The world rocked and burst into muted colors. Bony colors, fishy colors, furry colors. They competed against each other, all a desperate scramble, before they swirled out completely into blankness like an empty screen.
So much power and drive. It was like being filled to the brim with tiny flashing miracles, picking and choosing the points of the world that they desired to copy over in their consciousness, like a photo album. It was overwhelming; it presented them with a tyranny of choice at first, as they floated in their new form through the world held at their fingertips. They could restore or destroy any timeline. Warp this world to the very beginning, a beginning that once was lost to them through countless humans that fell down here.
Lost to Asriel.
Lost to them.
They could keep the timeline going as it was, too, however. In a way, they already had what they wanted, so further action seemed unnecessary. Maybe they would enjoy a save just a little before the moment that the world became theirs.
The blankness they'd retreated to flickered to life and filled again, the Underground returning to a previous state. As soon as they had inserted themselves back in the world proper, with a mere whim they rewound it. A few minutes, a few minutes more. Until they had rewound over a quarter of an hour, and then at that point the rewinding world came to a complete utter halt. Their feet touched down to solid ground, and they landed in the center of a familiar throne room. Dust or ash that had been recently disturbed hung frozen in the air and frozen in time.
The particles gently clipped through them as they walked across the long room. In a similar manner, although they didn't quite line up with the doorway they had no issue with getting into the adjacent hall, without even shifting to line up properly.
Where are we going? They thought as they left the stone wall behind them. Quickly, they corrected themselves. Where am I going? It was once they corrected themselves that they realized they already knew the answer.
Moving through the castle was much faster when they didn't need to line up with every door, or when they didn't need to use every stair or elevator. They glided so quickly, they were like a ghost. They stopped after a few moments, though, sticking a claw in their mouth as they considered the situation. With what felt like limitless energy at their fingertips, the world shifted around them. They moved from point to point in the blink of an eye, choosing as a fixing point the places where they used to SAVE as, as...
The places where the ability to SAVE were the easiest. Somehow it felt as if the amount had doubled since last they thought about it.
There were particular people that they wanted to see, and although initially moving in random order, they jumped to those points in search of them. They found their mother sitting just outside the castle doors, humming to herself. Lost in a dream, as though nothing of any urgency was going on, her eyes were far away by the time that they arrived in front of her. There in that dream she would remain, now, with her gaze transfixed on no particular part of the ceiling. They couldn't help but feel some kind of revulsion, and then some kind of sharp nostalgia, upon seeing her. Toriel.
They jumped to another point, and there they found an argument taking place amidst the dim, sickly lighting of Waterfall's neighborhoods. Trapped in perpetuity, the bone brother and Captain Undyne screamed at each other in the middle of exaggerated gestures, perhaps in the kind of argument that they might have had several times before. They couldn't help it, they sneered at the bickering couple. But as they did, a miserable twist overtook their stomach and they decided to move on. So strange, given everything else that had happened.
Alphys, it wasn't hard to even guess where she went wrong. She was still underneath her lab, hiding away from all of her responsibilities, curled up in a corner with a chisp halfway to her face. The amalgamates she created, free to wander even to the upstairs, seemed on the cusp of escape with no one left to stop them. Maybe it wasn't too late for Alphys to die down here, alone and surrounded by her obnoxious mistakes.
Somehow that didn't feel right. They decided to port somewhere else. To find the two that they had already found before, at least for another laugh. They found Asgore sitting in his throne, slouched, staring to the entrance of his throne room as if perhaps expecting a visitor. In a few moments he might be off, although clearly moving too late.
They remembered a little less solidly where Sans was, in the final corridor. But, when they moved to that point, he wasn't there after all. They thought at first that something terribly wrong had happened, but then they remembered Sans' ability that none of the other monsters seemed to possess. It appeared that he had not been cowering long in the corridor when they found him.
When Flowey found him.
When they found him.
Where had he been? They could rack their memories to guess the most likely place, but they were an impatient being. Their consciousness swept through the underground that they held in their grasp, until their mind came upon his insignificant presence; in a flash they appeared back in Waterfall, touching to the ground and turning. He was there by the water, not that far from where Papyrus and Undyne stood in their timeless argument; he seemed in the middle of a chat with the river person, although it was hard to tell when his mouth never opened anyway.
That was everyone accounted for, nowhere near where they needed to be. No one else stood in their way. Why didn't any of their friends come to helThey waved their hand in front of Sans face and they uttered a careless chuckle, preparing themselves for what would come next.
There were a lot of changes about this miserable world that they planned to enact, as its new God.
But in the next instant, they realized that something was wrong.
They had drawn their hand away from Sans; although his body, like with the rest of the monsters, remained frozen in place, his red eye followed their retreating hand in its socket. For a second, as bizarre as it was, they thought that perhaps they imagined it, and they waved their hand in front of his face again. Again, the eye followed, a wavering point that moved back and forth while the rest of Sans, even the relaxed socket, was still.
How could this be?
It surely didn't matter. The only way someone could resist a god's will was if they were a god themselves, or something like it. And they were fairly sure that an eye could not become god. It must just be a fluke, a glitch, of some sort. Just like the "reset" ability had its flaws, the things it missed, the "pause" ability must have just missed this one too. They waved their hand over Sans' face one more time and dipped a finger in his eyesocket, moving it around and satisfying themselves to feel nothing but empty, cold space in his skull.
The eye didn't watch them as they departed, after that. Unimpeded they returned to the castle, for now, zipping through it until they stood inside the barrier room. For right now, the barrier gently waved its monochrome light back and forth over the cavern floor, freedom just beyond it. They remembered the first time they pressed through it into the open air.
They remembered watching as they left.
No, they moved through it once. Twice?
Their head hurt looking at the barrier, they turned away. Perhaps the first thing they really should do was destroy it. The whole world and every human soul would be open to them then. If they were a god with seven, they wondered what even more would do for them.
Something else other than the barrier was giving them a headache now, it had gotten to the point where they started to massage their head just underneath where their horns sprouted out. "Ugh..."
But the headache was nothing compared to the sudden sink in their stomach when they finally realized what the source of the pain was. A shrill, dull sound emanating from below; their phone was ringing, it seems like it had been for some time.
My phone
Their phone.
No one in this underground could be calling, not unless someone out there possessed the same ability as Sans' eye and moved about when they were not supposed to. They brought their phone out, and remembered that on Toriel's old dinosaur it was impossible to actually check the number. They would just have to give a listen in. Cautious, they opened the phone and pressed it to their ear.
"Hello?" They said.
"Hello?" Said a voice back.
"That's my voice"
It was a familiar voice, but it didn't belong to them.
"It's the other-."
They needed to hang up.
"Hello?" But the voice persisted, and however much they wished to tear it away from their ear they stood in place like they were frozen. The child on the other end of the line laughed a weak laugh, and said, "You've been taking a really long time. I worried that maybe you were at the part where you probably shouldn't be answering phone calls-oops! I guess you answered anyway."
They breathed out, slowly.
"What was I taking a long time doing?"
The phone call had nothing to do with them. They knew that they needed to hang up, but their arm wouldn't lower no matter how hard they tried, as if control of it had passed to someone else.
And the voice on the other end became shaky. "Hello? Did you even get to Asgore yet?"
They just visited Asgore.
"Hellooo?" One more time, the voice called out to them, to them whom it had no business calling.
"Frisk?"
Once again, Frisk woke up from the brink of a dream. Admittedly, this one was a little less grounded than before. The body she was standing in right now wasn't her own, far from it. Yet the tall boss monster body had only a moment ago seemed so familiar and comfortable; now it was too high, too slender, draped in the kind of regal and pointed clothes that she would never be caught wearing, and Frisk's mind was overcome with dizziness and an unbearable pressure.
She knew what was going on, she remembered Flowey taking his long vines and tendrils around her soul, absorbing it before she even had a chance to start their encounter over.
Stabs of fear added to the pressure; Frisk struggled to think, her own thoughts a faint whirl amidst so many others. She wasn't the only being fueling this body; even next to all of the faded musings of children which she couldn't hear, Flowey's thoughts were like a siren in volume.
This was Flowey, but it also wasn't Flowey; something, although she couldn't quite tell what, was different about him. The name Asriel pounded out at her, but even as as Flowey's story came back to memory all she felt was confused. Asriel should have given some kind of warning before he showed up, like all the other monsters in existence; that was the right thing to do.
...Asriel, in what she supposed was his own body, had been standing still for quite a long time. However Frisk struggled, she couldn't force any part of him to move, nor could she direct his thoughts. As soon as she woke up, it was as if those thoughts retreated from her and locked themselves up. They no longer were of one mind.
Frisk hoped that she would have eventually dragged herself free of him even without Blue Frisk. No, she would have time for those kinds of thoughts later. Already the pressure was growing worse and she saw no means of escape from someone's own body.
Maybe this was how Asgore felt.
Suddenly Asriel was moving, walking out the barrier room with his cape and robe dragging across the floor. Frisk didn't know where exactly he was going next, but considering the thoughts that the two of them had before Blue Frisk's call, she didn't want to wait to do whatever it was that she was supposed to do. The only issue is, she didn't know what exactly she was supposed to do. She couldn't move out of this body, no matter how hard she tried, even though in no way did it feel like hers. Although if she did get out of it, where exactly was she to go?
The souls that were within Flowey the first time had gone somewhere, once she defeated him. But she didn't know where or how.
For now, she just focused on the pressure that was growing stronger and stronger against her. It seemed set on pressing her down, even if neither of them took up physical space, and she wondered if she would go back to thinking she was just another part of Asriel if it succeeded.
Well fuck that.
She shoved at it, struggled against it with all her will, and called out to Asriel's mind. "Hey, fuckwad, I need to talk to you," she said without lips. The consciousnesses of the other dead children buzzed about a little bit louder in the collection of souls, but they weren't the ones that she was after-not to mention how utterly awkward their last meeting was-so she tried to ignore them. Asriel, at first, returned the favor. His mind was shut off like with a brick wall, and he said nothing to her.
He was just walking, until he reached the throne room and stood in front of the Asgore again. So she tried again, projecting her thoughts loudly. "Come on, Asriel, I know what's going on, talk to me. I'll list every bad word I know over and over in your head."
"There's nothing to say," said Asriel at once, startling her. He took a long look at Asgore, his face twisting bitterly, and then he turned and started to walk out further. Where he was going, Frisk wondered if even he knew. If he had a destination, there were faster ways to reach it. "You pushed me to do something like this, it wasn't my first choice. I would have even been satisfied with staying in that other timeline, as long as we stayed together."
"I want to go home."
"Oh please!" He snapped, and his lips curled in a way that she had never seen before as a flower. "For a while there, you and I shared the same thoughts. I've seen the home that's waiting for you up above. It's not worth fighting so hard for, nothing up there is worth fighting so hard for. You're just a special kind of idiot who doesn't know when a better opportunity comes along."
She felt the words as if they were coming out of her own throat and, unable to control them, it was as if she was choking. Her soul burned with anger, and she repeated. "I want to go home. I want to live. So put everything back the way it was."
"You aren't in a position to make commands anymore, and in a moment I'll prove it," said Asriel.
"Flowey! Whatever you're going to do, cut it out," Frisk said. Asriel didn't say anything more to her out loud. Much to her surprise, though, another voice finally replied in her head, as she fought against the pressure on her soul. But, although strained and clear it suddenly was, it wasn't anything like Flowey's voice. It didn't belong to any of the children's souls either, the six of them having long become empty of answers.
You struggle. Nothing happens. It was that voice which Frisk had never exactly heard before, but was already familiar to her mind. Now there was nothing left to her but her mind, and the presence couldn't be glossed over. It caused her to stop for just a moment before something changed on the outside, the world once again reacting to Asriel's will.
The first time that it had happened, they were on the same wavelength. It felt natural, almost an extension of every reload SAVE Frisk had ever made. Now it felt intrusive, spurring panic in her soul, as if the ground under their feet and the air around them was supposed to be hers to control. As Asriel tore the ground apart, condensed the air, and melted away the colors, it took all of her control away. Then they floated in a void, where there wasn't even a trace of dust in the air.
The void around them shimmered and broke into basic bright patterns, changing gloomy colors, while Asriel rubbed the tip of his snout. "See how easy that was? I can purge the entire world if I want to, and that's more than you, with your stubbornness, have ever been able to do."
"Put it all back," Frisk said, quiet as to be a tiny blot in his mind. Whether she had gotten like that seeing everything disappear, or because of the relentless pressure squeezing down on her even now, she wasn't sure. But the other voice
He simply folded his arms. "I could, if I wished to. But that's the point, isn't it? I can do anything I wish, now."
You fight with all your might. But nothing happens. Even your own SAVE file is out of your control now.
Even on the smallest level, Frisk couldn't so much as move her arms and legs anymore; they weren't hers, after all. She could feel his movements as if they were hers, more so when he concentrated. The curls of his lips, the twitches of his fingers, and even the sparks that sometimes jumped to his hands; she felt them all but none of her decision. The point that made up her mind grew smaller under the weight of just knowing that much. Maybe whatever that weight was, it had already crushed the minds of the six human souls.
The world around them flashed into some new colors, warmly shifting from shade to shade as Asriel arranged them.
...Small as she was, she hadn't yet been crushed. "You can't, though. You can't do anything you want; you can't stop me. You couldn't stop me all those other times, and even now, when you're a god - or whatever-"
"Well that's going to change now, isn't it?" He hissed, mind and voice cutting her off. The void they floated in started to rearrange into the world again; instead of the throne room, or indeed anywhere like Frisk had seen in the underground, they stood in a swirling snowy village, bright and cheerful. Snowdin? But it, too, was empty. "You act cocky. But I'm the one with the reins."
Even if it was just mental, Frisk grunted as her focus slipped and a thin rage bubbled inside. This forceful creature whose body she was trapped in couldn't be Flowey. He wasn't that nervous coward flower, who stammered so when they first met, who fled from every encounter; he wasn't her friend. He wasn't that person she trusted, the only person she trusted.
Hell, Flowey hadn't even been Flowey when he was Flowey. She remembered when he tossed her into Blue Sans' machine, bringing them both into that other timeline; his face had changed then too. Maybe that was when it started, or something.
So much pain; a stream of Frisk's thoughts melded together into an unintelligible growl. This stupid this stupid this fuckwad shitpig stupid who murdered her trapped her fuck fuck fuck shitty little doucheball with his shitty
"And even after all this, you don't you understand," he murmured. Around them, the snow flew faster and colder. "I just wanted someone to stay."
Though she slipped, and slipped, she grabbed for his words like a lifeline. "I wasn't going to leave you behind."
"Liar." Asriel lowered his head. The wind bit at them like teeth, and the ground grew dark and muddied as the cavern ceiling overhead turned grey.
"I'm not a liar, you're the liar. I wouldn't leave you."
"Maybe I have trouble trusting that."
"I'm not-!" She stopped, but only for a second, her presence spreading. From a pinprick, she pushed to become a dot. "-Lying. I don't know about RIGHT NOW but we were friends." For a given definition, at least. "When have I lied to you like that? When did I ever..."
The third voice said, even cutting her off, As you struggle, you seem to touch something.
"But it's not about me, is it."
Asriel's mind and voice went silent.
"It's about that kid on the tape." If she could, maybe Frisk would have sneered. "And you turned into that asshole on the tape, well, I'm not friends with him. I'm friends with Flowey, you were Flowey. You're still Flowey."
"That isn't my real name."
"It is to me." From a dot, to a blot, she pushed and pushed and the weight gradually vanished from her mind. "I don't like Asriel. Maybe the kid on the tape didn't like Asriel either."
"Stop it. You don't-"
"I like Flowey. I'll stay with Flowey. I wouldn't leave Flowey. I'll be a jerk to him back but I won't leave him behind. Not like that Asriel you turned into."
"..."
You reach out.
From a blot, Frisk even grew large enough to overpower the third voice. "But you have to become Flowey again. You have to put everything back, even me. You have to help me, the way you always did when you were Flowey."
"I don't have to do anything you tell me," he said, but his voice for the first time was hoarse.
There was a little anger left over. With even that small amount, Frisk suddenly was as big as this tall monster body they both inhabited. Suddenly, even that disembodied pressure had disappeared for her. "Yeah, you do."
Snowdin disappeared into another void; it only lasted for a second before the world rearranged again. Everything for Frisk was fading out, though, faster than she could see what shape the rearranged world was taking. Before everything went black, again, the voice spoke one more time in her head.
You have bullied your way through, at least one more time.
Author's Note: In Undertale you have to remind Asriel of who he was in the distant past. In Bunny Fell-Fell you have to remind Flowey of who he has been in the present (or something like that pff.)
Ehhhh this chapter gave me a lot of issues, although I hope you guys like it anyway. I'm sorry you had to wait so long for me to finish it. We have one more chapter after this, which should at least be easier to write, and then I'll have finished this fic and I'll be free to work on sequels I'm more interested in doing.
Next Chapter: The Chara Named Anna