A/N accept this chapter as a peace offering to my latency. I hope we can look past these few bad weeks and go back to our regularly scheduled programming. Enjoy!

Chapter 21: Sibling rivalry

Staring down the monumental challenge before them was... harrowing, to say the least. The bland greys and complete opposite pinks really messed with their heads. Everything so far had been so bland and boring but... the hot pink coloring really burned their eyes but they needed to push on. They had to save Frisk and Six.

"Chara... Mono... you two need to focus on Six. I'll look for Frisk." Mike said as he started to walk off, but Chara stopped him.

"Oh no you don't. Remember the last time we split up? I'm not letting you

We'll find them together." Mike removed her arm from his shoulder.

"No. I'm going and that's that. Theres no way we'll find them in the same spot and we don't know what'll happen when we find one of them... if we find them... We need to be efficient about this." He replied. "Help Mono with Six." Chara started to reply, but Mike silenced her. "Enough. I'm not hearing of it anymore. Okay? Now go, find Six. Make sure she's safe... I'll bring Frisk back." Chara pouted a bit.

"What if... You don't come back?" Mike smiled a bit and hugged her.

"After what I've been put through, I think I'll be fine. What's the worst that can happen?" Reluctantly, Chara sighed and hugged him tight.

"If you die, I'll kill you." Mike nodded and hugged her back before he picked a direction and went. Chara glanced at Mono.

"Well... Better not waste any time... He seems to know what he's doing. He'll be okay." He reassured her. She nodded and together, the two went the opposite direction of their wayward friend.

A bit later

Mike had searched a few rooms by this point, all of them empty, save for the strange pink lights and other oddities. Except... the pink slowly started to turn a shade of crimson... Not a good sign at all in his eyes, but he really wasn't paying much attention. Of course he was concerned about his sister, but there was one other thing nagging at the back of his mind. That dark figure... he wondered who it was. Everyone else had a theme and a title: the nurse, the doctor, the crocodile, the thin man, except the dark figure. He wracked his brain trying to make sense of it for so long that he didn't even notice that he had been walking the same hallway for nearly 10 minutes. The red lights had all but faded out. In fact, all color faded. He was walking on nothing more than darkness. That's not to say he was walking on nothing, there was solid floor under his feet, it just lacked all color. Only when he encountered a light that shone down on a single point, illuminating the grass underneath... and a lone, familiar figure. Upon seeing this, he stopped dead in his tracks. Was it really that easy...? Did he really just find his kidnapped sister...? It seemed almost too good to be true, but the only way he'd know for certain was to... investigate closer. And so he did. He slowly inched his way closer to the figure while speaking softly.

"Frisk...? Is that you...? Its me, Mike, your brother...m Frisk?" He got no response and not even so much as a reaction. He stepped closer. Closer... closer... "Frisk? Hey, come on back, we need to go." He placed a hand on the figures shoulder only for them to twist around fast and swipe at him with a knife that grazed his cheek. Mike yelped and jumped back while holding his injured face. "Ah! Frisk?! What the heck..." His words caught in his throat as he got a good look at his... sister... This girl... this creature... this demon... was not his sister. At least, not one he recognized. Her body was the same, her clothes, her head. Nothing was manipulated or distorted... but her face... Or more specifically, her eyes and mouth. Her evil devilish grin stretched from ear to ear while glowing red eyes bore right into his soul.

"What's wrong Mikey? Dontcha wanna play? Let's play!" The demon girl lunged at him and tried to impale Mike's heart, but he dodged out of the way at the last second.

"Ah! Frisk?! Stop! It's me!" He tried to plead with her.

"Oh, I know it's you! And I want you dead!" She let out some maniacal laughter that gave him chills. "You survived a lot so far, but you won't survive me. Unless... You kill me first. Won't that be swell?!" She swiped at Mike again, but he shielded himself with his arms. Frisk only managed a few deep cuts on his forearms.

"Frisk... No... this isn't you!" She laughed again.

"Keep telling yourself that! I already drew blood, I clearly want you dead!" She swiped again. "You left me to die! You let that man take me away!"

"No! I tried to help you... I did!"

"Liar!" She slashed again. Mike's arms were getting pretty cut up at this point. He couldn't keep this up forever. "You always abandon me! You always leave me for dead!"

"That's not true! You know it's not! Please snap put of it!"

"I've got nothing to snap out of!" This time, Frisk jabbed at his arms, which dug into his flesh almost to the hilt and burst out the other side.

"Ah! Ow!" Mike groaned but used this leverage to twist his arm and knock the knife out of her hand. It clattered to the ground but as soon as it hit, she was on him. Tackling him to the ground and pummeling him to a pulp.

"Die! Just die!"

"No! Frisk! It hurts!" Frisk snarled and quickly grabbed her knife and went to plunge it into his chest, but Mike held out his hand to catch it before it could. It stabbed him right in the palm and caused Mike to scream out in pain as blood trickled down his arm and began to pool by his body.

"Just die! Or fight back! Do something! Why don't you fight back?!" Mike gulped and looked at her.

"Because you're my family... You're the reason I keep fighting... without you... I got nothing left to fight for..." This gave Frisk a few moments of pause. She stopped digging the knife into Mike's hand and looked at what she had done.

"M-Mike... Mike..."

"Frisk...?"

"Mike... You... You're... SUCH A WUSS!" Mike's eyes widened as she raised the knife high and went to drive it into his face, but he shoved her arm aside and pushed her off as he rolled away. He groaned and held his hand.

"No..."

"You can't save me Mikey! You'll have to kill me if you want to live!" Mike narrowed his eyes at her and grumbled under his breath. "That's it... get angry!" She lunged again, but Mike used her momentum to launch her to the ground. She hit hard but quickly got back up to charge again, this time tackling Mike but not bringing him down. She tried to stab his neck while he tried to keep it away. They fought back and forth with the knife, neither making any real progress. They seemed evenly matched. But then, out of nowhere, Mike let out a loud yell and forced the knife to stab him in the shoulder. He groaned but shoved Frisk back, knocking her down. She looked up at him and grinned as she watch him pull out the knife and wield it. "Yea... That's how it works. Now fight me." She beckoned him, but he shook his head.

"No... I'm not fighting you damn it." He dropped the knife to the ground. "You're my sister... I'll fight for you, but I'll never fight you. I'll shed blood for you, but I'll never shed your blood. I'd rather die a thousand times before that thought ever even crosses my mind! I. will not. Fight you." Frisk frowned.

"You're such a little b-" For barely a second, her face glitched a bit then went back to her demonic form, but her smile was gone. Her red eyes remained... but there was something else there too... Slowly, a sneer grew on her mouth as she stood and grabbed the knife. "Enough of this little game. Time to die Mike-" Her face glitched again, but once it returned again, one of her eyes were its original color while the other remained red. "Gah... what's going on...?" Her whole body began to shake violently

"Stop... hurting... my... brother!" Another voice said. It wasn't... this demons voice. No... it was someone else's... This new voice was Frisk, not the demon. She was still in there, fighting for control of her own body.

"Grr! Stay in your lane! Let me kill this whimp!" Frisk started to charge Mike, but she forced herself to her knees.

"N-no!" The true frisk said. "I'll kill you first...!"

"Ha! You think you can-" Suddenly Frisk put the knife to her own throat. "Eep!"

"You're damn right I do, demon!" Mike watched as the Frisk's battled with the knife. Frisk slowly stood back up and used both hands to try and keep the knife from her thoat. Her eyes flashed from normal to red and back again over and over as they fought for control.

"You can't kill me! We're evenly matched! You'll never beat me alone!" The demon said. Frisk glared at herself.

"I don't have to do it alone."

"What-" without even noticing, Mike had rushed Frisk and his good hand to shove the knife into Frisk's throat, the force of which caused a glitched version of frisk to burst out of the real Frisk and freeze in the air with a knife in her throat. She stayed there, paused in her final moments before shatteing into nothingness.

"Jeeze... That sucked... You okay Frisk? Frisk...?" Mike looked at the girl in front of him, who looked up at him with an evil grin. "No... No!" Mike backed up a bit, but not before Frisk tackled him.

"Yes! You think you can get rid of me that easily?" She said. Mike shook his head as tears fell down his face. He began pleading with Frisk again, but Frisk stopped him with a poke to the tip of his nose with her finger. He blinked at her for a few moments before Frisk let out a hearty belly laugh.

"BAHAHAHAHA! I- I COULDN'T KEEP IT IN I'M SORRY! HAHAHAHAH!" She wiped a tear from her eye. "You should have seen the look on your face!" She added while trying to get over her laughing fit. Mike exhaled the breath he was holding.

"You're a terrible person..." He mumbled. She giggled and nodded while helping him up and bandaging his wounds.

"Let's go find the others, dummy." The siblings walked hand-in-hand back to the main hall. They looked back and saw that the place they had came had dissapeared. There was only one way left to go: an ominous pink staircase with pink lighting and distant screaming.