"Just put on your clothes, Azzy," Frisk said. Asriel did, being careful to put his ears through first this time, and putting his arms through the sleeves smoothed them down some. Some gentle movements from Frisk smoothed his ears and arms down more.
"Hey, something's going on up front," Asriel said when Frisk got their clothes on. "I think there's a monster up there." The group hurried, Frisk's roller shoes clattering loudly. There was, indeed, a monster; a moldsmal had taken up temporary residence inside a revolving door. The group also saw Jenkins talking to some policemen out front. Asriel overheard some things but had no idea what they were talking about.
Frisk approached and considered how to deal with the moldsmal before it or anyone got hurt. They considered just picking it up, but that seemed like a very bad idea; it gave off a faint smell of battery acid, rotten eggs, powerful solvents, and other things that they really didn't want to be touching with their bare hands. That, and it looked so placid that they feared it would go off as soon as anything touched it. Maybe it was a moldbygg in disguise...
"Hey, greedy!" a kid yelled from behind them. Frisk turned around. The kid was about a year younger than them and was pointing with an accusing look. "Quit being so selfish! Tell me how to catch it!"
Confused, Frisk just said, "You can't catch it."
"I can't catch it while you've got three legendaries?! You're a douche!" Undyne smiled at being called legendary. Sans just stood there with his trademark grin. Asriel stared at Frisk and the kid in utter confusion.
"This isn't- you can't catch monsters! They're here because they want to be!" Except for that one thing, but Frisk wasn't about to tell some random kid about that. And didn't anyone read shirts anymore? Then again, that kid's was "Gotta catch 'em all!"
"So how do you make them want to be?" the kid asked, innocently. The disbelief and puzzlement were crowding Asriel's face.
"You can't make people want to be your friends." Frisk almost asked if the kid had any human friends but suspected that the answer was no. "And I'm not going to take this little one with me either," they continued, turning away. Frisk considered how to encourage it to leave. Lying down only pacified monsters of this type, letting people walk right past; perhaps if they flirted, and made it chase them...
"You shouldn't be here," Asriel told it, walking into the revolving door alongside it. "We both know this isn't where you belong. There's nothing to eat up here, at least nothing you want." Frisk barely remembered to get into the same revolving door slot before Asriel walked out the other side, the moldsmal close behind, gawkers watching the display. "That's where the water goes, isn't it?" he continued, gesturing to a nearby storm drain. "Carrying all the yummy stuff the humans leave behind. I know, you were curious. And now you know. Down." It obediently oozed its way into the gap, falling with a plop. A few people clapped, and then, being Americans, they all did. Frisk looked at Asriel with some shock, shivering against the nippy day, and Asriel looked smug as could be. "You said who I am earlier. Did you forget?" he asked quietly.
"Prince of Monsters," Frisk acknowledged. "I still kind of wanted to show how humans should do it."
"We ought to put a show about that on TV. You're cold?" Frisk nodded. It wasn't Snowdin, but it was chilly. (Which reminded them, they had a never-melting snowball at some point... where'd that thing go? They didn't lose it in the Underground...) "Mom got us some sweaters." They went through the freshly emptied revolving door, which still smelled of janitorial chemicals.
"Frisk," Agent Jenkins said, hurrying with a professional jog. "Can we talk for a moment? Just the two of us."
"The three of us," Frisk countered with. Undyne looked mildly concerned; Sans did not. The three entered the elevator together, Frisk inserting the cardkey. "Is something going on with Mom and Dad?"
"No, they're fine, but Frisk, why do you consider them your mother and father?" Jenkins asked.
"Well, Mom took care of me when I fell past the barrier." There was no way they were going to tell him what really happened down there. Mom only half-heartedly tried to kill me, and it was just the one time. "And then Mom got back together with Asgore, so that makes him my Dad, and Asriel is their son, which makes him my brother."
"And your birth parents?"
"You're like the third or fourth person- I don't talk about them. I don't want to talk about them." They're the only people in the whole world I'd never even try to SAVE, Frisk almost said, but didn't want to let on too much about their DETERMINATION, either. "They're bad, okay? If they're asking to talk to me, tell them to go away."
"You've made your wishes clear. Thank you. I just needed to make sure something else wasn't going on." Frisk just shook their head. Couldn't this guy recognize a loving family when he saw one?
The elevator reached the top floor, and Asriel and Frisk hunted through the dresser drawers. "Hey, Frisk, what's a 'diplomatic incident'"?
"It's when something bad happens between leaders or countries? Maybe ambassadors? Or maybe just some diplomat does something bad in a foreign country?" That reminded them, The Revenge of Dr. No was in the theater. They'd managed to smuggle a viewing of not-dad's S.P.E.C.T.R.E. Blu-Ray a few months back.
"Oh, that makes sense. I heard Jenkins also say something about 'summons', so maybe someone accused Dad of summoning monsters."
"Yeah, someone needs to tell them not to blame him. This one works," Frisk said, picking out a bright red and extremely comfortable sweater.
"I guess this shirt doesn't match..." Asriel started, about to change.
"No, leave it on, I'll just do this." Frisk put their T-shirt on above the sweater. Asriel couldn't believe he didn't think of that.
"Hey, what was that kid even talking about?" Asriel asked on their way back. "With the catching monsters?"
"There's a lot of games about monsters up here. But they're not about you. Most of them are 'fight the monsters'" Frisk wasn't about to even mention the concept of EXP in front of Jenkins. "but there's one real popular one that lets players catch them, and then use them to do stuff, like fight other monsters and ride around and have tournaments. He thought that was real."
"And this game's real popular?"
"Yep. Sorry."
"So when they see us, they all think that..." Asriel trailed off.
"It's why I like wearing this T-shirt," Frisk replied.
"...so, yeah, actually trying to catch 'em all isn't very smart," Sans was telling the kid as the elevator opened. "how would you even feed 'em all?"
The kid looked sheepish. "In the games and the show, there's these little balls that hold them until the player's ready to choose." Suddenly, Undyne was quite glad that anime was not, in fact, real.
"wow. portable solitary confinement for your gladiator slaves. for little kids to play games and watch cartoons about. hey frisk, why didn't you warn us the surface was so messed up?" Undyne was glaring at Frisk with her one eye. The kid finally decided it was a good time to scram, as did almost all of the gawkers.
"Alphys's a big anime fan, ask her why she didn't warn you."
"Oh, I will," Undyne said, cracking her knuckles ominously. "In person."
Maybe I shouldn't have deflected that one. "Anyway, you guys want to catch a movie?" Frisk asked, changing the subject. "The new James Bond's out. We can get the seats that shake like an amusement park."
"sure, i got time. gotta be at the dum-vee later with my bro, though." Everyone looked confused. "you know, for our learners' permits." Sans was learning to drive? Papyrus was learning to drive?! Frisk could only think of one outcome to that, and it rhymed with blisted bleckage of blangled bletal. Would the rescue crew even bother using the Jaws of Life if the driver was already a skeleton? Sans read their expression. "c'mon frisk, give 'im some credit." Yeah, and maybe a couple of LOADs, too.
For the moment, at least, they had a driver who knew what he was doing. "Hey, Frisk," Asriel asked as he closed the door to the SUV, not wanting to ask yet another embarrassing question in public. "What's an amusement park?"
This time, it was Frisk's turn to flinch at how close Asriel was to never knowing things. A kid who didn't know what an amusement park was? Wasn't that against the Geneva Conventions? "It's a place where you go on fast, scary roller coasters and hit bumper cars together and eat cotton candy. But in that order, if you do it the other way around you throw up." Well, Frisk would. And did, once. And then- but they didn't think about that. "It's not amusement park season, though, they only open in the summer." Frisk suddenly recoiled. They'd been thinking too small. They tumbled the thought around in their head. I can go to a Six Flags where the weather's warm. I can go to Disney World if I want. And I can use DETERMINATION to guarantee a good time.
"What?" Asriel asked.
"My world's a lot bigger now, too," Frisk replied, still trying to mentally reconcile Disney World and if I want. "Okay, take brother to amusement park, that's on the list. And an aquarium. And a lot of other places."
"well, you've finally become determined to enjoy life. i guess you could say you're feeling... frisky." All the monsters laughed, but Frisk didn't. "dish it out, but can't take it?"
"No, Sans, it's a great pun by itself... but don't tell anyone this, any of you." Sans made a lips-zipped gesture, which came out weird as he didn't have any lips. "My not-parents had one name they were going to use if I were a boy and another if I were a girl. But I came out like this, so they named me after a brand of cat food." They clenched their left fist tightly at their side. "I hated that cat when I was little. But it wasn't the cat's fault." Frisk almost brought up the idea of changing their name but remembered the last time something tried to do that. "See why I don't talk about them? Oh yeah, don't talk in the theater, and turn your phones off, too."
Undyne looked at them strangely. "Do things... happen... in these theaters, Frisk?"
"I don't know what you're thinking, and I don't want to. It's just so we don't disturb everyone else. Oh, and if anyone else's phone rings, I think you're allowed to stab them with your spear. Hey, Jenkins, can she get away with that?"
"If it doesn't put them in the hospital, I'll get it swept under the rug."
"So is this a kind of anime?" Asriel asked.
"No, it's a movie with live actors. Humans pretend to be movie characters, and then they use cameras and special effects to make it look like they're doing things they're not actually doing, but it's all pictures of stuff that happened in front of a camera. It's all fake, it's just... real-fake, not cartoon-fake." But then there was CGI... "Most of it, anyway."
"That must be horrible, pretending to be a movie character. That's a job Alphys built a robot for. Who'd want to do that?" Asriel asked. Frisk laughed and explained how many people wanted to become big stars and how much they got paid when they did, and then Asriel asked more questions about how real-fake worked, and Asriel and Undyne almost understood what they were in for by the time they went into the theater. (Sans never needed anything explained, which Frisk found increasingly weird. That skeleton simply knew things...)
The movie was full of plot holes, incredible leaps of logic, implausible stunts, and Daniel Craig acting like a badass, and Asriel almost got shaken right out of his seat, and nobody's phone rang, and the kids loved every second of it, despite its long runtime. Except for the weird adult parts and some fairly gruesome scenes that might have disturbed kids who weren't used to being attacked or turned into flowers.
Sans slipped away once the credits rolled, heading to the DMV, and Jenkins led the other three out past a crowd of gawkers and a couple of paparazzi (seriously? We have paparazzi on us now?!) to a limosuine with enough headroom for Asgore and Toriel, and Frisk was surprised they made limos that tall. "Mom! Dad! We just saw James Bond kick everyone's ass!" Asriel gushed before realizing how little that made him sound.
Toriel might have said something relating to violence and children if she had completely different children. Instead, she said, "I'm glad you had fun. We're going to have a nice supper today. As a family." The last part was directed to Asgore.
Frisk surprisingly found themself looking forward to it. Being dragged along to dinner with their not-parents was always a nightmare, but with Mom... Dad didn't seem too enthused, though. "Dad, is there something else you want to be doing?"
"It's not what I want to be doing. You should have told me that there are more than 200 countries in the world." Oh no, now Dad's expecting me to tell him basic stuff that I wouldn't know is important! "All of which have monsters in them now, and all of which have leaders that want to talk to me." He shook his head. "Some of these leaders should not be leaders," he said, quietly. "And your mother is right. I also have duties as a father." He turned to his son. "But how can I teach you anything about the world when I, myself, know nothing about it?"
"Frisk's been helping, but they say we need school, and I don't know how that works."
Toriel chuckled. "School is what I wanted to talk to Frisk about. After supper." She sighed, thinking. "Frisk, I do not like to say this about your species. So many humans profess love and practice hate. I wish I understood why."
"Mom, I don't know what happened today to make you ask that, and I'm not sure I want to." She didn't answer.
"Your Majesty, if anyone said anything harsh to you-" Undyne began.
"Not to me. Never to my face." She gently waggled an ear, and everyone understood.
"I did a lot of videoconferencing today," Asgore said, pronouncing the unfamiliar word carefully. "Having tea in the morning with a man eating dinner in the evening. There's a lot of tyrants in the world, and they usually think that I'll agree with them, just because I'm a king. What happened to you, that kings became evil and that your advanced countries, what are they called... yes, you First Worlders decided to elect your leaders?"
"That's something you'll have to learn from a history book," Frisk said. "But I think that human kings were always kind of bad. Being able to do things to people and get away with it gets to people's heads." Frisk didn't think that their power could corrupt them. They only had the power to undo things, not to do things, at least not to humans. Then again, Chara and Flowey...
"Yet another reason to worry," Toriel said.
Frisk leaned in, making sure the driver, who wasn't Jenkins, couldn't hear them. No, there was thick glass and a push-button intercom between driver and passengers. "You have nothing to worry about, remember?"
"I am not worried for myself," she replied. "Not even for monsters. I am worried for all of you. For your future."
"You've got me here, Mom," Frisk reminded her. "If you want, I won't SAVE after today. So if anything really bad happens a month or two months from now, it can always be taken back. All the way back."
"My child, that is your ability. Yours to use."
"Don't do it, Frisk," Asriel said in a low voice. "If you keep looking for every possible solution, every possible reality, you'll end up like Flowey. We're having an awesome day today. You know what would make it less awesome? Doing it over, and over, and over, and over-" He stopped. "Mom, if you're worried about something in particular, maybe we can stop it. Not from Frisk's DETERMINATION, just from actually stopping it." She shook her head.
"My burden," Asgore said. "Not yours. Never yours, I suppose. When you were... when you were alive, I had dreamed of passing on peacefully, and leaving the Underground to you. But that cannot happen." He turned to Frisk. "And I cannot even pass on any other way. So you will always be a prince, and never a king."
"Always," Asriel replied, "until old age takes Frisk away."
"Azzy, are you really sure you don't want me to keep an old SAVE? There's no time limit. Even after that ninety years, I can just LOAD back."
"I'm sure. You'd go crazy, Frisk. Eventually you wouldn't remember what you'd done and what you hadn't. And then, not remembering, you'd just keep going back over and over..."
"Highnesses, Majesties." Undyne interrupted. "The way forward is forward, boldly forward, always onward! To greater ideals and higher challenges! Frisk, erase bad events if you must! But don't stop going forward just to erase your past!"
"Oh, I'd love to erase my past," Frisk replied. "But that was before I got this power." The limo pulled to the side of a swanky-looking building. "A French restaurant?" It clicked immediately. "Oh my God, Mom, you came for the snails! Okay, Azzy, you win the argument. I am not doing this over again!"
Of course they had reservations, and of course Mom ordered an escargot platter for all of them. The kids were still in their T-shirts, but nobody in their right mind really expected children to be dressed up, and there were no dress codes for monsters, especially not royal monsters. The general snootiness of the place was slightly disturbing to Frisk, who was used to associating it with their not-parents fussing over every last thing they did, but when Dad was gobbling down literal handfuls of snails, shells and all (Who would stop him? That's what 'king' means), and Undyne was spearing them with her fork one at a time, they didn't really worry about things like that. And the escargot was surprisingly good. They didn't even mind being called "Mademoiselle" by the waiter.
"Wait," Frisk said when they were about to leave. "I know this stuff's getting paid for, but you're supposed to leave a tip for the waiter. A little bit of money, for the service."
"I suppose one of these will do," Toriel said, leaving a one-ounce gold coin where the snails used to be.
"Okay, Mom," Frisk started on their way out, popping an after-dinner peppermint candy in their mouth, "what's this school stuff you wanted to talk to me about?"
"The paperwork is in our suite, but there are so many terms and names and ideas I have never heard of. What is Common Core?"
