Chapter 18

Crow POV:

When it came to getting through town, most of the residents looked at me in surprise, as I was their most prominent resident in the town and a major talking point. But my change of skin got some heads to turn and some of them immediately started to ask questions.

"Crow! Is that you, dude? What happened to your skin, mate?" asked one of the townsfolk, the first to ask me.

"I was in the Underground, and the only way to escape was to absorb a monster soul," I simply told him, the guy trying to laugh before I produced silk from my butt and flung it at his wallet, snagging it with a smile to get him to shut up.

"Uh... can I have that back?" he asked.

"On two conditions," I frowned to him as I then looked to the cemetery in the distance. "I need you to spread the word to the humans of this village and beyond that I'm going to destroy the barrier in the Underground, freeing all the monsters down there. After all, they were quite wrongfully imprisoned there for millennia and I've come to love all of them," I said.

"And the other condition?" he asked.

"Get some folks together to help me dig up some dead bodies. I need 7 souls of the deceased to destroy the barrier and I said I'd do it within a few hours," I said, the guy nodding at that and immediately texting the two things to the other people in town, me going off to the cemetery and starting to dig with a shovel into the first plot. I was only going to use souls from the deceased that were nice in the past, as I felt that evil souls would be horrific to use, especially if they revived somehow during my collection process. After digging in the plot for awhile, I eventually got to the casket and opened it, the stench being bad, but I simply got the soul in there, seeing it was brown in color. And just in time for the other members of the town to help me out in the other areas of the cemetery that had good humans, me having to explain it to them that I didn't want murderer or abuser souls. "One down, 6 to go," I said with a smile.

Muffet made herself a bit more vocal when I allowed her to look through my eyes while I got to work with helping the others.

"So this is what the surface world looks like... my little spiders will be quite happy to see this when we destroy the barrier..." Muffet said with a happy, contented sigh.

"Muffet, if you think the midnight moon and the stars look beautiful, just wait until the sunrise," I smiled at her, Muffet gasping at that and the others being confused.

"Who're you talkin' to, Crow?" asked one of the helpers, him being an undertaker, which was a huge help.

"Oh, well, see, the only way I could get out of the Underworld is if I absorbed a monster's soul... so I'm talking to my monster friend, who we share bodies with," I smiled.

"Very odd... but considerin' your skin is purple and you can spit string out your butt, I believe it," the undertaker said, me then hearing Muffet speaking in my mind.

"The sunrise... I'd like to have my spider children with us when we see the sunrise... after all, they're all technically your children now, too," Muffet smiled at me.

"It's a great honor, Miss Muffet," I smiled at her, but only in thought as we uncovered the second soul, this one being a blue-green hue. "Only 5 to go," I smirked.


Asriel POV:

It was a full house all within only a single hour, all the monsters in the crowd coming from all over the Underground. The Amalgamates were with their families, the Snowdin residents in the back of the room, the Hot Land residents in the middle, and the residents of Waterfall in the front. And just like Undyne said, the Temmies were the first to show up, their faces all jittery and jumpy from the excitement. Even Bob looked to be pretty excited to hear Asgore's speech. Only when the last of the group arrived in the form of Burgerpants and Mettaton did Asgore finally stand up from the throne and start speaking.

"Ahem... hello everyone," he said, all the monsters silencing from his voice. "As you know, I have called you all here for a very important meeting, one that is important to everyone of us. Due to some circumstances from a certain young human named Crow Burr, the barrier is soon to be destroyed forever," Asgore said, the monsters speaking amongst each other at that. "Once the human returns from the surface with 7 souls of the deceased, he will demolish the barrier and we all will be freed from the Underground. And not only that, but it is because of Crow that every single one of us can have a happy ending," Asgore smirked. "I will now have my son, Asriel, take over," Asgore said, me smiling, though I was kind of nervous. Asgore wanted me to tell everyone about my past. How I was resurrected and how Crow and Chara saved me and everyone in the Underground. But I was a bit worried about having to explain the part about me being a murderous flower...

"It's okay, Asriel..." Chara said to me. "Just tell them the truth. If you can't find the words, I'll help out."

I smiled and nodded as I then went up to the throne and I held the microphone in hand. "Uh... hey, everyone... you're all probably wondering how I'm back to life... after my death 19 years ago..." I said, the monsters conversing among themselves as I then spoke again. "Well, after I died, my ashes were spread in this garden of buttercups, as it was my favorite item, as is tradition... but then, Alphys, after gaining some Determination from some of these humans, decided to inject it into the first flower to grow after my ashes were spread. She didn't know that it'd make the flower gain self-awareness without a soul. And that was what I had become... a flower creature that had no soul, therefore no emotions. And at the cusp of death, I discovered I could access the full power of Determination... with it, I did... truly terrible things... hurting people... breaking families apart... killing innocents..." I sighed, a shiver running down my spine as tears started to from in my face. "But... then Crow came down here... and because of him being down here and his soul being the same type as Chara's, he was able to resurrect her from death while also forbidding me to use any Determination... and over the course of his adventure down here, in the state of a flower, I tried to get him killed numerous times... I tried to kill him when he first arrived, tried to trick Papyrus into feeding him poisoned spaghetti without his knowledge, tried to make a ghost in a training dummy attack and kill Crow by telling him I killed his cousin... and then, in one last effort, I tried to get him to face the Amalgamates... Alphys... could you um... explain the state of the Amalgamates for us?" I asked, Alphys nodding and approaching the microphone, but I could see she was a bit nervous as well.

"Um... h-hi... everyone... um... as you've probably seen... the Amalgamates in the crowd with you... they used to be monsters that had their own bodies and one soul for each of them... but after Asgore made me the Royal Scientist, he asked that I try to find a process to have monster souls last after death. I then extracted Determination from the... human souls we'd gathered first... it didn't hurt them or anything, as human souls are brimming with the stuff... and after multiple injections to the monsters' souls, nothing happened... but then, after ten days, they finally opened their eyes, one by one, they were waking up as if nothing happened... but then... well, Determination is a very powerful source... unlike humans, monsters have far less physical matter to hold that much Determination... so, after only a day and after I told everyone they could go home in a week... they started to melt... and meld into each other... but, in the end, it was because of Crow helping me save the Amalgamates that we Asriel is alive today..." Alphys said, a hand being raised from the audience.

"Yes, what is it, Temma?" Toriel asked when she saw the hand raise up.

"Um... yeah... how did... Amalgamates help?... Oof... hard to keep up act of Tem... so tense..." she said, me smiling at how she was losing her jittery nature with the other Temmies and that they were now very calm and focused. It was no wonder Temma couldn't stay in her random nature.

"Well, Asriel, in the state of a flower was injected with Determination, the same as all of the other Amalgamates. Knowing that if an Amalgamate touches another Amalgamate, they'd meld together, Crow asked help from Reaper Bird to assist, who is made up of Sir Whims, Astigmatism, and Final Froggit. They changed their physical form to look exactly like the 6 human souls of Crow's siblings... and the moment Flowey touched him, he was trapped. Using the opportunity, Chara, who was traveling with Crow in secrecy the entire time, revealed her identity to Flowey and merged her soul into his again... and since they were previously intertwined before, it not only gave Asriel back his memories and kind nature, but gave him back his old body too..." Alphys said, her tugging on her collar from time to time while speaking as another hand was raised.

"Yes, Mettaton?" Alphys asked.

"I wanted to ask you, Alphys... do you think that, while we wait for Crow to return, that you could finish the adjustments to my body?... I want to look my best for when I go to the surface world, after all," Mettaton said with the lights on his head in the shape of a smiley face.

"Of course I can... um... Sans, would you like to say anything at all?" Alphys asked.

"nah, not really. i'd rather just stand here and contemplate... thinking about what i'd do on the surface..." Sans smiled as he had his eyelids closed. "though, i do have a question... what does everyone want to do when we go to the surface?" Sans asked, the whole castle brimming with conversation and wild cheers of joy and expressive emotions at that, the commotion making me look at Sans with a sly smile. "what?" he smiled at me with a wink.

"You always know how to make a somber moment suddenly explode into an eruption of joy. Maybe you should be a comedian? Besides, your jokes are sure to be a hit with the humans. It takes... real 'skull' to pull off all your jokes, if what Chara says is true," I smiled at him, Sans smirking at that one.

"hehe, i've heard that one before from tori," Sans smiled. By the time everyone had calmed down, the time on the clock said that it was 3 hours since Crow had left. And after only 30 more minutes of waiting, Toriel suddenly got a call on her cell phone.

"Hello? This is Toriel," she answered. And after the other party spoke, she gasped and then smiled. "Really? How long will it take?... Only a minute, huh? Okay, then!" Toriel smiled widely. "Great news, everyone! Crow's entered the Underground from the surface with 7 souls! All we need to do is wait for the barrier to shatter. He said to give him one minute to perform the spell and then move to the door that leads to the barrier," Toriel smiled, everyone cheering in unison at that as I noticed a very large light show happen from the room behind Asgore's throne. I looked down the hall and saw Crow by the barrier, him levitating in the air as 7 souls of different people circled around him and he then unleashed a powerful blast, me needing to retreat into the throne room as the flash of light happened, everyone in the throne room gasping as they saw a great white light come from the room that held the barrier! And then, just like that, I heard a loud sound. The sound of magic shattering. Crow had done it. He'd just demolished the barrier!

"Let's go! He did it!" I said happily as I rushed to go see him with everyone following behind me to see Crow again... but when we saw him? Norma gasped and rushed over to him with extreme worry. Why? Muffet was outside of his body and Crow was knocked unconscious!

"CROW!" Norma exclaimed as she tried to nudge her boyfriend awake, me seeing that he was still breathing, Muffet looking at us with a smile as the spiders immediately flocked over to her.

"My darlings..." Muffet smiled at her spiders, me holding my hand to Crow's heart and seeing that he had a steady heartbeat.

"Crow's okay... he's just been knocked for a loop," I said, Norma sighing in relief at that.

"Yeah... when he destroyed the barrier, all the souls that were used ended up being absorbed into the barrier and all of them shattered the moment they connected... if Crow, his siblings, or Chara were the ones to do that, they'd be gone forever," Muffet said, dad smiling at that.

"We should probably wait for Crow to wake up before we embark to the surface. Do you agree with this, Burr family?" dad asked Crow's siblings.

"Of course," Tex nodded as he went to Crow and gave him something. It was a blanket, the one that covered mom's throne. "Here, bro. To keep you warm," he smiled.

"Now we need to wait longer, huh?" Bob the Temmie asked.

"We should. Besides, if not for Crow, we'd never see the surface world," Papyrus smiled.

"Yeah... agreed..." Napstablook said with a small smile.