NAME: vitiferous: bearing vines
NOTES:
Sorry this is so late! These past couple months have been kicking my butt - migraines, sickness, family matters, depression, classes, etc. - and I just haven't had time to work on this fic. Sorry it's so short, but hey - plot is starting to happen!
I've updated a few of the chapters, though I can't exactly remember which ones I've done, since I just go and re-update every chapter I've published. With the updates, certain facts or details may change, though that will probably stop when I am far enough into the fic and I feel more confident with what I've written.
Please remember, this here fic is incomplete, so that means that if anyone sees a portion of the fic that is unclear or that someone feels is confusing, please either leave a comment or PM me with your username. I may not get back to you immediately, but I do actively check my messages and comments.
That being said, thank you Energy-the-hedgehog for leaving a review along these lines! I hope that I've cleared up the issue you had!
Anyways, I'm really excited for the next couple of chapters, so I'm sorry that this one is a little late. But we're at the beginning of the AU aspect of this story!
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Enjoy!~
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"I'd just watch your fucking step around here, pal. There's a lot of ways to have an accident. Now... you have yourself a good day."
— Jericho, Fallout 3
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Upon further reflection, the spike trap she and Frisk had been so quickly ushered past by their oh-so-gracious host should have been a blaring red flag for the absolute bulshit they would have to deal with - because what Toriel had proposed as being a 'small walk' had turned into what felt like an eternity of stumbling blindly through an obstacle course that had plenty of literal pitfalls and traps which she got little to no warning for.
It didn't help that Toriel remained tight-lipped the entire time. Even though she kept up a running stream of commentary for the whole walk, the plentiful 'tips' she passed on were decidedly leaning towards a much younger (and much less experienced) demographic - thereby making it annoying for an adult audience. (1)
First, they had gone in a circle - because she could tell that they had made four left turns, and there wasn't a slope in the floor, nor an incline, to indicate they were going anywhere. Admittedly, this may have been intentional on the 'monster' woman's behalf, in order to make sure that Rin wouldn't be able to find a way back to her home in case she decided to ditch her later. Although Rin hadn't figured Toriel to be one for cloak-and-dagger tactics, she was still begrudgingly impressed at her deception - even though it was failed attempt at deception - and she ultimately decided not to call her out on it.
Then, they were forced to stop in a room with a horrible, absolutely ungodly pungent scent of old, musty cheese - which made her eyes water while she gagged and made her desperately wish to be able to breathe through her eyes (for even breathing solely through her mouth made her feel like her lungs were rejecting the putrid, oily air in the room) - all because some uppity bastard with a painfully fake southern accent seemed to be arguing with their goat-guide over how much he would move to de-trigger a trap which kept them locked inside what was quickly becoming her own personal hell.
After a short reprieve - during which Toriel had, unfortunately, argued that they were 'much too busy to be dealing with a piece of schist like him right now' - they moved on into a room where she would need to carefully step onto specific spots-
That she could not see.
Toriel realized that quickly enough (judging by her suddenly choked-off explanation), though that only brought on another argument about holding hands. Honestly, how could this grown woman not understand that Rin, who is also an adult, did not feel comfortable holding the hand of a stranger that she's known for less than a day?
Eventually, Rin just settled for ignoring the other woman entirely in favor of ordering Dogmeat to find his way across the gap, pointing across and following closely behind him. He, and by extension she, made it across the oddly-winding path easily enough, though judging by the gasps and/or strangled shouts coming from the peanut gallery (i.e., Toriel), Rin was certain that they had a couple of close calls. (2)
Then came the next room, which came with something Toriel called a "small drop".
What Rin was expecting, as she ushered Dogmeat to her side so they could step off together, was a tall curb...
… but what actually happened was that the floor crumbled underfoot as soon as she put her weight on it (this, at least, lended some sort of actual credence to Toriel calling this place 'The Ruins', but they still deserved a better warning damn it!). The fall itself was a straight-up one-ish story plunge, the kind that happens when you accidentally strafe off the side of a tall ledge when you didn't pay enough attention to where you were stepping.
And it didn't even have the decency to be a proper, laws-of-physics-obeying fall either!
There was a strange, high-pitched whistling sound in her ears as she spun to the ground - as in, spun around in several full circles, twirling almost like she was spinning on an office chair. The room was still spinning when Rin's feet FINALLY touched the ground, and she had to crouch down - under the guise of checking on Dogmeat, who seemed remarkably unbothered by the circumstances - until the room stopped spinning from her unexpected that she could stand without looking like she's recently downed a couple bottles of vodka (3).
After this point there was only one more trap that gave them trouble, and it was another one of those shitty follow-the-specific-path things. While Toriel gave some halting and childishly over-simplified excuse about how this trap was 'decidedly more dangerous' than the last path they encountered (because, apparently, deadly spikes could somehow get even more dangerous!), Rin decided to solve it the same way as before - order Dogmeat to go to the other side and follow along after him.
Unfortunately, the 'path' he took involved a cold and miserable jaunt through a knee-deep pond of water which immediately gushed over the top of her boots, making every step a cold, squishy, and moist slog through water of uncertain cleanliness. Rin could so vividly imagine her Geiger counter clicking from exposing herself to this almost-certainly radioactive puddle that she had even had to touch her naked wrist several times to reassure herself that her Pip-Boy was still M.I.A.. When she got back onto dry land and took her boots off to pour the water out, she cursed the fact that she had no way to either check her radiation exposure, or a way to cure the rads that she had most assuredly gained from haphazardly trekking into strange water (4).
The entire last leg of the trip entailed a long, paranoia-inducing walk while she and Frisk were blatantly being paraded past some of Toriel's fellow monster-brethren. Their conversations and voices, whispered as they were, had a distinctly inhuman twang to them, in tones that no human vocal chords could produce. Their hushed whispers would abruptly cut off as they approached, and, as soon as they were a little ways away, she could hear them urgently whisper (croak?) amongst each other. Odd-sounding footsteps shadowed their every move.
When these footsteps came closer, Toriel would loudly clear her throat, without nary a hitch in her whisper-like stride, as the footsteps scrabbled against the stone floor in their haste to get away. So it looked like (more sounded like) someone had a bit of a reputation in these parts.
They went down one more flight of stairs (and, seriously, they were just stairs! Why was Toriel so worried about her going down them?) before Toriel suddenly told them to stop. She felt a hand on her shoulder as Toriel urged her to turn around. The hand left her shoulder with a small pat (pet?), and she heard the goat woman shuffle around for a moment before she cleared her throat and spoke.
"Please, remove your blindfolds!" Toriel said in a showman sort of way.
"Finally." Rin muttered under her breath as she removed her blindfold, rubbing her now-sensitive eyes and freeing the fire poker's hook from Dogmeat's armor. "Should have just been a fucking-"
"What was that, dear?" Toriel called out with just a hint of warning in her tone.
"Oh, nothing. I was just..." she trailed off as her eyes adjusted to the sight - of an awfully unfamiliar room.
The walls were made of a dark purple brick that was extremely similar to the brickwork down in Toriel's basement. On the far end of the room, there was a double staircase leading to a doorway with a window on either side and a large engraved metal plate framed above it. At the base of the balcony, the space between the stairs was filled by a thick layer of red leaves. And, in front is of that, in an unusually pale, worn-looking square of floor lined by more red leaves, stood a nervous-looking Toriel with her hands carefully folded in front of her (5).
"So... where are we?" Rin asked as she slowly turned to look at the small windows lining the walls of the room - because every single one of them had dark shadows moving past their frames, with bright, almost eye-like lights blinking in and out like twinkling stars (well, the brighter ones that weren't blotted out by the dirt, ash, and lingering radioactive material that lingered in the upper atmosphere, but it was still an apt comparison).
"We are at the beginning of the Pathway through the RUINS." Toriel replied, gesturing to the room around her. "This place is-"
"Not where we were supposed to go." Rin interrupted sharply, and the shadows in the windows flinched backwards. "This can't be the beginning – I remember at least two other rooms. Are we at least somewhat close to where we were with that flower?"
"W-well… we are somewhat close, but..." Toriel's eyes drifted to an area behind Rin's head.
Spinning on her heel, she raised her eyebrows as she took in a rather large, ornate archway. The top of the arch was a giant half-circle of stone on the top of the arch, which prominently displayed the 'delta rune' symbol of the 'monsters' carved into the center, and was held up by two large columns of stone.
What was interesting to take note, however, was that the entire surface was covered by a thin network of bright green vines that shone like neon lights against the dark purple coloring of the stonework.
It was only a token of what was to come, for the next room - the place that had her Pip-Boy and the rest of her things - was now the physical embodiment of the enemy's terrain.
A tangled, waist-high field of organic barbed wire weaved through the edge of the room. Vines twisted and corkscrewed through the grassy turf, exposing streaks of the dark, rich undersoil, its ruby red thorns glinting in the firelight, wickedly curved and sharpened like trench knives.
There was a single path burned through the veritable jungle, a blackened trench through the mass of razors that lead to a barely-visible clearing in the center of the room. It was the epicenter of the vines, and surrounded on all sides – which were most certainly also in the cave ceiling and under the ground as well – by the inert vines of a psychotic flower-monster-thing out for blood and soul, which could reawaken at any moment so long as that flower still 'lived'.
And she was in a god damned silk dress.
"Fuck."
"Language!" Toriel snapped, quickly reaching out and placing her hands over Frisk's ears, who looked up at the goat woman with furrowed brows (after all, she hadn't placed her hands over Frisk's ears nearly fast enough to block out the word,. If anything, she'd probably just seared that 'bad word' straight into their developing mind).
Rin sharply exhaled at the reprimand, but didn't otherwise react. "That flower thing. What happened to him? Is he still out here, or did you...?" she trailed off meaningfully as she looked at Toriel and raised an eyebrow.
The goat woman narrowed her eyes. "I may have encouraged it to FLEE, so yes, it is still 'out there'. However..." She looked back out over the destroyed ground and frowned. "I must admit that a lingering field of effect like this is highly unusual. The vines should have disappeared when I made it leaf the area..." (6)
"Meaning it's probably still hanging around like a little creep. Great." Rin sighed, scanning the gaps in the undergrowth for even the briefest flash of yellow petals.
"Do not worry, my dear." Toriel was quick to assure her. "So long as I am here, no one in the RUINS will harm you, either of you. I will make sure of that." The woman finished with a dark tone, scowling slightly as she looked off to the side.
"Here's hoping." Rin muttered as she stepped into the blackened pathway through the vines.
Toriel turned back in confusion. "What was that - ah!" She quickly moved to the edge of the path, stopping abruptly with her feet barely touching the threshold, and a hand extended as if she were going to try to grab her arm or shoulder. "Are you sure you wish to retrieve them alone?! I could always go with you! O-or I could go in and find your things myself while-!"
"It's fine!" Rin quickly interrupted, giving the other woman the best reassuring smile she could manage. "All I need is for you to keep an eye out for the flower"
"... Alright." Toriel replied hesitantly, glancing down at the child standing beside her and wringing her hands. "Be careful, won't you?"
"Always try to be, ma'am." Rin gave a quick nod before turning back to the path. "Doesn't always work when you have someone trying to kill you, though." She muttered to herself as she carefully made her way through the thorny barbs.
Tiny clouds of ashy-white soot billowed up from around her feet with each step that crunched into the carbonized undergrowth. Each noise seemed to echo loudly in the otherwise quiet room, and even the inane chatter Toriel was using to distract Frisk seemed to cut off into silence as soon as she crossed the ornate threshold into ground zero of the vine apocalypse.
"Dogmeat, fetch." Rin ordered her companion, warily scanning the room for any hint of moment from the vines as Dogmeat charged out into the clearing and stuck his nose to the ground. When no traps seemed to trigger as Dogmeat made his way around the room looking for treasure, Rin cautiously made her way to the center of the room. And, now that she was closer, she could see that there was a fist-sized hole in the ground ringed with vines at the very epicenter of the clearing.
So that was where the bastard disappeared to, eh? She glanced down the dark hole with a grimace, and hoped that she didn't have to stick her hand down there to retrieve anything. Rin had seen holo-vid horror videos with less blatant booby traps, so if that little flowery bitch managed to bait the trap with something she'd actually HAVE to potentially lose a limb for, she was going to get Pissed Off. (7)
Dogmeat started barking, drawing her attention away from her impending weed control plans and towards a pile of ash that her dog was trying to dig up. Crouching down, she probed the pile with her poker until she felt it collide with something metal. Rin jimmied the poker around until she got under the metal with the poker's hook and pulled it free.
Her eyes widened as she unearthed her machete - though it probably couldn't even be considered a machete anymore judging by the state it was in. The blade was now crunched and bent into a washboard facsimile, and the wood from the handle was jagged and splintered from where it had been forced into its new shape. Even the cutting edge had been damaged, as, beneath the dried green vine-goo, the once-sharp edge was nicked and had nicks and chips missing all the way down the blade.
Without a proper repair bench to straighten it out, and without another handle to replace the splintered mess it had become, the thing was useless. Hell, it probably wasn't even worth its weight in scrap metal at this point. But scrap metal was still scrap metal, and, if there was anything she learned during her numerous adventures into the Wasteland, it would be needed sooner or later for something else.
Tucking the machete/scrap metal away, Rin returned to scanning the ground with an increasing sense of urgency as she ordered Dogmeat to search around again. It should be here somewhere. But if its not then where could it be? Did that little fucking plant run off with it?!
A glint of light caught her eye and cut through the panic slowly clouding her thoughts. It wasn't far from the circle of grass, and in fact she had overlooked it because it she had initially dismissed as just another chunk of dirt that had been burst out from the ground from when the vines emerged...
But dirt didn't normally have shards of glass sticking out of it.
Rin crouched next to the pile and delicately plucking and discarding loose glass shards until she found a piece that gave resistance. More broken glass tinkled to the dirt floor as small vines ripped away from the metal of the Pip-Boy... which was scarcely recognizable aside from the label on the left-hand side. The glass shards came from its cracked screen, and the right side of the glass was just gone, exposing the wires and circuitry underneath. The frame of the screen had three deep indents on the top, and one larger one on the bottom right, like finger impressions on a ball of clay - except the clay, in this case, was a casing made of pure steel. (8)
Of the three buttons on the bottom of the screen, only the one on the far left that was labeled 'Stats' was still intact. The middle one (labeled 'Items') was covered in a spiderweb of cracks, and the 'Data' button on the right was gone - a wire jutting out from an empty and deformed crescent-moon-shaped hole was all that remained. Even the glass covering the radiation indicator was cracked, and, below it, the selection dial was limply hanging from a metal spring.
Rin pressed her fingers into the four finger-divets that deformed the metal and marveled at just how large and long they were compared to her skinny human-digits. When Toriel said that she took my Pip-Boy off, I never thought she meant THAT way.
Now that it was unsupported, the other half of the Pip-Boy cuff - which was filled with the specialized medical sensors designed to monitor and display vitals at any given moment - screeched like an un-oiled door as what was left of the wrist-hinge gave way, letting the newly-made metal scrap fell to the ground with a dull thump and a small cloud of ashy-dirt as wires strained and snapped out from what was once the internal wire conduit.
"Oh fuck," Rin cursed as she fell to her knees, picking the fallen chunk up and gently fitting the piece back onto its proper place amidst the other remnants of her Pip-Boy like it was just a large metal puzzle.
Pip-Boys, regardless of model, were a scarce commodity, so getting parts to repair it would be almost impossible, especially while she was trapped under a mountain in some backward, middle-of-nowhere mutant/monster-filled ruins.
"Hello? Rin? Are you alright?" Toriel's voice called out hesitantly at the entrance, making her head shoot up to look towards the entrance of the room - and accidentally jostling her Pip-Boy various small metal pieces, glass shards, and mechanical parts from inside the Pip-Boy's screen spilled out and scattered across the dirt.
Growling expletives, she hurriedly began plucking at the dirt, picking up anything that was even remotely shiny, metallic, or oddly-shaped and began throwing it into the open screen of her Pip-Boy like it was a bowl of odds-and-ends (and, since it was broken, that's all it essentially was right now). If she couldn't find a way to keep it all together, she'd end up losing something important to its proper function.
Suddenly, a dirt-encrusted handgun was dropped beside her rummage pile. Glancing up, Rin saw a proud-looking Dogmeat whoof happily as he sat down to scratch at the bandana around his neck -
Wait - the bandana!
Shuffling her Pip-Boy around until she could hold it with one hand, the other hand was now free to reach up to Dogmeat's neck to pull it off and over his head. Wiggling the double knot loose with one hand was extremely frustrating, but once she got one done, the other came away much easier. Rin had to hold the creased piece of fabric out flat so she could place her Pip-Boy pieces down on top of it, and then she tied the corners together so it formed a neat bindle sack. She also grabbed the gun Dogmeat found and slipped it into the bindle along with her Pip-Boy to hide it away from Toriel.
Though the bandana was heavily creased, slightly crusty, soaked in dog grease, and smelled overwhelmingly of dirty dog, it would hold.
Shadows moving along the wall and loud crunching footsteps heralded the goat woman's imminent arrival - and the end of her time. Rin grabbed the bindle and stood up, brushing the dirt off her dress as she scanned the ground for anything she may have missed.
Oh my god. Glancing down at the bundle with wide eyes, Rin stilled as she suddenly realized something that made goosebumps raise up all over her body.
I was going to try to fight her with Melee!
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NOTES:
1- I once heard a joke where there's a very fine line between kids who love Barney the dinosaur, and the hatred kids have when they become slightly too old for it. Just imagine something like that, but more pun-filled, for how Toriel speaks.
I got a reason for her speaking like this which will come up eventually!
2- This is an example of a Fallout companion's "Go There" order. It sometimes helps them get around obstacles that their pathing otherwise can't figure out. In this AU, Dogmeat and other followers would obviously have MUCH more intelligence to avoid things like that (like not setting off the fucking super obvious traps and landmines). And Dogmeat's a Good Boy, so he could probably figure out NOT falling into the abyss when needed.
3- The Underground is super weird when you consider real life physics, no? Ah, well, that's magic for you!
4- in Fallout, almost everything gives off radiation - and all the puddles there are super gross and polluted. Rin's just generalizing based off past experiences, especially since she can't actually SEE the water is clear right now.
5- I have a bit of a headcannon that the circle Toriel is standing on is where the MONSTERS would have placed a guard to stop any HUMANS who fell, since they'd have to go through them to get to the rest of the MONSTER populace if they were dangerous. Obviously, this fell out of favor when Toriel locked the RUINS away from the rest of the UNDERGROUND, but she'd probably use the room for its intended purpose now that she had the chance to.
6- Hoho that IS quite unusual, isn't it? :)
7- Ever read "Where the Red Fern Grows"? Apparently, some raccoon traps involve making a odd hole with something shiny on the bottom. Raccoons grab the treasure, and their little fists become too wide to leave the hole. They aren't smart enough to think to let go of it, so they're trapped there until the hunter comes to finish them off. So Rin has THAT kind of dilemma going on - she needs the treasure at the bottom of the hole, and, once she's got it, she's probably not going to want to let it go.
8- Toriel is not only MUCH stronger than a HUMAN could ever be, but she's got the power of fire on her side. In my headcannon, that fire would produce heat, so, as long as having fire powers meant you were immune to heat and flame, its feasible that Toriel kinda melted it a little to make it easier to come off since she didn't understand that there was another way to do it.
Oh, and, as a bit of a spoiler, you may want to keep that in mind for later :)
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A.N.
Again, sorry for this fic taking so long to publish. I could publish sooner, but I'd prefer for my work to be readable when I do it.
I have no beta, so it takes a lot of reading and re-reading with fresh eyes to find errors and hiccups. Sometimes I just get to a point where its like "If I have to read this ONE MORE TIME, I'm gonna scream and throw my phone", so I just have to label it good enough and publish it. Occasionally, this leads to odd hiccups which I've either forgotten about or mentally blocked out to save my sanity, so, if any of y'all ever notice something strange, that's most likely why.
Anyways, this fic is the beginning of the AU aspect of my story. I think I have a lot of good plot threads coming up, so hopefully I can retrieve my plot bunnies out of the pile of dust bunnies I have laying around!