It was so cold.
I had been so sure I was dead, that all of hell was a cold hard ground you spent lying on for all eternity, that I refused to move at first. My body felt stiff and vacant like a mannequin, more plastic than flesh. It wasn't until my fingers closed around something soft and powdery that stung my skin, the same blistering chill biting my face, that I realized I still had some control.
I opened my eyes slowly, as if waking from an impossibly long slumber. A slanted view of a snow littered ground rose to meet me. Groaning, I attempted a rocky climb to my feet, made harder by the grading numbness infesting my skull. The world spinning around like a top at mach speed only intensified the feeling of vertigo. Waking up at all should have been relieving, but the nauseating dreams accompanying made the feeling null and void.
I waited for the earth to more or less stabilize before wracking up the nerve to look around. Instead of the deepest, darkest pits of Waterfall, a disjointed landscape surrounded me. The air felt paper thin, making it difficult to breath, and subsequently to get any blood flowing to my brain. Unlike my previous dreams that somewhat dabbled close to reality, this one felt particularly fuzzy and...hard to stomach.
My arms wrapped around my abdomen, both to hold in any heat I could, and to keep the contents of my stomach from spilling out. The freezing cold, the near pitch-blackness, the wind howling like a pack of wolves at a full moon, the distant ruckus of city life...despite the foreign substance casing the ground, it all felt so familiar...
...Mt. Ebott. Where reality ends and chaos begins.
That revelation alone made it so transparently clear what I was looking for. Suddenly, everything looked familiar, and even though the ground wasn't visible, I could effortlessly find the path I needed to follow. My legs were on autopilot, swerving back and forth through the snow, until I had found what I was looking for.
The massive hole appeared out of nowhere near the very peak of the mountain, and as the legends go, swallowed up any children who dared to venture this far. As I neared, the memory of that night became increasingly vivid, despite the snowstorm enveloping me growing ever thicker, and the pit somehow more foreboding. All the pieces were falling into place, an exact recreation, soon to be a reenactment, of my entrance into the Underground. Except for one single piece that, time and time again, had refused to fit.
As I had anticipated, the girl had appeared yet again.
I stopped when she came into view, only a few feet in front of me, with her back turned and leaning over the edge of the pit. She stared down into the endless blackness, as if preparing herself for the end of the world.
That's the moment I realized the girl's piece did fit, and had fit every time. Perfectly into my place.
"You shouldn't do that," I warned, though I already knew she wouldn't hear me. Strangely, though, a sound did come out, but the voice didn't belong to me. "Nothing good ever comes out of that place. Nothing."
Still, she refused to budge. Good riddance, I decided. With her out of the way, I could finally get my life back. She's a thief. A nuisance. She doesn't deserve to stay here any longer.
And yet, even as she began to take her fist step off the cliff, and those horrific vines shot out of the ground to follow her, as everything happened at once, I took a step forward and reached for her.
I blinked.
I was the one falling. Rushing past blurs of crumbling stone, past tendrils reaching out to pull me into the darkness, I fell. The sensation rose throughout my whole body, further chilling me from the inside out.
I blinked again, and the sensation came to a violent halt.
"It sounds like it came from over here..."
The voice drew closer, a child's from the sound of it. So light and innocent...like the song the music box would play.
"Oh! You've fallen down, haven't you...?"
It was right above me now, above my wasted form. I imagined, lying there on the cavern floor, that I looked like a crumpled up piece of paper, with my limbs bent in all the wrong directions.
"Are you okay?"
My eyes fluttered open, but my vision was so blurry it hardly mattered either way. A figure loomed over me, but even their shape was difficult to make out. Could've been anyone or anything for all I cared. "Do I look okay?" I tried to say, but my lips were sealed shut.
"Here, get up..." Now there were hands grasping at my arms, pulling me to my feet. Although it hurt in every corner of my body, I complied, and eventually made it to my knees.
"...That's a nice name."
But I hadn't said anything.
As the thought crossed my mind, the vision was already fading, a blinding white light taking its place. Time slowed to a crawl.
"My name is. . ."
I woke up choking on a thick glob of my own blood.
A garbled gasp, unrecognizable as a human sound, rocketed itself out of my mouth as consciousness cruelly returned to me. I laid on my stomach and a set of what must have been shattered ribs, every bone, limb, and bit of flesh screaming for some sort of relief. Just knowing how broken and bloody my body was, essentially reduced to a breathing corpse, terrified me on its own. But I refused to let the shock and fear paralyze me.
Almost as soon as I had woken up, I attempted to slide my arms under myself and push upwards, but the pair were shaking so much, and the slightest bit of pressure threatened to overload my entire nervous system. Vision blackening around the edges, I uttered a pained cry that echoed uselessly off the walls. The last fall had been enough to leave me battered and bloody. Nothing but a skinned knee on the side of the road compared to this.
It hurts. Dammit, it hurts so much.
I couldn't give up. I wouldn't go out with nothing more than a pathetic whimper as my last words. But every urge I made to move was rejected by my crumpled form, and who could blame it? I might as well have been burning to death, the agony was so intense, and my legs were doubtlessly broken. Every sickly breath that shuddered through me was released in a fit of ragged coughing that grew weaker over time, as if mimicking the sweeping sound of death itself.
Among the sea of trauma, a spark ignited in my brain. The nice cream! Where is it?!
I clumsily tugged at the edges of my pockets with my numb, dented fingers until I realized they were empty. Barren. Vacant, desolate, uninhabited, abandoned. Of course the jars had tumbled out during the fall, most likely shattered into a million pieces when they hit the ground. The nice cream, my only chance of survival, was scattered like dust in the wind.
Why couldn't she have made it quick. My thoughts were becoming tangled in webs, products of a numb and confused brain. Why'd she have to leave me to suffer?
She's just like the flower. She probably enjoys watching this. Watching me writhe. They're psychotic, all of them.
Another clot of blood ejected from my mouth in a violent cough, splattering on the ground below me. Flowers, I realized. A patch of tiny golden flowers, soft as cotton, on their own little island surrounded by water.
Same ones from the Ruins. Guess they weren't enough this time...
But as the thought ate away at what little remained of my mind - what could have easily been my last thought - I noticed something jutting out of the static water. It was hard to make out, could've been thousands of miles away for all I could tell, but I knew what it belonged to.
The cap for the jar that held my nice cream.
It was at that moment the hardest thirty seconds of my life began. I grit my teeth and bit down as hard as I could before slowly, carefully beginning the extension of my arm. I might as well have been tearing the thing off myself, tissue by tissue, tendon by tendon, blood cell by blood cell. By the time my fingers had fully extended and grabbed hold of the thick bed of flowers, I was howling in anguish, tears streaming down my face and mixing with the blood and sweat, thick like molasses.
My left arm, in somewhat better condition, was less of a hassle to move. Soon my other hand had found support in the flower bed, and I prepared myself for the worst. Turns out, no amount of preparation could ever have been enough.
Dragging my limp body nearly tore apart the fabric of my own universe. More than a few times the sweet embrace of exhaustion and defeat threatened to drag me into a peaceful unconsciousness, and every time I spat weakly back at it. I refused to be beaten, even when the alternative seemed infinitely easier, even when my energy reservoir had long run dry. In a moment of clarity, I decided right then and there, in those eternal thirty seconds, I would die on no force's terms but my own.
I grabbed hold of the jar and yanked it out of the water with the last burst of energy I could muster. The cap, loosened by the force of the fall, came off easily, and in the next second I was eating the very top of the nice cream, my face halfway buried in the jar like a dog. The first bits barely made their way down my throat, but the more I ate, the easier it became to force down more. Bones began reforming, internal bleeding was stemmed, and feeling steadily returned to every nerve. Panting, I brought a now soaked hand to my face and began wiping off any lingering sweat and bloodstains. The coldness of it felt good against my red-hot skin, and helped drag me back to the reality of what had happened, of what I had survived. Aside from my head spinning like it was in outer space, the effects of my little fall had been completely reversed. At least, physically.
Although I tried to focus all of my energy on the here and now, I couldn't stop the events leading up to my fall from replaying over and over again in my head. Undyne chasing me across the bridge, the realization that I was trapped, the look of pure hatred in her eye as she commanded her spears to cut the bridge. And, most vividly, my desperate struggle to cling to something for protection as the last splinters of wood cracked loose, and my plummet into nothingness...
...Strangely, I had no memory of hitting the ground. Instead, it was if I had landed directly in a dream, a fragile realm to hide from the broken state my body was in. Waking up, having all the pain and emotions rushing back at once, was...it was...
Terrifying.
I kicked at the water in frustration. Despite my earlier burst of courage, I was still afraid to die. Undyne's mercilessness, how she had so easily chosen the most torturous way of ending my life without so much as blinking, had a vice grip around my soul. No amount of anger could deter it, and I knew for a fact I held plenty of that to go around.
I dared to test my voice. "Where the hell am I, anyway?" It sounded small and weak, more fitting for a tiny rodent than myself, but I didn't let that take my mind away from other things.
The crevice was nearly pitch black, as I had expected, and I was barely able to make out even the outlines of the waterfall beside me. The entirety of the floor was completely flooded, if the the body of water surrounding me was any indication. Which in turn meant I had to spend even more time wading through the water.
Just what I needed.
Even worse than the lighting was the smell. For whatever reason, this stink-hole smelled less like a riverbed and more like a mucky, overgrown swamp. I was convinced something had curled up and died just below the water's surface, and hadn't been carried out by the tides yet.
Only when I had started to get up did my hand brush past something soft, and I remembered the flowers. Now that the..."excitement" of the situation had boiled down, the coincidence of landing on an identical set of flowers for a second time seemed a little too convenient. I wouldn't have been surprised to hear someone had been planting them under my sorry ass every time I needed a nice, cushiony landing.
I stroked the smoothness of the petals for a moment while I gathered the last of my bearings, not sure exactly what I was feeling around for. Some kind of explanation, or a memory perhaps, but my train of thought went careening off the rails.
"Sorry I called you guys bastards..." I muttered apathetically to the plants before sliding into the murky liquid.
The water came up to just above my knees, at least ten degrees warmer than the last puddle I had waded through. Actually, the air felt warmer too; it didn't quite chill me to the bone the way the previous sections of Waterfall had. If not for it stinking like a can of week old tuna baking in the sun, it may have been actually pleasant. And, you know, if the everlasting fear of death wasn't a storm cloud constantly pushing down on my shoulders.
I practically stumbled over the other jar of nice cream, lying just below the water's surface. Even though it was dripping wet, I shoved it into my open coat pocket without a second thought. No chance I'd ever go anywhere without food after that experience.
How the hell do I get out of here? My brain felt like its tissue rotted further with every step I took in that purgatory, like an apple, infested with insects & vermin. Every glimpse I caught of a wall looked sickeningly identical to the last, every shadow became a cowl for Undyne to hide in, every harmless splash in the water her footsteps inching closer.
Keep it together. You've lasted this long, you've survived the worst, just power through for the last lap.
How can you be so sure it's the last lap?
...God dammit, I'm doing that thing again.
What thing?
You know, the thing where two halves of my - you know what? Never mind.
Visibility was so low, I almost stumbled into the hulking pile of garbage that appeared in front of me, with no other warning than the spike in the stomach-emptying stench polluting the air. The sight, along with the sucker punch to my nostrils, caught me off guard. My hand flew right to my face in a vague attempt to force the volatile chunks of half-digested nice cream back down my throat.
"Ugh, that's sick!" I choked. The mound of trash was a perfect metaphor for both my physical and mental condition at the moment. A grotesque mish-mash of soggy food scraps, shredded cardboard boxes, discarded furniture, smashed electronics, sewage, and bent up hunks of scrap metal, each with its own of coat of dull, rusted armor. All soaking in the water I had willingly washed my face with moments before.
Must be a landfill or something...wait...
I recognize these brands.
Branded across everything from mangled television screens to torn fast food bags were names and companies that had been shoved down my throat all my life. A burger joint I went too often when I needed a bite to eat, a T-shirt sharing a logo with the one I had been wearing this entire time, bikes, computers, toys, tools...the sight and smell overwhelmed me, made me recoil from some sort of culture shock. It was as if I were seeing Ebott for the first time again, even if it were still miles above me and whether or not I wanted to see it at all.
What is human trash doing here, anyway? Does it really flow into the Underground?
Great. As if the monsters needed another reason to hate mankind.
I scanned the pile for a flashlight, a lantern...hell, I'd even have taken a torch at that point, until the rancid smell grew so thick it repelled me like a bug spray to a mosquito. Finding something to chase away the blackness wasn't worth coughing up my own liver.
It turned out to be a good call. After taking more blind steps, a few patches of light managed to break their way through the cavern. Being able to see around myself was great, until I noticed it revealed nothing but the thick, slimy green shade of the water, and the additional clumps of trash being carried in on waterfalls from above. Seeing the new debris floating off in different directions made me realize how unnaturally constructed the stacks of trash were, built on a steady base with the lighter materials placed on top. Either the pit was treated as an actual landfill...
"...Or some OCD hobo is running around here, keeping the place spiffy," I said to myself. Instead of helping to lighten the mood, the low-effort joke only soured my spirits further.
The path forward turned a sharp corner and forced me into a narrower corridor with even less space between me and the filth. Any closer and I'd be unable to distinguish between the two of us.
A bright orange cooler in surprisingly good condition, at least compared to everything else, stuck out against the water like a big, bright, butt-ugly zit on a pale white face. I dug through it, pulling out a couple of those freeze-dried "space food" bars that serve no other purpose than to make you crave an actual ice cream sandwich. I never cared for them any of the times I had tried it. Felt like the equivalent of eating a dried out slice of watermelon over the real thing, but the wrapper had no brand that I recognized from the surface. Any monster food was welcome to take up residence in my pockets, at least until the next time I got the living shit kicked out of me.
My looting spree was cut short when I saw it. The rotten cherry on top of the trash heap. A worn, sullen training dummy falling apart at the seems, hiding with its back to the wall, staring blankly ahead as if something could attack at any moment. It wore old, tattered leather for skin that looked ready to tear apart at the slightest touch. Probably the only thing left to rot in the trash heap that didn't come from the surface, and it still managed to be painfully familiar.
I brought myself to eye-level with the dummy. While it saw nothing, I saw everything that was wrong with everything in that stare. I saw a tidal wave of places and names and emotions and voices and failures that crashed against my shoulders and sucked the air out from my lungs. No part of my brain could decipher why seeing it brought on so many memories. They just came.
We don't want to hurt anyone, do we...?
My fist shot out and brushed the dummy's face. But that was all it was, a brush. The punch was shaky and unsure; it lacked any sort of drive or confidence, and worst of all, any purpose.
I clenched my teeth and hit the dummy again, harder. And again, harder. And again, and again, until I had to hold the dummy in place with my free hand just to keep it from falling over. And then I hit it harder. Each blow was filled to the breaking point with a fury that burst out over the dummy's leather like blood, and that breaking point was pushed further with each blow. Soon my eyes no longer laid sight on a simple punching bag, but on monsters, on Sans and Papyrus and Flowey especially, then humans, teachers and peers and officers. But more than anything else, the dummy manifested itself as a broken and beaten down Undyne screaming for the last moments of her life.
I kept hitting it mercilessly, until I realized the endeavor only added onto the burden. After letting that, along with the pain creeping through my knuckles, sink in, I gave the dummy one last shove. Its head bumped against the uneven surface of the wall a few times before it landed in the water with a faint splash.
"As for you, I can happily label you a 'bastard.'" I wasn't all that far off, anyway. Isn't that all a punching bag becomes when you've had enough, a bastard child of every problem you wished you could solve with your fists?
I sighed, attempting to pull my rapid breaths back under control. Should've expected to feel worse after losing myself like that again...
What I couldn't have expected was the dummy shooting off the ground and butting into my nose in retaliation.
My hands went right to the spot where it had hit me, feeling something sticky seep between the gaps in my fingers. The dummy, meanwhile, was busy denying every thread of reality that had remained unsevered until now, levitating a few feet above the ground. Before I could fully recover, it darted across the surface of the water and blocked my only way forward.
"FOOL! You thought you could hurt ME?!" it bellowed, its head bobbing up and down with each ear piercing word.
"For Christ's sake, the hell do you want?" I cried, taking my hands away from my face only to find them already stained a dark crimson. What was left of the blood in my body began to simmer as I glared at the disturbed figure in front of me.
The now animate dummy's thousand-yard stare had been overhauled for a gaze so full of anger and piercing enough to snipe a fly out of the air from a thousand yards away. Its body had appeared at least vaguely normal to me a moment ago, but the stitches holding it together had come loose, its fragmented pieces held together only by whatever force kept it airborne. Now that it was alive and moving so...unnaturally, as if the head were some kind of puppeteer and the rest of it the body parts of a marionette coerced into bending to its will...it sent chills down my spine.
"What do I want?" it cackled, pulling the mess of torn leather and string it called a face into a twisted sneer. "I am the ghost that inhabitants this dummy!"
A ghost? Like the one in the Ruins? "Beat it, Frankenstein!" I had tried to sound intimidating, but my voice broke mid sentence. Now I wasn't sure if it was from a lack of confidence, or how my nose was undoubtedly smashed to a pulp.
"Frankenstein? Oh, that's rich, because you're the only monster here!" It resumed it's cackling, until each part of its body eerily froze. "Well, technically speaking, you're the only non-monster here...but IT MATTERS NOT!"
Its screams were so loud and erratic, I half-expected them to break the surface of the water. "Then what does matter?"
Once again, the dummy became completely motionless before it continued. "My cousin used to live inside a dummy, too. Until...YOU!"
Me.
"When you talked to them, they thought they were in for a nice chat. But the things you said...horrible, shocking, UNBELIEVABLE!"
Is he talking about that training dummy in the Ruins? "Pretty sure I said hello-"
"-It spooked them right out of their dummy!" At the last word, a chorus of whistles and explosions crescendoed to life from every direction. The sound and images of thick smoke appearing out of thin air reminded me of gunshot, and alone was enough to make me recoil. After the smog had cleared, an army of shimmering white dummies stacked and mangled together like tangled webbing was revealed, forming a tightly knit bubble around me and the clearly insane dummy. Nowhere to run. "HUMAN! I'LL SCARE YOUR SOUL OUT OF YOUR BODY!"
I wanted to puke. I wasn't ready for this, not so soon after healing off those injuries and receiving another blow to my nose. But what other option did I have?
Feeling the gaze of every single dummy burning through the skin on my back, I rushed forward with my tough glove draped across my hand and rammed it straight into the mad dummy's snout. Its head snapped backwards and tumbled clean off its shoulders, and everything else followed suite, until the whole thing lay in a motionless heap on the floor.
I blinked, not sure whether to be relieved or bewildered. "Um...talk about all bark and no bite?"
Sure enough, the broken pieces of the dummy began shaking violently after a couple seconds of staring. "Futile. Futile. FUTILE!" After emitting that muffled scream, they flew up and forced themselves back together, making an effort to push me back. I complied, putting enough space between us for me to unwrap and take a bite out of one of my space food bars, just enough to stem the bleeding from my nose. "You thought physical attacks could hurt me!? What are you, some kind of cheap, brainless dummy?!"
Before I could even begin to think of a retort, the dummies surrounding us began to open fire on me. Seeing them participate as anything more than glorified traffic cones startled me enough that the first shot almost scraped past my shoulder. At first, I thought the projectiles they hurled would come from every direction at once, eventually overwhelming me. But the shots they fired, appearing more like scribbles across a piece of paper than an actual attack, traveled at the lightning-fast speed of a snail with crutches. As if it weren't predictable enough, only a few of them would fire at a time, and all from the same direction. I quickly found that I barely even had to move to avoid being hit by them.
The moment their pebble assault ended, I attacked the mad dummy a second time, this time aiming lower on its body. The center most and largest part of its body went flying backwards, but boomeranged back into place almost instantly.
"Foolish. Foolish. FOOLISH!" The dummy laughed again. "You really must be brain dead! Even if you attack my vessel, you'll never hurt me! I'm still incorporeal, you DUMMY!"
"Say dummy one more god damn time, I dare you," I growled with a flex of my fist, but there wasn't much else I could do to enforce the threat aside from pounding him again, only to reform moments later.
Shit, is there really no way I can hurt him?
It lowered its head so we were eye to eye. "Dummy."
His posse of reinforcements began firing for a second time, no more tricky to avoid than the last. But it didn't matter how pathetic their efforts were if there I was nothing I could do to the leader of the bunch. I tried plowing my way through the wall of them, receiving a nasty shock in response when my skin made contact with them. They weren't any more solid than wisps of vapor, but appeared to be made out of the same energy as the scribbles they shot at me. Eventually they would wear me down, and...
Dammit, why is it never that easy-
"-Yowch!"
I spun to face the outburst, quickly covered up by the mad dummy, but not quick enough. I know what I had seen.
Bingo.
Another wave of projectiles was hurled my way. Seeing my opportunity, I ducked under the floating form of the mad dummy, much to their confusion.
"Hey, what are you - OWWW!"
I smiled to myself. My theory was right. Every shot from one of his own men had hurt his "incorporeal" form in some way.
"You dummies!" cried out the dummy. "Watch where you're aiming your magic attacks!" Noticing the smirk spreading across my face, it added, "Hey, you! Forget anything I said about magic!"
"Gladly."
With that knowledge at my disposal, fighting the mad dummy became trivial. It was just a matter of waiting for his minions to fire and lining up the shots so that they collided with the flying sack of potatoes, which was trying its hardest to throw itself out of the line of fire, and failing miserably at it. Judging by how much its sorry excuse for a body flopped around when it jerked into motion, controlling its tangled mess of detached leather was more difficult than he made it out to be.
After about five rounds of being repeatedly pelted in the face, the dummy screeched, "HEY GUYS!" I stopped moving for a moment as every single dummy illusion poked their heads out to take orders from their master. "Dummies. Dummies. DUMMIES!"
"I'd do what he says, guys," I said. "Starting to think that squeal of his is giving me brain damage..."
His head spun to look at me. "You. Quiet." Then he addressed his men. "Remember how I said not to shoot at me? Well...FAILURES!" I made an effort to cover my ears, but I was too slow. The mad dummy had finally succeeded in shattering my eardrums with his voice. His eyes were bulging out of his head, his body even more spastic than before. Even his men, which I'd been sure were illusions until now, looked scared shitless. "YOU'RE FIRED! YOU'RE ALL BEING REPLACED!"
At his command, the wall of dummies vanished in another puff of smoke, and were replaced by new ones before I could even begin to attempt an escape. Oddly enough, the sound of mechanical clicks and whirs filled the room with their absence, along with the maniacal laughter of my new least favorite thing to ever grace the planet.
"Now you'll see my true power: relying on people that aren't literal garbage!"
The air cleared, and I got a glimpse of the new dummy brigade, this time appearing much more organized, and...robotic.
"Uh..."
"DUMMY BOTS! MAGIC MISSILE!"
You ever had heat-seeking missiles - you know, the ones from just about every action movie ever made - fired directly at you in an enclosed space?
It's about as exciting as it sounds.
A cluster of the robo-dummies had opened fire on me, and I wasted no time moving to get as far away from the blast zone as possible. Unfortunately the missiles had a different idea; chase me down to every corner of the earth until I was reduced to a smoldering pile of ash, left only to be swept up by the water current. I ran them in circles for a few heart pounding seconds, until they lost track of me and went careening off into nowhere.
No explosion? Shit, that's right! They're not real missiles, probably the same as the weird scribbles the other dummies were firing...
I wonder...
"Dummy bots! Try again!"
More of them fired this time, but I wasn't complaining. If anything, it just meant I could wreak more havoc for the mad dummy himself. He had a tragic problem of hiring people who made his life a living hell, but I couldn't say I felt sorry for him.
I led the rockets around in a circle again, this time sprinting head first at the ringleader of the bunch once I finished the rotation. The mad dummy, refusing to learn his lesson, was too busy laughing to himself to notice the array of missiles headed towards him, until I was already sliding beneath the bottom of his airborne stand.
"Oh, NOT AGAIN!" he cried as his body was bombarded with the satisfying boom of the rockets.
Now that's what I call an explosion.
"No way!" panted the dummy, perturbed. "These guys are even worse than the other guys!"
"Eh, about on par I'd say," I chimed in.
The mad dummy was not amused. "Who cares. Who cares! WHO CARES! I DON'T NEED FRIENDS!" For a final trick, he pulled out a knife from thin air. "I'VE GOT KNIVES!"
A paralyzing sense of shock injected itself into my blood stream, and my limbs froze for almost a second too long as he hurled the knife my way. At the last possible moment, I ducked under the dagger, which disappeared into the murky shallows. "Christ, dude, chill out!"
"CHILL OUT?! I'll have you know that I...I...I'm...out of knives." The room appeared to tremble when he spoke again. "BUT IT DOESN'T MATTER! YOU CAN'T HURT ME AND I CAN'T HURT YOU!"
Dammit, he's right. I don't have anything to hit him with...
His eyes appeared ready to gut me from the inside out. "YOU'LL BE STUCK FIGHTING ME...forever. Forever! FOREVER!"
And that shrill, gravelly, insane laughter echoed throughout the cavern, drowning out any and all sane thoughts I could still muster.
But it only lasted a moment. In what was the probably the luckiest moment that will ever occur in my entire life, I was saved. Not intentionally, not by a person. By just a little bit of acid rain.
The droplets came out of seemingly nowhere aside from above, falling straight down onto the dummy's head. It flinched with every drop, disgust spreading across its face. "Wh-what the heck is this? Acid rain?!"
I moved out of the way of a few stray drops, trying to hide both my confusion and optimism at the sudden turn of events. "Apparently."
"Oh, forget it! I'm outta here!" Just like that, defeated by nothing but himself, the incredibly pissed off dummy's minions vanished as he flew over my head and straight out of the trash pit. Leaving me with my rapidly crashing adrenaline levels.
I let out an exhausted breath, biting my lip to fight the temptation of dropping to the ground and sleeping 'till I couldn't get back up. Even though the cuts and bends and breaks were healed, I could still feel the agony I was in only minutes ago. They were mental scars, now. Voices in my head urging me to give up. Fighting had taken my mind away from them, but like the effects of a placebo, it only lasted momentarily.
What would happen if I encountered someone actually worth a damn? Could I trust myself to keep pushing? Did I want to keep pushing?
What am I even pushing for? Even if I make it back to the surface, what would I say to anyone? They'll probably think I'm insane. They'll lock me away, keep me hidden from the world.
I can't do this anymore. I want to go home...
...But where is home?
"...Sorry, I interrupted you, didn't I?"
I glanced up at the soft, unsure voice, a nice relief after listening to that dummy scream his head off. A new figure floated in front of me, one that looked strangely familiar. Another ghost from the look of it, half transparent, had a Charlie Brown Halloween costume look to him, tears drifting down his face...
...Acid tears...
"...Grey? I mean...shit what was you name again?"
The ghost was so absorbed in self-loathing, he hadn't heard me. But I was sure this was the ghost from way back in the Ruins.
"As soon I came over, your friend immediately left..."
Napstablook!
"That's your name, right? Napstablook?"
He turned his vacant stare on me, immediately turning away. "Y-yeah. You remembered? Wow."
"Talk about a blast from the past. It feels like I haven't seen you in forever."
"I-I'm sorry I interrupted you guys...you looked like you were having fun..."
I frowned. "You think him mercilessly trying to kill me looked like fun?"
"Oh no...I just wanted to say hi..."
Whether he was embarrassed or just confused, I had no idea. Either way, he had started to float down the path forward, rapidly putting distance between us.
"Hey, wait up!" I began to chase after him, grateful to leave the stench of muck and trash behind me.