I was back in my room, at home, leaning out the window, the only sounds the chilling breeze rustling through my hair and the distant chorus of angry drivers slamming on their car horns. It was one of those nights. My thoughts were stumbling around in my head so much I couldn't focus on anything, much less fall sleep. So I sat there on the sill in my pajamas, gazing longingly at the inky, star-filled blackness of the sky.

Maybe that's why I came out here so often. Nighttime was an escape from the desolate gray that hung over Ebott every waking minute of the day. At least then the stars' scintillating light shone through the smog, adding a splash of color to the city.

Occasionally, on the worst nights, I would glance down at the pavement thirty feet below, and consider how easy it would be to leave all of this behind.

But something was different this time. It wasn't me leaning out the window.

I was just a spectator, ripped from my body, forced to watch from outside, floating beside the window like an apparition. My gaze was fixated on the new person sitting there. Stealing my own personal solace. Its current inhabitors face was nothing but a vacant space. Long jet black hair falling gently behind its shoulders was the only feature I could clearly make out.

I shuddered, from both the cold and the eeriness of it all. Who was this? An old friend? Someone expendable I'd already thrown away from the surface? And why the hell had she...yeah, she, taken my spot!?

Real or not, my blood started to boil. I wasn't about to let someone else take my place so soon, even if it did suck. With all of my willpower, I forced myself to move, pushed forward, and started towards her to get back what's mine.

I don't know what exactly I'd expected to happen, but it certainly wasn't for her to climb up and balance precariously over the ledge.

My heart stopped. Every negative thought I had of her completely melted away. Without warning, my only intention had become to save this person I didn't even know, for reasons I was light years away from being able to explain. Common sense went out the window, much like her in a few seconds if I didn't act in time.

She didn't move anymore, she didn't make any motion suggesting she could see me, not even so much as a glance in my direction. I still had time. I could still...

I cried out in pain as something dug into my arm, coiling around my elbow. I whipped around to both sides, fidgeting uncontrollably, searching for a source. My breath caught again as it cut deeper and I gasped, but it was silenced. By what force, I had no idea, but I knew whatever this thing was, it was effortlessly trying to keep me away from her.

It wanted to see her die.

Finally, I found it, and immediately wished I hadn't. Thick green vines were emerging from the wall, covered end to end in nasty looking thorns each bigger than my whole frigging hand. Their fingers slashed and clawed at me, coiling at an agonizingly slow pace around my limbs as they ravaged them, yanking me further and further away from the girl. I struggled against them with every bit of my strength, but it was feeble in comparison to their overwhelming numbers.

They were literally tearing me limb from from limb.

I couldn't think. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't scream. I was a pathetic little fly caged in a Venus fly trap, with no way out other than to give myself up. They wound their way around my arms, my legs, my chest, my neck...

...Slithering down my throat.

I gagged and sputtered. All of it felt real. Every sting of pain felt so, so, so terribly real.

Blood everywhere. All going black. Losing consciousness, thank God. Anything to make it go away.

At last, the vines reached my eyes. The last thing I ever saw before they cut out my vision was the girl, without a sound, stepping off the sill, oblivious to the world around her, tumbling down, down into the darkness below.

Nothing like the taste of dusty floorboards to get a guy out of bed in the morning. Although, if I were tasting the floorboards, I'd probably already done a decent enough job of that myself.

I jolted awake with my body sprawled out across the floor like a misshapen rag doll, tied up in my own blanket. Must've been one hell of a night, seeing as how it was literally coiled around my...

"Shit!" I scrambled around on the floor until I could get myself free and flung the blanket across the room. It landed in a heap of cloth, dust, and my various bodily fluids against the wall on the other side of the room.

I sat in complete silence for the longest time, listening to nothing but my own panicked breaths. My face and T-shirt were completely drenched in sweat. In fact, my whole wardrobe, which I guess only consisted of the clothes on my back, felt a good sixty pounds heavier at the minimum.

Eventually, I grew enough of my pair back to manage a face-palm. It wasn't real, of course it wasn't real.

...But the fear certainly was. Christ's sake, I'd better not be morphing into one of those...uh...what's the word for a person with a fear of plants? A holy-shit-plants-run-for-the-hills-phobic?

Sure, that sounded good, lets go with that.

Unfortunately, I've never known myself to give up on figuring out what the hell was going on in my dreams before, especially not the nightmares, and this one was no exception. Of the five W's, I had a definite "where," a pretty vague "what," a pretty vague "when," and an especially vague "who?" Anything other than that were complete shots in the dark, plus the shots I had were still only illuminated by a defective nightlight. Don't even get me started on "why" and "how."

It made sense to be dreaming about home, I suppose, but there certainly wasn't anything pleasant there. Homesickness was the last thing on my mind. As usual, Ebott delivered on the bullshit, hands down. I couldn't even tell which bothered me more, the girl I swore I knew - even though I didn't - or those damn vines...

A violent shiver ran up my spine. Yeesh, no, definitely the vines. I'd be lucky if I could get any sleep in the next three years, let alone the next three weeks.

...Botanophobia! That's the word.

Great, if that one psychology class I was forced to take taught me anything, now that I've named my own irrational stupidity, I was one step closer to fully understanding it. Thanks psychiatrists, your profession will forever be seen as nothing more than a complete joke to me.

I eventually forced myself to stand up, taking a second to stretch out my limbs...which only reminded me of the nightmare again, and I cut it the hell out. A huge part of me had secretly been hoping my entire escapade in the Underground had all been one long and incredibly vivid dream, an imaginative landscape I'd sort of created out of my own wretched boredom. It'd certainly explain the seemingly random events unfolding in front of me; hell, I'd still compare them to something along the lines of a drug induced trip...even if I had no idea what those were like in the first place. Regardless of the bizarreness of it all, I knew those hopes were foolish. It wasn't hazy enough to be a dream, and my thoughts were far too certain and controlled, unlike the bastard of a nightmare that drove me awake only a few moments ago.

...The rest of me, mostly my gut, was screaming for it to be real. At least that bit felt victorious.

If the uncountable strands of hair dangling tauntingly in front of my eyes were any indication, I imagined I looked like something the frog dragged in. The room was still too dark to make everything out, but I finally found a lamp sitting on a table on the corner. It was old-fashioned, a curvy design with totally-not-fake gold lining it's edges, but it lit up the whole room no problem.

Something immediately bothered the living hell out of me the moment I flick the lamp on. Maybe I'd been right about Toriel's fixation on the humans to fall here before me after all, since the room was littered with pretty much everything imaginable to suggest I hadn't been the first to stay here.

And I mean everything. Boxes of worn and uninteresting toys, torn and sewn stuffed animals, a chest containing more children's shoes in various sizes than any one goat lady could ever possibly need, and most notably, a crude drawing of a single gloomy sunflower tacked to the wall, clearly on par with Vincent Van Gogh's handiwork.

...Jesus, this room tried so hard to be hospitable it almost backfired and created the exact opposite environment. To be fair, a lot of the sickening feeling in my stomach came from the knowledge that so many other people had already lived here for who knows how long, and each one probably met some grim fate when they were out of Tori's custody. After all, the legend surrounding Mt. Ebott did explicitly state that no one had ever returned. Key words being, "no one," and "ever," and "returned."

I'd hate to know what happened to any of these poor little shits after they left here. Anyone young enough to wear kid size eleven's and draw something worse than I could muster with one hand cut off and shoved up my ass wasn't going to last five minutes out there, even when their biggest threat was a pack of angry Kermit the Frogs. Unless Tori had been the one to do them in, but as much as I'd rather stay suspicious of her, chances are if she was the secret child murderer I was painting her as, she would've already killed me the second I fell asleep. She also probably wouldn't leave a surprise for me when I woke up.

I'd been so caught up in my panic-attack I hadn't even noticed the sweet fragrance wafting around the bedroom. Sitting in the middle of the rug on a glossy glass plate was a piece of pie. By the smell of it, Tori's famed butterscotch-cinnamon pie; evidently still piping hot if its scent was filling all the empty space in here.

I bent over and picked the plate gently off the ground, bringing it closer to face. Damn, it smelled good. It was a good sized piece, too, maybe a little less than a quarter of the whole pie. Thoughtful of Tori to leave this out for me while I slept...

...Without a fork. So close, and yet so far.

I quickly slipped out of the room with the plate in one hand and the Almighty Stick in the other, not even bothering to shut the light off, suddenly wanting to be anywhere but there right now.

I found Toriel by passing back through the foyer and heading straight into the next room. Those stairs still sat there nagging at me to descend, but there was no way I'd go exploring again on an empty stomach. Plus, basements suck. No. You can't argue. They're either god damn dungeons dressed up as a living room's third cousin twice removed, or jungles of twisting pipes that go PSSSSST every five seconds, like that one annoying kid in algebra who constantly needs to be the center of attention, not realizing that their efforts are only going to net them the honor of dying alone.

...So, uh, anyways, Tori was seated in an impossibly comfortable looking chair right beside a fire place, nose glued to a book with a pair of round reading glasses resting in front of her eyes, hazardously close to falling off. The furnace was lit with a wimpy flame, but it was at least enough to chase away the cold, leaving a fairly pleasant warmth. Compared to the rest of the Ruins, it felt like summer in here. I sure as hell wasn't complaining, I'd take sticky and sweaty over freezing my ass off any day.

That book must've been pretty damn good, 'cause she hadn't so much as glanced in my direction since I'd entered, slipped across the room, and placed the platter on a nearby table with a not at all obnoxiously loud clatter. I might as well have broken it over my knee.

"Got a real page-turner there, eh T?" I goaded, poking at the table's rough flower pattern trestle. Tori must've had a damn flower fetish or something, potted plants and other patterns like this were everywhere. It didn't help much to clear last night's nightmare from my thoughts. God, those thorns were sharp...

"Oh, up already, I see!" Tori exclaimed, so surprised she dropped the book to the floor and had to fumble with her glasses just to keep them on. I really had snuck up on her. "Funny, I didn't even hear you come in."

"Of course you didn't. I spent five years training with the...world famous Hoshidan Ninjas. I'm practically undetectable," I said smug as a bug in a rug.

She went wide-eyed at my comment, only made more hilarious as they were magnified by her glasses. "Is that so?"

I flashed a devious smile at her. "Yeah, I'm also an astronaut, a world-famous scientist, and married to Scarlett johansson. I couldn't even sneak a pack of gum through Walmart's security, hell no am I a ninja!"

"Oh..." she managed, sinking back into her chair in defeat. Leave it to gullible ole' Tori to lift my spirits up a notch after being traumatized for life.

Her shock was replaced by a disappointed frown as her gaze fell upon the table. "You did not like your pie, my Child?"

Right, that. We ninjas weren't always up to par with our social skills. "No, it smells great," I assured her. "I'm just looking for a fork is all. You, uh, do have forks in this joint, right?"

"Of course," she chuckled slightly, relieved. "We monsters aren't quite as uncivilized as you may think!" She bent down and plucked the book off the floor and straightened her glasses. Then, pointing behind her, said, "They're in the top drawer besides the stove."

I nodded a weak thanks, already taking off for the kitchen. I'd been within sniffing range of the pie for long enough, and the crazy good smell was starting to drive me insane. In these next ten seconds, my life goal was to have just a taste of that pie. It was downright manipulative.

Wait...manipulation...

I stopped dead in my tracks. Was that all the pie was? Not an act of kindness, but as another method for Tori to convince me to stay with her? One of Cupid's love potions disguised as a cruel, deceptive...harmless, delicious piece of cinnamon-butterscotch pie...

"No, you're over-complicating things again," I muttered to myself, rubbing a few straggling beads of sweat from my face. Toriel was different from Flowey, I could feel it. Her intentions weren't to trick me or capture me...but I'd been fooled so many other times already, and I wasn't getting any sharper, no matter how I scolded myself. There was no clear way of knowing if I was walking into another trap. I might as well be walking forward blindfolded.

It was gut-wrenchingly difficult, but I finally came to a conclusion. I wouldn't give Toriel the chance to betray me, because I simply wouldn't trust her. Final decision, no more wishy-washy back and forth with it. I couldn't stay here and play a pawn any longer.

But god damn, that pie smelled too good to pass up.

The kitchen was infinitely smaller than the living room and a tad cramped for sure. A fridge, a sink, a few cabinets & drawers, and a stove, all as impossibly clean as before. Why the hell did Tori even need a stove if she could fricking just fire-bend to heat up her meals? Eh, whatever.

I fished a fork out of the top drawer (no knives in any of them from what I could find...weird) and came back out into the living room stone-faced. Maybe it was best to keep up the small talk to avoid arousing any suspicion.

For a split second, every fiber of my being screamed to tell her the whole spiel about my nightmare, and ask her what she could make of it, but the words caught in my throat. Sharing that would be the equivalent of painting a big bright red target on my back. And even if she wasn't faking, the best case scenario was for her to just brush it off as a silly dream. Plus, that wasn't exactly small talk, and dropping that bomb of a dream on her was just plain rude. So I went with something a lot safer, taking note of the massive bookcase shoved into the corner.

"You read a lot too, Tori?" I asked, driving my fork into the slice for the first absurdly huge bite. Two words.

Holy.

Shit.

Now, I'm no cooking connoisseur, hell, my greatest achievement in the culinary arts was likely not burning the toast one morning, but I was pretty sure even the stingiest of food critics would rate this thing a perfect ten. Perfect amount of moisture, perfect crunchiness of the crust, and perfect taste. Who the hell knew butterscotch and cinnamon went so damn well together?

"Why yes, I feel I read a fair amount," came Tori's voice, falling on deaf ears. I couldn't hear her over the nuclear war of flavor exploding in my mouth. "It's one of my favorite ways to pass the time. Although I must admit, you did not strike me as an avid reader yourself."

I fought off the urge to wolf down the rest of the slice right away and shrugged. "Eh, avid might be pushing it a bit," I admitted. "It's just of the cheapest way to let people know you want to ignore them. And I wanted to ignore a shit ton of people, so I started reading a lot. Simple as that."

Tori went silent for a few moments, allowing me another chance to dig into my pie, which was much appreciated. Try as I might to eat slower...who am I kidding, it was gone within ten seconds, without a single regret. I couldn't help myself, it was plain maddening every instant it sat on the table, taunting me with it's mere existence. So I devoured it faster than a rabid goat could.

Just as I'd finished it, I felt a not-so-subtle stare burning into the back of my head. I spun around, finding Tori looking up from her book, staring at me for reasons beyond me.

"What, I got something in my hair, Tori?"

She blinked and shook her head back to reality. "Oh, no, no, nothing like that, you just...remind me of someone else I knew. A long, long time ago. Please don't worry about it," she sighed, all in one breath. Her fingers were clutching the book a lot more tightly all of a sudden. 'A-and I want you to know how glad I am to have someone here." She added nervously, quickly changing the subject.

I stared back blankly at first, not really sure what she expected me to say to that. Either one. Clearly, she didn't want to talk about it, and was probably already regretting bringing it up in the first place. Which only made it more necessary in my head for me to pry further. Maybe she was referring to one of the other children to come through here...?

Whatever, it wasn't important to me, anyways. I'd be out of here before long, regardless of how much guilt-tripping Tori would have me sit through. I wouldn't let myself grow sentimental about her, but for some reason, I still couldn't bring myself to tell her I'd be leaving that same day. Instead, I put on a smirk and said, "Really? 'Cause even I'd be kicking myself out if I had to put up with me this long."

Tori laughed at that, maybe out of desperation to keep the focus off of her, placing a gentle hand to her mouth to muffle it. "Of course not, I enjoy your company." Yep, completely untrustworthy, I teased myself, but I still wouldn't go back on my promise. There could still be an evil hidden behind that smile of hers, just as their was behind Flowey's, just as their was a horrible taste hiding beneath the wrapper of the monster candy. "You are welcome to take a look at any of the books on the shelf over there, if you'd like," she suggested. "There are so many old books I'd like to share, history books, cook books, educational b-"

"-Got any novels?" I interrupted, inches away from being bored to sleep. However many teenagers she's met who actually enjoy reading anything that helps us learn, I don't know, but I certainly wasn't one of 'em.

"Um...s-surely there are a few in that stack," she assured me, a nicer way of telling me "No, I'm boring, sorry."

I stood up anyway, deciding it was at least worth taking a look. Monsters may have invented a completely new genre of writing for all I knew, so I trudged over, using my index finger scan for a book spine with something, anything actually interesting written on it. Sure enough, I found no title resembling the name of a novel in any way; no, "To kill a Monster-Bird," or, "The Monster Games," or even a copy of, "Why the Hell is This Kid Looking for Monster Themed Puns in Our Book Titles, He Must Be Mental."

"Er...I'd also like to show you my favorite bug hunting spot," Toriel hinted, noting my apathetic expression. She might as well be dangling keys in front of my face now.

"Yeah...yeah, sounds cool," I muttered in response. Secretly I was paying her less mind than a fast food manager payed their employees, but what she didn't know wouldn't kill her.

Eventually, as my patience was wearing thin on one of the last rows of books, my finger rested on something semi-interesting that I'd been way too quick to dismiss earlier. In ancient, worn sea blue letters read, "A Brief History of Monster Kind," by who the hell cares, the other letters had long since peeled off by the look of it.

"I've also prepared a curriculum for your education." Holy shit, this lady doesn't know when to quit, I thought. She was grasping at an empty jar of straws at this point.

In that same moment, I yanked the gigantic book out, cringing as I dropped it on the floor with a heavy grunt. Damn thing weighed more than a stack of encyclopedias. "Brief" history my ass, it had to contain the birth of the very first monster up to present day to fill all those pages.

"This may come as a surprise to you...but I have always wanted to be a teacher," Tori said to the side of my head, because no other part was listening anymore.

"No, not really. You already seem to enjoy chewing people's ears off enough." I crouched down and flipped open to a random page, surprised to find it was all written in faded English letters. Come to think of it, why hadn't I been surprised that Toriel herself spoke fluent English? The language was so ingrained into my head I guess I'd built up the mentality it was used universally. Was it the universal language of monsters? Maybe I'd find my answer right here...

"Okay...perhaps that isn't very surprising. STILL, I'm glad to have you living here."

I didn't even muster a response this time. The page was slightly torn, and missing a few chunks here and there, but it was all legible. The very first phrase caught my attention like a fishing hook. "Trapped behind the barrier and fearful of further human attack, we retreated," I read softly to myself. Only one sentence in and I was already confused as hell. "Far, far into the Earth we walked, until we reached the cavern's end. This was our new home, which we named...'home.'" I nearly laughed at that, but was still caught on the first line. "Fearful of further human attack..."

"As great as our king is, he's pretty lousy at names," I finished. Apparently I was right about the new genre of writing, whoever wrote this thought a history book should be written in the same tone as a third grader's shitty history report. But that wasn't what I was stuck on this time.

Leave it to a frigging history book to get the gears in my head turning again.

"What does this line mean?" I asked almost as an accusation, whipping around to confront Toriel.

My outburst had caught her off guard. "W-what does what line mean?" she stammered.

I glared daggers at her. "'Trapped behind the barrier and fearful of further human attack, we retreated.' The hell does that mean?" My mind was racing now, but the track looped pretty quickly. Monsters in the Underground, fighting humans...I knew it, I knew it was familiar! And all of it was written down right here. History book. Not fantasy, not a fairy-tale, history.

Tori frowned and heaved a heavy sigh. She was done beating around the bush, I could tell from her now much more serious stature. Which was good, because I was done getting half-assed answers. "...This may be hard for you to believe, but...a very long time ago, many centuries before your birth, monsters and humans ruled over the surface. Together."

My heart leapt out of my chest, halfway up my throat by now. I'd read about this, when I was little and still didn't know anything about the world. Humans didn't remember it as fact. We'd remembered it as a fable, tall-tales passed down from generation to generation. All this time, I'd been secretly living in a world filled with mythical creatures and magic and...and...and.

Toriel stood up from the chair and removed her glasses, giving me a stern look right to my face. It was the gloomiest tone I'd ever heard her use. "One day, for reasons I can't quite remember, war broke out between our two races." She paused, trying to think of a good way to put it, I presumed. "After a long battle, the human's were...victorious, and we monsters..." she trailed off. "We were sealed underground, never to roam the surface again."

Her words chilled me, cutting deep, like a shower of icicles. I had so many questions, more than I'd ever had about anything in my entire life, way more questions than when the lead character in a story says they have so many questions. My legs felt weak. None of this could be real. How did humans forget about monsters? Why did we decide to fight them in the first place? How long had they been trapped down here? How did I go my whole life, unaware that this entire civilization rested beneath the most boring city in the world?

"Is...is that why all these monsters want me dead?" I squeaked. The one that had been disturbing me most of all.

Toriel snapped right back to full mom-mode, bending down so our faces were at the same height, her look of genuine concern flooding back into her face. "No...they don't wish any harm upon you, they..." She was choking on her own words. "They're victims of a false promise. A chance to return to the surface."

It felt like I'd been slapped across the face, multiple times, back and forth, alternating sides. "What about you?" I dared, taking a careful step back from her. My hand drove instinctively into my pocket, whipping out the toy dagger and holding it out along with the Almighty Stick to keep her at bay. I hadn't the foggiest idea what killing me had to do with returning to the surface, but in that moment, I didn't need to know. "I bet you and your little froggy friends would love to go and slaughter more of us, is that right?!"

Toriel was taken aback by my accusations, looking trapped, like a caged animal. In a way, that's what she was. "No, My Child, no..."

But I knew I was right about her. Like the other monsters, she was a killer. They'd started a war. They'd been sealed away. And now, they wanted revenge. Irrational or not, my anger boiled past the tipping point.

"I know you are scared, I understand," Tori ventured, her voice breaking on every other word. I flashed back to the first time we'd met, she'd said nearly the same thing. Only now the situation felt much, much more dire. "But I have never lied to you. I only wish to keep you here, safe from the rest of them." She extended her hand slowly in forgiveness, eyes pleading for any sense of understanding in my being. "Please...stay with me."

I stared at the warm, furry white hand extended to me. It looked so alien now. I didn't even care if her words were sincere anymore. There was no life for me here, or anywhere else. "I don't want to hear your fucking excuses! I'm no one's child!"

I turned and sprinted back out the into the foyer, oblivious to Tori's cries of protest. Those, too, felt alien now, rushing past my ears in a language I didn't want to understand.

My gaze drifted over the to the door. There was no way out through the Ruins that I'd come from, I was sure of that. I had to be a little more creative. The stairs. That's my way out. Looks like I was kicking my boycotting of basements to the curb for right now.

My body worked before my brain did, vaulting me over the rail, landing on my feet, and continuing down into who knows where. Tori may be old, but she was quick on her feet. I hadn't a millisecond to slow down.

The moment I touched down on the basement floor, the temperature dropped a solid twenty degrees. The ugly purple walls of the Ruins had returned on either side of me, but the dim lighting made them much more bearable than before, especially when they were going by in a rapid blur.

My breath caught up with me, coming out in quick, shallow bursts, but it didn't phase me at all. I'd been running nearly my whole life, and could easily speed down these narrow corridors for as long as it took to get me away from here. Tori's footsteps pounded behind me, somehow still growing closer and closer and closer no matter how fast I ran. She was yelling something to me, probably to convince me to stop, but it was all dust in the wind to me. Her words had grown stale.

I came up to a ninety degree turn to the left, literally throwing myself around the corner. The stone tore at the flesh on my hand, leaving a small gash along my palm. I didn't let it slow me down.

What if it didn't lead anywhere? What if I'd cornered myself down here with her?

Run. Breathe. Run. Breathe. Imagine there's a shark chasing you...wait, shit, that only works for swimming. Land shark, imagine there's a frigging land shark behind you.

Yes! There it was! A door! A huge steel door, with some strange markings along its face. The way out! I was home fr-

Tori pushed past me just meters from the exit, nearly ramming into the door herself. I dropped the stick and the knife and threw my arms out to keep from hitting the wall. How had she caught me? Was she really that fast?

Panting, I bent over and grabbed my weapons off the floor, turning back to face Toriel. She now stood in front of the doorway, panting like a dog, a stoic expression plastered on her lying, cheating face. She looked a lot taller standing there, a friend turned obstacle. No, never a friend. A minor nuisance turned obstacle.

"You still wish to return 'home,' do you not?" she asked, more a challenge than anything. I stayed silent, squaring off with her, only a few feet away. "Well, here is the end of the Ruins. A one-way exit to the rest of the Underground."

She paused for a moment to catch her breath, still tired from our race a moment ago. "I am going to destroy it," she said coldly. "No one will ever be able to leave again."

I took another step towards her. "You honestly think I'm going to stand by and let that happen?"

Toriel shook her head, out of disappointment, I think. Because if anyone here should be disappointed in the other, it should totally be Tori. "Every human that falls down here meets the same fate." It was amazing how different Toriel had become from the woman I thought I was growing to know in these last few minutes, from someone I'd been banking on trusting, a pleasant flowing, kind spirited voice, to something much icier and ruthless. "They come."

...

"They leave."

...

"They die."

...

"You naive child...if you leave the Ruins, they...Asgore...will kill you."

That caught me seriously off guard. I was so sure Toriel had been out to kill me, but...

...Had I...

...Had I still been wrong?

"Who the hell is 'Asgore?'" My voice came out a little shaky. Don't let her know you're afraid. Don't let anyone know you're afraid.

Toriel cast my question aside. "I have tried again and again to explain myself, but clearly, I should have been more blunt." She leaned forward, just within striking range of my stick. I could take her down right now...

...but I couldn't.

"I am only protecting you. Do you understand?"

Why. Why did she have to say that? Why did she have to make what I was about to do all that more difficult? After all this time in the Underground, after being completely unsure of Toriel, and finally coming to the conclusion that she was just another Flowey, just another big, bad monster out to kill me, she had to destroy my entire understanding of the situation. It felt harder to breathe. The walls were closing in, suffocating me.

"...Why?" I asked softly, barely above a whisper.

Toriel snapped back to her original position, no less serious than she'd been a moment before. "Why what?"

"Why are you being so nice to me?!" I yelled, spitting the words with every ounce of my fury. "Why are you even bothering to keep me safe?! You know I don't deserve it."

Toriel eyes shifted towards the floor. Even she couldn't answer that herself. "...Go to your room."

I laughed. What else could I do at this point? I laughed like a fucking hyena, and just like them, I had no idea what I was laughing about. "That's your big trump card? 'Go to your room?' How 'bout this one." I said through gritted teeth. "Get out of my way before you make me do something I'll regret." My grip on my weapons tightened. We were each giving each other one last chance. One of us would back down, or...or...or whatever happened after that, happened.

"You want to leave so badly?" She looked me dead in the eye, letting out an exasperated sigh. That was it, then. No more chances. "You are just like the others. There is only one solution to this."

Regret tinged on the end of her lips. She hadn't wanted it to come to this, just as much as I had.

Get a hold of yourself. "Contrary to popular belief, I don't wanna fight you, Tori," I japed, without letting my guard down. Defusing the situation seemed all but hopeless at this point, but it was still worth a try. "Just let me go. You know I can handle myself out there."

Now it was Toriel's turn to laugh. Not her usual cheerful chuckle, a low, darker laugh. "Headstrong, indeed, just like the others. Now, prove yourself..."

A bright red-orange flame popped into existence behind her right shoulder. More joined in, forming a tightly knit circle behind her back, their sickly glow bouncing off the walls of the cavern, illuminating the dimly light walls. Each one crackled at its own rhythm. A chorus of light and fervor. "Prove to me you are strong enough to survive."

Just as the last word escaped her lips, the fire was upon me.