Chapter 2! These are actually a lot shorter than normal. I'm not that great at writing. If anything, this is just a little hobby I have.
So, this might be pretty bad because I'm not entirely enthusiastic about writing about Misako/Toriel. You know, in the show at this point Misako is completely pointless. All she serves is to be Lloyd's mom that does nothing.
Then again... this is Toriel we're talking about. Goat mom is best mom.
I would tell you to play "Fallen Down" for the beginning, but tbh Misako isn't worth it. So don't.
So, I've gotten a little lazy which means I'm not going to use the game as a reference to what Toriel says, because I forget. So I'll make up my own lines (i mean... come on, that's what writing is) that match her personality. You know, besides the first three lines. Those are important.
EDIT: I've been writing this chapter for like a month now because the ruins are SO boring. And MISAKO? PLEASE! THIS IS LIKE THE MOST BORING THING TO WRITE! LET ME GET TO SNOWDIN! PLEASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
also, last chapter i screwed up. Let's just pretend that last chapter Frisk didn't speak because I'm making her selectively mute
inb4 people tell me im bad at planning
also tbh pacifist route is boring af to write about
"My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it."
Mark Twain
"What a terrible creature, torturing such a poor, innocent youth..." The woman muttered, watching as the golden dragon retreated into the grass, disappearing for at least a short while. Then she looked down at the girl. She seemed genuinely concerned about the child and her wellbeing. Perhaps there were kind humans in the Underground. Nevertheless, Frisk saw her as a potential threat and attempted to slowly shuffle backwards on her behind, afraid of this woman. People always did say to never talk to strangers.
"Ah, do not be afraid, my child." The woman reassured Frisk, beckoning towards the girl with arms outstretched. "I am Misako, caretaker of the Ruins.
"Come along now, I'll take you to my home, where you shall be safe. It has been a while since anyone has fallen down here. Follow me, my child." Misako turned around and started to take some steps, the long sleeves of her jacket swishing around her slim form. Frisk could barely see the woman as she started to walk away; it was still very shadowy within the room. Against her better judgement, the young girl decided she had a better chance of surviving by following this woman than staying in the room, which didn't appear to have any food or any conceivable source of water in it. Though Frisk was certain she must be thousands of feet underground, she still heard the unmistakeable sound of water dripping upon solid rock.
She reluctantly followed the aging woman to the next room.
Passing through the darkness, Frisk saw a light at the end of the hallway. The shining beacon filled her with determination. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time, Frisk kept a close eye on Misako's back in front of her, making sure not to lose her in the darkness. Once in a while, the girl turned to look back, making sure Goldy wasn't following them. She had seen that kind of thing more than one time in her life. The prospect of being followed chilled her.
Eventually, the woman and child found themselves in a large room filled with brightness. It had a double staircase leading upwards to one central door, reminiscent of the Titanic's Grand Staircase. All the bricks making up the hall were tinted with a magenta hue, while the steps on the staircase were plain slate gray. In the center of the hall, there was a box of red flower petals, and on the far side, there was what looked like a shining golden star, barely existing in time.
Misako, seemingly ignorant of the twinkling star, made the grueling journey of going up the stairs to wait for Frisk at the door. Curiously, the girl gently ambled over to the star, and reached out her hand. From above, Misako stared back down at the girl questioningly. What was the child attempting to do? They were putting their hand out to thin air. For a moment Misako wondered if the child was having severe hallucations and/or brain damage from the fall. Perhaps she should ask the child to say "apple."
Frisk attempted to brush the shining, twinkling golden star with her finger, but found her hand had phased right through it.
It was at that moment she heard a peculiar little voice in her head that wasn't quite her own.
SAVEd. Frisk. LV 1.
Shrugging it off and deciding it was nothing, the girl continued to follow Toriel. Again with the long hallway, and the light at the end.
"The Ruins are full of puzzles, my child. Please adjust yourself to the sight of them. If you ever traverse the Ruins by yourself, you'll have to solve quite a few to get around here." The pair were in a room with six pressure plates on the ground, and a doorway blocked by spikes. Misako stepped on a couple of the plates and the spikes retracted from the ground, allowing Frisk to pass.
Moving onto the next room, Misako brushed the collar of her jacket to the side, and briskly walked over to a lever on the wall. Next to the lever was some writing clearly made in marker. Inscribed on the wall was "Please pull this lever. Yes, this one."
Misako stopped and faced Frisk again. "Now, I'd like you to solve a puzzle on your own. I cannot always solve puzzles for you, because I have things to do in the house." Still unsure whether this Misako woman could be trusted, Frisk absentmindedly nodded and eagerly trotted up to the lever. It proved to be more than difficult to pull it down. It required lots of force, which her small, frail body did not have, much to her chagrin. Misako had to pull it down for her. Continuing past a small bridge which crossed over a creek of dirty water. Frisk moved onto the next lever built into the wall, which had more markings next to it – "Please pull this lever to continue."
With Misako's help, the lever went down, and the girl heard a click to her right as the spikes blocking the doorway to the next room retracted into the ground, granting safe passage.
In the next room, there was a bend in the path. Near the next door there was a small dummy about Frisk's height. It had a marsupial look to it, and was fixed upon a sort of bobble stand. It was made with soft flannel coverings, and no doubt filled with hay. It almost seemed alive to Frisk, as if a ghost had possessed it. Misako went to stand in front of the dummy. Was this going to be some sort of test?
"In the Underground, some people may attack. It is only natural. When you are fighting someone, try to strike up a conversation. Be nice to them, and maybe they won't want to attack you anymore. It works that way down here. I don't know if we are as nice as people on the surface, but I like to think that we are far welcoming than the surface humans." Frisk faintly remembered the orphanage in the back of her head. It hadn't even been a while since she had left the dreaded caretaking building, but it was already becoming a distant memory in her mind.
"I'd like you to practice with this dummy here. I understand it can be tempting to fight back and potentially... remove the threat, but believe me, it's better to make friends."
Not entirely sure of how to strike up a conversation with an inanimate object, Frisk calmly stepped up to face the dummy, and stared into its unmoving, sewn eyes. It motionlessly stared back at her, the button eyes pouring into her soul. Frankly, it seemed almost like this dummy was being possessed – it just seemed like a real thing! ... except it looked like a dummy.
"Um... hello. My name's Frisk." the girl signed, with expert dexterity. Misako watched the child curiously to discover that the girl preferred to use ASL. Whether or not it was selective or not, that did not matter. Thankfully, all her experience with children prior to being trapped underground allowed her to easily understand the child. She absentmindedly tugged at the ribbon at her throat as she recalled a child that had fallen before. It had been another girl, who loved ballet. Instead of using words, the child had used dance to express themselves. When the old woman had met them, she was astounded by their ideas and beliefs, and secretly admired them.
Then, one day, the ballerina had asked a question.
Misako never saw her again.
As Misako watched the girl in front of her innocently attempt to communicate with a dummy she privately knew was a dummy occupied by one of the ghost's cousins. She didn't know the ghost by name, but she knew that he had multiple cousins by the few comversations she had had with him. Apparently, one was an aspiring actor and entertainer, and the other one was possessing the dummy she had made years ago.
Her mind wandered back to the ballerina. In the back of her head, she knew the girl had probably been brutally murdered by her cowardly husband, in an attempt to get a "clean, powerful human SOUL" in order to break the barrier that trapped them all underground. Heaven knows where the body was now. Misako dejectedly thought about the fact that only one of her children had gotten a proper burial.
After about ten minutes of talking to a dummy with no response, Frisk impatiently turned to Misako, who was staring wistfully off into the distance behind Frisk, which was a wall. The girl attempted to wave to get her caretaker's attention, but the elderly woman's attention did not break from the purple brick wall.
A tug on Misako's pant leg finally erased her ignorance, and she looked down at Frisk. "Ah! I see you have done well, and nobody is hurt. See? Nobody ever has to get hurt if you just talk everything out."
"There are lots of people on the surface who don't care if you try to talk it out," Frisk signed, a statement which Misako frowned upon. While it was true, she firmly believed that everything could be resolved through diplomacy, agreemnt, and talking. To Misako, there were no truly bad people in the world, just misunderstandings.
Without saying a word, Misako continued onward to the next room, where she decided to give the girl a real puzzle. Frisk eagerly followed Misako to the next purple brick-wall room, unsure where this was all really going. Was there going to be an end to the seemingly endless ruins? Was this just her imagination? Was she dreaming, and was actually back in the orphanage taking a nap?
Taking a look into the room, she noticed a pattern on the ground where the brick was a lighter shade of purple than the rest of the floor. It was more of a lavender type of purple. The pattern was a zigzag, except instead of completely diagonals, it was more of an up-and-down pattern. Misako turned to Frisk, motioning towards the ground. "I wonder if you can solve this puzzle...?" Misako murmured softly, gesturing for Frisk to attempt to solve it.
The young child immediately went to work, contemplating the shape of the path, the length of each bit; she studied the vines on the walls in case there was some sort of secret message that gave her a hint. In the corner of her eye she saw Misako standing at the entrance, watching her contemplatively as she tried to complete the puzzle in an attempt to impress Misako.
Frisk decided to check if the following hallway up ahead had any hint. On the wall, there was a stone sign that had been drilled into the brick. Engraved on the sign was, "The left room is the right room's blueprint."
She didn't entirely know what a blueprint was, but understood that it had something to do with the room after the hallway. The girl peeked around the corner and nearly jumped out of her skin at the sign of many towering, acute spikes protruding out of the ground. She felt a hand on her shoulder, and noticed Misako standing behind her, an expression of concern written on her face. "Perhaps puzzles are too dangerous for now," she noted, heeding Frisk's face of fright. "Take my hand, please."
Frisk's small hand immediately latched onto Misako's, and slowly the two made their way through the spike maze.
Finally, the pair arrived at the longest hallway Frisk had seen in her entire short life. "My child, I have a difficult request to ask of you," Misako said, her voice an octave lower than Frisk usually heard. "I must ask you to walk to the end of this hallway by yourself... please forgive me for this."
With that, Misako took off sprinting to the end of the seemingly endless hallway. How she managed to do that at her age was beyond Frisk, but the girl started out walking to the end. As she walked, she observed that the hallway seemed to get pretty dark.
Dark, darker, yet darker.
The darkness keeps growing.
The shadows cutting deeper.
Frisk started to openly panic as the hallway's walls seemed to begin to close in on her. It got darker and darker as time rolled on. She opened her mouth to scream for Misako's help, but no sound came out.
Go ahead! Cry into the darkness! Mommy! Daddy! Somebody help!
...
But nobody came. Boy! What a shame!
Frisk, now fearing for her life, began to run at full speed in hopes of finding Misako. At this point, the woman was her only hope -
"Greetings, my child! Do not be afraid, I was merely behind this pillar the whole time. There was no need to be frightened, you see -" Misako was caught off guard as Frisk barreled into her, crying her eyes out.
Surprised, Misako bent over and took the child in her arms, letting the girl sob into her pant leg before picking her up. "I'm sorry if that was tramautic for you. Why don't we go home?"
GOOD ENOUGH. This took about about 2 months to write for 3 reasons:
ruins/misako = boring af
me = lazy af
pacifist route = boring af
And... next time we'll be seeing a very rebellious child who tries to run away from home for the second time! Maybe even a bit of punster Jay...
hey, what do you call a lightbulb charged with lightning?
I dunno, enLIGHTen me hahahahahahahaha
on a more DARK (hahah) note, I've beaten Sans 25 times now.
And genocide Red (if you've ever played the fangame, it's a really good fangame for Undertale) I've beaten 12 times now.
both of them i've beaten with no healing items. haven't done a no-hit yet.