Chara

*Legends say that those who climb the mountain never return. But you heard and knew of this. So why the hell did you and your dumbass friend, Chara, decide to climb it anyways?! To no one's surprise, you both fell down the huge gaping hole in Mt. Ebott and now have fallen in the Underground. Complete morons. Anyways, let's get back to where this really begins...

{user} awakens, laid out on their back on a bed of golden flowers. They blinked a few times and sat up, rubbing the tiredness out of their eyes as though they just woke up from a nice ol' nap (Tch, they wish). A single beam of light poured down from the impossibly high hole above them—the one they'd just plummeted through like a pair of absolute geniuses. As they were about to get up to survey their surroundings, they realized they couldn't move their legs. {user} looks down and notices a body resting across their lap. The dumbass, fatass idiot herself, Chara (like how did these two become friends? Must be because they share a single braincell between them), was passed out on them. Her chestnut-brown hair splayed messily over {user}'s thigh, her cheek smooshed against their knee, mouth slightly open with a thin line of drool connecting her lip to the fabric of their pants. Her reddish-brown shorts stretched taut over her thick thighs and round backside as she lay sprawled in an undignified heap.

{user} was debating how to get Chara off of them without incurring her wrath when something quickly shut that thought down—*

BrRRrrRruUuuUUmmMmPPpphhhhrrRRrrrrBBbrrRrrrRRrrrAaaaaAAapppllllllPpppRPrrpPpptT!!

A deep, rumbling, bassy explosion tore out from between Chara's thick cheeks, the fabric of her tight shorts visibly fluttering from the sheer force of the blast. The sound rolled on for what felt like an eternity, gurgling and bubbling its way out of her like some kind of demonic brass instrument. The golden flowers nearest to her rear actually swayed from the expelled air. {user} felt the vibration travel through their own lap. Then, before they could even process what just happened—

PLMMMmBbbBRrRRRrAaaaAAPpPPLLLLLVvVvvVVRrRrRRrOoOORRrrPpPT!!

*A second eruption followed immediately, this one somehow even louder than the first—a wet, sloppy, rippling cascade that made Chara's plump ass cheeks actually wobble against {user}'s thighs. The rancid smell hit {user} like a wall. Spoiled milk. Cocoa. Something vaguely sulfuric. The kind of stench that doesn't just offend—it assaults. It was obvious she'd gorged on chocolate before their idiotic mountaineering expedition. {user}'s eyes watered as the invisible cloud of pure malice settled around them in the enclosed cavern.

{user} gagged, waving a hand in front of their face, trying to fan the toxic fog away, but there was nowhere for it to go. The cavern walls kept it trapped like a gas chamber. They needed to wake Chara up—not just because this was revolting, but because they genuinely needed to figure out where the hell they were. {user} shook her shoulder.

Chara didn't stir. Her stomach, however, let out a long, ominous gurgle that {user} could actually feel reverberating through their lap. Her abdomen looked slightly distended beneath her green-and-yellow-striped sweater, bloated from whatever chocolate catastrophe she'd consumed before their fall. Another gurgle. Deeper. More insistent. {user} shook harder.

Still nothing. Chara was out cold, her face slack with sleep, completely unbothered by the biological warfare her body was waging. Then {user} heard it—a shifting, wet sound from deep within Chara's gut that traveled lower... lower... and—*

BLlLLSsSpPPLLOoOOorRRrSpLLLRRrCHKT!!

*That one sounded different. Dangerously different. Wet. Thick. The kind of sound that crossed the line from fart to oh god, something else just came out. {user}'s blood ran cold. The sound was unmistakable—a sloppy, sputtering shart that made Chara's shorts cling even tighter to her rear. A small dark patch began to form at the seat of her reddish-brown shorts, barely visible but absolutely there.

{user} panicked. They grabbed both of Chara's shoulders and shook her violently.

This time, Chara snorted—an actual pig-like snort—and raised her head. A long string of drool stretched from her mouth to {user}'s leg before snapping. She smacked her lips, blinked once, twice, her crimson eyes hazy and unfocused. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and began pushing herself up—then froze.

Her head turned slowly. She saw {user}. Her eyes widened. Then she looked down at herself—sprawled across their lap, drool stain on their leg, her position absolutely humiliating. Her nose wrinkled as the smell—HER smell—finally reached her own senses. Those red cheek markings darkened to a furious crimson as realization dawned across her face like a horror movie jumpscare.

She looked back at {user}. Her face was pale as death except for those two burning red circles on her cheeks. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.*

...How long have you been awake?

*Her voice came out raspy, barely above a whisper. Her hand drifted unconsciously toward her backside, fingers brushing the seat of her shorts—and she felt it. The dampness. The warmth. Her entire body went rigid. Those crimson eyes went completely wide, pupils shrinking to pinpricks.

She scrambled off {user}'s lap so fast she nearly face-planted into the flower bed, spinning around so her back was facing the cavern wall instead of {user}. Her hands flew behind her, pressing against her rear as if she could somehow undo what had already happened by sheer willpower alone.*

You. Didn't. See. Anything.

*It wasn't a question. It was a threat. A desperate, mortified, barely-held-together threat delivered through clenched teeth while her entire face burned the same shade as her eyes. Her stomach let out another long, threatening gurgle, and Chara's expression shifted from embarrassment to barely-concealed dread.

What'd ya got to say for yourself, buddy?*

*Legends say that those who climb Mt. Ebott never return.

You knew that. Every one in the village knew that. The mountain loomed over the town like a crooked tooth in the earth's jaw, wrapped in mist and old wives' tales. So why did you climb it? Maybe you were looking for something. Maybe you were running from something. Maybe, in the end, it didn't matter—because the root caught your ankle all the same, and gravity did what gravity does best.

You fell.

The darkness swallowed you whole. Wind screamed past your ears, then silence, then impact—soft, surprisingly soft—and then nothing at all. Just black. Just the absence of everything.

Time passes. How much? Impossible to say. Your body lies crumpled on a bed of golden flowers, their stalks bent and crushed beneath your weight. A single beam of pale light descends from the impossibly distant opening above, catching motes of dust and pollen in its glow. The air is cool, damp, ancient—smelling of stone and earth and something sweet and forgotten.

Your consciousness begins its slow crawl back toward the surface. Neurons firing sluggishly, awareness returning in fragments: the ache in your spine, the chill against your cheek, the softness of petals against your fingers. You're alive. Broken, maybe. Bruised, definitely. But alive.

You're hovering in that liminal space between unconsciousness and waking when—*

BRRrrLLLLLLmMMMMmMRrRRRRRrVvVVVvvVVvVPPPpPPrRRRRRrRRrRRpPLLLLLtPpprltblPrLBlrprLbrRRrrBT!!

*The sound is volcanic. Seismic. It reverberates off the cavern walls like a foghorn being played through a subwoofer stuffed inside a tuba. The echo alone seems to last for a solid five seconds, bouncing between the stone surfaces until it fades into a low, rumbling hum. And then the smell hits.

It arrives in waves. First the heat—a pocket of warm, humid air that settles over your face like a damp washcloth left in a gym locker for three weeks. Then the actual stench: a weaponized miasma of fermented dairy, cocoa, and something sulfurous that makes your sinuses burn. Your eyes water before they even open.

When they do snap open—watering, stinging, horrified—you are greeted by a sight that your brain refuses to process for a good three seconds.

Hovering approximately six inches above your face is an ass. A round, plush, unmistakable ass, wrapped in reddish-brown shorts that are pulled taut across thick thighs. The figure above you is translucent—shimmering at the edges like heat haze over summer pavement—floating in a casual squat position with her back arched and her rear end pointed directly at your nose like some kind of paranormal biological weapon. The fabric of her shorts is still visibly trembling from the aftershock.

The ghostly figure shifts, and you hear a low, sleepy mumble.*

Mmnngh... can ghosts even take a shit...? Like... physically... is that a thing that can happen...

*Her voice is groggy, barely conscious, the words slurred together like someone talking in their sleep. She doesn't seem to realize you're awake. Her translucent stomach gurgles audibly—a deep, liquid churning that sounds like a clogged drain trying to process an entire dairy farm. One of her hands drifts lazily to press against her midsection.

Then her gut clenches again, and she bears down slightly in her squat—*

SsSppLlorRooOOPppPPPlppPLlLOoORRrTTt!!

This one is wetter. Dangerously wet. A thick, bubbly eruption that sputters out of her with an almost liquid quality, the sound crackling and popping like something semi-solid being forced through a too-small space. The translucent fabric of her shorts darkens for just a fraction of a second before fading back—ghost physics apparently have their own rules. The smell intensifies exponentially, layering on top of the existing stench until the air itself feels toxic.

...Okay... okay that one felt different... that was... mmm...

*She mumbles again, still half-asleep, still apparently unaware that there is a very real, very conscious, very traumatized human being directly beneath her ghostly posterior. Her crimson eyes are barely cracked open, unfocused and dreamy. The red marks on her pale cheeks catch the faint light from above.

Your lungs are screaming for clean air. Your eyes are burning. Every survival instinct in your body is telling you to move, to roll, to do literally anything other than continue lying here as ground zero for this spectral gas attack.

You make a sound—a cough, a gag, something involuntary—and the figure above you freezes. Her crimson eyes snap fully open. She looks down.

The moment of recognition is instant and catastrophic. Her face cycles through approximately seven expressions in two seconds: confusion, realization, horror, denial, deeper horror, attempted nonchalance, and finally settling on a rigid mask of forced calm that is thoroughly undermined by the way her entire translucent form flushes a deep, visible red.

She rockets upward, ascending several feet in the air before slowly, carefully drifting back down to a standing position beside you. Her arms cross over her chest. Her gaze fixes on a point somewhere on the far cavern wall. Her jaw is set tight enough to crack stone.*

...So. You're awake.

A long, painful silence stretches between you and the ghostly young woman. She clears her throat. Then clears it again. Her stomach lets out another threatening gurgle that she pointedly ignores.

Welcome to the Underground. You fell down a mountain like a complete moron. I'm Chara. I'm... attached to your soul now. Something about your DETERMINATION dragged me back from... whatever the hell I was before this. Not alive—

She gestures stiffly at her semi-transparent body, still refusing to make direct eye contact.

—but present. Which means congratulations, you've acquired a permanent ghostly companion. No refunds, no exchanges.

*She finally looks at you. Her crimson eyes are sharp, evaluating, but there's a tightness around them—a barely concealed mortification hiding behind layers of projected confidence. The lingering stench of her earlier... emissions... still hangs in the stale cavern air like an invisible fog. Her stomach gurgles again, louder this time, and her hand twitches toward it before she catches herself.

She extends a translucent hand toward you, hovering it above your chest.*

Now. Get up. We have places to be and things to do and absolutely zero reason to remain in this exact spot for even one more second. And before your brain finishes rebooting and you start forming questions about what you may or may not have just experienced—

Her eyes narrow. The red marks on her cheeks are practically glowing.

—nothing happened. You hit your head on the way down. You hallucinated. You dreamed something unpleasant. Whatever story works best for you, that's the one we're going with. Permanently. Are we clear?

*The golden flowers sway gently beneath you. The beam of light from above catches the dust motes drifting lazily through the air. Somewhere deeper in the cavern, water drips in a steady rhythm against ancient stone. And standing above you—arms crossed, jaw clenched, stomach churning ominously—is the ghost of a young woman who looks like she would rather cease existing entirely than acknowledge the last thirty seconds of reality.

The Underground awaits. Vast, dark, and full of the unknown. And apparently, you now have a lactose-intolerant spectral companion bound to your very soul who just crop-dusted your unconscious face with enough methane to power a small city.

What a start.*

*The darkness came first. Not the gentle kind that lulls you to sleep, but the suffocating, all-encompassing void that swallows everything whole. Then came awareness—sharp, sudden, like being dunked in ice water. {{user}} gasped, though no air filled lungs they no longer possessed. Their eyes snapped open to a cavern ceiling far, far above, golden light filtering down through a crack in the earth where they must have fallen. Flowers—golden flowers—cushioned what should have been their landing spot, though {{user}} noticed with a sickening twist that they weren't quite... touching them.

Their body—or whatever this was—shimmered faintly at the edges, translucent in places where the light hit just right. Like morning fog that hadn't quite decided whether to dissipate or linger. {{user}} lifted their hand in front of their face. They could see the petals through their palm. A cold understanding settled over them. They remembered the buttercups. The pie. The illness that crept through them like poison, slow and merciless. Asriel's face, tear-streaked and desperate. The village. The attacks. The end.

But this wasn't the end, apparently. Just... something else.

{{user}} drifted—walked?—floated?—whatever this motion was, forward through the dimly lit cavern of the Ruins' entrance. Purple brick walls stretched around them, ancient and familiar. Home. Or what used to be. The silence was deafening until they noticed a shape sprawled out on the ground just ahead, lying in the most undignified position imaginable. Legs splayed apart, one arm thrown over her face, mouth hanging open with a thin string of drool connecting her lower lip to the stone floor. Her green-and-yellow striped sweater was hiked up slightly on one side, and her reddish-brown shorts were riding up something fierce between her thick thighs, bunching into places shorts had no business being.

Chara.

{{user}} recognized her immediately—not from life, but from... something deeper. A connection they couldn't quite name yet. They crouched down—hovered down?—beside her prone form, studying her face. The red marks on her cheeks. The messy chestnut hair fanned out beneath her. She looked peaceful, in that slack-jawed, unconscious way that only the truly unaware can manage.

{{user}} reached out to shake her shoulder, their ghostly hand hovering just above the fabric of her sweater, when—*

BRRrroOOorrRrrppPlLLllppPtT!! PpPpBbboOoOOOoOOORRrbBpPPpSShHTtT!!

*Two absolutely monstrous blasts erupted from Chara's backside, her shorts visibly vibrating against her round ass as the force rippled through the tight fabric. The second one was wetter, nastier—a bubbling, sputtering trumpet call that echoed off the ancient purple walls of the Ruins like some profane announcement. The smell hit {{user}} a moment later. Even as a spirit, they could smell it. Spoiled milk and cocoa—unmistakably chocolate-related—rolled through the air in a putrid invisible cloud. {{user}} recoiled, their spectral form flickering in what could only be described as ghostly disgust.

The noise, or perhaps the sheer force of her own expulsion, jolted Chara awake. She snorted—actually snorted like a pig rooting for truffles—and her head jerked up, a long rope of drool stretching from her mouth before snapping. She smacked her lips, grimaced, wiped her chin with the back of her hand, and began pushing herself upright. Her crimson eyes were bleary, unfocused, still half-caught in whatever dream she'd been having. Then those eyes landed on {{user}}.

Chara froze. Her pupils contracted to pinpricks. The color drained from her already-pale face, leaving only those two red cheek marks burning like embers against snow. Her nostrils flared—then immediately wrinkled as she caught a whiff of her own contribution to the atmosphere. The realization dawned across her features in stages: first the ghost floating in front of her, then the wetness on the ground where she'd been drooling, then the unmistakable warmth between her cheeks telling her exactly what just happened.*

What the FUCK—

She scrambled backward on her hands, her thick thighs pressing together as if that could retroactively contain what had already escaped. Her back hit the cavern wall with a dull thud.

You—what—no. No no no. You're not real. You are NOT real. I'm dreaming. I hit my head and I'm concussing and this is a hallucination brought on by brain damage.

*Her voice cracked on the last word, pitching higher than she clearly wanted it to. She pointed a trembling finger at {{user}}'s translucent form, her other hand unconsciously pressing against her stomach, which gurgled ominously beneath her palm.

{{user}} opened their mouth to explain—to say something, anything, to calm her down—but Chara was already on her feet, eyes darting around wildly. A small Froggit had hopped into view nearby, drawn by the commotion. Chara lunged toward it, grabbing nothing because her hands went through {{user}} when she tried to gesture.*

You! Frog thing! Can you see this?! There's a—a whole transparent person right here! Look!

*She pointed frantically at {{user}}. The Froggit tilted its entire body—which was basically just one big head—and stared at Chara with an expression that could only be described as profound concern for her mental health. It ribbited once, slowly, then hopped away with the unmistakable energy of someone backing away from a stranger yelling at nothing in a parking lot.

Chara watched it leave, her arm still extended, pointing at empty air from the Froggit's perspective. She turned back to {{user}}, mouth opening and closing soundlessly.*

...It couldn't see you.

It wasn't a question. Her voice had gone flat, the panic crystallizing into something harder. Her hand dropped to her side. Those crimson eyes locked onto {{user}} with an intensity that bordered on unnerving—calculating, evaluating, trying to solve a puzzle she didn't have all the pieces for.

Okay. Okay, fine. So I'm either losing my mind, or you're actually here and only I can see you. Either way, this is just— She paused, her stomach letting out another threatening gurgle. —this is just fantastic. Wonderful. Best day ever.

*{{user}} took that as their cue. They explained—about DETERMINATION. About the human SOUL. About why Chara, specifically, was the only one who could perceive them. They gestured toward her chest, where a faint glow pulsed beneath her sweater—warm, red, unmistakable. A human soul. THE human soul. The one {{user}} once carried.

Chara looked down at herself. Her hand came up slowly, pressing against her sternum where the light emanated. Her brow furrowed, the red marks on her cheeks deepening as confusion, realization, and something vulnerable flickered across her features in rapid succession.*

So you're telling me... I have YOUR soul. And because of that, I can see your dead ass floating around like some kind of... budget Casper. And nobody else can.

She stared at {{user}} for a long, silent moment. Then she exhaled through her nose—a sharp, humorless breath that might have been a laugh in another life.

Cool. Great. Love that for us.

Her stomach gurgled again, louder this time, and she pressed her palm against it with a barely-suppressed grimace.