I walked over the snowy threshold and suddenly the grass began to squelch beneath my feet, which didn't help that my boots weren't waterproof.
"Well, this is fantastic, i'm gonna get trenchfoot after this. Oh well, must march on." I didn't have to walk for long before seeing sans again at his post, which was still covered in snow despite it being soaking wet and nowhere near cold enough for snow.
"Sup kiddo, got cold feet there?"
"Funny, seems like your humor isn't as dry as your bones. Anyway, you got any rain boots or something, my feet are soaked." I said this as i lifted my cloth and rubber shoes from the damp and spongy ground.
"Don't worry kid, i got you. Here, take these, sorry about the color, it was the only pair I could find." He pulled out a pair of pink rubber boots with flower decorations that also seemed 2 sizes too small.
"Thanks for the offer Sans, but i think i'll run the risk of getting my feet amputated by a bacterial infection than lose my dignity and circulation in my feet."
"Suit yourself, i'll just keep these right here. Anyway, be careful with Undyne, she's gonna be looking for you up ahead on the path.
"Don't worry Sans, she ain't even gonna touch me."
"Oh, i know you'll be just fine, i'm meaning that i know you're gonna want to fight her, so i'm saying, be careful not to go too far and accidentally hurt her too bad."
"Oh, well, i'll try my best. Later Sans." He waved at me and almost instantly fell asleep at his post. I kept walking, only now realizing that i could concentrate my ki on my boots to give me a barrier and dry my feet. "Stryker, you idiot; you have the power to blow up the planet, but you couldn't think of a way to keep your feet dry." I walked forward with my satchel on my back, when i had an idea; maybe i could compress the monster food considering it is also mass, even if it is magical. I set down the bag on a dry spot in the ground and pulled out the food i had in there. The Pie, Doughnut and Burger i collected through my journey were all there; i laid them out in front of me, held out my hands and concentrated my ki on a molecular level, bringing the atoms within the food closer and closer together until each one was the size of a senzu bean. I felt proud of myself, shrunk the bag and placed the items within it and tied it to my waist like it was before.
I walked to the raging waterfall that was right in front of me and just hovered over it, continuing my walk. I walked through a patch of really tall grass, but about halfway in, i heard the sound of metallic clanking along with a familiar voice that rang in my ears.
"GREETINGS UNDYNE, WHAT DID YOU WANT TO TALK TO ME ABOUT?" Nope, still not used to it. Suddenly, the source of the metallic clanking began to talk in a rough, yet still noticeably female voice.
"Papyrus, it has come to my attention that another human has fallen into the underground. You haven't seen anything have you?" This piqued my interest, so i looked through the grass, up onto the ledge where i heard the voices, sure enough, Papyrus was there along with a person in a suit of armor and a scary helmet.
"EHHHH, NOPE, NOTHING, I HAVE DEFINITELY NOT SEEN OR ENCOUNTERED A HUMAN WALKING THROUGH SNOWDIN AT ALL." I facepalmed at Papyrus's idiocy.
"Hmm, well alright then." The person, who i believe is called Undyne, was clearly not convinced. "Well, if you see anything, be sure to give me a call. I'll call you later to ask some more questions. That'll be all Papyrus."
"OK, FAREWELL UNDYNE, I'LL SEE YOU TONIGHT FOR OUR SPECIAL TRAINING!" He walked off and i slowly began to move, but she managed to hear the rustling of the grass, turned and began walking towards the grass; she stopped at the edge of the ledge and readied a glowing blue spear that just materialized out of nowhere. I got into a fighting stance in case things went south and readied to deflect and fight, but suddenly, she seemed to think that it was nothing, de-materialized her spear and walked right off. I stood up normally and walked out from the grass, where i was instantly followed by a little yellow monster kid with no arms and he began talking to me.
"Yo... did you see the way she looked at us? SO, AWESOME! Undyne is the best!"
"Um, who exactly are you?"
"My name's kid, i saw you in Snowdin with the blue skeleton and i thought you looked interesting, so i decided to follow to see where you were going."
"That's... creepy, well, i'm heading forward. Wanna tag along?"
"Actually, i wanna catch Undyne to see who she fights, so i wanna get there as fast as possible!"
"Oh, you want fast? I'll show you fast." I picked him up and began to fly, not too fast, but faster than he could run.
"WOW! THIS IS AWESOME!"
"You like that? i can still go faster."
"Really?! Show me!" He seemed totally ecstatic at this, so i nodded and we blasted off at about 100 miles per hour, nowhere near my fastest, but i didn't wanna liquify the insides of the kid. We stopped at what seemed to be a dead end with a blue flower. I set him down, but he looked about ready to burst with excitement; and that he did.
"OHMYGODTHATWASSOCOOLICAN'TBELIEVEWEWEREFLYINGWEWERELIKE ZOOMZOOMZOOM ANDGOINGEVERYWHEREAND AND AND... THAT WAS AMAZING!"
"Heh, glad you liked it where do we go from here?" Suddenly i heard a voice identical to mine say exactly what i just said.
"Now, where do we go from here?" I turned around, waiting to see something behind me, but all i saw was the flower.
"What was that?"
"What was that?" Suddenly, i realized that it came from the flower.
"Hey, Kid, why does the flower repeat everything i say?"
"Why does the flower repeat everything i say?" He walked up to me and began explaining.
"That's an echo flower, it repeats the last thing it hears."
"It repeats the last thing it hears." It said it in Kid's voice this time. Suddenly, i heard the same female, rough voice shouting at us.
"HUMAN! GET READY, BECAUSE I'M COMING FOR YOU! NYAAAHHHHH!" Undyne appeared behind us, ready to charge, but stopped when she saw Kid; she then walked up to him, grabbed him by the ear and pulled him away.
"Ow, hey, you're not gonna tell my mom about this are you?"
"you're not gonna tell my mom about this are you?" I reached behind me without even looking and blasted the flower to bits. I was about to backtrack, when suddenly, a path opened up to the right of me. I began moving forward, but then, very faintly, i heard some form of music, kinda like some polka, but random tune with a high pitched sound here and there. I backtracked to the path before this little hallway that was kinda dark, but i just used a ki ball to light the way; i followed the sound to some hole in the cave wall, i walked in and saw a room filled with, what looked like dogs in blue and yellow striped shirts and they were all saying "hoi, i'm temmie" so i just decided to retreat slowly and forget i ever encountered that room. I walked back to where the path opened and walked through it into a field of echo flowers, but these ones weren't annoying, as i walked past, they told a story that two people talked about before; the wish of both of them was to just be free and live up on the surface. I knew i had to push on, to free everyone here; i was their last hope; suddenly, i felt something odd, something that was resonating within my soul; it materialized over my chest again, but this time it was glowing, suddenly, in front of me appeared some sort of glowey thing that looked like a star.
"The hell?" I reached forward to touch it, and when i did, it felt like something anchored me to this spot in time, suddenly the world around me swirled and turned into a black void, but in front of me there was something that looked like a slideshow with only 2 slides, the first picture was of me landing in the underground and the second one was of me first encountering the glowing star. I looked around for anything else and above the pictures, there was somehow words, the words said "select load point" I sort of understood it now, i was in a sort of pocket dimension, a menu, you could say, where i could select places where i've "saved" within the underground; was this what Sans was talking about earlier? I decided to touch the picture that had me first encountering the "save point" and suddenly, the world swirled back into how i saw it before.
"Well, no time to waste, i gotta keep moving." I moved forward on the path and in front of me was a bridge; i was about halfway across when i heard a familiar voice.
"Yo!" I turned around and saw Kid.
"Hey, what's up?"
"Ummm, U-Undyne s-said that you were bad, and that i sh-shouldn't hang around you because you might be dangerous. S-so, i-if we can't be friends, then, we're gonna have to be enemies. S-so say something to me to make me not like you."
"You're gonna take the word of Undyne over me? Dude, we had a lot of fun before she showed up, we can be friends can't we?"
"True... it was a lot of fun hanging out with you, and you can fly and stuff, and we were being good friends."
"Exactly, so how about we stay that way huh? Don't listen to Undyne about who your friends should be, you should choose your own friends."
"Awesome, i gotta tell everyone about this!" He turned to run off, and just in the distance, i saw a suit of armor coming our way, but suddenly, i turned to look at Kid, he slipped on a puddle and fell off the edge; he tried grabbing at the ledge with his mouth, but he missed and fell down further. In a split second, i saw Undyne arrive at the bridge, but at that exact same time, i jumped off the bridge and boosted forward to save Kid. I grabbed him and slowed our descent, then i brought him back up to the bridge where Undyne seemed surprised considering she was looking back and forth from the ground to us.
"You alright Kid? Nothing hurt?"
"Y-yeah, i'm fine. Thanks."
"Don't worry about it. You'd better go home though, don't want any more accidents happening."
"Y-yeah, but wait, what about Undyne?"
"I'll handle it, don't worry about us, we'll be just fine."
"A-alright." He ran off, careful to not slip and fall again, but he went on home. I turned to Undyne who apparently got over her shock, she then began talking to me.
"You've been running away for too long human. Don't think this incident changes anything; i'm still gonna take your soul to king Asgore and then, monsters will be free from this place!"
"I wasn't the one running, Kid was the one who kept you away from me. So technically, you were the one who was running."
"Doesn't matter! Get ready to fight!" She took off her helmet which revealed a blue, female fish face with an eyepatch, sharp teeth and a red ponytail. She materialized a spear and slashed a green arc of energy at me; i held up my arms to block, but the thing just phased through me; i looked down and saw that my soul was now green. "You like that? When your soul is green, you can create a one directional barrier as long as you don't move, gotta give you some kind of handicap."
"Handicap? Giving me a handicap? You should be the one with the handicap, i don't need the shield; i can hold my own. And i'm about to show you how." I got into a fighting position as she smiled and turned my soul back to its golden form.
"You've got spirit human, i like that, let's make this fight a good one."
"I couldn't agree more." I quickly scouted her and saw that she had a power level of 3000, i lowered my own power to be about half, just so i could give her a chance; then, i charged forward. She began throwing spears at me from every angle; i blasted most of them to pieces, caught one and hit a few back at her as well, even throwing the one i caught, which narrowly missed her. I could tell she was as excited about this battle as i was; she decided to stop with projectiles for a bit, materialized a spear in her hand, and began going head to head combat. She jabbed, slashed and did all sorts of moves with her spear, while i parried, blocked, dodged and countered every move she threw at me. I began throwing my own punches and she could just barely block them; eventually i managed to land a hit on her, which pushed her back, but she stood her ground. We both stood there, breathing heavily, smiles on our faces; it all came down to this moment. She charged forward, ready to stab, but i dropped to the ground, kicked the spear into the air, fired a ki blast to send her flying into a wall and grabbed the spear as it came down. As she was getting up, i charged forward and jabbed the spear at her. She closed her eyes to prepare for the strike, but it never came, this was because i stopped, with the spear mere inches from her face.
"W-what? Why'd you stop? Why not go for the final blow?"
"Because i know that you were just doing your job, and after a little bit into the battle, i could tell that this wasn't about getting my soul anymore, it was just about getting a real challenge and i fully understand that. Look, if i really wanted to kill you, i would have been able to do it from the very beginning. Here, i believe this belongs to you." I flipped the spear horizontally and handed it back to her. She smiled and took it back while standing up.
"You know what, you're alright.. umm.."
"Stryker, the name's stryker." I held out my hand in greeting, she gave a smile and shook it.
"Stryker, i'll remember. You gave me one hell of a fight, i haven't had a match like that since Asgore. Look, i've gotta head back to patrol and everything; plus, i really don't like hotland, anyway, you'll run into my good friend Dr. Alphys on your way, tell her I said hi. Oh, by the way, you're welcome to come by later tonight at my place for mine and Papyrus's training, it'll be nice to have you along."
"I think i'll be there. Later Undyne."
"Later punk." We both smiled and went our seperate ways on the bridge. After the bridge there was a sort of mountain tunnel that lead to an orange glow; when i walked out, i saw there was a bridge over a river of lava and it was, quite literally, hot as hell. I put a ki shield up to protect me from the heat and flew over the bridge, because i didn't trust a wooden bridge to carry me over a river of lava. On the other side was a water cooler, which i emptied about half of because i realized how dehydrated i was; I then pulled out the senzu bean sized burger, brought it back to normal size and ate the thing, both filling me up and healing the battle damage i gained from my fight with Undyne. I walked a little and found a giant metal building with 'LAB' engraved into the top.
"Really making it obvious huh? Well, no time to waste, gotta keep going. Actually, i wanna test this out a little more." I concentrated on the feeling I had back before i fought Undyne, the drive i had to keep going, my determination, i guess; suddenly, my soul started glowing again and another star appeared in front of me. I touched it like the last time and i was transported back into the black void, only this time, there was a picture of me in front of the lab, i pressed it, returned to the normal world and entered through the big metal doors.
A/N: WHAT?! AN UPDATE?! Yes people, i am not dead and am continuing this series. I haven't had a lot of time since school started and i've been doing cross country and i have a lot of homework. Worry not though, i'm still working on this story and my others whenever i have the chance to. So stay tuned, like and review if you want and i'll see you all next time.