"Why me?"

Nightmare had been stopped by Error on his way back inside, and Error looked like he had a request of Nightmare to do.

And a request he had, alright.

"Both of us need to track them down and make sure they don't get too far, where ever they went," Error informed the runaway skeleton in front of him, "If they tell someone who works for the King, specifically one of the Royal Guards where our base is, then..."

"We'll be caught."

"Precisely."

Nightmare groaned, crossing his arms and rolling his visible eye. If there was one thing he hated, it was following orders. He was a person who played by their own rules, so Error had just given up trying to order Nightmare around. Nightmare usually was the one to gives orders, they both were powerful and smart enough to come up with strategies that often had success, so Error commanding Nightmare was now very rare.

Yet, there he was, commanding Nightmare to do something.

"I know you like playing by your rules, and you can, I'm just asking that you stop them from reporting this to anyone," Error pointed out, "If someone finds out where we are, it's all over. It'll be difficult to find some new place here, there's no buildings other than this one in a perfect hiding spot."

As much as Nightmare didn't want to admit it, Error was right. Their base had been a perfect find, not one normal person had stumbled upon it on accident. It suited their needs the best, and if they lost it, they would have a big disadvantage, especially with the King now allowing for people to start hunting them down.

"Just let me do my thing and we have a deal."

"That's fine with me, as long as you don't fail, you can do it however you like."

That gave Nightmare plenty of creative ideas, which Nightmare liked. With being commanded, his actions were more limited, and he liked to be in control with what he did. All he had to do was make sure they didn't report their situation to someone of good status, that was it. He could pursue it however he wanted.

The vampire wasn't sure how he was going to do it yet, but he didn't want to hurt the servant named Cross. He had developed a 'love in first sight', as some people would say, since he had found Cross extremely adorable. He especially liked how nervous Cross had been when he met him, and he wanted to talk to Cross more.

This gave him some opportunities to see his little crush a tad bit more.

That, Nightmare had decided, was a good plan.

~~~~~~

Flowey and Alphys had come back shortly after they had defeated Muffet, helping them drag her back to her house. It was obvious that they had to leave before she woke up and took it out on Alphys and Flowey, who knew she was going to try to use them for food at some time. So, they had stricken a deal.

If Alphys and Flowey would help Ink and Cross get back to the castle against the other citizens and vampires threatening them, they would sneak them into the castle and get them some gold so they could get some better living conditions.

Flowey just seemed bored with his life, so he was all for going and having an adventure. Alphys also wanted to see how Sci and her girlfriend, Undyne, was doing so she also accepted eagerly. But, since none of them had enough gold on them to get a carriage to take them all the way to the castle, they would have to walk.

Cross stood near Alphys, who was busy throwing some things into her worn backpack, awaiting any requests he could possibly fill for her. He had been used to listening to others orders for years, so his default mode was to stand and just wait for them from anyone who could give him orders. If there was nobody that could, he then went onto focusing on his survival.

When Cross had awoken, he had no one to listen to, so he just escaped to go back to the castle to have some orders. It was accidental that he had stumbled across of Ink, he didn't even know that Ink had been captured. But once he found someone who would give him orders, he waited for them, and Ink delivered.

Wait, if he had happened to stumble across of Ink, were there others that had the same fate as them?

"Um, Alphys," Cross spoke, gaining her attention.

"Mh-hm?" She hummed in response, not looking up at him.

"Did you hear about any news of the castle being raided at all?"

Alphys then looked up at him in confusion, her hand halfway on it's journey to place a glass vial of some blue powdery substance into her bag. She had obviously been surprised by his sudden question.

"Why?" She asked him.

"Well, I just had happened to stumble onto Ink, it wasn't like I knew he was there with me," Cross explained, "What if there was someone else there too, and are still trapped?"

"If they were, how would you get them out? Those are vampires who had kidnapped you, correct?"

"Yeah, it looked like it."

"There's your answer. It would probably be the best idea to report what had happened, then get back up, since you now know the location of one of their bases, if they have more than one. And I'm doubting you guys have any leads, so this could be a major break through on your part."

"Okay," Cross said, agreeing with his thoughts.

"Hey!" Flowey said, sticking his flower top through the doorway, "Ink being an emotionless crap and it's annoying. Fix him."

"He's the one without emotions, remember?" Alphys said, turning towards him.

"Thought it was this bag of bones."

"No, it's Ink."

"Well, fix him then," Flowey said, rolling his eyes, "If he has no emotions then I can't mess around with him, and it sucks."

"He has to take supplement emotions instead of his real ones," Cross told Flowey.

"So, have him take them!"

"They are specially made in a different Kingdom, we just transport them over."

"Alphys, just make them yourself!"

"I don't know how."

The yellow flower huffed and left the room, grumbling, "Then what's the point of being a scientist then?" on his way out.

"I'll finish packing up, you can go see if those makeshift cruches are working," Alphys told Cross.

"Understood."

The skeleton followed her 'commands' in his eyes and retreated into the other room to retrieve Ink, who was texting out the cruches they had made out of some of the old branches from thr forest they had escaped from. Flowey was the one who had grabbed them and the vines required to make them into something useable.

It was just two ling sticks, one slightly longer than the other, and two sticks at the top to help support his arms. The sticks were connected by some vines twisted around the two, keeping them there. Ink was testing them out to see if they could keep them stable, and they weren't snapping under his weight, so that was good.

His expression sent chills down Cross' back. It was just so... Empty. Blank. Dull.

Ink's eye sockets showed so many emotions, but it was just two simple white pupils, void of any emotions. Cross knew that Ink had no soul, but he didn't know what it had looked like. Earlier, Ink was clinging to the last affects of his medication desperately, that was obvious compared to what the servant was looking at now.

"Hey Ink..." He spike softly, knocking on the wall to alert Ink of his presence.

"Cross, greetings."

Even his voice was just blank of his personality. He sounded like a shadow of himself, like some sort of failed clone. It was like was gave up on trying on anything, he sounded tired and dull.

That scared Cross.

"Um, hey, just wanted to,say that we're planning on leaving soon," He said quietly, shifting from his right foot to his left.

"That seems reasonable."

Cross had always been set that his worst fear in his entire life was dying. He had no giant fear of snakes or heights, heck, he even liked being up high from time to time. But just ceasing to exist had always been his worst thought of how he would go, which was why he but survival above everything else.

However, seeing Ink like this...

Death was no longer his greatest fear.

Having no soul was much more terrifying.

~~~~~~

"They drew back their forces..."

"I heard his Kingdom is going into lockdown..."

"They won't even be trading to anywhere but one heavily guarded post for food for the castle..."

"Didn't you hear? King Asgore is afraid of the war..."

"What will happen to our Kingdom? Our only Royal member is sick, he's going to die soon with no heir."

"Of course he has no heir you idiot, no right minded lady would get in bed with a dying 64 year old man!"

The whispers surrounded them, reminding the three girls of what was going on. There was threats of war looming above them, and one of the largest and most powerful Kingdoms was practically going into lockdown because of reasons unknown to them. Rumors said the King was terrified of losing a war, so he was locking down to keep from other Kingdoms having a better chance at invading his. If any ship tried to go anywhere other than the castle's personal dock, they would be sunk on sight.

"Do you guys think a war is going to happen?" PurpleFluffball asked her two friends, her fingernails picking at her glass of water nervously.

"That's political stuff, we shouldn't be talking about it, I sure as heck don't like talking about it," Bubbly replied, drinking her hot chocolate before her eyes shot open as she screamed, "HOT!"

"But don't we have to be concerned about the idea of war?" The blond haired female asked the other two, her grayish blue eyes looking between them.

"Well, everyone is backing away from alliances from our Kingdom because our King is dying, alliances and trade would practically serve no use to them," The blue eyed female answered, "We'd need a new ruler with an iron fist to be able to talk to the others. The war is only really a threat to everyone because we're all afriad of each other when we should be more focused on problems like the King."

The other two girls stared in awe at their friend.

"Ba-geez my friend, I had no idea that you knew so much about the leading stuff I sleep on during class," Bubbly laughed, a hand running though her brown hair.

"I dabble from time to time."

"Of course you do!" The third female joined in, her injured wings slightly adjusting as he leaned forward, "You read about that crap all the time! You could practically become the Queen with all of that knowledge."

"I doubt it," PurpleFluffball said, grinning at them.

《》《》《》

Boom!

Chapter out!

Ok, I have a little problem on my hands.

I HAVE NO IDEA IF THIS IS GOING TO BE A ONE OR TWO BOOK STORY!

I originally planned for one book, but I might have to drag this out into two books, since there's so many characters I have to develop and so many character archs I need to get into. Not to mention how it's already Chapter 27, and most of the ships have yet to even look at each other!

Like holy crap is this book slow.

So, can you comment if you want me to cram it all into one book or two? That will be very helpful for helping me decide!

Anyway, one last message. If you've been skipping the italicized parts of the book about the characters pasts or the girls, don't do it and please go read them! There is a reason I put them in here and the girls are actually essential to thr story itself, so don't skip it just because you may think it's a 'self insert' that has nothing to do with the story.

Anyway, bye!