Papyrus returns, but instead of the comfort that Frisk was hoping for, things take a surprising turn. She is faced with a decision that she has never had the opportunity to make before. Now that her powers have vanished… Now that she is finally able to disappear… Is there any reason not to?
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Chapter 14: Reaching A Decision {Frisk}
Frisk's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door to the house being unlocked. And then the sound of the door being opened, followed by immediately by a very welcome boom. "GOOD FOR NOTHING BROTHER SANS, I DEMAND YOU DO YOUR JOB AND JOIN US THIS INSTANT!" Papyrus had returned to his home. "LAZY OR NOT YOU ARE STILL SECOND IN COMMAND OF THE ROYAL GUARDS, SO YOU NEED TO HELP ME LEAD THEM INTO GLORIOUS BATTLE. WE MUST KILL THE PEOPLE WHO…"
The voice suddenly died down, and Frisk winced. He must have realized what was missing downstairs. "WE HAVE BEEN ROBBED!" His voice exploded in shock and alarm. Frisk could almost read his mind. He was probably wondering how Sans' would have allowed something like that as he was most certainly not that lazy. Plus… "SANS! SOMEBODY STOLE YOUR PET, AND YOUR BOOK, AND YOUR SOCK!?" Everything that was missing belonged to Sans.
Frisk could hear the sound of Papyrus beginning to bound up the stairs. Papyrus was here… She wasn't alone anymore. He could… could fix all of this. He could make everything right… somehow. At least, he might have some idea what to do now. Frisk rose… and fell back to the ground. Her legs were weak; whether from the cold, or the fight with Yellow, or the struggle through the snow to get here, or the stress of what she had just gone through was unclear. However, on her second attempt, she succeeded in getting to her feet.
Frisk stumbled out the door of Papyrus' room and watched as Papyrus came racing up the stairs. She didn't really have the strength to put any expression on her face right now. She felt numb, way too numb. She opened her mouth, presumably to ask him for some sort of comfort. However, the words that came out weren't really anything as uplifting or hopeful as that. "Papyrus…" She began. "Sans is gone, and Toriel is dead."
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Papyrus stopped on the stairs, his eyes wide. The words that Frisk had just said ran through his mind, over and over again. Instantly, he put out a hand to steady himself as an unbidden memory raced through his head.
"DAD! WE ARE GOING TO BE LATE FOR ASGORE'S PARTY! HE ISN'T GOING TO BE HAPPY IF WE ARE LATE AGAIN!" As soon as the elevator doors opened, tiny Papyrus came rushing out of them. His dad had been working here late into the night, and he had been hanging out at the restaurant nearby. As his dad hadn't returned yet, he was going to pick the guy up. It wasn't unlike him to forget things while focused whole-heartedly on an invention after all.
The area was empty. Papyrus froze, glancing around. The metallic floor of the core wasn't thin, and was at least twenty foot wide. This area was mostly just a circle of metal, about thirty foot in diameter, over the middle of the core. There was a smaller hole, some six foot in diameter, the middle of it.
"DAD?" Papyrus stepped out, eyes glancing around. Then his eyes locked onto a few pieces of scrap metal remaining at the far end of the area. Quickly dashing over to it, Papyrus could easily confirm. It was meant to be a panel for an invention Gaster had been working on in this area. There was no sign of it, and there was no sign of Gaster.
He was too distracted, standing there, to notice the sound of the elevator opening behind him again. Alphys, who in her young state looked pretty much like Megan had as a child, with the addition of arms of course, stepped up next to him. "Gone…" She said quietly. "He vanished from my video screens. Just… disappeared. I came straight here to check it out." He could have fallen. Both knew the possibility, but there was nothing to confirm or deny it. Both him and his invention were simply… gone.
"THE MONSTER KILLED BOTH MEGAN AND TORIEL!?" Those were the words that came out of his mouth. He didn't want to act as if he had even heard the other statement. That the same thing had happened to Sans' that had happened to his dad. He didn't want to hear that Sans was gone.
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Papyrus pushed past Frisk and raced into Sans' empty room. And then he stopped, and simply stood there, frozen. His eyes were wide, periodically darting about. It was as if he was reliving some memory from his past, as if he had stumbled into a horrible nightmare that he had experienced before. Seeing Papyrus like this was nearly suffocating. Never once, despite everything she'd seen Papyrus go through, had he ever looked like this. He was broken too.
Frisk walked over to him, and stared at the empty room. There was literally nothing, not even a speck of dust. It was weird… There was no way that even somebody as bizarre as Sans could have pulled this off. It wasn't just that everything had been moved. It was like… like the room had never been lived in…
It was as if… as if… Sans the skeleton had never even existed. But he had… right? She wasn't going insane… was she? After what had gone down at Megan's house, she wasn't so sure. But if Sans didn't exist… did anything? Was she locked up in some insane asylum somewhere making up all of this crazy crap?
Frisk felt weird… detached… everything that had been happening that day was catching up to her, and she was beginning to shut down. Her brain couldn't handle it, couldn't accept that even if she did nothing, the world would still fall apart. Like it had been on a countdown before she arrived, and nothing could stop it. And if she tried to stop it in any way, doomsday just came that much faster. Nothing made sense.
She didn't want to do this, didn't want to mess with any of the pain that the world seemed to so love throwing at her. All she wanted to do was take a nap, and have some of Mom's butterscotch pie. But no… that wasn't going to happen. She would never be able to do that again. Papyrus was broken, and so was she. They would be broken together.
Frisk rested her hand on Papyrus' shoulder, but he didn't respond. Frisk's eyes wandered downwards, and she noticed the wadded paper that she had thrown to the floor. She hadn't been able to make much sense of it, but maybe Papyrus could. The door was locked, after all.
She wasn't supposed to be there. It was quite possible the message was supposed to materialize in Papyrus' pocket when he had entered the room. Maybe, this was another thing that her very existence had messed up. Stooping down, she picked it up, and handed the wadded paper to papyrus. "I… found… this. Do you recognize the handwriting?"
The change in Papyrus was instantaneous. He went from a broken down, unmoving monster to a frantic, take-charge one. His eyes flew open, and he grabbed the paper out of her hands. The emotions that had come back into his face were various, but fear and stress were by far the most readable. Se had this nagging feeling that, somehow, showing Papyrus the paper had made things worse. Clearly, he knew what it was trying to tell them.
Papyrus quickly pulled Frisk into his room and closed the door behind them. He didn't utter a word, but the look on his said it all. He had much bigger things to worry about right now than Sans' mysterious disappearance. And that was saying a lot. He strode over to his closet and pulled it open. Reaching into the back, and moving aside some of his clothes, he pulled out a really bizarre looking trash bag.
Apparently, there was still something whacky in the house of Sans', and she was looking at it right now. In shape, color and size, it appeared a normal garbage bag. However, it had a galaxy painted on it, with the stars constantly moving and spinning and spiraling. It was the sort of thing she would typically have marveled over, but Papyrus was clearly in a hurry. Marveling would have to wait.
Before Frisk really had much chance to react, all of Papyrus' precious memorabilia that the two of them had shared countless hours on was being hurled into the garbage bag. The aliens and wizards, never to share another battle, the war suddenly inconsequential. He tore down the proud pirate flag, the one to which they'd sung the pirate anthem to so many times… and that too went into the trash.
Next went the computer, along with the Papyrus song he had been working on for months, and all the songs they created together over the course of their friendship. Then he reached for the box of bones he had been collecting for years, by far his most treasured possession. Frisk reached out, silently, her feet unmoving. She was in shock, completely at a loss. She had no idea what was going on, but she wanted it to stop.
Papyrus reached into the bottom of the box, pulled something out and slipped it into his coat. Then he took the box and hurled it into the bag. Frisk wanted to scream. She knew how much he loved that collection. How could he throw it away with such reckless abandon? Then things got weirder, and more unsettling as well.
Papyrus leapt on top of his bookshelf, spread the bag as wide as it could go, and slowly pushed it down onto the bookshelf. Ever so slowly, the massive shelf disappeared into the bag. Within just a couple of minutes, Papyrus' room looked exactly the same as Sans', as if nobody had lived there… ever. Mission accomplished, he tossed the bag into a corner of the room, where it promptly vanished.
Grabbing two more bags from his closet, he tossed one to Frisk. Apparently, they weren't done yet. "HELP ME ERASE THE REST OF THE HOUSE, FRISK!" He ordered hastily. And suddenly, she found herself being pulled into the upstairs hallway. That happened a lot in their interactions, didn't it?
Papyrus would get excited about some crazy thing, and the next thing she knew, he'd be dragging her somewhere. Sometimes it was all the way across town and out into the wilds of Snowdin. Except, Papyrus wasn't excited. He seemed stressed out, and downright scared. But Sans' was gone, and he was never concerned about his own safety. Which meant that all of this was supposed to be for… her? That thought made her feel worse than she already did.
This realization, when added to Papyrus' urgency, snapped her out of her detached stasis, for the moment at least. She glanced down at the trash bag in her hand, and wondered again, what the galaxy bag was supposed to mean exactly. Clearly it was something unsettling, as one had seemingly just swallowed itself.
Was it supposed to be the actual galaxy as a trash bag? A trash bag that could hold a galaxy? The one he'd thrown away certainly didn't seem to have had any trouble fitting Papyrus' bed, shelves, dresser, and desk. But if it were really that big, why throw it away. And even if that was the case, it didn't explain why the bag had vanished into thin air!
So many questions were swirling through her head right now. But one was stronger than the others… Why? Why was Papyrus destroying everything? How was that supposed to protect her, or anybody else, for that matter? She wanted to ask, but was afraid of the answer. Because he knew… whatever the answer was… Papyrus clearly knew it. This had been way too planned out to be some sort of spur of the moment craze, and the paper had been the signal.
Frisk began to unravel the thoughts swirling about and sort out all of the questions she had. The ones she would ask Papyrus when she managed to work up the courage. Why did he have the bags? Why were he, and presumably Sans as well, erasing all traces of themselves. That must have been what the paper meant. Do this. But… why?
Had Sans leapt into one of the bags, erasing himself from existence? Had Megan? Did the bag simply make things no longer exist, or were they stored somewhere… like what the freaky backpack she sometimes found lying about did? If Sans was erasing things, why had he only grabbed the things that solely belonged to him? Was that note from Sans?
More to the point, had it really been an accident that she had been the one to end up with the paper, or did Sans' want her to do this at her place too? Was she also supposed to erase herself? A shudder ran through Frisk's thought at the very thought of erasing anything else… She'd done it so many times already. She didn't want to ever do it again, but here she was… holding the bag.
Frisk peered in, curiously. It was pitch black inside, and she couldn't see the bottom. Was it endless? What exactly would happen if she jumped into the bag? Would she cease to exist? Would all of it be over? Chara would be gone from the world at last… and Demon Frisk would go with her. Erase. It was actually rather tempting.
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Chara stared at the bag, mesmerized. Could it really be that simple? Suicide had never been an option. If death were truly the escape she wanted it to be, that would have been great. But she'd just end up in some kind of messed up afterlife where the universe would still be out to get her. Possibly still bound to the same body as Frisk, unable to truly live. She wasn't a soul after all, just an empty shell of a body. What did that mean for the afterlife, then? Would she even be able to make it there?
Her big plan was simple. A start-over. Get everybody to the next life, and then go there herself. An alternate reality, a new story… A better world, carved lovingly by her blade. Sometimes she didn't believe it possible though. She'd seen Frisk start over so many times. It got to the point, with the genocide run, that she didn't even want to move on. She just wanted there to be… nothing. Nothing to hurt her, nothing to hope for, nothing to live or die for, just… Nothing.
The bag promised Nothing, didn't it? But she couldn't go in, couldn't let Frisk go in. Five long years of waiting, and she wanted to try one more time. Kill them all, and then activate Sans' machine. Create a new world, and allow a new Chara to have a chance at a better life.
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Frisk found herself remembering what Flowey had told her at the end of the Genocide Route. At the time, she'd wanted nothing more than to storm past him and finish erasing everything. It was right before she killed Sans. She'd gotten tired of everything and simply wanted there to be… nothing. One couldn't screw up nothing, and she'd been so sick of screwing everything up… She hadn't even been able to die back then.
Flowey had told her that he had done much the same. He'd realized his life had no meaning, and tried to take it, discovering the SAVE powers. When they showed up, something had pushed him toward them. He hadn't been able to let himself die. Yet, all he got was the same predictable loop. Everything always turned out the same. And she had understood that perfectly. By that time, she had done countless runs herself.
It was funny. People seemed to think that time travel was a gift, that going back in time in order to fix past mistakes would be a wonderful superpower. Flowey and herself had found quite the opposite. That no matter how many times you went backwards certain things always happened. It was like… the world was headed toward a specific destinations, and regardless of how many detours you put in the way, it always seemed to end up in the same place. A time travel power… was nothing but a curse.
"To be blunt... it makes it kind of hard to give it my all." Sans had said that to her, about her constant resets. But he hadn't understood just how well she'd sympathized with his statements. The inability to change things despite the constant resets had left her with the exact same feeling.
Things were different now though. She was no longer saddled with the cursed time travel ability. If she wanted to die, she could. She could just jump in the bag, and, well… she didn't know what would happen. She didn't know anything about the bags, but she wouldn't be here. She would no longer be in The Underground. And that would be better for everybody.
Images of the horrific things she'd done began to race through her head. Mettaton in a broken heap of metal on the floor. Alphys' horrified look as she wept over Mettaton. Young Megan's expression as Frisk attempted to drive a dagger through her heart. Sans' blood draining onto the floor. She'd even killed her Mom once, on the Genocide run. And the words she had said as she faded to dust… "Now I see who I was protecting by keeping you there. Not you... But them!"
Yes… She needed to… She looked at the bag again, and opened it up. She peered into the emptiness, and stopped. It wasn't that she was afraid. She hated herself so much that even she would be relieved to see herself vanish into nothing. But she knew that she couldn't do it, at least not yet. She had to at least try to help, even if she wasn't very powerful. Disappearing wouldn't stop the maniac that had cut down Toriel. That was up to her.
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Frisk the Undetermined has made a vow. She will not bend. She will not break. She will do whatever she must to save the world. It is her duty. But how long will this determination last, and does she even have the power to back up such a claim? Hope you enjoyed the chapter. As always, your fanship means a lot to me. Hope to hear from you.
~ Xanatos Stones
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