Beyond Midnight

by Owl Winter

As a shady government agent, you really should stop being surprised by things like monsters returning from the Underground for the first time in hundreds of years.

i.

At 8:35 Sunday morning, your coworker Melissa texts you to turn the TV on, right now. You oblige. Literally every single news channel is showing the same grainy photo - of a group of monsters, standing on the top of a hill next to a human child.

Monsters...you know humanity's history. The war, between humans and monsters, hundreds of years ago, ending with them being locked underground. But of course, there were no pictures of these monsters, only drawings and sketches, so you had assumed that the tales of some more strange monsters had simply been...exaggerated.

Obviously you were wrong, you think, staring at the blurry photo of the freakish group.

At 8:50, a statement is released to the press: the human child in the picture is the Ambassador for the monsters, and they will present a speech to the public at noon, by the bus stop at the base of Mount Ebott.

You lean back in your chair, and wait for the shitstorm to come.

It does. Your boss calls you at 8:55 on the dot - how he even got your home number you'll never know, you just changed it two days ago. No, that's a lie, you know exactly how he got access to it. But just because he can look up your entire life at the search of a database doesn't mean he has to. It's the principle of the thing.

Boss tells you to come into work, right now Goddamn it, I don't care it's your day off, before hanging up on you. You look mournfully at the new video game you were planning on playing today. Of course monsters had to reappear for the first time in nearly three hundred years on your day off. Of course.

You reluctantly get your bike out and head over to work. It's not a long bike trip, only around fifteen minutes long, but it seems like every single car in the city is being used today. Every store that sells food has a line out the door.

Come on, people, it's not like it's the apocalypse happening.

(You hope.)

You do notice protesters outside of the Town Hall. Well, that didn't take long, you think.

You finally get to headquarters at 9:15. Unsurprisingly enough, the entire place is abuzz with agents. You pass your friend Melissa in the hall, her hands full with papers. "Crazy stuff, right?" she says. You agree.

Boss calls you into his office. "The Ambassador child, they'll be giving her speech at noon," he says. "We have to prepare for every outcome. Your job is to find out everything you can about the child. If we need to, we have to be able to discredit what they say." You nod, and head back to your workstation.

Find dirt on the Ambassador, Boss had told you. So, the first thing you need to do is find out who the child is.

You start with databases. Facial recognition is your best hope, so you start with inputting the few blurry images available to the public. The results are inconclusive, but you expected that. Your next bet is by finding some higher quality photos, so you load up your department's Top Secret Intranet Files database. Almost everything uploaded today is about the monsters, you notice. No surprises there.

It doesn't take you long to find a better quality picture of the child's face, taken by some in-field agent or another. You upload the picture to the facial recognition software and wait.

You look over the other uploaded files out of curiosity. The pictures of the monsters are pretty...disconcerting, to say the least. There are giant humanoid creatures of every sort, from dogs to turtles to freaking spiders. You shudder.

Your computer beeps that the software is done with it's analysis. Results are inconclusive again, to to your disappointment.

Whatever. Boss didn't place you on this job because you gave up after the easy solutions failed, that's for sure.

You peruse the intranet files for anything that could help. Someone earlier had uploaded a report about the relatively high number of missing children in the Mount Ebott area over the last hundred years or so.

Huh. Well, that's a place to start, you suppose.

You pull up the Missing Person Database, and start with narrowing out people by age. The Ambassador couldn't be older than twelve or thirteen, you reckon.

That still leaves way too many missing kids to hope for any sort of lead, so you try filtering by area. You search for missing kids from the couple of towns nearest to Mount Ebott. No results; the other missing children must have gone missing years ago and thus would've been too old to possibly be the Ambassador. You widen the search area, which leads to a much greater number of possibilities, not all of them with descriptions or pictures.

You sift through the results for a couple of hours, but it's an impossible task. You don't know anything about the Ambassador, and there are way too many kids that could match the few details you do know about them.

You sigh and lean back in your chair. Ted from downstairs enters your small office, and you look up.

"It's almost noon. They're putting the Ambassador's speech on the big screen in the conference room, if you want to come watch," he tells you.

You do, in fact, want to come watch. One name, that's all you need to be able to find everything about the Ambassador's life.

You follow Ted downstairs, grabbing a coffee from the break room on the way. The two of you head to the conference room, where it seems the entire department has gathered. There's a huge TV screen up at the front showing live footage from the bus stop. You can see a cluster of the monsters in the background. Some news station must have set up a podium between the announcement of the speech and now, because there's one set up in the middle of the bus station that you're decently sure wasn't there before today.

There aren't any seats left, so you find a spot against the back wall to lean on. Your friend Melissa joins you.

"Long day?" She asks you, and you nod. "Boss put my team on looking through historical records for the spotted monsters. I thought he was insane, you know? How the hell could any creature live that long, right? But then you see those two goat-monsters in the back, there? Mark found a dead-on painting of them from sixteen ninety-four. It's crazy!"

You whistle. From the sixteen hundreds, holy crap. You're about to explain what you've been working on, but the news interrupts you as a few of the monsters walk together up to the bus stop.

The Ambassador steps up to the podium. God, they're just a kid, how on earth did they come to represent an entire race of creatures? The Ambassador is too short to reach the top of the podium, so some news station rushes to give her a chair to stand on.

The Ambassador wastes no time on introductions, which disappoints you immensely for obvious reasons. But the speech they give…it's a pretty incredible speech. Their words are far more mature than you had expected, and the message is heartwarming. Unity, the Ambassador speaks of. Peace, reconciliation, understanding. Some of the tension leaks from your body. We won't have a war, you think, at least not immediately.

After the speech you go back to your cramped office to continue your search. You pull up a copy of the Ambassador's speech, already uploaded onto youtube as "I am Determined: The Monster Ambassador's Speech." You glance through the comments section. The consensus seems to be pretty positive, at least for now.

You notice one buried comment mentioning Mount Ebott's history of missing people. So the government isn't the only one who put two and two together.

You watch the speech again. Behind the Ambassador are the two goat-monsters the child introduced as the King and Queen of the monsters. You think back to what Melissa had told you. Over three hundred years old.

You wonder what that must have been like, to be on the surface and then suddenly forced underground.

Standing behind the two royals were four other monsters. To their left was a walking fish-hybrid thing standing next to what looked like a dinosaur in a lab coat. To their other side were two honest-to-god walking skeletons.

You watch the video again. Damn, would it have killed the kid to introduce themselves? Or reveal, like, any personal information whatsoever? There was literally nothing in the speech to help you find out who they were...

It had to be a deliberate decision, you realize. They monsters are defending themselves against people trying to find out the Ambassador's history. People like you.

So the monsters weren't as naive as you originally thought, it appeared.

You sigh and lean back in your chair again, starting the video from the top once more. You watch again as the cameraman runs up to provide the Ambassador with a chair to stand on. What a weird place to have such an important speech, you think. Why would the monsters pick a bus stop, of all places, to have such an critical speech…?

No, you realize suddenly. The monsters wouldn't have been the ones to pick the speech's location, they haven't seen the surface in three hundred years. It must have been the Ambassador that picked the spot. So was the Ambassador must not be familiar with the area, then? But then why a bus stop…?

You get a bad feeling, suddenly. It's not like you have any proof for it, but you can just see the scene unfolding in your mind: a mother driving her child a couple of hours to a bus stop far away from their house, telling her child to stay there, she'll be right back in a couple of hours, the child waiting and waiting and waiting for her to come back...

You feel a bit sick. Would the Ambassador's parent have known about Mount Ebott's history of missing kids, if your assumption was right? They would have had to, for them to so deliberately pick that one bus stop in such a remote place.

You need a break from thinking about this. You open a new tab on your computer and browse the internet's reaction to the speech. You find a poster in a forum that had broken down the speech down frame by frame and had found another monster in the background of certain frames of the speech, standing right behind the other two skeletons. The screenshots they had posted do indeed show a blurry figure lurking there in the background, scars on their face...you shiver involuntarily.

You close out of the forum and write your boss an email about your current suspicions of the Ambassador's history. Time to get back to work.

ii.

The Ambassador ends up giving somewhere around a dozen speeches within the following couple of days, all of them with the same basic message. The king and queen themselves sit down for a couple of interviews with various programs. You notice that they avoid giving away any personal details about the Ambassador.

The monsters definitely know what they are doing.

One of the skeletons claims the first interview with a comedy show, which you watch online from your office. It's the shorter of the skeletons, and he introduces himself to the world as Sans. The skeleton's a natural comedian, joking around with the host. Someone in the comments section makes a remark about the "comic, Sans" and you snort despite yourself.

The next non-formal interview goes to an actual robot (!) that was made underground. The fact that the monsters have somehow developed actual artificial intelligence scares the shit out of Boss' superiors, and suddenly, there's more pressure on your department than ever.

You do find a few bloggers talking about the missing Mount Ebott kids. This is not going to end up well, you think.

You find no more leads as to the Ambassador's identity.

iii.

A week after the monsters return, Boss gets tired of your 'no new leads' reports and decides to send you into the field, effective immediately.

"You're stationed there until you can find something useful," he tells you. So you pack up your things and move. You're lucky that you're used to moving for assignments like this. Means that you don't have a lot to pack up.

Ecliss, the city at the base of Mount Ebott, was relatively small, until the monsters moved in. To their credit, the local townspeople saw an opportunity and took it, working together to build enough housing for the monsters to move into. Naturally, Ecliss is now the number one tourist destination. Do you want to meet a MONSTER? all the new advertisements read.

It's flat out impossible to find an open apartment or hotel room anywhere in town or a short drive away, so you have to settle with a small apartment at a city a forty minute drive away from Ecliss. It's not a bad place, but the price is way too high all things considered. (You send an email asking Boss if this counts as a business expense, but never hear any reply.)

Being a shady government agent does provide some perks, mainly in the equipment you have access to. Leo from the tech department sends you a case of suitable surveillance equipment as well as a spare laptop and a couple of fake IDs and licenses.

You spend the first couple of days walking around Ecliss, observing the Monsters that pass by you. You blend into the crowd of tourists that are just as curious as you are when it comes to humanity's tentative new friends. You only catch a glimpse of the Ambassador once.

You memorize the buildings of the town first, and then get to learning the routines of the monsters. The Ambassador lives with the King and Queen, and it is a simple thing to stealthily break into their house when it is empty. You place six small bugs around the house and leave before anyone returns.

You listen to the feeds for the next couple of days. The Queen is constantly upset with the King, you find, which is surprising considering how unified they appear in public. The Ambassador, meanwhile, is almost silent, only very rarely talking to them.

More pertinent to your current job is the fact that the Ambassador gets very bad nightmares, almost every night. You finally get one detail as to the Ambassador's life from these nightmares - from what you can tell, a very bad person named Chara was doing terrible things which the Ambassador witnessed.

Chara. You know that name. That was the name of one of the missing kids of Ecliss, wasn't it? It takes you a second to pull up headquarters' brand new everything-under-the-sun-monster-related database. A quick search confirms that Chara was indeed one of the missing kids.

There's a link in Chara's profile to another file, so you open it. It's a scan of an old diary entry. Well, whoever wrote it, they had terrible handwriting, so you scroll down to the analysis from the agent who uploaded it.

Monster sighting. Ecliss, 9 OCT 1929. Young monster goat seen carrying young child's body. People of town assumed monster killed child and beat it. Monster retreated. No other sightings. Child possible link to CHARA, age lines up with discription.

You try to sort through the implications of Chara's story. The young monster goat...you know it couldn't be the King or Queen, seeing as they both were seen three hundred years ago with the same appearance as they currently have. But of all the monsters you've seen, those two are the only goats. So, perhaps the young goat was their child?

But then, how could he have reached the surface? Why was he holding Chara? Why was Chara dead? And why did the Ambassador have nightmares of Chara?

The Ambassador definitely viewed Chara as an evil person. So, what if the young goat had killed Chara deliberately? Perhaps to protect somebody, or in self-defence? But then, that theory still didn't explain how he reached the surface, holding her body. Holding her body...did that action have any significance? It could have just been out of grief.

Or. What if the monster had to kill Chara, in order to reach the surface? Could Chara have been some sort of sacrifice?

A chill runs up your spine as you remember the other missing children. Could they have been sacrifices to reach the surface, too? But if that theory was true, the Ambassador would have been sacrificed too. Maybe the Ambassador really wasn't human, only pretending to be one? Or could the monsters have needed an alive human being to free them?

You...are even more confused now, than before. You make yourself a cup of coffee then spend a good hour and a half working on an email to send to your boss, explaining what you found as well as your speculations.

iv.

You spend another few days listening to the feeds, but you get no new information. So, you head back into Ecliss to try a different method to gain information: getting a monster to reveal something accidentally.

You have a target in mind: Papyrus, another skeleton, the brother of Sans. From your observations of the monsters you know he's not considered the most cunning of the bunch with the added bonus of being a loud talker.

You approach him casually, pretending to be a fan wanting a signature. The poor guy is so excited to have a fan, you almost feel guilty about deceiving him.

Not guilty enough to stop doing your job.

You casually bring up the Ambassador's "I am determined" speech, and gush about how fantastic of a speech it was for a minute. Papyrus smiles widely. "YES, I AGREE," he loudly says. "FRISK DID A FANTASTIC JOB!"

A name, freaking finally! Frisk. A rare name, too, you can definitely work with it!

To his credit, Papyrus seems to realize his mistake immediately. "I MEAN, NOT THAT FRISK IS THE AMBASSADOR'S NAME," he amends hurriedly. "SANS TELLS ME NOT TO REVEAL PERSONAL INFORMATION ABOUT FR - ABOUT THE AMBASSADOR. ESPECIALLY THEIR NAME. WHICH ISN'T FRISK. WHY WOULD IT BE FRISK? WHAT A STRANGE NAME, HAHA."

You assure the skeleton that yes, you agree that Frisk isn't the Ambassador's name and wrap up the conversation as quickly as you can. You hurriedly wave Papyrus goodbye as you walk back to your car.

In the corner of your eye, you could've sworn you saw a flash of blue. But you're too excited with finally having a name for the Ambassador that you pay it no notice.

v.

"Frisk" shows no results in the missing person database that could reasonably be the Ambassador, but that doesn't deter you. Your next attempt at finding them is by looking at abuse reports.

Bingo. You find a match. An abuse report, filed three years ago by a school nurse against one Matilia Fernicle.

Matilia Fernicle, who has a child named Frisk.

The details match almost perfectly. Frisk Fernicle was pulled out of school two years ago, and would be about the same age as the Ambassador currently. Their grades for the few years they were in school had been excellent, though multiple teachers commented on how quiet they were.

Matilia Fernicle was a mess, according to what records you can find on her. Compulsive shoplifter, addicted to drugs and paranoid to a fault, according to her therapist. The abuse report appears to have went nowhere, and you clench your teeth.

You settle down on the couch with your laptop and work for a bit on finding details on the Fernicle's lives. Matilda Fernicle was nice enough to have social media accounts, though none of them had been updated in months. You type out a nice long email to your boss detailing everything you found and linking to her found accounts. You read over the email once and then are about to click send when -

Without any warning, a skeleton appears right in front of you, kicking your laptop from your lap to the ground.

You scream, and suddenly a bony hand is holding your mouth closed. It takes you a moment for you to recognize the being as that skeleton, Sans. His eyes are pitch black.

"human. did you really think we wouldn't catch you eventually?"

You squirm as much as you can, trying to pull out from the skeleton's grip. Sans doesn't budge. His left eye starts glowing a deep neon shade of blue, as his smile widens terrifyingly. This is bad, this is very very bad...

"listen to me, buddy. pal. you break into our houses, you listen to our conversations, and you take advantage of my brother to gain information. if you tell anyone frisk's identity, if i ever see you again, y o u ' d. understand?"

You nod rapidly, tears running down your face, and Sans disappears in a flash of blue.

vi.

It takes a you a few minutes before you are calm enough to move. What the hell was that? Did the skeleton actually teleport to your house? But then how did he know where you lived? Were you being watched were they watching you oh my God you could have died -

Focus. Your thoughts are still a shattered kaleidoscope, but you shove the paranoia away as best you can for now.

First things first. You scoot over to where your laptop had been kicked away. It's screen is damaged beyond repair, unfortunately. You look at it mournfully for a few moments.

It's a good thing that the feeds your bugs were recording were being sent to a much more hidden laptop.

You manage to pull yourself upright. You need to find out how badly your cover was blown. You walk over to your bedroom and pull out one of the cabinets from its spot against the wall. Secured tightly behind it is the laptop Leo from the tech department provided you. You start it up and immediately click to the bugs' feeds. Your hands are still shaking a bit. You close your eyes and take a few deep breaths.

You had placed six bugs around the Ambassador's house. Five of the bugs are down - Sans must have found them and removed them - but to your surprise bug number four is still working. You listen to its feeds for a few seconds to Toriel humming a strange tune before opening your email.

Sans hasn't been around humanity - or human technology - for over three hundred years. He must not have realized that most email services automatically save messages as you work on them. And there it is - the email you had been typing, right there and ready to be sent.

Sans had threatened to kill you, if you released the Ambassador's identity to your boss. Your hands shake for a moment as you reach out and click send anyways.

If there was to be a war with the monsters, humanity would need to know their opponent. Some things are more important than the life of one agent.

vii.

You can't sleep at all that night, or the night afterwards. Your mind keeps taking you back to that moment, of Sans appearing right in front of you with no warning, of that glowing blue eye…

Nothing happens to you, and you begin to breathe a little bit easier. You can't ever return to Ecliss, but you still have the one bug's feeds to gain information from. So you stay locked up in your cramped apartment, listening to the remaining feed for any potentially useful information.

The fish monster and the dinosaur come over to the Ambassador's house for dinner, once. The fish used to be one of Asgore's royal guard, you learn, and the dinosaur monster used to be the royal scientist. The two of them are definitely a couple.

Media continues to go batshit crazy over the monsters. The 'ghoul' that could only be seen in three frames of Frisk's "I am determined" speech becomes practically a celebrity, with dozens of creepypastas popping up about him. People even draw fanart of the thing! Fanart!

A well known reporter picks up on the missing Mount Ebott kids story, and suddenly it's the hot topic to discuss. "Where did our children go?" has become the tagline of the anti-monster groups. You keep an eye on their forums.

Things are starting to not look good for the monsters, at this point.

You get an email back from Boss about Matilia Fernicle. Apparently, her current whereabouts are unknown. I put a couple of my other best agents on finding her, he tells you. Good work.

It's been a week since Sans had threatened to kill you, and you're still alive, obviously. You tell yourself you're past the incident.

(If you sleep with a loaded gun under your pillow at night time, no one's the wiser.)

viii.

You have a nightmare. Something's hit you, you hear a crack and suddenly it's hard to breathe, but you have to stand up stand up he needs enough time to get away from them -

You wake up, completely disorientated. What the hell was that? You shake your head a couple of times to clear it.

You pour yourself some cereal and turn on the news. To your surprise, the monster king Asgore is giving a speech - on the missing children.

"The missing children," Asgore says, bowing his head. "I know that this is a topic that people want answers to. But I am afraid our answers are few. These children, from what we could tell, died from the fall into the Underground. Our Ambassador was the only one that survived the fall."

You think of Chara, and know for a fact that Asgore is lying. But why would he do that?

(Somewhere in your mind a memory twinges. A speech that ends differently, an angry world, fear. You brush the vague memory away.)

You spend the rest of the day uneasily listening to the feed. Mostly you hear just silence, from when the room is empty. But your patience pays off, eventually, as you hear the king and queen return to their house.

"Tori, I'm sorry, I had to do that although I cannot tell you why exactly, but - "

"Don't you dare 'Tori' me, you just lied to the entire world. Oh, those poor kids, what have we done, Asgore? We've just lied to their families, don't they deserve to know the truth, after everything?"

"Toriel, I-"

"huh. i always wondered if i had missed one of the recording devices. guess i did."

You scramble backwards, pulling out your gun as your heartbeat spikes. It's Sans, oh god has he come to kill you like he said he would? Why did you ever let your guard down you're dead meat now, dead meat -

"St - stay back, you freak!" You say, your voice shaking badly. "Don't - don't come any closer, or I'll shoot you, I mean it!"

Sans looks at you for a moment and then slowly raises his hands up, palms open.

"woah, calm down there. i forgot, the last time we talked in this timeline wasn't pleasant, was it? oops."

In this...timeline? You have no idea what he's talking about. You don't reply, taking a moment to calm yourself. Your aim steadies.

Sans frowns, rubbing his skull with his hand. "look, i'm not going to kill you. not after…" He looks at you for a moment, then sighs. "i was wrong about you, you know. you're not that bad of a person."

You...honestly have no idea what was the cause for his sudden change in opinion. "And how - how do you figure that?" you ask, your gun not wavering from the skeleton.

Sans stops smiling for a moment. "you sacrificed yourself for papyrus, in another timeline."

In another...timeline? "Explain."

"only if you put the gun down, kiddo. i'm not up for another reset quite yet. not after we've gotten this far without one."

You waver for a moment before your curiosity gets the best of you. You lower the gun and put it gently on the table next to you. "Fine. Let's talk."

(You don't mention the fact that you have another gun on you, right inside your jacket. It would only take you two seconds to pull it out and shoot, if you needed to.)

Sans takes a seat at the table, so you follow suit. You wait for him to speak.

Sans clears his throat, and you wonder how it's possible for a skeleton to even do that. "the kid has a special ability," he starts with. "they can...manipulate the timeline, in a way. at certain times, they can 'save' the timeline, and if they die or if they don't like how things turned out they can 'restore' to that point. frisk can also 'reset' the entire timeline, back to the point they first fell into the Underground."

That...is a lot of information to take in. You say the first thing that comes to your mind. "So, you're saying that Frisk is like a videogame character?"

Sans stares at you. "What's a video game?"

ix.

"I don't get it. So you monsters developed honest-to-god artificial intelligence before the concept of video games?" you ask, as you grab your computer from where you had left it on the couch. At least nothing is broken this time; Leo from the tech department would have killed you if you had destroyed his brand new expensive laptop.

"well, I know there were a few dating sims out, in our defence." Sans responds. "i mean, alphys never shuts up about them. but i guess we never developed games like the ones you have above ground."

You snort. So even monsters have their shippers, apparently.

"and besides," Sans adds. "alphys really didn't invent artificial intelligence, she just made mettaton's shell. then blooky's cousin possessed it as a body."

"Blooky?" you mentally run through your departments' repertoire of monsters. "You, mean, Napstablook, the ghost?" Sans nods and you stare at him for a moment. "Mettaton's a ghost?"

"yep."

Well what do you know, now ghosts can possess things. You suppose that makes sense. You make a mental note to send Boss an email about this later.

All of your games had been on your personal computer that Sans had destroyed, but thankfully with the internet you can get access to anything. You quickly download one of the old retro games, then open it and turn the laptop around slightly so that Sans could see it.

You create a new character and wait a moment for the short intro to end before passing your laptop over to Sans. You explain the controls to the skeleton briefly, and he taps a few keys, moving the miniature character from its house to the woods. "show me how to do a save," Sans says. You lean over and pull open the menu. You click the save button.

"Now see, I can close out of the game and reload it to that point," you explain, doing just that. "And then, I can also return to that save at any time. If I die, I automatically return to my most recent save point. Saving is just a way to preserve progress in a game."

"progress…" Sans trails off. "show me a reset."

You return to the menu and erase the save file. You click on the new file and watch the same short intro sequence before your character appears again, back in its house.

"but...what's the point of resetting?" Sans ask, genuinely confused.

"Well, if a game has multiple endings, people may want to try and get them all," you explain. "Or sometimes, people just want to play a game again because it's fun."

Sans stares at the screen for a moment. "fun...heh." He rubs his face with his hand. "i need a drink."

"You and me both, buddy," you say. You walk over to your fridge and grab a couple of beers. Sans grabs one of them and takes a long drink.

"How does drinking anything even work for you?" you ask.

Sans grins. "magic."

Makes sense, you suppose. You take a sip of your own drink.

"Why did the King lie today, at the speech?"

"well, you know about timelines. in the one we were in, before frisk pushed us all back here, asgore told the truth. your kind didn't much like us, after that. it was...bad. lots of us were killed by rioting humans. so...frisk was determined enough to bring us back. and so here we are."

"Do all of the monsters remember the different timelines?"

"only me. asgore has some knowledge of them, that's why he believed frisk when they told him that he had to lie."

"So the missing kids are dead, then?"

"yes." Sans doesn't elaborate, so you don't press the subject.

You're about to ask Sans about Chara, but you are interrupted by your computer pinging and a new email notification. You glance at the sender.

"Oh, shit, it's Boss."

Sans leans forward. "who do you work for, anyway?"

"A shady government agency," you say distractedly as you open up the email. "Oh, hell. Boss wants to know why Asgore would have lied today."

"how does he even know that asgore lied?" Sans asks.

"I told him about Chara," you reply. You're decently sure that Sans won't kill you, at this point. No reason to start lying to him.

Sans looks up sharply. "how do you know that name?"

"Frisk has nightmares about them."

The skeleton doesn't seem to know how to react to that. "that doesn't make any sense. how would frisk even know about chara? there's no way they could have ever met..." the skeleton trails off for a moment. "i have to go."

There's a bright flash, and when you open your eyes again, Sans is gone.

You blink a few times and look mournfully at your empty drink.

Sans appears again and you automatically flail backwards, falling out of your chair.

Sans grins. "one more thing. don't listen in on any of them again. or else we're going to have a problem."

There's another flash of light, and Sans disappears.

x.

The next day is normal, relatively speaking, until around four in the afternoon when you find yourself working on an email for Boss with the certain feeling that this is not what you had been doing just now.

Was this what it felt like when Frisk messed with the timeline? You close your laptop and wait for Sans to show up.

He actually bothers to ring the bell this time, which you suppose is a good sign for not dying today.

You open the door and look at him for a moment.

"i need your help. frisk disappeared."

"You mean like, someone kidnapped her? I can call Boss, he can rally up some people to help us search."

"no, the kid is purposefully hiding. i asked them about chara."

"Is that what caused her to mess with the timeline?"

Sans gapes at you for a moment. "Can you remember that?" he asks.

"It was just a feeling. But I can put two and two together. How did the conversation go?" you ask.

"bad. the kid freaked out and sent the timeline back a little bit, to about an hour before we had the conversation. now i can't find them anywhere."

"Any idea where they would have went?"

"i don't know. my guess was that they went to their above ground family, maybe? that's why i came here. you must have been able to find out frisk's identity, right? when you were investigating. so you have to know where their family is."

You shake your head. "No - I mean, yes, I know who their parents are, but there's no way Frisk would have returned to them."

"why not? are they too far away from here?"

"No, it's just...our best guess as to why Frisk was at Mount Ebott in the first place was that they had been abandoned there."

Sans' eye burns and you are suddenly reminded of how dangerous he really is. "abandoned? as in, deliberately left there? in a place notorious for disappearing children?"

"Yes."

Sans looks at you and you feel chills running up your back. "human. answer me honestly. do you think that being abandoned like that...would that be enough for you to want to see the world burn?"

You don't answer for a moment. "Yes...I think so," you say.

The burning blue fire disappears, and Sans looks really away. "...that makes sense, then."

"What does?" He doesn't respond. "Sans, what makes sense?"

"i'll tell you later. we need to find the kid first."

"Yeah...sure, okay. Any idea where they might be?"

Sans thinks for a moment. "assuming frisk isn't above ground, then i'd say probably the place where everything began. the place they landed, when they first fell into the underground."

"The place the kid landed? How long do you think it will take for us to get there?"

"normally? maybe half a day. but fortunately, i know a shortcut."

xi.

Sans gives you a moment to put on your shoes before teleporting the two of you elsewhere. It takes a second for your eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness. You're in what appears to be just a regular snowy mountainside town.

"Sans? I thought you said Frisk would be underground? Why did you bring us here?"

"we are underground."

"What? No way, there's snow! How can it snow, if we're underground!?"

"magic, probably," Sans replies.

The monster village really does look just like a normal human town. You're standing near what looks like an inn. Ahead of you, you can see a big "Welcome to Snowdin!" sign.

"this way," Sans says. "the ruins aren't too far ahead."

You follow him as he leads you through the woods, and you can't help but wonder how the hell there could be trees growing without sunlight. Sans leads you through a huge door leading to a long passageway. You walk for a minute before Sans leads you up a staircase. It looks like you're in...a house?

"Did someone live here?" you ask, but Sans doesn't respond. He opens up the front door, and you see Frisk, sitting there on the front steps.

"kid. are you gonna run away again, or are we gonna talk about this?"

Frisk looks up at him. They must have been crying, because their face is all red.

"We...we can talk," Frisk says. "But...but if you're going to k-kill me, there's someone I need to talk to, first."

Sans sighs and runs a hand over his face. "i'm not gonna make any promises, but i probably won't kill you, kiddo. the last thing i want at this point is another reset."

Frisk glances at you uncertainly. "They know about your...ability," Sans explains. "They're a friend."

Sans considers you a friend? That's news to you. You go with it.

Frisk looks at Sans for a moment before their eyes start welling up. Frisk takes a few steps forward and buries into Sans, sobbing.

"Sans, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" Frisk wails.

You have no idea what is going on anymore.

Sans is frozen. He turns his head towards you slightly, and you shrug. Sans looks back at the kid again and slowly pats their head.

It takes a couple of minutes for the kid to settle down. You just kind of awkwardly stand there wondering what the hell was going on.

"alright, kiddo. let's go inside and sit down," Sans finally says, when the kid has calmed down a bit. Frisk nods, and Sans leads the three of you to the dining room table.

Sans clears his throat. "so, uh, kid. where do you want to start?" he asks Frisk.

"Chara," Frisk replies. "They...they were a fallen human like me that Toriel and Asgore adopted, right?"

Sans nods. "are you going to explain how you know that name?"

"Chara can talk to me, in my head," Frisk says. "And sometimes, if I'm - if I'm weak enough, Chara can control me."

Sans doesn't respond for a minute, so Frisk continues on.

"Chara...chara isn't a good person. They would make me do - things. Evil things."

"things like systematically killing every single monster in the Underground, multiple times, just because it was possible," Sans replies. You glance at him, startled. His eyes are pitch black, and you shiver. Had Sans really have to live through that?

"Y-yes." Frisk responds.

"then kid, what changed this time? for us all to have our happy ending, and then chara deciding not to reset like the last couple of times we made it to the surface?"

The monsters had made it to the surface before? You wonder why nobody had ever picked up on the resets happening before.

"I think...I think someone talked them out of doing that. Chara's disappeared, and I think it's for good."

"well, who talked chara out of resetting, then?"

Frisk hesitates for a moment. "I can lead you to them, if you want. They should still be down here."

Sans nods, and Frisk leads the three of you further into the ruins.

Sans hangs back a good thirty feet from Frisk. You slow down and walk with him. "Do you have any idea who the kid's leading us to?" you ask quietly.

Sans hesitates. "if it is who i think it is, i'm not going to be happy about it," he finally responds.

The three of you walk on silently until Frisk pauses at the end of a long room.

"He's...up ahead. I don't know in what state he'll be in, so…"

Sans gestures. "lead on, kiddo."

Frisk pauses to take a deep breath before continuing on, with you and Sans following behind.

You're in a huge cavern that reaches a long way up. At the very top, you can see a faint pinprick of light. Was this where Frisk had fallen? How would it be possible for anyone to survive from a fall of that height?

Frisk approaches a flower patch at the center of the cavern. "Hello, again," Frisk says.

You have no idea who Frisk is talking to until one of the flowers opens its mouth to respond. "Frisk. I told you not to come back." The flower twists it's stem a bit so it can look at you and Sans.

Sans scowls. "well. if it isn't flowey again."

Flowey wilts, a little bit. "That's not my real name," the flower says.

"well, then, what's your real name, mr. serial killer?"

"Asriel. Asriel Dreemurr."

Sans freezes completely. "how is that even possible? you're dead. tori, hell, the entire kingdom mourned for you -"

Tori - the Queen? You try to put the clues together. If the Queen had mourned for Asriel, did that mean that Asriel was the goat killed holding Chara's body?

"I...I did die. Mom and Dad spread my dust over the flowers, in our garden. And that would have been the end of everything, except that the royal scientist Alphys happened to use one one those flowers for an experiment. An experiment on what would happen if determination was infused into something neither human nor monster."

Sans' eyes widen. "so - so then, when you were trying to destroy everything, you -"

"I didn't have my soul, then. I was just an empty creature with the determination to live."

"and you thought you would regress back into that creature, so that's why you wanted to stay down here, all alone?" Asriel nods.

"But - but that didn't happen, obviously!" Frisk cuts in. "So why haven't you come back up to the surface? You know you won't become...Flowey, again."

Asriel closes his eyes and hunches down upon himself. "What's happening is...even worse than that, Frisk. I thought I would just regress to being Flowey again, and that would be that, but...I'm still me, just a flower again. It's just...I'm losing all the traits that make me a monster, little by little, every single day. My hearing's been getting worse and worse, and I can't see out of my left eye. I can't even move from this spot, anymore. And it's getting harder and harder to think and talk and understand things. I'm becoming trapped as a regular flower, just with a soul."

Frisk doesn't respond for a moment. "Oh, Asriel…"

"Frisk...you should go. Just leave me here, in peace. Maybe this is justice, for all the evil things I've done."

There's silence in the cavern, for a few minutes. In the background, you can hear a gentle tune fading in and out of existence. It's…surprisingly serene, considering.

"you're not the one who gets to decide that, asriel," Sans finally says. His eyes are dark. "toriel - she deserves to know, what happened to her son. staying here, in this cavern, all alone - that's not justice, that's cowardice."

Asriel flinches a bit. "But then - she would - hate me. She would never want to see me again."

"but that should at least be her choice then, don't you think?"

Asriel doesn't respond. "asriel. you want redemption for everything you did without a soul, don't you? this would be how. give your mother back her son, at least for a little bit."

"I -" Asriel pauses. "I - alright."

xii.

You go back to the house by the entrance of the ruins alone to grab a pot to transport Asriel in. It's not hard, to move the flower into the pot, and afterwards Sans transports the four of you above ground.

Toriel isn't in her house when you get back, so you nod at Sans and take your leave. Some conversations are meant to be private.

xiii.

Of course, that doesn't stop you from asking Sans how everything went the next time he shows up at your apartment.

"it went about as well as could be expected. i think asgore cried more than tori did."

"And Asriel? How's he doing?"

"a bit worse off, today. it looks like he really is regressing into an actual flower. nobody knows if his soul will disappear too, but if it does it'll probably be the last thing to go."

Poor Asriel. You can't imagine what that would be like, slowly disappearing piece by piece.

Sans plops himself down on your couch and turns on the TV. You watch him for a few moments before turning back to your work.

The internet is going batshit crazy over that goul from Frisk's speech again. Apparently the ghoul was seen in another couple of frames from an interview last night, which was with Sans' brother, Papyrus. The ghoul's gotten himself a nickname - "The Lost Soul" - which, personally, you think is a bit dramatic, but it works.

You search through your department's database to see what you have on the ghoul. There's depressingly little, to your disappointment. Nothing other than the five frames it was spotted in by the public, and a note that the ghoul has only been seen hovering behind the two skeletons.

Huh. Interesting.

"Sans, do you know who this monster is?" you ask, and Sans glances over. You make one of the pictures of the ghoul full screen and turn the laptop around slightly so Sans can see it.

Sans freezes. "human technology can see him?" he asks incredulously.

"Well, only in a few frames. He was seen behind you and Papyrus during Frisk's first speech as Ambassador, and again last night during Papyrus' interview. Do you two, uh, know him?"

Sans laughs a bit. "Yeah, that's Gaster. Our Dad."

Well. You can't say you expected that. Or anything vaguely in the realm of that, either.

"Your Dad?! Then why isn't he, you know, real? I mean, corporeal, present, whatever?" How could a ghoul even have skeleton children? Your brain breaks a little bit.

"there was an accident, when we were younger. gaster kind of vanished himself out of existence. but human technology can pick up on his presence? that's amazing. can i see the other pictures?"

You obligingly pass him the laptop, trying to gather your thoughts back together. "Can you elaborate on the, uh,'vanished himself out of existence' thing?" you ask.

Sans doesn't look up at you. "he was the original royal scientist, before alphys. i helped him out at his lab, sometimes. then one day, there was an accident. he fell into his creation, and vanished. monsters forgot anything related to him, it was like he had never existed. alphys and i were the only ones that remembered him."

"Because you had been working on the same experiment as him?"

Sans shrugs. "maybe. it makes the most sense." He passes you back the laptop. "the fact that human technology is capable of perceiving him at all is insane. alphys speculated that he might still be around somewhere in the fabric of space and time, but we never had any proof. there's no way to contact someone that exists like he does."

You have an idea. A very, very bad idea.

"I don't suppose you've heard of something called an Ouija board?"

xiv.

It takes you twenty minutes to go out and find a department store still open this late at night, but fortunately the first you go to has decent looking Ouija board for sale. You wonder if Ouija board sales have gone up since the monsters have come out from the Underground.

"There is absolutely no proof that this will work," you tell Sans as you unwrap the board. "I mean, it was made to talk to ghosts, not souls lost in the fabric of space and time. And, it's not like any ghost actually existed above ground when they were made. They're mostly used in horror movies, actually."

"it's worth a shot," Sans says as you place the board on the ground. "not like i have anything better to be doing."

Sans places his boney hands on one side of the small wooden piece and you place yours on the other.

You clear your throat. "Um, Mr. Gaster, if you are here, please give us a sign."

Nothing happens for a long moment, and then two.

"Nevermind," you say, starting to pull away. "This was a long shot anyway - whoa."

The wooden piece is moving. "that - that's not you, is it?" Sans asks, and you shake your head. "dad, is that you?" Sans asks, sounding young for a moment.

4612353/1159

The two of you wait for a moment, but that seems to be the end of the message. "Did that make any sense to you?" you ask.

"Yeah, the first seven could be coordinates, the system we use underground is seven digits. Four six one two three five nine- "

"Five three," you correct.

"five three. that would be in hotland, then. but those last four digits, one one five nine, i don't know what those could be."

"It could be a time, eleven fifty nine." you say.

"That would make sense," sans replies, and the two of you turn towards the nearest clock. It's nearly midnight now.

"you should stay here for this one," Sans says, and you nod. This reunion is something way too personal for you to intrude on. There's a bright flash, and when Sans is gone by the time you open your eyes.

xv.

"there might be a way to save asriel."

You spit out your soda you had been drinking. It takes you a moment for you to catch your breath. You glance at the clock. Not even a minute had passed since Sans had left.

"Goddamn it, don't do that, you'll give me a heart attack!" Sans grins at you, and you mentally rewind your conversation back a bit. "Wait, Gaster has a way to save Asriel? How?"

Sans sighs. "it's complicated. and based off of speculation. and probably one of the worst ideas i've ever heard, all things considered."

"Well, what does this plan involve, then?"

"it involves frisk, and their...powers. we were talking about frisk basically has video game character powers, right?" You nod. "well, gaster's plan involves another ability they might have based off of that."

"Which is?"

"save files. in human video games, you can typically have more than one save file, right? and you can jump from one to the next at will, but nothing changes in your current world when you jump over to a new one."

You try to wrap your head around the implications. "So, what you're saying is that you want Frisk to create an alternate universe? One that exists differently from this timeline?"

"yeah. frisk would have to create a new file, and work her way through it like they did in this timeline, up until their fight with asriel. then, gaster thinks it would be possible for frisk to...drag asriel back to this timeline with them. frisk's soul is the only one that can survive the transfer from one reality to another, so asriel would become only a shell. but fortunately, we still have asriel's soul here in this reality. then all we'd have to do is place asriel's soul in the shell."

"What makes you so nervous about this plan?"

"chara. chara would still exist in that universe."

...oh.

"frisk...gaster reckons that they can create an alternate reality only about once a month, with their current level of power. anything more than that and there's a chance frisk would die. we don't have a month before asriel fades."

"So, you're saying Frisk only has one shot at this?"

"yes. if frisk is weak to chara, at all, we've lost. on the bright side, we should know right away if it works or not. gaster believes that time won't progress in a universe if frisk isn't there. frisk is...the 'main character,' so to speak. if things go so badly that frisk never returns to this timeline we'd never know."

"What would happen to that universe, once asriel's shell is brought to this one?"

"frisk can create the universe, frisk can delete it. the only one that really matters is the one frisk currently exists in, regardless."

Which, you supposed made sense? But still… "And you - alternate you - is just going to be okay with this? Would alternate you even remember this plan?"

"i don't know. but fortunately, i have sets of coded phrases just in case. alternate me will believe the kid."

"Do you think Frisk can do it?"

"i don't know. i'd like to think so, but...i've seen how powerful chara can be. it's risky."

"Then why on earth would you frisk to try?"

"we owe it to tori to at least try to save her son. if i didn't let frisk try, and asriel fades...i don't think i could live with myself."

Which you can understand.

"frisk is probably asleep by this point. i'll talk to them tomorrow. if they are willing to try...plan on us showing up here at eleven fifty tomorrow night here. gaster says midnight is the best time to travel anywhere within the fabric of space-time."

You are used to Sans disappearing by this point, so it's no surprise to you when he vanishes in another flash of light.

xvi.

You're prepared this time for when he teleports back to your apartment with Frisk in tow, precisely at 11:50.

"you ready, kiddo? we've got ten minutes."

"I'm ready," Frisk replies, looking anything but. Sans pointedly looks at you, then the clock, and then finally at the kid.

You sigh. So there was a reason he wanted to meet up so early. "Can I talk to Frisk, for a moment?" you ask. Sans nods and heads off to your kitchen. You can faintly hear him rummaging through your cabinets. That dirty food thief.

You kneel down in front of Frisk and look them in the eye. "Frisk. I know about your mother."

Frisk flinches back from you. "You - you do?" they squeak out.

You nod. "I know that it would be easy for you to want to see the world burn, sometimes, because of what she did to you, right?"

Frisk looks down. "Yes," they say quietly.

"What you are fighting to protect today. It's not just people like her. It's everybody. Toriel, Asgore, Sans - all of us. You can't let Chara control you. You have no choice but to beat them."

"But...I don't know how to do that."

"Try talking to them, maybe? Asriel was able to get Chara to back off in this universe, right? Chara can't be lost beyond reason. You just have to find what asriel could have said to Chara to bring their tiny bit of humanity back."

The kid doesn't say anything, so you open your arms a bit. "Come here, kiddo." Frisk grabs you into a hug, and you rub her back a bit.

"You're going to be okay, kiddo. I believe in you." And you mean it.

Sans appears in the doorway, and you nod at him before stepping back from Frisk.

"you ready, kiddo? There's only a minute left."

"Yeah."

"i'm rooting for you, kid. all of us are."

The three of you wait in silence for a minute. The clock changes to midnight.

Frisk takes a deep breath and opens her eyes.

"New file."

There's a bright crack of light, and then nothing.

xvii.

There's another flash of light, and then Frisk reappears, holding Asriel's body. The kid looks at the two of you blearily.

"I did it," Frisk says, then promptly falls fast asleep on the floor.

xviii.

Sans picks up Frisk and puts her gently on the couch while you grab a couple of blankets from your room. The two of you watch Frisk for a moment.

"Toriel isn't going to worry?" you ask.

"i told her that frisk would be staying over tonight. we're fine."

"We are. Frisk actually did it."

Sans releases a long breath. "yeah. the kid pulled through."

You turn slightly to look at Asriel's shell. "What should we do with, uh, that?" you ask.

"we can wait until frisk wakes up again. then we take them both over to tori's."

"Sure. You need blankets or anything for tonight? Or are you just going to teleport to your house for the night?"

Sans shakes his head. "i don't think i could sleep tonight, even if i wanted to."

"Same."

Sans sighs. "you got any cards?" You do, so the two of you spend the rest of the night teaching each other various card games. How the hell anyone can be so good at games that are one hundred percent luck, you'll never know.

xix.

The two of you are there when Frisk wakes up in the morning.

"heya, kid. congrats, you did it. you beat chara."

Frisk blinks, and suddenly their eyes are glowing a bright shade of red.

"Not exactly."

Sans rears back and suddenly his hands are tightening around Frisk's collar, glowing a bright shade of blue. "you - what did you do to frisk?!"

You grab your gun from under your coat. Frisk pushes Sans back and grins a creepy, distorted smile. Then, without any warning, the red glow disappears from Frisk's eyes. "Woah! Sans, Chara, stop it! It's me, I swear!"

Sans freezes. "you better explain what's going on, kiddo. right. now."

"I made a deal with Chara! Chara came here with me!"

"...and what exactly, did this deal entail?"

"Chara is part of my soul, now. It's the only way they could come back over to this reality with me, if our two souls...merged, as the other Sans put it. They - they aren't going to hurt anybody. They promised."

"and why would the other me help chara out, exactly?"

"Chara - this Chara - changed. They're better now."

"and why should I believe that?"

"Because -"

"i wasn't talking to you, frisk."

"He was talking to me, you idiot." Those red eyes are back again. They look wrong somehow, on Frisk's face.

Sans smiles, but his eyes are empty. "same question, then."

Chara-as-Frisk sighs. "Frisk convinced me. That not all people are bad. The power of friendship, all that jazz. I won't kill anybody, and in exchange...I get to live to see the surface."

"you've let frisk see the surface, before. multiple times. but then you always made frisk reset, right as we reached it."

"Because it was either that, or cease existing! Reaching the surface was the end of the line for me. It was as far as I could go. Until now."

"that sounds well and good, but you've forgotten one thing. you monster, you n, ' - "

"And you killed me hundreds of times, too, to stop me. So what? We're all equal by this point, don't you think?"

Sans lunges forward, and you grab him to hold him back. Goddamn the skeleton is strong, considering he doesn't have any muscles. "Whoa, Sans, calm down, you can't just kill Frisk - "

"Sans, stop, please!" It's Frisk again. "Don't you believe that even the worst person can change? This Chara is different. Our souls merged, we have all of each other's memories. I wouldn't hurt any of our friends. They won't either, now. Please, trust me just this once."

Sans sags a little bit. "this - this is some pretty major trust you're asking of me, kid."

"I know."

"if chara gets out of control, don't think for a minute that I wouldn't kill you to stop them."

"I know."

"i won't forgive you if you ever reset again."

"I know."

The silence in the room is nearly palpable. After a couple of long moments, Sans straightens up, the blue fading from his hands.

"well then, don't we have a flower to save?"

xx.

The procedure to put Asriel back into his body is surprisingly easy, all things considered. All it takes is for Frisk to place the flower on Asriel's shell, and Asriel is a living talking goat once again.

Apparently, that little adventure was all it took for Sans to consider your apartment his second home or something because suddenly he's there all the time. It's not like you're complaining - he always has a joke to make and can cook a mean quiche.

You write your boss a full report on everything you learned. Well - not everything - you leave out Frisk's ability to manipulate time from your report.

Frisk doesn't deserve to be used as a weapon, you think. Which is exactly Boss would want if he knew, you know. You're not naive.

Boss is happy enough with your report, and you breathe out a sigh of relief.

xxi.

Another two weeks pass.

You're looking through some of the chat boards when your email notification goes off. You click it.

Sans looks up from his spot on the couch where he had been watching a program featuring Mettaton when you don't say anything. "is it your boss again? what does he want, this time?"

"...He wants me to return back to headquarters. He thinks I've found the most that I've could, in the field."

Sans stills for a moment. "is there anything you could tell him to convince him you should stay?"

"Probably not," you say. "Unless…" you tap your fingers on your table for a few moments. "If I told him that I had...a reliable informant, from the monsters, he might change his mind. It wouldn't even have to be about your weaknesses, I don't think...but the small things, about your culture and traditions, things we still don't know about your kind...I think that would be enough for him to let me stay here."

Sans looks at you for a long moment. "well, what do you think?"

"What do you mean?"

"do you want to stay here, in freakville, or do you want to return to your home?"

It takes you a moment to understand his question, and then you realize that you must have stopped thinking of your previous house as your home sometime in the last couple of weeks.

Well. That makes your decision easy, you suppose.

"Stay," you say. "I want to stay here."

"well then, let me formally introduce myself, i suppose. sans the skeleton, monster culture specialist." He holds his hand out to you and you shake it.

Sans grins at you, and you smile tentatively back.