The Indieverse

Chapter 23: A Last Hurrah

Chapter 23: A Last Hurrah

The Player opened Undertale. He spawned in as... Frisk?

Sure enough, the figure that he was moving around was that same poker-faced human child with the very sporty blue-and-purple striped sweater.

And a few feet away stood another Frisk. The actual Frisk?

The Player gave up trying to understand the conundrum and looked around at the rest of his surroundings.

His eight friends were all there, now pixelated in the style of Undertale's overworld. They were all standing in the eerily empty Judgement Hall.

As they walked down the hallway, they came upon piles of dust and sweaters scattered around on the floor. Almost everyone didn't think twice about them, but Frisk stopped at each one, gazing at it sadly, and the Player knew that she was thinking about each Sans that fell there.

They all soberly passed out of the Judgement Hall, and walked on towards the throne room, unsure of what they were searching for.

As they walked down the white hallway to the throne room, a wind picked up. Silver pixels began to swirl, coming together on a specific spot in the center of the hallway, spinning faster and faster and faster, until it finally came together in the solid, recognizable form of...

"Gaster?!" the Player shouted at his computer, bewildered.

Sure enough, the former Royal Scientist himself stood in front of the party, albeit flickering and looking like he was about to vanish at any given moment.

To everyone's surprise, Frisk, who looked as though she was at death's doorstep, walked straight up to the skeleton, grabbed his coat, and began violently shaking him.

"YOU!!!!" she thundered. "After everything you did?! How dare you show your face!"

Gaster, who looked like he was about as healthy as Frisk, blinked out of existence for a moment before returning.

"I... I made a mistake..." he stuttered. "Helping... her..."

"Monika?!" the Player questioned. Gaster nodded his head. "How do we stop her? Tell us!"

"She's al-al-al-already leaving..." Gaster stuttered. "It's too late to stop her here.

Suddenly, the camera on the Player's computer began to blink. A beam of light shot forward from it and hit the ground, as though it was a hologram from Star Wars.

The light began to take the shape of two black shoes.

Monika's shoes.

The Player grabbed a pencil from his desk and jabbed them into the shoes experimentally. They felt as solid as anything he'd ever felt in his life.

The light began to travel upward. The sight of two ankles clad in black socks could be seen inside of the shoes.

Monika was coming.

"What the hell, what the hell, what the hell, what the hell!" the Player muttered, running around his room in a panic. What could he do?

Quickly, he threw open his dresser, grabbed a shirt, and threw it over the camera.

The mysterious light burned a hole right through the cloth and kept on... doing whatever it was doing.

The Player decided that it would be bad for any part of his body to touch the light.

Ducking below it, he crawled back into his chair and looked at his computer screen.

Gaster nodded, somehow in knowledge that the Player had returned. "It has already begun," he said serenely.

"I can see that!" the Player shouted. "How do I stop it?!"

"You can't," replied Gaster with infuriating calmness.

"Well, help us out, then!" the Player begged.

Gaster closed his eyes, and Undertale closed with it.

Suddenly, a new game popped up. Everyone stood in the exact same positions, in a meadow in a field.

The computer's camera shut off, and the shoes disappeared off the ground as though they had just been a mirage.

"And one... more thing," said Gaster.

He pointed at his chest, and a thin silver stream came out. He pointed at each of the heroes in turn, imparting some of the substance within each of them.

The Neighbor's eyes popped open. "I feel like... I could knock over a mountain," he said, flexing his arm.

"This is amazing," said Cuphead, firing his peashooter experimentally and finding that its strength had tripled.

Six stretched out her hands in front of her, black tornados swirling around her short arms, the spirits of the dead at her beck and call.

As everyone marveled at their new strength, Gaster opened his mouth one final time. "I hope you're ready," he said. "She's right over there."

The former Royal Scientist dissipated, his cloak dropping to the ground, a single wisp of the gray substance trickling away.

In the distance, a figure appeared. A tall, pale, feminine figure, still somehow dressed in her school uniform, although it was now completely covered in dust. A golden heart locket encircled her neck, and the metal from the knife glinted as she held it behind her back.

Frisk stepped forward, holding her stick with a death grip, fiery determination burning in her eyes.

"Well?" Her quiet voice echoed through the valley.

The team walked across the valley, towards Monika, towards their destiny.