Asmodeus and Gaster knocked on the door together as Toriel helped Frisk into a Dreemurr-fur cardigan. After spending a few hours with her, the wizard had left his daughter with the skelebros; while they were certainly invited to the Dreemurrs' charity event, they decided that they had better things to do. Asmodeus had asked to come not because he really wanted to be there- he would much rather be celebrating a Christmas that his daughter would remember- but because, as the only human adult among them, he felt obligated to protect His Majesty from charlatans and chicanery.

"Hey, Frisk, Charles, we need to cast that spell now," Asmodeus said, forcing himself to sound casual, knowing that if he screwed up, that was going to be the end of all of it. Whoopsie-daisy, wrong syllable, there goes the universe. But of course he had things triple-checked on his phone, with both his and Gaster's voices saying different things at the same time.

"Are we really going to just do this right now, right here?" Frisk asked. This seemed like the sort of thing you'd do in the middle of a magic circle, with a full moon directly overhead and pillars, arcane components and strange devices surrounding you, not something you'd do when you're about to go to a Christmas party. ('Oh, hey, before you go, can you make the universe not collapse?')

"We are inside the universe, correct?" Gaster asked. "That is the appropriate place to cast it."

Frisk laughed. "Okay, then, let's not keep time waiting." The Dreemurrs' parents gave each of their children a deep, loving hug. "It's okay, Mom, Dad, don't worry," Frisk said, feeling very worried.

"It's all right, they're not going to mess this up," Asriel said, smiling. "Because they didn't mess it up, remember?"

Standing next to each other, Charles and Frisk looked up at the adults. The spell was rapid, but it took time to take effect; Frisk felt the magical pull and accepted it, wishing for it to work, and she abruptly found herself seeing everything from far too many perspectives, her mind simply unable to process so much information at once, a million distractions hitting her at the same time and forcing her to concentrate to remember what she'd gone back for. This must be the way Charles sees the world, she realized. Maybe the way Gaster did. No, it had to be Charles, because she was seeing the world through the eyes of a million EXP earners, some more clearly than others, and when she screamed "DON'T PRESS THAT BUTTON!" into the ether like she knew she had to do, it came out in Charles' voice too and abruptly the spell was finished as Charles dissipated the EXP from so many of his former followers and she was simply a time-reversing princess standing in a room with her family and friends.

"That was the weirdest thing ever," Asriel said. Part of him had been dragged along for the ride.

"Charles, is that the way you always see things? With all those people?" Frisk asked, her head reeling.

"Pretty much, yeah. I got used to it." Frisk blinked. It didn't seem like something anyone could get used to.

"With this concluded, I bid you all goodbye," Gaster said, and he opened the door and swiftly floated out of it. He had to return home, as he had a very immature person waiting to celebrate Christmas again with him. Victoria was there, too.

Undyne came stomping to the door then. Toriel opened it with a smile and a warm Christmas greeting, and all Undyne said in response was "Good Morning, Your Majesty. Are we ready to leave?" Her head slowly turned towards Charles, but she said nothing to him. She was told not to, Frisk realized. She wasn't engaging in screaming, threats, or violence not because she believed that Chara and Charles weren't really the same person but because of an explicit command from King Asgore. She was very bad at pretending, which was obviously why she was wearing the helm on top of the full battle armor; if she hadn't been, everyone would have seen her terrible scowl. As it was, her hands twitched, and Frisk could have sworn she saw flashes of blue light appear and vanish in Undyne's gauntlets as she struggled not to form a spear. Even Frisk could hear her furious breathing. She didn't even say anything about my dress. She must really be peeved.

As she led them into the armored SUV one by one, bowing deferentially to each of them, she remained totally silent save for the clanging of her boots on the shoveled walk, and by the time she got the car started (Undyne can drive?!) Frisk realized that she couldn't take it anymore. "Merry Christmas, Undyne," she said.

"Merry Christmas, Frisk," Undyne replied, icily, and Frisk almost replied with 'the kid you're so mad at just helped us prevent the end of everything,' but Asriel was grasping her hand and shaking his head. It wasn't the best time. Undyne drove well, with professional precision, falling easily into place within a larger motorcade. The motorcade was only the beginning; Dreemurr family business got a couple of helicopters all the way down to the hotel, the same hotel that the Dreemurrs had stayed at before, as it boasted a particularly large ballroom.

As they approached the hotel, the sidewalks on both sides of the road became clogged with people waving American flags because that was what Americans did, some of them wearing Delta Rune-styled clothing, more than a few with 'Make America Great Again' hats. There were a couple of people holding up a sign, yelling in a way the supporters were not, and Frisk found herself staring into the palm of one of her long gloves as her hand covered her face. Protesters. We've got protesters now. There were only a handful of them, and they were largely surrounded by police and the Dreemurrs' loving fans, who were staring at them with some hostility. But the sign the small, beleaguered group was holding up wasn't 'Destroy all monsters' or 'God hates DETERMINATION' but 'Why didn't you save our son?' "Wait, what?" Frisk asked, confused.

"Figured something like this might happen," Asmodeus said with a wry expression. "I can already guess what they're going to say." Everyone else in the car except Undyne turned to look at him. "It was a car accident, a lightning strike, or some other kind of random chance. We can talk about this later."

"I... want to make sure of that. Can we stop there?" Frisk asked, pointing.

"I am not sure if that is wise," Toriel said, wary. Frisk just looked at her. There was nothing- absolutely nothing- ordinary citizens could do against all three of the Dreemurr children, but that didn't seem to be what she was worried about.

"I am sure it is necessary," Asgore replied. "Undyne, stop the car here." Undyne obeyed, parking the car next to the curb, confusing the drivers ahead of her and behind her until she radioed what was going on.

Asriel got out first, and the police pushed back the throngs of people getting close with their phones and cameras. "Here comes another billion-hit video," he said, having learned well the ways of humans, and the crowd screamed in response. Frisk followed her brother out, her curled hair flailing around in the biting wind, and the crowd almost went nuts. Supporters and protesters, and they must have stood out in the freezing cold for an hour or more, just to watch us pass by. She would not have come out on a morning like this to watch anyone, regardless of prestige or power. Charles followed, hopping out of the car, and there were only a handful of reactions at first because only a handful of people could guess who he was (one man, then a man and a woman, quickly and quietly backed off and left- the Dreemurr kids figured they were the smart ones); then they saw his robe, and everyone decided to take pictures of the new sibling. The kids were all expecting someone to scream "That's Chara!" but nobody did. Frisk rolled towards the protesters, who had police protecting them as well, her dress waving back and forth in the wind.

"Who didn't I save?" she asked loud enough to be heard above the crowd, although she could see pictures on the sign of a boy in various stages of life, the oldest being roughly her age. Nobody she knew, nobody who went to her school. Definitely nobody she should feel responsible for; if rememberers failed to save someone, it wasn't her fault and wasn't her problem. But that didn't make him any less dead, nor did it reduce the grief of his parents.

"The truck tried to swerve, it wasn't his fault, it was nobody's fault," the woman blubbered out, and Frisk was taken aback; Asmodeus had known.

"Please, just go back and fix it," the man begged, sinking to his knees, the sign going down with him. "It was just last week, you can do a week, can't you?"

There was no way she was going to explain the limitations of her power. "I'm sorry," she said instead, shaking her head. "He's gone." Frisk was halfway expecting the man to pull out a gun or a knife, to try to force her into going back one way or the other, and then one of her brothers would instantly take his weapon away and his hand with it. Instead, he simply started to cry, and the sign fell onto the ground as his wife comforted him. Frisk wanted to reach out and touch him, to comfort him somehow, but what could she do? It was only when her brothers were helping her back into the car, Asriel pushing her dress aside and closing the door behind him, that Frisk realized she'd never even learned the kid's name.

"Hey, Frisk, remember what you said," Charles pointed out as Undyne pressed the accelerator. "When everybody else has something that someone doesn't have, that someone gets mad. Everybody else has their fatal accidents prevented."

"Envy is a powerful human emotion," Asgore said. "Even moreso when it is combined with survival."

"But why did that happen?" Frisk asked, confused. "Did a rememberer just forget and miss one?"

"I doubt this was a missed one. I'll explain why later," Asmodeus said again, as the SUV pulled into the lower parking garage and the Dreemurrs were ushered through maintenance hallways that were altogether cramped for King Asgore, who had long ago discovered the art of squeezing through narrow corridors.

The setup was simple: the King and his family would seat themselves at a large, semicircular table, and charity representatives would approach one a time to sit in the center. Each representative would make his pitch, and Asgore would later judge how much funding to give. Frisk guessed that the setup was probably unusual, but it gave everyone face time with King Asgore (and me), which was what they'd all come for. She wondered how long they'd all been waiting and how many hadn't gotten any sleep last night, and again wondered how disappointed they were when her family hadn't shown up the first time. But that hadn't actually happened and none of them remembered it, so who cared?

Asgore began with a prepared speech, a long one with a consistent theme of charity and personal sacrifice. The children were barely even listening; all of it was either basic truths they already knew or things they didn't particularly care about. Frisk wondered what she was even doing there- her presence put the focus on her, instead of Dad where it belonged, and Asriel wasn't even trying to hide his boredom. That, Frisk found awful; there were an unlimited number of fun things to do, Sans had bought them a hang glider, and while boring her was an annoyance, boring Asriel had to be some kind of war crime after what had happened to him.

Charles wasn't bored, though. Charles was focused, angry, staring at a few of the labeled tables and their occupants, and once Asriel heard the fury in his breathing, Asriel's boredom turned to anxiety. While Dad droned on, saying what the humans in the room expected to hear about cooperation and trust, Charles whispered something under his breath. Turning to her with his snout up against her ear (and prompting another wave of picture taking), Asriel repeated his message. Then Asgore's speech finally ended with "So we must remember that our value as people is not defined by our authority, our wealth, or our power, but what we do for others. And it is with that sentiment that I welcome you all here today." He got plenty of applause, even from Muffet's six hands, but Frisk was increasingly convinced that he could have said almost anything short of 'It's SOUL-crunching time' and he'd still get people to clap. They wanted his money, after all.

Charles got up, first tapping Frisk as he did so, and they approached the front center. "Let me talk for a bit," he cordially asked his father, and Asgore nodded and stepped aside. "One, two, three," he said quietly, and together, he and Frisk said "You might recognize this voice." Most of the audience did, and more of them realized which voice it had to be, and the room became completely silent at once. Frisk got the immediate impression that this could go south in a big hurry and visualized her finger on the LOAD button. "Greetings. My name is Charles Dreemurr. Now that I have a mind of my own, I stand with my siblings and my parents. I fight for life, for humanity, for monsterdom. And as I look around, I see some who do not. I see people whose loyalties are to a creator they've made up, the same creator that I can hear worshipped in the minds of so many monster killers and a different creator from so many more." Tension was in the air, and some people started eyeballing the exits. A few of the security personnel started talking to each other in hushed tones, and Asriel started shaking his head; if Charles got really angry, there wasn't enough firepower in miles to stop him. "None of you- none of you- know the true creator of this world." His gaze turned to a few tables in particular, and Frisk saw what they had in common: clear religious affilation of some type or another. Some of them were clutching their religious symbols, either for comfort or as old-school protection from evil. "And you better feel lucky you don't know him!" Charles continued, enraged. Asgore shook his head at his wife, who was about to get up to try to stop this. "If any of you really do know the thing that screwed up so bad as to make me possible, to create an entire species and then create the means to imprison them in a pocket hell, speak up! I want to talk to the inventor of cancer and malaria, the one who's got kids being born for no other reason than to suffer, make more of themselves, and die! And don't say that I'll one day meet him because I won't, not the way you will. I can't die. But one day I will find him, and I will cast him down from his throne, or his admin account, or his building blocks, or whatever he used, and I'll ram all my LOVE and all the sufferings of the world right up every evil, filthy orifice he's got. Are you listening, God? Can you hear us? Can we hear you?" Nobody spoke for a long while. Asriel heard nothing except human agitation, the whirrings and blowings of the hotel's machinery, and the faraway yapping of a small dog.

Charles grinned demonically. "See? He won't save you. Maybe Frisk will, because his screwup let her do what she does, but he won't. That same screwup means that if you ever kill a monster, you belong to me." Frisk suddenly recognized the brilliance of what Charles was doing. He assuredly meant every word he said, but the way he was saying them made him sound vindictive and diabolic, exactly the way his father wanted. Undyne, who was standing on the other side of the room, realized it too and gave a sardonic smile. This was all being broadcast live and worldwide, and Charles was speaking directly into the cameras, his augmented voice needing no microphone. There was nobody on the face of the planet, not even in the remotest hinterlands, who wouldn't get the message sooner or later. Charles looked around, noticing that nobody had fled his presence; most of them were frozen in fear. "If your loyalty is to a creator rather than to humanity or monsterdom, get the hell out of here!" he demanded, clenching his fists, and while a few of the people he wanted gone kept sitting there at first, they were quickly dragged out by their wild-eyed friends. Charles relaxed. He was worried that he was going to have to break things to get his point across, and that would ruin the robe his mother had so carefully altered for him.

"Really, dearie? How about spiders?" Muffet asked, approaching the center table, and Asgore and the rest of his family approached their side of it, the King gesturing for the mass media to leave now that the speeches were done. Charles looked at her in interest, a quizzical smile across his face. Muffet was her usual self, wearing a silk gown for the event, her six arms making friendly gestures and her five eyes blinking irregularly.

Frisk took the opportunity to cool things down. "Hey, Muffet. Been a while," she said, smiling. "Dad, you know what happened when she asked me for money before."

"I'm aware," Asgore replied. "Muffet, we've been over this," he said firmly. "Especially out here in the human world, with so many other causes that need help, you cannot possibly expect me to finance yours."

"Oh, but Your Majesty," Muffet said, constantly gesturing (Frisk wondered what it would look like if Gaster and Muffet ever decided to hold hands), "there are so many types of spiders up here, types I've never known existed." A large variety of rare spiders crawled out from her gown, parading across the table. "Even the humans haven't catalogued them all. And to save them and protect them requires saving their entire habitat. I'm already working with several organizations up here. We're going to buy a whole rainforest preserve, we just need a little push~"

Asgore sighed. "I had not expected to live to see the day when humans could destroy so many other animals through their own growth, a day when they threaten the wild places and not the other way around." He stared at the spider monster, who was slowly drinking a cup of tea. He was the one who'd taught her how to make it, although she had a tendency to include arachnids as part of the recipe. "Muffet, I will consider your cause. But for the well-being of the world, not for you."

Muffet made a faint -tch- sound in response. "You're as stubborn as ever, Your Majesty." She left her seat and walked out, her lower pair of hands on her hips.

The next charity representative with the wherewithal to approach the Dreemurrs was a man who looked like one of Tolkien's dwarves had grown to full human height, his courage clearly bolstered by the armored fish with him. "Your Majesties, Your Highnesses," Undyne theatrically said with a flourish, "I bring you Dr. Grigori Greybeard, a man who claims to be able to solve Frisk's biological problem." Frisk stared at Undyne and the man she was introducing, in total disbelief that Undyne would bring up the topic in a public setting, let alone introduce a charity devoted to it.

Charles was singularly unimpressed and said what Frisk was thinking: "You really brought in a charity that focuses on rare conditions that don't even do damage?"

"Actually," the man said, his voice sounding like he was chewing on his three-foot beard, "what I'm here for kills more people per day than you ever did and more than you could ever possibly save," he said, gesturing to Charles and Frisk in turn. Asriel and Frisk looked at each other, confused, while their parents simply waited for an explanation. Charles theatrically folded his arms, raised his eyebrows, leaned back, and stared at the scientist with the smuggest of expressions: Oh, I've got to hear this. Grigori looked somewhat uneasy, and not just from Charles. In every other interview, charity pitch, and conversation he'd had, he could at least connect on a fundamental level with the personal aspects of his work; what he dealt with would happen to everyone he talked to. But of the people he was approaching, only three of them were human- and of those, one was fundamentally immortal, one could cast magic, and the last one...

Asmodeus understood. "Listen, if you're going to say that you have some kind of magic elixir to stop old age, remember that there's an actual magician at the table," he said, annoyed. Frisk was just relieved that he wasn't who she thought he was. Oh, he's not here to treat my chimerism, he's here to stop people from ever getting old. That's cool, then.

"Everything my organization does works within the realm of, well, call them now 'conventional physics'," Grigori replied. "The physics we all thought we had before this started."

"Indefinite longevity in a perfect universe," Asmodeus said, his expression matching Charles'. "Go on, tell us how that's supposed to work."

"It's like fixing a car," Grigori explained, going into something he'd rehearsed. "Parts break down, so you replace them. Things wear out, you repair them. You lose cells, you put in new ones. I could go into detail, but I tend to lose people when I start getting into detail about cross-linked collagen, transthyretin amyloid, and restoring body parts with stem cells. But we don't know how to do all those things yet, and discovering them requires effort, time, and funding. You can see who we give money to; our financial records are open." He looked discomfited for a moment and said what he really wanted to say. "At some point in these conversations, I usually remind everyone this is about health, not immortality, because people can still get run over or drowned or what have you." He stared at Frisk, as if trying to physically see the fundamental reality alterations that made her power possible. "Your Highness, the only thing I can tell you is that I don't think anyone wants to know what might happen if you get Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or some other form of dementia."

"What are those?" Asriel asked.

"Age-related brain diseases," Grigori replied. "They get people sent to nursing homes because they forget which end of a spoon to hold. Their thoughts start going away. They forget who they are, their friends' names, everything." Frisk shuddered, and Asriel's ears curled up in terror. Charles just nodded a bit, knowing exactly what the scientist was talking about. Some sufferers still had enough mind left to earn EXP, and he lost connections one by one when their deterioriating brains couldn't even support their SOULs anymore. It was a hideous way to die.

"Mr. Greybeard!" Toriel admonished. "You're scaring the children!"

"I hope so," he replied, grimly. "These diseases ought to scare everybody in the world. And they're not the only things. I could sit here all day and talk about blood clots blocking hearts and brains; if she ever has a stroke and can't just, well, un-have it, we're all in trouble."

"He can stop that," Asmodeus said, gesturing to Asriel.

"Really? I've been hearing things about that. Well, good. But there's also immune system dysfunction, there's dying cells and messed-up mitochondria and all the cancers we don't have good therapies for yet."

"So this is a threat," Asgore rumbled, and Grigori looked up at him, seeing how large he was, knowing that if Asgore were made of water and bone he would hardly be able to stand. "If I don't give you money, my daughter will gradually and painfully die."

Grigori spread his hands. "Your Majesty, I don't know for a fact if it'll be us that solves it, although people have come from us to start up related companies. I don't know which of the labs our organization funds will come up with treatments for these things, or if it'll be done by some other organization. But what I do know is that if we don't have a functioning rejuvenation industry by the time your daughter is old enough to need it, nobody here is going to be happy. I don't think anyone anywhere is going to be happy. Rather, you'll all be unhappy, I'll be frozen."

"So Frisk's going to get old and then be little again?" Charles asked, amused at the idea.

"That's not how it works," Grigori replied, smiling. "Adult humans will stay adults. Young adults."

"Dad, if he's for real we have to help him," Asriel said, desperately meaning it, his ears still curled tightly. "Not just for Frisk," he added quickly, not really meaning it. He knew that he should be concerned about this happening to everyone in the world, but all he could think about was Frisk's cells rotting away, her muscles withering, her heart giving out, her brain activity fading, her personality and opinions and emotions dwindling like a dying fire. And when she faded too far away to support happiness and love, to support him, his joy of being happy and alive and out in the world would simply disappear and all that would be left would be a single, yellow flower growing on top of a grave that Charles, wearing a succession of bodies, would tend until the end of humanity. Unless, of course, Asriel took her SOUL first.

"I will give your organization very deep consideration, Mr. Greybeard," Asgore proclaimed. He glanced at his daughter. The last thing he would call Frisk or any human was fragile, as he'd forced her to beat him to within an inch of his life, but the same things that made humans so strong were the things killing them slowly.

"Thank you, Your Majesty."

The next charity representative to approach the table was from a family planning organization that was dedicated to reducing the uncontrolled birthrate in impoverished countries; Charles immediately recommended that his father give generously to the cause, as it would surely reduce the sum total of human misery and slowly abate the screaming he was trying not to pay attention to. Asgore took it seriously.

Other charities came, one after the other. Charles largely dismissed them, pointing out that while they gave things to the poor, they had no power to not make people poor, and his parents understood the value of treating the disease rather than the symptoms. Eventually, as the King knew would happen, a burly man wearing a neatly tailored suit came up to him and suggested a visit with the President. Bring the family. Asgore would not be hurried; he saw the last of the charity representatives off and gave a boisterous and heartfelt farewell, and the group followed Undyne out.

As they filed into the SUV, Asmodeus took a deep breath. "This is as good a time as any to tell you why that happened back there. Are any of you at all familiar with the trolley problem?" he asked, and there was general shaking of heads.

"The answer I'm getting is 'multi-track drifting'," Charles replied, and the wizard guffawed a bit.

"It's like this. Frisk, let's say you have a trolley that's going to run over five people if it keeps going the way it's going. You can pull a switch to prevent that, but if you do, it'll run over one other person. Your only options are to pull or not pull."

"Pull it," Frisk answered immediately. "I have to. These are all the same people, right? I can't let five die for one."

Asmodeus nodded. "Gaster could probably explain this better than I could, because he's probably seen it happen for himself, but have any of you heard of chaos theory?"

"The butterfly thing?" Charles asked.

"Sort of," Asmodeus replied. "It's any small change that can affect larger things. It's why rememberers don't even do random traffic accidents, at least not in big cities. It's pointless, because unless somebody's drunk or high or distracted" Citations for texting while driving had skyrocketed, and some cops had started openly telling the texters that they'd gotten into wrecks in other timelines. "or has a bad car, something that can be traced back to a specific cause, it's pointless to try to intervene, because the changes in traffic patterns caused by moving police and ambulances around usually make those accidents not happen the second time. The people just weren't there when they would have been. Different accidents happen instead." Asmodeus decided it'd be counterproductive to mention that a motorcade driving through on one day and not another would decisively exacerbate the problem, at least in that one area.

"So it's like pulling the lever," Frisk said, understanding. "Somebody who wouldn't have died if I hadn't gone back died when I did."

"Yes," Asmodeus answered. "That may or may not have been what happened there. The only solution would be to keep going back until we have it exactly right, every day, and that'd just drive people insane." He sighed. "I hope it never happens to some rememberer's kid, but I'm sure one day it will. I give warnings about that."

Toriel spoke with confidence and finality. "The only proper solution is to make the world a less dangerous place."

Charles laughed. "Hey, Dad, how easy is that?"

"Immensely difficult. Frisk, do not worry about this. Harm caused by truly random chance and nothing else is vanishingly rare. Humans are born with problems or cause them."

Undyne spoke up theatrically. "But that does not mean that they cannot be solved."

"Speaking of humans with problems," Asriel said, "you think the President's going to do something stupid?"

"Nah," Frisk replied. "Besides, we still have pictures of him bald."


President Trump wasn't even wearing his toupee when he met the group in the Red Room, arms folded and a smug look on his face, totally unafraid of Charles or anyone else. There were a couple of Secret Service agents there, but everyone in the room knew they were just there for show. "Merry Christmas, everybody!" he bellowed as the group filed in. He'd have preferred it if there were fewer of them, especially the fish woman he wasn't familiar with, but he could deal with it. "Even you, you demonic little turd," he said, pointing at Charles, who made a dismissive look at this loser gesture.

"What'd you get for Christmas, that robot fake?" Asriel asked, smiling. The speaker simulating breathing and heartbeat hadn't fooled him for an instant; the robot just sounded wrong. Asriel couldn't blame the President for not wanting to be in the same room as Charles, lest the Red Room get a whole lot redder in a hurry.

"What, that fast?" the fake Trump asked, smiling in a very natural-looking way, and Asriel lifted an ear at him. "If Ross Perot's ears could have done things like that, history would be a little different. Anyway. You know what my top brass are telling me? They're saying I shouldn't get mad. Can you believe that? I've got the kid who possessed me, standing right here in my house, and I'm being told I shouldn't try to do anything to you." General Slaughter, who'd had some famous exploits before getting an officer's commission, had been insistent on telling him what the important half of the battle was.

"It's pointless, I'm everywhere," Charles said, sitting down in front of him. "And, for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

"You won't anyway. I won't let you," Frisk said to the President, quietly.

"About that," Trump said, the robot's head turning to look at her. He knew exactly how powerful she was, but in that dress she reminded him of his own daughters when they were small, and the warm smile on his face was patterned back to the robot. "I have a deal for you. I don't know how much history you've learned, but we and North Korea have been technically at war for almost seventy years now. And things look like they're getting a lot worse. That country's almost falling apart. Even China's on board with regime change. And South Korea's willing to pay us to finish it."

"Seventy years, and you still haven't finished it anyway?" Undyne mocked. "You humans have your super destructive weapons, and you can't finish a war in seventy whole years?"

"Those weapons are why we can't finish it, actually," Trump said. "Or couldn't, until now." Another piece of advice his team had given him: don't call Frisk a superweapon. "For the last five days, we've done full-scale invasions. For the last two days, we've neutralized every single counterbattery piece they've got, especially the nuclear ones. But once we've gotten started for real-"

"You've been using my power to practice starting a war?!" Frisk shouted, horrified. Her mother drew closer, comforting her.

"Those rememberers were to be used against him!" Asmodeus shouted, gesturing to Charles, before realizing how dumb he'd been. Of course they could and would move people around.

"Dad," Frisk asked, "do you think I should just LOAD right now and tell the news that he needs to be impaled?"

"Impeached," Toriel corrected her.

"Yeah, that." Trump's warm smile slowly evaporated; he still thought her large dress was adorable and her tantrum even more so, but he realized that she could easily end his career and possibly his entire party. This was a lot worse than the photos, now that everyone knew what she was. He trusted his own people to be resolute, but both houses of Congress would knuckle under within days. Religious leaders had deposed secular ones before, and none of them ever had real deific power- she probably could have him impaled if she really wanted to. Also, she was the only reason his approval rating was comfortably above room temperature. He was about to reply with something comforting when Frisk said, "Wait a minute- even if none of us learned because it was kept off the news or whatever, Charles, you had to know about this, right?" Frisk wondered what kind of total censorship was being employed, or if she'd just not been paying attention while cities burned and then became un-burned. The latter, probably.

"Of course I did," Charles said. "I didn't know that you didn't know."

"Patience," Asgore counseled, sitting on a couch near his daughter and taking up nearly all of it. "After the President explains himself, going back is an option."

"My deal is this," Trump said. "You help me with this, and I let bygones be bygones, forever. I say almost anything you want me to say about your human son. Frisk, I might ask you to go back more than once or on a weird schedule. Charles-"

"You need me to go break into somewhere and stomp some heads?" Charles asked, and he looked a bit too happy at the prospect for Frisk's taste. "I told you there's someone begging me to do that," he told his sister. "They've got people in prison camps. Starving people. And like I said, they bomb monsters." The scowl on Undyne's face showed her pure hate for people who did that, but Asgore's face remained neutral. He deeply wanted to help based on that alone, but he knew better than to say it.

"I don't want you stomping anyone there, although we did talk about that," The Donald said. Although he relished the idea of the Devil rushing through old tunnels and ripping people he didn't like in half, it'd be bad PR. "I actually want you to use whoever you have left there to tell us what's going on."

"That's not going to work," Charles replied. "While I wasn't really sure what I was doing, they pretty much purged me out of their hierarchy. All I have are just people, not even soldiers. Come on, just use regular spies." Trump shrugged in response.

"I have to say, it's an interesting deal with the devil," Asmodeus said, "but he can't retaliate anyway, so, Mr. President, what are you even offering?"

"There are some things I want from him," His Majesty said, folding his great hands and looking the robot in the face. "Certain causes that the royal finances may not be able to fully support. One cause, in particular, I believe he may approve of."

"Dad... do you really want me to do this?" Frisk asked, shaking. "Do you really want me to help kill people?"

"The quicker a war is, the more bloodless it is," Trump said, using arguments his team had helped him rehearse. "Thousands, maybe millions, are going to starve if we don't invade. These Communist bastards are cracking down hard, leaving farmers nothing from their own farms. Some of their military units are foraging, which means taking whatever they want."

"He's not making this up," Charles agreed, looking around at his family. "It's nightmare city over there. Well, it would be if they had more real cities."

Trump continued. "On the other hand, if we do go in, we expect near-total capitulation within a week. A lot of them are halfway ready to surrender right now. In the end, we'll have a single country with a big national park in the middle and, heh, you think people worship you now? They'll be putting pictures of your face where Kim's used to be."

"I don't want to be worshipped!" Frisk screamed at him. "Especially not like that, and not for that!" Asriel felt the emotions well up in Frisk's SOUL, but they weren't enough to make him transform. "You're not doing this for me or them!"

"You're right," Trump snarled, the robot's eyes looking directly at her. "I'm not. I'm doing this to get rid of a pain in the ass, stop them from selling nukes to God knows who," Frisk just stared in reply. Terrorism, even nuclear terrorism, did not work in the post-Frisk world. "shore up our allies in that region, ultimately increase the economy of a trading partner, and show the world that we mean business. A couple million... people" Frisk could only guess as to what word he might have said instead. "don't mean anything to me. But they do to you."

"Saving the human world is difficult, not easy, and trying times create troublesome allies," Asgore told his daughter, and they looked into each other's eyes for a moment. "Do you trust me with you?"

Frisk looked at Asriel for a moment, who was nodding slowly. "Yes, Dad," she reluctantly said.

"Then please, some privacy. President Trump and I must... negotiate."

"Okay, Dad," Frisk said. "If you think it's right." Asgore's family and friends left without him, as he did his job.

"Humans never stop killing, do they?" Undyne asked, disgusted, staring at Charles with unmitigated contempt. Fortunately, she wasn't driving this time; she was sitting in the back of a limousine next to Toriel and Asmodeus, the three children on the other side facing her, Asriel in the middle. "Monsters. Each other. Their own people. For gain, for politics, for whims. And then others kill the killers, and then the killers try to kill them, and then even more killers come in to kill."

"If everyone were nice, there wouldn't be such thing as the Royal Guard, would there?" Charles asked flippantly, and Undyne visibly restrained herself from attacking him right there. "Aren't you one of us, too?"

Undyne was incensed. "I have never killed anyone, human or monster."

"You tried pretty hard that one time," Charles pointed out before Frisk could. "Frisk's right. I'm not Chara. I'm trying to stop the deaths and the suffering. Dad's right too, it's not easy. There are no quick solutions. Pure pacifism doesn't work. But I know what I am," Charles solemnly said. "Do you know what you are?"

"I am a protector," Undyne said, firmly.

"And what would you do, if, say, fifty nutjobs came after this car? They might do that, after what I told them back there. Let's say they blew up the other cars, and they came in and started shooting. Frisk would just go 'nope', but if she couldn't, what would you do? I know what I'd do. I know what this guy would do." He gestured to Asmodeus, who shrugged. Charles didn't know what he'd do, not quite, because Asmodeus was a wizard and had a substantial bag of tricks saved to his phone. "I'm pretty sure I know what Azzy would do." Asriel slowly nodded. Even without a formal education in the subject, spending so much time with Frisk had given him terrific, terrible insight into the inner workings of humans. Reluctantly, he would use it. "If Dad were here, we know what he'd do. Even Mom would have to do something." Toriel bowed her head. "You would throw spears, Undyne. You would throw a lot of spears."

Undyne stared at him for a bit. "I'm still not going to be your friend," she said.

"That's okay. I don't expect you to be. I feel lucky Frisk and Azzy are." He held Asriel's fluffy hand, and Asriel held Frisk's gloved hand, and they sat together like that all the way home, even after the driver dropped Asmodeus off at the skeletons' house to be greeted by an ear-piercing call of "DADDDDEEEEE!"

The agent smartly parked them at their front door, and Frisk stepped out of the limo and stared, mouth open. Papyrus had placed extraordinarily lifelike statues of the Dreemurr family on their front lawn, and, through lines and texture, Frisk could tell that the three smaller sculptures were wearing striped shirts despite the skeleton only having one color to work with. The sculptures of their parents must have taken tremendous effort, but there they stood, horns and ears carved to perfection. Frisk immediately pulled out her phone and started taking pictures, asking her brothers to go around for other angles, while their mother chuckled and took some pictures of her own. It was still too cold to be standing around outside without heavy coats, though.

When the family got in, Frisk sighed and sat down heavily onto the nearest comfortable, cushioned armchair, her dress scrunched up around her legs and her wheeled dress shoes sinking into the carpet. "So, today... well, let's just say today, we met my brother the Devil, went back in time with that Devil to prevent the universe from blowing up, had that Devil basically declare war on God," Charles started smiling, and whether it was a genuine smile or an evil one Frisk couldn't tell. Probably both. "found out that I'm going to indirectly get a few people killed no matter what I do, agreed to try to end old age, and Dad's negotiating on how to use my powers to help start a war." She relaxed deep into the chair, feeling cozy. The weight of responsibility, of power, had gotten too ridiculous to be taken seriously. She had her magical friends and her loving goat parents and her wonderful goat brother and another brother who was straight from Hell and everything was okay.

"And you forgot my Christmas present," Asriel said, giving an exaggerated frown.

"No, I didn't," Frisk said, her small mouth making the biggest smile possible. "It's upstairs, next to the bathtub." Frisk relaxed and closed her eyes, and Asriel's surprised, joyful bleat on discovering the freshly installed walk-in hair dryer made her truly content.