Underearth/Book 4/Chapter 16

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As Frisk walked along the narrow bridges that connected the small spires of rock at the start of the Hotlands, he couldn't help but imagine the bridge below his feet exploding like the one before did, and him falling into the river of lava below. Shuddering at the thought, Frisk broke into a run, hurrying across the last bridge and approaching the laboratory.

With the laboratory coming into clearer view, Frisk noticed something wrong. The sliding doors were jammed open; one of the doors was only in partially, while the other stood lopsided. Approaching the doors, he saw that the inside of the laboratory was pitch black.

Stepping through the broken doors, Frisk continued through the laboratory, hugging the right wall, until he had come to the elevator on the far side of the building that led down to a hidden laboratory. Across from the elevator was a light switch which, as soon as Frisk felt where it was, was flipped, turning on the lights.

When the lights flickered to life, Frisk saw that the elevator door was also broken, though this looked more like it had been pried open by force. Behind the doors was nothing, just an empty shaft. Approaching the elevator, Frisk suddenly heard a familiar voice from behind him.

"Greetings, Partner." it said.

Frisk shot around only to find a blur of flesh flying at him, quickly followed by a tackle that spun him around, back towards the elevator doors. When his mind had finally made sense of what was happening, he saw Chara standing right in front of him, her arms up over his shoulders and around his neck.

Chara, once the movement had finished, leaned backwards into the empty elevator shaft, her arms still around Frisk's neck. Feeling himself being pulled in, Frisk shot his arms out to either side of him, grabbing the frame of the elevator door to stop him from being pulled into the shaft by Chara's weight and falling quite the distance, probably to his death.

"What is taking you so long?" she asked. "Every time you decide to murder all your friends again, you always get here way sooner than you have this time."

"In case you haven't noticed, Chara," Frisk strained out, his focus more on keeping himself from death by falling. "everybody was expecting me."

"Oh I *know*. Isn't it *exciting*?" Chara said. "Everyone started evacuating a lot sooner, too! Made it a lot easier to cut them all to ribbons.

"Speaking of which, I found where everyone was hiding." she gestured her head downward. "Alphys put them *all* down here. They clearly weren't expecting me to break in and kill them all. Oh, you should have seen the look on Alphys's face when I cut her open." Chara then laughed sadistically as Frisk looked on in horror, thinking *Was this really how I acted with LOV!?*

Chara's smile then faded slightly. "Though, come to think of it, I thought I saw a ghost fleeing with a Human who was carrying a robot. When I went down to the reactor to kill them, I found that the reactor elevator was missing." Her grin widened again. "Looks like you've got some trouble up in Elysium." she said slyly.

"Why are you telling me this?" Frisk asked. "Why not just kill me like you did last time, up in Helios Station?"

The corners of Chara's mouth curled upwards slightly. "To show you that I don't *need* you anymore. I have found a way to destroy the Barrier myself. I am letting you live for now in the hopes that you'll once again see things *my* way and join me in destroying all of Humanity!"

Before Frisk could raise protest, Chara pulled herself back up to his face, their noses just barely touching. "You have company." she whispered. "See you soon." Chara then let go of Frisk, falling away into the dark depths of the hidden lab below.

Pulling away from the empty doorway, Frisk then heard heavy footsteps coming from the opening to the laboratory to his left. Looking over, he saw the Riverperson approaching him.

"You..." the Riverperson mumbled, his voice hoarse. "you killed them all..."

Frisk looked back at the elevator, then back at the Riverperson, unsure of what to say—whether he should defend himself, or to take the blame.

"I am such a coward..." the Riverperson mumbled. "I trusted that they all could have killed you... Grillby... Gerson... Undyne... But with you here, they're dead, aren't they... And not just them, but everyone in the Outskirts..."

Frisk looked away, his own eyes beginning to show signs of flooding. *Damn it...* he thought. *What am I doing?*

The Riverperson raised one of his marred hands up to the neck of his cloak and tore it off. Frisk couldn't believe what he was seeing. The figure beneath the cloak looked Human, though more like a zombie with the exposed bones from the complete lack of flesh in multiple areas. What hair he had was black and messy, with most of it on his face in the form of a mustache and beard. Of the skin that the Riverperson *did* possess, Frisk noticed that it was of a remarkably similar shade to that of Serif's.

The brown eyes of the Riverperson shot into focus at Frisk, a burning hatred appearing deep within them.

"I am Charon Courier Gaster, Riverman of the Acheron." he spat. "Seeing as your filth-heap clawed its way out of the Citadel, I trust that my brother Serif is dead too, murdered at your sadistic hands."

Frisk stumbled backwards in shock at this sudden shift in tone. Instead of answering with words, Frisk simply pulled the spinal sword from his wrist. Seeing it, Charon's eyes burned ever brighter.

"I see..." he said. "so... this is for Serif, Toriel, Sans, Grillby, Gerson, Undyne, and every Monster that fled into that hole to hide from you. I ask you; who's the real monster here?"

The sound of shattering glass then rang throughout the lab followed by a light blue SOUL rising from the broken jar next to Charon. Seeing it, Frisk swung his sword towards the pair, though it wasn't fast enough to stop him from absorbing the SOUL.

As the tip of the blade shot itself at Charon's head, his eyes snapped open with blue glowing in them and, with a swift movement, shot himself upwards to avoid the thorns. Frisk looked up at the now airborne Charon as his eyes turned from blue to grey.

Frisk looked into an infinite black. The silence around him, deafening. The smell of putrid flesh corroded the inside of his nostrils as a chilling breath swept across his body.

Stumbling through the darkness, Frisk felt a surge of pain hit a side of his body as though he had placed his hand on a still-hot burner. Stepping away from the place he had felt the sensation, the opposite side began to burn.

Continuing to stumble drunkenly away from the places that burned, a blinding light shot through his eyes as a sensation of falling suddenly gripped him. With his eyes closed, he could hear wind rushing past his ears. Opening his eyes again revealed that he was now within the elevator shaft, falling far from the light above.

"Foolish child." Charon muttered above, looking at the broken elevator doors. "Although you'd presented skill in seeing through my illusions, you were no match for that spell." he then let out a sigh. "It has been so long since I've had the power to use that for any amount of time. Thank you, Human, for letting me use the power of your SOUL."

Looking away from the shaft, Charon turned to face the way he had come in. "I should tell him that the Human is dead..." he then muttered; a mournful song hinted deep within his voice.

As Charon walked towards the exit, a thorny rope shot past him, wrapping fast around his neck, and squeezing as soon as possible, crushing his neck into nothing as his head shot upward, its fading eyes catching sight of Frisk floating just above the ground at the maw of the elevator shaft, his eyes glowing a vibrant blue.

Breathing heavily, Frisk relaxed his focus and collapsed to the ground, the spinal sword in his hand vaporizing back into red energy before flowing back into him. "Thanks for showing me that I could use that magic on myself." he said to the slowly crystallizing corpse after a few seconds' work at catching his breath.

Standing up, Frisk walked towards the door that led deeper into the Hotlands. Upon nearing the door, the sound of a fridge opening caught his attention.

"For a scientist, I expected more from her stock..." Chara said, pawing at something in the open refrigerator. After a few seconds, she pulled out a package of instant noodles, ripped it open, and began crunching on the contents within. "Eh, they're better dry anyway." she muttered.

"What are you doing back here?" Frisk asked, turning to face her completely.

Crunching on more noodles, she quickly swallowed her mouthful before answering. "To congratulate you on a most excellent kill. I wasn't entirely sure you'd actually pull through, yet here you are, and here is Uncle Charon as a worthless pile of rock."

"Uncle Charon?" he asked, somewhat bemused.

Chara's smile faded slightly as she simply stared at the dead Monster. After a few seconds, she suddenly sucked in a load of air and looked back at Frisk. "All the elevators are unlocked. You can go all the way up to R3 from the L1 elevator." She then walked to the broken entrance. "See you soon." she said before exiting the lab.

Quickly, Frisk charged after her. Upon exiting the lab himself, back into the area out front, he found nothing. *Where does she keep vanishing to?* he thought.

About a minute later, Frisk stopped looking around and walked through the opening in the cliff-face and into the L1 elevator, selecting R3, hoping that all the questions he had piled up would eventually be answered.