Nothing much to say here, let's just get into it.

Yeah, I go to church on Sundays. But honestly, even though it may be my own fault, it's really not any fun for me. I never do anything outside of church that I should be doing, like reading the scriptures, so I hardly ever know any of the scripture stories that are referred to during Sunday school. This week it's a little different though: now that I know for sure some of the existential properties of a human being, I'm starting to wonder more than usual how much of this stuff is true. I've heard the word soul used here before, but not exactly the way I know it. And the scriptures never mention monsters...but then again history books don't either. But history books don't talk much about the things that happen in the scriptures.

Well, church is over, which is good, because I really don't want to think about that anymore. Now it's time to take care of something I totally forgot about yesterday. I go up to my room and text Erika: How did you manage to activate your soul without magic yesterday?

About ten minutes later, I get messaged back: I thought about how it felt to have my soul out and tried to think and feel that way again. I tried to fill myself with Integrity, so to speak.

That makes a lot of sense when she puts it that way. I guess now that our souls have been activated before, it's possible to activate them ourselves now? Let's see if I can do that now. My soul is Justice, so think I should be able to make that work.

I think about how great the world would be if everyone did what they should and took only what they deserved...This doesn't seem to be working. I'll keep trying for a few minutes. Now I'm thinking what a difference it would make if I treated everyone fairly and helped others do the same (not that I don't already do that)...

There it is. It's been five minutes but I've done it. Can I shoot yellow Justice bullets? Crud, but I don't want to break anything!

Dang it, it's gone. I don't want to waste another five minutes now that I know I can potentially activate my soul on my own. I'll work on that later; right now I wanna watch YouTube.

Finally, it's Monday again. I walk up to the bus stop early in the morning, Erika and Azalea already being there. Wait, doesn't Azalea go to that other bus stop? Whatever, I like this better anyway.

"Hey folks," I say.

"X!" Azalea says, running over to me and giving me a huge hug.

"Been a while, hasn't it?" I remark.

"It has!" she says back. "Now you have to tell me everything that happened on Saturday!"

"Okay, but maybe we should get on the bus first," I tell her as the bus drives up to our stop. We all get on the bus and sit in our respective seats, though I almost forget that I shouldn't sit with Azalea. Then I give Azalea a crash course on the Shadow Guard and what they want us to do for them.

"They want us to catch this man?" she asks. "How are we going to do that without getting hurt?"

"They mostly just want us to spy for them," I explain. "These guys are experienced, so we should be fine. Anyways, how was basic training?" I ask Darius and Minerva, who had boarded the bus not long after the rest of us had.

"Freaking awesome," Minerva says. "I've got a red soul, so I can float around! Only when it's glowing, unfortunately."

"And my soul is orange, which apparently lets me run really fast," Darius says. "Wish we didn't need magic to do this stuff..."

"Bravery and Determination, huh?" I remark. "Can't say I would have expected anything much different. And it should be possible to make your soul light up, you just need to be filled with the corresponding trait somehow. Remember when Erika did it a few days ago?"

"Oh yeah, that's pretty cool," Darius says. "You were filled with Determination somehow?"

"It's Integrity, and yes, but I'd been practicing all morning," Erika explains. "It's not easy to activate your soul at will, especially if you've never done it before."

"I pulled it off last night," I say. "I'm not sure if we can use our abilities that way though. We just need to work on it some more until we master it, and then, well, then things will be awesome."

"Heck yeah they will!" Minerva says.

"So, how exactly do you do it?" Azalea asks me.

"Well, you're Kindness, so you could focus on how great it is to be nice to people, maybe?" I tell her.

"Alright, I'll try that," she says.

"Okay, everyone try to stay quiet so she can focus," I say to my friends.

Azalea leans back in her seat and closes her eyes, almost looking like she's sleeping. She looks cute when she's sleeping. Scratch that, she always looks cute. After about three minutes, I see a green heart slowly light up on her chest.

"Did it work?" she asks, leaning forward again as her soul fades. "That felt really nice."

"Yep, it did," I answer. "It took me longer than that to do it, though. You must have more Kindness in you than I have Justice."

"Hey Erika, can you show her yours?" Minerva asks.

"I guess," Erika responds. She closes her eyes for about fifteen seconds, until her blue soul appears and disappears.

"Wow, how are you so good at it?" Azalea asks.

"Like I said, I've been practicing," Erika says. "I can never manage to maintain it for more than a second, though. My mind keeps wanting to think about other things."

"We'll get the hang of it eventually," I say as our bus driver dismisses us.

For first period, I have band, but the percussion director is never here in the morning on Mondays, so we usually end up just messing around in the percussion room for 45 minutes. The other percussionists are pretty cool people when you get down to it, but the things that they joke around about when our director isn't here make me almost wish he was. They think I'm pretty funny for the comic timing of my soundboard app, though.

Second period is when Erika, Darius and I have English together. Nothing interesting today, just analyzing a painting. Then chemistry in third period with Minerva and Erika, Spanish in fourth period with Azalea; now things get crazy.

Is Trent looking at Azalea again? That guy's been subtly trying to hook up with her for weeks now. Doesn't he realize she's taken? Well, most other people don't seem to realize it either, since we try to avoid any amount of PDA in school.

Well, our Spanish teacher's pretty cool, so hopefully there won't be any trouble today...oh wait, he left the room. We may or may not have a problem.

Trent had a girlfriend a few months ago, but he dumped her after they did some things they shouldn't have and ended up having to face the consequences, which he left with her. No, I am not going into detail on that, there may be kids reading this. Anyways, he obviously wants Azalea for the wrong reasons, so it's a good thing she's taken. And that she doesn't like him. But that's not stopping him from telling her an offensive pickup line right in front of me. He's never done that before.

"Uh...sorry, I'm not available..." Azalea responds quietly, looking away from Trent.

"Of course you are, girl!" he says. "Now why don't we go to my house later so-" I interrupt him by grabbing his shoulder, the thought of the difference between me and him in the way we handle females filling me with Justice. "Hey buddy, what are you doing?" I ask him.

"Trying to pick up a chick, why?" he says.

"Do you know who she is?"

Trent says something about Azalea that I refuse to quote.

"I said who, not what. She is the nicest person I know, and you can't just "take her home" if you can't even appreciate that about her."

"I did it last time. What's different now?"

"First of all, she's taken."

"By who?"

"Me." At this point, my soul is clearly visible, but Trent seems too distracted by both what I just said and Azalea to notice. Azalea sees it and her face lights up for a split second, before Trent grabs her shoulder and gets right in my face, or should I say right above my face, since he's about eight inches taller than I am.

"You ****ing liar. You don't have a chance with girls." Then he says something about me that is both a huge exaggeration and definitely not T-rated.

"You know nothing about having a girlfriend. Now you will leave Azalea alone because she does not deserve to be abused by you, or I will make you leave her alone." At this point my soul is glowing brighter than it normally does.

"I would love to see you try and **** with me."

"Okay. Azalea, stand back." Azalea throws Trent's hand off her shoulder and hops over a few rows of desks. "But before we start, I need to ask you something. Have you ever played Undertale?"

"No, da**q does that have to do with anything?"

"Good."

{Stop music}

With a flash of yellow light, I fire a huge blast of Justice straight from my soul into Trent's chest at point blank range, knocking me backward a little but knocking Trent back much harder. He crashes into the wall behind him and flops on the floor, moaning in pain. I stand up, and notice that my soul is gone...and that the room has quieted down and everyone is staring at me.

I probably should not have used my soul power in front of my whole class.

{Start "Dating Fight!"}

Luckily, the bell is ringing now, so I grab my stuff and Azalea and I sprint for the door before anyone can question what just happened.

"Thanks for helping me out back there," Azalea says as we speed walk down the hall. "That was amazing."

"You're welcome, and thanks, but I'm feeling kind of tired right now. Can we slow down?"

"Sure, but we need to get away from anyone who saw that."

My eyes widen. "Holy crap, I just realized what I just did."

"Don't worry, with any luck, nobody will understand what happened well enough to tell any staff about it."

At this point, we are the first people to get to our World History classroom, Darius coming in a little sooner than I would have expected.

"Did you guys see how much people were freaking out in the hallways over here?" he asks us. "What happened?"

"Yeah, long story short, I got filled with too much Justice and now we gotta act like we have no idea what happened because nobody should know what happened," I quickly say to him.

"Wait, what? It's been four hours and you did something everyone saw?"

"Look, Azalea may or may not have been violated or something if I didn't do anything and it was really awesome and I was mad and I just had to try that because this is still new and cool to me and now we're all screwed!"

"X, calm down, you don't want to call more attention to yourself," Azalea says.

I can never argue with her. "Okay, so we may or may not have our cover blown, just go with any rumor you hear about a futuristic gadget or something," I say quietly.

I try to forget what just happened, but nobody else will let me. A few people in my Spanish class know my name, so some people who know who I am start asking me about what the heck happened in my Spanish class. I tell people that I don't know what happened any better than anyone else does, and that people probably assumed Trent and I had something to do with it because we were in an argument in the center of the room. But that of course doesn't make a dent in the rumors that I had superpowers or used the Force or something. Well, now that sixth period is over, I just gotta last through lunch and two elective classes and then we should be home free.

"Okay, let me get this straight; someone was bothering Azalea, and that filled you with Justice and then it all exploded out on him?" Erika says, sitting down at the lunch table across from me and Azalea. "That is just...intriguing."

"It felt really cool," I say. "But as you can probably tell, people saw it happen. Our teacher wasn't in the room, though."

"Good, if no teacher saw it, no teacher should believe it. But how were you able to do something so big like that? I thought all the yellow soul could do was shoot those tiny bullets."

"Well, Frisk could do way more than just levitate, right? They could also reset, and their health was restored every time they were filled with determination. Maybe pure, natural soul essences are more powerful than those produced by magic."

"That makes sense...but you've been in situations that demanded justice before, haven't you? Why do your soul powers only work now?"

"I guess we needed magic to get our souls working in the first place, but now that that's done, we don't necessarily need magic for that anymore."

"That could be how humans supposedly used magic before the monsters were banished underground, right?"

"Yeah, maybe the barrier was some sort of giant, one-way Kindness shield or something..." I look over at Azalea, and then back at Erika. "We need to do some more experimenting. Can you guys make another midnight?"

"Yeah, if I get my homework done and go to sleep soon enough," Erika replies. "How about you guys?"

"If X will be there, I'm definitely coming," Azalea answers. Yep, we're made for each other.

"I am," I say. "Let me make sure the Shadow Guard will be there too. I'm going somewhere less noisy to call them, be right back."

I step off to a front hallway containing bathrooms and water fountains, unlock my phone, and put in the monsters' home phone number. After about a ring and a half, someone picks up.

"HHeelllloo?"

"Hey, this is X," I say. "Uh, to whom am I speaking?"

"TRheiaspiesrR,eoabpveiroBuisrldy," says the person on the line.

"Oh, hey buddy. Listen, my friends and I are wondering, are you guys available to meet us at the park at midnight again for some practice and experimentation with our human souls?"

"SYueraeh,,bbuuttsnoomteaolfluosfwuisll have to stay back just in case."

"Oh, okay, that's fine. What's going on tonight?"

I hear some muffled speaking through the phone, and then it stops.

"Hey X, this is Whimsalot. Sorry, I had to finish eating lunch. What do you need?"

"Well, I was asking if you guys were available tonight at midnight, because I wanna try to figure some stuff out, maybe experiment with soul power, and it would help to have some of you around to make that work..."

"Well, Knight Knight and I are going to be busy doing recon tonight, and we need someone guarding the apartment at all times, but I think Astigmatism and Reaper Bird can come. Town Park again?"

"Yeah, sounds perfect. I'll tell you if we learn anything cool. Also, let us know when you need us to do anything for you guys."

"Alright. See you!"

"Bye."

"Okay, so you guys can all make it tonight, right?" I ask the gang as the bus starts off to take us home. Everyone lets me know they're on board with the plan for tonight.

"Alright, great. Don't forget to bring a weapon, just in case."

That evening, I tell my mom I've extra tired and go to bed immediately after dinner; it is still a school night after all. I tape my watch to my head again (not quite as close to my ear as it was last time) and go to sleep. There's quite a few things I want to try and test out tomorrow...I just hope Azalea will be willing to do this.

Well, human souls always were stronger than monster souls. Of course, that tends to result in the powers of a human soul being harder to use sometimes.

Next time, more theories on the history of humans, monsters, magic and souls, as well as a possible action scene!