For trigger warnings, check the note at the bottom of the chapter.

It was never a question to me that I didn't want to get in a fight with Undyne. She was seriously buff, she had sharp-ass teeth, and she talked just big enough for me to figure she could go through with it.

But there was also no part of me that wanted to test that theory.

Alphys and Undyne were walking on either side of me, as they often did when it was only the three of us. It was some attempt at inclusion, which I kind of liked, honestly.

It was past midnight in early December, which meant it was freezing. Considering we were in New Hotland, there was an irony to the fact that it was snowing. I wondered if Alphys, accustomed as she had been to living in a volcanic area of the Underground, hated the snow. Undyne clearly did and the area she had lived in had been pretty cool itself, from what I remembered.

I kept forgetting to ask Papyrus for the Riverperson's number, which I was regretting right about now. I didn't want to have to worry about public transportation, but I couldn't walk all the way home at this time of night—it was asking for trouble. So I was on my way to the subway station and Undyne and Alphys were making sure I got there safely. I'd told them not to bother—this was a Slum, after all, it's not like I was in danger. On top of that New Hotland stayed active extra late, since some of its resident Monsters didn't like sleeping much. The streets were far from deserted.

But Undyne was nothing if not chivalrous and Alphys was nothing if not an anxious mess—which meant neither of them were willing to let me go without an escort.

We didn't always walk through the alley to get to the station from their apartment because it was actually a little longer, since it wound around and left you having backtracked a bit, but it was completely covered and Undyne really wanted to avoid the snow. The crush of ice beneath my feet was replaced with a splashing of water where it wasn't quite freezing under the awning.

Alphys was quietly telling us about an anime she had started watching. Alex was usually the one she talked to about things like this, but as she wasn't there at the time, it fell upon us to listen to her. Not that we weren't fans of anime ourselves, because we definitely were. Undyne loved anything with fighting and some of my favorite shows were anime. But when Alphys got talking about it, she kind of talked faster than any sentient creature should be able to comprehend, so it was just a mindless babble that so far only Alex could translate. Because of this Undyne and I hadn't replied in a while—we just gave one another knowing, fond glances and it was enough.

"Well, well, well. What have we here?"

We all froze, turning to find that two human men were standing behind us.

"You got a problem, punk?" Undyne asked. It was the same line she'd given me when I bumped into her so many months ago at the club.

"Hey, we don't need to have any problem at all. You and T-Rex here just scamper along. Our business isn't with you."

Then his eyes met mine with a hunger I recognized and my stomach tied itself into horrible knots as I realized who his business was with.

I had a moment to consider how ridiculous this was. I was wearing a tee-shirt, a scarf, gloves, baggy jeans, and a long, black pea coat. There was nothing feminine or flattering about the outfit. I liked it for the express purpose that it hid my hourglass figure, which on my more butch days annoyed the hell outta me. People always said that women got called out for dressing like hoes. Considering that no skin but my face was showing, this was conclusive proof that the clothes theory was bullshit.

"You wanna dance?" Undyne hissed, and these dudes were insane for not being afraid of her. She looked ready to slaughter them.

But the taller one with blond hair that had already been speaking gave a darkly amused smile. "We know by now that you freaks can't actually dance. You're useless against humans."

I looked over to Undyne, ready to watch her pummel him for questioning her ability to thrash them, but I saw her eye widen and her confident smile waver.

What did he mean, useless? Why would they be?

"C-c-come o-on," Alphys said. "Let's—let's j-just go, okay?"

She was right. There was no reason to stand here and take this. If we ran the other way, they wouldn't honestly chase us, right? And even if they did, we were almost to the end of the alleyway. Once we got out to the main street, there would be a million Vulkins and Tsunderplanes to witness their bullying and they'd let it go.

And that plan was all well and good before I turned around and saw that there were two more guys behind us, even bigger than the first. They were grinning like wolves, eyes shining with a sick joy at having trapped three people that hadn't wanted any trouble. I didn't even have my pepper spray on me—I was in a Monster Slum, for Christ's sake, it didn't occur to me that I'd ever need it there.

Bad day to have that kind of lapse in judgement, clearly.

"Couldn't have a fair fight, could you?" I asked.

It was a tendency of mine to start mocking people when I felt cornered and helpless. I was aware the habit was kind of a dangerous one, but it was a compulsion at this point—I couldn't help the bile that turned to sarcasm on my tongue.

"Why bother?" the same guy said, seeming to be the only one with enough brain cells to attempt spoken language. "The prize isn't winning the fight, now is it?"

I was somewhere between terrified and furious, not able to really tell where on the spectrum I fell. "Wow, charming," I spat. "No wonder you find your fuckbuddies in alleys."

Without warning, the two guys behind us hit Alphys and Undyne on the back of the head and, with no resistance at all, they both fell to the ground. I stared down at Undyne, the greatest soldier from the Underground, as she lie in a motionless heap beside a dumpster.

I couldn't help but think, Fuck, they're not dead, right? But Monsters conveniently turned to dust when they died, so I had immediate proof that they weren't.

Which left me to worry about the predicament I was now in.

Two parts of my personality were warring inside of me—part of me wanted to dissolve into anxiety, to shake and scream and cry because I couldn't go through this again.

The other part wanted to sneer, wanted to tell them exactly what I thought of them, wanted to start swinging and not stop until they made me stop.

Because of the fact that neither side could win the fight for dominance, I was left frozen, staring at the only one who had spoken to me. He was descending on me, all leisurely because he knew nobody could stop him. I was looking around for possible exits, but what could I do?

I couldn't get to my phone without them noticing, since it was under several layers of clothing—and even if I could, what would a phone call do now? The cops wouldn't arrive in time. They might even decide not to come if they realized it was a call from a Monster Slum.

I couldn't run past them on either side—they'd catch me.

This wasn't like the movies with some last-second chance to get away—no door hidden in shadow, no convenient fire escape.

In the moment of mania, I thought of Sans. "No fire escape in Hotland?" he would say. "That doesn't seem right."

Not that I wanted him to be here. If Undyne got knocked out in one hit, what would happen to that poor, silly skeleton?

"Not so mouthy now, are you, little cunt?"

I realized I'd thought all of this in only a couple seconds and that all the brainstorming in the world wasn't going to stop this from happening.

My right hand started to tremble, which was the very first thing that happened when I was going to have a panic attack. Maybe they wouldn't want to fuck me anymore if I was panicking. Not very sexy.

The thought didn't help. I sucked in a hysterical breath before I could stop myself, and the sick fuck—he smiled. My fear excited him. My horror was making his cock hard enough to see through his jeans and I couldn't stop this.

"Please." The word bubbled out of my mouth and my stomach clenched with shame at the thought of begging to this monster. "Please, you don't have to do this," I continued to babble. I saw the sadism in his eyes and I knew it wasn't doing any good, but I couldn't make my mouth shut. "Please. Please."

He came forward and slapped me. I'd only been slapped in bed and it was nothing like that. It hurt more than I expected, but it was my pride more than anything that felt injured. Slapping someone for real was a direct sap of their dignity.

"Shut up, bitch."

No. I couldn't go down like this. I couldn't. He was close now. I could swing out and try to hit him. I had a lot of weight to back me up and he would surely not expect something like that, so I might surprise him just enough to run past. Get him right in the nose. Maybe I could even just try for a kick to the nuts—I wasn't even mildly against playing dirty right now.

Which did nothing for the other three guys, I realized. I had shit reflexes.

The anxiety was flooding my quick burst of courage, using logic to beat it into submission.

If I fought, this would only end up worse.

Before I could decide what to do, the man grabbed me by my scalp and forced me to look at him. I winced as hairs were tugged from my head, but I gritted my teeth and glared at him.

"You know, we didn't come here for you," he told me. "We came to punch a couple Monsters is all. If you would've just stayed with your own kind, this wouldn't be happening."

Oh, that was just adorable. The strict anti-Monster sentiment sprayed gas on the rage-fire that was already roiling in the cocktail of emotion inside of me. "Your breath stinks," I hissed at him.

He smiled again. "I love a woman with spirit," he said. "It's so fun to beat it out of them."

The shaking in my hand had now found my whole arm, half panic and half vehemence. The other guys were chuckling.

I watched, nearly in slow motion, as his hand started towards me. I don't know where he intended to touch me, but I already decided I didn't want to find out. I was readying my leg to whip out the sac-smash of a lifetime—

"Looks like you wanna have a bad time."

My stomach did a nauseating flip as it felt relief at the sound of a familiar voice and then immediately dropped in dread as I realized that he was the exact person I hadn't wanted to be here.

The man holding me was so surprised by the voice that he let go of me. I turned just enough to see Sans standing near the end of the alley, his eyes empty black holes and his grin malicious. He looked like the grim reaper in fuzzy slippers.

"Get out of here, Boney."

"Boney? Wow, that was a good one. I'm scared now."

Sans, you fucking moron. Get out of here.

I'd rather them just take me if it would keep them from hurting him.

I considered still going for the kick. The guy was distracted. They all were. It was good timing. Problem was, fear was trying to freeze up my limbs. I had to get it under control.

"What do you want, freak?" the guy scoffed. "Want to get to know my knife?"

"I'm pretty sure nobody wants to get to know your two inch knife, buddy."

Come on, Riley, you useless lump.

"I'm going to give you exactly one chance to let this go," Sans continued. "You run with your tails between your legs, I take my friends here somewhere where you aint stinkin' up the place, and we depart as unlikely friends. Whaddaya say?"

Sans certainly had a lot of big talk in that small body of his, I thought in frustration.

Then again, so did I, considering the fact that I still hadn't moved.

"I say go fuck yourself!"

"Alright," Sans said morosely. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

I wanted to tell him to stop acting tough and get the hell outta there. Seeing another friend knocked out wasn't going to help my situation. Hopefully he'd at least tried to call the cops before barging in.

Instead of saying any of that, my leg flew upward and made contact with the guy's groin. He cried out and fell to his knees. I turned to tell Sans to run—

The guy directly in front of him abruptly flew to the side, smashing into the brick wall and collapsing to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

All the rest of us froze, staring.

What the hell had just happened?

Sans had his hand extended out in front of him.

Did he do that… with his mind?

He then flicked his hand to the right and the other guy directly in front of me crashed into the other wall, crumpling just the same.

Part of me wanted to marvel at the impossible things happening around me, but my survival instinct reminded me that there were people behind me. I turned to look at the guy I'd kicked and his lackey, who were no longer paying an ounce of attention to me.

I wouldn't either if I were them.

I had only just turned when the third wordless mook flew high into the air, falling on his leg with a sickening crack. I winced, but I was never squeamish, so I didn't focus on it for long. I looked to the last guy, the talker, who had gotten off his knees and was staring at Sans with wide eyes.

"Okay, okay, wait a second," he said breathily. "I didn't mean—I don't want no trouble, alright? You're right. Let's just call it a truce."

I looked at Sans again. His eyes—oh god. I thought from my first glance that they were still empty, but one of them had a blue orb of light—it looked like a human eyeball with an iris and a black pupil, but it was glowing eerily the way his tears did and almost seemed to be on fire, a cyan flame licking the top of his eye socket.

As I watched, it vanished. "I'm glad you came around, buddy," Sans said.

He sounded pleasant enough, but I stayed still, watching him carefully. His smile was still all wrong and his eyes were still empty.

He started to walk forward.

"Nice kick, Ri," Sans told me. "Definitely deserved that. Guess you knocked some sense into him."

I wasn't sure if he wanted me to reply to prove that I was alright, but in all honesty, I wasn't sure I was okay at all. Plus, his expression was so unsettling that I was having trouble thinking about much anything else, including trying to talk.

He was walking so slowly, like he had all the time in the universe to get over to his prey.

"Man, it sucks it got so messy," Sans continued when I said nothing. "Didn't have to. Just want to protect my friends, see? I didn't even want to get off my couch tonight, so you really caused me a big hassle, pal. You see what I mean."

"Yes, of course," the guy said quickly. "I'm sorry. Really sorry."

"I can tell. Remorse is good."

He was standing next to me and I swore that even in the winter air, his body was radiating coldness that I could feel through my layers.

"Shake on it?" Sans asked.

"Yeah, yeah, sure," he agreed immediately.

Sans put out his arm while leaning forward and the guy put his out too.

Then Sans's eye came back to life, flashing blue and yellow as he whispered, just loud enough for me to hear, "Get dunked on."

Then the guy flew into the air and landed in the dumpster.

Sans turned to me, his eyes back to empty pits. "Come on," he said roughly. He gripped me and I was pulled immediately into crushing darkness.

TW: Attempted sexual assault.