Frisk looked for Flowey at the patch of golden flowers. They looked for him in the Ruins. They looked for him in Snowdin. They looked for him in Waterfall. Even in Hotland and New Home. But he was nowhere to be found. Was he hiding from them?
When they finally crossed the threshold of the Underground again, it was dark outside and their phone indicated over a hundred missed texts and calls from their mother ; they had really been down there for too long…
The human was about to call Toriel back when they heard a voice from farther down the path to Ebott Town :
"Howdy! Shouldn't you be at home at this hour?"
They almost dropped their phone from the surprise. Flowey had willingly gone to the Surface? That was new.
"…Was looking for you", Frisk explained. "Do you think… I should reload?"
"I don't really care now", the flower replied.
There was a moment of silence only disturbed by a chilly wind.
"Well, you can't save the monsters from the other cave", Flowey continued, "so it just comes down to this one guy and the hospital's patients. You could let him rot in an empty cave for the rest of his life to buy them maybe a few months of life at most. Or you could repeat what we've already done and sacrifice seven people to save one person… and also access knowledge I guess?"
"heya", greeted Sans from behind Frisk. "whatcha doin' here so late?"
Flowey instantly burrowed himself into the ground and left.
Since Frisk still had their phone in their hand, they wrote "wanted to ask Flowey".
"about reloading?" Sans guessed. "what did he say?"
"That he didn't care", they wrote.
"hey. figures. listen kid, I could give you another spiel about how you probably shouldn't be messing with time and space if you're not absolutely sure it's necessary, but… it's not like i can actually stop you."
Frisk fidgeted with their phone for a second, then sent a text to Toriel to tell her they were alright.
"sometimes you just gotta wait. you don't always know right away if you made the better choice."
The human nodded slowly and pocketed their phone.
"anyway, tori sent me to bring ya back home, so… that's enough skull-king around for the night."
One shortcut later, they were both standing next to Toriel's house again.
A few days later, Asgore received another phone call from Hernandez.
"So, the monsters left a lot of documentations, and the one human was carrying a diary with them, right?" he explained. "We actually found some things mentioning other monster clans or kingdoms- Ebott monsters included. And the human's diary actually has a map in it!"
"A map?" the boss monster repeated.
He was holding the phone with one hand and picking ingredient for his lunch with the other.
"They drew a map of where they thought different 'monster colonies' were hidden. Looks like they were very passionate about the subject and did a lot of research. We're currently double-checking with the infos we got from monster sources. You know, just in case the diary might be inaccurate. I mean, they did find this one 'colony' -their word, not mine- but you know. We still have to make sure."
"May I see this map?"
"Sure. Just hold on a second."
Later, Asgore was knocking on Toriel's door. Frisk let him in, then he showed the map on his phone to them and Toriel.
"Yes, I do vaguely remember hearing about some these places when I was a child", she confirmed, squinting at the screen.
"So do I", Asgore said. "Perhaps the people in at least one of these places are still there. Us Ebott monsters simply cannot be the only ones to have survived the war and imprisonment."
"What if we are, Asgore? What if all we ever find is dust and the sacrifices were for naught? Too many people have lost their lives already."
"Wait and see", Frisk said calmly.