Sorry for the wait, guys! I'd like to say this is the last time you have to wait a few weeks for new chapters, but, well… I still need a job, and on top of that I need to start preparing for possibly selling art as a freelance artist, and that takes a LOT of work.
On another note, here's a question to anyone who's read my KHR/Artemis Fowl fic Ignition: who would be willing to beta read any new chapters I write for it?
It was amazing how quiet people could become when digesting information of implausible severity.
Artemis took a slow sip of the ginger tea Butler had prepared for him and Holly alike, hoping the warm drink would help settle his stomach. Across from him, his tiny elfin friend had once more laid claim to one of the armchairs in the office, curled up on the cushion and with a cup of her own cradled in her hands. The elf's posture seemed disquietingly child-like, with her feet on the seat and knees pulled up to her chin, and her still decidedly green face didn't exactly ruin that perception.
Not that he blamed her for that. If anything, he'd be more worried if she wasn't visibly perturbed by what they'd just watched, because that would imply that their many, many misadventures had been significantly more dangerous and disturbing than he remembered. Trolls, megalomaniac pixies, goblin revolutions, and demonic hordes were bad enough, but they were still very different from watching through the point of view of a child as said child murdered their friends and adopted family in cold blood.
His stomach rolled unpleasantly, and he grimaced and took another sip of tea.
The memories had started innocuously enough, despite Artemis being on guard for upcoming horrors by Foaly's warning, and the notion of No. 1 ridding himself of his lunch through the wrong end off camera. Each new timeline, or "Run" as Frisk had called them the few times they'd audibly addressed them in their recollections, began with the same vision – Frisk waking up in a bed of golden flowers that looked to be some variation of buttercups with overly-large petals, staring up at a jagged tunnel of unforgiving stone that gave way to a tiny pinprick of light high above. In most other sequences of memories Artemis had looked over, Frisk would immediately rise to their feet, brush themselves off, sometimes hold a conversation with "Chara" (whose words were still mostly unintelligible no matter what Foaly tried to do to enhance the audio), and then go on their way.
This time, however, Frisk spent several long moments staring up at the light above, blinking several times as if in confusion. It was only when Chara spoke (sounding even more unintelligible than ever) that Frisk moved, visibly starting at the ghost's voice, before rising quickly to their feet and sending their eyes spinning around the small cavern they'd landed in.
Considering some of the possible side-effects of regular time travel, it was only logical to assume it was possible for Frisk to lose their memories, and their actions in the video certainly suggested that was what had happened, as did their sudden reaction to Chara, as if a voice talking in their head that they were previously used to had startled them. The thought of possible consequences to their head-achingly paradox-free loops in the timestream had been enough to set Artemis's already fraying nerves on edge… and that had been before they'd entered the next room, where Flowey was waiting for them.
"Howdy, Frisk!" The flower monster had said cheerfully. "Boy, what a shame about that last timeline not working out, huh? I guess dying of old age down here is impossible for you!" Then the yellow menace had blinked, squinting at Frisk as they refused to answer, an odd look on his face. "Hey, what's up with you? …What's with that weird expression?"
He hadn't gotten an answer, because that was when Toriel had approached, and the flower had fled to avoid her notice, but the questions had still left a curl of dread in his gut that was proven to be logical by Frisk's next actions following Toriel leaving them in a relatively safe room in the Ruins. That action being Frisk turning towards the nearest visible monster (a creature that looked to be some combination of a moth and a bedsheet ghost).
And brutally slaughtering them.
It had only taken a few more obviously deliberate and merciless kills before Holly had run from the room to empty her stomach, and only ten more for Artemis's own gut to begin to rebel against him. It was immeasurably horrifying to see Frisk, the seemingly ever-merciful child determined to protect their monster family at all possible costs, even their own life, murder those they sought to protect without a single sign of recognizing them, nor even caring about the loss of life. Even more so as Chara immediately reacted in shock and horror, shouting something that, though gibberish to his ears, was easily translated to a what do you think you're doing?! by tone of voice alone, and Frisk still didn't react.
It only got more horrifying from there. Frisk carved their way through the Ruins with only a stick, leaving piles of dust and Chara's increasingly more distressed cries in their wake, until they reached a tiny house set into purple stone that turned out to belong to Toriel. Toriel, who was unaware of the killer under her roof. Toriel, who clearly still thought that this blood-soaked (or perhaps dust-stained would be more appropriate, considering what became of dead monsters) creature that he barely recognized was an innocent child.
An "innocent child" that had turned on her when she tried to stop them from leaving out of a misguided attempt to protect them, slashing their stick across her chest in a killing blow that left the goat-woman dissolving slowly into dust before their eyes.
Artemis had been forced to pause the video at that point to gather his wits again, and if Butler hadn't left and come back with a kettle of ginger tea for the both of them at that point, he was certain that it would have been his previous meal decorating the office carpet, as well as Holly's, when they started watching again. Frisk had killed their mother in all but blood, just like that, and didn't seem to shed so much as a single tear for her.
Something that even Flowey was horrified – or at least terrified – by, if the encounter with him in the tunnel leading out to Snowdin was any indication.
"You really don't remember them, huh?" The flower had said, in a voice just shy of a whimper. "You wouldn't be doing this otherwise." He'd flinched back as Frisk took a step forward. "You'll regret this later when you remember, Frisk! I'm warning you! You've killed monsters before now, and you always regret it later! But don't worry, your old friend Flowey keeps his promises. I won't let this play out like last time, if only because you'll be a blubbering mess later if I do!"
After that, the rest of the Underground had passed by in a sluggish blur, as if he were watching a train wreck in slow motion with filthy lenses between his eyes and the screen. Frisk massacred their way through the entire subterranean kingdom one region at a time. Snowdin Forest was filled with nothing but inactive traps and monsters that fell to their hand one after another, the only respite from the literal cold-blooded butchering being one brief encounter with Papyrus and Sans before they disappeared – only for Papyrus to reappear in Waterfall, crouching down to talk urgently to a tiny saurian monster child in an orange striped sweater, warning them about the "TINY MURDEROUS HUMAN." Upon seeing them, he simply urged the child to run, and then turned towards Frisk and tried to talk them into standing down, tried to appeal to their better nature.
He failed abysmally, and Artemis was sure that the sight of that tall skeleton's body dissolving, only to leave a head that was crushed to powder beneath Frisk's sneaker, would haunt his dreams for weeks. As would the following fight as Undyne, in all her furious knightly glory, lunged for Frisk with glowing spears poised to strike and murder in her eye, intent on avenging the fallen monsters yet failing to, literally melting before finally dissolving to nothingness like all the others before her. The next monster to attempt to stand in their way and actually succeed in any way was Mettaton, the robot celebrity that Artemis knew that Beckett adored for his flamboyant personality, and even he only managed to hold his own for a few minutes, dodging and attacking furiously in that odd black-and-white state that Frisk had entered with every battle, colored lasers landing only a few hits before a well-placed kick to his chest finally ended him in a massive explosion.
And then there was Sans, in that final golden hall, simply waiting for Frisk to arrive, and the creature that was supposed to be Frisk but wasn't was put down over and over again by screaming blasters, laser beams, blue-and-white bones and telekinesis. One death after another, until finally the screen glitched furiously – and Frisk was sitting bolt upright back on the flowerbed at the beginning of their journey, sobbing.
Holly shuddered in her chair, and quickly gulped down her own tea. The haunted look in her eyes made it abundantly clear that her train of thought had been following the same track as his.
"D'Arvit," she croaked, after another pregnant moment of eerie silence. "How was that Frisk? How was that the same kid that tried to comfort the Queen while they were bleeding out? That's just – it's not –" She waved one hand in the air, attempting to get across the sheer impossibility of what they had just witnessed.
"Unfortunately," Artemis murmured, not trusting himself to speak any louder for the moment, "regardless of how impossible it seems, that was Frisk."
"It can't have been," Holly insisted, firmly sticking to her denial. "Frisk is – Frisk is mercy and grudging forgiveness wrapped up in a striped package! They're just a kid! That was not the same kid we just negotiated with!"
"Those were Frisk's memories we just watched, Holly," he said, tiredly. "No matter how much we may dislike it, the fact is that that was Frisk. Perhaps not the Frisk we know now, but still them."
The elf grimaced, putting aside her teacup and springing up from her chair to pace back and forth in front of the desk. Butler, having been a steady presence behind both of their shoulders as they watched the real-life equivalent of an R-Rated horror flick, quietly exited from behind the desk to retrieve the cup, his brow furrowed in uncertain thought.
"At least we know why they were so scared now," Artemis's former bodyguard said softly. "With something like that to cover up… how are you supposed to tell your own friends and family that at one point in time, you killed them and walked over their corpses?"
Holly grimaced, running her hands through her short-cropped hair. Artemis half-expected her to start pulling out clumps of it in her agitation, but thankfully, she did not.
"How?" She said, helplessly. "How did all that," she gestured violently at the laptop, "happen?!"
"Considering Flowey's words on the subject," he said, flatly, "memory loss was at least a part of it. You heard him: 'You really don't remember them?'"
"That's a pile of steaming troll dung!" Holly snarled, going back to her pacing. "How could memory loss even cause that?! If they forgot the monsters entirely, then that'd just mean their first memories would be of their life before falling into the mountain, and even their biological parents would have noticed their kid growing up to become a murderer! There's no sign of that!" She paused. "Foaly, is there any sign of that?"
"Not a one," the centaur grumbled. "Apart from the obvious neglect in that household, there's nothing sinister that went on there. Heck, the kid's apparently saved stray animals before. Practically a saint."
"So how does a saint become a serial killer?" the captain hissed. "It can't just be memories! No matter how many memories they lost of the monsters, that wouldn't turn them into a genocidal miniature psychopath! There's got to be another reason! There has to be!"
She went silent, trying to catch her breath after her rant, glaring at Artemis's laptop as if it had personally offended her.
"I think I may have an idea," Butler said.
They both turned to look at him, and on the screen, Foaly's ears visibly twitched.
"Well?" Holly demanded.
The hulking manservant shifted his weight in a way that almost seemed… sheepish. "Well… Artemis, I know for a fact that you watched the movie Groundhog Day at least once. Frisk's life seems to be a magically-inclined real-life equivalent to that, yes?"
"A rather more childlike equivalent at turns, yes," Artemis admitted, reluctantly, while Holly visibly attempted to rearrange her world around the idea of Butler watching feature films, "only with considerably more deaths shown. Your point?"
"The protagonist in the film starts progressing towards gradually more self-destructive actions when he becomes truly desperate to stop the time loop," Butler said firmly. "Who's to say that desperation isn't an equally powerful motivator in the real world as well?"
Artemis considered this, frowning and steepling his fingers.
"… that might be one reason," Artemis said, quietly, "but I don't think that's the only one. Frisk obviously lost their memories of the Underground, and though desperation might explain why they were so dedicated to killing the monsters, but it doesn't explain why a child who starts off practically oozing mercy from every pour would start killing them in the first place. There's another piece of the puzzle we're missing."
"A piece of the puzzle we're not likely to find here," Holly said, grimly, "and considering what we just watched I'm not going anywhere near any of Frisk's memories again with a ten-foot pole."
"Agreed," Artemis muttered, suppressing a shudder.
"So what next?"
There was another moment of silence.
"Foaly," the Irishman said. "Have you already told the Council about this?"
"Not one word, yet," Foaly admitted blearily. "I haven't even told them about the whole time-travel issue yet. That's what I was going through the memories for, to get proof together so that they'd actually take the idea seriously."
Artemis took in a deep breath.
"I think," he said carefully, "we should not tell them about this."
"Artemis –"
"We will not tell them about this," he insisted firmly. "We will not tell them of Frisk's time-travel capabilities, and we will certainly not tell them of this… this genocide they committed. The Frisk we are dealing with now is obviously not the same Frisk as we are used to, and the Council would not see that. And because the mind-wipe wouldn't work, the next thing the Council would attempt after finding out they could be a threat would be a bio-bomb."
That cut off Holly's protests at their source, and she scowled. "We should say something."
"I don't know, Holly," Foaly muttered, "I don't think we can afford to get on Frisk's bad side by telling the Council outright that they can time travel. We're already in thin ice as it is…"
"And all it would take," Artemis finished for him with chilly finality, "is one more mistake on our behalf to ruin the new alliance we have now."
"We can't just leave it like this, though!" Holly protested.
"We won't." He assured her. "I have no intention of letting this go quite yet – not until we know exactly how this happened. But telling the Council isn't the only mistake we can make. Considering the effort they've gone to to keep the monsters in the dark about these time loops, I have no intentions of confronting Frisk about any of them in full view and hearing of the monsters. So, for now… all we can do is wait for the opportunity to talk to them alone."
Unfortunately, some things have to get worse before they get better, and this is one of those things. You can't expect Artemis Fowl or any of his friends to just let something like the Genocide Runs go, even if it's clear that Frisk isn't actually a psychopath at present time.
Speaking of the Genocide Run – congrats to all of you who guessed correctly what was going on with the memories (not that it was difficult to guess haha!) You all win: an explanation on the events of the two Genocide Runs, specifically how the two timelines are different from one another, despite being the same kind of run.
First things first – the first Genocide timeline went more or less the same as it does in Undertale itself – Frisk kills their way through the entire Underground with Flowey helping them with the traps, eventually reaching the Judgement Hall and the fight with Sans. Unlike the actual game, however, Frisk has a limited number of SAVEs and LOADs in each timeline, and so, when they died one too many times against Sans, there was a Reset that sent them back to the beginning with their memories and empathy (remember that author's note from way, WAY back?) intact.
However, the second timeline went very, very differently, mostly because of one thing: after the first Geno timeline, and after technically befriending him, Frisk made Flowey promise that if another Geno run began, he would warn the monsters about the murderous human coming for them, in order to reduce monster casualties. After seeing Frisk killing monsters throughout the Ruins, Flowey went on to Snowdin, Waterfall, everywhere else in the Underground he could reach in time before Frisk got there, and warned all of the monsters that he deemed as "most important to Frisk" of the incoming danger, and anybody else around them. This means that many encounters with main character monsters like Sans and Papyrus happened very differently – such as Papyrus helping evacuating monsters in Waterfall when Frisk ruins through, and Undyne being there to see Frisk kill him LONG before where the in-game encounter with her is, OR the fight with Mettaton, as Flowey outright warned Mettaton that a single hit could kill him, and so he actually dodged Frisk's first attacks a-la Sans while trying to get some hits in before he finally died. This ALSO means that when Frisk got to the Judgement Hall, they had a lower LV than in the previous Genocide Run, since they encountered far fewer monsters, which only made Sans's fight that much harder on them.
(Also, just to clear things up, Flowey was NOT helping Geno!Frisk with the traps like he does in canon – they were disabled because Papyrus and other monsters setting up traps didn't have time to finish setting them up before evacuating the area.)