DoubleTale: Rewritten

by XWolf26

What if two humans were in the Underground at once? What if one human was DETERMINED to stop the other? What if they could both SAVE? What happens when an Unstoppable Force meets an Immovable Object? When a certain scientist pulls enough of himself together, he finally finds a way to stop the destruction of his world. (Undertale AU. Rewrite of DT.)

100. Chapter 100: Ballroom Blitz

Thanks go to ZeraoraTheKnight, Wingah, Acoolnamme, DoctahSawbones, Sonic425, Zack Frost, 10burgers, XelaZagity, Astreum, Prominent, Night4099, Thanatos the Wolf King, Eternal7, and Tbone8454!

Howdy, it's been awhile! I'll be honest, this chapter was really hard to write for a good portion of that unplanned hiatus I went on. There's a number of things that happen here that required careful planning and detailed explaining, and it was a whole lot of scenes to organize! This is definitely the hardest I've had to work on a DoubleTale chapter possibly ever, but I like the result and I hope you guys do too. I spent a long time thinking about this part of the story, and now that it's here I worry a lot that I might mess it up and not really stick the landing on this arc. I had to push myself and I had to really think about what I wanted things to be and how I wanted them to be presented, but finally I got the right idea and then everything just fell into place around it.

Regardless, nobody worry! Even if every now and again a chapter takes a little longer, DoubleTale's not gonna be over until I've finished it. And I figured I made you guys wait long enough for this one, so I decided I shouldn't bother waiting for Thursday to upload. Huge thank you to everyone who reached out and asked if I was okay, it really meant a lot. :)

Next chapter will hopefully go up Thursday, May 11th!

Disclaimer: I do not own Undertale.

---

"Out of the way! Move! MOVE!" Eden snarled at anyone who got anywhere near the path of the stretcher that she speed walked beside. On the opposite side of the stretcher was King Future, and at the top and bottom was Demon's KIND souled student and their PERSEVERANT student. Laying flat on their back in the stretcher was Character The Winged, and though they'd long since put their wings away they were still smirking while they were carried through the crowds of the shelter.

"Easy, Eden..! C'mon, where's the fire..?" Character teased, looking over from the ceiling they'd been staring at and to the urgent expression of their boss. They were underground again, The Gatherer's people were being organized through a previously abandoned New Home. Xander's original timeline, where this all started... Eden squeezed Character's hand in hers, and they smirked even though their face was pale. "We're just a little dinged up, nothing magic can't fix..."

"Are you sure?" Eden asked hastily, glancing over to Character from the path she'd been urgently watching for pedestrians. Even though Character was casual about the situation, steam did not come out of the hole Errorphim had punched in their shoulder. And though the rest of their body was mostly uninjured, the fusion hardly moved. Their limbs were heavy with exhaustion, and their soul was dim on their chest. "How do you feel?"

"How do we feel..? Eden, check this out..." Character lifted their free hand, though it made them wince. They lifted it up over their head, so that all the onlooking crowd could see. And when they folded their fingers inward and gave a thumbs up, a roar of cheers erupted from the surrounding civilians. An outcry of gratitude for the ones who had saved them, and it made Character's chest vibrate with raspy laughter. "We're on top'a the world..! Go on, there's still important work you have to do. We'll be here for ya when you get back..."

"..." Eden didn't speak for a moment, but she did manage to crack a small smile at Character's positive mood. She had to admit, she never thought she'd see the day where they were cheered as a hero of the people either. She squeezed their hand tighter, she was so proud of them... But, they were right. Shelters had to be organized, supplies had to be handed out, people needed her help. So, begrudgingly, Eden let go of Character's hand. "I'll check up on you as soon as I can, okay? So you better heal."

"We'll think about it." Character smirked a little wider, an expression that Eden returned. She stepped away from the stretcher then, within seconds she was gone from Character's side and had disappeared into the crowds to go handle the work on her plate. Character relaxed into the stretcher, shutting their eyes and giving a sigh.

"... That was real brave'a you, munchkins." After a pause, it was Future who spoke up. Character peaked open their right eye to look over to him; they were at least a little surprised to see that he'd remained by their side. They weren't his 'munchkins', after all. In fact, they'd tried to kill his ass on several occasions. But, then again, he'd also been right there when Melanie forgave the both of them. He'd looked on while they stood up to Errorphim... Even though Character still looked confused by his sentiment, Future offered a KIND smile. "You worked harder than any of us for those wings. I don't know if it means much coming from me, but I'm proud of you both."

"You're gonna make us blush..." Character responded, shutting their tired eyes again without relenting their light smirk. Despite the dire straights, they still felt on top of the world. They had faith that their wish would come true, because they'd left the job to the best people they could have.

Future wished he could be so relieved, that he could be as at ease as Character was. But he didn't know what they knew, frankly he had no idea what was going on. All he knew was that the lot of them had escaped and that Character had survived. But where was Errorphim? There's no way Character wouldn't be running their mouth about it if they had defeated a god. Where was Angel or Anny or Lexi? The King opened his mouth to interrogate the punctured fusion being wheeled towards what he assumed was a medical tent, but a flicker of light across the Underground's stone sky cut him off.

In the next instant, the world around them had come to a screeching halt. Many flinched at a flash of light, they feared that Errorphim had found them and that instant death was crashing down. But, it wasn't death. At least, not yet. Character forced open their tired eyes after allowing themself a moment of silent confusion. Why had the stretcher stopped moving? What could be more important than patching them up after they saved everyone's ass?

"This reality... Belongs to The Fortune City Four."

Character's eyes widened; what a fuckin' sight. Xander The Gatherer, Lexi The Predator, Anthony The Anarchist, and even the traitor himself Angel The Hacker stood in defiance of a god's light. Defiant, together. As a unit, for the first time since coming to this place. With the distance they'd traveled, the battles they'd had, the blood the sweat and the tears... Character and Future were unsure anyone who wasn't one of Four would understand what it meant. For the Four, for Fortune City, for the multiverse and most importantly, for Errorphim.

Future turned his head just a little, he felt eyes on him. And when he spotted Ralsei and Melanie The KIND standing across the road, stained with blood and dirt but smiling wide all the same... He felt his own lips curl up into a small, relieved smile. His eyes glossed down to The Winged laid out beneath him, and they winked up at him with that smirk. Somehow, it felt like the scale was shifting. Still...

Future's eyes lifted back to that massive screen, they locked on to his last living student. An Angel with four wings and covered in the scars it took to earn them. Together, it had to be enough. Because if it wasn't, and Future's last living munchkin tried to make the impossible happen again...

"It didn't work against The Killer, it didn't work against Anarchy, and it isn't going to work this time."

Future's hands balled into fists, his jaw tightened. If he could trade places with that punk kid he'd do it in a heart beat just to keep him safe. But he couldn't. In his life, there were few that Future could save. And that trend started long before he was Future... Error had Chara's soul, and there was nothing to be done about it. He knew that, but... Staring at the beating locket on the chest of The Angel, he also knew that Angel wouldn't accept that. So, all he and anyone else could do now was hope.

... If there was ever a time, kid, it's now. Make the impossible happen, get the ending you need. I believe in you.

Whatever it takes... Future knew it always took too much.

Chapter 100: Ballroom Blitz

Or: Attack And Dethrone God (Part 2)

---

"There's my cue; I gotta go. But we'll be home soon, okay? Whatever it takes."

Asriel's tired white eyes stared at the screen of his phone even after he locked it. He'd played the message back a dozen times since he received it yesterday, had to bear the burden of passing the message on to his parents and his closest friends. Most of Ebbot City didn't know yet, no one had seen much of the Dreemurr family since Chara died on free TV. Asriel shut his tired eyes, it was too much to think about. Chara dead, Angel fighting a war, Frisk...

Home soon? How was Asriel supposed to believe that? It was just never that easy. Every now and again, he wondered if him and Chara were supposed to stay dead the first time. If somehow, this series of unfortunate events was some type of cosmic punishment for defying fate. Like some being beyond Asriel's comprehension was out for blood, bent on destroying him and Chara because they were never meant to live this long.

Well, Chara was already dead, and Asriel didn't feel too far behind. He felt like a withering plant, a flower shriveling and dying in the cold. This was the first time he'd been downstairs in quite some time, he spent days at a time laying in bed. He was always tired, but he could hardly sleep. Whenever he did, he dreamed he was underground. He dreamed he was Flowey. That made sense, it felt like a part of his soul died when Frisk left and that the rest died when he watched Chara's soul get trapped in that jar. The same vials that Flowey had once spent an eternity trying to crack open, lusting after power he had no business possessing...

The entire Dreemurr family would have looked sleep deprived and emaciated to anyone who saw them, but luckily almost none had. Their doors had remained closed, even people like Undyne and Sans had been turned away at least once. Asriel looked the worst of them all, often times a day would pass between the meals that he choked down. What was the point in trying to survive? The world was ending. That unfathomable, incomprehensible godly being would burn them all and Flowey would finally be punished for his crimes.

Asriel was considering listening to that voicemail again, maybe this time he'd find the strength to hope for the future Angel was still fighting for. But, before he could force his heavy fingers to unlock the phone and push play again, he felt something lay across his back, almost like a heated blanket but with a texture that was a little more rough. The crown prince lifted his head from where he'd been slouching at a bar stool against the kitchen counter, he looked over his shoulder and his tired eyes landed on Monster Kid.

Kid flashed him a gentle smile, and Asriel remembered that he hadn't been Flowey for a long time. It was a little hard, but the monster prince found the strength to return MK's smile with his own weaker one. The drake had all but moved in after the broadcast of that last fight came to an end, and was responsible for just about every smile that had existed within the dreary walls of the Dreemurr house since. He did not mope, he did not sulk, and whenever the topic of Angel came up he would always confidently state something along the lines of "Him and Chara will be walkin' through that front door any day now, just you wait!"

Asriel didn't think he could ever express how thankful he was for Monster Kid's optimism, at least not in his current state. He'd been certain that Anarchy had come around and that Angel now had a powerful ally, and when he heard both The Anarchist's and The Predator's voice in Angel's voicemail he'd grinned from ear to ear. No matter how upset Asriel got, no matter how many times he got frustrated with Monster Kid's unshakeable optimism, the drake always had an irrefutable answer: "No matter how long it takes, no matter how bad it gets, no matter how hopeless the future looks, good always wins in the end."

The monsters did get out of The Underground, Asriel did get a soul again. Chara did come around, Angel did get Anarchy to see the light. To Monster Kid, these were the events that mattered. These were the ultimate conclusions. So, whatever happened next, he firmly believed that it would end with Chara and Angel back home safe. And whenever he flashed that big toothy smile, Asriel somehow found difficulty in disagreeing with him.

MK set the bagged styrofoam boxes on the counter in front of Asriel with his tail, he'd taken it upon himself to order take out. He'd tried to cook for the family once or twice, but that never worked out. He'd actually managed to get Toriel to help him with dinner yesterday, it was the first time Asriel had heard his mother laugh in a long time. The prince was not sure where they would all be without Monster Kid, but what he was sure of was that his apatite had returned now that he was back.

Asriel opened his mouth to thank MK, but a static hiss on the living room TV cut him off. He shut his mouth, and the both of them furrowed their brows. They didn't turn their heads to peer through the kitchen and into the TV screen just yet, instead giving each other a look. If that TV was on right now, it had turned on of its own accord. If it had turned itself on, they both knew it would be showing something important. And though Asriel was terrified he would see something horrible, Monster Kid was confident he would see something to inspire hope. So, though they knew what awaited them, the prince and the dragon turned their heads in unison towards the television screen.

"This reality... Belongs to The Fortune City Four."

---

Mako exhaled white fog into the cool Winter air. It was the first snow of the season, and though the temperature was harsh she believed it was a pretty sight. November was an ugly month, everything was grey and dead. So, she was thankful for the snow. It was a little bit of light, something pure to brighten up the mud and dead plants. It was likely that thin white blanket would be melted by tomorrow, so she stood on the porch and she enjoyed the snow while it lasted. These things were precious, life was a collection of little moments.

It'd been a long time since Anthony had left, or at least it felt that way. Max still went to work, Mako kept the house clean and tidy. He came up in conversation every now and again, this place somehow felt so much more empty without him wandering around the yard doing all sorts of chores all day. Without her friend around to bug, Mako spent much of her time writing lyrics and practicing vocals. She had a life beyond Anthony, even though it was so easy to get wrapped up in a story so beyond her. What laid out in the world beyond this timeline, Mako had no part in it. This world, and the relationships between humans and monsters within it, was her focus. She wasn't powerful like Anthony, her destiny was here and not out there.

Still, she thought every day about that man. It was so hard to understand for her, how destruction could come so easy to him. She'd watched him come around and do the right thing, he had in fact saved The Angel's life. But, he'd also killed three people to do it. Not just killed, slaughtered them. With his own two hands he had effortlessly ripped apart those who had been his allies just minutes before. Beat in the face of someone who openly said they didn't want to fight, shattered the arms of a young girl... Possibly the most horrifying thing to watch was what he did to The Gatherer. Piercing him with that wretched stinger, poisoning him with Darkness beyond Mako's comprehension and tearing his arms off his body with nothing but his own two hands. Hands Mako had held, hands Mako had watched cultivate life and build a home...

And then there was that Frisk character. Mako hadn't liked that one bit. Anthony had told her that he'd hardly had a sexual thought in his life, and yet there he was with that... That manipulator. That liar, that traitor. What they offered him, careless destruction. A life free of his morals and free of the restrictions that Anthony gave himself. Mako liked to believe that she offered something similar, but on the opposite side of the spectrum. It was clear that horrible human wanted to bend Anthony to their will with sexuality, a concept that he had little knowledge of. They wanted him to kill everyone, they wanted to sit on his shoulders while he slaughtered everyone and everything...

All Mako had ever wanted after meeting him was to stand beside Anthony, help him with his chores and do her part to heal his twisted heart. But, whether Mako wanted to admit it or not, it was obvious that Anthony's destruction was more than just a reflection of his trauma. The more she thought about it, the more afraid Mako was that there was something within him that craved devastation. Something in his DNA that made him rip apart those people when he didn't need to. Something that made him enjoy mutilating and subjugating those who could not defend against his cruelty, something that compelled him to rip off Xander's arms. Compelled him to... To, kiss that weirdo!

Mako clenched her sockets shut, she was frowning now. She remembered what Max said when Anthony left, about how he didn't want him back. How he shared his friendship with Anthony in hopes of stopping him from killing again, and that by going back to his old ways he was spitting in Max's face. "You can't just switch between being a good person and being a murderer whenever you want"... And, Anthony's response. "That's exactly why I have to leave". Mako had played those words back in her head a thousand times. That entire morning played before her eyes almost every day, and she still didn't know if she'd said or done the right thing. She still didn't know if it was right to want Anthony to come back home.

Either way, it was clear that whatever duty he had out there was more important to him than she was. And, as Mako lifted her head and watched Max's car pull into the driveway, she knew she would be better off if she focused on her own life and what was in her control. She had her own hopes and dreams, and she had a brother who cared about her. If and when Anarchy came back was out of her hands, so even though it would be hard, she knew it would be for the best if she untangled herself from his gravity and focused on herself for the time being. Her thoughts drifted to the shield hung up in Anthony's barn...

Mako flashed Max a smile as he got out of his car, and he gladly returned it. If she was feeling a little more mischievous, she may have grabbed a handful of snow and chucked a snowball at him. But, he'd already had a full day of work, so she thought it might be better not to harass her brother. She watched Max make his way up the steps, and right as she opened her mouth to ask him what he'd like for dinner and how his day was, light flashed across the grey sky above.

Mako put her hands on the railing surrounding the porch, leaning over it and looking up over the roof's overhang. Her exclamation point pupils locked on to the screen looming over their forest home, and Max too peaked his head out. He frowned as soon as he spotted the four humans and one skeletal abomination being displayed, grumbling under his breath. "Oh boy..."

Mako grimaced while she took in the scene. Anthony was standing with The Angel he'd tried to kill, a woman Mako didn't recognize and even the man he'd ripped the arms off of the last time she'd seen him. He wasn't covered in as much blood this time, wasn't totally washed in warfare like he had been last time. Still... He brandished that crowbar, and he grinned with a wicked glee in those scarlet eyes that Mako hated to see.

"This reality... Belongs to The Fortune City Four."

The Fortune City Four, was that their name? Mako squinted her sockets some, she really knew so little about what Anthony was or from where he had came. But, what she understood less was the skeletal being floating before him. Six wings and a body covered in holy light, if Mako had a stomach she was sure it would have tied itself into a knot from the sight of that thing. She remembered clearly, the soul that Xander had stolen and that Anthony had failed to get back. Was... Was Mako really looking upon a god?

She didn't realize it, but her hand was shaking. It wasn't until Max put his hand over hers and stood beside her that Mako inhaled again, and with eyes now fearful she looked to her brother. He kept his eyes on the sky however, his expression was tense... Once again, Mako's thoughts drifted back to the last morning that Anthony had been on this land. Her eyes lifted back to the sky while she remembered her own words...

Please, Anthony... Please be safe..!

---

Once again, power flashed across this dead valley. The combined red light of our souls exploded to life, and around The Fortune City Four a massive scarlet tower blasted high into the sky. Errorphim's sockets narrowed as he watched our DETERMINED display, but he did not flinch. He did not budge, he merely opened one of his hands. In his grasp, the crimson steel of his own DETERMINATION manifested in a blade that we all recognized by now. Even still, we were undeterred. We even cracked smirks and smiles, because Ballroom Blitz by Sweet started playing.

"Ya ready Angel?" Lexi's voice called back to me from where she stood on the frontline. She lowered her stance, took up hold of her scythe with both hands and kept her eyes on our shared target.

"Un huh." I answered casually, as though what laid before us was no big task. I lifted my arms to my sides and opened the both of my palms, and over my shoulders twin Beat Cannons warped into existence.

"Anthony?" Lexi's focus shifted to The Anarchist past Xander and to her right. She glanced over his way, and grinned a little wider when she saw that he was wearing the same giddy expression she was.

"Yeah!" Anarchy didn't hesitate to agree. His eyes went wide and his mad pupils shrunk, as though he was some wild animal and the seven souled god before us was his dinner. His happy fingers twitched and clenched against the filthy metal in his hand, he was spring loaded.

"Xander?" Last up on Lexi's roll call was our founding member and our newest addition to the present day Fortune City Four, Xander The Gatherer. Lexi's eyes glossed back over him, she smiled at him for what felt like the first time in forever.

"Okay." Came Xander's coy agreement. On one hand his serpent flames coiled around his wrist and out past his palm, like scorching whips waiting to be cracked. In the other he held tight his grandfather's lighter, and from it a blade of white hot flames exploded to life.

"Alright fellas!" The Predator lurched forward then. She planted one hand on the ground in front of her and held back the curved and long blade of her scythe behind herself, and death flashed in her cold red eyes. In the next instant, the earth exploded apart beneath the lot of us, and all four members of the Fortune City Four exploded out towards Errorphim at sonic speed while Lexi roared, "LETS GOOOOO!"

Errorphim cleaved down with his stolen red steel, and his blade crashed right into the fiery sword of The Balor King. His multicolored eyes locked with Xander's as for just a moment the two of them floated in gridlock, glaring into each other's souls from opposite sides of their sabers. But, then The Anarchist fired right over Xander's head, and with a screaming cackle he sent his crowbar swinging right into the space between Errorphim's eyes.

CRACK!

A shockwave of red and white, and Errorphim was sent firing head first back through the air. His sockets snapped open and out of their pained wince near immediately however, just in time to spot the twin Beat Cannons spinning over his head. The flex of his fingers was all it took, and Errorphim commanded twin spikes of bone to manifest in motion and fire up through those cannons. Calcium pierced metal and sent fire and electricity exploding through the air, but Errorphim didn't even have time to breath a sigh of relief before Lexi The Predator dropped down through that smoke, yanking back her black ice Ghoul Scythe.

Errorphim snarled, yanking back his scarlet saber and slashing viciously up at Predator in the same moment that she slashed down. White and black flashed as their weapons collided, but ultimately Errorphim's indomitable strength threw Lexi back up into the air with the force of his swing. She back flipped at the same time he did, righting himself in the air and coming to a sudden stop just a few feet above the ground.

Predator landed crouched in the sand, and the moment she did I flew right over her head at mach speed. Anarchy and Gatherer shot by her left and right sides in unison, all three of us were in hot pursuit of Order's Mad God. Errorphim snarled at this, his wings beat and dragged him up and back through the air. He dragged one hand up through the air, and on the ground beneath him a massive spike of bone manifested in motion.

That ivory spike blasted out towards us like a freight train and it was the size to match. My wings beat and I fired up over the top of that spike, but Anarchy was bold enough to dart forward and get right in its path. Holding his crowbar between his teeth, Anthony threw up both hands and jammed two palms into that calcium bullet train. With all his might he demanded that it skid to a nearly immediate stop, sending a blast of kinetic energy firing through his bones and out in a shockwave from his back. His shadow grew beneath him, wrapping tight around his ankles and holding The Anarchist in place to help him stop that bone dead in its tracks.

The Gatherer jumped right over Anthony as he brought that huge spike to a stop, landing on its surface and continuing his sprint down its length towards the skeleton floating at its opposite end. Meanwhile I blasted towards Errorphim head on, soaring at sonic speed and yanking back one fist. Ink coiled up over my arm and jutted out around my fist in jagged spikes just before I sent a punch rocketing at the face of that mad god.

Errorphim hastily yanked his head to the side and let my punch soar over his shoulder, drawing back his DETERMINED saber and driving it forward at my abdomen again. Unfortunately for him my wings beat, dragging me up and letting me flip right over his head. As I did so I reached out with the ink wrapped hand I had tried to cold clock him with, planting my palm on the back of his head. The ink on my hand darted out, wrapping around his head like a headband pulled too low and blindfolding him.

The moment Errorphim was blinded, Gatherer lunged forward from across the freight bone we were floating at the end of. He inhaled, puffing out his orange glowing chest and clenching his jaws shut tight. That burning light raced up from his lungs, through his chest, up his throat. Finally, he lurched his head forward and let his jaws snap open. With a primal roar, a laser of molten death exploded out past Xander's lips. It blasted through the air in the blink of an eye, and with his eyes covered Errorphim didn't know what was coming until it struck him.

I could feel the heat of that laser from where I floated behind Errorphim. His body jolted when it crashed into his chest, flames blasted out around the sides of his diaphragm. They washed up over his shoulders and tried to scorch his bones, but his divine power proved resistant to hellfire. Errorphim lifted one hand and put it in the path of Xander's fire breath, holding those flames back with his palm while his other hand released that crimson blade and let it disappear.

That ink hastily released Errorphim's head as my wings beat, launching me up over him. He tilted his head back and glared up at me, no doubt planning a counter attack while the fires of Xander's breath flashed across his face. But, before his wings could beat and fire him up after me, waves of ice spikes blasted up at his every side. A pyramid of chilled glass crashed shut around Errorphim as Gatherer's death ray came to a stop, trapping him within its lethal cold.

That cold hardly lasted, however. In the next instant, the front of that pyramid exploded open and from within a beam of concentrated ivory death launched out at Xander. Errorphim's jaw had unhinged once more, and from within he spat a dense beam of power. Gatherer hardly had time to stumble back before that laser was upon him, but just before it blasted his head clean off his shoulders, Anarchy darted around his side.

Anthony planted one hand on Xander's chest to shove him back while his free hand swung that crowbar up into the laser of heavenly light firing towards the both of them. The Dark metal of Anarchy's Inheritance crashed right into that boiling plasma, and his Dark accustomed eyes winced as the laser shifted and rippled against his strike... Before blasting apart in an explosion that engulfed him and Xander both.

Errorphim smiled as he watched those two disappear in a blast of grey smoke, just before the smoke blasted open around Lexi The Predator. Surfing through the air on an ever growing ice stream, Lexi wrapped both her hands around her scythe's handle while she rapidly closed the distance. Errorphim lifted one hand in response, and on his command the bone Lexi was surfing over rumbled with life. Patches of smaller bone spikes darted up out of the huge calcium pillar under her and obstructed her path, and she continuously and expertly weaved between them, never slowing down.

Errorphim frowned irritably at this defiance, throwing his hand out to his side. On this command a Godly Gaster Blaster warped into existence by his side. Its maw snapped open wide and it flashed a brutal white flare, but before it could fire an eraser plummeted down from the sky above and blasted right into the top of its skull. The beast was driven down into the harsh desert floor behind Errorphim, where it shattered to shards and white embers.

Errorphim growled at this, wasted a moment looking over his shoulder and examining the situation before looking forward again. Predator was already diving at him by the time he looked back, that Ghoul Scythe was yanked back and primed to cleave Errorphim's head off his shoulders. Hastily the mad god ducked, and Lexi launched right over him. His wings beat and carried him back down the length of that frieght bone while Predator flipped in air, landing perched against the side of the eraser that had smashed Errorphim's blaster and letting her ice cold glare meet his wrathful stare.

Errorphim wasn't able to retreat too far down the bone however before I swooped down from behind, once again yanking back my red cracked fist. Error hastily pivoted in air, throwing up one hand and catching my fist in his palm. A red shockwave blasted up from the impact, and Errorphim was forced to a near immediate stop between The Hacker and The Predator. My wings pulled back and coiled into drill shapes while she launched off that pencil, once more pulling her scythe back for another deadly slash.

Unfortunately, before our attacks could land, a shockwave of BRAVE power exploded out of Errorphim. At the last instant my drill wings changed shape, morphing together into a shield of ink before me while that orange force crashed into me. I was thrown back through the air from the impact, landing on my feet on the calcium floor and skidding back a few paces. Predator swung her scythe down the moment that orange light flared, sending a stream of ice blasting out of its blade and crashing into the floor beneath. This shoved her up into the air, out of the range of that flash.

The moment my wings unfolded and spread wide back in their usual shape, I saw that Errorphim's glare laid upon me. His own wings beat, and he fired down to me. I hastily threw up my hands, and my teeth grit with exertion when I caught his palms in my own. The two of us locked up there, Errorphim's might forcing me to lean back some while he barred down on me from above. He sneered while my expression twisted with exertion, his white aura fell over the scarlet hue that enveloped my body while he growled. "You think your old pals can save you from me? This is your judgement day Angel, nobody's gonna stop me from destroying every glitch you've created!"

"You got any idea how many "I'm gonna kill everything you love" speeches I've heard today alone..?!" I snarled through grinding teeth, my fingers clenching tight around Errorphim's hands. I shoved up against him with all my might, but my body was still being forced to lean back. My spine was forced to arch, my knees had to bend. Even still I shot my mouth off, my wings once more coiling into drills behind me. "You're not the first person to try and take everything from me Error, not even close! And if they couldn't destroy me, neither can you!"

"Wishful thinking!" Errorphim snarled, yanking his head back in hopes of cracking his forehead down into mine. Before he could throw that skull forward, however, Lexi dropped down from above. Her scythe swung down under his bottom jaw, hooking under his chin and right where spine met skull. She planted her feet on Errorphim's back and pulled with all her might, and he snarled as he released my hands, stumbling backwards. Grey smoke burned up from where Lexi's Ghoul Scythe met his bone, and judging from Errorphim's grunting and growling it didn't feel too good.

"Yeah! Ya like that, twitchy?!" Predator called down to the god that she was steering, ice forming around her hands and keeping her grip locked on to her scythe. Those wings spread and flailed by her sides, and Errorphim attempted to reach up over his shoulders to grab her, but she continued to pivot and lean out of his reach while she ground that scythe blade into his throat. She snarled while she pulled, "Hey, if it's any consolation, you were my least favorite temporary teammate!"

On that note Errorphim suddenly yanked his arms forward and hunched with them, curling his spine in a sudden jerking motion. With this motion, his vertebra suddenly extended up in blunt spikes from his spine and shot right at Predator. Her scarlet eyes snapped open wide just before half a dozen of those bones punched up into her body, shoving her with brutal force off Errorphim's back and throwing her back through the air.

Errorphim threw his head back and his arms out to the side, straightening his back and commanding his vertebrae to pull back into their normal shape. When he lifted his head however, he spotted a massive eraser barreling towards him head on. Hastily he reached out with one skeletal hand, and the freight train force of that massive pencil pillar came to a harsh and immediate stop against his palm, sending a wave of force blasting past Errorphim.

Before he could relax however, the rubber of that eraser exploded open in black tendrils. Ink fired out of that pencil in lashing whips, tentacles that wrapped tight around Errorphim's arms and wings. One wrapped right around the back of his head and coiled around his neck, and they all pulled to drag him forward as pen points shot out of the eraser they were reeling him into. Errorphim's jaw clenched with his fists, he was angered by this act of defiance and the touch of mortal magic.

Predator landed a ways behind Errorphim and I stood a ways in front of him, and we both watched as another blast of white light exploded out of his body. I winced into the flash that deleted my assault, put up my arms in case I was Errorphim's next target. But, my wincing eyes instead saw the mad god fire up into the sky and away from Lexi and I. I knew immediately what he was doing; in the air he had the clear advantage. I was the only opponent he had with wings.

So, my wings spread wide and beat down, sending me firing up after him. At the same time, the ground beneath exploded open in the wake of dozens of skyscraper pens. They curled in a perfect circle, blasting upwards with a velocity so high that they shot right by me and up after Errorphim. I was trying to limit the sky around him, it was sorta like trying to put a cup down around a bug on a coffee table. If, the bug was a god and the coffee table was the entire sky.

A little ways beneath me, Predator was jumping from one wall of the hollow pen spire to the other, rapidly racing up after me. Above, Errorphim continued to sky rocket, even when those pens shot up past him. He frowned and growled at this, his wings beat harder and sent him firing upwards even faster in hopes of outspeeding the pens enclosing him. He knew he could fly higher than they could raise, and soaring into the ozone layer would only give him a wider range to obliterate the battlefield beneath.

Unfortunately, Errorphim didn't get the chance to get that high. Suddenly, the rising pens came to an abrupt stop. Errorphim sneered at this, figured they couldn't go any higher and beat his wings to fly out of their reach. But, just before he could rise over the tips of those pens, Xander The Gatherer jumped over from the opposite side of the sky scrapers. Having hitched a ride on one when they first launched out of the ground, Gatherer yanked back his hands as they crackled with magenta electricity. Errorphim barely had time to spread his wings wide and force himself to a sudden stop before Xander whipped his hands down, and with a crack bolts of lightning exploded down from Xander's finger tips and down towards Order's Mad God.

Glaring up at The Gatherer, Errorphim threw one hand up towards the lightning raining down towards him. Immediately, a wall of KIND light formed above him, just in time for Gatherer's lightning to blast against it. Sparks shot in all directions, Errorphim watched voltage crackle and dance along that emerald surface. It cracked and waivered... Before one ivory fist shot right through it.

Errorphim recoiled as Anarchy punched right through his defense, plummeting down towards the mad god with violet sparks flickering around him. He yanked that crowbar high over his head, and a beacon of scarlet light fired up out of it just before he brought it crashing down on the crown of Errorphim's head. A shockwave of red blasted out from the impact, blowing apart the peaks of the pens surrounding the two of them and sending Errorphim exploding downward like an ivory rocket.

My wings beat and yanked me to the side, letting Errorphim's body fire right past me. Predator jumped from one wall to the other, narrowly avoiding his deadly velocity. Anarchy backflipped after the impact of his brutal attack, landing crouched on one side of the multi-pen spire with his crowbar slung over his shoulder and an honest grin on his face. To his right Gatherer landed, placing his hands in his pockets and keeping his now half crumbled cigarette between his teeth while he smirked down into the darkness that Errorphim had been swatted into. Predator jumped up and landed on the ledge opposite to Gatherer, placing one hand on her hip and resting her scythe's long handle across her shoulders. My wings carried me up over the three of them, spreading wide while I glared past the three of them and down towards Errorphim.

The mad god's impact sent a blast of force exploding up past the four of us. The earth crashed open in a crater and cracks blasted up through the pen spire, prompting Lexi, Xander, and Anny to all jump back without hesitation. My wings beat and carried me off the crumbling spire as well, and soon enough the four of us had all landed at opposite ends of the crater. I stood to the North, Anny to the South, Lexi to the West and Xander to the East.

We all watched that cloud of dust. Chunks of shattered pens dropped down into it, the sound of them crashing into the earth was the only sound in the world for several long moments. We all stood spring loaded. Tense, ready to move... Before another blast of ivory light exploded out of that crater. It spread through the entire dust cloud in an instant, obliterating the smoke right with all the pen chunks and that broken bone down freight bone.

When the light cleared we could all see Errorphim floating above the glassed earth unscathed. His expression was blank. Cold, calculating... That was bad. Errorphim was arrogant and self important, it's part of what made dancing around him on the easier side despite his godly power. If he was actually focusing... The ground rippled, and an ocean of bones crashed out from beneath him. A tidal wave sprawling in all directions, ivory spikes rose and fell in a fluid motion. And at the epicenter, shining with light beyond our mortal comprehension floated Errorphim.

Gatherer was quick to drop to one knee, planting his hands in the glassy sands at his feet. Immediately, the earth before him erupted with molten heat. Geysers of lava fired up into the spines tearing towards him, melting clean through them and catching them in their thick, super heated form. That magma exploded open in the next instant however, and Xander recoiled as Errorphim shot right through the melted rock, reaching forward with one massive skeletal hand.

The Gatherer's shout was cut short and muffled when Errorphim grabbed him by the face. He continued forward on those wings as he shoved Xander's head down into the dirt, dragging him across the brutal surface of this dead valley and using his skull like a garden hoe. He dug a trench through the sands with the back of Xander's head, allowing myself a little smile while he felt The Gatherer's muffled yelling vibrating in his palm.

Xander's hands wrapped tight around Errorphim's wrist, they smoked and steamed. Up his arms raced his snake tattoos, Errorphim's sockets narrowed as the molten serpents coiled up his own arm. They wrapped up his bones all the way to his face, where they opened their maws wide and snapped at his face. One stabbed its fangs against Errorphim's bottom jaw and the other against his brow bone, but despite their super heated venom the snakes could not break through Errorphim's aura or his bones.

While his serpents constricted Errorphim's arm, the mad god pulled Xander out of the dirt and lifted him up over his head. Ever defiant, The Gatherer swung his feet and kicked blasts of flames into Errorphim's divine body. This assault too had no effect, and Errorphim opened his free hand's palm just a few inches from Gatherer's abdomen. An orb of golden energy almost instantly expanded in his skeletal hand, growing until it pressed into Gatherer's solar plexus and then immediately exploding in a flash of JUSTICE energy.

That blast sent The Gatherer flinging back through the air, and though Errorphim's hand let go of Xander's face those snakes only wrapped tighter around his arm. Gatherer flipped in air, landing on the balls of his feet and skidding back some, his hands still tied to Errorphim's arm by those snakes. With his arms lifted and tangled with Errorphim's one arm, The Gatherer had no choice but to inhale, puffing out his chest and igniting a brutal orange light in his diaphragm. That light shot upwards through his throat, and he lurched forward, letting his jaws snap open and releasing another brutal beam of fire with a furious roar.

Errorphim watched that laser of orange light race towards him with disinterest, before his own jaws creaked open, revealing another orb of white light trapped within. Again that orb rapidly grew, expanding until it was caught between Errorphim's teeth. The moment that it was, the mad god bit down, popping that white plasma bulb and sending white light blasting out from his maw like a wave of shining death.

That ivory light blasted forward with inescapable width, tearing right through The Gatherer's fire breath and barreling towards him. Hastily Xander threw his arms out to his sides, severing the snakes connecting him to Errorphim. Fire exploded out from his feet, launching him straight up into the air and right over that deadly wave of godly light.

Now suspended in air, Gatherer's eyes darted down to where Errorphim remained floating above the ground. His wings beat, and he fired up at Xander with terrifying speed. The Fortunate Son grimaced at this, clenching that smoldering cigarette butt between his teeth. Hastily he spat what remained of that cancer stick out, sending it flinging down towards the mad god racing up to meet him. Just before the filter dinged off of Errorphim's head, that cigarette flashed with ivory heat, before suddenly exploding apart in a massive orb of brutal flames. Errorphim was engulfed in the blast, the force of which blew back Xander's hair and carried him higher into the air.

As he watched that writhing ball of flames however, Gatherer's eyes narrowed. The fire he'd commanded to explode out of that cigarette... It was being sucked back inwards. In a matter of seconds, those exploding flames were dragged inward and that blast disappeared from around Errorphim, revealing him to be floating there unscathed. In his open palm, he held the cigarette butt that Xander had spat at him. With power that Xander had no concept of, he'd rewinded that explosion and put that cigarette back together.

"Fun party trick!" Gatherer shouted down to Errorphim. He threw one hand back and sent his snakes whipping down towards the earth to latch onto something and pull him out of the air, pointing two fingers on the opposite hand down towards Errorphim. His finger tips crackled with violet voltage while he snarled, "Now why don't you try and catch this in a bottle?!"

Effortlessly, Errorphim flicked that cigarette butt out to his side. As he did, orange light rapidly formed above him. In a split second, a skeletal hand made entirely of electric BRAVE power had formed between Errorphim and Xander, and in its palm it caught the magenta light of Xander's lightning. The Gatherer's eyes widened some at the sight of this, that orange light reflected in his scarlet irises while his eye twitched.

"Why catch in a bottle what I can hold in my hand?" Errorphim inquired, tilting his skull to the side and smirking up at the glaring Gatherer. He growled before his snake whip pulled tight, yanking him down towards the earth that it had attached to. Errorphim's smile didn't fade as Xander reeled himself down towards the earth, in fact it only grew as he threw his arm out to the side. On this command that BRAVE hand dissipated to nothing, and the ground that Xander was plummeting towards rumbled and twisted.

Sand collapsed in on itself. It shifted and moved into whatever place fit Errorphim's grand design, and then its shape changed. Glass and dirt morphed together into bone and then bone started to slither. Gatherer landed and stood on the patch of earth that his snake's venom had scorched to glass, and his head whipped from side to side to watch the massive spines rise from the vibrating earth around him.

A long, coiling spine. No, two... Maybe three? It was impossible to tell where one started and one ended, what with the length of those enormous constructs and the way they weaved and slithered. Xander had it put together what those long skeletons with rows of ribs were, long before the massive head of one of those skeleton serpents rose above him. Snake like as the body was, those creatures had heads far more draconic. Similar, almost identical in fact to the floating heads of Errorphim's Godly Gaster Blasters.

Gatherer's furious scarlet eyes darted between the three massive snakes now glaring down at him. They rose from massive canyons, black trenches that dug deeper into the earth than The Gatherer could see. Three Skeletal Wyrms, their long bodies coiled and blocked off every exit. Xander wasn't afraid though, he merely grit his teeth and threw down the both of his arms, sending his flaming snakes whipping out and cracking against the small, glassed platform that he stood on. He dared challenge those divine beasts, "Well come on! Who among you has the guts to try and strike down your creator's creator?!"

The Skelewyrms did not hesitate to answer The Gatherer's challenge. Their three maws snapped open in unison, and from within ivory light ignited. Xander bent his knees, his eyes darted hastily between those three heads. He watched, and waited... Before whipping out one hand to his right. His snake whip cracked outward, up into the air, where it wrapped tight around one of the ribs of a Skelewyrm. Just as those beasts screamed and unleashed tidal waves of white fire, that whip pulled tight and yanked Gatherer right off his feet.

Xander's teeth clenched as he fired up through the air, swinging around the side of that undead serpent's body. He pulled his left hand over his right shoulder and straightened his index and middle finger while he flung across the glitching sky, and magenta voltage cracked up his fingers while the Skelewyrm that he was attached to slowly turned its head towards him, that beam following behind. Before it could vaporize him right out of the sky though, Xander whipped his hand down and pointed those two fingers at the serpent.

CRACK!

Lightning blasted right off Gatherer's fingers, crashing with an explosion of sparks and embers into the side of that skeletal Wyrm. It's screech was muffled in the laser it fired, and as its sockets clenched shut the force of Xander's blast knocked its head to the side. With its head whipping to the side, the Skelewyrm's heavenly blast crashed right into the face of the serpent beside it, engulfing its skull entirely.

Xander sneered victoriously at the sight of that now headless Skelewyrm crumbling back into the trench it had crawled out of. His whip released, racing back up to coil his arm and letting him launch freely through the air. But, while his eyes focused on the two remaining Skelewyrms recovering beneath, multicolored blocks started to appear behind him. Little pixels that rapidly formed, Gatherer looked over his shoulder with wide eyes just in time to see Errorphim teleport right behind him.

The mad god had broken down into and reformed out of pixels in a way that The Gatherer had only seen Badster comprehend how to do before. Xander hardly had time to contemplate the gravity of this however, because Errorphim was yanking back a sword made entirely out of stolen DETERMINATION. For just a moment, it felt to Xander that time slowed to a crawl. His wide eyes locked on to that scarlet saber, he could see his reflection in its light. His eyes were a vibrant purple only in that cruel red mirror...

"Your little plan failed, Chara. Your hero isn't coming to save you, and no one is going to wretch this multiverse out of my hands ever again."

I'm getting real tired of this irony!

Though it was obvious that dying on Chara's sword wielded by the monstrosity he'd used their soul to create was a fitting end to Xander's life, I thought death was too lenient a sentence for him. So, at the last second I blasted down, crashing both feet into Errorphim's jaw. His sockets went blank for just a moment, his grip released that blade and it disappeared while my sonic speed drop kick forced his head to turn. Then, time returned to its normal speed and the momentum I'd gathered and blasted him with carried through, sending Order's Mad God firing down towards the devastated valley beneath.

My wings spread wide, catching me to stop me from launching backwards in the red shockwave that blasted out of my impact. A computer key appeared beneath Xander around the same time, and he landed crouched on top of it, keeping his eyes on the plummeting divine beneath us. I turned my head to those skeletal serpents to our right however, just in time to watch Predator jump off of a stream of ice she'd been surfing through the air with and down towards the Skelewyrm that Xander had blasted in the eye with lightning.

With the beast's one eye still burned and clenched shut, it didn't see Lexi plummeting down towards it until it was too late. She yanked her scythe up over her head while that madwoman grin yanked up her features, and the black ice of her Ghoul Scythe pulsed and seethed just before she swung. With all her might The Predator cleaved downward, and her curved blade split right through the crown of that wretched serpent's head, red light and black frost following its path through the bone. Finally, her blade blasted out of the Skelewyrm's chin, and Lexi watched with giddy eyes as the undead kaiju's head split vertically, right down the middle.

As that skeleton's long body crumbled down into the cavern that it had launched out of, it fell out of the path of its last remaining sibling. Still unscathed, the third Skelewyrm's maw was already wide open, and the white light of its charging laser reflected in The Predator's wide eyes. Just before it's beam could fire and evaporate Lexi like the ice she often weaponized, however, the Darkness beneath that skeleton exploded open. From within, the grinning maw of a vantablack Wyrm launched at high speed.

That Dark Wyrm snapped its jaws shut around the throat of its skeletal counterpart, dragging its head higher into the sky and disrupting its aim. Xander and I ducked our heads as that molten white laser blasted over us. It fired high into the sky, split the glitching and frame skipping clouds and disappeared into the warping space beyond the atmosphere. Our eyes followed its ascent, before Xander and I looked hastily back to one another. The music faded out while The Gatherer spoke first, "This is taking too long! He keeps figuring out new tricks!"

"Yeah, him starting to put together the same teleportation that Badster uses is real bad news." I shook my head after agreeing with Gatherer. I landed beside him on that floating key and I crouched down, wrapping one hand around the edge of our platform and looking over the ledge. It struck me as odd that Errorphim had not counterattacked after I kicked him, but it made sense when I saw him down below, summoning KIND walls to block the red flashes of Anny's vicious, high speed assault. I looked back up to Xander, "We have to find a way pick up the pace."

"Well..." Gatherer furrowed his brows, staring over that ledge right with me. While we spoke, the two of us were watching and waiting for an opening to do heavy damage or if need be a quick save for Anthony. But the two of them were darting back and forth so fast, even I was struggling to keep up with them. Xander's lips curled deeper into a frown while he watched that white and red blur dart back and forth across the sands beneath, I wondered what he might have been pondering. If I felt such a gap between my own raw power and the power of those battling beneath us, I couldn't imagine how he may have been feeling. But, Xander was stubborn. It was a big part of how we got into this mess. So he combed his brain, opened and shut metaphorical filing cabinets filled to the brim with the carefully organized information kept in his analytical mind... Before finally, begrudgingly, he parted his lips and floated an idea that he himself was clearly not particularly fond of. "... What about fusion?"

"Fusion?" My eyebrows rose - that was about the last thing I'd expected to come outta The Gatherer's mouth. Fusion wasn't too popular multiverse wide for a reason; most people weren't exactly jazzed about sharing their body, let alone their mind and soul. For that reason and a few others it typically remained unresearched and almost completely unknown in most timelines, at least in the case of unions between two humans with the same soul color. I turned my head to look back up at Xander, cocking a brow and waiting for him to elaborate.

"Fusion, soul merging, mutual possession - whatever you want to call it. It allowed you to go toe to toe with Anarchy, Frisk, Character, Eden and I all at once. And that was just between you and Chara." Xander shrugged his shoulders while his hand fished through his pocket, like he was trying to appear casual about his suggestion. But, it was clear from his frown and the general grumble in his voice, he didn't actually like this idea. But, desperate times and desperate measures are something the Fortunes knew a lot about, so he went on. "Surely if the four of us mashed our souls together, we could do away with this ungodly abomination."

"..." I remained quiet for a moment. My eyes glossed back down to the exploding battlefield beneath, and I silently contemplated my old boss's suggestion. I'd hardly ever considered sharing a soul and a body with someone other than Chara, let alone three people who were not Chara. For just a moment, some image of a legendary warrior appeared in my head. Red eyes, white hair, horns on its head and frozen ink wings coming out of its shoulders. A crowbar in one hand, a scythe in the other, a cigarette between its lips and a Deltarune on its back... My eyes glossed over to the back of my left hand though, and I grimaced at the sight of those glowing red cracks scarred onto my flesh for life. I sighed and shut my eyes, shaking my head before I gave my answer. "No, It'd never work."

"Hm? And why not?" Xander's frown deepened and his brows furrowed. He shot a glare at the back of my head while he fished that beat up pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. Must've taken a lotta guts to dig that suggestion up, and I doubted he took too kindly to me shooting his idea down even if he himself didn't like it.

"Well, for one, any regular body starts to break down when it puts out DETERMINATION that it isn't prepared to handle." To emphasize my point, I turned around some, lifting my left arm and showcasing its scars to The Gatherer. His eyes narrowed at the way they shined and burned, his brain likely reminded him of the fight he'd watched me and Anthony have on Mount Ebott. "The only body that might be able to handle power like that is Anny's, and even that feels like a stretch. Not to mention, his soul is basically already seemingly endlessly DETERMINED. So I wouldn't exactly be shocked if us fusing with it would be like dumping a gallon jug of water into the ocean: pointless and a one way trip."

"You really believe his soul is that different from our own?" Xander asked carefully. He didn't sound like he doubted my words, in fact it sounded like he was hanging onto everything I said. That made sense, he must've known that I knew a lot more about fusion and a lot more about Anthony than he did.

"Am I certain of it? No. But c'mon, the dude was refusing death back in Fortune City - before we were super human. It ain't a coin worth flipping." I shook my head, standing slowly from my crouched position. I placed my hands in my pockets, and my wings shuffled with some unease. I wasn't exactly jazzed about delivering this bad news; in a perfect world, fusion would've been a quick and easy solution to this mess. And I did appreciate the irony of Error coming back with new power three years later just to get folded by an unlikely fusion again. But, life was hardly ever that easy for us Fortune folk. "Even beyond all that though, there's no way the four of us can coexist in one body like that."

"I'm not sure I agree with that." Xander calmly disputed, slapping that cigarette pack against the palm of his opposite hand. Once one cigarette had risen above the others he brought the pack up to his mouth and took that cancer stick between his teeth, pulling the pack away and freeing it. He glanced back over to me and spoke with one half of his jaw shut, "It's been three years since we were last together, and we still work with incredible synergy on the battlefield."

"That's because we all know how to fill separate roles. But we're all stubborn and we're all head strong - all four of us would be pulling in different directions, trying to do something different all at once instead of working together. Being powerful doesn't matter if we're just laying on the ground having a seizure. Not to mention the serious personal issues we have with each other..." I sighed through my teeth, looking down over the edge of our key platform. I contemplated for another moment, maybe I was being too negative... But, then I remembered the swing I took at Xander's head just a few hours ago, and I knew that wasn't the case. I glanced back over to him, "Don't get me wrong Xander I'm glad we're on the same team, but we can't pretend that we aren't in this mess because you and I were totally incapable of not trying to kill each other just a few hours ago. We wouldn't be able to have coffee together without buttin' heads, let alone share a body."

"... Well, you've got me there. I haven't forgotten that you literally threw me through the statue I built of my dead boyfriend. Who you killed." Xander took a moment to think, but ultimately agreed. I grumbled quietly at his accusatory jab, but decided now wasn't the time to start an argument. Xander shrugged his shoulders with some exasperation, and his eyes dropped to the cigarette between his lips. He lifted his hand to cup around the cigarette's tip before lifting that old lighter, flipping it open and using its unyielding fire to ignite his addiction. He hesitated then... Before rolling his eyes. "... And, I... Guess, I did one or, two rude things in there somewhere too."

"... Yeah." I squinted irritably at Xander, my sentence punctuated by the sound of Errorphim's blaster firing at Anny down below. I let my aggravation go though, exhaled quietly and shut my eyes briefly. Pretentious as he was, Xander had in fact showed up to clean up this mess, and he was even willing to put his pride aside and share a soul with me of all people to put this beast down. That counted for something, but I didn't have to say it yet. I opened my eyes, and I squinted with thought one more time. There was of course the most glaring issue of all, The Killer in my mind. I didn't know if it was possible, but if there was any way he could jump ship to Anthony's brain were we to fuse, there wasn't a doubt in my mind he'd go for it. Lord only knew what trouble that would cause... But, even beyond that... "Throw in all the problems me n' Anny have had, as well as the trouble you n' I have both caused Lexi... Even if the fusion did work, and we did kill Errorphim... There's a chance we'd just end up being a bigger problem than he was."

"Oh? The incorruptible Angel doubts his own goody goody nature?" The Gatherer glanced over at me and flashed that grimy smile of his. Smoke filtered out from between his teeth right with his sarcasm, and even though he was insulting me I scoffed with amusement.

"I'm about the furthest thing from incorruptible, Xander. It's always been way easier for me to do the wrong thing than it's been to do the right thing." No point in hiding that from Xander, he was a direct victim of my villainy on more than one occasion. I lifted my eyes to the glitching sky while I pulled my hands out of my pockets, and I counted on my fingers while I explained. "You wanna put my insecurity and cruelty together with your anger and hunger for power, Lexi's thrill seeking, and Anarchy's psychosis? Methinks we'd end up a lot worse than the sum of our parts. Again, not a coin worth flipping."

"Alright alright, I get it already!" Xander groaned, rolling his eyes while he pulled his cigarette away from his lips with two fingers. He stuffed his free hand in his pocket and leaned back some, blowing grey poison into the air. He shut his eyes and grumbled, "I guess fusion isn't the quick fix I was hoping it was. You got any ideas that you can't write a college thesis on the flaws of?"

"... Hmm..." That was a good question. I knew all the ways we lose this fight, but did I actually know how we get the W here? I ground my teeth together and grumbled while I contemplated. C'mon smart guy, you figured out how to topple a crime syndicate when you were a teenager! You figured out how to save Chara the first time, do it again!

Chara... Man, if they were here I bet they'd know what to do. A lotta times, it felt like they were so much smarter than me. If I could just talk to them, reach out and get them to hear me. If they would respond when I called out for help, like the... Like, the, Lost Souls do, at the end of a True Pacifist route. When, Frisk fights, a Seven Souled God... My eyes went wide, and it felt like a lightbulb flipped on over my head. So surprised was I at a revelation that should have been obvious that I stated suddenly, "Oh shit."

*Alright Angel, you've got the gun. Now figure out how to put one between god's eyes again.

---

After that drop kick sent him flying away from Gatherer, Errorphim's wings spread wide and caught him a few dozen feet above the earth beneath. He chose to float there for a few moments, he knew he had time. His stamina was infinite, he was infinite. It was the wayward children that had to pick up the pace, The Fortune City Four were the ones on the clock.

Errorphim rubbed his chin, right where that brutal dropkick had landed. He looked at his hand afterwards, like he was checking for blood or dust. Of course he found none, and the momentary pain had already subsided. Still, he squinted at his palm for just a moment. With his memory in tact once more, Errorphim could recall that for much of his past lives, he had been... Fragile. Before he was warped, he'd had one HP. The weakest monster in the underground. Then, he was a shambling corpse, half melted and perpetually halfway through fading away. Even when he was Error, Character had proven that he was still small and weak...

Being so powerful so suddenly, waking up from that last life as though it was just a dream, it was strange adjusting. Every time he was touched, a danger sense would fire in his brain. Decades of dying in just one hit, lifetimes of fragility had left him careful and anxious. Even now, in this godly body, something in his brain would scream "You're gonna die!" at the exact moment when a strike struck him. But the moments after that, when he didn't die. When nothing broke, nothing crumbled, when he didn't even feel pain. Errorphim's grin slowly dug further up his face, That's euphoria.

A laser fired by overhead, something from the maw of one of his own creations. The sound of Wyrm and Skelewyrm brawling brought Errorphim back to reality, it drew his attention over to the two beasts in the background. Ah, that was right. Anthony The Anarchist... His strikes did hurt. His touch burned, but Errorphim welcomed it. There was still weakness in him after all, the fear he felt every time he was hit was proof of that. He trusted The Anarchist could burn that weakness out of him.

So, Errorphim's smile didn't falter when shadows crashed up from beneath. When a horde of worms, giggling and gnashing their teeth fired up from the ground directly underneath him. They stretched up into the air, raced head long into their doom without hesitation. The Dark was a relentless thing, unafraid of death. Willing to die if it meant that it got to kill, Errorphim didn't like it but he had to respect that level of devotion. Unfortunately for them, he would never die again.

With the wave of his hand, a flash of white light had engulfed those wriggling Dark creatures. The light of Errorphim's ERASURE obliterated those unruly shadows, and the mad god allowed himself a split second too long to admire his own handiwork. From within the flash of his light came a shadow he couldn't ignite; Anthony The Anarchist fired up out of that white flare, his eyes wide and his lips peeled back in a feral grin.

He shot up right behind Errorphim, throwing his arm back and keeping a white knuckled grip on his crowbar. But, just as he cleaved forward with that cruel metal, Errorphim's hulking skeletal form broke down to multicolored blocks. The pixels that made up his form fell apart and pulled away, vanishing in a split second and leaving Anarchy's crowbar to swing through nothing but thin air.

In the very next moment those pixels burst back out of thin air, this time behind The Anarchist. Errorphim rapidly reassembled, already pulling back one open palm and holding in it a crackling orb of JUST energy. He shoved that hand forward, but before he could smash that flaring light into Anthony's spine, Chaos Incarnate spun around. He swung his empty hand around, clamping his grip onto Errorphim's wrist and yanking that skeletal hand to the side. The orb Errorphim had tried to blast Anthony with fired a laser of gold over The Anarchist's shoulder while he yanked back his crowbar, once more swiping with brutal force at the head of Order's Mad God.

Errorphim's jaw tightened when his free hand shot up, snapping shut around that disgusting metal and stopping it in its tracks. For but a single moment he and Anarchy were suspended in air, both grinning wide with madness burning in their eyes. Hastily Errorphim's wings beat, sending the both of them firing down towards the sand. Anarchy hardly minded this rapid descent, swinging his legs back moments before impact and landing on his feet.

The moment his feet were on solid ground, Anarchy pushed up. His heels dug into the dirt and he was sent skidding back, keeping a tight grip on Errorphim's wrist and Errorphim keeping a tight grip on his crowbar. With the mad god baring down on him from above, Anarchy was forced to arch his back just to keep pushing upwards and defying the divine force that was trying to crush him. Scarlet electricity crackled over his body, his teeth grit in his grin and any sweat that broke out on his forehead instantly evaporated under the heat of his crimson heart.

"Things really have changed in my time away!" Errorphim sneered while his wings beat harder, kicking up charred sand around the two of them and making Anarchy grunt with exertion. His heels dug deeper into the dirt, he was pushed back further, and Errorphim's feet weren't even touching the ground. The mad god bore down on Chaos Incarnate, rage in his sockets and glee in his grin while he went on. "Last time I saw you, you were just a delusional killer! But now, you're-!"

"Oh I've always been a Killer, dwarf!" Anarchy cut Errorphim off, and his feet caught better traction. His rapid backwards slide skidded to a momentary stop, and a few deep groans and grunts echoed out of his chest while he shoved up into the mad god bent on striking him down. Those wings flexed, pushed forward even harder... "This is just the first time you've been strong enough to understand what that means!"

"Side note: you've got no room to talk about delusion!" Suddenly, Anthony swung his legs up and threw his head back. Errorphim's sockets widened some, his momentum carried him forward and lined him up perfectly for the dropkick that Anarchy then shotgunned right into his sternum. The force of this strike, coupled with Errorphim's momentum, sent the mad god flipping ass over tea kettle right over The Anarchist while he shouted defiantly, "You're the one who actually thinks he's got a shot at winning this fight!"

Errorphim's wings spread wide while Anthony backflipped, and as he caught himself upside down Anarchy landed crouched on one knee. His head whipped around to look over his shoulder at the mad god, who at the same time spun to be right side up. Anarchy's shadow fired up from behind him, three worms rose with gnashing teeth just for ivory spikes to fire down through the tops of their heads and pin them right back into the dirt in unison. And as Errorphim's wings beat and fired him forward at The Anarchist, he spun around and stood to his full height in one fluid motion. He swung that crowbar while Errorphim drew back his hand and manifested another scarlet blade in his grasp, and the mad god stabbed forward just in time to have his assault deflected by that twisted steel.

"Such confidence, even while your 'friends' struggle to figure out how to defeat me!" Errorphim spun with the momentum that Anarchy gave him by swatting his stab away, pulling one hand up over his shoulder and manifesting another scarlet saber. He cleaved at the skull of the Anarchist with it as he completed his rotation, but Anarchy jumped back out of his range. the mad god planted his feet in the sand and beat his wings, sending him firing right after Anthony while he pulled back the both of those blades to his sides. "How do you think they'd feel if they knew you were holding back?"

"Hopefully they'd be smart enough to know I'm doin' it for their own good!" Anarchy snarled as he watched Errorphim drive those blades towards him. If he hadn't left his shield behind, he could have blocked those strikes and counterattacked, but without his sapphire guard he was forced to jump instead. Those scarlet sabers stabbed through the air he'd just occupied, and Errorphim's eyes darted up to watch the now airborne Anarchist yank his crowbar back and prepare to knock his head right off his shoulders. "I don't need to go all out to kill you, anyway!"

"Their own good? My, you have gone soft!" Errorphim didn't flinch, even as that crowbar collided with the side of his head. A bolt of red lightning fired off of the impact, illuminating Anarchy's shocked expression and Errorphim's wide eyed grin. In the next instant Errorphim flipped his swords in his hands so that their blades faced upwards, and Anthony barely had time to recoil before the both of those sabers slashed upwards in a X. His pupils shrunk and his grin widened when he felt pain tear through his chest, and Errorphim went on while Anarchy's meaningless blood splattered across his face. "If you've always been a Killer, why are you trying to be something different now?"

"Things change..!" Anarchy growled while his now blood soaked shirt flapped in the wind, tore open at its front in an X. It was a good thing he had leaned back, or those slashes would have cut right through his upper body. Still, even as his blood sprayed through the air, his lips remained peeled back in that mad grin. His wide eyes and shrunken pupils twitched with deranged excitement while he watched Errorphim's jaws snap open, revealing a crackling sphere of white light hidden within.

In the next instant that concentrated laser of ivory death exploded upwards, firing right into Anarchy's already sealing chest and blasting it open again. The Bastard Son was sent flinging up into the air in the blast's flash, flipping and flaming and smoking. Ivory flames clawed at his flesh, his shirt and jacket had exploded off of his body when that attack struck him, only remaining in burning patches of cloth that still stuck to his flesh. But red was already steaming off his body, those brutal burns and the trench that had been blasted into his solar plexus were rapidly healing.

As Anarchy's prone body sailed through the air, Errorphim rapidly appeared out of shining pixels above him. The mad god fired straight down, he grabbed a handful of the back of Anarchy's head and in the blink of an eye he was driving The Anarchist face first into the dirt. The ground exploded apart from their impact, a bolt of white lightning crashed down beside them from the flickering clouds overhead. A massive crater expanded out around them, and in the epicenter Errorphim sneered while he ground Anthony's face into the sand.

"All that time preaching honesty when you can't even tell yourself the truth." Errorphim's sockets narrowed and his grin widened. Between his fingers he could see one half of Anarchy's face, cut up by the cruel glassy sands and steaming red. With the other side of his face buried in the dirt, only one of those wide, bloodshot eyes could stare up at Order's Mad God. It trembled with fury and madness that even Errorphim could hardly comprehend, but still he went on. "After all this time, all the brutality you've shrugged off and all the cataclysms you've caused, do you expect me to believe that you still think you're mortal? You're not even human, so why are you still pretending?"

Anarchy didn't answer with words. Instead, his shadow spread wide beneath him, and from within its vantablack shade several worms exploded out with maws open wide. Errorphim didn't flinch and he certainly didn't hesitate; in an instant another brutal flash of white exploded out around him. The cruel light of his ERASURE destroyed those worms before any of them could make contact, it leveled the bottom of the crater and it engulfed the Ghoul that Errorphim had trapped under his hand.

Errorphim sneered at Anarchy's futile resistance, he prepared more words to berate him with. But, before he could speak, a vantablack pincer fired up through the fading light of his ERASURE. Errorphim didn't even have time to lean back before the iron grip of that scorpion claw clamped shut around his neck, making his eyes widen and his jaw tighten. The light faded, and he could see not only Anarchy's one wide eye but also his cruel, giddy grin.

"You think you know what it means to be human, but you've got no idea..." Anarchy spoke quietly and slowly, he wanted to make sure Errorphim was listening. It'd been a very long time since somebody made him eat dirt, he was seven or eight back then. He remembered it vividly while his teeth grit and his hands shoved into the sand. He'd begged that mean little boy to leave him alone and mind his business, but that boy didn't listen. About a decade later, Anarchy recalled as he slowly rose up beneath Errorphim's crushing weight, he bumped into that mean little boy in a dimly lit parking lot. He broke his arms and legs, Anarchy remembered while Errorphim removed his hand from the back of his head to grab at the pincer squeezing his neck. Funny thing was, Anarchy only actually recognized the guy after getting halfway through eating his corpse. Now he snarled through gritting teeth up at Errorphim, and that pincer jutting out of his shoulder flexed its might. "You think you know what a god is, but you're just a seven souled imitation..!"

"Hrnng..! You, dare question my divinity..?!" Errorphim snarled as he slowly pried that pincer off his neck. It trembled in his grasp, why was it so hard to pull away..?! He hadn't realized it before, but scarlet electricity was crackling around the two of them. The air was popping and cracking, it felt like gravity was intensifying as that crimson heart burned brighter on the chest of The Anarchist. He could feel a pulse, the heartbeat of some deadly creature hidden underneath Anthony's skin. It crashed through his bones again and again, reminded him of the fusion that had brought his last life to an end...

"Oh you wanna see somethin' divine?!" The one eye that Errorphim could see trembled with psychosis, and the right side of Anarchy's shoulder ripped open. His blood flew through the air while his second pincer shot up, snapping open wide to clamp down right over Errorphim's head. Hastily the mad god beat his wings, releasing the pincer he was holding and firing up into the air out of Anarchy's reach.

Those pincers curled downward. They slammed into the dirt, shoved Anarchy right up off the ground and onto his feet. He leaned back the moment he stood, his back arched and his head tilted back so that he could stare up at the skeleton flying overhead. Flying on wings he hadn't earned or even wished for... The Anarchist found himself smiling at Errorphim's hubris, his chest rumbled with laughter that he could hardly control. And when the ground rumbled beneath him, he jumped and spun to the side, dodging out of the way of one bone and smashing his crowbar through another that shot up at him before he landed back on his feet.

"Whatever you are Anarchy, an anomaly or an abomination but certainly not a human, you are not divine." Errorphim opened his palms, he held his arms out to the sides while his wings spread wide behind him. it was impossible to tell whether the light pouring down was sunlight or moonlight, but it washed over him regardless. Throughout the sky around him, crackling orbs of golden energy were popping into existence. Electricity pulsed around those JUSTICE bulbs, they trembled and jolted with power far beyond their size. Errorphim squinted his sockets down at the Ghoul grinning up at him with those shining red eyes, and he let his will be known. "And once I've burned this multiverse clean of your disgusting Dark stain, there will be no one left to challenge my rule."

Anarchy found his teeth grinding together even while he giggled. His wide eyes remained locked on Order's Mad God, his fingers had a white knuckled grip on his crowbar. His body was spring loaded, he could feel that itch in his brain becoming unbearable. A foe this strong, and one that would dare challenge his rule as the incarnation of chaos. For Errorphim to speak like he understood, like he had any concept of the weight Anarchy carried in his supermassive soul... Anthony had doubted his own humanity plenty, more than he'd ever let anyone know. But now this supposed god could allegedly see what he really was beneath the surface, and that made Anthony's Killer blood vibrate in his veins. Rumble, and vibrate and pulse in a way that it hadn't since...

"This world was meant for you, Anthony. You just have to reach out and take everything you want~"

Anarchy's free hand shot up, he slapped it onto the side of his head and clenched his eyes shut. This wasn't the time to think about Frisk and it certainly wasn't the time to consider what they'd offered him. To destroy everything, to lie and cheat and steal and kill. A world obliterated and recreated in whatever image he liked... Things used to be simple. Before, he could aim every bit of malice he had at Angel. But now that he'd forgiven Angel, why did he still desire destruction? ... Reel it in. If you wanna kill something, kill the dwarf.

It was raining now. Not water, but those JUSTICE orbs Errorphim had peppered the sky with. They were plummeting down from all sides, and the moment one came towards Anthony he jumped backwards. He watched that crackling bulb of gold strike the ground where he'd been standing, and immediately a pillar of yellow power exploded upwards from its impact. It faded nearly as fast as it had came, but in its wake was a smoldering hole that reached so far into the earth that only darkness could be seen within...

Anarchy slipped his hand off his face, revealing the now black iris of his right eye. He exhaled red steam through his teeth while his eyes darted left and right; blasts were making the ground rumble again and again. More and more deep craters were being made, the earth was being hole punched... Absentmindedly, one of Anthony's pincers shot up and clamped down over one of those golden orbs. It totally covered the bulb that it crushed, and though the vibration of its explosion rattled the black chitin of that Scorpion arm, no light escaped its grasp. That got Anarchy smiling again, and as his eyes darted up to spot the bright light that Errorphim was in the sky, the earth rumbled with a deep shadow.

Errorphim smiled in the sky he knew was designed for him. He watched the beautiful, deadly flashes of his power. From up here he could see it, a world burning with the flick of his wrist. Effortlessly ravaged by his infinite power in an awe inspiring display... So why did he hear laughter? Not just one voice, hundreds. Thousands. A symphony of gross giggles, hoarse wheezes and unrelenting cackles, and it wasn't long before Errorphim realized those explosions were no longer sinking deeper. Was the ground rising somehow?

No, not ground... Worms! Disgusting Dark apparitions, those death worshipping bugs were shooting out of the craters Errorphim had made and running head first into the lethal blasts he was raining down! So many of them being birthed out of the Dark just to die instantly in his Light that his assault was being... Being challenged! Pushed back into the sky that he ruled by ugly beasts damned to the ground! Errorphim scowled at the sight of their cold blood and the blackened chunks of their flesh flinging through the air, and just as he began thinking of ways to punish this blasphemy, the floor of golden blasts was pierced by the head of a Wyrm.

Errorphim's jaw tightened as he watched that wretched serpent fire up through the maelstrom. It's mad red eyes were locked on to him, its wicked maw was wide open and its fangs were dripping with blackened drool. The Wyrm did not mind the scorch marks on its scales, it didn't feel the holes burned in its armor or the flesh that had been blasted open across its long body. It was laser focused on Errorphim, it was starving and it saw his Light as a food source.

As that starving snout raced up to devour Order's Mad God, rage flickered in his sockets. For anything to see him as lesser, for a dumb beast like Anarchy's Wyrm or even The Anarchist himself to see him as anything less than almighty was a crime he refused to let go unpunished. So, he threw one hand down towards the snake, and with a cyan flare Errorphim called upon his stolen PATIENCE. In an instant, that kaiju rising to eat him was stopped. Its momentum came to an immediate pause, and its Dark body was covered in a light blue shell. PATIENT light encased the beast, it reflected in Errorphim's pupils while he narrowed furious sockets down at the monstrosity he'd captured.

The Wyrm couldn't move, but the glee never left its eyes, not even as a Godly Gaster Blaster appeared between it and the mad god it had tried to devour. With its maw trapped open, the Wyrm was defenseless against the crackling white light charging in that blaster. A beam of searing ivory was about to fire down its throat and ignite its insides, but still joy was flashing in the beast's eyes. Errorphim didn't bother pondering why, The Dark's abominations were without logic or reasoning. They did not seek to preserve or survive, they did not believe in order like Errorphim did. And under his new rule, chaos had no place.

So, the maw of that Godly Gaster Blaster slowly parted, revealing the crackling ball of death within. But, before it could fire, something shot out of the Wyrm's out mouth. From deep within its blackened insides, a head of white hair. At mach speed, Anthony The Anarchist exploded up out of his trapped beast's belly. Out of the maw of his own abomination, and right past the jaws of Errorphim's beautiful creation. Order's Mad God recoiled, his eyes widened in horror as The Anarchist threw his body right through the searing flames in the mouth of his Godly Gaster Blaster. The back of the floating skull exploded open in bone shards and ivory flames, and in the shifting light Errorphim could two giddy red eyes, staring at him like he was food.

Anarchy shot through the fire and out of the flames, his already torn clothes still had a few embers on them but all the burns on his flesh were already sealing under scarlet mist. His lips peeled back in a ferocious grin, and Errorphim hardly had the time to get up one arm as Anthony yanked his crowbar up over his head. Still cold despite the molten heat it had just went through, the wicked steel of The Anarchist's Inheritance cracked down into the forearm Errorphim had managed to throw up, and the mad god's face twisted with pain when he felt that Dark tool smash into his bone.

A black and white shockwave exploded out from the impact, Anarchy's giddy grin crept further up his face while he watched Darkness spiderweb across Errorphim's arm, like cracks in his very being. Vantablack violated his perfect white aura, it was even darker than the black bones that comprised his body. The sight of them made Errorphim tremble with disgust, to him the Darkness attempting to taint him looked like strings.

So, as his now throbbing arm dropped limp to his side, he pulled back the other. His fist clenched tight, it vibrated with the power of his divine will and just as Anarchy yanked back that crowbar to hopefully send another vicious strike into Errorphim's forehead his knuckles fired forward, and the mad god blasted an earth shattering punch right into the solar plexus of Chaos Incarnate.

Another black and white shockwave, and Anthony lurched forward around that fist. His jaw unhinged, and specks of his worthless blood spewed out from past his lips, splattering against Errorphim's unforgiving expression. In that moment everything almost seemed to pause, and through the tattered remains of his shirt and jacket, Light spiderwebbed across Anarchy's abdomen around the impact of Errorphim's fist, like cracks in his very being. It was even lighter than the pale white of his skin, and the sight of that Light made Anarchy's jaw tighten with fury. The erratic pattern and the way those cracks divided his flesh, to him they looked a lot like the scars his mother had branded him with.

Time sped back up, and Anthony was sent firing backwards through the sky at mach speed. He hardly got to launch far though, before Errorphim threw up his now disfigured arm and clenched its fist tight. It was his divine will that his Light blasted up through his bones, pouring into the trenches of pitch black Chaos The Anarchist had carved into him and obliterating that Darkness. In the same motion that he healed his arm, Order's Mad God also commanded a bone spike to appear already in motion over Anthony, and it fired down to smite him.

Anarchy might have snarled when that spike shot down through his heart, but he smiled too. That momentary blink of death that his body effortlessly shoved away never failed to make him feel alive, and even though that spike had shot into him with enough force to change his speedy trajectory to straight down, his grip only got tighter on his Inheritance. His free hand flung up and grabbed ahold of the calcium stake that tried to snuff out his unyielding life, and though his heart had already started to rebuild around it he didn't hesitate to yank it right back out of his chest, grinning and staring at Errorphim all the while.

Order's Mad God scowled; just like the worms now laying in scorched chunks on the shattered ground Anthony was plummeting towards, Errorphim believed Chaos Incarnate to be filth. Nonsensical trash with no concept of death, he believed that much was obvious in Anarchy's total lack of fear towards his own mutilation. Anthony didn't see it that way though, in his mind Errorphim was the one who didn't know what it truly meant to die. Maybe if he did, The Anarchist hypothesized, he wouldn't be such a chicken shit.

Either way, The Anarchist flipped in air to land on his feet, but when he crashed to the ground those burning white scars left behind by Errorphim's punch made his strength falter, and he dropped to one knee in the center of the crater his impact created. That finally got his grin to waver, and Anthony winced as he grabbed at his abdomen with one hand, sticking the top of his crowbar into the dirt beside him with the other and using it to steady himself.

Anarchy's eye twitched, it was half winced shut. His lips had peeled back to reveal fangs in his pained snarl, and he looked carefully over the throbbing Light burns left on his body. Felt a lot like the sunburns he used to get as a kid, if a sunburn could be hopped up on evangelical might. Regardless his hand clenched tight over those glowing white scars, and a pulse from deep within his half black soul sent Darkness rushing out of his core. The shadow of a Ghoul's Chaos flooded those trenches of searing white Order burned into his flesh and swallowed that Light.

Still... Anthony knelt there. His eye continued to twitch, and the Dark in his soul continued to pulsate. His lips pulled back further in that snarl, and beneath him his shadow writhed and wriggled. It clawed at the earth, dug rivets into the sand like it was trying to tear its way out. Out of what? On Anthony's back, those pincers were tense. Snapping like hungry jaws, it took everything Anthony had to drag those claws slowly back into his shoulders. Once again, as those vantablack arms gradually sunk back into his body, he scolded himself. I said, reel it in..!

But how could he? Frisk and Jevil, all that babbling about doing whatever he wanted. And then there was Errorphim and Spamton, going on about him not being human and talking about [[Godblood]] and [[Anarchrist]]... Anarchy's mind drifted back to when he first saw that dwarf in his flask, that feeling he got when he put his hand on the glass... He was breathing red mist through his gritting teeth by the time his pincers finally disappeared back into his shoulders, and his furious, bloodshot eyes darted up to the mad god floating high above. What does he know that I don't..?!

So concerned was Anthony with the horrible itch in his brain and the unbearable vibration in his blood, he hadn't noticed that Errorphim was pointing down at him. The mad god extended one finger out towards The Anarchist, and he slowly drew it in a line horizontally through the air. Following behind his finger was a shifting line, a tear in reality through which green ones and zeros poured. Those numbers shifted almost immediately to red however, and in the next instant those bits of broken up code were blasting down from above at an impossible speed.

Shreds of matter, those code bits tore through the air like razor shards. Staring at those number bits raining down, Anthony figured the million edges would probably slice him into a pile of red chunks on impact. That was fine, he'd live. Might've needed the pain to get his head straight, really. Regardless of whether he wanted to get hit or not, he couldn't really move in that instant. He was too busy being rocked by the tidal waves rippling in his soul, it felt like something massive was trying to emerge from under the red and black waters and holding it under was taking all of his focus. So, all Anthony could do was tuck his head down and brace for impact..!

Crash!

A crackling, shattering sound hit his ears before those shards hit his body, and the surprise of the sudden noise relieved some of that soul twisting pressure, at least enough so for Anthony to lift his head. With strained and twitching scarlet eyes, he looked up to find somebody standing between him and mutilation. One hand thrown up over her head, Lexi The Predator had jumped down from above and landed in front of The Anarchist. And from her open palm, a spike of ice had shot high into the air before rapidly breaking outwards into a dome over the two of them. Like an umbrella, that ice sheet stopped those tiny code shards in its mass. They pelted uselessly against that frozen wall, sticking into it or skidding off it.

Anthony's eyes narrowed, he had to blink them a few times. Outside the range of Lexi's umbrella, shards of broken ice and slivered code were pouring down like sheets of rain. The only noise was the harsh pitter-pattering atop that massive ice parasol, and something about that was... Calming. Up until a second ago, Anthony had all but completely forgotten he wasn't alone fighting Errorphim. So, when Lexi turned and flashed a smile back at him, he recoiled just a little. Lexi wasn't bothered by the way he flinched, she wasn't put off by the way his hairs stood and his shadow wriggled. With her free hand, she reached out to him, leaning down some to be on his level and tilting her head while she asked PATIENTLY. "Are you okay?"

"... I, uhm..." Anarchy's eyebrows rose a little bit as he stared up at her, his lips parted but words didn't come. He pondered her question a moment longer, and when he did he realized that his blood wasn't vibrating so intensely anymore. Those brutal tremors were not shaking his soul. His body relaxed, and his shadow stopped its writhing. His eyes drifted down to the hand that Lexi stretched out to him, and a single black tear suddenly overflowed from his right eye, carrying in it the Darkness that had tainted his iris and returning both of his eyes to red. Anthony took the hand off his chest and used it to take Lexi's hand, all while he flashed her a small smile. "Yeah... Yeah, I'm okay."

"Better be, dork." Lexi scoffed, her smile growing into a little smirk after his delayed response. Her hand gripped his and she yanked him up out of the dirt. Anthony rose up with her pull, standing back to his full height and using his free hand to yank his crowbar up out of the sand. The two of them looked at one another for just a moment longer, before their eyes drifted upward. That deadly downpour had slowed to a stop, and Predator's ice umbrella was crumbling. So, she lowered her hand, and cracks immediately spiderwebbed through the frosty glass. It shattered apart into little bits of snow, blown away and melted to nothing in the harsh hot winds of all the powerful souls left on this war-torn world. Lexi asked as her eyes drifted to the mad god slowly lowering down from the glitching sky, "Got any new ideas?"

"Never been an idea guy, Lex." Anarchy pursed his lips and shook his head. He kept his head turned towards Errorphim, but glanced over at her from his eye's corner while he set his crowbar on his shoulder like it was a baseball bat. "Swattin' the enemy with my crowbar's never not worked before. I'm still not convinced it won't work here."

Predator hoped Anthony was right about that. Maybe if they just found a way to hold Errorphim in place, Anarchy could keep hitting his face with that crowbar until something gave. No, that was probably a little too simple... Just before she could start rubbing her chin and really start spitballing ideas, my wings beat overhead and Xander's flames crackled. I dropped down beside Lexi and Xander beside Anthony, and the two of them looked between the both of us while we looked to them. Lexi cracked a smile and spoke first, "There's our idea guys! You boys think somethin' up?"

"One way or another, we've all managed to damage Errorphim somehow. That means he's not invulnerable and he's not unstoppable." I explained quickly and concisely, looking between the three of them. I turned my head then, let my scarlet eyes land on the mad god floating above us now. So arrogant was he that he did not make a move, instead just levitating there with that smug grin shaping his features. I frowned irritably at his certainty in our downfall and went on, "We need to find a way to hold him in one place, and as soon as we do that I'm going to try and reach Chara inside him."

"Reach Chara..?" Lexi repeated with a bit of confusion. She furrowed her brows and lifted her arms, crossing them underneath her chest before she asked. "And how exactly are you gonna do that?"

"Whenever an Asriel becomes a god, he always loses because someone always finds a way to reach the monster souls trapped inside him." I explained, looking back to the Fortunate three to my side. I knew it wasn't much, but it was the only weakness I was sure a Seven Souled God had. I went on, "All the monster souls that Asriels absorb are the equivalent of a single human soul, so that means just getting one human soul to rebel could be enough to make Errorphim mortal again. If we can get ahold of him, and if I can reach out to Chara... I think it might be our only shot."

Things were quiet for a moment or two, I could see a hint of worry in the eyes of Lexi and Anny. I wondered if they pitied me, if they thought I was chasing something impossible. If even they really believed I couldn't get Chara back. But... Then Anny cracked a smile. He stood a little taller, and seeing him do it made Lexi and even Xander look a little more sure of my words. He opened his mouth to agree with me, but somebody else spoke first.

"It won't work." The cruel tone of Order's Mad God drew all our attention back towards Errorphim. He had floated down to levitate just above the ground a few yards ahead of us, his wings spread wide behind him and his arms held out to his sides. His sockets narrowed with some twisted pity, but his grin widened with the cruelty that made him feel alive. His foot dropped down a little, and when it tapped against the dirt red electricity crackled into the earth. "I already told you, Angel. You'll never see them again."

In the next instant, the sands exploded open before Errorphim and A Fierce Battle Against A Foe / All Out Battle Cover by Friedrich Habetler Music started playing. Massive red blades crashed up out of the earth, one after the other they fired out in a wave towards us. I grit my teeth as Xander, Lexi, and Anny jumped back out of the path of those scarlet edges. My fists clenched tight and my wings pulled upwards, my scarlet aura ignited once more before my wings beat and sent me firing head first into the brunt of Errorphim's stolen attack.

I shot towards those brutal DETERMINED blades until I could see the whites of my own eyes in their reflection, and then my wings pulled up on one side and beat down on the other, yanking me to the side and letting me barrel role out of that scarlet slash's range. Errorphim rose a browbone and smirked with plenty of amusement as I weaved and maneuvered through his tidal wave of cutting DETERMINATION right before his eyes. He lifted his hands, and the moment he did I crashed into him, sending bolts of crimson and ivory lightning blasting out in all directions.

Our hands locked together, our auras burned brightly and sent boiling winds blasting the sands up around us. My eyes were wide and my lips had peeled back in a snarl as I pushed against Errorphim with all my might, but his own strength kept mine at bay. Electricity crackled and the air popped around our gridlock, and I glared into the multicolored eyes of that mad god while I shouted in his face, "Chara! I know you're in there! You have to FIGHT!"

Errorphim was beyond unphased, he was amused. He cackled at my words, suddenly yanking one of his hands back and out of my grasp. He clenched that hand into a fist and launched it right across my jaw, throwing my head to the side. My eyes snapped open wide, and I watched saliva and blood fly from my busted lip while Errorphim laughed. "You think I'm the same as the flower boy?! Nobody knows how to keep a soul tangled in strings better than I do, Angel!"

I planted my feet in the dirt to keep from stumbling back, releasing Errorphim's other hand to send my own punch blasting up at his face. Before it could connect however my vision flashed cyan, and my eyes twitched with frustration as all my momentum was forced to an instant stop under the power of his PATIENCE. Errorphim sneered as he yanked his long leg up, pulling his knee right to his chest before sending a sternum shattering pump kick right into my solar plexus. That PATIENT light shattered around my body, and I was sent skipping across the glassed sands like a stone across a pond.

"You wanna know what they're saying, Angel? They're telling you to run!" Errorphim's wings beat the moment I managed to catch myself on my hands and knees, skidding back and shredding open more of my skin on the harsh terrain while he fired after me. He shot at me head first like a bullet, and to one of his sides Predator dropped down, yanking back her scythe. To the other dropped Gatherer, who yanked back his crackling and smoking palm. The both of them swung in unison at Order's Mad God, but just as their own tidal waves of subzero ice and molten flames started firing at Errorphim, he threw up both of his hands and pointed his open palms at them. His eyes didn't leave me, his grin didn't fade as golden light suddenly exploded out from his hands in vibrant cones of JUST energy. His power exploded right through the ice and the fire, engulfing Lexi and Xander and drowning out their pained shouts as it sent the two of them blasting away from him.

"'Please, god no! Not him! Anyone but him!'" Errorphim shouted in a pretty poor Chara impression when he finally reached me. He swung his knee up and threw his head back to float upright once more as he blasted a brutal knee strike right into my chin. The impact sent me launching head first into the air, but I only managed to get to eye level with Errorphim before his hand launched out and grabbed ahold of the top of my head. My arms and wings hung limp, blood poured down my chin from the corner of my mouth while one of my winced shut eyes snapped open to glare at Order's Mad God. That just made him smile wider, and he pulled back his free hand, manifesting another scarlet sword in his grasp instantly while he went on. "They know you're gonna die, and they know it's their fault. Talk about a punchline!"

Just as Errorphim jabbed that blade forward at my abdomen however, a red flash shot in from the side and smashed that DETERMINED steel to shards with one crowbar swing. Errorphim's hand was thrown to the side before Anthony's red blur fired in once more, and beneath us the shadows flared as his crowbar cracked right into Errorphim's sternum. The impact was enough to send the mad god sliding back through the air, his hand released me and I dropped back to one knee in the sand.

I lifted my head, breathing red mist through my gritting teeth while I watched the red flash that was Anarchy dart to and fro, crashing into Errorphim again and again and knocking him further and further back away from me with brutal crowbar strikes. Errorphim's body recoiled back and forth, agony twitched in his expression with every impact. But, when Anthony darted up above him and yanked that crowbar up over his head, Errorphim's eyes darted right to him. Anny let out a furious battle cry as he dropped down towards the mad god, but Errorphim's jaw suddenly snapped open to reveal another crackling orb of white light. Instantly that brilliant light beamed into the air, firing right into Anny's chest and sending him exploding back through the air in a flash of black and white.

Errorphim let himself watch The Anarchist sail back through the air with smoke rising off his scorched flesh for a second or two, before his cruel glare dropped back onto me. His sockets narrowed, but his grin widened. He floated towards me, just a few inches off the ground that I was trying to pull myself up out of. I glared up at him with eyes that were still wincing, one hand over the aching and steaming bruise in my sternum where he'd kicked me. My eyes snapped open wide and fires blasted up out of that wound however, when Errorphim so boldly stated. "They've given up, Angel. They know it's hopeless."

"... You're, lying..! YOU'RE LYING!" Errorphim's browbones rose when I suddenly fired out of the dirt, lips peeled back in a snarl and left fist pulled back for a punch. I sent my scarred knuckles blasting right into Errorphim's jaw, scarlet flames blasted out of the cracks along my arm while his head was forced to the side. Yanking back my left fist just to immediately drill him with my right, that mad god was forced to recoil backwards and I stomped right after him. Again and again, blasting that lying mouth with punches so hard it made my fingers splinter, only for my DETERMINATION to pull them back together so I could hit him again. And as I ping ponged his fat head between my punches, I screamed my fury. "Chara didn't quite on themself, they didn't quit on me, they didn't quit against Character or Anarchy! If they knew how to quit you never would have gotten that seventh soul! THEY'RE SURE AS HELL NOT QUITTIN' NOW!"

Finally, one of Errorphim's hands swung up and managed to just barely stop one of my fists before it cracked into his face. He glared down at me with twitching eye sockets and scarlet pupils, and I threw up my free hand right in his face. Under my arm, a mechanical pencil the length of my arm appeared tied to the limb with ink. And before Errorphim could react, I was blasting graphite bolts right into his face at point blank range. Thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk!

Each graphite bolt exploded to grey dust in Errorphim's face, and he released my hand as he stumbled back, his head engulfed in that cloud. Hastily he threw up one open palm, and I barely had time to blink before a wave of that scorching white light exploded out of his hand and crashed into me. Throwing my arms up in an X and ducking my head behind them, I felt that mechanical pencil get ERASED right off my body and I felt my atoms once more crying out in pain and confusion. Still, I stayed on my feet, skidding back some under the force of that death wave.

The moment the agony of that holy light faded, one of Errorphim's huge skeletal fists swung in and cracked into my side. That got my clenched shut eyes to snap open wide, and as I twisted and hunched to the side over his fist my guard dropped, giving Order's Mad God the opportunity to reach down with his free hand and grab a fistful of my face. He shoved me back off my feet and planted the back'a my head right in the sand with a crash so strong it made the earth explode apart into a crater beneath us.

"You doubt the word of the divine..?!" Errorphim snarled through grinding teeth. His sockets twitched, red light flickered inside them. He looked sick as I stared up at him from between his fingers, but that didn't stop him from roaring as DETERMINATION crackled through his palm and into my body. "Blasphemy!"

In the next instant, my eyes snapped open wide and pain ripped through my body. From the inside out, familiar curving red blades blasted out of my skin. They ripped flesh bone and organ on the way out, sending more red spewing up out past my lips and down from my nostrils. My body jolted, my chest lifted as those blades tore their way out of my abdomen, back, chest, arms and legs... Before I went limp. Motionless underneath his palm, I stared up at Errorphim with distant eyes. My jaw hung open, blood streamed down my bottom lip. Errorphim smiled at this, but he didn't look any happier as he pulled his hand off my head and let that crimson steel shatter and disappear from my body. Before his hand could go too far, though... My blood soaked, cracked and cut left arm swung up, and I snatched ahold of his wrist.

"... C-... Chara..." I managed to speak through ragged gasps, and I watched Errorphim's sockets widen almost painfully. His pupils flashed red again, and even though there was blood streaking down my face and DETERMINATION steaming out of a dozen different gashes in my body... I smiled. My lips curled up happily, I gladly flashed my teeth in a grin even though there was blood staining them. KINDNESS flashed in my eyes, and I spoke in a tone far sweeter than any I had used since I lost Chara. "You don't have to be scared, okay..? I am going to get you out of there, and we're going to go home together."

For just a moment, Errorphim was paralyzed. That red shine lingered in his eyes, tremors ran through his bones... Before he yanked his hand out of my grasp. He pulled himself back up to his full height, he hadn't even noticed that his feet were back on the ground as he threw one open palm down towards me. Golden light shined, and another orb of misplaced JUSTICE appeared in Errorphim's grasp for him to blast me with point blank. Through grinding teeth he snarled, "Chara's not here."

CRASH!

Before Errorphim could blow me to smithereens that I hoped I would be able to pull myself together from, a spike of ice and a bolt of lightning crashed into his chest. Hot and cold mixed instantly and the air warped, exploding right into Errorphim's core and sending him skidding back on his heels while smoke and mist blasted out from the impact. Through that smoke Anarchy fired at sonic speed, and with all his might he blasted both his feet into Errorphim's jaw in a vicious drop kick. Three layers of shockwaves exploded out from the impact, and just before the force sent Order's Mad God shooting back through the sky Anarchy shouted out. "YEAH WELL ANYTHONY IS, MOTHER FUCKER!"

BOOM!

That kinetic energy carried through, and Errorphim was sent shooting like a bullet across the length of the desert our powers had created. Anny backflipped as he was sent firing backwards from the impact, and he landed crouched in front of me. I tilted my head to look up at him, and he grinned over his shoulder at me. I was about to shove myself into a sitting up position, before I felt arms wrap around my left and right shoulders. When I looked to my sides, I found Lexi and Xander both pulling me up out of the dirt and helping me to my feet.

"Get up, Angel! You're essential to this stupid plan of yours!" Xander stated, and even though his tone was harsh I appreciated the sentiment. I spat a red wad out onto the sand to clear my mouth some before I finally got my feet back under myself. My body was still aching, but my DETERMINATION had put my organs and bones back together by the time Lexi and Xander let go of me so I could stand on my own.

"I wasn't sure about it at first, but I think there might be somethin' to your idea after all." Lexi stated as she and Xander stepped away from me. Ahead of us, Anthony stood back to his full height, holding his crowbar out to the side and keeping his eyes forward. Predator smirked some at me, resting her scythe over her shoulder with one hand and using the other to raise a confident fist. "He hesitated when you called out to Chara. It's gotta be having some kind of effect!"

"Well you better figure out how to put the moves on that skelegod faster." Anthony's voice drew our eyes forward, and my eyebrows rose while I watched sand lift hastily from the desert before us. Blackened and scorched were those grains, but as they mashed together into more solid shapes their color turned bone white. Stretching out before us was a sea of those swirling white specs, all amassing into separate amalgams until finally their many shapes started to become clear... And my jaw dropped.

"... You gotta be fuckin' kiddin' me." I said in the face of Errorphim's army of skeletons. They were far less imposing than him and less unique than he or his brother had been in his past life. Generic naked skeletons that made me think of the skeleton replicas hung up in health classes, their eye sockets were dark, but their bodies moved. Unnatural, jerking and almost mechanical motions. In unison those skeletons all took up wide stances, and in one of each of their hands a blade of crimson light appeared. On the opposite arm, an orange shield.

"Two armies in one day? Boy am I gettin' spoiled." Anarchy's lips peeled back in a grin as the four of us moved in closer to each other. We all stood back to back now, each of us covering a different flank. Anny held that crowbar tight, Lexi had both hands wrapped around her scythe's handle, Xander's claws crackled with magenta electricity and my wings spread wide. Those bone soldiers had formed on all sides, their numbers encircled us and were closing in. Overhead, Order's Mad God had taken up a spot back in the sky. Anarchy's eyes locked on to him and narrowed... "Angel, Lexi, you rush the dwarf. Me n' Xander will handle the fodder."

"You sure about that, Anny?" I asked over my shoulder, keeping my eyes on the shambling calcium stands before me. They weren't moving in to attack, instead waiting on the defensive... A distraction. Errorphim was trying to keep us away while he got his head straight.

"You need to keep reaching out to Chara, and they don't like me n' Xander." Anarchy shook his head, widening his stance some and letting his mad eyes dart between the bone soldiers before him. He was practically daring one of them to try something, the crunching bones was his favorite part of hitting somebody with his crowbar. "You n' Lexi know how to reach out to people a lot better than we do, anyway."

"To be fair I don't think they like me very much either." Lexi stated, tilting her head over towards Anthony without taking her eyes off the foes before her. She'd honestly gotten used to skeletons being a weird shape and having a wacky attitude, so seeing these bland shamblers was even weirder to her. "Think it's got something to do with the fact that me n' Angel used to date."

"Yeah but if Angel goes alone he's gonna get folded." Anthony stated quickly and matter-of-factly, and his statement made me grumble and got Lexi and Xander to snicker. I sincerely hoped that they all understood they wouldn't fair any better in a one v one with Order's Mad God, but before I could remind them of that Anarchy barked an order. He shouted out as he suddenly stomped forward, cracking his crowbar right into one of those skeleton's jaws and sending its head firing of its shoulders and somewhere into the stratosphere. "Now GO!"

Didn't have to tell us twice. My wings crashed down and sent me firing up into the sky while ice exploded out from beneath Lexi, launching her up right with me. Those bone soldiers instantly closed in, their bodies rattled and clacked as they swarmed in around Xander and Anthony, who both fell in and pressed their backs together.

"Oh if our forefathers could see us now, Anthony!" Xander called over the roar of his lightning. Violet voltage crashed from his finger tips and blasted out in a wave through the the skeletons swarming in on his side while wide and vicious swings from Anarchy's crowbar sent body after body flinging into the air on his side.

"Can't imagine they'd be too jazzed about this team up!" Anarchy called back to Xander while the two of them spun in unison, switching sides. Xander crouched down some and let his jaws snap open while the two of them moved, sending a vicious beam of fire breath crashing out past his lips and using it to cut right through the waists of the bone soldiers rushing in. Behind him the shadows cast by his ruthless fire stretched out into brutal spikes, crashing and slicing through dozens of those ivory drones.

"That's why we're alive and they're dead!" Gatherer proudly proclaimed as he stood back to his full height, throwing his hands out towards the soldiers that dared march over the corpses of their burning bone brethren. His serpent tattoos fired out from his wrists with savage hisses, and their fangs ripped through one enemy after another while their long bodies coiled and darted between blades and under shields.

Anarchy didn't respond to that, but he did smirk a little at Xander's words. As self important and arrogant as ever, Anthony was glad his friend was acting like himself again. He'd really thought he'd lost Xander for awhile there, and even though he was still plenty rough around the edges it looked like The Gatherer was comin' back around. Maybe after this was all said and done he might even be able to shake an apology out of him, but those were thoughts for later. Now, a Ghoul cackled and and crushed bones while back to back with a Fortune that laughed and burned bodies.

---

I fired through the air at Errorphim, harsh winds pulling my hair back as I raced towards him. Not far behind was Predator perched on an ever stretching and shifting pillar of ice, crouched down and holding her scythe tight in front of her. Far ahead of us floated Order's Mad God, his jaw clenched tight and fury flashing in his multicolored eyes. Slowly, he lifted his hands up over his head. His arms trembled and the earth mimicked them, just before the desert beneath exploded open, throwing wayward skeleton soldiers up into the air in the wake of massive towers of bone.

My wings beat and the air current created yanked me to the side, just in time to dodge the skyscraper of calcium that fired up in my path. They were firing up left and right, front and center. But I refused to slow down, I just bobbed and weaved between those massive spikes at mach speed. Behind me, Predator kept up. Her ice rail curved and curled and even loop-de-looped once or twice to keep her out of the range of the towers rocketing up at us. One of those pillars fired up in her path and she yanked her scythe back over her shoulder, cleaving with all her might. From ahead of her, I felt a blast of frosty wind shoot across the sky as she sliced right through that enormous femur. She cut its top half right off and sent it plummeting down into the bone soldiers beneath, crushing a dozen of them and clearing her path.

Errorphim snarled before his jaws snapped open, revealing another crackling sphere of white light in his maw. That condensed orb trembled and cracked before suddenly firing an ivory laser across the sky. Again my wings beat, launching me up over the blast while Predator's ice railing curved up to do the same. Unfortunately, that laser exploded right through the ice trail left behind Lexi, cutting her off from the support that kept the ice she stood on in the air and sending her dropping towards the back half of the angry skeleton mob beneath us. My head whipped around to watch her plummet, and I shouted out. "Lexi!"

Predator was hardly concerned, however. In fact, that madwoman grin tore up her face as she yanked her scythe up over her head, slashing down towards the shambling masses beneath and throwing her body forward with her slice. She spun down, rapidly gathered momentum until she was spinning like a buzz saw just before she crashed into those boneys. Chunks of calcium exploded up into the air in her wake, she spun right through the back wall of bone soldiers until her momentum died down. The moment it did, she flipped feet first into one of the soldier's chest and sent it crashing back first into the mud. She surfed another few feet on that skeleton before ice exploded up beneath it, crushing it to bits and sending another few dozen of its comrades ragdolling into the air.

Predator rose back up from the earth, now on the crashing tide of a frozen tidal wave. She rode that wave all the way up towards Errorphim, who snarled, pulling back his left hand over his right shoulder. His finger tips glowed purple before he swung that hand back through the air, and off his digits fired strings of PERSEVERANCE in a sweeping motion. From under Lexi's feet ice fired up so suddenly and so powerfully that it launched her up into the air and off that tidal wave, just before those violet whips sliced through the ice with their vicious burn.

Errorphim's head darted up as Predator shot right over him. She yanked back her Ghoul Scythe when gravity caught her, and when she was yanked back down towards the mad god beneath she let out a primal roar. Just as she slashed down, however, a wall of green light appeared in her path. Her jaw clenched as her scythe crashed into that KINDNESS barrier, her eye twitched when it cracked but didn't give.

Errorphim reached up to counter attack, but I crashed into him before he could. Leading with my forearms crossed over each other, I blasted right into his sternum and collar bone with a cross chop so brutal it sent red and white light exploding off of us. We shot through the air, Errorphim shoved back across the sky by my hellacious impact and the light of our souls streaking out around us in crackling electricity.

Errorphim's furious stare darted down into my eyes and my own glare shot up into his, before he reached up and snatched ahold of the both of my biceps. He flipped backwards with our momentum then, dragged me beneath him and released me there just to complete his rotation and blast a stomp right into my sternum. This sent me firing downward, and my body crashed into the aluminum roof above one of the evacuation center's empty train stations. We'd wandered so far we were no longer in the desert or the muddy fields, Errorphim floated now above the empty evacuation center and I was half buried in crumpled metal sheets. The roars of his bone soldier's and the shadows and flames that engulfed them were far off.

Errorphim threw one hand down towards me, and by his side a Godly Gaster Blaster appeared. Its maw snapped open, and between its jaws holy light ignited. I winced and grumbled before tearing my own arm out of the metal sheet I was trapped in, leaving some chunks of my skin behind in the process. I pointed my own open palm up at Errorphim, and between me and his blaster a Beat Cannon appeared. Its three segmented body spun, scarlet light flared in its barrel, and it fired a beam of crimson upwards while that Godly Gaster Blaster shot a beam of ivory straight down.

Those lasers met in the middle with enough force to send molten winds firing across the sky. Red and white lights flashed and flickered across the train station, tinting everything in their shade. My body was illuminated in red light, my teeth grit and the muscles in my raised left arm tensed. DETERMINED flames shot out of my arm's cracks as those lasers struggled against each other. Mine would push a little up, only to be pushed back down, only to push up, and then back down. Lightning fired out of where those beams were crashing into each other, blasted a power line and snapped its wires, sending them hissing and flicking through the air.

"Gnn..! Rrrnng..!" I grunted through grinding teeth. My eye twitched, my power vibrated in my arm... But, still, Errorphim's blast began shoving my own further and further down. More and more white light was washing over the evacuation center, snuffing out the red as that laser got closer and closer to the blaster defending me. I growled while my arm trembled, "F-fuckin'..! C'monnn..!"

A cone of white light surrounded me, my own body and a small radius around me still illuminated in red. My other arm pushed against the metal I laid on, my back arched and I shoved my left arm desperately up towards my struggling Cannon. But, just as the flames in my left arm were flickering and sputtering, and that white spotlight was closing in... Predator shot through the air above Errorphim's Godly Gaster Blaster, cleaving across its back with her Ghoul Scythe and cutting through the joint where its jaws connected. She shot right by it as its jaws disconnected, disrupting its blast and removing almost all the pressure on my Beat Cannon.

Errorphim recoiled as that wave of scarlet power suddenly fired upwards, exploding right through his damaged blaster and firing up past him. His jaw clenched as that tower of red light exploded high into the glitching sky... Before slowly dissipating to nothing. His head snapped down then, and his furious eyes landed on Lexi The Predator, who landed perched on a metal roof opposite to mine. She clenched her scythe tight and kept an eye on Errorphim while she called over to me, "You gonna make it, Angel?"

"I ain't folded yet..!" I called back, wincing as I yanked my right arm out of the metal. My wings slipped out next, pushing into the aluminum with both my hands and dragging me out of the crumpled sheet. I begrudgingly dragged my body up to its feet, lifting my own stare up to the mad god floating above the both of us. Slowly, I exhaled scarlet fog from between my teeth. It matched the red energy now smoking out of the aching cracks in my left arm. Still, I clenched my fists, planted my feet, and let my wings spread wide.

"Now help me triple combo this bozo!"

---

A bone soldier was tossed into the air before being caught in two separate maws. It's upper body captured in the jaws of one of Anarchy's giggling worms, its legs were snatched up between the fangs of one of Gatherer's crackling snakes. They both pulled and the skeleton came apart in the middle, being swallowed in Dark and in flame.

Anarchy's crowbar bashed aside one of those DETERMINED blades, sending it flinging through the air while his free hand shot out and grabbed the soldier before him by the face. His hand clenched into a fist, crushing the skeleton's skull in an instant. Before its body could even collapse to the ground however his leg swung in from the side, blasting into its rib cage and sending its corpse firing like a small freight train back through the rattling infantry marching to their deaths.

Behind him, Gatherer's clawed hand shot out and blasted a brutal ray of fire right into the shield of another boney. It huddled behind that BRAVE shield until it crumpled and melted away, and immediately that skeleton and many that stood behind it were blasted into soot. Gatherer smirked and yanked his hand back, he and Anarchy pressed their backs together and looked out at the crowding bones. Ivory shards littered the earth around them, hundreds of skeletons had been smashed and burned to nothing.

The numbers were already starting to thin by the time Xander threw one hand up over his head. Him and Anarchy obliterating all who got within their kill range while Anthony's worms rampaged behind the enemy's front line was rapidly wearing through the thousands of grunts, but still the bone soldiers marched forward. Without thoughts to think a second time and without a will to break, their only option was to win or die. Gatherer might have appreciated that persistence, if it wasn't something he'd once replicated in real men and women instead of constructs. But, without his army here now, he had to get his own hands dirty.

Fireballs expanded to life in Xander's raised palm before firing off into the air. They grew rapidly in air, from baseball to boulder size before finally crashing down into the mass of marching bone and exploding in huge blasts of flame. More and more of these fireballs shot out of Gatherer's hand, and like mortar shells they blew apart the ranks of those bone soldiers. With every flash of light a long shadow was cast, and every one of those shadows cut through or devoured any skeleton in its range.

Anthony could see the end of their broken up ranks now, the last hundred or so of them were pouring in through the shattered corpses of their comrades. Shadows were dragging them under along the way, picking them off while they struggled to even get close enough to swing their puny weapons at the Fortune and the Ghoul waiting for them.

They'd never get the chance though, that much was obvious when Gatherer dropped to one knee and planted his palms flat on the ground. The sands immediately started to rumble, smoke rose out from under the dirt before geysers of magma began firing up into the air, pouring down onto the skeletons beneath. In a matter of moments, lava had poured up out of the earth and formed a sort of moat around the two standing tall at the center of the skeletal slaughter.

"... Huh." Anthony looked out at the lava standing between him and the few bone soldiers that remained. Most of them had been buried under the melted stone, and whatever ones had managed to stay out of its range when it was formed were now trying - and failing spectacularly - to jump across it. After the last one sunk squirming beneath the molten surface, that lava released plumes of steam as it rapidly cooled. Anarchy glanced over at Xander, who smirked back at him as he climbed to his feet. "And here I thought you'd make me do all the heavy lifting."

"No, I figured it'd be better to do that while we fight Errorphim." Xander answered dryly, and Anarchy grinned with amusement. He appreciated his sense of humor, but he also took note of the way Xander's chest lifted and the way his skin steamed with evaporating sweat. Exhaustion would start to set in if this went on much longer, not just in Xander but in Lexi and Angel as well. Anarchy's grin faded at the thought, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. If he ended up having to fight Errorphim alone...

"This world was meant for you, Anthony."

---

That dented roof tore in two underneath Errorphim's pressure. He rapidly descended to the opposite side of the metal sheet before blasting towards me, all while his aura shredded the aluminum beneath him. I jumped and my wings beat, flipping me right over Errorphim and dodging his attempt to crash right into me. Now upside down in the air behind him, my wings coiled into drills in an instant and fired out towards his back.

Errorphim spun around though, swinging his hand in a sweeping motion and sending a wave of electric orange light blasting into me. It smashed into my wings and shoved them back before crashing into my body, sending me sailing back through the air. Errorphim didn't have time to admire his handiwork though, hastily ducking just in time for Predator's scythe to swipe over his head. She grimaced as his eyes darted up to spot her there, suspended in air above him. Instantly between the two a spike of bone appeared already in motion, and Lexi hardly had the time to yank her body to the side. She grit her teeth and muffled her pained yelp when that spike fired into her bicep, dragging her back through the air and flicking droplets of blood in the process. "Nng..!"

Errorphim extended one open palm to Lexi as she dropped back through the air, an orb of gold immediately expanded in his grasp and fired down at her. With red misting off her punctured arm, Lexi's good arm lifted the handle of her scythe in the way of that crackling JUSTICE bulb. It exploded against her weapon, sending a burst of smoke out from the impact and launching Predator down into the stone floor beneath.

THUNK THUNK THUNK!

Errorphim's eyes darted back towards me and flickered green, forming a wall of KINDNESS just in time to catch the graphite spikes firing at him. It couldn't block my punch however, shattering into emerald shards when I fired forward and blasted my red steaming left fist into its center. I shot right through and kept on towards Errorphim, who spun hastily to face me. His hand shot up right in my fist's path, and when my knuckles crashed into his palm it created another red white shockwave. His grin crept further up his skull at the effortless stop he'd brought my punch to, and he mocked. "All that time training, and you're still helpless."

I snarled and sent my other fist barreling towards Errorphim's jaw, but his other hand brought that punch to an immediate stop too. His hands snapped shut around my fists, holding me in place and trapping the both of us in yet another gridlock. My wings tensed and tried to pull me away, but Errorphim's own wings spread wide and held us in place. So, without any other options, I reached out again. "Fight it, Chara! Fight, you can do it!"

That got Errorphim's grin to change into a scowl real quick. He yanked his arms out to the side with mine in tow, yanking me closer while he cocked back his own head. His skull swung forward then, cracked right into my forehead while he released my heads. the impact made my eyes go white for a moment, firing me back across the shredded metal roof. Though most of my senses were temporarily rebooting after that head trauma, I managed to catch the mad god shout. "They can't hear you!"

I hit the metal roof back first and kept sliding. Curled and curved aluminum shredded my back, but I didn't mind it. The pain woke me up a little, as a matter of fact. So, by the time I reached the edge of that metal roof I had the sense to reach out, grabbing ahold of the sharp ledge and hanging on when my body flung over. I flipped back upon dropping over the edge, my body facing the roof while my bloodied fingers curled into the rough metal and held me up. Red streams were running down my right arm from my cut up hand.

"You're lying..!" I accused Order's Mad God when he floated to the ledge, staring down at me with those dejected, glowing pupils. My wings spread wide then, swinging downward with a brutal force and launching me up over that ledge and above Errorphim. His eyes followed me up into the air, watching me yank back that bloodied right hand. Those streams of blood coiled and grew along my arm, forming red stained ink whips and gathering in my palm. I shouted out as a spike of that bloodied ink fired down from my hand at the head of the mad god, "He knows that you're his one weakness, Chara! If you rebel, he becomes mortal again!"

Errorphim didn't duck and he didn't dodge. Instead, he narrowed his sockets, and his pupils flashed cyan. Just inches from the space between his eyes my ink spike stopped dead, and when I tried to pull back and try a different attack I found that I too was stuck in a PATIENT aura. My teeth ground, and I tried to resist that suffocating aura with all my might... To no avail. Errorphim smiled just a little, and his pupils switched to a deep blue right with the previously scarlet soul on my chest. I hardly had time to realize what he was about to do, before Errorphim simply poked one finger down towards the earth below.

Instantly I was back in motion. My body fired down like a mortar, in the blink of an eye I was crashing right into the evacuation center's concrete floor. My bones crunched, but so did the floor. Concrete exploded apart, I dug deeper and deeper through it until suddenly there was no longer a floor to drop through. An opening underground, some sort of tunnel beneath the stone that I landed flat on my back in.

While I laid there with my eyes clenched shut and blood dripping out of a hundred new lacerations, chunks of concrete dropping down all around me while I gasped for air, the blue grasp disappeared from my soul. Once I got some feeling back in my red steaming body, it dawned on me that I wasn't laying on dirt or stone, but on metal and wood. Train tracks..? My eyes winced open and darted up into the clearing smoke above. I could see that haunting white shine lowering down through the grey mist, so I forced my arm up and reached out towards the darkness of the tunnel to my left. Ink fired off my wrist and latched onto something, hastily reeling in and dragging me out of the spotlight that Errorphim was floating down under.

"Weakness? I have no weakness." Errorphim assured once he levitated just a few inches above the train tracks. His eyes glossed over the bloody puddles in the filth beneath him, the way they dragged off to the left... His head lifted, and he opened one palm out towards the wall of vantablack that awaited him on that side of the tunnel. As another golden orb of power expanded to life in his grasp he went on, "Not in ink, not in ice, not in fire and not even in this disgusting Dark!"

Power cracked, and that bolt of golden energy fired out into the Darkness. As it launched down the tunnel it illuminated all that it passed, and Errorphim's sockets narrowed when its light revealed me. I was standing again, right on the middle of the tracks, dripping with my own blood while my wings hung limp from my back. I'd tilted my head to the side, letting that JUST energy fire right over my shoulder. It disappeared down the tunnel, and I vanished in The Dark again.

"Fight, run, hide. Whatever you do won't matter, you and all your wretched kind were doomed the moment I woke up." Errorphim's grin widened, and another bolt of gold light ignited in his raised palm. He had time to play with his food, he was in no hurry. I reckoned he liked seeing me like this, he enjoyed beating the fight out of us... So I knew he wouldn't move, even when twin ink whips fired past him, launching down into the Darkness behind him. Order's Mad God paused when those whips shot by him, he even snerked when he looked over his shoulder and watched them disappear. Looking back in my direction, he stated more of what he thought he knew. "You missed."

Sssskkrrrrcchhh..!

Errorphim's browbones rose when he heard a sudden and horrific metal screech behind him, and again his head whipped back around. Illuminated now in the sparks firing off where its wheels met the tracks, those ink whips had splattered on and attached to the front of an empty cargo train just barely hidden in the shadows behind the mad god. With his light bound eyes he couldn't see it, but every kid who grew up in Fortune City could make out shapes in The Dark. Ice forming on the rails and increasing its speed, the front of that train blasted into Errorphim just as he spun around to face it, dragging him on it down the tunnel.

My wings lifted and beat when that train fired towards me, ink whips disconnecting as I launched up and latched upside down to the roof with the help of ink on my hands and feet. The train shot by beneath me with enough force to send gusts of wind pulling at my hair and tattered clothes, but I just hugged tighter to the ceiling while it passed by. The moment that it did my wings spread wide, flapping and hastily launching me forward.

I fired up and out of that tunnel, straightening out in air and spinning around to face the hole my body had made in the stone. I floated just beside Lexi, who stood beside that hole with the puncture wound in her arm already healed. I appreciated her intervention, without her there was no way that train would have picked up the speed it needed to. She gave me a thumbs up when I turned to look at her, and I opened my mouth to respond-

Snap!

Suddenly, ivory light poured out of that hole we stood before. It flooded the tunnel, and then it began blasting up through the floor. Lexi and I jumped back, and I hooked my arms under both of hers just as the shine of Errorphim's ERASURE obliterated the floor beneath us. My wings beat, firing us both up into the air and away from the evacuation center. That dome of white light followed hastily, we barely stayed out of its range. It only stopped when that massive ivory orb engulfed the entire evacuation center.

For just a moment, Lexi and I floated there, staring in awe and terror. Another massive display of power, but without crackling electricity. Without screaming power. A nearly soundless, windless blast... And when it faded, all that remained was a crater. No trains, no station. Just Order's Mad God, floating in the epicenter and glaring up at the both of us. My eyes narrowed, my jaw clenched, and gradually I began lowering back towards the earth to set Lexi down.

"Nice trick bozo, but we saw it already!" More fearless than me was Predator, who shook her fist down at Errorphim as I set her on the ledge of that crater. I was reassured some by her confidence, my wings spreading wide and my body crackling with DETERMINATION while the both of us awaited Errorphim's next move.

"This entire multiverse will see it, Predator. This reality will be cleaned in my holy light." Errorphim assured, narrowing his sockets with both aggravation and certainty. His wings beat once, slowly and calmly. That was all it took to lift him from the crater, gracefully levitating him high into the sky above us. His arms spread wide to his sides, and his grin returned as his light fell over us. "And there's no hero, there's no Fortunate Four who can stop me."

As Errorphim said that, however, a pool of Darkness expanded at the center of the crater his Light created. From that pool, a massive snout fired out. Piercing red eyes, jagged teeth and a hungry smile. Errorphim scowled as one of Anthony's Wyrm's exploded upwards beneath him, snapping its maw open wide and daring to try and taste his divine form with its wretched tongue. Without a moment's hesitation Order's Mad God threw one hand down towards the Wyrm, and from that hand a beam of white Light exploded downward.

That light crashed right down the monstrosity's throat, it scorched and ERASED its wretched insides. But even in death, its wretched carcass shot up through the air and forced Errorphim to float backwards to dodge its impact. When that burnt flesh fired up over him however, it ripped open. And from within launched Anthony The Anarchist, roaring and yanking his crowbar high over his head. Errorphim's arms whipped upwards and crossed over his head just in time for Anny's crowbar to crack into them, and a black and white shockwave crashed through the glitching sky.

Errorphim's jaw tightened. He felt a burning, vibrating pain shoot up his arms. But, no Darkness crept into his perfect form. His body was untainted by Anarchy's filth. Still, the force of the impact sent him firing diagonally down towards the dirt. His wings spread wide, and just before Errorphim crashed into the edge of that crater he lifted some, instead floating just over it and continuing to fly backwards now in a straight line... Only for the earth beneath him to explode open in geysers of lava.

Order's Mad God looked down to the boiling earth with an irritated narrowing of his eyes, which then darted up to spot Gatherer knelt down a few dozen yards away, his hands pressed into the dirt. Errorphim hastily floated backwards, pivoting between the molten geysers exploding up from beneath and levitating over the bubbling stone they poured over the ground beneath. After dodging back out of the way of another lava blast, that mad god threw one open palm out towards Xander in the distance.

Before he could manifest an assault on Gatherer however, my fist crashed right into Errorphim's jaw, shoving his head back and to the side. Immediately those white pupils darted to meet my own furious glare. My wings spread wide behind me and my face pulled back in a ruthless snarl, I had fired like a rocket across that Lake Of Fire and now its orange light illuminated me from beneath. Yanking back my free hand and slipping my fist off Errorphim's jaw, I threw another punch right at his head, only for his hand to swing up and clamp shut around my wrist.

Errorphim hastily pulled me in by my arm, spinning me around so that I was facing away from him and twisting my arm behind my back in a chicken wing so brutal that it made me cry out in agony. My elbow creaked and groaned, my ulna and radius trembled and I definitely felt something snap in my humerus before Errorphim yanked up his foot and planted a hellacious kick right in the center of my back. The impact made my spine bend and creak, it sent my body launching forward through the air and crashing back into the dirt shore of Xander's Lake Of Fire.

Errorphim didn't have a moment to rest however, he instantly had to float backwards when Lexi cleaved down from above with her Ghoul Scythe. The brutal chill of her weapon smashed into the fiery floor, sending a spray of mist into the air and giving her an obsidian plateau to land on and immediately dive off of. She launched right back at Errorphim, who ducked back under another slash and swung his sharp fingers up at her. Predator pulled the handle of her scythe in the way just in time, wincing from the impact of his slash and being pushed back through the air.

Landing back on that obsidian plateau, Lexi's jaws immediately snapped open and fired a wave of frozen breath up at Order's Mad God. Errorphim's eyes flashed green, and instantly between himself and that blast of subzero air a wall of KINDNESS appeared. Upon impact that chilled breath began forming ice over Errorphim's defense, a frost that grew rapidly and sent cracks splintering that emerald guard.

He could have counterattacked, but Errorphim didn't believe he had to. His eyes darted back to The Gatherer as yet another blast of lava shot up near him, and his sockets narrowed. Immediately afterwards his wings beat, firing him to the side just as Predator's ice broke through his defense, blasting through the air where he was just a moment earlier. Lexi's eyes darted to watch him blast off towards Xander, and she cussed under her heavy breath before ice fired out beneath her, once more sending her chasing after the mad god in hot pursuit.

Barreling through the sky, the lava beneath Errorphim split and sprayed out to his sides from his aura and velocity. Still, Xander remained on one knee there, watching with a clenched jaw and narrowed eyes as that mad god launched closer and closer. Short bursts of molten heat fired up from beneath Errorphim, but he weaved between every attack, getting closer and closer to The Gatherer in the process.

His tattoos igniting in challenge of Errorphim's holy might, Xander held his ground. And finally, when Errorphim was yanking back his hand and right about to grab a handful of Gatherer's face, fire exploded out of The Balor King's palms. He launched himself right up and over Order's Mad God, and the serpents burnt into his arms darted out as fast as they could. Those scorching scales wrapped tight around Errorphim's arms and pulled them back to his body as Xander flipped in air. He landed on Errorphim's back and wrapped those snake whips twice around the both of his own hands, grunting with exertion as he pulled them tight and attempted to restrain a god in his flames.

Caught off guard, Errorphim's arms were yanked back to his sides and his wings were forced to fold inward. It was just for a moment, he knew all he had to do was flex his might once and that he would tear those puny restraints apart. But a moment was all Gatherer had needed. Because from where he had jumped, out of his own shadow that had grown into a vantablack puddle, a curved stinger shot free just as Xander shouted. "NOW!"

Errorphim's sockets went wide, his arms ripped upwards and tore out of those flames. His hands shot out towards that stinger as Anarchy too launched out of that Darkness, revealing the Scorpion stinger to be connected to his lower back. And unfortunately for Errorphim, the stinger wasn't the only appendage he'd grown. Before the mad god could catch that stinger, a pincer crashed down around the both of his wrists and pulled them aside. And dripping with Dark poison, much to the dismay of Order's Mad God, that stinger drove right into Errorphim's sternum and injected him with its Chaos.

"Gah..!" Errorphim's body dropped from the air, he landed on his feet and stumbled back. Tearing his now trembling hands out of the grasp of Anthony's pincers, the mad god snarled and thrashed, spinning around and throwing Xander off his back. While Gatherer flipped and landed back on his feet, Errorphim put one hand on his head and waved his other hand back towards Xander and Gatherer, sending a few bone spikes firing blindly out of the dirt while he swore. "Disgusting venom..! Damn you!"

Those bones missed wildly while Errorphim's sockets flickered black. For just a moment, that aura had dimmed. It split and flickered, flared wildly and did not radiate around Errorphim's chest. Black tendrils were creeping over the sternum of Order's Mad God, wrapping around his ribs and bubbling out of the hole that stinger had left in his bone. Errorphim was gasping now, but he had a fix for this problem. Light crackled in his palm, he reached to put it over that bubbling Chaotic wound... Only for Predator to finally catch up.

Lexi launched herself off the ice railing she'd been riding, diving forward and wrapping her entire body around the arm Errorphim tried to heal himself with. With her momentum she dragged his arm away from his chest, planting her feet in the ground and letting ice form around them, sticking her to the ground and helping her keep that powerful arm restrained.

"What do you think you're doing..?!" Errorphim's flickering eyes darted to The Predator, his teeth grit with fury. He pulled his free hand off his throbbing head and opened his palm wide, before more of those molten snakes whipped out, coiling along his forearm and pulling it back some. Errorphim snarled, throwing his head to the opposite side and spotting The Gatherer once more planting his feet and holding his whips tight. Order's Mad God warned furiously, "This is blasphemy! You can't restrain me!"

In spite of this warning, Anthony's arms wrapped around Errorphim from behind. His fingers locked together in an S grip near the bottom of the mad god's rib cage, and his pincers swung around his body as well, clamping onto one another just under his bubbling sternum. Anarchy snarled as he planted his feet and squeezed Errorphim with all his might, clenching his eyes shut tight while he roared. "ANGEL! WHATEVER YOU'RE GONNA DO, DO IT NOW!"

Errorphim, writhing in the grasp of the last Fortune, the Ivory Ghoul and the Jade Cat's disciple, suddenly looked straight ahead with those furious, flickering eyes. There he spotted me, back on my feet with my wings spread wide. Scarlet electricity crackled around my body, red flames poured out from the cracks running up my left arm and over the left side of my chest. The updraft lifted my messy hair and pulled at my torn clothes, and the crimson shine from the DETERMINED heart on my chest reflected in the inky glass of the flower behind my ear. And for just a split second, Error Sans and Cter The Hacker were alone there. Staring each other down from across the Valley of Shadow and Death... Then, my wings beat, and I fired like a rocket at Order's Mad God.

"Stay..! AWAAAYYY!" Errorphim roared so loud that it shook the flickering sky, but it did not shake the grip of the Fortune City Four. The earth beneath me rumbled and exploded open as I blasted through the air, sending crude spikes of bone shooting up at me. Most of them were already aimed poorly, frantic attacks that never had any hope of hitting me in the first place. The rest I effortlessly weaved between, only building more speed as I rapidly closed the distance. Errorphim's jaw unhinged, an orb of white light jolted and crackled with instability before exploding apart in four separate beams of ivory death. All of those lasers shot in random directions however, and I effortlessly flew between every one of them.

Flickering and struggling to manifest, green light appeared between me and Chara's prison. KINDNESS put itself together, tried to form a wall... And I flipped in air, blasting through it with a kick at sonic speed. Errorphim recoiled, and emerald shards flew through the air around the five of us as I suddenly crashed into him, landing on him as if his hulking form was a cliff face. I planted one foot on his pelvic bone and another on one of his bottom ribs, planting my right hand on his shoulder. And when that flickering orb of light between his jaws focused in on my head, Anny's stinger swung down and coiled around the mad god's maw, blocking that weakened blast and sending stray beams of light firing out from between Errorphim's teeth, out of his nostrils, ear holes, and even eye sockets.

My DETERMINED stare darted down to the damaged chest of Order's Mad God. It was the one section of his body without a shining white aura guarding it now, Anny's Darkness writhing over it and struggling to keep the light from pouring out of his body. I thought quick, my brain raced back through my past experiences and quickly gave me the best idea it could. I remembered the first time I really met Chara as I yanked my burning left hand up over my head, I remembered how I expelled them from Frisk's body so long ago.

"Will you really be able to live without me?"

I know you were just trying to get in my head back then Chara, but you were right! I can't live without you! I thought as my palm flexed, and the burning red light of my soul appeared in my grasp. Errorphim's twitching sockets watched, his defiant roars were muffled in Anny's tail. But I didn't look him in the eye, I just stared down into the opening my friends had given me as DETERMINED fire poured out of the soul in my grasp. And then, without another moment's hesitation, I drove my hand down, and I shoved my soul against Errorphim's poisoned sternum! That's why I'm gonna get you back! WHATEVER IT TAKES!

Red and white lightning blasted out from where my soul hit Errorphim's body. Vibrations exploded up my left arm, the air surrounding us all cracked and popped. His divine body was rejecting my eighth soul, now that he was no longer a monster he couldn't absorb another human soul. Still I pushed. I shoved my own soul deeper and deeper into the twisting Light and Dark in Errorphim's sternum, and green lightning started firing out from where my soul crashed into Order's Mad God. Purple joined, then blue. Cyan, yellow, orange..!

Those eight colors all flashed in my vision, and between them was nothing but a deep black. It felt like I was trying to push the same sides of two separate magnets together, an invisible force was driving up into the culmination of my very being and trying to shove it away. But I kept pushing down, deeper and deeper down! I couldn't see the world around me in the flashing colors now, I couldn't even see Errorphim underneath me. I was in a whirlwind of twisting lights, caught in a tornado of power far beyond my comprehension. Still, I pushed further, and further, and further..!

Until suddenly... Something gave. That force stopped pushing me, those flaring lights went out, and I gasped as I dropped down onto my hands and knees... Into woodchips. My wide eyes stared down at those wooden shards for a moment or two while I gasped. My shaking fingers dug into them, remembered their familiar texture. And when I could finally move my trembling eyes, I looked to my arms and realized I wasn't shirtless anymore. In fact, I was the most dressed up I'd been in over a month. I had to blink a few times to be sure, but once I sat up and looked my full body over, it was obvious to me that I was wearing the very same suit I had on at Toriel and Asgore's wedding. The music stopped.

"What the..?" I lifted my head then, let my stare travel up those woodchips and inspect my surroundings. Slides, swings, monkey bars... The playground? Why was I back at the playground? Why was I in a suit and tie? Where was Error? Where was Anny? Where was Chara? I turned my head to my right, and beyond the playground fence I could see nothing but a bubbling wall of vantablack. It surrounded the playground at all sides, it shifted and slithered in the sky overhead. Then I turned my head to my left, and my eyes went wide. My pupils shrunk, my heart stopped for just a second.

At the far end of the playground, where I remember the chain link used to be overgrown with creeping vines and high bramble, making it impossible to see over to the other side... There was no vegetation blocking the way now. The chain link fence had fallen down, and its form stretched unnaturally. As though it was streams of water and not metal chains, the fence stretched in multiple coiling, rickety paths across the void. Metal bridges curled through the nothing... Until they reached something.

A long, expansive open plain. Where grass swayed, and beautiful golden flowers grew. A whole field of those yellow petals rose to about knee height, and in the center of that peaceful field I could see someone standing there. Back to me, wearing a green dress that I recognized. Long auburn hair, carefully put together in a bun... My emerald eyes trembled in their sockets, my shaky hands grabbed fistfuls of woodchips, and even though my entire body was still aching from the tremors that had shook my very being on my way down into this place... I shoved myself up off the ground, and I screamed into the void. "CHARA!"

In the distance, I watched that figure flinch. They were looking at something in their hands, something that I could not see. And though they moved when I screamed... They did not turn around. But that was fine, I'd get closer. I'd cry out again. Before I knew it, I was tearing up off the woodchips and breaking into a sprint across the playground towards those twisted fences. Without my wings, I had to run like a mortal man across this incomprehensible plain, all to reach them.

"CHARA!" I shouted their name again, not hesitating to jump over the edge of the playground. I launched off the woodchips, flew across the void, and landed with just a little stumble onto the chain link bridge, which clanked and sprang underneath me. Down below, pinpricks of white light were starting to burn through the inky black. I was too busy shouting across that field to notice, "It's okay now, I'm here! And I'm gonna get you out of this place!"

When I lunged off that fence and landed foot first on that golden field, I watched them twitch again. Almost flinch, draw in a little closer to themself... I pushed off the foot that I landed on and broke into a sprint. Under my every step, the grass and the dirt turned to woodchips. Behind me those fences were creaking and groaning, dragging the playground closer towards these golden flowers at a painfully slow speed. My hands shoved flowers out of my way, my heart pounded frantically in my chest as I began making out more and more of their features.

Throughout the sky now, Light was burning more and more holes in that veil of Darkness. Far behind me, a few blue strings flung upwards, wrapping around the floating mass of land that was my playground and trying to drag its already slow approach to a stop. I didn't care, it didn't matter what was behind me. All that mattered was who was in front of me, who I was approaching with every step..! From somewhere far behind me, one of those pesky blue strings fired up. It snapped around my ankle and made me stumble while beams of light trickled down from above, but I yanked my leg forward and made that flimsy wire snap, continuing my sprint with added urgency.

I was close now, just a few feet behind them. I could see the way they lowered their head, I could see how they sort of folded their body around something in their hands... And I could see the white, pixelated particles lifting off of their facing. Shrouding their identity, guarding them from me... I lifted up my cracked left hand, and I screamed out to the Lost Soul. "CHARAAA!"

Blue strings wrapped around my hand when it was just inches from their shoulder. They tangled my fingers, coiled my palm and ensnared my forearm, stopping my hand just before I could grab them. My lips peeled back in a snarl, I tried to pull my other arm forward just for it to get grabbed by the elbow by more of those rotten wires. The blanket of Dark was now just waning black clouds in a shining sky, and far behind me hundreds of those strings were now dragging my playground back away from Chara's flower field. And I planted my feet, I puffed out my chest and I fought with all my might against the Divine Will trying to drag me backwards. Out of this place, away from them..! "Chara! Snap out of it!"

"Gnn..! It's me! It's Angel!" I shouted out to the Lost Soul, who kept their back to me. Strings wrapped up around my chest, over the tie that they'd once help me put on. Wires coiled my knees and my shins, and no matter how hard I fought it... I started to skid backwards. I roared with exertion, digging my heels in and slowing my sliding while I forced one of my wire wrapped hands to tremble just a little further. I cried out while I reached desperately, "Please! You have to wake up! Please!"

But it was no use. That Lost Soul kept their back to me, they kept their body cradled around whatever it was they were holding so close to their chest. And I was sliding back further, gradually gaining momentum and losing the strength to fight the strings that continued to ensnare me. This couldn't be happening, this couldn't be the end! I got so close, they're right there! Again, my mind raced for an answer. A solution, a way to cut these strings or to find that Lost Soul. Something, anything!

Back through my memories, my experiences, my entire time in this strange new life..! All the way back - back to a computer screen, and back to the final boss of my favorite video game. Back to all the silly little characters that made me believe I had some sort of good in me, back to the good ending I knew I had to give them for all that they'd done for me..! I struggled, I planted my feet and I stopped that dragging force for just a moment. Then I inhaled, and I made one last attempt to SAVE Chara.

"CHARA! I THINK YOU'RE AMAZING!"

My words exploded out of me, they blasted out across that field of golden flowers and they slammed into the ears of that Lost Soul with all their familiarity. And this time, they didn't flinch. They didn't draw in closer, they didn't hide. Instead... They jolted, and those glowing particles disappeared from their face, no longer shrouding their identity. And as those strings pulled, and I was sent dragging back away from them at a speed far faster than the last... Chara Dreemurr's head whipped around, they pulled the ink flower they'd been hugging so close away from their chest and their stunned scarlet eyes landed right on me while they whispered in disbelief. "Angel..?"

"Nnng..! Shit shit shit..!" I growled as I stared over my shoulder, watching the shining white antivoid get closer and closer. I couldn't fight back against the might of those strings now, hundreds of them had ensnared my body. Even though I dug my feet into the dirt and the woodchips, even though I pushed my hands forward and even though I writhed, I was still right about to go over the edge... When someone grabbed my hand.

"Angel!" Chara repeated this time, planting their feet in the ground and wrapping both hands tight around my own. My head whipped forward to spot them, my eyes went wide and my pupils shrunk. And, even though I probably should have been concerned with the unstoppable force trying to drag me away or the pain of having all those wires squeeze my body... I smiled with relief and a tear in my eye, because I had been terrified that I'd never see their face again. Chara, however, was not quite as happy as I was. "What are you doing here..?!"

"What's it, look like..?!" I spoke through the straining of all my muscles. With Chara's help, my backwards slide had stopped before my foot went over the ledge behind me. The wires had to stop their harsh pulling, they didn't want to drag Chara out with me. Chara had tucked that ink flower behind their ear so that they could grab ahold of my hand with both of theirs, and now a few of those blue strings had ensnared them too, keeping them from flying over the ledge with me. Still, with just a bit of a crack in my voice, I confidently proclaimed, "I'm here to SAVE you, Char-bear!"

"What..?" Chara's eyes widened when they heard that, their pupils shrunk and a few tears were just barely held back by their bottom eyelids. They opened their mouth and tried to force words out past a forming lump, shaking their head. They held my hand as tight as they could, but those wires just kept pulling and pulling... Their feet dug deeper into the dirt, we were both trying with all our might to keep the other from being dragged away. To be pulled apart and separated again, I couldn't bare the thought and neither could they. Still, Chara found the strength to cry out, "N-no, you have to listen to me, there's no time! Errorphim, he's too strong! You have to run, regroup, think up a way to kill-!"

"Fuck that!" I cut them off with absolute certainty, making them recoil. I had found the strength to lean forward some while I barked my refutation, DETERMINATION shined in my KIND eyes while I watched streams of tears overflow down their cheeks. Squeezing their hand tight in mine, I didn't hesitate to go on. "Without you, there's no place for me to run to! There's no life for me to live! So I'm beating this stupid fuckin' skeleton and we're going home together!"

"Please..!" Chara begged, clenching their eyes shut tight while their voice trembled. They lowered their head, and silver dust blew through the golden flowers behind them while they shouted out. "I can't let another person that I care about die because of one of my stupid plans..! Not now, and not you!"

"Rrrnnngg..!" I grunted and growled, pulling with all my might on my free right hand. Wires pulled, they stretched... And finally, they snapped, giving my hand just enough wiggle room to swing forward and latch onto theirs. This made Chara's eyes widen, they lifted their head and looked into my green eyes with new streams of tears making their way down their cheeks. And as I stared into those beautiful scarlet eyes, I demanded to know. "Chara! Do you believe in me..?!"

"W-what..?! I..." Chara's mouth hung open, like they were baffled to even hear me ask such a thing. They shook their head, pursed their lips briefly and swallowed the lump in their throat. They clenched their eyes shut tight, I felt their hands squeeze my own desperately. Then, as their eyes opened and another stream of tears broke free and trickled down their cheek, they dared nod their head. "O-of course I believe in you, Angel..! More than anything!"

I smiled gently then, my intense expression relaxed. KINDNESS shined in my eyes, and I took just a moment to look at their face. My favorite sight, and something I'd feared I would never see again... Then, even though it was harder than anything I'd ever had to do, I released Chara's hands. Their scarlet eyes went wide as my grip released, and I gave one last promise before those wires dragged me back away from them. "Then I'll see you soon."

"Wait!" As I was yanked back into the void of Light, I watched Chara find the strength to step forward and reach out. Their eyes followed me up as me and my playground were yanked sky high by those blue strings, up into the antivoid's shine. And this time, I didn't feel despair as I watched Chara get further and further away. This time, my red soul burned bright, because I knew they were waiting for me. I knew I could reach them! No, that I had to reach them! Down below I could just barely hear their voice scream out, "ANGEL!"

Chara and their field of flowers faded into the shining white, and once more I felt that crashing force pushing me upwards. That pure white was joined by orange, yellow, cyan..! Blue, purple, green and even red flashed before my very eyes... And then I jolted, my eyes snapped open wide and I gasped for air when all those colors suddenly cut out. I was back on those grey fields under that flickering sky then, my scarlet soul had been jammed back into my once more uncovered chest. And as my senses returned, and I looked down to see if I was still perched on Order's Mad God, I was greeted by Errorphim's head swinging up and crashing into mine.

"Augh-!" I cried out as that headbutt racked my already confused brain. His bald head crashed into my forehead so hard that the impact sent me firing back off of his body. I launched back through the air, crashing into the dirt and skidding backwards while Errorphim whipped his head back, cracking his skull this time into Anny's face and sending him blasting back off him.

With Anarchy's hands and his pincers unwrapping Order's Mad God, Errorphim had all the freedom in the world to tear both his arms upwards and yank Lexi and Xander up with them. He pulled them upwards, and then orange power exploded off of his body, slamming into the both of them and sending them flying back through the air. Before either of them could force their aching body's to recover, however, Errorphim's hands reached out to The Predator and The Gatherer respectively, and violet wires fired out from his fingers.

"Augh..!" Lexi cried out when those boiling hot strings whipped around her body, wrapping her just like they wrapped Xander on Errorphim's opposite side. The both of them cried out in unison as the mad god clenched his fingers, forcing those violet strings to squeeze their bodies tighter. Their legs were pulled together, arms trapped to their sides. And though he had the both of them restrained, Errorphim wasted no time. He was tired of someone swooping in whenever he had one of us, so this time he forced twin Godly Gaster Blasters to appear over The Predator and The Gatherer, their maws already open wide and burning with a brutal white shine. Lexi's wincing eyes darted up to the charging blaster just above her, and though her tired limbs pulled with all their might, it was all she could to curse as that laser blasted down towards her. "Fuuuuck..!"

BOOM!

I lifted my head and focused my blurry vision just in time to see Errorphim standing with his arms stretched out to his sides, twin pillars of ivory power crackling to his sides. The impact of those blasts blew the earth apart, sending gusts of wind firing outward and blowing back my hair. I threw up one hand to guard my eyes, and on my chest that heart shaped locket caught in the wind, clanking against the scar that Chara left me with what felt like eons ago.

Gradually those winds died down along with the laser light show, and when that ivory shine faded all that remained were twin craters in the earth. Within each of those craters laid Lexi and Xander respectively, crumpled in the dirt. Their clothes burned and their skin scorched, red mist lifted slowly off their prone bodies. I was glad to see that neither of them were dead, but I couldn't imagine they'd be crawling out of those craters particularly soon.

My jaw tightened as I looked back to Errorphim, my chest still heaving some from all that I had just put my body and soul through. His sockets narrowed at me, and his smile only grew. He continued to hold his arms out to his sides, now displaying the same sternum that Anthony had stung. That Darkness had been burned out of his bones, and once again his entire body was protected by that shining white aura. Still, he walked on the ground. Took steps to get closer to me in what I could only assume was a mockery of my mortality.

I reached up and pushed one hand up through my hair, forcing loose strands of hair out of my line of vision. But, in doing so, my eyes widened some. I realized that the ink flower I'd had behind my ear was gone, must've been knocked out of place when Errorphim headbutted me. My eyes quickly darted down the path my body had crashed through the dirt, and I found that flower laying half submerged in the sand... Only for Errorphim's foot to crash down on top of it.

"How many times am I going to have to say it before you get the message?" Errorphim asked, tilting his head to one side while he ground his foot into those colored shards. My wide eyes and shrunken pupils trembled as they stared at that crunching glass, I felt clarity slowly returning to me. Feeling back in my limbs, power back in my soul. And by the time my eyes lifted back to Order's Mad God, my lips had peeled back in a snarl, and red electricity was starting to spark to life on my body. Still he went on. "There's no hope for you. There's no hope for your friends, none for your home, and certainly none for Chara. You're all damned by my hand."

"..." Gradually, my expression relaxed. The fury in my eyes cooled... And turned to hate. Then, I pushed off my one hand in the dirt. My wings beat, and I was lifted hastily back to my feet. Once there I stood tall, and I didn't feel fear when I looked Order's Mad God in the eye and spoke. "... Y'know, Error, that actually reminds me'a somethin' I said to Chara once."

"Oh yeah?" Errorphim smirked some, tilting his head to the side. He might've been wondering if this would be a sad story, or if maybe I was about to try and reach out to Chara again. He probably loved that idea, in his eyes it just meant he had more opportunity to beat despair into me. So, he didn't hesitate to ask, "What's that?"

My lips curled up into a slimy smirk when he asked that. I folded one hand behind my back, and with the other I casually pointed up over Errorphim's head, making his browbones furrow with confusion. I recited casually, "Watch out for the space bar."

Errorphim's eyes widened with some surprise at that, and on instinct his head whipped up to catch sight of what he figured would have been some giant, plummeting computer key. But, when he looked up, he found nothing there. For a split second he was confused, before the realization that he'd been tricked and the rage it induced set in and his head whipped back down to look at me. The moment he did, the mad god had to yank his head back, and he winced with pain as the scarlet burn of my DETERMINATION sword cut right through his aura and over his cheek bone.

Errorphim stared up with wide, furious eyes and a clenched jaw as that scarlet saber slashed through the air and I spun with it, swinging my leg at his head with brutal force. Hastily Errorphim pulled up his arm, and a shockwave of red and white crashed out around the impact of my kick, sending him skidding back. His wings flexed and lifted him up a foot or two off the ground, letting him sail back away from me.

But Errorphim didn't get far before Anarchy darted in from behind. He crashed into Errorphim's lower half, wrapped his arms around the mad god's waist and used his forward momentum and Errorphim's backwards momentum to yank him backwards in a snap German suplex. He crashed Errorphim's head right into the mud and slid across the ground with the velocity he'd already gathered, flipping around to be on two feet and one hand just as a ring of Beat Cannons appeared around Errorphim's now prone body.

Anny skidded until he was just a few feet ahead of me, and while he hastily rose back to his full height those cannons fired. A circle of scarlet lasers poured down over Errorphim, igniting a cruel boiling wind and blowing back my hair and Anthony's. Those fields were alight in scarlet light, a pillar of red fired high into the sky from where all those lasers met... Before a beam of white light shot up the pillar from within. That ivory shine exploded outward in the next instant, and Anny and I both had to throw up one arm to guard our eyes against the explosion of dirt and debris that blasted outwards in the wake of Errorphim's holy might.

Rising in a pillar of his own light was Errorphim, sneering down at us and holding his arms out to his sides while his wings spread wide behind him. Anny had skidded back a few more feet under the brutal force pouring out from Order's Mad God, and the two of us glanced at each other while we crouched some, holding up both arms to guard against the gruesome winds. Our eyes narrowed, and we both nodded, before suddenly straightening our backs and standing tall. Bending our elbows and clenching our fists, the both of us released the pressure of our scarlet souls in unison, and twin pillars of crimson light exploded up into the sky before Errorphim's single ivory tower.

Me n' Anny stood tall there, side by side and engulfed in a scarlet shine. My wings spread wide and Anarchy's pincers snapped open while his stinger loomed up over his head. Our hair and our clothes were lifted and pulled at in the burning updraft, red lightning blasted down from the cracking code in the sky above and it crashed down around us here and there. The mud and dirt was hastily burning to sand and glass under the booming waves of soulfire. The air popped, the world rumbled... And then, finally, those three pillars of light began to dim. Those harsh winds died down, but still the air cracked with power. Steam rose off the scorched earth at our feet, and gradually Errorphim floated down from the sky to hover across from us once more.

"How'd things pan out with the souls?" Anny asked once the noise died down, tilting his head towards me some but not turning away from Errorphim for a second. His crowbar clenched tight and his knees bent, he was spring loaded and ready to move.

"Worse than I'd hoped, better than Error woulda liked." I answered clearly and concisely, bending my own knees and leaning forward some. My feathers twitched with anticipation, and I held that DETERMINED saber out to my side. It burned with the fire of my will, sending scarlet embers dripping off its blade.

"You think it'll work if we try it again?" Anthony narrowed his eyes at Errorphim as he asked. The mad god was smiling, he didn't mind giving us time to talk strategy. Must've been certain that no matter what we came up with, we'd fail.

"We'll have to weaken him, and I mean really weaken him." I frowned and shook my head as I spoke, but Anny grinned from ear to ear when he heard those words. He leaned forward slowly, planting one hand on the sand and holding his crowbar out to the side while those scorpion limbs loomed in wait. I smirked a little at his enthusiasm, and my muscles clenched while my wings tensed and prepared to beat. And just before Anny spoke again, Ultra Instinct Vegeta by Friedrich Habetler Music started playing.

"I was hopin' you'd say that!"

The earth exploded apart behind us, and in the next instant Anny and I were launching towards Errorphim. Scarlet streaks followed close behind us as we blasted towards that mad god, who threw out one hand to his side as I flew in front of Anny and took the lead. In Errorphim's grasp manifested another sword of stolen DETERMINATION, which he threw up just in time to block the downward cleave of my own scarlet saber. Our blades collided, sending a bolt of red lightning firing right by my head and into the sky. I wrapped both hands around the pommel of Chara's knife while Errorphim put his free hand behind the back of his own blade, and we were trapped in gridlock for just a moment... Before Anarchy shot up from beneath me and drilled that crowbar right into Errorphim's chin, sending him firing back through the air.

Order's Mad God glided back over the ground, his sockets clenched shut for a moment before they snapped open. He swung his legs up and back flipped in the air, righting himself just in time to see the both of us racing towards him in a pincer motion, Anny to his left and me to his right. His wings beat and fired him further backwards just as the two of us closed in however, and Anthony ducked under me while I flew over him, the both of us turning in unison after crossing paths and continuing to barrel towards Errorphim.

The mad god dragged one hand up through the air, and on this command spikes of bone began jabbing out of the earth between us and him. When he witnessed the way we easily darted between those spikes however, Errorphim then threw that raised hand out towards us. Over his head another Godly Gaster Blaster warped into existence, and its jaws snapped open wide to fire a ray of heavenly death right in our faces, only for me to fire right by it on a crackling streak of electric red. My DETERMINED blade cleaved right through the beast's head, separating its jaws and releasing the energy it was harnessing in a white explosion that engulfed and obliterated its entire form.

Errorphim hardly had time to look up and watch his construct get deconstructed before he had to whip his head back down, throwing up his saber just as Anny swung that crowbar at him with crushing force. The Anarchist's jaw tightened, his lips peeled back in his mad grin and with his might he crushed right through the stolen scarlet steel of Errorphim's saber. The mad god leaned back just out of the range of that crushing blow, and when Anny's crowbar crashed down into the earth and made a crater instantly dent into the earth, his stinger fired forward at the face of Order's Mad God.

Errorphim's hands shot up and clamped shut just under the stinger atop Anny's tail, he grimaced at the sight of the vantablack poison dribbling out of its point. Then, the mad god's wings pushed and pulled, spinning Errorphim with enough force for him to drag Anthony off the ground with his grip on that tail. Errorphim released his grip after doing a 180, launching Anny back through the air and putting some distance between himself and that wretched Darkness.

STAB!

Just then, Errorphim's back arched. His eyes widened, and his pupils shrunk. While his teeth ground together, his head slowly turned down and his sockets locked on to the burning red steel of my DETERMINED sword, now protruding from his sternum. I'd landed behind Order's Mad God just as he shitwhipped Anny away, and with all my might and all my DETERMINATION I had driven Chara's blade right through his aura, into his back and out his chest.

"G-ghh..! You, dare..?!" Errorphim's jaw tightened, his pupils trembled as he stared down at that blade. His thoughts must've drifted then, brought on cruel memories of his past lives and his past deaths. Whatever it was he saw, it was enough to light a fire under his ass. Because with a roar he reached up, clasping one hand around the blade of my DETERMINATION even though it cut and burned him. His hand clenched then, and I recoiled as that steel shattered like glass. Just as I started to step back with now just a Real Knife in my grasp, Errorphim's power crackled in white lightning around him. He let out a primal roar, one hardly befitting of a god, and it sent another explosion of blinding light crashing out of his body.

The power of Errorphim's ERASURE exploded into my body. It sent me flying backwards, and it obliterated the knife I'd had in my hand in the blink of an eye. While my very being vibrated with agony I crashed back first into the sand, skidding backwards a few more feet before finally finding the strength to kick my legs up and backflip back up to one knee. I skidded to a stop on that one knee after pressing both my hands into the dirt and folding my wings some, and my muscles trembled with pain as I watched that ivory shine dissipate before my eyes.

"I achieve godhood, I take from you what you love the most, I leave your friends crushed and broken!" Errorphim was furious now as he floated out of the massive crater his own ERASURE had caused in the sand. Green energy flashed over that hole that I had punched in his body, in merely a second or two the damage had been healed. My jaw tightened, and my eyes drifted to my now empty left hand. My fists couldn't break through his aura, my magic couldn't break through. The one weapon I'd found that I could use to hurt him, and he'd obliterated it in an instant. My open hand clenched into a tight fist, and my eyes lifted back to Order's Mad God as he snarled and floated closer. "And yet here you are, begging for more punishment! What am I gonna have to do to-?!"

WHACK!

Suddenly, Errorphim's head whipped forward. And bouncing off the back of his skull with a brutal clank was Anthony's crowbar, our Inheritance. From at least a dozen yards away The Anarchist had shitwhipped that twisted steel just like Errorphim had shitwhipped him, and it hit its mark with perfect precision.

While Errorphim's no doubt throbbing noggin was tilted forward and his entire body leaned in the same way, my eyes darted up to that crowbar, now flinging up through the air after bouncing off the mad god's dome. My eyes narrowed, my hand clenched to a fist against the dirt, and then my wings slammed down and fired me into the air. With my cracked and burning left hand I reached out, and the moment my fingers snapped shut around that filthy metal my furious scarlet eyes darted down to the recovering god beneath.

My wings beat again, and this time I fired straight down while I yanked my Inheritance up over my head. The first thing Errorphim's readjusting eyes saw was my shadow writhing and wriggling on the ground, before his head whipped up just in time to catch the curve of that crowbar right between his eyes. My jaw clenched tight, I hardly noticed the flash of Darkness that fired up through the cracks of my left arm while a shockwave of black and white exploded out around the two of us, sending tidal waves of sand crashing up and across the desert. Then, the force carried through, and Order's Mad God was sent blasting on his back across the Valley of Shadow and Death.

Errorphim's body dug a crater through the glassed sands, a trench followed him while he crashed across the earth. Pain on his expression, pain that he had once thought he would never feel again. And then... Rage. He reached back, dug his claws into the earth he was about to smash through and kicked his feet up, flipping back up onto his hands and feet and skidding slowly to a stop. He exhaled white steam through his teeth while he remained there for a moment, a god on all fours like some savage animal.

My wings lifted and fired down, sending me launching through the air at Errorphim while I held that crowbar out to my side. Errorphim snarled and shoved off the dirt, throwing his upper body upright and standing tall once again. He threw his arms out to his sides and his jaws snapped open, firing another beam of concentrated laser death right at me. My wings beat and swung, spinning me suddenly in a corkscrew motion. I continued to launch forward, spiraling up that laser and pulling my Inheritance out to the side. When Errorphim snapped his jaws shut and stopped shooting that death beam in order to pivot into a different counter attack however, I whipped my hand forward and released that cruel steel, sending it flinging right at the mad god's head.

Errorphim yanked his head to the side the moment his accurate eyes caught that wretched tool fling at his head, letting it sail over his shoulder. But, what he hadn't seen was Anthony The Anarchist diving at him from behind. Anny's hand shot out and snapped shut around that crowbar, and he spun, swinging his Inheritance with crushing force right into the side of Errorphim's head. Errorphim's eyes snapped open wide, his pupils went out for just a moment as shadows flashed momentarily across his face and through his shining aura. Then, the momentum carried through, and Order's Mad God was sent launching on his shoulder across the sand again.

Anny landed on his heel and spun to face the launching mad god, kicking off the ground and shooting right after him. I drifted in at high speed from behind, chasing behind Anthony after Errorphim, who's wings beat and launched him back to an upright position while he skidded backwards. The mad god threw up one hand, and a spike of bone shot up in Anny's path. He wrapped one hand around that bone and swung himself around it, releasing his grip and throwing himself at Errorphim.

When a wall of KINDNESS appeared in Anny's way though, he slammed into it feet first and was forced to an immediate stop. He didn't hesitate to toss his crowbar upwards then, and I caught it once more as I shot over him, rapidly closing the distance between myself and Errorphim. The mad god threw up his arms when I crashed a crowbar strike down at his head, and the impact to his forearms sent another shockwave blasting and forced his feet to dig deeper into the sand while he skidded back another few steps.

Anny shot by underneath me then, and I handed our Inheritance off to him like a baton as he launched after Errorphim. He pulled the cruel metal down and dragged it across the earth as he ran low to the ground, popping up right in front of Errorphim and swinging the twisted steel right into the underside of his arms, shattering his block and forcing the mad god to throw his arms up over his head and recoil.

Anny kept that crowbar held up high and once again I shot right over it, snatching our Inheritance once more when he offered it up to me. With brutal force I sent that steel crashing down into the very same chest that Anthony had stung and I had driven my soul into, and red voltage exploded off of the impact. Power cracked and snapped through that ivory aura, before suddenly... It went out. For just a moment, a few seconds at best as Errorphim was sent skidding back on his heels once more, he was no longer protected by holy light.

I landed side by side with Anthony, and Order's Mad God managed to lift his head just in time to see the both of us cock back a fist and push forward. We fired off the ground, I pulled back my left fist and Anny yanked back his right. In the blink of an eye we'd closed the distance, and scarlet flames exploded out of our knuckles and up our arms when we threw our punches in unison. Our forearms and the backs of our hands pressed together, we both let out a primal roar as our fists crashed right into Errorphim's skull. His face nearly dented in from the impact, we could see his eyes look in two different directions while a few thin cracks splintered his teeth and orbital sockets. Three layers of shockwaves blasted out around the three of us while our fists dragged Errorphim's head backwards, and then the impact finally blasted through his body, launching him at mach speed away from the two of us.

My wings lifted to put me in hot pursuit, when suddenly my eyes widened. Searing agony shot up my left arm, and for just a split second I was paralyzed by the sudden pain. I tumbled onto my hands and knees as Anthony launched forward without me, my steaming left arm hanging limp while it twitched and vibrated. My jaw tightened, and I looked to the crowbar in my right hand before my eyes darted back to Anthony. I yanked our Inheritance up over my head while I shouted out, "Anny!"

Anthony's head whipped back around as he raced towards Errorphim, and when he saw his crowbar flinging towards him he instantly reached out, catching it out of the air. Then, his focus darted back to Errorphim, who was hunched over and holding his beaten in face. One socket winced shut, the other glared right at The Anarchist barreling closer. His body trembled with rage, ivory energy started to shine out of his bones once more as Order's Mad God ripped his hands off his face and threw them down.

Revealing the very same cracks that our punch had put in his divine skull and giving Anny a pretty clear target, Errorphim's hands tensed before he dragged them up through the air. And to my shock and Anthony's, a horrible, furious scream exploded out of that holy being as beams of yellow light suddenly started blasting up out of the sand around him. Undeterred by the rumbling earth or the geysers of golden power, Anny dove into the air and cranked back that crowbar. But, just before he could bring it slamming down on Errorphim's head, the ground beneath the two of them exploded open.

Anarchy's eyes snapped open wide, he used his free arm to cover his face just before that rising tide of energy exploded into him. It burned his skin and his clothes, he felt the force of the blast firing him high into the sky while he was blinded by the light. When that shine finally cleared and he could open his eyes again, he was shocked to see that he was nearly a mile in the sky. From his bird's eye view, he could still see that golden energy dying down beneath. It appeared that all the earth in an acre radius of Order's Mad God had been blown apart under that holy JUSTICE, and judging by the flesh he was still regrowing and the bones he could feel snapping back into place Anarchy had been right in the epicenter.

He could feel his ascent slowing now, he knew gravity was about to get ahold of him and that the drop back down would be less than pleasant. Still, with his arms having been thrown up over his head with the blast, Anthony gripped his crowbar tighter. Dropping down from the sky like this, and he couldn't even see where Errorphim was. It was more than likely he'd have a lot of bones and lasers to get through before he even hit the ground...

Or at least he probably thought that, until he felt me grab him by the wrists. Anny's eyebrows rose with some surprise when I suddenly stopped the growing pull of his gravity, instead pulling him through the air with me and keeping the both of us in the sky while we waited for Errorphim' form to become clear in the smoke beneath. I smirked down at him while he glanced up at me with a dumbfounded expression, keeping the both of us in the air with one pair of wings instead of two. One of my eyes was green now, a color that reflected in my halo and glowed in the cracks of my left arm. I'd had to fall back on my KINDNESS to dull the burn that my DETERMINATION was starting to leave. I arched a brow at Anny's shocked expression, asking casually. "Need a lift?"

Anthony didn't speak, however. He just blinked a few times while he looked at me, before lowering his eyes to our surroundings. The glitching clouds that we soared by, the warped sky above and the destroyed valley beneath. It seemed as though Errorphim just existing in a timeline might've been enough to destabilize it, or maybe we'd all played a hand in that too. I don't think that's what was on Anny's mind while I carried him through the air, though. I thought he might have been pondering what it was like to feel so weightless after carrying the supermassive weight of his own soul for so long, and maybe, just maybe he remembered that picture that he'd drawn and I'd framed all those years ago... His scarlet eyes narrowed at a white glow emerging in the sandstorm beneath, and he finally spoke. "... Throw me, Angel."

"Wait, what?" Not gonna lie, I'd anticipated a few statements and that wasn't one of them. I glanced briefly at Anny before my eyes too dropped to the growing ivory shine in the settling mist of grey. I only had a moment to squint into it, before suddenly that fog exploded open, revealing a massive spike of bone blasting up towards us. I hastily jerked to the side, pulling Anthony with me and getting both of us out of the way just in time. That building sized femur shot right past, disappearing into one of the code dripping tears in the atmosphere above. "Whoa-!"

"There's no time!" Anthony spoke with more urgency, kicking his feet some while we circled around the mad god beneath. More of those bones were flying up, and I could see the white shine of a few of those Godly Gaster Blasters. All the while Errorphim remained on the ground, maybe he liked the distance it put between us. I would've needed to regroup too after the beating we'd laid down on him a minute ago. Anny quickly explained, "He's slipping, we need to act fast! You throw me down there, and I'll keep him in one place while you charge that dome thing you used the first time we fought!"

"My Massive Beat Dome?" I asked with some surprise, immediately being answered by the sound of Anny muttering "He has a name for it..." I shook my head though, my brows furrowing some while another one of those huge spikes blasted by us. I objected, "That takes awhile to charge, Anny! You'd have to keep him in one spot for a real long time, and even if that worked how would you get outta the blast range?"

"I don't need to get outta the blast, I'm me!" Anarchy stated like it was the simplest fact he knew, and I shook my head. I guessed that I couldn't deny the fact that he'd shrugged off my Beat Dome like it was nothing when I hit him with it a few years back, but I'd gotten way stronger since then. And, besides, if the Beat Dome wouldn't work on Anny, why would it work on Errorphim? My eyes darted to the cracks in my still aching left arm, and I grimaced as Anthony went on. "We've gotta lay into him with everything we've got, right now! Then, when he's weakened, jam your soul into him again and yank Chara back out! Even if we all get knocked out in the process, as soon as he's not a god anymore Lexi's crew, the old knockoff, Eden and Gaster can all pour back in to finish the job! We just have to get rid'a that stupid ERASE ability and his invulnerability!"

"..." I groaned as I hesitated, shaking my head. There were flaws in this plan and I knew it, if Errorphim shrugged off this assault but Anny didn't... Still, my body was aching. The red half of my soul was burning harshly, I knew I was approaching my limit and I remembered very clearly the warning that future had given me back in the Royal Garden. One way or another, I was gonna run outta juice sooner rather than later. I groaned louder, before centering my focus back on the mad god beneath. "I hope you're sure about this, Anny!"

"I'm sure about everything I do, now toss me!" Anarchy confidently commanded, and I took a deep breath before turning us towards the center of that bone and beam barrage. My wings folded in some, and immediately we started to pick up speed in a nose dive. I gripped Anny's wrists even tighter as we plummeted down towards Errorphim, and just before I spread my wings wide and released my grip, Anthony said one more thing. "Oh, and thanks for the lift! Even at the end'a the world, it's still a real pretty view from up here!"

I smiled at that, in a bittersweet sorta way. Then, my fingers released and my wings snapped open, sending Anthony blasting straight down towards Errorphim with the momentum I'd built while the brutal wind currents yanked me back upwards. I watched Anthony The Anarchist fire like a missile down into the barrage of Errorphim's magic, and my thoughts once again drifted to that smiling albino boy with a framed drawing in his hands... Before my expression grew more tense, and I reached out my open palm towards the mad god below.

Anarchy fired in a nose dive down towards Errorphim, unflinching as a wave of super heated plasma blasted right by him from the maw of one of those Godly Gaster Blasters. When he saw another supermassive bone shooting up right at him, he threw his head down and his legs up, spinning himself right over the blunt end of that bone and landing on his feet along its smooth surface. He slid on his heels down that calcium pillar, bending his knees and holding his arms out to his sides some to keep his balance.

Another laser fired at Anthony when he was halfway down that bone so he kicked off of it, launching through the air at the same Godly Gaster Blaster that had tried to blast him. He yanked his crowbar up over his head with both hands, and just as that blaster's glowing eyes landed on him he cranked down a skull crushing blow. His crowbar blasted through the top of that dragon skull and out its bottom jaw, through which Anthony plummeted to continue his descent now feet first.

A green wall manifested in his path, but with another brutal swing of his crowbar he crushed it to green shards and fell right through it. Four orbs of glowing gold energy appeared on all sides of him, but while his pincers shot out and crushed two while his tail stabbed back through the third his mouth snapped open, firing out a wave of pressurized black water not unlike his Wyrms' ability to obliterate the fourth orb.

After that, Anthony's eyes darted once more back below. A sea of those enormous bones were flying up to meet him, and between them were the twinkling lights of more charging blasters. Still, Anarchy's face ripped up in a mad grin, and he yanked his crowbar once more over his head while his pincers pulled back. Another huge pillar of white blasted up into his path, and he cracked his crowbar right down into its blunt end with enough force to send bone fragments blasting up around him and a crack splintering down the length of the spire. Then, his pincers shot forward, slamming into the now split sides of that bone and shoving with all their might. The bone snapped and cracked before it split, being torn in two and giving a more clear path.

Once that bone was tossed aside Anarchy could see a blaster charging right behind it, but his tail fired down at mach speed and crashed right through the skull of that godly construct, making it explode in white lights and black shadows. After that Anny flipped in air, plummeting through the smoke and landing on his feet on another one of the dozen bones shooting up at him. He skidded down it for a moment, before firing off of it in a jump and landing on another. Then another jump to another bone, and another and another and another.

He was a red blur now, firing between those bones and gaining even more velocity as he went. He darted by blasters and left them exploding apart behind him, firing like a bolt of scarlet lightning all the way down to Order's Mad God. Finally, he flipped in air, rapidly approaching the earth now at meteoric speed. Another bone appeared to fire up at him, and with all his might and built up force he crashed his feet right down into it. So intense was his impact that not only did it stop that bone's ascent, it drove it right back down!

Errorphim recoiled as the shockwave of that impact blew another blast of glassed sand past him, and as that bone crashed halfway into the dirt before him his eyes narrowed up at the man crouched on its peak. Face covered by shadow and eyes shining red, Anthony The Anarchist loomed over Order's Mad God. Two pincers and a tail looming over his head, his arms were held out to the side and his crowbar was clenched tight in one powerful hand. And behind Anarchy... Errorphim could see Cannons. Wires and metal, rapidly putting themselves together to form a perfect line of Beat Cannons.

Errorphim's head whipped to one side, and then to another. More cannons manifesting, side by side. Connecting in a ring... No, a halo! Errorphim's head lifted, and he could see more of those blasters gradually putting themselves together high into the sky. Just how many was that damn Pencil Pusher making?! Whatever, it didn't matter! Errorphim's body turned towards one of the many openings in the forming dome, and his wings beat, launching him towards it.

Just as he got close to that opening though, the same red blur that had been darting down through his relentless assault fired right over his head. Suddenly, Anarchy was upside down and eye to eye with Errorphim, giving the mad god a full view of what madness really looked like before whipping his crowbar forward and cracking it right into Errorphim's jaw, sending him blasting backwards.

Errorphim's wings spread wide and dragged his momentum to a stop, and he winced and grabbed ahold of his chin while he watched The Anarchist flip upright and land on his feet across from him. His knees bent, his body spring loaded, Anarchy had put himself right between Errorphim and his exit. That got the mad god's sockets to narrow with understanding, and his teeth pulled up in a grin while he spoke. "How noble. I didn't take you for the type to sacrifice yourself, Anarchy."

"Then you haven't been paying attention." The Anarchist stated coldly, those vicious eyes narrowing at Order's Mad God. One red and one black now, his heterochromia eyes matched the half and half soul on his chest. For just a moment, nobody moved. The only sound in the world was a symphony of clanking metal and hissing wires, resounding from the dome of cannons gradually building itself around the two of them. Then... They both launched at each other.

BOOM!

A shockwave blasted when Errorphim stopped one of those swinging pincers in his open palm, him and Anarchy having met in the middle in the blink of an eye. The mad god's maw snapped open then, firing a laser of boiling white heat only for Anarchy to jump and flip over Errorphim, letting that laser blast a crater into the earth and firing his stinger at the back of the mad god's skull. Errorphim's jaw snapped shut and he ducked, letting that stinger shoot over his head while his wings spread wide. As Anarchy landed behind him Errorphim's wings beat, launching him upwards and towards the wide open sky above.

He didn't get far though before those pincers shot up, clamping shut around the both of Errorphim's ankles while Anarchy's stinger stabbed into the ground behind him, stopping Errorphim's ascent in an instant. The mad god glared furiously down at Anthony, who smiled in return before spinning, yanking Errorphim through the air and releasing his grip to shitwhip him at the very same pillar of bone he'd kicked into the ground earlier.

With a crash and an explosion of dust and bone shards, Errorphim's body exploded into the base of that half buried tower, splitting it in two and letting its top half plummet down onto him. Another blast of ERASURE fired out from the mad god's body then, obliterating the same construct he'd constructed in a short ivory blast. From within that blast, Errorphim launched not at Anarchy but instead to the side, barreling towards a rapidly closing opening in one of the bottom halos.

Just as he thought he'd reached that opening however, that red flash entered his line of vision and once more Anarchy was right in his way with that crowbar cocked back. Errorphim lifted his hand to catch the strike, only to find he'd been faked out when one of those pincers blasted up and grabbed ahold of his skull. The scorpion limb stretched, shoving Errorphim back through the air and slamming him back first into the sand. That mad god was used like a garden hoe, digging a trench into the sand before finally being released, that pincer rapidly slinging back to loom over Anarchy's shoulder.

Errorphim's body rose right back up from the dirt he'd been shoved into, his wings spread wide and his arms held out to his sides. His eyes locked onto The Anarchist, his sockets squinted irritably and power crackled over his divine body... Before suddenly his wings blasted down, launching Errorphim to the side and towards yet another opening in the Beat Dome. Anarchy's head whipped to the side to follow his path while he cursed, "Fuckin'!"

Errorphim was grinning as once more he shot towards the daylight, before once again Anarchy bolted into his path. That turned his sneer to a frown, and his wings beat again, launching him upwards and towards a different opening higher in the dome. Anthony fired off the ground right after him though, once more getting in his way and blocking his exit. Again Errorphim's wings beat, and again Anarchy launched after him. Again and again and again, they were a white and red flash bolting all around the inside of The Angel's forming Halos.

But the openings were getting fewer, farer between. Errorphim knew that the dome was getting closer to completion with every passing second, and finally after Anarchy's crowbar sent him blasting back to the ground, his head whipped straight up to the last opening left. Right at the top of the dome, the one spot that wasn't beginning to shine red. Where metal and wires were still morphing together, and where Errorphim had to make his escape.

So, just as Anarchy landed across from him, Errorphim's wings lifted. They slammed down, and ivory lightning crashed down beside Order's Mad God just before he blasted upwards at super sonic speed. Anthony's head whipped up to watch him ascend and his teeth grit while his knees bent. With an earth shattering force he jumped right up into the sky after Errorphim, but he was trailing behind. That last Cannon was just starting to spin as Errorphim reached up towards it... Only for a pincer to snap shut on his arm.

"Where ya goin', dwarf?!" Anarchy cackled as he reeled himself in on that pincer, latching onto Errorphim's back. His arms and his pincers swung around Errorphim's sides, latching onto each other over his chest and trapping both Errorphim's arms and two sets of his wings against his body. Errorphim snarled at this, his two remaining wings flailing and trying to keep him in air to no avail. Anarchy shouted just as the two started to drop back downward, into the growing red light of that Massive Beat Dome. "You're gonna miss the best part!"

"You disgusting, death worshipping, masochistic filth!" Errorphim shouted furiously as he watched that final Beat Cannon start to spin, red light flaring in its barrel just like the seven halos now spinning around the two of them. The mad god's body quickly started to break down into those multicolored pixels, but Anarchy just squeezed him tighter. His red soul flared, and a scarlet aura broke out around the two of them, bouncing those pixels right back onto Errorphim's body! Sockets widening in shock, Errorphim's head snapped back around so that he could glare at The Anarchist. "How did you-?!"

"It's MY Divine Will that the both of us get blown to high hell in this dome!" Anarchy snarled, his lips peeling back to reveal his inhuman fangs. Errorphim's teeth grit, and once again he looked out to the sea of red light around the both of them. The whirring power of those Halos was quickly becoming deafening, they were beginning to spin in opposite directions. That scarlet shine was quickly becoming blinding, and still Anarchy shouted. "I hope for your sake all that divinity shit you were spoutin' was true! FIRE, ANGEL!"

Just like that, the roar of lasers blasting overpowered the charging of the Cannons. In an instant all at once, those Halos all opened fire on their one and only target. Suspended in air and surrounded on all sides by tidal waves of scorching crimson death, it was all Errorphim could do to grimace and watch the atomic blast roll in. He tried to break away in pixels, he tried to summon walls of KINDNESS and bone in the way, he tried to manifest a Godly Gaster Blaster to shoot back. But, each and every time, his power was denied. His magic was subdued, the DETERMINATION pouring over him from The Anarchist latched onto his back willed it so. DETERMINATION that overpowers the will of a god?! What is he?!

Anarchy wasn't thinkin' too hard about the pressure he'd used to subdue Order's Mad God, he was too busy cackling as that brutal crimson power rained down. Over his head his stinger curled, and Errorphim's pupils shrunk as they darted to spot it looming over his head. Just as that stinger fired down and drove its point right into Errorphim's forehead, one of the mad god's vertebrae stretched backwards suddenly in a long and vicious point. Anthony's eyes went wide as that point shot right through his core, and even though it left streams of burning white Light creeping up through his abdomen, he still grinned.

Blood in the corner of his mouth, Anarchy's eye twitched with the pain of that searing Light. Errorphim writhed now that The Dark was creeping down his head and slithering under his eye sockets. Still, even though he could feel a holy burn ripping at his insides, Anthony's grip did not relent. Not as The Dark in his soul screamed out, not as that scorching scarlet death exploded into the two of them and not as he felt his human body being burned away. His eyes went blind in the flashing red, his ears deaf in the roaring plasma. His smell washed out by the scent of his own burning flesh, his taste and his touch replaced with the agony of his own obliteration. The music stopped.

Every part of his body felt everything all at once... And then there was nothing. No bright light, no roaring sound, no death stink and no burning pain. For just a moment, Anthony The Anarchist felt himself floating in the nothing. A Dark void, Darker than even he could have ever conceived. For a time, he thought he might have been dead. That perhaps he had overestimated himself, or that the poisoning Light at the last second had made his infinite soul weak enough to shatter.

... But then his eyes opened, and he saw his mother's face.

And for a moment, he thought that more confirmation that he was dead. Dead, and likely set to endure some eternal punishment right with the woman who created him. And that was, until he recognized her sad expression and realized he was laying on that shitty old couch with his head in her lap. That made Anarchy frown, it made him growl. And when Delilah tried to reach out and put a hand on his cheek he slapped it away, quickly jerking his head out of her lap and sitting up.

"For the love of- what do you want now?!" Anthony demanded to know as he stood up off the couch, spinning around to face the frail woman sitting calmly on the old cushions. When she just stared up at him and didn't answer, his jaw tightened. His eyes narrowed, and they darted quickly around that old living room. The scratched up wood floor, the rickety recliner, and right behind him was the old box TV. He glared at that darkened glass screen, in it he could see the red fury shining in his Ghoulish eyes.

"... I thought we should talk." Anarchy saw Delilah's lips move in that television reflection, it made his eyes widen and his pupils shrink. Her voice... Why did he still remember it so clearly? She'd hardly even talked to him his entire childhood, he should have forgotten it by now! Exhaling through his grinding teeth, Anthony slowly pivoted, looking over his shoulder and into the dim blue eyes of his mother.

"Of course now you wanna talk." Anarchy spun around to face her, letting her get a good look at all the anger on his face. Disgusted, Anthony shook his head at Delilah before turning towards the door across the living room. He grumbled as he stomped towards it, not even bothering to look at her while he shouted. "I'm busy now, mom! I don't have time to take care of you anymore, there's people who actually care about me that need my help!"

Delilah's head turned to watch Anthony walk towards the door, but she didn't stand up. She just sat there, hands folded in her lap and tired eyes watching her son turn his back on her... But, when he reached out for the doorknob, she spoke again. "You can't beat him like this."

"..." Anarchy's hand stopped, mere inches from that creaky wooden knob. It was the door to the backyard, he remembered opening and closing it again and again on days that his mother took forever to get home and him and Angel spent the day playing on the patchy grass and dead dirt behind his house. Anthony's eye twitched, and again he slowly looked over his shoulder to the woman sitting calmly on the couch. "What did you just say?"

"I said you're going to lose." Delilah didn't hesitate to reiterate, blinking those distant addict eyes at her son. On the living room television, something flickered for just a moment. A quick flash of Anthony's mother, dead and mutilated on the basement floor... He spun around to face her, and his hands clenched into tight fists at his sides while she went on without emotion. "You wouldn't go all out on Xander, and he got away with Chara's soul. Now you won't go all out on Error, so he's going to kill you and every one of those 'people who actually care about you'."

"..." Silently, Anarchy glared at her. His teeth grit, his hairs rose and every cell in his body cried out for Delilah's blood. But... He didn't stomp across that living room. He didn't grab her by the collar of the shirt and smack her across the face, he didn't rip her limb from limb and he didn't tear her face off with the fangs he inherited from his father. Instead, he exhaled through his grinding teeth, and he flashed a berserk smile while he asked in a growl. "Alright. What do you suggest I do?"

"Whatever you want." Delilah answered without hesitation and without care, and immediately Anthony threw his head back and tossed his arms into the air.

"There it is!" Anarchy threw out one hand to gesture to Delilah as he exclaimed, more and more wrath slipping into his expression. That television screen flickered, flashed between the faces of Jevil, Frisk, Spamton... And then a fourth face, shrouded in shadow with two glowing red eyes. Anarchy stomped away from the door and back towards his mother, standing in the center of the living room now as he berated. "I'm gettin' real tired of being told to just 'do whatever I want'! Last time I did whatever I wanted I killed and ate you, you dumb bitch!"

"Do you regret that decision?" Delilah blinked, tilting her head to the side. She didn't flinch or lean back as Anthony loomed over her, leaning down until his face was inches from hers and baring his fangs while he gave his answer.

"No." Anthony snarled definitively, the red eyes his father gave him trembling with rage. Still, his mother was unmoved. She stared up at him with the same cold eyes she'd used to look at him when he was just a boy. When he was small, and weak. When she didn't have a reason to fear him yet...

"Then why are you afraid of going to that place again?" Delilah's cold eyes narrowed, just a little. It made Anarchy flinch, made his white knuckled fists shake... He pulled himself away, turned his back on her again and marched right back towards that door.

"Fuck off!" He exclaimed dismissively, pointing back towards her without looking at her. He stomped over to that door, and again he reached for it with his hand while he snarled. "I'm not wasting anymore time on you! You're dead, and this stupid house is gone!"

"If I'm dead then what am I doing standing right here?" Again, Delilah's voice cut in before Anthony could grab the handle. His hand paused, his body tensed, and he stood there. Paralyzed, with shadows covering his face and the light of those Ghoul eyes staring down at the knob just inches from his grasp... Standing behind him now in the center of the living room, his mother went on to ask. "If this house is gone, what are you doing standing here, with me, ten feet above the basement where you ate me alive?"

"I don't know, okay?!" Anthony snapped, spinning around to face that cruel, frail bitch. His desperate eyes were wide, pupils shrunken and trembling while he slammed his hand against his chest and gestured back to the door behind him. "I have tried so hard to move on! I made friends, I took years off of murder, I even fuckin' forgave Angel! So you tell me: WHY AM I STILL HERE?!"

"You think you've moved on?" Delilah's eyes narrowed with disbelief, she tilted her head and her mouth hung open a little like she was trying to find the words to properly berate her son with. She shook her head when she found them, going on to say, "You know where you are right now, Anthony? Flat on your back, covered in your own blood, alone and about to die. That predicament sound familiar to you?"

At the halfway point between Anthony and Delilah, the TV flickered again. A quick image of a little albino boy, crying and spitting up blood while he held his shattered arm close to his chest. Alone in the basement right under Anarchy's feet... Delilah dared step closer to her son, shaking her head with disgust while she went on. "All the power in the world, and you're still waiting for someone to come open that door for you."

Anarchy clenched his eyes shut tight, he lowered his head. His fists trembled at his sides, his entire body shook with rage and pain. It took everything he had, but... Slowly, Anthony forced words up out of his chest. Through his throat, and finally out past his sharp teeth. "... I didn't just kill you. I hurt so many people for so long after I first became, this..."

"Now I have friends. I have, people rooting for me..." Gradually, Anarchy's eyes opened. He looked into his open palms, and he could see all the blood stained in the creases of his hands. Under his finger nails... His hands clenched into fists once more, and in a shaky voice he found more words to say. "I... I don't want to hurt them again..."

"You only feel that way because you're trying to be someone you're not." Delilah was not moved by her son's words, she never had been before and she wouldn't be now. Those cold blue eyes narrowed, bitter in their broken INTEGRITY. She shook her head while she went on, "You're still trying to be that scared little kid. Pretending you're weaker than you are, putting what everyone else wants before your own desires... You're trying to be like me, but you were born to be like-"

WHACK!

Anthony didn't realize his hand had moved until Delilah's blood was flying through the air. He didn't know how or when his crowbar appeared in his hand, but he could see her blood on it now. He'd swung upwards with it, cracked it right into her chin and thrown that poor, weak and frail woman back through the air. Anarchy's eyes trembled with emotion as she crashed to the floor, her frizzy greying hair falling over her face... The TV flickered, and it showed another albino. Another Ghoul in a lower resolution, with straight hair and a pointed nose. He was covered in blood and holding up some beaten and battered corpse by the back of the head as he grinned and snarled right into the camera. His cruel cackle was distorted, it skipped and shifted pitch while Anthony dared say. "I will NEVER be like him."

He said that, but Anthony had a crowbar in his hand and it was dripping with the blood of someone far weaker than him. His heart was pounding, his blood was vibrating for more cruelty. But, Anarchy fought it as best he could. He loomed there, didn't strike again because he didn't have to. He just narrowed his eyes and watched his mother's body twitch and shift. Gradually, she lifted her head. Delilah reached up with one hand and brushed away the hair covering her face, and Anthony's eyes went wide in horror. The face of his mother had shattered like a glass mirror, cracked and broken off all the way up one side of her face. And underneath, the original Ivory Ghoul was grinning up at his son.

"Then all your precious toys are gonna die."

Anthony took a step back while The Killer picked himself up off the floor. His wide, mortified eyes trembled, and he shook his head while the possessed body of his mother lifted and dragged upright like some sort of marionette tangled in strings. The first Ivory Ghoul smiled with the same fangs that Anthony had, his giddy eyes watched more horror creep across the face of his progeny. That crowbar was heavy in Anarchy's hand now, he didn't know if he was supposed to drop it or swing at that familiar face again.

"If you really believe that those friends mean something to you, if you actually care about all those people that you can obliterate with the flick of your wrist and if you really want to go back to that boring farm life..." Killer shambled closer to Anthony, but he didn't take another step back. Even though he was disgusted, even though he leaned away and scowled at the strange half and half face of his parents, he refused to take another step back towards that door. The Killer leaned in, got right in his face and stared through the scarlet eyes that his son inherited from him. "Then why are you so afraid to let loose? If you really believe that's the life you want, then using the power you inherited from me to protect that life should be a no brainer, shouldn't it?"

"... I-..." Anthony turned his head away, he narrowed those crimson eyes and hoped that his father wouldn't look into them again. He hesitated, and the TV screen flipped again like it was changing to another channel. Anthony, Mako, Max, and even Badster on that beach. The bad doctor sitting on the dock with his feet in the water while his fellow skeleton tried to stand and balance on Anarchy's shoulders. Max floated a safe distance away, smirking with some amusement at the sight of Mako slipping and tumbling off Anthony's imposing frame and into the water.

"So many wasted years, trying to convince yourself there was something good alive inside you." Killer narrowed his eyes, he frowned at his son and he shook his head while the TV went Dark again. "Every self imposed rule, every bit of blame that you shifted onto Angel's shoulders. You really believed that you'd be the hero so long as he was the villain. But he's giving everything to do all the things that you've convinced yourself are right and good, so where does that leave you?"

"All the bodies you stacked up, all the homes you destroyed, all the devastation you left in your wake when you were barely even trying." Killer shut his eyes briefly, he shivered with some sick pleasure while he contemplated that sort of might. The potential his boy had, the opportunity to truly ascend to something beyond his mortal form... Those ruthless red eyes opened again, and he flashed his boy another smile. "The funny thing is, son, you don't really have a choice in this matter. Either you step out of your little prison and start acting like a Killer, or all the people you think you care about are gonna die."

Anthony's jaw tightened, his eyes clenched shut tighter. He heard that TV hiss as it shifted again... And then he heard Frisk's voice come through the speakers. "With your power, all of reality could be your play thing. This world was meant for you, Anthony. You just have to reach out and take everything you want~" The words made Anthony shutter, forced him to reckon with all the feelings that their offer had made him experience. The desires he'd pretended he didn't have, all the things he was afraid that he might have really wanted...

"Your honesty, your loyalty, your control? It's not gonna save anybody now. So either give up and let the world die, or let yourself out and learn who you really are." The Killer grinned wide as he looked into the face of his son. His Ivory Ghoul, his second coming. Fight as much as he wanted, Killer did not believe that Anthony could overwrite fate. He could not deny destiny, and he could not hide forever from what he was born to be. So, when his son's eyes gradually opened, and Anthony looked up at the first Ivory Ghoul from under his white eyebrows, The Killer tilted his head and asked, "What's it gonna be, Anny?"

"..." Quietly, Anthony The Anarchist took a deep breath. His eyes drew down towards the wooden planks that he stood upon, and the basement that he knew was hidden beneath. Then, his stare glossed over to the crowbar in his grasp. The blood stained steel that he was born to hold, his Inheritance... His eyes drifted up his arm, and all the scars engraved in his skin. His stare finally lifted with his head, and he looked his father in the eye as his right hand shot out and punched right through his parents' shared chest.

Killer's eyes went wide, his pupils shrunk. And he smiled even wider in spite of the blood filling the corners of his mouth. Fearless now, Anthony The Anarchist stared into that wretched half and half face before cranking his head back. He threw his forehead forward and cracked it into theirs, throwing them off his arm sending his marionette mother and the wretched Ghoul that possessed her tumbling like a broken doll across the floor.

Anarchy's eyes drifted to his hand and the blood that coated it. That cold stare examined the dripping red... Before he brought it up to his mouth, and his tongue slithered out past his lips, licking up his palm and over his finger. He turned then towards that TV, looked at it for the first time since he saw his reflection in it when he first woke up in this place. And as the screen flickered and flashed again, he lowered that blood soaked hand and tilted his head, squinting with some confusion...

Suddenly, an image appeared. He saw a little albino boy, holding out an umbrella over some crying girl in an alleyway. It meant that the water poured down over the boy, but he didn't care as he reached out to her and smiled. The image flipped and changed then, and suddenly Anthony saw himself kneeling in the dirt. Lexi stood over him, one hand outstretched to hold a massive umbrella of ice up and protect them both. The other reached out to Anthony while she flashed him a smile.

Anthony didn't know it, but he took a step closer to the TV. Just a little one, before the image flickered and changed again. Now, he saw a young Fortune and a young Ghoul standing at opposite ends of a Dark alleyway. A Fortune who buried his father and a Ghoul who ate his mother... The image flipped and warped, it became Xander and Anthony standing back to back. Surrounded by a sea of undead soldiers and still finding the strength to smile as they protected one another from the constructs.

Without thinking, Anthony lifted that blood soaked hand. He reached out towards the TV screen, ever careful... But it changed again, and he stopped. Now, he saw that red eyed boy smiling sheepishly with his arm in a cast, holding out the drawing he'd made as an apology to his green eyed best friend. Anthony's eyes widened a little while his pupils shrunk, and then the screen flickered to a different image. Anthony The Anarchist, soaring through the air in the grasp of The Angel. Held up by his arms, in almost an exact reenactment of the drawing he'd once framed and held whenever he felt hopeless and alone...

Anthony blood soaked hand clenched into a fist, his expression tensed with newfound resolve. And when the TV shut off and he saw himself reflected in the darkened glass again, he knew who he was. Turning his head towards the door, Anarchy's lips curled down into an intense frown. His eyes narrowed with certainty, there was DETERMINATION in his every step as he marched towards that exit. And when he reached the door, he didn't need his crowbar to pry it open. He just yanked up his foot and kicked it right off its hinges.

---

I held out both hands towards that atomic inferno beneath. The entire world was lit up in red, the only other color left was the waning green in my right eye and my left arm. My jaw clenched tight, my body vibrated right with the cracking and popping air. I could feel magic and power beyond my comprehension pouring out of me, my wide eyes stared into the supermassive blast that I had created and once again I was forced to reckon with what I really was.

Seven halos. From bottom to top, Order, Judgement, Punishment, Repentance, Might, Wrath, and finally Sacrifice. All seven of The Angel's Halos, I hadn't summoned then since Mount Ebott. Since I tried to kill Anny, and in the process mutilated my own body. My wide, trembling eyes darted to my left arm. Green light was being snuffed out by red flames, I could see those scars stretching and I could feel skin starting to break. But I ignored that pain, because I knew Anny was enduring worse. He was in the dome right now, his only company was the mad god we were trying to destroy.

My wings shifted, my hair and tattered clothes were ripped at by the boiling hot gusts of air blasting out of my Massive Beat Dome. My left eye twitched and then winced when a red crack suddenly split down my bottom eyelid. It was a result of the burning DETERMINATION pouring out of that eye, too much for my body to handle... My thoughts drifted back to the Royal Garden again, for just a moment. Future's words echoed in my head as I watched red cracks splinter the back of my right hand. "Death! Is going! To stick! Eventually!"

My limitations, my mortal body in comparison to the two seemingly unbeatable beings that were trapped inside of an attack that's creation and perpetuation was tearing me apart. My best friend, putting his life on the line and enduring the cruel punishment of my Seven Halos for the second time in his life. And Chara, trapped in the body of Order's Mad God, their survival connected to his own... I exhaled scarlet smoke through my teeth, and my muscles started to relax.

My trembling wings folded in some while the scream of those lasers and the hum of the cannons that fired them got more and more quiet. With some blood trickling down my cheek from the glowing red crack under my left eye, my somewhat fuzzy vision stared into those dimming red lights as my numb arms dropped to my sides. With those winds starting to slow, little by little, I began floating down from the sky.

It was a slow descent, took a bit of focus and care to make sure that my wings didn't lock up and send me dropping to the sand like a ton'a bricks. For a few moments I was just a shadow in the red flare, but it dimmed and dimmed and dimmed... By the time my feet hit the ground, those halos had vanished. That atomic blast had faded away, and in its wake was a wall of dark smoke that still crackled with DETERMINATION. That wall stretched all the way to the sky above, it totally eclipsed any world beyond it. Here and there, code was starting to break off from the earth and dissipate into the air. This world really was falling apart...

My knees bent and almost buckled when I let my weight shift from my wings and onto my legs, but by leaning forward and planting my hands atop both'a my kneecaps I managed to keep from falling to the ground. I glanced briefly over my shoulder, all the way across the expansive desert behind me and to the twin craters that Errorphim had blasted Lexi and Xander into. No ice, no fire, no explosions of red light... I had to stay on my feet, because I wasn't sure there was anyone else left to fight. I turned my head back to the burning world before me and I swallowed with a dry throat.

C'mon, Anny... You survived it last time. I squinted into that twisting mist while I grit my teeth, gradually straightening out my back and standing tall. I was waiting for a head of white hair, or maybe glowing red eyes. I wanted Anny to strut out of there dragging an unconscious Errorphim by the ankle, I wanted this to be over. But with every second that passed, more doubt was creeping in... Until something flashed blue in that smoke, and I was instantly slammed face first into the dirt by my now blue soul. "Eugh-!"

My left eye winced shut while my right snapped open wide and darted back into that smoke. But, before I could spot anything I felt gravity change, and I was suddenly ripped up into the air, just to be smashed back down with bone crushing force. I cried out in pain, clenched my eyes shut and tried to push out of the dirt before I was yanked up again, even higher than last time, just to get smashed into the ground so hard that the sand crushed inward to form a small crater around my impact.

At that point I was starting to get disoriented, but still I was dragged upwards again. Higher, until my body smashed like a test dummy through a panel of KINDNESS created above me. Before I knew it, I was whipping through the air. Left and right, up and down, crashing through walls of green light that felt a lot more like walls of brick. I could hear my bones crunching, my blood swishing back and forth with every rapid directional shift. Until finally, once again, I was yanked straight down. I cried out in agony again while my body crashed into the ground just a few yards before the twisting smog, my wings splattering to useless puddles beside me. The intense gravity held me down, it was all I could do to lift my head a little and glare into the smoke with wide emerald eyes and shrunken pupils.

"Well Angel I didn't think you had it in you, but look!" Errorphim's imposing form burst through the atomic fog then. Standing tall, with his feet on the ground. Madness flickered in his furious eye sockets, and though his body was in tact and that aura still protected him... There was a crack in his skull. From the right side of his forehead, where a hole much like the one Anny's stinger had put in his chest remained. From that small puncture hole, a crack ran straight down to the top of his right eye socket. Despite this unhealing blemish in his perfect form, Errorphim still grinned from ear to ear as he pulled his right hand out of the smoke and held his prize high. "You actually managed to kill Anarchy!"

Despair flooded my expression when I saw the body Errorphim was holding high above his head. With skin burnt black and bleeding, Anthony's head leaned forward, his face covered by the blood and soot stained hairs that hadn't been burnt off his head. On his left hand I could see the charred fingers that hadn't been obliterated, and his right arm ended in a blackened nub right above where his elbow would have been. His legs weren't in much better shape, one only made it to the knee before ending abruptly in a still dripping stump while I could see chunks of his shin and femur through the brutal burns in the other. The most defining injury however, was the hole punched clean through his solar plexus. The core of Anthony's body, ripped right through but unburned. Still sparking with Light... I tried to push myself up to my feet, screaming out before being slammed right back on my face by that unforgiving INTEGRITY. "ANNY! Gagh..!"

"THIS is your champion?! This is your god?!" Errorphim shook that charred corpse up over his head, before bursting into a maniacal cackle. He whipped his arm back over his shoulder, tossed the body of my best friend back into that smoke like it was garbage. It landed in the slowly settling smog, tumbled over itself before landing flat on its back and skidding too deep for me to see anymore. Errorphim threw his arms out to his sides, and my eyes darted to the crowbar that he was holding in his left hand. He gestured back to himself with his free hand and went on, "Anarchy was no match for me! You're no match for me! Predator, Gatherer, even the fusion can't stop me! This is my reality now, and your rotten kind don't belong here."

Errorphim casually tossed that crowbar towards me then. It hit the sand, skidded until it was just a few feet in front of me. My eyes darted to it, and hastily I dug my hands into the dirt, crawling as fast as I could towards my Inheritance. But, just as I reached out to grab it, a bone fired down from above. It drove right through the forearm of my right arm, pinned it to the dirt with the crowbar just inches out of my grasp and made me scream out in agony. I slammed my forehead into the ground while I tried to quiet my gasping and grunting, I tried to move my left arm to reach for my Inheritance instead but it was still totally numb. "G-gah..! Ahn! D-damn it..!"

"Look at you. Flat on your stomach, squirming under my power like the filthy little cockroach you are." Errorphim smiled sadistically as his feet crunched into the sand, carrying him towards me. In spite of his wings, he was no longer hovering over the earth. His sockets were wide with glee when I looked up at him from under my eyebrows, face stained with blood and mouth hanging opened in pained gasps. His words sounded a little familiar... "There's no outcome here where you survive and kill me, not one."

"Y-you're quotin' me now, Error..?" I managed to speak, wincing at the pain it caused me. Errorphim's sockets narrowed at the sound of my voice, at the way I picked up my head and continued to resist even as he bore down upon me. "I would think a god could come up with his own material..!"

"You know what, Pencil Pusher? Maybe you're right." After he spoke, Errorphim carelessly reached out to me with one hand. From his fingers those violet strings fired, and the very instant that gravity released me they snapped around my body. I was ripped off the dirt, my arm was yanked up and off that bone spike. I screamed out in agony while my body was tangled in those searing wires, throwing my head back and wincing my eyes shut. I breathed through gritting teeth as Errorphim dragged me through the air and held me up right in front of him, keeping me at eye level while he grinned. "I think I'd much rather hear you quote me."

"Gahh..!" Another cry escaped my gritting teeth. My eyes snapped open wide while my aching arms were ensnared and squeezed tight, being pulled backwards against my will until my shoulders creaked and groaned.

"So go on, tell me I cheated. Tell me this is all my fault, tell me you hate me so I can tell you that sounds like a you problem." Errorphim snarled over my gasping and grunting. He leaned in, got his furious expression real close to my face... Just for me to whip my head forward and hawk a loogie right between his eyes. It was obliterated instantly in his aura, but the act still made Errorphim's teeth grit. Those strings pulled suddenly, and I screamed near the top of my lungs when my mutilated arms were pulled back, making snaps and cracks echo out of my limbs. Errorphim smiled furiously, "Or, we can skip right to the punchline! Go on Angel, scale'a one to ten! ANSWER CAREFULLY!"

My vision was spotty as I stared up at the glitching sky. I writhed and I screamed, though I couldn't really hear it over the snaps continuing to vibrate through my arms and the pounding of my own heart. But, I believe I was frantically shouting something like "Suck my dick, suck my fucking dick, fuck you!" when suddenly, Errorphim paused. The pain dulled, but I couldn't be sure if that was because he let up or because I was going into shock. I had my answer though when I tilted my head down, gasping and managing to keep my eyes open long enough to see Errorphim's stunned expression.

That grin had melted away, and Order's Mad God had gone wide eyed. I hardly understood why he looked so worried all of a sudden, seemed to me everything was comin' up Error right about then. That was, until that atomic smoke blasted apart behind him. It's roar was a sudden noise over the deadly quiet of the obliterated valley, and the power with which it fired sent that smog exploding past us in a brutal shockwave. In its wake... An enormous Dark Geyser. For Whom The Bell Tolls by Metallica started playing.

A moment ago I'd felt I was about to slip away into unconsciousness or death if I was lucky, but having my hair blown back by that blast and feeling the way my heart skipped woke me up some. It was a basic feeling, something primal. The same instinct that makes deer run and birds fly when a gun fires. Staring into the twisting black storm of Chaos waters before me, I felt deep in my gut that I was faced with something beyond my comprehension. Beyond my comprehension, and cruel.

Turning away from me, I wondered if Errorphim had the same feeling. Those wires released my arms, let them fall limp by my sides and become tangled in the same strings that restrained the rest of my body. Sockets narrowing, the mad god faced that Dark Geyser in silence, one of his hands still held out to the side and keeping me suspended in air. His browbones were furrowed but his sockets were wide, holding trembling pupils.

The geyser before us blocked out the horizon, it encompassed everything in our line of sight. Spiraling higher and higher was its mad current, until finally it crashed into the glitching, torn apart sky. Then... The Darkness spread. It poured over the skyline, a thick goo spreading in all directions. Seeping into those tears, blacking out the flickering sunlight and blotting out the stars. Gasping and wincing, I managed to tilt my head back to watch that shadow spread. Far past us, in all directions... The entire world was being blanketed in Darkness, something wretched had emerged to devour the planet now that it was dying. I felt like a wounded animal on a cosmic scale, something that'd already been shot by the hunter and was now laying in a bush dying. Listening to the footsteps getting closer, knowing it was following the trail of my blood...

And once the sky was blacked out, it rumbled. Bubbled, vibrated... Before suddenly, red eyes surfaced out of the bubbling muck. Thousands of them, unpaired and bloodshot. With them, mouths. Curling lips, pearly white teeth flashed in mad grins. I knew Anthony had turned the sky to those awful smiling faces before, but this time it was wrong. They were not faces, just mismatched eyes and mouths. Forming over a sky that was glitching and broken appeared to have glitched and broken those faces too. Now, mouths were upside down and sideways. Some of them had eyes inside. Eyes were layered half on top of each other here and there, and nowhere in this mess of features was even one recognizable face. And abstract mess of Chaos... And still, those eyes stared wide and those mouths snapped open, raining down a horrible, ear drum rumbling symphony of laughter.

I was too out of it to notice, but Errorphim took a step back. His trembling pupils darted across that sky of twisted expressions, he could hardly stand the indecipherable sound. Some laughs were high, some low. Some sounded like they'd been edited to be twice as fast, others to be twice as slow. And as his gaze looked between all those fucked up eyes, he was forced to make eye contact with every single one. They were all looking right at him, laughing at him... I heard him growl through his teeth, "What is this..?"

It took a bit of focus from my hazy mind, but as I listened to that sound it made more and more sense. Not all those mouths were laughing, some were mocking. Saying "Boo-hoo-hoo!" over and over while they stuck out tongues and faked frowns. It was clear to me in that instant that Errorphim was the butt of a joke that those faces already knew, and when I heard that laughter rise a pitch and get even more hysterical, I knew the punchline was coming.

Errorphim's head snapped to the side when a tendril of vantablack sludge suddenly darted out of the geyser. It rocketed forward in the blink of an eye, in my delirious state I didn't even see it. But, that whip did not strike out at me or the mad god holding my broken body hostage. Instead, it shot right by Errorphim and wrapped around the crowbar that he'd left laying in the sand. That wretched metal, that wicked Inheritance... It was dragged back through the air at that same incredible speed, whipping by and right at the front of the Chaos Geyser. But, just before it hit those wicked waters and disappeared inside the torrent, fingers reached out. Pale and scarred, one powerful hand emerged from the raging Darkness and caught his Inheritance in an iron grip.

Then, that hand pushed forward. Out came an arm, and beneath it a leg. A shoulder, another arm and another leg, and the body that it was all attached to. Without any haste a pale form emerged out of The Dark, and just before his head slipped out of the tearing tides, two glowing red eyes appeared within the Chaos. Then, finally, the face of Anthony The Anarchist pulled through the vantablack. I'd almost expected him to grin, to cackle and mock Errorphim like the shattered sky did... But his expression was cold. His eyes almost as lightless as The Dark twisting behind him, my own eyes slowly went wide when I got a good look at him.

Those burns and mutilations were gone now, it was as if he had never been in that Beat Dome at all. His clothes were totally shredded, all manner of shirt was obliterated and all that remained were tattered jeans. With his scarred body on display, I noticed something different on his skin. Something new, the first scar Anthony had kept since his mom last beat him. Right in his solar plexus, where that hole had been punched by Godly Light. it was sealed now, but the flesh was dented in and twisted. A crater of a scar laid right under his chest, burned forever in his core.

But, what really caught my eye wasn't his menacing expression or the new permanent blemish on what once seemed to be an unbreakable body. No, it was his hair. For the entire time that I'd known Anny, his hair had been a mess. When we were kids and he was cleaned up a little better, it was wavy and almost a little curly in places. Reminded me of his mom, on days that her hair wasn't a frizzy unwashed mess. After he became Anarchy, his hair became this wild mane. Spikey, thick, kinda poofy... That life was gone from his long hair now though. With black water running down his body and that ivory hair matted down by Darkness, it fell down his shoulders completely straight. Not at all like his mother... But a lot like his father.

"A-... Anny..?" In all the pressure, all the intensity and all the Chaos, I was the one who managed to speak first. My wincing eyes struggled to stay open and I gasped for breath, but Anthony didn't look at me. Those cruel eyes remained laser focused on Errorphim, who was staring right back with far less certainty. Confusion, anger, and perhaps even...

"Put him down." Anthony spoke next, and when he did the shadows squirmed. Felt like the whole world was going Dark, like all the Light that didn't emanate from Errorphim himself was being covered in a black blanket... To be devoured, or to be protected? Hearing him order Errorphim to put me down was a bit of a relief, for a moment I couldn't have been sure that I was safe from that punchline I mentioned earlier.

"Or what?" Errorphim dared challenge, squinting his sockets and tilting his head. Perhaps the idea of a conscience inside the Ghoul that was staring him down instilled some confidence. Perhaps Errorphim saw it as weakness, or leverage. It gave him the confidence to sneer at Anthony... Who flashed him a smile, right before Errorphim's arm got cut off.

The mad god's eyes snapped open wide, his body was shocked by both the pain in his elbow and the absence of any feeling beneath it. When those trembling white pupils darted to the side, he saw nothing but vantablack steel. A wretched shadow, one that had darted up from beneath and effortlessly cleaved up through his arm. Like The Dark was a hot knife and his holy form was butter! Errorphim's expression twisted with pain, he stepped quickly away from that sharpened shadow and snapped the digits of his free hand around the stump of his left arm. Light was pouring out from his wound, a glowing essence dripped off the amputation while Errorphim's now furious eyes darted back to Anthony.

I hit the ground right with Errorphim's severed arm. The strings around me had vanished the moment that limb was chopped off, and the thud of my weak body against the rough sand was enough to knock just about all the sense I had left out of me. I laid there, bloody and burned and flat on my face again. My vision was a blur, I'd gone deaf and none of my limbs would respond. With consciousness dragging away into the back of my exhausted brain, it was all I could do to lift my head just a little. Looking up, all I really saw was a twisting blackness. And, within it, two shining red eyes. My lips moved while my eyes started to close, but I didn't know if I actually made any sound or not. "An... ny..."

The deep scarlet of Anthony's eyes glossed over to his Angel, laid flat in the dirt. Bleeding, broken... Far behind him, Lexi and Xander. Exhausted after fighting so hard to keep up, blasted into the dirt by a power incomprehensible. Incomprehensible, to everyone but Errorphim and Anthony. Those cruel red eyes darted back to Errorphim, and Anthony's smile was long gone by the time he promised. "Very soon, you'll learn not to test my patience."

"Oh, you wanna see PATIENCE?" Errorphim growled through his grinding teeth, his body still turned more towards the arm he was clutching. But, after a moment, thousands of little pixels popped into existence around that stump. They all swarmed inward, shifting colors and positions until they matched the exact color and shape of his arm. Then, those pixels became more clear, and once more Errorphim had two arms. With this new arm, the mad god threw out one hand towards Anthony, cyan light flashing in his palm.

Anthony was unmoved, his expression did not change. He began putting one foot in front of the other, and when PATIENT light flashed over his body and tried to restrain him, it shattered. Broke apart, and crumbled to tiny cyan specks. Little shards that caught in the harsh winds and blew away, all while Anthony continued to take step after step towards Errorphim.

"What..?!" The mad god growled more to himself than anyone. His sockets narrowed, his teeth grit... But, then some understanding came. Anger gave way to knowledge, and then Errorphim found himself smiling. He stood up straight, spread his wings and lifted just a little off the ground. Maybe he'd needed a reminder, perhaps it was easy to forget that he was a higher being. But, looking into the void and knowing it was looking back at him, Errorphim knew he wasn't the only one. He grinned a little wider, because now he knew he'd been right before. Anthony was not mortal. "I see... Have you finally stopped pretending, then? Tell me, what are you?"

Anthony didn't answer, not at first. He marched forward until him and Errorphim were only a few paces apart, and he tilted his head up some to look at him while Errorphim tilted his own head down some to look at Anthony. A being with pale white skin, shrouded in and commanding Darkness. A being with pitch black bones, shining with and commanding Light. A black ocean crashed onto a white shore now, Chaos Incarnate frowned while he considered the question asked by Order's Mad God. But, he knew the answer, and he was an honest man. So, regardless of whether he liked it or not, Anthony answered Errorphim's question. "My name, my identity, who and what I really am...

Is Anthony The Killer."

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XWolf26, out