This chapter has three optional themes. "Undertale OST - The fallen child extended", "Undertale - Long shock", and "Undertale OST - in my way (Soulless Ver)". The first song plays when you see (1), the second one plays with (2), and the third plays with (3). All stop when you see (0). Hope you enjoy and if you're reading this on Christmas, merry Christmas and all that jazz!

Dying Emotions

Skyler lies on the ground in a completely dark world, devoid of any light anywhere. He fainted and fell unconscious thanks to accrued blood loss from the stab wound Mettaton NEO managed to inflict on him near the end of their battle, and although he won, his body had succumbed to it once his Determination had dropped down to its normal levels. Although the void of his unconscious soul is completely pitch-black, he's lying on a solid surface that exists in this odd world created by his mind without any idea of what's going on in the outside world he's nearly destroyed with his own hands. He's also unaware of the being that stands a few feet in front of him, their hands held behind their back, one foot in front of the other, looking down on him and waiting for him to awaken so she could finally talk to the one she's been watching the entire time. Her dark reddish brown, shoulder length hair gently sways back and forth slightly as she sways her body from side to side gently. She stops momentarily to fix a few loose, fluffy bangs of hair on the side of her head and in front of her face with both of hands for a few seconds before continuing to look upon the boy she's been overcome with wonder with ever since she saw him fall into the Underground. She bobs back and forth gently, a bit impatient for she has quite a bit to say to him but knows that she'll be rewarded by her patience soon enough.

He slowly opens his eyes, sniffling a couple times and letting out a tiny cough before completely opening them to view the darkness all around, save for the shoes and legs of the aforementioned girl standing in front of him. He blinks a couple of times, his vivid green iris faintly glowing, though this glow is simply eaten up by the hungry darkness surrounding him. Surprisingly, the black sclera of his has retreated back and the whites of his eyes have fully returned, an interesting revelation that he can see for himself as he looks down at the ground and notices his own reflection in a wavy, mirror-like substance below him. He tries to put his right hand into it, but he can't, though seeing his familiar green eyes and soft face in the reflective substance comforts him slightly. This comfort is short lived since the blackness all around him is unusual and somewhat terrifying to him. "W-where am I? What is this place?" his voice echoes all around, more than it would if he shouted into a large cavern.

His question is put on the backburner temporarily as the sound of someone clearing their throat is heard and he looks up at the girl he should've noticed upon waking up. Her eyes are completely blacked out and an unsettling smile sits on her red, rose tinted, pale toned cheeks. "Remain calm, you have simply fainted from the wound you got while fighting that heap of scrap moments ago and this is your unconscious mind that you are in right now."

He quickly stands up and steps back a few times, worried that she might do something to him. "Who are you!?" his voice shakes and his face cowers in her presence.

She takes her hands out from behind her back and puts them in front of her stomach while bringing both of her feet together, bowing for a moment. "My apologies. You and I have not met yet even though I have been aware of your presence in the Underground for some time now. Salutations, I am Chara." She rises back up. (1)

For a moment, he's slightly confused and his fearful expression changes to one of confusion, only to rapidly go back with a significantly more intense version of it. "C-Chara…?" he's heard this name many times when Flowey talked to him.

She nods while taking a single, slow step towards him. "Yes. I have been watching you ever since you fell into the Underground, as I said before. You are quite strange…" she points at him with her right pointer finger. "You see, your power awakened me from my death. " she drops her hand to her side. "At first, I was so confused. Did the plan fail? Why had I been brought back to life when your presence graced this world? YOU. With your guidance I was able to understand the purpose behind my reincarnation." she holds both of her hands out with her palms facing him. "POWER." she drops her left arm and brings her right hand up in front of her chest, clenched into a fist. "Together, we eradicated the enemy and became strong. Every time you killed someone, every time you spilled the blood of someone else, that feeling? That's me, "Chara"."

He takes another step back, he doesn't believe his own unconscious mind is creating this scene right now. Chara is someone who should be dead according to what Flowey had told him about them, which, while it isn't much, it was enough for him to deduce she had died. "No… n-no, it's not you, it can't be…" he silently whispers to himself, not being heard by her luckily.

She takes two steps forward, two long steps that bring her much closer to him, dropping her right hand to the side in the process. "Now, we're within reach of the absolute and only a few beings exist between us and that. You know what you have to do, but before you awaken into the real world once more, there is something I think it would be wise to think about. I cannot understand the feelings within your soul, it is… troubling to me. It is possible my current judgement of you is wrong, but your soul has been grasped by a highly perverted sentimentality, with a twisted perception of life and the world around it pulling the strings. Perhaps a deep reflection of who you are as a person would be better suited to your liking." she turns around and starts walking towards the darkness away from him. "Do as you wish, Skyler." (0)

He simply stands there without anything to say, his fear melting away as she fades into the darkness and in its place is deep thought about what she said and what he's done so far over the course of his journey. He thinks about everyone he's met, everyone he's destroyed… Toriel wanted to give him a home, Papyrus simply wanted a good time, but the others were nothing more than a mystery, although he knows that Undyne would've done whatever it took to protect her friends and Mettaton, he was probably the most misunderstood by him out of all of them, being the only superstar in the Underground to give everyone something to look forward to. He drops to his knees, looking at the palms of both of his hands, caked with dust from hundreds of monsters he's killed.

He thinks he should feel guilty for what he's done. He knows he's a horrible person for murdering an entire race, something he should be crying over with regrets a plenty. His heart should be aching for the lives of those he's taken without remorse or care… but nothing comes to him. In fact, he doesn't feel anything, and whatever he does feel is extremely faint. No sadness, no anger, no joy, no guilt, no remorse, no love, nothing. He feels cold, freezing cold. He starts to shiver, and both his hands grab his elbows opposing each other in an attempt to maintain his current temperature but he feels like he's getting colder by the second.

He looks down and his reflection is gone, absolutely nothing sits below him now, but in its place, a low growling sound, one that makes his entire body go stiffer than a statue. His eyes move in every direction, looking around the void to see who or what is there, but there's nothing. He exhales slowly and quietly, his breath visibly comes out in a giant white cloud that lingers for a while before disappearing. He inhales and this time, the growling noise is much closer, so close that it sounds like it's in his ear, and against his own instincts, he turns his head to look over his shoulder, being greeted by two glowing red dots staring at him. His mouth opens and he tries to scream, but nothing comes out and whatever this thing is lunges at him.

He awakens and gasps loudly, his entire body having fallen on the floor of the elevator with the doors wide open and a small puddle of blood underneath him. Some of it has gotten on the remains of his hoodie while the rest has dried up and stuck to the exposed skin on his stomach and parts of his chest. Mixed inside the small puddle of blood is also that strange black substance he once vomitted up back in Snowdin. His entire body aches and his head pounds harder than any sledgehammer could from the loss of blood his body has endured. He grabs his frying pan off the floor with his right hand, shoves it into his hoodie pocket, and tries his best to stand up, although being dizzy doesn't help him keep his balance and he nearly falls out of the elevator when attempting to walk forward. He stumbles and crashes into the wall in front of him, leaning against it to balance himself and he notices a SAVE star not far from where he is, so he slowly hobbles his way over to it by using the wall on his right to push against it with his right hand to hold himself up while walking.

He cusps the underside of the glowing yellow beacon gently and waits for his friendly black and white text box to tell him what he needs to know. While he waits for it, he suddenly starts feeling stronger and his dizziness quickly disappears as a strange yellow glow encompasses his entire body, healing and stitching up the wounds he obtained in his battle with Mettaton NEO. It doesn't heal the wounds completely, but it stops them from bleeding and leaves them as scars on his body, a fair shade better than having a hole in his stomach while trying to get out of the Underground. Soon after the glow fades, the text box appears. "Skyler. LV 20. Time - 601:01. Castle Elevator. File saved." 600 minutes is 10 hours, though it feels like he's been in the Underground for much longer than that as he drops his left hand and looks to his left to notice a few castle-like structures in the distance where he must go next.

He walks in the direction of these buildings and comes across a long hallway with a guardrail to prevent people or monsters from going over the side as the drop from here to the ground is high enough to break bones or even kill depending on how they fall. In the distance on the right, he can see one building is much bigger than the others around it, it has to be the king's castle. About time, maybe the king of all monsters will show him the way out of here since he's become quite sick of the Underground at this point and just wants to go home. He slowly walks down the hallway, his dust filled shoes leaving little bits of it here and there with every step he takes, his steps echoing around the hall in the process. He looks over to his left at all the buildings and notices that he can't see any of the lights through the open windows, something that's strange to him. As a matter of fact, he can't tell if there's any monsters inside through the windows at all, it's like a massive ghost town but the town is a city in this case. His mind wonders where everyone is, a place like this should have monsters crawling all over and not a single one is in sight. This is most likely a product of everything he's done, and everyone fears him, knowing that they have absolutely no chance to even scratch him if they were to try and attack him. This is good, he won't have to deal with them at any point in the near future and he'll have a straight run to the king, wherever he may be.

The path turns into a long, flat slope leading up to the final destination that he must reach to escape the Underground. Not wanting to waste any more time down here, he takes off running as fast as he can to get to the top. (2) When he reaches the top, he's surprised to see a rather familiar looking house, except instead of being made out of purple bricks, this one is made out of grey bricks and lacks a tree standing in front of it. There's another SAVE star here, though he finds the placement of it to be useless since he just used one not too long ago, so he ignores it and starts walking towards the house. As he approaches the doorway, the familiar voice of Flowey the flower calls out to him. "Howdy, Chara!" he turns to look at him, sitting in a pile of dead, brown leaves with a massive grin on his face. "You finally made it home. Do you remember all the time we spent playing here?" he giggles in a child-like manner before his face twists into a sharp, fanged, evil smile. "Boy, today's gonna be just as fun." he sinks into the ground, sprouts a vine that wraps up Skyler's leg that stops on his right shoulder, and reappears there, ready to see the old house that he used to play with Chara in.

He stays silent and walks through the door. The front foyer is exactly the same layout as Toriel's house in the Ruins, but there are a couple of differences though. For starters, there's a chain with two locks blocking access to the basement of the house, and a small table in the northwestern corner of the room has a pot with a bunch of wilted, dead flowers on it. None of this is interesting to him so he walks towards the hallway where the bedrooms are located since he knows there has to be at least one room that's open there thanks to the nearly identical layout and upon reaching the very first door in the hallway, he grabs the knob with his right hand to try and open it. The knob turns and the door opens to a room that's nearly identical to the one in the Ruins, except there are two beds in here instead of one.

Flowey turns to look at him, his petals rustling slightly. "Our old bedroom. I remember all the games we played and the drawings we created back then. He's kept all of our old stuff, almost as if time hasn't passed since that day you died." The boy's green iris looks at him for a brief moment before settling on the picture frame next to the dresser near one of the beds. He walks over to it and grabs it with his left hand, displacing some of the dust that's accumulated on it over the years. Compared to the other picture frame that was in Toriel's home, this one has enough dust to bring a monster back from the dead. He blows hard on it and a huge cloud of dust pounces into the air, revealing an old, sepia-tone picture underneath taken more than 16 years ago. The picture is of 4 people, two large goat monsters, a smaller goat monster, and a human girl that reminds him of the girl he saw in his unconscious state. He quickly puts it back and looks on the bed in the western corner of the room.

On the bed lies two fully wrapped presents, both gifted to absolutely nobody in particular, with red and white wrapping paper and a red bow. He sits on the bed and grabs the nearest present with his left hand, putting it on his lap and unwrapping it to find out what's inside. He pulls the top of the box off and what he finds inside makes him smile, though he doesn't feel any emotion from looking at this object. He puts his left hand inside to grab the item out and holds above his head a real knife whose edge is shiny, and its blade pristinely crafted. After all this time, he's finally found a knife, and he can ditch the plastic one if he wants as he has no use for something that merely emulates the real thing. He gently swings it to the side back and forth, its lightweight handling being no stranger to him as he remembers all the times in high school when he snuck one in and had to spill a little bit of someone's blood with it.

He puts it back in the box, he'll come back to it after he finds out what's in the second present. He puts the open box on the ground in front of his shoes and grabs the second one, unwrapping it exactly the same as he did with the first one. He pulls the top off and inside he finds a tarnished locket inside that he immediately knows he has no use for since he already owns a locket. Perhaps he could sell it on the surface for money, so he takes his backpack off his back, unzips it, and with his right hand, places it into the pocket where he's stashed over 7,000 GOLD over the course of his journey before zipping that pocket up. He reaches down with his left hand to grab the box the knife was in and with his right hand, grabs it out and drops the box on the floor. With a proper knife now, he can retire the short-lived career of his pan and does exactly that by putting it into the pocket where all the items he's found on his journey are held. Flowey giggles a little before speaking to him. "You always had a strange fascination with knives, Chara." his face scrunches up to have a menacing, malicious look to it. "Now, you finally have one to use without ANYONE here that can take it away from you!" The boy holds the knife in front of him, looking at his own reflection where his iris has slightly dulled and taken on a brownish-red look holding hands with his wide smile.

He speaks out loud in a deep, monotone voice. "About time." and stands up, grabbing his backpack with his right hand and putting it over his right shoulder carefully to make sure he doesn't knock Flowey off. His left hand happily holds the brand-new knife he's acquired and with nothing else of value in here, he walks out of the room and back into the hallway. He looks towards the end and notices a green key laying on a table out in the open. The key must be for the locks on that chain he saw in the foyer, so he walks towards the end and goes for the key. Flowey talks to him again while he does this.

"I remember when I first woke up here, in the garden out back." he frowns, remembering the rather terrifying memory. "I was so scared, I couldn't feel my arms or my legs… It was then that I realized my entire body had turned into a flower! "Mom! Dad! Somebody help me!" I called out." his evil face makes his voice go deep and nasty. "But nobody came." the two go through the front foyer, his story still continues as they both go through the living room where nothing worth mentioning lies. His frown returns and his voice becomes normal. "Eventually, the king found me, crying in the garden. I explained what had happened to him, and he held me, Chara. He held me with tears in his eyes, saying, "There, there. Everything is going to be alright." He was so… Emotional. But, for some reason, I felt nothing."

They head into the kitchen and Skyler immediately goes for the green key sitting on the clean, spotless counter. Now in his right hand, two green keys are held captive by a firm grasp, so firm that the veins in his hand are visible and slightly bulge out from under his skin. He turns around and walks back the way he came, stopping in front of the chain where the two keys will do the work they were created to do. In a few short clicks, the chain falls to the floor with a loud clunk and the way is clear. He drops the keys on the ground and heads down the stairs into the basement, continuing to listen to his only "friend's" story. "Chara, I soon realized I didn't feel ANYTHING about ANYONE. All my compassion… all my sympathy… all of it had disappeared!" he smiles with nervous expression. "And believe me, it's not like I was trying to feel nothing." His tone shows the frustration incurred by all of that. "I wasted weeks with that stupid king, vainly hoping I would feel something, but it became too much for me." his tone returns to normal, and his angered expression does too. "I ran away from home and eventually, I reached the Ruins." his smile returns. "Inside, I found HER, Chara. I thought of all the people, SHE could make me feel whole again."

He simply gets a cold stare from his human friend who quietly listens to the whole story. It tells him everything. "She failed." he laughs, but unlike his giggles from before, his laughter isn't from this being funny. "I realized those two were useless. I became despondent. I just wanted to love someone, I just wanted to care about someone. Chara, you might not believe this, but I decided it wasn't worth living anymore. Not in a world without love, not in a world without you. So…" he smiles wide. "I decided to follow in your footsteps and like you, erase myself from existence." he frowns. "And you know what? I succeeded." He chuckles a little, but frowns after with a slight nervous expression. "But as I left this mortal coil, I started to feel apprehensive." His evil face returns but his tone stays the same. "If you don't have a Soul, what happens when you die?" his frown comes back. "Something primal started to burn inside me. "No," I thought. "I don't want to die!" and then I woke up like it was all just a bad dream. I was back in the garden." He smiles wide and his eyes dilate a little, almost joyful if it wasn't for the fact, he had no pupils. "Back at my "save point"."

He looks away, recounting everything he did after learning of this power. "Interested, I decided to experiment. Again and again, I brought myself to the edge of death. At any point, I could have simply allowed the world to continue without me, but, as long as I was determined to live, I could go back." he turns to the boy, looking for approval of his findings. "Amazing, isn't it, Chara? I was amazed, too." he starts rambling on about everything he did after that. "At first, I used my powers for good, becoming "friends" with everyone. I solved all their problems flawlessly and their companionship was amusing… For a while." He frowns as he remembers the boredom that overcame him as he learned of what everyone would do or say. "As time repeated, people proved themselves to be… predictable. What would this person say if I gave them this? What would they do if I said this to them? Once you know the answer, that's it, that's all they are." They both round a couple of corners, a bit of light at the end shining through the rather dim halls of the basement.

"It all started because I was curious… curious to know what would happen if I killed them. "I don't like this." I told myself. "I'm just doing this because I HAVE to know what will happen." he grins, bearing a bunch of teeth and laughing out loud. "What an excuse! I know for a FACT you know how liberating it feels to act this way, Chara. At least we're better than those sickos that stand around and wish to make it happen instead of taking up arms to do it themselves!" he laughs again. "Those pathetic people who want to do it but are too weak, they're absolutely useless! These are the kinds of people that get killed in this world!" he calms down as they both exit the basement and the light of the world graces them once more.

"Nowadays, even killing has grown tiring. You understand, Chara? I've done everything this world has to offer. I've read every book, I've burned every book. I've won every game, I've lost every game. I've appeased everyone, I've killed everyone. Recognizable patterns… Identical spoken words… I've seen and heard them all. But you… YOU'RE different." he smiles. "I never could predict YOU, Chara. When I saw you back in the Ruins, I didn't recognize that it was you." his big evil grin comes back. "I thought I could frighten you and then steal your Soul… but I failed. When I tried to load my "save file", it didn't work. Chara, your DETERMINATION! Somehow, it's even stronger than mine!" he calms down and returns to normal. "But… I have just one question for you that you never answered, Chara. How did you come back? How did you get back to the Ruins from here…?" he stops but realizes the answer, or what he thinks is the answer. "...wait, I know. She must have taken you and decided to give you a proper burial, rather than hanging out in the basement forever. But, why then…? What made you wake up? Did you hear me calling you…?"

Flowey hadn't noticed it, but while talking to him, he slowly began to get annoyed by him constantly calling him "Chara" when he isn't related to her in any way shape or form. He finally speaks up to him before he continues his story. "Stop calling me Chara. I'm Skyler, now get that through your head."

This actually surprises him. "What? You're not Chara? Then… Why do you look similar to her?" he grins. "Wait, are you perhaps related to her? A brother of some kind that we all never knew existed, trying to find his long lost relative?" he starts laughing. "What a pathetic use of worthless family ties!" his grin gets stronger. "Trying to save your family by killing everyone you come across is probably the best thing I've seen all day. You and Chara are exactly the same!" he giggles on the side before coming back to him. "Well, Skyler, it doesn't matter now. I'm tired of all of this. I'm tired of these people. I'm tired of these places. I'm tired of being a flower. Skyler, there's just one thing left I want to do, let's finish the Magnificent Plan and free everyone. Then… we will see what happens when they realize what humanity is REALLY like! Despite everything, this world is still "kill or be killed"!"

A shadow starts to fall over the boy's face and his head tilts itself down extremely slowly towards the ground. Finishing what he's started, sounds like a good idea. Even if he could go back, he'd have to try and die for that, and what'd be the point of all this if he did that. He slightly turns his head towards his companion. "Then what?" his monotone, slightly deeper than normal voice asks.

"Then…?" he struggles to think of something, evident that he didn't think beyond this that much. "Well, I had… been entertaining a few ways to use that power." he laughs, thinking his quick response to his question would suffice.

"Like…?"

He frowns, almost caught off guard. "Yeah… but seeing you here changed my mind. Skyler, even though you're not quite the same person, I think if you're around… Just living on the surface together doesn't seem so bad." the boy's head turns away, the shadow covering his face getting darker with each step he takes towards the end of the hallway, which is quickly coming upon them. Flowey smiles. "Chara had originally planned for me to use her soul to pass the barrier and get six souls to break it, but we won't even need to leave here to get them this time. The king has six of them locked away. I've tried hundreds of ways to get him to show me them, but he just won't." his tone gets a bit annoyed at the end. "Skyler, I know he'll do it for YOU." there's a bit of hope behind him when he says this.

He turns his head slightly to him once more, but this time, his entire face is completely black. "Why tell me all that you've told me?"

(0) "Huh, why am I telling you all of this? I said it before. Chara was the only one that understood me and never showed me any pity, and with everything YOU'VE done, I don't expect you to show me any, either. Creatures such as us wouldn't hesitate to KILL each other if we got in each other's way, so that's…" he stops for a moment, his stem shivering for a brief moment. "So… that's… why…" (3) His stem starts shaking again, this time he's unable to control it. He realizes the implications of what he just said, and with such a precedent set before the boy he's been encouraging to kill the entire time, he's begun to feel something he hasn't felt in a long time and laughs meekly. "W-what's this… feeling? Why am I… Shaking?" He slowly turns his petal filled face to look at Skyler, only now noticing that he had stopped walking, his face completely darkened by a shadow that wasn't there before, making it impossible to see his expression. "H-hey, Skyler… no… No hard feelings back then in the Ruins… right?" He waits for an answer, only to notice the boy's right hand slowly rising up towards him to try and grab him. "H-hey, what are you doing!? B… back off!" He immediately slithers down the vine that he put on him earlier and onto the ground, barely escaping a deadly grip that pulls the vine off his shoulder and crunches it up into little pieces.

Flowey moves through the ground and sprouts up in front of him, noticing his face is nothing like it was before while they walked through his old home. Skyler slowly starts for him, shambling towards him, almost as if he was being controlled by something. A shine sparks off his knife as he raises it up to his side a little. His flower target tries to change his mind, thinking that this was a mistake in the long run. "I… I've changed my mind about all this, the plan isn't a good plan anymore. Y-you should go back, Skyler, this place is fine the way it is!" It does nothing to stop his slow approach and with each step, his unsettling smile and dark, deep glowing red iris shock more fear into him. "S-s-stop making that creepy face, this isn't funny! You've got a SICK sense of humor!" his pleas don't do anything, and his stem hits the back wall, signifying that he's run out of places to escape to on the surface. With absolutely nowhere to go but into the ground, in a panic, he quickly burrows himself down into the concrete, barely escaping a meat butchering job by the murderous human, whose knife digs itself into the ground where his flower foe once was. The ground cracks under the force of his attack and sparks fly off the blade as it makes contact with the flooring. (0)

The boy is no longer in control of himself, rather, something else controls him. It notices an orange glow coming from the doorway in front of it and raises its knife off the ground to walk towards it, entering a rather beautiful hall with stained glass windows and the Delta Rune symbol plastered all over the place. None of these matter to the incarnate evil that now roams the Underground, making use of the SAVE star in front of itself and using the left hand of the body it has taken control of to yank on it, trying to save its progress. "Skyler. LV 20. Time - 617:07. Last Corridor. File saved." It releases the poor star, allowing it to shine its soft glow on the walls nearby once again, and it turns its head towards a figure standing near the end of the hall. This figure is someone that hasn't been seen in quite a long time, and now, it's time to finally put him to rest with his brother.

Seeya in the next chapter...