Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It had been a surprisingly exhausting day for Noelle. Not school, but what happened afterwards. Falling asleep like that when they should have been doing their group project, having that bizarre dream that she could still feel the fatigue of (imagine being more tired after waking up instead of less), and then rushing over to the hospital only for Susie and Kris to practically follow her there...

Needless to say, she excused herself for several reasons, not the least of which being that she had endured enough nonsense today without Kris’ dumb pranks following her to what feels like the ends of the earth. But, just as she gets outside the hospital and starts to stretch before heading home, she notices something...odd. A building across the street that she hadn’t noticed until now. One that, by all rights, probably shouldn’t be there. Some kind of shop with a sign out front that says “GARAGE SALE”. Sure enough, the place looks like a run down garage with a bunch of tables and items laid out. Nobody appears to be present.

Her curiosity gets the best of her as she chooses to approach, albeit cautiously. The awning provides an atmospheric amount of darkness as she enters and begins to look around, finding all sorts of strange trinkets and nick-knacks strewn across the table. They all seem like mundane decorations and toys, some broken down electronics that might as well be as old as the dinosaurs.

Nothing in particular catches her eye as it glazes over everything. Not worth spending her allowance on, anyways. But as she turns to leave, she hears a whisper from behind her, “Pssst. Hey, kid.”

She whips around like lightning, taking a timid step back from the source of the sound. Standing there before her, behind one of the tables, is a large, shadowy figure with what looks like a trench coat and a comically tall top hat that has seen better days. Only, he wasn’t there just a second ago. Noelle stutters a response out, “H-Hello? Is this... your shop?”

“You could say that.” he responds in a raspy, quiet voice approximating an old-timey mafioso with a smoking problem. “I am, indeed, the proprietor of this humble garage sale, as you may call it. And I can see you, my deer lass, have quite the particular eye for wares.”

“Uhh...” Noelle takes another step back, face scrunching up with a forced smile as she nods along “A particular eye...?” And out of the corner of her eye, something dark moves within the shadows. A cat of some kind leaping onto a cabinet that she can’t make out the details or exact location of, its eyes colorful and glowing, toothily smiling at her. An oddly shaped tail drags behind it, illuminated just enough to make out its presence but not its shape.

Despite it nearly stealing her attention away, the monster (or man?) before her continues with an explanation, “None of my wares seem to interest you, despite their peculiarities. My...odds and ends aren’t your everyday household conversation starters, I can tell you that much! And yet, you don’t seem to care for any of them. Now, what’s a monster like me supposed to do to earn an honest sale around here?” He makes a welcoming gesture with his arms spread out, not letting his trench coat open at all.

Noelle stares up at him for a moment to parse what he’s trying to tell her, then asks, “You could, um... tell me your name?” She tries her damnedest to smile despite how pants-shittingly scared she is.

“Of course!” he obliges. “The name’s Uncle Shady. But you can call me Slim.”

Noelle stares up at him, eyes narrowed as if waiting for a punchline that never comes. “Um...” she tries to speak, but can’t find the words. “(UNCLE!? SHADY!? ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? KRIS, I SWEAR, IF THIS ANOTHER PRANK...!)” And, well, she tries to clear that up by attempting to call them out directly, “Um, Kris? If this is another prank, you can stop now. I’m really tired today.”

“Kris?” Slim asks, befuddled by her befuddlement, “I assure you I am no Kris. Never heard of ‘em.”

Clearly that wasn’t going to work, so she attempts to completely bail on this otherworldly situation, “O-Okay, well, I need to get going! Mom’s going to be home soon and I don’t want to be late and...”

But he flags her down before she runs out, with an offer, “Whoa, whoa, there! Let’s not be too hasty with that retreat! I’m just an honest salesman, I promise! Come back in, tell me what you like and I’ll find something you absolutely will not regret!”

Noelle stops for a moment, just to be nice.

“All of my items are special, unique. You won’t ever find another like ‘em. And I got plenty! So what kinds of items do you like?”

Despite the fact that she’s literally living in what she KNOWS is surely the opening of a shitty internet creepypasta, she can’t help but wonder exactly what kind of strange cursed object she’s going to find here. And if anyone is genre-savvy enough to beat this stupid narrative and prove they’re better than some kind of knockoff Sonic.exe, it’s her. She just has to remember all the tropes! But without any further hesitation and charged with a certain excitement to live out those cheesy horror stories for herself, she takes a step back in and answers, “Um, well, I... I like video games!”

Classic answer. If there’s one type of creepypasta she’s familiar with, it’s haunted games. Slim retreats behind one of his tables and opens a drawer just out of view, “Oh, very good! I have JUST the thing that will pique your interest! Observe...”

He lays down an oddly pristine-looking game cart that has no official stamps, seals, or labels. Just a piece of tape over it with a word written in sharpie: “DELTARUNE.” Slim explains, “This game never saw the light of day, cancelled while still in development seven years ago. The developers were proud of its innovative features, but the playtesters were so freaked out by how lifelike it was that it even spooked the company... The project was dead before it could ship, and this is the only remaining copy. One of a kind, never going to find another like it. It’s a once in a lifetime deal, and I’m offering it to you for the rock bottom price of five. Dollars. That’s right, just five little smackeroos! The price of a single meal, for today! What do you say?”

It’s almost too bad...or good, to be true. It’s almost word-for-word exactly what she expected to find! She even has an old console to play it on, somewhere in her room. She’d have to dust it off, but she could do it! Her very own haunted video game. But just to make sure it’s not the super dangerous type, she asks, “...This thing’s not gonna make some demon come out of the TV and kill me, right?”

He almost recoils at the accusation, “What!? Oh, heavens no! My wares may be a little quirky at times, but you have my 100% cash-back guarantee that none of them are lethal when used as intended!”

“When used as intended?” Noelle senses a string attached.

“As intended. After all, I can’t be held responsible if I sell a guy a chainsaw and he dusts himself trying to juggle the damn thing, can I?”

She hadn’t considered that. Truly, anything can kill you if you’re stupid enough. But with that aside, she decides that she’d rather not sit here bargaining with the man or trying to figure out some weird, arcane caveat to the supposedly perfectly normal video game. So, she whips out her fat stacks and puts a humble five dollars down for it. Even if she doesn’t touch it ever again, it’s still a good...conversation starter, as he said.

He takes the money and hands her the cart, “Pleasure doin’ business with ya.”

Noelle bows and turns to leave, only for him to suddenly stop her, “Oh, now wait there just a moment! I almost forgot...” She turns back around to see him handing her a strange controller, “You’ll need this. It’s a special controller made just for the game. You won’t be able to even get it started without this! I’ll throw it in free of charge.”

The controller, of course, looks surprisingly normal aside from the presence of a speaker and the ugly pink and yellow color of its buttons. Strange for something from over a decade ago. Come to think, strange that a game for a console this old would be made just seven years ago. But regardless, she makes her way out of the overly ominous store and starts to walk down the street.

But she begins to have second thoughts. What if that guy had MORE haunted and/or cursed things that she just totally missed out on? With that thought somehow in her head, she turns back around...

...only to find that the building is entirely gone. Replaced by trees. “Yeah.” she says to herself aloud, eyes wide, “I should have expected that. I bet I’m going to wake up tomorrow and see that he’s actually been dead for a week on the news.”

Disregarding all of this, she heads home in high spirits. Back in her room, she dusts off the old console and hooks it up, having to get an old CRT TV out of the basement just to get the right inputs for the cords. Then she sets out to prepare. Every single protection charm Catti taught her? Check. Salt? Check. Religious symbols? Check. Easy access to the power cable? Check. Lots of water? Check. Towel? Check. She even gets her dad’s gun from his safe (they’re the only two people who know the combination) just in case a serial killer tries to come after her. Oh, and can’t forget Dess’ old bat. And snacks. Plenty of snacks.

After all, it might be the day before church, but she was going to pull an all-nighter if she had to just to get the full creepypasta experience. Upon further examination of the cart, she starts to wonder why on earth anyone would make a game called “DELTARUNE” after the town’s niche little prophecy. And why is it one word instead of two? It even has the little symbol on the back. And the controller isn’t particularly odd in how it looks, but how it...doesn’t. It’s completely normal aside from the speaker. Maybe it’s some kind of horror thing where the game records her voice and uses it against her? She ponders its potential uses more, but ends up deciding to just see what’s up with it.

And so, with a slight bit of hesitation, she pops the cart in and powers the console on. Much to her displeasure, the TV goes black, then back to static. For a moment, she starts to wonder if the damn thing’s broken. Then she’d have to get a bunch of adapters for modern TVs, figure out how they work, set up the display options, and it wouldn’t even be formatted correctly for 4:3 and it wouldn’t have the scan-lines—

But then the screen goes back to black. It falls silent. She sits back down, preparing herself for a jumpscare that she would still be scared by. And it doesn’t come. Instead, she hears...snoring?

The screen fades away from black to reveal...

“...Susie? KRIS!?” she practically yells, scooting back a bit in shock. In front of her are Kris and Susie. Or at least, pixelated versions of them. Just...sitting there on some kind of weird, demonic, fucked up couch with eyes and legs.

Then the Susie on the screen wakes up from her slumber and nudges Kris awake. “Hey, we’re in a dark world!” she says. And that starts to jog Noelle’s memory, “...Dark world? She said...? Wait, that’s what the thing in my dream was called... Why...?”

But before she can think about it further, the dialogue continues without her. The two of them roll out of the couch’s warm embrace, and Noelle finds herself staring at the motionless duo. She looks down at the controller and taps an arrow key. Kris moves. She taps it again. They move again. She raises an eyebrow, “Oookay. This is...a little creepy.” she admits. She had been prepared for a jumpscare or some over the top hyper-realistic blood and gore, but for some reason this very normal, subtle oddness hits her far harder than either of those options. She briefly considers turning the game off, but then her preparations would have all been for nothing! So she presses onward.

The place she traverses is odd, to say the least. Wind howling, a dark abyss below, strange dusty creatures littering the landscape, winding bridges that only lead in one direction, massive cliffsides... And then that strange goat boy she saw in her dream shows up. Ralsei. And Susie starts telling him all about how her day went, how she went home with Kris and ate a whole pie, watched movies all night... Noelle smiles faintly. As creepy as it is to be controlling these strange video game versions of them, that does sound like the Kris she knows. And to see those two finally getting along, she can’t help but adore her just a little more.

She continues. They keep talking on the way down through the cliffs, making small talk... But then Susie mentions the festival, and how Ralsei should come with them. It gives her pause, “Wait... The festival? That’s... the day after tomorrow, isn’t it? How on earth...?” But then she remembers, smacking herself on the forehead, “Duh, it’s a haunted game, of course it knows! Honestly, Noelle, what are you thinking? I feel like I’m starting to become just as stupid as those protagonists.”

But at the same time, hearing Susie so earnestly trying to invite Ralsei out, she can’t help but feel just a tad bit jealous. Still, this is just a virtual Susie. She could ask the real one out tomorrow! To the festival, anyways. No way she had the courage to ask for a straight-up date yet when neither of them had talked much since they met.

Well, she gets to a part where Ralsei begins to explain why exactly he can’t come with them. There are those words again she’d heard in her dream: Darkners, Light Worlds, Dark Worlds. And then she sees some kind of beaten up room displayed on screen, a lone chair at its center, a poster of a kaiju on the wall. She begins to wonder whose exactly that could be, “(Susie likes giant monster movies, right? I mean, there was the Susiezilla thing. And she looks like she has a pretty bad home life... Is that her room? How does the game know what her room...)” she catches herself again “It’s haunted! It’s 100% haunted! Of course!”

“You see, when it gets dark, things become more indistinct. A chair can look like a monster. A poster can look like it’s moving. Your eyes can’t see the truth anymore. And when the light runs out... You see nothing.”

As the explanation continues, she finds herself nodding along. That was all far too familiar an explanation. Something Dess had always told her was that the inbetweens of light and dark are scarier than pure darkness. When you can just barely make things out, your brain plays tricks on you. When you can’t see anything, it doesn’t even have the room. Just like he said.

“But what if? What if it became even darker? Darker than dark.”

She had heard that somewhere before, too, though she can’t remember from where.

“What if we could take away the light that wasn’t there until we reached the other side? If that were to happen... You could start to see things again.”

Eyes. Eyes everywhere, the screen is covered in eyes. And a strange silhouette. Cat-like. But with too many legs. Noelle finds herself scooting back, trying to look away from the screen, but unable to. The droning, off-key music doesn’t help. Whatever mood of whimsy she had was slowly draining into a kind of subconscious dread at the sight of whatever this too-familiar thing is.

And then the laugh. The smile. The eyes. Just like that shady guy’s cat. It jumps out at her, as if threatening to breach the television’s screen, but it doesn’t. It fades away, leaving her jumping to her hooves and dropping the controller. She backs up into her couch, dropping onto her backside, shaking. Of course, she was always easily scared, and she was supposed to be ready for a jumpscare. But somehow, it caught her off-guard anyways.

But she steels herself and walks back over, picking up the controller and continuing. Some cheap cat jumpscare wasn’t ever going to deter her from this unfortunate endeavor. But something strange rings with Ralsei’s next line:

“An alternate view of reality through the lens of shadow. In other words...an illusion.”

Seeing the darkners before her illuminated and turned into that old abandoned classroom fills her with a sense of loneliness that she can’t quite put her finger on. Something dreadful. She had fallen asleep in the computer lab, right? And that dream, that “Dark World”; it was all computers, right? They had to seal the fountain. Queen talked all about those fountains. About the knight who made hers. Kris went to seal it, and then...

She looks down at the controller, even as the dialogue continues unabated. And just as she glances back up from her thought, she sees queen herself standing in Kris’ house. Transforming into a laptop. Ralsei even says as much.

“(Was it... Was it real?)” she starts to wonder. She had already been on the verge of believing that, or at least wanting to, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny. Even if this is just a haunted video game, even if it could read her mind, her memories, her dreams, and make new things out of them...this all still made too much sense.

And Susie, bless her heart, refuses to believe that none of it was real. Despite Ralsei’s insistence otherwise, she continues to stubbornly refuse a reality in front of her. “(She’s... So nice...)” Noelle stares at her tiny little pink sprite, starting to truly believe this is the real Susie. “(Has she always been like this? I knew she couldn’t be as bad as everyone said, but to think she’s like this...)” She can almost feel her heart skip a beat as she cups her own cheek, trying to cover the rising blush from nobody in particular. Perhaps herself. She can’t help but think, “(That’s... adorable!)”

But just as she becomes enthralled in Susie’s passion being on full display, lights come on and ruin the moment completely. That, in fact, is probably the part that unnerved her the most. And to call out the tears she’s currently shedding... It’s almost mean. And then some...goofy looking VHS introduction of a guy named Tenna with a TV for a head starts to play. If she weren’t so upset by Susie being interrupted, she’d probably find it funny. But before she realizes what’s happening, Tenna sweeps the crew up into a game show and she finds herself in charge of...a name. Rather, three initials. It’s almost like a bad joke, to go from this bizarre, spooky haunted game about her own real life friends to some wacky game show host.

Well, no point in delaying the inevitable. The game already proved it would keep going on its own if she doesn’t act. Only trouble is, what is the game asking for? Kris’ name? That’s who she’s controlling, after all. Or her name? Well, obviously if she wants maximum spookiness, she should use her own. She inputs NOE.

Of course Susie would put “ASS” as hers. That was just to be expected. She ends up giggling a bit. But when it gets to Kris revealing their — or Noelle’s — initials, she notices that Kris’ sprite jitters a bit. Shakes. Just as soon as revealing it. Yet, the rest of the cast don’t notice it. Not Tenna, not Susie, not Ralsei.

And while the others are posing dramatically in time to enter whatever nonsensical TV land this guy made for them, Kris just...stands there, staring down at the initials. She can’t make out their expression from this tiny sprite, but it feels off. Well, until she can’t see it anymore and they transition to the game world.

She regains control of another, smaller Kris this time and starts wandering through this “Desert World”. And it seems just a little bit familiar. Too familiar. Like she’s played a game just like this before, but different in a small way. The 8-bit music radiates through her, bringing back old memories of when she first played Dragon Blazers. “(That must be it.)” she surmises. “(It does kind of look like the first game...)”

She blazes through the first quiz, but stops herself at the first battle. It’s far too overly familiar with the first encounter she had in Cyber World to be a coincidence. Same eerie change in scenery, same game-y mechanics, turn based... But she shakes the feeling. She already accepted that this was going to be far too similar to her dream to ignore.

The second quiz gives her a bit of trouble on the last section, though. Lancer’s name. Of course, she never really encountered Lancer at all, only heard Susie briefly mention him in passing. So she goes with whatever Susie picks, which turns out to be right.

Throughout the rest of the board, she combs through it like she’s looking for lice, ending up mildly upset that she can’t get past the long corridor of trees that has cacti at the end blocking what is obviously a second area. She finds all four keys, and only screws up the final quiz a little bit. The blushing cactus reminds her of Krismas, her own pet cactus. Kris always loved cacti for some reason. “(If only Berdly hadn’t named it...)” she shudders “(...Tsunstun...)”

But finally comes time for the physical challenge. And while she does get mildly distracted by Susie’s cook outfit and would gladly kiss her “my ass”, she uses her hardcore gamer experience to completely demolish the entire segment, earning a total S-rank.

She almost manages to forget she’s surrounded by occult talismans and playing a haunted video game in the dark. That is, until she enters the green room and stumbles upon the S-rank changing room. She can immediately tell that something is off about this place when she notices the depressing, repetitive music and the poor state of the room. Then Ramb. Ramb, who mentions the old days with Kris. How they want to have REAL fun. To have FREEDOM.

She isn’t quite sure why, but that also sounds familiar in a sense. She can’t quite place her finger on why, but proceeds into the room he ushers Kris into anyways. But oddly enough, the minigame TV that she brings Kris to doesn’t seem to work properly. Finding it strange, she goes to ask Ramb about it, only to find an item on the ground. The “ODDCONTROLLER”. Funny, that’s how she would initially describe what she’s using now.

But, that must be what this game wanted. She goes back and restarts the minigame with the controller, and...it works. No error. Although it also doesn’t show the title of the game. It flashes a series of odd colors, making a shrill glitchy sound as the graphics boot up...showing her controlling Kris, again. Noelle, controlling Kris, controlling a smaller, more pixelated version of Kris. With that strange red heart thing inside of it.

The 8-bit ocean waves crashing in the distance of the game’s soundtrack sends a shiver down her spine, combined with everything else. It isn’t just familiar at this point. It’s what’s happening. “(...It’s like, a game. Within a game. Within...)” she sighs, shaking her head, “This is getting a bit much. Why is this...?”

She tries moving around. The cave where the previous board’s shop was is replaced by a completely silent, dark, empty one. The rest of the map is filled with harmless wandering creatures who entirely ignore the tiny 8-bit Kris. She starts to walk around in it, wondering if the cacti have been removed. They haven’t. She searches every corner of the map, only to find the stairs that once led to the mail room already open. Traveling within, she finds...a sword. She pauses to stare at it. So far, the game has been entirely non-violent. She ACTed, just as she had in her dream, and it worked fine. Even though it ended in a couple getting divorced. Upon second thought, that probably would upset Kris if this were real.

But, now...it’s just giving her a sword. “(Why?)” she asks herself. But she still picks it up. She can’t progress without it, after all. It doesn’t help that picking it up plays such an incredibly ominous jingle, starting off chipper like she just found a cool key item in Dragon Blazers but trailing off into something disharmonious. And then the dramatic, over-the-top adventure music starts playing.

The nonviolence the game started out with makes her first virtual kill feel even worse, despite how clearly unrealistic it is. For some reason, seeing that tiny harmless sprite of some kind of creature get turned into nothingness in a single poke of the sword makes her second-guess her actions. “(Well, it’s just a game, right?)” she tries to tell herself. “(I mean, it’s as far removed from me as possible. And it’s just... It’s just the first Dragon Blazers! That’s all it is! So why am I starting to regret this?)”

Despite her regret, she continues. She cuts down every enemy on the map in sequence. Tiny Kris’ level increases. And with it, she gains the ability to cut down bushes. Then more monsters. And eventually, there are no more monsters she can find. Yet, nowhere to go. She tries attacking just about everything in sight, eventually finding out she can now cut down cacti.

Cut down cacti. “(I can... Oh!)” She finally figures it out, running back to the hall of trees to cut her way into the new area. An odd, linear area in an eyesight-destroying shade of blue. More monsters. She destroys them all. Her level goes up to max.

And...the music stops. The ocean waves return. An eerie almost-silence. She sits there for a minute, just soaking in the atmosphere of the situation. A fear she can’t name places itself firmly on her back, weighing down her decision. It’s as if the game just took back what it wanted her to do. But she can’t just stop now, not after coming all this way. She backtracks, quickly discovering she can now destroy trees.

So she makes her way to a final room that she passed earlier containing a bird enemy with a shockingly large amount of HP. Far more than the other enemies, but it falls quickly all the same. And then she wanders, all the way back to the start, to see if that empty cave now has anything in it. And oddly enough, she hears a text sound as she enters. But there are no words.

Moving up into the room to try to find something, anything, perhaps a hidden interactable object, she stumbles through words in black text. “Having fun?” they ask, as if taunting her. She quickly retreats, eager to finally get out of this odd minigame. But the big double doors are sealed shut. And then she remembers...the entire level is covered in trees. That she can cut down, now. So she does, turning and immediately going to chop them all down only to suddenly stumble upon a second part of the big pyramid at the start of the map. And another dark room. With a pair of glowing eyes inside.

As soon as she exits it, its entrance vanishes. Then she goes left. Another. This time, it has a smile inside. It, too, vanishes when she leaves. It’s that same thing again. That damn cat-like creature that was apparently stalking her throughout the entire game if the intro was any indication, the shopkeeper’s cat. “(Maybe...)” she starts to question herself “(Maybe I should really stop playing. This is getting way too weird.)” But she doesn’t. Her curiosity gets the better of her. After all, there are still secrets to uncover.

Like the bridge that was suspiciously out of reach, blocked by a tree at the bottom of the map. Entirely inaccessible, just like the blue area. As she wanders inside, she finds herself faced with a series of downward staircases. Going down one leads to another dark cave. She walks forward, expecting something to be there.

And oh, there is. But she isn’t expecting it. The sudden sight of something dark floating up, the sound it makes, causes Noelle to catapult right out of her seat on the floor and fall backwards, her heart and mind racing to figure out just what that thing was. Obviously not harmful. Not immediately. It’s just not there. It said something, but it’s not there anymore.

“(It... It didn’t just fly out of the TV, did it? It’s not...IN here, is it? I mean, I have the protection charms! It shouldn’t be able to! I mean, I...)” In her paranoid state, she starts to look around the room, searching for something dark that could be stalking her. But it’s too dark to make out. She recalls Dess’ words of wisdom, about the inbetween of dark and light, and goes to turn the lights on. But...there’s nothing. It’s just her room. Filled with artificial light and the ominous sounds of crashing waves. She stands there for a good minute before deciding that this was good enough, turning off the light, and returning to the game.

If nothing else, she wants to know what it said. Same gimmick as before, “See you soon.”

That certainly doesn’t help. “(Oh sweet angel, what am I doing? I’m totally gonna die tonight.)” she tells herself, heart still pounding at the thought of what she must have just unleashed upon the world. A guilt, like opening Pandora’s Box. Or the Demon Ruins in MediEvil.

But with no place else left to turn, she goes back to the board and just starts cutting down every tree in sight until she finds something. Anything. Just to get her and Kris out of this stupid game. Endless seas of trees, cutting and cutting...until she finds a chest. Something about it makes her hesitant to approach, but her curiosity is apparently entirely suicidal today. When she opens it...silence.

“YOU GOT THE ICE KEY.”

The words type slowly on screen, with “ICE KEY” being colored blue. A high-pitched, grating jingle plays in slow motion, a similar discordant melody of just a few notes to what this strange game had already been showing her. Something about the waves, the key, the changing room, the sword...all of them just seemed to be interlinked in some way that she can’t quite figure out.

And then it just...cuts off. The TV in the game, that is. And the tiny 8-bit Kris is gone. The next most realistic one stops playing. They...don’t do anything. Just shake slightly, put the controller down, and turn around to stare. Stare directly at the screen. At Noelle.

It wasn’t the first time. Kris’ sprite always does this at the end of a cutscene, she had noticed. But for some reason, it feels more personal this time. Especially with how downcast they look. Although, they always look like that. Perhaps “more downcast than usual” is more accurate.

But with the game finally over, she retreats from the room. She tries to interrogate Ramb on what the hell that was supposed to be, but all he does is ramble. Kris apparently isn’t keen on asking about it all. And at this point, that starts to get a little bit on Noelle’s nerves. “Couldn’t they have added some kind of option to ask about it?” she asks herself aloud.

And as if Kris could hear her, they turn to the screen again. Noelle does NOT like that one bit. “(Must be what the speaker on the controller is for: verbally interacting with...)”

Upon realizing this, she gasps quietly, horror etched onto her face. “Oh god, they can hear everything, can’t they?” she asks. No response from the game. “...Or not? Maybe they can, or... are they pretending not to?”

Either way, the fact that it COULD be recording her voice creeps her out to such a degree that she runs over to her desk to get a piece of tape just to block the speaker before continuing. Anything to thwart whatever demonic entity was haunting this game.

Now, she could run through the game and do everything she can possibly manage, try to absolutely 100% clear everything, experience every experience, but by now her interest is entirely focused on that also extremely creepy minigame. It just ended abruptly, after all! So she decides to skip past the other reward rooms and go straight to the next board...

Chapter Text

In the next scene that plays out in front of her, between Tenna and Susie...

“Oh, Susie...” Noelle swoons. “I wish I knew how thoughtful you are before... Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to talk to you. Well! Assuming, you know, this game is like, accurate. To her. In real life. I mean, it’s just a game, and a haunted one! It can’t be THAT realistic! Although... I guess I wouldn’t mind if this part were real.”

But then Tenna starts talking about Kris. About his doubts that they actually like TV. But the thought? Laughable. Noelle even scoffs at it, “Of course they do! Or, did. We used to watch TV all the time!” she rambles on as if she’s arguing with him “Doesn’t like TV... Well, I can think of a reason.” Her words are oddly venomous, spat out in disdain of the very notion. “A few reasons... Maybe if anyone cared, they would ask.” A bitter resentment she didn’t know she had inside of her suddenly bubbled out, revealing to herself an insecurity that she wasn’t ready to face. After thinking about it for a moment, she looks back up, shocked by her own words, and tries to rationalize, “Oh, wow... I didn’t... That sounded a lot meaner than it should have. Glad nobody heard that! I bet Kris would hate me if they...”

The Susie sprite is looking at Kris, a mix of concern and surprise. “Uh, Kris? What was that?” she asks. A silence in the game, followed by her speaking again, “Nothing? No, I’m pretty sure I heard you ranting about something. Were you...eavesdropping on us? Not that I’m mad, I thought you were coming with, but... That didn’t sound much like you, either. Kind of sounded like...”

Kris reaches over and puts their hand over her mouth, muffling her. She stops talking for just a moment before pulling their hand away, “Whoa, what’s up? Haven’t seen you THIS freaked out since that weird guy we fought in Queen’s mansion. You good?”

Noelle freezes up, grasping the controller in an iron grip of pure tension as she stares at the screen, looking between it and the controller. “(They... Can they still hear me? But I taped over the... I taped over the speaker! How...?)” She gulps, “(Okay, Noelle, calm down, you just have to stay. Quiet. The demon can’t hear you if you don’t talk! And neither can they.)”

So she doesn’t. She swears to herself to zip her mouth shut. The scene tries its best to play out as normal, although Ralsei appears to be...completely horrified by what transpired in front of him. He can’t help but look towards the screen whenever possible. She can feel his eyes burrowing into her across whatever dimension separates them. She tries to tell herself, “(It’s okay, they’re just characters in a game. It’s not real.)” but she can’t sweep away all of her doubts.

Despite all of that, she pushes on, determined to see this experience through to the end. You can’t just buy a cursed game and not beat it! Absolute slander.

The second board is a beach. She doesn’t bother trying to 100% complete all of it this time, although she does take herself wherever her curiosity demands. That just so happens to lead her to a moss-covered wall, which Kris eats off of. “Of course.” Noelle comments before returning to the game.

And also of course, she ends up figuring out how to make Kris and Susie’s 8-bit counterparts wear the ribbons. Susie loses her shit over it, making Noelle giggle uncontrollably. But otherwise, she tries to get through it as fast as possible, getting the three photos and entering the raft to the ocean.

But she stops. She recalls in other RPGs with surfing mechanics that there were often cool secrets in places that would seem out of bounds at first. So despite wanting to just get to the next S-rank game, she takes her time exploring. She makes it to the Isle of Love, raising a brow at the display it shows her, and then tries to just keep going up far past the point where Tenna tells her to stop. At first it seems like it’s going to just loop like he says, but she stubbornly keeps going, until she sees tiny glaciers. Immediately, Tenna cuts the broadcast and teleports the crew back to where they’re supposed to be.

Noelle shakes her head in disbelief. To think that he had the guts to do that to her! Well, she’s far braver in fiction than in reality, so she just goes right back...only to find the path blocked by signs. With a disgruntled groan, she backtracks and does the map as intended, getting the divorced couple back together with...some guy called Rouxls Kaard?

Well, Tenna leaves for a moment, and in that brief moment she decides to go rogue and try to get back to the northern part of the map that he blocked her out from. There, she finds...nothing. A giant icy glacier with no NPCs, nothing. Just a bush blocking her path. “If only I had that sword right now...” she ponders aloud.

“Sword? What?” Susie asks as if she heard that. “You already have one, just use that.”

But she can’t. Kris can’t. For some reason. And Kris remains silent. Susie tries to go up and pull the bush out, but it won’t budge. So they all collectively decide to leave, and Noelle agrees. She makes them go back, to finish the game up finally and get back to the interesting part.

And she sure does get to an interesting part. Of all things she could have encountered, a damn rhythm game! Tenna begins talking about it, about...the past. He mentions December. Her wild antics, the music videos. And as she realizes what the mechanics are, what the song is, the band...the memories all start rushing back to her. The cold bitter loneliness she usually feels gets washed away as her blood starts pumping, the intro to the song starts, and years of muscle memory playing Guitar Hero on Expert difficulty comes back to kick her ass into gear. She starts to absolutely SLAM the controller’s buttons with every note, and even sings along with the real lyrics of the song. Not Ralsei’s censored ones. Susie is so stunned she actually stops smashing the drum set to pieces just long enough to actually start playing properly, and Ralsei starts screwing up his own singing out of shock.

Needless to say, despite only having played this game once, the song has been so thoroughly stuck in her head the past several years that she can’t help but nail it almost perfectly. As if the beats were ingrained into her very soul. As the song ends, she drops the controller and yells out, “BLOOD CRUSHERRRRS!” while making devil horns with her fingers.

While Tenna compliments them, Ralsei and Susie just stand there stunned by Kris’ (and Noelle’s by extension) performance. She earns her S-rank and heads straight to the changing room after all the dialogue is over. But before she continues, she chugs an entire bottle of water and calms herself down. The memories the song dug up still mark a fresh wound, and she dwells on them until she’s ready to continue. Still tinged in bitterness, despite it all. She raises up Dess’ bat in memory.

Onwards to the minigame, it starts up just like last time. Now she’s in the second board with 8-bit Kris. Same gimmick. Same sword. But the music...somehow, it seems to be a bit slower this time around. Deeper, lower. Almost hesitant to continue. But she isn’t. She knows what she needs to do, and goes about slaying every enemy on the map. But this time, the music doesn’t cut off at max level, it cuts off at level 2. Curious, she continues to wander around the map aimlessly, trying to find a way out. Then, she remembers the bushes. They’re at the waterfall, and she can cut them down. But surely she can’t just swim upstream, right? Wrong, apparently. She goes right up, and gets a giddy feeling in her stomach like she just figured out something she wasn’t supposed to.

There’s another boat to the open ocean, except now there’s no Tenna to stop her. No signs, and soon enough, no bush. So she goes north, and north, and north until she hits that barren glacier again. She cuts down the bush. And there, she encounters...a door. With the delta rune on it. Except, not quite. The center is a keyhole, what looks like the usual circle but with an extra triangle taped onto it. And the wings, they aren’t angel wings, but demon wings. She approaches it.

“UNLOCKED WITH THE ICE KEY.”

The words are again, slow, and the door opens with a faded thud. The screen fades to black, then to something...new. A dungeon of some kind, reminiscent of Dragon Blazers once again. And this first room, she starts to realize, “...Wait, this looks like... No, it can’t be...”

But the music doesn’t lie. It’s the same. That droning, melancholic, discordant, repetitive sound that the underground dungeons would make. That the Glacier dungeon would play. It’s almost an exact replica, but...off. By just one degree. One tiny degree. Just a shade too blue, just a note or two off from the original, just a tad bit too dark, too empty. Every little jingle is off-tune, every enemy familiar yet different. But she’s been through this before and knows what to do. Kill all of the enemies, again. And boy, does she try. And for some, it works, but the grey enemies and the blue bird are invincible. Even to a level 3 sword.

“Blue bird...” she thinks aloud, “Why is that...?”

But she pushes the thought aside as she keeps getting hit by the enemies. Focusing tighter, she reaches a room with a hint: “FOLLOW THE WHITE CLOAK.”

“White Cloak” it says. Another familiar term. There was a character like that in Dragon Blazers. In a particular dungeon she remembered spending a lot of time in. Continuing further, past a room of particularly difficult enemies, she finds another hint: “THE FORBIDDEN PATH BEGAN WITH ICE MAGIC.”

“(Ice magic...)” she thinks. “(I... That’s the kind of magic I had in my dream. Or at least, I tried to use it. Kris said not to, so... Forbidden, though? Did we dodge a bullet? Wait, what am I thinking? There’s no way this is real. Some stupid game... No.)”

She keeps going, but finds her path blocked by unbreakable trees. But she’s max level now. She cuts them down without hesitation and enters the next room. A figure with a white cloak is there. “That must be the white cloak it mentioned... Weird, it kind of looks like... (My... robes in the dream? They had a hood too...)”

She tries to interact with it, but only attacks it. She flinches slightly at the thought of hurting herself like that, as if this figure is her. And to a degree, she could actually feel...something. Just a slight pinch. It gives her pause, and she leaves the room. It said follow, but the cloak isn’t leading. Kris is. The way blocked by an enemy, she does the only thing she can: attack. The white cloak freezes the enemy into a block, making a hurt sound at the same time. Each time it shoots a projectile, she feels that slight pinch again. The inability to tell whether she’s hallucinating or if this game is really hurting her in real life slowly begins to drive her mind up a wall. Her breathing becomes heavier as she starts to quietly panic, but continues anyways. She quickly figures out the block pushing and powers through every single enemy, making her way back to the blue bird that blocked her path. The same one that she slew in the previous game.

Given there’s no other path...she freezes it. She goes right, and into a very, very familiar room. She tries going right again, but the map just keeps looping. She tries every path, only for it to keep looping. Over and over. And then she realizes why it felt so familiar, as soon as she notices that the white cloak sometimes stops moving.

“It’s... It’s just like that puzzle...” she starts to remember. The one that she got stuck on, that she managed to glitch out. The Ice Palace. Its cross-shaped maze. It’s exactly the same. “Every possible direction” are the words she used to describe her path, but now with the guide, she knows. If it really is true, the final path is up.

Up, up, left, right, right, down, right, right, and...up. To a door. The same one that led into the Ice Palace. Except, this one has a red outline with a pair of devil horns just like the ones Kris used to wear. Nothing else to do, she approaches it and interacts.

“THE ICE KEY WAS USED UP.”

“SHE WAS USED UP.”

The key disappears. The cloak disappears. The door opens. Noelle’s heart sinks the moment that thing which she came to understand might represent her disappears. Gone, just like that. “Used up”, the words haunt her worse than anything she expected to see out of this stupid, stupid game. It didn’t die, it didn’t simply vanish, she doesn’t even know what could have happened to it, what that could mean. “Used up.” Somehow, it feels more...perverse. As if she isn’t even a person, but an object to be used and thrown away. Like a key.

Hesitantly walking forward, still staring down, barely at the screen, the tiny Kris enters a dark abyss. Something greets her.

“Well done. You found my secret hiding place. But there’s nothing here...is there?”

The words are said by nobody in particular. An item is illuminated in the darkness, and she steps up to it. Despite simply sitting there and doing nothing, it’s picked up automatically.

“Oh, you found that, too! Perfect, just perfect... Thanks for all your hard work, Kris! Or should I say...”

But before the entity can finish its sentence, another appears.

“YOU WERE USED UP.”

But this one doesn’t quite have the same ring. “You.” But she already felt attacked by the first. This “You” wasn’t her, was it? It was Kris. It was talking to them, after all. The tiny Kris disappeared in a blur of static.

Kris doesn’t look back at Noelle this time. They just...stare up at the blank screen of the giant TV. Just as Noelle does. For at least another few minutes, the two of them are locked in a similar realm of thought. Not together, but separated by a degree of reality.

Eventually, she gets her wits back and breathes in deeply, breathes out, and picks the controller back up. “Okay.” she tells herself, “I’m ready.”

Of course there had to be MORE to that. Right? She couldn’t just leave well enough alone. Not her. Of course not her. She was never the type to let those things go.

One more round to go before she can see what must be the conclusion to this creepy-ass game. At least, she thought she would be doing that. In reality, she ends up hardwalled by Tenna and what she assumes is a living remote. She starts running around, interacting with every NPC she can find with hopes that one will lead her to the right path, before finally giving up and trying to talk to the remote guy. She doesn’t exactly want to fight him, so she pushes his buttons until he surrenders. She finds herself in another odd, creepy location, but at this point she’s more frustrated than scared.

What blocks her way this time is a parental lock system. With Toriel’s face on it. Noelle rolls her eyes, “Oh come on, I memorized those ages ago! They’re so bad at coming up with passwords...”

But when prompted with the scene that follows, she obviously chooses to pay Susie as much attention as possible. Checking in on her, ask how she’s feeling. And when given the choice...well, obviously she would tell her that her friends are real. “(Honestly, how could anyone be mean to her? She’s so sweet...)” she asks herself as she picks the option. She knows damn well why and how, but that doesn’t make it any less confusing or heartbreaking. And break, it does, for the unadulterated love she puts on display. To someone she would’ve been ruthlessly bullying just days ago, no less. And as she sees that smile, Noelle starts to wonder if, perhaps, there would be any time where she could experience this first-hand, too.

It’s a slow time in this section of the game, so she takes it to mull over those feelings, only continuing forward when she finds the resolve. And after she does, she’s beset by another parental lock. Four digits this time. For music videos.

“Music videos...” she tells herself. “...Dess.” She enters the code knowingly: 1225. A number she’s all too familiar with. In the snow-covered wasteland beyond the door, she isn’t all that surprised to find Toriel waiting inside of a gachapon ball. By all accounts, that was probably the least weird thing so far. Although the fact that it’s Toriel of all people does have her puzzled. But no, the part that truly confuses her is why of all things there is a christmas tree. And the game doesn’t seem very eager to address its presence either. It’s the middle of fall, yes, and her house IS constantly decorated for christmas. But Kris’ house isn’t. Last she checked, they didn’t even put trees up until a day or two before, so why now? Why here?

She takes another moment to think, “(...Wait, why am I criticizing it for NOT being accurate!? I should WANT that! Cheese and crackers, what’s wrong with me!?)”

And another pause “(...Wait, why IS Kris’ mom here!? What does she have to do with any of this!? What!?)”

But as usual, the game continues without her. Tenna catches the gang in the act, hiding behind Toriel, and forces them back to the game board where they refuse to continue playing. Noelle, too, has grown tired of his shenanigans and is forced to simply watch all of this unfold.

That is, she would only be doing that if it’s all that happened. Instead, he traps all three of them in giant balls and forces them to play yet another game: this time as prisoners! Noelle shouts a very audible “WHAT!? YOU LET SUSIE GO RIGHT NOW!” Her voice resonates through the tape, but hardly anyone pays attention or can hear her past the confines of Kris’ spherical prison. She’s forced to sit there and watch them run through a gauntlet of nonsense, and oh, the pipes, the things that come out of the pipes...

“What...are those?” she asks as the black undefined objects bounce and warble in the rain of fire that Kris is forced to dodge. “What is wrong with this TV!?” she continues to ask, knowing damn well what’s wrong with him. More things. More things in the pipes, black things, and he can’t stop them.

When it ends, he starts going truly off the deep end, apologizing, but to who? Not Kris or Susie or Ralsei. Someone else. Another enemy appears, and even as he charges at them, he begs for it not to happen. “The family’s fighting again...” he says.

Noelle grits her teeth. This man already knows far too much about Kris, but to just say that in front of them makes her blood start boiling. “(And as he’s doing all of this...)” she begins to grip the controller so hard that it feels like it might actually break in half if she tries any harder. She picks the act that she knows will let her shoot him with those stupid finger guns, and she absolutely UNLOADS on him. Turns out that was the right move. It feels like overcoming the antagonist of one of these scary stories using your wit and sheer force of will, breaking the game’s rules... And yet it continues. Another challenge, another quiz, another battle. And she knows just by look at the acts exactly what she has to do. Power him off.

To her dismay, it does not actually do that, it just teleports the gang away. With a relieved sigh from the idea that she just saved her friends from a bad ending, no matter how virtual they may be, she leans back for a minute and just lets them act on their own. When it finally comes time to take back control, she’s in a hurry to get back to the final part of that minigame, rushing straight through TV World with reckless abandon, only caring enough to not get caught in the stealth sections and free the shadowguys from their indentured servitude with a smug grin on her face. The main thought resounding the entire time in the back of her head is “I wish I could ride a horse with Susie...”

That is, until she meets Rouxls Kaard proper. Or, as proper as she can get. There, she pauses and directs her attention to his antics, most notably the “Battle Throuple” line, despite the fact that she still blitzkriegs him with a loud and clear, “YOU’RE RUINING THE MOOD!” that somehow gives her the strength to very easily work with all of his tricks. Even still, the fight just...drags. And drags. And drags until she can’t take it anymore and sets the controller down to yell, “I... I just want to FINISH THE GAME! Let me get to the scary part! The funny stupid stuff is nice and all but did I really just get all of this together and stay up late so that the SUPPOSEDLY HAUNTED GAME I bought COULD SCARE ME? COME ON!”

And she expected that at least someone would react to that. But nope, no characters on screen even acknowledge she said anything. Maybe the game just doesn’t accept that input during combat? Maybe they’re just ignoring her? Maybe it only accepts certain things? She shakes her head, not wanting to bother herself with further thinking. She even lets the battle continue without her, though the game does a very poor job of playing itself.

With a resigned sigh, she just stares at the ground in a state of mild disappointment, as if she just wasted all of her time. “(Why am I even mad? I should be happy that the game isn’t actually all that bad. Sure, it’s a bit creepy, and that one part scared the crab apples out of me, but... Why am I even doing this? This whole thing has been so silly, I even forgot why I took the deal in the first place. Did I just want to have fun? I guess it is, but... What is wrong with me?)”

And as she stares at the ground, waiting for the game to finish, she hears a clicking sound coming from the TV. Her vision turns briefly to static as she looks up, only to see something slithering away behind the TV into the darkness. She’s no longer in a battle. She’s sitting in the green room. Or, they are. It’s...snowing. It looks like it, anyways. A dark, cold overlay on the screen. Somber music. Totally empty.

She jumps up, alarmed at the incursion by whatever kind of terrible entity has made its way into her room. She picks up Dess’ bat and stands at the ready to beat whatever came in to a pulp if it so much as touches her, even though she knows she isn’t that strong. “W-Who’s there!?” she calls out into the dark. “I’m not scared of you!” she lies. But no response. Whatever did this heard her, and seemingly listened to her complaint. It advanced the game forward, as if taunting her, “Oh, you want to get to the good part? Go ahead.” As if she would regret it. As if it wants her to regret it.

Well, she takes up the offer. If it’s going to taunt her with this, she would simply have to prove it wrong.

Chapter Text

Noelle sits back down and moves to take on the third S-rank room minigame. To use the “shelter key” she acquired. She meets the half-petrified Ramb there, and Kris shoves him out of the way after a brief chat. “One last game”, indeed. But just out of curiosity, she talks to him one more time, just to see what his deal really is.

And then he spills the beans: “I saw you make it, you know. The fountain.”

The dark fountain. That’s obviously what he’s talking about. And that small bit of info hits Noelle like a brick. She thought that the fountains were made by the knight, just like Queen said. At least, she came to that conclusion after all of the explanations, and after accepting that if they are all real, that this is how things work. “(But Kris? Kris created this? This... No way, this can’t be real, right? I mean, I know I was starting to buy it at first, but... Kris can’t be the knight, can they? Did they really make the TV World? And the Cyber World? Was it... really just for fun? I mean, there are so many weird things here, but... But they did spend a lot of time with me there. Was I... wrong? Do they want to see me again?)” But she shakes her head again, “(No, that... That can’t be it! I mean, this is just a cursed or haunted game! It’s just a prank! A scare! Right?)”

Just to confirm it to herself, Noelle slips her phone out of her pocket and dials Kris’ number. It may be the middle of the night, but they’ve been known to be a night stalker. It rings, and rings...but it doesn’t even go to voicemail. It doesn’t connect at all. It acts like the number is out of service. She gawks down at the phone screen, too confused to even hang up. It does so for her. She tries dialing it again, thinking it’s just an error, but...no. It’s not an error. No matter how many times she calls, Kris doesn’t answer.

Then, out of curiosity, she opens Kris’ inventory in the game and tries to use their phone. That was the wrong choice. What plays sounds like the very gates of digital hell opened up in her speakers and nearly blew them out from how garbled and noisy it is. Like a 4K Modem, but far worse. “Oh.” she says “Oh, that’s not good. That’s wrong. I’m... I’m just going to forget that happened.”

With a shudder, she decides to compartmentalize all of the implications that brings up and go to the next game. This time, little Kris spawns in...the city. Upon further exploration, the Cyber city. It looks almost exactly like it. And little Susie and Ralsei are with her too. Except, there’s nobody else here. Just Kris, Susie, and Ralsei. And the waves crashing in the distance again. Another eerie silence, just like the first time. The first door she enters, all she sees is a single cactus. And after a bit more exploration, she finds a set of stairs in an alleyway that leads...to the same exact sword she’s picked up twice already.

“(Maybe picking it up spawns a bunch of enemies?)” she wonders. Even though that’s never happened before. “(Maybe they’ll each get a weapon or something too? We’ll fight things together?)” she continues as the little kris reappears at a set of velvet ropes. She makes her way back to the cactus and tries to attack it, seeing that there’s nothing else to attack. Problem is, it’s invincible.

Another problem: She can’t leave. She doesn’t know how. Completely unaware that little kris dying will exit the game. She tries attacking the ropes, but nothing happens. She tries going back into the cave, but there’s nothing there. She tries searching for enemies, but there are none.

She’s absolutely incredulous that something like this could happen, “What...? How? How am I supposed to...? Am I stuck? Is this... a trap? Is that the joke? The bad joke? That can’t...”

But then something she subconsciously didn’t want to acknowledge creeps up behind her. There are, technically, other things around. Susie and Ralsei. “(They’re... not valid enemies, right? It’ll just go straight through them, they’re your party members! They’re... No, that can’t...”) She starts to think about how hitting and attacking with her “own” character, the white cloak, also hurt her in some way. That she still can’t tell if it was real or not. And the thought of inflicting that on either of those freezes her up completely. She stands there for a good several minutes, refusing to move forward, trying to figure out if she should just turn the game off.

But, ultimately, “...Well, it is just a game. It can’t really hurt anyone. Not badly.” So she turns little Kris around and, before hitting the button, closes her eyes and looks away. One slash. Two slashes. Each one rings the level up sound and makes her flinch just as it does Kris. She looks back at the screen and lets out the breath she was holding in, “...That was too much..”

With three levels in hand, she goes back to the velvet ropes and breaks them all to continue down a winding, oddly familiar alleyway and into a manhole, leading her into yet another dungeon.

Another droning, horrid, grating soundtrack hits her ears. It repeats ad nauseum, a background to the slaughter she knows she’s about to commit. A few rooms of random dinosaur enemies of different colors, flowers, they’re no problem. But then she reaches one that stops her in her tracks for a second. A floating head, singing as its attack. It looks like the hall of mask-like things she passed up, but it also bears an uncanny resemblance to someone. At least, a superficial one. Shyren, perhaps? Or maybe her sister, before she passed. The voice even sounds a bit like hers if it were bit-crushed. But, well, it’s an enemy. She slashes it like the others, and it poses little threat.

Next is a room with a similar looking monster. Kind of bat-like, kind of cat-like. And on second thought, those monsters, and the singing one, look quite a bit more like Catti’s family than Shyren. But there’s only four of them, not six like there are here. She dismisses the theory swirling in her head because of that alone and kills the enemies.

The next room contains a particularly powerful fish and...a series of yellow dinosaurs that look exactly like Alphys. She can’t shake the similarity at this point, Alphys crush on Undyne, the only other fish in hometown, is pretty well known at this point. You’d have to be blind not to see it. And this one fish monster is much tougher than the others, just like her. When she defeats it, the four yellow monsters all shake intensely and explode in unison. Noelle stops for a moment, unable to shake the idea that she just did something awful.

Next on the chopping block is another suspiciously familiar room: one yellow monster with several flowers surrounding it. She can’t help but associate them with the only flower-obsessed monster she knows: Asgore. After defeating them, it goes berserk and attacks the little Kris, forcing her to kill it. “That wasn’t him...” she tells herself.

She continues onwards, being attacked another two rooms over by a swarm of those same flying cat-like masks, forced to defeat them. That, followed by entering a room full of those odd white monsters that never harmed her before. Even now, they all just stand there, helpless and unmoving as she methodically mows them down.

And finally, the last room that she passed by before all the rest...a clean divide between two halves of the room, and some kind of pure black monster on the other side, mirroring her movements. She coaxes it into pressing its switch, then moves to the one on the other side, letting her suddenly control the monster as the door seals shut.

But...something even stranger than that happens. Not only is she granted control over it, but she hears a strange laugh coming from the game as some other kind of switch is triggered. One that causes the monster to transform into something else.

A black deer. It’s just a bit hard to make out, but moving around reveals it as such. Noelle’s body stiffens at the sight of it, the darkened appearance reminding her just a bit too much of her sister. It takes a bit, but after processing it, she tries moving it around more, trying to figure out how to leave the room. And in the process, she stumbles into little Kris, who...

...automatically kills it. The other Kris flinches, and Noelle freezes, nearly dropping her controller. She slowly lowers it to the ground and stares at the screen, holding her mouth shut with one hand, cupped over it, the other clutching her shirt. Her heart starts to drum again, the warning sign of yet another panic attack that she was so prone to, and this time she has to completely step away from the game into the darkness of her room before she can even begin to calm down.

“It’s... It’s not real.” she tells herself. “None of it’s real. It can’t hurt me. It can’t hurt her. It’s lying. I know it is! It’s just... that stupid thing playing tricks on me! Trying to get me to...” She smiles to herself, nodding furiously, “Yes! Yes, that’s right, it’s just... It’s just bait! I can’t take it seriously! I... But why did Kris not hesitate? I didn’t even...”

She shakes her head violently, “No, no, Kris is... Kris is my best friend! They would never actually hurt me! Even if they are mean sometimes!” It takes her a bit, but she finally stands back up and re-approaches the controller, picking it up as she whispers to herself, “Come on... You’re a big girl now, Noelle, you can’t let this thing get to you! Dess isn’t here to hold your hand anymore, you have to be brave...” And despite those words, her voice begins to break and tears begin to flow in tiny beads. She has to wipe them away, suck up her feelings. And as she does, she notices that the larger Kris keeps fidgeting, shaking.

“Oh.” she reminds herself “Right. It can totally hear me. Gosh, I’m so pathetic. I wanted to be scared, not sad... I...”

She sighs and sucks it up, going silent as she decides to continue despite everything. “(Why did I let that freak me out so much? It’s just some pixels on a screen...)”

Finally, at max level, she can bypass the last room of the dungeon: a wall of trees. Beyond the trees lies a long corridor. But as she tries to advance into it...something odd happens. The game appears to lock up. Freeze. Completely. There was no sound here anyways, but she doesn’t want to imagine what it would sound like if it were playing. It just...stops completely. And then starts. For one frame. Stops again. Each frame lasts several long seconds until the transition finally finishes, and an 8-bit Tenna is present. He rambles on about his partner, or something. Some kind of deal, some kind of secret.

Another screen transition, and the same thing happens. The FPS seems to be reduced to an agonizingly low amount, each frame taking several more seconds to render. And again. And again. One. Frame. At. A. Time. For several rooms in a row. The wait is so terribly long that it adds to her already mounting stress, and makes her eager to see what he’s going to say next, “(What deal is he talking about? What guy? Who was on the phone?)”

And when she reaches the final room, he drops a hint: “I wish they’d never brought that laptop home.”

But she still doesn’t understand. “(What does Queen have to do with this? That must be who he’s talking about, what other laptops are there in hometown?)”

She approaches him with the intent to ask, to interrogate the answer, only for him to notice the tiny Kris.

“I did what you said, Kris! Ha... Just like our deal! Y-You aren’t going to turn me off again, are you...?”

Noelle stares at the screen, brows furrowed ever so slightly, “...Deal? What deal did you make with Kris?” She almost intentionally speaks into the controller, hoping he answers. But before he does, little kris slashes forward and destroys him instantly.

Noelle jumps a bit, “Wait... Wait, I didn’t...!” Indeed, she didn’t push anything. She didn’t need to.

She shakes the thoughts away, unable to dedicate more space to this looming mystery she’s found herself embroiled and thoroughly interested in. There was already too much happening. The next room leads to what looks like a long patch of forest. An awfully familiar one, as the trend continues. And it leads...down...into...

“The shelter.” she says as it comes into view, slowly, the screen taking its sweet time to reveal the mound of dirt and steel. She tries to go down again, towards the doors despite her mountain anxiety over the approach, but something starts to fight her over control. That someone...being Kris. The other Kris. They’re shaking, trying hard to push down on the controller themselves, to force little Kris back up, but it persists. She doesn’t even press anything this time, the character just...fights against Kris on their own. They move inside the shelter on their own.

And only once inside do they stop. It’s dark. Not quite darker than dark, still enough to see something, but... Just a bit too much. The twilight state that Dess warned her about on full display. But she continues. She would be proud of her, wouldn’t she?

But something speaks to them.

“Kris... oh... Kris... Is it fun, Kris? Playing around like this... That’s why you’re searching for them, aren’t you? The SHADOW CRYSTALs... and the SHADOW MANTLE that I’m holding! Do you honestly think it’ll get you what you want...? No, a part of you is just enjoying this, isn’t it?”

Noelle grimaces at its taunts. Both out of reflex, and for Kris’ sake.

“Oh, don’t make that sour face. I can see in the dark, you know!” it calls them both out. Noelle grips the controller tighter, closer to her chest. “Question is...” it continues to taunt “can you?”

It immediately begins a fight, but not in the traditional combat sense that she’s used to. Instead, it’s worse... Her greatest fear...

NES Zelda.

This thing, this nameless demon which she’s sure is the thing currently attempting to haunt her, challenged her to a fight, and her frustrations mount into a new feeling: Determination.

She fights valiantly against the thing, but is quickly cut short by its chaotic patterns, causing the tiny red heart inside little Kris to explode. And the game restarts. She frowns at this, but takes a bite of the salad she made for herself and tries again. This time, she reaches its second phase, where the color of the room shifts. And it kills little Kris again, effortlessly. Noelle grits her teeth at it, takes another bite, and tries again.

And again. And again. And again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. It keeps catching her slacking, not paying enough attention, thinking too hard, being too aggressive, overextending, tunnel visioning. Everything except perfect play results in a death. But she keeps going, keeps trying, keeps...

She reaches into the snack bowl again, but realizes that by now, this fight has taken so long that she must be running out. Yet, it’s...full. The bowl is just completely full like she hadn’t been eating from it the entire time. In fact, she’s still hungry. As if, again, she hadn’t eaten any of it.

“I’m...” she starts “I’m not even going to think about that right now.” and returns to her fight.

With each passing attempt, she inches closer until eventually, EVENTUALLY, the frantic, violent music stops. The fight stops. She finally won. Instead of leaping into the air for joy, she’s left still clutching to the controller, gasping for air after holding her breath for so long. She barely even pays attention to what the bastard says after being beaten, such that she misses the first part. What she catches is, “Flickering red, like pretty little flames... Your eyes can’t hide it, Kris. Without play... the knife grows dull.”

And it welcomes them to take the mantle, if they can reach it. After she catches her breath and briefly contemplates what it meant by that (summarily dismissing it as another taunt), she goes up to try to get the mantle, but the chest is beyond little Kris’ reach. So she tries to go right to the next path, and...goes off the screen.

Her eyes shoot open, brows focusing in on it with visible concern. The little Kris just...walks off the screen, onto the wall, onto the floor. With the other Kris. They look over at it, then step back, dropping their own controller in what she can only assume is fright. But she moves towards them, wondering if this might be a chance for her to directly interact with them in a way that isn’t through that stupid speaker. She comes closer, Kris backing up the entire time. And then little kris leaves on its own. She’s almost disappointed, but then remembers that she’s supposed to get that chest. So, she tries to go up the same way little Kris did with normal Kris, and it works. Somehow, the game is able to be traversed by them.

Kris retrieves the controller and tries to continue, for some reason, but before they can do much, Susie shows up unannounced. She gets Kris’ attention, and while the two talk, Noelle notices something odd. The little Kris...shows back up. On the edge of the screen. She tries moving it, and it works. It moves slowly, but surely. She goes up to Susie to look at her directly, try to interact with her unlike she could Kris, when suddenly she’s prompted with one of Susie’s questions: “Are you seriously having fun?”

She meant to select yes. After all, games are pretty fun, and this one, while scary, was fun near the end. But instead of merely choosing the option, little Kris attacks, nearly hitting Susie right then and there with the sword known for one-shotting anything it hits. Noelle practically jumps out of her seat and goes completely pale upon the realization of what just happened. Thankfully, Kris pulled Susie away just in time, but it doesn’t stop Noelle from panicking again. She practically collapses to the floor, holding herself and repeating, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, why!? Why!? Why did it do that!? Why did it let me do that!?”

But her voice also comes through the speaker. Susie takes a step back from the semi-embarrassing situation she just found herself in, this time extremely worried about the panicked voice she can hear. “Uhhhh, Kris? You okay?” she asks. “You don’t...need to yell, alright? What are...hey, Kris! What are you freaking out about!? Don’t just stand there and scream like... Dammit, this isn’t the time to do a freakin’ Noelle impression! STOP!”

But Noelle, barely able to contain her alarm, doesn’t notice what’s happening until she accidentally looks at the dialogue while pacing back and forth. Her anxiety somehow manages to shoot up even further as she scrambles for the controller in a desperate attempt to cover the speaker and try to recover the situation. 

And it seems like just shutting up managed to, though she can still see that Kris at least also looks spooked. Susie even says as much, “Hey... I don’t know what’s got you so worked up, but I brought you a drink, so... come out soon. Kinda worried about you, now. Let’s just go seal the fountain, okay? (And stop talking with your mouth closed, it’s creepy.)”

She sets a half-empty flat soda down on the ground. Noelle directs Kris to pick it up, but not drink it, because nobody likes flat soda and it only heals 20 HP. She makes her way out of the room, greeted by Ralsei having tried his own hands at gaming. And it’s then that she realizes she never actually went into the door next to the changing room. Unluckily for her, she missed her chance. Two of the rooms are closed off completely, leaving only one with a huge gachapon machine in it. It lets her insert a certain amount.

She spins it a few times, of course, just to get herself to calm down a little. It actually kind of works. But then she gets an odd idea. The thing lets her put in a surprisingly large amount of points, in increments of 5. And with a certain someone on her mind, with how the number was used before, she starts to think about it. She puts 1225 points in.

The screen loses its sheen. The parallax effect goes blank, and the music stops. Susie and Ralsei disappear. Everything is a faint tint of blue, with Kris alone in the room. The machine is open. The exit is sealed. The only way forward is inside. Already stunned silent by this new incursion in her psyche, she takes a moment to go inside, where she finds herself in a looping, nonsensical maze where no laws of collision are abided by. In the background, a yet again familiar sound plays. An acoustic guitar, a song that she faintly remembers from long ago.

She starts to wander through the maze, reminiscing faintly of an old game she used to play that was at least a bit like this, if not outright identical. Just endlessly wandering through landscapes of pointless abstract somethingness, not looking for anything in particular until stumbled upon. And stumble upon something, she does. Not a weird transformation or item, but another gachapon machine. Entirely by accident, just by disobeying the paths as they lead her astray repeatedly. She walks up to it, just to see what happens.

“You used the machine. ... The capsule came out. Inside was something hard like lacquer. It was a small, dark, triangle. You tried to take it... But, it slipped through your hand. And you couldn’t find it anymore.”

The music stops.

“You couldn’t find

your hand.”

The maze disappears. The machine does, too. Kris returns to the room they were previously in. And Noelle sits there, once again rendered speechless. Her face starts to flush hot with something. As she reaches up to feel what it is, knowing she can’t sweat, she feels tears she didn’t realize she was shedding, on her fingers. She rubs them out and quivers with a gasp and a sniffle. She puts the controller down and curls up with her knees against her chest, head resting on top of them as she takes another minute to breathe.

After that, she returns to the game silently, “(It’s okay. I’m okay. Let’s just get this over with already.)”

And she does try. She directs the gang to run forward, towards where Toriel is being kept, only to be confronted by Tenna. And of course. Of course he goes on and on about the past, even going so far as to show them a flashback. If she had any more time to, if it didn’t keep going without her input, she would just stare at the silhouette of her sister and...think. Suddenly, the presence of the christmas tree makes sense. His constant obsession with the past. Just like her mother. And she can’t help but look back on that time, too, wishing it could all come back. But she knows it won’t.

The silhouette of Dess disappears first. Noelle chokes up just slightly, barely able to bring herself to watch it. Then her mother’s, then Asgore’s, and then hers. And finally, Rudy’s. He really was the last one to really stick around, until the illness caught up to him.

“One by one.”

“(That’s one way to describe it.)” her inner thoughts adopt a disdainful tone.

And finally Asriel. Left for college. Then Kris. Then Toriel. Though her bitterness remains, she can at least understand why he’s like this now. And this knight, the roaring knight that Queen spoke of promised him the attention he craved. It only brings more questions to mind.

But as his monologue fades away, she just finds herself questioning again, “(Why...? Why am I getting so worked up over this? This was supposed to be a fun little ride, not...this. This shouldn’t even be real. Please, just make a zombie pop up or something and tell me it was a stupid prank already. Please...)”

And, well...she gets half of her wish. Something DOES pop out, but not a zombie. Nothing scary. Instead, she’s suddenly assaulted by the bombastic music of Tenna’s game show once more as he incites yet another battle. Noelle scowls at the screen, her patience having been worn completely thin to the bone, and now she has a real excuse to absolutely snap.

“Fine.” she says “You want a fight? I’ll show you a fight.”

She fights, she hits, and Kris does a lot of damage. Far more than the others, for once, even Noelle is shocked by how big those numbers are. But she can’t stop. Each hit deals her major satisfaction after all the interruptions, the nonsense, the unwanted digging up and salting of old wounds, the attacks and imprisoning that Tenna has subjected her to. Completely ruining the atmosphere, hurting Kris and Susie, and having the guts to attack them AGAIN even after all of that! She just can’t stop attacking until he finally gives up, finally accepts defeat, and shrinks down into the proper size of his ego.

But after she gets all of her pent up frustrations out, and after he spills his own metaphorical guts again, she starts to regret having beaten him to a pulp. Then Susie steps up

“Lemme tell you.” she begins. “I’ve never really been able to... make friends. I was always... the scary girl. The bad kid. The only times anyone ever got close to me, ... were as a joke. And even if I did start to make a real friend... I’d always end up... Moving away. When I moved here, I thought it would be the same thing. I felt like you. I felt like a broken toy no one wanted. Kris’ mom saw me. Toriel. Saw me sitting on the bench in the graveyard, crying. She asked me what was wrong, and... Told me everything was going to be okay. Took me to the diner. Bough me a hot chocolate. Talked to me. Told me I’d make friends. That... gave me hope. Even just a little. And recently, that hope’s been growing. Because... now I have friends. Real friends. Friends I wanna keep. Kris, Ralsei. Lancer... Toriel, too. And maybe... someone else, if I could just talk to her. Even though I thought I was broken... I just needed to find the right people, y'know? So... Don’t worry, dude. Someone out there wants you. Promise.”

And as she smiles and looks at Kris, asking if they’ll help, Noelle can’t help but shed more and more tears. All her previous issues were pushed away in an instant to make room for the overwhelming radiation of kindness coming through the screen. “(Oh my... Oh my gosh... I never knew... I mean, I had an idea, but... I haven’t, really been trying, have I? I always looked her way, but... I should have been there. I should have been there more. If I just... Gosh, I was scared for no reason, wasn’t I? And I...)” She looks around at all the preparations she made just in case, expecting tonight to be dangerous and scary “(...enjoyed it. Even though she was suffering.)”

She looks back up at the screen. Tenna is freaking out, positively of course, about his newfound hope for existing. Meanwhile, she’s stuck in the gutter wondering aloud but hushed, “...Am I a bad person?”

Even without much motivation to continue, she does so anyways, just to end the game. The audience claps for the heroes, but Noelle just stares at the screen dead-eyed and downcast even while such triumphant music blares.

And then he dies.

Noelle’s eyes dart up from the floor as soon as she hears the loud thud of an attack. She stares up at Tenna as his arms are severed from him, and he falls to the ground, disappearing from her view. Her mouth hangs open. With all of her regret for her anger already stacked up, this is merely the cherry on the Prozac cake. No longer just regret, but guilt. That she so thoroughly disregarded everyone and was cruel to Tenna, that this ended up happening. She can’t help but believe it’s her own fault for not trying hard enough to do anything but satisfy her own petty desire.

But as she wallows in her own insecurities, the true perpetrator of this crime reveals themselves: a black figure cloaked in dark armor, bearing a helmet and two giant, bent antlers. She stares at it, muffling her mouth as the controller once again drops from her grasp. The figure bends over and moves in unnatural ways, its shifting into a visor as it attempts to do...something to Toriel, before Susie stops her.

Noelle’s first instinct upon seeing the thorns of its antlers is to breathily gasp out, “M-Mom...!? Wait, that’s... What is this!? What!? Why!? I...”

It retreats just a short distance away, just to reform and unleash a bloodcurdling roar, revealing its skeletal and practically undead features. Noelle scatters backwards in response, entire body shaking. It reaches out and forms a bat, making her sit back up and take a closer look, “Wait, no, DESS!?” But it transforms again, a guardless sword of darkness, “No, a...sword!? Like, the... The katana!? What!? What the hell is—”

“The Roaring Knight appeared.”

Noelle slams her fist into the floor, “THAT’S THE KNIGHT EVERYONE KEEPS MENTIONING!? WHAT!? I...!” She shoots up to her feet. She takes too long to respond to the game, so it starts playing itself again, this time doing much better than before. She starts pacing around the dark room, then runs towards the lights to flick them on, “No, no, this is... This clearly isn’t real! This is impossible! I can’t...!” she shakes her head again, again, and again, trying to make sense of this all. As the high tempo music bleeds through the walls, she retreats from her room to confirm something. It fades away as she runs up the stairs, towards her parents’ (or just her mother’s for now) room and tries to open it. Just to see.

It’s locked.

“Oh, that’s either good or bad.” she chuckles nervously to herself. She just...lightly taps on the door. Barely a knock. If her mother is asleep, she doesn’t want to wake her up. But there’s no response. “M-Mom? You’re there, right? Hello?”

But of course, it’s at least 3 in the morning. There’s no way she’d be up at this hour. Noelle kicks herself for thinking otherwise. She rushes back downstairs to find the fight still ongoing, but with everyone except Kris at -999 HP. Suboptimal to say the least.

She barely even gets into one attack before Kris gets absolutely demolished too, even though they had the shadow mantle equipped. Before she realizes it, the fight is over. The knight moves in again, but Susie, despite being beaten to within an inch of her life, still manages to grab onto its leg...thing...and stops it.

And just in time. Undyne shows up with a set of barrage of spears to save everyone. Noelle immediately gawks, “O-Officer Undyne!? Why!?”

The knight kidnaps her.

“WHY!?”

At this point, she’s content to just put the controller down and let things play out. “What is even happening anymore?” she asks. Herself or someone else? Not even she knows.

But just then, she hears a loud noise from outside the house. Down the street. Kris and Susie on the screen are outside, in what looks like a perfect replica of hometown at the same time. Noelle looks up from her already taxing shock, “...What?” They’re running down the street, Susie yells something. She can hear it. She can see them pounding on the doors of the Shelter.

“I’m... I’m hearing things.” she tells herself. She reaches forward, towards the screen. By now, Kris is alone at the shelter door. Seeing no more reason to keep the game going, she reaches for the power button. But then, the shelter door, which has never opened before in her life, opens for them. She stares at it with morbid curiosity, still reaching for the power...until it suddenly shuts off on its own. Not just the console, but the TV, too.

She steps back and stands up, looking around. Nothing is amiss. She’s alone. In her room. No need for the gun, there’s no burglars or serial killers here. She barely touched her snacks or drinks. The charms were supposedly pointless. It was all just window dressing to a threat that never existed. At least, that’s what she tells herself.

Being dead tired and unable to properly think straight after everything she just saw, she decides to simply retire to her bed without any of the hassling cleanup. It’s difficult to fall asleep, but she eventually passes out from sheer exhaustion alone.