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.)

84. Chapter 84: One True Pairing

Thanks go to Zillowzest, Wingah, 10burgers, Acoolnamme, adam,mat2007, GMLxAwesome, ZeroaraTheKnight, XelaZagity, WhoWritesThisCrap, Prominent, and Zack Frost!

Alright, I had to bust my ass for the past four days but here it is! This is a chapter I've been waiting to type for years, including some things that were planned all the way back in original DoubleTale! It's also unGODLY LONG at over 32,000 words! I promised myself I would never break my own record again and yet here I am being a godless animal again!

Ahem! Anyway, I love this chapter, I hope you guys love it too. And I hope you'll all be sweet little pumpkins and leave a review for me to subsist on. Next update will be in two weeks on May 31st!

Disclaimer: I do not own Undertale.

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"We're fucked!" Character was bold enough to shout, bending their knees and lifting their arms to guard their face from the ripping winds. Snowdin was tinted red now, buildings ignited and were blown apart under the torrent of The Angel's and The Ascended Heir's combining souls. And as Character stared at the shadow that shimmered within the DETERMINATION hurricane, the red soul flaring on its chest and the four wings spreading from its back... They found themself laying on the ground in Future's timeline. Huddled behind rubble in Gatherer's timeline. Laying in a crater 20 minutes ago... How did the power gap get so wide?

"Pshh, don't be so dramatic!" Frisk called over the wind, even though they were flinging behind Anarchy like a cape. They kept their arms wrapped around his neck and shoulders, and like a boulder he didn't budge at all in the face of the soul storm raging ahead. This was enough assurance for Frisk, who opened one eye in their weird reverse wink and flashed the lesser fusion a plastic smile. "Nobody can beat Anthony~!"

Eden was having trouble believing that now as she stared up at the brutal red sky. Smoke from burned buildings mixed with DETERMINED steam, formed clouds just beneath the trembling Snowdin ceiling. A ceiling detailed with stalactites, massive pointed stones that were breaking off under the violent pressure of The Ascended Angel's soul. Enormous rocks plummeted from above here and there, crashing down around the five of them and the DETERMINED tornado that raged ahead.

Eden hardly noticed the crumbling of the world around her however, her eyes remained locked on that tower of power. The burning winds blew her hair back, stung at her skin and took her back to the moments before her brother's death. Back then she'd been so weak, she'd fallen to her knees and barely been able to withstand the weight of The Cherub's soul. But her brother had stood between her and that monstrous creature - ever BRAVE, Cliff had held the line and given everything to keep her safe. Now, there was no one who stood between her and looming doom. But that was fine, she decided with the clench of her fist and a spark of purple light. She didn't need protecting anymore.

Electricity crackled in The Gatherer's clenched fists. His teeth ground against one another, his horns ignited embers that were blown to the way side. The tearing winds and their burning heat felt like nothing on his skin, he was the shepherd of fire. On his arms his snakes coiled and hissed, clung to him to keep from being blown away like the embers upon his horns.

Gatherer planted his feet in the dirt, refused to be tossed aside by the weight of The Ascended Angel's malevolent soul. His eyes glossed over to Anarchy, a statue tinted red. Gatherer wouldn't pretend he was happy that The Anarchist had prevented the prevention of the most dangerous strategy in The Angel's arsenal, but even though he hated to admit it... Anarchy out ranked him, he'd made that clear from day one. This fight was going to go how Anarchy wanted it, and if Xander objected to that he'd have a far more ruthless foe on his hands. So, even though the thought disgusted him, The Gatherer fell in line. Waited for Anarchy's order. He just had to eat dirt this one time, bow his head just this once, and he would be rid of The Angel. There was no hurricane Angel could summon that would make him doubt Anthony, he was a son of the Fortune family. And there was not one person in this life that knew how dangerous a Ghoul was better than a member of the Fortune family.

Anthony looked upon the winged one behind that trembling curtain of red, paid no mind to the light flashing into his eyes or the brutal heat striking and clawing at his skin. When that Deltarune exploded to life before that twisting hurricane he didn't even bother looking upon it; he did not believe The Angel's religion. He had met god, was born from his ivory flesh, and god was cruel. So, with Killer blood running through his veins, he released the pressure of his Bastard soul.

Character, Frisk, Eden, and Gatherer all flinched. Their heads all snapped to look at Anthony The Anarchist, their hair blew back and they recoiled with the explosion of his power. In an instant, another storm of DETERMINATION was blasting into the sky overhead. Clouds of smoke blown away and shockwaves of boiling air contested by the Bastard Son's opposing soul, Gatherer's Gang was suddenly freed from the tyranny of The Ascended Angel's power.

Anthony was a statue no longer. He had planted his feet, bent his knees and clenched his fists. He kept that crowbar tight in his left hand's godly grip, and intensity flared in eyes that were passive a moment ago. His jaw clenched tight, steam rose from The Anarchist's body while the unbreakable ruby of his soul appeared on his chest. Flames ignited around that soul, ignited over his left eye and in random patches on his skin.

Carefully, Frisk forced themself to unwrap their arms from The Anarchist's shoulders. They took a step or two back away from him, watched with wide eyes and an open mouth smile as scarlet electricity crackled across his ivory flesh. His muscles tensed, his neck strained, and then, finally... His jaw unhinged, and a savage roar the likes of which had never been heard from him before exploded out of his throat. Another shockwave of power crashed out around him, sent cracks blasting out in a spiderweb on the earth he stood upon and bolts of red lightning crashing down from the rumbling ceiling above.

Eden took a step back, watched The Anarchist with shock written across her expression. His body was alight with power, his soul was unleashing its incredible pressure. But, when she turned her head... She realized that the wind had stopped lashing at her skin. After a hasty examination, she realized that her and her friends were all standing side by side with Anarchy, protected in the eye of his soul's unyielding storm. The flashing red beyond the swirling curtain that surrounded the five of them was so bright that she could not see past it, and for a moment she felt doubt that the world would still exist when these two tornados faded. She doubted they would ever fade at all.

An upward draft of scarlet power was lifting Anthony's long hair, the red colored world was illuminating the white strands in a red hue. His bloodshot eyes stared straight ahead, the only direction his DETERMINED soul knew. His maw remained open, scarlet mist curling up and around his fangs. The world rumbled and burned under the fires of his DETERMINATION, but the four that stood by his side had been chosen for protection. So, when Anarchy threw back his head, let out another primal roar and brought a bolt of crimson lightning crashing down at either side of him from the twisting red clouds overhead, they did not feel fear. They felt relief in that instant, safety. Because between all of them and a brutal death stood god's Bastard Son, Anthony The Anarchist.

Gradually, finally... The heat began to cool, the winds began to slow. That impenetrable red wall of twisting energy slowly dissipated, the twin hurricanes melting Snowdin Town began to fade. Anthony, hair still lifted and tinted red by the never ending updraft of static DETERMINATION crackling over his body, relaxed his muscles. He stood up straight, lowered his clenched fist and crowbar to his sides. And after his expression relaxed, he exhaled several streams of boiling scarlet steam through his teeth. Red mist still lifted from his powerful body, jolts of crimson electricity crackled over his skin here and there. And finally, he turned his head away from the foe floating across the valley of shadow and death and looked back to the wretched souls he had granted salvation.

"Xander. Babykin." He addressed The Gatherer and Eden so suddenly that they nearly jumped. The both of them were still almost in awe, bewildered by the incredible might The Anarchist had summoned. How, they pondered. How could one man wield such a soul? A fraction of this power had shattered the body of The Cherub on Mount Ebbot nearly three years ago, even less power than that having sent red cracks splitting Nephilim's body as well. How was it that Anthony could bear this cataclysmic strength? How could he carry a soul so heavy? Anthony had no interest in answering these questions, instead giving an order. "If they catch either'a you, you won't be able to heal what they do to you. Keep your distance and use ranged attacks if you don't wanna die."

"U-uhm..." Xander The Gatherer had to blink a few times, shook his head and gathered his thoughts. He'd never heard Anthony give an order before, now that he thought about it. The Anarchist had been a man of few words for as long as Xander had known him, someone who kept to himself and did not bother with the lives and actions of those around him. So, though taking orders was not in his nature, The Gatherer hesitantly nodded his head. "... Y-yes, good idea."

"Good." Anarchy's head turned away from The Gatherer and his prodigy without another word, scarlet eyes instead landing on the fusion of Hacker and Demon. The Wingless One recoiled just a little - his stare was so intense. For just a second they thought he was gonna rip them in half for letting Chara get by them, interpreting the blank look on his face as a sign of anger. Anarchy elaborated, gave them something different to worry about. "You can't hit as hard as me n' the dream team over there, but you keep kickin' after taking a lickin'. That right?"

"U-uhh, well, yeah, we... We guess so." Character, too, had to blink and gather their thoughts. It was strange hearing such a nonaggressive and yet commanding tone from Anarchy, they had no idea how to feel about it. Honestly it was... Almost reassuring. Up until now, Anarchy had felt like someone they had to tip toe around. They'd been afraid he could snap and beat them into the dirt if they so much as looked at him funny. But now, they felt almost as though they were on the same page. Like they were under the protection of that crowbar, and not in its path. "We, survived being melted by a seven ringed Beat Dome a few years ago, and our regen has only gotten stronger since then."

"Good - you're with me." Anarchy stated simply, turning his eyes forward again. Snowdin was devoid of snow now - looked closer to the top of Mount Ebott back in Angel's timeline. The earth was burnt and smoldering, glassed sands tumbling by in the howling winds. Massive spikes of stone had dropped from the ceiling and dug right into the sands, now standing in upside down pyramids, flat plateaus of varying heights. Any homes or buildings had been obliterated in the storm, and now all that remained was a battlefield. "Hit 'em when you can, back me up, don't do anything stupid."

"What about me, handsome?" Frisk peaked around Anarchy's right side, flashing him their plastic smile. They'd folded their hands behind their back, were squinting their eyes again. Unlike the others they were not surprised by this commanding side of The Anarchist - they had known for some time now that it was Anthony who commanded fate, that his will was absolute and that he knew better than the rest of them. So, they waited giddily for their own order. "Don't keep me in suspense~!"

"Frisk. I don't know the details'a your powers, but I know you're faster than the rest of us and that your movements can't be tracked." Anthony turned his head some, looking at the traitor from his eye's corner. They happily nodded along, even opening their eyes some to showcase the malevolent soul beneath. Anarchy's next words weren't exactly what they'd wanted to hear, though. "But Angel's attacks have a massive area of effect, and his sidekick is fast. I can't imagine those two things put together mean anything good for you."

"Hey c'mon, you're gonna talk up those dorks but not me?" Frisk frowned, pointing over their shoulder with their thumb towards Character. The malevolent fusion was too exasperated to object - Frisk theorized that Chara had probably already kicked most of the fight out of them. That woulda been funny, if they didn't hate Chara so much. Regardless of what they were feeling, Frisk opened one eye and shut the other while they reached up. They poked one index finger into their cheek and flashed another smile, "I can run circles around anybody, you know."

"I know. That's why I need you to stick with Xander's team." Anarchy stated clearly and concisely, making Frisk's eyes widen just a little. Sure, he was saying he didn't want them to fight shoulder to shoulder with him, but... He said he needed them to do something. Needed something, from them? A giddy smile crossed the traitor's lips, and it only got wider when he reached out and placed a hand on their shoulder. "If those two get tired of getting hit in the back with lightning bolts and thorns, they've got plenty of ranged attacks to throw their way. I need you to use that power of yours to get them outta the way if anything huge flies at them."

". . ." Frisk blinked, seemed Anarchy had finally surprised them too. And they let themself stand like that, looking with open eyes and a genuine expression into the face of The Anarchist for a moment or two... Before time skipped, and suddenly they were under the arm he'd used to reach out to them with. They wrapped their arms tight around him and clung to his side, resting their head on the right side of his chest while they grinned up at him. "Oh, Anthony! You know, if you're worried I'm going to get hurt, you can just say that!"

"I said what I said. Interpret it how you want." Anarchy stated blandly, but he didn't roll his eyes or push them off. Instead, he just looked straight ahead again. The red fog was finally clearing, and The Ascended Angel would be upon them in a moment. That was fine, Anthony knew he could survive anything... His eyes glossed away from his rapidly approaching destiny, looked down into the pretty face smiling up at him. Ever the showperson, Frisk batted their eyelashes and hugged him tighter when he looked at them. If that meant anything to Anarchy, he didn't show it. "Stick with me, and I'll get every one of you outta this alive. I promise."

Eden furrowed her brows at this statement, pondered the DETERMINED albino that now commanded her. He was a long way from the cruel man she'd met a few days ago, it seemed like. Back then, he'd made his rules simple: stay out of his way or he will kill you. And yet, here he was now, promising to protect their lives... Her eyes glossed back to the parting fog. She could see the Winged One within. A shifting shadow, their feet did not touch the ground. They floated forward slowly, power crackling around them like it now crackled around all of Snowdin.

There was no time to ponder Anthony The Anarchist any longer, he'd laid out his orders and it was time to move. The Ascended Angel was coming.

Chapter 84: One True Pairing

Or: The Scorpion And The Frog Part 2

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The world was on fire; we made it that way. Our scarlet eyes blinked a few times, together we turned out head and looked into the open palm of our left hand. The cracks remained on our shared flesh, and though smoke and embers now trickled out from the scars that we bared together, our arm did not burn. Our body did not ache. In fact, as we floated above the earth on our shared wings, we felt stronger than ever.

We'd fused before. Against Error, and plenty of times when training with Future. But all of our training was in the barrier room: a hellscape that forced our own power back onto us. This was the first time we'd been able to move freely together, without the ten ton weight of our own strength baring down upon us. So, we took a deep breath, let our wings straighten while we exhaled red steam out of our nostrils. The four wings that spread from our back were a mix match of the two that composed us - the upper and lower left wings were made from ink. Onyx feathers that crackled with streaks of red. On our right side were two wings comprised of red energy, scarlet feathers that shimmered with light.

The air popped and burned around us, smoke began to rise from the sands when our feet lowered to the earth. Sand melted to glass the moment we stepped onto it, smoke rising up around our every step. Scarlet eyes staring straight ahead, we could see them now. Anthony The Anarchist, and by his side Character The Wingless. Our eyes glossed away from them, we watched Xander The Gatherer run into the distance with Frisk The Traitor and Eden The PERSEVERANT. For a moment we considered lifting our hand, sending a wave of screaming death towards them out of our Beat Cannons and evaporating the three of them. But, Anthony The Anarchist was between us and them, and he was our focus.

"Good to see ya again, sidekick." Anarchy so boldly called out to us, narrowing those searing red eyes. His hair stood up in red tinted points, lifted by the static DETERMINATION crackling around his body. The sands burned and melted to glass under his every step too, the air popped and cracked under his soul's pressure. Behind him, Character's shoulders ripped open in favor of two twisted ink hands. Their own scarlet power steamed from their body, but judging by the skittish look in their eye they didn't have much faith in it. Anarchy went on, "Of all the goons that slobber on Angel's knobber, you're the only one I find entertaining."

"Didn't ask." The response had left us before we even considered it; sounded more like Chara than Angel. Regardless it made Anarchy smile, in an irritated sort of way. Lightning struck down between us as we wandered closer to each other, the wind began picking up just from our souls existing in the same space.

"... It's a shame that you gotta die with him, but that's how all you sidekicks are." Anthony's angry smile disappeared, he looked thoughtful for a second. We figured he didn't know what it was like, to have someone watch his back in the way we watched each others. But, then our eyes glossed back over to Character. Xander, Eden and Frisk had disappeared from the battlefield. It was certainly intriguing, seeing Anthony stand with a Hacker by his side. But, they were united in a goal. Them and the rest of Gatherer's goons... Anarchy tilted his head, bent his arm to lazily point his crowbar at us. "You live by your Angel and you die by your Angel... I know better than anyone: that's a miserable existence."

"You can stop this right now, Anthony." Our overlapped voice answered; we didn't pay any mind to his threats or pointed words. Didn't have time to any more. Another bolt of crimson lightning struck the earth, this time behind us. Its red flash illuminated us for just a moment, before it faded like most things do. Our expression bland but stern, we went on. "You have all the power. On your word, nobody else dies. Nobody else has to get hurt."

"You say that, but the way I see it you're in the same boat." Anthony analyzed with a shrug. His free hand was in his pocket, crowbar dangling limp at his side. Red mist streamed out between his fangs while he sighed through his teeth. "You could have bent the knee, Angel. Bowed your head and let me kill you so that everyone else could live."

"Any day that I was gone, you could have called out into The Dark. Pleaded with me to take you and spare the rest, and I would have answered." Anthony The Anarchist lifted his head, looked down his nose at me. His nose, which was not pointed like his father's and instead more closely resembled his mother's. "But you didn't."

"Because there's another way." We answered immediately, our jaw tightening. Our fist clenched, sending sparks up our arm and embers trickling out from between our fingers.

"Because you're a coward." Anthony corrected with ease and precision, narrowing those judgmental eyes. Then, his lips curled up just a little. The shadows that lurked under our red glows shifted some, just in the corner of our eyes. Between real and fake, undiscernible from illusion and reality. "Because you don't wanna die. The same reason you won my old man's little game, the same reason you were his favorite."

*Oh?

"... You knew?" We narrowed our eyes, tilted our head and watched Anthony with skeptical red eyes. Our voice had more of Angel in it now, the ink wings on our back shifted with unease. We could feel the hairs rising on the back of our neck, could feel the momentary ghost of evil that all those felt when they dared speak of The Killer. "About The Killer Games. He told you?"

"Told me? Deadbeat only ever spoke to me once, and it was to tell me to kill my mom." Anny frowned, shaking his head. He carried that crowbar with such ease in his hand, his hairs didn't rise and wouldn't rise no matter how many times he spoke his father's name. He lifted his free hand from his pocket and held it up between us, leaving its pale skin in his line of sight and mine. "He gave me a shove in the direction he wanted. And I might not have the specifics, but I know he fucked with Lexi, and Xander too."

*"Fucked with" is such a... Unique way to phrase "guided".

"His blood runs through my veins, whether I want it to or not. The weight of his evil was passed on to me." Anthony The Anarchist kept that hand raised, displayed the scarred knuckles that matched his father. The pale flesh he had inherited... "I feel what he felt: that desire to kill and maim, the one that I have focused on you and you alone. The urge to conquer and lead, that I put aside when I crushed Chaos Crown into Worthless Metal. Even the thought of creating more to take my place, to spread my cruelty beyond myself through the hands of children and disciples... Has occurred to me."

*... He's more my son than I thought he was.

"So believe me when I say it was easy for me of all people to piece together what he was doing." Anthony finally lowered his hand, all while shifting his fingers around the crowbar in his opposite palm. His fingers slid over the disgusting surface, felt its rust and its stains rub into his skin. "He pushed us all together after leaving his brand on each of us, and then he waited to see who would kill the rest and inherit his mantle."

"..." Our jaw tightened, our left eye twitched. It was a special sting, an added symptom of Angel's crimes. He had done what The Killer had wanted when he was at his lowest, and that might have been the part that hurt the worst. That was what twisted the knife, made the shame burn... Our right fist clenched, we took a deep breath. Our ink wings relaxed some.

"And you were the only one cruel enough, Angel. You were more conniving than Xander, more driven than Lexi... More ruthless than me." He squinted, his jaw tightened. It probably stung him to admit that Angel had defeated him then, hurt whatever Killer parts of him that he had yet to kill. But, still... He smirked. Just a little, a lift of his mouth's corner. "And that just leaves me with one question, Angel. What did my father do to you?"

We flinched. Our left eye twitched with twisting agony, our right narrowed with concern and sorrow. It must have been a real funny looking expression. Our left hand clenched into a tight fist, sending volts of electricity crashing out from the cracks that branded us. Those volts lashed out, hit the sands and ripped through the scorched earth. Any streaks of red electricity that neared Anthony broke apart against the invisible force of his own aura, and we lashed out. "It doesn't matter! Angel killed that asshole the same day he killed you!"

Anthony's eyebrows rose; it was probably an interesting way to learn his father was dead. But he didn't look angry nor did he look sad. In fact if we had to guess, he was more interested in the fact that Angel had killed him. That made sense, Anthony had made it clear that he knew better than anyone still living how vile The Killer was. He must have understood that any world was better off without him. He opened his mouth to respond,

"... Our Granny."

Our eyes were quick to dart to Character. Anarchy too turned his head, arched a curious brow the way of The Wingless. He did not look irritated with them for answering for us, in fact he looked intrigued. His lips remained parted, his scarlet eyes watched the fusion carefully.

"... He, killed our Granny. Right in front of us." There was shame on Character's face, Hacker's voice predominant in their words. They looked away from us and Anny, tried to hide their sad little frown. We had our own frown, teeth grinding furiously while this other version of us gave away Angel's most defining failure. Our left hand nearly darted out, sent a wing blasting forward and ripped the soul out of Character's chest. But we held onto our reserve, if only for the miserable ache hearing an Angel's voice admit these things caused. "We weren't strong enough to stop him. We... We couldn't protect her, so he took her away."

"..." Anthony remained silent, the whole world did. No lightning crashed, no wind roared, no air popped. And when The Anarchist turned his head towards us and looked upon us... When we saw his blank expression, and we watched his brows furrow thoughtfully. In that instant he looked exactly like his father, in that moment his words sounded like exactly what The Killer would say. "And suddenly, it all makes sense."

The ground beneath us exploded apart, sound returned to the world whether the world liked it or not. In the blink of an eye we'd crossed the distance, thrown a brutal fist forward. Our punch was stopped dead in Anarchy's spare hand, the impact sending a shockwave blasting out around us. Electricity shredded through the earth, a release of force from this impact was enough to make Character throw up their arms to guard their face while they were sent skidding back a few yards. We had forgotten they existed though, furious red eyes locked on The Killer's Bastard Son and lips peeled back to bare our fangs.

"Is that why you wanna 'save' me so bad, Angel?" Anarchy asked with a curious furrow of his brows. The world around us trembled and shook, electricity crackled around us while the air snapped and popped. Red steam rose from the both of our bodies, our fist trembling to get further and his hand trembling to keep it in place. "Because you couldn't save her?"

"He's trying to save you," We snarled together, yanking back our shared right fist and stepping in towards him. Scarlet fires broke out across our knuckles, power shined through our body as we threw a mountain shattering punch at the face of The Anarchist. "Because you're his friend!"

Pain crashed through our chin - Anthony had thrown his crowbar into our jaw in a brutal upward swing. The cruel metal hit us with enough force to send more DETERMINATION tearing across the plain, throwing our head back with our body following it. We launched back a few steps, before hastily flipping and landing on both feet. Hunched some, we skidded back another pace or two while we wiped away the blood overflowing from our already healing split lip.

"You weren't strong enough then and you aren't strong enough now." Anthony stated with cruel honesty, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck. His jaw tightened and his expression finally regained its intensity; the fires of his DETERMINATION once more ignited in his eyes. He pointed his father's crowbar at us, even though he'd known it as his mother's crowbar. "Whether I like it or not, nobody can beat a Killer."

"... Already did it once." We stated with certainty, teeth snapping together. We opened our right hand to our side, and one of Chara's knives was summoned in our grasp. Immediately DETERMINATION crashed up its blade, evolving it into one of their swords. And we pointed Chara's saber at Anarchy, even though we now knew it as our saber. "We can do it again."

DMC5 x DOOM Bury The Light Remix by Geoffplaysguitar started playing.

In the next instant we spun that sword around, driving it right into the sands at our feet. Immediately scarlet blades exploded up past the sand, curved red steel reaching violently up towards the clouded sky we'd built over Snowdin. All around us they blasted skyward, a massive area of effect bringing chaos to the battlefield.

Character instantly jumped back, gasping as the ground where they'd been standing exploded apart in the path of one of our blades. Anarchy held no such worries, cleaving clean through the first blade that shot up towards him with his crowbar before bursting forward in a sprint. He bolted towards us at astonishing speed, darting between the DETERMINED steel racing up at random from below and cracking whatever got in his way apart with his crowbar.

In the blink of an eye he was upon us, but we were ready. Slashing our shared blade up from the earth we'd driven it into, we forced Anarchy to lean to his right and dodge. He shoved forward with his right hand as he darted under our blade, reaching his DETERMINATION crackling palm towards our face in hopes to pop our skull in his grip. Before he could, our right foot slid back and our left slid forward, and with all of our weight we blasted a left hook into his jaw. Teeth gritting, we watched in slow motion as his face contorted around our knuckles. Sand exploded away from the two of us, and the force of our punch sent Anarchy launching back towards the horizon in a red flash.

The instant The Anarchist was out of the way, a volley of white plasma was exploding towards us. From across the plain Character had sent a wave of Beat Blasts our way, we noticed upon lifting our focused eyes to the burning gleam. With one thought a wall of steel keys instantly manifested in the path of those blasts, stopping their boiling heat dead in its tracks.

Across the field Character stood, their feet planted in the sand as they had been for their shared life. Cold sweat beaded down their forehead while their scarlet eyes watched the metal effortlessly stopping their attack. The four Beat Blasters that had manifested over their head continued to scream the same old song, but that defense didn't give. Character didn't need it to give though, knew there was no way their attack would destroy us. And if they didn't know that, we would have to make it obvious.

"How many times are we gonna have to teach you this lesson?"

Character's head whipped around along with their right hand, a machete manifesting in their grasp. With terror in their eyes they swung back at us, but their machete was stopped dead against our own blade, a block that cost us no effort and sent vibration rumbling up our doppelgangers' arm. Character snarled, the hands that protruded from their back swinging forward only to slap their knuckles back towards us in a sort of backwards clap. "You don't understand!"

"What's there to misunderstand?" Our scarlet eyes narrowed with lethal precision, our wings curling around us like a ribcage while we answered. Character's malevolent hands cracked back against our wings, sending dust exploding out behind us. But, our wings held strong, and we did not flinch in the face of the brutal impact. Character made a sound that was half snarl and half frustrated groan at this result, hastily jumping forward and spinning around to face us. We didn't bother giving chase, they were still plenty in our range. "Chance after chance and you've still found yourself here."

"Trust us, nobody hates where we're at in life more than we do right about now!" Character assured as they launched back, opening their free hand out towards us and sending a brutal spike of ink launching out towards us. "But Gatherer's too powerful now! We can't afford to turn on him, we're in too deep!"

"Gatherer is the one who's too powerful?" Came our incredulous answer while we effortlessly cleaved through that spike with our blade. In the same motion as our slash we lifted our left hand, and its cracks gleamed while a wave of fountain pens crashed up out of the earth towards Character. "Look at who you're fighting! Are you two really willing to die under Xander's thumb?!"

"You two have been so busy preparing for Anarchy in your little bubble!" Character's expression twisted with fury, those ink hands stretching into the air overhead and clasping together. The hands swung down like a hammer, crushing through the triangular points of our fountain pens with incredible force. The impact sent ripples crashing through the pens, snapping them apart and throwing them off course. Character shouted through the dust that exploded up around their impact, "You have no idea just how much power Xander's hoarded!"

That dust exploded apart in an instant. Character barely had time to recoil before we were right in front of them, left fist cocked back and flames crashing out past the cracks on our knuckles. Character managed to get halfway through mouthing "ah shit" before we blasted a brutal punch right into their nose. Their face scrunched around the impact and a shockwave rocked the reality around us before the force of that punch sent them launching back across the sand. "Then enlighten us!"

Character hit the scorched dirt back first. They skidded at such a speed through the rough sand and glass chunks that the fabric of their shirt was torn apart, stones and shards burying themselves in the armor of their bulletproof vest. And though blood now poured from their shattered nose and trickled like tear streams from the both of their eyes in the wake of two shattered orbital sockets, Character still found the will to dig their hands into the brutal earth. They ground their teeth and forced themself to a stop, red already steaming out of their busted face by the time they'd stopped sliding.

"There's still time for you two. You can still earn a pair of wings." We assured, our every step melting sand to glass under our shoes as we marched through the trench Character's body had made. We wandered towards them without haste, frustration burning with DETERMINATION in our eyes as we squinted at our less fortunate doppelganger. "If you're afraid, then stand with us against Xander. Hell, just turn your back and make a run for it. Do anything other than be that asshole's attack dog."

"... It just isn't that easy." Character managed to say while they climbed to one knee. The laughed while they wiped one of those red tear streams off their cheek with their thumb, in a boo hoo funny sorta way. And they stared at the scorched earth while they shook their head, licking blood off their lip. Finally, they lifted their head, exhaling the same red fog that steamed out around their face and obscured their eyes. We were reminded in that brief instant of the Lost Souls, the monsters Asriel had once confined within himself and the way that shifting white energy obscured their eyes. "Xander's got Anarchy. He's got an army, he's got spies everywhere, and if he gets one more human soul he's gonna have god."

"What?" That got our attention. We lowered our head, glared at Character from beneath our eyebrows while our jaw clenched tight. A seven souled god? Was Xander insane?! Character was right in saying that we didn't know everything about the multiverse, but what we did know was that a seven souled god was serious business. Only a handful of beings had ever achieved such power, and the multiverse had been lucky with each of them. Asriel Dreemurr had a KIND heart buried inside him, he could be reasoned with and was usually only ever a god for a brief instance. Outside of him, the creation of a god was a one in a trillion chance. They usually fizzled out, the multiverse had been lucky enough for every god to have small goals. None of them had ever held seven souls long enough to fully comprehend the power they wielded, or they had never known the multiverse outside of their own timeline. Usually both... but, this..! "A god?! Why would Xander want to do something so reckless?!"

"Oh what it must be like to have those wings... To be so stupidly powerful that you can't understand why the ants scramble at your feet." Slowly, Character pushed themself to stand. Rising slowly, the red misting out of their face gradually faded. With the damage from our punch healed, we could see that the whites of Character's eyes had gone black. They smiled bitterly, hands straightening out on their back. "He wants a god under his control because of freaks like you. Freaks like Anarchy. He wants an equalizer, and he's just one soul away from getting it."

"An equalizer?!" We snapped, the wings on our back flexing and causing an updraft of scarlet heat. A crack shattered the quiet of the dead plains, and our shared red eyes darted to the right to spot a bolt of magenta lightning barreling towards us. An annoyance we deemed it, and with the slash of our sword we sent a red wave blasting out towards it. That slash struck the lightning bolt dead on, and while an explosion of red flames and purple sparks illuminated us and blew our hair to the side our head snapped back to look at Character. "A seven souled god is not an equalizer, it is a potential multiverse scale apocalypse!"

"You see why we can't run away now?" Character asked, arching a brow while they gave a shrug. At their sides the earth suddenly exploded apart, massive green roots alight with purple thorns shredding out of the sand and racing towards us. Character didn't flinch, didn't react in any way. They just frowned, blood dripping down their face and a single black tear overflowing from their right eye. "We gotta be on the winning side'a this, because we don't wanna die. Hope you can understand."

"What we understand is that cowards don't grow wings." We put our left foot forward and opened our left palm to the roots barreling towards us. With the flex of our soul a wave of DETERMINED heat ignited before us, and like a molten forcefield it reduced those vines to ash the moment they struck it. The roots shoved with all their might against the flare of our soul, but our DETERMINATION stopped them and scorched them away.

"I disagree."

Anarchy's voice caught our attention, and we looked over our shoulder to spot him. He stood a few paces behind us, about the same distance from us that Character was. There was blood stained on his lip now, likely left there from the punch we'd blasted him with earlier. That was the only sign that remained of our brutal strike, he'd healed that wound just like he healed all others. And now there he loomed again, scarlet light still lifting his hair and crackling over his body. Our jaw tightened at the sight of him, and he didn't waste a moment with conversation. His next words lead us all right to the point: "Attack!"

Anarchy and Character exploded at us at the same time. Character pulling back their machete and Anthony his crowbar, they swung at us from the right and him from the left. Our wings beat before they reached us however, and with a burst of boiling wind that kicked up puffs of sand we launched ourself into the air. Anthony and Character reached us too late, both of their weapons swinging by beneath us and narrowly avoiding a collision.

Both of their stares followed us up into the crackling sky, and Character was quick to drop to one knee and plant a hand in the ground. On their command the sands exploded apart, erasers racing up after us. Anarchy didn't waste a moment either; like a red bolt of lightning he fired up after us. Jumping from the dirt, he landed on the side of one of the erasers rocketing towards us. He kicked off of that pencil and to another, then another, and another, propelling himself after us.

We cleaved through any of the pencils that got within the range of our blade. We swung out to the right and cut up through the next nearest eraser, sending shards of rubber, wood, and graphite exploding through the air around us. This was not enough to keep us from stopping the wood pillar firing up right in front of us, and we hastily yanked back our left fist before firing an earth shattering punch into the eraser.

Steam exploding out of the cracks on our arm, the wood of that pencil split and splintered as the force of our punch stopped it dead. Eraser melting against the heat of our fist, gravity once more took hold of the pencil and began to drag its crumbling form down towards the sands below. But, the moment we lifted our eyes from the shattered pillar, we spotted Anarchy diving up over its edge. His crowbar already yanked back, we barely had time to clench our eyes shut before the twisted steel crashed into our jaw.

With another shockwave of red we were sent flinging back through the air. Blood spewed from our shattered jaw and scarlet flames immediately followed it, our prone body spiking down towards one of the fallen stalactites. With its point buried in the sand, its split base was now a plateau over the desert we'd created. We flipped upright in air, our wings spread wide and caught a desperate hold of the wind, slowing our rapid descent until finally we landed on the plateau on the balls of our feet. We skidded back to the edge, clenching our left fist while our eyes darted up to The Anarchist firing down towards us.

We yanked back our saber as he did his crowbar, planting our feet and slashing into his crushing swing. Another shockwave of red rocked the plateau, but it didn't crumble under the force of our impact. Cracks splitting the stone we stood upon, we ground our teeth and held our ground, DETERMINED steel struggling against the weight of Anarchy's Inheritance. Our eyes locked with his, he matched the intensity of our stare before we shoved him back with our blade. Without any ground to dig his feet into, Anthony was sent flinging backwards through the air from our might. He flipped a few times, before landing effortlessly at the opposite end of the plateau.

And our eyes met again, our souls challenged one another. His belief in Sacrifice, ours in Redemption. With the flex of our wings we were launching forward in a red blur, and he launched forward at the same lightning speed to meet us. Blade and crowbar collided again, and another shockwave rocked the plateau. Our weapons were crossed against one another, our feet planted in stone and our faces inches apart. Our lips peeled back with his, the both of us barring our fangs while we each tried desperately to shove the other back. The air around us crackled and ignited, a geyser of crimson power exploding up around the two of us.

Finally, our weapons slide off of each other with a metallic shing! Our sword sliding to the right and his crowbar to his left, we both yanked back our free fists the moment the metal was out of the way. Our punches rocketed forward in unison, and our cracked knuckles smashed into his scarred ones with enough force to send splinters blasting out through the stone at our feet. Our plateau rumbled and vibrations tremored up our arm, but we didn't give and Anarchy didn't either. A streak of red energy following his swing, he once more tried to knock our head from our shoulders with his crowbar.

We jumped back, let his Inheritance cleave through the air. Our wings beat and launched us backwards at high speed while twin Beat Cannons appeared at the sides of the plateau. Their glowing red barrels locked on to The Anarchist while their three segments began to spin, releasing scorching scarlet steam from between their segments before concentrated waves of crimson power exploded out from their barrels.

Anarchy didn't pay our Cannons any mind, bolting forward after us. A red blur, he darted between the two crashing lasers with ease and let their heat explode into the chilled stone we stood upon. This impact made the plateau rumble further, the heat of our cannons melting rapidly through the stone. The Beat Cannons ceased their firing to avoid cutting the plateau in two, but while they turned to aim their barrels once more on The Anarchist, lightning crashed from above. More strikes of violet voltage exploded down through the magic machinery, sending them exploding in a blast of DETERMINED flames and metal chunks.

Anarchy bore down upon us, slamming his crowbar down towards us with an overhead swing. Hastily we lifted our blade, right hand gripping the handle and left hand planting itself on the dull side of the blade. This was all the preparation we could make before his crowbar crushed into our sword, sending another spiderweb of cracks through the stone we stood upon and bringing a bolt of scarlet lightning crashing from the blackened clouds over head. This lightning crashed into the dirt behind our plateau, flashing its crimson color over us for a brief second.

Ink wings coiling into drills and DETERMINATION wings hardening into blades, our four wings stabbed around us in a pincer motion to skewer Anarchy. He jumped back just in time, and our wings warned him with another lethal shing! as they crossed over one another. Around the edges of the plateau, two more of those PERSERVERANT roots flung themselves at us. Our wings flung open and slashed those roots apart in the same motion that we darted forward, sprinting after Anthony and yanking back our blade.

He ducked his head to the side and let our stab sail over his shoulder, rocketing his right fist up towards our abdomen. Unfortunately for him, our left hand reached out on instinct and caught his vicious upper cut in its palm, all while we kicked off the ground and fired our knee up at his chin. Anarchy didn't waste a single opportunity, his jaws snapped open and crashed shut on our knee before it ever collided with his face.

We roared with pain as his bite force crushed through our leg's bend, nearly drowning out the cracks and snaps of our bone with our shout. Anarchy whipped his head back, threw us over his shoulder with just his teeth. We launched over him, flipping in air after his jagged maw released us. Worthless red paint spilled over the stone from our ruined leg, but by the time we'd landed on our good leg and were skidding back across the stone platform a scarlet flame was already sealing his teeth marks and fusing our knee back together.

We leaned forward and planted one hand on the ground, and from our back the curved drills and sharpened blades of our four wings exploded forward. With blood dripping down his bottom lip and staining his pearly white beard Anarchy effortlessly swatted aside the ink drill that tried to pierce him first with an upward swing from his crowbar. While his left arm was raised over his head with that crowbar in tow, his right hand darted out and fearlessly wrapped itself around the red blade that tried to drive itself through his throat.

Holding that DETERMINED steel in his iron grip shredded his palm, but no blood came. Instead, a healing red mist put his hand back together faster than our blade could pierce it. But that didn't matter, because the next red blade that flung through sliced itself clean through the flesh of Anarchy's raised arm. It cleaved through his elbow at sonic speed, sending his left arm and the crowbar it wielded flinging up through the air while the ink of our fourth wing drilled into his chest.

The eyes of The Anarchist snapped open wide, blood spewing out through the clenched teeth of his grin while our drill tore threw his wretched heart and ripped its way out of his scarred back. Its curves dug into his flesh, stuck into and clung onto bone, muscle and organ. But Anarchy didn't wince, didn't cry out or even stumble. Instead, he tightened his grip on the wing he held, and he ripped his hand back with it in tow.

The force of Anarchy's pull made our eyes widen, caught us off guard and tore us off the ground. We were flinging towards him now, but decided that was fine as we yanked back our saber. If stabbing him through the heart didn't work, maybe one through the forehead would help bring Anthony to his senses. Unfortunately, Anarchy had other plans. With the flex of his soul and the roar of his maniac maw, bone exploded out of the red spigot that his left arm had become.

Muscles rapidly slithering out of his bleeding stump and coiling around the arm bone he'd forced his body to make, Anarchy pulled his left hand back over his right shoulder, clenching his skeletal hand into a fist the moment the muscles coiled around it to let him do so. And as soon we'd been yanked into range, just as we stabbed at his head, he threw his knuckles at our face in a brutal backfist.

Another red shockwave made our platform rumble and crack. Pebbles trickled over its ledges from the boom of our power, the weight of our collision. Our blade had driven itself right between Anarchy's eyes, and his fist had crashed right between ours. The force of Anarchy's backfist carried through even while his brain was punctured, and we were sent exploding back away from him. Our wings returning to feathers, the drill that was lodged in Anarchy's chest released while we flung back through the air.

The blunt force trauma to our head had rattled our motor functions, made our grip on our sword release and left the DETERMINED steel stuck in Anny's forehead. With his brain split down the middle Anthony fell flat on his back, wide eyes staring straight up while his body twitched with inhuman motion. His newly reborn left arm flung itself up at odd and unusual angles, slapping its hand around the handle of the blade stuck in his skull. Like some sort of reanimated corpse from an old movie Anthony yanked the sword out of his head, whipping it off to the side and away from himself and spraying blood and grey matter through the air in the process. Immediately red smoke spewed out of the gash between his eyes, rapidly repairing his head.

We flipped through the air, our wings managing to straighten out and catch wind. We brought ourself to a stop a few feet over the ledge, one hand resting over our steaming face while we tried to gather our sense in the wake of that skull shaking fist. But before we could blink open our eyes and get ahold of ourselves, Character launched up from below. With a savage roar and another shockwave of red light they drove an uppercut into our chin and sent us launching higher into the sky.

Our jaw clenched at the sting in our chin, one eye wincing shut but the other remaining plenty open. We sailed another ten or so yards into the sky before our wings flexed and stopped our ascent. Another familiar crack! caught our attention, and our crimson eyes darted to the side to spot another arrogant bolt of violet lightning racing towards us.

Our eyes narrowed, our jaw clenched and we reached out our right hand to the voltage blasting towards us. With the flex of our soul another shimmering field of red light appeared between us and Xander's attack, the power of our soul bringing his lightning to a crashing stop. Violet voltage crackled out around the sides of our barrier, sparks flinging through the air and obscuring the view of our attacker.

But that was fine, we decided as Character jumped at us from below. Because another nuisance was entering our range. DETERMINED eyes darting down, we watched Character reach up towards us. What, were they trying to grab our ankles and pull us down? We had a simple counter for that. Yanking one knee to our chest, we sent our foot blasting in a brutal stomp right into the face of our Wingless doppelganger, and in a red flash they were exploding down through the stone of the platform we'd left Anarchy on. That platform crumbled and shattered under their impact, and the only sign they'd ever been in the air at all was the blood they'd left on the bottom of our shoe.

After sending Character into the Earth's crust, our unforgiving eyes darted once more to our right. That lightning bolt had fizzled out against the flare of our soul, and as our red shield faded we could see Xander The Gatherer. He stood across the Snowdin desert on another fallen stalactite, a flat stone platform for him to try and strike us down from. His hand was still extended, smoke and sparks crackling from the two fingers he'd used to shoot that electricity at us.

The horns protruding from his forehead smoked and flamed, all while his hateful red eyes glared at us. His eyes were powerful like always, even after changing color. Still, it was not enough to keep our attention. Our own gaze glossed to his side, where Frisk and Eden both knelt. The former was between Xander and Eden, hands empty of weapons and ready to ACT. The sight of them made our teeth grit, compelled us to clench our left fist and command our magic.

The clouds above parted, erasers firing on pencil pillars through the crackling overcast and towards the three hiding across the battlefield. Frisk was quick, grabbing a fistful of Eden's sleeve and Xander's pantleg while those erasers rained down at record speed. But, in a blink, the three of them were suddenly diving over the edge of the plateau. Abandoning their vantage point, they hit the sands and rolled to their feet to begin a mad dash towards whatever cover they could find. Our erasers shattered through the stone they'd perched on, punching right through it and crumbling it to a pile of broken boulders.

Before we could raise our palm and tear apart the earth they sprinted across with a sea of pens, a brutal strike crashed into our spine. Our body arched back around Anarchy's fist, his manic snarl tearing further up his face while he watched our body curl into a backwards C. He'd jumped from the crumbling plateau we'd left him on while we were distracted, punched us square in the back with enough power to send agony spiking through our nervous system before the force carried through and sent us blasting forward through the burning sky.

We sailed through the air, flipped and spun and flexed our wings to try and catch ourselves while our DETERMINATION realigned our vertebrae. But before we could catch ourselves, a massive hand of ink exploded from the sands below. It swung its dripping form up towards us, snatching us right out of the sky and capturing us in its fist. While Anarchy dropped down from the air and to the sands he looked over his shoulder, smirking some when he spotted Character kneeling there in the broken stone. There was blood pouring over their face and DETERMINATION steaming out from their hairline, nose, and several gashes along their arms and legs, but they still reached out to command the hand that had caught us.

But before Character could clench their fist and command the ink that held us to spike inward and skewer us, a shockwave of DETERMINATION exploded from within those oily fingers and blew the entire hand apart. Ink splattered through the air, splashed into puddles on the sand and bubbled from the heat that had struck it. In the heart of that soulfire explosion we levitated, fists clenched at our sides and red steaming out through our clenched teeth.

Anarchy didn't waste a single second. The moment we were free he was racing forward through the valley of shadow and death, red sparks and embers flicking off of his skin while he sprinted. In the blink of an eye he'd crossed the sands, a crimson blur that darted effortlessly between the four of our wings when they stabbed down towards him. He bobbed, weaved, and finally dove into the air again to swat us out of the sky.

We quickly crossed our arms in an X in front of ourselves, our teeth gritting as his fist crashed into our guard. The force was so intense that it sent vibrations blasting up our arms and through our shoulders, but that was fine. We could handle it. With a red flash we were sent rocketing back down towards the sands; we winced while DETERMINATION misted off of our arms, wings opening wide behind us to catch wind and slow our descent.

We landed on our heels and skidded to a stop, watching Anarchy drop down to the sand across from us. The moment he landed we shot forward at each other, the both of us yanking back a left fist. With a scarlet boom our knuckles clashed, the shock blowing his hair and ours back. Our eyes never left his however, and when he swung a right hook at our head we ducked under it, spinning under his arm and swinging our leg at his feet in an attempt to knock him off balance. But Anthony jumped, pulled both hands over his head and sent a devastating overhead strike exploding down towards us while he plummeted from above.

Our wings beat, launching us backwards just before Anarchy smashed his fists down with enough power to send sand blasting up around him, instantly creating a crater with nothing but his own two hands. The sand didn't even have time to settle - he blasted through it, encased in his scarlet aura and yanking back another punch. We ducked to the side, sent a right handed jab at his jaw while his fist sailed over our shoulder.

Anarchy snapped his jaws forward and crunched his teeth through the fist we'd launched at his chin, snapping fingers and mutilating our hand in an instant. He spun in his Anarchy death roll before we even had a chance to verbalize our pain, throwing us back over his shoulder and flinging us a few feet behind him with jaw strength alone. We flipped in air, landed on both feet and our good hand only to immediately dive forward when he turned to face us, blasting our knee into his jaw and sending him flinging backwards with another red blast.

"You sure are quiet, Anthony!" We called out to him as we landed on our feet, holding our arms out to the sides. Our wings shifted some on our back while our feet scorched the earth, scarlet eyes watching Anarchy flip back and land on all fours. He skidded back another few steps, red mist sealing his split lip after a thin stream of blood overflowed and disappeared into the red stains of his beard. DETERMINATION was just finishing putting our hand back together while we shouted over to him, "If we don't hear a dramatic speech soon we might have to start thinking you actually know what you're doing is fuckin' dumb!"

"I have this power for a reason, Angel!" Anarchy's retort came before he launched himself forward from his position on all fours. He shot at us like some red and white bullet, and we crossed our arms in front of us to protect against what we figured was some strange diving headbutt. But, at the last second Anarchy flipped forward, making a full rotation and swinging his leg over our guard and down at our head in a brutal ax kick. "To stop you!"

"You really think," We tilted our head to the side, letting that ax kick crush into our shoulder and wincing at the feel of cracks fracturing along our collar bone. Still, our hands launched up and our powerful grip snapped shut around Anarchy's leg. His eyes widened with some surprise before we spun, dragging him through the air for a single rotation before throwing him at mache speed away from us. "We're the ones that need stopping?!"

"Look around you, Anthony!" We shouted after him, resting one hand over the shoulder he'd kicked while we rolled it in its socket, red mist healing any fractures and dislocations his strike had caused. Anarchy landed on his feet, skidding back and exhaling a furious scarlet steam. His eyes locked on to us while we gestured away and towards the direction Gatherer had scurried off in. "Xander, Character, Frisk! Tyrants murderers and liars!"

"All that fucked up stuff you said you inherited from your dad! Everything you just said you overcame!" We pointed desperately in their direction, fury burning in our scarlet eyes. Red flames overflowed around the corners of our mouth, our wings flexed on our back and the boiling winds we perpetually produced kicked up sand at our feet. "They represent all of it! So how can you say you aren't like him when you're supporting them?!"

*Yowch.

"SHUT UP!" Anarchy snapped at the mention of his father, and in the blink of an eye he had blasted off towards us again. He traveled the distance in a split second, suddenly right in our face with a left hook cranked back. He threw it at our head but it only ever reached our open hand, another shockwave throwing sand away from us as we caught his punch. Still he snarled, "You're the liar here! You're his incarnation, Angel! You won his game! I have to destroy you!"

"What about Aliza?!" We snapped right back, didn't even bother with his accusation. Hearing us shout that name at him washed the anger off of Anthony's face, replaced it with shock. He recoiled like we'd hit him in the nose, and that gave us the perfect opportunity to swing and drill our fist right into his jaw with another earth shaking scarlet boom. We roared as we shoved his head away on our knuckles, "What about Lexi?!"

Anthony The Anarchist slid back a few steps, had to blink his eyes and shake his head to try to get his thoughts straight. We didn't let him get far though, stepping in and yanking back another fist. Our knuckles hammered into the side of his head and threw his skull to the side, before our upper cut crashed into his sternum, forcing him to hunch forward and spit up a mouthful of red. He didn't get to hunch for long though, because our knee fired up into his jaw and sent his head whipping back.

"Pretend to be stone cold all you want, we know there's people you care about in this life!" This time, we didn't clobber him. We just planted our hands in his chest, shoved him back and made him stumble away from us. He was still trying to gather his wits, holding his likely throbbing head while he blinked Darkness out of his DETERMINED eyes. "People who are going to get hurt if Xander gets what he wants!"

"Leave them out of this..!" Anarchy growled, but his voice didn't carry its usual power. He was slouched, wiping blood off his chin and smearing it on his scarred fist. He glared up at us from under his eyebrows while he panted red fog, "I've waited my whole life for this, you're not gonna talk me out of it this time!"

"This is bigger than you and Angel!" We barked, stomping another step closer to him. But, even though he put his fists up and prepared to guard, we did not swing at him again. Instead, we reached out with our cracked and bloodied left hand, opened our palm extended our fingers and dared offer a hand to him again. "People that you love, people that we love are all going to be in danger! Together we can stop it but you have to take our hand now!"

CRASH!

Electric chatter filled our ears, our back arched when a bolt of lightning exploded into the Deltarune branded on our back. We knew we were roaring, but the voltage in our ears deafened us. Our muscles twitched and seized from the foreign electricity flooding our nervous system, paralysis washing over us in that instant even as our DETERMINED heart healed the burn tearing through our back.

We tried to gasp when that lightning bolt faded to sparks, but our twitching lungs didn't allow it. While we blinked our eyes and fought towards equilibrium, Character exploded in from the side. They roared with all their might, scarlet energy igniting over their arm just before they drilled their knuckles into our jaw. With a boom of red power, we were sent rocketing to our right at mach speed, Character turning their feet and skidding across the sand to stop their momentum after they fired us across the desert.

We sailed until we crashed head first into another fallen stalactite. Our body smashed about halfway through it, sending cracks splintering the stone mass all the while. When we finally stopped crunching deeper into the unforgiving surface, the structure of the plateau gave, and the stone crumbled down on top of us. Our body still twitching with violet paralysis, we were buried under the grey rock.

This wasn't enough for our foe however, because at all four corners of our stone pile massive roots exploded out of the sand. Purple thorned masses of vegetation, gnarled tendrils that immediately swung down into the rocks with crushing force. They bashed down onto us and the stones that buried us over and over, relentless swings that crushed our bones and tore our flesh. Character must not have been worried about us, busying themself with dropping to one knee and planting the both of their hands in the sand.

From the Deltarune on their back ink overflowed, pouring down the both of their arms and cascading over the sand at shocking speed. Though sweat and blood was dripping down their face, Character still ripped more magic out of their shared soul and spewed it over the desert. Rapidly a river of oily dark was surrounding the stone tomb of The Ascended Angel, the hands on Character's back even melting down their arms to join in. From this massive ink puddle rose the blackened tentacles of Character's kraken, surrounding the rubble and following the example lead by those roots. They too rained down crushing force and repeated slaps onto the stone pile.

And Anarchy stood there, watching with narrowed eyes while he rubbed his jaw. His thoughts drifted to Aliza and her little diner, to Lexi and the apology she had once given him. The first apology he'd ever received... His jaw tightening painfully, he tried his hardest not to remember Mako. Didn't want to wonder what she might think of what he was doing, didn't want to acknowledge what he already knew.

Anarchy's head lifted some at the sound of shoes crunching in the sand, arched a brow at the three humans that materialized suddenly from Badster's pixels beside him. Gatherer, Eden and Frisk all landed behind him and Character, but seeing his comrades hardly put a smile on Anthony's face. Frown digging into his chin, he turned to face the three of them. "Thought I made the game plan clear. Get too close to them and you're gonna get killed."

"Merely needed to consult the two of you." Gatherer explained, a smirk forming on his face in spite of Anarchy's intense stare. With those fiery eyes and that blood and sweat on his face, Xander thought he looked so much like the ghoul he'd first met in a Fortune City alley. Putting his nostalgia aside, he explained with a malevolent sneer, "I've devised a fifth and final phase, you see."

---

*We're not reaching him.

I know. This isn't working, Xander keeps getting in the way...

Our bloodied fingers trailed along the ink stained stone that buried us. Our shared eyes narrowed into the dim red light our body produced; the only light we had under the rocks.

*We're holding back and they aren't, Angel. I know you don't want to, but-

If we resort to lethal force then we'll just be proving everything they say about us. Anny's gonna turn his back on us if he sees us chop Xander's head off.

Our fingers curled into fists, scarred knuckles pressed against that burning stone while ink dripped through a crack and splattered against our forehead. Our debate was silent for a moment...

*... Okay, then what's the next best option?

...

Our fists clenched, and our soul released its pressure. In an instant, DETERMINATION was exploding out of us with enough destructive force to send the stones that laid over us blasting high into the sky. A red shockwave crashed out around the pillar of DETERMINATION that fired up from us, blasting apart the roots and tentacles that had been smashing down onto us in the blink of an eye. Scorched plant chunks and molten ink flecked through the air while our scarlet tower blasted against Snowdin's roof, once more rocking The Underground.

And Anthony watched with Xander to his left and Frisk to his right, narrowed his eyes into the waves of boiling heat as we rose in the crimson light. Wings spread wide, we were a figure in the shifting energy, holding our arms out to our sides. We levitated over the ground while our power ripped and tore at the desert, kicking up blasts of dust and flinging shattered stone away from us. The ink that had surrounded our now shattered tomb was boiling and steaming away, leaving a wave of blackened fog slowly creeping out around us.

The five of them planted their feet there, cold sweat on the foreheads of Character and Eden. They did not look certain, not like Frisk and Gatherer did. Anthony looked like he did not know what to feel; with furrowed brows and wistful eyes he watched the tower of our power begin to dissipate. The boiling winds died down, the flashing red tower collapsed in on itself and was sucked back into the scarlet heart on our shared chest. A red vortex swirled before us, shrinking with every rotation until it had disappeared entirely into our flaming soul. Red embers and sparks crackled over our body as we slowly floated down to the earth, our arms relaxing at our sides... Before our eyes snapped open.

The black smoke exploded apart, and in the blink of an eye we had crossed the distance. The five of them recoiled, on instinct Anarchy threw his arms out to his sides to both guard Frisk and Xander and remind the two of them to stay back. He wouldn't have to tell them or Character and Eden twice, they'd all nearly jumped out of their shoes from our rapid movement. In a split second we had crossed a football field's worth of distance, coming to a sudden stop a mere ten feet ahead of the lot of them.

We were leaning forward some, knees bent and ground glassed at our feet from our sudden stop. Our clothes were in tatters now, blood stained our exposed skin. It dripped down our face, from our hairline and over our left eye. Scarlet mist steamed past our lips with every exhale, rose from the cracks that coated our left arm. And for a few long, droning seconds, no one said a word. Our eyes glossed over the five of them, noticed the way they all stood on edge. Eden and Character struggled to hold eye contact, we could see shame in their eyes. And with that in mind, we found something to say.

"... You all have the chance to do the right thing." Our overlapped voice rang clear over the howling winds and the shifting sands. The air popped and crackled around us and Anthony, but it was not nearly enough to drown out our words. We straightened our back, stood to our full height. The Deltarune on our back burned bright with the scars on our arm, and our wings spread wide, casting their shadows over those who stood before us. "We understand why you're angry, you each have a right to be. But not one of you is dumb enough to believe things are going to get better with us dead."

"I think things are going to be perfect with the both of you gone, actually." Gatherer so boldly spoke up, now that Anarchy was standing between us and him. He smirked in the slimy richboy way that he knew; the snakes on his arms glowed and crackled with white heat. The same ivory flames that would occasionally ignite in brief embers on his horns. "You and Predator are the last things standing between our people and salvation."

"..." Our eyes narrowed at him, red flames flickering briefly over them to emphasize our withheld fury. The horned serpent, a liar and a man born with a Fortune in his hand. Now he had the balls to smirk at us while he looked us in the eye and lied through his teeth. And our thoughts drifted back to Clifford The BRAVE, a man who believed so completely in The Gatherer's cause that he gave his life to it without hesitation. Our jaw tightened, but we didn't let ourself knock Xander's front teeth down his throat, not just yet. Instead, we took a deep breath and reiterated. "Xander, you have a whole timeline full of people who are afraid. People who love and believe in you. Please, back down. Do the right thing."

"Is letting a liar live the 'right thing' in your eyes? I tried to save the world once if you'll recall, Angel." Xander's pretty smile faded away, replaced by an irritable frown more fitting of the horns on his head. Sparks crackled in his clenched fists, black smoke trailed off of his liar's tongue and out of the corners of his mouth. "I rallied Fortune City, I pulled it out of despair, I got things under control and made it a safer place to live! It was you who destroyed all that!"

"Safer for who, Xander? The people who licked your fuckin' boots?" We contested, narrowing incredulous eyes at The Gatherer. Was he delusional? Did he think Angel didn't remember everything that he did? As if he hadn't been watching the cameras, setting up the ambushes, mailing the threats... We shook our head, tried our best to let go of the guilt that Angel's association with those crimes left. "How many skeletons with concrete shoes are laying at the bottom of Fortune River as we speak? How many people went missing after they stepped outta line? How many teenagers are never gonna walk straight because they made a mistake and you had somebody break their fucking legs?!"

"Xander, what are they talking about..?" Eden's pensive voice entered the conversation, fear flickering in her PERSERVERANT eyes while she slowly looked over to her lord and master. The Balor King's mad eyes darted to meet hers, and their intensity made her flinch before Gatherer got a single word out. We didn't give him time to deny, following right up and pushing our point even harder.

"So you kill us. You kill Lexi. You get everyone outta the way and the whole multiverse bows down to you. Then what?" We shrugged, holding our arms out to our sides. Shaking our head, we had to purse our lips for a moment to keep ourself from lashing out and calling him a handful of colorful words. Instead, we furthered our question. "If you're willing to kill all of us, who aren't you willing to kill? We'd be willing to bet journalists are already going missing; how long until any adviser that isn't a yes man disappears?"

"That's not-!" The Balor King tried to bark, sparks and flames igniting on his horns. But we didn't let him get far, we would've slapped him for trying to cut us off if Anarchy wasn't standing between us. Not that Anthony looked to eager to stop this altercation.

"How long until you hang the girl?!" We snapped, pointing with our steaming left hand to Eden The PERSERVERANT. She recoiled at these words, and with eyes desperate for a good answer she looked to Xander The Gatherer. But there was nothing there, just a furious and paranoid expression. A cracked mask, one that we intended to rip off with one final, brutal point. "If you're not gonna put your personal desires aside for the good of your people, then what THE FUCK did her brother die for?!"

For just a second, it felt like the whole world screeched to a stop. Character's eyes widened, Frisk put a hand over their mouth and rose their eyebrows to feign an appalled expression. Even Anarchy leaned back a little, the most blunt man we knew and he understood the weight and audacity of our question. Angel had been the one to murder Cliff after all, we had little right to use his name. Still, Eden did not look offended. A certain pain coursed through her eyes, a guilt and disappointment that would be hard for anyone but her to gauge. She stumbled, instinctively reached up and grabbed a fistful of the bandanna wrapped around her neck while she took a step back to steady herself. We wondered then, guilt stinging our heart, if we'd said something that she had already been thinking.

Gatherer recoiled and his eyes almost looked watery, as if we had punched him in the nose. For just a second we could see a glimmer of Xander inside The Balor King, in the agony that flashed across his face... Before his jaw clenched. Before flames exploded to life on his horns, and he inhaled a chestful of air through his nose. In the matter of a second or two an orange glow was igniting in his chest, rapidly racing up his throat while he yanked back his head. And when he threw his head forward and his jaws snapped open, the heat laser that blasted out past his lips did not fwoosh or crackle like flames should. Instead, the noise that accompanied this blast was a furious, primal scream. A sound so angry only a man like Xander could produce it.

We were quick to throw up our arms in an X, our wings crossing in front of us in a similar manner. Gatherer's laser crashed into us, shoving us back on our heels with monstrous force. Our wings steamed and burned, the hairs on our arms singed and our feet dug desperately into the ground for traction that they couldn't find. We were forced to guard and lose ground until finally that molten blast died down, thinning and thinning while it lost power until finally it disappeared.

"Everyone..!" Gatherer snarled between gasps for air. Black smoke was rising out of his wretched mouth, electricity crackled over his clawed hands and fire burned on his those damn horns. On his arms his snakes coiled and hissed, whispering wretched wrath into his ears while his manic red eyes laid upon us. Furiously he shouted, "No more wasting time! We're enacting Phase Five NOW!"

"None'a you have to listen to him!" We assured, throwing our smoking arms out to the sides while our already perfectly reformed wings opened wide behind us. An updraft of red energy ignited around us, kicking up sand and flashing a warning of what was to come. "You all have the option to put your weapons down! This can end right now!"

"I think we've heard enough." Frisk finally chimed in with a flash of their perfect plastic smile. They leaned forward and opened their empty hands out to their sides, summoning their rapiers in their grasp before they darted towards us. They moved at impressive speed, closing the distance between us at a rapid pace. Once they started to get closer, reality began skipping. It was all we could do to stand ready as they darted through time, blinking from left to right until suddenly they appeared dropping down from above, their rapier already pulled back and prepped to stab us in the eye. "Time to die~!"

We tilted our head to the side just in time, feeling their rapier slice a thin cut into our cheek as it sailed by. Immediately we sent our fist rocketing up towards their abdomen with enough force to shatter their rib cage, but again reality blinked and suddenly our fist was uppercutting thin air. With a quick glance we could see that Frisk was now in the process of flipping over our larger frame, spinning in air and pulling back a rapier to stab at the back of our neck. And though they were out of the range of our fists, now that they were behind us they were well in the domain of our wings.

Our upper right wing easily darted out and knocked their rapier aside while our other three wings stabbed inward towards them, but when we felt their foot plant itself in our back we realized the strike had just been bait. Time skipped again, and suddenly Frisk was jumping back out of the pincer motion of our wings. They'd kicked off our back, just barely escaping in time. They landed on their feet and jumped back while we spun around, hastily swinging one hand up in their direction. On this command the desert ripped open, fountain pens spiking out of the earth in a wave towards the traitor.

We would have loved to follow up and make certain that attack hit its mark, but unfortunately we had to continue spinning and throw up our arms in an X in front of ourself. Our guard was raised just in time to catch another brutal haymaker from Anarchy, our expression twitching with pain while the punch sent vibrations through our body. Our scarlet eyes locked on to him; he wasn't crackling red anymore. His white hair was no longer lifting up over his head, instead falling in messy strands over his blood stained face. When we looked into his eyes, we could see that his left iris had turned black and Dark tears were overflowing from that eye down his cheek.

"You're better than this, Anthony!" We shouted with force, throwing our arms to the right and shoving the left he'd tried to slam us with away. With both our arms to one side Anarchy thought this the perfect opportunity to throw a right handed jab at our defenseless face, and in a rage we lurched forward and snapped our jaws open wide. Taking a page out of Anarchy's book, we crunched our teeth down on his incoming jab and stopped the strike with our mouth, crushing several fingers and spilling his blood over our tongue in the process.

Anthony didn't react - wasn't pained or impressed by our savagery. His expression was hard to read, unlike anything we had seen before. Was he thinking? Was he guilty? Maybe he wasn't thinking at all. Perhaps he'd shut his brain off to see this through to the end. Either way his shoulder blades ripped open, those pincers once more tearing into existence. They didn't fling up and over his shoulders like they usually did, however. This time, the both of them caught us off guard by curling backwards and under Anarchy's arms. They broke free of his flesh, curled back and launched their iron chitin into our abdomen all in one motion, blasting into our diaphragm like two massive fists.

The wind being blasted out of our lungs, we lurched forward before the force of those pincer punches sent us rocketing backwards through the air in some unfortunate C shape. We crashed right into the sides of the pens we'd previously attempted to skewer Frisk with, our body tumbling through plastic and pen to the sound track of brutal crunches and breaks. Finally, about halfway through the pen patch, we came to a stop with our back against a bent and dented pen. Ink dribbled over the triangular point and down onto our body while we winced, panting red fog. Our wings were sprawled out behind us.

We stared down the path of broken writing utensils we'd created and to The Scorpion walking closer, hands clenched into fists at his sides and pincers looming over his shoulders. His stinger slithered up from his tail bone, looming over his head and his pincers. All the while his expression remained carved of stone, and his heterochromia eyes stayed locked on us.

We hastily lifted our hand as he marched towards us, and in front of us four mechanical pencils appeared. They unleashed rapid fire graphite spikes, massive grey bolts sailing through the air towards The Anarchist. But Anthony didn't flinch, instead lifting his hand and holding an open palm out in front of himself. In an instant his shadow slithered up, rapidly hardening into a chitinous wall between him and us. it looked to us like the shell of a scorpion's head as our graphite bolts thunked! uselessly into its steely texture, defending Anarchy with ease.

Growling with frustration, we pulled our wings up only to swing them down, launching ourself from the ground and into the air. Ink still leaking down over the right side of our chest, we landed on one of the many pens that had loomed over us. And we took a moment to look over the edge at The Anarchist wandering closer, still behind his chitin shield.

Suddenly, he cocked back the hand that wasn't extended in front of him, slamming a punch into the shield before him and sending it rocketing forward. Our eyes widened, and we hastily jumped to the side while it barreled by below. With ease that shadow shell blasted through the four mechanical pencils that had been firing into it, just before it crashed into the pens that we'd just been standing on and leveled them. It shoved a few yards deeper into the pen forest we'd risen, knocking over and displacing our constructs as it went.

"Gettin' tired yet?" Frisk's voice suddenly chimed in, and we snarled as we spun around to face them. They were perched on the point of a pen two or three yards away, hands folded behind their back and rapier points poking up like little horns atop their head. Eyes squinted, they continued to flash their deceptive smile while we hastily reached up, planting our fingers in the ink panting our right side. Then, we threw our hand out towards Frisk and the ink followed, slinging off of our shoulder and racing towards their face with a whip-like crack!

Immediately Frisk's head snapped to one side, an unnatural speed making us figure they'd had to use some increment of their time skip to dodge the whip. Their eyes opened just slightly while their smile melted away, replaced by a disappointed frown. Our whip sailed right over their shoulder and kept flying while they asked, "A whip? Really? Do you have any idea what I'm capable of dodging?"

"Good decisions, mostly." We answered with our own disappointed frown and deadpan eye narrow, wrapping our hand around our still extended ink whip and suddenly pulling it back towards ourself. It wasn't until a creak and crash hit Frisk's ears that they realized our attack wasn't over, and their head snapped around just in time to see that whip had never been aimed at them in the first place. It had wrapped around one of the pens jutting out of the ground, and said pen was now being pulled back towards them on the ink whip like some big plastic log.

That pen smashed its side into their back before they could jump away, forcing Frisk to arch their back over its rounded surface. It hit them and kept flinging towards us, now dragging them with it. Wincing, they managed to tilt their head forward to see us cocking back our right hand, fury igniting in our eyes and DETERMINED flames on our knuckles. The fear of god existed briefly in Frisk's wide red eyes when they realized they were being dragged in to a spine severing punch at mach speed, but just as we swung at them with all our might, reality skipped.

When the lights turned back on, our fist crashed through nothing but pen. Ink and plastic chunks flew by us, and our scarlet eyes lifted to spot Frisk in the middle of jumping back away from us. It looked like they'd had to flip themself back over the pen and sprung off of it. Whatever, we decided. Doesn't matter. From our back our wings darted forward, curving and hardening into blades that unleashed a wicked barrage of slashes on the traitor.

Frisk landed on one of the pen points that we had to stand upon, hastily shifting their body. They moved like water, tilting and swaying between the rapid fire slashes and stabs being unleashed upon them. They did not have to warp reality, not until one of those blades swung at their feet and they had to jump. Then, suddenly, they were standing another few pens back. And we stomped forward, our wings pulled back and prepared to stab down at them.

But before we could unleash another barrage upon them, Anarchy exploded up from the space between the pens we stood on. His left fist drove an uppercut into our chin while his left pincer smashed one into our gut, and our eyes snapped open wide, pupils shrinking. Our teeth had been forced shut, so the blood had to spew out of our nose just before we were sent launching skyward. We blasted higher and higher, before finally our wings spread open wide and our red aura exploded to life, forcing our body to a stop.

"Damn it..!" We snarled, stretching both arms out to our sides. Crimson mist was rising in streams from our bloodied body, all while electricity crackled over our skin. Opening our palms wide, the Deltarune on our back gleamed a bright white, and red lights began to flicker on across the cloudy Snowdin sky that we'd built over the town we destroyed. "We have to end this!"

Rapidly, a massive wall of Beat Cannons were being put together around us. The machines whirred and hissed with power, and after all their barrels settled on the crumbled pen patch below, all of their segments began spinning in unison. The hum of their charge grew hastily to a roar, the glow of their barrels to a flare. And then, all at once, the electronic shriek of our cannons exploded to life, and hellfire rained down upon The Anarchist and the traitor.

"Uhh... What was that you said earlier about area of effect?" Frisk asked, their red eyes glued to the scarlet beams falling from above. A few drops of cold sweat on their forehead, they gulped in the face of impending fiery doom. Anarchy, however, did not say a word. Instead, he hastily reached out and grabbed hold of their wrist, pulling them into his chest while simultaneously spinning so that his back was facing the lasers raining down. "Eek-!"

Ignoring Frisk's squeak, Anarchy jumped down between the pens the two of them were standing upon. He landed in the sands and knelt there, covering Frisk's body with his own. From below his shadow raced up, rapidly expanded and shaped a dome over them. In mere seconds another shell had manifested over him and his traitor, a Scorpion's carapace coiled over the both of them just in time.

In the next instant, the world was ignited in red. All sound was blocked out by the screaming wrath of those Beat Cannons. And Anarchy remained knelt there, heterochromia eyes darting up to the ceiling he'd built over himself and Frisk while he kept them tight to his chest. It was simple is his mind - he could handle being blasted to smithereens, they could not. And though that shell splintered and trembled, it did not shatter and it did not fall even as the sky seemed to drop down on top of it.

Finally, after one or two very long minutes in which neither of them moved, that shining red light started to fade away. The boiling heat and the deafening noise all dissipated, leaving nothing but the crackling embers on melted pens and howling winds. Slowly, Anarchy stood back to his full height. With just one arm he supported most of Frisk's weight, the rest they supported by wrapping their arms around his shoulders. And he arched a blood stained brow down at their red tinted face, frowning at the sight of their ogling. "You alright?"

"Never better..." Frisk assured with a dreamy sigh, their lips curling into a smile while they stared up at him with half lidded red eyes. If their batting eyelashes did anything for him, Anarchy didn't show it. Instead, he dropped his arm out from under them, and their eyes widened as they were suddenly falling off of his bulky frame. But, reality skipped before they hit the ground, and suddenly they were standing right next to him, squinting and smiling like nothing had happened.

Before another word could be exchanged, the already cracking roof of their shelter exploded apart. Hastily the both of them spun around as we smashed down into the sand behind them, the force of our impact sending out a shockwave powerful enough to blow apart the now crumbling chitin and send it flinging in all directions. Laser focused, our burning eyes darted up into those of the recoiling Anarchist. And in the split second before we rushed him, he did not cock back a fist or send his stinger darting out towards us. He merely reached out, planted a shove in Frisk's chest and threw them back out of our path.

We exploded forward in the very next moment, let out a primal roar and yanked back our left fist. Steam blasted out of the cracks that Angel had gained trying to destroy the man before us, and now we called upon that same power to try and knock sense into him. In the blink of an eye we were right in front of him, knuckles clenched white and expression twisting with emotion. And Anthony started to lift his arms to block... But stopped. He let our fist sail forward unhindered, and with a skull shattering shockwave our knuckles connected with his jaw. Our roar reached a new furious pitch, and the steam exploding out of our shattered arm turned to ruby flames. Then, finally, with one last earth shattering boom... Anarchy was sent launching.

At mach speed he blasted backwards, sand exploding away and creating a trench beneath him without him even touching the ground. We landed and had to turn our feet to the side, skidding another yard or two forward across the jagged ground. The heat of that shockwave had instantly melted sand into glass in a twenty foot radius around us, but we hadn't noticed. Our tunnel vision was locked on The Anarchist as he sailed through the air, right underneath that shining line of lights... Wait, what?

Suddenly, some of our sense returned. We had to blink our eyes and try to fight back our adrenaline, but we managed to lift our head and look away from Anthony. There was... A triangle that had formed around us. A massive line, far into the distance. It'd been out of the range of our Beat Barrage, and in the red flash of our attack we must not have seen it forming. Not only that, but lines of those same glowing lights reached up from all of the triangles points, converging in a peak way over our heads. As familiar mechanical whirs and audio pops echoed across the desert, our eyes widened, and it dawned on us what we were standing at the center of. "A Beat... Pyramid?"

"Sorry, besties." Frisk's voice suddenly caught our attention, only as we felt them cling to our back. We barely had time to glance over our shoulder at them, all while they locked their hands together under our chest. And with the ground starting to rumble beneath us, and shadows writhing on the outside of the pyramid, we watched fury twist Frisk's expression. Their eyes were wide open, showcasing the wicked soul beneath. With a frown digging deep into their face they explained, and we didn't think they were actually sorry. "But this is my game, and you have no place in it."

And just like that... Everything stopped. Our senses shut off. Unbeknownst to us, Frisk's Time Void had engulfed us. So we were paused there, under the charging Beat Blasters and on top of a rumbling, rapidly heating desert. Unable to use our speed to fly out of range or our might to stop the attack from happening. For just enough seconds, we were rendered totally helpless, and Gatherer's Gang had all the time it needed to unleash its full might onto us.

For us, it was like we blinked. Suddenly we were conscious again, and Frisk was already off our back. Instead, they stood right in front of us, eyes open and face without a mask. The sky was pure white, boiling heat sent brutal winds whipping by. We stood in a rapidly closing circle, flames and lava exploding out from the earth around us. A Lake Of Fire was pouring out of the earth on The Balor King's command, all while The Wingless blotted out the sky with their wrath.

"... We really did want to be your friend, you know." That was all we could think to say while we stood there, staring at Frisk. There was no anger on our face in that moment, no denial and no disappointment. For just a second acceptance had washed over us. And Frisk just stood there, searing winds blowing their hair and their scarf to the side. Their body was starting to break away into pixels, they were abandoning us to die. For a moment, we wondered if this was how Anthony felt watching Angel walk down his driveway one last time.

"Well then this is twice as funny." Frisk gave their cruel answer, but they didn't crack a smile and didn't laugh. They didn't really look like they thought what we'd said was all that funny at all. In the next instant, they were gone. And we were standing there, alone together on a rapidly shrinking island in a Lake Of Fire under a falling sky.

With Frisk gone, the island had nothing left for us. Our eyes darted to the sky, winced into the bright light while our wings lifted. They flapped down in unison, and we were launched into the air. We fired up at mach speed, hastily darting around a beam of ivory light that looked to send us crashing back into the flames. We had one shot, we'd already calculated as we darted through the sky on shared wings. A Beat Dome was inescapable once it started firing, a pyramid not so much. There were three wide open spaces, unfilled by our shithead doppelgangers.

It was hard to see the windows that were the three faces of Character's Beat Pyramid, it was hard to see anything in the flashing lasers and burning flames. The boiling heat was singing hairs on our arms, making sweat break out on our already blood and dirt stained forehead. But still, we flew at top speed through the roasting Snowdin air. We gunned it in one direction, teeth clenching with exertion as we honed in on a dim spot in the blaring light.

We raced for that increment of Darkness, reached out towards it in hopes for salvation. And suddenly, the light began to clear. We could make out a world around us, and relief began to wash over us as we were able to look out towards Snowdin desert once again... Until a Wyrm head blotted it out. Rising up from just outside the pyramid, one of Anarchy's Wyrms had already unhinged its jaw as it got in our path, and we barely had time to recoil before its Chaos Geyser fired. In the blink of an eye the pressurized madness of Anarchy's Darkness was about to strike us, and we barely had time to get out two words. "... Fuckin' Godzilla."

That water beam crashed into us with enough pressure to burn. We'd felt a lot of things, shared a lotta deaths and maimings between us. But, having the flesh washed off our bones by a concentrated beam of filthy water was a new agony for the both of us to check off the... Whatever the opposite of a bucket list is. The incredible force of that laser sent us racing at an unstoppable speed back into the burning light. Into the center of the Beat Pyramid, where the hundreds of Beat Blasts and the three geysers of the Wyrms that had been watching all three openings in the pyramid met.

We screamed, but it was washed away. On our chest our soul flared with all its might, desperately trying to repair a body that was melting in seconds. We felt the relief of nerves dying and the agony of them rebuilding just to die again. Deeper and deeper we were pushed, into the Geysers. The Blasters. And finally, the Lake. With all their might Anarchy and Character sent us plunging into the molten sands, the lava and the flames that The Balor King had dragged from the earth.

We disappeared into the punishing burn, and for the first time in years... I thought I felt death.

---

The music faded out as Anthony The Anarchist stood there, hands buried in his pockets and hair blowing back out of his face. his scorpion appendages had disappeared back into his back, and now he stood as close as he could be to a mortal man. It wasn't very close. By his side stood Doctor Badster, who had dutifully delivered his master's crowbar back to him. Said crowbar was sticking out of Anarchy's back pocket now - he preferred to keep it up his sleeve, but he was out of those at the moment.

Knelt on the ground before him was The Balor King, his hands pushed onto sands scorched glass. His jaw hung open and sweat poured down his face, but still his lips curled into a smile. Black smoke filtered past his lips as he panted for air, the horns on his head sparking occasionally. He did not know Anarchy was standing behind him, did not see Eden's wide eyes staring at him in silent horror from his eyes' corner.

Beside him, Character slowly lowered their hand. Their entire left arm was vibrating, but no cracks had split their skin so they figured their stamina would hold. With uncertain eyes they stared into the blackened mist that now lingered around the sight of their Angel Eradication Attack, lips parted in light panting and red mist lifting in gentle streams from their body. The mist had started the moment the water of Anarchy's Geysers hit the fire of Gatherer's Lake, caused by the rapid cooling the deathly cold waters inflicted on the lava. Squinting through the smoke, Character could see a jagged obsidian plain left behind in the wake of their attack. To think, this place was a snow field this morning...

Mad Mew Mew, Felldyne and Horror!Flowey had all been transported back to the rest of the group with Badster. Though their place in Phase 4 was hiding outside the timeline to assure they were not melted by the raw DETERMINATION of The Angel or The Anarchist, their place in Phase 5 was the same as everyone else's: Ensure the death of The Angel. Now, the three of them stood baffled. The last time they had seen this war zone, it was... Alive. A forest, coated in pure snow. Now, in the wake of the DoubleKids, it was all gone. In a matter of hours, this whole area of The Underground had been destroyed. How far had the destruction spread? Had these heatwaves dried up Waterfall? Had the shock waves brought The CORE crashing into Hotland's lava? Perhaps it was better not to think about it... Like Gatherer told them, this timeline's sacrifice was necessary for their own prosperity. Flowey's eyeball split in its vertical grin, Like I believe that!

"Well, I figure its right about now that the big tower o' power would come blasting out if it were coming." Frisk estimated, casually clinging to Anarchy's right arm while they pondered. Eyes hidden away, they grinned giddily while they looked out over their band of merry misfits. "You guys wanna start huntin' for a body?"

"..." Anarchy didn't say anything. He hadn't, not in quite some time. Instead, he just put his foot forward, walking right around the exhausted king that knelt beneath him. Not bothering to shake Frisk off, they dragged right behind him as he started his walk into the shifting smoke. The flames had died out, the Beat Blasters disappeared. Even his Wyrms had disappeared into the Darkness smog. And it only took a few seconds of him marching head first into the devastated landscape ahead of them before the mortals lagging behind found themselves following him. In spite of their exhaustion and their confliction, they were compelled to follow Anthony through the desert and into the heart of destruction.

---

Chara sat at a kitchen table in The Ruins. Didn't know when they got there, didn't know how long they'd been there. But, Asriel wasn't there. They were alone, they thought as their eyes examined the ink flower alone in a vase on the table. But, when they looked up and across the table, they realized that wasn't true. Though there'd been no one in the seat across from them in all the time they had sat here (however much or little time that was) there was now a familiar face staring back at them.

Chara's eyebrows furrowed, a small frown tugged at their lips at the older Heir seated across from them. Future Chara sat there in polite silence, hands folded on the table in front of them. It'd been awhile since Chara had seen them, they thought. Why was that again..?

The Disgraced Heir wore a strange expression. A bittersweet smile, as they reached out and gently ran their finger over the delicate curvature of that ink flower. Angel had given that to them, Chara thought. Why did he give it to them again? That was so long ago... How long had they been sitting here?

Apparently that didn't matter, because in the blink of an eye Chara was sitting no more and didn't have a single question about it. They stood now, at the center of a flower field. Golden petals stretched forever it seemed, moved and swayed in a wind that Chara couldn't feel. Overhead a bright blue sky felt so far away. How long had it been since they were under the sun? They'd been Underground for... How'd they get to the surface again?

Their scarlet eyes glossed over the field of gold, and it reminded them of when they were young. The simple moments, the quiet time where he was gone... Who was gone? Asriel? He was gone here, they both were. Right? Where did they go again? The flowers, buttercup... Tasted like gone.

There they were again, that Future Chara. Chara felt certain that this doppelganger wasn't supposed to be around anymore. If Future was here, they thought he might be happy. They wished he was here, they wished their own Angel was. It was such a beautiful day outside. Birds, and... Flowers...

F Chara was holding it, that ink flower Angel had given them. Why'd he give them that again? Meant a lot, meant gone... Meant coming back. From where, again? The Disgraced Heir stepped closer to Chara, somehow they didn't trample a single flower. They still had that bittersweet smile. That strange mix of love and... Gone. Something that came with going. What came and went?

Chara reached out with that ink flower, smiled in their gone way as they gently placed it behind Chara's ear. And Chara looked up at Chara, tilted their head and pondered Chara's knowing expression. What Chara knew... Chara knew it too. And the ink flower placed behind Chara's ear turned to gold.

---

Chara's eyes snapped open and they sucked in two lungfuls of air. Their body convulsed suddenly, like something in their soul had been screaming for them to move. They twitched and blinked, felt a burst of adrenaline kickstart their exhausted body. Wait... Their body? They blinked scarlet eyes, swallowed with a dry throat and looked over hands that were distinctly theirs... And not mine.

"Oh, g-good, you're awake..." Regretfully, I had to get their attention. They turned their head suddenly, and those ruby orbs of theirs went wide at the sight of me. I kinda figured that would happen - I looked like shit and felt worse than I looked. Our souls had put my body back, 'least wear it was important... But I was still burnt here and there, cuts still detailed my exposed upper body. I barely had any clothes left, nothing but the shredded remains of my jeans. Er... Jean? One'a my pant legs was almost completely missing and the other only made it to my knee before turning into a scorch mark. Still, I forced a smile in the face of their mortified expression. "How ya feelin'..?"

"How am I feeling?!" Chara repeated back to me, forcing their body to its knees. They weren't banged up physically like I was, but I was sure their soul was just as exhausted as my own. Still they fussed over me, kneeling at my side and getting a closer look at my injuries. Not that it would do either of us much good, I was the healer and I could barely feel my own body. "What's going on? Why are we unfused?!"

"Yeah I uh, I p-put'cha back in your body..." I let my head rest back against the unforgiving obsidian floor. Felt like a memory foam mattress to me, but I still kept my tired green eyes open. I couldn't look away from them now, didn't know quite how many more looks I'd get. "My body is uh... Yeah..."

"Well, here!" Chara hastily exclaimed, and my exhausted eyes glossed to the hand they opened over my chest before glossing back up to them. Their expression was frantic, it made my eyes narrow painfully. "Give me your soul! I know we trained in your body, but we should at least be able to make an escape and regroup in mine!"

"Yeah, that's uh... That's not gonna work..." I winced a little, managing to shake exhaustion for another moment. They looked angry at my doubtful thinking, until green light reflected in their red eyes. And I watched their pupils shrink, as they looked upon the green soul glimmering dimly on my chest. With a heavy soul I explained what they already knew, "Surviving that last attack took all the DETERMINATION I had in the tank... H-haven't been this drained since..."

"W-well, then..!" Chara stammered, looked my broken body over a few more times. It hurt me to see the realization setting in on them, felt worse to see the way they rejected and fought against it. "I'll just carry you! It'll be fine!"

"... Chara, that's not gonna work..." I hesitated to say, giving them a knowing frown. Truth was, I knew where this was going and so did they. One of us was going to have to leave first, but they didn't want me to say it. And I wished that I had time to beat around the bush; in fact, if somebody was giving out wishes right about now I'd probably wish we'd never ended up in this situation in the first place. But life wasn't that easy, and we were here now. "... Look. It's, it's me that they want... You have to-"

"Don't." Chara growled before I could finish. Their hands clenched into white knuckled fists while they lowered their head, and for a moment their bangs cast a shadow over their eyes. But, then they lifted their head with enough force to throw the hair out of their face, revealing the tears that were already filling their scarlet eyes. "Don't you dare say it, Angel!"

"... Chara, we are out of options." I strengthened my voice for a moment, even though it made my already aching body hurt even worse. I didn't really notice, I was too busy agonizing over being the bearer of bad news. KIND green eyes narrowing in this brutal reality, I found myself unable to stop an apology from slipping out. "I'm sorry, I... I didn't want this either. B-but..."

"We're going to get out of this!" Chara snapped, but I could hear the lump forming in their throat. I knew they were racking their brain, trying to find another answer. Another way. I'd thought myself sick the same way in the moments before they woke up, and I knew there was only one way. My thoughts drifted back to Asriel, and my hand clenched into a fist without any grip. I had a promise to keep.

"You're going to get out of this, but you have to leave now." I managed to keep myself steady through a single sentence, but immediately had to gasp for breath afterwards. My chest burned, so did the Deltarune on my back. But what hurt worse was the knot turning in my stomach, getting tighter and tighter while I watched the first tear overflow from their eye. "... I-if I'm here, they'll be distracted with me... I'm who they want."

"They're going to kill you, Angel! Stop talking like this is the only option!" Chara managed to shout at me through a lump in their throat. Their voice, cracking and breaking, maintained its power as best it could. But, as their shaky hand grabbed hold of mine, and a few more tears rolled down their cheeks, I could hear that power waning. "I-if I let them take you now, then what the fuck did I just spend three years training for?!"

"... Chara, I've done a lotta screwed up stuff with my life..." I stifled a cough for fear of what color might spew up out past my lips. With whatever strength I had I gripped their hand, and even though my own eyes were starting to sting I managed to smile. "But... The one thing that I have no regrets about, is everything we've done together..."

"Stop it..." Chara's hand trembled in mine, they shook their head. They knew I was giving them a goodbye and they didn't like it. I understood that, I didn't wanna say goodbye either. But we were out of time, I told them with the slow shake of my head. We were out of options.

"M-my whole life I've been a miserable son of a bitch... B-but, when I'm with you, I feel happy..." I gulped, tried to swallow the lump in my throat. Figured that the one time being honest came easy my own throat would try to strangle me. But, man... It hurt seeing such a pretty face cry. Still, I forced a shaky smile, showed my gratitude in the only way I could. "I don't know what happens after this, but I know that so long as you're safe everything will be alright... B-because you make everything better..."

Chara turned their head and forced their eyes shut, tried to stop the flow of tears and failed miserably. But, hey, if anyone understood miserable failure that was me. They muttered a curse word or two under their breath, I watched them tremble and stifle a sob. Still, that bittersweet smile laid plain on my face, and with my scarred left hand I managed to reach out.

"Please, it's me they want." My voice was a trembling whisper while my hand gently cupped their cheek, turning their face towards me. They looked at me with eyes that now shamelessly overflowed with tears, some of which my thumb carefully wiped away. Still, they too reached up, resting their own free hand over the battle scarred hand I rested on their face. Shaking my head, I forced myself to continue through the few tears that escaped my own eyes. "I won't ever be able to thank you enough for sticking by my side through everything, b-but... I can't let them kill you for what I've done..."

"So please... Please go." I begged them, it was all I had the strength left to do. My smile quivered on my face, but seeing them here with me was enough to keep it there, even as I told them to leave. I remembered thinking that if this moment were to ever come, I'd think myself sick on everything we never got to do. All the family gatherings I wouldn't be there for, the basketball games to be had, that date I promised... But, instead, I thought back to walking through Waterfall by their side. Carrying them on my back through the Underground, them carrying me on their own back out of Future's timeline. All the days training, the breakfasts lunches and dinners together, the dance at Toriel and Asgore's wedding. I surmised, as I choked on a sob, that Chara had given me more than I ever deserved. And there was only one way I could pay them back now. "... We're out of time, Char-bear. I'm sorry."

Chara stared at me for a few long seconds, I wondered if they were remembering the same happy times that I was. I hoped they'd enjoyed our time together as much as I had, I hoped I had meant even half as much to them as they had to me. I hoped that they understood this wasn't their fault, I hoped they knew they were the best of us, and I hoped they understood that they deserved to live more than I did. They didn't confirm or deny any of these hopes, instead they just clutched my hand tighter and held my hand against their face while they shut their beautiful ruby eyes. "... I-I'm sorry too, Angel..."

I smiled some, even though we were both crying. And with whatever magic my body had left, I commanded ink out of the Deltarune in my back. It crawled over my scarred, wingless back and up my right arm, desperate to reach their hand. And their eyes opened, widened some at the sight of my ink forming in their grasp. A long stem shaped between their fingers, reached up towards the stone sky and opened into a hauntingly beautiful black flower. Frozen in inky glass, it was at a halfway point between the golden flowers that had grown over Chara's grave and a rose. Though almost completely black, there was a detailed red and green line pattern painted on my goodbye present.

And Chara took it into their grasp, smiled even though looking at another ink flower made them choke on another sob. They looked back to me as I wiped away another few tears from their cheek, it looked like they were trying to speak. But, they couldn't get the words out because their throat had wound too tight. I understood that, I was in a similar boat. So, I just smiled like I understood, and they suddenly leaned forward.

My eyes widened a little, it hurt some when they suddenly wrapped their arms tight around me. But, more than anything, feeling them hold me tight and bury their face in my neck felt comforting. I hoped I returned their hug, but honestly I had no idea. My arms were totally numb, a lot of my body was... Were my eyes still open? I really must have been tired... It was funny, ever since Granny died I'd had insomnia. Sleeping never came easy, unless Chara was with me. Whether it be on the couch watching TV together, being carried back from training, or apparently minutes before my own death... They always made me feel safe. Safe and comfortable, so much so that my ever paranoid brain never had any trouble releasing its anxious grip on consciousness and giving in to exhaustion when they were around. It was so late, I was so tired... So, so tired... The pain hastily vanishing, I didn't even feel my body sink into theirs and go limp. I thought I heard them say something, something they'd already said...

"I'm sorry Angel."

Chara kept their eyes shut tight, took a few deep breaths to steady themself. They felt the knot in their stomach releasing as their Angel relaxed in their arms. They listened and waited for a few long seconds; his breathing had relaxed, gotten lighter. He was asleep, they were certain. Angel's tendency to accidentally pass out around them was hardly lost on Chara - for a long time, they'd thought his claims of insomnia were a joke because of how often they saw him sleep. They were glad even now that hadn't changed, they'd been afraid they would have to knock him out. They spoke in the same knowing tone he had used on them, finished their statement. "... But, there is one other option."

Carefully, The Ascended Heir laid their sleeping Angel on the obsidian floor. Looking at him now, it was almost hard to believe they'd ever tried to hurt him. That he had ever hurt anyone. The wings he could sprout, the Deltarune on his back, the fate he thought he was destined for... Chara didn't see it. Couldn't; whenever they looked at him, all they could see was the goofy dork that had wore down all their walls and won them over. No, they couldn't believe they had ever tried to hurt him... And there was no way they could let anyone else hurt him.

Footsteps were echoing across the molten stone field now. Uneven chunks of purple and black stone rose and lifted, leaving random platforms and plateaus crashing into each other and rising over one another. They knelt with him on a lower plate, jagged stone lifted another plateau a foot or two over their own section behind them. A high ground, and that was where the footsteps were coming from. It sounded like a death march, a whole platoon of soldiers coming to execute their Angel. But Chara wasn't going to let that happen.

Tears dried on their face and relief had removed the lump from their throat. Gently they smiled at his sleeping face, and they carefully brought down the flower he had given them. It meant gone, and that was why it would be better if he held onto it. They slipped the long stem behind his ear, were grateful that the blackened glass did not get caught in his messy brown hair. Hair that, as a gust of warm wind passed through, Chara carefully brushed out of his eyes and off of his forehead. That march was nearly upon the two of them, but as Chara leaned down and placed a gentle kiss on the forehead of their Angel, they knew that was okay. So long as he was safe, everything would be okay.

"Saying your goodbyes?" The Gatherer's voice brought an end to this moment, or at least it should have. But Chara didn't look up at him, their eyes remained on the gentle face of the sleeping Angel. As if Xander was not worth their time... He scowled from where he stood, looming over them on the elevated platform behind them. At his right, Character. His left, Frisk. Behind him loomed The Anarchist, his distant red eyes also locking themself onto the unconscious form of The Angel. Even further back than that was Eden, cold sweat beading down her face and bile threatening to rise up her throat as she got a look at the Heir and The Angel. By her feet was Flowey, returned to his little eyeball flower form. And behind her Mew Mew and Felldyne looked confident; The Gatherer had won, they thought with glee. Now their empire would be forever prosperous. Gatherer didn't see a single one of the people standing behind him however, instead glaring with stolen red eyes down at Chara. "Don't look so sad; you're going with him."

"..." Chara remained silent, but the smile did slowly wash off their face. Still, they did not look up, instead busying themself with carefully wiping away the tear and bloodstains from their Angel's sleeping face. He was out cold, if they had to bet money they'd say it would be a real long time before those green eyes looked out at the world again. But they would, of this Chara was certain. Not turning their head, they finally spoke up. "You're all here because of me, you know. Because your Gasters wanted versions of me gone."

"We're all familiar with the story by now." Gatherer frowned, his cold eyes narrowed. Why were they bringing that up now? What a waste. They must've been stalling for time, hoping someone would fly in and save them at the last moment. But their savior laid defeated under Gatherer's boot now, and all that opposed the King's will would quickly join him there. "But the four of us have always been bigger than you."

"You may see yourself a catalyst, but the way I see it? This world was always for us." The corner of Gatherer's mouth lifted into a vile smirk, he thought about lighting a cigarette. But he didn't need it, this victory produced a feeling far better than any nicotine could. Still, his smirk dropped suddenly into a cruel frown, and the flames of destruction trickled from his horns while he added. "Always for me."

"... That's quite a statement," Suddenly, Chara's crimson eye darted to look at Xander with lethal precision. He nearly flinched as their stare ripped through him from their eye's corner, and that slip up was enough to prompt a smirk to curl Chara's lips. "Coming from the weakest guy here."

That insult got a brief snerk out of Frisk, who The Gatherer immediately struck with a brutal glare. That silenced them, got them to turn their head away and whistle casually. That was enough for The Balor King; he turned his wrathful stare back to the wretched Angel sympathizer laid out beneath him and growled, "Watch your mouth."

"You can say this reality is yours Xander, but you know as well as I do the people behind you could squish you like the dirty little cockroach you are." Chara did not in fact watch their mouth, instead doubling down with a relentless glare. Still, their lips remained curved in a smile. They wondered, how long had it been since they put their scary face to good use? "Anarchy and Character would flatten you, and Frisk's time skip would be inescapable. You're at their mercy Xander, you just don't want them to know it."

"Oh, you think that's your way out of this? That you can turn us against one another in the eleventh hour?" The Gatherer broke into a mocking laugh, cruel smile twisting his face. He really was an ugly thing without his mask on, Chara thought. But Xander didn't care about his appearance, not anymore. Furiously he snarled, "You're a fool, Dreemurr!"

"This is not some silly comic book alliance that you can use our egos to destroy." Gatherer growled, gesturing with the smoking claws of his right hand out to the followers he'd assembled. Years of work, careful planning and endless effort, all for this moment! Now The Balor King stood tall, and there was no amount of words that could stop him from taking his revenge! He threw his hand forward then, sparks cracking on his finger tip as he pointed the finger at The Angel. "We are brought together by our shared HATRED for the man you've sided with!"

"Then what happens after he's gone?" Unflinching, Chara proposed a simple question. They arched a brow, turned their head to face The Gatherer and tilted it some to one side. They reeled in their creepy face to instead look mockingly curious. As though they were just posing a little question, like they really thought Xander had the answer. But he didn't, he clearly hadn't thought that far. It was obvious in the way his eye twitched and his teeth grit.

"Do you think Character won't betray you?" Chara questioned further, gesturing over towards the wretched fusion by The Gatherer's side. Character recoiled just a little to have the finger pointed so suddenly at them, but they didn't interrupt because they too were looking for the answer to Chara's questions. The Ascended Heir gave The Gatherer an incredulous look; it was the first time in a long time that someone had looked at him like he was a moron. "Hacker and Demon have turned their backs on literally every other person they've known. That's a one hundred percent betrayal average, smart guy."

This time it was Character who had to stifle a snerk. When Chara put it like that, Xander really did sound like a dipshit. And they could have reassured him of their loyalty, but they didn't. Maybe they thought it was funny seeing him squirm, maybe they wanted a little revenge for the hours of work and occasional cock-blocking, or maybe some little part of them wanted to lend a hand to the doppelganger that had been kind enough to believe in them. Regardless, they gave a generally neutral statement. "Y'know, we never actually looked at it like that. Huh."

"Frisk's track record isn't any better - they'll do anything once they're bored enough." Chara shrugged and shook their head lightly, like they were stating something they thought was obvious. Suddenly, the unshakeable Gatherer was starting to sweat. His mad eyes flickered with paranoia, darting away from Character and back to Chara, only for Chara to use that paranoia like a leash and command him to look at the traitor by his side. "How long until they feel like overthrowing you and running your empire into the ground for laughs?"

"Mm." Frisk hummed thoughtfully, raising their eyebrows and nodding their head like they were considering. Sure, they could have told Xander that was silly and that they'd never do such a thing, but they would do such a thing. Maybe not today, or tomorrow, or in fifty years, but with their RESET button they would live forever. And forever meant they had to do everything eventually. Besides, what did it matter if Xander had a panic attack and turned on the rest of them? Anthony was right there, and he was laser focused. His eyes still had not left Angel's unconscious body. Frisk was certain, no matter what happened, their hero would slay The Angel and any who got between him and the winged liar. So, they thought as they scratched their chin and considered, why not play with these toys a little more? "I mean, that doesn't sound unlike me."

"And Anarchy." Chara hissed his name, lowering their head and glaring up at the mad king from under their eyebrows. They were facing Gatherer now, though they had not climbed from their knees. They had no need to, they had everyone right where they wanted them. They just had to keep pushing and pressing Xander's buttons. They could see his brain twisting behind his eyes, and it made them smile in a cruel way that they had forgotten for some time. "Do you think even one person here believes that you don't HATE the thought of living under his thumb, Xander?"

Anarchy didn't say a word. Didn't even look at Chara or at Xander, his eyes remained on the fallen Angel. It was like he didn't know anyone else was there, like these mortals were so inconsequential to him that he could see right through each of them. He was powerful, The Gatherer understood as he felt the overwhelming aura of The Anarchist looming behind him, beyond any strength a mortal man could achieve.

"If you ever stepped out of line, he would destroy everything you've worked your entire life for and it would be easy." Chara's voice was a low growl, a serpent hiss that drilled into the both of Xander's ears. He was sweating, and that made Chara smile a little wider. Did that fool actually think he was the one in control here? =) "No matter how much power you get, you will never be stronger than he is."

Xander's eyes were twitching. They flickered between red and purple, his tattoos twisting and squeezing his arms. He could hear the fire crackling in his ears, and in that instant he was alone. His imagination pictured before he could stop it, and he saw his head under Character's boot. Defeated once again by a Hacker, or maybe he'd end up laying twitching and bleeding on the floor, unable to defend against Frisk's unstoppable barrage. A slow and horrible death, or maybe it would be Anarchy. Perhaps that crowbar would crush in his skull and those fingers would dig through his flesh, perhaps The Bastard Son would kill Fortune's Last Son as The Killer killed his grandfather once upon a time.

With no other options Gatherer's selfish mind had convinced him, he watched The Angel's Heir reach out one hand. That wicked smile faded into a brutal, demanding frown. Their eyes were relentless daggers, cleaving through Xander's shaky resolve. Their DETERMINATION stomped out his withering PERSERVERANCE, and Chara opened their hand to Gatherer the way Angel had opened his to Anarchy. But, their stare was not KIND, it was DETERMINED. "... Unless you make a deal with me."

That got the crowd talking. Character and Frisk exchanged glances, Mew Mew and Felldyne murmured and Anarchy did nothing at all. Eden stared from the background, confused eyes watching the scene unfold. She looked to Gatherer, remembered his cruelty. Remembered the words of Predator's cowboy... Her hands tightened into fists, and she looked back to the one that now knelt before The Balor King. Chara Dreemurr, a murderer who now fought against her savior's tyranny.

"Deal?" Gatherer repeated back to them, narrowing incredulous eyes. He couldn't forget his purpose, could not look past the man that Chara defended. No matter what they were saying, it was all just to protect him. With that in mind he got some weak grip on his psyche; what could they possibly have to offer him anyway? They were weak, broken and defeated. Just like that filthy Angel! "You think you have any leverage here?"

"I have all the leverage, you son of a bitch." Chara bit, and their certainty made Gatherer recoil. Paranoia stung the hands he tried to grip rationality with, and again his violet eyes were twitching. Then, as Chara straightened their back and leaned back their head, and the scarlet light of the soul on their chest reflected in the power hungry eyes of The Gatherer, it all made sense. "Because I'm the last human soul you need."

Character's eyes widened, horror settled over their expression. Their thoughts were brought instantly back to the information they'd spilled, the cowardice that their doppelgangers had shamed. They had thought of all people Chara would understand why Xander getting a seventh soul was VERY BAD, they were supposed to be the rational one! Were they really so desperate to save their Angel's skin? Guilt flickered in Character's shared soul, they winced. Suddenly, the two of them were very aware that either of them would make the same call if their Hacker or his Demon was in jeopardy. Their mind was so busy racing, they barely heard Gatherer growl. "... Excuse me?"

"Character blabbed about your six souled secret weapon and your plans to add a seventh soul to the mix. Smart plan; you need a backup for when one of these three betray you." Chara continued casually, even though they had just set their own soul on the chopping block. That was fine, their plan was working. Xander The Gatherer, a snake of a man who had spent his life wrapping weaker minds around his finger and getting those with less advantages than himself to bend the knee, had fallen hook line and sinker for their plan. A man with no one to trust and everything to lose, he was at Chara's mercy now. "But Anarchy destroyed all seven human souls in this timeline; might've been on purpose to make sure you didn't get them. And if any of Predator's crew is still alive they have to have regrouped by now, they'll escape long before you get the chance to steal one of their souls."

"Besides, your little alliance only lasts until Angel is dead, right?" Chara smiled with mocking certainty, tilting their head to the side. They shrugged their shoulders, as if they were just trying to help. As if this was some casual deal, like they were trying to sell him a pen and not their own soul. But there was far more weight to this moment than that, the flaming serpents whispered frantically on Xander's arms. Everything he had was in danger, they told him. And Chara agreed, "These three could turn on you the moment that happens."

"And what's to stop me from just taking your soul?" Gatherer managed to retort, narrowing his violet eyes. the horns on his head ached, crackled with power and hungered for more. He clenched his clawed hands into fists, exhaled black smoke through his liar's teeth. "Even if I believed what you were talking about, I could just harvest your soul after killing you!"

"Red souls shatter fast on death, Xander. You really wanna take that risk?" Chara effortlessly gaslit, furrowing their brows as they tilted their head. Another incredulous look, like Gatherer was the one being irrational. More water on the rapidly blossoming seed of doubt they'd planted right between those stupid fuckin' horns. "What if somebody tries to stop you as soon as I'm dead?"

There was a pause. Gatherer took a moment to think, and Chara knew that was good. The more he thought, the sicker he would become. They wanted him to doubt everything, overthink and panic. To his side, Character watched The Gatherer with a baffled expression. What, was he a moron?! Angel was right there! Character threw their hands into the air and tried their best not to shout, "Xander, for fuck's sake! They're trying to play you!"

"Deals with Chara are a bad idea." Frisk assured, scarlet eyes peering open. A frown now clear on their face, they weren't having fun anymore. A moment ago The Angel's destruction was totally assured, but now it appeared that Chara had found a hole to weasel through. They had to stomp this out now, before that bastard got away. "Trust me."

"Quiet!" The Balor King snapped, furious eyes darting to the fusion and then the traitor. Character and Frisk didn't flinch, they weren't afraid of him. Character just rolled their eyes while Frisk shook their head, obeying their master's order... For now. But Chara was right, they had stabbed everyone in the back. How was Gatherer supposed to trust any of them? Jaw clenching, he looked back to the Ascended Heir and dared ask, "... What do you want?"

"Time." Chara's eyes narrowed, that mocking smile washing away. A deathly serious stare returned in its place as they made their demands. Everything hinged on this. If they couldn't get Xander to agree to this, if they showed even an ounce of doubt everything would fall apart. This had to work, it was their only shot. They elaborated without hesitation, "I know you won't stop trying to kill Angel, there's nothing I could offer that you would want more than his head. So I'm just asking you to leave him this time."

"Absolutely not." Frisk answered for Xander, crossing their arms over their chest. They were glaring down at Chara now, that silly plastic smile was gone. They were withholding anger now; who did Chara think they were? They were trying to rip control away again, another wretched deal for another wretched soul. Frisk knew how this story played out, but apparently Xander hadn't gotten the memo.

"You do not speak for me!" Gatherer snapped, and for just a second Chara really thought he was going to try and punch Frisk in the face. But he managed to contain himself, even as he seethed and smoked. Just clenched his fist, let the snakes on his arms whispers louder in his ears...

"They don't want you to have that power, Xander. They know they can't beat you if you have a god on your side." Chara narrowed their eyes, but they didn't smile or sneer. Not now, they needed his trust now. After all, Chara was one of two honest people on these dead stone fields, and the other hadn't said a word in a long time now. "I'm the only person who can save your empire now."

Another long pause, one that elicited a groan from Character and Frisk alike. Character understood the devastation that would hit this reality if Xander got his hands on a seventh soul, knew that the freedom they'd suddenly found themself longing for would not come if he had that power in his hands. Frisk didn't give a shit about that, they just wanted Angel and Chara dead. And now the both of them were RIGHT HERE, and Gatherer was even considering fucking it up? They ought to stab him for being so dumb!

Gatherer remained silent. He eyed Chara's red soul, greed rumbling in his soul and paranoia strangling his brain. He was born to have everything, and all the world had ever done was try to rip it away. He had to work harder than any of his forefathers, a prodigal son with no home to return to. Now... It was right here. All the power he needed, offered up on a silver platter. But, for Angel's life... All the work he had put in to see him here, laying in the dirt and ready to die...

"They're right." Suddenly, Eden's voice hit Xander's ears. A voice he could trust, someone he knew would never turn on him. Hearing her speak brought relief, and he turned his head to watch her march forward to the head of the group. She had steel nerves, looked absolutely certain as she marched right up to The Gatherer's side, looked him in his eye, and told him exactly what he wanted to hear. "We can't trust these heathens!"

Even Chara recoiled at that; they figured they'd be on their own convincing Gatherer to spare Angel, and in the 11th hour came the girl who's brother Angel had taken away. A young woman who Chara thought, of all people, would be clambering for his blood. And as they stared, unabashedly baffled by Eden's assistance, the PERSERVERANCE soul glanced briefly at Chara from the corner of her eye. The two looked at one another, from the side of The Angel to the side of The Gatherer, and somehow... An understanding was reached. Eden gave a small nod to Chara, innocuous to all others but plain and clear to Chara. And they had to fight back a smile in that split second, returning their own little nod to Eden.

"They've served a great purpose, but they don't believe in our cause! They do not stand with our empire!" Eden's powerful purple eyes focused back on Xander, she grounded his aimless rambling thoughts right where Chara had wanted them to be. She was the one person that had any increment of Xander's trust, she was the only one who could get him to make a decision. "Our empire needs a god to protect it, and if these three really are on our side then they should have no problem with us collecting a seventh soul. They should be just as glad as we are to have this opportunity."

"But... What about The Angel?" Gatherer asked, some amount of Xander shining through in his dulling uncertainty. He glanced to the side, and Eden felt a pang of guilt. They could see weakness in him, something he never showed. He was afraid, but... She couldn't back down now. Xander added, "We, have to destroy him for what he did..."

"And we will." Eden didn't hesitate to say, reaching out and planting a hand on The Gatherer's shoulder. She forced a smile, even though her stomach was twisted in an anxiety knot. Honestly, look at her... Sticking her neck out for the winged dickhead who took her brother from her. She did not know what Chara was planning, but whatever it was she thought it was their only chance. Killers kill killers until everybody's dead... If The Angel survived today, would he be able to save her people? Eden didn't have any other options and she knew it. She couldn't play on the side of destruction any longer. "Once he recovers, he'll be back. And we will have all the power we need to be rid of him for good."

Right then Character put a hand on Eden's shoulder, spun her right around to face them. And they gave her a frantic look, eyes wide and jaw clenched. They spoke in a quieter tone through their gritting teeth, as if they didn't want anyone else to hear. "What the fuck are you doing..?!"

"If you really are on our side then you should see that we can only gain from this deal!" Eden proclaimed in her leadership tone, but her back was to Gatherer. And Character looked down to the hands she held together in front of her diaphragm in a begging gesture, before looking with even more confusion to her face. Her eyes were wide and desperate, her expression silently pleading with Character to play along. Despite this pitiful look she continued in her powerful voice, "Is this interfering with some plan to betray us, Character? If not then you would certainly agree that we need a seventh soul!"

"... Fuckin'-!" The Wingless fusion winced and grit their teeth, shook their head and tried to fight back against those stupid eyes and her stupid begging. They looked from Eden to Chara, who just rose their eyebrows at them. They gave the fusion a knowing look; they'd already said everything they could to Hacker and Demon. They could earn their wings, and it all started with one step in the right direction... Character groaned and threw their head back, before looking back to Eden and forcing out one of the most dishonest things they'd said in a real long time. "Okay, yeah, fine, you're right. Killing The Angel can wait, clearly we can beat him. What we have to prioritize is the... Safety, of our home!"

"This can't be real. You guys are not actually doing this right now." A confounded Frisk denied, blinking their wide eyes and shaking their head. They looked between the three numbskulls beside them, before glancing back towards Anarchy. They had hoped he would be furious, that he would rip these traitors apart and kill Chara and Angel himself. But instead he just stood there like a statue. The higher power that he was, immobile. Uncaring, focused on a goal beyond their squabble. His scarlet eyes laid upon The Angel... Frisk groaned when Felldyne and Mew Mew joined in like the lemmings that they were, agreed with The Gatherer's will once it was clear what he wanted. The result was clear... They were outvoted, and they couldn't afford to make an enemy out of Gatherer, not after everything he had promised them.

"You always have to find a way to stop me from being happy, don'tcha Chara?" Frisk's head snapped towards Chara, their furious red stare landed The Ascended Heir. Their lips peeled back to reveal their fangs, and for just a few seconds they looked honest. With a mouthful of venom they spat, "You just couldn't let me have this!"

"Cry about it." Chara stated without a second of hesitation and a bland expression. Frisk snarled in response, but as they went to take a step forward and crack a fist across The Ascended Heir's cheek, Gatherer put his hand out in front of them. Begrudgingly they stopped, turning their glare to their false King and grinding their teeth together to stop from calling him a slew of not-so-theydy-like words.

"... How long?" He narrowed his serpentine eyes at Chara. The snakes coiling his arms had dulled their hissing, now only a dim glow and a weak crackle on his arms. He looked certain now, like some increment of confidence had been restored with the cheers of his lemmings.

"However long it takes for him to get healthy." Chara explained, narrowing their scarlet eyes up at The Gatherer. A deal with the devil was being struck, but Chara had plenty of experience in that area. They cracked a little smile, "Two, maybe three weeks. All the power you could ever need, for just a handful of days."

"... Fine." Gatherer finally worked up the strength to say, his jaw tightening while he exhaled black smoke through his nose. The horns on his head ignited a few embers, but his mind was made up. He could not trust anyone but himself and his own power, and he needed more. So, he reached out one hand, bent his knees some to be closer to their level. "It's a deal. You give me your soul, and Angel gets to live to see one more fight."

Chara looked to Xander's hand, but they didn't reach out to it. They could see the snakes coiling on his arms, knew that in his heart The Gatherer was a liar. Like Frisk, like Character... Their eyes rose back to his, and another gust of wind blew a few strands of hair across their face. "I need you to promise me you aren't gonna go back on your end of the deal."

Gatherer recoiled a little, put his free hand on his chest like he was offended. But the corner of his mouth curled up a little, he couldn't help it. He was a serpent, and his mask was broken. Still he lied, "I assure you-"

"I'm not talking to you, snake!" Chara suddenly snapped, effortlessly slapping away the hand that Gatherer outstretched to them. This made him stand back to his full height, his composure instantly melting in favor of his ceaseless anger. But while he glared and clenched his fists, it dawned on him that Chara was not even looking at him. They stared right past him, tilted their head to look over his shoulder. "I'm talking to the one honest man in your little group: Anarchy!"

All eyes darted back to the ivory statue planted at the center of Gatherer's Gang, Mew Mew even gasped. And each and every one of them watched as for the first time in minutes... Anarchy moved. His eyes shifted, glossed over finally from Angel's unconscious form and to the eyes of his Heir. And they stared at him, fearless and full of contempt. He blinked slowly, his expression unmoved. But, then he lifted his foot. Took one step, and then another.

He lumbered right by The Gatherer, who's eye twitched with envy as he looked up at him. Oh to be born a Killer, he thought as his eyes scanned the hundreds of scars detailing the back of The Anarchist. All the wounds he could survive, all the power he wielded... Soon, Gatherer would have a being stronger than even him. Soon, he would sit on the shoulders of a god and claim everything that should have been his.

Anarchy stepped right over the short ledge, dropped two feet and landed before The Ascended Heir. And he didn't say a word, not as he looked down at them. Not as they grit their teeth, not as they struggled their way up to their feet on shaky legs. Not even as they stood before him, fearlessly staring right up into his Killer eyes totally unphased by his Darkness.

"Anthony The Anarchist, Angel has dedicated his life to bringing you home." Their voice trembled as they spoke. Not with fear or sadness, instead it was a righteous anger that brought tremors through their body. At their sides their fists clenched tight, on their chest their DETERMINATION flared as best it could. It wasn't enough to make a single spark, but it was enough to get Anarchy's attention. "For three years I was right by his side. I saw every drop of blood, every drop of sweat, every tear he shed for someone as horrible as you!"

All eyes fell on Anarchy, waited for him to bite back. Get angry, smack Chara upside the head. But, he didn't. He stood there, and he let them berate him. In fact, he listened when they spoke. Eyes without light and expression without a grin or frown, he let Chara jam their finger repeatedly into his chest in furious accusation. They went on, "He was willing to give you his life, just to stop your stupid crusade!"

"And today, after everything he did in hopes of making your sorry ass happy, you betrayed him worse than he ever betrayed you." A bold claim, but one that Chara would defend until they were dead. Not that they needed to; Anthony didn't object. He just stood there, watching and listening in silence. This must not have been enough of a reaction for Chara, because when their finger poking didn't succeed in pissing him off they reached up and grabbed a fistful of his stupid blood soaked beard. And while they forcefully yanked his head down to eye level, their expression twisted with rage. Their lips peeled back to reveal a mouthful of gritting teeth, and they demanded penitence. "You. Owe. Him."

"..." Anarchy still did not say a word. His eyes glossed down to the beard they were tugging on; it kinda hurt but he didn't care. White strands fell around his face, but didn't dare cover his sad Bastard eyes. He withstood their wrath, like he endured the wrath of his mother and all the mean neighbor boys. But unlike those rotten people, fear did not lurk in Chara's eyes. Just strength. DETERMINATION.

"So now you're gonna make a promise! You're gonna take an oath!" Chara nearly screamed, anger boiling in their throat. With one hand pulling his head down by the beard, their free hand jabbed its finger demandingly into his chest. The chest that hid an all powerful soul, one that could not be split or cracked or convinced to fuckin' forgive! With all the power they had Chara shouted right into the face of the most dangerous man alive, "Anthony The Anarchist, Bastard Son of The Killer! Promise me that you will keep Angel safe!"

". . ." Anarchy narrowed his eyes. Expressed... Something. He stood there with his neck craned, head pulled down by Chara's unforgiving grip. He examined similarly unforgiving eyes, blinking his own and tilting his head. A ride or die, he recalled. These Angels and their sidekicks. He understood why they were mad, he wasn't particularly happy either. This was supposed to be his special day after all, but it didn't feel very special at all. With that in mind...

"... You got a real way with words, sidekick." Slowly, Anarchy lifted his head. With one of his scarred hands he grabbed Chara's own hand, carefully pulled it out of his beard while he straightened his neck and stood back to his full height. Immediately afterwards he released their hand, and he did not raise his own hands again. Instead, he stared down at them. Contemplated all that they were... They wanted a promise from him, but he needed something from them first. "I beat you last time, before Angel got there."

"I remember." Chara was quick to say in a bitter and irritable voice. Their snappy remarks had been on point today, that one almost made Anarchy crack a smile. But, he remained stoic.

"I asked you a question then, do you remember that?" Anthony The Anarchist narrowed his eyes, tilted his head slowly to the side. His crowbar in his pocket, his hands decidedly not fists. He did not argue Chara's many points, to the shock of the peanut gallery. Instead, he went on down memory lane. "I had you by the neck, beaten and broken and somehow still all piss and vinegar. What did I ask you, sidekick?"

"... My name." Chara hesitated to say, their own eyes narrowing with suspicion. What was he getting at? Was he going to fulfill his role in this deal or not? They were getting impatient, but they chose not to snap at him again just yet. Instead, they finished the story before he wasted more time finishing it himself. "You asked me for my name, and I spit in your eye and laughed about it. That sound right to you?"

"Yeah... So, before I make any promises, I'm gonna ask you again." Anarchy's voice came through a little more stern that time. He lowered his head some, let shadows drip and slither over his bloody face. And when he opened his mouth again, and Chara could see the rows of his sharp teeth, he repeated himself. "What is your name?"

"... Chara." Chara frowned deeper, their jaw tightened for a moment. Truthfully they would have liked to have spat in his eye and laughed at him a second time, but it wasn't just their life on the line this time. For a moment, Their eyes drifted to their side. To The Angel laying sleeping, to the flower tucked lovingly behind his ear. Then, DETERMINATION reinforced, Chara looked suddenly back into the relentless red of Anarchy's eyes and repeated: "Chara Dreemurr."

"... Chara... Dreemurr..." Anarchy repeated the name slowly, narrowed his eyes at them while he tilted his head and let this new knowledge roll around in his skull. Yes, there was no mistaking it. Looking into those eyes, seeing the color red for himself made it clear. They were in fact Chara Dreemurr, The Ascended Heir and martyr of The Angel. With that in mind Anthony centered his head and did not hesitate to speak. "From now until he recovers, anyone who wants to hurt Angel will have to go through me."

Chara was quiet for a moment... Before they managed a smile. They meant what they'd said as the absolute truth; Anarchy was the one honest man among Gatherer's band of not so merry men. They knew that his word had more value than that of anyone else, everything he stood for was rooted in absolute honesty. Knowing that, and hearing him agree to their terms, brought relief and acceptance.

Chara glanced over to their Angel. How did he manage to look so peaceful, now of all times? They guessed they preferred it over him looking like he was in pain. They sighed lightly, because they knew what happened next. Preparations had been made, the deal had been outlined. Now they had to hold up their end of the bargain. And as Chara reached into the collar of their jacket and retrieved the golden locket wrapped around their neck, they hoped Angel would understand. They knew how he had wanted this to go, after all. And maybe this was selfish of them, but Angel was the only one who could win this fight, not them. He knew Xander, he knew Anthony. Chara wasn't certain how he would do it, but... He would figure it out. He always did.

Chara turned towards their Angel, knelt once more at his side. They carefully lifted his limp hand from the stone floor, setting their heart shaped locket in the center of his palm. His hands used to be so boney and frail, Chara found themself remembering while they closed his fingers around that locket. He used to be so boney and frail... They almost started to laugh. If someone had told them back in that timeloop that this was how the story ended... Well, it'd been a long journey, but they were at their stop.

Chara rested their Angel's now closed fist over his chest, over the heart they needed to keep beating. Then, they stood again, and another gust of wind blew by as they turned to face the enemy. Gatherer had hopped down from that looming platform, leaving an onlooking Character, Frisk and Eden. In his hand he held a glass cannister that Chara had seen before - the same soul containers Asgore had used to contain his six human souls. Their eyes narrowed knowingly, but no fear came to them. This is what it was all for.

They stepped forward, stood between The Balor King and The Angel. A few loose auburn strands dangled in front of Chara's face; their hair had certainly gotten long. Slowly, Chara forced themself to lift their hand. Their eyes laid in their empty palm for a few moments... Before their scarlet light manifested. A red heart, a color they were certain was evil once upon a time. Felt like an eternity ago now. Regardless, they stared for a few seconds into the culmination of their own being. Asked themself one more time if this was really what they wanted... And saw the reflection of The Angel laying behind them in their ruby heart. That brought a smile to their face.

"... I hope this ends up being worth it." Anarchy felt the need to say, but he didn't know why. The light of Chara's soul reflected in his distance eyes and Gatherer's greedy stare. He looked up from the ruby heart Chara offered as Angel's bail, frowned some as he looked back to Chara. They arched a brow over at him, didn't look particularly urgent. Wasn't like they had anywhere to be. "I hope you're right about Angel."

"I know I'm right about Angel. I just hope Angel is right about you, Anthony." Was Chara's simple response. It stung, even though they delivered it without a hint of malice. For just a moment, Anarchy was the one asking himself if this is what he really wanted. His eyes glossed back to Angel; his stupid brain replayed the memory of that stupid liar throwing stupid rocks at those stupid bullies in that stupid alley. The thought made Anarchy's frown dig deeper into his face.

"I think it's in my nature to sting you, and I think it's in your nature to cut me loose and let me drown."

Anarchy growled at his own thoughts, his jaw tightened. He watched as Chara placed their soul willingly in that container while Angel lay beaten on the ground... Why couldn't his head just be quiet for once? His own soul had appeared on his chest, and he hadn't even noticed. Another gust of wind tore by, hotter than the last. And Chara stared right into the eyes of Xander The Gatherer, unafraid and unyielding as the glass of that container reflected their scarlet shine.

Shing!

And suddenly, it was over. Cruelly, Gatherer suddenly snapped that contained shut the moment Chara's soul was wholly inside. The moment that glass closed, the connection was severed. Chara's body didn't even have the time to widen or shut its eyes, the lights just... Went out. Like a ragdoll their body dropped backwards, knees bending instantly under their dead weight. And before he knew it, Anthony The Anarchist had darted forward. Suddenly he was kneeling in the same obsidian they had knelt in, one arm hooked around their body's lower back to keep it from collapsing so unceremoniously.

"Far as I'm concerned? This story between us only ends two ways. Either we fly away together, or you kill me."

Anthony's hair shadowed his eyes as he stared down at the corpse he now held. Their head and limbs dangled without life, lightless eyes stared off into nothing at all. Chara Dreemurr was gone, the culmination of their being trapped in Gatherer's grasp. And as Anarchy stared into those dead eyes, he felt the hair on the back of his neck rising. Tremors crept through his bones, he could feel his jaw tightening and his lips peeling back to bare fangs. And suddenly, all the thoughts screaming in his head reached the same conclusion at once: ... It wasn't supposed to go like this.

The Balor King paid no mind to The Anarchist, nor to the worthless stepping stones that stood on the platform behind him. With the red light of Chara's soul reflecting in his eyes, a truly wicked and entirely honest grin ripped up his face. He held that container up to his face like a child might do a fishbowl; when he stared into it he could finally see the future he'd worked for. With this, everything would be his.

... So there was just one more thing to do.

Without a moment's hesitation, with every eye in the multiverse as witness, The Gatherer turned those vicious eyes to the defenseless, wingless Angel. And with one hand holding Chara's soul, as Angel had once held Clifford's soul, Xander reached out one hand to that wretched murderer. For too long The Killer's favorite son had been allowed to roam free. Too many times had he lied, gone back on his word, did everything in his power to burn Xander! Now, Gatherer decided as he opened his palm and spread his fingers, it was his turn.

And everyone looked on, the world moved in slow motion. Eden's eyes widened in horror, she couldn't stop herself from starting to reach out. How, she thought while it set in just how slow she really was, could Xander stoop so low? Flowey watched on from beside her feet, his eye wide in awe. He leaned forward, watched history unfold before him. What a lucky flower he was, to see the fate of the multiverse decided with his own eye. But Character shut their eyes, turned their head and looked away. Of course they'd seen this coming, they felt foolish for allowing a moment's hope otherwise. This multiverse was for Xander, he was The Fortunate Son. Mew Mew and Felldyne smiled - they were getting everything they wanted. So certain were they in their leader's genius, they never thought to question his motives or his morals. Now, Gatherer had seven souls and The Angel was going to be melted away like he always deserved. And though Frisk didn't believe any of the horse shit those lemmings believed, they grinned all the same. They'd been worried for a moment, but it looked like they had won. The Angel and The Ascended Heir, destroyed by a lie. How poetic.

And as embers crackled to life, and an orb of condensed white fire swirled to life in Gatherer's palm... Anarchy lifted his head. From between the strands of white hair that fell around his blood and filth stained face, he watched Xander The Gatherer take aim on his brother. The white light of Gatherer's crackling and vibrating pressurized fireball reflected in his scarlet eyes, and his pupils shrunk. His nostrils flared, his fangs barred... Raw emotion twisted his expression, and in that instant Anny knew exactly what had to be done. Gatherer grinned wide, and words slithered off his snake tongue. "I win."

"You can stop this right now, Anthony. You have all the power. On your word, nobody else dies. Nobody else has to get hurt."

BOOM!

For a few seconds, the whole word was tinted white. All eyes darted to the massive laser of ivory flame, watched in shock as it fired high into the sky. The smoke and clouds over head were blasted away in a perfect circle around the destructive power of The Gatherer's vengeance. And all eyes followed that wasted beam on its path to The Underground's ceiling... Before letting their stares drop down to The Gatherer. As that searing white light faded away and that blast returned to embers, everyone could see clear as day. There, standing between The Angel and certain death, with a strangling grip on the wrist of the hand that had tried to kill him, was none other than Anthony The Anarchist. And with fury burning in his scarlet eyes, he loomed over a stunned Gatherer and demanded to know. "What. Do you think. You're doing?"

"What am I-? I'm doing what we came here to do, you idiot!" The Balor King fearlessly berated, tugging viciously on his hand to try and rip it out of Anthony's grasp. But to no avail, that grip didn't give. Hastily Xander sent that soul container to his inventory; the last thing he needed was this damn dirty albino trying to take that power for himself. He snarled and planted a hand on Anarchy's chest, trying to push off of him and free his hand while he shouted. "What are you doing?!"

"You made a promise. You're not supposed to touch him until he's ready to fight again." Anarchy reminded in a low growl, his jagged teeth on clear display. He thought back to the man that had begged him for a hero on the driveway before his barn, remembered clearly the story that Xander had told. And yet, when he looked at the wretched horned creature squirming and snarling in his grasp, he did not see any remnants of that man.

"And I lied!" The Gatherer so boldly shouted, planting a foot on Anarchy's abdomen and yanking with all his might. Anarchy finally let go of his wrist, let him stumble back a few steps but immediately stomped forward after him. Gatherer tried to look past the mountain of a man before him, but Anarchy didn't let him. He stayed right in his way, made it clear that if Gatherer wanted to hurt Angel he would have to go through him. This just pissed The Balor King off even more, and he snarled indignantly up at Anarchy. "After all the lies he's told, it's exactly what he deserves! You of all people should understand!"

"What I understand is that I gave Chara my word and so did you!" Anarchy snapped, an increment of disappointment mixed in with the fury in his eyes. How had Xander crumbled into such a wretched thing? He found himself remembering the statue that stood before his tower, the shadow the tower would cast over the immortalization of Cliff The BRAVE... "I've never told a lie in my life Xander; I ain't startin' now. We're leaving."

"Don't you order me around, you albino ape!" Xander spit and swore, frothed like a rabid dog. It'd been awhile since someone had dared insult Anarchy in such a way, he was almost amused. Almost. But truthfully, he was furious. Just a few days ago Xander had promised him friendship, and now Gatherer was twisting a knife in his back. And there was nothing that pissed Anarchy off like a knife in the back, but Gatherer must not've got that memo because he kept yapping. "I spent years putting this together while you twiddled your thumbs and fucked a skeleton! And I'll be damned if I- Ack!"

"OH YOU'LL BE DAMNED ALRIGHT, BELIEVE YOU ME!" Anarchy's voice boomed across the valley of shadow and death, through every screen and into every multiverse. Everyone watched him snatch Gatherer by the throat, lift him right up into the air like he was weightless. All his accolades and titles meant nothing, he was weak and Anarchy was strong. With those powerful fingers bruising his throat, The Balor King choked and gasped, grabbing Anarchy's wrist and kicking his feet while The Bastard Son roared. "YOU WANNA TEST ME, RICH BOY? YOU DON'T KNOW HOW BAD I CAN MAKE THIS FOR YOU!"

"A-ack-! Guh..!" Face starting to change color, Xander's eyes grew bloodshot. He desperately kicked his feet into Anarchy's chest, but to no avail. The Bastard Son did not recoil, he did not feel pain. Like a brick wall he loomed there, strangling The Fortunate Son.

"I must not'a made it clear before, so lemme reiterate!" Anarchy pulled Xander real close then, ripped right through those amethyst orbs with his ruby ones. His fangs were on clear display, and he jabbed the index finger of his free hand into Gatherer's forehead while he shouted mere inches from his face. "YOU are my BITCH! This world IS MY BITCH! I'M THE STRONGEST, SO YOU'RE EITHER GONNA FALL IN LINE OR I'M GONNA RIP YOU LIMB FROM LIMB!"

On that note, Anthony threw Gatherer onto the ground. He watched him hit the stone and bounce, cower and gasp for air under the weight of his shadow. And Anarchy loomed over him, glared down at him with the infinite power of his scarlet eyes while he huffed, his chest heaving up and down with the adrenaline rush his furious outburst had brought out of him. And while Anthony slowly got to work on reigning his wrath in - lest he stomp in Gatherer's head - Xander rolled over onto his hands and knees. He didn't want Anarchy to see him gasp and cough, couldn't bare the might of those ruby orbs.

"... You're sick, Xander. I can see it." Anthony spoke after a moment's pause, the explosive anger that had backed his tone now a low simmer. There was an ounce of concern for his friend somewhere in his words, Anarchy must not have believed Xander was completely gone just yet. He understood, after all. The anger, the indignation, the belief that he had to destroy Angel no matter the cost... These things resonated with Anthony The Anarchist, so he did not destroy Xander. "You're angry, you're paranoid, you're full of hate. Take a deep breath, reel it in. We're. Leaving."

After that, Anthony didn't have anything left to say. He turned his back, fearlessly displayed the many scars that had been inflicted on it to The Gatherer and his thoughtless ilk. Eden hopped down onto the plateau, a frown clear on her face and worry shining in her eyes as she knelt beside Xander. She put a hand on his back, tried her best to comfort him like he had comforted her so many times before. He did remember those days, didn't he? He had to... She didn't want to lose him too.

Xander just stayed there, on his hands and knees. Shadows covered his face, hair pulled loose fell over his forehead. Anthony didn't pay him a moment's mind while he stood there, once more staring down at his brother. A brother who, for the first time in a decade, he had defended. And it... Didn't feel horrible. In fact, somehow, it felt like the one right thing he had done today. His eyes glossed over to the corpse of The Ascended Heir, laid down by the side of their Angel. ... Yeah, I hope he's right about me too.

Groveling in the dirt on his hands and knees was Xander The Gatherer. Under the eyes of his subjects, in his moment of glory, he had been stabbed in the back once again. How foolish he must have been, a Fortune trusting a Killer. His grandfather was certainly frowning up at him now. With that in mind and his face hidden from the world, Gatherer found himself smiling. Even as rage boiled and seethed in his chest, as the horns on his head burned and ached, he found himself grinning. His teeth ground together, his finger nails raked the obsidian floor... He'd gotten so close. Everything he had ever wanted was right in his reach, and if The Anarchist would not get out of his way...

"FINE!" Xander's sudden shout drew everyone's attention, and terror warped Eden's expression as she watched The Gatherer sit up and twist his upper body around. He threw back one of his arms, opened his palm and revealed another condensed orb of ivory flames, aimed right at Anthony. Anthony turned his head, looked over his shoulder at Xander with eyes that were widening in disbelief. The Balor King's true face was on clear display now, everyone could see the mad grin twisting his lips while he screamed. "THEN YOU TWO CAN DIE TOGETHER!"

BOOM!

Tears in her eyes, Eden was forced to throw her arms up and cower in the face of the Balor King's explosive fury. Up on the platform Character put two hands on their head, jaw dangling limp and eyes wider than they'd ever been despite the light flashing in their face. Mew Mew had taken up cowering behind the fusion, looking around Character's shoulder with a similarly mortified expression. Felldyne might have been the only person who looked happy about this, toothy grin defining her features while she watched that blasphemous Anarchist go up in flames. Flowey hastily disappeared right into the rocky earth, he'd seen enough history to know where this one was going. Frisk just put a hand over their face and the other on their hip, shaking their head with disappointment. Their lips remained parted, they even scoffed at the foolishness on display.

The Gatherer grinned from ear to ear into the flashing lights of his attack, his left eye twitching. His irises had gone red again, a color Anarchy's bloodline had taught him and the reason he was the last living Fortune. He was destined to destroy Anthony now, that much seemed clear to him. His kind was nothing but trouble, and if he were to let his empire exist in fear of The Anarchist's return, would he not be doing exactly what his own father did in the wake of Anthony's father? No, this ended here and now. A Killer was gonna die tonight.

As that beam began dying down - leaving a massive plume of ash and dust in its wake - Eden hastily grabbed Xander by the waist. She rose to her feet and dragged him up with her, and while he was busy spun around mother fucking that wall of dust she jumped back with him in tow. The moment that attack ended everyone had made a hasty retreat; the dust was expanding and not one of them wanted to be inside it with The Anarchist. Now they all stood a good fifteen yards back from the smog, and as Eden released Gatherer and let him stand on his own, and all others looked into that swirling dust with terror in their eyes... The Only Thing They Fear Is You (Reborn Mix) by Kaffeekatze began playing.

"YOU!" Character snapped the moment Gatherer was standing with them, turning their frantic snarl his way. Every member of the group was at least a few yards from each other now, most shakily taking up a defensive stance. There was sweat beading down Character's face, their pupils had shrunken with fear. They screamed at The Gatherer, "WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU DO?!"

"Don't waste your time yelling at me, Character! It would be better spent cleaning up the piss running down your leg!" Gatherer shouted right back, electricity crackling on his fingers and flames igniting on his horns. He stepped back towards the back of their little group in spite of his words, stood with the formation of his troops in front of him like any smart leader would. Still he turned his head and shouted back at Character, "Traitors have to die!"

"Yeah we'd be willin' to bet Anarchy's thinking something similar right about now!" Character furiously gestured to the twisting smoke, clearly irritated that Xander did not see the obvious and gruesome conclusion that they did. They held up one finger and frantically shook it, "We had ONE RULE that everyone agreed to! Nobody FUCK with Anarchy!"

"Yeah you guys are screwed for sure." Frisk casually chimed in, nodding hastily to Gatherer, Character, and Eden. Then, they gestured between Felldyne and Mew Mew, the latter of whom was still hiding behind Character like they were a meat shield. "I don't, even know what you two are still doing here. You should be running faster than any of them."

"He's weakened from the fighting! We can defeat him now!" Gatherer hastily denied, snarling as he looked between the other two potential traitors. He had the power, he had seven souls and an army! There was no Killer who could stop him now!

"And we aren't?!" Character threw their hands into the air; that sentence was so stupid it made them do a double take. Grinding their teeth, the Wingless fusion pointed right into the smoke and tried one more time to get the truth through Xander's thick skull. They lifted their other hand, pointing right at him. "You don't get it! Any second now Anarchy's gonna blast outta that smog and punch one of us into next week, and we think it's gonna be y-!"

In the next instant, two minutes and seventeen seconds into The Only Thing They Fear Is You, Anarchy had exploded out of the dust and already had his fist planted in Character's jaw. Their eyes rolled back, their face contorted around his knuckles, before the force carried through and sent them flinging back across the scorched valley at sonic speed.

Trembling, Mew Mew stumbled back, staring up at the looming Ghoul. He towered over her, seething with rage as his burning red eyes landed upon her. And before she could get a single word out, his hand launched out. He was so much bigger than her that just one of his hands fit all the way around her waist, crushing stuffing into her upper body and legs like she was a beanie baby. In one motion he pulled her over his head, grabbed her by the waist with his other hand, and ripped Mad Mew Mew in half. While he threw back her two halves, his shadow split open, and two worms darted out behind him. They each snapped their jaws shut around their respective half of Mew Mew's body, before plunging right back into The Dark of Anarchy's shadow with her corpse in tow.

In the next instant Anarchy tilted his head to the side, let Felldyne's spear sail right over his shoulder. His furious scarlet eyes darted right into her one good eye, and his hands swung back down faster than Felldyne could recognize. He drove his fingers right through her bullet proof vest and knuckle deep into her sternum, and before she even had time to recoil he then yanked those hands apart. He tore Felldyne's upper body into chunks in one motion, sending her body exploding apart in red and silver.

He shot through that dust without waiting for it to clear, and though Xander hastily threw his arms up and clenched his eyes shut... Anarchy shot right by him. Once it dawned on him that no attack was coming, The Gatherer frantically looked ahead and spotted The Anarchist looming right over Eden. She stumbled and leaned back, stared up at him with fear painted on her face and tears welling up in her eyes. But the Ivory Ghoul felt no pity for her.

Suddenly, between the two of them, the ground ripped open. Vines frantically snatched at the hands that Anarchy had raised to strike Eden down, thorns shredded through his skin and spilled his worthless blood. Golden petals threw themselves out of the ground, and the massive monstrous eye of Horror Flowey rose from the earth to defend the only person he actually kinda liked. While his vines burrowed under Anarchy's skin and tried their best to drink the vitality from the Ghoul, Eden stared at the back of his flower eye in disbelief. Flowey had been a coward after all, for as long as she'd known him.

And yet, his eyeball snapped open in his vertical maw and he dared lurch forward to try and chomp the head off Anarchy's shoulders. But with little effort, the Ivory Ghoul ripped his arms free of those vines trying to drink him, snatching hold of both sides of Flowey's terrifying eye mouth. And when he easily over powered Flowey's bite force and effortlessly ripped that eye in two, Eden felt a few tears over flow down her cheeks, all for the soulless beast that had bet its life on saving her.

Throwing those now limp and useless plant chunks to the side, Anarchy yanked one knee up to his chest the moment Eden was in his sights again. And she barely had time to get her arms up, cross them in front of herself and cower behind them before the ivory Ghoul blasted a ruthless kick right into her guard. Snaps and cracks split her forearms, fractures tore up her arms all the way to her shoulders as she was sent rocketing backwards.

Eden hit the unforgiving obsidian floor and started skidding, her twisted and shattered arms ragdolling limp at her sides. The ground beneath her tore at her body while she slid, but she was too busy gasping for air and trying not to go into shock. And when she finally came to a stop, and Anarchy turned his head towards The Gatherer... When the two of them made eye contact and Xander could see exactly how much of The Killer that The Anarchist truly was, Eden let out a blood curdling, agonized scream.

"New deal, Xander!" Anarchy snarled as he turned his body towards The Gatherer, making him flinch. He glanced desperately to Frisk, who put their hands in the air and stepped back to show they clearly didn't want any part of this. And when he looked back to The Anarchist, he could see that he was grinning ear to ear. Blood, dust and even some stuffing clung to his skin and his hair, plant juice trickled and dripped from his fingers. But he didn't care about the blood on his hands or the corpses in his wake, the Ivory Ghoul just cared about getting what he wanted. "Either you're gonna gimme back Chara's soul,"

And when he reached back and grabbed that filthy crowbar with his filthy Killer hands, when he pulled it free and pointed its cruel curve at The Gatherer... Xander knew the fear of god.

"Or I'm takin' yours."

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XWolf26, out