A/N: Hey guys! I know what you're thinking. An Author's Note at the beginning of the chapter? What blasphemy is this?! But there is a valid reason! I want to let you know that from this point onwards, how Frisk and Chara came into the OP world in this fic is a lot different than it was in the original. I read back through the original, and yeesh, did I not like what I saw. Like, really didn't like what I saw. I mean, the thing was a mess, so I commend you beautiful people for reading it. Honestly, this chapter has been written up for almost a month now, and I just haven't posted it because I was scared how people would respond. That said, I feel like I can do a lot more with this new storyline than I could with the old one. Well, you can get to your chapter now. Please tell me what you think. Was it great, terrible, I'd love to hear either way.
~Lizard-senpai
Frisk talking."
Frisk thinking.
"Chara talking."
Chara thinking.
Normal.
Words in all caps are in-game terms.
Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece or Undertale. They belong to Eiichiro Oda and Toby Fox, respectively.
2: Set Sail in a New World
It had been fifty stagnant years in the void, and no matter how mind-numbingly boring it was there, the girls had each other. Chara had slowly begun to accept the fact that Frisk didn't hate her- that the girl didn't have the capability of hating someone. It was still impossible to believe, and Chara had the ever-present apprehension that Frisk would turn on her. Still, ever so slowly, she had started to mend her soul, rehabilitating it from its LOVE induced loneliness with Frisk's gentle help and encouragement.
At the same time, Frisk accepted that Chara would never completely heal. She would always be wary of affection, always expecting Frisk to betray her just as the world continuously had. The pacifist became used to the other girl's snide comments and cynical wit and saw it for what it truly was: a method of defense. The girls grew to care for each other, though Chara could still see the fear in Frisk's eye when she awoke from the night terrors that plagued her more often than not. Chara knew she was the cause of them and made the habit of concealing herself from Frisk's sight when she woke up. Chara knew her presence would only send her little sister into a panic.
In the void, neither girl grew. They were aware of the passing time, of course, though only barely. They didn't need food or water either, though they did need sleep. It was as if the void had frozen time in their small yet endless area of the world and nowhere else.
This is the reason why it was jarring for both girls to wake up, feeling so hungry, it felt as if their stomachs were trying to eat themselves in order to gain back nutrients. The fact that they were no longer in the black nothingness of the void did nothing to ease their transition into a true plane of existence once again.
Frisk was the first to react, moaning a bit as she tried to stand up from her place on the grassy earth beneath her, only to be sent back to the ground by overwhelming vertigo. She whimpered, her hunger painful. Chara, the stronger of the two girls in both resolve and physical strength, stood up with strenuous effort, but didn't fall like her sister had. Stumbling over to the darker skinned girl, Chara helped Frisk to her feet before looking around at their surroundings. The moon hung overhead, shining pale light over them and a grassy field they had appeared in. Turning, she saw a few cows and windmills with a dirt path leading to a small town. She could make out the faint, orange-yellow lights from windows. They were in a farming village, from the looks of it.
"Where the actual f*ck are we?" Chara mused in the groggy voice of someone recently woken up, holding onto her sister's shoulder just a little tighter. Frisk looked around wildly, as the surroundings were incredibly new to her. She couldn't remember exactly how long she'd been in the void (and before that, the Underground) but it had been a while.
"I-I have no idea," Frisk murmured dizzily, taking her time in adjusting to the newness of it all. Chara nodded once while rolling her eyes, sarcasm back in her movements.
"It was a rhetorical question, Frisk."
When she felt that Frisk was stable enough to move, she dragged her in the opposite direction of the village, causing Frisk to yelp in surprise. The younger girl pouted, sending a close-eyed glare her sister's way.
"C'mon, let's go find a place for you to wait while I check it out." Yeah, Chara was definitely back in her usual nature.
Frisk had learned not to try and protest to this; Chara was stubborn and had a tendency to become physical when she couldn't properly voice her emotions. She knew that Chara was doing it for her sake, and because she could handle practically anything that came at her while the younger girl couldn't. But still, Frisk always worried about Chara and her actions.
"Check what out, exactly? How about we at least wait until morning?" Just then, as if reacting violently to her words, the younger girl's stomach growled like an angry dog. Chara gave her a dubious look. Frisk blushed with embarrassment, and quickly dropped all protests she had. The red-eyed, older girl searched until she saw a shed not too far off. Chara led her sister there and caught her when she fell while trying to sit down.
"Are you okay?" Chara asked, crouching down and eyeing her little sister with concern. Frisk gave a sweet smile and nodded. With a sigh, Chara said, "I'll be back soon. I need to get us some money and see if there's a safe place to buy food."
Frisk made a face, but her stomach rumbled painfully and she consented despite knowing that the older girl was most likely about to rob someone. The nodded and her sister left for the small village.
-:-
Frisk was awoken by Chara shaking her and urging her to wake up. Her older sister had a distant, flickering look about her, as if only Chara's body was there with nothing behind her red eyes. Frisk knew better than to comment; her sister wouldn't hear her anyway.
"C'mon, I got us food money. The only place I found open is a bar, so be careful."
Frisk nodded, mumbling a soft affirmative. Chara dragged/carried the pacifist, her shoulder under Frisk's arms and an arm wrapping around her torso as they set off. On their way, they clung to the shadows provided by an absurdly bright moon. Chara kept flitting her gaze, paranoia in her every action. Frisk, meanwhile, was valiantly fighting off the effects of exhaustion and was then putting all of her effort in putting one foot in front of the other. She barely stumbled, but Chara mandated that they stop and rest every time they did, making their journey far longer than it had any right to be.
To Frisk's relief, for Chara's mother-henning was getting on the younger girl's nerves, they made it to a simple wooden building. The green sign above the door, an eerie blue tint cast on it from moonlight, read "Party's Bar" in all caps. Chara stood pensively before the place, looking between the warm light being emitted from the entrance to her sister before making her decision.
They crossed the threshold and were met with the sight of an exceptionally rowdy bunch. Chara grimaced, not liking crowds no matter the circumstances, but pushed through as she supported Frisk to a bar stool.
After a moment, they were met with the sight of a smiling young woman, hair a dark green colour and tied back with a bandana. For a moment, her smile faltered as she took in the girls' appearance. Again, the red-eyed girl grimaced, finding sympathy and pity in the woman's gaze that uncomfortably reminded her of Toriel. She ignored the (understandably) concerned gaze the woman gave the two of them.
"Two of you special, please," the red-eyed girl grumbled, then turning and gently leading Frisk to rest her head on her shoulder. The woman nodded, but she bit her lip and her eyebrows furrowed.
"Of course, honey. Um, are you girls alright?" the kind woman asked, but her act of goodwill was met with a glare so icy it could have frozen a pot of boiling water. The glare was, predictably, administered by Chara. The woman didn't seem too fazed by it. If anything, her concerned look doubled its intensity, to Chara's dismay. Also to Chara's dismay, her action was noticed by her younger sister and punished with an elbow to the ribs.
"Ow, Frisk," Chara hissed quietly with a look that said 'what did I do?' Frisk didn't bother to respond to her sibling's silent question, turning an apologetic smile on the woman.
"We're fine ma'am, thank you." The woman nodded, unconvinced, went to a door and disappeared into a kitchen. When she was gone, Chara turned to her sister and leaned in close.
"Frisk, you can not trust anyone, do you understand me?" she whispered, a fierceness burning in her eyes. Frisk just fixed her with an innocent face of confusion, her ever closed eyes looking at Chara in askance.
"Listen, I know you like to believe in the good in everyone, but until I say it's okay, treat everyone like they're going to kill you. I'm not sure if I'll be able to protect you from anyone here. Especially those guys over there."
"You're being paranoid," Frisk huffed, while Chara raised her eyes to the sky as if asking for divine assistance. The older sister opened her mouth to try and get her point across, but before she could begin again, the woman had come back with two overflowing plates of food. Chara's suspicion shot through the ceiling, though Frisk looked ecstatic and thanked the woman profusely as she began to dig in. the woman chuckled, once again reminding Chara of her mother.
Chara began to poke at the food she found on her plate as if it was a hazardous chemical and not the second biggest steak she had ever seen. Soon, however, her stomach prompted her with an embarrassingly loud growl, and she began to eat with much reluctance. The woman was unlikely to poison them, she reasoned; if she wanted them dead, she could've just not given them food and let them starve.
She ate about half of her food, then looked over at Frisk, who was staring at the now empty plate with a forlorn face. Sighing, the red-eyed girl dumped the rest of her food on her sister's plate. Frisk brightened, gave her a quick side-hug, and began to plow through the portion Chara had given her.
Rolling her eyes in an annoyed gesture that was belied by the soft smile on her lips, she began to look around the room full of noisy men. Three, in particular, caught her eye and put her on edge.
One was a tall man smoking a cigarette and was eerily calm in comparison to his fellows. The second, and she knew how wrong she was for thinking this but thought it nonetheless, was an enormously fat, grinning man who garnered her dislike simply by being reminiscent of a certain comedic skeleton from their past. The last one, however, was the one that truly made alarm bells ring in her head, and that was a loud, grinning man with hair the most shocking shade of red she had ever seen on a human. On the outside, he seemed inconspicuous enough, but she could feel the power coming off of him in waves, and she could catch the curious glances he shot towards her and her sister out of his peripheral.
Her paranoid mind began to send her spiraling fast down the rabbit hole of dark questions. Why was he looking at them? Why did he seem so strong, even though he was acting like an idiot? She had learned from her encounters with Sans that it was often the types that laughed things off who were the most dangerous. And dear god, why did he keep looking at them?
"Come on Frisk, let's go," she grumbled, placing money on the counter and trying to drag the pacifist away. Frisk, confused, fought her grip just in time for the barmaid to go up to them, all smiles, and push the money back to them.
"This meal is on the house, girls," she said, and now Chara was going into a full panic because surely these people wanted something out of them and Chara couldn't discern what for the life of her. So, she nodded, grabbed back the cash, and pulled her sister out of the bar, ignoring the girl's question and the woman's words to come back soon. Chara kept her head down and kept marching and dragging her sister until they were back where they started at the base of a tree.
When they stopped, Frisk demanded angrily, "Okay, are you going to explain what that was back there?"
Chara smiled, a bit bitterly, and shook her head. The older girl sank against the trunk of the tree, looking at her sister with a gaze that dared her to dig deeper. Frisk sighed, but did not, in fact, demand an explanation. Instead, she sat down beside her sister with a mumbled 'whatever' before curling into Chara's side.
They sat like this for a while, and Chara now reflected on how crazy she had been before. Honestly, her paranoia was out of control. They hadn't been in any danger, and the barmaid had seemed kind. She just couldn't be normal, could she? She just had to go and make things more difficult for Frisk and-
"Chara, I get why you did that earlier. I won't trust everyone, I promise, but you have to not assume the whole world's out to get you."
"Yeah, I know Frisk."
There was another beat of silence.
"Chara?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad we have a chance to be sisters here."
…
"Yeah, me too Frisk."
