After having the awkward meeting with Onionsan shortly after moving forward once more, we then happened to see the sight of Shyren huddling in the corner next to the abandoned statue, her sniffling and crying while sitting atop her agent, it being a slug-like monster.
"Um... hi there, miss. You doing okay?" I asked, her sniffling after.
"p-please... d-don't talk to me..." she said with tears, me going to her and simply poking her, which she sniffed at as well.
"Hey, no need to cry. I don't bite. I just want to know if there's anything that I can do to brighten your day," I smiled.
"... what does that mean?" she asked, her then finally looking at me and her frowning before turning around again. "no... i don't trust you... you look like the ones t-that... that killed my friend," she said, me looking at her in confusion.
"Who was it? Your friend, I mean?" I asked her.
"why do you care? you're just gonna k-k-kill me too... just like they did..." she said, me frowning at her.
"What did the human look like?" I asked, her sighing.
"again, why do you-" she was about to ask before I spoke over her.
"I have yet to raise a single fist or hand to you and I've just been talking to you, wanting to know more about you. You really think I'm going to hurt you?" I asked, getting slightly fed up.
"fine... they had glasses... and held a book... I heard from... from Undyne... the human killed my friend... my friend's name was Kanako..." she said, which made Ceroba gasp before then taking Shyren to her chest and hugging her. Shyren was wincing at first... before then feeling the furry hands.
"I'm so sorry, Shyren... my daughter wasn't killed by a human... she's not even dead at all..." Ceroba said, which made Shyren surprised before wriggling out of her grasp.
"M-Misses Ceroba?! W-What are you doing with a human?! And you say Kanako's still alive?! Then why did Undyne tell me different?" the fishy singer asked in surprise, rare for her to experience.
"Um... well, when the human with the purple soul was in the Underground... Kanako agreed to take a test with me... she accepted an injection of an Integrity serum from my husband's experiments... she immediately entered the state of Fallen Down, and was sent to Alphys, along with your sister... it was all my fault..." Ceroba said with a sigh of absolute sadness.
"Man, that's rough... I heard that your family was one of the closest in the Underground, but then it always confused me why they say your family suddenly vanished in a week," Saura said with a wriggle of her tail.
"So why did Undyne come up with the lie of the purple soul being the one to kill Kanako?" Antoinette asked. "And are you saying that you took Integrity from my soul before I got revived? You do realize that if Integrity is injected into any soul OTHER than blue, it's basically like you're injecting death?"
"N-No... I did not know that... how do you-"
"My parents, when I was alive, were soul scientists. I know how every soul works, even the ultra-rare knowledge souls... but they never taught about monster souls, because they thought it to be a fairy tale." Ceroba looked at her in surprise, which I then nodded at.
"See? And if people didn't think monsters were real when Antoinette was around, I highly doubt they'd think so today," I frowned.
"You didn't look too surprised at all about the monsters we've seen so far... nor have you felt any fear, even towards that evil plant," Martlet frowned.
"Well, that's a secret I'm only going to share with you when we're in a place that the flower absolutely cannot follow us to," I said, her nodding at that as we went forward some more, but only after I gave her something that I felt she'd like.
"What is this?" she asked.
"It's something I had on me when I fell down here," I said honestly. Frisk NEVER mentioned that they had a future version of an iPod! "It's a special device that can let you listen to music," I smiled, her smirking at me after.
"T-Thank you... c-can I hum to it?" she asked.
"Hum to your heart's content. And I promise you, that by the end of my adventure down here, you can not only see Kanako again, but I you can hear your sister's humming again," I said, her looking at me with big eyes after, before getting tears and a smile.
"I... I choose to believe you... bye," she sniffed as she then listened to the music, me smiling at how it was a song that sounded like a love song, which she hummed along to.
"I'm gonna need to get used to the songs of today as opposed to the songs I was used to back home... but I would like to share some with you, once I get access to music software on a computer," I smiled at my friends.
"You mean you know how to make music?" Chara asked me.
"I do, and I know how to sing very well," I smirked at her. And after going through the rainy parts of the Waterfall, we then reached the large room with the castle, with the twinkly lights on the ceiling.
"Wow... look at this place! It looks so pretty!" Saura smiled at it.
"This was my favorite room in the entire Underground... the lights above us are luminous crystals, but it always looks like what the sky does when it's nighttime. They look like stars," Chara smiled as we also saw something on the ground. It was something that Courage looked at with a smile.
"Hey, look here! It's my old combat gloves!" he smirked as he picked them up and placed them on his hands. "Still clean. Cool."
"How?" is what Martlet, Antoinette, and Ceroba asked at the same time.
"Probably Woshua," Mary giggled as we then finally moved again and we reached the ledge to the next chase area, which... it now had a staircase made of a bunch of vines.
"Um... this seems suspect as all hell," Antoinette admitted.
"Indeed. It appears that this is either a trap or he's expecting all of us," Mary frowned.
"Who?"
"A certain flower that wants my soul for himself," I frowned to Antoinette.
"A flower, able to speak and move? Again, I must ask. How?"
"I thought they explained it," I frowned at her.
"They did... I didn't think it was true, though..." Finally, Saura went to the staircase and went up it, which we saw that nothing happened after. We then went one at a time up the makeshift staircase until all of us were up it... and the staircase never once tried anything funny. And after moving forward again, I left a save spot just in case and, after going to the bridge, I then saw that there were a lot of... orange and blue pellets appearing. And I saw that they were sent at me, but they intentionally missed me and all my allies! And then I saw that, underneath us was Flowey again!
"That was a warning shot, you prick! Keep moving and you'll get attacked by even more!" he shouted at us.
"Really? No reward if I win?" I asked him.
"NO! Shut up!" he shouted, me frowning and simply pointing to the end, everyone nodding as we then ran for it. "H-HEY! Stand still!" he shouted, him then attacking with blue and orange pellets as we walked forward, us standing still for blue and moving through orange as per usual... and when we did this, we saw that, if I got hit by a blue attack, I got a barrier of electricity after, which accidentally shocked Chara when she touched me accidentally. And if I was hit by an orange attack, I let out a blast of cold air, which is finally when Flowey stopped chasing us, when he tried to send some vines at me right after an orange attack, as I was then at 10 HP. And he then started to shiver.
"B-B-Brr... I... I-I'll l-l-let you off t-t-this time... b-bye..." he shivered before retreating afterwards, me smiling at that as we got to the end of the boardwalk and we saw that there was a ladder that would lead down to the dump.
"That was even more odd than before. If you're hit by an orange attack. you make the area cold? Must've been too much for him when he got hit by a frost," Zephyr smirked.
"Yeah, but at least he's going to leave us alone for a bit... and at least none of us got hurt, right?" I asked, seeing no injuries on anyone else, aside from one, seeing that Courage got a bit of a nick to his ear, which it was currently bleeding.
"Don't worry about me, teacher. I've gone through worse than this," he smiled at me as we then proceeded to go down the rope ladder to the dump, where we found out quickly that the weight limit was about three full grown people, and anymore would make it a bit unstable. So after that, we went down in pairs of three until all of our group were in the dump... but for Saura and Zephyr, they went down by using their teeth and feet in order to go down, since they didn't have arms.
"It must be tough being a kid and not having arms to work with, huh?" Mary asked the duo.
"You have no idea! But we can still pick things up with magic, but it's hard for us to grip onto anything," Saura smiled at her. And after getting down to the dump, we then got through the sloppy water, seeing a bunch of gross items mixed with perfectly good ones. Of the lot, the one that REALLY stuck out for me was a working video game system and television set. I then looked at the others and they looked at me in confusion with the smile I had.
"What's with the look, Scarlet? It's kind of creepy," Ceroba asked.
"I want this tv and game system... I want to see what kind of video games are available today, and this system looks like it has five different video game discs in it!" I smirked, pointing out that this particular system was able to switch the discs as if it were able to switch games by pushing a button on the device. And the five games consisting on the discs (there was space for 2 more games, but they were empty) were Ultra Fighting Ollie (with a picture of a man with a UFO for a head), Chrono Spinner (a beyblade copycat), Big Boobs Bonanza (X rated game for sexy times :D), Cat-astrophe (a game about a cat who wants to be a real human girl), and a very, VERY cool remake version of Spooky's Jumpscare Mansion! It had to be a passion project to get it as close to the original game as possible!
"Great! Only one of these is from my timeline, and it's in the form of a remake. I wonder if they added anything to it?" I asked with a smile.
"Which one is it?... Please don't tell me it's the one with the boobs," Chara asked, which got the whole group snickering and about ready to laugh out loud.
"Actually, no. In my timeline, a game like that would rarely make it to the shelves," I said, which got everyone to stop laughing. "It's actually the one with a creepy mansion on it... a game from my original timeline, where monsters weren't even around. The original AD had a lot of bizarre games, and Spooky's Jumpscare Mansion is one of them. It tests your might by having you go through 1000 rooms of a freaky mansion, and during the trek, you encounter a lot of cardboard cutouts that make you jump at the sounds they make... as well as various monsters based off of different things from my timeline," I said.
"So... what kinds were there? Did they include the royal family?" Saura asked.
"No, because as I said, this was before the monster species existed, according to Gaster," I frowned, which he nodded at. "These monsters aren't the kind that are in this adventure. No, these ones were consisting of a giant centipede that wanted to eat you for lunch, a ghostly woman that also wanted to do the same, but swallowing you whole to do so, a puppet man that would skewer your eyes with a needle and turn you into a puppet, even a monster with a reference to a horrible event from 1940s AD, that being an incident called Unit 731," I frowned.
"I see... so what exactly happened at this Unit 731? I'd like to learn a bit about the history of humans before monsters existed in real life," Martlet smiled.
"It was a place that conducted horrific experiments to war prisoners during World War 2. It's how they learned that human bodies are made up mostly of water, as one test they did was steaming their prisoners alive, cooking them from the inside out," I said, which made Mary gawk.
"Humans did stuff like THAT when you were around?! When I fell down here, the worst things people would do is accidentally killing someone! If anyone gets caught doing a horrid crime, they're immediately stripped of all their belongings and their souls are shattered!" she said in surprise.
"And is that the same the world over, or are there numerous law systems for every nation?"
"A unified law for all nations, and where everyone works to benefit the greater good. We train people in the occupations they wish to partake in, give free healthcare, and we are allowed to say whatever we want, so long as it isn't slanderous to innocent people. And no one is allowed to rule over everyone, instead, we work to help everyone out, no need for wealthy or poor," she smiled.
"I see..." I smiled, mainly because that seemed to be an amazing world to live in. "And currency?"
"No such thing. We're just supposed to take enough to live normal lives, and there are laws in place for thieves and those who buy too much. They're put into community service in gross jobs for the less offensive crimes, such as working in the sewers or making some of the food in factories," Courage smirked.
"Wow... the future sounds amazing," I smirked as we then got to the area with the Mad Dummy, me looking at the dummy by the bike and seeing that, when it saw us, the ghost on the inside was furious.
"Hey, why are you mad, mister?" I asked, him staying still as the ghost inside looked to be upset. "We've literally never met before, so why are you so pissed off at us?" And after I asked that, the dummy finally spoke.
"I'll tell you why, Why, WHY!" he shouted angrily. "My cousin used to live in a dummy like me! That is, until YOU came along! When they saw ya, they thought they were in for a nice chat. But the things you SAID! Horrible. Shocking! UNBELIEVABLE! Spooked 'em right outta their dummy!" he shouted, me frowning at that as Chara spoke.
"No, they weren't spooked out of their dummy. If you're talking about the dummy in the Ruins, she was scared at first, but Scarlet was nothing but kind and caring towards her," Chara said, which the dummy got in her face after.
"AND WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT?! Who said it was her?! I'm talkin' bout the one that lives in Snowdin!" Mad Dummy shouted.
"I never met a ghost in a dummy in Snowdin. So you're gonna need to tell me where exactly this took place," I frowned.
"By the bridge, right by the two lover dogs' stations! You scared 'em so hard, they were spooked out of their dummy and they've been trying to find a new body to inhabit ever since!" Mad Dummy said, me gawking at that. I had a feeling I knew where he was talking about right now. It was where I was shouting at Flowey in a rage.
"Ah... I see now. I'll explain what happened. At the time, there was a dangerous creature that was injection other monsters, particularly those of the Royal Guard, with a kind of poison," I said, which Mad Dummy glared at me as I spoke. "It's non-lethal to humans, but if a monster is injected, it causes them to melt into a puddle, unable to hold a form and unable to die. And before he could inject Lesser Dog with it, I grabbed him out of the ground with some help, stole all the vials of poison on him, and threatened him with a very loud, very angry voice not to do it again. Because if I found out, I'd tell everyone his darkest secret," I said, which the dummy frowned at me after I said all this.
"Peh! So yer sayin' that you were shouting those horrid things at that loud a volume, because you were trying to save people?!" he asked.
"It's true, I was there, and I was about to be a victim of the creature just as well." Martlet frowned. "And I know the cousin you're speaking of... I don't know where they're at as of now, but I can give them a call if you want."
"Do it," Mad Dummy frowned, Martlet then ringing up a cell phone, us waiting for a couple seconds before the call was answered.
"H-Hello? Is that you, Martlet?" the voice on the other end asked, me being surprised by the sound of it... it sounded almost as if it were a voice I'd heard before, but I couldn't quite place it.
"Hello there, Misu. Wanted to ask how you were doing?" Martlet asked, me thinking harder before then realizing the source. A certain voice actress/animator on YouTube at my time that did fetish stuff. About vore, giantess, and trampling... yeah, my YouTube feed was weird.
"I... I saw a scary sight when you were going through Snowdin, so I had to abandon my old body... b-but I found a new one to inhabit! It's a doll that looks almost lke a human, but with cat ears and the ability to store things inside of it... my dream," she said, me smirking at that.
"So... your fetish come to life?"
"Shh! Don't say that out loud! I'm hoping to surprise my boyfriend when I eventually get to Temmie Village. Bob's gonna love this," she said, me smirking at that and giggling a tiny bit. Why? It made absolute total sense that Misu was in a body that sounded way too much like the animated version of the Youtuber Peachmisu.
"Promise... by the way, your cousin, Sal, says hello," she said.
"Tell him I'll give him a visit when I come through," she said, which Mad Dummy then smiled, but without the angry eyes for a change.
"Wow... Who knew the best thing to happen to my cousin would be getting spooked outta their dummy? Sorry, sorry, sorry for my accusations! I was told that you did it on purpose," he said, that making me raise my eyebrow.
"And who, pray tell, told you that?"
"I didn't see him, but he gave me the message via Echo Flowers," he said, me frowning at that.
"Flowey again, then. We need to be careful, guys," I said, them all nodding as we then walked forward and we saw that, currently floating in the center room was Napstablook, him feeding a stray snail and looking like he was trying to lead it back home. I smirked at this and proceeded to help him out by getting the snail on my finger, which Napstablook looked at me in surprise.
"Does this little adventurer need help getting back home, Blook?" I asked, him nodding.
"y-yeah, she does... t-thanks for the help..." he said, me smirking as I carried the snail to Blook Acres and placed the snail in... a stable. A stable that was real and not a cruddy drawing that housed a hidden cameo appearance. "if you want... you can join me at my place... no pressure, though..." Napstablook said with shyness.
"Sure, we could do that. We need a small break after all the walking we've been doing," I smiled, everyone in my group agreeing in unison. Napstablook then locked the stable and led us to his place, where we saw it looked a little cozier than prior, but it didn't have any bathrooms and the bed was actually built into the ground itself.
"Nice place you have here, mister Napstablook... very quaint," Antoinette smiled widely.
"thanks... it's not much, but... make yourself at home..." he smiled as I then noticed something that was by his desktop. A pair of glasses.
"Hey, Napstablook? What's up with these glasses, per chance?" I asked, him looking at them with a smile.
"I uh... I found them near the entrance to Hotland when I was waiting for my customer one day... they feel like they've been around for centuries, though... and the only bad thing with them is a big of fog that won't come off," Napstablook said, me then looking at it and smiling.
"I think it's time to meet the owner of Perseverence... Blooky, when I do this, don't be afraid, but another human will appear, okiedokie?" I smiled, him smiling at that.
"You mean the purple one?... I met him when I was just a little spook... very wise and nice... he gave me the idea to make music..." he said, me then touching the cloudy glasses... and feeling my mind meld with the owner of the purple soul.