Author's note: Please enjoy this next chapter. Please leave a review. Please don't look behind you until that breathing noise goes away.

Please don't flame me for that last one.


Frisk pushed her school lunch around on the tray with her fork, keeping her eyes down. (It was rumored that the school lunches were comprised of food, but everyone knew that to be the stuff of fantasies.) Looking at the questionable material in front of her served as a shield from the fact that, yet again, no one wanted to sit next to her. Until the school decided that she was able to join classes of students her same age, she stayed with the younger monsters who knew nothing of life on the surface. They ate together, sat together, and got in trouble together. But as the monsters remained in the classes for younger students, both her class and lunch schedules changed. One day, she noticed that there was a larger crowd during lunch than before. Her hopes of someone being forced to sit with her were dashed as she saw students managing to balance their trays on one hand while eating, effectively upholding their distance at any cost. That's when she began her hobby of examining the school lunch. That's also when she began to wonder if Papyrus could start working for the cafeteria. Toriel had told her that after eating one of his spaghetti meals, she didn't vomit even once.

"Why doesn't that stupid monster-lover just leave," she heard a student ask a little too loudly.

"Who knows? I heard she's so stupid that she was kicked out of the monsters' class," a second voice guffawed.

"She was put in our class, stupid," the first girl yelled, followed by a yelp of pain from the second girl.

Frisk tried to see if looking at her lunch could block out noises as it did her view, but to no avail.


"Open your history books to chapter two," Toriel sighed, "And Spoopy, please stand up and read the title." She didn't mind occasionally being the substitute teacher if one of her colleagues fell ill, but the beginning of the semester meant starting the textbooks from the beginning. And somewhere near the beginning of the humans' history books was usually-

"'The War with Monsters: How Good Conquered Evil'," the student read. He stopped and looked at Toriel. "Is that true?"

"What do you mean, idiot," another student asked. "Of course it happened!"

"No, I," Spoopy flustered, trying to find his footing after that verbal blow. "I mean," he explained in a quieter voice, "were they all evil? The monsters."

Toriel smiled at the student who was so busy wrestling with that question that he seemed to have forgotten the concept of sitting down.

"Is every human evil," she asked. He ventured a glance upwards and shook his head. Directing her attention to the rest of the class, she asked, "Has there ever been a single human who was evil, or able to do evil things? At least one or two?" Some students nodded hesitantly. "If we can agree that one or two evil humans doesn't mean every human is evil, what if the same is true with monsters? That one or two evil monsters don't mean that every monster is evil?" In the silence, she motioned to the heckling student from before. "You're right. The war did happen. And we need to remember the past, whether or not it's easy. But let's also remember that there were different humans and monsters then, just like there are different humans and monsters today, okay? Now, Toby, please read the first paragraph."


"Okay, keep running! Keep running," the gym coach called out. Frisk preferred long walks, but her frequent sparring matches with Undyne helped her to summon the energy to keep pace with her classmates on the running track behind the school. After a few overzealous attempts, she learned how to leave enough energy to walk back inside after gym class.

"Looks like Monster Breath is catching up," a student panted as Frisk closed the gap. This was probably one of the students she overheard at lunch.

"Yeah, 'cause she kisses them all the time," said another student with a strange panting laugh that made Frisk worry for both the student's physical and mental state.

"Thanks for spelling out the obvious, idiot," the first one barked, trying to swing her arms in the path of the second student. Yes, these were definitely the two from that afternoon.

"You mean 'kill,'" Frisk said. She wasn't sure why she thought it, or how those three words found their way so easily out of her, but they did. From somewhere inside that she didn't know or wanted to admit existed, they did. The shock caused the two students to stumble, resulting in a three-student pile-up which the others easily steered around.

"What," the first girl whispered harshly, pulling up her friend.

"She doesn't mean it," the other said.

"No," the first girl said, staring at Frisk with a strange mix of fear and excitement, "I think she did."

"She did," a voice confirmed. The second girl looked around to see who it was, but could only see a nearby patch of wildflowers, with a large one moving against the breeze.