Frisk realized that they should have expected questions like that. They tried to remember what they'd overheard from the teachers' lounge and came up empty. "It's a bunch of tests, I think. But we stopped getting those tests a couple years ago? A lot of people liked to complain about it, I think?" It had been too long, and Frisk had been too young. "Just show me when we get home. By the way, we're gonna get mauled by people with cameras, but I've got just the thing," they said, reaching for their phone.
Half an hour later, the limosuine pulled up to the hotel's front entrance to a crowd of paparazzi and spectators. People had told their friends, who told their friends- the Royal Family of Monsters was staying here! At this very hotel, in their town, even! They were all goats, and the kid goat was really cute, and they had a human kid with them, too! Undyne got out first ("There's the singing fish lady!"), waved to the crowd, and opened a door. To shouts of "King Asgore, can you..." "Queen Toriel, what is..." "Prince Asriel, are you..." a long, shapely leg poked out.
"WELL HELLO MY DEARS! I AM SO GLAD YOU ALL CAME TO SEE ME!" Mettaton EX shouted, reveling in the camera flashes. "ARE YOU HERE TO TALK ABOUT MY UPCOMING THEATRICAL DEBUT? MY TELEVISION SERIES? MY FLIP BOOKS? OR DO YOU WANT ME ON YOUR TALK SHOW? BUT ONLY IF IT DOESN'T GET HIGHER RATINGS THAN MY OWN, 'A TON OF METTATON', AIRING THREE TIMES A DAY ON THE MTT NETWORK! WAIT, WHERE ARE YOU ALL GOING?"
Meanwhile, in the lowest level of the basement parking garage, Jenkins was hustling the royal family out of a van and into an elevator. "Nice trick, Frisk," he said warmly, sticking in the cardkey. "Right out of the playbook."
"Thanks. Will they ever go away?"
"If you stay out of the spotlight, they will once the novelty runs out."
"Agent Jenkins," Toriel said formally, "I know that this is just a career for you, but I have not yet formally thanked you for what you've done for us. It must be a burden."
Jenkins' professionalism, weakened by familiarity, dropped entirely. "No thanks are necessary. I've been a bodyguard to people from all over the world, but never to a royal family from another time, another world. In the last couple of days I've seen things that shouldn't be possible. This isn't a burden for me, this is an adventure. I've already got so much to tell my kids."
"You've got kids?" Asriel asked.
"Not yet. But that will change," he said with a nod. He paused for a moment. "Everything that's been delivered has been opened for security. Toys, mail, books, all of it." He looked at Asgore and Toriel. "Do you want to read the threats and the hate yourself, or should I dispose of it?" Toriel answered him with a gesture towards the children, and Jenkins understood at once. There wasn't too much, and most of it was probably trolling, but all of it would go to the FBI.
"If it's about us, shouldn't we read it?" Frisk protested.
"No." Toriel's voice was firm. "I am putting my foot down." She did, physically, and her soft, padded foot hit the elevator floor like a hard hoof. "You have had quite enough of people hating you. Both of you." Frisk backed down, an appreciative smile growing on their face, and Jenkins did not inquire.
Once the Dreemurrs were alone, Toriel asked her children, "How long have you been wearing those clothes?"
"Since yesterday except for this sweater. You tucked us in with them last night," Frisk answered.
"That was neglectful of me. We are not in the Underground any more! Bathtub, both of you, and then we can see to your education."
As Frisk took off their sweater, they saw the white hairs embedded in it. "Azzy! You got fur all over me!"
"You're the one telling me I'm fluffy! What did you think was going to happen?"
"I shall deal with this. I have long experience with it," Toriel said, looking at Asgore, who shied away. "I did not call him King Fluffybuns without a reason." He gently cupped her face, and she closed her eyes for the kiss. The kids quickly went into the tub to get away from watching it, luxuriating in the fact that they got to have a bubble-massage bath every day, and they found matching green-and-white pajamas, and fuzzy socks for Frisk, waiting for them after they finished drying each other's hair.
"Are you ready?" Toriel asked, having changed clothes herself into a modest nightgown, her husband in a kingly robe. "There was so much sent to me, by so many groups, but I am having trouble discerning what is of educational value and what is not."
Frisk glanced at the boxes of books, DVD cases, and packets, reading some of the names. "Well, it's all of educational value, Mom. We can use it to learn stuff in school, or Azzy can use it to practice his fire magic." There wasn't a fireplace in the penthouse, but there was a large grill on the patio.
"Asriel, you've learned how to cast?" Asgore asked. "And you have the strength to burn paper?"
"Yeah, Dad. I've got a really big fuel tank," he said, smiling and pointing to Frisk, who smiled back. The Dreemurr parents looked at each other and at their children, understanding.
"That reminds me," Frisk said. "All of this stuff is about human topics. What about stuff like, the differences between monsters, or how to cast other kinds of spells, or how magic works in general? There was a couple books like that in the Librarby, but those weren't teacher or student books."
Toriel smiled. "Then we'll just have to write some."
"So, what did they send you?" Frisk asked. Their mother started taking out books and reading titles while Frisk made judgments as best they could. "Okay, earth science, we're going to need that, English... I remember that book! That's the same one we used last year. Okay, all the stuff from this publisher is good. The math... I remember now! That's what everyone was complaining about, the math stuff. It's basically 'how to move numbers around', and most kids got it but some adults were too stupid. Ooh, history, that might be weird, because you're not from here. I mean, you wouldn't know what Valentine's Day or Fourth of July or Thanksgiving are, and you celebrate Christmas weird."
"Thanksgiving, I could tell you about that." The kids looked at their father. "I wasn't there for the very first one. That started in the northeast, as I recall. But the Xualae and the English, and later the Cherokee," Asgore did not pronounce 'Cherokee' the same way Americans did. "would celebrate together after every harvest season." They weren't always friendly with one another, but what humans ever were? "Children playing outside before the weather got too cold, people giving what they had, storing up for the long, cold winter. Sometimes, the children would see me seeing them, and they'd either scream or chase me. Once, one got lost in the snow, and he thought I was going to eat him instead of bringing him home..." Asgore sighed, wistfully. If he had taken the kid's SOUL rather than showing mercy, everything would have been different. "It was a simpler time. No penthouses, no limosuines, no videoconferences or planet-wide news." His phone started to ring, and he held it up, chuckling deeply. "None of this." He answered it, and waved to his family as he went towards the elevator.
"I like penthouses and limosuines, though." Asriel said.
"Me too," Frisk said. "Well, I didn't like them that much before, but I wasn't in them before." Asriel laughed. "Okay, what else?"
"Critical Race Theory for Grade Schoolers..."
Frisk's face screwed up. They couldn't remember where they've heard that before. Not-dad's favorite news channel? "Let me see." They paged through it. "Wow, this book really hates white people." Frisk was roughly half white in total, from great-grandparents on different sides of the family tree, although they were told they looked a lot like their Chinese grandfather. They started laughing, wondering what whoever wrote this pile would write about monsters. "There's a word for this, but it's not 'belief' or 'religion', it's an idea, maybe?"
"Is the word 'ideology'?" Toriel asked.
"Thanks, Mom. Ideology. Any books that do ideology are bad." Frisk put it aside for fire magic practice.
"Claws, Jaws, and... Dinno-saurs? by Kent... Hoe-vined? Huhvinned? I do not know how to pronounce all of this."
"Dinosaurs? Let me see." Something about it didn't look right, and Frisk flipped through it, laughing. "Wow. This is completely bogus. This one's for the grill." Frisk really did not want to read what this person would have to write about monsters.
"Veggie Tales... Is there a Vegetoid in this?"
Frisk laughed. "I wish. It's not what you think it is, Mom." They'd been subjected to it when they were little, and looking at it again was unpleasant. "Burn this one hot, Azzy."
"Exploring the Gender Spectrum, Challenging Gender Assumptions..."
Frisk's stomach dropped. "Oh, no, no!"
"You really don't want..." their mother started.
"I don't want to be treated special, I don't want to have to explain it, and I don't want anyone else in my class looking at me funny. This stuff shouldn't even be in school. It's all more ideology. Burn it. All of it." Frisk was wearing the same expression they'd had when they first left the ruins, and Toriel relented. "Here, let me just see the pile again." They started taking out books, looking at names, dividing the wheat from the chaff. "Focus on the Family? This isn't even a textbook, this can focus on the fire. Okay, the rest of this is actual books and programs, some of it is for high schoolers. Chemistry, biology, some advanced social studies... wow, they really sent you everything. It's good, but I don't know if you want to have it in our school."
"Why would I not?"
"It's for older teenagers," Frisk replied. "You're not going to put all ages in one school, are you? Nobody does that here." Frisk had no idea why, though.
"I can, and I will. You will stay in the same school until you go to college." Toriel suddenly laughed. "That is what human mothers worry about, is it not? Their children, going to college? A child I found, and a child I thought I had lost. And now here I am, talking about sending them out into the world."
"Together," Asriel added.
"Hey, Az, we'll figure something out before then. There's these girls who are basically two heads on one body, and I think they manage to live all right."
"I didn't mean it like... well, maybe I did." He was going to say something else, but it was embarrassing.
Frisk smiled and put an arm around him, cheering both of them up. He was impossibly, magically cuddly. "You feel normal now, Mom?" She nodded, slowly. "I've got time-reversing power, my whole family is goat monsters, I'm attached to my brother, and I feel more like a normal person than I ever have. Except my mom's going to be the principal. That's weird. When are we going there?"
"I was told that it would be built in two weeks because of 'prefabricated modules' and 'around the clock construction', but I am not seeing a clock on this picture..." Toriel found the floor plan and unfolded it on the floor. Most of the stuff Frisk recognized immediately, like classrooms, offices, and bathrooms, but some of it seemed out of place. Gates on an exterior fence? Designated student pick-up lanes? Security checkpoints with metal detectors? Cameras everywhere?
"Wow, Mom!" Frisk shouted, laughing. "All this needs are some sentry guns on the playground. Any kid stays too late at recess, t-t-t-t-t-t-t!" Frisk made a machinegun noise with their tongue and teeth.
"And a moat!" Asriel suggested with a wide grin. "With crocodiles and a big drawbridge, so anyone who's late has to throw a grappling hook over it!"
"Or we can get that big tentacle monster, what was her name?"
"Onion-san! Yeah, we can feed her the kids who flunk out!"
"And the fence should be electrified! With spikes on top!" Everyone knew that kids loved spikes, and Frisk was no exception.
"And, what's that stuff called, that other fence with the spikes on it?" Asriel asked. "It's like a rope?"
"Barbed wire? Razor wire?"
"Yeah, barbed razor wire! Put that stuff on everything! On the desks, on the buses, on the doors... on the teachers!" Both of them broke up laughing.
Even Toriel started to chuckle. "You two are incorrigible."
Asgore came back up the elevator, exasperated. "Interviewing the regular Mettaton was bad, but the EX was far worse. I'm not sure if it was interviewing me or if it expected me to interview it." He didn't go into detail, instead looking at what his family was doing. "Building a jail? Is this a homework assignment?"
"Dear! It's supposed to be a school!"
Frisk pointed at the blueprints, laughing. "That's not what this is!"
"Fire magic?" Asriel suggested.
"Fire magic," Frisk agreed. Asriel folded up the diagram and put it on the crap pile. "Hey, Mom, did these people send you anything else?"
"Well, yes, there's something on resource officers... and active shooter drills..." Toriel wasn't sure what the students were being drilled to actively shoot. "and bullying prevention..."
"Oooh, bullying prevention!" Frisk spat out with extra sarcasm. "Hey Az, guess what that actually creates."
"More bullying?"
"Wow! My brother's a psychic!" Frisk shouted, taking the packet from their mother's hands and slamming it on the burn-it pile. "And nobody's going to shoot up the school, either," they continued, grabbing the other packets from the same organization. "Even if they could do it without me undoing it, it's too rare to turn a school into a concentration camp. Don't do any of the other stuff, either, like 'Line up to go to the next class, we might lose you!'" That quote was said in a maximum-doofus voice. "Even for fifth graders. Please don't let our school end up like that, Mom." Everyone was staring at them. "I'm sorry, it makes me mad."
"When you say 'shoot up the school', do you mean with rifles?" Asgore asked. He had been shot with flintlocks a few times during the war, once in the head, but the bullets had passed right through him and the holes had healed rapidly. It was nearly impossible for humans to kill monsters with those. Killing other humans, however...
"Or pistols, or shotguns, or pipe bombs, or anything, really." Their family was staring even more. "I probably shouldn't even have told you. It's super rare, but the news likes to talk about it."
Toriel looked at her child intensely, her expression softening. "I thought that this would be so much easier. In every respect."
"You thought that you could just teach kids? Yeah." Frisk looked up at their parents. "Simpler time. You still can, Mom. You're the Queen of Monsters opening up the first school for your own kind, who's going to tell you what you can't do? And we can enjoy a nice, warm fire," they continued, carrying out the burn-it pile to the grill, their family close behind. Frisk packed the loose papers and some of the horrible books in and closed the bottom up. Fueled by Frisk's scorn, Asriel's magic took the paper at once, and the two of them held their hands up to it, enjoying the contrast between the chilly winds and the heat as burning, fluttering bits of paper floated out, and they leaned back against the reek of burning plastic.
"So what's it like going to school?" Asriel asked, and Frisk turned to him. "We're going to be in a room full of people our age? That seems a little bit..."
"Scary? Strange?" Asriel nodded, his ears wobbling. "It'll be fine. A lot better than my old school. We'll just be there learning stuff. Anything to worry about can't happen to us." Frisk had used a sure-fire strategy to avoid being picked on: be smart, be unnoticed, and be quick. Being out of the way served them so well in school that they weren't sure how not to be, even with options like 'LOAD', 'Mom's the principal', 'fireballs', and the really effective one that they hoped Mom would use, 'don't let bad kids in the school at all'.
"Children, we also had some people send toys. Would you like to see them?"
"Mom, I saw the toys you had before. They weren't very good," Frisk said. They felt a little bit old for toys.
"These are brand new." Shrugging, Frisk followed their mother inside, Asriel close behind.
"Why are they sending us free toys?" Asriel asked.
"For the same reason they're sending Mom free books," Frisk said. "They want us to use them, and they want us to tell the world we're using them, because we're popular. Toys are pretty cheap to make. Advertising is expensive." They looked at the boxes their mother was unpacking. "Oh, it's all Lego!" A castle, a dinosaur, a series of robots, a big tub of multicolored bits. "I... never actually owned these," they said, and then felt bad for saying it, because when was the last time their brother had the chance to play with something like this? If ever?
"Which one do you want to do first?" Asriel asked.
"We don't need to do what it says on the box. We can build anything."
"Like what?" Asriel asked, and then they were both stuck with too many options. "I know! Let's do that fortress school we were talking about!"
"Yeah!" They set to work immediately, cannibalizing playsets to establish an outer structure while their mother unpacked a tablet that someone had sent her. Asriel made his moat out of loose blue pieces while Frisk built a sentrygun-equipped playground in the back and dragooned castle guard and technician figures to serve as students and teachers. Frisk put the dinosaur's head on a large pillar while Asriel built a very good Onion-san out of white pieces. Too good, in fact, and the surrounding moat was made of blocks connected together at the sides, which Legos didn't do. "Az, that's awesome! But we won't be able to use them again."
"Yes we will," Asriel beamed, holding up two blue pieces, connecting them at the sides, and then disconnecting them. Frisk couldn't even tell what he was doing, exactly. The only smell of melted plastic was coming from the still-smoldering grill.
Asgore looked at what his children were doing, paying particularly close attention to the physical alterations. "Wow, Asriel. I was never able to do anything like that at your age."
Asriel hugged Frisk close. "Really. Big. Fuel. Tank."
"It's more than just power. It's finesse, and I don't think I had that either. Of course, all we had then was wood. Not plastic." He looked down at what they had made, making alterations so that things more resembled what they were pretending to be. Faces on figures were changed, walls looked like walls, blocks looked like desks, and Frisk's sentryguns were turned into things altogether strange.
"Careful, Dad," Asriel warned. "We have to take it apart when we're done so we can use it later."
"Use it later? You can do that?" Asgore took two small pieces in his large hands, putting them together and taking them apart the normal way, fascinated. He looked at Frisk with a smile. "Humans can never stop inventing things. I suppose that's just how it is. Now you have something that makes you almost like us."
"I still don't get what you're doing," Frisk said.
"Do you know what the difference is between a solid object and two solid objects made of the same material?" Asgore asked Frisk, and they shook their head. "Not much. It's only the tiny little outside layer that's different. We just change it to be the same. It doesn't take a lot of energy, and even less for plastic." Frisk had always wondered how Papyrus made a snow sculpture that impressive. Asgore kissed both his children on the top of the head. "Now don't burn too much of your sibling's fuel tank, Asriel. Although we are refilling it soon," he said, mischievously.
"With what?" Frisk asked, before getting a whiff of cinnamon and butterscotch. "Oh!" The kids finished quickly, and Frisk took a few pictures of the project with their phone before helping their brother disassemble the blocks.
The penthouse's dining table was just large enough for the four of them, and Toriel cut the finished pie into four equal parts with judiciously applied magic. Frisk had almost forgotten how incredibly good it was. There wasn't a lot of sugar in it; the tang of butterscotch mixed with the bite of cinnamon did it all. A quarter of such a large pie filled them up nicely.
Tears were running down Asriel's face as he chewed bite after bite, only pausing for water.
"Why are you crying, my child?" Toriel asked.
"I don't know. I shouldn't be. I'm happy. I'm just so happy to be alive..." He chomped the last bite, crust and all. "This is the best thing I have ever eaten."
She smiled, a wide, gentle smile. "Then I suppose I have two reasons to be proud of myself today." Her family looked at her. "I managed to get this working without any help," she said triumphantly, holding up her new tablet. "And even connected to the Internet! You can use it tomorrow if you want. Now, it is time for bed." Her children went without a word of protest, and she tucked them in with goodnight kisses again as they snuggled next to each other. Frisk could hear her talking through the closed door.
"Hey Az, what's she saying?"
"She's just telling Dad how she's going to look for pictures of herself on Google."
Frisk sat bolt upright, face twisted in pure horror, startling their brother. "AAAAAAH! MOM! WAIT!"
