Chapter 11 - THE BARRIER
The melted scientist looked down at the horizontal slash running through him as it glowed red. He only managed to murmur one last, confused “🕈☟✌❄📬📬📬✍” [What...?] before dissolving entirely. This just left the mechanical girl that had been standing behind him, eyes a horrifyingly familiar red.
“✋💣🏱⚐💧💧✋👌☹☜📬 ✋ 😐✋☹☹☜👎 ✡⚐🕆✏” {Impossible. I killed you!} Gaster said, staggering backwards, eyelights back on, and shrunk to pinpricks.
“Mister Comedian killed me, too. Over and over.” She said, eyes now actively glowing. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?” The tendrils of that corrupted, viral soul had seeped out of its mechanical casing, now laced with red veins of pure Determination, and were wrapping around the kitchen knife Chara had picked up from where it had fallen out of her grip in Laura’s scramble away from Gaster.
Before the scientist’s very eye sockets, the knife started to transform and outright mutate, growing a nauseating red as it morphed into the Real Knife, with the twisted little girl experimentally swinging it back and forth. “Much better. Now then...” She looked back up at Gaster with that sickening smile, a shudder running down his spine. “I don’t like it when my partners try to stab me in the back, Doctor Gaster.”
Before either of them could make a move, the air between them fluctuated, with two other skeletons showing up, one stumbling a bit. “SANS, WHY DO YOUR SHORTCUTS HAVE TO BE SO DISORIENTING? AND WHY ARE WE HERE?” Papyrus said, regaining his bearings slowly. “heh, sorry bro, but my skull’s been pounding all day, like something’s been in it.” Sans replied, looking up at Gaster. “and i remember seeing some very bad things happening here, that’s why.”
“💧✌☠💧📪 ✋📫📫” {Sans, I--} Before Gaster could finish, a pair of those viral tendrils harshly stabbed through both brothers’ rib cages. Through their very souls. However, rather than outright killing them, their souls were fully corrupted pink, forcing their magic irises to flare with that same color. “And what better punishment for a traitor than to be killed with his own progeny?” Chara’s voice came from behind them, followed by an outright demented giggle as the skeleton brothers readied bones and blasters.
Gaster, on the other hand, was not about to fight his sons. Not again. A wave of his hand with magic powering up, forced Sans and Papyrus’s souls to turn gray with Cunning magic, inverting their movement, and their attacks, rendering them harmless to the scientist, at least for now. With that out of the way, he readied blasters of his own to bear down on Chara. Blasters which she effortlessly avoided with a graceful twirl that ended with a harsh diagonal slash across Sans’s chest. “Useless, the both of you.” She growled as the light faded from Sans’s eye socket.
In the same motion of the first slash, she decapitated Papyrus, before coming to a stop facing Gaster. An idle glance at the two she now stood between, and had just mutilated, made her chuckle. “Old habits die hard, I suppose.”
Gaster, who had been standing by in shock and horror, decided that now would be a good time to run, again. Especially when those soul tentacles were bearing down on him. He had just about made it to the throne room when he heard a loud crack, followed by something rolling past him. On closer inspection, Gaster was mortified to see that it was Papyrus’s skull, with cracks along once side, as if it had been kicked. His magic eye had stopped glowing, leaving him back to his original state. “D-DADDY?” He said, actually quietly for him, before he finished dusting.
The wicked laugh and swish of those tendrils cutting through the air alerted Gaster to the fact that he was, in fact, still being pursued; so he ran into the throne room, past a very confused Asgore, and into the barrier room, where he collapsed onto his kneecaps. He had run out of places to run, and had nowhere to hide from the demon approaching. Seeing Sans and Papyrus killed... It was so much different when it was just an image of another timeline, and Gaster could comfort himself with that distance, but this was so much more real. So much closer. Once more, the skeleton felt like retching.
This was it. he was going to die, again. He had no doubts that this would be permanent, as Chara embodied Determination and certainly controlled the power of saving. There was nothing he could do now but to just sit on the floor and wait for death.
... The floor! He thought, using his magic hands to force the hidden soul canisters up into view. “✋ 😐☠⚐🕈 ✡⚐🕆 💧✋✠ 💣✌✡ ☠⚐❄ ☟✌✞☜ ❄☟☜ ☟✋☝☟☜💧❄ ⚐🏱✋☠✋⚐☠ ⚐☞ 💣☜📬” {I know you six may not have the highest opinion of me.} He started urgently, knowing full well that appeals to the six souls could still reach them. He had watched that nightmare of a fight many times. “👌🕆❄ ❄☟✋💧 ✋💧 🕆☼☝☜☠❄📬 ❄☟✋💧 ✋💧 👌☜✡⚐☠👎 💣☜📪 👌☜✡⚐☠👎 ✡⚐🕆📬 💧⚐ 🏱☹☜✌💧☜📪 ✋ ☠☜☜👎 ✡⚐🕆☼ ☟☜☹🏱✏” {But this is urgent. This is beyond me, beyond you. So please, I need your help!}
*☝✌💧❄☜☼ called for help...
“That was... odd.” Asgore said slowly, picking up his watering can from where he had dropped it when the skeleton had bumped into him. Then, he heard footsteps behind him, turning around. “Ah, howdy! How can I--”
He never got a chance to finish, the knife carving through his armor, his body, his very soul in one clean swing. “Why... You...” The fallen king dropped to one knee, only to be, once more, felled by friendliness pellets. “Wow Chara! I thought you were gone for good this time!” That high-pitched voice sounded once more as a buttercup with a face sprouted out of the ground to smile warmly up at the machine. “I mean, both those trashbags blasted you away! But I knew you’d come back, you always do!” He added on hastily, smile growing nervous.
“You know, Azzy...” Chara started to advance on the flower, grip on her knife tight. “Chara...?” Flowey said hesitantly, growing worried. “I don’t remember you ever trying to stop either of them when they vaporized me.” She said slowly, knife slowly raising up as Flowey recoiled. “B-b-but Chara, it’s me! Y-your best friend!” He said, shivering in an emotion he hadn’t felt for a long time. In this timeline, at least.
Chara hesitated, knife held high like the blade of a guillotine, looking reserved, even after her statement, until something prompted her forward. She swung the blade down, again and again. She chopped Flowey into mulch, then kept slashing and stabbing, growing more and more vicious, until there was nothing left.
She took a moment, before rising up and dusting herself off, chuckling at the powder that left her. After all, there was still a job to do. The old man had to die. And so, Chara marched into the barrier room.
She found Gaster knelt down, with the soul containers in the ground, as if he was accepting his defeat.
“Hello, abomination.” He greeted her, without his characteristic wingdings. “Oh, so you can talk again, can you, old man? Perhaps your last words will be coherent, then.” She said, giggling to herself as the skeleton stood, and turned to face her. His eye sockets were shut.
“Afraid to look death in the eye?” The mechanical demon asked, still lightly laughing. “I suppose can’t blame you. After all, you are the last obstacle to completing my run. The ‘final boss,’ so to speak.” She raised her knife, then stopped, narrowing her eyes. “Something isn’t right here.”
“It took you long enough, demon.” Gaster said, opening his eye sockets. The magic irises were active, and glowing every color of the rainbow. Suddenly, Chara understood. “NO!” She roared, suddenly charging the scientist. “You couldn’t have!”
Before she reached him, a blast of light erupted from the good doctor, blinding her and throwing her back. When she both recovered, and could see again, she found Gaster standing tall, with his hands behind his back. The difference being that now he had six huge, skeletal hands behind him, three right, three left. The holes in the palms were filled with each soul’s respective color.
“I believe my time in this timeline is coming to an end, Chara. but I’m sure that before I go, I have time for one last experiment...” He said, trailing off. The world around them had changed as well, with them now standing in a grayscale version of the judgement hall. Behind Gaster was the barrier, in all its might. Behind Chara was the lone gray door that was often the only real feature in Gaster’s room. Outside the windows was pure blackness with the infinite timelines streaking across it.
As Chara looked around, confused, Gaster took a moment to admire the closer timelines, all showing moments from within the last corridor.
In one, he saw what appeared to be Chara in a hoodie, locked in a duel with Frisk. All of the former’s wicked slashes and brutal stabs were literally danced away from by the latter, before Frisk returned fire with rapid kicks from her pink boots. It looked as if they were both getting tired.
In another, he saw Papyrus, dressed up almost like Sans, with a lit cigarette in his teeth, coldly judging a shivering, but slightly dusty Chara. The scene was somber, but not violent as the last one, ending with Papyrus telling Chara to just leave.
The third, and last, Gaster looked at contained a surprise. In it, Gaster saw himself, shocked, as what he assumed to be a save file loaded into a training dummy failed to produce an actual fighter, but instead gave a pacifist. That Gaster looked up incredulously at Frisk, who looked quite nervous, but accepting.
Finally, Gaster had to tear his gaze away from the lights of the timelines to focus on his opponent, who was trying to glare another hole through him. “Do you think this changes anything, old man? I’ll still kill you, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” She growled, leveling her knife at him.
“That is where you’re wrong, Chara.” Gaster said coolly, actually starting to smile. “While you may claim to be an embodiment of Determination, we’re evenly matched in that regard, at the moment, whatever you might think.” He said, making the Fallen actually hiss.
“Let’s begin, shall we?” The empowered scientist said, raising an arm forwards. The aqua hand rose with it, before firing a beam out of the power well in its palm. Chara, however, had seen enough magic attacks to know when to stand still for a blue one. “Hm. You know the rules well, hellspawn.” Gaster said, still grinning.
“But that’s just it, isn’t it? You have to play by the rules. I, on the other hand...” He said, snickering a bit as the orange hand fired a beam as well, the magic intersecting over Chara’s mechanical body. No way to avoid damage anymore. Soon enough, she had to jump away to prevent her health from being drained any further.
A sharp noise, and she found gravity’s influence invert, sending her hurtling towards the ceiling of the arena, and towards a bed of bones that awaited her. No sooner did the demonic child land with a metallic crunch than did a quartet of blasters fire on her, followed by her being slammed back onto the floor. A moment later, yet more attack bones sprung up under her, piercing her robotic body and propping it up.
“So, this is your end, demon? Effortlessly defeated by the one person you never expected? The one you didn’t have any practice with? Just because he has a few shiny new tools to use?” A dark, vindictive chuckle escaped Gaster as he slowly walked towards the girl’s limp, artificial body, the tendrils of soul energy having retracted into it. A wave of his arm sent the soul-powered hands back. He didn’t need them to just finish her off. “A shame. I was hoping to gauge your abilities more thoroughly. Perhaps intervene on Sans’ behalf if I can gain the energy for it.” he mused, the clicking of his shoes stopping just before the Fallen, blasters materializing in a ring around her. “Oh well, one should expect poor results from an impulsive study, after all.” Gaster said simply, then willed his weapons to fire.
“NO.”
The scientist then had to duck to avoid the ring of blood red energy that was fired off from Chara’s fused soul, cleanly bisecting his blasters. Black sludge was starting to leak from her broken body.
“THIS WILL NOT END NOW.”
That mechanical body of hers started to move again, lifting itself off of his bones, and tearing away her right arm when it wouldn’t move with the rest. That didn’t slow her in the slightest.
“I REFUSE!”
A burst of red light bowled the good doctor over, sending him sprawling. Gaster was left on his hands and kneecaps, his massive hands still floating behind him, but needing a bit of reorienting. Of course, when Gaster turned his eye sockets to where Chara had been, what he saw was not pleasant.
The robot’s formerly placid expression was replaced with an outright hellish smile of twisted metal, drooling condensed Hatred. The LEDs of her eyes had been blown out, yet two twinkling points of red light gleamed in the sockets, even past the sludge dripping down. Her severed arm had been replaced by a mass of pink, black and red tentacles, all writhing and squirming as if independently but forced into line by another power. Where metal had been blasted away there now shone pale, twisted flesh in its place, pulsing to the heartbeat of the now exposed soul in her chest. A soul that had a half-metal, half-organic container.
For the first time in his memory, Gaster had to check his opponent.
*CHARABOMINATION
The skeleton swallowed. The number of nines beside her attack stat was disconcerting at best.
“So, DoCtOr GaStEr. I bElIvE yOu WaNtEd A lOnGeR fIgHt?” The creature before him spoke, its voice nearly as twisted as his own had been, if not worse in some regards.
“LeT’s BeGiN. AGAIN!” The Fallen roared, soul tendrils that had replaced her arm lashing out like whips. Gaster was forced to teleport in short bursts to avoid the coiling, cracking tentacles. Unfortunately as soon as he had dodged those, a series of red slashes was thrown his way, courtesy of the abomination madly slashing at the air in front of her. This time, simple teleporting wasn’t enough, Gaster having to summon up attacks to slow and stop the flurry of strikes.
Eventually, the burst from one of his bone wall’s shattering sent him flying backwards, having to be caught by the green hand. “wHaT’s ThE mAtTeR? rAn OuT oF sTeAm?” The creature taunted, a sadistic, distorted laugh echoing out after it as the Charabomination started to approach. “Hm... I wOnDeR hOw MuCh EXP YoU’rE wOrTh...”
Gaster shut his eye sockets. That one hit, even though it was through his bones, was enough to put his colossal health pool in the red. It was over, and he’d let something like this happen. Something like that exist.
Doctor, please don’t give up.
Gaster’s eye sockets opened up slowly, looking to where he thought he’d heard that voice. What greeted him was what appeared to be a green silhouette of a young human boy. Warmth filled his bones as the green power well of the hand he was leaning against started to feed him its healing energy.
We know you can do it.
A purple child with glasses appeared out of the purple power well, magic strings lifting him into the air and back to his feet.
You can’t give up now!
The orange soul spoke next, infusing Gaster’s weakened bones with new energy. The Fallen growled, lashing out with her tentacles.
We’ll help you!
The aqua soul placed a barrier of magic energy between the tendrils and Gaster, blocking them from harming the scientist as he was reinvigorated. Reegardless, the Charabomination continued to approach.
You just have to let us!
... Until a ballet shoe connected to a phantom leg of blue soul energy kicked her in the jaw, forcing her to stumble backwards. Gaster looking in awe at the souls around him, ready to help him.
We’ll beat her!
A gunshot sounded out, with a yellow beam piercing into the creature, forcing her back even further. Gaster was standing tall now, a smile on his face, and his rainbow magic irises glowing brighter than ever.
TOGETHER! “TOGETHER!”
Gaster had cheered it with them, now letting the souls work with him, rather than wielding them as weapons or tools. He threw out his arms, the hands going into action.
The green hand snapped, locking the Charabomination in place by forcing her soul green, followed by a constant beam of aqua energy and purple magic strings winding around her to help keep her still for the others. Fist-shaped, orange projectiles, yellow laser bullets, blue ballet shoes, and Gaster’s bones and blasters all slammed into the forcibly immobilized creature, courtesy of the remaining hands, and Gaster himself.
The Charabomination outright snarled, before letting loose a massive roar, disrupting the magic holding her in place, before lunging at Gaster in a blind rage, determined only to sink her knife into his very soul.
Before she could reach him, though, she was stopped by a beam of orange energy. Then it was joined by blue. Green, purple, aqua, and yellow all joined in, every soul in unison to protect the doctor.
Gaster, who had flinched back, smiled wide at realizing that these six had saved him yet again. Of course, they couldn’t hold back that beast for long, she was already starting to claw her way forwards in the combined beam. Gaster simply smiled, gathering together everything he had, all his Determination, into the maw of one last blaster that he had summoned in front of him, turning the blaster’s energy red. Without wasting another moment, the scientist fired, adding his Determination to the attack.
The rainbow beam started to wear away the beast’s body, stripping it down and shoving it back, until with one last cry, the twisted abomination’s body crumbled, reduced to ashes. Though, before the beam could shatter the soul, Gaster signaled the souls to cease fire.
Slowly, the demented soul started to rise up, pulsing and trying to latch onto a host.
Ping!
Gravity for it abruptly shifted, flinging it towards the gray door, that one of the hands had opened up in advance. The doorway lead to the destroyed timeline that Chara was native to, which she recognized, as soon as she formed that phantom version of her body. “What are you doing, old man? What will this do? I can still use all this power in a timeline you can’t stop me in!” She said, grinning wide and starting to laugh.
“Oh it is funny, Chara. Because that virus was tailor made for this timeline. An intact one with these parameters. The one you’re in is destroyed, with no hope of restoration.” Gaster said, with the sort of smug grin one could only have when one is explaining something seemingly obvious they have used to win.
And Chara’s face was the perfect picture of a sore loser.
“YOU--”
Chara couldn’t finish, as the door was slammed in her face, moments before it ceased to exist.
Gaster smiled, looking at the six hands, the six Souls around him. “Thank you all, for everything. But, we aren’t done yet.” He said, smile turning into a neutral, determined expression. He reached out, a yellow, four point star appearing under it. A Save Point. “There are a few things we need to set right.”
The world suddenly jumped into razor sharp clarity for just a moment, before fading and blurring away.