Fanfic / An Anomaly In The Underground

An Anomaly in the Underground is a a crossover Fusion Fic of Iji and Undertale, taking the main character of the former game and putting her into the events of the latter. The fic was written by Zennistrad, who also wrote A Song of Silk and Saplings and My Little Planeswalker.

After saving the world (or what's left of it) from the Komato Empire's planned Alpha Strike, Iji heads to the famous Lone Mountain, Mount Ebott, in hopes of using the peak as a vantage point for survivors. When taking shelter from the rain, she falls into the Underground — and what she finds there is stranger than anything she could have possibly expected.

A sequel, titled Null Driver, takes place one year after the events of An Anomaly In The Underground and incorporates elements from Deltarune. As strange dreams of an alternate life continue to haunt Iji, a new darkness appears beneath Mount Ebott. Iji sets off investigate, only to be faced with a power that threatens to consume all of time and space.

In addition to the above, there is also a series of Interquel one-shots, set on the surface after the events of An Anomaly in the Underground but before Null Driver, titled Alpha to Delta.

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This Work Contains Examples Of:

An Anomaly in the Underground

• Adaptation Personality Change: Chara, as a Virtual Ghost in Iji's nanofield, noticeably has much more agency and presence than they do in the Neutral and Pacifist routes of Undertale. Eventually justified, as Chara later comments, by the fact that went Iji much more out of her way to them as an equal from the start. This resulted in them much more quickly regaining their own sense of self than they would have with Frisk as their host.
• Bait-and-Switch: Asgore, just before fighting Iji, realizes that it would be impossible to defeat her under his own power... and then comments that he will therefore not be fighting using his own power. For a moment, it looks like he's going to absorb the six human souls to fight Iji... until he instead summons a suit of Powered Armor, reverse-engineered from Komato technology by W.D. Gaster.
• Battle Theme Music: Most of Iji's fights with major Undertale characters have those characters' signature battle theme playing (see Virtual Soundtrack below). However, there are exceptions.
  • Iji's first fight with Toriel which ends with Toriel's death, followed by an accidental reset plays "Mother Knows Best", a fan-made remix of "Heartache" by Moonster, for a hypothetical fight against Toriel in a Genocide Run. The track is renamed "Last Stand" in the music indicator, pointing at Toriel very wrongfully assuming that Iji is a soldier come to finish the genocide that humans started against monsters six thousand years ago. The second fight with Toriel, where she is on much friendlier terms with Iji, has "Heartache" as usual.
  • Iji's fight with Sans plays "Megalovania," as one might expect. When she finally manages to turn the tables, the music changes to iFlicky's remix of "Last Battle" from Cave Story, retitled "Kill Me/Kill You".
  • The fight with Papyrus starts out with "Bonetrousle" as usual. When Papyrus stops holding back, the theme changes to "Big Boned Plus", the main boss theme of the expansion DLC to Skeleton Boomerang. The song is retitled "Live Alife," in reference to Megalovania being itself a Live A Live reference.
  • Notably, Iji's fight against Undyne doesn't have "Spear of Justice" as the battle theme, instead playing "Seven Four" from the Iji soundtrack. Even more notably, this is the only song with a green music indicator, exactly the same green as Iji's shirt. The implication is that the song is Iji's battle theme music, not Undyne's.
  • When Iji encounters a Komato Sentinel Proxima in the CORE, the theme that plays during her fight is "Critical Juncture", the main boss theme of Cosmic Star Heroine.
  • Iji's fight against Mettaton DELTA has a remix of Power of NEO, also by Moonster. This time, it's renamed "HENSHIN!! Power of Change, DELTA!!!"
  • Iji's fight against Asgore doesn't have the song of the same name as the battle theme music. Instead, the theme for the fight against Asgore is "Tor"
  • The first phase of the fight against Asriel uses Reconciliation from Everhood. It isn't until Iji gets her Heroic Second Wind that "Hopes and Dreams" starts playing.
• Crossover Relatives: Though no individual characters from Iji are blood-related to any in the Undertale universe key words being "in the Undertale universe," see the Alpha to Delta example below, it's mentioned at several points that all of monsterkind descended from a quasi-mythical race called the 'Proto-Saurians.' The Lizard Folk Saurians like Alphys are their closest modern relatives, and while it's never directly stated, it's strongly insinuated that the Tasen and Komato are both descended from the Proto-Saurians as well.
• Death Seeker: It's very strongly implied that Toriel is this, when she challenges Iji to kill her and take her soul. It becomes clear later on that she blames herself for the deaths of the six human children.
• Fan of the Past: Despite living in the twenty-second century, Iji knows weirdly a lot about twenty-first century popular culture. This includes recognizing the Show Within a Show Mew Mew Kissy Cutie on sight, and commenting on how bad the series is. Her Nanofield A.I., naturally, is the first to make fun of her for this.
• Foil:
  • Much like he is to the player in the original game, Flowey acts as a foil to Iji by highlighting what her own violent habits would be if she didn't have any empathy to hold herself back. Until her conscience starts catching up to her later in the Ruins, Iji very noticeably doesn't dispute Flowey's "kill or be killed" outlook, having fully adopted it herself during the Tasen-Komato War.
  • Undyne directly contrasts how Iji sees herself. Like Undyne, Iji is a highly skilled martial artist and an extreme Determinator, and both of them are noted for playing the piano. However, their attitudes towards fighting and killing are almost diametrically opposite. Undyne is almost unshakably confident in her own abilities (until she suddenly isn't), will stop at nothing to kill Iji, and will twist herself in knots to convince herself that this is the right thing to do. Meanwhile, Iji is terrified of her own strength and has to try as hard as she can not to kill anyone in the Underground, knowing full well that she would never be able justify it to herself if she did.
  • The seemingly posthumous character Varsilon, former head of Komato Imperial Research is shown through logs to be an active nihilist who seeks to destroy everything purely because he can, displaying a very similar attitude to the player in a Genocide Run of Undertale.
• Foreshadowing:
  • There are several early hints that point to the appearance of Noelle and the Deltarune universe in the CORE.
    • Early in Snowdin, Iji asks Papyrus why he and his brother are named after fonts. Papyrus, being... Papyrus, misinterprets "font" to mean "fountain," then offhandedly mentions that his favorite fountains are made of dark chocolate. He then asks Sans if there are any monsters named after dark chocolate fountains.
      “probably not. there’s no fountains of dark stuff down here,” said Sans. “not right now, anyway.”
    • After meeting Gyftrot, Iji recalls a game she used to play with her family during Christmas, called 'pin the nose on Rudolph.' Her imagination then immediately jumps to 'a family of reindeer-people' in the vein of the Underground's Funny Animal population.
    • Instead of Christmas, residents of Snowdin town celebrate a generic winter holiday called Holiday. Among these Holiday traditions is a decorative angel figure called... the Holiday Angel. Guess what Noelle's last name is.
    • At the end of Chapter 16, several voices appear in a Flashback belonging to an unknown trio of characters. While the voices are never identified, one of them briefly shouts "No—" before being cut off. Though out of context this sounds like someone shouting "no," it could just as easily have been someone shouting a name starts with the syllable "No."
    • The very next chapter, Gerson details a Creation Myth about an Angel that shaped the universe from primordial darkness. When Noelle finally appears, she's a seemingly ageless being with a very angel-like appearance.
    • The Riverperson, with their usual cryptic mutterings, mentions something about a girl named "Nobody" singing from somewhere called "The Darkness Beyond Time." When Noelle appears, she introduces herself as 'nobody.' Readers who are familiar with Chrono Cross may also know that the "Darkness Beyond Time" is a name for the Void Between the Worlds where events and people that are erased from reality end up.
  • The CORE being made from Komato technology is also hinted at prior to its reveal.
    • Iji's Nanofield A.I. mentions offhandedly that Sans and Papyrus use magic with very similar properties to Komato nanotechnology, which is why said magic is able to hurt her through her nanofield. Given Sans's implied connection to W.D. Gaster in Undertale, this is the first hint that Gaster was doing something with nanofield technology.
    • When Iji is traversing Hotland, she sees the CORE in the distance and notes that its "bright green exterior" and "very blocky and intricately mechanical design" are... something, and increasingly notes how familiar it looks every time she sees it. Observant readers who've played through Undertale might realize that the CORE's exterior in the original game was not green. However, Komato starships very much are.
  • When observing Iji's nanofield through her cameras' Soul Scanner function, Alphys notes that it's fused with Iji's soul in a way very similar to how a Boss Monster soul would theoretically look after being absorbed by a human. This comparison turns out to be entirely apt, when she learns that a nanofield is actually an artificial monster soul.
  • During his Quiz Show, when Mettaton asks what the name of the previous Royal Scientist was, one of the answers is "Dr. Varsilon." This name doesn't seem to be important, especially compared to the very noticeable "[DATA EXPUNGED]" option that hints at W.D. Gaster, until Sector Z's logbooks reveal that Varsilon was the head of Komato Imperial Research, and was responsible for creating the original Null Driver.
• Fun with Acronyms: The artificial intelligence built into Iji's nanofield, which offers narration and commentary through a voice in her head, is officially called the Cybernetic Human Augmented Reality Adaptor. It soon becomes clear that, somehow, this AI is the first fallen human, Chara.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: With the exception of the prologue and epilogue chapters, all chapters of each Act are named after a song from a single indie game's OST. The chapters that end each act have compound titles consisting of two songs, seperated by a slash. The exception is the end chapter of Act 6, which uses a song that already has a two-part name.
  • Act 1, the Ruins, has chapters named after songs from the Iji OST.
  • Act 2/Snowdin has chapters named after the Shovel Knight OST.
  • Act 3, Waterfall, uses the Hollow Knight OST for its chapter titles.
  • Act 4, which covers the first half of Hotland, uses song titles from the Cave Story OST.
  • Act Δ4, the CORE and Sector Z, uses song titles from Deltarune Chapter 2.
  • Act 5, New Home, names its chapters after the Everhood OST.
  • Act 6, which covers both post-pacifist and the True Lab, has chapters named after the Yume Nikki OST. Uniquely, the chapter titles in Act 6 are all in the untranslated Japanese.
  • Act 7, the True Pacifist ending, uses songs from the Undertale OST. The final chapter, not counting the epilogue, is fittingly titled "Hopes and Dreams / SAVE the World."
• Invincible Hero: Deconstructed — humans are already much, much stronger than monsters by default, but thanks to her nanofield Iji is so much stronger than monsters that she's practically a walking weapon of mass destruction to them. It takes a constant, conscious effort on her part to avoid killing people in the Underground by accident, and she's utterly terrified of herself as a result. That said, several monsters such as Sans as well as Papyrus and Mettaton's DELTA form are actually able to damage Iji through her nanofield, though it's made abundantly clear that monsters are not capable of this normally.
• Martial Pacifist: Iji might be be trying very hard not to kill anyone this time, but she doesn't take anyone's shit lightly. Best exemplified in her fight with Undyne, which ends with Undyne being very brutally humbled.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Iji has a minor one after being startled by a Froggit and killing it in a single shotgun blast, realizing just how effortless it was, and then learning not long after that Froggits are fully sapient individuals. Unlike the Tasen and the Komato, Iji quickly puts together that most monsters are not even remotely a threat to her, and that any act of "self-defense" against them could never be anything but murder.
  • After Iji accidentally kills Toriel, the sheer grief and anguish causes her to trigger her first reset, without even realizing it at first.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Iji's terrifying raw strength means that a few characters react very differently to her than to an ordinary human child.
  • Toriel, normally kind and doting to a fault, freaks out when she sees Iji is both an adult and carrying a lethal weapon, instantly jumping to the conclusion that Iji is a soldier who has come to finish what humans started against monsters thousands of years ago. She spends the entirety of Iji's journey through the Ruins running away from her, and when finally confronted threatens to kill Iji just to stop her from threatening the rest of the Underground's population. During Iji's second, post-reset run through the Ruins, we can see that Toriel is so spooked that she's considering leaving the Ruins to warn Asgore.
  • In his original game, Sans doesn't bother trying to stop the player-character until they start going out of their way end the entire world, seeing it as pointless otherwise since that the timeline can just reset anyway. Here, he immediately tries to kill Iji as soon as she exits the Ruins, hammering home the fact that Iji is that much more dangerous than any other human that's ever lived. Several other characters, as well as Sans himself, note that he's not normally one to be that motivated.
  • After suffering an absolutely humiliating but non-lethal defeat at Iji's hands, Undyne breaks down sobbing when she realizes just how powerless she is, and retreats to her house to quietly sulk. Papyrus takes notice of Undyne's sudden depression, noting that she's "much less shouty than usual."
  • Upon seeing Iji in the True lab speaking to Chara and referring to them as her "best friend," Flowey immediately drops his usual sadistic attitude. When Iji sees him again, his mannerisms are uncharacteristically cold and measured, with none of the malicious gloating he's demonstrated up until that point. Once he appears as Asriel after absorbing everyone else's souls, he doesn't even bother transforming into his godly appearances at first, instead being ruthlessly dead-set on seeing Iji destroyed.
• Powered Armor: Asgore fights using a reverse-engineered and miniaturized version of the Eidolon mech used by General Tor.
• Ret-Gone:
  • W.D. Gaster was removed from reality to a seemingly even greater extent than in Undertale, as nobody seems to even remember he existed. Alphys notes several times that whenever she even thinks about the last Royal Scientist, her head ends up hurting.
  • Noelle and the entire Deltarune universe are implied to have been removed from the timeline through some unknown means, though most likely involving the Null Driver.
• Running Gag:
  • Iji's Nanofield A.I. saying "data not found" whenever asked to explain how they know something they logically shouldn't, typically something that hints at them having been Chara in a past life. Iji gets one herself after emerging from Sector Z, and Alphys asks her just what the hell happened.
  • Iji getting pranked by Sans, and then immediately reloading a save in order to avoid it.
• Sequel Hook:
  • The story ends with Sans returning to the True Lab, and stumbling upon a series of experiment logs indicating that W.D. Gaster is up to something. The fic ends with a "To Be Continued" announcing the sequel, Null Driver.
• Sheathe Your Sword: Toriel, assuming Iji is a soldier in a potentially genocidal human campaign against monsters, tries to forcibly stop her from exiting the Ruins. Iji learns the hard way after killing Toriel and resetting that trying to subdue her through violent means won't work. The eventual solution she finds is simply to drop her weapon.
  Iji: I surrender.
  [beat]
  Toriel: You… you what?
  Iji: I surrender. You win. You’ve beaten me.
• Shout-Out:
  • The second time Sans tries to kill Iji, he offhandedly drops the title of another game by Ludosity.^note The indie studio that Daniel Remar has worked on several games with.
    Sans: welcome to slap city. population: you
    Iji: The hell does that mea— OW!
  • When Sans tries to kill Iji for the third time, he references a now-infamous line^note the original contained a homophobic slur, and invoked Toby Fox has admitted to being ashamed of his teenage self's attempts at being "edgy." from Dr. Andonuts in The Halloween Hack:
    Iji: Cut the crap. I know you’re here to kill me. You’ve already killed me twice.
    Sans: straight to the point, huh? alright, then. tl;dr: eat dirt, loser.
  • Sans kills Iji thirty-seven times. In a row.
  • When Iji finally has Sans at her mercy, the exchange that follows comes straight out of Dragon Ball Z Abridged:
    Iji: [pressing her foot down on Sans's ribcage] Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t crush you into dust right this second.
    Sans: uh… i’ll take you to grillby’s? i'll pay half.
    [Iji presses her foot down slightly harder]
    Sans: …forty percent?
    Iji: That's less than half.
    Sans: ……i’m a haggler?
  • Upon hearing Iji's name, Papyrus briefly wonders if she's a blacksmith, or if her best friend is a witch.
  • Iji plays an arcade game in Grillby's. She selects the hardest difficulty, "reallyjoel's dad," and quickly finds it unwinnable as it places her in a Boss Rush with every boss simultaneously, much like the "reallyjoel's dad" difficulty option in Hero Core. The exchange that follows also makes it a Continuity Nod to the unwinnable joke difficulty of the same name in Iji's own game.
    Iji: Oh come on! That’s complete bullshit! How am I supposed to even beat that!?
    Sans: you’re not.
    Iji: …What? Why?
    Sans: you’re not reallyjoel’s dad.
  • This version of Papyrus summons his own pasta out of pure magic. He mentions offhandedly that he's a skilled Pastamancer.
  • Iji is apparently a fan of Rush, with "Tom Sawyer" being her favorite song of theirs. Doubles as another Continuity Nod, as she notes that the keyboard solo is in 7/4 time, referencing the fact that the the song "Seven Four" from the Iji OST sounds strikingly similar to "Tom Sawyer."
  • Undyne is evidently a fan of Mobile Fighter G Gundam:
    “This soul of mine… glows with an awesome power!” Undyne shouted out. “Its burning energy tells me to defeat you! Now take this! My love, my anger, and all of my sorrow! SHINING… BOULDER!”
  • The fight with Undyne also contains numerous additional references to Dragon Ball Z Abridged lines.
  • Iji's Dark World outfit is identical to the armor worn by Adwoa of MURI, minus the helmet.
• Spared by the Adaptation: As with many Undertale alternate universe stories, Asriel is eventually able to be saved by giving him a nanofield, which can function as an artificial monster soul.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: Much like in Undertale, the year 201X is noted to have taken place in the past, though in this case it's pointed out almost right away rather than being saved for The Reveal of the first Fallen Child. Specifically, 201X was "more than a hundred twenty years ago," and the current year is noted to be 213X.
• Title Drop: Iji drops the title of the fic in Chapter 28. Notably, she's not using it in reference to herself, the Human Anomaly, but in reference to something much, much stranger.
  Iji: [thinking] So this Null Driver, whatever it is, involves creating dimensional anomalies… is that how I ended up here? Is this place some kind of anomaly in the Underground?
• Troubled Fetal Position: Alphys tries to permanently disable Iji's nanofield in a panicked attempt to prevent her from killing Mettaton. She immediately falls into one of these upon realizing that Iji's nanofield is sapient, meaning she very nearly murdered someone without even realizing it.
• Virtual Ghost: Iji's nanofield has an artificial intelligence that became self-aware when she fell into the Underground. It's very strongly implied that they're actually Chara, after being absorbed into her nanofield through unknown means.
• Virtual Soundtrack: Youtube links to various mood music are inserted throughout the fic. Much of it comes from Undertale and Iji, obviously, but there are occasional outliers.
• Wham Episode: The CORE segment drops several very important revelations at once. the CORE is built with Komato technology, not monster technology, and is connected to a mysterious realm called 'Sector Z.' Sector Z is either a Dark World from Deltarune, or is otherwise somehow related to the Dark Worlds. Several logs within Sector Z make mention of the Null Driver, a reality warping Komato superweapon that was likely involved in Sector Z's creation. Then there's the fact that Noelle is in Sector Z and may or may not have become a higher being who created the entire universe.
• Wham Line:
  • Chapter 27, as mentioned above, has Iji delivering a major revelation to Alphys over the phone. This comes as just as much a shock to Alphys as it likely is to readers:
    Iji: Because the CORE isn't monster technology. It's Komato technology.
  • At the end of the same chapter, Iji notes a very particular change in her appearance once she enters Sector Z.
    Iji: And why is my skin freaking blue!?
  • There's a more minor revelation at the end of chapter 29, especially in comparison to the other reveals of the CORE, but one that still manages to put Iji's nanofield in an entirely new light:
    Alphys: That’s right! A nanofield is an artificial monster soul!
• Wham Shot:
  • The final Wham Line in Chapter 27, mentioned above, is immediately followed by an illustration which shows Iji in "Sector Z", leaving no room for doubt about what said location actually is. Namely, it's a Dark World from Deltarune.

Alpha to Delta

• The All-Concealing "I": Iji's dream sequences, where she lives an alternate life, use a variant of this with Second-Person Narration specifically to avoid stating her name in said dreams: December Holiday.
• Anachronic Order: The chapters take place at various times from the end of 213X to the middle of the year 203X+1, with the latest chronologically taking place on April 13th, 213X+1.
• Crossover Relatives: An odd example, as while nobody from Iji is directly related to any characters in Undertale, a number of hints are given connecting Iji a character in Deltarune. Specifically, she's her own world's counterpart to Dess Holiday.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: As the title implies, An Anomaly in the Underground is also connected to the world of Deltarune, and this link is hinted at in more than one chapter.
• Mirror Self: In one chapter, Alphys works together with a calm, soft-spoken human scientist named Nodens, and her extremely muscular, confident, and simile-speaking Large Ham girlfriend Gamra. The two are rounded out by Calibri, a jaded, cynical, heavily Brooklyn-accented man who carries skull-themed ballpoint pen. The three are effectively opposites to Undyne, Alphys, and Papyrus, respectively.
• Mythology Gag: One chapter features Momorin and Sue Sakamoto from Cave Story as cameo characters. Momorin being a botanist, and Sue having gotten in trouble for an unspecified "Spaghetti Incident", makes this a reference to one of the author's previous Undertale fics.
• Parental Substitute: Suggested with Iji, when Chara accidentally refers to her as "mom" during a conversation. Both of them are immediately weirded out by this idea and decide not to think about it any further.

Null Driver

• Accent Adaptation: An in-universe example. Vateilika has a noticable southern U.S. accent, even more so than in the original game. It's later explained that this was due to the English language training software assuming this was the equivalent to her own dialect of the Tasen language.
• Alternate Timeline: After closing the first Dark Fountain, Iji, Asriel, and Chara finds themselves in an alternate timeline where Iji was a fully committed Actual Pacifist, unlike in her own timeline, where Dan is still alive, and Tasen are not extinct.
• Back from the Dead: Assassin Asha has been brought back from the dead through means unknown though apparently it was the doing of W.D. Gaster, and is causing trouble once again.
• Call-Forward: The flashbacks involving Dess take place three years before the events of Deltarune, and as such sometimes reference the events of the game.
  • Dess ends up fighting Queen shortly after buying a new laptop. Once she realizes said laptop is Queen, she donates it to the local library, wanting nothing to do with it ever again.
• Deity of Human Origin: Not human origin specifically, but the prologue very strongly implies that Noelle Holiday somehow became the "Angel" responsible for the creation of the Undertale universe seen in An Anomaly in the Underground.
• Expy: While many of the characters encountered in the first Dark World are clearly Touhou Project characters, some of them have names and backstories just different enough to not be identical. In particular, Cirno is named "Chillno" and Yukari Yakumo is named "Violet Hearn" (though the latter might simply be an alias.)
• Fake Better Alternate Timeline: The timeline that Iji finds herself in seems like a strictly better world, for the reasons outlined in Alternate Timeline above... until it's also revealed that Mount Ebott was vaporized in the Tasen Alpha Strike, along with all of monsterkind, unlike in Iji's own world.
• Foil:
  • Junko as she appears in the first Dark World is a direct foil to Asgore, with many, many notable similarities, including an expanded backstory that directly calls back to Asgore's own in the original Undertale. The primary difference between the being that Junko absolutely does not regret swearing her entire life to vengeance over the death of her son, and fights to the very end without even the slightest hint of hesitation.
  • Asha is directly contrasted against Papyrus: both of them are glory seekers with notably inflated opinions of themselves who are nevertheless both able to back it up when the chips are down. The difference being, Papyrus is genuinely a Nice Guy who virtually everyone likes, and Asha is... the exact opposite of that.
• Off the Rails: The plot of Deltarune is abruptly thrown off the rails when the Player quits after Chapter 1, and the world is destroyed in their absence through unknown means. The world that exists in An Anomaly in the Underground was seemingly created after the Deltarune world's demise.
• Or Was It a Dream?: It's unclear just how "real" the dreams that Iji has of the Deltarune world are, but the lines between them are increasingly blurred when "Violet Hearn" (who is clearly Yukari Yakumo) seems to forcibly drag Iji into her alternate dream world as Dess, explicitly referring to Iji and Dess as one and the same.
• Shout-Out:
  • Every character's Dark World outfit thus far resembles a character from another franchise:
    • Dess's Dark World outfit is based mostly on Aqua, with some additional inspiration from Lady Iceheart.
    • As in An Anomaly in the Underground, Iji's outfit is based on Adwoa of MURI.
    • Asriel's Dark World outfit is based on the traditional White Mage garb of Final Fantasy, but with the red and white colors reversed.
    • Chara's Dark World outfit is taken directly from the Blue Mage of Final Fantasy V.
• Trapped in TV Land: The first Dark World that Iji and company encounter is based on Touhou Project, including many Touhou characters re-imagined as Darkners and fully aware that they are video game characters.
• Visions of Another Self: A central part of the plot of Null Driver are the recurring dreams Iji has, suggesting that she is in some way a counterpart of Dess Holiday from Deltarune. Asriel is further implied to be a counterpart of Ralsei, though exactly how is unclear.
• The Worf Effect: In Deltarune, Giga Queen is powerful enough that the heroes are only able to fight it on equal footing by summoning their own Humongous Mecha, and even then they still lose even when they win. Here, in one of the recurring dream sequences, we're able to see that Dess is strong enough to fight Giga Queen without a mech of her own and win.
• Yaoi Fangirl: Dess is implied to be this (much to her profound embarassment.)
  Queen: Dess Sweetie Honey Darling Snowflake Don’t Think I’m Not Aware of Your Browser History
  Dess: W-wait, browser history!? Oh god no.
  Queen: Oh No I Don’t Mean Your Mangas About Pretty Boys With Big Hands (But I Also Know About Those)
  Dess: NOW YOU WAIT JUST A GODDAMNED MINUTE HERE!!!