So, in light of Toby Fox's resent SURVEY, I figured it might be a good time to give a little teaser of what is to come with my stories.

Time Bomb

Asriel gazed over the top of the city from the roof of a skyscraper and watched the sun set as the storm clouds gathered on the horizon. Occasional flickers of lightning drew his attention before it was brought back to the glowing red light in the distance. He reached up, wrapped his hands around the amulet that hung from his neck, and took a moment to think about the past. The wind picked up, whipping at his fur and blowing his ears back as the sky continued to darken.

Could it really already have been three years?

To him, it felt much longer, though not for the reasons he was used to. It was still surreal to him how distant the past felt when he wasn't reliving it, but he had put those demons behind him long ago. And as he'd learned about life, new ones came and took their place.

No one would have been able to tell it had only been three years by looking at him either. Time had caught up to his body as well, and he looked like an athletic young adult, much closer to his actual age had he lived his life in a single stretch like most others. Cracks of energy ran down his skin, darker than the clouds on the horizon. That hadn't changed. He wondered if it ever would, and if he even wanted them to. He had also learned that, sometimes, forgetting was more painful than remembering.

The sun finally vanished behind cloud and mountain, and the light of the city beneath him took over for it. All of the buildings in the city were new. Having embraced magic, humans had been able to do all sorts of things with it, good and bad. He tried to focus on the good; the latter would be dealt with in time, he told himself. Change was slow, he knew that, but now that he only had one shot, he would always doubt if he was doing anything right.

A siren coming from below broke Asriel from his reverie. He looked down over the edge of the building and hunted for its source.

There, two blocks to his left, a squad of cop cars was chasing something. That something was a human, he saw. A black dot raced ahead of the flashing lights, faster than any normal human could run. A magic user then, and so, his problem.

"Good," Asriel said to himself. "The night was getting boring anyway." He tucked the amulet back under his shirt and took a few steps back from the ledge. "Let's see how this goes."

Putting all his strength into his legs, Asriel sprinted back to the ledge and lept off of the building. It was at least a sixty story drop, and so he watched the approaching chase scene as he fell.

The human was still beating out the cops by a good distance. They were less than a block from him now, and the cops were getting stalled by cross traffic at an intersection. As he neared the ground, Asriel spun himself so he was feet first.

He landed with a crash, asphalt shattering beneath him and rocketing into the air, forming a small crater around him. The monster didn't feel a thing.

As the earth settled, Asriel turned to look at the human. He had landed just behind him (he was going for in front of him) but his entrance was enough to make the human pause.

"What's the hurry?" Asriel asked him. "Trying to beat the rain?"

The human's expression turned from shock to fear as they registered who it was standing before them. Without answering, they lept away, flying a good twenty feet into the air towards the side of a building, where they kicked off of a window and continued to fly.

"So it's gonna be like that, huh?" Asriel rolled his neck before vaulting after them.

He almost caught up to the human again in a single leap, landing on the side of another building just as the human kicked off again.

Asriel followed suit, his own leap shattering glass and bending metal in his wake. He didn't spare the damage a thought, for the spells tied into the building soon activated and repaired the damage done to them, and the chase continued with the city nearly blind to it.

Asriel came close a few more times, but the human just managed to slip his grasp. It didn't help that they were wearing a cloak like they were straight out of a fantasy game, making it hard to tell where to actually grab them.

They were now almost to the tops of the buildings again. Fearing any escalation, Asriel switched tactics. He readied his spell and thrust his hand towards the human. Red lines stretched out from his fingertips to wrap themselves around the human. As they did, they vanished, and the human continued to flee unhindered. That is, until Asriel waved his hand upward and the human suddenly went flying in that direction instead.

With one more seismic leap off, Asriel followed them up.

He'd tossed the human onto a roof where they rolled and came back to their feet, facing Asriel as he landed as well. As they rose, the cloak fell away from the human's shoulders, and Asriel could see that it was a man. He was shorter than the monster by a head and looked no older than twenty.

"Not that this isn't fun," Asriel began, "but I grew out of playing leapfrog a long time ago."

The man said nothing. He merely flung out his arm and a gust of wind threatened to knock Asriel over. An air user then; that explained all the jumping. Asriel cut through the magic with his own, severing the spell and disintegrating it as it touched him.

He called it his own magic, but he rarely used any magic that was truly his anymore.

"Come on, can't we talk?" Asriel tried. "I'm sure whatever you did is not as bad as four cop cars chasing you makes it look. People like to overreact in this city."

The man either wasn't listening or didn't care. He swung his arm again and another gust hit, this time sharper. A large gouge cut into Asriel's forearm before he could cancel it out. The cut leaked light for a moment before it closed, healing instantly. He lowered his arm.

"Fine, we'll talk after you've cooled off a bit then."

Asriel was before the man in a flash. His fist connected with his gut, doubling him over. His other hand came down to grab him by the back of his shirt and pull him up again. "Still gonna try it?"

The man's answer was to strike for Asriel's face, but the movement was slow and the monster leaned out of the way before punching him into the ground. He didn't get up again.

"Why do they try?" the monster asked, looking to the sky. "Every time they try and take a swing at me. Should I let them? Will that make them more amiable?"

Asriel picked up the man so he was sitting on his knees and pulled a zip tie out of his pocket. He cuffed the man's hands behind his back and let him slump back over again.

"It's better than guns, I guess. Those fuckers sting no matter what I do."

He noticed the ball of fire hurling towards him a moment too late. Asriel braced himself for the hit, but it never came; he didn't even feel the heat of it. He looked up to see a wall of shimmering light surrounding him that fell away as the last trickles of flame faded around it.

"To answer your question, no," a voice said behind him. Asriel turned to find Ryan standing on the building's edge, his hand raised after the spell he had just cast. His red eyes glowed in the night, and his blonde hair was longer than he normally liked it to be, almost down to his eyes. Had he not gotten it cut once in the four months since Asriel had seen him? He could forget himself like that sometimes.

"I don't think you should take a hit," he finished, stepping up to join him.

"What, is that solely your job then?" Asriel shot back.

"I would prefer it that way." He smiled, and Asriel smiled back. "Our job isn't done here yet it would seem."

He said this just before a dozen other figures joined them on the roof. They all wore the same cloaks that the first had, and several already had spells or weapons at the ready. Instantly, Ryan and Asriel were back to back.

"Miss me at all?" Ryan asked.

"No," Asriel said back. "And if you think that, I sense you may be projecting a little." He turned his attention back to their crowd. "Do they really think they have a chance?"

"I don't think it's confidence that drives them," Ryan stated.

"Then what is?"

"Fear, of us and of change; just like everyone else."

"Then we should fix that."

"My thoughts exactly."

Asriel jumped into the crowd and Ryan readied a spell. The monster fell on two of them at once. Ryan put up a shield to prevent the others from interfering without even looking behind him; he knew his brother's tactics. The rest quickly jumped on him.

Ryan dodged fire then ice then parried a sword with his own, summoned from the ether. Another swung at him with a fist made of stone. Ryan batted it aside then swept their feet out from under them. As they hit the ground, he stabbed his sword through the folds of their cloak to keep them pinned.

He was realizing by that point that whoever this group was they weren't very coordinated, and they were even less prepared to fight them. Both should be taken advantage of.

"Az!" Ryan shouted.

"On it!" the monster called back.

Asriel finished the two he had focused by bashing their heads together. He knew what his brother wanted without a word, and he was more than happy to give it: a distraction.

The monster was in the midst of the others before they could even blink, looking like he had materialized out of smoke. He did not wait for them to attack him, swinging at the closest one immediately and knocking them out. A second charged him that he grabbed by the throat and lifted into the air. The man looked down at him fearfully. "What?" Asriel said. "Were you expecting a hug?"

He felt a pain in his side and looked down to see a third one had tried to run him through with a blade. The human looked up with a measure of satisfaction that turned to shock as Asriel smiled back down at them. He took the blade in his free hand and snapped it in half. Pulling out the part that had stuck him, wound sealing as he did, he threw it at the feet of another charging at him. It caught their cloak and caused them to trip.

Ryan, standing behind his brother, was almost finished readying his spell. His magic had only gotten stronger over the years, but some things still took him some time.

"Now!" he shouted when it was done.

Asriel dropped the human he held and stomped his foot into the ground, sending out a tremor that rippled through the concrete roof like a wave and knocking the remaining enemies into the air. His destruction magic cracked the concrete in some places and rendered it into a fine powder in others.

Ryan took up the debris with his own magic before the building's spells could kick in. He swirled it up and shot it out, encasing the other humans as they fell. The roof reformed a moment later with small pockets missing here and there; the group members now all cocooned on the ground. Some of them still wiggled a little, but most had already succumbed to unconsciousness.

"Fucking hell," Asriel said, dropping his guard. "These guys really wanted it, huh?"

"Almost a little too much," Ryan agreed.

"You noticed too then."

His brother nodded then walked to the edge of the roof where he could see cop cars and more gathering in the street below. "Well lets round them up before they run out of oxygen," he said. "Still got cuffs on you?"

"Of course," Asriel told him. "You never know when a lunatic is gonna jump you these days."

"If I saw right, you jumped him."

The monster grinned. "My point exactly."

.

Fifteen minutes later, they were on the street handing over the last of the group to the local authorities. Asriel watched the process from a few steps back, not interfering. The cops were not all too happy he had done their job for them; they never were.

Ryan was over talking to their chief, asking if he could get certain information out of them while they were being interrogated. This whole mess didn't sit well with either of them. They weren't merely criminals on the run like Asriel originally thought, this was something more.

As the last of the group was being shoveled into the back of a van, Asriel noticed the first one he had chased, the one missing their cloak, was putting up an extra struggle. As he did, something caught the monster's eyes.

"Hold up a second," Asriel said to the officer as he approached. The officer looked at him like he didn't have to listen then listened anyway. Asriel grabbed the group member's shirt. There was a large splotch of white on its side, powdery, like chalk.

Or dust.

"What did you do?" Asriel demanded.

The man simply grinned back at him, staring straight into his eyes. Asriel grabbed him again. "What did you do!?" he roared.

"Your kind will never be welcome here," he said, finding his voice at last. "One day you'll realize that and go crawling back to that cave where you belong."

The officer attempted to pull Asriel away from the man and he let him go. As he was pushed into the van with the others he turned his head back and said, "You should have stayed in that game, freak!"

Asriel clenched his fist. He needed to know what happened, but the man wasn't going to tell him. There was one other way, though.

Squeezing his eyes shut and opening them again, he let himself see the magic around him. It was like world was suddenly superimposed by lines and weaves of color shooting out in all directions, connecting everything together and to things he could not fully see; threads disappearing into nothingness. It was getting harder and harder to use that power as magic became more accepted on the surface, and it was always more complicated than the magic he was used to. It was like humans refused to do things the easy way.

It did not take him long, though, to find the trail that was left from the traces of the man's magic as he first fled, and Asriel chased after it. He ran as fast as he could, jumping over cars and busses and eventually turning his body into smoke so he could move unhindered.

He traced the threads of magic back to an alley where he coalesced at its mouth.

Asriel entered the dark space hesitantly, fearing the worst, but it was not deep and he quickly found what he was hoping would not be there: a man, dead, blood pooling at his side and clutching at a pile of dust.

Asriel's jaw clenched as he felt tears running down his face.

He was so sick of this. Three years, and nothing had changed. He let his anger fill him, not anger at the man, or the group, but anger at himself. He was still too weak to save everyone. The violence did not stop no matter how hard he tried. He couldn't take it anymore.

Something had to change.

Asriel turned back to the street. Ryan's hand was on his shoulder before he could even take a full step. He said nothing. He merely gazed into the monster's eyes and shook his head.

Asriel's anger melted in his brother's gaze and he broke down. Sobs wracked his body and he fell into Ryan who wrapped his arms around the monster.

The sky finally broke. Rain mixed with the sound of Asriel's wails, and with his tears as they fell to ground.

Inspired by:

Time Bomb, by Feint