Toriel kills you the first time you fight her. She gasps in horror and clamps her paws over her mouth as you fall to the floor, limp and smoking, but the knowledge that she didn't mean for that last attack to hit you doesn't erase the scent of burning hair and flesh from your fading awareness. You aren't truly dying—well, you are, it just won't stick—but that isn't much comfort either.
You wake up in a child's bedroom with a box full of old shoes in different sizes and a crayon drawing of a flower on the wall. It's a cozy little room in a cozy little house, a place where you could live out your whole life, loved and nurtured by the goat monster who you impulsively called Mom over the phone.
You lean over the edge of the bed and gag, then bury your face in the blanket. When you finally muster the willpower to move, you feel like the loneliest kid in the whole world, but you still get up. There's nothing else to be done.
You are eleven years old.
Your name is Frisk, though no one has bothered to find this out. Flowey called you somebody else's name, Toriel said "my child", and the tall skeleton, Papyrus, is always yelling "HUMAN!" in your direction. His brothers, identical twins, call you "kid".
Yes, talking skeletons. You would've expected to be terrified by this development, not least because Papyrus is supposedly obsessed with capturing humans, but so far they've done nothing worse than subject you to dumb wordplay and some easy puzzles, and the familiar back-and-forth of their brotherly jokes and jibes further detracts from whatever intimidating presence they might otherwise have had. At first, one of the twins actually did scare you, trailing behind you as you walked the snowy path out of the RUINS. You kept glancing nervously over your shoulder and catching split-second glimpses of a walking shape, but then he spoke to you and you shook his hand—which had a whoopie cushion in it. Then his brothers showed up and you hid behind a conveniently-shaped lamp as the twins tossed silly puns back and forth and Papyrus stomped his feet in helpless outrage.
So, that's them. Papyrus, Sans, and, um, also Sans. It must be a skeleton thing, you decide, before mentally (and uncreatively) dubbing the twins Sans 1 and Sans 2.
"by the way, did you see that weird outfit papyrus is wearing?" Sans 1 asks after you successfully complete an electricity... maze? It wasn't exactly a maze. You were not amazed. "we made that a few weeks ago for a costume party. he hasn't worn anything since. keeps calling it his 'battle body'."
"in fairness, we're still wearing our costumes, too," Sans 2 chimes in.
"are we?" Sans 1 examines himself, then nods. "oh, yeah, that's right! we dressed up as each other... and then we never bothered to swap back. bet you were fooled, huh, kid?"
They're... they're dressed exactly alike.
You shrug uncertainly and Sans 1 snickers. He has little white dots of light in his eye sockets which dart this way and that as he jokes around. Sans 2 has one empty eye socket, as you'd expect of a normal, non-ambulatory skeleton, while the other socket is filled with the glowing shape of a broken heart. He laughs just the same as his twin, so you wonder if the heart in his eye is just another weird skeleton thing. Would it be offensive to ask?
Sans 2 notices your stare and his toothy smile curls wider. "what, did i miss a spot shaving?"
Your face goes hot and you shake your head. Gripping the stick in your hand, you keep walking.
A lavender rabbit wearing a straw hat stands behind the counter in the shop in Snowdin. As you pay for a cinnamon bunny, you ask her what there is to do in town.
"Grillby's has food, and the library has information," the rabbit lady says, believing you to be a monster child from some other part of the Underground. "If you're tired, you can take a nap at the inn. It's right next door—my sister runs it. And if you're bored, you can sit outside and watch those wacky skeletons do their thing."
She wraps up your cinnamon bunny in crinkly paper.
"There's three of 'em... brothers, in case you couldn't tell. Two just showed up one day and... asserted themselves. Then the third... that other short one, with the funny eye? He's newer. The town has gotten a lot more interesting since they popped up... makes ya wonder where they've been all along, doesn't it?"
You nod and take the cinnamon bunny outside, the bell over the door jingling. Brown sugar and cinnamon stick to your face as you bite into your snack, your stick awkwardly clamped under one elbow so you don't drop it. You don't have any normal money, which is fine since you doubt the monster shopkeeper would have accepted it anyway, and the small handful of gold coins you've found on the ground don't seem like enough to pay for a room at the inn. Oh well. You aren't sleepy and you don't intend to stay here.
Following the shopkeeper's advice, you wander the town, glancing in through the window of Grillby's and stopping at the library to leaf through some books. One of the twins is napping at a table, but you decide not to wake him.
When you run out of things to do in Snowdin, you walk eastward until you encounter Papyrus, who's decided that he should capture you now. To that end, he initiates a fight and immediately knocks you unconscious.
You wake up in a shed with a splitting headache further exacerbated by the crick in your neck from lying on a dog bed. Papyrus must have carried you here after he knocked you out; he left a note, but the words swim before your bleary eyes. There are speckles of some sticky green-brown residue on the floor like something gross had been there, the smell of which almost knocks you flat when you stoop down for a curious look. Did you throw up a little and forget? Gross. In any case, the door is unlocked, so you let yourself out, your ears ringing and your vision pulsing dark at the edges.
By some miracle, you win the next fight, which is to say that you avoid losing long enough for Papyrus to change his mind about capturing you and instead suggest that you come back to his house, a proposal which you're too dazed and scared to refuse. You scrounge through his couch for some change, watch the test pattern on the TV, chase unsuccessfully after the dog under the sink. Papyrus leads you up to his room for a slightly surreal hangout, gives you his phone number, then leaves. You stand there in his bedroom. The world spins lazily.
You don't understand monsters, you think to yourself.
A few steps into Waterfall, you pass by a sentry station and do a double take. You see four skeletons, but there are actually only two of them, which is still two more than you would've expected this far from Snowdin: Sans is reclining in his seat with a bag of chips and a car magazine, and Sans is also sprawled across the edge of the sentry station, sleepily munching a chip. Rubbing your eyes, you stand on your toes to see over one Sans and ask the other Sans what they're doing here.
"huh? oh, actually, i'm who," says Sans 1. "that guy there is named what."
You ask what he's talking about.
"huh?" Sans 2 echoes in a sleepily mumble. "i wasn't talking about anything."
You tell him that's not wha—... he's not the person who you were talking to.
"yep, that's MY name: 'who'. you got a great memory." Sans 1 winks, crinkling the empty bag in his hand.
This would be so much funnier if your head didn't already hurt.
Remembering what the shopkeeper said, you ask where they and their younger brother came from, hoping they might provide some useful intel about the rest of the Underground. You mention what she told you, that Sans 2 only recently moved to Snowdin.
"when a mommy and a daddy skeleton love each other very much... ...or a mommy and a mommy, or a daddy and a daddy, or a parent and a parent, or a parent and a mommy, or a parent and a daddy, or two mommies and a—"
Before you can learn any more questionably-true facts about the bird and the bee monsters (or skeletons, at least), Sans 2 interrupts Sans 1.
"'cause two is better than one. how else would we have more than one sentry station going at the same time? teleportation? nah, that's ridiculous. cloning, that's where it's at."
"plus, two sanses equals twice the number of legally-required breaks," Sans 1 adds.
"i dunno why more people don't do it."
You don't think you're being told the truth about this topic, either.
"speaking of which, it's time for ours. hey, kid, how does grillby's sound?" Sans 2 nod toward Sans 1. "his treat."
You hesitate. Their younger brother is, well, you don't know what to think of him. He's friendly and goofy but he also knocked you out and left you in a shed. These two haven't done anything to hurt you, but one of them also told you Papyrus wasn't dangerous, so you no longer trust their judgement in that regard.
Your stomach gurgles. You've been saving the slice of pie from Toriel, so the only thing you've eaten today was that cinnamon bunny, and that was a few hours ago. Despite your ambivalence, you give a nod.
"sweet," says Sans 1, while Sans 2 yawns and sits up. "c'mon, i know a shortcut."
One shortcut and another whoopie cushion prank later, you're sitting between the two skeletons and wolfing down a burger so fast that your chest hurts and you have to stop for a minute. Your headache is gone, and the blurry darkness at the corners of your vision as well. Who was it that told you monster food was magic? Wait, no, didn't you read it in one of those books from the library? You can't remember. Regardless, this stuff definitely works.
You glance aside at Sans 2, the one with the broken heart in his eye. He'd made a joke when he caught you staring at him, but something about him seems... calling him wrong would be unkind, but he's different somehow. Sitting next to him, you can see and even hear that he's trembling a little bit, trembling constantly, like he's cold. You've heard of diseases that make people shake all the time, but you're pretty sure it only happens to old folks, and besides, you doubt that monster and human biology would be so similar. He's a walking, talking skeleton, after all.
He couldn't possibly be afraid of you, could he? You're just a kid.
"still hungry?" Sans 2 asks, maybe misreading the reason why you've been staring again. You shake your head and look down at your lap in embarrassment, but he lets out a little heh and sets his basket of french fries on top of your empty plate. "here, you can have 'em. i've been watching my weight these days, anyway."
Your rudimentary sense of courtesy tells you that you should refuse the offer, but you don't know how long you'll be in the Underground or when you'll get the chance to eat again, so you eagerly shove a handful of fries into your mouth while Sans 1 takes a drink directly from the ketchup bottle, drawing your attention away from his brother.
"so, what do you think of papyrus?" he asks, the lights in his eye sockets gleaming.
You continue chewing, taking the time to think. Unlike his younger brother, Sans—there are two of him but they're sort of blending together in your mind, they're similar beyond what seems normal even for identical twins—has done nothing to harm you, but the absence of violence (so far) isn't evidence of kindness; he's a sentry, no matter how he seems to be trying to distract you from that fact, and you're on his home turf. Best to just tell him whatever he wants to hear.
If Sans notices any lack of certainty when you assure him that Papyrus is very cool, he doesn't call you out on it. "heh heh. yeah, of course he's cool. you'd be cool too if you wore that outfit every day. he'd only take that thing off if he absolutely had to... but hey, at least he washes it. and by that i mean he wears it in the shower."
You munch on your french fries. Sans 1 leans his elbow on the counter. Sans 2 has gone quiet.
"anyway, cool or not, you have to agree papyrus tries real hard. like how he keeps trying to be part of the royal guard. one day, he went to the house of the head of the royal guard... and begged her to let him be in it. of course, she shut the door on him because it was midnight. but the next day, she woke up and saw him still waiting there. seeing his dedication, she..."
Sans 1's story goes on. You don't know what it has to do with anything or why he thinks it's something you need to hear. Maybe he just enjoys talking about Papyrus? As much as he jokes around and teases his brother, it didn't sound like he was being sarcastic when he called Papyrus cool.
"...kid?"
You snap back to attention.
"you ok, buddy? i asked a question just now... you seemed kinda spaced out."
You lower your head and mumble an apology.
Sans 1 glances over to his twin, who for a while now has been as absent as you were, and Sans 2 looks up. Something passes between them, though you're not sure what. Some kind of weird telepathic twin thing.
"eh, that's alright," Sans 1 says. "i forgot what i was gonna ask, anyway."
"welp," says Sans 2. "that was a long break. can't believe we let you pull us away from work for that long."
"oh, yeah, by the way... we're flat broke. mind footing the bill for us? it's only 10000G."
Oh, good! They're actually scumbags in a completely different way than you'd feared. You shrug helplessly.
"nah, just kidding," Sans 2 says with a wink. "grillby, put it on his tab."
The fire monster behind the counter nods, and the twins get up in unison, leaving you sitting by yourself at the bar, just as confused as when you'd walked in.
Waterfall is beautiful, so it's a shame that you can't stop and admire the scenery for as long as you'd like.
When you aren't busy dodging energy spears and running for your life from a heavily armored monster knight twice your size, you walk along the docks and through the fields of waist-tall flowers; you listen to their whispering voices and read the old etchings on the wall, unconsciously holding a hand over your chest, over your heart and SOUL. You admire the glowing crystals, the darkening lantern room, and are thoroughly baffled by the Temmies in your village. Sometimes you nearly forget to be afraid.
As you hide in the tall grass, Papyrus tried to convince Undyne not to take your SOUL, and he doesn't rat you out even when it's apparent that she has no intention of sparing you. You can't decide what to think about that. (The twins also showed up again and tricked you into getting red ink on your face with a goofy telescope prank.) Then there was that big goofy octopus named Onionsan, and Shyren the little fish monster who liked to sing as long as you hummed along with her. You aren't sure what to think about a lot of things now.
There's a really infuriating puzzle involving a piano and a statue with a music box, though the song itself is pretty. By the time you walk away, you have a pocket full of dog residue and a short melody stuck in your head. You can hear what sounds like rain in the next room over, so you take an umbrella from the bin.
"Yo, you got an umbrella? Awesome!" says Monster Kid, nearly startling you into dropping it.
The kid prances over and you hold out the umbrella so they can fit underneath too. How is it even raining down here? You can't see the cavern roof no matter how hard you squint, it's dark like a bottomless pit.
"Man, Undyne is sooooo cool. She beats up bad guys and NEVER loses. If I was a human, I would wet the bed every night, knowing she was gonna beat me up!"
Despite all the soda you drank at Grillby's, you haven't needed to pee since you fell down here, which is a mercy since you've seen several hidden cameras and zero toilets. Hooray for magical monster food, you guess. You've died before and you'll most likely die again, but at least your dignity will stay somewhat intact. Sort of. In one very specific regard.
While you're busy thinking about pee, Monster Kid pauses to look at a flower.
"So, one time we had a school project where we had to take care of a flower," they say. "The king—we had to call him 'Mr. Dreemurr'—volunteered to donate his own flowers. He ended up coming to school and teaching the class about responsibility and stuff. That got me thinking..."
The kid turns back to you, bouncing excitedly.
"YO! How COOL would it be if UNDYNE came to school!? She could beat up ALL the teachers!"
You silently hold out umbrella. Monster Kid gets the hint and returns to your side.
"...Umm, maybe she wouldn't beat up all the teachers. She's too cool to ever hurt an innocent person," they amend.
You have nothing to say to that, so you just keep walking. Monster Kid is quiet for a while.
"Hey, dude, you've met Sans, right? The guy with the weird eye?"
You nod.
"I saw when he first came to Snowdin. He was wearing these WEIRD clothes, man, and..." Monster Kid stops to kick a pebble. "I've heard he came from far away. I mean... outside the Underground, THAT far away. But that's nuts, dude! Everybody knows there aren't any monsters in the surface world, and if somebody DID go out alone... they'd... it would be bad. That's why we have Undyne here to protect us!"
Not an hour ago, you were cowering in the tall grass and expecting to die at any moment, but okay, sure.
"Anyway, he told me one time that if I ever met somebody who was wearing lotsa rainbows and stuff like he was, I shouldn't trust them, 'cause they would try to... hurt me super bad. Don't tell him I told you this, dude, but... I think he used to be in, like, a secret gang. The kind that does BAD stuff, and if you try to leave, they do something REALLY bad to you. When I first saw him, he was really sick, like, really REALLY sick... that's gotta be what happened. Whaddya think, dude?"
To recap: Sans, a skeleton who is the long-lost identical twin of another skeleton also named Sans, was allegedly a member of a secretive cabal of monsters who all wore rainbow colors and poisoned anyone who tried to leave their ranks. Objectively, this isn't the most ludicrous thing you've seen or heard today—case in point, this story is being told to you by a reptile person while you walk along a rainy path in a underground tunnel—but it's got to be right up there.
You nod very seriously and tell Monster Kid that you think they're right, struggling not to giggle.
Maybe Undyne wouldn't beat up a teacher, but you can confirm that she has no qualms about killing a human kid. You keep trying to run, but she runs faster and she won't stop attacking no matter what you say.
You die. A lot.
Flowey told you back in the RUINS that fighting is an option. You don't feel very strong, but you're told that humans are tougher than monsters. Maybe the only way out of this situation is to kill. But Flowey was mean to you, and you've gotten this far without killing anybody, and you're stubborn. So you keep dying. Often. It doesn't make much of an impression on you after a while. You decide that it doesn't.
You deflect attacks, try to run, and die.
You fumble with the first spear Undyne throws at you, get impaled, and die.
You deflect attacks, run away, get attacked again, and die.
You cry and beg for mercy and die.
You run in the opposite direction, get impaled, fall off the bridge, and die.
You deflect attacks, miss one, and die.
You deflect attacks, run away, get chased down, deflect more attacks, run, and then trip on a rock and get impaled and die.
You deflect an attack and counter with your own, thinking you might damage Undyne just enough to slow her down, but you aren't accustomed to fighting and she's wearing plate armor, so your attack takes out a sliver of her HP and then you die.
You deflect attacks and plead for mercy and deflect more attacks and dodge and plead and plead and Undyne hesitates. You run. You make it halfway down the tunnel and then get impaled and die.
You remember those funny glasses you bought from the old turtle monster and put them on. You deflect Undyne's attacks through sheer muscle memory and then run straight into a wall. She laughs and then impales you and you die.
You deflect attacks and run and deflect attacks and run and almost make it to Hotland and then die.
You deflect attacks and beg for mercy until Undyne's attacks slow and then you run to Hotland. You think you see the skeleton twins at the sentry station but you're a tiny bit distracted at the moment so you keep running until Undyne collapses from the heat.
There's a water cooler nearby, and you didn't question the conveniently-shaped lamp sitting out in the snowy forest so you decide not to question this either. You watch Undyne nervously, struggling to catch your breath but still ready to bolt if she makes a move, and sidle over to grab a cup of water. You pour it over her head and back off, expecting your good deed to be swiftly punished. Instead, Undyne slowly gets up, looks at you, then stumbles away, and you nearly cry from the relief.
You backtrack once she's gone, only to find that the two skeletons are gone, too.
The lab looms over you. You keep walking.
Hotland. Your phone rings incessantly with notifications for Alphys' Undernet updates, and you've never had a cell phone before so you don't know how to turn them off. Your ringing phone attracts Vulkins by the dozen, but they're cute and easily placated once you know how, so it's not a big problem.
You could do without the steam vent puzzles and the interruptions from Mettaton, though. And the sweltering heat. And the two armed guards who try to crush you to pieces. At least Alphys has been friendly and helpful, even if she's a little annoying.
Then there's Muffet...
It's enough to make you miss Undyne. At least she wasn't interested in toying with you or tossing you to a giant spider-cupcake to be eaten alive, she just wanted you dead.
You could fight back and maybe kill the spider girl, but you don't, you won't.
As was the case with Papyrus, you don't really win the fight so much as you avoid losing long enough for the attacks to stop coming. You're bruised and limping and flat broke by the time the telegram from the spiders in the RUINS arrives, but you're alive and Muffet is alive, so this is an acceptable outcome, you think. You can restore yourself to life and she can't, so her life is worth the temporary pain.
You feel very noble until Mettaton shows up again, serenades you, and then drops you through a trapdoor. You actually succeed at negotiating the colored-tile puzzle waiting down there, which leaves Alphys in disbelief, but Mettaton attacks you anyway because you stepped on green tiles, even though he's a robot and not a monster so that's not how the puzzle is supposed to work. It all feels supremely unfair and it leaves you in a crummy mood.
By the time you arrive at MTT Resort, you feel a tiny bit better, and seeing a familiar and friendly-ish face waiting for you by the entrance doesn't hurt.
"hey, i heard you're going to the core," Sans 2 says. "how about grabbing some dinner with me first?"
It's a bit early for dinner, so the restaurant isn't serving any food right now, but Sans brought takeout bags from Grillby's. The two of you pick a table near the back corner—no shortcut this time, you just walk—and find that there aren't any chairs, so you just sit right there on the table, across from each other, which feels sort of forbidden in a fun way. A monster watches judgmentally from the corner, licking a leaf on a potted ficus.
You eagerly tear into your food (chicken fingers this time, yay!) while Sans pokes at the burger in front of him. It's hard to get a bead on him, even harder than it is with his twin. If you didn't know any better, you'd think he looks nervous.
"so. your journey's almost over, huh? you must really wanna go home."
Not knowing how else to answer, you give a slow nod.
"yeah. i know the feeling."
The sentence ends with an abrupt verbal lurch, like Sans meant to keep talking and then he just didn't. You shoot a nervous look at the ficus-licker in the corner and eat faster, suddenly worried that somebody might decide to shoo you out before you've finished.
"man, this feels weird," Sans mutters.
You give Sans a questioning look.
"can't even remember if i've been through this before. but all the times i met 'you', 'you' always seemed so... different? like, above it all, one way or another." Sans pauses, staring off into space. "there was this... some kind of... party, lots of these heart decorations hanging all around. it was early on. 'you' talked to it... tried to make it question itself. the things it was doing. the things it wanted to do. that's more than anybody else ever did. hell, that's more than what EVERYBODY else did, all of them put together."
You slowly lick a smear of ketchup off the side of your hand, brow crinkling. Sans started out making sense, but now you have no idea what he's talking about. Has he confused you for somebody else? It wouldn't be the first time that's happened today.
Seeing the incomprehension written across your face, he shakes his head and slides his bag of food over to you. "forget it," he says. "anyway, my, uh, brother, the other sans... he made a promise to protect you. didja know that?"
You tell him no.
"well, not you specifically. but we have this friend, an old lady who lives behind the door in the woods. one day, she asked him to make a promise. which he did. he promised to watch over and protect any human that came through that door." Sans glances away. "guess that hasn't worked out, huh? and i haven't done much good either, as far as you're concerned. granted, he's the one who made a promise, not me... but that must sound like a poor excuse."
The old lady behind the door is Toriel, you think. You think some more, and then you ask if that promise is the reason why Sans didn't capture you even though he's a sentry.
He nods. "smart kid."
The natural follow-up question: would he have beaten you up like Papyrus did, if not for that promise?
Sans grimaces. "maybe."
There's a weight to the silence. Near-silence, rather. A ficus leaf rustles and Sans' bones are rattling.
Reaching into the bag to fish out a carton of fries, you ask Sans why he's always trembling, and why there's a broken heart in his eye. For real—you don't want him to just make a joke instead of answering.
He laughs uncomfortably. You sit there and look at him and wait.
"i know we've been having a real heart to heart... but that's a seriously personal question, isn't it?"
You roll your eyes at the deflection. Remembering the story Monster Kid told you about where Sans supposedly came from, you try again, asking if he's sad about something. Did someone hurt him? Or is it both?
Sans looks away from you, like he wants to get up and leave but he's telling himself he can't. "nah," he says. "don't worry about it. just a skeleton thing."
You don't believe that anymore, but you don't say so. You quietly finish your food. And Sans' food.
"maybe it doesn't mean much, coming from the likes of me... but i believe in you, kiddo. you're capable of great things... as long as you stay determined."
You bite your lip. On an impulse, you correct him. Your name isn't kid, or kiddo, or any of the other things you've been called in the Underground. Your name is Frisk.
His answer is so faint that you nearly miss it. "yeah. i know."
Whimsalots, Madjicks, Final Froggits, and Knight Knights pursue you through the Core amid white clouds of steam that smell like ozone and plastic; your relief at reaching the end of the gauntlet is short-lived, because Mettaton is waiting for you.
Stage lights blare and TV cameras crowd around as you fight for your life and then promptly lose it, taking an electricity attack straight to the chest. It's an instantaneous death, you barely feel anything before you wake up at your last SAVE point. Even so, you find yourself needing to sit on the floor for a breather before you can muster the willpower to keep going.
No, not willpower. Determination, Determination.
New Home.
The last corridor.
The twin you've mentally labeled Sans 1 delivers your judgment, such as it is. You haven't killed anyone, and he praises you for that, which smells of hypocrisy in your opinion. Didn't he promise to protect you and then do almost nothing to uphold that promise? What was he doing when Papyrus gave you a concussion and Undyne chased you past the sentry station and Mettaton tried to kick you to death on live television? If you had reached such a point of desperation that you'd killed a monster to avoid having to suffer through yet another death of your own, whose fault would it have been? Yours? Why?
Since you have no intention of going back and killing somebody just to see what Sans says, and no interest in an ethical debate, you stay silent.
"your actions here... will decide the fate of the entire world. if you refuse to fight... asgore will take your SOUL and destroy humanity. but if you kill asgore and go home... monsters will remain trapped underground. what will you do?"
You have no answer to that, and no idea.
"...well, if i were you, i would have thrown in the towel by now. but you didn't get this far by giving up, did you? that's right. you have something called—"
You interrupt, knowing what he's going to say next: Determination.
That response takes Sans by surprise, but he covers it up well. "heh heh. yeah, you got it," he says. "so, as long as you do what's in your heart... i believe you can do the right thing."
You stare down at the floor, wordless.
"...alright. we're all counting on you, kid," Sans says with a wink. "good luck."
When you look up, he's gone.
You raise your face to the waning sunlight shining through the high windows, feeling the warmth of it on your skin, and then you move forward.
Asgore goes easy on you. You are a human child, and you look so much like one he'd known and loved so very long ago; with your SOUL in hand, together with the SOULs of the six children entombed below the throne room, Asgore will have to fulfill his vow to become a god and eradicate humanity, ending a war he began and yet never truly wanted.
He goes easy on you and you still die, over and over and over and over, burned or smashed into a wall by a sweeping slap from one of his massive paws or impaled on that trident. You don't know if it makes you feel relieved or angry to know how much worse this could be. Mostly you just feel bruised, even though your wounds disappear each time you load your SAVE file and rewind time to before the fight began.
After the first few attempts, you accept that you have no choice but to fight back, striking to kill. You still die. And die. And die.
At last, Asgore falls to his knees with a sick smile on his face like he's more relieved to see the fight end this way than you are. Despite how far you've come, or maybe because of it, you can't bring yourself to finish him off. You choose mercy.
Flowey doesn't. A hail of bullets flies in out of nowhere and shatters the king's SOUL, and his body disintegrates into dust, and a cackling Flowey arrives with all six human SOULs in tow. Shrill, wild laughter echoes and there's a blinding flash before your surroundings turn dark and abstract, a nowhere-place, as if the whole world has been washed away like a chalk drawing from pavement, and still you hear Flowey's laughter.
Chaos descends.
When you stagger away from New Home, shell-shocked yet physically unharmed, you have only the fuzziest idea of where you're going or what you're supposed to be doing. You need to befriend Undyne? And then do something else. And then you'll get a happy ending. Why? Maybe Flowey is just messing with you before he kills you again. You keep going anyway. After all this time, it's the only thing you know how to do.
Neither Papyrus nor Undyne seem to notice anything wrong; you've never been very outwardly expressive. Papyrus leaps out a window and Undyne glowers, then relents, then decides to give you tea and a cooking lesson, and then explodes her house. You cower at the sight of the roaring flames, but she scoops you up under her arm like you weigh nothing and gets you outside just before the roof caves in.
Amidst the burning wreckage, Undyne hands you a letter for Alphys, musses up your hair like you're a cute little puppy instead of a kid she tried to murder a few hours ago, and then sprints away. Hard to tell with all the fire, but it almost looked like she was blushing.
You will never, ever, ever understand monsters, you think to yourself.
After your "date" with Alphys in the garbage dump and subsequent visit to the Hotland lab, you make an alarmingly rapid descent into the place hidden below.
When you see the hulking, melting dog-thing, that enormous bag of dog food sitting upstairs by her fridge makes perfect sense. You cringe back against the wall, eyes fearfully squeezed shut, but Endogeny doesn't mean you any harm, it's just big and lonely and desperate for a playmate. You throw your stick for it to catch, and you rub its belly, and the Amalgamate foams and gurgles at you with delight. Why wouldn't it? Some monsters have hurt you but most of them haven't, and if a cute and friendly-looking creature can really be nasty and sadistic on the inside, then there's no reason to think that a disturbing appearance would indicate evil intentions.
Endogeny curls up in a corner to sleep, satisfied, and you give it a last pat on the head before turning away to retrieve your stick.
You've resigned yourself to another duel with Asgore when your new—friends? do they count as friends if most of them have killed or injured you at some point?—companions arrive to defuse the situation. Everything seems perfect, and then Flowey comes back and it isn't.
Toriel and Asgore both seem to accept their fates as the vines wrap around them; Alphys is frozen in mute terror while Undyne struggles furiously to free herself, ignoring the long bloody scratches pressed into her bare arms by the thorns; Papyrus' elbow has been twisted backward in a painfully unnatural position; one of the twins is tightly bound, and, like Alphys, he seems afraid to move, while the other twin dangles freely from a mass of vines that are wrapped around his skull and snaking into his eye socket, his feet kicking the air as he claws desperately at his face.
"This game between us will NEVER end!" Flowey gloats.
You can hear muffled crying. Papyrus tries to plead with Flowey and Undyne shouts for Sans, fighting as hard as she can to reach him, but it's no use, they're too far apart. Flowey giggles in delight.
"Yup, just like that! I'll hold victory riiiight there in front of you... and then tear it away just before you grasp it. Over, and over, and over... heehee!" Flowey winks and sticks out his tongue, at this point you're not even questioning how or why a flower has a tongue. "Maybe if you win, I really will let you have that 'happy ending'... I'll let your friends go and break the barrier... but that'll NEVER happen!"
Your grip on the stick tightens as magic bullets surround you, and the monsters—most of them—try to protect you with their own magic, which doesn't matter anyway because Flowey just absorbs their SOULs and becomes Asriel Dreemurr.
As you dodge his first "Shocker Breaker" attack, your arm raised against the eye-melting brightness, you can't help but remember Monster Kid's secondhand warning about malicious monsters with a rainbow aesthetic...
Can't move your body.
Can't move your body.
Can't move your body... nothing happens.
You struggle... nothing happens.
Can't reach your SAVE file... but maybe, with what little power you have, you can save something else.
Lost SOULs surround you, their faces shrouded in unnatural static, a nightmare fog.
"This is for your own good..."
"Forgive me for this..."
"All humans must die..."
"You hate me, don't you..?"
"I MUST CAPTURE A HUMAN! THEN EVERYONE WILL..."
A cluster of three lost SOULs stands closest to you, if notions of space and distance can mean anything here: a tall skeleton flanked by two shorter ones, twins. One is bright and clearly-defined in this dark void, while the other is faded and dimly translucent, his body nearly eaten up by the flickering static. Underneath the middle skeleton's boastful blustering, the twins murmur, their voices blending and feeding into each other.
"just give up. i did."
"just forget. they did."
"why even try?"
"not worth saving."
"you'll never see 'em again."
"nobody misses you."
"give up."
"give up."
"just give up..."
"...give up..."
"...give up..."
"...give up..."
You won't give up. You ask for help with a puzzle from the tall skeleton and tell bad jokes to the shorter skeletons, interrupting their loop as one of them starts to laugh. The memories come flooding back, and then the static is gone and they aren't lost SOULs anymore, they're your friends.
"NO! WAIT! YOU'RE MY FRIEND! I COULD NEVER CAPTURE YOU!"
"nah. we're rooting for ya, kid."
A rare smile crosses your face as you plunge back into the dark to SAVE the others, too.
There's a lingering sensation in your arms when you awaken... you were hugging someone, just a moment ago, weren't you?
You open your eyes. Toriel is cradling you in her arms, those warm eyes wide with concern.
"Ah, thank goodness!" Toriel breathes.
"W-we were so worried..! It felt like you were out forever!" says Alphys, standing on her tiptoes to get a better look at you.
Undyne nods vigorously. "Yeah! Any longer and I would have freaked out! Tell us next time you take a nap, okay!?"
"yeah, you made papyrus cry like a baby," one Sans says.
"WHAT! I DIDN'T CRY! I DON'T CRY! I JUST CAUGHT SOMETHING IN MY EYE!"
"what did you catch?" asks the other Sans.
"TEARS!"
Speaking of eyes, the heart in one of the twins' eye sockets looks a little different from how you remember. It's still lopsided and webbed with old fractures, but the broken halves seem to have been pulled or pressed together somehow; instead of that jagged crack down the center, where the heart had looked so painfully close to shearing apart, there's a deeply-indented scar. Before you can get a better look, he turns aside to say something to one of his brothers, and the angle doesn't allow you to see his face.
Frowning, you look back at Undyne. Her arms are uninjured and her clothing isn't even torn. When Asriel absorbed and then restored everyone's SOULs, his Determination must have...
Asgore raises a massive paw. "Now, now. The important thing is that Frisk is all right. Frisk, why don't I make you some tea? It'll help you feel better."
"Er... how about we give them space, first?" There's a dangerous glint in Toriel's eye as she turns away to keep you out of Asgore's reach. Her expression softens as she strokes your hair. "They must be very exhausted, though from what, I am not certain. Frisk... we do not remember exactly what happened. There was a flower... and then everything went white. But now the barrier is gone. When you are ready, we will all return to the surface."
You nod and squirm to let her know you want to go down. A little dazed, you hug her, then say there's something you'd like to go and do first, alone. You don't know why. You just have a feeling that there's something important you need to go and do.
As you walk away, you hear their voices rising and falling: Undyne and Alphys chatter excitedly about all the new anime available on the surface world while Asgore awkwardly hums to himself. One of the twins says something like huh, guess it's a good thing we procrastinated on getting your room built, huh? and Papyrus scolds him, after which point you're too far away to hear any more.
It's a long walk to the flowerbed and back. You have a long time to think.
You and your new friends look out at the setting sun, the streaks of red and yellow painting the clouds. They talk and laugh and banter while you listen quietly and look up at the open vault of the sky, and then set down your stick since you won't be needing it anymore. Asgore suggests that you act as the ambassador to monsterkind. You could say no—you get the impression that Toriel would gladly support you in defying Asgore's wishes—but you nod instead.
One by one, your friends begin the descent down the mountain. You reach up to take Toriel's fluffy paw, and she teases you for changing your mind about staying with her after all this time, but she wears a gentle smile to show she doesn't mean it. She gives your hand a squeeze, then tells you to come along, because everyone's waiting. You follow her.
The world to which you're about to return isn't going to be the same place you left behind, not now. You're okay with that.