Chapter Text
The majority of TV World, if they were being honest, had actually been a good break from the drama of the last dark world. And although Ralsei mostly refused to talk about what happened (primarily out of fear), he did manage to explain how exactly dark worlds work to her, about the roaring, and a more complete version of the prophecy than he had initially given. Kris, for the most part, enjoyed themselves. Maybe. It’s hard to tell for anyone who isn’t Kris. That went downhill, unfortunately, after Tenna’s massive crashout and after Kris finished going through those weird minigames they were playing in the back room. Ones that they, for some reason, walked away from looking simultaneously troubled and menacing, like they had just indulged in a guilty pleasure.
And their trek through the studio, their showdown with Tenna, would have been all fun and games and drama. Getting Toriel back from the tree would have been wonderful, if not for one little snag.
Just as Tenna is monologuing about his renewed vigor and lease on life, congratulating his contestants for their overwhelming victory in the face of uncertain odds, he comments, “...Say, did it just get colder in here?”
Susie glances down, noticing the beginnings of a ring of snow, then bellows out, “TENNA, MOVE!”
“Move!?” he asks “Why— What’s...!?”
But as his confusion piques, he’s suddenly engulfed in a pillar of ice before he can do anything. As it dissipates into an icy mist, his frozen prison is revealed. It falls over with a titanic thud, and although it sustains no damage, although it rolls harmlessly away into a snow bank, Susie is still left reeling from the shock of watching him all but die. Even Kris, who had just been all too eager to lay the smackdown on him, looks shaken by it. Especially by what lies beyond it.
“YOU!” Susie points at it, running forward.
* THE WAILING KNIGHT APPEARED
Again. Again it appears to haunt them. Hell, it doesn’t even look at them, it has its back turned, arms crossed, robe billowing in the wind. Trying to look cool. It even dramatically turns around! Although, its aura is summarily questioned by one tiny detail that Susie notices, “What the... is it crying?”
The knight wipes away the tear it shed through its visor, picks itself back up as if nothing had happened, and flares its robes out.
Susie shakes her head, “NO! Enough! I’m already sick of this, you thaw him out RIGHT NOW! He didn’t do ANYTHING!”
The knight’s head turns to Susie, cocking to the side like she just said something insane, and then it gives an exaggerated thumbs down. From this position, it throws its arm to the side and summons an array of ice swords around it, grabbing one to pose with as it levitates off of the ground.
Susie grits her teeth and brandishes her axe, “Oh, you’re just TRYING to piss me off now! RALSEI! THAW TENNA OUT! I know you’ve got fire magic!”
Ralsei panics a bit, “O-Oh, right! Of course! You have enough healing items, don’t you?”
“JUST GO!” she yells at him.
“Y-Yes! I—” Ralsei starts to head that way, only for the knight to suddenly jettison 40 swords directly into his path. When he looks at the knight, it just shakes its head before summoning 40 more. “Oh.” he says. “I guess I’m not doing that...”
“YES YOU ARE, I’LL COVER YOU!” Susie yells again, leaping in front of him. He does as he’s told and tries to make a run for it, with the knight throwing a veritable beam of swords at him again, but Susie runs in and deflects almost all of them. Only one or two graze past her and cut Ralsei, but he makes it to Tenna. Then, just as the knight is about to throw another volley, Kris comes out of left field and strikes its armor with INCREDIBLE force, enough to knock the knight back a few feet.
Susie grins, “Nice save, Kris!” She leaps in on her own, “Let’s GO, dumbass!” and starts swinging wildly.
The two of them clashing together against it, they seem like they’re almost going to actually hit it, but at the very last second of every strike, it manages to dodge or block with minimal movement. And then it just effortlessly flicks them to the side, knocking the weapons right out of their hands with an errant cut.
But Susie takes note of something, “(That knight... It could have probably just killed us right there, or at least seriously hurt Kris. But... it didn’t? It just... kicked us? What’s its DEAL!? I—)” Mid-thought, she spots it fly into the air and create a massive wall of swords that it aims at Ralsei, who’s partway through the melting process. She gets up and throws herself in front of him with nothing but a few of the melting ice swords she picked up from the ground and starts swinging.
And she notices another thing. As soon as she jumped in front of Ralsei, the knight pulled its hands back, and it was as if all of the swords did their best to avoid her. She grins. “Oh would you look at that? Someone’s all soft on me! Guess I’m TWO FOR ONE! COME ON! HURT ME, YOU COWARD! I DARE—” As soon as she starts taunting, she gets hit in the stomach with a massive hailball that sends her crashing into the snow behind her, leaning right up against Tenna’s ice prison.
“S-Susie!” Ralsei runs up to heal her, and manages to actually succeed before the knight cuts them both off and rushes behind him, stabbing him right through the chest with an ice sword. It lifts him up, as if to taunt everyone present, before tossing him to the side and off of the sword where he becomes a pile of fluff.
Susie, suddenly filled with the rage of titan, throws herself back up and charges the knight hard enough to send it back, “WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU!? YOU THINK JUST BECAUSE HE DOESN’T DIE IT MEANS YOU CAN HURT HIM ALL YOU WANT!? WHY DON’T YOU FIGHT SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE!?”
And for the first time, it speaks, like a dozen voices in unison, corrupted beyond comprehension, “THEN FIGHT.”
That takes Susie off-guard. A moment that the knight uses to close in on her and toss her axe aside once again, then put its sword against her throat. It’s right up next to her, inches away from her face, so close she can hear it breathing. And worse, she knows that if she moves at all in this position, that blade will go right through her. The knight stares her down, and in its visor she can almost tell what its eyes look like beneath the helmet. Only almost. It tilts her head up by the chin with one finger, clanks its helmet’s forehead against hers, breathes out, and then steps back without harming her in one smooth motion. It readies its blade again and gestures “come hither” to her. Its visor literally creaks into a jagged facsimile of a smile.
Susie prepares her axe again, “This is just some game to you, isn’t it...?”
But the knight seems to be done talking. With that done, she rushes towards it and clashes with it just like it wanted. In the meantime, Kris rushes over to Ralsei and plants the Revive Mint in his fluff, bringing him back up immediately. He hugs Kris and thanks them, “That was... That was awful! I... Thank you. Let’s go help Susie!”
And just as the knight and her are in an intense blade lock, Kris dead-angles it yet again in an attempt to find a weakness in its armor. To no avail. It chips off a tiny little fragment, barely smaller than a tack, and Kris’ sword practically cracks in return. The knight turns its head towards them, then spins and shakes both of them off. Kris flips backwards and immediately rushes back in to draw aggro while Ralsei flanks from behind.
And just for this special occasion, the knight pulls out something equally special: a much longer, larger sword than the floating ones it normally wields. One shaped and wielded like a katana. The beatdown Kris receives upon trying to match this weapon is beyond what they had bargained for, leading to their armor cut into ribbons, their sword cut clean in half, and them frantically consuming all of their surplus healing in an effort to out-heal the damage. Thankfully for the others, the knight tunnel visioned on Kris so hard that it forgot about the other two.
From behind, it gets hit with the roaring sound of a Rude Buster that practically paralyzes it as its armor begins to glitch out. Then Ralsei comes in and wraps the scarf around the knight, binding its arms together in such a way it can’t defend against the next few attacks: Kris picks up two of the thrown ice swords and shatters them against the knight, doing minimal damage but very clearly releasing some built up tension. Then, another Rude Buster. But Ralsei’s scarf doesn’t hold up to the damage, ripping apart afterwards.
The knight free, it whips around and generates a circle of blades that tear Ralsei in half, reducing him to fluff once again. His last words are, “Not... again...”
The swords are then fired directly at Kris, who dodges them gracefully. The knight regains its larger sword and lets out another bellowing wail as it uses its ice magic indiscriminately, casting empty coffins of ice all over the immediate arena. Kris and Susie make distance, with Susie launching off another Rude Buster to interrupt its attack, letting Kris run in and give Ralsei their last heal before throwing him directly at Tenna.
At this point, the knight has had its fill of the battle. It summons at least a hundred new swords and begins to chant once again. This time, Susie and Kris both make an effort to try to find an opening, anything to distract it so it misses its big attack. And then Susie gets an idea.
“Kris, you thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”
They nod, smiling at her smugly.
They hop up into her arms, and she throws them directly at the Knight. It, suddenly panicking at their ingenuity, leaps backwards and aims the spell at where it was standing. It sends swords flying off in random directions while the ice column erupts, engulfing Kris completely. But what the knight doesn’t notice beyond the massive storm of ice it kicked up is Susie leaping through the attack’s aftermath as cover, leaping directly at it with a powerful overhead. The knight seems to lose its nerve, grabbing two nearby swords and blocking with them instead of just shooting them at her. The blow, however, is so powerful that it shatters one sword and knocks the other clean out of the knight’s hand even as it knocks Susie away.
“Ha!” she taunts “I bet you didn’t see that one coming! Should’ve seen the look on your face! Panicked just because we did something stupid! I can’t believe I was scared of you!” She laughs heartily, only to suddenly have her axe cut straight in half and herself lifted off the ground by the collar.
“WIDE OPEN.” The knight speaks one more time.
Susie struggles and punches and kicks and bites, but she has no items, and her efforts don’t do jack or shit to the knight’s armor. All it does is stare up at her, its visor still etched with a grin.
“Uh...” Susie stutters nervously, “... Shit.”
But as soon as it looks like it’s finally about to end her, it drops her to the ground. She scrambles for her broken weapon, but the knight meets her efforts by placing its blade on her shoulder again. Pressing down. “DON’T.” It says. And she finds herself forced to obey for fear of invoking a lack of mercy.
And just when she thinks it’s about to do something else, something even worse... It just... leaves. It turns around and walks away. Susie, Ralsei, and Kris who just got back up are all stunned by this action. But they watch it, as it walks away. Then Susie shakes her head, “Wait, no, NO! That’s bullshit! It just came here to beat the crap out of us and leave!? I’m chasing that thing!” And chase she does, with Kris getting up and following. As they give chase, the Knight picks up and sprints through the grand doors.
By the time they get outside, it’s already far down the street, so they both book it as fast as they can. They end up chasing it all the way down to the shelter, only for the doors to slam shut in their faces. Susie kicks the door in frustration, “OPEN UP, YOU ASSHOLE! OPEN! UP!” She kicks it so hard the panel falls off. With a heavy sigh, she says, “Crap. Right when we had a chance... This keypad looks pretty long too. No way we’re bruteforcing it.” She turns to leave, “Come on, Kris. We’ll get into that thing and kick the knight’s ass eventually. Let’s go help unfreeze Tenna.”
But Kris lingers behind, glaring at the door as it remains shut. Except for a tiny sliver left open, with two eyes glaring back. Kris walks up to the door, as close as they can get without being inside, and says its name. The door slams shut. Kris leaves. By the time they get back to Susie, Ralsei has already defrosted Tenna completely. Turns out the spell wasn’t actually that permanent after all. But Susie can’t help but notice the dark grimace on Kris’ face, the way they sit in the distance, staring into nothing and brooding. She doesn’t address it, not yet. But they seal the fountain when everything is said and done, and collapse into sleep again, exhausted.