Chapter Text
If you have already read RESET to the Future, you can skip to chapter 2 unless you want a refresher on what happened. If you have not yet read it, then you are highly encouraged to do so now, instead of reading this chapter. If you really want to start with this story, then you should at least read the following plot summary of RESET to the Future, which of course will contain many spoilers.
The story begins five years after the events of Undertale. Monster Kid asks Frisk on a date, and Frisk unexpectedly says yes. With the help of Sans and Asriel, MK decides to take Frisk up to the summit of Mount Ebott, where they have a fun night of stargazing together. Eventually, Frisk decides to show MK the hole where they originally fell into the Underground.
It’s at this point in the story when everything goes wrong.
The two of them fall into the hole, and wake up five years in the past, on the day when Frisk originally fell. They proceed from the Ruins into Snowdin and then Waterfall, following the original path of Undertale fairly closely, but with full memory of the canonical sequence of events. Once they reach Waterfall, they run into Goner Kid, who introduces them to Gaster.
Gaster explains how it would be possible to return to their original timeline, and Goner Kid accompanies them through the rest of the Underground. We also learn that Gaster and the others cannot be held in a monster’s short-term memory, leading to their de facto exclusion from monster society. The goal is to get to the point where Asriel is about to break the barrier, and then use the energy to fix the timeline instead. The plot goes a bit off the rails at this point, but things are close enough to canon that Frisk still ends up fighting Omega Flowey, while MK and Goner Kid watch from the void, through the actual game interface. Frisk emerges from that fight in a rather unhappy state, saying that it was Asriel’s low point the first time around.
Since Frisk neglected to befriend Undyne earlier, they go back to do that now. But by this point, the whole “we’re time travelers from the future” thing is no longer a secret, and Undyne demands that Frisk explain why Alphys is so withdrawn and unhappy. Frisk takes Undyne and Papyrus into the True Lab, much to Alphys’s consternation. Everyone leaves the two of them alone, but Flowey manages to trap Frisk and MK in the elevator like in canon, and then warps them up to New Home.
The final confrontation with Asriel is a bit different to canon, but Frisk is ultimately able to reach him, this time using their own memories of their last five years together as adoptive siblings (instead of Chara’s memories). With everyone’s help, Goner Kid fixes the timeline, bringing them all forward to the evening of Frisk and MK’s date. She explains that, while fixing the timeline, she also saved Asriel by reaching back in time and preserving his SOUL, returning it to him at the moment the barrier broke (and creating a causality loop, since Asriel had already been rescued at the beginning of the story). She posits that this discontinuity in the timeline can be used as leverage to rescue Gaster and his other followers, and promises to work with Sans to make this happen. With the timelines fixed, Sans can’t do shortcuts anymore, but everyone considers this a fair price to pay in exchange for saving Asriel.
Miscellaneous information:
- The Genocide/No Mercy route has never been attempted.
- In general, Frisk has killed few or no monsters, across all of their runs.
- Frisk repeatedly redid the Pacifist run many times, trying to save Asriel, before eventually giving up and leaving him behind. That was the first time anyone realized that Asriel had already been saved.
- Most of the characters have undergone significant development over the last five years. In particular, Asriel spent much of that time in therapy.
You might also want to read In Memoriam, but it’s not required reading, so no summary will be provided.