Feel free to vote for any one of these titles below! Since nobody's told me otherwise, voting for the series title will close in three chapters.

The Magic of Souls (1)

Tales of Monsters, Humans, and Fairies (1)

Fairies and Monsters Gone Fowl (6)

Stories About Fairies, Monsters, and Two Bizarre Humans

Fairytales (13)

Temporal Dynamics for the Magically Inclined (10)

Okay Flowey, Stop Traumatizing the Fairies (7)

Underground Fairies

A Fairy Strange Crossover

(Thank you for voting!)

Also, warning for this chapter: the F-Bomb gets dropped at least twice.


Their fairy rescuer, Frisk couldn't help but notice through their own rising anxiety, seemed strangely calm for someone who had sounded so afraid seconds before.

Of course, since they still couldn't see her, and even if they could she was wearing a helmet, Frisk had no idea what the fairy's face might've looked like at that moment. For all they knew, she was grinning and on an adrenaline high right now. But they were fairly certain she was afraid, if only because of the layers of urgency in her voice – that and she was tugging them forward so fast now that Frisk wouldn't be entirely surprised if the fairy had decided running wasn't fast enough and had taken to the air.

Whatever the other fairy had told her (because there was absolutely no way that the fairies weren't communicating somehow, given the one-sided conversation in another language they'd been privy to seconds before), it wasn't good. Not one bit. And considering that the little woman had been almost eerily calm when sneaking past guards, without even a single tremor in her voice or a single ounce of hesitation… well, they doubted that it was a guard that had made her so anxious.

Not a guard… oh God, please don't tell me the wizard found out about my escape so soon!

*Knowing our luck? That's exactly what happened.

They bit their lip, eyes darting back and forth to scan their surroundings as they passed by another empty hallway.

God, they really hoped it wasn't the wizard. Frisk had absolutely no illusions now just how much the man hated the monsters – he loathed them, with every fiber of his being. He'd meant every single venom-soaked word he'd spat out during his attempted interrogations. They'd seen it in his eyes.

He hates them so much… if he catches me trying to escape… if I don't manage to get away… he wouldn't hesitate to carry out his threats. He'd grab a monster off the streets and dust them, and he'd keep doing it until I finally told him what I wanted to know… or until I found a way to LOAD.

They would never let that happen. They'd never let another monster be dusted in front of them, not in a million Resets, not even if they had to die a billion times to make it happen. Not if they could help it.

I can't let him catch me again. I won't let him catch me!

That determined, forceful thought couldn't stop them from flinching when the fairy pulling them along suddenly cursed and switched directions, and Frisk caught a glimpse of the wizard racing down the hallway towards them, his face so coldly furious they were shocked he wasn't leaving ice in his wake.

I won't let him catch me, they repeated in their head, more fearfully this time, as they were dragged down a different hallway. He won't catch me, he won't catch me -!

"Ambassador!" Oh stars, the wizard sounded even more furious than he'd looked – they could practically feel the anger in every word, like a cold breeze that went rushing over their skin and made every hair stand up on end. "Get back here!"

"D'Arvit!" Their rescuer cursed (there was no way that word wasn't a curse, and if Frisk had to guess by the tone of voice, it was a particularly foul one too). "Kid, things might be about to get bumpy for you, I'm taking off!"

If she hadn't warned them, Frisk might have actually lost their footing as there was suddenly a surge of motion from the other end of the cord. As it was, they nearly toppled over with a yelp, the camouflaging sheet wrapped around them nearly falling from their grip.

Holy crap, she's fast!

*Let me take over! I'm faster than you, Frisk, hurry up!

They didn't even think about arguing. Within nanoseconds, they'd stepped out of the driver's seat and let the ghost take over.

"If you don't stop running now, you'll regret it when I catch you!" The wizard yelled behind them. He was catching up – Frisk saw him round a corner just before their body was hurled out of sight again around the next one.

Chara was biting their borrowed lip, visibly seething with aggression.

*God, I really want to tell him to fuck off!

Don't! You'll just make him angrier!

*I know, I know!

"Almost there, kid!" The fairy dragged them around another corner at top speed, and if Frisk had been in control, they definitely would have slammed into the wall there – fortunately, Chara had better reflexes than that. "Hold on a bit longer!"

*Nooo, I'm just going to unclip this cord and let you leave us behind. Of course I'm gonna hold on!

Chara now is not the time!

"Ambassador, if you don't stop now then the first monster I'm going after is the damn Queen, you hear me?!"

With another curse, the fairy turned sharply at the next corner, and this time kept turning, dragging Frisk and Chara behind her as she hurtled into an empty room.

An empty room with no windows and only one door, which the fairy promptly slammed shut behind them as she shimmered back into invisibility. One hand flew to her belt, removing what looked for all the world like a hand-held futuristic laser gun, and then she fired the device at the door. A beam of searing plasma erupted from the nozzle, melting the doorknob and the lock along with it, sealing the door shut with a jarringly loud sizzle.

"What the hell?!" Chara hissed. "What do you think you're –"

Frisk quickly shoved the ghost out of control before they could finish the sentence. Knowing Chara, they'd probably swear right in the fairy's face in the heat of the moment, and the last thing they wanted was for their rescuer to have a reason to hold a grudge.

Besides, she has to have a reason!

The woman stepped back, shaking one hand as if to loosen stiff joints. "Don't worry kid, we've got this under control." She lifted her other hand to the side of her helmet. "Diggums! If you can hear me, we need that tunnel now! I've got an angry human coming down the hall –"

Footsteps screeched to a halt outside, and the doorknob jiggled furiously. Then there was a pained yelp, probably because the wizard had tried to open the door while the knob was still cooling down from being melted.

"Strike that – I've got an angry human on the other side of the door! Tunnel! Now!"

There was a loud bang. The door shook on its hinges.

"Ambassador! I know you're in there!"

Frisk eeped. Oh God was he was trying to break down the door?!

*He is! Damn it, what was she thinking?!

Another bang. Frisk took a step back, looking wildly around the room. The fairy had said tunnel, right? And she wouldn't have trapped both of them in a room like this if she hadn't thought they'd be able to get away! They had no idea how the fairies would dig a tunnel through solid stone and concrete fast enough to reach them before the door was forced open, but they had to have a way!

They did have a way, but Frisk had been expecting something more along the lines of some sort of super-powered drill instead of the enormous pair of jaws that came bursting out of the ground.

*What the actual fuck?!

For once, Frisk didn't feel like reprimanding Chara for their language.

How the heck?! They thought, a tad hysterically, watching with a hanging jaw as the mouth's owner, a dumpy, hairy little humanoid covered in dirt and with what looked for all the world like a vibrating beard, climb out of the hole he'd just made. Just – how?! Chara, how?!

*Like hell if I know!

"Finally!" Their rescuer snapped. "What took you so long, did you stop to sample some gourmet clay or something?!"

The new… fairy? He definitely wasn't a monster, that was for sure – huffed indignantly. "Hey! I'll have you know that that there's no good clay around here for at least two miles!" He winced, and then gave the shell-shocked Frisk a strained grin full of tombstone teeth. "Climb in, Mud Kid!"

The wizard slammed into the other side of the door again, shouting another threat, and although Frisk couldn't comprehend what that threat was exactly through their disbelief, it spurred them into action. They beelined for the tunnel, dropping onto their hands and knees next to it.

"Where does this come out?!"

"Just outside," the dumpy little creature (Diggums, was that what their rescuer had called him?) grunted.

"There will be a couple others waiting for you out there to fly you away from here," the first fairy added. "Hurry, and for Frond's sake, hold your breath!"

"Hey! My breath isn't that bad!"

"I'm not worried about your breath, I'm worried about what's going to come out the other end!"

Oh God, Frisk thought, I really didn't need to know that. I really didn't need to wonder where all the dirt from the tunnel went, why did you make me think about that?!

But they did as they were told. They sucked in a breath and dived into the tunnel.


Frond, the little Ambassador was clearly desperate, if they were willing to dive down a dwarf's tunnel to get out of here. Most people would have put it down to them simply not knowing how dwarves dug their tunnels, but Crane had seen the kid's expression just before they'd nose-dived in, and it had had a look of horrified, no, mortified comprehension on it. The kid had figured out exactly where all the extra dirt had gone and had clearly been trying really, really hard to not think about it.

And they don't even know how explosive* dwarf digestion gets, yet. I feel sorry for them. Nobody's prepared for seeing that.

"How much longer can you hold it in, Diggums?" She asked, putting the Ambassador out of mind for the moment. There was still a furious Bastard trying to break down the door, and judging by the sounds of the footsteps out there, he had friends now. It was only a matter of time before the door went flying off its hinges.

"Not much," the dwarf grunted. He was almost doubled over now, face scrunched up in visible discomfort underneath his vibrating beard and coating of grime – in other words, he looked like he was about to blow.

And then, with just that little observation, Crane was presented with a fantastic idea that went off in her brain like a firework.

If he's already about to blow, why not take advantage of it?

An evil grin spread across her face.

"Say, Diggums," she mused, as several human bodies hit the door and wood creaked dangerously, "how do you feel about reenacting a certain stunt involving a mountainous Mud Man during the Fowl Manor Siege?**"

When the Bastard and his fellow bastard humans broke down the door barely half a minute later, they were greeted by a small figure with a flap hanging open in his trousers doubled over on the ground. When one of them stepped forward, intending to take the being hostage, said being promptly blew tons of tunnel rubble and a huge cloud of smelly gas right into their faces with enough force to send every one of those humans flying.

The Bastard's face was worth every painful second of waiting, but Crane couldn't resist making things even worse for him by blowing up the cloud of unidentified gasses right in his face with a well-placed Neutrino beam. If anyone asked, well, the explosion was just to cover her escape… and the Bastard deserved a hell of a lot more than a few burns.


And with this chapter, Frisk is officially out of the wizard/Bastard's reach! Yay! (And he got pelted with dwarf gas! Double yay! Can't wait to write the kiddos' freak-out about that later… oh man, kids, if you thought dwarves were weird before, you ain't seen ANYTHING yet!)

* "How explosive dwarf digestion gets:" AF dwarves, as shown in this chapter and mentioned in the previous chapter's notes, literally eat through the ground itself to make their tunnels. However, their systems only take in nutrients from the soil/rock, and don't digest the actual soil/rock… which means that all that tunnel debris has to go somewhere. And that somewhere is usually out the opposite end the stuff went in, usually at extremely high velocity. Dwarf gas has been canonically known to cause AVALANCHES, guys.

**"A certain stunt involving a mountainous Mud Man during the Fowl Manor Siege:" In the first book, Mulch Diggums, the dwarf in this chapter, was sent in by Commander Root to 1) determine whether or not Holly (who had been kidnapped by Artemis and was being held for ransom) was alive, and if so, try to help her get out, and 2) find out how Artemis knew so much about the People's laws during negotiations earlier that night, when humanity hadn't even known that the fairies existed for centuries before him. Mulch was picking a lock in the Fowl Manor safe room when the camera loop they were using to help him evade detection was noticed, and Butler went to check out the safe room. When he got there, he made the mistake of sneaking up BEHIND Mulch and was sent flying by a burst of gas into the banister outside the room. REALLY embarrassing, for a bodyguard of his caliber. Later, when Mulch was trying to escape through the same route he used to get into the manor (through the floor of a wine cellar), Butler tried to grab him to stop him from escaping, and nearly got pelted with dwarf gas again. He managed to avoid it… mostly. Sort of. I mean, a piece of tunnel debris clipped his ear, but other than that…

And now for today's worldbuilding! Jack54311 asked what happens to Frisk's LV and EXP when they LOAD or Reset, where it disappears to in the Pacifist timelines, if it can be retrieved, how it works, and whether or not LV or EXP works differently for determined souls.

While in the Undertale game LV levels up steadily as you kill, I've imagined it here in M est P as a bit more… flexible. In the real world, intent to harm isn't limited to psychopathic murderers, and the same applies in this 'verse. While someone who kills a lot of people will still level up, that doesn't necessarily mean that that person's LV will stay at the level they gain thanks to those kills. Intent to harm is, for most people, not a permanent state of being and comes in fits and bursts depending on a person's mood, and thus LV will change depending on a person's state of mind. For example, someone with an LV of 1 who kills someone in self-defense will temporarily gain an LV of 2 or even 3 thanks to that kill, but once the fight is over, and the intent to harm that they mustered for the fight has passed, their LV will drop back down, even while that person retains the EXP from the kill. In order to rack up levels the same way that Frisk did in the Underground during the Genocide Runs, you basically have to either a) be someone with a genocidal mindset to begin with, b) hate the monsters with everything you have, c) have no empathy which can diminish your intent to hurt others, d) be so desperate to get out of the Underground that you're willing to do ANYTHING to get out, including hurt people, or e) a combination of any of the above.

Frisk's Genocide Runs were both examples of option "E." One of the side effects that Frisk has suffered thanks to the Resets apart from occasionally losing memories is losing their empathy. But even that on its own wouldn't make Frisk go on the warpath the way they did during the Geno Runs. What happened is a combination of loss of empathy, their desperation to get out of the Reset Loop… and they lost their good memories of the monsters. Basically, Frisk remembered that they had been stuck in the Reset Loop for what felt like forever, that they desperately wanted to get out, and nothing else. No good memories of times with the monsters, and because of their loss of empathy, they weren't able to FEEL Mercy for them… that combined with the desperation is what led to them hunting down monsters until they were racking up LV. However, in the next timeline, when Frisk recovered their empathy and their memories of the monsters, the intent to harm nurtured in the previous timeline pretty much flat-lined because normally Frisk can't bring themselves to hurt anyone.

That being said, Frisk still has all the EXP they've gotten from the various timelines. Killing people leaves a mark, even if the LV earned from a kill isn't necessarily permanent. (And ironically enough, that means that Frisk has a higher EXP than Chara, even though the ghost has a significantly more violent nature than they do – Frisk's killed more people in their lifetime than Chara ever did.)

People with highly Determined souls tend to stubbornly hang onto a certain level of violence that varies from person to person, depending on what kinds of experiences that person has had in their life. A Determined soul who's been through a crap ton of violent experiences (like Chara, for example) will hang onto a higher LV for longer periods of time – in fact, depending on what they've been through, and how Determined they are to hang onto that violent mindset, they may never drop down to LV 1 ever again, and therefore have a higher default LV. On the other hand, kinder Determined souls who've been through less violent experiences (like Frisk) find it easier to get back into a merciful mindset after a violent situation has passed.