#march alphare

[chesans-blog]

Look, another precious cinnamon roll! (I've noticed all the cinnamon rolls ended up being rabbits...) This is March Alphare, who obviously built Mad Hatterton. She's not truly a bunny because of the long claws and sentience. This'll probably be the last character design this week, maybe one more, but I'll try to write the next chapter this weekend!

[chesans-blog]

Three (3)

Read the prologue, chapter 1, and chapter 2 first!

She’s a rather large rabbit, your height, standing on her hind legs.  She’s wearing a labcoat over her fluffy brown fur.  Her eyes gaze at you nervously.

“H-hello, human.  What are you doing here?”  She twitches her nose, after which she pushes her glasses back into place.

You tell Alphare with a slightly tense tone that you want to go home.

“Oh, that.”  She smiles awkwardly and scratches the back of her head.  Her ears droop a bit lower.  “W-why don’t you come have some tea?”

“Oh!  Is the human our guest?  I apologize for being so terribly rude,” the robot says sarcastically, standing up and taking a deep bow.  “Take a seat, gorgeous.  Whichever one you like.”

He watches you closely as you choose the striped red seat.  You're about to sit down when you notice there's a fuse attached to it.  It’s already lit.

“Oh my!  That chair is in fact a bomb!  Actually…” As you look around at all the chairs, you notice all of them have lit fuses.  “They're all bombs!  And, if you don’t defuse them all, that bomb hanging off of Alphare’s bird feeder will blow you to smithereens in two minutes!”

The March Alphare’s ears go up in questionable shock as she turns to find a pink bomb with a ticking timer hanging off of her bird feeder.

“How terrible!  How disturbing!  Oh, the intensity of it all!”  Hatterton brings the back of his hand dramatically to his head and sighs.  “Good luck, darling!”

Adrenalin and determination pump through you as you race from chair to chair blowing out each fuse.  Meanwhile Hatterton keeps shouting in a semi-seductive manner about how much time is left.  You somehow manage to blow out all of the fuses in time, and Mad Hatterton congratulates you with his typical sarcastic TV-show host voice.

“Well done, darling!  you've deactivated all the bombs!  If you didn't deactivate them, the big bomb would have exploded in two minutes.”  During Hatterton’s monologuing, you hear a bit of rustling behind you, but you ignore it.  “Now it won't explode in two minutes!  instead it'll explode in two seconds!”  Hatterton lets out a robotic laugh.  “Goodbye, darling!”  He looks over at the bomb, smiling.  His metallic countenance quickly shifts.  You glance over to find the bomb in shambles, with wires sticking out.  Alphare grins awkwardly, holding a pair of tweezers.

“While you were talking, I, I, um…”. Her fluffy feet shift awkwardly under her oversized white tuxedo vest.

“You deactivated the bomb!” Hatterton declares in mock dismay.

“Y-yes!  I did!  I didn’t want my house blown up.”  Alphare glares at her robot with a timid smile.

“How about we just have some tea.  What do you think, beautiful?”  Hatterton looks down at you charmingly.

Your tummy rumbles with hunger, and you agree.  You’re rather tired from today’s chaos.  The robot pulls out the red chair and you take a seat.  He offers you a half-cup of tea.  It’s literally a half-cup.  The cup was cut vertically in half and is somehow holding the tea.  You thank Hatterton uncertainly and take a sip.  The tea is burning, but, otherwise, it’s pretty good.  Alphare takes the seat across from you, a dark blue chair with skeletal patterns on it.  Hatterton sits in the yellow chair next to her.  It has scales painted on it.

“What do you want, gorgeous?”  The robot rests his chin on his interlaced fingers.

You turn to the March Alphare and repeat your question.

“Home?  Th-that depends on what you define home as.”  You can tell she’s buying time, and you give her a look.  The rabbit sighs.  “I'm sorry.  The only way out of Underland is to go through the Barrier of Stability.  That is the bridge between your world of the sane and our world of the insane.  O-of course, the only way to get there is through the queen’s castle.”  She rubs her ear.  Only someone with a soul that has a powerful sense of reality, like yours, can handle crossing the barrier.  We can't.”

“You're avoiding something,” Hatterton remarks.

Alphare's eyes widen with sudden fear.  “A-and what's that?”

“Asgore will probably kill the human.”

“Oh! Yes, I forgot.”  Her eyes have a brief flash of relief pass over them as she smiles awkwardly.  “See, if a monster absorbs thirteen human souls, he or she has the power to break the barrier.  Then, finally, monsters and chaos will be free to roam the orderly overworld. We have twelve human souls right now, and Queen Asgore needs only one more.  That's you, Alisk.”

You ask her why it's thirteen souls, of all numbers.

“I'm sure you'll find out why,” Alphare sighed.  “Whether or not we get to go free is up to you.  I… I hope you do the right thing.”

You thank her and stand up.  You're about to leave when you realize something.  You ask Alphare where the castle is.

“Oh, well, I'm sure Chesans would be happy to guide you.  He’s so bored all the time.”  Alphare laughs softly.  “Well, you should go.”

“Tell Sansyboy I said hi,” Hatterton says playfully.  “Have fun dying, gorgeous!”

You smile and walk away from the table.  The forest looms in front of you with an ominous appearance.  You hadn't allowed yourself to see it before, but the forest isn't made of trees.  It’s made of red teeth, or something like teeth.  Now that you look around, you realize that everything is different than how you first saw it.  The roof of the cavern doesn’t have glowing crystals, but glowing eyes.  Certain patches of eyes drip white goop, making some of the cavern look like it's raining.  Alphare's house isn't made of bricks, and it doesn't even look like a house.  Most of the things in the underground are so beyond description that it tightens your throat.  The flowers back in the meadow must look different from what you made them look like, but you can't seem to un-filter your memories.  Flowey must be flower though, because he said it himself.  At least one thing makes sense.  If a talking flower counts as logical.

You've been putting the entire underground into denial to keep yourself from breaking.  You've been trying to protect your mind from realizing how insane Underland really is.  Fear throbs through you as you strive to hold on to your sense of reality.  You must hold on to your sense of reality.  Without that, you can't go home.

Home.

The thought of your peaceful, orderly home fills you with determination.  You have to stay determined.  Taking a deep breath, you walk bravely into the dark tooth forest.

Chapter 4

[chesans-blog]

Two (2)

Read the prologue and chapter 1 first!

You run between the towering blue stalks of the echo flowers.  The looping laughs of Flowey reach the flowers around you, and fearful tears form in your eyes.  You cover your ears and sprint as fast as you can. Not being careful of where you place your feet, you trip on a root and fall on the grassy ground.  You look up, your vision blurred by tears, to find Flowey sprouting out of the ground.

“You idiot!  Did you really think you could get away from me?”  The line of his mouth morphs into jagged teeth, and his eyes stare hungrily at you.  You blink away the tears and discover a tiny bottle lying on the ground with a tag saying DRINK ME attached to it.  You grab it and glance up at Flowey.  The tiniest flicker of fear passes over his floral face.  His countenance quickly shifts to an angry appearance as he screams, “You really want to shrink more?  If you drink that you'll be too small to see!  You really are an idiot.”  A crease had formed over his eyes while saying that, the same crease that had formed when he'd mentioned the ‘friendliness pellets.’  

You open the bottle and take a tiny sip.  A scorching pain rips through your body as you rise above the flowers.  Flowey screeches at you, but by now you've grown to your previous height, and the pain stops.  You try to stomp on the little liar, but he sucks himself down into the dirt before you can touch him.

Being normal height again fills you with determination.  You let yourself giggle and jump for a little bit.  But, as the flowers echo your laughter, you're reminded that you need to go home.  You start walking towards the forest, wanting to get out of the blue meadow as quickly as possible.  The sparkling white stones shine on the ceiling, mimicking the night sky that's somewhere up there.  You stand at the edge of the dark forest, observing all of the invisible forest paths.  You feel fear begin to grip you.  There could be much worse things than Flowey in there.

“You look lost.”

You whip your head around until you find the source of the rough New Yorker voice.  A cat skeleton, wrapped in clothing that clings to where the body should be, looks down at you with amusement.  He's sitting quite contently on a tree branch.  His blue jacket and baggy black shorts give him the form his body lacks.

“The name’s Chesans, but you can call me Sans if you want.  What're you doing down here in Underland?”  

His laid back expression tells you that this cat is probably not wanting to fight you.  He has a gigantic grin that doesn't move when he talks, and you look at it curiously.  You tell him that you fell down the rabbit hole.  You're about to explain more when he cuts you off.

“You're a human, aren't you?”  The white slit pupils floating in his empty eye sockets flicker.

You tell him that you are, and that you want to go home.

“That's not exactly an easy task,” he grunts.  “I don't feel like explaining.  You should go ask the March Alphare.  She'll probably be up to it.”  He yawns and nods in a direction.  Follow me.”  He starts bounding from tree to tree, not looking to see if you’re following.  You find yourself trusting him and running after him.  His long tailbone bobs behind him as you both race through the forest. He comes to a stop and, slightly out of breath, points his boney paw towards a clearing.

“She's over there.  Good luck, kid.”  His clothes fade away, followed by his body.  His smile remains for a few seconds before vanishing with the rest of him.  You look at the clearing.  There's a brick house with a smoking chimney.  A table is set up outside of it, with tea pots and cups scattered on it.  Each of the thirteen chairs is uniquely different from the others.  A person occupies one of them, wearing a large top hat.  The thought of this person knowing the way home fills you with determination.

You walk towards the table and stand by one of the chairs.  You ask politely if you could sit down.  The person, who, upon inspection, appears rather metallic, moves his head sharply to look at you.  His black hair covers half his face, which is made of actual metal.  His black-and-pink coat slims his curving body.  His left hand moves to point at you, and his robotic pupil shrinks.

“There's not enough room, darling.”

This immediately annoys you.  You exaggeratedly gesture to all the empty chairs surrounding the table.

“All taken, sweetie.  Come again some other time.”

You ask doubtingly if he's the March Alphare.

“No, she’s inside.  Shoo, I’m trying to concentrate.”  He looks down at his hands, which are trying to glue a shattered teacup together using pastry dough.

You thank him and go over to the door of the brick house.  You knock on the door, and, to your surprise, hear a yelp.

“What kind of monster goes around punching people's doors?  That's rather inconsiderate of you.”  The doorknob glares up at you with indignity.  You apologize and explain that you only wanted to talk to the March Alphare.

“Well, use the doorbell!  Honestly,” it groans.

You're slightly ticked off at this point, but you push the doorbell anyway.  You recognize the theme song of an old anime show as it plays inside the house. The sound of pots and pans hitting tile fills your ears, along with the scurrying of furry feet.  The door opens to an apologetic rabbit.

“I-I'm so sorry to keep you… oh.”

Chapter 3