And he wasn't the only one.
The script had changed. The story had changed. How? Well, for starters, a certain human had gotten curious. After all, who can resist experimenting with such a power as what they have? Who can resist trying to find out everything…especially if that person is sat behind a screen. For example, what happens if you load a save file that isn't yours? What happens if you load a save file made by a dead person? The human, frisk, a puppet to one of your own kind, was trying to travel to the past from before either even existed.
an extremely risky business.
…hey now, don't give me that look. I never said frisk or chara would not be a part of this tale. I just said it wouldn't be where we began. Anyway, what frisk discovered was that you end up in a hell of a lot of trouble. at least in the terms of space and time, that is. As soon as their hand touched the [RELOAD] button, the save had immediately begun to corrupt. In fact, every save began to corrupt.
It's a bad idea to mess with the script.
Not even I know how frisk managed to become so fatally curious- they were never meant to. Something interfered… something beyond the script, beyond even the confused puppeteer staring in bewilderment at their screen. But I think everyone can agree- determination is trouble at the best of times, and at the worst of times… It is an abomination. And in this case, it is a paradox. If a person dies but cannot RELOAD, what happens to their SAVE? And what happens if that same person returns, soulless, hitched to someone else with a powerful soul, that then tries to SAVE over the soulless ones SAVE? But the soulless one is also bypassing the same SAVE to SAVE for themselves, too? And what happens to the one with a powerful soul, whose last SAVE was in the future?
…makes your head hurt, doesn't it?
Mine too.
Time is weird and dangerous, always has been. Irregularities upon irregularities, this human had broken time herself, the well oiled clock of reality suddenly had a wrench in its gears. And that, is trouble. A lot of trouble. Reset is a part of the script, a 'natural' power, used in frivolous ways in a thousand other stories. But these sorts of loopholes… they make the universe break in real ways.
Ways with real, devastating consequences.
Well, what happened in the end was frisk, dragging chara behind them, was booted back to their last stable save. Which was, actually, Nowhere. They didn't have a stable save left to return to- so, all that they'd done, every sin, every murder, was erased. That is what time does to those that break it- erases the circumstance of their birth so they never get a chance to break anything at all. All the memories, gone, erased like their lives are but slates wiped clean.
Chara and Frisk, with their monumentally stupid mistake, had created an entire other timeline- technically, an entire other world, while their old one crumbled to dust. Well, not dust exactly- It wasn't gone entirely. There are always echoes. warped echoes. Memories buried in the most persistent…Maybe one, maybe one or two among millions could remember- Maybe the ones outside of time, outside of the rules, maybe the ones so broken time was unable to shatter them more. But perhaps not- After all, a footprint does not always look like a boot, whatever that means. Regardless, this timeline, this world that burst from their mistake was…Unstable. Fractured. missing certain parts.
Rather essential parts.
times, places, dates…all just slightly scrambled, but slight changes can still make big differences.
The fallen child for example…the child was sent all the way back to the very beginning, before anyone had known, sans, flowey, chara even. Back before every reset, back to the very first moment that Flowey found himself powerless. Back to when they first tried to climb the mountain, back to that fateful day when they fell, never knowing what power they would gain by doing so. So, no harm done, right? It would just happen all over again, right? Time would loop their mistakes endlessly, right…? Wrong. Oh so wrong. The child that was sent back to 201X, wasn't frisk. The child that chara now found to when they fell, didn't have a red soul.
She had a green one.
You see, Frisk was now in the past, far in the past, ending up the one climbing the mountain all those years ago in the place of another, to become the third soul to die. Their memories were intact, the scared and tortured child knowing all that should be…but that did not help them, however determined they were, because when they tried to save…
*You reach out to a mysterious power… but it rejects you.
They were harvested by the first snowdrake. Becoming the third soul, floating in the hall…Fates, swapped. Script, torn. As I said, everything was scrambled. Now, rewritten by the desperate makings of time, the script said the soul of Kindness climbed the mountain that fateful day.
And, instead of frisk, a young human from a harbor town, driven out with fork and fire, gained the power of SAVE and RESET when she fell to the bed of golden flowers. You see, you don't need DETERMINATION itself to save and reset, you don't need a soul red as blood to spill it- You just have to fit the script. And, as per the script, she woke chara from a very, very long sleep. Chara…didn't like her very much, but still.
And, even in the depths of the void, floating in nothingness, the presence of this new soul so strange and out of place to all he knew, awoke even gaster. His own glitching soul pulsed brighter in his dark chest as his eyes slowly came open, a shockwave of the universe retching the change knocking him awake. Now, at last, he was awake once again.
…Mostly due to the brilliant light erupting from the gaping crack in the void.
Well, what do you think happens when the universe turns itself inside out? A disco?
