Sorry about the long wait, guys. I started new classes, and then I kinda needed to recover my M est P writing mindset, because inspiration was NOT forthcoming (that's what I get for looking at Bittybones stuff and watching Steven Universe when I should be writing fanfics, I guess, haha), but hey, I'm back! Better late than never!


There were many moments of self-doubt that had been had over the course of the various timelines they'd lived through. Being an ambassador of monster-kind was rarely smooth sailing – there were so many decisions to be made, people to talk to, and if the particular meeting or conversation they were participating in hadn't been repeated yet, they had no way of knowing exactly what the consequences of their actions would be.

They'd experienced a lot of moments of doubt over the last several years since the monsters surfaced a second time, but those moments paled in comparison to the moment that Frisk was feeling right now.

Sitting wide awake in their hotel, with the sun having long since gone down, Frisk tried very, very hard not to think too much about their doubt, to no avail. The room was completely barren of distractions – it was eerily quiet. Toriel was asleep, her breathing quiet and calm. Flowey (who had refused to leave Frisk alone after everything that had happened) was disconcertingly quiet as well, head hanging and petals folded around his face. The faint shuffling and noises from the guards that the police chief had posted outside their door were no longer audible. Even the faint sounds of the outside world did nothing to break the uneasy hush floating in the air around them, and so Frisk was left with only Chara's silent presence and their own worried thoughts.

Should I have waited longer before contacting him?

They'd gotten a reply to their email to Anonymous only a few minutes after they'd sent it. Their phone (which Toriel had picked up off the street after their abduction) had chimed just as they were mounting the cart waiting for them and their friends outside the station, and when they'd flipped the thing open and seen the notification, they hadn't been able to suppress a touch of apprehension.

The apprehension had only grown when they'd read the email itself.

To Frisk Dreemurr

From Anonymous

Congratulations for correctly guessing my identity, Frisk. I apologize for the secrecy – however, I doubt that my apology is one that you are seeking at the moment.

The meeting time and place you specified are doable – however, if you have any wish to contact any of our mutual acquaintances, I must warn you that any that would be present at the meeting would not be there officially. Their superiors would certainly not approve of this meeting you have insisted upon.

Frisk let out a breath, and, after a brief glance at the monsters in the room, to make sure they were still asleep, they took out their phone and flipped it open to scan the email chain for what felt like the billionth time that night.

Not there officially could mean many things. It could mean that the fairies there simply would not report to their superiors afterward. But it could also mean that, as they are not acting officially, their government can completely deny involvement with whatever happens there. Should I have been more careful?

After reading Anonymous's – Artemis's – response, Frisk had shown it to the monsters, and Toriel had frowned, obviously picking up on the same worrisome undertones that Frisk themselves had. However, she'd left it up to Frisk to respond, and they had done so as the cart rattled through the streets of Dublin.

From Frisk Dreemurr

I will be bringing several monsters with me.

From Anonymous

I anticipated as much. The Queen and Flowey will be among them, I presume?

From Frisk Dreemurr

Yes, along with several others.

From Anonymous

Will you be in need of transport?

Frisk, at this point, had looked up at the monsters crowded around them in the cart, both to hide them from view and to read over their shoulder as they typed.

"Like hell I'd trust any transport from him now," Undyne growled.

"B-But Undyne, h-how else are we going to get there? We don't have the money for such a long trip at such short notice…"

The monsters had descended into uneasy conversation – conversation that had been interrupted when Frisk broke in with a suggestion.

"What about Sans's shortcuts? He's been to the fairy roses before."

Sans and the other monsters had agreed to it – though Papyrus had insisted on coming along once his brother had agreed. Something about making sure that lazybones can make the trip! But regardless of whether or not they'd all agreed, Frisk couldn't help but wonder if that had been yet another mistake.

Should I have suggested that?

They had no idea if Sans was even capable of transporting that many people at once. He hadn't said if he was capable of it or not, either. And Papyrus's explanation for wanting to come along…

And even without the magical side of things in mind, teleporting directly into the middle of a secure estate like Fowl Manor might send a message they weren't prepared to back up. A message that said see what we're capable of? Don't mess with us.

Fairy souls might be stronger than monster souls. In fact, they probably are. I don't think they're going to risk an ambush since I didn't specify how we would be arriving when I replied, but… what if they do? What if we teleport right into the middle of a trap? There's no way the monsters would survive.

Frisk let out a shuddering breath and closed the phone again.

It's too late to worry about it now. What's done is done. As long as I don't SAVE until after the meeting, I'll be able to LOAD and avoid all this…

But at what cost?


Frisk wasn't the only one wide awake and worried. In his apartment, Artemis paced quietly, too many thoughts whirling through his head for him to even consider sleeping.

He had not anticipated Frisk's demand for a meeting. And their initial email had most certainly been a demand, short and abrupt and to the point. Frisk had never struck him as a particularly demanding person, even when faced with the political side of their duties.

However, being kidnapped, then being rescued, then technically abducted once again by their rescuers and having their memories wiped and then restored barely hours later would likely put a dent in anyone's willingness for cooperation. Add to that the information that he, Foaly, and No. 1 had uncovered earlier that day… well, he really should have anticipated their message. Frisk was a genius approaching or perhaps even equal to his caliber, after all, and having powers over time did nothing to change that.

Artemis grimaced. Ah yes, and there was the other reason he was worried. Time travel.

Time travel, at least the variety that Artemis had experienced, was not a particularly stable magic. All it took was one wrong variable, and there would be a large variety of side effects which ranged from unpleasant to dangerous, and there was no way of knowing which side effect would actually occur until it had already done so. The fairy version of time travel could cause the wayward travelers any number of ailments, from the loss of a finger or the switching of eyes to losing minor memories, and probably was capable of causing much more in terms of damage. And that was in semi-controlled environments, with a warlock who knew what he was doing. On top of that, fairy magic most certainly complied with the theory of paradoxes – it was Artemis and Holly's own jaunt back in time*, for instance, which had inspired his younger self's interest in the fairies, thus beginning his search for the fairies that would eventually lead to him traveling back in time in the first place.

Frisk had none of those constraints. If their memories were any indication, and he and Foaly were indeed correct in guessing the nature of their magic, paradoxes simply didn't apply to the child. Whenever they went back in time and tried to change something, they succeeded. They'd already changed the timestream several times that they knew of, completely overwriting their own deaths and the events that led to them. If something went wrong during the meeting, Frisk could conceivably just go back in time once more, and stop them from ever finding out about their abilities.

And if they did… well, Frisk's time-travel seemed relatively paradox-free, but judging by their panic when confronted with the erasure of their memories, it was entirely possible that though the timestream experienced no negative consequences, Frisk themselves probably did... and he had a very dire feeling that memory loss was more dangerous to Frisk than it would be to the fairies.

But a feeling was just that – a feeling. He had no evidence, no way of knowing unless he asked Frisk directly at this point, and, if the hints that Foaly had picked up in some of Frisk's memories were accurate, trying to ask them at the meeting would not get him into their good books.

"Whether this is future vision or time travel," Foaly had said, "the Ambassador hasn't told anybody except Sans and the flower. Not the Queen, not the lizard-dinosaur scientist, not their fishy policewoman friend. None of them. They're keeping it a secret – same with their ghost friend."

He had no desire to earn more of Frisk's ire than he likely had already by confronting them about what were likely some of their deepest, darkest secrets right in front of those they sought to protect. But, one way or another, he was going to get answers concerning Frisk's abilities. He had to. The People's lives could very well depend on it.


Morning broke, and with the rising sun came rising tension and high-strung nerves. Frisk had, somehow, managed to actually get some sleep despite their doubts, and woken up shortly after Toriel and Flowey had. Most kids might have lingered in bed for several minutes after waking up, but Frisk had never been one of those kids. They had too much to do, too much to think about, and so they'd paced anxiously in their room after freshening up and getting dressed, double-checking everything they could think of. They double-checked their email notifications, double checked their phone's dimensional boxes, double-checked that all the monsters that would be coming with them were getting ready, double-checked with Flowey that there were no fairies that had snuck into their room when they were sleeping. But there were no new notifications, all the monsters were pretty much ready to go, and Flowey hadn't sensed any new fairies, and eventually the flower monster had gotten irritated enough with their constant worrying that he'd pushed them back onto the bed with his vines and told them to shut up and stop thinking, idiot, overthinking things will just make everything worse.

*He's right though, Frisk. Overthinking things won't do any good for you right now.

Frisk sighed, and Flowey shot them a look from the bedside table, probably daring them to ask about fairies again in the privacy of his own petaled head.

I know, Chara, but…

They didn't finish their sentence. Instead, they sat in nervous silence, listening to the bustle of Dublin waking up outside their window, of Toriel arranging her robes and making calls somewhere behind them, of the guards outside their door talking quietly (neither of the humans had been happy about being left behind, but when they'd been told where exactly Frisk and the monsters were going, the two officers had been suspiciously cooperative.) They pulled out their phone, flipping it open to check their inventory again.

Dimensional Box A

*Heart Locket

*Butterscotch Pie

*Monster Candy

*Monster Candy

*Monster Candy

*Monster Candy

*Bandages

The second dimensional box was completely empty aside from Chara's old knife (which they fervently hoped they wouldn't need to use), and Frisk couldn't help but wonder if they could have been better prepared.

I hope we won't need anything else...

Finally, things couldn't be put off any longer. At 8:50, Sans, Papyrus, and Undyne came into the room, making sure the door was shut tight behind them.

"We're all ready t' go, kid," Sans said.

Frisk sucked in a nervous breath. "You've got everything we might need?"

Undyne summoned a spear with a grin that was too toothy even by her regular standards. "You bet, punk! No fairy's gonna get the drop on us when we get there!"

"INDEED!" Papyrus proclaimed, posing heroically. "NO FAIRY SCOUNDREL WILL CATCH US UNAWARES! HOWEVER, I DO NOT THINK WE WILL HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THAT – IF THEY ARE REALLY SCARED OF US, THEN WHY ATTACK US WHEN ALL WE WANT TO DO IS TALK?"

Sans shrugged. "Better safe than sorry, bro."

They let out the breath they'd been holding and stood up.

"One last thing before we go, my child," Toriel said, gently. When Frisk glanced back at her, the Boss monster was holding a familiar purple shawl in her hands – the same one Frisk had worn to the gala, what felt like a small eternity ago. She slipped it on over Frisk's head, carefully adjusting it so that the Delta Rune was hanging over Frisk's chest in plain view, and then stood back and nodded.

Frisk didn't need to ask why. They knew why. Toriel wanted absolutely no doubts in the fairies' minds as to Frisk's relation with the monsters – and, more specifically, with her.

Wearing the shawl was actually a little comforting. Frisk smiled weakly at the monster queen in thanks and then turned back to the others.

"Alright," they said, very quietly. "Let's go."

They held out one hand to Sans, which he took with a wink extremely lacking in cheer, and the other monsters gathered around them.

"Are you positive you can take us all, Sans?" Toriel asked.

"NOT TO WORRY, YOUR MAJESTY! SANS WILL NOT BE THE ONLY PERSON TELEPORTING US TODAY!"

Undyne gaped at him. "Papyrus, you can do that teleporting thing too?!"

Papyrus let out one of his trademark "Nyeh heh heh"s." "OF COURSE I CAN! BUT UNLIKE MY BROTHER, I AM NOT SO LAZY THAT I WOULD RATHER BEND THE LAWS OF TIME AND SPACE INSTEAD OF WALKING!"

The air around them began to crackle with the familiar too-cold magic of one of Sans's shortcuts.

"Hold on everyone," Sans said. "Taking a shortcut in three…"

Frisk steeled themselves.

"Two..."

Flowey grimaced in his pot, hunching over.

"One."

The world disappeared around them in a blur of magic and disconcerting nothingness. For a very long moment, or maybe a short eternity, there was no ground, no air, no feeling, like they were floating in the void of space.

Then bright greens and oranges and yellows blurred into existence, and the group was standing at the edge of a spiral of orange roses, the sun beaming down on them from a little above the horizon. The familiar gothic shapes of Fowl Manor rose in the distance, crickets and birds chirping in the gardens.

And on the other side of the rose spiral, flanked by a very familiar man mountain, a similarly familiar blonde woman, and several small, undeniably non-human figures, Artemis Fowl raised an eyebrow.

"Impressive," he said, with surprising calm, and then continued as if they hadn't just appeared out of thin air in front of him. "Welcome back to the Fowl Estate, Ambassador. I believe we have much to talk about."


What better gift to give my beloved readers after a long four weeks (ish) following a cliffhanger than ANOTHER cliffhanger? :3

(Feel free to rage at me in the comments, haha)

Yes, Papyrus can use shortcuts like Sans can. That's not the only ability he shares with Sans, either. However, I'm not going to go into detail about what all they each can do or why they can do what they do as of right now. That's something I'm saving for later… possibly much, much later. As in, another story entirely later.

* "Artemis and Holly's own jaunt back in time:" In The Time Paradox, aka book 6, Artemis and Holly were sent back in time by No. 1 to save a then-endangered lemur that was extinct in their time in order to bring it back to the present. Their reason for doing so was that Angeline had apparently contracted a magical illness usually confined to the fairy people which cannot be healed via magic, and the lemur's brain fluid contained the cure. When they traveled back in time, Holly was de-aged into a teenager (at least in terms of emotional maturity and hormones) and Artemis's hair decided to rebel and do a mullet impression. Also, they had to pit wits both against Artemis's younger self and the younger Opal Koboi that followed them to the present and eventually got herself killed in order to cause the Techno Crash, so that was fun.

And for the first time in what's probably like twenty-something chapters, there are no worldbuilding things for you guys. Sorry 'bout that! I was really tired right after I finished writing this chapter, didn't have time to look for new questions to answer, on ANY of my fanfic accounts. That being said, if you have worldbuilding questions, feel free to ask them!