Crazy Mirror

by AdmyralOperius

Some people have a desire to fix everything, like Frisk; determined to save everyone. Absolutely everyone. It started as a thought, then became a fire, burning in the chest. Do you know it? Maybe you've felt it before? (Minor AU elements)

30. Empress' New Clothes

Empress' New Clothes

The castle gates were open, as usual. The garden was quiet. This time, it didn't fill Frisk with any sense of peace. He barreled up the path to the entryway and kept running as fast as his legs would take him as he crossed the threshold. The castle was eerily silent, light breezes drifting through its empty corridors. Frisk made for the first stairwell he could find, the one he had used to get to the throne room before, and he charged up two steps at a time. Frisk crossed through corridors, not bothering to check rooms, focused only on getting to the throne room before it was too late, and hoping against all hope that on the way there he would run into…

He turned a corner and ran face first into someone else, and for the few moments after he yelped and stumbled back, Frisk was worried, until he heard a fully adult monster exhale loudly after a small human had run right into him, and he looked up to see Asgore take a step backward, as well as his face turn to surprise. "F-Frisk?" he began. "Why have you come back? Is something wrong...?"

He didn't respond. All Frisk could do was grit his teeth and run past him as he called over his shoulder, "S-sorry, Asgore, there's no time!" Frisk could see the confused, worried expression on the king's face, but by then, he'd already outpaced him and rounded a corner, and kept running until he had found a stairway that let him climb one more floor, and soon, he found himself crossing the lofty catwalks built between the castle spires. He didn't dare look down; he wasn't worried about the fall or anywhere that wasn't directly in front of him. All Frisk could see from where he was was the path over the castle, and soon, he had made it to the steps that led to the throne room. Frisk ran up them two at a time, his legs starting to burn, but he forced himself to keep going as fast as he could until he finally slammed into the doors to the throne room and flung them wide open.

A cursory glance around revealed nothing but the flowers dancing in a light breeze and the solitary throne, so Frisk crept forward until he could see into the lightless room beyond. It was a corridor hewn into the rock, and unlike the throne room, there were no holes cut to let the outside light in. Frisk checked the corners behind the arch before he entered, and did so slowly, looking around for any sign of disturbance. There was nothing different, nothing he could see, anyway, so Frisk continued creeping forward with his hands balled into fists and partially crouched and ready to spring into action at the drop of a hat. He slunk the whole way to the end of the hall, but even before then, he could see the Barrier beyond. The next room that held it was, for lack of a better word, massive. More massive than Frisk had expected, and it seemed to be on the threshold between the surface and the Underground; he could see the sunlight filtering in (as the bright pink and dull red of sunset) as well as distorted tans and greys, most likely belonging to the stone walls that ran from one side to the other. It was a transitory place between the real and the fantastical, between life and death.

Of course, he couldn't marvel at it for long. Instead, Frisk went about checking all around him for a sign that Flowey had been there, but the area itself was too large to tell. Considering the edge of the Barrier shimmered and warped so that it was hard to tell where the traversable space ended and the ceiling and both walls of the area were cloaked in shadow, it left Frisk with several blind spots. Still, as soon as he got a few steps in, he began scanning the ground. Unlike the walls, it was smooth, obviously having been sculpted by monsters, and he looked for grooves or creases that would denote where the SOUL Jars containing the six human SOULs were. It didn't take long to find them, but getting the jars to rise...he had no idea how. Frisk stood over the seven marks on the floor, his lips pursed, his mind racing. He had no idea how Asgore had done it, all those times he'd had to fight him. It seemed as if they'd just risen up from nowhere. Frisk frowned and looked ahead of him. There was a space between the markings, wide enough for Asgore to stand in. Maybe…

Frisk took a couple steps forward and stomped on the empty area as hard as he could, and to his surprise, the floor in each of the divots pulled away, and seven SOUL Jars rose up into view.

There was nothing inside them, and Frisk's blood ran cold.

Unfortunately, to help him out of his mild shock, something came lancing at him from the darkness on his left, and it slammed into his arm. Frisk screamed as he felt something rigid and uncomfortably coarse pierce his flesh and dig in, and he stumbled back and clutched where it had hit him. When he looked down, Frisk could see what could only be a thorn sticking out of his upper arm, bright red and about the length of his hand from the tip of his middle finger to the wrist. It must have had some sort of poison in it, because he could already feel the area around the impact site growing numb. Frisk reached up and grabbed it, and when it jostled, bolts of pain shot up his arm, and then to make it worse, he heard someone giggling. High-pitched, staccato, and completely unhinged. When Frisk looked back up at where the thorn had hit him, he saw a shape.

It was hard to see clearly through the darkness, but Frisk knew it was coming closer; he heard the footsteps, saw it lurch toward him. The sensation of fire crawling up his arm forced him to look back down at the thorn, and Frisk knew he had to get it out if he wanted to be combat-effective, so he gritted his teeth, sucked in a breath, and wrenched it free. It came out accompanied by a yelp of pain and blood oozed out of the hole left behind.

"Eee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee…"

Frisk's head snapped back up as the shape came closer, out of the darkness, and once he could see it in full, he had to bite back a scream. It was Asriel, but at the same time...it wasn't. She looked like an Amalgamate, a cross between her old body and Flowey, or a plant in general. There were six yellow petals growing out of the base of her neck, her arms were no longer normally-proportioned and were instead two hulking stems. The left side grew five blood-red thorns half the length of his own arms, while the right side had fingers growing out of the stem, tapering off into sharp claws. The sleeves on her shirt were torn, her eyes, nightmarishly mismatched; one was blood red and the pupil was slit like a snake while the left eye had no iris at all. There were vines coming out of her back...holding six human SOULs.

She was hunched over slightly but grinning like a madman. The both of them remained frozen there, staring each other down, waiting to see who would make the first move. It was Asriel who did; she straightened her back, but it was jerky and stiff, as if she found it hard to move her own body. Frisk couldn't help but shudder thinking about it. Asriel's smile got wider (to the point of being uncanny). "Y'know, I was going to trip an alarm to the room to get you idiots to open up that machine, just to see if everything was okay, and then stab the comedian's quack of a father," she rasped, "but you made it so much easier!"

Frisk didn't respond. He was too busy looking at the vines that had the six SOULs snared in them as they slowly retracted into her body. Watched the light they made fade as they were, for lack of a better term, absorbed, but eventually, he spoke. Even. Measured. Careful. "Why...?"

That smug smile disappeared in an instant. "Why!?" she yelled. "I'll tell you why! Because I am the heir to the Underground's future!" She took a step forward. "Because once I kill you, I can pass through the Barrier," Asriel pointed to it, to the outside, "and give those humans what they really deserve!" She took a couple more steps forward; Frisk matched her by taking a couple steps away, angling himself so that he could run out the archway back into the throne room. Her eyes narrowed and she kept advancing. And then, in a voice so low he almost didn't hear it, Frisk heard her say, "Because someone, somehow, got their grubby little hands on something they shouldn't have."

"Asriel…" Frisk murmured, "don't do something you're gonna regret."

That got her to stop dead and stare at him. "This again...? Really. Get over it, Chara. I told you once, I'll tell you again: Asriel is dead." The right corner of her mouth turned upwards into another malicious grin and she took a couple steps forward as she whispered, "But don't worry, if you want to see her again that badly, I think I can arrange something."

In another instant, she had brought her arm back and before Frisk could process what was coming his way, much less react, Asriel had stepped into a punch that landed right in his stomach hard enough to knock the wind out of him, and sent him careening out of the room. He eventually landed and rolled across the ground until he slammed into Asgore's throne. He yelped when he made contact and it took him a couple minutes to come back to his senses. Frisk opened his eyes to see that he was crumpled up against the chair, upright, and still facing the Barrier. He tried to pick himself up, nearly lost all feeling in his left leg, grunted, and tried again. As he stood up he muttered, "...Great. You did something I'll regret."

He struggled to his feet and used the armrest to keep himself upright, knees shaking, breathing hurt when he filled up his lungs with air; soon enough, Asriel walked out of the antechamber to the surface. Her gait was slightly unsteady, the vines holding the SOULs in a death grip flexing and writhing, refusing to give up their prizes. She sneered as she got closer. It was a mix of disdain and anger, and the talons on her left arm twitched and flexed. "Just stay down and I'll make it quick." Frisk had seen her hand start to move again, and was barely able to fling himself to the left before she threw a punch. Her arm shot out, extending far beyond what should have been her natural range, and when it hit Asgore's throne, the entire back of the chair shattered. Pieces of wood and solid gold flew out and scattered across the garden. Frisk reflexively covered his face as shards of metal landed all around and over him, but he quickly rolled to the side, closer to the exit of the room in anticipation that Asriel was going to try and slam one of her fists down on top of him. She didn't, and though he was surprised, he didn't let it show; instead, he jumped up and kept his arms at the ready to defend.

Nothing came of it. Asriel was still glaring at him, and they kept their eyes locked on each other for what felt like hours. Then she took a step forward. Frisk took a step back. His breath was getting more shallow, more harried. "C'mon, Chara. Why don't you make it easy for the both of us? You'll get to see your 'best friend' in the afterlife, I'll get your soul." Her face contorted, the corners of her mouth pulling back almost impossibly far into a rictus grin. "It's a win-win."

Frisk had to take a minute to steady his breathing. He kept his arms up, blocking his face. "Not gonna happen," he said. "Not until you let the human SOULs go and let me fix this."

Silence again. Asriel stared at him. She didn't blink. She barely even moved; not even the vines growing out of her back were contorting that much. But then she sighed, closed her eyes, and shrugged. "Well, I tried being reasonable...Looks like you still need some persuasion." In the next minute, her eyes shot open again, and for a split-second Frisk could feel her murderous intent aimed directly at him. When she swung her arm up, he barely managed to manifest his soul weapons in time to cut a myriad of vines that Asriel summoned from the ground, aiming to skewer him alive. Frisk cut one, two, five, a dozen, but they never stopped or slowed down. Asriel kept moving her arms, pushing them outward to summon another vine, and all Frisk could do was keep moving backward as she advanced toward him. By the time they had come to the double doors that led into the throne room, the garden had been completely torn up, shreds of golden flowers littered the new, briar-choked grass. Asriel didn't let up, however, and Frisk cut through two more vines before she threw her left arm out, accompanied by an enraged shriek. A massive log of a vine erupted from the ground and Frisk's eyes widened before he jumped out of the way. It slammed into the doors, blowing them open and knocking the upper hinges off of one.

This, of course, didn't stop Frisk or Asriel from fighting. She launched herself at him, winding up a punch, and Frisk blocked it by bringing his hand up and interposing one of the katar's flat sides between himself and her fist. To his (mild) surprise, it actually managed to keep her from punching him clean into next week, and the result was a loud but hollow explosion from a lot of displaced air. Asriel seemed surprised as well, and it quickly turned to frustration as she yelled again and threw another punch. Frisk ducked down, and Asriel's fist went over him; he jumped back as she took another swing, slamming her other hand down where he'd been only a couple seconds before. Unfortunately, he hadn't been paying attention to his spacing. When his heel was supposed to meet solid stone, it instead met open air above the massive flight of stairs leading up to the throne room. His eyes went wide and he twisted himself around to try and keep his balance, but he only ended up falling forward and nearly breaking his teeth when he hit the stone stairs. The next thing he was aware of was pain and the sensation of rolling forward for seemingly forever until he stopped abruptly, at the bottom of the staircase. Frisk rolled over himself one last time on the bottom platform before he remained face-down on the floor. His entire body was aching from being jabbed by edges and his face was cut in a couple places, too.

He groaned and pushed himself up, blinking tears that were forming out of his eyes. He was right on the edge of the path, which let Frisk stare down at the ground far below. That was at least a seventy-five foot drop straight down, and was also certain death, so he pushed himself up and backward, away from the ledge.

Which was excellent timing, as Asriel followed him by jumping down a dozen stairs at a time and then jumped into the air when she got close to the bottom, and came back down screaming like a banshee. She slammed her fist into the spot where Frisk had been a moment before; he'd hopped back to get out of range, but Asriel swung her other arm in front of her, and dozens of bullet seeds materialized out of thin air. In the blink of an eye, they shot toward him, and Frisk gritted his teeth as he ducked down, barely avoiding the first volley, then he jumped up and backward as several more seeds blitzed the ground where he'd been standing. He landed, looked up, and brought up his hands to deflect more bullet seeds with his katars. Amazingly, he was fast enough that none of them scratched him. Then another volley came. And another. And another. His training was the only thing between him and being violently shot to death.

Of course, the training wasn't complete, and he wasn't perfect.

After dancing backward several steps and snapping his hands around more on reflex than conscious decision, Frisk wasn't fast enough to dodge another set of seeds, and two slipped by and pierced his abdomen on the right side; not enough to destroy anything vital, but definitely enough to hurt. He seized up, yelped, and almost fully collapsed on the ground, but when he landed, he retained enough control to roll himself away from where he fell, just before a thorny vine shot out of the floor. Seeing this got Asriel to yell in frustration, and she threw her left hand forward. Her thorny index finger shot out like a bullet; Frisk's eyes widened in horror and he instinctively ducked down. It flew over his head and he felt the wind as it sailed by.

Asriel sneered, and her left arm spontaneously grew a new finger in a matter of seconds. Frisk hastily glanced around and came to the obvious conclusion that this wasn't the best place to fight, and also, discretion was the better part of valor. He turned on his heel and booked it across the catwalks. What scared him was that he could hear Asriel right on his tail, but she hadn't said a word. He didn't stop to look behind him, except when he felt a (thankfully) smaller thorn whizz by the left side of his head and he turned around for a split second to see her glaring at him with a kind of tangible hatred that shook him right down to his bones. Frisk grimaced as he felt his stomach drop into his legs and he willed himself to run faster. They kept running, around the spires, around sharp bends, Frisk dodging Asriel's attacks, Asriel practically breathing down his neck. Soon enough, Frisk came to a door that led back into the main castle, and he reached for the handle and turned it. He turned back just to see how much time he had before Asriel caught up to him.

It, much like the sequence of events that had led him to this point, was a horrible, horrible mistake.

Frisk got a great look at Asriel's face as she barreled into him, shrieking the whole time, and the door to the interior was unfortunately not equipped to withstand the force of a human child and a monster supercharged with the power of six human souls and growing vines out of every limb slamming into it at full tilt. It exploded in a shower of wooden splinters and shards of metal, and Frisk's head was ringing as they tumbled over each other and across the freshly-waxed floor. His vision was blurry, his ears were still ringing. There were also a lot of new cuts on his arms and legs, but he wasn't really paying attention to that. Once the two of them came to a stop, Asriel was above him and had him pinned to the ground, a fact she was aware of as she grinned at him maliciously and brought up her fist.

His eyes went wide and Frisk barely managed to jerk his body away to avoid getting flattened when she punched the floor next to him. The sound echoed around the stairwell they had entered, but Asriel didn't wait around. She brought up her other arm and Frisk whipped himself to the opposite side before her fist slammed into the ground again. This repeated three more times before Frisk curled his legs up and managed to slide them between Asriel's, and before she could react, he angled them up and kicked. It hit her in the stomach and sent her flying off him, giving him enough room to spring back up and at the ready.

Asriel was in the air for a brief second before she landed back on the ground, her hands held up like a boxer. To Frisk's surprise (and concern) she didn't run right back in and keep attacking. She just stared at him for a moment before that horrid grin came back. "You're getting soft, Chara. That didn't even knock the wind out of me," she jeered, before she ran right back toward him.

It was like something out of a genre movie mocking and simultaneously paying homage to the most well-known cliches in swashbuckling period pieces: Asriel proceeded to swing her claws as organic swords, and Frisk did his best to dance around them. She forced him backward, and once Frisk hit the edge of the stairwell, he clenched his teeth and teetered dangerously on his heel, threatening to topple over and fall down. He flailed his arms for only a second before he regained his balance by stepping down, just in time to raise his right arm and block a horizontal swipe. She kept swinging at Frisk and he, in turn, kept retreating down the stairs, parrying, blocking, and dodging her attacks; they hit the landing between floors and Frisk took two quick steps back and kept moving back down the stairs. Asriel was still right on top of him, and was not letting up in her assault. The two of them kept up the deadly dance down the second flight, and Frisk had remained surprisingly untouched, perhaps some small cuts on his arms and his sides, but nothing serious. This changed when they were about six steps from the bottom, as Asriel's frown intensified to the point that Frisk could see dozens of creases in her brow and cheeks, and she shrieked at him in rage as she gave up trying to pierce his defenses with finesse and went for the brute force approach instead by tackling him.

They were flying for one glorious second before the floor came rushing up to meet them. Asriel had stayed above Frisk the whole time, so he crashed into it on his back, which understandably felt like he'd had pikes driven into his spine and his vision went white for a second. It went white again almost immediately when he regained focus and Asriel punched him right in the face with her right hand. Then again. And again. Frisk thought he heard a crack; must have been his nose. He didn't know, his head was still swimming.

Asriel was still wailing on him, but it was so loud she didn't hear the footsteps racing around the corner until she caught motion in the corner of her eye. She jerked her head up and to the left to stared across the room at the hulking form of Asgore. As soon as his eyes met hers, he froze stock still and didn't even blink. Then, a voice. It sounded like Asgore's. Same pitch, but the timbre was off, the bass was subdued as he muttered, "...Asriel?" in disbelief. As soon as her name left Asgore's mouth, Asriel grinned wickedly, and pushed herself off of Frisk and turned toward him. "My daughter...is that you? You...no, this cannot be. You were dead. I saw the dust."

"Sorry, old fool," she replied tauntingly, "the kid you're looking for isn't home. I was kind of in the middle of thrashing this idiot…" Her head twitched back toward Frisk. He was still lying on the ground, fingers twitching, he was trying to get his thoughts in order and his head to stop spinning, but still breathing. "But you are pretty tough...and I don't want anyone else getting in between me and them."

She took a step forward, but quickly felt herself get tackled from behind and fall face-first into the ground. Frisk had managed to get himself standing when she wasn't looking, though he was still horribly dizzy and his head felt like it was going to burst open if his heart beat too fast. Asriel shrieked again and started to struggle, and Frisk knew there was no way he could keep her pinned down, not with six SOULs at her command. He shot a pleading, desperate look at Asgore. He'd taken a step closer, his hand reached out to try and help, before Asriel had started talking. He still looked confused, hurt, and afraid. "R—run! Asgore...run!" Frisk cried out desperately.

His shouting seemed to snap the king out of his stupor, or at the very least, it got him to react. Asgore blinked in surprise, his breathing suddenly hitched and quickened...but he left all the same. He turned around and ran away. Frisk suspected if anything else was attacking him, Asgore would have jumped in to fight, but it was harder to do with something wearing his daughter's face.

Wearing his daughter's face? No. What was he thinking? This was Asriel; she just needed help.

And a second later, Frisk's only thought was, And I'm gonna need a king-sized ice pack, as Asriel rolled herself onto her right side and hit him with an elbow strike directly to the chest. He coughed, wetly, at that, and was jerked into the air from the force of impact before landing roughly on his hands and knees. When he looked up, Asriel was standing over him, her right hand raised, palm up (or whatever could be considered her palm). His eyes widened and he pushed himself backward so that he was only on his knees and his upper body was out of the way when a massive vine shot out of the floor in an explosion of linoleum and plaster.

Unfortunately, Frisk didn't have any time to react as the vine moved on its own and coiled itself around his waist and squeezed. All the air in Frisk's lungs was quickly forced out and he choked, his eyes involuntarily squeezing shut. He opened them again after a moment to look down at Asriel smiling at him. He could feel the sadistic glee radiating off her body and then he started to struggle, but the vine was still holding him in a death grip, and after a few seconds of futilely smacking it with his fists, he quickly plunged one of the daggers into it. A gash formed, but it didn't bleed. Frisk would have tried again if he didn't hear Asriel scream, and he snapped his head back up to look at her. It sounded like she was in pain, and now, looked like it, too; she was doubled over, clutching her chest. It made him freeze up, still holding his other hand high and about to plunge it down. When she looked back up, her gaze was filled with nothing but cold-running hate, and his hesitancy cost him. Asriel forced herself back upright and clenched her hand into a fist, and the vine constricted so fast, Frisk heard something snap and the worst kind of burning, stinging pain shot through his gut. That might have cracked a rib.

And then to just hammer the point home, Asriel turned away and the vine reared back before throwing Frisk forward across the hall, and out a window at the end in time with a cacophony of shattering glass and screaming. He hit the grass outside and rolled over once, twice, at least six times before he came to an unceremonious stop, laying flat on his stomach, his head reeling and his chest on fire. He groaned and tried to push himself up, but another bolt of pain shot up his spine and through his arms, and he stopped himself from moving, hoping the pain would stop if he did. Frisk cried out, and it melted into a hiss as he tried to focus on something, anything besides the burning in his stomach and arms and the sensation of several dislocated vertebrae. He eventually got himself up into a kneeling position and that's when he noticed there were shards of glass embedded in his arms and legs as well, along with a couple other places on his body. The breeze told him his face had not been spared either, and in the momentary lull, he realized how lucky he was that none of it had poked out his eyes. Getting a better look around him, Frisk saw he was in a castle garden with rows of flowers in planters, as well as perfectly-trimmed hedges and shrubs.

This momentary abatement was stopped when he heard crunching glass behind him, and he saw Asriel hop out of the window and began to cross the area between them. Frisk sucked in a breath and forced himself to stand back up. His legs were sore; he nearly fell over, but he managed to save himself just in time. As she approached him, she balled her fists up and the sneer on her face got more intense. "How are you still hanging on? Die already!" Asriel spat as she threw her fist out.

It extended like it was made of rubber; Frisk didn't so much as dodge the blow as he threw himself to the left and stumbled to a stop again. He looked back up at Asriel, her arm returning to normal proportions, and she turned to face him, but before she could try attacking again, Frisk murmured, "Asriel, please. I know you don't wanna do this."

She seemed caught off-guard for a moment. Her brows rose in surprise, but her expression just as quickly fell back into sadistic arrogance. "Oh, but I do. And I'm gonna enjoy it." She took a step forward and waved her other arm in front of her, shooting a wide arc of thorns diagonally up to the right. Frisk jerked his body to the left and twisted his torso so that he saw a flash of red as one of them nearly punched a hole in his head. He returned to a normal stance and stepped back. Asriel continued to mock him. "And once I've turned you into a fine red paste, I'll take your SOUL, have my fun down here for…" She trailed off and tilted her head as if deep in thought. "Oh, I don't know. A year? Maybe ten? Maybe a hundred?" Then, Asriel lowered her head so that she was staring up at him from below her brow. "Maybe more. And when I cross the Barrier, I can really cut loose!"

"Please." He could barely breathe. Not because of any magic or attack Asriel had thrown, there was simply a massive lump in Frisk's throat. It pressed up against his skin, blocking him from swallowing air. "Please don't. You're so much better than this," he breathed. He didn't notice, but Asriel stopped herself from taking another step towards him when those words left his mouth. All she did was stare, but by then, Frisk's head was already bent, staring at his shoes. "You...were always so much better than me."

Then, there was silence. After a few seconds, Frisk wondered what Asriel was doing if not attacking him, so he raised his head and saw her standing perfectly straight, staring at him with wide eyes. He blinked a couple times. He wondered if it was something he said, until he heard her ask, "...What?"

There were a lot of responses he could think of to that question. That wasn't very high on the list, and it took him a solid ten seconds to close his jaw that had almost dropped to the floor. He tried to say words, but every time he tried to start a sentence, it didn't sound right, so he started it over, and he did it four times, maybe more, before he decided to say, "Y-you...you were always so...so kind. So p-patient. A-and perfectly selfless." Frisk took a deep breath in and one step forward. Asriel only watched him and made no move to stop him...or rip his head off, whichever might have come first. "You...always wanted to make sure other people were happy before you were. I...let me return the favor. P...please. Nobody should have to suffer like you did, and I...I don't w-want you to suffer anymore." Another step closer with no response. Another step. Air thick with tension. Frisk took one last step, getting him as close as he'd ever gotten to Asriel before, though it was because she'd been slugging him. She stared up at him, but Frisk couldn't tell what was going through her head. Sure, she'd been totally rigid for the past minute or so, but her eyes had...softened. Despite his mouth being almost completely dry, he continued, in a low voice, "It doesn't have...it doesn't have to be like this. I know you're in there. The real you. Please. Please let me help you."

More silence. Time spent staring at each other, seconds to minutes. Then, Asriel pursed her lips and lowered her head. In hushed tones, she whispered, "You…"

Frisk reached out. Slowly, gaining increments in decimals with each centimeter, and when he touched her shoulder and held it, gently, for the first time in a long time, he felt hope. Hope. It blossomed in his chest and Frisk couldn't help the small smile that was growing across his lips. He could see some of Asriel's face, and he noticed she was smiling, too.

When she looked up, her smile wasn't happy. It was hateful.

"Are an idiot."

There was the sound of air being displaced above Asriel's shoulder and Frisk saw a bullet seed materialize, and in less than a second, it shot, aiming directly for his heart. Frisk's eyes widened and he jumped to the right. Because he'd already taken a beating his reflexes and muscles weren't fast enough, he wasn't able to get his body completely out of the way, and he felt something sting him. That sting blossomed, spreading across the lower left side of his chest, and he felt something compress in his lungs. It took the wind out of him and in an instant he completely forgot to work his legs, his head slamming into the hard ground. Despite his head throbbing and the sensible, rational part of his mind screaming in protest, he pushed himself back up after the shock wore off, and when he looked down at himself, the tension and burning he felt before increased tenfold. There was a splotch on his sweater that was rapidly turning purple at the edges. In the center, it was bright red and still bleeding. He suddenly found it harder to breathe. Frisk looked back up at Asriel standing over him, still grinning. She flexed her thorny fingers.

He probably should have seen this coming.

"It's been fun, Chara, but don't you worry! I'll take good care of your SOUL for you," she chirped sadistically. Then, Asriel raised an arm over her head, the left one, the one with fingers that were more talons than thorns. She spoke one more word which made Frisk reflexively squeeze his eyes shut and wait for the end. "Goodbye."

But before she could bring her hand down and slice Frisk into neat little pieces, blue circles appeared below her, and it got her to pause and stare at the ground with a confused grunt. Frisk opened his eyes too, when he was aware of the light hitting his eyelids, and it barely took him a second to realize exactly what those circles were. Considering he was laid out only a few inches away from the obvious magic, he should have tried to roll away to avoid getting cut up even more. Instead, he let his heart lead instead of his brain, reached out and called, "Look out!"

The glowing circles exploded, spears lancing upward from nothing, hellbent on perforating their target. Asriel shrieked as three of them cut into her leg and arm. The cuts didn't bleed.

Frisk wanted to pick himself up, run to Asriel, get her out of the way; there was a better way to deal with this than spears. Unfortunately, his body was rejecting the idea of getting up by making everything feel incredibly sore and tired and now it just hurt to breathe. After a moment of flailing like a beached fish, Frisk felt someone pick him up. Metal clinking on metal, and Frisk looked up to see the panting, happy face of Greater Dog. The canine crusader yipped happily and turned around, and started to run in the opposite direction with Frisk in his arms. He wanted to protest, say he needed to go back, but, again, breathing hurt. It hurt a lot more than he expected, and he was focused specifically on drawing his breath in slowly so as to not agitate the wound he'd received even more. They weren't running for long though. Greater Dog eventually gently deposited Frisk on the ground, sitting upright. He looked around; they must have run across the garden area, about thirty feet in all, closer to where the front gates of the castle were. But more importantly, all around him were members of the Royal Guard; Lesser Dog, Doggo, Royal Guards One and Two, and several other monsters Frisk hadn't met. Reserves? Most likely. Didn't really matter at the moment, especially with the captain of the guard herself approaching him. She stopped in front of Greater Dog and nodded before she looked down at him. "Well, well, well. Looks like we got here just in time!" she cheered. She looked back up at Greater Dog and said, "Nice work, soldier."

The Greater Dog barked happily, and then turned around, brandishing his pike. Undyne, however, knelt down to look at Frisk. Checked his face, his arms, and the hole in his chest. After a minute, she huffed, "Huh. She got you, but good."

"Undyne…?"

She just stared at him before she laughed, "Fuhuhuhu! Who else?" as she stood back up and put her hands on her hips.

"What…?" Frisk began. The stinging in his chest flared up and he gritted his teeth and hissed. "Why'd you...come here?" he asked.

"King Fluffybuns called me up, told me to sound the alarm 'cause there was a threat in the castle," Undyne explained. "Told me to go easy on the freak herself, though. Said it was his daughter, but man…" She glanced back up at Asriel, now far away. She looked angry, and Undyne furrowed her brow. The ground below Asriel lit up blue again, and this time, she recognized the danger and began running before the spears shot up. Undyne kept concentrating, creating the small pools of blue magic to keep her on the run. "That is definitely a face only a father could love," she finished, never taking her eyes off the abomination madly dancing around her attacks. "Think she got you in the lung, and if Alphys is right, which I know she is because she's just that smart, that means your blood's gonna clog'em up and drown you." The color drained from Frisk's face, so Undyne quickly added, "...Or it would, if your lungs had been totally shredded. But you just got a small hole punched in it like a well-used carnival ticket, so you'll be just fine once we get a healer in here! Just be tough for a couple more minutes, okay, squirt? We'll get you patched back up once we've dealt with this punk." She grinned at him, and Frisk wanted to tell her a lot of things. He wanted to tell Undyne this was a bad idea, he wanted to say she needed to let him handle it because not only was this his mistake, but he was the only person Asriel was interested in and she'd kill everyone else just to get to him. Unfortunately, she stood up and marched to the front of the line of guards before he could say anything and shouted, "Soldiers, form up! On me! Let's show this freak the might of the kingdom's finest!"

By now, Undyne had stopped concentrating on her spear magic, and had managed to force some distance between the guard and Asriel. When the spell stopped and Asriel likewise stopped dodging along with it, she looked up and glared daggers at Undyne. Royal Guards One and Two angled their feet into a ready stand, and One pulled out his sword and pointed it at Asriel. "Like, hold it right there, villain!" he called.

Two unsheathed his own sword, and held it in front of him in a pflug stance. "...no sudden moves," he said as Greater Dog held up his pike. One of them, a kind of hornet monster, pulled a chain and padlock off its back, probably intent on getting close enough to chain her up and keep her from moving.

The Royal Guard drew themselves closer to Undyne, forming a horizontal line with her in the center, and they took a couple steps forward when she added, "And make sure she doesn't get to the human!" They were intent on pressing Asriel into a corner.

Asriel looked around at all of them. It was a twelve-versus-one, and Undyne fought hard enough for two people, so that made fourteen. She licked her lips expectantly as the guards closed in, but Frisk, meanwhile, clutched at his chest and hissed as he tried to measure his breathing so it wouldn't agitate the wound. He forced himself up on shaky, cut and bleeding legs. It was steadily soaking into his shorts, discoloring them a dark blue with the faintest hint of purple. "Undyne, wait!"

Undyne took a quick glance back at Frisk and grinned. She called, "Sorry, Frisk! Give us a second to tie up the mini boss monster!" Undyne turned back ahead to look at Asriel, still standing in one place, eyeing every last one of the soldiers arrayed against her. Undyne furrowed her brow and commanded, "Guardsmen...don't let her out of the castle grounds."

Frisk grit his teeth as he tried to take a step forward. The beating he'd been through was starting to catch up with him, and his body wanted nothing more than to fall to the ground and just rest for just a few minutes, please, just stop moving, everything hurts; but Frisk's mind knew he couldn't afford to do it. Not now. He had a problem to fix, and had to warn Undyne. "No, listen to me, Undyne! She's—"

"Not now, punk! Can't you see we're trying to bring this crazy kid to justice!?" she yelled back.

"That's just it! You can't!"

Undyne threw her head back and laughed. "Seriously, Frisk? Your inner goody-two-shoes is talking again! Yeah, she looks pretty tough, but this is nothing we can't handle!" she said. "Just stay put until we—"

"She has the human SOULs!" Frisk yelled. Undyne froze in place, as did the rest of the Royal Guard. "You need to run!"

It was at that point Asriel bowed her head and sneered at the Royal Guard. And then, one by one, vines appeared behind her and snaked around her back, each one holding something bright and colorful.

Patience

Integrity

Perseverance

Bravery

Justice

Kindness

Now twisted in the grip of a new master.

"I think I've played around for long enough," Asriel mused as she watched the SOULs hang over her head and float beside her. She glanced back at the Royal Guards. One was visibly shaking. Two was sweating so much, it was actually sloughing off the grime on his armor. Greater Dog whimpered and took a step back. Asriel's sneer morphed into another wicked smile and she raised her right arm, palm facing out. "None of you morons have what I want," she said. The soul of Bravery began to glow more brightly.

"Chara does."

A ball of bright, hot, orange magic appeared in Asriel's palm and as she turned her hand and moved her fingers to mirror the shape of a gun, her smile became more and more twisted until it looked like most of her face was made of teeth and the orb was practically seething at the end of her fingertips.

She smiled, and then shot it.

---

Everything went white, then black, then reality abruptly reasserted itself, and Frisk could hear what was happening a few seconds before he blearily opened his eyes. The sounds of yelling and crashing weapons. The distant crackle of fire. Hollow explosions. He tried to focus, but everything was exceptionally blurry, and it didn't help that he was laying on his side, one eye pressed into the ground and closed. Frisk lifted his head and tried to make sense of what he was seeing through blurred vision and stars infrequently popping in and out of sight. He could see part of the garden; a tree and several hedges were ablaze, which meant that somehow, everything had gone even further down the toilet, so nothing new there.

Then it somehow got worse as the numbness in his mind receded enough so that he could feel each and every one of his nerves suddenly get flooded with information about how badly his arm was burned, how he now had a broken leg from being flung up and slammed into the ground, how his shoulder was now dislocated and basically useless; if he had to guess, he was hovering at 1 out of 20 HP.

If those conventions still applied to him, of course.

Frisk yelled and instinctively curled himself up in the fetal position, in some vain hope it would stop the pain. It didn't, of course. All he could focus on was the searing hot pain running rampant through his body, and the sounds of fighting not too far away. From where he was, he couldn't see what was happening. All he knew was that there was a lot of clashing weapons and...the distinct hum of Undyne's spear magic. He sighed a little to himself, the pain momentarily abated by the knowledge that she was still alive and kicking. He just laid there, uselessly for a minute before he tried pushing himself up again. A railroad spike heated up in a forge was hammered into the area of his left thigh just below the hip and he cried out and fell back to the ground.

He couldn't really do anything about it. His leg was very obviously broken, so he tried to simply prop himself up on his arms and roll over. He pushed up, agitating the burn areas and causing them to send signals of red-hot needles being poked into him over and over, but it sure wasn't as bad as a busted leg. He powered through it.

Once he could reliably lie on his back, Frisk set himself down, or at least he would have if his arms didn't give out when he tried to move his left leg and another nail got hammered through it, causing him to scream and topple backward. This, understandably, jostled his bum shoulder when he hit the ground, fraying even more nerves and it proceeded to feel like the bone in his arm was going to explode. Probably because it had. Frisk sucked in another deep breath and screamed again, and the pain crashed into him in waves. With every beat of his heart, blood was forced through strained arteries, delivering oxygen to twisted muscles, attached to hyper-alert nerves. All he could do was writhe on the ground, lightly smacking his head back into the ground below him as just a way to distract himself from the sheer agony coursing through the rest of his body.

He had never wanted to swear more in his life. He kept hitting the ground with the only part of his body that wasn't broken (a miracle in and of itself) until finally, Frisk couldn't keep himself quiet anymore. It was involuntary, but his voice spilled up from his throat like vomit. "...Shit!"

Now that catharsis had been reached, Frisk braced himself on his right shoulder. His left flopped over his stomach uselessly and he seethed as more pain shot up and down his arm and through his neck, but he looked up and around anyway.

The castle grounds wasn't a mess. It was a warzone.

Almost everything that could catch on fire was on fire. Trees, hedges, flowers, all of it was either burning, or spreading. Frisk forced his head to the left when he heard something heavy crash into the ground, and saw that a good chunk of the royal castle was just...gone. Obliterated. Stucco and plaster and brick were crumbling down from dozens of floors high after their support had been blasted to ashes. Frisk could see all the different floors in the castle, and it dawned on him that he had no idea where Asgore had gone after running from Asriel; he could only pray the king had left the premises, far away from the castle grounds, but there was no way to tell right now. And then Frisk looked back at where the Royal Guard and Undyne had been only moments ago, and saw that a shallow but wide crater had appeared several feet away from him. There were other craters just like it surrounding the larger one. Those were smaller. Frisk could barely take it all in at once, and he let himself fall back and just try to process the whole thing. However he'd managed to survive that blast, he didn't know; it must have been divine fiat, because there was no other way a human could have lived through something like that. He ignored the little voice in the back of his head that reminded him he wasn't technically human, because this had to be the worst time to pick to have an existential crisis.

Then a horrifying thought struck him, and he forced himself back up to get a better look at the destruction. The first thing he noticed wasn't actually the massive property damage this time, but he saw Undyne hit the ground a ways in front of him, and then slowly pick herself back up. She wasn't dead, so that had to amount to something. And then he saw Asriel and his stomach sank.

She landed shortly after Undyne, but now her body had mutated even more. The excess magic of the human SOULs had caused more vines and sourgrass flowers to sprout from her body in random places. One of her eyes was distended vertically, like Flowey's. In that moment, Frisk was seized with panic, and knew if he didn't want to die, he had to do something to get himself back together, no matter the cost; the pain would be temporary, death was not. He looked down at his limp shoulder and grabbed his upper arm. His nerves shot signals up his spine, screaming that he should let go, because it hurt like nothing on this earth. He seethed air through his teeth, bent over, and tried to ignore it. When he looked back up, he saw Undyne pick herself back up. A spear materialized in her hand. Then, a shape appeared from the flames off to their right. It was One, holding his sword up and at the ready, and then another monster appeared as well, a cat monster with chicken legs. It was at that point Frisk looked into and around the massive crater in front of him and noticed a few piles of dust. Nine in all. Most of it had been scattered, leaving very little behind. Frisk only stared at those piles for awhile longer until something spurred his heart and he gripped his left arm tighter.

The thought of fixing this mess fills you with Determination.

Undyne shouted something at Asriel. When Frisk looked up, he could see her throw her head back, cackling loudly enough for it to carry, and she replied with something that got Undyne to pause and relax her posture. One didn't seem as impressed by what she said as Undyne, and he ran forward, brandishing his sword above his head. Asriel remained silent as he got closer, and then caught the sword with a vine, ripped it out of One's hands, and used another to pick him up. She grinned at him and then threw him over her shoulder and into the castle wall, which exploded when he made contact, sending stone and plaster everywhere.

The second guard followed after One, and managed to strike her fast enough that she wasn't able to react. It left a large gash on her face and part of her upper body, but no dust spilled out. She recoiled, but quickly regained her balance, glared at the soldier, and Kindness began to glow green. The wound closed itself up, and then Integrity began to glow. Asriel held up her hand, palm up, and closed it into a fist. In the next instant, the monster was flung upward in the blink of an eye and Frisk could hear them yelling. The smile came back to Asriel's face and she relaxed her arm. The monster came right back down, hit the ground, and dissolved into dust on impact.

Frisk watched it all happen in slow motion, to him, at least. His heart beat again. That same feeling from before surged through his gut. He looked down at his arm and breathed in deep.

You are filled with DETERMINATION.

He had no idea what he was doing when he wrenched his arm around and forced it back into its socket. All he heard was a snap, and his whole body was flooded with adrenaline, as well as the sensation his muscles had been stretched out and wound back up like rubber, but a million times worse. He screamed. He screamed until he felt his voice crack, and kept screaming until his throat was raw. Frisk fell backward on the ground, cold and unfeeling, and he breathed in and out through his mouth rapidly. He was sweating bullets. With his luck, he probably set it back wrong.

Undyne must have heard him screaming, because the next thing he heard was her yelling at him. He sat up to see her looking at him, her face set in the kind of determination that only she had. "Move it, kid! Get as many monsters rounded up as you can and run!" she shouted.

Asriel took that as her cue to move in, screaming, as she raised her fist and went for a simple punch. Undyne turned back around just in time to jump out of the way. Frisk didn't wait to see more, however, and he stood himself up, trying to keep all the weight off his busted leg (and not doing a very good job at it). He did as Undyne said, but instead of getting to the front gates as fast as he could, he moved into the wreckage of the castle.

The absolute last thing he was going to do was run away.

Frisk didn't know where he went, exactly. He knew he was on the ground floor, but thanks to the magic ball Asriel had shot at them, everything was in complete disarray. Furniture had been thrown into the walls, the floor was charred in some places, parts of the ceiling and upper floors were still collapsing. Frisk didn't wander far, because he knew he needed to get back to the fight soon, and also because his leg was killing him; he simply entered the massive hole, found a hallway that seemed stable enough, and leaned up against the wall before lowering himself to the ground. It was neither a gentle or smooth process as he skidded down, starting and stopping infrequently, until he was finally sitting on the floor. His leg didn't feel much better; nothing felt much better, and it was still extremely hard to move his shoulder. Frisk leaned back and sighed deeply. Everything had fallen apart so fast it made his head spin, and in hindsight, there were probably better ways he could have gone about handling the start of it. He breathed in and covered his eyes with his hands and then slowly dragged it down his face. How was he going to get out of this catastrophe? And more importantly, how was he going to get everyone else out of this catastrophe?

He thought about it. He thought about it as hard as he could. It was difficult with the sounds of fighting and explosions echoing around outside, but he tried to think of a good plan. But in terms of good options that got everyone out alive and/or with as little bodily harm done to them as possible...he had no good options. Frisk shut his eyes and grimaced as he sunk down even more and leaned over to put his head in his hands. There was no way this was going to end nicely or quietly.

Unless…

Frisk picked his head up when the idea entered his head, and he was torn. He'd promised not to...but he also wanted one last chance. Just one. And he debated with himself for awhile. He thought about it, weighed the pros and cons of that action, if it was worth it, and after another minute, he sighed in defeat and lowered his head. No, he realized, it probably wasn't worth it.

But he really didn't seem to have a choice anymore.

So he leaned back against the wall, closed his eyes and tried to block out all external stimuli. He'd done it before. It was all second nature by now, and in time, all was black, and he searched for that glimmering light in the nothing. The light that he reached out and touched, the light that suspended him over a mound of flowers at the bottom of a massive pit, the light that could rewind time as easily as winding a clock. He reached out with aetherial hands, grasping in the dark, searching for it, that spark that undid his progress; it didn't take long for him to realize something was wrong.

He couldn't feel it.

Frisk's breathing got more shallow, more hurried as he kept reaching out, trying to find that little spark, but it was gone. Usually, he felt it right in front of him. All he had to do was reach out and hold on, but now he was blind and grasping at nothing in the stifling abyss. He tried moving forward; maybe it was just a little further out.

It wasn't.

Panic had fully set in. Frisk swung his imaginary arms around, swiping all around him. He was cast away at sea and desperately trying to keep his head above water, and he couldn't find his ability to RESET. The only reason he could think of, in this frenzied state, was that he'd gone so long without using it, the power had atrophied.

You seem to be having some trouble.

Frisk stopped, but the voice in his head didn't stay still. He saw, felt, someone else's hand grab his arm. Their fingers ran gingerly up it until they grabbed his hand, and he felt a presence press themselves up against his back. He knew who it was. There was only one other person sharing his headspace.

Let me see what I can do.

They felt like freshly cut grass and lemon wedges, an aura that, even after all these years, didn't die. Frisk didn't argue. He just let them do what they wanted. In his mind's eye, he saw them pass by on his right, still holding his hand. Their form was blurry, flickering, an outline drawn in chalk. They turned back to face him. Scratch that, they weren't completely colorless; their eyes were bright crimson. They walked away from Frisk, as far as their arm could extend without letting go, into the inky blackness, and then reached out with their free hand themselves. Frisk went quiet. For a minute, he wondered if he'd forgotten to keep breathing, until he heard them think something he thought he wouldn't get to hear:

Found it.

They reached out and grabbed something before turning back to Frisk with an open palm. He couldn't see it in the metaphorical dark, but he could feel it now that it was close. When he'd reached out before, it felt vibrant and full of life, like a miniature blazing star he could grasp and hold in his hands. Now, he felt it again, and it had cooled to cinders. He looked up at his partner.

It's dull, as you can see. But there may yet be some life left in it. Use it...wisely.

Frisk looked at them, then back to the invisible spark. Slowly he reached out and touched it with his free hand, and was immediately pulled from his meditation by his soul flaring up brightly, but not in the same way it twinged when he RESET. No, he felt like he'd been attacked, his SOUL shuddered violently. Frisk felt his stomach twist and he devolved into a coughing fit. They were dry and burned his throat. He covered his mouth with his sleeve and when he pulled it away, he found it stained red. Frisk just stared at it for a moment as the reality sunk in. If he went through with this, this might be the last RESET he'll ever pull off.

If he tried again, it might kill him. Maybe worse.

Of course, that still left the problem that was still outside and probably manhandling Undyne...if the yelling and magic spells being tossed around were any indication. Frisk racked his brains again. He had to get close to Asriel, retrieve her SOUL, and then RESET. Incredibly easy, at least on paper. In practice, she was most likely going to make him work for every inch he took. He groaned and held his head in his hands. There had to be a way. There always was. There had to be a way to get close to Asriel, and if he could make her see reason, for however briefly, then even better.

He had no real avenues on his person to do it, at least he didn't think he did. He searched his right pocket. Old Nice-Cream wrapper (why hadn't he thrown that away?), a piece of the stick he used to carry. He shook his head; no good. Better try the left. He reached over his chest to search it, because moving his left arm still hurt and his shoulder was shot. Nothing in there either, except something small, and made of plastic…

Frisk frowned and after some grip adjustment and a frustrated, "Oh, come on," he fished it out. It was his phone. After a moment of hesitation, he pressed the power button and the screen lit up. He scrolled through the menus, made harder by the fact he felt himself getting weaker and more tired by the minute, and couldn't help but wonder how it was still working and in one piece after the beating he'd taken. He checked through his contacts, then looked through photos (what few there were. Mostly just Papyrus, Sans, and him messing around), and then he looked through music. And he found something that got a few extra wheels turning.

It was a longshot. There was a high chance it wasn't going to work, but if it didn't...well, he'd deal with it. Maybe not very well. Maybe after screaming and crying and giving up for a few days to just eat junk food until he felt a little better, but he'd deal with it, if he survived. First, he had to talk to Sans. Tell him about what he needed to do...what he was going to do. His hands were still shaking as he dialed Papyrus' number, but he managed to enter it without needing to correct anything. Frisk brought the phone up to his ear as it rang once, then the other end picked up.

Papyrus' voice greeted him instantly. "FRISK! HELLO! HOW IS THE CONVENTION?"

Despite everything he knew and loved crashing down around him, Frisk had to stop and marvel at that statement for a minute before he replied, "...What?"

"THE CONVENTION! THAT YOU ARE AT! THAT IS BEING HELD IN THE KING'S CASTLE!" Papyrus responded matter-of-factly. "SANS TOLD ME YOU HAD SOME URGENT STUFF TO TAKE CARE OF THERE, AND THAT I SHOULD WAIT AT HOME UNTIL IT'S ALL DONE!"

Ah, so Sans told him that. Of course. If he'd mentioned there was a huge, world-ending brawl going down, Papyrus would have probably jumped at the chance to play hero and would've gotten himself killed. Frisk sighed. A small victory, probably, but there was a more important reason he was calling. "Is Sans there?" he asked.

"NOT AT THE MOMENT, BECAUSE I HAVE NOT SEEN HIM! I WAS BUILDING MORE HYPOTHETICAL ACTION SCENARIOS WHEN HE POKED HIS HEAD IN THE DOOR, TOLD ME ABOUT YOUR CONVENTION, AND THEN BEFORE I COULD ASK IF THEY ALLOWED COSPLAY, HE WAS GONE!" Papyrus replied indignantly. "SO LAZY, HE COULDN'T EVEN WAIT TO ANSWER ONE QUESTION!"

"Oh." Frisk squeezed his eyes shut and then reflexively bent forward to try and get down when he heard something explode in the distance.

He kept his mouth shut, which was a good idea since Papyrus chimed, "WHAT WAS THAT?"

"Uh…fireworks," Frisk lied. "But the really loud, annoying kind. Y-you wouldn't like them. And, uh, thanks anyway, Papyrus. I-if you do see Sans again...tell him to...call me back, please?"

"OF COURSE! QUITE A SIMPLE REQUEST, AND I SHALL GLADLY HONOR IT!" Papyrus exclaimed. Frisk breathed a sigh of relief as quietly as he could before Papyrus spoke again. "BY THE WAY, FRISK...HAVE YOU SEEN DAD? HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BACK HOME BY NOW."

For a moment, Frisk had all the air sucked out of his lungs and he nearly choked on his own spit. He managed to turn away from the receiver and muffle it before he turned back, cleared his throat and said, as evenly as he could, "Yeah, he'll...he'll be back soon."

"NYEH-HEH-HEH! EXCELLENT. THANK YOU, FRISK. THE GREAT PAPYRUS SHALL SEE YOU LATER! HAPPY CONVENTION-ING!" Frisk heard the phone click, and sighed deeply again.

He leaned back against the wall and tried to think of how to tell Sans about what he was going to do, but he really had no time, because he heard the phone start ringing again almost immediately. Frisk jumped a bit and scrambled to pick it back up and answer the call. "...Hello?" he asked tentatively as he brought the phone back up to his ear.

"heya, kid," came Sans' voice from the other side. He didn't sound angry anymore, but he also didn't sound very happy, or disappointed, or anything, really. He sounded painfully neutral.

They both went quiet, and Frisk...really didn't know what to say. "Listen, Sans, I...I'm so sorry, I didn't—"

Sans cut him off with, "spare me the apologies, kid. papyrus said you wanted to talk. well, i'm talkin'."

He stopped, took a deep breath, went over all the words in his head. Then, Frisk took a deep breath and said, "I...I have a plan. It'll fix this."

He heard rustling from the other line. Sans must have adjusted his coat. "great," he replied. A pause, and then Sans continued darkly, "what's the part you're hiding from me?"

Frisk lowered his head and chuckled. The bitter kind of chuckle, the kind people make when they're forced to say something they don't agree with. "...You're not gonna like it," he muttered. He heard Sans inhale on the other end and he guessed Sans knew what he was planning on doing without saying it. No sense in dragging it out, then. "I...I just wanted to give you a warning. And...and say I'm sorry."

"y'know what?" His voice was a bit more clipped now, but still betrayed barely a hint of emotion. Yet somehow, what he said next cut deeper than thorns. "go ahead. knock yourself out, kiddo. at this point, i'm too tired to care."

"Sans, I..." his voice broke and he coughed, tried to make it sound like he was prepared for what he was about to do (he really wasn't). He started again, "Really, I'm sor—"

"save it for next time, frisk. bye."

The line went dead, and Frisk was left holding the phone up to his ear, staring dead ahead at nothing. His heart was still pounding, his hands were still shaking, his leg still hurt like hell, but there was no other way to go but forward. Frisk sighed, and brought the phone down. There was a little clip he could pop out of the side and use to hook it onto the outside of his pocket, but first, he went back into the phone's saved media. He flicked his thumb down the list until he found what he needed, the song he'd asked Alphys to save several days prior, and then clipped the phone to his pocket.

Frisk braced against the wall and attempted to push himself up. His leg screamed out in protest, and the only solace he could take from it was that the pain wasn't as severe as it had been a few minutes ago. His lungs spasmed infrequently, and he let loose a cough that flung blood on the ground in front of him, but he managed to push himself upright. Now he just had to stand.

One step forward, and he nearly toppled forward from his legs going numb and becoming too accustomed to sitting down. Frisk stumbled forward, and then he did fall when he put too much weight on his left leg, and crumpled and cried out in pain. He landed on his hands and knees, his head spinning, breathing heavily. His whole body wanted him to lie down and just rest for maybe a few hours, maybe a week, or maybe just RESET and reverse the damage instantly. But he grit his teeth and forced himself to get back up and stand, then turn to the left, and limp his way out of the ruined castle.

He still needed to grab something first.

Undyne had sworn to the king she'd go easy on the threat that had him so worried. Even if she seemed dead-set on killing, he'd said, please try not to hurt her too much. That, however, was before she saw this...thing had gotten its hands on the six SOULs. At this point…

At this point, it was either kill or be killed.

Of course, the problem came from the fact that she was facing down a monster—a monster monster, not an Underground monster—with the power of six human souls backing them up. Taking down something like that would be a tall order for a human mage; for her, she'd have a marginal advantage due to her training as a Royal Guard.

Undyne pushed herself back upright after being punched in the gut and sent flying several feet backward, and hurled a spear at Asriel; she deflected it with a green shield.

Again: a marginal advantage.

Asriel raised her arm and pointed her fingers at Undyne, and the orange soul gave her a point of magical energy, which she shot. Undyne threw herself forward, but by now, the battle had worn her out so much that when she dove, the magic bullet clipped her leg. She winced, but kept moving, popped out of her roll, and conjured a spear in her right hand. It flickered, the blunt end was emitting a small trail of pearlescent turquoise smoke, but she ran forward anyway and swung at Asriel with a horizontal strike. She ducked out of the way and popped back up in an uppercut that sent Undyne flying back through the air, but then Asriel sent out a vine that wrapped itself around her ankle and swung her back down into the ground.

Monsters do not have bones, or muscles, or fleshy organs that are susceptible to failure, but Undyne felt a shock reverberate around inside her body and head that left her worse than shaken. She felt her soul twinge; the smallest crack appeared somewhere on it. But when she looked back up to see Asriel standing over her, she grit her teeth and kicked on reflex. It hit Asriel right in the jaw, which got her to yelp and stagger backward, though as she covered her muzzle, a vine shot out of her back and stabbed the ground where Undyne was. She had the foresight to roll to the side and get back up and summon her spear before Asriel recovered and charged forward, vines and arms swinging wildly.

This was the most straightforward assault any living being could do, swing at the target with reckless abandon...but Asriel was fast. Not fast enough to nick her, not at first. Undyne could block like the best, but she got tired after a couple minutes of blocking, dodging, parrying...while Asriel didn't seem fazed in the slightest. It was small at first, a small cut on her arm, a thorn nicking her leg. It was only when she used a small blast of orange magic that seared her left shoulder that Undyne realized she was slowing down, and Asriel knew it. She kept up the assault, a whirlwind of vines and thorns, until she found what she'd been waiting for; a critical mistake.

With as much strength left as she could muster, Undyne jumped back, away from a thrashing vine, and raised her spear up before leaping back in with the intent to drive it through Asriel's head. Undyne roared as loud as she could, but she was too slow...too predictable. Asriel threw up her hand right as the spear came down and…

It bounced off.

There was a flash of green light as the soul of Kindness glowed, and the spear was rejected by a small explosion of force that also knocked Undyne back to the ground. Not wasting the opportunity, Asriel reached down with both arms and seized her in a vise-like grip. She tightened a little bit; not enough to immediately kill her, but definitely enough to hurt. There was screeching as Undyne's armor buckled and dented, and she screamed along with it. Asriel held her up and Undyne tried to hit her hard enough to let go, but between her exhaustion and the pain she was in, it just wasn't enough. Then, Asriel brought her close, teeth bared in a rictus grin. "Any last words you want me to give to your moron of a girlfriend?"

"Put her down."

The both of them froze and Asriel looked down and beyond Undyne. There was someone standing there, in the wreckage of the castle and the burning remains of the garden. It was only Frisk, clutching his hip, bleeding out of several cuts on his arms and the hole in his chest, some of the skin on his face and neck inflamed and red from burns. Asriel only stared for a second before Undyne looked back and shouted, "Frisk! Why are you still here!? Run for it, this monster wants you dead!" This earned a scornful look from Asriel. The soul of Integrity flared briefly before Asriel wound up and threw her to her left. With the soul exerting its influence, she didn't stop to roll along the ground. Instead, Undyne kept flying through shrubs and hedges until she hit the stone wall around the perimeter of the garden and collapsed. Frisk noticed she didn't dissolve into dust, which was...something, at least.

But with Undyne out of the way, Asriel's attention was redirected back to him. "You're either awfully brave, or just really, really stupid. Definitely stupid," she said.

Frisk didn't reply. He took a step forward. This got a scoff out of Asriel. "What's this, Chara? Giving me the silent treatment?" The vines snaking off her body pointed themselves at him. "That's fine by me. At least try to make your screams entertaining, though." One of the vines launched a thorn, which Frisk sidestepped, and he kept walking forward. There was at least one hundred eighty feet between them. Asriel squinted and asked, "You're not attacking me, huh? Even after I tore your friends apart, swiped the six SOULs, nearly shattered your skull? What's your end goal, here? I know you've got one."

Frisk narrowed his eyes and took a quick glance down at his hip to where he'd hooked his phone on the lip of his pocket and quickly flicked the media player on.

A familiar song begins to play…

No, I'm not the one you seek,

But you're the one I need.

Everyone's here with me, so

Why do I feel alone?

I would give up anything

For what I had back then.

The bond that we had before,

Is it too late to mend?

Asriel stared at him, blinked a couple times...and then started cackling. "Hee-hee-hee-hee! Oh, now I get it!" she exclaimed. "You think just playing some sappy song's gonna get me to stop pummeling you? Alright, then...see how much good it does!" She launched even more thorns at him, and he set about dodging around them. He didn't manifest his SOUL weapons; with how hurt he was, he didn't know if he'd survive using them to block. "Admit it, Chara, you're chasing a ghost," she continued. "Asriel's not coming back, no matter how much you cry!" She raised her hand, another ball of orange magic forming in it. It shot out of her palm and arced toward Frisk. His eyes went wide and he threw himself to the side, making sure not to land on his phone. He scrambled back to his feet when he saw little white pellets appear in the air above Asriel's head, and they hit the ground right after he got back up and kept marching forward. "So either give up and die, or do what I know you want to do...come fight me!"

"Never." The words slipped out of his mouth before he even decided he wanted to say them, and Asriel stared at him for a second, astounded for the first time in awhile, but that look of surprise quickly disappeared and was replaced with rage. She lifted both her arms and fired off each thorny finger in rapid succession. Then bullets. Then more thorns. Frisk's eyes widened and he ducked down as a few whizzed over his head, then staggered to the right, jerked his upper body left, right, down, jumped over bullet seeds and staggered when he landed and his broken leg buckled. He hit the ground face-first. Frisk lifted his head back up to see Asriel glaring at him and she raised one of her hands, palm up.

His eyes went wide and he scrabbled to the side. Frisk felt the ground under him shudder and a giant vine punctured the ground where he'd been laying. Considering how bruised and battered he was, he wasn't fast enough; he was just a second too slow, and a thorn on the vine caught him, shredding his sweater and cutting a gash into his chest. Frisk yelled as he tumbled to the right, and finished the roll clutching his chest. His whole arm was bloody now, but he sucked in his breath, internalized the pain, and used it as a catalyst to push himself back up into a sitting position and then upright. Frisk turned around and kept marching, still clutching his chest and limping forward.

The music continues playing.

You ask for proof then,

I'll bear my heart then,

And then we'll meet in the middle.

You take the high road,

I'll take the low road,

And then we'll meet in the middle.

There was about forty feet left between them, and Frisk pushed himself forward. Asriel continued to stare at him, expression oscillating between shock and raw hate. He got a few more feet before she remembered she needed to keep him away, and a vine slithered out in front of her and launched several thorns at him. Frisk yanked his body out of the way, but it felt like every cell had turned to lead. One of them nicked his ear. He hissed and kept walking. Asriel snapped her fingers, and a ball of orange magic appeared, and she shot it at him without hesitation. Frisk threw himself to the ground and when the energy ball passed overhead, he forced himself back up to a kneeling position. He glanced up at her, and tried to stand up, but the soul of Justice flared and shot small yellow projectiles of magic at him. Frisk recoiled as they peppered his whole body; though they didn't puncture and leave open wounds, he still felt his SOUL being buffeted by magic and the raw power of human animus. He slowly raised his arms up to shield his body. This assault kept up for a minute until the bullets stopped flying. When he didn't feel anything else coming, Frisk dropped his arms, shakily got to his feet, and kept walking.

Asriel hissed and she brought up her arm. The soul of Integrity glowed, and Frisk was gripped with the familiar feeling of weightlessness as the ground was torn out from under him and Asriel threw him backward ten feet. He landed on his back and groaned. His heart was hammering away in his chest, the gash on his torso was burning and still bleeding because of it, his leg was screaming in pain again.

The music is still playing.

When we meet once again,

Don't think you must confess

All your sins, just let them go,

'Cause you already know

Doesn't matter what you do,

I'll still be there for you,

By your side until the end,

You'll still be my best friend.

Frisk grit his teeth, braced both his arms on the ground and pushed himself up. He raised his head. Asriel was still glaring at him, showing her teeth like a predator, but from here...he couldn't tell. It looked like her eyes were misty.

He forced himself to stand and keep walking forward. Asriel sneered and threw more projectiles his way, magic from the soul of Justice, bullet seeds and thorns. Frisk was too weak, battered, and broken to try and dodge them.

So he took them head-on, felt the thorns sink into his flesh and the seeds create pockmarks on his skin. Some of them broke the surface to bleed him. He looked down. There were thorns sticking out of his stomach. He winced as he reached down and pulled a couple of them out, looked back up and kept walking. Asriel...wasn't happy. "Why aren't you dead?" she screamed. "Why aren't you dead yet!?" Another round of projectiles. Frisk raised his arms up to shield his face, though he figured Asriel didn't want him dead immediately; it wouldn't be fun. He felt them slam into his body, harder than he expected. It knocked him to the ground, and he yelped in pain. On his hands and knees, he shut his eyes, resisting the urge to throw up, or lie down and let himself die. Instead, he coughed and splatters of blood landed on the charred grass below him. He sucked his breath in and shakily stood back up.

Your phone is still on.

I am here...

Still right here.

You'll be fine…

In due time.

Asriel screeched, and used the soul of Integrity to pick him back up and fling him backward. He didn't go as far as the first time, but the landing was just as rough. She didn't let him fall naturally, Asriel slammed him into the ground. Frisk heard something snap, and the sudden pain shooting up his spine confirmed another bone was broken. Right forearm. Then, he heard something fizzle and pop. The music skipped, and a few seconds of it replayed a couple times before abruptly cutting off.

Your phone is broken.

Frisk squeezed his eyes shut, and as much as he wished for it to pick any other time to break, he couldn't really bring himself to care much. He still had to try. He still had about thirty feet to go, so he stood back up. It was hard, harder than he expected it to be. His vision was swimming and his legs had gone beyond feeling like they were on fire and now just felt like jelly. He listed backward a bit, but jerked himself forward and used the momentum to walk, unsteady as it was. Asriel screamed, "I'll kill you if you don't fight back! You know it, I know it, so give up on the 'holier-than-thou' act!" She threw more attacks at Frisk; he dodged what he could, though at this point, "dodging" was being too generous. He was mostly moving away from attacks that probably wouldn't hit him, and doing it slowly. "What do you need me to do to spell it out!? I don't care about you anymore, Chara! I don't care if you die, I'm beyond that now!" She grunted and dragged the talons on her right arm through the dirt. Frisk saw it coming and jerked himself to the right as a vine shot out of the ground. Considering his form was sloppy from the damage he'd taken, he didn't clear it in time, and the blast it created from throwing soil around threw Frisk to the ground and he rolled over once. He stopped, groaned, and tried to find the strength to get back up. The spark was dim...but it was there.

Frisk pushed himself back up. It felt like he was trying to stand up with gigantic steel beams on his shoulders, the kind used to build skyscrapers. He moaned, trying to vent some of the pain and tiredness, and he stood back up. His knees were wobbling. Frisk slowly turned himself around to face Asriel. Part of his mind that wasn't taken up with trying to reach her wondered why she didn't take them time to finish him off while he was trying to get back up. Even with his vision blurred by tears and fatigue, he could see her face; her mouth was turned up in a sneer, but...he couldn't really feel any hate behind it. Yes, it was filled with derision, but he'd seen her look at him with true, unbridled hatred. He couldn't see it anymore. He stumbled closer as Asriel ranted, "Why are you still trying!? I told you to just give up and make this easy for both of us! Asriel's not coming back, don't you get it!? Do you!?" Frisk didn't respond. He staggered closer. Asriel still stood there, stock still, except the vines writhing behind her back. "Well!? Answer me, Chara!"

Fifteen feet. Frisk took another few steps, but then, in his fatigue, he kicked the back of his heel, yelped, and fell face-first into the ground. A trip like that would cause anyone else to suck it up, stand, and keep walking; wounded pride, at worst. But not Frisk. When he picked his head back up, he was seeing stars dance across his vision. His breathing was ragged; heavy, trying to keep himself conscious. He managed to push himself up to a kneeling position and looked up at Asriel. "...Why…" he began shakily, "Do...you...have her face...then…?"

"Th-that's...I...I only look like her because I have her SOUL in my body! Idiot!" She swung her fist and it stretched out far enough to punch him right in the face. He cried out and was sent sprawling backward a couple feet, and now he could feel blood pouring out of his nose. Despite his body telling him not to, despite it telling him he needed to lay down and die (it was beyond deluding itself into thinking he could just "rest"), he stood back up. One shaky arm, one shaky leg at a time. Frisk got back up and stumbled his way back toward Asriel. He got a few feet (further than he thought he would) before she launched into another tirade. "Just because I look like her doesn't mean I think like her! It's a ruse! Something I could use...should have used...to t-trap...lure you in! So I could kill you!"

"Then why...don't...you…?"

The world paused around them. With the way Asriel stared at him, it sure felt like time had stopped. Then, she stopped staring at him—with wide eyes, lips downturned—and stepped forward into another punch. He was so weak that this time, Frisk didn't even yell. "Is that what you want? Fine! Then I won't hold back, unlike you!" she roared."There's nothing left of Asriel! Get it through your thick...!"

Punch to the left side. Crack.

"Stupid...!"

Punch to the right side. Whack.

"Head!"

She didn't punch him three times. She grabbed his shoulder and turned him around to face her. For a brief, peaceful moment, Frisk wondered what was going to happen.

Then she sunk three of the talons on her left hand through his chest, deep enough to shatter his lower thoracic spine and paralyze everything below it, and far enough to poke out the other side.

Frisk gasped as his senses suddenly became crystal clear, unclouded by pain. It was there, but now that his body knew it was dying, that took precedence. He couldn't move. He was already too beat up to try, so when she let go of him and pulled the thorns back out, he shuddered when they left, cutting up more of his insides. His legs and hips were numb, and he crumpled backward onto the ground. It hurt to breathe even more; he could feel something sloshing around in his lungs. It could only be blood, at this point.

A figure stood over him. Hard to see with blurred vision as well as keeping himself from passing out via sheer force of will. Asriel. She was standing over his body, fists clenched, the vines on her back undulating softly in the breeze, if there was one. He couldn't tell anymore. He tried to focus. Her face was contorted in pain. He didn't know why; he hadn't been able to lay a finger on her. Then he noticed her eyes were welling up with tears.

Oh.

"How's it feel!?" Asriel yelled down at him. "The SOULs, some of your worthless friends, now your life!" Her arms vibrated as she clenched her fists tighter. Frisk thought he saw some tears fall from her eyes and land on his shirt, cleaning some of the blood away. "With your SOUL, I'll take the whole Underground, too, and the surface not long after! How's it feel, Chara? Tell me! Tell me…!"

Silence. If he wasn't breathing, Asriel would have guessed he expired from the shock alone already, but no. Frisk's chest was still rising and falling. Slowly. It looked like he was trying to breathe with a block of solid tungsten weighing his chest down, and sounded like it, too. He was staring up at Asriel, thinking. Just before she gave up trying to get an answer out of him, his mouth opened, and he spoke. "I…" A deep, wheezing breath. "...Don't...hate you."

Asriel felt herself freeze to the spot she was standing at and she stared down at him, wide-eyed. She felt the monster's soul inside her—broken, frayed, barely alive—quiver. "You...what…?"

"...I'm...I'm sorry." Frisk swallowed hard, loud enough to be heard. He licked his lips and kept trying to breathe. "All...I wanted...to give you...was a happy ending."

She kept staring at him. Something in the broken shell of her body shuddered. Something Asriel hadn't felt for a very long time came creeping up her back, wrapping itself around her mind. She'd been fighting it since Frisk started marching toward her, on broken legs, after getting knocked down over and over.

It smells like guilt.

Asriel choked on a sob and dropped to her knees. She could only look at Frisk's broken body for another few seconds before she covered her face with her oversized, monstrous hands. There was silence again, for a moment, until there was gentle sobbing. "...You idiot. You idiot," Asriel repeated, almost low enough to be left unheard over the crackling of the fires around them. She remained like that, on her knees and quietly crying, for another few seconds before she felt something lightly touch her arms.

Asriel dropped her arms and looked up to see Frisk weakly tapping her with the back of his right hand. "Asriel…" he rasped. She only stared at him until he flexed his fingers. It was slow. Life was leaving him quickly, but she understood his intention. She lowered her arms and let his hand get closer until it was pressed up to her chest. For a moment, she was confused, until he flexed his fingers again and repeated, "...Asriel…" In that moment, she understood what he wanted. What he'd wanted since the start. A little, shrill voice in the back of her head told her not to. Told her to finish what she'd started.

But she ignored it, and closed her eyes. There was a small, flicking light that coalesced into her SOUL.

It was still broken. Pieces still floated to the side. It was still split down the middle, but it stayed there, in front of her body and in front of Frisk's palm. But slowly, he curled his fingers around it. Asriel could feel it, as electricity arcing through her body. His touch was careful, slow, it practically felt like velvet; it was the gentlest thing she'd felt in years. She closed her eyes to squeeze out more tears, and then she opened them again, and slowly looked down at Frisk. His eyes were half-lidded, and it looked like it was taking every ounce of strength he had to keep his arm up. "Do...you...trust...me…?" he whispered.

She remained silent for a moment, until a small, scared voice whispered back, "Yes."

Frisk nodded, as much as he could nod when flat on his back and dying, and Asriel couldn't bear to look any longer. She sunk back down and hid her head in her hands again. Frisk brought his hand back, and closed his fingers around Asriel's SOUL just a bit tighter. Instead of breaking, it seemed to adhere to his skin like a magnet. His arm fell across his chest, and he used what little of his strength remained to hide it under his shirt, on whatever skin wasn't as bloody as the rest of him; it stuck there just as well as it had stuck to his hand. He angled his head back up to look at Asriel and rasped, "Don't...cry…" She stopped sniffling for a moment and peered at him from behind her fingers. Frisk took another deep breath and closed his eyes. "I'll be...back…"

He leaned back and reached out for the spark. It was still there, still weak, but he could reach out with aetherial hands far easier than his physical ones. It was a bit harder with his fading consciousness, and he fumbled a bit, until he felt someone else press themselves to his back and guide his hands one last time. He reached out…

Just a bit further…

And seized it.

He felt time rubberband and snap. Every nerve in his body went numb and he ceased to feel anything for a split second. He opened his eyes to white streaks in a field of black, like speed lines on a comic book page racing toward him. He felt the bones in his body knit themselves fresh, burning as the damage was undone. Marrow injected blood directly back into his arteries, and his head went light and vision went fuzzy. Time marched in reverse, and this time, he felt his stomach tie itself up in knots trying to keep this power from tearing him apart, atom by atom. This all happened in the span of a tenth of a second and an eternity, until reality reasserted itself and he felt gravity do its work. He was falling. Not for very long, but just enough that landing on a bed of flowers agitated the places he'd been cut and skewered mere days (several seconds) before.

Then he landed. There was a soft *fwump* to denote his arrival. He opened his eyes to see a few sourgrass petals float down after his landing had launched them up.

His back was on fire. The nerves were frayed, torn, broken and it hurt. God, it hurt. Frisk opened one eye, slowly, then the other, and finally sat up. He gritted his teeth as magma rolled down his back and his spine begged him not to do any more moving for the next week, please, for the love of God…

Frisk only forced himself to stand, ignoring the burning sensation in his back. It might've hurt, but it would pass, eventually. He rolled his neck and felt a couple of his vertebrae slide back into place, or at least as close to back into place as they'd get for the foreseeable future. Then, something he realized he hadn't done in what felt like ages, he glanced down at the flowerbed under his shoes, then up and around him. The earth was raised, but only slightly, and he could see massive pillars supporting the rock formations overhead, and further beyond, the last traces of sunlight were filtering in from the surface. He stayed there for another minute as a thought crossed his mind, a thought he didn't think he'd ever bring back up for a long, long time. "This is it. This is the magic bullet," he muttered to himself.

---

A/N: I hate writing combat. Hate it hate it hate it. Kind of hated writing this whole chapter. Not my best work, but "perfect" is the enemy of "done," so fuck it.

tbh, I didn't expect this chapter to break 20 pages in GDocs. Life is full of surprises, huh? Chapter 30's already ~43 pages long, though a good 80% of that is stuff I wrote way earlier and need to delete/repurpose, not counting what's looking like multiple illustrations. help.

But…! Ignoring all that, I think it's about damn time I said "thank you" to all my readers. This is my most popular fanfic ever written on either site it's been posted to. Since I'm still a small-time creator, that's not saying much, but the AO3 version has ~2,480 hits as of this chapter's posting, and this is by far my most popular fanfic on in terms of people actively faving/following it. I can't say it enough; thank you so much for reading this fic, even those of you who don't comment, for whatever reason. I never expected this to get popular (again, not saying much, but it's more attention than I thought). I think it's time I directly shouted out some names, since we're close to the end:

FF crowd:

Offbrandbiscuit: If not for quality, then I have to give you credit for the sheer volume of comments you've made over the course of this fic's lifetime. Luckily, quality isn't an issue, either. I love seeing your most recent comment on the reviews page!

SaintHeartwing: Even though you've done nothing but criticize me, I will admit, it's good to have a slice of humble pie every now and again. I doubt you'll even read this, but thanks for keeping my feet flat on the ground. Not all of us can get recommended by TVTropes ;)

I'm very honored—and humbled—that you've decided to come on this journey with me.

Let's finish it up.