUL, there was a possibility that if an afterlife exist, he might go to it. He did not want to cease to exist.

He thrown all of himself at it.

His head, half-liquefied, three of his petals having flaked away into lifeless dust, slammed into the RESET option.

Purple greeted his vision. The pain left him. But he did not feel any better. He couldn't. He just laid there, his head pointed toward the ceiling, not even bothering to hide his true visage within the flower, his eyes fluttering. With the new RESET, time had undone its wounds to his form. But even without injuries, he was still overdosed and he felt it. His body felt sticky, weak. He couldn't even bring himself to be angry.

It was funny how comforting anger had been. Hatred had never left him. Even when every other emotion and feeling had abandonned him, anger had remained to comfort him. But now, even anger felt futile. here was only emptiness and sorrow. It was funny. He shouldn't be able to feel sadness and he knew, rationally, that what he felt right now had nothing to do with the feeling of sadness he could feel when he used to have a SOUL.

But you didn't need to have a SOUL and emotion to realize loss, to feel emptiness. And thus, though different, he felt sorrow. In a way, it was even worse than normal sorrow even. After allowing himself to cry, back when he was a youthful goat-shaped monster, it would make him feel better. Crying now only left him empty and miserable and unlike all of his other emotions, it refused to die. It refused to leave him alone.

He couldn't gain love. Without a SOUL, he cannot. He tried. He tried so hard, for so long. But he cannot. He can only gain LOVE. He gained so much LOVE, so much that even such a weak body can stand up to the strongest of monsters. And even then, it wasn't enough.

He didn't want to do this anymore. Only his mother and his father gave him LOVE by now. His LOVE level was too high for anything else to give him EXP. He had laughed in pure insanity after a while. But even insanity had its limits. He guessed that in a way, no matter how much he had tried to embrace the horror of his existence, death had forced him back.

His mother's house stood before him. A small, tidy, cute house isolated in ruins. A place of solitude, sadness, and shame, the symbol of a broken family. A family broken because he was too weak. Because he had neglected LOVE in his first life and had paid the ultimate price for it when he had crossed the barrier into hostile lands. And now, his family was broken and fate had punished him in the most ironic, horrific way possible.

He had neglected LOVE all his life... now, LOVE was all he had left.

He was a coward. Through and thorough. Even now, he struggled to keep his worthless, pointless life going even without hope just because he feared death more. Why did he bother keeping such an empty existence going? Why can't he just let himself die? Or let some of those he had wronged put him out of his misery?

Because he was weak. No matter how high his LOVE, he would forever be weak.

And that same weakness drove him to barge into the house to kill the one who had given him life, that he had loved so much and still loved him, having never truly accepted his death. He tried to channel the same emptiness, the same sadism he had expressed so many times before... but the emptiness proved too strong, the despair and futility of it, too overwhelming.

Why even bother hide his true identity? He hated himself so much. He hated his own sobs as he plunged his half-liquefied vines into her chest, he hated her shock and pain as she saw him. None of it felt good. None of it felt fun. He screamed in desperation, wishing it to be over but it refused. Her incredibly high combined level of love and LOVE made her too durable for that. Even with all of the LOVE he had gained, he couldn't impale her and kill her quickly.

She tried to talk to him, tried to cry, tried to reach out to him. He didn't want any of it. He felt so empty. He remembered that it should hurt yet, he felt nothing. And ironically, that made it feel so much more painful than if he had been able to truly feel it.

He didn't want this anymore. He didn't want anything. He just wanted it to end. But he didn't want to die. He would do anything to not die. And so he struck her. He attacked repeatedly even as she didn't fight back, trying to live without harming her son.

He didn't want the EXP. He didn't want the LOVE. He wanted his life back. He wanted his body back. He wanted his family back. He would give up everything for it. His love and LOVE, his DETERMINATION, his prince title, everything.

But he couldn't. And he needed the LOVE to keep LOADING. To keep RESETTING.

She fell to dust slowly, like she died. And the EXP from this sin added itself to the ocean within him. If his father had seen this, he would be horrified and ashamed. LOVE should be gained from battle, never murder. LOVE without love is sterile, a corrosive power that can only destroy. A SOUL that does not balance love and LOVE is weak, no matter how high the level.

But this is all he have. This is all he is. All he can be. This is what he is reduced to.

And his mother died, the EXP flowed and his LOVE increased. But then, he felt a strange emptiness. A hollow feeling of sorts. And a horror unlike anything he had ever experienced inscribed itself upon his face.

Asriel's pupils shrunk to pinpricks. His entire body froze. Dust swirled around him and though his entire body solidified, death letting go of him, it left the most bitter emptiness in him that he had ever felt.

"No... please god no. Anything but this... anything... anything but this..." He couldn't stop the tears. He tried but he didn't have the strength.

His LOVE had reached its cap. All he could do was reload before he killed his mother. And that was it. That was all that was left of his DETERMINATION. His days of RELOADING and RESETTING are over. He wasted all of his chances at saving himself from this tormented existence. He is now truly, fully stuck.

Asriel screamed.

TO BE CONTINUED...