I. Am SO SORRY about not getting another chapter out sooner. This one was giving me a real tough time, and well, we all know what's going on with the pandemic by now I assume. I never realized just how much of my inspiration came to me while walking around the neighborhood until I had to stay inside all the time. Pacing in my backyard isn't quite the same. It's safe to assume this trend of long waits between chapters is going to continue for a while with everything going on, guys :(
To a lesser extent, my inspiration taking an extended vacation was also due to me making a mistake and starting to read My Hero Academia fanfictions in bulk. And then, more recently, Avatar the Last Airbender fanfictions. Any of you guys read Embers by Vathara or The Dragon-King's Temple by Kryal? They're great.
Also, daniel sent me clips from the show to watch a couple days ago, and that did NOT help XD
Undyne had seriously considered following Frisk when they'd left with the homicidal flower in tow. Normally, she wouldn't have bothered – the kid was a wimp, but they were a wimp that was good at dodging. And with the stupid flower with them, they could handle any attack no matter where it came from, regardless of where they were.
But Frisk was a wimp, emotionally as well as physically. They were her wimpy friend, damn it, her friend who looked more scared of whatever it was they were going to talk to that Fowl bastard about than the possibility of getting jumped. The same bastard that had pried into their memories and helped alter them. Undyne did NOT want to leave them alone in the same mansion with him, let alone the same room – who knew what the asshole would say that could hurt them, and who knew how many fairies were waiting behind closed doors, ready to rewrite Frisk's memories again in an instant?
But on the other hand, if Fowl wanted to talk to them alone – Frisk might not WANT her there. Which stung, but she understood that, at least a bit. Fowl knew some things about Frisk that they clearly didn't want anyone to know, and if they were bringing Flowey, then he probably knew at least some of whatever was going on. Undyne didn't. Frisk hadn't shared anything with her that made them pale and start shaking like that, and so it wasn't her place to pry. Frisk would tell her when they were ready to.
Didn't mean she couldn't prod the lazybones into going after her buddy, though. She didn't want the kid having only the flower as backup, and there was clearly something going on with the trio, some big secret they were all in the know about that nobody else knew about. Sans was a safe bet to send in her place, even though he was infuriatingly apathetic about literally almost everything.
Not this time, though. Sans had only needed one prod and one pointed head-jerk towards the door to figure out what Undyne was asking, and his sockets had gone dark before he nodded, finished his breakfast, and followed Frisk out the door several minutes after they'd left.
Which was a good thing damn it, but now Undyne didn't have one single stupid thing to distract her from sitting in the same room as some of the enemy's allies. And yeah, she knew that Frisk would give her that disappointed look that she was pretty sure they'd learned from the Queen if they knew she was still thinking of the fairies as enemies. She was trying, okay, she understood it wasn't exactly fair, since some of the fairies hadn't even wanted the mind-wipe to happen, but an enemy was an enemy no matter how you spun it. The fairies messed with her bestie, and the Fowls were on their side. Sure, maybe the Fowl parents hadn't started off helping the fairies, but they were clearly playing on the same team now, and really, why else would they be helping the monsters if it weren't for the fairies? CLEARLY they were in it for them, otherwise they would have fucking tried harder to protest the fucking mind-wipe! And the second kidnapping thing!
And Juliet. Juliet, who kept trying to talk to her, who wouldn't take a fucking hint that she didn't want the traitor around. Undyne did not want to talk to her. She didn't even want to fucking think about her.
So, with no more breakfast or Frisk-backup-duties to distract Undyne from Juliet trying to catch her attention from the other side of the table, the fish woman had ended up storming off after finishing her dish of something she didn't care much about eating. And now here she was, storming around the stupid flower gardens with their stupid colorful blooms and their stupid peacocks that hopped smugly away from her when she got too close, glaring at everything and trying to come up with something she could do to pass the time. Come on, there had to be something, right?
Nope. Nothing came to her except giving the peacocks dirty looks, and that was so helpful.
"Undyne?"
And now Juliet was here. Here with oh so apologetic eyes that made her sick to even look at. Fucking fantastic.
"What the hell do you want?!" Undyne demanded, snarling at her.
"I just want to talk." Juliet still looked so damn apologetic. How dare she look like she was sorry?! Sorry wouldn't make anything better, wouldn't change the fact that she had kept so many damn secrets, wouldn't change the fact that she had helped the fairies hurt Frisk. Some friend she turned out to be.
"How about you just go and talk to your fairy friends, then? Go and make evil schemes about stealing memories from my friend again?!"
The woman winced. "That's what I want to talk to you about."
"What, you going to try to make excuses now? Reasons why I should forgive you for helping the enemy?"
Another wince, more pronounced this time. "No excuses here, 'Dyne. I just want to explain things, that's all, I promise -"
And Undyne – Undyne was seeing red. With a roar of fury that she was sure that Frisk could probably hear from that stupid Fowl bastard's office, the fish-woman lashed out with her magic, light erupting from her hands and leaking out from under her eyepatch as she grabbed the traitor's soul and dragged it out into the open.
Orange and green. It was one thing to know that human souls could come in different colors, but to see it right in front of her was still weird after having seen so many single-colored souls. Juliet's soul was a heart-shaped mass of green and orange, orange near the top fading into swirls of green at the bottom, and somehow seeing it just made her fucking angrier. Bravery and kindness. Kindness. What the fuck was kind about what had happened to Frisk?!
"I don't want to hear your damn explanation, Princess!" She summoned a spear to her hand in a burst of white energy, and growled low in the back of her throat. "What is there for you to fucking explain, huh? I already know more than fucking enough about you and your stupid alliance with the fairies!"
Juliet groaned, and turned her eyes upward – apart from a brief startled look at her soul when the world had gone black-and-white, and a nudge of one foot against the battle-box around her, she hadn't reacted to the change.
"Do you always jump to conclusions about this sort of thing, 'Dyne? What happened to monsters being open-minded?"
"IT'S NOT JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS IF IT'S TRUE!" The monster roared. She slashed the spear through the air in front of her, forcing green magic through it. It caught easier than she expected it to – there was usually a sort of weird resistance when she used it, like she was stretching a muscle that didn't want to stretch – but it caught nonetheless, light shimmering into existence around the human and binding her in place, and painting a huge metaphorical target on the human. No need for depth perception with this!
Juliet's startled expression as she realized she was caught would have made her grin at literally any other time, but Undyne just – didn't give one single fuck about it, not now. She was angry, and hurt inside, even if she'd never fucking admit it, except maybe to Alphys if they were alone and at home – but they weren't at home, they were stuck in enemy territory because it was either the lesser of two evils or possible death, and she was fucking sick of everything going wrong.
"'Dyne -"
"STOP CALLING ME THAT!" Undyne roared. She hurled the spear, and only Juliet bringing up her hands to block it with the bar that had grown between two magic-cuffed wrists saved her from having her soul impaled. "YOU'RE NOT MY FRIEND, YOU'VE BEEN ON THEIR SIDE THE WHOLE TIME, STOP FUCKING TREATING ME LIKE I'M YOUR DAMN FRIEND!"
After that, the fight was a blur. Undyne was just so fucking mad, and she needed to blow off steam, and if a traitor she'd thought was a friend got hurt in the process, then who fucking cared. She threw spear after spear after spear, snarling insults and bolts of green and yellow magic. But while Juliet was still a fucking traitor, she was also still a badass, and she kept blocking every single one of them with ease that made Frisk's pretty impressive reflexes look like a joke. And that just made her more mad, and made her throw more spears, and more spears got blocked, and why couldn't she just lose already, you bitch, just let me hit you!
Juliet still hadn't been hit once by the time she finally stopped for breath after minutes of hurling barbs and spears at the human. She barely even looked like she was breathing hard.
"Let me talk, damn it!" The blonde snapped. Something in her tone had Undyne glaring harder at her, but before she could explode again, the bodyguard continued. "You shouldn't just assume things without asking if you're wrong or not, you know!"
"And what am I wrong about, huh?!" Undyne sneered, summoning another volley of spears behind her. "Am I wrong that you're on the fairies' side? That you've been on their side from the beginning? Am I wrong that you helped them hurt Frisk?"
"Yes, damn it!"
"What?"
Juliet glared at her, fists clenched and trembling in anger in front of her. "You think I'd want to help them mind-wipe anyone, let alone a kid? Fat chance! I was one of the people against it right from the beginning!"
The monster shook herself and bared her teeth again. "Oh, like that makes a fucking difference? You were only against it because you didn't want your precious fairies getting into this mess -"
"I was against it because I've been mind-wiped before, Undyne!"
Undyne froze and stared. Breathing heavily, Juliet kept glaring back. When it became clear that Undyne wasn't going to throw another spear right away, she stood up straighter, tossing her head so her braid went over her shoulder.
"Artemis isn't the only person of our group that's been mind-wiped before. Me and my brother had our memories wiped too, because we were both involved when Artemis decided to kidnap a damn fairy and hold her for ransom, and when he needed our help taking out an enemy that nearly killed my brother. But after that? Artemis and Butler remembered after six months. I lost my memories of the fairies and everything that had ever happened because of them for almost five years."
Five whole fucking years? How -
"And the only reason I even remembered the fairies in the first place," Juliet bit out, "was because a fairy tried to mesmerize me, and through some miracle, accidentally made me remember being mesmerized before, and then everything else that had to do with that."* She made a vague gesture back in the direction of the manor, hidden from view by the black around them but still there, if unseen. "My brother and Artemis? Didn't tell me anything. And there's no way my brother, at least, wouldn't let me know about some invisible threat unless he thought it was safer for me not to know!"
The woman paused, took a deep breath, and visibly tried to calm herself down. And Undyne just stared at her, trying to see a lie in her face but not seeing a single fucking one.
"I might be friends with some of the fairies," Juliet continued, once she'd gotten her temper under control again, "and some of them are cool. Like, Holly? That Crane lieutenant? They're badasses. Foaly's okay, for a fussbucket. Mulch is hilarious. I know a lot of fairies that are okay, too, even if I wouldn't call them friends." She narrowed her eyes. "But as a whole? I wouldn't trust the People as far as most of them could throw me."
"But you're still on that damn Fowl bastard's side, aren't you?" Undyne snapped, finally coming out of her shock and preparing to throw another spear. "You're sure as hell friends with him."
"If that's what you can call knowing someone for so long you literally helped change his diapers as a baby," Juliet snorted, and Undyne was suddenly presented with the mental image of a tiny human baby with pale skin and dark hair glaring up at a blonde human and trying to kill her with his eyes alone, and had to suppress the urge to snort too. "Look, I won't deny that Artemis is my friend too, but I'm not going to pretend he hasn't done some pretty awful things over the years. He means well, but he just doesn't get doing 'good' things when he's so much better at using immoral things to do good instead. I mean, hell, Artemis ended up using stolen fairy magic to make his parents forget that he disappeared off the face of the earth for three years and came back the same age he left!"**
"What the hell?"
"Not important," Juliet waved, when Undyne was pretty sure that was pretty damn important, but okay, whatever. "The point I'm trying to make here? Is that while I like some of the decent fairies, the fairies as a whole kind of suck. The only reason I even help them in the first place is because, well, because I know it wouldn't be fair to those of them that are actually decent people. It's not their fault most of them are scared of us – but you're still not gonna see me helping them mess up some poor kid's head."
Undyne stared at her. She ran the information she'd been given through her head many, many times, trying to find some lie, some sign that Juliet was trying to pull the wool over her eye again. But –
Damn. Damn, that actually made sense. One of Juliet's traits was kindness. She wanted to help people, even if she wasn't necessarily going to be nice about it. Of course she'd want to help the fairies even if she didn't like most of them. Of course she wouldn't want someone else to go through the same things she'd gone through.
God, I'm a fucking idiot.
She hadn't realized she'd said that out loud until Juliet snorted. "Damn straight you're being an idiot. I thought you were smarter than that."
"Shut up," Undyne snapped instinctively, trying to fight down the angry humiliation, because god, she was an asshole. "I just – god, Frisk kept telling me to give you guys a chance, but I was so fucking angry -"
"Hey, it's cool, I kinda get it." Juliet shrugged. "Nobody's at their best when they're pissed off." She raised her hands and shook her still-bound wrists slightly, looking almost amused. "Now can you please uncuff me? We can keep fighting in the dojo if you want, but I'm pretty sure we've ruined Madam Fowl's flowerbeds beyond repair at this point."
With a grimace, Undyne released the magic – all of it, the battle-box and all. Juliet's soul faded out of view, and the world faded back into view, peaceful gardens replacing black.
Juliet stared at the completely spotless gardens around them with raised eyebrows, and gave Undyne an impressed look. "That. That is a neat trick. Why haven't you ever used it before?"
The monster made a face and grumbled under her breath. "It's not as fun to fight people like that. I like a fair fight, damn it."
"Except when you're trying to completely decimate them out of rage, gotcha."
Undyne groaned and fought the urge to put her face in her hands. Fat lot of good it would do her if she did!
"Hey, I said it's cool." Juliet came close enough to pat her on the shoulder, as if they'd just left the gym after another spar instead of air out their rage and dirty laundry at each other. "I was serious about the fight, you know. The Fowls have got more than enough money to pay for repairs. C'mon. We can keep talking there, if you want?"
"… fine." Undyne glanced around at the garden again, then squinted briefly up at the manor and tried to squash the lingering flickers of irritation and distrust. "But you'd better believe I'm gonna flatten you, Princess."
"Bring it on, Betta Fish."
So, Undyne POV. She was… interesting to write. I hope I did her justice, it's a LOT harder to write her character from her POV than I expected.
Yes, Juliet and Undyne have sassy nicknames for each other. Juliet's is obvious. So is Undyne's, if you think about it – the Betta Fish pictures I usually think of are of ones blue with red fins, Undyne's a fish lady, and Betta Fish are also called Siamese fighting fish. How could I not?
Me and daniel spent some time brainstorming how Undyne uses her green magic from her POV, and daniel pointed out that since she's got one eye under an eyepatch all the time, that's got to mess with her depth perception. So she uses green magic to keep her opponents in one place during a serious fight, so that it's harder for her to miss when she throws her spears at them. As for how it actually works – I interpreted it as Undyne basically deciding to pervert the purpose of a force field, turning it into binding instead of it being protective. It seemed sort of like something she'd do to me – she's the kind of person that'll look at how one person does things, and then go "bah! That's stupid! I'm going to do something SO MUCH COOLER THAN THAT" and then she goes and does it. Plus, while she's kind, she's also VERY VIOLENTLY ENTHUSIASTIC about it. And the "spear" Juliet uses to bat away Undyne's is actually a bar of magic that connects two magic cuffs on her wrists.
And, since daniel was slightly puzzled at what I meant at Undyne's magic "catching more easily" during the bit where she was starting to use green magic – little worldbuilding thing for y'all! Colored magic that affects the soul is harder to use on red souls like Frisk/Chara's – they have a minor resistance to it, and it takes slightly longer for stuff like Undyne's green-soul-mode to start working on them when it's against their will. Juliet, as you've all seen, has no red in the colors of her dominant soul traits, so the magic started working on her faster, Undyne noticed the difference, thus the whole "caught more easily" thing.
*Juliet remembering the fairies: this happened in The Atlantis Complex, Book 7. Juliet and Butler were in the middle of a huge crowd of people (wrestling fans, and they were both in wrestling outfits to boot – yes, Butler was wearing a wrestling outfit, and it was kinda hilarious) that had just been mesmerized by Turnball Root via a huge screen, and Juliet was initially mesmerized as well before the mesmer shook something lose in her brain or something and let her remember the fairies again. She was mind-wiped along with Artemis and Butler at the end of book 3 – that's 3 books plus the first part of a 4th that she spent mind wiped. There's no way she's not at least a little bitter about it – if Angeline can be bitter at Artemis in book 7 for using the mesmer on her, then Juliet can be a little bitter about having lost her memories for five in-universe years. Speaking of…
** Yes, Artemis used his stolen fairy magic from the end of The Lost Colony to mesmerize his parents (and literally anybody that tried to poke into those 3 years and got nosy, which a fair number of people probably did because Artemis didn't AGE during those 3 years he was gone either) into forgetting he'd been missing for 3 whole years. Yes, he had only good intentions for doing so, since his parents had been hurt by his disappearance, but frankly, it was still an immoral thing to do, much like a LOT of things he's done over the years. This is why Artemis and his parents have a slightly strained relationship at times – the mesmer was a serious breach of trust, even if they understand that he was trying to help them.
