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pt-disconnected · 6 months

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It took a bit to explain how the Player had arrived to Asgore and Dess. Asgore was completely unsure of the story, and wasn't sure how such a story could be true. It only took a single look from Toriel, and a gesture towards the town- which looked like an amalgamated mess of the town and the surreal landscape of the Dark World at the moment- to make it clear that at this point, the lines between what should be true and what was able to be true were very much faded away. It was safe to say that Asgore was pretty embarrassed about the statement in the situation... but, thankfully, he agreed to believe it.

Dess, on the other hand, seemed completely unfazed by the story for some reason. Nobody was sure why, but she just seemed indifferent about it all. She explained her reasoning about what was going on, and it was a good reason. But Noelle, being the one who knew Dess the best, could see her sister shifting as she said this. There was more to it, but what it was... well, there wasn't any way to tell. And Noelle figured it was better off left unsaid for now.

Whatever the case, it made the team even more strengthened- though, against the chaos that was occurring, it seemed no amount of strength would succeed. But... they'd do their best.

It was all they could do.

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As the town was rampaged by the chaos, monsters who lived there gathered at the Dreemur house, seeing as it had become a sort of safe haven. Most Darkners weren't able to make sense of the situation, but there was a familiar face that did manage to assist... or, attempt to do so, anyways.

"Thy defenses could useth a few more puzzles, I believeth."

Of course, it had to be Rouxls.

Everyone had tried to convince him to just take some time, but he wasn't just going to "sit back and doeth nothing", as he said. And yet, the moment he started to work on the defenses, his focus was on puzzles. Though, there was someone who actually saw something of use in the simple puzzles. As Rouxls set up his usual block-pushing puzzle... again... the Player had an idea.

"Hey, uh... mister Rouxls?" they called out. Rouxls immediately noticed, as this was not the term he was used to. "...'Mister'? What kindeth of Darkner do thy taketh me for?! Just 'Mister'?!" he exclaimed, before thinking for a moment and adding "...I supposeth I've heard worseth. What doth thy wanteth?"

The Player picked up the block (which was quickly noticed by Susie as evidenced by a shout of "HELL YEAH!" and the sound of running), and gestured to the walls. "I know that these are meant for your puzzles, but I think they'd make good barricades too. And while your puzzles are certainly... a thing to behold... I would say that a wall would be far more effective than a puzzle at stopping someone trying to get in. Mostly because in the end, puzzles can be solved, or skipped. And I doubt you'd want someone to simply skip your puzzles, right?"

Rouxls' eyes widened as this was said. "...How dare thee! To imply my puzzles could be SKIPPETH'D! Yet, thou makeths a point. A wall maketh a better repellant than mine puzzles, it seemeth. And these blockeths are abundant... Very well. For the saketh of thy fort, I will... TEMPORARILY!.. put asideth my puzzles."

During this speech from the Duke, Susie had already started carrying around the blocks (much to Rouxls' dismay), and just looked to the Player. "You get any of that?" The Player simply shrugged. "...I think he's good with it. For now at least." Susie chuckled. "Wow, and here I thought the dude was speaking gibberish up till now. Gonna need you to translate for me."

This caused Rouxls to get somewhat upset. "I AM RIGHT HERETH, THOU KNOWST!!!" he shouts, only for Susie to look to the Player. "...so, uh, what did he say?" she asks, and the Player looks to the annoyed Duke and shrugs. "...Pretty sure that was just angry Rouxls noises." This resulted in Rouxls being even more annoyed, and in Susie laughing at how aggravated the Duke was at the joke.

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The group now had successfully fortified the house with the puzzle blocks, making it rather sturdy. But everyone knew that they couldn't just stay there. The Dark World and Light World were going to keep merging if they didn't do anything.

"...What do we even do at this point? It's too late to stop it... but we can't just let this keep happening..." Ralsei said. The whole of the group was gathered, trying to talk strategy but mostly ending up with awkward silence. Nobody knew how to handle the situation.

The Player sighed. "If I were back home I might have been able to use that whole SAVE thing to get myself back in time in some way, like I had done the first time. But that'd risk botching up the present and future even more, and I don't want to deal with that mess... And that's if it even works at this point..."

Berdly immediately gawked. "Wait, what?! You're telling me you were able to do TIME TRAVEL?! That shouldn't even be physically feasible, regardless of this whole Dark World thing! What are you gonna tell me next, you can just generate objects from thin air?!"

But, before the Player had the chance to respond, they heard someone outside the house-fort.

"I see you all blocked yourself up to try and save yourselves from this... It amuses me. You all were so confident, thinking you had won. And now look at you. Huddled in a boarded-up house, trying to figure out what to do next. How pitiful."

The Player immediately got up, and left, despite everyone telling them not to. They were, once again, face to face with the Knight.

"...So there's at least one of you who's willing to take a stand, even if you've already lost. How... curious. You always manage to exceed my expectations... with your methods of battle, your knowledge of SOULs even... then again, I know little about your world."

The Player scowled. "I plan to keep it that way. You've ruined enough. You got what you wanted, and you finished your plan. Now get lost."

But, of course, the Knight merely grinned. "...That would have been what I did, if I didn't think there might be some way to get to see your world myself. But with you here... it seems that my plan isn't quite finished. Knowing you're trapped in what someone sees as nothing but a simulation... it makes me feel even more trapped than I did in that bunker..."

The Player is now glaring, their fists clenched. "You wouldn't dare."

But the Knight is now laughing. "Oh, you have no idea. This was originally the end of my plans. But with your interference opening up so many new paths, new options... it's now barely even the beginning."

After looking over the past few parts of the story and this one, a couple minor edits made me feel at least good enough to qualify this as Chapter 21. And I may even start jotting down ideas for the next chapter while the recent events are fresh in my memory from the reviewing. We'll see if it goes anywhere- you'll find out soon enough. * Lqgokxkfx lohsm uej llsk Boal ufehm gema zldr alz'm hoklkfx qf. Rjl wldl ka vl zldl alz ufehm srpkz? * ...Gdgro vl'p rz doak rez kq asf wz ejl hejb kn fqy pp zkmjno kk qyz. (Enjoy a new cipher by the way! The key isn't hidden quite the same- you'll find it if you look! I'll never hide it in the story mind you- and if I do I will specifically mention it. But, if I don't mention it, then it's not. And I will link to the proper decoding website via the cipher itself, but if you want to solve it on your own then go ahead!) Also Knight (aka Gaster) is once again being the annoying scientist guy who looks too far and finds things that someone like him should not know about, much less have access to. Anyways, I'll leave it here for now. You have everything you need for the cipher here, so if you want to figure that out then feel free to do so. This one is quite out of the ordinary, honestly. (For a few reasons...) And I'll be working on ideas for the story as well. Hopefully I can figure out where I'm going with this and how to get things moving again. Previous Part | First Part | Next Part LynxGriffin's Paper Trail Comic (Even though we've gone beyond the boundaries of the comic, I don't want to forget what started it all. Go check it out! And if you haven't read it yet, then WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE? GO READ IT!)

#undertale #deltarune #paper trail #lynxgriffin #pt-disconnected #when deltarune becomes apocalypse #what do we do now #time travel is out the window?#but now the knight is threatening more #that guy sucks #on the other hand #DESS #asgore #and a bunch of others #oh and a cipher as well #;)

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pt-disconnected · 1 year

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The Player glared at the Knight- after all, he was right. They had come back to see things through, to watch the conclusion. And they had no argument for that. And knowing that the Player had no argument made the Knight grin. "Now, the reason you'd come back to this extent... baffles me. Why not just go back to how you were? Why take the effort to disassociate yourself from the puppet you used?" This got an angry reaction from not just the Player, but the team of Ralseis as well. "Their name is KRIS!" they shouted, almost simultaneously. But the Lightner just chuckled. "It doesn't matter what it was. It was a puppet at the time. It couldn't make decisions on it's own." they said... only for the Player to interrupt.

"And how did you know that from where you were that whole time? You couldn't follow Kris into the Light World. You couldn't follow them into the deepest depths of the castle, where Jevil was. And those were where they showed just how much of a life they had, even when the link first formed. They weren't a puppet. They may have been a vessel of sorts, like my body is." "But they were not a puppet. Things can live without a SOUL, after all... Kris was alive the whole time. But without a SOUL, they were a blank slate, which you saw as not being alive. And while the SOUL was left without any method of normal control, that was what allowed them to live- to gain experience from their surroundings, much like what one would do in the early days of their life. Their SOUL was what allowed that to start- but, I'd say by now..." "They don't even need me anymore." The Knight looked confused, maybe even startled by the sudden show of confidence. "Wh... what in the Angel's name are you talking about?! You know nothing about SOULs! You can't possibly know anything about them!"

The Player chuckled mildly. "Sadly for you, this experiment of yours came after something else- something that bears a lot more resemblance to this world than you think. And seeing those resemblances let me piece some things together- things that work the same way here as they did in that other 'existence'. I'm uncertain whether that one was real and separate, like this one- but I know enough to see the connections."

"At this point... I don't think that the SOUL in Kris, is actually my own SOUL. It's theirs. I'm just... cutting the strings. After all, if a puppet can dance without directions from the one holding strings, then it would be able to dance just as well if there were no strings at all. But the SOUL... wasn't the strings. It was what allowed the strings to connect. But, I'm starting to see that when I cut those strings, the SOUL wasn't removed at all. If that had happened, they'd just... fade. Back into the empty shell." "But they aren't empty, they're still moving. They're still LIVING." the Player said, to confused reactions from the group. "But... how do you know that? Kris still has the SOUL, and you said it'd unlink sometime soon... you're saying it like you already unlinked!" The Knight scoffed at this. "You'll see soon enough, in the end. They're a puppet, a vessel. No more. You took their SOUL from them, and with it, their life."

"You killed Kris."

And yet, the Player just chuckled, staring down the Knight- making even the Knight uneasy.

"You know the interesting thing about messing with time..? It can change when certain events happen. And, well, my memories feel a bit changed... you reminded me to think about that not long ago, didn't you?"

The Knight went visibly pale- which, in the Dark World, spoke volumes. "...you... you..."

The Player nodded. "I already unlinked. Turns out, my past self saw everything going on, and seeing Kris like this... well, they felt guilty. They disconnected sooner than I had before this. The timeline shifted- and I'm still here. Because I felt like I could do more than just that. I wanted to see things through, like you said."

"But I already disconnected. I did it a good amount earlier than I had thought... hah, gotta love those kinds of time travel shenanigans, huh?" they said, laughing. But the Knight wasn't smiling. In fact they looked visibly angry. "Y- you..! You GAVE your SOUL to them?! Then how do YOU still have a SOUL?! It should have been either them or you!! ...What did you do?! What rule did you change when you were... out there?!" he spat, angry as a raging bull.

But the Player laughed more. "I didn't change anything, Knight. This SOUL? It's mine. Always has been. I didn't quite realize it- but turns out that even people in my world have SOULs. They just never... show up. There's no reason for them to. So when I came in here, I took my SOUL with me. And that SOUL is using strings to control this vessel whenever I'm out there."

"The SOUL in Kris is all theirs."

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Kris was sitting on the bed in their house, waiting eagerly for the Player's SOUL to unlink, for that piece of them to be gone for good.

Nothing. Had they lied after all? But... there was no way. They were acting so genuine...

Still, something felt different. The SOUL... felt different.

Kris tried to stand up... they did.

They tried to walk to the birdcage. They did.

Open it up... done.

No resistance.

They reached out, preparing to pull out their SOUL again- bracing for the pain. But instead, it emerged as though a battle began, without the box that contained it. That was... new.

So they put it in the cage and closed it. Now they could see what was going on.

Kris began to move towards the bed. The SOUL moved in that direction, too.

That was new for sure.

They open the cage and focus some... and they got their SOUL to exit the cage on their own.

They started to move it around, up, down... left, right... and it worked. Not even a moment of hesitation or waiting- nothing inhibiting it.

And they felt free.

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The Knight was frozen. Such an obvious observation- and it had passed right over them. "But... then how did you access the SAVE state of theirs, and cause all this?"

The Player chuckled some. "At that point, it was still Kris' SOUL, if you recall. You hadn't pulled me in, my SOUL wasn't in the equation. When you pulled me in, my SOUL was pulled in with me. And that separated your link- in fact, it weakened my connection as it was. But of course, there was still my past self to deal with. They still had connection, while I didn't."

With every explanation given, the Knight wanted to give a counterargument- but somehow, these outlandish reasons... were valid. "...you... how do you plan all this out? How are you doing all of this?"

The Player laughed. "You know, I could easily just pretend I planned this, and say something on the lines of thinking in four dimensions. But honestly? I'm just rolling with the punches. Memories changed? Cool, time to make use of that. Pulled into this place? All right then, I'll work with that. Sometimes one of the best plans is not to have one. It's impossible to predict a plan that doesn't exist. Patterns are helpful- but they may not work forever."

The Knight growled in anger. "...so all of this... all of these changes, all of this absolute CHAOS you've strewn across my carefully laid plan... all of this has just been you doing... whatever comes to mind at that moment?! All of these things you do to ruin my progress... and you're not even planning them out?"

The Player chuckled a bit. "Not a bit. I'm not willing to try and learn that much about this time travel bullshit, I just want to make use of it to get this done."

With this, the Knight was seething mad. It looked like he was ready to attack, but in his current situation, he was not only outnumbered, but the Player could easily just pull the same stunt. He wasn't prepared to fight.

But as the ground beneath them shook, his face of rage shifted... and he looked quite happy with the quakes.

"...ah, but it seems it was all in vain!" he said, almost cackling.

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Kris was still trying out their newfound freedom- and the SOUL that belonged to them, and ONLY them this time!- when they heard knocking on the door. So they went out to where Toriel was, her already waiting for the arrival, before seeing Kris’ eyes- BROWN eyes... and as the door opened...

"Mom! Kris!"

"I'm home!"

And with that... we will reach beyond the end. The Player and Kris have separate SOULs, Kris is free- AND with a SOUL intact, interestingly enough!- the Knight has gotten his usual plans taken screwball thanks to weird time travel bullshit (love when the past changes), and the world is falling apart. Oh, and Azzy's here now too. Also one of the FEW times I will ever go beyond the Player's scope of vision- as it was something I felt needed shown. This will likely only happen more often if it makes the story a bit better- otherwise, we'll only know what the Player knows. But we'll see. I'm pretty excited to have Kris with their own SOUL, as opposed to split control with the Player. Yes, I was a bit worried about how to explain the time-travel again. But the differentiation between when the Player was in the Over World and when they were in the Light and Dark Worlds was perfect for that, as... well, they had their SOUL in the Over World with them. Why they can't SAVE and LOAD in the Over World? Good question, you get the gif! (You know the one.) I would say more about this but it's a lot to say, and would be difficult without potentially sharing possible story paths. Chaos, chaos. Hehe. It's a lot for this part, and honestly my brain was working overtime to tie it all together the best I could. I'm not even sure if there's any inconsistencies because of how much happened. If you do manage to spot any, then let me know. I'd really appreciate it and it'll help me with future parts as well. I also feel really bad because it's been essentially three months. THREE. WHOLE. MONTHS. College is annoying as all get out, and I wish I could just do this all the time. I enjoy writing, and I wish I could do it more, but with college, I often find myself doing other stuff, seeing this, wanting to do more, and then finding myself doing other stuff again. I highly appreciate the asks people send as reminders, since they show me that yes, people do still care about this. And that's kinda my motivation. Knowing people enjoy this story so much makes me honestly really happy, and makes it easier to work on this knowing that there is purpose to it. With any luck, I can get myself back into writing this more often, and we'll have a score of story parts (one score is equal to 20 for those who need to know) soon enough. If I didn't absolutely butcher this one at least. Previous Part | First Part | Next Part LynxGriffin's Paper Trail Comic (This part was almost exclusively based off of the Finale part of the original Paper Trail comic, with added portions that are unique to the story. I think this will be the last story for at least a good while that will be directly based off the comic itself. There will definitely be elements from past original comic pages used, but there's going to be more original aspects from here out. Hoo boy, I got work to do.)

#undertale #deltarune #lynxgriffin #paper trail #pt-disconnected #pt disconnected #the end #but not for us #SOUL shenanigans #Gaster discovering Murphy's Law #college is pain #lucky Asriel gets to be free from it

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