#alibi272

Things are just a little odd lately, is all.

In reality, monsterkind has been living the same handful of days over and over again, stuck in a loop of RESETs—at the mercy of a human who seems to be perfecting their ability to show no mercy.

The repeatedly looping timeline is beginning to take its toll.

Monsters are starting to realize that something is happening.

At first, it’s only a bit of déjà vu, feeling familiarity in their actions and conversations like they’ve been here before, done this before, said this before…

Then it’s a lot of déjà vu, being able to guess what someone else will say before they say it, what they do before they do it.

Monsters are starting to talk about it, starting to suspect that something may be happening around here.

But that’s as far as they’ve gotten before a human emerges from the Ruins, and they have far more immediate problems to deal with.

One monster is a bit further ahead of the curve, though—Sans.

Though he lacks full awareness of what goes on between RESETs, more of his memories seem to be sticking than others’ and between a gut feeling, the temporal anomaly data pulled from a machine his father left behind, and the first glimpse he gets at the human’s expressions every time he ‘meets’ them, he knows.

They’ve done this before, they’ll do it again, and they’re not stopping.

Not until someone makes them stop.

Unlike other monsters (or even unlike other Sanses, in other universes), this Sans is driven, determined—arguably to the point of self-detriment—to prove himself and to solve the problem himself.

He has knowledge the others don’t, therefore it’s his responsibility to act.

Sans tries a few things to put an end to it.

He ambushes the human earlier in their dusting spree. He tries to warn other monsters to get them out of the path of the massacre. Once, quite memorably, he tried taking all the human souls they’d gathered, absorbing them to make himself a formidable, hopefully final foe at the end of the line.

That was a grueling and nightmarish handful of runs…but of course, the human persisted.

They would not be halted, an unstoppable force.

But Sans aspires to be their immovable object.

There’s one avenue he hasn’t explored yet, in searching for a way to stop the cycle of RESETs, something he’s never explored before, too daunted by the deep and unknowable source that once granted him an arcane office that not even Queen Toriel could explain beyond that it has Been as long as monsters have been imprisoned.

In desperation, Sans calls upon the thing that made him The Judge.

It’s not easy, of course.

It takes him many attempts, more effort and concentration and force of will than anything he’s ever done, but eventually he reaches back, far back across that faint thread of connection within himself and makes contact.

With…something.

It’s old.

It’s big.

It’s strong.

It feels like something that always has been and always will be.

It feels like Justice.

Communing with such a thing—an entity, a concept—is strange, nearly impossible.

Later, Sans might describe it as trying to have a conversation with Cthulhu in its native R'lyehian, screaming it across fathoms of deep ocean trying to swallow the sound.

But he manages to get something through, or at least enough of something.

It seems to understand that Sans is trying to solve an injustice but is unable, and that assistance is being sought.

Naturally, such a vast abstract entity can’t interfere directly in the affairs of mortal creatures, but through its envoy—through Sans—it may tip the scales back to even.

Firstly, it will remove the hidden stars scattered throughout this universe’s version of the Underground. The human will not be able to SAVE their timeline, and will only be able to use their Determination to start their journey over from the very beginning.

And secondly, it will grant The Judge a greater measure of its power.

This will, of course, change him.

He will have access to much older, deeper, stronger magic than he’s ever known, and he will see and feel his world in spectrums and frequencies that will be entirely new to him.

However, he will also have the ability to share that magic with others, if he chooses. At cost to himself, but nothing can be given without taking from somewhere else.

This is the bargain that Sans is offered, in the face of repeated and unending slaughter of monsterkind.

It seems fair.

If what he’s reached out to truly is Justice, then of course, it would be fair.

Sans agrees to accept the gift.

………

Papyrus is very worried about his brother.

Sans has been comatose, unable to be woken by any means, stuck in what seem to be fitful dreams and seizing movements for…days? Weeks?

It feels like longer, it can’t only have been one day, time is so wrong lately and this isn’t helping…

But eventually, Sans does wake.

There are flecks of gold in his eye-lights and the first thing he does, without a word, is to grab Papyrus by the arm.

His touch burns, hotter than any fire ever could, branding a golden handprint in the bone.

A streak of yellow slices across Papyrus’ neck, and suddenly…

He remembers everything.

Every single RESET up to that point is perfectly, chronologically clear to him. Every day restarted, all progress made and lost, every single time that he died when the human—the source of this, the one who’s doing this—slashed at him with their blade and took off his head, no matter how many times they heard him say with his final breath that he thought they could be better, if they just tried.

Clearly, they didn’t want to.

Buzzing with power and new, horrible knowledge, he asks what Sans did.

“I’M MAKING IT FAIR. WE CAN FIX IT.”

Even in so few words, it’s obvious that Sans seems a little…different.

But Papyrus is feeling different himself, and knowing what he knows, how long it’s been going on, how bad this is…

That’s on the back-burner, for now.

They need to do something, they need to tell someone—and not just that, they need to be believed.

“what you did to me, to make me remember… could you do it again?”

“YES.”

Of course.

They go straight to the top, Queen Toriel.

Though bemused, Toriel allows her Judge to take her hand—and he burns his own into it, a golden starburst appearing on her breast where she was so many times run through by…the human! She remembers now!

And she also remembers that her ex-husband is alive and hiding out in the Ruins.

Despite his soft heart, he’s as much a boss monster as she is, and by his positioning, the first real line of defense that her people have against this vicious threat, though surely he doesn’t realize it.

Obviously he needs to know what’s at stake, his full and conscious awareness is needed to stop this repeated, savage decimation of their kind.

“Sans… What you have done for me…can—”

“I CAN DO IT AGAIN.”

They seek the former king, locked away in the Ruins.

Asgore is not best pleased that his ex-wife has come to call—especially when a human child has only just fallen down and he’s left them alone to gather ingredients for snail pie—but the trio pushes their way inside and the shorter skeleton puts his hand on his chest, and Asgore’s arms are adorned with bright yellow scars, remnants of the times he’d held them up before his face to block or just maybe not have to see the final blow, landed by…

…

Oh, no…

Asgore runs off, back to wherever he’d left the human, and he must put up something of a fight, because the timeline RESETs again before the rest can catch up to him.

They wait, for awhile.

No one emerges from the Ruins for quite some time, through several RESETs.

Perhaps…the newly strengthened Asgore is enough…?

…Well. No.

The human breaks through, eventually.

Papyrus resolves to hold them in Snowdin for as long as he can, while Sans goes off to recruit one more for their group—Alphys, the Captain of the Royal Guard.

“ONE MORE. I CAN DO ONE MORE…”

A handprint on her shoulder later—and a slash across her waist from hip-to-leg, a brighter yellow than her scales ever were—Alphys is in the know and furious, chomping at the bit to take the fight to the rotten little human making a game out of their lives.

The tide starts to turn.

The human is wearing down, getting frustrated in the face of stronger enemies, no SAVEs, and…other things that are just odd.

Nothing stays the same across RESETs anymore, fights that used to be quick take ages, and the terrain itself seems to be changing. No one is where they’re supposed to be and taking a turn they’ve taken a million times will now suddenly put them halfway across the Underground!

And every time they die, they now have to start all the way back at the beginning.

It’s annoying and it’s surely only a matter of time before they give up on their quest of destruction altogether.

But in the meantime, while the war is being waged…

Alphys asks Sans for a favor.

To do what he did for her, and the others, for Undyne too.

It’s not a need. Undyne isn’t a powerful fighter, she wouldn’t be able to combat the human that way, but she’s smart, and dedicated, and she can help somehow, probably…

And it’s…it’s so hard having to explain everything to her, over and over again, whenever there’s another RESET and she forgets but Alphys remembers…

And…

Well, the part she doesn’t say is that she’s afraid.

Whatever Sans did, whatever power he found that he’s sharing with them, they’re so much stronger now, the kind of strong that comes with a price tag.

Alphys is a Boss Monster now.

Effectively, immortal—at least in terms of aging and natural causes.

Does she really want to be that… alone?

Without Undyne…?

So…she asks.

What’s the harm in asking?

Sans seems oddly hesitant to share the gift again…but he agrees.

He takes Undyne by the wrist and the iris of her right eye turns yellow, brighter than her sclera.

Simultaneously…

Sans’ right eye-socket locks open, the eye-light and even the blackness around it bursting into a shimmering yellow cloud of formless, intangible magic.

Sans isn’t surprised, of course.

This was exactly the price that Justice—or whatever it was that felt like it—had warned of, the price he had been paying all along.

To share his power with others, to give them back their memories of previous RESETs, they would also have to experience again all the damage they took in those timelines.

Damage that killed them, many times over, and would again.

Unless Sans took it instead.

Bits and pieces of himself would be lost in the process, but pieces are only pieces in light of what—who he’s saving, replacing the lost parts of his closest friends and loved ones with his physical matter.

Many parts of him have become only loose stardust clouds of magic by now, but he’s strong enough to survive without them, bolstered as he is by his connection to the entity who gave him the gift.

There’s…a bit of agitation that goes around at this revelation, the eye-socket too noticeable to be overlooked like the other bits and pieces…

But what’s done is done.

And there’s still very much a war on, a task at hand that needs all of their focus and no squabbling.

In the end—between the six of them—they force the human to quit.

Apparently, for good.

When next the human begins their quest through the Underground, they say their name is Chara and that it feels like they’ve just woken from a very strange dream…or maybe a nightmare?

Between their Determination, the power of the other humans souls, and the deep, old magic of a few very powerful monsters, the Barrier is broken and monsterkind goes free.

It’s…a happy ending.

Xanth (Ascendswap Sans)

Never quite the same after his communion with Justice… He experienced a severe ego-death and was simultaneously opened up to several new perceptions of the people and the world around him, leading to a very divided focus that’s almost exclusively outward-facing. Missing as much of his body as he is, he doesn’t feel especially present within himself, more just…tethered, utterly fearless when it comes to himself and his safety, which—combined with his wandering attention and strange perspective—tends to make him seem a bit…dotty

Has a greatly heightened soul-sense and is much more aware of (and vulnerable to) the emotions of others, highly empathic and very attuned to the atmosphere around him. His eye-socket—the one mostly replaced by loose magic—amplifies his extrasensory perception significantly, so he tends to keep it covered to maintain what focus he can

Unfortunately lost a few friends in the aftermath of everything that happened Underground after it came out (or at least, rumor spread) that he was the source of some monsters’ cool new powers, but he only picked a few people to share it with… They don’t know the full story, but it’s a sore spot for him whenever it comes up…

Spiritual, very interested in matters of the soul and the universe and the cosmos, and all the ideas had and perceptions felt of it by people all around the world—he can and will talk mysticism with anyone who’s interested for hours

Cheerful, talkative, and generous, he can be a bit odd but perfectly warm and go-with-the-flow after some getting used to

Piper (Ascendswap Papyrus)

Considerably more confident than he ever was, the power boost of becoming a Boss Monster certainly didn’t hurt but mostly what changed him was the existential realization that nothing matters—or at least, not so much as to be afraid of what people think of you. (The memories of a few thousand RESETs where you did the exact same thing every single time because you were too nervous to step out of your comfort zone and be who you wanted to be work wonders for shaking off some of the rust and getting you started on making some changes to your life)

Has a new magical ability, courtesy of his rebirth as a Boss Monster, to push intent into his words as his speaks them, making him significantly more convincing. It has its limitations, as a Justice-born power—he can’t use his words to force people to go against themselves or do anything abhorrent to them—but he can influence a bit, making his words felt and persuading people to want to work with him rather than against him

A little protective of his brother…maybe more than necessary… He blames himself some for how much his brother ended up sacrificing, for being the first one to encourage him to do it, for not noticing sooner what it was doing to him—and it’s not only his imagination that there’s still plenty of people coming around looking to take advantage of Sans’ giving nature or apparent ‘naiveté’… Not when he’s around, that’s for sure

Aesthetic-conscious—spent a long time too self-conscious and insecure to present the self-image he wanted and making up for lost time now by dressing well, buying nice things that look good, and trying out hobbies he thought were ‘too cool’ for him… He's a cooler guy than he gave himself credit for, it all suits him wonderfully