The duo waved goodbye and trekked ahead, snow under their feet gradually thinning out and becoming hard, bluish rock. The caves ahead echoed with the sound of trickling water and every so often, a droplet formed on the roof and splashed against their fluffy heads. The bright light reflecting off the white snow faded as they went deeper into the caverns, being replaced with a bio-luminescent blue glow from the walls themselves.

"On to Waterfall, I suppose. No doubt the ninth human is already halfway through. By the way, Asriel, you've known Frisk and Chara for a while. How are these two humans so much faster than anything I've ever seen? I mean, Chara was actually moving faster than my dodging at some point, and I have a good chance at dodging a bullet as long as I know where it's coming from. Even though they're kids, they could probably take me in a fight."

"Before they fell into the Underground, they were already very determined beings, but they didn't know it yet. After meeting us, they learned about magic. They understood the power of determination a lot more and learned to use it to make themselves faster and stronger. I don't know if all humans can do that, but those two really are special."

Asriel didn't need to tell him twice. The alien remembered his moments on the asteroid; everything from being forcibly introduced to hard space rock at high speed to being flambéed by rainbow death ray to, most vividly of all, nearly being decapitated by a supersonic human with a sharp knife while another human with apparent magical ability watched.

Luna and Asriel found another sentry station, roof on fire and smelling faintly of ketchup. All they had to do was keep following the trail of burned breadcrumbs, and at the end would surely be the pistol-packing human. Soon after, they stumbled upon a river and four nearby lily pads floating in the water. Marked with a single pink sprout and diameter the size of an average human, it was obvious that they were meant to form a natural bridge across the creek.

"Actually, this river isn't very rapid, and I can just swim across."

Asriel climbed on Luna's back and the duo waded across the river, leaving both of them soaking wet. As is required of anything with fur that gets wet, Asriel shook himself dry and splashed more water on the alien. Ahead was a vast, bowl-like section of caverns, floor crisscrossed with small streams and domed ceiling peppered with fluorescent dots. To the alien, the panorama almost seemed like an observatory. There was the right proportion of twinkling light to darkness, and a good variation in size among the false stars, but it seemed to be missing a certain element of depth.

"This next room is the Wishing Room. If you look at the ceiling, those rocks shimmer just like shooting stars and monsters would come here to make wishes after we got trapped underground. Every day, Chara and I would come here and wish for monsters to be free again..."

Asriel's voice trailed off. This place reminded him a time when it felt like sunlight and twinkling stars would never exist again. Changing the subject, Luna pointed at a tall, six-petaled electric blue plant and asked, "What is that?"

"Oh? That's an Echo Flower. They repeat the last thing they hear. Since these are in the Wishing Room, you'll probably hear some of the monsters' wishes if you tried."

"Is that so? If these flowers can actually do that without needing batteries and circuits, I'd like to take a closer look. Could I borrow one?"

After the prince picked one and handed it to his companion, the two knelt by a bunch of the remaining flowers and listened intently.

I wish the barrier was gone, so we could see the Sun again.

I wish for the humans to be nicer to us. I wish they could see that we aren't all bad.

I wish for the wars to stop, so we don't have to keep fighting anymore.

I wish for Asriel to be happy again. If I could cheer him up, it would really make all of the other monsters feel better.

The last wish, made by Chara in secret, was more than enough for Asriel to break down into quiet tears, overcome with all of the pain of the monsters at once. Luna knelt down and patted his head in his best attempt to console him and spoke softly, "It hurts, doesn't it? Look, I'm not going to pretend that things ever go back to normal after a war, and I'm certainly not claiming that I haven't changed after all that I've been through. I understand if you want to take a minute for yourself, but don't dwell on the bad memories, okay? You're fortunate enough to live in a community where everyone cares about you, and Cheerful Asriel needs to be there for them when the bad memories overcome them too."

Asriel nodded.

"How's this for a wish? We wish that nobody will ever feel the need to start a war again; that everyone, human, monster, or otherwise could realize that differences can be resolved to everyone's benefit; that people could realize how absurd it is to wish harm upon their brothers and sisters; that evil shouldn't have to be something we accept for granted; that even good people can make terrible mistakes; that sometimes bad things happen and all we can do is hope for the best; to reach out to others for help; to at least understand them before moving to assign blame. The galaxy can be vast and lonely, and it certainly doesn't need hatred to divide everybody even more."

(Hmph. Now that's a tall order, isn't it? Of course we'll do all that we can to keep the peace, but they'll have to learn to play nice by themselves sooner or later.)

The duo made their way to another river, where a small yellow bird was waiting for them. The bird began to tweet and flap its wings wildly, as if trying to get them to come closer. They obliged, and the bird somehow lifted them across the river.

"Asriel?"

"Yes?"

"This bird obviously exists outside of the laws of physics. What do you think would happen if I took it to the Ruins door?"

"You're still on that, aren't you?"

Bird in his paws, the alien wormholed to the Ruins door and set the bird down beside it, hoping for something to happen. As one would expect at this point, the door remained undisturbed. Luna returned, disappointed, with the bird a moment later. Eventually, they stumbled upon a piano and a locked door.

"Asriel...I'm starting to get a little twitchy here..."

"Wait, don't kick it yet! I know this one! If I play the right song, the door will open and there should be a legendary artifact inside!"

Asriel sat down in front of the piano and began to play a familiar tune. His companion froze in his tracks and shut his eyes for a moment.

"That's a nice little song. Kinda takes me back to happier days, even if they're long gone by now."

"Thanks. Chara actually taught me how to play it a while after we first met, and I've remembered it all this time because it always seemed to cheer her up."

With a shuddering and rumbling, the door slid open, revealing a small room with a red object on a pedestal. Luna picked it up and immediately dropped it with a sense of revulsion.

"Asriel?"

"Yes?"

"This is a slimy, old, red rubber ball. How is this an artifact in any way?"

"The legends say that an ancient warrior stumbled upon this one day and it led them to victory over an invading army. Well? Do you feel...victorious? Stronger? Like you could take on the world?"

"I feel like I need to go back to the river and rinse off my paws."

"Oh. I guess the stories were just stories, then."

"Was it significant to the humans in any way? Would it have caused a war if the humans thought the monsters stole it from them?"

"I don't think so...Frisk told me that human children and pets like to play with these, so it's not something worth fighting over...hey! You're writing all this down on your electric notepad phone thing!"

"Okay, okay, you caught me. No more working off the clock, I promise."

The two found a pile of ashes that smelled faintly of barbecued fish next to an unscathed mailbox. The ninth human had been here too, swath of destruction having graduated from 'teenager-level prank' to 'force of nature'.

"I wonder whose house this was?"

"NGAHHH!" screamed a voice behind them, "What did you two do to my house?"

Undyne 95 AT 64 DF

*Thinks you and Asriel burnt down her house.

*It doesn't exactly help your case that Asriel uses fire magic.

Both Luna's and Asriel's SOULs turned a shade of dark green. The alien grabbed the prince's arm and tried to pull him to a safe place, but he felt the ground tugging like glue at his feet every time he tried to take a step.

"Ha! Now you two can't escape!"

"And now I can't move my feet at all…and just when I decided blue was my least favorite color…sigh, this'll be fun."

Asriel turned around and let Undyne take a good look at him.

"Wait a minute, you're the prince. Okay, you can take a seat, but I'm gonna have to teach your friend a lesson here about trashing other monsters' houses."

Asriel's SOUL changed back into its original color. He thought about helping Luna, but figured instead that a fight with Undyne was an important part of the tour and sat down on a pile of wood and stones. Magical spears began to float toward the alien from four directions, which he sliced at and blocked with his characteristic sword.

Undyne HP: 250,000/250,000

*Captain of the Royal Guard.

"I didn't burn your house down. It was a ninth human who ran past here with a futuristic-looking space spear."

"You're gonna have to lie a little better than THAT. Not even Papyrus would believe you right now, and that's really saying something."

Another volley of ethereal spears approached at a faster clip, some of them swirling around the standing alien like leaves in a whirlwind.

"You aren't ever going to believe me, are you?"

"Nope!"

"But you like fighting for other's sake, don't you? I respect that. Let's have a little proposition then, fighter to fighter. If you win, then I admit I burnt down your house and I'll pay in full for the damages. But if I win, you let me go on to Hotland before this kid can cause too much more damage."

Undyne's eye lit up when Luna, cunning smile on display, mentioned something that sounded like a competition.

"You're on!"

Undyne, smacked by a miniature explosion, retaliated with an even larger and faster volley of spears, which the alien blocked the brunt of. Luna fired a dark energy blast twice from a vortex floating to the side of his head, narrowly missing Undyne with one and cleanly hitting her with the other.

Undyne HP: 233,426

*Perhaps a little too overeager to properly defend against your 'directed' array of attacks.

Undyne realized that it was suicidal to confine the caprine monster to projectile attacks and turned Luna's SOUL a snowy white again. This time, Luna sidestepped and dodged a volley of spears, tips quickly approaching the speed of bullets, and swung at Undyne directly with his sword. Undyne blocked with her own spear and pushed Luna away with the shaft, trying to capitalize her superior brawn against his speed and her longer-range spear against his blade. At the same time, the alien tried to lunge and close the distance, leading him to chase a backpedaling Undyne around the ashes of her house.

After five minutes of cat-and-mouse games, Luna got around the spear and knocked it aside with his sword. He figured the marine would give in now, but all of a sudden, Undyne grabbed his waist with both hands and lifted with all her strength.

Half a second later, the floor was where the ceiling should have been.

Another half-second later, the dazed alien looked up from the ground and saw hundreds of magical spears in a radius around him and a single larger spear pointing from an Undyne standing over him to his chin. There was absolutely no way for him to block all of the spears at once, and it seemed that Luna would owe the guard captain a brand-new house.

(Yikes, are those sharp…)

"Well, fluffybuns?" Undyne sneered. "What'cha gonna do now?"

"You were so close, Captain…and I don't mean the tips in my face either."

Luna, white SOUL still free to move around, snapped his fingers and vanished from the ground with a quick flash.

"Hey! Come back!"

"You know, that green SOUL thing actually caught me by surprise…it really cut off a lot of options for me."

The voice seemed to be coming from several different directions at once. Visibility was poor, and the charred house left plenty of hiding spots and ambush points. Undyne held her spear closer to herself, scanning desperately for the outline of a sneaking goat, and shouted, "Stop hiding! Come out and fight me!"

"Throwing away such an advantage, though…a fatal mistake!"

A flare struck Undyne's spear from above and her right, knocking the weapon tip-first into a wall.

"And with that, Undyne, " Luna announced from his perch, "I believe it's a draw. Good effort, though."

Characteristic screams, the sounds of someone who did not like not winning in the slightest, echoed throughout Waterfall.

"I'll be a good sport, all right? All I have right now is money that no one here wants to exchange for G's, but I'll still pay you back when I can."

With newfound respect for the otherworldly fighter, Undyne reached out to shake Luna's paw very firmly. There was a cracking sound, which could either have been the settling rubble or Luna's fingers.

"You'll have to go this way to get to Hotland, but I'm still holding you to your offer!"