Chapter 22: Legendary Treasure

We had made our way into a large room, with a pit of water in the center, and two paths, one forward, one to the left.

And I gasped.

Mommy? Frisk signed.

"I... know this place..." I replied. "This was as far as I ever traveled in the Waterfall."

I walked over to some text on the wall by the left pathway. It read, "The northern room hides a great treasure."

"This is new though..." I noted.

Even still, memories flooded my mind. I remembered coming by here, so I could go and play...

At this point, this is when I ran into our next monster.

It was a fish monster, with blue hair, and a cute antenna. She was floating over a body with muscly arms, scaly skin, spikes on the back, and a tail instead of legs.

...Actually, I got the sense that the body was a separate monster.

I noticed that she was singing to herself, and I felt the channeling of magic.

Siren magic... I thought. Perhaps I should be friendly.

"Hi," I called out. "How are you-"

Suddenly the monster stopped. I guess I couldn't blame her, I probably scared her.

"...Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you," I apologized. "My name's Chara."

"Sh...shy...ren," she told me. Okay, it seemed more like she was... well, shy. After some silence, she sounded, "hum hum..."

She then gave a small toot, which was, of course, a magic attack.

...Though it was just one note. Easy to dodge.

She then began to tap a little beat with her fins.

I felt bad. I felt like I had to do something to help her.

Well... I was musically inclined. So, maybe...

I began to hum a small melody, a favorite song of mine, if not a bit... emotional.

And Shyren turned to face me, and began to follow my melody.

Frisk looked up at me curiously, almost as if she recognized the tune.

Meanwhile, Shyren, now emboldened, sang, "si re, si re. si mi, si mi," releasing several magical notes with each sound, now being a bit more tricky to dodge.

Okay, so I really am going to have to fight with music, I thought. I also noticed that Frisk had begun to clutch onto Toby.

But at least Shyren was more comfortable with singing along.

So, I began to hum some more. And now... some monsters passing by, an Aaron and a Woshua, were drawn to our music.

Looks like we were starting a little concert...

"Si fa, si fa, so fa so, mi re re," Shyren sung. And the notes I had to dodge became trickier to avoid.

As we continued, more monsters began to join in to watch, and... Was that Sans selling tickets? Made of toilet paper?

Well... this has just become a whole lot more crazy. But no stopping now.

I hummed some more. It seemed like we sold out.

I had to admit, I felt good. Like a rock star.

Of course, this made me think of the ghost family...

"Mi so, mi so, mi si mi, la si so!" Shyren sang, knocking me out of my thoughts as I now had to dodge more notes. And that this point, I felt the need to... dance a little as I dodged.

And then a storm of socks hit us. Okay. The crowd was tossing clothing at us for some reason.

I had to keep humming... keep helping out Shyren.

But this... constant attention... I dramatically thought. The tours... the groupies... It's all...

Shyren began to toot aggressively. I guess that she saw my distress, and didn't want to stop.

The attacks suddenly became extra hard to evade.

Okay... I could see that she now thinking about what happens next. We've come this far... but it was time.

"Okay, I think it's time to finish this," I said.

Shyren seemed shocked by this, but then she nodded in agreement. We both had our own journeys to embark on now.

So, together, we hummed and tooted a farewell song. One final toot, an extra long and dangerous attack.

...To which I completely dodged.

And with that, everyone present applauded, Shyren and I bowed, and she made her leave, followed by everyone else.

Once everyone was gone, I stretched, and smiled. "Man, wasn't that exciting, don't you think, Fri-"

I turned to the kid... but she wasn't there. And neither was her dog. They were gone...

"Frisk?" I called out. "Frisk!? Frisk!"

I began to frantically walk down one of the corridors, calling for Frisk. I was so freaked out by her disappearance that I forgot that she wouldn't be able to respond. Maybe if Toby barked, but he just wasn't.

I passed a more text on the wall... I had to stop to read it.

"This power has no counter. Indeed, a human cannot take a monster's Soul. When a monster dies, its Soul disappears. And an incredible power would be needed to take the Soul of a living monster. There is only one exception. The Soul of a special species of monster called a "Boss Monster". A Boss Monster's Soul is strong enough to persist after death... If only for a few moments. A human could absorb this Soul. But this has never happened. And now it never will."

I've read this before... And it always brought back memories... Bad memories. So I would try to ignore it... but not this time. Not after so long...

I continued on, and then I found something... that brought back even more of those memories...

There was a stone statue. I knew this statue. Gaster made it for me, in honor of my late brother...

It was the first time me and Gaster actually talked to each other about our problems, our histories... It was when we become true friends.

But now... water was dripping on it. The face was worn away, and now... there was nothing. Just a horned statue... With no sound either...

Was it still...?

I heard the patter of small feet behind me, and then a small bark. Spinning around, I found Frisk and Toby coming up behind me, the little girl holding an umbrella

"Frisk! Oh my g**!" I cried as I hugged her, causing her to drop her umbrella. "Where did you go!?"

I let go of Frisk, so she could sign, to which she signed, I'm sorry... I got scared...

Scared? I signed back. Wait, do you mean the impromptu concert?

Frisk nodded. Too many people...

I chuckled a bit. So you have stage fright. Hey, I get it. If you can't say anything, must be hard to want to perform.

Frisk looked away in despair, eventually signing, I want to sing...

"You want to... sing... Oh..." That was hard to hear. She wanted something... that she could never have. A mute person could never sing. "I'm sorry. I don't know what to say..."

I looked down at the umbrella I made Frisk drop by accident. "Where did you get this?" I asked as I picked it up for her.

Frisk pointed down the corridor, before turning to the statue.

"Oh... this? It's... it's a memorial," I said. "For someone I used to know." Then I looked at the umbrella in my hand. "Do you mind if I...?"

Frist tilted her head in curiosity, but nodded.

So, I put the umbrella in the statue's lap, positioning it so it stopped the water drops from hitting the stone construct.

...And then, after a moment, the music began to play again, as if in gratitude.

Memory... the song of my brother.

"It still works..." I sounded. "I guess it just needed the water to stop hitting it."

What is it? Frisk asked.

"It's a song I love... It's-" Then I turned to Frisk. "Actually, do you want to come with me? I have my own musical inclination that I'd like to show you."

I led Frisk back around to where I "fought" Shyren, and up the other way. There, we found a small room with a piano.

"Before I fell, I would come here all the time," I told the girl. "I always loved to play the piano. That song you just heard... it's my favorite to play."

I approached the large instrument. "Would you like to hear the full song?"

Frisk tilted her head. Wonder why?

I was about to play, where I started by playing the first few notes, a bit of practice to get my footing, since it's been so long since I played.

...But once I played those first few notes...

A loud sound played, as the wall off to the side opened up into another room.

"Wh-what?" I cried. "That never happened before!?"

Then Frisk pointed up to a sign. It read, "A haunting song echoes down the corridor... Won't you play along? Only the first 8 are fine."

So wait, does that mean, in the two decades I was gone, someone had chosen this room to hide a secret. And the first few notes of my favorite song was the key to opening it up.

But why...? Who made this? Why that song? Was it a coincidence? Or maybe they heard it from the statue?

...And what were they hiding?

I turned to Frisk, and signed, have you ever opened this place up before?

Frisk shook her head. This was the first time. I bet she at least tried, but maybe she never knew the secret.

Then I remembered... The northern room hides a great treasure. This was that room, wasn't it? So...

"Well... there's a first time for everything," I said. "Let's check it out."

Inside was another small room. Gems were embedded in the back wall, and in front of us, was a small shrine, housing a red orb. There was text on the stone block, as well as the wall behind it. It was mostly illegible, but I could read "legendary artifact".

"...Okay?" I sounded. "So, this is a legendary artifact...?" I motioned to the orb.

Frisk shrugged.

So, I decided that the best thing to do was, well... take the artifact.

And as I began to reach for it...

I heard some kind of shuffling. I looked over, and Frisk's backpack was shaking.

"Huh?" I sounded, as Frisk, who definitely noticed the odd shuffling herself, began taking off her pack to look at it.

And once we opened it... a small Pomeranian puppy walked on out of the bag, a tiny ball of white fluff waddling out, with not a concern in the world.

Both of us just stared in shock, and then turned to the puppy's fellow pom, Toby, who was just happily letting his tongue hang out, looking at us like "what? Doesn't this happen all the time?"

"Okay... so we'll just take this little guy somewhere that he can be taken care of-"

Then we heard a tiny yip. We looked back at Frisk's bag, and lo and behold...

Another pom pup came walking out, just as fluffy and white as the first.

"Frisk, is there something you want to tell me?" I asked.

Frisk barely signed, I don't remember putting puppies in my bag, when a THIRD pom pup popped out of the bag.

"U-uh, huh-"

And then a fourth!

And a fifth... and a sixth... and a seventh...

At this point, I agreed, this was not Frisk's fault. No way she could fit this many puppies into that bag, despite how small they were. ...Nor did this make sense.

And it only got crazier...

The pom pups began to come out of the bag at an increased frequency, to the point where you could no longer tell if they were puppies, or if liquid fluffy fur was pouring out of Frisk's bag.

The puppies began to fill up the room (don't ask me about the open entrance, I don't know), while we looked around bewildered. I stopped trying to move around my feet when I almost stepped on one of the truly countless tiny poms, not that it mattered, since the pups starting to pile up around us, and slowly started to reach our ankles, and even higher.

"What the h*** is going on!?" I shouted, as they began to reach my ankles and below Frisk's waist.

Then I thought... was this being caused by that "Legendary Artifact"? So I looked over...

And it just got weirder.

There was an adult Pomeranian, not Toby, who was still by Frisk, happily enjoying the attention of the vast sea of smaller poms. This new dog had red markings and tufts of fur sticking out in swirls at the bases.

Okay, there is supposed to be an image here, but on Fanfic, I can't place images or links. You can see the image in this point of the text on the other sites I post this story (DeviantArt, Wattpad, and Archive Of Our Own), otherwise, you can the image itself on DeviantArt, titled "Tobiterasu - Undertale Fallen Determination" by author Cobalt-Gemini.

...And it was standing over the red orb.

The strange dog then howled towards the sky (figuratively), and the legendary artifact started glowing, and the freaking white and red Pomeranian ABSORBED the whole thing!

Then everything was covered in a thick mist, and once it cleared... everything was gone. The strange dog, the puppy sea, and the red orb.

All that was left was me and Frisk, standing there stunned, Toby, who was barking and running around Frisk, Frisk's bag, sitting on the ground, no longer pouring out an endless stream of puppies, and an empty shrine.

And the only thing I could think of to say was, "well, that... just happened."

Author's Note: So, I bet you're all wondering what fever dream did I just write. Honestly... I don't know. I mean, I remember bits and pieces, but I made this plan YEARS ago, and I have since forgotten how I came up with any of this.

But I can try to piece it together. I think the main thing was that I already decided that the Annoying Dog / Toby was going to be part of the crew as early as Snowdin Town. So... then what do I do about the legendary artifact, which the Annoying Dog would absorb. Do I just let Toby hang around the group with a super powerful artifact inside him? Maybe I could've said it actually didn't do anything... which could've fit with the wacky Undertale world, in retrospect.

But that's clearly not what I thought when I was planning this years ago, so instead, I came up with Tobiterasu.

More than likely, I was playing Okami or something around that time, and maybe I picked on how, in Okami, normal people can't see Ammy's divine markings and can only see her as a white wolf. And I was probably like "hey, the Annoying Dog is white!" Just shows you how my mind worked. ...Maybe I was thinking about that one little side comic based on the Dogs of Future Past, where Flowers that were Floweys saying "Howdy" was popping behind the dog, kind of like when you're dashing with Ammy. Also, in the New Game+ of Okami, you can get skins for Ammy that are different breeds of dog... so yeah...

As for the sea of pom pups... I don't know. I just don't. That probably was a fever dream. Though... writing this, I remembered back when I was a kid, we liked Disney Channel, and even had some Disney soundtracks, and I remember... I think it was Billy Ray? I don't remember the song, but it had something to do with Tennessee. And kid me like to think he said "puppy sea" in the song. I don't know, I really liked dogs as a kid. Maybe that had to do with the pom sea thing I wrote, but for whatever reason, I feel like that is not the reason.

With that said, I wanted to look up pomeranian puppies, for no particular reason, and... why are they so freaking cute!? They're literal balls of FLUFF! HOW!?

Okay, anyway, moving on from that weird ending I fever-dreamed, this ended up being a shorter chapter. Aside from the fact it took me too long to finish this chapter, I was thinking about what to do with this, and I realized that after what is now Tobiterasu, we are two events away from something that I feel should be a cliffhanger. If you remember the game events, you probably can guess what I am talking about.

So, the next event was kind of significant in the game, so I want to be faithful to that, and write it that way in the story. With that in mind, if I added that to this chapter, I felt that it should end this chapter on that. But by doing that, keeping in mind the cliffhanger I mentioned, that would make the entire chapter following this one single event. One pretty short event.

So... it's probably better for me to make the next two events one chapter, starting with that significant event at the start, which should give the same effect, following into the shorter event that'll end with a cliffhanger. This probably means that the next chapter will be short too, but that's fine.

So, the Shyren event. I wanted to give Frisk stage fright, but give her the wish that she could perform and sing, despite her unfortunate lack of voice. It makes sense to me, she can't speak, so she doesn't have much reason to perform, so she would be very nervous getting on stage. Yes, I know that there are ways to perform without speaking, but I was really thinking about the idea of wanting something that is impossible for you, like Frisk, who is a mute who wishes she could sing, and the bittersweetness of that situation.

I was going to establish this later, and you probably can guess what I was thinking, but then I got reminded of the Shyren event, and I realized that this is the best chance to establish this, so I could better play into it later.

And then there was the statue. If you remember back in Book 1, I had set up that Gaster made the statue for Chara as a peace offering, and it was a statue of the deceased Asriel at the time, to remind her of her beloved sibling. Well, looks like the passage of time ticked on, and wore it down. Just a way to make this more impactful, even if it was short.