One could have easily reasoned that it was just the wind. Or perhaps it was the sound of his own soft footsteps sliding across the floor, echoing against the world left abandoned by everyone but himself. One could say it was just his imagination when the strange garbled sound reached him like a sigh; passing before most people would have ever been able to understand that they had heard something odd.

But Sans was nothing if not observant. And with Alphys no longer able to relay information to him and half of technology now on the fritz anyway, he had had to turn to less traditional methods of gathering information.

He used to try to ignore the sound and tell himself he was just hearing things. But sometimes he had moments where he couldn’t quite convince himself of that. Lately with the rest of his world becoming dust on the wind, he had become a very good listener.

The noise, the whisper, the sigh... it spoke of death.

“so, that’s it then.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “there is nothing left.” He buried his chin a little deeper into the orange scarf wrapped around his neck.

It still had his smell on it. It smelled nice, comforting even- if he could ignore the faint smell of the dust.

It had the smell of poorly cooked spaghetti, overly expensive MTT products and his brother’s favorite brand of fabric softener on it. They were the smells of home, before it had become empty. Before it had become just another dim house on an abandoned street.

Within his coat pockets his hands turned to fists that clenched so hard that they shook, bones creaking against each other. It was hard to keep his voice even when he called out to the nothingness; to the name the rest of time had forgotten. “if there is any chance, any indication worth a damn, any reason at all to believe that there is still a chance that this isn’t what we have been predicting right from the start- give me a sign.”

He listened and he waited. He would have taken anything. A sigh, a whisper, a shadow moving out of the corner of his eye- any sign at all that this wasn’t the one they had been trying to avoid. That this wasn’t going to be the permanent ending.

All he needed to rest easy was that one little whisper. That one little sigh. That one little passing shadow that promised him that if he just closed his eyes and let it pass, the nightmare would end and everyone would wake up none the wiser.

…But nothing happened. The world was quiet. He was alone after all.

He felt like he had just taken a blind step off of a cliff and was now plummeting into a bottomless darkness.

So this was it. This was the end. If he wanted things to change, this time he would have to be more than just the wall flower. If he wanted his brother back he was going to have to do everything himself.

He closed his eyes. “alright then.” A growing shadow touched his existence. He felt the deep cold of nothingness as he pulled himself through a tear in the shadows, stepped across the void and heading for a pinpoint of light in his mind. “i guess it’s my turn.”

He could feel a powerful sensation collecting in his chest. It ran up his neck and into his skull. Or was it the other way around? Hell if he knew. He just knew that it did strange things to his vision and made him feel funny.

He liked to imagine that this was sort of what drowning felt like. It was scary. You wanted to fight it. But once you accepted it, it became rather pleasant.

A deep, cold anger was growing inside of him. It was not a foreign feeling but it was one he had avoided for quite some time. Letting it consume him was like stretching limbs that had not moved in a long, long time. He had forgotten their strength.

He fell through that pinprick of light, watching it grow wider faster than he could understand, sucking him through it like a vacuum and spitting him out of the darkness and onto solid ground on the other end of the portal.

He braced himself and stepped out into the light of the golden hall.

***

The hall was just as she had left it. How long had she been dead now anyway? The dreamless darkness had felt like the blink of an eye to her but the world had rushed forward with no consideration for her slumber. Things felt older and more faded now and she couldn’t decide if that was because she was seeing things in their true light now, or if things had just been deteriorating in her absence.

Ah, well, it wouldn’t matter soon anyway.

She danced along, that sinister carefree smirk plastered to her face and her messy, dusty white hair dancing in time to her odd movements. She let the air catch her cloak so that it billowed out behind her. With no one left to talk to for the rest of her journey she decided to let Rain out of her cage a bit so she had someone to prod at. "Isn’t this nice? Don’t you just love the silence?” She shouted, enjoying the sound of her voice echoing against the walls. “No one left now. Its just the two of us and father. But soon he will be gone too; put to sleep with all the others so he can rest. No more hurt, no more pain, no more suffering. Just the black dream, filled with everyone in the Underground so they can keep each other company... They are finally going to be free.”

Rain was fighting against her for control of her body. Watching her struggle was like watching a fish flop around in the dirt. Even now Rain's weak little ethereal fingers grasped and pried at her for some sort of hold, desperate for any kind of control she could snag. Even after all this time she was trying to get Chara to turn around.

“What’s a matter? Don’t you like it? This is what you wanted too, isn’t it? After I take Asgore’s soul we will get rid of everyone. No one will ever be able to hurt us again.” She could feel Rain’s disgust crashing against her in angry waves. Good. Anger like that helped keep her warm.

She clicked her tongue in a chiding way. “You are wondering how I could be so messed up that I would want to kill my own family, aren’t you? Well, to be honest, practice helps.” She smirked against Rain's jolt of shock. “Hm, what? You’re not surprised that I killed my real parents, are you?" her lips twisted into a bitter sneer. "They were quite horrible. Worse than yours. I did the world a favor.” She reached out and touched one of the large golden pillars that towered above her in order to distract herself from the memory. She had always liked this room. The windows were pretty and the walls on the far right had lots of nice murals painted on them. The colors were faded and distorted by the golden light spilling in from outside but they still maintained their dramatic flair.

War, death and triumph, all of it was depicted along the walls.

She tore herself away from the murals and continued her speech. “Besides, it’s not like the thought never crossed your mind to do the same to your parents, right? When they fought, when they screamed, when they threw things at you. I can see your memories. There is no need to lie.

"I can see all of your favorite hiding places for when your mom was drunk and wanted to burn you with her cigarettes. You can’t tell me you didn’t wish she was dead when she finally caught you. Just like you can’t tell me you were never angry with your dad when you heard him talk about what a horrible accident you were.”

Chara looked down as a little beetle skittered across the floor in front of her, black antenna waving in the air. “Didn’t you ever want to just snuff them out?” She stepped on it with the heel of her boot and gave her foot a vicious twist.

“Hating someone doesn’t make it ok to murder everyone and everything they were ever associated with! These monsters were kind! They loved you! They trusted you! The sins of your parents did not carry over to them!”

“Hypocrite.” Chara laughed. “You let me kill people because you thought they may have had a hand in your friend’s death. You wanted them to suffer, remember?. So perhaps you shouldn’t judge me. Besides, they used me.” She snarled, rounding on Rain’s presence. “Every monster in the Underground did! They never stopped reminding me that I was their salvation. That I, a child who had just ran away from a blood soaked home, was now supposed to lead an entire species to salvation! They didn’t love me for me. They loved me for what they wanted me to do. They didn’t take me in for my sake; they took me in for theirs!”

She closed her eyes and shrugged, trying to calm herself and pretending like she couldn’t care less. “Well, I did it. I killed myself. I did the thing none of them were brave enough to ask me to do but kept nudging me towards. I did it for them because I loved them.” Her voice cracked on that last word in a wave of sadness and disgust. “And after all that, after giving up my own body for them… my own brother couldn’t even follow through with his part of the plan. So I died. Again. Slow and painful. Because they are all just selfish cowards in the end.”

“Chara please… don’t go down this path.”

She took a moment to compose herself. “We have already ‘gone down' this path, Rain. We are at the end of the road. It’s just like Asriel said. People like us, well, we don’t want pity. We don’t want to be saved anymore. We don’t deserve it. We just want it all to end so we can get some peace and quiet.” She shrugged, hair bobbing with the motion. “But we also don’t want to just lay down and die. Just like you, for some reason we still run from death. Funny, is it not? We are the world’s sickest joke.

“But now I am here to fix all that. So… be happy. You should be smiling. Today is your lucky day. You are about to get everything you wanted when you climbed this mountain. You will have nothing left to run from after this. All the bad people in your life will be gone and the monsters who killed your friend will be brought to justice. We are going to be free. Free from them and free from this place.”

Chara continued down the hall, pushing away Rain’s attempts at a rebuttal and locking her away in their mind once more. The hallway was long, empty and blessedly quiet.

Rain noticed him first and her guilty recondition tipped Chara off half a heartbeat later. Someone that had not been there two steps ago now strolled out of the long shadow of the pillar he had been leaning up against father down the hallway.

Chara tilted her head. “What’s this?”

“No. No! No! No! Sans, what are you doing here? Run!”

“heya.” Sans stepped forward, the same smile from their meeting in Snowdin still plastered on his face. He kept his hands tucked in his pockets while he moved towards her like she was nothing more than a friend who had come to visit him in his own home. His chin was hidden away all nice and snug against an orange scarf. “you have been busy, huh?”

“I have.” Chara scowled, twirling her spear in one hand.

He nodded knowingly, still smiling. “so, you made it this far. so now i got a question for ya.” With his hands still tucked away inside his pockets he lifted his arms a bit then let them drop back down in a lazy, nonchalant gesture. He looked through one of the stained glass windows, seeming to pay little attention to Chara’s creeping movements. “do you think even the worst person can change? that everyone can be a good person if they just try?” He tilted his head and looked at her, the little pinpricks of light twinkling within his sockets.

Chara took another step forward.

Sans looked back up at the stained glass and laughed. It was a soft chuckle that for some reason did not line up with his changing expressing. “alright. well here is a better question.” His gaze snapped back over to them, the pricks of light now gone; leaving nothing but the blackness in his sockets to stair back out at them. His lazy smile had turned into a hungry grin. “do you wanna have a bad time? cause lady, if you take another step forward… you’re really not gonna like what happens next.”

Chara grimaced. Great. Another flashy show bot standing in her way. “Really? Is this some sort of joke? You are threatening me? Now? Wow, I thought you were more observant than this. You should be off hiding with the rest of the worthless dust bunnies where you would have been safe.”

He took in a deep breath in through the nose. “but i wouldn’t be safe, would i? not really. not from you.”

She rolled her eyes and snerked. “Fair point. Alright. Let’s get this over with.” She took a single step forward and twirled her spear in one hand and drew out her knife with the other.

“you sure?”

“I got a goat to kill.”

Sans shrugged. “welp! sorry old lady, this is why i never make promises.”

“Um, ok. Whatever.” She shook her head, bloodshot eyes narrowed in a hungry grin. “I’m going to enjoy this. You were one of her favorites.”

He brought a finger up to his mouth. “shh.”

She balked at him. “Excuse me?”

“hang on. just taking it all in, ya know? even after all this... all this chaos, all this hell… it’s still a beautiful day outside. people never think the end will come on a day like this but sometimes… that’s just how things go. the birds are singing, flowers are blooming…” one eye had gone black again and the other began to glow with an eerie light. “on days like these, people like you…”

Chara charged forward, spear lowered.

“Should be burning in hell!” His grin became savage. The light in his left eye leapt to life. His left hand came out of his pocket and in the blink of an eye the ground erupted in a spray of rubble. Several rows of jagged bones jolted out of the floor in an uneven pattern that converged on Chara’s advancing position faster than she had time to react.

San’s moving hand came crashing down and in that moment Chara and Rain’s soul was yanked out into view and doused in blue so fast that it felt like something was physically being ripped out of them. When his hand continued downwards towards the floor they found themselves falling with it, feeling a crushing weight pushing them towards the marbled stone as the rows of bones advanced on them at an angle meant to skewer.

“What the f-” She didn’t have time to finish. She barely had time to twist out of the way of the barricade. She fell between the jagged gaps but he still managed to lance her through the back of one of her legs as she fell.

She cried out in pain and surprise, dropping to one knee just as a tall cross section of needle sharp-bone snapped out of the ground and collided with one another right were her head should have been, forming an 'X'.

She pushed herself to her feet, keeping her weight off of her now useless right leg. It was already gushing enough blood to make her boot squishy. “How the hell are you so-”

The fire in his single burning eye flashed yellow, casting shadows against his clenched teeth and etching deep grooves under his eye sockets.

With each flash of yellow the air around him shimmered and something began to move within the long shadows of the pillars. The distortions coalesced into monstrous skulls with steak knives for teeth.

Chara only had enough time to look up in disbelief at the floating monstrosities that could be described as both canine and draconic before the skulls unhinged their massive jaws and a brilliant blue light gathered in their hungry maw, setting their eyes aglow.

She braced herself for the blue attack, every joint locking up in preparation for it to pass over her.

With a hum that became an electric howl the air ignited with heat and magic. From several different angles the beams hit her dead center. Her mind only had enough time to accumulate a reaction of shock before it was over.

Her skin, her hair, her flesh and bone- it was all burned away before she was capable of registering any more than the faint peeling sensation of her body turning to ash, leaving nothing but a charred shadow on the stone.

Her sentience was blown away into the darkness.

Wrong kind of blue.

***

They tumbled through the darkness, head over heels. Chara was cackling like a madwoman as their awareness seemingly spun on and on forever, as if it was still reeling from the force of the attack that had landed them here.

“Oh! He’s feisty! I like that! It’s been too long since we had a proper challenge! After Undyne I didn’t think the Underground had anyone left worth a damn! I mean, it was really stupid of us not to kill him when we had the chance- but wow!”

Rain’s reaction to this revelation was much different. “Fuck! If he was always this strong then why didn’t he try to stop us sooner?” Rain was racing her down the dark tunnel now. She was trying to reach that distant pinprick of light in the distance before Chara did in some feeble hope that if she got there first she could regain control of her body for a while.

“Who knows! Laziness, underestimation, hesitation? I will be sure to ask him some time- if he lasts long enough.”

She could feel Rain's excitement and she loved it. Sans had given the fool a glimmer of hope.

Good. It would make it all the more funny when she killed him.

Chara reached out for her save point. Seeing the archways of her father’s court had renewed her Determination to the point that she could call herself back to the entrance of the royal hall. Perfect.

Chara dove head first into the light. For a brief moment she tumbled and twisted in the void as if caught in a vortex then all at once she landed upright on her own two feet without any force or momentum whatsoever. Her body was alive again.

The disorienting feeling of spinning around at a hundred miles an hour then suddenly standing still with no medium between the two states was enough to make her stagger a bit and shake her head in confusion. She had hardly twitched a mussel before she felt Rain’s presence rising up inside of her; fighting for control. Sans’s last stand certainly seemed to have stirred up what little resilience she had left in her.

Chara didn’t waste any time and ran into the hall. He had gotten the jump on her but now she would know better.

Her eyes darted around the room, weapons drawn. No one was there.

And then, between one blink and the next, he was standing in the shadow of a pillar again.

“There you are.”

He pushed himself away from the pillar, hands in his pockets and that knowing smile on his face. “heya.” He droned. “you have been-“ he stopped and frowned. “hm. you look upset about something.” His eyes turned black again, the perfect accent to his sardonic grin. “guess that means I’m pretty good at my job, huh?”

“I admit, I’m impressed!” She lifted her head so that she was looking down her nose at him. Her own features remained wolfish. “I was kind of disappointed with the last monster that bothered to make a final stand against me. But you, you’re going to be so much fun.”

“heh.” He was looking out the window again. “well then, give me a moment, will ya? it’s a beautiful day outside. birds are singing, flowers are blooming…”

Chara sprung forward, body leaning forward with the momentum of her sprint.

“on days like these… people like you….” His eye ignited with that blue glow again. She was running at him full speed but she already knew she wasn’t going to make it in time to have an opening strike. “Should be burning in hell!”

Once again his left eye ignited with the cold blue glare of a killer. His hand flicked up then came crashing down. She felt their souls being ripped out of hiding and yanked up to the surface, where the icy blue of an impossible weight caused her sprint to falter into a stagger.

Once again waves of bones came shooting out of the ground with enough force to send tremors up her shins. only this time she knew enough to understand what was coming. She threw her weight forward in an unflattering leap, kicking off the ground with one foot and sending herself spinning sideways and up over the rising arc of bones, legs just barely passing in-between the gaps.

She hit the ground on all fours, two rows of jagged bones crisscrossing overhead with a hollow rattle.

The fire in his single burning eye flashed yellow, casting deep shadows against his clenched teeth and etching something sinister under his eye sockets.

“Here we go.” Chara hissed, pushing herself back up to her feet.

The air shimmered once, twice, four times; two distortions appearing on each side of him. The shimmers became shadows and then the shadows became something more solid, the blackness slipping off like oil to reveal a row of grinning skulls. Their mouths unhinged as if to laugh and blue vapor leaked out of their eye sockets in thick glowing wisps as energy collected in their maw. The light shot forth with an electric howl.

She barely managed to doge it. She sent herself skidding across the floor, getting up just in time to throw herself out of the way as the second barrage converged on her position. A third blast split the ground behind her and threw her through the air in an ungraceful arc. She hit the ground hard, a spike of pain running up her shoulder as she landed poorly and rolled across the floor. When she looked back up again the skulls were shimmering out of existence.

“Is that all you’ve got?” She spat, taking this sudden break in the barrage to get back to her feet.

“huh.” He shrugged, looking at her sideways with the piercing, unblinking gaze of his single glowing eye. He had the look of a mad man enjoying his job. She was coming after him again but he didn’t seem to care. “i always wondered why people never used their strongest attacks first... oh well.”

Her spear caught the warm afternoon light on its sharpened edge as she drew her weapon back for a strike. She swiped at him, hair flying like a banner behind her as the sharp whistle of steel cut through the air.

He sidestepped her, hands in his pockets, eyes going black. He seemed amused by the surprise on her face as the ground underneath her buckled and a set of blunt bones shot out of the ground and knocked her out of his way. “what? do you think i’m just going to stand here and take it?”

She spun back around and struck at him with another vicious swipe but once again she only met air. He wasn’t even thereanymore. She turned around, searching wildly for where he had gone, expecting him to jump out and hit her at any given moment.

Her eyes narrowed. He was all the way across the hall, standing with his back against another pillar.

“ever double-dutch?” He asked.

Both ends of the hall erupted in turmoil, jagged bones rising out of the floor and flying towards her in tight barricaded rows with an escort of stabbing bones floating a few feet above the main columns. The two attacks synced themselves up with one another so that the only way to avoid them would be to leap over the bones as they converged.

She jumped, the first two barricades passing by each other to make an X as they slipped under her and streaked past, their counterparts in the air doing the same mere inches above her head. Her feet had barely hit the ground before the next row was upon her and she had to jump again. Over and over she jumped, trying to keep in rhythm but each time her feet hit the ground she ended up with a little more of a delay that made the window for error grow smaller and smaller.

On the fifth jump she went too high in her panic and one of the barbed bones flying overhead caught on her hair and yanked her sideways, causing her boots to get snagged by the passing barbs below. She landed on her side, her boots flying off and her long ponytail snagging on one of the columns. She was dragged along by the hair for several feet, only managing to break free when a bone moving in the opposite direction slammed into her.

She screamed in pain and frustration as she tried to right herself, blood smearing across the broken stones. New waves of magic kept hitting her over and over again just before she could right herself; brittle bones slamming in to her and fracturing into jagged lances as they pummeled her.

The rhythm was lost.

The barricades sank back into the ground. She didn’t even have time to notice that they were gone before two narrow spines shot out of the floor on either side of her at a diagonal angle and skewered her in place.

She gasped, mouth hanging open in shock. Inside of her Rain recoiled in agony. Dark red lines of blood dripped down the grooves of the bloodied bone tips protruding through her back.

The world was going dark again.

Sans stalked up to her, hands still tucked away in his pockets like this was nothing more than an afternoon stroll to him. Chara glared at him through her bangs, breathing wet and heavy as her lungs began to fill with blood.

He looked down at her like she was some sort of curious puzzle to toy with. He kept himself a few paces out of reach, either out of caution or out of a desire not to stain his shoes. “wow, so you can bleed. congratulations.” Either his eyes had gone all black again or she was losing her vision. Her head slumped, her body going limp as she embraced the darkness, his last words trailing behind her like an afterthought.

“didn’t think you had it in you. you know, since you're heartless.

***

“hm, that expression.” He tilted his head and rubbed his chin in sarcastic thought. “that’s the expression of someone who has already died twice in a row.” He winked at her, left eye already beginning to glow. “suffice to say, you look unsatisfied. so, how about we go ahead and make it a third?” He scowled to himself. “what comes after thrice anyway?” His right eye was going black. “…want to help me find out?”

Chara was already seething, her knuckles white from gripping her weapons.

He was looking out of that accursed window again. “It’s a beautiful day outside…”

“Oh for god’s sake am I going to have to listen to this every time I-”

His head snapped back around to meet her, looking down his nasal ridge at her with his Cheshire grin and that single wild eye.

The ground erupted around her. She found herself careening forward in surprise, cursing the whole way down. She tried to recover, biting back a scream of pain as several bones ripped through her mid-section. There was hardly enough time for her to come to terms with what had happened before the skulls were there, laughing maws wide and their blue eyes smoldering.

“You little shit!” She yowled.

“yup!”

For a brief moment the world around her was incredibly bright and then all at once it was black again. She could just make out Sans chirping the words “anyways, as i was saying, it’s a nice day out. why not relax and take a load off?” Before she died.

***

This time she decided to try something different. As soon as she reloaded she ran into the room and took an immediate left, ducking behind the pillars and creeping along on her tiptoes so her boots wouldn’t make much sound. By the time Sans appeared and stepped out of the shadows she was already closing in on him.

Rain became strangely quiet. Chara could feel her presence bunching up inside of her like a cat waiting for just the right moment to leap.

“Don’t even think about it.” She warned, detaching from the wall and creeping up on him. She could see a scrap of blue from San’s coat peeking out from the other side of the pillar. “If you try anything funny and mess this up, I will put you up front again so you can feel every sensation of your death in perfect clarity. Understand? I don’t care if it messes up my run when I do it- I will put you up front and you will feel it.”

Rain faded back like the whimpering dog she was.

“Good girl.” She hefted her spear in hand and counted to three. One…two…

Rain dove at her, her little wispy spirit launching itself at her hijacked body with her eyes screwed shut against the understood consequences. She didn’t have enough power to do much. She just opened their mouth and took in a sharp gasp of air as Chara swung.

Her spear clanked up against the pillar, finding no purchase.

“heh. nice try.” Rain’s little gasp had been more than enough of a warning for him. He was standing several feet away in the shadow of a different pillar now.

Chara had just enough time to lock eyes with him before her soul was yanked to the surface and the weight of the world was cast down upon her shoulders.

Oh well. At least she got to skip the dialogue this time.

By now she had his opener down quite well and now that she was behind the pillars she was able to use them as a means to shield herself from the hungry maws of those strange skulls he kept summoning.

He paused after the initial barrage. “hey, uh, i actually really like those windows. so could you, you know, get back to the middle of the room so i don’t have to break them when i kill you?”

“Fuck you, Sans!”

“i’m flattered. truly, i am. but given the circumstances i will have to politely decline your invitation. put a pin in that one, will ya?”

“You smug son of a-” once again he had lured her into talking when she should have been moving. Several rows of sharpened bones as long as her forearm materialized overhead in a wide, neat ring around her pillar. She rolled out of the way as all hell broke loose. She was driven out into the open, where Sans stood waiting. She could have sworn that over the resets San’s grin had become more and more hungry; his eye burning with something close to a cruel sort of madness as his grief and hatred chewed away at him from the inside.

“ah. there you are. hello again.” He hummed.

Chara glared at him, pacing back and forth, knowing the moment she took a step forward they would be right back to business as usual. “Watch it Sans. I’m getting tired of your shit and we both know that I’m just going to get better at this over time. You may want to think about turning around while you have a chance. Your big brother isn’t here to look out for you anymore.”

The glow in his eye winked out. His eyeless sockets glared back at her while his hand reached up to his orange scarf. He rubbed the fabric between his fingers. “heh. actually, i’m the big brother. it was my job to protect him.” His eye reignited with a flame so furious its ethereal light licked at the sides of his skull. “And now, it’s my job to make you pay!”

The world around them erupted into chaos, bones tearing up from the floor in a hail of debris.

Chara was dancing forward again. She had been able to gain an extra step in his direction this time while he had been talking.

She was getting the rhythm down pretty well now. Duck, duck, jump, jump, doge, sidestep, jump-

“Really?” She barked, leaping over a particularly nasty barbed fence and ducking as a lance shot by overhead. He was almost within striking distance now. “That’s funny. You don’t strike me as the big brother type.” She ducked under a low flying bone. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the shadows simmering again. He would be summoning another wave of skulls soon. She would be cutting it kind of close. “You look more like an only child to me!”

His eye flashed yellow, the light made his teeth seem all the sharper now; like he was snarling at her. Maybe he was. He chuckled, shoulders shaking. “You'll pay for that.”

There! He was in range!

Her attack passed right through where he had been. Once again he had moved at the last second, seeming to flicker and slide past her faster than her eyes could keep up. All she knew was that one moment he was in front of her and the next he was behind her.

She looked up from her failed attack only to realize that he had been waiting for this. Behind the position he had once held, a single shard of bone had been waiting behind him and now that he was clear of its path, it shot out at her like it had a mind of its own.

There was no way to avoid it. Making good on her previous threat, she took Rain by the scruff and shoved her awareness up front to dampen the pain. The strike punched right through her side, sending her spinning sideways and staggering off to the side in a spray of blood.

Rain writhed with pain and tried to mentally claw past Chara and escape but she was the weaker of the two souls now, thus her actions found no purchase.

“If you don’t like it, heal it!” Chara spat.

Rain refused, bombarding her with mental images of all their past sins. This last stand was her feeble idea of atonement and she wasn’t going to back down so easily. Turns out she had a bit of spine on her after all.

Without the pain there to stun her, Chara was able to turn her attention to the skulls that had finished materializing.

She dodged the first two, the force of one blast throwing her out of the range of the second. Her eyes darted around wildly in search of Sans as she was tossed through the air.

There! A few yards behind her, standing in the shadow of the other skulls.

She twisted around in midair and reversed directions, feeling the ground underfoot becoming uneven as a trail of spikes chased after her. The next two skulls were about to fire but she was almost upon him again, putting him in the line of fire.

His grin faltered in realization. At the last second his right hand shot out of its pocket and the two skulls spun around in midair at his hasty command, their maws already open in discharge. The twin beams filled the room with their thunderous howl and the crash of shattering glass.

Apparently he didn’t like the windows that much.

At the same time, his left hand reemerged from his pocket, glowing the same shade of blue as their ensnared soul.

She jumped, spear and knife at the ready as she flung herself at him. She swung on the downward decent but when she should have dropped into striking range she instead stopped, her whole body feeling impossibly light. She hung in the air for a moment, eyes wide and arms flailing.

Sans lifted his hand up above his head and her body followed suit, causing her to squawk and flail like an angry bird.

He flung his hand sideways and she went flying- gravity ramming into her like an angry bull and tossing her across the room. She crashed into a mural, smearing blood across its heroic depiction before falling to the ground in a heap.

“I want my brother back.” Sans spat, lifting his hand again, a motion soon followed by the uncomfortable sensation of having gravity drag them along by the chest.

“I want my friends back.”

She was tossed up into the air. She had just enough momentum to twist herself around so she could watch herself collide with the ceiling. Another row of spikes managed to get her in the arm.

“And if I have to rip you apart-“ He slammed his hand down toward the ground and Chara followed the motion with a scream. “-for the next half of eternity to make things right-”

The impact sent painful tremors up her shins but she shielded herself with Rain’s presence and put all her willpower into jumping away from the awaiting bone trap that sprung up the second she touched the ground.

“-well then, I won’t mind.” He shrugged and tossed her sideways into another wall. She avoided the spikes but she was slowing down. They were bleeding out.

Chara began to pool her own efforts towards healing. Lucky for her Sans couldn’t seem to maintain one style of offense without having to let the previous one evaporate back into nothingness, so there were natural breaks in the pattern that she could exploit. There was a rhythm to his song and she would learn it.

He laughed. It was a nervous laugh that bordered on being unhinged. “see, the thing is, i hardly even remember the resets. but judging by that look on your face-” He slammed her back into the ground. She dodged the spines and he let her go. Gravity went back to normal and the next set of bones came rocketing out of the ground in a tight formation. “-you can remember them pretty well, can’t you? every. single. second of this.“

Like the sickle teeth of a huge maw, bones were appearing above her and snapping down upon the marble in an attempt to pin her.

“every injury, every fumble, every broken bone... you will remember it. you will grow tired of it. so, in times like these you gotta ask yourself: is what you want really worth it?”

She ducked back behind the pillars and for a few precious second he lost sight of her. His attacks spread out wildly in her assumed direction but she managed to roll ahead of them. For one brief heartbeat he had his back turned to her. She swung out from behind her pillar and threw her spear.

He spun around, hearing her ragged breathing. With one sharp motion he lifted up a wall of bone around himself, knocking the spear aside. Then in the same motion he twitched his hand and a cross section of spines jumped out of the floor and finally caught her outright.

Once again she felt the familiar sensation of being skewered from multiple angles, propping her up at half height like a battered scarecrow.

“Damn….so…..close.” She panted.

He stepped over to her. She could see a few beads of moisture glistening against the crown of his skull. He reached out and flicked her nose. “heh. tag. you’re it.”

Rage burned in her bloodshot eyes for a moment, but then she smiled “Well… that was…a stupid move.” She rasped. Her body shook with a painful cough that painted her lips red. She glared up at him through her bangs, a nasty wolfish look accenting her bloody teeth. “Don’t you know…. that the whole point of tag…” She blinked and her eyes rolled up into her head. The world was fading again. “Is that you can’t run forever?...eventually….it’s always you turn….to be it.”

The pain was washed away by the blessed darkness. Her existence sighed, a soft whooshing sound within the void.

She had made progress this time.