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“We’re not going to stay with our relatives this year, Ib.”
“But Mary, even if they don’t like us, we have to go with them.”
“We’ll run off early on. What’s that mountain, the one outside of town?”
“Mount Ebott?”
“That’s the one. Pack your clothes, we’re going camping on Mount Ebott!”
So they did pack clothes. They also packed food. But they forgot one thing. A bottle of Mary’s medication, left sitting on the counter. They would grow to regret this. Ib especially.
“Soul Roses? In the Underground? Here I thought nobody knew how to make them anymore.” Ib blinked to see a phantom of a boy, deep red like the fabric- formerly fabric, she noted- rose she had pinned to her chest that morning, a birthday present from her sister.
“What’s a Soul Rose? Who are you, anyway?”
“Ah, yes. Greetings. I am Chara. I’m… I was… the prince of the Underground. Which is where you are now. And a Soul Rose is… well… when someone, through some magic means, turns their soul, or another’s, into a rose. Of course, this means that if you get hurt, the rose loses petals, and vice versa, but… there’s a lot of uses for a Soul Rose. Mostly involving the traits they’re meant to represent, but I couldn’t tell you all that. They have entire college courses on it.”
Ib glanced at her rose. Five petals, same as always. Mary’s once-paper yellow rose had had eight petals when she’d last checked, so she hoped she wasn’t hurt.
It wasn’t like they could check for fallen petals in this bed of golden flowers anyway.
“Say, you’re the first one I’ve met that can see me. Do you mind if I tag along?” Chara asked.
“Not at all. Oh, I’m Ib, by the way, and that’s my sister, Mary.”
“I don’t see much of a resemblance,” Chara commented, but Ib ignored him.
The red and yellow hearts floated back to the girls’ bodies and turned back into roses. “That’s strange,” Chara commented. “They’re not supposed to turn back. You’re meant to have to change them back manually.”
“I’ll get that flower,” Mary seethed as she watched Flowey duck below the earth, out of sight, and her reach. “I’ll get that flower, and play Love Me, Love Me Not with his petals!”
For whatever reason, at hearing that, Ib pictured a rose stem, surrounded by blue petals. But that was absurd. Blue roses didn’t exist, right?
“Oh, I’d rather you didn’t,” Their rescuer said. “The flower is a nuisance, yes, but once you’ve dealt with him once, he really won’t trouble you again. He’s been like this for all of ten years, and I don’t see that changing.”
Mary huffed, but said nothing. If Ib had looked closer, she would have noticed the palette knife in her hands.
“I hope she doesn’t hurt As-Flowey.” Chara sounded worried, and deep inside, Ib was, too.
“Mary, you did pack your meds, right?” Ib asked as they walked through the corridor, trying to avoid looking at the dust on her sister’s dress.
“What meds? Silly Ib, I’m perfectly fine.” Her rose was a darker yellow now, less vibrant, and had several more petals than it did before. Ib stepped away in fear.
“Ib, she’s dangerous,” Chara warned, and despite wanting to speak up for her, she couldn’t. She agreed. Mary was dangerous, and Ib couldn’t stay around her. She had to find a way away from her.
Ib ran through the snow, hoping that Toriel followed her, and didn’t stay around Mary for too long. She spotted a structure up ahead, and a skeleton sleeping in it.
“Oh, good, you can ask him for help,” Chara stated.
“Um… hello… excuse me?” The skeleton blinked awake.
“huh? what is it, kid?” She wasn’t even sure he was entirely looking at her, and she didn’t particularly care anymore, either.
“It… it’s my sister. She’s gone completely insane.”
“I don’t like it,” Undyne said, looking at the small girl sitting at her table.
“i know,” Sans replied. “but if anyone can stop the other human on a rampage, itll be ib.”
“She’s not… she’s not supposed to be like this,” Ib sobbed. “She was fine earlier… maybe we can get her to stop.”
“Ib, that isn’t how LOVE works,” Chara softly whispered. “Sure, she could, possibly, get nicer again, but it’ll always be there. LOVE can drain in circumstanced, become less wieldy, but obtaining it… some people have described it as addicting. We can’t make her stop. The killing just gets easier, until they never want to turn back. I mean, we already saw her kill twenty people personally.”
Twenty-one, Ib wanted to reply, but she didn’t know why. She’d only ever seen Mary kill twenty Monsters, she knew that, but…
Why did she keep adding on an extra?
“How’s the Snowdin evacuation coming along?” Undyne asked, trying her hardest to sound professional, despite Ib being right behind her, calmer and drinking a juice box.
“Well enough,” Dogamy replied. “The good human was right. This one is dangerous. She got the Drakes already, and Jerry, but nobody seems to mind that part all that much. We’ve nearly cleared the town though, and the Gyftrots are cooperating fully, so that makes it easier. We’re sending Lesser and Greater Dog to try and intercept her, but… we don’t expect them to come back.”
“I-I’ll write consolation letters to their families,” Alphys stammered out.
“Wait, they have families?” Undyne asked. “I thought they’d all fallen down!”
“Well, um…”
“She’s talking about what’s under the lab,” Chara flatly stated. “I was there once. It was creepy.”
Ib decided to take his word for it.
“Ib, Ib, wake up!” She gasped, wincing as she sat up on the rather uncomfortable mattress in Alphys’ lab.
“What is it, Chara?”
“You were shaking, and crying out. It seemed like a pretty bad nightmare to me.”
Ib tried to recall her dream, but she couldn’t get much out of it. Well, there was one thing she remembered.
Mary, without her rose, holding Ib’s rose instead. A third rose, a blue one, being held out. And one sentence.
“He loves me, he loves me not.”
The familiarity of those words, and the blue rose, shook her, although she didn’t know why.
“Well, there was another reason,” Chara admitted. “Your rose is red, right?” Ib glanced at the flower next to her, and nodded. “Well, I’ve been wondering something… has time ever flowed… strangely… around you?”
“All my life,” She confirmed. “Sometimes, things will repeat themselves, like I’ve gone back a bit. It’s strange, though. I can never remember it happening with… Mary… around…”
The real meaning behind her dream hit her full force, and she started sobbing, remembering Garry, the true friend who the one she now called sister had murdered.
“I don’t know how!” Ib protested. “I can’t turn back time at will, I’m not that good at it! I… I can’t go back as far as I want to, anyway…” Why had she mentioned her powers to Sans? Ever since Mary had killed Papyrus, all he had wanted was for Ib to turn things back.
“how far is that?”
“Last year. Before Mary could kill anyone. Before she…” She wished that she could tell them about the portrait world, but even Chara had found that unbelievable, and he had been nothing but a shade for centuries.
She did want to save everyone. She really did. But, even if she could get to before the mountain, she couldn’t save Garry. It was too long ago for her limited grasp of her powers to reach.
“You know,” Chara brought up, “If you can’t prevent those murders, maybe you can help prevent more. I have an idea, but it will only work if you go along with me.”
She shot a glance at him. He had outright stated, once, that his life had been a long series of very poor decisions and bad ideas, executed flawlessly… except for the one that got him in that predicament. That had just been bad.
“No, it won’t turn out like that one, but all the same… you do know how to turn things back in the event of your death, in case things go south, right?”
“Flowey?” Ib called out in the middle of Hotland. “Flowey?” She paused for a moment, and did as Chara had said. “Asriel?”
“Where did you get that name!?” He popped up in front of her near immediately, and she paused to compose herself.
“Chara told me. He has a plan. He says it’s a good one.”
“Oh, this’ll be good,” Flowey laughed. “What, supposedly, is his plan?”
She told him. “You’re right, it actually is a good plan. If it really does come from Chara somehow, that’ll be a first.”
From where he stood beside Ib, Chara sighed. “Okay, I kinda deserve that one. Did end up getting us both killed, and all.”
“I’ll do it. But believe me, human, when this is over… you owe me .”
She never knew a flower could make a nightmare face before. She just hoped that the plan would work.
Flowey popped up from the ground, Mary’s exceedingly dusty rose in his mouth.
“She didn’t even notice I switched it for a golden flower decoration when she woke up,” he stated. “Funny. You’d think she’d notice that her soul had turned black sooner or later.”
And that was true. Mary’s rose, once a beautiful pale yellow, was now coal black. Fitting, as Ib had learned that yellow souls represented justice, and there was nothing just about a cold blooded murderer.
It came to mind that, whenever she was in battle, Mary showed off her pitch-black heart, but Ib simply couldn’t make that funny anymore.
“you sure about this, kid?” Sans asked.
“Remember, we’re right behind you,” Undyne cheered her on. She gulped, smiled, and nodded. The rose had more than twice the petals it had had when she’d last seen Mary. She’d clearly been busy. Still, she had to face her now. It was their best chance.
The sisters faced each other across the bridge. Mary’s eyes narrowed dangerously, seeing what Ib had in her hands.
“You,” she snarled. “Give me back my rose.”
Ib faced her, the calm look on her face not giving away the tumult she felt inside.
“Why? You wouldn’t have given mine back. Equivalent exchange, and all.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know,” She could tell that the others were behind her, all of the monsters she had rounded up. They were listening, and chose her to represent them in this, as it was ‘her’ plan, and as a human, it should have been her to judge the other human. “It’s time for you to pay for your crimes, Mary.”
“What crimes? They’re just Monsters. It’s not like they’re people.”
“Any more than paintings are people?” Mary stepped back, and Ib knew she’d struck a nerve. “I’m going to let the Monster children play a game with this rose. I call it, Loves Me, Loves Me Not. But first, for the deaths you’ve caused.”
The first petal was torn off. “This one was for Shyren.” Again. “This one was for Papyrus.”
Rip . “The Drake family.”
Rip. “Lesser and Greater Dog.”
Rip. “Toriel.”
Again and again, she would remove a petal, to represent a victim, or a group of victims. Mary had tried to cross the bridge, but couldn’t move forward. Vines had blocked her path, courtesy of Flowey.
Even the soulless abomination didn’t want the Underground to be destroyed, not when he was one of the inhabitants.
Eventually, she had named all of the Monsters that Mary had slaughtered, but there was one more thing she wanted to do, before she allowed the other kids their ‘game’. She selected the largest petal, and the next, until there were ten between her fingers exactly.
“And these,” she stated, looking the one she had once called family in the eye, “are for Garry.”
Mary cried out in pain at losing ten petals at once, and stepped back, slipped, and fell off of the bridge. A few moments later, the few petals remaining on the black rose wilted and fell off. That was fine. Odds were, the Monster children wouldn’t have been willing to play with it if they knew what it was, anyway.
The implications of what Ib had done struck her, and she sat down suddenly, glad that Monster food didn’t have to be digested, for otherwise, she would have been sick on the spot.
“Well, it looks like you’ve done it,” Undyne stated. “I guess humans really can be as heroic as their history makes you seem.”
“Do not tell her it’s anime!” Chara hissed, reading Alphys’ frantic hand signals.
Ib shook her head. “I don’t feel very heroic.”
“well, we wouldnt have as much respect for you if you did,” Sans pointed out. “but, really, kid… thanks.”
“We might even convince D- Asgore to spare you, if he knows you saved all of these morons,” Flowey said, which was as close to a compliment from Flowey as it was possible to get.
“What is it, Chara?” Ib asked. Chara sighed, looking at the floor.
“I remember what you told me… about that friend Mary killed. I was thinking… perhaps there is a way for you to save him- and, by extension, the rest of her victims.”
“Don’t joke about things like that!” She yelled at her friend. He sighed.
“I’m not! Do you remember what I told you, how Soul Roses have a lot of uses? One of them is… transfer of traits.”
“What’s that?”
“I have Determination, like you, and I was much more powerful, although… significantly less skilled. It’d have to be mostly a True RESET, but… if I gave you my power, you could go back that far.”
She’d been told what a True RESET was early on. “But… only one person can remember a True RESET, right? So, if I use your power, who would remember?”
“I’d… I’d keep most of the memories, so that I’d know to hold on until you got back, given that you’d have the majority of my Determination, but you’d have… direction, I guess.”
“I-”
“It’d get you out of whatever sinister plot Asriel has to make you pay him back for getting Mary’s rose for you.”
“How do we do it?” Time began turning back around them. “Chara, what are you doing?”
“Give your directions, Ib!” Chara called. “We don’t have much time!” The boy was beginning to fade from her vision.
“Chara!”
“Do it, Ib!”
So she did. And it was a simple instruction.
“Never trust a yellow flower. And save the blue rose.” And then everything faded.
Ib pulled herself up in bed, thinking about the trip to the art gallery her parents had decided to take her on. Something pricked in the back of her mind, and it felt like she was forgetting something.
“Ib!” Her mother called.
“Coming!” She replied. Two sentences floated in her mind, but she wrote them off as unimportant.
Her conscious self, at least. Those sentences would guide her, however subtly, through the next day. Years later, she would refer to it as the longest day of her life, but for now, she was just a kid going on a trip.
And that was just fine.