Forward, Back, Neutral, Reverse: Frisk's POV

Why is this bed so fluffy? Wait, how am I even- Gaster! I shoot upright to find him sleeping peacefully against a mound of fur, only to regret the ache in the front of my head that comes from it. Leaning forward, I rest my head in my hands for a brief breath, "Ow…"

Turning my gaze, I see the large white dog staring back at me with eyes like a rainbow. Smiling a bit, I offer a hand out in front of his nose, "Hi… I'm Frisk." It nudges my hand, a small glow cascading over my hand. I know this feeling. He's giving me magic. I pet him with a smile, "Thank you for the magic. I wouldn't be okay if not for you."

The dog lays its head down on the lap of a younger girl on the other side of him. I just look around until I see Gaster sleeping peacefully. I sit beside him and place the tattered jacket that kept me warm. Taking his hand, the right option felt to sit there for a time at least until I could let him wake and explain it all. That was the plan anyways…

I feel a shift in the determination in the air. Something dark is entering this world as I think about it. Thisenergy is the worst form of determination. The poison that will kill us faster than any other type of energy. Squeezing Gaster's hand without notice, I feel him shake me with his free hand.

"Frisk. Come back from whatever you're seeing," Gaster says quietly but urgently and pained.

Snapping out of it, the magic fades from my view, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Just… That energy…"

Manually releasing my hand from his, he starts to heal it, "What did you sense? Nothing should be here. We left that mess behind and hopefully dealt with."

"Someone else. But not a good person. The determination is just like what mine almost became back in that fight with my younger self. But they stepped over the line that I didn't," I say a bit lost in the feeling of that magic. To go that far, I think, means they lost their reason for going or worse; revenge. Not a good sign.

He thinks it through, "Hmm. I need to ask Arch how many timelines his brother and he have been to. Something makes me believe that he's interfered with more than he let on or that Papyrus hasn't told him. I'm worried he hasn't come back yet."

"I can track him but we're not from here. It's not safe to just wander around…" I say out loud worried.

A small voice pipes up, "I can call him if you want."

We both look to Hope who is poking her head over the dog with a small patient gaze. I step in for Gaster before he tells her no, "Please do. I think he should know he has more guests…"

"Okay!" she starts to call and waits for a time on the dial tone of the call reaching him.

Archemimetale: Arch's POV

Walking towards my brother's house in Snowden, I find myself at odds with whether I should even bother coming here. Can a stranger really fix this with him and I? I have no clue. But Frisk is willing to help Hope, maybe Gaster can help me. But my Dad was a lot older. I'm still skeptical.

A crash catches my attention as his room smokes. Running into the house, I move upstairs to fling open the door. Papyrus is laying on the floor of his childish boxcar bedroom with a hole in his stomach. Reaching into his pockets, I find two potions and some healing items. I immediately apply the healing items; bandages mostly corrupted with determination. I can't find words to speak to him or get him to wake up. Only able to bandage his wound, I have to wonder where he went just now and what world can do this kinda damage.

When the wound seethes with blackened red lines that slowly heal, I know then. Determination stronger than his own hit him. That's a problem. I should tell Gaster once I know he's okay. I set him in bed with levitation, spinning on my heels afterwards to get out of the room before I teleport.

He takes my hand suddenly with a small pained cry, "Arch… Found something. It's coming here. I know… it."

"Pap, just rest. You got hit pretty hard. You're lucky the portal shut before those lines spread," I tell him, looking at him worried. He's hurt, he can't be doing this to himself let alone the power it takes to corrupt a monster like this.

Shaking his head, he holds onto my hand, "Arch, she's like us. She's coming…" His hand falls, finally passing out from his wound.

Part of me freezes until my phone scares the skin off my bones. Opening it up, I speak quickly, "Yeah?"

"Dad? Are you there? We were looking for you," Hope says on her end of the phone. She's worried about me, I can hear it. Sighing a bit relieved, I chuckle, "I'm heading back kiddo. Hey, can you give the phone to the wo- Frisk?"

"Sure!" she pipes up and holds it out. Her voice is distant, "He said he wants to talk to you."

The phone changes hands based on the movement and noises. Her voice comes through, "You can sense magic, like you sensed me back in that fight. If I asked you to use that ability, could you pinpoint it?"

"Already did… I felt it the moment it came here. She's dangerously empowered with magic. It's hard to miss it. I'm worried about the monsters in the ruins," she says offhandedly.

Hope speaks up urgently in the background, "Final Froggit! Froggits and Mom are in there. I gotta go!" Her footsteps fade.

The phone fumbles in the air, Gaster answering soon after, "Frisk took off after her. We'll meet you in Snowdin."

The phone clicks off the call only to leave me on edge. I walk outside and look out over the exit to Snowdin towards the Waterfall Area. I see Hope running from the mist with a blaze of red to catch her. Frisk holds onto her carefully, "Hope, calm down. We need to go together. It's dangerous."

"No! I won't let you stop me. I- Wait… together?" she fights and then blinks up at her captor.

Frisk smiles and nods, "Yeah. We'll all be safe together. Here." She lifts Hope up onto her back and winks, "You'll be safer with me. Promise."

Gaster catches up with a huff, keeping a solid eye around them until he sees me. He lets out one last huff and moves forward to me, "She sensed it after she woke up. Something's there, and it shook her up. That's a brave face, but I know her. Frisk is unsettled. Now we should go before anything else happens… But Arch, can you face Toriel at this point? Because with the knowledge we have, you don't have much choice, but I'm asking."

"Yeah… You guys follow behind me. And… Keep Hope distracted. I don't need her hearing this all," I say looking at the area towards the ruins, "Look, you take the girls and walk around. No one is around this area to say anything, but please be safe. I'm teleporting into the house to let you all in. Text me when you're there."

He nods and waves Frisk to follow With Hope. I move over and pat Hope's head, "I'm gonna go talk to your Mom. You guys are going to walk so I can save some magic in case. Be good for them and don't misbehave."

She nods, saluting me. Hope's grin just makes me sigh with relief that she can still be this goofy with me despite it all, "You got this, Dad!"

I move away from them to teleport into the basement door that Tori always kept shut. Calling out, I yell for her, "Tori! You here?"

And no one came…

Timidly moving down the hallway, I keep my magic at the ready. Speaking with a hand in my pocket on a pistol, the blaze in my eye flowing a teal hue over my vision, "Tori, don't do this. Something is in the ruins, and I need to get you out of here before it reaches the house. Tori…"

No one answers me…

The closer I get to the stairs up to the main floor, the stranger the hallway becomes. Vines are reaching along the walls in thin lines that seem to slightly glow of red lines or veins; like they're pulsing with life. Something eerie is going on. Carefully, I keep on my toes while I ascend the staircase, seeing the veins become more frequent once I'm upstairs. Calling again, "Tori, answer me please. What happened to the… house…"

The veins seem to reach the floor to cover a mass in front of the living room chair. Jolting forward, I realize where I've seen these before. Papyrus' wound… Pulling the gun out, I fire at the sides of the connecting vines to the mass. I focus on my levitation magic to pull the mass out of the severed vines. The mass that comes out is Final Froggit.

"Thank… ribbit… you… ribbit…" he croaks one last time, his white form tainted with red veined vines. He changes to dust, and the vines die with the dust.

The teal hue covers the dust and moves it behind the chair. Hope can't see this. Moving down the hallway, the veins cover the doors as if locking or barricading them. My feet move mechanically towards the open doorway as if they know where she could be. Every inch of me wants to turn around and walk away. If Tori is- No, she's fine. She has to be for Hope's sake. If she isn't, I don't know how to approach Hope about it.

The hallways lead through her training traps that are all disabled. The vines are becoming way too frequent, even covering traps now. What the hell happened here? Each step I'm taking without thinking is killing me inside. My nerves are twisting with only my hand gripping the gun in my pocket to draw my frustrations away from my magic. Suddenly the hallways twist towards the flower patch with humming filling the air.

A young girl. Older than Hope but… not as old as Frisk. I catch a glimpse of her staring at a body in the flowers. She's humming a lullaby of some sort, something sad with hints of a loss. Her tattered white sweatshirt is shimmering with red stains. The long black scarf around her neck leads down into a sealed bell. Her hood keeps me from seeing her face. The ripped jeans and bloody sneakers betray her innocent lullaby and appearance.

She stares at a mass in front of her on the ground as she hums. Moving my gaze to the pile of vines in front of her, I get a flashback of Final Froggit. My phone buzzes in my pocket, but that isn't my concern right now. Calling out to her, I speak up, "Hey. What happened here and where did these vines come from?"

"Papa's gonna buy you a billy goat/And if that billy goat don't pull," she sings out loud, her voice seeming emotionless or dead but with the same hint of sadness as before..

Looking at the body, I see Tori's robe in the mass and shake my head. The movement of my right hand with the gun in tow is quick as usual. Several gunshots fill the air to sever the vines' connection to Tori. The girl didn't even move once. When the vines weakened, I levitated Tori out of the pile, only just preserving her remains. The field drops instantly with an edge to my voice forming, "Why did you hurt them? They didn't do anything to you. Answer me."

She stops humming and singing, giving a small childlike chuckle, "Oh I didn't hurt them personally. I'm only aiming at one or two monsters. Then again, I didn't know what the other one looked like. If the second one was a skeleton like someone I knew. Then the other one is his brother." Her head turns to the side looking at me now with a slightly unsettling grin, "Where's your brother?"

Frozen in place, I just watch her with a thought back to Pap's wounds. Gripping my fist, I glare at the girl, "You're the one that hurt him. What did he do to you? I know he's not the greatest person but what made you come here?"

Giggling, she slides off the rock into the flowers only to kneel down to pick up a blackened scythe with the same veins running through it, "Papa's gonna buy you a diamond ring/And if that diamond ring is brass…" She comes towards me with an air of violence to her, "I'll hurt you… but… to quote him, 'I think the final straw will be to kill you in front of him…'"

"Wait, who did he- You don't have to do this. If you let this stuff eat at you any more than it has, you're going to die. Determination is deadly to monsters. Just lets-" I start to say until she cuts me off.

"I do… He took him away from me. That means I have to take something away from him. In front of him. An eye for an eye. He's hurt Turn, and you have taken my best friend away from me too. I think it's time you both felt the same. I thought I was going to have to hurt this whole timeline to find you both. Guess I was wrong. Just one goat and a few frogs," she says without even a hint of remorse as if she seems to have lost the last of her mind from all this.

Pap did a number on her and that's saying something. Bet he didn't see her doing this or ever even thought she was that strong. I need to get out of here to Hope. They have to know what I found. She's lost her marbles entirely. I decide to speak up in distraction while I focus on my locations for teleporting, "You can have him if you leave the rest of the monsters down here alone. Please. My daughter didn't do anything wrong. I'll willingly give you Pap if you let me just stay with her." I keep talking, "Listen to me. You can take me too. Just let me get Pap and leave when you got what you came here for. The others didn't do this."

She falters for a moment, the scythe turning white in her hands. The red lines vanishing off the scythe start to make me believe she can be reached. Her voice becomes somber and conflicted, "You're not the same… What… What happened to you?"

Her features seem softer, weak or lost even. Holding a hand out to her, my gun disappearing, "I had too much determination. Made me sick. Come on. I know some people who can help you. If you let this keep going, you're going to destroy your soul with that poison. I know it can be tempting to use its power to get what you want, but it's not all it's cracked up to be. Kid, come on. Let me help you. I know some friends who can make you better like they did me. If not, you're going to get worse or break your soul. My brother is dying already, and I was too until I met my daughter. Now I'm clean. I don't know about your friends, but they wouldn't want you in all this pain. Mine didn't."

The scythe drops to the ground in a loud clang, her eyes filling with tears. Before I can clammer for a half-cocked apology, she slumps forward, "My friends… No. Sans wouldn't want to see me like this. The others, too. And Turn…" The tears flow for a moment, a wave of dust building under her feet with Toriel's sweeping in with it. Dust flows like a dangerous tide that glows just slightly red.

"Dust?..." I jump back with a hesitant look to the kid, "Kid! You're gonna be swallowed by the dust. You gotta get over to me. Come on!"

Looking up, she stares at the dust with a small, sad look. This kid isn't fighting this.

I teleport near her, taking her hand. Using one last teleport, we both end up near the exit to the room. She tugs in my grip, making me look to her, "Kid, stop. That dust was trying to- Oof!"

A solid dust-made blaster rams into me, pushing me into the wall. Cracks fill the room from both the wall and my ribs. Refocusing my magic, I lift my right hand and focus my magic on it to strengthen it, "Let me go! I gotta protect the kid from you." I slam my fist into the blaster, watching it shatter into a large pile of dust. Just when I think it's safe, I see the scythe flying at me full speed with no time to think anything but 'I'm sorry Hope.'

A flash of red covers my vision with an explosion to follow as the wall to the left of me is suddenly destroyed. The same flash of red pries itself off the wall and lands in front of me, "Now who started the surprise party without me?"

"Frisk?" I ask cautiously, watching the red hue fade to her in that lab coat with the hood over her head. Her aura is intense, intoxicating almost. Instinctively step back trying not to think how it might affect me.

She turns to me with the cat mask over her face. With one large paw, she sets it on my shoulder, "Sorry about this… Tell Gaster that I'll be in the void."

The world changes to the snowy outer entrance to the ruins except the door is in pieces. Hope runs over to me, jumping to hug me. Holding her close, I just look up to Gaster, "She says she'll be in the void… How is she getting there?"