Chapter 20: Diving into the Waters
"When four Bridge Seeds align in the water, they will sprout."
After reading that sign, I looked over, and of course, Frisk was already on the case. She was dropping the Seeds into the water, letting them float to the other side, and once all four of the seeds that were present lined up, they bloomed into pink flowers, making a bridge across the water.
And Toby promptly walked onto the first flower, and laid down, trying to take a nap.
"Nice," I told the little girl. "You know the place well?"
Frisk slowly raised her hands, and signed, yeah. This is as far as I went. Undyne is at the end.
I remember, I thought. And I know this place pretty well, too.
Getting Toby up, and crossing the flower bridge, we found ourselves in the next room, where there was more of the same with the Bridge Seeds. It was a bigger room, and the exit was off to the left, around the corner, with water separating it from the main area, and that's where the seeds came in.
But I was looking over to an open way in the right corner... wasn't there a walkway here?
While Frisk started to do her thing, Toby excitedly following her around, I looked over at the waterway.
The platform had broken. But the other side was still intact...
"Frisk, I'll be back in a moment!" I called over to her. Then I engaged Blue Soul mode on myself, and used its gravity-defying abilities to leap over the water, and then kick off the other wall, landing on the platform.
I needed to see it... one more time. I never spent much time here, but I did have some private talks here.
Here was a simple gray bench, and an Echo Flower.
I remembered I once had a talk with Pristina, Gaster's late wife...
Didn't you want to talk to Wingding about something? I remember once asking her.
What!? What are you talking about? she replied in surprise.
Oh, you know...
No, I really don't...
I was talking about her obvious crush on my friend, but that wasn't the talk that got her to finally admit her feelings. That wasn't until a couple chats later. I think Gaster was demonstrating his Gaster Blaster. With some unplanned help from me. Those were good times.
Though I had to wonder... Gaster was rather dense when it came to romantic matters, but was he ever thinking about-
"I just wasn't ready for the responsibility."
I looked up, thinking that maybe Gaster was here. But it was just the Echo Flower.
No one must've been here for a long time, I thought.
I sat down on the bench, looking down. Gaster was here too. Here in Waterfall. I knew I had to see him again. But... would he be willing to listen this time?
As I thought on this, I noticed something. A lone quiche... sitting underneath the bench.
Monster food was made magic, so it would never rot. So it was still good, I knew that. It was partially eaten, but mostly unfinished.
I picked it up and inspected it. It took me a moment to realize...
It was MY quiche. I had made this a long time ago.
But how did it get here? Last I made quiche was... that one party.
I decided to leave it. I just wasn't ready... I supposed. Not ready to look back on everything that happened.
I leapt back to the main area, where, but of course, there was a monster challenging Frisk.
"Of course. Frisk!" I called out.
The monster in question was some sort of merman with tanned skin and a green tail, but he had a horse's face. He was super muscular, having a RIDICULOUS 12-pack, and a mane of black, luscious hair.
And I knew that this was going to be... an experience.
"Aarons" I sounded. These guys were annoying. Creepily flirtatious, and always flexing. Literally.
In fact, as I approached, Frisk was IN a flexing competition with the guy. Something that when I was younger, I could win just by getting them going.
...But then this Aaron had to notice me.
"Well, hello there," he told me, losing interest in Frisk. "You seem a little small... but I can tell that you have the mature aura about you." And he winked. These guys always winked.
"Excuse me?" I asked. While he wasn't wrong about my "mature" aura, I was twenty... he called me small. I didn't like that.
Failing to notice my disdain, he continued with, "would you like to ride this seahorse? I happen to have a lot of... HP (Horsepower)." He whispered that last part, as subtle clarification. And of course, he winked.
And I did what any woman would do in this situation...
SLAP!
The Aaron immediately recoiled, looked at me in shock, and then flew away.
I took a quick breath, before I felt a tug on my shirt.
Frisk was looking up at me, and signed, you did a violence...
"...Sorry. But, that was different." I knelt down to explain. "You see, that guy was being creepy and uncomfortable, using... adult language. And older girls might slap someone for that."
Frisk nodded, and signed, I think he was flirting.
"Yes... that was the adult language that made me uncomfortable."
Will someone slap me?
I rubbed the top of her head. "Let's hope it never comes to that."
Getting up, I noticed that Frisk had finished the bridge of flowers while I was gone. "I supposed it's time to go."
But as we tried to move on, there was a ring on my phone. Answering it...
"HELLO! THIS IS PAPYRUS!" the voice on the other end greeted. It was Papyrus.
"Papyrus? How did you-" I started.
"HOW DID I GET THIS NUMBER...?" he asked for me. "IT WAS EASY! I JUST DIALED EVERY NUMBER SEQUENTIALLY UNTIL I GOT YOURS! NYEH HEH HEH HEH!"
"That's... interesting," I replied. I suppose it was plausible. It wasn't like the Underground had that many phone numbers.
"YES... WELL, I DO SWEAR THAT I'VE SEEN THE NUMBER BEFORE. BUT I DON'T KNOW FROM WHERE..."
My guess was that maybe... Gaster made my phone, so perhaps he still had my number listed somewhere. Perhaps Paps saw it once...? Eh, didn't matter.
There was something else on my mind.
"Papyrus, are you okay?" I asked him.
"WH-WHAT DO YOU MEAN? I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, I'M FINE!"
"Yeah, well... we may have overheard your conversation with... Undyne."
"OH... WELL, DO NOT WORRY! THIS IS MERELY A TEMPORARY FALLING OUT! AND THAT IS ACTUALLY WHY I CALLED, BECAUSE I WISH TO HELP!"
"Well, okay, but it doesn't sound like you're in Undyne's good graces right now. So... what could you do?"
"WELL, I HAPPEN TO KNOW UNDYNE'S PATROL ROUTE!"
"Her... patrol routes?"
"YES. THERE ARE POINTS WHERE IT IS UNAVOIDABLE TO CROSS THEM, SO SHE SET UP AMBUSH POINTS THAT YOU CAN'T MISS. SOMETIMES SHE ATTACKS SOMEONE BY ACCIDENT... INCLUDING ME."
I winced. That didn't sound nice.
"BUT IT IS OKAY. I AM AT MY FATHER'S HOME RIGHT NOW, BORROWING HIS CAMERAS. HE HAS THEM SET UP ALL OVER THE UNDERGROUND."
He did? Was he watching us this whole time?
"THROUGH THESE, I CAN WATCH YOU!" Papyrus continued. "AND I CAN WARN YOU BEFORE YOU GET CAUGHT, SO YOU CAN SEE THEM COMING!"
...That made a certain degree of sense. Though, Frisk probably already knew about them, since she's been through this, through the previous timelines. The extra warning would be nice, though.
"That is helpful. Thank you, Paps," I replied.
"HM, THAT IS WHAT SANS CALLS ME... I'LL ALLOW IT! REGARDLESS, YOU DIDN'T HEAR THIS FROM ME! WINK WINK! HAVE A NICE DAY!"
"You too," I said, and Papyrus hung up.
The next room... I recognized it. Gaster brought me here. I came here with my old friends. I even once came here with my brother...
"The wishing room..." I sounded.
"A long time ago, monsters would whisper their wishes to their stars in the sky," an echoing voice said. There were Echo Flowers around. "If you hoped with all your heart, your wish would come true. Now, all we have are these sparkling stones on the ceiling..."
Yeah, yeah that was it.
Looking up, indeed, there were small, sparkling stones above us, glowing softly.
As we walked along, more Echo Flowers spoke to us, repeating words past.
"Thousands of people wishing together can't be wrong! The king will prove that."
"C'mon, sis! Make a wish!"
"I wish my sister and I will see the real stars someday..."
"Ah... seems my horoscope is the same as last week's."
Okay, that last one was weird. I know that Sans mentioned that Papyrus tried solving it... But I had no idea what that was about.
But this was what I remembered, each and every time. It gave me the drive I wanted... to free the monsters. They gave me love, when the humans did not.
And of course, I couldn't. It was pointless.
Looking around, I realized that there wasn't a way forward. I could've sworn that...
Then I saw Frisk pointing at a telescope. I guess she wanted to look at the "stars".
I came up, and looked into the scope. "Is there anything you want me to look at?"
Frisk nudged me to turn it up to a corner. As I did, I could swear something was blocking my view...
...Until I pointed at a very bright area of the ceiling, where I could clearly see that someone had written "CHECK WALL" on the lens, with an arrow pointing forward.
"'Check wall'?" I sounded. Looking around, there was a tunnel way splitting from the main room, with a suspicious wall at the end.
I walked up to it and tried pushing on it. And like a set of double doors, they spun back, opening the way forward.
"Geeze, they got more clever with their puzzles in the last 20 years," I noted.
Walking through, we came out onto a wooden platform suspended over a large pool of water, heading off to the right. And on the wall running alongside the platform... was a bunch of old writing.
Do you know what it says? Frisk asked me.
"I think so..." I've seen this before. It was written in the common monster language, same as the humans, but it was old and weathered, making it a bit difficult to read. I could barely make them out.
"The War of Humans and Monsters..." I read out loud, so Frisk could hear. "Why did the humans attack? Indeed, it seemed that they had nothing to fear. Humans are unbelievably strong. It would take the Soul of nearly every monster... just to equal the power of a single human Soul."
Frisk stepped back. This information seemed to make her nervous.
"...Do you want to keep going?" I asked.
Frisk made no movement for a second, but eventually, she nodded.
Nodding back, I continued, "but humans have one weakness. Ironically, it is the strength of their Soul. Its power allows it to persister outside the human body, even after death. If a monster defeats a human, they can take its Soul. A monster with a human Soul... A horrible beast with unfathomable power."
There was something else on the wall, by the text, but it was covered by cavern dust. Brushed it off...
And there was an illustration of a strange creature...
I never really really paid attention to this before, as I already knew the history by the time I first passed by this... but reading this, taking a closer look, just for the kid...
...There was something very unsettling about this.
What... what does this mean? Frisk signed. Monsters can take our Souls?
"Yeah..." I replied. "They can absorb them. That's why the monsters want us. But this can only happen if we die, so as long as we work "
What about us? Humans?
I laughed. "No. Humans can't absorb other human Souls."
...What about something without a Soul?
I gave her a quizzical look. "...There isn't anything living and sentient without a Soul, Frisk."
Frisk nodded in understanding, but for some reason, while I knew it was a true fact...
...What I told her bothered me for some reason.
To move on, we had to hop onto a small raft to drift across the water.
I swore there was a bridge here before, I thought. Maybe it collapsed since. Seems like that was happening a lot.
It wasn't like being on the water bothered me. I couldn't swim, but it was nothing compared to... being up high.
As we approached the other side, another wooden platform suspended above the water, I heard a ring on my phone.
Answering, I heard Papyrus's voice. "HELLO, CHARA!"
"Papyrus," I greeted, as me, Frisk, and Toby reached the other side, and got off the raft. It seemed the bridge was damaged up ahead, the path swerving from left to right. Yeah, this bridge definitely collapsed behind us sometime in the past.
"I AM WATCHING YOU, AS YOU KNOW," he said.
"Yes." To our right, stone pillars started to appear.
Also... Frisk started to get nervous.
"WELL, I AM CALLING YOU TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU ARE APPROACHING ONE OF UNDYNE'S AMBUSH POSITIONS!"
Suddenly, a magic cyan spear struck the ground in front of us. It narrowly missed me, and Toby started to bark furiously.
"You don't say," I flatly said.
Looking over, I could see the armored Undyne, her yellow eye shining, staring us down between the stone pillars.
"Gotta go," I told Papyrus, "we can talk later." And then I hung up, and grabbed Frisk's hand, picked up Toby, and activated Blue Soul Mode on all of us.
And then Undyne summoned more spears, hovering above her...
Author's Note: Welp, looks like I'm going to end it like this. I'm starting to feel right in thinking Waterfall might go a bit faster, already at the next Undyne encounter, the first that is an actually dangerous moment. It just felt right to end it before the chase begins, setting up a cliffhanger.
And now we know what Papyrus's role here is, now that he's no longer on Undyne's good side. And it makes sense he'd know where she patrols, and with her father, Gaster, still in this world, that he might have access to the camera's Alphys uses.
How helpful that is when Frisk already knows what's going to happen, we'll have to see (especially me, this is stuff I'm figuring out as I go).
Also, it seems I'm going with broken platforms a lot. I mean, it's a reasonable interpretation of the design of Waterfall, but not what I thought it might be until I was writing this, and started thinking about it.
If you don't remember, the quiche was made for Chara, and that specific one at the bench was in Book 1, when Gaster and Asgore were discussing the CORE project. This was "Chapter 17: The Proposal" in Book 1, if you are curious.
So, there was a sign in the Wishing Room that just read "Wishing Room", making it clear what the room is. But I decided to omit it, because I felt that scene was more effective without.
Speaking of which, I decided to make the history on the walls to be one big text, instead of several signs. I feel that makes it feel more... mystic, if you get what I'm saying.
And lastly, I skipped over this a bit... Aaron getting slapped, totally written on the fly. But you can't say that you didn't see something like that coming. (At least he recognized how old Chara really was.) Also, I wanted to add Washua too, but couldn't find a good place for it. It'll have to be in the next chapter.