" H o w c a n S a t a n b e e v i l i f h e p u n i s h e s t h e w i c k e d ?"

"Love is weakness."

Mayor Grimes looked out against the window of her sixty-third floor apartment flat, drinking in the vast serenity that had engulfed the city of Chicago. Humans progressed with their normal affairs, completely oblivious to the wide reform that had grasped the monster race. Perhaps if they had known the sheer calamity of it all, their viewpoints would have changed drastically.

You stood next to her at a respectful distance, the mayor's loyal servant, her never-questioning puppet. The newly-renovated clock tower that loomed above all other buildings chimed its familiar dreary tune, reminding the stragglers that they had less than five minutes to assume their daily work positions or face certain execution.

But unlike the humans, monsters arrived at their work stations an hour early as they had been commanded. You didn't know it yet, but Sans had assumed his position of packaging processed foods alongside his brother Papyrus. The only difference was that they earned no pay for their work, for a work force that never questioned its orders was a work force that would not question its pay.

And despite all of this, despite the glaring fact that you could and would not escape your indentured servitude, some small piece of resilience burned within your very core that yes, you would one day break free from your chains and put a bullet between Mayor Grimes' eyes.

"You must think I'm the villain," Mayor Grimes sighed and turned to face you. For a comical moment she seemed to expect an answer, though she had long since programmed you to be incapable of speech. "[Y/N], I am anything but the devil you portray me as. I have been thrown into an impossible position in impossible circumstances, expected to keep the peace between the two races that want nothing more than to tear out each other's throats."

You felt the pressure on your esophagus lessen as Mayor Grimes slammed her finger onto the silver remote you had begun to despise. "You are free to speak [Y/N], but any intolerable language will render you again mute."

You couldn't help but laugh at the sheer irony of it all. What then was there to say? She had wronged you and the monster race in every way imaginable and the woman behind it all, the woman who stood before you and controlled your every word and movement at the push of a button, wanted you to be quiet? Be a good little soldier?

"I'm not heartless," Mayor Grimes retorted as if picking up on your thoughts. Her fingers played with a rusted wedding band on her index finger. "I knew what it was like to love once, before the bombs fell. But my duty lies to this city, to protect the remnants of human race as I was elected for. Monsterkind is a threat, a threat that I have eradicated."

"Go to hell." You spat out the reply like every word was venom to you. Perhaps it was.

Mayor Grimes let loose a laugh and shook her head. "After all this time, cannot you learn? Is there not one shred of common sense left within you? I have won, I have eradicated the opposition. No one stands between my path and the rebuilding of humanity. By this time next year, nuclear warfare will have been nothing but a distant memory."

Your mind wandered to the obvious facts, facts that humanity was indeed not on the road to recovery. Electricity was scarce these days, only available to the few that could afford it. What type of society was that? How could it be a glorification of the Western Civilization that now lay in ashes?

"You're lying," you continued, surprised Mayor Grimes hadn't had the common sense to mute you. But for now you enjoyed your temporary freedom, enough time to find out just what made her tick in the hopes that you could one day buy your freedom. "You may have enslaved the monsters, but humanity is no where near recovering. Our numbers amount to less than a thousand and the electricity is barely on for an hour for those that can actually afford it."

"All minor steps," Mayor Grime spat and pulled a lever down on the remote, the air instantly leaving your lungs. Your words were halted and you once more became a mute servant. "Can't you have faith [Y/N]? Humanity will recover, and you will watch it happen. And once it is done, I will make you watch as every last monster you claim to be your ally is slain before your very eyes. And then we will see who the true victor is."

There was a brief pause before a knowing smile made its way across her features. "You think that there's still a way to undo the effects of the serum, isn't that correct? That there's still a way to break out of here and somehow become the hero of monsterkind? That's adorable."

With a strangled cry, you lunged for her throat. Your limbs hadn't been restrained, a mistake that would no doubt play in Mayor Grimes' downfall. You delivered a kick into her side, satisfied to be rewarded with the iconic sound of breaking bones and flesh. You pinned her hand to the ground and wrestled the remote from her fingers, satisfaction rolling off you in waves as you held the silver remote away from her grasp.

With a heave, you slammed the remote to the ground and rolled away from where you had been, picking up a metal shard in your hand. Whipping around, you stabbed into the spot where Mayor Grimes had been only mere seconds ago. But when you were met with air, you cursed under your breath and had barely enough time to feel the cold, hard steel of a gun placed against your back.

"You may be powerful. Hell, I'll give you that, but you aren't immortal," Mayor Grimes growled, cocking a bullet into the round of the handgun. "He told me not to kill you, but I don't think I have any other option. See you in the next run, [Y/N]."

In a frantic, you closed your eyes and searched desperately for the cut off part of your mind that seemed to possess the seemingly endless reserves of energy. You pushed against it, desperate to break the barrier between you and whatever energy rendered you capable of conducting magic. Almost instantaneously, the membrane burst and every fiber of your being reached out to claim the magic, almost as if the substance were water and your body had been deprived of it for centuries.

Satisfied, you opened your eye and felt your entire being hum with the energy you had now grown accustomed to. It was almost unimaginable how you could have progressed beforehand, magic seemed so vital and of import to your well-being.

In a fluid motion, you whipped around and imagined some sort of barrier that existed between you and the bullet that had now been unloaded from the gun's chamber. On cue, a [F/C] barrier sprouted against the palm of your hand. It was almost transparent and moved according to the position of your hands, and ultimately stopped the bullet in its tracks.

Mayor Grimes watched in growing horror as the brass bullet clattered to the tile floor. "You're not human," she hissed and took off running out the apartment door. In blind rage, you manifested your anger as a single piece of matter and a jagged piece of violent [F/C] light shot from your hands and erupted the doorway into flame. Much to your dismay, the mayor had already made her descent down the steps, the smoke and flame obscuring your view of her.

I'm free, you realized in triumph and flexed your hands, relieved to move of your own accord again. Your hand made its way down your back and gently prodded at the metal device that was still buried within your spinal cord. As long as the nerve tampering machine was still connected to your nervous system, simply another remote would be all it would take for you to once more loose control of your body.

What was your first motive? There was no doubt that you couldn't stay here, the wailing of the fire sirens in the distance were proof of that. Perhaps you could find Sans but what would be the point of that? You had made sure of it yourself, you had quite literally been the very person that had stabbed the syringe into him and watched as slowly but surely, his brain or whatever allowed him to function was rotted away.

You still thank that there's a way to undo the effects of the serum.

A part of you hoped, prayed even, that there was some sort of reversal of the serum. Maybe it had been created as a last-ditch effort in case the serum did end up spreading to humans and they needed a redo button, you weren't sure. But there had to be something, anything.

The question was, where would the serum be hidden? The city of Chicago was several square miles and you weren't exactly John Smith from the post office. No doubt was your face already making its way on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, properly entitled Public Enemy Number One.

There was always the possibility that it was back in the lab, the very place where the damn thing had been created in the first place. But something told you that it wouldn't quite be that easy, Mayor Grimes would make sure of that. And was it even possible to restore a monster's mind to the way it had been? One of the most prominent effects of the serum was to rot away the prefrontal cortex. Before the fall of Western Civilization, modern-day scientists hadn't even been able to map out half the neurons in the human brain, barely scratching the surface of monster anatomy when they had popped up.

Your brief day dream was ultimately halted as a series of shouts echoed from the floor below you. Already the police and fire task force was winding their way through the building, most likely armed and ordered to shoot you on sight. The energy hadn't retreated back into the dormant pocket that stored it within your mind. For now your batteries were fully charged in the literal sense.

However, it seemed like slaughter to use any offensive tactics against them. Your vendetta was against Mayor Grimes, not the unfortunate humans that had signed up to put food in their family's mouths. Even if they caused grief, it was only orders that they were following.

Orders that came from high command.

You willed the surrounding atoms to interlink together, forming a transparent barrier around you. It was completely undetectable to human perception. When a hail storm of bullets flew into the smoking apartment complex, the few that managed to come your way ricocheted off the barrier and flew at random angles all across the room. Despite your temporary armor, your heart still caught in your throat as the shield would occasionally illuminate a light [F/C] when a bullet hit the invisible matter.

"Just go!" you insisted, knowing that if you wanted to escape this room, you would have to use offensive tactics and risk the chance of killing one of them. This seemed to have no effect on the police as bullet after bullet rained down on your wavering shield.

You closed your eyes and a map of the variating human souls materialized into view. You allowed your consciousness to seize hold of several of the souls that were closed to your escape route and flung them aside. Startled exclamations sounded on cue as several of the police officers were thrown across the room. Wet snaps indicated that many had broken their necks and ultimately passed onto whatever afterlife lay after this one.

"I'm so sorry," you whispered as you made your way through the remaining crowd of officers. Their guns remained poised, ready to take a shot hoping to bury the bullet in your skull. But they knew better, however, after the death of their colleague had instigated the obvious fear.

As you made your way down the stairs, you almost froze at the sound of a gun being cocked behind your head, and an all-too familiar voice ringing behind you.

"Hands up."

Sans.