Pilot HP: 275,000

*Isn't leaving until he sees Chara.

*Convince him otherwise.

The agent clutched his head as a familiar human village whirled into view, memory projected by his opponent's telepathic skill.

I nearly lost Chara once. She accidentally ate some buttercups that grew around the Underground and became really sick. We tried to do everything to cure her, but…the blisters…the blood…the tears…it was just too much. Chara knew it in the back of her mind; she told me to absorb her SOUL to make sure it wouldn't shatter if her body couldn't hold on. Then, 'we' went to find a human doctor and have them cure Chara's body. She would be okay, I would put her SOUL back, it would be like nothing ever happened, and everything could go back to normal. I carried her to the village gate and started talking to the humans there.

"Could any of you please help my friend? She's really sick and I don't know what to do."

"Jumping Jesus on a Pogo Stick, it's a talking goat! And what happened to her?"

"A doctor! Please, she needs to see a doctor!"

The gatekeeper was afraid of letting a monster into the village, but I talked them into lowering their weapons and letting me in. I walked around for a while, but Chara was getting really heavy and the humans kept giving me weird looks and kept whispering to each other.

I was just about ready to put down Chara's body on a pretty patch of flowers and keep looking for a doctor. I thought the humans would respect their own child enough to overlook me being a monster.

They didn't. In the corner of my eye, I saw a glint of metal as one of the guards reached for something.

My ears exploded. I felt a sharp pain in the back of my leg, and when I turned around, the guard had a strange smoking weapon aimed at my head. I tried to run, but…my knee…everything around it felt like it was on fire. My head was spinning in circles; my arms didn't know whether to rub at my leg until the burning went away or cover my ears until the ringing stopped. Even though my teeth were clenched, I tried to yell out for help as loud as I could.

The other humans came…they…hit me a lot. I heard my SOUL beginning to crack. I clung to Chara's body as hard as I could. I had to hold on...I have to...remember…for Chara's sake…

"Chara...anyone...please..."

"Hey! Azzy! It's me!"

"Chara? But how..."

"No time for that. You have to use your magic on them or they'll kill both of us!"

"But...I...I don't...what if I hurt them?"

"Can't you feel what they're doing to you? You don't have a choice here; fireball them!"

"I...I can't...Why is this happening to us? I just want to go home!"

"I don't want to die, Chara! Please, help me!"

The burning stopped, but it got cold…really cold…I could hardly see or hear and I just felt so tired, like I hadn't slept in years. Maybe it was all just a bad dream, and if I just closed my eyes, we'd both wake up in our beds…

Despite the natural coloration of the prince's hide, it was obvious that the blood had drained away from his face. His breathing was as erratic and labored as if he'd flown the light-minutes here by flapping his arms; still, he had survived the worst of the trauma and it was a price he would gladly pay to keep Chara safe.

But I woke up, my leg bandaged, Chara's body still beside me, in Dad's throne room. Dad told me that the whole thing was a trap all along, some monsters risked their lives to save me and Chara, and that those humans in the village betrayed my trust. Carrying us to our room and gently nuzzling my forehead, he told me it was an honest-to-goodness miracle we survived. After a few days, my leg had healed enough to walk again, and I went to go check on Chara in her bed.

"Chara? Are you awake?"

She stirred from her sleep and responded with a groggy "...what?"

"I'm really, really sorry I couldn't fight back, okay? I could have gotten both of us killed and I just...something really terrible could have happened and it's all my fault..."

"I'm not mad, Azzy...if anything, I should be apologizing. It was a dumb plan from the beginning. I shouldn't have trusted those humans to not hurt you and I should have never told you to risk your life up there for me. You're my little baby bro, and I don't want to see anything like that happen to you again."

Chara pushed herself up from the soft pillow and gave me a hug.

"Now let me go back to sleep, okay? I'm tired..."

Seeing us like this was enough to make Dad declare a new war. Nobody could really do anything while we were still trapped underground, but eventually we learned about the first war that put us down here to begin with. It upset us so much to hear about all those monsters who gave their lives to hold off the humans.

I don't know if maybe we would have been better off knowing less history rather than more. Sometimes Chara would have terrible nightmares of the war—bad men storming into our house and taking Mom and Dad away, or maybe one of us getting badly hurt and the other unable to do anything. The worst left her crying in the darkness, and sometimes I would be the one who needed a few minutes in Chara's arms. They got less frequent after the first few weeks, but Chara changed after that. Whenever she talked about other humans in general, she had fewer and fewer nice things to say.

I still don't know if Chara truly started to hate humanity, but I understood how much of the world we couldn't enjoy underground. I dreamed that one day, I could play in the grass with Chara. I wanted to taste the fresh water from the stream that ran down the mountain. Most of all, I wanted to see the stars of a beautiful night sky. I read some books that washed up in the Dump saying how amazing they were, and all we had underground was a sparkly cave, which could never make up for it in a million years. But then the worst came.

"We can't turn to war as an answer for everything, Gorey!"

"What choice do we have? You saw what those people did to our son! We have to make sure this doesn't ever happen again!"

"Oh, so your plan is to stop the violence by starting it ourselves?"

"Fine, Tori, what do you want?"

"I want to live in a world where our children don't have to watch us march off with bloody spears in our hands!"

"...Mom? Dad? Is everything okay?"

"Asriel! Um...We're just talking about adult stuff. Yes, that's correct, things you would not care much for anyway. Why don't you go and see if Chara wants to play?"

Mom wasn't fooling me. I knew what they were arguing about, and everything clearly wasn't okay. After a few more days of shouting, Mom moved out and started living in the Ruins. Said she needed time to 'think things through for herself'. Those humans already took a childhood in the sun away from me, and now, somehow, they managed to take Mom away!

Maybe Chara was right after all. I knew that Dad found six SOULs from the humans that fell into the Underground after the war because once I came home and they were all stacked up against a wall in New Home. Dad said they fell to their deaths while exploring the caves around Mount Ebott, and our only real option was to honor them as best as we could. They looked really creepy, just floating around in their canisters like bugs in amber, and I normally wouldn't have paid any more attention to them.

But one day, I was walking past the SOULs with Chara when I heard a voice coming from inside the purple SOUL's canister.

"Hey! You! You're the prince I've read about! Guys! Wake up! It's the prince!"

The other five SOULs stirred and pressed eagerly against the glass.

"Be a dear and let us out of here, won't you?" asked the green SOUL.

"We've waited a long time for this," declared the light blue SOUL.

"Don't be afraid, we just want to talk to you," reassured the orange SOUL.

I let them out of their containers, and the SOULs started flying excitedly around the room before settling down in front of me. The dark blue SOUL began to, well, not exactly speak, but resonate with energy and send what it wanted to say right into my mind.

"The purple heart has told us about the history between the monsters and the humans. We knew that the humans had trapped you under the ground with a barrier, but we did not know all of the horrible things they did to you."

"I can't believe they tried to kill you," said the green SOUL. "It's positively barbaric what they've done."

"It just ain't right," announced the yellow SOUL, "and we'll help you settle the score."

"Take our power, young one, and break this cursed barrier so that we may all go free," concluded the purple SOUL.

"Asriel."

"Chara?"

"I don't want to see you guys suffer anymore. We just need one more to have seven. If those random weirdos trust you, then borrow mine too and break the barrier."

"But, Chara! You'll die if I take your SOUL!"

"So, what? We were hardly living down here to begin with. I trust you, Azzy; all you have to do is take five seconds to break the barrier and then put my SOUL back before anything happens to my body. You were able to do it before, weren't you?"

"But...but...I don't know if I can do this, Chara. Last time I had to do it to save your life, and you know I'd do anything for you, but I don't know these six people. What if I mess this up and something happens to them? What if they don't make it?"

My paws were shaking. Chara grabbed me by my shoulders and told me, "Do you know how great it would be if we could pull this off? We'd be heroes, Azzy, and not only that, we'd make a lot of monsters' wishes come true at once. Could you imagine if we could bring Dad a golden flower from the surface to add to his garden? Could you imagine if Mom could open that school she's always dreamed of having? And what about the sentries, who haven't had a fresh bone to chew in ages? And what about Vulkin, who's always wanted to see a real volcano? I could go on and on, but my point is: I believe in you. We believe in you. I know you believe in me, but don't you believe in yourself?"

I took a deep breath. The SOULs floated toward my own, and in an instant, I felt a vortex of magical energy. Something didn't seem right because I saw monster SOULs floating around me, too, but with seven human SOULs, I had power that gods could only dream of. First I tucked Chara's empty body in a corner for safekeeping, and I was just about to destroy the barrier and take my revenge on all of humanity, but then, I felt a strong concentration of determination behind me. Someone had the nerve to try and stop me, and that someone was another human child. I didn't know what to do, so I called upon the red SOUL for help.

"Chara! Now what?"

"What do you think? It's a human! I told you before, Azzy, they deserve this!"

"Galacta Blazing!"

I launched a bunch of exploding stars at the human, but it was weird—I could feel myself flying after them, but at the same time it felt like I wasn't doing that at all. Meanwhile, the human dodged and weaved; even though she had a toy knife, she didn't fight back.

"Shocker Breaker!"

*SPARE

"Hyper Goner!"

I showed them the full force of my magic, but every time I struck her, that human's SOUL would rebound and re-fuse as if nothing happened. I kept fighting and fighting, but that human just refused to die. She just kept standing there and wouldn't even fight back no matter what I did. Even after I used my special attack, the human still had the strength to call out and save her friends. One by one, the monster SOULs left me.

Then, the human called out one last time, every last drop of her strength pouring into her voice.

"Asriel! Chara!"

"What?! How do you know my name? And how do you know her name?"

"I know what happened to you two. The war, the buttercups, the barrier—everything. I fell in here some time ago and your mom fixed up my leg and we shared some pie. I asked her how I could get back to the surface, and she didn't want me to leave the Ruins, but eventually she gave up and said I had to find King Asgore. Well, I did, and I met everyone along the way, and he still tried to whack me with his pitchfork, but then your mom sent him flying across the room with a fireball. I won't stop you if you want to destroy the barrier, but when you took all those SOULs...yes, your parents are in there, but they're my friends too. Every time you use their power to strike me...I...I can hear it...it's hurting them. Please, I don't want this to go on any longer!"

I felt my stomach jump out of my body. One of the human SOULs started stirring inside me, and a voice started pleading to me.

"Asriel...this isn't you. The power's getting to your head. You don't have to do this for me anymore. Please listen to that human; I just want my brother back. We'll just have to find a different way to break the barrier, okay?"

The human called my name next, and all the good memories I had with Chara started flooding back. I couldn't bring myself to fight anymore, and I could barely look at her after what I did. But even after all of that, she still forgave me for everything. I used the last of my power to destroy the barrier so that the human SOULs could go free, but they wouldn't leave me no matter how hard I tried to get them to go back to their families.

"Your Majesty, we've been away from our parents for years. Seeing us again after all that time would only tear open painful memories."

"So instead, we're going to help you help the rest of the monsters. I know you won't let us down, kid."

The nine of us, I guess, went back to the other monsters. I told my mom and dad the barrier was broken, and I was scared they'd start fighting again, but they were just happy to see that Chara and I were okay. The war Dad declared is still a touchy subject, but I think they set aside most of their differences so that we could have a family again.

There could be no other possibility. The agent recognized the third child as an unconscious, younger Chara, splayed out on the floor next to the dazed hero and a child Asriel stumbling in the general direction of his speechless parents.

(Come on, space goat…Chara wasn't a saint, but she doesn't deserve this!)

Doubt began to roll in like storm clouds. Perhaps she wasn't the best influence on the prince, but imagining Chara as a murderer became significantly more difficult after being shown Chara's role in saving both the monsters and the humans. The alien shuffled through his data again, carefully reading over what must have been a major misunderstanding from HQ.

But there was no time to sit around reading. Asriel chimed in patiently, "Those two believed in the goodness within me to the very end, even as I tried to kill one of them. Now you understand why I have to protect my friends, right?"