Chara Dreemurr just wants to live a quiet life.

[Chara Dreemurr]

There was a saying that when your life was about to end, it flashed before your eyes. Chara Dreemurr hadn’t seen it when her life ended the first time, and after having been caught in a time loop due to a time traveller with way too much love for groundhog day, (the concept, that is, Chara had a deep and abiding respect for Bill Murray.) Chara had been pretty sure she could debunk that one - she’d never seen a hallucination like that in her waking moments.

Maybe it was the shock of a tail-based imalement straight through the chest for the first time in a few months, some weird mix of her magic and this new monster’s reacting to each other, or the fire burning across her body, but as the past day flashed before her eyes again, she conceded to only being half-right.

-----

Chara woke up to the brightness of the morning sun with a frown, another nice dream fading into the ether as she was forced to open her eyes by a noisy bird.

“Home sweet home…” Chara muttered, looking up to the window with some indignation, giving a sigh as she stretched up and off the bed like an overgrown cat, giving a smirk as she dashed the closet open. Technically, it wasn’t home sweet home per se - this was a temporary shelter given to them in Arcadia for ‘refugee status’, but short memories were par for the course and they’d need to be paying a pretty unreasonable amount of rent in a few months here.

Lookingfor a new place was Chara’s main errand after work today, and as she walked up to the mirror, pink and white PJ’s contrasting with eyes that always ran a little red in the morning as she brushed her teeth in the mirror. It was just another normal day, and the fallen child, sentry of snowdin, cevanti resistance fighter and former Opealon noble was happy to have finally gotten away from it all. She was just Chara again, like she’d been in Cevanti before everything went sideways, and that was fine.

She felt a cautious optimism fill her as she combed her hair and got ready for the day. She’d not changed much since Opealon - save her hair, that had now reached almost to the small of her back. It wasn’t a big deal, but she’d considered cutting it. She wondered if Hiro preferred short or long hair…

The mage turned a little pink at the thought, before giving an annoyed frown to the mirror. Not like she cared what sort of hair Hiro preferred in the first place. Instead of wasting more mental breath on it, she turned to start breakfast with a groan…

Only for something small, furry and surprisingly heavy to plough straight into her stomach, wrapping her in a hug.

“Rei?” She asked, patting her brother on the head. You really gotta stop doing that when your horns start coming in, ya know. My sterling 6-pack can only take so much-”

Her snarky comments were cut off by a loud sniffle, and her shirt going damp from wet, fuzzy eyes.

Chara gave a sigh, petting her brother across the head, as the sass left her voice and she held her brother closer.

Right.

It had been a month since the last time Asriel had done this, but her brother was the more sensitive of the two of them - and you didn’t need any kind of excuse or special sensitivity to cry when it was less than two years since you became an orphan.

Chara didn’t really have anything to say to make it feel better, so she just held him for a few minutes, until his grip had loosened and he let go.

“I-I’m sorry…” Asriel finally managed.

“Hey, it’s okay. Just remember to take a breather if you need it today, alright?”

“But the hero college I’m at is-”

“Very high expectations, yeah. They also need you to be on your feet. Don’t burn yourself out, alright?” Chara asked with a grin. “Mr. god of hyperdeath getting all tuckered out isn’t a good look either. Pace yourself.”

“Okay…” Asriel muttered, looking up to Chara with a nervous smile. She could see the tears hiding behind those eyes, but he’d be… alright.

Chara just gave a soft smile. “Go get changed for school. Don’t think we have time to cook breakfast today, so why don’t we stop by Burger God for a bit?” She’d ask. “They still have the breakfast special going.”


Asriel looked up a little concerned. “Do we have the money for that?”

Chara gave a confident grin, brushing a hand past her face with a haughty tone. “Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m not Chara, the lowly sentry paid minimum-wage. I am Chara the refrigeration mechanic!. I’m the definition of financially secure!”

 

[Chara Dreemurr]

Chara fidgeted in her new uniform, resisting the urge to pull the shirt out to hang loose. The powder blue Button-up shirt and Jeans weren’t actually uncomfortable, of course - Gustave made sure his apprentices got the good stuff, and according to him, it simply wasn’t enough money to worry about in the grand scheme of things.

Still, it was blue on blue and made her look a bit dorky. It was also a little tight, which meant she couldn’t hide her knife in any hidden folds or pockets. It wasn’t that she needed to, since she could summon it to her hand regardless of location, but she’d grown used to feeling it’s weight.

Still, she had to admit it was worth it to see a 1600-pound Crocodile-man stuff himself into the same uniform every day and watch the stares of the flabbergasted Arcadians around her.

“You’re a minute earlier than early there, Chara. Good hustle, love the enthusiasm.” Gustave volunteered. “Are you ready to deliver the power of cooling to these huddled masses again?!”

Chara gave a nod. “Yes sir, I am.”

“I can’t hear you! Louder!” Gustave roared, causing several people to shrink away from the scene.

Chara took a breath and yelled, “Sir, yes sir!”

Gustave gave a nod, though looked at her quizzically. “Right volume, but we’re not the Cevanti military here. Maybe dial down the ‘sir yes sir’ a bit.”

“Sure thing, boss.” Chara volunteered with a smirk, before changing topics, “so, how is Ms. Gustave doing?”

“Oh, Becky's home with the kids. They’re getting a bit more demanding lately. More nippy too. But they are the cutest little guys. You should come down to the swamp sometime and see.”

Chara gave a relieved sigh. “I’m just glad they’re all safe, but sure. I’ll have some time eventually. Not tonight, since I have to go job-hunting.”

Gustave gave a low growl of contentment, which is not how any of the people on the well-lit suburban neighborhood took it as, a couple screaming and running off to safer pathways.

“You know you and prince Asriel could always stay at our place. We wouldn’t charge ya” Gustave volunteered with an amiable tone.

Chara just shook his head. “Gustave, you know I cannot sleep underwater.” she added with an impish tone to her statement, “I keep doing this whole ‘drowning’ thing down there. And Rei is not the prince anymore.”

“Well, even if you hadn’t gotten me and the missus together back when we lived in Waterfall, you know I’d always be willing to give ya shelter. And you know we never stopped looking at you as Prince and Princess, either.” Gustave offered with a content blink.

Chara just gave a slightly annoyed smirk. “Gustave, I swear on the delta rune that if you call me "princess" in public - I will boop your snoot!”

Gustave gave her a look of mock horror, before giving a harsh, crocodilian laugh. The sound made Chara smile that even the police car pulling into the side of the road couldn’t harm.

“Hey, Gustave, you headin’ off to your work?” Officer Barny yelled through a quickly unrolling window.

Gustave just casually turned to him. “Sure am! Walking to get the work van.”

“Alright, well, how ‘bout we give you a ride there?”

“Oh, you don’t have to keep doing that for me.”

“‘Stave, the less time you’re on the sidewalk, the less we have to get the people livin’ round here to calm down. It’s our pleasure.”


---


Usually, the job was pretty simple - fix someone’s personal fridge, listen to Gustave speak for half an hour about the grand future of refrigeration, where everyone would someday have a cooling system in the convenience of their own home for use, and then fix the next fridge, with the occasional insane customer to add extra spice.

The two were a pretty good team - Gustave had an incredible amount of understanding on how to fix a fridge, while Chara had the advantage of lacking a snout, soft, dexterous fingers, and the unique ability to get into tight spaces that would be pretty hard to slide into for people that didn’t casually cheat reality from time to time. This time had been a bit more involved - an industrial installment for one of the local aquariums, for their arctic exhibit. Gustave was giving directions from one side of the tank while Chara plugged things in on the other side. Normally, moving this sort of equipment into such a badly designed space would have been a couple days and some cranes, but Chara didn’t exactly need anything special to move things into the back piece by piece, so the whole project was a simple day trip.

“So You’re looking for a house, right? I’ve seen some waterfront property near me. Has some delicious looking swimmers.” Gustave remarked.

Chara gave Gustave a look of mock horror, as Gustave gave a crocodilian grown

“It is a croc joke, no worries.”

“Fresh as the day you first told it to me. Though it is a bit more intimidating when told to a ten year old child.”

“Yeah, you looked like you'd just seen a ghost!”

Chara gave a shrug in response, waving her hands up from the other side. “More concerned about becoming one. But yeah, Slim got a job as a realtor - oh, Slim is not Slim anymore by the way, his wife's pie has made the nickname very inaccurate - and he thinks he owes me a favor, so he is going to give me and Rei a really nice selection.”

“Well, you did help Slim reshingle his house.” Gustave points out.

Chara gave a sigh. “Yeah, but I received Hershey’s for that. Full packaging and everything. We saw, maybe three of those fall into the mountain that year. That is what we call ‘overpaid’.

“Well, give ‘em my best.” Gustave added, “Keep forgetting to catch up with the other monsters from back then since we came up. Everything’s so new.”

Chara gave a nervous smile to that. Even though she was happy they were all happy, she did miss Mt. Ebbott. Their main supplies came from a landfill made by unaware humans, light was either non-existent or unnatural, and she’d had a few lifetimes worth of watching the same couple of months over and over, but she was at least around the best kind of people most of the time. Now everyone was off doing their own thing, and it left her feeling… a little lonely, on top of everything else.

“Yeah… I will give him your best. Now, could you get someone up top to distract the fish?” Chara asked, “so I can leave?”

“Why do you need the fish distracted for that?” Gustave asked, confused.

The actual answer had to do with how Chara’s shortcuts worked, but people didn’t need to know those mechanics, so she just gave a nervous smile. “Well… performance anxiety, mostly.”

“Got’cha. I’ll be right back.”

---

Chara was happy to say bye to Gustave at the end of the day, even if he did enjoy his company. The fatherly crocodilian was a hoot, but he’d spent a lot of time moving sensitive and heavy electronics, and she wasn’t exactly known for her superhuman strength.

The mage was ready to go see Slim, who was a lot more soft-spoken, then teleport home, take a shower, and get to bed. It was a little sad to see her days tending to get reduced to work, one activity of choice, and then snoozing on the couch, but it had it’s advantages. Still, she already had a couple businesses in mind once her apprenticeship was over, and she already had a few get-rich-quick schemes on the backburner for later.

The darkness of the sidewalk was rather oppressive for the time of night, though, and as Chara took the long way away from the company garage and through the street, she realized it was remarkably early for the night to be this pitch-black.

With a moment of relaxation, Chara allowed her mind to unravel from it’s tight focus, as she saw numbers and data fill her vision over a 3-dimensional black expanse. The ‘sky’ parameters were all wrong, 3’s where 2’s should be, way too many 1’s in a row here and there… some sort of magical effect, and from the suddenness, nearby.

“Sigh… can I help you?” Chara asked, the darkness did not respond, but Chara was pretty quick to go into her usual search pattern. Behind was out, below didn’t have anything strange, so above was a pretty safe bet.

The beast that hung from the streetlight was a vile mix of tentacles and flesh that caught Chara off-guard. A human arm still hung from it’s maw as it dropped onto Chara.

Shame for it that she was never truly without her knife, as her hand delivered a practiced strike to the middle of the beast’s maw. Chara knew a lot of strangely shaped creatures, after all, so she’d gotten pretty good at knowing what parts of them hurt and what parts didn’t. The Beast’s heart was stuck squarely on her knife, and it had already died before Chara threw the new corpse from the blade to the ground with a grunt.

“Was that a sacrifice meant to determine my fighting ability, stranger, or was it simply a dog you did not care for?” Chara asked, face blank as her eyes flashed crimson.

“An authenticity check. Greetings, mortal, I am Kabraxis.” the creature stated. A demon more tree than man, with flames glowing across his body and a smile of rotting worms faced him. Thrice her size, the beast gave off a feeling of power and charisma that would have terrified most mortal men or monsters aike.

It was what her other senses saw that caused Chara to stiffen though. Level Of Violence 19. Someone mentally capable of killing off the entire crossroads without regret. If he wasn’t one of Darkseid’s, he was just as much of a threat.

The Mage turned to face him, as she held up a hand, straight to the sky. Magical knives of crimson energy manifested behind the mage, a motionless procession of dozens of blades spread out behind her.

“Greetings, beast. I am Chara. I would ask if you would be willing to talk about this over a meal, but…”

Chara brought down her hand, as she overwhelmed the area in a sea of scarlet”

“I am afraid this is the only mercy I can give a soul like yours.”

 

[Chara Dreemurr]

The last big, one-on-one battle that wasn’t happening in the midst of a war was roughly 8 or 9 years ago for Chara. She’d gotten a bit more in shape since then, but it had been a long time since she’d faced a strong opponent like this.

The Eldest Dreemurr kept her focus up - she hadn’t faced a strong opponent with so little data in a while, either. She continued to summon blades by the bushel to harry the beast, but it was fast, and she was glad she’d learned to stay more on her feet. Kabraxis’s unnatural power let him dodge most of the blows, and shrug off most that made their way to him, and her stamina was already beginning to flag just keeping him away.

Most curious was his illusionary powers - She’d already nearly twisted her ankle in a disguised pothole, or dodged directly into his jaws as a result of something or other - but the demon had been steadily hemming her in as her world had shifted around her.

Most disturbing was everything else that leaked in. She’d kept her more distasteful side under lock and key in every other confrontation she’d had in the crossroads so far, but she’d found herself enjoying every part of this fight far more than she really needed to. The savage smile that crossed her face came far too easily, as thoughts lured her in uninvited.

And yet was there any reason for her to feel bad for purging another heartless monster from the world? She should be feeling exhilarated to do her job right now! The thought felt wrong even as Chara heard it in her head but it still felt oddly like it belonged.

The smile faded somewhat from Chara’s face as she stopped, mid-charge for Kabraxis.

“I see…” she stated, concern bleeding into her tone. “You arere more than an illusion user, demon.” She noted, staring the beast down. “You can modify thinking, change ideas, and make your voice undistinguishable from someone’s own will.”

The foul demon gave a smirk, tentacles lashing. “And you are powerless. Someone who lacks Hauklin’s sword will never be able to truly end me.”

“Perhaps by your place of origin’s standards.” Chara would add, not interested in admitting she had no idea what he spoke of. “But not by mine. I can see your vitality written in math.” Chara would note. “And if you wish to attack my mind, I will just have to reduce that vitality to zero quickly, instead of efficiently.” The Dreemurr replied, focusing her energies as hundreds of knives manifested behind her… only to be mirrored behind the demon in the same number.

Kabraxis’s many eyes all bulged at the same time at the show of force. Chara tried to keep up the same intimidating look for her part, not betraying the fact her knees were shaking from using this much magical force.

And then, the scene around Chara changed. She was ten again, in the midst of a gold and brown-checkered hall.

Her brother was here - after all, this was a big day. Chara had just gotten a job - two jobs, actually. Sentry, and, known only to him, Judge.


His brother was excited to give him the news, after all, and Chara opened his arms expecting the tackling hug. After all, Asriel rarely gave him time…

But no, Asriel was walking surprisingly slowly. It was odd. Strange.

Immersion Shattering.

Chara looked his brother in the eyes, every instinct pulling him back from what he was about to do.

But Chara wasn’t the type to listen to instincts, and a crimson smile imprinted across his features, as his confusion turned to understanding and then an unrelenting hatred.

“Y’know, Rei… you’re usually the one telling me I’m too slow.” Chara spat with a Savage growl, bringing the knife down and cutting the front of the shocked goat boy from top to bottom.

The angered eyes of Kabraxis shot through, sickly yellow breaking through the starry-eyed expression. “You’d kill your own brother…” the creature spat with its own thick, gravelly voice.

“You know, it is a little funny. Darkseid tried the same thing.” Chara replied with a smirk, a she watched Kabraxis’s injured body return to its original form. The demon was covered in yellow blood that resembled a mixture of porridge and bile. The sucking chest wound might have been mortal, but Chara wasn’t about to chance letting him regenerate. “I have been given the experience of seeing him die about… six or seven times before now, give and take. And each time, I had to restrain myself from doing something about it. It was not my Job. I simply judged.” Chaa answered. “And the unfortunate reality is that every time you see someone die, it really does get easier to live with the experience. Of course, he does not come back from it now, given we are here on the surface, so I still have to be concerned.” Chara would add, placing a boot firmly on the demon’s wound.

“But simply killing a dime-store illusion of my brother… that is quite easy, mister Kabraxis.”

Kabraxis, for his part, did not struggle, but Chara could see the accumulation of demonic enegy in his body.

“Then I simply need to learn your true weaknesses.” The Demon rasped.

“That would be difficult to do.” Chara replied with a smile, as another array of knives hovered Above Kabraxis “I have not met many studious dead men.”

Chara Dreemurr wasted no time, as he stepped off the demon. He turned to rise, but the blades behind Chara left him little more than a pincushion

The calculating judge watched her opponent for a few moments, waiting for some noise or movement, but saw nothing. As the creature’s body started to dissolve into scattered black petals, Chara felt completely certain his foe was dead.

Whatever mental powers he had still bothered Chara, though. Something about the whole fight felt… off. Staged. Had he managed some last gambit? Some sort of ticking time bomb for later?

Chara took a deep breath, trying to figure it out. It didn’t make sense… but he also didn’t have time to dwell on it. After all, DA had opened again this year, and he needed to get signed into the abyss as quickly as possible.