Undyne was right behind him.
Norman ran along the piers in the Waterfall. Energy spears shot up from the ground, never quite hitting him but always getting closer than he wanted them to be. The floor was splitting below him.
He reached a dead end. Undyne's footsteps, loud metal clacking on wood, slowed. She knew it was a dead end too.
He turned and saw her take one more step, right where her spears had splintered the wood already. There was a sickening cracking noise as the bridge collapsed. He fell.
"It sounded like it came from over here…Oh! You've fallen down, haven't you? Are you okay? Here, get up…Chara, huh? That's a nice name. My name is—"
It took Norman a minute to regain his bearings. He had landed on a patch of golden flowers, the same kind that were in the Ruins. Above head, he could make out just the faintest rays of the sun. He was still in the Underground.
What was that? It was too vivid to be a dream, he realized, and he did not think he had fallen asleep anyway. It was more like a vision. He did not recall having visions, but for some reason, the idea felt right in his head. If he could see ghosts, anything was possible, he supposed.
There was no point of worrying about it now. If it was a vision, it had not told him enough to make sense of it. Norman picked himself up and continued forward.
There was no other way to describe the things that emerged from the ground: they were zombies. They looked as ever bit grotesque as the art in Norman's room depicted them; pale green skin that should have rotted, skeletal limbs and organs that should be spilling out.
The FIGHT began.
The Cat ran in-between Frisk and the zombies, hair sticking on ends and a hiss in his throat. He stood ready to pounce at the first sign of conflict. Without thinking about it, Frisk ran a CHECK on the closest one.
? 80 ATK 80 DEF
He's been asleep for a long time. It's not his fault.
The zombie lurched forward, but did not otherwise attack.
*CHECK *TALK
*CONSOLE *CRITISIZE
*STEAL WIG
Hi! I'm F-R-I-S-K! They signed quickly, ending with a little wave.
The zombies gave her a confused look. Maybe they didn't understand signing. Frisk reached for their notebook and wrote it down during the zombie's turn.
The zombie with the wig leaned into it, old eyes struggling to read it. He reached for the notebook and pen.
JUDGE HOPKINS 80 ATK 80 DEF
He's been asleep for a long time. He did what he had to do.
The place Norman had landed in was a Dump. Most of the garbage had been kept in bins and bags, but quite a bit was flowing through the pond freely. Norman could make out some things that were clearly monster-made, like gloves for six-fingered folk and a jar of construction paper labelled "Temmy Flaeks." Most of it, however, looked like it came from above; coolers, desktop computers with empty contents, DVD cases with desperate claw marks covering the surface.
Norman was so absorbed in looking for the human-made things that he hardly noticed when the Training Dummy jumped in front of him.
"HAHAHAHA…Too intimidated to fight me, huh!?" said the Dummy. "I am a ghost that lives inside a DUMMY. My cousin used to live inside a dummy, too. Until…YOU CAME ALONG!"
He barely remembered the Dummy, all the way back in the Ruins. Toriel had just told him to talk to it. It did not even answer back.
"What did I do?" Norman asked.
"When you talked to them, they thought they were in for a nice chat," Said the Dummy. "But the things you SAID…! Horrible. Shocking! UNBELIEVABLE!"
Norman may not have remembered the Dummy very well, but he knew that all he did was ask him how the weather was before Toriel said that was good enough.
"It spooked them right out of their dummy! HUMAN! I'll scare your Soul out of your body!"
Mad Dummy blocks the way.
"Listen, I didn't mean—" Norman started.
He stopped as a series of dummy-shaped bullets were fired his way. He jumped out of the way. He jumped back as they spun around like boomerangs and rushed back to him.
"OWWWW, you DUMMIES! Watch where you're aiming you MAGIC attacks!" the dummy cried. "Wait…forget I said that!"
Another set of bullets fired towards him, but Norman easily dodged them and watched them fire back at the Mad Dummy.
"HEY GUYS!" The Mad Dummy shouted as he summoned his next round of bullets. "Dummies. Dummies! DUMMIES! YOU'RE FIRED! YOU'RE ALL BEING REPLACED!"
The dummy bullets faded out of existence with sheepish expressions,
"Now you'll see my real power," said the Mad Dummy. "Relying on people that aren't garbage!"
Mechanical whirs filled the room. Norman tried to talk him down again. He didn't seem much for conversation. Nobody was happy with this.
The next set of bullets appeared, bulkier and boxier than the others. Norman jumped out of the way like the others, only to turn around and find they were still chasing him down. He ran forward, coming face to nuzzle with the Mad Dummy as they lost course and plowed into it.
"DUMMY BOTS! You're awful?" the Mad Dummy cried.
More missiles were launched towards Norman, and he found himself running in circles. A few more hit the Mad Dummy.
"Who cares. Who cares! WHO CARES! I DON'T NEED FRIENDS!"
The dummy bots vanished, and were replaced with a single large bullet.
"I GOT KNIVES!"
The knife landed by Norman's feet.
"I'm…out of knives."
More bullets filled the field, but not the ones the Mad Dummy used. Most of them faded out before they got close to Norman, instead landing on the Mad Dummy and sizzling.
"Wh-what the heck is this? Acid rain?" said the Mad Dummy. "Oh FORGET IT! I'm outta here!"
The Mad Dummy slipped past Norman and back out into the fields of worthless garbage.
"…sorry, I interrupted you, didn't I? as soon as I came over, your friend immediately left…oh no, it looked like you guys were having fun…oh no….."
There was a storm brewing in Blithe Hollow. As soon as the sun set and the dead rose, there was a chill in the air. Storm clouds hung in the air, crackling with thunder. Frisk could just make out the shapes that formed as they swirled. But it was not just a storm; that much was obvious. There was a type of pressure on their Soul, the same they usually felt as a Fight started. Something else was going on.
After a long back and forth conversation between two people that could not talk and two games of tic-tac-toe, Frisk understood better. The witch was not buried with the judges. They would have to find her grave, and start from there. Judge Hopkins was the only one, possibly ever, who knew where she was buried, so he led the way.
The town was deathly still. What was once packed with ghosts and people now only held a few cars and bystanders. The only sign that there was still life were the neon signs and traffic lights.
For some reason, that scared the zombies the most.
I know, gas prices have gone too high, Frisk wrote down in the notebook, because it seemed like a smart thing to say.
Judge Hopkins snatched the notebook from them and began writing furiously. He had filled nearly a page when they first heard the screams.
"well…I'm gonna go head home now…" said Napstablook. "oh…feel free to 'come with' if you want…but no pressure…"
"I don't want to impose," said Norman.
"neither do I…" said Napstablook.
They didn't seem much for conversation. Nobody was happy with this.
"I live up just this way, in case you want to join me…" said Napstablook. "or, in case, you don't…"
The neighborhood that sat just above the dump was small. There were only a handful of houses but they were all uniquely shaped. No one house looked the same, and no one house looked like a real house. Even Napstablook's house was built into its neighbors, forming a perfectly symmetrical image.
The interior was much more what Norman would have expected. There were no chairs, but he remembered how his grandmother liked to phase in and out of furniture and figured most ghosts didn't invest in things they could not touch. Yet there was a desk with a working computer, a small TV, even a refrigerator. And on the other side of the house were piles and piles of CDs.
"uh…do you wanna…listen to some tunes, or something…?" Napstablook asked.