"King Asgore has lost his mind."

When I first heard that rumours, I thought it was a joke. Even as a young teen, I found it hard to believe that someone like Asgore, one of the greatest and kindest monsters in the underground, would do a sudden 180 and become cruel and malevolent after just a few shocking moments.

Depression I could buy yes, but not insanity. He just never struck me as the type.

I've dealt with depression and the feeling of massive loss in the past and so I understand what it's like. That chalked up with the amount of pressure that would come from being the ruler of an entire race would have resulted in even the most rational monsters to not being able to think straight, hence the mess we are in right now.

I believed that it was simply a phase that would pass in a few years, and sooner or later, Asgore would return as the king fluffybuns we all know and love and everything would go back to the way it was.

But now... I am not so sure anymore. After last weekend, I'm starting to change my mind. Now I'm starting to realise that these rumours may have merit to them. Now I'm starting to realize...that King Asgore may have indeed lost his mind.

But I've gotten ahead of myself so let's rewind a bit.

About 7 years ago, give or take, the kingdom got an unexpected surprise. Queen Toriel, who had been gone for like 60 years or so, suddenly returned to home to the capital. Even stranger, she was carrying a dead, human boy with multiple scorch marks on him. I was not exactly a baby bone when it happens, but I was still very little and I still remember being in the crowd of monster witnessing her come through the main gates with the dead human boy. I remember how she obviously tried to keep a strong face on, I have always had a keen eye on things, and so to me, her face was filled with anguish and regret.

Not much about the kings and queens reunion is given to the public, but however it went it couldn't have been jolly, because in less then a week, something happened that changed what everyone thought would be a happy moment into a massive tragedy. A few days after her arrival, news broke out that the queen had died. She had apparently hanged herself.

Everything got worse ever since. The king started becoming very quiet and distant to the point where he locked himself in the castle and hasn't come out in years. He stopped taking visitors until very recently, but even then, only a few have had the privilege of seeing him since the tragedy and all of them have claimed that Asgore has changed drastically, and not for the better supposedly.

So due to his uncharacteristic absence and refusal to communicate what was going on, for the next decade, the entire underground has, for lack of a better phrase, gone to shit. Just for a few examples, in some parts of the kingdom, food and supplies stopped coming, there were massive waves of depression, plenty of civilians went into paranoia thinking that the king had abandoned them, and so on. Unsurprisingly, since it was so unlike him, plenty of conspiracy theories sprung to life in order to explain Asgore's sudden change in behaviour. Some of them even involved my dad, who had somehow survived a massive freak lab accident just a few months before the queens return and the king's descent.

After a couple of years of this, millions of monsters eventually had enough and there came plenty of riots and general mayhem. When everyone realized it wasn't enough, some monsters decided to go an extra step, and thus a rebellion was formed lead by Gerson Boom, the hammer of justice, and soon afterwards, a civil war happened. It was the first war ever waged in the underground , which considering all the thousands of years we have been down here, is saying a lot.

On one side there was the aforementioned rebellion, while on the other side there were all the king's men and women, including the Royal Guard. Throughout the entire war the king never left his castle and so Undyne was essentially the closest thing to a figurehead on his side of the war.

To put it short, the war lasted a short while and ended with the rebellion being crushed in a large scale battle and the rebellion leader, Gerson, vanishing without a trace.

The kingdom and the Royal Guard were victorious, and Undyne was hyped up incredibly in the news and radio as being a massive hero like she always wanted, which is why during the award ceremony, everyone was shocked when she refused her medal and then, live on camera, retired from the Royal Guard in disgrace.

A year later, when she was asked in an interview about why she quit her esteemed job and abandoned her celebrity status so suddenly, she was quoted as saying: "Because fuck the king."

I have to admit that looking back, she is honestly my favourite part in all of this mess.

Afterwards, most of the Royal Guard members who didn't die in the war began following Undyne's route and after a few months, The Royal Guard became disorganized and eventually they called it quits and disbanded. I still remember when that news came on the telly. My bro, Papyrus, was utterly devastated. He didn't show it but I thought it was obvious. Throughout his entire childhood, he had wanted to grow up and become a Royal Guardsman and to hear that it might never come to fruition must have made him sadder than ever.

It's not like the rest of the Underground fared better. With no one to protect them, many monsters began to panic with even more thinking that the kingdom had abandoned them. There were protests in the streets, riots and general mayhem, while the king lazed and whined around in his castles, not seeming to give a shit that everything was burning around him. While a few monsters decided that "we didn't need the Royal Guard anyway and that we should all become our own protectors" or something like that, most didn't feel the same way. For years life down here got worse, even worse than before the rebellion. There were ideas about starting a second rebellion, but the risks were too great and yes, the Royal Guard was gone, but the kingdom still had a few warriors and mercenaries under on its side.

So in a nutshell, the Royal Guard was gone, the king hadn't been seen in years, poverty and depression were on an all-time high, and everyone was hopeless… for a while.

But then one day he appeared.

Mickey.

Nobody knows where he came from or who he was. The first time anyone had seen him, was when he just walked out of Asgore's castle and claimed to be his new champion. He was wearing a mask so most couldn't see his face.

In fact, in these past few years very few have had the privilege to see what this mysterious monster actually looks like, and those who have, claim that he looks unlike any monsters they have seen. It wasn't long after his arrival when whispers and rumours about this Mickey person began to spread throughout the Underground like a wildfire. I even heard stories that he has supposedly seen the surface, despite being very young. Sooner or later, everyone (or at least everyone who wasn't deaf or a hermit) had heard of "Mickey the Great" as they called him. Throughout the Capital, everyone wouldn't stop talking about this new saviour. Our hero they claimed. The angel of the prophecy, destined to bring us back to the surface. A legendary warrior that few could best, blah, blah, blah.

Obviously, my bro was one of his many fans. Like most, he had never really met him or even seen him, but he had heard so many stories of him that presented him as like the perfect idol. Eventually, Mickey managed to gather enough warriors and fame to form a new group, which was supposed to be a sort of successor group to the Royal Guard. The group was named "The Royal Hunt".

After all, it made sense that he would take over the mantle of Undyne. Why wouldn't he? He was a considered a legend, a true hero that all of monster kind should strive towards... or at least, that's how he was seen in the capital.

I didn't discover it until it was too late, but down here in Snowdin, and other towns that are very poor and unfortunate, the stories about Mickey were different. To them, the tales and myths from the Capital about the greatness of Mickey and the Royal Hunt were nothing but false propaganda. In fact, to most of the poor civilians who lived to get a glance of him, Mickey the Great is whispered by another title, a more fitting title in my opinion:

Mickey the Mad.

My bro learned the reason why all too well…