AN: May put this story on the back-burning hiatus machine for a while.

Chapter 7:

Mabel eagerly bounced in place, rifling through the various objects in her and Dipper's room, Grunkle Stan in tow. Well, not exactly Dipper's room anymore, she guessed. When she and Dipper had entered the Medium (although the latter's entrance came much later), the first thing that she'd realized was that there were significantly less people in the Mystery Shack. She remembered bounding downstairs, scaring Grunkle Stan, who was munching on ice cream, dejectedly, and Wendy, who dropped a plate in kitchen.

"Grunkle Stan!" Mabel yelled, causing Stan to drop the spoon he was eating with.

"Agh! Jeez, Mabel, can't you see I'm moping about the end of the world here?" He bent down with a grunt to retrieve his spoon. Stan turned the stained spoon over in his hands. "Eh, probably still good," he said, continuing his melancholic eat-out.

"But there ISN'T an end of the world, Grunkle Stan! The game Dipper and I played teleported us away from all the danger and fire and basically we're saved!"

"Huh, so is that why it got so dark all of a sudden?" Stan stood up from his chair with a crack from his back. "I don't really trust this. Watch my ice cream, Mabel, I'm going to go find a bat or something." He trudged off into another room, leaving Mabel to stew in her thoughts. She took a deep breath and relaxed, mentally preparing herself for oh my god what was that noise

She whipped around, facing some sort of short imp creature. It looked harmless enough, its features bland save for its plant-like hands. It growled, revealing itself as the source of the sound. Screaming, Mabel pulled out her grappling hook and fired at the imp. The metal hook bashed right through the short creature, reducing it to a pile of delicious-looking currency, right as Stan walked in with a bat in hand with Wendy in tow.

"Woah, dead person!" He yelled, dropping his bat. "Oh, you killed it. Whew. You have to stop scaring me like that, Mabel."

"Did you see that?! I just shot the grapple right at it and it exploded!" Mabel excitedly looked around for more imps to slay. Grunkle Stan, shrugging, went over to pick up the colorful Gushers-like currency laying on the floor.

"Huh," Wendy coolly pondered. "What is this stuff?" She swished her hand in an attempt to grab it, but it simply passed through the blue substance.

"Maybe only I can pick it up?" Mabel walked over and held her hand out, almost beckoning the drops to come to her. Luckily they did. And promptly disappeared. "Ohh! Just like CreateQuarry!" She looked at her computer screen, where her client player, Mae was picking up grist, as Mabel read at the top. As Mae picked up each piece of grist, a counter, marked with a blue hexagon, went up in its numbers. "It must be like, currency, or something!"

Stan perked up at the word currency. "Oh, now you're talking. Lemme at it!" He knelt down and attempted to pick one piece up, yet just like Wendy, the Gushers were intangible.

Slapping her fist into her other hand, Mabel said, "I got it! I'm the player, so I'm the only one that can pick these up." Dejected, Stan stood back up, dusting his knees off. "That must make you two my NPCs!"

"N-P-what now?" He swiveled around to look at Mabel, a confused expression painted on his face.

"Aw, man," Wendy said, scuffing at the floor with her foot, "so lame. I get to, what, stay in the house the whole time?"

"What is an NPC, someone, anyone."

"Maybe you can tag along, Wendy! You can always come with me on this daaangerous journey! Ooh!" Mabel giggled, wiggling her fingers.

"I am not that well versed in video-game language," said Stan, looking between the two girls. "Mabel, explain, please."

Mabel tugged at Wendy and Stan's hands and pulled them towards another room. "Come on! There's probably going to be more of those ink things, so let's get to smashing!"

"You know what?" Wendy smirked, hefting her ax. "Might as well get to it since we're stuck here."

"Okay, it's fine. Just leave your old man here in the dark." Stan glanced at the window, seeing the inky void out there. "Literally and figuratively," he mumbled.

The trio ventured into the kitchen-slash-dining room, faint worry plastered on their faces. Mabel screamed, "EEEEEEEE!"

"What is it? Where's the fire?" Stan yelled, wielding a bat he had found.

Mabel, unscathed, pulled out some unidentified creature from under the table and began hugging it. Hard. "Yes, yes, yes! Look at his cute wittle face, and his cute lil' cowboy hat!" she babbled, the sun itself seeming to power her wide smile. "Can we keep him?"

Wendy knelt down and put one hand on Mabel's shoulder. "Mabel, that is literally the same creature you just smashed to fruit-snack bits." She poked it in the face, and the inky imp recoiled slightly. "How about we find Waddles?"

"Oh my gosh, I forgot about Waddles! We've gotta get him before something weird runs into the big ball of light he ran into also!" Mabel ran off into the house, her panicked screams echoing through the it.

The female lumberjack and the conman looked at each other, blinking.

"Might as well," Stan remarked.


Asriel was not one to be chicken. Well, actually, to be honest, he kind of was. See, he was trying his best, he really was. But, Frisk and everyone else knew that he was a pacifist. At least, when he wasn't a homicidal flower. But now, with his half-soul, it seems that he was being pulled into another magical space-and-dimension-transcending experience. He didn't know why he agreed. He didn't know why he said yes to playing this game. BUt he did.

And now, not even a few hours later, he was forced to bash in skulls of random monsters with a golf club he found. He did... know, that there was a much more effective weapon in his house, but chose to not touch it for certain personal reasons. (He had been killed by it. That's what I'm saying) Asriel swung at a couple imps, his club skirting the enemies' perimeters, but not making contact. Adjusting both his loose sweater and his aim, he swung yet again and his shot rang true. It went through the three (two? no, it was definitely three) creatures standing in front of him. He quickly scooped up some of the grist from the floor.

"All right, sprite guy," Asriel said, turning to his bright white companion, "looks like we can build. Yeah!" He raised his hand to high five his sprite, then realized that his sprite didn't have hands. And that it spoke in garbled speech. "Oh yeah," Asriel said, dejected. "I guess that being one of the only few people left in the Underground has its downsides." He pulled out his messenger.

"Hey, Asriel, I'm gonna work on building up your house. I finally killed of all those imps." It was from Dipper.

At least I'm somewhat useful, Asriel thought, dejected. I wonder how Frisk is doing. He sighed and sat at a table, drumming his fingers on it.

"What to do..."


It would've been a nice, sunny day. It would've, had it not been for a certain video game.

"Ugh," Steven groaned, lying on the floor. It was much more work batting away imp creatures when your house consisted of an entire hill. There were so many of them on average, plus a few ogres sprinkled in, that one of the Gems had to keep watch at all times. Right now, Garnet was standing guard at the top, while Pearl and Amethyst stayed in the house, trying to help Steven in any way.

"Well," said Amethyst, "what now, Steven?" She walked over to one of the machines (The alchemiter, Steven thought.) and knocked on it a couple times. "Is there a point to us getting trapped in this void?"

Steven turned to the purple gem, tapping his chin in thought. "Well, John did say that the next step was to build up the house so that we could reach a gate or something," he said matter-of-factly. He peeked out of the window and into the sky. "Yeeep," he strained, squinting, "if you look just right you can see a glowing circle in the sky."

"Cool. But, why can't you just, like, make a jetpack or helicopter and fly up there? Or, ooh, I fly you up there!" Amethyst, who had an eager look in her eyes, was bouncing in her seat.

Pearl then walked into the room, still weilding her spear. "I think that's cheating, Amethyst. I don't really... understand what this game is, but if it's anything like any of Steven's other games, there's clearly an objective and you have to follow it." She thumped the ground with the blunt end of her spear to enforce her point. "By the way, Steven, who is this 'John' fellow?"

"Stupid rules," Amethyst muttered.

Steven turned to Pearl, drumming his fingers on the seat he was now in. "He's the guy that sent me and... I think about ten other people this game. From the looks of it, he and a couple other guys played this game already and are basically trying to help other universes to not die too."

"Interesting..." Pearl said, tapping her chin in thought. "And who are all these other people, may I ask?"

Steven popped off his chair and walked over to the kitchen counter. On it was a laptop. "Here," he said, opening it up to Pearl.

"There's a lot of people. I think some of them aren't even human! There's Connie, obviously, Frisk, a human, As- I think it's pronounced "As-ryel?" I don't know- Asriel, a goat guy, two twins named Dipper and Mabel..." The young gem pointed out each person to Pearl, although he had to scroll back in the chats to check what exactly each of them were. Pearl was more than a little surprised to find that so many sapient species existed on Earth. Perhaps she'd have to find out what exactly went down on Earth after the meteors hit.

"And finally, a pair of Inkling sisters named Callie and Marie. I think their actually cousins, but, ah, whatevs." He glanced at Pearl, who was still left in thought. "Pearl?" Steven asked.

"Sorry Steven. They all sound... quite nice," she responded. Steven could see the gears turning in her head. "Oh! I think it's my turn to keep watch. Talk to you later Steven." Pearl nimbly walked up the steps and to the window. She grasped the top of the doorframe and swung up to the roof, Garnet coming back in at the same time.

Steven's phone buzzed with a notification. "Yo," the message read. It was from... Callie, was it? "Are you gonna start smashing imps or what? I'm supposed to build up your house to that gateway thing."

Steven slapped his forehead. "Agh, forgot about that!" He pointed to Amethyst and Garnet. "I'm gonna go up and help Pearl so we can build up." The two gems nodded, with Amethyst giving Steven a pumped up thumbs up, and Garnet a hint of a reassuring smile.

"Yeah! Let's do this!" whooped Steven. He clambered up to the roof. It was going to be an exciting day.


AH: Uh. Whoops. Sorry I haven't updated in a while. School stuff again. But now that it's summer, it's time for me to get into late-night writing mode! But yeah. I don't really have much motivation to write this, but I'm not discontinuing it. I think I just need some time to get myself really deep into the story and real fuel that I need when I write. I have to be motivated to write, ya know?

Anyway, expect an update... in a while. I know, you all had to wait half a year for about 1.8k words, but see above. That's really all, I guess.

See/read you/me later!