A/N: In case you were worried, no, Cynicism and Innocence isn't being cancelled any time soon. I was just having trouble figuring out how to write the scenes I had planned out. (Thank you, writer's block, you're such a great help! Thanks for being so supportive of my creative endeavors! I totally wouldn't mercilessly murder you if you were a person!)

Once Lee had confirmed that placing Frisk's sprites back into the game would be a relatively simple process, Papyrus had immediately forgiven Winston and Lee, and though Sans hadn't explicitly stated that he forgave them as well, his less belligerent demeanor seemed to indicate that he would at least forget their crimes for now.

Finding Frisk's sprites online had been fairly easy, as had copying them back into the Undertale folders, removing Winston and Joe's sprites, and reformatting the code. Since the children's parents were asleep fairly quickly, Lee had decided it would be safe to let Sans and Papyrus go downstairs. Once Lee had assured them that he could copy-paste a bunch of sprites in by himself, Winston and Joe had decided to accompany them, the former more reluctant than the latter.

Figuring out how to restore everyone's memories of Frisk was a little more difficult, and it was unlikely that Sans and Papyrus would recall who Frisk was as well given that they'd been removed from the game already. Surprisingly, all Winston had done was change a set of variables and insert some new code. After some deliberation, Lee decided to rewrite the code so that everyone would remember Frisk, Winston, and Joe traveling through the Underground together. Sans would probably stick to the cover story with some prompting and Papyrus would go along with it with his usual enthusiasm. Frisk would take some convincing, but chances were that they'd agree to it too.

"Frisk?" Lee said aloud. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I restored your body."

There was no response.

Tentatively, Lee clicked on Undertale and opened the game. Would it work? Had Frisk shut down their rogue program?

He let out a relieved sigh as the intro began, and pressing Z to skip it, took in the sight of the load screen. The game started up properly, and it has "Chara" as the name, but it'll be worth nothing if Frisk hasn't been restored.

He hit Z again to load from the last save, and let out another sigh of relief as he saw Frisk standing in the judgement hall, shadowed thanks to the lighting. "Are you alright, Frisk? Is Chara alright?"

There was no response for a few seconds, and then dialogue appeared across the top of the screen, outlined in red the same color as Frisk's soul: It worked! It worked! Thank you, thank you, thank you thank you thank you thank you- They abruptly cut themself off. I'm fine. Chara's... they're alright too.

"Don't thank me, Frisk. You shouldn't even have been in a position where I needed to restore your body in the first place." Lee felt a strange wave of protectiveness towards the child wash over him. "I assume you can hear what I'm saying alright?"

Yeah. Your voice is a little distorted, but I can still figure out what you're saying.

"Good. I messed with the coding so that you won't have to go and fight Asgore and Flowey again, though Flowey will remember you fighting him- I copied in data from a different save file. You can head back and keep going with an ordinary pacifist route. I took off manual controls, so you can move by yourself now."

Thank you. Frisk said again. With that, they were off, heading back through New Home to finish the true ending.

It occurred to Lee, as he watched their progress, that Sans and Papyrus were still missing from the game. He had to admit, he was curious to see how the game would adapt to their removal, but that could wait for later.

"So that is what the stars look like." pondered Papyrus. "Wowie! Night on the surface can be really beautiful, don't you agree, Sans?"

Sans nodded briskly. "You're right about that, bro." He looked like he wanted to add something, but remained silent.

Winston and Joe stood about a foot away from the skeletons, shifting slightly. Neither of them wanted to disturb the moment, so they hadn't said anything.

"I can't help but wonder how the other humans are going to react to this," pondered the shorter skeleton at last, turning a wary eyelight towards the humans. "Surely it can't be as simple as just walking into town and introducing ourselves?"

"Well, if you walked into the middle of the road and shouted 'Hello, it's me, Sans Undertale,' that would be bound to cause a bit of panic, yes," Winston responded, looking away from Sans.

"I don't get it."

"Huh?"

"Is there some joke I'm missing?" Sans frowned. "As far as I know, my last name isn't 'Undertale.'"

"Tumblr would like to dispute that claim," said Lee's voice, and Winston whipped around to see his brother silhouetted in the light from the doorway. "What are you doing outside? It's dangerous out here, especially at night."

"Why?" Papyrus was very clearly confused. "Is it dangerous to breathe in the air out here for too long?"

"You're a skeleton," Joe said.

"It took you this long to notice?" Winston snarked.

Joe glared at him. "No, I mean, they don't have any lungs! How do they even breathe?"

"Magic" was Sans's unhelpful contribution.

"If you want to discuss the respiratory systems of skeleton monsters, do it inside!" Lee shouted quietly, and that was the end of that.

"Are you a real villain?"

"Well, uh, technically, nah."

"Have you ever caught a good guy, like a- like a real superhero?"

"Nah..."

"Have you ever tried a disguise?"

"Nah, nah..."

"Alright! I can see that I will have to teach you how to be villains!"

Papyrus poked the computer screen with a single gloved finger. "This man is not very good at playing the saxophone." he noted. "Perhaps he would benefit from a few lessons."

Joe shushed him. "It's about to get really cool, listen."

Though he didn't seem to want to acknowledge it, Sans was clearly captivated by the simple lyrics of "We Are Number One," and in fact he was even humming along, having picked up the melody surprisingly quickly.

"Are you going to tell me that giving them the computer was a bad idea now?" Winston asked.

Lee sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. "It's almost two in the damn morning, Winston. Do you really want to wake Mom and Dad at this hour and have to explain all this to them?"

"They might be able to help-"

"Or they might be scared out of their wits by two skeletons being in their house and try to kill them. Parents will do stupid things if they think they need to protect their kids." Lee looked like he was about to say more, but fell silent, clearly drifting off into thought.

"Now look at this net that I just found! When I say go, be ready to throw! Go!"

Lee snapped to attention, eyes gleaming. "I've got it!" he shouted.

"Shut up!" Winston hissed. "You want to wake Mom and Dad?"

"Got what?" Sans inquired, reaching over to pause the video.

"Listen." Lee stabbed a finger in the direction of the skeletons. "The game doesn't encompass the complete character and personal history of Sans and Papyrus, just the lines of dialogue they have to say paired with appropriate expressions to advance the plot. All that Winston and Joe did was get 3D models and rig up a 30-year-old projector, and yet here both of you are, saying lines the game never coded into you and acting like real people."

"So?" Winston shrugged. "All that proves is that the game is haunted like one of my friends theorized."

"No, you don't understand." Lee clasped his arms behind his body. "The game gives you the bare minimum that it can get away with, and yet, during the transfer, everything was filled in perfectly."

Papyrus shuffled his feet. "But what does it mean? Why does this matter?"

"Well, if I'm right, the idea I just came up with will make bringing everyone into this world a lot easier."

Sans leaned back against the counter. "Alright, let's hear it."

"I propose that we add something to the game to bring into our world." Lee rubbed his hands together. "A device designed solely to bring the entire Underground to this world in one fell swoop, which we'll then transfer out of the game and use."

Sans blinked slowly.

"If it works," Lee continued, gesturing madly, "the whole Underground is brought here without us having to go through the slow and arduous progress of bringing everyone in one by one, and if not, we just reload the game and try again. What could go wrong?"

Everyone stared at him for a moment.

"Do I even need to start?" Winston sighed.

"Okay, fine, a lot of things could go wrong," Lee admitted, raising his arms, "but it'll be a huge payoff if it works!"

He was correct, but that didn't stop Joe from trying to jump out of the window anyway. His given reason of "escaping these crazy people" was not considered acceptable by anyone, least of all Lee.

A/N: To make up for vanishing for so long, here's a less-noticed piece of fanon regarding a certain former Royal Scientist: it's not canon that Gaster is in the void. The only time any void of any kind is spoken of is when Mettaton references the void he'd leave behind if he left the Underground. What is canon is that he was fractured across time and space, and even that's just hearsay. It's also fanon that everyone forgot him, but that's less relevant.

In other words, Frisk's erasure left them in a very different state than Gaster was placed in.

Now, why did Lee state that Frisk was in the same position as Gaster? Well, even he's not immune to the clutches of fanon. That will prove relevant later on, as will this discussion.