Chapter Text
When you open your eyes, you’re in a Dark World. Kris’ Dark World.
Susie is excited about going on a new adventure, but this time you’re not sure you feel the same.
Why did Kris make this Dark World? Why did they slash the tires of Toriel’s car?
You’re the only one who knows what they did but you can’t say a thing. Out of the two of you, Kris is the one who can talk whenever they want and they definitely won’t spill the beans. Now that you think about it, they never talked to you at all.
You can barely focus on what Susie and Ralsei are saying as you trek through the empty wasteland.
Until Ralsei tells the truth about Darkners. As he talks about how the Dark Worlds work and what Darkners really are like in the Light World, he sounds so… despondent.
But Susie has none of it. She tells Ralsei that he, Lancer and everyone else are real to her and gets angry when he says she should forget them and move on, but then-
A spotlight shines on them, and a voice booms from afar. And after a short presentation, a giant host with a CRT for a head. To make it short, you, Susie and Ralsei are now contestants for his gameshow. Ralsei really wants to participate to make up for the fact he can’t come to the festival with everyone else.
Tenna has all of you input three letters for your names, and you decide to be very clever. Unsuprisingly, Susie has the same idea.
The “board” you’re going to play in turns out to be a level in an old-looking videogame you all have to play together while Tenna watches. It’s quite fun, honestly. You solve puzzles, answer quizzes, fight a weather couple that divorces in the meantime…
Some of the questions in the quizzes give you pause, though. One of them asks what’s Kris’ favorite food, and of course you veer towards Chocolate.
But just as you were about to press the button, Kris coughs and changes your answer to Pie. Hesitant, you reply.
You try to do your best to act like Kris, but stuff like this makes you realize just how little you know them at all.
The board ends with a cooking show. You have to grab food midair, dodge fire and throw it at hungry customers, which is much harder than it seems. Thank god Kris is a good jumper.
But you manage to do very well and earn an S-Rank! Turns out this was just one of two rounds, and in the meantime you enjoy yourself at the Green Room.
Grab some snacks, gamble at a ball machine for points and all sorts of stuff, reenact a monster movie, beg a watercooler for mercy… You know, just what normally happens backstage.
And speaking of backstage, you decide to check the S-Rank changing room for last. Best for last, after all!
…or at least, that’s what you thought. You’re kinda glad Susie and Ralsei aren’t here to see this, because Susie especially would have gone straight to Tenna to complain.
For a so-called room for VIPs, the room is decrepit. The color is gone from the walls, the decorations are falling on the floor and the guests are… Well. Rouxls Kaard is there, doing his makeup. That says it all.
You talk to a plug named Ramb, who tells you how the game you just played was modified by Tenna, and the original version is right there. Obviously, you go in the room and check it out.
Sure enough, the game is there and it boots up, but there’s no controller.
So you go back and… there’s an odd controller with pink and yellow buttons… that wasn’t there before. Ominously convenient.
You boot up the console and as the game logo gives way to the NO CONTROLLER error message, Kris plugs in the controller and the screen begins to show-
…
……
Why are you in the game.
It’s not “there’s an avatar of you in the game”, you are literally in the game. You can see Kris looking at you through the screen! Are you Kris’ 8-bit avatar? How? What? WHY!?
Being in a game is so unsettling. There’s no Susie or Ralsei with you, it’s just you as Kris. You walk around and you see monsters that weren’t there in the modified version, and Kris is looking at you nervously through the screen. Are you even moving on your own right now? Or is Kris making you move with the controller? Hell if you know anymore.
Eventually you get to what used to be the (empty) fanmail room in the modified version. Here, though, you find a sword.
There were no weapons in Tenna’s version. Something about keeping it family-friendly. Here, though, you’re allegedly free to do anything.
You grab the sword, and you’re back outside. An upbeat chiptune music starts playing, and the previously harmless monsters now start attacking you. So of course, you fight back.
You go into a cave and you read the message “BECOME STRONGER”, which makes it obvious what you have to do. You feel a pit in your pixelated stomach.
Once you’ve reached max LV, the music goes quiet and you can only hear the faint wind. Now that you can cut down trees, you go far, far beyond the boundaries of the map. Until you reach a chest. When you open it, a message reads you obtained an Ice Key, an ominous tune plays and before you know it, you’re back into Kris’ body.
Kris unplugs the controller and puts it back into their pockets, and you leave.
Back to Tenna’s game, the second board is more of the same. Fun games, fun battles, fun shenanigans… but you can’t help but wonder what it all looks like in the original version. You know it’s not a good idea to play that game again, but you just can’t help yourself.
There has to be something in there. There has to.
And so you find yourself back in the S-Rank room.
You turn on the console.
You see Kris looking at you, and waste little time looking for the sword this time.
Now, you don’t know if you played any video games before you came to this world, but you know how they work. You know violence is a given in a lot of them, and there is enough separation to make it. Fun, even.
But… here? Now that you are actually in a game, walking around, hearing the noises, killing monsters, it feels just so real.
And it makes your skin crawl.
You ride a raft north, north, north, until you reach an snowy location.
You get down, chop down the bush blocking your way, and find an entrance to the Ice Palace. You unlock it with the Ice Key and the screen fades to black.
When the screen lights back on, you’re inside the Palace. The music changed to a much more foreboding tune, but your objective stayed the same. There are enemies everywhere, and your sword grows sharper the more of them you slay.
Once you’ve killed everyone, you can cut down the trees blocking your way. Trees that look suspiciously like those in Hometown. Beyond them, there’s a room with a white cloaked figure in it.
She doesn’t react to your presence, not even as you approach and touch her.
You try to talk to her, but your avatar slashes at her instead. She gets hurt and knocked back, but doesn’t flee from you or attack you or… do anything at all.
Not wanting to hurt her anymore, you leave the room. Maybe you missed something?
But then you find her behind you. And when you attack an enemy, she shoots an ice spell that freezes everything in her path. You can’t shake just how wrong everything about this feels.
You go back to the blue bird that was blocking your way and have the ice mage freeze it. Now that you can proceed, you find yourself in a maze. You get lost immediately until you realize that she follows you only if you’re going the right way. You follow her implicit directions until you reach a door outlined by red horns.
To open it, the Ice Key is used up and disappears, but then you read the message “SHE WAS USED UP”.
You look behind you and, just before she vanishes, you see the ice mage’s face under the hood.
Noelle’s face.
You walk through the door and into pure darkness. A voice congratulates itself with you but doesn’t show itself. You walk deeper until you collect a Shelter Key. And you know what shelter is it for.
The game turns off and you go back into Kris, who looks away from the screen looking utterly pale.
When leaving the green room, you find a cold place with a Christmas tree and a toy ball. Only to find Toriel sleeping inside. And when Tenna catches you and Susie and Ralsei refuse to play his games, he loses it.
Compared to what you went through in that game, Tenna’s breakdown is almost tame. You answer quizzes desperate for validation, repeat physical challenges that are falling apart, escape his custom made toy balls, take part in a couple of cowboy challenges as you slowly watch everyone abandon him.
Until you return to a now desolate Green Room. Your hands may be shaking, but you know where you have to go. You find an half-petrified Ramb, asking you to play the game and to push him away. Kris does so.
You don’t want to play that game again, you know it’s a horrible idea. But you have to! You KNOW there’s something in there! Maybe a Shadow Crystal! Or that Shadow Mantle Seam was talking about! Maybe that object Seam can make is something that can separate you and Kris permanently! Or a way to return to your discarded body! It has to be something important! This has to be worth the hell you’re putting yourself and Kris through!
You’re back in the game. This time you’re in a night city with… Susie and Ralsei?
They follow your every move, not doing anything. You figure this is the city Tenna would have had you and the others play in before he had his… moment.
You look around for the sword, trying to shake the feeling of dread.
After finding it you walk around the city, but you notice there are no monsters anywhere. Confused, you walk around some more, thinking you missed something. There are no enemies, no secret passages, nothing. The only way forward is blocked by an obstacle you can’t cut down at LV 1.
You turn towards Susie and Ralsei, thinking maybe you have to interact with them, and-
Oh.
Oh god.
nononononoNONONONO
You didn’t mean to! You didn’t mean to kill them! You forgot the only way to interact with things in this cursed game is to kill them!
Kris looks away in horror. You feel like you’re going to vomit.
But hey, at least you can cut down that stupid rope barrier, right!?
You go through a dark alleyway until you go down a manhole, where you find an underground dungeon resembling Queen’s basement. The enemies in here are vicious, at some point you lose control of your avatar and instead become an enemy that has to get close to it only to get cut down, and when you reach LV MAX you cut down the orange trees and get out of this place.
You’re in a thin corridor, and as you walk you see Tenna, monologuing to himself about who you figure must be Spamton. He teleports further ahead when you walk up to him, until he notices you.
He begs Kris not to turn him off, but he won’t get out of the way so, as usual, there is only one thing you can do.
When you go outside you’re in… Hometown?
You notice the hill where the shelter is in, but as you walk up to it your body moves in the opposite direction, and you see Kris aggressively pushing the up button.
But it’s the only way forward, so, you fight harder, get to the door and open the shelter with the key you found in the previous level.
It’s dark in there, with no sound. Until you hear that same voice from the end of the previous level, taunting Kris, claiming they’re enjoying the hunt for the Shadow Crystals.
...Are you? You don’t have time to worry about it, because the room lights up and the voice shows itself as a black cloak, floating and laughing in front of you.
Before you can even process what’s happening, the cloak attacks you and you feel pain. Actual, genuine pain, unlike the other times you got hit where it was just a brief flashing and a sound effect.
It’s another fight for your life. You try your best to dodge its attacks but it’s so slippery, it moves out of the way just as you’re about to strike and summons cat figures with the face you saw back in Queen’s basement to make dodging even harder and before you even know it, you’re within an inch of your life and you know you and Kris are both about to die.
Luckily some of the cat things drop health candies when killed, so you’re able to keep fighting.
The room changes color to look more and more deranged, the cloak’s attacks get more and more vicious and you’re still standing only through sheer determination and quick reflexes.
You slash at it, over and over, until it finally stops. With a final taunt, it opens the way forward and leaves. You won by the scrape of your teeth, but it doesn’t feel like a victory. Just survival.
You find the chest containing the Shadow Mantle but it’s too high to reach, so you turn to your right and walk away, leaving… the… game.
The pixels that make your face can’t express the panic you’re feeling.
Kris looks just as horrified, as they drop the controller and walk away from you, shaking their teeth.
Neither of you says a word. You’re afraid that if you try to talk to them like this you’ll just attack them instead, so you walk away. Once you walk away enough, somehow you’re back into Kris so you go into the game to grab the Shadow Mantle since they’re taller than you were.
When you exit the game, Kris grabs the controller, only for Susie to come in and talk to them. And somehow, you’re back into your game avatar.
You want to talk to them but you know what’s gonna happen if you try to so you walk away, you don’t want to hurt them you REFUSE TO HURT THEM
As soon as Susie leaves, you’re back controlling Kris. Like nothing happened.
You run out of that room as fast as you can.
You go seal the Dark Fountain, but Tenna stops you. After a long series of physical challenges, you manage to defeat him and Susie convinces him he doesn’t have to be thrown away by opening up about her past. It’s obvious she’s speaking to Ralsei, too.
But just as Tenna is about to give you back Toriel, just as everything is going well for once, someone chops Tenna’s arms off, the poor CRT disappearing god knows where. The one responsible is a shadowy figure and you can’t help but notice the antlers on its head. It tries to capture Toriel but Susie has none of it, so they retreat and let out a massive roar, and then summons a black knife from its hand.
The Roaring Knight is ready to fight.
Their attacks are obscenely powerful, with the Shadow Mantle being the only thing between you and instant defeat. Your attacks barely do any damage, especially Kris’, and Susie’s Rude Buster is the only thing the Knight recoils to.
It’s a gruelling fight, just as vicious as the one you had in that game, but luckily Susie refuses to stand down and with timely heals and dodges, you manage to withstand the Knight’s assault.
Then it unleashes its ultimate attack by summoning a black hole and sucking up stars, which is as powerful as it is familiar, and then shoots them all over the place. You survive by sheer luck.
Susie deals the hit that finally makes the Knight stop for a moment, and then manages to shatter their blade.
She barely has time to gloat before she is struck down in an instant, with Ralsei immediately following suit.
The Knight forces you and Kris to kneel and then goes to capture Toriel, but Susie manages to hold it just enough for Undyne to save the day… only to get captured instead of Toriel.
You collect the black shard of the Knife and a Shadow Crystal from the ground and then chase after Susie and the Knight.
You find yourselves back in the Light World, outside Kris’ house. Susie physically drags you trying to catch up to the Knight, reaching the shelter that shuts itself as soon as you arrive, the black smoke coming from it quickly dissipating.
You find a numbers pad requiring codes, but no idea where to get them. Frustrated, Susie goes back to seal the Fountain in Kris’ house.
Kris doesn’t follow her, though. They look at the symbols near the pad, and then turn toward the shelter door.
It creaks as it slightly opens.