I'm going to try to make this author's note quick because this chapter's pretty intense and stuff. It's by far the longest one I've ever written for this story at 4.5k words. I personally think this chapter's kinda messy, and I'm afraid it's too stupid, or that it might be steering the plot in the wrong direction, but I kind of like it, and I REALLY hope you like it too.
Keep in mind that diction is very important in this chapter. And it's more interesting if you read everything like an action movie trailer voice over guy.
Please don't hate me for this chapter. AND PLEASE, PLEASE REVIEW AND TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT IT. I will appreciate it greatly and try to reply to every single review I can!
~Emily Believes xoxo
This was it. This was the end. This was where he had to face the one who caused all the resets, the one who put everyone in this dire situation. There was no turning back now.
He was filled with determination.
Dr. W. D. Gaster took a step into the Judgement Hall. Light from the city creeped through the high windows, making the many columns leave shadows. He could see small flurries of dust particles floating around. Years ago, he had known this place simply as "the corridor to the throne room" in his time working at the castle, but after watching the timelines, he felt that "the Judgement Hall" was a more suitable name. Especially considering what was about to happen.
She wouldn't reset. She wouldn't be able to reset. The world wouldn't end. It couldn't. Or perhaps it would; Gaster had no way of knowing. What was about to take place in this long corridor would decide the fate of everyone and everything in the Underground, as it had in countless times. Yet he wasn't scared. He was hopeful, prepared, confident. He had to be, for her determination outnumbered his by a landslide. He knew she would stop at nothing to destroy this place.
But he would stop at nothing to save it.
He took another step into the golden corridor. Then another. And another. The sound of his shoes against the checkered tile echoed. Standing in the middle of the long, long hallway, he peered into the shadows near the door of the throne room. At first, she wasn't visible, hidden in the darkness, but her figure became noticeable very quickly.
If he hadn't known any better, he would've mistaken her for Frisk. The two looked very similar. Their haircuts were similar, they had similar facial and body structure, and they were of roughly the same height. However, Gaster had learned to tell the difference between someone with a soul and a vessel without one timelines ago. Black. There was always black somewhere. Typically, it was to show corrupted dust, but with her, it was something different. And as she walked into the light, it became very prominent. Fiddling with her knife, he saw that under her skin, the veins were coated black.
There was a certain philosophy to it, he supposed. She spoke, breathed, moved. She lived. Yet, she was dead. Her heart was cold. The blood in her veins was clotted by a horrid, oozing black substance that only magnified her atrocious desires. She appeared living, but inside a cold truth presented itself, the truth that her appearance of sentience was simply a mask to a soullessness that lead to her being, in a sense, dead.
Thus, the skeleton found himself merely meters away from Chara, the one who caused this entire mess in the first place. The girl who caused the resets, the essence of a child that mercilessly killed everyone over and over again. A creepily wide grin spread across her face. She was staring at him with blood red eyes.
"I can see behind your schtick, you know," she said condescendingly, skillfully twirling her knife between her fingers. Her tone of voice was enough to send chills through Gaster's bones. "Asriel's told me what you've done. Killing monsters for research. Just to know how to create a single weak soul." He visibly cringed at the accusation, only causing her grin to somehow grow even wider. "And somehow, I'm the vile one in this room." Seeing the scientist's hesitancy to respond, she continued. "They all have so much faith in you, you know. It's ironic. They carry all that trust for a man who does nothing but lie. You lied to your sons, to new friends, old colleagues. Even Asriel trusts you! Such a pity that they'll only know the truth after your dust is on the floor in front of them."
He stared at her eyes, her dead eyes that lead to nowhere, and sighed. "It's ironic, you say?" he said calmly, interrupting her manipulative monologue. He had regained a solemn composure somehow. "While I, like most others, am in no haste to admit my wrongdoings, I will say that such events did occur. And like most others, I regret it deeply. I find it ironic, however, that someone like you, who has slaughtered countless monsters countless times, still has the respect to call your old childhood friend by his true name, instead of his, ahem, chosen one."
Immediately, her smug grin had faded into a pouting frown. She slowly moved closer to Gaster, and as she did so, he focused his attention to the knife grasped firmly in her hand. The world around them faded to darkness, Chara's agitated face outlined perfectly in the heightened contrast of the battle scene. She pulled him into a fight.
"You're not worthy to save this world," she spat childishly. "You've spent timeline after timeline in that Void without so much as a single attempt to leave until now. Do you really think this place is going to be saved by such a coward?"
"Personally, for a 'coward,' I believe this will work rather well in my favor," he simply responded, which only irritated her more. The former Royal Scientist moved backwards a few steps so Chara wouldn't have the chance to just simply stab him. "It's redundant to mock me for my past when the number of casualties you've caused is far, far larger. It's ridiculous to find irony in my lies when I've told so little, when you've told so many. I can see through your manipulation, Chara. I've been able to see through it far before I exited the Void.
"This is all senseless."
He stretched out his right arm, a small, indescribable light filling the hole in his palm. Chara stared at him for a second, confused, for the light grew and continued to grow until Gaster was completely immersed in it. She held her weapon tighter, stepping back as the strange light started to grow brighter and brighter. Behind the luminance, the soulless child saw something strange. She couldn't describe what it was. It was simply just… strange.
"You made a mistake by thinking you'd be able to simply turn me to dust," Gaster spoke, his voice booming throughout the Judgement Hall. The light suddenly turned mauve, quickly spreading throughout the corridor. "You want to reset? To turn this world to dust? To fight? So be it then. Let us fight."
Chara suddenly couldn't see anymore. The light was far too bright to do so. She shielded her eyes as the light emitted a blast that shook the entire castle. Darkness started to take over once again, the battle scene returning, but it wasn't the same. It didn't feel the same. It couldn't be the same. She could hardly describe it. It was just strange… weird…
Impossible, almost.
A small little voice appeared inside Chara's mind. It was faint, almost nonexistent, hard to hear over her cluttered thoughts and an eerie static that played throughout the area. She knew what it was. She had heard it over and over and over in numerous battles. It narrated her thoughts and actions as well as those of her opponent, offering some sort of flavor text to the battle. Sometimes, it articulated her thoughts better than she could.
"Time seems to be simultaneously speeding up, slowing down, and stopping."
"Space is breaking all around you. You've lost all sense of direction."
"Lights rush past at incomprehensibly fast speeds."
"An uncomfortable static fills the room."
"A strange monster emerges from the shadows."
Chara spun her head to a certain light that appeared. She recognized the figure immediately. It was the damn scientist, though something, like everything else, seemed off. The cracks in his skull were wider, the holes in his hands larger. Over all, he looked like he was melting, glitching. Somehow, he was more threatening this way.
His head was pounding. The shadows cut into his deepest scars, the darkness around drained his energy. Everything drained his energy. Dematerializing, creating such an illusion for a battle… But he had to be strong, act strong, keep it together. She couldn't know he was weakened. He just had to stay strong until Sans and Undyne arrived… He had to stick to the plan. "WElCoMe tO ThE vOiD," he said, causing her face to drop. Somehow, she understood. "haVe YoU evER wOnDEreD WhAt thIs pLAcE waS liKe? AN eTernAL PrISoN wItH no UNiVersAl lAWs of ScIENce to GuIDE iT?
"if yOu WISh tO FigHT, We wILl do So iN mY DOMaiN. ThIS woN'T bE yoUr tyPiCAl baTtLe, i GuarAnTEE yoU."
That small, frail voice entered his head as well, because surprisingly, instead of attacking on her first turn, Chara had chosen to check him, to act. "W.D. Gaster. Attack, 6666. Defense, 6666. A mad scientist who yearns for the past." Her face scrunched up into a sort of scowl after hearing his stats, making it obvious she wanted to attack him, but her turn was over. Gaster took a deep breath. Now, it was his. "yOU havE bEEN enJoYINg yoUrseLf, haVEn'T yoU?" he spoke, his voice nearly matching the static noise all around the room. He internally winced at it. It reminded him of his first days in the Void, hopelessly watching timelines while trying to piece himself together. All of this reminded him of then. "ReSetTINg thIs mEAgeR PLACe MAnY tiMEs OVer JUSt TO aCHIeve aLl tHE pOsSiBle enDiNGS, to kiLL evERyoNe For YoUr perSonAl AMUseMEnt." He used a fraction of the small amount of power he clung onto to conjure an attack, a weapon that bore his name, one Chara had seen countless times. Roughly five gaster blasters, with their bony faces and all, surrounding Chara. She smirked, having seen and dodged the attack many times before. "it'S siCKEnIng."
The skulls opened, all blasting relatively narrow beams in her direction. Gaster watched solemnly as she skillfully dodged all of them as if they were lazers. She looked at him smugly, thinking this would all be easy. She would just have to treat it like Sans's battle, right? Ha. The soulless child did not take into account how things would be different from that time. Much, much different.
Glitching. With one small glitch, she was sent right in the line of fire. "Gah!" she screamed, watching her own health bar drain from the meek thirty it was at to twenty-two. Twenty-two out of twenty health. She underestimated him so much as to not kill any other monsters in this timeline, thinking she'd only need the twenty health points she was given in the Ruins. Then again, that attack was supposed to yield far larger damage than what was done, for some strange reason…
No, it wasn't a strange reason at all, he realized once the gaster blasters had returned to his side, once his turn was over. Monsters' magic was tied to their souls; he remembered such a fact from his research. The more murderous their intentions, the more damage they would inflict on their opponent. Perhaps it was the journey, or something subconscious that he couldn't quite decode, but he apparently felt more mercy for her than intended.
...But did she deserve that mercy? Killing an uncountable amount of monsters over the course of who knows how long wasn't exactly the merit of a good person. The same could go for him, he supposed, given the monsters he had killed. Even then, the public didn't attempt assassination. They gave him mercy. But Chara's murders had different intentions, different numbers. Despite it all, however, the more the thought on the subject, the more he thought she should be spared. But that would mean creating an entirely new plan… That was something he didn't exactly have time for, considering…
Swing.
A direct hit. He looked at his glitching, unstable body to see a distinctive scar in the middle of his torso. He had allowed Chara to stab him, or whatever he was at the moment. However, Gaster was not surprised. Though his crazed illusion of reality stayed put, he felt himself slipping away. He didn't dare to even look at Chara, to let her know he acknowledged her victory, but he knew she had a complacent smirk on her face.
A small swirl of blue light showed behind the soulless child. From the shortcut appeared a short, stocky skeleton and a fish-like monster dressed from shoulder to toe in armour. It didn't take long for the two to notice what was going on. "Go ahead, do what you must. I can handle her, stall for time. Trust me." Chara turned around at the sound of the portal disappearing, grinning sadistically at them, seeing their terrified expressions.
"Look at your saviour now," she taunted, but her voice seemed far away, as if it were fading.
"Heh, heh… Guess you really like to cut right to the chase, huh kid?" Sans said, attempting to lift his face into a neutral expression. His voice too seemed distant, his gaze never meeting Gaster's.
"You… You killed him. You little… Why, you little hell spawn!" Undyne summoned one of her spears, an angry, vengeful look on her face. She slung her arm back and prepared to throw it at the child with no tactic whatsoever, but Chara calmly raised her hand.
"It would be disrespectful to fight when a monster has, aha, fallen down," she said, causing Undyne to begrudgingly put away her spear.
Gaster knew his time was running out. The stitches could no longer hold together his weak soul. They were unraveling. He hoped his plan would work, that he would not actually die in this process. But it was all experimental. Everything was. He did not know. He could not know. No would could know everything.
He lost feeling in his hand, which was clenched to the gash across his chest. He looked down at it curiously, watching as it turned to dust. He watched the rest of his arm disappear as well, his other hand, his other arm… the rest of his body…
He had turned to dust. W.D. Gaster, the one who had journeyed all the way from the Void to save this universe, had crumbled into nothingness. He was dead, and it was all Chara's fault. There was no stopping her now. To her, this would just become another genocidal timeline, the genocidal timeline were everything would finally be put to an end, a permanent way to erase this world. They watched as the scientist's original half a soul appeared above his dust. It floated carelessly, just for a second, until, like the souls of other Boss Monsters, it appeared to break into hundreds of tiny pieces and disappeared.
All according to plan.
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But...
Sans stared at where the soul floated for the shortest amount of time. He stared at the dust that lay on whatever seemed to be the ground in this strange place. That dust… He couldn't help but remember some vague flashback from an old nightmare… an old timeline that he knew wasn't that long ago.
"W-Well, that's not what I expected… But… St… Still! I believe in you! You can do a little better! Even if you don't think so!"
She killed him. She killed him, and yet she was laughing. Why did that surprise him? He fought her before. Sometimes she spent the whole battle taunting him, others she was dead silent. But this wasn't like the other timelines. He knew what was going to happen. She would fight them to the death. Even with only twenty-two health, with the "practice" she had in the other timelines, somehow she'd find a way to defeat them… She'd kill the others. She'd backtrack and kill everyone. Then she'd reset, because then, her work would really be done.
Unless…
"Guessin' you're not gonna stop there," Sans stated, causing her to stop laughing maniacally and turn around to face him. She grinned sadistically. "Guess he was the only monster you hadn't had the pleasure of killing, huh? Some sort of rare monster that only appeared when you went way too far."
"She went way too far a long time ago," Undyne growled. She pushed her red hair out of her face, once more summoning a fluorescent blue spear. She grabbed it with her right hand, pressing it against her arm, and pointed it at Chara. "You went too far when you killed your first innocent creature! I don't know everything you've done, but what you just did… killing him… is enough to show me who you really are!" She wound her arm, releasing the spear. It sped in Chara's direction, and she readied her knife, cockily placing it in front of her, ready to slice it in half.
Only, she never had that opportunity. Without warning, her knife disappeared from her hands right as the spear reached her. She was hit straight in the chest, a black substance oozing from the wound. She grimaced at the two, seeing a cyan light around the knife that was floating just above her head.
Fifteen health points.
...it...
"That's unfair!" she exclaimed angrily, trying to jump up to grab her knife. Sans was putting it up higher and higher, watching the scene with an amused grin. It was much like watching a dog jumping to get a toy. "You can't do that!"
"Says who?" Sans taunted.
"Says me!"
"Without a weapon, you're pretty much powerless, buddy," he responded. "Though, I guess if you really wan'it…" He started to slowly lower the knife from it's high elevation. "You can have it." He dropped the knife right in front of her, a grin still on his face.
"Sans, what the hell do you think you're doing?!" Undyne yelled at him, turning in his direction swiftly, a look of ire written on her face. "You just gave the enemy an advantage!"
Chara started to chuckle hysterically to herself, picking up the knife. Undyne continued to glare at Sans while also getting in a battle stance, summoning a spear, preparing for the worst. Sans simply stood there, his hands in his pockets, doing nothing as Chara began to charge towards them. "Yeah, it's an advantage all right," he said, slowly taking his hand out of his pocket and putting it in the air. His left eye gained a cyan iris, a fiery light of the same color appeared around his hand. "An advantage for us."
The knife was suddenly engulfed in a blue flame just as the child was within feet of the two monsters. With her tight hold on the weapon, she was sent flying upwards. In mid air, the knife left Chara's hand and stabbed her straight in the back. Since the knife was coated in blue, the soulless vessel was drained of health points after that one, seemingly insignificant attack. It continued to drain and drain like she had seen it before. Fourteen, thirteen, twelve, eleven… Her health continued to deplete on it's own. Ten, nine, eight, seven… She couldn't believe she was tricked so easily by that damn comedian. Six, five, four, three, two…
One. She had one health point left.
...refused.
"Ugh…" she said, slamming onto the ground. She thought that was it, that even if the impact didn't kill her one of them surely wo** but there was no further damage. She jerked the knife out of her back, finding it coated in the black substance. She needed to find her save point in this hell… If she saved, then she would have full health back. Then she could finally show these two the reality of her. She could show them the child who butchered hundreds of people thousands of times and felt nothing. No guilt, no sadness, no remorse. Absolutely nothing. And then, she could that same save point to reset everything.
And there it was, her save file. Right over the scientist's dust. She quickly rushed in its direction, trying to get to it before the other two could do anything to her. She was running after the star-like figure, the small object that allowed her to control this world. It brought her this far, to the brink of the end, and it was going to cause such. Termination of this timeline, the world. All of it was right in front of her. She stretched her arms outwards, ready to be filled with determination, health, power…
Until she stopped.
Out of all the strangeness of this room, all the weird, abnormal, unordinary, odd, mysterious things… This had the be the most peculiar. Something was resonating within the dust. It looked like it was shaking, glowing… but it had to be a glitch. He was dead. She killed him. Nothing too out of the ordinary could be happening to the dust… right? It was just the weird room being weird.
Yet it continued to shake. It shake and glew and started to float off what seemed to be the ground. Each individual speck of the old man's dust started to float off the ground, placing themselves quickly in seemingly random spots in the air. It took more than a few minutes for anyone in the room to realize what was going on as the dust specks continued to stick in a certain shape. The shape of Gaster's body. Once they were done assembling, a bright white upside down heart appeared. A full, healthy, powerful soul.
The dust combined with the soul began to glow. Brighter, brighter, yet brighter, until it eventually died down, allowing everyone to see what had become of it.
It was W.D. Gaster. No longer dead, no longer dust. His skull was unscathed, both of his eye sockets completely open and alert. He yielded a light grey turtleneck, a professional black jacket, dark grey pants, black dress shoes, and a lab coat. A metal name tag was pinned to the coat. He smirked at Chara, holding the save point in his hands. "That is enough," he spoke. With the simple motion of his hand, the entire illusion of the Void was torn apart, leaving the four spread out across the Judgement Hall.
"B-But… But I killed you! I won! I was about to destroy these nuts and then reset! I'm the one who's victorious here! You can't be alive! You're dead! I killed you!" Chara argued childishly, taking steps back in disbelief, shaking her head.
"You can't kill an illusion," Gaster said simply. "You see, the only way I can exist in the Void, even in just a masterful illusion of such, is if I am in a different state of being. Simulating a higher dimension meant I had to use magic to exist in such simulation. Energy, a different state of being. When I created the illusion, I managed to focus my soul energy on twisting all my atoms into massless particles. And it worked. You did not even destroyed the particles, just an illusion. My particles turned into the dust in reaction to your fatal swing of the knife. My true soul, my unfull, weak soul was actually recombined with it's other half in this wild process. It's a complicated method to explain, filled with magic and photons and quarks and a little bit of determination here and there, but I assure you, I am as alive as I appear. Atoms, mass and all."
Chara had a crazed grin on her face, speaking words in between hysteric giggles. "S-So this was all just an illusion? Some sort of trick to stop me?" she asked, still stepping back away from the man.
"Science is the greatest magic trick," Gaster responded. He noticed that she was too busy trying to reason through his return to notice that she was about to walk straight into Sans and Undyne. "Sans, Undyne," he said with a nod, "as we discussed."
Before Chara could step any further back, her back hit something. She turned around to see a tight weaving of spears and bones that she could hardly see through. It was all around her, and she didn't know what to do. She tried poking and slashing the interior with her knife, but to no avail. She was trapped.
"Will you two go down to the lab and see how the others are faring with Mr. Dreemurr? I have a few words I'd like to say to Chara," Gaster said, giving a thankful nod to the two.
"Got'cha, Dad," Sans said, one hand pointing at him with a lazy finger gun.
"Yes, sir," Undyne said respectfully, still in awe about the situation. She couldn't wait to tell Alphys! Thus, the two left the Judgement Hall, leaving only Gaster and Chara.
"You know as well as I that the actions you've done are immoral," Gaster started, earning an annoyed grumble from Chara. "And I know that with your soulless mind and tainted determination I will not be able to change your ways. I know that your hatred of humanity is what started this all. I've seen the timelines. Every single one with you in it. Despite all of that, despite the fact that you 'killed' me and despite the fact that you've almost caused the end of the world, I am willing to give you a final chance."
"I'm not going to change, no matter how many chances you give me," she responded from within the cage.
"Perhaps not like this. But remember that vain research you mentioned? The one where I killed all those monsters, just to find out how to make a monster soul? You won't be powerful enough to reset, and you won't hold such intense hatred. You will simply just exist happily with a monster soul, like you once did before all of this," Gaster stated. "I am willing to give you another chance, Chara."
"Ha! For a man who created that stupid trickery, you think I'm just going to believe you?" she retorted.
"The mercy I offer is not my own," Gaster stated immediately afterwards. "It is the mercy of your mother. Your adoptive mother, Toriel. It is the mercy of Asriel Dreemurr, the mercy of Asgore. The mercy of all of those who cared about you. I am willing to give you one final chance. Either accept the offer, or accept death."
"I would rather die than trust you."
Gaster sighed. He put up his hand - no holes in it whatsoever - summoning a single gaster blaster. He extended his arm towards the cage, and a small sound was heard as a beam left the blaster and hit the spears and bones, incinerating them. Gone with the cage, the only thing that remained of Chara was a black, empty heart that was used to substitute for her missing soul. But even then, it shattered. Gaster still held onto her save file, so she would not be able to return. He stared at where the cage, where she used to be. It was just another person he had killed. "...Then so be it."