Chapter 13: Where No Dog Has Gone Before

Hmm, interesting... I thought. In the middle of nowhere, there was a monster with a food cart, who seemed pretty down. Frisk, of course, was giving him a wide berth. I figured this would be as good a chance as ever.

I walked up to the monster, who was a tall humanoid blue bunny in a yellow shirt with a vertical red stripe, and red pants, the colors matching an umbrella attached to his cart. He didn't seem to notice me, and was muttering to himself, "I don't understand why these aren't selling... It's the perfect weather for something cold..."

"Hey, there," I greeted him. "What'cha selling?"

"OH!" He replied upon noticing me, perking up, "A CUSTOMER! Sorry, I didn't notice you there!" He cleared his throat. "Well, I happen to be selling Nice Cream! It's the frozen treat that warms your heart!"

"Well then, sounds great." I looked over to Frisk, calling out, "hey! You want some Nice Cream!?"

She stopped as she tried to sneak past the bunny monster, and looked over in fear.

"Hey, it's alright, he's friendly. I mean, he's giving out 'Nice Cream'. What's better than that?"

"Yes. And every Nice Cream comes with a free compliment!" the Nice Cream guy added.

"Come on over here!" Frisk nervously came over. I smiled at the bunny monster. "Sorry, she's... shy around people."

"Oh, no worries! I'll be sure to put a smile on that face!"

"That's what I'm hoping for." Frisk reached us. "So, could you tell her what flavors you have? She can't speak, so please be patient with her."

"Okay," and the bunny monster began listing flavors to little Frisk, once so she knew what they were, and a second time so she could pick her choice with a head nod (how thoughtful of him). There were a lot of flavors (21 in total, as I counted), so it took a while, but eventually, they got what she wanted. "Strawberry?"

Frisk nodded.

"Okay, here you go," and the monster gave Frisk the treat, before asking me, "and for you?"

"Chocolate," I told him. As he got me my treat, I asked, "so, how much?"

"Oh, 15 G for each!" I gave him the payment, and he waved us off. "Thank you, have a super-duper day!"

As we moved on, Frisk opened hers up, and looked inside. Along with the ice cream bar, the wrapper has some wording inside.

I looked over and read, "Love yourself! I love you!" I smiled. "How... 'Nice'!"

Frisk smiled back, then she pointed to the wrapper, then to me. "What... are you saying you love me?"

Frisk nodded.

"Well, I love you!" I told her. As she smiled in return, I opened my Nice Cream. "Now, mine says... 'Are those claws natural?'" I just looked at my hands, my NON-CLAWED hands. "Right... such beautiful claws." Frisk had a silent chuckle at that.

After just a few steps across a small bridge (which I crossed very quickly, small or not), we ran into Sans again, who standing by another area of packed snow, making a low pit, where a large snowball rested inside.

"sup', ya know, i've been thinking about selling treats too," Sans told us. "want some fried snow? it's just 5 G."

"Oh, geez..." I commented. "Sure, 5 G, right?"

"did i say 5 G? i meant 50 G."

Oh, what the heck, I thought. "Fine."

"really? how about 5,000 G?"

I think I know what's going on here. "Sounds good."

"50,000 G. that's my final offer.

"I'll take it, ...though I don't have the G."

"what? you don't have the money?" Sans replied, jokingly flabbergasted. "hey, that's okay. i don't have any snow."

"I figured."

I looked and found Frisk by the large snowball. And upon closer inspection, the snow pit was a long path of sorts, reminding me of a gold course (at least what I've seen in pictures of the surface).

"So... Sans, could you tell me about this right here?" I motioned to the course.

"well, this is the 'ball game'," Sans explained. "you simply push the 'ball' into the pit at the end. nut be careful, if you're too slow, the ball will shrink. Depending on how you get the 'ball' there, depends on the flag you get."

"Okay..." I replied, before turning to Frisk. "Frisk, want to try a round together?"

Frisk nodded. I had Frisk run over to the other end of the course, and then I pushed the ball to her. She then intercepted the ball, and pushed down past the next bend of the course. I ran to intercept the ball en route, and quickly realized... I was about to step on a patch of ice in the middle of the course. Still, I managed to keep my footing long enough to redirect towards the hole. I still slipped and fell on my butt, but I was able to get the ball into the hole.

"nice, hole-in-one!" Sans exclaimed, while Frisk clapped happily. "excellent finishing move, too."

"Yeah... because falling on your butt is always fun," I countered with sarcasm.

I got and noticed that, indeed, a red flag had risen out of the hole upon the ball entering it. Both Frisk and I approached it. There was a note on the flag, saying, "Bravery. Justice. Integrity. Kindness. Perseverance. Patience. Using these, you were able to win at 'Ball Game'. (You are awarded 50G.)"

"Nice," I replied, finding a pouch of gold with the note. As I added the coins to my own gold pouch, I said, "now I think I can buy some fired snow."

Frisk read the note herself, and then signed to ask, What do all these words mean?

I took a moment to reread the note, realizing she talking about the aspect traits at the beginning of the description, which were all color-coded.

"Remember what I told you about the color of our Souls. How the red means Determination."

Frisk nodded.

"Well, these are the other six of the most common Soul Traits. The colors of each trait even accurately match up with what the color of the Souls would be if they had the respective Trait. Like Patience, which would be a light-blue." I pointed the written word 'Patience' on the note, to make my point.

Frisk signed, that's cool! Do you know anyone with a Patience Soul?

I grew silent for a moment, "I did... once." I began to tear up, thinking about it. "Sorry, I don't like to talk about it."

Okay...

Trying to find something to cheer us up after that question, a looked around and found a random snowball, not on the course, just sitting a short distance beyond the end of the course. "Hey, look at that!"

Frisk looked over to the snowball.

I whispered to her, "it looks like a snowball... but actually, it's a 'snowdecahedron'."

And Frisk, once again, laughed silently.

Moving on from our game, we passed by another pair of stations nearby the course, nestled in some trees, with a sign between them. The one on the left was titled as "His", and the one on the right was titled as "Hers".

The sign read, "SMELL DANGER RATING: Snow Smell - Snowman, WHITE Rating, Can become YELLOW Rating. Unsuspicious Smell - Puppy, BLUE Rating, Smell of rolling around. Weird Smell - Humans, GREEN Rating, Destroy at all costs!" Each color was written in the actual color it was, except for "GREEN", which was written in red for whatever reason. Maybe these guys were color blind.

"Okay... these guys must be nearby... somewhere..." I said to myself. But I didn't get to think much about, because as we continued on past the stations, we ran into our favorite pair of skeletons.

"AH, HUMAN! I HOPE YOU'RE READY FOR..." Papyrus started upon our arrival, before looking around... and getting an annoyed face. "SANS! WHERE'S THE PUZZLE!"

Sans, now standing by his brother, replied with, "it's right there. on the ground." He motioned to a piece of paper on the ground. "trust me. there's no way they can get past this one."

We walked over to look, and found that it was a word search.

I laughed. "Really? So this was Sans' confounding puzzle?" Well, at least Sans was true to his word. This was indeed nothing to worry about.

Upon realizing I wasn't bothered by the "puzzle", Papyrus got even more annoyed. "SANS! THAT DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!"

"whoops," Sans replied, "i knew i should have used today's crossword instead."

"WHAT!? CROSSWORD!?"

"Oh my gosh, really Sans?" I added.

"EXACTLY, I CAN'T BELIEVE HE SAID THAT!" Papyrus continued, though what he said next was even more surprising. "IN MY OPINION... JUNIOR JUMBLE IS EASILY THE HARDEST."

"what? really, dude? That easy-peasy word scramble?" Sans exasperated. "that's for baby bones."

"UN- BELIEVABLE," Papyrus replied in disbelief, before looking towards me. "HUMAN! SOLVE THIS DISPUTE! WHICH HARDER?"

"...Um, I don't know. Honestly, both crossword and junior jumble are pretty easy for me. I did these kinds of puzzles a lot growing up, so these are just word games to me."

"WHAT! HOW ABSURD!"

"Sorry, I can't help you here."

"THIS IS A COP OUT, HUMAN. I DEMAND THAT YOU-"

Before Papyrus could insist I give a proper answer, Frisk started jumping up and down, holding up Sans' word search.

"you didn't," Sans commented.

I motioned for Frisk to calm down, and then took the paper from her. "She did," I told Sans, as Frisk had indeed completely finished the word search. "She found each one."

Frisk nudged me, and when I looked over, she signed, this word is weird, and she pointed to one of the longer words.

Looking at it, I could see while she didn't even try to sign it. It wasn't even a word, much less being something you COULD easily sign, it was just... gibberish. What it said was "giasfclfebrehber". Could you even pronounce that!?

I looked to find where it was hidden, which wasn't hard. It was just the entire top row of letters in the search map. "Okay... it's... weird all right. But not hard to find," I commented.

Frisk pointed to a letter in the gibberish-word, then back to the same "word" in the list. As I inspected them closer, I noticed that the one letter she pointed to was different than it was in the list, the first E in the "word" being a U on the map, spelling "GIASFCLFUBREHBER".

"Okay, so that one is wrong, on top of being just gibberish, right?" I asked, and Frisk nodded in response. "Well, I did the best you could, despite the error on their part. I'd say you finished it to completion!"

Frisk clapped in happiness.

"SO... SANS' PUZZLE... ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING," Papyrus commented.

"seems so," Sans replied.

"WELL, EXCELLENT JOB, TINY HUMAN! TRULY, HUMANS ARE VERY INTELLIGENT... TO OUTSMART MY BROTHER! EVEN I FIND THAT DIFFICULT... NYEH! HEH! HEH HEH!" And then he ran off.

"Did he just...?" I motioned to Sans.

"eh, don't worry about it, it's fine," Sans replied. "papyrus... finds difficulty in interesting places. yesterday, he got stumped trying to 'solve' the horoscope."

"Okay then... Well, see ya, buddy."

As we moved on, I had to ask. "So... do you feeling smart, outsmarting the skeleton bros?"

Frisk thought for a moment, before signing, yeah. I'm much smarter than them!

"Good," I replied. "And do you think you're getting more comfortable with them?"

Kind of... They are funny! But...

"They're still scary, right? I get it. The things Papyrus does can be a bit terrifying to deal with... until it gets messed up on his account. I get monsters are being very confrontational right now, but they are good people if you give them the chance. Let me see..."

I looked around to see if anyone was around. It was about a 50-50 chance someone around. In a forest like this, it makes sense that you wouldn't run into anyone out here, at least quickly, and yet, I knew monsters liked to hang around here, so it wasn't unlikely.

It took a minute, but I noticed someone in the distance. "Hey, over here!"

The creature spun around, and began to approach. I intended to greet them, until they got close enough for me to make out their details.

...And it was another dog.

To be specific, he was a bipedal dog with a cream-colored thick coat, shorter than me, wearing a suit of armor, and holding a long sword in one hand, and large, triangular-shield that was as tall as he was in the other hand. The shield had the same insignia on it that was on Toriel's outfit.

"Hey, boy," I greeted. "How you doing."

The monster simply gave us a happy expression, his tongue hanging out.

"So... think you can help-" I started, before the dog made a move to attack. He leapt out at me, attempt to do a lunge attack on me. I quickly dodged to the side, and Frisk freaked out. "Hey, it's okay," I comforted her, "he must be part of the Royal Guard, like the other dog. But I'm sure he's a good boy."

I took a look at the monster to try to place exactly what kind of monster he was. "Okay..." I singed to Frisk, this is the Lesser Dog. He wields a stone dogger made of pomer-granite! I added that last bit to make Frisk laugh, which would hopefully calm her down.

And it seemed to have worked, because that's exactly how she reacted. The Lesser Dog cocked his head to one side.

"Okay, these guys love to be pet. Think you can give him some love?"

Frisk nodded, and approached the Lesser Dog. She was nervous, I was sure, but she lifted her hand...

And she barely did that and Lesser Dog got excited. ...And I swore his head got higher.

"As I expected," I said.

Of course, he wasn't excited enough not to fight. He let loose a tiny bark, and sent forth some magic spears, standing vertically and traveling across the ground. One was another blue attack, like from before, and having learned from the last Royal Guard-Dog, Frisk stood still, and it didn't affect her. The second spear was normal, and Frisk had to back up to avoid it, before it slowed down, and then flew back to the Lesser Dog before disappearing.

Frisk approached one more time, and lightly the dog. It was already overexcited...

And indeed, its head was getting higher, because its neck was getting longer.

What the... I thought. I've never seen this before.

He did another one of his spear attacks, and Frisk dodged, then want to pet the Dog. It raised its head up to meet her hand... and I'm sure to elongate its neck.

So, of course, she did it again. And the dog's neck grew again.

At this point, I figured I'd have some fun. "You pet the Dog. It was a good Dog."

Frisk smiled and pet it again, the neck getting even longer...

"Its excitement knows no bounds."

And again...

"Critical pet! Dog excitement increased."

And again...

"You have to jump up to pet the Dog," I told her, so she tried again, but couldn't. It just got excited, and its neck lengthened further.

It was clearly overstimulated, and the dog was making excited noises, and... a motor revving? A plane taking off? Kettle whistle? Okay?

And Frisk continued to pet it, moving to rubbing the back of its neck, and there showed no signs of two of them stopping any time soon.

"There is no way to stop this madness..." I said, mostly to myself in exasperation as it continued.

Soon the dog's neck raised into the cloudy... skies? I guess. We were underground, but the cavern above us was filled with a dense white fog, with the odd stalactite poking through. Point was, the dog's head was starting to poke into the dense fog.

"Looks like the Lesser Dog has entered the realm of the clouds," I joked.

Frisk tried to do some clapping as a means to call out to the dog, but it was too late, he could not hear her. There was a faraway bark, but no reaction beyond that, as his head disappeared into the clouds.

...

Welp, that's that.

I was about to tell Frisk we should finish up, but then I noticed the Lesser Dog's head poking out of the clouds, having flipped upside-down.

"Oh, boy."

The Dog's head lowered to a point where Frisk could reach him again.

And she pet the Lesser Dog, as his head lowered.

And this continued, the Dog panting in excitement as he continued to lower.

And it continued...

And it continued...

"It's possible that you may have a problem," I told Frisk. She didn't respond.

We were doing this for several minutes already, and now it kept going even longer. Eventually, the Lesser Dog's head began to touch the snowy ground. And then it began to dig into the ground.

Frisk tried to pet its head, but couldn't, and on the account that the top of its head was literally in the ground.

"Lesser Dog is unpettable..." I looked at the buried head, "...but appreciated the attempt."

I could hear some whining, and I knew it was probably because he couldn't see Frisk. I also knew this had gone way beyond ridiculous.

I heard a nearby sound, and the head was poking out of the snow nearby.

What the heck... I thought. "Hello there," I called to him, and of course, Frisk noticed, running over to him. "Frisk, perhaps mankind was not meant to pet this much."

But of course, it continued.

In the hope of getting Frisk to stop, I said, "Lesser Dog is questioning your choices." Of course, I was the one with the questions.

And it continued, to the point where he could be reached again.

"He's beyond your reach, Frisk," I told her. "This Dog... has gone where no Dog has gone before."

And Frisk petted him one more time.

"Really..."

After about maybe ten minutes of... all of that, we helped the Lesser Dog dig himself out. While his neck had shrunk, it was still elongated, and slunk back as he ran off in joy, to do who knows what.

"Well, I can't deny that went... better than I hoped," I commented.

So, all monsters are like him? Frisk signed.

"...Yeah." All monsters were weird, and I've been around them for most of my life (outside of the Void), but I didn't know what to make of this situation.

I like dogs! Frisk exclaimed in sign.

"Yeah, I like dogs, too," I said. With nothing else to talk about, I motioned for Frisk and I to move on.

Author's Note: Aw, man, I've been wanting to write the Lesser Dog part for a while. I was going to put it in the last chapter, but on top of forgetting when it actually takes places (in fact, I got him after the spaghetti room, which would've been actually next, so I still put it in a room early), as I mentioned last chapter, just couldn't fit it in.

I really wanted to put in the line "The Lesser Dog is learning to read", but I couldn't put it in, not in a way that makes sense. See, it's a very forth-wall-breaky line, considering it's referring to when the Lesser Dog reaches the text box. But even though Undertale is known for fourth wall breaks, I'm not writing this story that way, so I felt it would've been too jarring to try to fit it in. I guess I could've added a sign to read somewhere in the area description, but where? It wouldn't make sense.

So, this chapter was really about giving Frisk a big boost in her confidence with monsters. I mean, with ice cream and dogs, that's some fun stuff that kids generally like, so she should be getting an idea about how nice monsters really are now.

And finally, the word search scene. Yeah, I didn't want to pick either crossword or junior jumble. I personally don't find either too challenging (then again, I don't do those at all really, but they don't seem challenging to me). And honestly, if I could've, I would've picked word searches. Not because it's hard, but because I despise them so much. To explain, I had a mandatory Spanish class in middle school, and we had to do word searches a lot in that class. And I hated that class. Sorry, but I don't think I can become bilingual (unless computer code counts. I mean it is a "language", just not a spoken one).

And yes, the fun twist to this scene was that Frisk did the word search anyways. I liked that idea.