Okay, this chapter is the longest thus far. Make sure you have ten minutes set aside to read it or something.
Also, a quick disclaimer: I do not claim anything this story says about Toby Fox to be true in real life (though it'd be epic if it was).
Holy crud, what happened last night? Oh, right: everything I've ever dreamed of.
When I got home, my bike was lying on my driveway, the back tire looking good as new.. How the heck did it get there? I wondered. Oh yeah, Knight Knight's been stalking me, so of course they know where I live. But when did they drop it off here? I decided not to question it and got to work carefully moving my bike and the baseball bat through the house and into to the garage; if I had opened the garage I would have woken someone up.
Now it's 9:00 AM on Saturday, and I'm just waking up. With all that happened last night, I think I'm going to go back to sleep for another hour or so. Maybe Azalea will show up in my dreams. Wait, did she already? She may have, but I can't tell. Oh well.
Nah, screw it. I can't sleep when I've got video games to play.
I go downstairs and...crud, my sister is on the PC already. Her turn should be over by the time I'm done eating breakfast.
I eat some toast and a miniature sausage biscuit for breakfast, and then go over to the computer. The rule is that we get thirty minute turns on the PC, Wii U, and DS, so I'm hoping my sister's turn is over now.
"Can I get on now?"
"No, I've only been playing for fifteen minutes."
Wait, so she had literally just gotten on when I came downstairs? That may not actually be bull, but it sure as heck feels like it. This is why I try to go out with my friends as much as possible. I grab my tablet and go back up to my room.
I share a room with my two brothers, so I'm lucky to be alone in here right now. I consider reading fanfictions, but that only makes it harder to wait for this afternoon. So instead I'm about to start watching fail compilations on YouTube, but then I remember something. If I'm going to working with those monsters, I should probably know a little more about them, so I'm going on the Undertale Wiki. Hey, they stalked me, so it's fair, right?
I start by looking up Knight Knight. Apparently her weapon is called Good Morningstar and if you sing to her enough, she falls asleep. That may or may not be helpful information.
Next is Final Froggit. The wiki says that Frisk spared him by "mystifying" him, but if you compliment him, his ATK drops, and if you threaten him, his DEF drops. Good intel.
I put in a search for Whimsalot. So not only did Frisk have to pray to spare him, but they also had to catch the green healing moths; hey, that means Whimsalot can do some healing magic. That's pretty cool.
Now for Astigmatism. Something I didn't know is that challenging him let Frisk spare the other monsters. The wiki makes him sound mean, but last night he didn't seem too bad. Maybe he's gotten a little less selfish over the last several months or so.
Well, that's done and over for now, so I think I'll watch some fail compilations to take my mind off the subject. Haven't seen many of those lately.
By lunch time, I'm having a little asthma from constantly laughing, but it's never anything serious. I go downstairs to eat lunch; Mom's also there in the kitchen, so only now do I realize that I forgot to tell her about our plans for today. But of course I can't tell her what I'm actually up to.
Let's see...I can't tell her I'm going to Azalea's because I could just walk there, and Erika's driving us. The parks are still too close; we could ride our bikes there.
The mall. That's it. We would drive there to hang out.
"Mom?" I say. "Erika's taking me to the mall at 3:00, if that's alright."
"The mall? Didn't you just eat out last night?"
"Well yeah, but I'm not planning on spending much money. We're mostly just going there to hang out, maybe find something we might want to buy later."
"Alright, but I want your chores done before you go."
"Alright, fine."
Like I mentioned earlier, it's my week to clean the kitchen, so I have to wait until everyone else is done with lunch before I start. Unfortunately, by the time I'm done, it's only 2:00, so I have to kill another hour before it's time to go. I end up spending that time playing Super Smash Bros. against my brother and his friend over the Internet, until the doorbell rings.
I head over to the front door to open it, and there's Erika, wearing a blue T-shirt and jeans.
"Hey X, ready to go?" she greets.
"Yeah, just a second," I reply, running to grab my phone. "See you later!" I call out to the whole house as I close the door behind me and get into the front seat of Erika's mom's blue car, which is parked in our driveway.
Erika is probably my closest friend, besides Azalea. She lives on my street, so we've known each other since middle school, and the only reason we didn't meet sooner is because she didn't live here before then. I was the first, and for a while, the only person she ended up becoming friends with in our neighborhood, until we met Azalea, Darius, and Minerva, in that order. They'd been going to school with us for a while, but we never really got to know them until last summer.
Erika drives through the neighborhood until we get to Darius's house; Minerva's apparently been hanging out there too. I hang out in the car while Erika brings them out.
"So where are we going again?" Darius asks.
"Oh, X, Azalea and I met some people that we think you guys should also meet," Erika says. "They're kind of a big deal but not in the way that you'd expect. We're going over to their apartment."
"You guys sure this is safe?" Minerva asks.
"Don't worry, they would never do anything to us," I tell them. "We're a little too important to them for that."
"Why, are we their biggest fans or something?" Darius asks. "Wait, I know: it's Toby Fox, isn't it?"
"No, but in a way, you're close," I reply. "You'll see when we get there."
Darius and Minerva also live on the same street and have gone to school with me for a while, but it wasn't until last summer when our whole gang was formed until they started hanging out. From what I can tell, they didn't develop feelings for each other until about the time Azalea and I started dating, but then they ended up making out on their first date, and even now I feel like we're lucky that they've never done anything more than that...at least as far as I know.
It takes us about seven minutes to get to the group of small apartment building where our new monster friends(?) live. I quickly get out of the car, eager to learn some cool new stuff about magic and souls.
"Wait, guys," Erika says once we're all out. "I want to show you all something before we go in. Watch me closely."
Erika closes her eyes and appears to be mentally focusing on something. After about ten seconds, her soul flickers on for a second.
"...Is that what I think it is?" Minerva asks, looking uneasy.
"How the heck did you manage to do that?" I ask.
"I'll explain that later. Let's go now," Erika says, and we follow her up to the apartment that was given to us.
"Alright guys, try not to freak out too much," I tell Darius and Minerva as Erika knocks on the door.
We wait for about twenty seconds, which may as well have been five minutes (MONSTERS ARE AWESOME).
Finally, Astigmatism opens the door. "Hurry up and get inside," he says.
"WHAT THE ****?! MONSTERS ARE REAL AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME?!" Minerva screams at me.
"Wait, what-" Darius takes another look at the eye monster peeking through the door. "I'm dreaming. But I sure as heck don't want to wake up now!"
"Look, I'll explain once we're inside," I tell them. "Just come on in."
We all quickly shove ourselves through the barely opened door, and Astigmatism shuts it as soon as we're all inside the apartment.
"Okay, I'm sorry I didn't explain the situation earlier, but if I told you we had met monsters, you would have thought that I was fanboying and making stuff up," I explain. "And Darius, you're not dreaming." I punch him in the shoulder.
"Did you have to scream like that?!" Astigmatism demands. "Someone's gonna find us!"
"Oh yeah, and we can't let anyone else know that there are monsters in town," I add.
"Quiet, please and thank you!" says an armless monster sitting on the couch next to Whimsalot, wearing a wizard hat and a strange, curly, purple outfit. I recognize him as Madjick; and his speaking is making my head hurt a little.
"Oh, welcome to our base of operations, humans!" Whimsalot greets. "I forgot you guys haven't met Madjick. It can take some time to get used to being around him, but he's the one who brought your bike home, so respect that."
"Oh, thanks," I say to him. He just goes back to watching TV. Apparently they're watching...Steven Universe? Well, I guess it is a pretty good show, and the gems are kind of like monsters in more ways than one.
"Final! Reaper! The humans are here!" Whimsalot calls out, turning off the TV. A bedroom door opens and Final hops out along with a really tall, skinny bird-looking monster with its head spinning back and forth vertically. I didn't know they brought Reaper Bird here.
"WShoatth'essuepa,rheutmhaenhsu?mans you were talking about," Reaper Bird says. Final makes a noise that sounds like "robbit" in response.
"Oh no, not that thing," Minerva says, stepping backwards.
"LJiuksetyboeuccaaunsfeiIn'dmafbuestetdetrolgoeotkhienrgdaomeaslng'atmmaetaen I can't hear," Reaper Bird says back.
"" Minerva yells.
"What did you say about my sister?" Astigmatism says.
Final woofs.
"Calm down, guys." Whimsalot tells everyone. "Humans, this is Reaper Bird, an amalgamate consisting of my twin brother, Final's younger brother, and Astigmatism's older sister. They're still figuring out how to talk one at a time, so they're a bit hard to understand right now."
"Well, it's great that they're doing alright," I say. "Uh, where's Knight Knight?"
"She sleeps during the day," says Whimsalot. "Don't worry too much about waking her up though, she's got music playing in her room, and it's pretty hard to wake her up without turning it off."
"How many of you guys are there? And how long have you been here?" Darius asks.
"Well, it looks like there's six of them: Madjick, Knight Knight, Final, Whimsalot, Astigmatism, and Reaper Bird," I answer.
"And we've only been around here for a week or so," Astigmatism says. "And like we said earlier, we're only here to find a certain someone."
"Right, it's about time we told you what's going on," says Whimsalot. "But first, I should explain a little more about us. You should probably find a seat though, it'll take some time."
"This sounds interesting," I comment, sitting down on the couch. Darius and Minerva sit at the table over in the dining room, and Erika leans against the wall (there aren't many places to sit).
Whimsalot starts hovering, Astigmatism taking his place on the couch. "Back in the Underground, Final, Astigmatism and I lived in the capital. Our fathers were on the Royal Guard, specifically they were Guards 03, 04, and 05, so our lives were pretty good. Then one day, the human with the green soul came to the Underground. Some how, they managed to get through Waterfall without ever getting spotted by Undyne, which none of the other humans had ever done, apparently. When he got to Hotland, though, Guards 01 through 05 engaged him in combat. They were eventually defeated and their soul was taken, but our fathers died in that fight."
"Oh...that must have been horrible," I tell the monsters.
"I'm not done yet. A few months later, the human with the yellow soul showed up. They managed to escape from Undyne by injuring her, but she continued to chase them down. Then our siblings, the ones who currently make up Reaper here, decided to fight them in front of MTT Resort to avenge our fathers. They hastily almost killed them all with their weapon, which I think was a gun, but then Undyne caught up and struck him down before he could go any further.
"At that point, our siblings weren't dead, but they were dying. I tried to heal them, but they wouldn't wake up. We were convinced that they were going to die when King Dreemurr let us know to send all dying monsters to the new Royal Scientist, Dr. Alphys. So, we brought her our dying siblings, hoping that she would be able to save them somehow. After about a week-"
"Let me guess," I say, "Alphys called and said that they were okay, but then you never heard from her or any of them again."
"Wow, Knight Knight really did find the right humans. Yes, that's exactly what happened. Eventually our mothers fell down, not having much hope for life anymore now that their families were half dead. We didn't send them to Dr. Alphys though, since she never brought back our siblings. So then we decided that we were going to really avenge our families this time. But we didn't try to join the Royal Guard; we didn't trust them anymore, since they didn't seem to know how to handle such situations without letting innocent people die. So we teamed up with Madjick and Knight Knight, two of the strongest monsters we knew outside of the Royal Guard, and devoted all of our time to training ourselves to fight. We quit our jobs and devoted all of our time to practicing our battle techniques. We started calling ourselves the Shadow Guard, because nobody really knew about us."
"That's a pretty cool name, I guess," Darius says.
"After about two years, we were all not doing so well in terms of keeping ourselves going. That was when the final human with the red soul, now known as Frisk, appeared in the Underground. We heard that this human made it all the way to Hotland without hurting a single person, and had even made friends with Undyne. Then we heard that they were constantly appearing on Mettaton's TV shows, where the show starts off normal, but turns out to be a death trap for the human, who always ends up getting saved by Dr. Alphys somehow. At that point, we all positioned ourselves outside MTT Resort and got ready to fight the human there, but then Mettaton himself showed up and said he'd pay us 200 Gold each to wait in the Core to kill the human and give him their soul. We agreed to his offer, because we didn't want to get on Mettaton's bad side, but we planned on actually taking the soul to the king so he could free us all.
"We split up and attacked the human as they encountered us, but they kept singing Knight Knight to sleep, and Madjick seemed to really like them for some reason. Then after Final and I took our turn and saw what an amazingly kind and thoughtful person this human was, even we didn't really want to kill them. Astigmatism somewhat forcefully convinced us to take another shot at them, but then they refused to surrender to him, something none of us had ever done before. We all left the Core then and got ready to disband.
"Several hours later though, we ran into Dr. Alphys with our siblings, who were melted together into one being. Alphys said that the human had named them Reaper Bird, so we decided to call them that, and stay together as well. Then, on that same day, we heard that the barrier had somehow been destroyed, even though that last human was still alive. As we went out to the surface world, we resolved that the Shadow Guard would never again hurt an innocent person...and instead go after much less innocent people."
"So let me get this straight," Erika says. "You guys are a team of mercenaries called the Shadow Guard who hunt down criminals?"
Final nods in response.
"You may have heard of some of our work," Whimsalot says. "Have you guys watched the news lately?"
"Uh, not really, why, did you guys do something cool?" Minerva replies.
"Yeah we did!" Astigmatism says. "We've been everywhere, taking out anyone who kills or attacks anyone!"
"What makes our captures newsworthy, though, is that nobody ever knows who does it, and the prisoners sometimes end up freaking out to the police about monsters and magic, which most people don't believe exist," Whimsalot explains.
"Why can't you monsters just reveal yourselves to the world?" Darius asks.
"Well, as you probably know, humans can be pretty terrible," Whimsalot answers. "If the world knew monsters existed, someone would definitely come to wipe us all out. So we told every human we met to keep monsters a secret, or a myth at the most, which has gone pretty well so far."
"Wait a minute," Erika asks. "Aren't you guys from a video game? How do you even exist?"
"That's a good question," Whimsalot responds. "Soon after we monsters left the underground, we met a human named Toby Fox, who had a brilliant idea to integrate us into the world. He said that anyone who experienced what Frisk did couldn't help but love monsters, so he got us all to help him and his team of programmers create a video game about Frisk's adventure. It took about a few years, and the game isn't that famous yet, but people seem to love it so far."
"It's really entertaining, and it makes us feel like we're actually there," I comment.
"But after Undertale was released," Whimsalot continues, "it seems that more humans started trying to kill each other, and have even killed a few monsters. We've never played it, but it apparently teaches about how killing people gives you EXecution Points, which makes your Level Of ViolEnce, or LOVE, go up, and that in turn makes you stronger, harder to kill, and harder to be around in general. So now there are more serial killers around than there used to be. Fortunately, none of them have ever become powerful enough to overpower local forces of justice."
"Thank goodness," I say. "I've heard that LV 20 is the maximum LOVE a person could have, which means that something pretty bad could probably happen if someone got that high."
"That's right," Whimsalot says. "And that's why we need to do anything we can to stop that from happening. And at this point, we're going to need you humans to help us with that."
"Wait, wait," Minerva says. "You want us to help you track down serial killers?"
"It's actually worse than that. Have you heard of Chara?"
"Yeah, they were the first human to fall into the Underground," I answer.
"Well, there seems to be a cult of some sort bent on killing absolutely everyone in the world. From what we've heard, they seem to be doing this for Chara. But now that doesn't make any sense based on what you just said."
"Well, I don't actually understand how it works, but in Undertale, you are given the option to do things Frisk would never do, including murdering nearly every monster in the Underground. If you do that, Chara somehow comes back to life, destroys the game and won't let you start over or do anything until you give them your soul. Like I said, I really don't get this stuff, but my point is that Chara is probably the worst person you could ever imagine, due to the fact that they want to kill everyone."
"Wow...I'll have to ask you more about this later, X. But anyways, we tracked one member of this cult down to this very town, and we'd take care of him ourselves, but we're way too far away from Ebott City, and we can't risk getting found out by anyone. Except you guys, of course."
"This sounds really dangerous," Erika says. "How much do we know about this person?"
"Well," Whimsalot answers, "his name's Mason Richards, he's somewhere in this town and he's subtly trying to get people to join him. We'll need you guys to find out the rest."
"Uh, and how the heck are we supposed to do that without getting ourselves killed?" Minerva demands.
"It won't be that bad. We'll have you go and spy on some of his associates, hopefully to find out where he's staying or what he's planning to do next. But right now we don't exactly know who's working with him, so we'll have to get back to you on that."
"Alright, that'll work," I say. "Anyways, it looks like we're all briefed. I told my parents that I'd be at the mall, so she's not expecting me to be home for some time. Do you guys mind if we stay for a few hours?"
"Not at all," Whimsalot responds. "As you can see, we'll be a little packed, but we'd enjoy being around humans more."
"Nice!" Minerva expresses. "What kinds of video games you guys got?"
"WSeodrorny',twheahvaedatnoyleave them all back home," Reaper Bird says.
"But we have internet!" Madjick says, making me feel weird.
"Sweet!" Darius says. "X, you brought your phone, right? I still gotta upload that video to YouTube."
"Yep, I'll email it to you. What's the wifi password?"
The time we spent hanging out at the Shadow Guard's apartment turned out to be pretty fun. I showed them all my favorite fail compilation and some Studio Z videos, which everyone loved. I ended up finding out that Madjick, Whimsalot and Astigmatism worked for Mettaton back home, while Final, Knight Knight and Reaper Bird worked for Muffet, both of those businesses going pretty well, despite not being able to expand much. And by the time we had to leave, they all promised they'd play Undertale when they went back home, and we planned for Darius ans Minerva to train with them in Town Park at midnight, after convincing them that it was completely safe. We even exchanged phone numbers so we could contact each other when necessary.
When I get home, I look up Madjick and Reaper Bird. So, Madjick's orbs can be weakened by staring at them, and Reaper bird attacks with some magical manifestation called Everyman? I guess I didn't quite remember as much about these specific monsters as I thought I did.
For Reaper Bird's dialogue, I took two sentences and alternated characters from each, so if you read every other letter, you can still tell what's being said.
Since this is my first fanfiction, I'd love it you if you guys would take a minute to leave a review to let me know what you think. So far, it looks like you guys like it, but it still helps to see that you guys keep enjoying this stuff. Thanks so much for reading this longest chapter yet!
Next time, the gang goes back to school, but things have definitely changed for them...