Hey, it's me. Sorry I was gone for so long. Life kept me real busy and this stuff fell to the wayside. But I never stopped keeping tabs on the pages or with everyone that has liked or favorited my stories, even after all this time. I didn't realize people were still interested, so thanks to those like Wolfliker that stuck with. I really appreciate that, so thanks everyone and I hope you enjoy. Next chapter will probably not take a year. Maybe a POV shift?
Chapter 10 – War is Cruelty
. . . You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our Country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to Secure Peace . . . You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war . . .
"Letter of William T. Sherman to James M. Calhoun, E.E. Rawson, and S.C. Wells, September 12, 1864"
They tore through Waterfall, a wind of death that blew and left only dust and ashes. Fully unleashed, with no qualms or hesitation, the last two members of Sovereign Task Force Team Three proved fully the motto of "action through aggression." Frisk took the lead, blazing the path as Chara trailed behind. They were perfectly in-sync, supernaturally so, as if it was one mind that was controlling two bodies.
At first, the monsters outside of Snowdin fought back, the distant sounds of explosions drawing them closer to the town, but quickly they came to realize that against such abject force, there was no chance of victory. Only swift, certain death. The pair of humans ripped through, unstoppable, and the echo of gunshots and the ringing of brass on stone was a steady constant that reverberated across the echo flowers.
Frisk was almost entranced by it, by the ease of it. She had never felt anything quite like this before. Up above, there was the fear, the all-encompassing terror of the mindplague that would reduce her to quivers were it not for the fire pumped through her veins. There was the hideous calamity of heavy shells bursting against both sides, of anti-matter charges leaving that horrid static that seemed to freeze the brain, of mormymniometric lances that seemed to tear through air and space itself and leave only a wrongness in its place. There was the shouting of men and women, there was desperation and clawing for anything, any chance for something to go right.
This . . . this wasn't war. Frisk didn't know what this was. It didn't make sense. Her body was moving, her finger squeezing the trigger, but there were was no fire coming back at her, no one she was dragging and holding as holes poured out blood. There was no goal here, no fight, no greater purpose. Humanity was out there burning while they shot unarmed people in a cave. There was no point to this. This wanton murder.
That flower had mentioned this. He'd popped up out of the ground as they were advancing, alongside some weird flowers that seemed to mimic the sounds around them. Said he knew Chara, said he knew Frisk. Said he'd be waiting. Said he was a big fan of the "show" they were putting on, but they were still amateurs. He could take them to the top.
Kill or be killed.
He'd left before she could reply, when Chara had walked up, but she couldn't get his words out of her head. What did he mean, who was he?
None of it made sense. There was no point to any of this. Not to anything. So why . . .?
Why did Chara look so alive, her eyes shining with each new kill? And why couldn't Frisk feel the same? She was supposed to. They were destroying the enemy. Frisk knew what happened to those that couldn't kill. And Chara was right – they were alive, and the monsters were dead. They would push through and get back to the Task Force. It was all like Chara had said.
And yet, all she could think about was Papyrus' skull drifting into the snowbanks.
"Three o'clock, high," Chara said. Frisk immediately snapped her rifle up, pivoted to the right– there, what looked like a plane with a ribbon (?). Three controlled shots brought it down, two more to keep it down, a final shot from Chara. "Beautiful."
It wasn't beautiful. Nothing about this was beautiful. There was only ugliness, and the worst was inside Frisk. Because she dared to have a dream of peace, of possibility, and such a dream was for good people. Not broken weapons like her.
Fight. All she had to do was fight. Turn off everything else – destroy the enemy. As long as she did that, she was good. Robotically, she flicked her wrist, ejecting her spent magazine and smoothly sliding in a fresh one. Four left, plus one half-empty mag from the other day. It would have to be enough.
"There, in the mountain." Frisk flicked her head, motioning as they kept charging forward. The rocky path they'd been following veered up towards a tall mountain inside the mountain, the sky turning from the reflective gemstones to a burning red that was more familiar. There was an opening, a tunnel that burrowed in. Seemed to be their path forward towards the–
"Move!" Frisk cried out, sparks flying as she came skidding to a stop before pushing off into a roll that brought her to the leftmost edge of the ravine, Chara backstepping and swiveling to the right as a line of teal spears came raining down, plunging into the rock and burying up to the shaft. Frisk scanned the horizon, looking for movement – there, on the mountaintop. One hostile in armor, skylining.
"Humans! That's far enough!"
A single crack as a round from Chara's rifle tore into the monster's helmet, sending its head snapping back and body back down the other side of the mountain.
"Hmph. Seriously?" Chara frowned. "What a disappointment." She was cut off by a scream and a single spear that seemed to pierce through the entire mountain, careening straight for her heart, and Chara barely brought her bayonet up in time to deflect the weapon, sending it skidding into the ravine.
"HEY!" The figure was leaping down from the peak, its helmet off and revealing a blue, scaly face with red hair and only a single eye, the other covered by a patch of cloth rather than a prosthetic replacement. "I WASN'T DONE TALKING!"
"Oh?" Chara's face lit up in a way that made a pit form in Frisk's stomach. "Well, well. Aren't you fun?"
"This ends here, murderers." It was a woman's voice, ringing out through the windstorms that seemed to be raging down the mountain. "Not one more step forward, not one more life! I, Undyne, will strike you down where you stand!"
Royal Guard. This was who Papyrus was talking about, who he looked up to. Did she know?
Did it matter?
"Man, you monsters really like to talk, huh . . .?" Chara cracked her neck, rolled her shoulders, but never took her eyes off of the woman in front of her. "All right then, shoot. What's your big plan, hero? Kill us, take our souls, then what?" She propped her rifle up on her shoulder as she spoke, though Frisk noticed her right hand hovered next to her sidearm.
"Then monsterkind finally gets to be freed and go to the Surface, like we've always dreamed. All that's left is for me to take you two down, right here, right now!"
Frisk and Chara both just stared at that, not even blinking. That was her big plan? Just walking out? They didn't even know about the enemy in orbit right over their heads, just waiting to rain down fire and glass this entire continent, and they were going to just walk on outside?
The silence was broken by Chara, who put her own disbelief into a shrill and mocking laughter. She almost doubled over how hard she was laughing, and the ugly scorn in it was loud and clear.
Frisk didn't think it was that funny.
Now it was Undyne's turn to stare before utter fury settled over her features, her sharp teeth grinding. "WHAT THE HELL'S SO DAMN FUNNY, PUNK?! YOU THINK THIS IS A JOKE?!"
"Yeah, I do, and it's hilarious," Chara replied, wiping a tear from her eye. "You're all so damned stupid. It would almost be worth it to give you my soul if only to see the looks on your faces when you got out there and saw what it was really like, rather than your magical fairytale."
"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Undyne growled.
"It means you should be thanking me," Chara said with a wicked grin. "Rather than have all your dreams crushed the second you walk out of your magical door, instead you can all die happy down here. Look, here's your skeleton friends, and here's your icicle friends, and here's that stupid horse. Where would you like to be?" She pointed at the scratch marks on her armor, relishing Undyne's reaction.
"Chara," Frisk said. "Please." Don't drag this out any more than they needed to. This was just needless cruelty.
"You . . . you . . ." Undyne apparently had had enough, and she charged straight at them with a roar that seemed to shake Frisk to her very core. "DIE!"
"That's more like it," Chara purred. She moved to dash backwards when she realized that her legs were locked in place by something, keeping her pinned. Frisk raised her rifle and fired to intercept, two quick bursts, but the rounds were struck down mid-air by more of the hovering spears. The spears seemed to move of their own free will, hurtling themselves at Frisk as Undyne closed in on Chara in a second, towering over the young soldier and locking her into a melee. Frisk threw herself out of the way of the incoming projectiles, thrusters kicking in as they pierced into the rock behind her, one after the other.
Undyne roared as she thrust her spear straight at Chara; rather than try to lean away, Chara snapped off a couple shots with her sidearm, but the bullets seemed to deflect off of the crude steel armor, and she dropped the weapon in favor of her sniper rifle, taking a forward grip and parrying the incoming blow away with the black steel of the blade attached under the barrel. Undyne was using her height and reach to her advantage, and Chara was locked in place by something and unable to move, instead forced to trade blows, the spear skimming past her armor and sending sparks flying.
Frisk bit her lip; they were too close to each other for her to use her heavy ordnance, and she didn't have the ammunition to keep shooting all of those blasted spears out of the sky. Instead, she decided to close in, her own yell of defiance resounding as her legs pumped, skidding under the next wave of spears, right arm raised and ready to fire the ultra-dense Osmium-TA penetrators of the integrated revolver gauntlet. Before she could, however, Undyne got the upper hand, twirling her spear around Chara's rifle and tangling her arms up before sending the weapon skittering onto the uneven stone. She grabbed the child by the head and hurled her at Frisk, who only just managed to fire off her thrusters in reverse in time to arrest her momentum and catch her twin. Chara gracefully rolled back up to her feet with a scoff, drawing her combat knife in one fluid motion and spinning it into a reverse grip.
"I'm not done with you two yet!" Undyne snarled, raising a clawed hand, and Frisk only barely noticed the spears rising from the ground in time to dart away, teal points scraping and gouging lines into her armor. One of them managed to find a gap in the knee joint, piercing into the undersuit, and white-hot pain flared up before the auto-injectors numbed it and began applying medifoam. Anger swelled up in her, fed on by the combat stims. This damn woman was in the way, in her way, and she'd had about enough of it. With a roar she fired off a pair of the Fimbulvetr micro-missiles from her shoulders, the warheads fracturing into dozens of mini anti-matter payloads.
Undyne swiped her spear at them, a crescent wave flaring out that caught most of them, but three got three and impacted her armor, black implosions sucking out the sound and color from the air as the annihilation weapons detonated . . . and left the woman alive. On one knee, armor scarred and and warped, her body shifting and melting(?), but alive.
Just what were these monsters, anyway?
"I said . . . not yet . . .!" Undyne coughed, rising back to her feet. Just in time for Chara to reach her, moving in under the cover of the missiles, and she plunged her knife straight into her neck.
"Should've kept your helmet on, hero," Chara sneered, twisting the combat knife, yet even that wasn't enough. Undyne just threw her off and onto the stone, stomping down on her chestplate with an armored boot as she began to glow, plumes of smoke rolling out of the holes in her armor.
"You're gonna have to try harder than that!" Undyne raised her spear to finish Chara off, light shining out of her eyes, when Frisk hurled herself forward. She refused, she refused. Thrusters firing, she turned herself into a missile, barreling the monster over and aiming the revolver gauntlet straight at her head.
"Just die already!" Frisk said through gritted teeth and she fired once, twice, three times, loading each of the anti-materiel penetrators with a flick of the wrist, the self-sharpening osmium rods nailing through, until all that was left was a plume of dust and the echoes of Undyne's final thoughts.
"Not yet . . . I didn't . . ." Her words blew with her ashes onto the wind, leaving Frisk and Chara panting and heaving on the stone, alone.
"Well," Chara finally said as she rolled off of her back and got to her feet. "That was unexpected."
Frisk glanced over at her, tossed her knife back to her. She took a moment to speak first, letting herself cool down. "That's the second time you've tried that and gotten knocked on your butt."
"How was I supposed to know she'd start glowing?"
"Magic."
After a moment of silence, the pair burst into a fit of giggles, the tension dissolving as they looked towards the open mouth of the mountain ahead of them.