Paps (Underswap Papyrus) isn’t a fan of the concept. He’s a little squeamish, generally unnerved by blood and severe injuries, and a lifeless, rotting, empty shell—especially of someone he cared about—is pretty morbid and upsetting. He definitely wants to think about it and deal with it as little as possible, so his s/o better not die too soon! And if they want him to go to a wake or funeral, they better be prepared for him to have to psych himself up to approach the casket of the deceased, or take a moment outside for a breather.

On the other hand, Mal (Swapfell Sans) is explicitly glad for the longevity of the human body. He doesn’t really care one way or the other for any other humans, but if he somehow manages to outlive his human, he thinks he’d very much appreciate that their body stuck around awhile after they left. He loves hard and digs in deep, and whatever extra time he can have for a private goodbye, to look at his s/o’s face and commit everything to memory before letting go…he’ll take it, gladly.

Slate (Horrortale Sans) is liable to dissociate around a dead body and risks the same just talking about it too much. He’s made dealt with plenty of corpses already and doesn’t want to have to deal with any more, it brings back a lot of guilt and bad memories… If—stars forbid—it ever has to be his s/o that he’s confronted with, he would just… try to hold it together and do whatever needed to be done to honor their wishes, on full autopilot if it came to that. He can have whatever breakdown he needs to have after ensuring everything they wanted for their remains has been done, they deserve that.

His brother, Papy (Horrortale Papyrus)…well, he tends to get panic attacks when humans die and their souls leave their bodies as just an empty husk. It’s a distressing concept for him that everything that makes a (human) person themselves can just…go like that, and then all they are is dead meat. …Meat which he has availed himself of in the past, and fed to others, and that was circumstantial and desperate but still very distressing to reconcile with any new occurrences. He’s giving himself a lot of immersion therapy with his choice of career, and maybe by the time his s/o passes on, he’ll be ready to cope with it…but who knows?

Aster (Gastertale Papyrus) may be a bit abashed to admit to it, but he’s not uninterested and finds it (somewhat morbidly) fascinating. The human body itself is fascinating with all its physicality and moving parts that keep everything functioning like an organic machine, and the body remaining behind even after death—for study or investigation or just as an idol of mourning—it’s…kind of cool? In fairness, though, he wouldn’t be able to muster up much of that opinion if it was his s/o’s body no longer occupied by the person he loved. Too personal, very different…

Spectr (Transcendtale Sans) is a soulless machine. He won’t age and may never die, but if he does, he might leave some sort of corpse behind himself…or maybe not, if enough magic has soaked into his metal bones to make them dissipate when the consciousness piloting them leaves. Still, he can’t really be sure, and the way humans die is a less foreign a concept to him since he’s considered that something similar could happen to him eventually. …He would rather it not happen to his s/o, though. (He’d never ask it of them, but he would want them to stay.)

PapAIrus (Transcendtale Papyrus) would have no trouble asking it of his s/o—they should stay! Just don’t die. Or, well, die, obviously, but stay anyway, like he did! He finds the concept of a body in general troublesome and limiting, so he’s pretty cavalier about humans leaving theirs behind when they die—can’t blame them in the slightest!—but he won’t be as cavalier about his human trying to shuffle off their mortal coil without a digital backup first. How are they supposed to be ‘together forever’ if one of them is trying to escape to some kind of unknowable Great Beyond?! Sheesh…

Kohl (Descendtale Sans) is…a bit of an asshole, most of the time but also when talking about human corpses. It’s one of his preferred off-color jokes to say that the dead ones are his favorite kind of humans since they’re quiet and don’t bother him… totally irreverent, but as far as his actions go, he’s actually considerably more respectful. He’s defensive and wary around most live humans because he knows what they’re capable of and the harm they can do, but there’s no danger in the empty shells they leave behind, just signs of personality and the life they once lived—laugh lines, tattoos, scars, painted nails… It cuts his venom a bit to see that, and to have the time he has with peoples’ bodies; to be entrusted (however peripherally) with sending them off to whatever final rest they’d chosen. …If his s/o decides to let him outlive them, he’d like to do the same for their shell.

A sadistic, single-minded human has set their sights on the Underground, locking the monsters within into an endless cycle of RESETs.

In the beginning, most monsters were only peripherally aware that something was wrong—recurring déjà vu, nightmares that felt like memories, knowledge of things they didn’t remember learning.

But as the RESETs persisted, this awareness grew stronger and stronger, compiling across many, many repeated timelines until people really were remembering things.

The natural change in their behavior only seemed to encourage the human to keep repeating the cycle, almost as if to see what would be different this time—strengthening the awareness further.

Monsters began to talk to each other about it, realizing they’re all experiencing the same; realizing that the looping of time is actually something that’s happening.

A lot of secrets end up out in the open, once people start talking.

The machine back behind Sans’ house is one such secret, actively recording data on the anomaly that seems to be tampering with the timeline and providing solid proof that what they’re all going through isn’t a shared hallucination.

No one blames Sans for not coming forward with that information earlier, of course, being that his memory transfer across RESETs is so poor.

The guy can pick up context clues and read a room fast as anything, and being able to check on that data when he felt something odd was going on helped catch him up to speed, but in terms of actually remembering…

Well, it seems that the strongest recall of memory across RESET timelines is linked to levels of Determination, and there are many things to be said about Sans but ‘determined’ is not one of them.

Still, his data is helpful.

Monsters begin to try to organize, trying different strategies to combat the human’s relentless assault against them.

Gradually, the Underground becomes a siege, or something like it, a handful of the same days repeated over and over again to the point that the monsters living them—now remembering them all—feel like years are passing.

In spite of trying everything they can think of, the human manages to thwart them at every turn—or if they do manage to turn the tide for a short while, the human comes back again and again until they force their way through.

Potential solutions escalate, from attempted diplomacy to guerrilla tactics to the height of desperation.

It would be one thing if it was only the (repeated) extinction of their species they were fighting against, but another entirely to know that when the human finishes with everyone else and kills Asgore, the entire universe ends—not a single timeline in thousands extending past that point.

No one’s been left alive to see what happens, but inevitably everything ceases and goes right back to the start, for the killing to begin anew.

It has to stop before then, whatever the cost.

The human is far too strong for any one monster to handle, even groups of monsters, and they know that because they’ve tried, and the human will always come back, learn their patterns and break through.

It’s no job for any monster.

They consider that they may need a god instead.

Asgore, the strongest boss monster of their number, absorbs the six human souls, becoming something terrible and powerful and deeply unnatural.

………

It takes the human under a hundred tries to get through him.

The monsters are at a loss, for awhile.

Their biggest and strongest boss still isn’t enough…

…can they make a stronger one?

Normally, this would be a ludicrous thought—just making a stronger monster—but Sans isn’t the only one whose strange secrets are out, now that everyone remembers RESET timelines.

Flowey’s busted too—at least, to the extent that he’s an artificial monster brought to life by dust and DT.

Initially, he was on the human’s side for………reasons………but being killed a few hundred, thousand, whatever times has a way of changing one’s loyalties, and he’s been (begrudgingly) siding with monsters for awhile.

So when the suggestion is laid on the table—make a new bigger and better monster—Flowey has a couple cents to throw in on the matter.

That still wouldn’t be enough.

He fought the human once before, and even something like him plus all the human souls they have couldn’t keep them down for good. If they want that to work, they’re going to have to find a way to make it really tough, and good luck with that because it’d probably take the equivalent of all monsterkind to have a shot at taking that killer down.

…The equivalent of all monsterkind.

That…is an idea.

A terrible idea, horrible, unthinkable, no one wants to discuss that further.

Until.

The RESETs continue.

Death, again and again and again.

Suffering, with no hope of an end anywhere in sight.

Desperate times…do call for desperate measures, and eventually even the most ghoulish way out of it is given its due consideration.

So…what if they do use all of monsterkind?

What if everyone pooled all of themselves—their magic, their souls, their hopes and dreams—everything, together with the human souls.

Could that be enough?

With the few faint memories Flowey has of a pacifist timeline, he posits a less than confident, “Maybe?”

It’s not a no, and it’s the best they have to go on.

They have to try something.

A vessel of some kind will be needed, something capable of containing all of monsterkind. They have an excellent roboticist in Alphys, who has already made one robotic body for a monster to occupy and is relatively confident she can do it again.

The logistics will be different from that, of course. It was simple enough to make a shell for a willing ghost monster to occupy, but they’re all out of ghost monsters capable of taking on a body, so…

It’ll have to be piloted…the way Flowey occupied his vessel.

Monster dust laid onto the vessel and brought to life by DT.

Someone needs to volunteer to do it, to be resurrected into a soulless body after their death, to give intent and sentient function to the vessel of everyone’s hopes and dreams and use their power to bring an end to the perpetual terror hanging over monsterkind.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Undyne is the first to volunteer.

…Then Asgore.

And Toriel.

Papyrus.

Mettaton.

Many others.

It won’t take.

The human runs through several presumably confusing yet intriguing timelines where the Underground has gone empty, save for Flowey trying to distract them and Alphys in her lab trying desperately, fruitlessly to get her mysterious project to work.

At least, before they kill her and begin it all again.

Eventually, Alphys manages to at least figure out what the problem is, why the vessel keeps malfunctioning and the volunteer monster’s dust never seems to properly take.

She determines that when DT extract is introduced to the volunteer’s remains, it awakens and joins with whatever existing DT that monster had in life. This amount is typically small, as most monsters can’t handle high concentrations of DT, not the way humans can.

But this time, it happens to be doing the same to the vessel—a construct made of nearly every monster in the Underground.

Flowey was a different equation, monster dust added onto an inanimate vessel with zero DT of its own, and now with a vessel overbalancing the amount of the unstable element, it’s not working.

But it could.

If…

If the volunteer monster were someone with extremely low DT, so that there would be less to activate when the extract was introduced…

Suddenly, everyone in the room is looking at Sans and he is less than enthused.

Dying over and over again was one thing—he was just about used to that, at this point—but dying and living again? As something neither monster nor human? With the grand responsibility of avenging the entirety of monsterkind, nearly literally carrying everyone’s hopes and dreams on his shoulders?

That sucks.

There was a reason he didn’t volunteer, but now it seems like he’s being voluntold—nobody’s saying it, but…he has to, there’s no one else with DT as low as his and everyone knows it, the numbers from the machine being what they are, the human already bearing down on them for yet another assault, they’re all counting on him to agree.

So, he says—

“NO.”

Papyrus refuses this option point-blank.

There is no way in hell that he is letting his brother do that alone—he will have to be there too!

He is spoken to and encouraged and pleaded to be reasonable. All of monsterkind’s peace is at stake, of course he cares about his brother, but he must see that everyone is making sacrifices to end this horrible cycle once and for all.

And yes, certainly, Papyrus can see that. Obviously, he can—he’s made a lot of moral concessions himself over the past few time-looped years, he and Sans both have fought and been killed and willingly sacrificed themselves, and all manner of other terrible things, over and over and over again.

And they’ve been happy (for a given definition of ‘happy’) to do so!

But this is the line.

His, anyway.

He will not let Sans do this thing unless they can find some way for him to be there too, and he’s not budging—so figure something out.

(Sans could’ve protested and just willingly damned himself, but grateful for Papyrus’ interference, he…didn’t.)

So fine, apparently this is the hill that everyone will die on—again and again and again and again—if they don’t ‘figure something out.’

The problem is now how to make it so that Papyrus can ‘be there’ after he chronologically needs to have been incorporated into the vessel with all the other monsters.

Well… his soul needs to be there.

Does he need that to exist? To be present?

Sans won’t have that and he’ll be around, if this works the way it’s supposed to.

Flowey doesn’t have that and he’s around.

Maybe…

Maybe there’s a way to take a snapshot of a living monster—a scan of their knowledge, their memories, their experiences and thoughts and personality—and save it, like a program, or…an AI?

It wouldn’t have a soul but clearly that isn’t a requirement for sentient life, functionally it should be all but identical to a person’s continued existence.

…It raises a whole lot of ethical and philosophical questions, certainly, but if it can be done, it could be a very, very good thing.

After all, monsterkind was more or less going to be gone after this, a Pyrrhic victory to finally end their never-ending nightmare at the cost of all their lives.

This way, they could be preserved, in a digital space or a virtual reality, after their physical bodies and selves were gone, and that’s worth something, isn’t it?

At least a notch above total, permanent extinction.

Many monsters agree, previously resigned to total cessation and hopeful to carry on in some form, to have scans of themselves done when the tech is sorted.

Papyrus is of course among their number, and entirely too smug about it since all this was his idea…or at least, Alphys wouldn’t have developed it without his ultimatum, so it’s basically the same as being his idea!

And ultimately, with the assurance that he won’t be alone on the other side…

Sans agrees to volunteer.

The human’s final timeline is a very different experience than what they’ve become used to.

Sans, resurrected into a body filled with truly godly power, is their only opponent, one they never would have had a chance to beat.

With ease, he removes all of their options—refusing to allow them to FIGHT or to use MERCY. He blocks their path, corrupts their SAVES, and severs their connection to whatever entity has granted them to power to do what they’ve done…permanently.

The human falls, like a puppet with its strings cut, and simple as that…

It’s all over.

The barrier is broken, almost as an afterthought, and the few remaining monsters that can go up to the Surface.

Monsterkind itself exists almost entirely virtually now. As a species, they’re on the down-low with regards to humanity, off the grid, as there’s only (currently) three among their number who exist physically and trying to establish anything official with so few feels…trivial.

Some monsters are looking forward to obtaining robotic bodies of their own to begin interacting with the surface world, but others are content to remain digital.

It’s not exactly a happy ending…but it’s not an ending, and monsterkind has transcended from one phase of existence to the next, and will adapt accordingly.

Spectr (Transcendtale Sans)

A soulless consciousness inhabiting an exoskeletal body that at least mostly resembles his old one—a favor from Alphys—shining chrome and white plating with prismatic flecks of rainbow that catch in the light. Heavily dysphoric about his body and averse to seeing ‘himself,’ he's always covered up and tends to avoid reflections.

No longer reality-bendingly strong, without the power of the human souls, but still in possession of the condensed power of all monsterkind and fully capable of unleashing terrifying strength and magic if needed. …He would rather not.

Because he lacks a soul, his emotions are distant and muted, and because he was resurrected and not scanned in great detail, his memory is mostly intact but can be spotty—especially with regards to things that happened between RESETs.

Spends a lot of time thinking about personhood and existence—is he who he was before, now that he doesn’t have a soul? Can he claim those memories, that self, or is he too different? Does he even count as ‘alive’?

Trying to find meaning in his current state of being, roaming the Surface and seeking small pleasures and maybe the hope of some kind of inner peace out in the world.

PapAIrus (Transcendtale Papyrus)

Technically not The Original, a scanned digital copy of everything that made Papyrus…Papyrus—and completely fine with it, entirely bypassing the philosophical questions his brother dwells on. As far as he’s concerned, he’s himself: he has all of his thoughts and memories and feels like himself, so he is! Easy, why make it so complicated?

Exists mostly in a virtual state and can traverse through and access most any electronic device, but he can also manifest physically as a hard-light projection via any device that emits light. He has access to most of his brother’s systems and can communicate or project himself through him as a conduit…unless said brother has intentionally blocked him out

A bit different than he was before all the RESETs, a little looser with his moral code and more of a wisecracker—he lived a lot of years under siege and had to adapt to an enemy that really couldn’t be better and didn’t want to try, and filling in for the jokes his brother had become too downtrodden to tell

Spends his time everywhere and nowhere, surfing the ‘net and making a splash as a holographic DJ and periodically checking in on his brother to make sure he’s as okay as he can be—basically doing everything he wants to do, whenever he wants to do it

Transcendtale: The result of a never-ending cycle of RESETs with a No Mercy sort of human. Monsters gradually became aware and eventually resorted to extremes to put an end to the cycle, sacrificing themselves to create one single vessel powerful enough to kill the human for good. In the aftermath, most of monsterkind is gone…physically, but still persist as consciousnesses recorded digitally instead. (Sort of a cyberpunk aesthetic answer to Dusttale.)

Spectr (Transcendtale Sans): The unlucky bastard who got tapped to pilot the ultra-powerful human-killing vessel and one of only a few physical monsters remaining. His new body is entirely robotic but similar to what he had before—the only thing missing is a soul. He’s coping in the aftermath of Everything about as well as could be expected, but pretty heavily dysphoric and doubting his identity and his personhood as…whatever he is now.

PapAIrus (Transcendtale Papyrus): A virtual consciousness, a snapshot of the previous ‘original’ Papyrus, his thoughts, his feelings, his memories, his entire sense of self… AKA, Papyrus, just detached from a physical body and soul. He considers it a major upgrade, really—he’s eternal, everywhere, everything… Maybe a slight god-complex about it, but can you blame him? He can interact with the world directly via hard-light projections of himself if he chooses, so it’s hard for him to see a downside to his new state of being.

Ascendswap: Another never-ending cycle of RESETs with No Mercy to be found, but after a bargain is struck with an entity beyond mortal ken, a small inner-circle of monsters is granted awareness of the cycle, and access to deeper, older, more powerful magic in order to put a stop to the human’s reign of terror. Most of monsterkind is only peripherally aware of all that happened, but a select few have been Elevated beyond what they once were.

Xanth (Ascendswap Sans): He’s the one who struck the eldritch bargain and consequently gained power and magic, as well as the ability to share it with anyone he chooses. It’s come at a significant cost and large swathes of him have been lost, dissolved into pure magic. He’s also now one who’s seen beyond the veil, the ant who has perceived the circuit board so to speak, and he’ll never be quite who he was. Still, he’s happy, and far more attuned to souls and magic and energy than he ever was before, so he’s not complaining.

Piper (Ascendswap Papyrus): One of the beneficiaries of his brother’s meddling, a newly-minted boss monster with full awareness of RESETs and much stronger magic—including an ability to push intent into his words as he speaks them, making their influence stronger. Due to the nature of its source, there’s only so far that little trick can go, but between being far more persuasive than he ever hoped he could be, his increased power, and more than a few timelines of experience, his confidence is through the roof and stress over what people think of him is a thing of the past.

Underfell Fruition: The Royal Scientist is never erased from reality. He continues his work as planned, without interruption and continues experiments which produce marvelous innovations for monsterkind’s eventual conquest of humanity. Two of his most impressive achievements are a device which allows the user to produce magic seemingly limitlessly, from thin air without drawing on one’s own energy, and a war machine that attacks on command—both of which are frequently lent out to the Emperor and the Royal Guard to serve the crown’s purposes. …Until a bit of poking around uncovers some…moderately…alarming monster rights violations, amongst other charges, which lead to the Royal Scientist’s conviction and execution.

Carmine (Underfell Fruition Sans): Captured during his attempt to escape from Gaster with his brother, and due to a consistent pattern of disobedience, locked away—permanently. Altered to produce magic at a significantly higher rate and used as a magic battery, he’s got plenty of energy and a whole lot of living to catch up on now that he’s out of the (barely metaphorical) box. What he lacks in worldly experience, he makes up for in luck, intuition, and a cocky can-do attitude, all too ready to make up for lost time.

Tank (Underfell Fruition Papyrus): ‘Raised’ alone by a cruel ‘father’ whose only use for him was as the pinnacle of his project to create a perfect living weapon for the war against humanity, he is extremely new to a lot of concepts—making decisions, having opinions, being a person… None of that was allowed while he was being developed…er, growing up, so in spite of being tall, intimidating, and built like a truck, he’s hesitant around new people and situations where he needs to do any more than just follow orders. Tentatively starting to branch out and discover what being a monster (instead of a monster-shaped weapon) is all about now that his creator is out of the picture and the brother he thought he’d only imagined is back in it.

Swapfell Fruition: The Royal Scientist is never erased from reality. He continues his work as planned, without interruption and continues experiments which lead to the development of a black ops division for the Empress, a secret service of sorts to serve the interests of the crown and to do the unsavory dirty work involved in maintaining an empire whose citizens are prone to corruption and violence. Espionage, blackmail, and quite a few assassinations are carried out by the unknown team managed, equipped, trained, and modified by the Royal Scientist. …Until one day, he happens to turn up dead and it’s uncovered that the ‘volunteers’ for the program were less willing participants and more lab-grown experiments who were given no choice otherwise. Bearing in mind what’s come to light about the circumstances, the black ops program is disbanded.

Vi (Swapfell Fruition Sans): Stopped during his attempt to murder Gaster and escape with his brother, and because of his clearly duplicitous nature, far more tightly controlled and observed and forced into obedience to his creator after. Used primarily as a handler to debrief, control, and monitor the real asset, he developed a keen eye for detail and skill in fact-finding, being secretive, and lying…which was probably a tactical error because he devoted himself wholly to playing the long con and waiting for the perfect opportunity for another attempt to free himself and his brother. A little late…maybe too late…but better than never.

Hunter (Swapfell Fruition Papyrus): The asset and field agent, a thoroughly trained and heavily mentally conditioned assassin, operant on a small library of trigger words and phrases which compel him to follow directives and alter the functioning of his mind and body. He’s extremely competent when working, charming and ruthless and efficient, but off the leash, impertinent, impulsive, and impossible. He does as he pleases whenever possible which, now that his boss/creator/dad is dead, seems like it’ll be all the time. On some weird footing now with his erstwhile handler—his brother—who was apparently less complicit in said boss/creator/dad’s bullshit than he’d thought, but y’know. He’s out of the cage either way and can chase his whims wherever they take him.

Descendtale: A Horrortale variant, a human’s passage through the Underground has left monsterkind without their king, without any of the human souls they’d gathered to break the Barrier, and without a handful of citizens. The long-lost queen returns to lead her people and pivots toward survival, weathering the long-haul trapped Underground with dwindling hope and resources. An alternate food source is the highest priority as monsters are already starting to go hungry in the wake of the chaos, and one is found…though not without its…side-effects. Light sensitivity, slowed metabolism, darkening of extremities, thorn-like growths on the body, and some mental changes and personality drift among other metamorphoses. The Underground takes on a deep-sea quality—slow, cold, dark—monsters subsisting on what they have and waiting patiently for the next whalefall to swarm.

Kohl (Descendtale Sans): The human’s disappearance has left him more than a little bitter (betrayed, though he’ll never admit that). His opinion of humans (or anyone new) is quite low after what the last one did to them all and he’s not keen on trusting or believing in any, anytime soon. He’s chilly, selfish, and reluctant to engage—though he does have a slight mean-spirited streak, and is greatly amused by creeping out or otherwise agitating humans by his presence. Coping with the changes they’ve all gone through and settling in to his new normal, but very stubbornly digging in to the small pleasures that his altered biology makes more difficult. Determined to live much in the manner of a cockroach: through just about anything and regardless of the opinion of those who’d prefer him not to.

Bram (Descendtale Papyrus): The human’s disappearance has left him confused and hurt. He’d thought they were friends, but well…then they did all that and left, never to return. There’s…a lot of conflicting emotions in there and he probably shouldn’t try to unpack it all—he’s just focusing on being the best friend possible from here on out! He’s a little bit clingy with new friends and people he’d like to become new friends but as much as possible, a perfect gentleman, host, and conversationalist. Some strong emotional outbursts from time to time, and his tendency towards unintentionally unnerving statements do make that a bit difficult but he’s very amicable and unlike his brother, only creepy on accident, so…he can still be popular, right? …Right?

If anybody’s interested in a full lore dump for anything, I can draft something up, but that’s the gist of all the brand new ones!

He doesn’t have a sense of smell or taste, but three out of five isn’t bad and certainly more than enough to keep a relationship with a partner from feeling a little too virtual.

He does have a hook-up who could make a more physical (robotic) body for him, if that’s something a partner feels like they’d want, but Alphys’ project list is already long and personally, he thinks of the idea of getting a body again like most people think about getting a very fancy suit.

It’s nice, sure, but how often is he really going to wear it? Seems a lot for something he’ll only use on Special Occasions and then shuck off as soon as possible… 🙄

Since his preferred physical form is made of light, the one thing that does cause some difficulty is maintaining solidity in extremely low-light environments, since there’s fewer—if any—particles for him to utilize in his density. Rural areas, sealed unlit spaces, if you ever happened to go deep-sea diving for some reason…those are the kinds of places he might be able to reach but wouldn’t be able to physically touch without additional light sources to draw on.

But! Most urban and residential areas have plenty for him to work with and that tends to be his locale preference anyway, so anywhere there, he can easily go from untouchable to very touchable and right back again as it suits him.