Frisk was waiting with nothing but a granola bar, their cell, and a folded sheet of drawing paper in a small food shop on the Overground Hub station, sitting on a little chair in the corner, watching the long-eared, purple-furred lady behind the counter scan cards, place buns and boxed drinks into little bags and packages, and hand sweets on sticks to children. She looked over at them from time to time and returned to helping the queue that Frisk had had the bad luck of showing up just in time for, while the child let their legs rest out of their soreness from ducking and weaving through people-traffic and taking this turn and that after two days sitting and waiting alone in a pod. They rubbed the tops of their thighs, rocking slightly, and, in this current lack of occupation, picking out voices.
"Huh - I don't actually think I've seen an Earthling before," said one from someplace toward the back of the line that reminded Frisk of wings buzzing, filtered into the balanced sounds of Overcommon. "You know, not in person, anyway."
There was faint shuffling. Another buzzing voice added, "It's a small one, too."
"Small?"
"Young." Clicking mandibles. "There were a lot of Earthling families back on - I was actually on Ruehenn for a couple of months, before it got Gastered. All kinds of Earthlings there. Whole families of them. That's what their kids look like."
"Yeah, that's what I was asking, buddy. What's one doing over there by itself?"
"Waiting for someone?"
Frisk turned their head for just a second, with the words I'm looking for my mom cushioned between the back of their throat and the base of their tongue, but a pair of shiny blue shells with wings sparkling in the lighting of the station outside under them had already squeezed past the line's tail to step into the crowd outside. Frisk licked their lips and turned their attention back to the front of the line.
The lady behind the counter had apparently heard, with those long, rabbitlike ears of hers. She had her lips thinned as she beamed half of a gentle, rueful smile to them before she turned to a row of shelves behind her. Frisk swore she'd started to move a little faster.
Frisk wouldn't have been surprised if there'd been more comments and questions like that among the patrons of the little shop, but talk like that had stopped standing out to them a long time ago - not over background noise like that of the television screen wide and bright and on display above a fan observable over the glass case that held the sweets, where a bombastic electrical jingle played as the letters "ECHO Broadcasting" burned themselves against gray and black in neon yellow. A couple of creatures already out of the line, one with a pale teal green claw over their mouth, started to press back toward the counter, watching the screen as the monochromatic bars pulled themselves aside like zig-zagging set of shutters.
Frisk paid the screen no mind - and, they noted, neither did the shopkeeper. The low, tinny voice of a newscaster filtered into the store and voices de-singularized into a hum as the she started to clear the cue, smile ever-deepening as those who'd been served clustered around the same spot of the counter, eyes on a face that looked, in fact, not unlike Frisk's, but older and paler, with almond-shaped eyes and black lips that quirked in a smirk before their owner started talking.
A question came to Frisk's mind, but they held it, and shifted their full focus back onto the lady behind the counter.
She stood aside for a few moments, her arms crossed, watching her customers settle in front of the screen. Then she nodded decisively, and approached Frisk with a gentle smile. Frisk straightened up in their chair, hands on the sides of the plastic seat to pull themselves back.
"Hi," they said, and she nodded.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, hun." Her voice was, like her smile, gentle but clear, calm. "I know, I could have answered your question, but, uh..." Her mouth closed for a second. Her indigo nose twitched and wrinkled. Her smile came back uneven. "It sounds like it's no small subject you wanted to talk about. I thought it wouldn't be right if I couldn't give you my undivided attention."
Frisk thought "it's okay", but didn't find themselves quite saying it. Instead, they looked at her, not angry, blank and open - and they hoped it'd be enough.
Her nose twitched again. "You're a quiet little thing, aren't you?" she said.
Frisk nodded.
She let out a small, soft "ha". "As long as you can remind me what's wrong..." She threw a quick look over her shoulder, one ear turning on her head like an antenna. Apparently catching no need for her attention from the crowd, she turned back to Frisk. "So, little friend, what was it you wanted to ask me?"
"I'm looking for my mom."
"That's not exactly a question," she said - Frisk held it in mind questioningly before judging the warmth in it; it was a joke. "But, I see." There was a pause. And with a faintly knit brow, the lady made a soft, low humming noise. "I don't think I've seen her, honey. And I'd probably remember if I had. You don't get many Earthlings this far into the heart of Overground space - I'll bet you got a lot of funny looks on your way over here."
They had. They tended to get them anywhere they went - Frisk and Mom both. True enough, Frisk hadn't met many Earthlings before, and they'd gotten fewer and fewer between the closer that they and Mom had gotten to the Core of the Overground - the less that the Core itself had gotten to look like a distant rainbow star and more like the sun of any other planet. Between the sheer difference between them in terms of height and appearance and their rarity - while Frisk had met few Earthlings, they had seen exactly no other people who looked quite like their mother - they had a tendency to turn heads anywhere that they went; and not only had Frisk alone gotten plenty of funny looks, they'd heard bits and pieces of talk like that of the two insect people who'd snuck out of the store, complete with "What is it doing here by itself?"
"My mom's not an Earthling." Frisk fished in their pocket for the drawing they had brought, and unfolded and smoothed it in their hands. "My mom looks like this."
The lady nodded and took it. She flipped it over and scanned it. Frisk wasn't an expert drawer - they'd drawn the outline of a cowlike head in black crayon, with a pair of short horns, long ears draped over shoulders, eyes with rectangular pupils, two small triangular fangs, and a couple of strategically-placed squiggly lines to indicate patches of fuzz; and zig-zagged a purple pen below it to color in Mom's tunic. They knew it wasn't a detailed likeness, but it was a likeness all the same.
As she looked, the lady squinted her eyes. Both the looking and the squinting slowed to a frozen point.
Frisk let it hold for a couple of seconds. "Have you seen her?" they eventually asked.
The lady lowered the paper. Her eyes drifted up from the drawing to Frisk. She chewed her lip for a second with rodentlike teeth. "You're adopted, huh?" she said.
Frisk nodded.
A gentle laugh. "Well, I'll bet your mom's a very special lady."
Frisk nodded again. "Mm."
"After all..." She stopped up completely for a few moments. Then she straightened up, looking over her shoulder, ears turning. Then she leaned back down to Frisk, smiling unevenly. "...I mean, I've pretty much always lived near the Core - my whole family has, you know - and the number of Earthlings I've talked to, an Arakake could count on her three right hands. But still, as an adult this deep into the melting pot of Overground space, you get surprised whenever you see a new species. What looks like a new species based on... what you've got here, at any rate."
"You've never seen anyone who looks like her before?"
"I'm afraid not." She passed the drawing back over and Frisk folded it up again, head down.
"She doesn't look like anyone else," Frisk said, trying to affirm.
"Do you know what planet her family's from?"
Frisk shook their head.
"What about her name?"
"Toriel," Frisk said. "T-O-R-I-E-L."
"If I were you, I would've looked for a guard to help you out first."
"I tried," said Frisk. "I could only find one. He was in a hurry and I couldn't make him stop to listen to me."
"Huh," said the lady, twitching the corner of her lip. She paused for a moment - and then she dialed her easy smile back up, speaking steadily. "Here's what you should do," she said. "You ought to sit down in that chair again, and relax a bit. As much as you can, anyway. I'll borrow that drawing of yours again for a few seconds and ask the customers if they've seen your mom, and then I'll call the guard office for you, okay? They'll get folks looking for her, and they'll send someone over to take you to a safe place where you can wait for her to turn up. Would you know if you've got a tracker in your cell, perchance?"
Frisk nodded. "Yeah."
"This all sound good to you?"
"Yeah."
"All righty, then." The lady flipped her hand out to take the drawing when Frisk pulled it back out and passed it over. Afterwards, she hovered her hand, pinching the drawing between two fat, padded fingers, over Frisk's head.
Frisk knew what she was doing. They offered her a twitch of a small, polite smile, and she showed her teeth contently, giving their hair a light ruffle. "Stay right there and I'll be back with you in a jiffy," she said, and turned to walk toward the mass of people crowded at the counter.
When the lady tapped her first inquiree on the shoulder, drawing already unfolded and forward to them, they moved aside, and a spot opened up in the crowd. Frisk leaned aside a bit to take a peek. The camera followed the newscaster who'd initially appeared, who, matching their face, had a body like Frisk's but longer and leaner, with long legs and long arms. "Oh my gosh, look at that strut!" somebody in the crowd cooed, and the question returned to Frisk's mind. They raised an eyebrow, and tried to put the question into their eyes, scanning the edges to locate the lady again.
She'd gotten the attention of two folks. Her free hand was up, pointing and waving over the drawing. One of the two had a brow cocked high, giving their friend a sideways glance. The friend shook their head slowly. "No," they mouthed, and the lady moved on with only the most cursory glance back at Frisk.
Frisk pulled their chair back into the wall and brought up their legs to cross them. Back on the screen, the newscaster laughed loudly. "Ohhh, yes! The rumors were true indeed, lovelies! It seems this little colony is home to the single best waterflower wine tart and cup of subterranean prickly pear coffee in the Overground - o, heaven in the heavens! But...!" They pointed their microphone like a wand and winked. "With that pleasant little detour taken, let's get right back to our directive for the afternoon, won't we?"
"Wait, what?" someone muttered. "Oh, gee, I forgot that his restaurant review block isn't for another hour!"
"Same here, friend," someone else laughed. "What's he covering right now?"
"The... the thing that's been going around has spread to the Waterfall area. Apparently."
"What thing...?"
Meanwhile, the lady with the purple fur had moved to the fringe of the crowd, picking her cell out of her pocket and sticking the re-folded drawing in its place. Frisk gave her a questioning look. She met their eyes, and her brow knit with regret.
She leaned over to speak to them above the crowd's chatting. "Do you know your mom's last name, hun?"
"Dreemurr," said Frisk. "D-R-E-E-M-U-R-R."
"Toriel Dreemurr - all right." She nodded, faced the wall, and lifted her cell to her mouth. Her eyes left Frisk to the little white light at the tip. Her ears batted. "Hello - if you could help out, I seem to have a lost child on my hands, looking for a Toriel Dreemurr...?"
She covered the cell with her available hand and started to pace - her voice fell out of Frisk's hearing. In spite of themselves, they started to frown slightly, and leaned after her, uncrossing their legs and kicking their heels in the air underneath their seat. The crowd, meanwhile, continued to speak.
"Are ECHO nodes malfunctioning really a big deal out in the Waterfall area?"
"Buddy - ECHO nodes malfunctioning anywhere are more of a big deal than you think."
"Shaddup, would you? Shh, shh, shh! I can't hear Mettaton's voice over you two!"
"All righty," said the voice of the lady, coming back in. Frisk's brow lifted high over their eyes, and as she turned to approach, they hopped off their chair and crossed the store floor to stand next to her. Her eyes darted down to them and she acknowledged them with a flick of a smile and a nod. "Thanks a lot," she said into the cell, and with a flick of her thumb, the little white light on its side shut off. "You were giving me a look, hun." She raised a brow, looking down at Frisk again. "Did you have something to say?"
Frisk took a moment to remember what she meant - and a little light went on in their head.
"Yeah." They nodded. Their hair fell in their eyes and they brushed it away before pointing at the TV screen.
"Something you heard on the TV?"
"Is the news reporter an Earthling?" Frisk asked, looking between her and the small gap still open in the crowd to the screen.
The lady's ears wagged as she shook her head. "Ah-nope," she said. "You're too young to know about that, huh? Or do you and your Mom not watch a lot of TV?"
"No."
"Fair enough - though I would have thought you'd have at least seen his picture out there somewhere. That's Mettaton. He's a robot." The lady had on a bright but patient smile, her rodentlike teeth showing. "A real smart one." She tapped her temple with a thick, padded finger. "They put a computer in his brain that they say runs just like a real brain - that pretty much is a real brain. Now, I can't know how true that is - only Dr. Alphys up at ECHO-Tech really knows that, that's his developer - but... he's got an independent personality, that's for sure. It shows, doesn't it?"
The lady gave a smirking upward nod in the direction of the screen, on which the reporter swayed his hips, leaned on his leg, and cocked his head as he held his microphone out to a creature resembling a bubble of sludge with a kaleidoscope eye. "Oh?" he said, quirking his brow and twisting his lip into a smirk. "Well, nobody mentioned that in the briefing." He let out a soft laugh, which cut off inorganically. There was a sudden flick of a glowing pink eye to the camera and back to the creature. "Would you happen to have any other scrumptious tidbits to share with the hungry galaxy, darling...?"
The lady paused for a moment. "Speaking of ECHO-Tech," said said, "it sounds like that's what's got the guards so busy today. Technology's been acting up throughout the station. It's caused... well, concerns. Security concerns, info tech concerns..." She noticed that Frisk had again started frowning, and put on yet another easy smile. "Nothing that's gotten anyone hurt, as far as I've picked up - don't worry."
Whether anyone had been hurt had occurred, in fact, only secondarily to Frisk. The thought of technology malfunctions made Frisk think mainly of machinery winding down, as if due to depletion of batteries, which seemed unrelated; and explosions, which Frisk imagined they'd have heard directly or heard of if they'd happened.
"Is... Is someone coming, though?"
"Yeah." The lady's smile showed teeth again. "Don't worry about that. They told me they'll have a fella down here in just... five minutes, I think? In the meantime, sit tight. Can I get you anything?"
"I don't have any money."
"Cup of... Well, I don't know. Milk tea, maybe, on the house?"
Frisk accepted, and the lady patted them on the head again and moved behind the counter.
There was a hiss.
Back on the TV screen, the reporter Mettaton's smile had grown dark. He said, hyper-articulately, "Quite - all - right." He pouted, faintly. "Are you sure, honey...?"
The sludgey person made a squelching noise into the microphone, under which Frisk just barely heard the words of Overcommon. The hiss repeated. The crowd flinched. It rose to a sputtering.
And then to a squeal.
The lady's ears twitched and shuddered at the drink machine. "What the devil is that?" she said.
And then the image on the screen burst into rainbow colors, and then to black.
The crowd collectively groaned and whined.
"Geez!" someone said.
"Ma'am, could you come over and fix this?"
"I'm in the middle of something here," she said.
The crowd turned to her, and Frisk, half anticipating to be looked at next, hopped off their chair and moved over to the end of the counter, between them and the lady.
One person did look - right past Frisk, to the entrance of the store. The rest followed. And so, in a moment, did Frisk.
The lights of the station were flickering.
"Is it a power outage?" a man said.
The lady, now holding a steaming cup of a shiny silvery material, looked flummoxed. In a beat, her head started to shake. "We shouldn't be getting those," she said. "This close to the Core satellites, it doesn't make sense."
The man laughed. "And yet," he said, shrugging his shoulders up high.
A couple of the news-watchers had already started toward the door, with a last look at the TV screen, silent and black, and two more started to follow, and three more, muttering worried mutters. The lady rounded the end of the counter - she nearly bumped into Frisk in the process, catching herself at the counter's corner; a splash of bright liquid jumped up over the cup's edge, deftly caught - and the rest of the crowd turned to leave.
Just as Frisk turned to ask her another question - but the lights are still on - the store's lights started to wink. And then they dropped out entirely.
The murmur of the crowd proceeded until a departing tail held the door open for a last "See you tomorrow, ma'am" and shut, leaving Frisk and the lady alone between darkened electric lights and a floor made of warm yellow wood, now gone colder.
The lady stood leaning, arm and hip against the counter. She pressed a small, dry sigh out through her nose, brow unevenly furrowed. The look she cast down to Frisk sought solidarity, though in what, Frisk couldn't tell.
Eventually, she forced a grin and a laugh. "Not so interested in loitering now, are they?" she said. "I'll bet they're going to head in that little pack of theirs to a store that's still got their TV running."
She passed the cup of tea down to Frisk. They took it, peeked inside, and inhaled - they couldn't identify the type of tea off the fumes - and then asked, "Do you think the guard's still coming?"
"The guard cruisers here run on Core power," she said, crossing her arms and tapping the spot just above her elbow with a finger, "like most everything else here does, so if anywhere's having power troubles, I hate to say it, but it might take a little while. That said, kid - they wouldn't be much good as guards if a little inconvenience like cruiser trouble kept them from helping a person in need. Particularly a lost child."
A bright flash of light that Frisk couldn't make out the color of - red? Purple? Blue? - jumped in the corner of their vision. The lady turned to look at it at the same time that Frisk did - the screen gave a few rainbow flashes before cutting out to black again.
"...But with this off-and-on," the lady said, "hopefully you'll have a little time to finish your tea. Do you drink tea often, hun?"
Frisk nodded. "My mom has lots of it in the pod," they said.
"You know what kind?"
Frisk didn't know what to do in response to that but shake their head. "It smells like flowers," they said. "And it's sweeter than this. But it still tastes like plants, even, um. Even with milk."
"That sounds pretty fancy." Her eyes squinted partway up toward the door and she laughed. There was a pause. "Maybe it's from her home planet."
"Maybe," Frisk agreed.
They looked up after her, wondering if something had caught her attention. It was dark outside, now, and a variety of shapes crossed in front of the shop - masses of people walking in a big crowd, some of them running, some of them talking loudly. The lights blinked on for a split second. A couple of people briefly paused. The lights went dark again.
And then there was a knock at the door.
The lady started, her ears pricked high.
She looked down at Frisk again - not a lick of fear. They had the same thought in mind: "That was quick," she said. "Even for... you know. What I said. That the guard wouldn't let power trouble get in the way of doing their jobs.
There was a knock - three knocks. Quick and sure.
And the lights outside came on. They held for a few seconds - enough for Frisk to take a few steps forward, the cup of milk tea still steaming fragrant billows of cloud in their hands, and peer at the door.
A very tall and very skinny silhouette appeared against the orange light shining through the glass. Frisk looked at the lady, tilting their head. Her smile was back at the corners of her mouth, and her nose was faintly wrinkled. "Oh, boy," she whispered.
"What's wrong?"
"They would send this guy to deal with a kid," said the lady, without looking at Frisk.
The figure raised its arm and knocked.
"We're open, Agent," the lady called. "You come right on in."
Cross-posted to AO3.