Author's Notes:

All right, chumperines.

So, because I am a moderately garbage human bean, I started reading one of V-mum's lovely works, SlaveTale, which can be found on Archive of Our Own under that title - with that username. There's several, so keep an eye out. (Unfortunately, I can't link to it directly because of how this website works.) That's not the garbage part, though. What is the garbage part is that it totally inspired me to do something similar with Underfell. I couldn't get the idea out of my head, sooooo... here you are.

Just a note, aside from the warnings in the main description, this story has a pretty satirical and liberal slant. If you think you'll be bothered by that, you might not want to read this.

Also, specific trigger warnings for each chapter will be posted at the end, while vague warnings will be posted up here - totally stealing this technique from someone else.

If you think you'll be okay and don't want to get spoiled, great! Keep reading. If you're concerned, on the other hand, then you can scroll down to the end to see the specifics.

This chapter is mainly a summary, so I'm not going to post warnings here.

With all that out of the way, I hope you enjoy!

It had taken five years for your world to become a hell.

Well, that wasn't quite accurate – you weren't affected by this nearly as much as other people. And the seeds of conflict were planted decades before. But it couldn't be denied that the time when shit really hit the fan was about five years ago.

The day the monsters emerged.

You had to admit, the particulars didn't sound great from any side. The monsters didn't exactly come peacefully – they came out fighting. They took over farms and buildings – they wielded magic, people said. They used fire and poison and forces that couldn't fully be described. The area they took wasn't very large, but damn if they didn't keep it for a long time. Much longer than expected, considering the armed forces sent to deal with them. For over eight months, the monsters kept the army at bay – guerrilla warfare. It seemed like they would never lose their grip on the land. People were terrified, curfews were enacted.

Then, just like that, the monsters surrendered. Out of the blue.

Surprisingly, no lives were lost in the conflict – no human lives, anyway. There were some casualties on the monsters' side, and both sides had sustained injuries.

The debate on what should be done with them lasted a long time. The government considered mass execution – but that was a strong violation of the Geneva conventions, and more cynically, there were those who wanted to study monster magic. They examined the possibility of sealing the monsters back underground, but that would have taken up too many resources. So instead they attempted mass incarceration, but that brought its own similar set of problems with overcrowding and creating new prisons. Finally, they hit upon a solution that was terrible in a whole new way.

They called it "community service", but it was really just slavery.

The idea was to treat the monsters like convicts and put them to work until they had "atoned" – just an excuse, the end time was indefinite. It started with public projects – construction work, road paving, factories and farms. Then new technology was developed to keep them in line. Foremost among them was the "bite" collar, which manipulated monsters' own magic against them and forced them to follow commands. With such new devices, people started owning monsters as "private property". House slaves. There were some limits on what an owner could force a monster to do – anything sexual was supposed to be banned, though it wasn't all that heavily enforced.

Were there protests? Of course there were. People protested in places all around. The 49 United States of America weren't all that pleased – after all, this was essentially another violation of the Geneva Conventions. But the U.S. government didn't contribute much aside from a reprimand – there had been a lot of conflict already due to Texas seceding from the Union fifteen years ago, and their relationship was fragile. In fact, plenty of other countries condemned The New Republic of Texas for their actions, but none of them seemed to do anything about it.

People protested in Texas as well. However, most of the reasonable people had left with the Secession, and in poured the people who wanted less government. The walls and barbed wire fences were erected, border control became insane, and the remaining reasonable people were trapped in with… everyone else.

And it had led to a modern slave state.

There were a couple good areas, to be sure – areas where monster slaves were less tolerated. You lived pretty close to one – you hated the idea of even seeing them around.

You never thought you'd have a slave yourself.