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.)

97. Chapter 97: Shoot To Kill

Thanks go to EpicSlayerGuy99, TiredWhiteMayge, Wingah, Acoolnamme, XelaZagity, GMLxAwesome, ZeroaraTheKnight, Zack Frost, Kds147y, Prominent, Eternal, Guest, DoctahSawbones, and 10burgers!

10burgers, don't worry! Since you reviewed the chapter you missed, I went back and edited you into the author's note. I appreciate you sticking around to review literally every single chapter, so I'm happy to thank you every chapter. :)

Eternal, I really appreciate your review! I myself had kind of a weird feeling about last chapter that I couldn't place, and your review put it into words for me. I've thought about what you said, and I can totally understand not exactly feeling the climax of last chapter. I might end up going back to tweak it at some point, just to build things up better to Angel's half n' half mode. But, I will say that there's more to the KINDNESS/DETERMINATION form than last chapter shows, and the dynamic of Angel's two colors is hardly over. I'll definitely keep your critiques in mind going forward, so thanks for writing them!

Guest, I read every review so of course I'll see yours! To answer your question, Future's role is probably a little bit closer to a mix of teacher and older brother to Angel. He's not quite a dad figure because the two had the same childhood, but him being older and wiser while also sharing those experiences I think definitely puts him closer to the older brother category.

Kds147y, I can't say what Angel is or isn't close to achieving because of spoilers, but nah, his new form isn't stronger than Cherub. Cherub is still the most raw power Angel has, his half n' half mode is probably about the same strength as his Archangel form with the added defensive bonus of KINDNESS mode. And The Dark kinda works like a shadow hive mind that obeys Anarchy mainly.

Alright, sorry about the delay! I mean, there hasn't been a DoubleTale update since last year! (Cue laugh track.) I hope everybody had good holidays, here's a late present from me! Hope ya like it, because ya can't return it! Next chapter should go up on Thursday, January 19th!

Disclaimer: I do not own Undertale.

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"... So you're really Xander Fortune?" Lexi frowned as she leaned her face further into her open palm, smushing her cheek. She was slouched against the counter in Jade's kitchen, her free hand was using a fork to pick at the breakfast Xander had prepared her. She would have thought someone who'd always had chefs prepping his every meal would be a lousy cook, but the eggs weren't burnt or melty, and that was good enough for her. "The guy who literally owns the city. Probably the youngest millionaire ever. That's you?"

"Maybe if I strike my pose it'll help." Xander answered from the other side of the counter. He hastily pushed his hair back with his open palms, before standing up straight and puffing out his chest. He folded his arms behind his back and turned so that Lexi could see his side profile, then he put on a stoic expression, and began hastily walking forward. Lexi cracked a smile that; he did in fact look something like the footage of him that made it on the news. Always surrounded by security, never looking down a camera and always hasty to get out of the public eye. Xander stopped his quick shuffle, smirked a little as he looked over his shoulder at Lexi. "See?"

"... Guess ya just looked more imposing on TV." Lexi shrugged, let her smile fade. It always did, now that Jade was gone. Her stare drifted back to her plate, she forced herself to take a bite even though a knot in her stomach took up much of the space for food. "... You're a long way from home, Xander."

"My home was buried on the other side of the fence when I was twelve years old." Xander assured, and Lexi glanced up from her food to see that any joy had washed off his face as well. That was true, he was down a mother just like she was. But, he had a little more courtesy than Lexi, because after he heard how intense his statement sounded he cleared his throat and tried to put on a more friendly face. "Ahem! In any case... I'm glad you believe that I am who I say I am."

"Yeah, I'm meetin' all sorts of important people these days..." Lexi muttered, blinking tired eyes at her breakfast. She knew it was getting cold, but she didn't mind. She just kept picking at it with her fork, leaning her head against her propped up fist and frowning while she pondered. Again, those ice blue eyes darted over to Xander Fortune. "I guess I just don't get why you came to me of all people. Don't you have people to help you out on your side'a the fence?"

"Well... No." Xander took a second to think about it, even though he knew what the answer was as soon as he heard the question. His eyes darted to the side, his thoughts drifted back to all the fake smiles he was given at his father's funeral. All the cowardly old men who shook his hand, all the mean old woman who suddenly wanted to hug him and pretend to be his mother. People who had lived entire lifetimes before he was born, just trying to figure out how to get their hands into his pockets... The violet eyes that his mother gave him darted back to Lexi, and he shook his head. "My upbringing was, secluded. With so much time dedicated to learning how to succeed, I just... Never really had time to make any friends."

"..." Lexi didn't answer, not for a few seconds. She thought about her own childhood - looking back, it didn't feel much like a childhood at all. She'd been so focused on growing up, so busy running from The Ghoul's shadow that she never took the time to enjoy herself. And with Jade keeping her hidden away from the dangers of the outside world, she never made any friends. She hadn't thought about it back then because she'd always had Jade, but now that her mother was gone...

"... Yeah, I don't have any friends either. My m-... My, mentor, was very protective. She knew how dangerous it was out there." Lexi sat up some. She pushed her plate away from herself and folded her arms over the counter top. She turned her head towards Xander, and she shrugged her shoulders while a frown tugged down at her lips. "I was too busy learning to make friends, too."

"Huh... Then I guess we're not totally different." Xander smiled a little when he said that, Lexi wondered why. She figured having a one in a billion life like Xander's could have been lonely in a way, maybe it made it hard to relate to the people around him. To feel that there was someone who could understand him, that must have been rare for a Fortune. So, when Xander reached out a hand across the counter, Lexi kept her guard lowered. He asked her while he wore that quant little smile, "Lexi, if I may be so bold... Would you do me the honor of being my first friend?"

"..." Lexi hesitated. She stared at his hand, without a callous or any of the blemishes that hard work caused. That was how most hands looked on Xander's side of the fence, Lexi guessed. Her mother, a murder drunk albino, and now the dethroned prince of Fortune City... Though her friends had been few, they were at least unique. The fact of the matter was Lexi had little left to lose, and unlike most who wanted to be Xander's friend, she didn't bother thinking about what she may have had to gain. She couldn't be sure just yet, but it was looking like she'd bumped into the one good person from the other side of the fence. So, Lexi took Xander's hand in her own, and she shook it.

"Sure. But you gotta agree to try to stop talking weird like that, okay?"

For just a second, Lexi The Predator could see her reflection in her ice wall. Her shape was distorted and wrong in the jagged surface, but the cold glass captured the scarlet glow in her eyes. It got the design of her mother's mask on her face. And she stared into her own eyes... Before lightning crashed into her defenses, and violet power blasted that teal glass apart.

The Balor King watched with wide eyes and a giddy grin as smoke rose from his finger tips. The magenta blast of his lightning exploded into Predator's ice wall, sent steam and chunks of frost flinging through the air with its impact. He pulled back his other hand, and as The Ice Queen exploded out of that mist in a dead sprint towards him, he threw it forward. The flaming serpents coiling Gatherer's arm darted from his wrist, they raced towards Predator and opened their hissing maws wide... Only to have their heads cleaved off by the slash of her scythe.

Now holding her scythe out to the side, Lexi yanked back her free hand and clenched it into a tight fist. She sent a punch blasting up at The Gatherer, who was quick to lift his hand. Her frosted knuckles crashed into his open palm, and his scaled hand snapped shut around her fist. A blast of hot and cold air exploded up around the two of them, and their tainted red eyes glared into each other as they stood there.

"You can't destroy me." Gatherer's lips peeled back as he snarled, clenching his free hand into a tight fist. The serpents sliding over his body hissed at Lexi, they rattled in The Balor King's ears and they told him whatever he wanted to hear.

Whatever Lexi might have been feeling, it was hidden behind that mask. All Gatherer could see was that frigid glare, the scarlet glow of her eyes. The two of them stood there, steam rising from where her fist was caught in his hand. And the wind continued to swirl, the air kept twisting with the heat of Xander's wrath and the chill of Lexi's DETERMINATION. Frosty air lifted from the edges of The Ice Queen's mask, and she responded without hesitation.

"You already destroyed you, Xander."

Chapter 97: Shoot To Kill

Or: The Head Of The Snake

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New Born by Muse started playing. Xander grinned at Lexi's response, and it prompted her to yank back her scythe and swing it right at his face. He dropped down beneath her slash, released her dry ice fist from his molten grip while his serpent tattoos struck out at The Predator. She was unphased, yanking back the hand he'd let go of to pull up the bottom of her mask while she inhaled deep enough to fill her chest. Revealing just her mouth from behind the face of The Jade Cat, The Predator exhaled a blast of subzero air from her lips and right into the faces of those molten snakes.

The blast of her ice breath shredded those serpents to embers and exploded into the ground between the two of them, sending Lexi launching up into the air and Gatherer skidding back across the stone path on his heels. She flipped in air while a pillar of ice crashed up behind her, landing perched on the side of the frozen mass and resting her scythe over her shoulders while she pulled the bottom of her mask back down over her lips.

The Balor King haphazardly yanked back his hand, and embers popped to life in his open hand before he swiped his arm out towards The Ice Queen. In an instant white hot light flashed to life, and a tidal wave of fire blasted through the air. Lexi didn't hesitate to spring from her frosty perch, launching herself into the air and high above those flames. Her body illuminated in the white flare of The Gatherer's wrath, the scarlet glare of her eyes pierced through the eyes of her mask and the flashing lights.

She yanked back her open hand, and frost misted out of her skin. It formed a cloud of fog around her arm, which she then whipped forward. Hail blasted out of that mist, dime sized spheres of ice that rained down towards The Balor King. But, as they scattered through the air, those icy pebbles expanded. From dimes, to baseballs, to basketballs, to boulders. And The Gatherer scowled as he jumped back, watching those dry ice orbs crash into the ground and shatter the stone path on impact. From his upper body those snakes struck out on their own accord, sinking their fiery fangs into any hail boulder that got close to their puppet and making them explode into mist and shards of ice.

Red dots gleamed in the cloud created overhead by the melting of those boulders, and in the next instant the mist parted around The Predator's scythe. She spun down from the sky like a buzzsaw, and The Balor King hardly had time to step to the side before her frigid blade cleaved through the space he had occupied only a half second before. Those powerful scarlet eyes landed on his mad expression as that frosty steel cleaved right through the rock path, sticking there. On its impact, a wave of ice exploded out over the ground at their feet, coating the terrain in frost.

Gatherer jumped back when she yanked that scythe out of the ground and cleaved up at his head, backflipping and landing on his hands a few feet out of Lexi's range. Though the floor was now like that of a frozen lake, The Balor King's super heated palms burned right through the ice and hit the rock path beneath, preventing him from sliding. He sprung back off of his hands as The Predator darted after him, and in his wake the earth exploded apart, forcing Lexi to pivot and jump to the side, away from the geyser of lava that blasted out from where The Balor King's hands had just been.

"You think your chilly party tricks will work on me?! Who do you think you're fighting?!" Gatherer cackled as he rested one scaled hand over his madman expression. He stared through his fingers at Predator as the ground exploded apart around the two of them, more molten geysers firing out of the dirt. The Balor King threw his free hand out to his side and leaned back, electricity crackling between his fingers while he berated his first ever friend. "You're too weak Lexi, just like always! You can't stop me! NO ONE CAN STOP ME!"

Predator didn't tell him to shut up, she didn't have to. She wasn't listening. Frost misted off the blade of her scythe as she held it out to her side, and she began marching right towards the husk of Xander Fortune. When a molten geyser blasted up in front of her, she cleaved right through it with her scythe. The power of her chill cooled lava to stone in the blink of an eye, and with a second swing of that scythe she crushed that stone to pebbles, which scattered out at Gatherer's feet. His eyes narrowed furiously down at those smoldering stones, before darting up to the mask of The Ice Queen sauntering closer. Predatory eyes gleamed red, and The Balor King knew in that instant that Death was a woman.

"HAH!" Gatherer threw his hand forward then, and the electricity that had been jumping between his fingers exploded from his smoking finger tips. In an instant ice crackled to life; the air between Lexi and Gatherer's killer voltage froze rapidly, forming a frost wall just before his attack struck. Static and mist blasted out from the impact, and Gatherer's eyes narrowed, trying to spot any sign of The Predator from within the haze.

His head whipped upwards when she emerged from the top of that white cloud, his fists clenching furiously tight. Predator's frigid stare locked onto The Gatherer as she lifted her scythe, pointing its blade right down at him. Ice blasted off that chilled steel, firing in blade shapes down at Gatherer, who snarled his defiance. His snake tattoos fired from his arms and shoulders, darting up to catch those ice blades in their jaws and creating more blasts of steam. A fog was hastily settling over the courtyard now, Xander's slit pupils had to tense to peer through the mist.

Suddenly, his head whipped to the side. His serpent eyes locked onto movement in the steam, and he threw his hand out towards it. His snake whip cracked off his wrist, it shot out in an instant and hissed as it darted through the mist. Gatherer was grinning as he watched those fangs crash through that figure in the fog... Before he heard ice shatter and hiss. He realized as his eyes went wide that he'd struck a decoy, and in the very same instant the mist behind him exploded open around The Predator.

With that scythe cocked back over her shoulder, lethal precision burned red in Lexi's eyes. She swung, and her curved blade sliced down towards Xander's waist in hopes of cleaving him in two. Unfortunately for her, his knees bent, and he backflipped right over the frosted steel and the one who slashed at him with it. Predator's head turned, she peered up over her shoulder as The Balor King yanked back one smoldering hand, suspended in air above her.

In the blink of an eye, ice exploded up in a pyramid around The Ice Queen, jabbing its point right up at The Balor King. He was unbothered, throwing that smoking palm down into the ice jabbing up at him and sending an explosion of wicked white flames blasting out from his scaly hand. Ice and fire collided, and Gatherer's hair was thrown back from the blast of steam that followed. The temperature shockwave created by that impact threw him back through the air, and once again his slitted pupils were darting through the thickening fog to try and find The Predator.

He landed back on the stone path, skidded back on his heels and whipped his head from one side to the other in his frantic search. Embers flickered on his horns, electricity crackled between his smoking finger tips. And as Xander Fortune stared into the mist, his eyes twitched and blinked. His mind played tricks, showed him figures in the fog. Slithering shadows, Leviathans, winged creatures... The Gatherer snarled, grabbing both sides of his head and shutting his eyes to block out The Dark. "Lexi! Stop hiding and fight me!"

Suddenly, the fog shifted. It swirled, sucked inward in dozens of different directions. The moisture was dragged out of the air, sucked into the rapidly forming masses of ice that were beginning to surround The Balor King. He snarled as he looked between those floating frost boulders; the fog rapidly disappeared, now replaced by a sea of levitating ice masses.

Gatherer's eyes jumped from boulder to boulder in search of his nemesis, before he suddenly jumped forward. Two of those masses of ice smashed inward, crashing together right where he'd just been standing. He rolled before jumping to his feet, snarling as he spun around just in time to watch ice shards blast through the air.

As Gatherer skidded back on his heels however, Predator darted out from behind one of the floating aquamarine masses behind him. She shot by his back in an instant, and his eyes went wide. He arched his spine as a cut tore open on his back, his eye twitching with agony while Lexi disappeared behind another one of the floating ice boulders. The Balor King spun around, his head whipped in any and every direction while scarlet steam rapidly sealed the gash she'd cleaved into his back. "Where are you?!"

Suddenly, Gatherer's head whipped upwards to spot another one of those frost boulders crashing down from above. He jumped to the side and let its massive form shatter against the stone path, splitting rock in the process. The Balor King threw up one hand to guard his eyes from the ice shards that flung out from the impact, clenching his free hand into a smoking fist. "Typical! All a gutter rat like you knows how to do is hide!"

A receipt came instantly for that comment when two more boulders crashed in towards The Balor King from his sides, forcing him to jump into the air, where a third came rocketing at him head on. He roared his fury, throwing one hand forward and pointing two fingers at the ice mass. Magenta voltage blasted off his finger tips in the blink of an eye, the sky flashed with color and reflected in the surrounding ice as Gatherer's lighting blasted clean through that boulder, blowing it to smithereens.

From those smithereens launched Lexi The Predator. She fired high into the air, spinning rapidly down towards Gatherer, who hardly had time to lift his head and look up in shock before she was upon him. Swinging her leg down, Predator planted a massive ax kick right between The Gatherer's horns. A shockwave of hot and cold exploded out around the two of them, just before The Balor King was sent blasting downward at mach speed. In the blink of an eye his body was crashing into the stone floor of the courtyard below, sending dust and debris blasting up around his impact.

Lexi didn't waste any time throwing her open palm out towards that plume of smoke, and on her order the remaining ice boulders all rocketed downward. From all sides huge chunks of ice crashed down into The Gatherer's crater, the repeated impacts made the ground rumble. Predator dropped down to the ground, kept her icy stare locked on the growing pile of ice shards before her. Crash after crash, more and more boulders blasted down on top of Gatherer, burying him in his entirety in her cold. With that mask covering her face, it was impossible to see how Lexi felt about this.

Moments dragged on and on, and finally, after all of those boulders had blasted down and amassed as a cracked and uneven glacier atop The Balor King... Light flashed in the ice. A concentrated laser of fire blasted right out of that glacier's peak, and with it came the sound of a vicious, primal scream. That laser cleaved down, then to the side, then back up, then down again. It cut that glacier apart from the inside, before finally more power flared, and a sudden outburst of heat sent the ice blasting out in shards and droplets.

Encased in a furious scarlet aura, The Balor King rose. The heat ray he'd been blasting out of his wicked maw died down, leaving him gasping while smoke trickled out past his lips. Scarlet steam rose from his body while magenta electricity crackled on his fingers and ivory flames crackled on his horns. And as his crimson eyes darted from side to side, he found that he was once more surrounded by fog. He'd melted the entire glacier, and now he could hardly see five feet in front of his face. His teeth ground together while he slowly turned his head and looked for shadows in the mist, and he snarled... "Kill you... I'm gonna kill you..!"

Suddenly, the fog sucked inward. Gatherer recoiled... But it was not an attack. No spikes formed, no boulders. Instead, the mist hardened into a flat, smooth surface all around him. A dome of ice sheets... Mirrors. And Xander Fortune's eyes snapped open wide, he flinched when he whipped his head to spot an enemy and instead saw his own reflection.

He was quiet, the fury melted off of his expression. Slowly, Xander turned his head. He looked with trembling pupils all around him, and all that he saw was his reflections. The horns and the way they burned, the tattoos and the way they curled and strangled his body... He took a step closer to one of those mirrors, tilted his head to the side and stared into his own eyes. He had no idea his pupils became so, serpentine when he ascended. He reached out slowly towards himself, furrowed his brows at the sight of all the scales on his hand...

Movement. His eyes lifted from his reflection to the reflection of the one standing behind him, and the contemplation disappeared from his expression. He could see the masked Predator, looming behind him. She didn't move, didn't strike, didn't speak. She just stood there, staring at him with those piercing red eyes. That scythe was gripped tight in one hand, but she did not raise it. Didn't point, didn't swing... Finally, her voice echoed out of that mask. "Is this really what you wanna be, Xander? Is this the future you dreamed of?"

"SHUT UP!" Xander Fortune screamed, whipping his body back around to face her and tearing his claws over the reflection he'd been reaching out towards, cracking and distorting it in the mirror. He threw out that claw, and the snakes exploded off his arm. They raced forward, opened their maws and lunged at The Ice Queen, only to bite through glass. That mirror shattered apart after Xander foolishly attacked a reflection, and behind it he could see it clear as day. That statue looming at the courtyard's center, surrounded by flames... Gatherer's eye twitched, just before Lexi's fist blasted into his jaw.

Gatherer stumbled to the side, blinked his eyes and grabbed his now throbbing jaw while he whipped his head around to spot his attacker. His eye twitched furiously, all he saw was reflections. His tattoos curled tighter, his teeth grit while his stare darted between mirrors. Misting glass, shimmering ice... He watched Predator bolt towards him from every angle, and he roared his frustration. Threw his hands up over his head, let his power crackle and burn before he whipped his hands right back down. He dropped to his knees and smashed his clenched fists into the ground, and the power of his soul flared out around him in scorching heat.

An explosion of flames blasted up around The Balor King, and the heat of the sudden eruption shattered those mirrors to melting flakes of ice. Lexi threw up one arm to guard her eyes from the brutal white shine, her momentum was stopped and she was sent skidding back on the balls of her feet. She pulled her scythe back with one arm, and she lowered her other arm to spot the shifting, horned shadow of The Gatherer in the flames.

The Ice Queen didn't bother waiting for the fire to clear. She whipped that scythe forward, released her grip on its handle and sent it flinging forward like a buzzsaw. The shadow of The Gatherer whipped his upper body back, twisted unnaturally to duck beneath Lexi's scythe, which cleaved right through his fire with its cold. Those flames were forced to die down, and The Balor King threw his head right back up just in time to catch Predator's fist with his chin. A shockwave of cold blasted out around her impact, and the flames at Gatherer's feet were instantly snuffed out out while he was sent launching back through the air head first.

The Balor King backflipped, landed on his hands and feet and dug his claws into the stone path to stop his backwards skidding. His ferocious red eyes locked onto The Ice Queen, before he leaned his head forward. He pointed those smoldering horns right at her before he shoved forward, sending himself launching at her. Hastily she planted her feet and opened the both of her hands, snapping her fingers shut around those horns the moment they were in her range and managing to stop their vicious points mere inches from her abdomen.

Lexi grunted and growled and Xander did the same while she skidded back on her heels. Her arms trembled and shook, it took almost all of her might to keep those horns from goring her. But, suddenly, with a new burst of strength, Lexi yanked up on those horns and pulled The Gatherer's head up with them. She lifted her knee, blasted it right into his chin before immediately slamming her raised leg back down, alternating between legs and crashing her other knee into the other side of Gatherer's chin.

With The Balor King dazed, The Ice Queen yanked him up to a standing position with her hold on his horns before releasing her grip. She sucked in another chestful of air and prepared to blast Gatherer in the face with her frost breath, only for one of his hands to launch up and chop her right in the throat. Lexi's eyes went wide, her jaws snapped open to release a brutal cough and nothing more. Gatherer's head swung forward then, he bashed his horned forehead into Lexi's mask and sent her stumbling back.

Lexi shook her head to get ahold of her senses, one hand wrapped around her now aching throat. Twin cracks split an inch or two down from the top of her mask, where the bases of those horns had made their impact. Her cold stare lifted back to The Gatherer, who was exhaling black smoke and shaking with rage.

"You... What do you know of my dream? What could you understand about my future?!" The Balor King demanded to know while his left eye twitched. His clawed fingers trembled and clenched, before he threw up one hand and pointed at Lexi while he accused. "I was promised the world in the palm of my hand! What were you promised?!"

"I was promised a friend!" Lexi snarled right back, and Xander recoiled. She lurched forward, launched off her front foot and raced towards him in a mad dash. He managed to throw his arms up in an X in front of himself, and the force of her dry ice punch blasting into his guard sent him skidding backwards.

"Do not speak to me about friendship!" Xander hissed right with his snake tattoos, one of which struck out towards Lexi. Her fist swung up, crashed its frozen knuckles right into the side of the serpent's head and snuffed out its molten heat. Xander roared as he lunged forward, pulling back one clawed hand and thrusting it out towards Lexi. "I gave you freaks from the other side every-!"

"Spare me the speech rich kid, I've heard it before!" The Predator threw her head to the side, let that claw stab through the air over her shoulder before hastily ducking down as it swiped at the back of her head. She planted one hand on the charred stone path, and ice blasted up in brutal points towards Gatherer. "You can play the victim card all you want, but you decided I had to be destroyed when I wouldn't join you! You stabbed Anthony in the back when he tried to help you!"

"Help me?!" Xander jumped back and out of the range of that ice blast. He threw forward an open palm, sent a wave of fire exploding out of his hand and into the aquamarine glass. Frost was melted to water and water to steam, which Lexi launched right through, cocking back another dry ice punch. Xander caught that fist in the smoking heat of his raised hand, pulling back his free hand and once more flexing his clawed fingers. "I had that traitor laid out right in front of me, my ultimate victory was laid out before me and he stole it from me!"

"Me me me!" Lexi reached out with her own free hand and caught Xander's claw in her grasp. The fist she pressed into Xander's palm shifted, the two intertwined fingers on both hands and locked up against each other. They planted their feet, widened their stances and shoved their hands into one another with all their might. Winds twisted viciously around the both of them, hot air chased cold and it was dragging a funnel cloud down from above. "You can pretend you selflessly tried to help us, but everything you ever did for us benefitted you! You were always looking out for yourself first!"

"I had to - I'm the only person who hasn't fuckin' disappointed me!" Xander hissed in sync with his snake tattoos, His eyes wide and bloodshot. Steam was shooting out from where his hands locked with Lexi's, the whipping winds were lifting their hair and screaming in their ears. Stones were torn from the earth, windows on the surrounding buildings were beginning to shatter. A tornado had touched down in the courtyard, and The Balor King was standing in its center with The Ice Queen. "Mark my words, Lexi The Predator! I! WILL HAVE! MY! REVENGE!"

Light ignited in Xander's sternum. He inhaled two lungfuls of the tearing winds and puffed out his chest while that molten light raced up through his chest and into his throat. Lexi's eyes widened, she tried to pull back away but Xander had a death grip on her hands. Thinking fast, The Ice Queen threw her head back and made her mask slide up and reveal the bottom half of her face. She sucked in her own chestful of air before leaning forward and parting her lips, blasting sub zero air right into the face of The Balor King.

Ice rapidly formed over Xander's face. It started as little sparkles in his hair and eyelashes, but rapidly advanced to chunks of ice melding onto his skin. Frost formed a seal over his open maw, cold raced through his skull like instant death. But, clearly, that death was not instant enough. Because before The Gatherer's twisted brain could be freeze dried by The Ice Queen's ice breath, that explosive heat shined through the ice covering his head. The icicle that had formed in his mouth shined with molten white light just before it blasted apart, and Lexi's eyes went wide behind that mask just before Xander's laser blasted right into her face.

Xander Fortune's primal scream blasted out of the tornado right with Lexi The Predator. The wind tunnel was blown apart by the vicious updraft of volcanic heat, and Lexi was sent blasting back through the air at mach speed. She exploded through the wall of The Gatherer's strategy hall, her impact sent splinters blasting through the brick and made the entire wall crumble down on top of her prone body.

"Hah... Hah..." Boiling water dripped off of Xander's face. His shoulders slumped forward, scarlet steam rose with mist from that rapidly heated ice off of his head. Patches of skin on his face had been frost bitten to a black and purple shade, but the heat of his DETERMINATION was quickly shrinking those patches of frozen death. Gatherer's newly thawed eyes were locked onto the smoldering pile of rubble that he'd blasted Lexi into, and his teeth grit as he forced himself to start stomping towards her. "I will not be made a fool of, not again... I was promised the world and I will have it..!"

Predator laid there, leaning against that shattered wall with brick and shingle shards laying over her red steaming body. Smoldering shards of Jade's mask laid in her lap, she watched them burn away to nothing at all... Gradually she lifted her head, her scarlet stare stabbed clean through Xander. Only one chunk of that mask remained, the section covering her right eye. It was charred and smoking, and when Lexi lifted her head it slipped off her face and dropped into her lap to burn with the rest of its remains. The music faded out.

Xander could see her expression now. Her knowing frown was complimented by the disheveled black strands of hair falling around her face. A stream of blood streaked down from her hairline and through her right eyebrow, around her right eye and down her cheek. And she didn't pull herself out of the wreckage, didn't flinch with any of the steps that mad Fortune took towards her. She squinted at him... And then she spoke. "... When I was a little girl, The Ivory Ghoul ambushed me and my parents in an alleyway. I ran away, and he killed them."

"The perfect origin for a coward like you." Xander hissed, his clawed hands clenching into fists so tight that the skin of his palms was cut open. Blood trickled down from between his fingers, dripped to the charred and frosted floor while he stomped closer. Lexi didn't acknowledge his brutal words, instead glancing past him for only a moment to where her scythe laid on the ground. Ice was once again forming over its blade...

"Jade took me in. She trained me, dedicated her life to raising me when she could have just left me to die." Lexi's eyes glossed back from that scythe to Xander, her expression didn't change. Her arms rested over the piles of broken brick to her sides, one of her legs laid flat while she rose the knee opposite to it. Lexi paused, her expression twitched with pain... She took a deep breath, and she nodded her head as she continued. "And when I tried to get my revenge, I just got her killed too."

"I'm not interested in your origin, Lexi." Xander squinted furiously at The Predator. Smoke was curling up from the corners of his mouth, embers were flashing to life on his horns. His tunnel vision was so focused on Lexi, he didn't even see the scythe laying on the ground behind him or the way it started to shift with the twitches of Lexi's fingers. "Get to the point."

"... The one time I mentioned revenge to Jade, she said something straight out of an old Western." Lexi leaned her head back, shifted a little like she was trying to get comfortable. Xander didn't think it was odd that she wasn't trying to counter attack, the only thought in his mind was how he should kill her. Lexi flashed a bitter smile while she recited words that she'd been too young to understand back then, ""If you're looking for revenge, you should dig two graves.""

"I've got people to dig graves for me, Lexi." Gatherer reminded with a serpent sneer. He stopped walking forward, the twisted light of his tattoos reflected in Lexi's eyes as he loomed over her. In his blood soaked hand, his grandfather's lighter appeared. A relic from a time long passed, passed down to the final Fortune. But in Xander the Fortunate flame was its strongest, that much was clear when fire exploded up out of that lighter and took the shape of a sword. Its light flashed up across his face, illuminated him in a haunting glare while his mad eyes went wide and his mad grin got wider. "And I'm gonna kill way more than two people."

Lexi didn't speak. She just stared up at Xander, squinted and tried to see the socially inept rich boy flashing a pretty smile in Jade's basement. She remembered the home run derbies, the days cleaning the mansion together, the times his snappy comebacks made her laugh until her stomach hurt. She sighed quietly, let her eyes gloss to the charred mask laying in her lap, and slowly nodded her head. Then, she looked up into Xander Fortune's wicked grin, and she flashed her own pretty smile. "I'm glad I got to be your first friend, Xander. And..."

Her eyes squinted, her smile melted to a sad frown. And while Xander recoiled from her words, she clenched her left hand into a tight fist. "I know."

Sccrrrrch..!

The iced over scythe behind The Balor King dragged across the ground as it lifted, before breaking free of the earth and flying at top speed right at the back of his neck. It spun like a saw, an executioner's ax and a reaper's scythe all at once. And Xander stared with those twitchy, wide eyes down at Lexi's remorseful expression. He tried to comprehend why she looked so sad, for just a moment he could see that exhausted girl sitting across the counter from him and shaking his hand... His eyes glossed to her hand, the one he'd held in his own that day. The one she'd used to make a deal with him, to shake and promise her friendship... It was a fist, and it was covered in frost. His eyes snapped open wide.

SHING!

Xander's shrunken pupils watched as one of his horns was cleaved clean off his head. He'd thrown his body down and to the right at the absolute last second, and the deadly chill of The Predator's weapon had effortlessly sliced through his horn, along with a few tufts of red and black hair. And Gatherer's stunned eyes followed that scythe, all the way to the cracked wall that it stuck into, right above Lexi. Lexi, who suddenly flipped up and out of the rubble. She went right over her scythe's handle and landed perched against that cracked wall, and her cold stare met Xander's fury heated glare as she wrapped her hands around the scythe's handle.

In the blink of an eye, Lexi The Predator kicked off that wall. She launched right over Xander's head, and the slash of her scythe cleaved his other horn clean off. He was left with two black stumps protruding just a few inches out of his forehead now, and by the time Lexi landed crouched behind him, the both of his horns clattered to the ground.

The moment Predator landed, she exploded into motion. In a dead sprint she fired down the mutilated stone path, running low to the ground with her scythe gripped tight in front of her. Gatherer's wide, shaky eyes watched her run, his brain desperately tried to catch up with current events. Just two seconds ago he was certain he'd had her, and now..! Those mad Fortune eyes lifted from The Predator and to the building she was making a B line towards, and Gatherer's brows furrowed before they rose in shock. Hacker's lab..? THE SOULS!

Lexi's eyes were focused forward now, The Gatherer was left in her dust. She had one mission, one way to win this without having to chop Xander's head off his shoulders. One shot at the ending she wanted, the ending she needed! But, far behind her now, The Balor King had his own ending in mind. Black smoke poured out from between his gritting teeth, and he pointed two of his smoking fingers right at Lexi's back. Electricity crackled on his fingertips, and he hissed. "I'll show you what happens when you turn your back on me!"

CRACK!

Magenta lightning blasted from Gatherer's finger tips. It launched through the air, fired at a nearly incomprehensible speed at the back that Lexi had shown him... Only to be stopped dead by a wall of KIND energy. Green light forced that bolt of power to an immediate stop, and Xander's eyebrows furrowed. His eyes twitched, Melanie..?!

Suddenly, The Balor King jumped back. From the earth beneath him, pens fired. They spiked out from the dirt, shattered the stone path and tried to skewer Gatherer. He landed on the roof of the building that he'd blasted Lexi into, and with the wave of his hand a wall of flames melted those pens before they could reach him. Then, perched on that crumbling rooftop, without shirt or shoes and with those serpentine flames circling his body... Xander Fortune lifted his head, and his hate filled stare landed right on me. "... Angel The Hacker. I should have guessed."

Tears Don't Fall (Part 2) by Bullet For My Valentine started playing.

"I'm gonna say this one time." My voice slithered out from between my grinding teeth in a low growl. I was suspended in the air, floating over Gatherer on the wings I'd earned with my halo glowing bright atop my head. My left eye ignited with scarlet fury, my right eye was a dull green. Looking down at Xander now, seeing how wretched he'd become... He tried to use Anny to kill me. He convinced Frisk to turn on me. He took Chara away. My hands clenched into white knuckled fists, and I demanded that The Fortunate Son give back what he'd stolen. "Stand down. Hand over Chara's soul, and go. Away."

"..." I knew he wouldn't take my offer, honestly I didn't think I wanted him to. But I didn't expect him to smile. Smile, tilt his head to the side, and narrow those serpent eyes at me. New found rage was pushing the stumps of his horns up, forcing more out of his skull even though it sent streams of blood streaking out of the bases of those horns and down his face. The Balor King regrew his horns, and he struck at me with his venom. "Sorry, I didn't hear you. I was just thinking about how your happy little family must have felt while they watched you get Chara killed."

My eyes snapped open wide, my lips peeled back in a snarl. Over each of my shoulders a Beat Blaster manifested and instantly fired white hot death down at The Gatherer. He jumped into the air while those blasts exploded through the side of the building he stood on, cackled hysterically at my wrathful display while he pointed two of those smoking fingers at me. Lightning cracked, and a wall of emerald light appeared just in time to stop the beam of violet voltage racing towards me. Sparks and KIND shards exploded out from the impact, Gatherer threw up one hand to guard his eyes from the blast...

I fired right through the debris, smashed into Xander without any hesitation and wrapped the both of my hands around his throat. We careened downward, I slammed him back first into the roof of his research center and dragged him through the shingles with the beating of my wings. My flaring red eye and flickering green eye stared furiously down at him while he dug his clawed hands into my wrists, glaring right back up at me.

We stopped sliding after we reached the edge of the roof. A vein popped out on my forehead while I dangled Gatherer's head over the ledge, my fingers wrapped tighter around his throat. I throttled him without remorse, shaking him and smashing his back into the hard wooden ledge beneath us. The halo over my head flickered, I remembered how Chara's hand felt in my own. How right it felt to have them in my arms. How I would have done anything, used all the strength that I had just to keep them there... Now, that strength would be used to choke the life out of the wretched snake beneath me. "YOU! Do you have any idea what you've taken from me?!"

"Oh, I've only just started taking from you, Angel..!" Xander's bloodshot eyes went wide, his wretched smile shredded his face. His claws tore into my wrists, sent my blood trickling down his fingers, hands, and forearms. I refused to let go, even as he spilled my blood and made DETERMINATION steam out of my wounds. I was so focused on trying to pop Xander's head like a zit, I didn't notice his tattoos lunge up at me.

Molten snakes latched onto me, their burning fangs drilled into my flesh and they shoved me up off their master. I was dragged into the air, burning and shouting in agony as scorching venom was injected into the arms I'd used to hold and to strangle. Those serpents whipped down then, yanked my body right back down through the roof I had mopped Xander across and sent me blasting down through the mahogany table in the conference room beneath.

"Oh, do go on!" Xander demanded as his snakes dragged him up to his feet. He loomed over the hole in the roof, the shine of those vicious serpents illuminated the otherwise dark conference room I'd been thrown into. His arms dangled limp, his body slumped forward while he sneered and snarled. Those snakes rose from his body and swayed left and right, like the strings suspending a puppet. "Lie to me! Tell me you loved them when I know you only care about yourself!"

I roared my fury, threw one arm up at Xander from where I laid on that shattered table and sent an eraser exploding out from the floor beside me. That eraser blasted up on a pencil pillar, crushed through the roof but Xander jumped forward to the other side of the hole and dodged its relentless path. The moment he landed and spun back around to face the pencil that had tried to smash him, scarlet energy blasted up out of that hole, blowing more chunks of wood and shingles into the air.

Xander lifted a hand to shield his eyes while he skidded back on the trembling roof. I rose in that pillar of scarlet light, my furious heterochromia eyes landed on The Balor King while my wings spread wide. In my left hand, Chara's Real Knife appeared. Green light flickered and flashed on the blade... Before crimson energy fired up it instead, forming a DETERMINATION sword instead of a KINDNESS one. Fearless and foolish, Xander pointed the flaming blade of his lighter up at me and threatened. "You think you know what it means to lose Angel, but you have no idea! I'm going to take your everything!"

"YOU ALREADY DID!" I didn't hesitate to roar before my wings beat, launching me down at The Gatherer. The light of his fire refracted in the glass-ink flower behind my ear, it reflected in the beating Heart Shaped Locket around my neck. and I yanked my DETERMINATION blade up over my head, cleaving down at the Fortunate Son only for him to lift that flaming saber and block my slash. His knees bent, the force of my impact crashed through his body and sent cracks blasting out across the roof's edge beneath him.

That ledge gave out, shattered apart beneath Xander and sent him plummeting down to the earth below. His snakes launched out though, their fangs latched onto what remained of the roof and they yanked him up, sending him launching right back up at me. I was quick to lift my sword, turning it horizontal and placing one hand on the back of the blade to brace for Xander's impact. His saber crashed into mine, and for just a moment we were suspended in air together, snarling and shoving and trying to kill each other.

"Why do you hate me so much?!" I demanded to know as my wings beat, launching me back away from The Gatherer. I landed at one end of the roof and he dropped down onto the other. Between us, wood and shingles were crumbling down into that ever growing pit below. I flicked my blade out to the side and shrugged, furious and baffled. "I know what I did in the gang was fucked up but c'mon man, everybody else moved on!"

"... You don't even know what you did..?" For just a second, Xander paused. His expression was free of madness and fury, he just tilted his head to the side and looked at me with wide eyes and trembling pupils. His lips were parted, like he was trying to find the words... Then, they peeled back. His teeth ground together, rage unlike any before exploded through his veins, and he screamed. "YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU DID?!"

I opened my mouth to ask him what the fuck he was talking about, but I didn't get the chance. White hot light blasted out past Xander's lips, a pure and guttural roar erupted out of him with his laser of fire breath. Green light and metal keys rapidly appeared before me, but the brutal heat of that laser blasted my defenses apart. Smoke, flames, and a shockwave all blasted out of the impact, and the roof quaked under our feet.

Beneath us, the building was crumbling. But before my wings could beat, Xander fired through the dust and flames with one claw yanked back. He thrust that claw out in an attempt to rip my heart out, but I ducked, and over my head an eraser fired right into his upper body. The sudden impact of that pencil pillar floored Xander, sent him firing back through the air and off the crumbling building.

My wings beat and I fired into the air, watching as Xander flipped and got ahold of his balance as he descended down to the front steps of his tower. As he dropped down, he threw the both of his hands out in a sweeping motion. This sent tiny embers flecking out through the air, and I hardly acknowledged those little flames as my wings beat again, sending me firing down after that rotten Fortune at mach speed.

The moment I was in the middle of those useless specks of fire however, their true purpose was revealed. The one directly in front of me flickered, before exploding out into a massive orb of heat and force. The blast floored me, sent me firing back towards another ember, which immediately exploded in the exact same way. This blast threw me forward into another explosion, and then another. Xander watched in sadistic glee as I was pingponged between blasts, holding open his free hand and letting electricity gather rapidly in his palm.

One final blast sent me crashing face first into the stone path, which blew apart beneath me from the force of my impact. I shoved myself up onto my hands and knees, exhaled red smoke while I cracked open one eye to glare up at The Gatherer across from me. He whipped that electric hand forward, and from each of his fingers beams of electricity shot inward. That voltage all met in the middle of his palm to form an orb of magenta power, before a beam of lightning blasted out of that sphere right at me.

I shoved off the ground, my wings beat, and I rolled to the side just in time to let those brutal sparks fire right by me. My wings hammered down and sent me firing forward as Xander yanked his arm to the side, pulling that beam of power back towards me and trying to blast me out of the sky with it. My right wing pulling up while my left flapped down, and I spun in a corkscrew. My body spiraled around the lightning laser trying to fry me as I rapidly closed the distance, and Xander hardly had time to recoil before I was upon him.

I launched out of that spiral up at his face, blasted my knee right into his jaw. His face contorted around the impact, his head was turned to the side before the force carried through and he was sent firing backwards like a bullet. In the blink of an eye the light of his power had been snuffed out, and Xander was exploding head first through the front of his tower. The doors and the walls surrounding them crumpled inward around his impact, and his body disappeared into the Dark building.

I exhaled red steam as I landed on my feet. My narrowed eyes stared into that shattered doorway and the dark lobby within, and for a moment I found my thoughts drifting back to the fight I had last time I was in this timeline. Eden's brother, that hulking BRAVE soul... What was his name again? Cliff, right? Yeah, that sounded right. He'd put me through the front door of the last tower Xander had built, and then he'd dropped the building on me. I had half a mind to drop Xander's tower on top of him now and make him a red splat, but I needed a body. I didn't know if he still had Chara's soul with him, but if he did I needed to pry it out of his cold dead hands.

"Wake up Xander, I'm not done beatin' your ass!" I shouted down the damaged path and into that shattered lobby, my fist clenching tight at my side. Red electricity crackled over my DETERMINATION saber, the green halo atop my head flickered dimly and I didn't care. I wanted to hit him again, I wanted to feel his bones break under my fist. He took Chara from me, and he was gonna pay for it.

No words came out of that hole. Instead, I got my answer in a sudden flare of white light, before another horrible, primal scream exploded out of that lobby right with a beam of molten heat. I recoiled, green light flickered in front of me. Walls of green energy struggled to form, sheets of KIND light were punched right through and shattered to nothing by Xander's fire breath. Hastily I threw up my arms, and that brutal laser crashed right into my forearms. My eyes went wide in agony, and red was starting to appear in my green right eye.

Grunting screams echoed out from between my gritting teeth as I skidded back on my heels, brutal flames creeping up my biceps. I could feel my skin turn to tar and my bones char and crumble and I could feel my DETERMINATION rapidly put my arms back together just for them to be melted and replaced again. On the opposite end of that fire breath was Xander The Balor King, who had stomped out of that dark lobby and who continued to exhale a wave of volcanic heat onto me.

Finally, my own jaws snapped open, and I let out a primal roar of my own. On my back, my wings lurched forward. They launched, stretched out from my shoulder blades like twin spikes and raced across the courtyard. Coiled and curled into drill shapes, Xander was so busy shouting molten wrath that he didn't see my wings until they blasted up into his sternum. His heat wave stopped instantly in favor of the blood that spewed up from between his jaws, and he was lifted up off his feet as my wings drilled deeper into his body.

His scarlet colors sprayed through the air as my wings shoved him upward, dragged him high into the sky and smashed his back into the front wall of his looming tower. Xander was carried up through stone and wood, his body flailed and dragged and tore up the length of his stupid tower on those ink drills. All the way up, leaving streaks of blood and chunks of flesh and defacing his monument until he was dragged to the very peak.

But, before my wings could pull Xander right back down all the way to the hilt of my sword, a massive flare of light erupted from the peak of his tower. An orb of ivory flames exploded out around The Gatherer, accompanied by a furious roar. Chunks of rubble were raining down from the path I'd cleaved up the building with his body and the explosion of fire he'd caused, and my wings hastily retracted all the way back down to me, their smoldering tips reforming.

"Angel The Hacker..! The Ghoul's favorite son!" Gatherer snarled and roared through a bloodstained maw. He loomed there, at the burning peak of his tower. Surrounded by flames and smoke, mutilated body piecing itself back together and DETERMINED flames igniting on his torn flesh and broken bone. His wide, mad eyes twitched and trembled, and a furious grin shredded his face while he pointed his flaming blade down at me. "I WILL MAKE YOU PAY FOR WHAT YOU'VE DONE!"

Those snake tattoos exploded out from Xander's twisted body, they raced down towards me. I was quick to jump back, and the serpents bit nothing but stone and dirt. That appeared to be enough for them though, because in the next instant Xander jumped right off of that flaming peak. His snakes yanked his body forward, launched him right down towards me with all their might. He landed on his feet right across from me, the ground trembled and cracked under his impact. Those snakes released their grip on the earth, but continued to loom and slither through the air.

But, before Xander and I could rush each other, more rubble rained. Between us, metal rungs dropped down. Maybe it was a cage door, maybe it was the handrail from a staircase. Whatever it was, it stuck right into the ground between me n' Xander. Stood straight up, got between us... We stared at each other then, from opposite sides of the metal bars. My heterochromia eyes narrowed with understanding, his red eyes did the same. And for just a moment, we were standing in a graveyard. His parents laid under his feet, my Granny under mine.

All the smoke and mist, all the hot and cold air had mixed with the clouds into something nasty over our heads. Dark clouds seethed, the overcast sky held until it couldn't... And then, drops of rain started to pour down. They hit the rungs, pooled and streaked down its metal form. They struck my body, dripped down my skin, started to wash the blood from my flesh. The raindrops evaporated before they could hit Xander, they were burned to steam before ever getting close to washing the blood off his hands.

I stared at him, he stared at me. Water dripped down the Heart Shaped Locket over my chest, blood trickled over the tattoo over his heart and made it impossible to read the words engraved in his skin. Then, the both of us yanked back our swords, and at once we swung. His blade came in from one side, mine from the other. And the moment DETERMINATION and fire hit those metal bars, they cleaved right through. Steel sliced like butter, and the shockwave created when our weapons crashed into one another blasted those fence chunks away from us. Destroyed the barrier between us, made us the same.

Our eyes stayed locked together, our lips peeled back and we both bared our fangs as we yanked our swords back in the wake of the sparks and embers that blasted out around their collision. We skidded a few paces apart from the shockwave, darted in at once and slashed at each other again for the same collision. More sparks and more embers, another shockwave that blew back our messy heads of hair. But we didn't skid back this time, instead we held our ground and continued to force our blades against each other in hopes that one would cut through and one of us would die.

"All the work I put in, all the time I spent, all the blood sweat and tears..!" Xander snarled through his grinding teeth. We shoved DETERMINATION against fire until we couldn't anymore, and our blades slid off one another. The moment they did, the both of us rushed forward. My shoulder slammed into his, we planted our feet and kept pushing against one another while Xander barked his fury. "And at every peak, every high point, there you are to take it all away! You blight, you stain, you..!"

"Xander you dumb mother fucker!" I cranked back my head before I whipped it forward, cracking it right into his. The bases of his horns split my forehead and drew my blood, but I didn't care. My headbutt still made Xander stumble back, giving me the opening to stomp forward and slash at his neck in an attempt to decapitate him. "You think you're the only one who's been busting his ass?!"

Xander's own blade cleaved up at the last second, striking mine and throwing my hand and my weapon up over my head. Xander lurched forward and opened his maw, screaming another wave of heat right at me. I leaned all the way back under that heat ray, planted my free hand on the ground behind me and yanked my knees to my chest just to shotgun a kick into his chest, stopping the flow of his fire breath and launching him into the air.

"Day in and day out, training 'til it felt like my soul was gonna bleed!" I flipped back up and onto my feet, holding my blade out to my side. Xander threw his arms down and sent those flaming snake whips latching onto the ground, using them to yank his body back down to the courtyard. He landed across from me, and I shoved forward, sprinting low to the ground and yanking back my saber to stab him in the chest. "Trying to learn how to spare people that I knew didn't deserve it!"

"Trying to be a better man!" I continued as I jabbed my blade at Xander's heart, only for him to side step my stab and cleave up at my head, which I threw back, allowing me to slide right under his blade and get behind him. I spun around right with him, and we both slashed just in time for our swords to clash yet again. "All for some bitter has been to ruin my fuckin' life!"

"I RUINED YOUR LIFE?!" Xander snapped, like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. He jumped back then, whipped his hand down and sent more of those explosive embers raining down towards me. I learned my lesson last time, so my wings beat and pulled me back away just as the embers started to detonate. The courtyard was alight in blasts of white light, and the moment that those blasts died down to smoke and embers, Xander fired through the dust at mach speed. He was so pissed, he couldn't form words. All he did was roar and scream as he lowered his head, blasting towards me horns first.

I pulled up my saber to slash down and slice right through his skull, when fire exploded out of Xander's back. He shot forward on jet propulsion then, his speed caught me off guard and in the next instant the both of those horns were ripping through my stomach. My eyes went wide, blood spewed out past my lips when my jaws flew open. And Xander planted his feet, threw his head up and lifted me right off my feet. His horns were sticking out of my back, my blood was dropping down onto his tongue and streaming down his face.

Xander The Gatherer lifted his head high and me higher, and while I puked red and tried to gasp with punctured lungs, the air around me crackled and popped. Suddenly, with a rumbling fwoosh! a pillar of flames exploded up from over Xander's head. He roared with all his might, it was his will that hellfire blast up around his horns and engulf me entirely. My agonized screams were drowned out in the roar of the flame and Xander's wicked cackle, my body was a writhing shadow in the ivory heat while Xander threw his arms out to his sides and basked in my pain.

Using what facial muscles hadn't been burned off to grind my teeth, I forced my one melting and regenerating hand to reach down and wrap tight around one of the molten horns that had gored me. Then, though the tornado of fire had broken away the DETERMINATION on its blade, I pulled Chara's Real Knife high over my head on a hand that was mostly charred muscle and bone. I would have roared, but my vocal cords were ash, So my jaw hung open in a silent scream as I plunged their knife straight down between those horns.

THUNK!

Xander's giddy eyes went wide, his pupils shrunk. His grin disappeared, right with that torrent of flames. Those distant eyes stared up into my trembling heterochromia orbs, and my charred fingers wrapped tight around the handle of the blade that I had driven right down through the top of Xander's skull, all the way to its base.

Rain poured down, washed over the both of us as Xander's legs gave out. We both tumbled to the ground, my scorched and skewered body slipped off those horns and I rolled a pace or two away from the brain damaged Fortune. I yanked Chara's knife out of his head when I tumbled away, there was no chance I was letting him keep it, even if he was dead. And for several long seconds, we didn't move. There was no shouting, no metal clangs, no roaring flames, no tearing pens or slashing ink. The only sound was the rain, beating down on our beaten and broken bodies.

I laid there, flat on my back, staring up at the clouds. My mouth hung open, my newly regenerated eyelids squinted painfully. Again, I thought I could see Granny's backyard. Thought I could feel a broken arm and shattered ribs, thought I could hear The Killer leaving my shattered body laying on the wet grass. Slowly, my eyes glossed over to Xander's prone body. My jaws gradually closed, my lips frowned as soon as my DETERMINATION brought them back. Out of that gaping hole in Xander's forehead, red steam was pouring. I had to cough and grumble to get my healing throat to cooperate, but after another moment I managed to get a few words out. "... Ay, Xander..? You... You alive over there, you piece'a shit..?"

Gradually, one of the hands that had dropped haphazardly in front of Xander when he hit the ground twitched with life. His lighter's flame blade had went out, he clenched his fist around it and made it disappear back into his inventory. Then, he lifted that clenched fist just a little, and he gave me the middle finger. I gave a raspy, irritated sigh. I must not have drove the blade in far enough, or maybe it was at the wrong angle. I didn't kill him, just lobotomized him for a minute or two.

Grunting and groaning, I managed to sit up. My skin was steadily forming back over the muscle and bone that had already rebuilt itself, red mist and the occasional flicker of green light had healed any major damage by the time I was sat up on my knees. In front of me, Xander shoved himself up on his hands. Red misting out of the hole in his forehead, bone reformed under skin, and then skin over the bone. And I watched as he pushed himself up onto his own knees, watched him lift his newly healed head and shoot me a glare with exhausted, reptilian eyes. His snake tattoos were glowing dim now, and my wings dangled limp on my back, laying flat over the ground behind me.

And we knelt there for another few seconds, gasping for air and feeling sheets of rain pour over us. Then, finally, Xander cocked back his hand and swung it forward. He smacked me across the face, slapped my head to the side... His hand fell limp, there was another pause. I slowly turned my head back to him, pulled back my own hand, and slapped him across the face. Another short pause, and his hand cracked into my cheek again. Then, my hand swung back up and slapped him. Soon enough, we were kneeling there in the raining, beating each other's faces back and forth with lefts and rights. Smacking each other, over and over and over...

As we smacked the sense back into one another, we started to rise up off the ground. Or legs shifted, we got to one knee. Slapped each other two dozen more times, then got up to wobbly knees... Soon enough we were standing at our full height, and the moment we were, the both of us reached forward. I wrapped a hand around the back of his head and he wrapped one around the back of mine, and with our free hands we just started hammering elbow strikes right into each other's faces.

I guess it hurt, Xander's elbow snapping my nose to the side and splitting my lip. Breaking my orbital socket, tearing open my eyebrow. But, I didn't notice. All I felt was my own elbow crashing into his face, the vibration of bone giving way under my strikes. The warm blood that spattered onto my arm, the crunch of his front teeth folding back... And finally, once we were both snarling and seething like rabid dogs again, his elbow flew in at my jaw and my mouth snapped open wide. Xander recoiled as my teeth crunched down right on the bend of his arm, and my furious, mostly red eyes tore through his stunned serpent stare.

With my jaws on his arm and my arm wrapped behind his head I yanked Xander forward, stepping to the side all the while and releasing my bite to slip behind him. Before he could react, I snapped my arms shut around his upper body, trapping his arms tight to his body and locking my hands together over his chest. My wings yanked up over my head, and I snarled. "I'm getting a soul today, Xander! And if it ain't Chara's, it's gonna be yours!"

"Better men have tried!" Xander assured as he whipped his head back in attempt to crack me in the face with it, but I moved my own head to the side to dodge. Snarling, I whipped my wings down, and with an updraft of DETERMINED winds I launched up into the sky with Gatherer in tow. We fired up into the pouring rain at mach speed, I kept a tight grip on Xander even as he writhed. Even as his snakes came back to life, even as they coiled and scorched my arms and sunk their molten fangs into my skin.

We launched higher and higher, the air got thin. In the next instant, we were blasting up through the clouds. Out of the rain, through the overcast and into sunlight. And for just a second... It felt like everything stopped. Xander stopped his flailing, the snakes stopped biting, my wings stopped flapping. Covered in rain and blood and soot, Xander and I stared out over the horizon above the clouds and felt the warm sun on our skin. The light reflected in my eyes, I took in the beauty of this sight with someone I loathed... Before I pursed my lips, I tightened my grip, and I threw my head back. We flipped in air, our heads pointed down into those crackling black clouds, and the beat of my wings sent us both firing back down into The Dark.

We punched a hole right through the clouds, sent a single ray of sunshine falling down over us like a spotlight while we fired at mach speed down towards the courtyard below. We spun in a corkscrew, spiraled at a devastating velocity. DETERMINED mist and vicious white flames followed close behind us, we were shooting down so fast that those snakes were washed away in the whipping winds. And as we plummeted down towards some mass of stone that I didn't take the time to recognize, Xander's jaw unhinged. Even through the wind tearing at my ears I could hear his furious roar, but I didn't care. He took Chara away, I didn't care how much he screamed or begged. He was gonna pay for it.

At the absolute last second, my grip released. My wings spread wide. The updraft caught me, I just barely managed to pivot and glide over the ground, pulling up and escaping that terminal descent. Less lucky than me was Xander The Gatherer, who's body fired like a bullet right through that stone mass. Some statue or something, I didn't know and I didn't care. I sent him punching right through it, it blew apart in concrete chunks. The torched garden surrounding that statue was obliterated, the entire courtyard blasted inward into a crater, and at the center was where Xander had made his impact.

Any window that hadn't already shattered blew apart, the fronts of most of the buildings that surrounded us sunk inward towards the massive crater. Dirt exploded up into the air, a massive shockwave of power blasted up into the sky and forced that hole in the clouds to widen. I threw my hand up to shield my eyes from debris, my wings caught some of the brutal updraft and dragged me higher into the air. But, after a few long moments... The ground stopped rumbling. All the shattered stone clattered to the dirt. And as the smoke cleared, my heterochromia eyes locked on to Xander's prone body. The music faded out.

"... K... Kill... Angel..." Was about the only thing Xander could stammer. One of his horns had broken off, his body could hardly do more than tremble. Broken bones, spilt blood... It was all he could do to arch his neck, lift his heavy head up out of the dirt and try to spot the enemy with his blurry vision. His weak hands slowly clenched into the sand... "H... Have, to... Avenge..."

Finally, his eyes focused in on something. And the moment they did, Xander stopped. His shaky hands released their grip on the ground, his trembling snarl relaxed into an expression that was astounded... And heartbroken. His pupils, now returned to their normal shape, and his irises now purple again... His eyes laid on one stone head, laying on its side in the dirt with him. Immortalized in stone, the face of Clifford The BRAVE stared right back at Xander at the heart of this devastation. And as tears started to fill Xander's mortified eyes, his lips struggled to move. He whispered, "... Clifford..?"

With new found urgency and desperation, Xander clawed into the ground. He dragged his body forward, he crawled through the dirt towards what remained of Cliff's statue. Grit his teeth, forced air past the lump forming in his throat. And finally, after chipping his nails against dirt and rock and covering his hands in filth, he was able to reach out. Carefully he took that statue's head into his hands, rested his hands over both sides of its face... And a chunk of its jaw split, sliding off and falling into the dirt.

Xander shook his head, tears overflowed down his beaten and battered face. He bit his bottom lip to try to stop it, but sobs forced themselves out of his trembling chest anyway. His entire body was shaking, his snake tattoos had gone dark and his skin had gone cold. He pulled Cliff's head in, desperately hugged it to his chest and tried to feel something. Anything. But, there was nothing there. Just a cold, broken piece of rock. Kneeling in the dirt and hugging that head tight, Xander slowly looked to his left and to his right. All around him, broken chunks of that statue. Cliff's memory, Cliff's dream, Cliff's immortalization. Broken, destroyed, gone. Just like his Unbreakable Shield.

More tears poured down Xander's face as he shook his head. His mouth was hanging open now, lips pulled down into a mortified frown. And those wide, tear filled purple eyes drifted down to the head in his hands again, just before Xander folded. He leaned forward, curled his body around all that he had left of Cliff, and he cried.

Quietly, my feet touched the ground a few paces in front of Xander. My brows furrowed, I tilted my head and stared confused at the writhing, wailing ball he'd curled up into. Skeptically, I took a step forward. I dared walk into the sunlight that shun down from above, stepped out of the rain and got just a little closer to Xander. My head turned left and right, I looked at the broken chunks of statue... Statue? Who would Xander have ever felt the need to make a statue out of?

"... Y-you... You idiot..!" Xander's weak, trembling growl got my attention. I looked back to him and I watched him start to uncurl just a little. I could almost see the stone he was holding... Xander didn't lift his head, didn't look away from the debris in his arms while he managed to speak. "I-I don't care about the g-gang..! I don't care about losing Fortune City..! D-don't you get it..?!"

Xander's head whipped up, his violet eyes shined with indignation as he glared at me. Tears streamed down his face, dripped off his chin and landed on the stone face he held in his arms... A stone face I recognized. My eyes slowly widened, more green flooded my right. The halo on my head burned bright once more as guilt twisted my stomach and understanding washed over my mind. When I saw the head in Xander's lap, when I saw the words on his chest, it all made sense.

Clifford The BRAVE

My Unbreakable Shield

"The only thing I ever cared about was him..!" Xander's voice broke further, there was no power or composure behind his words. I was slack jawed, trying to get words out and failing. Shaking my head slowly... Xander's wide, agonized eyes punched a hole in my heart, and as more tears streamed down his face, he lamented to the one he hated the most. "And you took him from me..."

"... X-Xander, I..." Slowly, I dropped to one knee in front of Xander. I wrapped my right hand carefully around the heart shaped locket on my chest, and my scarred left hand glowed green as I slowly reached out to him.

"Don't touch me!" Xander hissed, daring take one hand off that broken face just to slap my hand away. He gulped and failed to swallow the lump in his throat, and then he snarled in that cracking, sob choked voice. "You t-think you can just, say sorry! That you can, be good and nice now a-and that it'll just, fix everything! But it won't! It won't because Clifford's still dead!"

"..." I let my scarred hand drop to the dirt right with my gaze. I stared into the sand, and I tried to sort my thoughts. I knew I still hated Xander, I knew that this didn't excuse the horrible things he had put me and those I loved through. I knew I was still furious with him. But, even still, the KIND half of my dual soul ached as he cried. Knowing that Xander was in all this pain, over a man I had almost let myself forget. A man that I killed when I didn't have to...

"Everything I did, I-I was just trying to do right by him..!" Xander hung his head, clenched his eyes shut and let more tears overflow. Inhaling sharply through his clenched teeth, he just kept letting words overflow. All the pain that had been eating his insides, now that the anger was out of the way the true feelings poured out. "B-but now, my people hate me, Eden hates me..! M-my house is fuckin' broken again, and you're still alive! How did things get this screwed up..?!"

"... Look, Xander, I... I know things are fucked right now." I shook my head, took a deep breath and tried to get something out. It was obvious this might be my one and only chance to build a bridge, to get through to an old friend. Again, I carefully lifted my KIND cracked hand and started to reach out. Even someone as awful as Xander deserved a chance, right..? "I know you hate me, but... If we work together, I know we can figure this-"

"Oh for god's sake, just shut the fuck up Angel..!" Xander rolled those bloodshot eyes while he slapped my hand away. Then, he looked back to me with those miserable violet eyes, and he went on. "There is no we! Hasn't been since you stabbed me and everyone else in the back..! And if you think I'm gonna, buy into your s-stupid nice guy act just because my life is in shambles, you're even more of a jackass than I thought!"

"Xander, please-" I lifted my hands and pleaded that he hear me out, but he didn't. Instead, he shoved one hand into the dirt, and he forced himself to stand on shaky legs. He held that stone head under one arm while he shouted down at me, fresh tears still overflowing.

"Hate is an understatement..! I loathe you, Angel! I despise you!" His free hand clenched into a tight fist while he screamed. It trembled and shook, his entire body vibrated with emotion. And my eyes narrowed, my jaw tightened. I fought the urge to shout at him that I felt the same way, I tried with all my might to be KIND while he went on. "If I had the means, if I had the power..! If, I! If..."

My eyebrows rose slowly as Xander's indignant expression started to relax. I tilted my head a little, gave him a vague pleading look because I could see clear on his face that he'd just remembered something important. And finally, the tears stopped streaming down his face. To my dismay... Xander cracked a shaky smile. Raising my hand slowly from where I knelt before him, I spoke first. "Xander. Don't."

"... You've left me with no other options, Angel." That tremble was disappearing from Xander's voice, the misery was washing off his face. The spotlight over our heads was closing in, Darkness surrounded us...

"Xander!" I shouted as Chara's Real Knife appeared in my grasp again and I lunged up at him, but I was too slow. He jumped back out of my reach, into the rain and darkness. I watched with wide eyes as he managed one last wicked smile, sticking his landing and throwing his free hand out to his side. In its grasp, a remote appeared. A detonator, one that would activate the end of the world.

"It's not going to work!" I shouted frantically, but I didn't make any sudden moves. I couldn't, Xander was holding that button up over his head and giving me a warning glare and a knowing smile. So I just stood there, reaching out in vain with an arm that was cracked red and green. The clouds closed over my head, I felt rain on my body again as The Dark consumed us both. "You can't control a Seven Souled God! You're playing with power you can't understand!"

"So what if I am?" Xander shrugged, rain and tears alike trickling down his despondent expression. His eyes were sunken in and swollen from his crying and his exhaustion, no light reflected in their amethyst shade. Without any will to PERSEVERE, his fake smile had melted away and I could see the hopelessly miserable individual underneath. "So what if this blows up in my face, so what if I die? Look around you, Angel. I'm done. Everything I have is gone. So what do I have to lose?"

"There's still hope for you! For all of us!" I cried out desperately, shaking my head in a frantic denial of Xander's hopeless words. My mind raced, I called upon all the KINDNESS I could and I tried with all my might to find an answer. A reason, something for that miserable bastard to hope for. "We can work this out! You, me, Anny, Lexi! We can be friends again! Don't throw that future away!"

"Blow it out your ass, Angel." Xander responded without much emotion at all. He lifted that heavy remote like it was weightless, rested his thumb over the button and narrowed his tired eyes at it thoughtfully... His other arm held the head of Cliff's statue tight, and with whatever power they had left, the violet eyes of the last living Fortune darted up to me. "And when you see The Ghoul in hell, make sure he knows who sent ya."

I reached out, my left arm shined a bright green. I clenched my eyes shut tight, and I forced my thoughts back to the graveyard. To the boy across the fence, to the umbrella he gave me. What I'd give for that umbrella now... More, more memories. Shove away the ones with Chara, forget the ones that hurt! Go further back! The dinners together, the homerun derbies, the late night talks, every day together in the mansion..!

Green light flashed, and Xander's eyebrows rose. His expression didn't change much, he didn't look furious our indignant when the power of my KINDNESS washed over his body and stopped his thumb in place. My desperate eyes snapped open wide, they shined green and red. Just like I'd done to Frisk, I grabbed ahold of Xander with my KINDNESS. I forced myself to dig up the will to protect him, and I shielded him with my soul.

"... Hm." Xander's eyes glossed over as much of him as they could, he tried to inspect his body but found that he could not move. Then, he looked across the destroyed courtyard to me, and he blinked those unbothered eyes. Finally... He cracked a smile. Just a little one. "You really expect me to believe you wanna protect me, Angel?"

"I. Have. To." I answered, my voice trembling with tension. I took slow, careful steps towards him now. Forced my brain to focus on any good memory involving Xander, and not the ones where he hurt me. Like when he made Frisk betray me, or when he- No, stop it! Only good memories! If my KINDNESS gave out now, DETERMINATION wouldn't be able to save us! I had to hold him there, I had to protect him, even if he took Chara away! Fuck, stop thinking about that!

"Well, you were right about one thing Angel. You have worked hard to be a better man." Xander remained unbothered, he could see the stress sweat on my forehead. He could see the strain in my every step, he knew I didn't want to show him KINDNESS after all that he'd done. No one did, it's why he pulled out the button in the first place. That knowing smile grew... "This is kinda poetic, isn't it? My whole life, nobody actually cared about me. Now, the only way to stop me is to love me. And you can't do it."

"Shut up..!" I growled, taking another step and then another after that. I kept my hand raised, even as the green in my cracks flickered and wavered. Another step, I was almost there! Remember the good things, forget what he took from me!

"... Friends... That... Doesn't sound too terrible..."

I just had to hold him long enough to get that controller out of his hand..!

"Uh, well... I'm... I'm glad you're not dead."

Just long enough to cut off his hand!

"Your heart's racing... Is that my fault..?"

Or maybe his FUCKIN' HEAD!

DETERMINATION ignited in a blade over the knife in my off hand, which I yanked back furiously. The green light holding Xander there reflected in my scarlet eyes... Before it disappeared. Vanished in an instant, right with the halo over my head. Right with the green half of my soul. And I cleaved at his neck, tried to chop his head clean off... Only for him to duck. Lean back out of the range of my swing, let my blade cut a stray hair off his head.

My eyes were going wide, the world was moving in slow motion. Xander's sunken in, dead eyes looked right into mine while his bitter smile laid plain on his face. And as his thumb effortlessly pushed in the button to destroy the world, he reiterated what he'd said before. "You've worked hard to become a better man, Angel... But we all get what we deserve."

Click.

---

Tak tak tak tak! BOOM!

Metal doors exploded apart left and right, rooms were blasted open in the wake of Lexi's ice. She'd blow open any door she saw with the swing of her scythe, hastily glance inside to see if it looked like a lab with a big iron door on its back wall, and mutter a cuss word and keep sprinting down the halls when she saw it wasn't the room she was looking for.

The Science and Research Center was in shambles after Lexi's relentless looting, kicked in doors and iced over walls were left in her wake. Her feet pounded down the halls, cold sweat dripped down her forehead as she sprinted through what looked to her like a labyrinth of twisting halls and meaningless doors. Faster, she had to be faster! If she got Chara's soul back now, Xander's plan would be stopped! If she failed, either Xander was going to get himself killed or he was going to get everyone killed!

Finally, Lexi rounded a corner and spotted a black burn on one of those steel walls, right across from a sliding door that was struggling to close. It would get about halfway shut, stick on the pile of dust laying between the two doors, open all the way, then try to shut again for the same result. Her eyes lit up with hope, and Lexi darted right to that doorway, skidding to a stop in front of it. The automated doors slid right open for her, and she barely spared that pile of dust in the doorway a passing glance. Whoever that dust belonged to, she hoped they were resting easy now. Lexi wouldn't be afforded that luxury.

"Finally!" Lexi exclaimed as her eyes locked onto the steel doors looming at the back of the lab. She didn't bother examining anything else, not the computers or the huge test tube in the corner. She sprinted right over the glass shards and strange fluid drying on the floor, opened her free hand and summoned Hacker's ID in her frosty grip. As fast as she could, she darted right up to one of the scanners beside that door and slammed his keycard down on top of it...

For a second that felt like an hour, Lexi held her breath. She watched those doors with desperate, pleading eyes... And then, they budged. Locks clicked open, hydraulics hissed, and two feet of titanium started to slide open. A rainbow of light shined out from between those doors as they parted, and Lexi's cyan eyes went wide. She stood there, ultimate power laid out before her. Seven human souls, suspended in glass tubes behind steel bars. Floating, glowing, waiting... They were all here, and Lexi couldn't be sure if that meant she was saved or damned.

Her eyes scanned the monitors and keypads laid out below that glass and metal wall, she tried and failed at making sense of any of it. Grimacing, Lexi understood then that she was the wrong person for the job. Angel was the nerd, if he was here he could find someway to shut the system down and safely extract the souls but, her? She didn't know the first thing about this stuff! Fuck it, no time! Brute force! If she couldn't save the souls, she could sure as hell smash them before Xander got the chance to put them to use!

So Lexi The Predator planted her feet. She wrapped both hands tight around her scythe, she yanked that blade back over her shoulder and let frost form over the metal... But, her eyes locked onto that red soul floating at the center of the six, and her pupils shrunk with despair. Her cruel brain reminded her of that misery on Angel's face, of the words he had screamed at Anthony, at the way he had despaired... She shut her eyes and shook her head, lowered her scythe and adjusted her footing. Okay, okay! Just one! She just had to smash one, then she could tear the wall open and grab Chara's soul! This wasn't over!

So, now with even more haste, Lexi pivoted towards the cyan soul at the far right end of the seven souls. She threw up her scythe, pointed its frosty blade at that soul and tried to ignore the way its light reflected in her eyes. But, just before she could fire some spike of ice right through the metal and glass and into that light blue heart, an alarm made her jump. The mechanical shriek caught her anxious body so off guard that she yanked on her scythe, and that blast of ice stabbed right through the wall instead of the PATIENCE soul.

Red light flashed on emergency bulbs on the walls, an ear piercing "EEENK! EEENK! EEENK!" blasted out of speakers so loud that the room vibrated. And, to Lexi's despair... The soul she'd been aiming at was sucked down into the tube, disappearing down into a network of pipes hidden beneath the floor. Frantically her eyes jumped across the line of souls, she watched the orange heart that was on the far left side be sucked down next. It was all she could do in that moment to shout out, "No! NO!"

Lexi's head swiveled left and right, she watched a deep blue heart and a violet one get yanked down next. With everything she had, she pulled her scythe back over her shoulder once more. She still had time, there was still a chance! Her eyes locked onto the scarlet soul right at the center, the last one that would be pulled down. The gold and green souls were disappearing down the tubes... Lexi shook her head slowly as she swung her scythe, and with it a wave of ice cleaved forward towards that scarlet heart. With the weight of the world on her shoulders, Lexi The Predator only managed to cry out three words over the screaming alarms. "I'm sorry, Chara..!"

Metal screeched and glass shattered, a frigid wave of ultrasharp ice cut right through those defenses. All of Lexi's might, everything she had to destroy the red soul that they had all came to save. Her slash cleaved closer and closer, cut through the rows of empty glass tubes... But, the suction kicked in too fast. Chara's soul was dragged down, just beneath Lexi's slash. Ice cleaved through the glass right above it, missed the top of that scarlet heart by barely a hair's width... Lexi's last ditch effort missed its mark, and the seventh soul disappeared down into the floor.

"Where are they going?!" Lexi snarled without wasting any time despairing over her miss, her eyes darting to the floor beneath her. She could see the shine of those souls blasting up through the tile, racing across the ground beneath her to some unknown destination. She sprinted right out of the soul containment chamber, turned her head and watched those seven lights shift to the left as soon as they were passed the door. And her eyes lifted, her mortified stare landed right on the glowing green test tube she'd ignored on entry... And she saw the skeleton floating inside.

"What're ya gonna do, twitchy?"

"It's been awhile. But I think, one last time... I'm gonna bring Judgement."

Error Sans. One of the original horrors of this world, before DoubleKids turned the multiverse on its head. His death had marked the start of a change, when The Angel destroyed him all those years ago the natural order was upset. The food chain tangled, the pecking order fell apart, chaos reigned... All of this multiverse nonsense started with him. But Error was supposed to be dead. So what in god's name was he doing here?! How long had Xander kept this in his back pocket?!

No time! Lexi could see those seven lights racing towards his pod, she watched seven slots open at the bottom of his test tube. And as all seven of those human souls were pushed right up into the green slime Error Sans had been preserved in, Lexi dove forward. She roared at the top of her lungs, pulled back the scythe she had been gifted as a girl. And she launched at Error's pod, started to swing with every bit of strength she had... Only for a brutal white flash to blind her. Ivory light engulfed the laboratory, a shockwave of power blew that test tube apart and smashed into Lexi The Predator, engulfing her in its flash and sending her body exploding back through the wall.

---

BOOM!

I threw one hand up to shield my eyes, folded my wings in so that they wouldn't catch that wave of holy force. And with my one winced open eye, I watched in horror as a tower of white light blasted up into the sky. A pillar of light that pierced the heavens, blew the clouds away in the blink of an eye. I was forced to skid back on my heels, my knees bent under the overwhelming pressure pouring down from above. Light was shining down on my filthy, blood stained body. I felt the eyes of god upon me...

Slowly, I lowered my arms. My wide eyes and horror shrunk pupils stared into that twisting tower of power as seven different colors swirled within it. Cyan, orange, purple, blue, green, gold... Red. All streams of energy, blasting up through that beam of white and curling within it. The Science and Research Center was totally blown apart, its rubble scattered far and wide. My eyes darted to the body of The Predator, flying backwards to my left.

Hastily, my wings beat. I launched myself to the side, got right in Lexi's path and reached out. Her body slammed into mine, I wrapped my arms around her and skidded back on my heels... My knees bent, and finally after we stopped skidding, they gave out and I dropped onto them. My eyes, now green once more, glossed over Lexi's furrowed brows and gritting teeth. Pain was written all over her expression as I carefully laid her down, keeping one arm wrapped around her waist and another behind her head. My head snapped up, my frantic Angel eyes landed on Xander The Gatherer, and I screamed at him. "XANDER, YOU IDIOT! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU'VE DONE?!"

Xander didn't answer, though. He just stood there, staring right up into god's light. Those eight shining colors reflected in his violet eyes, his lips remained parted slightly. His expression did not reflect fear, nor did it reflect joy. He didn't look like he thought he had won or lost, like he assumed he was saved or doomed. He just stood there, bathing in the light that he had dared create. Letting power crash down over him, letting whipping winds pull at his hair and what remained of his clothes. One of his arms hung limp, while the other kept ahold of Clifford's severed head.

"I-I... I tried, Angel..." Lexi's voice caught my attention, and my wide eyes slowly lowered down to her. She had managed to wince one eye open, reaching up and grabbing a weak hold of my shoulder. She shook her head slowly, and choked out a few more words through the pain and lump in her throat. "R-really, I did... But, I... I wasn't..."

"No, Lexi, it's not your fault..!" I assured, quickly shaking my head. I wanted to reassure her, but despair was so obvious on my face. My family, my home, my Chara... All up in smoke. All because I wasn't good enough. I carefully took the hand Lexi placed on my shoulder in my own, and I held onto it desperately as my eyes drifted back up to that dimming pillar of light. While my eyes locked onto the shadow hidden within the light, I squeezed her hand and she squeezed mine, and I admitted mostly to myself while I slowly shook my head... "... It's my fault."

Xander pursed his lips as that light began to fade away, narrowed his eyes thoughtfully while the whipping winds died down. The world stopped shaking, instead it stood still. In awe, just like the three of us. We all stared at the being slowly coming into view... A massive shadow, wrapped in three pairs of wings. An angel of death, a god floating over the earth... One of the seraphim.

"Errorphim!" Fearlessly, Xander called up into the sky. Covered in blood and soot, a king before a god, and he dared give the almighty a name. His expression did not change, his face reflected nothing while he watched the light fade away. There, laid bare before the world... Was Error Sans. His now massive body curled into a delicate ball, floating there with three different sets of wings laying protectively over him. But, on Xander's call... The being twitched. Those wings shifted. Programming placed in its head, ingrained in its code for three long years, was reacting to Xander's call. "I have created you for one purpose! I am your master, and there is only one thing I desire!"

Slowly, that ball was starting to unfold. My heart sunk, my stomach churned when I watched that thing move. Gradually, its wings started to open. Its arms, wrapped tight around its knees, released their grip. Its legs began straightening out, it uncoiled from the fetal position on the demand of its creator. It was in the creature's DNA, carved into its very being. The Gatherer's will was its will. His wish... Was its command. Xander The Gatherer turned his body, lifted his arm to point lazily over at Lexi and I. "Destroy Angel The Hacker and Lexi The Predator."

I knelt there, Lexi laid in my arms. And the both of us stared with wide, mortified eyes. Trembling, gripped by despair... As Errorphim unfolded his body completely. His wings spread slowly, revealing the powerful body beneath. What was once a little skeleton frame was now an eight foot tall skeletal monster, all that remained of his previous design was the black basketball shorts on his lower body and the torn up hoodie still clinging to his now much wider shoulders and the spines that jutted out of them. His bones were still an onyx black, but the blue strings that had once wrapped him had vanished. The glitches on his body, the error codes around his eye sockets... Gone. Washed away in a heavenly light.

"Go now." Xander's voice commanded, and those eye sockets shifted. Gradually... Errorphim opened his eyes, and a rainbow of color shined from within. My wings curled protectively around Lexi and myself, my Adam's apple bounced when I gulped through a dry mouth. And as me n' Lexi stared up into the eyes of a god, Xander's voice was the only sound in the world.

"And let my will be done."

---

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E_R_R_O_R

Pyre by Son Lux started playing.

Just as quick as those eyes opened, they snapped shut again. Suddenly, another shockwave of power was exploding out from Errorphim's body. I held Lexi tighter, leaned my shoulder forward and shielded the both of us from the whipping winds with one of my wings. The three of us watched as Errorphim lifted his hands, wrapping them around his skull and gripping his own head like he was afraid it was going to burst. He folded over himself, his six wings spread wide. The black and blue feathers on the uppermost set of wings shifted and poofed, the leathery flesh of the bat-like middle set of wings crawled and pulsed, and the skeleton wings that were the bottom set rattled and trembled.

"Oh boy, whoever could have predicted this..." Lexi's strained, sarcastic voice was about the only silver lining in the world right about then. Unfortunately, I wasn't jolly enough to reward her joke with a laugh.

Instead, my eyes darted back over to Xander, and I shouted through the tearing winds. "For fuck's sake Xander, that thing better have an off switch!"

Xander didn't answer. Didn't even look at me. He just stared up at Errorphim, watched as he doubled over and tensed his entire body. As the code surrounding him shifted and warped, as the sky above flickered and glitched... Xander reached into his pocket after he carelessly dropped the remote he'd been holding, and he fished out a beat up pack of cigarettes. His eyes didn't leave the writhing god overhead as he lifted that pack to his mouth, taking one of the few cigarettes that remained in it between his teeth and pulling the pack away. He jammed however many cigarettes he had left into his pocket, and then he pulled his hand back out. He lifted his fingers to the tip of the cancer stick in his mouth, and he snapped, creating a spark. This spark ignited his cigarette, and he lowered his hand as he took one long, deep drag...

Suddenly, Errorphim threw his head back. He threw his arms out to his sides, he let his wings straighten out in a sudden jerking motion. And from his rigid body, bolts of power exploded. Multicolored lightning, blues and reds, all shades that matched the seven human souls that had made him into a god. Those bolts crashed into the earth, tore through rubble and punched through the buildings that still managed to stand. Gatherer's tower creaked, teetered... And when Errorphim's eyes opened again, they were the yellow, red, and blue colors that I remembered were in the skeleton's eye sockets when I thought I killed him.

Xander rested his hand on his hip, kept Cliff's head under his arm while he watched Errorphim's body relax again. Slowly... The skelegod turned his head, and his twisted eyes landed on The Gatherer. And as Xander watched a familiar, wicked grin pull up Errorphim's face, he didn't flinch. He just reached up with his spare hand, took his cigarette between his index and middle finger. He pulled that cancer stick out past his lips, and he breathed out a stream of grey fog. Then, staring into the eyes of a mad god and already knowing his fate, he stated his last words without fear. "Make it quick."

Errorphim obliged without a moment's hesitation. He waved one arm at Xander, and with the flick of his wrist, scarlet bones appeared already in motion. In the blink of an eye, three massive bone spikes struck down from the sky above and plunged right into The Gatherer. They tore through his chest, punched through his core and his abdomen and shot right out of his back, sticking into the dirt behind him. Xander was knocked right off his feet, leaning back and suspended on the bone spikes that Errorphim had used to smite him.

Eyes wide and blood overflowing down his bottom lip and out from his nostrils, Xander Fortune struggled to even lift his head and see what had happened to him. He stared at his own wounds, his right arm dropped limp and let the head of Cliff's statue plop uselessly into the dirt. His left hand, trembling and weak, slowly curled. Brought that cigarette up, placed it between his lips as his head slowly leaned back. And as his pained, trembling stare landed on Lexi and I, he inhaled that poison smoke one last time.

"XANDER!" Lexi cried out, daring to try and shove herself to her feet. I wrapped my arms tight around her and held her back, and tears overflowed from her eyes as she reached out to her very first friend. I clenched my eyes shut tight, looked away from Xander's expression as the light flickered in his eyes and held onto Lexi with all that I had.

"Alas, poor Gatherer." My eyes snapped open wide, however, when I heard Errorphim's voice. It was clear now, free of the tone and pitch shifting glitches that had plagued Error's speech. His body cured, his mind cleared, Errorphim held one open palm out to Xander's trembling, brutalized body. And I dared look over my shoulder as an orb of crackling light suddenly appeared around Xander, engulfing him. "I knew him well."

Lexi screamed, but I didn't hear it. I couldn't hear anything. All I could do was kneel there and watch that orb of light engulf the man that I tried my best not to hate... And then fade. When that light disappeared, The ground it had taken in had vanished. The bones that had pierced Xander's body, the cigarette that'd been in his mouth, the stone head by his side, all ERASED in an instant. But, strangely enough... Xander's body still laid there. Flat on his back, in a rapidly growing pool of his own blood.

Looking back up to Errorphim, I could see even he was perplexed by this. Was Xander supposed to vanish like all else in that sphere? Had Errorphim tried to ERASE him? If so, why didn't it work? Errorphim must not have been too bothered by it, Xander was dead to rights regardless. So, he turned those glowing eyes back towards me, and I felt my breath hitch in my throat when he flashed me that wicked smile. "Pencil pusher... It's been a year if it's been a day."

Silently, I let go of Lexi. I forced myself to rise on weak knees, and she scrambled up to her feet, breaking into a sprint towards Xander's motionless body. Errorphim didn't even bother moving his eyes to watch her run, his stare was focused entirely on me. And while Lexi dropped to her knees beside Xander's prone body, I took a deep breath. My wings spread wide behind me, my fists clenched tight, and I answered that ghost from my past. "And if its been a year it hasn't been long enough."

"You sure do look screwed up these days... How long was I in there?" Errorphim's glowing pupils glossed down to the back of his own hand while he spoke. His sockets narrowed some, he examined his blackened fingers. No strings, no glitches... His smile grew, and he looked back down to me. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he shrugged his shoulders while he leaned his head to one side. "Oh, I guess it doesn't matter. Because now, I have all the time in the world."

"Angel!" A new voice cut in then, and my head whipped down to spot the frantic monochromatic child standing at my feet. If they could, I thought CORE Frisk might have been yanking the hair out of their head. I shared that sentiment, I understood the gravity of this just as much as they did. They looked up at me with pleading void eyes, and they shouted frantically. "Do you have any idea what Error's ERASE power is going to be like amped up on seven human souls?! Look, I don't care what you have to do, but please! You have to stop him NOW!"

I stared at CORE Frisk with shrunken pupils, took just a moment to consider my options... Before I clenched my fists. My head turned, my eyes darted back up to Errorphim and I released a primal roar as scarlet light exploded up around me. Red flames blasted through the cracks on my arm, the halo on my head broke away in the crimson updraft and my soul became entirely red. A second pair of wings fired out of my back, and I ascended to Cherub at the heart of The Gatherer's empire for the second time.

Red flames breaking out over my body, my wings crashed down and sent me blasting up into the air. I fired like a rocket, blasted up towards Errorphim at mach speed while I yanked back my vibrating left fist. I sent my punch crashing forward, right at his smug smirk..! Only for my body to stop dead. My eyes widened, cyan light had washed over me and encapsulated me entirely. Errorphim tilted his head, looked around my fist while I struggled in vain against the PATIENT energy restraining me. And without any urgency, he spoke again. "You know, pencil pusher... I owe you an apology."

"W-what..?!" I struggled to say through grinding teeth, trying with all my might to shove that fist forward... But to no avail. I was suspended there, effortlessly trapped by power beyond my understanding. And I stared with wide, twitching eyes into the face of a cruel god.

"I blamed you for my transformation. I thought it was your reckless actions that made me into Error Sans in the first place... But I remember now." Errorphim's eyes narrowed some, they shined with seven different lights. He didn't bother moving out of the way of my punch, he knew I had no hope of breaking free from his hold. There was understanding on his face then. Acceptance... And sadism. He spoke quietly, like he only wanted me to hear it. "I did it to myself. I got my happy ending, I had my easy life laid out in front of me... And then I played around with powers I didn't understand, and I trapped myself in the antivoid. Error Sans was created by my own mistake. Isn't that ironic?"

Suddenly, the air behind Errorphim ignited in orange light. Skeletal fists made of BRAVE energy, and the both of them launched forward and slammed massive punches into me. The dual haymakers from those two gargantuan fists sent me blasting out of that PATIENT hold, and I fired down into the ground in the blink of an eye. My body hit the dirt, and I dug right through it, cleaving a trench through the earth with my impact. For yards and yards I dug through stone and sand until friction finally dragged me to a stop. And I laid there, slumped forward with my limbs and my wings sprawled out to my sides and my head hanging low, gasping for breath...

"But, y'know something, pencil pusher? That entire time I was trapped, seething in the antivoid..." I managed to lift my head as Errorphim spoke, panting red fog that matched the DETERMINATION steaming off my injured body. And as I glared up at Errorphim, now with a streak of blood running over my face from my hairline, he turned his head. His powerful eyes pivoted, and when they landed on CORE Frisk, the omnipresent child froze. Errorphim's eyes narrowed... "Nobody came to save me. Isn't that interesting?"

"... Y-you were a dangerous and unstable Sans, even before you became Error." Seeing what Errorphim was insinuating, CORE dared defend their actions. Or, lack thereof. Their form was shaking, their fake body was tense with fear, but they still managed to glare weakly up at this new god that challenged them. "I-I could not allow someone like you inside The Omega!"

"Oh yeah, I can't think'a one outcome worse than that." Errorphim's eyes darted to the side, he grinned a little wider while he chuckled. Then, just as I managed to dig myself out of the dirt and stand up on solid ground, he reached out. Not to me, but to CORE. And then... Something outstanding happened. A display of godly power, an ability beyond reality and beyond reason. Beyond space, beyond time... Monochrome color began pouring out of the world around us, and into Errorphim's open palm.

Winds whipped by, pulled at my wings as color was dragged out of the multiverse. Lexi lifted her head, she had to dig her knees into the ground and hold Xander's motionless body tighter to keep either of them from being dragged in by that suction. I stared with wide, haunted eyes, my feet planted in the dirt as the colors swirling into Errorphim's palm switched from monochrome to purple and blue. Brown hair, tan skin... The colors stopped swirling, the winds stopped dragging. And there, in Errorphim's hand, was a Frisk. All the pieces that had been scattered, put back together by a god's will.

What was an omnipresent, totally infinite being just seconds ago was now a helpless child, being held up by the front of their shirt by an angry god. The human formerly known as CORE Frisk stared up into Errorphim's sneer with wide scarlet eyes. Their trembling, sweaty hands wrapped around his long, boney fingers. They could feel the light on their skin, they could feel their clothes, they could feel their body... They could feel death creeping closer. And as cold sweat poured down their face, they slowly shook their head and managed to force out just one word. "Don't."

"Heh. Irony." Errorphim's glowing pupils darted to the side again, and he carelessly tossed Frisk back through the air. Their arms and legs started to flail, they struggled for balance and felt gravity's pull for the first time in millennia... Before a red tipped bone fired down from above, skewering them. It crashed right through their chest, punched out their back and stuck into the dirt. they were pinned to the ground then, dangling limp on that one spike just like Xander had. Another helpless creature that Errorphim had chosen to smite.

When Frisk's head slowly leaned back, they looked right at me. there was blood trickling out past their lips, pouring up out of their nostrils... And they were crying. I had both hands on my head, baffled and despairing as I watched a child be killed right before my eyes. My mind raced, I tried to think of something, anything to salvage this..! And then I remembered the conversation CORE and I had on Predator's ship before. When I asked them what they would want me to write them if I were to die, and what they answered... I stepped forward, cupped my hands around my mouth as Errorphim reached out his open palm to the skewered sinner, and I screamed out. "I FORGIVE-!"

Crash.

An orb of white light exploded to life around Frisk, and when it vanished... They were gone. ERASED, right with the ground at their feet and the bone that had punctured them. It was as if they'd never existed at all. I felt my knees go out, I dropped to the ground and let my arms fall limp. And I just sat there, staring at the crater where CORE Frisk had just been. Wide eyed, slack jawed, trying to understand what was happening...

"Ahh... Talk about a long time coming." Errorphim's jovial chuckle brought my eyes slowly up to where he floated. My jaw tightened at the sight of that effortless smile on his face, my pupils shrunk and vibrated in my wide eyes. He took it all in stride, the power that had been thrust upon him. The tragedies he could cause with it. Again my wings lifted, and I roared as they blasted downward. A shockwave of scarlet power exploded out around me, and I fired up towards Errorphim with my flaming left fist cocked back. CORE Frisk was right, I had to stop him now!

"ERROR!" I shouted at the top of my lungs, crimson light flaring in the both of my eyes. I threw my fist forward, the scarlet flames of my DETERMINATION blasted out of the cracks covering my arm. My punch sailed with mountain crushing force, right at the jaw of a god..! Before it was stopped immediately in Errorphim's open palm. A shockwave of DETERMINATION blasted out around the two of us, sent waves of dirt launching up and crashing back down. But... His hand didn't budge. His fingers just snapped down, wrapping tight around my fist and holding me there.

"Too bad, kid." Errorphim stated effortlessly, pulling back his free hand. And my jaw clenched, my heart dropped as I watched red energy manifest in his hand. It rapidly built into the solid shape of a sword that I more than recognized, and I barely even heard Errorphim when he spoke. "A part of me was really rootin' for ya."

STAB!

My body curled forward, I puked up red as I folded over the DETERMINED steel that Errorphim drove right through my gut. Weakness spread through my body like poison, my limbs and wings went limp... And Errorphim flicked his blade aside, sent me sliding off of it. He tossed me aside like useless garbage, and my body plummeted down below.

Lexi watched with haunted eyes as I crashed down beside her. She stared, paralyzed. Watching me lay there, eyes clenched shut and body trembling while I clenched one hand over the red steaming wound that had ripped through my body. She turned her head then, she looked back to the pale face of Xander in her arms... Then, she raised her head and looked up to the merciless god floating overhead. Her jaw tightened, her teary eyes narrowed furiously, and she gently set Xander's bloody, broken body down beside her. She rose to her feet, and she held her hand - stained by her friend's blood - out to her side, summoning her scythe in her grip.

"If it's any consolation, Predator, out of all you filthy DoubleKids?" Errorphim was unbothered by The Ice Queen rising. Even as Lexi planted her feet, dared stand in defense of two of the men this wrathful god had condemned. Errorphim just kept grinning as he lifted one hand. He pressed two fingers together like he was preparing to snap, and Lexi bent her knees in preparation to move while he went on. "You were my favorite."

Snap!

Lexi's eyes widened in horror as an explosion of that deadly white light blasted out from Errorphim's fingers. It expanded rapidly, an orb of death that engulfed Errorphim and the sky he floated in. She didn't have time to move, the attack was too expansive and moving too fast. It was all she could do to wave her scythe, use whatever strength she had to summon a thick dome of ice over the three of us..! Only for it to vanish in the light. It couldn't end like this, she thought as she threw up one arm in a feeble attempt at protecting herself from total erasure.

We didn't want to die.

---

The music faded out.

Frisk The Traitor screamed themself out eventually. The indignant tears dried up, and they were left laying on their side, staring bitterly into the distance that Angel had flown away into. Blasts of fire, bolts of lightning, it was really quite the light show over there. Eugh, whatever the outcome of this fight, Frisk was certain whoever would find them laying there chained up would have a good long laugh. Just another dumb puppet, tangled up in strings and bent to the will of another. Oh well... They'd get another shot at freedom eventually, they just had to lie in wait again.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

The sound of heavy footsteps got Frisk's attention. They rose their eyebrows, lifted their head some and looked over their shoulder with an exasperated expression... Before they perked up. Their lips curled into their pretty little smile in spite of the blood on their face, and they hastily climbed up to their knees. Like a dog when its master got home, they knelt there and nearly wiggled with excitement. "Anthony!"

"..." Anarchy didn't say anything. He was stained with blood and some metal fluids, seemed like he got some nice new clothes but they got all torn up... Ah, that was okay. Frisk preferred being able to see his abs anyway. Even though he didn't speak, The Anarchist walked right up to Frisk. Hands in his pockets, his scarlet eyes narrowed down at them.

"I'm glad to see ya! Say, you don't happen to have a bondage kink, do ya?" Frisk tilted their head, cocking a brow up at their master. They wiggled their shoulders and hips, made their restraints jangle around before they explained. "See, I've been trying to find a silver lining here, and if me being chained up like this is doin' it for ya, that might just be the one good thing I was lookin' for."

"..." Again, Anthony remained quiet. He loomed over them, his shadow dropped over their helpless form and they welcomed it. He didn't react to their crass question, but he still looked them up and down like he was trying to think up an answer. Whatever conclusion he came up with he didn't bother stating, instead looking right into Frisk's red eyes with his own and stating in a monotone. "... Angel spared you."

"Oh, this? Yeah, he wasn't man enough to finish the job. Par for the course." Frisk hadn't bothered squinting those pretty eyes, they didn't hide the fucked up soul that Anarchy could see beneath. The Traitor shrugged their shoulders, and their perfectly imperfect smile grew as they spoke. "Sounds like he wants to ship me off to some prison or something. But I'll be back in no time, don't you worry~!"

Again, Anthony didn't speak. He just stood there, frowning down at them. Looming, like some statue that they were praying to. Frisk didn't acknowledge his stern expression or his menacing aura though, they never did. Instead, they just rolled their eyes and scoffed. "Angel really thinks he can rehabilitate me somehow, but it's not gonna happen~!"

"And next time I get out?" Frisk winked an eye shut. They tilted their head, and they stuck the tip of the tongue that Anarchy had once felt on his own out past their lips. "I'm gonna get right back to trying to kill him~!"

"... I know." Anarchy's brows furrowed, his jaw tightened, and he steeled his resolve. Then, he took another step forward, and Frisk arched a brow up at him. They cracked a suggestive grin, maintained eye contact and opened their mouth wide when they realized that, when kneeling, they were at face level with Anarchy's groin. Even made an "Aaa" sound, like he was a dentist that just told them to open wide. And Anthony's eye twitched, before his open hand reached down and snatched ahold of Frisk's neck.

They didn't make any sound to object when he yanked them up off the ground, didn't flinch when the both of his hands snapped shut around their throat or when he pushed them back against the pen they were chained to. His hands squeezed their windpipe shut, but they didn't struggle or choke. Instead, they just continued to stare into his eyes, and they kept smiling so sweetly...

Anarchy's face, however, was not half as peaceful. His eyes were wide, his lips were peeled back in a snarl as he strangled Frisk. He had to kill them now, he'd screwed up letting them live before. If getting spared by Angel wasn't going to show them the light, nothing would. Anthony knew that, he understood that they had committed themself entirely to that twisted philosophy... "People don't get better". He taught them that. They were like this because of him, so it was his job to kill them before they hurt anyone else! But why were they still smiling like that?!

Frisk refused to squint their eyes, even as they started to get bloodshot. Their face was turning purple, but that smile just kept getting wider and wider. Anthony's hands were the ones trembling, his pupils were the ones that were shrunken and mortified. Then, he felt something. Frisk lifted their chained legs, pushed their knee against his groin... But it wasn't a kick. It wasn't self defense. They weren't trying to hurt him, they were just moving their leg slowly, carefully rubbing it against the space between his legs... Fuckin' A, were they really trying to get him off while he strangled them to death?!

Anarchy's twitching eyes lifted from the leg he was letting touch him and back to the dying face of The Traitor. He leaned his head forward more, pushed his forehead into theirs and glared right into their eyes. His fangs were bared and gritting against each other, his power was shining bright in his twisted red eyes. He need to apply more force, crush their throat! Crush their neck, break their spine! Kill them now! But, Anthony's hands were too shaky. He just... Couldn't bring himself to do it. Why couldn't he do it?!

Frisk was unbothered by Anthony's struggle and their rapidly approaching death. Instead, they stared into him with their own bloodshot, popping out eyes, and they pouted with purple lips. Pressed their lips together and pushed them out. Like they wanted another kiss. Now? Of all times, now?! Anarchy's twisted brain flashed endless, nonsensical, meaningless thoughts. Memories of the people who'd abused him, the people he'd killed, the night he spent with Frisk before leaving for DoubleScramble, the moment that they said they loved him..! Was he leaning in? He didn't know if he wanted to bite them or kiss them, but his lips were definitely getting closer to theirs...

BOOM!

An ear piercing, earth shattering blast snapped Anthony out of his trance. He pulled his head back, whipped his face towards the pillar of light that was firing into the sky far beyond that kicked open fence gate. And his scarlet eyes widened, his body relaxed and his fingers loosened their grip on Frisk's throat. A massive tower of white light, with seven streams of color rising through it. Wind howled closer and closer before the shockwave of that blast finally hit, blasting back Anthony's long hair and forcing him to plant his feet just to keep from sliding back.

"Damn it!" Anarchy shouted the moment that shockwave passed, and his fingers released Frisk's throat. They dropped to the ground, coughing and sputtering all the way down. Anarchy took a few steps closer to the cataclysm shining in the distance, his lips parted in awe while he slowly shook his head. His shaky hands tightened into fists, and he spoke to no one but himself. "I was too late..!"

"I know I'm right about Angel. I just hope Angel is right about you, Anthony."

"I-... It's okay, Anthony..." Frisk managed to sputter between gasps, and Anarchy looked over his shoulder and down at them. They just laid their on their side, pale in the face and desperately sucking air. Still, they were smiling up at him with lips that were now cracked and broken. Somehow, they found the strength to give a raspy laugh... "I-I still... Love you... Heheheh..."

Anarchy snarled, he clenched his eyes shut tight and turned his head away from them. Then, his hand whipped out, and it smashed right through the chain that kept Frisk's arms suspended in the air. And with his eyes on that dimming pillar of light in the distance, Anarchy shouted his command. "GASTER! Get them out of here! Stick them in some kinda prison or something, make sure they can't cause anymore trouble until I can deal with them!"

Frisk didn't speak, they just smiled as they laid there. It was so sweet, they thought. Anthony saw potential danger, and the very first thing he thought to do was get them out of harm's way! Such a softy, he was so cute. They didn't bother worrying about their Anarchist as their body started to break away in multicolored pixels, weren't concerned as his servant Badster teleported them to some unknown location. Anthony was the only real god in this multiverse, after all. No seven souled imitation could harm him.

Anthony glanced over his shoulder one last time to make sure Frisk had completely vanished, and when he saw that they'd been teleported away his eyes narrowed painfully. Then, his head whipped forward again, and he broke into a sprint. Through that golden gate, into whatever was left of the empire within and right towards the abomination he'd let be created.

He wasn't afraid of any 'god'. He'd made a promise after all. If Xander made a god, Anarchy told everyone that he would kill it. That him and Angel would kill it, and that Angel would get Chara back. And Anthony The Anarchist was not a liar, he did not break promises. So, his resolve was not shaken by that pillar of light, nor by the lights that flashed and cracked after the tower faded. He just kept sprinting forward, the ground shattering beneath his every step.

... Until something else flashed in the distance.

An orb of ivory light, another shockwave of power that was incomprehensible to all but Anthony. It was a wave of power, exploding out from some epicenter far away and blasting right towards The Anarchist. And Anarchy turned his feet, skidded to a stop and snarled as he stared up at that wall of destructive power racing towards him. Engulfing all in its path, devouring whatever it touched. It was too wide, moving too fast. There was no retreat now, and Anarchy didn't retreat anyway. So, as that tidal wave of godly power bore down upon him, Anarchy just threw up one arm. Commanded his shadow to blast to life.

A wriggling, writhing group of worms fired out of Anthony's Darkness. They raced right up into that wall of light blasting towards their master, cackled with glee as they effortlessly got in its path and laid down their wretched lives on Anarchy's command... Only to be ERASED immediately. Then, Anarchy recoiled. His eyes went wide, that wave of power reflected on his pale skin and in his scarlet eyes. And it was all he could do to throw up his arms, cross them over his head and prepare himself for the total erasure that poured over him..!

I can't die, I'm immortal..!

---

Melanie had been holding her hands over Future, her KINDNESS had just about finished healing the wounds he'd been left with. Character had just been sitting there beside the two of them, hugging their knees to their chest and pondering their next move... Then, the pillar of light came. The sky was blasted free of clouds, and even though it was sunnier in this timeline than it had been in years, all four of them knew it spelled doom for the multiverse.

"W-wait, is that..?!" Melanie couldn't bring herself to say it, even though she was certain it was. It wasn't just the pillar of light, there was a pressure that could be felt even at this distance. A weight bore down, it made it feel impossible for Melanie to even stand. It was all she could do to kneel there, staring with mortified eyes at that twisting tower.

"No..." Future found himself whispering. His eyes focused on the red light that streaked up through that white tower, right with six other colors. Again his thoughts drifted back to his own Chara, buried on Ebbot's peak. Dead at his hand... Despair gripped The King's haggard heart, and he slowly shook his head in disbelief. "... We failed."

"No! NO!" Character was the first one to stand, spiting the weight pouring down over all of them. As soon as they got to their feet, those howling winds reached them. They threw up their arms, grimaced as the shockwave that came with that tower's creation blasted against them, throwing their hair back and pulling at their clothes. They snarled as the shockwave passed, "Xander, you idiot..!"

But, as much as Character wanted to scold Xander, they knew that they too were to blame. If they had gotten themselves sorted earlier, if they'd helped from the start..! Damn it! What body had Xander used to make the god? There were several fallen down monsters kept in those labs, donated by Gatherer's people or scrapped off multiverse floors... Character didn't have to wonder long, because they could see a brutal white light exploding over the horizon.

"Uhh, what's that?!" Melanie asked frantically, turning her head up to look at Character. The fusion was unresponsive though, at least for a moment. They just stood there, arms hanging limp at their sides, staring wide eyed and slack jawed into the wall of light barreling through the city before them. Walls, buildings, people... Their home, all ERASED the moment that light touched it. "Character? Character?!"

Future grimaced into the tidal wave approaching. Its light reflected in his green eyes, he could see it obliterating the very street they were laying on now. It was getting too close too fast, the area of effect was too wide! It was all The King could do to reach up and grab Melanie, hastily pulling her down. He threw his body over her on instinct, tried to shield her from the blast..!

And just as ivory light was about to engulf the two of them, a third shadow fell over them. Character jumped over their bodies, and in their powerful arms they scooped up King and KIND alike. With all their might they launched off their front foot, firing down the road and away from rapidly approaching death. Red energy streamed off their body, and Character shouted their exertion as a portal opened right in their path..!

C'mon, we have to make it!

---

"Run! RUN!" Clover's voice hollered up to the walls, the pirates had never heard him so frantic. He'd hoisted Eden up on his back, her own exhausted eyes had been opened by the awakening of a Seven Souled God. She looked over her shoulder while she clung to Clover's back, and she watched in horror as that orb of ERASING light just kept expanding behind them. It was getting closer..! "Over the wall! Whatever that shine is, DON'T LET IT TOUCH YA!"

Eden's eyes lifted to those pirates, watched Susie and Ralsei jump down onto Fortunate Spamton's broken body and slide down it to the other side of the wall. Overhead, Fell Grillby blasted through the sky on violet flames, rocketing ahead. It was all Clover could do to run, but he wasn't fast enough, not with Eden on his back. Ivory light was washing over the both of them, and all Eden could do was wrap her arms a little tighter around the cowboy who'd tried to save her...

Pop!

Suddenly, GB!Sans popped into existence right in front of the two of them. He was grinning, even though there was a clear nervous sweat on his skull. Without a moment's hesitation he reached out and planted one hand on Clover's forehead, and with another Pop! the three of them had all vanished just in time. That tidal wave crashed right through where they were standing in the very next instant, and Clover and Eden both gasped as they tumbled to the ground with Sans on the dirt outside the wall.

"Thanks fer the save..!" Clover was quick to say, gasping for air while he shoved both his hands into the mud to try and force himself up to his feet. Sans was sitting back on his hands though, staring up with sockets that had gone dark to the creeping dome of light overhead.

"Save is uh, bit of a strong word." He assured, and when Clover looked over his shoulder to see that annihilation was still creeping closer, he muttered an 'Ah shit...' Beside him, Eden had already climbed to shaky feet. And she stared up into that light, alone with the pirates that had dared try to save her. It reflected in her violet eyes, it loomed over her just like it loomed over Clover, Sans, Susie, Ralsei, and Grillby.

... But, then it stopped. As soon as the light hit that wall, which vanished instantly in its shine... It paused. For a moment, a dome of ERASURE loomed there. Reaching high into the sky, engulfing the entirely of The Gatherer's empire. The entirety of Eden's home... And when that light faded, her knees gave out, and she dropped into the mud. There was nothing left. What had been an expansive metropolis seconds ago was now a wasteland. Totally flat, as if no empire had ever existed there at all.

Nobody could speak. Six people gathered there, some sitting, some kneeling, a few who managed to stand. And though they were all staring at that empty space before them... No one said a word. They couldn't, they were paralyzed. In all the battle they'd all seen, the war they'd participated in, they'd never seen something so... Instant. The empire wasn't destroyed, it wasn't crushed. It was just... Gone. All that remained was an empty plain, acres and acres of dead dirt and dry sand. If they didn't know better, they all could have believed that there was never anything there at all.

Whoosh!

Suddenly, all anxious eyes were whipped to the side to watch a portal open. Out of it shot Character, who crashed right to the dirt, dropping Melanie and Future along the way. The three of them all tumbled for another few feet before they stopped, and the moment they did they were all looking themselves and each other over for injury. No part of them had been ERASED... Character had been fast enough. But, that did raise the question. Where was everyone else?

"Character!" Eden was the first to cry out, and the Wingless fusion lifted their stunned eyes just in time to spot her lunging at them. They jumped a little, but they did manage to open their arms just in time to catch Eden in a hug. She clung to them, even though her body was achy and exhausted. And, though Character wanted to smile at this... They just lifted their eyes to the wasteland that stretched ahead, and they squeezed Eden a little tighter.

"What was that?!" Susie demanded, her frantic eyes darting between Character, Melanie, and Future for answers. Future was still dumbstruck, however. He just sat there, legs sprawled out in front of him while he leaned back on his hands and stared at the total devastation laid out before him. Melanie's lips moved, she tried to get something out... But just shook her head. Their silence made Susie's teeth grit, it made more cold sweat break out on her forehead. "Where's Lexi? Did you guys stop Gatherer or not?!"

"... There's nothin' else it coulda been." Clover spoke quietly, more to himself than to Susie. He stood at the head of the group, closest to the barren wasteland laid out before them. And as he stared with one eye, an eye that was never meant to see a world like this, he reached up. Grabbed ahold of his hat, and slowly pulled it off his head. His heart twisted with his stomach as he held that hat over his chest, his accurate eye couldn't see anyone on the ground...

"Wherever you go in this here multiverse, I'm gon' be right beside'ja."

Clover's eye trembled, his lips creased into a deeper frown. He'd promised Lexi he would stay by her side, but had still let her go on without him... Now, she was gone. Would he have been able to stop it? Was there anything he could have done? Was there anything he could do now? His hand tightened, crumpled that hat some against his chest.

People were shouting at one another, everyone was demanding answers that nobody had. Nobody, other than Character. The fusion had remained quiet, keeping a protective hold on Eden and trying to keep her safe from the rising panic. Staring at the top of her head, feeling her cling to them in celebration of their survival... Character understood that they would do anything to get her out of this alive. So, they took a deep breath. Stared into the desert before them, let their scarlet glare lock in on the glowing, multicolored spec in the sky above the deleted empire.

"Doing the right thing is hard, but it's worth it..."

... Whatever it takes.

"That was a Seven Souled God." Character's voice erupted out of them, so direct and so powerful that it drew all pairs of panicked eyes to the fusion. Eden even pulled away from them some, blinked her eyes and got ahold of herself while she looked up at them. And even though she'd known Hacker and Demon as scoundrels, liars, and cowards... There was BRAVERY in their expression now. Once they had everyone's attention, The Wingless went on. "And from the looks of it, the vessel for those Seven Souls is Error Sans. Xander had his body laying around for years, he had Hacker code his brain to obey only The Gatherer's wishes... But clearly that code didn't hold up too well against godhood."

"Error Sans? I thought he was-" Melanie started, but Character opened their one free hand out towards her, signaling her to let them finish.

"We don't have much time, so we're gonna make this quick." Character went on, lowering the hand they'd used to silence Melanie. Now with just one arm around Eden's shoulders, The Wingless looked between all the eyes watching them and did not shrink away to hide from their desperate stares. Instead, they kept explaining clearly and concisely. "Hacker's research proved that Error's corrupted code is similar to that of an ERASE button. Now that he's been given seven souls, his likely got the power to ERASE way more than he just did if and when he wants to."

"... So, what happens now..?" Melanie asked hesitantly, it was clear she was afraid of the answer. She held her hands together in front of her chest, like she was trying to hold her KIND soul together. Lexi, Angel, Anthony... All people she cared about, and the three strongest people they had. But now, all three of them were...

"Error only wanted one thing before Angel and Chara iced him the first time: to destroy every Alternate Universe. Now that he's got the power to do it? Any timeline that deviates even a little from a standard Undertale timeline isn't just in danger, it's doomed." Character's scarlet eyes narrowed, and Melanie flinched. They heard Ralsei gulp, they felt Eden's hands grip their shirt tightly. "That means all of us. All of our homes. Everyone we care about."

"Okay, so what do we do?!" Susie snapped, throwing her hands into the air. Clearly she'd been racking her brain, and even with Kris in her head to help her brainstorm she couldn't find the answer. She looked like she was about ready to rip the hair out of her head, her shared eyes shining with desperation as she looked to Character. "How do we punch his lights out if he can just snap his fingers and make us disappear?!"

"... The ERASE button doesn't work on DoubleKids." Character hesitated, but they got the statement out well enough. Their eyes glanced over to Future, who had managed to stand from the dirt he'd been sitting in. The King arched a hesitant brow at The Wingless, and they explained while they looked back to Susie and Ralsei. "In Hacker's research, he discovered that the power to ERASE works based on the deletion of code. Coding is the building block of this entire reality... But it's not in the reality that the DoubleKids came from."

All eyes were darting between Future and Character now. Character had presented them all with a dim, flickering spark of hope. But, it was all any of them had, so they clung to it. Clover had turned his head, looked over his shoulder at Character with that all seeing eye. Eden stared up at them, worry was still drawn across her face. Melanie's hands clasped tighter together, and Grillby carefully put a protective arm around her shoulders.

"We're made of microscopic particles called atoms, so the ERASE button doesn't effect us. And, though we have no idea if Error's seven soul power up will change that... It's all we have to go off of." After Character said that, they stepped forward and out of Eden's grasp, which was hesitant to let them go. They unwrapped their arm from around Eden, and they dared move closer to Clover. No, not Clover... The wasteland behind him. What were they intending to do? They stopped once they stood in the center of the group, and they turned back around to face Eden. "Eden can show you all the way to our evacuation zone. Fellphys has probably gotten all of our people out by now; you'll be able to escape to our emergency timeline to regroup. Destroy the gateway behind you, make sure Error doesn't know where you're going."

"... Why are you talking like you aren't going with us?" Slowly, Eden stepped forward. Her legs were still shaky, her entire body was still aching. Honestly, it was hard to even stand on her own and she hated it. If she still had the strength, if there was anything she could do..! But, she had already done all that she could and she knew it. And knowing that while she watched Character's expression soften, while they hesitated to answer... It made the knot in her stomach squeeze tighter.

"... We're the only ones left, Eden." Finally, emotion returned to Character's voice. They shook their head slowly, their shared eyes gleamed with sadness because they could see the fear on Eden's face. They'd felt her cling to them, they knew they meant something to her... And it was why they had to go. They added so quietly that she thought their words may have been for her alone... "We have to do something."

"W-wait, Character. If, if Lexi and the others were in that blast, and we still haven't seen them..." Melanie's KIND eyes drifted to her mud stained shoes as she trailed off, like she couldn't bare to finish her thought. Her hands trembled and clenched tighter together, as if she was offering up a prayer... Then, she lifted her head, and she looked into Character's scarlet eyes with her despairing stare while she mustered the strength to ask. "How do we know you'll fair any better..?"

"We won't." An honest statement, brutal as it was. Character already knew what the deal was, they knew they had no odds in their favor. Even if they were immune to Errorphim's ERASURE in Hacker's body, they were certain he had a million other ways to kill them. But they weren't going to go fight him because they thought they could win, they were going to fight him because they had to. "While we distract him, you're all going to make a break for it. Get away, make a better plan. Get a better champion."

"If you're going, then I'm going with you." Future spoke next, drawing Melanie's worried eyes back to him. He stood tall, without fear in his eyes or doubt in his stance. His stern frown dug deeper into his face as he dared volunteer, "If your theory is true, then I'm immune to Error's ERASURE too. I can help you hold him off."

"Sorry old man, but you've gotta get outta here too. If you go down with us, we're fresh outta DoubleKids. Then who's gonna train up to stop Error?" Character didn't hesitate or doubt their own words, but Future recoiled. Him? They thought he was the guy for this? Why would they believe something like that? He was a has been, a knockoff, an old washed up-... Character flashed a smirk, they knew he didn't think he could do it. But they believed in him anyway, and their explanation was easy to understand. "You've got wings, after all. You'll figure it out."

"I'm not just going to-! I'm not..!" Eden started to refute before she really even thought about Character's words, her emotion demanded it. But, when Character looked at her, and she saw the vast wasteland of death behind them... Her trembling hands clenched into tight fists, she felt a lump forming in her throat, and it was all she could do to clench her eyes shut while the tears started to overflow. She knew there wasn't another way, she knew how dire the circumstances were and she knew that if one of them didn't die, all of them would. Even still... With a cracking voice, she forced the words out. "I'm not going to lose you too!"

"... Thank you for being our friend, Eden. It means everything to us." Hacker and Demon's voice was gentle then, so delicate and KIND and totally unlike either of them. And when Eden's head whipped up, her teary eyes could see the caring smile plain on their face... As well as the portal that had opened behind them. They kept smiling, one hand in their pocket while they lifted the other. Eden reached out, she tried to lunge forward to stop them but her legs were too weak. Character just kept smiling while they gave a two fingered wave, stepping right back through that portal. "Figure this mess out, then go live your life. Be sure to have a good time for us, okay?"

"Character..!" Eden reached out towards the two of them, her exhausted violet eyes were wide with desperation as she watched that portal close on Character's honest smile. She could see a tear in their eye, it matched the ones that were streaming down her own face. Her legs gave out, and she stumbled and started to fall forward. Still, helplessly, she reached out. They were all that she had left, she couldn't lose them too! She tried to refute this reality, screamed out desperately for them to come back.

"CHARACTER!"

---

Well, he'd had to play the long game alright, but everything was finally comin' up Error! He floated there, high over the dust bowl with his wings spread wide and his arms held out to his sides. Just basking in the heavenly light that washed down onto him from above and grinning from one ear hole to the other. All the humiliation he'd suffered, the brutality of his own defeat, but if it all served the purpose of getting him here? Shit, Errorphim would do it all again in a heartbeat!

His mind was so perfectly clear, free of the hissing static and skipping, meaningless noise. With those seven souls inside him, Errorphim was able to feel for the first time since he'd became Error. And he felt amazing. CORE Frisk was skewered and ERASED. The Hacker that had humiliated him before was powerless to stop him, the Chara that had humiliated him was now nothing more than fuel for his destructive power. And the wretched Gatherer that had tossed Error in a jar and left him to rot was struck down, felled by his godly wrath. He'd only been awake for a few minutes, and Errorphim had already achieved his ultimate revenge. So... What to do now?

Errorphim glanced back down beneath himself, his twisted gaze moved along the sloping dunes of sand that his ERASURE had kicked up. Ground zero was a desert now, if anything had survived the blast it would be buried in the dirt. But, everything was gone. He'd ERASED the entire empire that was built around him and he'd killed all the dirty glitches inside it. So, Errorphim lifted his head. His eyes shifted to a glowing gold shade, and with accurate eyes he looked out over the horizon.

Aww, there was a little group of stragglers just outside the blast radius of his first ERASER explosion! Should he go and obliterate the lot of them, too? He wondered if he'd see any familiar faces... But, then Errorphim lifted his head and looked further across the horizon. And when he saw the crowds, he smiled wide. Hordes of humans and monsters pushed and shoved, screamed and panicked. Without a leader there to organize the evacuation, it looked like a majority of The Gatherer's people still hadn't escaped! That one got Errorphim laughing; these people were pathetic!

Imagining all those screams when he appeared in the sky overhead was all the convincing Errorphim needed, the evacuation zone was the perfect target. So, for the first time since he'd erupted from his prison, his wings shifted. They pulled back, prepared to launch him across the horizon and towards all those helpless people... When a massive hand of ink exploded up from the ground below Errorphim, opening its palm wide and snapping shut right around him with an iron grip.

The shifting liquid of that hand squeezed, and though it tried to pull back to throw Errorphim in the opposite direction, all it did was explode apart. Ink rain crashed down as an orb of green light expanded around Errorphim, blowing apart that ink hand from within without a drop of the black liquid ever getting on him. And as that useless attack crumbled, Errorphim's curious eyes darted to the dunes below. "Pencil pusher?"

But, when Errorphim looked down, all he found was an eraser barreling up towards him on a wooden pencil pillar. Arching a brow bone, he just lifted one lazy hand, and the moment that eraser struck his open palm it stopped dead. Though his expression was bored, it lit up the moment Errorphim heard footsteps. He looked down the length of that pencil, and he spotted someone sprinting up it right at him! Oh, that took some balls!

Character lunged at Errorphim, roaring and cocking back one DETERMINATION flaming fist. And when another wall of unbreakable green energy flashed into existence in their path... The fusion vanished. Errorphim's brow bones lifted to reflect his surprise as Character jumped right through a portal they had instantly opened, and then..!

WHAM!

Errorphim's head leaned forward, just slightly. A red shockwave exploded out around him, and Character's teeth ground together as they blasted a punch right into the back of his skull. They'd dropped out of another portal right behind Errorphim, and though they were hoping to send him flinging out of the sky with that incredible punch... They'd barely even got his head to move. With their knuckles pressed to the base of Errorphim's skull, cold sweat broke out on Character's forehead as they watched him slowly turn his head and look up at them from the corner of his eye socket.

"... Hacker and Demon." Errorphim deduced after just a moment of looking them up and down. The huge ink hands reaching out of their shoulders instead of wings made it obvious, at least to one of the souls in Errorphim's possession. And though Error didn't know either of those glitch knockoffs, he knew that they knew the same soul that recognized them. So, he cracked a smile, and he relayed a message. "Chara wishes you would have ran."

"Yeah, well when have we ever listened to them before?!" Character shouted without hesitation, even though Errorphim's heartless words made their eye twitch. Those ink hands on their back reached back rapidly, wrapped around the peak of another pencil pillar that had rose behind them and yanked them away towards it. They backflipped, landing on the eraser peak of that pencil and crouching there as their ink hands released its sides. And as they rose to their full height, and Errorphim pivoted in air to face them, their fists clenched and red aura exploded out around them.

"A Chara and an Angel folded your ass last time, and we're the last Chara and Angel left!" Character dared to challenge, lifting their fist to beat it against their shared chest. The whipping wasteland winds pulled at their mess of hair, the sun shined down on the Deltarune brand on their back and the BAD KARMA tattoo along their shoulders. They pointed the fist they'd beat against their chest out at Errorphim then, and they snarled. "So if you wanna prove you aren't the same punk bitch that the first Character left crying on the void floor, you better get your fuckin' hands up!"

". . ." Errorphim was silent for a long moment. He floated there, staring at the last ones left with his multicolored pupils. Then, his sockets narrowed. His grin widened. They wanted him to prove a point? Fine, he could do that. He lifted one hand some, opened his palm and let scarlet energy gather in his grasp. His fingers snapped shut around the handle of a sword comprised entirely of Chara's DETERMINATION, and he watched with delight as the sight of that blade made Character's eye twitch. Only then did he speak. "You make a compelling argument, knockoffs. It only makes sense that you die next."

That's it, take the bait you big dumb bitch... Hacker and Demon thought in unison while they bent at the knees, preparing to move. This was their one chance, their only shot at doing the right thing. For the one who'd let them be her friend, and yes even for the one who'd forgiven them after all they'd done. For all the people they'd hurt and all the people they'd killed, all the people who gave them a chance just for them to spit in their face. They would fight, one last time, for all of them. We'll protect everyone!

Scarlet flames ignited over Character's shared eyes, and though they didn't know it... A single, ink black feather broke free from one of the knuckles on the hands coming out of their shoulders.

WHATEVER IT TAKES!

---

(Oh my god it's Errorphim what a shock no one could ever have predicted this it's the twist of the century!)

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