XTale (series)

*For the comic version of Timeline X, see XTale - Timeline X.*

"I HAVE ALSO FAILED, BUT UNLIKE THEM, I CAN FIX MY MISTAKES AS MUCH AS I WISH, WITHOUT CREATING USELESS VARIATIONS."
— XGaster transcribes his first entry of Timeline III to his assistant
**XTale** is the animated series created by Jakei95 preceding *Underverse*. It shows the ten timelines of XTale in depth and explains many of the plot points behind Underverse. It introduces the XTale cast and their stories, and how they progressed over the timelines.

## Synopsis

Ink!Sans visits a new universe and finds its creator trying to destroy his own soul out of frustration of not knowing what to create. Ink decides to remedy this by bringing the creator to the Doodle Sphere, and showing him different AUs to give him inspiration. It worked, and the creator was given a new name: XGaster.

XGaster creates the first timeline as a place where his assumed children, Frisk and Chara, can live happily. He recreates many of the inhabitants from the original universe, and gives Frisk and Chara a new family. The two grow up with a new brother, Asriel, who is given a heart locket from them. Eventually, XGaster decides that this timeline isn't enough, and overwrites it.

Ink checks up on how XGaster is doing, and is shown the Overwrite button. XGaster presents the idea of a "game" for them to play, and Ink agrees as it wouldn't break the truce he made with Error. The second timeline goes very similarly to the first, although Chara and Frisk were able to retain all of their memories of the first timeline since they are not XGaster's creation. Due to this, Chara did not believe they would ever be able to live a regular life, while Frisk tries to live as normally as he can in the timeline. Asgore eventually notices Chara's sadness, and encourages him to look forward and not to let whatever happened to him happen again or hold him down. This cheers Chara up, and Asgore is given the heart locket. XGaster watches over this timeline, and is not satisfied with how happy the atmosphere is. He decides to kill Asgore, as well as Sans, who Frisk bonded with, to improve his story. This only angers Frisk and Chara, but XGaster insists that he must Overwrite for them to see their family again. And so, the two reluctantly let him.

XGaster decides to model the third timeline after an AU he saw in the Doodle Sphere, Underswap. Frisk befriends Toriel and gives her the heart locket. XGaster overwrites the timeline after only two days after seeing how similar it was to the other two.

For many years of the fourth timeline, XGaster isn't present and watches what Frisk and Chara do in the timeline. Frisk befriends Muffet and gives her the heart locket that time. Soon after, XGaster arrives at Frisk/Chara's house and attempts to overwrite Frisk. He succeeds, and Frisk starts committing genocide on the residents of the timeline. Chara only later sees the destruction Frisk caused, only to get immediately attacked by Frisk. Alphys, XGaster's assistant, sees how bad it is getting and attempts to help Chara by taking a part of her entry for the timeline and sending it to Muffet. This causes Muffet to tie up Frisk, and encourage Chara to fight back against XGaster. Chara uses the Reset button for the first time, bringing them back to before Frisk was overwritten. XGaster decides to punish the two, creating a new timeline.

In the fifth timeline, XGaster made it so everyone would dislike Frisk and Chara. In their anger, they break the heart locket, however Alphys finds it and repairs it to give it to Undyne on their upcoming date. Frisk and Chara go to attack Alphys on her day off, only for Undyne to show up and defeat both of them. Later, Undyne asks Alphys about the two, and mistakes them as "having a rough time in their friendship" with Alphys. She brings Alphys to them to repair their friendship, but instead learns of all of the other timelines. She agrees to train them, but Frisk declines, knowing that it won't end well. Chara is then trained by Undyne, and learns the technique of summoning determination knives. Meanwhile, Alphys is found out by XGaster, and is converted into a subservient assistant. Undyne and Chara confront XGaster, but they soon find out what really happened to Alphys, and get attacked by amalgamated versions of Asriel, Asgore, Toriel, and Muffet.

By the sixth timeline, Undyne has already been killed and Chara defeated. XGaster then swaps half of his soul with Chara's, giving XGaster the ability to live past death and Chara the ability to Overwrite. This is the beginning of the X-Event experiment.

Frisk, dismayed seeing what happened to Chara, loses his determination. XGaster stores Frisk's soul in the data for the seventh timeline, and gets ready to discard Frisk, but Chara convinces him otherwise. Chara's soul is given to Frisk, creating a body controlled by Frisk with Chara as a ghost following behind him.

The eighth timeline is mainly used as training grounds for the X-Event. Frisk is tasked with creating something with the Overwrite button, and brings Mettaton to life. To Frisk's dismay, XGaster commands him to destroy his new creation. Mettaton attacks XGaster, only to be stopped as Alphys summons an amalgamated version of Undyne to destroy it.

Ink revists XGaster, and is surprised when he is given a vial containing XGaster's half of the Overwrite soul. XGaster worries that something may happen to him in the near future, so he wanted to keep the rest of the soul away from the X-Event. Meanwhile, Frisk is exploring the ninth timeline with Chara, only to get irritated that it seems generic. Frisk meets Papyrus after being trampled, and is brought back to XGaster by Alphys. Papyrus sees the heart locket broken on the ground, fixes it up, and returns it to Frisk, meeting XGaster in the process. XGaster spends most of his time this timeline sitting in an area in the woods, watching everything play out, and ends up befriending Papyrus. Frisk decides to give the heart locket to Papyrus and explain the truth of XTale to him, and the two go to contront XGaster. XGaster taunts Frisk, but Papyrus tells the two that the sorrowful aura of the timeline is just a reflection of their own sorrow. Frisk gets dismayed and ends up resetting the timeline after declaring their hatred towards XGaster.

The timeline was reset so far back that Frisk ended up falling in the underground and meeting all of the XTale characters there, with most of them as children. Frisk eventually breaks the barrier using the sheer power of his soul, earning the trust and respect of every monster there in the process. Frisk and Chara attempted to destroy their soul many times over the course of the tenth timeline, trying to take XGaster down with them. However, they were unaware that half of XGaster's soul wasn't with him, and he wanted to make sure it stayed that way for as long as possible. Eventually Frisk overwrites a mob of humans to try and do it for him, but Undyne tries to protect Frisk. XGaster proposed the idea of creating a Royal Guard to protect Frisk to Asgore, and eventually all of the characters who were given a heart locket in a previous timeline joined it. Eventually, Frisk decides to overwrite Sans into killing him, seeing as they're friends. However, Sans isn't too happy with being manipulated and forced to kill his own friend, and fights back. Soon, Chara finds out that half of XGaster's soul is missing, and restores the memories of their friends. Frisk, Undyne, and Papyrus attack the newly-nicknamed Cross to make sure he doesn't interfere with their plans, and soon join the rest in attempting to kill XGaster. Cross survives, and ends up killing each and every one of them, and absorbs Chara's soul in hopes that he'll be in control of the timeline. Instead, all of XTale is turned into a blank void, with the only survivors being Cross, Chara (as a phantom inside Cross), and XGaster as well as Alphys who are biding their time in the Doodle Sphere. Ink senses the disturbance in XTale and investigates only to be met by Cross, who soon become friends.

## Trivia

* The movie version contains an extra credits sequence showing a reanimated version of Ink's story in Underverse 0.1, as well as hints towards Underverse Season 2 at the very end.
* For a while, the thumbnails for each of the videos were originally just the text "XTale \_". They were later updated to include images of the character featured in the episode, with most of those images originally being part of the album covers for the XTale soundtrack.