"Tune…?"
"Yeah! Tune!" Frisk said "Do you like it?"
They smiled at the monster on top of the wardrobe, who was currently lying on their side, facing the wall. They slightly turned their head to look at Frisk questioningly.
"I-It's because I really like how your voice sounds!" they quickly tried to explain.
At first they had tried selecting a cool name that sounded like sharp objects, because of their feathers and claws. Actually, everything about the monster looked sharp. Like just the act of touching them could cause a cut. However, Frisk realized that maybe their name shouldn't hint at their destructiveness, because then people would be scared of them before getting to know them. So, they tried looking for the most pleasant thing about the monster, and the first one that came to mind was their voice. This lead to a long search of sound related words, which ended with Frisk selecting 'Tune' as the ideal name. Of course, because the few sounds that all of Frisk's friends had heard from the monster were limited to growling, screeching and hissing, everyone disagreed with the kid. It didn't matter, though, because Frisk had been confident that it was the right choice. Nevertheless, now that they were standing in front of the real judge of the name, their confidence faltered a little.
The monster stayed silent for a minute, just carefully watching their eager yet nervous demeanor. Frisk almost felt like that sharp look alone could bore holes into them. Finally, the monster went back to stare at the wall.
"My voice, huh?" they said, "Fine."
"Really?! You like it?" Frisk eyes sparkled with joy. Alright, maybe the monster wasn't even half as excited as they were about it, but Frisk was proud they had managed to make the monster accept something from them without reluctance. "Then… Nice to meet you, Tune!"
The newly named 'Tune' shifted in the cloth nest to lie on their belly and face towards Frisk. The movement caused Frisk to tense a bit and glance nervously at the monster.
Truth be told, the new monster still managed to make Frisk really anxious, even after visiting them several times. The visits had started shortly after the investigation with Sans and Undyne. To their father's dismay, Frisk kept sneaking into the monster's room to try and make them talk some more. Although it hadn't been working, Asgore had seen the positive reaction the kid had gotten out of the new monster the first time they snuck in their room, and he intuited that Frisk could make more progress than the king himself ever could. So he convinced Toriel that the monster was behaving exceptionally well lately, which had allowed Frisk to visit Tune more frequently. This could be considered a lot considering a couple of weeks had already passed since the investigation.
Frisk was worried that Toriel would want to visit to verify Asgore's words, because they wouldn't describe Tune's behavior as good, but they had to admit it wasn't a complete lie either. Tune had stopped growling at everyone, preferring now to just plain ignore them all (unless anyone tried to get too close). That… was another issue, though.
As far as Frisk knew, Tune had only spoken to them. Not that they said much, when they did choose to talk. Sometimes they would ignore Frisk as much as they would the others, albeit that happened mostly when someone stayed to watch Frisk through their visits to Tune. The monster wouldn't open their mouth if someone other than Frisk was in the room, and they would only reluctantly talk if the guardian stayed on the other side of the door. Frisk's solution to that was just outside the room.
Tune frowned and took a quick look at the door, causing Frisk to wonder if the monster could sense whether someone was behind it or not. After a moment, they shook their head and returned their attention to the kid.
"Frisk… Right?" they finally said.
"Oh!" Frisk exhaled a shaky breath. "Y-yeah! So you remember!"
That was good. At least they knew Tune was actually listening when spoken to.
Frisk looked at their watch. 1:25 P.M. They still had a couple of minutes before they needed to go. Moving slowly as to not startle the monster, Frisk took a package of cookies out of their bag, sat on the floor and started eating them.
"You know," Frisk said "we haven't found anything new lately. Undyne has been trying to discover the reason to why they lied to us about the place where everything happened."
They tried thinking carefully about what they should say next. Tune had already narrowed their eyes at them, and if they said anything wrong, the monster would just clam up for the rest of the day. They normally tolerated the progress reports Frisk brought to them, though.
"We really, really don't know what to do or what happened. We, uh, we could use some help?" they tried.
But Frisk sighed when they saw that Tune wasn't paying attention to them anymore, and instead, they were staring at the last two cookies in the human's hands.
"Oh. Do you want them? I'm kind of full."
Frisk stood up and offered the cookies to the monster. Tune didn't make a move for the offer, and, if anything, backed up a little. Frisk's shoulders slumped in disappointment. It wasn't the first time it had happened. They would have to leave them on the table and exit the room for Tune to take the cookies. They wondered if they would trust them fully one day. Frisk frowned as a thought occurred to them.
"You like human food a lot, don't you?" the kid asked them.
Tune brows shot up, but they didn't answer.
"Every time I come over with human food you always look like you want it. Did many monsters here in the surface couldn't eat monster food? Are you used to eat like a human?"
Tune avoided their eyes, confirming Frisk suspicions.
"Didn't you miss eating monster food? Or… maybe you never had any?"
Silence… although it was accompanied by quick glances to the cookies.
"Don't worry, then!" Frisk said with a big smile. "I'll tell Dad to change the menu so that you can eat all the human food you want!"
The watch beeped. 1:30 P.M. Time to go. Frisk calmly went to put the cookies on the table and said goodbye to their newly named friend. Tune didn't bother to acknowledge them and simply turned around to return to their previous position. Frisk didn't let it get to them. They knew Tune would ask for help sooner or later and Frisk would be sure to be there when they did. No one should go through what they had to all alone.
Frisk rapidly slipped through the door and immediately locked it behind them. They turned around to find Sans leaned against the right wall of the corridor. He lazily waved at them and motioned to the stairs with his head. Frisk nodded and hurried to go upstairs. They knew they would find Sans up there when they reached the living room. He was the monster whose presence behind the door was the only one Tune couldn't detect. Besides, he managed to come and go without a sound between rooms, so there was no way he would be noticed unless he wanted to. He was also pretty capable of hiding his magic flow, which Tune somehow seemed to be able to measure. In fact, the first time Sans had tried watching over Frisk during one of these visits, Tune hadn't taken their eyes off him, letting out occasional growls through the whole thing. Frisk… didn't know how to feel about that. They hoped Tune couldn't tell how strong Sans really was, or it would be hard to get them to trust him.
"hey, there." Sans greeted them from the couch as soon as they stepped through the door. "seems like they accepted the name, huh?"
Frisk nodded happily.
"heh. it looks like they have relaxed quite a bit since they arrived, don't you think?"
"Yeah! They are making a lot of progress! Maybe they'll even tell us what happened by next week!"
"let's hope so. and talking about progress, shouldn't we be heading out already? i mean, i have no problem with staying right here since undyne isn't too eager to see me again."
Sans shrugged nonchalantly. Frisk just smiled at him and crossed their arms. While Undyne wasn't being overly rude to him, it was clear she still didn't appreciate the skeleton's little prank. In fact, as revenge, she had convinced Toriel to ask him to be the main transportation between operations, knowing full well he couldn't bring himself to refuse any favor the queen asked of him. Of course, this was a direct attack to Sans' lazy tendencies.
"i'm sure alphys already has some information for us, though, so how about we get going?" Sans stood up and started walking to the front door.
"Alright!" Frisk hurried to follow after him. They were actually quite excited to visit Alphys. It had been a while since they had last seen the scientist. She did live close enough to Dawn, but her new lab-house was some miles away from the town itself. She still didn't like crowds and adding that to all that was happening, Frisk just hadn't had a good chance to visit her. Well, at least they wouldn't have to wait much more, because after they took a single step through Asgore's front door, they found themselves besides Sans, in front of the ex-Royal Scientist's home.
Frisk thought Alphys' new place was cozy. Since Undyne was now living with her, more space was added to the house, which included the living room they were now in. The fact that it was a total chaos added to the charm of the place, with random anime merchandise decorating walls and furniture, and a vast array of weapons visible everywhere you looked.
Frisk was sitting on a puff while they waited for Alphys to return from the back of the lab. After she had greeted them, she asked Sans to follow her for a moment, because she needed a second opinion on something before feeling confident in reaching a conclusion. So Frisk was left alone in the room.
It wasn't too long before Alphys and the skeleton came back. To Frisk's surprise, Undyne appeared behind Sans. That was a bit weird since she seemed to hate being inside the actual lab, probably because of how careful she had to be around all the equipment. None of their expressions told Frisk much.
"Soooo," they said impatiently, "what did you discover?"
"A headache" Undyne said, dropping on the puff next to Frisk's. Sans just stood there, looking thoughtful.
"W-well," Alphys started, "i-it's pretty hard to explain. I really wished I had a-another monster from up here to compare results, but…"
"There haven't been any reports about another one in years, apart from that punk." Undyne said, "So we only get what we already have."
"I-I can't really make a theory without having testing more variables a-and observing more subjects, b-but my hypothesis on the reason that this monster's magic attacks are so durable is because they have been affected by their environment. It probably happened to o-other monsters too, through the generations…"
"What do you mean?" Frisk asked.
"W-well, it's just an idea, but it seems that, somehow, the monsters up here slowly modified according to the needs of living with humans as a major t-threat. At f-first I was really confused when Undyne brought those feathers to me, because I couldn't imagine a reason why they were lasting so much, and s-so far from their caster t-too! So I ran a few tests on them and I found that they had an a-abnormally high level of physical matter on them."
"Huh? But…" Now Frisk was confused. "Aren't monsters made of magic?"
"Well, we are, b-but we do have a small amount of physical matter to help keep our forms solid. At first I was sure I was doing something wrong, so I kept repeating the processes again and again. R-right now, I have n-no doubt that's what is happening. A-at least with this monster."
"And why did that happen to monsters like Tune?"
"Tune? Is that what you called them?" Undyne looked at Frisk incredulous. "You need to wash your ears better, Frisk! I can certainly tell you that whatever comes out of that mouth of theirs is not a song!"
Frisk pouted at her, but opted to look expectantly at Alphys for her to continue.
"W-well, it is a nice name, I think?" She timidly smiled at Frisk. "A-anyways! The reason might be that the monsters slowly began gaining more matter to resist human attacks. It seems like a plausible explanation, a-and it might be useful to us, since we might be able to track those attacks to where they originally formed… b-but even so, there is still one thing that is b-bothering me…"
Alphys paused. She seemed… unsure, for some reason. She frowned and started pacing the room from left to right, probably searching for the appropriate words. Frisk was getting nervous just by watching her, and the question left their lips before they could help it.
"Is it… really bad?"
"it's not about it being bad." Sans said, looking sideways at Frisk. "it's about if it's possible or not. or rather, that it actually shouldn't be."
"It's," Alphys gulped. "determination."
The room fell awfully quite. Since the situation with the Amalgamates had been made public, Alphys had wished to just forget all about it, and the sole word 'determination' always made her uncomfortable. Frisk hoped she wasn't pushing herself too much with these experiments.
"There is," she continued, "a worrying level of determination in T-Tune's body. The only other monster that I know that has been able to live with such levels of that substance is…"
Alphys turned to look at Undyne with anxious eyes. Frisk felt their chest tighten when suddenly an image of Undyne melting appeared in their head. They didn't even want to imagine what Alphys must be feeling, having watched many monsters losing their forms because of an excess of determination. She probably feared it would happen to Undyne too.
"Aww, come on Alph! Don't look at me like that." Undyne said, obviously guessing what was going through Alphys' mind. "You've made the tests, already! You said that as long as most of my determination remained dormant, I should be fine and kicking butts!"
"M-maybe, but… that's the issue. The determination in Tune's body is… active. It has recently begun to decrease, if we go by the latest results of the newer feathers. B-but it's still too much, even for their amount of physical matter. I-I s-simply can't f-find an explanation to why they h-haven't…"
She shuddered. Undyne immediately got off the puff and went to put a comforting arm around her girlfriend's shoulders. Frisk thought it for the best to just change the topic.
"Well, um, Tune still won't talk about what happened. Do you have any ideas?"
"Maybe not ideas, but I do have some news!" Undyne announced, "Apparently, there's been a 'delay' and the information of the men that were killed is 'not available'" She imitated whoever told those last two words to her in an arrogant voice.
"Aaand I guess that information is necessary, right?" Frisk deflated. Why were the human adults so bad at cooperating? Didn't they want to help so that everyone could live in peace?
"Those jerks are holding their identities for some reason. It's all very suspicious if you ask me!" She held her fist in front of her and tightened it as if she could squeeze the truth out of those people just by doing that. She huffed, but then her eyes landed on Alphys, and her furious expression was replaced with a smile. "Fortunately, everyone's favorite nerd right here will show those humans that monsters aren't as stupid as they think! Right, Alphys?"
She slapped Alphys on the back, making her flinch but smile all the same.
"Y-yeah! I've been studying humans' digital storage systems a-and I think I will be able to create a program that, will let me h-hack them without, um, being d-discovered!" Alphys' face illuminated at the idea.
"That's the spirit!" Undyne said. "And with the Canine Unit searching the true place of the crime, we should be able to brag right in front of those human faces that they can't take us for fools!"
Undyne let go of Alphys to stand on the table in the middle of the room and hold a magical spear over her head with one hand while the other rested on her hip. Alphys giggled and watched her in admiration, blushing slightly. Frisk smiled fondly at them. They really were giving it their all to solve the case. Frisk knew that if they continued like this, they would be able to prove in no time that Tune deserved to live. Their smile fell a little, however, when they looked at Sans. He was unusually quiet, and he was just staring into the distance. His ever present smiled looked like a grimace.
"Sans? Are you okay?" Frisk asked him. Undyne and Alphys, noticing the change in the human's mood, remained silent waiting for the answer.
"eh, it's nothing. don't worry about it, kid" He shrugged. But, of course, when someone told Frisk not to worry about it they could just do the opposite. So they did the only thing they knew would make him talk: they latched to his arm in a death grip and made the biggest pout they could. Sans looked at them and let out a sigh.
"i just have a bad feeling about this." He said closing his eyes. However, his smile suddenly widened and without bothering to open his eye sockets he said, "I guess you could say…"
"DON'T!" Undyne jumped to try and cover his mouth, but the skeleton was out of her reach within a second.
"…that I feel it in my gut."
The responses were two female groans and a little laugh.
Hi, everyone! I'm back! I once again have stable Internet, so let's hope I can bring you regular updates! I was kind of busy and I couldn't write as much as I wanted so no multiple chapters for now. Sorry! D: However, I'm working on a new Undertale fic! Don't worry, it doesn't mean I will stop updating this one or How to Make Friends, so I hope you'll check it out when it's up!
Well, that's everything I wanted to say for now. Please review and tell me what you think! Constructive criticism is always appreciated!