"Do I really have to get out of bed today?" Frisk mumbled into the pillow. It should have been a school day, but there wasn't any school. It should have been a workday, but there wasn't any work. There wasn't even any homework, because none of her teachers was going to give anyone any kind of assignment to complete during it. And it wasn't any holiday that Frisk had ever celebrated before.

"Don't you have anything better to do?" Asriel asked playfully. Frisk sighed. She knew she should be a lot happier than she was- things were so much better, for everyone, in every way, since the last time he'd asked her that- but she just wasn't feeling up to it.

"Yeah, I can eat a bag of Haribo gummi bears." Her brothers laughed. "Here, I'll put on my bracelets." She sat up just long enough to snap them on and went right back to the pillow. "You happy?"

"Up and at 'em," Asriel warned, gently placing his hands on her feet, "or I start tickling."

"You wouldn't dahahahahahahahahaha! Az! Staaahahahahahahahahp! You win, you win! How did you do that?!" He'd simply held onto her feet.

"It's almost like I know where all your nerves are and how to stimulate them," Asriel said smugly as she reluctantly sat up.

"Oh, you are going to enjoy that when you get older," Charles said, and she shot him an angry look as she dragged herself out of bed. "I actually have a reason to hide today. It's probably better if people just forget I exist until tomorrow."

"Maybe you should eat the gummi bears," Frisk suggested, "although that'd probably turn Newer Home into a toxic waste dump." They began their morning ritual, the same one Frisk and Asriel had done for a full year exactly. Their father was still legendarily bad at naming things, so he had simply decided to call it Return Day when asked by the UN, and the name had stuck. The double meaning was inadvertent; monsters and magic had returned to the world, but 'return' could also refer to the one person who could return things back to the way they were at a previous time. And that's what most of the seven-billion-whatever of them are going to be celebrating. Thinking too hard about things like that gave Frisk vertigo, as if she were staring into an abyss or up into space. Thinking about the huge number of people she'd saved every day was nice, when she thought of them as numbers, but when she realized that every single last one of them had individual ideals and dreams, it was hard to contemplate. "I do not want to turn on the news today," she said as Asriel meticulously brushed her hair. "Actually, I don't want to watch anything. Can we play a game, or go bike riding where nobody will see us, or go flying out to the middle of nowhere? Actually, Charles, can you dig us out another cave? Not with traps, but just... a cave. With a chimney, and we can put comfortable seats in it and read or something."

"I don't think that's on the agenda today, sis," he said as he brushed his brother's fur with long, delicate strokes. She was going to ask why it wasn't, but she was busy brushing her teeth, and then Asriel scraped out her mouth as he'd done every morning since she'd saved him. The three kids still lived hand-in-glove with one another most of the time. There were times when they wanted privacy from one another- Charles had a penchant for death metal that the other two didn't like listening to, and there was a system of mostly soundproof barriers that they used from time to time- but they still slept soundly in the same bed, still washed each other, still perpetually had each other's backs.

Toriel knocked on their door as they finished up, holding a gigantic "Mom, seriously?!" dress, two sets of ceremonial robe armor, and matching accessories. Frisk couldn't believe what she was looking at and probably would have guessed it was some kind of blanket if not for the long-sleeved top poking out. Asriel just blinked; even Charles had never seen anything like that from any of his many, many eyes. Toriel had gone full-throttle, weaving together pastel blue and lavender purple with the characteristic Delta Rune and red heart combination, creating countless layers of skirts and festooning it with a large, pink sash ribbon and many other ribbons besides.

"Quite seriously, my daughter," Toriel said, her great smile widening her mouth. "As before, this holiday is the first of its kind. I do not wish to look back and ask if I could have been more thorough in celebrating it properly. Breakfast is ready." Frisk wanted to argue, to ask what possible event could warrant her wearing that thing, but the smell of fresh pancakes was too enticing and her father was waiting for her.

Charles ate a normal-sized breakfast with his siblings and parents. Toriel had learned how to gauge Charles' meal sizes; she had known when he had been expending tremendous amounts of energy in carving out his Halloween dungeon crawl. Butterscotch and cinnamon were the principal flavors of the pancakes- how could she serve her children, particularly her daughter, anything else on a day like this?- but the kids tasted hints of blueberry, strawberry, and vanilla, and the hot cocoa was as thick as ever.

"Frisk, do you still fear public events, after so long?" Asgore asked her when the three of them were almost done.

"It's not that I fear them, Dad," she explained. "It's..." She took another bite of pancakes, thinking. "It's that people fear me, after so long."

"They respect you," Asgore said. "As do we all."

"It's still really awkward. Especially when Mom's putting me in something like that thing."

Toriel smiled as Frisk ate. "I have made those garments specifically for our places in the parade today."

Toriel had wisely timed saying that right after Frisk had finished swallowing her last bite, so as not to cause a spit-take, but Frisk was almost spitting anyway. "My place in a parade, good mother? Truly, this must be a jest. Has your ability to reason been impaired? Is it your desire to emphasize my position of supernatural nobility while elevating me above the general public, thereby demonstrating that I am in a position to be envied? Have you considered the notion that this may fray the friendships I share with my classmates, which by necessity are strained due to this very issue?" was the gist of Frisk's reply, although she actually used entirely different, less cultured words (one notable adjective was used repeatedly, although the word was known to serve many other functions) and an extremely loud voice. Asgore frowned at her but said nothing.

"I understand your concerns, my daughter," Toriel said patiently, "but you are indeed a princess, and your friends are already familiar with who you are and what you can do."

"If aught goes amiss due to my presence in this parade, I shan't repeat the experience after I have reversed time's arrow," Frisk said with different words, including a notable adjective and a notable noun. She stomped upstairs to get changed.

"Mom, do you really want me to show up there?" Charles asked. "I don't think it's a good idea to remind everyone that I... well, Chara, got out at the same time."

"I understand your concerns as well," Toriel told him. "But it is your duty, just as it is your siblings'."

"If this backfires later on, I warned you," Charles replied before going upstairs.

"Asriel, would you like to share any concerns?" Toriel asked, smiling. "Preferably with less profanity than your sister?"

"I don't care that much, but Mom, she really doesn't want to do this," Asriel said. "She didn't even want to get out of bed today. This stuff makes her feel bad inside. It isn't who she is."

Toriel only looked at him with understanding. "We are well aware. Go on. She needs your comfort."

"I think I'm just going to put on a hoodie and go down there anyway," Frisk was telling Charles, glaring at the gigantic dress, her pajamas in a heap on the floor. She wasn't even sure if she was supposed to step into it or pull it over her head; either way looked difficult. "They really want to see me that bad? Fine. Fly us right down into the parade route and we'll just go tell everyone how stupid this all is." Who would stop them?

"If you really want me to, I'll do it," Charles said, putting on his own armor and robe set, "but you know what'd happen if we did? This is dozens of times bigger than the Christmas one. As soon as we'd show up, there'd be people mobbing us. And half of them would be flying."

"You can keep them off," Frisk reminded him.

"Yeah, I can twirl my pitchfork around, people would stay back. Or they'd try to. But everyone else in back would still try to move forward to see us, and it'd actually be a crush of people. It's that kind of crowd. We could get cops to help but then it'd really just be a parade again. That's the whole thing with a parade, that it's organized so everyone gets a chance to see you without having to crowd."

Frisk sighed. "Maybe we should just not show up, then," she said as Asriel walked in. "Or send robots, I'm sure Alphys probably has one of me at least." She started to think a bit more on the implications of that and decided she didn't like them.

"If you didn't show up, people would wonder where you were and why you didn't want to see them," Charles explained as Asriel put on his robe. "They'd think something was wrong, and they shouldn't ever think that about you. And if you sent a robot, what would that change? People would still see you the way you don't want to be seen." Frisk sighed in defeat and reluctantly started putting on the tights. "It's me they don't want to see."

Frisk put on her dressy roller shoes and finally figured the dress out; she'd have to slip into it from the bottom and then Asriel could do up the thin Velcro on the back. She levitated it above the ground, raising up her hands and slowly settling it onto her body. It was comfortable, at least. "Yeah, but it's like you said- erf, this thing- if they didn't see you, they'd wonder what you were doing, and that's a lot worse for you than me," Frisk answered him, popping her head out, and Charles quietly admitted the point. "Next time, Mom shouldn't schedule something like this without asking us. Which means she should just not schedule it."

"It's not her fault, either," Charles said. "She didn't schedule it, she just said 'Yeah, we'll be there' because we have to for at least one of the parades." Frisk sighed in deeper defeat, letting Asriel tie the sash in back, the large, pink ribbon hanging down. Of course there were going to be multiple celebrations the world over, and the idea gave her vertigo again. "People want a savior, especially when weird stuff starts happening to their lives, and this whole year's only gotten weirder for them. They at least need someone to blame. You have to do something like this sometime." Frisk looked glum. If she was going to sit on some huge parade float, she wanted to spraypaint 'Don't you have anything better to do?' on both sides. "C'mon. Mom's right, this isn't going to ruin your social life. Everybody in school already knows, and you hang out with me every day, remember?"

"I just don't get why I need to wear a dress that I need telekinetic powers just to move around in," Frisk said. If everything wasn't Dreemurr-sized she'd worry about fitting through doors.

"Well, the people expect a princess done up for the parade. If you want, I'm sure we could whip something up that makes you look like a goddess..." Frisk's white, warm gloves fit her perfectly, and she proved it by showing him one extended finger on each hand, just before she reluctantly picked up her tiara and placed it on her head. Here we go again, and after it's done, here we go again again. The real downside to her life, as always, was having to do unpleasant things twice. "You're beautiful. You really are. And the whole world's going to see how beautiful you are again." He wasn't making fun of her, and she had no idea how to reply to him. "There are girls out there who would sell their own mothers for a day like this."

"Then I'll buy one of them to give to charity and let that girl get stared at all day," Frisk snapped.

"Frisk, we've been through this before, it's not that bad," Asriel said, stooping down a bit to look her eye-to-eye. He was easily six inches taller than she was, and that wasn't even counting his horns. "Nobody ever went 'Oh my God, did you see Frisk at the Christmas party, she looked so silly' last year. If they did, I would have heard them, remember?" She smiled. "They were all too busy talking about how Charles declared war on God." Charles abruptly laughed, and Frisk giggled; some things were indeed more important than others. "Besides, it's not going to be just you up there, remember? It's a parade for the return of monsters. It's us who are going to be stared at today. And Charlie's right. Not everyone gets to be as beautiful as you."

"C'mon, Az," she said, smiling despite herself. "You know I'm still messed up."

"It doesn't matter, and I'll be able to fix that anyway." He held out his fluffy hand, and she reluctantly took it. "We're two princes and a princess, and it's all because of you." Still embarrassed, but smiling all the same, Frisk held her brother's hand and floated down the steps, where her mother and father waited in their royal finery. Asgore's great robe trailed on the ground, and his armor, while still medieval in form, was made of modern materials. Toriel had done herself up as thoroughly as her daughter, her tremendous dress hanging from her huge frame. It was easy to forget she was the Queen of Monsters; kids at school knew her as 'the principal' or, all too often, as 'Frisk's mom'.

"Are you feeling better?" Asgore asked his daughter, smiling and kneeling down. Every time she was close to her father, her foremost thought was always Azzy's going to be this big one day. She didn't mind having another goat plushie twice her height.

"A little," Frisk admitted. "Sorry for getting mad."

"Oh, my dear daughter. Your anger is a terrible thing. If you had used it a year ago in response to my foolishness, we would not be here together now." Frisk bit her lip, not wanting to think about that. She never liked being reminded that her father was nowhere near as tough as he looked and that Charles still had to be careful not to hurt him. "Let us protect ourselves, and we can begin." The Dreemurrs, all five of them, started casting spells from their phones that fundamentally added up to Protection From Lasers, a necessity in a world where a growing number of humans could shoot invisible beams. Asmodeus, even more than Gaster, had been treating the alteration of humanity like a magical arms race, decoding the language of the universe, occasionally through trial and error on unhappened days. (Frisk had heard second-hand that he'd killed himself thrice so far.) They really ought to be thanking him too, even if he is a jerk. But Asmodeus was so far into wizard-dom that most of the country thought he lived in a tower surrounded by eldritch books and pored over a bubbling cauldron all day, which wasn't terribly far from the truth.

Asgore opened the double doors and strode out, head held high, with his wife next to him and his powerful children following behind. Frisk recoiled, blinking. Mt. Ebbot's residents lined both sides of the walkway from the house. Chilldrake and Snowdrake with his family on one side, Papyrus in a tailored suit and Sans in expensive-looking loungewear on the other, Vulkin, Kid, and Kim using their mechanical arms, even Asmodeus in a black suit (from wizard to mafioso, g'job Asmo!) and Victoria in an expansive pink dress of her own, and nearly every other monster Frisk knew besides, all of them tossing...

Flower petals.

They were decorating the Dreemurrs' path with flower petals.

All three Dreemurr kids looked at each other and clutched their sides laughing, and their mirth spread to all the other monsters, who followed along behind the Dreemurrs as soon as they were passed. "Hey, they coming with us?" Frisk quietly asked, still amused.

"Well, yeah," Asriel said. "It's the monster parade, full of monsters." And he reached out to hug his siblings and the monstrous crowd cheered. The Dreemurrs and Asmodeus got into a limo with Undyne, in full armor without a helmet, doing the driving; the other monsters and Victoria piled into a double-decker, bright-red, plastic-looking bus of a kind that Frisk was sure didn't exist in the United States. The bus's driver was a surly-looking, grizzled beast with a cigar sticking out of its mouth and a checkered cap, and as Frisk craned her head around to get a better look at the driver through the limo's windows, there wasn't any steering wheel and she could have sworn the driver had no legs-

"What- who- is that?" she asked.

"That is Nightbus," Asgore explained. "He formed a couple of months ago in England. He doesn't take any passengers over 60 pounds each, so, as you can imagine, he caused something of a stir." Frisk wondered what his regular route was and what it was like for the monsters and small children who rode him. Maybe they ride him to school... do they have monster schools over there? Without anything better to do, she pulled out her phone to check. Of course they did. Diners had copied Toriel's recipes; educational authorities had copied Toriel's school, with varying degrees of success.

Undyne drove the Dreemurrs down to the airfield, Nightbus following behind. Four Tsunderplanes were sitting on the tarmac, close (but not too close!) to a series of planes, including a cargo helicopter big enough for Nightbus, and the Dreemurrs were formally led into a plane by silent dress-uniform Marines. The plane was opulent, even swanky, with cushioned leather seats and a stewardess who offered them food and drink even though they'd just got done eating Mom's breakfast. Frisk half-expected a chandelier to be hanging from the ceiling, as little sense as that made. Toriel spent time running her furry fingers through Frisk's hair, curling it in waves.

The plane landed and Frisk floated down the steps with her brothers, giving a deep sigh. "Still nervous?" Asriel asked, smiling. He had several ways of telling, the first of which was just looking at her.

"Let's just get this over with," she said. A large, inconspicuous van took them to the parade staging ground, a chaotic place full of floats, monsters and several teams of human support. With His Majesty present, the rambunctious monsters quickly fell into line, and Asgore wasted no time in giving out instructions, reminding each monster of its order in the parade. Asriel's eyes were wide open, looking around at the panoply of monsters preparing to participate. Many of them spotted him and waved. A huge, whale-like monster with a ball on its tail and large, flapping wings fidgeted irritably in mid-air; Frisk asked who that was, and Asriel was surprised she'd never seen Glyde from her time in the Underground. Some they knew from the news; the regal-looking chimeric monster was a qilin, and the quadruple-winged birds with stars and stripes decorating their feathers were Freedom Eagles. Others were unfamiliar to both of them: a few strange collections of connected boxes that budded and resorbed themselves constantly, jet-black goblins that were practicing juggling sticks for the parade, a few burly-looking trolls with fur on their bottom halves, and a full-sized dragon with gossamer wings that flitted around like a hummingbird despite its size. "Dad, who's that?" Asriel asked once Asgore had finished giving commands.

"That's Dragonfly," Asgore said. "He and I do not always see eye to eye." As if to prove his point, Dragonfly took one look at Charles and hissed.

"If you're going to start yelling things at each other, warn me first," Frisk said, looking around. Charles could actually do a Fus Ro Dah, although that much moving air tended to do quite a bit more collateral damage than was in the game.

Asriel giggled. "I've never even heard of some of these monsters. I mean, who are those?" Asriel pointed to the connected boxes.

"Those are Cubici," Asgore replied. Frisk wondered whether her father had studied monsterkind or if, as King of Monsters, he had a supernatural ability to know them.

"Hey, Frisk, Charlie, you see any really weird ones?" Charles failed to resist the opportunity and pointed directly at his brother, causing Frisk to lose it and Asriel to slap his hands over his face, wondering how he'd been fool enough to walk right into that.

After she was done laughing, Frisk looked around, trying to figure out where she was. A large, round building stood to the north, and past that was a temporary, decorated fence. Large sheets of Dreemurr-purple cloth, divided down the middle, stood on bridges to the northwest and the northeast. To the south was the freeway, which was blocked from view by an even taller set of temporary poles and decorative cloth. The parade was oriented towards the northwest; they'd make some kind of clockwise circle before the day was done. Frisk clenched her hands slightly, pursing her lips. Once they got started, there was no stopping it, unless something horrible happened or Frisk wanted to do something really drastic that she wasn't going to do, such as snap her fingers and nope out in her singular way. "I don't even know what that building is," she said, expecting Charles to answer. She'd seen it before, she was sure, but if she pulled out her phone she'd get an idea of the size of the parade route, and she really didn't want to know that.

"Jefferson Memorial," Asriel answered before Charles could. After a year, he knew geography cold and was branching out to astronomy. It was still his continent, his planet, his great universe.

"Az, you know this stuff well," Frisk noted. "I'm surprised you've memorized so much."

"I'll explain after this is over," Asriel said. "C'mon. It's ready for us."

What was ready for them was a white-and-gold parade float exactly wide enough to fit on the two-lane bridge and its sidewalks. The Dreemurr king and queen were given lofty, elaborate perches, the Delta Rune in stylized golden filigree above them. Below them were brightly decorated thrones for their children, with a place for Asriel in the center and Charles to his left (Charles found this hilarious; when Frisk asked why, all he said was "old meaning of 'sinister'") and Frisk to his right. Undyne stood as a figurehead ahead of the children, striking a heroic pose that she planned on holding the whole way. Someone was about to give Frisk a hand up, because climbing on anything in the monstrosity she was wearing was out of the question, but she was already embarrassed enough and simply floated up there instead. Of course, the Dreemurrs got the center position; the goblins would lead the way ahead, marching like majorettes, with Glyde and Dragonfly competing for attention overhead. In front of them, a chilled float held Icedrakes, Frosty the Snowspy, and a tough-looking wolf that Frisk didn't know the name of, and many other unrecognizable snow monsters besides, with the trolls positioned beside it; then a hot metal float featured its own unrecognizable monsters plus Vulkins, Pyropes, and Hotguy Burningman or whatever his name was. (Grillby wasn't there; he was absolutely open for the holiday and was showing parade coverage on every TV in his establishment.) Behind them, Mettaton EX practiced his own poses, and at the back, a combined human and monstrous orchestra started rehearsing a song that Frisk felt she should recognize. Oh, yeah, it sounded kind of like her ringtone, but slower and much richer. (Doh, dee, dah... dah, dee, doh...) Sans and Papyrus weren't there; Frisk thought that maybe Papyrus was in court or something, but that didn't make sense because this was an actual holiday.

Lacking better things to do, she called Sans; he picked up at once. "Hey, Sans, you're not participating?" she asked over the din.

"eh, our holiday was last month. they wanna see dreemurrs, not femurs. glad you decided to come." Of course he knew she didn't want to.

"WE'LL BE CHEERING FOR YOU!" Frisk heard Papyrus shout through Sans' phone.

"Yeah, I know. Just wanted to check." Sighing, she clicked off. It was easy to get bored waiting, but that was what phones were also for. She casually checked the Internet for people talking about her parade; browsing past the extensive corporate sponsorships (MTT was one of the chief sponsors; it wasn't hard to guess who those cameras would be focused on), she swiftly got a livestream showcasing the festive mood. She saw the people lined on both sides of the streets, her stomach churning and her gloved hands trembling, and the first time someone on the stream mentioned her name, she quickly turned her phone off. You knew it was going to be like this! she inwardly cursed herself. Everyone wants to see all the monsters and you, the freaking princess of time! You knew! You knew! "Try to relax, Frisk," Asriel said. "What's the worst thing that could possibly happen here, and what could you do about it?" He had a point.

"All you have to do is smile and wave," Charles reminded her. "Today, you're just here to look pretty. And I still think you're good at it." Biting her lip, her face going red, Frisk took deep breaths to try to control her anxiety. She knew it was silly. She knew she'd been seen by everyone in the world many, many times before this. She knew it was just a big formality, a senseless annual celebration that made companies money just like every other holiday did.

But, still, a parade?

It started later than she expected and sooner than she would have liked. Freedom Eagles, true to their name, wouldn't follow the path of the parade and took off in random directions; the sparklebirds followed the eagles, and the band began playing in earnest. The great curtain parted, and the goblins strutted through first, marching in perfect harmony. Past the bridge, on both sides of the road, people were kept back by a 20-foot-high rope fence onto which magically gifted children held (Frisk recognized a couple of them from school), floating and shouting, as cops with echolocation goggles constantly scanned the crowd, searching for invisible saboteurs. The curtains were completely parted by the time the heat-related float rolled through, for obvious reasons, and that was when people started seeing the Dreemurrs and the real screaming started. To Frisk's surprise, some of the people on both sides of the river had their backs turned, but it wasn't hard to see why: aquatic monsters of every type played both in the Potomac River and the Tidal Basin. Little kids, some of them magical, whipped their heads back and forth trying to see everything at once. Frisk did the one thing expected of her: she smiled and waved graciously, not disappointing everyone who had come out to see her. Her brothers did the same thing, and some teenagers in black leather pumped their fists after being waved at by Charles. Frisk tried to pretend she was an actress, just playing a role for the crowds, but they had come to see her as herself and she couldn't keep that attitude up for long. This isn't really me, she wanted to shout at them, but that would have made everyone, including the crowds and her parents, upset.

Ten minutes later, they were passing the Lincoln Memorial and her wrists were getting tired. She'd switched arms both times, but after so long she was no longer doing the enthusiastic wave of a proud princess but the generic yeah, here's your wave of a very bored rich girl. Her smile wasn't going anywhere, though; it was a grimace fixed on her face. She really should have asked in advance how long this was going to go on, she realized, and the uncountable numbers of people (it's a holiday, the first one of its kind, what else are they going to do) never flagged in the slightest. If anything, the crowds grew by the time the group reached the National Mall, and more than once Frisk spied flying cops stopping overenthusiastic kids who were floating above or on the wrong side of the barrier. The noise was starting to get to her, an endless yelling crowd only overshadowed by the powerful playing of the band. She glanced up at her parents to see how they were doing; Toriel was giving a steady, gentle wave, and her husband was looking as stately as he could, smiling his great smile at the humans. Frisk could only guess at what he was thinking. Colonial America feared them; corporate America made them a spectacle.

Every single one of the humans watching this was an individual, she tried to remind herself. The ones calling her name- and there were many- wanted Frisk to wave at them, to see her seeing them, to catch her on their cameras, to be part of a memorable moment; to deny them that because she was feeling a bit tired was selfish, even if she would simply undo it all with a thought, only to do it again. She heard a vaguely familiar voice calling her name, and she saw three very ugly people standing in the back of the crowd: one older teenager that looked like she'd been eating butter-flavored ice cream with sides of butter for three meals a day, a mother who looked like she'd eaten the same thing for five meals a day (they looked almost like grotesque cartoon versions of her not-sister and not-mother, Frisk realized, putting the image out of her head), and one nearly skeletal Asian-ish man who looked almost like her not-father, only with grayer hair and a look of resignation permanently welded to his face. She gave them the same generic wave she gave everyone else, trying not to show how disturbed she was. I hope I don't see that next time. I need more sleep and less anxiety.

On Constitution Avenue, a block from the White House, a large podium featured the Presidential family; Sans and Papyrus were there with them, cheering as promised, as were Asmodeus and his daughter, and Frisk found the strength to give enthusiastic waves to her friends. Victoria rocketed up from her seat in her pink dress and flew to the rope barrier, waving her hand through it and creating a memorable picture. Only almost nobody's going to remember it. Her father carried her down, pretending to be angry, which he was very good at.

The parade turned south, towards the Washington Monument, and by the time they got to that great erection, Frisk's wrists were getting pins and needles every time she switched arms to wave. She drew strength from watching Undyne in her rigid pose, as she'd done so many times before in gym class; monsters were weaker than humans, and if Undyne could perform a feat of endurance, she could too. Still, by the time the curtain appeared in view, making Frisk sigh in relief, her arms felt like dead weights and she seriously wondered if her bracelets were going yellow under the sleeves. Her left arm fell clunkily to her side after they passed through. "Finally," she said.

"You did not need to keep waving the whole time," Toriel pointed out.

"Everyone wanted a wave," Frisk said. "So that's what I did." With her arms hanging limply at her sides, she felt like she had some idea what Monster Kid had to go through before technology had given him his own pair. As the Dreemurrs offered their goodbyes, she gave one final, painful wave to the monsters who'd shown up to participate (Glyde and Dragonfly seemed disappointed that it was over, even after having done tricks for more than a hour), and then she sat heavily in the van, just wanting to go home.

"That one part couldn't have been fun," Asriel said, sidling in beside her, the two scooting over to make room for Charles.

"What part? Oh, you must have noticed. I saw some people who looked almost like my not-family, but they were really messed up."

Asriel's long jaw dropped in amazement. Charles' eyes lit up, and he started chuckling heartedly. "Brutal! That is savage! Frisk, you really shouldn't, though. I can be like that. You shouldn't be."

"Yeah, that's pretty harsh," Asriel agreed, giggling boisterously. "I know you hate them, but I didn't think you were that annoyed by all this."

"Wait, what... that was actually them?" Her brothers busted out laughing, Charles with tears in his eyes and Asriel's hands covering his ears, which in turn were covering his face. "No, seriously! I saw they kind of looked like them, but..." Her brothers were still hysterically, riotously cracking up, Charles holding his brother as if for support.

"I don't know if that was the best or the worst thing I've ever heard you say," Charles said. "Mom, Dad, what do you think, best or worst?"

"I think," Toriel said primly, "that forgetting about bad and unimportant things" Charles' lips pursed in an O of amazement. His mom was even more brutal! "is a sensible way to go through life."

"I concur," Asgore added. "There is little sense in worrying about that which does not matter." This time, it was Asriel who pursed his lips.

"I should have been recording this conversation," Charles said. "Not that it'll last after a LOAD, I just wanted to send it to them. Just to see what happens."

"My whole family's mean," Asriel said, laughing. "The only way I could fit in is if I took off my bracelets and jumped out of a plane."

"I'd say I'd jump out after you, but you'd fall a lot faster than I would," Frisk said, gesturing to her parachute-like dress.

"You sounded like you enjoyed yourselves after all," Toriel said kindly, a satisfied smile on her face.

"It was all right, nothing I worried about happened, so there's that," Charles said, shrugging. Frisk and Asriel weren't sure they wanted to know what he had been worried about.

"Mom, it was great, but... I think it would have been better to watch the parade instead of being in it," Asriel said, smiling.

"What he said," Frisk added, nodding her head. He'd found the right words. She would have loved to have attended invisibly or in disguise, although someone with goggles would have seen through the invisibility and disguising Asriel would have been nearly impossible. Asgore and his wife got to talking about the people they recognized while on parade, and Frisk wanted to while away the time on her phone, but her hands were effectively giving her the finger and she just closed her eyes instead. Once they arrived home, Toriel immediately got started on lunch and Frisk reluctantly let her brother help take off the dress after he'd tossed off his robe and armor; it felt very appropriate to wear, as she didn't want to move and it didn't either. Her bracelets were still, surprisingly, bright green.

"Hey, Frisk, you asked before how I can remember so much stuff so easily," Asriel said after she put on a much lighter, much cozier housedress and her brothers had gone back to shirt and pants. "It's magic. No, seriously, that's the explanation. You know how I can use your human strength to do stuff?" Frisk nodded. "It's the same for thinking. I don't actually have a brain, remember? It's just a magical pattern, it's what I am. It's what all monsters are. I just get to do things with my pattern that other monsters can't." He hugged her abruptly, his snootle behind her shoulder and his growing, fluffy arms around her back. "I still don't have a SOUL, Frisk. All I have is you." Seeing the two of them like that, Charles couldn't help but join in, his outstretched arms ever-so-gently hugging both of them.

"Haven't we been awkward enough for one day?" Frisk asked into Asriel's fur, with a smile on her face and in her voice. "There is one more thing I was wondering," she continued, grinning into his chest and her fingers wiggling behind his back. "Az, are you ticklish?"

"Frisk! CHARLIE!"

He was.