Absolutely nobody was having fun.

As it turns out, the anime they all picked out, one which even Alphys had not yet seen, was very, very bad. The concept was cool; a bunch of gamers get trapped in a virtual reality MMO and a select group of people have to beat the game's 100 dungeons in order to free everyone. The only problem was that everything else about the show was horrible.

Undyne and Alphys had fallen asleep on the couch, the show was so boring. They were slumped up against each other, which Frisk thought was really cute. She looked at the clock. 4AM. She guessed this was as good a time as any to have a little chat with the voices in her head.

Alright friend, come on out, she said. The voice responded with a groan. Aw, are you sleepy?

We share a body, partner. You're sleepy.

Deal with it. It's time to talk.

Fine.

Satisfied, Frisk sat down on her new bed. The mattress was far more comfortable than she thought it would be. So, what exactly was this "reward" you were planning to get?

Gee, you're pretty straight to the point, huh? asked the voice. Well, if you must know, I was sort of hoping you'd feel guilty about the whole "genocide" thing and hand your soul, as well as total control of your body, over to me. The voice chuckled. That plan didn't really work out.

Frisk was confused. What would you have done with my body?

I dunno. Reset. Free the monsters somehow. Probably kill a bunch of humans. I sort of don't like humans. The voice briefly took control of Frisk's body in order to glare at her reflection in a nearby mirror with their red eyes. You and I are no exception.

Frisk shook her head. Please stop doing that.

I get bored. It's only for a few seconds, what's the big deal?

Frisk clutched her head. It gives me a headache.

The voice scoffed. Oh, boo hoo, you know what gives me a headache? Not having a head. Or an anything else, for that matter. Frisk laughed. It's not funny! Being dead is pretty boring, pal!

Frisk still laughed. I'll bet. Frisk thought of more questions to ask. ASL?

Excuse me?

Age, sex, location, Frisk answered. Or I guess your name, for the last one.

Chara thought for a moment. What year is this?

2015.

Ok, I'm 64, male, I'm from a suburb outside of Denver, and my name is Chara.

Frisk blinked. THAT'S why Flowey kept calling me that.

Yeah, he's pretty goofy, isn't he?

Do you know him?

I did.

Frisk didn't inquire further on that topic. How old are you actually? Like, taking into account the fact that you're super dead and probably haven't aged in a few decades?

Uh, 14, I think? He hesitated to think about it. Let's see, I fell down here in 1963, and I was 12 then, and I died in 1965, so yeah, 13 or 14, depending on what month I died. Which I can't remember at the moment.

Frisk let out a small gasp. Whoa, you were here a whole two years?

Eh. Chara did some approximations. Just about. …Oh, I died in November. I remember now. Yeah, I was 14. I had to have been around that puberty age, because I was around the same age as my brother, and I remember once mom and dad caught Asriel with an adult magazine and they gave him a talk about—

That last bit of information caught Frisk off-guard. Wait, wait, back up. Who?

Asriel. My brother. Chara suddenly realized why Frisk was confused. OH, yeah, his name was pretty stupid. Toriel and Asgore just combined their names and—

You were raised by monsters?!

Oh, yeah, that's some pretty vital information.

Also, Toriel and Asgore were married?

Was that not obvious?

Suddenly, Frisk heard a yelp coming from the couch. Undyne had shot up, screaming, and summoned a spear, glancing around frantically. She looked terrified. Once she realized there was no real danger, however, she let the spear dissipate and rubbed her eye.

Did… Did she just have a nightmare? Frisk wondered. Chara, we'll continue this discussion later. She got up and ran over to Undyne, who was still recovering from her panic attack. Alphys was still fast asleep, having only flopped over to the other side of the couch.

Undyne noticed the kid running over to her. "Heh. Hey, kid. Did I wake you?"

Frisk shook her head. "I was already awake. Undyne, are you okay?"

Undyne nodded groggily. "Fine. Just had a dumb dream." She yawned, stretching as she did so. "No big deal."

Frisk crossed her arms. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Undyne shook her head. "Talking's for weenies, and I'm tired anyway."

"There's nothing wrong with being a weenie."

Undyne yawned. "Alright, kid, if it'll make you feel better. Come on, let's head outside."

Frisk shook her head. Undyne sure did take her pride seriously. She did wonder, though, what things Undyne could possibly be dreaming about that freaked her out that badly. Once they were both outside, feeling the heat of the magma below immediately, Undyne leaned against the building's wall.

"Talk to me, Undyne. What's up?" Frisk inquired.

Undyne chuckled. "How old are you, Frisk? Thirteen? Fourteen?"

"Around there."

"You sound a lot older sometimes. All the time, really." She sighed. "You sound even older when you do that weird red-eye thing." Frisk made a short gasp. "Yeah, I noticed. It's weird, but it's not really my business." She leaned her head against the wall and closed her eye. "My point is that you understand a lot more than I think people probably give you credit for. With that being said, this is some pretty heavy sh- stuff." She opened her eye and looked back at Frisk, who was listening intently. "So, uh, brace yourself."

"I am braced."

"Heh. Alright." She drew in a deep breath, holding it in for a moment, before letting it out. "Have you ever done anything that seemed like the right thing at the time, only to realize later that it probably wasn't?" Frisk nodded. "Hard to believe. You're basically… Perfect." Frisk was about to protest, but Undyne cut her off. "Not perfect in the sense that you don't have any flaws. Perfect in the sense that… You always want to do the right thing. You try your hardest to please everybody, and you put others before yourself." Undyne shrugged. "I gotta say, kid, I envy that a lot."

"Where is this going?"

"Nowhere, I guess. I guess I'm just jealous. Anyway… Back to what I was saying before. I've made a lot of mistakes over the years." She paused, her eye searching the cave floor for nothing in particular. "I'm twenty-five, and I'm leading the Underground's all-in-one defense team, police department, and army. Do you know how crazy that is?"

"It's an impressive achievement."

"Well, not everything I do is impressive. There are two things I did in particular that I'm not exactly proud of anymore."

"Elaborate."

"Well…" She was searching for the right things to say. "God, I don't know how to talk about this." She sat down on the ground, arms around her knees. Frisk sat down and joined her. "Okay, so, you know that there were six other humans down here before you, right?"

Seven.

"Uh, I believe there were seven, actually," Frisk corrected. Thanks, Chara.

"Huh?" Undyne did some mental math. "No, you're right. That would make you number 8. Anyway, after the first one died and something happened with the king's biological kid, Asgore declared war on humans and said any who fell down here would be killed and their souls harvested so that he can be a god and blah blah blah, you know this story." She summoned a spear and examined it. "I joined the Royal Guard when I was 17, after four souls had already been… Taken." She sighed and closed her eye. "Things were… Pretty quiet for a while. I mostly just solved petty disputes between the monsters, but…

"About two years ago, humans five and six fell down. Siblings, one boy and one girl." She opened her eye slowly and stared at seemingly nothing. "I remember everything about them. What they looked like. What they wore. Their soul colors." Her voice began to break as she spoke. "God, they can't have been older than twelve. They might have been twins. I don't know." She twirled the spear in her hand. "Well, anyway, they came out of the ruins, and we were all sort of trying to get them. They were clever ones, I'll give them that. They stuck to the shadows, never letting anyone see them. They managed to get to Waterfall before anyone even knew what they looked like. Papyrus to this day swears you're the first human he's ever met, but I'm willing to bet he was within feet of these humans at one point.

"So they come into Waterfall, right? Finally, somebody saw them. Woshua, I believe. So now I was sort of scrambling to get to them. Like Papyrus, I had never seen a human before, and I really wanted to prove my worth. At the time, the guard captain was a soldier named Greatest Dog, and he was planning to retire soon, so…"

"You wanted to be his replacement?" Frisk asked.

"Hell yeah I did." Undyne smiled slightly at that thought, then frowned. "He, uh, 'fell down' a couple of weeks after that so I guess I got my wish. Anyway… These kids… I found them just outside of Temmie Village. I gave them this whole big speech, about how we only needed three more souls, and all that noise." She sighed. "Looking back on it… They just looked scared. At the time I was proud, but…" She groaned and put her face in her hands. "I'm a god damn idiot."

Frisk patted her on the back. "Continue." Undyne looked back up at her. "Uh, I mean, if you want to." Frisk looked away. "Sorry."

"It's fine," responded Undyne. "I don't know why I'm upset anyway. I don't have the right to be."

"Sure you do."

"Anyway… We… Fought, although they really didn't put up much of a fight. You couldn't even call it that. A fight. A slaughter is what it was." Undyne sighed. "I got the girl first. The only positive thing I can say about that was that it was quick. I doubt she felt any pain at all. I tossed the spear and she was… Gone. Like that." A tear rolled down her cheek. "At the time, I didn't even think about it. I killed someone. Maybe I didn't WANT to think about it.

"Regardless, the brother was horrified and enraged. I would have been too." She pointed to her eyepatch. "I ever tell you what happened to this eye?" Frisk shook her head. "That kid happened. He caught one of my spears and tossed it right back at me. That was the last thing I ever saw out of that eye."

"What… happened next?" Frisk asked slowly, seeing her friend in an entirely new way now.

"What do you think happened next?" Undyne crossed her arms and peered over the edge at the lava. "If you're waiting for the part where the hero triumphs, you can stop listening now, because I can tell you right now the villain won that battle. This whole time I've just rationalized it as 'following orders', but my orders are to protect the innocent, and I failed at that." She stood up. "The nightmare I just had involves me reliving that day from the kid's eyes. I just… Watch myself kill these kids over, and over, and over again."

"Do you have it… Often?"

"Not until you showed up. I never thought about that day again after that. Maybe I repressed it because even then I knew, deep down, that what I did was wrong… But then you came out of those ruins and…" she shook her head. "The worst part is I'd have done it again, if you hadn't spent so much time running from me."

"Then you'd be free."

"Then Asgore would become a god. And more humans would die." Undyne yawned. "I don't blame you for not wanting to fight him. It's more than just your life at stake." The spear dissipated, its blue glow leaving the area. "I'm jealous of you, Frisk. I've made some pretty big mistakes."

"I'm not perfect either, Undyne," Frisk said, internally debating something. She forgot, however, that Chara could hear her thoughts.

Frisk. What are you doing? Chara asked, concerned.

Relax. "Undyne… Look, you…" She took in a deep breath. "You did what you thought you had to do. You did what you were told to do. You didn't know any better. Believe me when I say that I know what that's like."

Undyne scoffed. "How can you—"

"I just can, okay? I can't tell you why or how or what the circumstances were right now, but I've made some really bad decisions too. I'm sure Alphys has her fair share of screwups, too. What's important is that we take those experiences and learn from them so that we can look forward to a better future instead of dwelling on a horrible past. Okay?"

The irony was not lost on Frisk that she partially ignored this same pep talk from Alphys.

Undyne, who'd been looking down at her feet, smiled slightly. "Thanks, kid. I needed that." She started to walk back into the lab.

"What are you going to do when another human comes into the Underground?" Frisk asked. Undyne looked up and contemplated the question. Frisk was eagerly anticipating the answer.

"My orders are to deliver all humans—or their souls—to the capital," Undyne said. She contemplated the implications of that situation. She looked over at Frisk, then pulled a Delta Rune badge out of her pocket, which was normally pinned on her armor. She ran back outside and tossed it, with a grunt, into the lava below. "I quit," she said, before turning around and walking back into the lab. Frisk stayed for a moment longer to stare at the spot where the badge sizzled.

Gee, said Chara. You sure do have a way with words, huh?

Frisk kept staring into the lava. I didn't mean for her to do that. She yawned. Thanks for not interfering.

You had the situation under control and I had nothing to add.

Chara, if you're going to stick around, there are some ground rules I need to lay down.

Okay.

No murder.

Got it.

If you're going to butt in, warn me first.

No guarantee, but okay.

Be nice to people.

That's not fun.

Chara.

Fine.

Frisk nodded, satisfied. I have nothing else to say to you. She walked back into the lab, where Undyne was reading one of Alphys' "history books" on the couch.

"Hey, kid. Thanks again," she said.

Frisk nodded. "Don't mention it." Frisk decided it was time to finally get some sleep. She marched over to the bed and sank into it, sleep overcoming her instantly.

Once the human was asleep, Undyne grabbed her phone and headed outside. She dialed the number, not caring if the recipient was asleep or not. She knew he'd probably be up already. He always was.

The phone rang twice before it was answered by a rather excited sounding skeleton. "Undyne! Greetings! How was the business you said you needed to take care of?"

"Hey, Papyrus. Listen, I need to get some things off my chest."

"Have you tried prying them off with a wedged tool of some sort?"

Undyne chuckled. "Do you have time?"

"Always!"

Undyne sat down and recounted her story to Papyrus, who listened to her intently. Finally talking with others about all of this, as well as carrying the knowledge that she could do better in the future, filled her with determination.

She was looking forward to the future.