Nemo rested on the floor, staring up at the ceiling of the skeletons' house. He couldn't sleep, despite how exhausted he was. He had every desire to just shut his eyes and drift off to the land of dreams. But he knew that he'd be dragged to the realm of nightmares instead. He tries not to gag as he remembered the stench of dust. The cries of monsters as their lives ended. The visuals of Frisk being burnt, stabbed, blasted, and slammed around more times than he could count. He knew he should probably still try to get some sleep though, otherwise he'd be too exhausted to fight Undyne tomorrow. This whole thing was still kind of surreal to him. He knew that he was going to fight Undyne tomorrow because he'd already experienced it a couple days ago. He thought back to what Undyne had said to and about him. The words "killer" rang in his ears in Undyne's voice. He glanced down at the knee she'd blown out before stabbing him to death with a spear. Albeit not before promising to keep Frisk safe out of respect for his courage. Not that it mattered, they'd jumped to their last save from before the fight and Nemo was just fine, save for a few scrapes. His mind wandered to the fight between Chara and Undyne, the memories of which had been implanted courtesy of Chara. He shut his eyes tightly as he tried to force out the memories of Undyne melting into a pile of sludge, to try and focus on something, anything else. God he was tired. "You look like you're having fun." Commented Chara.
They'd surprised him, but Nemo barely had the energy to notice, much less react. "What do you want?" He asked after a minute of just sitting there.
"Bored." Said Chara.
"And you want to know about my magic?" Asked Nemo.
"Nailed it." Said Chara.
"And why should I tell you?" Asked Nemo.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you had something better to do." Said Chara.
Nemo sighed, not wanting to be a part of this conversation. "I could always sleep, since, y'know, living people need to do that." He said with a flat expression.
Chara glared at him. "Fine. Be that way." They said, managing to keep the hurt out of their voice before floating away. Nemo watched them go for a moment before deciding that he didn't feel like cooperating with them today. He rolled over and went to sleep.
After waking up and making a mental note to apologize to Papyrus about the damages and to help replace and/or fix everything, Nemo prepared breakfast for himself and Frisk and they began their trek to Waterfall. Thoughts of Undyne and the fight to come plagued Nemo's mind. They stopped in front of Sans's second station. "What? Haven't you seen a guy with two jobs before?" Asked the smiling skeleton. "Fortunately, two jobs means twice as many legally-required breaks. I'm going to Grillby's. Wanna come?"
"Oh, would you be willing to pry yourself away from work to come hang out with us?" Asked Nemo in an almost sarcastically nice voice.
"Sure, I'd be more than happy to." Said Sans as he stepped out from behind his station.
"Are we gonna take a shortcut?" Asked Nemo.
"Be careful, I'd rather not have Frisk be blasted into oblivion and get sent back to their last save point." Said Chara.
"Uh… yeah…" Said Sans as the group was shortcutted into Grillby's.
"Gotta say, that's a useful trick." Said Nemo as the group made their way to sit down at the bar, where Grillby was polishing a glass.
Sans said hi to everyone in the bar before sitting down next to Nemo. "By the way, nice jacket. Did my bro give it to ya'?" Asked Sans, who seemed to be dead set on changing the topic.
"Hm? Oh, yeah, your brother's pretty cool huh?" Said Nemo as he looked around the bar. There was a noticeably larger number of people here, the dogs he'd fought were playing cards at a table.
"There's more people here," Said Chara, who seemed to have read his mind, "Because the last time you came here, you'd killed half the monsters here." The jukebox was playing a tune as the smell of food wafted through the air.
Nemo didn't want to dwell on their words, no matter how true they were. "Yeah, my brother's so awesome." Said Sans. Frisk sat down next to Sans. Chara groaned at the sound of the whoopie cushion. Nemo snickered. "Whoops, watch where you sit down. Sometimes weirdos put whoopee cushions on the seats."
"Oh, I'll have fries this time, by the way." Said Nemo.
"Yeah? And what about you kiddo?" Sans asked Frisk.
"I'll have fries too." Said Frisk.
"Well then, hey Grillb? Triple order of fries." Said Sans. Grillby nodded and left to make their food. Sans pulled out a comb to brush his skull.
"So…" Said Nemo. "Seen any talking flowers around?"
"Talking flowers? You talking about the Echo flowers?" Asked Sans.
"Sure, the Echo Flowers, that's right. Specifically a very special one. It seems to have a habit of buttering Papyrus up, and giving him advice." Said Nemo. "Ring any bells?"
"Yeah, it's ringing a whole lot of bells." Said Sans. Nemo smiled as he watched Sans's eyelights vanish.
"Something wrong Sans? Seems like you're having a bad time?" Asked Nemo.
"Uh, Nemo, maybe we shouldn't-." Said Frisk.
Suddenly Grillby came out with their food. "Here comes the grub." Said Sans. "Want some ketchup?"
"Gladly." Said Nemo as he took the ketchup, tightened the lid, and then poured some ketchup onto his fries. "Wow, good thing I checked, I wouldn't have wanted ketchup to just be dumped all over my food." He held the bottle out to Frisk. "Want some bud?"
"I'm good." They said. Nemo shrugged and put the ketchup down.
"What are you doing!?" Demanded Chara. "Stop antagonizing him!"
"Maybe someone is using the flower to troll Papyrus, what do you think?" Asked Nemo.
"That's probably it…" Said Sans as he stood up. "Welp, that was a long break. I can't believe I let ya pull me away from work for that long." He then turned back and looked at them. "Oh, by the way… I'm flat broke. Can you foot the bill? It's just ten thousand G."
"Hmm… no." Said Nemo.
"Just kidding." Said Sans, he then looked at Grillby. "Grillby, put it on my tab." He then started walking away, but stopped at the door. "By the way… I was going to say something, but I forgot."
"It's a beautiful day outside Sans." Said Nemo brightly.
"...Yeah, it sure is." Said Sans. He then left.
"I think I lost my appetite…" Said Frisk softly.
"More for me." Said Nemo as he ate his food.
"What… the h*ll… was that!?" Demanded Chara.
"I wonder if he remembers anything?" Asked Nemo.
"What do you mean?" Asked Frisk.
"I remembered something Sans said to Chara in their fight. Actually it's kinda hard to remember it since I heard him say it almost a hundred times." Said Nemo drily. "He mentioned something about reports about anomalies in the timespace continuum."
"Oh yeah… I remember him saying something like that." Said Chara. "Flowey… mentioned that Sans had caused him to reset a lot too."
"That's right." Said Nemo. "Sans knows stuff. More stuff than anyone else in the underground. The question is how much? And what?"
"And what good would being blasted out of existence do?" Asked Chara.
"I was testing his patience. Sans doesn't seem to want to acknowledge… well, any of this. He's given up and is just kinda… pretending his problems don't exist. We're probably going to need to explain some stuff to him." Said Nemo.
"Odds are he'll just blast whoever he thinks the resetter is so that they'll reload and he'll forget the conversation." Said Chara.
"And return to blissful ignorance." Said Nemo. He inhaled, and then exhaled. "Well, It can't be helped now, let's go see Undyne."
"I wonder if she'll kill you again?" Said Chara.
"Thanks for the vote of confidence." Said Nemo drily.
The duo entered Waterfall, walking past Sans, who had returned to his station. "Let's hang out again sometime." He said as the pair passed him.
"Sure, Sans." Said Nemo as they continued forward to the next area. They stopped at the box and the passing water filled with ice chunks. They waited, wanting to time it so that they would be able to get through without the ice knocking them off the edge and onto the bridge. When the time was right, they moved forward, stopping at the middle gap with the area that the tutu was hidden in. Frisk moved over and took it, slipping the bandana off and putting the tutu on. They then moved to the other side of the water.
"My feet are cold and wet." Said Nemo drily.
"Mine too." Said Frisk.
"Well my feet are dry." Said Chara.
"Yeah, because they don't have any matter." Said Nemo as he waved his hand through Chara's leg. Chara stuck their tongue out at Nemo before the group continued forward. They walked until they reached the weed area with Undyne sitting at the top.
Then Papyrus approached her. "H… HI, UNDYNE!" Greeted the skeleton. "I'M HERE WITH MY DAILY REPORT… UHHH… REGARDING THOSE HUMANS I CALLED YOU ABOUT EARLIER…" Undyne turned to Papyrus, and must've said something because he then responded with, "...HUH? DID I FIGHT THEM? Y-YES! OF COURSE I DID! I FOUGHT THEM VALIANTLY!" Undyne turned again. "...WHAT? DID I CAPTURE THEM…?" Nemo sat there quietly. He'd heard this song and dance before after all. "W-W-WELL… NO. I TRIED VERY HARD, UNDYNE, BUT IN THE END…" Said Papyrus. "I FAILED." Undyne turned to him again. "...W-WHAT? YOU'RE GOING TO TAKE THE HUMAN'S SOUL YOURSELF…" Papyrus then approached the slower monster slowly before stopping. "BUT UNDYNE, YOU DON'T H-HAVE TO DESTROY THEM! YOU SEE… YOU SEE…" Undyne then turned to him, causing him to take a few steps backwards. "... I UNDERSTAND. I'LL HELP YOU IN ANY WAY I CAN." Nemo grimaced as the skeleton walked away.
The duo prepared to move, and just like the first time around, Undyne turned to stare down at their direction and walk towards the cliff. Undyne then manifested a spear with magic and aimed it at them, before pausing for a moment, letting the spear dematerialize, and disappeared into the shadows. Nemo sighed. "That still makes me nervous the second time around."
"Oh don't be a big baby, you could probably blast her off the face of the world if you wanted." Said Chara.
"The sad thing is I can't tell if you're trying to get a rise out of me or if that's just your weird way of complimenting me." Said Nemo drily. Chara scoffed, but said nothing in response as the trio exited the weeds.
Monster Kid then burst out from the weeds next to them. "Yo… did you see the way she was staring at you…?" Asked the Monster Kid. Nemo looked at him and then raised his eyebrow at the kid. "That… was AWESOME! I'm SOOOO jealous! What'd you do to get her attention…? Ha ha. C'mon! Let's go watch her beat up some bad guys!" Monster Kid then started running from them before face planting. He then got up and continued running.
Frisk and Nemo managed to set up the row of bridge seeds easily enough the first time, but it was when they were grabbing the seeds for the second bridge that Chara pointed something out to them. "There's a bench or something over there." They said as they pointed to a thin part of the cavern. Before they could act though, they were dragged into a fight.
It was the horse mermaid thing. Nemo still wasn't sure what to call this guy. But Chara apparently did as Frisk checked him. "Aaron ATK: 24, DEF. This seahorse has a lot of HP. That means Horsepower by the way. All of his attacks are harder to dodge the closer you are to him."
"Attacks generally work that way." Said Nemo.
"Check all you want." Said the monster with a wink. The unimpressed look Nemo gave him mirrored the one he gave him in the first timeline. Cue the rain attack, which was avoided with a few sidesteps. Nemo then had to watch Frisk get into a flexing contest with Aaron, to the point where the buff monster "flexed himself out of the room". Nemo could only stare at this bizarre display.
"You win!" Said Chara. "You earned 0 EXP and 30 gold." Nemo picked up the gold and the living humans resumed their task. Once a bridge to the narrow area was built, the duo entered with Chara just floating through the wall. They found a lone quiche sitting under a bench.
"Ew, how long do you think that's been down here?" Asked Nemo.
"It seems fresh enough." Said Chara.
"I just wasn't ready for the responsibility." They heard the echo flower next to them say.
Page 50 End