A/N: Looks like it's finally time to post pre-chapter warnings. Now, this isn't the first character death that has popped up in this story, but this one's a little more graphic than the others, so be wary of that. Also, there's some self-harm towards the end. If you've seen Gravity Falls, you should have a pretty good idea of what I'm talking about.
Whoever it was that said the only thing to fear was fear itself had obviously never stared directly up at the fearsome silhouette of a deranged knight plucked straight from the dark ages, complete with an inexhaustible supply of spears and an unhealthy penchant for stabbing people with the pointy ends.
Though thoroughly offput by the prospect of yet another battle, Mabel shifted her weight to pull away so she could stand on her own, clumsily disentangling her arms from his shoulders in the process.
He watched as she gave herself a little shake, shrugging off the dizzying languor of her latest adrenaline crash with the ease and flippancy of forgetting a bad hair day, loosening up her muscles, rolling from her heels to her toes.
Even if she'd rather talk things out, there was nothing wrong with anticipating a fight, and if worst came to worse, then she'd be ready to make a break for it as soon as the opportunity presented itself.
His swelling cheek, still stinging from its encounter with the captain's iron fist, rather hoped for the latter. Neither of them was in any shape to be fighting, let alone wait for the captain to exhaust herself the way they'd tried with Papyrus. With both of them suffering from injuries that none of the gold they'd managed to accumulate would heal, and the lasting strain of their previous encounter with the captain, a single good hit from one of those weird, wiggling gelatin monsters would probably take them down, let alone a serious blow from a soldier trained for the exact purpose of taking them down.
Essentially, if it came down to a fight, then they'd already lost. Luck meant little when faced with experience, even if some of that luck seemed to be coming from an unexpected and morally ambiguous benefactor.
Meanwhile, the captain boomed out a rather obviously rehearsed - Dipper would recognize that too perfect 'I've been practicing in front of a mirror' pronunciation, anywhere – monologue, voice ringing clearly despite the mask, "Seven human souls, and King Asgore will become a god." It was the same speech as before, except this rendition was even more dramatic than the last.
Scratching her head, Mabel frowned. "Seven? I could have sworn she said, 'Kevin." She seemed exceptionally pleased by this discovery, as though the universe had suddenly decided to open up and share one of its most closely guarded secrets. "Seven makes so much more sense!"
And there it was. You could always count on Mabel to find the absurdly thin, borderline nonexistent silver lining to their encroaching doom. "If we make it through this," Dipper glanced sidelong at her, huffing at the sight of the impromptu thumbs up she'd gleefully thrown in his direction, "we need to have a serious talk about your priorities."
From her perch, the captain drew in a deep breath, sucking in the scorching air without any outward sign of discomfort, then bellowed down with a reverberating echo, "SILENCE!" They stiffened, a sensation similar to that of being scolded by a kindergarten teacher warming their cheeks.
In an instant, the helmet was cast aside, revealing the ocean blue scales decorating every inch of the captain's face and neck, the delicate webbing stretched between the spines of the fins springing from where her ears would normally be located, an eyepatch placed snuggly over her left eye, and a fiery red ponytail. "Didn't anyone ever teach you not to interrupt when someone's speaking?!"
Now that Undyne's full attention was on them, it was going to be difficult to make a break for it through the gaping tunnel ahead of them, but with so little options and resources at their disposal, the opportunity was too tempting to pass up. And as much as he'd love to pay her back a little for some of the injuries she'd heaped on top of both of them, she had saved Mabel, putting her somewhere towards the bottom of the growing list of monsters to whom he owed some gratitude.
Bluffing their way out wouldn't work; she wasn't the type to be scared off by theatrics, not when she was a one-man Broadway show herself. There had to be another way to distract her.
Just in case, Dipper shrugged off his backpack, knowing that holding onto the money and journal would only serve to slow him down. Hopefully, there'd be a chance to retrieve it later.
As he did so, Dipper heard his sister mutter that it felt like they were preparing to throw down with a real superhero. "If she weren't after our heads, I'd have already snagged that journal out of there and begged her for an autograph." Hands clenched into fists at her sides, chin raised in defiance, she huffed an empty, humorless laugh. "Guess that means we really are the bad guys."
"Not a chance," Dipper retorted for only her ears to hear, desperate to rid her of the most ridiculous notion she'd ever come up with – neither of them deserved any of this, didn't deserve to be hunted or feared or hated. And whether she'd meant it as a joke or not, it didn't matter. There were a few key things that needed to be set straight, and now wasn't the time to do it, but Dipper wasn't going to let that stop him from trying. "You're the least villainous person I know," he told her. "You've got more good in your pinky than ten of this crazy fish lady put together."
The smile she shot him in response was smaller than her usual fare, but strong and unwaveringly grateful, like she'd been given a part of the moon to hold and keep forever. After everything she'd done for him, he doubted he'd ever be able to fully repay her, but this was a good start.
Reaching deep down into his diaphragm, Dipper called up to the captain of the Royal Guard, "Sorry! I know we're being very rude, but that's only because we're kind of tired. It's been something of a long day, and we're really not in the right frame of mind to deal with – to appreciate this at the moment. Think we could take a rain check? Maybe come back later?"
Undyne leapt from the peak, plummeting towards the earth with the speed and ferocity of a meteor, until her legs slammed onto the rock floor in front of them, blocking the only path to the tunnel, and shattering the ground. With a crater beneath her, she sneered, "Oh, I'm sorry. Did you need some time to rest? A nap, maybe?" An electric blue spear materialized in her grasp. At the same time, she thrust an open palm at the twins, causing their chests to seize, their feet to stay rooted to the ground, as an iridescent shield, tinted green and thin like glass, curled around their dominant arms. "Taking the life of that Froggit must have really tuckered you out."
Mabel strained against the magic, pulling fruitlessly against the pull that kept her anchored to the ground. Seeing Dipper tense, with the memory of the Froggit's final, agonized moments, of the dust on his hands, so obviously searing through his brain, she rushed to his defense, yelling, "That was an accident! We didn't mean to-"
"They were scared, weren't they?" The spear spun through Undyne's fingers, twirling in a neon arc. "Froggits are harmless, and yet you cut them down without remorse."
"That's not how it happened!"
"You could have talked to them."
"We didn't know that, then!"
"Why not?" The cutting mix of vitriol and disappointment in her question brought Mabel up short. She pressed her lips together in a thin, unhappy line, unable to think of an answer, and Undyne smirked, as though she'd known all along that the humans were merely wolves in sheep's clothing, pretending to want to get along when really all they wanted was to save their own skins. "That's twice now you've interrupted my speech, and now I've lost my train of thought. Hope you're ready to pay the price."
Mabel swallowed hard, glancing nervously at Dipper, who still looked a little shaken, like all his blood had evaporated, and all his bones had turned to mush. The only thing keeping him standing was the spell around his heart, squeezing his ribcage, and Mabel flicked her eyes up to Undyne, who loomed large and forbidding, taking in the dark scowl she wore. "Don't worry, bro bro," Mabel whispered, hoping she sounded leagues more confident than she felt. "I got this."
Straightening, she called for Undyne to let her brother sit this battle out, since there wasn't any point in taking both of their souls when the Underground only needed seven. "One and done, right?" A wild grin had her lips curling back to reveal her braces, as though the dental ware could match the captain's fangs for intimidation.
It snapped Dipper out of his trance. Horrified by what he was hearing, he sputtered out protests, "No. No way. This is not happening," waving his arms and yelling with increasing desperation, but Undyne wasn't paying any attention to him anymore.
"That's a brave offer, human. I'm impressed." She tilted her head, considering. Then her mouth stretched into a similar expression, flashing her fangs in a matching grin, though hers was as much an expression of challenge as it was of battlelust. And it transformed her, made her brighter, more vibrant, a legend in the making with her hair whipping behind her in the scorching wind, scarlet and vivid as the flaming feathers of a phoenix tail. "Let's see if you've got the bite to back up your bark."
Crouching, Mabel readied her shield.
The first strikes came slowly, with the occasional projectile going wide, and Dipper had to act quickly to block it, watching with fascination as the electricity dissipated upon contact. While his share remained at a steady, manageable pace, though, Mabel often had to swing the shield attached to her forearm from side to side, preventing the impact of sometimes three strikes at once.
It gave Dipper time to think, to plan, but seeing her in constant danger was distracting him. What did they know about Undyne? They knew that her armor was heavy, which didn't seem to slow her down much, but there was a chance that it increased her susceptible to overheating. It was only a chance, though. And without any ability to test it, the theory was practically useless.
"Not bad," Undyne crowed, her arm shooting above her head, palm outstretched as though to call down a hurricane, "How about this?!"
Streaking white tails of lightning, arcing high and fast with the deadly beauty of comets careening through the atmosphere, came pouring down from the ceiling overhead, except these didn't falter, didn't dwindle away in the heat. They gained momentum, each of them aiming for the same target, a little girl with a red heart sewed over her chest.
"Mabel, this is crazy! You have to get out of here!"
"I'm not going," she viciously batted a spear aside, "anywhere!"
A spear rocketed towards Dipper's side, distracting him from the onslaught, and he turned, only to realize too late that one had been aimed at his chest, as well. He heard his sister scream, felt the electricity sear his torso as the spear passed through him, and then… nothing. There wasn't a scratch on him, not even a burn.
He patted his shirt up and down in confused disbelief. How was he still alive? He could have sworn… "I'm okay!" He called out to Mabel, who thankfully was still holding her own. "It must have missed me."
She slumped in heavy relief, unintentionally allowing her shield to droop, until a massive spear collided with its surface, sending her skidding backwards on her heels. Dipper could practically smell the rubber of her soles burning as she struggled to recover from the blow. "Why are you doing this?" Mabel shouted, trying one last time to reason with the captain. "You're like a hero here, aren't you? Kids look up to you; people want to be like you, so how can you act like this? Taking our souls might get you through the barrier, but wouldn't it be a million times better if we all worked together?"
Snarling, Undyne shot back, "You think I care about being a bad role model?" She did. Mabel was sure of it. "As long as every monster in the Underground is safe, as long as the path to fulfilling their hopes and dreams is clear, it doesn't matter what happens to me. But how could you understand? You've never been asked to sacrifice a single thing in your life."
A calm fell over her. "Until today."
It was a Valkyrie's promise, delivered low and menacing, and with it came the latest, fastest barrage of volleys yet, as though Undyne had never truly made up her mind to kill them until to this moment. They slammed against Mabel's shield, the impact traveling up her arm, shaking her bones, pushing her farther and farther from the tunnel.
Meanwhile, Dipper writhed against the pull of the green magic paralyzing his legs, desperation driving him to beg for the being inside him to help him. It didn't matter how.
You need me, don't you? Behind him, Mabel faltered, nearly pulling up her shield too late to block an actual, solid spear that flew towards her flank. Annoyed by the ploy, she fixed Undyne with a glower, breaths bursting from her chest in grunts and heaves. Without my body, you're not going anywhere, except right back to wherever it was you came from, so get me out of this mess. Help me win! Help me save my sister!
He lurched forward, startled to find himself suddenly free of the green magic, and twisted, already racing to get to Mabel, ducking instinctively to avoid the projectiles aimed at him.
She was holding on by a spider's thread, back hunched with the effort of holding her head, her swipes becoming sluggish, but her face brightened at the sight of his freedom, confusion mixing with pure, unadulterated joy, and then he was on her, lifting her and Undyne's clunky shield with a strength he was positive he didn't actually possess, but offhandedly chalked up to the emergency reserves the body tapped into whenever a child was trapped under a car or something.
The captain's armor gave her a defense that was nigh impenetrable, but it was heavy and unwieldy, stealing from her speed and agility what it added to her durability, and the weather was fast approaching 'trapped in an active volcano' levels of hot, so even though carrying Mabel would slow him down significantly – and he'd likely never be able to do it again in his life unless he seriously considered lifting weights – he decided that getting close enough to the knight to slip past her was worth the risk of getting within impalement range.
At his approach, Undyne roared a challenge, before charging like a matador bull, a fist raised that, upon contact, would surely break bone. She was holding nothing back, but Dipper used the entirety of his weight and Mabel's weight combined to lean heavily to one side, enabling them both to avoid the brunt of her attack.
Upon entering the tunnel, shadows settled, cool on their skin, the air tickling the napes of their sweat slickened necks, but before they could reach the end – and Dipper could see a massive screen not too far ahead, was counting on there being people nearby, someone who could raise an objection to two kids being slaughtered before their very eyes – Undyne leapt to block their way. "You think I'm going to let you continue standing in the way of everyone's hopes and dreams?"
Dipper set Mabel down, then moved instantly in front of her, his weapon drawn and flashing, reflecting a reddish glow across Undyne's enraged sneer. "Stay behind me, Mabel."
All at once, he felt her stiffen, her shield and its weight suddenly dissipating, vanishing into the atmosphere. He turned in time to see the look of confusion pass over her face, her lips moving soundlessly as she began to pitch forward.
Forgetting about the knife, uncaring of whether or not Undyne would choose that moment to attack, he turned his back to catch her before she could hit the ground, dropping to his knees in an effort to better cushion her fall. There was a terrible, acrid smell in the air, like hair burning, and-
There's something wet dripping from the flower petals. At first, his mind was slow, his thoughts coming together like a jumbled painting that used to mean something but now there's too many odd shapes and mismatched colors to make any sense of it, and he's sure these flowers must be roses. Carnations. Poppies. Amaryllis. Something red and red and red...
Her head laid heavy in his lap, her neck bent at an odd angle, with her face too pale, and something's pushing against her skin, a bump that's sharp to the touch. She's missing – missing whatever coats the flowers, the ground, and it's staining his shirt but his shirt was always red and his hands are red as he cradles her against his chest and soon it's all he can see…
He called for help.
And no one came.
…But something did.
He didn't know how long he waited, with warm red liquid dripping over his hands, running over the skin between his fingers, but eventually a putrescence saturated the air, making it foul, and he started to panic, thoughts leaping immediately to repeated, looping denials that his sister was beginning to decay in his arms.
And he was right.
It wasn't her. The rot came from the ground, from the flowers, seeping from their petals. It was black as tar, and it moved towards Mabel, clinging to her fingers, creeping up her arms, climbing up the strands of her sticky, matted brown hair.
It was trying to get inside.
Dipper beat it back, screaming at the black ooze to leave them alone, to go back to wherever it'd come from and never come back, but it redoubled its efforts, threatening to overwhelm him, until a different figure formed in the darkness. It waved a spindly hand, and the ooze actually recoiled, retreating back into the earth with a shriek of pain and rage. "Looks like you owe me one, Pine Tree."
Dipper looked up to see that the figure was a triangule, a pyramid with limbs, straight from the deranged fever dream of an employee at the National Treasury. It tipped its hat, then growled, "Of course. You owe me a lot more than that, after you ruined over a millennia of work and TRAPPED ME DOWN HERE TO ROT FOR ETERNITY!"
Blue fire.
A photograph burning, an old man Dipper's seen only in scrapbooks and postcards smiling on the front as the edges begin to shrink and curl.
Dipper had no idea what the creature was talking about, nor what the images playing over its body were supposed to mean. He didn't care. "Oh?" The creature narrowed its one eye, settling down. "You really don't know who I am, do you?" Not trusting himself to speak, Dipper shook his head, failing to notice as the dark green star embroidered on his hat morphed into a blue pine tree. Satisfied with that answer, the creature shrugged. "I can work with that. Your timeline never made a lick of difference to me, anyway." It outstretched a three-fingered hand, which Dipper made no move to take, "Bill Cipher, here, at your service. So…" It gestured towards Mabel, "what's the deal with Shooting Star here?"
At the reminder, Dipper shuddered as though waking up from a nightmare, his protective grip around his sister's shoulders tightening. "Can you…" it comes out hoarse, like he hasn't spoken in years. Coughing, he tries again, "Can you fix her?"
"Sure can, bub. But…" The enigmatic being disappeared for an instant, then popped back into existence, much closer this time. It's grown massive, its large eyeball inches away from pressing against Dipper's forehead. In some detached corner of his brain, Dipped thought he could trace the bulging veins and lines zigzagging through it. He took notice of how the triangle's coloring had changed, having shifted to a deep, angry crimson, and pondered what he could have done to upset it, "nothing's free in this world. If I do that for you, then the question that remains is: What will you do for me in return?"
"I'll do anything! I'll give you anything you want! Just…" He's so broken he can barely think. He hasn't been alone since the day he was born. Lonely, maybe, but never, ever alone, and now he was.
He can't face that, doesn't want to wake up one morning to remember that he'd had a sister, a twin he could share everything with.
Until, one day, she was gone.
There was an entire world for them to explore, and all their lives to live. So, if Bill could help, if there was even the slightest chance, then-"Bring her back. Please."
The corners of Bill's eye turned up in a sick imitation of a gleeful smile, but Dipper was past caring, so when the spindly hand was thrust out once more, this time burning in azure flames that gave off no heat, only light, spreading darker shadows that climbed the walls, looming over the proceedings with minds of their own, he gripped it without hesitation.
Bill laughed, mocking and cruel. "Make no mistake, Pine Tree. This here's a deal that lasts 'til the end of time." A lid closed over his bulging eye, then flew open, as though trying to approximate a wink. "Better not let a single thing happen to a pretty hair on her head, or you won't like what happens next."
He snapped his fingers…
The world stuttered...
And Dipper fell.
"Mabel?" Dipper said, small and disbelieving. He'd caught her, and now her head rested on his lap, his knuckles turning white as he gripped her tightly around the shoulders and shook. "Don't scare me like this, okay? Wake up." Glassy, unseeing eyes stared up at him. He shuddered, curling over her with a sob that burst violently from his chest. "Come on! Please… please wake up."
After an entire life of never being alone, he didn't know how to process this new reality. It was straight from his nightmares, the very reason he'd tried to push her away.
Tenderly, he brushed a stray lock of wet hair away from her cheek. "You promised me we were going home together, Mabel." He didn't notice the internal conflict curling Undyne's hands into fists as she watched him mourn her, nor register that she could have killed him at any time, yet chose to give him space. Even if he had, he wouldn't have shown her any gratitude for it. Now that Undyne had her last soul, nothing she did or said would ever hold any meaning to him. Her mercy was worthless. "That wasn't a lie, right?"
Mabel's head lolled to the side, her lips parted, frozen in the midst of a startled gasp. Her braid had come undone during the fall, allowing her hair to spill out over his legs, framing her ashen features with the gold and amber of a halo.
It couldn't be real.
It wasn't.
"Well, well, well," the colors melted from the ceiling, from the rock, from the river flowing nearby, until everything came to a halt. Dipper raised his head to see Undyne standing immobile, still as a figure from a faded photograph, but before he could decide what to do next, a golden pyramid in a top hat and bowtie emerged from nonexistence, complete with a gleeful chuckle, "that's quite a mess you've gotten yourself into there, Pine Tree."
Dipper scowled, recognizing the glib tone, the harsh, mocking voice that he'd grown more accustomed to having grate against the inside of his skull. "Bill! So, it was you inside me this whole time, making me think I was losing my mind, making me hurt people!"
He remembered everything now. Falling into the cavern, meeting this demon in the cave, accepting his deal, and the price… What was it? He'd never specified what price he was willing to pay. At the time, it hadn't mattered.
"Making you hurt monsters, you mean," a cane appearing in his hand, Bill tutted, as though he felt Dipper was being terribly unreasonable in his accusations. Waving vaguely, he added, "Trust me, bucko, I didn't make you do anything you weren't already thinking of doing, anyway." He shrugged. "And it's not like you can lose something that wasn't yours to begin with."
The demon hovered closer, ignoring Dipper's attempts to drag himself and Mabel away from him. There was nowhere for Dipper to go, nowhere for him to run.
Realizing he was out of options, Dipper stopped trying. His arms linked around Mabel's torso, as though he could still somehow protect them both. "What are you going to do?" He demanded, sickened to see that Bill was having actually enjoying watching him squirm, as though Dipper were a worm writhing on the end of a hook, or a mouse struggling under the paw of a cat.
"Memory loss is a little tricky when it comes to deals. A gray area, really. You should ask Stan about it, sometime, not that you're ever going to see 'em. Deal's up, after all." The demon's voice distorted to an inhuman growl, "Time to pay the piper."
Blue flames leapt up Dipper's arm, starting from where Bill had forcibly latched onto his hand, and suddenly, he couldn't move, couldn't even scream as energy surged through his veins, microwaving his intestines.
Black crawled at the edges of Dipper's vision, swallowing him up as his consciousness began to fade. No, worse than that. It was being erased. Everything he was, everything he'd been, everything he'd ever be, it was all being erased.
With the last of his strength, he interlocked his fingers with Mabel's, willing the last thing he saw to be her face, the last memory flitting through his mind to be her smile, so that some part of her, no matter how small, would survive in whatever it was Bill was turning him into.
It wasn't enough.
He needed to stay.
But Bill wasn't in front of him, anymore. He was in his mind, right back where he'd been from the very beginning.
All that time, Dipper had thought he'd been fighting a losing battle, when really the battle he'd been fighting had been doomed from the start. In the face of that, he'd never even had a chance.
Biting back tears, Dipper gathered up Mabel in his arms, determined to stay together for as long as possible, before the inevitable tore them apart, burning him up from the inside as the foreign entity raging through his system ignited everything in its path.
Undyne watched as the boy doubled over in grief, though what little she could glimpse of his expression seemed strangely blank.
Killing the girl had given her no satisfaction – in all honesty, though Undyne refused to admit this simple truth, even to herself - she'd rather hoped the girl would weather her attacks, having believed in a secret, hidden corner of her heart that they might one day face each other as friends and equals, but it wasn't to be, and in the face of the task presented before her now, that of claiming the girl's SOUL, her chest felt empty, hollowed out and scraped clean by disappointment's sharp edge.
Taking it in front of her brother would be cruel, though. There had to be a way to get rid of him.
Stepping forward, Undyne made sure to announce her presence with a cough so as not scare him, anymore. It was difficult to clear her throat when her mouth was so dry, but she managed. "Out of respect to her sacrifice," it took every ounce of self-discipline she had not to cringe at the poor word choice, knowing full well that what happened was no sacrifice. She'd struck down an opponent that refused to strike back, despite knowing full well that the girl had never laid a hand on a single monster. It would likely haunt her for the rest of her life, but if it meant freeing her people, then she'd gladly shoulder the weight of any grudge. "I will have my men escort you to the barrier. Try anything funny, though, and they'll tear you limb from limb, understand?"
At the sound of her voice, the boy didn't so much as twitch.
Was he even listening?
"Hey," she grabbed his shoulder, more roughly than she'd intended, "did you hear what I said?"
Years of instincts flared in warning as the boy tilted his head backwards, thin lips stretched wide in a corpse's grin, "What's up, fishstick?"
Before her, tucked safely away in the body of a child, was something ancient, cruel, and ferociously uncontainable. It's a hurricane, a forest fire, an eldritch nightmare with the eyes of a murderer shining from under the disheveled mop of wet hair clinging to its forehead.
Acting on that impulse, Undyne launched herself backwards, warily putting plenty of space between them as yet another spear of pulsing, crackling energy formed within her grasp. "What are you?!" She demanded. "What happened to the boy?"
The… thing wearing the girl's brother swayed to its feet, moving its limbs in an odd, disjointed manner, suggesting it didn't quite know how to use its new body yet. "Catch me if you can!"
It darted past her, a blur of golden sclera, orange and red sprinting towards the Hotland billboard with the restraint of a caffeinated squirrel, and faced with no other alternative – she certainly couldn't let this thing run amok in the Underground – Undyne stomped after it, shoving her own discomfort aside as the temperature continued to rise.
In the end, none of her spears made a difference.
Those that hit the faux child were absorbed seamlessly through its clothing, and those hit only because the creature allowed it. The rest of the time, it avoided her strikes effortlessly, infuriating her with taunts and raucous laughter.
The second time it escaped her, Undyne's phone vibrated, signaling an incoming call. Glaring at the device, she pondered just who in the Underground could possibly have such god-awful timing. On the third ring, her voicemail picked up.
"HEY, UNDYNE!" Oh, it was Papyrus. That explained it. What could he possibly want now? "I WAS JUST THINKING… HOW GREAT WOULD IT BE IF YOU, ME, AND THE HUMANS COULD ALL MEET UP AT YOUR HOUSE? I HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH THEM LATELY, THOUGH, SO I'M A LITTLE WORRIED. AND SANS HASN'T RETURNED ANY OF MY SEVENTEEN CALLS! I'M SURE YOU'RE VERY BUSY, BUT DO YOU THINK YOU COULD CHECK UP ON THEM FOR ME? PLEASE AND THANK YOU!"
Oh, so he wanted to obliviously make her feel like the worst person in the world. Well, mission accomplished, dork.
"That Papyrus?" The thing wearing the boy called back to her with a sly smirk. "He's always losing his head over the tiniest problems, isn't he?"
The words themselves were harmless enough, but something about the way they were said set Undyne's teeth on edge. Though she knew nothing about what happened or why, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the smarmy little worm leading her on a goose chase was bad news.
And yet… It knew about Papyrus.
She couldn't let it leave her sight, not for an instant, so she followed it past the empty sentry station, internally fuming to see that the skeleton posted there was once again shirking his duties, and then crossed the bridge, heaving by the time she got to the end where the former human waved cheerfully, as though it hadn't just purposely manipulated her into overheating herself.
It was while she was wearing a dark scowl that her legs finally buckled, and the full weight of her body and armor collapsed onto the bridge's boards, hitting them with a force that momentarily knocked her senseless.
Woozy from dehydration, she pried open her eyes to see a cup full of water being tipped over directly in front of her, rendering the liquid that could save her unattainable, as Hotland's heat evaporated it form the wood in seconds. She gnashed her teeth. Had any of her own men taunted their opponents in such a way, she'd have had them stripped of their rank and banned from the Royal Guard before they could so much as spit.
Laughing uproariously, the thing that used to be human tossed the empty cup at her forehead, its mirth increasing exponentially when it bounced harmlessly off her forehead, then rolled off the bridge to burn in the flowing lava below.
Humiliated as she was, Undyne willed herself not to wince. This was her fault, after all. Her failure.
Back in the tunnel, she'd clearly killed the wrong human.
Bill hadn't had this much fun in ages!
The captain had proved a little tougher than he'd expected, snarling and snapping at his feet long after her limbs refused to support her, but it wasn't long before the heat stole even that from her, rendering her prone and unconscious, a victim to his nonexistent mercy.
It was after pouring the third cup of water directly in front of her, but always out of reach, that a flat, carefully controlled voice from behind him said, "I know I told ya to loosen up a little, but don't you think you're taking that to an unhealthy extreme? But then… You're not the kid, are you?"
At first, the boy's body stiffened, and Sans strained to see if Dipper was still in there, somewhere. Fighting to free himself. But then Bill drew the blade he'd seen the kid swinging around in Waterfall, its sharp edge gleaming, reflecting the light of the lava flowing steadily below. "And you're not a hero, so what of it?" Bill replied breezily, now on the journey to his fourth cup of water. With the knife's tip balanced precariously on the tip of a finger, he filled up the cone until it overflowed, then dumped it onto the wooden plank in front of Undyne. For a finishing touch, he tossed the empty cup at her head, before going to retrieve another. Sans watched the process with an inscrutable expression, making no move to stop it. "Little early to be confronting me, don't you think?" As flippantly as it was delivered, a warning was a warning. "I haven't even gotten started."
A relieved sigh nearly whistled through his clenched jaws before Sans could catch it, and shove the urge down. Putting his cards on table with guys like this would almost definitely get him killed. "If that's what you're after, pal, then you're too late. The Ruins are closed."
The demon - whatever it was, it wasn't a monster – flicked yellow eyes onto him, narrowing them into slits. The boy's manic expression drooped, as though suddenly bored. Then, before Sans could even realize what happening, let alone stop it, the boy grabbed one of his own fingers and yanked it backwards. There was a sickening crack, followed shortly by the boy's mouth splitting open to allow for the agonized howl that rushed from it.
Without the distortion, without the creepy laughter, it looked and sounded exactly like the kid.
Upon its release, the broken digit remained where it was, bent at an unnatural angle. The boy jerked, a marionette, his limbs swaying loosely as Bill glanced smugly up at the skeleton, as though gauging his reaction to the display.
"Don't…" Sans said quietly, fighting the chills crawling up his spine, "Don't do that again."
"Or what?" A convulsion passed through the boy's body as an open palm came to rest over his heart. "You'll stick a bone through this kid's chest?" This time, Sans offered nothing. "Face it, Comedian, once she hears that shriek, the Queen'll be tripping over herself to open up the gates for me." Still, Sans offered nothing, not even a change in expression. His hands hung loose and relaxed at his sides as the demon wearing the child's face slowly began to back away. It needn't have been so cautious. "The game's over," were the words Bill left to him as a parting gift. "You've already lost."
Once he was finally out of sight, Sans allowed his dark, empty gaze to flick to Undyne, concern warring with apathy.
Then he was gone.
Further back, beneath the cover of the tunnel's ceiling, the prone form of a young girl began to glow, her body breaking down into small, glowing orbs that drifted apart, rising lazily towards the sky. Then, like a taut string had been broken, they snapped together in burst of light, returning to their former shape.
With a startled gasp, lungs rapidly inflated with their fill of air, desperate and starved. It scratched on the way down, its heat biting at her throat.
Harsh, sputtering coughs hit unforgiving stone, echoing through the cavern, but strangely, nobody came to investigate the sound.
Groaning, Mabel shifted onto her elbows, waking up as though from a dream, to find her body uninjured, her clothes mended.
She was alive.
And completely, horribly alone.