A/N: I'm terribly late on delivering this. I meant for there to be more but life just got in the way of getting stuff done. Then again, would you have rather I wrote this pissed off at life or in a more agreeable mood? Please don't answer that.

So remember how I promised that a lot of the set up is going to done in this chapter? It's kinda correct. I intend to deliver one more chapter before the day is up. This chapter makes for yesterday's and today's quotas of 1667. The next is going to be done tonight and get this story A-MOVING!

Onwards to the goal! Tally-ho!

After the meal and a bit of sewing Toriel sent Steven off to bed. The young crystal gem was dead tired… So many shields and bubbles in one day and so many super stressful moments. He couldn't wait to meet morpheus' demands in full. Toriel had a pair of pajamas tailored up in a jiffy and promised a brand new shirt that fit him in the morning.

The evening's rest at Toriel's manor proved to be difficult for young Steven. It wasn't that room wasn't perfect, certainly not. It was more of that ominous feeling Steven had been feeling since he'd arrived in Home. It gnawed at him from the back of his mind. An unshakable sensation that reminded him severely of the feeling of a Gem De-stabilizer but less acute and definitely more chronic.

He supposed it was simply that he was feeling anxious without the Gems. He'd been living with them years now. They'd been there constantly throughout his life. To not have them but having this goat-bear-aberration instead that constantly reminded him of them but didn't constantly was another nuisance for his head to deal with. It reminded him of those nights when he couldn't exactly find that comfortable position.

Like tonight actually. He'd checked his phone and was uncomfortably reminded that it was, indeed, one in the morning. An impassive frown hung on his face as he flopped around on the bed. The frown soon blossomed into a tired scowl as he felt something about this position urging him to move… again. He sat up finally, abandoning sleep for now.

"PING!" his phone politely interjected as he stared into the dark of the room. He squinted at his phone which had decided a lightshow was necessary whenever he got himself a message. Half blindly thumbing his way through the lock screen and so on he found a message, from Connie.

"Steven, Are you okay?! I tried to call your place earlier but the gems said you'd gone missing! If you're getting this please txt back!" Steven read it twice to ascertain himself that it was true. The words hadn't changed but the implication was the same.

They, the gems and his friends, were probably flipping out. He didn't want to think of Pearl losing her head. He'd had enough of that earlier today. He suspected that Amethyst would be a bit more level headed but still agitated that they couldn't find him. Garnet…

He gasped. Garnet! That was it! Garnet could probably see him. Steven grinned at that magnificent stroke of genius. Garnet had future vision and there were only so many warp pads on Earth. She'd foretell the correct destination and rescue him. He'd be home tomorrow for sure! Then he could work on that plan he'd earlier about the gems being a peace envoy to these people.

With this in mind he comfortably laid back down and attempted sleep again…

When he opened his eyes it was not Toriel or morning that greeted him. It was Rose. Steven stared at her in a daze. She held him in her arms as he lay on her lap. She was warm and motherly. He could hear her singing the same song Garnet had sung on that spaceship.

"O-o-o-o-o-of LoOo-o-o-o-o-ove~!" Her voice sounded pretty to him. It followed alongside Pearls giggles as she danced.

"This world is full of so many possibilities." She said as she sang "O-o-o-o-o-of LoOo-o-o-o-o-ove~!"

"Each living thing has an entirely unique experience;" her speaking tone began to shift lower and became slower, "O-o-o-o-o-of LoOo-o-o-o-o-ove~!"

"the sights they see," And then pink tears came from her as she continued "I am made,"

"the sounds they hear," Steven felt cold and her tears were starting to pool around him "O-o-o-o-o-of LoOo-o-o-o-o-ove~!"

"the lives they live," Steven looked up and Rose had become a statue like at her fountain "O-o-o-o-o-of LoOo-o-o-o-o-ove~!"

"are so complicated, and so simple" And then the water rose and her drifted away from her. The sound now garbled in the water… "O-o-o-o-o-of LoOo-o-o-o-o-ove~!"

And then the waters turned turquoise and turbulent where they'd been pink and still. The rushing of water hit him with the force of the ocean in an storm. Tumbling this way and that Steven struggled against it. He suddenly felt tight in his chest. He fought now with the seas around and his lungs.

Until he was flung bodily through space and onto wet ground.

"Aw were you in the middle of sumtin'?" Steven choked as he came to himself, "I'm soo sorry to have taken you from sumtin' sooo special."

An abhorrent shifting visage met him as he righted himself. Two humongous eyes glared at him steadily as two others bulged and pulsated alongside other features like someone trying to force several layers of heavy quilts off of them… to no avail. The mouth was the only other stable part of the face looking down at him and in a way Steven would've been more comfortable if it moved. THe inside of it was decidedly not human. There were two tongues! one on the roof of the ceiling and the other on the floor of the mouth. The cavernous mouth's teeth were sharp and jagged in an inorganic way that reminded him of the bleached coral rather than teeth. Folds of flesh and tissues twisted and rested on each other uneasily and stretched to breaking. Some dark slime took the place of saliva and colored everything the color the of sky after sunset and before dawn.

"La-lapis?" Steven hoped. Prayed deeply that his friend still remained inside there. As he saw the face warp he wondered to himself, was that her or jasper? or both…

"Com'on kid, say it with me." The face drew close, pressing its sharp gemstone to him and forcing him to the ground, "MAL-LA-KITE!

"Muh-Mal-Lap-La-Kuh-kite!" "Good." The face twitched into a macabre parody of a smile. Somehow the tongues slithered out and attempted to hold onto Steven! They wound themselves together into a cord of beating throbbing muscle and flesh that somehow sprouted TEETH!

"Com'on Steven, Why don'tcha go for a swim." Steven went white as the toothed tongue-appendage played with his leg. Slime fell like rain on him and he felt it soak into him like acid into a sponge.

"Steven?! STEVEN! Please! Wake up!" A jolting motion, sharp inhale, A spinning room forward and back. Nausea, Too warm sheets, Strange ghostly sensations, the taste of bile in his mouth. He was shaking as the sheets fell off of him. A blink and he felt himself shudder fiercely until his eyes opened once again. His body left like he was going to pop or shatter from how tense he was. He curled inwards on himself as he felt his knees on his chin.

"Steven…" The voice bounced off the walls like a ricocheting bullet and almost just as loud. The silent echoes the voice left in it's wake played hell with him as the name came back to him. He blinked and the world went to madness until the light restored itself… painfully.

"Steven…" He hadn't felt it when the hands had come around him. He hadn't known the moment he'd stopped shaking. He couldn't recall him crying or when he'd stopped. He knew that he'd been held and something told him one of the gems had been there. The memory kept jumping like an old CD player on a bumpy road, showing him Pearl, Amethyst or Garnet at different times. He didn't care. He was with someone and that someone would keep the monster away. The monster named… (V) !1! !(1)~(17(!#

Morning came softly and gently to them. It wasn't the same as the oceanside melody of Beach City but the steady sound air moving, through the grounds and them. Steven regained full consciousness with his head in Toriel's lap as she dozed in a heap over him. His mind was empty and something told him that was bliss in of itself.

Toriel stirred when he woke. She immediately brought a hand to his shoulder. Steven accepted it thoughtlessly. His head too addled to think it strange or alien.

"Steven?" "Tori-el." Steven added sleepily, "No please Tori is just fine." she replied amicably, "All my friends call me that."

"What happened last night?" Steven asked as he sat himself upright. Toriel's face darkened,

"I… You were yelling in your sleep." Steven was stunned. His lips parted to reply but nothing came to him. His head seemed determined to undermine any attempt at going over the previous night. The idea that something bad happened to him last night filled him with dread. He pushed that again as he thought of what he'd been considering the night before.

"Oh, Okay." he replied at last, "Y'know I was thinking. I got in here through a warp pad yesterday. The gems know where most of them go so maybe they might've found their way down here!"

Toriel looked positively alarmed but reigned it in, "Well, that's good." She replied a bit shakily but kept the apprehension clear off of her face which broadcasted nothing but cheer. Steven chose to make no mention of her moment of fear, it was an understandable reaction to hearing an hostile alien race of exterminators were back in town.

"Yeah, I was thinking maybe we could search for the warp pad today and maybe surprise them by meeting up with them!" Toriel nodded at the idea,

"That sounds nice, We could even have a little picnic about it!" "CAVE-PICNIC!"

That was all it took for Toriel and Steven to jointly begin the day. First order of business was breakfast. The kitchen was unusually small. You would've thought that a home catered to Toriel would've included a larger kitchen but apparently a diminutive closet of a kitchen was all that was needed. The two had made a joint agreement. Toriel would bake and make sandwiches for their picnic and Steven would handle breakfast. Because they both would get in each other's way in the teeny little kitchen they'd agreed to let Steven go first, also because Steven insisted and it was breakfast for crying out loud.

Steven found most things where he needed them to be. The counter was a bit higher than he would've liked but he would be able to work with it nevertheless. Toriel, like any good maternal figure, had a veritable arsenal of culinary devices. Utensils of all shapes, sizes and functions were everywhere from drawers to hanging on the walls. Steven took to trying to find a gap in her taste workshop after a while.

The refrigerator was… surprisingly empty. He raised a brow at the MTT brand chocolate sitting on it's lonesome on top of a lower shelf where there was a carton of milk, a thing of eggs and some packaged bread. The rest of the food looked somewhat old, not expired but simply old. He shrugged, maybe it was late in the week and Toriel was about to do her grocery run. The gems' tended to do so with his Dad every week close to Sunday.

The freezer was by far better stocked than the refrigerator. Frozen veggies and the like lay stuffed off in the corner. There were a few frozen meals sitting ready to be had closer to the front of the freezer. A few bits of frozen meat sat in the far back with frost covering them. There was one thing that immediately stood out to him,

"Tori… why are there snails in the freezer?" Steven looked very green at the sight of the packaged snails. Toriel chuckled at him,

"It's going to sound a bit strange but they're my favorite." Steven tried his best to hide his disgust behind a very thick layer of smile. All he accomplished with his facade was look mildly creepy and ill at ease. Toriel howled at the sight of his reaction. "Hahaha, s'now reason to look like that!"

"Oh man Tori…" Steven cheerfully grimaced at the pun, "Guess you hit the Snail on the head!"

"PFT!" Coffee flew in a graceful arc onto the far wall of the living room as Toriel spitaked at the sudden joke, "Steven! Hahaha! Where'd you-hehehe come up with that one?!"

"I got it from a joke book! I read a lot when the Gems grounded me from TV. You wouldn't believe the goofy stuff they got in there!" Steven grabbed what he hoped were eggs and started preparations for breakfast. A prideful overcome Toriel as the eggs sizzled on the pan.

"So would you say that you've been Egg-ucated by those books?" Steven's mouth oh'd in comprehension and astonishment before curling into his broad full bodied smiles. He couldn't see Toriel from the stove top but could tell from her tone that she was grinning alongside him.

"Oh let me shell you another!" Toriel let out another gout of giggles as Steven focused on the eggs. They were going to be sunny side-ups as long as Toriel didn't make him laugh too hard.

"Steven, please you're really cracking me up!" Steven snorted as he broke the yolks. Obviously toriel wasn't going to let up on these jokes.

"You got me Scrambling for more material over here!" There the sound of a book hitting the floor before Toriel let loose a flood of chortles. Steven shook his head,

"That was a pretty bad egg as puns go, Steven." Toriel called as she swiped the book back off the floor. For Steven's part he was just about golden brown on underside of the eggs,

"Oh no, I guess I'm stepping on Egg-shells now!" Toriel guffawed once.

"Nothing beats that," Came her reply which came out in pieces from how much she was laughing. Steven wisely decided to stop there lest he put them both in hot water by putting her out of commission. You could said he didn't want to Hard-boil the situation! Or then they'd be deviled.

"Hey you want any sausage with these?" he asked from the stove. Toriel chuckled and Steven braced himself for the next pun.

"Def-Weiner-tly Steven!" Steven bit his lip as he held the laugh back in. If he started there'd be no end. But then again he already had a pun in mind.

"Dog-gone it Tori! That's pretty good!" Breakfast was served with a side of laughs.

After a delightful and thankfully pun-free meal It was Toriel's turn at the stove. They'd mutually agreed to put the puns away… for now. Steven wouldn't have been capable of engaging in punnery regardless.

"Tori, are you-" Toriel looked up from her oven to see steven at the doorway of the kitchen. "You're baking with MAGIC?!"

"Oh, yes." Looking down at her hands which still held some arcane glow she blushed. A quick wave of and the glow ceased.

"That's so COOL!" She beamed at him. "What else can you do! I wanna see all the spells you can do!"

"Oh well a lot of those aren't the sort of things you'd do in the kitchen." she admitted. Steven nodded. A lot of the Gem's powers were cool but stuff like Garnet's supersized gauntlets, Amethysts whip moves and Pearls energy beam really weren't stuff you'd do to demonstrate super cool powers. But there was something he could show off immediately.

"Hey I can do magic too!" He proclaimed. Toriel's brow went up in challenge as she leaned against the wall next to the stove. Steven screwed his face up in focus. He was going to do this perfectly. He did have an audience after all! Again he called forth those reassuring memories of the gems and their protective impact in his life. He added a bit of his Dad and Connie and all of Beach City for good measure. Feeling safe and wanting to ensure that he sent energy down into his gem and his arm.

"aaaand…" he held the energy there before letting loose. The sensation of holding in that energy buzzed in his teeth and stone. He let it go and with a flash of pink light he felt the familiar ghostly weight of his mother's shield on his arm, "TADA!"

With a big smile Steven held the shield up proudly. The spiral of rose thorns and Rose Quartz emblem at the center of the shield shone in the artificial white light from the ceiling fixtures. Steven expected her to clap at him playfully. She was a goat creature that candidly tossed around after all! how could making a shield out of nothing be all that surprising.

Apparently pulling a shield out of the air was more amazing than he'd been wagering. Toriel's face was long with shock and excitement and an emotion that Steven hadn't been planning: recognition.

"Your mother was the pink menace?!" Toriel exclaimed when she finally spoke. Excited might have been too mild of a term to put to Toriel's reaction. The large goat matron was ecstatic. Steven was somewhat intimidated by all this, That's a lot of goat mom being happy at him.

"I guess?" Steven shrugged,

"Oh my goodness. I haven't seen something from that long ago in AGES!" She reached over and started checking the shield out. She frowned at it a few times but the smile never left her, only dimmed and flickered like a flame in a breezy room. And then she tapped the shield,

and her arm was flung back by a surge of force. Steven's eyes went wide in shock as did Toriel as the both of them stood there reeling from it. The both of them looked at the shield in trepidation. Toriel put both hands in front of her and Steven nodded. They were not going to do that again. Thankfully the smell of pie was filling the air,

"So wanna show me how your magic flame thingie works?" Toriel eagerly set to the task of explaining magic theory to him. The tension still there but buried behind several paragraphs on things that didn't have to do with kinetic blasts.

"So all you do is think about what you want, believe in it and then will it?" Steven questioned back at her. Toriel nodded, looking very pleased with herself.

"Exactly! Oh Steven you're such a good student." She purred, "I always wanted to be a teacher, I know I'd be a good at it too."

Steven shrugged at her statement, "What's stopping you? I bet there's a school just waiting to have you! And you're super good with kids!"

"Thank you Steven, but it's not that." She replied as she tried to keep the blush off of her features. Composing herself she formulated a reply, "It's just… We already have enough teachers and I have a sort of reputation with children that might not be altogether suitable."

Steven frowned in disappointment as well as thought. To him Toriel was the best teacher he'd had! She'd totally explained things in a way he understood and didn't go too fast or use big words that confused him or ones that he didn't know. He loved Pearl but she could be a bit… esoteric in her speech and sometimes her analogies just complicated things. Also she tended to go off topic if it was related to his mother in some ways. Toriel had done none of that and in his book that was great!

Although, he mused, He hadn't gone to school so how good of a judge of teacherly-ness he was was up for debate.

But that last part about a reputation with children. That struck a note with him. How was she bad with children? She was fine with him. He wondered worriedly if something had happened in the past to her. 'Tori' to him was a sweet old lady that reminded him of a more lively Granny Nanefua (Gunga) nyx the penchant for appropriately used modern slang. The thought of something unfortunate happening to her filled him with dread.

"You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to Tori." Steven offered gently. The Past. There's too much it and it's heavy and hard to deal with. Toriel half smiled at him,

"Thanks Steven but it's nothing a old lady like me should burden with one so young." An amenable silence fell over them. Steven left it at that and chose to dismiss his shield. Summoning it took power from but not nearly as much as withstanding an attack. That blast of force had drawn some of that out of him but compared to stuff like falling rubble, a gem mutant and a spaceships main cannon it wasn't anything big.

"Hey, why don't you read or something while I make the sandwiches?" "okay!"

Oh-my-Let me pun you again! Aren't my Jokes just Egg-cellent? Look on the Sunny Side, I'll run eventually. But why would you ever want to see the end of these Grade A yolks?! Up and Ovum your heads now! Don't you just love how I'm laying on you!

Incoorporating two disparate universes together is tough work. At least to a competent punslinger this is an enjoyable part. Creating that relate to Steven and that are true to Undertale is super cool and wicked tricky at times.

As a big note, I'll be delivering more history bits throughout the fic but they're of the smaller variety. Info dumping isn't my style but it's really hard not to when I'm in a Nanowrimo setting with lots and lots to type and style isn't a huge concern...

Word Count 10323 total (3456 today)