#crisly

Why???? Is it pink??? This is my scanner, and it does change the colors a little, but never THIS bad

...yellow. -_-

You come to slowly. Your surroundings are vaguely uncomfortable. It's cold, not overly so but just enough to nag. There's a faint static grating ever so slightly against your nerves. It raises and lowers in pitch and volume, like messing with an old radio to try and find the right channel. Eventually, the metaphorical fingers twist the metaphorical dial just right and words start to make themselves known amongst the white noise.

“-oks li-e yel--w is ---rting to ---- -n.”

“Oh, oh, wh--s that one s--osed to b-?”

“I beli--e that one w-s emble-atic of j-stice. An over-ll intol-rance for anyt-ing unfair.”

The voices are on the higher side, like children; although some sound younger than others. You notice your fingers are pressed down against some kind of surface. Now that you're thinking about it, your whole body is lying atop this surface. At first it's smooth like marble, but the longer you think about it the more it shifts from solid to something more like water. The impression of an idea easily molded but hard to hold together upon prodding.

You open your eyes. It takes a few tries. Your body feels weird, altogether too light and too heavy and a little bit like the weird solid-liquid floor beneath you. Once you finally manage to pry your eyes open, a blur of rainbow colors greet you. They come into focus, and you find yourself staring at 5 brightly colored children in a variety of ages.

“You awake?” A teenager tinted a shade of green asks, demeanor overall aloof.

Before you can answer, a kid painted in shades of orange jumps forward. “Who’re you? I like your hat! Look, we’re bandana buddies! Mine’s on my head though, and it's got abs on it so I think mine’s better. Whe-”.

The barrage of questions is cut off by the green teen shoving the orange kid back. “Cool your jets, Jabberjaw. Give em a minute.”

You sit up slowly, feeling a bit like a baby calf attempting to stand for the first time. “Wha-”

A purple kid sits up straighter, adjusting the glasses on their face. “We’re in between realities right now, a shared mindscape between souls. A sort of wishful thinking, if you will.” You blink at them, trying to process any of what was just said and coming up blank.

“You’re dead.” A girl in shades of blue says bluntly. “We all are.”

You stiffen at that, suddenly remembering. Ceroba had revealed her plan and attacked. But that wasn’t what got you in the end, no, it was… You just… You clutch at your chest, recalling the sensation of sharp cold that had spread throughout your whole body at the removal of your soul. It had hurt so badly that it started going numb. Your vision had blurred and your ears had started ringing. You remember a voice, probably Flowey’s, but you have no idea what he was saying.

“Classy.” The purple kid deadpans at the blue girl. You shake your head, trying to refocus in the moment.

“If… If we’re dead, how are we here? And does that mean you five are… The other kids who fell down here before?”

“Like I said-”

“Who cares, it’s magic!” The kid in orange interrupted Purple’s sentence, waving a hand dismissively. Purple stares the kid down for a few seconds before turning back to you.

“Whatever, sure, it's basically magic. To answer your second question, yes. Yes we are.”

You look down at your hands, fisted in the fabric of your scarf. You know there’s nothing you could’ve possibly done. Most had died before you were even born. And yet… “I’m sorry.”

“What for?” Purple asks, raising their eyebrows. “There’s nothing you could’ve done about it.”

“I know, I just…” You hesitate, digging into your pocket. You know it wouldn’t be there, but still. Somehow, paper brushes against your fingers, and you pull out the missing persons poster you lost at the very start of your adventure. This particular poster only has one person on it, the face of one girl, but you’ve seen the others in newspaper clippings from the library. “I came here because I wanted to… It didn’t seem fair that everyone gave up. That nobody tried looking for you guys. I wanted to save you. I wanted to help. But that didn’t really… work out.”

“You fell into the underground… for us?” Blue asks, eyes wide. The others have similarly shocked expressions.

“Man that’s so cool! You’re like a real sherif, coming to bring justice!” Orange says, swinging their arms up. It's then that you notice they're holding hands with another kid in shades of cyan. They’re like a silent little shadow, hair falling over their eyes as they let the orange kid move their connected hands around spastically.

“Even if it didn’t work, we appreciate the effort, right guys?” Purple says, nudging Blue. She nods quietly, seeming to need time to process the information. Green just stares, a conflicted expression on his face.

“Tell us a story!” Orange says, bouncing in place. “What was it like? Did you get into lotsa fights? I bet it was pretty epic.” They shadowbox the air, faded pink gardening gloves on their balled up fists.

You’re not used to telling stories to an older audience, you think, glancing at Green and Blue, but you have plenty of practice helping the younger kids to sleep. So you tell your tale, starting with jumping and ending with your fight with Ceroba. Blue’s expression hardens at the mention of Dalv and Axis, but you ignore that, too busy trying to engage the little cyan child. You hesitate at the end. “I… I realized something. The monsters being trapped… it's not fair. They didn’t even start the war in the first place, and.. And they don’t deserve this. So I… I gave myself up.”

“WHAT?” exclamations of shock echo around the circle the group has formed.

“You mean you just.. Walked up to the king and surrendered?” Purple asks, mouth agape.

“No, I mean, not quite. I gave Ceroba my soul, and she and Marlet and Starlo took it to him. I assume?”

Silence, for just a few moments, and then a scoff. “Why would you DO that?” Blue says, standing up and towering over the kneeling group. “It's bad enough you made nice with the monsters. It's WORSE you let that.. That THING go. But to give yourself up, voluntarily? To the same creature that was trying to take it by force just moments before? You can’t be serious.”

You feel your posture tense, shoulders climbing upwards the more she yells. When she seems done, panting from the effort of chewing you out, you stand up as well, uncomfortable with her height advantage. It doesn’t really help, she’s still a little taller than you, but at least you’re not kneeling anymore. You can’t think of what to say for a bit, simply frowning up at her. But then, your mind catches on something. “What ‘thing’ are you talking about?”

“The robot.” She says, seething.

“Don’t… Don’t talk about Axis that way.” You mutter, glancing down at your shoes. You’ve never been good in a confrontation, preferring to run interference. But after everything you went through, after everyone you met, you just can’t listen to this. You’re still not brave enough to look her in the eyes though.

After a moment, the taller girl sucks in a breath. She gets right in your face and screams. “That thing blew my head off!”

“...What?” It takes you a minute to process what she said. “Wait you mean Axis…”

“Killed. Me.”

Your hand reaches up to fiddle with the brim of your hat. You’ve heard this story, or part of it at least. From the other side. Facing the reality of both sides of the situation is worse, somehow. “..Why’d you attack Dalv?”

Blue stands there, mouth opening and closing a few times. “You… The vampire?”

“He was just minding his business, hanging out with Kanako. Your attack scared him so bad he moved to live in the ruins until I came! Why would you do that?”

“You’re not serious. You can’t be serious. I just told you what your awful ‘friend’ did, and you’re more concerned about the MONSTER? What is wrong with you?! Were you just pretending to care about us? Because you’re too busy playing with your monster friends to do ANYTHING for us. I hate you!” Green stands up at that, and he’s even taller. Your stance shifts, ready to escape at the first sign of trouble. He just puts his hand on her shoulder, turning her around. She starts to walk away, but stops, glancing over her shoulder at the other kids, still seated in a now broken circle. “C’mon guys, lets go. Justice has forsaken us.”

The others stand up hesitantly, not meeting your eyes. Orange tugs Cyan behind them, following behind. The smaller kid looks over their shoulder, the only one to meet your gaze as the group stalks away to another corner of the mostly white void. You look away first, sitting back down and pulling your knees up to your chest. You did the right thing, you know you did. Monsterkind deserves to be free. They’re better than humans in every way imaginable. You’re glad you helped further that goal. But still, it hurts to be rejected so thoroughly. And it hurts because you can’t help everyone. In doing what's best for one group, you’ve hurt the other. You wish things were simpler. You wish that war had never happened in the first place. You wish someone else was in your place... No, you don’t really. You’re glad to be the one to have to give up your soul. But you wish you were smarter, more confident. You wish you were better…

You wish you could go home. No, not to the surface. You long for the soft cushion of Dalv’s kitchen chairs. You long for the feel of wood grain under your hands and the rush of water under your boat. You long for the little old couch in the Feisty Five’s house, even if it was cramped. You long for the feeling of your friends arms wrapped around you, all feather and fur and woolen poncho. You wish you’d asked them to stay. You wish your death didn’t have to be so lonely.

In a group of five standing just a few yards away, a little girl looks over her shoulder at a figure colored in shades of yellow. She glances at the faces of her friends, all frowny mouths and angry eyebrows. She huffs, pulling her hand out of the hold of her sister. "This is stupid." She thinks as she walks back towards the lonely yellow kid, leave unnoticed by the tense group. "I wonder if that gun really works."

(end)

So yeah. For Quaver, I think it's less that Clover gave up their soul, although that is certainly a factor. It's more that Clover is dismissing the harm done to her in order to stay on their monster friends' side. Clover came down here to bring justice for the humans, but over the course of the resets, they gradually switched to bringing justice to the monsters. (To be clear, Clover doesn't remember resets, just reloads. But Clover still changes significantly over the course of the resets because the resets stick somewhere in their subconscious). So that's Quaver's side of things, she feels hurt by Clover not seeming to care about the terrible things she went through. She doesn't really hate them, but she's definitely mad. The others are mostly just following her because they've known her longer and she's the second oldest. Dashi is probably the one that agrees with Quaver the most. Dashi never quite bonded with the monsters in a meaningful way, and is really really mad that not only did they kill her, they also killed Kit who's like a little sister to her after all these years being dead. Cris has pretty mixed feelings about monsters. Being the oldest, he understands that monster kind as a whole aren't bad, but that doesn't make him any less mad at the ones who had a hand in his death. He's not all that mad at clover though. He's mostly just worried about Quaver. Kit and Reid are the most sympathetic with monsters, both having spent a period of time living amongst monsters in the underground, not just running from them. Kit doesn't care what the others think, she goes and hangs out with Clover anyways. Reid is a bit more nervous to go against the norms, but when Kit does it, they find the courage to join the Clover Corner™. Kit thinks Clover is cool and likes to watch them shoot things. So yeah it's not like they all dislike/are mad at Clover. It just kinda complicated, as feelings are.