"Hey, Frisk! Hey, Asriel!" Four words. Four words, spoken by one of the three winking Aarons, was all it took for Frisk's fear to evaporate and be replaced by kind familiarity. The curious look from the woman with the baby and the Gyftrot, and the downright shocked look from one of the other patrons, a balding man in his mid-fifties and with glasses, didn't matter. "Queen Toriel! And... who's this little cutie?"

"Victoria!" she piped up, running towards the Aarons, curious what they were.

"Heya, guys," Frisk said, waving, feeling her hand in the cold air as her brother did the same. She almost asked them about snowboarding but realized that, with their long tails in place of legs, they'd probably be the wrong people to ask. Someone, human or monster, had made large nylon-and-rubber winter coverings for the tails, and they made an odd sound as the three of them slithered towards the Dreemurrs, Victoria by their side. They were also openly carrying pistols, Frisk noticed with a start; in a state as deeply red as West Virginia, it had been no problem for them to find a gun show even before the state laws were altered for monsters.

Gun shows were, of course, something Aarons were very familiar with. "Ready for another flexing contest?" another one of them asked, his long face in a grin, winking. They always winked when they talked, and Frisk wondered what quirk of monsterdom made them do that.

"Are you sure you want to?" Frisk asked, laughing. "Remember what happened the last time we did that?"

"Why, what happened?" Asriel asked.

"Go on, try it," Frisk suggested, pulling the ends of her sweater over her cold hands. "Just, uh, make sure nobody's standing behind them." The balding man quickly moved out of the way, taking his friends with him, and Victoria ran to Toriel.

Asriel flexed. The three Aarons flexed twice as hard. Asriel flexed very hard. The three Aarons flexed thrice as hard, their not-quite-muscles straining, their tails coiling. ASRIEL DREEMURR flexed. All three Aarons flexed as hard as they could, and then the pent-up energy in their coiled tails sprung loose with an audible TWANG, flinging them backwards into the air as Asriel laughed uproariously and his mother gasped. One bounced off the side of the mall, one was catapulted fifty feet away down the sidewalk, and one of them landed on a car hard enough to trigger its alarm. Victoria shrieked in surprise.

"My car!" one of the balding man's friends, a slightly younger man in a blue snowsuit, shouted, running to inspect the damage. "Are you all right?" he asked as an afterthought.

"Fine, bro," the Aaron replied, still winking. There wasn't any damage to monster or car; the Aaron lacked human density and had hit the hood and windshield like a foam mattress.

"Wow. Did not expect that," the balding man said. "Hey, ah.. Princess Frisk? I don't mean to bother you, but is all that stuff, you know, that was on the news..."

"It's all true," Frisk snapped, knowing that he would never remember this conversation and wanting to see what people did. "Everything you heard on the news is true. I really do have some control over time, Chara really was Az's sibling, and half of That Voice really was my voice. But I never said those words and I have absolutely no clue what did." He looked like he was going to say something, then realized that even the risk of annoying someone with Frisk's kind of power was an incredibly poor life choice and kept his mouth shut, and so did everyone else. Except, of course, the three Aarons, who were laughing as they returned, saying what a great flexing contest that was. Frisk decided that she still preferred the company of monsters to most humans.

"Something for your hands, my daughter," Toriel said, ignoring the humans' stares and pulling out a pair of Dreemurr-fur gloves in Frisk's size. She'd noticed her daughter walk out the door without them. "Should I have brought something for your face?"

"That's okay, Mom," the princess of time said, letting her mother help put her gloves on in front of everybody.

"I should not have left without something for your ears," she said, covering them with her magically warm hands and towering protectively over her daughter, as if to guard her against the humans looking her way and prevent her from hearing things said against her, despite how ridiculous that was. "Either of you." Victoria had her hood up.

"We're just out here for a little bit," Asriel said. "See? He's opening up now." It still wasn't opening time, but the Knight Knight had been given a heads-up from his manager that letting the royal family stand out in the cold was not something he really wanted to be doing. Frisk got in the door first, everyone else having embarrassingly got out of her way, holding the door for her brother and mother. "Woooaah." Asriel had reacted in a similar way at the aquarium, but instead of staring at the different kinds of fish, he stared at the different kinds of stuff, branded clothing most prominent. Frisk belatedly realized that this was his first time in a mall. Another Azzy's First Experience. "Hey, Frisk, the capital has a football team, right?"

"Yeah," Frisk answered, not understanding why he was asking.

"So, uh, if Pittsburgh is north of here, and Washington's to the east, where's all that team's stuff?" The balding man and his couple of friends turned to stare at him even harder than they'd stared at Frisk, the manager who was coming out to greet them staring just as hard, and Frisk laughed abruptly; messing with the fabric of reality was one thing, but you don't mess with football! Unbidden, a vision came to her mind, of Asriel's god form with its accented shoulders wearing shoulder pads, and its demonic visage covered by a football helmet, and Frisk laughed again. "What?"

"Az," Frisk said gently, "I don't think I could ever explain all the different social regions, what fans live where, but this is Steeler country."

"Oh. Is there a map?"

Frisk chuckled, thinking. "I bet there probably is, a map of what areas buy what gear, and the CEO of this place probably has it." The manager who was originally going to greet them abruptly decided that he had other things he needed to do, and Frisk wasn't sure what scared him off. Then again, quite a lot of things could have done that, such as the eight-foot-tall goat monster following them around and their bodyguard, who was standing a few paces away, looking nonchalant and being anything but.

"So how does this work, anyway?" Asriel asked. "I mean, like the way you get stuff. How do humans bring all your stuff to one place like this?"

Frisk's not-dad, despite being a jerk, had taught her many informative things over the years. "I don't know, exactly, but people make it in China and other countries for cheap, then they put a logo on it to make it expensive," Asriel, having sat through more than his fair share of MTT as a flower, understood perfectly. "then it comes here on a boat with a lot of other stuff, and then they unpack the boat and drive everything all across the country on trucks, and then somebody puts it up here." The balding man laughed and looked like he was going to say something, but one of his friends led him away.

"Everything in this building is like that?" Asriel asked, looking around, his and his sister's roller shoes bumping on the roughened tile, Victoria staring at them.

"Everything in this world is like that. Except for people who live where they make it. How do you think we can buy chocolate in a store?"

"It was not always thus," Toriel explained. "When this was still a colony, humans made what they could, had it brought to them by traders, or did without. Sometimes," she continued, looking around at the plentitude, "I fear your species, having lived for so long doing without, does not truly know how to do with. And sometimes, I fear it may extend to you as well."

"Having more money, fame, and supernatural power than we know what to do with is really an okay problem to have, Mom," Frisk said, as Asriel examined the rows of bicycles, running his fingers over their tires, trying to ascertain the differences between the thick-rimmed mountain bikes and the thinner road bikes. He called Frisk over, excitedly, pointing out the one he wanted: a tandem bicycle with an extraordinarily complicated dual-gear system.

"We are totally getting this," he gushed.

"It's too big!" Frisk pointed out. "Even if you lowered the seat all the way, you couldn't reach the handlebars!" Of course he could, and demonstrated it. "Without doing that, obviously!" She lowered her voice. "Az, you know I can just carry you. Or you could get your own, we wouldn't get that far apart." She waved an arm towards a row of bikes that could actually fit each of them.

"Yeah, I know. I just thought that you could teach me how to ride it." Asriel did not understand, even in the slightest, how something with only two wheels and no magic could possibly stay up all by itself.

"Teach you?! Why would you think I know how?" Her voice grew very, very quiet. "What makes you think those two ever got me a bike? I've never even sat on one. Or ridden a snowboard. I can't even remember if I sat on a sled last winter. Outside of gym class I don't know when the last time I kicked a ball was." But talking about this stuff was stupid. "Come on, we can look around all day, but we can't really use bikes until the weather's warmer, not unless we get a ride somewhere first." Inside the Mt. Ebbot military cordon was a microcosm of a small town, but outside was a lot of cars-only road with no sidewalks, which Frisk figured was a good way to earn a couple of LOADs.

"Then that's what we do," Asriel suggested, checking out a bright green kids' bike in his size. "Mom's right, you don't know how to do with." Frisk chided herself. Of course she had people who would instantly take her anywhere she wanted; she could come home from school on Friday and go bicycling in a city in Texas on Saturday morning, doing her homework and sleeping on the plane. It was so easy to forget that she could do that, mentally going back to being half-invisible Frisk who never made trouble for anybody because doing otherwise was dangerous. Frisk took all of those feelings, all the pointless fear and helplessness, all the dithering anxiety and crippling uncertainty, all the worries about how much things cost and if she was asking too much, and wrapped them up in a box marked From: Frisk Dreemurr, Princess of Time - To: The Void, and mailed them express.

"Can I help you with something?" the Knight Knight asked through both of its mouths. The manager had agreed that sending the monster to deal with the kids would be best.

"Yeah, I want to try this out," Asriel said, pointing to the bike he'd picked out, and the large monster unhooked it from its mounting. He sat on the bike, and it was a good fit, and the monster knew why the bike, without its kickstand deployed, was standing still. Fiddling with the gears, Asriel began to slowly pedal down the hall, then very slowly turned around and pedaled back. "Weiiird... it's like it wants to stay upright when it's moving. Hey, Frisk, try it. I'll help." Frisk climbed on the bike (I dodge impossible things, why am I worried about getting on a bike?) and Asriel climbed on her back. The pedals spun too easily as she pushed them, and she almost pushed the handlebars to the side trying to get the bike into a higher gear, but Asriel righted them and she went forward. Trying to turn a corner, she turned the handlebars at a sharp angle and Asriel stopped them cold before they could fall.

"It doesn't work that way," a human employee helpfully said, hiding his shock at the flagrant violations of momentum. He, too, had seen the video, which was sitting at more than three billion views and rapidly climbing. "You can't turn the handlebars like that, you have to kind of lean in. It takes practice."

"Let's buy it for practice," Asriel suggested.

"I'll get my own, too," Frisk said. Being able to bike with Asriel's power was nice, but carrying her brother around on her back wasn't something she wanted to have to do, and she picked out an identical model in light blue. "Do you know anything about snowboarding?"

"No, but let me take you to someone who does," he said, and as the Dreemurr kids rolled along Victoria stared at their shoes again.

"I want those!" she said suddenly, pointing at them excitedly.

"We actually have those here," the employee said. "Down the hall, make a right." Holding her hand, Toriel took her in that direction. "Hey, Jack? These two want to know about snowboarding."

"Sure, just give me a- woah!" Jack said, almost dropping the merchandise he was hanging up as he saw who he was serving. He'd reacted similarly the first time he saw a monster in an employee uniform. "Okay. Wow. Um. Let me see what I can get you. Are you going to want it for your normal size or something else?" He'd seen the video too.

Frisk and Asriel looked at each other and laughed. "Normal size," Asriel said, and the employee helped them pick things out, starting at the expensive end of the rack. There was a cute pink board Frisk liked, but it had flowers on it, so she chose a snowflake-decorated bright blue one the same color as her new bicycle and matching goggles and highly flexible snowboard boots to go with it. Asriel got a pair of goggles and a red board covered in spiky stars, but he couldn't possibly fit into any ordinary boots and decided to simply fuse his boots to the board when he was using it.

As they went to check out their purchases, Jenkins stepped up and beckoned another man with a finger; when the employee at the cash register, terrified of being fired for not doing this by the numbers, asked if they needed help taking their purchases to their car, Jenkins said to the other man, "Hey, Bill, unlock the car for him." Frisk suddenly realized that of course Jenkins was not alone; he was the only bodyguard walking around who looked like one. The others had trickled in, posing as customers, watching the growing crowd of surprisingly oblivious Christmas shoppers who were nearly as determined as Frisk in not letting strange circumstances affect their consumerism. With Bill watching them, the employees walked out the door with the Dreemurrs' purchases and Victoria's old shoes, as of course she'd immediately wanted to wear her new ones.

As Victoria excitedly rolled along beside the Dreemurrs towards the rest of the mall, Frisk felt a twinge of guilt: her power erased the good with the bad. None of this will have happened. Everyone's joy and fear, pleasure and pain, wished out of existence to return things to where they were. She resolved that Victoria should feel just as much joy the second time, if not more, as she did now.

Asriel smelled something and stopped abruptly, pulling on his mother's robe. "Candy store." Toriel gave an exaggerated sigh and followed them in. It was highly upscale, with walls covered in enough multicolored candies (and chocolate, chocolate, chocolate) to give everyone in the mall diabetes, and Frisk mused on what would happen if she, Asriel, Asmodeus, and Victoria all ate as much as they could and decided to have fun in an auto wrecking scrapyard. Asriel would have the most fun, she thought. "You may purchase what you like, but you will not be eating it all at once," Toriel said, mostly to Victoria. Fortunately, the store was otherwise empty save for the two employees; Asriel figured that if Chara was going to keep minions around to wait for Frisk, this would be the place they'd hang out. On general principle, Frisk gleefully filled a bag half-full of cinnamon candies and the other half full of butterscotch (it's twelve bucks a pound and I don't have to care), then looked at the glass display case in the counter and the goodness embedded therein.

"White fudge," Frisk said. She'd forgotten this stuff existed. It was thick, and chewy, and very dense. "Let's get.. five pounds of it. Don't worry, Mom, we'll save plenty for later." The employees immediately hastened to serve the whims of the god-child, cutting it up into neat squares and placing it into a bag, which was nearly exactly the requested weight. Frisk pulled out a single cube out for herself and a single cube for her brother, breaking off a piece of a cube for Victoria, who had become used to very small servings of sugar and did not complain. Asriel immediately popped the cube into his mouth. "Just chew it slowly, Az, it's fudge," Frisk advised as his eyes lit up, actually glowing a bit. She'd never, ever been offered this by her not-parents but had had it at school, and savored every small bite. I can have this as much as I want. In fact... But that was for later.

Asriel was wondering how a society where you could just buy this stuff could even exist when Victoria said, "I gotta go pee." Frisk showed Toriel where the bathrooms were, and Frisk and Asriel uncomfortably stood outside waiting, Jenkins further down the hall and pretending to look aloof, each of the Dreemurr kids sipping a bit of water from the water fountain and trying to look nonchalant when a passing mall employee did a double-take. The crowd somewhat dissipated- ordinary people still won't follow kids to the bathroom even if they're beyond celebrities, especially with someone like Jenkins there to look tough- but it picked back up as soon as they came back down the hall. More people were coming into the mall, many of them stealing glances or outright staring at the Dreemurrs, a couple pulling out their phones to take video (and suddenly making Frisk glad this won't have happened), and Frisk suddenly realized that this was well beyond ordinary Christmas shoppers; some of the humans, perhaps some of the monsters, had told their friends that, holy cow, the Dreemurr royal family was going shopping! Where they lived, right in front of them! These people had nothing better to do, Frisk realized, and they would tell their friends, who would tell their friends... and there was a very good chance that some people getting invited would not be friends at all. She looked from person to person, trying to judge their intents, sizing up how quick they were, wondering if any of them were possessed or influenced and if they were carrying things that could hurt her before Asriel ended them. I bet this is how Jenkins sees the world. She really, really didn't want to have to see the world in that light. "Mom," she said nervously, standing protectively next to Victoria, "I think we better get out of here."

"We will do nothing of the sort," Toriel said, leading her children into a craft and fabric store. Extremely few of the people following them around the mall followed her in, and the ones that did looked like they belonged there. Frisk didn't felt like she belonged there, though, and she and her brother gradually realized that their mother had, in fact, dragged them along shopping. At least they had butterscotch and cinnamon candy (one of each at once!) to suck on, although Asriel didn't use saliva the way Frisk did and slowly unmade the candy in his mouth, savoring the taste. Victoria, at least, was having fun, sucking on candy while poking at fabrics and grabbing a handful of velvet to feel it against her skin, using her magic to fool with it when Toriel remarked not to do that and undid the damage. Toriel was also playing with the fabric, picking up cloth samples and shaking her head more than once, putting them down, asking her children which fabrics felt better against their skin, clearly having something in mind. She looked at a few metal, jingly bells, then at her children's jaw-dropped looks (what's she going to use those for?!), put them back with a chuckle. She slowly lingered, and the staff neither approached her nor complained, knowing that having the Queen of Monsters patronizing them (which was not the same as the patronizing she was doing with her increasingly bored children and their young friend), and she came across a row of appliques as she reached the counter.

"These are perfect," she said, taking a stack of red hearts in a plastic case. She placed the other items on the counter and opened the package with magic, taking a single red heart and gently melding it to the front of her daughter's overalls. It felt right, somehow, and Frisk smiled.

"Would you like one, Asriel?"

"Mom!" he protested. "I don't want a red heart! Anything with red hearts on it is obviously for girls!" The clerk chuckled, and even Frisk could hear the relief in that chuckle: they're people.

"Oh," she said, mildly disappointed. "Victoria?" The little girl accepted it, and Toriel took off her too-warm coat, putting it in a pouch in her robe and sealing the heart to her pink long-sleeved shirt.

"Now we're like sisters!" the little girl gushed, and Frisk smiled in reply. We are, aren't we? The small family of humans with supernatural powers. Although she was very glad Asgore was her father and not Asmodeus.

Toriel paid with her card, putting her purchases in her robe, and when they left the store, only a handful of people were still waiting for them to come out. Suddenly, Frisk realized her mother's cunning: she'd bored them away, and Jenkins standing outside the shop hadn't helped them stick around either. Nobody except the truly die-hard paparazzi, of which there were few, wanted to watch anyone shop for fifteen minutes, especially in a store the watchers didn't care about.

"Where else?" Asriel asked, also bored.

"This mall's almost totally clothing and food stores, there's one game store," Frisk said. She'd still lost her taste for video games, and Asriel picked up on that in her voice. He had better things to do, too. "Come on, let's get out of here before the crowd comes back." One erstwhile member of the crowd picked up on that and sheepishly left in a different direction than the Dreemurrs, Victoria happily rolling along all the way to the car, pushing herself with magic without anyone noticing.

The kids ate some more candy (white fudge, as much as I can stand!) and played in their backyard for a little while before realizing that they needed a better hill. Asriel might be able to dodge the trees on the mountain, but Frisk, without magical assistance, could not. In short order, they found the closest skiing place (very close; they were on a mountain range after all) and were being driven there, Jenkins' breath smelling of a hastily consumed meal.

As small children do when seeing people do more grown-up things, Victoria had become dissatisfied with sleds in favor of snowboards, but fortunately the place had rentals; the renter was a habitual pot smoker and consumer of psilocybin, and he assumed that he only thought he was talking to an eight-foot-tall goat monster. Frisk and Asriel played around on the bunny hill with Victoria for a while before they were approached by someone who looked like he knew exactly what he was doing. "Heyo, I'm Clark. I just talked to your guy, and he said I'm okay to teach you if you want to learn." His mask of professionalism was even better than Jenkins'; he had a friend with a camera nearby, and he fully intended to use this in advertising material, figuring that the guy who taught the Dreemurr kids how to snowboard could earn triple digits in an hour just by asking nicely.

"Teach her," Asriel advised, gesturing to Frisk. "Us two, we don't move the same way." Clark turned to Victoria, wondering if she was a very human-like monster, and she smiled at him.

He was a decent teacher, as the three kids discovered, and he pretended not to notice Asriel and Victoria's liberal use of magic in steering, although Victoria got tired within fifteen minutes and returned to the lodge. With the littlest one gone, Clark swiftly moved into more advanced techniques; Frisk's natural, practiced agility made her an excellent student, and she was doing small jumps and landings in short order, braking and turning naturally. Frisk eventually called for a break; it was cold and windy up there, and her face felt numb.

They returned to their mother sitting inside, who was chatting with a few humans about their children; Toriel always seemed able to strike up a friendly conversation, even while waiting patiently. Frisk suddenly realized that Toriel ought to be infinitely more bored than her kids were in the craft store, having sat there doing nothing but taking care of a magical little girl for hours. And she hadn't ever said anything about needing to repeat days, or any sort of toll that being a mother took, or anything negative about her own situation, even once. As long as she had children whom she could take care of, she would take care of them, reality-warping powers or not. Frisk wasn't sure whether that made her mother less than a human being or much, much greater. They ate lunch together, some fast food-style burgers that could not possibly be good for them, but Toriel overlooked it with a smile.

By the time Frisk and Asriel were done, the expert having shown them everything he could possibly teach in one day (they planned on surprising him some other day by showing him that they already knew these basics), they were completely beat. Frisk's legs felt like the Dragonforce drummer had gone to town on them with a sledgehammer. Asriel was snoozing, his head lolling over into Frisk's lap, and he only awoke when Jenkins pulled up to Asmodeus' house to drop his daughter off. As the Dreemurr kids trudged from the car into their house, they immediately agreed to grab a bowl of cinnamon and butterscotch candy and relax. Someone had left a box on the doorstep; it was probably Papyrus, judging from the "I HOPE YOU LIKE THESE BOOKS FROM PAPYRUS! NYEH HEH HEH AND LOVE (BUT NOT LV) PAPYRUS!" label. The books were the complete collection of Calvin and Hobbes, and the Dreemurr kids wasted no time in sitting by the fireplace to read them, Asriel lighting it up with a wave of his hand, the two cuddled up together in their long johns.

Toriel brought out her project: a specially shaped blanket made from several combined fabrics and a generous amount of Dreemurr fur. She carefully draped it over them, and Asriel bleated softly while Frisk hummed in comfort. It was thick, and silky, and velvety, and she did not feel that she would sweat despite the blanket and the nearby fire. Frisk and Asriel opened the first of Bill Waterson's classics and laughed, and wondered where the cell phones were, and made comments about the silly scenarios, Calvin's vivid imagination and weird ideas (Asriel laughed at the 'stupid flowers' strip), the demonic bicycle, the monsters under the bed (there actually were certain monsters of that variety, as Asriel informed Frisk, and neither of them wanted to know how much EXP terrified children had ended up earning) and the implausibly morbid snowmen, although Asriel thought that 'Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons' was kind of racist.

"I bet I could do that," Asriel said, smiling. "Melt some snow, and freeze the sticks solid, and freeze the snowman's head to them. We should totally do that tomorrow. You know what I mean."

"Well, yeah, we have to do it on a day when it counts. Otherwise, we couldn't leave Azzy and Frisk's House of Snowman Horrors up all winter," Frisk said. They laughed and kept reading, although the undertone of Hobbes being maybe/maybe-not real was disconcerting enough that neither of them wanted to mention it directly. They knew what Az's 'stuffed tiger' form was like and did not want to ever see it again.

"I'll keep believing in you," Asriel said, "if you keep believing in me." Frisk snuggled closer to him.

They had gone through nearly half the collection when their father came in, and they would have rushed to greet him except that they really didn't want to get up. "I had an unexpected surprise today," Asgore said, letting his wife take his greatcoat. "Someone driving a bomb had attempted to blow me up."

Frisk and Asriel turned their heads around, but there still wasn't any point in getting up. "Dad! Did anyone... no, it's okay," Asriel realized.

"It is," Asgore agreed. "Three. Three humans perished, not counting the driver. When you rewind, Frisk, you will have saved at least three." A very old label on a very old media format came unbidden to Frisk's mind: 'Be kind, rewind!' Being from the digital age, she had no idea what that meant. "What are you two reading?"

"Literary classics," Asriel replied, and Asgore huddled over to read with them, his two great arms adding another layer of blanket.

"This boy reminds me of another child," Asgore said after a bit.

"Dad! Calvin's not Chara!" Asriel replied.

"No," Asgore said, getting up as he really did not want any more reminders, "a child you never knew." Silence, until Toriel called her family to dinner, a full repast of onions and egg noodles and ground beef. Only Frisk recognized it: Mom bought Hamburger Helper?! But it wasn't sodium-infused anything that came from a box; the only premade ingredient was the noodles, Toriel having made everything else from its most basic ingredients. But it was delicious and filling and they had fudge with it, and when Toriel sent them to bath and bed they were more than ready for it, falling asleep at once.

Frisk was awoken by her phone. Alice had sent her a Warning app, very similar in principle to Checkup except in reverse; all Frisk had to do was press a button and, per Alice's request, wait five seconds before the LOAD if possible, and she'd sent a text requesting for it to be done within the next minute or so as the few rememberers were busy memorizing what they needed to know through repetition. Too much global tragedy, not enough people to remember it all.

"Oh, okay- wait, I almost forgot! C'mon, Az!" Frisk rushed downstairs to the kitchen and its spacious, well-stocked refrigerator, her brother following quizzically behind, and pulled out the entire bag of fudge. Asriel, getting it immediately, took the bags of candy from the shelf where they sat.

"What are you children doing?" Toriel asked, getting up from the couch and shaking her head.

"It doesn't matter, Mom!" Frisk exclaimed, picking up several cubes of fudge and putting all of them in her mouth at once, her eyes rolling back at the taste and texture. Her brother had grabbed the bag of cinnamon and butterscotch candies and threw a huge handful in his mouth, plastic wrappers and all, spitting out the plastic in one large melted glob while gleefully dissolving the candy. "Fee haff to eat it faff," Frisk half-explained, rapidly unwrapping several candies and shoving them in her mouth with half-chewed fudge, as her brother ripped the bag open to grab even more fudge, not caring in the slightest that some of it spilled onto the floor. Savoring the taste, Frisk pressed the button on Warning, and five seconds later, just as the throes of pure sugary bliss were beginning to subside, replaced by disgust at eating way too much of it,

==LOAD==

Frisk and Asriel sleepily walked downstairs together yesterday morning, somewhat embarrassed smiles on their faces, as Asgore was sitting down to breakfast. It was still too early. "Sorry, Mom, sorry, Dad," Frisk apologized, giggling although there was nothing left of the candy in her system but memories. "I just had to do that."

"It was not the most prudent use of your ability, but it was understandable," Toriel said, sitting on the couch in much the same way as she had tomorrow morning. "I recall each and every one of your purchases. Shall I visit the mall today and pick them up for you?"

"That'd be great, Mom, and you should buy Victoria a snowboard too, but what if her dad was right?" Asriel asked, his sister nodding. "What if Chara shows up and tries to hurt you?"

"They will not," Toriel said, simply.

"You can't be sure about that! You really can't. Not with Chara," Asriel argued. "You remember how they were before, and that was without being everywhere at once."

"We will not live our lives in fear," she declared. "And if they do, I will not go a third time," she said, smiling.

"Mom!" Frisk protested. "You're not supposed to... no, it's fine." She didn't have to explain, and there was a brief moment of silence before a knock on the door.

"That," Toriel said, "did not occur before." She moved quickly to open the door before her children could get in front of her, prepared for the worst, but it was only Sans, standing in his bathrobe with an annoyed look on his face.

"what's the big idea?" he asked. He'd just got done sleeping and was going to spend all day in the sun tanning bed he'd slowly set up. Now it hadn't even arrived yet.

"Boop, boop, boop," Asriel replied, and his mother frowned at him. "We're sorry, the Dreemurrs aren't here right now, leave your name and bone number and we'll get back to you as soon as we feel like it."

"kid... i expected something different, okay? yeah, i was trying to control things. didn't work," he explained, as Toriel waved him in from the cold.

"So what are you here- oh, you weren't around when we talked about what we're going to do," Frisk said. "A lot more people are going to be able to remember now, and they're going to save a lot of lives by preventing bad things before they happen."

"so you think you're doing the right thing?"

"Is there any way she's not?" Asriel asked. "We know Chara can remember, but these other people are smarter than Chara and there's going to be lots of them."

"you're right. many lives are more important than one."

"Whose life are you talking about?!" Asriel asked, annoyed.

Sans almost answered but closed his eyes instead. "nothin' you could do about it."

"Nothing we could- Sans, my dad is the King of Monsters." Frisk said, looking at the skeleton eye-to-eyesocket. "You know what Az can do. I've got pictures of the President bald. I'm going to wind up with an entire department of the government just for me. I have the phone number of the last wizard in existence. Even Alphys might be able to help."

"alphys. heh. you know she wasn't always the royal scientist?" he asked, opening his eyes slowly.

"Yeah, Mom threw her out before she made us our bracelets." Toriel looked a bit sheepish.

"no, before that. you ever heard of w.d. gaster?"

Frisk shook her head. Asriel scrunched up his face. "That name's almost familiar. But no, I can't."

"that was my dad. he tried injecting DETERMINATION into himself. but he tried SAVEing right away before he melted. he kept melting anyway, even while he was trying to LOAD. eventually he stopped going back and forth and went sideways. and now nobody but me and papy can remember who he is. that jump's why i'm the way i am. it's why my bro is the way he is. i can hear dad sometimes. he sees all the branches, all the possibilities. but he's messed up. he's messed up bad."

"So every time I LOAD..."

"you just add another one. another aborted timeline that nobody remembers, nobody inhabits. nobody but him." Sans closed his eyes again for a bit. "you're going to actually do it, aren't ya? frisk, listen to me. if you manage to meet him, through whatever shenanigans you get going, you don't hesitate, all right? DETERMINATION itself might break down around him. so do him a favor. kill him. and kill him quick." Toriel was shocked but chose not to interrupt. "and SAVE as soon as you do. no mercy, not this time. he's gone, frisk. just let him go. for his sake and yours."

"Sans, a while back, someone else was telling me to let him go. That he couldn't be saved, that he couldn't come back, that he'd have to stay in his own little world forever. But his family missed him a lot. So I did save him, even before I realized I had. Now I wear clothes made out of his fur and he helps brush my teeth."

"Don't doubt Frisk, Sans. She saved us, remember? She beat a wizard trying to steal her DETERMINATION, remember? The one living human in the whole world who could actually hurt her, and she wouldn't even let him stay dead. And then she turned that eternal enemy of our whole race into a lifelong friend. In a donut shop. And then she, and I still think it was her, beat Chara's whole army. She finds a way, and when there isn't one she makes one."

"Sans, we will save your dad," Frisk proclaimed. Heroine time had come again. She turned, going up the stairs to get ready. "C'mon, Az. We've got a wizard and a scientist to talk to."