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Life had resumed as normal in Hometown after the festival got postponed.
The decorations were still up, and no one seemed in the mood to really go back to work but here they were at school anyway, distractedly going about their day. With the news of Officer Undyne having disappeared spreading there was also a solemn bit of wariness in the air in recent days.
Kris and Susie knew their adventures were getting direr each day. They were spending most of class passing notes back and forth to plan and prepare, and then hanging out at Castle Town after class if they could to get Ralsei up to speed. There was no time to waste now.
It really was a pity that at this important juncture Kris had lost their newfound advantage of being able to learn from the Soul.
They could still talk to it, of course, if they so chose to. But they did not know if they could bear it, after the last time.
In fact, since that talk a couple of days ago Kris hadn’t even taken the Soul out again so they wouldn’t have to face it or hear it at all. Which seemed counter-intuitive – they should rather be letting it have lesser control over what they do. But they chose to be a coward this once and take that risk in favour of not having to directly interact with it. Nothing bad had happened so far anyway.
If anything, the Soul had been subdued since their last talk.
It walked them around like usual, but snooped a lot less. When prompted to talk it no longer jumped on the excitable, friendly or even teasing options like it usually would. Instead it stayed… stoic. Colourless. Saying as little as possible.
“Dude, are you okay?” Susie finally asked them after another dry response. “You sound… off today. Did something happen?”
* This is how I talk * Worried about the prophecy
The Soul hesitated on the options a while.
Susie started to look worried too.
♡ This is how I talk
It settled on that. Susie made a face. “I dunno, doesn’t sound like you… You’re like – more quiet than usual. Or, y’know,” she scratched the back of her neck a little, “more than you have been since we started hanging out…? Did I, um, do something?”
Kris frantically shook their head.
Susie was so quick to look for the blame in herself, and they hated how it was coming to this.
Their friends have gotten used to the normally chirpy tone of the Soul, and even if that’s not how Kris would usually speak, this distant persona isn’t them either. But there has never been any choosing with the Soul. They get what they get, and this is what everyone else sees too. Kris wondered if Susie would even like who Kris was without the Soul. It’s true, they haven’t been as quiet since they became friends with her. But how much of that is the Soul’s doing? How much of this friendship can they even lay claim to?
The Soul’s hold was looser now. They decided to take advantage of that and mumbled, just for her ears, “Do you mind… when I’m quiet?”
“Huh? No I don’t mind, dumbass! Just,” she flushed a little and pouted, “just worried, ‘s all.”
Kris hid a smile.
That was all the reassurance they needed for now.
“I’ll be fine,” they told her instead, and decided to end this awkwardness, if only for Susie’s sake. “I have to do something, back home… See you later?”
“Yeah yeah, I’ll go catch Ralsei up then. But you better have some new ideas by night!”
Kris gave her a salute and headed back home.
There wasn’t much time to waste. They needed to get talking to the Soul again.
--
“Kris?”
It was a surprising relief to have the voice stay in their head instead of forcing words out of their mouth.
“We’re running out of time.” Kris stayed on the floor near the cage this time. “I don’t want to talk more about that. I wouldn’t believe anything you have to say anyway. Just… stop acting weird. You’re freaking Susie out.”
“I did not think that would happen… I’ll go back to the usual, Kris.”
“Good,” they nodded, and then elapsed into an awkward silence.
They hadn’t really planned very far into this talk. They got up without preamble and got their notes back out instead.
“I have told you some of what we know the Soul can do. I don’t think you have told me all of what you could possibly do and what restricts you. I want whatever you will admit to today and then we’re done. Got it?”
“… I thought the point of this planning was for us to work together.”
“I don’t want to work with you,” they said without heat, and started sifting through the notes to see if they missed anything. “We will know what we will know. Do what you want with it.”
“Fine.” The voice was cold. It made Kris shiver. “Ask what you must then.”
It had become clear from their talks that the Soul did not understand its own Light magic or purifying qualities. But they had Ralsei for that side of things. What the Soul did know was its own control; and Kris intended to get every last drop of information about it that they could.
“Can you control… anything other than me here?”
“Not that I know. I can affect things other than you when you let me out.”
“Evidently,” they muttered. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. “Can you make choices outside of the ones you make for me?”
“… Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“I get to choose sometimes when I’m watching Susie. Doesn’t affect her though. I get to choose… things on the menu, equipment and all, but the party is tied to you. And I…”
“What?” Kris prompted.
“I don’t know if I should say too much. But I made some choices, long ago… for another Vessel.”
“… In another world?”
“In this one. Before I came to you.”
“What?”
“It might not ever come into play. Or it might? That Vessel was ‘discarded’ supposedly. But before that I chose many aspects of it.”
“Discarded by whom??” It had really not thought to mention something like this before?
“That part I cannot say, Kris. If I even know, I mean. It’s possible I have the wrong idea. These are murky waters now, parts of the world shrouded in a lot of mystery. I can only guess at it.”
Another thing for the ‘will not say’ pile then. Still, another discarded Vessel that the Soul got to choose attributes for – that was something Kris could work with keeping in mind.
“Did you choose something for it that might become a problem for us later down the line?”
“I don’t think so? I did say its, um, favourite food was ‘Pain’, but I’m almost certain that option was there in jest and nothing else.”
“Almost cer– everything is a ‘jest’ to you here!”
“Give me a break, it might not even mean anything!”
Kris took a breath before this could spiral off track again. “Anything else about this Vessel I should know?”
“It is… bald?”
“Yeah, that’s enough.”
Are any of the ridiculous things it says even true or is it just having fun pulling their leg?
“What about your Vessel in that other world? Did you create it? Did that affect anything in the story?”
“No, that one I got as was, the way I got you, I guess. Human child, young’un.”
Kris wonders at the fact that they never got to talk about that Vessel. They kick themself mentally for it. Too busy chasing after what was familiar – asking about Asriel and Chara and people who did not matter to this world at all – to actually focus on what they should have asked about first: the other Vessel and how it worked.
Better late than never though.
“What was their name?”
“Frisk.”
“Do I look like I’m in the fucking mood?”
“What?”
“Frisk? That’s what you’re coming up with?”
“That was their name! Honest!”
Kris wasn’t sure any amount of controlled breathing could help their annoyance.
“It sounds an awful lot like my name.”
“Wild, right?”
“Sounds like you made it up right now and couldn’t do better than ‘Frisk’ because you named them after the first thing in front of you. Which is me.”
“Are you saying I am making up the Vessel in a different game now? Why would I do that.”
Kris groaned. There was no good answer they could give there. Just that…
“To hide things? I don’t know what all you hide and what you lie about, all I know is to be wary about things you would be willing to hide. Because why would you?”
The Soul is quiet for some moments. Then it says, “Just to put things into perspective… I did not make that up. So… you know. You don’t have to worry about why I would have made it up.”
Kris was going to lose their mind before the sun went down today.
It talked a little about Frisk. Small child, silent, not a lot of background, showed up in the Underground with a stick and a bandage. Every time Kris heard the name be mentioned though it felt like a tickle going through their mind.
“Did you not even name your Vessel? Nothing there at all?”
“Well, no. I gave my name to Chara.”
“To Chara??” To the dead child that was Asriel’s friend many many years ago? What sense did that make? “What do you mean you gave them your name? Your name, your Soul, did you give everything to Chara? Why was Frisk even your Vessel then.”
“You’re confusing me with admin.”
“Shut up.”
“I mean that this wasn’t for me to decide! I got a Vessel. The Vessel was Frisk. I did not know I was naming Chara till really the very end of the whole ordeal. And I only gave Chara my Soul because they asked for it in return of bringing back the world, remember? Frisk never asked.”
Yes because why would a player question the bounds of the game they were playing?
To the Soul it would have been of little consequence. It was thrown into a story that it got to play out and live through. Stand outside.
To Kris, being within, it was terrifying not knowing exactly who made the rules and what they could do to defy them and where exactly their free will ran headfirst into the invisible wall of fate.
“… How did you name Chara if they had a name already? And… what about here? Whom did you give your name to? The other Vessel?”
Kris hadn’t really considered much what existence would be like for the Soul beyond this realm. What was its name? What did it look like, how did it spend its days? How small a part of its life was Kris’ entire existence – their entire world, even?
“Chara had many names, really. Depending on what they were named when we started out on our journey. Here, I knew it wouldn’t be that simple. I was asked to name the Vessel and then to give my own name. Here, I’ve given my name to Castle Town, do you, um… do you remember it?”
That strange sound that the Rudinn had made?
“I… don’t think so. What is it?”
“It shows up at the Save points, do you not see them?”
“I see no names there.”
“Well, it’s… It’s ▮▮▮▮▮▮”
At first Kris heard nothing except an odd disturbance in the speech.
Then there was a sharp prick of pain like an ice pick straight through their brain. They let out a yelp and closed their eyes against it, hiding their face in their hands as the ringing died down.
“Kris? You good?”
“I don’t think I am meant to know your name,” they mumbled against their palms.
“Well… Guess we better leave it at that.”
“Do you really look like how you do in the prophecy?” they blurted out.
“What?”
“The panel about… the Angel. Is that how you really look?”
“I cannot see that panel,” it admitted. “It is obscured from my view.”
“Oh.”
“There is no one way I can look… and no one name I can bear. That’s probably why you cannot… well… perceive me. Properly, I mean.”
Kris just let their thoughts run for a while.
“Sometimes…” they said, “sometimes I remember that you really are from another world. Alien. Angelic. Not meant to be looked at or talked to… I wonder if I never should have started talking.”
“I’m glad you did, Kris…” Its voice gentled for the first time today.
Kris shook their head.
They shouldn’t be wasting time on these thought experiments.
“What was Frisk like?”
“It’s hard to say,” it sounded thoughtful. “They didn’t make a lot of themself known. They said what I told them to, they acted good or bad depending on what I did. They didn’t really resist any of it? I dunno, best case scenario they made friends with everyone in the Underground, did all they could to help their friends. Or rather, I did. But, y’know…”
“As far as the others knew, that was who Frisk was.”
“Yeah…”
Kris thought again about how all the relationships they were making now were just the Soul’s, same as Frisk’s. For all anyone knew, that was Kris. The friends Kris called their own had been befriended by this stranger inside them. Where did Kris truly end and the Soul begin? Was there anything at all of their own peeking out from under its influence? Had they managed to leave any impression at all of their own self onto their friends?
“There’s not much more I can tell you, really…” it went on, “Whatever I could tell about them, I based on the kinds of choices I would get. They flirted a lot?”
“The child?”
“I’m as confused as you there. They must have picked it up somewhere. Kids are weird, they do all sorts of things without context… Although… Hey, why do you flirt so well?”
Kris flushed at that. “Stay on topic,” they said gruffly.
“I’m just saying, maybe the names aren’t the only similar thing, maybe they were like, a younger version of you from that world? Or had something to do with you somehow, like with Ralsei and Asriel.”
“Not sure how you mean.” They went tight-lipped.
“Oh come on! You must know what is up with that, right? Why are their names so similar?”
“That is not of your concern.”
“Isn’t it?” it teased.
“No, it isn’t. It’s Ralsei’s business, stick with what matters to us here.”
There is levity in its tone again when it says, “You know, I love it when you get all protective of him.”
Kris flushes deeply. They are reminded of the incident back at Ralsei’s room though and it pisses them off enough to get back to the point.
“So Frisk never asked for the Soul. Did they ask for anything? Did they not try to break your control, or – or revolt against it somehow?”
“Well no, Kris, it isn’t exactly a frequent problem with Vessels. We aren’t usually so at odds the way it is with you.”
“Oh I’m so sorry, is your possession of my mind and body a little inconvenient for you?”
They seethed in the ensuing silence.
“Yeah you’re right, sorry man.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What, man? You don’t mind Susie saying it!”
“Susie is my friend.”
“… Yeah, no, that’s fair. I won’t.”
Kris wasn’t sure what else to ask. Frisk seemed to be painted like a blank slate. A favourable Vessel for the Soul to drag around and do with as it pleases with no resistance.
It must miss that, they mused. It must resent Kris for not being that innocent malleable child that stayed in their lane.
It must have missed that when it found a way to go to great lengths for a little more control – for the right to ‘force the wrong thing’.
“Maybe,” it started again, “the reason Frisk did not do what you do here is just that they were younger?”
Who is to say?
“I mean that… Maybe that’s all there is to it, maybe anyone would have tried to revolt, and it had nothing to do with Frisk or with you, just that you’re, you know, older, and understand the situation more. So you are able to do something about it too.”
“But Chara could override you…”
“Yes… I suppose it comes down to being determined all over again. I don’t doubt that Frisk was determined too. But how much of that was their own determination, and how much it was mine… and how much it was Chara’s undying spirit driving us ahead, well. We’ll never really know. But it mattered a lot. If any of that is an indication maybe that is something I can tell you about Frisk. They found a way to let every little thing inspire them and drive them on.”
Now that they were talking about it, Kris realised the Angel always held determination in a high regard. Like it was the best thing one could be, the best trait one could embody. To Kris, here, it was just an adjective – determined. A descriptor. Nothing like the life-altering substance from that other Alphys’ experiments that could revive the dead and breathe life into the Soulless.
Was that the missing link though? Was that what Kris was lacking in this world? It would be a trait so far out of their reach, something fantastical and inaccessible from a world of magic –
Except there were worlds of magic here… Worlds where these spells and fantasies came to life and became something they could wield. Could this power be accessed through the Dark too? Could it be used to banish the Light of the Angel’s own determination if they had to?
Kris had something of use to tell to Susie and Ralsei after all.
“That’s the best I can leave you with, Kris,” the Angel spoke as if in response to their own thoughts. “If there is one thing that will get you through… it is the will to keep going itself. I don’t know how that would work in this world. I don’t know what the power is that allows you to snatch back the fate of this world from me. But as long as you keep that persistence… I think we will find our answers yet.”
Kris nodded.
They will ponder on that. For now, that will and the power it came with stayed with the Soul.
They moved to get it back out of the cage.
“See you on the other side then,” they said.
“I’ll be close by, you know.”
“I know.” They hesitate a little. “How do I know you won’t just reset all this now?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” It laughs. “Kris, you should know this by now.”
“Know what?”
“I need to see what happens next.”
***