A/N: You may have noticed this was put up then immediately taken back down. The formatting on this site hates me and must be punished. Can't get the stupid double line breaks to appear properly. Anyways. I finished this the night before exams instead of studying. You're welcome.

Frisk looked down at her feet on the cold, white, tiled floor of the bathroom, wiggling her toes a bit; her feet were blistered and bruised from all the walking and running she had been doing as of late. She lifted her gaze to the mirror above the sink in front of her. A filthy, ragged, abused child stared back at her, clothing in tatters and hair maimed; despite everything, though, it was still her.

"Frisk, dearie?" Muffet called from the other side of the door. "Are you alright in there?"

It took Frisk a moment to respond. "Yeah...yeah, I'm fine. Thanks…"

"Let me know if you need anything, dearie."

It had been roughly a week since Frisk had failed in her attempt to escape Muffet's castle, as far as she could tell. She had been living in an isolated little suite far from the royal court, but relatively close to Jerith's clinic, presumably where long-term patients were housed. This morning, Jerith had declared Frisk "as well as she would be for the near future", meaning that, through a combination of magic and medicine, she was able to walk on two feet and speak for extended periods of time without vomiting or fainting. Muffet decided soon after that announcement that tonight would be Frisk's grand premiere – she would dress the little girl up and present her to the royal court as a personal guest and friend.

A friend…

Frisk wondered how her friends were doing as she turned on the shower and stood under the hot water. Sans, Papyrus, Undyne, Blooky, Alphys, everybody. She hoped that they were alright, that Asgore hadn't come for them. Undyne and Alphys especially, given their close proximity to the king both physically and professionally. Then again, they also seemed close to him emotionally, and Asgore didn't seem like a bad person – just a victim of circumstance; hurting a strange human was one thing, but could he bring himself to hurt those close to him in the name of the kingdom? Frisk's mind wandered to her parents and her village. Her mothers were probably worried sick. She felt her heart begin to ache and tears well up in her eyes. The girl shook her head violently back and forth, trying to forcefully expel the thoughts from her head; getting sad wouldn't do anything. She just…had to stay determined.

Frisk turned off the water and stood there in the shower for a moment. Being dressed up like a doll and showed off to a bunch of spiders was probably the last thing she wanted to do right now; however, things that she did want to do – scream, cry, sleep, run, fly up into the air and smash right through the Earth's stupid crust – were all either impossible or pointless at the moment. With a heavy sigh, Frisk set about drying and dressing herself. Muffet had been nice enough to provide her with new clothes – freshly woven, she was told, from the finest silk. Clean white undergarments and socks, along with a blouse and simple pants, all white as snow.

Steeling herself, she opened the door, only to be grabbed suddenly and seated on a stool in front of a tall mirror. Muffet experimentally opened and closed a pair of scissors as she ran her hands through Frisk's hair, which, despite now being clean, was still uneven and torn in places.

Frisk placed her hands protectively over what remained of her shoulder-length bob of hair. "Wait! Wait! Do you really have to cut it?!"

"Of course, dearie!" Muffet said with a giggle. "Just look at it! We can't have you walking around looking like that."

Frisk made a sour expression, knowing the spider-girl was right. "Fine…" she conceded, looking down at the floor.

Muffet beamed at her, apparently not thinking she would actually get permission. "Don't you worry - I think we can salvage most of it, dearie. I'll just cut it to the bottom of your, hm, ears. How's that sound?"

Frisk nodded reluctantly, studying Muffet in the mirror as she went to work. Muffet's black pigtails were cute and well-maintained - she supposed that there were worse people to entrust her hair to, provided Muffet did her hair herself.

A thought occurred to Frisk. "Muffet..." she asked. "Do you have ears?"

Muffet looked blankly at the girl for a second before realizing what she was asking. She giggled again and brushed back her own hair; just as Frisk suspected, the places on both sides of her head where ears would normally be on a human were simply smooth, flat spots. "Spiders don't have ears on the outside like humans and furry-folk, dearie."

Now that Frisk thought about it, Jerith didn't have ears either – his short hair didn't obscure those spots at all; Frisk had just subconsciously filled ears into those spots because his already looked so human, except for the multiple eyes, especially compared to many of the other creatures she'd seen in the Underground. It was these strange, small things that somehow unnerved her more than the big ones – it was one thing to see a skeleton that walked and talked like a normal person, or an angry fish woman who suplexed boulders for fun; those things had ceased being surreal and were now just common to her by now, and most of those creatures acted like normal humans anyway. It was when she slowed down and truly observed the monsters that she felt uneasiness and paranoia tugging at the back of her mind, noticing all the little things that made it clear these things were definitely not human, no matter how they acted; in those moments, some sort of primal defense mechanism told her to run as fast as she could…but there was nowhere to run to, so she persisted and stayed determined.

"Frisk." Muffet said. "Frisk, Frisk…Friiiisk." She rolled the word around on her tongue, apparently not liking the sound of it. "That's a nickname, isn't it? Your real name can't possibly be 'Frisk', and the court will be expecting a lady to go by her actual name."

Frisk shook her head. "It isn't. My moms gave it to me because they say I always frisk about."

"Well?" Muffet asked after a moment of silence. "What's your real name, dearie?"

"I don't like my real name."

Muffet laughed again. "Oh, neither do I! Why do you think I always go by 'Muffet'? Whatever it is, it can't be any worse than 'Mirabelle', dearie, I'm sure."

After a moment of silence, Frisk mumbled something incoherently. With a bit of prodding from the older girl, she finally blurted out a few syllables. "Ming Li."

Muffet smiled, patting Frisk on the head. "See? Was that so hard, dearie?" The girl struggled with a particularly difficult knot in the human's hair for a moment. "I think that's a rather pretty name, 'Ming Li'. Not what I would have named you, maybe, but still nice."

"Would you mind just calling me Frisk?"

"Of course not, dear! But while present at the royal court, you shall be Lady Ming Li of…what was your village's name?"

"Dyuzhimin." Frisk said flatly.

"Pardon?"

"Everybody just calls it Duzy."

"Your people certainly have a particular way of speaking, don't they?"

"What do you mean?"

"Catai, Ming Li, Doozymon – all very exotic and peculiar."

Frisk shrugged, uncomfortable with the notion that she was somehow 'exotic'. "I guess."

By now, Muffet had finished cutting and was now in the process of brushing the human's shortened hair. "That will go over very well with the court. The nobles very much appreciate anything exotic. You will be Lady Ming Li, First of Her Name, Princess of Dyuzhimin!"

"I'm not a princess, though." Frisk frowned at the lie.

"They don't know that, though. It'll make you seem far more respectable."

"But Muffet, it's a lie."

It was Muffet's turn to frown. She then shook her head, laughing even more. "Oh, dearie, you're too sweet for this world. You would make such a delightful cake." Frisk shuddered at the thought. "I'll tell you what: since I'm the Queen of Spiders, everything in this castle is mine to do whatever I want with. I declare that this room is a realm named Dyuzhimin, which just so happens to also be the name of the place you hail from, that you are the ruler of it, and that your title shall be 'princess'. There! It's no longer a lie."

Frisk mulled it over for a moment as Muffet finished her brushing. "I suppose. If you really think it's necessary."

Muffet clapped her hands together jubilantly. "Wonderful! Now that your hair and title are sorted, we can find you a lovely dress!"

Papyrus jumped up and down excitedly, shouting fanatically; Sans lounged on a log behind him, seemingly fighting to stay awake. Before them, Undyne ferociously lifted a pile of three massive logs in her arms, smirking cockily at the bear beside her who was struggling to gather up just two. She threw all of her logs up into the air and delivered a salvo of punches and kicks to them, causing them to shatter into hundreds of little pieces that embedded themselves in the snow. The bear-man growled in frustration, dropping his logs and leering daggers at Undyne, before breaking out into good natured laughter. All around them, the logging camp had ground to a halt; a few men had stopped to watch the spectacle, but most had gone into Snowdin for lunch.

"Boy, guys, you sure know how pick 'em." He rumbled to the skeletons, drowning out Papryus's cheering, before turning to Undyne. "Gotta hand it to you, ma'am, you're one tough cookie."

Undyne grinned broadly up at the bear, who stood at least two feet taller than her. "Yeah, well you just need to train harder – soon, you'll be just as tough as me!"

The bear chuckled again. "Oh, training isn't for me, Captain. As long as I can do my job and put food on the table, I'm happy."

Undyne's grin turned into a frown; she obviously didn't agree with this philosophy, but chose not to say anything about it.

"Hey, Barry!" Sans called from his seat. "Why don'cha go get Corduroy? He's gotta be at least as strong as Undyne."

"You're name is…Barry?" Undyne asked. The fierce log-lifting competition had begun quickly and without time to exchange names. "Barry the Bear?"

"My parents weren't very creative." He said dejectedly. "Neither we my grandparents. Or their grandparents. I'm actually Barry Fedelstien the Seventeenth."

Undyne let out a long, low whistle. "Anyways, what about this Corduroy guy?"

"Oh, Cory? He's the biggest guy we got here. Total softie though." He looked in the direction of another bear who was in the process of devouring a sandwich that consisted solely of a still flapping salmon stuffed between two soggy pieces of bread. "Hey Barrett!" he called out to him. "You know where Cory is?"

The bear took an enormous bite of his 'sandwich' and spoke with a full mouth, splattering red flecks of meat all over the snow. "Dunno." He shouted back. "Baryl, you know where Cory is?" Barrett asked a bear sitting atop the roof of a bright yellow, tracked vehicle, reading a book.

Baryl shook his head. "Nope. Bearic, do you know where Cory went?"

Yet another bear lay flat in the snow, waving his limbs around in a futile attempt to make a snow-bear. Bearic lifted his head. "Nope, sure don't. Do you know where Cory is, Tim?" He looked around. "Where's Tim? Oh, right. Grillby's."

Baryl proceeded to begin relaying the information. "Bearic doesn't know where Cory is." This set off a chain reaction that went all the way back up the line until it reached Barry once again.

Sans, Papyrus, and Undyne watched the entire process with a mixture of confusion and amusement on their faces. "Sorry, guys. Looks like Cory's home sick or something."

"Oh well. Some other time." Sans said dismissively, pulling himself to his feet. "Come on, Paps. Let's get some lunch."

"Okay!" Papyrus agreed cheerfully. "Undyne, do you want to come with us?"

The fish-woman nodded with a smirk. "Sure thing. Where we going? Grillby's?"

"You know it." Sans replied.

Bidding the bear brigade farewell, the trio set off down the snowy path towards Snowdin, walking in silence for a while, with no sound but the raucous laughter of the bears fading away behind them and the crunching of snow beneath their feet.

"I like your friends, guys." Undyne said. "They seem nice."

"Yeah," Sans stuffed his hands in his pockets. "Barry and the fellas are pretty cool. Big tough guys too. But really, they're all just a bunch of teddy bears." He squinted his eyes and looked up at Papyrus expectantly. When his brother offered no reaction, he frowned. "Really? Nothing?"

"That wasn't really a pun, Sans." Papyrus explained. "They're literally bears."

"Yeah." Undyne nodded. "Not your best work, man."

"Oh come on. That's the whole point!" Sans argued as they started entering the town proper. "They're bears both in the literal sense and the—"

A rabbit-child rushed out from a side street, whizzing past Sans and almost knocking him over, followed by at least four more of the little critters, all shouting for the leader to wait for them. Looking around, Sans saw a number of people walking towards the center of town, converging on a single point.

"What's going on?" Undyne asked. "Do people normally gather like this on Thursdays?"

"No." Papyrus said uncertainly. "Where could they all possibly be going? I, the Great Papyrus, am right here!"

Sans studied the throng – everybody wore an expression of either worry or nervous excitement. "Paps, you should go home." He said. "I'm gonna check out what's going on."

"If you're going, then so am I." Papyrus snapped indignantly. "Besides, whatever's happening, it can't hurt to have two highly trained Royal Guardsmen there to protect everybody!"

"I think Sans is right, Papyrus." Undyne said. "Why don't you turn in for the day?"

"But its only noon!" the taller skeleton whined.

Undyne and Sans both gave Papyrus severe looks. He wordlessly nodded and set off towards home. Whether he would actually comply with their orders or not was yet to be seen.

Sans looked up at Undyne. "Let's go."