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 two 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 (14)
Temporal Dynamics for the Magically Inclined (13)
Okay Flowey, Stop Traumatizing the Fairies (7)
Underground Fairies
A Fairy Strange Crossover
Looks like Temporal Dynamics is catching up… (Thank you for voting!)
Judging by the odd noises they were making, Chara was caught somewhere between helpless snickering and gagging. Once their head had stopped spinning and they'd finished recovering from being hit by whatever small boulder had sent them flying out of the tunnel out onto the hard pavement, they intended to find out why… though honestly, considering the gagging aspect of the noise, that might not turn out to be a good idea.
As it turned out, it was not a small boulder that had hit them. Instead of seeing a heavy rock when they managed to sit upright again, they were subjected to the sight of a massive toothy grin much too big for the hairy face it was attached to.
"Oh good, you're still awake," the grin, or, rather, the small dumpy fairy of questionable origin that had definitely still been inside the building last they checked, said. "You're made of pretty tough stuff, Mud Kid! I've knocked out full-grown humans before with half that much gas!"
Frisk blinked at him dazedly for a moment, before another bout of sickened laughter from their ghostly companion caught their attention again.
...Chara?
The ghost's answer to their unspoken question came out sounding a little strangled.
*F-Frisk, never, and I mean never, get behind this guy. EVER. Oh stars, he sent those assholes flying –
Frisk blinked again, not quite understanding the warning. Okay…?
And then they finally remembered the noise they'd heard just before the hairy fairy had apparently sent them flying out of the tunnel – an awful noise like every whoopee cushion in the world had been gathered in one place and then had been set off, all at once.
… Oh my God. Oh my GOD, Chara, please tell me that wasn't what I thought it was. Please tell me that noise I heard had nothing to do with this guy. PLEASE.
Chara outright cackled.
*Oh, it was exactly what you thought it was! Oh my God, that was so disgusting but so, so worth it, I wish I could have seen that wizard bastard's face -!
Eyes widening until they were about to fall out of their skull, Frisk turned to gape in dawning horror at the squat little figure still grinning before them.
"That – y-you just –"
"Jettisoned all my tunnel waste into the faces of a bunch of angry human terrorists?" God, the little creature sounded way too cheerful admitting to something that, in Frisk's mind, was basically tantamount to biological warfare. "Yup!"
Chara gagged again. Frisk almost followed suit.
"H-how on earth –"
They were cut off by a loud boom from somewhere behind them. Frisk yelped, springing to their feet and whipping around, fully expecting to see smoke rising from the building they'd just escaped from. There wasn't any.
"What was that?!" They demanded.
The fairy – no, Diggums, that was what the lady inside had called him, they'd almost forgotten – scratched his beard, still grinning far too widely. "Huh. Didn't think I had enough vole curry this morning for that big of a boom."
In perfect unison, both Frisk and Chara choked in shock.
*Oh my God. No. No.
T-that was – he – that – A swarm of bewildered words built up in their head for a moment, swirling in confusing eddies, and then exploded into full sentences. How?! Human gas can't do that! Monsters can't do that! There wasn't any magic involved, right?! I didn't see any, there weren't even any sparks or anything, just – HOW?!
*What even ARE fairies?! What the actual fuck?!
Something of their inner freak-out must have shown on their face, because Diggums' grin grew even wider than before, and he laughed at them.
"Oh Frond, kid, your face! Haha!"
"Leave off the teasing, dwarf, we're on a time crunch here." A new voice, male, by the sounds of it, and sounding somewhat sympathetic. Frisk yelped and spun around again, and the new fairy, this time in a matte black suit instead of the dull green one the woman inside had worn, put up his hands in a calm down gesture.
"Easy there, Ambassador." The fairy soothed. "Didn't mean to startle you. Just ignore Diggums for now, alright? We've got to fly you out of here before the humans inside come looking." The helmeted head tilted to one side slightly, and a sigh gusted out through unseen speakers. "We'll need to get you one of the spare cam-foils, though. Looks like you lost yours underground."
Honestly, Frisk had been more concerned with the borderline biological weapon that was still laughing in their face to notice that they no longer had the cam-foil. Heck, they hadn't even really registered that they'd still been holding onto it when they'd first climbed into the tunnel. They'd been too busy being focused on getting away, and trying as hard as they could not to think about how the tunnel had been excavated. But sure enough, when they glanced down, their hands were clenched only on air.
"Sorry," they mumbled. They hadn't meant to lose the cam-foil, and God, that kind of tech must have cost a fortune.
The fairy huffed, and, reaching into a large pocket on the leg of his suit, pulled out another sheet of the foil. "It's not your fault kid, it's all on Diggums' shoulders."
"Hey! It wasn't my fault!"
"I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people that actually give a damn, Diggums." The fairy slung the foil over Frisk's head. "Head back underground. Last thing we need is you getting shot because you can't shield and didn't get away from a bunch of gun-wielding humans in time."
The dwarf made what was probably some sort of rude gesture, though he didn't seem particularly upset if the seemingly-perpetual smile was any indication, and then his jaw unhinged like a snake's and he dived headfirst into the ground. Within seconds he was gone, and there was only a patch of moving dirt where he'd been.
"Here, Ambassador." The fairy held out a cord attached to his belt, just like the woman inside had done. "Same drill as inside."
They took the cord with shaking fingers. While Diggums had been a mortifying distraction, now the severity of the situation was bearing down on them again, and they sort of wished that he'd come back. They weren't out of the woods yet.
Then a thought struck them, and they turned back towards the building. "Wait, what about the lady inside? We can't leave without her!"
"She's fine, kid. She and the Private in there just got out, I got word over the coms." He snorted suddenly. "Knowing Crane, she's probably the one that set off that explosion. She's got a vengeful streak as wide as the Atlantic when it comes to people that target children."
A little heartened, though still trembling with nerves, Frisk connected the cord to their belt loops, just like they had inside. "She'll be okay?"
"She's already up in the air." The fairy tapped something on one wrist – Frisk caught a glimpse of some sort of panel with a little computer screen displaying some sort of graph and unfamiliar symbols, plus some buttons – and then Frisk's mind was suddenly far from the fairy inside the building, because they felt for all the world like they'd just been hit with blue magic. They felt almost weightless, like they were floating in a pool of water instead of standing on solid ground.
"W-what –"
The fairy didn't wait long enough for them to finish their sentence. A pair of mechanical wings slid out of the back of his suit, and then he was taking to the air.
Flying, Frisk decided after a heart-pounding minute, was both amazing and terrifying at the same time, and honestly, the terror was probably only because they weren't actually flying themselves, but dangling off of a fairy's belt by a thin cord hundreds of feet off the ground.
Apart from that? Well. There weren't many planes that hadn't fallen to Earth during the Crash, and even fewer that had been repaired – those few that were open to passengers were often very, very expensive to get seats on. And their biological parents had never brought them with whenever they'd left for their business trips, so even if they had flown, Frisk never had.
This was nothing like Frisk imagined flying on a plane would be like. They weren't encased in a machine that did the flying with them, sheltered from the elements. The wind was blowing right into their face, making their eyes water, and the sharp smell of humidity and distant rain came right along with it, and they could hear the distant, faint nighttime sounds of the city below, they could see the city below for what looked like miles – it was exhilarating. The closest they'd ever come to this had been… well, a long time ago, when after a particularly horrible surface run, they'd climbed to the top of the tallest building they could find and jumped. This was so much better, mostly because the apprehension from knowing that the ground was coming up to meet their face in a few seconds' time wasn't there.
That didn't mean there wasn't still some apprehension, though for an entirely different reason than because of how high they were.
I might be out of HuRg's reach, for now, but… I feel like something else is going to happen soon. And I'm not going to like it.
A faint flicker of movement in the corner of their eye caught their attention, and Frisk looked up from gawping at Dublin through the gap in their concealing foil to see a familiar green-suited figure flitting up to fall into formation right beside them.
"Hey kid," the woman said. "You doing okay?"
Frisk gave her a brief smile. "Y-yeah. Um, y-you're Crane, right? That's what your… teammate? That's what he called you."
"Yes, that's me."
Their smile grew a little wider, a little more sincere. "Thank you," they said, with feeling. "Thank you for getting me out of there."
The fairy might have smiled. Frisk still couldn't see her face and find out. But that didn't stop them from seeing Crane's shoulders twitch, and see the slight stuttering of green wings as they missed a beat.
"Don't thank me, kid," she said, so quietly they almost didn't hear her over the wind – or the sudden pounding of their heart. But heard her they did, and she sounded guilty.
Why does she sound guilty? Unless –
*Unless there's something else going on here. And considering that our hotel's not near here, and we just passed the police station and we're not slowing down…
Frisk glanced down and back – as much as they could, it was a little difficult with the foil covering them – and sure enough, there was the distant but still familiar police station disappearing behind several taller buildings behind them.
They turned back to look at their rescuer – no, the fairy beside them and swallowed.
"Where are you taking me?" They whispered.
Crane didn't answer. She just looked away, and then shimmered out of visibility, leaving nothing behind to show that she was there save for the occasional buffeting of wind from her wings.
Minutes later, what little exhilaration Frisk was still feeling was disappearing behind them along with Dublin, as the fairies left the city behind and struck out into the rolling green countryside.
Frisk wasn't sure exactly how long the fairies had been flying for, nor how far they were from Dublin. Clouds had long since covered the moon (a moon which was a sliver over full, whereas the last time Frisk had seen it, it had been a sliver under – how long had they spent in that cell?), thus completely ridding them of the only celestial navigation tool they'd been able to see, and throwing the countryside below into deep shadow. And while years ago, the hills below might have been dotted with tiny blobs or large streams of bright lights as they passed over small towns and homesteads and packed roads, now they couldn't make out a single landmark. Nothing but green, tinted ever-so-slightly blue by the moon.
That alone would have made them nervous, but Frisk was honestly more unnerved by the fact that the fairies hadn't said a single word during the entire flight. At least, not one that they'd been able to hear. And though Chara had apparently been able to make out a few brief murmurs through the fairies' visors, they hadn't been able to understand them.
*Think it's the same language that Crane was speaking in back in the warehouse.
The word Crane came out with scathing contempt, and Frisk winced, glancing to the side again where they thought the green-winged fairy was still flying.
It's… probably not her fault this is happening, Chara, they thought weakly. She seemed… guilty, back in the city.
*I don't give a damn.
A lie. A big one. If Chara hadn't given a damn, they wouldn't have been so upset right now, but Frisk could tell that, though they weren't feeling as foul-mouthed as they had been when the wizard had been chasing them, they were still seething internally.
They didn't blame the ghost, not one bit. Had they been any more temperamental a person, they probably would have been seething too. Instead, all they could feel was a cold little tendril of dread and resignation curling up in their stomach and making itself right at home.
I don't think they're going to kill me. If they were going to do that, they would have done it back at the warehouse, where it would've been easier, and could be blamed on HuRg. But that still leaves a lot of options open.
Options like memory-erasing. Which they still could have done back at the warehouse, possibly, assuming that the enthralling-voice-trick was something all fairies could learn, and not just a few.
I guess it's possible that these ones don't know how… and that someone where they're going does.
They took in a shuddering breath, holding the sheet of cam-foil closer in a weak attempt to comfort themselves. It didn't work.
Chara? If… if they are planning on making me forget them somehow… you won't let them, will you?
*Not in a million years.
The wind blowing into their face suddenly lessened, and Frisk jolted, heart beating faster as the fairy flying them started to descend. They squinted towards the ground, trying to make out any defining landmarks. Nothing but green farmland, barely visible without the moonlight -
No. Wait a second. While the relatively flat farmland was difficult to make out, there was a little bit of moonlight slipping through the clouds and illuminating some of the earth below, and amongst the fields, they could see a little farmhouse, and two odd mounds, surrounded by rings of raised earth –
No. No way.
They knew those mounds. They'd looked up pictures of them a couple weeks before getting on the boat to Ireland when looking through tourist sites to visit with Toriel after their duties in Dublin were done.
No way. Is that Tara?
Daniel pointed out to me that the worldbuilding notes, though cool, tend to take up a lot of space, and pointed me to a site called Pastebin (just add . com, minus the spaces, to the end of that word for the URL) where people can store text online for a theoretically limitless period of time. I'm thinking about possibly moving M est P worldbuilding notes to that site. I know that not everybody who reads this fic is using their own computer, though - there's at least one person on Ao3 that mentioned using a school computer, which blocks some sites - so I wanted to check and see if people are a) okay with the worldbuilding being moved to Pastebin, and b) are able to access Pastebin from their computers in the first place before actually posting anything there.
I had a little trouble writing Mulch's dialogue this chapter, as little of it there was, so I ended up checking out a couple of Artemis Fowl audiobooks to listen to while I was writing this, and that sort of helped. I'm gonna listen to the books while writing from now on, at least until I have to return them. And wow, would you look at that, they're at Tara now. Mind-wipe is incoming, people.
On a brighter note, at least Frisk got to fly. I've sort of had the idea in my head now that if this Frisk ever got to fly, they'd absolutely love it. The bit about jumping off of a building wasn't something I meant to slip into that bit, but at the same time, Frisk is Frisk, they can't really BE a normal kid, in any way, for very long. (Don't worry, the jumping off a building thing was more for the sake of being able to LOAD than because Frisk wanted to kill themselves. Doesn't make it any easier to stomach, but still.)
And now for more worldbuilding, thanks to more questions from Jack! Jack asked: "Frisk becomes more powerful the higher their LV got. Does it work that way here, or is it just a representation of killing intent? Finally, since Chara is tied to Frisk, does that mean that they share EXP? When Chara takes control, is it Chara's LV and EXP that is drawn upon, or Frisk, or both?"
With most people, their LV doesn't affect their strength and is a representation of killing intent only. Frisk is amongst these people, at the moment. However, there are a couple kinds of people whose intent to hurt can increase their strength - one of those groups is human mages/wizards/magic users. Since magic is tied directly to the soul in this 'verse, that means it's also connected to a person's LV - this means that if their magic is combat oriented or can be used in combat their magic grows in strength along with their LV. The other group of people that have a similar relationship between magic and LV is the monsters themselves - the more a monster wants to fight (or in other words, the greater their intent to harm someone) the stronger their magic will get until they decide they don't want to fight anymore.
Frisk and Chara do not share LV or EXP. The link between their souls means they share Determination, not stats. This means that when they take over, Chara is drawing on their own LV when they muster intent to harm, and not Frisk's. And possibly more than just their own LV too, because, interestingly enough, when they're in control of Frisk's body, their physical strength and speed fluctuates depending on how much LV they have at the time... ;P