WARNING: The following chapter is not suitable for those who are easily disturbed by the following; Self Harming Behaviour. Please keep this in mind before continuing.
Chapter 1 - "Cyberspace"
In the northside of Glasgow, Scotland; there's a construction site that's completely engulfed in flames. The lifeless bodies scattered about the site among the flames and ash are charred, to the point that only the best of professionals can tell who these people once were.
At the centre of the site, in an open space among the flames is a man with light brown hair, that just touches the edge of his shoulders. The man's clothes have mostly been burned off except from the top half of his black trousers. While the man is unconscious on the ground, a seemingly disembodied voice is heard, calling out his name, but considering there was no conscious person in the entire construction site. It's most likely a voice only the unconscious man can hear inside his head.
"FRISK!"
The voice heard is strangely similar, if not the exact same to Frisk's own voice. The voice was loud enough in Frisk's head for him to open his eyes, which shows his eye colour as a maroon colour. As Frisk tries to sit up, he suddenly feels a burning pain from within his insides, so much so that he starts screaming in pain while crossing his arms over his torso and rocking side to side. His eyes flickering back and forth between their regular colour and a fiery orange colour.
Frisk then stops rocking when the pain dies down as the flickering in his eyes stops. He then turns onto his belly and looks up to the sight of a desktop computer; the tower case is standing upright with the power button glowing white as the monitor is lying on the ground with the screen facing the sky.
"What... the…, why..."
Frisk, in sheer confusion at what's in front of him, shallowly whispered these 3 words.
Am I hallucinating or something?
Frisk tried to rationalise what he was seeing and with his curiosity taking over, Frisk dragged himself over to the desktop computer while still having one arm pressed against his torso to ease the pain. The desktop tower case seems to be in mint condition but without any labels or logos as you would normally have on a tower case. While the monitor is pretty much in the same condition as the tower case except the monitor doesn't show any signs of being functional. The only wire that's there is a thick, larger than normal, wire connecting both the tower case and the monitor; that also seems to be fused to the back of the monitor.
What on earth is powering this computer?
Frisk tries to pull out the wire from the tower case but is unable to. He keeps trying to pull on that wire, and it still won't come out of its port. Then suddenly, the desktop tower case starts to shake and crackle with electric sparks and bolts.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!"
Frisk jumps back as he looks at the tower case stunned and confused. The shaking slowly becomes more erratic and violent as the seconds pass and pieces of the monitor's screen, starting from the centre of the screen extending outwards in a spiral, break apart and get pulled inward as a cyan storm-like portal begins to show.
Frisk starts to get up and run away from the portal, forgetting the pain he was in due to the sudden adrenaline rush, but after he turned away, the storm-like portal shoots a cyan coloured lightning bolt at Frisk; the lightning bolt strikes Frisk in the back.
"AAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
As Frisk screams in agony, an astral projection of himself appears behind him, with cyan lightning crackling all over the astral projection. The astral projection then gets pulled into the portal like a black hole pulling in matter, while Frisk's actual body doesn't move.
Once the astral projection gets sucked into the portal, Frisk's body falls face first onto the ground still not moving. The portal starts to close and reverses the breaking apart process of the computer screen. The portal is now closed with nothing but a blank screen as the computer's tower case stops shaking and returns to normal while Frisk's body is lying on the ground unconscious once again.
Frisk wakes up lying down in complete darkness. He doesn't know where he is and is unable to see anything. He then slowly stands up, and starts looking around trying to find any kind of light source.
"Where am I?!"
As Frisk shouts, the sentence he uttered starts to echo around him. He then starts frantically looking for something, anything.
"Is anyone there?!"
As Frisk shouts again, the echo of his desperate words continue. He then stops frantically moving around and starts to breathe heavily.
Is this a dream? It sure doesn't feel like one.
Suddenly, a red light is shone against Frisk's back allowing him to see himself and what Frisk saw in front of him now has a gradient of the red light and the pitch black darkness. The further away he looked the darker it got, like staring into a black hole. Frisk, naturally curious, turned around to where the light came from.
As Frisk looks at the red light, his expression turns from curiosity to pure and utter shock and horror at what he sees, as the red light leaves a red reflection in his eyes.
If Frisk were to describe what he sees, he would say this;
There are many varying timelines, all of them begin to fuse into one unstable timeline that can't hold itself together. More timelines are added to it, accelerating its inevitable end.
At said end, there's a single point, a singularity. Matter, time and even souls are unable to escape. A destructive wave of blood red crimson stretches outward across the universe and once it reaches the edge of the universe, as if a plug was taken out, it gets pulled back into the singularity, which marks the end of existence.
Frisk then hears the sound of a finger snap as everything, just like the flick of a light switch, instantly goes back to darkness.
As if he was experiencing a nightmare of nightmares, Frisk jerks up to a sitting position. Frisk's breathing is hoarse and shallow from the adrenaline rush of waking up. It took a few seconds for his breathing to calm down and for his vision to adjust to his surroundings. He is sitting on a bed that's coloured navy blue with a cyan coloured circuitry design all over the navy blue.
What the hell,...
Frisk then looks down at his clothing which is coloured with the same navy blue as the bed but without the circuitry design.
... where am I?
As he looks around the room he's in, the first thing he notices is the wallpaper in the room, which is the same navy blue as the bed. The design on the wallpaper however is split down the middle of the room where a regular looking mahogany door is. The wallpaper on the side of the room Frisk's on has the same design as the bed, while the wallpaper on the other side of the room has a bunch of five-pointed stars scattered about the wallpaper.
The room has 2 drawers with a small flat screen television on each, both drawers on each side of the room in the far corners. There's also two desks, one is next to the bed Frisk is on with a smartphone lying screen up on the desk. The other desk is next to another bed that's on the other side of the room. This desk has a picture frame with the front facing towards the bed.
As Frisk focuses on the other bed, he notices that there's someone sleeping in that bed. Frisk slowly gets out of the bed and carefully walks over to the other bed. He sees a goat-like boy with white fur that Frisk starts to recognize.
Wait… is this kid Asriel Dreemurr from that Undertale game I played a while back?
Frisk holds his forehead as he starts to get a headache from the weird situation he's in.
I only played that game due to the protagonist having the same name as me.
As Frisk continues to hold his forehead while processing everything that has recently. He thinks back to where he found the odd computer that started this weird situation.
A storm-like portal inside a computer with no visible power source and now I'm waking up in different clothes, in a room I've never been in, with a game character sleeping on the other side of the room. Is this some kind of weird sci-fi shit?
Frisk then turns towards the picture on the desk and picks it up to look at it. He sees Asriel with his mother Toriel, with her regular purple robes, and Frisk himself, wearing a cyan t-shirt with navy blue jeans.
The hell?... Why am I in this photo?
Frisk's headache starts to get slightly worse as more and more weird circumstances keep piling on top of each other.
I don't remember any of this. Is this photo fabricated or do I have amnesia?
Frisk then carefully places the picture back down onto the desk.
This room has a similar layout to the bedroom in Deltarune. It's most likely that the rest of this house also has the same layout.
Frisk then lowers his hand from his forehead, slowly and carefully walks over to the phone on his desk, and picks up the phone.
I should go to the bathroom, as that has a lock before I try and figure this out. I don't want to risk waking anyone up.
Frisk slowly walks to and opens the door, then turns on the phone, the light of the phone causes Frisk's vision to blur and once his eyes start to adjust again he sees that the time is currently 3:13am. Frisk then swipes down and taps a flashlight icon that shows up, directing the now turned on flashlight to the ceiling outside. Then while being cautious not to directly shine the flashlight at any of the other doors, Frisk navigates, from the bedroom he was in, to the stairs at the end of the hall.
As Frisk starts to walk down the stairs, Frisk places his free hand on the handrail as his headache intensifies. His breathing becomes hoarse as his vision becomes red for a split second. The exact moment his vision becomes red, Frisk grits his teeth and grips the handrail with as much force as possible, trying to shake off this burning pain.
Only one thought was going through his head.
Go to the bathroom.
Frisk kept his mind purely focused on that single goal, in order to push himself to move. He kept on sluggishly walking down the stairs with his free hand moving across the handrail and as he got down the stairs he pressed his free hand against the wall to keep up right as he moved towards the bathroom door.
After getting into the bathroom, turning the light on and locking the bathroom door. The adrenaline rush he gets from purely focusing on getting to the bathroom starts to weaken as he stumbles onto the bathroom's sink while placing his phone, with the flashlight still on, at the back of the sink. His body starts to get weak as his breaths become hoarse, and while gripping his hands against the edge of the sink, he thinks about one thing.
Why do I feel this anxious and tense?
His breathing becomes more hoarse.
This is just like…
The realisation hit him, like a bolt of lightning, as his hoarse breathing stopped and his eyes widened in shock.
… before.
Frisk recognised this feeling of tension and anxiety. It was a feeling he felt once before. As he raises his head, he looks at himself in the mirror, he didn't even realise there was a mirror above the sink when he came in. He steps back from the sink as his heart beats faster, and faster while he stares at his reflection. As he sees the look of shock and despair in his eyes, a very recent memory resurfaces. A memory that he was subconsciously trying to suppress.
-AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!
The sounds of his own feral and tearful scream echoes in his mind, as his vision flashes red again with the burning headache returning manyfold. Frisk presses both of his hands against his forehead, grunting in pain as he drops to his knees. The pain continues as he moves his right hand from his forehead and slams said hand onto the ground, nails first. Digging and scraping against the tiled floor trying desperately to ease the pain in any way. The pain continues more and more as grunts and bites his bottom lip. Said lip starts to draw crimson blood as the pain starts to subside.
Frisk then notices a cyan glow at the corner of his eyes as he turns his head to look at the hand that was scraping the floor and something was glowing below his hand. Frisk turns his hand to see that the glow wasn't something underneath his hand as the entire palm of his hand glows cyan with mini sparks of similar coloured lightning dancing about the glowing palm.
"What the fuck?"
As Frisk voices his bewilderment, he accidentally jerks his hand slightly as the sparks on the palm intensify. Then a single bolt of cyan lightning shoots upwards.
"SHIT!"
*BANG*
As Frisk jumps back from shock, the cyan lightning bolt strikes the lightbulb above Frisk, instantly fusing it as the sound of shattered glass echoes around the room. As the lightbulb fuses, the bathroom goes dark with only faint light coming from the phone flashlight which is mostly covered as it's facing down on the sink. Frisk starts to breathe heavily from shock as he starts to hear faint running and muffled voices from outside the bathroom. The faint running starts to get louder and louder, then it suddenly stops as he hears a woman's voice.
"FRISK!"
Frisk immediately thinks that the owner of that voice is Asriel's mother, Toriel. Frisk then shakes his head to relieve himself of the shock as he shouts.
"I'm in the bathroom, the lightbulb fused!"
The moment he stops shouting, Frisk hears Toriel give a faint sigh of relief as she replies.
"Okay… Asriel, can you get a new lightbulb?"
Frisk then hears the faint voice of the goat boy.
"I'm already on it."
A few seconds pass as Frisk fully calms down from the shock, then he hears the faint voice of Asriel again.
"Mother, we're out of lightbulbs."
There was a couple of seconds of silence before Toriel spoke up.
"Frisk, are you able to move around fine?"
"Yeah, I have my phone's flashlight so I'm okay." Frisk answered, as he got up and picked up his phone.
The phone's flashlight lights up the room a bit more and as Frisk looks up he sees that the bathroom lightbulb was beyond fused as the entirety of the glass was completely blackened.
Bloody hell.
"Ok, we'll have to get more lightbulbs tomorrow. We… should head back to bed."
As Frisk hears Toriel's yawning and faint footsteps of both Toriel and Asriel that get quieter each step, Frisk starts to also feel fatigued from the adrenaline rush of his situation, he then slowly walks towards the sink and turns on the blue coloured tap.
I should do as she says and head to bed. I might be able to have a better understanding of what's going on after some rest.
Then after using the cold water to wash off the blood from his bitten lips, Frisk unlocks the bathroom door and leaves the bathroom, then using the wall as support slowly walks up the stairs and towards the bedroom he woke up in. Once Frisk enters the bedroom he sees Asriel sitting on his bed, ready to go back to sleep till Frisk enters the room. Asriel then turns to look at Frisk, the look the goat boy has is mostly fatigued but he has a hint of worry in his eyes.
"Are you sure you're alright, Frisk?"
"Yeah, I just need some sleep. Goodnight."
Frisk doesn't look at the goat boy who still has that hint of worry in his eyes as Frisk slowly goes straight to bed without saying another word. The only thing Frisk hears is the sound of Asriel also going back to sleep and the faint voice of the goat boy also saying "Goodnight" as the room goes silent.
Frisk then closes eyes, trying as hard as he can to get some sleep. He wants some peace from this situation, he wants to escape from the piercing pain he's been feeling inside his head. As time passes by, Frisk starts to slowly calm down and after he fully calms down, he then enters into a deep sleep.
As Frisk consciousness goes into a deep sleep, rather than going into a dream-like sleep like what normally happens, he feels a disconnection between his consciousness and his physical body.
"Huh?"
As Frisk felt this disconnect he noticed that he was standing upright, there was no bedroom and no house. There was only a flat plane of a cybernetic design. If Frisk were to describe where he is, he would describe it as Cyberspace.
"Where am I?"
Frisk with a confused expression looks around the flat plane he's in and as he does so, he sees nothing else, there's only the flat plane.
"Am I dreaming?"
Frisk then looks at his hand with a feeling of uneasiness.
No, this might not be a dream. I feel like I'm fully awake but at the same time, I feel like I'm not.
As Frisk looks up from his hand, the world starts to slowly shift and, like uncovering a veil, the seemingly infinite flat plane changes to a busy street.
Huh?
As Frisk looks around the street in confusion, he sees various vehicles on the road that are crystal clear in Frisk's eyes, while almost everything else on said street is blurred and unclear. The only exception being a young woman in her mid to late 20s, with her right hand holding the handle of a pushchair with a baby girl sitting inside asleep and her left hand holding the hand of a young toddler boy.
That's my mother, and younger brother and sister, John and Sam.
Frisk then starts walking towards his family and as Frisk gets closer, he notices a young boy that looks a few years older than his brother, his younger self.
This looks exactly like the incident that happened over a decade ago and if that's the case then…
As Frisk looks at his younger self and his family, he notices a blurry figure running towards them and as the blurry figure runs towards them. The figure bumps into Frisk's mother causing Sam in her pushchair to be pushed onto the road as Frisk's mother falls next to John.
… a thief ended up bumping into my mum, causing my baby sister to be pushed onto the road and was in danger from a speeding truck.
As Frisk thought that, he turns around towards the road and sees a speeding truck screeching around a corner towards the part of road where Sam in her pushchair starts moving across. Frisk, knowing what happens next, then turns back around in time to see his past self sprinting onto the road towards Sam, Frisk's eyesight following him as he runs.
When I saw Sam on the road, my body started moving on its own. I guess I always had a protective instinct even when I was a little kid.
As the truck gets closer to Sam in her moving pushchair, Frisk's past self gets to her in time, placing his body in front of the pushchair just as the truck is inches away from hitting them. In that very instant, a single vine as thick as a tree trunk sprouts in front of Frisk and Sam. The vine then wraps around the front of the truck as it crashes into the vine, stopping the truck instantly while creating an indent into it in the process.
People assumed Sam and I were the ones being saved.
As Frisk looks at the crash, his mother and John start running towards a now crying Sam and his past self who passed out from shock.
Then I found out that my mother's side of the family could manipulate and control nature and with that power being weakened over the generations, it was surprising to the relatives that knew about it that my control was that powerful at that age.
As Frisk is reminiscing, everything around him starts to blur and shift.
So I'm guessing this is either me leaving this weird cyberspace or the more likely scenario, I will see another one of my memories.
As Frisk ponders on what will happen, the blurred bright colours of the street shift to more darker colours. As everything starts to become more clearer, Frisk sees his younger self, a couple years older than before, standing sleepily in a familiar hallway in fire patterned pyjamas.
This is my grandparent's countryside house.
As Frisk realises where he is, he sees his younger self open a door on Frisk's left. He then sees an orange light coming out of the door as his younger self's expression goes from being very sleepy to shock and despair.
This is when my grandparents…
As Frisk starts to recognise what's happening, he walks towards the door and turns to see a living room with burn marks and patches of small fires scattered about. Though the only thing both Frisks could focus on was the black mist and goo-like shadow standing in a melted hole in the wall with two corpses scorched beyond recognition.
… died.
Frisk's vision then flashes red yet again as both Frisk and his younger self drop to their knees. There's no pain this time compared to before, but the shock and panic was still there as Frisk started breathing hoarsely.
They died.
This was Frisk's only thought as he remembers what he was suppressing.
"AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"
-AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!
The grief filled scream of his child self echoes in his ears as the grief filled scream of his current self echoes in his thoughts.
The world then shifts and blurs once more at a quicker pace as mere moments later, the countryside house is shifted to the construction site that he was at before.
They died. They died. They died.
Each time he repeats this thought, Frisk's hoarse breathing intensifies as he sees himself kneeling staring in shock at the two scorched corpses in front of the same black shadow.
"My Mum and Dad died."
As the kneeled Frisk voices what he's been trying to suppress, he grabs at his hair with both hands while bending over in a bowing position, pressing his forehead against the ground.
"My Mum and Dad died. My Mum and Dad died. My Mum and Dad died."
As Frisk says the same words again and again in grief and disbelief while looking at the ground, he sees a faint orange glow at the top of his field of vision but his mental breakdown makes him unable to pay attention to this glow.
My Mum and Dad died. My Mum and Dad died. My Mum and Dad died.
Frisk starts hyperventilating while continuing repeating these words in his head. The initial disbelief of remembering the death of his parents then starts to dissipate, with that disbelief being replaced with boiling, unyielding rage.
"Die."
Frisk's hyperventilating continues as both himself and his past self utter this single word.
"Die, Die, Die, Die, Die, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE!"
In sheer rage, both Frisks continue hoarsely uttering this single word. Both of their voices echo as the volume of their voices increase each time the word is said, going from a regular volume into a grief filled shout.
"DIIIIEEEE!"
This final screech by both Frisks echoes as Frisk feels his consciousness start to reconnect with his physical body. Then in a blink of an eye, he fades into the subconscious.
In a similar manner to last night, Frisk jerks up into a sitting position with a shocked look on his face as he starts to hoarsely hyperventilate. Frisk now fully remembers the suppressed memories of his parents' death and due to this, Frisk continues to hyperventilate as he grabs onto the wall and his chest, trying desperately to calm down but he's unable to. As the memory of his parents' death repeats in his mind, Frisk starts biting down on his lower lip, drawing blood from it again. While the blood starts trickling down from his lower lip, Frisk slowly starts to calm down and once he fully calms down, he hears the familiar voice of a goat woman.
"Frisk, breakfast is ready!"
After Toriel shouts this from the kitchen downstairs, Frisk comes back to his senses and shakes his head to get rid of the remaining amount of panic he had. He then looks down at the small amount of blood dripping down onto his cybernetic pyjamas.
I need to stop doing that.
Frisk slowly lifts the bed covers off of himself and gets off the bed.
I should wash this blood off before anyone notices.
Frisk then walks to the drawer on his side of the bedroom and begins searching for a change of clothes.
I might as well go along with the cybernetic blue theme to avoid being suspicious. Not like I have much of a selection anyway.
Frisk takes out navy blue trousers from the bottom drawer along with some regular black socks. Then from the middle drawer, he takes out a plain cyan t-shirt, and finally from the top drawer he takes out a deep navy coloured tracksuit jacket.
Frisk places the clothes he took out onto his left shoulder then starts to walk towards the door, but as Frisk is about to open the door, he stops as an intense feeling of danger and dread washes over him. Frisk felt something close by watching him, and turned around to look at the open window behind him.
He never paid much attention to the window when he woke up but he knew that it was already open from the slight sounds of the back garden outside. Frisk then starts to walk towards the window at a fast pace, and hears a screeching sound akin to a speeding car as he approaches the open window. Once Frisk gets to the window and looks out towards the back garden, he looks around to find anything remotely suspicious and sees nothing suspicious as he also notices the sense of dread he feels is starting to dissipate.
What the hell was that?
After looking around for a few more seconds, Frisk turns around and starts to walk towards the door again with his clothes still on his left shoulder.
I don't know if I'm just getting too paranoid now that I'm starting to hallucinate, but right now I should focus on figuring out where I am.
After Frisk had this thought, he gets to and opens the door into a familiar hallway and closes it behind him.
A few moments ago on a small beach, not far from the house Frisk now stays in. Where there was not a single person, human or monster, in sight.
A streak of crimson red lightning along with a screeching, enters the area of the beach, instantly stopping in the middle of it and in that very spot stands a masked figure. The masked figure is wearing a red variant of Frisk's new tracksuit jacket, along with black coloured jeans and shoes which has a darker than normal shade, akin to vantablack.
What was once the streak of red lightning that trailed behind this person, is now several upon several small blots of the same lightning crackling around the masked figure. The figure wears a vantablack mask that covers the figure's entire face with no eye holes to see out of. The only design on the mask is a symbol of a red eye and, as if it was drawn in fresh blood, it also has slight drip marks going down from the eye.
"Interesting."
A voice of high pitch akin to the average young girl, a regular-pitched voice of a man and a deep-pitched voice that's practically demonic, echo out from the masked figure. Then after the masked figure speaks out this single sentence, they reach into their right pocket and pull out a syringe with a blood red liquid-like substance.
The figure then starts to fiddle about with the syringe in one hand as they look at the coastline in front of them. Then once they finish watching the coastline, they place the crimson syringe back into their right pocket. With their arms at their side, the crackling of their red lightning intensifies slightly.
"This is gonna be fun."
Instantly after the masked figure joyfully speaks these words, they speed off with their lightning trailing behind them, reforming the streak of red lightning once again. With the only loud sound in the area being a familiar screeching sound that slowly echoes away as the beach falls into silence.
A/N: There are some things I should address since I have a feeling it would get asked about later on:
While the Frisk in this story does have the same name as Undertale's Frisk. This Frisk is a separate character that I created prior to Undertale's release and ended up giving the Frisk name to him at one point and it has stuck ever since.
Also, for those who are concerned about me using OCs in these stories in detriment to the other franchise's characters, Project Guardian's OCs won't overshadow characters from other franchises, some of those characters from the other franchises will have important roles in this story and Project Guardian Cyber as a whole.
My aim is to create a large scale story that's unique and I have done numerous rewrites to several stories cause I want to make this story better. Any advice/feedback that can help me improve the overall story or me as a writer are welcome.