Lost In The Echo (Arc 1: UNDERTALE)

Prologue: "The Last Genocide"

Twilight seeped through the windows of the Judgment Hall. It would seem their journey was almost over. They could feel the sins of their actions crawling down their spine, but nothing, save for the chilling wind breezing down the hall, comforted them. It was too late to go back, to repent for everything they put them through. They had been lost to their demise, their own sanity, or rather insanity. In their head, they were calling out, crying, screaming for help of some form... but nobody came. There was only one individual left standing in their way. One last obstacle to stop them from reverting the world back into another time loop… him.

In the depths of their soul, only one thought remained...

I don't want to do this was all their mind kept thinking, but despite their pleas, their body moved involuntarily closer to the lackadaisical skeleton standing before them.

"back here again, aren't we..? how many times has it been now..? fifty.... sixty..... i've lost count... what about you..?" he peered one eye to look at the human child, pretending to open for a response before sneering, "if i couldn't count the number of tries you've had, the odds of you having counted them are about as high as me taking my job seriously..."

His left eye lit up in a blue hue, glaring at the human child standing before him with a knife drawn.

"let's just get to the point... kid..."

With a flash of blue, Sans took hold of their soul and hurled them through a barrage of sharp bones, accompanied by a few blasters here and there. The human tried their best to scrape by, barely making it out of the ambush alive. They heard a slight chuckle out of the skeleton monster, glaring up at him with an enraged expression.

"that look on your face... you've memorized that attack by now, haven't you..?" Sans let out another light chuckle, "always wondered why they never used their strongest attack on the first shot. guess the others really were right not to underestimate you..."

Despite their condition, the human did not hesitate. Clenching their knife with a fierce look in their eyes, they began to fight, unleashing one slash upon another slash repetitively at Sans, which he dodged with minimal effort. The two seemed to take turns in this little bout; for every strike the human made, Sans would dodge and then counterattack. He'd been through this song and dance before; it was nothing new to him. Eventually, he would fall and the human would make their way to the throne room in order to slay the king, putting a brief end to the timeline before some entity RESET and put them through a new hell.

"guess i gotta make this one memorable to ya in some way before it all ends, right..?" he suggested, sending the human flying into the walls with telekinetic-like abilities to try impaling them through the soul, but the human anticipated this attack and jumped before the bones emerged from the walls.

He continued to try and throw the human off with bones and blasters, trying to shift his attacks with a snap of his fingers at any turn to throw them off, not even giving the human a moment of respite. With each attack fired, they tried to retaliate by going after Sans, but their attempts were fruitless, for he dodged every swing of their blade that came at him.

"you've gotten faster, i'll give ya that... probably from all the times you've failed to kill me, eh, bucko..?"

His mind wavered briefly, referring to a completely separate outcome where he and this child could've been friends. A timeline where everyone was happy and living with this kid in peace, but that was nothing but a pipe dream. He knew that any trace of the old human within was gone, or trapped by a stronger force, their Determination no longer their own.