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“It’s bullshit,” December Holiday grumbled into her extra-festive mug of peppermint-peppered, spearmint-speared, whipped cream-whipped mug of QC’s world-famous (her family was her whole world) hot chocolate. Her fingers tapped irritably against the table.
“Did your mom ground you again?” Asriel asked. Considering the two of them were now both adults in the eyes of the law and most of the world, those shouldn’t have been the first six words out of his mouth, but old habits died hard.
She spared him a passing glare before turning the daggers of her eyes to her drink. “She’s running unopposed again.”
“Yeah, she does that.” He’d never seen that piss her off like this, before. Usually, her mom had to do something to her to get her like this. “And that bothers you, because…”
“Because she won’t need a campaign manager!”
“Uh…”
“You know my mom. Charisma’s her dump stat. If she had any real competition, she’d get her ass handed to her!” The silverware leaped up and rattled from the impact of her fist against the table. “She’s running a political monopoly and no one’s got the dog damn guts to take her on!”
Heads throughout QC’s Diner turned in the direction of her outburst.
She took a sip of hot chocolate and got a glob of cream speckled with crushed candy cane all over her snout.
“Dess, you’ve got a little something on your nose.”
She licked it off, and then, in a low and terrible growl that deepened and darkened the shadows under her eyes, intoned: “I wanna put the fear of the Angel in her, Azzy.”
Kris piped up. “Run for mayor yourself, Dess,” they burbled into their mug of extra-chocolate hot chocolate (two scoops of powder instead of one).
“Dess can’t run for mayor, Kris. No monster under the age of thirty-five can run for mayor. It’s in the town charter,” Asriel told them. “Besides,” he added, noticing the beginnings of a threatening glimmer in her eyes, “Dess has had too many run-ins with the law…”
“The only reason everyone saw me in the back of your dad’s squad car is because Dad’s truck broke down and I needed a ride back home,” Dess huffed, checking her phone. “Anyway, I gotta look something up.”
Asriel turned his attention to Kris. “So, uh, how’s the double-C treating you, Kris? Just like old times, huh—”
December let out a loud, sharp bleat of a laugh and tossed her phone down like a winning hand. “HA! I knew it!” She took a swig of her drink and started bouncing in her seat to the beat of a song only she could hear.
Asriel was used to the mood swings, but even he could tell they’d gotten more extreme since everything that had happened last month. He wondered if he should be worried. “Knew… what, Dess?”
She giggled and rested her head on his shoulder. “Hometown’s founders never expected any human would wanna live here. They wrote all the laws to apply to monsters like us. Only a few of ‘em ever got updated.”
Kris was smiling.
“Dess, please don’t give Kris the idea that just because they’re human, they’re unbound by monster laws—”
December leaned over the table and grabbed Kris by the collar of their sweater. “Hey, kid! Wanna run for mayor?”
“This is absurd,” Carol Holiday intoned, sheathing her katana as the shredded remains of a stack of paperwork fluttered to the floor around her hooves like snowflakes.
“Well, there’s no law that says a fifteen-year-old human can’t run for mayor,” said Politics Bear.
“That little traitor.”
“Um… You mean Kris Dreemurr?”
“I ought to have expected. Their tendencies for truce-breaking would inevitably waylay me yet again.” She turned her back to him and looked out the window, parting the venetian blinds with a pair of fingers and glaring at the kids playing in front of City Hall. Fortunately for the kids, they probably couldn’t see her, although they’d all probably felt an eerie chill crawling up their backs.
“A-Again, ma’am?” He picked up the shredded remains of that paperwork and piled it into the recycle bin, so it could become new paperwork for her to kill. “Anyway, I don’t think there’s any reason to worry. You know, every election at least two percent of the population writes in ‘ICE-E’ as a protest vote. This year, there’ll just be a few people writing in ‘Kris Dreemurr’ as well. I can’t see you not getting a majority.”
Carol stepped back from the window. “You’re right.”
“Yup! That’s politics!”
“But this has my daughter’s stench written all over it. She’s doing it to humiliate me.” She took a long, deep breath. The air in her office turned ten degrees cooler. Politics Bear could see frost starting to grow on his fur. “Arrange me a meeting with Kris Dreemurr’s parents.”
“This is wonderful,” Toriel said. “Of course, I do not think Kris has a chance of winning, but I am just happy to see them take an interest in civics. I am sure they will carry the lessons learned this election season in their heart for the rest of their life.”
That did not un-sour the look on Carol’s face, but Toriel was not here to put her mind at ease. She was here to stand up for her child. Unfortunately, so was Asgore, but as long as he behaved himself, Toriel had this.
Besides, she’d often thought Carol could do with some competition. And if the only person with the means and the fortitude to provide that competition was Kris…
Carol folded her hands on the table. “I take it, then, there is no talking your child out of this.”
“Oh, no, certainly not! I am so proud of them. This could be the start of an incredible career, and would that not be wonderful?”
Asgore chimed in and immediately did what he did best, which was to firmly plant his footpaw in his mouth. “Just think of it as… nurturing the next generation of political leaders, Carol. Golly, I guess Dreemurrs just have a knack for public service!”
He punctuated his statement with a grand belly laugh, but it did not lighten Carol’s mood.
And just when Toriel thought that maybe this evening would go well, he forced her to bury her head in her paws by adding, “And I don’t think it has anything at all to do with how Dess has been telling us that in the real world, there is no way in hell her mom could win a free and fair election.”
“That’s why we’re doing this,” December said, standing in front of the blackboard in the unused classroom she’d commandeered as her base of operations for the Dreemurr campaign. “That’s the only reason we’re doing this. Mom’s always talking about ‘in the real world’ this and ‘in the real world’ that, but in the real world, there’s no way in hell she can win a free and fair election.”
“You can’t run a campaign solely on spite,” Asriel pointed out, using his nearly half of a four-year polisci degree to his advantage. “What even is Kris’s platform gonna be?”
“Full communism now,” Kris answered.
“They’re the protest candidate!” December wrote ‘SPITE’ in big block letters on the chalkboard and underlined it twice. “They’re a sign that the Hometown voter is fed up with the status quo and wants change!”
“Communism. Write communism on the board,” Kris said.
“It’s a sign that the people of Hometown want a mayor who can, I dunno, smile once in a while? And not chop up people’s expired driver’s licenses with her katana? There’s nothing wrong with driving on a license that’s just a little expired!”
“Dess, you’ve been presumed dead for three years. Your license isn’t a little expired.” And, considering how she’d tried to drive after a three-year stint of whatever the hell had happened to her, he’d been relieved that she’d lost it.
“It’s the principle, Azzy!”
Kris had started pounding their fists on their desk and chanting, “Comm-u-ni-sm, comm-u-nis-m, comm-u-ni-sm,” though Asriel wasn’t sure where they’d even learned what communism was.
He sighed and rubbed his head. “Dess, do you really wanna win or is this just another elaborate temper tantrum you’ve roped my sibling into?”
The piece of chalk pinched between December’s fingers snapped in half.
“I’d run for mayor my damn self if I could, y’know,” she muttered, and she stormed out into the hall.
“Dess!” Asriel pulled himself out of his seat—either these kids’ desks were a lot smaller than he remembered, or he’d put on another Freshman Fifteen in his sophomore year—and hurried after her. “Dess, wait, I didn’t mean to upset you!”
The nights in Castle Town were still long, but had never been less lonely. Nevertheless, Ralsei usually didn’t have many conversation partners while he worked, especially when he was working late into the night. That was why he still hadn’t broken his habit of talking to himself when nobody else was around.
Susie’s white pen tapped against the sheet of blueprints he’d been poring over. “…And December’s room can go… hmm… right next to Noelle’s,” he murmured. “That would probably be for the best. Unless…? Would the two of them want to share a room? I know Kris liked having a room of their own, but what’s good for the Kris isn’t always what’s good for the Noelle. Maybe separate rooms with a door between them, so they can visit each other without going through the hall?” Inspiration had struck, and he wielded his pen to make the requisite changes to the floor plan. He could hear the distant rumbling of the castle settling on its foundations in the distance. “There we go. Ralsei, you’ve done it! This will work the best for everyone!”
He didn’t have long to bask in the afterglow of his accomplishment, though, before another problem crossed his mind.
“Oh, but what do I even put in December’s room? I don’t know her at all. It might be easier to list the things I shouldn’t use to decorate her room.” He gnawed on the tip of his pen. “Let’s see, there’s… I wouldn’t want to paint the walls black. She wouldn’t want any eye-shaped decorations, either, and I should probably stay away from pink and gold for accent colors. Now that the easy part is taken care of…”
He found himself struggling to stifle a yawn. Just thinking about this was making him tired. “Maybe I should just go to sleep and ask Kris about it the next time they visit. Yeah, that would work out nicely. They know so much about her. She was one of their best friends, wasn’t she?”
Not bothering to stifle the next yawn that forced his mouth open, he leaned back in his chair, exhausted, and turned his eyes to the ceiling.
But he couldn’t see the ceiling. Mainly because Kris’s head was in the way.
He let out a yelp. “Ah! K-Kris, I… I didn’t hear you come in. Sorry I wasn’t there out front to meet you… I’ve been busy here working on improving everyone’s rooms. Can I… help you with anything?”
Kris smiled and patted him on the shoulders, then slouched into the chair at the other end of the table.
Their fingers tapped the table, like they were about to start playing. “I’m gonna run for mayor,” they said.
“Um. Castle Town doesn’t really need a—”
“Of Hometown.”
They explained everything to him.
“Kris, that’s amazing!” Ralsei gasped, once he’d figured out how to speak again. “Of course, every darkner in the kingdom can vouch for your leadership skills. If there’s anything I can do to support you, well… I, um, didn’t exactly earn the right to be a prince, though.”
“The darkners could just leave,” Kris pointed out.
“Y-You’re right. I sold myself short again, didn’t I?” He rubbed his head. “Just ask me a question, and I’ll give you the best answer I can! Just rely on me like you’d rely on me in battle! And I’m sure any of my subjects would be happy to help, too!”
Kris rested their chin on their hand. “Me and Dess wanna beat her mom to prove it can be done. We just don’t know where to start.”
“Oh. Well, I guess if someone were running to replace me as prince, they’d focus on wherever I fell short in my rulership to build up popular support. If there was work that wasn’t getting done, or people whose needs weren’t being met…”
Kris nodded and started taking notes on Ralsei’s blueprints.
December woke up on a half-inflated air mattress sitting on a dirt-smeared floor with the sound of something burning filling her nostrils. Asgore was already awake and doing something horrible with what little of a kitchen Flower King had. She pulled her head free, felt something tug at her left antler, and realized why the mattress had gotten so squishy overnight.
He took notice of her as soon as she lifted her head. “Howdy, Dess! You’re just in time to try one of my special instant noodle waffles. Would you like yours with Spam or without?” He put his hands on his hips and stood proudly beside a waffle iron that probably shouldn’t have been making that much smoke or smoke as black as that. It almost looked like someone had created another dark fountain in Flower King.
“Think I’ll pass,” she groaned, and she slowly unfolded her tangle of limbs and picked herself up.
“You know, Carol kept your bedroom just as you left it the whole time you were lost,” he said.
“Yeah, yeah. I know. I just like it here better.”
“Oh, I have an idea. Why don’t we borrow another air mattress so Asriel can spend the night here with you? Wouldn’t that be fun?”
She couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t think you wanna spend the night upstairs listening to me jingling your son’s b—”
The bell chimed and the front door burst open. “Oh! A customer!” Asgore gasped. “W-We don’t open until eleven, but I appreciate your enthusiasm—Asriel?!”
Speak of the devil—there was Asriel gasping and panting for breath at the door, doubled over with his paws resting on his knees. “Dad, have you seen where Dess—”
“Hey, dude,” December said to him.
Wide-eyed, he scurried over to her and swept her up in one of the Dreemurr family’s infamous hugs. “Dess! I looked for you all night! I didn’t call the cops, but I searched everywhere—I’d thought you went back to the shelter and… And where’s Kris?”
“What do you mean, ‘where’s Kris,’ they’re with you, right?”
“No, I thought they were with you! That’s why I was too scared to call the—”
The back door to the Flower King creaked open and Kris trudged through it.
“Hey, Kris Cross Applesauce!” December called out.
“Kris, where were you?!” Asriel cried out.
“Well, would you look at that. We’ve almost got the whole family here,” Asgore said. “How about an instant noodle waffle, Kris? My treat! If you spread some apple butter on it and give it a dash of cinnamon, it tastes just like one of Tori’s pies! Except I don’t have any apple butter, or cinnamon, so…”
Kris walked past him, cracking their knuckles and their neck. They looked up at Asriel and December with bright, tired eyes, the kind of tired that had overflowed into wired. December assumed they’d gotten into Toriel’s coffee stash overnight. “It’s mayorin’ time.”
The smoke alarm started beeping. “Huh,” Asgore said. “I thought for sure I’d removed the batteries.”
It was a beautiful day outside. Birds were singing. The sun was shining. Flowers weren’t blooming, because it was October. On days like today, Susie was glad Noelle was with her: her warm and furry body did a great job keeping the chilly winds of autumn and the looming threat of torpor at bay.
“Are you… sure you want us to walk all the way to the lake like this, Susie?” Noelle asked while Susie followed close enough behind her that she could rest her chin on her head right between her antlers. Tailgating like this did, in fact, make it difficult for either of them to walk at a steady pace, but as far as Susie was concerned, that was a skill issue.
“If you wanna drag a snoozy Susie all the way back, that’s on you.”
“Fahaha! I’d be happy to, if I could! If only there was some way I could just. Get stronger?”
“Dude. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Let’s bring a bunch of exercise stuff to Castle Town. They could turn into dumbbell darkners and set up a gym for us!”
From the way Noelle’s tail was wagging and her ears were twitching, the idea seemed to be pretty exciting to her. And since they were pressed together front-to-back, Susie could feel that tail wagging like hell.
Something rustled in the trees.
Noelle froze. Susie took another step forward and nearly shoved her to the ground, but caught her just before she could lose her balance.
And out from the woods popped Kris, wearing the slickest and reddest suit and the yellowest tie Susie had ever seen in her life. “Do you know you have rights?” they asked, though it was hard to hear them over how loud their outfit was.
“Kris, are you… feeling okay?”
“Dude, did you lose a bet?”
“The Constitution says you do. But do you know what doesn’t? That’s right. The Hometown charter.” They produced an official-looking document from under their blazer and pressed it into Noelle’s hands, continuing in a well-rehearsed monotone. “Take a look at this and tell me what you don’t see. That’s right. There are no local laws barring discrimination against—”
Susie grabbed them by the scruff of their fancy tie and hoisted them against the nearest tree, baring the claws of her free hand and preparing to plunge them through Kris’s sternum. “Hang in there, Kris! I’m gonna get that thing back outta you, no matter what!”
“Susie, stop, it’s me!”
Susie stopped.
Kris grinned. “I’m running for mayor,” they said while they dangled from her grip. “Wanna join my campaign?”
Susie shoved a leaflet into Monster Teen’s mouth. “Did you know the school could force you to wear a skirt, even if you didn’t want to, if they decided to put a uniform policy in place?”
Monster Teen tried to say something, but couldn’t speak with a mouth full of Kris Dreemurr for Mayor advertisements.
She slapped them on the back, forcing them to swallow the wad of leaflet filling their mouth, and sent them careening on their way. “That’s right. Vote Kris Dreemurr for stronger student rights!”
“Um, excuse me!” Noelle called out, flagging another student down with a leaflet waving in her hand. “Do you have a moment to talk about what we can do to strengthen protections for queer monsters? Even though most monsters are queer, there are hardly any actual legal…”
She trailed off. The leaflet made like a leaf and flet.
When Catti and Jockington walked past, she scooped up the leaflet and hurried after them. “Catti! Catti, boy am I glad to see you! Can Kris count on the Cattenheimer clan’s support this upcoming mayoral election?”
“No,” Catti said.
“But their platform includes students’ rights, queer rights, stronger oversight for businesses and roads—”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I agree with Kris’s platform. But I can’t support a candidate so compromised. Compromised by… special interests.” Catti’s yellow eyes met Susie’s.
Susie flipped her off.
“C’mon… What about you, Jockington?”
“Noelle,” Jockington said, “I would, take a brochure. I respect, Kris’s ambition. And admire, their use of, the ‘Air’s Bud’ rule. But my hands, are tied. Because my hands. Are actually, Catti’s hands.” He tipped his baseball cap at her and went on his way with Catti.
Noelle sighed and leaned against the nearest locker.
Susie caught up to her and leaned against the second-nearest locker. “Dude, if we could lock in the Jockington vote, we’d have this election in the bag,” she grumbled, yawning and showing off rows of delightfully jagged teeth.
Noelle fanned herself with a campaign leaflet. “Susie, do you think we’d be getting better results if we passed these out to people who can actually vote?”
Carol Holiday was not a charismatic politician. She found the idea repugnant, actually. Show her a charismatic politician and she would show you a self-absorbed grifter eager to take advantage of the people. She would rather be efficient and effective than charismatic, and the people of Hometown were smart enough to see things the same way.
In other words, it was strictly for business, not for a photo-op, that she went to the hospital to speak to that young minimum-wage worker who’d recently sustained a debilitating injury at his workplace.
When she arrived at the hospital, though, the way to the patient’s room, as well as the rest of the hospital, was blocked by a throng of reporters crowding around a piano and its player. Beautiful music filled the air. Carol recognized the sound of those ivories being tickled.
She stepped forward, expecting the crowd to part. It didn’t, so she parted the crowd herself—at least, until a certain shaggy mess of an overgrown purple lizard got between her and the lobby piano.
“Whoa, there, you got a press pass, miss?” Susie asked, glowering at Carol over the rims of her sunglasses.
“‘Press pass?’ I am the mayor.” Carol could barely deign to speak to this violet tormentor. “Out of my way.”
“Sorry, but the current frontrunner called dibs.” Susie crossed her arms. “You can visit Pizzapants when they’re done.”
“‘Frontrunner?’ There haven’t even been any polls yet.”
A familiar hand patted her on the shoulder. “It’s called manifesting, Mom,” December said with a smug smirk splitting her snout, having similarly manifested out of the morass of the crowd. “You wouldn’t get it.”
At the center of the crowd, Kris played one last chord, stood up from the piano bench, and bowed. “Thank you, thank you,” they mumbled. “Wonderful audience. Gonna visit Pizzapants now.”
Carol couldn’t help but let her satisfaction show on her face. “That is your idea of charisma, December?”
“More than you’ve got. And besides, we’re just getting warmed up. Get ready to find out how it feels to be a lame duck, Mom.” December took Susie by the arm. “C’mon, Susie. We’ve got more PR stuff to schedule.”
Noelle knocked on the door to one of the townhouse apartments on Hometown’s east side. “Excuse me!” she called out. “I’m Noelle Holiday with the Kris Dreemurr campaign. Can I ask you what the most important issues are to you as a Hometownian?”
“Oh! What an incredible knock! I wonder, if I don’t answer the door, will I hear it again?”
Noelle knocked again.
“Oh… the magic is ruined. That was a once-in-a-lifetime knock. Lightning in a bottle. It’s always so painful to see people with potential turn into one-hit wonders.”
Noelle knocked a third time.
“Oh, just stop trying! You’re embarrassing yourself.”
Canvassing was a lot harder than she thought.
“I’ll just leave this ‘Vote Kris’ sign on your stoop and you can use it if you want,” she said, and she moved on to the townhouse next door.
“Excuse me!” she called out. “I’m Noelle Holiday with the Kris Dreemurr campaign. Can I ask you what the most important issues are to you as a Hometownian?”
Snowy’s dad opened the door. “Aw, yer poor muddah. Ta think she’s seein’ her own dawddah playin’ fer the othah team. Heartbreakin’.”
Noelle clenched her jaw, suddenly gripped by the very real fear that her mom might swoop in and ground her for the rest of the year. “I just think it’s time for some change? Don’t you?”
“Don’t I know it! The poor mayuh. Bless her frigid heart. Never once laughed at my jokes. Invited her t’ my stand-up show once. Only dry eye in the house. But Kris. Now there’s a kid who knows a good joke. A prankstah.” He reached out and took one of the signs Noelle had been lugging around. “I’m gonna put this in my windah! Just tell Kris they oughta make a law sayin’ you can drive down da centah of da road.”
Noelle didn’t realize it at the time, but she’d just had her first encounter with the mythical, inscrutable creature known to political scientists as the ‘median voter.’
The librarby was the center of Hometown’s nervous system. Its mandala obligato, as one might say. People from all across Hometown came in and out all day, pursuing knowledge, organizing social interactions, keeping up with the local news. It was a holy and sacred space and had to be treated as such, for he who controlled information… controlled the world.
And when Berdly was at the front desk, the librarby was at his wingtips alone, and he alone decided who would peck at its juicy fruits from the tree of knowledge and spread its seeds far and wide.
“Well, well, well.” He clucked his tongue at the sight of Asriel Dreemurr stepping through the front door. “Have you returned to pay your debt? Need I remind you that How to Draw Dragons is—”
Asriel tossed the long-awaited book onto the countertop, along with a crisp twenty-dollar bill. “Keep the change. I’m here to put up some fliers.” His eyes darted to and fro.
“Oh? These fliers wouldn’t be of the political varietal, would they?” Berdly put on his favorite smirk. “Need I remind you, the librarby is a public service. This is a ‘neutral zone’ where political factions are forbidden from doing battle. Let the rest of Hometown be your ‘No Items, Mouse Only, Ultimate Location.’”
“Whoops, look at that, I don’t think I’ve paid off my family’s whole debt,” Asriel said, rummaging through his pockets and placing a pawful of change on top of the book.
“I guess you really did learn something at college.” Berdly swept the money off the cover of the book, baring the already mostly bare illustration adorning it. “You won’t buy me off with money.”
He leaned forward and dropped his voice to a whisper.
“But I might look the other way for someone else who appreciates… purple mountains’ majesty. Dinner and a gaming session with Susie. Get me that, and this librarby is yours to do with as you please.”
Asriel drew an X through the librarby on the campaign team’s map of Hometown.
“Ugh, but that’s where all the voting booths go!” December groaned. “There’s gotta be a way to make people think ‘Kris’ when they see ‘librarby!’”
“We can dye your fur purple and put you on a date with Berdly.”
“On second thought, those places are neutral territory for a reason, and we should respect that.”
“Which was what I was telling you all along.”
December brought her head down on the table. “Ugh. Kris is barely polling twenty percent. We’re never gonna win at this rate.”
“Twenty percent is pretty good so far! And as long as Kris is having fun with it, well… Is Kris having fun with it?”
“Now, how many syllables are in ‘probably?’” Tasque Manager asked as Kris dangled over the vat of battery acid.
“Three,” Kris answered.
“Correct! Now, say ‘probably’ with all three syllables. Enunciate.”
“Prob’ly.”
“Incorrect! There were only two syllables there.” The chain wrapped around their ankles lurched; the bubbling vat of acid rose up another foot. “Try again. Pronounce every syllable in…”
She snapped her finger. Miss Mizzle pored over Bibliox’s tome for her. “Ah! Here is a word those seeking the glory rightfully theirs must know. ‘Ostentatious.’”
“Ost’n’t’atious.”
“Incorrect!”
Kris felt themselves drop another foot. The acid started to curl their hair.
“Tasque Manager, what are you doing?!” Ralsei cried out as he politely pushed through the crowds of onlookers. “Kris! Are you alright? Don’t worry! I’ll save you!”
Kris would have given him a thumbs-up if their arms weren’t bound to their sides. “It’s okay,” they said while Ralsei hurried up the stairs beside the vat. “I’m getting dictator lessons.”
“Dictation lessons,” Tasque Manager sniffed.
“I can teach you that without boiling acid!” Ralsei cried out, pulling the lever to carry Kris back onto the platform.
“But the acid’s what makes it fun,” Kris said as the crane arm overhead carried them out of danger and set them back down. They came to a rest; the chains made a solid clunk against the platform.
“I think there are more effective ways to learn how to be a great public speaker,” Ralsei said, catching his breath before going to work on the chains. “But at least you’re having fun…?”
Carol had always planned to make redeveloping Hometown after last month’s events a top priority for her next term, and had already scheduled a feasibility study of the empty plot of land that had previously been Sans’ convenience store and his house.
When she and the survey team arrived onsite, though, the empty plot of land was quite full—full of townspeople, full of reporters with cameras and mics protruding willy-nilly, big and colorful ‘KRIS FOR MAYOR’ signs, fluttering banners that had most definitely been repurposed from last month’s festival. And there Kris was standing, making a cute little speech about bringing a new convenience store to Hometown so people could buy groceries.
“Oh, there’s that kid who’s running for mayor,” said one of the engineers.
“I didn’t know this was a bipartisan thing,” said the other.
“It isn’t,” Carol growled, beholding the circus Kris had erected atop the serious business of politics.
She marched up to them while they were hard at work shaking hands with babies, ready and more than willing to intimidate them into submission.
Kris didn’t miss a single beat and pivoted smoothly to offering Carol their hand.
With cameras looming all around them and the entire Hometown Post staff waiting with bated breath for the two to confront each other, she had no choice but to make nice and give their hand a nice shake. “May the better candidate win.”
They squeezed, daring her to squeeze harder. “Thank you for conceding.”
She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Kris, if I squeezed with all my might, your hand would be broken.”
The dead-eyed stare they gave her made it clear they were beyond intimidating. No threat, no promise would deter them. “Try it,” they whispered back. “Already lost it once.”
“Are you having fun with your little prank?”
“Not a prank. I’m gonna win.”
“Who is going to vote for you? Toriel? Asgore? Your darkner friends?”
“Darkners can vote?”
“No.”
“Because if they could, I’d win in a landslide.”
“Not if I created a dark fountain in my own house.”
“I’d go into your dark world and recruit all your darkners so they’d vote for me instead.”
Carol, realizing she’d gotten herself engaged in brinkmanship with a child—a child who, a month ago, she’d had wrapped around her little finger—pulled her hand away. “Excuse me. I have mayoral duties to attend to. Duties I hope you need not understand one day.”
“Then we’re not gonna have a debate next week?” Kris asked, raising their voice.
“Please. I refuse to lend the legitimacy a debate would grant your campaign.”
Kris turned to the reporters and shrugged. “Mayor Holiday’s afraid to debate me.” Even with their back turned, Carol could hear their smug little smile.
She ground her teeth and stomped past the survey team. Never before had she so fervently wished she could still send the Roaring Knight after people.
It had almost been a better daughter than December.
Asriel slapped the morning paper down on the table. “Dess, look! Kris is polling at twenty-one percent!”
“Oh, boy. A one-percent increase and we’ve still got two whole weeks ‘til election day,” December sighed, shoving the newspaper off the table. “Anything can happen.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, nothing, I just thought… ugh, never mind.” She buried her face in her hands. Her voice slipped out between her fingers, muffled. “I just need this to work.”
“Well, I think Kris is doing a great job,” Asriel said. He pulled the other chair next to her and sat down. “I mean, they’re being a goofball about it, but they’re also kinda… taking it a lot more seriously than I figured they would? Like, they actually have policy proposals! But that’s just what Kris is like, isn’t it? Take it serious, do it silly.”
“Are you sitting down backwards on that chair with your arms hanging over the back?” she asked without looking.
He looked down at the back of the chair he’d straddled.
“…Yes,” he admitted.
She snickered. “Fucking youth pastor ass. At least that hasn’t changed. Polisci, though?”
“What’s wrong with studying polisci?”
“You’re Azzy! You like that shit with the trumpets, you jaw on about fuckin’ quasars, you’re a closeted drag—”
“Dess.”
She eyed him through a crack between her furry fingers (she always had the most arresting eyes—that was why he’d always said she could’ve been Dad’s deputy) and uttered five accusing words: “And… what about game dev?”
“I mean, I wanna make a living, Dess.”
She threw her head back. “By studying polisci?!” she cackled, kicking her hooves against the table. “What are ya gonna be, a talking head?”
He stroked his chin. “Gosh, I guess it’s not too late to transfer to an English major.”
December’s chest heaved. She was grinning. “Speaking of college, shouldn’t you have gone back by now?” she asked.
“I worked things out with my professors. I can listen to the lecture recordings, keep up with readings, and do the work online, and it’ll work out as long as I’m back on-campus for finals.”
“So they just let you take the rest of the semester off with an A, like they do if your roommate commits suicide?”
“N-No, I still have to do the work—”
“God, universities are so soft these days, I bet they’d even let me in!”
Seeing her with that smile back on her face, Asriel forgot what he’d been so worried about. “I bet you could get in. And the two of us could live off-campus together.”
She looked away.
“Anyway, keep your chin up, Dess,” he told her, draping his arm over her bony shoulders. “The debate might move the needle.”
“Mike! The local news, please!” Tenna called out as he stood on the stage beneath the spotlight. Backstage, Mike did their work. His face flickered, waves of static rolled across the screen, and after a few seconds of apprehension, Kris appeared on it, standing at a podium alone on the stage of their high school’s auditorium.
The darkners all gasped, mainly because none of them had ever seen what Kris looked like outside the dark world.
Kris spoke up. Hearing those first few words, Ralsei couldn’t help but beam with pride, having drafted most of their speech—at least, the rough draft. They’d promised they would punch it up later with Susie and Noelle’s help.
“Greetings, my fellow Hometownians.” They gestured to the empty podium at their side. “Mayor Holiday wouldn’t agree to a debate tonight. So I’ll just have to debate this podium instead.”
“At least bring it to the dark world first!” Lancer jeered.
“Hey, Rals. You sure Kris is gonna be okay saying all these words?” Susie asked while Lancer bounced on her shoulders. “I mean, I’ve never heard ‘em talk this much. It’s not like… their head’s gonna explode?”
“No, Susie, I don’t think just making a speech can make your head explode,” Ralsei assured her. She still eyed Tenna’s screen with concern.
“Instead of debating my opponent, I’d like to just talk about the issues facing Hometown. First off, it’s still legal to discriminate on the basis of gender and sexual orientation in Hometown. Of course, no one would do that while Carol’s in charge. That means if she wasn’t, there’d be nothing to stop anyone from refusing service to her own daughter’s girlfriend. Or maybe she’d want that.”
One of the Pippins whispered a question about Asriel to another, who shrugged.
“I know that 90% of the town is some kind of gay or trans. I know. I’m one of them. Even if you feel safe with Carol as mayor, is this a loophole you want to leave open? I don’t.”
“They Are Looking So Mayoral Already,” Queen said. “I Am So Inspired I Will Create An Army of Killer Social Media Robots To Support Their Campaign”
“Work will begin on the ‘Killer App’ immediately, milady,” said Swatch.
“Moving on, Hometown’s business regulations are lax even by this country’s standards. With proper regulations, that new ICE-E’s sign wouldn’t have fallen on Pizzapants’ legs last week. Now, I know ICE-E’s has created dozens of jobs across Hometown.” Kris leaned forward and raised a hand to the side of their mouth. “Mostly in the hospital.”
The Mikes supplied a stock rimshot sound effect for the crowd.
“That’s my Kris,” Tenna whispered, the screen momentarily blanking as a tear dripped from it.
“The camera, she loves them,” Shutta cooed, “and as for moi, je l’aime aussi!”
“PIPE DOWN!” Spamton’s voice grated. “SOME OF US ARE TRYING TO WATCH THE [[HyperlinkBlocked]]!”
A paper airplane, which Ralsei assumed contained a new cease-and-desist letter the Mikes had just drafted, fluttered into Spamton’s eye.
“Which brings me to Hometown’s infrastructure. Mrs. Birdberg told me the other day that she has to buy her own supplies for her fifth-grade class. This should have surprised me. But it didn’t. Because my mom taught second grade for years and she always bought her own supplies, too.”
“This lack of school funding is Pissing me off,” said the original Starwalker.
“It’s not hard to see where that money is going instead of our schools. Except it does get hard to see around a certain time of year. Has this ever happened to you? You’re taking a walk outside at night. It’s the first of December, just past sunset. Suddenly, you notice a blinding light from the northwest. You think time must be turning backward, so you hurry to run to the convenience store so you can buy the milk with the best expiration date.”
“YOUR TAKING TOO LONG,” said Jackenstein’s pumpkin.
“But when you get there, the clopen sign is still turned off. That light wasn’t the sun, it was a neighbor’s excessive Christmas decorations, which consume an estimated three hundred kilowatts of electricity per night, according to an inside source.”
“That’s me! I’m the inside source!” said a power strip Noelle had stolen from the Holiday mansion’s garage and brought to Castle Town.
“For too many years, all four of Hometown’s nuclear reactors have been pushed to their limits to handle ostentatious holiday decorations.”
“Ah, I can hear every syllable,” Tasque Manager sighed.
“As mayor, I promise to put a limit on how many lights a house can have on at once!”
The eldritch shadow sitting in the center of the crowd with their spindly arms and legs scrunched up at its sides let out a bone-chilling roar of laughter. The outlines of its body turned to radio fuzz as it cackled with glee.
The speech went on, and the more it went on, the more impressed Ralsei was with Kris. They didn’t need anyone else controlling them to make them a true leader, he thought—all along, all they’d needed were friends.
Nearby, Seam chuckled to themself. “That one sure does have a way of making things interesting.” As Kris concluded, they raised their glass. “A toast to the champion of lost causes!”
“D’you think they’ll give darkners the right to vote?” one of the plugboys asked another.
“I don’t care about politics, so it won’t affect my life one way or the other,” the other said.
The broadcast came to an end; the stage lights brightened and Tenna made for his trailer. As the rest of the darkners went their separate ways, a voice drifted from the conveniently shaped lamp in the corner of the room. “If they becometh Mayore, perhapseth… I could be. Their Vice-Mayore?”
In addition to mayor of Hometown, Carol was also president of its homeowner’s association. Often, her mayoral duties and presidential duties were more intertwined than one might expect.
She stood on the porch of the Dreemurr house and knocked on the door. Toriel answered with a spring in her step. “Oh! Carol, how nice to see you,” she chirped, hurriedly stepping outside and positioning herself between Carol and a prominent ‘Kris for Mayor’ sign. “Can I help you with anything?”
Carol knew the spread of Kris’s campaign signs across town didn’t mean anything; they were just putting them in everyone’s front yard now and banking on Hometown’s denizens being too lazy to remove them. The idea of betting on people’s laziness disgusted her. Carol had never won an election by assuming the worst of her constituents.
Toriel winked and drew her finger and thumb across her mouth. “If you are here to do opposition research, you will get no help from me,” she added with a mischievous smile.
“I’m here to inform you that your grass is one-eighth of an inch over regulation,” Carol answered.
“Oh, dear! This will not impact my child’s campaign, will it? I will go start the mower.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Carol quickly unsheathed and re-sheathed her katana. Across the Dreemurrs’ front and back yard, grass clippings settled quietly on the ground.
“Oh, thank you, Carol. I am glad we can remain civil here.” Toriel glanced behind herself at the sign. “Oh, this? I know I have been a Holiday voter in the past three elections, but… Kris is promising to use the revenue from electricity lease agreements to fund the school so it can finally have a bathroom with a toilet inside it. There, I said it.”
She stepped back into the living room. “I would invite you in for coffee, but Kris and Susie are upstairs strategizing, and I would not want you overhearing anything. I hope you understand, Carol. Oh, last night’s debate was so exciting, was it not? Kris’s polling went up almost four points!”
Carol wrinkled her nose. “What debate?”
Down the street, she could hear Noelle and December laughing while they littered the town with campaign signs. “Harder, Elly! Harder! Focus your will and strike the earth! Pound the stake in deep enough and that thing’s not coming out ‘til January!”
December fell hard onto her air mattress. It didn’t provide much protection from the hard floor of the Flower King. The fall knocked the wind out of her.
“Another long day on the campaign trail, Dess?” Asgore asked. “Why don’t I make you a peanut and jelly sandwich? I’d use peanut butter, but all I can afford are peanuts with the shell on, so… It’s a great source of fiber!”
She groaned into the mattress loudly enough to cover up the rumbling in her stomach.
He crouched down beside her. “I saw Kris’s speech the other night. I didn’t know they could be so articulate. And did you hear? Their polling went up to almost twenty-five percent!”
“Yeah, and just a week left to get the other twenty-six.”
“Oh, Dess.” He laid a heavy, warm paw on her back. “In her entire political career, Carol’s never gotten less than eighty-five percent of the vote! You and Kris ought to be proud of the fight you two are giving her. Even if you lose, you can do it with your heads held high.”
“But I don’t wanna lose. Anything under fifty percent is still a big, fat ‘F.’”
“Why does winning have to be the only thing that matters? It’s more important just to have fun. I mean, look at me. I have fun here at Flower King every day,” he said.
She looked up into the headlights of his big, beaming grin. Asriel looked more like him every day.
“I gotta win this,” she insisted.
“Well, don’t throw in the towel yet, then.” He handed her half of his sandwich. “There’s still plenty of time for a miracle.”
Carol couldn’t believe her eyes. For the first time across eighteen years and three terms, she was behind another candidate in the polls.
For the first time in eighteen years, there were polls that mattered.
She’d forgotten how to handle that.
Her phone shook in her hand. “What… the hell… happened last night? Why is Kris suddenly polling at fifty-one percent?”
Politics Bear scrolled through the news. “Well, um… it looks like Kris’s ‘debate’ went viral. And so have… a lot of photos and videos of your house’s seasonal decorations.”
“Our Christmas decorations are a work of art,” she said.
“I know! I really like the video of all the lights synced to that one song. But, uh… it’s not going viral because people like it.” He checked his phone again. “Also, Kris just promised to make the school week four days long and abolish homeowners’ associations.”
Carol tossed her phone down on the table. A consummate professional, she put in a full eight hours of work without letting the election get to her one bit.
At the end of the day, when she finally checked the polls and found the polls holding steady, she threw on her coat and went out to put an end to this farce.
She left her office, left City Hall, passed rows of Kris for Mayor signs, and made her way to Flower King. She knocked four times on the door.
It opened and Asgore poked his head out. “Oh! Carol! It’s good to see you. Are you getting in your last-minute campaign stops? How long has it been since you had an election this close? Twenty years?”
“Asgore, where is my daughter?”
Asgore’s face went pale for a moment as her icy words dredged up several years of traumatic stress.
“Dess is… s-safe and sound, of course. As you know, she’s been sleeping on the air mattress in here, and I keep telling her she can sleep in her room, since you went through all the trouble to…”
“Is she in here right now?”
“Oh. No, she’s off with the rest of the campaign team by the lake—”
“Thank you, Asgore,” Carol said. She made haste for the lakeside.
Sure enough, there they were—the children who had once again made a mockery of her plans. As the sun began to set, Kris, Susie, Asriel, and her own two daughters were sitting around one of the picnic tables, talking, laughing.
“December Clarice Holiday,” she called out.
She watched December sit upright and freeze, except for the alert twitching of her ears.
“Hey, Mrs. Mayor! Wanna toast to our victory?” Susie called out, hoisting high a two-liter bottle of ICE-E’s Non-Alcoholic Flamin Hot Flavored Champagne for Kidz.
“Susie, we haven’t won yet!” Noelle reminded her.
“Hey, we got it in the bag, don’t we?”
“We’re leading by one percent!”
“Yeah, but one percent over failing is a pass!”
Asriel stood up and put himself between Carol and her eldest daughter. “Uh, Mrs. Holiday, I’ll be the first to admit that things took kind of a weird route here, but don’t—”
December nudged him aside and trotted across the park. Her hands were stuffed in the pockets of Asriel’s old letterman jacket; her shoulders were slumped in a way that made Carol struggle to resist the urge to tell her to stand up straight and stop slouching before she gave her spine the curvature of a candy cane.
“Hey, Mom,” she said with a lopsided smile and crooked teeth. Rudy’s smile to a tee. She’d always had her dad’s smile. “Ready to concede or what? Looks like a little charisma can go a long way after all.”
She was so much taller now than Carol remembered. Her antlers had sharper points to them, her eyes were more tired.
“December.” Carol lowered her voice. “You do understand, don’t you, that being the mayor is my job.”
December shrugged. “So file for unemployment.”
Carol sighed and pinched the bridge of her snout. “Why, Dess?”
“‘Cause you’re gonna be out of a job soon—”
“Why this? Why bring your and Kris’s harebrained, juvenile antics to my work? You know how sacred civil service is to me. You know the sacrifice it takes, the sacrifices I have made. Do you just delight in profaning it?”
For just a moment, December looked like the little girl she remembered.
But only for a moment.
She started to giggle. “Aw, Mom, it’s just like old times, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“You and me, at each other’s throats! Remember, all the shit I’d get into, and you’d yell and yell, and Dad would always tell me, ‘It’s just ‘cause your mom worries so much,’ and…”
She caught her breath, scratching the side of her neck.
“Y’know, I… I got back here and… And I felt so stupid and big lying in that little old bed, staring at that glow-in-the-dark aurora Dad helped Azzy paint onto the wall. I got back here after three years and… And the Dreemurrs are divorced, Asgore makes the weirdest struggle meals by my standards, Toriel keeps leaving flowers at that empty plot of land where the convenience store used to be, Kris and Elly are all fucked up and different ‘cause of all the dark world stuff, Azzy’s studying political science, a-and Dad’s… Dad was already…”
She dried her eyes on Asriel’s sleeve, realized what she was doing, and turned around to bound into the woods.
Too slow. Carol lashed out and hooked her fingers around her shoulder.
A shoulder that quivered and heaved like a frightened living thing.
“And the worst you could do to me, ever since I got back, was kill my driver’s license with your katana.” Her voice came out small; Carol could tell she was trying hard not to sniffle. “Can’t just one thing actually feel like it used to feel?”
Carol loosened her grip, just a little, just enough that she could still keep December from bolting.
“December, I was ready to destroy the world to get you back,” she told her. “Do you really think I’d want to treat you the way I used to? The day you disappeared, I… All those reasons I ever raised my voice to you felt so stupid and petty.”
Her throat closed around the words she wanted to say—a problem she never had at work.
“Mom?”
December turned around, her own eyes glistening, and wrapped her arms around her.
Carol patted her on the back and she started sobbing. “There, there,” she told her. “There, there,” she repeated, again and again until December stopped dampening her shoulderpad. “There, there.”
At last, December pulled herself away, her eyes clear yet reddened.
“So… it’s not too late for Kris to withdraw their campaign,” Carol told her.
She threw her head back and laughed.
“Make way for da Mayor-Elect!” the Zappers called out.
Kris’s silver armor had never shone so spectacularly as they stepped onto the parade route Ralsei had made from Castle Town’s main street. Glittering confetti fell like rain upon them, and they stood there with a real smile on their face.
Susie swept her arm around them and nearly knocked them over in the most affectionate way possible. “Dude, I can’t believe it! You’re the mayor! Now I can do whatever I want!”
“Susie, being the mayor’s friend doesn’t give you legal immunity,” Noelle said. “B-But it should! Kris, can you make a law saying it does?”
“And make a law banning homework!”
“There are scientific studies that show homework doesn’t do students any good.”
“But that law letting me do what I want, we gotta get on that pronto. First thing tomorrow!”
“Susie, Kris can’t make any new laws until they’re sworn in next January,” Ralsei said.
“What?”
“Mom gets to keep being mayor until her term ends,” Noelle reminded her. “That’s what a lame duck is.”
“That’s what a lame duck is?! I thought it was like, duck o’loreal or something.”
“Did you think we were gonna eat my mom?!”
“I dunno! After all these dark worlds, I dunno what a normal government looks like!”
Kris broke away from the two of them. “Enjoy the parade for me,” they murmured, and the next thing Ralsei knew, he was being dragged behind them back toward the castle.
“Oh, I—I’m sorry, I should’ve known the parade would be a little too much,” he told them. “But for what it’s worth, everyone here is so happy for you! You’ve done something incredible… again.”
Kris was quiet. They’d certainly had a loquacious few weeks; it wasn’t much of a surprise they weren’t up for saying much anymore.
But Ralsei just had to ask, out of curiosity: “So, what’s the first thing you’re going to do as mayor?”
Kris smirked and gave what, in hindsight, was the most Kris-like answer imaginable:
“Quit.”