Me: This chapter has gone from an insane dark to a somewhat happy note...? I am still confuzzled.

Shamir: You're always like that, lately...

Me: Nope. I never thought I could write something like that.

Shamir: Someone looks like they didn't enjoy something.

Me: ...More of that later.

Rolling...in the Darkness!

CHAPTER NINE: FATE-DEFYING WISHES

There was still a deep confusion within Papyrus's SOUL, as the humans haven't acted in any way hostile - yet the leopard that just attacked them was completely disregarding that, in front of him, stood Papyrus the Underground Star - the first thought crossing his mind was that, perhaps, the Royal Guard's Captain have ordered them to kill the humans on sight, a thing that the dashing skeleton was not fully convinced of. If Sans was correct about the feline ruling the Royal Guard with a strong paw, then the Captain wouldn't act so rashly without intent. He would rather be a master tactician, planning out in advance, waiting for the enemy's next move - and when the situation would look incredibly dire, only then there would be blood spilling around.

So why was this feline charging at them, again?

Even the two humans were confused at the sudden lash from another monster - Roger's mistrust in the monsters just increased with that attack, while Frisk was more scared than ever - but then again, Papyrus defended them. 'He may have just as well defended himself, not really us,' Roger mused as he looked at the skeleton with his eyebrows arched in questioning, while holding tighter Frisk's hand. And the chillness still went to him - he was freezing completely - and Papyrus, out of his generosity, lent Roger his large blue jacket, which the latter took with some reluctance.

"I AM A SKELETON. I DO NOT FREEZE...WELL NOT COMPLETELY, AT LEAST." Papyrus justified his act towards Roger.

"Thanks. I-I can feel the cold dissipating right now." Roger could say, in some acknowledgement. "Frisk, you okay? The cold isn't bothering ya?"

"No, I am okay. The sweater is really he-" but Frisk stopped mid-sentence as they sneezed.

"Not really helpful. Come on, buddy. Hang tight on me, the jacket is large enough to warm us both." Roger said with a joking grin on his face.

"YOU LOOK LIKE YOU KNOW HOW TO TAKE CARE OF THE CHILD." Papyrus said, surprised by the fatherly attitude Roger tried to adopt.

"Not quite, Papyrus." Roger said dismissively. "Are we close to...how did you say, Snowdin?"

"YES, WE ARE. LET US HOPE NO MORE DANGER IS GETTING AHEAD. I'M STARTING TO BE SCARED FOR MY LIFE." Papyrus deadpanned.

Ahead of them, the forest didn't seem to have an end - but come to think of it, when Roger looked back, it didn't seem to have a beginning from where they were - it was so incredibly dense, they would've gotten lost had it not been for Papyrus's somewhat helpful guidance. Even so, it looked like the monsters weren't really content with seeing humans around here - whatever happened to them was probably the cause for said annoyance towards humans - and while Roger wasn't himself a huge fan of humanity, seeing monsters going for the same thing, it definitely made him consider that there was no difference between this Underground and the human world.

Frisk was all concerned if they would be able to get out alive, along with Roger - it was their only wish, really - and they were determined to see that wish becoming real. For Roger, however, the certainty of danger befalling them - and Papyrus too - was written all over his face, that much Frisk could see and understand. For it was the very same look the young man gave them when they talked about Sam, a look of something already set in place, of something that cannot possibly be changed. They clinged to the man in fear, while the latter softly patted their messy hair.

"We'll find a solution to this, Frisk. I promise." Roger said as they were treading through the white snow, a decisive look glinting in his eyes.

"Do you smell what I smell, Rasha?" an unknown voice to the two - and known to the third - came out from a distance, through the wind.

"I smell...something different. A monster. Two humans. Something tells me..." Ribras said as he readied a large, iron-plated axe with a fleur-de-lis on it..

"They won't be leaving these grounds alive." Rasha completed him, a similar iron-plated axe in her paws, with two red leaf clovers.

"This can't possibly be good." Roger said as he saw the two sillhouettes approaching them.

"RIBRAS, RASHA! HOW ARE YOU-" Papyrus greeted the feline couple nonchalantly, while Ribras silenced him with a paw.

"Do you think we're idiots, or what? You're conspiring with the humans, against the Underground! Have you forgotten your allegiances?!"
Ribras roared as he tightened his grasp on the iron axe. "We have orders to take the human SOULS!"

The two felines began attacking in turns, their iron axes colliding with Papyrus' walls of bone, that didn't look so effective right now - while his bone attacks were strong, he wasn't exactly trained in this field - and the dashing skeleton thought that would be his demise, along with the two humans he thought as friends. 'SANS WAS RIGHT, I SHOULD'VE LEARNED TO DEFEND MYSELF!' Papyrus was thinking as he parried yet another striking blow aimed towards him and the humans, while fighting back with incessant waves of bones.

'He's not going to last this long if I won't do something.' Roger mused as he tried to form a plan, while parrying with his bare hands the lashing strikes, cutting through the blue tuxedo, and making Papyrus' face scrunch up in disbelief. The skeleton was still concerned over how to protect himself and his new friends - he could feel his energy dropping slowly, with each consuming attack that was demanded out of him, and the two felines looked like they could keep this up all day.

"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME? I HAVE NOT BETRAYED ANYONE'S CAUSE!" Papyrus tried to talk to the two, but his words landed on deaf ears.

"We can do this all day. Surrender the two humans and we'll cease our attack." Rasha said as she looked through the skeleton. "We do not wish to hurt one of our own, but if we must do so-"

"enough." a voice came from behind them.

While Roger couldn't see more, he was definitely sure the voice that has just spoken was a male's one. What surprised him more was that, out of the shadows, a small skeleton with a blue lab coat, black shorts and pink slippers. came closer to them. He was exactly the same height as Frisk, and looked like he was grinning. It was a mad grin by all means - because Roger could've sworn he saw the skeleton's left eye glowing a strong blue. Papyrus's jaw dropped at the sight of the skeleton, while Frisk waited patiently, holding a breath, as the confrontation proved to be even worse than now.

"nobody touches my brobone. not even shamir's colleagues." the small skeleton said as he placed a bony hand in front of him.

"SANS...I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M SAYING THIS, BUT I'M RELIEVED TO SEE YOU HERE!" Papyrus exhaled in relief, while sweat kept bedding on his forehead.

"tell me, fellas. do you want me to let shamir know of your reckless actions? he'll be more than happy to oblige." Sans said as above him, a Gaster Blaster started to manifest.

"He said we should be vigilant! And that we need the human souls!" Ribras said, while his tail floofed at the sight of the blaster.

"maybe. but i didn't see the humans do anything yet. and as far as he told me, he ordered you to be vigilant, not to outright kill the humans." Sans's eyes were closed as he uttered that phrase.

"I-" Ribras said as his paws tightened on his fleur-de-lis donned iron axe.

"you all look so silly, trying to be the best in his eyes. but i think he has already chosen y'all as the best. and he added undyne on that list."

Their eyes shifted as Frisk's voice bellowed - shocking Roger with their strength - in the chilly air of Snowdin Forest, while the monsters seemed to flinch at the sheer amount of rage enveloped in that one question that cut through them.

"WHY EVERYBODY WANTS TO HURT ME?!" they asked, as tears broke in their eyes, and ran away from Roger's arms, into the unknown.

'Oh no.' Roger could think as he saw the child running off God-knows-where, while he stood in place with Ribras, Rasha, Sans and Papyrus. His anger was now no longer containable, and began punching Papyrus with all of his strength. While he wasn't affected, Roger didn't seem to notice the pain, nor the gaze from Sans - the latter was there to his and the humans' rescue, and the tall human just outright punched his brother. That wasn't a good move, in Sans' books, and it warranted killing on sight.

"you think you can hurt a monster, eh? i want you to try that with me." Sans said as he engulfed Roger's SOUL in his blue magic.

Sans wasn't going to show any mercy for that - the human thought he could just do what he wanted - but the small skeleton was about to prove him so dead wrong. Keeping the young man's SOUL in his blue magic, he frowned and tossed Roger into a few fir trees. The researcher felt like he was hit by a damn train, because he began spitting blood. A lot of blood, by the looks of his hands, as he tried to clean himself away - but he was really close to dying. He looked towards the skeleton with foggy eyes, and advanced with a soft grin on his face.

"Even if I die here...Frisk will carry on, my sacrifice won't be in vain." Roger could say, before collapsing to the ground.

[Somewhere in Waterfall...]

While they were running, Frisk could feel a damp pain through their chest - the pain left them yelling - and yet, they didn't know why...because they went past Snowdin, and Roger wasn't coming after them. At first, they thought maybe he abandoned them, but he wouldn't do that, would he? He did so much for them, and, if Frisk was honest, he protected them after Sam was killed. They wiped their tears with one sleeve of their sweater, and kept on running, as if their life was fully depending on it.

There would be no turning back, and different voices were calling out to Frisk, out of which one was recognizable...Sans' voice...

[You've always wanted to be strong, to fight back, to teach everyone a lesson...

...hm...you look empty. bored. totally snuffed out in the excitement department. as in...you've done this thousands of times before...and the thrill is now totally gone.

In a world so dark and hostile and twisted as ours...how can you possibly succeed where I repeatedly failed?]

'Make it stop, make it stop...make it-' Frisk was thinking as they held onto their head, tears flowing endlessly, almost like a river, when their sobbing was cut off by the voice that saved them earlier.

"Human." Shamir said, as his arms were folded, eyes still darting at the little human. "As we speak, monsterkind has now six souls. I am dreadfully sorry for your friend...he seems to have not understood like you did, that mercy is a way too."

"He-" Frisk's eyes lowered, their little fists clenched in a silent fury.

"Yes. Parvos told me about the capture...He was the SOUL of Perseverance, was he not?"

"I do not know! All I know is that you killed him! And I'm not going to let you take him away from me..." Frisk laughed with a degree of insanity as he called out, unknowingly, to their SOUL.

Shamir's eyes narrowed to slits, and unsheathed rapidly one of his swords - he wasn't going to let the human do anything reckless - not when they were closer to reaching the goal of leaving this blasted Underground...and he began slashing towards the child, only to be repelled by a strange red shield manifesting itself around the child. He could see them having a pocket knife in their hand, a strange grin plastered across their face. Of one thing he was certain - humans were able to damage monsters by willfully wishing they could do so - and a badly planned attack would go very wrong for him.

"You...you will die in here!" Frisk gritted through their teeth as they tried to lash out towards Shamir.

The jaguar parried all the blows with ease, and let a few go down in his stride, but it certainly looked like the child wasn't thinking clearly. The pain was making them act wildly, forcing the Captain to act on his intention of killing humans - he knew that he hesitated enough in doing so anyway - and slashed towards the new crying and fighting child, while Frisk dodged carefully each swipe aimed at them. He then tried shooting sets of lightning bolts, but yet again, the child's DETERMINATION was making them evade those magical lightnings with grace. 'This human fights well...but their dodging skills will not save them for long!'

[Meanwhile, in Sans' Lab]

'i got the tall human's body in here. his soul is still here...and it's purple in colour. so he was the perseverent one. the only one that can really change the tides is the one with determination...' Sans mused as he contained Roger's SOUL within a glass-like large tube and placed it next to the others. 'maybe if the human wasn't that reckless with hitting my brother, that wouldn't have happened.'

He frowned for a bit as he looked through one of the cameras that caught Shamir's fight with the last human. Something felt incredibly curious about the human, he could've sworn he saw the child somewhere. Even Shamir said this himself - the small child looked so oddly familiar - it brought back interesting memories, from timelines Sans thought he would've forgotten by now. "I just won't forget about these, won't I?" he mumbled through his teeth as he looked at the cameras and saw himself fighting a human.

["ya' know, i want some answers. i have a real bone to pick with you." Sans was saying in a really pissed off voice.

"Your puns are stupid. And what kind of answers do you expect from me?" a child's voice was ringing at the end.

"i want to know why the heck you go on with this game. you give us monsters a happy ending and then RESET, as if you weren't fucking happy. ya might wanna stop this hell-loop you call 'play-time'.

Tch. Spare me the theatrics, Sans. I know you inside out."]

The memories were bound to haunt Sans, no matter what timeline he was in, no matter the universe he was in, a Genocide was going to follow each time a human fell down. Why? 'Cause said humans often got so bored of giving monsters the best ending, that they ended up Resetting and then murdering everyone. For some reason, he felt someone else must've been the mastermind behind these plans, because Shamir learnt that on his own - he was forced to fight someone he did not expect to. And also, for a long time, he has been begging Sans for some way to revive a certain Prince of the Monsters.

[Days before the Humans' Falling Down. New Home, Asgore's bedroom.]

Shamir was still laying in Asgore's kingsized bed, still in recovery after the incident with Undyne. Neither he or Toriel could actually move around, so Asgore and Sans were placed in the rather awkward situations of being caretakers for the two - Sans for Shamir, Asgore for Toriel - but it was in this day that Shamir requested something odd of Sans. The jaguar monster didn't know much about his former brothers - if he could call them brothers - and he wanted to do something nice for his adoptive parents. He wanted to find a way in reviving Asriel, at least, because the Royal Guard Captain didn't want to see the sorrowful look on the Boss Monsters' faces anymore.

"so, you want to bring asriel back from the dead? you have any idea what kind of wish you aim for?" Sans asked him, as he looked in puzzlement towards his best friend, almost sure the latter must've lost his mind.

"I would go as far as giving him my SOUL, if that would be the case." Shamir said, looking away from Sans' still questioning gaze.

"i dunno...the experiments with determination kinda failed...and asriel's dust is well kept in a container, somewhere in a locked room." the small skeleton said, twiddling his thumbs. "that lock is fire magic enabled, and there's no way i could open that door to-"

"But what if you snuck in?" Shamir suggested, as he lifted himself a bit more to stand straight. "I think that would help...Toriel-" he paused, "Mother goes in there sometimes, at exact hours."

"are you dumb? tori would pick up on my magic instantly." Sans said as he scratched the back of his head.

"You're very good at hiding your magical signature, Sans. Once I was looking over my shoulder, yet you weren't there..." Shamir paused, trying to ease in his breathing, "and then you jumped out of nowhere with a Gaster Blaster. It was impressive."

"shut it. it's nothing like what you do when i teach you about monsters' history - you pick it up so fast i barely have time to explain anything." Sans laughed.

"About my wish...can you do something about it? And if you manage to...please, keep him a secret until I am ready to do so. I want to acquaint him with myself first, since he would be my brother."

Sans left out a long sigh before replying, as if he wasn't sure about the chances of that ending up in success...and even if it did, it might be weird for the young Prince.
"i'll try what i can furend. but i can't deny, what you ask me is impawsible to do so."

"When did the mighty Sans the Skeleton Scientist just gave up on his projects, hmm?" Shamir said with a teasing grin. "I'm sure you'll do it, otherwise, it will take all my purrsuation to bring you back on the track, if you'd abandon this!"

"nice one there, good to see you're no longer that quirky about my cat puns." Sans grinned.

"I've grown to love them. Not all of them are unpurrfesional!" Shamir laughed heartily, before leaving out a deep cough. "I should be more careful...Undyne's kick in my chest was quite strong..."

[Present, Sans' Lab]

Sans explored the possibilty of creating a partial SOUL from the six souls that were laying in those containers...'this has to be a way...but will the souls be acceptant and won't just outright kill me for attempting this?' he mused while he looked at the six souls before him. 'determination would be useful too...' but he thought he could manage with just six souls, and a bit of Asriel's dust that he collected from Toriel's locked room - Shamir was right, sneaking in did prove effective, while sneaking out was a little more difficult to do - but nevertheless, Sans was sure he could bring to life the former prince. Alphys knew of this as well, but he didn't hand her the details on a plate...it was Shamir's wish he was talking about, and he didn't want to leave the cat out of the bag like his buddy did. 'i still find it somewhat hard to believe he was adopted by tori, but...there's something in his demeanour that shows it. he has the dreemurrs' way of carrying themselves around, yet he's a ton prideful...just look at him how he fights against that kid, in extreme hostility...'

Indeed, Shamir looked like he was relentless, while the kid was trying their best to hurt him, in those images caught up by the cameras of Waterfall. The Captain was no measly monster one human was going to take down - it would totally go the other way round -but Sans' mind was focused, right now, on reviving Asriel. "shamir looked like he needed a brother...and tori and asgore looked like they needed their son back. welp...here goes nothing." Sans said as he pulled a lever and static shock charges powered themselves around the dust and the six souls that were hovering above said dust. Zaps, whirrs, and entrancing chants could be heard as the skeleton watched in awe the souls pulsing rapidly and lifting the dust - as if modelling it - creating it while retaining the form of the original owner, and this whole procedure finished with a bright ball of light that blinded Sans for a good few minutes.

After the light slowly dissipated, a form could be seen on the large, cold table, sitting on their rump. Something resembling fur could be discerned from that shadow, that lightly placed their paws front and gasped in surprise - and they sensed someone in the room. First feet, they walked towards Sans, handing out a white, fluffy paw and smiling weakly at them, while the skeleton could only freeze in surprise at the monster before him.

He had actually done it.

He brought back Asriel, and the timeline was going to suffer a drastic change.

The rules were broken...

...and someone was not at all pleased with it.

"tHeRe wiLL bE heLL tO pAy foR tHis..."