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You weren’t much of a talker. Not that you could’ve spoken, anyway; when Susie slammed you against the locker all the air left your lungs in a great rush. Still, you didn’t talk much even when you had ample oxygen to do so - selective mutism was a bitch like that. Life was easier when Asriel was there to talk for you. He always seemed to know what was on your mind. You missed him. You were the only human in a town full of monsters, though, and even your brother couldn't mitigate that loneliness. Susie was saying something above the rushing in your ears from your desperate attempts to catch your breath. She released your shoulder and you slid down to the base of the lockers. “Kris. You’ve got a good mother - it’d be a shame to make her bury her child.” Despite the casual mention of murder and the subsequent denial of your having any choice in your future, you managed to stand up on shaky legs and follow Susie to the supply closet. Then a portal to some netherworld opened, the two of you fell into it, and going to get chalk for your anxious teacher seemed like a distant memory. *~*~*~* You weren't much of a talker, so when Lancer came out of nowhere and knocked the hooded figure over and out of sight, you let Susie make all her witty comebacks and menacing remarks. Lancer seemed interesting, at least. He was loud, rude, and seemed to want to fight anybody who got in his way. You couldn’t tell if he was serious about being the bad guy or not, and from the way Susie swung her ax repeatedly at him, it seemed like she didn’t care if Lancer was serious or not. They seemed perfect for each other. Ralsei, well... You wondered if there had ever been another being as soft as Ralsei. You decided to CHECK the dummy you were fighting and cast a glance to the side at your companion when the text appeared:
*A cotton heart and a button eye,
Looks just like a fluffy guy.
Ralsei blushed and stammered through an explanation of the dummy’s appearance, ending with a wish that you be gentle with the dummy because it was an extension of him. When you were allowed to have another turn, you hugged Ralsei instead of the dummy. (Ralsei blushed even harder.) Hugging Ralsei felt a lot like hugging Asriel - he was certainly fluffy and certainly huggable, though your definition of huggable is not everyone’s definition. You were reminded of something(?)
(“Ha. Ha.
...I don’t want to let go.”)
Strange, but maybe Asriel had said that to you at some point when you comforted him during a thunderstorm. In any case, you SPARED the dummy, and Ralsei seemed proud of you. He pulled you aside before the two of you passed through the huge door and mentioned that SPARING and being kind were the best ways to assure a favorable outcome.
(“Be good, alright?”)
This gave you pause. You wondered where the memory had come from. It was your mother’s voice, but that particular phrasing was wholly unfamiliar. When Ralsei asked you if you were okay with minimizing the damage done to the people in this strange underworld, you told him that you could handle it. You were pretty sure you could handle it. (You had the strangest feeling that you had done so before.) *~*~*~* You weren’t much of a talker. Yet you were the Leader™ of your party, somehow, which was the most contradictory thing to your character you could possibly imagine. Ralsei wouldn’t do anything until you told him to, and you had to bring it upon yourself to save your enemies from Susie’s constant offensive. Her ax was intimidating, you needed to give her credit for that at least. Her becoming a bad guy was a little bit of a relief for you - less communication on your part was always good. Your own worn-down pencil had turned into a wooden sword at some point and that was pretty cool, you might say, though the thing wasn’t getting much use at all. The faith that Ralsei had in both Susie and Lancer was refreshing and mildly irritating at the same time. It simultaneously restored your good mood and worried you about the fluffy boy - he was going to get himself hurt eventually by someone who wouldn’t stop FIGHTING.
(“You’ll die, and you’ll die, and you’ll die!”)
("In this world, it's k̶i̶l̵l̵ ̵o̸r̵ ̷b̵e̵ ̷k̸i̶l̸l̶e̸d̸")
You shook yourself, and you tried your best to focus on the puzzle before you. You must have hit your head when you fell through the floor of the supply closet. Nobody would've said that to you -
(*You called for help -
"But n̴ o̴ b̸ o̴ d̷ y̸ c̷̡̽ ̸a̶̬̓ ̵m̴͓̎ ̸ẽ̵̩ ̸. B̴o̶y̷,̵ ̵w̴h̷a̷t̶ ̸a̶ ̷s̴h̸a̵m̶e̶!̶") "Kris? You feeling okay?" Ralsei asked gently. You turned to reassure Ralsei of your health only to find stars swimming before your eyes. You were overwhelmingly dizzy. You started to pitch forward and were confronted with a smell somewhat like freshly-turned earth and vegetation. Flowers? You think you passed out.
("Oh! You've fallen down, haven't you?
Here, get up.
...Chara, huh? That's a nice name!
My name is Asriel!")
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
You weren’t much of a talker, so you did a lot of observation just on principle.
You sat on a stool at the counter in a diner, you think.
You glanced curiously at the bartender (either he was on fire or he was made of fire - you didn’t want to assume) and at the brownish hue the floor and furnishings were cast in. You saw the pink neon sign on the wall - “Grillby’s.”
“so you know all about it. the echo flower. they’re all over the marsh,” said someone from somewhere to your right.
You looked over. A stout skeleton in a blue hoodie and fluffy pink slippers.
He was talking to you.
“say something to ‘em and they’ll repeat it over and over…”
Something on your face must have betrayed the shock of the situation because the skeleton cocked an eyebrow (brow bone? Eye socket??) at you.
“you feelin’ okay, kid?” The skeleton asked.
The skeleton knew you, somehow.
You had absolutely never met him before.
You nodded.
“well...as i was sayin’ - papyrus told me that sometimes, when nobody else is around, a flower appears and whispers things to him,” the skeleton elaborated, “flattery, advice...predictions. i think somebody might be using an echo flower to play a trick on him. watch your back, okay, kid?”
Then the coat-wearing skeleton stood from the barstool he sat on and mentioned something about a job before cheerily exclaiming that the bartender should put something on his tab.
You didn’t know what was happening.
Echo
flowers?
The skeleton exited the diner.
You decided to exit, too, and found yourself standing much shorter than you remembered being. Your clothing was unfamiliar, the length of your hair unfamiliar. You patted your pockets and found a pink boxing glove and several cinnamon confections...bunnies?
You stood in thickly-laid snow and shivered a little.
There was a Christmas tree with presents underneath it some distance away, addressed to people you’d never heard of before. Snowy? Doggo?
You desperately hoped someone in this place could understand sign language, but you didn’t quite get the chance to find out.
The loudest voice you had ever heard called you out.
“HUMAN. SO YOU CAME BACK TO HAVE A DATE WITH ME? YOU MUST BE REALLY SERIOUS ABOUT THIS…”
You turned to see another skeleton approaching you at a truly frightening pace. The other one had been round and a little soft-looking, despite being a skeleton. This one was longer and its proportions didn’t congeal in your mind as something that could be marked as ‘friendly.’ It wore armor and a cape and looked very official.
Desperately, you hoped this was some sort of fever-dream that you would wake up from. You wished that Ralsei were here to explain.
In any case, you turned and fled.
“HUMAN?! IF YOU ARE TOO INTIMIDATED TO DATE ME AT SCENIC MY HOUSE WE CAN ALWAYS GO ELSEWHERE!” The skeleton cried as you ran away.
You passed through a patch of extraordinarily thick fog on your way, and the ground grew less and less slick with ice and snow and more slick with plain old water as you progressed along a river.
You were unsure of how long you ran, but you found yourself surrounded by rushing waterfalls and glittering stones set in a cave ceiling. The strain on your now-tiny lungs was far too great, so you sat down amidst some tall ferns and hoped to not be noticed by anyone.
Unfortunately, it didn’t seem as if the universe was on your side.
You heard the heavy clunking of plate armor(?) somewhere near to you and that same tall skeleton from earlier shouting loudly in response to someone else’s questions.
“I’M HERE WITH MY DAILY REPORT….THE HUMAN?...DID I FIGHT THEM? YES, I FOUGHT THEM VALIANTLY! DID I DEFEAT THEM…?”
THE human. Always THE human. Never “one of the humans” or “the human with the brown hair.”
Even in this strange otherworld-fever-dream-hellscape you were THE human.
Even here, you were alone.
Something shifted nearby and you looked up to see someone leaning over the top of a wall, staring down in your general direction with a glowing blue spear in their hand.
You broke into a cold sweat and grit your teeth in preparation of fleeing.
To your relief, the spear dissipated and the figure retreated into the shadows slowly.
“You’re not the same.”
You jumped to your feet, ready to fight, but found that the culprit of the sudden speech from your left was just a small, golden flower. Wary though you were, you crouched back down to see what it had to say.
“You’re pretty close, I gotta say, but you’re not the same as when I scared you in the Ruins. What changed, I̷̻ ̷w̴͇̒ő̷̱ṉ̷̐d̴͚̕e̸̪͝r̵̪̈?̵̛̯?” The flower asked with a manic grin.
You shuddered and backed away. That expression…
(“Wh-what’s with that creepy face?! Back off! You’ve got a sick sense of humor!”)
A sudden throbbing in your skull brought you back down to the ground, clutching at your temples as if to try and keep your head together.
“as much as i hate it, the flower’s right, kid,” said the same deep voice from the diner.
You looked up through squinted eyes and saw the skeleton you’d talked to not twenty minutes before, blue coat and pink slippers and all.
“the kid was all excited to have a date with my bro - they think he’s super cool and want to hang out with him. you ran away like you were scared of him. not a very frisk thing to do.”
Frisk
? Who the hell was Frisk?
(“You’re not Chara - Chara’s been gone for a long time. Um, what...what is your name?...Frisk?”)
“you’re not frisk. you’re not the kiddo. so tell me, anomaly, who are you and w h a t a r e y o u d o i n g h e r e ?”
(“Well...let’s just say he’s caused me more than my fare share of r̴͊̐̈e̷̛̬̐̆̿s̷̘̹͍̥̿͆̓̐̅ě̷̤̈̉̽͛̌t̴̖̮̻̻̎͗̚s̴̺̻͙̒̓̉͋͂ͅ.”)
The pinpricks of light from the skeleton’s eyes were gone, but he still smiled.
(“You know. Smiley trashbag.”)
You shook so hard your teeth chattered.
“S-s-s-s-s-s,” you took a deep breath and tried again when it wouldn’t come out, “s-sorry.”
No more followed. You couldn’t manage any more than that.
You missed Asriel.
You missed Ralsei.
Hell, you even missed Susie and Lancer as messed up and weird as they were.
You wanted your mom.
The skeleton stared at you and one of his eye sockets flared blue.
You braced yourself against whatever you thought might be coming.
Your phone rang.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Your phone rang. It didn't ring like it would ring. In fact, it didn’t sound like your phone - or any phone, ever - would sound. You’d had a dream a few times including elements of some episodic cartoon from your early childhood. A character would seemingly whisper and yell at once - an impossibility - and you would jerk awake as it occurred. The impossible sound would follow you. Briefly, just long enough to make you wary. Your phone rang just as that sound had - an impossible sound as if it had been generated by an overactive subconscious. It skittered in your ears and goosebumps rose on your skin. By all means, it shouldn’t have been your phone. But it was your phone. Your phone rang. The skeleton stared at you with one eye aflame. You made a gesture with your limbs and body that you hoped conveyed a “what can you do?” idea and reached into the pocket of your (not your, but your) pants to dig out an unfamiliar phone. It was a voice you had never heard before. “S I M - I - L A R B U T I N C O R R E C T...ou aren’t supp... to be here. D̸i̷d̶ ̴y̶o̷u̷ ̸g̵e̵t̵ ̷l̷o̸s̵t̵?̷?” Shouting and whispering all at once. Just like your dreams, except you weren’t waking up. Did you get lost? You hoped this wasn’t the world you remembered. You hoped that you’d be able to find your way back. You wanted to express this to the voice on the phone, but - The skeleton looked vaguely upset. As if he knew that he was supposed to be upset but wasn’t sure what it was about. He reached forward and snatched the phone out of your hand, and the two of you watched it suddenly disintegrate into blackened particles of dust. The skeleton stared at the particulates. You stared, too. But the voice from the phone wasn’t done. This time, it came from all around you and throbbed through your head, taking your breath with pain. The voice faded in and out and gained and lost qualities at a rate you couldn't pay attention to. "I….IND SOLUTION….TO THIS Ć̷̨̝̈̕O̴̬̮̫̥͌̎̈́̃̕N̴͕̦̳̟̦̾̀̄̏͝U̷͖͈͖̹͐̈́͑̒N̶̺̼͌̂̅͜D̶̩͓̖̟̀̉̏̄̓͜R̵̜̜͓̞͆̎͌̈́̍U̵̡̡̞̫͛͝M̴̡̳͈̠̓̄̿̄͠.” The voice was gone, and the pressure on your head was relieved. The skeleton stared at you. You stared back. “guess you’re not the anomaly i was thinking about, huh?” The skeleton sheepishly scratched at the back of his skull. You gave a brief shrug. “not much of a talker, huh? just like the kiddo,” the skeleton said, “i’m sans. sans the skeleton. the tall guy you met is my little brother papyrus.” You held out your hand for Sans to shake, and you were met with a loud and obnoxious sound like...farting? A small smile bloomed on your face despite yourself. “the old whoopie cushion in the hand trick! it’s always funny. you got a name, kid?” Sans asked. You didn’t think that you could talk, so you decided to finger-spell “K-R-I-S.” Sans observed your signing with the intensity of somebody who knew what they were doing, “‘kris,’ huh? nice name. pretty close to ‘frisk.’ maybe that’s why you got mixed up,” Sans paused here, and when he continued he sounded worried, “i hope the kiddo is okay, wherever they are.” You wanted to assure him that of course Frisk would be okay - they would be with the kind and gentle Ralsei, who would explain everything before terrifying the hell out of anybody out of the ordinary. However, you did not do this because you didn’t have any confidence in saying that Frisk would have been dropped right where you were. And it struck you that you had known Ralsei for much less time than you felt you had. *~*~*~* You woke up to someone shaking your shoulder and yelling quite loudly. Something was definitely wrong because you weren’t sitting next to Sans anymore, and you weren’t sitting in Grillby’s anymore. Strange. “Kris! Kris! Wake up!” Yelled the loud person. You sat up, and looked around a little. “Kris! Thank goodness; I thought I’d lost you there for a minute…” There was a young monster in a green hat and a long green cloak with a furry paw on your shoulder. You could feel gentle healing magic travelling from that appendage into your very bones. They offered assistance to help you stand up, and stand up you did. Kris? You weren't sure if you'd met anyone named Kris. You felt taller than you had been before...
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
You were extremely pleased that this ‘Kris’ person also did not speak much, and that this ‘Ralsei’ character was able to understand sign language at least passably. You wondered whether something had gone wrong during a RESET. You’d corrupted something a few times when you didn’t RESET right, though nothing quite as extreme as this had happened before. You were stronger, somehow, but you had no EXP and you were LV1. Things seemed similar, but they were markedly different at the same time. “Kris” - like your name, but not. (“Ralsei” - like “Asriel,” but not.) Ralsei was the owner of the fluffy paw and green clothing who had shaken you awake earlier, and he didn’t seem to notice a difference between you and whoever Kris was. (If Ralsei did notice something was off, he didn’t say.) You hoped beyond anything that if you and “Kris” had switched places somehow (if your RESET wasn’t the culprit of this strange situation, that is) that they were okay. If they’d been transported to the same Underground you’d left, they would have to deal with Undyne, Sans, Flowey, and Asgore. You hoped Kris at least had enough determination to SAVE and RESET, if only to save themself.
….interesting….
You had a headache. More than anything, you hoped that Sans couldn’t recall your last run. (D i r t y b̴̝̔ r̷͔͋ o̵͔̿ t̴͈̊ h̴̟͗ ȅ̷̻ r̵̠͊ ̸̳͘ k̵͉̽ ȋ̸͔ l̴̪͒ l̸̦̓ e̴͒͜ r̷͔̈.) You and Ralsei encountered several dust bunnies and a few enemies that looked like they were made of legos. You completed several card-game themed puzzles and walked through doors which seemed eerily similar to the door into Sans’s room. You felt the same feeling as when Sans lead you through his “shortcuts” - a strange tingle ran down your spine and you felt a pit of something wrong in the depths of your stomach. Eventually, you came to a ragged-looking shopkeeper. You hoped that you could learn something from the shopkeeper, like you could back in the Underground. “The name’s Seam, pronounced ‘Shawm.’” You purchased something called a “Dark Candy” from Seam with money that wasn’t yours (oops), and learned that the monsters in this world were in a similar, but slightly different, situation. You didn’t think that “Lightners” referred specifically to humans, but you had absolutely nothing to go on. Ralsei was either a "Lightner" or a "Darkner" but you had no clue which one. Apparently there was another prophecy, too, and involved Kris, Ralsei, and someone named Susie? The Delta Rune on the wall was familiar, too. You wondered whether it held the same meaning in this place as it did in the Underground. You itched to buy the Spooky Sword from Seam, but you shoved that instinct as far down as you possibly could. Something told you that you should do as little damage to this place as possible, hence your decision to ACT earlier instead of FIGHTing. The Underground had been your arena - yours to mess with and yours to help or hinder. You figured that this place was Kris’s version of the Underground. They would have to decide what to do with it. You hoped that once they solved whatever problem this place had, that was the end of it. You hoped that there was no Chara to drag them back into the cycle. Ralsei looked between you and the sword on the wall, apparently noticing your interest in it. Ralsei frowned at this, because this wasn’t a very Kris thing to do. You didn’t catch Ralsei’s thought, because he thought it to himself and not aloud, but he pondered Kris’s mild change in attitude since they fainted. Ralsei resolved to keep a closer eye on you. With every mannerism that was slightly off from Kris’s norm, you inched towards an encounter you would dearly regret. The two of you walked back through the strange door, and you decided to SAVE again, just in case. You encountered a strange, three-headed monster whose heads all seemed to be fighting with each other, and proceeded to a...bake sale?
~*~*~ Your hands were cold. This was understandable, considering the climate, but even so it was inconvenient. ‘Frisk,’ whoever they were, had not dressed appropriately for the weather and apparently hadn’t bothered to even try and correct it. After the phone call with whatever entity had contacted you, Sans had sat you down and made sure you understood at least the basic facts of the world you had fallen into. The monsters in this world were trapped underground, while humans lived on the surface. Frisk was a human who had fallen through a hole in a mountain and found themself trapped right along with the monsters. The King of all Monsters, Asgore (you blinked slowly and for a long time upon hearing this name) killed any human who made it to the castle in order to steal their souls to eventually break the barrier. You shuddered, imagining someone Frisk’s size trying to fight someone as huge as your dad… It seemed like you and Frisk had somehow switched places. Sans had said that you’d gotten ‘mixed up’ because your names were so similar, though you doubted that was the extent of his knowledge on the subject. He seemed to simultaneously know a lot more and a lot less than he let on.
(*Sans
AT 1, DEF 1
The easiest enemy. Can only deal 1 damage.
*Can’t keep dodging forever. Keep attacking.)
You had to admit, you were getting tired of the strange interjections into your thoughts. They were someone else's memories, someone else's experiences, somehow being shoved into your brain. Sans puttered around his lab, checking this and that and fiddling with some gadget that seemed to pulse in his hands. You stopped him by tugging on the sleeve of his jacket and you asked a question. “a kid named asriel? yeah, he was the king and queen’s son. he died a while ago, though. why?” Sans answered easily. Asriel… Asriel was dead in this world. You frowned and asked another question that had been bugging you for a while. Sans stiffened as much as a skeleton could and replied, “‘chara’? where’d you hear that name, kiddo?” The way Sans phrased his question made it seem like he knew a lot of very bad things about this ‘Chara,’ but his expression afterwords betrayed nothing but confusion. It reminded you of his reaction to the voice earlier - like he knew he had to be mad but didn’t know the reason for it. “jeez, why’d i ask it like that? chara was the king and queen’s other kid, i think. they died a while ago, too. it’s bad to speak ill of the dead,” Sans admitted, “but i heard from some folks around here that chara was a bit strange.”
*Sans is starting to look really tired.
You tried to refocus. Asriel and this Chara person had been siblings in this world, and they’d both died somehow. You felt a measure of sorrow for both of them.
“You’ve probably heard this a million times already, haven’t you?
See you soon, Chara.”
Sans tried to explain about the strange measurements he'd obtained - timelines jumping left and right, stopping and starting, and his own memories of timelines that hadn't happened but had happened, somehow. He mentioned fighting someone in a hallway for what seemed like days, only to wake up without realizing he'd fallen asleep; safe in his bed, little recollection of the previous day (or had there even been a previous day? Sans seemed unsure). As he spoke, you felt guilty. You'd "died" after battles a couple of times - dodging wasn't the easiest thing to to, after all, and since you had the power to go back and try it again, why shouldn't you? Whatever that strange, spinning white light was, it allowed you to make a point to return to when you failed in battle. What if someone in the world you came from was able to sense or remember your different timelines, like Sans was apparently able to do for the timelines in this world? Your hands were cold. Sans eventually noticed this and moved your conversation to the living room of his house. "any clues about what could have happened? what was going on right before you ended up here?" Sans asked. You explained, as best you could, the strange interjections into your thoughts like you were being reminded of something that happened to someone else. You told him about the sudden dizziness you'd felt and your brief fainting spell before you were brought back to awareness in Grillby's, right in the middle of a conversation. "reminded of things that didn't happen to you? that's strange, kid. sounds like some timeline shenanigans to me," Sans replied. You concluded through the use of the far-too-accurate phrasing of "timeline shenanigans" that you must be only person alive to have gotten quite so lost getting chalk.