((A/N: Thanks to JashertheDarkened for your review, its great to know what the audience is thinking! And thanks to my lovely beta for your support!))
"so, i think we all understand here what Falmercia's next move's gonna be. she's going to go for the souls, and if we don't stop her now, we have no chance of stopping her in the future." Sans said getting up.
Chara nodded, "I'm pretty sure she already knows where they are, so we are going to need to hurry to intercept her," they sent a smirk to Sans, "not that that's going to up problem with Mr. shortcut here."
Sans nodded, took a deep breath in and offered out his arms, "alright, babybones, chara, grab on. flowey can get there by himself."
Flowey nodded and popped back into the ground, Frisk quickly grabbed onto Sans' arm, while Chara hesitantly approached him.
"SANS, I WANT TO HELP TOO! LET ME COME." Papyrus pleaded, getting up from the lounge.
Sans shook his head, "nuh ah, it's too dangerous."
Papyrus frowned, "BUT-"
"frisk and i have fought Falmercia before, we know what to expect… plus we're responsible for all this." Sans explained.
"BUT, SANS… I'M SURE I CAN CONVINCE FALMERCIA TO STOP ALL OF THIS. I COULD OFFER TO HELP HER BECOME A BETTER PERSON." Papyrus pleaded again.
Chara sighed, "I'm sorry Papyrus, but you tried the exact same thing with me in all of the previous timelines, and it didn't work, what makes you think it will work on a demon?"
Papyrus looked down disapointed, Sans wanted to comfort him, but Chara reminded him that time was of the essence and he took a short cut to just outside of the CORE.
"sorry, but we'll have to get inside before i can shortcut us further, shortcuts into the core from the outside can be dangerous." Sans explained, he really didn't want the CORE's magic interfering with his short cut with Frisk with him.
The two children nodded, and moved to go in when a bunch of guards charged out of the CORE.
"what's going on?" Sans asked one of them, he had a feeling the Falmercia was involved in this somehow.
"The bridge leading into Hotland has been set on fire! This side doesn't have enough water to put it out, and with Undyne missing the royal guards in Waterfall are having difficulty organising themselves. King Asgore himself is leading the effort to put out the fire. I'm sorry, but I must help!" The guard answered before running off.
"Falmercia must have set the bridge on fire as a diversion to avoid having to fight the guards and Asgore," Chara said, showing the same thought process that Sans was having.
"which means she probably is already inside, quick let's go." Sans grabbed Frisk's hand and rushed inside the core, once he was in far enough to make another shortcut, he grabbed Chara by the shoulder and teleported directly to the barrier room, where the souls were kept.
They were already too late, Falmercia was already here. All Sans could do was stare in horror at the broken jars that had once held the human souls inside.
He was very aware of the feeling of Falmercia's aura increasing in strength, becoming stronger and stronger that it made him feel like he was choking, but in reality, he was just losing the energy to breathe, he managed to look down, and he could see that little Frisk was having the same problem, but since she was less used to feeling tired than he was, she had fallen to her knees.
Chara was less affected, glowing red with DETERMINATION, they stood normally, shoulders only slightly slouched. It appeared that her DETERMINATION was giving her a resistance as Gaster had theorised.
Sans saw that Flowey had popped up, and he didn't appear to be affected at all, not having a soul.
Sans looked for the last person he needed to check for; Undyne. Undyne like Chara, seemed to have a resistance to the aura, but unlike Chara's, it was nowhere near as affective, she was slouched over completely, and visibly leaning on her spear.
"Oh, you're here." Falmercia said, turning towards them as she absorbed the last soul. "Well that saves me trouble of having to go after you."
Sans didn't wait for Falmercia to finish talking and immediately summoned a Gaster Blaster.
"I wouldn't if I were you." Falmercia interrupted him, "I went through the effort of coming up with this speech now you're going to listen, besides," Falmercia conjured her staff and gave it a twirl for show, "It's not a bad deal, by listening, you get a few extra minutes to live."
Sans stood down, dismissing his Gaster Blaster, it might be the aura talking, but stalling didn't seem too bad of an idea, might give him a chance to get used to this feeling… yeah, that was it.
"Good boy," Falmercia said degradingly, "you see, most demons with the power of seven human souls would use them to cause chaos and get more souls, all to get to the goal of world domination, but me, I've already gone down that path, and it only told me one thing."
Falmercia paused and frowned, "The more power you get, the more effort it takes to keep it. Take over a kingdom, the surrounding kingdoms will invade, take over a continent, the surrounding continents will also give it a shot. And for what? I don't need the power of a country. I realised back then, that all I wanted was a nice comfortable bed to sleep on and no one to bother me,
"So that's what I did, I abandoned my kinship; my siblings, the only six beings that would ever consider allying with me, and made a deal with some monster inn keeper, I save his kid, get a permanent room. I stayed in that room for thirty years and did nothing, my siblings fell without me long ago, but mortals just couldn't forget, couldn't let me go. So, then they found me and I got trapped in the void for so long that I was willing to do whatever it took to get out!" Falmercia was visibly shaking with rage at this point, and needed to calm down before continuing.
Chara took this as an opportunity to speak, "So this is revenge?" She asked.
"No! Don't mistake me for my brother! No, this is more practical than that. I'm going to use these souls to take over the UNDERGROUND SO NO ONE CAN BOTHER ME AGAIN!" Falmercia screamed, before stopping, eyes going wide and a look of confusion appearing on her face.
Sans didn't waste his time trying to figure out what it was, and instead used this as an opening for his attack. He summoned his Gaster Blasters and aimed them all directly at her, and she was still too out of it to notice until they hit her.
Sans' eye-sockets widened when he saw the impact on her health, the initial damage was as small as always, but the damage that his Karmic Retribution caused took out a quarter of her health bar.
"Now where'd you learn a trick like that?" Falmercia asked, head back in the game. Sans wasn't given the time to react as she started to spout out orders to Undyne.
"Undyne, I want you to take Sans and Frisk, don't let them leave the range of my aura, I'll take Flowey and Chara."
Chara felt a spike of fear as they realised who they were up against. Shaking their head to brush off the fear and instinctively gripped onto their anger, they pulled out their knife and took the offensive.
Falmercia didn't even block as Chara's knife sliced through her chest, and Chara's eye's widened as Falmercia's health went up slightly.
"That's some nice intent you got there," Falmercia goaded.
"W-what?" They asked in disbelief as Falmercia slammed her staff against their side and sent them flying back.
"I'll explain it to you," Falmercia said as she started to walk towards Chara, "Monsters are weak to ill intentions because they are made of love, kindness and compassion, while me?" Falmercia smirked.
"I am entirely made of L.O.V.E."
