Frisk bolted out of bed like Undyne was after them, and Asriel managed to follow them out, confused.

"What is wrong, my child?" Toriel asked, concerned.

"Don't Google yourself," Frisk warned, their voice wavering. "Don't look at the pictures, don't even read the words. Don't use that one devious art site, don't go to Fur-aficionado or whatever it's called, and above all, never, ever, visit any site that ends in 'chan'." Frisk's not-parents had never allowed them to use the computer at home, but they weren't always home and didn't really understand computer security or browser history, and Frisk had discovered many things before their not-mother had lost her job, stopped leaving the house, gained weight, and became even more insufferable.

"Oh my! Do you think some of the pictures will be unflattering?" Frisk's dear, naive mother asked.

"No, Mom, they'll be flattering, but..." Frisk gave their dad a desperate 'please understand what I'm talking about' look.

Asgore smiled. "I suppose I'll have to look at some of them. They sound like they might be interesting." He started to look concerned and kneeled down next to Frisk. "She isn't drawn naked in these pictures, is she?"

Frisk burst out laughing, then looked into their father's concerned face and laughed some more. "Dad, I can't explain it. Just don't. If you do, you'll regret it."

"Perhaps we should look for pictures of our son instead?" Toriel suggested, typing.

"Mom, I think you should listen to Frisk..." Asriel started to say.

"Well, this site cannot be too bad, it has 'heal' in the name... Good gravy! Delete! Delete! How do I delete?!"

"That's foul!" Asgore shouted, enraged and aghast. Asriel looked, and covered up his eyes with his ears to keep from seeing what he thought he just saw.

"I told you you'd regret it!" Frisk shouted, interfering before their parents could break the computer. After a brief but informative session on the realities of the Internet, the ability of people to post whatever they want, and the limits (or lack thereof) of human depravity, Toriel once more tucked her children in, giving them deep hugs and tender good-night kisses and a promise never, ever to do that again. The kids fell asleep slowly, Asriel shuddering as he put his nose to Frisk's chest.

"Mornin', Frisk," Asriel woke them up with. Frisk didn't remember anything from their dreams except a feeling of deep contentment.

"Mornin', Az," they replied, reaching for their phone. Alphys had sent them a text marked 'Please come and see me today' and an app named 'Checkup', which let them know the status of all their friends. Papyrus was listed as 'Do Not Disturb - taking bar exam', and Frisk wondered if he was being tested on getting drunk. Frisk pressed "Check" for Sans, Alphys, and Undyne, who came back 'OK' in moments, and even Frisk could hear their parents in the other room. "Good time to SAVE?" Asriel nodded, and giving their brother a warm hug, as always, filled Frisk with DETERMINATION. "Bathroom." Their morning ritual commenced.

"Cripes, how do you shed this much?!" Frisk asked, getting out large swaths of fur with each stroke of the brush.

"You poop, I don't," Asriel reminded them.

"I'm brushing your poop?!"

"If my hair's poop, so's yours!" Frisk tacitly acknowledged the point and finished their brother's fur before starting on their teeth, and Asriel was able to floss out much less plaque than last time.

They went to get dressed. "Heh. Mom really did fix this thing," Asriel said, looking at his old striped shirt.

"Brings back bad memories?"

"Yeah. But happier ones, too. Mom got me and Chara matching shirts... but this is also what I wore when I met you," he said, putting it and pants on, and Frisk put on their striped shirt, pants, and socks, which felt perfectly tailored and brand new.

"Good morning, children," Asgore said, a bright pink 'Mr. Dad Guy' T-shirt on his enormous frame, sitting at the table with his wife. "Tea?"

"Sure, Dad," Frisk said, sitting down alongside their brother. The tea was excellent and not a variety Frisk had tasted before. Nor, they suspected, had their father. "I want to take Az to Disney World until school starts. Maybe stop over at SeaWorld, go some other places too." Their family looked at them, Asriel taking a large gulp of warm tea. "The first is the biggest amusement park in the world, and the second is the biggest aquarium. I think. We can bring Undyne, she'll like it."

"Even with her, will everything be okay?" Toriel asked.

"We've got that app Alphys sent us. I'll make sure I LOAD and not SAVE if something's happened to you."

"I see my children in front of me, and I want to protect them," Asgore said. "I don't think I'll ever get used to the other way around."

Toriel chuckled. "It seems your father and I do have something in common. But you have to be ready for school. That means eating right, staying healthy, and getting plenty of sleep. And I want you back in the morning, a full day before school starts, so we can prepare."

"Yes, Mom," Frisk and Asriel said together.

There was a ding as the elevator came up, and the Dreemurrs turned to face it. "Excuse me, King Asgore Dreemurr?" a man wearing a suit and an inordinate amount of hair gel asked. Another, smaller, man was with him, and Jenkins was behind the both of them, his face lined in a deep scowl. Frisk knew that look. It was the look of someone bringing bad news who wasn't responsible for it.

"I am having tea with my family," Asgore rumbled. "Is this important?"

"I'm afraid it is, Your Majesty. Fathoms Sharpvalue, Attorney-at-Law. Please read these legal documents carefully, as they outline your options." He handed a large brown envelope to a confused Asgore and looked down at Frisk. "Frisk Sholeas?"

Oh, no. This can't be what I think it is. You have got to be kidding me. Wake me up, Azzy, I am having a very bad dream.

Even through Frisk's shock and outrage, their hair-trigger reflexes kicked in. "There's no one by that name living here," they said quickly, too quickly. "I'm Frisk Dreemurr. You must be talking about someone else." Their tone of voice made the situation clear, and Asriel felt an alarming wave of rage coming out of Frisk's SOUL, like someone had turned the wrong valve in a boiler room.

Fathoms considered his next words carefully. "I am obligated to request that you come home with me. Your parents are-"

"And I'm obligated to tell you to put honey on your dick, put chocolate syrup on your balls, and shove them down an anthill! Full of fire ants!" Frisk shouted. Fathoms looked at the monsters and their bodyguard, and decided it would be a good idea to end the conversation there. As the two men descended, Frisk entertained fantasies of using Asriel's magic to cut the elevator cable, sending the lawyer somewhat farther down than he anticipated and exactly as far as he belonged.

"That was a very discourteous and inappropriate thing to say, my child," Toriel said in disapproval.

"I'm sorry, Mom. But what he just gave Dad is discourteous and inappropriate."

Asgore had opened up the envelope and was looking over the papers, trying to make sense of them. "Court summons? Ordered to appear? Custody hearing? Expedited... that's next week? Judge Judith Saibancho, Presiding? What does all this mean?"

"It means they want me back," Frisk snapped, slamming the side of their fist into the wall. "It means they just flushed our vacation plans down the toilet. It means they won't go away!"

"Jenkins, did the President have a role in this?" Asgore asked, his face darkening.

"That's not how things work in this country, Your Majesty," Jenkins replied. "This is entirely the responsibility of Frisk's..." Frisk stared at him, hard. "...the Sholeas family."

"He's right, Dad," Frisk said. "But, hey, Jenkins? Is there any way to send American citizens to Guantanamo?"

Jenkins shook his head. "I'm afraid not. Why don't you go and get some breakfast while I tell your parents how the justice system works?" The emphasis on 'your parents' was reassuring. Frisk put on their roller shoes, and the Dreemurr kids went to the stairs rather than the elevator, which was near the bottom floor and surely contaminated with lawyer germs.

"They can't actually get you back, can they?" Asriel asked.

"Of course not," Frisk replied, a c'mon, bro look on their face. Their DETERMINATION would make sure of that even if they had to LOAD several dozen times in a row. As long as Frisk had any chance, their not-parents had no chance at all.

"Then you shouldn't get so mad."

"You're right. I was kind of acting like Chara, wasn't I?"

"Not at all," Asriel replied, smiling. "You're burning where Chara was frozen. Chara never got mad. Chara got even. Usually more than even." He paused for a moment. "Someone's coming."

Frisk heard it in a few moments: someone struggling to breathe was running up the stairs, panting. The kids looked down to see Undyne, in full armor with water dripping out of it, running up the stairs, putting foot after foot down. "Undyne, what's wrong?" Frisk asked.

"Just... training," she panted.

"I thought you said monsters didn't get stronger like that?"

"We... don't. But I need... discipline." She continued running past the kids. "I will join you... shortly." Frisk and Asriel looked at each other, shrugging, and continued. Frisk held the railing and bumpety-bumped their roller shoes down the stairs a few times.

"I don't know why they want me back," they said suddenly when they were halfway down, turning to their brother. "They never loved me, so it's not that. Maybe they just don't want me to be happy? But they're too cheap to hire a lawyer out of spite."

"Or maybe they just don't want to let go, even if they do hate you," Asriel suggested, and then smiled. "Of course, sometimes, not wanting to let go is a good thing, if you're doing it for the right reasons."

"Azzy, this is going to sound weird, and maybe it's because of Chara somehow or maybe it's just because of Mom, but the moment I saw you, the real you, I thought of you as my brother. And the stuff we're doing together feels like the stuff we should have been doing all our lives. Same way for Mom and Dad, too. When I told Mom I felt normal now, I wasn't kidding. Of course I wasn't going to let go that easily. How could I?"

Asriel smiled. "I was going to say the same thing. Even when I woke up and found out you weren't really Chara, it didn't matter. And, Frisk..." He turned aside.

"If it's that embarrassing, you don't have to say it, Az," Frisk said, slowly walking down.

Asriel said it. "If we weren't stuck like this, I'd still want to stay by your side. Just not all the time."

"That's not embarrassing!"

"It's not?"

"No! Embarrassing would be, I don't really see the point in making you walk down all these stairs, even if you are a goat, because you're not made out of the same stuff I am and I can just carry you." Asriel could have said anything in response, that it obviously wasn't a problem for him or Frisk, but instead jumped up on Frisk's shoulders and let their roller shoes go bumpity-bump down the stairs.

"May-be this was-n't the best i-de-a, oi-yoi-yoi," Asriel said after bumping down a few flights. Frisk laughed and walked the rest, only rolling again in the lobby. There were only increasingly indifferent travelers and hotel security guards there; the hotel had thrown the news media out. Frisk and Asriel had syrupy waffles again and matching tall glasses of orange juice.

Undyne, out of her armor and cleaned up, started serving herself the same thing. "Hey, Asriel. Hey, Frisk. Your parents are not happy."

"Yeah, they're not happy," Asriel said, waiting for her to sit down. He leaned in. "If Frisk was as cheesed off down there as they were just now, I don't even think the trees would have been spared. I think they would have eaten the mice, burned down Snowdin, blown up the CORE, melted Alphys' lab into a pool of metal and bad anime..." Frisk started chuckling. "That reminds me, Frisk, wasn't there something from Alphys on your phone?"

"Oh, yeah. She wants us to go meet her at the lab, didn't say why."

"Perfect," Undyne said. "I'll find out why she's been avoiding me."

"You're not still mad at her about that show, are you?" Frisk asked.

"She should. Have warned. Me. I am not a water-type anything." Frisk started to laugh, and Asriel joined in. "What!"

"Well... err..." Frisk started.

"...you kind of are," Asriel finished.

"If you weren't the Royal Siblings, I swear..."

"hey. this doesn't seem like a joyous gathering."

"Oh, hey Sans," Asriel said as Sans sat down with the same food. The skeleton was actually eating this time. "Frisk's ex-parents are after them, and it feels like Undyne's just fishing for reasons to get mad." He didn't realize what he said until after he was done saying it.

"Yeah, Undyne, you really need to stop getting caught by that bait. The show's meant to reel kids in after they get hooked on the games," Frisk added, knowing exactly what they said.

"You two are the worst, you know that? The worst."

"you should know betta, halibut it's an easy ray to get cod."

"Sans, they're the Royal Siblings, but you..."

"you're carpin' on it now, but it'll all eel over eventually for a veteran grouper like you."

"You've got to run out of puns sometime!" Undyne yelled, annoyed.

"walleye really?"

"One day, Sans. One day. And in the moment of your punlessness, I shall strike, and I shall be victorious."

"well, before then, anywhere you guys want to go? i got a driving instructor i shouldn't keep waiting."

"Alphys' lab," Asriel said, and the group started going to the car. "I just hope I can go back down there without freaking out."

"Hey, the Underground's just another place now. There are no more wizards to seal the barrier back up," Frisk said. "Unless they came back too, but I think somebody would notice a wizard."

"You'd think somebody would notice someone who could reverse time, too," Asriel said, very, very quietly.

Apparently, human security on the royal siblings was rather light, because no one even tried to stop them from getting into a car marked STUDENT DRIVER with a particularly short skeleton behind the wheel, sitting on phone books (what else were they good for?) and using bone-shaped pedal extenders, and a particularly spooked driving instructor in the passenger's seat.

"Do you know how to.. how to back out?" the instructor asked. "If we're going to- yiiiipe!" Sans reversed hard, and did a quick turn of the wheel to get the car pointed in the right direction, then swiftly accelerated to get them out of the area. He drove exactly the speed limit, and despite his erratic movements and his jerky stops and starts, Frisk couldn't help but get the feeling that Sans would never, possibly could never, get into a wreck.

Frisk's phone started ringing. "Oh, hey, Mom! Oh, I'm just out with Sans, he's learning how to drive. Yes, we're fine. Yes, Undyne's here too."

They pointed the phone in Asriel's direction. "Hi, Mom!", Asriel said, having heard both sides of the conversation.

Frisk put the phone back to their own ear. "Okay, we'll be back before dinner. Of course I'll be good, Mom. Dad still angry? Did you tell him he doesn't have to worry? Good. Thanks, Mom. You too. Bye." They hung up and chuckled. "When am I going to get used to having a mom who cares?" No one answered them, and their brother looked out the windows all the way to Mt. Ebbot.

The new community was being built. Foundations were being laid, prefab units were being trucked in, and humans and a few monsters, mostly Woshuas and Aarons, swarmed over the work. Frisk swiftly realized how invaluable intelligent monsters with good control over their abilities could be on a construction site. I wonder which one's ours? The big one up high, probably. A fit place for a king, even if it didn't have its own breakfast buffet. But we're buying a waffle machine. The mountain itself had become something of a tourist attraction; onlookers walked around the area, talking to the assorted monsters who were scared to go too far into human territory. A gold-for-cash dealer had left their stall behind, probably after making out like a bandit. A human vendor was selling donuts at a stall marked 'All profits go to the ASPCS'. Frisk didn't get the acronym until they saw the eight-legged logo.

Sans parked at the human-guarded entrance with a slam on the brakes. "you three have fun. i gotta go get some more time in. you ready, mr. instructor?" The terrified man nodded, and Sans sped off, the wheels kicking up dirt.

Frisk had almost expected the humans to get in their way, but one look at Frisk's face and the guards waved them through. Asriel cringed as he started to pass where the barrier used to be, but he worked up his gumption and tried not to close his eyes. They passed through, silently regarding areas of interest, Frisk's shoes rolling along. There was where Frisk had fought their dad. There was New Home, dilapidated and empty. The CORE was still functional, but the hotel's elevator had finally been completely gutted, the people seeking room service finally gone. Fortunately, the Hotland elevators were still working, and Undyne banged on the door to Alphys' lab.

"Hey, let us go first," Frisk said. "Let's deal with whatever she called us down here for, and then you can get all hot-blooded angerfish." Undyne scowled.

Alphys answered the door. She seemed happy, a wide smile on her face and a few gizmos in her hands. As a natural introvert, she'd enjoyed the privacy the empty, guarded Underground gave her, giving her time to focus on her research and Mew Mew. She'd answered some questions from the few human scientists who had come down here, but they'd never seen her real work.

"Frisk! Prince Asriel! Undyne! Um, I'm sorry I didn't return your calls, I've just been so busy..."

"Them first, kissy-face," Undyne told her.

"Oh, um, yes, of course. Asriel, your own phone," she said, handing it to him, "and, for the two of you, a pair of matching friendship bracelets! Waterproof, acidproof, and timeproof! You can even spill vomit all over them and they'll be fine. Urm. That was entirely in a controlled testing environment, of course." The bracelets looked high-tech, made of etched, lightweight, shiny metal, with a small light on the inside of each wrist. Alphys held them out in front of her, nervous.

"Friendship braaaaaa...!" Asriel bleated, realizing what they must be for. "Gosh, Alphys! How far?"

"Through two meters of solid rock, or so. A few hundred meters outside if it's a really nice day, maybe." Okay, so he was still tethered to Frisk. At least now it was a long tether. The Dreemurr kids held out their left arms eagerly, and Alphys snapped them on. Despite being made of metal, they were mostly comfortable, except they felt like... A wrist shackle, like that genie in that old movie. Except this does the opposite. "I've got spares, in case anything happens to these."

"Alphys! If anything happens to these while we're wearing them, I'll have to LOAD! We should be wearing the spares, too."

"Oh. Good point. Here." The spares went on their right arms. Now we're just like that genie. Well, it beat the alternative. "The lights are on the bottom side. Green is good. Like eating your greens. Yellow is, um, not good. Yellow is actually pretty bad. Asriel, you won't like yellow. And, uh, Frisk, if the light turns red, LOAD. Charge them every day, charger port here, here are some adapters, just plug it in while you sleep. And if I can, um. Get something, maybe, in return?" The Dreemurr kids raised eyebrows, despite Asriel not really having any. "Can... can you ask your parents for my old job back? Because I really liked being Royal Scientist. I mean, okay, I was responsible for all that stuff before, but, you're you again, so it's all good, right?"

Asriel nodded, looking a bit unsure. "I'll ask," Frisk said, "but it's not up to me. No promises."

"And now," Undyne said, "there is something to discuss..."

"Oh, dear."

Frisk and Asriel quietly left them to do whatever they were going to do and whatever that would lead to.

"Well, at least now I don't have to jump out after you if you start running out of bed too quick," Asriel said. Oh. Frisk had done that when trying to warn Mom about the thirty-fourth rule, hadn't they? "And there's something we can do now," he continued, a huge smile on his face.

"Catch? Frisbee? Soccer, baseball, that stuff?"

"Well, those, yeah, but I was thinking..." Asriel poked Frisk gently in the chest. "...a better game of tag." And he was off like a shot.

Frisk ran-rolled close behind. "You screwed up this time, goat boy! I've got these on!"

"You still can't catch me, water-wrapped skeleton!"

"I'll just follow your trail of fur, shedmeister!"

"From a growing distance, squishguts!"

"A living plushie is calling me squishy?!"

They kept at it through the waterfall area, the ferryman having left with the rest of them. Asriel led Frisk to a large gap and cleared it in a single long jump. "What- there used to be a duck here!" Frisk protested.

Asriel laughed, rounded a corner and the lights on Frisk's bracelets went yellowish-green. Asriel came back at once, shaking his head. "Bad idea. Ba-a-a-a-d idea." He looked across the gap, where Frisk was collapsed in a heap, panting.

"Okay, no more tag, ever," Frisk said between breaths. "We're not Undyne, we don't need to train. You win as long we we're like this. I can't catch you, it'd be like lifting a board I'm standing on." That wasn't quite accurate, but Frisk wouldn't even consider restricting Asriel's DETERMINATION supply. "C'mon back."

Asriel looked at the gap. "This is going to sound weird, but I'm not sure if I can."

"You can do it, Azzy," Frisk said, fueling their brother up through force of will, and Asriel hopped back over. "You want to keep going? The long way? Or head back?"

"Keep going, I guess. There's something I should probably check up on."

"Okay." They took a leisurely walk through the mushroom-lit path with a brief stopover at the dead-empty Tem Shop (perhaps, Frisk thought, she was finally attending colleg), the echo flowers, the water-dripping area (with no umbrellas, they had to hurry), past where Undyne had chased them. At least they didn't have to worry about Undyne killing them anymore- that was Alphys' problem now. Curious, Frisk looked at Checkup; Papyrus was available (with a message of "I PASSED!") and both Undyne and Alphys were marked 'Busy'. Frisk did not want to visualize what they were busy with.

The kids continued, through the cave of fake stars. "We should destroy this," Asriel said. "It's just so..."

"Pathetic? Kind of stupid?" Frisk asked.

"Yeah, it's like the inflatable girlfriend of stars."

"How do you even know what that is?! Wait, no, don't tell me, I'll go my life without knowing." They kept going into Snowdin, past the skelebros' old house. "'Grillby's will be open at its new location,'" Frisk said, reading aloud, "'check us on...'" They checked their phone. "You've never eaten there, have you?" Asriel shook his head. "That's for the to-do list. Better if we go with Sans, although if he hands you a bottle of ketchup? Don't pour it. Oh! I almost forgot." They went north at the crossroads, meeting the snowman, who seemed very content.

"Why, hello!" the snowman gushed. "Thanks again for bringing that bit of me out."

"Actually, I have to ask... where is it? Because I, um... lost it," Frisk admitted.

"It's on a desk! Next to a bright red button. In the company of a man who talks about so many things! He says he's not just going to build a community for monsters, he's going to be building a farm! For Vegetoids, I believe."

Asriel and Frisk looked at each other, grasping it immediately. If Trump had found a way to breed monsters, he didn't need to go out hunting them. Would a farm full of Vegetoids keep giving EXP forever, or would they be too weak after a while? And if they were too weak, would he try to keep gaining EXP or would he just decide it wasn't worth it?

"It's in the best place it could be," Frisk said. "Try to remember what he says, okay? And, like, who comes in with him and who talks to him and that stuff."

"All sorts of wonderful people! Leaders, and businessmen, and scary-looking people with dark glasses. He's been such a great help to monsters. Promoting the King's ideals, looking for ways to give monsters jobs, just being a good friend to everybody. And using the word 'exploit' a lot, whatever that means, and worrying about something called an 'approval rating'."

"Well," Asriel said, shrugging, "a Vegetoid farm isn't the worst thing he could be doing." He considered it the rough equivalent of beef ranching.

"Giving monsters stuff to do isn't the worst, either," Frisk agreed. "It can't be, like, slavery, not if he's worried about his approval rating." Of course the man, and the government, had the money to pay monsters for their solid-altering abilities. "Thanks, snowman! We'll be back to visit sometime." For our spy on the President's desk.

They kept going back, snow getting packed around Frisk's wheels. Asriel winced at the entrance to the ruins, but kept going through anyway, and helped Frisk get the snow out of their shoes once they were inside. "Someone's in here," Asriel said, and the two crept slowly up the stairs of Toriel's old home.

A man and a woman wearing gear and backpacks were browsing, taking pictures, and generally being curious about the empty rooms and barren bookshelves, Toriel having found time to take all her possessions out. The woman had a paper notepad and was making sketches; the man was putting his phone at odd angles.

I don't ever need to be afraid, Frisk remembered. "Excuse me. Who are you, and what are you doing here?" If these two got violent, they were in for very unexpected surprises, in this timeline or another.

Startled, the pair turned to the Dreemurrs. "Asriel, Frisk!" the woman shouted, recognizing them immediately. "I'm so sorry. I thought you'd completely abandoned this place."

"We're urban explorers, not looters," the man explained. "Record everything, take nothing."

Frisk laughed. "I wouldn't care if you did loot the place. We did abandon it, and we got all the important stuff out," they said, putting an arm around their brother. "Az, is there something that got left here?"

"No, nothing but memories." He motioned, and Frisk followed him past the dead tree and all the silly little puzzles; the urban explorers had helpfully left behind even more signs and taped a path through where they were supposed to walk, making the puzzles even easier.

They reached the place of the fallen child, a rope ladder going to the surface. Frisk laughed, and Asriel laughed with them. If only this thing had been here before! But the ladder hung just over the flowers, which had been trampled on by more than one set of boots.

"You know," Asriel said, "I guess these flowers really don't need to be taken care of after all." He nodded to the flowers and what was buried under them. "Goodbye, Chara." Chara was always the type to dance on other people's graves; it seemed fitting that people should walk over theirs. "If you're completely gone." He turned to Frisk. "Wanna climb up?"

"If we do, then the guards up front will think we never came out, and then someone will come down here and these people will get in trouble," Frisk said. As an ardent explorer, Frisk had no interest in getting people jailed for exploring. "But if we don't tell anyone, then somebody bad might come down here and mess with Alphys or the CORE, and I think that's what the guards are for. And Dad put them there, so we kind of have to. Don't call yet." Frisk and Asriel returned the way they came, and the explorers had made it to the door to the snowy path, still documenting.

"Hey, guys?" Frisk approached them with. "Dad really can't just let people down here, so we're going to have to get that hole blocked off. It's all right, we never saw you," Frisk said, looking right at them. "We'll wait, like, fifteen minutes."

The two explorers looked at each other, and for a moment Frisk worried that they would do something stupid. "Thanks, Frisk," the woman said instead, and the pair left to go climb the ladder.

"You really can't not spare people, can you?" Asriel asked.

"Not unless they're really evil or something. I can think of only two people I wouldn't spare," Frisk said. "And..." they said, taking a deep breath, "I think we should at least try to go meet them and talk them out of this."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"No. I'm pretty sure it's not a good idea, and I don't want to," Frisk said. "I really, really don't want to. But it might work, and if it doesn't work, whatever. I can just undo it." They walked back the way they had came, past the lab (Undyne and Alphys' status: still busy), up the elevator, and out through New Home, through where the barrier used to be, and past the guards. Sans was there, a big grin on his face, standing next to a brand new car that notably did not have the words "STUDENT DRIVER" on it.

"Already, Sans?!" Frisk asked.

"i guess you could say... i get things done at maxillar speed."

"And yet you still don't pick up your clothes, do you?" Sans just grinned. "There's a couple of places I want you to take us. Let's get the bad one out of the way first, and then we can go to Grillby's for lunch." Frisk really didn't like Sans' facial expression. "No pranks! Bad skeleton!"

"hey, frisk. you might be royalty, but don't go patellin' me what to do."

"Sorry. Sans, please take us to my not-parents' house, and then please take us to Grillby's. And please don't prank us. At least not a messy prank."

"you sure you don't wanna just skip that first one?"

"Same thing I told Azzy. I don't want to, I have to." Frisk remembered to call their dad in the car, telling him about the still-unplugged hole they'd originally fallen down.

Frisk's not-parents' house was a few miles away, in the middle of a very ordinary-looking suburb. Asriel was almost expecting some kind of ruined or obviously bad house; the lawn was manicured, and the car parked outside the garage was waxed, and it looked like a healthy place to grow up. On the outside. But once the door was open, Asriel could hear Frisk's not-parents talking, and although he didn't quite understand the words, he could detect a note of something in their voices that hinted at the problem.

"Come on," Frisk said, stepping out of the car and relishing this like a root canal. "Let's just get this over with." They pressed the button to check their friends' statuses (Undyne and Alphys weren't busy anymore, finally), held their brother tightly, mustered up enough grim DETERMINATION to SAVE, and reached for the doorbell.