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.)

47. Chapter 47: Always The Bridesmaid(Part2)

Thanks go to Wingah, Zack Frost, 10burgers, JasherTheDarkened, Tbone8454, GrayK, Doctah Sawbones, GMLxAwesome, Linki, CrystalGamer82, Acoolnamme, dragonmasterd55, Jack54311, AkumaESPer, Get vectored, and NBoss01!

I apologize for the delay, and I apologize that I can't respond to the reviews with questions in this author's note! I've been absolutely swamped these past three weeks, as you can tell I'm updating right on the wire this Sunday. I will either answer questions via PM or through next chapter's author's note, so I hope no one feels ignored. I promise I read all your reviews and thought about each of them. Also next chapter should be up in two weeks! Hopefully! Very sorry for the many delays!

Please enjoy the chapter! It's the longest one in DoubleTale and XWolf26 history! (26,163 words long) I'm very excited (and very anxious-) to see what you guys think!

Disclaimer: I do not own Undertale.

---

Monster Kid had left his house to go for a pleasant walk not even an hour ago. Now he was standing on the sidewalk, wincing into the flashing red lights and feeling hundred degree winds blast against his face. Life was funny like that.

"He's going to bring down the entire mountain!" Toriel exclaimed, guarding her face with one big paw and squinting her eyes, trying desperately to make something out in the blaring red lights.

"Asriel and Chara!" Asgore pointed out, shooting Toriel a worried glance from the corner of his eye. He too was shielding his eyes, scarlet lights illuminating him and the rest of the world in their hue.

"Yo, look at Cter!" Monster Kid pointed out, his eyes never leaving the massive screen that floated over Ebbot City. The display was focused on The Angel's pained expression as his skin split apart in burning crimson cracks, and the sight of it was making Monster Kid cringe sympathetically.

Suddenly, a quick burst of sound caught the trio's attention. They all turned their heads in unison to spot the source of the "vvVROOMMMmm" that blasted by them, and were quick to spot the red of Papyrus's convertible flooring it down the empty roads. The tall skeleton behind the wheel, Undyne was standing clear as day in the passenger seat, roaring into the winds and pointing one sapphire spear towards the distant Mount Ebbot.

"Where are they going?!" Toriel exclaimed in a panic, lowering her paw from her face as the explosive light in the distance began to dim. With it, that searing heat was cooling as well. "What are they doing?!"

"They're going to help Cter!" MK answered, looking up to Toriel. He was pacing in place, his clawed feet clicking anxiously on the sidewalk. "And we should be doing the same thing!"

Toriel and Asgore exchanged a grimace from Monster Kid's proclamation. It wasn't that they didn't want to help, in fact if it were up to either of them they would have never let that creature wearing human skin get anywhere near Cter. But with the sight that the massive display in the sky had given them came a sobering realization: They would only get in Cter's way. These humans were leagues beyond any monster they knew, and any other humans they knew for that matter. Whatever this clash was, it was between powers beyond their control.

Asgore turned his eyes to the portal overhead, and his wise old eyes narrowed solemnly. The Angel knelt now, his wings curled back into his back. As he looked upon Cter's face, tarnished by streams of blood, sweat, and ink, he couldn't help but remember how completely plain and utterly innocuous the young man had looked the day they first met. Imagine his shock when, hours later, the boy returned from death and sprouted his first pair of wings!

But, now... He looked nothing like the harmless young man Asgore had met all those months ago. The king was beginning to wonder if he ever was harmless. If Cter had known all along he was The Angel, if he had known better than anyone what that met.

... Or if he didn't know about any of it. If he was just as scared and confused as the Monsters that now gathered in the streets, silently praying for his safety.

"Wanna see mine?!"

The wicked voice of The Anarchist caught the attention of royalty and civilians alike, and with terror in their eyes the people of Ebbot City watched The Anarchist stroll right out of the epicenter of Cter's mountain crumbling Beat Dome. A horrible creature loomed behind Anarchy, adorned with a stinger and pincers and big, soulless eyes. The sight of The Scorpion sucked the life right out of Ebbot City, bringing all the confused murmuring to a dead silence. Every Monster watched now as their Angel knelt before an absolute horror, seemingly powerless and defeated.

The beginning coughs followed by the hum of an engine interrupted the terrified silence, and the three of them turned their eyes to see Cter's van - MK recalled it had been named the Purple Piece of Shit - pulling to the end of the driveway that they all stood beside.

Frisk was behind the wheel, hitting the brakes and pausing beside their parents and friend. Rolling down their passenger side window, they turned their head to look at Asgore and Toriel, displaying ruby orbs. Unlike they usually did, Frisk was not squinting their eyes, keeping the DETERMINATION they gleamed with on clear display. Toriel's heart sunk deeper into her stomach when she saw the look her last remaining safe child was giving her; she knew exactly what it meant. Frisk spoke to confirm her theory, "I'm going."

Toriel opened her mouth to object, but she couldn't find any words. What could she possibly say that would convince Frisk to stop? She didn't know, so she didn't try. Instead, she let her mouth close, narrowed her eyes, and slowly tilted her head down. In a whisper, she pleaded. "... Please, be safe..."

Frisk nodded and turned those piercing eyes forward. But just as they were about to shift their shoe from the brake to the accelerator, Monster Kid pushed right past the goat parents, racing up to the passenger door. "Wait, wait!"

Frisk furrowed their brows with heavy confusion as they watched MK hook his tail under the door handle, pulling it open before hopping right into the passenger seat without a moment's hesitation. Then, he turned back to Frisk, giving them his own stubborn stare. "I'm going with you!"

"Monster Kid, this is gonna be dangerous." Frisk began shaking their head, clearly hesitant. They were human after all, Monster Kid wasn't. They didn't know much about the crowbar swinging maniac Cter was colliding with, but they figured his LV had to be high enough to one shot just about any Monster. "I don't think-"

"You're wasting time!" MK exclaimed suddenly, making Frisk jump. He lowered his head, giving them a DETERMINED stare from under his eyebrows. He punctuated his statement by slamming his door shut behind him and locking himself into this car, which very well could be on a one way trip to meet this Pale Rider, Death. "My best friend is in danger! I'm going! Now floor it!"

Frisk opened their mouth, but much like their adoptive mother, they couldn't find a single sentence to convince Monster Kid to turn around. So, instead, they closed their jaws and looked ahead. Drawing in a deep breath, they gulped audibly as they slowly shook their head back and forth. Then, without another second's hesitation, they hit the gas, and turned hastily onto the street.

As Toriel watched the beat up van speed down the road and towards the smoking mountain in the distance, she couldn't help but feel like she was watching another child walk through the Ruins door to their death. She clasped her hands together over her chest in some attempt to dull the ache in her soul, feeling hopeless tears welling up in her eyes. But before any sob could come, she felt one large, fluffy paw lay itself upon her shoulder.

She turned her head to see Asgore's empathetic smile, a level of understanding and similar guilt and worry in his eyes. Smiling weakly, Toriel stepped closer to him, lowering her head into his chest. Asgore looked a little surprised by this, but smiled comfortingly all the same, wrapping his arms around her and hugging her tightly.

"Hey, look! He's getting up!"

The bystanding Nice Cream Guy pointed up to the screen overhead, and both Asgore and Toriel lifted their heads to confirm this claim. With pride Asgore watched as Cter The Angel rose to his feet. Fearlessly he stood before The Anarchist and his ungodly beast. His left arm hanging limp, his wings folded away, his body aching with exhaustion. Because Cter The Angel doesn't give up. He doesn't stop, he doesn't fall. Because Cter The Angel holds the goddamn line.

Chapter 47: Always The Bridesmaid

(Part 2)

"I apologize for how long it took."

---

"You wanna see mine?!"

After Dark by SharaX began playing.

"Not, erg..." I grunted with exertion as I slowly got one foot under myself, wrapping my right hand around the bicep of my crack riddled left arm. Gradually I forced my body to both feet, standing tall before The Anarchist and his beast. "Particularly, no..!"

"Aw, c'mon Angel!" Anarchy whipped up his arm, pointing the disgusting metal of his crowbar right at me again. Like this was a command it fully understood, the Scorpion behind him sent its massive stinger crashing right down towards me, forcing my widening eyes to dart right up to it. "He really wants to meetcha!"

I jumped back just before that stinger plunged into the white sands of our battle ground, the loose soil being sent exploding up around its impact. Jaw clenching with frustration, I watched the black iron of its tail pull itself from the plume of ash, which immediately burst open. Anny blasted clear through the wreckage, giggling like a madman as he yanked his crowbar back over his right shoulder, lunging at me.

"Seriously Anny, another giant monster?!" I ducked swiftly underneath the hiss of his cruel weapon, swinging my crack riddled left arm back and clenching its hand into a tight fist. I planted my feet as I crouched beneath him, whipping my fist upward with brutal force. With his chin my knuckles collided, and DETERMINATION flared in my eyes. From the smoldering cracks of my arm crimson steam blasted out, blowing my bangs back out of my face as I drilled my fist deeper into Anny's jaw. "You watch too much Godzilla or what?!"

Anthony skidded back on his heels, head forced to the side and white strands dangling over his face. He whipped his head forward though, droplets of blood flicking from his lip while his hair was thrown out of the way of his eyes. His piercing glare landed on me just as I planted both feet, lifting my left hand and clenching it into a tight fist. This motion sprayed more smoke from the fissures spanning my forearm and the back of my hand, as well as my bicep and my shoulder. The open wounds that had split along the skin surrounding my left eye glowed and glimmered lightly, illuminating the rest of my face in a scarlet hue. Though my wings were in my back, a steady updraft of red winds were still lifting my hair to reach towards the sky, almost like I was underwater.

"This is comin' from you, Mr. Super Saiyan?!" Anny questioned as he jumped straight back, flipping back in air and landing on all fours on the massive pincer that was racing over the earth towards me. He slid back some on the smooth surface, but after a second it seemed to register that its master was atop it, and the chitinous armor grew more rough for his hands and feet to catch on.

"Fuck off!" I told him as I broke into a sprint towards the approaching claw, diving into the air at the last second and hearing it snap shut beneath me. I front flipped in air, straightening one leg and swinging it down like an ax towards The Anarchist below. From my heel ink lashed, slicing down with the swing of my leg towards Anny, who jolted some and reactively stepped to the side. "This looks way more like the Kiaoken!"

As my ink whipped by him, I smirked, suddenly pulling my extended leg back towards my chest. The stream of ink that had slashed uselessly past Anthony coiled then, wrapping quickly around his ankle before pulling his footing out from under him with the retracting of my own leg. His eyes went wide as he fell back just as I was upon him, and I took full advantage, kicking out my other leg and blasting my heel into his face. This stomp would have planted his skull into the armor of his beast, but to my shock, his head phased right through its body, disappearing into the solid black.

I landed on both feet and skidded down the arm of The Scorpion, spinning while I slid and turning to face the pincer that Anarchy's entire body had just disappeared into. The ink connecting us split, rapidly racing back up my leg and instead curling around my right arm. Rapidly my eyes darted back and forth, trying to spot any sign of The Anarchist, before they snapped open wide when one powerful hand wrapped back around my neck.

Anny stood behind me, pulling me back by the throat and whipping me over his shoulder. He sent me flinging back through the air, where I flipped and tumbled until I righted myself, landing upon The Scorpion's vast back on my feet. I slipped across the smooth chitin of its thorax, throwing both my arms out to my sides and commanding the construction of a Beat Blaster on either side of me.

As I watched Anny dive high into the sky overhead, I whipped both my hands forward, sending the burning lasers of my blasters exploding up through the air towards him. I watched Anarchy disappear into the flames one moment and saw a smoldering ball drop out of them the next. His already red steaming form spun in air, landing on knee down the long back of his beast. That didn't last long though, he blasted right up to his feet and into a dead sprint towards me.

he lunged through the air towards me, cocking back his crowbar and swinging viciously for my skull. With my right hand I reached out, snatching him by the wrist and stopping arch of our Inheritance. Red fissures burning, I yanked back my left hand before my palm darted forward. I grabbed him by the face, and once more the smoke of my DETERMINATION blasted out from spiderweb of red cracks that coated my arm, super heating it.

Anarchy roared as my searing flesh melted his face, but it wasn't long before that screaming became giggling. I watched his mutilated lips curl upwards, his eyes hidden beneath my palm, just before I was forced to lean my head back, his free hand whipping by in an uppercut that I narrowly avoided. This all played into a trap however as his hand shifted, suddenly snagging a handful of my hair and tugging my head downward into Anny's rapidly rising knee.

With a crack I was sent stumbling, blood spurting from my nostrils while my face reflexively scrunched up. Now that he was released, Anarchy darted forward, dropping his crowbar into the blackness of his creature to grab both sides of my head with his powerful hands. I opened my eyes to see his horrific maw opening wide and racing closer, and the memory of my nightmares flashed before my eyes.

Before his serrated teeth could rip my face off, my hand flung up, grabbing him by the bottom jaw and grunting furiously while I forced his head away from mine. I was reminded of some kind of shark based horror movie with his frothing maw this close to my face, feeling his breath wash over my face. It smelled like iron. So, in the spirit of shark fighting, I cocked back my left fist, and began bashing punches right into his nose.

Anny hardly recoiled, in fact he leaned his skull into all four of the punches my steaming hand cracked him with. First I bent his nose, then I concaved it, then I cracked one orbital socket, then I cracked the other. Finally, with blood trickling from his nostrils and streaming down like tears from both of his eyes, he abruptly yanked his head back, ducking under my fifth punch like we were in The Matrix. He leaned so far back that he was able to plant the both of his hands on the ground behind him, yank his knees up to his chest, and shotgun both his heels into my diaphragm with a rib shattering kick.

I was sent ragdolling over the horizon of Anarchy's familiar, eyes clenched shut and arms wrapped feebly around my screaming abdomen. Finally gravity managed to catch me, dragging me down just as I sailed over the Scorpion's side, disappearing into the shadow its body cast in the moonlight.

Anarchy landed on both his feet, sliding forward only a little. His eyes squinted skeptically, watching for only a second or two for some sign of retaliation. When none came, he growled irritably, pushing off of his feet into a dead sprint towards the ledge he'd kicked me over. In seconds he had closed the distance, but before he could dive down after me, a vicious updraft caught him by the face, throwing his hair back and making him turn his head skyward to spot the shape that just launched up by him.

Atop a paper airplane I ascended, crouched down and gripping one hand around the edge of my creation. Flying straight up, the plane suddenly looped, flipping briefly upside down before launching back down towards Anny. Rapidly I nose dived towards him, but he just smirked, shaking his head like he couldn't believe I was trying to assault him with an origami airplane.

His eyebrows rose with further disbelief when the paper along the bottom of my aircraft split, and from within two neatly folded turrets of paper jutted, taking aim on The Anarchist. The strange, vertical slits that opened the end of each of these barrels suddenly fired more paper into the air.

Anarchy was busy squinting up at me, bewildered, when suddenly slicing pain carved across the side of his head. Swiftly he turned his head, which blood poured down the side of. In the shell behind him, he found an origami shuriken embedded, its steel sharp edges dripping with his blood. Then, his ruby orbs lowered to his severed ear, which lay flat on the back of his beast, also dripping with his ichor.

With the sheet rustling of more fire from above, he turned his attention back to the incoming air strike. Anny threw his arms up in an X in front of his head, and a dozen thunk!s filled the air as shuriken fired into his flesh, catching in bone and cutting through his bare flesh like a hot knife through butter.

Swooping from above, I pulled up just in time to evade the massive pincer crashing towards me. The force of its collision when it closed just below me sent wind blasting up into the paper of my aircraft, my eyes widening as I was shaken back and forth. But the iron grip of my left hand never failed me, and in the next instant I was veering to the right, performing a U-turn and racing back towards Anny for another fly-by shooting.

Disdain in his eyes, Anthony stared right up at me, streams of blood trickling down his bare arms, chest, and legs from the sharp edges of my origami shuriken buried in his flesh. But just as I opened fire once more, the darkness beneath him gave way, and he slipped right into the flesh of his Scorpion as though he'd been standing on water the entire time. In a second he had disappeared beneath the surface completely, and in the next my shuriken planted themselves uselessly in the thick chitin of his monstrosity.

Jaw clenching with frustration, I silently cursed the versatility of his darkness, before pulling my plane to the left, quickly racing away from the imposing form of this bug. Glancing over my shoulder, my eyes widened when I spotted the onyx of a scorpion pincer racing up towards me. Thinking fast, I pulled myself forward on my left hand, flipping over the nose of my plane and plummeting from the sky just as the paper was crunched into a useless crumple above me.

As I dropped, I spun to face the Scorpion, thrusting one palm out towards its ugly mug. The earth beneath me shattered apart, and from the sands one massive eraser fired, racing up at an angle towards the mandibles of this demonic arachnid. I landed on the pillar of pencil that was rapidly extending in attack, crouching and planting both hands upon the wood.

Unfortunately, before the blunt, hardened rubber could blast that creature in its face, one of its pincers swung out, snapping around the wood of the hundred foot pencil and quickly splintering it, before shattering it entirely. This sent cracks firing down through my footing, and my eyes widened, before I jumped back, flipping in air and landing further back along the crumbling pillar on my palms, before hand springing further back and launching myself off the wood.

I landed in the white sands of my devastation, skidding back on the balls of my feet and watching my pencil plummet in shards of wood and graphite to the ashes on which this monster and I collided. I winced, feeling a searing pain in the Deltarune on my back. I guessed that it was bleeding, judging from the warm streams I felt trickling down my lower back.

My whole body felt like it was on fire. The steaming cracks in my face, chest, back, and arm were a constant pain. Some of them were even beginning to leak my scarlet ichor, red streams detailing my skin further. If not for the adrenaline pumping through my veins, I wasn't sure I'd be standing. The fact of the matter was, I couldn't keep up. I couldn't push harder.

*You have to, or else you're going to die.

... My eyes widened some at Texty's revelation, eyes darting from the beast thundering closer to his emotionless, black and white text. ... But I don't want to die.

*I understand that. You've gotta convince him.

My jaw clenched at that, my crimson eyes narrowed. Then, blood streaming from a few of the cracks beneath my left eye, I turned my head upwards, towards the lumbering Scorpion. With each colossal step it sent tremors through the ash of the desert we stood upon, shattering glassed earth and piercing burnt sands. ... You got it.

Suddenly, I stomped one foot forward, bending my knees and rising my hands slowly up into the sky. My palms strained, as though I was Atlas, struggling to put the weight of the world onto my shoulders. The fruit of my labors grew when the sands below the Scorpion split and blasted open, pens jutting their sharp points into the underbelly of the kaiju in the thousands. Though its chitin refused to split, its eight legs were lifted and put off balance. Its entire massive body was angled oddly, lifting and dropping in awkward angles.

With the beast off its footing, I clenched my risen hands to tight fists, and my jaw clenched before I whipped both arms inward, crossing them down into an X over my chest. With this order, sky and earth alike split, more and more erasers plummeting on wooden pillars to crush this kaiju like the dirty bug it was.

First, it snapped out its left pincer, crushing through wood and rubber and stopping one eraser, only for another to crash into its left side, pushing it along the pens it laid upon and scraping ink across the natural armor coating its body. Then, its right claw darted up, crushing through another wooden pillar striking down from the heavens and sending splinters raining down onto its body. At the same time, its stinger struck downward, crashing into another battering ram of a pencil and piercing its cedar, slamming its blunt end into the ground and burying it in the sands.

For the first few moments, Anny's Scorpion fended off my barrage of rams quite well, but it just didn't have enough pincers or stingers, and it was hard for it to move around to catch my strikes on its sharp, disorderly footing. Into its back two erasers crashed, shoving it down into the pens beneath it and sending a few thin cracks through its seemingly unbreakable armor. As more and more pencils crashed against it from all angles, one jutted from beneath it, slamming under its head and forcing it to lift some at its front.

My DETERMINED eyes squinted then as the space between that beast's eyes shifted, before suddenly rocketing a familiar albino up into the air and on an angle down towards me. I just grinned at that though, suddenly swinging my lift arm up and yanking it down like I was throwing something overhand. "GOTCHA!"

From the stars above one final pillar fired down, catching The Anarchist right from the sky and flooring him right towards the ground below to crush him. With a dust kicking shock wave Anny was slammed into the earth, but the eraser never fully reached the sands. My eyes narrowed curiously, before widening with shock.

The massive pillar that I had sent crashing down upon Anarchy was gradually being shoved back up from the earth. Its weight trembled and shook, and I ground my teeth, my fist trembling as I tried desperately to squash The Anarchist. But in spite of my efforts, that tower rose and rose, and finally I could see him. Frothing at the mouth, Anarchy's eyes were a sea of white, the left violently flaming red while the right seeped an inky black shadow on all sides. His back hunched and his knees and elbows bent, he snarled furiously, pushing his hands up desperately into the eraser baring down on him.

His knees straightened first, then his back, and then his elbows as he gained more and more space underneath all that weight. Then, he shifted his hands, bringing them together at the erasers center and digging his fingers deep into the rubber. His chest puffed out, each of his imposing muscles bulging before he loosed an earth quaking roar.

And I watched, in awe and terror, as one massive crack split up the middle of this pencil. However many feet long and however many pounds heavy it was hardly mattered to Anarchy, who tore it in half from its base, wood creaking and groaning before snapping! It sounded like what a bomb dropping in a cartoon sounds like as both ends of this massive pencil dropped to each side of Anny, before a deafening crash.

Sands blasted in plumes into the air, before both sides of the split pencil slipped down the edges of our destroyed plateau, sliding down Mount Ebbot from its leveled peak. My shoulders sinking, I stared with wide eyes at Anarchy, slack jawed and bewildered. He was sweating clear and smoking red, chest heaving up and down while he gasped for breath. For just a second I thought he looked like a gorilla there, strands of hair dangling over his savage expression. So, in my stupor, I couldn't help but ask him what anyone would want to ask a gorilla. Across the plain I called, "Dude, what do you bench?!"

Drawing in deep breaths, Anarchy stomped powerfully forward, making the earth tremble fearfully. His savage red eyes locked back on to me, and he swung his fists up one after the other, beating each one against his chest a single time. He roared his answer at the top of his lungs,

"PLANETS!"

---

The music stopped. Tires squealed and screeched, both Frisk's and Monster Kid's eyes darted from window to window, mirror to mirror. Left and right Frisk yanked the wheel of the van they were driving, swerving around the tumbling stones and shattered trees from the rumbling mountain that they were quickly approaching.

In wake of the titans colliding at Ebbot's peak (or what was left of it) rock, mud, and other types of slides were all rolling down to the world below. Frisk was flooring it down the dirt road that coiled around the Mountain towards its entrance, and the intensity of the doom raining down from above had only gotten worse.

"LOOK OUT!" MK suddenly shouted, leaning forward in his seat and letting his wide eyes stare up at the charred black boulder that was plummeting down from above. It's shadow fell over the Purple Piece of Shit, and both Frisk and MK let out a helpless wail as it dropped down upon them. But, just as Frisk was beginning to ponder how long it had been since their last SAVE, a blue spear pierced the stone, shattering it into a rain of pebbles that then poured down onto the metal roof of the van.

After the many clatters of the pebbles came one loud thud, and Monster Kid lifted his head to see Undyne land atop the car. She smiled toothily down at the two through the dirt smudged sunroof, before jumping off the car, likely to smash more boulders before they hurt anyone.

"Was that Undyne?!" Frisk questioned frantically, looking up through the sunroof a moment too late, before their eyes darted back to the road. They grimaced, swerving briefly around a downed tree before getting back on the thinning road. It wouldn't be long before dirt road became dirt path, and they would have to hike the rest of the way up the quaking mountain. MK was beginning to wonder if it would still be standing by the time this was over.

"I don't think spears are gonna stop that!" Monster Kid was far too panicked to answer Frisk's question, the both of them spotting the vertically split, massive pencil side that was tumbling down towards them.

"shIT-" Frisk turned the wheel as hard as they could, tires screeching loudly as they attempted a U-turn at 70 miles per hour. All they managed to do was turn the car so that the side of it was skidding towards this rolling mass of wood, sliding quickly on the gravel and threatening to flip on its head.

As the two were once more speeding towards a horrible demise, the ground between them and the rolling writing utensil exploded open. From the earth pillars of bone rose, blocking the path of this rubble and stopping it with a crash that the two felt even through the many vibrations of their skidding vehicle.

With a far less impressive crash, The Purple Piece of Shit smashed side first into this calcium wall, shaking both Frisk and Monster Kid violently to that side, just before airbags exploded in their faces, throwing their head s back into their seats and jarring the both of them further. With a hiss the engine turned off, black streams of smoke swirling up from beneath the now dented ajar hood.

Several long moments went by, before the drivers side door was thrown open, and Frisk stumbled out of the totaled van. Their eyes were clenched shut, and they waved their hand to dissipate the black smog they'd been inhaling. They had a few cuts and scrapes, but nothing that would stop them from ascending this crumbling mountain and saving their friend. Monster Kid was in a similar way, hopping out of the van a few moments after Frisk.

"Frisk! Monster child!" Papyrus ran quickly up to the car side, a few droplets of sweat already on his brow bone. Frisk wondered if that was from over exertion or from the high heat that peak was still giving off. With worry in his sockets the tall skeleton made his way to the two of them, leaning down to their level while he delicately placed a hand on each of their shoulders. "Are the two of you hurt? Are you maimed?!"

"N-no, no, Papyrus, we're okay..!" Frisk finished their fit of coughing, wincing over to make eye contact with the concerned skeleton. They straightened their back out, shaking off any residual aches or pains for the moment and refocusing on the task at hand.

"Yo, what are you and Undyne doing out here?" MK asked Papyrus, shutting his eyes momentarily as the taller monster wiped dust off his scaled face with his scarf.

"The same as the two of you, I presume!" Papyrus straightened his back after cleaning off the both of their faces and checking for any particularly nasty looking scrapes, placing his hands on his hips. "We came to help Cter!"

"But these dumb rocks won't stop falling!" Undyne interjected suddenly, catching all of their attention and making them look upward. She stood upon the wall of bone Papyrus had erected, cocking back one sapphire spear before whipping it up the slope of the mountain. "And who knows what'd happen if all these slides reached the city? We can't let that happen!"

"Sans and Gaster are on Mount Ebbot's other side! There are rock slides and other bad things over there, too!" Papyrus explained, his naturally loud voice booming over the rumbling and tumbling sounds that blasted from above.

"Frisk n' me have to get up there!" MK pleaded, stepping forward and looking up to The Great Papyrus, who couldn't help but show concern on his skull. "Can you guys help us?"

"Uhm..! Undyne?!" Papyrus turned his head to the grinning fish stationed on the cracking bone wall and continuing to whip spears into any and all falling debris, clearly unsure of what to do. He was very aware of the many dangers that just climbing the mountain brought, let alone what awaited these young adults at the flattened peak.

"Thems kids is tough, Papyrus!" Undyne assured, looking over her shoulder down to the three. She assured with both her toothy grin and one thumbs up, making both MK and Frisk smile with her faith. "They can handle this!"

"Well Undyne, you always have perfect judgement!" Papyrus said with certainty, grinning from her to Frisk and MK. If anyone else had said what Papyrus had just said, Frisk would have been certain that they were being sarcastic. But they hardly had time for thinking about that; they had an albino to stop. "But how are we going to get them up there?"

"I'll guide 'em!" While she spoke, Undyne threw the both of her hands out to her sides, and a dozen spears manifested in the air behind her. Sapphire lights zipped across the darkening sky racing up into the never ending waves of destruction that was barring down on them. "You gonna be able to handle things here while I'm gone?"

"A task like this is no problem at all for The Great Papyrus!" Papyrus assured with certainty, planting his feet and taking up his most heroic stance. The wind, as always, caught his scarf perfectly, making it billow majestically behind him.

"That's what I like to hear! Fuhuhuhuhu!" Undyne laughed confidently in the face of devastation, and Papyrus planted his foot, splitting the ground further. A staircase of bones rose from the earth, scaling up to the height of the wall that was keeping whatever Undyne couldn't shatter on her spears in time at bay. With that, Undyne turned to look over her shoulder at Frisk and MK, and waved her hand forward.

"C'mon, punks! We gotta move!"

---

"..." I blinked my wide eyes, Anarchy's intensity flooring me so hard that my hair blew back. That might have just been the worsening weather, though. It was hard to tell. My Massive Beat Dome had cleared the sky earlier, but already black clouds were slipping back over the stars.

I watched Anarchy saunter closer, death blocking out the moonlight behind him. The only light in this world was my soul it seemed, but that was becoming even more of a burden to bare. It felt the valentine heart was reaching critical mass, burning constantly in my chest. Steam rose from the growing cracks on my body. Pain was a never ending sensation. That didn't matter though, that just wasn't what was important. What mattered was what was right in front of me: Anthony The Anarchist.

I knew why I was here. Like I said, whenever I let Anny out of my sight, people died. And standing before him now, seeing the sky darken behind him, feeling the earth quake with his every step, I knew I was the only one. If I couldn't stop him now, no one would. But more than that, it was my responsibility. Anny was like this because of me. Ebbot's peak was flattened by me. Chara got hurt because of me. It was up to me to either stop him, or...

From the maw of Anarchy's Scorpion another object was spat. It flung through the air, seethed in the dark. On a perfect arch it soared, and Anarchy thoughtlessly lifted his arm, catching his crowbar without so much as glancing back. Then he pointed that curled metal at me again, and I felt the full weight of his hatred.

... Or die trying.

Yeah, I knew why I was here. But Anny... Don't get me wrong, it was pretty obvious, he had plenty reason to wanna concave my forehead with his crowbar. But I wanted to hear it from him. He had worked this hard, came this far, all for me. I wanted to know why I was special, I wanted to know what he thought of me. Of us. Of this.

"..." Exhaling red fog through my clenching teeth, I slouched forward some. My right hand was wrapped around the smoking and bleeding bicep of my left arm. I, The Angel, was a mess. And he, Chaos Incarnate, was seething. Confident in every step, his chest heaved up and down, but not like me. I was gasping like some exhausted athlete. He was gasping like a feral animal, high on adrenaline and thirsty for blood. But he understood me, I knew that. He would speak to me. In fact, I might have been the only man he would speak to.

"... Why are you here, Anthony?"

"That's a stupid question." Just like I thought, Anarchy didn't hesitate and he certainly didn't mince words. I couldn't disagree with his assessment; he'd made it pretty blatantly clear what he was here for. Regardless, I continued to speak, not bothering to squirm as he slowly closed the distance between us.

"Yeah, maybe." I agreed, squinting red eyes at his shadow dripping form. The world behind him was getting darker and darker, and that shade was only creeping forward with his every step. It was an ocean's tide, just one wave of his malevolence. "But I don't get it. What do you get out of this?"

"..?" Finally, Anny's expression changed. I had his attention now, that much was clear when his calloused feet stopped crushing sand under his heel. He paused there, slowly tilting his head to the side and letting white strands dangle around his face. "What do I get..?"

"Killing me. Killing my friends. Burning my home to the ground. Whatever you wanna do." Gradually, I straightened my back. The howling winds pulled at my brown hair some, forcing it to all whip towards the right of my head. "Is it gonna fix you?"

"Fix me?" Again Anarchy echoed my words. He almost scoffed at what I said, but I wasn't sure why. Did he find my suggestion silly, or did he really not believe he needed to be repaired?

"What I did to you. What your mom did, what your dad did, what the other kids did." My lips curved down into a deep frown, and my fingers slowly curled inwards to form fists. "Is that just gonna go away when you kill me? Is my death gonna heal even one of those scars you're wearing?"

"..." Anthony paused. He went quiet, and he shut his eyes gently. Then, his lips curled a little, and he huffed with a small laugh. He began shaking his head from side to side, that huff snowballing into a chuckle. After a few long seconds, those eyes peaked open again, and their scarlet hue illuminated the night. "Come on Angel, you know me. I'm a selfless guy."

"You were." I corrected with venom on my tongue, my teeth grinding some against one another. This remark hardly phased Anny though, who kept his small smile. It hurt me to look at it.

"I don't do things for me, Angel." Anarchy explained, slowly tilting his head back. His ivory locks tumbled out of the way of his face, putting the wickedness of his smile and the evil that gleamed in his eye on clear display. "I'm not here because I think bashing your skull in is gonna magically turn me back into that bright eyed little dipshit I was."

"It's kinda the opposite, really." Anny's eyes rolled upwards in his head like he was thinking, tilting his neck from side to side. But then, again, that focused stare landed on me with however many tons it weighed, and a sweet, loving smile curled Anthony's lips. I knew that smile, its light had once illuminated my dull childhood. "After I kill you, I'm not gonna have any purpose left."

I furrowed my brows at this, recoiling some. I watched him skeptically now, pensive and anxious from his answer. I didn't know how to feel, worried or glad. I didn't know if this was flattering or insulting, I didn't know if this was a good or bad thing.

"I think when you die, Angel," As Anarchy tilted his head to the side, a hint of sadness entered his eyes. But his smile just grew in spite of that, and behind him his darkness seethed even louder. "Most of me will die with you."

"But, then..." Eyes semi-wide, I lowered my gaze to the glassy sands. I shook my head with disbelief, like I really couldn't fathom this truth. Anarchy wasn't like me, he wasn't a liar. If he chose to say those words, it was because he meant them. I looked back up to him, "I don't get it. Why would you kill me if you think it's gonna kill you, too?"

"I told you, I'm a selfless guy." Anarchy's face split then, lips curling into a slimy grin. His blood soaked teeth gleamed hungrily, his cracked lips split and bled. Still though, his eyes were calm. Happy, even. "I'm going to kill you because you deserve to die. That's all there is to it."

"That is not all there is to it!" I snarled suddenly, red voltage crackling a few sparks out of my burning soul. Electricity jumped out over my bleeding and steaming chest, and a fire was lit in my previously passive eyes. Something about breaking our relationship, our collision down to something so simple infuriated me. There had to be more, he had to want something else from me.

"It's the only part that matters." Now Anny was calm, while I was furious. He lifted his arm again, pointing that damned crowbar at me. I wanted to slap it aside. I wanted to punch him in his face. "I hate you, Angel. And that's the only real thing I feel anymore."

"Everything else I experience is out of control, sporadic, up in the air..." Anny's eyes slowly went wide, that madness sparking, then twinkling, then flaring and now burning. He grinned from ear to ear, lamenting his psychosis to me like I was the only one he ever wanted to talk to. "My moods swing to and fro, back n' forth, but what keeps me focused is you! I always hate you, Angel!"

"All that I feel, all that I want, all that I am!" He was giggling now, so many emotions shining in his eyes. in some sick way I felt special, accepted and noticed and important. The premeditation of my murder rang like wedding vows in my ears. He slapped one hand against his chest, and fires of crimson ignited in his left eye while obsidian darkness seethed from his right, trickling down his cheek like tears and swaying around his eye socket like 2D tendrils. "I exist to hate you, Angel! To kill you! Don't you get it?!"

"But why do you hate me Anarchy?!" I snapped, stomping one foot forward. We were both snarling now, our matching eyes gleamed with the same whirling emotions. I felt insane when I was close to him. When we spoke, my emotions flared and my reasoning skills ebbed away.

"You know why I hate you!" Anarchy challenged furiously, stomping his own foot forward. The air was beginning to vibrate between the two of us once more, popping and crackling here and there.

"I wanna hear you say it!" I told him, fires bursting out from the cracks surrounding my eye. It stung, burned my face and made me wince some. A few streams of my ichor spilled over from the shattered skin on my face, trickling down my cheek. But that didn't matter. What mattered was right in front of me. My worst enemy and my best friend. "Tell me what I did!"

"I already told you, but you weren't listening!" The ground suddenly exploded apart beneath Anarchy, and he lunged forward, racing across the space between us. Ferocious expression tearing his face apart, he cocked back his free fist. "It's always about you, you selfish mother fucker!"

I threw both my hands back, and from the Deltarune boiling on my back ink spewed, coiling in a handful of blades over my shoulders. And when I shoved my hands forward, those blades launched out on their winding liquid handles at The Anarchist. The usual pure blackness was tainted however, the occasional red stream lost in the obsidian ichor. My blood was spilling over into my magic, and my magic into my blood.

"Xander took us off the street, gave us a place to stay and a purpose!" Anny snarled as he raced closer, swaying his immortal body to and fro between the ink whipping by him with lethal speed. He didn't flinch, not even as one blade slashed through the shoulder of his cocked back fist, spraying his endless blood through the air and severing his arm in an instant. "But I was the one who busted his ass to pay him back!"

Without skipping a beat, Anarchy lurched forward. His jaws latched around the wrist of his severed arm, catching it between his teeth and digging into its bone to assure he kept a tight grip on it. Then, as he reached me, he stopped his sprinting. He planted his feet, skidded right up to me, and yanked his head to the left, spinning on his heel and whipping the bleeding shoulder of his own arm at the side of my head. I was so completely stunned by the savagery of this attack that I couldn't get up an arm in time, and his flesh club bashed into the side of my skull with so much force that it exploded into blood and viscera against my head.

"Lexi loved you, trusted you more then anything!" Still Anny was ranting and raving as I stumbled back, concussed and jarred. That hardly deterred him though, and from his crimson spraying stump arm bones suddenly exploded out. The moment a skeletal fist had formed, and while muscles and flesh still wrapped around the bone of his new right arm, he whipped his knuckles up into my chin in a brutal uppercut. "But I was the one who gave up my life to make sure she stayed safe!"

"I was your best friend, I worked hard to give you all the attention I could and make you happy!" Before I could stumble even two steps back, Anarchy's still forming fist wrapped its gross fingers around my throat. He held me in place while he cranked his crowbar back, and I managed to wince one eye open just in time to spot his expression, twisted curled and deformed by endless wrath. His face was inhuman, like nothing I had ever seen before. "And you left me behind the first chance you got!"

When his crowbar shattered my jaw, when I felt some shards of my teeth fling past my split lips and a few more tumble down my throat, it felt right. Like it was a feeling I had been missing, something I needed to experience to be whole. I wanted him to hurt me, I wanted to hear him hate me. It ratified and validated all of my self loathing, every late night and every early morning. Every nightmare, every meal I puked up in the toilet to make room for the many knots in my stomach. Every struggle I had, he made it feel real and important. So, as I was forced to step back and my head was thrown to the side, I planted my feet, dug my heel into the ground, and whipped my head back at him. My blood covered forehead shoved into his, and my shrunken pupils trembled and shook with rage and madness as I shouted through a mutilated mouth. "COME ON MOTHER FUCKER!"

Anny responded with a furious roar, like he was so angry in that moment that he couldn't even form words. Again he blasted his fist - now fully regenerated - into my cheek, forcing my head away from his. I was shoved back, stumbling on shaky knees a few feet away from him. My arms hung limp at my sides, my head hung low, but my knees never buckled.

"Now you've got this new life, these new friends, and suddenly they're worth it?!" His crowbar clattered to the ground, dripping with my blood. Now that both his hands were free, he snagged both my shoulders in a vice grip, shaking me so that I would throw my head back while he threw back his.

"You don't deserve this happy life!" With a hellacious collision Anarchy smashed his head against mine, sending tremors along every wrinkle of my brain and fractures splitting my skull. My disoriented eyes were barely open, my vision fading in and out. But my focus never left his eyes. My brain, no matter how concussion riddled, never stopped processing how hurt he looked in this moment. "You don't deserve to be put on a pedestal! You don't deserve to be the hero of this story!"

"It's me!" Anthony let go of my shoulder to crank back his left fist, and I hardly felt the brutal impact of yet another punch in the face, even as it whipped my head back.

"It's always been me!" With the hand he'd used to clock me, Anthony grabbed a fistful of my hair. Then he pulled back his right fist, only to immediately blast a rib shattering punch into my solar plexus. This made me lurch forward, eyes snapping open wide while I was forced to puke up a mouthful of scarlet.

"IT ALWAYS WILL BE ME!" Anthony roared like the beast he was, pulling his hands up high over his head. He clasped his fists together, shaking his head back and forth while he frothed like a rabid dog. With crushing force he swung his fists down like a hammer, bashing them down between my shoulder blades and buckling my knees. I face planted on the ground at his feet with earth shattering force, the dunes of ash around us all being blasted away from the shock wave my impact created.

"I'm the one who stuck to his guns, I'm the one who lived the life he deserved!" Even as I laid flat on my face, gasping and spitting up blood, Anarchy hadn't had enough yet. That was fine, I hadn't had enough either. He dropped to a knee in front of me, grabbing a fistful of my hair and yanking my head up from the filth of our obliterated battleground. "I'm the one who didn't run from the consequences of his own actions!"

"What do they have that we didn't?!" In one motion Anarchy rose to his feet, standing effortlessly in all the gravity that was pouring down on us. With his titanic strength he pulled me up as well, only to whip back his left fist. He let go of my hair just as he slugged me, blasting his fist into my scarred chest on a downward swing and throwing me right back into the dirt.

"Why weren't we good enough Angel?!" Anthony was screaming at me, red flames crackling to life around his face as he dropped down onto me. Burying his knees in each of my forearms, he sat on my chest, trapping me completely. His hands snapped around my throat like the pincers they were, threatening to strangle but never restricting airflow. He wanted my answer, he needed to know why.

"WHY WEREN'T WE GOOD ENOUGH?!"

---

Xander was encapsulated. He laid there, flat on his back. He hadn't moved since he'd landed, hadn't been able to tear his eyes from The Hacker Anarchist Event. It had been gratifying, and it had been a little sad. He often tried not to think about it, because Xander knew he was an angry man. It wasn't an attractive feature, so he fought it, groomed himself to mask it as best he could, but the shame that Angel The Hacker had brought him never failed to make him furious.

So it felt good, seeing Anthony The Anarchist explode with fury on his behalf. So raw and so emotional in a way Xander never could be, The Gatherer admired that. Envied that. For a long time now, he'd felt a disconnect between himself and a handful of his emotions. When he became The Gatherer he felt he had to strike out his weakness.

"Xander, I want you to promise me something."

... Emotions had destroyed someone he loved. Someone he admired. Someone he looked to for guidance. And he had made a promise, he had made several, to keep from ever ending up in the same way. And yet, here he laid, fearing the consequences of his broken promise.

Here he laid, rooting for a psycho. A murderer. A cannibal. An abomination. Because when Anarchy said it out loud, it made sense to Gatherer. Anthony was the hero, and Xander did think he deserved to win.

---

Stop... Please...

Lexi couldn't speak. She just stood there, mortified. Her eyes were transfixed on the television screen broadcasting Angel and Anthony's showdown right into her ship. She stood there, at the forefront of her exhausted pirate crew, one hand clasped over her mouth. She hadn't turned around to face the friends behind her, she didn't want them to see her face.

Because she was crying. How could she not be? Hearing Anthony scream, tell Angel how much he hates him and all the reasons why. It hurt her, knowing that he hated him for her. That she did matter enough to him, even now. That he remembered and thought about that instant six months ago, just like she did.

She had been worried that Anthony was gone, that the connection between the four of them really was lost, and that her friend had disappeared. But now, as she watched him and Angel mutilate one another, as she saw just how much agony writhed in Anarchy's eyes while he lamented his indignation, it became clear that Anthony had never went anywhere. In fact, she worried that he felt he had lost her.

"WHY WEREN'T WE GOOD ENOUGH?!"

Lexi's eyes widened, and a fresh stream of tears raced down her cheek. Her hand tightened around her mouth, trying to stifle the sob that Anarchy's speech was bringing out of her. She hated watching this, but she couldn't look away. She wanted to intervene, but she couldn't move. Besides, her and her entire crew had seen what Anarchy was capable of. The fact of the matter was, getting between the two in their current state was nothing short of a suicide attempt.

So instead she stood there, trembling with stifled sobs and choking on the lump in her throat. Unable to pick a side, she didn't want a winner. She knew there couldn't be a winner. She just kept hoping one thing, over and over.

Stop..! Please! Just stop!

---

Thud! Creeeaaakkk...

Grunting and groaning with effort, Asriel hobbled past the front door of his home, leaving it wide open behind him after he had opened it with his now shoeless foot. He was hunched forward, sweat forming on his brow from the weight he was carrying on his back. That weight was in fact an unconscious Chara, eyes closed and head slumped onto his shoulder.

Just..! A few..! More steps..! Asriel's teeth ground together while he cursed the lacking physical strength of his monster body. He wished he would just hit a growth spurt already; he was sure this wouldn't be a problem if he was the towering and imposing size that his father was. With an instant sigh of relief, Asriel leaned back over the couch, sliding Chara off his back semi-gently onto the cushions.

"I was your best friend, I worked hard to give you all the attention I could and make you happy!"

Asriel squinted his tired eyes up at the living room TV, which was clearly displaying the beat down Anarchy was inflicting upon an unyielding Cter. He heaved with his panting, taking just a moment to watch and to ponder. He muttered through his heavy breathing, "What is that... Maniac, talking about..?"

"N-nng..."

Asriel's eyes widened some as he heard Chara grunt with pain behind him, immediately drawing him back to the task at hand. He spun on his heel, turning to face them and immediately kneeling at their side. He extended his paws over them, letting them hover there as his palms began to emanate a green glow.

When his TV lit up with a fight starting at the top of the mountain he lived under, Asriel raced towards the ladder that lead to the surface above the Ruins. But when he got there, he had found Chara at the bottom of the hole that lead into the Ruins, out cold. It was almost nostalgic, him carrying them back to their Ruins home after they fell into the Underground. Of course that was hardly important now.

"You're gonna be okay Chara, don't worry..." Asriel whispered more to himself than them, gulping silently while he stared at their pained expression. Their eyes were shut tight, eyebrows drawn close together while their teeth ground together. This moment, too, was familiar. It was terrifying, the look on someone's face while their body failed them. He had watched Chara die like this once before, and that memory filled him with dread.

But this wasn't the same. He could fix this. He had to fix this. They weren't poisoned, they were just hurt. He could heal this. He was stronger now, he could heal this. It was up to him, he was the only one who could help them. But he was afraid. The longer he looked at their face, the more he had to think, the more he felt like a scared little kid, waiting for his best friend to die. He bit his inner cheek, and he pushed those thoughts away, once more muttering. "... I'm not gonna lose you. Not again..."

"Asriel?! Chara?!"

Shaken from his invasive thoughts, Asriel's eyes snapped open wide, darting up towards the wide open front door that Frisk and Monster Kid were darting in through. The two looked rapidly back and forth, before Asriel called out to them, lifting one hand to get their attention. "Over here!"

They spotted him, and the both of their faces lit up with some form of relief before they sprinted across the wood floor and into the living room. They might have been looking to hug him, but they stopped dead when they reached the other side of the couch, spotting Chara's battered and blood stained body beneath his healing hands.

"Yo, what happened to them?!" MK exclaimed, the worried ivory of his eyes never leaving Chara. Frisk was staring in a similar way, though their expression was a little harder to read. They looked surprised, like it shocked them to see Chara in such a weak state.

"I think they were fighting that pasty guy before Cter showed up." Asriel spoke aloud, though his own wide eyes never looked up to either of his companions. He mumbled, "Would explain why Cter was so angry..."

"What are you two doing here?" Asriel's shaky eyes darted up to the two of them, his expression something ghastly despite his calm tone. "The whole mountain is shaking, there's no way it wasn't a dangerous hike."

"Undyne got us up here, throwing spears at falling trees and tossing us over landslides all the way." Frisk turned their head to Asriel as they explained, squinting their eyes some. Silently they examined his panicked face, and they could tell he was just as shaken as everybody else, if not more so. That made sense, the mountain might just be coming down on top of them and his sibling had been beaten within an inch of their life. "She's still outside, trying her best to slow the waves of rubble."

"WHY WEREN'T WE GOOD ENOUGH?!"

The crazed screams of The Anarchist drew all three pairs of eyes to the television, and Monster Kid's stomach dropped when he saw The Bastard Son on top of his best friend, poised to strangle the life out of him. The reptilian monster groaned loudly, throwing his head back and beginning to run in place. "C'mooooonnnnn! We're wasting time! Cter needs our help!"

"What?!" Asriel snapped suddenly, his snout turning back towards MK while his white rimmed eyes vibrated with anxiety. He threw one hand out towards Chara, "Have you two not been paying attention?! I don't know who this freak is but he's way too strong!"

"We don't have to fight him, Asriel. I don't have any intention to, actually." Frisk spoke calmly, quietly, and quickly. It was a stark contrast to the panic the room was filled with. "If you help us, then we just need to distract him."

"What do you mean?" Asriel asked immediately, his eyes darting between the two. Still he held his healing hands out over Chara, though he was hardly focused on them.

"I've got an inventory full of healing items and you've got healing magic." Frisk explained, DETERMINATION gleaming in their scarlet eyes. "We just need to get close to Cter, and we can get him back in this fight."

"Yo! So you actually had a plan?" MK's face lit up, and he turned his excited grin towards Frisk. His praise caused them a smile, just a little one. "I thought for sure we were making this up as we went, haha! That healing thing could totally work!"

"I-I don't know..." Timidly Asriel lowered his head, looking away from the two of them. He wanted to help Cter, of course he did. But he also didn't want to die. Him and Monster Kid were made of magic, they were fragile. And he could feel how powerful the souls raging atop the mountain were; the two of them could be destroyed in an instant. And that was terrifying. He had died before, after all. And he had a lasting fear, in the back of his mind.

What if, when he died... Flowey came back..?

"Asriel, you don't have to come with us." Frisk reached out, planting a hand on their friend's shoulder. This caught the goat monster's attention, made him look up into their reassuring expression. Like always it seemed, - at least lately - they were certain in all that they did. "But MK and I are going."

"..." Slowly, Asriel's hands balled into fists by his sides. Fears be damned, his friends needed him. And there was no point in being him, no point in having a soul, if he was still going to be a coward like that stupid little flower. He shut his eyes, and when he reopened them, he too looked certain. "... I'm in."

"Alright guys that's great but we're kinda on a time crunch here!" Again, Monster Kid was running in place in front of the TV. He turned his head from the screen to look back at them, anxiety burning in his expression. "How are we even gonna get there fast enough?! We have to run through the entire Underground to get to the peak!"

"Eugh..."

All three of them jumped, spinning around to this new voice in the conversation. On the couch Chara sat up, running one hand through their blood stained hair and wiping it back out of their face. With sunken in, tired eyes they looked up to the three of them, a deep frown engraved in their face. To say they looked pissed was beyond an understatement. They didn't have much to say, just three words.

"I can help."

---

Stab!

I didn't know how to respond to Anny. Didn't know how to answer his questions. It felt like there was nothing I could say, nothing that could justify my actions or explain my complex emotions. So, instead, I did something that made sense. I attacked him.

The Anarchist's eyes were wide, his forehead split down the middle by red ink. Our heads were connected by this inky blood, the red that had been streaming down around my eye having stabbed upwards in the same manner that my ink attacks did. My blood had sliced right in through his forehead and out through the back of his skull.

He just stared down at me, wide eyed. He looked stunned, maybe like my attack had caught him off guard or maybe like he felt especially betrayed by this strike. He had been begging me for an answer, I was the only one in the world he felt he could talk to. The only one he wanted to talk to. But I didn't want to talk to him. I wanted to take out all my anger and hate on him, and I wanted him to take his out on me. I wanted to feel it. I deserved it. I wanted to drown in our shared poison. I deserved it.

The blood pouring down my still healing chin from his jaw shattering crowbar strike a moment ago exploded up then, taking the vague, liquidy shape of a hand and wrapping around his face. My crimson ichor yanked Anarchy high into the sky, before suddenly curving down. He was sent rising and then racing down in an instant, my magic blood smashing him into the earth with enough force to throw up a blast of ash.

"Huh..." I spoke as I slowly sat up, forcing my burning body to move. As I got one knee and one hand under myself, I rubbed my fist across my reformed chin, coating it in my scarlet shades. I grunted, pushing myself to my feet before throwing my blood soaked left arm out to my side. My blood hardened in its streams over that arm, creating ruby rivers of that glimmered with DETERMINATION. "I guess there really is ink in my veins after all."

With a flare of red light, an updraft of heat blasted the dust surrounding Anarchy into the air, immediately clearing his surroundings and putting him on display in crackling red lighting. His expression, now healed of course, displayed even more fury and indignation. The fires of his DETERMINATION burned between his knuckles, licking up his arms and growing more and more with each passing second.

"That's it?" He called to me, holding his arms out to his sides. A ways behind him, his Scorpion was stirring, shifting strangely in its trap. It had been obediently waiting for an order from its master, an order that appeared to be on its way. "You really don't have anything you wanna say to me?"

*All those wasted hours.

"There's nothing I can say or do that's gonna make you feel better, Anny. You made your choice." I held both arms out to my sides, and black stained blood swirled from where it ran across my body. My cracked flesh was endlessly dripping my angelic ichor, but that was fine. This was my last stand, and my own viscera would be my weapon. "You wanna kill me so bad? Come kill me."

"..." Anarchy just squinted at me. His chest was lifting up and down in breathing that I was sure was labored. He was losing a step, he had to be. There was no way he had ever been pushed to any kind of limit, and I knew I was getting him close. Somewhere, somehow, the well had to run dry. I just had to keep fighting. It didn't matter how far I went past my own limit, so long as I brought him down with me. "Fine, Angel. Just remember that I gave you the option."

The Devil in I by Slipknot began playing.

I narrowed my eyes a little curiously at that statement, finding it odd for him to say. It's as though he expected something of me, and I wasn't giving it to him. But that hardly made sense, and I hardly had time to think about it. I watched as he suddenly lifted both of his arms, before pushing them forward towards me slowly. It was a strange motion, like he was carefully commanding something.

The explanation came when I saw his Scorpion liquidate behind him all of a sudden, its form turning to the black waters of Anarchy's Fountain. Like a tidal wave it raced across the sands of our shared devastation, and my eyes went wide. Uselessly I threw my arms up in front of myself, as though that simple guard would save me from a tsunami. Fortunately for me, the tide never hit me.

Instead, this wave of tremendous force exploded into Anthony's back, forcing him to lurch forward. This hardly distracted him though, his wide red eyes boring holes in my head with his glare as the ocean of his madness poured over him. It swirled over his shoulders, under his arms, blasting with high pressure right into the valentine heart that burned scarlet in his chest. It looked painful to me, but Anny didn't look like he even knew it was happening.

Instead, as he stared at me, his expression grew more and more intense. His lips curled back, displaying his jagged fangs to me while his pupils shrunk in his eye sockets. His mane of white hair lifted and bristled like some feral animal, and his hands tensed and trembled. His entire body was tensing, every hair on him standing on end.

And as his pitch black hatred finished pouring into his bottomless soul, once more tinting its left side an obsidian shade, Anarchy's fangs parted. He threw his head back, and with every bit of indignation he carried he screamed into the heavens. I felt the air pressurize, just before an explosion of shadow raced out around him. A tornado of black winds extended high into the sky, dragging the razor stinging of the sands that surrounded us into the air. Crimson lightning crackled in the storm of his hatred, one bolt blasting just by my head. It exploded into the earth behind me, blowing my hair forward and forcing my eyes to snap open wide.

And I watched as Anthony The Anarchist lowered his head, his eyes closing on this cruel world. His expression was calm now, but mine was heavily anxious. And when his eyes gradually opened, red flames blasted up over the left side of his forehead, DETERMINED embers sparking from his left eye. His right eye was different, however. What was once a beautiful ruby iris was now an unnatural obsidian shade. His heterochromia eyes peered into my soul, and I watched as a single black tear formed within Anthony's right eye. Elegantly it overflowed, slipping down his face and cupping his cheek perfectly.

I watched him pause, like once again he was waiting for me to make a move. Anarchy had become so forward, so unlike Anthony was when we were kids, it was almost out of character that he was waiting for me. But I wasn't one to let an opportunity slip through my fingers. So, I planted my feet, bent my elbows, and clenched my fists.

*If you keep scraping the bottom of the barrel, you're going to break it.

Just this once, Killer... I shut my eyes briefly, inhaled deeply through my nose. I could feel it, every tingling pain vibrating my body into numbness. From my head to my toes, it felt like my body was going to split apart. But my soul, it pulsed and burned with power. My soul didn't ache like my shattering body, in fact my soul felt better than it ever had before. So, I focused on that. I blocked out every ounce of pain, let it fade from my psyche and allowed my body to lose contact with all feeling. Then, my eyes snapped open, letting their furious crimson shine slice through the night. Keep your mouth shut.

Then, the air around me ignited. The heat of my holy soul scorched the earth beneath my feet, burned the darkness closing in on me and forced it to keep its distance. One final pillar of light fired into the heavens, disorderly in its construction. It thinned, and then it widened. It dimmed and it brightened. So desperate was it to survive that it pushed its flames to burn brighter and hotter than ever before. Cracks shattered through the sands that were melting together below me, leaking scarlet lights just like the splits of my flesh.

Then, suddenly, I yanked back my fist, and my outpouring DETERMINATION condensed down from its pillar. It fell into a swirling, sweltering dome around me, winds whipping rapidly around me. My hair was being lifted straight upwards, swaying in the deafening winds. My furious pupils shrunk, and the ground exploded apart at my feet, shards of glass flicking through the air.

I launched forward, a vengeful roar exploding out of my throat as I rapidly closed the distance between Anny and I. He didn't seem to mind though, in fact he turned his head, leaving his cheek wide open. That just made me angrier, put more force between my punch. My knuckles smashed into his cheek, instantly splitting skin before burning it shut.

Anny slid back on the balls of his feet, his iced eyes shooting glares down my outstretched arm at me. Then his arm suddenly swung upwards, knocking my fist from his cheek and sending me falling forward towards him on my momentum. I spun in air with my now swinging to the right arm however, swiping one leg at my best friend's head while I did a complete 360.

Like a shark smelling blood Anny's eyes lit up when my leg soared towards his face, and his jaws parted unnaturally wide. Between his rows of teeth he caught me by the calf, just before he swung his head back and whipped me around on jaw and neck strength alone. In an instant he was swinging his head back and forth, smashing me against the ground on his left, before yanking me up, throwing my on an arch over his head, and sending me crashing down to the sands on his right.

I never felt the sting of his teeth in my leg though, just like I didn't feel any of my brutal impacts with the floor of our arena. Suddenly, the blood pouring out into his mouth went rigid, spiking out in all directions and blasting black and red points out the back, top, and front of his head. His jaw's muscles shredded, his fangs were forced to unhook from my mutilated calf, and I yanked my leg back, tearing it from his teeth.

I landed on both feet in front of him, carelessly putting weight on my ruined leg and not feeling a single repercussion. The blood running down both my fists spiked out in ruby and obsidian points, and I began raining lefts and rights into Anny's abdomen. Jab after jab, hook after hook, his scarred flesh was ripped and shredded, and he was forced to stumble back, red steam covering his head to heal his many brain and skull wounds.

I stepped forward for every step he took back, arms never stopping their rapid fire punches so long as I kept seeing his scarlet paint spill through the air. But, suddenly, Anny's head swung down, swiping just by my shoulder with lightning speed. It wasn't until my ruby orbs darted to my shoulder that I realized he had effortlessly bit off a chunk of my arm. I didn't have time to react though, because his fist launched upwards, and his knuckles buried themselves in my chin with a brutal uppercut.

I was launched off my feet and sent firing straight up, but I didn't get more than five feet off the ground before Anny's pale fingers snapped shut around my ankle. With a roar he spun on his heel, yanking me through the air before whipping me as hard as he could through the air. I fired back across the deserts of our battleground, flipping and spinning in air before I finally landed on both hands and feet.

I skidded across the sharp sands, using the rips it dug through my fingers to my advantage. As Anny sprinted across the dunes of ash to meet me, my inky blood exploded out in thin points from the ground before me. He kept running straight ahead, not seeming to notice as my magic ichor slashed through him. Holes were punched in him, gashes were cut into his body, his cheek was ripped open as one spike launched over his shoulder.

With a primal roar he jumped, lunging at me and yanking back his left fist. My head was sent whipping back when he crashed a punch down into my face, my arms swinging with my entire upper body from the force. I quickly regained control however, planting both hands in the ash at our feet and catching myself. Swiftly I swung my legs up, yanking both knees to my chest before blasting my feet into Anny's chin and throwing his head back whiplash fast.

I flipped back on my hands, landing on my feet and planting them. Screaming my wrath, I pulled back my left fist, and the ink of my blood coiled rapidly up my knuckles. On my fist a spear was crafted from my constantly flowing ichor, and I ruthlessly jabbed forward. Anny lurched forward again as I hole punched his chest, swinging his head down and cracking our foreheads together.

Our vicious, snarling expressions were inches apart now, and death glowed in our eyes. Anny's arms flung up suddenly, and his fingers wrapped tight around my arm, keeping it trapped it there. Then he opened his jaws so unnaturally wide that my thoughts were drawn back once more to my reoccurring nightmares. Pushing that back in its bottle, my right hand flung up. Blood formed a serrated surface, a strange hundred hooked glove of inky viscera on my right hand as I planted my palm over Anny's eyes and nose, holding his snapping jaws back away from my face.

I shoved his head back, slipping my hand down his face and shredding through his nose and eyelids with the sharp ink on my palm. Then, in the same motion, I cocked this hand back, clenching it into a fist. My inky blood poured through the cracks between my fingers, moving from my palm to my knuckles and almost instantly reforming my spiked fist.

"Just! Stay! Down! You! Crazy! Fuck!" I punctuated every word of my sentence with a punch to the head, further mutilating Anny's face. My assault was ruthless, desperate. Whatever I could do to save myself. Whatever I could do to kill him. Unfortunately, Anny knew a lot more about being ruthless than I did. That much was obvious when he suddenly grabbed my left arm and snapped it like a tooth pick.

He inverted my elbow, but I still didn't feel it. All I felt was the impact of my fist on his face. The vibrations it sent up my arm. This was it, all or nothing. If I didn't fight like him, I had no hope of beating him. So I didn't care that my left arm's humerus had ripped up through my skin, I didn't care that one of my limbs was ruined.

Anny let go of my broken arm, pulled back both fists, and smashed them into each side of my chest. The force of these two punches was like a shove, throwing me clean off my feet and sending me launching back through the air. Again, I didn't get far, one pale hand shutting tight around my ankle before Anny spun on his heel. He yanked me high above his head, before shitwhipping me down into the glass that had formed beneath us.

The jagged, clear surface exploded apart when I impacted it. Shards of glass embedded themselves in my back, but I never stuttered. With my one working arm I reached back, planting my palm in the razor shards and springing back away from Anny. I landed on both feet, immediately pointing the now cut up palm of my right hand at my best friend and letting a barrage of droplets fire like bullets from my flesh.

Anny sauntered fearlessly forward, red smoking and black bleeding from his wounds as I opened them. The upper half of his face had healed, but both of his lips were still shredded, keeping his blood stained maw on clear display. His two orbs, one ruby and one obsidian, were devoid of any light. Whether it be joy, madness, rage, or sorrow. He showed nothing now. He just put one foot in front of the other, step after step, while his body was rapidly destroyed and reformed under the pressure of my attack.

Furiously I growled, and the blood pouring out from my upside down V of a left arm suddenly coiled rapidly around its broken shape. Then, with a snap, the ink stained ichor tightened, pulling my arm back and snapping it into the right direction, setting the bone. After that, I carelessly yanked what was uselessly shattered a second ago back, forcing fingers to clench tight as fires exploded brightly from the many cracks detailing my arm.

Anny shoved my right arm aside, just to get blasted by a punch from my left. There was so much force behind this strike that red energy blasted out the back of his head, representing the force that just quaked through his skull. Anny didn't stumble though, instead he fired his own fist into my ribs. This forced me to lurch forward, several loud snaps echoing out of my diaphragm as a similar black and red energy exploded out of my back from the power of his strike.

My shrunken pupils darted up to his face, bloodshot eyes blazing with animosity. My right hand clenched into a tight fist, and I blasted my knuckles into the side of his head, forcing a wave of red to fire through his skull once more. Head tilted to the side, Anny's soulless eyes were wide as they stared at me. He yanked up his other fist, clocking me with another energy pulse creating punch and forcing me to throw my head to the side.

I planted my feet though, sliding on my heel before whipping right back, smashing another right hook into his jaw. He brought both hands over his head, clasped his fists together, and smashed them down on top of my head. I was forced to lean forward, before throwing my head right back up and jamming my left fist into his chin with an uppercut.

For minutes on end we stood there, the both of us refusing to lose any ground. With punch after punch we slammed one another, each impact so hellacious that it sent a shock wave of our soul's lights through our opponent's body. Skin split, bones broke, organs ruptured, but neither of us felt a thing. Our souls forced our shattering bodies to rebuild themselves, again and again, over and over.

We gasped for air. We bled and we sweat. Until finally Anny swung for my side, and I stepped forward, letting his fist wrap around my back and hooking my arm under his. I wrapped my right arm around his left in the same manner, trapping both of his arms in both of mine. The blood pouring from me wrapped around the two of us rapidly, binding us to one another.

Our chests were forced against one another, our souls burning at one another furiously. Red flames and black lightning crackled and scorched between our abdomens, fires licking up at our chins and updraft levitating our blood, sweat, and dirt stained hair. Anny struggled against my hold, but I refused to let up for even a moment. We both pulled our heads back, crashed our skulls together so hard that the ground rippled beneath us, exploding up in fissures of scarlet and onyx.

I unhinged my jaw, and right into his face I screamed. The fires of my soul swirled up and out from my gaping maw, and red light suddenly fired out from my shoulder blades. Skin cracked apart rapidly, before suddenly the flesh covering my shoulder blades violently exploded open, sending my crimson colors spattering through the air.

Trembling wings composed of red stained ink spread wide behind me, shimmering and vibrating like they could hardly hold their form. They didn't need to though, not for long. With a gust of winds so hot it glassed the sands encircling us, my tortured wings beat downward, and we were sent rocketing into the air.

We fired high into the sky, shot through the dark clouds of our hatred and raced so high that the air got thin. Breathing became impossible, my wings stiffened and grew worthless, the ink on them beginning to drip and run away while their feathers disappeared to black and red splotches that flung off into the air. With the last flaps my disintegrating wings could manage, I turned us in air, hooking downward and launching us back down towards Mount Ebbot head first.

The wind whipping in our ears was deafening, the vibrations in our blood all we could feel as we sped right past terminal velocity. Gravity pulled us with increasing force, and we spiraled like a drill, the fires of our souls along with whatever ignition we gained from dropping out of the atmosphere quickly turning us into some kind of comet.

We hardly noticed the hellfire surrounding us however, didn't care about our descent or what it might do to the both of us. Instead, we snarled and frothed at one another like animals, and we both pulled our heads back. Rapidly, over and over, again and again we headbutted each other. We beat our foreheads together as we spun faster, dropped harder. Even with Death rapidly racing closer, we just couldn't stop hurting each other. It was impossible to stop attacking.

As usual, Death never reached us. The explosion of aura around us blasted right through the ground when we reached it, and Anny n' I continued to plummet. Deeper and deeper we dug through what remained of Ebbot's peak, melting any and all dirt and stone that got in our way until finally, something gave.

We broke through the earth, and almost instantly all air disappeared. Into a hidden spring of water Anny and I plunged, and in the darkness of this mountain lake, the only light was the DETERMINATION we were glowing with. Around us the water boiled, our blood turned it red. Our rapid spinning formed a whirlpool, and we were at the epicenter, descending deeper still. All the while our heads flung back and forth, skulls crashing together over and over even as we held our breath.

In the dark waters surrounding us, worms swam and swirled. Primordial creatures created by our shadow, swishing their long tongues through the waters. They circled us endlessly, trapped in our whirlpool. They didn't look like they minded though, and we hardly noticed our starving demons as we finally reached the bottom of this vast lake, and once more mud and stone gave way to our power. When our skulls finally did explode into this wall, it was blasted apart.

In the ceiling of The Underground, a hole blasted open. Into Waterfall's garbage pit a massive ball of red stained, boiling water poured, crashing into the filthy dumpster water and adding to its poison. The impact was so harsh that the water first bounced up, nearly forming a mushroom cloud before it blasted apart, rapidly dispersing in two massive waves, one to the right and the other to the left.

The currents yanked Anny and I apart, and we were dragged to opposite ends of this over sized gutter. We were sent washing down and away from each other, and when the water finally dispersed from around us into small, quaking waves, we were both left on our hands and knees. But we didn't stop.

My head yanked right up, whipping drenched brown hair out of my face as my scarlet eyes locked on to the waterfall left between Anny and I. Water was pouring down from the hole we had made in the ceiling, forming a shifting, crashing aqua tower. I couldn't see Anny through the shifting waters, all I could see was my own reflection. But that was close enough. I'm sure Anny thought the same thing.

I shoved myself up from the gutter juice I was kneeling in, splashing rapidly across the garbage dump in a dead sprint towards this tower of shifting pressure and volume. I could see the red in my own eyes. The rage on my own face. I could hear splashing on the opposite side of this pillar. I was sure Anny was rushing me in the same manner.

When I reached the waterfall, I lunged and I roared. I heard him shout in the same way, and I cocked back my fist, preparing for my final strike. This was it. Everything was for this. Every second, from the alley to here. All of our hate, our animosity, our indignation, our spite and our guilt. One punch to end it all. For me, for him. For The Killer, for The Mother. For Granny, and for Lexi and Xander too. For everyone who ever got dragged into our mess, for those who contributed to its beginning. Surely, this was it. This was our finale.

We both reached the center of the waterfall, and with its rain blasting down on top of us, we threw our fists forward. At the same time our knuckles connected, each of us hooking the other in the face. Our arms had raced right by one another, his just over mine and mine just under his. With all of our strength we blasted each other right in the jaw.

And for just a second, a split hair of an instant, I was nostalgic. With his arm over mine, it was almost like we were kids. Wrapping arms around each other's shoulders, grinning and smiling in our innocence.

The lights in the both of our eyes turned out, and we knocked each other out cold.

---

The music stopped. My eyes opened.

I recognized this place. Its concrete walls, its broken pipe waterfall, and its slithering darkness. I found myself in The Basement, and I was already standing over the Ivory Ghoul. I was right behind him, my arm already cranked back. In my hand was his crowbar, and in my eyes the red of his Inheritance's poison gleamed.

Last chance.

Usually, by now, the shadows were loud. They would be cackling, hissing. The sound of their filthy bodies sliding over the floor and the walls drowned out everything. But now, it was... Quiet. The only noise was the Ivory Ghoul's animalistic, gasping breaths. Our darkness watched carefully, pensively, as I prepared to strike.

"..." My eyes narrowed, and my jaw clenched. I wasn't sure why, all of a sudden, I was apprehensive. Something felt different. Had I missed something? No, it didn't matter. I had to do this. I had to put this beast down, before it killed me. Before it ate me, before I was ripped apart. This was the only way. The crowbar was already in my hand, I thought as my knuckles tightened around its filth. I had to do this.

But, just before I swung, a certain sound echoed in my ear drum. I had thought it labored breathing, carnivorous panting. But, the harder I listened... No, it wasn't that. Those weren't gasps or hisses or anything of the sort. In fact, as I listened more and more, as I waited longer and longer...

Made a mistake.

... Those were not growls, nor hisses, nor snarls. And this was not some horrible creature. Those were sobs and whimpers, and this was a terrified, emaciated boy.

And just like that, it all clicked in my head. I was never brought to this basement to be eaten. I hadn't woken up here to strike some freak down. My arm slowly lowered back to my side, and my expression softened. All rage and all DETERMINATION melted away. The red that painted my eyes washed away from my irises, filling the rims of my bottom eyelids before overflowing in a red tear down each of my cheeks. Now, the green of my eyes shined in the darkness, and both sorrow and KINDNESS overwhelmed my expression.

Clang!

Anthony whipped his head around, and one mortified, shrunken pupil landed on me. I had dropped that crowbar, let our past and our Inheritance go. I had been a fool to ever hold onto it. But I was like him, alone and afraid in The Dark. I had made a mistake, and now was my last chance to right that wrong. And as Anthony stared up at me, and I saw the tear stains on his cheek, I gave a small, knowing smile.

Mercy.

Carefully and calmly I knelt down behind him. He just stared at me, silent and skittish. It looked as though he didn't understand. He must have been wondering why I hadn't hit him, why I wasn't trying to hurt him. I slowly lifted my arms, keeping my KIND smile and letting my rightful color shine in my eyes.

I gently wrapped his frail body in my arms, and I hugged him close to my chest. This made him stiffen, made his beautiful ruby eyes go wide. He turned his head, staring ahead because he didn't want me to see. He sniffled, he fought with what might he had left as tears filled his eyes. But it just wasn't enough, and streams overflowed down his cheeks as he began to whimper. And then, as the seconds went on, he started to sob.

And as he finally relaxed in my arms, and I held him even tighter... He hung his head low, and he began to wail. All of his sadness brought to the surface, finally overflowing and being let out of the bottle he had kept it in. Tears and snot alike poured down his face, his messy hair hanging over his eyes.

But, even though he was crying, even though he had to scream and sob just to let out his many feelings, I was smiling. Suddenly I felt okay, and as the darkness began to ebb away, and an emerald hue began overtaking the basement, I felt, for the first time in forever, that I was doing the right thing.

"I'm sorry, Anthony..." I managed to say, though my own voice cracked and broke. I just hugged him tighter, like it was all I could do. I shut my eyes, my smile growing shaky the more that my own feelings began to flow. And as a stream of tears slipped past my closed eyelids, I said all I could say.

"I-I'm so sorry..."

Karma.

---

I gasped when my eyes opened, and I immediately regretted it. My entire body was throbbing with pain, from head to toe. The glow in the many cracks covering my body had dimmed to almost nothing, and my burning red soul had disappeared back into my chest. There I laid, beaten and broken, a gutter kid right back in the gutter.

"Promise me you'll get out of this hole as soon as possible and promise me you won't ever look back!"

... I-I'm sorry, Granny. I thought it would be easy, but... Suddenly, I found myself sniffling. Something warm and wet was overflowing down my cheeks, and my first thought was that it was blood. My eyes stared straight up at the glimmering rocks lining what remained of the ceiling, and I had to shut my lips tight to keep back a sob. I-I just couldn't get away... N-no matter how hard I try, I just...

I managed to lift my bleeding left arm, instinctively grabbing my face as a frown dug itself into my cheeks. ... I let you down. You must be... You must be so disappointed..!

Just as I felt this sudden influx of emotion was going to make me hysterical, I managed to grab some semblance of my composure. I stifled a sob, and I let my hand slip off my face. With teary eyes, I forced a shaky smile up at the beautiful shine of those fake stars. This was a good thing, after all. This was no time for self loathing. ... I'll make it up to you. I'll make it up to everyone. I promise.

Everything Anny had shouted at me, all of his furious screaming and all the raw emotion that was shown in his eyes. I knew now what he had wanted from me, and I felt like an idiot for not understanding sooner. He had wanted me to say one simple thing from the moment I got here, and I had wanted to say it too. I had just forgotten how to phrase it in my emotional haze, but suddenly my thoughts were flowing perfectly. I knew what I had to say, and I was going to say it.

"Eugh..!"

I heard a familiar grunt on the opposite side of the waterfall, and I took it as a call to attention. Even as my body ached and screamed, I managed to climb and crawl. I forced myself up onto one knee, eyes clenched shut tight. Desperately I tried to push off of my knee, but gravity proved far too powerful for my shattered body.

So I knelt there, barely managing to lift my head as one Anthony The Anarchist stepped through the waterfall. His fists were still clenched, but I could tell he was in pain. His chest heaved, his eyes were their original color, his soul had disappeared back into his chest. He glared down at me, but when I looked up at him, and our eyes met, he squinted some, like he was confused. Only for a moment though, before he shook it off and spoke over the quiet flowing of the water. "Havin' trouble there, Angel?"

"E-... Ehehe... Y-yeah, I'm done..." I smiled weakly at him, and again he squinted like I was being weird. I let my other knee drop into the water, and I knelt there, The Angel thoroughly defeated by The Bastard Son. My cracked, bleeding arms laid limp in my lap, and my eyelids fluttered some, struggling to remain open. Still, I lowered my head some, and my fingers gripped my torn up jeans weakly. "... Listen, Anny. I know you probably wanna, I dunno... Eat my face, tear my arms off and beat me with them, rip me in half..."

"All great suggestions." Anarchy spoke in a jaded tone, his glare sharpening. His frown deepened, cracking further into the stone of his expression.

"And, hey, I get it..." I lifted one hand, raising my bleeding left palm as though I was asking him to wait. I lifted my head slightly, looking to him from under the strands of hair that dangled in front of my face. "It's, honestly exactly what I deserve... But, before ya do, I-I... I wanna say something..."

"Oh?" Anarchy's eyebrows rose, before he crossed his arms over his chest. Corner of his mouth curling into a snarl, some of that psychotic wrath dripped into his eyes, and his jaw clenched slightly. "Coulda swore you said there was nothing you could say or do that would make me feel better."

"Yeah, well, that was dumb." Closing my sunken in, exhausted eyes, I breathed a few more ragged, desperate breaths. I condemned my previous actions, before I began leaning forward. I planted my hands in the filthy water, lowered my head, and bowed before Anthony, stunning him completely. "There is something I need to say to you..."

"..." Anny was silent for several long moments, squinting down at me. His left fist tightened, crackled briefly with red lightning, before, begrudgingly... He let his fingers relax. His fist unclenched, and the crackling energy that was forming on it dissipated. He growled, "... Alright, Angel. Make it quick."

"..." I opened my eyes slowly, and I looked into my reflection in the quivering water. My eyebrows rose some when I saw it, before a small smile curled my lips. I felt relieved when I noticed that my eyes had lost that horrible red color, once more emeralds glimmering with KINDNESS. Somehow, it felt I had gotten control of myself. Like I knew who I was again, if I had ever known at all. So, I shut my eyes, I took a deep breath, and I spoke. "... I'm sorry, Anthony."

". . ." Anthony's eyes went wide, and his pupils shrunk. His entire expression looked completely shocked. It was as though no part of him really thought I would ever say those words. He needed confirmation, he needed to know this was really happening. "W_h_a_t_._._?"

"I abandoned you. I abandoned everyone who ever cared about me." Solemnly my eyes opened, but I didn't look up at him. How could I? I had put up a front, tried my hardest to be the tough guy, to hide all the shame and guilt a felt. Now I knew that was wrong. Now I knew what I had to do. "I put a hundred knives in a hundred different people's backs, and... I'm sorry."

"..." Silently, Anthony The Anarchist narrowed his eyes. His expression began hardening, but he didn't say another word. He waited, watched and listened.

"I've... Kinda been a piece of shit my whole life. I've been a liar, a coward, a cheater..." My hands slowly tightened into fists in the filthy mud, my eyes clenching painfully as I wallowed in the filth. "The best thing I ever did was befriend you, and I fucked that up too."

"I could have helped you when we were kids. I could have kept up with you after I moved." I took a deep breath, and I slowly pushed myself up off the ground. Pathetically I grunted and I groaned with pain, my body hardly responding as I managed to straighten my back, once more sitting on my knees before him. Even though it hurt, I forced myself to look him in the eyes. In the dark, my green KINDNESS and his red DETERMINATION cut through the shadows, illuminating the windows to our souls. "I could have apologized when we met again in the gang. I could have apologized before we started this fight."

"Anthony, I've had plenty of chances to make things right between you and I, and I never did." I closed my pained eyes, forcing myself to draw in a deep breath even as it shot pain through me. "You becoming Anarchy, and everyone you ever hurt or killed... That's all my fault. And I'm sorry."

"..." Anny's eye twitched lightly, his jaw tightening. Fury was rising in his expression, but he didn't say anything. He didn't move. It looked like he was confused too, and maybe even a few other things. He clearly didn't understand his emotions, so he was defaulting to the one he knew best: anger. I didn't mind that, though. However he responded would be how he responded, but I had to say what I've wanted to.

"Because you're right, Anny." I lowered my head some, not yet opening my eyes. My guard, all my defenses were down. There wasn't much I could do now, anyway. My life, my fate, it was all in his hands. "I'm not the hero of this story."

"But... I haven't been trying to be the hero." My emerald eyes opened slowly, flashing their green KINDNESS as I looked up at him. I was weak and powerless, and yet with words alone I had stopped The Anarchist dead. Painfully my expression tightened, "I've just... Been trying to stop being the villain."

"... Stop it, Angel." Anarchy spoke suddenly, his wide orbs never blinking as he stared down at me. He clenched his fist again, but his indecisive soul wasn't sure whether or not it should lend him its destructive power. So there was no red flare, no devastating shock wave. In that moment we were mortal men. Less than that, we were the same dumbass kids we were when this mess started. All the power we'd gained, every stride we'd thought we had made... But here is where it had led us. Right back to the trash we came from.

"That's why I started being KIND to these people. Not because they're better than you or Xander or Lexi," I shook my head slowly, droplets of water trickling down my soaking wet face and sticking my hair to my forehead. "But because I'm trying to be better than I was."

"I said stop it!" Anarchy snapped, stomping one foot forward. The water rippled beneath us, and red lights flickered across its surface. Anny's soul was trying to react the only way it knew how: violently.

"I'm sorry, I... I didn't understand back then. I didn't get that I was the problem..." Tiredly my head leaned forward, my breathing growing more labored between my sentences. I was light headed, and my body kept getting heavier. But I had to keep talking. He had to know how I felt. "You were always good enough, Anny... I-it was always me... I was always the problem..."

I shut my eyes tight, and my hands once more slipped off my wet lap and into the water. I clenched fistfuls of polluted soil, hoping in the filth I would find the cure to my own disease. But I didn't. I never would. So instead, I did all I could. My voice cracked and broke, and I managed to whisper again. "... I'm sorry..."

"SHUT UP!"

My eyes snapped open wide, pain splitting through my body as Anthony swung his foot right up into my diaphragm. I spat up a mouthful of bloody saliva, my pupils shrinking before I was launched straight up. There Anarchy's hand lunged out, grabbing a fistful of my hair and keeping me from dropping back to the ground.

"What, you think you can trick me?! You think I'm an idiot?!" Anny cocked back his free hand, clenched it into a fist, and began punching me in the face. I just clenched my eyes shut, it was the only defense I had as he broke my nose and split my cheeks with swing after swing. "You show up ready to 'put me down', and now that you're LOSING you think you can apologize?!"

"You're right Angel! You are a FUCKIN' COWARD!" Anarchy cocked back his fist, let go of my hair, and slugged me so hard in the chest that it launched me back through the air. Anarchy didn't pause though, immediately bending his knees and then launching himself up into the air. "A LIAR! A CHEATER!"

"You'll say anything to save your sorry ass! You really thought I wouldn't see through this bullshit?!" He smashed down on top of me, burying both feet in my chest and slamming me down into the water. I screamed with agony, the crunch of my ribs rocking my already devastated body as he drove his heel deeper and deeper into my abdomen. "You really expect me to believe you've changed when not ten minutes ago you were trying to crush my skull with yours?! You just don't get it, do you?!"

"This is MY special day, Angel!" Anarchy lifted his foot, only to stomp down with added force. This forced a bloody cough out of me, spilling red over my chin. He repeated his motion, stomping on me again and again while savoring every grunt and agonized cry I let out. "When I kill you it's gonna validate everything! Every miserable fuckin' moment was all for this! All so I could take you down with me!"

"DON'TCHA GET IT, ANGEL?! WE WERE MEANT TO BE!" Anny started cackling, grabbing his face with his scarred hands and letting his wide, bloodshot eyes peer through the space between his fingers. A mad grin tore his face open, revealed his carnivore fangs. "YOU N' ME, BEST BUDDY! WE'RE GONNA BURN TOGETHER, FOREVER AND EVER!"

The Anarchist roared with laughter, howled and threw his head back while I screamed in agony. My numb arms couldn't even move, I had no hope of pushing his foot off my concaving solar plexus. He stared straight up at the ceiling, chest tremoring with his hysterics while he let his clawed hands hang limp at his sides.

And as he lost himself in the euphoria of my helpless screams, he lowered his guard. And he paid for it when suddenly one hand wrapped around his face, covering his eyes and immediately making the grin disappear from his face. Over his shoulder a Worn Dagger stabbed down, plunging into his chest and collar bone repeatedly.

"Get the hell off him you son of a bitch!" Chara's voice made my weak eyes widen some, and I watched as Anarchy was forced to stumble back. He grabbed at the heir, who had latched onto his back, expression a vicious snarl as they stabbed him over and over with a borrowed knife.

"Again with this gremlin shit!" Anarchy snarled, swinging back and forth before finally reaching over his shoulders, grabbing two handfuls of the back of Chara's shirt and yanking them off of him. In the same motion he shitwhipped them across the trash dump, sending them slamming back first and upside down into the wall that the garbage waterfall rushed down. "Wait your turn sidekick! I'm busy!"

Chara splashed in the water, before instantly shoving their body up to one knee and shooting Anarchy an unforgiving glare. They gripped their dagger tightly, refusing to give in or let up in the slightest despite the pain they felt. They still looked exhausted, but their wrathful stare refused to waver. "You and me aren't done Anarchy!"

"Okay, you know what?! Fine!" Anarchy stomped one step towards them, a burst of his red aura igniting the dim lighting and tugging at his hair with an updraft of power. "You wanna die first? I'll make it happen!"

Fwoosh!

Orange light blasted through the dark, and suddenly Anarchy was engulfed in a wave of flames. It was brief, a wall of fires that flashed across his body. But when it faded to crackling embers, all of which drifted down into the water, Anarchy was revealed. His piercing red eye glared to his left, that side of his body scorched crispy. The skin on the left side of his face had been peeled away, revealing the rows of his teeth and the structure of his jaw. This would hardly last though, red mist already steaming from his body.

"... Ah. The goat boy too, huh?" Anarchy spoke, his voice distorted in his still healing mouth. He turned both of his wide, psychotic eyes on Asriel Dreemurr, who stood down the way. His hand was still extended, embers still falling from his fluffy palm. Anarchy shrugged dramatically, "Well, fuck it I guess! More the merrier!"

"Hey!"

"I was KIDDING!" Anarchy turned his head to his right, screaming furiously down the cavern. The water vibrated with his power, and his enraged orbs landed on Frisk and Monster Kid, both of them flinching from being suddenly shouted at. Frisk stood protectively between Anarchy and Monster Kid, their eyes narrowing with their nerve.

"Oh, wow, the lizard and Frisk! Everybody made it to the reception!" Anarchy's face was split with a grin, his mad eyes darting between each of my friends. Then he looked down to me, yanking up one foot and smashing it down on my chest. This brought another agonized roar out of me, and I flailed my head back and forth, squirming helplessly. "Isn't this exciting?! All your brand new friends came to watch you die!"

"Get off my best friend!" MK shouted, pushing suddenly past Frisk. In the corners of his mouth, flames were rising. His fangs were barred, and I realized how often I forgot that he was a dragon.

"YOUR BEST FRIEND?!" That definitely got Anarchy's attention, so much so that he stepped off of me to take a threatening step towards Monster Kid. He looked over his shoulder and down at me though, snarling furiously. "You WHORE!"

I couldn't formulate any response to that, all I could do was gurgle painfully up at him while my vision faded in and out. Anarchy's focus was officially taken off me and put onto Monster Kid, and he began stomping through the mud towards both him and Frisk, the latter putting a hand out in front of MK and glaring at Anarchy. Chara slid suddenly between them as well, standing shoulder to shoulder with Frisk and awaiting The Anarchist's onslaught.

Footsteps raced through the water, and suddenly Asriel was dropping to his knees at my side. Weakly my vacant green eyes scrolled over to him, and his own eyes were darting over all my injuries. Without a moment's hesitation he opened both hands over my shattered rib cage, and an emerald hue overtook the garbage dump as healing light began washing over me.

"As... riel..?" I managed to speak the moment the screaming pain in my diaphragm began to lessen, wincing up at him. Most of my body was still lacking in feeling, and what I could feel was in agony. "You all... N-need... To run..."

"Preachin' to the choir, Cter. Trust me." Asriel's eyes lifted to mine briefly, before immediately going back to my indented abdomen. I could see the anxiety on his face, I was sure he must have felt as though the weight of the world was baring down on his shoulders. That was something I understood. "Just gonna give you a quick heal so you can get back to kicking butt. E-easy, uhh... Easy peasy!"

"How'd... Get here..?" I spat out a broken sentence, figuring it would still get the point across. Luckily, Asriel put it together well enough.

"Chara opened portals for all of us so we could get to you before uhm... A-anyway!" Asriel was sweating, and I didn't know if it was from anxiety or from the rate at which he was forcing out green light. Whatever he was doing, it was working. I was regaining more feeling throughout my body, and some of the cracks in my skin were finally starting to close up. "Try not to talk, okay? But, also, don't pass out!"

Suddenly, Frisk was flung like a projectile, slapping into Asriel with enough force to send the two of them tumbling back through the water and away from me. This of course tore the healing light of Asriel's hands away from me, and I winced as relief left me once more. I tilted my head up, looking back towards Anarchy.

"Sneaky sneaky!" Anarchy seethed, grinning his berserk smile back towards the heap that Asriel and Frisk now laid. Then, his back suddenly arched as Chara drove their knife into it. Snarling viciously, Anarchy spun, swinging back one arm and smashing the back of his fist into Chara's jaw, throwing them back through the air with devastating force.

Then, some strange mix of an exhale and a fire igniting resounded, and brass flames streamed out, crashing into Anarchy's side. MK ran right by The Anarchist, turning his head, breathing a mouthful of flames across his back and pulling his attention right back to him.

I watched as Frisk took up a stance right in front of me, holding their arms out to the sides and using their body like a shield. Asriel knelt by me again, despite the water he was now soaked with and the pain I'm sure he was feeling. The roar of Monster Kid's flaming breath, the clang of Chara's blade, the psychotic snarls Anny was making, it all echoed throughout the garbage dump. And I didn't understand. I couldn't understand.

Everyone was vastly outmatched, completely hopelessly overpowered by Anarchy. And yet... Here they were. Putting their lives on the line for me. Risking everything, putting themselves in the sights of the most dangerous man alive or dead, to keep me safe. Why? Why for me? I was a bad person, I didn't deserve this. My whole life I'd been the worst I could be, I'd made every mistake I could. This just... It didn't make any sense!

There had to be something, anything I could do! I felt so useless, so powerless. All I could do was lay here and hope, pray that Anarchy didn't massacre each of my friends. They didn't deserve it! He was here for me, I was the one who deserved this! Please, something! I have to do something!

Suddenly, one pale fist smashed upside Frisk's head, sending them flinging into the water and skidding through it, out of my line of sight. Asriel lifted his head to the Ivory Ghoul as it loomed over him, his eyes widening and his pupils shrinking. My own eyes went wide as I watched Anarchy cock back his foot, knowing full well just how much LOVE was behind each of his strikes. Helplessly I cried out, "Wait-!"

With a crash Anarchy's kick smashed into Asriel's chest, making him lurch forward before launching him away from me. I couldn't see him anymore, and my terrified eyes darted desperately for an answer. Was he dust? He had to be dust! No monster could survive a strike from Anarchy!

I didn't have any time to think though, because Anarchy suddenly reached down, snagging me by the throat and yanking me right off the ground. For only a second I was forced to look at the darkness in his eyes, before he threw me as hard as he could through the air. My aching back smashed into the wall that water poured down, before I immediately dropped flat on my ass.

Painfully I groaned, body lurching forward as I was now propped up against the wall. Water rushed down around me, carrying trash and filth, and I lifted my head weakly. With glowing green eyes I watched the chaos, my mouth hanging open as I desperately sucked down air, wet hair dangling over my face.

Anarchy was only able to take one step towards me, before Monster Kid lunged at him. The wyrmling sunk his fangs right into the flesh of Anarchy's right arm, planted his feet, and tugged violently at the limb, trying desperately to pull Anarchy away. The Anarchist didn't budge however, his wrathful eyes only darting to MK as his arm was shredded by fangs, and his worthless blood poured down the lizard's chin.

"Wait, Monster Kid..!" The green of my eyes shining brightly, I placed one hand over my aching abdomen as I reached desperately out towards the two of them. Something, anything! I had to protect my friends! "Get away..!"

Anarchy roared ferociously as he yanked his mangled arm right out of MK's jaws, spinning on his heel in the same motion. And I watched as Anarchy pulled his fist back, let it burn and spark with all his fury, before he blasted his knuckles right into my best friend's face.

"MONSTER KID!" I screamed, tears filling my eyes again. I watched his body sail back through the air, before crashing unceremoniously and skidding through the filthy waters.

But, then there was... Nothing.

Anny's eyes narrowed then, watching as MK's body remained. He did not break down, not in the slightest. Not a spec of dust flecked off of him. And, as we all watched in silence, and the air was sucked from the room, Monster Kid moved.

Sitting up swiftly, his furious eyes landed on The Anarchist. He looked more intense than I had ever seen him, his pupils taking the shape of thin slits. Anarchy's blood was dripping down his chin, and those brass fires were swirling up from the corners of his mouth. But, most noticeable of all was the color of his eyes. Most monsters had white irises to reflect the color of their souls. And though his eyes had been white the entire time I had known him...

Monster Kid's eyes were green.

"What in the..?" Anarchy squinted with a moment's curiosity, before rage reignited his expression. "You're supposed to be DEAD!"

Once more the fwoosh of fires blasting through the air resounded, and orange flames engulfed Anarchy briefly a second time. That was, until he roared, and the explosion of his red aura formed a dome around him, whipping that stream of fire away.

I threw my head to look down to the opposite side of the cavern, where I spotted Asriel on one knee, his smoldering paw still extended out towards The Anarchist. His eyes, too, gleamed an unnatural green. These revelations shocked both me and Anarchy, the latter whipping his head back and forth to look between the two.

"You're both supposed to be dead! What kinda warlock shit is this?!" Anny demanded answers, And I found myself looking as well. I didn't have to look hard though, all I did was lower my head and it clicked. On my chest, my soul was glowing again. But my DETERMINATION was not shining, its destructive power having gone dormant inside me. In its place was the next strongest trait of my soul.

Glowing brightly in the dark, a KIND green soul was displayed clearly on my chest. Throughout the many cracks in my body, an emerald light was shining. It was a healing ray, soothing the burns my DETERMINATION had left in its wake and protecting the lives of those I held dear.

"Anthony!" I suddenly shouted, lifting my head. I caught his attention, and when he looked upon me, he snarled. The green of my eyes and my soul, the light shining through my broken skin, and even the glimmering halo of KIND energy that now floated just above my head. "I'm not gonna let you hurt them!"

". . ." He stared at me for several long moments, looking genuinely baffled. He leaned his head back some, just watching me with narrow red eyes. But, finally, he turned his back on me, instead pivoting slowly to look out at those around him. Asriel, Frisk, Chara, and Monster Kid. They surrounded him, and all of their eyes shined with my green KINDNESS.

Suddenly, Anny clenched his fists, and an uproar of DETERMINATION flared on his body. His power shined bright, sending both embers and volts of power crackling across his skin as his left eye ignited with red fire. In a low, gravely tone he finally spoke. "... You don't got a choice."

And I watched, holding on to my hopes as best as I could, as my friends rushed Anthony The Anarchist. Fires washed over him, blades pierced him, but he refused to stop. For every strike he received, he returned it tenfold. But my KINDNESS protected them, took the brunt of every strike and assured that they would rise again.

He would beat them all down, and they would all get back up. He would throw them away, and they would come running back. They fought tooth and nail against the unstoppable force that Anarchy was, no matter how hard he hit them. Even as blood was spilled, as skin was bruised and broken, they forced themselves to rise again. And I just held them each with my KINDNESS as tightly as I could, using every ounce of my soul to lighten every blow.

I had to protect them. No matter what happened to me, I had to protect them. And, as I watched them beat their heads against this brick wall, as I watched each of them rise from beating after beating, I realized they must have felt the same way about me. I had never known this feeling before, I had never understood it. To be so loved and valued and so accepted, and to return that love and acceptance.

For seconds, or maybe minutes, in fact it could have been hours, I watched my friends slowly break down against the overwhelming power of Anarchy's hatred for me. Now, Frisk stood between Anarchy and I, arms raised protectively. They had refused to throw a punch this entire fight, and had probably taken the worst beating because of it. Now their legs were shaking, and blood streamed down their face from their hairline. Their mouth hung open, and they gasped for breath.

"You really love gettin' hit, don'tcha short stack?" Anarchy questioned, wearing his berserker smile as he sauntered closer and closer to Frisk. He tilted his head slowly to one side, letting his neck pop and crack while he rolled his shoulders. It was as though he was saying he was just warming up.

"I-I... Promised Cter, I would n-never fight again..." Frisk lifted their eyes to the furious smile of The Anarchist, and they glared into it fearlessly. Though they were bruised and bleeding, though they were panting for air, they refused to budge. "I-if it wasn't for him, I never would have got better... I'll never let you hurt him..!"

Anarchy snarled, stomping one foot forward and getting into range while he yanked back one fist. Throwing a brutal right hook, he blasted Frisk in the side of the head, sending them launching like a rag doll through the air before they skipped like a stone across the water's surface. "PEOPLE DON'T GET BETTER!"

Then, for a third time a wave of flames launched at him from his side. But, this time Anarchy was ready. He turned, pulled back both of his hands, and just as the fires reached them, he threw both his hands out, smashing his palms together in a clap so powerful it boomed like thunder. The force of this impact smashed into the fires, shattering all those flames to embers.

"Cter saved my family when I thought nothing and nobody could..!" Knees bent slightly and unevenly, Asriel struggled to stand, holding out his shaky arms. His palms were looking burnt by now, exhaustion clearly setting in. He had been smashed through the water so many times that his white fur was matted down all over his body. "You've got no right to take him from us..!"

"I HAVE EVERY RIGHT!" Anarchy refuted, breaking into a sprint. He rapidly shut the distance between himself and Asriel, jumping suddenly and yanking both knees up to his chest. He shotgunned a brutal dropkick right into Asriel's abdomen, making him lurch forward and forcing blood up past his jaws. Then, the force carried through, and he was sent launching back through the filthy water, parting the pond for only a moment before the water rushed back down around him.

Anarchy turned back to me, but before he could do anything more, Monster Kid dove onto his back. He sunk his fangs down on Anny's shoulder, and his clawed feet raked down The Bastard Son's back over and over, shredding it into a mess of blood and torn skin. Anarchy snarled furiously, reaching up and grabbing each side of MK's head before ripping him off his back and throwing him over his head.

MK tumbled down into the mud, but the moment his momentum stopped, he pushed himself to one knee. He opened his maw, spitting out a ball of brass fire at Anarchy, who was walking right towards him. Anarchy merely opened his palm, catching the orb of flames in his hand and crushing it to embers between his fingers.

"Cter's the best friend I've ever had..!" Monster Kid lamented, snarling in a beastly way as he forced himself up to both of his clawed feet. "All he's ever been is nice and understanding to everyone! He's given us so much!"

"Well all he did was TAKE FROM ME!" Anarchy roared, jumping forward and yanking back his left fist. He punched MK square in the nose, knocking him back through the water as well and sending him skidding all the way to the back wall of the trash dump, where he thudded loudly to a stop.

Then, again, Anarchy turned his eyes back to me. Those scarlet peepers narrowed however when he spotted Chara there, standing between the two of us. Though they were gasping and bleeding, they pointed their borrowed dagger out at The Anarchist, eyes narrowing with deadly precision.

"And what's your special memory, sidekick?!" Anarchy demanded to know, suddenly racing forward. His footsteps splashed rapidly closer, before he dove and punched at Chara in the same manner he had Monster Kid. They ducked this strike though, leaning in and ramming their shoulder into Anarchy's abdomen. They followed this up by plunging their blade right into his ribs, planting their free hand on his chest and shoving him back away as they yanked their dagger free.

Anarchy slid back a few feet, but immediately lurched forward, reaching out and grabbing Chara by the shoulders. He yanked them forward, bashing his infinitely thick skull into theirs and making them recoil. Then, he let go of them, brought his fists up over his head, clasped them together, and hammered down right on Chara's face, sending them whipping back first into the water.

"A-Angel... Told me..." Hand clenching weakly around their dagger, Chara stared straight up. They struggled with their body, tried their hardest to get it to move, but it wouldn't obey. "He t-told me, that I'm amazing..."

"..." Anarchy's expression turned completely sour and bitter, his eyes narrowing with an icy chill. He leaned down, grabbed a fistful of their shirt, and yanked them a foot or two off the ground. "He lied."

Then, with an easy motion, Anarchy swung his arm, and he threw Chara like garbage across the dump. But, when he turned his head to watch them go, he spotted his enemies standing again. Frisk and Monster Kid were both climbing to their feet to his left, and to his right Asriel was limping back towards the battle, holding one dragging arm tightly.

"... Okay, fine. Clearly everybody wants to go down together, right?" Anny's eyes glossed between all four of my closest friends, and he turned his back to me. Chara landed beside Asriel, who immediately leaned down, pulling them gently to their feet and helping them stand again. Anarchy frowned deeply at this, at all of this. My friends surrounded him again, beaten and broken as they were. This defiance was infuriating to him, so he thought up a solution. "Don't you worry, Anarchy's got the answer!"

Then, suddenly, Anthony planted his feet. He bent his elbows, he clenched his fists, and red flames exploded to life in the garbage dump. Roaring at the top of his lungs, Anarchy once more let his DETERMINATION explode violently out around him. A pillar of red fired right into the ceiling, crashed into it so hard that it made the cavern rumble. And when that happened, it instantly became obvious what he was doing.

"Yo, he's trying to bring down the ceiling!" MK pointed out, shouting over the vibrating air and The Anarchist's howling. The entire gutter was shining red now, rapidly heating. The water at Anarchy's feet was bubbling and steaming, starting to boil. And the louder Anny screamed, the more violent his tower of power grew, the more vibrations ran through the already unstable ceiling.

"Is he insane?!" Asriel asked, recoiling. His eyes glossed up, examining the cracks that were quickly spreading through the roof. More and more water was pouring down through every fissure, and it was obvious to everyone that there was nothing but drowning death awaiting them above.

"YES!" Chara answered like it was obvious, their panicked eyes darting to their brother. "We need to grab Angel and portal the hell out of here!"

"It's too hot..!" Frisk objected, throwing one hand up over their face the moment they took a single step forward. The searing winds of Anarchy's DETERMINATION threatened to scorch their skin and singe their hairs. "We can't get in close enough!"

"Well we can't just leave Cter!" MK objected, and the four of them exchanged terrified glances. Louder and louder the stone sky quaked, raining down more and more upon us. Anarchy's screaming had become laughter, hysterical cackling. Clearly he had no fear, he was certain he would escape any death.

My eyes narrowed up at the back of Chaos incarnate, examining every healed wound and every permanent scar he was marked with. I was immune to the boiling, scorching heat, my body accustomed to overflowing DETERMINATION. I could get closer. He was wide open. I had to get closer, I had to make my move.

"DOWN, DOWN! WE'RE ALL GONNA GO DOWN TOGETHER!" Anarchy grinned wide to the sky, his mad eyes wide and bloodshot. His pupils were shrunken, he was in complete psychotic bliss. All around him, my friends were forced to kneel, the power he was radiating sapping what strength they had left and blasting them endlessly with his disgusting feelings. "ISN'T IT WONDERFUL, ANGEL? ISN'T THIS WHAT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR?!"

Suddenly, I was lunging forward. Anny recoiled, as did everyone else, as I suddenly wrapped my arms tight around him from behind. I grabbed my hands, wrapping my arms all the way around his shoulders and his chest and locking my fingers together. I restrained him, and while Anarchy probably thought this the set up to some kind of attack, I rested my cheek on his shoulder, hugging him tight to me. "Anny! I'm so sorry!"

"What?!" Anarchy snapped, his eyes turning down to me and his focus leaving his pillar of light. This made the destructive power he was giving off start to lessen while he struggled in my grip, shaking his shoulders back and forth to try and throw me off. "I told you I wasn't gonna fall for that shit!"

The green light of my soul pierced the pillar of red from his soul, making the tower bulge out before popping in emerald and ruby lights. This brought the cavern's vibrating to a stop, and forced the temperature to stop rising. I just shut my eyes tight, holding onto Anthony for dear life as he whipped me to and fro. "I'm not lying! I regret everything I did!"

"Fuck! Off!" Anarchy suddenly pushed out his chest, shoving his arms outward and breaking my grip on him. The moment he did, he spun on his heel, smashing a punch right into my jaw and forcing me to stumble back. "I know you're full'a shit! You're ALWAYS full'a shit!"

blood flew from my lip, but I planted my feet, shoving myself forward and clinging to him again with another hug. I squeezed him tight, wincing as I rested my face against his chest, even though it burned my cheek. I just continued to shout my feelings. My guilt, my regrets, my sorrows. All for him to hear. All so he could understand. "If I could go back and change it all I would! I'm sorry it ended up like this!"

"Get off'a me, freak!" Anarchy demanded, grabbing a fistful of my hair and yanking my head back. His other hand smashed a fist into my side, forcing me to stiffen and lose my grip on him. He shoved me off him, snarling furiously. "I didn't come all this way to accept some half baked apology! You left me for dead! TWICE!"

"I! Know! And that was shitty!" I latched on to the arm Anny shoved me with, and I immediately heard him groan with exasperation. He swung his arm, dragging me with it in a 180 before finally yanking up one foot and planting it in my chest. He kicked me back and pulled his arm free, sending me tumbling into the filth with a splash! "I'm sorry..!"

"Stop saying that! I know you don't mean it!" Desperately I tried to scramble back to my feet, but again Anarchy dropped onto my chest. His expression twisting with fury, he grabbed me by the throat. But now that I was up close, I could see it. Behind all of that rage and all that hate, there was something else. Something sad, something that hurt him. And I knew then that I was getting somewhere. "You left me behind, you son of a bitch! You forgot about me!"

"Y-you, think I, erg-! F-forgot about you..?!" I choked and gasped, my hands wrapping around his and trying desperately to pry them from my throat. But my fingers barely worked, and his grip was that of a vice. Still, I choked out what I could. "Anny-! I think about you e-every day..!"

"LIES!" Anarchy shouted at me, more and more pain bleeding into the red of his eyes while his fury and his madness dwindled. He throttled me, shaking my head back and forth before dunking me back into the garbage juice. I sucked down a mouthful and it tasted like how a dumpster smells, before he yanked my head back up, and I coughed up the greenish, oily waters. "You're just like everybody else! I gave you everything I had and you spat in my face!"

"I-I'm-! Sorry..!" I sputtered, and we could both see the tears that were overflowing down my face. I wasn't sure if it was the sting in my throat and nose from the 'water' I had just slurped down, the fact that I was being strangled, or how miserably guilty I felt. It hurt me to look at his face as more and more pain appeared in his expression. I wondered if it hurt him the same way when he looked at me.

"I needed you! I needed you and you just tossed me aside! One stupid apology isn't gonna make up for that!" It was hard to tell through the water splashing in my ears, but it sounded like his voice was starting to crack. Was a lump forming in his throat? Was it getting harder for him to berate me? "I never needed a hero, or an angel! All I wanted was one friend and you couldn't even give me that!"

He dunked my head back into the water. He strangled and drowned me. He screamed at me, beat me. And still, through the garbage I was gargling, through what little space was left in my throat, I forced out every apology I could. When he pulled me up for air, I didn't inhale. I just told him I was sorry, and he shoved me under again. My hands pushed instinctively on his chest, trailing up and down and trying desperately to fight him off. Of course, I couldn't make him so much as budge.

"You think I don't want the cushy life?! You think I actually LIKE who I am?!" Anthony's eyes were only getting mistier, and his grip was getting tighter and tighter. Dots were sparkling in my fading vision, and I was sure my face had become a shade of purple. "You wanna know what I want, Angel?!"

"Go on, ask me!" Anarchy leaned down, his face all my failing vision could see. My hands stopped moving, just remaining pressed against his chest. I could feel the heat of his soul. It burned at my hands, tried to push them away. But I refused to move them. "'Anny, if you could have a super power, what would it be?' SAY IT!"

The best I could do was gurgle uselessly, but that seemed to be enough for Anthony. He sat up, his lips curling back and displaying a snarl in spite of all the sorrow bleeding into his eyes.

"Well gee Angel, I don't think I really need any powers! I don't really wanna be all powerful or anything like that! Fighting just isn't in lil' ol' Anny's nature!" He was smiling, but tears were starting to overflow down his cheeks. It was like his entire body didn't understand, didn't know how to respond to the whirlwind of emotions he must have been feeling. "BUT IF I COULD FLY AWAY WITH YOU, ANGEL! BOY THAT'D BE SWELL ANGEL!"

Anny gripped my neck as tight as he could, and he shoved my head back under. My vision was nothing but glimmering lights and slithering darkness, my ears were filled with crashing water. All I tasted and all I smelled was dumpster water, and all I felt was a burning fire in my chest, a throbbing pain in my brain, and icy cold in each of my limbs.

And Anthony smiled. He grinned wide through his sobs, and he watched my flailing and my struggling start to dull. My hands slowly began to slip away from his soul, but just as they did, I made one dying effort. Just a flicker, a little crackle of green from my finger tips and into his ruthless soul. And suddenly, as my arms splashed limp into the water, something happened. For only a moment, a split second, an emerald color washed over Anthony's eyes. A wave of green swept through his ruby orbs, from right to left, before disappearing as quickly as it had came.

And then, gradually... His fingers loosened. His expression softened, his smile faded, and as he stared down at me, he looked mortified. Slowly, he let me back up to the surface, and immediately I vomited a mouthful of water up onto myself, before taking shallow gasps for air. In barely a whisper, The Anarchist questioned. "... W-what..? What's going on..?"

"I-... I..." My disoriented eyes stared straight up, my mouth hanging open. Water leaked up, overflowing down my lip as I coughed weakly. "...S-... Sorry..."

"Y-you... You ruined it!" Anthony snarled, even though his voice was cracking and breaking. More and more streams of tears were overflowing down his pale cheeks, and his chest was quivering with sobs. He pulled his hands away from my throat, and he clenched them into fists. But I don't think he knew who to hit, so instead he just reached up, pressing his knuckles against his eyebrows. "This was supposed to make it all worth it! This was my day god damn it!"

"But you took it from me!" He suddenly threw his fists down, slamming them into my chest. This sudden motion forced up another lung full of water, forcing me to puke more sewage up onto myself. "Just like everything else! Why?! Why couldn't you just let me have this?!"

"..." I didn't say a word. I couldn't - I was dying. But, slowly, his fists uncurled, and I heard him sniffle. It was a strange sound, something I hadn't heard since we were kids. Something I didn't think I would ever hear again.

"... I-I just wanted one thing... I've only ever wanted one thing... W-why..?" His expression softening again, Anthony slowly reached up with the hands he had just smashed into me, running them slowly through his ivory locks. "I worked so hard... All I've ever done is work hard... I-it's all I know how to do..."

I was so beaten and broken, I couldn't speak. I just watched him, tears silently streaming down my face. So miserable were we, the two most powerful men alive. Scared little kids, just trying to be happy. All our power and all our struggles for nothing at all.

"I-I just wanna be happy... I want something to make me happy... I-I thought for sure this time..." Those miserable red eyes met with my miserable green eyes, and it nearly shattered my KIND soul. Quietly, he asked me... "Why can't I feel happy..?"

My chest lifted once with a sob, and my bottom lip quivered. Crying harder and harder, all I could do was shake my head slowly. Like I was telling him I was sorry. Like I wished I knew the answer, I wished I knew how to save him. But I didn't, and it tore me apart.

"... I don't know how many more moments like this I can take, Angel..." Anthony whispered to me, slowly letting his hands fall. They sank into the filthy lake. "I don't know how many more times I can let you hurt me..."

I choked, gargled the water seeping up from my lungs and tried to inhale whatever I could. Wincing my teary eyes, I tried my hardest to reach him. But I didn't have anymore words that I could say, my body was broken and my mind was strangled. "... I-... I'm... S-sorr-"

His scarred, pale hand fell over my mouth, and he stopped my apology in its tracks. His half-lidded eyes glossed down to me, and he just shook his head slowly. "Don't. Please..."

Shamefully, I lowered my eyes, letting a few more tears slip free as he slowly pulled his hand away from my mouth. Then, to my surprise and my sorrow, he began climbing to his feet. After a few moments, he stood over me. But our eyes never left one another, not until he reached up, wiping his tears away with his forearm.

"... I thought I was ready to face you, Angel. But I wasn't." Ivory locks dripping water, Anny turned his head away from me. He avoided my gaze, some semblance of shame on his face. Whether he was ashamed of me or himself, I would never know. "Next time, I'll be ready. And I'll make you pay for what you've done."

"N-... Next time..?" I managed to say, barely lifting my head to watch him take a few steps away from me. His back was turned to me now, once again displaying every scar he'd ever been branded with.

"Gaster!" Anarchy suddenly shouted, turning his head to the ceiling like he was shouting to the heavens or space or something. My eyebrows rose as it registered who he was calling, just before a rift in space and time opened, and a familiar skeleton stepped out of it. And in his hands, wrapped in a towel so that it would not make direct contact with his bones, he was holding Anarchy's crowbar.

"Yes, Anarchy sir?" Politely and respectfully Doctor Badster bowed to Anarchy. I figured he must have understood the fragile state Anny was in, and he was smart enough to know a single misstep spelled death for him. "What are your orders?"

"... We're leaving. I've seen what I needed to." Anarchy's back remained to me, and the bad doctor took a step to the side without a single question, inviting The Bastard Son into the portal he had opened.

As I watched the two step through that rift, I felt a pair of hands gently take hold of my body, and my weak eyes glossed up to see that Chara knelt beside me. Exhausted as they looked, they still pulled me protectively into their lap, glaring at The Anarchist and his Badster with their sunken in, tired eyes. Then, I looked back to the portal, and saw that the both of them had finished stepping through it. The moment I realized it was about to shut, my hand flung up, and my voice broke free.

"W-wait..!"

". . ." Anthony The Anarchist did not say a word, but he did raise one hand, silently ordering Badster to adhere to my wish. He turned his head slightly, and the beautiful scarlet glow of his left eye landed on me. The rest of his face was covered in shadow, and he didn't say a single word, but I knew I had his attention.

"... I just..." My eyes lowered, and I realized I hadn't really thought out what I had wanted to say. My arm fell limp, and I just... Spoke what I felt. That had never been easy for me, not once in my life. But I found the strength today, at my very weakest. "... I just wish we could start over..."

"... Seems like everyone always wants to start over." Anthony spoke after a pause, before looking ahead. That's always where he looked, ever since we were kids. His back was turned on me, and I just watched as the portal began to close behind him. A million miles were separating us again, taking Anny away from me.

"Why can't anyone ever just get it right the first time?"

The portal shut, and immediately my eyelids felt heavy. I leaned my head back into Chara's shoulder, dim green orbs staring ahead into nothingness. Chara wrapped their arms around me, and I wasn't sure if it was to keep me from slipping out of their grasp and back into the water or if it was to comfort me. They probably didn't know what to say, I didn't either. So, they just shut their eyes, and squeezed me a little tighter. In barely a whisper they spoke, "... I'm glad you're okay..."

Their voice was muffled in my ears though. My eyelids fluttered, and my head swayed some.

"Angel..?"

My eyes closed. My head slumped over. The pain rocking my body disappeared, and all my senses turned off.

"Angel!"

---

An Ending from Undertale began playing.

In the trash dump, two portals suddenly opened. From one, Undyne and Papyrus quickly stepped out. From the other Sans and Gaster made their way with the same level of urgency. They swiftly scanned the area, and immediately their expressions twisted with mixes of pain and relief.

Throughout the trash pit, five bodies were strewn about. Monster Kid and Asriel both lay in the waters, face up thank god. Frisk was slumped against a pile of garbage, wet hair falling over their sleeping face. And at the center of the devastation, laying on the rotten boards of the bridge that had been dropped down here months ago, Cter was laid flat on his back.

Urgently Chara planted both hands on his chest, giving rhythmic compressions and performing CPR. Their lips were moving silently, it was clear they were counting the number of times they pushed their hands stiffly into The Angel's chest. After a few seconds, Chara leaned down, opening their mouth and using it to cover Cter's completely. They delivered one rescue breath, pulled away briefly to inhale, and performed another.

On the second, suddenly, The Angel flailed with life. His eyes didn't open, but his chest convulsed, and several more mouthfuls of water spewed up past his lips. Despite how miserable he looked, Chara smiled with relief, tears building in their eyes. Cter slumped back over after hacking up his water, leaning his head against their knee unconsciously. Gracefully, peacefully, his chest lifted up and down. He was breathing.

Chara slowly lifted their tired eyes to the four on lookers, and though there were tears streaming down their face, they smiled weakly. With the same sad relief Undyne and Papyrus's expressions broke, tears building and overflowing down their faces as well. Then, the two raced forward to help the beaten and battered young adults strewn about.

Sans was smiling with relief as well, breathing a silent sigh now that he knew everyone was alive. There was cold sweat dripping down his brow, and when he glanced up at Gaster, he saw the doctor was sweating in the same way. And though they were both beyond glad to see everyone was alive, both of their sets of sockets paused on The Angel.

Beaten and broken Cter was, clenched tight in the arms of The Ascended Heir. Anarchy was gone, he had escaped. The Angel was alive, he had gotten lucky. But in the grand scheme, luck didn't last. Gaster and Sans knew one thing for certain.

The Angel had lost.

---

Okay so I know I updated really late in the day, but please be sure to review! This is the chapter the whole story up until now has been building to, and I really wanna hear your feedback! Thanks so much!

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