I said on sunday. I didn't say which sunday. Trolololol-

Chara sprinted through the judgement hall. This run had been...odd. She was pretty sure Sans had slept in that morning or something, because everyone had been late. Toriel hadn't turned up until she was halfway through the ruins. Snowdin had been halfway through evacuation. Undyne hadn't found her until after she had killed that annoying kid. Sans hadn't even showed up. For the first time in a while, she was hopeful as well as determined, and deliberately hadn't killed anyone in her rush. Then she slammed open the doors into Asgore's room.

"Come on! Go! go! go-oh no." Flowey paled at the sight of Chara running in through the doorway. Three of the human souls had been cleared out, one was inside Sans and two more were still on the floor. Flowey hadn't absorbed a human soul yet, and panicked, grabbing the green soul's container with vines and trying to haul it towards the barrier, but Chara pounced forwards, slashing the vines with her knife and leaping atop the container protectively. Sans, in desperation, hurled himself, Flowey and the remaining (orange) soul at the barrier with his 'blue attack'. Neither Flowey nor the soul could get through alone, and the flower quickly went about trying to absorb the thing. The moment he did though, he realised that somehow he wasn't dead yet.

"Well." Sans quipped. "Looks like we messed up our one, soul job, huh?"

From the other side of the room, there was a terrifyingly musical laugh. "Oh, Sans. Your puns are about as abysmal as your chances of winning." Chara stood there, red and green soul pulsing together.

._.

Flowey was sorely tempted to run and hide behind the barrier, but either by absorbing the soul of courage or by knowing its futility, he stood his ground. Noting that a familiar yellow twinkle was behind Chara, he sighed. "So this is it, huh? I don't suppose you'd be alright with resetting again? Giving us another chance?"

"Are you seriously asking that?"

"We're not asking you." Sans cut in. "We're asking Frisk."

There was a pause, before Chara chuckled. "Nice try. What makes you think she's still here?"

Sans shrugged. "Well, she's the most determined entity I've ever encountered."

"And she gave me her soul. Gave it to me, just to bring the world back. Then the little minx just managed to reset the place. Still puzzling that out."

Flowey laughed. "You think that a soul is necessary to be determined? Look at me. The injected stuff didn't last forever, y'know. I was soulless, lacking all empathy, and determined enough to be omnipotent." His visage twisted for a moment. "Until you turned up. I know Frisk's still alive, because all your power? You got it from her. She's stronger than you. And she's not going to let you do what you're doing."

Chara leered down at the plant. "Really? Then why hasn't she already stopped me?"

Sans began chuckling. It started out quiet, then grew louder, with Flowey joining in. Chara stepped backwards, eyes narrowing. Sans calmed down and closed his eyes for a moment, before opening them as one flashed blue-orange. "Well, you haven't given her access to a fully living human soul yet, have you?"

Suddenly, Chara felt a stabbing pain in her chest. She gasped and fell to her knees, head pounding as that annoyingly naive voice got louder and began wrestling with her control. She felt the twin coloured heart actively shivering, cracking at the edges, jerking about despite her attempts to keep it stable. Dimly, she saw Sans wander towards her, twirling a blue bone around his gloved hand.

"Red and green,

Should never be seen,

With no other colour in between."

He brought the bone down, straight through the heart.

And, with a bright flash, it split in two.

._.

Frisk clambered up from the ground, coughing. She had her body back. So that was good. She checked her soul. It was green. Damn. It made sense that the kindness soul had been attracted to her, she was the only one out of the pair who had ever done a kind act. Unfortunately...that meant...

Chara got up, not needing to cough. Her new body was built out of magic. She did spit in the direction of Frisk though. "You...I really hate you."

Frisk asked why.

"Because you keep screwing with me? Right when you'd killed everyone, when I had your soul and six others for the taking, you reset me, and you've been resisting me ever since!"

Frisk pointed out that Chara owed her her life.

"No, you owe me yours. Remember that niggling voice that gave you info when you checked monsters? That was me. You'd have died far more often without me."

Frisk conceded that they were equal there, and told Chara that they didn't have to fight. They hadn't killed any monsters this run in their hurry. If Chara let them swap souls, Frisk would leave her to her life.

Frisk was sparing her...

Chara's eye twitched. "How dare you. I don't want your MERCY!" She levelled her knife. "I want that soul, and I'm going to cut you away from it!"

Frisk shrugged, walked to the side, and picked up a stick. Then the battle started.

._.

On the sidelines, Sans had pulled popcorn from... Somewhere. Flowey looked at him critically. "Should we be helping, or..."

Sans shook his head. "Nah, she'll just reset."

"So what do we do?"

"We watch." Sans leaned backwards, squirting some ketchup into his popcorn. "Frisk is gonna either doom the human race or save the world. No pressure kiddo!"

Frisk parried the knife with her stick. Then parried again. In the battle window, it looked like her green, shielded heart was deflecting a very fast and random pattern of knife strikes. Then it was her turn. She chose mercy.

Chara elected to keep on attacking. "Why are you even fighting? I can just reset even if you beat me! And you won't!"

Frisk just smiled.

Chara growled and her attacks became more violent. "You idiot. I have the soul of determination, a heart locket, an actual knife! And what do you have? A freaking twig!"

Frisk just smiled. She mentioned that-

"No!" The knife sliced and Frisk's soul was forced to dodge as Chara's palpable anger let her attack out if turn. "If you're going to talk to me, you can do it without the comfort of your first-person conversation horse crap!"

Frisk sighed. There was a long moment where she struggled to resist the urge to click selected dialogue. "...Okay. Let's both stop obeying the rules neither of us need." With that, the battle box shattered, as did the various options, and the turns system, and the background...

It was just two souls locked in combat. At once, knives began flicking towards the green soul. "I understand." Frisk said, placatingly. "I know why you're angry at me."

"I'm angry at everyone!" Chara yelled. "Monsters, humans, I hate all of them!"

"Of course." Frisk nodded, conceding the point. "I was with you for all your genocide runs. They just seem so weak, and selfish, and pathetic sometimes, right?"

Chara raised her eyebrow. "Is that your tactic? Survive by indulging in companionable slaughter with me?"

"Nope. You'd have to get past Asriel, and you wouldn't kill him."

"Flowey!"

"No, Asriel. He has a soul. S'not his, but he has it. Two, really."

"I don't care how many souls he has. I don't care about him."

"Exactly. And you hate yourself, too, because of it."

Chara froze in her constant attack for a good few seconds. "What?"

Frisk continued. "You fell down to the underground, you met Asriel, and he took you home, and his family promised to house you for as long as you wanted."

"Stop."

"He loved you like the brother he never had, his parents loved you just as much as they loved him. But you never loved them back, did you."

"Stop."

"You couldn't understand it. You had a soul, they kept telling you how great your soul was, but you really just hated everything, didn't you?"

"Stop it."

Knives were slashing towards Frisk with almost ridiculous intensity now.

"And when you were dying, you wanted to go back home, to see if maybe it would help you. And it did. Because your soul merged with Asriel's, and you felt his love, his emotion. And then he died."

"STOP IT NOW."

"You can feel mine, can't you? In that soul I gave you. You aren't only using my determination, you're using my kindness, my courage... That's why you hate me so much. When you found me as I woke up on that bed of flowers, you saw the person you wish you could have been."

"Please... Just... Please stop." Chara was crying now, her assault faltering as she slumped to her knees. "Why do you have to make me hurt, Frisk. Why?"

Frisk walked forward, slowly and deliberately, and enveloped Chara in a hug. She froze, grip on the knife tightening. "Are you simple? You know, I could kill you right now."

Frisk giggled. "I'm about to do one worse."

She leaned back and held out her hand , the green soul moving to float above it. Chara gaped. "You go to all this trouble and give it to me? What is your game?"

Frisk tilted her head and smiled. "This is the soul of the kindest child to enter the underground." She pointed towards Chara's heart. "That is a soul I've kinda grown attached to. Wanna trade? We could be actual friends!"

Chara looked up and actually smiled. "Ya know what? No thanks."

She grabbed forwards, her fist closing around the green soul and wrenching it away from Frisk. There were cries of anguish from the spectators as Frisk staggered backwards, flashed a smile, then collapsed.

._.

Chara laughed, both souls back inside her, looking down on Frisk's motionless form. "You are hopelessly naive, aren't you?" She stalked forwards. "I won't deny, you hit some touching points there, Frisky. But ya see, I still wanna know what killing the overworld is like. And I can't risk this happening again..." She paused. "Huh. I'm actually sorry about this."

She raised the knife-

And her red heart turned blue, yanking her back into the wall. Two figures stood between her and Frisk. "Guess we're actually screwed now, huh?" Sans shrugged. "Well, we tried."

Flowey smiled, having grown himself into a rough approximation of Asriel's form. "Sorry to do this to you sis, but the whole heart of courage thing means I'm not running and living."

"Aww, you're tugging on my heartstrings. Seriously, you are. Stop it and die."

._.

"What is wrong with you?" Chara spun past another set of vines and kicked Asri- no, Flowey, dammit- onto the floor beside a panting Sans and a motionless Frisk. "Here I am trying to destroy the world and you..." They had talked to her. Reminded her of that one time when, or that one place where. It was nice, but-

"Gah!" She ruthlessly stomped down on Asriel's chest as he tried to get up. "I am going to kill all three of you with one swing, and then all of this is going to be over!"

Asriel fixed her with a stare. "Is that what you want? Death for everyone? Not as a consolation prize for a lack of empathy, as your actual most wanted outcome?"

"I...I..."

"Chara please. I...I miss you."

The words struck harder than Undyne in a bad mood. Chara grimaced, her blade raised. She looked across the three forms, conflicting emotions running through her mind, memories of so many runs and before them, living with Asriel, life before she fell down...

The knife fell.

And clattered to the ground.

Chara fell to her knees, wrapped her arms around her old friend, and began to cry.

Three weeks later...

"Seriously Asgore, the skeleton knows what he's doing." Toriel reprimanded, as Sans wandered back through the portal with another soul. "You could have just gone out there and nabbed the souls of some old, dying guys. What you did wasn't just cowardly, it was stupid."

Asgore hung his head in shame. Nearby, Frisk giggled and Chara rolled her eyes. Sans set the new soul beside the other six. He'd only had to grab three, with two of the original six going to Asriel and Chara. He looked up to Papyrus, whose eyes were bright with excitement. "So, bro, you ready to-"

"BECOME THE GREATEST WARRIOR IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNDERGROUND AND SAVE ALL OF ITS CITIZENS? I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO READY IN MY ENTIRE LIFE!"

Asriel, his original form returned by the power of both his souls, wandered over to Chara. "So, sis, any sudden urges to slaughter everyone?"

Chara smiled. "Oh, all the time, but hey, you're entertaining and I hate making you pout. Oh, and Frisk's the one who can reset now, so..." Frisk shrugged, red heart back in its place.

Asriel paused a moment. "You know, while me and Sans were coming up with ways to stop you, we realised that you could have won anytime you wanted in spite of us."

Chara raised an eyebrow. "That so? How?"

Asriel smiled slyly. "Oh come on. You never thought that maybe you should try and absorb Toriel in the Ruins?"

"..."

"Yeah."

"I'm a terrible evil spirit."

"Yup."

Sans appeared beside them, just as there was a massive smash from the portal. "Okay, so Papyrus is currently flying around the Overworld at about Mach 20. Congrats, Frisk. You've officially managed to save everyone. That should be an achievement or something. I guess that..." He trailed off. "Oh no."

Asriel looked up worriedly. "What? Did we miss something?"

Sans shook his head. "No. There's something I forgot to say to you. When we get out, you and frisk could be best Buds!" There were widespread groans.

"Dude, not a plant anymore."

"Well, thAsriel mean. I suppose you can Goat somewhere else then."

"*Sigh*... Never change."

And the story ends in the typical, Frisky, pacifist fashion. Please review with feedback, or Grammar errors (Heil comma, my brethren.) and feel free to chack out my other work. See y'all!