I can see that the world outside the dark area is starting to move once more. Looks like time has started up again, though it matters little. I'm already exactly where I need to be. Flowey, meanwhile is searching quite frantically for Frisk, flower pot abandoned as he pops out of the ground here and there. So much for his claims of not being able to keep up…
"Frisk!?" he calls out. "Frisk, where are you!?"
"HUMAN? HELLO?"
"Where'd you go, you little weenie?"
It's to no avail, I can see clearly that Frisk can't see them, can't hear them… can't see or hear anything, in fact. It isn't making searching for these gray entities any easier, but I feel like I'm getting close.
None of the three are able to find Frisk. "The Lab, maybe they went to The Lab," Flowey says.
"Maybe," Undyne replies, though she looks less than eager to go there. "I can call Alphys. Papyrus, phone. " He hands his over to her. She dials the number. "C'mon Alph pick up… Do you have your phone on silent? Ugh…"
"SO WHAT DO WE DO?" Papyrus asks.
Undyne considers. "Hey Papyrus, you got data on here?"
"NO," he replies, then thinks. "WELL, IT'S EXTRA." He frowns. "A LOOOOOTTT EXTRA."
"Oh well, gotta get on the internet."
"UNDYNE, NO!" he shouts.
"Undyne, yes," she replies.
Flowey looks frustrated with both of them. "How is this helping Frisk?"
"I'm summoning Alphys through the power of social media. How about. 'lost the kid. #oops.' And now we wait about three seconds and-" A comment on the post appears. Papyrus reads it over her shoulder.
"IT SAYS 'WHAT, REALLY?'"
"Yep. Now lets just reply 'call me.' and leave the number and…"
Right on cue she gets a call. "Hey, yeah the kid's gone, they with you? No? …crud, well… let me know if they turn up. Alright, bye." She hangs up. "Well they aren't at the lab."
"Where else could they be," Flowey wonders.
Meanwhile, I see something ahead of Frisk. Looks like… a grayscale Monster kid? There's a slight resemblance anyway. They wear the same stripes and don't appear to have arms. So now what, Gaster? What do I do with this little thing?
Wherever Gaster is, he doesn't answer. Well, I suppose I'll just have to find out. I go to them and speak with them.
"Oh good, I was getting bored of being ignored. …You're not in your world right now? Do you think anyone misses you?"
Yes. *No.
"Oh… That's sad," the kid replies and stares straight ahead. He doesn't do anything else. Frisk walks around him, then talks to him again.
"Oh good, I was getting bored of being ignored. …You're not in your world right now? Do you think anyone misses you?"
*Yes. No.
"You're an indecisive person. Is that why you just said they don't miss you?" Then he stares straight ahead again.
I'm fairly perplexed by this. What am I meant to do? Fight him? Keep talking to him? I try the latter a few more times, each time yielding more or less the same result. I'm not given an option to fight though, so… It isn't too clear what I'm supposed to do. I leave him behind and keep looking.
Papyrus, Flowey, and Undyne look for a little while before speaking to eachother again.
"I'm going to check the lab…" Flowey says. "They must've found something by now, and maybe we can use all those creepy cameras Alphys has to find Frisk."
"SOUNDS LIKE IT MIGHT WORK," Papyrus says.
"Good, then take me there," Flowey says. "Undyne, can you stay here in case Frisk shows up?"
"Guess so," Undyne replies. Papyrus picks Flowey up and leaves for the lab. "Good luck…"
I wander a little more with Frisk. I've been going the same direction for several minutes. I've passed by the same gray monster kid three times. I got the same dialogue, the same options, the same responses. I… might have messed up. Just a little. …Again.
Just as I start considering ways to get Frisk out of the dark area I see light ahead. It's an arrow… and just ahead of it: a message. It says 'this way to the debug rooms.' Well there doesn't seem like there's anything else here. Though before I can even decide to go there, Frisk is running to the light. Just when I thought I had a good hold of them, nyctophobia wins out. Though I suppose at this point, they have as much of an idea what they're doing as I do. I let them take over and kick back to watch them. They walk through a gray door into the area.
They're exploring the rooms, each one seems to be pieced together from various elements of the world. There's a whole room of ice, and not too far from there I recognize the air vents of Hotland. Dark caves and grass and water from around Waterfall lie not too far from a room covered in the vines that wouldn't look out of place in the ruins. In one of the rooms is a snowball. Frisk pushes it around for a while, and rather than shrinking like the snowball from earlier, it grows. It grows to a ridiculous size, in fact, before Frisk abandons it. After traversing a few rooms, Frisk comes across a bowl of candy. A small sign lies in front of it, saying 'take them all.' Frisk goes to the bowl. The message becomes 'you can't. you already did.' Frisk takes a candy from their pocket and put it back. Then they take it back out.
"The weight of your greed is too much."
Frisk tries to move but can't. I can see them growing panicked, then throwing their candy to the ground before running though a gray door to the outside. Once they get outside, the door disappears, leaving them outside of the debug area entirely with no way back, back into the darkness. They hold their arms fearfully and start walking again.
Far ahead of them is the monster kid again. I've gotten a little sick of them, and I have Frisk keep walking. They only make it a little ways over before the monster shows up again. "Hey," he says. I have Frisk keep walking. They appear, in the way, and Frisk is forced to stop. "Hey," he says again. I go around the monster. Frisk walks, uninterrupted for a while before a much larger monster, looking like an amalgamate of many, many gray monster kids towers over Frisk.
"Why would you ignore me?" it asks in a loud and distorted voice. Frisk shakily draws their toy knife as a battle begins.
Flowey and Papyrus arrive at the lab before too long. Sans looks out the door at them. "…hey bro. flower. did you guys find the kid?"
"No," Flowey says, still distressed.
"Don't worry, we'll find them," Alphys says, checking her cameras before she even needs to be asked. "Hm… don't see them…" She keeps cycling through cameras for a few minutes before getting discouraged and stopping. "They… aren't anywhere I can see them."
Flowey frowns sadly, worried for Frisk when Sans jumps up, startling him. "there's a disturbance… looks like it's right near us."
"The b…basement maybe?" Alphys wonders.
"maybe," Sans says. "you two come with me." He looks at Flowey and Papyrus.
"What about Frisk?" Flowey asks.
"YEAH, I'M KIND OF WORRIED ABOUT THE LITTLE HUMAN TOO," Papyrus says.
"maybe they'll be around there or something," Sans says. "anyway come on. alphys, keep an eye on us with your cameras."
He leads them down to the basement, and it seems to be empty. "There's nothing here," Flowey says quietly. Papyrus carries him around, looking for anything that could be causing the disturbance. "Sans, this is a waste of time, we gotta find Frisk."
"we will, we will. chill," Sans says. Flowey isn't particularly comforted. They look around, eventually finding a large, gray door. "has… that always been there?"
"I don't remember it being here last time but I was kinda distracted," Flowey says.
Sans shrugs and opens it. "hello?" he calls into the dark room. Far within it, the three see eyes. Many too many of them, quickly growing larger. "oh no… run."
Papyrus does so but the Memory Heads gain on him quickly. One charges into Papyrus and he nearly falls, only just barely catching himself. Another one hits his arm and he loses his grip on the flower pot. It crashes into the floor, bouncing once and leaving a piece behind, before Flowey is launched out of it, skidding across the floor to the center of the room.
The Memory Heads surround him. Flowey grows afraid and creates a ring of bullets around himself. It keeps them back for only a moment before they move through the ring as though it wasn't even there. Sans quickly raises his hand, eye glowing brilliantly and leaving a ghostly trail whenever it moves. Several objects around the Memory Heads fly up, but they remain where they are. Sans frowns, then raises his hand again and Flowey launches up, hitting the ceiling with a soft thud.
"Ow…"
"sorry," Sans says quickly, slamming a filing cabinet into a Memory Head with little effect. "there's no way to fight these things…"
They surround Flowey, pulling him down and pooling around him. "Sans! Papyrus, Alphys… someone!" he yells out in fear. Papyrus run in, trying to knock them away, but they keep their hold of Flowey, moving around him and seeming to somehow converge around him. Where one begins and the next ends becomes hard to say. They fade away from the room, along with Flowey.
He's pulled into the darkness. His eyes are like saucers as he struggles to look around himself. "No… no…" Nearby, Frisk is still trying to fight. He spots them. "Frisk!" he shouts, struggling to get free. "Frisk, hold on!" he says quickly. But the Memory Heads are overpowering him, pulling him away. "Stop it… stop… Frisk!" He's losing sight of them. "No, no, you can't do this! Frisk hold on!" He sees Frisk fall as the monster rises, ready to strike. He knows his friend absolutely needs him, and it fills Asriel with DETERMINATION.
The Memory Heads cease to pull him, and then, slowly, they ceace to be. They're molded into a new shape, vaguely humanoid, but much more animalistic and though it's very hard to tell, almost fluffy looking, standing at about the same size as Frisk. The shape runs now, rushing to Frisk and getting between them and the attacking monster. The attack is blocked and Frisk is unharmed. They look up in surprise. The monster looks nearly as shocked, especially when a ring of bullets surrounds it. They crash into it, one by one and it is knocked back as the shape that was once Flowey moves forward. He doesn't stop attacking until it is on the ground, whimpering in a broken, garbled voice. He raises his hand and another ring of bullets appears.
Frisk wants to run, to hide, to do whatever they can to get away from the situation, but as they look at the silhouette, a memory stirs within them. I recognize it… Asriel reaching a paw out.
Just as the bullets are about to close in, Frisk grabs his arm and he turns to face them. His features are twisting in the same way that the Memory Heads did, though his outline remains solid as a small boss monster. Frisk swallows in fear and shakes their head. He looks at Frisk for a moment, then turns again, raising his hand. Frisk grabs him, turning him around forcefully and shakes their head again. Behind them, the monster stirs, getting up and slowly limping away. The small boss monster's silhouette looks back at it in panic, then back to Frisk, shifting features looking angry. Frisk swallows and rubs their eyes, but doesn't back away. Instead they step forward and hugs him tightly. After a moment's hesitation, he slowly hugs Frisk back.
The monster is gone and around them, the sounds of the lab are returning. They both appear back in the basement of the lab, overhead lights flickering slightly. Frisk looks around to the two brothers, who stare at them in mild shock before rushing to them both. The silhouette hides his face in Frisk's shoulder, startled. Frisk tries to shoo them away. Sans gets the message pretty quickly, keeping Papyrus from crowding around them. The silhouette flickers a little and Flowey falls unconscious to the floor. What's left of the Memory Heads is scattering away from them.
"AH GRAB THEM!"
"papyrus, don't worry about it. they're running away." Frisk flinches as they rush past, then quickly picks Flowey up, looking for their flower pot. Papyrus pushes it over to them and they carefully put him back into it, looking at the chip in the pot a little sadly. Sans approaches them carefully. "hey, kiddo… you okay now?" Frisk nods slowly, holding onto the flower pot tightly. Sans glances at Papyrus. "you see that?" he says quietly.
"YE-"
"sh…" Sans says. Papyrus seems to decide he can't speak that softly and simply nods his head. Sans glances up at the camera, hoping Alphys was able to keep watching through that. "there's no way of mistaking what he looked like… definitely looked like a boss monster."
AN: and on this episode of undertale, things get weird. 6 chapters left. I'll post two tomorrow but I have had one of those days so I'm just going to go take a nap now. If anyone leaves questions in a review, I'll respond then and not today, if that's alright.