A/N: Howdy, all! In case I was too vague with the summary, Golden Alteration is my interpretation of a combination of the Inverted Fate and Storyshift AUs. Before you click away, however, this is not just going to be a shallow retelling of either AU, nor shall any characters swap personalities. I'm going to do my best to be original with this and not just plagiarize what's come before, so don't misinterpret it as that. You don't need to be familiar with either AU to understand this one, since it'll be fairly different from both of them.

Since using Frisk as the main character won't really work for what I'm envisioning, I'm going to use an OC instead. However, this isn't my first fanfic (it's actually somewhere in the twenties), and I promise you that I will do everything in my power short of satanic rituals to ensure that he is not a Gary-Stu. Additionally, Frisk will still appear in this story in some capacity.

Finally, this story takes place in a universe where Undertale, the game, exists and was created by Toby Fox. However, don't take that to mean that it exists in our timeline.

Apologies for the excessively long author's note.

Thirty days.

Thirty days since it happened.

Twenty days since it began.

Eight days since they gave up.

Seven days since Dad managed to get a job transfer overseas.

Six days since we packed our meager belongings after getting rid of what didn't fit and got on a plane to travel across the Atlantic.

Five days since we landed in the United States outside of Richmond, drove north to our new house, and unpacked again.

And despite everything that had happened, I never wanted things to be any different.

Not even the event.

I surprise myself with how cold I am sometimes.

It was day five of living in America, and I hadn't really done anything worthwhile with my time. Currently, I was browsing Tumblr and generally being a huge prick to everyone. Should I have been? No. But was I doing it anyway? Yes.

Only I could be this apathetic in a time like this.

My parents had suggested a few times that I go out, wander the neighborhood, try to make new friends before school started, but I ignored them and eventually they gave up. I've heard that Americans in this part of the country tend to be uncivilized and intolerant, so it's not like I'd want to befriend them anyway.

I accidentally clicked out of my browser, and made an indeterminate annoyed noise. My background, a fanart I'd made but never bothered to post anywhere of the eleven main characters of Undertale, seemed to glare back at me, judging me for my sins, and with a quiet snarl I swiped the lid of the laptop lid down. "Shut up," I told the silver plastic.

Shoving my door to the side and stomping down the stairs, I wondered, not for the first time, when I was going to do anything worthwhile with my life. Realistically, I probably could have written a novel or coded an original video game by now. Their quality might be debatable, but the point is that I could have, and yet what did I do? Boondoggle all day on the internet, that's what I bloody well did.

I'm a sad, sad little man, and I'm well aware of it.

If I even count as a man, which is debatable considering my height.

My parents were both sitting on the couch watching the telly, and they ignored me as I passed by. They're really that invested in whatever they're watching? I thought with no small disgust, flinching slightly at the sound of canned laughter as I left the room. Say what you would about my parents' integrity on other matters, but they took their sitcoms very seriously.

I closed the back door quietly behind me and walked out into the yard. This was probably the first time I'd been outside since we arrived in America, and I found myself pleasantly surprised by the size of the garden. Never could have got something this big back in Britain.

Past the chain-link fence, the Appalachians (or the Alleghenies, I couldn't remember which) loomed in the distance. I had been tempted to climb one of the mountains when we first arrived, just in case one of them was Mount Ebbot, but they were at least a thirty-minute walk away and I wasn't going to go that far considering what an unlikely dream that was.

But, damn. If I could climb Mount Ebbot, fall into it, meet all the monsters and bring them to the surface, all my problems would be solved. I speculated wistfully.

And that's when the universe decided to prove me wrong.

As I walked closer to the fence for a better look at the mountains, a distant, low rumbling filled the air. I started to scream "Earthquake!" before I remembered that earthquakes were a thing that happened in California, not Virginia, at least according to American movies.

Then I saw it in the distance, and my eyes widened in disbelief.

In front of the rest of the mountains, a new one was rising, chipping away at the area around it as it lifted from the ground. And as it came to a halt, I distinctly recognized its silhouette as that of Mount Ebbot.

Normally, I would have questioned how that enormous mountain leapt up from the ground and whether I should probably stay away from it just in case it wasn't actually Mount Ebbot, but at the time the only thing I was thinking was Hell yeah! I'm gonna hop down there and be friends with skeletons and have a goat mom! I even started to pull myself over the fence before the rational side of my mind took over.

And it said Stop right there. You're not going down there without supplies, you little bugger.

But, rational side... whined the rest of my mind.

No buts. You go inside and you pack a bag to survive down there. Get your laptop, its charger, your phone and its charger, some food, and grab a knife or something just in case this is actually the Mount Ebbot of one of those fell AUs. Also, leave a note saying that you went out to explore the town to stop your parents calling the American police on you, and be bloody quick about it, you can't be the only one to have noticed this giant mountain just magically spring out of the earth. And while you're doing all that, consider that Mount Ebbot popped up while you were going into another bout of wishful thinking about Undertale, and try to come up with an answer as to why this happened that isn't "my life is actually just an edgy ten-year-old's self-insert fanfiction."

Yes, rational side, muttered the rest of my mind, and it went off to sulk in the corner.

I dashed back up into my room and snatched up my backpack, upending it onto the floor. I ripped my laptop charger from the wall socket and stuffed it into the bag next to my phone charger and set my laptop more gently into the bag. I stuffed my phone in my pocket and grabbed a spare torch just in case. Since pencil lead would probably break on the fall, I grabbed a few ballpoint pens and a blank notebook which was supposed to have been for school and added those to the bag.

After a moment of deliberation, I pulled my world map off the wall and carefully rolled it up, placing it into its protective tube and setting that into my backpack. Maybe one of the monsters would be curious about what the surface looked like.

Finally, I found a piece of scratch paper and penned a quick note, which I left on the desk:

Went out to look around town finally, since being unproductive was getting boring. I should be back around 5.

- Jason

Zipping the backpack and swinging it onto my shoulder, I crept down the stairs, ensuring to stay quiet this time. Once I was past the telly, I allowed myself to be a little louder and opened the pantry door. Being paranoid shoppers, Mum and Dad had stocked up on food after we arrived, so they shouldn't notice any missing food. I moved quickly, snatching mainly granola and candy bars, adding a water bottle after a moment of consideration.

Finally, I went to the knife block and reached out, but my hand wavered hesitantly over the knives. I shouldn't need these...

Regardless, after a moment of internal debate, I snatched a knife and thrust it into the bottom of the front pocket on my backpack, an unpleasant feeling worming its way through my stomach.

As I had predicted prior, the mountains were about half an hour away. Ebbot, however, in its new position, jutted out from the side into the neighborhood and as a result was only three minutes away. Regardless, thanks to being relatively out of shape I was out of breath upon arrival.

"This better be worth it." I thought to myself as I started up the side of the mountain, the grass and moss of the newly birthed Ebbot falling away beneath my feet and receding into the distance.

The height of Mount Ebbot was deceiving, and as a result I was nearly to the top in under a minute. At the peak of the mountain, it sloped at a quite steep angle, with one part of the slope becoming Ebbot's peak and the other forming an irregular circle.

Wiping sweat from my brow, I couldn't help but laugh. At last! What I had dreamed of for so long was right before me!

"And so," I mumbled to myself as I stepped to the edge of the hole with no small trepidation, "without any further ado..."

And that's when my thought was interrupted by a loud, rhythmic sound above my head, and I tilted my head upwards to see a black helicopter circling above the mountain.

"A helicopter." I snarled. "A damn news helicopter. Why am I not bloody well surprised? These Americans are crazy."

Well, I might as well give it a show, considering that they'd probably noticed me by now. With a demented grin, I flipped off the helicopter before turning and stepping into the hole, which in hindsight was a very bad idea.