Two seconds into his arrival and he already knew something had gone wrong. Now it was just a question of how badly he had fucked up this time.

“dammit.” He hissed between his teeth, looking down at the small puddle of snow beneath his slippers. Someone had left the shed door ajar. He took slow deliberate steps down the short hall that lead to the main room. His hands were shoved as deep into his pant pockets as they would go and his shoulders were hunched as if he expected to be dealt a blow when he rounded the corner.

The room was empty.

He looked up at the ceiling and sighed through a list of his favorite curses. “of course.” His soul was twisted in a mix of draining acceptance and something that sat between dread and anger. He flicked the still-open panel on the shield generator. No struggle. No damage. She had been let out. “Dammit, Papyrus.”

He turned back around and yanked the shed door open. He didn’t bother to close it behind him as he trudged off towards the house. If she hadn’t outright bolted the second she got out, Papyrus would have taken her inside, so he had to check there first.

He could have easily teleported to make things faster but by now whatever was fated to happen already had. He didn’t want to see what was waiting for him inside. He didn’t want to know the truth. With every step that sticky ball of anxiety and resignation grew thicker and heavier in his chest. With each step he took he tried to mentally brace himself for what he would find.

The door was unlocked.

He stepped inside, clinging to the doorknob like a man hanging from a cliff instead of standing in the doorway of his own home. “Bro?” He called out, smile having faded into a thin, unpleasant line of worry. The TV was on but no one was there. A half eater contain of leftovers was laying on its side. “Papyrus?”

He slipped inside and closed the door behind him and crept up the stairs, wary and ready to defend himself if he had to. “human? anyone?”

The door to his brother’s room was unhinged.

“oh no.” He rushed to the door and pushed his way through. The scene on the other side was a mess. A broken computer monitor, furniture piled up against the door, a shattered window- everything not bolted down had been flung across the room. The struggle must have been pretty crazy.

“no. no, no, no! not again. dammit why didn’t i take her somewhere more secure?” His eyes darted around the room, waiting for that moment when he saw the dust. But… the room was empty.

He looked at the broken window and felt a brief ray of hope. Maybe his brother had gotten away.

He stuck his head out of the jagged hole in the window and squinted out into the darkness of the oncoming night. One short teleport later and he was back outside, scanning the area for clues.

When he saw the scarf he froze in place and his heart stopped. Past images of his brother’s death assaulted him and for a brief moment he felt nothing once again. He stared at it for a long while with his eyes dark and his hands balled into fists. But when he went to go retrieve it, footsteps echoing across the timeline in an act of synchronicity, he realized that this time something was off. The scarf was the only thing there.

No Armor.

No dust.

Just shards of glass and a few messy footprints sheltered from the snow by the broad side of the house and a few boxes of junk that had kept the wind away.

He stooped down to look at the footprints. There wasn’t much to go on, but he could recognize his brother's footprints. Here and there the prints overlapped on top of an unfamiliar set pressed far deeper into the snow. The human’s no doubt.

So she had been the one in the lead then. She had been the first outside and Papyrus had gone after her.

He began to follow the tracks off into the trees. Ok. This was ok. He could still work with this.

Slowly his mind began to piece things together a little. “you were running from it, weren’t you?” He murmured, recalling the fear in the human’s eyes as she had spoken of the darkness inside of her. If anything it added a little credibility to her wild claims- sort of. He wasn’t writing down his faith in ink any time soon but at least this meant she really was more focused on getting away than fighting this time.

He pulled out his phone and called his brother.

One ring.

Two.

…Three.

Papyrus always answered by the second ring. No acceptations. This was not encouraging.

It kept ringing and went to voicemail. The recording was a long, loud explanation about how he must be busy training and a requested that the caller leave a message so they could hang out later. Sans had never actually heard this messaged before. This was the first time Papyrus had ever failed to answer the phone.

He waited for the beep so he could leave his message. “hey, it’s me. where are you? i’m worried… you’re not trying to follow her, are you? please, call me back.” That last bit sounded a little more uneven then he had wanted it to. He shoved his phone back in his pocket and took a deep breath.

No dust. He had to keep reminding himself of that. Not dust. Yet.

He rubbed at his eye sockets and groaned. He had to get back to Hotland and let Alphys know their plans had been changed. Maybe he could find Papyrus on one of her cameras while he was there.

It looked like this was going to be another sleepless night.

***

Rain had gotten used to a great many things that she had not been aware of getting used to. The feeling of always being somewhat cold, the smell of her own singed clothes, the feel of dust and pollen packed under her nails. She had gotten used to the taste of her own blood and the feeling of dirt stuck between her teeth, because once you got to Waterfall you had nothing but raw water sausages to eat until you reached MTT resort. She had even gotten used to the numbness that had made all of these things little more than vague nagging sensations residing in the caboose of her train of thought.

But things were quite a bit different now. This run was different. And those differences weighed down upon her like tiny stones piled up into a crushing weight of responsibility and cluelessness.

She was winging it.

It felt strange not to have the cold weight of solid metal always pressed against her hand. Chara had picked up quite a number of improvised weapons along the way but Rain always managed to drop them, so long as she was patient and sneaky. More than once she found herself reaching back to pull up the hood on her stolen cloak only to remember she had discarded it in this timeline.

She had to take frequent breaks now. Having a body was so much more exhausting and the pain of injury far more sharp than she remembered.

However, the strangest new sensation by far was the feeling of new clothes. Warm and soft, the faint scent of fabric softener still present in its bright threads. Their fresh cleanliness made the rest of her feel dirty.

They also made her feel like she had a bright neon spotlight on her back at all times. Papyrus’s taste in clothing was far flung from her own. It made it twice as hard to hide as it needed to be.

Lucky for her she was quite skilled at avoidance by now. She probably knew these caverns better than half the monsters that lived here. She knew all the shortcuts, secret tunnels, lesser known pathways and precarious routes that most people would want to avoid for their own safety.

She traversed them all. A shadow in the dark- a slightly neon shadow, unfortunately- but a super sneaky one!

Once again she lost track of time. Though to be honest she had stopped trying to keep track of it long agao. There was no sun to speak of and resets shot everything to hell. Not to mention monsters seemed to have adjusted to much longer “daytime” periods of activity down here.

If time had traveled in a straight line, then perhaps it could be said that she had been in Waterfall for about two days. Of course phantom time could be added to that number for every accidental encounter she had where Chara had fought against her, stretching those two days into something far more grueling.

Chara wasn’t like a dog with a bone. She was like a vampire starving for blood. Her attempts at murder were becoming more frenzied. More desperate. Yet as time went on it became a little easier for Rain to hold her back. The longer she had control over her own body the more time she had to practice calm control and careful thought. So long as she kept a level head it was harder for Chara to steal the reigns.

Of course she could also steal control while she was sleeping.

...Rain had not slept in at least two days.

For now that strategy was working but it was only postponing the inevitable trouble. If she didn’t come up with a new tactic soon she would be too worn out to fight Chara or deal with Undyne and then the two of them would be at each other’s throats while she recovered.

“She won’t show you any mercy you know. Undyne only has two settings: stubborn and dead.”

“I will find a way around her.”

“What, do you think she will forgive you as easily as Papyrus did? She was a pain in the ass to start with. If she can remember even the faintest scrap of memory from all those other timelines we burned, she will turn you into a personalized pin cushion and throw your corpse into the magma once she’s bored.”

“Then I just won’t give her that chance.” She shifted her weight and tested her footing. There was a pretty large gap where a bridge had gone out- possibly due to Undyne trying to force her to take a different path. She had been hunting them for a while now but she had become predictable in her tactics so while it may not be easy, avoiding her was in fact possible.

With a running jump Rain flung herself across the gap. The wind was knocked out of her and she cracked her knee against a rock but she limped on, plucking sausages from the reeds and healing as she went.

“How do you plan to get past her?”

They were climbing up a rather sketchy looking wall now. There was a small tunnel about twenty feet up. Not quite tall enough to stand upright in but that was fine. She would crawl.

“You’ll find out.”

“Whatever you do it won’t work. And once you get to Hotland she will corner you. The guards will be much more organized with her alive to give them orders.”

“I will figure it out. I got all the time in the world, remember?” Well, so long as time didn’t shatter, she did. It seemed to be holding up ok now that they were not spamming true resets but it still wasn’t looking friendly in the void. Lately she felt like she had spent too much time staring into that thing and it was starting to stare back.

“Hah! Who do you think you are? Some sort of pacifist? Do you think this will make up for all the things we have done? Do you think they will forgive you just because this time the mask you wear is a smile?”

“No.” She grunted, dragging herself up into the tunnel. An echo flower that had sprouted from a tuft of grass near the entrance echoed back her negative. “But it would be a start.” She yanked it from the ground. It gave a shrill and feeble sort of cry that made her hair stand on end. “It would give them a chance to move on. Even if I will be stuck like this forever.” She held the flower close to her lips and whispered. “Test, Test. One, two, three.”

“Test, Test. One, two, three.” It echoed back.

Good.

“Rain? Hello?”

She froze in place for a second, crouching low to the tunnel floor. Chara perked up at the sound of Papyrus’s voice.

“Not again.” Rain sighed through her teeth.

“Not again.” The flower echoed.

Papyrus had not given up his search. They had lost him in the trees near the borders of Snowdin but he had followed their tracks into Waterfall before the snow could fill them in. She had been trying to permanently shake him ever since.

She had left him several messages via echo flower by now, coming up with a dozen different ways to try to get him to go home. Yet he was nothing if not persistent.

He didn’t know it but he had had a brush with death while searching for them in the reeds this morning. More than a just a brush, actually. But she had fixed that.

She felt words bubbling up in her throat as Chara tried to call out their position. Rain picked up a nearby rock and put it in her mouth, its cumbersome size pinning down her tongue and keeping the words from being much more than a few sloppy grumbles. She clenched the stem of the flower between her teeth and began to crawl away.

The tunnel felt crowded. She felt like there were eyes burning holes in her back. Despite knowing full well she had successfully avoided all of the Royal Scientist’s cameras thus far and that she wasn’t scheduled to have another run-in with Undyne until she came out of the tunnel, she still found herself looking over her shoulder and checking the cracks in the walls to make sure she was still alone.

Dark, darker, then even darker. Falling through the cracks. Into holes, into tunnels, into static. Brushing up against the past and causing her soul to bleed. There was a face in the walls. It was watching her.

Maybe it was just paranoia over Papyrus finding her when she could only crawl that made her feel so uneasy. Maybe it was because the echo flower kept echoing back distorted versions of her own breathing as it died. Maybe this tunnel was just fucking creepy.

Or maybe she really was being watched.

A sigh. Wind through leaves. Distant static coming from an unseen radio. But there were none of those things here in the void. Was it a whisper then? What did it want?

The bleeding stopped when she regained a body but the scars remained.

Yep. It was just the echo flower freaking her out. Best to stop thinking about the void. But just to be safe, she leaned away from any sketchy looking gaps in the wall.

“You know I bet they know Papyrus is missing. Maybe they think you killed him again! Technically you did.”

“That was you.” Rain thought, choosing to keep quiet in the tunnel.

“Was it?” Chara lounged around like a smug cat, her presence draping itself over Rain like a scarf. “We have been together for quite a while now. I may not have been able to fully absorb your soul, but you did give it to me. Your body too. I used your body to kill. I use your Determination to live. And despite what you may like to tell yourself, we both know you used me too. You used what’s left of my soul to do the things you were too afraid to do. So why nitpick the black and white now? You used to be so eager to live in the gray.”

“Yeah and then that gray got really, really bloody cause I fucked up! I may have helped to kill in the past. Sometimes I let you kill because It was the most passive choice I could make. But I’m done with that. That last kill was just you being, well, you. You killed him on your own and I brought him back on my own.” And boy had that been like pulling teeth. It had also added at least two more phantom days to their two “true” day’s journey. “ So don’t bother trying to guilt trip me. I know what I did.”

She could hear the sound of rushing water now. It began to drip from the ceiling and soak through the knees of her pants as it pooled along the floor. She was getting close to the exit. She picked up the pace. She needed the flower to be in good shape when she got out.

“Anyway, as I was saying, do you think they think you killed him again? I mean, Undyne will hunt you down like a fox either way- but Sans could be interesting. Because now he knows exactly what you are and what you have a habit of doing. What will you do if he turns on you? What will you do if you end up fighting both him and Undyne?” Chara chuckled to herself. “Even I won’t be able to help you then! It would be worse than fighting both her and Papyrus.”

Rain tried to ignore the bitter taste in her mouth. Maybe Chara had been hoping to take care of Papyrus out here in hopes of pushing Sans past the point of mercy again. Then Rain would either have to dive back into the void and start all over, or compromise and kill a few monsters in order to progress.

In a brief flicker of worry she realized she was not sure what option would be the best. Was it justified to risk the safety of everyone to save the few?

She shook the thought from her mind. She wouldn’t let it come to that.

Finally she came out of the tunnel. It was an awkward last few yards. There was enough of a slope to cause a thin stream of water to run down the tunnel’s belly. The water was cold and the floor was slick with slime. When she slid back out into the open she made an ungraceful belly flop into a small running river just deep enough to carry her downstream a few feet before she paddled over to the other side and wrung her clothes out.

Hah! She had made it. Let’s see Papyrus catch up to her now!

She scurried up against the thick reeds and began to traverse the water’s edge, careful to stay as far away from the wild echo flowers as possible.

She tried to calculate what day it was for the rest of the Underground. She had seen most of these days quite a few times by now so she had a rough idea of where Undyne was likely to try and catch her today. Of course this run broke so far from tradition that she couldn’t lean too heavily on that pattern anymore.

She did know her patrol route though. So that was something. And so far she probably hadn’t killed anything in Waterfall… yet. At least she hoped she hadn’t killed anything. She had gotten into a few fights and ran off without ever knowing if the monsters she encountered were ok. She just had to hope they were and that Undyne would notice that she was trying to show mercy. She didn’t put much stock in that hope though. That’s why she was so mindful of the flowers.

Speaking of which, there was quite a large field of them coming up soon.

She peeked over a nearby ledge. Down below several flowers swayed along in a gentle wind; a small stream cutting through their ranks. She held the flower to her lips. “Testing. Testing. One, two, three.”

“Testing. Tes…ing. One..oo.. tree.”

Good enough.

“That angry piece of sushi couldn’t catch me if I showed up at her front door and gave her a net!”

“That angry pie…shi couldn’t catch me if…. showed up….. and gave her a net!”

Eh, still good enough. She tossed it over the ledge and down into the gentle rolling water below. The flower bobbed down the lane, passing by its counterparts and whispering its message as it went. Soon the whole field was whispering about her, the message becoming garbled in one area just as a patch somewhere farther downstream caught on to the fresh message and saved its voice from the static.

Somewhere down below on the far side of the clearing, the clang of metal footsteps could be heard echoing against the cavern.

Rain smiled and ran the other way.

***

Her luck was bound to run out eventually. She should have known this would happen and couldn’t help but be angry with herself when it did. All that careful planning and she still ended up stuck right where she always ended up: staring down a gauntlet with a pissed fish waiting at the end of it.

She had avoided everyone so well up until now! She had been so sneaky! She had really thought she could pull this off. But there were two things she had not quite accounted for.

One: Just like Papyrus, Undyne knew she could catch her in a bottleneck if she waited long enough.

Two: The water down here was really, really cold.

Her original plan had been to bribe the ferry boat to carry her downstream to Hotland. She knew the docking stations well enough. She may or may not have broken into someone’s house to acquire said bribe, but she didn’t have to kill anyone to get it.

She had just kind of assumed that if she waited around long enough the ferry would show up. But without evacuating monsters to carry back and forth, the ferry didn’t seem to have a reason to show up today.

Maybe Undyne had something to do with that. She didn’t know.

Plan B was to ride the current bareback. She had become quite the good swimmer down here but the runoff from Snowdin coupled with the lack of sunlight made the water icy cold. The current was swift, the water was deep and the sides of the tunnel the river ran through were smooth and slick from so many years of erosion. She did not last long enough to make it to Hotland.

Lastly she tried to beat Undyne to the punch and sneak through the bottleneck before the intimidating Captain could arrive but Undyne was not one to easily be beat at anything. She was already there waiting for her when she arrived.

So now her only choice was to go through Undyne’s ledge. She had to brave the mock-mountain within the mountain and face its angry guardian.

So, here we are. Doesn’t this all just look a little too familiar?” Chara teased. “You thought you were being so clever, didn’t you?”

Rain’s answer was cut off when Undyne’s grim voice cut through the howling air.

“Seven. Seven human souls and king Asgore will become a god.” High above them, on a perch illuminated by the smoldering light of Hotland, Undyne turned to face them. “Six. That’s how many we have collected thus far. Understand? Through your seventh and final soul, this world will be transformed.”

Rain cleared her throat. Her hands reached to grasp something to help comfort her but there was nothing there to hold. No weapon. Nothing to use in her defense. She had chosen to throw it all away. “We don’t have to do this you know. We don’t have to fight. I don’t want to fight.”

“Hah! You sure as hell wanted to fight all those monsters that got in your way!” She spat, glaring down at her and twisting her hands over the shaft of a glowing spear that accumulated in her hand. The leather of her gloves creaked in response. She watched them with a single angry, yellow eye.

“But they are all ok, right? No one died.” Rain protested.

“No thanks to you! Do you think it’s been fun for me? Searching for the people you left for dead? Following trails of dust and magic across my home so I can find the friends who crawled away from your little encounters? Did you think this was all just a game? It’s not fun promising to keep the people you care about safe, only to find them wounded and dying later because you couldn’t do your damn job!”

Rain flinched away from her growling words.

“Doesn’t sound like she’s in a very merciful mood. Are you sure you don’t want a little help?”

“I don’t want to hurt any more people, Undyne. I don’t want to fight you.”

“Hah! You just don’t want to pick on someone who can actually stand up to you! Why else would you have spent the past two days crawling around with your belly in the mud? You have been running from me!” She pulled off her helmet, hair dancing in the wind. A look of disappointment fell across her face. “I used to think humans were cool, you know. Alphys’s history books told me that people like you could be compassionate, just like us. But you? You are just a remorseless criminal.” She looked off in the direction they had come from and sighed. “I know what you did. I can’t find him… but I know.”

Rain shifted uncomfortably. “Know what?”

She flashed her teeth in a hateful sneer. “I know that you killed him! You killed my friend!” Her voice broke ever so slightly and she tossed her helmet away with an angry crash. “Say what you want about him. Call him naïve, weird, self-absorbed- but Papyrus always answers his phone in the first two rings!” She held up two fingers and shook them at her. “Then you come along, pass right through his town and all of a sudden he won’t answer anymore. He didn’t show up to give his report either. I stood there waiting for him for hours and he never came! He’s just… gone. And his brother isn’t around either.”

Rain took a step back. This was too much like before. This was too close to how she has lost it all the first time. “N-no. Undyne you don’t understand. He’s fine. I swear! He’s still alive! He’s out there somewhere, I saw him just a few hours ago and-”

“What did you do to him? What did you do to him!” She threw her spear. It hummed as it embedded itself in the ground at Rain's feet. Undyne closed her eye and composed herself. “Forget it. You don’t really care. Go ahead. Prepare however you want. But when you step forward,” a second spear formed in her hand. “I will kill you. I may have failed him but I’ll be damned if I let you hurt anyone else.”

Chara began to whisper little doubts into her ear. “You are going to have to kill the king anyway if you want to get out of here. Do you think she would stand by and let that happen? Do you think you can defeat him without any LOVE? Come on, you have proven your point. You want more control. I get it. You have been heard. Now let’s find an appropriate compromise and get out of this hellish place.”

“I would have been a lot more open to that offer if your compromise wasn’t murder.” Rain chuckled, dark and grim. She was watching the path she had come from. Papyrus had been on her tail ever since she left his house. He was crazy fast and way more observant than she had originally given him credit for. Usually if she stayed in one place long enough he would catch up to her.

“Are you even listening to me punk?” Undyne snapped, patience wearing thin.

“Ca-calm down, ok?” She called up the mountain. “I’m sure if we wait long enough you will see that I’m telling the truth. Any minute now Papyrus will round that corner and sort things out.”

“Quit mocking me!”

“I’m not!”

“Bah! Fine then! I gave you a chance to start this on your own terms but I’m tired of waiting. So now we finish this on mine!” Undyne came crashing down the mountain like a rock slide, fangs bared and a pack of spears trailing behind her like eager hunting dogs. “Nnnygah!”

“Here we go!”

“Oh geez.” Rain snatched the tribute spear from the ground, eyes widening in surprise at just how fast Undyne was able to close the distance between them. In hardly a blink of an eye she hit the ground, feet sinking into the earth and armor clanging like a gong of war, initiating the fight.

“En guarde!” She swung at her, the blow low and vicious.

Rain rolled out of the way, the spear’s teeth whistling over her back as she moved out of range just as a second spear came crashing down mere inches from her last location. She dropped into a crouching position; spear in hand and at the ready. It was far longer and lighter than the weapon she was used to but its warmth was familiar enough.

She knocked a third spear out of the way when it came flying at her face. It rang like metal and crackled like fireworks before dissipating into static.

In the time it had taken her to move away and deflect the attack, Undyne had taken several steps towards her, flinging spears with one hand while the other let her weapon drag across the ground, its teeth cutting into the earth. Rain noticed the completion of the box far too late to escape it.

Undyne cast her hand in front of her in a wide arc, a spray of glowing green needles casting eerie shadows under her single wild eye and yellowed teeth.

Rain tried to shield herself from the spray with the spear but felt the strange sting of their prick anyway. The world around her throbbed once, her soul being ripped from its hidden place and accumulating into a heart shaped light in front of her chest. She had but a brief moment to notice the growing consistence of light red outshining the dark red before everything was enveloped by green.

“Goddammit.”

“It’s time you stopped running from your crimes and faced justice head on.” Undyne jumped past the line in the dirt, wasting no time in taking a jab at her.

“At least let me get my footing before jumping in here!” Rain yelped, bending over backwards to avoid a stray arrow of light and wobbling in a moment of imbalance when she did.

Undyne saw her moment of vulnerability and swept her feet out from under her, several spears stabbing down at her from up above and forcing her to roll back and forth to avoid them.

“Hah! You know, when I first got reports of your presence I planned on this being a fair fight. But now? After what you have done? I don’t care!”

Rain scrambled to her feet. She screamed in pain when a blow cut across her side, tearing a hole in her clothes.

“You're not just bad, you're cruel. You're sick!”

Knee-level spears shot out from the nearby reeds. Rain sidestepped two and jumped over a third, spinning her spear around just in time to block another hail of glowing bullets Undyne had sent raining down upon her head.

Once again Undyne’s voice broke into something shaken by grief. “And you think you can just lie to me? You are wearing his clothes for god's sake!”

Rain mentally cursed herself. She had forgotten about that little detail. That probably looked pretty condemning, didn’t it?

They were face to face again, exchanging blows in rapid succession. Rain blocked them one after another, remembering her patterns from previous lives but still losing ground to her ferocity. She tried desperately to force out an explanation between strikes. “He! Lent! Them! To! m-ugk!” Undyne kicked her in the gut and with a brutal cutting motion from her hand, sent another wave of blue in her direction. A spear lodged itself against her hip bone and caused her to crumble in pain, nearly dropping her spear as she screamed.

She needed to heal.

She felt Chara’s smile against her soul like a warm, oozing cut spreading across her chest. In that brief moment where Rain turned her attention to healing, the world began to lose its color. Even though she was aware her body had already hit the ground, she continued to feel the odd sensation of falling farther and farther back.

“My turn!”

Ignoring the wound, Chara sprang forward with her trademark grin of madness, spear held at the ready.

Undyne’s eye widened in mild surprise at witnessing the human’s first offensive move and brought up her spear, blocking the strike and deflecting it with a spin that she turned into an offensive blow of her own.

Chara snaked around the attempt, allowing her whole body to be spun around when her spear was knocked to the side and using the momentum to come back around for another attempt. Arcing her back and allowing Undyne’s next attack to slide behind her, she lashed out with her own attack, aiming for the head.

Undyne’ head snapped to the side, the teeth of the spear cutting a deep gash across her face that only seemed to help widen her snarl. She stepped back, wiping the dripping magic away with a gloved hand and glaring down at it. “Hah. Not bad. See? I knew you had it in you.” She growled.

Chara wasted no time exchanging needless banter, making another lunge instead. But Undyne was falling back on a defensive play, choosing this moment to better judge her opponents capabilities before going toe to toe again. “But now let’s see how you do against this!” With both hands raised like a conductor commanding a symphony, Undyne called upon the next storm of ever-glowing hell.

Chara darted from side to side, trying to inch closer and closer to Undyne while the warrior’s concentration was on manipulating the school of glowing spears streaking across the sparing ground. The patterns were all too familiar by now and Chara blocked every blow with minimal effort.

They clashed once more, Undyne deflecting her attack and knocking her away.

Chara darted back a few steps then darted forward again, ducking under Undyne’s attack, eyes trained on her target. Undyne was oh-so predictable and so much less demanding when compared to Sans. Chara had no problem anticipating the brief opening to Undyne’s left thigh and spun her spear around to go in for the hit.

Rain rose up with a vengeance. She had used Chara as her autopilot while she had healed their wounds and now that they had been closed she was hellbent on regaining control.

Chara let out a frustrated growl as her attack faltered..

“Not this time. This time I’m the one in control and- I choose to show mercy!” Rain pulled the attack into a feint and darted several steps back to reopen the gap between them.

“Mercy? Ha! I still can’t believe you want to spare me!” With another flick of her hand a spray of arrows came racing towards Rain from several different directions, their whistling teeth carried forth on the howling wind.

Left, right, left, front, back, right. One after another she knocked the blows away with a spin of her weapon, hissing in pain only when Chara's harassment caused her to falter in her rotation.

A single spear hit her in the back, biting deep into her skin but not going far enough to stick. She felt the warm blood run down her spine and soak into her shirt.

It frustrated her. Chara writhed with excitement at this but Rain forced herself to remain calm, condensing the frustration down into Determination instead.

“You are pretty good.” Undyne commended through a dripping grin, flicking more spears at her then dancing forward and jabbing at her herself. “Most people would be dead by now.”

“Well I’m not most people.” She panted, weaving back and forth, hissing when another strike grazed her ribs.

The pain disrupted her concentration and before she could do anything to stop her, Chara stole her hands for a brief moment and struck Undyne in the shoulder. Luckily she missed the joint in her armor and only managed to scratch the plating.

“Well I don’t care! So stop being so damn resilient!” Undyne lunged forward, risking over extending herself in order to knock away Rain’s spear and go in for killing blow.

Rain gasped, her body tensing in reflex as the spear stabbed deep into her gut, aqua colored teeth rending flesh on the way back out.

She crumbled in on herself, blood gushing between her fingertips, the grip on her spear nearly lost in the trauma. Her only saving grace was that Chara’s enthusiasm to snap at Undyne while she remained over extended has kept Undyne from delivering a proper killing blow.

Undyne danced back a few steps when Rain’s rouge arm kept on attacking while the rest of her remained doubled over in pain.

Heal. She had to heal! Dammit it cost so much more energy to do this when she was the one splitting her concentration between mending and movement! Chara seemed content to let them bleed out if Rain didn’t agree to fight and wasn’t lending any help.

Their soul trembled and the neon green of Undyne’s holding magic began to dissipate. Rain looked up with wild eyes, staring first at the line in the dirt and then at Undyne, who was once again closing in on them.

She threw herself over that line, wincing in anticipation for the wall of yielding magic that never came. She was free!

“Hey!” Undyne shouted, throwing another spear at their heals as Rain staggered off, doubled over and limping at first but gaining more speed as her wound began to heal one painful stitch at a time. “What the hell are humans made of?” Undyne growled, charging off after them.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Rain slowly began to regain a proper upright position, the pain in her abdomen easing a little. She risked a glance behind her and nearly got a spear to the face for her trouble. “Oh fuck! Oh fuck!”

“Gotta go fast.”

A spear hit her in the leg. She fell head over heels and landed with her face in the dirt.

“Hah!” Undyne barked, armor sounding like thunder as she closed in on them once more. “Alphys told me humans were Determined. I see now what she meant by that.”

Rain screamed when she pulled the spear from her leg. Her breathing was becoming ragged with exhaustion.

“But I’m Determined too.” Undyne raised her weapon. “Determined to end this right now.”

Rain felt light headed, her mind swimming as the pain threatened to overpower her. She struggled to heal herself. She was running out of energy to do this on her own.

One after another spears stabbed down at her like the teeth of a closing maw. Unable to get back up, she rolled from side to side. She was only alive because of her familiarity with the pattern.

“I could help you if you would just let me kill her!” Chara snarled, chomping at the bit.

“No!”

Growing impatient with her attack, Undyne let out a frustrated snarl and launched herself at Rain, stabbing down with her personal spear. “I said: Right now!” The spear dug into Rain’s shirt and scraped down her spine as she twisted away. Thanks to her oversized clothes Undyne misjudged her target by a hair.

Rain swung her good leg forward to try and sweep Undyne’s feet out from under her. Her kick was pathetic in comparison to who she was attacking but it did cause Undyne to jerk back in a defensive stance.

“I. Will. Show. Mercy!” She declared again, forcing her arm down when it tried to stab at Undyne’s knees. She used the momentum from Chara’s attack to knock Undyne’s spear out of her hand instead; an action that seemed to truly take the warrior by surprise.

Rain pushed herself back up to her feet, forcing herself to run while her body screamed in objection.

In the blink of an eye Undyne had another spear at the ready, allowing the old one to dissipate before it ever hit the ground. “I will never take mercy from the likes of you!” She bellowed back.

They were running again. Rain couldn’t heal her wounds. Chara was holding them for ransom, trying to fight off the healing energy like Rain had done in the Judgment Hall. She wanted Undyne to corner her and wear her down to her way of thinking.

“Just let her die. Kindness will never be worth enduring this pain.”

“No! No more violence! I’m done hurting people! I will spare them. I will protect them from you!”

The air was getting hotter. The dry howl of the wind warmed her cheeks as they lurched down the tunnels, building speed as they went.

“You! Will! Never! Spare me!” Undyne screamed, throwing spears into the ground with every word. Rain dogged them on a stroke of luck but was brought up short when she spotted something yellow approaching up ahead.

“Oh no.” She groaned, clutching her spear close. She hated these.

At the last second, when the yellow spear was mere inches from her face, it swerved around and came at her from the opposite direction

Rain smacked it out of the way, having to stop and deflect two more yellow attacks before it was safe for her to run off once more.

Chara was putting extra resistance on their feet now, causing them to drag. They could hear the clank of Undyne’s armor as she raced after them, getting closer. She was practically hyperventilating with rage.

“She will not offer you mercy. But I will. You can’t reason with her but I will listen. Just a little violence, Rain. Just a few tiny EXP. That’s all I ask. Let’s compromise! Let’s us feel LOVE again! It will hurt so much less once we have it!”

The pain in her legs was like fire. It felt like it was slowly eating its way farther and farther up her body with each step. She longed for the numbing relief that Chara’s LOVE could bring.

But it wasn’t worth it.

“Fine.” She spat. “Let’s see how many resets you can inflict upon yourself before you change your mind.”

When a second wave of yellow attacks came tearing out after them, Chara made sure to give her as much misinformation as she could to confuse her. Rain spun her weapon around to block them but one of the spears still managed to graze her legs again.

She couldn’t heal any more. Her lungs burned and her body trembled. She was on pure adrenaline now. It was all she could do to keep her mussels from tearing. Thick trails of blood ran down her legs and stained her shoes.

They tore into Hotland and its dizzying heat. It was a miracle Undyne had not caught up to them again.

Their eyes darted off to the side, noticing a sentry station up ahead. There was a small blue and white shape sitting at the post. Her heart leapt, hope causing her exposed soul to flutter.

“Sans!” She cried, throat dry. “Sans! Help!” She waved her spear overhead. “Tell her to stop!”

“Hold still you little brat!” They were almost to the sentry station when Undyne finally caught up to them. She seemed to have begun to slow down as well but of the two of them she was still in better shape. She flung herself forward and tackled them.

Rains tried to scream but it came out as a breathless grunt as the wind was knocked out of her, Undyne’s crushing weigh shoving her into the hot gravel.

“Sans! Help!” She croaked.

“Sans! I found the human! Help me hold her down!” Undyne ordered.

They grappled for a brief moment before Undyne pinned her down with a knee pressed against her shoulder blades.

“Dammit, Sans!” Undyne spat between heavy rasping pants, apparently having discovered something infuriating. She shoved Rain’s head against the ground. “Hold still you little twerp.”

Rain reached for a handful of dirt and gravel.

Chara reached for the discarded spear.

“Oh no you don’t.” Undyne leaned off to one side to kick the spear farther away, easing up the pressure on their back. Rain twisted around like an eel and flung the dirt at her face.

Undyne cursed, hand going up to her good eye.

Rain wormed her way out of her grasp, allowing Chara a moment of freedom in which she took up the spear and jammed it into Undyne’s leg before the two of them managed to limp off amidst Undyne’s screams of pain and fury.

Despite not having achieved a killing blow, Chara seemed rather smug about her accomplishment. "Hah. She took an arrow to the knee.”

Rain rolled her eyes, apparently missing out on somthing. Eh, Undyne would live.

Rain Hobbled away at maximum speed- which was starting to look pretty pathetic at this point. She heard a rather loud racket of armor scraping against gravel but did not dare to look back until she had crossed the nearest bridge and had nearly limped out of sight of the sentry station. When the sounds of pursuit did not follow after her and Undyne’s bellows of rage fell silent, she finally stopped to see if her attacker had given up.

Undyne hadn’t moved from where she had tackled them. She was lying on her side, hand resting against the wound in her leg as the spear winked out of existence. Rain felt her heart twist.

She didn’t seem like she was going to be getting back up any time soon.