Frisk woke with a gasp, desperately trying to pry Flowey's thorn from his chest. As the phantom pain slowly faded, the fallen human realized what had happened. In a second, he was back on his feet, yellow lightning arcing along his Aura and enhancing his body.

The cavern was silent. Frisk stood there in the patch of yellow flowers, waiting for that bastard flower to come in and brag or something. After a few seconds, he dropped into a quick meditation to reveal if Flowey was spying on him from somewhere nearby.

There was nothing.

With his teeth clenched in anger, Frisk carefully walked towards the second room, where Flowey had been initially. With yellow energy pooled in his left hand, he could summon his bow at a moment's notice.

The room was empty.

*Bzztoom* The cavern walls rumbled as Frisk took out his anger by slamming the gathered energy into the wall with his fist. He was pissed.

Pissed at that stupid flower for taking a cheap shot and killing him. Pissed at Undyne, who was being a self-righteous ass. Pissed at himself for underestimating her while also being so weak.

But anger wouldn't help right now. Frisk took a deep breath and calmed down. He was in a better situation than the last reset. Sans should still remember. All he needed to do was give the skeleton the excuse to look in his lab. The human had allies and plans; all he needed was to persevere.

—

[Toriel's House]

—

"Ah, I can actually use fire magic too." Frisk lit the spark inside him and manifested a small ball of purple flames above his hand.

Toriel's eyes widened in surprise. "Very impressive, my child. Are there many mages like you on the surface?"

Hmm, Frisk actually didn't know. While he was getting some memories from the original fallen human, it wasn't exactly enough to determine the situation above ground. All he could really hope for was that it would be better than down here.

Perhaps reading something in Frisk's expression, Toriel quickly followed up. "You don't need to talk about it if you don't wish to." She patted his head with her large, fluffy paw. "That is impressive enough on its own. Though I'm afraid my fire magic is inherent to my existence as a Monster, I can't help you too much with it."

"That's fine," Frisk dismissed her concerns. "I was just hoping for some tips. Learning more about magic is something I enjoy." It was one of the few upsides to this situation.

"Well…" Toriel trailed off, trying to find an excuse not to play with dangerous fire. "If you finish all your lessons today, I'll allow it." She finished, thinking it would be a difficult enough task.

Frisk smirked; he was very good at finishing these by now. "Sure!"

—

[Papyrus]

—

After giving the code word to Sans and completing many of Papyrus's puzzles, it was time to fight the younger skeleton for real. Frisk had gone through this fight many times now, to the point where he mainly used it for training.

That wasn't to say the fight was easy. The two fighters were still almost evenly matched. But with Frisk unlocking his JUSTICE bow and the accompanying improvement to his control over magic, he was stronger.

Well, not stronger in physical strength. Papyrus could still knock Frisk around fairly easily. However, the human's speed and ability to negate status effects overwhelmed the skeleton. Frisk even got better at using his improvised mines by using them to destroy Papyrus's Weighted Bone Forest special attack.

That wasn't to say winning the fight changed much. Getting through the skeleton's sense of superiority would take much more than that.

"INCREDIBLE! Truly, only my RIVAL could do so well against the GREAT Papyrus! NYEH Heh heh."

Though he might have taken it a bit hard, Frisk would try to talk with him later.

—

[Sans]

—

Taking a deep breath, Frisk relaxed into a slight meditation, ensuring Flowey wasn't looking in on them. "We're alone but should probably keep it down." He wasn't exactly confident in this abilities range.

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"So you got boned." Sans looked down at the sulking human leaning against his watchstand.

A spark of annoyance flashed through Frisk, and he was ready to defend himself… then he remembered the fight. "I think that pun was a bit of a reach. Does that word even work in this context?"

"Wow, attacking my puns now, that takes guts, kid. Though tibia honest, that's a bit of a low bone." Frisk rolled his eyes as Sans leaned down and smiled. "But don't worry, I won't let it get under my skin. You're just sulking because I was right, and you underestimated her."

"I didn't underestimate her, I just…" Didn't think she was that strong. "Fine, I underestimated her a bit, but she also had the terrain advantage, and I didn't know much about her magic." Those were things he could now take into account during the next fight.

"Keep in mind she knew little of your techniques, either."

Frisk remembered his electric arrows catching her off guard and scowled. "But I'll still have that advantage this time."

Sans looked off into the distance for a few seconds before sighing. "Maybe, but do you have a better plan than just running into Hotland?"

Frisk thought about it for a few moments. Maybe he was limiting himself by only considering how the game played out. "I'll think about it." Planning something like that would take time, but there was something he could do now. "Can I trouble you with some extra training? I want to get better at hitting targets with my ranged attacks." The human figured the skeleton knew something about that.

Sans looked at Frisk with narrowed eye sockets. "Don't you have a date with my brother to get to?" The human tried to interject and say something about a training session before Sans cut him off. "Maybe tomorrow; as you can see, I'm very busy today." He gestured at his sentry station.

"Fine," Frisk conceded, obviously not believing the skeleton. "Let me know when you stop being a lazybones, " he called out in jest, realizing Sans was probably just tired from recharging his machine.

—

[Alphys]

—

Alphys, the Royal Scientist, watched her large monitor in confusion. Ever since she had started spying on the human from her cameras, the scientist had known something was different about them.

Well, not spying, really; they were just security cameras! Alphys was just… monitoring the situation! Humans could be very dangerous, after all.

But ever since she had seen them exiting the RUINS, they had been clearly special. Their confidence in making friends and fighting enemies (sometimes both!) was fun to watch. She would almost liken them to the main character of an anime.

Maybe that was why she was spying on them…

Not spying! She was monitoring.

Alphys has even started to think that maybe she could be a part of their adventure. After all, they would have to pass through her lab before getting to the capitol. Undyne would probably block their way for a little while, but she knew that the Captain of the Royal Guard would figure out just how cool and nice the human was (They had that in common!).

But that last conversation Alphys had uhh, listened in on, had confused her. A secret conversation between Sans and the human about a fight the human had somehow lost. What a compelling mystery to add to the action the story already had-

"Whatcha doin'?" A voice asked from right behind her, and Alphys almost had a heart attack.

"AIEEE!" She shrieked and whipped around, her lab coat flaring behind her, only to see the very same skeleton she had just been watching. "S-s-sans, what are you doing here?!" Alphys desperately tried to calm down and smooth out her coat.

Sans casually leaned against the giant bag of dog food he had teleported in with. "I just thought I'd bring some more food for good ol' Endo, " he said, smacking the large bag. "And maybe let you in on our little world-saving conspiracy."

"W-what?" She asked incredulously.

"Let's go somewhere we can talk." Sans held out his hand.

"O-ok," she trusted him and stepped forward.

—

[Frisk]

—

Frisk carefully drew his hand back to form the electric pseudo-arrow on his Magic Weapon's bowstring. The bow and string were still crackling and releasing sparks into the surroundings, but recently, he had been trying to reduce those occurrences.

The better he could control the bow itself, the more powerful it would be. Plus, it would make it so he didn't have to feed the thing constantly with magical energy to keep it manifested.

"Now!" he called out, watching as five medium-sized bones flew through the air in front of him.

He released the first arrow rapidly and was already drawing back another before it reached the target. Five times, he drew back his arm and let go, trying to hit each of the moving targets. However, during the third draw, he was forced to split his concentration between shooting and trying to burn off the INTEGRITY magic that had started to weigh him down.

The first shot hit the bone dead on and shattered it, while the next few weren't as lucky. The second blasted through the top half of a bone, and the third missed its mark entirely. Only one of the following two managed to shave a small piece of the side of the bone.

Before he even finished burning the status effect away, another wave of dark blue energy swept past him and reapplied the debuff.

"I did it!" Papyrus called out as he danced off to the side. "I mean, of course, the GREAT Papyrus was successful. I'm sure my RIVAL will experience the same breakthrough very soon." The skeleton tried to reassure his friend.

"Thanks Papyrus." Frisk dismissed his bow and sighed. Kinda hitting three moving targets wasn't bad, though taking into effect the arrows' slight homing capabilities, it wasn't good either. "This probably won't be a big breakthrough, though; I just need to practice more."

"Well then, shall we continue?" Papyrus asked.

"Sure," Frisk smiled at the skeleton and gathered the JUSTICE necessary to summon his bow once again. Unfortunately, this would be the last time he had enough magic to do so. "Let's get started."

After practicing for the next thirty minutes on various different things, it was decided that they were both too exhausted to continue. However, Frisk still had something he needed to talk to Papyrus about.

Ever since hearing Sans' words, the human had been thinking about how to beat Undyne and deal with her overwhelming strength and terrain advantage in Waterfall. And he had come up with something. It might not be the greatest plan, but it would give him the best chance of both talking it out and fighting for his life.

"Hey Papyrus. Could you contact Undyne and let her know that I challenge her to a duel."

"Wha-WHAAT!?"