The scene shifted.

They were somewhere else. She let go and backed up a few steps.

He felt disoriented. "Where...where is this?"

"My office," she replied. "On the ship."

He looked down. No damage.

"umm...well thanks for not killing me, I guess?"

She looked apologetic, but she was quiet, waiting for a reaction nervously.

He looked around. There was a computer screen nearby.

It said,

CONTINUE RESET

"What..." Reality was tilting upside down. "Is this how?!"

"Here we go," she thought. "What is he going to do?"

He took control.

CONTINUE RESET

"Reset!"

The game reset.

He didn't move or speak for a long moment.

She said tentatively, "Everyone...should be alive again now..."

Was that tears?

"Are you ok?" she asked softly.

His hand moved-

"Crap-!" she cried.

She got pierced from all sides with sharp bones.

Sans saw it was enough to seriously wound her. But not kill... Her guard and her shield were definitely down, but something still protected her enough to stop the bones from completely running her through.

She was on her hands and knees choking on blood.

"Sans-" she started, then stopped. "No. No. I can't really blame you for this."

He tried attacking again, but now her shield was back up, and he did no damage.

So stupid, she thought. How arrogant to think she could talk him down. What did she expect? Of course, he thought she was the one who'd been killing everyone all along - worse than the killer Frisk, worse than Chara, worse than Flowey.

She let her guard down after he reset. But for all he knew, this was his one chance of stopping her for good, and he'd taken it. Why not?

Only her inner shield had saved her. Weaker than the main shield surrounding her like a bubble, the inner shield stayed right at skin level and helped block attacks. But given a strong enough attack, the inner shield could be pierced. The inner shield had slowed down the bones but not completely stopped them.

She knew damage to the digestive system was very dangerous, and she was losing blood at a life-threatening rate. She was on the verge of fainting from the pain and the bones embedded in her torso weren't making it any easier to move.

Carefully, she used her inner shield to push out and eject the bones. Then she molded the inner shield to act as a temporary bandage over the many wounds.

Sans was having a hard time with watching this. He'd killed the human Frisk enough times to get inured to the violence, but seeing the half-dead human dying covered in blood was getting to him. Her weak efforts to help herself made it even more gruesome.

How long did it take humans to die after they took damage? His knowledge of human anatomy was pretty rough. He kept his face from showing it, but he was screaming with terror and anguish inside.

Rose clutched her stomach painfully.

"Is fighting really the only option?" she asked Sans. "You have blood on you..." The sight of it was gut-wrenching.

"I won't let you hurt them anymore," he said fiercely, with the feelings of retribution from many timelines of despair.

His blue eye flared with anger and determination.

"Do you even know what everyone has gone through? Do you think it's just me that remembers? The others might not remember as clearly, but they have nightmares too. Our souls can't take this forever."

"Cracks and lines are starting to form in our hearts. One day you might find that we've all turned to dust and no resets will bring us back again. I hate the role you've put me in, but I have no choice but to fight you. You passed the point of mercy so many timelines ago, it's not even funny."

Rose empathized with that. She wished the real genocide player could see this in person. They'd run like the coward they were. At this moment, Sans was awe-inspiring, with blue flames and Gaster Blasters at his side.

She was losing strength. She whispered faintly, "I want to help. Please. I'm sorry you've all been hurt so bad. I'm not the one who killed everyone. Look in my eyes, Sans. Do I have the eyes of a killer?"

He had to admit to himself that she didn't. Her eyes were gentle. But then, where did all her LV come from?

He had figured her to be the one controlling Frisk across multiple timelines, so that her EXP increased every time Frisk killed. The Anomaly.

The one who kept consuming timelines over and over, never satisfied.

The one who would pretend to be his friend in one timeline, and then kill him in the next.

The one who enjoyed pretending to be merciful, only to later reset and cruelly slash away at him and his friends and kill them without mercy over and over again.

But now, he questioned that theory.

Now that he could look at her closely without being in the middle of a fight, he could see that nothing about her resembled the red-eyed Frisk who had killed so many times with a gleeful smile.

There was no glee over the violence from Rose, just sadness. But after so many betrayals, it was hard for him to trust anymore. This was his first real chance to stop the Anomaly, and he had to take it.

She was getting weaker, going into shock and losing blood pressure, barely conscious.

After a few minutes, something happened. Her outer shield hardened and turned from transparent to an opaque gold, as she went into a self-induced stasis, a desperate last resort to keep herself alive. Everything became quiet.

Sans collapsed onto his knees, holding his skull with bony fingers and weeping and shivering from the stress. Not just from this fight, but from many fights before it.

Being a kind person by nature, hurting someone else did far more mental damage to him than getting hurt himself. He refused to distance himself from the pain of having compassion, because he didn't want it to become easy to hurt others.

He'd been avoiding the thought for a long time, but the truth was he was very close to his breaking point. Every reset, every death brought him to the edge of a cliff that he feared he'd get pushed off of eventually.

Everything seemed to be pressing down on him as his eyesockets flooded with tears.

Would his efforts to stop the Anomaly here finally end this horrendous cycle? Would it stop the killings? He didn't know. He couldn't tell if they were still alive or not inside that shield. Maybe they'd just reset again. That's what happened in every fight before.

All he knew for sure was, something had to change, and soon, or he'd lose his sanity completely.