Chapter Text
Kris loved pranks.
It made them feel alive. It got a reaction out of people, it made them scream and squirm. Nobody really told them to stop—or if they did, Kris didn’t hear—so they kept going. They wanted to see how far they could truly go for the ultimate prank.
Something so grand, so awesome, so bloodcurdling that they would remember it for the rest of their life!
Of course, Asriel always kept them in line. Of course he would, he was the golden boy of the family. The prodigy.
What did Kris have if it wasn’t pranks? Their human body? Their skin and blood? No, Kris had no concern over that. Pranks were what they liked.
Suddenly it wasn’t fun anymore.
The screams felt stale.
At such a short amount of time, Kris realized they only liked the laughter from the people they knew. Harmless pranks where they knew both them and the victim can laugh at it together.
They believed it was about time to find some inspiration.
..It should have been another day.
Another evening, they mean.
They were merely just trying to find a perfect idea to prank Noelle with. The best time to do so is when there is no school! Because they can adventure further out of Hometown, towards the source of all of the scary stuff.
The bunker was the common source of all of the town’s greatest mysteries.
Dess’s legs dangled over the hill, ankles roughly colliding with the steel door, loud ‘thunks’ for every thud.
It’s their unofficial hideout. The adults didn’t go near, and neither did the younger kids. It’s scary enough that both they and Dess loved it. They did make-believe along with Asriel and Noelle, horror stories about how anything that entered the evil, dark bunker would swallow little kids whole and how they will never get out. Maybe there was an evil human hiding inside, sealed away for thousands of years.
Or a body hiding inside, a deep-dark secret in their little home town.
It certainly got a reaction out of Noelle.
But the same stories about the same evil humans did get too boring really fast.
When the sun reached a certain point, they knew it was time to go home. They didn’t want either of their parents finding out about their hiding spot. Kris isn’t sure why the adults were so insistent on hiding the bunker. Maybe there really is something inside!
They have half a mind to ask Dess if they could investigate, without the prying eyes of their brother.
Trailing their way back home, their foot collides with something soft, tripping on whatever it was.
Kris lets out a yelp, quiet enough to not startle the others.
At first, they assumed it was something else entirely. Until they got a closer look.
It’s red, blood? It’s squishy, an organ?
They should have been scared.
But they were just confused?
It’s a heart.
Unlike any other heart-shaped pillow Kris has seen in the Holiday household.
It’s smaller, and it wasn’t a pillow at all. Mrs. Holiday’s pillows were fluffy, had fancy textures.
This one?
It feels warm, like an egg. Kris feels it moving in their hand. It twitches when Kris presses on it with a finger. They can squeeze it too, very malleable, like the surface of a water balloon.
They put it to their ear.
Kris swears they hear breathing.
“Kris?” Dess calls.
“Coming!” Kris smiled.
She clearly sees them hiding something behind their back, which leaves her with squinted eyes.
Dess wouldn’t pry. But she still had her arsenal of weapons at the ready once they detected their cheeky grin anywhere near Noelle, and whatever new prank Kris has come up with.
The birdcage was beaten a little bit.
A long time ago, Kris wanted to keep a bird. They sang, they flew, they were pretty.
But Kris never kept them for long.
Birds like to fly.
Kris realized they didn’t like it in the cage. Because they could not fly. They chirped nonstop and they pecked at the bars. Kris once pricked their finger in an attempt to feed one.
That was when Asriel told them, through drying their tears, that birds should fly, to their little bird families in their little bird homes. He told them how Kris wouldn’t like it if they were far, far, away from the Dreemurrs.
Kris understood.
So Kris let it go.
The heart likes to fly too.
But when Kris slammed the cage shut, it didn’t scream. It didn’t fight for very long. It flew around the cage for a bit until it settled, its red glow grew dim.
“Kris? What is that?”
Asriel believed he knew by now about all of the signs of Kris.
When they were quiet, it was probably just another setup for messing with Noelle. When they were talkative, it was definitely during TV night. Their constant pranks left the adults around them a little exasperated, but Asriel could tell Kris was having fun. Even if they were frantically, while embarrassing to admit, tearfully, picking up the pieces they left behind.
Tonight, Kris was unnaturally quiet.
That definitely meant they were up to something devious. Especially when they were recently hanging out with just Dess.
“Kris?” He calls, vaguely spotting something in the birdcage. “What is that?”
His sibling looks to him, pointing at something behind the bars.
“Another bird? Come on, Kris..”
Asriel staggered once he lays his eyes on the thing–
“Kris– what–” He wasn’t sure what this thing was. If it was alive and could talk, would they go to jail for kidnapping? Or was this something that Kris stole?
Already, Asriel stumbled on words upon words.
“It’s a heart!” Kris proudly announced.
“Um– Is this a prank?”
“No!” They proudly announce once again, this time with hands on their hips.
“Oh– Ah, hearts don’t look like that!” He laughed, if only to ease the nervousness he is feeling right now.
“They don’t?”
“No– well, yes but.. It’s complicated?” Asriel shrugged, “What is it? Where did you find it?”
Is it real?
Kris blinked.
“Bunker.”
The bunker..?
Asriel takes a look at the ‘heart.’
It glows in the darkness of their room, like a night light.
“Should we tell mom?”
Kris shakes their head.
“Alright, but we have to know what this thing is first.”
“Can we name it?”
“What?”
“I wanna give it a name.”
“Kris? You’re seriously not thinking of keeping it–”
“It’s good for pranks!” Kris smiled. And it was true. The times Kris used ketchup bottles, to pink streamers, and recently, Mrs. Holiday’s pillows was too much to count, and a pulsating, red heart seemed the right fit to imitate a real one.
Asriel read many books the next morning, while desperately trying to take advantage of his reputation as ‘the Golden Boy’ to keep the heart as secret as possible during breakfast. In the afternoon, he scoured the internet on a heart-shaped object that flew and pulsed.
Nothing useful showed up. It’s the occasional advertisement for shiny jewelry, superstitions, or actual, human hearts. The human hearts Asriel saw were nothing like the heart Kris found. They were more like the lovey-dovey hearts during Valentine’s Day.
Asriel looked at the birdcage that kept the heart. It’s more active now that it's daytime. And they have the weekend until they can figure out what it is.
Asriel doubts it’s the heart of a monster. Monsters didn’t have hearts, some did, but in most cases, it was mostly a cosmetic thing. And sure, monsters came in all shapes and sizes, but there was an official classification on types of monsters. The heart did not meet any qualification for a monster. They even backtracked to the bunker where they found it, and didn’t find any smaller or bigger hearts that could be accounted as the hearts’ family members.
He crosses out 'Monster heart’ in his notebook.
Human heart, gem, and titan heart were also crossed out.
Asriel looks to their sibling, with the cage half-opened, attempting to feed the heart, or well–’Angel’, half of a cookie.
The heart, at least to Asriel’s knowledge, appears to be eating it. A strange red goop fills the cookie. And it disappears. Kris quickly retracts their fingers before they touched the soul.
“You shouldn’t feed it chocolate!” Asriel chastises. “What if it’s bad for its tummy?!” Did it even have a tummy?
“Do hearts poop?”
“Kris!”
“You saw it eat the cookie. Do they?” Kris closes the cage and marches over to his laptop. “I’m going to look it up.”
Again, no results.
“What if it's a slime?” Kris asks. "I'll look that up too."
Quickly, as they finish typing, the laptop displays pictures of slime. They were both met with pictures of the type of the gross slime props around Halloween. Or the ones Kris keeps pouring over themselves to traumatize poor Noelle. And of course, no, um, information about slimes using the bathroom.
Though, a heart-shaped slime, maybe? That could very much be a possibility. A residue of a slime maybe, but as far as Asriel knew, they haven’t heard of slime shaped like a heart before, or a monster that could secrete said slime and have it fly around like magic.
“Maybe it’s poisonous." Kris briefly glances back at the heart in the cage. "Like the ones in Dragon Blazers.”
Wouldn’t it be green then? This one would be fire if it was a Dragon Blazers slime.
“If it was, you would be dead. If it’s venomous is the question.”
“Does it have teeth?”
Is Kris just ignoring him?
Kris tried to prod at the heart behind bars, a strange attempt at proving the hypotheticals of this slime-like creature having any kind of bones.
Of course it didn’t.
Kris already seemed a bit attached to it.
From what Asriel could gleam, sometimes Kris let the heart out. It’s a little slow, so it never got too far. It’s not like it tries to escape through the window. It only touches their stuff, poking at them all like a cat.
They spend most of the time on the laptop, looking up questions Asriel searched for first. According to his search history, Kris really did believe it was a weirdly-shaped slime.
They haven’t left the bedroom in a while. And they usually get up to run towards the TV for TV time, or maybe visit Dess and Noelle.
But the energetic, prank-loving Kris he was used to was cooped up for merely a few hours, but that was obviously a long time for a kid like them, and Asriel was a little concerned.
Their parents would definitely find out, and at the end of the day, they had no idea what it was supposed to be.
When Asriel approached them once more, inquiring about the heart, Kris managed to speak up first.
“Angel.”
“Angel?” Like in Church? There are a lot of problems about that. Won’t they be in trouble for it?
“Angel..” Kris repeats to themself, like a confirmation. “Angel! I like it.” Their mouth curled upwards in a semblance of a smile.
Angel the heart. Not too weird. Asriel expected a goofier name. So that was the part that was weird. It was kind of unlike Kris to not name it something scary or ‘badass’ as Dess would probably say.
Like Bloodred. Or Fireshock. Or Pyro. Or Red Peaty-Peatmoss.
If they were insistent, who was Asriel to judge? At least it wasn’t something like dad would say, something as simple as ‘Red’ or ‘Hearty’ or even 'Redheart' just like how he calls all his flowers.
Asriel would worry about getting in trouble later..
His worries rely on the fact that if Kris gives the heart an actual name like ‘Angel’..
Was Kris truly, genuinely, serious.. about keeping it?
“We don’t have to ask around where it came from yet. But we need to tell mom and dad.”
Kris takes a second of consideration, and then they nod.
“And we have to return it if it has a home, okay?”
Kris nods more slowly, “Okay.”
Asriel swears he heard the vaguest hint of apprehension in their voice.