YT!Alphatale / True Chapter 1: The Road to Absolute Infinity

Completely casual, Wendy Gaster, recently having christened herself as the Astral Mother, walked out of the shack. She sped up her stride, recounting in her head the events of the last 15 minutes. “It was definitely catastrophic,” she thought to herself calmly. She felt odd. Perhaps the shock of what she’d done hadn’t washed over her quite yet. She’d already realized what the eventual consequences would be, it’s just that she was too busy to particularly stress. Not only had she just shattered a man across the Multiverse and sent about eighteen years of work haywire, but adding onto that, she’d had effectively the entire course of her life revealed to her. She had a vague idea of what would happen if she didn’t follow up on that, and she wasn’t keen on it. She revised the plan in her head. “Simply kill the King, create or otherwise obtain a few princes, and then I’m pretty sure I just wing it. Yeah, easy enough.” The Astral Mother arrived at the doors to a castle, and knocked. The door was opened by Alphys. The Astral Mother briefly wondered why on earth she was in her way now, but quickly came to realize what must be done, so she blasted Alphys into smithereens with a flick of her wrist. The guard was raised, but it didn’t really matter. The stone castle immediately exploded upon the Astral Mother’s will, likely incinerating the king along with all his subjects. She didn’t need them, after all. As a totalitarian, she ought to hold all the power herself. In the place of the destroyed castle, a new fortress was built. As her mind raced with ideas, the Astral Mother was interrupted by the arrival of several guardsmen from the nearby town. Perfect. She looked at the men, sizing them up next to each other, and noticed the presence of a guy she happened to know. What his name again? Perryson? Before any questions could come in, the Astral Mother turned all the guards besides her target into dust.

The Astral Mother teleported to Peterson, the guard, and grabbed his arm. "Let's have kids together," she said breathlessly. "But, what about my wife?" replied Peterson unconvincingly. "Oh, her? She's dead now," said the Astral Mother with a smirk. "Oh ok then," conceded Peterson. Then they went into the Castle and had sexual intercourse. Will be described in detail in Steel Heart.

*A few weeks later...*

After having stifled any rebellion possible, the Astral Mother decided to rush along her plan. She teleported out of the mountain to the capital of Humanity, Humantown, and demanded they give her two human children, preferably siblings. Upon sighting the Astral Mother, a fighting force of 300,000 footsoldiers, 20,000 tanks, 3000 stealth bombers, and one nuclear missile silo hidden in a submarine were deployed. "This is for all the lives you took! Die!", declared some random footsoldier. And so, every single munition and arms, except the nuclear bomb, were immediately deployed upon the Astral Mother, showering her with hundreds of thousands of bullets, tank shells, and high-yield explosives. After roughly 30 minutes of this, the Astral Mother decided to finish her opponents off and summoned a Dark Blaster, which in one omni-directional shot, vaporized every single foe. On cue, a hydrogen bomb was launched at the Astral Mother from the nuclear submarine. Although she survived, every single human living in the City was dead, except two siblings extremely conveniently. "How did you even survive that," asked the Astral Mother, making small talk. "I blocked the blast with this stick I found lying around," replied one of the two. "What're your names?" asked the Astral Mother, although she didn't really care. "I'm Frisk", said the infant human who had parried the burst of hellfire, "and that's my brother, Chara." Chara, who was obviously moritified at the situation, said nothing. "Well, that works for me," said the Astral Mother as they arrived at her Palace.

The Astral Mother would begin training Frisk and Chara despite them being about two years old. Frisk, who showed more potential, was to be trained directly by the Astral Mother, while Chara was delegated to Quenya for magic training. Chara and Quenya sat in a well-lit courtyard. Quenya was lecturing Chara on basic Magic Theory, which the two year old seemed to find boring. "To begin with, our world is entirely spatial and temporal. As such, things happen in the bounds of cause-effect relationships, and all is merry. Essentially, as long as your description doesn't disregard the existence of space-time, you can describe the world. Obviously, this opens up many scientific possibilities. For a layman such as yourself, countably infinite-dimensional space may be the first thing that comes to mind. However, it expands much further than that. Infinite as a descriptor is a bit broad. Some infinities are bigger than others; some spaces are uncountably-infinite dimensional. The continuum hypothesis is a pretty nice flowchart for the amount, or cardinal value, of dimensions past the countable infinite. However, we can make even *bigger* assumptions due to the nature of the world, such as a space with an amount of dimensions parallel to an inaccessible cardinal. You probably have heard of those in passing, but I'll spare you the detail. For your information, you just need to know that our Universal Bubble has a number of dimensions parallel to the Woodin cardinal, as proven by Pope Jabe-" "This is all stupid as shit, what does this have to do with magi-" interrupted Chara. "WE'LL GET THERE WHEN WE GET THERE!" snapped Quenya. She cleared her throat, and continued, "Well, since you're so keen to realize it, there is a world that exists beyond ours. The Thought Point. It is above the concepts of space-time which we ourselves are bound to, and by extension it is beyond all cause-effect relationships, but that's only the beginning," continued Quenya.

"The Thought Point, that which transcends the concept of space-time, is just a part of something much greater, which we will trace across the number line. Our world takes the position of *zero*, while the Thought Point takes position of *one*. In order to reach the Thought Point conceptually, you would need a *one*. This *one* which we have imagined represents the difference between the Thought Point and our world. This can be generalized further. Thought Point II would be, well, *two*. *Two* is reached by the difference of *one* between the Thought Point and Thought Point II. Thought Point II transcends the Thought Point to the same degree that the Thought Point transcends our world. What do you think the biggest number is?" Quenya says, concluding her ramble with a question. "Uh, I dunno, ten or something. So there are ten Thought Points?" says Chara, wagering a lucky guess. Quenya pretends to have not heard Chara, and continues rambling, "Yes, there is no biggest number, as the difference of *one* can always be applied. Thought Point III would transcend Thought Point II to the same degree that Thought Point II transcends the Thought Point. IV would transcend III to the same degree that III transcends II, so on so forth. At some point, however, we must make a conceptual leap. Past the finite ordering of Thought Points, there would be what we call a Branch I. Branch I represents the conceptual leap from the finite to the infinite. No amount of *ones* can compare to Branch I's superiority over the entirety of the Thought Point Network. Now, we can take a look at the continuum once more. Past Branch I, there exists Branch II. Branch II transcends above Branch I to the same degree that Branch I sits above the first Thought Point. You can generalize this notion to any finite numbered Branch. Branch III transcends Branch II to the same degree that Branch II transcends Branch I, etcetera." Quenya stops for breath. "Are we at the magic part, yet?" asks Chara. "Nearly."

Quenya stops panting, much to the dread of Chara, and continues explaining, "Now, for the next conceptual leap. Above the Branch Network, which is just the hierarchy of all finite numbered branches, there exists another representation of the superiority of the infinite over the finite. The Single Mind I. Single Mind I's transcends any possible finite numbered Branch, the finite numbered Branches being in the number-line analogy, the finite numbers to the infinite and transcendent Single Mind I. See? We got to the Magic! Magic is the extradimensional capability to harness Single Mind I, and higher once you progress further, to do various tasks! Even being able to produce the simplest of Magic would put you far beyond the bounds of our physical world. Wizards are unbeatable by any non-magical means. I am a Wizard, the Astral Mother is a Wizard, and you will become one, too!" "Sounds fun," says Chara. And so, Quenya and Chara began practical Magic training. Frisk and the Astral Mother did too, however the nature of their training was special and secretive. Around nine months later, the Astral Mother would give birth to two children, who she would name William and Adam. William was incredibly intelligent and basically a child prodigy, Adam on the other hand was a bit of a dunce. The Astral Mother would once again delegate the children which she thought less of to Quenya, who would get Adam into shape. Seeing that her children were taking too long to achieve Magic, the Astral Mother would decide to stimulate them. As she reached this conclusion, she had already finished in kidnapping two clones of her children from a different Universal Bubble and bringing them. She was unsure which was the alternate for William, and which was the alternate Adam. She decided to simply name the one who she thought was William, "Ares", and the one she thought was Adam, "Jacob". Satisfied, the Astral Mother erased the Void Empress's concept and teleported back home.

The Astral Mother intended to breed as much strife between brothers as was humanly possible. Some of her schemes to breed distrust was to manipulate Frisk's mind to make him homophobic, manipulate Adam's mind to also make him homophobic, also torture Jacob for absolutely no reason then accidentally let slip that she did it. Also, she gave Ares some dusty old book that probably revealed the secrets of the Multiverse to him and ruined his life. Things were looking good, as nobody she knew was happy and it seemed likely that she'd be overthrown. However, it didn't happen. Her children were all around 16 years old now, and none of them had seriously tried to kill her yet. "What more can I do?" wondered the Astral Mother. "I'd like to finish up with the destruction of Alphatale in one run, I'd rather not have to take my time with this." She sighs, and gets off her throne. She'd have to make up some excuse to get them to fight her. The Astral Mother teleported into Quenya's house. Delios and Aurora were playing chess as Quenya played Uno with William, Jacob, Adam, and Chara. Frisk was sulking elsewhere and the Astral Mother remembered that she had forgotten to release Ares from the boiler room of Hell. "Hey, underlings," says the Astral Mother, "I've decided that I need to borrow Jacob for my experiments." As the Astral Mother expected, the reaction was immediate and typical. Everyone in the room jumped up to face her. As they rushed at her, she cleaved at them with a dash of pink smoke, blasting all of them across the room and dealing severe damage. William gets up panting, and summons a Dark Blaster, which she disables with a thought. "Your Magic is lacking," says the Astral Mother. "You'll never save your brother at this rate. Not that you want to, or need to, that is. Well, bye," she says, as she teleports out. William screams into the sky, as he has been fucked over once again.

The Astral Mother teleported into her laboratory and threw Jacob into a vat with mysterious liquids. "You, Jacob, have the potential to realize Magic beyond the Single Mind. This experiment intends to unleash that power..." drawls the Astral Mother, as she presses the buttons for every single non-lethal toxin and instrument she knows of to be activated in Jacob's vat. "I expect you'll be here forever. I'll come see you again in a bit," says the Astral Mother with a harsh laugh, as she walks out of the laboratory. As she walks out, she mutters a spell under her breath. "This should provide them with the necessary drive to train, and the results needed to oppose me. Oh well, time to release Ares and send him to join them," she snaps her fingers, as a door appears midair, and Ares is catapulted out of it. He lays on the ground, drenched in black blood, scorched from the Magical fires of Hell. "Aren't you supposed to be somewhere?" taunts the Astral Mother. Ares scoffs, and vanishes with a bang noise. "Now, waiting time," says the Astral Mother as she takes a seat. Far away, the main characters are training their Magic with increased vigor. Knowing that they are supported by everyone in getting rid of the Astral Mother, their powers increase greatly. After roughly five minutes of intense and motivated grind, the group begins to move towards the Astral Mother's castle. They break into the entry hall, and are immediately greeted by her. "Now... the Final Battle begins," says the Astral Mother, suppressing a smile of relief.

William summons his Dark Blasters, and opens fire at the Astral Mother. She creates a barrier of her Magical pink smoke, blocking the shot with great difficulty, before splitting it in two with a slash of pink smoke, heading straight at William. Adam leaps in front of William, and blocks the slash with his Magically enhanced body. Simultaneously, Frisk teleports behind the Astral Mother and swings his DETERMINATION Katana at her. She avoids the cut by a hair, but the energy released still slashes her open. Chara runs up from beside the Astral Mother, and releases a blast of Fire Magic, sending the Astral Mother flying. As she skids across the grounds, she is assaulted by Quenya, who jabs at her with her Magic spear. The Astral Mother dodges, and fires a Magic Ray, blasting Quenya's side. Delios slams at the Astral Mother with his hammer, crushing her Magically enhanced internal organs. As she is slammed against a Magic wall created by Aurora, and then impaled by the spikes which shot out from the wall, she is struck with a massive bolt of Magic lightning from Ares. She barely blocks the attack by forming a sphere of pink smoke around her. Her barrier however, collapses as Frisk extends his DETERMINATION Katana through it, stabbing her once more. Aurora reconfigures her metal wall, transforming it into an Iron Maiden. As the Iron Maiden closes, the Astral Mother is crushed completely. Then, the Iron Maiden dissolves, and William fires a Dark Blaster at the Astral Mother, hitting her so hard her very concept, the idea stored within the Narrative on which her existence in this world is based upon, was completely destroyed. Astral Mother, despite drawing her Magic from Single Mind I, and being capable of using this Magic to travel in Single Mind I as a substitute for inferior travel, was completely overwhelmed by the speed of her attackers. "Is it over?" asks Frisk, panting from the effort. A little ray of sunshine beams from outside. "Not quite."

The Astral Mother sits perched upon a pillar, panting heavily. She had regenerated from the Dark Blaster with some difficulty. She was no longer pink; her entire body had become white. "It's not over, not at all!" yells the Astral Mother. As the group prepares to continue fighting, she laughs. "I have disabled my Magic Control, now. Ordinarily, Wizards control the damge dealt by their Magic only onto their intended target. Now that this is disabled, simply activating my Magic will annihilate the entire world. But! I am not unreasonable. If you leave me Jacob, I will abdicate my position, and go elsewhere." finished the Astral Mother, still panting. The group looks at each other, considering their options. The Astral Mother's Magic power exceeded all of their's combined; they only had an advantage due to their numbers and skill. They seem to want to protest, but decide to remain silent. Finally, William says, "Fine. Just leave this place," The Astral Mother's heart swells with triumph, as she moves straight to her laboratory using her Magically enhanced speed. She quickly takes everything and runs off to a nearby mountain, taking Jacob with her, traveling with her Magically enhanced speed. "Where are we going?" asks Jacob fearfully, as the pair travels to the mountain. "To a larger laboratory," says the Astral Mother. "Nobody came to help you, so I figured moving you would be safe." The pair arrives at the mountain, and Jacob is deposited in another vat. This time, the Astral Mother presses all the buttons to use everything lethal she has. After an excruciating twenty five seconds of all manner of Magical poison and instrument activating, Jacob goes silent. "Well, that went nicely," says the Astral Mother. She teleports Jacob out of the mountain into a forest, where he will hopefully wake up into civilization.

Jacob wakes up. Or at least, he shifts into consciousness, for he sees nothing but black. He didn't really mind, his existence was kind of sucking lately and this getaway was much needed. And so he waited. And waited. There was no sense of time in his own head, so he could simply wait forever. At some point, he began to get tired of nothingness. He reasoned that surely his pals had figured out a way to solve their problems by now, and that he'd come back to a world where he wasn't the sacrificial lamb for every time the Astral Mother wanted to do something. So he tried to wake up. It dawned on Jacob that this was not much of a vacation. For the first time, he feels the cold steel underneath him, and discerns the shape of bars in the dark. A match is lit, and someone leans in to face him. He recoils, but cannot move; the cage is a perfect fit. He finds himself to face to face with himself. "Heya," says the other Jacob. "Not very comfortable in there, is it? I was shut up there for a long time. Back when you wanted revenge and all that cool shit. Now, you're more into peace and shit but that's just not what the game demands. So, we've swapped places! The tables have turned. Don't look at me like that! Just... let me cook."

Jacob's body spasms, as he gets up like a doll attached to strings. His body is shaky. This identity is not used to physical form. He begins to speak, but suddenly stops. He is not used to hearing the sound of his own voice. Laughing it off, he draws an axe from the floor, and heads out to town. Muffet sits on a windowsill, brooding over the fact that she wasn't plot relevant at all, when she suddenly sees what appears to be Jacob approaching her. "Ayo Jacob!" she says excitedly, "I was just on my was to ressurect you to kill the Astral Hoe but I guess I don't gotta do that anym-" Her presence in the story was no longer needed after that one line, and so he took the time out of his day to write her existence out of the narrative. The town was oddly quiet. "What years of oppression will do to a society," says Jacob with a shrug. He would like to take the time to torture every innocent bystander personally rather than automating it, but the destruction of Alphatale really had to come soon. He simply swings his axe, killing every single inhabitant of the town as if he had been standing right in front of them, yet leaving all structures unharmed save for a few doors he ripped off for dramatic effect. He admired the narrative he had constructed of his attack, and continued walking. Meanwhile, at the victory party, Ares was sitting in a corner reading, before he felt a chill up his spine. He looked up, his gaze penetrating through all obstacles to see Infected approaching. He shivers , and closes the book, vanishing from Alphatale in anticipation. Hardly anybody notices his disappearance as Ares had never been known to the be the type to enjoy a party. Infected draws nearer. Nearer to the palace yet, Infected takes a step over some pretty priest's corpse. Jabez hadn't joined the party, likely because nobody had bothered to spread word that the Astral Mother had abdicated. Perhaps they could feel Infected's approach ahead of time? Ah, here's the palace now.

Delios sat on the steps to the palace, smoking the Astral Mother's pack, as Infected lurched towards him. Delios looks into the distance, squinting. He drops the pack, and stands up in disbelief. "Jacob! You got aw-" "Not quite," interrupts Infected. "See, I'm not exactly Jacob. I have been given the name 'Infected'. Wasn't my first choice, but it wasn't my choice at all! Anyho-" Delios leaps at Infected, attempting to mercy kill him with his hammer. Infected flicks his wrist, shattering Delios's body and slumping him against a pillar. "Anyhow, I'm destined to kill you, kill your friends, destroy the universe, yada-yada. But, just to clear things up, don't go thinking I'm some tortured soul, or that I'm being 'forced' to do this. I'm just the 'bad guy'! I kill things for no good reason at all, ok?" says Infected as he stomps in Delios's chest, shattering his soul. Infected wanders into the palace. He thinks to himself that it'd be convenient if he could leave the bodies of the soon-to-be-404 lying around so that he could find then and fall into despair gradually, but he really was hard pressed on time. Infected kicked down the door of the ballroom, silencing the party. "Yo."

"Let's do this really fast. I'm Infected, I'm currently in control of Jacob's body, and I'm here to murder all of you," he says, spinning his axe around for dramatic effect. "Wh-" begins Adam, but he is cut short as Infected cleaves him in two. Quenya roars, and leaps at Infected from behind, thrusting her magic spear. Infected smoothly turns, cleaving through her before she even sees him. Aurora leaps from her place, but immediately skids to the floor, ripped into metal ribbons. Infected fights with absolute grace and speed. Against such inferior opponents, there's really no room for worry. Infected casually swings his foot backwards, kicking Frisk's head off. He then turns around, and throws his axe, ripping Chara into two. He turns to William, and tilts his head to the side. "Well?" William sits in silence for an instant, before leaping at Infected, bone in hand. Infected raises his axe lazily, but is, to his surprise, blown away and impaled by the first bone thrust. He crashes through the palace wall, and skids across the ground. He stands up, but is immediately drop kicked by William again, and drags across the floor again. He gets up, and is immediately blasted by two Dark Blasters and sent skidaddling into a wall. Infected gets up, and screams, "ENOUGH! I'M NOT PLAYING FUCKING SOULSHATTERS WITH YOU GRAAAAAAAAH!!!!" His scream paralyzes William, who stops his combo half-way. Infected then leaps forward, punching William to the end of Alphatale where he rebounds and grabs his skull, slamming him into the ground and flipping the universe upside down. Infected then kicks William, sending him bouncing around the boundaries of Alphatale, as he intercepts him halfway through, and knees his spine, shattering it and sending William flying. Infected then leaps up, ascending above William, and diving down to slam him so hard he lagged backwards through reality, ripping Alphatale in half as a vortex opens.

Infected chases William through the vortex, grabbing him, and spinning him around so fast he gets turned into sludge. He then balls William up with telekinesis, compressing him into a one-dimensional point. Infected then somehow summons a Gaster Blaster through his sheer frustration, and fires it, melting a massive hole in the fabric of Alphatale and collapsing all laws of physics as massive amounts of energy are created from nothing. Infected lands next to William's abused body, and looks down at him. "FIGHT BACK! FIGHT BACK KID! C'MON, IS THIS WHAT I WAS WOKEN UP FOR???" screams Infected into William's ear. As Alphatale is both figuratively and literally flushed down the drain, the two face off against each other. William raises a hand. Infected stamps his feet impatiently. How long was it going to take for this idiot to destroy the universe? William snaps his fingers, and all goes dark. "Well, that was anti-climactic," thinks Infected. He looks around the black space. In the distance, he can see dots of blue. Eyes, watching him. The entire place kicks into activity, buzzing and whirring noises resounding from across the place, as energy travels through pathways under the floor, lighting the place up. "This is the void then, huh?" thinks Infected, nervous for the first time. "I expected it to be a lot more void-y, you know?" He laughs, and suddenly, hears a footstep. William walks out of the darkness, the blue dots being his own eyes, lit with a strange fire. "YO, WAIT A MOMENT. THIS ISN'T RIGHT, PAUSE. THIS WASN'T A PART OF THE PLAN, YOU WEREN'T SUPP-" A wind blows through the strange room, and William walks past the spot where Infected stood just a moment ago, before he was rid of. William lumbers forward, looking for the small glass marble which he emerged from. He picks it up, then fumbles. It shatters on the floor, as the ghost of Alphatale vanishes through it. William screams internally as his world goes up in smoke.

END