Underworld Frisk

Chapters

1 - Tutorial
2 - Ruin Nation
3 - Burning Pie Waltz
4 - Sans Sorrow
5 - Snow Going
7 - Flat Tired
8 - Snowing Rest
9 - Letting Inn and Out.
10 - Story for Tori
12 - Blueberry Pie Tango
13 - Skele-Font in the room
14 - Fantastic Flowers
15 - Tem Swamp Pirates
16 - Tem-sanity
17 - Song and Dance
18 - Tools 'n Ghosts
20 - Farm Snails and Tortoise Tales
21 - Moving On
22 - Shovel Pie Shuffle
23 - Meanwhile...
24 - In-Quiz-i-Toriel
25 - Dr. All Fuss
26 - Cooking With Mettaton
27- Metta-ton of Explosions.
28- Bound Pie Bounce
29 - Met A Ton Of Friends
30 - Date?: Muffet
31 - Core Issues
32 - Bare Bones Core
33 - Mad Pie Rave
35 - Date: Pinkie
36 - Shaky Prospects
37 - Feline Frisky
38 - Beaming Pie Barrage
39 - Queen of the mountain
40 - Final Pie Prance
41 - Underworld's Frisk
Epilogue: Soul Mates
Prologue: Misstep
6 - Pinkie Puzzles
11 - Date: Tori
19 - Date: Napstablook
34 - Red and Relaxation

1 - Tutorial

Pinkie moved up the stairs in what looked to be a courtyard full of leaves after Toriel, who waited patiently for her to look around at the ancient walls. She wondered where all the light was coming from for this place made of stone. Before she could ask Toriel about it, the goat lady moved on and into the next room where there were several round spots on the floor to the right and a lever on the far wall behind those grey circular spots forming two V’s.

“Welcome to your new home Pinkie. Allow me to educate you in the operation of the ruins.” Toriel sounded rather presumptuous about Pinkie wanting to call this place a home. After stating this Toriel turned to her left and moved across four of the six circle spots on the floor which pressed downwards at the beautiful bipedal goat’s weight, which was normal in comparison to the pony that needed to exercise some more, then she moved to the lever at the back wall and pulled it down with a good strong yank.

Pinkie glared at the air again for no reason whatsoever, while trying to remember what switches to hit of the six switches that were in a pattern of two V’s sitting on top of each other. She’d remember that she’d need to press the ones that formed a square if for whatever reason the door locks her out.

The pony was kind of stuck in the underworld at the moment and didn’t know her way around at all, so Pinkie had little in the ways of actually making her own assumptions about what Toriel meant. In all likelihood Toriel meant that the way she came in was not exactly a way she could get out. If there was a way out, it probably wasn’t easy for her to reach so she was stuck here and this would be her new home.

“The ruins are full of puzzles; we monsters tend to like building mechanisms like this all over the place. They are both ancient diversions and door keys. One must solve them when they are active to move to another room. Please, adjust yourself to the sight of them while you are around.” Toriel then smiles serenely at Pinkie Pie’s curious face as she turned on her heels and walked off to the next room leaving Pinkie to look at the puzzle in question.

Moving around and looking at the buttons and the lever, Pinkie nodded at the fact that they were obviously buttons and levers. Toriel was a bit strange, but her voice sounded heavenly to Pinkie. Moving over to the entrance to the next room Pinkie stopped when she saw a plaque on the wall to the left.

“Only the fearless may proceed? Brave ones, foolish one, both walk not the middle road.” Looking over to the puzzle in question she noticed the slight discoloration that created a road that surrounded two of the switched that intersected the middle of the two V’s. “Oh, so this is how you figure the puzzle out!”

After stating the obvious Pinkie realized that Toriel had reset and solved it for her just to teach her how things worked around here. It was really nice of the friendly goat lady who didn’t seem frustrated with having to solve it again after resetting it. Walking into the next room she saw some aqueducts and Toriel waiting patiently next to a sign. For some reason Toriel seemed excited and even giddy to show her more things.

“To make progress here, you will need to trigger several switches. Do not worry I have labeled the levers that you need to pull.” A smiling Toriel then walks across the bridge and out of sight as Pinkie walked up to the sign to read it.

“This is a sign… you read them to get information. Well that’s informative.” Pinkie said flatly, before going up to the wall covered in small vines behind it to read the writing there. “Please stay on the path... right.”

Trotting back to the pathway and over the first aqueduct on a small wooden bridge, she saw Toriel waiting eagerly with her hands held up to her mouth almost squealing as she stood at the start of the second small bridge. She watched Pinkie move up to the switch on the wall, that was still on a narrow extension of the colored path that was slightly different from the surrounding colors of the ruins.

Looking up at the switch she saw three yellow arrows drawn in chalk including a message by Toriel telling her the obvious. The message read ‘Please pull the switch. -Toriel’ and Pinkie smiled a bit at Toriel’s happy reaction when she finally did and the goat lady ran off. She seemed rather easy to please and quite eager to help Pinkie.

She moved on over the next bridge where she saw Toriel waiting at some spikes jutting up from the floor and saw another message on the wall and two switches, one that was connected to the path and one that wasn’t. The puzzle was obvious, but Pinkie humored the beautiful lady because she was a childish mare that liked childish things and so did Toriel apparently.

The second message read ‘Please pull this switch too. -Toriel’, after a moment Pinkie started giggling because she gave it a second glance and put ‘too’ and ‘Torial’ together . She pulled the switch and shook her head; Toriel’s messages were just so adorable.

“Splendid, I worked hard to make these puzzles just a little more understandable for anyone younger who gets stuck in the Underworld. I still need to work on the entrance one though.” Toriel said brightly and Pinkie just had to make a comment on it by making a joke, the pony wanted to strike up a friendship with her after all.

“You’re really being so nice to me. So I just have to ask, if your name was synonymous with nice, is there such a thing as being too Toriel for you?” Pinkie smiled and waggled her eyebrows and Toriel held a hand up to her smiling mouth in shock. They both started laughing at the joke; it seems that the goat lady can enjoy a good pun.

“Oh my goodness, that was a cute pun. I feel like we will become great friends Pinkie. Now come along with me to the next room.” It seems Toriel understood Pinkie’s pun just fine when it came to leading her through the puzzles while solving them. She led Pinkie into the next room with a comment of her own. “You’re really sweet Ms. Pie; why I could just eat you all up.”

Pinkie laughed along with Toriel giggling at that. At least Pinkie didn’t take it the wrong way, which was a thing Toriel was worried about. Since Pinkie wasn’t upset by the joke, Toriel didn’t have to bring up that it was one and that she’d never eat anything that was truly sentient.

For some reason Pinkie sighed in relief after looking at the air, she had just apparently remembered that goats could eat just about anything. She turned her head back to Toriel who pointed at a strange object with a claw.

“As a being with a soul like that of a human, only apparently more powerful in your case, monsters will definitely attack you to try and steal it. You will need to be prepared for this Pinkie.” It was in Toriel’s best interest to be serious to the pony. She would not sugar coat this as Pinkie wasn’t a little child, though she was quite childish. Saying that other monsters will outright attack her was letting Pinkie know that not all in the underworld were friendly or had her best interests at heart like Toriel currently did.

Pinkie smiled at the air and nodded to Toriel to continue, letting her know that she was paying attention to the wonderful lady that had a laugh that chimed wonderfully in her ears. Pinkie would eventually start telling Toriel jokes, just to hear it. Even if she didn’t have her cutie mark, she still knew what her special talent was and she wanted to make Toriel happy.

“Worry not; the process to this is simple. When you encounter a monster and they get too close, you may enter the range in which they will create an energy field to pull your soul out and attack it. When you are being attacked, try to strike up a friendly conversation. Stall for time and allow me to come and resolve the issue if they start becoming too rough with you.” In other words Toriel was basically saying she would protect Pinkie while she was around to do so. She liked Pinkie that much and would probably come to love her if she played her cards right. “Now go up to the dummy and talk to it.”

“Quick question, what will I do when you aren’t around?” A curious Pinkie asked, while she looked at the air again while marching up to the strange dummy. It didn’t look anything like a pony mannequin that her fashion conscious friend Rarity had in her shop; Rarity was a white unicorn with an elegantly styled royal purple mane and tail. Rarity’s cutie mark was the three blue jewels marking her soft white flank that Pinkie had managed nuzzle multiple times without her friend being aware of it.

“Stop telling them things like that, I’ve only done it sixty three times. It’s not like I have a problem with the soap scents she uses on her flanks and how well it mixes with a freshly shampooed tail.” Murmured Pinkie randomly to the air as her face became slightly red; she seemed to be going a little crazy since she kept addressing the air as if she expected it to mean anything.

“If you can befriend them, I’m sure they will be stop trying to hurt you. The monsters down here are rather… desperate… I don’t think there are many of them that are truly evil. So please be good and try not to hurt them too much.” These were some of the most important things Toriel could have ever said that Pinkie should really pay attention to, she was basically pleading with the pony to not do any harm to others which was another important to having everything end in sunshine and rainbows. “If it helps you any, if you can actually get your body far enough outside the range of the soul pulling energy field your soul will quickly come back to you. Of course that will only work if you have enough room to run away and can actually get outside the field, there are some soul pulling fields you can’t escape from. Also while you’re running you might incidentally leave your heart exposed to attacks.”

“Well, okay… hello there Mr. Dummy!” The pony said this to the dummy as soon as she was done looking at the air again. She felt a wave of energy wash over her and her soul popped right on out of her body; surprisingly something was off about the dummy as she didn’t think Toriel was the one to cause her soul to pop out. “Please don’t take this the wrong way Mr. Dummy, but I got to run now.”

Turning around the pony started running away. The dummy had a short ranged field and she could feel it as she passed through it a few feet later. Her large pink heart miraculously grew four legs and galloped after until it hit the edge of the field and shot straight into her body like a rocket, Pinkie was a little fearful that she would get used to the sensation of having her soul forcibly pulled out of her body.

“Well now that that’s done, let us continue on then. Good day to you good sir and thanks for helping us out with this demonstration.” Toriel nodded at the dummy before leading Pinkie into the next room. As Toriel led Pinkie along, she seemed pleased with the pony’s friendly countenance. “I hope you can figure out the next puzzle.”

“I know I can Tori.” Aw, it was so cute of Pinkie to Give Toriel a nickname already and Toriel was already noticeably smiling brighter for it. The pony should probably watch out for that upcoming ambush instead of getting distracted by the pretty smile. Pinkie turned the corner following Toriel and just had to ask to the rather warm air of the ruins. “There’s going to be an ambush?”

After asking that, her soul was quickly pulled from her body as a frog monster had jumped at her from around the corner. Before it could really do anything serious, Toriel moved over and glared at it. It cowered in fear of her, it stopped generating the energy field and Pinkie’s soul went back into her body. Looking at the scared frog monster cowering against the wall Pinkie decided to forgive it.

“It’s okay Tori; I forgive it for attacking me, whatever it is. Is it two separate beings? Do they even have genders if it is? I have got to know if they like to eat cupcakes!” Pinkie came face to face with the frog creature which seemed less scared now and seemed to croak slightly in amazement that she wasn’t afraid of him. Toriel cleared her throat bringing Pinkie’s attention away from the frog monster. “Oh right we were going somewhere weren’t we? Do you want to come along with us?”

The cowed frog just tilted its head at Pinkie and couldn’t actually understand what she was saying, though it could understand what she was feeling; Toriel will promptly explain what the creature is.

“Pinkie, that is a monster called a Froggit. He has eyes on his belly as well as his head; they are a very common sight around the ruins, only this one looks to be a bit feral.” Toriel watched as Pinkie hugged the frog and started to pat it on the head. “Um… what are cupcakes?”

“You don’t know what cupcakes are!” Pinkie was rather horrified that Toriel hasn’t tasted a cupcake before; she would get Toriel a cupcake come hell or high water. Considering where Pinkie was… we’re going to go with the high water.

“No, but I know what pies are. Is a pie like a cupcake?” Toriel asked pleasantly while clasping her hands together.

“Well no, but I’ll get back to you about that later. Can he come with us Tori? I mean if there are others like him that are not feral, then he can learn to not be feral and make new friends at the same time! It’s got to be so lonely this far away from others like him, I haven’t seen much aside from that deranged flower and Mr. Dummy.” Pinkie’s idea surprised Toriel, but she nodded nonetheless.

Placing the frog on her back, Pinkie moved forward. The large four eyed frog rested in Pinkie’s comfortable pink fur while looking wearily at Toriel, after a moment it realized it was safe and stopped worrying about the powerful monster that had scared it. Pinkie’s warmth made it cuddle down and slowly nod off.

Coming up to the next sign Pinkie read it; it wasn’t hard to figure out the puzzle.

“The western room is the eastern room’s blueprint? Oh I get it; the pathway on the floor to my left is mimicked in the puzzle on my right!” Turning to the right, Pinkie moved up to Toriel and saw something behind her. It was a lot of raised spikes in the middle of a room past another little wooden bridge that went over a circular aqueduct. On the other side of the spikes was another bridge leading to the next room.

“This is the puzzle, but… can I hold your hoof and lead you through it? I don’t want you stepping on any of the spikes by accident nor would I want the Froggit to get hurt.” At a guess, Toriel was just using this as an excuse to get closer to Pinkie Pie for some physical contact. Either that or Toriel was just really worried about Pinkie and the sleeping four eyed frog possibly getting hurt.

The goat lady was a real sweetheart despite the underlying tones of loneliness that Pinkie had only just begun to notice once before in her background music. The possibility that Toriel hasn’t known the touch of another in a very long time was quite high. Toriel hasn’t exactly had the opportunity to rub Pinkie’s belly or scratch her behind the ears yet, which were the two main weaknesses of ponies to handed individuals. As such Pinkie should really look into having Toriel do one or the other and possibly both at the same time. Also more fluffy hugs would be good as the goat lady could use a little loving contact. Only a really cruel and heartless pony wouldn’t take this opportunity to make Toriel’s day.

“I’ll do it, but not just because your guilt tripping me into this so I’ll fall in love with her faster alright? Not that I’m falling in love with her now either… I would have to get to know her better first and then bake something to see if she likes it. Maybe go on a few dates with her as well…. wait no… I’m not going on any dates with Tori. No matter how beautiful and adorable I may think she is!” Pinkie quietly whispered, so as not to be heard by Toriel or the sleeping frog that she actually found Toriel attractive. She had said it herself personally and could never take it back now, she was just simply protesting too much over nothing.

Shaking her head in an aggravated manner while staring off into space, Pinkie raised her front left hoof to the gorgeous lady and nodded in acceptance. Pinkie finally admitting that she was attracted to the goat lady and she hasn’t even been in the Underworld for longer than an hour or two, it was hard to tell time down here without a watch or the ability to see the sun and moon.

Toriel gently took the hoof into her soft supple grasp with her right hand and she smiled back at Pinkie as she led her through the maze of spikes. After they were on the other side of all the pointy dangerous metal spikes and across the other bridge, the smiling Toriel looked rather reluctant to let go of Pinkie’s hoof. After taking in a short breath she finally did so with a wan smile.

“I sometimes forget that these puzzles can truly be dangerous.” Said an emotional Toriel, who seemed to be hiding the fact that she really enjoyed holding Pinkie’s hoof, the pony would probably never know that since she’s being really stubborn about her own feelings.

In any case Pinkie could try telling a few more jokes as there was quite a long straight tunnel ahead of them, it was going to be a long walk so she may as well start with a classic knock knock joke. In fact she should ask Toriel if she likes jokes and puns.

“Okay, I guess you do have good suggestions from time to time. Just stop trying to force her on me and I’ll eventually make an honest attempt to ask her on a date alright? Hey Toriel, do you like jokes, because I got quite a few good ones.” The two started walking slowly down the hallways look to each other.

“Oh I really do enjoy a good joke and I positively love puns, even bad ones. Maybe even especially the bad ones.” This admission from Toriel seemed to excite the joke telling ability in a very big portion of Pinkie’s brain.

“Okay I got one; did you hear about what happened to the frog that kicked the bucket?” Pinkie started off.

“No, what happened?” Toriel followed along.

“He croaked!” They both started laughing at the joke, Pinkie then decided to start off another one. “It’s hard to explain puns to a kleptomaniac, do you know why?”

“No, why is it so hard to explain puns to a kleptomaniac?” Toriel tilted her head to look down at the pony; she was obviously enjoying her presence more and more by the passing second.

“It’s because they always take things literally!” That got them chortling and Pinkie already had another one coming. “I got another one, knock knock!”

“Who’s there?” Toriel was smiling so hard, it would be nearly impossible to wipe that kind of grin off.

“Owls.” Pinkie stated simply.

“Owls who?” Toriel asked wondering where this joke was going.

“Well of course they do!” It took a moment for her to figure it out, but Pinkie got Toriel laughing once more. The goat lady probably had some jokes to tell so Pinkie decided to let her get in on the fun as well. “I think it’s your turn now.”

“Oh… well… knock knock.” Toriel had her own jokes to tell and they weren’t that bad.

“Who’s there?” Pinkie answered amiably hoping Toriel had a good side splitting joke.

“A herd.” Toriel always though topical jokes were always a good way to go and Pinkie was a pony.

“A herd who?” Pinkie hasn’t actually heard this one before.

“A herd you were home, so I came over!” Now it was Toriel’s turn to hear Pinkie’s laughter, yep they were already good friends. “Why did the skeleton set out to make a friend?”

“I don’t know, why did the skeleton want to make a friend?” It was getting harder for Pinkie to contain the laughter and yet her hair was still straight, even if it didn’t curl up it didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy a good time with her new friend.

“Because he was feeling rather bonely!” They were both giggling in excess now and it wouldn’t matter now if Toriel told a bad joke. It took them a moment to get themselves under control; they were near the end of the long corridor. “Okay last one; what do you call a snail on a boat?”

“Well I don’t know, why don’t you tell me?” It was so nice to see Pinkie and her new friend enjoying their time together.

“A snailor!” They were both guffawing off that last joke where Toriel had to wipe some tears out of her eyes, when she looked to her left to see the stone pillar marking the end of this room. She suddenly had an idea and what that idea was would be completely unknown to Pinkie, because she reads between the lines way too often for the idea to appear there and thus spoiling it for her entirely. “Excuse me, but I must run ahead. Take this phone, it will allow me to talk to you. Stay safe alright?”

“Um… okay?” A confused Pinkie Pie had no clue what a phone was, all she needed to know was that it was used to reach out and figuratively touch someone. She was handed a banana shaped plastic device, before Toriel ran off ahead leaving Pinkie with the sleeping Froggit.

A light hearted Pinkie stood there for a moment thinking of Toriel. Thinking of how much fun they were going to have together in the future and then she thought about introducing the goat lady to all her friends. While she was ruminating on that she heard a strange noise, she looked at the object she was holding in her hoof. Curiously she tapped the button on it that says ‘talk’ with the tip of her hoof.

“Hello Pinkie, I’m just calling to make sure that phone was working. I also have a question for; do you like butterscotch or cinnamon?” That was a easy question asked by Toriel for Pinkie to answer; she liked both flavors and decided to ‘speak into the device’.

Pinkie stared off into the void for a moment before nodding.

“I like both of them equally Toriel.” Pinkie had never used a phone before, telling Toriel that face to face later on would help immensely in understanding what the device was and how it worked. Ponies had random technology thanks to magic; it was advanced in some place and far behind in others. Telecommunications was one of the ones that was nonexistent, yet high grade film projectors existed.

“Okay, that’s all I needed to know. Don’t get into too much trouble Pinkie.” And with that Pinkie was left to her own devices, one of which she was already putting away into her saddlebag.

Author's Note

Next Chapter: Ruin Nation.

2 - Ruin Nation

Pinkie left the long hallway with the single solitary white column, that room was a bit odd and rather strange. It was a large wide open corridor and yet the monsters never placed a puzzle in it? It didn’t take too much thinking as she came into the next room to see the floor lined with leaves and another frog monster sitting to the left, it didn’t attack her like the one still sleeping on her back had.

“Welcome new being, those who live here call the ruins ‘home’. Try to talk down those who would attack you. Mistress Toriel likes you and let you in this far, then I too will trust in her judgment. Also it is because you have seemed to have befriended one of our own, though he is feral from the smell that comes off of him. It is sad, but it can happen to those of us who have lived down here without friendly contact for too long. Mistress Toriel along with help from others can help him return to normal.” This Froggit could actually talk, but it came in the sound of frog noises that somehow translated itself into a spoken language for Pinkie’s cute ears. “A bit of advice friend, go to the door on my right and to your left, there is something in there for everyone, but it’s a once a day thing. I share this knowledge with you, so be sure to heed the sign.”

“Thank you Mysteriously Informative Frog Thing, I hope we can have some more ribbit-ing conversations later after I check out the room.” Pinkie moved past the feminine sounding Froggit who started chuckling only to be beset by whimpering ghost fairy. Her soul wrenched itself from her body once more; it was just an odd feeling like it always was.

“Hey, can you tell me what that is?” Pinkie asked the feminine Froggit as she didn’t get that far by her.

“It is a Whimsun my friend, they are very meek creatures. This one however seems to have garnered only just enough courage to actually approach you. Besides that, my name actually is Mysteriously Informative Frog Thing, though I’m not exactly sure how you knew that. You can just call me Mifty; everyone else just calls me that after hearing my actual name.” Mifty smiled at Pinkie and then Whimsun launched its attack at Pinkie Pie, except Pinkie didn’t have to dodge it all. Even Mifty seemed less than worried as the attacks were far off from actually hitting the new visitor.

“My name is Pinkie, why did you…” Before Pinkie could get too far the Whimsun started crying and then it started to fly away.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” The Whimsun cried out in a panicked manner as it flew away leaving Pinkie’s heart to return to her.

“I forgive you!” Pinkie shouted after the Whimsun, loud enough to be heard by several beings in this wide open room, so she might want to keep it down and not disturb everyone in the surroundings. Smiling sheepishly after looking at the air, Pinkie entered the doorway indicated by Mifty who looked after her with a curious tilted head.

Walking into the room Pinkie saw a bowl on a pedestal, but it wasn’t just any old bowl. It was a bowl filled with candy, Pinkie got closer to it when the frog monster on her back woke up. It hopped off her back and tried to get up at the bowl. It wanted some candy, the sign said take one and the frog was having problem reaching the bowl. What was Pinkie to do about it?

“Why I’ll help it of course, who do you think I am? I’m not a selfish pony; I’m only allowed to take one so I’ll give mine to Mr. Hop.” That or Pinkie could give Mr. Hop a lift to get his own, but she obviously hadn’t thought of giving him a lift since his small stature made it hard to reach the candy. “Oh, right… or I could do that.”

Pinkie lifted the newly named Hop up to the bowl and it carefully only took one candy, then she let him down to the floor gently. He seemed to be a bit more intelligent and less feral now as he unwrapped and enjoyed his piece of monster candy. Pinkie lifted herself up to the bowl and took only one for her as well and put it away in her saddlebags.

She turned to leave and upon exiting and a few feet later, she saw some colorful things that looked like fruity gelatin desserts, except they were moving. Hop also finally followed her out of the room and moved to her side to rub against her like a cat.

“Those are Moldsmals; they are actually one of the most dangerous things around next to the Vegetoids. In fact, instead of standing around doing nothing let me come with you, it seems you will need some help. Don’t forget to show mercy to them.” Mifty answered Pinkie’s unspoken question as she hopped up next to her. “They like wobbly things and being flirted with.”

Pinkie’s heart wrenched out of her chest and the Moldsmals attacked!

Pinkie avoided the initial volley of white pain bullets that came at her in a wavy fashion, some of them even exploded into more bullets. Looking at Hop and Mifty, she could see them taking cover behind her as she started to dance her heart out of the way of the attacks. With the rapid beat of her hooves clacking against the ground, her heart started to jump from place to place in the air avoiding all the spheres of pain.

Her heart barely avoided taking damage and she was angry with the three Moldsmals, not for herself but for her friends that could have been caught in the crossfire. Her sudden anger caused them to cease attacking. She flipped her mane and danced forward in an aggressive manner.

“Hey watch it; you could have hurt my friends!” Seeing Pinkie stand up for some other monsters, the Moldsmals stopped attacking and wiggled a bit. Pinkie randomly wiggled her ‘generous’ backside at them while looking at the air in an angry manner and then winked at the slime monsters in a flirtatious manner. They quickly became docile and stopped attacking her and her friends.

The three monsters moved up to Pinkie, instead of attacking her again they dropped some money that appeared from inside their bodies. One would think they were thanking her for thinking of others first instead of herself before they left her alone with the two Froggits; Hop took back his perch on Pinkie’s back and snuggled into it.

“Well that was awfully nice of them; it appears you have received seven coins. It’s not much, but friendship and being nice tends to earn you currency around here.” Once again Mifty was being a great piece of exposition for Pinkie Pie who accepted the money as a gift it was meant to be by sweeping it up into her saddlebags.

“Right, thank you for explaining to me what they were Mifty, but are you sure you want to come with me?” Pinkie walked along and turned left into the next room, with Mifty hopping along after her.

“Yes, as I would like to warn you about…” Mifty was too late as Pinkie stepped on the discolored section of the floor and the pony fell down leaving a circular hole. Shaking her head Mifty sighed while slapping a webbed foot to her face and finished her statement. “As I was about to say, there are a lot of holes around here that need patching and are quite inconveniencing, are you okay down there?”

“I’m fine and so is Mr. Hop!” Pinkie yelled up to the female frog monster as she hopped over the hole in the floor. After which Pinkie looked to the two doors in the room. Hop just playfully bounced around in the leaves for a bit before returning to Pinkie’s back. She entered the doorway on the right and fell out of a hole on the wall on the other side of the discolored area having been pulled upwards suddenly. She landed safely on her hooves with Hop on her back, where Mifty was waiting.

“There are plenty more pitfalls like that one, however they have all been made entirely safe with leaves at the bottom. Mistress Toriel cares about us that deeply, she spends so much effort to make the falls safe for everyone. You have no idea how long it took her to collect all those leaves.” Mifty was happy to see Pinkie wasn’t hurt except for the bruise that still hasn’t gone away. She was a little worried about Pinkie being in pain, but the pony appeared mostly fine from her perspective.

“Right, remind me of it again why don’t you? It’s a bit painful to walk around if you keep reminding me about the bruise you know!” After Pinkie groused about her bruise to the abyss that was the space around her head, she moved onwards into a puzzle room. “Let’s keep going Mifty!”

Walking up to the sign after looking at the rock and the switch Pinkie hummed slightly as there were spikes in the way of moving forward. Moving up to the sign she read it as Mifty took action behind her.

“Three out of four rocks recommend that you push them, what’s that supposed to mean?” Pinkie was a bit confused over the wording of the answer to the puzzled, she heard a clicking sound and turned around to see that Mifty had already move the rock onto the switch for her and that lowered the spikes. It was obvious that the rock needed to be push, but why would one in four not recommend it?

Shaking her head, Pinkie decided to continue on to the next room. She would start asking Mifty a question about her surroundings or in general Toriel, as she seemed to be highly knowledgeable of the area.

“Why do you call Toriel your mistress?” Of all the questions Pinkie could have asked and it was the one that made her sound jealous of the frog monster before her. Pinkie looked to the air sternly. “I’m not jealous, I’m more curious about why she does it. So please don’t put feelings in my head that aren’t actually there or I and everyone else will start thinking you’re ‘unreliable’.”

“I call her mistress because she is a grand protector to those who live here in the ruins; she cares for us and helps us learn things. All monsters in the ruins know the love of Mistress Toriel’s protection which has been extended to you as well and I wish to make my mistress proud by aiding you.” In the next room they came across a large expansive floor covered in cracks. “Follow me, I will show you the path through here. I do not wish my friends injury to be exacerbated; I noticed it after you came out of the return chute the last time you fell.”

After showing Pinkie through the room of various pratfalls they came to a room with three rocks and more spikes. Pinkie and Mifty both move one rock each at the same time; however Pinkie would come to ‘stare at the fourth rock she’s seen since entering the area’. It would behoove her to ‘stop Mifty with a hoof’ before she could start pushing it. She did just that a few seconds later.

This was one of those odd times that reminded Pinkie of the rock farm and how her sister Maude met her pet Boulder. As such she took the message two rooms back and applied it to this being the fourth rock, instead of pushing it she would instead ‘talk to it’, even if it didn’t make any sense at the time to do so.

“Excuse me, but could you please move over to that switch to press it down.” Said the pony and much to her shock, after having looked off into the ceiling again for a while in her continuously strange manner of constantly doing so despite nothing being up there, after following her strangely psychic notion to talk to the rock it moved on its own to the switch to press it down.

“Thank you for asking kindly partner, it’s not often someone would be willing to talk to me out of the blue before trying to push me around. You’re of the friendly sort, so let me keep this switch held down for you. Lady Toriel came through here earlier looking very excited about something and you seem new, so she must be really excited about you.” The rock surprisingly spoke in an accent reminiscent of Applejack; it had the country twang to it and everything. “Well go on now you three, oh and don’t forget to stop by the bake sale up ahead! They could really use some money if you have any, it would help them out a lot.”

Saying the words ‘Bake’ and immediately ‘Sale’ afterwards got Pinkie hyped for sugary things and she moved into the next room and stopped when she saw a mouse hole and a wedge of cheese that looked stuck to a nearby table. Hearing some shy squeaks in the hole, Pinkie decided to flip the table onto its side and with some help from Mifty she moved the top of the table closer to the mouse hole by leaning it up against the wall cheese side down.

“Why did we just do that?” Mifty was a little confused, but didn’t see a problem with helping Pinkie move the small table.

“I just wanted to do something nice for the mouse that lives here and a friend of mine just happens to speak mouse and I know a few words in that language.” As Pinkie and Mifty left the area she heard happy squeaking sounds and smiled as the shy mouse seemed to have gotten what it wanted. “Come on; let’s go see about that bake sale, I can already smell the sugar from here! So are these ruins from some kind of nation of monsters?”

“Why yes it is, lots of monsters live down here and yet we have sadly let it fall into disrepair. We ended up here long ago when we were sealed by these beings called ‘humans’ who feared our power to attack the soul directly and forced us down here in a sad war that should have never been. Our war was started over a few small things and something was blown out of proportion to the point where we now find ourselves, all of us trapped below ground.” After a moment of pensive thought Mifty decided to tell Pinkie something else that she really needs to listen to. “The reason why those other monsters are attacking you for your soul is because it could possibly free us from our entrapment that binds us, I don’t think I could do what they are willing to do to break the magical seal holding. Your friendly countenance and ability to forgive those who attack you will see you safe here among the ruins of our fallen nation, where all the monsters have stopped caring about the upkeep of the place we call ‘home’. As you can already tell, this place gets a bit depressing at times.”

Mifty came to a stop and Pinkie looked forward to see why that was and she could almost taste the sugary goodness on her tongue from the bake sale, only something was in the way of the sugary smells. It was a large white blob that seemed to be in their way and mumbling the letter Z over and over again or just plain buzzing. If he was trying to pretend that he was sleeping, then why was he making so much noise?

“Oh dear, it’s him. His name is Napstablook, he tends to lie about in odd places in the ruins because it’s usually so quiet here and he comes here fairly often. This is one of those times he’s completely in the way and he tends to cry a lot. Crying is his method of spiritual attack and since he’s a ghost you can’t exactly physically hurt him to get him to leave.” This bit of dialogue from Mifty the Froggit was something Pinkie should take note of, befriending him into leaving was always an option.

To get him out of the way, Pinkie would have to disturb him. Of course this means he would definitely attack her if disturbed and there was a bake sale on the other side of him counting on her. So there was a good reason to disturb his getting in the way, also because she wanted to continue on her way through the ruins and she couldn’t do that with Napstablook sitting there. She’d best make sure her frog friends were out of the way first in the alcoves to her left or right.

“Right I can’t endanger them like that, got to keep my new friends Hop and Mifty safe. Hey, you two can you go over to the alcove while I deal with this ghostie?” The two frogs looked at Pinkie worriedly; she should probably tell them she was going to be okay. Pinkie could definitely ‘giggle at the ghostie’ to solve this problem. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry. I’ll have this ghost smiling in no time!”

Taking Pinkie at her word the two hopped off to her left, while Pinkie moved up to Napstablook and disturbed him with by pushing at his squishy ghost body with her two front hooves.

“Hey get up; I know you’re not actually asleep.” Having shoved at Napstablook he immediately swirled into the air and gave off a pulse of energy, Pinkie’s heart swiftly and audibly popped out of her body.

“Here comes the napstablook!” Napstablook said loudly as he stared Pinkie down, his music was just funky sounding and really cool so Pinkie started moving to the jazz beat when the ghost started crying tears at her heart.

Pinkie danced to the jazz music in a jitterbug style, moving slightly to the left or right while shifting the placement of her hooves to make her heart go between the tears flying at it. As soon as the attack ended, Pinkie addressed Napstablook with her cheerful disposition.

“Hi my name is Pinkie Pie and I like your background music, it’s really fun to dance to.” Pinkie saw Napstablook blush and start crying some more and this time his tears tried to circle around on Pinkie’s heart and entrap it in a strange way and they looked more wobbly than before.

“I’m Napstabalook, you really like my music? I worked so hard on it!” Napstablook was blushing slightly; Pinkie should continue attacking him with her friendliness. “I hope I’m being a decent mid-boss for you.”

“Yeah you’re difficult to dodge; it has a nice jazzy beat to it. It makes dancing to it fun, well aside from having to dodge your dangerous tears that is.” Pinkie’s words brightened up the ghost quite a bit. “Can you stop trying to hurt me please?”

“Let me try something…” He said with a frown, Napstablook seemed to want to show Pinkie Pie something interesting. He started crying again, only this time the tears weren’t going after her heart, they were instead going to his head and taking shape up there until they formed a rather dapper top hat. “I call it Dapper Blook! Do you like it?”

Napstablook waited eagerly for a response from Pinkie Pie, who should tell them that she liked it because she really truly did.

“I think it looks really neat on you, it’s really cool Napstablook!” Pinkie giggled at the cool ghost and his blush deepened, Pinkie’s soul went back into her body and she could see a small ghost of a smile on his face.

“I came down here to be alone, but instead I met somebody that was really nice. Oh my, I’m rambling… I’ll get out of your way now.” Slowly Napstablook faded from existence, don’t worry he’s not dead. How does a ghost die anyway? Probably by getting giggled at by a pony named Pinkie Pie.

Now that that was dealt with, Pinkie motioned for Hop and Mifty to come back over to her. The bake sale was in the next room and even if Pinkie didn’t look at the air she could smell it. That crisp smell of sugar and baking powder in the air, so Pinkie would probably…

“BAKE SALE, BAKE SALE, OH HOW I LOVE A BAKE SALE!” Pinkie sung out in an adorable manner before hopping straight into the room the bake sale occupied. Her adorable nature and her bright optimism helped out the monsters watching her go to the bake sale from a nearby doorway; she brought their mood up quite a bit just by showing enthusiasm.

Pinkie saw two spider webs, one of which was larger than the other and a sign in the room. Well it was a bit depressing to her that she didn’t see the bake sale, but she could definitely smell it. She looked at the nearby sign in the middle of the room.

“Huh… spider bake sale? It’s for charity for helping out spiders, oh neat!” Pinkie carefully moved over to the smaller of the nearby spider webs as to not accidentally destroy it and saw the sign at the bottom of the web. Placing seven coins on the floor she waited as a spider dropped down and held out a small doughnut for her. “Thank you… wait a minute, don’t go back up yet.”

Pinkie was about to eat the small doughnut when it was snatched out of her hoof by Mifty’s tongue, she shouldn’t be mad though and with good reason as Mifty will explain herself.

“You probably wouldn’t have liked that as it was made with mulched dead spider.” Mifty didn’t know much about horses, but what she did know was that Pinkie was of a vegetarian species and bugs weren’t on the menu.

“What? Oh that would not have ended well… I really need to help these little guys out, but how would I do that?” While Pinkie was considering this by looking off into space, she could just teach the spiders to bake in a way that wasn’t partially sacrificial for their dead and that would aid them further in their very good cause. It might take a minute or two for the slow pony to… “Hold up a second, hold everything you spiders! I’m going teach you how to bake something that’s actually good. Now I need a working oven, a table to sell stuff at, a chair, baking powder, a few metal pans with six cylindrical indents in them, an insulating object or something that you can hold hot metal with without getting hurt, rice paper, flour, sugar, vanilla, some salt, a way to easily get water into a container, butter if you can find any, food dye and some icing made with fruit ASAP, make sure that nothing living goes into it and I’ll show you how baking is really done!”

Thousands upon thousands of spiders crawled down from the ceiling to surround Pinkie Pie and the two frogs. It was a veritable massive army of them.

-A few hours and one ‘Cupcake Song’ later –

“Thank you for your patronage.” Pinkie said joyfully to a Loox and a Migosp enjoying her cupcakes as they walked off. The Loox was the large one eyed bipedal creature and a Migosp was a friendly dancing bug monster, both were happy customers to the bake sale that had been taken over by Pinkie Pie.

The spiders were really quite ridiculously and overly resourceful. The room now had two working human sized ovens, multiple sinks with liquid soap dispensers and several working toilet stalls fully stocked with toilet paper in it since Pinkie had to go to the bathroom and had idly mentioned it to the spiders in passing that she needed one. Aside from that they cleaned up the room to the point it was spotless, it was all to the plus side that dead liquefied spiders weren’t being put into the food anymore.

In fact things had picked up by quite a lot since Pinkie started baking, the smell of her cupcakes was attracting a lot of monsters to come see the bake sale and who was making that wonderful aroma throughout the ruins.

After sitting on her flanks for a while selling cupcakes Pinkie had forgotten something important, despite making this the most successful bake sale the spiders had ever had in their entire history. She even sold a cupcake to a Vegetoid, a strange creepy smiling carrot being that gave her a few fresh vegetables as a tip after hearing her stomach grumble. Pinkie hadn’t eaten a single thing until that point since she came to the Underworld, all because she fell into teaching the spiders good business practices that she had learned from her time with the Cakes. The Cakes were her favorite adoptive secondary pony family, who were likely worried about her and also happy that she wasn’t around to disturb the finer points of what being married entails.

“Really, what did I forget? Also I know what sex is, there’s no reason to dance around the issue unless it’ll break our T rating. You know this story almost didn’t get posted, because some pony accidentally forgot to mark this T rated to start with.” Pinkie heard a strange noise after making such an odd statement to no one in particular that was possibly embarrassed about it getting out. A spider pointed to her saddlebags, she reached in and pulled out her phone which she held up to her head… the question here was how did she know to do that? “Oh I asked the spiders about it during the time transition where they got all of this together, apparently they know a lot about phones and how they work so I don’t have to ask Tori about it. Hello?”

“Oh I’m so sorry Pinkie, I forgot all about you! I was so busy cleaning and fixing things up, it must have been so awful waiting for me.” Toriel sounded upset and could use a little reassurance that Pinkie had spent her time quite lucratively; the spiders certainly weren’t complaining about the workload she gave them with all the money she raked in.

In fact, Pinkie could invite her to the bake sale and give her a special warm cupcake with a heart shaped pat of icing on it to let her know how much she meant to the pony. Then there would be a declaration of love and kissing with the pretty goat lady that was slowly winning Pinkie’s heart.

“(I’m not doing that YOU, but I will still give her a cupcake.) Don’t worry about it Tori, I’m having fun making cupcakes and friends.” In fact all the monsters in the ruins were spreading it around that she was too friendly to attack, she was now safe in the ‘home’ from any kind of soul seeker. “I’ve been helping the spiders at the bake sale, you should really come here. Also bring some money to buy a cupcake with, they’re delicious!”

She would continue to help the spiders out of the goodness in her heart, which also earned her a large amount of respect from them and she asked if they could help clean up the other parts of the ruins a bit. This led to the oddly comical sight of hundreds of little spiders with tiny construction helmets running around to start fixing things and making them less dreary. At least there were no orange fat cats around to squish them or get in the way down here.

Author's Note

'Nifty' frog character that can do scans on monsters for Pinkie, check.

Next chapter is going to be a sad one for Tori, because she and Pinkie get into a fight. Though I think Pinkie will get her kiss in the end exactly like she wants.

"Stop trying to set me up with Tori, can you really be any more annoying!" Pinkie shouted from inside the authors notes where canon is a bit iffy or nonexistent.

Sheesh fine, I'll set you up with Papyrus or Sans then.

"Who are they?" Pinkie asked surreptitiously.

You'll see, that is if you can survive to be away from Toriel's 'burning passion' for PIE!

Also don't you dare start taking potshots at me in the story Pinkie or you'll regret it.

3 - Burning Pie Waltz

(Spoilers for those who haven't played Undertale Yet. You have successfully been warned.)

Pinkie had waited patiently for Toriel to arrive; the goat lady was looking around in surprise at some of the newest features in the ruins. Wouldn’t you after thousands of spiders miraculously install working plumbing in less than an hour? There were several levels of absurdity going on here. That it even worked perfectly at all was amazing; the monsters were welcoming of this change in scenery and couldn’t complain about having toilet paper.

“My goodness, what happened here?” Asked Toriel who looked around the room with both her hands clasped together as this was something new and never before seen in the ruins. She looked to the table that Pinkie was sitting at to see that she was smiling and waving at her. “Oh there you are Pinkie; I hope that none of the monsters here gave you too much trouble.”

“Oh there was no trouble at all Tori, in fact I’ve made friends with a lot of monsters since I started helping out with this bake sale.” Now would be a good opportunity for Pinkie to share her love of baking with Toriel by selling her a cupcake that was made just for her. She had to point out her new friends who were really good at acquiring things. “All the proceeds go to helping out these friendly little guys! To be more specific these three spiders right here are George, Georgette and Georgina, they helped organize it all. They are a really cute family along with Geo, Geology, Geosynchronous, Geode and many other spiders like them. It’s really hard to remember more than a hundred names when there are thousands of these guys around here. So anyway, will you please buy a cupcake? I promise they’re spider free!”

Toriel came up to Pinkie and looked at the strange confections that she saw several monsters walk, hop and or wiggled their way out of the room with. They had seemed to be enjoying their treats and they did seem to inspire passion in the monsters of ‘Home’. After a moment of looking into the adorably big eyes of Pinkie Pie and that wonderful smile, how was Toriel to refuse buying one and eating it to see what the fuss was all about? Seeing the cost of the confection, Toriel reached into her robe and pulled out her coin purse.

Toriel was ignoring the many stares and bows she was getting from the surrounding adoring monsters as she paid the money for a cupcake of her own, Pinkie knew she was a guardian of the ruins but they were all paying attention to her presence in a highly reverent way. Why were there hints of sadness if she was so loved?

The cupcake was an intriguing thing to Toriel and this one in particular was covered in a pink sugary icing that used fruit in some way judging from the smell. Sniffing it made her mouth water slightly. Apparently she did the right thing earlier when she asked Pinkie about her preferences for butterscotch and cinnamon; it definitely looked like she appreciated a well made baked good.

“Thank you for your patronage Tori! Now if you spiders will excuse me, I think I’m done with selling baked goods today.” The first three spiders Pinkie named waved at her that it was okay for her to leave, she did them a great service today and they would always be in debt to her. “Thanks for letting me help you guys out! So, are you going to try it Toriel?”

Toriel looked at the cupcake with a bit of apprehension; she just could not quell her need to bite into it. She wondered what it would taste like and slowly opened her mouth and moved the confection towards it to take a bite.

Quite a few monsters with small popcorn buckets sat nearby, they all leaned forward to see how Toriel reacted to this. Even Pinkie was holding a small bucket of popcorn munching on some of its contents; she wasn’t even going to bother questioning where she got it from as she was busier with watching Toriel’s lips part for the cupcake in a rather sensual manner.

If Pinkie were aware of herself, she would have notice herself licking her own lips at the sight of Toriel parting hers. This moment was something Pinkie really wanted to see, the goat ladies first cupcake. They say you’re first time was always the most exciting, especially when it came to a good pastry.

Toriel slowly bit into the treat, her teeth sliding like knives down into the fluffy and sugary treat of enormous delectability. Pulling her head back with a chunk in her mouth, she carefully chewed and savored the flavors. After a moment she gave of a cute soft moan and her pupils shrunk and then grew big and glossy before they started to fill with tears.

Then Toriel ate the rest of the cupcake like a ravenous blood thirsty maniac.

No seriously, Toriel couldn’t get enough of that one cupcake and slapped some more money on the counter and took three more cupcakes. They were all made by Pinkie, who just smiled at such a reaction. Even the other monsters were surprised to see her lose her graceful appearance as she slowly savored the other three cupcakes she just bought, they just couldn’t help but watch her doing so.

It certainly would make for a good slow motion movie. Thankfully Pinkie Pie had a very good memory and she would see this with great clarity for the rest of her life, however long that may be especially with what the future entails and where she currently was.

“You’re actually kind of underselling it you know. You actually have to be here to enjoy the experience of watching Toriel eat these cupcakes.” Addressing the air, Pinkie’s face had noticeably turned straight red and she wasn’t the only one with a red face. All the monsters were also watching Toriel go from sweet and innocent to downright sinful in a matter of seconds after getting her first taste.

After she was finished eating the last cupcake slowly, she looked horribly goatish about it all with a grin and blush on her face. She had returned to her senses to realize that she had an audience that didn’t have any popcorn left, having given them enough time to finish their popcorn with the way she had eaten the other three cupcakes far more slowly than that first one.

The reason why it was impossible for Toriel to be sheepish about this was because she was a goat lady.

“Well duh, tell them something we don’t know!” Pinkie said blandly to the air, as if expecting it to answer her that Toriel might have incidentally found the taste so wonderful she was going to hug the baker who made them. It wasn’t quite a romantic thing, but it was sure to be cute to all the monsters around that were watching.

Toriel swept Pinkie up into a hug and nuzzled the back of her neck and the pony didn’t struggle, in fact she came to enjoy the nuzzling feeling of the humanoid goat’s nose pressing against her neck, diving into her long straight hair and incidentally taking a small whiff of it. The pony’s eyes closed as she relaxed, Toriel made her feel completely safe.

It was only a few seconds later that Toriel had completely disarmed Pinkie’s brain when she found a sweet spot behind one of her ears to start rubbing with her fingers. Pinkie started cooing before she fell asleep in Tori’s arms purring like a happy kitten with her tail wagging back and forth almost sweeping across the floor in Tori’s strong grip. The pony hadn’t realized how tired she was since she got to the Underworld, until Toriel picked her up to start petting her affectionately.

“Excuse me everyone, I have to get this sleepy one to bed. She must have had a really tiring day and when she wakes up… well, I hope she likes the surprise I’ll have waiting for her.” Toriel cradled the pony in her arms and smiled; she found Pinkie adorable in how she curled up in her arms and snuggled into her body. As cute as she was, Pinkie was still quite heavy for her size. The pony grunted angrily in her sleep at something, Tori took it as her getting cranky so she had to move on after addressing the monsters. “I wish you all good health in the near future. It has been a long time since I’ve seen things brighten up down here and I know I haven’t exactly been the most attentive caretaker. I’m sorry for not trying harder to make things better my people.”

“Worry not; it is nice for us just too even see that you’re finally feeling better mistress Toriel. It gives us hope to see that your spirits can be lifted even after all that has happened to you.” Mifty bowed to Toriel, she was smiling as she watched her carry Pinkie off into the ruins back towards her home. Now she would attend to the one Pinkie called Hop and try to reintroduce him to monster society, hopefully he would fully regain his senses and stop being feral.

Toriel opened the door to the room and carried the sleeping pony to the bed and tried to place her on it. It was a little hard to dislodge Pinkie as she was quite the snuggly pony and Toriel was a warm and inviting figure to cling to. It took her a few tries to get Pinkie’s hooves off of her and there was a temptation to just give in and crawl into bed with Pinkie, but she decided against it. They were just becoming friends, they weren’t that close yet. She felt her face heat up because the word ‘yet’ popped up in her head as if she were wishing to be closer to this brightly colored individual with an excessively friendly demeanor.

After tucking the pony into bed, Toriel sighed wistfully as she leaned down and kissed Pinkie on the cheek making her smile in her sleep. The pony’s sleeping face raised up to nuzzle Toriel before resting itself on the pillow, the smile on Toriel’s face broadened but she was still sad at the reminder of her past.

Toriel just knew that Pinkie would want to leave eventually, she tried to harden her heart to the possibility and she just couldn’t as she looked at the pony sleeping peacefully in the bed. She looked weird enough to pass for a monster, but she had a powerful soul and Toriel didn’t want her to leave if she was just going to be attacked for it like the others. It hurt her deeply that she couldn’t save any of them.

An hour later. -

Toriel sat in her comfortable chair with her reading glasses on as she read a book about the uses for snails. Despite being mostly an herbivore like a normal goat she did get a taste for snail pie every now and then, it was very much an acquired taste.

As she read her book, Toriel couldn’t help but feel a pang of hopelessness to see someone like Pinkie die by trying to leave the safety of the ruins. Why did she keep doing this to herself? At least this time it was an adult or at least what Toriel assumed was an adult pony. She knew how to bake and take care of herself and of that Toriel was sure of, but could she survive against the monsters of the Underworld? That flower monster was unusually powerful; even then Pinkie would have survived the initial attack had Toriel not interfered.

Thinking on it, she would do what she always did. She would try to discourage Pinkie from leaving; her soul was a shining beacon of happiness that had spread throughout ‘Home’ and after a few hiccups the monsters seemed to like the exuberance and enthusiasm Pinkie had brought to them. It was a little strange that Pinkie didn’t seem to be overly worried that she was stuck in the Underworld and she wasn’t sad at all; she must have had something to go back to at least if she was that good at baking.

Toriel sat up and closed her book, it was no longer time for her to keep pretending that she could continue reading with her heart hurting like it was, Tears filled her eyes as her hands came up to her face and she let loose. Hearing a door open she feared that she had disturbed Pinkie Pie’s rest, only for the sleepy pony to come to her and crawl into her lap before resuming her sleep. Toriel just couldn’t cry anymore after that, even if she was still upset. Pinkie was a beautiful creature that just had so much love to give even as tired as she was.

It was about time that Toriel decided that she got some rest herself and she closed her eyes as she slowly nodded off rubbing Pinkie’s belly as that seemed to make the sleeping pony giggle. That laugh really made Toriel frown, considering that it would soon be gone from her life and it reminded her of her sorrowful past.

Underworld Morning or what passes for it. –

Pinkie sighed and stretched out before blinking blearily having just woke up feeling very comfortable, looking to her belly she could see Toriel’s left hand resting on it. A blush broke out on her face as the hand gently rubbed her belly even as the goat lady snoozed in the chair and she noticed that she was lying in her lap.

“Yes, I like this and I’m upset that I have to do this, but…” Pinkie raised a hoof and started slowly pressing it to Toriel’s face trying to get her to wake up. “Tori, hey it’s time to wake up!”

After a moment Toriel’s eyes scrunched up and she shook her head and felt something warm under her palm and in her lap, looking down she saw Pinkie looking up at her. With a kind smile she stood up and deposited the pony in her warm chair as she walked off to the kitchen past a bathroom that she didn’t have previously, the spiders were working very fast if they had already started altering Toriel’s home.

“I’ve tasted one of your cupcakes… and had three more after that. Now it’s time for you to taste my butterscotch cinnamon pie.” Toriel hoped that Pinkie liked it since she used her magic to personally warm it up for her. She waited patiently as Pinkie sniffed the air around the pie.

“All natural ingredients, just the right amount of sugar to make the flavor just right. Oh my goodness…” Pinkie’s eyes snapped open and she stared at Toriel before nibbling at the tip of the slice of pie, her pupils also grew big and watery. “Toriel… can we date? I mean I’m an adult and you’re an adult so… and your pie is just so amazing!”

“I would like that.” Toriel had to admit she’s never exactly thought of getting into dating again, nor did she really think she was that attractive. Had she bothered to ask the monsters in the ruins called ‘Home’, she was considered the most attractive monster there.

“Give me a montage please; I’m sorry that I said I would never want this!” Pinkie screamed at the air, confusing Toriel greatly as to why she was asking it for something. Of course the goat lady wouldn’t know what a montage was, but Pinkie obviously did.

A week long montage, because Pinkie asked nicely. –

Pinkie and Toriel spent a lot of time together telling jokes and puns. There were many laughs to be shared. Toriel even found a red ribbon to tie back Pinkie’s hair after brushing it out.

Toriel showed Pinkie around the ruins on a date and they spent time talking to the monsters making their day that mistress Toriel’s funk seemed to have been entirely obliterated by Pinkie’s presence. They knew why Toriel was sad, but would not speak of it to Pinkie.

Pinkie told Toriel of her homeland of Equestria, of her parents and sisters, of her home with the Cakes and her five closest friends. She even made mention to the power of harmony and that she thought Toriel would make a good element of kindness, this caused Toriel to blush slightly and state that she wasn’t exactly as kind as Fluttershy sounded.

Toriel told Pinkie of the future she wished she could have, she wanted to be a teacher and wanted to help many others get a good education. To have a school where all can learn, one that she would build with her own hands if she had to. Her noticeable depression was what was holding her back.

Pinkie told Toriel of Pinkie Promises and what they meant to her, she even Pinkie Promised that they’d always be friends much to Toriel’s shock that she’d promise that.

They talked to each other long into the nights, even if it was hard to tell what the time was underground, they talked to each other opening themselves to a possible future unlike any other. Their hearts growing closer with each passing day, it was hard to separate the two now.

The week they spent together had meant a lot to them, having baked many a snack for the other. The ruins over the week became a true home for the monster, instead of some run down ruins filled with mostly harmless traps. Pinkie had brought about a wonderful change to all who lived there and the monsters started supporting each other on their own, they were becoming self sufficient.

At some point Toriel even decided to talk about the most painful thing in her heart to Pinkie, as they had become close enough for Pinkie to learn of Toriel’s history. It was at the end of the week that she brought this up and she was heartbroken, since she had actually fallen in love with Pinkie in the intervening time frame of the montage and knew what she had to do.

At the end of a wonderful week.-

“Pinkie this has been… this has been the most wonderful week in my life and… it has been a long time since I’ve felt this way about anyone.” Toriel knew deep down in her heart that she couldn’t keep Pinkie here; she would have to test Pinkie’s resolve. It hurt her to know she was going to hurt such a wonderful young being like Pinkie, but it had to be done. “You’ve asked me multiple times why I’m always so sad, well now it’s time for you to learn of the sad truth about how we monsters ended up sealed down here.”

“I think I can handle it Tori.” Every time Pinkie said her nickname now, there was a smile to be had and Pinkie would brave this knowledge with ‘determination’. “Okay what was with that emphasis on determination? Is there something you’re not telling me here?”

“Long ago our world had two ruling tribes on it; they were the humans and the monsters. Before the start of the war that drove us here, there was a human that I adopted who perished in a terrible accident.” Toriel’s eyes filled with tears once more as she sat in her chair, only for them to be wiped away gently by a hoof and a pair of concerned eyes. “He gave his soul to my son by birth and made him promise to do something, my sons name was Asriel. My flesh and blood son perished and it was that day that marked the true end of the war that broke out between monsters and humans.”

Pinkie stayed quiet and motioned for Toriel to continue on with a hoof as she rubbed her head against Tori’s chest trying to make her feel better.

“The humans were always so strong and they pushed us underground where they sealed us away using powerful magic, needless to say they won the war they started out of fear. We never wanted the war to begin with, as it was all a misunderstanding. My adopted human was the one to kick off the war and with his last request to my son, it took the most important thing I had in this world, my family.” Toriel closed her eyes and tears started to spill from them, Pinkie brought her into a comforting hug. “Now that seal holds whoever falls through it, it’s a one way barrier that prevents anyone who ends up here from getting out. This led to the death of six humans who fell down here previously, their souls being taken from them in the hopes that it will break the barrier to set us free. It’s why I divorced myself from the one who was the father to my deceased children; I don’t like to talk about him much as he lost himself in all the fighting. He’s become a true monster and I can’t find myself to forgive him for it.”

Pinkie slowly put a hoof on Toriel’s arm while looking her in the eyes; she didn’t know what to say to that to make it all better.

“Now… now I know that I can’t keep you here forever. You have an unbroken family to go back to; they all must be missing you dearly. Follow me Pinkie.” Toriel, with a heavy heart, pulled away and was going to confront Pinkie and make her leave. Those stolen souls would never really free them, but she believed that Pinkie might be able to make it through the barrier.

Toriel walked down the staircase leading to the basement, Pinkie had never asked about it after she told her she didn’t want her going down there. Now there was a sense of dread as she led the pony to the gateway to the rest of the Underworld down the tunnel.

“Toriel… what’s wrong?” Pinkie could feel the dread in the air as Toriel led her down a tunnel, at the end of which was a door. The goat lady hunched a bit before she turned around and slowly looked down on Pinkie with a frown. “I’m not going to like this am I?”

“No, you are not. I don’t much like what I am about to do either. Behind me is the door to the rest of the Underworld, it is a path forward. At the end of a long traveled road is the barrier, I think you might actually have a chance of breaking through it alone. Please show me that you can survive until you pass through it Pinkie, do this for me!” With that Toriel ignited her hands wreathing them in flames and Pinkie felt her heart wrench from her chest. The look of betrayal on Pinkie’s face hurt Toriel immensely, but she carried on. “Defend yourself my sweet little pie!”

As the sad music started playing Pinkie could see the tears in Toriel’s eyes as she launched waves of fire at Pinkie’s bright pink soul. Pinkie started sadly dancing to the music in long sweeps, twirls and quick taps of her hooves to slide her heart between the waves of fire that started encircling in on her soul.

“The flames are rising higher, my heart will not give in, I love you Toriel, you who are my beloved friend!” Pinkie continued to dance as Toriel leapt forward to sweep her hands at Pinkie’s floating pink heart that pulsed with power, it floated out of the reach of her flaming hands.

“This may be hurting me a lot, but I’m giving it all that I’ve got, I will not let you go without knowing you can handle the monsters that do not know your heart like I do!” Toriel launched another wave of flames as she watched Pinkie dance to the music in the air with a long sweep across the floor, then her body twirled dancing beautifully among the flames.

“Toriel, please listen to me, this is not the way things have got to be!” Pinkie shouted as she danced a lonely waltz between the flames trying to damage her soul, heart her got burned several times causing her to wince as she felt her soul take damage. She looked into Toriel’s sorrowful eyes and had already forgiven her for the pain.

“Please Pinkie, fight me and put an end to my broken heart! I can no longer take that which you did start; you ignited it again and brought it back in the end. I think I might love you, but your soul is too bright for me to hold on to. I don’t want think myself as selfish to take that from you!” Toriel was screaming at Pinkie Pie and through the flaming inferno she had started up in the stone tunnel.

“Toriel I don’t want to hurt anyone, especially not you. Who I’ve come to love, it is true.” Pinkie was aware that she couldn’t run from this battle and she stayed and danced despite her soul taking multiple scorching hits. Her lonely waltz could only do so much to protect her soul. “Don’t you know that I care? It is you who I will spare, and from this torment I will pull you while you are there. My heart will dance in tune, to your sadness I will fill with love a new room!”

Pinkie’s continued refusal to fight and Toriel’s breaking heart was starting to affect her ability to actively harm the pony. Pinkie had been having a hard time dodging Toriel’s assaulting magical flames, her heart was slowly being wittled down under the torrent. It was bad until Toriel started to aim away from her slightly.

“Toriel, I forgive you for attacking me, please stop this already!” Pinkie’s dancing became more erratic as her heart tried to sway its way through the flames. It was getting burned and Pinkie was getting weaker in the inferno. She still refused to attack Toriel, ponies could sometimes be cruel, but outright violence was a hard thing for them to achieve.

“You have to fight! You won’t survive the rest of the Underworld on the goodness of your heart alone!” Even as she continued her barrage after a point she noticed how weak Pinkie’s soul was getting, in fact she stopped aiming at Pinkie’s soul entirely and watched as it and the pony danced. “What are you doing Pinkie, fight me!”

“No! You’re my friend and loved one; I have no reason to fight you!” It was as if Pinkie was ‘consistently choosing the spare option’. Eventually Pinkie stopped dancing entirely and sat down to stare at Toriel blankly and all the flames that were dancing around her. Her pink pulsating soul floated there in the middle of the air slightly burned and damaged in the midst of a sea of fire.

Toriel didn’t stop shooting out flames at Pinkie Pie, but she couldn’t hit the heart anymore as her flames actively moved away from the heart. She couldn’t bring herself to steal or break Pinkie’s soul, much less her heart.

“Please… Toriel….” Pinkie didn’t know what to do aside from cry and stare Toriel in the eyes as she too was crying. Not being a violent pony, she didn’t want to hurt Toriel. It was not like she could just push her soul into Toriel to make her stop; because that would just be silly and it would kill her so... “Wait, that’s exactly what I’m going to do! I’m going to give you a heart attack Tori!"

Pinkie stood up and stared down Toriel who continued to encircle them both in the flames of passion.

“Pinkie…” Toriel said sadly as she looked at the pony.

“Toriel… I’m really sorry for what I’m about to do.” Hearing Pinkie’s wavering voice, Toriel thought Pinkie was going to start fighting back and closed her eyes and continued to conduct the flames keeping them encircled.

Pinkie danced forward launching her soul at Toriel and ran forward to start forcing it into Toriel’s chest with her hooves.

Toriel opened her eyes and stared in horror as Pinkie started forcing her own soul into her body.

“I hope you forgive me for this Toriel, but I can’t hurt you! Please take my soul and free your people!” With a strong push of both her hooves, the light in Pinkie’s eyes died as her soul fully absorbed into a horrified Toriel’s body. “I just want everyone… to be… happy.”

“No… Pinkie, what have you done!” The flames dancing around them immediately snuffed out and Toriel could feel the warmth of Pinkie’s soul hugging her insides and filling her heart with warmth and laughter. She fell to her knees and took the limp pony’s form into arms. Her tears grew with the sadness she felt knowing the warmth of Pinkie’s soul was inside of her. This was not how she wanted things to be or go at all.

Toriel let loose a fit of sordid laughter as she rubbed her face against Pinkie’s cold body which started turning from its bright pink colors to a dull sad lifeless grey.

“Why! Why did this have to happen?” Toriel looked to the ceiling holding Pinkie’s body in her arms. She saw something very odd, but it was very faint. If only Toriel could remember all the magic she had at her disposal, she might even be able to ‘save Pinkie Pie’. “What… save Pinkie Pie? What is this that I am seeing? There’s a way to save her? Please if you know, tell me!”

It would take some thinking, but Toriel wasn’t the beloved protector for nothing. In her heart and in her mind she knew there was a way to save Pinkie Pie. Then it hit her like an epiphany, all monsters could draw souls out of a human body, or in this case a pony’s body. It was a common ability, but to do it in reverse, to give one back? Toriel already knew what she had to do, her heart filled with hope and determination that she could achieve this feat!

“For the spirit to be willing, the flesh must first grow weak. Just long enough for the soul in flight… to pass from cheek to cheek.” As she solemnly intoned an ancient spell she barely remembered, Toriel’s body glowed with an ethereal blue light. She slowly brought Pinkie’s lips up to her own and kissed her lifeless body.

Toriel tried to flood Pinkie’s body with the soul she had been gifted in an effort to return it to its rightful place, despite all that she pushed back into Pinkie some of it refused to leave her. Pulling back from the kiss born out of hope and desperation, Toriel could see the grey lifeless Pinkie slowly turn pink once more before she started hacking and coughing. She dearly hoped Pinkie was alright and that what was left in her wasn’t needed for the pony to fully recover.

Weakly opening her eyes, Pinkie looked up into Toriel’s worried visage from the floor where Toriel laid her recovering body.

“Is this heaven? I always knew you were an angel Tori…” Pinkie’s eyes closed and she snuggled weakly against Toriel’s warm body when she felt herself become trapped in a wonderful embrace.

Toriel, the Queen of the Underworld, cried tears of joy and laughed. She had done as the mysterious words had asked of her. She had saved Pinkie from perishing and her own mistaken need to try and make Pinkie change who she was.

Author's Note

Hey, without Pinkie Pie we wouldn't have a story.

In the game, if Toriel kills you it horrifies her at what she has done.

Hope this hits at least one person in the feels, anyway the way to be Toriel is to keep using the 'spare' command. You hammer it like no tomorrow and stop dodging her attack, she will eventually just let you go.

Heck you don't even need the 'attack' command at all throughout the entire game, unless you end up on the neutral ending or are actively trying for the bad ending.

I might come back and fix a few things wrong with this chapter after I take a siesta from submitting it.

4 - Sans Sorrow

Pinkie stirred slightly and felt very warm, in fact she felt safe and happy as her eyes opened to the sight of a familiar desk and a diary. She was in a bed like the last few times she woke up over the past week of spending time with Toriel. It wasn’t in the room with the toys and she certainly wasn’t in the guest bed that Pinkie now knew belonged to Toriel’s deceased son.

Pinkie immediately recognized that she was in Toriel’s bed, given that she had two white furred arms wrapping around her body that was a safe bet. She could even feel a pair of lips pressing against her neck. It wasn’t hard for her to tell she was being held by Toriel, who was cuddling her in a very comfortable manner and she didn’t feel like getting up from this compromising position.

Even then the minor shifting Pinkie had done woke Toriel up, seriously the pony only moved about as much as the space the currency from Equestria occupied and it woke the goat lady up. Story of the Princess and the pea much? Toriel was a queen, so that might be related to her ability to feel even the slightest shift Pinkie made.

“Hmm… Pinkie, I’m so glad you’re okay. I’ll let you up in a bit, but for now I just want to keep you to myself.” Toriel’s voice sounded soft, yet it also cracked slightly since it sounded like she had been deeply upset by what Pinkie had done. “You really scared me when you started turning grey, I thought you had… well that’s not important right now since your still here. I’m sorry for being so selfish; I wanted you to be able to fight back, to be able to leave. Most of all, I wanted you to be able to return to the life you once knew and I still don’t think that can be done peacefully. Maybe you can do it peacefully despite my fears that you can’t.”

Toriel started to stroke her fingers through Pinkie’s mane and Pinkie sighed at the feeling of Toriel toying with her mane. Toriel knew a lot of things about the pony she now held to her body, her likes and dislikes learned over a week of openly talking to each other about themselves. Among the dislikes she knew about Pinkie, poking fun at her weight was a definite thing to avoid. She smiled as Pinkie stayed right where she was and didn’t seem to be moving because Toriel started playing with her mane.

“It’s okay Tori, so what is beyond that door? You wouldn’t have attacked me if it wasn’t so serious.” Pinkie didn’t feel like looking to the air for the current time and just rested in Toriel’s arms. Like the time of day really mattered in the Underworld anyway, even though Pinkie would always give her friends the time of day anyway if she knew what it was, which she currently didn’t at the moment.

“It is a very cold place is what it is. Beyond the door is the route to Snowdin, I have taken the liberty to make you a scarf and got some food prepared for when you leave and… I’ll miss you dearly.” Toriel’s snuggling grip tightened around Pinkie Pie who gave off an embarrassing squeaking noise.

“Why don’t you come with me?” Pinkie tried to lift her head, but couldn’t due to Toriel’s sudden strong grip on her mane. Toriel had figured out that Pinkie liked having her mane pulled and held; Pinkie didn’t have much of a chance to fight back against the passionate goat lady that she was snuggled up against.

“I… well someone needs to tend to the flowers.” It sounded like a horrible excuse to not leave to Toriel and she just knew Pinkie was going to call her out on it. The pony glances at the air for a moment and then leaned her head back to nuzzle Toriel’s chin.

“You’re too scared to leave aren’t you Tori? I get scared too, all the time in fact. I try to keep my attitude as positive as possible and I try not to let things like sadness get in my way. My special talent as a pony is making others happy and I just wanted you and the monsters to be happy.” Pinkie felt a tug on her mane and she smiled, it seemed Toriel was going to style her mane again and she was going to let her. There was a reason why she went to Rarity sometimes and having her mane toyed with was one of them aside from the pretty dresses, giving the fashion designer a headache and sniffing around her rear end like a dog.

“I can’t protect anyone, I’ve become quite pathetic. It’s hard for me to set aside my depression in the face of all that has happened. I’ve been quite lonely because I keep to myself too much, my expectations are unknown to myself anymore, I fear for your life and the coming future, on top of all that I’m royalty Pinkie. I’m the Queen of the monsters Ms. Pie and I’m a great failure.” After a moment of silence Toriel reached out of bed and picked up the red ribbon dangling loosely from the bed post. She then sat herself and the pony up into sitting positions and started to roll Pinkie’s hair up into a cute bun, she held it in place with her left hand as she began wrapping it in the ribbon which she tied off expertly. “You broke my heart when you gave yours up to me willingly you know. It hurt me so deeply and far more so than I thought possible. I didn’t think I could feel pain that bad anymore, I thought myself numb to it all. I was wrong. What you did wasn’t what I wanted at all, but you made me see that things could have gone differently if I hadn’t tried to force things”

“It’s okay Tori, everything will be alright. Though I’m not leaving without you coming with me, you really need to get out more. Though I don’t think you’ll be lonely anymore, if the monsters refuse to let you be that way anymore.” Once Pinkie received a pat on her back signaling that Toriel was done with her mane, she turned around on the bed and looked at Toriel who was looking down at her sadly. “So how did you get my soul back into me?”

“You couldn’t have enjoyed it in the state you were before, but I did it like this...” After a moment the adorable goat lady with a thick tuft of fur sticking out from her chest leaned down and kissed Pinkie on the lips. After a few moments Pinkie tilted her head and started returning it with equal passion, which led to Toriel gripping the back of Pinkie’s neck. This spurred the pony on to add some tongue to it.

Once they broke apart, Pinkie felt her heart thundering loudly in her chest as she had never experienced anything like that before. After staring at each other with blushes on their faces, Toriel carefully maneuvered herself out of bed trying not to dislodge Pinkie and left the pony sitting there confused.

With the pony staring at her as she grabbed some clothes to put on elsewhere, Toriel wiggled her short tail in Pinkie’s direction with a shy smile on her red face before walking off towards the door to her room. Pinkie felt incredibly flustered as she stared after the goat lady.

“I’ll go clean up and get breakfast ready. A few friends of yours keep dropping by who are very worried about your health; I’ll assure them you are fine after having been out for a little more than a day. Please, just rest for now my sweet little pie. Just know that you’ll always have a place to come back to as my door will always be open for you after you leave.” And out the door the teasing Toriel walked carrying one of her robes with her; she didn’t shut the door upon exiting as if to prove her statement.

Toriel knew ponies were nudist by nature, but it still felt awkward to be naked around Pinkie who was always naked as was a thing that was normal for ponies and their culture. Monsters didn’t put much stock into culture, but like ponies she guessed that she was akin to the aristocratic unicorns Pinkie had spoken of when she went to visit her friend Minuette up on the mountain city of Canterlot. Her fur was thick enough that it wasn’t cold to go without wearing one of her robes, plus she could heat her body with magic almost indefinitely. It still felt a little odd to be without clothes.

For Toriel that bit of teasing was really quite hard to do, but she felt better after snuggling the pony in her sleep fur to fur. To feel Pinkie’s heartbeat against her chest made her sleep calmly instead of having nightmares for once. Pinkie was right about the other monsters though, she herself could have asked for help from the other monsters to stave off that loneliness. She was both a sad queen and a great fool who almost destroyed a beautiful thing; that thing being Pinkie’s wonderful soul. She now just wanted to form a strong bond with Pinkie and for it to last even if it just ended in friendship.

At least Toriel knew the meaning of pansexual and what that had to do with Pinkie’s nature, she was alright with Pinkie being open about her feelings and not letting a single thing get in the way. She herself didn’t want to let anything get in the way of their friendship and budding mutual romantic interest which hasn’t gone too far, aside from the recent cuddling and that one true kiss she just initiated with Pinkie. She licked her lips thinking of the sugary sweet taste Pinkie gave off when she kissed her, it tasted exactly like a pie to Toriel.

“I’m going to miss her when she leaves.” Toriel looked down and lit her hands aflame as she started cooking breakfast using her magical flames.

“Then go with her mistress Toriel.” The sound of Mifty the Froggit’s voice caused the goat lady to jump slightly and turn to the intruder in her home with a hand wreathed in chaotic flame. That flame quickly died down in the face of an unconcerned Mifty looking at her. “If you wish to follow your heart, then do so. We, the monsters of ‘Home’, will not hold it against you. We can tend to the flowers and we can take care of ourselves, we just needed a boost in morale to remember that we should take care of ourselves as well as each other. Pinkie was that reminder that we should stop letting things fall to ruins. We have idled long enough. It is time for us to get back into the spirit of things and laugh a little, even in the face of dire straits.”

“I haven’t been much of a queen to any of you have I?” Toriel continued to make breakfast; she knew Pinkie had a sweet tooth so it was pancakes and hash browns today. She had enough tomatoes to make some homemade ketchup for the diced and fried potatoes; she had enough syrup for the pancakes as well. With some fruit juice it would be relatively healthy.

“Maybe not, but given the circumstances as to why… we still think you’re great mistress Toriel. You just needed some… pony… to bring out that greatness that we still believe in. If you believe she will die without you… then why would you ever let her go alone you idiot! What happened to us was a tragedy and it didn’t just affect you milady, if you are that worried about it then do something!” Mifty was an average sized Foggit, but she was speaking with conviction that made Toriel pay attention. “We don’t have much down here, so what! We’re still alive and we should stop whining about how the dice fell and get up off our fat lazy butts! You’ve been moping for way too long for it to be healthy to continue doing so and so have the rest of the monsters in the ruins we named ‘home’! So why don’t you stop her from being killed if you’re that concerned about her? I don’t think you care about her at all and are pretending to just be her friend!”

“How dare you talk to me in such a manner…. I am not your mistress, I’m your queen! Also you’re right; I have been moping for far too long. I think I will set out with Pinkie to see what has become of the rest of the underworld under my ex’s rule! I won’t forgive him for the slaughter of innocents, but I will let him be if he still cares for our people. I do care, I am her friend and I think I might even be a bit smitten with her even when I thought I could never feel such passion again! I even want her to be as happy as she made all of you feel!” Toriel felt something odd; it felt like a wellspring of energy was born inside her body. It was as if she could feel the sliver of Pinkie’s soul that was still wedged inside her igniting in a blaze of passion. The Froggit she had glared down didn’t look cowed at all, instead she looked rather hopeful. “First step we still have to eat this breakfast I’m making; I’ll set up a third spot for you my friend.”

“You are our rock Queen Toriel, even when muted you were still infinitely kind enough to not make things worse and you endured for so long. It’s nice to see that you have come back to your senses and have taken an interest in someone who you wish to consort with. I’d even think you have a soul like that of humans if I didn’t know any better that it was impossible. You were always shy, but strong when we counted on you milady.” Mifty bowed curtly to Toriel before hopping off towards the exit of the kitchen. “I will go get your guest out of bed for breakfast. I’m sure we will both enjoy your divine morning feast, no matter how simple the fare may appear to be.”

“Hold on Mifty… I assign you as current regent of the ‘home’ ruins. See to it that ‘home’ becomes prosperous and that our morale doesn’t fall again! For when I leave, I will be trying to bring life back to the other monsters trapped down here.” Toriel smiled vibrantly seeing the wide eyed look in Mifty’s four eyes. “I will announce it later, now go. I have a table to set up and then I must prepare for my journey with a dear companion.”

“Hey Pinkie it’s breakfast time!” Mifty opened the door to Queen Toriel’s room and saw Pinkie sniffing the pillow and could swear she saw little red hearts wafting off of the ponies head.

“I wasn’t doing anything!” Pinkie quickly put the pillow back on the bed and hurriedly placed a tuft of white fur pulled from a brush into her nearby saddlebags, which she quickly strapped on before giving the four eyed frog a rather fake grin.

“Of course you weren’t… Queen Toriel has seen to it that we are having breakfast together and as her consort she wishes you to see her for breakfast.” Thanks to Mifty, the underworld might be a slightly brighter place even if they couldn’t get out anyway. “She has also decided to stop being so cowardly and will join you on your adventure.”

Considering Mifty just convinced the sleeping queen to awaken from her misery, if Pinkie Pie knew that she had convinced Toriel to go with her then she would have given Mifty a tight hug of not death even if close to asphyxiation.

Looking at the air for a moment, Pinkie nodded and launched herself at the suddenly shocked Mifty. She was going to thank her friend with a great big Pinkie Pie trademarked tight hug of not death even if close to asphyxiation.

Skip to near the end of breakfast. -

Pinkie happily ate her pancakes and smiled brightly at a Toriel who smiled right back at her, they were going to continue dating to see where it led. Not to say that they weren’t close enough already for Mifty to start declaring Lady Pie as consorting with Queen Toriel, but they just didn’t feel like it went beyond platonic feelings quite yet. Even with snuggling and kissing already involved it was still considered platonic between them.

“I think the monsters here will be able to get by without my presence, I must get to packing. I will be ready to set out within the hour. That will give you enough time to say goodbye to all the friends you have made here.” Today Toriel was wearing her blue robes, which Pinkie had thought looked nice on her and had said as much. It was the reason why she chose blue today; she had all colors of the rainbow in robe colors and at least three matching sets of each.

“Okay, I guess I’ll have to say bye to the spiders, they really cleaned things up around here. Well except for all the spider webs, but it’s rather obvious why they won’t clean those up.” Pinkie left Toriel’s home to go say good bye to all the monsters she had met and that she promised to visit if she survived her travels to the seal on the Underworld.

“Thanks for the vegetables; they’ll really help me out.” Pinkie was saying good bye to the Vegetoid’s and they kept giving her free vegetables and were making sure she had a lot of nutritional food with her before she left. “Still don’t know how they grow them underground.”

“Well not all plants necessarily need sunlight until they start growing out of the ground, Vegetoids can empower plants to grow without sunlight and they help keep a lot of monsters fed. The soil down here is very rich and there is plenty of water, so it’s not entirely impossible and just really hard to do without photosynthesizing potential. Solar moss helps a bit, even if it can’t match the power of the sun. Here take this monster compendium I wrote, I can’t exactly go with you because Toriel is leaving me behind as regent Pinkie.” Mifty held out the book to Pinkie and didn’t release until she said her part. “Please make sure our queen doesn’t fall into despair again. Keep her happy, as a lover or just a friend. It doesn’t matter which one you choose to be for her, she just wants to be by your side.”

Pinkie nodded as she stowed away the book, Toriel was definitely a beautiful bipedal creature and if there was one thing Pinkie liked on a beautiful creature… it was a wonderful smile. She was still unsure of where they were going with each other, but she knew that the kiss they shared was really special. She wrapped the scarf Toriel made for her around her neck; it was a pink and white fluffy scarf.

“Go on ahead Pinkie; wait by the exit after the grove. I have to address the other monsters of the ruins about Mifty’s regency and then I will catch up with you.” Toriel tilted her head and smiled brightly, a true smile for Pinkie Pie and the pony was all smiles as well.

With that Pinkie set off down the stairs into the basement and down the tunnel to the door, opening it led further onwards for Pinkie who continued down another long corridor until she came to a grove where she saw a familiar evil flower.

“So you saved one person…?” Flowey was about to go on when Pinkie cut him off.

“I saved a lot of monsters and improved their livelihoods. The question is whether or not I can save you as well Flowey.” Pinkie smiled at the flower who just frowned at her, it was obvious to Pinkie that ‘there is more to Flowey than can be initially seen’. The flower was demented and evil sure, yet there was something about him that had Pinkie determined to ‘find the light in him’.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about; in this world it’s kill or be killed.” The flower seemed particularly upset that he couldn’t wipe the simple smile off of the pony’s dumb face with his words as she stared off into the air blankly.

“Only because you want it to be that way, then again nothing is ever as one perspective sees things to be. You want the world to be dark and grim and I want it to be bright and happy, if we mix them together we see an entirely different picture, mine will be in colors and yours will be in shades of grey. So monsters want to kill me and steal my soul, I don’t have a problem with that if I can always change their minds so that they won’t do that.” Pinkie kneeled down to stare Flowey in the eyes with a friendly demeanor. “I don’t believe in hurting anyone as solving the problem here. You may be creepy and tried murder me, but deep down I don’t think you’re evil at all. I have no idea what it is, but when I do find out what’s wrong with you, you better believe I’m going to try and make things better for you when I do! Why I even Pinkie Pie Promise that I’ll help you one day, cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye. Just know that when I make a promise like that, I definitely intend to keep it!”

The mention of the word ‘promise’ stunned Flowey and he had a look of shock on his face for a bit, he sat there staring off into space blankly as if he were reliving some kind of horrid nightmare. Pinkie leaned forward and kissed Flowey on the forehead and his reaction to this was gagging loudly, followed by angered sputtering and generally just trying to think straight where all his logic was completely thrown out the window. It was interesting at how well logic could actually fly when the gravity of the situation that was involved was flipped upside down.

“Yuck, why did you have to go and do that? Now I’m covered in cooties!” The flower used its two petals to rub at its forehead. It sunk into the ground in apparent disgust leaving Pinkie entirely alone to her thoughts about that strange reaction.

Pinkie stood there staring at the spot the flower disappeared from, she was surely going to have a lot of strange friends in the future if the killer flower was one of the ones she had to really figure out.

“Pinkie, I heard the voice of that demented flower. Are you okay?” Toriel came up to Pinkie looking worried, only to see the pink pony smiling at her vibrantly.

“I’m fine Tori, the flower has got some sad views of the world and I wanted to cheer him up!” All Pinkie had to do now was keep doing what she was doing; also she needed to lose weight. Pinkie seemed bipolar about how often she glared or smiled at the air, currently it was a glare.

“Are you looking at the mysterious messages in the air? I saw them when you forced your soul into me. It told me to save you and I had to think hard on just how to do that. I think I can understand you’re strange actions now because of seeing it personally, what did it say to make you so angry?” Toriel kneeled beside Pinkie to hug her gently.

“Oh I’m not angry, just slightly peeved that I keep getting jabs at my weight. Otherwise what I usually see is rather friendly advice, so if I really had a problem with it I would just stop looking up entirely.” Again Pinkie was talking about nothing and trying to make it sound like she could see something, everyone around Pinkie was slightly crazy and it would only get worse from there.

“I don’t see a problem with that, it just gives me more belly to rub.” Toriel rolled Pinkie on to her back with a gentle push of her foot before started rubbing the ponies belly causing her to giggle uncontrollably. After she was finally done, Toriel looked ahead at the exit to the ruins. “Come on Pinkie, we must be on our way.”

Following the yellow backpack wearing Toriel through the exit, Pinkie walked out into the light of a wide expansive open area that looks like they were in the middle of a forest with a lot of trees packed tightly together and the ground was covered in snow. There was only a single path leading forward.

“Are we still underground?” Pinkie looked to her left and spotted an oddly out of place bush, considering the really tall closely planted together tree’s around this singular pathway. She moved over to the bush as Toriel answered her.

“Yes, we are. Everything you will see here is below ground. Even if it looks like we just walked out into a frozen forest, we are still in the Underworld.” Putting her hands in her sleeves Toriel looked at the road ahead and turned to see what Pinkie was pulling out of a nearby bush. “What’s that?”

“It’s a camera; hey it has a time delay setting on it. Get ready to smile and say ‘Fuzzy Pickles’!” Pinkie’s exuberance led her to placing the camera on top of the bush as she bounced up next to Toriel causing her to look at Pinkie in a weird manner.

“Why would anyone want to say…?” As Toriel was about to say it, Pinkie hopped up and kissed Toriel on the cheek getting her to smile. “Fuzzy pickles.”

A snap was heard and then Pinkie picked up the camera and showed Toriel the picture of them together. She gave off a small chuckle as Pinkie had a big wide smile with a hoof wrapped around Toriel’s waist while she was blushing and smiling about the kiss to the cheek. They looked at several other things about the camera and smiled a bit in a conspiratorial way, then begun whispering to each other.

“Pinkie, I don’t think we’ll ever be far apart if we were to stay just friends.” Toriel watched as Pinkie put the camera away into her saddlebags.

“Me neither, we’re going to have a lot of memories to capture of our adventures here and I’m sure the guy would let us borrow his camera. Come on Tori; let’s walk down this really eerie and spooky pathway together!” Pinkie waved the chuckling goat lady onto the path and they walked along it together.

As they moved along the path Pinkie couldn’t help but feel that something was watching them as they passed over a large stick in the road.

“Well of course you’re watching us, why wouldn’t you be? I mean if you weren’t watching us then what would the point of all this be?” Pinkie stopped when they came up to a weird bridge with what looked like a poorly constructed gate passing over it in a slanted manner that would never stop anyone. If the gate was intended to be Japanese in design, it was working perfectly as an aesthetic to the Underworld given the name of such a gate was ironically enough ‘Torii’. They could hear something trudging in the snow coming up behind them, but they didn’t turn around and there was a question as to why when they’ve only been on this one path for a while. “Eh, it’s probably just the back wind.”

“Hello, don’t you know how to greet a new pal? Turn around and put her there.” Doing as the voice said, both Pinkie and Toriel turned around and saw a shadowy figure.

“Okay Pinkie, stand right there.” Toriel said while pointing to the spot with a smile and Pinkie moved to the spot the outstretched skeletal hand was seemingly motioning out to. “I put her there, now what do I do with her?”

“I mean shake.” The stout skeleton with the blue jacket, white shirt and black shorts said earnestly.

“Oh that’s an easy one; it’s kind of cold out here.” Pinkie started shaking violently, despite the fact that she wasn’t actually that cold.

“Oh my goodness…” The stout skeleton started chuckling and rubbed his head with a bright. “You guys are funny, I meant shake my hand.”

“Okay!” Pinkie shook the skeletons right hand instead of his outstretched left and he jolted a bit when her right hoof wrapped around his hand. “Maybe next time you’ll even ask me to do it without my joy buzzer.”

“Oh you guys are good, how did you know I was a practical joker?” The skeleton asked and then he was shown several pictures from his camera involving him and several pranks, one in particular involving a fart cushion. “Ah, I was wondering where I left that. Now can you shake my hand for real so I can introduce myself?”

Rolling her eyes, Toriel reached out with her left hand and gripped the skeletons left hand only for a farting noise to go off causing Toriel to blush as she shook it.

“Oh my, did I do that Pinkie? I’m afraid we need to ‘air’ out some things between us.” Toriel said jovially. “Like the fact that I can do that whenever I feel like it.”

“Well anyone who can fart on command like that belongs in an insta-toot.” Pinkie and Toriel started laughing along with this new stranger.

“Be still my beating fart, you guys are hilarious! One of you sounds familiar to me though, but I can’t recall where.” The skeleton had yet to introduce who he was and already he was getting along with them.

“I wonder if there will ever be a gas ceiling to all the puns we can make if we put our heads together.” Pinkie and Toriel were smiling brightly with this new stranger.

“Wouldn’t that hurt though?” They started laughing again and then after they calmed down the skeleton held out his hands. “Okay, okay, stop, you’re killing me as much as yourselves! I’m ‘Sans’, sans the skeleton.”

The two laughed at the joke Sans pulled with his name, once they calmed down Toriel motioned to Pinkie while she tried to figure out why sans sounded so familiar.

“Hey Sans, I’m Pinkie Pie! This is my… could I call you my mare friend?” Pinkie asked seriously with a deadpan stare.

“You can call me whatever you want Pinkie, except ugly.” They all started laughing again as Toriel couldn’t help herself. “Seriously though, I am Queen Toriel and it is nice to meet you Sans.”

“You’re voice sounds familiar to me, have we met before?” Sans was genuinely friendly with the two and he was enjoying where the conversation was heading if it kept being a laugh riot. Hopefully nobody got hurt when the police hit the riot with laughing gas. “Anyway, you guys got some good funny bones, very humerus at that. We’re all going to be good friends!”

“Ah yes, I remember now. This is the guy I was telling you about Pinkie; he sat on the other side of the door cracking jokes the entire time when I was feeling lonely. We’re already friends; we just didn’t give our names until now.” Toriel smiled a bit and tried to think of a good joke. “Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?” Sans said immediately wanting to play the game.

“Wanda.” Toriel answered simply with a smile.

“Wanda who?” Sans questioned with a clearly defined smile on his face.

“Wanda hang out with us right now?” After a moment, all three of them smiled and crossed the bridge through the gate together making nonstop puns and cracking jokes every few seconds.

Author's Note

If you can't figure out why the chapter is title the way it is, define the word 'sans'.

Without sorrow, there is no joy.

Anyway it'll be more than a week at least before you hear from me again, Xenoblade X is soon coming out and I'm jumping on that post haste.

5 - Snow Going

“Wouldn’t you know it; they just couldn’t ‘stick’ to the plan. So… all I could say in the end to how we were going to get out of that one was, ‘lettuce just leaf’ and we did.” Pinkie got an uproarious laughter out of Toriel and Sans as they trudged along towards an empty checkpoint station.

“Whoever missed hearing that story is never going to understand why that was so hilarious, let’s just ‘branch’ out and continue on.” Sans looks at the air and smiled creepily. Well he was a skeleton so how else was he supposed to smile, he does have a fleshless human skull for a head. “Oh, tell the one about the oatmeal again!”

“Okay, I tell this story all the time and usually twice. So it goes like this….” Pinkie started off only for Sans to hold up his skeletal hands while shushing Pinkie.

“Sorry, but I think I hear my brothers theme music coming, quick you two have to hide!” Sans saw the curious stares on Pinkie and Toriel’s faces.

“Why do we need to hide from your brother?” Pinkie actually wanted to meet Sans brother if he was as funny as Sans was; now there was a skeleton that could tickle her funny bone.

“I find myself curious as well, what’s so wrong with us meeting your brother? I’m likely stronger than him, that is if my meek disposition toward hurting others doesn’t get in the way of me throwing attacks that are completely impossible to dodge.” At least Toriel was able to acknowledge that she had faults, of course what she wasn’t saying was that she was far worse when she went from meek to downright angry as a bull in a china shop. Toriel wasn’t the queen and one of the strongest monsters in the underworld for nothing. “Aside from that I’m queen of the underworld; I really don’t see much reason to hide from him if he’s as friendly as you are.”

“Okay let’s get serious here for a moment. There are rumors running wild everywhere of a new being that has a soul that might be stronger than a humans as being in the underworld and that it happens to be connected to a bright pink, four legged creature that looks really adorable. Plus it’s something no one in the Underworld has seen before, so it’s quite obvious who we’re talking about.” Sans said holding out a hand to Pinkie.

“Oh you mean that dog running this way?” Pinkie pointed forward with a hoof and they saw a screaming pink, four legged dog run by on its hind legs being chased by a big green floating scary mask. Sans held his head while chuckling dryly. Looking to the air Pinkie smiled a bit. “Thank you for the gag!”

“Actually intelligent dogs are quite a common sight around here and they come in all colors, they are generally white and highly annoying though. All the monsters in the Underworld know it’s a new pink creature and that Pinkie is that creature. They all want to break the seal on the underworld or at least just capture her to eventually end up with her dead when they destroy her soul trying to break the seal with it.” Sighing, Sans quirked one of his eyes sockets to Toriel and decided to address her as well. “My brother is good guy and he’s really cool and awesome. Even if he is one of those who wants to capture Pinkie. The reason why I want you to hide Toriel is because my brother gets incredibly awkward around celebrities and you fit the bill by being the queen. So could you please hide over there behind that conveniently placed cutout of you? Pinkie you can hide with that lamp.”

Toriel turned to look back at the outpost where she saw a lamp and a cutout of herself that weren’t there a minute ago. She shrugged it off as she was used to oddities like this and obviously Pinkie wasn’t going to question it as she was already looking at the lamp and rubbing it with a hoof for some reason. Looking at the cutout it was a life sized cardboard cutout of her glaring with her arms crossed with the words ‘Be good. Won’t you?’ printed across her belly in big highly visible letters. The lamp looked like a generic lamp and had no magic genie in it for Pinkie who looked a little sad that it didn’t, Toriel quickly went to stand behind the cutout and noticed that it had hidden eye-holes and looked through them.

Next to Toriel, Pinkie moved the lamp aside after taking the lampshade off to place on her head. She started sitting completely still after that point and then Sans brother rushed onto the scene, he definitely was the most awesome skeleton she had ever seen, even if he was only just the second one she’s seen and he looked kind of dashing wearing his strange getup. The tall skeleton was wearing red gloves and boots. He somehow had some blue armored underwear levitating around his very thin pelvic region to make sure this didn’t get forced into an M rating. He was also wearing some bulky looking white armor and a dandy looking red cape around his upper torso.

There was sure to be questions about where Sans could have possible gotten the cardboard cutout of Toriel later, since Pinkie Pie actually wanted one for her room back at Sugar Cube Corner. The lamp wasn’t considered anything out of the ordinary despite it being an electrically powered object out in the middle of nowhere where there were no outlets. Being a pony that hasn’t seen high level technology, it was understandable that Pinkie didn’t have a reason to question it.

“Sup, bro?” Sans said immediately upon being seen by his brother.

“You know what’s up brother!” The tall skeleton said to the wide and chunky looking one. “It’s been a week and a few days and you still haven’t recalibrated your puzzles! You just hang around outside your station! What are you even doing?!?”

“Staring at this lamp, it’s really cool. Do you want to look?” Sans was wondering if his brother actually would take him up on it.

“Sure! There have been no sightings of humans in the Underworld and I’ve got some time to look at a lamp. I don’t have to be ready for a human since there are none coming, we’d usually get a report from the ruins if there is one to look out for.” The tall skeleton looked to have boggled Sans’s mind when he said that, then the skeleton walked up to the lamp that was obviously a pink pony with a lampshade on her head. “Hmm… so I just pull this chain to see it light up?”

“Uh yeah, that’s how lamps usually work Papyrus.” Sans looked a bit worried.

The named Papyrus reached out and grabbed the pull chain and gave it a tug.

“Click!” Pinkie said out loud and was seen visibly coming from her mouth that was poking out from under the lampshade. Two light bulbs lit up under the bright blue lampshade revealing the rest of a pony shaped head with the light bulbs sticking out of both of her ears.

“Oh now that’s neat, you have a lamp that says the word ‘click’ when you pull the cord! No, wait… your distracting me Sans! What if that creature with the human soul comes through here! I want to be ready!!!” Papyrus started stomping the ground in a childish manner. “I will be the one, I must be the one! I will capture that soul with the power that matches that of a human’s soul! Then, I, the great Papyrus will get all the things I utterly deserve! Respect, recognition and a hot tub since it can get really nippy out here and could use one to warm my bones! I will finally even be able to join the royal guard! Then finally people from all over will ask to be my friend. Why I will even bathe in a shower of kisses every day made up of their adoration for my greatness in the morning!”

“Hey, maybe this lamp will help you?” Sans was just staring at the lit silhouette of Pinkie’s head under the lampshade and still wondering how she managed to light up like that.

“Sans, you are not helping! You lazybones, all you do is sit around and boondoggle!” Papyrus screamed angrily in the childlike manner he was becoming known for by Pinkie and Toriel as he started stomping the ground with his boot again. “You get lazier and lazier every day!”

“Hey, take it easy bro. I’ve gotten a ton of work done today. You might even say a skele-TON!” Sans could hear both Toriel and Pinkie giggling from their hiding spots and Papyrus wasn’t picking up on it.

“Sans!!!” Papyrus was smiling despite himself and the angry sounding voice.

“Come on, you’re smiling.” Sans said with great big skeletal grin of his own.

“I am and I hate it!” Papyrus sighed and then turned to look at the cardboard cutout of Toriel. Papyrus was choosing today to be a bit more observant than usual. “Why does someone such as me have to do so much work to get some recognition? Hey who is that? She looks popular and motherly.”

“Wow it sounds like you’re really working yourself… down to the bone.” Again Sans could hear the snorts and snickering of his two friends and currently captive audience. “Anyway that’s a cardboard cutout of Queen Toriel.”

“Wait, the Underworld has a queen? Oh my goodness, do I have to throw myself out a window!” Papyrus held his hands up to his face and his eyes sockets started glittering with sparkles.

“No Papyrus, it’s just a cardboard cutout of the queen. She hasn’t actually been seen around here in a while. I recently heard she’s been doing okay.” Sans was used to hearing him ask if he had to jump out a window.

“Ugh fine, I will be attending my puzzles. As for your work, put a little more ‘Backbone’ into it.” Papyrus cackled and ran off. After a moment he came back and gave off one last laugh before running away.

After a moment Pinkie pulled the cord with her right hoof turning her head off and tossed away the lampshade to reveal that she didn’t have light bulbs in her ears at all. She fell into Toriel’s cuddling arms and they started laughing like no tomorrow.

“Yeah, can we get to my theme music now?” Sans was looking to the air and addressing it like a crazy skeleton, like we didn’t have enough problems with a crazy pony talking to thin air already.

“Oh my goodness, your brother is so cool!” Pinkie just liked his demeanor, although it was quite sad to hear that it sounded like he didn’t have many friends.

“I know, right? Hey… hold on a minute.” Sans looked up to the air frowning slightly. “That’s not my theme music and you know it!”

“What? I think it’s kind of cool.” Pinkie said as bounced her head to the music.

“Well, how does your theme music actually sound?” Theme music was a common thing in the Underworld for Toriel to hear, hers sounded generally friendly if a little weird. Maybe if she got out of her depression it’d sound more like Pinkie’s theme music which was really quite upbeat when she was laughing.

“If they would put on the correct music and let us hear it, then we can move on. Somebody’s looking to have a bad time, plus getting dunked might be in your future.” There was an eerie blue glow in Sans left eye socket.

“Okay, that hardly sounds any different except for the slightly different beat and is it just me or is it a bit jazzier sounding?” Pinkie just spent the next few seconds appreciating the music while it would last.

“Well now that you’re hearing it you might want to get a move on or else my brother will come back and you’ll have to listen to more of my jokes.” When Sans noticed that neither Toriel nor Pinkie were moving, he smiled brightly at that. “Ah I know you guys like me, but come on! You were going somewhere weren’t you? I know you’ll meet my brother on the path anyway, but don’t worry he’s kind of harmless… except to windows and when he’s cooking. Anyway I’ll be there to keep him calm when you do run into him again.”

“He’s right we can’t stand around here forever listening to his theme music and jokes, no matter how fun it is. We have to get a move on if we’re going to make it to Snowdin Pinkie. It was nice meeting you Sans!” Toriel waved at the skeleton that waved back as they continued on their way, Pinkie also waved back before taking up position behind Toriel to stare at her butt.

It took a few moments of walking, but Pinkie started blushing about being caught staring by Toriel who was looking back at her with a smile and a blush on her own cheeks.

“Good luck with the other monsters you two run into, see you soon!” Sans waved them off, after a moment he put on some sunglasses. “Why the future is looking so bright, I’ve got to wear shades.”

“Sans, where are the sunglasses for my biceps!” Papyrus could be heard shouting in the distance.

“Well considering we heard him ahead of us, Papyrus is not too far off from here.” Pinkie trudged through the snow slowly, until she felt a familiar wrenching feeling as her soul burst from her body as something erupted from the snow.

Pinkie quickly pulled out the Mifty’s informative book and held it out to Toriel who took it and looked it over trying to find a picture of the monster that just popped up in front of them. It was a strange duck like creature with what looked like a strange snowflake on its face.

“Ice puns are “snow” problem for me!” With that said by the duck monster, he started firing an array of spiraling crescent bullets at Pinkie’s floating pink heart they were coming from all directions. The bullets looked to be made out of broken snowflake bits.

Pinkie started to dance, duck and roll her heart out of the way of the crescents flying a straight path at her heart. The path the bullets were flying was predictable as they didn’t change directions mid flight and went in a straight line.

“It says here that’s a Snow Drake, an ice duck monster, likes to make ice and snow related jokes. Somehow this book knows he’s a teenager and he’s trying to become a comedian to prove his father wrong and that he can make it as a comedian. What do you think Pinkie?” Toriel looked up from the book and saw a look of determination on the ponies face as she marched up to the duck past her own floating soul.

“If you will stop attacking me, I’ll teach you some good jokes and I’ll start by using some puns. ‘Icy’ you need some work and you could actually achieve what you’re going for, attacking me won’t get you a good job as a comedian you know. You need a friendlier disposition for one, plus you’ll be getting the ‘cold’ shoulder from my friend Toriel if you try to take my soul. I don’t need you ‘freezing’ in front of an audience either so let me teach you how to be ‘cool’ like me. So what do you say?” Pinkie held out a hoof to the toothy duck monster and it looked at it for a moment and then started laughing.

“Oh my goodness, you used so many ice puns! Yes, I’ll take you up on your offer! Look ‘frosty’ though, ‘snow’ monster around here who wouldn’t try to attack you. I’ve heard about you and wanted to try some material out on you while I had a captive audience. You know, before I took you’re soul and everything, but you sound too nice to continue attacking anymore.” The ice duck released its hold on Pinkie’s soul causing it to snap back into her body. “So what kind of jokes do you have?”

“Here’s my first joke you should learn, what’s an ig?” Pinkie said with a bright smile.

“I don’t know, what is an ig?” The mallard looked a little perplexed.

“It’s a snow house without a loo!” Pinkie got both the Snow Drake and Toriel chuckling and it emboldened to teach the mallard a few more. “What do you call a cat on ice?”

“I think I’ve heard this one before, but I’m not sure. What do you call a cat on ice?” Toriel tilted her head at the now mellow mallard.

“You call it ‘one cool cat’!” Pinkie remembered how Rarity’s cat Opalescence liked ice skating with her, she listened to the accolades of a good laugh from a new friend and the lady she happened to be dating. “Why did a bride refuse to get married in an igloo?”

“I don’t know, why?” The cold duck was actually quite interested in hearing the joke.

“It was because she got cold feet.” Pinkie’s simple delivery caused more laughter among all three of them. “My names Pinkie Pie the pony and I like making others laugh. This is Toriel, she’s a nice lady who’s also queen of the monsters that I happen to be currently traveling with and dating. We were on our way to a place called Snowdin…. Did I say it right? It sounds a lot like saying ‘snowed in’. Anyway I think you can make it if you really try hard Snow Drake. Just remember to get your audience engaged in your jokes, don’t be afraid to try something new and if it doesn’t work then try to think of something off the top of your head to make the jokes a little sillier or funnier. You’re a smart kid, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Of course it never hurts to ask for help for inspiration from others or to get others involved in what you’re trying to do. Who knows, you might be the best cold open comedian ever! You just need to practice your routine.”

“Well you can’t miss Snowdin, it’s a ‘snowballs throw’ away from here and a bit of a walk. It’s that way, past fishing river and the sign that tells you about the strange universal boxes that appear all over the place in the Underworld.” The Snow Drake was pointing with a wing and seemed a bit brighter having met Pinkie; he also waved at them as they trudged off. “Thanks for believing in my dream and helping me out, I’ll be glad to call you my friend and I’ll take your advice about asking for help!”

Pinkie and Toriel continued on past the box after reading a very odd sign left behind by someone named Snake the Box Lover, down the trail they walked until they stopped when they saw the skeleton brothers again.

“So, as I was saying about Undyne.” Papyrus started off only to stop and look to his left; he looked to sans who looked to his right to see Pinkie and Toriel standing there.

Soon they were interchanging looking at each other then at the two just standing there, until they both started spinning around in place. It was so silly that the two observers started to giggle wildly. Both the skeleton brothers eventually stopped and they were both facing Pinkie and Toriel who had yet to move.

“Sans!! Oh my god!! Is that… a human!?!?!??!?!” Papyrus the ‘tall drink of water’ skeleton pointed in their general direction.

“Uh… actually I think that’s a rock Papyrus.” Sans, needed to help his brother along somehow as it would take him forever to actually notice Pinkie and Toriel. In fact he didn’t even know why he was so worried about them needing to hide earlier. “Hey, what’s that in front of the rock?”

Pinkie and Toriel had since stopped paying attention to the two brothers and were looking at the rock. The pony talked about what kind of rock it was since she came from a long line of rock farmers, she grabbed a sample that she would hopefully be able to give to her oldest sister later.

“Oh… my… god… is that… a leaf!” Papyrus ran up to the leaf and picked it up looking overly joyous about it with sparkling eye sockets. “This is going in my leaf collection! Of course it’s my first one of the collection so I’ll have to give it a name worthy of it being a leaf… I’ll call it Leafy! It will be the number one best leaf in the world and of my collection that will consist of this single leaf shaped like my most incredible skull!”

Sans just sighed and smacked his face while shaking his head as his brother had missed the obvious and what was thoroughly plain sight. In fact, Papyrus was derailing this story so spectacularly on his own without really trying to that he should be applauded for managing to do that. So if Sans will ‘get Papyrus to notice Pinkie and Toriel’, then things will continue on as they were supposed to.

“Yeah, like that’ll be easy. Sure my brother is awesome and everything, but he’s got a horribly dense skull. He wouldn’t notice them even if I said, ‘hey look Papyrus there’s the creature with the soul like a human right there’.” Sans said it so dully that Papyrus looked up from safely stashing away the orange skull shaped leaf into his armor. He looked at Pinkie and Toriel still going over the merits of rock farming and the kind of resources you could get from it blankly.

“Oh hey, there are some strangers here Sans! Wait a minute; I have a bone to pick with one of them! That must be the four legged pink creatures with the soul like that of a humans… it certainly wasn’t the pink dog like I thought it was. Whatever happened to that dog anyway? No matter! You, the pink one! You shall not pass this area! As I, The Great and Powerful Papyrus, will be the one to capture you!” Once again the Mighty Super Awesome Skeleton De’ Papyrus had managed to prove Sans entirely wrong with his mighty skills of perception as he struck an epic pose. Pinkie looked up from the highly interesting rock in snow, never to be mentioned again in this story ever, to notice Papyrus addressing her. “You will be delivered to the capital and then, then… I’m not sure what’s next… I haven’t exactly read my script… give me a minute.”

“Someone somewhere just stepped on Trixie’s title, The Great and Powerful Trixie swears revenge!” Trixie the blue stage magician pony shouted angrily at the heavens while waving a curled up hoof at the sky knowing that someone had used her title. She had a trademark on it darn it all!

Papyrus walked off leaving everyone feeling a bit weird about all of it. Even Pinkie was a bit speechless in the ridiculousness of the situation; they looked amongst themselves as they waited for a minute. This was a bit awkward, even the air had no idea whether or not Papyrus was aware of its existence; skeletons didn’t need to breathe after all so he couldn’t have possible been aware of it. Papyrus suddenly came running back into the scene from stage right.

“In any case, continuing from where I left off… continue on if you dare!!!” With that Papyrus ran off again cackling.

“He didn’t even let us introduce who we are.” Pinkie said with a slightly disgruntled snort after a moment. “That wasn’t very nice of him.”

“Yeah, sorry about that, he’s being a bit of a rude ham bone. Don’t sweat it; I’ll keep an eye socket out for you if he tries to go too far.” With that Sans walked off after his strange and wonderful brother.

“Well he was interesting at least; you can’t say he’s not friendly. He didn’t try to attack you outright like other monsters would have.” Toriel just shook her head at the headache that was Papyrus. “Let us keep moving forward then, I believe this will be an enlightening experience. If not then we should at least sell tickets to a comedy show starring those two.”

“I’d actually like to see them get their act together.” Pinkie was smiling once again as they both began giggling about her choice of word. She thought of how silly Papyrus was and he was kind of cute, maybe she could get a date with him?

Walking forward they didn’t get far and couldn’t even walk past the next empty booth before another monster popped up. Toriel was already flipping pages in the monster compendium to find out what it was as Pinkie had her soul ripped out of her body once more.

It was a strange creature with a small body and a large head with two eyes like a chameleons sticking out from its head. On top of that head was some really large spikes of ice.

“It says here that it is Ice Cap, this teen is wondering why it is not called Ice Hat. It’s so focused on its hat it’s lost all sense of anything other than focusing on it and making others do the same. Kind of sounds like horrible situation to me, to put all your focus on a single object like that.” Toriel seemed kind of worried about Ice Cap being so focused on its head wear. She watched Pinkie dance around the icicle cannons the tiny ice monster generated to fire up at her soul.

“Pay attention to my really cool hat and stop looking to the goat lady!” Ice Cap noticed that Pinkie was paying more attention to the floating heart and launched another attack at it.

“Uh… Tori… a little help here?” Pinkie didn’t know what to do, she wasn’t about to attack it and it seemed angry since she ignored it twice.

“I got this.” Toriel walked up to Ice Cap as it continued to attack Pinkie and pulled off its hat revealing that it’s whole body was a hat and what was left behind was an average looking ice cube. “Wow, without its hat it’s just Ice? Well it’s a pretty nice looking ice cube.”

“Thank you for saying that.” The Ice Cube stated after a moment of silence. “I guess my hat wasn’t everything was it? My name is Ice, sorry about attacking you about not being so focused on my cool hat as I was. I just wanted to be noticed.”

“No it wasn’t. Now you can go out there and be the best ice cube that I know you can be! You don’t need a hat to make people notice you, being a talking ice cube is good enough to do that on its own. Learn to be a bit louder and I’m sure you’ll be noticed more.” Pinkie immediately moved over to the empty ramshackle looking booth that was poorly built, after her heart finished slamming back into her that is. She proceeded to read the sign on it that seemed to be a narration written by a certain skeleton. “You observe the well crafted sentry station. Who could have possibly built this, you ponder. I bet it was that very famous royal guardsman! (Note: Not yet a very famous royal guardsman.) So this is Papyrus’s station?”

“Looks like it, let’s continue onwards then.” Toriel went back to the path with the trailing pony who she knew was staring at her rear end; she wiggled it and watched the ponies eyes follow its jiggling. As they went back to continuing on the path, they passed by Snow Drake and Ice Cube talking to each other. Apparently the two were quickly becoming friends.

Moving on they came to a sign that said ‘Absolutely NO MOVING!!!’ They both looked at it confusingly and couldn’t move on until it was explained why it said that exactly. Looking ahead they could see a guard station that was built better than the two previous stations together and it was even personalized with a motivational poster and a service bell.

“Well no time like the present!” Pinkie moved forward and heard a dog growling and she stopped in front of the booth and saw a strange dog wielding two blades looking around. The black and white dog was wearing a shirt, pants and a belt; he looked a lot like a diamond dog.

“Who’s that moving around out there? If you’re a human, then I’ll get you!” The dog looked around growling angrily as if trying to find something; he kept missing Pinkie entirely who was standing directly in front of him.

“Pinkie don’t move! Apparently his name is Doggo, it sounds rather familiar to me. The book says he can only see moving things… why doesn’t he just use his nose and ears? The book says he relies entirely on his ridiculously poor sight.” Toriel watched as Pinkie’s soul was tugged out of her body once again and felt sorry for the pony. That was the third time in the last ten minutes for that to happen to Pinkie, she had to of been getting tired of having her soul pop in and out of her like a… why did Toriel’s usually innocent mind suddenly jump to phallic objects? She felt really embarrassed to be thinking those things, she and Pinkie weren’t that close yet or she at least didn’t think they were. “Anyway, I think he was one of our great warriors from when we were having that war with the humans; I think I vaguely recall hearing that he has post traumatic stress disorder from that. It was from a time before I divorced myself from my husband.”

Doggo started to attack everywhere with quick wild aimless swinging of his blue glowing blades, however much to the ponies confusion the swords didn’t damage her soul and she knew what that felt like.

“Blue soul attacks only hurt those who move while being struck by them; he can’t do anything to hurt you if you don’t move your soul.” Toriel watched as Pinkie stood up and walked over to the dog and stopped moving when he sent out a wave of blue at her movement, then she moved closer to Doggo. “Be careful Pinkie, he seems on edge.”

“Don’t worry Tori, I’ve got this. I’ve dealt with ponies that have Pinkie Traumatizing Stress Disorder, so I’m sure the same principle works here.” Pinkie pulled herself up onto the counter slowly and the dog continued to attack the air wildly, the air couldn’t feel it because it was air and the soul floating in the air was motionless as long as Pinkie didn’t dance. Slowly the pony reached out with a hoof and rubbed the dogs head exciting him beyond belief. “There there, you’re a good dog. Calm down, no one is going to hurt you.”

“I have been pet?” He felt Pinkie’s gently hoof caress his neck as he excitedly started yelling words randomly, those words were mostly ‘pet’, ‘pit’, ‘pot’, and ‘pat’. After a while of being petted he calmed down greatly and Pinkie gave him a hug.

“It’s okay; just let me make it all better. You don’t have to fight anyone.” The swords clattered to the ground and the dog just let himself be hugged, he was whimpering in Pinkie’s hooves. “It’s going to be alright, there are no big scary things coming to hurt you. I have to wonder Tori, why would anyone place a guy with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder here. He really needs help.”

“The war was just that bad that some of us wouldn’t ever let down our guard, even when we became sealed down here. After a while we figured out that the humans weren’t going to personally exterminate us out of existence and actually did something rather merciful and cruel at the same time. Though being stuck underground sounds rather cruel, the monsters survived such poor conditions to become what you will see and have seen already.” Toriel walked up to counter and moved over it to the dog and started hugging him as well. “This poor old dog has been a soldier for so long. He must be so alone and scared out here and from what I can see he’s been smoking dog bones. That isn’t very good for his mental or physical health. Even then he is still quite loyal and willing to protect other monsters from dangers real or imagined. I’m guessing it has been long since anyone has brought him comfort. Our army had a lot of guard dogs like this one. Sans was not kidding when he said there were many colorful dogs around here, especially if our K-9 division is still present even if they aren’t properly trained. I have personally helped train some units, though I still detest the annoyance force my ex trained to be nothing but incredible nuisances to everyone. Even under as much stress as this dog has been through, he continues to be a loyal sentry to a cause he likely finds hard to give up.”

“Queen Toriel… you’re here… we’ve all missed your warmth greatly.” The sad sounding humanoid dog said as he nodded off into the warm hug. “Everything for a long time was so… cold.”

Toriel sat down pulling his whimpering form into her lap and continued rubbing his head gently until he fell asleep.

Author's Note

Xenoblade X has taken up most of my life, thank you for asking... even though I know you didn't. So please excuse my inability to write a good chapter because of ludicrous day long gaming habits.

Yes, I do pay attention to my comments recieved. I just don't have much to say at the moment, except for 'THANK YOU'.

I just thought Sans music sounded like it comes from Pilotwings 64 upon first hearing it.

7 - Flat Tired

“So, how did he do that? Did it just happen the second I let go? It just happens, like that?” Pinkie was looking at the Lesser Dog with something approaching wonderment, given the dogs head had snapped back to being normal after stretching so far within a second of releasing it. The holes were still there as a testament to the fact that it had actually happened.

“Yes, they snap back immediately after they stop receiving affection, he would have run off if I hadn’t whistled for him to stop. He’s quite a rambunctious monster isn’t he?” Toriel gave the dog a few pats on the head and didn’t proceed to give him any further affection, unless they wanted more trouble with his neck growing again.

The dog monster barked twice and wagged his tail; he was kneeling in front of Toriel after retrieving his sword and shield.

“Good boy, now can you lead us towards town? I want you to let us take care of the puzzles though, also please don’t start any fights. Be good, will you?” Toriel received two sharp barks as a response and he took up a position in front of Pinkie and Toriel. He waited for them as he sheathed his sword, they would be the ones setting the pace, plus there was a puzzle here.

“Hey Tori, look at this!” Pinkie got Toriel to come over to the sign she found next to a tree. “Why does ‘dog marriage’ have to have a warning?”

“I haven’t the foggiest Pinkie, now come along. Maybe it will make sense further along.” Moving forward they were stopped by spikes. She turned to the Lesser Dog. “Well, there must be a puzzle here... can you give us a clue?”

The Lesser Dog nodded and pointed paw to a strange build up of snow that was in a square shape, they had somehow missed seeing it entirely and it was completely unnatural for the given area.

“Okay, I think I know what we have to do.” Walking over to the area, Pinkie started sweeping her tail through the snow as she walked over it. It didn’t take long for her to clear the snow away revealing a map of the general area. There was a huge red X on the map showing where the switch was. Pinkie knew immediately that she had to ‘go find and press the hidden switch’ to continue onwards.

“Right, come on you two. Hey I’m getting pretty tired Tori, are we going to find an inn or a bed soon?” Stifling a yawn, the pink pony led them over to where the switch as supposed to be. It was quite obvious when there was a square indent in the ground, in the middle of the three trees and this indent was the button which was promptly pressed.

“Of course, once we reach town I’ll inquire about it as I’m getting a bit tired as well. I think the spikes are down now.” The Lesser Dog taking the lead, Toriel silently took in Pinkie’s tired eyes. They had been traveling through the cold for a while and the poor pony looked like she needed to be warmed up.

They crossed a bridge with the Lesser Dog in the lead and then they came to a stop when they saw two figures wielding axes approaching them. They didn’t look like Lumberjacks at all, so Pinkie can stop thinking about them becoming a Monty Python spoof.

“What, they’re not lumberjacks? Aw, but I had this really funny skit and everything! Wait… you can read my mind? Get out of my head, get out of my head! All the felt up there is mine and you can’t have it!” Pinkie started running around in circles like the insane pony that she was until a voice stopped her.

“Halt, what’s that smell?” The male dog said as he came forward with a small mustache.

“Halt, where’s that smell?” The female dog said as she came forward with thick eyelashes.

“If you’re a smell…” The male said quietly.

“Then indentify your smell-f!” The female followed up getting a giggle out of Pinkie.

The two bipedal dogs then started to run around sniffing the area crazily before they came to stand back in front of the group of three.

“Two friendly smells… except one makes me want to eliminate!” The male dog shouted suddenly and took up his axe as he pulled down his hood.

“Eliminate you!” The female dog shouted taking up her axe as well; she followed along with the male as they pulled Pinkie’s soul from her body.

Whereas Doggo looked more like a weary wolf and the Lesser Dog looked like a cute little powerful Pomeranian that was almost less than half Toriel’s size, these two dogs look more like tall floppy eared belligerent bipedal battle beagles in black.

Pinkie didn’t need to be told twice to avoid the spirit axes being launched at her soul as she danced her heart carefully between them as they persisted in trying to damage her soul after three swings, the third one making the two axes form a heart in the space between them. The two were attacking in unison which made their first attack really hard to avoid, but she just managed to do so.

“Stop it this instant!” Toriel lit up and was wreathing her body in flames as their axes came down again, where she watched as Pinkie danced her way through another attack tiredly.

The two axes were halted from attacking again by the Lesser Dog’s kite shield as it took position in front of Pinkie’s soul to protect it and he easily deflected both of the axes with a glowing shield.

“That smell, it is the power of fire and brimstone in excess with that of goats mixed in.” The male started off and started to back away looking clearly frightened.

“It is the smell of an angry Queen Toriel! We are sorry we didn’t recognize your smell! What with the odd smell here and everything. Why do you protect it?” The female looked a bit more apologetic than the male did.

“I’m so sorry about my people Pinkie; anyway yes it is I Queen Toriel. I have decided to travel the Underworld to see what has become of it since I’ve recently finished wallowing in my misery. I don’t like what I’m seeing thus far, especially since you just attacked a close friend of mine.” Toriel started to tap her left foot angrily as she tried to calm down and extinguish her brightly glowing hands heating up the surrounding area. “Please release your pull on her soul or else I will have to get unpleasant.”

Incidentally, Pinkie Pie snuggled up against Toriel because she was so warm and had a marshmallow impaled upon the stick held up to one of her hands. She wasn’t very upset to be attacked; she was getting used to it by now and having her soul slam back into her body. After the marshmallow was nice and toasty from Tori’s burning anger that was beginning to peter out, Pinkie let it cool before she plopped it into her mouth and started chewing its gooey sugary goodness. It was too bad she didn’t have any graham crackers or chocolate at the moment, instead she waved a second snack on a stick underneath Toriel’s nose to distract her from her anger. Needless to say it worked.

“Huh, oh, well thank you Pinkie.” Toriel took the snack and ate the marshmallow calming down greatly; she politely swallowed before addressing the two guard dogs. “I would like to know your names.”

“I am Dogamy Dogi, guard to this area and life partner to Dogaressa. We were just coming off break when we came across your smells.” The male dog Dogamy stopped to nuzzle the female dog who returned the affectionate gesture with a chaste kiss.

“I am Dogaressa Dogi, also guard to this area and life partner to Dogamy. I am pleased to make an acquaintance of your friend and we apologize immensely for assaulting one under royal protection.” The female dog Dogaressa stopped to kiss Dogamy chastely, before receiving a gentle nuzzle from him. They were certainly a cute couple that both looked like tough customers in a fight as well.

“Yeah, they do make a cute couple… I wonder what their puppies would look like.” Both the dogs blushed at Pinkie’s words since she was one again staring off and up again. Maybe she could even ‘tell them to pet each other’. “Oh hey, yeah… that’d be totally adorable! Can you imagine what it would be like if you two were to start petting each other and then kissing a lot more deeply.”

“Dogs petting dogs, it sounds like an interesting prospect. Maybe when we’re done collecting firewood out here, we might perchance pursue this idea much more… closely. Hopefully I will be allowed to wear the dress, yes?” Dogamy seemed to be excited about the prospect as he wrapped a paw around what was obviously his mate, while sniffing Pinkie Pie.

“Well maybe dogs petting dogs should just be a rather… intimate thing. It is an amazing concept and I think we should keep it in mind. If you wear the dress then I get the spiked collar.” Dogaress cuddled into Dogamy, she also sniffed at Pinkie Pie. “Okay, you may pass on through. We’re sorry about being so aggressive. We’d prefer to make love and not war, even if we are guard dogs. Dogs petting dogs, a new world of ideas has opened up to us.”

“Yep, it will be a totally new world where you’ll be making a lot of adorable puppies too!” The two dogs blushed even worse at Pinkie’s words as the two started hurrying off. They didn’t look like they were about to release their significant other anytime soon.

“Pinkie… you’re right, their puppies will be totally adorable!” Toriel had flipped from anger to compassionate as her pupils notably turned into hearts; they did that when she was exceptionally happy. Then her mood dropped into something more somber as they approached the next puzzle. “I think they’ll actually be good parents, unlike me and my ex-husband. Also you’re a good dog Risotto, a very good dog for protecting Pinkie. Yes, that’s his name.”

The whimpering Lesser Dog named Risotto looked up at Toriel worriedly as she gave him a nice short petting because he was a good dog for protecting Pinkie’s soul. He was upset because Toriel was upset and he licked at her hand. The petting had to last for a short time or else the Lesser Dog’s neck would go out of control again.

They stopped when they came upon a puzzle with two X’s and a sign telling them to turn them into O’s, plus a nearby pressure plate and some spikes with The Unobtainable Papyrus standing on the other side of them paying attention to something else.

The puzzle wasn’t too hard at all, all Pinkie did was tap both the red X’s turning them into blue O’s and then when she hit the switch they turned green and the spikes dropped away revealing that The Oblivious Papyrus was still standing there not even noticing the puzzle was solved until Pinkie started poking him with a hoof to get his attention.

“Not now Sans, I’m trying to think of something cool to say to that pony creature. Something that will be stupendously incredible, and that will further the progression of her liking the wonderful me that is Papyrus as a friend!” The Highly Distracted Papyrus gently shooed away Pinkie’s prodding frog at the end of her hoof with a red glove. None of the three standing behind the skeleton saw Sans anywhere.

“We aren’t Sans Papyrus; did you forget my name already?” Pinkie smiled as she watched Papyrus jump in shock, before turning around and taking up a seemingly regal pose as if she hadn’t spooked him. “Besides that I think we’re friends already!”

“What! You, how did you get by my trap?! Also is there any left for me?” The skeleton looked horribly flummoxed; then again this was The Enviable Papyrus. Now Pinkie had to tell him what she thought of it.

“Honestly… I think it made someone happy… though I thought it needed some cheese. I didn’t eat it though.” Pinkie wondered what Papyrus’s response would be.

“Really… wow…. you resisted the flavor of my home cooked pasta just so you could give it to someone less fortunate? Fret not pony. I, Master Chef Papyrus, will make you oodles of noodles for being so thoughtful! Maybe someday you’ll be as thoughtful as me, for not being as thoughtful as Papyrus is not the way to be!” Seriously how is Story Breaker Papyrus breaking away from his usual lines, he’s not even aware of the fourth wall like Sans is! The script he was talking about before was about a play of what he’d say when he would eventually meet up with an actual human! What did he do, change that script to fit Pinkie into it? Anyway, The Incomprehensible Papyrus giggles like a school girl and walks off. Oh wait, since Pinkie is in this story it actually makes complete sense for Papyrus or anyone to not follow things to the letter since things have changed so vastly already.

“I have no idea what you’re going on about, so let’s just move on after that skeleton!” Pinkie moved forward with Risotto and Toriel trailing behind her. They immediately found The Slightly Bored Papyrus waiting for them in the next area.

“My brother recently started a sock collection; adding on to all that chaos in his room! Where he’s getting all those left socks from I’ll never know! It’s saddening really; I wonder how his life would be without someone as awesome as me watching out for him?” The Absent Papyrus who cackled was not paying attention to the three as they moved on.

“Hey, pony! How do I say this, you were taking so long to get here I decided to make this puzzle look more like my face, unfortunately I failed since the snow froze to the ground. Now you figure it out since I’ve made the solution so different, even I can’t figure out how to get into town anymore… which is a major problem considering I was going to make more spaghetti when I got back home.” The Diabolical Papyrus had barred their path into town with his idiocy by complete accident. “As such and since my lazy brother is nowhere around… I’ll try to solve this conundrum, but you can have a first crack at the puzzle. I could use the help even though I do know a method for getting through here faster, it’s only supposed to be used in an emergency.”

What The Honest Papyrus was talking about was ‘the switch on the tree you just went by a few feet back and to your left’, but that would have made things way too easy for Pinkie Pie.

“Seriously, you tell me the quick solution is that tree over there and then expect me to think my way through the puzzle the hard way anyway?” Pinkie was a little miffed with the air and Toriel poked her on the neck to get her attention.

“What’s the quick solution? You’re tired, I’m also tired, especially of you being attacked all the time and I don’t feel like standing out here forever. So if those mysterious words in the air have a quick way through, then I think we should just take it.” Toriel obviously didn’t feel like putting up with another inane puzzle while out in the cold.

They heard barking, then a loud clicking sound. They turned to see Risotto already running past them to stand on the switch which solved the puzzle and lowered the spikes that were in the way.

“Thanks Risotto!” Pinkie was going to hug the dog and cuddle its neck again, but Toriel put a quick stop to that from happening again by picking up the pink pony up off the ground.

“No more petting Risotto for you Pinkie. To stop you from doing that, I’m going to start petting you!” Toriel started to gently rub the side of Pinkie’s head and she cuddled into the goat ladies arms content at the affection she was receiving.

“That’s one really smart dog.” It was all The Entirely Flabbergasted Papyrus had to say about this situation as he continued onwards.

As the trio moved forward, they came across Sans standing around like usual.

“Good job solving it, I so love having to do nothing at all.” Sans smiled as the two continued onwards with a slightly tired Pinkie yawning. “Thanks for that dog!”

Risotto turned around and barked while waving a friendly paw at Sans. Looking back to Pinkie he could see she was purring in Toriel’s arms, he wasn’t even jealous at all. If she could keep Queen Toriel happy, then who was he to bark angrily? However when they came upon the next area Toriel sighed at the sight of many various shades of grey squares.

“Pinkie, I think you might want to stay awake a little longer… I believe we have another puzzle to go through.” Toriel sighed and put down the now whining Pinkie Pie.

“I’m not whining, I’m making noises that show that I don’t want to be put down after being held against her warm cuddly body. It’s chilly out here even if I have fur, you’re also probably in a warm heated room and don’t have to deal with things like this! So frankly I’m a little upset and cranky.” Complaining to the air won’t make things better for Pinkie who had to deal with yet another puzzle, this one looked far more complicated than the last and it hadn’t even been activated yet.

“Hey, it’s the pony! You’re going to love this puzzle! It was made by the great Dr. Alphys! You see these tiles here? Once I throw this switch they will begin to change colors and each color has a different function!” The Exceedingly Loud Papyrus yelled out to them on the other side of the bridge leading to all the grey squares. “Red tiles are impassable, you can’t walk on them! Yellow tiles are electric; I’m not going anywhere near those tiles as I’ve been shocked enough for one day! Green tiles are alarm tiles, stepping on them forces you to be attacked by monsters. Orange Tiles are orange scented; they will make you smell delicious. Blue tiles are water tiles. Swim through them if you dare, if you smell like oranges then the piranhas will bite. Also if it’s next to a yellow tile it will zap you! Purple tiles are slippery, so you will slip to the next tile. However the tiles smell of lemons which piranhas do not like. So you’ll be safe if you slip on one of those, as such purple and blue are okay. Finally pink tiles are safe… wait, what are all of you doing on this side! I didn’t say you could come across yet!”

“I’m a queen, I’m quite sure that I’m higher than you on a chain of command since you aren’t even a Royal Guard yet. So as such you can’t presume to order me or those under my personal protection around. Two of us are very tired and we want to go into town, so if you’ll excuse us.” Toriel was about to walk off with Pinkie at her side when Papyrus decided to interject.

“Hey wait a minute, can’t we see what kind of puzzle you would have had to of solved! This machine was made to generate a random puzzle after all; don’t you want to at least see it?” The Saddened and Upset Papyrus pleaded purposefully. “I’ll throw myself out a window as a bonus…”

“Can we Toriel, I’m actually interested to see what kind of puzzle we would have ended up with.” Pinkie seemed a little more interested in it because she wouldn’t have to deal with it. She gave Toriel some big pony eyes and this was followed by Risotto the Lesser Dog throwing in his big doggy eyes too.

“Fine, we’ll see the puzzle.” Rolling her eyes, Toriel couldn’t help but think this was going to be something really inane. If it made both Pinkie and Risotto happy, then she would let Papyrus go ahead and show them what it would have been.

“Well alright then, turning it on!” The Switch Throwing Hero Papyrus threw the switch. The tiles all started to light up in different colors. There was a powerful hum in the air that was quite impressive; the flashing colors proceeded to get worse with each second.

“Gee, I hope no one here has epilepsy problems.” Pinkie intoned innocently, despite the fact that people can’t get an epilepsy episode from reading this. It was after that that the entire board stopped flashing an array of colors and came to a dull conclusion. “Well… the puzzle would have been easy to solve at least.”

There was a two tile wide pink colored stripe running between the other tiles that were all an impossible to enter red, it was a safe walk all the way from the bridge through the pink tiles to the other side. The Enigmatic Papyrus just stared at it blankly for a while and then started to spin; he slowly slid off into the next area. Most likely in disbelief that the random puzzle had turned out so incredibly simple to the point that his mind had temporarily snapped.

“Wow that was highly underwhelming, especially after all that build up to it.” Pinkie had a thoroughly disappointed look on her face now.

“Actually, that spaghetti earlier wasn’t too bad for my brother. Since he started cooking lessons, he’s been improving a lot. I bet if he keeps it up, next year he’ll make something that even you and I might like. I saw the mouse eating it, which was really nice of you two. To think my brother actually made something edible enough for a mouse to consume.” Sans smiled as they walked off. “You might want to take a break at Risotto’s guard post, just don’t break anything important you hear me?”

Walking to a wide snowy area, Risotto shot off leaving Pinkie and Toriel behind to watch him start building snow dogs. Shaking her head Pinkie walked up to the guard post and saw a few boxes of raisins in it, looking to the sign it said something vaguely interesting.

“Aware of dog, please pet dog? Wow his grammar is quite bad if he can’t spell please right.” Pinkie turned to the dog who continued to try and build a long necked snow dog and the heads kept falling off of them, all the snow dog heads had happy smiles on them and little pieces of coal at the tip of their noses.

“I think it’s supposed to be ‘beware of dog’, but with Risotto I can’t really be sure since he’s not overly aggressive as he is playful when he’s not trying to hit you with a sword. I’d be more wary of petting him too much, just look at him go. He’s positively hyperactive now that we’re at his guard post.” Toriel watched as the Lesser Dog continued to run about building snow dogs with long necks only for them to fall apart, that didn’t seem to deter Risotto at all as he kept going at the snow like crazy.

“Hey Risotto, can I have some of these… Pomer-raisins? Really… that’s an adorable brand name and it’s quite a silly pun.” Pinkie saw that Risotto stopped momentarily in the middle of building another snow dog and nodded, before he went right back to his frenzied snow building.

“I’ll have some as well.” Toriel crawled into the booth with Pinkie and they both opened a box to snack on while they watch Risotto run around building elongated snow dog necks and heads. “It seems Risotto needs time to blow off his excessive happiness thanks to you.”

“Hey, can I join you guys in your snack?” A short horned caribou or reindeer lady walked up to them, she had brown and white fur with a cute black nose. She was also wearing a snazzy looking sweater and warm looking pants.

“Sure, the more the merrier I say!” Pinkie wanted to get to know just about every monster in the Underworld. Who knew Risotto had a thing for dried fruit? Here Pinkie thought he’d have peanut butter in his guard post. “I’m usually throwing a party when I say it.”

“It was nice to meeting you Clarice Faun, but I, Risotto and Toriel have to get to Snowdin sometime today.” Well Pinkie and the others certainly weren’t getting to Snowdin this chapter. The pony was just saying goodbye to their newest friend on the Underworld tour towards Snowdin.

Before they could leave, Risotto pointed out the one successful snow dog he made with its neck lying on the ground leading everywhere, it had taken him a while to figure out the vertical building just wasn’t going to work, so he built a horizontal snow dog. It was amazingly lifelike and expertly done if Pinkie had to say so herself, given she was an expert on snow constructions and even held winter contests as to who could build the best looking snow pony back in Ponyville. Pinkie praised the dog’s effort to get his own likeness into the snow and since it was in a cold place underground, it would be a long lasting monument to Risotto’s pony snuggled happiness.

Moving on Pinkie stopped just before the ice and turned right when she saw a snow skeleton that looked familiar, she looked upon the sight of an expertly crafter snow skeleton which she inspected from all sides. The snow skeleton looked exactly like The Snow Crafter Extraordinaire Papyrus, except with more muscles. The other thing was a pile of kicked snow with Sans name written on it.

“Wow Papyrus is right, Sans is a bit lazy. Then again Papyrus was possibly being egocentric when he made his own snow skeleton of himself. I think it’s really impressive that he even managed to get it to stand up like that though, the construction is very sturdy looking.” Shaking her head Pinkie looked to Toriel to see what she thought.

“My, he certainly does have a good knack for sculpting. I agree that being able to make a sculpture like that stand up is impressive, especially the small spinal part holding up the upper torso like it does. I still think Risotto’s work was more fun looking and more about the joy in his heart than the joy of himself.” Even Toriel was a bit impressed with the snow Papyrus. “Now let’s go solve the puzzle we just walked past.”

“Do we have to? I’m surprised to say this, but I’m actually getting tired of all this puzzle nonsense and I usually love puzzles and nonsense!” Pinkie Pie was groaning. She actually liked puzzles, but things were getting ridiculous with how often they ran into something that could even feasibly be called a puzzle. The nonsense around here was so crazy, it made Pinkie look normal and average.

“Sadly we must, if we are to continue onwards.” Toriel looked at the ice and saw the various X’s on it; no rocket science was needed to understand where this was going.

“I’ve got this one. I’m a professional ice skater and I don’t need ice skates to be good at it.” As the pink pony stepped onto the ice she got a worried looked from the goat lady, this caused her to smile a bit. When she kicked off onto the ice, that worry quickly changed into a look of wonderment as Pinkie took off over the X’s. She twirled and leapt into the air as she danced on the ice for Tori and Risotto’s amusement.

Pinkie looked quite spectacular on the ice, especially after such a wonderful ice skating performance that had Toriel quite spellbound by it with the way the pony’s tail flowed like a ribbon. Everything was going fine until Pinkie lost her hoofing on the big switch she hit and came down butt first on. Pressing down the switch created an ice bridge which she promptly slid across into the distance backwards, she had been lucky enough to not slide off the edges in her tired state.

“Oh my goodness, come on Risotto!” Toriel leapt onto the ice and flew straight across it eventually falling on her butt when her legs slid out from under her.

Risotto just sat there at the edge of the ice and pulled out his sword and carefully tested the ice and used the sword to anchor himself to it when it became too slippery to move. He was smart enough to not go rushing across the ice like his queen had.

At the other end of the bridge Pinkie looked completely fine, laying there on her back looking to what was possibly the stone ceiling high above in the darkness when Toriel flopped right on top of her putting their two faces together in an embarrassingly close manner. Oh the awkward lover’s position these two were in right now.

“I’m sorry for flopping onto you pinkie, are you okay?” Toriel said before she tried to get up only to find Pinkie’s hooves pulling her back down.

“I’m fine. You can come on to me anytime you want!” Pinkie nuzzled Toriel’s neck and then allowed the goat lady to get off of her. “If we’re going to snuggle, let’s do it on a nice warm bed and not in the snow please.”

Toriel got off of Pinkie embarrassed at the idea of sharing a bed with Pinkie while she was awake and aware. At least she wasn’t the only one red faced after the situation. Risotto finally came walking up to them and he happily barked at seeing that the two were healthy.

“So which way do we go now?” Toriel had no clue which way she was going to go from here.

“How about we see what is in this direction?” Pinkie led Toriel down a path off to the side with Risotto taking up the rear, forgetting entirely that Risotto knew the way to go.

“Hey guys, a bit lost huh. Snowdin is back that way or maybe you’re just going to explore that mysterious door back there. I’m okay with it either way and have snow problem with it.” Sans addressed them with a cheery smile like always.

“Now I’m curious to know what he’s talking about.” Pinkie was followed by closely by Toriel, while Risotto trailed behind not minding this detour one bit.

“Just know that the door doesn’t open, never have been able to figure it out personally. Anyway, I’ll see you two around. I bet Risotto is going to go back to work as soon as he’s done helping you.” Sans had appeared in front of them yet again despite having passed him about twenty feet back. “Well have fun looking at the door that never opens, just go back from where you came and hang a right.”

“Okay Sans, thanks for the directions.” It wasn’t five feet later that Pinkie was under assault by two monsters this time as her soul was pulled forth into the air. “Oh come on! I’m tired, cold and I just wanted to look at a door for about three minutes! Can’t I get some snuggles before I’m assaulted again? I know I’ve gotten a little rest, but it wasn’t nearly enough!”

Pinkie’s anger at the air doesn’t do anything and the deer like monster launches its attack at her, while the other one just sits there being annoying. Pinkie quickly dodged around the ring shaped bullets falling from above her heart by dancing left and right while ducking and weaving, her heart was slow to move because she was tired and her dancing was a tad sluggish.

“Apparently that’s Gyftrot. Don’t know how Mifty finds this stuff out to even write about it, but she’s written down a history of abuse and how much psychological help this monster may need. Judging from appearances, I’d says she’s quite accurate… also the other monster is…” Taking a glance at the second monster for only a moment, Toriel paled incredibly. She fell to the ground where she scrambled away in total fear. She looked to Risotto the Lesser Dog to see he was also visibly frightened. “Oh for all that is holy, anything but that!”

“ What is the other monster? I’m kind of busy dancing here and I can’t exactly read a book while I’m trying to save my soul you know! I’m really tired and I’m possibly heading straight into positively cranky territory real soon.” Pinkie was dancing her heart out. With how tired she was, it was hard for her to keep her heart from getting struck and it was getting nicked from all the round nickel sized bullets. The other monster didn’t seem to be launching any attacks at all, all Pinkie knew was that it was very ugly and it smelled horrible.

“I’m having a panic attack right now Pinkie!” Toriel was breathing heavily and hiding behind the whimpering Risotto who had his tail between his legs, still he bravely held up his sword and shield towards the horrifying monster. “We threw that thing in lava, we’ve atomized it, we ripped all of its internal organs out and even imploded it’s brain… that is the monster you’re seeing right now. It just wouldn’t die or leave us alone! It will stick around you until you’re driven to madness and this is not the book I’m reading from, it’s from my personal experience with it. That unholy abomination is… THE JERRY!”

Author's Note

Encounter Spoilers.

THE DREADED JERRY, THE MOST FEARED MONSTER IN THE UNDERWORLD!

Also the rarest monster in the game, you're not likely to run into it in a normal run through the game or will even know that the guy exists. Still, it's not important to the game to run into it and it's better that you don't try to find it. It's really annoying on any route to encounter. Doesn't affect the plot at all and the only thing it really seems to do is increase how long the other monster attack phase will last.

All my excuses for the slow chapter go to Xenoblade X.

8 - Snowing Rest

“Why is Jerry so scary to you?” Even as Pinkie asked this she tried not to look at the other monster, since the one she was avoiding was the one that was aggressive. Her dance steps were a bit sluggish; still she shook and grooved her way through another attack launched by the strangely cute deer monster with a weird mouth.

“It can literally annoy you to death!” Toriel whimpered as she started to rock back and forth in her sitting position behind Risotto while trying to hug herself, hearing Pinkie giggle slightly she got a little upset. “I’m not kidding, it can actually do that. It’s actually the real problem here.”

“Really? How do you deal with a Jerry anyway? It sounds like it can’t be killed.” Surviving being atomized did sound like an incredible ability to Pinkie Pie, not to mention the ability to swim in lava.

“Ditching it is the most common way to do so. Also it can be killed; it just takes a really long time for it to give up on living. It makes sense that killing them is just as annoying as trying to escape them since that’s what they do, they annoy anyone they can find and take an interest in!” Toriel shuddered as the monster in question gasped and wheezed and even farted loudly.

“Don’t you think I have tried that? This horrible horrific thing has been following me around for a month! A month, my sanity is at its limits here!” The Gyftrot didn’t seem particularly happy with The Jerry as he attacked Pinkie Pie. “Do you realize how hard it is to sleep with that thing following you around, it’s damn near impossible to get any rest!”

“Pink is such an ugly color.” The ugly, stinky and oppressively annoying monster stated quite loudly. It was a squat looking monster and every annoying or disgusting thing you can probably think of, it was probably doing that at this very moment. “You’re dancing is also atrocious. You even suck at being pink, that’s how bad at life you are.”

“Well I’d like to see well you would dance when you’re exhausted.” Pinkie didn’t even have the wherewithal to get angry at the monster as she had to watch her hoofing; even then she didn’t like Jerry and had to ‘start thinking up a brilliant plan’ to get rid of him. “If I can get rid of The Jerry, then will you stop attacking me?”

“If you can get rid of The Jerry, then I’d swear my firstborn son and daughter to your name and will owe you my allegiance for the rest of my life. Any money I make would belong to you and heck if you want my soul, then I’d give that to you as well if I could! I’m willing to enslave myself to your whims no matter horrible they may be! You could even tear off all my limbs after getting rid of him and it’d still be better than dealing with The Jerry!” Gyftrot had stopped attacking Pinkie for the moment and he sounded horribly desperate to be rid of Jerry. “Just please make him stop following me, I’ll do absolutely anything no matter how disgusting it is! Just so long as it doesn’t outright kill me, I’ll do it for you if you can get rid of it! But if you must kill us, then have mercy and kill me first please!”

“Wow, is he really that bad?” Pinkie felt The Jerry breathing throatily on her neck and even spitting up phlegm and mucus on the ground nearby, he even started hacking and coughing without covering his mouth. He even sneezed up a blobby string of snot from his nose that he didn’t bother to wipe away. “Never mind, you don’t have to answer that. Now if you will excuse… oh Tori, what’s that over there! It’s amazing!”

“What is what now?” Toriel sidled up to Pinkie while looking wearily at The Jerry, she too looked off the side of the highly convenient cliff that led to a very, very long drop to try and see what Pinkie was pointing at. Pinkie motioned for Toriel to move her head closer. Once she did, she received some whispered words in her ear that caused her to nod. “Yes, what is that? Why, it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen!”

Risotto moved up to them and started barking excitedly as he too wanted to know what they were looking at near the cliffs edge. His eyes became glossy as he to saw the most wondrous thing ever, after Toriel told him what it was.

“What are you guys doing, you’re not being helpful at all!” Gyftrot moved over to them to see what all the fuss was about and after a moment of whispering from Pinkie Pie his eyes widened. “My goodness, that… that makes me exceptionally happy! It’s incredible.”

“What are you guys looking at? What’s so interesting over there?” The Jerry had moved closer to the edge as Pinkie pointed off the side of the cliff and looking over the edge it didn’t see anything.

What The Jerry wasn’t seeing was Toriel lifting up the skirt of her robe and reeling back a flaming foot to punt him off the cliff. After the goat lady kicked him off, she promptly started launching fireball after fireball after him, all of which homed in on The Jerry falling into the distance.

“Please never come back!” As she angrily said those words, Toriel stopped to summon a humongous flaming meteor that shot straight down turning a bright bluish white color as it went. Her eyes had turned solid red with yellow cat like slits and she was almost foaming at the mouth as what sounded like an explosion went off far below. To say she was angry about Jerry terming pink as an ugly color was an understatement, her rage was ceased when she felt two hooves wrapped around her waist.

“Tori… please stop, you’re scaring me.” Pinkie nuzzled up against Toriel’s side and whined, Risotto followed this action on the opposite side obviously worried about the queen’s mental health.

“Wow, I can’t believe you killed it…” Gyftrot stated as he looked up to Toriel with wonderment and happiness in his eyes. However the look on Toriel’s face told him something was amiss with his theory that The Jerry was dead.

“Oh I didn’t kill it… it’s definitely still alive even after all that. I’m very sorry for scaring you Pinkie.” Toriel kneeled down and cuddled with Pinkie Pie trying to make amends for unleashing all her anger on what she knew to the most annoying monster in existence, it was a bit cathartic even though she knew it was still alive.

“Are you sure it’s still alive Tori?” Pinkie asked hopefully as she didn’t like the idea of Tori being a murderer, she was way too nice and friendly for that! Well except to The Jerry apparently.

“Listen closely and you will hear the truth.” Toriel leaned an ear towards the edge of the cliff, Gyftrot, Pinkie and Risotto all listened carefully as well. A loud long drawn out farting noise was heard coming from below. “Yep, ‘IT’ is definitely alive. Again I am quite sorry for losing myself like that in front of you Pinkie and I apologize dearly.”

“I forgive you Tori, just try not to scare me like that again please. If you can’t help yourself, I’ll forgive you for it if I know that you will eventually return to being the Tori that I know and possibly love.” Pinkie was lifted out of the snow and cuddled by a calm Toriel. she accepted the cuddling and nuzzled Toriel’s cheek before she was placed back on the ground.

“Seriously, after all that it still lives!” There was clear disbelief in Gyftrot’s voice. Now Pinkie was looking at him to scrutinize his figure a bit better, he looked like a deer with beady eyes at the base of his antlers that had little growths of hair that made it look like there were tree’s on them. He also had this strange sideways opening toothy mouth below a heart shaped black nose and two large eyes above that. Aside from the facial descriptions he didn’t have much of a tail and he was the only other four legged hoofed animal Pinkie has seen so far, plus he had a lot of junk on his head.

“Do you need help with that junk on you?” Pinkie’s question caused the Gyftrot to start crying and she couldn’t understand why.

“You guys are the angels who have saved me from adversity! I find it hard to complain anymore, but yes I need some help getting this stuff off of me.” Gyftrot told them what he wanted to remove from his horns, the barbed wire was definitely something he liked to see gone. He swiftly released his pull on Pinkie’s soul and let them help him.

Pinkie was a little wary of Toriel again, since she had never seen the goat lady so angry before. Toriel did say it was a catharsis that she gets all her anger out on The Jerry even if it wouldn’t kill it; she was still the same sweet goat lady that Pinkie liked a lot. Pinkie would do her best to make Toriel stay happy, because her angry side didn’t look pretty like her happy side did and even Pinkie had her angry side.

“So how do you think Pinkie’s birthday party in a few months would have gone if she were here to enjoy it?” Rainbow asked of the others as they held a party in a barn. “I think it would have been awesome to see Pinkie’s reaction. Anyway… to Pinkie, hopefully she’ll come back from wherever she disappeared off to!”

A lot of ponies were in agreement that Pinkie coming back would have been a good thing, because Cheese Sandwich just didn’t have the exact same kind of peppy quality that Pinkie had. He may have been a really cool guy and had party throwing powers to match Pinkie’s abilities, but he was no Pinkie Pie and could only stop by Ponyville sparingly. Nobody had any idea how much Pinkie actually did until she just up and vanished into thin air.

Let’s face it; Pinkie couldn’t have disappeared into fat air. Fat air is a ludicrous idea, even if it weighs so little yet has so much mass to encompass an entire planet.

“You know, this hearth’s warming month just doesn’t feel right without Pinkie Pie in Ponyville.” Rainbow sadly sipped from a mug of apple cider.

The three travelers through a nearby tunnel into a cavern with four groups of glowing mushrooms and following them was a happy Gyftrot. Said deer monster swore that he’d eventually pay them back for helping him out not once, not twice, but three times in a manner of minutes. He was hungry and Pinkie gave him a cupcake to cheer him up and it had worked immensely in improving his mood. The deer monster was even praising Pinkie for her kindness along with Queen Toriel’s might for temporarily trapping The Jerry under a massive conjured flaming rock.

“So this is the door that doesn’t open… it looks like the symbol on all your robes Tori.” Pinkie heard a barking noise and turned to the small armored dog. “Oh and it’s also on your shield as well Risotto.”

“It’s the crest of the royal family called the Delta Rune. It’s also involved in some kind of prophecy related to us monsters being trapped underground, but the prophecy wasn’t exactly made by a reputable source and I’ll tell you more about that crackpot if we ever see him. Anyway, the symbol has been a long standing tradition of our people, well before we got shoved underground and it represents the royal family.” Toriel stared at the symbol longingly and slowly brushed her hand across the door that had no handle. “I think I know what this is.”

“What is it Tori?” Pinkie was curious as to know what was behind a door that never opened. Even while she was waiting for Toriel to answer, she started poking at one of the glowing mushrooms watching as the dimmed and lit up with each touch. The mushrooms also squeaked when touched and it was exciting Risotto, not that that was hard.

“Please stop touching the mushrooms before you get Risotto too excited Pinkie. Anyway, behind this door is the last hope for the underworld if all the people who can lead it are for some reason killed or become incapable of keeping the state of things in a good condition. Unfortunately that means that if for some reason all those who are strong are taken down, then the Underworld will probably be run by the most intelligent annoying dog in the world that is preserved in this room which is impossible to open except in two circumstances.” Toriel took on a lecturing tone as she told them about what was behind the door; she was sharing her knowledge and she liked doing that as it was teaching others. It was the kind of job she always wanted. “That first circumstance is if there is no other option for a leader, the other is that the door will only open up after the end. Nobody knows what that means or what exactly ‘THE END’ is, but we’ve created rooms like this before and they’ve opened under similar rules and constraints. This one just happens to have those specified reasons for this door opening, here let me show you. You can’t see it normally, but with a little magic…”

With a wave of her right hand, Toriel caused writing appeared across the lower portion of the door. Pinkie looked at the door and all the writing on it, she wasn’t the only one scrutinizing the door as Gyftrot was right there at her side. Risotto had become completely distracted by the squeaking lamp mushrooms which were constantly going off in the background.

“Okay I can see the two ways the door will open written here, but who in the world is W.D. Gaster?”Pinkie asked a little confused; she also read something else that Toriel didn’t mention. “Also do not spend too much time here, lest a powerful light be shed upon you? Do you know anything about what that means?”

“I have no idea Pinkie, but that name sounds highly familiar… something to do with snails I think? It’s on the tip of my tongue and I can’t exactly remember why it’s important that I should, but I know it is. Anyway let us continue back on the path to Snowdin, I think the thing about light being shed upon us was a warning to not dally around here.” Turning around heading towards the tunnel it had been about three minutes since they arrived, Toriel didn’t get too far when something flew out of the tunnel knocking her onto her back with a strong blow to her head.

The being that just flew into the room smiled brightly at the four before shining its tail brightly at them blinding them for a bit and then Pinkie’s soul ejected from her body. The large floating serpent looked like it was smiling at them slightly and it reminded Pinkie of a flying fish, except for the tail that had a glowing pulsing sphere beneath its flesh before the tipped point at the end of it.

“Okay, I really don’t feel like dancing right now. So can you please just go away?” The look Pinkie received from the monster was a demented looking scowl before it raised its tail at her menacingly. It would be a good idea for Pinkie to ‘take this seriously and dance like her life depended on it, which it probably did’. “Okay, what is it going to do that has you so worried?”

Pinkie should be ready to dodge carefully, because it’s now firing its attack and it was a bit of a thing to dodge.

“How bad could it really… ah horse apples!” Pinkie couldn’t question the air much farther as her eyes widened at the shower of light sparks being fired at her soul; she barely managed to get her hooves to move right as she danced vigorously to dodge the first wave. If it were up to Twilight, she’d be dead by now because that pony can’t dance to save her life. “Well duh, but she could at least have used magic to create a shield or something for her soul instead of having to dance her way through these attacks. Either that or she can’t because she got regressed into being a filly and… oh my gosh that sounds so adorable!”

Pinkie had a fair point and in ignoring the monster, it got angry that she was paying more attention to the air than it, him or her. Toriel was still groggy and slowly getting back up from the blow to the head, all while thumbing the monster compendium. Risotto whimpering and covering its ears as the grinning monster apparently generated some kind of high pitched whining noise that only dogs could possibly hear with its every movement. Gyftrot was currently blinded stiff; he was basically the deer in the headlights except it was the taillight of the monster.

The next attack the floating fish monster launched was even harder to dodge, mostly because it started firing bigger pulses of pain and misery at Pinkie’s soul as it fired its regular spread gun attack of light spheres from its deadly tail. Pinkie was struck several times as Toriel quickly looked through the book for the monster hurting the poor pony.

“The monsters name is Glyde, it is hard to find information on him… what is currently known is that he is arrogant, uses powerful light based attacks and loves attention. Not many monsters would actually want to attack him considering how hard it is to avoid his dangerous attacks and he also fancies himself a flying ace.” Toriel looked at Pinkie with worry as the pony looked to be flagging on her hooves; the goat lady also noted her soul wasn’t doing any better having taken some damage in her state. “Are you okay Pinkie?”

“Well if Glyde here doesn’t kill me, then I want to get a good… what time of day is it even? We’ve been walking through snow and ice for a long time. I want a bath and to be in a bed cuddling a pretty, snuggly goat lady like a teddy bear after this.” Pinkie watched as Glyde performed some quick acrobatic feat and she weakly applauded by stomping her hooves earning his attention.

Despite his rather violent nature, Glyde reminded Pinkie of Rainbow Dash in how he basked in her method of applause. Of course given what Pinkie knew of Rainbow Dash she could apply it here to make him go away easily. It’s just that surviving it would be a chore when she was fatigued as she was.

Glyde launched a third wave at Pinkie who was starting to struggle to stay standing and dancing, only to have Toriel suddenly taking a position in front of her soul holding up Risotto’s delta rune emblazoned shield. Glyde performed a few flips in the air and Pinkie once again stomped her hooves weakly applauding him.

“Why are you applauding him Pinkie?” Whispered a vaguely the worried goat lady who looked back at the weird pony, Toriel was now holding up a slightly scorched shield.

“You’ll see, now all we have to do is ignore him or tell him there’s something he can’t do.” If Pinkie were truly smart she’d ‘go with the first option’ until he got bored and leaves, then it would be a good idea to ‘then get out of there’. “Got it, do you think you can keep that shield intact Tori? We’re going to ignore him and pay more attention to protecting my soul.”

“Of course I can. Just don’t move your soul from behind me and I’ll protect you. Glyde seems to be affecting Risotto somehow and poor Gyftrot can’t handle all the light he’s spewing around.” Taking a brave stance, Toriel prepared for Glyde’s next attack. This attack had more large pulses that force Toriel back slightly, but she admirably held her ground against them.

Glyde performed a twirling air maneuver then fanned out his only appendages which were the two fins on his serpentine body. He waited for the applause, none came and he looked to see Pinkie was paying more attention to her soul. He was quite angry.

“Why are you ignoring my awesome skills?” Finally Glyde decided to talk instead of just plain attacking.

“Sure you have some good stuff, but my friend Rainbow Dash has done better with less flashy stuff. Of course the flashiest thing she’s supposedly done is a Sonic Rainboom. An exploding rainbow created by flying too fast.” After a moment Pinkie wiped the back her hoof against her chest while looking nonchalant. “Bet you can’t do anything quite as amazing as what I saw as a filly. You’re tricks were entertaining the first two times, but now they’re just drab and I’ve totally seen better.”

“How is this Sonic Rainboom performed?” That was the question of the evening and instead of dancing, befriending or coercing Glyde to be nicer, Pinkie applied a little force to his ego. “I bet I can do one that’s better and even more incredibly than the one whom previously performed it!”

“Well…” The pony started off before the scene faded to black, much like a person sees things fading out of focus from lack of oxygen. Take in a deep breath just in case your oxygen deprived.

“Are you still following us?” Toriel wondered why Gyftrot was still willing to follow them, especially after being temporarily being blinded by Glyde’s flashiness.

“Yes, you’re majesty, I owe you a great debt of gratitude and will be in your service whether you want it or not. I also owe Lady Pie a lot and I found myself safe in a situation where I was struck entirely useless to you two and you still cared to ask if I was alright afterwards.” Saving the deer monster from The Jerry, feeding him and then removing the horrid decorations forced upon him, it earn his undying gratitude for Pinkie and Toriel. They just added onto his loyalty for the two by asking him if he was okay after Glyde’s attack. “I believe in you two bringing light back to the hearts of the monsters of the Underworld and I want to be a part of that by helping you two.”

Pinkie Pie yawned as they came upon a field of round snow puffs and a small dog house. Getting rid of Glyde was easy and now he was training to perform a Sonic Rainboom somewhere else. He wanted to eventually be a mascot for those Wonderbolt guys that Pinkie told him of. It sounded like something he wanted to be a part of and he also wanted to eventually be introduced to Rainbow Dash. Pinkie didn’t know if she could keep such a promise as she was from a different world, but she said she’ll see if she can do something about it.

Now the four were back on track with Pinkie’s slightly tattered soul back where it belongs. She was a bit woozy from the damage it had taken and needed time for her soul to heal. As they walked around investigating the snow puffs Pinkie found some money in one and Toriel stashed it away. There were no monsters around, well except for Risotto, Toriel and Gyftrot. Soon Risotto’s time would come to an abrupt end.

“Wait… WHAT! But I like Risotto; can’t you have something nice happen to him?” Pinkie was implying that something bad was going to happen to him for no apparent reason. “I’ll tell you there’s a reason! When you say things like, his time ‘would come to an abrupt end’. It’s rather upsetting to me to know I’m about to lose a friend here!”

“Who’s she talking to?” Gyftrot asked, as he saw Pinkie looking off into the air after Toriel just finished investigating the cute and very small guard dog post which had a small sign that said ‘woof’ on it.

“She’s talking about the mysterious words in the sky. I only saw them once, but they definitely exist and Pinkie see’s them constantly. Apparently she has some kind of a rapport going on with the words. She apparently likes the compliments she’s received from them and she dislikes being called fat by them, which I’m assuming hasn’t happened in a while.” Toriel looked to Pinkie who was hugging the Lesser Dog to herself and his neck was starting to grow out of control again. “However the words seem vaguely prophetic in a way, given that they can guide her actions. She doesn’t actually have to do what the words say, but she seems to trust them well enough. Pinkie, please let go of Risotto as his neck is getting out of control again!”

“But I don’t want Risotto to come to an abrupt end though! If I’m right next to him, then nothing bad can happen to him!” That’s what Pinkie thought anyway, what little did she know was that wasn’t necessarily the truth. “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do for him? Why can’t he continue being a good doggie like we know he is? Are you trying to be cruel to me here?”

The story continued on with Pinkie sticking to Risotto’s side as they came upon the last snow puff leading on the pathway forward. Trying to make sure nothing bad happened to Risotto in a rather hopeless manner, Pinkie checked the snow puff first.

As soon as Pinkie touched the snow puff it erupted into revealing a dog’s head, its tail popped out the back end of the snow puff and wagged a bit.

“Aw, look at him… who’s a friendly little guy?” Pinkie really shouldn’t talk down to this guy if she knew what was good for her, the dog barked twice at her in response. “Why shouldn’t I? He’s got a really cute bark like Risotto.”

That was when the Greater Dog decided to stand up; he eclipsed Pinkie with his size and the now revealed armor was quite massive as was his large spear with a smiling face scribbled on it.

“Oh… you’re not a little fellow… you’re a really big fellow. Still has a cute voice though.” Pinkie looked up at the large armored dog that smiled and wagged its tail at her. “I’m aware of space compression considering I used to be capable of it before I ended up here, but that’s ridiculous. Even so, I’m not going to even ask where he was hiding all that armor and his body in such a small space.”

“This is a Greater Dog monster Pinkie. I assure you he is quite friendly and he makes for a good soldier to protect the innocent, unfortunately he himself is also quite innocent because he thinks fighting is playing.” The large dog in armor stopped paying attention to Pinkie and looked to Toriel and his tongue lolled out of his mouth and he started barking happily at the sight of her. “I remember him fondly; it has been a long time since then my cute little Pilaf. Aside from his playful nature, it was hard to train Pilaf here in how to be a guard since he wasn’t as intelligent as his smaller brother is.”

Risotto moved up to Pilaf and barked and growled in a specific manner while motioning to Toriel, Pinkie and Gyftrot with a paw. The large armored dog nodded and barked once in response to whatever it was that the Lesser Dog had said. And moved off to the side and the armor knelt down, after that the dog seemed to hop out of the armor being smaller than it actually looked. Pilaf ran up to Toriel and started whining because it wanted some affection; he was still a lot bigger than Risotto.

“Wow, is that armor magically enchanted.” A quick nod answered Pinkie’s question as Pilaf was receiving some love and affection from Toriel. “Wait, that’s Risotto’s brother? He’s really big and bulky looking.”

Pilaf barked proudly that his size was a match for the greatest of foes when it came to playtime! Had Pinkie understood the true meaning behind what playtime meant to Pilaf, she might have been a little bit more worried about it.

After Toriel was done petting the monster dog, she whistled softly and he went back to his armor and saluted the goat lady. He also barked something that made her blush.

“What did he say Toriel?” It did beg curiosity, considering Pinkie was the one that wanted to make Toriel blush.

“He called me ‘goat mom’ and the fact that he still does so to this very day is rather embarrassing to me.” Despite not thinking she was a good mother at all, Toriel had a lot of the royal guard dogs completely devoted to calling her that constantly.

At least Risotto was more respectful in not mentioning that he too thought Toriel deserved the motherly title, almost all of the royal guard dogs called her that when she wasn’t in earshot. Pilaf was one of the few that called her that no matter how much she insisted that he stop doing so, Toriel would always be their second mother.

Pilaf quickly went back into his armor and motioned with the spear it was holding for them to move onward and they did so without any problem. The group of four travelers came upon a bridge and Pinkie started to cry.

“I’m so tired Tori, when are we going to find a nice warm bath and a place to get some sleep?” Pinkie looked pretty ragged; the damaged to her soul was affecting her body. At least her saddlebags were doing completely fine. She just continued to sigh as she looked at the bridge before her.

Risotto barked something to Toriel and she nodded.

“Risotto tells me that Snowdin is on the other side of the bridge.” Even Toriel was looking forward to some cuddle time with Pinkie at this point. “It’s just a little further Pinkie; I too find myself tiring of travel.”

“Can I just say that I don’t like the people of Snowdin for decorating me?” Gyftrot seemed generally okay about going into a town that abused him. After traveling with Pinkie and Toriel for a bit, he knew they wouldn’t let him be abused anymore. “Makes me wish I had hands so I could have dealt with the decorations myself, even then the barbed wire would have been problematic to remove. Also I too need some sleep after having been followed around by Jerry for too long, finally I can have a peaceful nights rest without all that darn wheezing and moaning messing up my sleep.”

“Please remind me to introduce you to a friend of mine, she plays a lyre and she’s got an obsession with hands.” The sleepy pony muttered. Pinkie was yawning a lot more often now and she was even getting Toriel and Gyftrot to yawn as well. They’d fall asleep when they could find a comfortable place to do so, so they had to cross a bridge to come to it.

Moving slowly across the bridge they eventually saw Sans and Papyrus on the other side, Pinkie groaned sadly.

“Pony, this is your final and most dangerous… what happened to you?” The Suddenly Worried Papyrus stopped following the script again; he was interested in Pinkie’s disheveled and tired looking state. “You know what? You may pass on through, for I Papyrus wills it to be so! I’m a skeleton that has standards; why I would never kick a dog while they are down! Why it would just make me bereft of class if I was going to continue with my previous plan! I’m not some classless skeleton who doesn’t know the meaning of fancy! The Snowed Inn is right next to the shop, you can’t miss it!

After saying that Papyrus quickly ran off, leaving behind a befuddled Sans.

“Huh… I guess he really likes you guys. I see you have a new traveling companion ‘horning’ in on the fun. Yeah the inn is called the Snowed Inn, classic pun for the town really.” Sans gave off a happy sigh and followed after Papyrus.

Pinkie quietly trudged forward and saw a sign that said ‘Welcome to Snowdin’ in bright colorful letters; it even had festive lights on it. It kind of reminded her of Hearth’s Warming; the town seemed quaint and nice. It was too bad she was too tired to explore it at the moment.

Then the moment where Risotto’s time of traveling with Pinkie and Toriel came to an end, but he didn’t leave without giving Toriel something to remember him by. He let her keep one of his spare shields.

“Oh so that’s what you meant… well I feel rather silly now.” Pinkie tried to continue walking forward only to fall on her face in the snow, she felt two arms wrap around her and heft her up into the air.

Pinkie could recall the feeling of warm water splashing over her fur and someone scrubbing her body softly if thoroughly, she also remembered wrapping her hooves around a large white fluffy smiling creature before resting her head on that creatures chest as she felt something rubbing her ears tenderly. She went right to sleep after she felt a warm blanket cover her and a pair of lips pressing against the tip of her nose.

Author's Note

The odds of this chapter having problems is high, so I'll fix it later if it does have any.

This one took a while to write in between reading other fan fiction and of course playing Xenoblade X. I'm running into a lot of Time Sinks.

9 - Letting Inn and Out.

As Maud walked towards the rock farm she sighed lightly with no emotion on her face, she hadn’t heard much of her sister since she fell off that cliff. She inspected every bit of the mountain with a critical eye; it took an entire day since it was rather a big mountain. Whether or not Pinkie was a rock farmer, she was still a part of their family. She was back home to tell their parents that she still had no idea where Pinkie could have went, it seemed like her little sister never landed from her trip and there was no discernible evidence whatsoever of Pinkie having been injured anywhere on the mountain provided she survived the fall.

Well there was no evidence until this moment, which caused Maud’s right eyebrow to lift a millimeter. It was the most emotion she showed since she heard her beloved sister went missing. Moving over to a particular stone, Maud picked it up and looked it over. After stashing away that stone in her saddlebags, she continued on to the homestead.

“Hey… I just found out that Pinkie’s doing alright.” Maud said this dully and at a normal even voice, one that would not have attracted any attention at all. Her entire family was upon her in an instant.

“Where is she? Did you find her?” Marble Pie the youngest of the four pony sisters asked and then became shy because of her outburst.

“No, but I did find a rock. It’s quite important since its evidence that Pinkie is still alive somewhere.” Maud reached into her saddlebags with a hoof and moved over to a nearby table to place the evidence on it for everyone to look at.

Her two sisters Marble Pie and Limestone Pie looked at the rock with confusion and even their mother Cloudy Quartz was a tad put off by the evidence Maud produced. Igneous Rock, the father of the four pie sisters, just stared at it for a bit.

“Pinkie was always the odd one, given that her name finally showed up on one of the stones. Wherever she is, she better eventually bring this ‘Toriel’ to meet us.” Well it was apparent to Igneous that Pinkie had met someone special wherever she was, it also sounded like they were of the feminine persuasion. He always knew his daughter would end up with someone odd; he couldn’t wait to meet them to see just how odd they were. It was around this point that he noticed a lot more indents in the stone that were completely blank. “Cloudy dearest, you don’t suppose all these extra blank spaces mean what I think they mean?”

Pinkie woke up without causing much of a stir when her hooves started grasping at air and her eyes flew open. She stayed still and realized that she was in the only bed in the room given a slight tilt of her head told her that the bed she was in was in fact the only bed in the room. Gyftrot was sleeping peacefully on the floor with a pillow under his chin and a blanket over his body.

Looking beyond the deer monster, Pinkie saw Toriel sitting on the floor with her arms wrapped around her legs. The goat lady eventually addressed the jar of snow, it sounded like she had been crying.

“I used up so much of my magic on The Jerry and I really scared Pinkie. Not only that, but I didn’t have that much magic left to protect her from Glyde because of that and she took a lot of hits. Not to mention poor Risotto and Gyftrot were both incapacitated and helpless.” Toriel had her chin on her knees and her ears were drooping slightly over her face and she wasn’t wearing a robe, her pristine white fur was easily visible in the dark room in the light of a small flickering ball of fire hovering above her and the jar. “Getting lost in my rage was the worst thing of it all, since it caused Pinkie to get hurt and she was already exhausted on top of that by all the dancing she has to do to protect her wondrously bright soul from injury.”

“You still protected her and stood tall for her, she has a really strong soul that will heal with rest. You haven’t failed her; you just had different priorities at the time that led things to getting slightly rough.” The snow in the jar sounded optimistic about things, compared to Toriel who looked distraught. The jar glowed slightly brighter whenever the voice sounded off from it. ”You gave her the chance to negotiate with Glyde and that book seemed helpful in at least giving the both of you a name and some information to work with.”

“She’s so very much like a child, I want to protect her and I feel a spark of attraction within me ignite around her. She brought me back from a dark place and her soul is like a beacon to me, aside from that she’s quite funny and she looks beautiful to me. I find her quite compassionate about not taking an aggressive stance against any monster.” Toriel sobbed slightly and her body shuddered. “I’m so horribly out of practice; I would even say I’m rusty at doing anything worthy of being a queen to my people. I don’t have it within me to hurt any monsters, The Jerry being a big exception, but I want to protect my ‘sweet little pie’ from being hurt by them as they lash out in their anger. She just felt so fragile to me when I picked her up after she collapsed, especially so when I bathed her tired body. The way she snuggled into me as I laid down to sleep… it all feels wonderful that she can still trust me after seeing me at my worst.”

“Your majesty, I don’t believe you’ve ever truly been at your worst. You will never be at your worst because you’ve got a friend in me and many others who believe in you. Just by doing your best, you’re reminding everyone down here that while things may not be perfect, they can still get better with the right attitude.” The jar of snow paused for a moment before continuing on. “That much needed kindness and love has been rekindled within you, you shouldn’t let self hatred sully your view as to what you are beginning to accomplish. I have only been with you two for a short while and I’ve seen many an amazing sight in such a short amount of time, I’m going where no snowman has gone before. You’re helping me, a simple immobile pile of sentient snow, achieve my dream of traveling. I’m no one important and yet you stopped to help me when I asked of it and yet I can’t do much of anything to return your gesture. If anyone should be crying, it’s me for being so useless to you.”

“You are not useless… you have a voice and I wished to hear it. It’s why we’re having this conversation.” Lifting her head from her saddened state, Toriel looked slightly more upbeat and had a wan smile forming on her face. “You’re someone that can be talked to, someone that can give advice and see things from a different point of view. You are not animate, but you can still lend your voice and ear to give a new perspective on things as you see them. While you can’t be there physically for anyone, you can still be there for someone spiritually and emotionally. You may not be able to do big things, but you can still lend support in your own small way.”

“That is why you’re the beloved queen of the monsters; you see the best in others and can find a purpose in them when they themselves are lost.” The snow seemed to be glowing continuously now at the positive change around in Toriel’s attitude. “I may be just a snowman and a bunch of snow in a jar, but I will listen and offer what support and advice I can.”

“I guess even The Jerry has his uses. No matter how horrid a creature it is, I have learned an important lesson from dealing with it in a rather temporary capacity.” Toriel’s tired eyes stared upon the jar and she licked her lips slightly. “I… I always thought myself as only being attracted to men. I was even married to what was once a wonderful man for a time, only for that to sour quite horribly when it became known what an idiot and a horrible monster he truly is. What I want to ask is, is it strange that I’m attracted to Pinkie? What does she even see in an old lady like me? I’m a bit confused on my own feelings, yet that week we spent together was magical and I find myself willing to even pursue them for as long as I’m able to.”

“I wouldn’t know as I might never know the true feeling of love, I can understand camaraderie as monsters sometime come to talk to me and I eventually started to understand what they were saying. By just listening to others, I learned how to talk. As to what Pinkie sees, she obviously sees a lot in you and you’re actually still quite young by my standards.” The jar seemed to wiggle a bit. “The heart wants what the heart wants, my heart wishes to explore the world and experience things I normally would be incapable of. Your heart apparently wants Pinkie Pie, I think she is plugging up a hole in your heart that you didn’t know you needed sealed up.”

“But what if I don’t want that hole plugged? Sorry… I’m tired and I will return to bed, Pinkie has to be missing my warmth by now. She’s quite clingy with those hooves of hers; I find that I don’t mind that at all. Once fully rested, we’ll see to exploring Snowdin for you and ourselves. Gyft might make for a good tour guide in that respect.” Toriel slowly stood up and picked up the jar to place it by the yellow backpack. “I thank you for giving me the one thing that is ultimately precious to you, your time.”

“I have always given it freely to any in need of a good listener; I must thank you as well for not forgetting about me. I do get very lonely sitting out here you know. Talk to me again sometime.” The snow dimmed and the jar became inert.

Pinkie closed her eyes and started to lightly wiggle around in bed, she heard the goat lady gasp and she quickly found herself enveloped in a warm fluffy hug. She could feel that she was being pulled on top of Toriel again, this is where she slowly drifted back to sleep shoving her nose deeply into Toriel’s neck. Her sleeping mind was a blur of activity about what she had overheard; it led to some rather pleasant dreams of baked goods.

Shifting on top of a soft white fluffy cloud of soft bliss, Pinkie slowly woke up with her nose in Toriel’s ear and her tongue licking at a smiling Toriel’s neck. She quickly stopped and the goat lady frowned slightly in her sleep and stopped frowning when Pinkie started nuzzling her to keep her appeased.

It was at this point that Pinkie considered the idea that maybe she should stop having that dream about licking the pie tin completely clean; the flavor of the dream pie this time was peanut butter. Why the last time this dream happened, she woke up in Applejack’s bed. It was a good thing that the apple pony thought she was Winona at the time and that she had managed to make an escape from that situation without anyone being the wiser that she had even been there.

“That’s supposed to be a secret, so stop telling everyone about it!” Pinkie whispered harshly at the air trying not to wake Toriel. It was hard to understand why Pinkie was getting so angry; it wasn’t like someone told everybody that she frequently stole Fluttershy’s loose feathers, preening her when she was distracted by other thing. “So I have a problem with personal space and those feathers make for a really good pillow… can we not get into this right now? Besides it calms Fluttershy down a lot and it stops her feathers from getting all ruffled.”

“Pinkie, are you complaining to the words again?” Toriel was fully awake now but she didn’t move to shove the blanket off of herself or Pinkie, she just let the pony nuzzle her.

“Now they’re annoying me by telling everyone my secrets, not that the Rarity thing was news to anyone. Well except Rarity who doesn’t catch me doing it.” To be fair Pinkie just admitted to whatever secrets she was talking about that may or may not have appeared in the air, this pony had quite a vivid imagination. “Oh right, like you weren’t about to tell everyone I’m attracted to intellectuals like Twilight and Tori who look totally adorable while reading books!”

Right about now Pinkie was feeling pretty dumb for saying that out loud without even being prompted by some invisible being she thinks she’s talking to. It was a little understandable that Pinkie was a tad insane, but then again wasn’t everyone sanity challenged at one point or another? In any case Toriel’s cheeks flushed at Pinkie’s admittance of thinking she was both an intellectual and adorable when she reads.

“I can tell you’re doing it on purpose you know.” The pink peppy pony flatly stated. She then received a kiss on the cheek from the naked goat lady who slowly got up and moved the pony slightly aside and off of herself.

“It’s time for us to get up anyway Pinkie; don’t you want to explore the town?” The reason Toriel left out the word ‘today’ was because it was hard to tell if it was day or not. One has to remember that the location of this town was deep underground and all; the monsters had dug out a lot of space to plant that huge forest of tightly packed trees. Time was quite an iffy thing to keep up with in the Underworld and Toriel knew it. Now what color was our favorite goat mom going to choose for her robes today? Maybe a festive bright green color would fit her well? “You can play with the words in the air later Pinkie, we need to get washed up, do your mane and find a place to eat breakfast if the inn doesn’t serve that already.”

“I hope they have at least pancakes and syrup.” Hearing about breakfast was a reminder to Pinkie that monsters in the Underworld had what they could scrounge up or grow in a harsh environment of the underground. Makes one wonder how dwarves can go their entire lives living like this, then again the little squat men and women were often relatively oxygen deprived unlike the monsters that had an entire forest underground. “So should we wake Gyft or let him sleep in?”

“He’s been awake for the most of a month with The Jerry following him around, let’s let him sleep him. He needs all the rest he can get.” The observation that Toriel gave couldn’t be refuted and thus they decided to leave the sleeping deer monster alone. “He’ll probably also want some food, The Jerry likely ruined any food he didn’t eat fast enough. So we’ll need to tell the inn keeper to bring him some when he wakes.”

Walking down the stairs Pinkie felt refreshed and today her mane and tail were both styled in a loose braid. She didn’t think she’d tire of Toriel playing with her mane. They came upon a sight of a pink bipedal rabbit moving about the kitchen next to the lobby. Getting underfoot was a white rabbit that looked to be following her around in an adorable manner.

“Good morning Carol.” A polite Toriel intoned to the pink rabbit lady working on breakfast wearing a white apron over a yellow shirt, this cause the little rabbit to run up to Toriel.

“Morning Miss Toriel, did you sleep well?” The little white rabbit certainly looked excitable; she definitely wanted to help her mother in making the guests at the inn happy.

“I did sleep very well, it was quite comfortable even.” Saying this, Toriel looked at Pinkie Pie as the reason for a good sleep. It couldn’t be a good night’s rest, time in the Underworld was still hard to tell without a day and night cycle. “Tina this is my friend Pinkie, I was carrying her the other day when we came in.”

“Hello Pinkie, mommy said you were sleeping like a log. That’s silly though, everyone knows logs don’t sleep!” The little rabbit named Tina ran over to the table and sat down.

“Oh, your awake, you look so tuckered out when you’re friend here brought you in. You were really quite content in her arms. Come along to the table breakfast is almost ready. I hope you like frost carrots.” Carol smiled charmingly at them as she started placing food out for her guests at the table; eventually a third bipedal bunny came in.

“Smells good like always Carol; are these the guests that came into town today? I’m Betty and I run the shop next door, it’s nice to meet you.” The purple rabbit lady wore a gold choker, a hat, a shirt and some pants. It looked like she was also wearing lacy underclothing judging from the bit of bra that stuck out from under her shirt. She sat down with them and they started to eat. “So who are you two, haven’t seen anyone new like you two around in quite a while. Are you from the capital?”

“No, I am Toriel and this is my friend Pinkie. We came from the direction of the Ruins; we’re starting a journey to see the rest of the Underworld for our own reasons.” It had yet to be established what exactly they were setting out to accomplish and Toriel kind of jumped the gun with assuming Pinkie wanted to leave. Even then Toriel wouldn’t be cruel as to keep Pinkie from the rest of her family and numerous friends. She truly wanted what was best for Pinkie and thought that traveling to the seal would do something. It was obvious that while Pinkie could technically take care of herself, she would need all the help she could get.

Pinkie herself contemplated her reason for traveling the Underworld as she ate. Other than to see what was down here, she wanted to help the monsters trapped in this Underworld. In fact she was hardly thinking about earning freedom from being stuck in the Underworld. She didn’t really bother with the fact that she was stuck here nearly as much as she did with the fact that there were a lot of unhappy folks here who couldn’t smile.

“Huh, well that’s interesting. So those monsters are still alive.” Betty shrugged and looked to them. ”Do either of you know why the door was locked to the point that only a ghost or something that can dig under the door could get in?”

“That would be my fault I’m afraid, I kept the door locked for various reasons. Unfortunately those reasons didn’t do what I set out for them to accomplish, I’m sure the door is open now for monsters to start traveling from ‘Home’ if they wish to do so.” It made Toriel upset to even think about it and Pinkie rubbed her face against Toriel’s neck before returning to her food, the gesture got her to smile slightly. The two older rabbits looked surprised by the gesture, but they smile afterwards at the two. “I have a question of my own, what is there to do in Snowdin? We’re going to be here for a while.”

“You want to know what there is to do here in Snowdin; Well I got you covered on that.” Betty was a bit of a sassy purple rabbit in comparison to Carol’s motherly appearance. “Grillby’s has food if you’re looking for a place to eat, it’s the only restaurant in town and it serves anyone. You can get some free snacks for newcomers there. The library has information if you need to look up anything, oh and don’t mind the poorly spelled out sign. We might have an illiteracy problem as we don’t exactly have a school, but the community does its best to raise our children to be happy at least. If you’re tire you know where my sister’s inn is and you’re always welcome here. If you’re really bored you can sit outside and watch those two wacky skeletons get up to some really silly stuff. You must have met those two on the path here; ever since they came here they’ve really brightened the moods of all of the monsters around here.”

“So… how did this town get started?” A curious Pinkie had become interested in how Snowdin came to be.

“A long time ago, the monsters lived in the ‘Home Ruins’ back there through the forest you came through. Long story short, we decided to leave the ruins and head for the end of the caverns and we also dug out a lot of space to plant trees down here for extra oxygen. If you’re wondering about all the snow, it falls through some cracks leading to the surface through the barrier that keeps us all trapped down here. Along the way some of us fuzzier folk decided that we liked the cold and set up a town. You can see the results outside. From the way you’re friend carried you into town, you didn’t get any time to actually see anything yet.”

“So how has life been here for you and you’re family Carol?” The queen did need to know the state of her subjects and what Toriel was seeing was of interest to her.

“It’s a little claustrophobic for my sister with how small this town is, but I think everyone here is getting by day to day alright enough. We all hope for freedom, but we’re not willing to harm any innocent souls to achieve it. All we can really do is hope that it is coming soon.” Carol leaned over and rubbed her child’s ears. “We have day to day struggles, but we’re making the best of what we have.”

“Yet, my ex husband is willing to harm people to achieve a goal that could have been achieved in a peaceful manner. He slaughtered six innocents for their souls before their time, when he could have waited for just one of them to peacefully pass on… ” It was why Toriel divorced her husband. She didn’t mind it so much when he was fighting in a war, but to do so during a time of peace when those six souls refused to fight back. It had broken her heart and she decided to move on.

“What do you mean? Wait… you’re… Queen Toriel!” The sassy Betty looked sorrowful for Toriel.

“To free all of us monsters from the Underworld, all it would have taken was the power of a single soul along with several other willing ones that only needed to be naturally on their deathbeds and willing to lend aid. There was no need to commit such horrid violence.” The goat lady broke down somewhat, she had tears in her eyes and she found Pinkie hugging her side. She then started to spill something had thought of a long while ago after the previous child had passed through her domain. “A single ‘willing’ soul would have been enough to get a single monster through the barrier to find enough souls that didn’t hate us and would actually help us; we could have been free a long time ago. My son managed to do it, but he perished upon his return with a bunch of golden flowers. I find the wholesale slaughter and hunting of children to be abhorrent! Not to mention all those horrible experiments… I hope my ex didn’t hire that scientist back on. I didn’t know her very well, but what my ex had that scientist doing was so very wrong.”

“Mommy, what is the sad ‘goat mom’ talking about?” Tina looked on at Toriel with a sad confusion as she couldn’t understand what she was talking about.

“It’s nothing for you to worry about my little sugar bun.” As Carol comforted the child she looked to her sister who stared back with a saddened expression before they both gave Toriel understanding expressions. Her ex did have a lot to answer for if her words were the truth. “Please don’t talk about such disheartening thing your majesty, I and Betty are sorry to have upset you.”

“I find it is I who must apologize for bringing dark subjects to the table and we were having such a wonderful breakfast too.” Toriel looked down at her plated and started to eat in silence as Pinkie pressed up against her side having sidled up next to her.

“Well at least the music sounds somewhat nice eve if it is rather somber, it fits the mood at least.” The rest of breakfast went rather well with Pinkie being asked questions about who and what she was, she answered them and slowly brought the mood back around to a much brighter tone. She didn’t move away from Toriel, who occasionally glanced at her with thankful eyes.

Walking out the door of the inn after giving instructions to save some food for Gyftrot, the two travelers moved out of the building to see the quaint little town.

“I don’t think any monsters will attack you while we are here Pinkie, we should take this time to relax.” Her green robe made Toriel look highly festive, but her mood couldn’t have been any more low.

“Tori… knock knock.” Pinkie wanted Toriel to smile again and she was going to bring her mood up no matter what it took. Toriel stood there silently for a minute looking at the decorated tree ahead of them. There were a lot of rabbit people around, a few bears here and there and even a few strange monsters.

“Who’s there?” Toriel dully asked as she stared at the friendly townsfolk going about their lives.

“I love.” Pinkie answered in surreptitiously fast manner.

“I love who?” After a moment to let it sink in as to what it sounded like, Toriel blushed when Pinkie’s response came back loud and clear.

“I love you too, how about we go on a date? I hear there’s a nice restaurant in town we could go to later.” A smiling Pinkie was a rather infectious thing, especially when she was wearing that cute scarf Toriel made for her and the braids just added to her happy appearance.

“Are you trying to get me into the spirit of things by flirting with me using jokes?” As she said it, Toriel had a rather sweet smile on her face.

“Why would I want you to get your spirit into things, I like it right where it is in your body!” Pinkie’s bold declaration caused the goat lady to snort and cover her mouth as she broke out into a fit of giggles. The goofy smile on the ponies face broadened at successfully striking down the bad mood her friend was in. “Hey Tori, knock knock.”

“Who’s there?” If there was one thing Toriel loved, it was these kinds of jokes and Pinkie had a million of them.

“Little old lady.” Pinkie stopped to inspect a sign next to an igloo that talked about trying the under snow tunnels. It was quite a curious thing to her as it would still be walking to the other side of town, only just through a tunnel.

“Little old lady who?” Every time Pinkie told jokes, Toriel just couldn’t keep a frown on her face.

“Hey, I didn’t know you could yodel!” It was another fresh round of giggles and a broader smile on Pinkie’s favorite anthropomorphic goat.

“That lady over there… something about her disturbs me.” A rabbit in a grey shirt and blue pants muttered and this attracted the pony’s attention to what he was looking at.

Pinkie was taking lead on exploring the town and Toriel stayed quiet as she took in the wonder on Pinkie’s face at all the sight of the tree with the presents under it. They went over to a white furred bipedal female rabbit that had a smaller more normal looking rabbit on a leash.

“Hello there, isn’t my little Cinnamon just the cutest?” The rabbit lady squatted down and started to pet the rabbit.

“Um… is that a… no I’m not going to question it.” Pinkie was about to asked if the little rabbit was a Cinnamon Bun, but decided to avoid the obvious pun.

“It’s my little brother, is it strange that I keep him on a leash?” The rabbit lady saw the unusual looks on Pinkie and Toriel’s faces.

“Just a tiny bit, though I can see he has ADD. So it makes about as much sense as anything else in the Underworld.” It was a guess and Toriel wasn’t about to say what she thought about the obvious pun here.

“Yeah, my little brother is hard to keep under control at times. He’s really quite fast and all over the place.” With that said by the strange rabbit lady, the two decided to move on.

The two moved on towards the bear arranging presents under what Pinkie would have termed as a Hearth’s Warming tree. She moved up to the grey bear in some kind of suit and gave him an inquisitorial look.

“Well I see we got some newcomers to town. If you’re wondering about this tree, some awful teens tormented a local monster by decorating its tree like horns. It was as if things weren’t bad enough for the guy with The Jerry following him around, they go and made it worse for the poor fellow.” The bear shook his head as he placed a present down. “We started giving that monster presents to make him feel better. Now it’s tradition to put presents underneath a decorated tree for loved ones at certain times of a year. I guess it was a good thing those teens tormented that monster? I wouldn’t know, haven’t seen him in a while.”

“So you know Gyftrot, he says he dislikes some of the locals in this town because they abused him.” At least Pinkie knew he was willing to forgive them for it.

“Yeah, we’re actually quite sorry about that. Is he here?” The bear looked hopeful. “I wanted to talk with him.”

“Sure he’s at the inn getting a lot of sleep; we managed to help him shake off The Jerry.” Toriel ducked her head in a sad manner about how she had acted at the time; Pinkie gave her a friendly smile making her feel better about it.

“Thank you, I wanted to meet him personally and tell him how sorry we are about he keeps getting treated around here.” The bear continued to arrange the presents under the tree. “I’ll go after I’m done arranging the presents.”

Moving onwards slightly past the tree Pinkie and Toriel came upon a smiling lizard monster with no arms that was of moderate importance to everything that will eventually happen. The absurd situations that will come from it will definitely be fun times, since ‘the rails will thoroughly be jumped at that point’.

“You’re kind of spoiling things for me by telling me how important it’s going to be in the near future you know.” Ignoring the fairly blatant fact that Pinkie could somehow read the future, she walked up to the yellow lizard monster with no arms.

“Yo, hey there, I’m Kid! Welcome to Snowdin!” The bright and cheery Kid stated with enthusiasm, this hermaphroditic monster didn’t let the lack of arms get in the way of being happy. “I wonder if that weird skeleton is an adult or a kid as well. He seems nice for a tall guy, plus he hangs out with Undyne so he has to be cool!”

Turning away from Kid after giving it a nod in acknowledgement, Pinkie and Toriel saw Grillby’s where they saw a brown bear in a red jacket standing outside.

“You know, this town doesn’t have a mayor. If there is ever a problem the skeleton will tell the fish lady about it, though it would be kind of harsh to set loose someone that crazy over such a small thing. That’s politics I guess.” The bear nodded to himself. “Well I’ll leave you two to your date.”

Both Pinkie and Toriel blushed as they hadn’t exactly stated that they were dating, they weren’t denying their closeness however. They looked to each other and the restaurant.

“So… should we come back later after checking out the rest of the town? You know… to have a meal together just you and me?” The two started becoming painfully shy around each other and Pinkie gave Toriel her hoof as they continued on their way past the restaurant. They were definitely coming back to it.

Author's Note

If you aren't aware of it, Betty, Carol and Tina are a stealth pun. Now it's no longer stealthy.

Fixed a few minor things last chapter mostly surrounding Pilaf getting into his armor, nothing big. Also my rock was flooded on Christmas, what did I do to deserve that? The smell is quite horrible and the dehumidifier is loud.

10 - Story for Tori

It was a new day at the rock farm and Marble was asking questions about the ‘Choosing Stone’ issue that came up the previous day.

“So it’s a bad thing for Pinkie to have so many extra options in choosing someone special to her?” It was what Marble wanted to know and her parents were the foremost knowledgeable on stones of choosing, which helped narrow things down a lot when it came to finding love.

“You should already know that a personal choosing stone usually only has room for another name that isn’t yours, sometimes it’ll have two or three. Remember that a name fills in when you find someone that might be capable of becoming very special to you and it’ll only fill if you meet them and actually hear their name.” Igneous Rock Pie closed his eyes. “It’s not exactly a bad thing to have that many choices, but it can become an ill omen. With so many options things aren’t as set in stone as they could be. The forty one empty spaces on hers, it leaves me fearing for my Pinkie’s happiness as many are still unsure what causes so many empty spaces to form on a ‘Choosing Stone’. At best it has to do with the heart in question; I don’t like the idea that my daughter’s heart is getting out of control or away from her. At least we know Maud has two other options if that Trixie Lulamoon on her ‘Choosing Stone’ doesn’t meet her fancy. You and Limestone still only have the one empty slot, speaking of… when did you meet this pony Maud?”

“I was looking at rocks around the mountain where Pinkie went missing and Trixie put on a show in Ponyville where I was staying at the time. She caused an Ursa Minor to appear in town.” Maud continued to have a flat even tone and an unexpressive look on her face. “I thought it was a neat trick, her coat and hair reminds me of cobalt ore. Also she says her name a lot.”

“I think I’ve heard of her. Oh you would fall for a pony that has a blue coat along with what sounds like a zany personality that involves referring to themselves in the third person all the time!” Limestone huffed irritably. “You have odder kinks than even Pinkie does, which is a huge understatement in relevance to our family.”

“I will not deny that.” Said Maud in a way that only she could, with the same continuous monotone deadpan she was known for.

“So Pinkie, I know this may seem awfully personal of me to ask, but have you ever dated a stallion?” Given what Toriel knew of Pinkie, she wanted to know a bit more about her and if she really was pansexual.

“Yes, there’s this guy named Pokey Pierce, nice friendly stallion… unfortunately we acknowledged that it would never have worked out between us if he kept stabbing his horn into my cutie mark. I hope I can show you that someday, I currently can’t because someone knows why it’s not on my flank and they certainly aren’t telling me the reason!” Add another tally to the Pinkie looking up at nothingness at this moment, what number would that be by now? You’ve probably lost count already anyway. “Then there’s Caramel, he’s actually a really sweet guy. Unlike Pokey who is completely straight; he’s bisexual with very slight leanings towards stallions. My problem with him is that he’s always sticky, as if I wasn’t already sticky enough from making cinnamon buns from being a baker.”

A tiny rabbit dragged his big sister right up to Pinkie and wiggled his nose at her; the bedraggled older bunny looked a bit loopy on the ground from having been dragged all the way over to them.

“Sorry, I wasn’t talking about you.” Pinkie seemed to have upset the small rabbit for a second before it lost complete focus and started to run around while his elder sister tried to keep him under control with the leash. Toriel giggled before motioning to Pinkie to continue on if she had any more to say. “I always did kind of like Big Mac who’s the brother my friend Applejack. He’s a gentle giant of a stallion, but I didn’t like the idea of being split in half so I never even tried to ask him out and just hung out as friends with him. Besides he already has the local school teacher whose name is Cheerilee sniffing around after him and I totally ship that. There was that evening I spent with Mr. Fancy Pants, but it wasn’t romantic. It was more about the guy needing advice about how throw a wild party, especially while he was stuck in the middle of a boring upper class party. That was definitely an interesting crash course in party politics, I was hoping to go to the grand galloping gala with my friends but I guess my ticket is going to someone else. It probably wouldn’t have been as good as I thought it would be anyway.”

“It sounds like you are very popular friend to have Pinkie.” Toriel decided to take a left turn as they slowly strolled along through town. “Just to know someone who can put together and throw parties for anyone who needs a good cheering up sounds absolutely amazing.”

“Popular nothing, I can almost guarantee smiles wherever I go. I know every pony in Ponyville and half the ponies in Canterlot by name. I have to ask Tori are you trying to focus on other things then what you said at breakfast?” Pinkie gave a sad look to Toriel who didn’t answer and looked away.

“I would rather keep my mind off it.” Toriel was easy to make happy, but she was also apparently easy to depress.

“Then why would you ask questions that would lead me to asking about your ex’s name? You’ve never told me that. You’ve only told me what he’s done.” Pinkie was sure to give the guy Toriel was once married to a pop in the nose for being a big mean jerk for making the beautiful goat lady sad like this. She was distracted from her thoughts when she saw three sentient piles of slime sitting outside a house, one had a mustache and another was green in color and had a hair clip on it despite not having hair. The last one was really small looking and appeared to look like the older one with the cool mustache.

The family must own the house the two children were playing in front of with their father watching over them, Pinkie saw no sign of the missus and assumed that she was indoors and decided not to bother them.

“His name is Asgore, acting king of the Underworld. I just couldn’t condone his actions or accept the cost of our freedom.” Turning to the right they saw a strange machine that had a conveyor belt that sent giant cubes of ice at a muscular wolf who threw the giant ice cubes into the nearby river. “We’re all one soul away from being free, but I’m not very happy about it. It might have even been possible to have asked them nicely to aid us and they could have done that while still living. The more I think about, the more I’m torn between being angry and being sad. It happened and it’s in the past, there’s nothing I can do about it now and I’ve been trying to move past it.”

“Well that’s quite obvious. Hey, there! Why are you throwing big cubes of ice into the water? Do you ever get to add the powdered flavor sugar or what?” Pinkie stopped her conversation to address the well muscled brown bipedal wolf that had a lot of upper body strength, she needed some time to think.

“Please don’t talk to me; I’m rather busy keeping the core cooled down. The cubes of ice travel downstream and fall into the core keeping it from killing us all, it’s a job that takes up most of my day and I hardly get any break time as it is.” The wolf continued his job of tossing giant ice cubes into the water where they floated down the river. “Besides that we don’t have enough resources here in town to make the conveyor belt longer, so don’t ask.”

“Come along Pinkie, he’s appears to be very busy. Maybe we should try looking around the library.” Toriel turned back around and started walking; she was stopped when Pinkie asked a question she didn’t want to hear.

“Do you hate him Tori?” Pinkie ears were down and she was looking at Toriel, the goat lady sighed and turned back to Pinkie’s questioning face.

“No… I don’t hate him, though I’m no longer capable of loving him as I once did. He’s not completely heartless; if he was then I would definitely be able to hate him… possibly even more so than everyone does The Jerry.” Toriel shook her head and they walked back towards the town’s main row to see the library which was on their left now. It was comforting to admit it to herself that she couldn’t find it in herself to hate her ex-spouse.

Pinkie made note of the mouse wrapped in a green scarf that was too big for him and a strange smiling orange feminine looking horned figure that wore a cape on her right, they appeared to be close friends. Turning left she saw that the sign was misspelled ‘LIBRARBY’, she snickered slightly at what Twilight would do if she ever heard about this. There was no sense in worrying about the past; the present is what makes the future and Pinkie wanted to make all these monsters smile sincerely.

“Someone somewhere is laughing at a library! Quick Spike, we must make haste to the book mobile!” Twilight pointed a hoof towards the front door of the tree library.

“Twilight… did you forget to take you’re medicine again?” Spike asked dryly of the purple mare.

“Spike I’m not on any medication, you know that.” Twilight the purple nerd pony started prancing around in circles. “Besides its not like I’m obsessed over something so bad that it’s a disorder, what would Celestia even think of me if I did have one! Anyway I need to gather the books, so get the book mobile ready!”

“We don’t have a book mobile…. whatever that is.” Spike was beginning to wonder if the void left by Pinkie’s insanity was having an adverse affect on Ponyville. Sure things were still crazy; it was just missing a more subtle form of happy crazy to even out things.

Entering the library, it felt entirely cozy to Pinkie as they saw several monsters sitting around. They saw what appeared to be lizard or reptile monster sitting at the counter and there were three other beings sitting at a table nearby. One was obviously an armless Loox; the other two were new and unique to Pinkie. One looked like a green cat or caterpillar that smoked too much with upwards styled hair in bun and the other was blonde camel… possibly. She could just very well be a really odd looking dog.

“Hey there and welcome to Snowdin’s library, yes we’re aware that the sign is spelled wrong.” The green lizard person leaned back in his sweater and sipped what smelled like tea. “Enjoy your time by reading whatever catches your fancy.”

Toriel walked up to the shelf and started to look at several books titles trying to find a good read. Pinkie decided to start with the shelf on the far left and just picked one out at random, it was a small book.

“Monster funerals… okay this is kind of getting morbid. When monsters get old they turn into dust, then dust is spread on favorite object and is thus infused with their essence?” Pinkie shrugged and put the book back to look for a cheerier subject. She picked out a blue book from the shelf next door. “While monsters are mostly made of magic, humans are mostly made of water. Humans with their physical forms are far strong than monsters, but will never know the joy of expressing themselves through magic.”

“That’s obviously a lie and propaganda, considering that the humans apparently had enough magical power to seal all the monsters in the Underworld with an almost completely impenetrable barrier. If they didn’t have the magic to do that, then we wouldn’t be stuck down here now would we?” Toriel added her two cents as she was now reading a book with her reading glasses on and it was about snails. Reading glasses made her look adorable. “That’s the reason I want to be a teacher, I want to educate others on the truth of things instead of what we think is the truth. Monsters aren’t very good at keeping false information and the truth apart from one another.”

Pinkie wondered what Twilight would think of a book lying to her, she looked to the air as if expecting some cutaway gag that wasn’t coming.

“You did it before… why not this time?” After waiting for thirty seconds Pinkie moved on to the next shelf and pulled out a yellow book this time. “A person comes in; they pick up the book and start reading it… where’s the rest of the story?”

“Oh sorry, I’m still writing that one… I’m head of the Snowdin newspaper, we mostly just do puzzles and comics.” The blonde lady said, it was an unsure thing if those were ears or horns. She might not even be a camel at all, some monsters were hard to describe. “This here is my partner in printing.”

“Yeah, there’s not much news going on around here anyway so we fill it with fun activities, it’s about as much as an education system as we have around here.” The green catty lady with the dark hair next to her looked bored; she was shuffling some papers around as she addressed Pinkie. “When I was younger my teachers gave me word searches when we ran out of assignments. I was pretty good at making them and now I’m the one running the most educational thing in the newspaper. Says a lot doesn’t it?”

Moving on to the shelf with the orange books while worrying about the educational standards of monsters in the Underworld, Pinkie picked out another book hoping it was a decent read.

“Because they are made of magic, monsters bodies are said to be attuned to their souls. If a monster doesn’t want to fight its defenses will weaken.” Looking to the goat lady, Pinkie didn’t see her offering any counter statement this time. “The crueler the intentions of a monsters enemy, the more their attacks will hurt that monster. If a being with a powerful soul struck with a desire to kill… um, let’s end that chapter here?”

“If they strike with a desire to kill then the monster being struck will inevitably die, however if the desire was to befriend then the monster would respond with friendship in turn. However it is not entirely true, humans have what are called adrenal glands which activate when they become highly emotional or stressed.” Closing her book Toriel took on a lecturing tone with Pinkie. “The gland boosts their physical strength, but monsters do get weaker when charged aggressively as stated. So it’s like they hit us with twice the strength than they normally would have. Usually such a gland is activated from fear, hatred, anger and panic; some monsters like me who resemble humans more closely have such glands. It’s not always a negative thing when the glands are used, why they could be used in the course of saving another’s life with everything they have.”

“These humans sound a lot like ponies, except we’re made of mostly water and magic at the same time. I know that whenever I was in trouble, my big sister Maud would drop everything to make sure I was okay. When the adrenaline spikes in our bodies we tend to be running away from danger, ponies are really good at that.” Pinkie wondered why Toriel such got a curious look on her face and decided to move on while ignoring Toriel’s stare to the next shelf. She plucked out a light green book from the next shelf and opened it. “Monster History part four, no longer fearing humans we moved out of our old city, HOME. We braved harsh cold, damp swampland and searing heat. Until we reached a place where we started building what we now call our capital, NEW HOME. Our king is really bad at names. We should have asked our ‘goat mother’. So is that where we’ll eventually end up Tori?”

“Yes, I believe that is our main goal. Also that’s a mostly accurate history of what happened… though I wish everyone would stop calling me ‘goat mom’, what did I ever do to get stuck with that moniker?” Groused out an irritable Toriel, she went back to her book on snails and their reproductive habits. Maybe it had been a good thing that Pinkie had been distracting her from the book she was trying to read, because now her cheeks were rather flushed.

“Last shelf; let’s see what this one is. Love, hope and compassion are what monsters souls are said to be made of. The absolute nature of the soul is unknown. After all, humans have proven that their souls don’t need these things to exist. I will eventually do an in depth study into the darkness within everything, as monsters also harbor the ability to survive without these traits. Wow… that’s kind of disheartening.” Considering how much like ponies these humans and monsters sounded to be, there was a lot to think about. Looking at the author of the book she saw the author was W. D. Gaster. “Huh, there’s that name again.”

Pinkie tried another shelf and hit pay dirt with a monsters guide to baked goods, she sat down next to Toriel and snuggled up to her. Eventually Toriel draped an arm around Pinkie who was reading her book about sweets and hopefully wouldn’t run into any more heavily emotional stuff.

“It’s kind of sad that education system down here is highly lacking. It’s why I’m so very worried about you, because there’s no chance of finding good medical aid down here for you aside from magical healing which is a rare talent that few monsters have.” Toriel didn’t say much more than that as she cuddled Pinkie while reading her own book.

Having read a few things, Pinkie had found out a bit about monster history. What they thought of humans in general gave her the idea that they were a tad jaded about being sealed in what is called the Underworld. Reading the Monster Compendium gave her plenty of good insight into what monsters were like, they were often times careless in how they acted which was a bit of a problem.

Still it was interesting to know that the humans saw them all as a viable threat, despite a good number of them being relatively harmless. The ones that weren’t trying to drag your soul out to use as a punching bag for their grievances were gentle as a lamb, the ones that were at least had a reason to be aggressive to her and befriending them wasn’t too hard at all.

“The humans weren’t bad; they however were easily roused into a frenzy and quick to judge us despite having done little to them to earn their ire.” Toriel spoke softly and continued to be intrigued by all the gastropod facts she was reading about. “We have a lot in common with them, but our differences were exceptionally vast. One such difference is the numerous types of monsters that could do so many unique things and humans only generally coming in one form in comparison with the common ability to be highly innovative. They are always bipedal and have five digits at the end of each limb aside from the head; the only time that is not true is by deformity, injury or sickness. Is it such a comfort to not have a very large diversity in appearance? I ask because you’re people are similar to both monsters and humans, you may even be a common or middle ground between the two.”

“Everyone is different no matter how similar they look Tori, if you ever meet my family you might even think my sister Maud is the oddest family member for her highly emotional attitude. You know what; I should tell you the story of Hearth’s Warming! It is a story about putting aside your differences to come together in unity. Let me put this book up first.” Pinkie put away the book of monster style baked goods and stashed away the Monster Compendium in her saddlebags.

Toriel wasn’t the only one intrigued to hear this story as the other monsters present gathered around the two at the table as Pinkie took the stage to begin telling the story of the three pony tribes.

“Long ago there were three tribes of ponies that exist where I’m from; one was the earth pony tribe who are good in things related to preparing food and working the land. I’m an earth pony for those of you who don’t know what one looks like. Another tribe was the pegasi, known for their weather manipulation. They have wings coming out of their backs that allow them to fly and they could even stand on and move clouds with their bare hooves.” Pinkie couldn’t continue on as the young red Loox without arms was trying to get her attention by hopping up and down. “Yes, what is it?”

“What are clouds like? I’ve only heard from elders who knew what it was like to live above ground.” The Loox was obviously curious and it seemed to spend a lot of time in this library.

“They’re hard to describe, but think of something big, white and fluffy.” Pinkie answered amiably, a little put off that the poor child didn’t know what the sky or even rainbows looked like. “Can I get some crayons and paper over here?”

“Big, white and fluffy, you mean like ‘goat mom’?” The red Loox smiled and looked to Toriel, who actually looked a little amused to be called ‘goat mom’. Toriel hadn’t even done anything to warrant being called that by this monster she hadn’t even talked to, but she wasn’t about to complain about it or contest the given title to a kid.

“No, she’s big, white and cuddly, there’s subtle difference between them.” Getting back on subject of Hearth’s Warming Eve after making the goat lady blush from the flirting, Pinkie spoke of the last tribe. As she did she was given crayons and paper to work with. “The last tribe is the unicorns who are ponies that have a single fluted horns growing from the center of their foreheads, they are known for their magic and knowledge. Are there any more questions Tori?”

“There are none, please continue on Pinkie.” This actually had Toriel’s full attention; the other monsters were intrigued by this as well considering they were all paying attention to her words.

“Things began with these three tribes having relatively peaceful, if highly divided, societies. Things started to go downhill as the lands around the tribes started growing colder and colder with each passing day. The cold started becoming unrelenting with constant snowing and blizzards, the tensions began to run high amongst each of the tribes. They all started blaming each other for the misfortune that was befalling them that was known as the endless winter.” Pinkie continued her tale as if she were reading to foals and fillies in the hospitals on the weekend, only she didn’t have the book with her at the moment and she was going from memory now. “Eventually all the leaders of each tribe held a gathering to end the hostilities, things didn’t exactly work out the way they wanted them to. Pudding Head of Earth Tribe, Commander Hurricane of Pegasus Tribe and Princess Platinum of Unicorn Tribe gathered their respective tribes, as things had gotten so bad that all three tribes decided to uproot themselves and move away from their homes to seek out a new land to colonize to escape from the problem and each other. So they tried to go separate ways.”

“I’m guessing there’s an issue with the fact that the three tribes ‘tried’ to go separate ways?” Tilting her head to the side Toriel wonder where this bit of history was going and how it related to her question about diversity.

“Yes, even though the three tribes left at different times, their leaders all had them going the same general direction. Chancellor Pudding Head of the Earth Tribe was the first to leave and arrive in the new land, the earth ponies settled at the base of a mountain on fertile soil to start farming. They were followed very shortly by Commander Hurricane leader of the Pegasus Tribe forming a city in the sky above said fertile land and after that the Unicorn Tribe arrived and settled on a mountainside almost between the other two settlements. At this point the three tribes didn’t notice each other until they were done building their three cities. After that they just started fighting again amongst themselves over resources, appearances and other things once more. With their fighting they somehow brought the eternal winter to themselves once again, it seemed as if no matter where they moved they couldn’t escape it.” There was no pause for dramatic effect; Pinkie was taking a moment to let all of this to sink in as she showed them cute crayon drawings.

“Was there a reason why the cold followed them?” The green lizard guy was as enthused by the strange story as the others were, because Pinkie was given some paper and crayons to color with to give them rather childish looking visuals to form images from.

“You bet there was a reason for it! They didn’t know that at the time that there was a cause for it all. The leaders of each tribe decided to call for an emergency meeting where each of the leaders would only bring one trusted advisor to the meeting. The six ponies, two from each tribe, met in secret outside a cave away from all three of their tribe’s cities so as not to be disturbed. What followed were the leaders once again devolving into an argument about who should leave these new lands that they all worked so hard to colonize, it got pretty bad. Things started to get really getting cold around them so they moved into the cave for shelter.” Pinkie quickly scrawled out three ponies getting into scuffle with the crayons she had been leant by the library staff. “While their leaders were arguing and fighting the three advisors from each tribe gathered together for their own little meeting. The advisor of Pudding Head was Smart Cookie a pony who saw that there was some correlation between what happened before and what was starting to happen again. Private Pansy the advisor of Hurricane noted that the Pegasi were being blamed for all the cold weather despite it not being their fault at all and that the odd weather shifts seemed to be caused by something else. Putting together the final pieces the advisor of the Princess Platinum, Clover the Clever, figured out that something odd was going on when it came to the fighting between the tribes being a catalyst for the cold weather. By then it was too late for them to prevent an ambush by the true cause of the eternal winter which had followed the anger and hatred the three tribe leaders were spewing at each other in a constant stream, they couldn’t warn their leaders in time as the three of them had swiftly been encased in ice.”

“What was it that attacked them? Did the tribes eventually come together to deal with the threat? What happened next? You have to tell us, you just can’t leave it at that!” Toriel was positively giddy at this point to hear how the rest of it went, she could only hope for a happy ending at this point. There were various agreements from the now larger group of monsters surrounding Pinkie Pie; quite a few new monsters were getting a quick rundown of Pinkie’s tale as they had arrived late to the story.

Pinkie waited patiently for the others to catch up and then she cleared her throat earning the attention of everyone as she was ready to continue.

“The three advisers were left in a lurch with their leaders frozen with expressions of anger and hatred on their faces, their distaste for the differences between them made it impossible for them to see the true issue. With their leaders on ice and the situation looking hopeless the three advisers huddled together for warmth taking comfort in one another as the ice slowly crept along the walls and floor towards them in a menacing manner. The three advisers did not hate each other and didn’t break away from one another, they had easily put all their differences aside when their leaders could not. The creatures that caused the eternal winter soon revealed themselves to the weary and slowly freezing trio who would soon be just as frozen as their leaders.” Pinkie had dropped into the horror form of storytelling, which usually termed as suspense by waiting for all the monsters lean forward before continuing. “They were quite dangerous creatures; they fed on hatred, anger and malice which attracted them to the leaders of the three tribes. They fed well on the festering hatred the leaders of the three tribes had between themselves and for the ponies of the other tribes. They are called Windigos, creatures of ice that had easily sown hatred and misery among the three tribes for a veritable feast. They appeared to freeze the leaders in a moment where their blind hatred for one another had hit its peak leaving them with ugly expressions frozen on their faces for what would be an eternity of feasting for these creatures. For if they freeze you at the right moment then that cold hatred will never cease to feed them as the emotion is frozen in time with the victim’s body, enabling them to torment you forever.”

“Why is it called the story of Hearth’s Warming if it sounds like it’s going to end on a sour note Pinkie?” Seeing the pony smile, Toriel knew she hadn’t heard everything yet. “Come on Pinkie, please don’t stop there!”

“Well, since you asked nicely and I got my goat. The three advisers were trapped and slowly being encased in ice, yet there was a critical mistake made by the Windigos. It involved trying to encase the three who were forging a friendship while their leaders were fighting. If the Windgos can freeze hatred eternal then they can also have the opposite happen with positive emotions. When their magic interacted with the three who didn’t hate their leaders, each other or anyone at all, well… as the story goes the three advisers natural magic combined into what is called The Fire of Friendship! Their ability to look beyond outer appearances and befriend those that are different from themselves was so strong; it formed a powerful magical flaming heart in the air.” Pinkie threw out her hooves and didn’t see any confetti fly out of them, she really missed being able to do that. Instead she lifted up a perfectly good crayon drawing representing the scene. “The Windigos were vanquished by the burning light and heat of the eternal friendship formed between the three advisers, who only moments before were saying good bye to each other as they were in the middle of being frozen. The power of the magical heart that had formed from their friendship melted the ice on their leaders and that’s when things started turning around for the three tribes. Though all three tribes were different, they started working together to form a strong bond that would possibly last forever. The leaders didn’t immediately change things around and the change happened slowly, but with effort the future of the three very distinctly different tribes came together to be a whole lot stronger than they were before as one alone. That is the tale of Hearth’s Warming and that’s how I got my cutie mark!”

Pinkie received applause from the library which was now full of monsters, all the while smiling cheekily at the air for whatever reason and waggling her brows. It supposedly has nothing to do with the fact that she just told the story of how Equestria was made.

“So while our differences can rip us apart, they can also just as easily make us stronger if we work together for a greater understanding of one another. I like that story Pinkie, it sounds like a good lesson and it answers my question well enough. Though I now have a few more questions that come to mind.” Toriel looked at the detailed crayon heart that formed between the three ponies that Pinkie drew; it looked like what would happen if a monster pulled out three souls from humans only to have them miraculously combine together to save the humans from being attacked. Compassion, love and hope to create a heart that vanquished the creatures who fed upon hatred, misery and darkness. There was a loud grumbling noise and everyone turned to Pinkie who smiled with a cheeky grin. “Is it lunch time already? We can discuss some things that are now tickling my mind over some food, Pinkie will you go out on a date with me?”

Author's Note

Who knows what Pinkie's answer will actually be.

Yes, you silly goose... oh wait you're a goat.

No... because we're still in the middle of one already.

Third option.

12 - Blueberry Pie Tango

“Oh how nice of you to walk me back to my room you chivalrous thing you, but I must ask why haven’t you talked in a while Pinkie?” It worried Toriel that Pinkie hadn’t said anything since they left the restaurant, the smile Pinkie sent her was quite reassuring.

“Oh I haven’t talked in a while, because I’m a little horse!” They both burst out laughing; Pinkie could probably have helped herself at anytime. “It took you long enough to notice I haven’t said anything for a while, the punch line was definitely worth the set up for it!”

“Oh indubitably my dear little equine, let’s see how Gyft has been doing as I pick up my things. I see he’s had a meal since we’ve been gone.” Toriel looked around the room and saw a lot of empty plates around deer monster with a distended belly that was slowly standing up upon hearing them enter the room. “Quite a few of them it would seem, I’ll pay Carol for the extra services and then we’ll be on our way. Are you still insistent on coming with us Mr. Trot?”

“Of course I want to come with you and Pinkie!” The sideways mouthed deer didn’t look to be taking no for an answer. Gyft stood up and bowed to the goat lady as she gathered her backpack and nodded to him.

“Okay then, also Pinkie I’m going to arrest you for stealing from me!” Toriel became stern with Pinkie as she looked through her backpack.

“Wait, what did I steal? If I took something without asking I could reimburse you for it, eventually… I think all my money is still back at Sugar Cube Corner.” Pinkie looked particularly pitiable when purposefully panicked.

“My heart, I think it’s rather hard to reimburse.” Toriel said with a simple smile forming on her face, it eventually led to a burst of giggles as she equipped her backpack and checked on the jar of snow to make sure the magic on the jar was doing okay.

“Oh you, not only are you beautiful, but you’re also filled with a love for the classics!” Pinkie pranced around Toriel while happily humming a tune and then made for the door to the room. “Come on, we’re burning… wait how can we burn daylight? Wouldn’t that set the whole world on fire? I don’t want to set the world on fire; I just want to start a flame in your heart!”

“Oh it’s on fire alright. I just hope it’s not too hot for you Pinkie.” It made Toriel happy to joke with Pinkie and to have friends to help her out of her chronic depression problem.

Walking through the town They saw a mailbox that was stuff with what looked to be unread junk mail, next to it was a mailbox clearly labeled ‘Papyrus’. The house near the two mailboxes must have belonged to Papyrus and Sans; it was festively decorated with Hearths Warming lights and a wreath on the door. It must have been decorated like that year round, given that Papyrus did have a thing for being silly when it came to standing out from a crowd. Next to the house was the other end of the cross town igloo tunnel and a locked shed.

The three, well four if you count the sentient snow still connected to a snowman, travelers made their way out of town following the road that moved along the side of the cold river with the giant ice cubes floating down it. As they continued onwards, things started to get foggy and the traveler’s visibility started dropping drastically until they came upon a tall shadow waiting for them.

Having stopped, Pinkie knew what was coming as she could practically feel it in her bones. It wasn’t hard to figure out what the guy that wanted to be the royal guard was going to do. He wanted to catch Pinkie Pie and this was obviously his last chance before that duty was passed on to someone who was monumentally more dangerous than this silly goofball.

“Monumentally dangerous, so they’re as strong as a statue of Celestia? Well they must be ‘stone cold’ ruthless if they are going to hurt someone as cute as I am.” Pinkie shook her head and moved forward to face Papyrus in what would be a rather ‘interesting’ battle. “That sounds highly ominous.”

“Pony, allow me to tell you about some complex feelings! Feelings like the joy of finding another pasta lover! The admiration of another’s puzzle-solving skills! To know that a cool, cute and smart creature finds you cool as well!” The Epic Papyrus started off only for Pinkie to answer him.

“Yeah, it’s pretty ‘cool’ out here with this foggy blizzard of air around us.” Pinkie said with friendly smile that was unseen due to the visibility being so low that they could only see shadows of each other.

“Excuse me; but I’m trying to monologue here!” The Vaguely Upset Papyrus shouted while stomping his foot into the snow.

“I’m sorry, Pappy!” Pinkie shouted back while waving at him.

“It’s okay I forgive you and… ahem nice nickname for me by the way. It sounds like Papyrus only shorter and with more P’s.” Papyrus’s shadow crossed his arms and nodded his head. “Now where was I? Oh yes, these feelings, they must be the feelings you are experiencing having met someone of my intricately incredible nature! Why, I can hardly imagine what it must feel like to feel that way around someone else!”

“You’re incredibly silly and crazy, I like that about you.” Pinkie heard The Blushing Papyrus growl at her and he started stomping his feet again.”Oh I guess you weren’t done yet, sorry again Pappy.”

“No worries, after all I’m a forgiving being in my greatness! I don’t ever wonder what having lots of friends would be like, since I’m a popular guy around these parts.” The Nonchalant Papyrus took on a heroic pose. “Why my window smashing prowess is renowned for being stared at by all who look upon me doing so with such wonder!”

“Yeah, it’s a wonder why he keeps jumping out of windows so often even when there aren’t even celebrities around.” Gyft’s flat commentary earned him giggles from Toriel and Pinkie.

“Hey, I needed to practice! You can’t just expect me to jump through windows all willy-nilly; you have no idea how hard it is to jump through windows without showering innocent bystanders with glass! There’s a method for making sure the glass doesn’t arc off and hit someone, plus there are all the calculated movements for putting enough oomph into actually breaking the window in the first place! It’s actually hard if there are cross sections of wood or metal in the way, not to mention choosing which exact portions of the window you wish to be destroyed when you do so! Don’t even get me started on what it takes to get stained glass window to shatter in just a way so that it sparkles beautifully upon you, especially without any of the glass actually hitting you or getting it stuck in your eye sockets when you do it right! That's on top of not hurting anyone else!” The Expert Window Breaker Papyrus explained, it sounded like he was actually prominently good at something other than being just half baked at cooking, puzzle making and inflating his curiously somewhat eccentric ego. “Yes, anyway, I see that you have many friends too. Worry not for I the great Papyrus shall become one of your friends as well!”

“Really, well I happily accept you’re offer of friendship!” Pinkie was willing to be friends even if he was being rather antagonistic. She was quite willing to look past being attacked or forced to go through puzzles or traps if they were quite sincere about it as The Master of Way Too Many Titles Papyrus sounded.

“No wait, this is all wrong! I cannot be your friend!” The Supremely Saddened Papyrus shouted. If Pinkie’s mane weren’t already deflated, it would have been deflated by this statement. “I’m supposed to be capturing you! Sure you may not be human, but you still shouldn’t be let by without a fight! I have to fulfill my lifelong dream and this is a ticket that I shouldn’t pass up. Powerful, popular, prestigious, that is Papyrus! I Papyrus shall be the newest member of the royal guard, now let us fight!”

“Hold up, before we do that and you pull my soul out of my body to attack it… can we go on a date after this?” The sweet little pony that Pinkie was, she looked hopeful for a date with The Super Silly Papyrus.

Off to the side Toriel didn’t seem upset in the slightest and had been expecting Pinkie to eventually ask some other monster out on a date eventually. Papyrus seemed like a nice guy; if a little dim in the skull for ‘her’ sweet little pie. She had personally felt Pinkie’s boundless love and didn’t see a reason to stop her from being who she was. She would step in to protect Pinkie from this idiot should he prove to be less friendly than he was currently acting.

“Ah so you want a date with me, The Great Papyrus!” The Skeleton of Standards Papyrus took on a haughty look. “Well, I’ll have you know I’m a skeleton of incredibly high standards!”

“I can bake lasagna; make a pot of spaghetti, macaroni and cheese is easy for me and I can do a mean rigatoni zucchini casserole that you haven’t lived until you tasted it. Is living harmful to skeletons Tori? Hey, why are you laughing at me like that? ” Pinkie saw Toriel busting up with laughter at her question; she shook her head and continued on. “Of course being a pony all my dishes are healthy and loaded with vegetables, but where I truly specialize is baked goods of a sugary variety. So any dessert I make will be extra special! I’m also not bad at a broccoli casserole.”

“Oh no, she’s surpassed all my incredible standards with flying colors and she’s not even my type!” The Utterly Surprised Papyrus stated aside to himself out loud where everyone could hear him. It was in awe that Pinkie had met, from his point of view, his surprisingly high standards. “Right well, we’ll go on a date after I’m done pummeling your soul until your unconscious!”

“Either that or I’ll dance around your attacks until I can convince you to stop, whichever comes first I suppose. I like the route where no one gets hurt. Though if no one got hurt, this wouldn’t be much of an adventure now would it? Hold on a minute, I need to put something on for the occasion before we fight!” Taking off her saddlebags and searching around in it, she found what she was looking for and slipped it on. It was a red flamenco styled dress and a dressy looking fake flower that she placed behind her right ear, it made her look extravagant as she passed her saddlebags off to Gyft. “I’m ready to dance my socks off now!”

“Pinkie you’re not wearing socks, though the image sounds absolutely adorable to cuddle with” After Toriel was done pointing that out, they turned to The Exceedingly Patient Papyrus while she whispered to the pony. “Where did you even get that dress from Pinkie? Also when did you even make it and the other one?”

“I made it off screen between the end at the restaurant and the start of returning to the inn. Although I think I’m going to eventually run out of the red fabric from the bolt that I was carrying for Rarity.” Well Pinkie just explained away some of the hundreds of plot holes going on around here.

“Right then let’s get this started!” The Needy Papyrus shouted at and sent out the soul pulling field towards Pinkie and then something really bizarre happened.

Pinkie felt that usual wrenching sensation of her soul popping from her body and blinked as she saw something rather unusual and she continued blink at it. She looked to Toriel questioningly and looked back to what was floating in the air.

Toriel just stood there staring at what was now floating in the air with wide eyes, as Pinkie’s soul wasn’t the only one floating up in the air. She had felt a twisting sensation in her chest before it came out of her; it was the same thing that Pinkie had described when her soul was pulled.

“Was that supposed to happen to you Tori?” It had to be asked as Pinkie didn’t understand what she was seeing, as she hadn’t previously seen it happen to someone else aside from her before. “I mean, this didn’t happen the last few times I was attacked… are you okay?”

“Pinkie… this… should be impossible. It’s not possible, something like this shouldn’t be happening!” Despite saying it to herself in a crazed tone, Toriel was in fact staring at her own pulsing soul floating before her right next to Pinkie’s large pink pulsating heart. A heart which she finally noted that didn’t seemed to have diminished in size.

The heart that was supposedly Toriel’s soul was about half the size or less of that of Pinkie’s. It was wildly shifting between bright reds and oranges in color like a fire, while also giving off faint blue ethereal pulses. The soul even had The Befuddled Papyrus too perplexed by this sudden turn of events to even think of beginning his assault.

“Wow, that… I don’t even know what I’m looking at, but it’s definitely pretty.” It was hard for Gyftrot to put it into words, because it was or should be completely impossible for a monster to be separate from their soul as they basically were intrinsically connected to their soul.

This was quite a huge impossibility to any monster that saw it, but apparently it was possible for Queen Toriel who now had her own soul outside of her body. After a moment of staring at the shifting reds and oranges of the soul, The Opinionated Papyrus came to his senses.

“Oh my god, I didn’t know the queen had a soul like a humans! It looks incredible, just like my awesome battle body!” After rubbing a gloved hand at the side of the skull The Always Ready Papyrus decided to start the fight. “Right, well I’ll just have to attack you both as I’m tired of standing around, nyeh heh heh!”

The Attacking Papyrus started launching his first wave of attacks by rattling his bone at them and this caused a parade of bones to pop up out of the ground and slide towards their hearts, only they were missing and the hearts didn’t even need to be moved.

“Tori, can you move it around? You might have to figure things out quickly because Papyrus seems to be just warming up, given his music hasn’t even started yet that's a good bet.” Pinkie didn’t know if those bones could pop further out of the ground, but it looked like they could.

“I’m not really that good at dancing without a partner, but I’ll try.” Toriel tried a short shuffle, but her heart stayed in place. Deciding that she’d figure out later, she tried to knock out Papyrus with a blast of fire to the skull only to not have her hands light up. Her soul lighting up was another manner entirely and it started moving as jets of fire shot out of the heart giving it propulsion. “That feels really weird. Maybe…”

Toriel tried something different as The Not Overly Aggressive At The Moment Papyrus continued to warm up his small bone attacks beneath their floating hearts. She performed a slow movement while trying to ignite her hands as she had before, but this time she watched was she was doing and her heart started to zip about in the air at an incredible speed. It moved counterintuitive with her motions as she directed the direction the fire pushed out and it moved the heart the other way. When she stopped, her soul took a while to slow down in momentum and bounced off an invisible wall.

“Right, give me a minute to get out my fabled ‘blue attack’!” The skeleton started concentrating and he rattled his bones hard, which started to form more white bone bullet walls to go sliding underneath their hearts and through their bodies without an effect.

With the time she had, Toriel was getting used to moving her heart around. It felt incredible and a little weird. Her soul was fast and hard to control, but it was becoming a little easier to figure out how her shifting about caused it to dance in the air like Pinkie’s did. She was clumsy now, but in the future she would get better at it as it seemed to be highly important to her survival that she did.

“Right here I go!” Suddenly a wave of blue bones launched themselves from The Badass Bone Blaster Papyrus. They were going at Pinkie and Toriel’s hearts and more kept coming, neither of them moved their souls as they both knew to avoid doing so in the case of a blue attack. After the attack ended something strange happened to both the souls, there was a loud ding sound followed by two loud thumping noises hitting the snow. “You’re both blue now, that’s my attack!”

After that The Rhythmic Battle Leader Papyrus started stomping his left and right legs to the music and he would start launching his attacks with fervor and exclamation points!

“No I’m… what!” Pinkie had pointed her hoof at Papyrus to notice that her fur had turned blue, so had her red dress. Even looking to Toriel, she could see that she was also all blue. Gyft on the other hoof was perfectly fine and normal though; he had moved away from the fight that was just getting started and was looking to them with worry. “I’m not supposed to be Blueberry Pie, my distant cousin is creepy and I don’t think I can think of my own sister Marble like that! Also why does everything feel heavier? This better not be another fat joke at my expense!”

Pinkie looked to hers soul on the ground and looked to Papyrus who sent a wave of bones at her heart and she tried to get it in the air. It hopped rapidly with her hooves tapping at the snow and she just couldn’t get off the ground as the first row of sliding white sliding bones closed in. Becoming frustrated Pinkie slapped her hoof on the ground and her heart bounced over the first bone, it was followed by Toriel’s heart jetting into the air slightly only to slam back into the ground.

Pinkie’s soul jumped the next two bones with two more stomps, while Toriel followed clapping her hands rhythmically to cause her soul jet upwards to clear the rest of the attack as well.

“You make this look so easy Pinkie… I hope this blue isn’t permanent.” Toriel didn’t know what she would do if she were permanently blue for the rest of her life, which would be short if Papyrus was actually actively trying to kill them.

Papyrus launched a wave of white bones; this time there was a wall of them floating through the air at the two like what happened with the blue attack that turned their souls a different colors.

Trying to dodge the incoming wall in the air and on the ground Toriel launched her flame powered heart too high with a clap and felt what Pinkie felt when her soul was damaged by the long floating bones in the air. It was quite excruciating and it made her wonder what Pinkie felt when she burned her soul.

Pinkie’s heart didn’t jump high enough with her stomps and the tall sliding bones on the ground slammed into her soul causing her to cringe and wince in pain.

Looking to Toriel, Pinkie saw that she was in far more pain than Pinkie was. She seemingly had a higher tolerance for it, ‘with Toriel’s soul being a new thing, it was probably weaker than Pinkie’s even if it was faster and more mobile’. It would be a good idea for Pinkie to ‘protect Toriel’s soul’, because ‘Pinkie’s heavyset soul could take it better’ since she has a big heart.

“I’m okay with you saying my heart is big in a compassionate sense, but please leave my weight out of it! Also there aren’t as many sweets in the Underworld and my point about that is, this place is kind of like hell for me if you think about it.” The irony of that statement should not be lost on Pinkie when she sees another part of the Underworld later, provided she’s not captured and fed dog food. As she stomped her heart barely cleared a long row of low sliding walls of bones.

Toriel’s heart easily jetted straight over the wall of bones without a problem and in fact could hover in the air for a while due to its interesting properties, in comparison to Pinkie’s strange soul which likely had unknown properties of its own.

“Stop complaining to the air Pinkie and pay attention to the skeleton attacking us!” Toriel didn’t snap harshly, she was just trying to pull Pinkie’s mind back to the situation. Especially considering the pony’s heart got damaged again while her own made it through a narrow gap with her barely controlled rocket heart.

“Attention pony, my name is Papyrus and for my battle here’s my status effects rule! It causes you’re soul to be weighed down and it will stop you from avoiding my attacks to make me look like a complete fool!” The Crazy Awesome Papyrus sung with his theme music. “I see you trying to avoid my attacks with your cute little dancing; well I’ll tell you right now that all you are doing is hopelessly prancing!”

“Okay you know what? Tori let’s dance, all this stomping alone is rough on my hooves!” Pinkie took to her hind legs and put on hoof around Toriel’s waist while taking her hand with her other hoof. “Now follow my lead, if you think you can do better then I’ll follow yours!”

They started performing a frantic swinging tango together, with quick twirls, heavy steps and concise movement where one would lead the other on a moments notice. Not only were their bodies pressed together, but so did their souls and the one leading performed perfectly when they were needed to avoid being hit by the parading bone walls. If they needed short jumps Pinkie lead, if they needed high jumps Toriel lead them and when they needed moderate jumps they both stomped at the same time moving forward or back together.

“What is that he keeps dabbing on the side of his head?” Pinkie asked out of the blue as their combined dancing got their hearts safely through a series of bone walls.

“On the side of my head, what are you talking about? I’m dabbing this stuff behind my ears!” Missing The Obvious Fact Papyrus didn’t have ears, so this made no sense at all.

“Pinkie could you please keep your attention on me and not what Papyrus is doing, I would like the dance to end with both our souls in good condition.” Hearing Toriel plead to her in a soft voice, Pinkie got a look of determination on her face as she nodded to the goat lady and their dancing became far more synchronized. Beforehand their dancing was barely passable as dancing together, as much as it was holding one another and moving them both around.

“Hey stop working together, it’s not fair to me that I have to deal with two souls as nice as yours are! Don’t make me use my special attack!” The Super Slow Papyrus exclaimed as he stomped his boots and rattled his body to send more waves of bones at their souls. “Oh wait… I don’t have ears. Huh, silly me, ‘tibia’ honest I forgot!”

Both the dancing ladies giggled at his pun and he smiled a bit at them. That he could get them to laugh, despite attacking them made him feel strangely fuzzy inside. He could almost taste his future popularity… did that really matter when he sorely wanted to be popular with these two? Well three if he counted the deer monster that was watching them dance with worry.

“Hey Papyrus, can you guess why skeleton pirates are always considered the worst? It’s because they always have bone-arrs!” A sad sounding rim shot played out on some drums as Sans showed up out of nowhere and winked at the air with a cheeky grin. This wasn’t actually out of character for him; he probably would actually tell a joke like that one.

“Sans that’s highly inappropriate! Also my sensitive ear holes didn’t need to hear that!” The Utterly Aggravated Papyrus stopped attacking the two dancers to yell at his brother. “I was kind of in the middle of something important here you know!”

The two dancing together started laughing louder as they continued to strut about together having completely forgotten they were being attack aggressively by a skeleton with childish tendencies. They stopped when the blue bones came up to their souls and danced them around the walls of white bones.

Sometimes the bones moved up and down, but that didn’t stop the two from working together as Toriel twirled then dipped Pinkie before bringing her back up. Their eyes stopped paying attention to the fight entirely and their souls were starting to make perfect dodges, even when they separated with a spin and spun back together stomping in rhythm as they rejoined one another.

“Undyne will be proud of me; the king will trim a hedge in the shape of my smile!” The Uncertain Papyrus didn’t sound like he was trying to put his heart into it anymore as he watched the two dance beautifully together, there was even a tear in the corner of his eye socket that he had to hastily wipe away. Their hearts were bouncing over multiple rising walls of bone, in time to the beat of his music no less as they stepped in tune and swung around looking into each other’s eyes. “I’ll do my ultimate attack, don’t think I won’t!”

Sans moved over to stand next to Gyftrot as he watched his brother slowly have a mental breakdown, he considered the fact that Queen Toriel now had a soul that could be separated from her body very interesting. He smiled as the two souls dodged over two enclosing bone walls coming from two directions at once; it was all amazing to watch in action. The walls passed through each other harmlessly trying to crush the souls between them in the form of a bone sandwich, they were failing to hit the two hearts snuggled together and Papyrus was putting up a good fight too.

“My brother… he won’t change very much…” The Poor Papyrus was losing his steam; he looked on at the two and decided to still give it his all in an attempt to capture them. Though he wasn’t as happy about it as he sounded before, it seemed as if he was slowly started to reject his mission to capture them. “I’ll have lots of admirers, but… I won’t have my new friends who don’t care how goofy I am at times and will always like me for me…. who is Papyrus.”

“Will anyone like me as sincerely as they do once I’m popular?” He continued stomping his boots, rattling his bones and he even started clapping his hands to start putting more oomph into his attacks. His attacks started moving faster and the gates were becoming much hard to jump through and yet the two souls wouldn’t separate no matter whether or not one or the other took damage, which was becoming a rare thing to see as time went on. “Seeing anyone like them is really rare… I want to be popular for the right reasons… I’ve always wanted to be a hero, is this really the right way?”

There were up and down bone gates, rising waves of bones and the enclosing bone doors that required that the two hearts to squeeze between them. Yet they didn’t let go of one another and still performed the quick tango styled dance with such passion. They were no longer paying attention to what Papyrus had to say and were enjoying their dance, so Papyrus really didn’t want to stop his theme music.

“Dating might be kind of hard, I’ve never really been on one and yet she’s willing to give me a chance and she’s practically an expert at dating with a ‘hot’ celebrity like that. What does she even see in me?” The Depressed Papyrus was lost in what to do as he sent a wall after wall of blue and white bones. Bones shifted, colliding together and flew through the air and it should have been getting easier for him. Only it was actually getting harder to actually hit either heart. “My ultimate attack is coming so you two better prepare! I thought you two might want an advanced warning…”

“Bring it on; we’re having so much fun Pappy!” Pinkie said joyously as she cuddled up against Toriel’s larger form, the goat lady had large pupils in the shape of hearts as she looked down at the pony.

“Right, here’s my ultimate attack!” The bone that would start a series of dangerous walls was launched out by The Emotionally Distraught Papyrus, only to be caught by an annoying looking white dog that started gnawing on it. “What the heck! That’s my special attack! You stupid dog, stop munching on that bone! Come back here with my special attack! Nyeh… alright I’ll just throw whatever else I have left at you!”

Pinkie and Toriel were dancing at a more frantic pace that looked rather majestic as they dodged the bones coming at their souls from all angles. After dodging so many wild bone attacks, it got really weird and absurd. Their souls soon bounded over the annoying white dog that ran through the area with the still active bone that hadn’t been set off yet, they quickly dodged the following bones in the shape of the word ‘COOL’, followed by more forming the word ‘DUDE’ and finally what looked to be a living T-bone riding a small skateboard while wearing an awesome jacket.

Through it all Pinkie and Toriel kept up the pace admirably, it was then that Toriel saw a large forest of bones forming ahead of them and she looked at Pinkie who stared right back at her. Pinkie looked at Toriel’s weakened soul and then gave Toriel a certain look.

“Oh Pinkie… please don’t...” Toriel started before the pony forced them both to jump into the air and stomp down hard, Pinkie’s heart leapt for the sky above the forest of sliding bones holding Toriel’s soul above it.

“If we’re boned, then it’s going to be me that will take the hit Tori!” Pinkie’s heart and soul continued to rise higher and higher, the large blue heart started cracking at the force of will being pushed into it. “The Underworld needs you alive more than it needs me.”

A monolithic bone began forming at the end of the veritable forest, it slowly slid forward and Pinkie strained to keep pushing her soul upwards to make sure Toriel’s didn’t get hit. As she did so this was the first time Pinkie actually initiated a kiss with Toriel and the goat lady didn’t cry, instead she was downright furious and cracks started to form along her blue soul as well. Pinkie’s heart was almost to the point that it was getting Toriel’s soul out the range of danger, but it didn’t look like it was going to make the leap itself.

Toriel was not going to lose Pinkie Pie! What was it with this pony and being stupidly self sacrificial for others? She came out here to make sure that the pony stayed safe and alive, all the monsters souls in the Underworld would have to be stolen by some crazy monstrosity before she would ever let something bad happen to her sweet little pie! Given where they were and everything, that shouldn’t be too hard to imagine as happening.

“You’re not doing this to me Miss Pie! I’m not letting this happen again, especially not on my watch!” Toriel let loose a primal scream that caused her soul to burst into flames and grow wings. She pushed both their souls higher to the point that it cleared the giant bone attack by twenty feet before Toriel could let go of her rage. She became very tired in Pinkie’s hooves and slumped forward. The pony held her up admirably despite being the smaller of the two. “So this is what you have to go through when monsters attack you? I guess it’s a pretty rough world we live in My Little Slice.”

Pinkie just stared wide eyed at Toriel with her ears laying back and then noticed one last teeny tiny bone wall creeping along the ground. The Rather Upset Papyrus was looking at them from beyond the attack. Pinkie managed one final stomp. The two hearts that had returned to normal in Toriel’s outburst just hopped into the air above the last wall and hovered there. Toriel’s tired looking face smiled at her endearingly, before her eyes closed as she collapsed and her soul went back into her body alongside Pinkie’s going to hers.

“I… I… I elect… to have pity for you two. Please, take the mercy that I am willing to give to you.” The pink pony looked at him and nodded, Papyrus felt a fragile smile appear on his bony face. He couldn’t even bring himself to actually attack them anymore; maybe following the queen was a much better idea than the king.

“Of course we’ll still be friends with you Pappy.” The skeleton broke down crying at Pinkie’s kind words as she had seen through his most incredible acting skills, the skills that he didn’t actually have. She could feel a softly breathing Toriel slumped against her and she looked to Gyftrot for a little help.

Author's Note

Papyrus realized he wasn't being the hero here, that's got to hurt him deeply in an emotional way.

Tell me if there is anything wrong with this chapter, I've fixed some grammatical errors in the previous chapters and I haven't looked at this one too deeply.

Party Member: Toriel

Class: Phoenix Soul Dancer.

Species: Monster.

Special Traits: Quick moving soul, backwards movement controls, has a chance of destroying bullets with propelling fire, slow to stop.

Alignment: Pacifist

Titles: Queen of the Monsters, Goat Mom!

Health: 40/40

Again the stats above are 'almost' meaningless and just for fun.

13 - Skele-Font in the room

The Everyday Papyrus was sitting on the ground away from them looking quite sorry. Pinkie let Sans and Gyft have Toriel’s tired form so she could make her way over to him. She bent down and looked up him with a bit of worry.

“Are you alright Pappy?” The now upset Pinkie asked of the sad looking skeleton man who turned his head to meet her eyes before sighing.

“I’m such a loser and Undyne is going to be so disappointed in me.” The Dismal Papyrus answered.

“Hey, Pappy… can you please pick me up. I want to give you a big hug!” Nobody got sad when Pinkie was around, no exceptions except for completely evil entities which The Lawful Good Papyrus most certainly wasn’t. The skeleton did as asked and Pinkie got her hooves around him and she snuggled the adorable silly bone guy. “By the way, you’ve captured me now.”

“What! I um… wow… you let me capture you even though I ‘The Mighty Papyrus’ stopped attacking you and your close friend entirely, I don’t exactly think this is how it’s supposed to work. You see you are supposed to go on by me now that you’ve won.” The Pony Capturing Papyrus was a little more than confused about this turn of events as Pinkie snuggled up against him; he tried to let her go only for her to cling to him. He had to admit that even if she weren’t as great as being him, she was really nice and cuddly.

“And I didn’t exactly think a nice guy like you could feel so warm, we’re not in any hurry Pappy.” If Pinkie was going to get silly about this, then things were about to get ridiculous. The pony followed this up by whispering at the air. “Oh like things aren’t ridiculous enough already as it is? I can make it worse and push things into even more ridiculous territories you know!”

“Wowie, we haven’t even had a date and I’m already in the friend zone! Well I give you permission to pass on through. Once we let your friend get some rest that is, she looks rather exhausted! Come on, we can have that date at the house where I live while letting her rest! Sans and me are the Font family and our home is where we’ll be going!” Managing to get Pinkie to let go of him, The Obviously Last Named Papyrus Font started move awkwardly into the air defying gravity as he ran along back towards town. “Nyeh heh heh heh!”

“San’s, you’re brother is so cool.” Pinkie liked him and his reality warping abilities, because she didn’t think it was normal for a skeleton to walk or run on air like that.

“Yeah, he better stay ‘frosty’. He just wouldn’t be the same if he were actually hot blooded about hurting others, as I said before he’s not really a violent guy and just wants to be useful and have friends. So, Pie Face, are you making dinner for us tonight? I would, but I’m too lazy and I usually eat out at Grillby’s, Papyrus only barely knows how to make a passable spaghetti meal. That should tell you a lot about his cooking talent and how we both live.” As Sans spoke, he and Gyftrot were both carrying Toriel between them as they headed back for Snowdin. “You know, he wouldn’t have seriously hurt either of you.”

“Yes, but it was still a serious situation to us, it let us both know what’s in store for the future. My Pinkie Sense isn’t exactly working at the moment, but when it was it told me when to look out for danger or misfortune. Here in the Underworld, I have to actually think about things and focus on what’s important. Like how Tori’s going to be in a lot of danger from now on because of me and I really don’t like that as I love her as friend and possibly more.” Pinkie didn’t like the idea of the goat lady’s heart breaking to keep her safe. “I don’t want anyone getting hurt because of me, I like making others happy and it’s kind of my one mission in life you know. Tori needed a lot of cheering up to come this far and she was so afraid of losing me that she pushed herself a bit too hard there and now she’s out ‘cold’.”

“Hey, you’re looking a bit ‘blue’ yourself there Pink, who’s going to make sure you’re happy as well? Maybe I can cheer you up; since you’ve cheered up a close friend of mine and my brother. What I just saw was unlike anything I’ve ever seen before down here, though everyone’s favorite goat mom seeing ‘red’ was also a new one on me.” Sans looked towards the ceiling while trying to think of a joke that’ll swing Pinkie’s dampened mood around. “I’m sorry I forgot to say ‘yellow’ to you two as you were leaving town, but I was busy at the time. I’m feeling like ‘violet’ you down somehow. So ‘orange’ you going to take care of dinner or what? Oh we’re here so ‘indigo’.”

“Did you just use all seven colors of the rainbow? I really like rainbows you know, but I guess monsters of the Underworld haven’t seen one in a very long time.” A giggle escaped Pinkie’s lips followed shortly by a snort as she entered the domicile of the Font family. “Of course I’ll do some cooking for you two. I just need you to get some ingredients together for me and I’ll bake lasagna for five.”

“I know this may be asking a bit much of you, but could you also teach Papyrus about dating and how to cook while you’re at it? I worry about him sometimes, his friend Undyne isn’t exactly a good cook and her house catches on fire every other day. She’s also not the best monster to go to for dating advice.” Sans was actually willing to help out Pinkie, since his brother did just hurt his friend’s souls a bit and they didn’t do much too really deserve that. “So what kind of ingredients do you need? I can make a grocery run if we don’t have the necessary stuff.”

“I’ve heard the name mentioned once or twice before Sans, but who exactly is Undyne?” They were now in the kitchen where Pinkie was currently wearing a chef toque and teaching The Lethal Chef Papyrus how to make lasagna. In the living room a short walk away was Toriel snoozing on the couch while Gyftrot was laid out on the floor in comfort. “Papyrus, you focus on spreading the sauce like I taught you. Yes, that’s right, nice and even.”

Pinkie was making sure to give The Tall Cook Papyrus a step by step knowledge of how to make lasagna and was even showing him everything she was doing slowly, just to make sure he understood what she was doing and why.

“How should I explain Undyne? She’s not exactly of the friendliest sort. If there was anyone who gave two hundred percent to a job, then it’d be her. You’re definitely going to run into her as she’s the current head of the royal guard and a little too gung-ho about her job. She’s leader of the royal guards for a reason and I have plenty of reason to doubt that she’d care little if the queen told her not to attack you. She’s not exactly going to be supportive of your friendly ideals and she responds to violence and justice better than anything else.” Sans had already noted that Toriel had quite a lot of monsters around here that were willing to support her and Pinkie, it was almost to the point that those monsters were ready to fight a civil war for a peaceful solution to the entire Underworld problem. “She’s been training my brother for the royal guard, but the only reason why he isn’t one is because he doesn’t have a killer instinct. Our cousin Spinal had that, but he accidentally got lost in an alternate dimension and we have no idea what became of him.”

“He never taught me to do a skele-port and Sans does it all the time!” The Jealous of His Brother Papyrus stated. “I Papyrus deserve to be capable of Skele-porting too!”

“Why didn’t you ever ask me how it was done? I would have told you, its quarter circle back and kick.” Sans saw a sudden look of pure joy showed up on Papyrus’s face and he smiled. If he had known earlier that Papyrus was sore about that, then he would have told him sooner. Ah well, he was also too lazy to tell Papyrus until now, he was going to have so much fun watching his brother learn how to control where he skele-ported to. He was already plotting the positions of the banana cream pies.

“Oh my goodness, I always thought it was quarter circle forward and punch, but all that made me do was launch large balls of spirit energy. I could never figure out what I was doing wrong.” The Button Input Challenged Papyrus looked quite flummoxed with himself.

“The absurdity of the direction this conversation has just taken is not lost on me at all and I wish I can join in with my own joke related to button combinations. I wish I could, but I’m not Button Mash and fighting games with more than two buttons are hard to play with hooves. I apologize profusely to all of you out there who expect me to say something funny in this situation.” The pony in the kitchen stated flatly with an annoyed look on her face as she stared up at the air, Pinkie was just now putting the lasagna in the oven as it slowly warmed up. “Anyway, aside from the lasagna, do you guys want a cake or a pie for dessert? I think I might even be able to replicate Toriel’s super tasty cinnamon butterscotch pie recipe, but I’m not sure if I’ll get it right.”

Toriel’s nose scrunched up slightly and she started slowly rise up as a strong scent of food filled her nostrils. It smelled good whatever it was; opening her eyes she noticed she was on a couch and her green robe was a bit rumpled up.

“Papyrus you really need to stop jumping through windows all the time because it’s a ‘pane’ in the ‘glass’ to repair them.” It sounded like Sans was still spewing puns as often as he ever was. “Oh hey, you’re awake. Thanks for repairing the restaurants window for me earlier Tori, I also heard I missed seeing Flame Face. That guy sure knows how to give someone a ‘bright’ smile.”

“Well of course he does, his head is on fire!” The Shouting Papyrus shouted with exclamation in redundancy!

“Dinner’s almost done, now we need to let it cool for five minutes and then I’ll dish out a bit of lasagna for each of us!” Walking into the room Pinkie turned to Toriel and immediately hopped on to her lap after seeing she was awake. The goat ladies fingers were immediately on Pinkie’s ears causing her to visible melt into the goat ladies lap. “So what do we talk about until then?”

“What about how if you ask nicely, the king just might let you through the barrier without a problem?” The Optimistic Papyrus responded, wanting to believe the best in everyone to the point it was bordering on blind faith.

“How about we don’t after the last six children I let past me that just wanted to go home and ended up having their souls ripped out. Pinkie’s an adult and I think he’s more than made it clear he’s willing to have her captured for the same reason as what happened to them, if not that then for some horrible experiments I’ve only barely heard of.” It looked like Toriel’s words made Papyrus take on a thoughtful look. “I wouldn’t have minded if we were at war and they were all adult souls killed in battle, but we’re not and they are not. We lost horribly sure, but we’re currently in a time of peace and the ones he’s taking are as innocent as Pinkie is. There was once a time of peace when we were even coexisting with the humans, I wish the war never happened in the first place.”

“I am sorely sorry for bringing up that sore topic of debate.” The Unhappy Papyrus seemed muted now; he didn’t seem so sure of himself or what he was doing anymore.

“To think this was all caused by the adoption of an orphan. All it took for them to incite hatred against us was that one act of kindness.” Sans smile wasn’t there anymore and Toriel didn’t answer his words as he seemed to be looking towards her. “It was a good deed, but good intentions lead to a lot of horrors none of us were prepared for.”

Toriel sat there looking at the floor, Sans seemed more familiar to her than just a voice on the other side of a door. He obviously knew about her adoption of the human child and the events that led to the death of her own child by birth. It didn’t sound like he could have done anything to have stopped what happened either. That human child had been filled with so much anger at his own race and so much love for the monsters that took him in.

“Why is it that when I look at you, I get this sense of familiarity that’s not associated with your name?” The mood was quickly dropping into depressing territories for Toriel and Sans. It was also beginning to bum even the positive Pinkie and Papyrus out; Gyftrot continued to listen on in a neutral fashion.

“I don’t know, but it’s the same for me and I’m talking outside all of the conversations we shared through the door.” Sans could have been hiding something behind his smiling facade, but he was left to his secrecy when Pinkie abruptly stood up.

“Okay, can we get this mood back on track with something a little more upbeat; I have some tasty lasagna to give out!” Pinkie hopped to her hooves and made her way to the kitchen. “Come on Pappy; let me show you how to serve this meal you helped to make!”

Four monsters and a pony sat around eating the wonderful lasagna made by Pinkie Pie and The Great Assistant Papyrus, she brought them out of their funks readily enough with just a taste of a perfect home cooked meal.

“Just think, by the time we’re done eating the pie should be cooled off!” Pinkie’s attitude really wasn’t strained as she preferred to think in the here and now instead of the past, she couldn’t do anything about what has already happened. Gyft was a hard read, but he too was a little bummed out by all this talking about the past and she almost hadn’t noticed it. She needed all these sad sacks to focus on the present and to stop living in the past. “Hey Pappy, do you want to learn more about dating?”

“Oh this should be interesting.” Sans couldn’t frown, his face was now in its perpetual smile once more thanks to the food.

“Of this I actually have no doubt.” Toriel wondered what kind of uplifting shenanigans Pinkie was going to cause this time, she crunched a softened cucumber in her baked noodle meal. It was apparent that Pinkie wasn’t just good at baking sugary goods, but she’d see whether Pinkie’s pie was actually tasty or not. After thinking that, the goat lady sported a huge blush on her face for the next few minutes.

“Of course I would want to learn how to go about dating, so I can have many friends!” The Wrong Idea Papyrus answered with a childishness not befitting his apparent age.

“Well the first is that you have to know the several kinds of dating, there’s calendar dates, carbon dating, play dates, date trees or the one you need to know about which is called actual dating. Dating is more about romance than it is about friendship.” Pinkie started off before she took some lasagna into her mouth, after she swallowed the morsel she continued. “You make friends by actually talking to people until you get to know them better, you know what being friendly is all about considering you’re really friendly yourself. To make friends you have to be a friend, but if the other person doesn’t agree then they aren’t very nice at all. Are you with me so far Pappy?”

“I do believe so, so dating isn’t about making friends?” The Suddenly Shy Papyrus was looking a bit thoughtful.

“Not always, it’s usually about deepening an already existing relationship. You can make friends outside of dating you know. So what kind of sexuality do you have?” Well that wasn’t a loaded question from Pinkie at all. The pony was suddenly aggravated at the air. “Hey, you be quiet! I’m trying to help my new friend here, he’s actually really sweet guy now that I’ve gotten to know him and I don’t need you causing any trouble by implying its trouble that I asked that!”

“Who is she talking to Sans?” The Whispering Papyrus whispered to his brother.

“Oh, just something only I and her can see apparently.” It was obvious that Sans could also read between the lines, like most comedians and individuals of great humor could.

“Right then, ahem, ‘The Humble Papyrus’ shall ask. What is that exactly?” As if that wasn’t an even more loaded one coming from the The Great Friend Papyrus.

Sans and Pinkie let out a chuckle and shook their heads for whatever reason while looking upwards.

“Right well… sexuality determines the kind of person or being you would like to date as a personal preference, especially in a romantic sense. It tells you the kind of individual you more easily want to get closer to that isn’t family.” As long as it doesn’t tank the T rating, Pinkie could continue on with this topic of discussion. “I’m not really that bad am I? Anyway, ignoring my griping at the nameless entity that absolutely no one cares about at the moment in any capacity, there are several types of sexuality. For instance the usual sexuality most start out as having at a young age, asexuality. Most who are asexual can be romantic, but can’t rise to the challenge like bread dough. Then there’s the sexuality usually termed straight or heterosexual, which involves a male and female gendered being of the same species.”

“Can I have an example of this? I think I understand the meaning of Asexual, it sounds boring and not for the likes of Papyrus.” The question was quite sudden, but The Intrigued Papyrus would get his answer.

“Me and my husband were a heterosexual or straight couple, I was a nanny and he was a buck.” For the life of her, Toriel couldn’t understand why Pinkie had a strange look on her face.

“I didn’t think your husband was that cheap, but I’d buy that!” Sans earned a bit of laughter all around, except from a confused Papyrus.

“Tori I know you dislike you’re husband, but did you have to imply that you just used him like that? Well provided we survive to get me back home intact, I think you’d be a great nanny for the Cake’s foals!” Okay this is getting a bit too silly Pinkie, get back on topic or else. “Fine, be a spoilsport. See if we crack any more jokes for you this chapter why don’t we. Moving on there is gay sexuality; we apparently can’t legally call it by its name since there haven’t been any humans in this story so therefore I wouldn’t even feasibly know the word homosexual, given that the prefix doesn’t exist in the pony language. So ponies like to call it filly fooling and colt cuddling. It’s a sexuality based on sharing stronger feelings for someone of the same gender as you. Like me and Tori!”

“Oh like me when I watch Mettaton, he is so awesome!” Yeah, there’s no getting any of deposit back on the words for this chapter now after The Story Breaker Papyrus got this inanity started.

“Then there’s Pan and Omni Sexuality. I’m personally a pony of pansexual preferences. Being pansexual means that gender or species doesn’t matter to me, I will likely be able to fall in love with anyone if I can form an emotional attachment with them like how I like you for being so lovable.” Pinkie moved over to The Embarrassed Papyrus and rubbed up against him.

“I am very sorry, but I can’t say I feel the same way. I can’t match the burning passion you have for me Pinkie, even then you’re dating prowess overwhelms me! I would just prefer for us to be friends.” The pink pony nodded to The Ever Friend Zoned Papyrus.

“That leads to omni-sexual, the likelihood that you’d have a romantic interest for multiple people at the same time. That concludes the lessons on sexuality and as I told the guy upstairs earlier, I can drive this to being even more ridiculous.” More ridiculous than the conversation Pinkie just finished off? Perish the thought of this ever actually happening. “Thank you for letting me down gently Papyrus, it’s better to tell someone that you don’t feel the same as soon as you possibly know of their feelings and your own in conjunction. Though those feelings can change, you don’t want to lead anyone on thinking that there could be something between you more than friendship if you can’t bring yourself to feel the same way. This was a nice date, thank you very much.”

“I’m now thinking that my brother is actually ‘gay’ and I’m okay with that as long as it makes him ‘happy’.” Sans was the best and only brother Papyrus has ever had. “Yeah, I’m a real nice guy, but if this all leads to a bad ending I will come up there after you and dunk you.”

“Well this has been an interesting evening, if we can really call it that down here.” Toriel had a large drop of sweat sliding down the side of her head.

“Huh, so I can still be friends with girls even if I don’t feel any kind of attraction for them?” The Understanding Papyrus got two flat looks from the pony and the goat lady.

“Well of course you can, you can be friends with anyone!” I think everyone can understand Pinkie’s exasperation quite clearly.

“Oh goody, the friendship power of Papyrus has increased by oodles in the last few minutes! Now if only I can get Sans to stop with the pranks on me from me across time and space, then things would be just perfect around here!” Yep, the exact day Papyrus stops getting pranks from his brother is the time that space collapses in on itself.

“Is everyone done with the lasagna? The pie is probably cooled off by now.” After she said this, Pinkie stuffed the last bit of her deep dish veggie lasagna into her mouth and chewed. She was bound to be ready for dessert now; given how much she can eat. “Do you honestly think I can spread as much happiness as I do on a normal diet? My friends never bothered to figure out how hyperactive my metabolism actually is, but I need all the energy I can get you know!”

“Pinkie, please stop yelling at the ceiling and go get the pie.” Toriel couldn’t help but laugh at Pinkie’s antics looking at it the way she did. If she didn’t know Pinkie was actually responding to someone then she would have thought the pony as being completely bonkers.

“I’m not actually in this story.” A cartoon bobcat wearing what appears to be a police uniform stated quite clearly, despite the very irony of the statement.

“Well here’s the pie. I hope I got it right, I guess I’ll just have to taste it and see.” Setting the pie down on the table the monsters were sitting around and taking up her seat next to the goat lady, Pinkie was about to slice into the pie when Toriel gently took the knife from her and started doing it herself.

Five slices of pie were divvied up by Toriel and she gave a soft smile to Pinkie before trying her slice, the other monsters followed and Pinkie waited for the results before trying her own.

“So how does it taste Tori?” She was hopeful that her skills in baking were good enough to meet up with expectations of the dessert in question.

“It’s good, but it’s not quite my cinnamon butterscotch pie Pinkie. I’m surprised you even managed to get this far having tasted it a few times between two pies.” Toriel smiled at Pinkie’s expression as the pony tasted her slice of pie.

“Yeah, it’s definitely missing something.” Pinkie said after a minute of rolling around pie chunks on her tongue. Being a connoisseur of baked goods, this disturbed her slightly. Quickly forgetting the pie that was only slightly off in flavor, but still very much palatable, she turned to Sans. “So your family name is Font?”

"Meow?" The demonic fruit cake cat gave off questioningly.

"Stop looking into other dimensions Pal, I got your dead spaghetti monster all warmed up!" The ex-villain who was once the Mane-iac was currently feeding her cat in an entirely different story altogether.

“I ‘Font’ you to know that is correct, I’m Sans Font and this is my brother with Font named Papyrus. I believe we’ve previously met.” That smug smiling skeleton Sans verbally let out, then he visibly winked at the air before he started drinking from a bottle of ketchup. “Yeah this stuff is smooth.”

Pinkie wasn’t about to comment on Sans ketchup drinking when she personally was a hot sauce drinker who ate cupcakes between ingesting the spicy stuff. Toriel might have, but she preferred to just sip at the tea she and Papyrus were having. At least The Tea Maker Papyrus wasn’t bad at making a good cup of royalty fodder.

“So are we actually going to talk about it?” Everyone looked to Pinkie with a raised brow. “You know, how Tori’s um… now different from other monsters.”

“I would rather we not discuss the elephant in the room.” Queen Toriel so did not want to go to that topic or even think of what her ex-husband would do. Especially once he found out about her body and soul having been mysteriously warped in an odd manner.

“Really there’s an elephant here, where?” The idea that there was a pachyderm in the room had Pinkie looking around everywhere for one.

“Sans we can’t really afford an elephant in the house; why we can barely afford to even feed your pet trash tornado!” The Tornado Feeding Papyrus was now also looking around for the elephant.

“Hey, Trashy is a self contained class five tornado and he always picks up after himself!” It was Sans best effort at defending his pet tornado of trash.

“I am surrounded by silly people.” Toriel giggled at that and continued to eat her pie.

“The silliest your majesty, though I haven’t exactly found a niche yet.” Gyftrot just bit down on his slice of pie with his sideways opening mouth. “I find myself more of a quiet and contemplative monster like Mr. Snow Guy.”

“Yes, speaking of elephants, what did you do before we came back to the inn Trot?” She was happy to spend time around so many friends who were now becoming like family to her.

“Well I met with a bear that said you told him about me and we had a lot to talk about, apparently my suffering spawned a holiday around happiness. Eh I can’t complain about it Toriel, all I ask is that they leave adorning my body and The Jerry out of it. Speaking of that horrid thing, they have seen sighting of The Jerry slowly crawling up the cliff so I’m definitely leaving with you two after another resting period. I want to be as far away from it as possible.” That was about as much motivation as Gyftrot needed to follow Pinkie and Toriel around. “I don’t know of what use I can be to the both of you, but I wish to be there for either of you in any capacity you’d have me.”

“I think you’re doing good so far as a friend, your quite an intelligent monster and I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to support us on your own merits. I however don’t see combat as something you should involve yourself in. Might you even take up the Monster Compendium written by a friend of ours to read while we’re busy dodging attacks?” It was just a suggestion that Toriel thought might be helpful in giving Gyftrot some ideas about what he could do on their journey.

“Tori, I’m going to need some money!” The shout from Pinkie caused Toriel to flinch slightly as she came up to the goat lady while looking up at her innocently.

“Please don’t tell me you’re going to buy a tornado.” Toriel thought Pinkie would want something like that, considering she already had what would eventually be a dangerous pet already in the form of Gummy.

“No that’s not what I need the money for, Pappy was just telling me about how strong Undyne was and I think buying a shovel would really help us out in the long run!” Okay this would have anyone curious, but why in the world would Pinkie need a shovel of all things? “Also I’m going to cross pet tornado of my list of things to ask for since you obviously aren’t going to let me have one.”

“Pinkie tornadoes are highly dangerous things, so of course I’m going to say no to that.” It was to be sure that Toriel wasn’t the only one confused. “Now back on topic, why a shovel?”

“Because I’m a rock farmer’s daughter and I know how to use a shovel, you already have the shield for it. So it will make perfect sense that I get one!” It certainly didn’t, but we’ll go with Pinkie and rock farm logic on this one. “Really you don’t know the reference I’m trying to make here? You know those two with the guy in the blue armor and the girl in the red armor?”

Well somebody could probably get where Pinkie is going with this now.

“Pinkie if I get you the shovel, will you try to avoid the topic of me having a soul that is capable of being pulled from my body? Not forever mind you, but just for a while until I can get my head around it.” It took a moment for the pink pony to think over Toriel’s offer, but she eventually nodded and Toriel reached into her backpack to hand over some money to her. Pinkie set off immediately out the door for Snowdin’s shop to get a shovel.

“So can we stay here and get some sleep before we try to set out again?” Traveling was not a thing Toriel wanted to do right this moment.

“Sure you can crash on the couch, if it’s okay with Papyrus.” Sans crossed his arms and turned to Papyrus.

“Well of course they can stay! I think Mettaton’s show is about to come on, I don’t want to miss it!” Papyrus ran up the stairs to presumably get something out to watch his show with.

“Thank you Sans, you and your brother are very kind, friendly and funny individuals. Should anything happen to me, I want you to look out for Pinkie to make sure she gets back home alright. There’s a higher possibility of that happening now than there ever was.” Toriel took up the lasagna dish, plates and the empty pie tin before going over to the sink. “I’ll just take care of these dishes.”

Sans smiled at the feeling of being a part of a bigger family again, he was really missing someone but he couldn’t recall who.

Author's Note

We'll be on our way to Waterfall and the swamp next chapter, this chapter was a bit annoying to write.

Other than that, Steven Universe was good this week. Peridot development and all that, I still think her gem weapon is going to be some kind of energy repeater pistol.

14 - Fantastic Flowers

Pinkie stretched out and yawned as she got up from cuddling against Toriel on the couch and walked into the kitchen, this kitchen was good except for one small problem. The sink was so high off the ground that it was really quite hard to reach.

She walked into the kitchen and Papyrus came running down the stairs and as she stepped out he went running backwards to the end of the living room and there started a feral smile on Pinkie’s face. She started to step between the kitchen and the living room until a ding sound could be heard as Papyrus ran back and forth until he managed to out speed Pinkie.

“I can’t feel my legs anymore; I must be a really good host!” The Chuckling Papyrus looked to Pinkie. “What can I do for you this morning my fine fluffy friend, for I the great Papyrus will put any problem you have to its end!”

“Can you tell me why the sink is so high up? It’s kind of hard to use it with it being so way up there.” Pinkie pointed out the sink that only Papyrus with his height could possibly reach.

“Oh that. It’s so we can have this cabinet here, it’s where we can store more bones! See…” The Unaware Papyrus opened the door and there sat an annoying dog gnawing on a bone, there was only one bone in the cabinet and that was the one the dog was going at. This is when Papyrus got angry. “Darn it, not again! Get that dog!”

The annoying dog was alerted to Papyrus’s shout as he dove for it, the dog hopped out of the cabinet and the poor skeleton had the door kicked shut on him getting him stuck in there. It’s a well known fact that Skeletons preferred closets to overly large cabinets. Pinkie was the next to try, but was knocked for a loop as she slammed head first into the cabinet. Toriel tried as she had just woken up, only for her to flop onto her belly and the dog to wipe its paws on the back of the robe she slept in after leaping on top of her. This was followed by Gyftrot trying to run this highly annoying dog down only for him to slam into the wall.

After all that the dog simply padded up to the door, stood up on its hind legs. Everyone watched as it walked out the door and closed it behind itself while giving them all a rather smug smile. After that Sans came out with a trombone and played a sad wind down.

“Sans, stop plaguing our lives with incidental music!” The Visibly Annoyed Papyrus shouted at his brother, this got quite a bit of laughter from Toriel and Pinkie. Gyftrot just huffed audibly.

“That was another one of my ex husbands many highly trained annoying dogs, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing many more of them moving forward.” Toriel sighed and stood up and made her way for the door after picking up her backpack. “Let’s just go get a warm bath in Pinkie and then we’ll be on our way, you might as well get one too Mr. Trot.”

Pinkie was walking on the path beyond where they had a run in with Papyrus less than twenty four hours previously. This time Pinkie’s hair had been pulled into two cute streaming pigtails and the shovel she bought was now with Gyftrot. Toriel was wearing a red robe and walking right next to her as they entered a dark cavernous area. Bringing up the rear and carrying Pinkie’s saddlebags was Gyftrot who was bemused by the idea of the shovel being dangerous in Pinkie’s hooves.

They walked from out of the snowy area into something that looked a lot more cavernous and to their left the floating ice cubes drifted off in a different direction in the river as they continued on.

They immediately came up three figures and a rather familiar theme tune that belonged to Sans, one of the three monsters present was Kid the little hermaphrodite lizard monster. Pinkie looked up at the air with a quirked eye as if expecting something to happen soon. If the air could tell her she wouldn’t be disappointed, then she would be more on edge than she already was.

“Now when you say things like that, I’m just going to smile and try to think of you as a good friend and not someone who is trying to get me all worked up because you think I’m cute when I’m angry.” Pinkie shook her head causing her two pigtails to sway with her heads movement as she moved up to Kid. “Hey Kid, what are you doing here?”

“Yo pony, I’m sneaking out to see someone; she’s like the coolest and most awesome monster ever!” Kid seemed to have devolved into Scootaloo stalker territories when it came to hero worship, not that Rainbow would ever notice she has a stalker. Kid hasn’t even mentioned who she or he was talking about and it sounded like Kid was excited to see them. “I want to be just like her when I grow up! Hey, don’t tell my parents I’m here.”

“Young monster, are you seriously telling me you’re here on your own without your parents?” Toriel put her fists on her hips and looked down on Kid.

“I just want to meet who I’m looking for, she’s said to be in the area around here and I want to watch her in action at least a little bit.” Kid whined slightly.

“You really should go home to your parents. It’s dangerous to go alone Kid, especially when you can’t wield a wooden sword since you don’t have limbs.” Gyftrot and Toriel moved onwards shaking their heads as they went to Sans booth past a strange red creature sitting next to a light blue flower.

“Excuse me, but what kind of flower is this.” Pinkie stopped to take a sniff of the flower, she wondered if it would taste like fresh buttercups. It was a stranger flower that could grow underground and its blue faintly glowing countenance was interesting to the pony.

“This is an echo flower; it repeats the last thing it hears. Over and over into possibly infinite, if you stay quiet you might hear some things from the last being who spoke around one of them. You have to be pretty close to them for them to catch the sound of your voice though, neat huh?” The strange fish monster looked to be wearing a bib with a picture of a goldfish on it.

“You have to be pretty close for them to catch the sound of your voice though, neat huh?” The echo flowered echoed.

“Okay, you’re a really pretty flower and you smell nice.” Pinkie said within proximity of the flower while listening carefully for it to echo her words.

“Why thank you, I try!” The flower stated quite clearly spooking the monster and Pinkie, the pony decided to see what Toriel and Gyftrot were doing over at the booth with Sans.

“The good thing about having so many jobs is that I get just as many legally required breaks for all of them, plus it keeps us in spaghetti for Papyrus to work with. Thanks for hanging out at our house guys; I guess I’ll see you around.” Sans leaned back and kicked his feet up on the outpost and looked to be as relaxed and lazy as he could possibly get. He vaguely watched them with something approaching keen interest as they left the area.

“Those echo flowers are really cool, but are they sentient? I can’t tell if I’ll ever be able to eat a flower again after all this.” Pinkie was so confused about all the flowers in the Underworld.

“Done talking to a monster about the flower Pinkie? Right then, let’s get going.” Toriel led the group into the next area and came to a stop at what was a large waterfall and large rocks flowing down it.

“Oh I see an echo flower down there; I want to go hear what it says! Can I Tori?” The goat lady rolled her eyes at Pinkie, but she eventually assented and the pony took off down the stairs to go hear what the echo flower would say.

“You can’t use things when you put them in a box, so why would you do so, signed a box hater. Well it does make sense.” Gyftrot was just reading the sign with a box next to it only to notice that Pinkie had went missing. Looking over the right side of the falls he saw Pinkie in a lower area listening to the flower, she eventually started coming back their way and up the steps.

“So what does it say?” Tilting her head and looking to pony with mild interest, Toriel awaited her answer.

“Apparently someone saw something behind the waterfalls over there.” Pinkie pointed at the waterfall where rocks continuously fell from and there was some kind of light coming from behind it, she was standing on one of the wood panels leading into the water.

“Alright, we’ll check it out, but be careful of the falling rocks now.” Toriel didn’t any of her friends to have anything bad happen to them at this stage in their adventure, they quickly waded out into the water and went beneath the waterfall and through it.

They found a small cavity with two lamp mushrooms behind the waterfall and in it was an old tutu which Pinkie wanted to take with them since it looked like it could fit her. So they stuffed the pink object into her saddlebags that Gyftrot was carrying. They waded back out and made it to the other side without getting hit by any of the falling rocks. There was a near miss or two, but they were perfectly fine if a bit wet.

“I think you’re ears look cute when they’re wet Tori.” Pinkie smiled as Toriel lit her hands aflame magically and their bodies were quickly dried off from the magical heat. The goat lady was blushing and pawing at one of her floppy ears shyly afterwards.

They came upon some tall grass that would completely cover Pinkie and Gyftrot, but Toriel would stick out from if she stayed standing up. As they made it into the grass, Toriel ducked down and shushed her two companions as she thought she heard something. She didn’t feel much like being attacked quite yet; she was still up in the air about her soul as being capable of being pulled from her body.

“Hi Undyne, I’m here with my daily report! About that pink quadruped creature, you know the one with the soul like that of a human I called you about earlier. Huh, did I fight them? Y-yes, you could say that I did. I fought them valiantly!” Which wasn’t a lie; The Talkative Papyrus seemed to be conversing with a heavily armored figure on the cliff above. It was easy to know it was The Verbally Loud Papyrus by the sound of his voice which hardly had more than the loud setting at all. “What, did I capture them?” Well no, but I tried very hard Undyne. In the end, the pink creature got away from me, I failed.”

“Well at least we know Papyrus is very honest.” Pinkie whispered as they all stayed crouched down in the grass below where they could easily see the two figure standing above them.

“What you’re going to take the creature’s soul yourself?” The One Side Conversation Speaker Papyrus continued on expressing everything the imposing figure was telling him out loud. At least Pinkie knew she was in danger with this individual coming after her. “Undyne, you don’t have to destroy them! You see… eh… I understand. I’ll help you in any way I can.”

The retreating boots of Papyrus could be heard; Pinkie felt the pressure to not make a sound coming on. Being who she was, making no noise at all was quite hard for her to do. Something caused the grass to rustle and it wasn’t Toriel, Gyftrot or Pinkie and they saw the armored figure move to the edge of the cliff above them and create a spear which it held in its left hand as it looked around. Seeing nothing, the armored figure slowly backed away from the cliff and the spear soon disappeared along with the tall armored figure.

Not moving for a minute as they held their breaths, Pinkie finally let out a sigh of relief and moved forward out of the grass. The fact that she didn’t immediately get speared proved that the armored figure was no longer there. Toriel and Gyftrot also came out of cover looking a little shaken up by the figure that Papyrus had a meeting with.

“Did you see the way she was looking down here? That was awesome! What’d you do to get her attention like that? I’m so jealous!” Kid seemed to have not realized that they weren’t the one who attracted Undyne’s attention. Running forward Kid flopped down on his or her face and popped back up to look at the three travelers. “Come on; let’s go watch her beat up some bad guys!”

Kid ran on ahead and made the three travelers follow hastily, however they didn’t see the little wastrel anywhere in the next area.

“So that was Undyne… wow, she’s a lot more scarier looking than Papyrus said she was.” Pinkie shivered, she had plenty of reasons to avoid fights now. Toriel was the main reason she didn’t want to fight, but Undyne definitely looked the part of a tough guy who’d win in a bar brawl and Pinkie might have been slightly intimidated by her. “Yeah, I’d like to see you walk up to tall, dark and scary just to say, hello let’s be friends! I think what would happen, would be something similar to doing that with Nightmare Moon. Meaning I don’t think it will end well if they were dead set on being aggressive.”

“Pinkie now is not a time to be addressing your friend up there. When four bridge seeds align in the water, they will sprout.” As Toriel read the sign on the wall, she gained a thoughtful look on her face. Turning to her two companions with a small smile, she added cheerily. “It seems like we’ve run into the next gauntlet of puzzles!”

Moving forward only slightly, the group saw a distance of water between them and the way forward, to their left was four flower seeds. Kid just came through here and thus couldn’t have possibly missed the puzzles unless it was an achievement in ignorance. That and Kid could probably just run across the top of water like some lizards can do when going fast enough. We’ll just label Kid with male pronouns from now on, even if he has capabilities of both genders in one oddly noodle shaped body of incident causing.

“Right, Kid’s to be considered male from now on until further notice.” Even as Pinkie said this she was already picking up one of the seeds and setting it adrift in the water. She moved over to pick up the last seed as Toriel floated hers in the water next, which was then followed by the bridge flower Gyftrot grabbed and finally Pinkie dropped the last one in the water and all four flowers bloomed into a bridge to cross the water.

“Well that puzzle wasn’t too hard.” As they moved into the next area Gyftrot watched as Pinkie and Toriel’s souls popped out of their chests. “Spoke too soon, sorry guys.”

“Hello there, I’m Aaron, check out my muscles!” The flamboyantly muscled horse headed lamia said as he flexed his pectorals at them. Clouds in the shape of flexing arms shot up from the floor as Aaron’s personal form of bullet attack in a simple pattern of left right left. Pinkie had an easy time of dancing left and right precisely, while Toriel had to zigzag her heart through the attack since it moved so fast.

“Gyftrot, please tell me you got something in the book about this monster?” Pinkie didn’t like this guy, sure he had a pony styled head, but he was way too muscular for her tastes. Maybe Pinkie just didn’t have a thing for heavily muscled stallions.

“Flex your muscles at him, that’s all the information on him says.” Gyftrot put the book away in the saddlebags and saw them giving him a strange look.

The pony and the goat lady looked to one another shrugged and then flexed their muscles, Pinkie performed a forward flexing motion with both hooves that would have Bulk Biceps proud. The goat lady rolled up her sleeved and flexed her muscles by curling her arm.

“So you want to enter a flexing contest, well come on then!” He launched another attack, after a flexing his muscles again. Pinkie’s large pink soul had very little room to squeeze between the flexing arms rising up to try and meet it, while Toriel’s soul being smaller zipped between them more easily.

Pinkie stood up on her hind legs and put both her front legs behind her head and flexed hard, Toriel took a thinkers poser and flexed her muscles in that manner. In response to their flexing Aaron flexed so hard it caused him to physically shoot away from them and their souls were once again restored to their bodies.

“Right then, let’s cross the bridge” Indeed there was a bridge and the back of a sign to their right as they crossed it, Pinkie moved to the right and leaned over the water to get a look at the sign. “It says something about failing a puzzle if you can read it.”

“Then we do not need to use these flowers to go that way.” Turning around Toriel saw something off in the distance, a room that had an incomplete bridge leading from it. It looked like they could reach it if they used the bridge flowers. “Grab the bridge flower seeds; I think I see something worth investigating.”

Moving over to the bridge seeds, they saw a sign that said to ring the bell to reset the puzzle, which was a helpful bit of knowledge. They moved towards the spot to the right of the sign and started drifting the plants across the water until they formed a bridge that led them to the unfinished wooden bridge. Moving forward they came across a bench, underneath which Pinkie looked at a covered dish.

“It’s a quiche, I wonder who made it? It looks to still be in good recent condition, no mold or anything bad whatsoever. Can you preserve it for me Tori?” Pinkie got Toriel to preserve the contained quiche for her and they stashed it away, before moving over to the echo flower that was there.

“I just wasn’t ready for the responsibility.” The voice sounded familiar coming from the flower, deciding that this was not the way forward the party went back to the previous room that the puzzle was in. They had to ring the bell which caused the bridge seeds to reappear where they had previously been.

“Aside from the psychologically scarred quiche with abandonment issues that still looks tasty, I think I know how to solve this puzzle to move on!” Pinkie had been looking at the small river between them and the next area. She showed her companions where to push the seeds into the water, four seeds were floated upwards and a row of bridge flowers blossomed. “So do you think it was Sans who made the quiche?”

“I’m not sure, that voice sounded generally depressed and that doesn’t sound like Sans at all.” Shaking her head at the thought of the pranks, jokes and pun cracking skeleton being depressed, Toriel moved onwards and before they could reach the door they heard a phone ringing.

Pinkie quickly pulled out the phone from her saddlebags and opened it since it was the one ringing.

“Hello, this is Pinkie Pie the pink party pony speaking!” The voice on the other end was that of a friend, or at least Pinkie still considered him a friend. No idea what Toriel or Gyftrot thought of the situation between him and Undyne.

“Hello this is Papyrus.” The Phone Calling Papyrus stated.

“How did you get this number Papyrus?” Pinkie didn’t actually think to give him the phone number considering she preferred personally meeting other people face to face to talk with them; as such she had hardly used the phone for much. She didn’t even need to call Toriel, though she had her number.

“How did I get it? It was easy! I dialed each number sequentially until I got to yours, nyeh heh heh heh!” The Super Silly Skeleton Papyrus answered with jubilation. “So, what are you wearing? I’m asking for a friend since she thought she saw you wearing a dusty tutu.”

“I’m wearing a costume of myself.” Pinkie was in the middle of putting on said costume as she said this, so she was actually now wearing a ridiculous looking Pinkie Pie costume with bulging eyes and her head stuck out of its mouth. It didn’t look the least bit flattering on her at all.

“Okay, I’ll know what to tell my friend now. Got it, have a nice day!” The Abrupt Call Ending Papyrus said before the call was rudely ended before Pinkie could tell him to have a nice day right back.

“Pinkie, where did you get a ridiculous costume like that? Also, why does it look vaguely like you but in such a bizarre way?” It was suffice to say it was quite ugly to Toriel’s perception.

“Let’s say I got it in a comic book and leave it at that.” It didn’t matter to Pinkie how bad it looked, no one would expect to her to be as brazen as to actually wear the darn thing. So therefore it was the perfect disguise that would have Undyne overlooking her for its absurdity and utter audacity as far as disguises went. “Besides would you really look for me when I’m wearing such a good disguise as this one is?”

“The only reason why I’m agreeing is because it’s so hard to look at directly, that thing is absolutely hideous!” Gyftrot answered trying not to stare at the horrific Pinkie Pie costume that Pinkie Pie had on.

“See, it’s working already!” It was only because Pinkie’s costume was so horrendous in design and appearance, that it’ll actually force you to look away out of disgust for it. It made one wonder how Pinkie could even enjoy wearing such a horrifically satirical costume. “Oh that’s simple; I do crazy things for fillies and colts all the time. Wearing something like this isn’t embarrassing to me at all!”

“It’s embarrassing enough for us to just be seen with you while you’re wearing that Pinkie.” Looking anywhere but at the pony in an ugly costume of herself, Toriel decided to move onwards through the doorway in a quick hasty manner.

Moving into the next room they could see it was a room full of echo flowers, a sign on the wall declared this the wishing room. They decided to stop and listen to each of the flowers as they moved along starting with the flower to the left of the entrance.

“A long time ago, monsters would whisper their wishes to the stars in the sky. If you hoped with all your heart, your wish would come true. Now, all we have are these sparkling stones on the ceiling.” Looking up at the ceiling the three could see the beautiful sparkling stones and they looked on with a sense of awe before moving to the next flower.

“Thousands of people wishing together can’t be wrong! The king will prove that.” This flower caused Toriel to frown at it, before they moved to the next one.

Before they reached the next flower a strange monster shuffled into their path and Gyftrot was already into the Monster Compendium looking it up. It had a round head, clawed feet, a domed hump filled with water on its back that had a rubber duck in it and a tail that looks like a twirling crank.

“Here it is, it’s called a Woshua. It’s a monster that likes to clean things and is horribly germ phobic.” As Gyftrot finished saying that, the Woshua launched its attack which was a bouncing soap bar with the word ‘hope’ written on it.

As the soap bar bounced around it left sparkling trails of sparkling bullets in its wake, Pinkie was having a rougher time of it since the soap bar was fast, slippery and dangerous. Toriel on the other hand was perfectly able to dodge the attack, since her soul was quicker to react to the speeds the bouncing soap bar was moving at.

“Excuse me, but could you stop attacking us and maybe do some laundry for me?” At Toriel’s request the Woshua stopped attacking and would take all the unclean clothing she offered him into his body. Every scrap of dirty clothing was quickly washed and cleaned by the monsters odd body, which made him inexorably happy. Patting the monster on the head for doing her laundry, Toriel watched as the Woshua went on its merry way with a smile and he also let their souls go back to their bodies without a fuss. Purely good souls were clean souls apparently. “So what’s the next flower say then?”

“C’mon, sis, make a wish!” The next flower said and the one right next to it continued on in a similar heartwarming fashion. “I wish my sister and I will see the real stars someday.”

They saw a telescope, but passed right on by it and a long corridor to nowhere to hear the last flower in the room.

“Ah… seems my horoscope is the same as last week’s.” Was the entire flower had to say, after that they went back to the telescope.

“I don’t see a way forward, do you guys?” Gyftrot look around for a passageway forward and saw nothing.

“Speaking of seeing things, what’s this telescope all about, it’s not like there’s much to see under… oh… check wall. Come on guys, I know what to do.” Moving down the dead end passageway, Pinkie reared up on her hind legs and started checking the wall, after a moment she hit something and a doorway appeared. “Found it!”

“Good job Pinkie, this looks like the way forward!” They went through the doorway and found themselves in some kind of wide open marshlands. They saw some writings on the wall ahead, as they moved out onto what looked to be some kind of docks in the marsh.

“Let me translate what all the writings say, the war of humans and monsters. why did the humans attack? Indeed, it seemed 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.” Toriel ran a hand over where her soul rested in her chest, resting for the next time it was pulled from the confines of her body. She moved over to the next few bits of writing. “But humans have one weakness. Ironically, it is the strength of their soul. Its power allows it to persist outside the human body, even after death. If a monster defeats a human, they can take its soul. A monster with a human soul is a horrible beast with unfathomable power.”

The last bit of writing was just an illustration of a strange creature; there was something highly unsettling about this piece of artwork. It was especially unsettling to Pinkie Pie who had vaguely recalled seeing something like it before in Equestrian history.

“Is any of this true, aside from the war part I mean?” Pinkie could now understand why a monster would attack a human for their soul, if it is as powerful as the wall says. Her soul would probably be equal to a humans or worth even more than that if it’s the reason why Toriel can now have her soul from her body.

“That’s the thing isn’t it? Monsters can gain incredible power from stealing souls from humans; a human’s soul is considered their weakness compared to their bodies which are strong. That unfathomable power would have been a very good reason for them to attack us, but it wasn’t the main one.” Sitting down at the edge of the dock and letting her legs hang out over the marsh, Toriel sighed sadly. “It is correct, the humans had nothing to fear from us when they brought about a united front. You’re like a monster and a human put together Pinkie, but much more naturally and with less hell raising tendencies.”

“That small bit of artwork reminds me of… what was it called again? Started with a D? Draconic equine, oh right they’re called Draconequus’s! That’s what it looks like; all that power really doesn’t seem to be doing them any favors in the looks department.” Pinkie was one to talk considering she was wearing a large horrific looking costume version of herself. “Look, I know my costume is ugly. So please stop drawing so much attention to it.”

“So now what, do we cross to the other side of this marshland on this small bit of wood. It only looks big enough to carry one being at a time.” Gyftrot tested the wood with a hoof and stepped onto it to cause it to go skating across the marsh to the dock on the other side; he sent it sliding right back to them. He had to yell back to them as they were quite a distance away. “It seems safe enough!”

“You go first Tori, the beauty before the pony.” Even though Pinkie knew Toriel was quite old as in Celestia age old, she was still attracted to the goat lady who now had a rather rosy blush on her face.

“Okay, nothing seems to be coming and there doesn’t seem to be anything dangerous in the swamp.” Toriel carefully stepped onto the chunk of wood and tried to keep herself balanced until she stopped on the opposite shore, turning around she pushed it back to Pinkie who was waiting for the piece of wood to come to a complete stop.

“Toriel I know I’ve been quiet for a while, but I can’t help but get a horrible feeling something bad is about to happen. Call it snowman’s intuition.” The jar of snow lit up with Mr. Snow Guy’s voice.

“I didn’t see anything that would give Pinkie trouble with getting across.” Toriel watched as Pinkie tested the board of wood with a hoof.

Pinkie got three legs on the platform and she kicked off with her left hind leg and started to slowly skid across the water towards her two waiting friends. However halfway across a large wooden galleon quickly sailed in front of Pinkie’s little platform and it hit the side of the ship; Pinkie looked up at the side of the ship and didn’t get much time to do anything. She was knocked out when something cylindrical had struck her in the forehead really hard, the only thing she heard before that was a loud popping noise.

“Did that just seriously happen?” Blankly asked Toriel who watched as the galleon sailed in from out of nowhere in the marsh and then it started to sail off again leaving an empty platform to continue on its way towards them. She looked at the flag the galleon was flying as it sailed off.

“Do you mean that a pirate’s galleon sailed up, impeded our vision of Pinkie and then sailed off leaving an empty platform to float up to us? Then yes that did just happen.” Said empty platform was now at the dock where Gyftrot just stared at it blankly. He and Toriel just stood there for a few minutes letting this sink in. “So Pinkie’s been captured, now what? We don’t exactly have a good means to give chase to her captors. That is provided her soul wasn’t immediately destroyed or stolen from her yet.”

“Sadly I know the creatures that have captured her, judging by the design on their flag. It’s got to be those crazy little bastards; it seems they are still thriving as they always were. Who knows what they’re going to do with Pinkie, though I know for a fact that killing her is probably not one of the things they’d do at least.” Sighing as she rubbed a hand over one of her horns she continued on. “Hopefully they’ll at least do us all a small favor and burn that costume.”

“One can only hope for that to happen.” Gyftrot agreed amiably while watching as the galleon sailed deeper into the Underworld swampland in the distance.

Author's Note

Yeah that doesn't look good at all.

15 - Tem Swamp Pirates

“Come on we have to find a boat or at least find someone to assist us in rescuing Pinkie Pie!” As Toriel ran forward, she couldn’t help but worry as to what the pirates could be doing with Pinkie Pie this very moment.

Toriel and Gyftrot came to a halt from their rush of continuing onwards while looking for some kind of boat to chase after Pinkie’s pony grabbers with, when a spear lanced into the ground before them in an artful explosion. Toriel’s ears were blown back by the force of the impact the spear caused and she shivered slightly at the sight of a crater before her.

From off to their left they could see the heavily armored figure of Undyne standing amongst the trees.

“Who are you two and what are you doing out here?” The armored Undyne questioned with a narrowed eye glowing beneath her helmet. “I’ve heard rumors that there are some monsters that have been assisting the fugitive soul I’m supposed to capture. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that… would you?”

Coming around from being knocked out, Pinkie Pie wouldn’t know this is the end result of spending that week long montage with Toriel. It wasn’t like this was a bad thing; at least her captors were rather productive with the extra week they were given to go stir crazy from being too normal. It was easy to guess that the captors were abnormal beyond belief or were at least trying to be.

Shaking her head Pinkie stood up and looked around, she was in a wooden room and things were swaying gently letting her know that she was likely on a boat. She looked to be deep in some kind of hold on a ship, tied up nearby was a familiar skeleton that noticed her waking up.

“Hey Pinkie, I know it hasn’t been long since I called you and all, I the great Papyrus kind of ran into trouble and was captured! Fear not, for I have a cunning plan to get us out of this!” The Perilous Predicament Papyrus was tied up at the moment by lots of rope around his battle body, given his peaceful nature he didn’t want to damage the rope and most likely he didn’t have an idea for how to get out of the room. “My plan is that you will think of a cunning plan Pinkie!”

“Can you tell me what’s going on or how you even ended up here first?” Oh that was a good question coming from Pinkie Pie; she was unlikely to get this information by just spacing out and staring into the air.

“Well I was just finished calling you and I wasn’t quite on my way home yet when I ran into a crazy little bastard, then more came and they swarmed me with their adorable natures and I was swiftly defeated by how cute they are!” This was The Overly Friendly Papyrus everybody, he’s trying to be a royal guard and we can all hope he’ll succeed some day with that kind heart of his. He’s better off being a royal guard for Toriel, but that’s just popular opinion among several royal guard dogs. “Besides that, they interrupted my plans for excessive spaghetti making! I was going to make a plate so pure that it would have been a taste sensation! Nyeh, I might have actually been awarded something for it!”

“How do you taste things anyway, you don’t have a tongue.” It finally occurred to Pinkie to ask this question now of all times? In the middle of being captured, let it not be said that Pinkie didn’t have her priorities straight.

“Oh, well, I’m a magical skeleton. I assumed you knew the answer to that, because I certainly don’t!” The Great Enigma Papayrus answered with a smile and a bit of uncertainty on his bony face. “Back on topic, we’ve been trapped in this room for the past few hours or at least I have been! You’ve been here for about a few minutes at best, nyeh heh heh!”

“So what are those crazy little er… creatures, I’m not comfortable saying that B word.” Well that was surprising considering Pinkie was okay with everything else so far, including talk of her natural inclinations for emotional and possibly future physical relationship.

“Well…” Papyrus started to say before he was interrupted by the only door to the room slamming open and in walked an adorable creature.

The creature was small; in comparison to the eight foot in height doorway. It was a little ridiculous that creatures like this would even build a ship with taller beings in mind. Anyway the creature was wearing a red and white striped shirt along with a red bandanna on its head where cat ears were sticking of the top of it. Below the cat ears was a set of floppy dog ears jutting out from the bandanna. The creature had a flat face with beady eyes, a small nose and a smiling cat shaped mouth. It also had a mop of well cared for raven hair spilling out from under its bandanna that covered its dog ears slightly. To put it quite frankly, this thing was adorable from the top of its cat ears to the tip of its round tail.

“Ho1, E’m F1R$7 Ma73 TemMiE!” The creature introduced itself with grammar so horrible, it caused a computer somewhere to catch fire and explode. The poor grammar checker on it didn’t want to deal with the incessant cutesy talk every single one of these guys did and this was just the first one we met to actually say anything. At this point we don’t want to deal with the Temmie language, so we’re just going to auto correct everything from the get go. “I swamp pirate, here to drop off this cuddly friend, we will cuddle you into submission and you will then feed us Temmie flakes! Then we let go only to capture again because we think you already have Stockholm syndrome and we love you too! By then the plan for belly rubs will be set off and finally profit!”

We’re not entirely sure if the auto correct is working correctly, but we’ll go with whatever a Temmie happened to be saying under its guidance as completely accurate. As in, let’s hope that the auto correction is not just trying to paraphrase the Temmies and their horrible grammar issues.

Kid was led into the room at gunpoint by two other similar creatures, he didn’t seem very eager to be shot by the pirate dog cats that wielded what appeared to be cork guns.

“Hi we’re Temmie! We go make big scary pink prisoner give up soul now or else force to walk plank, we save life of little pink creature from bigger horrible pink creature! It eating you, we no like four legs like us being eaten by bigger thingy!” The two creatures said in complete unison to Pinkie and Papyrus, these two were only wearing blue shirts and looked a lot like the first Temmie despite walking on their hind legs. They left the first Temmie in the room and closed the door behind them, while First Mate Temmie just stood there vibrating wildly in an adorable manner.

“Yo, hey pink creature, nice to see you again! Isn’t it just awesome that we’ve become captured by crazy little bastard pirates?” Kid had shocked Pinkie with her language.

“I’m sorry I haven’t formally introduced myself, I’m Pinkie Pie and… language mister!” Pinkie tried to sound angry about the kids use of the B word.

“What I didn’t hear anything that was untoward and my ears work supremely well despite me not having any!” At this rate The F-earless Papyrus, Kid and the Temmie might actually drive Pinkie to normalcy by being as crazy as she was supposed to be.

“Tem wants cuddly hugs!” First Mate Temmie leapt at Pinkie and the pony caught the little creature in her hooves, we are now currently acknowledging that Pinkie wasn’t tied up like Papyrus was. “Oh right, First Mate Temmie forgot, First Mate Temmie allergic.”

“Oh, what are you allergic too?” Even as she said this, Pinkie’s brain was overloaded by the adorable nature that was Temmie and she nuzzled and cuddled her. The pony instantly loved this soft feeling cuddle monster that was likely to cause her heart to explode from how adorable it was.

“Tem is allergic to Tem self!” As soon as First Mate Temmie finished saying that she broke out in hives. “Tem feel itchy now, oh no humans also allergic to Tem!”

“I’m a pony, my name’s Pinkie Pie and it’s nice to meet you First Mate Temmie!” After a moment of receiving a blank stare, Pinkie smiled and shrugged. With a thoughtless look on her face, First Mate Temmie just tilted her head to scratch at one of the rashes on her body with a paw while sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth. Pinkie Pie decided to ask her a question since she didn’t seem like she was going to be forthcoming or take in the realization that Pinkie was not a human. “Is there a cure for your hives?”

“First Mate Temmie knows cure, I sleep with you!” The cat dog creature named First Mate Temmie crawled up onto Pinkie’s back, twirled around three times and fell asleep. The hives quickly went away and First Mate Temmie purred in her sleep. “Soft and friendly, First Mate Temmie will love long time.”

“Uh, okay, I want an explanation to these Temmie things here?” Pinkie was trying to force her mind not to think about how cute and adorable they were, it was hard not to focus on that because they were so darn good at it.

“As you heard they are Temmie’s, which in the native monster tongue translates directly into ‘Crazy Little Bastards’! The only thing that can truly be said about them is that they are absolutely adorable and do a lot of crazy things, though no one is more adorable than I the powerful Papyrus! They also somehow manage achieve things that should be completely impossible even for them at times!” Wiggling from his seated tied up position on the floor, The Struggling Papyrus added. “Can you untie me; I don’t want to rip up these ropes they so graciously gifted my magnificence with!”

The door to the room opened again and there was what looked to be another First Mate Temmie who closed the door behind her.

“Hi I’m First Mate Temmie, I’m here to wake up First Mate Temmie and tell Tem self that hives all gone!” With that the Temmie crawled up onto Pinkie’s back and seemingly merged with the other First Mate Temmie who immediately woke up.

“Yay, First Mate Temmie all cured now, more cuddles!” Ignoring First Mate Temmie wrapping her rather stretchy legs around her neck, the pink pony completely ignored the cute strangeness and worked on untying Papyrus.

It wasn’t easy being an earth pony, since hooves were not entirely conducive to untying ropes.

“That was so totally weird wasn’t it Pinkie?” Having taken a position on a nearby barrel, Kid watched as the Temmie started batting at one of Pinkie’s pigtails with a paw. “It’s still so cool though!”

“Eh I’ve done some pretty weird things myself personally Kid.” Pinkie sighed and then groused out as she finished untying Papyrus. “I just happen to be incapable of most of it right now.”

“Thank you Pinkie, I will now stash this coil of spaghetti like rope away into my battle body!” After doing so, The Free Papyrus stood up and turned to Pinkie while striking what he thought was a heroic pose. “So how do we get out of here? If anyone can make it to the surface it would be you Pinkie, because I believe in you to be as grand as me in believing in others who will also believe in you!”

“Can’t you just break the door down with a bone attack?” It seemed like an obvious answer to Pinkie. “Oh and First Mate Temmie, we’re friends, your doomed with friendship now!”

“Goodie, I like have fur friend with you cuddly too! I’m going to sing the doom song now… doom, doom, dooming…” First Mate Temmie seemed to have readily accepted Pinkie’s offer of friendship or at least everyone thinks she has, hard to tell with the strange cutesy attitude.

“I can’t exactly use my bone attacks here; I have to actually be standing on solid ground to summon them and we’re on a boat.” Well that plan was shot down by The Plucky Papyrus.

“So I guess you’ll never make a good pirate then Pappy, I mean if you can’t do the whole skull and cross bones thing.” Pinkie’s comment was responded to by having Papyrus pull his own head off and two bones out of his body where he set them up on a small table nearby that was being lit up by the lantern that filled the room with light. The bones were crossed behind the skeletons head and they looked cool. “Oh that’s a neat trick! Still we have to destroy that door to escape!”

“Yo guys, maybe you should just look at the door. I mean it doesn’t even seem locked. Why do we even need to break it down?” Kid’s statement as to why their direction in destroying the door was horribly flawed was received with two flat stares, one from Pinkie and one from the skeleton reattaching his head. “I don’t even think the door has a lock on it.”

Pony, Skeleton and even First Mate Temmie all started shaking their head sadly at Kid; he just didn’t understand epic storytelling required them to do outrageously overly complicated things. Why the mundane quality of just opening the door and walking out, much less leaving the boat without a fight would ruin everything that went into an epic pirate ship escape scene.

“I the Great Papyrus have something important to tell you Kid! You have no idea what escaping from a pirate ship is all about, so leave things to the professionals for I am a great royal guard… in training.” The Professional Window Breaker Papyrus asked of his positively peppy pink pony pal with a bright skeleton grin. “Are you a professional Pinkie?”

“You know I’m a professional baker.” Pinkie said with an equally bright smile. “Beside everyone knows that when you’re captured by pirates, you have to do an overly elaborate escape from the pirate ship thing! Even the words in the air know and understand that completely.”

“First Mate Temmie best professional First Mate Temmie of Tem Swamp Pirates! We best swamp pirates ever, we even be pirates for whole day already! There still no timber shivering though, we work on it!” First Mate Temmie was proud to be a part of the best pirate group that has ever existed in the swamps and marshlands of the Underworld. It wasn’t all that hard, as they were the only swamp pirates in the Underworld period. “Tem think destroying things in escape is good idea, it gives jobs to repair Tems and help Tem economy.”

“Good enough for me! See, logic dictates that we can’t escape this ship without at least destroying one thing, it’s just not done!”The Destruction Prone Papyrus stopped and looked around. “Hey where are your other friends Pinkie?”

“I think they’re somewhere in the drier portions of the swamp, I hope they’re doing okay. I’m sure we’ll find one another soon enough.” Determination filled Pinkie Pie to rescue that horrific Pinkie Pie suit and escape the ship. “Now let’s figure out how to bust this door down so we can go rescue my suit that everyone seems to hate! Besides, by now I know it for a fact that monsters have an absurd complexity addiction, so we need to come up with the most convoluted idea possible to make sure this door suffers a horrible fate!”

“Tem agree, want help figure out how to explode door too!” First Mate Temmie was completely on board with the captive’s bizarre and entirely needless plot point to destroy a door. She was fishing for belly rubs and they didn’t even notice it yet, victory would soon be Tem!

“Am I the only Monster in the Underworld that is lacking a complexity addiction?” At this point Kid figured if he couldn’t beat them with words, then he may as well join them in the door destruction derby.

“Yes.” Three voices answered in unison as they set about scouring the room looking for a ridiculous manner in which they could remove the door to escape being held captive, even though the door wasn’t locked and the Temmies obviously weren’t actually going to do anything bad to them at all.

Spears struck the ground around Toriel as she ran forward and dove straight into the tall grass while breathing heavily. She had to catch her breath; Gyftrot was already cowering in the grass. She quickly quieted her breathing down as she heard the heavy thuds of the armored magical spear chucker thundering towards their hiding spot in the grass.

The looming figure of the heavily armored warrior stalked through the tall grass and was looking about for the ones she was just chasing judging by the movements of her helmet. Undyne was on the prowl and saw movement in the tall grass.

“Ah hah, got you!” Undyne, quick as a viper, lashed out grabbed the being in her right gauntleted hand and lifted a monster triumphantly into the air.

Toriel and Gyftrot stared at the being now being held up by Undyne in horror; they both stood up and ran screaming not caring if they got a spear in back as they were suddenly highly motivated to keep running.

The seemingly powerful armored warrior just stared after them in confusion and then took in what she was holding at the moment. A slow comprehension of horror began to dawn on what was being held in her grasp.

“You suck at catching you’re quarries and talking about your true feelings.” The Jerry snorted noisily in a horrifically annoying manner. It suddenly found itself being thrown as hard as possible towards the nearest pack of Underworld swamp alligators as the captain of the royal guard ran away screaming like a little girl.

Undyne would definitely deny screaming like that later. There was only one thing as undying as Undyne and that was The Jerry.

They had run past a table, one that was knocked over in their haste, a mouse hole and a echo flower, they heard a squeak of joy after hearing something shatter against the ground. They weren’t about to stop and look with The Jerry nearby.

They even ran past Sans standing in front of a telescope who gained a worried look as they had passed by without Pinkie Pie. They also ignore the recurring dimensional box of storing, a doorway to the nice cream seller Blue Bunny and an onion monster before they stopped.

“I can’t believe it’s followed us this far!” Gyftrot whimpered at Toriel with tears in his eyes, he thought the nightmare would have ended. The goat lady brought the distraught male deer monster into a warm comforting hug while whispering words of peace and tranquility.

“I know, I’m horrified that it’s managed to follow us too. I feel your pain.” Having studied the current royal guard captain as they were under attack, Toriel was glad that Undyne never thought to use a pull field on her soul. Monsters usually didn’t use the soul pulling fields on each other because they couldn’t. One thing was for sure; Undyne was pretty powerful and had quite a lot of offensive capability. “Calm down my little monster, it’ll be okay. We have to keep moving, because I too now sorely need a hug, mostly from Pinkie.”

“Hey look, there’s the ship… it seems they’ve dropped anchor!” Pointing his hoof to the anchored ship a short distance away beached on the marsh, it seemed to Gyftrot that catching up wasn’t going to be much of an issue now.

“Either that or they crashed by accident or on purpose, hard to tell with them. They always tend to do something to inconvenience themselves, that’s just like the Crazy Little Bastards. If only humans weren’t horribly allergic… wait, is there a possibility that Pinkie could be allergic to them?” The goat lady formerly known as Toriel left behind a dust cloud in the shape of herself, she was running faster than Gyftrot had ever seen her move.

The deer monster just watched as the goat leapt majestically across parts of the marsh along the way. Gyftrot shook his head and started running after Toriel at a more lenient pace than the break your neck on a rock speed Toriel was going at, he had to use the bridges.

“Where’s the fire Gyft, trouble seems like a hot item around Tori and Pink.” Sans had popped in front of Gyftrot to see what was going on, he wanted to play a prank on Pinkie and the answer to his question was a pointing hoof. He turned to see a beached galleon and a familiar white furred figure with horns climbing up the anchor. “Huh, would you look at that. The crazy little guys must be at it again, I wonder what they did to get Tori so panicked.”

“Do you know how Pinkie would react to being touched by a Temmie?” By the time he had finished his sentence Gyftrot was left standing alone. He sighed and galloped for the beached galleon.

The situation was not going well in the hold of the ship; Pinkie didn’t know how things just kept getting worse. At the start of this they had just a plain old normal simple wooden door. Now they had a steel door that required a vocal password, two keys, a keycard, a specific whistle only skeletons could hear and a flute that required that the user doesn’t have any skills in playing it whatsoever and this was what was required to open the door now.

“How did we even manage to make it this hard to get through the door?” Pinkie turned to her three partners in crime when it came to making the door more convoluted to get through, instead of actually making a convoluted plan to break the door down.

“Tem no knows, but we achieve! Give belly rubs now?” First Mate Temmie had been hinting at belly rubs with the subtlety of a brick hitting you in the face that you saw coming since you knew the guy who threw it at you.

“Yes, we have made quite a difficult puzzle indeed! Why the complexity of it boggles the mind as to how we even turned wood into steel to begin with! It is an impressive feat of incredibleness, which means no one could possibly…” The Unfinished Statement Papyrus didn’t finish what he was about to say as the door shattered into tiny metal bits leaving an angry Toriel was standing on the other side of the now destroyed door. “Success, we have achieved our rather convoluted goal in making sure the door gets destroyed!”

“See I told you it would work Kid and you doubted us! Now we have to hold an epic escape while fighting off various vicious pirates!” Instead of various vicious pirates like a smiling Pinkie expected, she was swept up into a big grand hug by Toriel. Also there was a bunch of Temmie’s meandering about seeming to not care that the door was destroyed or that the ship had even been boarded by an angry motherly goat lady who liked a pink pony.

“Are you okay Pinkie, are you feeling sick, are you feverish, did you have horrible reaction to any of the Crazy Little Bastards?” Toriel’s affectionate petting and cuddling, that was entirely filled with worry, just made the pony snuggle her head into one of the goat lady’s soft floppy ears.

“I’m fine Tori, but we have to be quick to save my Pinkie Pie suit! They’re going to take its soul or make it walk the plank!” Pinkie ran through the destroyed doorway and stopped and came back when she noticed Toriel just stood there with her arms crossed.

“Pinkie, we’re not going to rescue you’re costume and there’s nothing you can say that will get me to do so.” Or at least that was what Toriel thought until Pinkie hopped up to her and into her arms to whisper into her ear while tickling it with her tongue. “Quick, we have to go save Pinkie’s suit from the dreaded Temmie Swamp Pirates!”

“Yay, we fight with Tem Swamp Pirates… oh wait, I Tem Swamp Pirate… head hurt. I Tem Swamp Pirate, but want to help friend who is to fight with Tem Swamp Pirates?” Yep, First Mate Temmie just realized that she had a conflict of interest and a quandary on her paws. “I know what do; I fight self then become normal First Mate Temmie and then earn belly rubs! Plan proof of fool, mother be proud college education pay off!”

First Mate Temmie started the fight with First Mate Temmie by punching herself with her right paw and then her left paw tried to hold off the right and after that the fight got intense. What followed was the utter destruction of the room that was swiftly evacuated by Kid, The Shocked Papyrus, Pinkie and Toriel. They all stood there outside the recently destroyed door watching as First Mate Temmie beat the crap out of herself.

“Tem bets on First Mate Temmie to win!” A Temmie said walking up to them on all fours wearing a blue sweater.

“Tem takes that bet! First Mate Temmie is definitely going to win! No way will First Mate Temmie lose to First Mate Temmie!” Another Temmie said with legs that were five feet long. After that a bunch of Temmies started gathering and betting on whether or not First Mate Temmie would win in a fight against herself.

Toriel crossed her arms and huffed audibly while tapping her left foot on the ground, they were as crazy as she remembered them being. She was even witness to First Mate Temmie tossing a barrel up into the air with her right paw only for her left paw to force her into the path of the barrel which smashed apart as it came down on the Temmie’s head. Shaking her head, the goat lady was always a bit saddened by how insane the Crazy Little Bastards could be.

“Yay, First Mate Temmie won fight, I get lots of Temmie flakes for Tem friends!” One among the many look alike Temmie’s cheered, the only difference between any of them was their choice of clothing. It appeared that the fight concluded with a battered and bruised First Mate Temmie exiting the room.

“Okay done beating First Mate Temmie up, we go epic escape time now?” First Mate Temmie had bloodied herself in a rather comically painful way, but she still looked adorable despite the swelling bruises.

“Are you okay?” Pinkie asked a little worriedly, it’s not every day one of your friends just goes and beats themselves up. Though First Mate Temmie was a relatively new friend, Pinkie cared about her health the same as she would any other friend.

“Tem fine, after escape Tem get big nap in and then belly rubs!” First Mate Temmie didn’t seem like she was ever going to leave her new pink friend alone until she got what she wanted.

“Well Temmie’s aren’t particularly aggressive so how do you expect to rile them up for an epic escape Pinkie? Also don’t forget you want to save your Pinkie Pie suit, for whatever reason I cannot even begin to comprehend.” Why Toriel was now interested in saving Pinkie Pie’s suit probably wouldn’t come up until later, whatever Pinkie said to get her motivated in rescuing it was definitely on the goats mind though.

“Well we’re going to need some awesome music to play as soon as I’m done saying this statement. First Mate Temmie I will give you belly rubs, however none of us are going to give any other Temmie here a belly rub!” Suddenly there was a subtle change in the goofy air; the mood changed into something darker. Pinkie slowly backed down the corridor with her friends as the mass of Temmies that had been watching First Mate Temmie beat herself up all leaned their heads downwards to cover their eyes with their hair. “Yeah, I think that did it.”

“Did what?” Sans the slippers wearing skeleton asked as he approached, Pinkie looked particularly okay and didn’t seem to be having any allergic reaction to the Temmie sitting on her back.

“Well Sans, Pinkie just stated that none of us would be giving any other Temmies belly rubs aside from that one that just crawled onto her back.” There was a long pause after The Tense Papyrus said that and Sans slowly took in all the shivering Temmies.

“Quarter circle back kick!” Sans yelled with a panicked look on his face and he disappeared in a vibrant flash of energy.

“Temmie no get belly rubs, then Temmie force belly rubs! We work hard to be cute, Tem deserve the rubbing and cuddles!” All the Temmies looked up with red colored eyes and they all pulled out stiff baguettes and cork guns.

“Pinkie… you’re going to get your epic pirate ship escape. I think you just might have killed a few of us in the process, but you’re going to get it.” Kid was the one closest to the stairs leading up to the next floor and he turned and started running.

“Um, can we talk about this?” Pinkie’s ears fell backwards as she backed away, the sharpened stiff baguettes were quite threatening as were the cork guns that had knocked her out previously. She may now be considering the fact that she might have overdone it just a bit. “Hey you up there, prepare the epic escape music!”

“Pinkie… we should run now…” Toriel stated quite clearly through her clenched teeth before turning about face and running for the stairs after Kid as the yowling mad Temmies starting to move forward.

“I’m with her on this, time to get moving!” The Scared Papyrus was also running now.

“Tem Swamp Pirates cutely attack and get belly rubs!” A Temmie yelled, thus the chase was on.

Gytrot heard loud noises of cork guns firing from within the ship and sat down to wait outside, it wasn’t moments later that Blue Bunny came on by and stopped to set up shop outside the ship.

“So…” Blue Bunny asked as he pulled out a packet of nice cream. “Want to buy some nice cream?”

“Sure.” Gyftrot pulled out some money and paid for a nice cream, he started eating as he waited for his friends to get off the pirate ship.

“What’s going on? It sounds like something dangerous is going on in there.” Blue Bunny looked up at the ship and saw that all the visible Temmies on deck seemed rather agitated about something.

“Yep, but I’m not going in there after my friends. It sounds like they just did something to make all the Temmies mad.” Gyftrot was welcoming the company of the nice cream salesman, he wasn’t bored nor was he being swarmed by angry cat dogs.

“I heard that was really hard to do, I also heard that they don’t like muscles or flexing because it’s not cute. So I guess they in general dislike things that aren’t cute, they probably love skeletons though.” As he finished speaking Blue Bunny recognized that he had a new customer.

“That they do, I’d like a nice cream please.” Sans got a nice treat for himself as he watched the boat, his poor friends were about to die in avalanche of cute. He was sure his brother could probably survive it, maybe. There were just some things he wouldn’t try to dunk and an angry horde of cuddle happy Crazy Little Bastards was one of them.

“Hi can Tem get some nice cream, we have Tem cash for it! Tem swim hours in tepid bog, very icky!” Quite a few Temmies had crawled out from under the boat and came up to the nice cream salesman. “Now we Tem snack time, want delicious treats!”

The ship didn’t have sails, but it did have rigging strangely enough. It needed some form of propulsion, so the particularly large galleon used doggy paddling Temmies for propulsion and could also be moved across land on their tiny backs working together. Not only did it somehow work, it sounded like a ridiculously cute thing to do since it shouldn’t have worked at all. These were the ship moving Temmies and had nothing to do with the plot going on inside the ship.

“Well of course.” Blue Bunny said with a smile, today was a good day for him and his highly mobile nice cream selling business.

Author's Note

There are bound to be a few issues this chapter, I'll try to make up for it with the next chapter.

Also there is nothing we can do for the computer that exploded sadly.

16 - Tem-sanity

The minute Pinkie started running was when the corks started flying. They weren’t as fast as bullets, but they were sure to hurt anything they hit. As soon as our favorite pink hero made it up the stairs with a horde of Temmies charging up her flank she came to a hallway with six doors, three on the left and three on the right.

“Tori, why did you stop?” Pinkie asked as she galloped up to the goat lady. “At least the music is a pirate theme, but not quite the escape music I envisioned.”

“Because the layout of the ship has changed, this happens all the time with the Crazy Little Bastards when they build things. I wouldn’t put it past them to have made the ship bigger on the inside the minute somebody angered them. We’re stuck in a maze now with adorable monsters hungry for belly rubs.” Toriel saw the Temmies coming at them and ducked a cork that followed a loud popping sound. “Also they likely don’t run out of ammo. You know, since they are so ignorant of the fact that they need to reload that they don’t even have to.”

At this point Papyrus and Kid were nowhere in sight, Toriel had been waiting on the pony at the start of the hallway and First Mate Temmie refused to be dislodged from Pinkie’s back. Looking a t the six doors Pinkie had a light bulb go off above her head; she had to quickly pull the chain to turn it off. She didn’t want the Temmies to figure out her bright idea or get any themselves.

“Yes, I get it. They are good at achievements in ignorance, but then so am I. Now follow me Tori, I know how to use this to my advantage!” Pinkie ran to the middle door on the right and entered into a bed room with an adjoining bathroom, she closed the door as soon as Toriel entered.

The angry mob of Temmies, who were only motivated by the lack of belly rubs, all got to the door and opened it to see a brick wall. They looked rather perplexed while Pinkie and Toriel popped out of the first door on the left and ran for the third door on the same side which was swiftly shut behind them.

The leader of the angry Temmie brigade closed the door and ran to the third door on the left followed by all the other Temmies. When the Temmie opened it, there was another Temmie who screamed and covered herself with a shower curtain. There was a Temmie taking a shower behind this door.

“Tem sorry, but did tem see belly rub denier!” The lead Temmie asked of the Temmie who suddenly dropped the shower curtain to reveal that she was wearing clothes and she quickly joined the other Temmies in their anger at being denied. Belly rubs were serious business for Temmies.

Behind the pack of Temmies, Pinkie and Toriel opened the second door on the left and came out of it on the ceiling; the goat lady was confused as she looked up at the mob of Temmies on the floor. The pony just moved towards the first door on the right while ignoring the fact that she was currently upside down.

“Can you open the door for me? I can’t reach the handle with my hooves Tori.” Pinkie got an eye roll from Toriel. The goat lady had to reach down to the door to open it and they both quickly jumped through the doorway.

All the Temmies that were denied a belly rubs for their cuteness had seen them jump into the door and ran through the first door on the right before it closed.

The first door on the left and the third door on the right opened at the same time and two Toriel’s and two Pinkie’s came out of the doors. The odd thing was that the Toriel and Pinkie that came out of the third door on the right were slightly different. Other Pinkie actually had curly hair and an inverse colored cutie mark on her flank, Pinkie was a bit jealous that Other Pie still had her cutie mark and the hairstyle was cute for more controlled loose curls. The other Toriel was wearing a blue robe and had black fur.

“Uh, Pinkie…” The white furred Toriel looked slightly confused to see a strange looking pair that almost looked exactly like them. The black Toriel also looked confused and strangely aroused by the white furred Toriel, judging by the looks in her eyes that went to a half lidded gaze with an attractive smile.

“Don’t you even think about it Lei! Also don’t you dare think about this too hard either Tori!” Other Pinkie said loudly as she and forced her raven colored Toriel past them towards the first door on the left.

“Who’s thinking? I’m just looking; there’s nothing wrong with appreciating a fine looking doe like her. Do you think I should dye my fur white? I think it looks good on me.” The dark furred Toriel turned her head and licked her lips slightly as she stared after the pigtailed Pinkie’s posterior before she was forced through the door by Other Pinkie.

“What she said Tori!” The Pinkie with the pigtails intoned as she dragged her Toriel by the hand into the third door on the right where their doppelgangers had come from.

Both doors shut at the same time as the Temmies burst out of the second door on the right which now no longer had a brick wall behind it and ran through the second door on the left. As the second door on the left closed Pinkie and Toriel came out of the first door on the right, only both of them were wearing wedding dresses now.

“What the… Pinkie, I don’t know what the hell is going on anymore! Oh wait, I’m sorry, I mean I don’t know what the ‘heck’ is going on anymore!” Toriel was about to ask why she was wearing a wedding dress and she looked to Pinkie and a blush dusted her cheeks slightly, Pinkie’s dress looked quite fetching on her.

“Hm… the wedding theme now… that means we need to go back into the door we just came out of!” Pinkie shoved a now thoroughly confused Toriel back through the door they just popped out of and seconds later the chasing pack of Temmies ran out the same door that was still open.

The Temmies looked about for Pinkie and Toriel only for Pinkie to pop out of the first door on the right to slam it shut. The Temmies ran to the door, opened it and went in it just as two Toriel’s came out of the second door on the left.

“What the, what did you do with Pinkie!” One Toriel yelled at her exact duplicate that was also wearing a red robe and looked the same except for the bright blue heart shaped eyes.

“Wow… so this is what it feels like to be you Tori. I feel like a goat mommy now, I want to take care of everyone and becoming a teacher all the sudden.” Pinkiel, the Toriel that had Pinkie’s voice was checking her white furred hands by wiggling her fingers. “Right, we need the third door on the left then!”

Goat Pinkie took two steps and fell flat on her face; she wasn’t exactly the master of walking with a humanoid body. Toriel deciding to heed the Pinkie voiced version of her, she dragged Pinkiel through the third door on the left.

All was quiet in the six door hallway and the third door on the left opened and out walked First Mate Temmie rubbing a towel against her wet hair, she tossed the towel back through the doorway before she closed it. After looking around a bit she tied her bandanna back to her head.

“Where did tem friends go? Tem still want belly rubs and victory!” First Mate Temmie sat in the middle of the hall frowning. “Why is no victory for Tem?”

Out of the third door on the right walked two odd looking Temmies. What was odd about these Temmies was that one was an adorable bright pink furred Temmie with her hair up in pigtails and the other was a white haired Temmie with cute little horns poking out of the top of her goat faced head.

“Please tem me we didn’t just turn into Temmies, also why is my urge to be absolutely ridiculous and overly cute in an annoying manner rising?” Poor Temmiel looked to be slightly freaked out that she was now a Crazy Little Bastard; Pink Temmie Pie shrugged and stretched her legs out to grab both Toriel and First Mate Temmie before dragging them to the second door on the right.

“Don’t worry about it Temmiel, we’ll be back to normal and then we’ll go to the door at the end of the hall after this one.” Promised the cutesy sounding adorable pink Temmie as she opened the door and entered it with her two companions in tow.

Within seconds a normalized Pinkie with First Mate Temmie on her back and a regular Toriel came up to the hall with the six doors.

“How did we… but we went into the door and… we are now are back at the start of the hallway?” Toriel’s right eye started twitching fiercely as Pinkie ran down the hallway; she had no other choice but to follow the pink pony before she got lost.

They entered the door at the end of the hallway to enter into a fancy looking ballroom where there were Temmies everywhere that were wearing top hats and colorful dresses; they were also wielding baguette blades and cork guns. A Temmie was sitting at the piano waving a feather at the keys for some reason. All the Temmies started to slowly turn towards Toriel and Pinkie; they all raised their weapons angrily as they heard that there were beings on the ship denying them the right to have belly rubs.

“Before you ask Pinkie, Temmies reproduce like whiptail lizards and are ninety to ninety five percent female in gender ratios. Also yes I think the top hats are cute even if they are wearing dresses that obviously clash with them.” Having finished making a statement about how Temmies tended to dress oddly at times. Toriel heard a scream and Papyrus, while on fire, ran out of a door on their left that looked to lead to the galley.

The flaming skeleton ran around in circles screaming wildly while holding a plate of spaghetti out of the flames he seemed to be covered in, he entering a door on the opposite side of the room from the one he entered through. The distraction allowed Pinkie and Toriel to turn over a table before the upper crust Temmie pirates could shoot them with corks which started bouncing harmlessly off the overturned table.

“Yo guys, this place is crazy awesome, I didn’t see any of this stuff on the way in. Have you seen the Jacuzzi on the ceiling room or the swimming pool of warm spa mud?” The three beings behind the table jumped at hearing Kid’s voice, they turned to see the two legged lizard smiling at them. “Oh and Mr. Papyrus is on fire because a Temmie threw gunpowder in the pot of spaghetti after he made himself a plate, I don’t exactly know how that works.”

“What part of Crazy Little Bastards do people not understand about Temmies?” Toriel sighed blithely before cringing as a Temmie leapt onto the edge of the table and swung a baguette blade at her, only it didn’t hit her because three fourths of the blade was missing.

“Hey what happened to the rest of your baguette blade?” Pinkie wondered as the Temmie who just tried to attack Toriel with a piece of bread had missed pretty badly and seemed to be losing her balance.

“Tem got hungry…” The suddenly balanced bashful Temmie smiled cutely before she was smacked in the back of the head by a cork and knocked out cold, she fell limply between Toriel and Pinkie with a large bump on her head.

Pinkie narrowed her eyes and got a shifty look in them before she picked up the small chunk of bread the Temmie dropped and started eating it.

“Tem think all tem swamp pirates are angry at you.” First Mate Temmie was quite slow on the uptake as she was only now picking up the fact that the other Temmies were angry. She was promised Temmie tummy rubbing and she didn’t see what the problem was, so it was somewhat understandable that she missed this or the point in general.

The door that Pinkie and Toriel came through slammed open and the Temmies that had been chasing them had finally caught up. Our heroes were trapped in a pincer.

“Tem force you to rub bellies now!” The lead Temmie said while threateningly pointing a baguette at the four of them.

“Quick we ran through that door over there! You better catch us before we get away without rubbing your bellies!” Pinkie pointed to the door that led to the galley.

“Pinkie, I know Temmies are silly and cute to some rather interesting extremes, but there is no way that they are that…” All the Temmies charged past Toriel, Pinkie, Kid and FM Temmie as they ran into the galley, the goat lady just sat there for a moment staring blankly. Even the Temmies that had been previously attacking them ran through the door to the galley. She now had an utter look of disbelief on her face which, she slowly brought a hand up to her head where she felt a migraine was forming. “Stupid.”

“Come on, while they’re busy with possibly putting out a fire, I think I know the way to go.” Standing up from crouching down, Kid darted for the door on the opposite side of the room only to fall flat on his face. Despite this he kept on smiling as he pulled himself back into a standing position and stopped at the door.

“If there is one thing I certainly know all about Tori, it’s doing something really dumb to look cute.” Yep because Pinkie Pie of Ponyville was practically an expert at it. “I don’t know whether or not that’s a compliment Airy, but I’ll think the best of you anyway.”

Opening the door and looking into the next room there were staircases and doorways leading every which way imaginable. It kind of boggled the mind at how this room was designed.

“Wow, this room looks like it was designed by that famous mare that did that one really famous piece of art, I believe her name was M. C. Sketcher.” Looking about the room as she moved onwards, Pinkie moved down the stairs and through a doorway. She came out on a wall to Toriel’s right and continued walking until she appeared out of a doorway on the opposite wall. She eventually ended up at the door on the far side of the room. “It seems pretty straightforward, kind of a letdown considering how cool this room looks.”

“Hopefully all the rooms from now on can be just as straightforward, lest we forget that we need to get your Pinkie Pie suit back and get off this boat before we all lose our sanity.” Toriel was already halfway to losing hers at the moment. She soon had a large sweat drop sliding down her face as she went to look back through the door to see the temmies clogging the galleys door in the ballroom. She turned around and saw Kid had already gotten to the other side of the room and she set off herself.

They were just one staircase away from being on deck considering they were below the cargo access of the galleon, though knowing the Temmies three of the four moving together wouldn’t put it past them to be prepared for the escaped trio. First Mate Temmie continued to be oblivious and snuggled into Pinkie’s back regardless of what was going on.

Moving through the nearest door, they came to a room full of rubber ducks. They slowly made their way through the room.

“Be careful guys, these things are dangerous.” If Pinkie was the one telling everyone that the rubber ducks were dangerous, then she obviously had a reason for it due to prior experience.

“Pinkie they’re rubber bath toys.” Even though she was skeptical, Toriel still kept her distance from all the rubber ducks which seemed to be watching them.

“Tem ducks of doom and rubbery endless quacking.” Even First Mate Temmie looked weary and that was setting off alarms in Kid, Pinkie and Toriel.

“Yeah, but you haven’t heard of the ones Daring Do ended up facing in some adventure books I’ve read Tori. Also they’re all looking at us.” It was true all the rubber ducks were staring at Pinkie and them as they slowly progressed through the room.

The group of four didn’t make too much noise the entire time until Toriel opened the door which caused a loud creaking screech noise. All the rubber ducks started bouncing for them and quacking wildly. They swiftly went through the door and closed it behind them only to see a Temmie in a fancy bellhop uniform behind them and no other way out of the room other than the door they just came through.

“What tem floor be wanting to go?” The bellhop asked nicely.

“Uh, how about top floor my good Temmie?” Taking charge of the situation Toriel figured there was no other way to go, but up.

“Okay Tem take to top floor, top floor is tem deck and captain’s cabin!” Stretching one of its legs the Bellhop Temmie poked the button numbered forty two on the ceiling, it was between the buttons labeled ‘six sixty six’ and ‘cloud nine’.

The elevator music started playing while they felt the elevator starting up, it was some rather funky music and Pinkie started shaking her hips and bouncing slightly on her hooves. As they all felt the weight of the elevator going slowly up and then they all slammed into the wall as they felt it suddenly going sideways.

The entire elevator seemed to flip upside down at some point leaving only First Mate Temmie and Bellhop Temmie standing on the floor. The elevator eventually reoriented itself causing Kid, Toriel and Pinkie to slam face first into the floor. Then the Elevator started spinning causing the three affected by the crazy elevator shenanigans to float into the air bit before landing on upright on their feet.

This was followed by the elevator performing a crazy upwards zigzag motion making them feel somewhat sick. When they all felt the elevator move in the direction of the door they entered at an insane speed, it caused them to slide to the back wall. The pressure started placing itself heavily on the three being affected by the elevator and then suddenly the elevator stopped causing three of its occupants to slam face first into the door.

“Tem at top floor now, tem have a nice day!” As the Bellhop Temmie finished saying this, the door opened and the three smeared up against it fel through with painful moans, she held out her hat towards them.

“Here, tem deserves a Temmie flake for doing a good job.” First Mate Temmie pulled out a Temmie Brand Temmie Flake and the Bellhop smiled as she placed her hat back on one Temmie Flake richer.

“Remind me to never get in an elevator with a Temmie ever again Tori.” Pinkie slowly peeled herself off the wood floor outside the elevator to see a sign point to the left and right. To the left was the sign ‘to deck for Temmies and beings with Stockholm syndrome’; to the right was ‘Captain’s Casino Cabin’.

“Oh don’t worry Pinkie; I never plan to ever be near an elevator if there is even one Temmie within a mile of it.” Toriel picked up Kid and they went to the stairs on the left and opened the door at the top of the stairs and walked out to see a lot of Temmie Swamp Pirates. They were lining the rails of the ship with cork guns, there were at least fifty of them were wielding baguettes and standing near the door facing it. It looked like every Temmie on the ship was here, the Lead Temmie of the angry belly rub brigade, the fancily dressed Temmies from the ballroom and the only mentioned once Second Mate Temmie.

A noise was heard and the clacking of boots closed in on the four standing at the door, what approached was an adorable looking Temmie with an air of authority as all the other Temmie’s looked to her. Yes, the air appreciated the adorable Temmie, since she was a badass adorable monster.

“I be Captain Temmantha of Tem Swamp Pirates!” It was a blonde Temmie with a cocked hat, boots and a purple sweater, on her shoulder was a really small Temmie poorly disguised as a brown parrot. “Now tell us something tem really want to know, how do you make big ugly pink thing walk plank? Been poking with bread for thirty minutes and tem not move much.”

Pinkie Pie’s Pinkie Pie suit sat there at the start of the plank to walk off of and there was a Temmie idly poking it with a bread sword.

“Yo can I know something first, how did all of you get here before we did?” It did seem kind of odd that they’d be here first; also Kid wondered where his friend Papyrus got off to. Kid liked Papyrus because he trained with Undyne; he was a really nice skeleton man.

“Tem didn’t know how you could have gotten here behind us if tem used shortcut from the galley, maybe tem have Stockholm syndrome and dragging feet on purpose to stay with Temmies longer?” The Temmie angry at being denied belly rubs answered. “If tem wanted guest room, tem could have just asked. We will be having those belly rubs now!”

“What tem said, give us rubs or else tem will have to be crazier and cuddlier for you!” Temmantha pulled out a blackened baguette and pointed the tip of it threateningly at Pinkie Pie and her friends.

“I just have to say to that… never!” Pinkie shouted with a thrust of her hoof into the air for emphasis. She then charged for her suit and hopped into it. She swiftly shut the mouth of the suit as she ran into the middle of all the Temmies.

What followed was a bunch of Temmies getting knocked around by corks in the cross fire, but the corks just bounced off of Pinkie’s suit. Toriel meanwhile had ducked back into the doorway watching as Pinkie ran out into the open and now there were corks flying everywhere. There was even one cross eyed Temmie holding a cork gun backwards and shot itself in the face knocking itself out, the really sad thing about this was the fact that that was the best gunner on the ship and the absolute best that they had ever had. The cross eyed Temmie had never accidentally shot another Temmie yet and she was in fact the one responsible for Pinkie’s capture.

“First Mate Temmie, bread me and no I don’t mean breed with me!” Pinkie received a baguette to the teeth horizontally; thankfully she didn’t choke on it and swiftly pulled it out of her mouth to turn to face Captain Temmantha with it. “As per rules, we duel you until one of us is half baked!”

“Tem agrees giant ugly pink creature that swallowed the little pink creature again, action packed escape sequence nothing without the captain dueling something!” At least Temmantha seemed friendly about it as she held her blackened bread out towards Pinkie while raising a paw above her head in a fencer’s position. “Butter me bread, because this tem will soon have you rubbing her head!”

Thus the battle music would start and then bread would slap against bread, chaos would reign and odd things will happen. Things went as you might expect them to.

“Oh that music is neat, uh oh.” Pinkie held her bread with two hooves in a claymore style, she stopped to listen to the music as it started and Temmantha darted forward to take advantage of her lapse of attention. She was extremely fast for a cute kitten puppy.

Deflecting the blow Pinkie focused on her opponent who dodged her counterattack and swung with the ferocity of a cat and the strength of a dog.

Several Temmies got it into their crazy little heads to help the captain and charged Pinkie’s back as she forced Temmantha back with a strong blow, they never did lay down the ground rules for this fight.

Before the three Temmies charging Pinkie’s back could get too close to interfere, two small barrels shattered against their bodies. Toriel was picking up a third barrel and she chucked it at a cork gun wielding Temmie knocking it off the ship. That Temmie would go on to have nice cream and take a break, because epic fights really hurt.

“I am still on fire here!” The Flammable Papyrus randomly appeared out of nowhere screaming, he was still on fire and running around with his plate of spaghetti that was still untouched outside the flames.

Pinkie duck a jab and swatted Temmantha across the face with her baguette and a little bruise mark appeared on her face. Temmantha dropped her baguette and slapped Pinkie across the face with a big flounder knocking her onto her back.

“Okay now, that fish slap really stung!” Pinkie quickly rolled to her hooves and just missed getting stabbed by the black baguette Temmantha was wielding as she sunk it into the deck.

“Good, then tem knows how tem feels!” Then Temmantha took a baguette to the chest with a baseball swing from Pinkie, it knocked the air out of her lungs.

Running for the mast the pink pony started climbing the rigging with her baguette in her mouth and Temmantha did the same seconds later chasing down her opponent.

Kid ran around tail slapping Temmies and had ducked every single cork that was shot at him. He wasn’t much of a fighter, but his armless profile was perfect for dodging corks by falling flat on his face in the moments that he sorely needed to. In the background Papyrus continued to run around with his plate of spaghetti trying to prevent it from catching fire.

Toriel was on the back end of the ship near the steering wheel and she was trying her best to not harm the Temmies too much, they seemed to be harming themselves enough without her help. A Temmie beating itself unconscious with a baguette would be a testament to how silly the fight had gotten, it would still cause her giggles later to think of it when she wasn’t fighting them off by lightly kicking them.

Every time Toriel’s foot connected with a Temmie they just had to make the most adorable squeaking noise in existence, it actually made the goat lady feel bad about hurting them, especially since Pinkie started all this in the first place. Her pony just couldn’t leave without causing a hilariously bad mess.

On the large yardarm, Pinkie and Captain Temmantha clashed their bread blades against one another slowly pushing themselves back and forth across it with excellent balance. They leapt over each other’s bread, they sliced their bread fiercely and they were trying to make toast of the other.

“So then you stick it in the toaster with the settings you want, then it’ll appear in the shape of the face you etched into it.” It was at this point that Pinkie ceased being attack by the Temmantha.

“Tem now know and understand fundamental art of making toast pictures!” In her distraction Temmantha got walloped on the head and she lost her balance and fell feet first towards the deck below. A foot before she hit the deck she stop in mid air and her body rotated ninety degrees and then she fell the rest of the distance to land on her side. Being part dog, Temmies always landed on their sides with no exception. “Temmantha is having boo boos, but tem is still willing to fight for I tem strongest swamp pirate captain of swamp!”

The fight raged on and you’d think having Pinkie, Kid and Toriel entirely outnumbered at least ten to one would put things in the Temmies favor, but it didn’t since the Temmies spent a lot of the fight taking each other out.

The Flaming Hot Papyrus continued to run around while on fire. He tripped over a Temmies and accidentally stepping on some of them, which apologized for profusely. All throughout this he kept his perfect plate of spaghetti safe and clean, even with corks whizzing through the air, breads flailing haphazardly at anything and everything within range and the dangers of his own fire lit body burning his perfect plate of food.

Having returned to the deck, Pinkie was taking on three bread loaf wielders and had at some point left her Pinkie Pie Suit next to the railing as it was inhibiting her movements. Sure the ugly suit gave a lot of added protection, but the pink pony preferred to be mobile as she swatted Temmies upside the head with the ever shrinking baguette that had broken at least four times on her opponents.

Throughout all this First Mate Temmie just continued to stand at the door vibrating blankly and her face was slowly floating away thanks to her inaction. She moved forward a few steps to stand in front a staircase that had a sign that said ‘Temmie Cosmetics Room’ and her face quickly reattached itself to her body. She wasn’t being much help to anyone as she didn’t particularly feel like fighting other Temmies or her friends at the moment.

After a lot of fighting Toriel had tired of seeing Papyrus run around while on fire, though it was rather odd that his battle body hadn’t burnt away yet and he hadn’t even set fire to anything else either except for maybe the galley. Looking for a barrel labeled water nearby, Toriel heaved it at Papyrus and slung a fireball causing the barrel to burst near the skeleton who just managed to get his plate of spaghetti out of the way in time.

The Wet Papyrus was blinded by the water and started stumbling and then tripped over First Mate Temmie, he had such a look of horror as his spaghetti went flying down the stairs. Everyone stopped fighting to turn to Papyrus when he let out a loud whine.

“Why, my perfect plate of spaghetti, why couldn’t it have been me!” It was hard to tell if The Lacking Noodles Papyrus was crying as water was dripping from his face.

“Look it’s just a plate of spaghetti; you can always make another one Pappy. I believe you can and will achieve such a feat again because you are a mighty individual of can do attitude!” The motivational speech Pinkie gave was cheering Papyrus up somewhat. “Now can we get back to the action packed fighting?”

“Wait a minute; didn’t the spaghetti explode when it was exposed to gun powder?” You should never allow Kid to talk; especially when he brings up the most dangerously logical thing to happen in this situation. “Oh my goodness the ship is about to explode!”

“Kid, cosmetic powder is not the same as gun powder. You certainly have an active imagination as I can assure you nothing is going to…” The entire deck of the ship explodes interrupting what Toriel was about to say, the rest of the boat stayed miraculously intact despite this.

Swamp pirate Temmies went flying every which way, slamming into each other in midair in a cacophony of pain of the tens of Temmies landing painfully on their sides. Captain Temmantha found herself straddling Sans face and he started running around screaming for someone to get her off of him.

Toriel came down face first in some thick but shallow patch of mud causing a fountain of it shoot upwards. She tried to push herself up only for Pinkie to slam into her back first causing another blast of mud to go up and then Kid landed on Pinkie’s chest which was the only part of her that wasn’t caked with mud at the moment, he hopped off and was completely spotless of mud. Papyrus landed in a pile of bones and one of his skeletal hands swiftly pulled out a manual labeled ‘Bone restructuring for dummies, skeletons and stalfos’.

“That was so totally wicked! This is the best adventure that I’ve ever had!” At least Kid was enjoying himself; he hadn’t gotten hurt or dirty at all except for all the times he face planted. His face was capable of taking a lot of punishment, so there was nothing for him to worry about.

“So, do you ladies need a towel? I’ll give you one each if you by some of my new nice cream flavors and since you’re my friends I’ll give you a two for one deal on any of the new flavors.” Blue Bunny was a shrewd business man; even then he was still a truly nice guy.

“Try the banana daiquiri flavor, all the flavor of a daiquiri without the alcohol!” Gyftrot had been enjoying himself the entire time; he made a friend with Blue Bunny and several of the ship moving Temmies. He also got to know Sans better as he watched his friends fight in the silliest brawl he had ever laid witness to. It was one of the most amusing things he had ever seen.

Author's Note

A 'cocked hat' is also known as a classic pirate or privateer Tricorne, the more you know!

We'll move back onto the rails, for the most part anyway.

17 - Song and Dance

“I’m just about done Pinkie and then we can be on our way.” Toriel gripped the base of her right ear with a flaming hand and slowly dragged it down to the tip causing the mud to come off in thick chunks that fell to the ground. After that she shoved a flaming finger into her ear and wiggled it around a bit before pulling it out. “Ah, that’s much better.”

“I’m almost done too Tori!” Pinkie sat near the mobile nice cream stand rubbing First Mate Temmie’s belly and she was mewling and barking happily at the affection.

“I have victory for Tem!” First Mate Temmie said in answer to the happiness she felt. She was in a stage of complete ecstasy that most Temmies wanted to be in, the belly rubs had indeed been worth the long wait and her patience was rewarded. All the other Temmies were sure to be jealous of her grandest achievement ever.

“Well I’ve been ready to go, where’s the kid?” Being the first one to take notice, Gyftrot saw that Kid was long gone after finishing his nice cream.

“Probably went to chase after Undyne. I think he’ll be fine as I don’t think she’d attack a child, but I still can’t help but worry about him running around like this all alone. His parents must be so worried.” Toriel was just being a goat mom and couldn’t help but worry about the adventurous child named Kid. “It’s been nice to see you again Mr. Bunny, but we must be on our way.”

“I’ll see you guys around! I’m getting some real good business here.” Blue Bunny was positively surrounded by Temmies eating lots of nice cream.

The three travelers, technically four, were about to set off when Pinkie remembered something important.

“Wait a minute, where’s my Pinkie Suit!” Pinkie Pie hadn’t wacked small cute animals upside the head with slightly stiff bread just to forget about it now. “Anyone see where my Pinkie suit went after the deck exploded because of The Super Awesome Papyrus’s spaghetti plate? Oh great, now I’m accepting the running gag as an actual thing that exists with him. He is pretty awesome having invented highly combustible spaghetti though.”

“Over there.” Flatly stated Gyftrot who had hoped Pinkie wouldn’t notice it. Being a good ‘deer’ friend, he just had to point it out to her.

“What… no….” If her hair wasn’t already deflated Pinkie would have deflated right then and there. She watched her Pinkie Suit’s head sunk beneath the bog and the last thing it did was raise its left hoof before sinking into the muck. “Well gee; I hope it’ll be back eventually. Given the chance that it won’t in time, I guess I’ll have to make a new one then send it to myself from the future.”

“What, a new one!” Two voices echoed out. Toriel and Gyftrot were completely horrified at the idea of another Pinkie Suit existing.

“Yep and I still owe you Tori, so you can expect me to get around to my promise later.” As Pinkie hopped off, Tori had a bright blush on her face.

“What did she promise you?” Gyftrot was still carrying Pinkie’s stuff and he shifted the so far unused shovel about as it had been digging into his side slightly.

“She promised me a dozen cupcakes… I can’t believe I’m so easily bribed.” Toriel brought her hands up to her face to hide her shame at giving in so easily to the adorable pony.

As they walked off they ignored the Temmies that went to work on fixing the exploded deck of the S.S. Tem Ship.

After setting off through the rest of the swamp they came up to a sign that read about the power to take souls is what humans feared.

“Again not entirely the truth, humans also feared our strange appearances and our even stranger biological workings. Like how not all monsters need to use bathrooms, but plenty of us do.” As they passed by the sign they came to a room filled with water surrounding the pathway, as they walked forward on the path something strange raised out of the water alerting Toriel to the fact that they weren’t alone. They walked a few more feet before she couldn’t take it anymore. “Stop, there’s something here.”

Slowly it rose out of the water, a giant anime faced onion with tentacles. Pinkie just looked at it curiously, Toriel took the same route of curiosity that Pinkie did and Gyftrot just kept walking onwards ignoring it entirely. Apparently Gyftrot was not going to get himself involved in any of the shenanigans that Pinkie and Toriel got up to; he would still wait for them up ahead.

“Hey there, noticed you were here.” Then the onion monster took on a goofy expression. “Hi I’m Onion-san! Onion-san you hear! You’re visiting Waterfall, huh? I really love this place, but it’s been going downhill a lot recently you hear.”

“Hey there Onion-san, yep, we’re on our way through. So if you’ll excuse us, we just got waylaid by a bunch of these really cute little creatures known as Temmies and we don’t feel like stopping to talk.” Having had the mud cleaned off her by her favorite goat lady, Pinkie couldn’t say it was all that bad to have Toriel’s hands all over her and the magic she used really tickled.

“I know it’s quite a bother to talk to me, but being here beats moving to the city and getting stuffed into a crowded aquarium you hear. It’s been really quite shallow in here lately, hold on a second. I’m easily getting tired of all this shallow water you hear.” The giant onion monster continued to follow them along in the water way trying to chat them up; it seemed as if ‘Onion-san was very lonely’. “All my friends moved there, to the city that is and the aquarium is full anyway, so even if I wanted to... that’s okay though. Undyne’s going to fix everything you hear!”

Pinkie sighed as she stared at the air and then shook her head before trying to place the brightest smile on her face that she could manage. It’s not like the air has steered her wrong about the feelings of others yet, especially when ‘this large onion monster is stuck here and needs help’. It was becoming readily known that Undyne was considered a heroic figure among many monsters, mostly because she was tough as nails and strong in spirit.

“Tori… let’s listen to her for a moment.” Pinkie looked to Toriel with a bit of concern on her face.

Hearing Pinkie’s words, Toriel sighed and stopped. Pinkie wanted to help another individual and she had to admit to herself that she wanted to do so as well. She couldn’t very well be coldhearted to anyone, especially not with Pinkie around.

“I’m going to get out of here eventually and live in the ocean you hear! Well once every monster is free on the Underworld that is.” The giant onion monster tapped her two tentacles together as they slowed down and made it to the end of the room. “Well I guess this is the end of the room… I guess I’ll see you around.”

“My name’s Pinkie Pie and this is Toriel, is there anything you’d like to ask of us? I think me and Tori could help you out!” This is rather sweet of Pinkie, but it stands to wonder if she could lift an octopus onion monster that weighs a metric ton and carry it to the ocean.

“Oh… well… there is one thing you hear. Despite not knowing how to sing or play instruments, I’m going to start a band called the Red Hot Chibi Peppers! So I need to ask, do you think the band I’m forming could be popular?” Onion-san looked particularly hopeful; this was obviously not what Toriel or Pinkie had expected Onion-san to ask of them. Aside from the obvious verbal tick of saying ‘you hear’ a lot, she seemed optimistic despite her circumstance of being lonely and stuck in a dreary place.

“If it’s your dream, then I say… go for it! Do your best, try hard and you can succeed at anything! You look like you’d make a good drummer, so let me give you some pointers.” Giving the pointers would have to wait as Pinkie and her goat friend found themselves being hugged up against Onion-sans body. Her onion tentacles were quite strong, in both odor and grasp. The crying involved could either be from the smell or the pain Onion-san was accidentally causing her new friends.

“Oh my goodness, you are so friendly and fluffy you hear!” If only Onion-san could hear their cries for help, she’d notice that she was crushing them in her cuddly hug. She eventually released them and Pinkie Pie looked entirely blue again and The Blue Powered Papyrus wasn’t responsible this time. Onion-san looked hopeful. “So, some quick lessons right?”

“Right then, if you can tap out a rhythm like this, you’ll probably be a good drummer! Let’s see if you can follow me.” Tap dancing a rhythm was easy for Pinkie and then Onion-san attempted to follow with Pinkie by slapping the floor nearby and trying to keep up with Pinkie’s hooves. “Get ready because it’s going to get trickier from here on out Onion-san.”

Pinkie was tapping out a rapid beat and then it was followed by Onion-san who looked happy to learn how to drum and then they looked to each other and started going at the same time. The tentacles were slapping the floor in the exact same rhythm Pinkie was stomping out.

“You’re doing well so far Onion-san, if you can keep up with me you’d make for a great drummer.” Then Pinkie started really stomping a complicated rhythm and Onion-san was managing to copy her stomps at the same time as she drummed her tentacles against the floor.

Toriel just stared; it was like they had rehearsed the rhythm they were both playing out. Pinkie stomps and quick taps were proving to be quite musical sounding. She knew ponies were talented when it came to musical numbers and spontaneous choreography, but this was ridiculous. She could even swear she saw Pinkie’s magic interacting with Onion-san. They stopped for a moment and then continued, Onion-san wasn’t too bad and had flummoxed the rhythm slightly every once in a while.

“Yeah, you got it Onion-san, that’s how you do a rhythm. Learn to play the drums or something that can at least survive your tentacles slapping at it, because you’ve got the beat!” Causing the giant onion to blush and give a smile that would make Pinkie’s day as she turned around to address her goat friend. “Okay we’re good Tori.”

“Wait, one last thing… um… how do I go about finding a singer or other band members? I’m kind of water bound you hear.” Onion-san was quietly poking two of her tentacles together looking a bit down.

“Don’t worry we’ll send someone your way to help you out!” Pinkie gave Onion-san a cheerful smile as she exited the area waving back to the large onion monster that waved a tentacle back at her.

“How are we going to find her a band, much less someone who can sing Pinkie?” Given the fact that opening her mouth sometimes has causality tendencies, Toriel caused her and Pinkie to have their souls ripped right out of them by a monster that didn’t seem as if it was even trying to get their attention or attack them. In fact the monster wasn’t even looking at them when a pull field erupted towards them at that exact moment.

The creature turned to look at them with a sad looking eye, the other one was covered by her hair. It was a little angler fish with long hair for its small form floating above some weird eel shaped creature with a large mouth and spikes coming out of its back.

“It’s Shyren, she is a musically talented monster that can sing, but is very shy. If you can get her started singing, then she may become a bit braver and with a little confidence boost she’ll go far. Whoever this Mifty is, I’d certainly like to meet her as she’s been everywhere.” Gyftrot had been waiting for them with the book open to the very page in the monster compendium since he knew that they’d both somehow run into a pull zone. It was becoming a rather noticeable occurrence with the duo to suddenly have their souls pulled, and then they would just befriend the crap out of whatever monster was trying to steal their souls. “Also her head is her actual body; the thing below her is actually her agent. He’s not an overly aggressive monster and I think it’s the one that pulled your souls since it’s doing what it is supposed to do, finding her a job singing for a crowd.”

“How fortuitous…” It was commented on rather dryly by Toriel who gave her words an entirely sarcastic lilt.

“I know, right? Maybe if we can get her singing, we can convince her to be friends with Onion-san so she’ll be happy. It’s the perfect plan!” Cutely clapping her hooves together Pinkie started thinking of what to sing, she was channeling Twilight Sparkle for a moment there.

“Look, just be prepared to dodge when she inevitably attacks us Pinkie.” Moving her soul through the air with a sweeping gesture she tried to keep it as far back from Shyren as possible in the pull field.

“Come on Tori; just let me do my thing!” Pinkie took up a spot on the floor and cleared her throat.

“I may know; that this world is grim. But things are not… quite as so dim.” Pinkie started singing slowly and the Shyren looked at her curiously wondering where this was going. “All the monsters are blue, sad and stressed… while I am here, just doing my best.”

“Now let go of all that darkness and, sing a song, all day long. Now come, and you’ll see my heart shine bright!” Pinkie’s rhythm changed to something a bit faster paced and the Shyren’s eyes widened in shock and Toriel was also surprised, Pinkie’s soul started pulsating brightly and followed the rhythm of her song. It was filling the room with a soft pink glow. “I give my all, to help others in plight. And that’s me, which is my very own light!”

“I bring hope to those who all will need it; it may not be much it’s true to any who see it. I do my best to plead my case, and then I will make you believe in it and my happy smiling face! If you can’t see what joy there is in helping those around who are blue, then you need to start singing I say confound you! Because I won’t stop the cascade that is the joy I will fill in you, your empty heart will stop being down and I’ll turn that frown just right around!” Pinkie was filling the room with joy and there was no doubt about that as the Shyren started smiling, the music couldn’t be heard but Pinkie’s song was infecting them with her happiness. “My own soul can fill a world with color, fueled by rainbows the grayness of your world will shatter, I am a little hero and a powerful friend, and all over the world my joy will splatter!”

Pinkie started bobbing her head to the invisible music and humming, everyone in the room felt a strange sensation coming from the light given off by Pinkie’s soul. She started dancing and shifting her hips, she even started bouncing and her butt suddenly lit up with an outline of her cutie mark.

“Now all you come on and join in on the fun, and then we let all of that joy out! It’s inside of all of you, and I can see it quite clearly too! So stop being blue and share the joy with a good shout!” Every monster in the vicinity started giggling as happiness seemed to have flooded the area. “Come on everybody, let us all have a party… and then we’ll get all of that joy out! Sharing laughter with your friends, is really the best way for time to be spent, because it’ll take away all of your blues and darkest doubts!”

Shyren started humming a tune to what Pinkie was singing; the shifting tunes were causing her to look wondrous as she smiled. A smile made her look less horribly depressed and shy.

“Sing with me and the blues will be chased away my friend, if we work together there’s no problem we can’t end! If you can’t find the hope inside your heart, then look to me I’ll be the place you will have to start! You can’t stop me for I’m not lonely; my songs are not quite made of macaroni. I am fueling my own vibes which is exciting, as all the possibilities are not limited by things that are just frightening!” Watching Pinkie dance to a song with no music was poetry in motion as was actually seeing her cutie mark glowing on her flank.

“We have been down here for a while; we’ve been waiting for so long.” Shyren sung and her voice was beautiful and captivating as many monsters started come and listen to it.

“It’s gotten bad.” Toriel sung along as backup while crossing her arms as she stared at Pinkie faded sparkling cutie mark.

“Since when have we let our depression grow like this, that it’s so relentlessly strong?” The little floating shyren sung and looked beautiful to all the gathering monsters, even Sans was there and he was looking on with something akin to wonder.

“I don’t know.” Toriel was feeling the music and her own heart started to glow brightly alongside Pinkie’s.

“Come on and shuck off all the pains of anger, and hate.” Shyren and Pinkie sung together.

“I hope we still can.” Sang Toriel, she was still a bleating heart and didn’t like anyone being violent.

“We will build a future of love, and one of our own make!” The pony and the shy little singer intoned together, Toriel followed in singing the exact same words behind them.

“Because we are what we choose to be, we are all that strong.” The three sang together.

“We will be free!” Toriel brought her hand up to her chest with them clasped together.

“To make that bright future together, of which we will all wish to see!” The three sung together.

“Because that’s what all your hopes and dreams are going to really mean to all of us and maybe even especially me!” Pinkie held her note.

“Set us free!” Shyren sung and that was the end of the song, those three words had the monsters all crying. Two souls wedged themselves back into the bodies they came from without even an attack launched.

There was a second impromptu concert which Sans sold tickets to, after that was over the Shyren was smiling softly at Pinkie as she hovered before the pony having finished an encore of the song. Toriel and Pinkie were good singers and they had plenty of synergy when it came to working together.

“Thank you.” Shyren said quietly, she had a blush on her fishy little cheeks and she was a really cute floating fish monster with hair. She reminded Pinkie of Fluttershy so hard it was ridiculous that she wasn’t Fluttershy’s sister born as a strange flying fish monster.

“Don’t thank me yet, you seem like a rather mobile monster and so does your neat big lipped friend.” The strange monster that Pinkie was looking at just smiled with its eel mouth and eyeless body. There were a few spikes sticking out of its body in odd places. Two of those spikes even looked like eyes. “There’s a monster in the previous area we just came from and she wants to start a band, maybe you can help her find some musically talented monsters? Even if you don’t sing for her, maybe you can be friends? Her name is Onion-san and she’s really lonely.”

“I would like that, come along Argent… I wish to help this friend of hers.” Before she floated off to be followed by the large monster that could have also been an eyeless slug, the Shyren moved over to Pinkie and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

The pony blushed and rubbed at her cheek slightly, she had never met a fish cheekier or as shy as that that one. The soft spoken Fluttershy resemblance was still rather uncanny in a valley, the little fish could practically have her cutie mark tattooed onto her body and call it a day.

“That song was so beautiful; at least I’ll carry it in my memories.” Onion-san was trying to look on the bright side to being stuck where she was having heard and felt Pinkie’s singing nearby. Then there was another singing as well, then things became quiet. It wasn’t long before a little angler fish monster came floating up to her. She was curious as to what this monster was going to do as it opened its mouth and started signing just for her.

It was hard to get someone like Shyren to open up to others, but she did this to make a friend that was a friend of her friend. She didn’t sing anything in particular; she just lent her lilting voice to Onion-san’s lonely world. Shyren and her talent agent Argent quickly became good friends with Onion-san.

“Oh my goodness, you are amazing! Also I could see your cutie mark glowing faintly on your flank when you really got into it.” Not caring that the shy fish kissed her pony friend, Toriel brought Pinkie into a hug.

“No I’m Pinkie. I don’t know who this Amazing is, but for some reason I keep getting confused for her.” Pinkie was only acting confused as to why Toriel was laughing; she even started giggling a bit afterwards herself. Looking to where her cutie mark would be, it was currently not there and she sighed.

“Don’t worry about it Pinkie, let us move on then. Hmmm…” It was Toriel who took interest in a sign this time and she scratched her head at seeing it, there was a great treasure in the northern room? Well they better look into it, because Pinkie was going to suggest they do so anyway. “I guess we’re going to look into this.”

“Actually I was going to suggest we move on, but if you want to stop to look Tori then I’m okay with that!” Smiling Pinkie watched as Toriel slapped her face, she wasn’t completely innocent as she knew that Toriel thought she would want to investigate that path. She had just mentally got Toriel in a backwards trap by making Toriel suggest it herself that they go off the beaten path. It seemed like Toriel would be reluctant to do so after she got grabbed by the crazy little Temmies. “Yeah, I still don’t like the use of the B word, even if it is quite a literal translation of their species name. So not even in my thoughts Airy!”

“Fine, but first how are the two of you holding up Gyftrot, Mr. Snow?” It had been some time since Toriel addressed the snow in the jar hanging from a strap on her backpack. She also worried about their other more obvious traveling companion even though he seemed to be avoiding all the danger with relative ease, then again his soul couldn’t be pulled.

“Can’t complain, I’m enjoying everything and I’m glad that I’m not so easily forgotten. I’m seeing so much and I’m quite happy after that concert, no need to worry about me.” The jar glowed when the Snowman talked; it had been a while since they heard from him. He was always so quiet it was easy to forget he was even traveling with them.

“Ditto, though I’m still not certain as to how useful a shovel will be against Undyne, she can summon and fire spears like a maniac.” Shuddering at the thought, it was clear Gyftrot had a healthy appreciation for how dangerous Undyne was. “There were so many spears.”

The three, or four if you count the snow in a jar connected to a distant snowman, went to see what this great treasure was all about. They came to a room with a piano and a sign on the right wall. High on the left wall above the piano was the letter X with an arrow pointing to quit, probably meaning exit the room to reset the puzzle. Below the X and above the piano was a dot, left arrow, down arrow, right arrow and an up arrow.

“A haunting song echoes down the corridor, won’t you play along? Only the first eight are fine… what do you suppose that means? Also it’s the number eight and not the word eight.” Pinkie found this puzzle actually enticing, because there wasn’t a puzzle quite as complicated as this one looked to be. Whoever made this one had to be as smart as Twilight. Moving up to the piano Pinkie started to play it masterfully, but the puzzle wasn’t solved.

“How are you even doing that with hooves?” That’s something everyone would like to know, Toriel was just the first one to voice it after watching a pony play the piano perfectly for a bit.

“I don’t know, it’s just been a thing that all ponies are capable of doing… heck we ponies don’t even know why pianos exist in our society where there aren’t even any unicorns or how we do it.” It has now been positively confirmed, the pink pony known as Pinkie Pie can in fact play any instrument she gets her hooves on.

“Well we obviously don’t know how to solve this puzzle, so I think we should be on our way.” It made Toriel sad to upset Pinkie that she wouldn’t be able to solve the puzzle, but they continued onwards out the room and to their left into the hallway where they saw a strange statue and another two signs.

The first of the two signs they passed by talked about the power to steal souls and how humans couldn’t possibly counter it and how a human cannot take a monster’s soul. It said when a monster dies, its soul disappears. And that an incredible power would be needed to take the soul of a living monster.

“It’s not the truth, if you remember what one of the books said back in the snowdin library said. When a monster dies, they basically lose cohesion and their body turns into pure essence. A monster body isn’t quite as physical, so when what’s holding it together is gone; the essence basically pops all over the place like a soap bubble.” As Toriel thought about it, she became concerned. “It is even actually completely possible for a human to take a monsters soul without an incredible power, all they would need to do is gather a monster’s essence and… though it is sickening of me to say this, ingest that essence. Thereby the human would now have some of that monster’s soul inside of them.”

“Yet you’re body seems more physical than a normal monsters.” Gyftrot thought that you’d have to be pretty blind to not notice that Toriel’s body actually gained a strange physicality, aside from the fact that her soul could actually be separated from her body like a human’s soul would under a pull field.

Gyftrot was actually considering it to be a side effect of spending so much time around Pinkie who’s both physical and magical, but he wasn’t sure she was entirely the cause of the oddity that Toriel was among monster kind. Despite her being different, Gyftrot would never treat Toriel differently for it. She was still his queen that he’d follow anywhere, provided his services were needed of course.

Looking at the next sign, Toriel sighed sadly at the poor educational standards monsters had and turned to answer Gyftrot’s curiosity.

“The next sign would make you think that’s the reason for it, but it isn’t either and I’m still confused as to what’s going on with me. It says 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 never will.” Toriel just shook her head at how dumb monsters could get. “As I have just explained to you this is not true as anyone could just steal a monsters essence and essentially use the leftovers of that soul for their own purposes. Also before you ask, I was considered one of these particular ‘special’ species of monsters. There was nothing more special about me than any other monster, except for the fact that my body is more put together than most monsters because my magic was stronger. I flexed my magic like a muscle and exercised to get myself to that point, mostly by using my magic to bake pies at the perfect temperature. Now I’m solidified into being like Pinkie is, I could actually pass for human as I am now if I were to take on the appearance of one. I’m afraid to know what will happen when I die; will my soul persist as a humans would? If it does, I’m planning on haunting my ex husband. Also never, forever and always should be used sparingly given that circumstances can change quickly to prove anyone wrong, like I was apparently wrong about the spaghetti and the cosmetic powder.”

“Hopefully you’ll be able to reach the Elysium Fields Tori.” The thought of there being no afterlife to talk about things you did in life with your friends with an endless amount of time on hoof was a little sad to Pinkie, especially considering monsters don’t seem to have an afterlife and were used to getting screwed over by everything in general. It was to the point that they started accepting the underground as their reality.

As they walked forward, a wan smile crossed Toriel’s face as she looked at the pink pony out of the corner of the eye.

“That’s a really nice sentiment Pinkie.” The idea was better than the alternative that a monsters soul and essence being eternally stuck in the nearest object when they died.

“Well until we know what happens when we pass away, we have to live first if we’re going to have any good stories to talk about when we do!” Ever the optimist Pinkie Pie continued to hum slightly and she stopped when she saw some strange horned statue sitting in front of them. “Hey Tori what’s that? It looks rather sad.”

“It looks like an ancient guardian statue. There used to be creatures called golems, they were basically the most basic of what a monster is.” Seeing the strange look in the pony’s eyes as she looked at the dripped on statue, Toriel had to ask. “Pinkie, is something wrong?”

“Hold on a second…” It looked like Pinkie was telling that to the statue and ran off; she came back dragging an umbrella. Opening the umbrella and placing it so that it covered the poor statue from the water falling on it from the cracks in the ceiling, she smiled. “There you go, nice and dry!”

A music box melody immediately started playing as soon as the umbrella was in position and Pinkie smiled at the music, Gyftrot and Toriel looked at her mystified. Neither of them would have thought to do that for the lifeless statue.

“What? He was sad so I made him happy, now he’s playing me a song!” Pinkie started humming along and then after humming the first eight notes again, she stopped and her eyes widened. “So that’s how you solve the puzzle, thank you mister statue!”

Pinkie was off back towards the piano room with her friends giving chase. They found her sitting at the piano with her eyes closed, she was humming slightly before she inhaled and tested all the keys of the piano. She opened her eyes and proceeded to start playing the tune the statue gave them. An open doorway appeared.

“I’d be hard press to match that kind of craziness.” It was a commendable of Gyftrot to admit that.

“Come on; let’s see what that great treasure is!” The enthusiastic Pinkie went into the next room to see a large red orb sitting on a pedestal. “Oh what is it, what is it!”

“I’m not sure, but I think we should take it.” As Toriel picked up the orb and tried to place the heavy thing in her backpack, only a white dog was taking up all the space in her backpack. “Snowman, did you see a white dog get into my backpack at any time?”

“No, why do you ask?” Snow heard Toriel’s frustration.

“Pinkie can you check the saddlebags.” It would only confirm what Toriel already knew, but she just wanted to be sure. The colorful equine looked through the two saddlebags on Gyftrot and turned to the goat lady with a strange frown.

Two dog’s suddenly ninja hopped out of the saddlebags and the dog in Toriel’s backpack joined them as they all went for the red orb and ran off with it.

“Your ex’s annoyance unit?” In answer to her flatly spoken question, Pinkie received a firm nod.

Author's Note

There is a tune that Pinkie's singing her song to, but I'll leave it for you to figure it out. It's very easy.

Also I've been trying to edit this chapter for a while, so please excuse me for being a little tired and this chapter as being poorly constructed as any other chapter.

Song and Dance is quite an interesting idiom.

Update Jan, 27, 2016: The song Pinkie and the others sing to.

18 - Tools 'n Ghosts

“Pinkie you’ve been at this for ten minutes, I think it’s about time to give up on this.” Putting her hands on her hips, Toriel watched as Pinkie once again tried to get the round red object from the room. The annoying dogs were making it impossible with their ninja style abilities.

“I don’t want to give up!” Pinkie shouted as she ran into the room and crash sounded out seconds later. “Where did all these banana peels come from, they weren’t here last time!”

Pinkie came back covered in banana peels looking pretty sorry for herself and Toriel quickly swiped away the fruit peels with a magical flame. She picked the pony up and brought her face up to her own. Shoving her tongue deep into the pony’s mouth, maybe she could get Pinkie to forget about the artifact.

Their tongues danced and Pinkie really started to get into it, her hooves wrapped around Toriel’s head and started to pet and rub the soft white fur. The taste of Toriel’s mouth reminded her of all things good and wholesome that weren’t annoying dog related. She soon forgot her troubles as their tongues did them the favor of cleaning out the corners of each other’s mouths. The passionate wrestling of their two taste muscles leant to them a foggy haze of bliss.

“There, better now?” Toriel asked after she separated her face from the pony she had kissed, she slowly ran a hand up and down the back of Pinkie’s neck. The pink pony nodded at her question and snuggled against her and the face started nuzzling into her fur on around her neck, then she felt the sensation of blunt teeth gently gnawing at it.

“Tori, you take my breath away and that’s not just because you’re very beautiful either.” Ever the charmer, Pinkie pulled her face away from the bipedal goat’s neck. “I guess I don’t really need to know what that red ball does. It’s probably just a bouncy rubber squeak toy anyway.”

Pinkie was carried away from the piano room with her tail wagging and with her happiness at an all time high as Toriel started blowing raspberries into her belly. The goat lady obviously knew what it took to please the pony and get happy giggles to fill the air.

“Darn she has discovered the great secret of the artifact through random guessing!” The first white dog muttered from the shadows in the language of dogs.

“Hey, is covering the entire room in tacks a bad idea?” The second white dogs asked, also in dog speak.

“For the love of all that is chewy and squeaky, you’re an idiot!” The third white dog said, it had wondered what those painful sensations in its paws were and now it knew for certain who was to blame for it.

“You guys suck at being annoying and I would know a lot about that.” A heavy breathing sound was heard from next to the three dogs hiding spot.

“Oh god it’s The Jerry! Abort all operations; abort all operations and run for it!” The three dogs dropped down onto all the tacks. After getting the tacks stuck into their feet which made it impossible to run away on their injured paws, the lead dog turned to the one who placed all the tacks.”How could you do this to us, we can’t run now without incurring injury to ourselves!”

“You guys suck at escaping, seriously!” The Jerry commented as he made annoying high pitched noises only dogs could hear. The whimpering three dogs of the annoyance unit found their selves in a rather dire situation of being annoyed.

“Did you hear three screams of unholy terror that vaguely sounds like dogs howling just now?” Pinkie asked as Toriel got an umbrella sticking out of the saddlebags Gyftrot was wearing; the pink pony took up the shovel from the deer monster as it looked like it was getting uncomfortable for him. She slung it around her body by the strap that was recently attached to it.

“Thank you Pinkie.” Sure Gyftrot avoided danger at the first drop of a hat, but he was still there with them through thick and thin.

Pinkie looked at the shovel and its sleek design. The shovel had a treated special kind of flexible wood that was impervious to rot and was heat resistant. It had a handle that she could fit her hoof through and most importantly the curved blade of the shovel was made of a highly sturdy metal. Said metal was a nice silvery blue color. She was glad to have found it thanks to Betty and her shop, it was a good shovel and she knew it would serve her well as it was perfectly balanced for her usage.

Picking up a second umbrella for herself and Pinkie, Toriel opened it and walked out into an area where the ceiling was leaking with a lot of water that made it look like it was raining underground. She looked on as Pinkie inspected the shovel as they moved forward.

“Guys… I think Pinkie took up a shovel.” Maud said blandly and was shivering ever so slightly that it was almost unnoticeable.

“Well so much for Pinkie being safe wherever she is.” Limestone muttered angrily. “Whoever gets the business end of it will deserve the fight they’ll have on their hooves.”

“Isn’t Pinkie really dangerous with a shovel though?” Marble shyly poked a hoof at the ground and drew small circles. “I mean we’re talking about our sister who mastered the trowel when she was nine because she overcompensated for not having a cutie mark like the ones we have before she moved away.”

“She will still be our sister Marble; even if she is pushed to use the worst of her techniques which she knows not to take lightly.” Maud was better with her bare hooves when it came to rock farming and fighting, but Pinkie was a natural at shoveling out fun. “I ask that you to please trust our sister to have a good sense in not going too far unless she’s forced to.”

“Trixie really needs food and a warm place to sleep please.” The haggard sad voice of Trixie being heard on the rock farm actually caused Maud to give off a very small freakish smile; what was freakish was that it was the most emotion that was ever seen on Maud’s face by her sisters in their entire lives.

They continued walking through the undergrounds torrential downpour from the ceiling with Kid now adorning Pinkie’s back. They had found the poor wet little two legged lizard in an alcove and got him to come with them, he couldn’t very well hold an umbrella with his tail as it hadn’t become prehensile yet.

“Hey Tori, how many tickles does it take to make a squid laugh?” Pinkie couldn’t just take all the affection she had gotten without giving some of the joy that she felt right back to Toriel.

“I don’t know how many tickles does it take to get a squid to laugh Pinkie?” Toriel knew that Pinkie told her jokes to make her happy and she indulged in them wholeheartedly when the pony wanted to dish one out.

“Ten tickles!” The happy laughter made Pinkie happy in turn; because Toriel’s wonderful snorting laugh wasn’t the only one she was hearing. Kid liked it too, while Gyftrot just settled for chuckling as he seemed the most stoic of them all. “Oh let me try some poetry. Roses are black, violets are black… oh wait, I think I’m still wearing a blind fold from when I was dreaming of flowers while I slept on my back!”

“Oh Pinkie…” A tittering Toriel just loved the weirdest things Pinkie could come up with. “I once told my friend ten jokes to get him to laugh. Sadly, no pun in ten did.”

Laughter filtered throughout the group as the moved forward. They all stopped for a moment to look into the distance when they heard Kid gasp. Far away, but still very visible in the dim underground was a brightly lit castle and city.

“There it is, ‘New Home ‘. Yes my ex is certainly horrible at coming up with names, I would have at least called it something a little more inventive. I can see we’re almost to the hot lands; it is a dangerously warm environment.” Hot or cold, Toriel was never bothered by temperature changes. She was a monster that could theoretically bathe in lava and enjoy it like it was temperate. “Well at least it’s dangerously hot for everyone other than me at least.”

“It really looks like you’re people etched out a living down here Tori, they must have worked so hard to build such a wondrous city. It kind of reminds me of an inverse Canterlot from what I can see from here really.” Pinkie leaned her head again Toriel’s thigh while looking at the distant sight and she received some scratches behind her ears. That tall lovely goat definitely knew how to please a pony.

“Let us move on.” They were on their way at Toriel’s beckoning and passed a few more bits of swampland.

“What’s a pirate’s favorite letter? Well you’d think it’d be R, but it will always be the C.” That was the last joke to giggle and guffaw at from Pinkie Pie.

They had to stop to put the two umbrellas back at the nearby umbrella stand and wondered how they were supposed to get past this newest obstacle before them.

“Yo this ledge is too steep!” Kid was quick to point out the obvious as they continued to give the ledge a once over.

“We’ll look for a way around.” As Toriel said this, she noticed Pinkie taking hold of her shovel which she swiftly planted blade first into the ground as if she were going to dig something up. The back of the shovel was pointed towards the ledge.

“Hey guys, want to see a neat trick? I’m a bit rusty and could use the practice anyway.” Pinkie looked down at the shovel and bent it slightly once, then a second time testing whether or not it was firmly planted. She looked at the ledge and pulled on the handle bending the shovel’s wood slightly.

“I doubt I’d be able to stop you anyway Pinkie.” Crossing her arms Toriel watched as Pinkie swiftly pulled back on the shovel and kicked off the shaft her hind legs.

It was obvious that the tension in the bent shovel and Pinkie’s kick was what caused the pink pony to launch high into the air with an aerial somersault to the top of the ledge with ease. She had easily done so while still holding onto the shovel.

Pinkie turned around and waved down at them from where she landed on her three hooves while shouldering the shovel; it had been quite a while since she had last performed a shovel launch. Shovels were where the idea for pogo sticks came from in Equestria; many a pony had forgotten the old earth pony combat traditions with some exceptions. An excellent trowel had nothing on a good shovel to Pinkie, even if she had mastered the trowel and had helped Rose, Daisy or Lilly in gardening from time to time.

“So you guys coming or what? I think I see more scribbling on the walls up here.” Pinkie could see a look of indecision on Toriel’s face.

“Go on, we’ll catch up with you. Just be careful as Undyne could still be around okay?” Toriel didn’t know if Undyne was still around or not, The Jerry had scared her off pretty badly and it had scared them as well. She shuddered at the thought that it could still be nearby.

Nodding Pinkie turned to the two writings on the wall ahead of her. The first talked of how the humans had declared war on the monster and suddenly attacked without mercy, which didn’t sound very nice to the pony at all. The second bit of writing talked about how it was hardly a war as the humans were too powerful and countless monsters perished whereas not one human soul was taken.

“Yeah, that might put a damper on them being able to be friends.” Pinkie shook her head and saw a winding path of wooden boards ahead of her and took one step onto it. She stopped when she heard some creepy music start playing.

(Ghouls and Ghost- Graveyard Theme starts playing.)

“Is it me or is that music meant to fill one with a deep sense of dread? Also I can’t help but think that you’re trying to tell me something in a rather subtle way here Airy.” Pinkie looked around carefully walked out onto the wooden planks and looked around cautiously; there was no way that the music she was hearing was a coincidence.

Some point at walking across the wood multiple glowing circles appeared all around her on the platform and she turned sideways seeing that her rear legs were standing on two of those circles. She was glad she had when spears erupted from below, after they went down Pinkie started moving.

Galloping along the wooden structure, Pinkie was looking out for spots that started glowing and stopped in a safe spot to avoid the spiritual spears that erupted from below trying to skewer her. Looking over the side of the platform she was on, she could see the armored figure of Undyne below. Several spears arced upwards and came down around Pinkie Pie who dodged left and right as she ran.

The pony wasn’t going to make it easy for Undyne to hit her and continued to look for a way forward. The little pink equine under assault had to double back at least twice as spears erupted from below or came raining down from above to block her path.

There were soon spears flying every which way imaginable and Pinkie was starting to run out of room, running out of it while running to be exact. She grabbed her shovel and deflected a spear with it as she continued on her way.

Coming to an almost soon to be literal dead stop, spears were starting to come down on her and pop up from the floor beneath a lot more rapidly. There were a lot of them now that she was finding it hard to press forward or go back, slowly the spears started to enclose and encroach on Pinkie.

Pinkie quickly jammed her shovel between two bits of wood and with a quick pull she launched herself out of harm’s way, twisting between several spears as she flew forward to a different section of platform. She felt several sharp stinging sensations throughout her body; she had been nicked by several of the sharp edged spear heads and was bleeding a bit.

As she landed from her launch, Pinkie heard a loud thud and she turned back to see a glowing eye shining from under the armored knight’s helmet. Undyne twirled and threw two spears overhand at her as she leapt into the air. Defying gravity the armored knight spread her legs slightly farther apart, seeming as if to jump a second time and tossed two more spears that missed the pony.

Pinkie dodged the four spears and six more as they formed in the air in a stylish twirl before launching at her sides like they were arrows shot from invisible crossbows. Ducking and weaving through the torrent of spears she came to a long extended section of wood and saw that there was nowhere else to go, turning around she tried to run back only to stop when she saw that Undyne had her cornered.

The armored figure slowly stomped forward; thick metal boots were grinding against the wood underneath. She held up a hand and several spears form to strike at Pinkie’s side. Leaping backwards Pinkie managed to avoid getting skewered.

It was only seconds afterwards that Pinkie noticed that in having missed her, the spears heavily damaged the platform she was standing on. Said platform was hanging over the dark void below. The elongated section of wooden planks started break apart and the entire section start to fall down into the darkness. The last sight Pinkie had of Undyne at this point and time was her clenching her fist in rage.

Pinkie was falling and she knew the landing was going to hurt unless she did something fast, what could she do? Well she had a shovel; she quickly pulled the shovel back into a batters position while trying to correctly orient her body in the air. She had to do this just right so she wouldn’t hit the ground at terminal velocity; said ground was rushing up to meet her. She didn’t think a hearty hello would get it to stop and chat with her.

Twisting her body as hard as she could, Pinkie waited until she was about fifty feet from hitting the ground and she swung out as hard as she could while angling the shovel. She spun like a wild top; this caused the mare start slowing down drastically as she angled her shovel up and down, her pink pigtails and tail also helped a bit. The spiraling effect had her entire body becoming a propeller cancelled out how fast she was falling and it alleviated a lot of her momentum before she struck the ground.

Pinkie hit the ground shovel first, even with the shovel taking the brunt of the impact she still let out a yelp as she touched down on her left hind leg when she tried to alleviate her spinning. She stumbled her way into a nearby patch of flowers. Rolling on to her back she just stared up at the distance above and trailed down all the way to where she was now. She lifted her head and looked at herself; she had several lightly bleeding cuts along her body. She hadn’t come out of this unscathed and with how her landing went she might have just sprained a leg.

Laying her head back down, Pinkie decided that taking a nap was in order. She could lick her wounds later; she was okay and was safely lying among a bunch of flowers.

Pinkie didn’t know how long it had been, but she startled awake and tried to roll onto hooves out of the patch of flowers. She grunted when she placed pressure on her leg that was most certainly sprained. She was hungry; Gyftrot and Toriel had all the food. Sniffing the flowers, Pinkie pulled one into her mouth. She chewed vigorously and swallowed, the flowers down here were actually pretty tasty.

It was a bit of an odd place for flowers to grow, considering she smelled garbage. She had fallen into what was the cleanest spot in what looked to be a garbage dump; the shovel was still planted in the ground by up to half its shaft.

She ate a few more flowers and then carefully got up. She silently wondered if Toriel knew she was in some kind of trouble. Her wounds seemed to have scabbed over without getting infected, Pinkie was lucky in that respect at least.

“Thanks for letting me know I’m mostly okay Airy!” Pinkie said jovially to the air as if she thought it had helped her out in some way, when she was actually cornered in an area surrounded by monsters. “Yeah, that doesn’t sound as good. Can you tell me how Tori, Kid and Gyft are doing?”

Pinkie’s friends were likely doing better than she was at the moment.

“Really, that’s as much as you’re going to give me here?” Pinkie acted like she hadn’t just fell hundreds of feet to where she was now in a garbage dump with piles of random trash and injured. “Well of course I’m not acting like I just did that, it actually happened!”

‘The pony should just check her surroundings and move on, using the shovel as a crutch’.

“Oh… thanks for the idea Airy!” A smiling Pinkie limped her way over to the shovel. With two hooves gripping it tightly, she gave one strong pull and popped the shovel out of the ground. She fell onto her rump and raised the shovel high above her head causing a fanfare to sound out as the shovel sparkled.

Looking around, Pinkie saw that she was surrounded by water, waterfalls and broken wooden planks, so ‘keeping her leg and freshly scabbed over injuries out the water would be a good idea’.

Nodding at the air, Pinkie wedged her shovel between two planks and launched herself onto a nearby garbage pile where she landed on her hooves. The garbage had a lot of things in it, including some things that were so strange that Pinkie had absolutely no idea what they were. She let her shovel hang limply from its trap as she did a three legged leap to the next garbage pile.

Pinkie couldn’t just use her shovel to launch herself at any old time; she always had to find a place to wedge it into to create the necessary amount of tension. If she had the use of her cutie mark she could have actually done it without the need of physics with little or no tension at all. She eventually found a good spot in the garbage and looked ahead to calculate the distance to the wood planks in the next area.

Launching through the air, she came down planting her shovel perfectly between the planks and launched herself immediately continuing her momentum. She twisted her body in the air and slammed into the wall where she hung horizontally by two hooves firmly pressed against the wall, all while the third held tightly onto the shovel dug into it. Nodding to herself she launched herself onto another pile of garbage, twisting herself in the air so that she landed upright.

Pinkie was a tad dizzy from all the rotations her body went through, and she looked around while she got her bearings. There was green bicycle with what looked to be flat tires and a broken horn, it looked readily salvageable. Overlooking that to look at the next pile of garbage she wanted to land on.

With a sharp pull, she launched onto a different pile of garbage and it shifted beneath her hooves. It wasn’t quite as stable as she thought it was, she quickly jumped on to a orange cooler nearby as some of the garbage toppled into the shallow water that Pinkie would have had to wade through.

Stepping off the top of the cooler onto the nearby pile of garbage she turned around and looked at the perfectly good cooler that had supported her weight. Considering the good condition of the cooler, she checked it hoping to find something. There were some strange packets of stuff in there that read as being space food, Pinkie couldn’t exactly carry them and shut the lid.

Looking ahead, Pinkie saw that the there wasn’t a place to launch to and tried to think of a way to move forward as the patch of dry land was far too far to launch to. A light bulb went off above her head as Pinkie realized that the orange cooler with the white lid had supported her weight.

Stepping back onto the cooler she sat down and used her shovel to push it forwards and past the final pile of garbage and a idle ugly looking dummy just sitting there in the water. Just as she was about to reach dry land and get out of this flooded area, something stomped down on the dry land before her and then floated into the air.

“Isn’t that just like you? What are you too intimidated to fight me? Is the little four legged chicken going to cry and run away?” The speaker was a floating dummy now glowing with in an angry looking orange color and two large eyes staring at the, innocent of any slight whatsoever, pink pony with hatred. “I am a ghost that lives inside a dummy. My cousin is a Dummy and he might have been nice about you, but me? I’m going to murder you, because I’m Mad Dummy!”

“Well that was rather self deprecating of you; you seem pretty smart to me so why would you call yourself an idiot?” Pinkie’s words caused the Mad Dummy to turn red with anger.

“I’m not an idiot, my name is Mad Dummy!” Mad pulled Pinkie’s soul out of her body and the bright pink pulsating heart had a small bandage on it representing Pinkie’s injury.

“So your name is basically angry idiot? Well, who gave you that name? They probably weren’t very friendly.” Now wondering what it was that she said, Pinkie could not understand Mad’s absolute loathing for her. Now she was going to have to dance on her injured hoof for setting him off.

“I’m not an angry idiot, I’m a Mad Dummy!” The angry Mad Dummy screamed in Pinkie’s face as he got even angrier than he was before.

“Is this a semantics thing? I don’t actually have any cement for that.” Pinkie’s innocuously weird statement only caused the Mad Dummy to get madder and growl aggressively.

“Why you, give me your soul!” Mad Dummy summoned an army of strange little creatures to start fire projectiles at Pinkie’s floating soul.

Pinkie started to dance in place with what little space she had as she dodge the orbs being launched at her soul and one batch of the beings appeared in just a position that when her soul dodged the attack the attack hit the Angry Dummy.

“Ouch, you dummies, watch where you are aiming your magic attacks!” The Mad Dummy realized that Pinkie was paying attention to what he had said. His eyes widened. “Hey you, forget I said anything about magic!”

“But I like magic.” Pinkie intoned only for the strange spiritual heads to start popping up all around her again to launch more shots.

“Well too bad for you!” As soon as Mad got finished saying that he got struck by several blasts of magic from the little dummies popping up out of the walls, ceiling and water covered floor as Pinkie danced her soul around the attacks to get him struck again.

“You’re not very nice!” This thing was really beginning to upset Pinkie.

“Well good, I’ll defeat you and take your soul; you can’t possible hurt me because I’m a ghost! There’s no hope for you, you sniveling little thing!” Oh sure the dummy was invincible to physical attacks, however he was weak against magic attacks which his own attacks were made of. Several more of the minions that Mad summoned, appeared and launched more attacks at Pinkie’s soul.

Pinkie started doing a variation of a Bachata dance in place, she had very little room and she was using the best of it as she could while standing on the cooler. Her heart shifted and slid around the bullets until she saw an opportunity where the miniature dummy army could shoot him again.

In his anger the Mad Dummy started doing an armless Ska dance, having taken a lot of hits from his own minions that he bullied into attacking Pinkie.

“Everything I want will be mine once I have your soul!” The Mad Dummy summoned more of his little dummies and Pinkie started to painfully dance her soul in a way as to hit the wildly shaking dummy that was spilling cotton everywhere.“Ugh, I guess I’ll avenge my cousin as well… even though you did nothing to him!”

Even if dancing on a sprained leg was hard, Pinkie was managing to do so, on top of having very little space to dance with. She was doing impressively as she shook and jiggled her hips with the music trying not to damage the cooler too much. Her left hind leg was really beginning to sting quite a bit.

“What was their name again? Who cares, all I know is that I utterly hate you!” The Mad Dummy launched a salvo of little dummies at Pinkie Pie which all missed as she shifted and stepped while trying not to fall off her narrow perch. After getting struck by his own magic several more times, the Mad Dummy gave a loud growl. “That is it! Hey guys, you dummies, I told you not to shoot at me! Failures, the lot of you! You’re all fired, you’re being replaced!”

“That’s rather mean of you.” The poor little mini dummies looked sad to Pinkie as they left the scene of the fight by sinking into the nearest surface. “You hurt their feelings; they were just doing their best.”

“I don’t freaking care! Now you’ll see my true power, one that doesn’t rely on a bunch of people who are garbage!” This was saying a lot about him, considering Mad Dummy lived in a garbage dump. He was the actual garbage in comparison to his little dummy minions.

“Ha, ha, ha, so giggle at the ghostly.” Pinkie muttered and narrowed her eyes at the mean old cranky ghost. She was significantly upset by this monster.

“Dummy bots, use your magic missiles!” The Mad Dummy summoned a lot more mechanical looking versions of his minions that popped out of the water and fired missiles at Pinkie’s soul.

Pinkie moved her heart left and right and noticed the missiles were turning towards it, some quick thinking on her part and she tapped out a rhythm and stopped her heart in a very specific point in the air. Just as the missiles were about to hit her soul she slammed down both her right hooves causing it to jump to the right and out of the path of the missiles. The missiles circled around about to hit her soul when she moved it up then towards Mad Dummy. The red lights on all the magical missiles winked out and they flew straight into Mad Dummy’s surprised face and exploded violently, while Pinkie’s floating pulsing pink heart just slid around them in one smooth motion.

“Dummy Bots, you’re awful! Just use your damn final attack already!” Mad Dummy was still being really, really mean even to these mechanical minions, even they had feelings too.

Missiles started flying every which way and the robotic minions flew out of the walls and Pinkie kept dodging and miraculously aiming the missiles right at Mad Dummy with a slight scowl on her face. Mad fell to the ground looking ragged after the staccato of magical explosives he took to the face.

“No way, these guys are worse than the other guys. Who cares who cares? Who cares! I don’t need any friends!” That announcement from Mad Dummy had a pink pony actually looking at him sadly, then the Mad Dummy pulled out a knife on Pinkie and it hovered a few feet from him. He proceeded to shout crazily. “I’ve got knives!”

The Mad Dummy sent the knife flying blade first at Pinkie’s big pink soul and Pinkie dodge the soul charged projectile and then physically dodged projectile itself, it still managed to cut a furrow across her left cheek. A whimpering Pinkie tried to staunch the blood flowing from her cheek with a hoof.

“That was my only knife… but it doesn’t matter, you can’t hurt me and I can’t hurt you. Why you’ll even be stuck fighting me… forever.” The mad cackling dummy intoned creepily before his body parts started flailing wildly all over the place as he laughed an insane laugh. Only something that looked like rain started to fall all over him injuring him a lot more. “What, what is this! What the ‘BLEEP’ is this! Acid rain, that’s it I’m out of here!”

Pinkie’s soul went back into her body as the Mad Dummy floated off in a hurry, she felt bad for him even if he tried to kill her by stabbing her with a knife. The poor guy sorely needed friendship in his life, because friendship just saved hers. She saw her savior was an old acquaintance.

“I’m really sorry to interrupt… it looked like you two were having so much fun.” Napstablook said as Pinkie flagged slightly on her good three legs before sitting down on the cooler. “Sorry to make your friend run off Pinkie.”

“Oh that guy wasn’t my friend, he was just an ugly old mean guy who was trying to kill me and you saved me from him. You’re actually my hero Nappy!” Pinkie caused the floating ghost, one that had just rescued her from the angry idiot, to blush vibrantly. “I need your help Nappy, I’m bleeding and I don’t want to get wet with these injuries!”

“Oh… you’re hurt? I’ll see what I can do to help you; I don’t know how much use I’ll be though.” It was definitely the same Napstablook that Pinkie had met back in the ruins; he still sounded rather down.

“I have a sprained leg, several scabbed over wounds that just opened up and I just took a knife across my face. Any kind of help would be good right about now… and I could really use a friend. Can you push this cooler over to solid ground and help me carry it? I also need a place to rest Nappy.” Pinkie watched as the ghost floated behind her and started pushing the cooler until they hit the solid ground. She got off and tried to lift the cooler, only for Napstablook to politely start carrying it for her.

“We can go to my house, I live around here Pinkie. I think I might have a box of bandages lying around there somewhere. I can’t really use it because I’m a ghost, so you can have it.” Napstablook didn’t know how to feel about saving Pinkie’s life or being called a hero, this kind of thing has never happened to him before. He was supposed to be useless wasn’t he?

The ghost felt a brilliant warmth flow throughout his body when Pinkie hugged him. It stopped when Pinkie let go and he nodded to himself, he would continue to do what felt right just for that kind of feeling again. Pinkie really needed his help and he was ‘determined’ to do his best.

Author's Note

Hmm... Undyne would certain make a good Arthur, just so long as she isn't reduced to a bikini when she takes a hit.

Will fix whatever is wrong with this chapter later, if there is anything. Also Pinkie has yet to actually use the shovel in a real fight.

20 - Farm Snails and Tortoise Tales

“Thank you again for letting us into your home and for helping Pinkie.” Toriel looked about the area outside the little corner the two houses sat in. “So this place is called The Quiet Area… sounds nice.”

“Hey since we’re leaving the cooler behind in Nappy’s house and it’s taking up quite a bit of space since it’s so big.” Pausing for dramatic effect Pinkie looked at the air and waggled her eyebrows at it. Goodness knows she was about to say something relatively close to beating a dead horse in the world of jokes and the air would like to apologize in advance, as a reminder air cannot talk or even groan about bad jokes and is not in fact sentient as Pinkie would have many believe it is. “Does that mean that his house is now at least twenty percent cooler?”

“Pinkie, you’re horrible.” The air wished it could thank Toriel for stating that, now if only she wasn’t giggling like a little school girl about it.

The air would like to remind everyone that it was not in fact an existing entity or an anthropomorphic representation thereof. The fact that the air itself was making wishes despite having no sentience or mind to do so whatsoever should not have bearing on what the protagonists are currently going to do.

“Moving on from the house being colder jokes that somehow got Toriel to laugh, we heard it from a reliable source that Undyne lives around here.” Rolling his eyes as the silliness of his friends, Gyftrot was thankfully trying to get the plot back on track.

“Oh… yeah, she’s my neighbor around the corner over here. She couldn’t keep her house in ‘New Home’ because she kept setting everything nearby on fire, alongside the many incidents. They had to invent new zoning laws specifically for her and her house. She can’t very well turn herself in for being a public disturbance when she’s the captain of the guard. Then there’s the fact that she’s almost been entirely responsible for destroying half of ‘New Home’ more than once, so zoning laws.” Leading the travelers to Undyne’s house, Napstablook saw that the house wasn’t on fire, halfway destroyed, forming a black hole, puking up dancing stone frogs and or flooding with risqué pictures of a yellow lizard on the cover of multiple magazines labeled ‘Hot Land Lizards Monthly’. The ghost figured Undyne had to be busy at her job for her house to be still standing like it currently was. “It seems she’s not home, it’s really easy to tell when she’s not. For one the lights would be on, another is something destructive would be happening around here or to her house.”

Looking at the house, it looked like a scrunched up house shaped like a large monster fish or serpent. It had two angry looking window eyes, a toothy mouth that didn’t even look like a door, two fins on what looked like its cheeks, a tail and scales all over. It was a tad intimidating for a house.

There was a large fishbone mat nearby with a dummy sitting on it and Toriel saw that Pinkie noticeably shied away from it, there was a smaller fishbone mat in front of the door to the house or what passed for one.

“That house almost looks like it’s alive.” Shuddering at its angry looking visage, Pinkie couldn’t help but think that the house was glaring right at her.

“It’s certainly a monster of a house.” This got Toriel a few wary giggles from Pinkie.

“Right then, there’s not much else to The Quiet Area except for a few things… oh hey, it’s Clam Girl.” It was a little strange that Napstablook seemed happy to be a tour guide to The Quiet Area, he floated over to the strange humanoid with the clam head and it opened to reveal a head shaped like a pearl inside with a face. “Hello, Clammy… I hope you aren’t clamming up still.”

“Hi Napstablook, I’ve been better. I see you’ve made some new friends. It’s nice to know you’re getting out more. Showing them around The Quiet Area? I’ll tell my neighbor’s daughter Suzy you said hello, I think your friends would like her.” The clam person smiled at them as they continued on their way.

The ghost pointed out the path beyond the clam person as they moved on.

“That way takes you towards a shop, lamp light swamp, a small village of Temmies and closer to the Hot Lands. Over here is a small farm owned and operated by the Blook family… which consists of just me running things at this time. It’s slow going most of the time and doesn’t even really need me around.” Despite the sad sounding situation of being the only one running a farm, Napstablook didn’t look the slightest bit depressed as he introduced them to what was his actual job. “Welcome to the Blook Family Snail Farm!”

A deafening squeal broke out and it wasn’t Pinkie Pie, it was kind of surprising that she wasn’t the one to make such a high pitched noise. Instead the pink pony and brown deer were wincing and had their ears folded back at the high pitched note.

No it wasn’t Pinkie that had made that noise; it had in fact been a starry eyed Toriel who did an almost perfect imitation of a Pinkie Pie super squeal. She looked immediately enamored with the idea of such a farm and ran up to the fence to look at all the snails there with what could be considered an insane level of excitement. She was at ‘Party Making Pinkie’ levels of enthusiasm.

“I’m not sure about this, but I think our queen really loves snails to an absurd level approaching insanity that goes all the way around again to being barely sane.” It was kind of ridiculous for Gyftrot to see his queen fawning over snails.

“Is that really what I sound like when I squeal loudly around others?” The memories of spooking a shy pony with her squeals entered Pinkie’s mind as she looked to the air in thought. She’d gently approach Fluttershy from the front the next time she saw her and pet her gently.

“Snails, phylum mollusk, class gastropod, they were known as univalves at one time. They are the most diversified class in the phylum with over seventy thousand unique species. They can be anywhere from microscopic to the size of my head or bigger. Slugs are also related to them despite lacking a defined shell which they can entirely hide in, usually having only partial shells. Snails move on a single foot by creating mucus so as to make a slippery track where they can expand and contract their foot in a rippling motion for locomotion. A lot of them even start off a reproductive process by stabbing a prospective partner with a hormone covered biological knife, usually referred to as a ‘love dart’ despite the fact that the snail just stabs with it and no actual throwing takes place.” The snail loving Toriel just couldn’t help but get excited in a deranged manner as she spouted off snail related facts. “I actually have a joke relative to this situation, why are snails stronger than elephants Pinkie?”

“I don’t know Tori, why are snails stronger than elephants?” This reminded Pinkie so much of how Twilight would go on about one thing or another in an adorably nerdy manner, except Toriel wasn’t trying to bore her to death intentionally.

“Twilight dear, I’m sorry for being unladylike by asking this, but are you actually trying to bore us to death?” Rarity yawned and couldn’t feel her body at all at the moment, she had been in this sitting one position for hours and she was trying to stay awake as to not appear rude.

“Yes, because the lecture on the hypothesis I’ve been going on about for the last ten hours as to where Pinkie could have possibly gone or disappeared to is just that boring on purpose!” A sarcastic Twilight responded, she didn’t like the fact that her friends were nodding off at her lecture. There were five chalkboards positively covered in equations behind the unicorn, all of them had depictions of Pinkie Pie connected to chaos theory.

“Well at least you admit to it sugar cube, and that’s a mighty fine first step to admitting that you might have a problem. We’ll forgive you for trying to kill us, isn’t that right girls.” Looking around Applejack noticed that Rainbow had flown the coop, likely hours ago, and Fluttershy actually looked dead or was she just playing possum? It was hard to tell at this point, she looked almost to be a pile of skin and bones. “I think it’s high time we got some vittles in us, then we’re going to go out and do something that’s not worrying about how Pinkie Pie is doing. If her sister Maud says that one of those choosing what-you-may-call-its’ is active, then that’s okay enough for me to know she’s alive wherever she is. Hopefully not in a coma from falling off a mountain and dreaming of a pony named Toriel. Pinkie’s weird and all, but an imaginary girlfriend is where I draw the line of being able to deal with her shenanigans.”

“Because a snail always carries its house, whereas an elephant only carries its trunk!” A smile that could light up the area was on Toriel’s face, she was just that happy to be at a snail farm. She had a large thing for snails that she thought were as cute as they were delectable. “They are omnivorous and a larger snail will actually break the shells of other snails and eat them. Snails use their radula which is a rasping organ that they use to wear down their food; it’s not exactly a tongue even if it does get referred to as such quite often.”

Pinkie was chuckling at the joke and she wished she could say she was as enthusiastic as Toriel sounded, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t about to ruin it for her goat friend though and the snails on display were actually kind of interesting.

The one on the far left was an ordinary looking garden snail. The one to the right of the previous snail looked surprising with a long nose, big eyes and it even had a mustache and the third thing behind the fence was what looked like a strange suited being with a shell sitting on top of them. Next to the strange guy was what was probably once a snail that was now a slug that looked like it was counting money it got from shelling out.

“If this is a farm, these can’t be all the snails you have!” You’ve really got to wonder how Toriel managed to physically start throttling the snail farm operator who was a ghost, then again Pinkie could touch him too so it made sense.

“Yes, there’s quite a lot more than that, these are display snails… well except for that guy in the suit. Usually the only visitor to the farm is some big hairy guy with horns. Want to see the thunder snails’ race?” As Napstablook was asking this, Pinkie and Gyftrot looked to each other before they covered their ears. Toriel was one happy goat lady already and if the two hadn’t seen what was coming they would probably be deaf now. “It’ll be thirty gold to watch them race, that’s ten gold per customer. While I might not have much personal use for money, I do use some of it to keep the farm going.”

“EEEEEEEEEE… Oh my goodness, would I ever! Of course I’ll pay!” Nothing could darken Toriel’s tone in this moment after that deafening squeal; she even brought her hands up to her face and was bleating with glee. She was positively bouncing on her feet as she paid the ghost.

Napstablook nodded and then floated onwards leading them to a straight racetrack at the end of which sat three snails near the three different lanes. They were yellow, red and blue snails and they just seemed to be idling around that area, aside from the colors they all looked the same.

“Guys to the starting lines, we actually have paying customers that want to see the Underworlds fastest snails.” The three athletic snails all quickly snapped their heads towards Napstablook and took up positions in their lanes; they were actually pretty quick to react to his command. The ghost turned to his new friends. “Now I want each of you to cheer for a snail, they need a confidence boost to really get them moving. I’m not really that good at it myself, maybe you’ll do better.”

“I’ll cheer for the yellow one.” Pinkie wondered just how fast these thunder snails could be, if they were twice as fast as a normal snail she wouldn’t be impressed. They were pretty fast to line up at the starting line and now she was actually looking forward to it.

“I pick the red one; oh the trained snails are so cute!” The red snail seemed to wiggle excitedly at the starting line to be picked by Toriel. If only it knew the horrors that the snail eating goat monster would enact upon it if she could, then it wouldn’t be as friendly with her as it was.

“I guess I’ll cheer for the blue one.” What Gyftrot really wanted to do was go back to Napstablook’s house and feel like garbage for a while. There were no words for what the ghost showed them and there still wasn’t any.

“Okay then, 3… 2… 1… go!” As soon as Napstablook said the word ‘go’, the snails set off at a pretty quick pace for snails.

“Come on yellow you can do it, don’t be afraid to go really, really absurdly dangerously turbo fast to the point that things get really bad where you start crashing and burning!” Pinkie cheered on and the yellow snail which was a bit slow starting off compared to the other two snails and it seemed rather anxious at hearing the pony’s words.

“Come on red, full throttle, get it in the zone, you can do it, come on and burn slime!” Being the most enthusiastic and loudest of the three, Toriel could see that the snails were slowly picking up speed as they went and was cheering them on to go even faster.

“Come on blue, don’t you dare be a depressive wimp as your color would imply, wiggle that foot, slime as hard you can and push it to the brink! You’re not just a snail, you’re the snail!” It was odd that Gyftrot was getting into the competitive spirit and even coaching his snail.

They continued to cheer for their snails harder and at some point the snails started getting faster and then they suddenly all started to burst into flames. The yellow one had stopped entirely a little more than a quarter into the track. There was a sudden silence as blue managed to continue sliding until he passed the finish line while on fire. The red one came to a halt before the finish line and like the other two, its shell was burning.

“Do you think we might have pushed them a little too hard?” A worried Pinkie asked of her friends, as Napstablook brought out a fire extinguisher in the background and started to spray the spontaneously combusting snails.

“Uh, maybe just a little, but way to go blue!” Stomping in applause, Gyftrot was smiling at his snail being victorious.

“Don’t worry, they’re alright guys. Okay back to the starting lines with you.” Napstablook picked up the three snails and then pulled a cabbage leaf from his ghostly form to feed the racers as he set them down back at the starting line.

“I’m enjoying this a lot, as much as I love this place we can’t stay here forever. Do you have any snails on sell as in eh-scar-to-go?” A chuckling Toriel licked her lips at the smell of slightly cooked snail on the air; she was almost entirely vegetarian except when it came to snails. “I’m kind of hungry and could use a few snails as a snack for the road.”

“I do have an entire box of snails. For some gold it’s five to a bag, your pick.” A few minutes later and Napstablook eventually came back with a large box. He dropped it on the ground and opened it for the goat to peruse at her leisure. There were hundreds upon hundreds of snails inside the box, Toriel pointed out five to the ghost. He swiftly bagged them and gave them to the goat lady once he received the proper compensation. “This kind of gives me a snail related idea for that cooler in my home.”

Watching the exchange Pinkie sighed, she could overlook the snail eating as long as it didn’t gross her out too much. Hearing a sharp crunch, Toriel had already gotten into her first snail. They were soon to be on their way after a quick bathroom break for Pinkie.

“Would you like a gift shop item for free? They are kind of taking up space in my cousin’s house.” We’re not questioning why Napstablook even has a gift shop for a snail farm; we’re just going to go along with it. He was glad to make Toriel’s day.

The three travelers and snow jar were now at the pathway out of The Quiet Area. Toriel was now hugging a snail plush and after putting it away in her backpack, she pulled out a snail out of her snack bag and popped it in her mouth. There was a loud crunching noise that caused Pinkie to cringe and she cringed again when she heard the following slurp. Now Toriel had only three snails in her snack bag.

“They are crunchy and slimy, yet satisfying.” A smiling Toriel muttered, having just started on another helpless snail and it were two left now.

Pinkie still loved Toriel even if she was a snail masticating monster. If the teaching thing didn’t pan out for Toriel, then she’d be a very good gardener at very least because getting rid of snails and slugs wouldn’t be problematic.

They set off down the tunnel to the sound of a snail being crunched; now there was one left and Toriel was going through them pretty quickly. Given they still hadn’t left The Quiet Area or even reached lamp light swamp, a small swamp area where a village of Temmies was said to reside. Coming up on their left Pinkie saw a sign to a shop.

“Let’s check out the shop.” Pinkie turned and walked through the doorway to the shop and saw a very old bearded turtle with a magnifying glass studying a delta rune on the wall.

“Whoa there, didn’t see you come in… I’ve got some neat stuff to sell, unless you want to hear about my old glory days then I can talk your ears off.” Upon seeing the tortoise who was speaking to Pinkie, Toriel immediately scowled at him.

“Pinkie, this is Gerson, otherwise known as ‘The Hammer of Justice’. He fought in the war, well if you can consider hiding in his shell when things got too rough fighting. Though I will admit that he truly is a hero and has saved many lives, he also never killed anyone and that’s why I’m willing to talk to him.” Looking a bit upset with her arms crossed, it seemed as if Toriel had much more to say about this Gerson character and held her tongue.

“… hmm… oh it’s you! It’s been a long time Toriel; it’s nice to see that you’re doing well. Why you don’t look like you’ve aged a day since I last saw you!” Old guy Gerson was wearing an archaeologist outfit and was looking the travelers over. He cackled slightly, before gaining a serious look. “That war was entirely pointless I tell you, so many monsters gone and nothing to show for it except for all those broken hearts. Of course yours was the most broken out of all of us Lady Toriel, but as a boss monster I’m guess that’s healed over with time?”

“While he is a war hero, he is also a crackpot and I’m not over it. I would also like to reiterate to you that there is no such thing as boss monsters; I aged the same as any other monster until I appeared to have stopped aging altogether and that was even when my children were still…” Now Toriel was quite upset and had stopped herself from getting too angry by popping the last snail into her mouth, she crunched it noisily as the tortoise monster before them looked at the floor.

“I’m sorry for opening those old wounds miss. I guess I’m getting a bit dull about tact at my age, but I’m still mostly sharp as a tack where it counts.” The chuckling Gerson put a comforting hand on Toriel’s shoulder and she quickly shook him off in anger, he didn’t seem to take it personally.

Looking at the two a bit confused, Pinkie wondered what they were talking about when it came to age. She had never bothered to ask for Toriel’s age and never would, what mattered was that she was an adult that could make her own choices about who she dated.

“Um excuse me, but what are you talking about Tori? I know bad things happened to your children, but what does that have to do with your age?” A few question marks popped up around Pinkie’s head.

“Gerson here has a running theory that there are ‘boss monsters’ which are different from other monsters and run on a completely different set of biological rules. He just never explained how he came up with his ludicrous idea that monsters like me who have stopped aging entirely, will now only age when we have living children.” Pressing a hand to her head, Toriel sighed as she thought back on things that she thought she would have forgotten by now. The memories were still painful, but she was older now and more willing to handle the trauma of her past and move on with her life. “To start off if boss monsters do exist and only age when they have children and vice versa that children only age when they have parents, then I shouldn’t be like I am and I still grew up into what I am now. Another thing is, it would be completely impossible to keep a population of monsters going like that if it were true. While I will admit that some monsters do age at different rates, such as you still being alive from the time of that massacre Gerson. If we were to use the term boss monster for anything, then it would have to be for a monster that is far stronger than normal and only physically appears ageless.”

“Why is his idea wrong exactly?” Pinkie tilted her head and Toriel turned to her.

“If you were to follow his ideas of boss monsters Pinkie, then you’d just have us as normal as any other monster who have children. Children don’t steal our energy, they are a lot work to take care of which uses energy and it’s not siphoned off from the parent in a ludicrous manner of which he says it does. In any case his highly flawed theory doesn’t account for the fact that I still age because my fur and horns still grow out.” A bit self conscious about her thickening fur, Toriel rubbed at the back of her head fluffing it up slightly. “If my fur and horns couldn’t grow back then that would imply that I’m not aging at all because I currently don’t have a child. His hypothesis is quite wrong because my fur still gets rather thick, also being entirely incapable of aging would also cause muscle entropy so there’s that. I might have eternally youthful appearance, but as for being ageless… that’s hardly the truth.”

“Maybe you’re just a special case of boss monster that became completely immortal after reaching an age at which you hit a peak where you’re body will sustain itself at that age forever without actually aging forwards into a wrinkly old goat, figure of speech of course madam, like I am. Such a thing still allows you to grow your muscle, hair and horns where entropy wouldn’t be a problem; did you ever think of that?” Gerson the bearded wrinkly tortoise seemed a bit smug about his explanation. “You know that I consider you a boss monster and one of the sweetest ones to ever exist right?”

“Yes, but your hypothesis still fails on the fact that my parents would have to have been boss monsters by your logic, which would mean that if you were right I would still be at ten years in age without their energy to feed off of. My body’s physical age is still actually around twenty three to twenty five at the moment, I’ve been alive for so long it’s hard to remember when my bodies overall aging stopped and how old I really am.” Toriel’s slightly sad tirade was about to continue when she felt Pinkie rubbing up against her while looking up to her with sad eyes, she smiled softly at the pony.

“Tori… it’s really sad that your parents died when you were ten. This is kind of like the debate about Celestia’s age and whether or not she actually does age. She still gets trims for her hooves and hair, so I guess that answers whether or not if she still ages in a way that there isn’t degradation or entropy while appearing ageless.” Many surely haven’t forgotten that Pinkie isn’t dumb. While she’s not dumb, the pink pony was very much a lover of being silly and now was a time when she wasn’t, as she was worried about her goat friend's emotional state.

“Who is Celestia? I’ve never heard of her.” The ancient Gerson asked as he looked at the delta rune on the wall with his magnifying glass.

“Where Pinkie comes from, there’s a supposedly immortal creature called an alicorn that looks like her only bigger with a fluted horn and wings.” At some point Toriel would like to meet with this Celestia and discuss whether or not she was truly immortal. She considered herself quite old and dating Pinkie made her feel young, despite feeling like a cougar she wasn’t going to complain as she needed some love after so long.

“Plus Celestia is well over a thousand years old and she’s still beautiful like Tori! She’s a many times great aunt to so many ponies.” Pinkie didn’t need to tell Gerson that she once had a crush on Celestia and had a crayon drawing of a plan involving a trapped cake to capture her. She already told Toriel that almost every young teenage pony in existence has had a crush on Celestia at some point in their life or at the very least looked up to her.

“This Celestia isn’t a monster I take it?” Nobody could possibly know what was wandering through Gerson’s mind at this moment. He looked to the delta rune. “So she has wings and a horn along with some similar traits to you Toriel?”

“Haven’t met her yet, but I really want to.”As Toriel watched him inspect the wall, she gave off a grunt. “Oh please don’t tell me you have a new prophecy or another hypothesis which blatantly disregards all existing evidence again.”

“Prophecy, what prophecy are you talking about?” Pinkie was interested in a story and prophecies usually led to some interesting times, such as when nightmare moon was defeated a short while ago.

“It’s about the delta rune, which is a long time symbol of the monsters. The prophecy is basically that we’re all stuck down here and a falling angel will be our doom or salvation. You fell down here didn’t you? Been hearing a lot from Undyne about a pink creature that had the power of a human soul without actually being human. You better watch your back girl, because Undyne is definitely gunning for you!” Hacking up a bit of his lungs, Gerson turned to Pinkie Pie with smile. “Undyne looked up to me a lot when she was little and she’s a strong one, I think she’s even close to being a boss monster. I don’t know whether or not she’ll stop aging at some point, but it would be interesting if she did and it would prove me partially wrong. One more thing, I think that legend was talking about you as you seem innocent and perky sort for a young whippersnapper that could be a fallen angel. I wish you the best of luck whatever you do, because you don’t seem to have a lick o’ real mean in you and that might be just what we need down here.”

“Well at least you are able to admit that your boss monster theory isn’t viable.” Toriel deadpanned at the tortoise. Behind them Gyftrot just sat silently staring at a living legend as old as dirt itself.

“I’m admitting to nothing you highly educated nag; maybe I just got some parts of my theory wrong! I still say boss monsters are a real thing.” Doing the old huffy man routine, Gerson did what Pinkie always saw Applejack doing in these situations and that was getting ludicrously stubborn.

“How did the war start? Were you there for it from the beginning?” Pinkie had wanted to know, but she didn’t think Toriel would answer it.

“Indeed I was and those were dark times. Now that I look back on it, it was a horrible misunderstanding of the largest sorts. If Toriel is okay with me telling the story, her and King Fluffybuns didn’t mean for things to happen the way they did.” Hearing the goat lady groan caused Gerson to smile wickedly. “What can’t handle the nickname of your ex? I can understand why you left him though; he’s not exactly the brightest guy ever and he stomped on your heart quite hard he did.”

“Go ahead… I can’t exactly bring myself to tell the whole story.” Toriel sat down and immediately found herself being hugged and nuzzled by Pinkie. The pony also pulled out the snail plush and put it between them and started snuggling with all she was worth.

“Well, the war started over many things, but what was it that set off the whole powder keg of monster resentment that led to a mostly one sided war you may ask? It was the adoption of an orphaned human by a monster with a loving heart; it’s sad but true. The humans didn’t seem to really care about the orphan after they supposedly ‘rescued’ them from us, heck they even accused us of kidnapping their children to enslave them after that. I will say that I know that not all humans are bad or are born that way, but when they start getting a collective idea in mind, they are really quite dangerous easily riled bastards.” There was a grim look on Gerson’s face as he took a seat himself while putting away his magnifying glass.

“This tale isn’t for the faint of heart young one, but you wanted to know. It starts when a baby was found crying out in the cold by a beautiful white maiden in the wilderness, not a mother or father to be seen for miles around. There were splatters of blood covering the small amount of cloth the baby was wrapped in as it cried for help out in the cold, it was completely helpless. The white maiden took that child in, regardless of any consequences it would bring out of the goodness of her heart. Within the same year the white maiden gave birth to a son that she cherished as much as her adopted child that she took in. It was a few years later when the humans found out about the adopted child and then ‘LIBERATED’ the kid from us and it wasn’t long before we were all stuffed into this hole you now find yourself in. The human child still managed to find their way back to the white maiden and their brother, the humans didn’t even really care for them at all after the war was all said and done. The child was never the same after that long fall to the underground which caused them a lot of injuries; they had nothing but hatred for their own kind and were filled with a grand love for monsters. The white maiden saddened by the war was at least happy to have her other child back again. I don’t rightly know what happened next, but it was only a year or maybe two of peace before both of the children ended up dead. One from unknown causes and the other being the white maiden’s innocent child that managed to venture up to the surface to bring back some flowers as a last request for his human sibling; he died from the injuries a pack of humans dealt to him. It taught us the barrier wasn’t perfect and could actually be surmounted. The son of the white maiden had his essence spread all over what became New Home’s flower gardens. Now, we’re becoming just as bad as the humans by hating them and we’re slowly turning on each other out of desperation.” Gerson looked to Toriel with sorrow; he felt horribly guilty now and he was usually such a jolly fellow.

“Asriel… Chara… my children… all of the sudden they were just... gone. I’ve caused so much pain and suffering, I don’t even know why monsters are still willing to call me a queen.” Toriel muttered as tears spilled from her eyes, she should have been more watchful and careful. Why was she such a horrible mother, why did monsters continue to mock her with the name ‘goat mom’? All the extra happiness from the snail farm left her body, but Pinkie’s warmth was still there as was the plush snail. She snuggled them both to her chest and hiccupped slightly. Even the stoic Gyftrot and old Gerson joined in seconds later. It still hurt even now, but she had friends to help her feel better. She also had someone to live and die for; she was ‘determined’ to not fail Pinkie.

Author's Note

Being constantly reminded that your children are gone is never a good thing, just ask Samus Aran about her baby metroid.

Yep, this is mood whiplash for Toriel. As previously stated, all the darkness is in the past and it still haunts Toriel that she was the main cause of it all. She's hasn't exactly had the easiest life and she wants a family, so yeah these things are going to wreck her ability to stay positive. She can't get angry at Pinkie for asking about it and the only other direction for her emotions to go is to sadness and depression.

If you don't like this chapter, then the long editing process for it was probably not worth the effort put into it. If I'm to be honest, it could still use quite a bit of editing no less and is the longest chapter I've made yet.

21 - Moving On

Toriel wiped away the tears from her eyes and slowly calmed down, but she wasn’t about to let go of Pinkie Pie.

“I’m sorry for getting emotional about it; my human child was just playing with other monsters when they were taken. That was the beginning of the war. I guess you now know the whole story Pinkie. I dislike the goat mom moniker as it feels like a mockery of my failures as much as if they were ignoring the damage that I’ve caused, but I will not stop those monsters from calling me what they will.” Toriel looked down at the pony who smiled at her even if it was a sad smile. “I wasn’t just crying for my children, but also for the children who I let pass me by and had their souls taken. I think we became what the humans accused us of, thieves of souls that are mostly innocent. I haven’t even heard a single one of those six humans hurting any monsters in our travels.”

“Toriel, no one can begrudge you for your sorrow; we all need to cry a little sometime. Especially me since I took a lot of slings and arrows to the shell. You’re not entirely to blame for what happened and you can’t put it all on your shoulders like that, I’m surprised that you don’t blame me more.” The crotchety Gerson was trying to pep talk the goat lady, he knew Toriel didn’t like him much but he had to at least clear some air for making her cry again. To him, Toriel’s heart was so very fragile and easy to damage. “You did a good and noble thing; it’s just that things didn’t work out they way any of us could have wanted them to. If you never stop grieving then you might not be able to fix the mess that’s going to boil over if your ex ever gets hold of another soul. He’s planning on attacking the humans on the surface and with what forces we have right now… that would be condemning all us monsters to death. Well the ones who can’t take a hit anyway, I’m sure my shell could weather even the angriest of blows. The humans have likely expanded their numbers by quite a bit; given the stuff that ends up down here they’ve likely got a technological edge on us too. If King Fluffybuns goes off half cocked, he’s only going to cause more suffering.”

“All the more reason to stop another soul from being stolen, I can’t let that happen even if I have to usurp him myself to do it.” A fierce fire lit in Toriel’s eyes. “I will not let things devolve into any more pointless bloodshed; I will do all that I can to stop this peacefully.”

“That is the reason why we’re still willing to call you queen, it is because you’re strong and you haven’t given up yet Toriel. I may not be helping much when it comes to you two getting attacked, but I’m still here aren’t I?” What Gyftrot was talking about was the fact that he was still there for Toriel. “I didn’t know any this as I was born down here. What happened to us monsters is a tragedy for sure, but hearing that you’re still able to feel joy or even laugh after hearing what you’ve been through? You’re an inspiration to us all Toriel. I know this may be crass of me, but would you be okay with me calling you goat mom to?”

“Of course Gyftrot, I am the queen of all monsters after all and I guess I’m their mother as well. I don’t like being called goat mom, but I guess there’s no stopping it… just so long as Pinkie doesn’t start calling me that.” Toriel saw Pinkie slowly gain a wide grin and actually gave her a real smile. “No… you are not going to stop being my mare friend to be a daughter to me. That would be awkward for me after all the cuddling and kissing we’ve done.”

“It’s good to know that you’re still able to smile Tori.” Pinkie nuzzled under the goat ladies chin before separating herself from the strong grip and stood in front of the tortoise monster. “Thanks for the history lesson Gerson, but we really have to be on our way. By now you know that my name is Pinkie, my last name is Pie. I, Pinkie Pie, hope that we can be friends and that you’ll live long enough to try a cupcake.”

“I’ll look forward to whatever a cupcake is. I’m not that old you know! I’ve still got a good forty or so years left in me.” Gerson gave off a soft chuckle and patted Pinkie on the head, he made the pony smile and it warmed his heart to see the youngster bounce back so easily from the Underworld Tale. “Of course an old coot like me would be a friend with someone like you, you’ve got a lot of spunk young one. I guess this is good bye for now Toriel, a boss monster like you and your friends here need to put some gumption into saving us from ourselves. Just one last thing, before you leave. Undyne may be offensive in every meaning of the word, not to mention fast and easily angered like a honey badger, but she’s not really a bad monster and is just trying to do what she thinks is right. What she has in power and aggressiveness, she lacks sorely in the stamina department and her pull field range is really short. Tiring her out is easy to do and dry hot areas bother her quite badly. So you get her running, keep her active and try to lead her into the hot lands. If you can do that, well… you’ll see.”

“Thank you; that might even be useful when we run into her again.” Though she didn’t like the tortoise very much, Toriel was not one to hold onto her anger and could be amiable towards him. Exiting the shop, she continued on the path to New Home with more on the line than ever before. “I hope we don’t meet again too soon you old crackpot.”

“So the reason why you have a thing for magical fire is because of Chara?” As they walked Pinkie had still been a curious little pony that wanted to know more about her goat friend, she loved Toriel a lot and she wanted to make her happy. She also had a healthy respect for the goat lady who could still laugh in the face of her emotional baggage. They read the signs that they walked past on the way, they were talking about seven humans sealing the monster underground and gave off some very defeatist tones.

“Yes, I believe I have told you that I know many enchantments and of what magical fire entails already, now if I were a Temmie where would I live in a swamp that isn’t on a ridiculously built ship?” The rocky flooring slowly stopped and led into swamp area, Toriel was actually on the lookout for monster attacks now. Things were getting more and more dangerous for Pinkie as they went along and she had yet to put that shield she got from Risotto to good use.

“So I was wondering, I know Gerson mentioned technology and that makes me wonder where the monsters got the idea for cell phones.” If Pinkie could get her friends mind off her old turmoil, then she could learn a thing or two at the same time as well. “You’re the smartest and most beautiful goat I know, so I’m sure you know the answer.”

“Your flattery isn’t going anywhere with me Pinkie, I sometimes don’t think I’m beautiful enough to even warrant such lavish loving attention from a sweet and funny little equine like you.” Blushing and looking away from the pony, Toriel gave her an answer as they walked into a very dark place. “Monsters didn’t come up with cells phones Pinkie; we got them from whatever the humans likely toss out as garbage. A lot of things that could only be from the humans end up falling into the Underworld and we recycle it for ourselves. As Gerson said, humans have quite an edge in technology and back when we were on the surface they never had anything quite like the stuff us monsters have been finding. Ever heard the phrase, curiosity couldn’t kill the Temmie, but tried really hard to do so?”

“No, but I’ve heard the phrase, curiosity killed the cat and if the cat didn’t learn the lesson the first time then they still had eight more lives with which to do so. Makes me glad I’m a pony and not a cat, because I like being curious.” Pinkie tilted her head at Toriel with a sense of curiosity as the goat lady laughed a bit. “So how come curiosity couldn’t kill a Temmie? Is it because they are part dog?”

“No, it’s a phrase that monsters use to say that curiosity tends to bring trouble to us. Like the technology that falls down here is somewhat troubling.” Toriel was actually getting back into a better mood after her little emotional episode just by talking with the mare. “Temmie’s can’t be killed by curiosities when they are curiosities themselves. The ability to warp reality isn’t exactly common among monsters.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed, used to be able to do some of that stuff myself… why do you dislike Gerson so much?” As Pinkie watched the goat light her hand aflame and walked into the dark area, the light barely even reached a foot from Toriel.

“He was there when the war started Pinkie; think about it for a minute.” Toriel looked about the darkness with her magical flaming hand barely creating enough light no matter how much power she put into it. “Stay close to me; we’ll stop to eat and sleep at that village if we can find it.”

Pinkie did actually think about it as Toriel tried to find the way forward, she finally realized that Gerson was there when Toriel’s adopted child was stolen from her. He had literally been there at the beginning from the very start.

“Do you want me to stop asking about your past Toriel? I can cut back on the curiosity if you want.” Coming to a stop next to some mushrooms, Pinkie poked them and a pathway lit up through the swamp with the same squeaking noise all the lamp mushrooms made when poked.

“Don’t stop being who you are Pinkie; I’ve actually needed to confront this stuff for a while now and you’re actually helping me through it.” As they followed the pathway that lit up because of the mushrooms, Toriel felt she was currently under a lot of pressure to solve all the problems of the Underworld and she was only one goat. All the friends Pinkie was making and their traveling together was actually making it all easier to bear with. “If I’m going to eventually live the dream of becoming a teacher someday, I need to be able to hold myself together under pressure.”

Something darted across the pathway and Toriel stopped and held out her arms in front of Pinkie and Gyftrot getting them to stop as well. After a minute of silence they continued on and poked another mushroom lighting up another pathway through the darkness, even then Toriel kept her hand lit and ready to scare away anything that would dare to be as brazen as to attack them.

“I’ve been meaning to ask. If you’ve been to New Home before, then why are we so lost?” Pinkie was just happy that Toriel didn’t sound very depressed anymore.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been to New Home and there are many paths going there, the one through the Hot Lands is the quickest route from Waterfall and it is kind of scenic. Now quiet, I don’t think we’re alone out here.” Something shifted in the dark swampy grass and Toriel felt a twisting in her chest as her soul pulled out of her body, the flame around her hand immediately snuffed out.

Toriel’s soul was glowing brightly as its red and orange colors shifted and Pinkie’s soul was floating next to it appearing not as bright in contrast, in front of them there were two Moldsmals’ slowly approaching. Moving forward Pinkie shook her rump at the Moldsmals’ and one of them shook right back at her with a sexy wiggle.

“It’s okay Tori; I think I can befriend them easily enough. Hey there having a nice stroll through the swamp?” Pinkie patted the Moldsmal that wiggled at her and it slowly started to ooze away and left money behind for her to scrape off the ground. The other one just started growing in size until it looked like it could swallow Toriel whole. “Um Tori, is a Moldsmal supposed to get that big?”

“Oh that’s not a Moldsmal… it’s a Moldbygg. According to the monster compendium written by the author Mysteriously Informative Frog Thing, they are native to swamp lands of the Waterfall region. Like the one we’re currently in the middle of. Watch out for their tentacles, because they can throw quite a lot of attacks at you using them.” As he read from the book, Gyftrot couldn’t help but feel sorry for the two who would have to deal with a tentacle monster. “Its slime is quite putrid, so it is for the best that you don’t hug it. If you have a shield, then stay away from it or it will steal it from you by swallowing you whole to get at it, which is something you definitely don’t want to happen to you. Warning whatever you do, do not entice it with sexy shaking for the love of all that is holy.”

“You know, you could have told me that before I shook my butt at it.” It wasn’t like Pinkie wasn’t going to ignore the books advice and do it anyway just to see what would happen, because curiosity was a problem for her and she had already been shaking her rump at it while Gyftrot was reading. “Is this whole chapter going to be about how often I upset others with my overly abundant curiosity? I know I lack tact and have problems with personal space, but that doesn’t mean that I’m that bad when it comes to curiosity.”

“Please stop complaining at the air and pay attention!” With a swift twirl and a sweep of her arms Toriel rammed her soul into Pinkie’s and shoved it out of the way of pattern of bullets fired by the tentacles that popped out of the large gelatinous mold monster.

“Sorry Tori, I’ll get on it right now!” Pinkie did a quick jig that shifted her heart about to dodge the bullets and more grasping tentacles. The tentacles weren’t only trying to grab her soul, they were going after her body as well, as one almost managed to get a grasp on one of her legs. “Hey keep your tentacles off of me! I’m not that kind of pony, at least take me on a date first!”

“Pinkie if you date that thing or even think of actually giving it a hug, we’re not going to be cuddling in our sleep at all later!” At Toriel’s words, Pinkie began dodging more frantically as cuddles were on the line. She herself was trying to avoid her soul and body being snatched by one of the many tentacles popping up out of the surrounding bog.

“Nope, nope, nope, I’m not going to go anywhere near that idea of Pinkie dating the Moldbygg as being possible!” Gyftrot leapt back a few times and then launched an attack that caused several snowflakes to form in the air. They blocked the bullets being fired from the tentacles, he actually managed to control his attack well enough to deflect a few more of the Moldbygg’s other attacks away from Pinkie and Toriel.

“Why not, I think he’s cute in a big gooey way.” Even the words in the air are appalled at Pinkie’s ability to overlook how horrific the Moldbygg’s outward appearance was.

“Pinkie, you’re taste in men is appalling.” Sighed Toriel as she dropped under a tentacle that swiped at where her waist used to be.

“He’s tall, in the dark and could possibly even be handsome in the right light though!” When it came to taste Pinkie had the oddest tongue on any planet, especially when it came to eating liquid rainbow cupcakes. She danced her soul around several more bullets fired by the tip of the tentacles as her body bounced around the tentacles themselves. Even though there wasn’t much ambient light it was still easy to see the bullet attacks coming. Dodging the tentacles was another story entirely, as they swept sneakily through the dark trying to catch the pony off guard and she was trying to pay close attention for those very attacks. “Also what’s wrong with Napstablook? So he’s a little incorporeal, he’s a really sweet guy underneath that dour attitude of his when you can get him to cheer up.

“You are not dating the Moldbygg; I’m putting my foot down on this one Pinkie!” As Toriel said it she stomped a flaming white foot down on one of the grabby tentacles and the Moldbygg recoiled away from them by a foot or two. “There is nothing is wrong with Napstablook and I have nothing against him. It’s just that all the men you choose to date don’t sound like they were really ideal for you. I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation!”

“Really, you don’t believe in our conversation? Well that makes the conversation rather sad that you won’t acknowledge that it exists when you know it does. Our conversation deserves an apology Toriel!” There was a strange noise coming from the mold monster as Pinkie and Toriel came to a halt in their evasive motions.

“Is the Moldbygg actually laughing at us?” Toriel asked with a flat look on her face as it seemed the giant mold monster was jiggling in place and making an odd noise, at least it had given them a moment to breathe.

“I think it is. Say Mr. Moldbygg, if excuse me for asking this, I know you want to do horribly naughty things to us with your tentacles and all, but could you give us some personal space and not do that? I think we’d be better off as just friends and not touching one another inappropriately, well unless we go on a few dates first.” After a moment of silence, Pinkie tilted her head at the large mold monster that seemed to nod. It slowly started to ooze away leaving a pile of money behind and the two floating souls went back to their respective bodies. “Thanks for the money Mr. Moldbygg!”

It was quiet once more and a snort rang out among the group as Toriel started laughing. She tried to cover her mouth and stop herself, but she couldn’t help herself. Even Gyftrot couldn’t help but laugh at the situation.

“What’s so funny?” Pinkie was confused as to why the two were laughing.

“Because for a moment there we thought you were serious about dating the Moldbygg!” After staring at the pony that had a firm look on her face, Gyftrot blinked and commented on her expression. “Oh wait, you’re serious, Toriel’s right you do have a bad taste in men!”

“Oh come on, he isn’t that bad! Sure he smells funny and is a large tube like blob of tentacle horror, but I can see through that to the sweet and wiggly innards he has. Why he’s positively oozing with character!” This caused the two to laugh a bit harder at Pinkie making her blush. So she liked big blobs of goo, green ones in particular, that wasn’t a reason to tease her about it. Why if some chaotic being were to introduce her to a nice green blob monster, she’d go on a date with it and maybe get a dance in.

“Oh he was definitely oozing something alright. Let us continue on before he comes back to take you up on your offer for a date Pinkie.” This had actually put Toriel in a good mood, not all monster attacks would end in an easy manner as just asking them to stop attacking you. The Moldbygg had actually given them a workout and had been dangerous up to the point Pinkie’s silliness caused it to falter in attacking them. “I don’t think you’d ever get the smell out of your fur if you did.”

“Maybe, but I bet he cleans up nicely!” The two laughed even harder at Pinkie’s words and she had to admit that what she said was actually pretty funny. There was no way she could have said that previous statement with a straight face, which is why she herself started to giggle. “But seriously though, I would actually date the Moldbygg. So if my taste in men is questionable, what about my taste in women Tori?”

“No comment.” Toriel immediately stated as they continued onward for about a few feet only to have their souls pulled out again and just as they were about to turn on another mushroom lamp to see if they see any more paths on the ground.

The figure that had leapt out in front of them and used a soul pulling field was none other than a Temmie, well their village was said to be in the area so why not get attacked by one?

“Hi, tem have special monster fight with Temmie Assassin who kills with cuteness!” This Temmie was as cute as any other Temmie wearing a thick blue shirt and talking in a cutesy voice. “I am a Temmie-nator and I will Temmie-nate you, because I’m De-temmie-d to do so!”

“Well since I wasn’t around to read the entry on it previously, I will now present to you what the book has to say on Temmies’. They don’t like muscles or flexing because they don’t see muscles as cute at all. They are easily bribed with Temmie Brand Temmie Flakes, belly rubs, scratching behind the ears and cuddles.” Looking over the next page in the book, Gyftrot saw that there was more to read. “Their faces are not fully attached to their bodies, humans are allergic to them, despite how silly they act they aren’t actually dumb and they always land on their sides when it comes to hitting the ground after falling. It is never a good idea to ever underestimate a Temmie when they start deciding to be clever.”

“We knew most of that already. Hey Temmie Assassin, if I give you a belly rub, will you give up on attacking us?” Offered Pinkie Pie and the Temmie actually considered it for a moment.

“Belly rubs from two of you, ear scratches from goat mommy and a five, no, ten second cuddle with deer monster.” The Temmie Assassin said that as a counter offer. “Tem might take that deal and overlook bounty on tem and be friends with you, tem will love you long time too!”

“Well guys, what do you say?” Pinkie wasn’t about to talk for her friends as they had to decide on their own if they were willing to make that deal.

“I’m fine with it, I give really good scratches don’t I Pinkie?” Toriel kneeled down and wrapped her fingers around one of Pinkie’s ears and started rubbing until the pony soon swooned from the euphoric feelings going through her body.

“Cuddling is all it better be, because anymore and she’ll owe us something in return aside from not attacking us.” Gyft was a little skittish around the Temmie Assassin as the Temmie Assassin was staring at him creepily.

“We’ll try to convince Gyftrot kiss you if you will also lead us to the Temmie Village safely.” The little thing started vibrating excitedly in place at Pinkie’s words. “So what do you…”

“Temmie Assassin accepts all the offers!” This Temmie Assassin didn’t even have to think about it, she wanted a big smooch from the cute deer monster with the sideway opening mouth and she had immediately released the two souls from her pull field.

“Okay then, lead us towards the village and we’ll get started on convincing Gyft to kiss you on the cheek… or do you want it on the lips?” Both Pinkie and Toriel were ignoring Gyftrot’s groan of being the center of attention, he liked his quiet background status in the group.

“Tem want lips… though tem don’t know how tongue work for deer monster.” Well at least Temmie Assassin knew what she wanted.

“Can we talk about this?”Gyftrot asked with a sense of dread as the Temmie seemed to gush over his appearance.

“Well of course we can, we did just promise to try and convince you to do it. We never said anything about actually forcing you to kiss her.” Pinkie noted that the Temmie Assassin didn’t seem to care that it wasn’t a guaranteed thing, so she would work on convincing Gyftrot to give her a good kiss. “Sorry Gyft, but that cuddle is not negotiable though.”

“I’ll live I guess, so how are you going to convince me to kiss a Temmie?” Gyftrot coughed lightly as they followed behind the Temmie Assassin onto a path that wasn’t lit. “I’m rather highly reluctant on that front.”

“Come on Gyft, she’s cute and adorable! What’s wrong with wanting to kiss all of that? Besides she wants to and you can’t be picky because you’ll never learn how to kiss with a mouth like that if you don’t at least try once.” Pinkie wasn’t exactly making a winning argument here as Gyftrot still looked like he didn’t want to kiss Temmie Assassin.

“Yes, I too have been curious as to how a sideways mouth would work when it comes to kissing.” Now Toriel had a vested interest in Gyftrot’s love life and the deer monster looked to be slightly put off by his friends.

“It is in my opinion that you should man up Gyft and take this wonderful opportunity as she’s apparently interested in experimenting. Then again all Temmies are as cute and silly as any other from my perspective.” Even the snow in the jar was for the deer monster kissing the Temmie.

“Gee, what great friends you are.” Gyftrot stated sarcastically as he didn’t think they were being very convincing by telling him to just go for it.

“Yeah, yeah, tem great friends, you listen and give big smooch? We almost in tem village and I get attention then yes?” They walked along a very dark path and a light was coming from up ahead, the Temmie leading them seemed to be bouncy at the prospect of receiving so much attention.

“Come on Gyftrot, I’m sure there’s a monster out there for you even if Temmie Assassin here isn’t the one! You need to learn how to romance eventually!” The deer monster was only slightly bigger than Pinkie was and he proved to be quite shy like a normal deer when it came to confrontations.

“Fine, if it’ll get you guys off my back and to stop pressuring me, I’ll do it.” Flicking a bit of mud off his hoof as they walked into a village carved out of stone, Gyftrot had to at least say one more thing. “I withhold my right to dislike it though, not many of my kind around to really teach me how to kiss you know. I may just as well learn now.”

“That’s the spirit and totally understandable Trot! Now let’s go talk to some Temmies’ and see if they have an inn!” Pinkie walked up to and kneeled down in front of the Temmie Assassin. “That is after we pay you first.”

“Tem anticipation is great and patience is always worth great reward.” Temmie Assassin stretched out and waited for the good feelings to come.

Pinkie started her off a with a belly rub, that had the adorable assassin mewling in happiness. Toriel went next and scratched behind all four of her ears and rubbing her belly at the same time, it was pure bliss for the cutely growling dog sized monster. After that the Temmie Assassin looked to Gyftrot expectantly with little hearts floating off of her head after all of the attention she had just received.

Sighing Gyftrot moved forward and wrapped his hooves around Temmie Assassin and cuddled her for the allotted time and after he set her down he tried to prepare himself for the kiss. He didn’t get much time as the Temmie Assassin leap straight for his face taking the initiative and her mouth was on his before he could even object.

It was minutes later and Gyftrot and Temmie Assassin were still going at it after Pinkie and Toriel had already booked a hotel to sleep in.

“Why are we still watching this?” It had gotten kind of awkward for Toriel as to how much the two were getting into it.

“Because it’s adorable, that and Gyftrot definitely has her hooked on his masculine charms.” Pinkie said while feeling the love as she rubbed her face up against Toriel’s side while hugging her.

“I think it’s more of the idle curiosity as to when those two are going to come up for air.” A look of worry crossed Toriel’s face.

“I’m sure they’ll separate eventually.” A popping noise was heard to confirm Pinkie’s words as the deer and the cat-dog separated.

“Tem is very happy to be meeting you, you good kisser!” Temmie Assassin started to glow slightly and she grew a pair of brown antlers between her two sets of ears. “Guess tem is no longer assassin, now I am Temmie Trot! Big fan of traveling deer monster, he have real good gift for kissing with odd mouth!”

“Don’t say a word Pinkie, maybe things won’t get too crazy.” Yes, because Toriel witnessing a Temmie growing little antlers on her head wasn’t crazy already.

“A word…” Pinkie waited for something to happen, only nothing interesting did, apparently tempting fate at this point and time was not going to work. “Well what was the point of me saying, a word, if nothing was going to happen anyway?”

“Did anybody get the number of that donkey cart? Is the Temmie all done latching herself to my face?” Gyftrot sat up dizzily and saw the Temmie now had cute little horns that reminded him of his own, only they didn’t have decorative tree’s growing on them.

“Yeah, we think she’s done. We’ve fully paid her back for helping us find our way through the darkness to the village, now if we could only find a way forward. This sequestered little village has a five star hotel that we booked a room in. We going to eat and sleep in that hole in the wall over there.” It boggled Toriel how the Temmies could build a five star hotel starting with a hole in the wall, not to mention that they could actually pay for a short stay in belly rubs. The Temmies’ didn’t even seem to have any other buildings aside from the shop and the hotel in the hole. “After that we should be able to easily reach hot lands.”

“Do you really think Undyne is waiting for us, she didn’t chase us this far for nothing.” Pinkie took up a carrot and started nibbling at it; they were having a nice meal. “Of course you realize she means war in that armor and with all those spear she can throw at us right?”

“It is unfortunate, but we will do what we must because we can, for the good off all of us that are stuck down here. I wonder how aggressive the monsters in the hot lands will be and at what point does reasoning with them cease to be the best option? It is there that my ex has most of his power consolidated with New Home.” As Toriel ate her soup and looked at the surrounding accommodations, she couldn't help but think of the hotel as being really quite fancy. “You know they have ovens here at the hotel and I’m still feeling a tiny bit depressed. Why I could use some sugary little cake shaped confections right about now, you know, to make me feel better.”

“Hopefully we’ll never have to stop reasoning with everyone.” Pinkie giggled at Toriel’s thinly veiled hopes for dessert; she looked to her shovel nearby and frowned. She hoped that she would never have to utilize it to its fullest potential as a weapon. “I can’t believe I created a cupcake eating monster.”

“I was always a monster Pinkie, but I didn’t start eating cupcakes until you come along and it has been a while since I’ve had one.” With a smile, Toriel took a sip of fruit juice she ordered. She was never going to understand the economy of Temmies’ at this rate if a glass of juice is worth one friendly ear rub.

Author's Note

Well I'm not caring about editing this time, it shows.

Next up Undyne Vs. Pinkie Pie.

The Undying Warrior Vs. A Rock Farmer's Daughter.

22 - Shovel Pie Shuffle

Pinkie sat still as Toriel gave her a sponge bath; she shivered at each gentle and caring touch. The Temmies’ hole in the wall hotel had nice bathrooms and having a goat lady clean you with a sponge felt awkward, especially when said goat lady was going without her robe again in preparation for bed. This was a rather intimate if quiet moment for them.

The wounds still stung, but were healing well enough to not bother the pony very much as they had never been infected with dirty water that had piles of garbage in it. Toriel made sure that the cuts were cleaned and bandaged once more and all throughout the process Pinkie kept making squeaking noises that made her smile.

After that then came the part where Toriel had Pinkie in front of a mirror and she brought out a brush after removing the hair bands holding the pony’s hair in pigtails. The goat lady pulled the pony into her lap and started brushing her in front of the mirror.

“You know Tori, if so many see you as a leader and an inspiration to monsters, then Gyftrot and Mr. Snow aren’t wrong about you. Even I think you’re an inspiration to me for being able to smile like you do.” The brush didn’t falter and Pinkie felt it continue to stroke her pleasantly, she didn’t see much of a shocked reaction in the mirror. There was only a pleasant smile for her. “You don’t look surprised that I listened in on your conversation with Mr. Snow.”

“I knew you were awake Pinkie, I too would be wary around someone who became angry and crashed a mystically formed meteor down on someone’s head. Then there was how cute you looked when you held out your hooves asking for a good snuggle and smiled at me with your eyes closed, crawling back into bed with you wasn’t really all that hard for me.” Toriel continued to brush Pinkie’s mane and then she’d get to Pinkie’s tail. “Are you going back to the puffy mess your hair is supposed to be in when this is all over?”

“Yeah, I think it’s my signature hairstyle.” Pinkie felt Toriel slowly gather her hair into a hand and then jerked it upwards slightly; she could feel her face heat up at the tugging.

“What style am I going to do when we wake up? There are so many options.” Toriel hummed as she went back to brushing Pinkie.

“What about a ponytail? Oh, can I brush you next!” Pinkie was going to have a nice evening treating her goat friend to a nice relaxing brushing, because why not return the favor to her goat friend.

“I’m thinking more of a nice loose braid and not such an obvious silly pun. Of course you can brush me. Is your leg going to be okay, it’s still slightly swollen and don’t think I didn’t notice your dancing was thrown off by it.” The conversation stayed pleasant as Toriel became assured that all Pinkie needed was some rest after dancing on her sprained leg twice in one day.

After Toriel went to lie down in the soft cushiony bed on her back, Pinkie crawled on top of her and rested her face against the goat’s neck and snuggled into her. The lady reached up and wrapped her arms around Pinkie and started to drift off into a peaceful sleep after entrapping them both in the blankets. She held Pinkie close to her; the pony was already snoozing until she herself drifted off. She was wondering what would become of them at the end of this. Would the monsters reconcile with the humans and would Pinkie go home?

In a nearby bed Gyftrot looked at the two snuggled together and smiled as he himself enjoyed a five star bed. He was never going to question why Temmies’ built things to human proportions, all he knew was that they were really good at building things that were bigger on the inside than the outside and didn’t care for the specifics as long as he got to enjoy that hot tub again before they left.

Toriel awoke calmly and snuggled something to her chest, it took her a moment to realize that it wasn’t Pinkie Pie. It was the snail toy she got from the snail farm. She sat up a bit startled and looked around to see that Gyftrot was also gone.

“Oh good, you’re awake Toriel. Do not look so panicked. Gyftrot went to enjoy the hot tub. That Temmie that grew antlers snuck into his bed last night followed after him, he has quite an admirer there. Anyway Pinkie said something about getting breakfast.” The snow in the glowing jar had eased the panicked monster queen’s mind for the moment. “If you’re wondering, Pinkie awoke a few minutes ago and then managed to switch herself out for the toy by tickling your ear with her nose. I believe she said something about breakfast.”

“Aw, I wanted to tell her Snow. I was getting you breakfast in bed!” Pinkie pushed a trolley into the room and the smell of hot waffles and fruit syrup soon filled the room, along with fried and scrambled eggs, some biscuits and mushroom gravy, plus a few other breakfast goodies. “This is one of the best five star hotels I’ve ever been to. Oh and there’s a breakfast cupcake for dessert with your name on it Tori.”

Plying the goat with cupcakes was always going to be fun to Pinkie, as she didn’t think Toriel could ever figure out how to eat one in a dignified way and she would certainly enjoy the smile that came with it.

After breakfast Pinkie walked into the only shop which had curtains and was in an alcove next to the hotel, she had met Bob one of the few male Temmies’ in existence outside. He looked exactly like the females and only had a slightly deeper voice to distinguish him from them; it was still high pitched and adorable.

Shaking her head the pony approached the cardboard box where a Temmie with Grey hair popped up.

“Hi I’m Temmie, welcome to tem shop, I have good stuff! Tem trying to pay for college, so tem can learn ancient Temmie techniques. So I can has big tummy rubs and more money!” The Temmie pawed at the edges of her cardboard box that worked as her counter cutely. She was a merchant, quite an intelligent one at that, except for the problem with her impulsiveness that all Temmies’ seemed to have when it came to doing dumb things to be cute.

“Say, you’re a bit different from the other Temmies’, then again so was Temmantha and a few other notable Temmies’.” Pinkie’s idle comment got the shop Temmie clapping her paws in excitement.

“You bring news of sissy! Tell, maybe give discount! Tem full name is Temmie Tammie!” Temmie Tammie seemed excited to hear about her sister. “Is sissy capturing Stockholm syndrome people to get belly rubs and cuddles?”

“Yes, she’s doing that somewhat successfully. She’s captain of her own ship of adorable little pirates who know how to swing a mean loaf of bread, I’m friends with her first mate First Mate Temmie.” Pinkie hadn’t been injured in that fight at all, but it still stung to get a stiff baguette upside the head or a hard cork to the face.

“Yay, yeah, yeah, sissy is always having good times with her first mate! Now if only she could get second and third mate to join in more often. We have deep history, very deep! History very long too, I even forget most of it. Now would you help me get college funds by buying something?” The adorable smile and squeak toy noise she made as she stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth had gained Temmie Tammie an intrigued customer.

“Pinkie, are you in here? There you are, I don’t know how much more I can take of these Temmies’ and their need to be overly adorable.” As Toriel looked around the quaint little shop and the curtains, she could see the Temmie who owned it was wearing a graduation hat. “Other than that I managed to help a slightly sad mushroom out. He really knew how to dance a mean samba and gave me some pointers. What have you been doing for the last hour? We really need to get going soon.”

“Hold on just second Tori, I’m almost done here with my friend Tem-Tam. Okay so that’s the armor paid for and for directions to get to the hot lands, so I still I owe you a hug.” Pinkie had haggled Temmie Tammie down to a warm comforting hug instead of a belly rub. The Temmie nodded and held out her paws wide waiting for Pinkie to sweep her up into a grand hug, she did so with a loving gentle manner and tightened the hug into a passionate cuddle.

As they cuddled the Temmie Tammie whispered some directions into Pinkie’s ear, said ear wiggled attentively as it took in the directions. Since Tem-Tam wasn’t doing business with Toriel, she had to keep her customers privacy at its utmost secret. Even if Pinkie told Toriel later, business was still business.

“Okay tem thinks that about does it!” Temmie Tammie stated jovially as she pulled away from the hug and placed a piece of clothing with what looked like a Temmie’s face imprinted on it. “Here go, one Tem Totally Tempered Tubular Tactical Temmie Armor! It very good, special made for friend who brings news of sissy being okay and has treated crew to nice cream. Armor will never break and help wearer lots and lots; it has deep legendary history to any who wear one! It is very expensive to make though, doesn’t perfectly stop injuries either even if very powerful.”

Toriel questioned the usefulness of a shirt and wondered how much it cost for Pinkie to even buy it, it certainly didn’t look helpful. All the other Temmies’ wore shirts or sweaters all the time, so what was so special about this shirt with a smiling face on it? She watched as Pinkie slipped it over her head and shook her mane out, which reminded Toriel that she would have to braid it before they left. It was then in her musings as to playing with her mare friend’s mane, that she saw the shirt do something odd.

The shirt shrunk down and began to change color; it became slightly flush with Pinkie’s body while still giving her a full range of motion. It became a lighter shade of pink that added a new one to Pinkie’s two main colors already. The symbol of Pinkie’s cutie mark swiftly appeared on her chest above the blankly smiling Temmie face emblazoned on the shirt, the small three balloons were clear as day in all their glory. The shirt also created a very small skirt in a colorful rainbow of pteruges that covered Pinkie’s rear slight and the pony was looking at it in clear fascination, as the shirt had become something akin to a form fitting small dress with sleeves. It breathed so easily, she almost couldn’t tell she was wearing it without the skirt.

Holding out a hand to scan the shirt with some magic, Toriel balked and stumbled back a few steps from Pinkie and then she stared wide eyed at the Temmie. Suffice it to say that cloth was obviously magical armor, Toriel just found out how magical it was and couldn’t believe what she had seen. That shirt had been positively covered in all kinds of advanced magic that Toriel couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

“Okay let’s go rescue Gyftrot from Temmie Trot and then we can set out Tori.” Pinkie left with a skip in her jump and her skirt flopped up and down. She looked back at Toriel and saw that her eyes were looking at her rear and she shook it a little to get the goat blushing.

After braiding Pinkie’s mane into one braid that split into two at the base of her neck, they were now back in lamp light swamp and Gyftrot looked around warily for Temmie Trot. The little Temmie with antlers was determined to give them heart attacks through pure adorable. After following the directions they received from the Tem-Tam and passing several mold monsters by without incident, they eventually found their way forward. Coming upon the next section of the swamp which was so dark, even Toriel’s magical flames couldn’t light up the path or even further than one foot in diameter around her. Both Gyftrot and Pinkie were pressed up again her as if they were afraid of the dark. They all stopped to look over a sign.

“Who keeps leaving these signs behind or even writing them? I don’t think it’s entirely Gerson.” Pinkie tilted her head as she tried to read the sign in the dark, only for the area to light up suddenly and she saw Gyftrot poking at a lantern with a crystal in it. “Thank you, without candles or magic to guide them Home, the monsters used crystals to navigate. Huh so those crystal lamps light up the swamp?”

“Yes and those dark crystals are absorbing the light from the area and my magic. So these lamps are going to be quite temporary in getting us through here and are the only solution to moving forward. Let us not dally lest we be eaten by a Grue.” Toriel looked around warily for the sign of such a monster in this dark place as she pointed out the purple glowing crystals in comparison to the white ones in the lanterns. The underworld didn’t only have sentient monsters; it also had monsters that actually lived up to being actual monsters. “It is curious though, who has written all of these sometimes uninformative messages?”

“What’s a grue?” Pinkie asked innocently while trying to look around for once as they moved from crystal to crystal.

“You really don’t want to know, all you need to know about them is that they can only get you if you are completely encased in darkness.” Gyftrot was also wary of the darkness. “They despise light of any kind that is shined upon them, even a shadow of light keeps them away.”

Aside from being accosted by an Aaron and Washua coming at them at the same time, they were almost to the end of the swamp. The two had barely even had time to launch a single attack since they were so readily distracted, by flexing and dirty clothes to clean. The travelers also saw a Moldbygg before they left the area, but it thankfully left them alone.

They walked into the next area and things got a whole lot darker. Toriel continued forward with what little light she managed to conjure, with the thought of the lamp mushrooms at the start of lamp light swamp being far enough away from the darkness crystals to be ineffective against them.

Upon coming up to a wall Toriel stopped and looked at it, she didn’t see a doorway or mechanism and next to them was an echo flower that Pinkie leaned an ear to.

“Look out behind you.” The flower stated calmly, suddenly the entire area started to flood with light as Pinkie and Toriel spun around to the sound of stomping of metal boots.

“Well, look at what I just found.” Forming a spear in her hands Undyne moved closer threatening them with it. Both Toriel and Pinkie tried to get in front of the other to protect their respective partner. “So you weren’t eaten by a grue, good for you. Seven, seven human souls or souls close enough to pass for one, the power held in them will be enough for King Asgore Dreemurr to become a god. Then we will take back the surface from the humans once the barrier is shattered.”

“So you really don’t know who I am?” Toriel stood tall and imposing with her arms crossed, she was ready to light them up to protect Pinkie against this monster. “Know that I don’t condone the idea of monsters becoming as bad as the humans can be.”

“Look lady I don’t care what you think or whoever you are, you’re an obstruction to justice and in my way. We will make the humans see the pain and suffering we have faced by making them endure what we have!” Undyne started forming some spears. The pony held her shovel at the ready and was about to get up on her two hind legs while the goat next to her lit a hand aflame and held a shield in the other. Undyne wasn’t intimidated in the slightest. “Give up your soul willingly or I will tear it from your body.”

“Wait a minute… Tori wheres…” Pinkie started as she noticed someone was missing and was interrupted.

“Wait, weren’t there three of you traveling to…” Three simultaneous explosions from behind Undyne sent her slamming into the wall and behind her Gyftrot was seen shooting another present at the wall which exploded and covered Undyne in some rubble.

“Come on you guys, that won’t stall her for long.” Gyftrot had apparently managed a good sneak attack on Undyne’s unguarded back and knocked her silly with his present attack. Pinkie and Toriel quickly ran past Gyftrot and saw a pathway that they couldn’t see previously in the darkness and followed it.

“No time for echo flowers or reading messages Pinkie.” Toriel saw Pinkie nod as they ran past several echo flowers and another message about the prophecy Gerson mentioned that went completely ignored as they came to a bridge. As they started quickly across they were followed by a familiar two legged lizard monster.

“Hey, where are you guys going? Undyne looks about ready to fight someone and it’s going to be, whoa.” Kid tripped and almost flew over the side of the bridge only to be caught by his tail in Pinkie’s teeth; she swung him around and hauled back up onto the center of the bridge.

“No time to talk Kid, be more careful and stay out of the way because Undyne is trying to kill us!” Pinkie yelled over her shoulder as spear formed in the air and tried to skewer her and she leapt over it and slid under the next two as she continued towards the end of the bridge where Toriel assisted her by blasting several spears out of the air with fire.

“Ugh what are you doing here kid, stay out of the way and don’t get involved! You’re just lucky that fugitive bothered to save you.” Undyne surged past Kid who just stood there looking upset, though the armored figure would quietly admit that she was a bit surprised to see Pinkie turn back to help the monster. She formed another spear as the trio made their exit.

Taking on a strange look, Kid ran after the four with a hopeful look in his eyes. Maybe Undyne was mistaken, Pinkie wasn’t mean or evil and neither were Queen Toriel or even that grumpy stoic guy. It was hard for Kid to think that a hero could become the villain.

The four crossed a small bridge and came up to a caverns mouth.

“We only have six souls and all we need is one more, NGAHHH!” Undyne came down swiftly barely managing to hit pinkie in the chest, only for her spear to slide into the ground frustrating her that she didn’t injure the pony to stop her from running. “You are about to die!”

Pinkie narrowly missed taking a spear to the face, as the blade of the spear glanced off the Temmie Armor without cutting into it. She turned tail and ran.

The two other runners continued around Undyne and got past Pinkie while looking like they were about to escape. That was until Pinkie froze as her soul shot out of her chest and with a swipe of her spear Undyne sent a wave of energy out that turned Pinkie’s soul green causing Pinkie to freeze in place. Pinkie counted herself lucky that Toriel wasn’t within the range of the pull field.

The pony’s two friends turned around to watch her spin around up onto her two hooves and deflect Undyne’s initial thrust with the scoop of her shovel, with a quick twist of her hooves holding the shovel near the base of the blade. She deflected Undyne’s blow downwards and swung around to slam Undyne across the helmet with the handle of the shovel causing Undyne to stagger and release the hold on her soul.

Pinkie quickly turned and ran through the entrance that led towards the hot lands, how could she tell? Well the big letters flashing on an electronic screen to her left. Toriel blasted a few more spears out of the air as Gyftrot ran across the bridge ahead of them to likely provide artillery support via presents.

“You think you’re so great with your goody two shoes hug everyone ways, you’re a coward! Those humans and their history books made them all seem really cool, but I know that you’re just like them by standing in the way of everyone’s hopes and dreams, by kicking someone when they are already down! All three of you are in the way of that!” Undyne formed several spears and sent them hurtling at each runner.

Pinkie quickly stood up and with a spin of body and a stylish twirl of her shovel, she flipped two of the spears upwards into the air as she leapt over the one meant for her. As the two spears came down she hit them with the back of the shovel with stylish flourish and sent them flying right back at a surprised Undyne.

Undyne managed to dodge one of her own spears only for her helmet to get blown off by the other stunning her and knocking her dazed form onto her butt. Her surprised looking finned face was now completely exposed to Pinkie.

“I may be a coward and I may be running from you, but hurt my friends and you’ll be asking for it!” Pinkie went back to all fours and continued running after her two friends who were deflecting several more spears being shot at them from the air as Undyne was soon back up and moving after them.

Gyftrot was having a hard time using his snowflake defense since things were starting to get hotter, at least his present boxes made for a good defense as blue spirit colored present boxes handily kept the projectiles at bay.

Toriel was blasting away the spears and dove to the side avoiding being hit directly by another one that narrowly went between her legs through her robe and deflected the next one with her shield.

“You can’t escape me if I turn your soul green again; you have to face me head on if any of you are going to survive me!” Undyne managed to force Pinkie’s soul out of her body again to turn it green; she was fast and already attacking Pinkie.

Pinkie shuffled around her swinging spear attacks while deflecting a few of them with her shovel while being stuck in place. Toriel and Gyftrot stood by and launched attacks at the attacks Undyne was launching at her soul while Pinkie was too busy blocking powerful spear strokes and stabs.

Pinkie’s floating soul eventually turned pink once again and she managed to shove Undyne back with the shaft of her shovel with her hooves holding on to both ends. Pinkie turned and ran for it with Undyne close on her heels as her soul ran back into her body.

“You call that pathetic gardening implement a weapon, I’ll show you how to use a real weapon and then you won’t be alive much longer.” As Undyne closed in on Pinkie a phone range and Pinkie twirled around held her hooves up in the shape of a T.

(The air prepares to stop the music.)

“Wait, time out, time out, I need everyone to stop, that’s my phone! Hey, you up there stop the music!” The music playing stopped immediately as she walked up to Gyftrot holding out Pinkie’s cell phone to her, Undyne had surprisingly stopped and planted the butt of her spear into the ground next to her as Pinkie answered her phone.”Hello?”

“Hey Pinkie what’s up! You, I and Undyne should all hang out together sometime! You know, once you’re past the whole she’s going to kill you thing and you befriend her like you did with me!” It was The Running Battle Interrupting Papyrus and he also wasn’t going to let Pinkie get in a word edgewise either. “So you can drop by her house later and we can do lots of cool things like cook, talk about our feelings and stuff. I know we’re all going to be great pals.”

After a clicking noise was heard Pinkie calmly walked up to Gyftrot and gave the phone back to him to hold on to, then she walked all the way back to the position she had stopped running at and took up position.

(Music starts again after Pinkie says the word ‘pickle’ after this point.)

“Right, why in the world would I ever say that word now knowing that it’ll start things back up? I mean seriously though, at what point would I ever need to say the word pickle? Oh fudge.” The music abruptly starts again and Pinkie narrowly slid sideways out of the path of a spear that Undyne chucked at her with lightning speed. Undyne had a good sense of timing and had done it the millisecond the music came back and caused the pony to start running again.

“Stop running away!” Undyne quickly grabbed a nearby boulder and proceeded to use a Suplex to throw it at Pinkie Pie.

Pinkie stopped and jabbed her shovel at it roughly causing it to split perfectly into two halves that flew off to Pinkie’s sides after making contact with the tip of her shovel that was rotated slightly so the blade was vertical.

“Why can’t we just be friends?” Pinkie shouted as she continued running, Undyne faltered and her attacks against Toriel and Gyftrot lessened slightly for a few moments. She saw a kiosk with a sleeping Sans in it and Toriel looked rather upset with the sleeping skeleton as she ran across the bridge, only for a spear that Pinkie just dodged to ram its way through Toriel’s left hip sending the goat lady sprawling.

Pinkie’s eyes widened at the sight of Gyftrot assisting an injured Toriel to the end of the bridge, she came to a complete stop in the middle of the bridge over flowing lava and stood upon her hind legs and slowly turned around gripping her shovel tightly.

“You fight for your kingdom; you fight for your throne. I fight for my friends, even knowing that I might never go home.” Pinkie intoned quietly as she took a step forward with left leg, she closed her eyes. “You hurt Tori… now… I’m mad.”

“Really and what’s being mad going to do for you.” If Undyne were actually smart, then she wouldn’t have just taunted Pinkie like she did. She obviously did not see the muscles shifting in Pinkie’s body nor did she see the pony tensing up with anger. “I’ve got one of you down and there’s not much more running you can do now, since I don’t think you’d leave them behind.”

“Stop the music completely.” At Pinkie’s words Undyne’s theme came to a screeching halt and she opened her eyes to stare into Undyne’s, there was a creepy silence on the bridge. “I won’t kill you Undyne, one because I don’t like hurting anyone and killing is wrong. Two because I believe in what Gerson said about you. Just so you know I’m going to spank you and it is going to hurt… a lot.”

Undyne hesitated at the sudden change in Pinkie’s demeanor, not to mention hearing that Gerson talked about her. The little pink pony didn’t look threatening or impressive, that was until the subtle shift in personality that caused the fish girl to look entirely unsure of her ability to handle things.

“You were asking for this.” Pinkie declared as she pointed her shovel at Undyne. “Someday you might even become my friend after this because it’s what Pappy wants, but that’s not going to happen any time soon because it’s going to take you a while to recover and for me to cool off. You better hope my goat friend’s injuries aren’t permanently debilitating.”

Pinkie jabbed her shovel between the planks of the bridge and with a swift pull and kick she was on top of Undyne before she could react to defend herself from the pink blur that launched at her.

“Spear spade!” Pinkie stabbed into Undyne’s armor with the tip of her shovel and a large rent formed on it. The pony bounced off the armor and over Undyne to slap her across the back causing the armor to gain cracks all over it. The force of the second hit made Undyne go to her knees.

Undyne quickly turned around and hurled two spears at Pinkie as the pony distanced herself, only to find them jammed into her shoulder pads inhibiting her movement seconds later as the pony sent them back to sender. Undyne’s follow up thrust missed entirely because of this.

“Shin shredder!” Pinkie’s shout was followed by a shattering sound as Undyne lost the armor around her right leg. The shovel sliced into it causing Undyne to falter in horror that Pinkie managed to break the armor off of her and leave a bleeding cut there, the pony also landed several more blows before being pushed back by Undyne.

Undyne managed to distance herself and twirled a spear into existence to get the two spears embedded in her armor off, she started summoning and throwing spears wildly at Pinkie who just twirled and shuffled her way through them in a calm fury. After batting away a spear with her shovel, Pinkie stabbed it into the planks of the bridge and with a pull, she shot high into the air.

“Shovel rondo!” Pinkie came down flipping through hundreds of revolutions a second; it horribly battered a suddenly tired and sweating Undyne who couldn’t keep up with Pinkie despite her previous bravado. The pony finished off the staccato of blunt shovel slaps by kicking off of Undyne’s armor while wrenching away the armor from her left arm with a sharp pull. “Shoulder shredder!”

Now all of Undyne’s remaining armor was cracking and falling apart. She was desperately trying to keep the pony off of her. Summoning spears to both throw them and send them flying as fast as she could.

The pony simply shifted out of the way of the spears, deflected them with rapid swings of her shovel or just let the spears simply bounce off of her Temmie Armor calmly like they weren’t even there. Pinkie pulled her shovel back as she charged forward towards the backpedaling Undyne. The pony even leapt over five spears and then slid into a crouch as Undyne tried to form a spear to stab her with.

“Shovel shatter!” Having slid under her opponents guard, Pinkie came up stabbing her shovel rapidly in a blur at the armor of her opponent causing multiple pressure waves to shoot out from Undyne’s back. She finished the attack off in one harsh if swift golf swing to the chest that gave off a blast wave of air that passed through the space Undyne once occupied.

Hundreds of bits of metal shot through the air along with a fish girl who was still awake for the agony of that last hit and the next two as she bounced twice before ending up on her back.

Undyne tried to scrabble to her feet and found that she could hardly move. Her armor was completely decimated in that last attack and she now had pieces of her own armor uncomfortably embedded in her skin. She whimpered slightly and tried to keep a brave face as Pinkie shouldered her shovel and slowly walked forward on two legs until she was standing over the gasping fish girl.

“Wait, please don’t hurt her!” Kid came running up to them and looked at Pinkie with obvious worry.

“I wasn’t planning to do anymore to her anyway. I think she’s had enough with the broken arm and leg, she’ll certainly need help though.” It wasn’t until that moment that both injuries were mentioned by Pinkie that Undyne started to scream realizing only now how much pain she was in.

Outward appearances showed the fish girl to only have one badly bleeding wound in her leg and a few trickles here and there from where her clothing had been pierce by jagged bits of metal.

Pinkie walked by everyone and up to a nearby water cooler and got a cup of water, which she then brought back to a drying out Undyne and held it out towards her good arm knowingly.

“Here’s a peace offering. If you don’t take it, I’ll actually be more upset than I already am with myself.” Pinkie waited until a shivering Undyne slowly took the offered water and started gulp it down, she kept her one scared eye on the pony as her other one was already covered in an eye patch. Pinkie addressed Kid as she walked toward on all fours towards Toriel with her shovel limply hanging from its strap looking perfectly normal despite the stress it was put through. “I could have done far worse if I had a trowel Kid and two trowels would have been just plain overkill. She’ll live as I held back quite a bit, but she was definitely asking for it. I might even be willing to carry her to someone for medical help if she asks nicely.”

Toriel sat there, finding herself horrified for Pinkie and maybe a little bit of her. Even Gyftrot was stunned at the painful looking display Undyne went through. Like Pinkie forgave her, Toriel was willing to forgive how scary her mare friend just became in her eyes. All she could see now was Pinkie’s concern for her after she had completely wrecked Undyne’s fighting spirit. Wait… that was her holding back!?

Author's Note

Pinkie is far worse with a trowel, when wielding two you might want to run the other way. Just to be clear, Pinkie did not come out of that fight unscathed and yes Temmie Armor does have slow healing properties for the wearer.

She might not have her cutie mark powers, but she still has her Earth Pony strength and earth ponies can dig through solid rock in seconds with their bare hooves.

Shovels are very versatile and dangerous weapons in the right hands or hooves in this case. Never underestimate the weapon of your opponent, even if it happens to be a simple spoon.

23 - Meanwhile...

Yawning and getting up out of the guest room bed, she hopped her way out of the home to see how everyone was doing. Being put in charge as a regent of Home Ruins meant that Mifty couldn’t be lazy as all get out, she had to do a good job for the beloved Queen Toriel. She was currently using the Queen’s home as a base of operations, staying in the guest room that Pinkie had once slept in.

Hop, the less than feral Froggit, was already awake and had curiously enough procured coffee. Coffee making was now his one job and he at least knew how to do it. His reintegration back into monster society was going pretty well since Toriel and Pinkie left six to eight days ago. He smiled at Mifty as she hopped her way into the room; he obviously liked his new big sister.

“Good morning, let us ‘Hop’ on to business now shall we… I hope you are taking your reading lessons to heart.” Mifty was educating the monsters of the ruins and many a discovery was being made about how intelligent each monster was, the Froggit had found herself teaching the suddenly interested monsters.

There were many changes going about and the spiders were doing good work and had almost completed the additions to the ruins, aside from that they were about to leave the ruins for good to join up with their brethren on the other side of the cold, inhospitable to spiders, Snowdin. They had made more than enough money to pay for such a trip in safety and were really good at what they did.

Silently wishing the spiders’ good luck in their endeavors, Mifty started going over what she needed to do today. Being that her name was a Mysteriously Informative Frog Thing, she had to live up to it. As she sat at the table with her assistant Hop, she started to sip the coffee and reminisce about how she ended up getting so smart.

It was a long time ago and Mysterious Informative Frog Thing was a small lonely little four eye frog, her parents were always so busy with how cramped things were in the Underworld before it was dug out. She wanted a snack and she saw a bowl with a little bit of candy sitting inside on a pedestal. Who in their right mind would leave such a bounty behind? She couldn’t read the sign, no matter how hard she tried and she just couldn’t figure out how to get a piece of candy for herself. Monsters didn’t have much of an education system to speak of.

“Oh, hello there little one, I just came by to refill the candy bowl.” Turning around Mifty met a wondrous, if sad looking goat lady, she unwrapped a piece of candy and held it out to her. She flicked her tongue out and took the candy into her mouth, it was as good as she imagined. She watched as the lady filled the bowl with more delectable treats. She was curious about the goat lady that gave her the treat and followed her to a small patch of flowers in some light and watched as she tended to them.

That had had been the first time Mifty had met Queen Toriel, she had always been an inquisitive Froggit and she had set her mind to learn all about the things around her after that meeting. She eventually set out of from the ruins and braved the cold snow, swamps and other places of the Underworld on her own. She had learned much including how to write, having gone on her travels to learn all she could about their world underground. She eventually returned to the ruins knowing that Toriel was the divorced queen of the monsters and the habits of just about every monster trapped in the Underworld.

To the very present, Mifty would still shudder when she thought about trailing The Jerry for five days straight just for the knowledge she could acquire on it. She had learned a lot of things she would rather forget about and couldn’t. The Jerry was truly a horrific creature that even a grue wouldn’t eat and those monsters usually ate everything.

Sighing at the memories Mifty took another sip of her brew, humans threw out of the oddest flavors sometimes and she didn’t mind that they did. She certainly had interesting tastes. Even if they couldn’t get any of the better stuff humans had to throw down here, they took what they were given and liked it. Her assistant Hop was a godsend in making coffee for her.

Knowing what she did about Toriel and her dream of opening a school, Mifty wanted to see her achieve that dream. The goat lady had inspired her to become what she was today, a Froggit that was informative about many things as her parents had named her. She had written a book with paper that wouldn’t fall apart when exposed to water.

Though there were many mysteries in the Underworld, none were more interesting to Mifty than Papyrus and Sans the Font brothers. She had a recollection of someone named Gaster written down as having made the core of the Underworld, but she couldn’t remember much about him beyond what she remembered writing that suddenly no longer made sense as she was on her way back to the ruins from her long journey. That was around when the two Font brothers appeared in Snowdin before she swam her way back into the Home Ruins.

It had bothered her that she somehow lost all recollection of ever meeting the scientist named Gaster, but she knew he was somehow tied to the Font family that had taken to living in Snowdin.

Aside from that Mifty had recently gotten some information about Toriel passing through Snowdin and then carrying on to Waterfall region with a new companion in tow. The Home Ruins recently started trading goods with Snowdin and things had really opened up for both living areas, all the supplies everyone had were actually in surplus.

The Home Ruins were no longer a closed off piece of monster society, one that had let those poor innocent humans through. The ones that the queen wanted to see the goodness in. Now they were actually becoming more and more active and so were their neighbors. There was a vast change in the air for all the monsters who had met Pinkie Pie, the catalyst of joy and laughter. It had all happened so fast and in such a short amount of time.

Among the ways in and out of the Home Ruins, swimming, digging and the door in the basement of the queen’s house were among the only ways into the Home Ruins. Swimming was dangerous for monsters that weren’t aquatic like Froggits’ and digging required careful planning to not having things collapse on you. As such the door was the safest way in and out of the Home Ruins. That was aside from being a ghost type monster like Napstablook who could go through walls, but couldn’t go through the barrier holding all the monsters in.

“Now that I think of it, why can’t the ghost monsters go through the barrier holding us all down here in the Underworld?” Mifty was now once again curious; she had never thought to study the barrier that kept them in the Underworld. Goodness knows others have tried to study it and nothing came of that, except for the idea of bringing it down by overpowering it. “What’s physically keeping the ghost monsters down here? What is powering the barrier and how has it stayed this strong for this long? In all the studying that any scientist has done, why have they never asked that question? Why was it believed that seven human souls would break the barrier? What if humans have been sacrificing their souls to keep the barrier as strong as it is… would that mean that seven isn’t actually enough? How can humans pass safely into the barrier, but can’t leave once they are through it? It was the question whether or not any humans have actually been incapable of going back through the barrier, if so then why?”

As she continued to sip the coffee, Mifty began to realize how uneducated monsters were that they never given it much thought to how each monster was different in many ways. Some monster could have seen something that others would have missed. She personally was a thinker and was seeing personally to the prosperity of the Home Ruins. The bear from Snowdin was a good politician to talk to even if he wasn’t smart in any other arena than a political one. She had made sure the monsters of the Home Ruins had jobs to do and kept them busy. She wasn’t about them to lazily fall into a funk again, that same funk almost broke their queen’s heart! Only the daily task of tending the flowers was what kept her going if barely at that.

Mifty felt something nudge her and she came to her senses, Hop had apparently been worried about her going off into thought for too long and brought her mind back to the present.

“Right, thanks for getting my out of that rather thoughtful state Hop. Now where can I get a phone? I have to call Queen Toriel!” A phone lowered from the ceiling on a whole lot of strands of webbing. Looking up Mifty could see the monster spiders were still around and performing their duties, they heard her ask for help and they gladly and generously gave her a phone for free without asking for compensation. “Things really have changed around here for the better. I thank you my dear friends, I don’t know how I can ever repay your kindness. It is thanks to everyone’s efforts that we will not let Queen Toriel down.”

A spider held out a sign that said ‘no problem’ on it and Mifty smiled before she tapped out a number on the phone and heard it ringing. She had to ask the queen what she knew of the barrier and how it worked, it could be important to the future of the Underworld. She might have hit upon an idea that would break the barrier without the power of human souls, much less without stealing Pinkie’s big heart. She wanted the queen’s consort to be around to make Toriel inexorably happy and her idea just might help things.

The spiders were still in the midst of their preparations to leave the Home Ruins; it had been long since they had seen the other half of their colony and soon they would make that trip in perfect safety. Thanks to Pinkie, they now knew what they were all capable of when they worked together to really put all of their tiny little hearts into it.

Sans was a lazy guy, he was everywhere at once and sometimes nowhere at all. He’s seen many pathways and realities. This time however, something was very wrong. Something had changed drastically. The pony didn’t know of the power of saving, heck he wasn’t sure how the pink one even ended up here or how she had altered things.

He was a very smart skeleton, also a really dangerous monster even if his health wasn’t that great. In comparison his brother was actually stronger than he was, however he was smarter, agile and more cunning. While his brother Papyrus could take a hit, he himself couldn’t which made him a glass cannon. The irony of being cannon made of glass was not lost on him.

Having once promised the voice on the other side of the door that he’d look out for the next human that came by, Sans knew who that was supposed to be. Only now that there was someone else, he was confused at how things had changed so drastically. Pinkie was not human so he couldn’t be held to that promise that he gave Toriel about her, but he was interested in the pony. He was still watching out for a seventh human that wasn’t the adopted child of Toriel and there was no sign of them yet.

“Does Pinkie really have the power to save us from the loop?” Sans mused out loud and in a serious tone before her heard Papyrus scream up at him, something about picking up a sock? “No.”

“Sans, you’re going to come down here and pick up your sock right now!” The Sock Avoiding Papyrus ran into the room and grabbed Sans to drag him down the stairs and then threw him at the sock in question in the middle of the living room, much too both the brothers shock Sans just sat their floating in mid air upside down above the sock. “Sans, how are you doing that?”

“I actually have no idea, but I don’t want you to ‘sock it to me’ for saying that this is kind of neat.” Sans held out his arms in a shrug and smiled as a rim shot played. He got a little introspective as he floated above the sock, how did the sock even get down here? Eh, he’d worry about it later. Hopefully his pet tornado wasn’t doing anything with that dust devil he didn’t like. “So I’m just going to ‘hang around’ here for a while, you know, while you go find help for me. No, seriously, I think I might actually be stuck like this Papyrus. Oh and can you get me a root beer ‘float’ from Grillby’s while you’re at it?”

On the path to Snowdin there stood a snowman, he wasn’t lonely since a part of him was going on a wondrous journey. Something brought his attention away from the distant piece of himself leaving the Temmie village.

It was a local called Snow Drake and he brought a friend with him that looked like a large mobile ice cube in the shape of a pony.

“Hello there, Ice to meet you.” The snowy duck said with a jovial tone of voice.

“You’re not Ice, I’m Ice!” The walking ice sculpture stated angrily.

“If you’re nice then why are you yelling at me angrily? I’m Snow Drake by the way!” The frozen duck stated.

“If you’re no drake then why are you even pretending to be one?” The ice cube pointed a rectangular block for a leg at the drake.

“Sleets me, all I know is that I’m one cool customer.” The Snow Drake answered in return. “So don’t leave us out in the cold.”

“Well leave me out in it; I’m okay with it being a bit nippy.” The rectangular ice pony said.

“Well so long as you don’t frost bite me, I’m okay with that.” Snow Drake said before striking a pose with the living ice sculpture while giving a jazz hands kind of wave with his wings as his newest friend did the same. “So, like our routine? Come now don’t freeze up on us.”

“Yeah, please give us an idea of how our routine is." The ice sculpture stated jovially. "We’re such a frosty pair!”

“I would ice my partner here, but it’s already too late for that.” The Snow Drake waggled what passed for his eyebrows. “At least he isn’t freezing up anymore.”

“Oh no, am I melting!” The ice sculpture sounded scared for a moment before he burst out laughing, a laughter shared between the three cold faring beings.

“I like you two.” The snowman gave a broad smile; he just had to ask since it seemed kind of obvious. “Have you two met Pinkie Pie by any chance?”

The two strangers nodded, what followed was a stone cold serious conversation about having a sense of humor that good. Also how to let loose a blizzard of fun commentary, a joke about Ice cycling and things really began to snowball from there thanks to the snowman.

The Temmies’ had finally finished repairing the deck in the most haphazard of fashions and they somehow made perfect repairs to the ship. Temmantha was sad, not because the ship had been hurt or because of all the injured Temmies’ around her still recovering. No Temmantha was sad that she couldn’t hug the big chunky skeleton anymore; he disappeared in a flash as soon as he got her off his face.

“We do what we want, because we are Temmies’!” Shouted Temmantha the blond Temmie pirate with boots that walked around on her hind legs, she would move on and get more belly rubs and cuddles. It was the perfect plan, glad tem thought of it!

“We are the pirates!” The Temmies’ shouted back enthusiastically, except for one who looked a little lost.

“What about me, tem beat First Mate Temmie and stopped being pirate?” First Mate Temmie had beaten the ever loving tar out of herself, but in the end she still got belly rubs for it from Pinkie Pie. She liked her friends who weren’t Temmies’, but they had other things to do and she was still with her pirate friends who were all Temmies’.

“First Mate Temmie got belly rubs, victory for tem is you! We forgive transgressions against First Mate Temmie, right?” The rest of the crew shouted their support at Temmantha’s words. “In the pursuit of belly rubs we trust!”

“Can tem try to help other friends? They give good belly rubs.” All the pirates were behind First Mate Temmie’s suggestion; none of the Temmies’ were upset that First Mate Temmie got belly rubs and victory when they didn’t. In fact they were all just really happy for her.

The insane crazy little guys weren’t an overly vicious bunch and were just sadly looking for love, cuddles and rubs of the tummy in an over the top aggressive manner that was just plain adorable. They’d be the perfect friends for a certain group of shape shifters back in Equestria.

In Snowdin the rabbits, bears and many other residents were actually happy to start trading with the Home Ruins. In fact they were happy to hear that there were monster still there. Betty and Carol were getting more business than ever lately.

Ever since Toriel came through the town, it had brought about a rise in emotional closeness between all the residents. It occurred especially in those who heard the story of the three tribes that Pinkie told, the editor of the Snowdin newspaper put it to print in a story and it became quite a hit that breathed some life into the town, aside from what having reopened connections with the Home Ruins brought.

The story of coming together had been such a heartwarming tale, especially when it went into detail about the frosty snow creatures that fed on hatred and anger being defeated by caring and companionship.

“I wonder how Pinkie and her friends are doing.” Betty hummed to herself as she sold some warm clothing to monsters that weren’t as good at handling the cold.

“I don’t know, but I wish them well… can you watch Tina for me Betty, I have so much to do and she’s been getting a little underfoot if you will.” Carol was happy to have so much business, she was also happy to be making so many new friends with the monsters that haven’t been seen in a long time.

“Sure thing Carol, I love my niece and I can look out for her while you taking care of all your new guests.” Betty reached down and ruffled Tina’s ears causing the little rabbit girl to smile up at her.

Friendship and the warmth that came with it had appeared in Snowdin and the monsters were slowly waking up from a long emotional winter.

In what was once a quiet, dreary and lonely part of Waterfall there was now some music and excitement. Onion-san had made a lot of knew friends, among them were the two new best friends she had made since meeting Pinkie and Toriel.

Shyren and Argent weren’t the only ones to visit the lonely Onion-san, as of this day now Clammy and Napstablook were planning on doing so as well. They were all becoming good friends and the composing ghost was the one to take up teaching them all he knew of music.

Quite a few of the monsters there in that area were shy and these five were making a support group for the local monsters of Waterfall to get together and stop being so lonely. Quite a few were here to learn how to make music from Mr. Blook’s impromptu lecture.

“So that’s how an arpeggio works.” Napstablook got some awed sounds from his knowledge in helping these other monsters learn about what it took to make a band; Argent would be helpful as he was a good agent to Shyren. The ghost would later make for an excellent music teacher and there were several other monsters that were already interested in the music that was being made here by the person who wanted to be a composer.

Clam Girl was good with a violin and flute, Onion-san definitely liked drumming with her big tentacles, Shyren could sing, play a tambourine and a xylophone. Argent was the most surprising as the large mouthed eel monster could play a cello and bass guitar with his tail. Napstablook was good with just about anything including an electronic piano he brought just to show the other monsters as he taught them.

It was even getting hard for Napstablook to even be depressive with so many monsters that liked him and he himself personally really liked Ms. Shyren.

Napstablook hoped that Pinkie, Gyftrot and Toriel were all okay. Sure it was okay for him to continue on feeling like garbage after a meal, but he wasn’t alone anymore and he was truly happy to stop being so darn shy. He especially liked the commentary and feedback on his musical expertise.

King Asgore had heard many strange things were going on in the Underworld, a strange pink creature who had a soul that was as powerful if not more so than that of a humans. He tended to the flowers in his personal field and pondered the other strange rumors as he did so.

He had heard that his ex wife Toriel was on the move, but he didn’t know why. Was she coming to see him? It made his heart flutter slightly. He was a tall and wide goat monster with a lot of muscle to him; of course the ones in his head were thickest as his ex would proclaim clearly without remorse.

The seven to ten or so foot tall goat monster wearing dark armor sighed sadly and thought of what Toriel coming to visit him meant, did she forgive him for what he had to do or was there another reason?

“Oh the memories...” The king sighed to himself; he remembered when the human child and his son accidentally poisoned him with buttercups. It had been truly an accident; it made him remember at least one human in a fond light.

He much preferred these flowers he tended to that were known as Gorse or Ulex, he would never eat any of the ones in his personal garden but they were edible and tasted pretty good. Plus the flowers were really quite hardy if in need of tending to get rid of all the thorns.

These were the flowers Asriel brought back to the Underworld before he died.

The large goat man sighed as tears fell freshly from his eyes; what was Toriel up to and why she was coming to see him. It bothered him that his ex wife, who had been inactive for so long, just suddenly left the Home Ruins from whence she had barricaded herself in a long time ago to get away from him. While they may not be together anymore, he was somewhat happy to hear that she was still alive.

Asgore never bothered to even think that Toriel and the pink creature with a powerful soul were even remotely connected in some way. It was well known that Asgore wasn’t the smartest guy in the world, since Toriel was the one that was considered to have all the brains in the relationship they had. Nobody would ever be able to disabuse any monster of that fact. For what he lacked in brains, Asgore made up for it entirely in pure raw physical strength and a great compassion for his people.

Celestia was compassionate about her ponies and had her sister back, and then she made a big mistake. Luna and Cadence had both gotten onto her about it and she was properly chastised. She sent her faithful student Twilight Sparkle after a full grown dragon, which most ponies knew were highly magic resistant and why it was so dangerous to even attack one given they were armored against most forms of attack.

Heck, Celestia even knew that only an alicorn or a bunch of royal guard unicorns working in concert could even hope to suppress a single dragon much less a few. The Wonder Bolts would at best have annoyed it enough to attack the nearest settlements and earth ponies weren’t exactly the best idea to combat an actively aggressive dragon.

Not once had Celestia stopped to think of what would happen if one of the element bearers had gotten hurt or perished, she was grooming her student for a bright future and she had immediately lost one of Equestria’s greatest defenses against powerful beings like Discord in the Elements of Harmony.

It was ironic that they didn’t lose Pinkie Pie to the dragon, but a fall off a dangerous mountain where she disappeared and it has been long time with no sign of her except for the one thing that proved she was still among the living.

Celestia never liked the idea of choosing stones and Cadence was even less thrilled about the old earth pony tradition of finding a perfect soul mate, but there was nothing they could do about it. The choosing stones had a ridiculous accuracy when it came to finding a perfect partner for the earth pony that it belonged to, around eight hundred years ago Celestia got one and to this day she still has it.

Personally, Celestia just doesn’t like what her choosing stone says about her. It didn’t have the name Sombra on it at all and the name it did have was something of a bit of contention for her. There were names on it now that she’d rather make sure her faithful student didn’t know about, considering she had only recently checked her stone for the first time in the last eight hundred years and was a bit shocked at what she saw.

On Celestia’s personal choosing stone, there were a lot of blank spots and among those spots that were not blank were some surprising names. The name Sunset Shimmer had saddened Celestia greatly, Twilight Sparkle which didn’t surprise Celestia all too much and much to her unenviable dislike of seeing it at all as still being on the stone, Discord. Discord was the very reason why Celestia hadn’t checked the stone at all after she got one about two hundred years after Luna was sent to the moon, the very first name to pop up was Discord’s which had her feel completely disgusted with the notion that such a stone could find a perfect partner for you.

“With Pinkie Pie being incapable of being found by a spell, the elements of harmony can’t be used in the case of an emergency.” Celestia had to say it out loud to herself to understand why exactly this was a horrible thing, she had become too reliant on some certain knowledge she had. This is what she was stuck with now. “At least I know the Element of Laughter isn’t entirely gone, but the name Toriel is too foreign a name to even someone as well traveled as me.”

Walking over to the balcony she considered the names that had appeared on Cadence’s choosing stone, because the princess of love was curious as to what her choosing stone would have on it. She had recently gotten one thanks to Twilight’s message about them and the news that Pinkie Pie was alive. There was a lot of irony surrounding how the choosing stone reacted to Cadence, millions of names flickering all over the stone. At least one of them hadn’t flickered and was someone Cadence was already dating, that being Shining Armor.

Speaking of Shining Armor, he could never know that Cadence had a lot of other suitors she could turn to incase things didn’t turn out well between them. Especially not when his sister’s name was on Cadence’s choosing stone as well, Celestia was wary of her going near Twilight like that. He would also be shocked to find that Cadence also had a good match with Applejack. Apparently hearing the name of the element of honesty immediately hardened that name into the stone since love and honesty were definitely two traits that worked together when it comes to a commitment.

“Yes, it is a name that even we cannot fathom as to where it comes from sister; something is interfering with our spells to find the pink one. Now what are the chances of us getting our own stone of choosing? Does it only work for those with the power of earth ponies?” Luna had been curious about choosing stones since hearing of them, they were strange and wondrous rocks and she had seen the one Celestia had without her sister knowing about it. She was a little surprised that her sister could possibly be won over by Discord, but thought it was cute that Twilight and some pony named Sunset were on the stone as well. “Hearing the name of one who could be our very own beloved interests us so. Know that we are still upset with thee even if we are on speaking terms.”

“I pray for your swift return Pinkie Pie.” A slightly bedraggled Celestia muttered something under her breathe, she still had two alicorns’ that were still rightfully upset with her decisions to send Twilight up against a dragon. Twilight didn’t even beat the dragon in a spectacular manner that Celestia had expected she would, it had been Fluttershy that did it by staring the dragon down into a quivering pile of pure fear.

It was blazing hot in the hot lands as per usual and in a nearby laboratory where a yellow lizard in a lab coat worked, there was said lizard watching the events nearby on a camera. She was watching as the powerful pink pony took a shovel to her crush for a painful looking pounding.

The lady lizard who wore glasses froze up when she saw the shovel dig into the armor at the start of the fight on the bridge over lava, then the pony was up and over Undyne who was promptly smacking her across the back seconds later causing her armor to crack and fracture.

As horrified as she was, the lizard creature couldn’t help but look at the scientific process behind the armor being broken down with what looked to be an average shovel. The first impact had caused the armor to vibrate as it was rent open in the front, then when it was hit from behind it caused the vibrations to counter the force back towards the front of the armor creating the numerous cracks.

The pink pony the yellow lizard had been watching was quite a notably dangerous creature when armed with a shovel. With an analytical mind, this lizard person studied the angry equine shredding completely through the armor plating around one of Undyne’s shins with a sideways swing. The pony then proceeded on to perform the incredible feat of tearing Undyne down with raw strength and what appeared to be an understanding of physics beyond what was considered normal. All this while taking a lot of hits in the process, the shirt and colorful pteruge skirt the pony was wearing had to be really tough to survive hits from those spears like that.

The last attack was what had the lizard the most intrigued; she moved the footage back and put it into slow motion and watched in amazement as the pony rapidly stabbed her way up the armor that was left on Undyne starting from the still armored leg to the still armored arm with what the pony called the Shovel Shatter. In one upward motion of incredibly fast stabs, the armor and Undyne were on their last legs before that devastating golf swing that shattered every single bit of armor that had been stabbed at.

It was like watching an anime hero in action. While the last blow had taken Undyne down, it thankfully didn’t kill her much to the lizard’s joyful relief. She tensed up when she saw the pony approaching Undyne only to sigh again as the pony became friendly once more and went to go get that lovely fish girl some water, which made the lizard somewhat thankful that the pony understood Undyne wasn’t doing so hot.

“Oh p-p-please be okay Undyne… why am I not getting any audio? Did those circuits overheat again? Did some monster chew through the wires? What’s going on over there?” The figure watching them saw that the two injured monsters started talking to one another and then Undyne looked particularly horrified about something. A second later the goat lady pulled out a cell phone from her backpack and started talking into it. After that the injured were each soon mounted to a four legged being to be carried in the direction of her lab. “Oh no, they’re coming here! They are coming with Undyne, to here… and coming… oh my goodness what do I do, what do I do? Do I put on a dress or do I prepare Mettaton for a fight? I’m so horribly conflicted right now!”

This reptile recluse of a monster was royal scientist Dr. Alphys, who was now currently having a panic attack.

Author's Note

Not much to comment on, I've been pretty down lately. The end of Gravity Falls was nice though.

I also made some plot patches to a chapter when I realized I had messed some things up. I'm surprised nobody called me out on those plot problems.

24 - In-Quiz-i-Toriel

Pinkie rubbed up against and kissed Toriel after seeing the wound as soon as she got her robe off, the goat lady pulled out of the kiss to use the medical kit she received from Napstablook. She was bleeding quite badly after taking a spear through the left side of her hip.

Undyne was in a worse position even if she did look better off. At least Undyne was in a stable condition even if she was overheating. She laid there watching as Pinkie and Gyftrot assisted Toriel in bandaging her injury.

“Are you going to be okay Tori?” Pinkie no longer had any lingering anger for Undyne; she was just loaded with buckets of worry for Toriel though.

Toriel didn’t answer and just calmly rubbed the side of Pinkie’s neck softly while giving her a smile. She was hurting, but she wasn’t going to stop traveling now.

“Ugh, it’s so hot around here.” Gyftrot was starting to sweat and Pinkie didn’t look comparatively bad in heat.

“Really, I don’t feel anything.” Pinkie walked to the edge with the water cooler and looked over to see the blazing hot lava below, before coming back to the others.

“It’s… ugh… the magic armor…” Grunted Toriel, she had just finished tightly tying off the bandages around her damaged hip with some help from Gyfrot lifting her off the ground. Before that Pinkie had gotten her some water from the nearby cooler to clean out the wound and to drink.

It was the armor Pinkie was wearing that not only protected her from Undyne’s spears, but it also had a pain numbing effect and was keeping Pinkie cool. Toriel really didn’t want Pinkie to remove that armor.

“Oh right… Tori you might need this armor more than I do!” Pinkie tried to pull off the magical shirt only for Gyftrot and Toriel to make some sounds that said they were clearly upset with something. “What, what’s wrong you guys?”

“You may want to look at yourself before you remove the armor entirely Pinkie.” Gyftrot could see Pinkie had a mess of bruises and injuries all around her belly and chest as she held her shirt up.

“Wow… this magic armor is neat stuff; I can’t even feel those painful looking bruises and welts lining my body from where all those spears hit me.” All throughout this exchange Pinkie was sending looks to Undyne who sat there trying not to move too much. The heat was clearly unbearable for the fish girl and she was direly in need of a cooler environment. Pinkie wasn’t ready to forgive her yet, but she was willing to help her if she could swallow her pride to ask for help.

“Pinkie, don’t take that armor off. At least not until you heal from those bruises, I can manage on my own without it.” Toriel might have been in pain, but she was able to speak clearly and concisely long enough to tell Pinkie it was a bad idea. She was still so worried for Pinkie, even while she personally took the worst injury of the travelers.

“You guys want some help, I know someone nearby who’d help.” Undyne was pushing for a bargain instead of outright asking for help, the red haired fish girl wasn’t going to swallow her pride just yet. “One of you is going to have to carry me though.”

“Yes, because your certainly not going to be fired from your job as head of the guard when Asgore finds out that you injured me.” Toriel, as much as any other monster, knew that Asgore still felt something for her. She wished she could say the same about the big lug, but she couldn’t. “Even if it is by accident or on purpose, he’ll be mad.”

“What do you mean? Why would he be mad at me?” Undyne stared at them from her sitting position and her breathing was becoming a bit more ragged as the heat was getting to her again. Kid managed to get her a cup of water, he held it up to her in his mouth and she took it greedily.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever actually introduced myself to you.” Grunting from the pain shooting up her side, Toriel smiled at Undyne with something faintly approaching malice. “I’m Queen Toriel, Asgore’s ex wife.”

“What? Oh for the love of, damn it!” It didn’t take long for it to filter through Undyne’s aching head as to what Toriel was getting at and she was quite shocked. This fluffy goat lady certainly fit Queen Toriel’s description perfectly and now Undyne knew she was boned if the king ever found out that she hurt her.

“Do you want me to carry you Toriel? We can’t exactly stay here much longer as Gyftrot looks to be sweating badly and we need to find someone to check that injury.” Pinkie wasn’t the strongest pony in the world, but she could carry Toriel draped over her back easily enough. She looked up into the air. “Just a reminder to everyone, I’m not a doctor and taking an injury to the hip is quite bad for ponies and sounds even worse for bipedal beings.”

“I know a person who could help us, in fact she lives real close to here and she’s a friend of mine.” Undyne was hunched over and facing away from everyone with a limp arm. Only Kid was there in front of her, looking up at her with noticeable worry. “Yeah, she owns the nearby laboratory that runs on thermal energy. My dork of a friend’s name is Alphys. I ask that you help me get there… ugh; I can’t believe I’m even saying this… I want you to help me get there, please. Also bandage up my leg; I’m still bleeding out over here!”

Before Pinkie could answer, a ringing noise was heard and Pinkie went to check her cell phone in the bags Gyftrot was carrying. It wasn’t the one ringing, sitting up on the ground Toriel reached into her backpack and opened her phone. She tried to keep the pain out of her voice as she answered it with the one eyed Undyne looking on in interest.

While Toriel was talking, she watched as Pinkie and Gyftrot saw to bandaging Undyne’s leg wound and began splinting her broken arm and leg. Sitting up on her own hurt, but she was interested to know who was calling her at a time like this.

“Hello?” Toriel could hear the voice of a friend in response.

“Mistress Toriel, I’ve heard so much about when you passed through Snowdin!” It was the recognizable voice of Mysteriously Informative Frog Thing. “It’s me Mifty; I’m calling to ask you about the barrier!”

“Mifty, when did you get a cell phone?” Toriel hadn’t heard of how things were going in a while and decided to add on to what she just said; she winced slightly as her excitement caused her to shift her hip in a painful manner. “How are things in the Home Ruins? Is everything alright there? How are the flowers? Wait, what was that about asking me about the barrier?”

“Calm down, the flowers are fine thanks to the vegetoids’. We’ve even made contact with Snowdin and even started up some trade with the stuff we have. We’re in the in the middle of a surplus of supplies and are sharing the wealth with our neighbors! I even got a cell phone from the spiders for free; they are really nice hard working guys who are about to set out to meet up with the other half of their colony.” Mifty sounded pleased to be doing a good job as a regent. “Look that’s not why I called you Queen Toriel; I have to ask why ghost monsters can’t get through the barrier.”

“Oh um… well, while ghost monsters are not solid as you or me and can pass through solid objects such as stone and can survive any environment. The barrier is mystically designed to hold monsters of any type from getting through it, even ghostly ones who are more spiritual than physical.” Toriel became upset as she started thinking about her children again, but she held herself together even if her voice wavered a bit. The injury her hip had recently sustained couldn’t hurt nearly as bad as losing her children. “What’s this all about?”

“I think I might have thought of something important about how the barrier holding us all down here is supposed to work, you’ve only ever had two scientist look at it right? I might know how to break it without the power of seven human souls, but it depends entirely on your answer to my next two questions.” Mifty sounded rather curious about something. “In fact the answers could change everything. As it means that what Asgore is doing could actually end up destroying both our world and that of the humans above ground, he could even end up accidentally destroy everything!”

“What is it, what are the questions that could help us figure out a way to break the barrier without having to use human souls?” Toriel was more than interested to hear what Mifty had to say about this and Undyne’s right eye snapped open as she looked at the goat lady on the phone.

“Why does Asgore believe that human souls are the only way to break the barrier and what is it that is exactly powering the barrier in the first place? You were there when your children… this is not easy for you is it mistress Toriel?” Mifty sounded reluctant to continue on. “Are you still there my queen? I’m sorry if I’m upsetting you, but you were there when your children breached the barrier after the human child died from poisoning while giving their soul to Asriel. You might know the most about all of this. I heard it from a lot of those monsters that have heard that story when I visited New Home one time.”

Toriel took in a deep breath and then exhaled as she thought about the two questions, after a bit of thought.

“He believes that human souls are the only way through the barrier because of what my son Asriel managed to accomplish with my human child Chara’s soul. He died after coming back through the barrier while heavily injured though. As to what is powering the barrier… we were never able to figure it out, as scanning it with magic doesn’t work.” Toriel heard a frightened gasp on the other end of the phone and the gasp could even be heard by her friends since it was so loud.

“Whatever you do Toriel, don’t let Asgore gather any more souls or even use them! I hope to be a biology teacher working alongside you one day. I can tell that something really bad is going to happen if he does and that’s even if I’m wrong!” Mifty sounded panicked all of the sudden. “If I’m right, then hitting that barrier with the power of seven human souls could be catastrophic for everyone!”

“Catastrophic, how could gathering seven souls and using them to break the barrier be catastrophic?” Toriel was now worried as it sounded like Mifty had an idea as to how the barrier worked, Undyne looked pensive at hearing Toriel mention breaking the barrier being catastrophic.

“I’ll set out immediately for New Home… wait… something has just come up here at the Home Ruins, just don’t do anything to the barrier until get there! I have to prove my hypothesis and if I’m right, we monsters have always had the key to our own freedom! You and Pinkie have to make sure that king dumbass doesn’t do anything with those stolen souls! Don’t even let him take Pinkie’s or any more either!” The sound of a phone being abruptly turned off could be heard, they had all heard Mifty’s voice as she had gotten rather loud.

“We’ve always had the key to our own freedom?” Toriel looked horribly confused, even as she closed the phone and put it away, all while she clutched at her side in pain. Undyne’s one good eye had a sense of curiosity in it as she looked on at the goat lady.

“Who was it Tori, it sounded like Mifty?” Pinkie asked in curiosity at having heard things from Toriel’s side of the conversation.

“It was Mifty, she says she’s heading for New Home and that we should make sure Asgore doesn’t use those stolen human souls for anything in regards to the barrier. She says that she might even know a way to break the barrier without the use of the human souls that were already taken.” Toriel looked to Undyne who was staring at them silently with a thoughtful look on her face. “We have to move and stop my ex husband from doing something that sounds horrendously stupid. Mifty thinks she knows something about the barrier and I’m quite willing to trust her on it. Asgore may still be a somewhat sweet man, but he’s really quite dumb and isn’t exactly a good leader.”

The three looked to Undyne in surprise when she didn’t bother to speak up in Asgore’s defense; in fact she was very quiet at the moment and didn’t seem to be particularly talkative. Undyne knew Asgore was strong, but he did lack heavily in the brains department and it was always said that the divorced queen was the smarter of the two.

“Right then, I’ll carry Tori and you can carry Undyne, because I certainly don’t like her after she hurt my goat friend Gyftrot.” What followed was Pinkie carefully getting Toriel over her back after getting her blood stained robe back on and carefully walking forward, the same as Gyftrot who carried the battered Undyne after getting her one last round from the cooler that finally ran dry with two more cold cups of water for the thirsty monsters.

“Hey, look at it this way Fishy. If you have the energy to complain about your injuries, then you’re going to be just fine once you heal. My friend Rainbow is always alright if she can still complain after a bad crash.” It was slow moving for Pinkie and the others as they were being careful about moving the monsters that were injured, Undyne was griping and muttering under her breath about being in pain after they started moving into the next area.

Pinkie was dragging a bit of Toriel’s body along the ground, but she didn’t seem to be complaining about it. Gyftrot was only slightly bigger and Undyne was looking uncomfortable about things as they moved forward to see that friend of hers that lived around here.

They came across a pair of large guards in black armor standing in front of some stairs; Undyne addressed them from Gyftrot’s back.

“Hey, what are you two standing around here looking useless for!”Groused out an angry Undyne who could see the two armored figures were outside of Alphys’s lab, they suddenly came to attention at the sound of Undyne’s voice.

“C-c-captain Undyne, ma’am, the elevators up to New Home are down. Even if we were to let you pass you can’t actually go that way.” The first black knight answered seeming to be afraid of Undyne even if she was an injured mess at the moment.

“C-c-captain Undyne what happened to your armor, are you alright ma’am!” The second knight was also frightened of an injured Captain Undyne, possibly for the same reasons or because someone around here could actually beat Undyne in a fight.

If Undyne wanted to toss Toriel, Pinkie and Gyftrot to the sharks, she could have had them detained right this moment. Instead something else happened and it was a little surprising given Undyne’s aggressive nature.

“Right, go about your business then guys. I’m a bit indisposed at the moment, but when the elevator is back up I want you to make a report to the king that I may have come across a lead to something important that he should know about and that he should wait until I’m better before he does anything involving the barrier.” Surprisingly enough, Undyne didn’t bring up that she had been beaten down by Pinkie or that Toriel was the long lost Queen. “I’ve got a broken arm and a leg, but I was asking for it during a combat exercise while training a militia force. So don’t worry about me, despite the loss of my armor I’ll be just peachy!”

“Are you sure you’re okay Captain?” These black knights saw her stern gaze and backed up slightly, it was the first one that had spoken. “Who are these people with you?”

“Yes, I’ll be completely fine! These people are so graciously taking me to the lab to get me some medical help and they have medical issues with one of their own.” Was Undyne actually covering for Pinkie and her friends? This felt a bit odd for them, especially considering how axe crazy Undyne was about bringing them in. “Now stop gabbing and we’ll be on our way or do I need to get my crippled butt off this monster to cripple your butt! Don’t think I won’t.”

“No ma’am you may carry about your business, just please don’t give us a refresher course!” The second black armored knight was cowering even worse than the first one. If there was one thing these two guards could agree on, it was that even as injured as Undyne looked to be, she was still tougher than they were.

“You heard the man, let’s move on into the laboratory over there! My damn body needs medical attention; I do eventually want to have all these shards of armor I still have stuck in me removed sometime today!” Undyne certainly commanded respect among the royal guards and it sounded like she was siding with Toriel for some reason.

Gyftrot continued a slow easy gait, with Pinkie following along behind him looking at Undyne as they walked up to the doors of the lab. Undyne seemed to have noticed her staring and stared right back with prideful eyes.

“I’m only doing this because I respect your strength.” Undyne muttered loudly. While she did respect Pinkie’s strength, she also respected something else about Pinkie.

Undyne also respected Pinkie’s ability to wear her feelings on her sleeves and show that she loved the Toriel without thinking of what others thought of her. This was something Undyne herself had trouble doing with her personal love interest, she saw Pinkie kiss Toriel and had been rather interested in that ever since she saw it.

They walked up to a large metallic wall that was part of a building, on it was a large sign that said ‘LAB’ in large simple red letters above the doorway. Moving towards the door, it slid open for the visitors automatically. Upon walking in, Undyne and Gyftrot felt better since the lab had air conditioning.

Everything was quiet and it was dark in the room as they moved forward, they could hear the whirring sounds of machinery running in the dim lighting. Interestingly enough, they saw a large monitor that showed them as they walked forward just past an escalator going downwards. After that was filled trash can, a desk covered in empty noodle bowls with a computer and some toys on it. Next to that was a refrigerator and a large bag of what looked to be pet food, they walked past all this and Undyne had to comment on it.

“Huh, that’s unusual, where could Alphys be? She’s usually trying to cover up her tendencies of being a dork whenever I come around for an inspection. I think it’s cute that she… right… not talking anymore.” Undyne noticed Pinkie was staring at her with a stupid knowing smile on her face.

They stopped just beyond the bag of pet food and a doorway ahead of them in a large empty space of the laboratory slid open to reveal a squat yellow lizard woman in a lab coat. This glasses wearing lizard with a slightly overbite problem, she looked a bit confused and frantic as she walked out of the doorway. The lights came on when an electrical glow formed from the lizard’s hands for a few seconds and she turned to walk towards her desk only to notice that she had four visitors sitting there.

“Hey Alphys, I’ve kind of bit off more than I can chew recently. So get your medical supplies, because we’re going to play doctor.” Undyne gave a sharp toothy grin as she saw the lizard cover her face and start blushing, she always found the yellow nerd to be outrageously adorable.

“Undyne, fancy seeing you here… er I mean… oh my god, I haven’t even been able to… no you can handle this Alphys. But I haven’t showered yet, my labs a mess and I’ve just done something really bad… oh right visitors…” Alphys seemed to be the simpering type of being and quite shy at meeting new people. She was looking to be highly self-conscious as she fiddled with her hands, she also seemed incredibly nervous at seeing an injured Undyne. “Oh right, introductions… er… hi I’m Doctor Alphys, I’m a royal scientist. But I guess you already knew that from having Undyne with you… uh I’m not actually a bad person like all those other monsters that have attacked you really. Oh right, I’ve been watching all of you through the camera network on that console you passed by, I have a set up throughout the Underworld. From since around the time you two stepped out of the Ruins really.”

“Yep, she’s got stalker tendencies so you might want to watch out for her fanny bandit routine.” Undyne smiled broadened as she watched Alphys become a stuttering wreck at her words. “She’s relatively harmless personally, but her inventions… yeah; watch out for those as they have a tendency to explode.”

“Why are you telling them that Undyne?” Alphys had her hands on her head and she looked horribly embarrassed and was blushing, her hips and body wiggled slightly in despair as if she were trying to chase away her embarrassment.

“Because it’s just that easy to tease you, you really have to grow a backbone and show some courage one of these days.” Undyne wanted to go on dates and do stuff together with her. She was in fact in love with this lizard, but damn if Alphys wasn’t such a coward about it. Undyne was waiting for the day Alphys would own up to the fact that they were definitely attracted to each other and ask her out, she wanted to see the good doctors resolve to start a relationship. Otherwise she would start it in an explosive manner personally.

“Right… backbone… I was, I was originally planning for a way to stop the pink creature… but watching them on screen really makes you root for them. You know.” Alphys continued to show increasing signs of nervousness.

“Okay Alphys, what did you do?” Undyne state in a flat no nonsense kind of tone.

“Do… oh well… heh… funny you should mention that because... anyway, I want to help these three… or is it four with the snow in the jar? With my knowledge I can easily guide them through…” Alphys stopped when she saw the one eyed glared coming from red headed fish lady. That beautiful ponytail, the way the hair hung over her eye patch and those sharp pointy fangs of passion and the image of them gnawing at her neck made her eyes flutter.

“Snap out of it Alphys, what did you do!” Undyne screeched trying to get her beloved dork back on track.

“I know a way to Asgore’s castle through the hot lands and… okay so I might have a slight problem… its small really. I mean, it’s not like I’ve done something ridiculously stupid right?” Alphys gained a looked that was comparable to Applejack’s face when she lied and was even sweating a bit. Having Undyne’s furious eye upon her made her squeal slightly. “Okay, you remember that robot I made a long time ago to entertain the monsters of the underworld; you know who I’m talking about right Undyne? Anyway there might be a slight, teeny tiny problem with him right now.”

“Let me guess, you turned him into a killing machine. Here I am too injured to put him in his place and I’m also going to guess that he’s targeting the pink one here. By the way, you can put me down now Rudolph.” At Undyne’s words Gyftrot gently placed her on the floor. “This is my 'close' friend Alphys everybody.”

“Hi, I’m Pinkie Pie and that’s Toriel and he’s Gyftrot… we’re traveling the Underworld to save it or something like that. We haven’t exactly had completely clear goals as to why we’re traveling all this way to reach the barrier in the first place, but we recently got one.” Pinkie shook the nervous Alphys’s hand with a hoof. The pony thought she seemed nice even if she was as shy as Fluttershy sounded.

Suddenly a loud thumping noise started sounding out and Dr. Alphys looked at the floor while blushing.

“Oh no...” Undyne started off while covering her face with her good hand.

“Oh no….” Alphys muttered as she did the same with her hands before blast of dust erupted from the wall and the entire room went dark.

“Oh yesss! Welcome, beauties…” A light shined down on a familiar machine in the darkened room, one that was seen way back in Snowdin that had been operated by Papyrus. Only it now had arms and was on a single wheel, its face was made up of multiple squares that formed the letter M in a red coloration and it held a microphone up to what pass for his mouth above his dials. It was a rectangular kill machine that was now hunting Pinkie in a dramatic fashion. “…to today’s quiz show!”

“Aw, he’s not the kool-aid man… and here I was wondering what the new flavor would be!” Pinkie suddenly gained a grumpy look as she and her two friends found themselves sitting at a stand with a buzzer as disco balls lowered from the ceiling sending colorful lights everywhere. Not to mention some funky music started playing.

“Where did the chairs and this podium come from?” Toriel questioned as she found herself seated next to Pinkie.

“Tori stop thinking so hard about it, it’s a quiz show!” Pinkie was okay with insanity. This actually looked to be like a fun quiz show to her, even if the host was a crazy and murderous robot.

“You didn’t even know what a TV was before you came down here, how can you even know what a Quiz show is?” A slightly freaked out Gyftrot muttered, he was also in a seat at the podium that had the big red buzzer in the middle of it.

“I can tell this is going to be a great show, everyone please give a round of applause for our contestants!” As Mettaton the rectangular menace said this, he received just that by an invisible audience as he played a clap track and clapped personally along with it.

“I’m guessing that you’ve never played before, you two gorgeous ladies and a handsome gentleman. Well no problem, it’s quite simple!” Mettaton was pointing a finger to the ceiling and had a one displayed on his face instead of the letter M. “There’s only one rule, answer correctly or you die!”

“Okay we’re ready for you, bring it on!” This had gotten so ridiculous so fast; Pinkie couldn’t have been stopped from jumping right into it with a smile.

“Right, someone’s ready to get into it. First question and it’s an easy one! What prize do you get for answering my question correctly?” Mettaton slid to the left and started up the game show as he projected the answers in multiple choices for the group in the chairs while Alphys stood by behind Mettaton looking nervous.

A. Money.

B. Mercy.

C. New Car.

D. More questions.

“That’s an easy one!” Pinkie hit the buzzer. “It’s D!”

“Good answer! Sounds, like you get it!” Mettaton started up with another question. “Here’s your prize, what’s the king’s full name?”

A. Lord Fluffybuns.

B. Asgore Dreemurr.

C. The Heffalump.

D. Fuzzy Pushover.

“That’s also an easy one, its B.” Toriel said calmly after slapping the buzzer faster than Pinkie could.

“Aw, but I wanted to make the buzzing noises.” Pinkie started to rapidly hit the buzzer. “Buzzer noises are fun!”

“Surprisingly this question and the next one have been answered in one go so on to the fourth one!” It was the slow rocking motion of Mettaton moving side to side that was slowly putting Gyftrot to sleep. “What is Alphys’s favorite snack?”

A. Hot fish girls.

B. Really hot fish girls.

C. Fish girls named Undyne.

D. Noodles.

Pinkie hit the buzzer and continued to play with it as Gyftrot sighed and answered, they all noticed both Undyne and Alphys weren’t looking at each other with blushes on their faces.

“It’s D.” Gyftrot yawned; this was the least threatening killer robot he has ever seen. Likely the only one he has ever seen too.

“Correct, that’s another one for the team of travelers who just arrived in the hot lands, but how long can they avoid getting burned?” Now Mettaton seemed slightly off as he read the next question on a sheet of paper. “Here’s my next one, what is the airspeed velocity of a swallow not burdened by anything?”

A. Seriously?

B. Come on.

C. This is rigged.

D. 24 MPH.

Pinkie still hit the buzzer despite Toriel and Gyftrot staring blankly at the answers.

“It’s a trick question! You’re not even telling us where this swallow originates from in the first place and how much it exercises in a given day!” After a moment a beep and a ding was heard and Pinkie smiled.

“That is actually the correct response to this question! Amazing isn’t it folks!” Now Mettaton was bouncing up and down on his wheel. “Next question is, if you’re a kleptomaniac, is there something you can take for it?”

A. This is nonsensical.

B. Sure, the answer to this question.

C. What wouldn’t a being like that take?

D. None of the above made sense, so I’m answering this one.

Pinkie continued to play with the buzzer heedless of the dangerously insane robot’s sixth question.

“I believe the answer to be B.” Toriel rolled her eyes as she heard the dinging sound of a correct answer.

“Wonderful, even I’m astounded folks. So many right answers here!” Mettaton’s nonsensical quiz was beginning to make Pinkie and Toriel giggle. “Next question, if you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?”

A. Fail.

B. Succeed.

C. Epic Fail.

D. Succeeded at failing.

Pinkie played with the buzzer and even managed to match the buzzer to the music playing as she pressed it in time to the tune.

“The answer is D of course.” Gyftrot knew a lot about failing to succeed, he failed at successfully getting away from The Jerry after all. Well that was until his friends helped him escape that horrific being.

“Correct, boy do you guys know your stuff, but don’t count on your victory yet!” It seemed Mettaton had more questions up his metal sleeve. He projected a partial image of a monster that looked to be a Froggit. “What monster is this?”

A. Mettaton.

B. Whimsun.

C. Moldsmal.

D. Froggit.

“It’s easy, the answer is A. Mettaton!” Pinkie stated while continuing to strike the buzzer in a playful manner, causing Toriel and Gyftrot to look at her as if she were insane.

“I’m so flattered you remembered!” The image pulled away to show Mettaton wearing a shirt with the face of a Froggit on it, causing both Toriel and Gyftrot to sigh in relief. “Next question, in the dating simulation game called Mew-Mew Kissy Cutie. What is Mew Mew’s favorite food?”

“Oh I know this one!” Alphys was ready to go into a tirade about it when Toriel spoke up with a bright smile on her face.

“Its snail ice cream, but no one else wanted it and I think it was a great message on friendship!” Toriel suddenly received stares from everyone and blushed slightly. Alphys even looked happily watery eyed to see that Toriel knew the answer. “What? I like snails… and any mention of them in any form of media.”

“Correct and just for trying to help them Alphys, this next one is about you. The last question for this show in fact!” Mettaton seemed to inhale as he leaned back on his mechanical wheel. “Who does Dr. Alphys have a crush on?”

A. Asgore.

B. Undyne.

C. Pinkie Pie.

D. Everyone else not listed here.

“Hm… this is a really hard one… I know I’d like everyone else in the whole world. There are plenty of options there.” Pinkie rubbed her hoof against her chin.

“I know right, who doesn’t love a nice slice of pie?” Despite her injury, Toriel leaned over to her left and started to rub Pinkie behind one of her ears.

“It’s certainly a daunting choice, as Asgore is a mostly nice guy.” Gyftrot added in, the suspense was quite horrible.

“It’s B.” all three of them answered at the same time as Pinkie hit the buzzer one last time.

Undyne slapped a hand over her mouth. She was trying to keep herself from laughing her ass off at the adorably embarrassed red faced lizard lady.

“Correct, see even they knew you have a crush on Undyne! The probability is calculated as being one hundred and one percent, with a one percent margin for error!” Mettaton intoned before waving at the air as he slowly started rocketing towards the ceiling. “Thank you for tuning in folks! Join us next time when I do battle with Pinkie, the shovel wielding quadruped menace in, Cooking with Mettaton!”

Author's Note

In Quiz- a quiz deep in this chapter.

informing Toriel- also something in this chapter.

Inquisitorial? You bet.

I think the chapter kind of speaks for itself.

25 - Dr. All Fuss

“So… that happened.” Pinkie said from her seat at the podium as she continues to tap the buzzer that continued to go off with each press.

“Pinkie why are you still pushing the buzzer, it’s kind of annoying.” Gyftrot was the only one that thought so at this time, it was soon going to get grating on everyone.

“Because I’m waiting for it to make a different sound, also it’s a big red button. How can I not press the big red button?” Turning to her right, Pinkie smiled at Toriel who sighed and shook her head in exasperation. “Tori can’t actually get up from her chair, you know, because of the shredded hip and everything. I’m just trying to lighten the mood and stay by her side.”

Pinkie felt herself get dragged into Toriel’s lap where she was wrapped in a hug and felt Toriel nuzzle the top of her head.

“I guess we need to get our injuries checked on, we also need to ask about getting to New Home from here since we can’t use the elevator. Although I don’t particularly like the person we’re asking for help.” It was around this time that Toriel remembered who Alphys was, said yellow lizard shied away from Toriel’s glare. “I hope you’re not planning on performing any unscrupulous experiments while we’re here. I only know you in passing, but I know of you from those reports of the things you started doing. It’s why I had you fired; I guess my ex hired you back on then?”

“Well y-yes… that’s what happened lady Toriel… or is it still q-q-queen? It was around the time… Wing Ding…? Somebody… I can’t remember if he died though… I think his disappearance caused me to be hired again.” A blushing and sweating Alphys was trying to look anywhere but at Toriel’s eyes, she was also trying ignored the bandaged wound that was visible through the hole in the goat’s robe. She silently admitted that Toriel was quite a beautiful lady. She and Toriel had barely met one another, but it was entirely true that she’s done some horrific things. She was still quite horrified of what she has done to this very day and stuttered a bit because of it. “A-anyway, I promise that I won’t do anything experimental to either you or Undyne. Mostly because I don’t want to think of what will happen to either of you if I did. I’m not exactly a medical doctor, but I am trained to do things like that.”

Staring at the nerdy lizard, Pinkie couldn’t help but pick up on the fact that she had a lot of anxiety and was trying to hide her head in her lab coat from Undyne. It was cute, but she was definitely hiding something despite the fact that she didn’t seem like she would intentionally hurt anyone. Alphys was paying a lot of attention to the way Pinkie and her goat friend were cuddling and seemed a bit jealous of what they had.

“What are you standing around for Alphys? Get a move on and don’t just suddenly run to the bathroom like you always do when I’m around!” At Undyne’s words Alphys came to her senses and ran off around the corner, she came back a minute later with some kind of hand held device coming from the direction of the monitor. “It took you long enough!”

“S-sorry Undyne, I’ll get right on seeing what your injuries are.” With a twitch of her claws, they started glowing and the device she was holding lit up with power. She ran a light over Undyne and looked at the results the screen was showing her. “You have a broken arm and leg; they are clean breaks and have been set really well. You also have a lot of metal in you and I can guess that this would be rather aggravating for you. I’ll get it out of you, but you’ll have to be… oh right, what am I saying? You are the toughest Undyne. This is going to sting and I’m very sorry for hurting you like this, but those bits of metal have got to come out of you if you are to ever heal fully.”

Seeing the fish girl nod, Alphys put the device down to clap her two hands together. Pulling her hands apart, streaks of electrical energy bounced between her two palms. She held them over Undyne who grunted as the bits of metal from her armor flew out of her body into the circular field of energy that was now being generated between Alphys’s hands.

After she released the magnetic field she had made, the bits of metal Alphys had drawn out of Undyne fell to the floor in a spherical clump with a dull clank sound.

“I’m not going to lie, that actually hurt. Hey guys with the bandages, why don’t you make yourselves useful and pass that medical kit you have over to my friend here!” It was strange that she was speaking so calmly despite the amount of pain she had to be in; she had actually taken the knowledge of all the metal that was in her body pretty well. Gyftrot passed the sparingly used kit over to Alphys who looked through it.

“Hey, an almost fully stocked human made medical kit, wow… this is amazing! It even has some kind of gel that from what I’m reading helps quicken coagulation and some other things I haven’t seen before. Oh this is a veritable treasure trove of new stuff to look into.” A spear slammed into the floor next to Alphys; she cringed and stopped being a geek over a stocked medical kit. “Oh right, s-s-sorry… some of this gel, a few more bandages and you’ll be good as new. “

“Tell that to my left eye.” Undyne didn’t sound happy or angry in her bland tone, but she did certainly sound aggravated though. “Right, go ahead and start feeling me up under my clothes.”

Alphys moved over to Undyne and pulled up her shirt to start rubbing gel over the small spots that the jagged bits of metal had been ripped from.

“I can tell that you’re not exactly a medical expert Alphys.” Toriel was still giving Alphys a stink eye as she ducked down and continued to shyly rub the coagulating gel over Undyne’s wounds. “In fact I don’t recall ever hearing of what happened to those monsters that were experimented on.”

“I… I don’t like to talk about that… though you had a very good reason for firing me.” The remorse in Alphys’s voice caused Pinkie to sit up and take notice even if the pony didn’t leave the comfort of Toriel’s arms. She turned back to Undyne and continued to act tenderly towards the fish girl, knowing that her crush had been revealed. She had been quite thoroughly embarrassed and was now feeling up Undyne for medical reasons; she quickly pulled her hands away when she was done bandaging the spots along Undyne’s torso. “There now, all you need to do now is to rest Undyne. T-there’s something I want to say to you, but it can wait until I’m done seeing to the others.”

“She’s such a freaking coward, I already know she likes me why can’t she just come out and say it?” Undyne muttered unheard by anyone as she leaned back against the wall next to the hole Mettaton made.

Picking up the device, Alphys moved over to the pair at the podium that had appeared out of nowhere and with no mass calling attention to that fact at all. Pinkie hopped out of Toriel’s lap and looked at the device.

“What is it?” A curious Pinkie intoned as she pushed the buzzer while trying to get a good look at the device Alphys was holding as she swept a light over Toriel.

“It’s a hand held full body scanner. You see this thing here takes a scan of a single being and can show you various biological things about them currently. I built it myself and without using any dangerous materials, it’s a personal invention of mine from those human documents that gave me the idea for it.” Alphys looked proud of herself as Pinkie looked at the screen to see an outline of a sitting Toriel, her muscles, her heart, her bones and everything were on display. Alphys opened up a little to Pinkie. “Huh that’s odd… there’s something off about your soul readings. Otherwise you’re hip has some really bad cracks and your missing a bit of flesh. Same as Undyne, you need rest.”

“That thing can scan souls as well? Then I may as well show you what your scanner is picking up.” Toriel inhaled calmly and then held out her hand and focused on it, she forced the field she was making to only affect herself personally. Popping her soul out, it’s shifting orange and red colors danced as if they were flames themselves in front of the two now spooked monsters.

Both Undyne and Alphys had a different reaction to it, Undyne was staring in disbelief followed by a sense of intrigue and Alphys was looking at the soul with something akin to horror.

“How… but… that’s impossible!” Declared Alphys who had her scanner pointed at Toriel’s soul only for it to confirm that it was tied to Toriel herself. “No, no, no, no, this isn’t right; this is nothing like what happened to them. Yet it’s different somehow. How in the world are you doing that, monsters just can’t pull their own souls from their bodies. That is, this is, oh my god!”

Unynde didn’t declare it impossible and continued to stare at Toriel. She might not have been as brainy as Alphys, but she was far quicker on the uptake. It was a fact that Toriel had been holding her own soul in the palm of her hand and that it was clearly possible to have a soul as powerful as a human’s could be without taking away from one.

“I still don’t think much of this god guy everyone keeps going on about.” Equestria didn’t have much religion aside from what ponies wanted to believe in. The common belief was in Alicorns’, as much as Pinkie believed in the power of making friends and friendship itself.

“To be fair, religion has fallen out of practice for monster kind. We just tend to use the word ‘god’ out of habit Pinkie.” Toriel pulled her soul back into her body and leaned back while crossing her arms, she was trying to ignore all the pain her hip was giving her. “We don’t actually have physical examples of a god like you have physical goddesses Pinkie.”

“W-w-well technically, you are the very physical example of a goddess.” Alphys blushed and looked towards Undyne who was starting to form a spear in her good hand. “No! I mean logically speaking Toriel is a goddess. Don’t think that I don’t think you’re gorgeous or sexy Undyne because I… oh dear…”

Alphys curled up on the floor and covered her face as her entire body started turning from yellow to a solid bright red in embarrassment. Undyne started cackling at Alphys’s accidental confession; it was hilarious to watch her friend break down in shyness. It was also kind of sad that Alphys just couldn’t get the words out to her face.

“Face it Tori, you’re a goddess to me and a really pretty one too!” Pinkie moved over to nuzzle Toriel’s face while licking at her cheek. The pony standing on the podium got the goat lady to lick her back affectionately.

“So, how did your soul end up like that?” Summoning a spear above the floor, Undyne made it strike the floor next to Alphys causing her to yelp and leap to her feet while still covering her red face. The spears were leaving quite a few cracks and a small crater, one that had Alphys shivering. “Get a grip Alphys, your just embarrassing yourself now… and it’s actually kind of cute.”

“It’s because I’ve had certain interactions with Pinkie.” A moment of kneading an ear between her fingers, Toriel looked at the happy pony that was back in her lap and humming cheerily. She wasn’t going to tell Pinkie that putting any weight on her hip really hurt, she really didn’t want Pinkie to stop being cuddly.

“I can vouch for that, since goat mom showed hers… I might as well show mine now too.” Gyftrot focused and a brown fluffy heart shaped soul with an icy blue glow popped from his body. Even Pinkie was a bit shocked at the sight; no one in the room looked calm about this revelation that Gyftrot brought to the forefront.

“Gyftrot, just how long have you been able to do this?” Toriel just stared at the soul; she had thought that her soul had grown because of the sliver of Pinkie’s soul. Was she wrong or was something else in the workings here? Pinkie did say she was the element of laughter and laughter is usually termed as being rather 'infectious'.

It was here that Gyftrot got very quiet and looked pensive about answering the question.

“Wait, are you telling me that these effects are repeatable? This is the huge breakthrough I’ve been searching for! No… wait…” Turning her scanner onto Gyftrot’s soul, she studied the scans she was receiving from him. “Is it different every time? What’s the common variable between them? Is this why the human determination won’t work? Oh my experiments in determination have caused nothing but pain and suffering.”

“Hey sexy nerd butt I’ve been staring at for the last few minutes, I think I know the answer to that one!” The lizard jumped as she realized her butt was pointed at Undyne and she turned to face the fish girl who called her sexy and started dithering quite a bit about how to answer that. “You’ve got a scan of my soul right?”

Alphys backtracked to look over the scan of Undyne’s soul and saw something similar to the others, yet it was just short of being able to match the two other monsters she just scanned.

“W-what is it Undyne? Yours is almost close to theirs, then again you were always a bit… different.” Alphys seriously wanted to know the answer to this. It would make those years of research pointless, but she needed to know what was causing this phenomenon in two differing monsters.

“Moo!” The sharp cow noise interrupted everyone’s thought processes and they turned to Pinkie whose hoof was pressing down on the buzzer. The pink pony giggled into her other hoof and then Toriel started laughing as well, soon everyone was laughing at the same time.

“Oh that was neat and super terrific; anyway I think I know the answer too!” Pinkie waved her hoof frantically waiting for Alphys to choose her.

“Don’t tell her anything yet; I want to know more about this human determination thing and what happened to those who were experimented on.” Undyne really liked Alphys, even to the point she could truly love her, but she had a second reason for becoming her friend. She wanted to know what Alphys was hiding. Her eye narrowed as she stared into Alphys’s eyes. “We won’t be able to truly start a relationship until you can come clean about what you’ve done. A relationship is about trust, so I can’t really trust you until I can see for myself what happened to those monsters you experimented on. Now is the time to come clean about it.”

“…. Okay… I will. Just promise me you won’t look at me differently because of this.” Alphys was about to go get something to show them what she had done only to have a smiling Pinkie standing in her way with her hooves held out wide while looking at the device she was holding. “Oh right, I forgot to scan you… hold on second.”

The scanner swept over Pinkie’s form and Alphys stared at it for a bit.

“Huh, well you apparently have a lot of bruises and minor internal injuries, but you seem to be healing well enough. A-as for your soul… it’s… incredible.” Looking over the readings, Alphys couldn’t understand anything about Pinkie’s soul or how it worked. “This is far more powerful than any humans soul would be, it seems to be giving off a strange energy to everything around her. I don’t know what it’s doing, but it’s nothing harmful as it doesn’t seem to be affecting anyone’s health.”

“Alphys…” Undyne threatened flatly by just saying the scientist’s name while juggling some floating spiritual spears in the air with motions of her good hand.

“Oh well… as Toriel and Asgore might know, but not the rest of you. I’ve done some… experiments… into the nature of trying to recreate a human soul in monsters. The experiments however are largely failures and were only tested on dying monsters. I have yet to actually disclose what actually happened because… well I’m afraid of what the families of those dying monsters will do to me if they ever find out about it.” Alphys looked as upset as Toriel usually does when her children were mentioned. “The end results of the experiments weren’t pretty. Those monsters are alive, yes, but their current states are horrific. Even Asgore doesn’t know what I’ve done, but he was the one that gave me the go ahead for the experimentation. I’m wishing I hadn’t done so on his orders, nothing the king ever plans turns out well and this has been sitting on my head for quite a while.”

“I don’t know what you’ve done, but I know for a fact that trying to recreate a naturally existing phenomenon artificially has a high tendency to lead to bad things happening.” Toriel had heard of what Alphys was going to do and fired her for it. Apparently she had more reasons to be angry with her ex than ever before, because he actually had her go through with those crazy sounding experiments.

“This is going to a really dark place isn’t it?” Despite not liking where this was going, Pinkie at least has a popcorn bucket in her hoof to staunch the flow of bad vibes in the air. “Look can we do this later Airy; we’re trying to establish a twist in the plot that wouldn’t have come otherwise without Undyne being here. It’s just getting good too! Wait a minute… popcorn? Yay, a snack full of salt and butter, all just for me!”

“Didn’t you want the air to stop making fun of your weight Pinkie?” Toriel asked gently as Pinkie loaded up on the fattening goodness that was popcorn summoned from realms unknown.

“I don’t care, popcorn is tasty!” Pinkie only pulled her head out of the bucket just to state this.

Nobody bothered to ask where Pinkie even got the popcorn from, as monsters could do a lot of weird things like this. She certainly looked ravenous as she stuffed her head into the bucket and started taking on more mouthfuls of messily mashed and masticated morsels.

“W-w-with good reason lady Toriel. Your friend is also correct as are you, you were right to fire me and trying to cease the experiments from starting.” Alphys now seems to have fallen into a funk of depression. “I have to ask, how would you feel if you suddenly heard that your mother was an amalgam of fifteen differing species of monsters? Not to mention all those minds going on in one body.”

“Are you telling me, that all those injured and dying monsters fused together into one big horrific abomination?” Toriel turned a little green at the thought.

“A-a-actually, multiple abominations and segregated in an unusual manner. Like a lot of the nearly dead royal dog guards fused together into a strange somewhat dog shaped mass.” Alphys looked to the large bag off food sitting next to the refrigerator, that large bag of food wasn’t for show. Alphys wilted a bit and even her tail reacted to her mood by flopping limply against the floor. “At least the monster can now eat what their constituent parts can, meaning that if at least one monster was an omnivore then the whole amalgamation is. I’ve been keeping them alive in the basement…”

“Well at least they are alive and you sound like you tried your best, at least you’re still willing to take responsibility for what you’ve done to them. Like a mad scientist.” Everyone was a bit flabbergasted at Pinkie’s optimistic outlook. “Even if you are having a lot of trouble telling us about them, maybe you can introduce us?”

“Well I could, but I don’t know how coherent they would be. They are like feral monsters… except they don’t try to hurt me and are relatively docile really. Some of them like music and others like jokes or stories.” Alphys looked ill, but she gained a look on her face that said she was going to do this. She had to if she was to ever gain Undyne’s trust in her. Speaking of the fish girl, she had been rather silent for a while now. “They can still seem to be reasoned with somewhat, at least they know that I’m trying to help in any way I can. Hold on a second and I’ll show you personally.”

The podium had been moved to sit facing the large monitor; Gyftrot, Undyne and Toriel were comfortably seated. Pinkie was lying on the podium and receiving a belly tickles from Toriel causing the pony to break out into giggles.

“Well it’s time to show you just exactly what I’ve done.” Alphys was acting like there was a reaper with a scythe hanging over her head.

The monitor became fuzzy before it showed a distraught Alphys looking over a monstrosity that was clearly not a normal monster, it looked a like a huge dog with five shadows of smaller dogs in its encompassing mass and a large gaping hole for a mouth.

“The chemical I believe to be the source of the human trait of determination is a complete failure in many ways, in others it succeeded with horrible consequences. Subjects seem to retain all memories of each individual; however the competing minds leave the monster in questionably feral state. They are noted to not be immediately violent or hostile. I hope that I can fix this.” The Alphys on the screen poured some food and the mass leaned over to start gobbling it up with the big hole. “Subject retains the ability to breath, eat and sleep. Sleeping is haunted by nightmares of the conjoined minds trying to cope with their situation. This one is the most active of them since all the minds are relatively from similarly minded monsters. Determination, the will to keep living… even in such a melted conjoined state, it is both disheartening as it is horrific. I can’t bring myself to put the subjects down, I’m not a murderer. What am I going to tell Asgore? What am I going to tell the families of the monsters that I’ve done this to? What happened to the first flower I injected? It is apparent that trying to use the determination from human souls… it’s bad, it’s all a bad idea and should have never been attempted in the first place! It’s kept them alive, but it’s also doomed them to this! The cost is too high...”

The screen flickered after it showed Alphys breaking down and destroying some her work, the amalgamation tried to comfort Alphys in her sorrow by rubbing up against her gently. Several other amalgamate monsters slowly moved toward Alphys and it started up a rather strange group hug.

The monitor now showed a different time and a different monster that looked familiar to Pinkie, only it had vegetoids for eyes and parts of the lower half of its body was melted. Even Pinkie couldn’t smile about it; the main one in the previous showing had even looked kind of cute.

There was also another monster that reminded her of Argent, Shyren and a Moldbygg. That was the one to actually made Pinkie sad, it reminded her so much of some of the monsters she had met and befriended on the way here.

“It’s always the same, high concentrations of determination taken from the human soul always turns out the same. They melt, they gather and then they fuse into amalgamates. What am I missing? Is my research really all that important? If a monster acquires a high dose of determination from a human soul, is this always the end result?” Alphys looked into the two vegetoid eyes of the monster and it crooned sadly at her sadness. “They know I’m sympathetic and might have some level of empathy; maybe they can even partly understand their situation. I’ll find a way to fix this, I just have to! I’ve only ever had one clue as to fixing this mess, her name is Undyne and… she’s special to me. I can’t experiment on her and I won’t! She has naturally occurring determination and has yet to melt or fuse like all the others, is it possible for monsters to gain determination on their own? I am not risking Undyne’s health over what ifs; these monsters were on their death beds already and knew the risks of something going wrong. I’m not doing this to a healthy monster, especially not one that I… love… I hope Undyne never hears this.”

The scene faded out, Alphys had her head lowered and refused to turn around. Undyne sat up straighter and the silence was rather palpable.

“Every monster has given up on trying, but I haven’t! That’s what makes me different, I’m willing to do anything to stop all the sad sacks around here from giving up on freedom and I’m doing just that by showing everyone that I’m strong! Alphys, you will tell those families about this issue or so help me I won’t be able to forgive you like I’m willing to already! If those monsters you did that to can be so forgiving, then I can as well.” Undyne’s declaration caused Alphys to turn to her and stare sadly with tears in her eyes, she snorted and started to rub her eyes and nose on her lab coats sleeves. “I’m sure the families will forgive you Alphys, just tell them the truth. Keeping it from them had Asgore assign me to look out for you and to figure what was going on. So you are going to do it or so help me I will ram a spear up your flatulence hole!”

Pinkie started giggling at the term ‘flatulence hole’ and even Toriel couldn’t help but follow Pinkie in laughter. Undyne couldn’t keep a straight look on her face as she chuckled dryly at her own words.

“I’m being serious though, I will do it.” Nobody was going to think Undyne wasn’t capable of it, it just made Pinkie laugh harder.

“Go ahead, I really deserve it” A sniffling Alphys intoned. “I feel just awful about keeping them trapped down there in the basement, I’m surprised they never tried to rip me apart.”

“Alphys… come here.” The tone of voice Undyne had Alphys feeling very little confidence that things were okay between them.

Undyne brought her good arm around Alphys and hugged her tightly.

“Alphys, you’re the best friend that I’ve ever had. We will always be friends. I’m currently upset with you because I want to go up a level in our relationship and that I’m only now learning of all this. The one thing you’ve done right so far is having Mettaton doing what I’m trying to, and that’s keeping up the morale of every monster in the Underworld.” Undyne was kind of scary in how she held on tightly to Alphys, it was in a rather threatening manner. “I won’t let them hurt you, even if I have to fight while I’m temporarily crippled like this. It’ll definitely be over my dead carcass, do you understand me Alphys? Now show some backbone and work up the courage to ask me out on date you lousy lizard!”

“O-of course Undyne, anything you say.” The properly throttled Alphys would eventually set a world wide blushing record for longest and hardest blush ever.

“Which brings us back to a point, how did your soul get stronger Gyftrot?” Toriel could forgive, but she would never forget. That was just asking for people to repeat their mistakes ad infinitum. She looked at Gyftrot who looked sheepish under her light glare. She addressed the two monsters in love. “As for you two, I believe things will turn out okay for your relationship if you will allow me to preside over the wedding. I still want to eventually be introduced to those poor monsters in the basement though.”

“Uh oh, Tori’s gone into super smart and seriously beautiful queen with a glare mode!” Pinkie received a lighthearted slap upside the head for being silly from Toriel. “That’s pony abuse, you can’t do that! We don’t even have a dark tag on this.”

“Well… I learned that I could pull my soul when I started becoming friends with the both of you. The two of you pulled me out of my depression.” Gyftrot pulled his soul again and it floated there lazily. “Unfortunately my soul isn’t quite as mobile as the ones you two have. All mine can do is form two antlers.”

Two antlers swiftly popped out of the brown soul and then slowly moved around it while giving off a faint light blue glow.

“You’re soul is appears to be more defensive than agile like mine and Pinkie’s are.” Toriel saw Pinkie raise her hoof again eager to be called on as she waved it wildly in front of her face. “Yes, what is it Pinkie.”

“I’m betting he figured it out after he kissed Temmie Trot!” Pinkie saw Gyftrot groan and slam his face into the podium. “I know what causes your souls to become all powered up. All you monsters are always so depressed and sad all the time! I think what everyone here needs is a good dose of friendship, love and some belief in yourselves! Stealing someone else’s ability to be determined is never going to work, because that’s not you being determined on your own merits. Undyne’s almost got it, but she needs friends and loved ones to protect as that will make her stronger! I’m still contractually angry at Undyne until Toriel’s hip is better, so I can’t be her friend at this time because of a current conflict of interest here. I’m sorry Undyne, it’s rather personal and an apology would go a long way to boosting our friendship values.”

“Eh, I can’t complain and that sounds like stuff in Anime. It answers everything perfectly, so I will eventually befriend the crap out of you and I will grow stronger for it!” Undyne seemed actually pleasant now. “We will then try to do normal not destructive things together!”

“Like, accidentally burning your house down later?” Pinkie queried innocently after having heard so many paranormal things tend to happen to it.

“Yes, we’ll burn down my house together with power of friendship and my love for Alphys will make it burn down all the faster! It’ll combust so hard, that the ashes of the ashes will catch fire!” Undyne was being a bit intense, she calmed down only slightly. “Yeah, we’re going to have to wait until you’re goat friends hip is better before we can really try being friends. I’m actually very sorry about that now.”

“Well I guess friendship, love and belief make some kind of sense I guess. It’s not exactly scientific, but I always feel strong when Undyne is around and she’s my best friend that I… er.... That everyone now knows I love of course.” Alphys didn’t know whether to believe friendship, belief and love as being the main catalyst to the phenomenon she had seen in the two monsters. If that were true, then did that mean she and Alphy would become stronger when they eventually become that much closer with each other?

“Hey Alphys, those amalgamates don’t need wheel chairs right?” Not comprehending why Undyne was asking this, Alphys nodded wanting to be helpful and to avoid making Undyne any angrier. “Then why haven’t you brought us any to get around on our own with, I’m tired of being moved around like a freaking sand bag! I swear it’s like I’m the smart one here.”

Two wheel chairs later and in the basement of the laboratory using the only working elevator around, Pinkie met each of the amalgamate monsters and befriended them within seconds of opening her mouth to each one. She even danced and hummed some tunes for them.

“This is the happiest I’ve ever seen them.” Alphys was standing between the two wheel chairs. “Well, since they got stuck like this that is.”

“Yes, Pinkie certainly does have an effect on everyone.” Toriel wheeled herself over to Pinkie who was now petting the royal guard dog amalgamation.

“All the monster that make up this big guy are good boys, aren’t they? Yes they are!” Pinkie accepted all the amalgamate monsters readily despite their twisted outward appearances.

“Well you girls can stay here until you’re better. We can watch some movies, play games and can spend time talking with the amalgamate monsters. Oh I can tell we’re going to have so much fun together!” After a bit of enthusiasm of having guests in her lab, Alphys had forgotten something that she only now remembered. “Oh, but wait, Mettaton is still on the loose and crazy.”

“Oh don’t worry about that, I’ll go after him! Tori and Gyftrot will stay here with you, Undyne and these guys!” A white puddle rose up and formed into a hand that patted Pinkie gently on the head.

Author's Note

I've been really sick, but I'm almost better now.

I have a low tolerance for caffeine and I had one too many chocolate cookies in a given day which caused me to get sick, fever level of sick even. I can't drink a regular mountain dew without feeling horribly ill, I've only had to do that once when things around my rock were really bad and it was the only thing I could drink safely. I also don't drink coffee or tea for the same reason.

I'm okay though, when I actually require the use of medicine is when things are actually bad.

Gyftrot joins and leaves the party! Toriel leaves the party for medical reasons.

Party Member: Gyftrot.

Class: Antler Aegis Dancer.

Species: Monster.

Special Traits: Antler Barrier can block all enemy shots, but will eventually wear away under constant stress. Can safely encompass other souls in the Antler Barrier, but the soul can not fully cover itself. Immobile soul. Long invincibility period.

Alignment: Neutral/Pacifist. (Prefers to stay out of combat, but is now actively willing to protect Toriel and Pinkie.)

Titles: Mr. Trot, The Gift, Trotty Bo Botty, Sir Antlers the Stoic, Children of the Goat Mom, The Presenter, Temmie-Trots Unofficial Boyfriend.

Health: 15/15

Pinkie Pie: New Trait discovered.

Trait: Infectious Harmony. Pinkie has always had a way with making friends.

26 - Cooking With Mettaton

Pinkie had barely taken two steps outside the lab when the cell phone rang; the pony sighed and shook her head. Toriel was being overly protective. Pinkie had her shovel, her saddlebags had snacks and she was wearing incredible powerful magical armor. What more could her goat friend possibly want after kissing her good bye for a while and asking her to be safe after several minutes worth of cuddling?

Also Gyftrot wasn’t going with Pinkie because the hot lands would wear him down really fast; the only reason why it wasn’t going to bother Pinkie was because she was wearing magic armor to deal with the heat. The snow in the jar was also staying with Toriel to make sure she healed. This was Pinkie doing something on her own, as long as her friends were safe she could face down Mettaton without problems.

Pulling out the recently upgraded phone attached to a small fabric necklace she had around her neck, Alphys got a hold of it after seeing it was old, Pinkie held it up to her head and said the first thing that came to mind.

“Banana’s are good fruit for a hat.” It was clearly the first thing that came to Pinkie’s mind to say into the phone.

“Pinkie I… wait what?” Toriel on the other end sounded so confused and she giggled lightly, you could almost hear her ears flopping about as she shook her head. “Look, I just wanted to say that we’ll be in contact with you and that I just want you to take three more steps to prove a bet.”

“What kind of bet?” Pinkie asked sounding for all the worlds intrigued as to what kind of bet her goat friend could have made about taking five steps away from the laboratory.

“I’ll tell you if I win or not, just know that Alphys has you on the monitor and we’ll be watching your progress from here.” Toriel sounded exasperated with her, but there was that loving tone that Pinkie had come to know from her goat friend.

Taking three more steps outside the laboratory, Pinkie waited for something to happen. After a minute of waiting, she shrugged and tried to take another step and her soul pulled from her body as she was beset by what looked like a small walking volcano that was all smiles and a strange flying metal thing that was somehow blushing and wearing a feminine cap.

“Yes, I win!” Toriel called out childishly over the phone as Pinkie closed it up rolling her eyes with a simple smile on her face, it looks like she had to dance her way by these guys.

Hearing her phone ring again Pinkie pulled it out and curiously wondered if Toriel was always this clingy, she actually liked it.

“I’ll pay you in a minute Goat Mom; I need to inform Pinkie about them. Those monsters are Vulkin and Tsunderplane. Vulkin’s are not very smart; given they believe their lava can heal everyone and are a clear danger to every monster who goes near one of them that isn’t fire proof or at least highly resilient to heat. I wouldn’t suggest hugging it; otherwise they are really friendly despite their lacking in the intelligence department. The advice is to keep your distance and be congenial.” It was Gyftrot’s voice as he still had the monster compendium on him and he was obviously informing the now dancing pony as to what she was dealing with. “The flying one is Tsunderplane. Best option, get close but not too close and calm it down gently. It has a tendency to get really defensive and easily flustered, which tends to cause it to fire explosives from its body everywhere.”

Pinkie shifted and shook her hips and stepped out a rhythm to make her soul dodge walls of fire that spat fireballs out, as well as avoiding having her body being set on fire personally. The magic armor protected her soul pretty well from both this and the bombardment. The explosives falling from above were a tad harder to dodge given they created thin columns of smoke that shot straight up, she recognized the explosives immediately given they looked like tank shells and party tanks were a thing in Equestria.

Pinkie’s dancing ability was becoming somewhat of a thing of beauty and she twirled closer to the Tsunderplane and it seemed to blush as she wiggled and shook her body near it.

“Hey there, it’s okay. Do you want to be friends?” As soon as Pinkie said this, the Tsunderplane shot away from her looking smaller and highly flustered. She hovered there high in the air while staying away still looking rather embarrassed, but somehow enticed by Pinkie. “What’s with her?”

“She likes you, now hugs!” The Vulkin tried to leap at Pinkie, only she leapt back away from and caught him in the scoop of the shovel she pulled into her hooves from the strap. She carefully slid him off of it onto the ground away from her body and soul. He started spewing lava at her; she swiftly dodged with an awkward twist of her body and a graceful looking sideways leap away.

“Sorry, but your dangerous to my health and I can’t really hug you or touch your lava, which would hurt me. Though I’m sure you’re a very nice guy that can find some way to be useful and helpful. Ask a being before you try to hug it first if it’s okay for you to do so, you don’t want to hurt someone accidentally now do you?” Pinkie was being friendly and gentle with the lava spewing creature that smiled so brightly. “You have a really nice smile by the way.”

“I smile, I smile lots!” The four legged living miniature volcano said with a jovial tone, Vulkin seemed to be willing to listen to Pinkie. “I ask from now on, no want to hurt friends! I am friend with you?”

“Of course silly, just so long as you don’t try to spew lava or try to force me to hug you. Just keep in mind that you’re dangerous to others that are not like you, I’m sure we’ll be good friends.” That seemed to cheer up the monster and he just wandered off the side of the pathway forward and fell into some lava, Pinkie shrugged as he would be perfectly fine given he was made of the stuff and seemed to be a living rock creature. Maybe she’d eventually even be able to introduce one to Maud just to see what would happen.

Now Pinkie was to set out and face down Mettaton, as long as she didn’t run into any other problems along the way. She was glad her magic armor translated to protecting her soul and keeping her cool in this intensely hot place. She’d be sweating a lot otherwise and sweaty fur doesn’t smell nice, especially not after a long day of rock farming.

“Hey Papyrus… yeah… just called to tell you, I think… I might… want to be friends with Pinkie.” There was a loud girly squeal on the other side of the phone that caused Undyne to roll her eye. She looked to the screen and saw Pinkie moving forward, Toriel was watching the screen with obvious hints of worry about her girlfriend. “Yes, I get that you’re excited, but I’m in traction right now. I broke an arm and a leg… no it’s not necessary to give me some of your bones! Look I’ll be fine and I’ll heal... STOP BEING SENPAI CRAZY ALREADY! Sorry, I’m just stressed and in a bit of pain. Now shut up because I already told you, I’ll be fine. You’ve made some nice friends; they just might become my friends soon too. Yeah, I kind of always thought we were friends Papyrus… yes even if I was always treating you professionally, I do think of you as a friend.”

That led to another squeal on the phone and Undyne sadly knew that she sacrificed some of her future time with Alphys to be more friendly to the skeleton, but it didn’t make her feel bad at all. In fact Undyne smiled a little, Papyrus was a cool guy and she called because friendship mattered to her a little more now.

Undyne was strong for the monsters of the Underworld, she was stronger for her friends and she would be at her strongest for the one she loved the most. Now all Alphys would have to do is get up the guts to ask her out. She clenched her good hand; she swore she’d be a hero to everyone that was worthy of it. She now mentally added Pinkie to the list of friends she had, even if Pinkie couldn’t see her as a friend yet.

Pinkie had used two conveyor belts and was once again looking at the sea of lava; there was machinery running and metallic flooring in random spots. She looked at an arrow on a steam vent and stepped on it, she found herself rocketing onto a nearby platform the arrow had been pointing her to. Looking up in the air, she could confirm that the Tsunderplane was still following her. Said monster seemed to shy away when she looked in its direction.

Searching around randomly, Pinkie came across an area with a perfectly good frying pan with more conveyor belts and wondered who would leave something like that lying around. She picked it up and continued looking for a way forward.

Eventually she succeeded in finding a path forward after stepping onto a few more vents, only to see it was being blocked off by a wall of orange energy. She sat down and pulled out her phone which rang immediately.

“H-hi, Alphys here, I noticed you ran into a problem there. You can go through orange lasers, just keep moving as you do and as for blue lasers, don’t move.” Alphys was being particularly helpful as Pinkie moved towards the orange barrier and quickly ran through it.

After having run through the first laser, Pinkie looked ahead and saw multiple lasers ahead of her. It didn’t take her long, stopping when blue lasers were passing by her and moving quickly through the orange ones, she made it to the other side unscathed and disabled them by pressing the rather convenient switch.

Continuing onwards Pinkie came to a pathway where the arrow on the vent was slowly turning counterclockwise and there were three ways to go, one led to a door that she obviously wouldn’t be able to get open. She heard her phone ringing again.

“Uh, you need to solve the two puzzles to that area, there’s one on each path. Then you can move forward, I’ll take care of an active laser on the left side while you deal with the right side first.” Nodding at Alphys’s words, Pinkie launched when the arrow was pointing in that direction.

The pony moved forwards sharing some greetings with the adult monsters she met before she entered the puzzle room to see a bouncing fox head with sunglasses. On the wall there was a yellow arrowhead pointing up and a white arrowhead pointing down, between them were strange boxes on a three by three grid.

“If you’re wondering, you’re supposed to hit the other ship to solve the puzzle, but I kept running out of ammo. It’s like my buddies outside don’t want to go to work and they aren’t helping me any, can you solve it?” The fox head continued to bounce in place.

“Yep, that’s what I intend to do anyway.” Pinkie looked at the nearby note and then nodded to herself as she took up the controls for the game and moved one of the boxes out of the way and fired twice, this immediately destroyed the white arrowhead on the large screen. “Okay now on to the other puzzle then.”

As Alphys had stated, the laser blocking the way was turned off by the time Pinkie got to the other side and saw two kids together. Well at least she assumed they were kids, one purple humanoid monster with a skateboard and the other was with a green fire based monster in a skirt. Ignoring them, Pinkie pressed forward into the other puzzle room and saw that the puzzle was only slightly more complicated than the previous one being on a four by four grid.

Taking the controls she shifted the boxes around until she found a position as to which she could fire twice and split another white arrowhead. Walking out she saw the green fire monster talking with the purple one and looked to be doing homework together, she thought it was cute at least. No, she had a mission to stop Mettaton from doing whatever it was that he was doing! She would not be sidetracked by puppy love, even if it was adorable.

Making her way back to the door, it now had two spots lit up on it and Pinkie launched herself over to it using her shovel instead of taking the steam vents. As she stood in front of the door, it suddenly shifted and slowly clanked it’s way open.

Moving forward Pinkie came to another vent, stepping on it sent her bouncing across several vents consecutively and she squealed with joy as she bounced over to a spot where she landed on her hooves and could continue onwards.

The pony quickly found herself in a dark room. Looking about in the darkness she couldn’t help but feel that there was something there with her. The light’s flicked on and she found herself in an area with two kitchens.

“Oh yes, hello beauties, welcome to Cooking with Mettaton, the Iron Chef Edition! Today I and a very special guest are going to do battle to quickly make some cake; this will be a no holds bar cake making extravaganza folks! There will be action, ingredients and most of all, me!” Mettaton was sitting at the other kitchen station with microphone in hand, whereas Pinkie was already in the middle of hers. “Let’s get started with the rules that my opponent has to win with, all she has to do is make a successful delectable looking cake and it has to taste good too. If she doesn’t, she will be fried and battered. Heck folks, she might even be battered and fried even if she does win!”

“I’ll take you on Mettaton! Hey everyone, I’m Pinkie Pie the Earth Pony. I come from Sugar Cube Corner the bakery I call my home, which is also in Ponyville. I happen to be a master baker and Mettaton is quite the character to be facing in the arena!” Pinkie had her own microphone and had decided to actually get into the spirit of things, she put on a toque and her mystical armor changed into a smiling cat faced apron. “Now I will solemnly wait for my opponents to start this match of culinary warfare. We will be having cake by the end of this; I can assure you all that this is no lie! Hey Tori, don’t worry about me, I’ll even save some for you! I think I’m going to have a lot of fun here today.”

“Well at least you’re not a master baiter, am I right?” A laugh track sounded off for Mettaton. “Anyway let’s kick things into gear then, we each have all the supplies we need and we will begin in three…. Two… one…”

A horn sounded out and some music started playing with it too.

(Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga- Popple Battle plays. In case of you-tube loss.)

Pinkie went and gathered the supplies she needed to make the batter for the cake and the icing to go on it. She was going to go for a butter cream icing, everyone loved butter cream icing and she was sure that any of the monsters that tasted it would too!

The pony looked over to Mettaton who was using his telescoping arms to grab his stuff and then he turned towards Pinkie who was carrying stuff in three large pans that were inside of each other in her hooves. He fired a rocket that blew up the drawer where she would have found her baking utensils, she glared at Mettaton.

“I never said I was going to make this easy for you!” Mettaton chuckled derisively and went about continuing his work leaving Pinkie’s station full of destroyed utensils.

Pinkie looked down at her shovel and a light bulb lit up over her head, she moved over to the sink and turned on the hot water and started to wash her hooves and cleaned off her shovel blade. It was time to innovate!

Pinkie finished cleaning off her shovel to the point it shined and gleamed, she then ran two legged over to the counter and tossed up six eggs with one hoof and swung her shovel three times. Six eggs split perfectly in half leaving their shells to fall to the floor and their insides to fall in the three pans she laid out.

She tore the bags of flour and sugar open with a single shovel swipe and took one bag in a hoof while holding the shovel in her other. She started pouring the correct amount into one of the pans and then quickly swung out with the shovel in her hoof sending the incoming rocket flying back to Mettaton’s station and an electronic scream of pain was heard. Pinkie smirked vindictively as Mettaton had to start all over again.

Pinkie quickly finished pouring her sugar and flour, and then she started spilling milk into each pan haphazardly. As she was doing this she suddenly stopped and leapt up and smacked the eggs being shot at her station back into Mettaton’s with a few swift Tennis style swings of her shovel, he was trying to ruin her cake batter and that didn’t make her a happy pony. She used her shovel to hook and launch a spare gallon of milk at him in retaliation before she went back to pouring milk into each pan and then had to think of a way to mix them given she had no whisk or a mixer.

Ducking, Pinkie narrowly missed having her head taken off by a large mallet being swung horizontally. She narrowly even had time to push her pans on the counter out of the way of the mad mallet wielding Mettaton who was dripping milk. He brought the mallet around holding it high above him preparing to drop it on Pinkie’s head. Pinkie rolled out of the way as he slammed the mallet to the floor sending her bodily into the air, where she ended up landing on his head.

“Hey, get off the most incredible and only host of this show ever!” Mettaton shouted angrily while waving around his mallet, he slowly brought it into both his hands. The pony started hanging down in front of his screen that was his face and she smiled brightly and waved wildly at him, he decided to swing the mallet for what passes as his own face. The pony just leapt off as he knocked himself backwards.

“You’re not a very friendly host!” Pinkie called after him as he knocked himself back to his station where he wobbled slightly as a circle of stars appeared on his monitor, he soon fell onto his back.

Pinkie looked back towards the unmixed batter and then came up with an idea. She pulled herself onto the counter and planted her shovel into the middle of the first batter filled pan. With a kick up into a twirling hoof stand on top of her shovel, she twirled rapidly like a top stirring the mixture.

The batter was quickly being mixed by Pinkie’s rapid spins, with a jerk she stopped spinning and stared down into the batter for a bit. Nodding to herself and staying vertical, she hopped her shovel into the middle of the next pan and then lowered her rears hooves to the outside of the pan where she kicked off and started spinning again. She performed this action one more time and it was about this time that Mettaton had managed to get up and get back to baking his own cake in a shaky manner.

A smile slowly crept its way onto Pinkie’s face and she quickly put her three pans into the oven and pulled out an egg timer to time how long they’ve all been baking for. She then pulled out a salt shaker; she stood on top of her counter and launched the salt shaker with a golf swing of her shovel sending it right at Mettaton who was in the middle of mixing some batter. Mettaton immediately turned and deftly caught the salt shaker in the air before it could hit him or fall into one of his batter pans.

“Hah, did you think you could ruin my cake, like I’ve been trying to ruin yours? I, Mettaton, wasn’t born yesterday.” An egg splattered across Mettaton’s screen causing him to reflexively drop the salt shaker into one of his pans batter as he fell over from the force of the impact.

“Never mess with a baker who’s got the skills in kitchen fighting and a shovel she knows how to use!” Pinkie shouted over to the robot that had been knocked onto his back again. “Now to get started on mixing the butter cream icing, can’t do quick mixing like I did previously, this requires slow methodical mixing.”

“You’re cake could use a soul, here let me help you with that!” The pony gathered her ingredients and dove over her counter as Mettaton revved and brought down a chainsaw on it.

On the other side of the counter Pinkie got a chunk of butter into her bowl by holding it up to the chainsaw. She quickly ran off towards Mettaton’s station while pouring some milk into her bowl. Mettaton gave chase with the chainsaw swinging it wildly after the pony.

Pinkie quickly took some ingredients and used a clean stirring spoon hastily taken from Mettaton’s supply drawers; she also managed to get a fresh icing bag and a tip for it.

As she kept just ahead of the angry Mettaton, she ran on her hind legs while mixing throwing ingredients into the bowl. She jumped spreading her hind legs out as rocket shot underneath her throwing her tail hair up between her hind legs, the rocket flew into the distance and promptly exploded there.

“Why do people keep destroying my cabbages!” Ignoring the voice yelling, Pinkie turned around ran forward and slid underneath the chainsaw being swung horizontally.

“If a single chainsaw or a hammer won’t stop you, then I’ll just have to use two hammers!”Stashing his chainsaw away behind his back Mettaton turned around and brought out two large mallets which he twirled once in each hand.

“Wait, what happens when you lose? I messed up one of your batters and you still have to make your icing!” Nobody took baking more seriously than Pinkie. Sure experimentation was fun and all, but she was serious about finishing her cake and making sure Mettaton doesn’t destroy it. Even as she talked to him, she continued to mix her ingredients slowly. She needed the time to get it to the right consistency or else her butter cream frosting wouldn’t chill right and would be too lumpy. “Also, seriously, two hammers? Where were you even keeping them?”

“Oh like you’re the one to talk, how are you able to hit eggs with that shovel without immediately breaking them?” That was a good question, but Mettaton wasn’t about to get his answer as he answered Pinkie’s question. “You live if I lose, that’s a good prize right? I’m the star of this show and the ratings are going through the roof with our interactions! I really don’t like the fact that you’re upstaging me though.”

“I would like to think of it as sharing the stage with you. I mean we’re both here and we’re performing quite well together.” Even stating that, Pinkie could see that Mettaton was not happy to be sharing the stage at all. She quickly stuffed the bowl of what would become icing into the refrigerator to chill and took up her shovel in a tight grip with her two hooves. “Do you want to dance for a while? Then let’s dance!”

Mettaton came at Pinkie and smashed one of his hammers down. The pony jumped backwards, he swung his other hammer horizontally and with a hop she leapt up onto the hammers head. She smacked him in the side of the head with her shovel once she rode the hammer in close enough to him. She rattled Mettaton and leapt away going towards his station.

Mettaton tried to turn around and give chase, only his wheel hit a banana peel and he went skidding off past a smiling Pinkie who had an entire banana in her smile. Somewhere off the set there was the sound of several things shattering and an explosion, followed by the sound of a pot lid settling against the ground. The pony pulled the banana into her mouth to chew and swallow it.

“I like Mettaton, he’s silly.” Hearing her phone ring Pinkie pulled it out and held it up to her ear, while holding up a hoof to the audience. “If everyone would excuse me for a second, Mettaton will be back shortly to continue being ineffectual in attacking me. Hello?”

“Look I know we’re not friends yet, but I have to say you’re doing great out there! You show that bucket of bolts how to bake like a tough girl!” It was Undyne and she was apparently enjoying the show. “Before you ask, Toriel gave me your phone number.”

“Right then, anything I should know before Mettaton gets back from his trip?” Pinkie asked curiously.

“Yeah, there’s a switch on Mettaton’s back. It is not an off switch. It will however make him go through a transformation and start using up his battery power really fast.” It seems Undyne has had some previous history with Mettaton. “Thought that was something you might find interesting if you want to knock him out. Also look out, he’s coming back and he doesn’t look happy if that skull shape on his screen is anything to go by.”

With a click, Pinkie put away her phone and turned around only to quickly leap for the counter as Mettaton was now obviously mad enough to have created a deep crater where she had been standing. He swung his hammer again destroying his own counter and sending ingredients flying everywhere, that it created a huge mess didn’t need to be said.

“Right, combat stance time.” Having jumped from the robots counter, Pinkie landed in the area between the two kitchens and faced down Mettaton as he switched from his wheel to a hovering jet. She twirled her shovel and crouched down while holding it in a reverse grip.

“You’re being quite a nuisance on my show. Now stop it, hammer time!” Mettaton brought both his hammers back and slammed them down sending a visible shockwave towards Pinkie, who easily jumped over it.

Pinkie leapt towards Mettaton and took a swipe at him rattling him again; she quickly leapt back and crouched under his spinning form. He flew over head while holding out the hammers without hitting her with his them or his jet. She ran forward and turned around as he came back and now she was standing in his spot and he was in hers.

Mettaton whipped the hammers up on his telescoping arms and then slapped one down towards Pinkie who dodged to the left and then moved to the right as the other hammer came down while the other one went up. He rapidly continued to slam the hammers to the ground faster and faster until Pinkie suddenly leapt forward past and underneath one of these slamming hammers. She slammed the back of her shovel into his jet with a quick rising flourish. The jet went out and caused him to fall to the ground with thud where she rattled him once again with a blunt shovel strike; she once more quickly backed off.

“Is that all you got Metal?” Pinkie said with a smile, as she shouldered her shovel. A ding noise was heard and Pinkie looked over to the egg timer.

“How do you know my… forget that! You still have to finish your cake and I’m not about to let you!” Popping up onto his wheel, Mettaton charged forward and slammed his hammers together trying to smash Pinkie’s head between them. The pony charged him too and rolled forward before stabbing at his wheel making it go out from under him so that he fell flat on his face, all while she went to the oven and popped it open.

“Oh, they’re all so good…” A fond Pinkie stared at the cakes she had been fighting to make, she heard Mettaton struggling to get up from his face plant. She quickly used her shovel to pull the three pans loaded with cake from the oven. Her icing would be done in two minutes and then she’d have a cake worthy of her taste buds. “Right, can’t stop to smell and then eat the roses until I’m done!”

Placing the pans filled with cake on the counter using her shovel as to not burn her hooves, she got out a silver tray. She hefted one of the pans upwards before smacking a corner of it with a quick rap of her shovel. The pan flipped and landed neatly on the counter after sending the cake flying out of it into the tray, then two more cakes landed neatly next to that one. Pinkie was going for a triple layer cake.

Smiling in satisfaction, Pinkie quickly turned and deflected two hammer strikes from hitting her cake with her shovel in one hoof. She followed that up by spinning around to smacking Mettaton harshly across the screen with the frying pan she picked up earlier, which was being wielded with her other hoof. Several yellow exclamation marks appeared on Mettaton’s face as he spun away like a top from Pinkie’s blow and fell over onto his back looking so dazed that his screen turned blue.

Seeing that Mettaton was not getting up for a moment, Pinkie made for the refrigerator and she quickly started filling her icing bag that had its requisite tip installed and move back over to her cake. She started icing the bottom layer of her vanilla cake with strawberry butter cream frosting.

Once she was finished frosting the bottom layer she moved the second layer on top of that and started frosting it, she took glances at Mettaton every now and then to see if he was getting up. She managed to finish frosting her final layer by the time Mettaton was getting back up again.

“I’m done, I made a cake!” Pinkie proclaimed proudly.

“It still needs to be tasted; thankfully I already had a cake made in case I wouldn’t be able to finish making one while attacking you.” Mettaton wheeled his way over to his station and pulled out a tray and lifted the lid of a single layer double fudge cake. “I made it fresh while you were busy getting here.”

“I would say that’s cheating, but knowing that this is your show… well okay then!” A smiling Pinkie stated. “Anyway, who’s going to taste these cakes?”

“You would not be impartial my dear, plus I’m not exactly built with a flavor processor personally.” Metatton answered flatly, while tapping his microphone against his screen showing an M once more. “How about my camera crew and those two kids? They’d be pretty impartial.”

The three adult monsters and the two children from earlier were sitting there looking so awed at Pinkie’s prowess in the kitchen and dealing with Mettaton on top that.

“Okay, I can agree to that. Just so long as I can save a slice or two for my friends, I also want one for myself too!” At this point Pinkie was no longer being assaulted and Mettaton ceased his aggressive actions towards Pinkie and started getting out some plates.

Plates were put out and slices of rich cake were had, Pinkie actually enjoyed Mettaton’s cake as it was a human recipe and not a monster based one. Apparently Mettaton did a lot of charity bake sale appearances; he obviously couldn’t eat the stuff he baked and it had to go somewhere.

“Oh this is awesome! This strawberry butter cream icing is delicious and Mettaton’s cake is just as grandiose as the star himself!” The hopping fox head with sunglasses spoke.

“Metatton’s cake is sweet, but the strawberry cake is radical in flavor!” The purple skateboarding monster said as he continued to eat both his slices of cake.

“I think they’re both nice in their own ways, but I like the strawberry cake more.” The green flame headed girl said sweetly.

“Well, it’s edible and it’s cake. I guess that means that your opponent lives, but your cake is chocolate so you win my vote Mettaton.” One of the camera crew monsters said with a smile.

“What can I say; the strawberry butter cream was made quickly and expertly. I’m giving this one to Pinkie Pie from Sugar Cube Corner of Ponyville.” The final adult of the camera crew answered.

“You heard it from the impromptu judges here folks; my opponent has shown her excellent baking skills and even deserves a little praise from me.” Mettaton and Pinkie bowed to each other, turning to the audience Mettaton made a large pink heart appear on his screen as he held up his microphone. “Don’t worry folks; I’ll get her next time! For now I have to perform some self repairs for my next great act! Of course it’ll be great; the story has me starring in it after all!”

Author's Note

Not done with Mettaton until the 'verb pie dance' based around him, oh and Mettaton is going to be much worse than this. Can you say giant fighting robot VS. a pony?

27- Metta-ton of Explosions.

Opening her ringing phone and putting it to her ear, Pinkie ‘proud of herself’ Pie wondered if Toriel was calling to congratulate her on a victory well fought for. Her Temmie Armor shifted back to its previous skirt based form.

“Hello, orange you glad?” Pinkie queried innocently.

“Orange I’m glad what?” Toriel sounded slightly confused by Pinkie Pie.

“Orange you glad I didn’t start talking about banana’s this time?” The laughter was music to Pinkie’s ears.

“Pinkie, oh my goodness, my side hurts. Please don’t make me laugh!” The lilting laughter of a lovely goat lady could be heard coming from the phone, after Toriel calmed down she sounded a bit pained. Hearing that her goat friend’s hip hurt made Pinkie frown. “Anyway I called you for a reason Pinkie, why did you let Mettaton get away? He was right there!”

“… You know, I honestly forgot that I was supposed to catch him. I guess I got a little distracted by all that baking huh? Also I’m not exactly what you call good at catching things; it’s not a part of my many talents that’s for sure.” Pinkie started toy with her braided mane while she thought of what to say. “Hey at least I have some really good cake for you.”

“I’ll be sure to enjoy it when you get back. I love you, mostly because you’re ridiculous. I found out that if you had come alone, Alphys would have scripted all this business with Mettaton.” A Sigh was heard and after a moment Toriel had a little more to say. “She’s become a lot more honest since Undyne set her foot down. Mettaton is actually doing all this on his own; he seems amiable enough to not attack you outside of his shows though. The monster amalgamates say hello, please stay safe and don’t do anything too dangerous.”

“No Pinkie Pie promises I can’t keep Tori, you know that. I’ll do my best for you though!” As she hung up, Pinkie felt butterflies in her stomach. She said her good-byes to each monster on the wrecked kitchen set, and then she set out after Mettaton. “Now I just got to find my way forward, I wonder what Metal will come up with next.”

Pinkie eventually came across an elevator and found that it would only take her up to the second floor, shrugging she went along with it. The elevator to New Home wasn’t working, but apparently the other elevators were working at Mettaton’s behest. She calmly exited the elevator at the second floor.

“Hey there, I’m Heats Flamesman. Remember my name for later, oh and watch out for explosives.” The humanoid pile of flames named Heats seemed friendly enough for a monster, so Pinkie nodded and was on her way forward.

As she walked forward, Pinkie looked out the corner of her eye and saw that Tsunderplane was still hovering around and happened to blush every time she vaguely looked in her direction. Shaking her head and deciding to ignore the strange monster, she came upon a stand run by an old friend she hadn’t seen in a while. There was also a strange blue bird monster that was likely a harpy; she was eating a strange object on a bun. There was also a Vulkin enjoying the same kind of treat that was awkwardly shoved into the top of his head where it was slowly being dissolved by the monsters lava, it reminded Pinkie of things that Mr. Cake likes to do with Mrs. Cake.

“Hey Sans, it’s been a while since I last saw you.” Moving over to what looked like the guard station from Snowdin transplanted in the Hot Lands; Pinkie looked up at the building and saw that there was still snow on the roof of it. She shrugged, not caring if it didn’t make sense or not that the building had snow in an area that was supposedly really hot.

“Hey, Pinkie, heard you got on Mettaton’s show, heard you’ll see more of him as well. Papyrus jumped out a window because you now have celebrity status in his eyes. So want to buy a hot dog? I’ve got mustard, hot sauce and relish. The ketchup is all for me, though I may be willing to share some with you if you ask.” Sans leaned on the counter smiling as he always did, waiting to see what Pinkie would do. “So are you going to pay me thirty G, so I can introduce you to a nice hot Frank?”

“Sure Sans, but to be frank about a Frank, is it made of meat? I know what Griffons put in their hot dogs and it’s pretty weird. I didn’t even know grasshoppers could be cooked like that or that ponies could stomach eating bugs.” She can eat all the sugar, vegetables and fruit in the world, but Pinkie would never be capable of eating meat. “Also if he’s hot, is he too much so to be out of my league?”

“I’m sure you could take being frank-furter than I would as a joke.” Sans smiled and held out his arms as a rim shot played. “I do have a no meat option here that you might enjoy.”

Pinkie reached into her saddlebags and found some gold sitting around, Gyftrot must have picked up some since almost all of the money was with Toriel. She placed thirty gold on the counter and Sans turned around to start boiling what looked like an average looking hot dog and he eventually forked it out with his bare hand and put it on a bun. Pinkie raised an eye at the sight of him shoving his skeletal arm into the hot dog boiler.

“Don’t worry I’m clean, so much so that a vulture would starve trying to pick me clean again.” Sans set a slightly discolored looking snack food on the counter, he liked making the pony giggle. “What do you want on it?”

“I would like the works!” Pinkie watched as Sans placed a book open book over the hotdog, the title of the book read Macbeth. “I don’t think I can digest that much ink Sans, or whoever this Shake A Spear guy is. So maybe you could take that off and start with some relish.”

“Okay, I enjoyed making this special hot dog for you.” Joking about relishing it just made Sans feel so much more sillier than he usually was. “Do you want me to relish it some more?”

“What about some ketchup?” Pinkie was enjoying Sans’s puns and gags.

“Oh I would like to catch up with you too, but I’m busy at the moment. Maybe later though.” Nothing would break Sans’s stride at this moment.

“I’ll take the mustard and hot sauce then.” Pinkie wanted to see what Sans would say now.

“I guess you don’t want it shaken, so it is a must stirred then. So how hot do you want your hot sauce?” As he said this Sans stirred some mustard in a nearby vat and scooped some of it out onto the odd hot dog.

“Oh I like it spicy.” It appeared to Pinkie that Sans didn’t have much more silly to say as he handed over the completed hot dog to Pinkie. She took a nibble of it and hummed. “Oh this is good! I haven’t had boiled cattail in a long time. Why would you call it a Hot Dog or a Frank, it’s really a Hot Cat. I should know, my sisters enjoy a nice Hot Cat every once in a while.”

“I get this funny feeling in my gut every time I eat one of these.” Marble ‘Cheesecake’ Pie looked around warily, before she went back to enjoying her Hot Cat with the fixings.

“Yeah well, keep it to yourself Marble; I want to enjoy my Hot Carrot in peace.” Unlike her sister Limestone was eating a carrot on a bun.

Maud was just eating a rock next to Trixie who was also eating a Hot Carrot.

“Trixie always wonders why phallic food always keeps coming up in every form of civilization Trixie visits.” Shaking her head, Trixie just continued to eat silently in thought and leaned against Maud for comfort.

Having moved on after finishing her Hot Cat, Pinkie stopped along the path when a flaming creature hopped towards her and her soul pulled from her body once again for the umpteenth time. Hearing her phone ring, Pinkie pulled it out and opened it. The creature looked like a bouncing torch, with two feet, a flaming head with a crazy smile and a body that only looked like it was made of coiled rope.

“Pyrope, they like partying, heat and explosives. Just have some fun with him and he’ll probably stop flicking explosives at you.” As he read off the information Gyftrot watched as Pinkie was blown back by an explosion on the screen. “Warning: the power of the explosives this monster summons is on the high end scale of things.”

“No kidding, those things are powerful!” A round bomb with a fuse went flying towards Pinkie who scrambled to get away from it before it exploded; she was caught in the edge of the blast and was nearly blown off the second floor by the force of the explosion.

“My mind is on fire, my soul on fire, I’m feeling really hot, super hot, turbo hot!” The monster screamed crazily as it bounced and spun into the air launching another salvo of explosive devices at Pinkie. The round bowling ball shaped bombs with small fuses looked strange, but they were nonetheless effective for looking however odd. “We need a party song, a thumping jam, so I go boom, boom, boom!”

“You think you’re hot stuff, then let’s get all steamy then!” Pinkie started to dance and shake as she got closer to the bouncing explosives spewing torch; all while dodging through explosions and grooving her soul out of the explosion range as best she could. She started to party with the crazy monster and he bounced in place enjoying Pinkie’s hot hooves. She was on fire as she danced, but not literally.

“You got the blood pumping mi amigo; you came to the party knowing what you’ve got! No point in bringing the boom now.” The crazy monster stopped throwing bombs and just danced along with Pinkie for a minute, after releasing his hold on her soul of course. “Know where I can get something hot like you?”

“Sans has a Hot Dog and Cat stand back that way, he also has some good hot sauce. It’s really spicy.” The bouncing monster bowed to Pinkie’s dancing skills.

“I thank you kind senorita!” The monster said before he hopped on his way hooting and hollering wildly.

“That monster sure knows how to party!” That was a friend Pinkie knew she’d eventually be seeing again. Speaking of seeing friends, she could see the Tsunderplane blushing worse now and was still following along behind her. She seemed cold and distant, but Tsunderplane also seemed to be slowly getting closer and closer to her as time passed.

Once again traveling, Pinkie went off the beaten path for a bit and picked up a stained apron with a heart on it. She shrugged and stashed it away in her saddlebags and went back onto the path, she came up to a relatively easy puzzle.

She pulled her shovel into her hooves and looked at the three switches on the way across the conveyor belt to a blue electrical barrier on the other side. It was simple enough for Pinkie to tap the three switches as she passed them and was once again moving forward without any impediment whatsoever.

Seeing that the next area involved a switch puzzle, Pinkie decided to skip the puzzle entirely as she gauged the distance to the other side. She launched herself over to a platform, passing by one entirely in the process. Then she launched the rest of the way with another use of her shovel, Acrobatic shovel based body launching techniques trivialized the whole puzzle for Pinkie.

What came next had made Pinkie pause for a minute, it was another mouse hole. Next to the mouse hole with a hungry squeaking mouse was a safe with the distinct smell of slightly melted cheese coming from the safe. She pulled out her phone and called Toriel.

“Hey Tori, I want to help the mouse, but I don’t know how to open this thing. Do you have any ideas?” If Pinkie didn’t have the solution now, then someone else probably did. She sat down facing away from the safe.

“She could always brute force it!” When it came to ideas, Undyne preferred the violent option and could be heard in what sounded to be the background of Toriel’s phone.

“She could go back and get Pyrope to blow it open.” Of course Gyftrot’s idea was in a similar vein of brute force, but with more friendship and utilization of explosives.

“Maybe this one is impossible Pinkie. Oh right, did I tell you I helped a mouse out in the swamp? We ran by it after you got kidnapped by Temmie’s, doing so caused that mouse to get the cheese that time.” Toriel leaned forward in her wheel chair and she started rubbing at her right horn with a hand. “Why are so many mice having problems getting cheese in the Underworld? I mean it seems to be a bit ridiculous the lengths somebody would have to go to, just to place a hard to get piece of cheese near a mouse hole.”

“Aw, but Tori, it’s my side quest to help every mouse! I mean you obviously got one of them for me, so it’s a bit moot to say I’ve done the quest all on my own, but I still want this mouse to have that cheese.” As she said this something streaked behind Pinkie who was getting sad and an explosion sounded off, turning around Pinkie saw that the safe had been blown open. She looked around and saw that Tsunderplane trying to look even more nonchalant than ever, despite the smoke trail leading right to her. It was obvious that she just blew the safe wide open because Pinkie wanted to help the mouse.

“Thank you for helping me out Miss Tsunderplane!” Pinkie smiled as the plane blushed and even looked bashful as it hovered there in the air.

“I-I didn’t do it for you, you jerk! I did it for the mouse, I don’t have a very bad crush on you if that’s what you’re thinking.” The plane secretly decided that its bombing run was worth the attention she got from the pony.

After helping make sure the mouse gets the cheese, thanks to some help from Tsunderplane who was warming up to Pinkie’s friendly ways, Pinkie set forth to continue her epic journey.

As she walked forward she saw some green constructions beams off the side of the path, before she could turn the corner she heard someone shouting out behind her. Pinkie’s soul pulled from her body and she was accosted by two armored monsters.

“Hold it right there you; me and my bro are so totally going to capture and or kill you!” The first royal guard looked much like the previous two Pinkie saw before, though there was a noticeable differences in the design of the armor from the two Undyne had addressed. “You know, whichever comes first. Sorry we have to do this, but it’s our job.”

“Oh it’s those two, never seen that much tension between two guys in my life. Hey deer boy, call Pinkie and tell her those two guys are into each other.” Seeing the stare she was getting, Undyne rolled her eye at Gyftrot. “What, I’m really curious to know what she’ll do with that knowledge. Those two men have been avoiding the truth for a while now and someone needs to give them a good kick in the pants region.”

The truth of the matter was that Undyne was a bleeding heart for romance and usually paired up the guards that asked if they could get assigned with someone special that they wanted to start dating or were just good friends with. She rewarded bravery and assigned the guards to their friends or eventual significant others based on that.

A ringing was heard and Pinkie held up a hoof to the two gentlemen who waited for her to finish listening to who was calling her.

“Really, well that’s neat, anything else… the dirt on their armor is there to keep them nice and cool? Okay I can use that.” A smile of devious intent crossed Pinkie’s face as she rubbed two hooves together. The Grinch would have run for the hills at the sight, Pinkie was going to friendship them so hard. “Hi I’m Pinkie Pie, your armor is dirty. Do you mind if I clean it off?”

“Actually me and my bro would prefer it if you didn’t.” The second of the two knights answered before he charged Pinkie in sync with the other one. They started to attack in tandem and tried to keep the pony between them as they slashed and blasted white friendliness pellets all over the place towards Pinkie. The pony dodged the projectiles with grace and she expertly deflected their swords blows meant for her physical body with her shovel.

“I want hugs!” Pinkie yelled as she attached herself to the second guy’s armor and started rubbing her face and body against it.

“Hey stop getting cuddly with Platwoon! I want to do that…” The first knight in black armor stopped and you could almost see the visible blush through the slit in his helmet at his admittance.

“Zuno, did you just seriously… is it hot out here or is it just me. I’m burning up.” The pony having removed enough cooling dirt from his armor, Platwoon started remove his upper torso armor without removing his helmet. His massive scaly muscled chest was covered in sweat and manliness, Zuno just seemed to start gawking blankly.

“Hug time for you too, then I want you two to talk about your feelings!” Pinkie started nuzzling Zuno the same way she did Platwoon; she was definitely going to need a bath after this.

“Hey, get this crazy creature off of me… ugh did things just get hotter around here? It’s too hot; I’m practically burning up in this armor.” Zuno removed his upper torso armor the same way Platwoon had and now it was his friends turn to stare at him. His fluffy rabbit chest was rippling with muscles.

“Now talk about your feelings, you two like each other! Just so you two know, being gay is completely okay. I should know, I’m almost always happy all the time!” Well if that wasn’t a loaded statement, because indeed Pinkie was smiling at the two because she thought the dragon and a rabbit knights would be cute together.

“You see, this is kind of why Threep and Fourlette are having friendship problems, they both had a crush on me. I was too afraid to tell them or you I was gay and it ruined their friendship.” Zuno looked down and sad, even his armored bunny ears wilted.

“Hey it’s okay, want to get some nice cream together? Maybe we can even call those two and help them rebuild the friendship they had.” Platwoon seemed willing to help Zuno make amends. “We can buy some salmon flavored ice cream, they both love that flavor! Also… would you want to start dating?”

“Sure, I would love to! Wait, what about her?” At least Zuno was more on the ball about dealing with Pinkie instead of getting distracted entirely by that manly, manly dragon chest.

“I’m friends with Undyne, here let me get her on the phone! Then you can go get nice cream with your hot boyfriend, in fact the both of you are quite hot. It would help if you cooled off together with friends.” One phone call later and with some time off ordered by the captain herself, the two knights left Pinkie to her quest after she helped to call their two old friends that were a cat and a mantis.

Moving along the path, Pinkie was sure she was going to run into another Mettaton moment as the darkened area she walked into lit up, what she came upon was as much as she would expect. In fact it was a sign of just how egotistical Mettaton could get, since he was inside a larger robot of himself that suddenly rose up and faded into existence.

(N64 Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, the Ghost Robot Tsurami boss music starts playing.)

“Say hello beauties, to the Super Sentai Metatton Machine! Be prepared for my Metal Fan Toss!” The large robot slowly rotated and then pulled out two fans and struck a fantastic pose. It even had a ridiculous eye attracting topknot on it that Mettaton himself didn’t have. It was easy to tell who the twenty foot tall robot was being driven by. It threw the two large fans at Pinkie and they turned into glowing discs of death. “You know I was going to do a boring news story, but I figured changing the time slot to something with more action packed was in the works!”

Pinkie pulled back her shovel and swung it as hard as she could sending the two spiraling discs back at Mettaton’s machine knocking it back, but the discs did little to damage it.

“It’ll take more than that to bring me down Mettaton! Wait… am I the villain or the hero in this scene? I can’t really tell.” Even if she and Mettaton were at odds, it would help to get their stories straight for their audience.

“I’m the villain, everybody loves good villain! Especially an overpowered and handsome attractive one like me! Meet my Miniature Mobile Mettaton Style Bombs!” The machine crouched down and a mouth opened up on it launching out several box shaped robots that vaguely resembled Mettaton with blinking twirling red lights on them, except for one really odd looking one.

The robot bombs quickly charged for Pinkie who started trashing each one that came at her with horizontal shovel swipes. She also knocked the resulting pieces away before they could explode next to her.

“Woo, I made it into someone’s fan fiction as a unbelievably awesome crossover character, hi I’m Clap Trap and I’ll be attacking you n…” Clap Trap was launched back at the Super Sentai Mettaton Machine with swift twirling golf swing, where he promptly exploded and was forgotten as having ever punctured the dimensional barriers on this fan fiction. The only notable thing he did was damage The Super Sentai Mettaton Machine slightly and proved to be an ugly looking Mettaton style bomb too.

“Okay time to bring out the big guns, Kabuki Dance Burning Palm Strike!” The machine danced around weirdly on its one wheel in a circle and rotated its upper torso while it held out right palm which started glowing white hot, it charged towards Pinkie leaving a blazing heat trail in its wake as it thrust it forward.

Pinkie stabbed her shovel into the ground and quickly launched herself high into the air just before the palm strike created a crater filled with melted rock where she had been standing.

“Taste my Shovel Rondo!” Pinkie came down slamming her shovel into the Super Sentai Mettaton Machine multiples times with vicious flipping action.

“Strike the earth!” Pulling back her shovel she jammed it home into the right shoulder joint of the Super Sentai Mettaton Machine causing its arm to take some heavy damage and start cracking. She leapt away while striking at the large robots screen and landed on a safe piece of ground. She swiftly reversed her grip on the shovel as the machine lift its left palm towards her, a hole opened up in the palm and a bulbous shape filled it.

“Now taste My Mettaton Massive Megaton Missile!” Finishing his shout, Mettaton launched a large missile out of the raised palm sending it spiraling right for Pinkie who narrowed her eyes; it even left a trail of pictures with Mettaton on them.

“Super Reversing Shovel Slash Flash!” Doing something that was nearly impossible without her cutie mark powers, in a single step Pinkie flashed to behind the robot having seemed to teleport there.

The missile was suddenly flipped around and already impacting with the upper left screen off of the large machine with huge explosion that caused it a lot of damage. The machine even started smoking now and the large screen had an error message for a few seconds.

“Oh no, my beautiful machine of me that’s really impressively built to look exactly like the wonderful Mettaton! You’re ruining it, how did you even do that!” Mettaton couldn’t even figure out what Pinkie had done, but he slowly turned his large machine around to face her. “Your becoming such a nuisance, activate Super Sentai Metatton Machine Melee Masher!”

The machine started glowing brightly and a huge barrel shaped object flew up high into the air and came down extending a long handle into the hands of the machine in a very flashy manner, it was held high in the air and it flashed a rainbow of colors. It was just a really big hammer with flashy special effects.

“Now let’s see if this marauding mare can really handle my mechanical might!” The hammer raised high into the air and then it was brought down on top of Pinkie; it caused a huge explosion and a shockwave.

The pony had quickly planted and spun around her shovel to launch herself sideways and she rode the massive resulting pressure wave spinning through the air with her legs splayed out. Flying like ninja star she flew in a wide arc and then came back and cut through the large robots topknot as she passed it by with her shovel.

“Oh no my robots topknot, what did my beautiful machines appearance ever do to you? How dare you strike at my robots vanity?” That really upset Mettaton and he really sounded it too. The panels that made up the large robots screen opened up to reveal a ton of missiles beneath them; it held the large hammer off to the side in its left hand. “It is time for my ultimate attack, Heat Seeking Massive Mettaton Missile Massacre!”

Unfortunately for Mettaton this attack proved to be more of a detriment to him than Pinkie Pie who was still recovering from her rolling landing that left her near the edge of the battleground that hung high over a vast sea of lava. They were still on the second floor after all and if the fall didn’t kill her, the lava sure would.

Why was Mettaton’s attack such a detriment, you may be asking? Well remember where Mettaton is launching this attack from. In the middle of the hot lands, a heat seeking missile was less likely to hit a colder than everything around her thanks to magic armor Pinkie Pie. In fact the hottest thing in the area was the right hand on the Super Sentai Mettaton Machine at the moment as it was still cooling down.

“Oh no, I miscalculated!” Was the scream Mettaton let off as the entire right arm of his machine was blown off a by a large number of missiles impacting with it. “Super Sentai Mettaton Machine, fight on for great sponsorships and ratings!”

The machine swung the hammed sideways at Pinkie who ducked under the swing; the machine retracted its wheel and lifted off on a jet. It continued its swinging motion to start spinning around, this generated a tornado that threatened to suck Pinkie in and send her flying out in dangerous manner.

“Come on Super Sentai Mettaton Machine! You can do it, I believe in you!” It seemed like Mettaton was just shouting encouragements to his machine now instead of doing any actual piloting. It even seemed to be working.

The machine spun faster and faster trying to suck the pony in and it buffeted her form with tons of loose rocks, she had her shovel jammed into the ground and was trying to hold her position with all her might. She even took a few rocks to the head that really stung quite a bit, she held her position as best she can to not be dragged in.

The damaged Super Sentai Mettaton Machine started to wobble as it spun faster and faster, creating a large vacuum tornado that threatened to tear Pinkie apart as she slowly slid closer to it. Suddenly something in it finally broke and the left arm flew off the machine. It slowed down and started wobbling, the large screen even showed a circle of yellow stars on it.

“Now’s my chance, I’m going to bring his mad machine of destruction and explosives down for good!” Pinkie planted her shovel in the ground and pulled back as hard as she thought the shovel could handle. “This is one of my more devastating techniques, but I’ve got no choice, Super Spear Spade!”

Pinkie turned into a blur of spiraling pink, she went shooting through the air creating a spinning drill as she shot towards the Super Sentai Mettaton Machine with an incredible velocity. As she came up to hitting the screen, it gained three question marks on it as Pinkie hit and slowly started to push against the large screen. The large robots screen started to bend inwards at the force Pinkie was applying to it.

“Fight it Super Sentai Mettaton Machine, fight off her attack for great publicity! Oh no beauties, it looks like I have to eject, the Super Sentai Mettaton Machine can’t handle the stress!” Mettaton quickly ejected out the backside of the machine and ran for it just as Pinkie finally pierced it with a large exploding flash of white light.

(Boss music ends.)

Landing on the ground behind the Super Sentai Mettaton Machine, Pinkie stood up shakily. She was hurting all over; turning around there was a pile of scrap metal that was the exploded shell of Mettaton’s Super Sentai Mettaton Machine.

“Darn it he got away again! That last attack really took a lot out of me.” Holding up her shovel in victory, a victory that was short lived as Pinkie’s pupils shrunk and her eyes started to water. The battle had taken a victim; her shovel fell apart in her hooves. “My… the… it… just fell apart. Just like all the others before it, it… just… fell apart. Shovelllllll!”

Pinkie started to sniffle slightly and then started crying over the remains of a good friend that had helped her through tough times in the Underworld. Her shovel had died from the stress of performing that last attack.

“How am I even supposed to dig a grave for you?” A blubbering Pinkie screamed over the remains of her shovel, she may have won the battle, but she just lost a good friend to the war between her and Mettaton. “Don’t worry shovel; I’ll dig your grave with my bare hooves if I have to! I’ll carry your remains until I can find a good spot for you, you… you deserve the best. I… I’ve always loved you and I always will shovel, you were like a shovel to me. I pushed you too hard; now you’re… you’re all broken up and shattered into pieces. You were one of the best shovels that I’ve ever had! Perfect balance, high tensile flexibility, pogo capable and you even gave me some of the best launches in my life. I’ll miss you…”

Toriel sat there with tears in her eyes. Despite the ridiculousness of it, she couldn’t bring herself to laugh about Pinkie’s sorrow at losing her shovel. She also felt some hints of jealously for a shovel of all things. She wasn’t the only one with wet eyes in the laboratory. Even the amalgamates crooned sadly and Alphys even wilted under the sad scene of a mare and her shovel swiftly parted.

Stowing away the broken shovel pieces into her saddlebags, she stood up hiccupping and crying over her loss. She looked to the path forward and started walking with her head hung low. She had lost a partner in combat and was now leaving a trail of tears in her wake as she walked away from the bored out husk of the Super Sentai Mettaton Machine, her spoon shaped defense against really bad monsters was now gone.

No monster bothered to attack her because she was giving off a very thick field of bad funk, she was just too sad to attack now. She boarded the next elevator untouched in silence and went up to the third floor; she was still mourning the loss of her beloved shovel. It was a moment of silence until the elevator doors opened and she walked out with none of the pep her friends would recognize her for.

“Will I ever learn to love another shovel? Will I even find one that was as good as you?” As Pinkie asked this she approached what looked like a spider bake sale, but she wasn’t in the mood for a bake sale or helping to teach spiders how to bake for real. “How can things be any worse now? My goat friends injured, I lost my shovel and now I feel lonely. I miss throwing parties at the drop of a hat…”

“Hellooooooo….” The long drawn out greeting was creepy. It came from a six armed girl with the five eyes sitting next to the bake sale behind a counter; she was giving Pinkie a rather sadistic looking fanged smile. It was the kind of smile you see on a cat before they do something mean spirited. Her raven hair was pulled up into two pigtails held up by two red ribbons and she was wearing a neat red outfit with a large bow over her chest and pantaloons with long boots that extended right up into them. “Welcome to our parlor dear customer. Are you interested in some of our spider pastries? All proceeds go to real spiders!”

“I’m not really interested at the moment, excuse me.” Pinkie continued to walk on by feeling downtrodden; as such she missed the malicious smile coming from the strange monster that just spoke to her.

“Why have we suddenly just lost contact with Pinkie?” Toriel started to panic slightly and even Alphys was a little spooked that the video feed watching Pinkie cut out as soon as she reached the third floor. Something was obviously wrong here and just after Pinkie lost her means of self defense.

Author's Note

Pinkie Pie lost her shovel knight power and is disarmed, she's also depressed too.

That shovel has been through a lot with her, the eventual eulogy for it will probably be really grand and a message about how our gardening tools lives are short when we use them to battle large robots in exceedingly absurd ways.

28- Bound Pie Bounce

Tsunderplane didn’t want anything to do with the third floor of the hot lands area; she was especially not going near the spiders and thought Pinkie brave for just walking passed that particular one like she had. She wanted to take the pony up in her wings and hug her, but the poor dear was so depressed over the loss of a shovel that she didn’t think it would help much.

Now Pinkie was in danger and she was sitting there twiddling her wings trying to think of something to do without going anywhere near the territory of the spiders. She was very much afraid and fearful with good reason, but someone as friendly as Pinkie really looked like she needed help. She didn’t want Pinkie to get hurt and she did want to be friends. What was the forever flip flopping Tsunderplane to do?

She had to get help, but from who? She flew off looking for someone that could help Pinkie who was walking straight into a spider’s web. She’d have to find help quickly before that happened.

Undyne saw that Alphys was having problems getting Pinkie back on screen and Queen Toriel looked about ready to get up and go out there even with her injured hip. Rolling her eye, she pulled out her phone and would proceed to call in some help if they couldn’t get in contact with Pinkie. It would take a good explanation just to get that help into position waiting for her on the next floor, she was sure Pinkie would be able to get that far if she ran into trouble. She had already told two guards that she wanted to let Pinkie pass them by, so why not issue more strange orders? She was willing to take the fallout from her decisions.

Pinkie had tried to call Toriel and things weren’t exactly going so well, for whatever reason her phone wasn’t working correctly and had spotty connection issues. She needed some comforting and she couldn’t even call her goat friend for some friendly encouragement. Pinkie wasn’t very scared of pushing forward as much as she was still just sad to have lost her shovel.

Why was it that Pinkie couldn’t hold on to a shovel for too long? They always break, bent and cracked with the force of her swings, bounces and other various shovel related maneuvers. This recent shovel had almost felt like the one for her, and then it goes and breaks on a giant robot after she finishes flawlessly performing one of her most powerful attacks she’s ever done with a shovel. She loved shovels, so why didn’t they love her? She was perfectly good at using trowels, but was wielding shovels completely out of the question for her?

Of all of Pinkie’s sisters, she was particularly gifted in scoop related tools. Marble Cheesecake Pie had a specialty for a chisel and hammer, Limestone was a pickaxe master and Maud was a savant in Earth Pony hoof to whatever-else-wants-a-fight-that-badly techniques. Her slightly by a few seconds younger sister Marble in particular was really good at sculpting, Limestone liked getting rough when it came to mining and Maud was a geologist that sometimes did business with dragons and diamond dogs. Out of all of them she was the most dangerous when she had a shovel, without a weapon to wield she was a bit hopeless in a fight without someone to assist her. Maud was the exact opposite end of the spectrum, she was hopeless with a weapon since they tended to break after at least two attacks and even without one she still had enough strength to possibly physically rip a dragon in half.

It cheered Pinkie up a little to think about her family as she came across another field of steam launching platforms and without her shovel as a bypass, she decided to go along with the steam vents this time. She eventually made her way across them and came upon another puzzle room that was to the left of where she approached the steam vents from, this rooms puzzle was a bit difficult as it only gave her a single shot to work with in destroying the white arrowhead above. She eventually managed to do so by getting all but one of the boxes in the alcove on the left side.

Walking out of the room and avoiding a few more than friendly volcano monsters, she made her way back to the steam platforms passing by two diamond headed humanoid monsters on the way. She went straight across the steam platforms to the other side knowing that there would be another puzzle in this area as well.

She was a little confused by the conveyor belt with the blue lasers moving along on it and then had an idea; she got onto the belt and moved in the opposite direction as the laser passed by her body. Her body was not moving as she kept pace with the conveyor belt, this caused her to avoid being hurt by the blue lasers which required someone to be still and on a conveyor belt that was impossible unless you were moving against it.

After that Pinkie went into the next puzzle room. The puzzle was a bit tricky, all it required was getting two of the boxes into position so that she could move them right one and a clear path would be open for the single shot she had. That done she made her way back using a different conveyor belt, where she stopped to smell some cactus flowers on the way, and then she took a right at the steam vents towards the way forward as another door opened for her.

The nature of the pony’s surroundings started to change as she moved onwards. Pinkie knew that without her weapon, the one that fell apart into at least sixteen clearly unusable pieces to the point that even the blade of the shovel was too dull, melted and warped to use as even a makeshift knife, she had to be far more cautious from now on. She had this feeling that she was being watched at the moment; she saw a few spiders walking around in the webs above her that seemed to be paying her some amount of attention. The further along she went looking up, the more webs and spiders she saw sitting around.

Moving forward Pinkie was getting a bit nervous with her surroundings as they started getting gloomier and covered in more and more spider webs, the spider’s webs seem to fill this room almost entirely. She was still looking up at the webs when she finally felt her hooves started slowing down, she realize she had been walking on something that was both sticky and squishy. Looking down and hoping she didn’t accidentally step on anything, she found her hoof was stuck in a thick bit of webbing which was soon followed by her other three hooves moving forward on autopilot to get stuck as well.

“Uh oh, this doesn’t look good.” Pinkie muttered as she tried to pull a hoof out of the webbing to find it quite stuck. The webs she was standing on were really sticky, far more so than the consistency of cotton candy, maple syrup and honey.

“Well of course it isn’t good my dear, it seems you’ve been caught in my web. I must admit you do make for a very cute fly at least.” The voice attracted the pony’s attention to the six armed, purple skinned spider monster with the five eyes, one that she had seen earlier at a bake sale. She stood in the middle of a different web under a spotlight. She had four of her arms folded and two of them held out in a welcoming manner. “Welcome to the Hot Lands Spider Hive, I hope you’ll enjoy your stay so much that you won’t want to leave darling. Because your soul is going to help a lot of spiders and there’s a lot of money in it for me to take it.”

The way the spider monster said darling made Pinkie shiver and think of Rarity, yet this being was nothing like Rarity even if she was cute and probably had a nice smelling butt.

“Uh what’s your name, I-I’m Pinkie Pie.” A slight stutter in her voice came from the fact that with her hooves trapped like they were she wouldn’t be able to dance effectively enough to protect her soul.

“I’m glad you asked, but you don’t really need to know at the moment. I and my thousands of friends have been waiting for you.” With a grand leap the humanoid spider monster started wrapping the pony in webbing coming from her six arms until everything was cocooned except for her head. “Now let’s see this soul of yours, now that you’re completely tied you up at the moment.”

The humanoid spider started laughing in a manner that Pinkie would think was cute if it were not for the situation at hoof; she struggled and managed to get into a standing position just as the spider monster created a huge pull field that encompassed the entire room. She was obviously very powerful, either that or the hundreds of spiders she could now see were adding into the field’s strength.

“Now now, no trying to escape dear, your soul is precious to our cause and we wouldn’t want it getting away. Isn’t that right my friends?” The spider monster wagged her middle left arms finger at the pony while crossing her others and setting the remaining arm on her hip. Spiders started coming down on the surrounding webs in droves and even lowered from the ceiling. They were all in various sizes, some average and others larger than normal spiders. “Besides not having very long to live, I heard some nasty rumors about you. Now about these rumors that say you don’t like spiders, which just won’t do at all as spiders are wonderful creatures. So my darling little cutie, any last words before I deal with you? You know, we just might have let you go on through if you stopped to buy something at our bake sale. Now that opportunity has clearly passed and your soul looks really beautiful, I happen to like its color and pulsating nature. I think I’ll take it.”

“Unfortunately for you Miss as of yet unnamed monster that obviously has a lot of spider friends, I’m really good at sack racing and I’m completely unwilling to comply with letting you have my soul. Besides I’m friends with a lot of spiders too.” Pinkie looked around and saw all the spiders converging on her body and her soul floating in the air. She wiggled until she could get her body hopping and the web sprung up and down, her soul slowly reacted by drifting out of the way of the entangling webs that were starting to try and surround it.

With a mighty bounce Pinkie shot to a different portion of the large room spanning web and had to regain her balance. She started to guide her soul around the webbing towards herself with some precise shakes of her body.

“Oh this is going to be interesting; we can’t have you running off like this. Now let me show you just what I can do, let me pour you some tea.” The creepy spider girl pulled out a tea pot and a purple gas erupted from it filling the room with a fog as she tipped it over and poured it out. It quickly encompassed Pinkie’s soul turning it purple causing it to fall into the webs.

Pinkie tried to get her soul to jump from the webbing, but it wouldn’t let go of it. After a moment frustration she flopped and her soul skidded along the web and then bounced to nearby line of webbing, managing to get up again Pinkie started struggle to move her soul around. Apparently it was like turning blue except she hadn’t physically turned purple. The air was becoming very restricting though and it made Pinkie slightly nauseous, it was making her gag to even breath in even a little bit of the purple fog.

(Undertale Spider Dance plays.)

“Hello there, I’m Madeline Muffet; if you have a face then I’ll be sure to really stuff it. Come now and tell me, why you don’t want to sit for crumpets and have some tea?” Madeline Muffet was apparently the name of the spider monster now singing words to her theme song which was fast paced, quite fitting considering the situation Pinkie found herself in. “You can bounce and flee, but I doubt you’ll escape from me and my massive incredible spider army! Show me what you’ve got, before you perish my precious tasty little fly.”

“Bouncing in time, with a one, two and a three, I’ll think of a plan to escape from you, you’ll see. My name is Pinkie Pie the pony; I am still quite skilled moving my soul even while tied up as can be.” Pinkie sang back as she bounces more spiders off the web and away from her soul that could now only slide along the web or jump between close points to other bits of webbing, she even wiggled to the tune of the music while she tried to break free of Madeline Muffet’s webbing. “Oh I doubt his will be any fun or that you’ll let me go free. So escape is the only option that I can see, there are so many spiders that this might cause arachnophobia to become a new thing for me.”

“Now that you’ve become caught up in our spider dance, spiders prance, spiders dance. Come now don’t’ you know that you don’t stand a chance, no egress to advance, unable escape with a glance!” Muffet followed Pinkie’s bouncing trying to catch her physical body while she left the spiders to go after the soul; she was juggling tea cups and pots while chasing after Pinkie’s bouncing form by doing some jumping of her own. “It’s now really quite impossible don’t you see, I’m filled with glee, darling you won’t escape me. Dear you don’t even have a chance, now that you’re all caught up in our spider dance!”

The spiders were all over the place and running for Pinkie’s soul along the web and it deftly avoided them as Pinkie controlled her soul while trying to keep her body safe from Mad Muffet. It was hard to concentrate on two things at once, but she was managing somewhat until the spiders started throwing boomerang croissants into the work. It made it hard for her soul to dodge the charging spiders which were moving swiftly along the web alongside having to avoid projectile attacks at the same time.

“Come now my dear spider friends; don’t despair as we know that things are the means to our ends. It just so happens that the money we’ll get from this is on which what our lost clans will have to depend.” Muffet seemed to have caught Pinkie’s attention about something, but the pony hopped away before the six arms could ensnare her and the dancing humanoid spider was joined by two big spiders that didn’t look happy with this situation for some reason. “So let’s show this pony what spiders can do, we’re on the move, get in the groove. We’re all already know that we’re ready to dance, now let’s move on spiders and advance!”

The soul slid along the webbing bouncing to different lines avoiding the spiders that tried to leap onto it, Pinkie’s body was harder to get a hold of since her bouncing and writhing in the cocoon created ripples in the webbing that were too strong for the spiders to keep a grip on it near her.

“I’m certainly troubled, this problem is doubled, I need to keep my body and soul both safe. I just need to survive, if I’m to find a way to get out of this cocoon that’s starting to chafe.” Pinkie shifted her entire body and maneuvered her soul around the spiders charging straight for her soul and managed to avoid getting hit too much by the croissants. Eventually one of the spiders managed to bite into her soul causing her to flinch slightly and she forced her soul to shake off the spider.

“So, you can avoid us, but for how long? Looks like we’ll need some help with this one, she’s a bit feisty and so strong.” Muffet gave off a sharp whistle using her lower left arm holding its fingers up to her mouth as she poured herself a cup of chamomile with two other arms; this was actually some rather stressful business for her. Blinking her five eyes in a sequence from right to left, she smiled brightly as a bulge started moving through the webbing towards the pony’s soul. “Mister Tuffet, come on out because we’ve got a live one! Don’t devour the soul completely, we need it. If you can do that, you can have the body. It’s all wrapped up nice and tight, but it’s going to be a bit of a problem to pin down at the moment.”

A large muffin shaped monster popped up out of some webs in front of Pinkie’s soul, it gave off a loud shriek that caused the spiders around it to make way for the larger monster. Pinkie started bouncing in place as she stared wide eyed at the monster that popped up and started pulling the webbing into its mouth trying to pull in her soul by practically inhaling the webbing, the spiders on the web fled off to the sides of the new monsters mouth as they came up to it and her soul had to avoid both them and being swallowed by the monster. If she wasn’t so scared her soul was about to be devoured by it, Pinkie might have thought it was cute and that Derpy would have definitely enjoyed meeting a pet muffin spider.

The pony started to shift her soul away from Tuffet who seemed to tire of swallowing so much webbing and bounced away personally as Muffet tried to grab her again. Muffet even whipped out some webbing after Pinkie’s bouncing form, but narrowly missed getting her as she performed a horizontal lunge to avoid being caught by the webbing. All this webbing reminded Pinkie of all the bounce houses she loved to play around in even if she was getting too old or ‘heavy’ for them.

“Hey I’m kind of in the middle of something here airy; make fun of my weight later! Besides bounce houses are fun for all ages, I do admit that my weight is eventually going to become unavoidable in that regard. If so then they’ll just need to make bigger adult bounce house with me in mind.” Pinkie didn’t notice Madeline Muffet give her an odd look before sniffing the teapot that the purple gas had come out of. The spider was silently wondering if it was what was driving the pony insane as that was not a part of its soul trapping effects.

Shrugging to herself Muffet continued to give chase to Pinkie who managed to get some distance between them and her soul had managed to escape Mister Tuffet for the time being. Mister Tuffet needed to unload his gullet of all the webbing that he had just swallowed before he could even think of making another attempt on the soul, so the pony had some time to evade them for a while longer. Yes, this pony was quite a tricky one, but she wasn’t going to make it out of the room without some form of excellent struggling. Right now Muffet could tell that it didn’t look like the pony had it in her to actually break free of the webbing on her own.

“Come on my fellow spiders and do the dance, knowing that she still doesn’t even stand a chance!” The spiders were numerous, but Muffet noted that the pony’s bouncing kept shaking them off the web. She was doing pretty well despite having stuck Pinkie’s soul to the web to the point it could only slide or bounce to another piece of webbing. That soul was quite surprisingly swift in movement despite its size and Pinkie’s bodily wiggling was becoming very distracting for Muffet as it was kind of attractive. She slapped her face with her lower left hand to get the naughty bondage related images out of her head.

Pinkie for her part didn’t see a way out of this, but she wasn’t one to give up easily. She may have recently lost her shovel, but she still had her family, goat friend and others to meet back up with. She scrunched up her body and then gave a large bounced that sent her flipping up to the ceiling where she got stuck hanging upside down.

Looking to her soul from the ceiling, the pony shook and wiggled trying to dislodge her body as spiders started crawling up to her trapped body. Her soul slid and bounced around the web and deftly avoided the spiders bouncing and jumping around trying to get it pinned down, the soul still moved to her frantic struggling and Pinkie wasn’t about to stop now. Even as Madeline started crawling up the wall to try and reach her on the ceiling.

Madeline Muffet had started running bake sales for a reason and she wouldn’t need to have anymore bake sales if she got a hold of the soul, only its owner was a bit more troublesome than she thought the rather lovely pink pony would be. She crawled for Pinkie only to have her slip through her grasping hands and fall towards the webbing floor.

Pinkie wondered if Napstablook had something to do with Muffet’s theme music, it was as catchy as it was familiar. She managed to shake herself loose from the ceiling and flopped onto her belly on the large web causing it to dip down; it sprung up sending her past a surprised falling Muffet who once again missed grabbing her.

Rotating and twirling in the air still stuck in the spider cocoon, Pinkie landed in an upright position where she started to hop away from a wildly bouncing Muffet who didn’t look pleased that she had managed to evade her again. While she was hopping away she kept her eye on her soul in the sea of spiders crawling along the web.

Pinkie was successful in keeping her soul ahead of all the spiders that were after it with some shakes and well choreographed jiggling. She eventually saw something interesting; it was a spider holding up a sign in her direction. It looked really familiar, kind of like the one that was living in Napstablook’s house which was near the Hot Lands.

The sign simply read ‘go left’ and the pony turned hopped to the left and slid her soul about to get it closer to herself as it traded several different paths in avoiding the spiders. That spider had just helped her avoid a mass of spiders that would have caught her had she not listened to the sign. If her soul entered within close range of her, maybe she could protect it by bouncing the spiders off the webbing. She didn’t know what was below this area, but she wasn’t about to fall off the webs to find out and she didn’t have many options other than to do that at the moment.

A shriek was heard and it looked like Mister Tuffet the muffin spider was back up and ready to start gnawing on more webs. Pinkie fell over as the monster took in the webs she was on and started to drag her towards his mouth. She rolled around trying to get back into a standing position; she was only a few feet from it as her soul moved up next to her. She could see its gnashing maw getting ready to devour her in the next few pulls of the web and she couldn’t get her body into a standing position to bounce out of the way.

Muffet stood by watching what would be the pony’s final moments thanks to her pet, Mister Tuffet. She thought this would be the end of things when she heard something unusual, it sounded like a revving engine coming towards the webbed over entrance of the Spider Hive.

Pinkie saw the spider with the sign again and the sign said it was sorry it couldn’t help her more.

“It’s okay, I understand.” This was before Pinkie was upon the cusp of entering Mister Tuffet’s mouth opening wide for her soul and body, the pony closed her eyes waiting to be chomped on.

Mister Tuffet opened its mouth wide prepared to take in Pinkie’s body and soul. Only it never got the chance to when something big rammed into it.

(End Spider Dance.)

Mad Muffet had leapt clear of the object that rammed its way into the Spider Hive and then hit poor Mister Tuffet knocking him out cold. Looking up from her position on the springy trampoline like webbing, she saw something really odd in the spider hive. She was mad because the object had hit her poor pet, but it also invited a sense of wonder and hope in her. She also saw a Tsunderplane hanging around it, but thought little of it.

“What in the world? Is that… is that a limo?” Muffet slowly got up and saw the pony slowly maneuvering and picking her body up next to the front of the limo as the doors came open. What came out of the door was hundreds upon hundreds of spiders; they were not just any spiders either. They were all the spiders that had been trapped in the Home Ruins. “They, they came to us, but how did they even pay for the trip?”

The spiders coming out of all the doors of the heated limo took notice of Pinkie’s tired and bound state. The new spiders instantly got a little angry with all the other spiders that were trying to attack Pinkie after they got over the shock of a limo driving into the Spider Hive. A ring of spiders formed up and was now protecting Pinkie and her soul. The other spiders that had been on the offensive refused to attack as these spiders were family, therefore things immediately came to a grinding halt .

“Oh my goodness, thank you guys so much! You have no idea how close I was to being eaten! By the way it’s nice to see you Geoff, how’s the family?” A little spider crawled its way up to the tip of Pinkie’s nose from the limo and started talking about how his family was while the other friendly spiders started slowly tearing up the cocoon Pinkie was trapped in. “Oh really, that’s nice. So what’s with that wheeled thing you came in?”

Pinkie had no idea what a car was, much less a limo, but it was quickly explained to her that the object was a heated limo that let them get through the Snowdin area without dying from it being so cold. The temperature inside could be controlled by a device on the vehicle.

“So it’s like a pony drawn carriage? But where’s the pony?” Pinkie had the spider explain into further detail what the limo was and that it could move and be controlled from the inside meaning it didn’t need to be pulled. “Oh that’s nifty! Something like it could carry a lot of ponies anywhere they would want to go like a train does, except it doesn’t need tracks. Oh and thanks for freeing up my legs you guys.”

Pinkie slowly stood up and the circle of spiders was still protecting Pinkie from their own kind. She looked at Muffet who now had a confused and unnerved look on her face. The soul pulling field was quickly dropped by Muffet and all the other spiders released their hold on Pinkie’s soul as well following Madeline’s lead.

“Um, can I get an explanation as to what exactly is going on here?” Madeline was confused at all the spiders from her lost clan protecting what was supposed to be her prey from being captured or eaten. She had three hands with which rubbed her head or formed a questioning gesture. The Home Ruin spiders even tore and cleaned the webbing off of her. She soon put all six of her hands on her sides and hips while waiting patiently as she looked on at the spiders circling the pony protectively.

The spiders let one spider through and Madeline leaned down and allowed it to crawl onto her hand on her top right arm. She lifted it up to her face where the spider started telling her the story of what Pinkie has done for them, she gave them a new lease of life as far as spider power went and they were willing to share the wealth. Just as long as Muffet gave up on hurting Pinkie that is.

“Well I don’t see a point in continuing to assault Pinkie, if we no longer need all that cash to get you guys here. So tell me this whole story of yours in detail please.” What followed was Muffet sitting down for tea on an out cold Mister Tuffet surrounded by thousands of spiders and Pinkie Pie. There were a few added tidbits that Pinkie hadn’t known about since she left.

After the story was over, Muffet sat silently for a moment to contemplate everything she had heard.

“How profitable was it exactly? You didn’t even need to use freshly deceased spiders at all in the recipes?” Upon hearing the spiders answer, Muffet’s eyes widened and she lowered the spider to the web carefully before standing up. She turned to address Pinkie and clasped her six hands together while looking highly apologetic. “Right then, I Mad Madame Madeline Muffet and the spiders of the Spider Hive would like to profusely apologize for attacking you. I would also like to state that if there is anything at all I can do for you, to you or with you. Then please ask me now…. you were depressed about something earlier right? Maybe I could help you with that; I can do a really nice back massage.”

The earnest smile Muffet was giving Pinkie let the pony roll it over in her head if there was anything that the spiders could do for her. Madeline actually sounded repentant about attacking her.

“Short of making me an indestructible shovel, finding a place to bury the one I loved that was recently destroyed in battle, being my friend and overall just becoming a better person. I don’t really think there is much you can actually do for me.” Reeling back at the close up smile she was receiving, Pinkie couldn’t help but feel a shiver go down her spine at Madeline’s grinning fangs in her face.

“We’ll arrange for it, so until then… you wouldn’t mind sticking around for some tea right? I promise that there will be no soul sticking gas this time. I’ve got all kinds of flavors; chamomile is one of my favorites. I’ve also got some earl grey, green and nut-bar in stock.” Madeline saw interest in Pinkie’s eyes at the sound of nut-bar tea. “Nut-bar is also popular with me and the other spiders. I’m sure you’ll like it too. Say you wouldn’t happen to mind if I devoted my soul, time and energy all to you would you?”

Pinkie stared flatly at the smiling spider monster and sighed, she felt herself wrapped up in a gentle six armed hug.

“That’s it, I’m going to be your slave now on and there’s nothing you can say or do about it. I officially sell my soul to you Pinkie Pie.” Madeline Muffet’s tone made Pinkie shiver as it sounded like there was no room for negotiation on that front as she felt the hug tighten. “You’re so cuddly that it’d be a crime to leave your side anyway. Also I’ve got nothing better do since I’ve just met all my goals and my whole clan is now rich from just being nice. If that was all it took, then I’m going to become a pie-ous and generous being under your command.”

“Excuse me for a moment, thanks for helping Tsunderplane!” The hovering plane promptly blushed and flew off in embarrassment, much to Pinkie’s confusion as the plane had saved her life by leading the limo here. She turned her head back to the six armed snuggle monster that still held her in a loving grip. “I’m guessing that there is nothing that I can say to make you leave me alone?”

“Nope, also just call me Miss Muffet.” It was the swift reply from Miss Muffet who nuzzled her face against Pinkie’s neck making her sweat a little.

The pony silently hoped those fangs weren’t poisonous.

“Hey, there’s another name on Pinkie’s stone… it says Madeline Muffet? Huh that sounds… friendly.” Marble didn’t k now whether or not it was actually a friendly name, it sounded like the name you’d hear in a nursery rhyme. “Do you suppose it’s a girl’s name?”

“Well it’s not like its Napstablook. That name sounds like it has a lot of weird connotations to it and we all know Pinkie has a horrible taste in men. Her taste in women is actually pretty good though, why she ever stopped dating Vera Blossom I’ll never understand. Her name could have even eventually appeared on the stone with the way those two snuggled.” Limestone turned about and slammed her pickaxe down with the force of an anvil that broke off crystals from the walls of her mine. “Now get back to work on sculpting Prince Blue Ball’s carrot dog. I hate him as much as any mare does, but he’s paying a lot for his commission so exaggerate it as best you can without getting sick of him.”

Author's Note

It might be a while before next chapter, I've been really off lately. Also Pinkie now has a huge problem named Madeline Muffet to deal with.

Also the word 'MAD' has several definitions which don't technically mean bad things. So don't pay attention to the fact that MAD could possibly mean Mutually Assured Destruction as an abbreviation.

Mad could mean 'very exciting' or 'excited or enthusiastic about someone or something'. So saying Muffet was mad about Pinkie could have two very different connotations, the good one and the bad one.

Saying she was Mad Madame Madeline Muffet, comes off as meaning the exciting lady Madeline Muffet.

Hope this chapter was somewhat enjoyable. Also I still think I'm a crappy writer even now.

29 - Met A Ton Of Friends

The nut-bar tea was actually pretty good, quite nutty it was to Pinkie’s sense of taste. She was sitting near the crazy Miss Muffet who was sitting on a still unconscious Mister Tuffet and she was eating some curds and whey. For some reason Pinkie couldn’t help but think something about this was rather cheesy. It also seemed that Muffet was milking the time she had left with her spider kin before they unblocked the exit for Pinkie.

A spider came up to Pinkie and gave her a piece of paper based on the autopsy of her shovel.

“Huh, wow did I really push it that hard? I didn’t know how strong I was until I saw your examination of my shovels pieces.” Pinkie didn’t know she could put that much pressure on a shovel; it was surprising that the shovel lasted as long as it did under the circumstances. She saw some of the efforts they were going to, in getting her a new more permanent shovel while she continued on her way. She could probably come by a temporary shovel while she was it. “So when can I leave?”

“As soon as I’m done eating this dear, I can’t go traveling on an empty stomach.” Muffet held her bowl in her middle left arm while her upper right arm held the spoon. Her upper left was in the middle of pouring tea to her middle right arm. Her lower left arm was doing nothing while her lower right reached out and squeezed Pinkie’s butt causing her to back away from the humanoid spider monster. “Sorry, I can only keep five of my arms controlled at a time and one is always an independent thinker. I get by well enough without that being too much of a problem; my five eyes are a bit of a bother though. So do you have a girlfriend Pinkie?”

“I do have a goat friend and I’m still a bit unsure about letting you follow me around.” Pinkie narrowed her eyes at the lower right arm which waved jovially at her.

“You let that Tsunderplane follow you around.” Using her lower left arm to point it out as she took a sip of tea, Muffet smiled at the taste of a home brewed cup of tea. She wouldn’t be able to get some once she left with her mistress, since it just wouldn’t be at home then.

“Yes, but at least she’s really unobtrusive about it and she’s my distant friend.” Looking up at her, Pinkie noticed that the flying metal monster blushed and flew slightly farther away at being noticed.

“So should I wear a maid outfit my dear Mistress Pie? I think I can be that wonderful servant you’ve always been looking for.” Muffet was still rather insistent on being Pinkie Pie’s servant, most in part to make it for the pony and because she happened to have a thing for pink and fluffy. Now if only Pinkie were a unicorn that danced on rainbows.

“No you don’t need a maid outfit and I’m not looking for a servant! Also I’m so sure that pink fluffy unicorns’ dancing on rainbows means so much to this screwball plot.” Pinkie stated sarcastically to the air.

“I the eggplant am!” Screwball said as she snuggled up to a large carrot in Carrot Top’s garden.

“Again Screwball… what am I going to do with you?” Carrot Top sighed and looked around for something to dig up the crazy pony with. She wondered how Screwball even planted herself in her garden in the first place, especially without her noticing it happening in the first place.

“I emptied your fridge Carrot, no need to thank me!” Derpy walked on by with a jar on her face licking at the preserves inside, the grey furred queen of muffins with blonde hair was happy to eat all of Carrot Top’s provisions again. Her seven bubbles cutie mark made the world a brighter place, plus she could hold her breath underwater for ten minutes and would make for an excellent pirate.

“That cut away sequence made no sense whatsoever… I liked it!” Pinkie said cheerily while staring at the air. Once again Muffet had to sniff the spout of her teapot to make sure she wasn’t damaging the pony’s brain with the noxious soul binding gas by accident. “There is one thing I really wanted to know, why doesn’t my phone work around here?”

“Well that’s simple; it’s because of our webs and the spiders jamming in them. Spiders happen to be particularly good at music.” A nearby spider with a tiny green mohawk held a leg up in the air as three other legs worked the tiny guitar, Muffet just smiled at the performance and tiny rock concert going on. “Aside from that a lot of monster spiders also like peanut butter and jam, so the communication devices don’t work very well around here because of all the jam we have.”

“Speaking of music and completely ignoring the fact that that makes no sense whatsoever from a technical standpoint, you wouldn’t happen to know my friend Napstablook would you?” Pinkie was okay with being surrounded by thousands of spiders, she certainly wasn’t going to freak out like Rarity probably would have in this situation. She could be friends with anything… except The Jerry.

“Oh the ghost guy, yeah I know him. He’s a bit of a downer, but he’s a musical genius… well if you consider him altering one track slightly to fit multiple monsters genius anyway. He’s still good at it and knows what he’s doing at least. He’s a friend of the spiders like you are.” Muffet watched as Pinkie munched on some crumpets that didn’t have spiders or any other unwholesome ingredient in them. She smiled broadly at making the pony smile and took a sip of her tea. She was glad to be such an accommodating host after her rather boorish if at the time somewhat necessary actions from her point of view, which was five different things at once given how many eyes she had. “Almost done here, anything you want to know before we leave.”

“Yeah, what do you look like with your hair down?” In answer to Pinkie’s curiosity Muffet’s upper arms set about untying her hair to let it flow free, it hung down slightly past her shoulders and it looked nice. “I think it looks nice, but you can do whatever you want with it. The pigtails looked cute so go back to that if you want to, so about opening the exit to the Spider Hive?”

“Right, hey guys, move the webs away from our exit!” A few hundred spiders set about the task of removing the webbing from the exit after having placed it there to prevent Pinkie from escaping, if the limo hadn’t come then Muffet and the spiders would have won the fight. The webbing at the entrance didn’t need to be removed as the limo did that on its own.

The conclusion of their recent scuffle worked out in the favor of the spiders anyway and Muffet had a new job, following Pinkie Pie and making her as happy as she herself felt to see all of her kin reunited. She wanted to return Pinkie’s generosity at least ten fold for having run a bake sale so successful, that her kin afforded a limo without needing to be wired the money and still had plenty leftover to last several generations. Her price gouging was nowhere near as effective as Pinkie’s kindness was, the pony even left the bake sale without the money she helped earn and it resonated with Muffet.

She grabbed her fashionable black and purple backpack and supplies; she also put in a maid outfit as she got ready to leave.

Pinkie walked out of the exit of the Spider Hive and immediately came upon a scene that had her sighing. It was a nice backdrop and the staircase was a rather fancy touch, but things had reached a level of ridiculous that even Pinkie was exasperated. What was so ridiculous you ask? Mettaton was wearing a frilly blue dress and was standing at the top of the staircase at a balcony, looking like he was ready to start singing a song or start reciting poetry.

“Is that Mettaton in a dress? That guy has done some of the best stuff the Underworld has ever seen in show business… well when we can watch it anyway. Darn our love of mulched nuts, fruit preserves and rocking out hard enough to ruin our cable and internet access!” Tittering slightly at the sight of the robot in a dress, Muffet stayed by Pinkie’s side wondering what he was going to do as a spotlight was now shining down up him. “Though this is one of the most amusing sights I have ever seen in my life darling.”

“Well just don’t take him lightly; he’s really dangerous even when he’s acting like a complete goofball.” Pinkie winced at the memory of her shovel falling apart in her hooves. “I should know how dangerous he is given I’m one myself.”

Pulling out a microphone, Mettaton seemed to test it a bit before moving to the top of the stairs away from the balcony.

“Hello my friendly beauties, I would like to say it’s been a while but it hasn’t cuties. I’m here to say that our time together is almost up and I hope you don’t survive my most ingenious of traps, because getting you to fall into it will only take one of my snaps.” Holding up his other hand that wasn’t holding the microphone Mettaton snapped his glove hand, snapping your fingers while wearing gloves was pretty hard to do but this miraculous egotisical robot managed it somehow. “You haven’t got a clue, because now I bid you adieu!”

“Wait… what?” Pinkie didn’t get much farther when she and Muffet fell down a trap door that suddenly sprung open beneath them. Pinkie managed to get a yell out as she fell down. “I don’t like you! Why do fall down or get hurt so much in this story?”

After sliding sideways for a bit, Pinkie fell straight down and almost struck the ground. Only something slowed down her momentum, to the point where she gently dropped onto the ground on her belly with the sound of something snapping, looking to her back she saw some bits of webbing stuck there. Muffet slowly lowered down after her on two pieces of webbing before they heard the distant sound of the trap door snapping shut. It cut Muffet’s webs causing her to fall on her butt with a grunt; she got up and quickly cleaned the webs off of Pinkie with a few swipes of her hands.

“You okay Mistress Pinkie? I didn’t give you whiplash when I stuck that bit of webbing to your back did I darling? A fall like that could have broken a limb, but I don’t exactly see the part of this where this is a trap.” Muffet rubbed her head with two right arms and looked about curiously. She saw a huge grey board of faded colors.

“The part where this is a trap comes in when you have to go through a maze, so here I go!” A hovering Mettaton flicked a remote out into his hand and pressed a button causing the board to light up and a wall of fire to erupt behind Pinkie and Muffet. “These fire walls will burn you up if you don’t complete the maze. So run, run or you’ll be well done! It’s not like you remember every single rule for it either, especially not a hundred rooms or area’s back where I met this pony.”

Muffet cried out and leapt onto Pinkie’s back to start cowering into Pinkie’s body, she had two arms wrapped around Pinkie’s neck, two around her chest and her final two around her midsection. She also had her legs around Pinkie and was whimpering.

Looking at her back, Pinkie could see Muffet was crying from her five eyes. She was whimpering pathetically in a manner that Pinkie almost couldn’t believe that this was the brave and charismatic spider monster that almost killed her for no good reason, which obviously Muffet didn’t know about until the limo came in. Raising a hoof she started patting Muffet softly to calm her down, it only caused the spider monster to tighten her grip on her. On a side note Pinkie didn’t like the idea of being called mistress.

“Before you ask, I use magic to heat up my tea. I don’t like real fire my dear, not one bit.” Muffet was usually a proactive monster and quite a cute one at that, but in the case of fire it seems she breaks down entirely. It was easy to see that she was terrified of fire, then again most spiders probably were given their homes were easy to set ablaze.

“Don’t worry Muffet, just hold on to me and I’ll get us out of this.” Pinkie looked forward at the panels before her.

“Yes and you’ll only have thirty seconds to do it too. Now start, I’ll be singing you a miraculous ballad of Mettaton as you go through the dungeon maze of doom!” Mettaton grasped the microphone in both his hands prepared to start singing only to be hit by several explosives that sent him falling past the area Pinkie and Muffet were trapped on. Tsunderplane wasn’t very happy with Mettaton at the moment and wasn’t going to let him get away that easily.

Pinkie immediately set off for the maze ignoring what happened to Mettaton, she rode the convey belt over to the first colored square and started mentally preparing a path forward through the maze. She remembered seeing Papyrus touching Mettaton after they had crossed over the grayed out puzzle, then she came to the very strange conclusion that Mettaton might have had a secret crush on the skeleton.

So Pinkie went left onto a green tile, then right across an orange, purple and blue tile, she turned right onto a pink tile and then left across two blue tiles. She turned right onto a pink tile, she was moving pretty fast as she turned left and ran across a green tile, followed by orange, two purples and another orange and stopped at the next pink tile. Turning left she went across a purple onto a blue tile, turned right and went through two more blue tiles, turned right again and move over a pinkie to an orange tile, where she turned left and moved over another pink tile stopping at the next orange one.

“How do you even know which way you’re going through the maze?” Muffet cried out as various scents assaulted her nostrils.

“I know because of what my friend Papyrus once said about the tiles.” Pinkie move to the left onto a green tile, turned right and galloped over a purple tile to another orange one. She stopped for a moment and then turned left onto a pink tile where she moved right onto another pink one and then turned right once more crossing over a purple tile to a blue tile. Turning left she moved over a pink tile to an orange one again. “The green tiles are thankfully not working right.”

“Wait, why did you go around back there?” Muffet was confused, but Pinkie seemed to know what she was doing.

“I would hit a yellow tile. Purple is slippery so… look I have no time to explain, I know what I’m doing so trust me on this.” Pinkie answered as she turned left and moved over a purple to blue, turned right onto a pink tile and right again back over a purple tile to a blue one. She turned left onto a green, passed over and orange one and stopped at pink before a blue tile. Looking to her left she winced slightly. “Oh this is going to sting a little, sorry but I need a lemony scent!”

Pinkie ran to her left past a pink tile, skidded over a purple intentionally into a yellow tile that electrocuted her causing her to cry out in pain and caused Muffet to yelp as they slid backwards over the purple tile to the pink one. Turning around Pinkie moved forward to back to pink tile that she had previously stopped at. She turned left to move over the blue one she stopped at previously and across the purple to orange and turned left moving over another purple tile to another orange tile.

“Almost there.” Turning right she ran over two purple tiles onto a pink one and turned left one last time onto an orange tile, before she turned right and ran along the green pathway to the end. As soon as she stepped off the colored panels there was a playful fanfare that played out and the walls of fire disappeared as the floor behind her grayed out. “Yes, I did it, I solved the maze puzzle!”

“Well good for you… wait… I forgot to activate the green tiles features. No matter, it’s time for me to… AGH! Stop attacking me, I’m trying to give my audience another epic battle scene!” Mettaton was last seen fleeing the angry Tsunderplane into the distance, while Pinkie flopped to the floor with a great big sigh.

“Are you alright… that shock must have hurt.” Muffet slowly let go of Pinkie to check her over with her six arms.

“I’m fine…. though I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of the scent of lemons until I take a bath.” A phone rang out and Pinkie quickly reached into her saddlebags to fish it out with a hoof. “Hello, can you hear me now?”

“Oh my goodness Pinkie, are you alright? Who is that with you that was clinging so tightly to you?” Toriel sounded slightly upset. “What’s going on?”

“It’s my new friend Madeline Muffet or as she prefers to be called Miss Muffet. Mettaton dropped us into a trap maze and we made it through alright, though I didn’t like the need to electrify myself and now I smell like lemons Tori. Lemons Tori, it’s really horrible!” Pinkie could hear laughter on the other end of the phone. “This is serious, I need a bath soon or else this smell will drive me crazy.”

“Only you could complain about smelling like lemons Pinkie, and here I was more worried about you getting electrocuted! Huh, Alphys says there’s something suddenly interfering with the signal in the area and that she’s sorry that she invented the trap maze Mettaton used on you. She says it was supposed to be impossible to finish, I guess she doesn’t know you very well does she Pinkie Pie.” Toriel saw Pinkie gain a confused look before she glared at her six armed companion who was eating a sandwich with the crust cut off. “Can you see what is causing the interference Pinkie?”

“Muffet… I’m trying to talk on the phone to my goat friend, you’re PB and J is interfering with it.” Pinkie watched as Muffet smiled abashedly showing her teeth covered in peanut butter and red jam before she walked over to nearby stairs leading back to the upper floor.

“I’m sorry, but I wanted to eat something a little more substantial. Fear and terror really does a lot to help you lose weight darling.” Muffet sat down at the stairs and continued to eat her sandwich in solitude. “I’ll let you talk with your goat friend by staying over here, this seems like the only way out.”

“A sandwich was causing the interference?” Toriel sounded particularly befuddled. “That doesn’t make any sense at all!”

“Tori, what part of being around me makes any kind of sense at all?” Waiting for a minute, Pinkie had to think that she had Toriel completely stumped by asking that question. It was taking so long for her goat friend to respond. “Also I’ve been over this very fact with Muffet already and chose to ignore it.”

“Do you like her?” Toriel suddenly asked and she was obviously referring to Muffet, it was change of subject and Pinkie went with it.

“No, I don’t like her like that. Though she’s seems adamant to follow me around, I do however think she’s cute... even though she almost killed me.” Pinkie cringed when she heard an angry shout on the other end of the phone, her goat friend was not happy so she quickly explained the situation.

“So she doesn’t have anything better to do, but include herself into your life? Ever after she almost fed you to her pet?” Toriel queried as she finished listening to Pinkie’s tale of going to the spider hive, she sighed over the phone. “Look, Alphys almost has the elevators that Mettaton has tampered with back up and running. I and Undyne will still be in wheel chairs for a while longer, but we’ll be able to meet up with you soon. Gyftrot says hello by the way. I’m sorry to hear your shovel broke, please stay safe Pinkie. You’re willingness to befriend anyone who almost kills you on a regular basis is one of the reasons why I like you, because you even gave me a chance when… I almost did it myself by accident.”

“It’s Okay Tori, hopefully we’ll be able to see other soon. I need cuddles to keep me from getting sad that I haven’t thrown a part in several weeks.” Pinkie was a little stir crazy about not throwing parties at the drop of a hat, but she kept a tight control of herself to not go crazy from her current inability to do so.

Flicking her phone shut and storing it away she turned to Muffet who was a bit busy licking jam off of her fangs. She smiled sweetly at Pinkie as she stood up; with the jam on her fangs it couldn’t have been anything else other than sweet… also since it was strawberry it looked vaguely creepy.

“Right let’s get a move on my dear friend.” Muffet bowed to Pinkie before waving her arms towards the stairs. “Darling, you take the lead as I am but a humble spider in your presence.”

“Thanks for helping me back there Muffet. Also I’m not your deer friend; I’m your pony friend!” Pinkie moved up the stairs with a smile.

“You’re friends with a deer monster aren’t you?” Muffet asked as she rolled her five eyes while chuckling a bit. She followed after the cute pink equine up the stairs back to the next floor.

Upon coming up the stairs, Pinkie saw a familiar friend of hers.

“Hey Blue Bunny, it’s been a while!” Pinkie approached the bunny at the nice cream stand.

“Hey Pinkie, it’s nice to see you… where’s Toriel?” Blue Bunny’s smile lowered in quality slightly.

“Oh she’s been hurt, but she’s mostly okay. She’ll get better; I just recently got a call from her so I know she’s okay.” Pinkie smiled brightly for her friend. “So have any nice cream to cheer me up?”

“Sorry Pinkie, I’m actually sold out right now. Four armored royal knights came by and completely cleaned me out; I think they might have been some friends of yours as they mentioned you in their conversation. I still do have one thing and it’s for free… my bright smile!” Blue Bunny gave Pinkie a great big happy smile. “You’re still one of my best customers and you’ve helped my stand become a big success, especially when I ran across all those pirates you were busy escaping from.

“Speaking of escaping, how do I continue on from this area, do you know anything Blue?” While Pinkie was busy talking to, Muffet stood off to the side looking out of place and a bit shy.

“Well that way leads to a floor three elevator which only goes down, other than that I think the only way forward would probably have to be through the Mettaton Hotel up the stairs that way.” Blue Bunny rubbed his chin looking thoughtful.

“Okay thanks for the help Mr. Bunny, come on let’s go check out the elevator!” It reminded Pinkie that she had missed seeing some parts of the underworld because she was captured by pirate Temmies. She wanted to see the elevator and if any monster was there. Upon walking up to the elevator, she saw a familiar face.

“Hey, hey there, did you remember my name?” Heats Flamesman said wondering if Pinkie did in fact remember him introducing himself to her earlier.

“Of course I do Heats Flamesman!” Pinkie said in a cheery manner.

“Oh no, to be defeated this easily by being remembered, I’m so embarrassed!” The flame head monster looked surprised for some reason which confused Pinkie. “I’ll always remember that you remember, so remember the ember! Is there something wrong with your friend?”

“I guess she doesn’t like fire or fire related monsters.” After looking over her shoulder, Pinkie answered with this statement after seeing Muffet cowering away from the fire monster.

“Eh it’s alright, I can understand that I’m a hot guy and all that. So don’t worry about it.” Heats tone normalized and he didn’t seem upset that Muffet was staying well away from him.

“Okay then, see you later Heats!” Pinkie went back toward Muffet and gave her a comforting hug which she gracefully accepted. “Why do spiders live in the hot lands, if you don’t like fire monsters?”

“While we don’t like fire monster, we can’t stand survive being cold and the hot lands are a warm place for us to stay.” Muffet followed Pinkie up the stairs towards Mettaton’s Hotel. “The limo probably drove off a ledge from higher up; it explains the momentum it had with breaking the webs we covered the entrance to the hive with after you came in.”

“Speaking of… who hired you to steal my soul and said that I didn’t like spiders? I befriended all the ones in the ruins and even sold cupcakes to Vegetoids; do you realize hard that is to do with those guys being health conscious? It’s a good thing I deal with guys like that when I was working at Sugar Cube Corner back home.” At this thought Pinkie came to a halt. “Gee, I hope they don’t fire me from the bakery as soon as I get back. I technically have a good excuse for being late to work by getting stuck in the Underworld.”

“Yeah, about that darling, the nasty rumors came from this strange talking flower. That and King Asgore wants to capture a powerful soul so the barrier could be broken. Both of them would have paid well for it.” Muffet came to a stop and saw Pinkie looking up at something at the top of the stairs; she came to a stop as well when she saw MTT hotels sign. “Well gee, that’s not gaudy at all what with the two gold winged statues of Mettaton and his initials on the sign.”

“I guess Flowey still doesn’t like me very much, but I will see to him eventually… even though I haven’t seen him since I gave him cooties. How does one cure cooties anyway?” Tilting her head while looking around in thought Pinkie noticed a note on the ground. “Huh, what’s this? Come to the dark alley on the right for good deals.”

“Oh come on, who would be that silly as to follow… oh never mind then.” Muffet had crossed her four upper arms and her lower right arm pointed after Pinkie entering the alleyway. “I better not let my mistress get into any trouble then.”

Walking into the alleyway after Pinkie, Muffet saw there was a shop being run by two humanoid monsters. She stayed back a bit to watch as the pony approached them.

Pinkie walked up to the two who looked to be selling stuff, she curiously looked at the two who were looking back at her. They both scrutinized her a bit before speaking up.

“Oh my goodness, do you think she is…” The tall green humanoid crocodile monster started off, she had short blonde hair that ended in curls and was wearing a shawl with blue and yellow stripe over a blue undershirt and some pants. She also had a dab of lipstick at the end of her snout.

She reminded Pinkie of Gummy back home, only female. This led Pinkie to being completely at ease around this crocodilian monster almost immediately, she liked her looks too.

“I think she is, because we’ve recently seen her on his show… like a lot.” The corpulent purple furred cat monster said drawing Pinkie’s attention away from the crocodile monster. She had black hair that had colorful blue streaks in it and she was also wearing blue overalls with tufts of yellow hair coming out from under it. The overalls didn’t cover her arms or go past her knees; the only other small notable thing about her was the earring in her left ear.

“It’s got to be Pinkie Pie!” Both of them said at the same time looking rather excited.

“Hello there. Like I’m Bratty and this is my best friend Catty.” The crocodile now known as Bratty introduced herself.

“Hello there. I’m Catty, like this is my friend Bratty.” The cat that called herself Catty introduced herself almost at the same time as her best friend and the two of them started laughing together.

“Aren’t you two being stereotypically bad puns?” It was seemingly out of the blue that Pinkie asked this.

“Like, how so and what do you mean?” Bratty place a hand over the other while sitting up and taking an interest in the conversation.

“Well you’re both in an alley. So, you’re an alley-gator and she’s an alley-cat!” There was a silence for a moment as the two looked at each and then started laughing about what Pinkie had just pointed out.

“Like, oh my, I didn’t know we were being funny like that...” Bratty started off looking suddenly amused at the thought.

“Like it was completely unintentional, but it is so awesome to have it pointed out to us!” Catty followed up. “Welcome to our shop by the way, do you need anything. We have this packaged junk food stuff from the surface that should still be good. We can never hold on to the barbecue flavor because Bratty keeps eating them all.”

“I so like the taste of the barbecue flavored ones, so sue me… no wait you wouldn’t.” They both began laughing again at Bratty’s words. “So did you need anything?”

“Yeah, can you two give me details about this area? Or maybe tell me something about Mettaton like where he is at the moment? Otherwise I’ve already Met-a-ton of monsters.” Pinkie smiled as the laughter restarted anew and she bowed to the two.

“Yeah, like we can totally set you up with that information.” Bratty answered to be eventually followed up by Catty.

“We know all about Mettaton and we’re like his biggest fans.” Catty looked particularly like her namesake with her paws under her chin.

“So, like, Dr. Alphys built Mettaton right?” Bratty started up.

“That’s like, what they tell you.” Catty followed.

“But like… Mettaton always acts like…” Bratty spoke up again.

“Being built was his idea somehow.” Catty held a paw up to her mouth.

“I know about that already, tell me something I might not know.” As Pinkie asked this Muffet walked up to stand right next to her.

“Alphys is like an old friend of his… she used to be our friend too before she became busy doing all that science stuff for King Asgore.” Bratty actually offered information that was remotely new to Pinkie. “We used to go looking for good garbage at the dump.”

“Yeah we went to Waterfall all the time when we were young to scrounge around the garbage dump; we were such good friends before she became so busy being a royal scientist and all that.” Catty followed up with her own bits of information.

“But they’re like… not friends anymore. You could say Mettaton went crazy, we still love his show though and you’re like really cool for being able to be on it with him.” Bratty smiled at Pinkie and pulled her into a tight hug. “Isn’t she just the cutest thing Catty? She’s so cuddly.”

“Yeah, Mettaton has become a bit of a mean guy, but we’re still diehard fans of his! Unlike him and Alphys, Bratty and I are like best friend forever!” Catty seemed to be a rather energetic about being friends with the other girl. “Alphys used to be like a big sister to us.”

“She used to live on our street. I mean, like, if your big sister…” Bratty turned her reptilian red eyes upwards thinking a bit while sticking out her tongue.

“Sister takes you on trips to the dump with her!” Catty held her paws up to her face and looked ecstatic at the memories.

“She showed us the coolest places.” Bratty looked a little bit melancholy as she said this, she must really miss her lizard friend and the pony picked up on it. “We haven’t heard from her in a long time.”

“Do you want to talk to her? I can get her on the phone… I think she’s even watching us right now.” Pinkie’s suggestion was met with gleeful enthusiastic nods from the two.

“I guess it’s been a while since I put myself down here with the amalgamate monsters…” Alphys looked unsure as to whether or not she would pick up when Pinkie called, she felt Undyne prod her back with a spear held in her good arm. “Okay, okay, I’ll get back together with those two soon and I’ll spend some time with them!”

“That’s better… stop being so cooped up in here and hang out more, at least with someone other than me for a change!” An angry Undyne said while keep her eye narrowed at Alphys. “Those old friends of yours seem pretty cool, why haven’t you ever introduced them to me?”

It was clear that Undyne wore the pants in the relationship and she was actually socially adept despite her highly aggressive and destructive tendencies.

Author's Note

Catty and Bratty are smarter than they look or act, you just have to be paying attention to notice it.

30 - Date?: Muffet

“So like, are you going to have some fun with us again Alphys?” It had been a few minutes since Bratty got a hold of Pinkie’s phone and she practically seemed to try and talk her old friend’s ears off, provided she even had them in the first place.

“You don’t care that I caused so much trouble for all those families?” Alphys had told Bratty everything, but she didn’t seem upset at all by what Alphys had done to those monsters.

“It’s like, okay and everything. You did what you could with what you had Alphys, I just want us to be able to hang out again.” Bratty looked over to her best friend in the whole world. “Like Catty really misses you too, those monsters are still alive even if they came together a little too much. Goodness knows, I can’t be with Catty like twenty four seven in that way. Going to the bathroom like that would be so awkward.”

“You don’t even know the half of it; we’ll get together soon after I’m done informing all the families of those monsters.” Alphys was happy that at least Bratty understood, she had missed those two as well and maybe things wouldn’t be so bad if she had all her friends back in her life like Bratty and possibly Catty. “Speaking of which, one of them is in the hotel right now, give the phone back to Pinkie as I have a mission for her.”

“Like that sounds totally awesome, oh can you get us some phones too? We want to stay in touch with you. Here you go Pinkie, like the phones all yours again and thanks for letting me use it and junk.” Bratty really liked Pinkie; she had a stubborn inborn smell like an alligator or a crocodile that spoke to her.

“You’re welcome, okay Alphys what’s up? Am I going on some super secret spy mission where you’ll create all kinds of crazy gadgets for me to use that seem useless, but will be useful when I run into a situation those gadgets weren’t meant for?” Pinkie had felt a returned skip in her step as she made her way towards the front of the hotel having reunited some old friends. “Don’t worry I’ll use your gadgets carefully!”

“Wait … what? No, I just want you to find a monster for me. He should be in the fancy dining part of the hotel.” Alphys was confused by Pinkie’s words for a moment and then she shook her head slightly exasperated. “He should be easy to spot; I think he’s the only Snow Drake there.”

“Okay, I’ll need to get on my fancy red dress then, I’ll also need a partner to get me in the door. Since the hotel isn’t wheel chair accessible for Toriel, I guess I’ll need I’ll need agent Mad’s help. I think Bratty and Catty can work as spotters, hopefully they can get into the establishment with us.” Now Pinkie was moving into full silly mode and there was no stopping that train from going full blast. “Can you get us reservations for at least five or six at this fancy dining establishment Alphys? Then we’ll sneak in and start casing the joint for your contact. I’ll also be looking for information on where Mettaton got off to and we’ll also crack the safe while we’re at it.”

“Well, yes I can get you reservations. There’s really no need to overcomplicate this or make a horribly convoluted plan like that!” In the background behind Alphys was the goat lady Toriel sighing sadly at the doctor, she obviously didn’t know Pinkie Pie too well.

“Guess what Alphys told me? We’re going to perform the most overly complicated and convoluted plan ever! So do you two want to help?” Both the monsters Pinkie addressed gave a shout of confidence that they wanted in on her zany scheme that had no sense of reality to it. “Guess it’s decided then, go find something nice to wear and Alphys will call to tell me what time we’re expected in the fancy dining area. We’ll start operation bittersweet after we get together so I can tell you what the whole plan entails. Also don’t bring anyone else to the briefing; it never turns out well in spy thrillers when that happens. So see you all before and at dinner!”

With that Pinkie close her phone and was off to get dressed with a highly amused Miss Muffet following behind her, while Catty and Bratty moved off to do their own thing and pick out some dresses for dinner. It wasn’t often the two garbage scroungers got into a fancy establishment.

“What just happened?” Alphys said with a lost look on her face, she shook her head and started typing out stuff on her keyboard and would start preparations for operation bittersweet, whatever the heck that was.

“Pinkie Pie just happened, just go with it.” Toriel smiled fondly, Pinkie was hiding the fact that she was still upset about her shovel being broken. So it figures the pony was going to do something silly to cheer herself up. If the plan was to get outrageously ridiculous only to end up making everyone happy in the end, then Toriel was personally okay with it as Pinkie did ridiculous really well. Just so long as Pinkie stayed safe in her endeavors, then Toriel wouldn’t have much to worry about. The hotel seemed safe enough.

Undyne sat by wondering where her help was, Pinkie was on the next floor up by virtue of going up the stairs to the Mettaton’s personal hotel. Those slackers were looking for a bruising if they didn’t get there soon to help her out.

“Why am I using the elevator to get dressed again darling?” As Muffet said this she took out a slinky black dress with a grey web pattern throughout the whole thing, she would change into it while Pinkie was busy changing outside the elevator. Ponies didn’t apparently have a sense of decency, not that it really meant much to Muffet or even really bothered her at all.

“Because it would be awkward to go back to your hive to do this, plus nobody knows this elevator is working again. Besides I doubt anyone wants to actually see your fuzzy butt.” Pinkie wiggled her way into the red dress she wore on a prior date with Toriel, the one where she almost got shot by a guy named Flame Face. “I wonder who Catty and Bratty will bring to the dinner, if anyone at all.”

“Look I can’t help it if spiders are naturally hairy downstairs, it’s how nature intended me to be and I don’t think the idea of waxing as being anywhere near the word pleasant my darling!” Muffet sounded rather defensive about her outrageously hairy butt. After a few more moments, she walked out wearing her dress made with six arms in mind and some purple stockings with black slipper, her hair was down and being brushed out by her middle two arms. She chuckled slightly. “So be a dear and tell me, does this make me look fat?”

“No, it looks really good on you, did you make it yourself? I heard spiders were good at making silk, but dresses?” Pinkie saw Muffet look away and blush while bring up her to lower hands up to her chin looking highly embarrassed as she toed the ground with a slipper.

“Well darling, I and the other spiders don’t just know how to make baked goods; we can also do clothing too. Not only is it very comfortable dear Pinkie, it’s practically stab, slash and rip proof! Plus it’s really easy to repair since I can make the specially treated spider silk all by myself.” Why Muffet would need a dress that was knife proof would need to be seen, some might say she was actually taking the Agent Mad thing seriously because Pinkie was. Muffet obviously liked Pinkie more than she liked her. She started smiling and closed all five of her eyes as she clasped her various hands together and leaned forward while giggling. “Also your dress is really nice too darling! It’s such a lovely shade of red.”

“Yeah, I just hope my friend Rarity doesn’t kill me for using her fabric to make this dress in the first place.” Pinkie was never going to tell Rarity about it and her friend never had to find out. Besides if Rarity ever knew she could actually be elegant instead of party peppy happy all the time, then Rarity would actually expect it of her at all times. She preferred to be herself and it would be a drag to act like something she’s not. “Yes, I think they get it Airy!”

“Who do you keep talking to?” Muffet tilted her head and looking at the air in interest.

“I’m talking to the words in the air of course. Don’t worry about it as they have nothing but nice things to say about you.” Though Pinkie wouldn’t tell her that she was a little flattered that Muffet liked her, she didn’t exactly feel the same way. “Let’s go to dinner, but before that. Please take care of yourself Tori, you don’t need to watch out for me twenty four seven. Sure I might have almost died a few times… I really don’t know where I was actually going with that.”

“I will Pinkie.” Toriel’s stomach grumbled as she finally realized she was really hungry. She rubbed her hand over her robes at the loud grumbling not befitting a queen. “So… want to order pizza? Oh wait, who could possibly deliver it with the elevators down?”

“I’m sure the New Home pizza guys will find a way eventually; I’m thinking of a slice myself and if we can give them trouble over the elevators being out, then we can probably get it for free. So we’ll need a big order.” Undyne’s plan was perfect for getting a free pie, speaking of pie. “Funny how you immediately jump to wanting pizza, thinking of a certain pie you want?”

“Well yes, but my Pie is unavailable at the moment.” It made Toriel sad that she couldn’t snuggle her pony. “Pizza is kind of a poor substitute for snuggles to me, even so what kind of toppings should we get? I’m thinking fresh snails.”

“There will be anchovies; it’s one of the few kinds of fish that we can actually get down here!” Undyne wasn’t about to budge on the anchovies and Alphys was being handed a phone by an amalgamate monster, they wanted some pizza too.

They all knew the plan or as much of one as Pinkie had when she briefed the girls on it, the one guy that got dragged into this had no idea what was going to occur. If things went well, then nobody would notice anything is wrong.

The doors to the dining area of the hotel slammed open and five figures walked in. Two of the figures were Pinkie and Muffet who looked particularly serious as they strutted over to the big green monster behind the counter to the fine dining and entertainment area of the hotel. Behind them came the two girls with a strange bear like monster that looked like he was awkwardly stuffed into a tuxedo. He didn’t look happy to be dragged from his job as a fast food worker drone and especially not by Bratty and Catty.

Speaking of the two friends forever, Bratty was wearing a nice yellow dress and had a red flower in her hair. Catty on the other hand was wearing a dress made from overalls; nobody was going to question where she got it from or how it fit her exact particular theme.

“Stop squirming, like we want to make up for the trouble we’ve caused you Burger Mc. Pantsington. Is a free dinner like, really all that bad?” The figure Bratty called Burger stopped struggling against the duo and caved in to their demands to join them for dinner and quieted down, he still narrowed his eyes at the two as they came up to two more girls.

“We’ll see, I just hope the food here is good. The food from my job isn’t exactly healthy or even safe to eat.” Burger crossed his arms and got a bit huffy while he waited for them to be seated.

“I believe we have a reservation for everything. My name is Pie, Pinkie Pie and I’m assured we have a full table reserved that’s large enough to fit our group.” The suave accent was probably not doing it for anyone, so Pinkie should probably cut back on it. “Caw caw bwa-bwa-bwa-cluck!”

“Pinkie… Tsunderplane isn’t even in position yet.” Agent Mad said as she looked to the air to see that Tsunderplane made it into the room without being spotted, not exactly hard to do for a small flying monster that could hover.

“Oh right, sorry! Ahem, I am the president of cookies!” Pinkie smiled and waggled her eyebrows.

“Like isn’t plan C supposed to come after plan B?” Bratty was just a bit confused about Pinkie giving them so many mixed signals.

“Right, what was plan A two again?” Pinkie was confused about her own confusing spy codes. “Dee deedee, we’re a princess down!”

Catty was actually doing her job and on the lookout for anything suspicious and saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were two monster kickboxing each other into a bloody pulp in the corner, a monster was lighting itself on fire to run around screaming in pain and he even sang the little teapot song too, there was even one monster proclaiming the end of times for all monster kind. It was just an average Saturday night and she didn’t see any trouble whatsoever.

They were swiftly seated at the table and then their rather familiar waiter came five minutes later with an equally familiar monster dressed as a bellhop.

“We saw you standing around over there, what took you so long to get to us?” Agent Mad didn’t like their waiter already and Pinkie was smiling for some strange reason.

“I’m a waiter, so therefore I the greatly disguised papyrus who is Surypap had to make you wait!” The Obviously-Not-Papyrus Surypap said in a clearly Papyrus like manner. Then he had to exclaim in a clearly not-Papyrus way. “Nyeh heh heh!”

“Dude, really?” Kid said in an annoyed tone. “I will be taking your drink orders and Papyrus will…”

“That is the almost indistinguishable from Papyrus skeleton whose name is Surypap. One who wishes to be a great heroic spaghetti making figure to all, especially to his closest friends!” Super Serious Surypap the not-Papyrus said while fiddling with his fake Italian style mustache with a bony hand and an ever present cheerful not-Papyrus smile upon his face.

Their orders were swiftly taken. Their drink orders would be correct. As for their meals… it was all spaghetti that was actually pretty good tasting, the tomato sauce was exquisite and the parmesan was fresh from the block of cheese. The dinner seemed to be entirely normal with small talk, there was absolutely nothing odd about the conversations they had even as the entertainment went up on the stage.

“Hola amigos, we are el trio de le muerte, we are here to play music in the memory of our dead friend pedro!” The monster on stage was a short legged skeleton with three upper torsos’s, said three torso’s look odd especially the odd long skull shaped one. The conjoined skeletal trio started wailing. “Oh our dear Pedro, the band member we lost, you were so special to us!”

“I’m standing right here, we were already skeletons and where else was I going to go when I died again?” A skeleton with a sombrero was standing off the side of the strange conjoined skeleton and looking particularly annoyed with the three torso brothers. He was wearing a poncho and wielding a trumpet.

“Pedro, we miss you being in our band so much!” Another of the torso trio spoke, followed by the final one. “Why have you forsaken us Pedro, why can’t we find you? Are you really so far beyond us?”

“Seriously mi amigos, I am right here behind you!” Now Pedro was looking rather indignant. He’d still play his music with them, but it was like he didn’t exist to them or something.

Pinkie was giggling at the act and turned back to her enormous plate of spaghetti to start slurping up the noodles messily, nobody could tell if she was getting any of the sauce on her dress or not given its color. After she finished swallowing a mouthful of Papyrus Perfected noodle, she gained a shifty look in her eyes.

“Hey look everyone it’s a one eyed flying purple pasta eater!” Everyone looked at who Pinkie pointed at; it was in fact a giant one eyed flying purple monster that just entered the room.

“Yeah, so what about it? I like noodles and this new guy makes really good spaghetti… it even seems like it’s the only thing he can make. I really want to try his chocolate pasta surprise again.” The monster was seated and Kid did his round of refills and drink orders, he turned to Pinkie and winked.

Pinkie nodded and looked at the incredibly fake inflatable Agent Mad sitting next to her; nobody would notice her leaving the room to perform her secret mission even if her replacement only had two arms and looked nothing like her and only had her name on it. They would need another distraction for her to get back in and for Pinkie to escape scrutiny so she could make contact with their last target while Tsunderplane and Mad cracked the safe, even if there were only like fifteen monsters in the room that weren’t even paying any attention to her party at all.

“Along came a spider.” Said Pinkie in a loud tone, hearing her phrase word, not-Papyrus gained a serious look before he took a tumble on purpose attracting attention. Pinkie swiftly ran across the room to sit down next to Mister Blizzard Drake, the whole building shook as something exploded nearby. Nobody panicked over the loud explosion or even acknowledged it happened. “They sat down beside her!”

Nobody cared what Pinkie was yelling or why, they barely even reacted to the explosion with the merest of grunts. Not-Papyrus started to quickly clean up his mess and Blizzard Drake stared at her as if she were a lunatic. He wouldn’t be wrong for thinking so.

“Hello there, I’m Pinkie Pie. Alphys has a message for you, but she was afraid you’d get mad about the finer details. So she sent me to talk to you about it.” Moving her hoof over the table to gently grasp Mr. Drake’s wing with her hoof, she delivered her message with as much tact as she had. “Your wife’s alive and she’s fused to several other monsters into a horrible amalgamation, so do try to keep an open mind that she’s at least fifteen different monsters now in one body that’s partially melted, she also now has Vegetoids for eyes and her mind is really messed up with all those other guys occupying her body. Oh and here’s a number to contact Alphys about seeing her, she’s the most intact one of the bunch to survive being saved from dying you lucky… duck.”

Blizzard Drake sat there for a moment letting all that sink in and looked down in to his wing to see that the hoof left a number there on a piece of paper, after a moment of looking at the pink stranger his eyes slowly rolled up into the back of his head and he fainted. Pinkie simply got up from the table without a distraction and walked back to the table to see Madeline Muffet lowering herself into her seat ready to finish off her large plate of Spaghetti. She idly pulled the webbing from the ceiling to make a fancy looking belt out of it.

“I think he took it rather well.” Pinkie said as she sat back down and swallowed her dessert whole which didn’t surprise anyone, not even Burger.

“I do so too… what about you Papyrus Nyeh heh?” Surypap turned to Papyrus wearing his battle body armor.

“I’m positive that he was happy that his wife was at least still alive, for I am the great Papyrus disguised as the great Papyrus himself! Yes the disguise is so ingenious if I do say so myself.” The Really Confusing Papyrus was now in two places at once or so it would seem. Pinkie went slightly crossed eyed because of this. “Nyeh!”

“I so say myself indeed! Heh heh!” Surypap said in exactly the same tone of voice Papyrus had, in fact his voice matched the other skeletons perfectly.

“Come on let’s go get a dance in before bed.” Muffet pulled Pinkie away from staring at the two skeletons in complete confusion to dance a nice slow dance. “So do I get a kiss for completing my mission successfully Agent Pie?”

“Oh what the hay, I can agree to that!” Pinkie chastely kissed Muffet on the cheek and despite the spider girl’s blush; she got a bit angry at the pony.

“Oh come on, that’s all I get for finding out information on Mettaton, stealing all the cash in the safe, buying out the hotel making the theft a moot point in the first place and securing us rooms for the night!” Nobody really batted an eye at Miss Muffet’s angry yelling, much less the tiger, mantis, rabbit and dragon sitting at a table together who just shrugged idly at her words despite being royal guards.

“Yes, that’s all you’re getting.” Pinkie answered bluntly.

“Oh you are such a cruel mistress darling, especially for making me do so much work! Thankfully for you I’m a masochist and enjoy the challenge... what’s with that face?” For the life of her Muffet couldn’t tell why Pinkie looked so upset and started smacking her head into the table. It was still cute to watch though and she had been perfectly successful at her job getting them free rooms for themselves and their friends. “Was it something I said?”

“And nobody is even going to bat an eye at any of that, not even the purple spaghetti eating monster.” An amazed Toriel muttered blankly who shook her head and shoved a slice of snail encrusted pizza into her mouth. The free snail pizza would definitely help her heal faster.

Author's Note

I wouldn't worry about Sans, he'll definitely attack Pinkie for reasons beyond his control. There will be Megalovania.

As for the fake Muffet balloon. Imagine the decoy glove from Ratchet and Clank, only much worse and even less believable.

31 - Core Issues

Pinkie was having a good time dancing with Miss Muffet, the spider knew how to dance and nobody ever bothered to question the explosion or all the crazy things they did leading up to the last dance before they decided to head to their rooms.

“Like, thanks for a wonderful night Pinkie.” Bratty was happy to get a room in such a swanky place and for free no less, she walked off with a happy sway in her tail.

“Yeah like, this night was hopping for us Pinkie!” Catty mewled happily following after her best friend’s tail; she even started batting at it like a cat would and got Bratty a little upset with her.

“I guess this hasn’t been so bad…” Burger seemed a little less grumpy since he joined either Catty or Bratty in a dance. He seemed to be a little bit happier and at peace with himself. “I also get to finally see what the accommodations are like, the reservations must have been hard to get.”

“Come along darling, I’m tired and we should really adjourn to our rooms.” Muffet seemed to be happy just to be in Pinkie’s presence much less get in a few dances with the pony.

“Can I ask you something first before we do?” As Pinkie said this they walked out into the lobby area and saw a few monster gathered around the elevator leading straight to New Home.

“The elevators are down honey, I’ll be home later tonight… maybe you can heat up some pizza from my treasure horde’s refrigerator?” The dragon monster on the phone looked sad that he wouldn’t be able to see his family.

“I’m thankful that the hotel is trying to accommodate all of us for the inconvenience.” That came from the strange cat monster standing near the dragon with a suitcase; she had big fangs, glasses and was wearing two red heels on her front paws.

“As a slime monster, I’m completely outraged.” Stated a feminine looking tall black goo monster with a large eye and red bow tie, it was also sitting outside the elevator.

“Come on Pinkie, we need to check in to our rooms. You can ask me your question on the way, also ignore the hole.” Muffet gave a tug on Pinkie’s braided mane and dragged her towards the monster sitting behind the counter past the fountain and to the left from the entrance and also to the left coming out of the fine dining area.

The monster that sat behind the counter was a giant hand monster for a head. Unlike Twilight who would eventually forget that Minotaur’s exist, Pinkie certainly wouldn’t. This monster certainly looked handy to have around.

“Yes, we know. The elevators to the city are down.” The strange hand headed creature side while vibrating an index finger.

“That’s not what we’re here about; we’ve booked a room and are checking in to get the keys for them. Also I’m the new owner of the establishment and I’m going to have a construction crew of spiders come in and fix the place up a bit.” After that Muffet muttered something about the possible chance of getting phones and cable to work around spiders.

“Oh right, our new bosses. Hello Miss… Muffet and Pie was it? Your rooms are ready, here are you’re room numbers. We also don’t do keys, but the doors do have locks on the inside.” Taking the knowledge from the hand headed monster, Muffet turned to lead Pinkie towards their rooms.

As Pinkie followed Muffet a small thought occurred to her, as she followed they prettily dressed spider monster.

“Wait… bosses?” Pinkie looked curiously at Muffet who flinched slightly, but kept a rather toothy looking fanged grin on her face.

“Yeah about that, I put a lot of the ownership in not only my name, but your name as well. The hotel is going to be a bit cheaper to live at so more people could enjoy the place, plus ownership equals free mints on the pillows, toiletries and rooms to whoever we want to give them to. I just wish I hadn’t bought out the place before I stole the money that’s now legally mine in the first place.” Muffet looked particularly sheepish even if she wasn’t a sheep; she was in fact still a spider monster. “After my kin upgrade it a bit, it’ll be a nice vacation spot. Well at least until we find a way out of being stuck down here.”

“Okay, back to the question I wanted to ask. Are you into bondage?” Pinkie really wanted to know the answer, for various reasons and she actually hoped the answer was a big resounding ‘no’.

“No, but a lot of spiders are definitely into it. Why, is that a problem? I can get into bondage if you want me to.” The smile on Muffet’s face was creepy and it dropped as soon as it saw Pinkie’s slightly disgusted face.

“No, please don’t!” Pinkie had little love for the kinks like that; she also wished that she didn’t know her sister Maud did. “I’m not into kinky stuff like that, though I know for certain one of my sisters is as well as a friend back home. I did not need to know what my friend Fluttershy does on Sunday, I only know because its information I needed it for my party portfolio. I’m going to have to sweep out the cobwebs when I get back.”

“Ah, did you assume because of all the webbing that spiders like me are into bondage? Well, you’d be mostly right as seventy percent of the spider population is into it. I’m one of the few who isn’t, although…” Seeing the flat look on the pony’s face directed at her, Muffet stopped her train of thought and opened the door to Pinkie’s room. She giggled dryly, she wasn’t into bondage, but she’d go there if Pinkie wanted to. Bondage didn’t have to be sexual in nature; spiders mostly did it for fun, sometimes recreational sports and to keep their food still. “Right then, here you go!”

Pinkie saw the humongous bed; one that could likely hold Mettaton’s weight. Her pupils grew big with excitement and she immediately lunged onto the bed to start bouncing on it playfully. Muffet bowed to the pony enjoying her bed for the night and bowed out of the room to get into her own comfy bed.

“I’ll leave you to it then. Goodnight my dear Mistress Pie.” Muffet smiled gently at Pinkie’s childishness, her goat friend was one lucky lady and she was a bit jealous of her getting the attention of such a vivacious looking little cuddle toy.

“I’m not going to be what you want me to be since you’re trying to fit a large round shape into a small square hole. So please stop it with the eternal slave and mistress thing, can we just be friends? Anyway, good night and sleep tight Muffy! Don’t let the mean bed bugs bite!” Pinkie watched as a huge blush broke out on Muffet’s face as she went to exit the room. The spider looked entirely embarrassed at the nickname and the thing Pinkie said about bed bugs only made her blush harder for some reason as she left.

After that Pinkie quickly prepared for bed, used the toilet, washed her face and brushed her mane and tail out. Once done she snuggled down on the extremely oversized and soft mattress, closing her eyes she sunk comfortably into its mass.

“She’s always so cute when she’s being childish.” It was hard for Toriel to keep a smile off her face as the surrounding amalgamate monsters cooed softly as the pony went to sleep after snuggling under the covers. Gyftrot just rolled his eyes and shook his head, Kid walked into the room looking around curiously and it made Toriel wonder how he got here so fast when she last saw him in disguise up in the hotel. That little monster was a handful and rather adventurous, his parents must be worried sick about him at this point because he just wouldn’t go home and kept getting into places he probably shouldn’t be. It saddened her in a way as it reminded her of her own children, when they were around that is. “I wish I could be there with her… anyway, anyone going to help me into a bed?”

The amalgamate monsters helped Toriel into one of the beds in the laboratory basement; she looked up at the sleeping pink pony on the screen and wanted to be there to cuddle her. Shaking her head as she was tucked in by the amalgamate puddle that could turn into an arm, she sighed and rested her head on a well fluffed pillow. She thought she could hear the muttering of the words ‘sleep well goat mom’ coming from the large dog amalgamate, the fact that it was spoken so clearly said a lot about how all the monsters conjoined into that one body collectively saw her. She sighed in slight aggravation at hearing her infamous moniker even from the amalgamate monsters.

Undyne was soon getting some similar treatment, but it was Alphys herself that tucked the fish girl with the cute head fins in. There was a lot of affection flowing between the two that caused Toriel to smile and lean back to close her eyes, she needed to heal quickly if she was to get back on her feet to help Pinkie.

Pinkie stretched her legs out with a yawn and slowly fought her way free of the bed, for some reason moving around under the covers caused party music to play and she didn’t want to stop playing around in the covers because of that.

The pony kept playing around under the covers until Muffet came in bearing breakfast for her while wearing her normal everyday attire with her hair up in pigtails again. Madeline had at least ten copies of her favorite set of clothing; they could both eat comfortably on the massively oversized bed.

Breakfast was a simple affair. It was mostly vegetables and fruits for Pinkie, usually covered in some assortment of tasty syrup along with some waffles that had banana chunks on them.

“Mettaton is waiting for us in the core, which can be entered at the back of this hotel. We’ve got to get by lasers and apparently some mercenary monsters hired to take you down, shouldn’t be too much trouble considering you’ve come this far.” Muffet ate some of her porridge with her two upper arms while her two middle arms unrolled a map. “This is a map of the area behind the hotel and it’s rather simple to get from point A to B, the elevators are still shut down with the exception for the ones you’ve already passed by and he’s behind this particular door leading to a different elevator. It seems to be entirely either proximity based on where Mettaton is or it’s because he no longer has a reason to stop you from using them.”

“Seems simple enough, I just have to dance my way through the monsters, move around the lasers where needed and then kick some robot butt in a showdown where I finally catch him in an epic long drawn out dance off next chapter.” With a cheery smile, Pinkie hopped off the bed to a do a little jig on her hooves; she then quickly put on her Temmie Armor and prepared to set off. “I want to make sure he never harms another innocent shovel through making me stress one so badly it breaks apart in my very hooves!”

“Well your priorities seem entirely straight. Not exactly simple though, the mercenaries he hired to block our way aren’t going to be easy to deal with and they might actually be dangerous even for me and I’m the toughest spider monster of my people.” Muffet didn’t think things were going to be as easy as Pinkie wanted them to be. “Did you know that most spider monster never reach a human like stage that I’m at? It proves I’m a tough girl, but even I’m a bit wary at the prospects of fighting if a monster uses a fire based attack near me.”

A phone rang out and Pinkie quickly moved over to her saddlebags that she had taken off before she crawled into bed to sleep; bouncing on the rather sturdy springy bed had been fun and she wondered what Toriel thought of her exuberance. She knew the pretty goat lady liked cute, cuddly and silly, she naturally was all of those things combined and it warmed her heart when she made someone as nice as Fluttershy is smile.

“The color of the pen is definitely ‘blue’, would I lie to you?” Pinkie answered immediately as she put the phone up to her ear.

“I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean Pinkie. Anyway, be careful Alphys tells us that Mettaton still has control over the security in the area and she’s currently busy trying to take it down. Also Undyne said to tell the monsters that are supposed to help you hello, I don’t know what she meant but I think she’s sending you help from some of the guards in the area.” It sounded like Toriel didn’t sleep very well without her cuddle toy and it made Pinkie feel bad that she wasn’t there for her goat friend.

“Okay Tori, me and Muffet are setting out. I’m thinking I can trust her to keep me safe from danger, now if only I were safe from her trying to get under my tail. Just try to not close yourself off again if something were to happen to me. Mettaton has been really tough for an effeminate guy so far, a lot tougher than Caramel was at any rate.” Pinkie closed her eyes and sighed. “A lot of people care about you Tori and I think you’re becoming a little selfish about me, I won’t lie and say that I don’t feel the same way about you.”

“I guess I am, but a queen has got to have her pony cuddles or at least a little love directed her way.” Toriel sounded more amused than sad; the chuckle was music to the pony. “Go get him Pinkie, and befriend the crap out of him while you’re at it! You’re good at that with most people who almost kill or hurt you badly. Good luck, my sweet little pie.”

“Don’t worry Tori, I’ve got this. You stay happy you hear me, also get better soon for me and all the monsters that look up to you!” Both the phones cut off and were put away, after having done so Pinkie realized that her hair was now up in a ponytail with Muffet brushing it out.

“Is it me or do monsters really like playing with my hair in this story?” It was probably just Pinkie, but it really did seem like a thing. “Right then, where’s this door to the core?”

“You think I would have noticed this yesterday.” In big glowing letters the sign said ‘CORE’ over a door between the health hazard that was Mettaton’s sandwich shop and the hand headed monster receptionist. Pinkie was a little put off by the fact that she hadn’t.

The two walked towards the double doors down the little hallway, when they heard a shout.

“Hey wait for us, we’re your backup!” Turning around the two saw four armored knights slowly trudge up to them and they hadn’t put on their helmets yet.

“I believe we’ve met before, we’re Zuno and Platwoon. Let me introduce you to Threep and Fourlette and we’re the guard escort Captain Undyne called in!” The armored rabbit spoke and then turned his head to stare at his partner Platwoon with affection, before returning his gaze to the pony. “She says it’s important to protect you and we follow our captain’s orders. Even if she were committing treason against the king for some odd reason, like how his intelligence doesn’t quite match up to his physical prowess. He might be an airhead in many things, but King Asgore has got some real muscles on him and he’s kind of a sweetheart. Hey, I scope out every available guy Plat, so don’t look at me like that!”

Pinkie just stared at the rabbits face for a moment scrutinizing it a bit; his dragon headed partner was giving him the stink eye, likely because he had been fantasizing about King Asgore for a moment there.

“Darn it, why do the cute ones always swing mostly that way?” Throwing her hooves up in the air as she exclaimed this, the two other knights she hadn’t met personally both shifted a bit.

“I know right? Still he and Platwoon do make a cute couple.” The mantis looked rather shy about the looks Zuno and Platwoon kept shooting each other; she didn’t look particularly tough for a guard. “Thanks for helping cause Fourlette and I to become best friends again. We wouldn’t have said much to each other if these two didn’t make us acknowledge that we were still wearing each other’s friendship bracelets.”

“No problem, friendship is kind of a thing for me and my friends back home.” Rubbing the back of her head, Pinkie gave them all a silly smile before turning back towards the door. “Right then, let’s get a move on. We can’t keep stalling the plot!”

“Wait, like before you go…” Bratty and Catty said simultaneously as they ran up to Pinkie, they stopped to look at each other and started laughing. Bratty spoke up. “We want hugs before you leave!”

“Yeah, like give us a nice cuddle before you go!” Catty’s tail wagged in anticipation. The two obviously just wanted Pinkie to give them some sugar. “A totally quick squeeze works just as well.”

“Of course, I knew I was forgetting to do something! I still have to say goodbye to my two new friends before I set out to capture Mettaton. Remember girls, destroying humanity isn’t going to really help anyone.” Moving up to the two, Pinkie began a group hug. She was swiftly followed by Muffet who added herself to the group hug. Madeline’s lower right arm once again squeezed Pinkie’s butt causing her to jump slightly in the embrace, she glared at the arm that gave her a thumbs up. “Well come on then guys, Undyne says hello by the way and I think she expects you to do your best to protect me.”

“Say what you will about Undyne being tough on everyone, or crazy aggressive, or explosively dangerous and maybe possibly a violent psychopath, but we’d still follow her lead.” Seeing the disturbed look she was getting from the pony, the tiger headed Fourlette just smiled showing off her sharp teeth and fangs. “Hey, she lets us work with our friends, she gives us good hours and she trains us well. The pay for keeping the peace is also pretty good too, now if only Undyne would actually stop being the biggest disruption to that peace herself.”

With that said the six turned and walked forward through the double doors together and crossed the bridge when they came to it into the area simply called The Core.

The group saw some shadowy figures moving into the core ahead of them as they moved forward, the four knights were now taking caution as they formed a protective square around a brave Pinkie and a nonchalant looking Muffet. They came to a room with an elevator with two paths; the elevator obviously wasn’t going to be working if the theme of them being disrupted by Mettaton continued.

The path on the right led to a pit of flames that had Muffet shivering uncontrollably, obviously not the way to go. So they entered the left pathway and Pinkie’s soul immediately popped out as soon as they passed through the doorway onto a long path to the next doorway. They were ambushed by a pair of strange little floating monsters; they had creepy smiles and wore dark clothing that curled in a strange manner. Though they lacked arms, the floating monsters had two spheres’s floating next to their bodies. The clothing they wore could be described as black boots, wizard hats, and body covering coats.

A phone rang out and Muffet pulled hers out and quickly stepped off to the side, the four knights dodged out of the way of several orbs that popped into existence and started spewing cross shaped bullets at them.

“Hello… yeah, okay then why did you call me? Too busy dancing for her soul at the moment?” Muffet watching as Pinkie danced around the attacks that kept trying to track towards her soul and the attacks were being blown out of the air by the four knights once Pinkie’s soul was out of the way of their own attacks. Zuno and Platwoon worked in concert to launch sword shaped bullets in an accurate manner, while Threep and Fourlette launched wide shifting bullet walls to block anything that the two other knights missed deflecting. “Okay I’ll tell her, hey Pinkie! Some guy named Gyftrot wanted me to tell you those guys are called Madjick’s. He sounds like he’s reading from a book, says they are magically inclined and the easy way to deal with them is to clear your mind and think happy thoughts. Also doing a magic trick might impress them enough to leave us alone. Wait a minute… how did he get my number? I hardly ever use this darn phone considering the poor cell service we spiders usually get.”

“Magic tricks? I know plenty of those!” Pinkie stopped literally square dancing and pulled out three cups and a small red ball. “Want to see me perform a trick?”

The Madjick’s immediately ceased their cackling and muttering of ancient curse words and spells to form their attacks, their faces stopped smiling creepily. They both softly drifted down to the floor and looked rather intrigued by what Pinkie might have to offer them.

The pony lifted the middle cup, placing the ball under the cup she then started sliding the cups around swiftly with her two hooves. Everyone watched the cup that the ball had to be under.

Muffet scoffed slightly as this didn’t seem like a magic trick, none of the monsters present could see the trick in it as the pony stopped shuffling the cups around. Madeline had fives eyes and she wasn’t seeing Pinkie do anything out of the ordinary and knew which cup to look under for the ball.

“To continue my act of extreme prestidigitation that’s good at parties, now pick a card!” Pinkie pulled out a pack of cards and fanned them out in front of the two monsters that tilted their heads curiously; she couldn’t see what their heads looked like as the hats covered almost everything except for their mouths. One monster bounced into the air floated forward and mystically pulled a card to look at and he even showed it to his friend. “Now remember that card and put it back into the deck anywhere.”

The monster floated the card back into the fanned batch of cards, after shuffling the cards Pinkie placed them off to the side of the cups. The pony then pulled out three bound together solid metal rings. She lifted the right cup and places the three bound rings under it, the right cup notably did not have the ball under it.

“Now shuffling the cups again and…” Pinkie shuffled the cups around on the floor at an obscenely incredible pace, after stopping she took a few steps back and bowed while holding out a hoof to the two monsters that had ceased their attacks entirely out of curiosity. “Which cup do you think the ball is under? I’ll even let you look under them all after you each make a guess.”

The two monsters each picked a cup, choosing the ones Pinkie hadn’t put the rings under. The pony picked up the cup on the left and under it was a solitary metal ring, then she picked up the middle cup and playing card that was standing up inside of another ring that fell over and lifting the last cup there was the ball in the middle of the last remaining ring.

“Nope, thanks for playing though and was your card the ace of spades by any chance?” Not only had Pinkie managed to entirely flabbergast the two Madjick’s, she had confused the heck out of the five other monsters who had been watching her the entire time. She had easily impressed all of them.

“Bibbidi Bobbidi!” The Madjick on the left exclaimed in shock before nodding to the card, it was clearly mystified.

“Boo!” The one on the right simply exclaimed in an unnerved tone, it didn’t know how the ball got in the cup that clearly didn’t have it there before, much less how Pinkie managed to separate the three metal rings at the same time and get their card under another cup, especially without touching the deck again.

The two Madjick’s looked to each other with uneasy expressions on their mouths before they smiled at Pinkie and moved out the way and left the area, they enjoyed the magic trick and were going to go tell their friends about it. Pinkie scooped up the objects for her trick and put it back in her saddlebags as her soul slammed home into her body.

“Okay, let’s go!” Pinkie continued onwards, while the five monsters stood there looking dumbfounded and still trying to figure out how she did it.

“That... there are no words for it.” Muffet mumbled to herself before she followed after Pinkie while four of her arms slapped the guards back to attention as she moved by them. “Come on and snap out of it guys, you’ve got jobs to do and I have a wonderfully talented pony to harass innocently.”

Walking through the doorway they found Pinkie sitting at a blue laser barrier blocking the way forward.

“Hey, we can’t exactly continue the story if we’re being blocked by lasers.” Pinkie’s cell phone rang from within her saddlebags and she quickly got it out, it was in answer to the laser wall blocking her path forward.

“Don’t worry Pinkie I’ve almost got that small bit of security down.” Alphys’s nerdy voice came through loud and clear, the guards shifted a bit as they heard the royal scientist talk to Pony in a friendly manner.

“Look alive you four, no slacking on protecting someone who’s going to help me burn my house down with flaming lemons later!” All four of the guards snapped to attention at the sound of Undyne’s voice. “Make sure she gets through the area relatively safe or else.”

The four guards started sweating, they didn’t even need to ask what the ‘or else’ entails as Undyne was a cruel taskmaster as captain of the royal guards. She was rather inventive with her punishments.

“Okay got it, but not without some complications. Three lasers will come at you after you hit the switch on the wall which will remove that barrier… they are blue, blue and orange. Remember to move through the orange one.” Alphys had become somewhat braver recently, so Pinkie should ‘trust her on this’.

“Right prepare to move forward guys.” Pinkie watched the four knights lined up along with Muffet who nodded and she hit the switch, three lasers came at them and they stood still for the first two and they all took several steps forward through the last one safely. “We made it, thanks Alphys!”

“Don’t thank me yet, there are still several measures and mercenaries in your way.” One could almost hear the nerdy lizard blushing over the phone in embarrassment at being praised for being helpful.

“We should keep going straight ahead.” At the intersection Muffet mentioned they should just keep going straight on through at, another mercenary monster ran in front of them from the room off to the side.

The mercenary looked tall, dark and scary as they pointed the Morningstar at them causing them to halt; this monster stabbed the butt end of the large mace stiffly at the floor with a loud thud.

“None shall pass.” The dark night said out loud in a masculine voice, the armored torso looked like it had a face like a birds and considering the biology of monsters it probably was a face given the way the eyes of the armor looked around and the beak opened to reveal another eye in it. Dark blue eyes glared out from under the horned helmet with the crescent moon on it; at least the eyes weren’t the stereotypical evil red, yellow or the seldom used dark purple.

“Oh, oh, are we going there?” Pinkie stared expectantly up at the air in anticipation with a broad smile.

Sadly it would seem it wasn’t going to go there, especially since the black armored knight pulled Pinkie’s soul and then launched multiple blasts of fire at her and the other monsters from the large ball of fire the glowing Morningstar summoned when it was held aloft. It wasn’t surprising that Muffet curled up into a ball behind Pinkie and whimpered on the floor.

Pinkie body went through several small convulsions as her soul got hit several times as she tried to tap dance her way through the numerous blasts of fire launched at it; thankfully the Temmie Armor translated into mystically protecting her soul as well. As such the damage wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Her convulsions quickly came to a halt when two of her bodyguards moved in front of her soul and started taking the full brunt of the attack that continued onwards for several more seconds.

“Okay, even with the armor, that really hurts.” Zuno groaned as he fell over, there was a slight amount of steam coming off of it. The attack practically boiled him in his armor; he hadn’t muddied it up again with heat absorbent material after Pinkie previously cleaned it off.

“Man down, exceptionally cute man down!” Platwoon shouted as he had taken the attack much better and being a dragon was pretty sturdy again heat based attack, his partner and recently acquired fluffy boyfriend wasn’t so lucky and was possibly suffering from heatstroke.

The dragon dragged him back as Threep and Fourlette moved forward to take up protecting Pinkie as the menacing mercenary monster seemed to have tired from using that attack for the moment. The armored aggressor was slowly collecting strength for another powerful attack.

“I don’t think I’d take an attack like that very well.” Threep whimpered, being a mantis monster she was susceptible to fire. At least her armor still had the heat absorbent material on it.

“Threep… stand your ground, you’re much tougher than you act.” Fourlette didn’t seem to waver in the face of danger. One might even call her foolhardy, but her name was definitely Fourlette Rispur. Foolhardy would be a very odd name to have, though somewhere a pony might have that as a name and their parents must have hated them.

“Well you’re not very nice at all…” Pinkie directed her comment at the black knight as she stood up and pulled out her cell phone. The pony hit the quick call button and waited. “Give the stats quick, this monster is really powerful and scary.”

“That monster is Knight Knight. Despite the masculine voice, which is most likely a side effect of wearing that helmet, she is definitely a female monster. She has powerful offensive abilities, but she’s easy to put to sleep with music, a gentle song or something akin to a lullaby would easily get her out of the way.” Gyftrot was beginning to wonder how he was even holding his recently acquired phone with his hoof; he shrugged as he must have picked it up from watching Pinkie Pie do it. “She’s easy to knock out without her armor on, but I doubt she’s going to take it off at the moment and all her attacks are quite dangerous and damaging. Thankfully it seems as if they take a lot out of her to do even one attack.”

“Hush now, quiet now…” Pinkie started singing softly with an evil grin on her face; the big mean lady knight was cranky and could use a nap. Why not do it with a lullaby most ponies knew?

Turning away from Knight Knight who was sleeping with a blanket and a teddy bear, Pinkie smiled and turned around to see the two female royal guards had fallen asleep. That and with Zuno unconscious, things weren’t looking so good. Platwoon was awake, but appeared conflicted on what to do now as he shifted about in his armor.

“Really, they fell asleep too?” Pinkie said in a slightly dull tone as she looked to the air as if expecting it to be the cause of this problem. At least Muffet and Platwoon were still awake and Muffet was poking at the two sleeping female armored guards, while glancing fearfully at Knight Knight every once in a while. “Are you okay Muffy, Platwoon?”

“Well we did have a long time of partying before we went to sleep, those two must still be tired.” Platwoon was referring to a sleeping Fourlette and Threep as he slowly picked up Zuno and started cradling his boyfriend’s body in his arms; the dragon knight was quite a strong guy emotionally and physically. “By the way, you have a nice singing voice. My only complaint is that it’s a little bit squeaky.”

“Thanks Plat, ponies are really good at singing in general.” Pinkie looked to the two sleeping guards thoughtfully before she turned to a slightly shaken Muffet.

“I’m a bit scared, but I can manage Pinkie.” Muffet started clenching her fingers on all six of her hands; they all flared outward to start spraying webbing all over the corner above Knight Knight’s sleeping form. She was making sure that Knight Knight’s body was pinned to the floor. “Well, what do we do from here Mistress Pie? I can see a large number of laser walls ahead of us, who knows what else we’ll run into here.”

“I think Plat should take Zuno back to the hotel for some help, we’ll try to wake these two up and then we’ll keep going even if we can’t rouse them. We’ll at least move them away from Knight Knight in that case.” With that Pinkie moved over to start shaking Threep to see if she could get the humanoid mantis monster to wake up.

Things just kept getting more and more dangerous for the pony. She really needed all the help she could get.

Author's Note

There's been a few problems involving family and my mind just wasn't in it to write this story.

Let's just say my family member had to have a relatively large Tumor removed from around their bladder that was causing a seriously painful hernia, alongside a foot of their intestines being removed for an entirely different problem that was discovered early. Said family member is okay and back on their feet, but they will have to deal with having a stent in their body for the next five weeks.

I've been worried about them and have been unable to think clearly, now I'm back and hopefully I can finish the last few chapters of this story.

Undertale is a short game and as such this story will end in about ten or so chapters, I apologize for the delay and to those that might actually like this story.

Fourlette could be pronounced as a strange form of Farley.

Just a reminder, I'm not a good writer.

32 - Bare Bones Core

“So… are they your best guards?” Toriel was eating popcorn and watching the screen as Muffet and Pinkie dragged the two sleeping guards out of Knight Knight’s area towards a large number of laser walls that blocked their path.

They watched as Muffet managed to move the armored Fourlette by attaching four strands of web to her armor and pulling. It was surprising that she could move that much weight as she didn’t look very strong, but she did come off as incredibly agile.

Pinkie was moving Threep and had her front two hooves under the mantis monsters armpits, now the pony Toriel could actually believe as being strong. In both soul and body, Pinkie tried to keep a cheery mood no matter her situation and she was quite a sight to see when she had a shovel.

“No, but to be fair they are pretty good and protected her pretty well against the two Madjick’s. Plus I did kind of call them on their off days. Still doesn’t excuse them falling asleep just because your mate sung a lullaby.” Undyne watched as Toriel’s cheeks visibly colored at the word ‘mate’ while ducking her head slightly in embarassment; she didn’t pay it that much attention and continued on. “Still though, when I’m better I’m going to start kicking their butts into gear until my leg breaks again, and then I’ll keep kicking with my broken leg just to prove a point!”

“Aside from dating we haven’t done anything besides cuddling and kissing. I’m not even sure Pinkie can actually stick to a monogamous commitment, her heart goes where it wants to go and I’m just happy to gain a large piece of her attention.” Toriel was happy having met Pinkie, but she wouldn’t say they were close enough to go too far. “So I wouldn’t say we were mates.”

“Close enough to it though, let’s see what happens next. They are almost where all the electrical power for the Underworld comes from. Did you know the guy who made the core? You know, it was that royal scientist that no one can even remember the name of.” Intoned Undyne as she watched the screen attentively, she was rather contemplative as she tried to remember the logistics of the incident she only knew of in passing. “It’s kind of creepy how so few monsters can only barely recall the guy; we only know he exists because The Core exists since that guy built it.”

“Name… name… ugh… it was Wing-ding? I think I know this.” Toriel muttered thoughtfully, before she clutched at her head feeling a small pinch of something in her memories. She shook away the pain and went back to watching the screen. She continued to mumble on. “His name meant something akin to party? Wing-Ding Aster… hmm… Gaster was his nickname, Wind-Ding Aster Font? Is that it, is that all I can remember? Was he related to Sans and Papyrus?”

Toriel was faintly remembering the royal scientist now, she recalled he had been the best scientist in the monster kingdom and had even designed and assisted in building The Core. It was just that his appearance was so hard to remember… he fell into the core though, that much she could remember now. He was a monster of science and ignorance was his bane. She vaguely remembered getting into all kinds of interesting discussions with him, but why was it so hard to remember him? It was like there was a fog on the memories of that particular monster she thought she could remember fondly.

It wasn’t long before the Pinkie and Muffet stopped a few feet away from the multiple laser walls in their path; they laid up the two sleeping guards and looked to each other before a phone rang out on the screen. Toriel and Undyne looked to Alphys who was furiously typing away at a computer and her eyes were swiftly sliding from side to side at the screen as she shouldered her phone up to her head.

“Okay, Mettaton has really gotten good at taking control of the security systems, I don’t know if I can keep all the lasers off for long so you’re going to have to hurry through them once I can bring them down.” As Alphys spoke to them, there was a loud clattering noise coming from Pinkie’s phone. It was the sound of a lizard monster going at a keyboard with gusto. “Stop if they start to turn on, now give me a few more seconds.”

“Well that’s good and all Alphys, but we haven’t exactly decided what we were going to do yet with Fourlette and Threep. We were going to try and wake them up.” Pinkie looked over to see a Madeline Muffet trying to triple slap the two awake.

“Nope they’re out cold and not waking up anytime soon by the looks of it, they have to be really tired to not wake up when someone with six arms starts slapping them as hard as I just did.” Muffet let out a huff as she placed her three left hands on her hip and held her three right arms out to Pinkie gesturing to the multiple laser walls in their path. “Should we just keep going Mistress Pie?”

“Well okay then, we’ll get ready for when the laser walls go down. Can you hold my phone for me Muffet? I can’t run while holding on to it very well and you’ve got hands to spare.” Pinkie handed off her phone to Muffet’s middle left arm and she took it with a nod and one of her patented creepy smiles. “So why do you think they have so many laser walls here?”

“I guess you’re finally ready to let me lend you a hand my dear. The Core powers all the electronic devices in the Underworld, if it were to go down… well shutting down wouldn’t be too horrible. It powers a lot of things up in New Home and some other parts of the Underworld, including solar lamps to help with growing food down here and those lamps also gives us an idea of what the sun is like.” They moved over to the start of the laser wall defenses in their way as Muffet explained the reason for this much security. It was so that nobody could get into and possibly bother the core. If something were to happen to the core then the resulting destruction would be catastrophic, enough so that almost every monster in the Underworld would die. Chances were that The Jerry would live through it and Muffet even said as much while shuddering at even mentioning the ridiculously indestructible monster in question. “So yeah, if it was to overload or someone were to tamper with it in the wrong way, then I doubt no one would survive the resulting explosion. The Jerry likely would though, that thing survived being thrown directly into the core and that would kill just about any monster no matter how powerful they are.”

“I’ve just about got it, I’m going to count down and when the lasers shut down, you have to start running.” This reminded the two travelers that they still had Alphys on the phone. “Okay now three, two, one and go!”

The lasers ceased spewing walls of energy and both Muffet and Pinkie sprinted forward as fast as they could. The entire area went dark, but the pathway forward was still clearly visible. Madeline was managing to keep up with the pony rather easily as they ran forward, she was pumping all six arms as she went too.

“Stop, right now!” Hearing Alphy’s urgent tone, both Muffet and Pinkie came to a screeching halt as the power flickered throughout the hallway. The laser walls activated making it impossible for the equine or the spider monster to move a single inch. They both started sweating. “Don’t worry I got this, I’m trying to stop Mettaton from controlling the security in that area. Give me a second and don’t move.”

“Like we’re going anywhere for the moment… your name is Alphys right? So how did Pinkie rope you into helping us like this?” Muffet didn’t know Alphys very well aside from the fact that she was the royal scientist, she figured that the friendship thing Pinkie had going for her was highly contagious. She didn’t know how true that sentiment was.

“She beat my recently acquired girlfriend in combat and then for some crazy reason said girlfriend wants me to help her out because of it. I’m actually kind of okay with that, helping that is, not the Pinkie beating up my girlfriend thing.” The clacking of the keyboard continued as Alphys sounded like she was furiously working away at something. “Ugh so much coding, he’s practically just trying to force it into existence with his mind and that’s why I’m still able to circumvent all this.”

“Huh… who’s your girlfriend?” Muffet was making small talk since Pinkie couldn’t move or talk with her face stuck in a blue laser wall. The pony couldn’t move her mouth or even nod her head, which Muffet figured was a problem for her. The mare was a very active charismatic creature and the humanoid spider monster had long since noted that standing or sitting still wasn’t exactly her forte.

“She’s Undyne, captain of the royal guards… well she might not be captain much longer unless Queen Toriel is hiring. I’d rather work for her than Asgore at this point, because he’s made a lot of horrible decisions.” Alphys followed along in the small talk as she continued trying to support Undyne’s friends. “Almost got it, be prepared to move again.”

“Wow you beat the captain of the royal guard in combat darling? That’s rather impressive… to think I only got the short version of how you ended up at the spider hive.” Muffet moved her middle left arm still holding the phone away from her head and looked positively intrigued with Pinkie now.

Madeline Muffet was already interested in the pony in a not so subtle manner beforehand; it was just that she was going to redouble her efforts to make the mare like her even more now. Now it was not just because she was indebted to Pinkie for helping all of her kin get back together again, she actually did like Pinkie and was trying to encourage a friendship between them to make up for her actions. Plus she wanted Pinkie to continue acknowledging her in a friendly manner.

“Okay got it, three, two, one and go!” Alphys announced once more in a calm manner.

The two ran forward as the area flickered into darkness after the barriers went back to being offline, they managed to get a good thirty feet before the area started flickering and the power came back on.

“Okay, Mettaton’s really making this hard for me… sorry guys, give me a few more seconds and I’ll have it back off again.” It was only now that Alphys sounded frustrated.

“Don’t apologize Alphys, we’re doing okay so far. Just so long as neither of us move while we’re inside a blue barrier, we’ll be completely fine.” Now it was Pinkie’s turn to talk as most of Muffet’s body was sitting the middle of a blue barrier and she was staying very still. She had her five eyes closed and she wasn’t going to move a single muscle. “You know this situation kind of reminds me of this game I played when I was little. It’s called red hooves, green hooves and you’re supposed to move while you have green hooves and you’re supposed to stay still while you have red hooves. Having Green Hooves is seen as a positive thing since Earth Ponies like growing plants, I know I like sugar cane… really shouldn’t eat too much of that though as it’s not exactly healthy in large quantities and should be consumed sparingly. Having red hooves is a negative connotation, if you moved it’s like you were caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar… well what cookies we could get on the rock farm anyway. The not nice version is getting them bloody because you’re a bit violent and should stop to think about where you’re going in life. So red means stop and green means go! I like to study up on the history of the party games I tend to use… I’m not a violent pony am I?”

“You’re not overly violent Pinkie; you’re as sweet as any pie I could make.” Toriel giggled slightly, the pony did have an insatiable sweet tooth for baked goods. “Sometimes you’re even sweeter than that. I think Alphys has just about got it again.”

“Well that’s nice to know, anyway get ready to move. Three, two, one and go!” Hearing Alphys countdown again, the two prepared to start moving. The lady scientist saw that they were already near the end of the hall of barriers, so it wouldn’t be much longer than one more stop before they made it.

The barriers and lights went down again and Pinkie took off at a full gallop wanting to get clear of the multiple barriers as soon as she possibly could. She did not like sitting still for long periods of time like this and it was starting to make her shaken crazy. Yes shaken crazy, because she preferred strawberry milkshakes with sprinkles and milkshakes weren’t as good stirred… who’s ever heard of a milk-stirs anyway?

“Hey, don’t tell people my milkshake preferences! That’s rather private I’ll have you know!” Pinkie shouted at the ceiling as she lunged for the end of the barriers and managed to pass by them before the laser barriers flickered back on. She looked back and saw that Muffet had also dived for the end of the laser walls and had narrowly made it as well, she held up her middle left arm and Pinkie took the phone back.

“Thanks for the help Alphys. If there’s anything else you can do for us, it would be greatly appreciated.” Keeping the phone out, Pinkie turned to Muffet and waited for her to get up and catch her breath. “We’ll keep you on the phone so Gyftrot can tell us about the monsters we’ll run into… we’ll need the useful information the monster compendium to befriend them!”

“Well, that was easier than I thought it would be.” Muffet was gasping slightly trying to fill her lungs with air at having managed to get past the last energy barrier before the walls went up again. “After that I think all we’ll have to worry about is the monsters in the interior area. Still though, that was a lot of blue soul attack energy.”

“Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask. Do soul attacks come in every color of the rainbow?” That was actually a good question and the air is as curious as Pinkie Pie to hear the answer.

“Well almost, but what are the types that you know of? I can give you a quick rundown of the ones you don’t know about.” Muffet smiled brightly and slightly shifted her hips like her cousin Mimi usually did when she stood too still for a while, she really hasn’t heard from her cousin in a long time and thought of her in that moment.

“You have a cousin named Mimi? No wait, don’t answer that! I’m sure she’s just as creepy as you are.” It didn’t upset the spider monster to hear that Pinkie thought she was creepy; she actually prided herself on being creepy and possibly masochistic. “Anyway I know white is the most common color in soul attacks, green soul attack heals like what the Vegetoids I met could do…”

“They are the best farmers in the Underworld darling; they are really good at using nothing but green soul attacks if you can get them to focus on just using that type of… would you say it’s an attack if it never hurts anyone? It is a rather aggressive form of healing at the very least. Spiders like me strive to be of service and well educated. You know, instead of like the rest of the lazy bones that are the monsters of the Underworld.” Madeline made this comment dryly before she nodded to Pinkie to continue with what she knew. “Sorry, please continue Miss Pie.”

“There’s also…” Pinkie didn’t get to say much as a familiar friend popped up in that very moment, quite literally out of a vortex of energy that formed before he appeared.

“Nyeh heh heh, did somebody say lazy bones! I the Sensational Papyrus will not shirk my duties to royally guard my friend as I am not like my brother! I want to be a hero and that is what I will do amazingly, for I will not give up on my dreams to be successful at it or anything else!” The sudden appearance of Skele-Port Master Papyrus spooked the girls causing them to jump away from him in fright as he popped up out of the solid steel flooring. He was holding a plate of spaghetti and Pinkie was unsure as to whether or not it was loaded like her party cannon always happened to be.

“Pappy… what are you doing here? Also you never know with Papyrus, he blew up the deck of that ship with his perfect plate of spaghetti by accident, so whether that plate is safe or not is a questionable thing when I don’t have my Pinkie Sense as an early warning as to how dangerous it could be.” Both the monsters ignored Pinkie’s insane if riveting commentary to the air. “But I’m not a construction worker so how is my commentary riveting?”

“I am here looking for my brother, for he has gone missing! Probably lazing away in one of his secret sleeping locations or hopefully just planning another space and time related prank! The last I heard of him was that he sold five hundred hot dogs to a Pyrope, Exclamation Point! He usually drops by the hotel before he visits The Core, but he wasn’t there and I was there brilliantly disguised as myself so he wouldn’t run off to be lazy elsewhere!” After throwing up his index right finger and having his cape waggle with a proud expression on his face, The Gallant and Silly Papyrus quickly turned moody. He put down his plate of spaghetti and started poking his two gloved fingers together sadly. “I’ve been all over the Underworld and… well I want you to let me follow you around for a bit, I don’t like being alone for too long. I, Papyrus, am finding myself to be in great need of a hug from a friend right now!”

Pinkie immediately latched herself bodily onto Papyrus, perfectly mimicking something that is known to hug faces and lay eggs inside the body of said face which would inevitably end poorly. Thankfully this was only mimicry and Pinkie could not in fact infest the whole world with clones of herself… oh wait, the mirror pool thing. Yeah, Ponyville is definitely screwed in all the ways imaginable.

“Again I am not a construction worker… so why would I be screwing around in Ponyville?” Pinkie was still hugging Papyrus with all she was worth, even as she directed her eyes at the ceiling. “Then again the buildings back home are always made of shoddy construction materials. Seriously, the town can’t go a day without at least one house collapsing.”

The skeleton welcomed the pink fuzzy cuddle creature with open arms and Madeline Muffet just stood off to the side rolling her five eyes in sync at the odd conversation Pinkie had going on with the air, she quickly joined in on the hug. The spider monster would not miss an opportunity to hug Pinkie when she has already started one.

“I thank you my dear friend, for you are quite the amazing being of positivity Pinkie and I believe in you to do your best at whatever you wish to accomplish!” The Mildy Cheery Papyrus was slightly happier as he put down Pinkie to pick up his spaghetti plate and started eating; his mood only became slightly somber a second later.

“Well come on then Pappy, this is my friend Madeline Muffet. I’m sure she’ll be your friend to, I think she really likes being called Muffy.” Pinkie just gave Muffet a big smile and the spider girl looked a bit shy in that instant.

“Well of course Mistress Pie, any friend of yours is likely to become a friend of mine. I would like to get to know them first however, anyway let’s get back to the subject we were discussing.” Madeline clamped all six of her hands together and bowed to Papyrus in a stuffy fashion, taking precaution to not damage the phone she was still holding. “We can even do it on the move, because I’m certainly tired of standing around here waiting for you to get attacked again mistress.”

“Okay… where was I before Pappy showed up?” Pinkie looked up thoughtfully at the air as she was about to finish talking about the colors that soul attack came in. “Oh right, thanks Airy! Anyway the other two soul attack colors I know are blue and orange, to avoid getting hurt you have to stand still for blue and be moving through orange. What I don’t understand is why blue soul attacks don’t turn my soul blue like what Papyrus here did to me once, then there’s your soul attack that turned my soul purple… I’m a bit surprised I didn’t turn purple myself.”

“That is because there are special soul attacks that don’t deal any damage to the soul, but will have interesting effects that give a monster an edge in battle. Mine in particular turned your soul purple and stuck it to sliding along the spider hives webs. Wait, you physically turned her blue? As in like a Blueberry Pie?” Muffet quirked three of her eyes at the skeleton with an amused smile as they walked forward, they came up to a three way splitting path. “It looks like we’re really in the core now, smells like ozone. It’s not exactly a pleasant smell mind you.”

“Why yes, we are indeed in the core now and yes, I Papyrus did turn my previously not a friend entirely blue with my special attack of specialness!” The Slightly Worried Papyrus looked warily over the left side of the path and continued to fork some spaghetti into his mouth as he walked along with them. Pinkie moved over next to him to look over the edge as well. “They really should put in a lot of guard rails; this place is a real safety hazard, nyeh heh heh! Especially after what happened to… anyway, I know my way around here. Follow me to the nearby puzzle I know, since I know Pinkie loves those! Please watch your step; I don’t want to lose the most amazing friends to have ever graced the presence that is The Beloved Papyrus!”

Papyrus became rather silent and didn’t look like he was going to continue much further, he looked to be in though. He led Pinkie and Muffet to the left path where they saw a conveyor belt Carrying huge blocks of ice into the glowing mass below.

“Well I guess this is where all those giant ice cubes eventually end up. What is all that glowing stuff?” The yellowish white substance below them was glowing brightly; Pinkie stayed away from the edge of the path as she didn’t want to know what would happen if she fell in and she watched as a large ice cube evaporated upon barely touching the substance. She shivered at the sight.

“Actually this kind of ties back into the discussion of soul attacks.” Muffet also looked at all the glowing light of the energy below and praised the fact that she wasn’t a moth right now. “All that you see below is raw energy that is powering a lot of thing in the Underworld. You probably know by now that soul attacks are somewhat derived from magic right? Well all that you see below you is basically yellow soul attack energy, it super charges you if given in very tiny doses. Otherwise too much and you get shredded violently by all the energy, that stuff down there is powerful enough to dissolve even heat resistant monster instantly if they were to try. All that stuff is being generated by the core; unfortunately it wasn’t useful in breaking the barrier holding us all down here and as such we use it for powering electronics and a few other things. I’m a tad afraid of being here to be honest with you, falling into the core really wouldn’t be a pleasant way to go.”

“I would know that all too well… anyway, to the left is a puzzle room of unsolvable power! I’m assured our mutual friend Pinkie here will be able to solve it quite easily though!” The Off Kilter Papyrus was acting very odd, but he did lead the two girls into a puzzle room with a two shot box moving puzzle in the vein of several puzzles Pinkie has done before.

“Is everything alright Pappy?” Pinkie was worried about the skeleton that didn’t seem very happy at the moment, he was usually livelier than this and it showed. She moved up to the controls and started to shift around the boxes to figure out the puzzle.

“Not really… this is the place where… where everybody forgot about dad. Even I in my mightiest of memorizations hardly remember him, but I’m thankful that I still can.” The skeleton had a bit of sorrow going for him; usually he was The Plucky Papyrus. “It was an accident that can hardly be remembered, what is remembered is that dad fell into the core. After that things became a bit distorted surrounding the incident and a lot of monsters forgot who my father was or even what he did for all of us. It’s like all the memories that connected to him became entirely corrupted; only those of us that were closest to him can even remember what he looked like. Dad wasn’t exactly the most handsome guy around; in fact he was quite disfigured from all the experiments he performed on himself. What he lacked in looks, he made up for in having a big heart. He would never perform any harmful experiments on another being and the last thing I remember hearing of him was that he was looking into the darkness within the hearts of monsters and other beings. Being here is rather upsetting to me; I thank you for being here for me in my time of need dear friends! Oh my… Mettaton's show is about to come on, I’m quite sure you can find your way from here on. Maybe his show will be of some comfort to me... oh right! I have to throw myself out a window; I’m friends with a celebrity in you Pinkie for I have watched you and Mettaton play nicely together! Please be safe and don’t go away like daddy did, I just hope my brother hasn’t gone away too. If you see Sans, please tell him I want to talk about some things. Quarter Circle Back Kick!”

Papyrus disappeared in a flash with his empty plate in hand and Pinkie had finally managed to finagle the boxes into a solvable solution where she could fire twice and the puzzle was solved. She turned to Muffet with a frown and the spider girl looked as equally down about hearing The Mourning Papyrus being sad and she hadn’t known the guy for more than a few minutes.

“Kind of makes me feel worse given that I’ve been replacing his father as the Royal Scientist, at least I’ve implemented some better safety standards since then.” Alphys was rather quiet as she said this. “I think and would like to believe Gaster was a really good man too, but whatever the core did to him really destroyed any memory of what he was or did after he fell in. It would be kind of scary to be almost entirely forgotten like that. The core doesn’t look like my map suggests… so there’s quite a bit of warped reality in there from all the energy.”

“Right then, let’s keep moving forward. We have to find our way out of the core and to where Mettaton is!” Muffet quickly pulled out a map of the area with her lower left arm and then noted something. “Okay, so we should go… that way. Thankfully this map is the magical self updating kind, this won’t take long.”

Muffet turned left and Pinkie followed behind the spider monster, as she led them through an area and they took a right turn past a room with a garbage can. They continued forward past an empty room and then a room with another garbage can where they turned right once more. Then they took a left and came to a bridge and were immediately halted in their progress by two monsters at the start of the bridge.

Pinkie’s soul popped out of her body, only this time she really didn’t seem to care as she stared at one of the two monsters and a slow smile started building up on her face. It was easy to guess that Pinkie had an affinity for amphibians and reptiles, she was able to overlook the menacing look of the Froggit in front of her as she ran up to hug him.

“Oh my goodness, you’re an adorable spiny looking froggit, yes you are!” Pinkie picked up the odd looking Froggit and brought it into a tight hug slowly choking the life out of it with affection. Said frog monster desperately clawed at the air with his webbed feet asking his mercenary compatriot for help as it just hovered there staring at Pinkie snuggling him.

“You attack Pinkie and I’ll declare you my next fly. Don’t think I won’t web you up and make you into a snack.” Licking her fangs, Muffet had easily intimidated the small floating armored monster into doing nothing by holding up a cat’s cradle made out of webbing held between her two upper arms. They both watched as the odd froggit the pony was snuggling slowly stop putting up a fight, the monster slowly accepted his situation as he croaked in a rather pathetic manner.

“That is a Final Froggit and Sir Whimsalot. You know what… I think you have this perfectly under control.” Gyftrot sounded rather bored as his voice came from the phone.

“So anyway while we have time, I’ll get on to the rest of the types of soul attack. Most monsters can’t project lethal amounts of yellow so they stopped bothering with that kind of attack since they just kept powering up their opponents. The other soul attacks that are generally known are brown, black and purple. Purple soul attacks just slow you down; they don’t do any damage but leave you open for getting hit from other attacks. Brown is… yeah, it’s a thing, really disgusting and you’re glad that monsters have ceased using that particular brand of attack. Only some skeletons still use the effects of that type of attack, it causes infections and poisons you.” As Muffet went on about soul attacks she dropped the webbing she was holding and brought Sir Whimsalot into one armed hug, he didn’t resist and actually snuggled into it after a few seconds. “As for black attacks, only the king or queen of monsters can really do something like that. It’s a powerful attack that requires a bit of build up to use, its drawback is that it weakens the user for a while after a successfully launching the attack and the build up for the attack can also be cancelled. You really don’t want to be hit by one of those attacks. As for the other colors of soul based attacks, they possibly exist though I don’t know anything about them.”

“Well, that was highly informative, thanks Muffy!” Pinkie cuddled the Final Froggit to her chest and nuzzled the top of its head making it blush. Her soul still sat there in the air when a swarm of doughnut shaped bullets suddenly came at it from out of nowhere. It forced Pinkie to drop the Final Froggit and rhythmically tap dance her big floating pink heart out of the way.

This monster looked like a giant floating eyeball, closing its eye made it looked like something different entirely. It seemed to be a cousin of the monster Loox based on its appearance.

“Astigmatism, pick on it or don’t depending on what it has to say at the time. Meaning ask which it wants of you, it seems like the mercenaries aren’t as dangerous as we thought they’d be.” After a bit of a pause Gyftrot spoke up once more. “Well Knight Knight was dangerous, but she didn’t take long to bypass.”

“Right, hi there I’m Pinkie Pie! Want to be friends? Tell me what you need.” Pinkie waited for a moment and the Astigmatism actually spoken up.

“Pick on me!” The Astigmatism shouted and promptly got a hard right hoof to the eye. “Thank you! So want to be friends?”

“Okay, are we close to the end of this area?” Pinkie turned to a perplexed Muffet and Sir Whimsalot just tilted his head at Pinkie. “This chapter is almost over and I need to quickly ask if you guys want to be friends too!”

“Verily, that gilded machine Mettaton waits for you on yonder side of the bridge. I feel no need to combat thee and your highly creepy companion.” Sir Whimsalot answered with a slight upbeat measure in his rather surprisingly deep voice for such a small guy; he stashed his tiny twin headed spear on his back and pointed towards the other end of the bridge. He brought everyone’s attention back to himself. “My companions and I cede to you pink one, I personally welcome your offer of friendship.”

Toriel just sighed and slapped her left hand into her face, how does punching a monster in the eye and forcefully hugging the others immediately equate to friendship? She looked to Undyne who seemed to smile appreciatively at the violence. Gyftrot was idly looking through the Monster Compendium and Alphys was looking nervous about the upcoming confrontation with Mettaton as Muffet and Pinkie crossed over the bridge towards the interior elevators in The Core.

Author's Note

Reminder to those who haven't read previous author note. Family member went through surgery, has to spend at least two weeks as of now with a stent in their body, a foot of intestine was removed for something else entirely different from what the surgery was initially for and with good reason as that bit of intestine could have turned cancerous given time. Thankfully it was caught before that happened.

Currently said family member is still recovering and doing well, if easily exhaustible and unable to stand up for to long.

Other than that I'm really good at Starfox Zero, then again I've been good at every single Star Fox game ever. The exception being adventures, but I still beat that game. Command was probably the hardest Starfox overall.

My writing has slowed down to a crawl and is of poor quality, but poor quality is nothing new to me. It is what it is.

The Core is a really small area, consisting of the opening area leading to the laser walls, which leads into the interior which doesn't have much going on aside from three monsters appearing there. Bare bones is a apt word for it as there's not much going on in the core itself.

33 - Mad Pie Rave

“Nghh… I remember now… I always wanted to become a teacher to help the monsters of the Underworld, but there was a person that led me to the idea. Gaster… his bane was absolute ignorance.” Toriel clutched at her head as she remembered spending time with Gaster as her teacher and she could now remember the incident. “How could I have forgotten so much? Sans did always seem familiar to me when I heard his voice through the door, it makes sense now. Doctor Font was always so kind in his own unique way as I assisted him in his endeavors.”

“Whoa… hold on, you were one of Wing-Ding Font’s two assistants?” Alphys looked at Queen Toriel in a new light. The awed open mouth stare earned Undyne’s attention and she smacked the lizards jaw back into place with a freshly conjured spear. “You were one of the two mentioned in his logs?”

“Yes, Sans Font was the other one. I… this is very troubling and it’s giving me a headache. Everything he taught me is coming to the forefront; I always did love learning about snails. I had been curious about the tasty things that were always plaguing any garden I tried to grow.” A wan smile crossed Toriel’s lips as she chuckled dryly. Looking up at the screen, she gazed at Pinkie’s butt longingly as the pony crossed the bridge. Tears started to flood out of the corners of Toriel’s eyes as they started staring blankly ahead. “Entry number seventeen, dark, darker yet darker, the darkness keeps growing. The shadows cutting deeper, photon readings negative, this next experiment seems to be… very, very interesting… what do you two think?”

“I… I don’t really think this is such a good idea Doctor Font.”

“Don’t worry, even if there is no photon readings at the moment, there’s always a light somewhere when things are at their darkest. I would never put you in danger as Fluffy Buns would kill me if I did, so that’s why I’m only putting myself mostly in danger.”

“What if something were to happen to you, why do you always keep doing this to yourself? Is it because of Calibri?”

“My queen, Toriel, I’m always willing to take risks with myself to help others, I also respectfully ask that you don’t dig up old graves. In any case, what could possibly happen if we proceed cautiously? Every precaution in place is for your personal safety.”

“What of your son Papyrus? You never talk of him much.”

“You know I don’t like ignorance, but even then Papyrus is bright where it counts. In his heart and friendly demeanor that is. If something does happen; I hope you will look out for them.”

“If anything will happen, then my brother is going to be the master at achievements in ignorance!”

“It would be ironic that one of my progeny can do what those ‘crazy little bastards’ can, yes, but I don’t think your brother Papyrus is as ignorant as he acts. He just wants to be happy and I can’t fault him for that, nobody should really. Even I am willing to admit that ignorance can be warranted. There are some things that we should just simply never know.”

“Like whether or not laughter really is the best medicine?”

“There are many scientific things that I’m not ignorant of, but there are just as many more things that I am that can’t be entirely quantifiable or completely understood, even by me or science. I am not infallible and anyone can make mistakes no matter how perfect they act. Usually the more perfect someone tries to act, the more truly flawed they are. Ignorance tends fester with those who think they can do no wrong.”

“So, things like how laughing and crying can mean the exact same thing?”

“Why yes, things like that! There is a reason that darkness is something that I intend to explore … in depth. I swear ignorance will be our ultimate downfall; the war was a notable effect of a collective ignorance by both monsters and humans. This is why I pursue knowledge, to spread understanding to everyone as best I can. This is why we are doing these experiments.”

“Yep, dad is always going to be a Font of knowledge.”

“Son that was a horrible pun, but the queen seems to appreciate your humor. Now say thank you.”

“Thank you Goat Mom!”

“Why does everyone keep calling me that? I’m not that good with children, really! Oh I do so hope Asgore is paying careful attention to Chara and Asriel, they can be so rambunctious.”

“Well one is definitely a ram and the other is the definition of wild.”

“Watch your blood pressure your majesty! We don’t need you setting metal on fire again, no matter how entertaining and informative it was the last time you did it. Though I must say, without your temper the newly named Hot Lands wouldn’t exist to give us this grand opportunity.”

Gyftrot, Undyne, Alphys, the amalgamate monsters and even Kid all stared at Toriel who had been talking to herself in a rather monotone manner. One of the amalgamate monsters started crooning sadly.

“Queen Toriel created the Hot Lands!” Undyne was now the one with the dropped jaw and Alphys took it as an opportunity to kiss the tall fish girl while her guard was down. Undyne was angry that she didn’t think of it first when Alphys was like this, then again she was still healing so she had an excuse.

Pinkie and Muffet reached the other end of the bridge where they saw a foreboding looking door and a closed elevator beyond it. Muffet walked right on past the open door and checked the elevator.

“Yep, locked up like all of the other elevators in the Hot Lands. So Mettaton is in there, well come on then darling, after you. Let’s go get him!” Muffet seemed eager to help Pinkie stop Mettaton from causing any more trouble for the monsters that lived around New Home.

Pinkie walked through the ominous doorway followed by Muffet and they immediately saw Mettaton there waiting for them, his screen lit up and he held up his microphone. They heard the doorway they came through slam shut behind them locking them in the circular room with the metallic menace that had a spotlight on him.

“Hello, to all you beauties out there! It is the ever wonderful and beloved Mettaton everyone, welcome to my final act with Pinkie Pie!” Mettaton had the ever present M on his screen and he didn’t seem very surprised to see them as he said this. “I see you’ve made it past Red.”

“Wait… who’s Red? I mean I’m pink, your silver and some colors, Muffet’s outfit is…” Pinkie said as she walked towards Mettaton who had yet to pull her soul, only to almost get a chakram to the neck. It came at an angle from Pinkie’s right; the cute pony immediately flinched away from the danger.

The spinning metal disc had been an inch from hitting Pinkie’s neck before it was pulled off course to the right by a bit of webbing being wielded by Muffet’s lower right arm. The chakram quickly stopped rotating upon striking the floor between the pony and spider monster. Muffet’s upper left and middle arms grabbed the rope attached to the chakram and pulled roughly.

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen on my watch!” Muffet yelled as the cloaked figure she pulled from the shadows fell straight into the upper right hook and middle right jab of her upper right arms. Her lower right let go of the webbing it held.

The red cloaked figure was knocked back by the simultaneous punches from Muffet with a grunt and flipped to land on her feet off to the side of Mettaton and Pinkie, who were standing on a slightly raised bit of pentagonal flooring taking up the center of the room. The rope reeled the chakram back into the cloak and the feminine faced monster without a nose glared at Muffet with her rusty red hair partially hiding the right part of her face.

“Darn it, I almost had her!” The cloaked figure stated angrily, she had to be this Red person that Mettaton was talking about seconds ago. She was about as tall as Muffet was wearing a bright red cloak and bow around her neck. Underneath the cloak was some black clothing, white boots and gloves, she was also strangely wearing the royal crest on her shirt. Red and Muffet had a somewhat similar taste in clothing.

“Oh my, what an incredible ambush by the amazing Red Rider folks, and it was even more incredibly thwarted by Pinkie’s stalwart companion. This is what it’s all about folks, real action, drama, suspense, bloodshed and most importantly of all, yours truly!” Mettaton rocked from side to side as he spoke into his microphone before he turned his right side slightly towards Pinkie. With a flick of his left hand a small rectangular piece of metal with a red button appeared in it. “Sorry, but I don’t want to share the stage with more than one opponent! So we’ll get back to you girls later. Don’t worry; everything is being recorded for posterity! It’ll just be shown after the magnificent performance me and Pinkie are going to put on.”

With a single movement the button was pressed, Mettaton and Pinkie shot upwards as the slightly raised platform became a pillar that was raising them high up into the air through a hole in the ceiling. A hole that was quickly sealing itself shut on the pillar.

“Pinkie, don’t worry I’ll…!” Muffet was going to run forward to start climbing the pillar, only to jump back as a chakram slammed into the floor before her. It created a skittering noise as it rotated against the metal floor.

“You got in my way… I will make you pay for that.” Red looked calm as she pulled the chakram back into her cloak and unsheathed her sword which she held in her left hand. The distraction let the hole completely seal off.

“So you want to dance? Well I would love to now Miss Rider, I hope you’re decent or this will be boring.” Letting off a dark enchanting chuckle, Muffet held upper her left hand up to the air as she faced down Red in the right side of the room from the entrance she came through. “I would like some music if you will please. Something with a nice beat. If this is being recorded, I might as well put on a good show. You’re about to find out why they call me Mad, because I get that way when anyone attacks my friends or kin. Now what type of monster are you exactly? Let’s find out shall we?”

With a snap of the fingers on her upper left hand, Madeline Muffet caused the music to start up.

(Undertale Red Fangame pacifist theme plays)

“Right then, I’ll show you why they call me Bloody Red!”With a swish of her cape, Red charged forward and slashed her sword rapidly at Muffet who started backpedaling towards the wall. The room was large enough to fight in and the only obstacle was the large pillar taking up the middle of the room.

Frantically ducking horizontal slashes and weaving between the vertical slashes that came at her with a cheeky smile on her face, Muffet kept her five eyes half open for any tricks. She saw one coming when Red jumped back and threw her right hand forward. Madeline managed to bend her body backwards at the waist flowing down to bending backwards with her knees.

Right as the horizontal spinning chakram passed over her highly flexible torso, she bent further back and planted her four upper arms on the floor for stability as she kicked out her legs and snapped her feet together on the rope. With a vicious little smile that turned nastier, she twisted her right foot back and her left foot forward.

The chakram swung around aiming at Red’s neck, Red reacted quickly not letting her shock stop her from narrowly dodging her own chakram with a backwards leap, it still nicked her neck causing a small splatter of blood as it flew past her, Muffet had released her hold on the rope at that point. The chakram continued on to slam into the right hand wall making a loud noise before it retracted back towards Red.

Still in the middle of her jump, Red felt a slight tugging sensation causing her to quickly shift her view downwards to the two bits of webbing clinging to the bottom of her boots.

The web lines led back to Muffet’s two lower arms, with a harsh jerk Red slammed to the floor harshly stunning her. Muffet was quickly on her feet and twisting the two lines of webbing together before gripping it with all of her arms. She heaved to the left, sending Red bodily towards the pillar. She ran to the left towards the entrances as she swung Red to put more force behind the attack.

Red quickly slashed away the bit of webbing from her boots with her sword and rotated in the air to plant her boots on the pillar. She kicked off while sheathing her sword and threw her arms forward. This time two rotating chakrams flew out at Muffet from underneath the cloak.

All five of Muffet’s eyes widened as she dodged the first chakram to the left, the second one cut a small furrow through her right cheek. While placing a bit of webbing over the wound with a quick swipe of her lower left arm, she smirked and grabbed the two ropes with her middle arms and slammed the chakrams into the ground to make them stop spinning, Red swiftly tossed two round objects which bounced towards her.

Red watched as Muffet quickly released her hold of the two ropes allowing her to reel the chakrams back in. The spider dealt with the grenades in this enclosed area by webbing them with all six arms at once, three arms working on each grenade. The webbing was destroyed in the ensuing explosions, but Muffet had ultimately managed to render the grenades harmless. This tactic did give Red a chance to charge forward for another attack, she couldn’t let Muffet get a hold of her ropes again.

“Enough of warming up, let’s see how you handle my cross slashes!” Red started with a single horizontal swing of her sword. Muffet ducked under it, only to scream when a gash appeared in her left shoulder which was swiftly webbed up by her middle right arm as she dodge backwards avoiding Red’s angled slash. Red followed with a vertical slash and Muffet rolled to the left avoiding the horizontal swipe that came with it. “I would say you came to this fight unarmed, but you still have five too many!”

Muffet narrowed her eyes and ducked again as Red swung in the opposite angle and saw what was going on, this monster was really good with that sword of hers… only now it was useless because she understood how the attack works. She had yet to figure what kind of monster Red was.

Red sheathed her sword and launched four chakrams this time, Muffet leapt backwards and started to move to the side. Only for the chakrams to spread out and block her from moving to either the left or right, the sharp spinning metal discs hung horizontally in the air on either side of Muffet who had her back to the wall. The reason why Red didn’t immediately close the chakrams in on Muffet was because she’d be able move out of the way in time.

With that thought in mind Red charged forward to block Muffet’s only obvious avenue of egress while reeling in the chakrams to keep them hovering in place as she leapt forward. She quickly brought out and held her sword in a reverse grip with both hands; she was prepared to jam it straight into this nuisance’s heart. She looked down upon the frightened spider monster as she closed in with her blade; only a quick flash of a devilish smirk was any warning that Red had that something was wrong with this situation and that she was forgetting something important.

Muffet had her four lower arms pressed against the left wall of the room, ready to move in case the chakrams did close in on her and she put on her best look of false fear. Red wasn’t wrong in the respect that Muffet would have been capable of escaping her chakrams as the spider had planned for that, but when Red personally charged her, Muffet couldn’t help but wonder if they were handing out faulty brains the day Red was born.

The sword was a second from impact when Muffet curled the right side of her mouth up into the smirk. With a single push of all four of her arms, her body shot upwards and the cutlass styled sword made a loud pinging noise as the tip of it stuck into the wall and the look on Red’s face was priceless. Well, that was until the heel of Muffet’s left boot connected harshly with her forehead. Rolling forward as she planted her heel into Red’s skull, she kicked off the back of Red’s back with her right foot while pulling her hood down with an arm as she kicked.

Red slammed bodily into the wall making her chakrams fall to the floor limply, she also dropped her sword which was quickly pulled away by a line of webbing and swiftly encased in a corner against the ceiling. Red slowly stood up and was incredibly dazed by the blow to her skull, she had lost her sword and upon turning around saw that Muffet was sitting high up on the pillar giving her an insufferable smile while bobbing her head to the music. It took her a moment to really feel the agonizing pain erupting from her forehead and back. Reaching up with a hand, it came away drenched in blood.

“My, what a pretty face you had there… I think I’ve almost figured out what kind of monster you are.” Muffet watched as Red take notice of her injury. She decided to answer Red’s unasked question as she stared at the injured, if still beautiful, monster before her. “My boots have bladed heels, just be glad I didn’t hit you in the back of the head with them.”

Red immediately threw up her hands and hundreds of grey strings raced out of her body, it was a grey soul attack and there were quite a few of them all rushing into Muffet. With a flash all the grey lines that harmlessly punctured Muffet’s body started to turn white starting from Red’s position.

A purple field of energy exploded from Muffet filling the entire room for what seemed like three seconds and it appeared to have nullified Red’s attack entirely as soon as it ended.

“Oh so that’s what you are, a puppet monster! I’ve always wanted one of you for my very own!” Muffet giggled gaily and then she gave the puppet monster a smile. Said smile chilled the room by twenty degrees as her fives eyes took on a more seductive look. Her lilting voice carried throughout the room, it was easily heard over the slowly quieting music. “I’m done dancing now. You’re very nice to look at, I do so hope that Mistress Pie let’s me keep you. Why, I think I can even train you to be one of her most loyal servants!”

Red shivered uncontrollably and tried to launch another attack only to find she couldn’t move nor could she launch any of her attacks at all. She watched as Muffet lifted her wounded arm and flicked the air and slowly the entire room started to fill with shimmering threads… all of it was webbing. A look of horror crossed Red’s face; she felt her hair shift out of the way of her rose colored eyes as Muffet seemed to have crossed the room in a single blink to look into her soul.

“Now it’s play time.”

(End music.)

Pinkie looked down and saw that they were high up in the air; she backed away from the edge and turned to Mettaton.

“Worried about your friend… well you should be more worried about yourself beautiful. After all once I get your soul, I can go to the surface and become a shooting star!” Mettaton’s screen showed a smiling yellow star on it.

“Really, wouldn’t that be really cold or hot? Well it would depend on your orbit or how close you got to the sun I guess, well unless you were a sun yourself which would count as a shooting star because of how it moves through the universe and how others perceive it’s movement.” Pinkie wondered what Mettaton would look like shooting through space at high velocity and giggled slightly at the image it presented. Mettaton having a solar system literally revolving around him was a pretty silly image.

“Not that kind of star cutie, now let’s pop that adorable soul of yours like a cherry so I can attack it to the point of separating it from your body.” With but a flick of his hand Mettaton had pulled Pinkie’s soul from her body. “With it I can leave this Underworld and carry out my dreams!”

Now would be a good time for Pinkie to ‘remember the switch on his back that Undyne talked about earlier’, because Mettaton would be really hard to beat without her flipping it and draining his battery. Pinkie glanced at the air and nodded.

“Hey look, a mirror that doesn’t represent you in it!” Pinkie pointed behind Mettaton and a question mark appeared on his screen. Despite the obvious fact that they were too high up for a mirror to be anywhere near them, he still fell for it.

“What, a mirror that doesn’t have me in it? That is sacrilege; every mirror I look into should show my wonderful appearance!” Mettaton immediately spun around revealing a comically large switch that had the words ‘turned on’ and ‘sexually inactive’ written above it; it was currently set to the latter. He continued to search around for the evil mirror that didn’t show his wonderful visage.

For the life of her Pinkie really didn’t want to flip that switch. She really didn’t want to be responsible for what was going to happen when she did. Not having any other option in beating Mettaton, she quickly slapped her hoof against the switch making it flip to ‘turned on’.

“Do I really have to do that, really? I mean come on! Even I’m finding this to be a little bit too ridiculous and that’s coming from someone like me!” Pinkie was not interested in Mettaton in quite that way and was refusing to follow what the story had already stated her as doing. She was giving the air a no nonsense look when she was generally all for nonsense. “Nope, not doing it and that’s final, I don’t want to be the one responsible for turning him on!”

As she gestured at the air with her right hoof, Pinkie was incidentally close enough to Mettaton and had smacked the switch to the left anyway. Any complaint she probably had about having to progress the story in this manner were now entirely pointless as it was happening whether she liked it or not.

“I’m angry now, this is my angry face.” Speaking in a flat tone, Pinkie gave an equally flat stare to the audience as Mettaton swiftly spun around to face her. Since Pinkie couldn’t take it out on the air like the insane equine that she was, she would probably ‘take it out on Mettaton’.

“Did you flip just my switch...” Mettaton started vibrating violently while holding up his hands to the side of his box like body where his head would be. Then a bright flash blinded the pony and in a moaning voice Mettaton said. “Oh~ yes~, that’s the stuff honey!”

When Pinkie blinked the spots out of her eyes, she bore witness to a much more different Mettaton than before under two dissipating fog and two bright spotlights. He was now humanoid with a pink chest plate, boots and a heart at the center of his torso. The rest of his clothing was black and tight fitting appearance that covered his legs and most of his upper torso, with shoulder pads which spiked out slightly from his shoulders. He has short black hair that hung down in the front and his bare midriff, arms and face were all a brighter metallic grey and he was still wearing his white gloves from his previous form. His eyes opened to reveal sharp dark purple orbs that looked down on Pinkie Pie.

A large screen appeared nearby showing the ratings and things were starting to pick up, a silver metallic looking soul flew out of Mettaton’s body.

Toriel came out of her memories upon seeing Pinkie face down Mettaton.
-

(Death By Glamour, Undertale plays.)

“I hope you’re ready, because we’re going to be absolutely gorgeous together before I end you!” Mettaton said with a smile as he looked down on Pinkie. “Now where are my back-up dancers?”

A bunch of Mini-Mettaton’s floated in on little umbrella’s holding bombs and laser guns only to be blown up within seconds as Tsunderplane flew by dropping explosives on all of them. Tsunderplane had Pinkie’s back even though she didn’t want to get too close to it, she’d keep the Mini-Mettatons away.

“Darn/Thank you Tsunderplane!” Two voices shouted out simultaneously.

“Right then, we’ll settle this in a dance fight!” Mettaton kicked out with his right leg nearly catching Pinkie in the chin. He then tried to stomp down on her head or neck, only to miss again as Pinkie rolled to the side and came up onto her rear hooves with her Temmie armor quickly transforming into a flattering black sequin dress and she quickly shucked her saddlebags to set off to the side. Mettaton didn’t give chase instead he struck several poses where he stood and then moved back before motioning Pinkie forward.

Pinkie threw her hooves out and did a twirl before she performed a ‘Floor Sweeper’. After she was done she spun and held out her right hoof to Mettaton while backing off slightly.

Mettaton responded by doing slow jerking movements where he hung his arm out and it swung a bit before he twirled stiffly and slowly strode forward in a mechanical manner, obviously doing his rendition of ‘The Robot’ ironically before he went into a handstand. He then fell onto his back where he started twirling around with and then he stopped on his side with a hand propped up on under his chin. He had a quaint smile directed at Pinkie before he hopped up onto his feet and pointed to Pinkie with both hands and stepped back.

Pinkie strutted out to the center of the floor shaking her butt, she twirled and came to a stop giving a shy smile as she held her ponytail in both hooves before she went into performing a ‘Melbourne Shuffle’, shifted to ‘Jumpstyle’ dance throwing her hooves out and bringing them in rhythmically. She went into a ‘Techtonik’ style in a series of impressive hoof twirls and bouncing crouches that looked rough for a pony to do. She followed it up with a retreating ‘Can Can’ while flopping her right hoof forward and back in a manner looking like she was waving goodbye, before motioning with her left hoof for Mettaton’s Turn.

Mettaton stalked forward boldly and then promptly proceeded to drop into a ‘Windmill’, he stopped and laid prone on his back before he performed a ‘Kip-Up’ and immediately went into a ‘Two-Step’. He hopped forward onto his hands and kicked his feet out performing a 'Donkey Kick' and then pushed off into a standing position. He took two steps forward and performed a spinning hook kick and after he landed from it he performed a back flip and started back away from Pinkie looking to her with his right arm sparking slightly.

Pinkie shifted left and right masterfully as she shuffled forward and she looked to be having fun doing it too, before she went into a ‘Criss Cross Step’ to the right and then to the left while slowly waving both her hooves up in air in the direction she was moving, looking almost like she was going to do a fusion dance.

The pony stopped and then slowly sauntered away from Mettaton with her eyes closed, her dress sparkling brilliantly on stage. She was bopping her head to the music and shifting her hips to the beat, strutting her stuff on two hooves before she turned back and pointed at him with her right hoof, putting her left on her hip, all while giving him and the cameras a cute wink with a broad smile.

“Oh my goodness, some pony somewhere is being absolutely FABULOUS, EEEEE!” Rarity screamed causing any nearby pony close to the boutique to look at it as if there was a murder going on.

Mettaton marched forward and then spun around to face away from Pinkie and then started to ‘Moonwalk’ towards her, before he kicked out his left leg and pirouetted twice and then stomped down to perform a ‘Shimmy’ before doing a simple shuffle in place while stretching to the left and then to the right. He finished off by raising his left hand high into the air wobbling his arm and putting his right on his nose and slowly wobbling his way to his knee’s before he performed a left-right split. He brought himself out of the split into standing position with a downwards push of both his arms and sliding his legs back together. As he walked back out of the center he pointed over his left shoulder with his right arm while looking back to Pinkie and gave her a cool looking nod, if he had sunglasses it would have been better.

As Mettaton waited for Pinkie to take the floor some sparks started shooting out of his left shoulder which he grabbed with a frown. Proceeding to look at the ratings, he saw that they were constantly on the rise and didn’t look to be stopping anytime soon, he couldn’t stop the show now even if he was slowly breaking down from pushing his body and on top of that his battery was running down fast.

Pinkie sauntered forward and slowly fell to her side where it looked like she had like a seizure, then she started flopping on her side like a fish with her mouth firmly set into an O shape. She rolled onto her belly and started doing The Worm in a tight circle, after which she arched her back and kicked off with her hind legs into a headstand where she spun fifteen times, her tail glittering as it fanned out while she twirled, she ended her head spin by flip twisting onto her two rear hooves.

She put both her hooves alongside her face vertically and then horizontally above and below her eyes, before she slowly drew the back of her left hoof across her face and then her right hoof all while shifting her head back and forth. She turned to the left and thrust her right hip at Mettaton and slapped her flank twice with her right hoof, before giving the camera’s a sultry look as she slowly ran her left hoof up the back of her head.

Toriel, having seen this, felt she had some blood dribbling from her nose and she didn’t understand why. Pinkie did look really nice out there though.

Pinkie stayed where she was and motioned Mettaton forward.

Mettaton nodded and moved out on to the dance floor, yet didn’t attack Pinkie and then miraculously he and Pinkie started to perform ‘The Perfect Cast’ at the same time. Following that particularly hard to perform maneuver, they proceeded to put their left limbs to their hips and then pointed to the left at the floor with their right limbs before raising them high to point straight up and to the right, they did this several times.

They rolled their hand/hooves around each other and then thrust them to the left and then after rolling them again to the right. They started leaning forward while looking at each other with a smile and bouncing their butts up and down. They both flipped their hair and then did the ‘Wild Monkey’ together tottering back and forth from footing to footing as they wildly moved their arms up and down, after that they took a step back and bowed to the cameras watching them and then they broke out laughing at how they ended their fight.

(End Music.)

That was when Mettaton’s arms fell off and then his legs broke down and also fell off his torso after leaving it sitting upright on the floor. His joints sparked weakly and he chuckled, he saw Pinkie’s soul hugging his own in a friendly manner above them before they went back to their respective bodies.

Pinkie shifted her black dress back into its skirt form and went to pick up her saddlebags where she left them before moving back over to Mettaton.

“… I’ll take some calls now…” Mettaton stated quietly as Pinkie moved up to look him in the eyes with worry as he opened up the cell phone line in his head.

“Are you okay Mettaton… that looked like it hurt. Also you really know how to party!” Pinkie sat down next to Mettaton who opened his mouth and coughed up a remote with a large blue button.

“P-Press t-that-that button; it’ll l-lower our dance floor back to the room with y-your-your-your friend.” Mettaton started stuttering and his voice sparked oddly here and there, the pony did so and they were on their way back down. “I’ll be okay once Alphys fixes the damage and recharges my batteries, yes first caller?”

As Pinkie listened to Mettaton talk to an overly excited Papyrus, she turned her head and saw Muffet all roughed up sitting against the wall with three arms around a very pale faced looking Red.

“What happened to her and you?” Pinkie asked as she vaguely heard Mettaton talking to Napstablook behind her.

“She’s my new special friend, that’s what!” Muffet looked rather giddy in a most evil manner as possible as she leaned her head to rub against Red’s unchanging horrified visage. “Also nothing a little medical attention couldn’t fix.”

Author's Note

Madeline 'Mad' Muffet, you're scary.

The Melbourne Shuffle, Jumpstyle and Techtonik mixed together equals... the 'Mister Six' dance.

'The Perfect Cast' is from The Goofy Movie.

The Monkey is standing in place squatting up and down while moving your arms up and down vertically, 'Wild Monkey' has you shifting from one foot to the other while waving your arms in a wild up and down swaying manner.

35 - Date: Pinkie

(Music from Chrono Trigger, Delightful Spekkio.)

“So… enjoy that?” Toriel looked down at the spider monster melting into the floor with a smile on her face, she looked up to see Pinkie already taking charge of the ‘everything party’. She was organizing every monster

“Yes, you’re a really lucky monster.” Muffet stayed on the floor where she was in complete bliss, but came to a realization as to who she said this to. Her smile dropped slightly at the frown she was getting. “You’re not angry about that are you?”

“No, I’m angry that you think I’m lucky. To start my parents died when I was young. The guy I once loved is a complete idiot in helping things degrade to where we monsters are now and though he is kind, he’s not really that good as a leader. I’ve lost my children; one of them twice because the first time they were kidnapped by humans, given it was an orphaned human child I had adopted it was entirely understandable. That started off the war that harmed a lot of monsters and how we came to be stuck down here, so a lot of that is my fault. Oh, but that isn’t the entirety of my woes, I’m beginning to think I’m a black cat to others. Everything always literally goes to hell around me and I was the one who created the Hot Lands! You can’t get closer to a representation of hell than something I once did in anger with my magic.” Toriel had to vent because at this point she was expecting Pinkie to die in some horrific manner and was absurdly happy that she hasn’t. Hopefully it would never come to pass, but the Mad Dummy thing had raised a lot of little red flags in Toriel’s mind. They have had a heck of a time getting this far without serious injury, barring her hip and Pinkie’s temporary knife wound. Thank goodness for Temmie Armor having healing properties. “I’m lucky to have met Pinkie, yes, but my life itself is a conga line of horrible tragedies. I think it kind of comes with the territory of being an ageless immortal.”

“Ouch… yeah… sorry I brought it up, but you’re seriously not upset about Pinkie kissing me like that?” Muffet tilted her head curiously as she looked up at Toriel from the floor while crossing her arms.

“Not really, Pinkie is Pansexual. I will never get in the way of how she chooses to express herself to others as only she can limit herself, she’ll love who she wants to regardless of appearance, sex or even species. I’m not going to try and change that.” It was an easy concept for Toriel to understand that Pinkie’s heart may wander, but it was big enough to always have a special place for anyone she comes to love dearly. It reflected in the appearance of Pinkie’s soul pretty well. She watched as the pink pony blazed around the room at a party that was meant mostly for her sake and instead of making it all about herself, she was busy trying to make sure it was about everyone else. Pinkie Pie was a rather selfless individual and trying to make sure there wasn’t a frown in sight. “I honestly feel that I don’t even deserve to be dating her, where many would see the reverse because I’m still considered a queen. I find it hard that she can even love a monster like me sometimes. I even have problems accepting that I’m considered beautiful by her and many others, much less figure out why monsters can still look up to me like they do. I know she prefers to do romantic thing with one being at a time, so stop thinking about a threesome and get that look off your face Madeline.”

“Way to bring down the giddy thoughts Tori. If anything, nobody seems to blame you for all the bad things that have happened around you and being adorably charming helps.” A slightly irate Muffet commented using Pinkie’s nickname for her. “A threesome is a rather nice mental image, though admittedly I was actually thinking of an orgy. By the way, the only alcohol at this party is tequila and it’s mostly reserved for the monsters who are family of the monster amalgamates.”

“You really have no shame do you?” Toriel saw the grin and six thumbs up coming from the raised arms, she rolled her eyes. “It figures. So long as Pinkie stays sober, I don’t care what else happens here and things seem pretty tame so far.”

“Yessssss, it’ssssh… er… tame… shtill looks likes a goods partehhhsss seniorita!” The flame headed figure walking over to them immediately had Muffet up and across the room in as long as it took Toriel to blink as she was now face to face with a tequila drinking Flame Face. He wavered around a bit, as is the manner that many have become accustomed to whenever he was around.

“Excuse him, he’s always like this. I’m here to make sure he doesn’t harm any of the guests at this party. Let him have as much tequila as he wants, it’ll likely keep him from getting violent. If he does get violent then I Tostada, Guardian of The Mask, will stop him!” Tostada was here and she immediately did a floating pose that had a fanfare played by the three conjoined skeletons and their friend Pedro in the background. She was wearing bandages, a pink mask and a skirt this time instead of the strange chicken suit.

“That’s nice. Just keep him out of trouble and make sure his guns are empty for everyone’s sake.” Receiving a stiff nod from the stiff, Toriel turned back to the party and wheeled her way over to a table.

“Oh right, I forgot to get you a slice of cake too Tori! Here you go.” Pinkie zipped up to her and dropped a slice of cake on a plate in front of Toriel, along with a requisite plastic fork to eat it with.

Before the pony could run off, Toriel reached out and grabbed her tail and got a good tight grip on it. Pinkie spent the next few seconds running in place much to Toriel’s amusement that she wasn’t being toppled or pulled out of the wheelchair by Pinkie’s need to please others.

“Pinkie…” Toriel’s tone made the pony stop and look back at Toriel. “Sit down with me; you’re all over the place. I think my mare friend needs to relax a little, everything is okay.”

Pinkie crawled up to sit down in Toriel’s lap and a second slice of cake was placed before them by a smiling Muffet.

“Yes, let me and the others take care of things. This is an ‘Everything Party’; we’re celebrating all that we can here. Celebrating what we all still have and the good memories we carry.” A jovial Muffet stated as she walked away pour some drinks and brought them back to the two. “You should be celebrating your wonderful goat friend; to think she’s being a bit moody at such a wonderful party. Look around and just bask in it Mistress Pie.”

Basking was what Pinkie did, as she looked to a table to see the Undyne’s four knights had made it out of the core alright. Gyftrot was being followed around by the antlered Temmie Trot. First Mate Temmie was getting cozy against a Vulkin who was managing to control his heat levels to tolerable temperatures.

The music playing in the background was calming and beautiful especially when the flute got going, it was being played professionally by Napstablook. Onion-san was there playing the drums, shaking some maracas and flicking a tambourine rhythmically. Shyren was humming to the cheery tune, while playing a xylophone. Helping the eel like Argent with the other musical instruments was Clam Girl who also hummed along; Argent was using his tongue to play his instrument.

There were monsters gathered around the monster amalgamates reuniting with lost family despite the state that said family members were in now, the monsters would not shy away from what became of their family members. Mr. Drake was having a tearful reunion with his wife no matter what she looked like. The spiders had miniature party cannons blasting confetti in their corner of the room and quite a few of them were stumbling about in drunken eight legged dances.

Many a monster was getting a slice of cake or enjoying the good food present and making new friends on their own merit, Tsunderplane was surprisingly a highly social animal when she wasn’t being shy. One could see Kid trying to carry his cake with his tail and ended up eventually face planting into it by accident with a hum of appreciation for the taste; he didn’t mind the laughter he caused as he too was laughing with everyone. He swiped his tongue across his face to get at the frosting on his mouth.

There wasn’t anything bad happening at this party, though there were some tears from the monster amalgamates and their families. Toriel leaned into Pinkie and nuzzled the top of her head as Muffet dropped off two refills for them; she was now wearing a waitress costume and was smiling as she went right on by them.

“These are the kind of things I dream of Pinkie, everyone being able to stop for a moment and just simply enjoy things. If you want to help with the party go right ahead, but I’d prefer it if you stick by my side unless an emergency comes up.” A content Toriel didn’t get much of a response from Pinkie, until the pony smacked the edge of her plate with a hoof and swallowed the airborne slice whole. The pink pony followed this up by turning around swallowing slightly and kissing Toriel, which she followed up by carefully forcing some cake into her mouth before pulling back.

“The cake is really good; I just thought that you would like to try some before we continued our conversation.” The affectionate words rolled right off of Pinkie’s sugar coated tongue as she took a drink and leaned back into Toriel’s embrace. “Besides I’m happy right where I am.”

“Good. You know it’s kind of strange that things could turn out so well. You know most of my life and my story. I know a lot about you too and I have to say I will never regret coming with you on this adventure.” As Toriel held out her hand, Pinkie took it into her hoof and kissed the back of it before giving it a good strong grip while looking her in the eyes in a loving manner. The goat lady just couldn’t help but comment. “You’re so sweet that I think I’m getting cavities.”

“Then I guess you’ll just have to floss and brush after every kiss with me to avoid that.” A serious faced Pinkie intoned before they both burst into giggles together.

“There’s not much we don’t know about each other now, so there’s not much talking to do I guess.” Toriel rubbed at her slightly longer white hair hanging down the back of her neck and tried to think of something to say To Pinkie. The pony was a cheery spot in a still somewhat dark, but entirely less dreary world. “Maybe you can tell me about the parties you’ve been to before or tell me a funny anecdote. Aside from that all I want to hear you say is this, I love you.”

“I love you too Tori! So do you want to hear this story about the bathtubs and paints store back home?” If there was one thing Pinkie was good at, it was telling a story about the weird wonderful world she came from. In particular about a store near the one that specifically sold quills and sofas, which was also incidentally near the one that sold toilets and kitchen sinks. Ponies had weird specialty stores.

It had been an hour into the party and Toriel was red in the face with laughter, she wouldn’t be surprised if Pinkie were trying to ultimately kill her with laughter. At least she could say she would have died happy. Pinkie didn’t know much about being the ‘Element of Laughter’, but she knew how to make anyone laugh and smile.

“And I never looked at oatmeal the same way twice, though I never quite understood how I ended up with that bag of shelled pistachios in the end.” Pinkie paused here and the monsters leaned in to hear what else she was going to say. “So you can say that things were just… plain nuts!”

Toriel laughed so hard she bleated and was forced to cover her mouth in embarrassment; she looked at the pony and couldn’t help but find her face trying to mirror the smile her favorite equine had as she waggled her eyebrows while looking at her, the other monsters around were in quite a jovial at hearing some of Pinkie’s random tales.

“Hey, why did you stop bleating Tori? I think it’s cute when you do that!” Pinkie made Toriel duck her head in embarrassment; she had been getting a lot of bleats out of Toriel and enjoyed how cute it sounded.

“Okay, that’s enough stories for now Pinkie. If you will all please kindly give me the opportunity to talk to my mare friend?” All the monsters surrounding Toriel and Pinkie groaned sadly and started to go after the snacks and drinks again. A giggling Muffet stayed behind and nodded to them before moving away to refill their drinks.

Seeing that the monsters were leaving the anthropomorphic goat and the pony to their own devices, Toriel finally decided to ask for some help in her hips recovery.

“Pinkie, can you pull up the Temmie Armor so I can check your body? I intend to sleep in it so I’ll be all better when I wake up. I just want to make sure that taking it off won’t hurt you.” Doing as Toriel asked, Pinkie lifted up magically armored shirt to her neck. Toriel reached out and started check Pinkie’s body, all while ignoring the giggles the pony gave off when she touched her more sensitive spots. “It should be okay to take off Pinkie; the hotel has air conditioning so you should be fine. Now if only we had someone who could help me out of my robes.”

“Then your hip would be all better!” The joyous smile on Pinkie’s face was infectious as it was hopeful; she stopped hopping place for a moment as a frown crossed her face. “But where are we going to get the help from?”

“Did someone say they needed help?” Approaching the two Muffet looked like she was ready to offer them any help they could conceivably need.

“Yeah, we have to get my Temmie Armor on Tori so she can heal and be all better.” Pinkie crawled up into Toriel’s lap and rubbed her face against her goat friends.

“Then I’ll call the girls over to help you out. Threep and Fourlette owe us and they really want to make it up to you. Knight Knight is still asleep by the way, so no worries there.” Muffet went off to find the tiger and mantis monsters, they certainly wouldn’t say no when it came to helping Toriel. “I’ll be right back.”

“You know Tori, this is the happiest I’ve been since I got stuck down here.” The party was over with and the games had been played; a lot of the food and drink had been consumed in merriment. Pinkie was a little upset that she didn’t even get to help in the clean up because all the other monsters were doing that together already, monsters coming together to help one another was at an all time high.

“I’m glad for that Pinkie, being with you is the happiest I’ve been in a long time too.” Toriel leaned back and winced slightly at the twinge in her hip, but that quickly went away thanks to the Temmie Armor. The magical armor had a really good magical pain killer effect and it was really comfortable, it had even taken on the shape of one of her colorful robes and was bright pink. “This armor is really comfortable.”

“Yeah well they certainly know how to make good stuff like that.” Pinkie spoke of them and at least one would appear, First Mate Temmie hopped up to rub up against the two in a friendly manner before running off to do something random. Gyftrot was still trying to avoid Temmie Trot from getting under his hooves and was failing to get away from the adorable kit-dog-doe who was affectionate with him.

“Pinkie… what will happen when you leave? To go back home, I mean. Where will that leave us?” It was time to ask the hard questions and Toriel knew Pinkie didn’t think about things too hard unless she was forced to.

“Well I was kind of hoping you could come with me to see Equestria and everything… but I know you will probably have more important things to do such as breaking the barrier down and taking care of your people. We’ll try to cross that bridge together when we come to it.” Pinkie felt a hand immediately start kneading her right ear and she leaned into it. “I really don’t want that bridge to burn down Tori.”

“That’s awfully mature of my little childish mare; at least you understand that our relationship might not be able to continue on. It’ll break my heart as well if we were to be separated after sharing an adventure filled with fond memories like this one.” Sighing Toriel wrapped her left hand around Pinkie and started rubbing her belly getting a squeak out of the adorable mare. “No matter how much the two of us might want to always be friends or something more, we’re frightfully close to hitting the end of our journey. I just hope things can be resolved peacefully... I just know Asgore is going to attack you for your soul.”

“Yeah well, he’ll have to through me first.” Both pony and goat monster jumped at hearing Red speak up as she came up to them. “Allow me to help you and your girlfriend to your room milady.”

“Ditto, I’m not letting some muscle headed goat hurt Mistress Pie. He’ll have to go through us.” Muffet didn’t like the idea of the king hurting Pinkie and would stand tall in his path if he was set on hurting her. Red seemed to even give her a look of acknowledgment for her statement.

“Heck throw my name into the hat. Even if I’m still injured, I can summon spears!” Undyne was wheeled over by Alphys. Her shoulder was almost better given she was able to move that arm again, but her leg was still a few days off from healing to a usable status.

“We would like to help too~! Shyren sang out as she and Nasptablook approached, both the floating monsters looked happy. Behind her was one of the amalgamate monsters, one that apparently had her sister fused in there along with her personal agent that was Argent’s cousin. “Just tell us when and we’ll be there for you~!”

“Yeah, no one messes with my friends, you hear!” Onion-san threw in her two cents as she slowly dragged her way over to them. “Tell us when you’re ready and we’ll appear to talk him down.”

“Tem friends have Tem support!” First Mate Temmie included stretching a paw straight to the ceiling of the large room while waving it around wildly. “Especially if you give Tem more belly rubs.”

“Not today my friends, I think it’s time me and Pinkie got to cuddling in bed together. I need my rest and so does she.” Turning to the pink pony, Toriel watched as the equine gave off a long drawn out yawn. She had done a lot that day, she danced down Mettaton and went through the core and even got to enjoy a ‘monstrously’ large party. Told a lot of funny stories and even played some games with the other monsters.

Before they could get halfway back to the room Pinkie slept in with the overly huge bed, Toriel’s phone rang and she took the call. Mifty was giving her a status update of where she was, she was apparently at the start of the Waterfall area and told them to wait a little longer and to not approach Asgore before she met up with them.

“Brrr… something is really wrong with this place, it’s colder than Snowdin… there’s a foulness in the air here that I can’t describe as I’ve never felt anything quite like it. I’m not sticking around to find out what’s causing it. Anyway, I’ll quickly pass on through with some friends and we’ll be there as soon as we can.” Mifty looked around and felt that something bad was nearby and quickly hopped across the flowers with her friends in tow, she felt like she was getting further away from that cold feeling as she entered the swamp portion of the Waterfall. “I got a surprise in store for you when we meet up; do you have anything to add Queen Toriel?”

“Yes, we’ll meet you at Napstablook's house in a day from now; try to make a stop at Temmie Village as they have a nice hotel in a cracked wall. Apparently we’ll be having marshmallows that day while burning down Undyne’s house… I really don’t know why they are going to burn down her house.” With a defeated sigh Toriel decided to wrap up the conversation. “I still can’t believe she’s okay with it. Anyway, we’ll see you then.”

As they lay down in bed together Toriel held Pinkie close to her, the Temmie Armor was knitting her hip back together and she’d likely be able to walk in the morning. Toriel needed a little help getting into bed, but with Pinkie there on the big soft mattress it was a heavenly feeling.

“Tori…” Pinkie mumbled in her sleep as she dug her face into Toriel’s neck. “I want to be with you, I don’t want to go away.”

“It’s alright Pinkie, I want to be with you too.” She whispered into the pony’s ear and it flicked against her nose and she could feel Pinkie smiling against her fur, lifting her head Toriel kissed the pony good night on the lips with a little tongue thrown in before bringing the pony’s sighing happy face back to her neck. “Unfortunately I don’t think I’m going to be that lucky, but maybe you’re lucky enough for the both of us. Things never turn out well around me and I fear what that will do to you. If nothing bad happens, then I’m grateful to whatever higher power sees fit to let me have this one good thing... for however long it may last.”

Author's Note

Now there is a battle that's coming up and Pinkie is going to need a lot of healing items... of which she doesn't have on her, so thank goodness for Temmie Armor right? Well, Temmie Armor can't exactly stop or protect you against some things.

The next chapter involves Undyne's house burning down... on purpose... with combustible lemons... containing napalm juice. There is no way that I can make any of that sound even remotely serious or reasonable.

My family member is going to have that stent removed soon, after that things 'should' be better.

36 - Shaky Prospects

Toriel mumbled something about tambourines tasting like tangerines as she woke up a day later with her hip in a much better condition. Her current location, she was in bed with Pinkie sleeping on her naked chest under the covers. Yesterday had been quite fun and somewhat educational, given that they learned the Temmie Armor works to heal even while the wearer sleeps. She was capable of walking again and the Temmie Armor went to Undyne before they all went to sleep again.

She stayed where she was as she watched Pinkie snoring away on top of her, cuddling against her warm body. Nothing was more comfortable than snuggling Pinkie in bed and Toriel was not about to remove her right arm wrapped tightly around the pony’s body. Her left hand was in the midst of caressing Pinkie’s head, neck and mane as she thought about yesterday; it was a day for relaxing at the hotel that Pinkie and Muffet owned.

Muffet continued to be an obsessively generous nutcase and Red was a little less than happy to be near the spider’s countenance. They had spent the day doing things around the hotel by themselves. Toriel and Pinkie talked with monsters passing through in the lobby and held fun conversations; a lot of monsters were passing through as Pinkie was something of an interesting attraction. There was a small kerfuffle with a kangaroo monster named SoSor Ray, it was quickly pointed out to him that there was in fact no art meeting going on at the time and that he was causing a ruckus with his living art doodles. After that Pinkie befriended him and he was on his way to do other things instead of making a nuisance of himself.

Yesterday had been generally quiet; it had Toriel wondering if today could be like that. Considering they were burning down a house and meeting up with Mifty with whatever she was bringing to the table, it wasn’t likely. She thought that the situation was entirely silly, but who was she to stop Undyne and Pinkie? Not to mention the fact that they were going to make snacks near what would be the burning house in question.

Toriel just shook her head, she was going to indulge in the insanity and keep careful watch over Pinkie while she did so to make sure her mare friend didn’t get hurt. All she had to do now was wonder how the four of them were going to get there. Alphys was coming with them and Muffet was staying behind to finish some kind of project she had going on. Red was going to be watching the laboratory with Gyftrot and the monster amalgamates while Alphys was gone. Kid had long since wandered off after the party, who knows when he would pop up again.

“Pinkie…” Toriel gentle patted the pretty peppy ponies head. The pony just tightened her grip against Toriel’s chest digging her body further in against the fluffy warmth Toriel provided. The pony was like a cuddly little tick and Toriel couldn’t help but enjoy the affection she was receiving through sleepy nuzzles. “It’s time to wake up.”

“Five more minutes…” Pinkie mumbled as she drowsily kissed Toriel’s cheek. Sighing, the smiling goat lady decided to acquiesce to her demand of getting five more minutes of rest.

Turning left from the elevator outside of the front entrance to the lab they were about to go down the stairs to see if their transport was waiting for them when they were stopped. The transport in question would decide on whether or not they had to walk all the way back to Waterfall’s quiet place.

“Hey, hold up guys!” Hearing Muffet shouting for them to stop caused them to wait and see what she wanted.

“Are you actually coming with us to ‘Burning House’ Muffy?” Pinkie perked up slightly as more friends meant more fun at Undyne’s, she saw Muffet visibly shudder with fear at the mention of being near something that was burning.

“No, I’ve got other things to do today Mistress Pie, but these two wanted to go with you as they want to go junk diving with Alphys. Since it’s in the area and you’re all going there anyway.” Muffet held out her upper right two arms and motioned two monsters forward, it was Catty and Bratty the best friends for life.

“Like, we want to go with you guys. It’s been too long since we’ve hung out with Alphys and now is a perfect chance to do that.” Bratty started out to be inevitably followed up by Catty.

“Yeah, we heard you were going to be in the area of the dump and we wanted to go with you big sister.” Catty followed up with a bright friendly smile. Alphys was the big sister to the two of them, even if she was no longer bigger than them. It didn’t matter to Catty; Alphys would always be the big sister.

“Well sure, but we still have to find out if the transportation is around today. It’ll mean the difference between walking and riding our way there.” Alphys was surprised when she was hugged by the two and she blushed when she noticed Undyne eyeing them. It wasn’t suspicious eyeing; it was more like eyeing in the sense if they try to go too far with Alphys, then she’ll physically rip their limbs off.

Undyne was physically up and about; the Temmie Armor could only do so much for her though and didn’t give her a new eye. Some fleshy mass did start to grow in her eye socket that still glowed ominously with magical energy, it wasn’t a working eye but it would cover up her eye hole in case her eye patch fell off and she was happy at the prospect of possibly being able to swim again without having to cover a portion of her face with a taped down sheet of plastic. She did return the armor to Pinkie saying that it definitely belonged with her and gave thanks for letting her borrow it long enough to heal up, they were now friends even if Undyne was still a somewhat aggressive.

As they moved down the stairs to see if the transportation was available, Muffet waved them off with a smile before she narrowed her eyes. The spider monster looked to the left and right and turned to a relatively large spider that moseyed up to her.

“How’s project ‘Grave Digger’ coming along?” The spider held up a sheet of paper with one of its legs for Muffet to take into her lower left hand, she turned around to walk back towards the lab looking it over as the spider fell into step with her. “We really need to step up our timetable and I don’t want Pinkie finding out about this until it’s too late for her to do anything about it. Also we have access to a laboratory to speed things up! So, shall we?”

At the bottom of the staircase the five monsters and lone pony saw a river; it was empty of transportation, for a few second at least. A strange cloaked figure rowed up to them in a large gondola that could carry eight monsters somewhat comfortably.

“Tra la la~, beware the man who speaks in hands, for he gathers his spirit from the grave from beyond the dark other lands.” The river person intoned adorably and continued on. “He grows like fungus upon that which he really shouldn’t. Avoid him as best you can, as for approaching him even I wouldn’t.”

“That’s our transport to Waterfall; we call her the River Person… mostly because she keeps forgetting that her name is Sharon Styx. She’s a bit creepy, but she’s harmless… I think… never actually seen her use any soul attacks or do anything aside from push that boat around up and down the river without pay every single day.” After a moment of pondering the cloaked figure that looked at them as she docked the boat, Alphys just had to ask. “What do you do for a living aside from drive that boat?”

“La la~ I am a mystery unto myself, de dum~ I’m resting my boat so as to stock its pantry shelf.” Sharon apparently spoke in a lackadaisically airy manner, but not the kind of Airy that the clinically insane Pinkie kept talking to. We’ll bravely default to the plot to carry on as it should. “Do doo~ with passengers I do get a lot of love, speaking truths is what I’m fond of. Heed my warnings for the approach of the man who speaks in hands. You have places to be and I will take you there for free, for I like to row. So please fill my boats shelves so we can go.”

“Man who speaks in… you don’t mean…” Toriel was about to say Wind-Ding’s name as she boarded the boat. Only for Sharon to cut her off, by changing her creepy light hearted tone by deepening it noticeably.

“Lolo~ do not speak his name for it is not to be said, for he should very well be dead. His pieces scattered all over the place, gone without a single ability for anything to trace. Why one would be unfortunate if there was involvement of teleporting between time and space, for they might be unfortunate to pick up some of his dirty grime in such a place.” Sharon continued to wait for everyone to board and once Undyne sat down, she started rowing the boat. “Stroke stroke, here we go~! Row, row, row my boat, gently as can be~! Better not tip it over, or unfriendly passengers I might see~!”

Pinkie was amused by the strangers singing and clapped her hooves; she wanted to strike up a conversation with her.

“Hello I’m Pinkie Pie, is this all you do day in and out, if so then what do you eat or when do you find the time to? Also is Sharon Styx you’re real name?” The ever curious Pinkie got an odd response to her question from River Person Sharon Styx in an ominous manner.

“Ooodalalee~ names are important for yes they get you far, for equines like yourself they are even prophetic as they often are. For the names in your species, ‘little sweet’, are always detailed to your jobs and correct. Call me River, for I hardly ever use my actual name as sharing sticks is not something that I do in that respect.” Sharon then got a bit more ominous. “Oh oh~ I do not know the ‘what’ when the shroud soon covers you, but I know in the end… you’ll be baking with two. Ho ho~ the sweet buns will turn out quite nice, but it will cause turmoil in the oven by at least twice. Hee hee~ the broken heart can mend for a task that is tall, as long as you don’t mind that it leads to an angel’s sordid fall. Know darkness is coming for you and that I eat plenty when I’m not busy rowing; the buns will eventually be glazed upon by the half dozen boxes showing. ”

“You kind of sound like that enchantress that visits Ponyville. She’s also weird and mysterious.” With those words from Pinkie they all sat in silence contemplating Sharon’s words. Even Pinkie was perplexed when she mentioned ponies having prophetic names, this was the first time she’s ever seen this monster and they had never met previously. River was a bit weird, but that that was not a bad thing. Pinkie liked weird and was exceptionally good at pulling it off personally.

They had come across the Temmie Pirates in transit, they all said hello to the snuggly belly rub hunting pirates. Aside from that the trip was entirely uneventful aside from small conversations and the lab coated lizard showing off her lemon launching system, she called it a BUSTER. It stood for Ballistics Utilizing Super Tree Extractions Rapidly and it was made in Alphy’s favorite color which was Undyne blue.

“Heehee~ here we are, I hope my services were not subpar.” River docked the boat at another staircase; after they all got off she started rowing again. “Tata~ my boat Avalon helped me get you to where you needed to be, if you need more help just wait at one of these spots and me you’ll eventually see.”

“Thanks for the ride River!” After getting off the boat and looking up the stairs Pinkie recognized the area; they were near Gerson’s shop. She immediately charged up the stairs and through the doorway to see the old turtle sitting in his spot, he smiled as he spotted Pinkie and got up to greet her.

“Oh, you’re back Pinkie, how did things go with Undyne? Did she cause you a bit of trouble? She’s quite a fearsome monster.” The old tortoise monster Gerson chuckled dryly and received a surprise when a cupcake was placed before him by Pinkie who hadn’t forgotten. “What’s this then, a new curiosity for me to explore?”

“It’s a cupcake! You eat it, but you have to unwrap it first though.” Pinkie smiled at Gerson who nodded at her hopping form.

The old coot couldn’t get to the proffered snack when he received his second visitor that day; Undyne ran in and gave him a hug.

“Well if it isn’t the salty old ‘Hammer of Justice’ himself! Hey grandpa, how are you doing? You look to be really getting up there.” Undyne smacked him on his shell with a hearty slap and the tortoise just chortled at her rudeness.

“I see you’ve made a new friend Undyne, good for you… so… how are you and…” Gerson was stopped as he saw quite a few more visitors walk in, he recognized Catty and Bratty as the two came around the area once in a while and he definitely knew Alphys. Alphys was a bit spotty in personality to Gerson, she was shy and vibrantly intelligent and the apple of Undyne’s missing eye. It seems the lizard had become a bit braver in recent times and it was good to see young folk that were obviously in love. Being the grandfather type, he couldn’t help but rib the strong willed and violent Udyne. “Oh ho, what’s this now… I see someone’s managed to finally domesticate you.”

“I’m not domesticated old man; I’m here to burn down my house with lemons!” Undyne shouted in anger before she went over to Alphys to hold her hand with a toothy smile.

“Sure you are, not at all interested in getting some alone time with your girlfriend.” Gerson replied and both Catty and Bratty cooed at that response, he frowned when he saw Toriel at the back of the visitors looking at him with a frown in equal measure. “Well you best be on your way, you’ve apparently got better things to do than talk to an old codger like me. Lady Toriel, always a pleasure to see you again even if you’re not very forgiving.”

Toriel just nodded as the group exited his little store and dug out alcove that Gerson called home. They turned right to head towards the quiet area. It took a moment, but both Catty and Bratty suddenly had a realization.

“Like, oh my goodness Catty… doesn’t Mettaton own a house in this area?” Bratty was still a fan despite the slightly aggressive actions between him and their friend Pinkie. Pinkie was okay and Mettaton seemed to be friends with her now, she liked the music for that last performance.

“Oh my goodness you are so right Bratty! We’ve got to see where he came from; you know the humble beginnings stuff and all that!” Catty’s tail wagged as she was also still a fan, that last show with Pinkie was phenomenal. She couldn’t believe how well both Mettaton and Pinkie could dance.

“Napstablook is probably here, so we should say hello to him since we’re in the area. I’m sure you two would like to get to know him as he’s Mettaton’s cousin.” Toriel watched as the two girls squeal with excitement, while she was licking her own lips at the fact that she was kind of hungry for snails again. Waterfall had many interesting places and many nice monsters to meet. Maybe this time the Thunder Snails wouldn’t catch fire.

Pinkie, being the main character of this story, requires a bit more focus.

“But I’m not actually doing anything interesting Airy.” She sat next to a pool of water in the Quiet Area with Onion-san just tapping out a small beat next to her. “Besides Alphys is treasure digging with Catty and Bratty, Toriel is off at the snail farm buying more snail snacks and Undyne… well she’s right here.”

The view pans slightly to the right to show Undyne with a bored look on her face. She scratched at her left side with the butt of a conjured spear and just stands there looking all nonchalant and cool.

“Well we’re not burning down my house without Alphys or her invention… so want to see the inside of my home or something before we get around to it?” Undyne was rather bored at the moment with her house not burning down and going up in flames, but hanging out with Pinkie seemed like a thing to do while Alphys was catching up with old friends she used to be like a sister to.

“Sure, what does your house look like on the inside?” As she asked this, Pinkie was led up to Undyne’s rather scary monstrous looking house.

“Surprisingly nice if it’s like it usually is, sorry for the mess if there is one.” Opening the door to lead the pony inside over what looked like the tongue of the house; Undyne took in a breath of air of her home that was soon to be destroyed. She’s destroyed it numerous times before, but it never stayed destroyed nor was any damage done to it ever permanent.

Pinkie blinked and looked about the average normal looking room with yellow and blue tile flooring, to the immediate left was a bit of purple carpeting with several sweat stains in it and a window. Slowly she panned her eyes to the right taking it all in. A piano, behind it a blue door leading to what could be Undyne’s bedroom. Against the far wall to the right of the door was a sink, followed by a stove for cooking, a cutting board on a counter with a small drawer for utensils and a refrigerator. The walls were lined with cute blue wallpaper with pink fish shapes. In front of the refrigerator was a large sword with a blue hilt just lying on the ground, to the left of that and slightly closer was a table with a doily that also had a fish shape in the middle of it, there was a single stool to sit on and the table sat on a square piece of purple rug.

“Not quite what I was expecting… it just looks so… normal. Also you play the piano? That’s rather classy.” The room was in fact so normal that it was breaking Pinkie’s ability to react to it all properly, the house looked like a large monster from the outside but on the inside it was way too quaint for Pinkie’s comfort. She was expecting something a little more… gruesome. Apart from the sword, there wasn’t much to the room aside from the glaring normalcy that had Pinkie completely on edge.

“Yeah, I do play the piano, what of it? It help keeps the fingers nimble for wielding my spears. Anyway that spot of carpeting is where I perform some exercises and you can clearly see what everything else is. I have all the amenities of a low budget bachelor.” Undyne didn’t seem too proud or too vain about it, it was just her house after all. The very same one that had numerous zoning laws against it being anywhere near New Home. After thinking about something, she smirked. “Hey, burning down my house will actually give me a reasonable excuse to move in with Alphys for a while!”

“Speaking of housing Undyne, what’s New Home like? I’ve seen the Home Ruins already.” Pinkie wanted to see New Home when they got back to the laboratory, she wanted to ride the elevator up to the city to meet all the strange and wonderful monsters that lived there.

“It’s a bit cramped actually, there a lot of good monsters there that wouldn’t hurt a fly. At least not while I’m around and as far as I know Asgore hasn’t fired me from captain of the guard yet, so I’m still good for calling myself that.” Rubbing the side of her head Undyne decided to try and do something nice, she wasn’t particularly good at having guests. “I’ll show you around when it’s time to do whatever you and Toriel are trying to do. I want to believe that’s helping everyone out, so I will. So… uh… want something to drink?”

“Sure, do you have tea?” This was starting to get a little awkward for Pinkie; Undyne didn’t seem to really know what to do with a guest in her home. At least Undyne knew what she liked and she definitely liked nerdy lizard monsters.

“Sure… take a seat and I’ll get right too it.” Undyne felt the tension growing within her; she almost couldn’t take it as Pinkie sat down. She had a lot of bravado, strength and courage. What she didn’t have was any real social skills and she hadn’t incidentally hurt anything in the last few days.

Pinkie sat at the table idly tapping her hooves as Undyne went to work to fill a fish shaped teapot with some water to boil. The tapping of her hooves caused a bit of dust to float up into her nose which scrunched up slightly as it inhaled the dust. She tried to rub her nose and then she let out a very tiny sneeze and something shot past her head barely an inch away and she heard a loud crash.

Turning her head to look behind her, Pinkie could see Onion-san covering her head and cowering at the spear wobbling the wall it hit. The wall was slightly cratered and that was after causing a large hole in Undyne’s house from the raw force it was thrown with.

“You could have hurt someone with that, you hear!” Onion-san was now righteously angry and waving a curled tentacle at Undyne.

“Sorry, I’m a bit twitchy today as I finally got off medical leave!” Undyne was a bit of a violent person, she was naturally predisposed for hurting others by accident or on purpose, giving her a position as a royal guard made perfect sense in that respect. Anyone that so much as considering doing something bad just knew that Undyne would come to kick their ass for it, other than violence she liked to stay fit through exercise and she hadn’t been capable of either of her favorite activities because Pinkie had put her in traction. It was only now that she was healed that, she was almost ready to do bodily harm even to someone who hadn’t done anything wrong. “Also that was a bad reflex and I haven’t beaten anyone up for several days!”

“Apology accepted, you hear!” Onion-san was sticking around for ‘Burning House’; she heard they were going to have some sugar crackers for the occasion and wanted some. Also marshmallows and chocolate, but she really just liked the sugar crackers. She knew of Undyne’s reputation, frankly everyone did, so she forgave her for the incident immediately.

Pinkie went to stand up and three spears immediately destroyed the table, she sat back down and stared flatly at Undyne who gave her a fishy grin.

“Wow, you’re really wound up aren’t you?” Was all Pinkie had to say to Undyne as she took a sip of the proffered tea, it was rather decent tea with some honey in it. Having the complete and utter normalcy of the room horrifically shattered in an explosive manner, Pinkie was finally able to relax despite almost getting a spear to the head. Everything was right with the world from that moment on. She took almost dying because of the actions of a friend in stride, as it was not like this was the first time this has happened.

“A little bit, yeah.” Undyne had to admit that almost skewering Pinkie made her quite upset with herself.

They were all gathered outside of Undyne’s home a few hours later on the fish bone mat that a mannequin still sat on, said mannequin was facing the house like everyone else. Alphys hefted her invention, the BUSTER, at the house. She had explained that the invention involved compressing her botanical masterminded super lemon tree that grew napalm enriched lemons into the barrel of the BUSTER, the BUSTER itself took in light which gave the tree the power to quickly grow lemons and upon pulling the trigger she could fire a maximum of three lemons in one go. Quite frankly it was a marvel of scientific engineering and a very dangerous one at that; Alphys would eventually want to create a mega version of it.

“Well time to use the BUSTER, let’s see what my baby can do!” Alphys fired the BUSTER three times and the hand cannon made adorable plinking noises as the lemons shot out and swiftly set the house of fire. “House fire officially started with lemons, so marshmallows anyone?”

Pinkie took sitting a safe distance away from the fire holding a marshmallow on a stick; they had sweet crackers and chocolate which made for a nice treat when combined into a sugary sandwich. In the middle of all this several of her friends started singing a weird song with the words Kum-Bay-Ya, Pinkie didn’t understand it and had to have it explained to her what it meant.

Seven monsters and one equine were lying on their backs in Napstablook’s house when a knock at the door was heard. Nobody moved to get the door as nobody wanted to get up, the last six or so hours had been rather wonderful and fun. The knocking on the door sounded again and everyone slowly turned their heads to Napstablook who was lying on his back next to Shyren staring at the cosmos.

“Sorry Pinkie, but someone has to take charge and stop being lazy. If I’m to continue being considered a queen by my people, then I should act like it and take charge.” Toriel unwound her arms from around Pinkie’s body and gently shoved her off to the side and stood up to go get the door, despite Pinkie’s complaining about her comfy goat shaped pillow leaving her to the cruel cold hard wooden floor.

“Airy is right; you’re cruel to leave me on the floor!” The air would like to thank Pinkie if it could.

“I don’t care what the words in the air are saying at the moment Pinkie.” Well that was kind of harsh of Toriel; the words in the air never did anything to her but tell her story, describe everything she does and even helped her once to save Pinkie and the plot.

“I know, right? No respect for you at all.” As Pinkie addressed the ceiling, Toriel shook her head and opened the door to see a friendly froggit they both knew.

“Queen Toriel, Lady Pinkie, I am so happy to see the two of you are doing well.” Mifty bounced into the room looking to be healthy if a little haggard. “I’ve traveled a long way to meet up with you, we have much to discuss.”

“That we do… you said you had an idea as to how we can break the barrier?” Toriel was focused and the other monsters were sitting up to listen in, as was Pinkie.

“That is going to take a little bit of study.” Mifty had come ahead of her traveling party, the rest of the monsters she had been traveling were being careful as they traveled along; she personally took to the river to get here. “The thing is… we don’t need to break the barrier, because if I’m right it’ll break itself under the right circumstances.”

Mysteriously Informative Frog Thing got a lot of looks for that statement, most of them disbelieving and or hopeful.

“Why did you need to come all this way, especially when you could have just told us over the phone?” Toriel was curious about Mifty’s reasons for coming so far.

“I have to see this through myself.” After saying this Mifty started looking about. “Can someone get me a piece of paper and something to write with?”

Napstablook floated off and came back with a sheet of paper and a pen that looked to be slightly chewed on, all the monsters and Pinkie gathered around the Froggit who drew a simple circle and put a large dot in the center of said circle.

“Okay to explain how I figured this out, I’ll need to ask a question. If humans thought us nothing more than savage beasts then they had the right idea in how they went about making the barrier to contain us. If we were actually smarter we would have been free a long time ago.” Mifty turned to Toriel and pointed to the dot on the paper. “That dot represent monsters inside the barrier, the circle is the barrier and will not let monsters out. One monster got through the barrier twice despite this impossibility.”

Putting a dot outside the circle Mifty wrote the name ‘Asriel’ above it.

“Here’s what I know and Alphys will likely agree with me on this, but no monster can breach the barrier under normal circumstances. Now here’s my question that will help everyone figure it out.” After a pause Mifty looked to everyone to see that they were paying attention. “What was the end result of the scanning spells?”

“Inconclusive as we couldn’t get anything from the barrier at all and as I said to you before, scanning it with magic doesn’t work.” When she said that Toriel could see the Froggit grinning brightly, something about the statement caused her to pause and think on it.

“There, THAT, that’s what the problem is! In all its simplicity, that’s why we’re still stuck under the barrier. It makes sense as to how Asriel breached the barrier; he incidentally did it by having Chara’s soul wrap around his magic.” Seeing that some of the monsters and Pinkie were upset Mifty had to explain it better. “The problem is magic! We’re magical beings; the barrier was created to stop anything magical from passing through it and Asriel only could because the human soul he had prevented it from detecting that he was magical. If I’m right, then the reason the barrier is still standing is because it’s passively feeding off the magic of every monster in the Underworld. That’s why it’s still powered; we’re the ones powering our own damned prison!”

All the monsters eyes widened, the implications suddenly became rather clear.

“Well that explains why my cutie mark isn’t appearing on my flank.” Pinkie looked to her flank and could now quite clearly understand why her cutie mark wasn’t present if her magic was being drained passively. She got slightly upset at the thought that she was helping the monsters stay stuck down here. “Um, does this mean I’ve been contributing my magic to the barrier as well?”

“Pinkie… don’t get upset because of this, we’ve all been contributing to it without realizing it.” Toriel place a kiss on her upset mares head and then turned to Mifty. “Now that we know this, what’s your idea Mifty?”

“We stop the barrier from absorbing magic, basically we design a way to cold turkey it’s access to any magic at all and it’ll eventually collapse without anything to continue powering it. We monsters use a lot of magic and we do so constantly. In hindsight it should have been rather obvious what was powering the barrier, but we really don’t have good educational systems and that’s why I want to work at Queen Toriel’s side when she builds that school she wants. Wherever she chooses to build it, I want to be there to help educate anyone who wants to learn.” Muffet turned back to the piece of paper drew an arrow pointing at the circle and labeled it magic absorbing barrier. “Thankfully the barrier isn’t actively draining our magic; it would have killed us all by now if it did that and would have destroyed the world in one apocalyptic scale magical blast resulting from the barrier overloading. At least the humans had enough common sense to make it passively absorb magic; the effect hasn’t been noticeable to us at all.”

“That could work; it’s quite a feasible idea.” Nodding as she crossed her arms Alphys continued on in a slightly defeated tone. “We would still need to study the barrier directly to get an exact idea of what we can do to achieve this.”

“All this stuff about the barrier is like, so heavy and junk.” Freedom was at hand and Bratty could almost feel it. “It’s nice to know that we might see what the above world looks like, we might even be able to see the sky.”

“Yeah, to think we’ll be able to see the above world in our lifetimes! We won’t need to hurt anyone to do it either, that sounds good to me.” Catty didn’t like the idea of hurting anyone to achieve freedom. Sure humans stuck them down here, but she didn’t think all humans were evil.

“We don’t have a set solution yet, but we can make one with this information. We will go to New Home and to talk to Asgore about this, I’ll personally pummel it into his skull to listen to me before he does something stupid.” A knock at the door distracted everyone from Toriel willing to bodily harm the king.

Hopping over to the door, the Froggit opened it and then turned to everyone.

“Yeah there’s one other reason for my coming here… you remember when I said something came up?” Mifty moved out of the way of the door and there were a lot of monsters waiting outside and they were staying protectively around a single creature that looked at Pinkie and ran forward to give her a friendly hug.

Toriel just looked at the smiling human hugging Pinkie; this human bore an eerily similar appearance to Chara. The human started petting Pinkie who nuzzled them to receive a sweet sounding laugh, the kind of laughter that Toriel hadn’t heard in a long time.

Author's Note

Pinkie and normal can't sit in the same room for too long. They can be friends, they just won't be best friends.

37 - Feline Frisky

When this story last left off, Mifty the Froggit appeared and told everyone about how the barrier effectively works, she even added a line and arrow moving through the barrier pointing to a heart that was drawn encircling the Asriel dot. Plus Pinkie was giving cuddles to a human that wore a striped shirt and they were still at Napstablook’s home.

“Thanks for the recap captain obvious!” Pinkie said to the ceiling as she continued to dole out friendly hugs to the human. “Wait, that’s what a human looks like? I thought it was just another strange looking monster!”

Toriel smiled at Pinkie’s talking to the air and quietly managed to drag Mifty off to the side and away from the human that took to playfully sitting on Pinkie’s back.

“Why did you bring this child all the way here to me?” Understandably Toriel wasn’t really happy with this turn of events.

“Queen Toriel, you are the safest monster for any child to be around in the Underworld. Quite frankly nobody would be stupid enough to hurt a child in your presence, given that said monster or monsters in question knew who you are and know better.” Taking a glance at the child as they rode the pony around the room, Mifty turned back to the slightly aggravated Toriel. “We, I and the other monsters that is, even taught the child how to protect their soul in a friendly environment. We do not want Asgore to get a hold of either of their souls. Pinkie has been a big influence on monsters all over the Underworld. ”

“Next question, would Asgore getting a hold of any soul other than those two be a bad idea?” Queried a slightly frustrated Toriel with a bit of apprehension, she pointed to the human and Pinkie gamboling together around the room.

“Yes him getting any soul would be a very, very bad thing… why, do you know of any other souls that Asgore could get?” Tilting her head, Mifty watched as Toriel raised her hand and pulled her own soul and had it floating above her left palm. This was a bit shocking to the Froggit who couldn’t find words for the soul that looked to be colorful and vibrant as a burning fire.

“Yes, apparently there has been a bit of an issue with souls recently… and this is my soul.” Toriel closed her eyes and slowly pushed the soul back into her chest. “I’m not the only monster that this has happened to. Apparently being around Pinkie long enough tends to have that effect, either that or having a strong friendship with another monster as Mettaton could pull his soul long before meeting Pinkie.”

“I’m sorry that I’ve been quiet for a while, but that seems likely the case. Making monsters happier in turn is what makes them stronger, as they are spreading this happiness to others. It’s just a supposition.” The glow of the snow in the jar interrupted their conversation. “Why to back it up, quite recently Ice Pony and Snow Drake here in Snowdin found out that they could pull their souls like that. Ice Pony has even recently found out that he can stand to be in warm environments and has simply ceased being able to melt. He even says that feeling warm is nice, when previously that would have been a bad thing.”

“Okay, not going to lie, that makes things a matter of time. All it would take is one monster stupid enough to give their soul up for what they think is doing the right thing. We certainly can’t let something like that happen! Like I said things would get catastrophic.” Mifty shuddered at the thought of all the monsters trapped in the Underworld dying because they didn’t understand the barrier well enough. “Before you say anything Mistress Toriel, I am aware that there are plenty of monsters that would be stupid enough given the quality of education down here. Has Pinkie been in New Home to befriend anyone yet?”

“Well… Pinkie wanted to see New Home after we were done here and got a ride back to the Hot Lands; I doubt most monsters are aware that they might be able to pull their souls after a meeting with Pinkie. We don’t exactly know how long it takes or when a monster becomes capable of pulling their own soul.” After a pause to think it over Toriel decide to elaborate on something. “We had a party a day or so back, it was big and any monster could just walk right in. It was as much for Pinkie as it was many other reasons, my mare friend was going to run herself ragged trying to take charge of a party. She introduced herself to a lot of monsters and she brightened up a lot of monsters that day, in fact I can honestly say Pinkie is like a plague of happiness and rainbows shooting euphoric feelings at everyone and everything in the room.”

“Okay… since nothing bad has happened yet, I’m going to assume that no monster has hit the particular threshold where something like that is possible aside from the ones we already know of. I won’t blame Lady Pie for inadvertently creating a crisis, but we really don’t have much time before some monster becomes the wrong side of a martyr.” After croaking a bit, Mifty looked Toriel in the eyes. “I doubt we could have kept Pinkie’s free spirit locked up anyway.”

“Well she doesn’t like sitting in one place for too long.” Toriel took in the scene of Pinkie, Napstablook and the human child playing together, her heart fluttered at the sight. The fact that Pinkie was good with a child of a completely different species made Goat Mom feel a bit of whimsy as she made her way over to them. It was about time they returned to the Hot Lands, they were probably taking this child with them and as such Toriel would hardly let them out of her sight.

Toriel knew that Mifty was right; she was the safest being for that child to be around right now.

As they waited for River’s boat to appear, Pinkie got the child giggling at a joke. Apparently the child was identified as female and liked Pinkie enough to give her name to the pony. The child’s name was Frisk. Frisk was rather friendly and was peaceful in every sense of the word, she was also quite curious about the place she found herself in.

The most surprising thing to hear from the shy whispering Frisk was that she came down here to find Pinkie and see if she was okay. She had heard the legends of the mountain and was wondering if she could get lost on it like the other children; she didn’t have parents and was an orphan. She wasn’t uneducated, at least the orphanage saw to it that she could read, write and talk, but they didn’t do much more than that and she was overlooked a number of times for adoption.

She had read in a book of magical places, she just didn’t think they actually existed down a really large rabbit hole. This place wasn’t the described Wonderland that Frisk had read about, but it was certainly interesting. How did she end up here? Well that’s a short story.

Frisk had climbed Mount Ebott and had been frightened away from the interesting hole that Pinkie fell into after appearing out of nowhere above it. She had seen the strange pink four legged creature shouting at something in an understandable language as she fell and Frisk had ran away scared by the strange event. She eventually came back and tried to climb down the hole, only to lose her grip halfway down and fell onto the flowers at the bottom. She wanted to know happened to the pink horse out of deep rooted curiosity and would maybe bury the body or help the horse if it was still around and injured. It wasn’t like she had much else going for her life anyway, no friends that would miss her at any rate, so she was a bit reckless and adventurous to make up for the loneliness of being passed over two more times for adoption.

Her curiosity had led her to this place and when she looked at Pinkie for the first time, she could tell that the pony was doing okay and had immediately hugged her in relief. Magical talking animals were incredible, but Frisk was able to keep a cool and calm appearance and had mastered a poker face no one could read. It was rather unfortunate that her face eventually got stuck like that. Not having parents to warn her about such a situation happening, Frisk had nobody to blame but herself for the constant poker faced look she sported and was the main reason nobody had adopted her.

After falling on that bed of flowers she eventually came across her first monster, the meeting was rather intriguing as communicating with a small entirely sentient blob of mold had taken quite a while. Eventually the two worked out a modicum of understanding, that she was lost, needed help and was hungry. She was swiftly introduced to Vegetoids and from there Mysteriously Informative Frog Thing who was placed as a regent of the ruins by someone called Queen Toriel. The Froggit had a really weird name, so she did what everyone else did and called her Mifty.

Pinkie was Frisk’s white rabbit and she didn’t want to wake up from this strange and wonderful dream, she also thought the goat lady was both beautiful and nice. Maybe she could even become Frisk’s mom? She didn’t want to assume and kept quiet, but there was just something about the goat lady that screamed mommy to her heart. Now they were waiting on a boat and she wanted to hug the lady, but she wasn’t sure how she would take it being a queen and everything. The queen in a book she read was a scary sounding figure, but this one was too nice and soft spoken to be mean or nasty.

Frisk reached out and tugged on some of Pinkie’s mane to get her attention and the pony leaned in to hear what she had to say. She was glad she came after the pony; she now had friends who were really strange if friendly creatures. She whispered some words into the pony’s lent ear.

“I really don’t think she’d mind that, she likes hugs and cuddles.” As soon as Pinkie had finish stating those words Frisk was immediately upon Toriel. “You should go ahead ask her, oh and call her Goat Mom.”

“Can you be my Goat Mom?” The somewhat shy Frisk asked. She was completely unaware of Toriel’s general distaste for being called that and would continue to be oblivious to this fact.

“Pinkie…” A flat glare at the brightly grinning pony was Toriel’s response and after a moment she sighed rubbed at her head in annoyance. After a moment she calmed down and smiled at the child and brought her into a hug, she wasn’t ever going to say no even if the child had an odd poker faced look about her. “Of course I will my child.”

The boat was coming and it was slightly larger than it was before, no one questioned the increase in size because it would be able to fit Frisk and Mifty. The other monsters would have to just walk to the Hot Lands if they wanted to keep following Frisk around.

The boat came to a halt and they were in the Hot Lands once more. Pinkie was the first one out and moving up the stairs followed by Frisk who wanted to be near the pony, mostly since she was fluffy and fun to hug.

At the top of the stairs they stopped when they came across Blue at his nice cream stand.

“Hey Blue, what’s new?” Pinkie said jovially and the rabbit quietly and simply passed out some nice cream for her and Frisk. She started in on her snack, as did Frisk after seeing that Pinkie was okay with eating it and was even enjoying it.

“What’s new is that the elevator to New Home is working. Figured you and you’re new friend would want some nice cream on the house by yours truly. Heard from a spider you went back to Waterfall for some fun. Anyway is that a human? Ah well, that’s not the strangest thing I’ve seen being around you Pinkie.” Chuckling Blue Bunny crouched down in front of Frisk and gave a few quick affectionate rubs of her head as she ate her nice cream. He personally didn’t think the souls of children made for a good way to gain freedom and knew Pinkie was at least on to something about that with Queen Toriel. “So are any of the rest of you looking for some of my patented nice Cream as well?”

Turning about and seeing Toriel come up with the rest of the monsters Catty and Bratty looked to their queen imploringly.

“Fine, I’ll by some nice cream for anyone that wants some.” Toriel pouted as everyone gathered around Blue until she felt Pinkie rubbing up against her like a cat. “I’m beginning to think you only do that when you want something Pinkie, what is it?”

“Can we still go up to see the city of New Home?” Ever since Pinkie heard the elevator was working, most likely because she dealt with Mettaton, she wanted to see the city of monsters. Because at this point how could… “Don’t jinx me Airy! So can we go up to see New Home Please? I don’t want to go back to the hotel yet, being stuck indoors… well we’re underground in a wide open cave network… but still, being stuck indoors and at the hotel is boring so, pretty please with cherries, sprinkles, bananas, strawberries and chocolate syrup on top?”

Pinkie’s sudden outburst caused quite a few monsters and one human to jump; they turned to see her giving Toriel big puppy dog eyes that looked rather hard to refuse. Toriel glared at Pinkie even as Frisk came up to her side, Frisk wanted to see the city to. Toriel didn’t want to put either of them in danger.

“Pinkie, you realize how dangerous it is for you and a human to both be in that city at the same time, besides we don’t need to even go to the city as there is an elevator that we can take that leads directly into the castle where we can quickly meet with Asgore.” It was quite obvious from her tone that Toriel didn’t relish the thought of seeing fuzzy butt again.

Pinkie continued to give her puppy dog eyes and added quivering lips to it. It was really adorable and Toriel felt her willpower breaking down, the only thing Pinkie was forgetting to do at this moment was tilting her head slightly and folding her ears back in a pathetic manner.

“I knew I was forgetting to do something, thank you Airy!” Pinkie folded her ears back after stating that and then tilting her head just so…

“I still think this is a bad idea Pinkie.” Toriel was in the elevator up to New Home with a flat look on her face with Pinkie, Frisk and Mifty, the other monsters were either going to the hotel or settling in at the lab in Undyne’s case. “Just remember to not drag Frisk off with yourself as soon as we get off the elevator, at least hold off on that impulse for a minute if you can. If you still do that, then you’re completely responsible for her safety until dinner time. Alphys assured me she’ll talk to Muffet about saving us a spot to eat in the hotel for when the time comes around and we are done gallivanting around the city undoubtedly getting into all kinds of trouble.”

“Seriously Tori, even after I told Airy not to jinx me. Now we know something bad or crazy is going to happen to me… eventually that is!” The elevator dinged and Pinkie bound out of the elevator while looking around at the city there was a lot of monsters around, but none of them were quite cheery or upbeat. There were a few spots here and there and looking around at all the splendor that was New Home, there were little monsters running about happily while the older ones looked a little dull or bored.

Toriel sighed and just watched as Pinkie and Frisk started to wander off, she shook her head and looked at some of the new things that had been added to the city. It had grown a bit since she was last here.

Looking to the right they saw the castle was nearby and Pinkie was gazing up at it with Frisk, it was big and ominous.

“Yeah we’re going there later to see about the barrier and talk to the king. I heard he’s friendly, so maybe he won’t attack us?” Pinkie didn’t know whether or not that was a thing, but she was sure the guy could be reasoned with as he had managed to get married to someone like Toriel. “Where are we right now?”

“I believe we’re currently in the Residential district at the heart of the city. There are some farms around the edges and between them is the market district, not much goes on there except for the buying of food.” Mifty still thought the city was well designed and the construction crews did great with the upkeep of the city, but it really couldn’t be expanded very far nor could the population really grow itself out of control because of the finite resources. “The most common of recreational activities down here are music, dancing, storytelling and carving stuff out of rock because it’s the most common resource you can find underground. This is the best monsters could do… well they could have collapsed a portion of the mountain above us to give us more shafts of sunlight to bathe in at least.”

“Say Mifty, how did things go with the Temmie Village? Humans are allergic to them right?” Pinkie just had to ask as they walked down the street looking at the many monsters interacting with one another, strange, tall, short or colorful they came in all kinds of strange forms. One was even a large one eyed spider monster with three gangly looking legs ending in four claws each, probably one of Muffet’s relatives.

“Yeah, that was a heck of a time. I don’t know what was up with those Temmies, but they really wanted to rub up against Frisk.” It was an oddity to Mifty; Temmies had always acted strangely around humans. “It was hard to stop them from bothering Frisk, traded at least three belly rubs to several temmies to get them to help make the others leave us alone.”

“Well it makes sense; cats are always attracted to those who are allergic to them and they are part cat. I’d say cats have a sixth sense for it… at least I know Opalescence does.” It was one of the greater mysteries of any world that had cats, one that Pinkie could shed some light on. “I guess most cats are just mean like that. Oh what’s that over there?”

Pinkie ran off followed by Frisk and Toriel just stared blankly after them and threw her hands up in the air. It had happened, Pinkie was now officially going to get lost and start causing problems.

It hadn’t taken Pinkie and her sometimes short attention span very long to get lost, Frisk followed diligently to look out for the pony instead of the other way around with the pony looking out for her. There was much to look at and a lot to see. Frisk was a little wary of all the monsters that looked her way, but she figured if she didn’t bother them then they would do the same for her.

Unfortunately it didn’t take long for frisk to get bothered by two familiar half cat half dog monsters, except one of them was sporting antlers which was pretty odd even for these crazy critters. Especially since Frisk had seen one dye itself in multiple colors of the rainbow by turning inside out for a few seconds. She didn’t know much about allergic reactions, she just knew it was a bad idea to be touched by one of them, turning back to Pinkie who was dancing with some monsters she quickly got the ponies attention about the two Temmies that were now looking at her with something akin to attraction and inching their way forward.

“Huh, what is it Frisk… oh… hey guys what’s going on. Why are you looking at Frisk like that?” Pinkie saw the two Temmies turn to her; they were of course First Mate Temmie and Temmie-Trot.

“We want to touch the human!” Temmie-Trot said enthusiastically and First Mate Temmie vibrated in place excitedly. “Tem attractive, so give us touch and cuddle, yeah!”

“Can I interest you in some belly rubs instead?” Pinkie offered with a wary smile as a way to stop them from trying to attack Frisk, even if it was going to be done in an adorable and cuddly manner. She knew that humans were allergic to Temmies and judging from Toriel’s reaction, an allergic reaction to them must be pretty bad. Enough so for her goat friend to ram herself through a solid metal door in total worry over the fact that Pinkie might have been allergic and all humans were definitely considered allergic.

“Nope we want to touch the human, no belly rubs negotiable and we are already having had rubs earlier at spa!” First Mate Temmie raised her butt in the air and stalked forward looking prepared to pounce on Frisk, said human who was now backing away from the cute little monster with worry.

“You do realize she’s allergic right?” Pinkie quickly put herself between the Temmies and the human.

“Don’t care, want to cuddle with the human!” Temmie-Trot leapt at Frisk only to miss tackling her as Pinkie quickly spun around moved the human out of the way and onto her back.

“Can’t we talk about this?” Pinkie’s ears wilted as both Temmie’s gained de-temmied looks on their faces.

“No!” Both the ‘crazy little bastards’ yelled at the same time and they lunged forward only to smack into each other head first as Pinkie had jumped backwards. Two soul pulling fields pulled their souls from their bodies; Frisk’s soul was an average looking red heart that looked small next to Pinkie’s big pulsing pink soul.

Pinkie was up and running out of their range and the souls quickly rushed back into their bodies, one on four legs and the other on two. Pinkie turned the nearest corner and ran into a strange lizard who had a conductors outfit, strangely he was the only monster on this street.

“Oh someone that will listen to my music, it’s time to play!” Twirling a baton the small lizard stood up and pushed his fancy hat back into position with it and then held it high up in the air. Several musical instruments magically popped up floating in the air. “You will tell me how good the music is, you seem like a fan of ours already. Now say hello to me, Timpani and the Timpani Troupe!”

“Music, oh no, that’s not good. It usually means…” Pinkie jumped to the left when she felt Frisk jerk on her mane in that direction, they avoided nearly getting pounced on from behind by Temmie-Trot. Pinkie quickly dashed forward when she felt her fur stand on end and avoided a lightning bolt fired from a floating drum above them and they heard a pained cat shriek as First Mate Temmie got struck by it instead.

“Ouch, that really hurt.” First Mate Temmie stood up and shook herself out with a look of de-temmie-nation on her face. “We will cuddle Tem human! Also we will all still be friends afterwards, Tem promise.”

Turning around Pinkie ducked as did frisk and a musical note from a floating sousaphone shot over their heads and exploded behind them knocking Temmie-Trot away from them into a wall with a pained look on her face, she got up immediately afterwards so she hadn’t been hurt too bad.

“Hey pay attention to our music!” The small gecko monster named Timpani shouted as he marched in place and pointed his baton towards Pinkie and Frisk.

“How can I not, it’s highly offensive and I don’t just mean on the ears, whoops!” Pinkie turned around and started running down the street with a shower of exploding musical notes chasing after her and Frisk. “Sorry about all this Frisk, but I seem to always find the right monsters that want to attack me. Apparently this one just wants me to be a music critic and the other two aren’t going to stop trying to rub up against you even knowing you’re allergic. How do I get myself into these situations?”

“It’s only been five minutes, how much trouble could Lady Pinkie have possibly gotten into?” The minute Mifty stated that a series of explosions went off heading towards the market district.

“You obviously don’t know Pinkie very well; I however do know how much trouble she can get into in five minutes. Especially given that Frisk is with her.” Standing there for a minute Toriel didn’t look to be overly concerned enough to immediately go charging off to where the pony obviously was. Even knowing her pony was in danger, it couldn’t have been too terrible as there weren’t any buildings falling down. “Come on then, let’s follow the explosions. I bet we’ll find Pinkie near them.”

Pinkie had avoided a wall of concussive force in the form of musical notes, at least when Shyren launched attacks like this she sounded beautifully. This was a bit physically agonizing on her ears as she ran from two of her Temmie friends that want to cause an allergic reaction in Frisk and a crazy musician monster that was marching after her with floating instruments that launched various attacks. She ducked a Tambourine that almost took her head off as it flew by at high speeds.

As she turned into the market district none of the monsters reacted to a pony being ridden by a human, they reacted when they saw Timpani and the musical instruments floating in the air and immediately ducked for cover.

Pinkie ran down the market street and suddenly swerved left as First Mate Temmies front half comically stretched right on by her to slam into a wall. Avoiding a bolt of energy from a drum above, Pinkie leapt onto the wobbly stretched Temmie’s midsection to bounce on it like a trampoline. She did this until she could bounce up to an awning. Following that she started bouncing down the street from awning to awning with Timpani launching musical noted everywhere wildly from his bands brass section after her twisting and twirling form.

Frisk looked down at the pony she was riding curiously wondering why Pinkie could touch the Temmie when it was dangerous for her.

“I’m not allergic to Temmies, just thought you should know Frisk. I really don’t want to know what will happen to you if they do touch you.” Pinkie shot off another awning as a musical note exploded under it into multiple musical notes that exploded violently upon touching anything which evaporated the awning.

Pinkie pressed her and Frisk’s weight down on the next awning and pushed off the almost ripping fabric to get a lot of height to the point she could grip onto the edge of a nearby roof. The pony scrabbled to pull herself up onto it with Frisk clinging onto her for dear life. After they were on the roof Pinkie quickly moved out of Timpani’s sight and looked for a fire escape. Finding one, with a leap and taking most of the shock as she slammed against the bars of the staircase, she start to drop her way back down to street level catching herself twice on the way down.

“Do you think we lost them?” Turning to the companion riding her back Pinkie saw Frisk shrug and then the wall behind them exploded outwards revealing Temmie-Trot wearing a creepy smile as the bricks rained down around her small antlered form. The hole the Temmie had caused was three times bigger than she was.

“Here’s Temmie-Trot!” Temmie-Trot stated in a deranged voice as she started stretching her right paw towards Pinkie who shot out of the alleyway barely avoiding another drum dropping a bolt of lightning on her head.

The paw continued to stretch out after Pinkie as she went to the alleyway across the street took a left and then another left and crossed the same street Timpani was still on again avoiding more explosive musical notes as the Temmie Paw continue to stretch after Frisk.

“Wow that’s a bit crazy, I guess you weren’t kidding.” Watching the chaos from a distance, Mifty couldn’t believe the three monsters were after Pinkie. Two of them were friends of theirs according to Toriel.

Toriel stood off to the side silently watching as the Temmie with the wobbling midsection whose face was still stuck in the wall reeled in her rear half. With a pop of her flat face pulled free from the wall, she shook her head and was back on her paws and watched Pinkie cross the street the second time before giving chase alongside the stretching paw. She decided to stay back until Pinkie really needed help.

“I don’t like your music!” Avoiding string instruments that fired bows was not how Pinkie thought coming to the city would have went, she just wanted to walk around and explore without any trouble. Maybe spend a little more quality time with her Goat Friend; she didn’t imagine dodging twirling xylophone sticks being a part of that exploration.

“Maybe you will if I play it louder!” It was quite clear to anyone that talking to Timpani was a lost cause, a lot of the monsters that lived in the city knew of his concussive percussion habits.

“That’s not exactly the problem I’m having with it here!” Pinkie shouted over her shoulder as she galloped away down the street with several drums pounding above her, they released lightning attacks on the street causing some of the ground to crack and break. Pinkie had to roll to her right to avoid a shower of exploding notes.

His lightning spewing drums hit First Mate Temmie again and after yowling in pain, she gained an angry look in her eyes. She stopped and grabbed Temmie-Trot’s extending paw and pulled her body to it. They both started talking and First Mate Temmie pointed to Timpani. They both nodded, before they started charging him instead of the human they wanted to playfully rub up against. They were upset now and having a Temmie upset with you was going to put you in a world of hurt.

Before Timpani knew what was happening he found himself being bowled over by a charging Temmie-Trot and then First Mate Temmie came down on his prone form with her claws. It quickly turned into a dust cloud of pain and misery; they had had enough of Timpani hitting them with his attacks not to mention they were angry that he was attacking Pinkie who was a friend of theirs. They weren’t trying to hurt Pinkie or even attacking her, they just wanted to cuddle the human.

Pinkie’s beating heart slowed down as she stared at the dust cloud, she saw a few glimpses of the violent beating Timpani happened to be currently receiving. She sighed with relief and planted her butt firmly into the soft soil just outside the market district, Frisk slid off her back and walked around to her right to kiss her on the cheek and started to pet her affectionately. She pulled the human into a one hoofed hug and felt something grip her left shoulder she looked up and received a kiss to the forehead from her favorite goat.

“With the Temmies distracted, we should really vacate the area. We have a few hours to look around before dinner time. So let’s get on that before the Temmies realized that we’ve evaded them.” Leading them away from the mauling of an annoyingly pushy musician monster, Toriel led the trio to see if they could find some fun activities and see the sights like Pinkie wanted to.

It was the evening and Muffet had showed them to their table with a smile and a graceful bow, she even said hello to the human and hoped that she didn’t mind spiders. Frisk didn’t seem bothered by spiders at all and Muffet was happy to be friendly towards her as she got them some menus and seated them at the table.

“What a long day.” Muttered an exasperated Toriel, she was seated next to Pinkie. They saw the aquarium that Onion-san had spoken of at one point, it was full of water bound monsters and Mifty played biology professor with all of them which was highly informative. Even some of the aquatic monsters didn’t know some of those things about themselves. The Froggit had quite a captive audience and was a good teacher with incredible observational skills.

“Yeah, it’s almost over and then I get my goat snuggles!” Pinkie smiled at the idea of sleeping in bed with Toriel, she couldn’t help it if her goat friend was one of the cuddliest most loveable monsters in the underworld. The blush on her goat friend’s face made her that much happier, they were going to try and see Asgore soon and she knew that things might get a bit rough. That and she might soon be separated from Toriel, but she was going to stay positive that things would work out in the end.

“Darn it Pinkie’s back already, but we can’t cut any corners on Project Grave Digger… can some of you guys do an all-nighter?” Muffet got a few affirmatives from the spiders in front of her. “Great, get some coffee, because we got some work to do and I’ll see to it personally. Well, after I’m done serving her holiness Mistress Pie of course. She looks like she’s had a very busy day.”

Author's Note

Up next, as Jackie says: "Bad day, bad day, bad day".

Some Pinkie Parkour this chapter and back story to Frisk, Temmie's having an allergic attraction and Toriel can't help but Goat Mom.

38 - Beaming Pie Barrage

Pinkie slowly woke up and blinked her eyes several times as she groggily opened them, she was comfortably in Toriel’s grip and she looked about the dark room while still snuggled against the warm body.

“I won’t blame Lady Pie for inadvertently creating a crisis…” The remembered words caused Pinkie’s ears to wilt. Even if Mifty didn’t blame her, she still felt responsible for causing some really bad things to happen. Looking down at the comfortable smile on her goat friends wonderful lips in the dark, the pony frowned slightly after kissing them gently.

Pinkie carefully pulled herself from Toriel’s grasp and put a pillow in her place before she quietly stumbled around in the dark to put on the Temmie Armor and she slowly closed the door as she exited the room trying not to disturb Toriel’s sleep.

“Muffet are you there?” Intoned Pinkie to the quiet hallway and a tired looked spider monster came walking up to her from out of nowhere with white mugs in all her left hands. She drained the one held with her upper left arm and then passed it off to the lower right as her middle left arm moved the mug it held into that one’s grasp.

“Yes, Mistress Pie? Did you need something?” The spider monster didn’t look like she had gotten any sleep, she yawned drowsily and her five eyes had red lines running through them. It really helped add to her creepiness factor. Even as tired as she looked she was ready to lend Pinkie a hand or six.

“I need a cute picture of me and Tori together, plus something to write with.” It really shouldn’t have surprised Pinkie as much as it did when her friend fanned out ten pictures in her snuggled up with Toriel middle right arm while her upper right produced a pen, all while taking another sip of what smelled like Chili Pepper coffee. “Wow these are great! You know its things like this that make me think you’re really creepy Muffy.”

The pony chose one of the high definition pictures from the slightly smirking humanoid spider who continued drinking the spicy smelling coffee that might be of interest to her. Pinkie wondered how Muffet managed to catch her in the middle of nuzzling Toriel, even when they were both asleep, especially without waking them up. Sticking her tongue out the side of her mouth she wrote something down for Toriel on her chosen picture.

“Can you please see that Tori gets this picture when she wakes up?” Handing it back to her friend, Pinkie trotted off towards the hotels elevator with a thoughtful look on her face.

Pinkie rode the elevator up to the path that would take her to the castle and as she walked forward she looked off to the left and stopped. She found herself looking out over the city. Yesterday had been fun, but there was a time and place for fun. Right now things weren’t going to be a very fun; Pinkie was going to confront Asgore right this instant before somebody innocent like Frisk or Mifty could get hurt. The city looked grey and boring from up here even if it was full of life; well the buildings were carved out of rock so of course they’d look a little gray.

The pony walked along the path until she came to an opening with some writing above it and a bunch of raked leaves that sat off to the side of it.

Pinkie looked a bit discouraged as she looked up at the sign and walked into what could only be a carbon copy of Toriel’s home in the Home Ruins, Toriel and Asgore must have had something special. Maybe they would be able to again after Pinkie befriended Asgore and left the Underworld to return to Equestria.

Walking into the dining room area she was met by several monsters that were familiar to Pinkie, they had to be relatives to the monsters that she had seen in the Home Ruins.

“Um… hi, can any of you please tell me where Asgore is?” Hoping that asking nicely would help, Pinkie gave them the friendliest smile she could muster. “I just want to talk him.”

The monsters looked amongst themselves, a Froggit hopped forward and nodded. The monsters of this place started talking about the falling out of the King and Queen as Pinkie was shown to Asgore’s room. She saw the fresh ink on an open diary; it seemed some tears were spilled on the paper recently.

Pinkie read the latest entry other than it being stated as a nice day, ‘Toriel still has yet to show up, I hope that we can at least be friends again one day’. She looked at the entry sadly. The guiding Froggit pulled on her tail, the frog monster motioned for her to follow him. If Asgore wasn’t in his room then they might know where else he could be.

As Pinkie was being led along, she worried what her goat friend would think of her doing this on her own. She continued to hear the monsters talking of the tale of Chara wanting to see the flowers of his village one last time when he fell ill, the story was also about how Asriel became different and was seriously injured by the humans who thought he had killed his brother. It was rather depressing to hear and was bumming Pinkie out.

They came up to another elevator on their left and on their right was a doorway. The Froggit pointed to that doorway and he croaked loudly while looking to Pinkie.

“That way huh… okay. Thanks a lot for helping me out.” As Pinkie stepped into a long hallway, she looked all the ornate windows featuring the royal symbol that she had seen throughout the underworld. The Froggit chose to follow her into the room.

It kind of reminded Pinkie of that fancy ‘Hallway of History’ that Celestia had. The hallway was bathed in a golden light as she looks towards the doorway at the end of it. She walked out into the hallway while looking up at all the columns. About a quarter of the way into the hall, Pinkie felt the entire room chill and things dimmed drastically. The helpful Froggit that had followed Pinkie into the hallway looked frightened by something.

“Is it just me or did someone touch the thermostat on the weather factory around here?” Slowing down Pinkie warily came to a stop as a shadow stood before her; it looked stocky in a familiar manner.”Sans… is that you?”

“Hmmm…. Pinkie… It’s time to wake up, I think… Pinkie… Pinkie!?” Waking up to cuddling just a pillow, Toriel felt a horrible chill run down her spine as if Pinkie were in some sort of grave danger. She quickly got up in a blind panic and as she headed towards the door her tail twitched weirdly causing her to stop and look at it, why did she suddenly feel like something was going to fall?

Muffet fell flat on her face in front of Toriel coming from above. The spider groggily held something up to her and Toriel tentatively took it, then Muffet flopped onto the floor in a boneless manner. What followed was some rather cute snoring from the sleeping monster face down on the floor.

Looking at what was she was handed; some warmth filled her heart at the image of her and Pinkie snuggled together. That was until she saw some writing that said to look at the back of it and she felt her heart stop cold when she did.

“Sans…?” Pinkie tilted her head as she moved forward something was very off about the skeleton, he was just standing there with his head lowered. Sans lifted his head and his left eye socket had a glowing sphere of darkness in it that caused Pinkie to back up somewhat.

The skeleton just stared at her with his rather blank grin, that wasn’t a real smile on his face and Pinkie was good at knowing whether or not a smile was real or faked. She knew when a smile was a fake, there was nothing in that smile that came off as pleasant and then he spoke.

Pinkie clamped her hooves to her ears as the strange sounds coming out of Sans’s mouth were quite horrid and she could see weird symbols in the air floating out of him and several of them were hand shaped. It took only a few minutes of this strange talking for Pinkie to understand what was going on, the words ‘beware the man who speaks in hand’ came to mind.

“Beware the man who speaks in hands…?” Slowly Pinkie started to back away and then her soul forcefully wrenched out of her chest, this time the feeling was highly unpleasant. Sans held his left hand out towards her glowing dark blue and he moved it upwards slightly.

Hearing a frantic croaking noise behind her, Pinkie turned to see the Froggit that escorted her here was floating in the air. Turning back to Sans, the pony watched the skeleton flick his hand and the Froggit shot back through the entrance and a pained grunt was heard.

“Hey that wasn’t very nice!” It didn’t seem to Pinkie like the skeleton particularly cared that he just hurt another monster. She watched as he stomped the floor, walls of bone covered the entrances into the hallway. Sans said something again, but whatever it was, it was lost on Pinkie as she had no idea what the symbols he was speaking meant.

Sans held out his hand and the blank look on his face suddenly became more sinister, several large glowing skulls started to form in the air. The left side of his body slowly became coated in a roiling darkness. Pinkie’s frowned when he gave off a dark chuckle and said something else, while pointing the sharp shadowy claw that replaced his left hand at her.

This reminded Pinkie of Nightmare Moon, only there was no one here to save her and there was only one element of harmony present. She didn’t particularly feel like laughing at this situation.

(Undertale Megalovania plays.)

More and more skulls started appearing around the pony. Pinkie cowered slightly, then shook her head and narrowed eyes as the first two in front of her started to build up energy and fired two beams of scorching energy that came at her soul blazingly fast.

She quickly tapped danced her soul between the searing beams and she could feel the heat of one of them almost touched her soul and she started sweating. She definitely didn’t want to be directly get hit by one of those if she could feel the energy behind the attack through her soul.

Tapping out a rapid beat against the floor Pinkie started dodging the rest of the skulls that were firing from the side at her soul by moving it towards her body zigzagging through the beams and then she pushed her soul towards the ceiling as two beams shot from behind. The bottom tip of her soul was hit by one of the beams and she felt an agonizing pain shoot across her face, she grits her teeth and hisses at the burning sensation.

Looking down at the tip of her nose, a bit of it had turned from pink to grey and a small portion of her soul looked slightly shriveled. She just lost the sense of smell in her left nostril and it occurred to her that whatever this was, it wasn’t trying to capture her. It was actually trying to destroy her soul outright.

The skeleton held up his hand and with a pulse Pinkie reeled back and saw her hair turning blue as did her entire body except for the small portion of her nose that stayed gray. Her soul fell towards the floor having turned blue as well and as soon as it touched the floor the skeleton raised his leg to stomp down, Pinkie’s eyes widened and she was quicker by stomping all her hooves as hard as she could.

Pinkie’s soul leapt to avoid a huge forest of bones that popped up momentarily beneath it, the sickly brown glow reminding her of something Muffet once said about that being poisonous. She found herself pulled from the memory and flying towards the columns to her right back first when the skeleton made a gesture to the left. She slammed into it and she felt her spine shutter at the impact and pain flared throughout her body.

Her soul flew past her pained form falling towards the wall and she saw what used to be her friend preparing for another stomp, she rolled slightly down the column and pulled back her left hoof to slap it down as hard as she could causing her soul to bounce off the wall as soon as it touched down avoiding another quick temporary forest of bones popping up from the wall.

Sans muttered some more symbols and swiped his arm to the right sending Pinkie flying face first at the column across from her and was preparing to stomp. Pinkie was prepared for it this time and planted all four of her hooves into the column solidly causing her soul to avoid another forest of bones that gave off that faint deadly brown glow.

With a swift swipe upwards the skeleton had Pinkie suddenly falling towards the ceiling and was angry that she managed to reorient herself making her soul jump again and avoid another temporary wave of bones. His grin became slightly nastier as he swiped the still upheld arm downwards and made Pinkie fall to the floor at twice the speed.

Pinkie screamed in agony as she fell down on her front left leg badly and having had little time to twist herself into a good landing position as a forest of bones that didn’t go away popped up beneath her soul. Her soul dropped towards the bones until a small square blue platform appeared and caught her soul.

Pinkie looked to Sans and saw his right hand glowing faintly alongside his right eye which showed sorrow, whereas his left eye showed angry vehemence as it spewed darkness. This confused Pinkie slightly, what was happening to Sans? He was obviously trying to help her with whatever was going on with him.

A skull pointing downwards appeared above the platform and Pinkie’s soul currently had nowhere else to go.

Another platform appeared as the skull blast shot downwards, Pinkie barely managed to stomp out several beats while trying to stay off her front left leg. Her soul leapt for the other platform as the previous one was demolished. It landed on the platform and she tapped danced slightly to slide it towards the center of the platform.

While she was doing that the skeleton held up his left hand and three large beam shooting skulls appeared this time. One above the platform and two slowly rotating around the platform opposing directions, a third platform appeared as the right arm glowed faintly.

The beam came and Pinkie slapped her hooves to the floor making her soul jump towards the platform and between the two horizontal blasts launched by the other two skulls that moved to intercept her soul. The bones on the floor receded leaving the pony’s soul to drop to the floor. She looked to Sans and saw him clutching at his head before he held his left hand out to her.

A skull appeared and before Pinkie could do anything she felt her body fly to the left and her soul stayed in place, the skull was building up to fire as she fell sideways. She couldn’t dance to move her soul out of the way.

Pinkie did the only thing she could in a moment like this she flailed wildly as she fell harshly into the stain glass window cracking it slightly and hurting her even worse, her soul manage to slide slightly out of the way. She didn’t get it far enough as the beam hit the upper left corner of her soul and Pinkie screamed in pain as her front right leg started to turn gray, not only was her body taking on numerous injuries but so was her soul.

Once again gravity shifted and the pony found herself falling towards the far wall after bouncing off the side of the window. She flew into a pillar where the right side of face slammed into it harshly thoroughly dazing her and spinning her in the air.

Time seemed to slow down for Pinkie as she saw her soul falling towards an ever narrowing stretch of bones coming from the walls and pillars. There was only a small spot on the far wall that wasn’t covered in bones and there was a faint blue glow there preventing any bones from sprouting out of that portion of the wall.

Pinkie narrowed her eyes and started performing gestures with her rear and front left legs to move her soul falling towards the wall vertically in every direction through the small holes and gaps in the ever thickening wall of bones. Its horizontal movement was constant as it became harder and harder to avoid the narrowing corridor of bones.

Her soul landed, in the small spot of safety and the blue glow started quickly dim as bones were threatening to sprout below it. Pinkie slammed into the wall on three legs, her front right leg was not responsive and it worried her that she couldn’t feel it. Her left leg almost felt like it broke from the impact, but she managed to make her soul bounce just as the weak blue glow failed to hold the bones back. That spot of bones finally sprouted and narrowly missed her soul before receding.

Before she could get her bearings on the wall, Pinkie found herself falling in the opposite direction. She started coughing as she fell towards the other wall and the blood that came from mouth continued to oddly fall in the same direction.

As the splotches of coughed up blood passed by Sans, some of it splattered across his face and his right eye widened. Before Pinkie fell too far past him, she felt her gravity suddenly reorient and she fell to the floor softly as did her soul. Sans was clutching at his head with both his arms and while he was doing this Pinkie’s soul, the parts of it that weren’t gray and shriveled, turned pink again.

Pinkie tried to stand up even if her entire body was hurting. The Temmie Armor was doing its best to hold her together and heal her, but Sans was proving to be a powerful monster. The injuries she was suffering from were bad, even if she hadn’t been poisoned by the brown soul attacks that floated as a mist amongst every bone shaped attack she saw so far.

The poor battered pony felt her body being lifted again even if her soul was still pink, the left hand was held out at her and made a sharp gesture to the right trying to slam her into a pillar again. However the right arm came up and gestured to the left stopping Pinkie’s momentum before she hit the pillar and then it slashed downwards dropping her safely onto the floor.

After that the skeletons right arm started grasping the left one trying to prevent it from hurting Pinkie even worse than she felt at that moment, it looked to her like Sans was actively fighting against himself. Aside from Mad Dummy and possibly Muffet, not many monsters really attacked her body and soul at the same time and in such a fierce manner that seriously hurt her like this.

While the two arms fought over dominance, a demented grin appeared on Sans face as he stomped down sending a wave of bones rising up towards her soul.

With a few quick rapid taps of her three hooves, she managed to get her soul to float high enough that it was out of the way of the bones temporarily protruding from the floor.

The skeleton frowned and several skulls started to appear as he stomped several more times making bones appear on all the walls and ceiling, only they didn’t disappear this time. It made the entire room a death trap for her soul to be near any surface, not to mention she couldn’t just let her soul sit still or else the guy attacking her would shred it with those skulls that fired things that were definitely not beams of love, tolerance and friendship.

There were multiple skulls moving about in the air around her soul and it was a good thing Pinkie knew they couldn’t move while firing, but they could still set up to hit her even if she dodged one she could be moving into the path of another. Pinkie went up onto her hind legs and took a bipedal stance, her front right leg hung limply and her front left was a constant throbbing pain as she held it against her chest.

Pinkie was friends with Lyra, but she hadn’t told the bonbon loving pony that she knew how to move around on two legs like a human. While it wasn’t easy, Pinkie figured out the trick and it required her to use her tail as a balance and to keep her legs slightly spread out. It had helped her out with her dance off against Mettaton and she was going to need to do it here as a matter of life and death.

All she was doing now was waiting for one of the skulls to fire so she could move her soul, there were ten or more of them hovering a circle around it. They were quite threatening, one of the skulls stopped and fired off a blast and Pinkie was immediately tapping out a beat on her two rear hooves.

The soul moved up and bobbed to the right, then dropped straight down being chased by two beams, it shifted moving in a leftwards manner, then towards her, away from her and then around one of the pillars which took the blasts that hit it and finally she brought it to a stop in front of her as the crossing beams of soul damaging energy took a moment to stop.

The dark side of the skeleton managed to push his right hand away and started to narrow his glowing eyehole. Suddenly a shifting came from the pillars in the room and two of the pillars ripped out of place, the ripped out portions were ten feet in length and quite solid, they floated over to the skeleton and he pointed to Pinkie sending one shooting like a spear at her.

Pinkie tapped her soul out of the way before she hopped up onto the pillar and ran along its length and did a side flip to the right off of it to dodge the second incoming pillar. Both the pillars came to a stop behind Pinkie, they floated parallel to each other before swinging around away from each other to slam together.

The pony had jumped straight up to land on top of them; she danced her soul to a few feet behind her then back flipped off the end of the pillars as they slammed straight upwards into the ceiling.

The two pillars quickly floated over to above Pinkie and slammed down with impressive speed making her roll out of the way to the left. She had to push off the ground with her three working legs to hop onto the pillar that came sliding sideways at her and with two twirling leaps she made her way onto the next one and back to the floor.

The skeleton grew angry and a dark glow started to surround Pinkie and she turned blue again, only this time the feeling of being weighed down was much, much worse. Everything just felt so heavy as she fell to her butt, she couldn’t move and her right eye was finally starting to swell up. The magical pain killers of the Temmie Armor were not enough to offset the severity of Pinkie’s suffering from just moving around now.

Sitting paralyzed in her spot, Pinkie looked up at Sans with her head feeling like it weighed a ton and saw a large black skull forming above him. It was large enough to fill the entire hallway where she was with a beam that would definitely destroy her soul. She could practically feel the buildup of power in the air and started coughing up more blood, all this pressure was really hurting her insides.

The skeleton spoke in strange symbols again, as the black skull built up power. It seemed like it was a monologue or some kind of observation. When the dark skull finally fired, the entire room was filled with a roar as the beam slowly left the skulls mouth and became increasingly faster as it expanded wider and wider the further it got from the mouth.

Pinkie’s pupils shrunk, she could feel the beam pass through her body heading towards her undefended soul. She closed her eyes knowing what was about to happen. Even if she could move her soul, there was no place to dodge to.

(End of Megalovania.)

“Oh please, no… Pinkie, please be alright!” Toriel could feel the buildup of energy as she approached the hallway and saw the bones at the entrance glowing brown. Even as powerful as she was there was no way for her to save her mare friend from whatever was going on in the hallway to the garden where Asriel died from his injuries. “Why can’t I ever protect the ones I love?”

Red was the only monster with her at the moment as many others were busy getting everyone together, she stood at Toriel’s side with a frown on her face.

Everything felt strange… lighter even… was this what it was like to be dead? Opening her eyes, Pinkie looked about and saw her damaged soul still in front of her own eyes and looking to her body… there was an ethereal light glowing about her and she was floating in the air slowly twisting about until she saw something that made her heart soar. She certainly wasn’t dead, even if she was still in quite a bit of pain that seemed to be deadened somewhat in the glow she was enshrouded in.

The first sign that she was alive was the wall of blue bones underneath her as she lazily turned in the air, she continued her slow weightless spin until she saw a monster that bravely stood before the currently weakened Sans with his hands planted on the ground.

“Nyeh heh heh, nobody expects a skeleton in position! Or is it that nobody expects The Mighty Papyrus to be in the Spanish Inquisition?” The Great Hero Papyrus had saved Pinkie in her last seconds from the attack that Sans had unwillingly unleashed, he was here now looking as every bit gallant and brave as befitting the nature of a true royal guard. “Speaking of inquiring things, brother what were you doing to our mutual friend? That attack might have actually killed her!”

“P-papyrus… help… me… save Pinkie.” The distorted sound of Sans gasping voice didn’t sit well with Papyrus; Sans’s body looked far frailer than it previously had a few moments ago. “Not in control… stop me, while he’s still weak.”

After that Sans started speaking darkly in symbols and Papyrus’s eyeholes widened, he apparently understood what Sans was saying whereas Pinkie just floated there bathed in a warm cozy golden light.

“F-Father… you shouldn’t be inside of Sans like that, why the innuendo alone is unpleasant! Can’t you see that it’s hurting him?” Quick On The Uptake Papyrus figured out immediately what was going on. “Also I don’t think Pinkie is a virus destroying what we monsters are; she’s just trying to help everyone be happier like mom used to do.”

Sans flinched and let out a scream of pain as if he had been slapped by The Oratory Empowered Papyrus’s words. The skeleton started speaking a diatribe of dark symbols directed at Papyrus.

“I guess you’re not father after all. I know I’m a bit ignorant, but at least I know dad loved us. You’re just a wraith, a dark revenant of the beloved parent we once had.” The Super Skeleton Papyrus was now angry as he set his left hand on his hip and pointed his right glove to Sans. “I may be ignorant of many things, but I personally know what’s precious to me and you are currently hurting my brother! I will save Sans from you; I will protect my good friend Pinkie and most of all… I will save the good name of my father!”

(Super Papyrus, Undertale - Megatrousle plays)

The Powerful Papyrus exploded with a golden field of energy that shook the room to its core and Pinkie’s soul returned to her body as he stood tall. He started marching in place and just the release of his power in the room alone was enough to force Sans’s body to start sliding backwards. All the dirty soul attack bones permeating the room had shattered immediately and were replaced by solid blue bones taking up the room, The Super Papyrus’s bones rattled angrily.

“I am Papyrus and I’m a skeleton made of magic bone and lots of cool, if you think you’re going to get away with this then you’re nothing but a complete and utter fool!” The Incredible Papyrus started stomping his way forward sending shockwaves with each step as he stared into the darkness encrusted eye of his brother’s tormentor. “My skills are unrivaled when it comes to defense and protecting those who are being hurt, and then if you don’t understand me now then I will see you served a plate of bad spaghetti with a side of my fist being curt!”

With each step Papyrus took towards Sans, something wavered from his body and an inky blackness was starting to shake and separate from him. It started to take form the closer The Golden Papyrus got and it was screeching in pain with his approach.

“So if you think I’ll just let you hurt my family and friends just to let you walk away, then you don’t know how upset it is to know that my brother was something with which you thought you could play!” The Stomping Mad Papyrus continued to stalk forward and a dark figure started fully emerging from Sans. “I want to be a royal guard as anyone who asks will know! Some may think I’m a goofy nothing, but my true strength I will now begin to show!”

The thing that came out of Sans was a twisted shadowy visage that started to solidify as it was being pushed back by Papyrus and away from his brother through sheer force of will and raw power. The things face was warped and had gained a somewhat skeletal appearance that looked similar to Sans and Papyrus.

Pinkie floated there watching as The Papyrus stomp his way forward and saw several skulls forming in the air trying aim at her, only they were destroyed by the time they fully came into existence and couldn’t even begin to build up any energy. The bones that Papyrus had control over stretched out and or launched from the surrounding bone forest Pinkie floated peacefully inside of, Papyrus wasn’t even looking at the skulls when he destroyed them with pinpoint accuracy as he continued to stomp his way towards the thing that had once inhabited Sans’s body.

“Now I would like to respectfully ask that you leave, if you don’t then I Papyrus will have to show you what I still have up my sleeve! Now be gone you terrible thing do not darken me or my loved ones lives, for in my heart there I know an unbeatable power thrives!” As he stated this, Papyrus’s soul popped from his body shining throughout the room brightly, in fact it was blinding to even look at. “For in my heart I know I can help save and protect the helpless for it will be for me that they will call! So rest now Revenant, we don’t need your hate and ignorance to bleed into us all! For I the Great Papyrus am the one that will see to your fall!”

After a moment the light died down revealing the ghost of Wing-Ding ‘Gaster’ Font floating before Papyrus.

“The light… it’s so bright… maybe I should have put more research into the light inside of hearts instead of the darkness.” Wing-Ding started to fade away slowly; he looked down at Papyrus and stared him with a crooked smile on his scarred and damaged face. “There is always a light somewhere when things are at their darkest... Calibri is that you?”

The ghost faded from existence and Papyrus looked down at the soul floating before his chest, it was a heart made of white bones giving off a golden glow. He slowly pushed it back inside of himself and a smile came onto his face, he turned around and walked to retrieve his brother and to stop Pinkie from floating in the air somehow. He didn’t know how he achieved any of that, but he definitely felt lighter now.

“Pinkie, oh thank goodness you’re alive… why… why did you have to run off like that?” Toriel plucked Pinkie from the bubble of light and held her damaged form close and started crying over her.

“If I didn’t, then you would have gotten hurt badly too Tori. I just wanted to talk to Asgore; I didn’t expect anything like this to happen.” Being cradled against her goat friend’s form, Pinkie snuggled into it. “I want to keep going; we need to talk to Asgore.”

“At least give yourself some time to recover Pinkie.” Toriel held her pony tight and Pinkie couldn’t struggle out of her grip as she was too weak.

Author's Note

Let's see meeting with Asgore, then a few surprises surrounding Asriel, but how is the ending going to be different from normal? Oh, I have an idea!

Yep, everyone saw that come I'd bet.

Party Member: Papyrus!

Class: Papyrus!

Species: Papyrus!

Special Traits: The Special Skeleton Papyrus can alleviate pain, counter some damage dealt and block ridiculously deadly attacks! He makes spaghetti too, good or bad depending on how he feels about you!

Alignment: Papyrus! Papyrus's Friends! Papyrus's Family! Those in need of more Papyrus!

Titles: The Too Many Titles To List Here Papyrus, Captain Exclamation Point!

Current Health: ????!/????!

The stats above are Papyrus approved!

"No... they are not approved... there isn't enough of me, Papyrus, in them!" Papyrus declared loudly in the author notes despite the fact that he shouldn't even be aware of them.

39 - Queen of the mountain

Pinkie looked so frail in her arms, yet Toriel knew the pony was quite strong and had survived another harrowing experience. This equine had just been in some kind of battle that involved her floating in a bubble of light at the end of it and there Toriel came in to hold and comfort her little pink heart breaker with a soft hand rubbing her belly.

“What’s wrong with her leg and face?” Red looked both worried and a little saddened by Pinkie’s injuries. It was kind of hard to tell with her flat face and even flatter delivery of the words she spoke, but Pinkie knew given that her sister is Maud.

“Its soul damage, it’ll take some time and rest for her soul to heal. I don’t know of her other injuries, but I’m not about to let my mare friend run off into danger like this again.” Fussing over the pony as she held her head against her chest, Toriel moved over to one of the pillars where she sat down to lean against it while keeping a tight but careful grip on a whimpering Pinkie. Toriel’s eyes roved the pillars she leaned back against and they widened slightly. “That energy build up, it was a black attack. Thank goodness it didn’t hit Pinkie.”

“Black attack… isn’t that a powerful attack that tends to cause anything from destruction, decay or death upon hitting anything?” Looking at the pillar the upset queen was sitting against, Red could see that a large portion of the pillar had been worn away heavily on one side and slightly less so on the other.

“Yes and I The Wonderful Papyrus am quite surprised that my brother was even capable of such a powerful attack, but fear not for I have thwarted the fiend who stole the visage of my father’s spirit and my brother’s body!” The Ever Friendly Papyrus dragged a tired looking Sans over to them. “Finding out my brother hasn’t left me all alone fills me with a joy that is great, I might even say that my joy is greater than even me!”

“Papyrus… you are the best brother ever.” The weakened Sans was still out of it from his devastating loss of energy, being forced to charge that attack had taken a lot out of him. “You saved me and Pinkie; I honestly didn’t even know you were that powerful.”

“Do not worry about it Sans, for I Papyrus would do anything to make sure my friends and family stay safe! Even if it means putting everything I have into doing so!” The Grandstanding Papyrus took a self important pose with his arms crossed and head held high, his cape fluttered in a wind that wasn’t there. “Nyeh Heh Heh, I’d be a rather ‘bone-ly’ skeleton now if I didn’t take my dream of protecting those precious to me seriously!”

“Yeah, I’m definitely boned without my bro around; because let’s face it he has some real backbone to jump in front of an attack like that. I think it will be a while before my funny bone can get back into action, then I’ll be humerus once more.” Sans statement was blunt and out of nowhere. “Tibia-honest and tooth-full, I could use some rest before I get back to my skullduggery. I don’t think I can rib any of you at the moment, but I’ll take that as a phalange to get better soon. Likely the next time you see me, I’ll be feeling spine.”

Pinkie gave off a round of loud giggles before coughing some flecks of blood into her left hoof, yeah her insides were still damaged from all the gravitational forces and Toriel was giving her a worried look. She gave her goat friend a weak smile; the strong arms holding her gently eased her body into a more relaxing position. The Temmie Armor was working its magic, but she wasn’t going to be one hundred percent for quite a while and talking right now would have been rather painful. Her head was pressed against Toriel’s chest and her goat friend’s heartbeat made the world feel nice and calm.

“Get some rest now Pinkie. I know laughter is your favorite medicine, but right now I think all it will do is hurt you.” Having the pony she held looking up at her and trying to smile was breaking Toriel’s heart, Pinkie was undeniably strong and positive even when she was hurting. She turned to the skeleton that had saved Pinkie from a dangerous attack. “Papyrus as a recognized queen of the people, I can’t believe I’m really doing this, I hereby grant you potential status as a royal guard. Before you go off shouting it to the world, you are not yet fully recognized as a royal guard as I need to see if you can uphold the position. I need to know that you can follow orders, but can also go against them if it’s for the good of the people or others. You can even come to me and question my actions if you think there is something wrong with them. If you accept this proposition, my first order is for you to take care of your brother first and see to his safety. I also order you to follow your heart and to not abuse the authority given to you. Those are my only orders right now, do you accept?”

“Oh my goodness, I the Potential Royal Guard Papyrus can abide by those orders quite easily! Following my heart and training is all I’ve been doing for a long time, so that shouldn’t be too hard for the likes of me!” The Bright Smile Papyrus hefted his brother up and disappeared by skele-porting away with him.

“You made him really happy Tori.” A hand went to one of Pinkie’s ears and started rubbing away slowly making the pony drift off with a hum of appreciation. Toriel started whispering into her ears and as the sweet words flowed, the pony quickly decided that it was nap time.

“Yeah, but why do I feel like I’ve just doomed everyone by giving Papyrus authority and responsibility?” Toriel shook her head and tried to banish the horrible thoughts of a spaghetti empire forming because of that skeleton, the image was a plate of spaghetti using him as a puppet leader in a ridiculous fashion. “I trust and hope that he can handle it.”

“It is your will my queen. I’m sure he will not abuse his authority when he actually gets some, even he didn’t seem that foolish to me from what I saw.” The skeleton was a little silly, but Red thought he had a lot of heart and the smile on his face as he left really cheered up the dour mood considerably.

“Now we just have to wait for Pinkie to recover some of her strength. Are you staying to watch out for us Red?” Receiving a nod from their cloaked friend, Toriel leaned back and let out a sigh of contentment as she hugged Pinkie tenderly.

It had been almost two hours and ten minutes later when Toriel’s eyes snapped open and she looked down at Pinkie to find that she was still there. The left side of Pinkie’s face didn’t have that horrible gray streak on it and her right leg was halfway to being pink again, the other half of it was still gray and lifeless.

Pinkie shifted about and mumbled in Toriel’s arms and after a moment she calmed down. Hearing someone coming, Red was immediately had her sword out. Toriel could only guess what Muffet had done to Red, but it must have been horrifying and like Pinkie she would not rather think too hard on it.

The one who came running was none other than the yellow scientist lizard with the hand held BUSTER strapped to the side of her lab coat, it was Alphys. She looked around a bit and upon seeing them she smiled without an inch of nervousness on her face. She was becoming braver by the day and came up to them looking happy to see them. Red simply sheathed her sword and went back to leaning back against the pillar.

“Have you met up with Asgore yet and… what happened here? Oh… oh dear, Pinkie, is she okay?” Looking at the wear on the pillar, Alphys didn’t ask much more, especially after seeing Pinkie’s partially gray leg which led to her surmising what had happened here.

“She’s doing better; she’s still recovering from her run in with a possessed monster. The situation has been dealt with and surprisingly no one died.” At least with what little she saw, Toriel hoped that no one died. It was a concern that Wing-Ding Aster ‘Gaster’ Font had possessed his own son to a dangerous degree, could someone even die twice? She knew she could personally explode more than twice, but that was just her. Shaking her head of that random thought, Toriel turned to address Alphys. “Alphys what are you doing here, are you here to help, are any of our other friends coming?”

“Well… there’s something I wanted to tell you. You see, it’s about those stolen souls, they are probably with Asgore. Hold on, that’s not exactly what I wanted to tell you!” It was an upset Alphys who held up her hands in a calming gesture as if to prevent Toriel from setting off on Asgore in an explosively dangerous manner. There was a smell of brimstone coming off of Toriel.

“What is it then that you wanted to tell me aside from the fact that I’ll be seeing the stolen souls of children?” Toriel calmed down as Pinkie became slightly upset at her agitation and her mare friend really needed to finish her nap without complications. Her pony quickly got comfortable and nuzzled into her neck calming her down. Could she ever really let go of Pinkie? It was beginning to worry Toriel that she had too strong an attachment and that Pinkie might feel the same way, she wasn’t about to be the reason that Pinkie never saw her family or friends again.

“You’re so nice and warm.” Pinkie muttered from her perch in Toriel’s arms, the blush that crossed the goat ladies face was rather vibrant.

“Right, well what I wanted to say was that the bodies of the children have been perfectly preserved in stasis from the moment their souls were stolen. Their bodies are in the same place that Chara’s body was placed when he let his soul be taken as his body… died.” It took a while for Alphys to remember what they did with the bodies of those children and she was wondering if Toriel wanted to know about them. There was quite a strange thoughtful expression on the face of the queen. “I just thought that you might want to know about that. Aside from that I’m here to help in any way I can and yes the others are getting together, I’m not much of a fighter… I’m more of a lover in many aspects.”

“Yes, I did want to know that and I needed to. That’s really good news actually. After things are said and done I can at least put their souls back where they belong and revive them if the stasis was good enough. It’s not exactly good news because even if those children had families to return to at the time, those families are likely long gone after so many years.” Toriel stroked Pinkie’s mane as she looked down at the pony now hugging her with one and a half legs. “This means even if the children were to be revived, they would have nowhere to go and are in fact orphaned by Asgore’s actions if they weren’t already orphans like Frisk. Pinkie, I know you’re awake, how are you feeling?”

“I’m feeling…” Pulling away from hugging her goat friend and after opening her mouth to speak, Pinkie’s eyes widened and she turned her head away from Toriel and started spewing blood and bile. Her goat friend gained a horrified look as the fluids splattered all over the floor nearby. After wiping at her mouth with her left hoof, Pinkie looked a bit embarrassed. “I actually feel much better after having done that, but I’m really hungry now. Internal bleeding really takes it out of you, I think the Temmie armor dealt with most of that first and I just had to get the rest of the blood out of my body by losing my cookies. Are there a cookie monsters or apes escaping around here? I want to get some cookies back into me.”

“Give me a second Pinkie and I’ll heat something up. Alphys can you please go get us a lot of food and drink? We both missed eating since ‘some pony’ wanted to get an early start and I will not beat the hell out of Asgore on an empty stomach.” As she said this, Toriel pulled out the container that had the quiche in it from her backpack. Toriel pulled off the lid and her hands started faintly glowing, within a minute Pinkie started sniffing the air and hummed appreciatively. When you had leftovers that needed warming up or baking to be done, then Toriel was your goat. “Aside from the fact that Pinkie also needs to replace all the blood she lost. She might think she’s fine, but she’s pale and could use a good meal before we deal with what could inevitably become a life or death struggle. Not that Pinkie hasn’t already faced that a few hours ago, I’m not exactly hopeful that something worse won’t come up.”

“With your luck Toriel, I would think the mountain collapsing down on top of us all or it suddenly becoming an active volcano would be the next logical step in Murphy’s Laws.” Dryly stating the likeliest outcome for a worst case scenario was Red. She knew that Toriel has had a series of inconvenient things that have happened to her that were not likely coincidental as she seemed to be fates chew toy for sob stories and emotional trauma.

“No, I can actually deal with a volcano. I can also obliterate the mountain above us, but I would be hurting the nature that happens to live around it.” Putting her palm to her chin and tapping her nose with a finger, Toriel started to think of the worst likeliest scenario involving her she could possibly come up with. “Actually what I think will happen is either Asgore or another monster absorbs all the human souls and then proceeds to use them to do horrible things, one of which will be trying to kill Pinkie. At this point I should expect that to be the very thing that will happen. Of course if in the initial using of the human souls incapacitates me and any other monsters that happen to be around that could possibly do something about it, then Pinkie will be fighting alone for a time until I or any of the others can break free. So I want a full stomach, because I know for a fact that something is going to go wrong in the most 'annoying' manner possible.”

“I’m with Tori on this one; even I can see that everything she said is going to happen. I guess all we can do is our best to grin and laugh in the face of danger; I’ve done that plenty of times. Kind of how I ended up down here, you know I always thought that purifying an immortal pony twisted by darkness born of a deep rooted jealousy using the power of friendship would be the highlight of my life,” Going slightly cross eyed Pinkie became thoughtful, then she took a bite out of the warmed up quiche. “Don’t think the dragon really appreciated me laughing at it while wearing a silly outfit before all this started come to think of it.”

“Is it wrong of me to think that my mare friend had a death wish before we even met?” Toriel turned to Red with a pathetic look on her face.

Red mulled it over and shrugged as she was just a puppet monster with a chip in her shoulder about life since meeting Pinkie’s horrifyingly fanatical spider friend. If you were to ask her about strings and how to not let them hold you down, then she’d definitely have more to say and add to this conversation. After the two finished eating, Red would give Pinkie something the pony needed for the foreseeable future.

Full of food and a given few minutes to try and befriend Asgore by herself, Pinkie made her way forward. Toriel was going to be busy checking the coffins with the preserved bodies while Pinkie did this. Whether or not Pinkie was successful in her endeavors to befriend Asgore didn’t matter, Toriel promised to flat out beat up King Asgore ‘Fluffy Buns’ Dreemurr. The severity of how badly Toriel would rip into him depended on how well he treated Pinkie. If Asgore attacked her pony, then Toriel was not going to hold back her wrath on the man she once loved.

Knowing this Pinkie put on her best hopeful smile as she sauntered forward into a room full of vegetation and flowers, there a throne sat in the only clear spot in the room. Her right leg was almost completely pink right on down to the hoof; eating food really sped up the recovery process and she ate a feast before setting hoof in this room. The back of a large goat person sat before her and he turned around upon hearing her steps coming into the room.

Asgore had a hopeful look on his face and it fell as soon as he turned with a swish of his cape to see Pinkie standing there bright eyed and straight tailed.

“You were maybe expecting Tori?” Asking this quietly, Pinkie sauntered up to the big man himself looking up at him curiously as she sat down in the flowers. He was far bulkier than she had imagined, King Asgore was a large beefy looking goat monster. “Well I don’t think she really wants to see you right away, but she’ll still come and right now she’s gone to check on the children’s bodies.”

“Tell me, does she still at least have a spark of fire in her?” It was for the sake of his mind that Asgore even asked this, he was the one to throw water on that fire.

“Oh yeah, I’d say she’s rather hot.” Waggling her eyebrows, Pinkie hoped it would amuse him. “She gets pretty depressed at times, but I’ve been trying to help her through it and I’ve managed to make her smile quite a few times.”

“Good, that’s… good. I’m sorry, I would ask if you would stick around for tea, but I’m afraid we’ll come to conflict soon miss?” Stopping here Asgore looked at Pinkie searchingly; even if she was friendly he didn’t like what her presence represented.

“Oh wow I’m being rude; hello there I’m Pinkie Pie. I’m an earth pony; my special talent is throwing parties and making people happy.” She went up onto her hind legs and held out her left hoof, her right was still a bit gray at the tip. “I already know you’re name, but it’s still nice to meet you mister?”

“I’m King Asgore Dreemurr, you can call me Asgore. Follow me please; I will not sully these flowers or what they represent by trampling all over them when we come to blows.” Asgore shook her hoof and turned to look over the Ulex flowers with sadness. He motioned for Pinkie to follow him. Seeing that the friendly pony following him, he led her out the back of the throne room to a hallway that led to the barriers edge, while leading her there he just had to ask. “So how did you come know Toriel?”

“Well it’s a bit of a story, but I fell down here after a falling off a mountain. My world doesn’t have humans so I’m quite sure I’m from an alternate dimension. After I hit the floor I quickly met Toriel in the Home Ruins, she led me through the ruins and made me the most delicious cinnamon butterscotch pie I’ve ever had. Even when she was trying to help me understand how things work around here I could tell that she was a super sad goat lady, I’m surprised I can make her smile or even laugh so hard that she bleats.” There was a noted wistful look on the king’s face at Pinkie’s words. Pinkie had to tell him she was dating Toriel and she hoped he wouldn’t be too mad about it. “I like how a lot of monsters start calling her ‘Goat Mom’ after a few minutes with her. Even when life hasn’t exactly been nice to her, she keeps going.”

“She always did have an adorable laugh to go along with her sweet voice. She was always so strong too, stronger than me at least. So, the Goat Mom thing is still happening around her?” The king snorted in amusement as they walked into a vast space of pure white. “I’ve hurt her badly and I don’t think she’ll ever fully forgive me for all that I’ve put her through. Which leads me to this question, how long have you been dating her?”

“Almost ever since I got here… wait, how did you know? No, I think know. It’s because it isn’t easy to make her smile or more importantly laugh until she bleats.” Stopping Pinkie actually looked around at the vast white expanse before her. “Whoa, what is this place?”

“This is the edge of the barrier that holds us all down here. I just want you to know that I don’t hold dating Toriel against you Pinkie, if you’ve been able to make her happy again then I’m glad that she found someone like you.” Turning to face the pony, Asgore took out a large fork he twirled it and then stabbed it into the ground at his side prongs down. Seven tube rose up and six of them were filled with colorful souls. “I’m afraid that I will have to try to take your soul, I don’t think Tori will ever forgive me for it if I manage to do so. Can you defend yourself?”

“Yes, I can protect myself. I really don’t want to fight you though; you really seem like a nice reasonable guy… well except for the whole attacking me thing. Monsters really like doing that to me for some reason.” As she said this Pinkie pulled something out and stabbed into the ground at her side, she would then proceed to strip herself of her saddlebags and leave them in a corner in the hallway behind her. “Do we really need to do this? Tori is going to be really mad at you if she finds you hurting me after I just finished healing from my previous injuries. Throwing up blood is not fun and neither is internal hemorrhaging.”

At Pinkie’s side stood an object that was as mighty and grand as Asgore’s giant fork, it was a spoon. It was a really large spoon with a handle that had blue and yellow stripes, the shaft was dark magenta and the scoop was bright pink with a familiar emblem of three balloons on its back.

Red had given Pinkie the end result of Project Grave Digger, Pinkie had never asked for it and she didn’t want another shovel after what happened to the last one. It was too late for Pinkie to stop the highly personalized shovel from being put into her hooves ensuring its inevitable destruction. Pinkie didn’t know how long this shovel would last and she didn’t want to think about it.

“You know this is a bit silly when you look at it that way… say did you know you’re big fork is going to be fighting against my big spoon?” Smiling cheerfully Pinkie hummed in thought about the weapons name. The project was called Grave Digger for obvious reasons, but the name of the weapon was actually ‘Laughter’s Resolve’ and she didn’t know if she even liked the name until she thought about it. It reminded her of how Toriel could still laugh and smile, she had just about given up on having a shovel that wouldn’t break under the extreme shenanigans she could put one through. Now she was going to use this one. “Oh my goodness, this will be a silverware battle! So who has the butter knife?”

“I see what Toriel likes about you; you have a heart that’s like a child’s. Yes this is necessary, well mostly to me anyway, not so much for you. Are you ready?” Being the king that he was, Asgore stood tall crossing his arms and waited for Pinkie’s answer.

“I don’t want to, but I’m ready as I’ll ever be. You don’t seem particularly surprised that I’m going to use a shovel.” To put things into perspective, Pinkie was a small pony and Asgore was a big heavily muscled monster at least twice her weight even without the armor. Pinkie looked positively puny next to him and now she was shaking a hoof at the air. “Hey, I might be small, but I’m no pushover! I’m no Negative Nancy, now there’s a pony who’s a pessimist and even then we’re decent friends even if she is a real downer! ”

“I’m not too surprised because I watch Mettaton’s shows. Best entertainment we can get really.” Looking up at the air Asgore had to wonder who Pinkie was addressing, shaking his head he picked up his trident and pointed it at Pinkie while giving off a heavy sigh. “I suggest you get yourself ready, have at thee!”

Asgore didn’t move forward or attack Pinkie immediately; instead he swung his large trident in a wide arc and swished his cape to wait patiently for her to ‘make a pose’.

“Every day I’m shoveling!” Raising the shovel above her head with her left hoof, Pinkie’s shovel shined brightly and sparkled gloriously as she shuffled a bit waiting for Asgore to make his move.

Asgore charged forward and Pinkie did so as well and they clashed their weapons together, a large blast of air came off their impact and Pinkie stood her ground pushing against his weapon with all her might. After several seconds of stalemate they pushed away from each other, Asgore was a bit surprised by that outcome.

(Shovel Knight - Fighting with all our might, arranged version)

Pinkie charged forward and swung her shovel outwards only to be deflected by Asgore who proceed to stab at Pinkie. She rolled under the stab between his legs and came up to slap him across his unguarded back putting a small dent in his armor.

Asgore quickly spun around and would have taken Pinkie’s head off; if she hadn’t disappeared. He immediately jumped backwards out of the way as Pinkie came down to strike the floor with a thunderous crash; she used that impact to launch herself forward towards him in an attempt to do a Spear Spade.

Catching her shovels blade between two of his tridents prongs Asgore twisted and slammed Pinkie into the ground. He pulled his weapon back to nearly skewer her with a strong thrust that had her rolling away from him onto her two rear hooves.

Pressing his advantage Asgore charged Pinkie who quickly jammed her shovel into the ground at a forty five degree angle; she waited until he was almost on top of her.

“Taste the Rock Salt!” Pinkie lifted her left rear leg and stomped down on the handle of the shovel flipping it back into her hooves and launching a large section of the floor into Asgore’s face knocking him down from the harsh impact.

As Asgore stood back up he used the shaft of his trident to block the overhead swing Pinkie brought against him that forced him to skidding backwards a few inches from the force she put into it. His conjured weapon even cracked from the blow.

Pinkie held out her shovel and waited for Asgore to come at her, a sparkle of energy traveled down the length of the shovel from handle to the tip of its blade.

Lunging forward Asgore tried to use his longer weapon to his advantage, only for Pinkie to crouch under the vertical prongs and spin into his attack dragging the shovel along the floor. She brought it up and with a mighty swing, only she didn’t hit him.

Instead of pressing forward Asgore had quickly retreated upon seeing her move and didn’t actually escape unscathed. When he leapt backwards a spiraling crescent shaped blade of air shot out of Pinkie’s shovel and slammed into his chest plate causing it to crack.

Pinkie suddenly had an angry blonde haired muscular goat man on her and she didn’t particularly like the airs incidental innuendo. She clashed her shovel with his trident; she held her shovel in a reverse grip and used the scoop to catch the prongs. She was forcefully pushed backwards and where she quickly used the shaft of the shovel to block the follow up swing that sent her flying a few feet to her right where she slammed into the floor.

Asgore leapt high into the air and tried to come down on her with his trident, Pinkie locked the shovel between two of the prongs as she stood up. Managing to stand her ground and with a twist of the shovel, Pinkie caused the falling Asgore to land sloppily and he started stumbling having become off balance.

Disengaging the shovel from his trident while he stumbled, Pinkie rammed her right shoulder into Asgore and then slammed the handle of her shovel upwards into his chin dazing him. She swept around and slapped at his left leg with her weapon and managed to topple him.

Asgore immediately spun his trident from his prone position and clocked Pinkie harshly across the right side of her face with back end of his weapon which flowered outwards into small spikes.

That last attack caused Pinkie to start whimpering and bleeding from the cuts she had acquired from the action, not to mention it forced her to back off. It was not like she hasn’t lost enough blood today. Pinkie should really stop glaring at the air; it could really hurt her beautiful bright blues eyes if she kept doing that.

Even in that short amount of time fighting the king, Pinkie was breathing pretty heavily having strained herself to keep up with his notable physical advantage over her. She made up for it with incredible skill and agility. The pony prepared for the kings next attack.

(End music.)

“Enough!” Hearing Toriel shout, caused both combatants to freeze up and look towards the goat lady that had just witnessed Pinkie take a painful looking hit to the face. Red and Alphys backed away from her with slightly fearful looks on their faces.

“Toriel, it is nice to see…” Started off Asgore as he stood up, however it was obvious that he had earned his ex’s ire. He swiftly received a flaming foot that lifted him from the floor while melting the metal between his legs upon impact; he crumpled while clutching at the molten mess between his legs. The sudden pitch in Asgore’s voice went hilariously high and squeaky. “You…”

“Huh the chapter’s title actually makes sense this time, has the world gone mad when I wasn’t looking?” Ignoring Pinkie’s continued insistence that there is no fourth wall to this story and that the king just suddenly had a sex change via hot foot to the gonads, Toriel proceeded to throw flaming right hook to his face that knocked him flat on his back.

“You always did have a mean right hook Tori.” Hilariously squeaky voice aside, Asgore wasn’t about to lift a hand to defend himself against Toriel even if he did have an imprint of her fist burned into his face.

“I swear, no one has any idea how long I’ve been waiting to do that!” Goat Mom Toriel was a flaming pyre of anger and resentment at the moment, which was until Pinkie walked up to her and hugged her around the waist calming her down drastically.

“I’m okay Tori; it’s just a scratch.” Pinkie received a pair of arms wrapped around her warmly returning the hug she was giving.

“Oh well now isn’t that just nice. I honestly don’t know how you made it this far without the power of saving, but you’re not going to be going anywhere.” Hearing the voice they all turned to see a devilishly smiling flower that had the six human souls floating around him. “You asked who had the knife you cootie spreading jerk… well that would be me. In this world it’s kill or be killed after all, I’m going to show you exactly what I mean. Even if you did have the power to save, it wouldn’t help you now!”

“I called it, pay up!” Toriel said and held out her hand, Pinkie, Alphys and Red grumbled a bit and they all passed Pinkie’s smiling goat friend twenty gold each.

“I still thought the active volcano thing would have been a way better idea!” Pinkie intoned vibrantly.

“I was still banking on Asgore going crazy with power.” Red muttered next to her in a flat tone.

'“MRGRGR, hey, I’m trying to start up an evil villain monologue of how I came to be here! Are any of you paying attention to me?” Flowey was completely upset that they were all ignoring him. “Oh you guys are so asking for it! I’ll absorb the power of all the monsters down here starting with those in this very room! Of course I will still explain my back story in a long overdrawn monologue before that, I’ll just have to force you to pay attention!”

“Are you seriously going to make us suffer through that?” Tilting her head at the ‘mad with power’ flower, Pinkie didn’t want to hear a boring monologue.

“Yes!” Flowey started giving off a deranged laugh as he powered himself up with the souls of the six human children.

Vines sprouted up around the room capturing the monsters, thus creating a captive audience as Pinkie took to holding her shovel at the ready.

Author's Note

I think Pinkie has the advantage here, she can dig up plants with her shovel.

Flowey is a plant, so it makes perfect sense... well it would if he kept being a flower.

Sorry this one took so long, I have a temperamental computer that kept freezing up and losing large portions of this chapter I've had to rewrite four times. Plus there was E3 to watch and other things to worry about. Good times.

40 - Final Pie Prance

Asgore’s hands were still clutching at his tenders when he was entrapped by large powerful vines. He figured he would challenge Pinkie and then… well he hadn’t really thought that far ahead. He wasn’t about to kill Pinkie though. He looked over to Toriel and a strained smile came to his face, she was as beautiful as he remembered.

“You know despite what’s currently happening Toriel, I’m still really glad to see you. That’s like what, the four hundredth and fifty third time you’re foot has been between my legs?” Asgore didn’t have a clue why he thought that was a good thing, but then again Toriel always continued to impress him with how hard she could manage to kick him.

“I will admit that a part of me does miss you too… but I don’t think we’ll ever go back to having anything romantic to do with each other. Even provided we survive this encounter with whatever this flower monster is.” It was the tone that Toriel spoke in that hurt Asgore more than the kick had, in some parts she was glad to see her big lug Fluffy Buns was doing okay despite having personally dug her foot into him once again. She wasn’t exactly very friendly to him during her pregnancy with Asriel, her mood swings during that period were said to have been quite dangerous and somewhat legendary among monsters. “I’m surprised you could keep count of how many times my foot has made contact between your legs.”

“Yes, but it usually didn’t involve fire unlike this time. Sometimes it was a happy foot instead of a bad one.” The high pitched Asgore chuckled admirably despite himself. “I’m also sad to agree that whatever romance we had is dead by our actions, of which I can be blamed for.”

“Oh no the blame doesn’t fall squarely on you, I’m somewhat to blame for a lot of things that happened as well.” Releasing her own slightly bitter laugh Toriel looked to Pinkie who looked to be at the ready for a confrontation.

“Can you two please be quiet, I’m trying to mentally prepare myself for an evil monologue and I was building dramatic tension with the silence!” To the two captured royals Flowey seemed to be adorably childish for such an evil flower and they just couldn’t put their minds on why it was so cute to them. “Now to start my monologue, ahem…”

Flowey went to open his mouth only for Alphys to open hers first and she spoke rather fast, even Pinkie Pie was a little surprised how fast she blurt it out.

“It all started when you, Asriel, were still holding onto Chara’s soul tightly and died over the flowers. We still had monsters that were sickly and others that were dying so Asgore had me look into Wing-Ding’s determination extractor after the accident took his life. As a test for the first bit of determination extracted, I injected one of the flowers and this is the end result. Said flower had Chara's soul which would of course cause it to help the other sou, Asriel's, persist after death and with Asriel’s essence fused into the life of the flower, it twisted into a horrible amalgamate in a manner like what happened to all the other monsters I’ve ever injected the stuff with. I never knew what happened to that flower until now. So now he’s a cruelly twisted monster with both the souls of a human and monster horrifically combined that’s driving them to complete insanity!” After that Alphys blinked at herself, did she really just state Flowey’s monologue for him before he himself could and had she really figured this all out so quickly? She saw that Flowey was just staring at her flatly gritting his flowery teeth. “Oh and I guess he has a hatred for humans a mile wide given Chara hates his own kind, made all that much worse for ending his beloved brother’s life and leading to their current situation among all the other reasons he possibly has. He even probably wanted to kill them off by having Asriel take his soul to get revenge on them originally. He didn’t count on Asriel being as kind hearted as his mother or morally innocent unlike he was. Considering he poisoned himself to death in a ridiculous ploy, Chara really couldn’t let go of his anger towards his own kind and died giving his soul to his brother Asriel and told him to go get some flowers from his village. Incidentally this doomed Asriel too and further increased the madness of what we see before us.”

“Which all of course happened on Asgore’s watch no less and given that he ordered the experiments into determination I’m not exactly surprised to see both my sons are now an evil flower. Sure, because why not? My only question is this, could the flower amalgamate be considered undead or reborn? I ask mostly out of curiosity because it sounds like you created a lich with science.” An aggravated Toriel finished frostily for Alphys while looking to the flower sadly. “So… how is this not your fault Asgore?”

“Well… okay I’ll admit that some of my decisions leading to the current situation weren’t the brightest, but we can all agree that at least I’m a nice guy that tries to be friends with my people right?” No one countered Asgore on being a nice guy so he smiled to himself; he had a fair point as he was a generally nice guy. “In any case I accept responsibility for most of this situation.”

“Yes, you’re nice to monsters and you have a nice body and I might admittedly tap that again, but not as lovers and probably out of pity. Just know I’m going friend zone you so hard that the chance of that happening will be highly unlikely. I would also like to state that you suck as a leader.” Rolling her eyes Toriel turned back to Flowey. “Sorry I couldn’t protect you from becoming what you are now.”

“Wow, that’s really messed up on a number of levels and here I thought Ponyville was bad where Hue Jelly was his own grandpa through archaic marriage practices.” Tilting her head while shoveling popcorn into her mouth with a hoof, Pinkie sat staring at Flowey who she now knew to be two of Toriel’s sons merged together into an unholy abomination in the form of a creepy flower with a sadistic laugh. The pink pony was looking at him sadly; at least she knew there was a light under that dark smiling flower that was beginning to laugh hysterically that seemed to be born of anger more than madness.

“Oh, come on! You guys are bunch of butts! I was going to go on a long drawn out monologue and here you all are ruining everything! Do you know how long I’ve waited for this moment?” Flowey crossed his two green leaves and glared at all his prisoners while squeezing them tightly for a moment with the entrapping vines. He received grunts of pain from them that made him smile.

“Yep that’s definitely our son in there alright; he sounds just like you Toriel.” It was a bit bitter to take in, but Asgore guessed he was okay with his sons being an evil flower. “Besides I know I’m a butt, a rather fluffy one at that.”

“Yep that sounds just like me when I get cranky, except there’s usually more fire involved. I guess our son would have been great with plant related magic, he always did like gardening. Had I been given the chance to actually teach him anything, he probably would have learned magic related to plants or healing.” Staring off into space with misty eyes, Toriel gave off a wistful smile. She at least knew that her son was in there somewhere and it warmed her heart slightly. Normally she would be mentally traumatized, but at this point she was used to this kind of thing by now and she was tired of crying about it. “Well at least I can see my son is living the dream at least, you’re quite adorable as a flower even if it is under trying circumstances. Also you should not be checking out your mother’s posterior young man!”

“Mom, I’m a boy, I’m not supposed to be adorable! I’m supposed to be a big scary monster, also handsome and stuff… even if I really do like flowers!” Flowey stopped for a moment and then covered his mouth with his leaves in wide eyed shock and saw Toriel smile at him sweetly. Did he just really say that? He shivered at the loving smile he so wanted just stretch out to and hug, the words ‘Goat Mom’ echoed in his head thunderously at the sight. “Look we’re getting way off track here, I’m evil now and I’m going to carry out my goals of destroying all the humans! First I’ll just have to steal all the power of every single monster in the Underworld!”

“So you’ll take even The Jerry?” Pinkie asked to see what his response would be; so far all he did was grow big vines to bind up every monster in this area next to the barrier. It seemed as if Red was off in her little world and having a panic attack that was likely related to whatever Muffet did to her, which is probably why she didn’t react to being squeezed slightly by the large entangling vine. “Speaking of which, where is The Jerry? I haven’t seen or heard of him since the party, all the monsters were having so much fun they didn’t even notice he was there.”

“I’ll steal the power of ‘almost’ every single monster in the Underworld!” He had been about to say yes, but Flowey retracted his statement immediately upon paling at the thought of having The Jerry’s power inside of him. It positively made his photosynthetic flesh crawl with horror to think of it. He would acknowledge the fact that he was insane, but even he wasn’t nearly that insane or stupid. “There’s nothing any of you can do to stop me!”

“Okay.” Everyone said in simple acceptance, even Red in her monotone voice rang through loud and clear.

“Wait, really? You’re just seriously going to just let me do this and you’re not going to attack me to try and stop this?” Flowey didn’t seem particularly in to it anymore, but he started charging up his power anyway and the souls floating around him started growing brightly.

“Someone will eventually defeat you, but I’m banking on Pinkie to do it. Anyone want to gamble on it?” Toriel asked sweetly with a bright friendly smile.

“No.” Even Flowey joined the chorus that sounded out that sentiment, nobody wanted to bet against Toriel.

“Well excuse me then for trying to lighten the mood, okay go ahead Chariel.” Toriel hoped Pinkie could handle whatever her little flower was about to do, she believed in the dancing cheer spreading pony.

“Can you call me by my name, that’s Flowey Chariel Dreemurr to you mom! Wait, did I just accept that… ergh…” Flowey had accepted Chariel so easily and gained a constipated look on his face. “You know, before that, why did you name me after yourselves? I’ve always wanted to know, why is my name a mixture of Asgore and Toriel?”

“Asgore named you using parts of our names. If you want to be upset with anyone my little flower, then please be upset with your father for being unoriginal and incapable of naming things. That should have been my fifteenth clue to never let him name anything, ever.” Toriel was moved closer to Asgore and she gave Flowey a questioning look.

“Can I make a request that you kick him mom, you know before I become an all powerful monster bent on destroying everything in my path? That would include you as well, no hard feelings mind you, evil flower and all.” A high pitched yelp was music to Flowey’s petals and he smiled happily. “Thanks mommy!”

“You’re not upset that she hit you with a fireball? You know, back when I first met you?” It seemed a little odd to Pinkie that Flowey was getting along with Toriel so easily. “I’m also wondering how you can treat your father like that.”

“Daddy’s an idiot, but he’s our idiot even if mommy doesn’t like him very much anymore and I was feeling a bit vindictive. Mom may have hit me with a fireball, but I forgave her for that because she can still love an evil being like me. That and she didn’t know it was me at the time so she has a good excuse. Now to rip the power out of every monster in the Underworld, yes even you mom! I’m not holding back on you just because I want you to tuck me in to the dirt and water me!” After a moment, all of Flowey’s petals turned bright pink in embarrassment. He followed that up by becoming angry, the glow around him started to become brighter. “I will become all powerful, so no distractions this time!”

“Distracting who’s being distracting? Not me.” Toriel was having fun teasing her poor little flower even if he was dedicated to this course of destruction, she couldn’t find the fear in herself to be scared anymore.

“Who me, couldn’t be?” Pinkie said putting a hoof to her chest looking coyly at Toriel.

“What’s a distraction? Is it like a hospital for healthy people?” It was apparent that Asgore was being dumb on purpose this time. “They must have some nice room service. Hey, wait a minute, I’m single! I can look at the nurses all I want and Toriel can’t punish me for it.”

“Like hell I can’t!” Declared Toriel, it was mostly out of reaction more than any less than existent hidden feelings.

“We really have no idea what you’re talking about, we’re having a rather pleasant conversation here I’d think.” Smiling brightly was Alphys, was completely calm despite being entangled in the ‘vines of ludicrous danger’. She didn’t mind the entrapment as it reminded her of some anime she loves to watch, plus she might just a have a few odd kinks from watching too much Mew Mew Kissy Cutie. “Sorry about your current state of existence by the way, yeah that’s my bad on top of Asgore telling me to do it. This is just hindsight knocking on my door.”

“I could be a distraction!” The snow in the jar proudly proclaimed quite loudly distracting everyone.

“I haven’t said a word this entire time, mostly because I’ve been mentally traumatized by an eight limbed psychotic pink pony fanatic and being captured like this is causing me to mentally shut down on a number of levels so any chance of becoming a distraction would be completely impossible for me. The horror, that horrible five eyed horror.” Even Red was getting in on the act with her flat tone of voice. “I am seriously in need of psychiatric help.”

“To be fair we are all in need of it.” That earned a bit of surprise as it was Asgore who acknowledged it as a clear and proven fact. “Goodness knows our little Chariel is going to need it after this.”

“Not me, I come from a nut bar family. We really like our granola!” With a broad smile Pinkie managed to get a few laughs out of everyone.

“Okay enough talking idiots, no more distractions from you, no more funny oatmeal jokes from the pony who never seems to run out of them and more of doing the power stealing thing now!” The six human souls went into Flowey and a bright light started erupting from him blinding Pinkie and everyone else in the room.

The light flowed from the castle and expanded throughout the city where a little human girl, holding a recognizable content Froggit in her arms, frowned at the sight expanding towards them. The light filtered through the Hot Lands where several flaming monsters, airplanes and madcap wizards were engulfed. The blinding wall passed through Waterfall engulfing a suddenly alert looking ghost that had been heading towards the hot lands, then on to Snowdin and further still. All the way to the Home ruins which were blanketed by this power and many things fell to silence.

Pinkie opened her eyes and saw before her a rather handsome floating teenage male goat that sparkled slightly like a vampire pony from a horribly written novel that even Twilight Sparkle absolutely hated and on top of that he had creepy looking dark eyes. His body was positively pulsing with power as he floated there and he had a demented grin on his face. He was wearing a slightly different version of what looked like his mothers robe.

“Time to start making everyone feel my suffering, in turn I’ll make you suffer.” Once Asriel finished speaking the world started warping wildly around them and there were so many colors and weird twisting flowing light everywhere in the void, it was a kaleidoscope of madness. “I was tired of being a flower, I’m back now and this spells your doom you stupid pony. I’m going to win here since you don’t have the power of saving. There isn’t a thing you can stop me, for I’ve become all powerful!”

Pinkie looked to her flank and saw that her cutie mark had returned in full force, yet her hair was still flat. She looked to Asriel and wondered what he was going to do now and prepared her shovel for anything. He quickly generated two swords and flew forward to slash at her, he did it without warning and she deflected or blocked his simplistic swings in a rhythm of left and right. After he backed off Pinkie’s legs holding her shovel felt like noodles, he was hitting as hard as Asgore had been only without the raw muscle required to do so and there was no skill in his swings.

“Wait! Are my legs like macaroni or spaghetti? I like me some cheese and spinach stuffed ravioli for dinner too. Also aren’t you going to pull my soul out or start playing music?” This was beginning to become very different than what Pinkie was used to when it came to being assaulted, even Sans had music accompanying his assault on her even while he was possessed.

“Hmmm let me think… no. I’m going to have so much fun with you; do you really think you have the power to stand up to me? You’re an idiot to think you can stand up to my power!” Asriel held out his hands and they started glowing in all kinds of colors before he launched them forward where it generated huge stars falling from the sky that seemed familiar to what Toriel had once done. “Who are you even talking to? There’s no one here, but us!”

The multiple colorful star shaped meteors struck the ground and exploded to create hundreds of soul searing bullets that flew in every direction, Pinkie was hard pressed to dodge them all and some struck her painfully. At the end of the barrage a giant star flashing all colors of the rainbows created a huge explosion and Pinkie launched herself away from it using her shovel to avoid the blast and subsequent wave of bullets.

What Asriel did next caused Pinkie to freeze in shock when his hands lit like Toriel’s always did when she was using fire magic. Speaking of which, the pony couldn’t see Toriel anywhere around here as waves of flames launched themselves from Asriel’s hands.

Pinkie dodged the first part of the incoming wave of fire and quickly leapt sideways through the empty spots that appeared in the flames, she continued to move until the attack petered out. She stood at the ready for whatever Asriel would do next with her shovel held pointed at him; she could feel something inside of herself holding her back from attacking him.

What came next was Pinkie’s tail twitching, the fur along her neck started standing on end as Asriel held his hands high in the air. She was soon instinctively dodging blasts of colorful lightning falling from above with incredible speed that surprised Asriel as she had become hard to track with the high speed magical blasts narrowly missing her as they tracked her blurring form. Dodging the colorful lightning barrage had the poor pony gasping for air slightly when it finally ended.

“Look, can we talk about this?” Catching her breath, Pinkie watched as Asriel conjured a large cannon that he hefted at her with his left hand and shoulder. Several laser sights appeared and one of them was pointing directly at the equine. “Gee, I guess not.”

“Spread gun mother…” Asriel was about to continue only for Pinkie to stop him.

“Hey, I never touched or did anything inappropriately with your mother! Aside from the naked cuddling and maybe a loving or tonsil exploring kiss every now and then, we’ve never had sex.” Why the accusation alone that Pinkie wasn’t a proper mare friend to Toriel upset her.

“I was going to say ‘spread gun mother hugger’! Why? What did you think I was going to say and what in the heck is sex?” If anything the powered up Asriel looked horribly confused by her words and somewhat curious, considering he was around six to eight when he died it made sense that he had no idea what these things were despite existing as a flower for a while. He’s never actually had an education and he was only doing things that he thought were cool with all the power he had at his disposal.

“Go back to trying to kill me; it’s much simpler and better than me trying to give you The Talk.” In answer to this statement, Pinkie was suddenly dodging between three to four streams of continuously spraying bullets. She moved to the left and right swiftly and even deflected a few bullets using Laughter’s Resolve as a shield.

“Fine, I don’t care about whatever The Talk or sex is anyway!” With a twirl of the deadly cannon it opened wider and Asriel started holding down the trigger on his weapon which built up a powerful rainbow of colors in the barrel. When he released the trigger a huge rainbow colored beam spewed forth from the end of his weapon.

Having seen him charge up for the attack Pinkie reached behind her and pulled out a two wheeled blue cannon and the positioned it so that the rainbow beam flew down into the barrel of the cannon. Hopping onto the cannon and straddling it lovingly for a few seconds, Pinkie gave a bright cheerful grin as she reached back with her right hoof and gave a strong tug to the bit of rope back there.

“What! Where in the world did that cannon…” The blast knocked Asriel onto his back where he was promptly covered in what had come out of Pinkie’s infamous party cannon. It wasn’t the rainbow blast that went into it; no instead he was now covered in copious amounts of warm fluffy cake batter. “Come from.”

“Oh my goodness, my party cannon! It’s been so long since I’ve felt my pocket space! But wait… cake batter? Then where are my streamers, confetti and balloons?” Tilting her head and trying to concentrate on why exactly her cannon had fired mostly cooked cake batter instead of its usual load along with the accompanying noise Pinkie loved. She quickly chose to put away the cannon as she didn’t want it to be damaged by the empowered tantrum throwing child in the body of a teenager. “Oh right, that’s a definite whoops. I wonder if the cakes found my party supplies in the oven again.”

Mr. Cake had opened the oven hundreds of times and he was still wary of doing so. He knew Pinkie hadn’t been around for a while, but the stallion still couldn’t help his cautiousness. When he went to open the oven this time it exploded in a shower of confetti, balloons and a familiar squeaking noise. He fell over onto his back in shock because of it.

He shivered not even knowing how that stuff had gotten in there, Pinkie still hadn’t been found wherever she ended up and it was like she was still in Sugar Cube Corner even though she couldn’t have possibly misplaced her party supplies in the oven again. Which begged the question, where did the several gallons of cake batter he just poured into the pans and put in the oven go? The pans were still there at least.

“I guess Pinkie is doing fine wherever she is.” Mrs. Cake just poured a second batch of batter into the pans and shoved them back into the oven. “Hurry up dear, we’ve got hungry pastry loving ponies out front and I’m not really supposed to be doing any heavy lifting you know, also can you get me some chocolate covered pickles?”

Pinkie barely reacted in time to deflect the sword that came at her head from the left, she blocked to the right knocking the other sword away with the edge of the shovel and both swords swung forward and she leapt backwards and weaved her body between the magically enhanced sparks that shot off both of the swords.

The pink pony couldn’t understand why Asriel was so angry, she’d love to be covered in cake batter and he was personally lucky to experience the opportunity. Maybe it was the fact that he got shot with a party cannon load of warm tasty cake batter, some of which she scooped up with her shovel to flick into her own mouth and it tasted like home. The shovel hadn’t taken any damage from deflecting the swords and it had the equine curious as to what it was made of when the magically created blades couldn’t damage it, especially with the force it was being hit with.

“I might have the shovel I’ve always been wanting since forever… unfortunately circumstances are really trying to make me break it. Please, hold together.” Pinkie really had her heart set on this one since it was made with her colors and cutie mark on it. She stabbed the shovel into the ground and launched herself over several rainbow beams being shot at her by Asriel.

Asriel growled and started blasting the colorful lightning at her as she flipped and bounced her way around used the field of cake batter. She was utilizing her shovel as an extremely powerful pogo stick that had her evading his attacks with ease and she could have attacked him, yet she continued to only evade.

Pinkie knew something was off with her, she had a right to defend herself yet it would feel wrong to her to strike out at a child and Asriel was definitively recognized as Toriel’s child, albeit crazy with evil, twisted with the soul of a human and lots of magical power behind him. In fact Pinkie didn’t think she had it in herself to harm a child, even one as angry as this one was and was more worried about him hurting himself with all the power he was spewing at her.

“That darn shovel, how are you even using it like that?” Asriel pulled out his spread gun cannon and fired hundreds of shots trying to even wing Pinkie as she blurred through the air rapidly flipping and spinning, it got to the point where she started giggling and her hair started puffing up.

Deciding to stop firing for a moment, Asriel twirled his gun he charged his rainbow shot and took careful aim. The pink little ball of sugar loaded excitement from consuming a shovel full of cake batter was being really hard to keep his aim on. The pony was bouncing around too fast and could practically change directions on a dime the second she hit the ground.

Asriel’s eyes narrowed at the fast moving blur and with a single twitch of his left eye, her fired a rainbow beam and hit the shovel in Pinkie’s grip. The beam knocked it away from her, but on the bright side of things the shovel came out of the attack completely unscathed. Now if only it wasn’t knocked a good fifty feet away from the hooves that needed it. Asriel quickly launched a wave of fire to surround the pink pony that flopped into the cake batter, started to boil around her from the heat.

Her body screaming in protest from the boiling cake batter, Pinkie tried to get up and shake the burning cake batter off of herself only to be struck by multiple bolts of colorful lighting that started driving the color from her body with each successive hit until she was struck almost completely gray by a huge thundering bolt of lightning that blew out the flames around her. Sure she could predict what was to come at her with her Pinkie Sense, but it was up to her to dodge the attacks personally.

“I… never thought… I’d go this way… baked into a cake.” Pinkie let off a few pained giggles, her soul could be seen dully thumping from within her body. “It’s kind of funny… you blew out the candle… with a lightning bolt.”

“I don’t know what your laughing about It’s time I ended this farce, I haven’t even been using the full extent of my power against you and you refused to put up a fight to entertain me. I will now erase your very existence!” Asriel started to glow black and his head started to increase in size and a vortex started up from his mouth trying to drag Pinkie into it.

In this case Pinkie was lucky that cake batter fired from her cannon as the suction took all the heat out of the cake batter causing it to solidify and hold her to the ground. It wouldn’t be long before she got pulled in though, the edges of the batter were breaking away and being sucked into the black void along with several strange box shaped things. All those soul damaging shocks had Pinkie laid out almost incapable of anything, she only had on good hoof and it was her right one, her chest and head were the only other parts of her that were still pink.

Pinkie looked around trying to find something to hold on to and saw her shovel flying towards her; she reached out with her hoof and managed to catch it by the shaft. With a quick jerk she slammed the shovel blade down deep into the cake batter and the ground below it, it was just in time as the cake batter started ripping away from her body. She held on for dear life as the pull on most of her lifeless grey body put a lot of strain on her one limb. Once the attack died down Asriel had transformed and gained a dark angelic appearance.

“This is my final form; you will be the only one in the underworld to ever see it.” His hands held out and blasted several little beams of energy that curved into the pony’s leg still gripping the shovel with all its strength and it went limp from the next several impacts. One last blast of magical missiles and Pinkie gave out a whimper as her head was struck and she turned entirely gray

“Hah, finally, now to break this barrier and I will destroy everything!” Asriel turned around and was about to attack the barrier, he stopped when he heard the sound of something striking the floor. He turned back and around and saw Pinkie struggling to her hooves. “Impossible! You shouldn’t even be able to stand after that.”

“I’m… not…. done playing yet.” Pinkie’s gray limbs were wobbly as they gripped on the shovel and she tried to push herself into a standing position, the best she could manage was leaning on the undamaged shovel which easily supported her weight. There was only one color on Pinkie Pie’s entire body that wasn’t gray, her bright blue eyes. “I made a Pinkie Promise… one was that I promised to help you.”

“You did help me. You distracted dad and allowed me access to those human souls, so why are you still holding on? I’ve become all powerful thanks to you; you know no one’s coming to rescue you so give in and let me win.” The madness in Asriel’s eyes was clear and he brought both his hands before him. “Let me win and die!”

The wide rainbow beam spewing forth from Asriel’s hands engulfed Pinkie who started screaming in pain, even then Pinkie held on to the shovel tightly and stayed standing. After Asriel let off of his attack he saw that Pinkie’s eyes were still filled with color despite the rest of her being completely gray, she was far grayer than even her sister Marble Pie was.

“Why won’t you die, what exactly is making you hold on to your pitiful existence?” Even with all of his power Asriel was having a little problem believing Pinkie was still alive despite that attack. That even as she took shuddering gasping breaths, she held onto the shovel and kept herself upright in the face of his power.

“I promised myself that... I’d see all my other friends again.” She was a cringing battered mess and her breathing was something beyond labored, but Pinkie could say she was still able to laugh and she still giggled to herself despite the pain. “I still have the power of friendship.”

"I suppose this supposed power is going to magically pull a coin from behind one of my floppy ears, well is it going to do that? I don’t see what your even laughing about, you’re about to perish and then your promises will mean absolutely nothing.” Gathering energy for another wide rainbow blast Asriel looked down upon the pained giggling pony. “Where has your power gotten you now?”

As the wide rainbow beam unleashed Pinkie kept a smile on her face and a laugh in her heart, a figure jumped in front of her and stood in the path of the beam. It wasn’t a comical skeleton, it wasn’t a nerdy lizard, it wasn’t a strong blue fish girl, it wasn’t a fanatical spider that would put Pinkie before all else in her madness, it wasn’t a loving goat mother, it wasn’t a poor downtrodden king and it wasn’t any of them.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me!” Angrily yelling these words was a completely flummoxed Asriel. He looked at the figure standing in front of Pinkie; he put a lot of effort into that attack to kill Pinkie and despite taking every inch of the blast by standing in front of Pinkie. The thing standing before him looked completely unharmed by all the power he put into it, it was mocking him and what he was capable of by surviving the attack without trying. “How can you possibly be saved in the nick of time twice in one day?”

The figure had the gall to smile disarmingly at Asriel without an ounce of fear.

Author's Note

Blind fired this chapter, too tired, write the final confrontation until next chapter. If I need to fix something, tell me about it. I'm sure there's a lot to fix or polish.

I've been out having some goods times and I've been a bit lazy, my family member is still recovering from surgery and is completely fine. I hope to finish this story before my birthday on the thirteenth or I'll finish it on the day of, I would need to put more effort into it considering I'm only about two chapters off.

Hope everyone had a good time, I was celebrating explosion day.

Before you say anything it's not Frisk.

41 - Underworld's Frisk

“I don’t like pink, but I like Pinkie.” The Jerry stood before Asriel proudly, he didn’t like bullies very much either and Pinkie wasn’t a bully. She was actually his friend and that was more friends than he could possibly say he’s ever had and the feeling felt great to just have even the one.

“And I suppose you think you’re going to stand in front of every attack I launch at her until you decide to just die before I launch one of my attacks at you?” Asriel was upset that The Jerry had decided to interfere and he knew the monster was tough, but tough enough to take the most powerful attack he could think of without a single ounce of pain to show for it. It was quite ridiculous, which made it downright annoying and very much like The Jerry.

“No, I just needed to stall you for thirty seconds. Also the wi-fi down here sucks and Pinkie knows how to help everyone, if it’ll get me better wi-fi I’m all for it.” The Jerry smiled brightly; he knew how to stall as it was one of his requisite skills in annoying the crap out of anyone who displeased him. Asriel was a powerful force that just met his worst nightmare, a brick wall that was impossible to take down with force. “Plus I get to annoy someone for a good cause, always a bonus.”

“Really what’s going to happen in thirty seconds?” If Asriel knew what was about to happen he wouldn’t have asked, but everyone knew that The Jerry’s only weapon was annoying the crap out of anyone and being tougher to hurt than any monster throughout the Underground. It was already apparent how tough The Jerry was, given every single thing it has survived up to this point with barely a scratch to show for it.

“This, Bounce Brigade to battle!” Suddenly finding your body getting pounded on by twenty Froggit’s of varying sizes would have been bad, what was worse was that the Froggit’s were also blasting Asriel with fly shaped bullets at the same time. The fact that they could all even do two attacks at once was a small miracle; much less make a concerted effort to not hit each other in the midst of wildly pounding away at the empowered monster.

At most they were irritants to Asriel as they weren’t doing much damage individually, but together they were actually managing to push him back. Asriel couldn’t believe these weaklings from the Home Ruins would actually stand up to him; he was more surprised that he didn’t have their power

The twenty first Froggit came in glowing in a blaze of power and rammed into the dark angel’s belly bodily knocking him away from The Jerry and Pinkie, it was Mifty and she didn’t look to happy.

(Undertale - Hope and Dreams, Save the World theme plays)

“We may know…. that things are grim.” Mifty started singing and music started playing making Asriel suddenly look to the pony with fright as Pinkie’s smile perked up by quite a bit.

“Only we would like to think… that it’s not so dim.” Hop sang in a slightly distorted deep tone, the male Froggit who was Mifty’s coffee making assistant had apparently found his voice and was sounding off from the Bounce Brigade.

“Here we are, being lazy while you’re battered at best.” Shyren could be heard singing from behind Pinkie. “Now let us fight, while you get some rest.”

Looking behind her Pinkie could see The Red Hot Chibi Peppers playing the music and Napstablook was still tuning a guitar and he had a sudden glint in his eyes, when he raised his left arm to start playing.

“Now let go of that darkness and, sing a song, all day long! Now come, and you’ll see all our hearts shine bright!” The Red Hot Chibi Peppers were all singing together and playing expertly adding music to the fight that Pinkie had been sorely missing and the Froggits suddenly became energized. “We’ll give our all, to see our friends without fright. And that’s us, glowing, with our very own light!”

“You think some music and a bunch of weaklings is going to stop me, seriously?” Asriel shuddered at the uplifting beat and how all the Foggits started bobbing their heads at him. He fired off a huge wave of magic missiles in seconds only for them to explode prematurely before they could even reach the Froggit’s when a cloud of little white dots floated into their paths.

“Hey!” Frisk shouted attracting Pinkie’s attention as she ran up and shook her rear, wiggled her hips and twirled to point her right finger forward and a bunch of Moldsmal’s lined up behind her and started to barrage Asriel with spores.

“Ah! Where the hell, I mean heck, are all of you nuisances coming from! I have the power of all the monsters in the Underworld!” In answer to Asriel’s as he was pushed back against the barrier, several large tentacles popped up and started blasting him with rapid fire. The thing that scared him most about the attack was that it was actually hurting him.

“Not all of them, isn’t that right Mr. Moldbygg?” Pinkie said weakly as she looked up at the large mold monster that crooned sadly at her gray form and moved in front of her, it then growled at Asriel as he tried to fire off more magic missiles and managed to push back the attacking Bounce Brigade that was harrying him.

“Migosp Marauders support the defensive line and empower the Vegetoid Vets. Vegetoids we’ll give you time to heal Pinkie, just give us some artillery support while you’re all at it! The Moldsmal’s will tire too quickly; Frisk is going to make sure they take breaks and is in charge of them. Everyone give everyone else covering fire when they need it!” Mifty was belting out orders and the monsters were immediately following them, which said a lot about how much respect Mysteriously Informative Frog Thing had.

Not to say that Asriel was idle while Mifty was giving orders, he was trying to fire magic missiles and he was having problems charging up for a wide rainbow beam as he kept getting a Froggit to the head when he tried. He managed to get in a few strikes and had managed to hit five of the Froggit’s so far, but they got up immediately afterwards even while injured they kept going. It boggled him that they were so determined to keep fighting him despite his obvious power completely dwarfing their own.

“Don’t be afraid to back off to the support line if you’re injured, if you need to be heal then don’t be stupid. So help me no one dies a hero today!” Mifty screamed over the sound of various monsters attacking as one, she herself charged up and launched herself glowing with power and a green scaled shining heart became visible on her chest as she struck Asriel in the stomach again. A blast of dark mist shot out of Asriel’s back and he gasped in agony as he had been staggered by what he considered to be a lowly, simple and weak Froggit. “We’ll all see the surface together or so help me I’ll bring you back to life myself to maul you and make sure you keep living!”

The other Froggits chests started to glow with similar hearts at Mifty’s brave words, in fact the Moldsmals, Misgosps and Vegetoids also started glowing with their own hearts appearing on all of their bodies. Every single monsters soul was different and unique to each monster, they were proudly glowing together.

The Vegetoids had been building up to help Pinkie and were surrounding her, the Migosp were dancing to give them energy and soon streams of green bullets were penetrating Pinkie’s body. A glow started around the pony’s hooves as her bodies soul was being recovered from being shattered so badly and she started turning pink again. Adding on to the Vegetoids healing circle, they also fired an arc of white vegetable shaped bullets every once in a while at Asriel trying to keep him back and to prevent him from attacking.

Asriel was getting angrier by the second and he unleashed a shockwave that pushed all the closer monsters back, but they didn’t look like they had been hurt by the darkness. They were all stalled and tired considerably by the attack.

The Home Ruin monsters were trying to stand and keep fighting; they started to pull back as they couldn’t keep up the pressure. Only Mifty was still going at Asriel alone, every attack he hit her with wouldn’t put her down as she just got up again. Frisk was looking sadly to the tired out Moldsmals. She sadly wiggled her hips and pointed towards the support line and they retreated.

The Jerry stood quietly next to the Moldbygg who continued to attack, which by itself wasn’t going to slow down Asriel as Mifty finally decided to retreat. Mifty was completely battered and beaten in letting the other monsters retreat before getting out of there herself, but she was not nearly anywhere close to being broken and had a proud smile on her face.

As Asriel generated two giant swords, he teleported forward to try and stop the Vegetoids from healing Pinkie. Only he never reached his target as something pulled him out of his teleportation and he was suddenly on his back with a broken nose, a large metal covered gauntleted paw pulled back from punching him.

Pilaf gave off a loud bark and his tongue lolled out, then his face became serious and he narrowed his eyes on Asriel and he started growling while wielding his spear. His brother Risotto sat on his back and let off a howl while raising his sword to the sky.

“Sorry we’re late; it’s been a while since we’ve been involved in a melee! Isn’t that right my sweet?” Dogamy shouted clashing his axe with a blushing Dogasressa.

“That’s right, nothing get’s by us honey, you’re in for some heavy petting later after we’re done my love!” Dogaressa had Dogamy’s tail waggling and then they turned towards the sword wielding maniac backed by Doggo, Pilaf and Risotto. They weren’t the only dogs here as the trio known as the annoying dog unit appeared and they also looked ready to be serious, one of them even had the strange orb that Pinkie kept trying to get on his back.

“How, how are there still this many monsters left? I should have gotten every last one of you!” Asriel flew forwards only to end flipping backwards into the air and landing on his face, he picked himself up wondering what happened only to have a banana peel land on his nose. Seeing the annoying dog unit snickering at him, Asriel shrieked when it occurred to him what exactly just happened. Everyone else was equally befuddled as to how the annoying dogs managed to make him slip on a banana peel and The Jerry’s smile widened slightly; he might have taught them a thing or two about how to be annoying. Everyone started laughing at Asriel, there was not an ounce of fear among them. “How is that even possible? I was flying! Stop laughing at me!”

Asriel was up and he swung his dark angel enhanced sword that was twice the size of what his swords had previously been, only to be skillfully deflected by Risotto the smallest of the dogs with a glowing shield. He felt pain as he was slashed across the chest by a sword, then two axes blazed across his shoulders to his hips and then he was stabbed by the Greater Dog’s angry looking spearhead, each hit caused a dark mist to seep out of him and pain to wrack his body as he was pushed back. Even then he kept regenerating from whatever damage was dealt to him.

“I want to win! Why won’t any of you let me have this?” Speeding up Asriel started fighting the four aggressive dogs; they were covering each other with their weapons expertly whereas Asriel had no skill in his attacks despite the fact that he could knock back Pilaf with his blows that dented and cracked the strong dog’s armor. He fired a blast of magic missiles and several blue blades cut through them like hot knives being thrown through soggy barely holding together tissue paper, Doggo had been waiting for that moment and launched into a projectile destroying frenzy.

Teleporting away to take aim and start charging for a massive rainbow beam to hit the Home Ruin monsters that were all resting and being restored by the overworked Vegetoids. The Vegetoids could be seen pushing themselves hard to help their fellow monsters and restore Pinkie who was halfway back to being fully pink.

Firing the beam Asriel watched as it approached the weakened monsters that stood tall in its path while the dog soldiers tried to get into position, only none of them needed to worry as the annoying dog unit sat still and grinned. The orb relic glowed and the wide beam turned into stream heading straight for the orb that absorbed it’s power and then fired a concentrated beam back at Asriel who teleported out of its path and launched some magic missiles. The orb didn’t draw the magic missiles and Doggo ripped those apart with more blue blades.

“That orb, it took my most powerful attack, but it won’t take my weaker ones?” Asriel was slowly building power for another shockwave as that had seemed effective previously, but it had drained even him to do something that could only weaken these monsters which were notably starting to regain their strength.

Summoning two cannons Asriel fired off a flurry of bullets that even Doggo couldn’t keep up with. Only when the bullets looked like they were going to hit the eight dog monsters did snowflakes, presents and walls of ice appeared and absorbed the hundreds of bullets fired from his spread cannons. Twirling his cannons he charged them both up to fire two humongous rainbow beams, only for two icicles spike up utterly destroying them in his hands wasting the energy he had been building up.

“Yeah, the monsters of Snowdin are representing and in the house!” Snow Drake had to dodge a magic missile that slammed into the ground next to him, Asriel started firing off more of those than Doggo could deal with and didn’t bother with the rainbow cannons. “Hey dude, that’s really cold of you!”

“No I’m cold; you just need to stay frosty, it’s really snow problem at all flake face!” Ice Pony and Gyftrot moved forward into support positions for the dog soldiers, they all start attacking Asriel together.

With a roar Asriel knocked all the monsters back as he unleashed a shockwave and they were weakened like the Home Ruins monsters, he himself was getting weaker by doing that. Looking beyond the Moldbygg and The Jerry he saw that Pinkie was a little more than halfway done healing, if he couldn’t get to her then he could get to someone else. His eyes narrowed upon a smiling Frisk who was gently petting some of the Moldsmals, with a grin and a flash, he teleported.

Frisk fell down onto her rear end when Asriel appeared over her prepared to attack; only he stopped and just stared at her for a moment. He shook his head and flames appeared in his hands before he could launch them at the frightened Frisk who was in the middle of standing back up.

“Hey leave her alone and get dunked on!” Sans appeared in front of frisk with his hands in his pockets and an angry glare on his face, a large skull appeared to Asriel’s right and blasted him almost point blank sending him flying.

“Okay where’s Alphys, she better not be sitting on her ass during all this!” Undyne and Papyrus appeared together, the blue fish girl looked positively livid to be late to the fight.

Asriel hearing Undyne’s words started cringing as he felt something inside of him stirring. He howled in agony when an explosion erupted from his left shoulder and Alphys popped out of it onto the ground wielding the Buster. It was becoming apparent that Asriel was quickly losing control of this situation and his mind. He tried to thin their numbers before they could get any worse by swiping his claws at the prone scientist only to have two spears block his hands and four more impaling his body at various odd angles.

“No touchy my lovely loving lizard, that makes me an angry monster and not many monsters would like me when I’m completely pissed off!” A bright blue scaly soul appeared on Undyne’s chest that looked like it was flowing with water and Alphys was blushing as she had a yellow soul glowing with electrical discharge. A humongous spear formed and rammed its way straight through Asriel’s body and pinned him to the ground where he started to constantly leak darkness. After that Undyne took Alphys into her arms and leapt away from him having used most of her energy just for that one very painful looking attack.

Asriel started coughing up a black mist and tried to pull himself off the spear; he flapped his wings and start launching multiple swarms of magic missiles with them. He didn’t care who he was aiming at anymore, he just wanted to take them all down.

The Protective Papyrus took that as his cue to build hundreds of walls made of blue bones around everyone by stomping both his feet and slamming his hands to the floor. The bones were destroyed by the power of the magical missiles, but no one was going to be hurt by the magic missiles with the literal Royal Guard on the case.

Roaring with rage, Asriel dissolved the spear that was holding him with another shockwave and summoned hundreds of swords to send them flying forward only they all fell short and straight into the ground five feet away from him.

“No way was I going to miss the show of the century, hello my beauties! Why with my magnetic personality and a few upgrades I can bring down the house and rock the very world! Well as long as it’s made of metal, possessing metal has always been my specialty.” Mettaton strutted forward while laughing gaily; he quickly moved over to the dancing Migosps and joined in dancing with them increasing the flow that the Vegetoids were putting out to every monster that needed it.

“Where are all of you coming from?” Asriel’s hatred was getting worse as he summoned two massive swords and he held onto them tightly as they threatened to pull themselves into the ground like all the other swords when not directly under his power. He used every ounce of power he had to try and get to Pinkie Pie, she was the cause of all this, she just had to be!

The dark angel managed to push away every single monster in his way and even knocked the Moldbygg down and pushed a portion of the Vegetoid circle out of his way and raised a sword high to bring it down whistling. All that only for the entire world to turn purple for a split second and then Asriel was suddenly wrapped in a copious amount of webbing holding a broken blade that simply dissipated in his hands.

“I can only do that once or twice in a day, totally worth it to save Mistress Pie! I may need more sleep, but I’m not about to let you hurt her anymore.” A yawning Muffet came forward and then her five eyes narrowed at Asriel. “Get your ass out of there and help us Red or so help me you’re getting a chair!”

A bright glowing white X appeared across Asriel’s body causing him to convulse, then a cross, then another X and with an explosion Red leapt emerged from Asriel’s body wielding her sword that was glowing. She immediately spun around to launch two chakrams to wrap around Asriel shoulders as she leapt over him and pulled hard from behind to keep him pinned down.

“Let me go, I have to win! Why won’t any of you let me win?” Shouted Asriel who was struggling to get free of the webs and chakrams holding him, two more chakrams wrapped around his waist and pulled taut sinking into his flesh immobilizing him completely. He watched as Pinkie was almost fully healed the only part of her that wasn’t pink was her head and she was looking at him sadly with her blue eyes. “I don’t need your pity!”

“Tori, Asgore, I know you love him, but he’s being a real big butt right now and that butt probably needs a spanking. Is this really what you want your child to be known for? He’s being really mean to all those who look up to you, are you both telling me that the life of this world don’t matter to you?” At Pinkie’s words s flash of fire erupted from Asriel’s left wing destroying it completely and Toriel was standing there looking sadly at him. The right wing exploded with a glowing trident erupting from him and Asgore was also looking equally sad upon his exit.

“Hi we’re Temmies, what can we be doing for you super belly rubbing friend! We would like to help, also touch human, but we do that later!” The half cats half dogs had just driven a galleon through the nearby solid rock walls and they were all holding baguettes and pop guns, even Temmie-trot and First Mate Temmie were there. It was weird, but if that wasn’t already odd enough, every single Temmie was also speaking completely in absolute unison.

“I could honestly use a little of that weirdness from each of you! I need everybody to help me, help him! He really needs help; we can’t just destroy him like this as that would make us the bad guys! I need Loyalty, Honesty, Generosity, Kindness, more Laughter than even I can give and a metric ton of Magic!” Pinkie turned back to the trapped Asriel who now had multiple monsters pinning him down including the Moldbygg’s tentacles. Multiple Madjick’s, at least fourteen Final Froggits, Catty, Bratty, Undyne’s four trained knights had seemingly popped up from nowhere to hold him; various Vulkins and even Tsunderplane just arrived and were pressuring Asriel to stay down. Every monster there had a soul showing. “You’ve all shown that you have souls; you never needed determination. It was already there inside of all of you just waiting and all of you just needed to just believe in yourselves! You need hopes and dreams to look forward to! You all need a good big laugh, a great guffaw and something joyous to look forward to… oh, like a grand party for when you get out of the Underworld! You needed to rekindle that friendship that all of you have; now all of you help me to do this one thing, please!”

“Pinkie… you’re beautiful… ” Toriel smiled at the brightly glowing pink pony with the curled and puffed up mane, strings started forming from every monster and they were all flowing towards a single point. The lines led from every monsters soul to right into Pinkie’s pulsating pink form.

“Aw you’re just saying that Tori…” Pinkie shyly ran a hoof against her mane and then looked at the bouncy wild frizz and curls and gained a broad smile, then she looked to every monster that started glowing brightly and a white light started to encompass Pinkie. “Whoa, there’s so much harmony here…”

Asriel froze as he saw the light and before it engulfed him, the one thing he noticed was that there were hundreds upon hundreds of lines leading from his own body to Pinkie and the other monsters that were interconnecting and weaving together. It looked like an infinitely thickening rope was coming out of his chest before he was blinded.

“I know you can keep your promises Mistress Pie, take everything I have and my life if you have to! Why I’m generous to a fault now and not just for my kin anymore. Hope you like the shovel, it should be indestructible after all the work I put into it. Why your religion will be the silliest one in existence, my Generosity is endlessly flowing!”

“Mistress Pie, let my Patience aid you. One has to have an endless amount of that when dealing with that crazy lunatic.”

“You lit a fire in Toriel’s broken heart, as her duly appointed regent I give you all my Hope for a better tomorrow!”

“Please make things right Pinkie, I want to help and a royal guard always gives it their all! There’s no greater Loyalty than mine to the job and what it represents. I want to help him too, let me The Ever Loyal Papyrus help you help him by helping us help you! Wow, there are so many famous people here… I’m going to need at least fifty windows after this.”

“I haven’t been really honest with myself or others in a long time; you came into my lab and gave me the courage to start telling everyone and someone important to me what I think needed to be said. Honesty is a good policy and you need some of that right from me, now if only I can work up the courage to ask Undyne to marry me.”

“You better damn well be the one to ask me; don’t you dare make me do it myself! We both know I was being just as shy as you were. Let my boundless undying courage be your spear Pinkie! Thrust me into the heart of darkness and I will not bend or break for anything, for I will give you the power of Justice!”

“Need a little extra kick to the funny bone eh? Why does nothing ever bother a skeleton for too long? It’s because nothing can ever get under our skin! I’ve always known Laughter is best shared when it’s with friends, so I’m definitely sharing what I have with you!”

“I’ve been a foolish king for so long, have I done nothing to give my people what they needed? You have given me a direction to look in, you can have my Perseverance! I may have given up too early on the barrier, but I will never give up on my people or my life where it counts. Who knows, I might even be able to find love again, these tired bones just wants everyone to be happy!”

“Pinkie, like, it’s been a long time since Alphys talked to us, it’s thanks to you she actually wants to spend time with us again!”

“Yeah, we’ve always known Alphys would continue to be our big sister! I and Bratty have got a lot of Integrity to spare even if we’re almost always flat broke! Sure we may have fumbled on that a bit by blaming the humans, but hey we’ll always be best friends in our hearts no matter what circumstances do to try and pull us apart. We might not be blood, but family is family and I think your family too Pinkie my newest sister!”

“Onion-san is here for you, you hear! We the Red Hot Chibi Peppers all are, hear us everyone!”

“Mettaton here, dance like I know you can Ms. Pie! You’re a beauty that needs to be seen by everyone, let it shine and go show him just what all our souls are made of! I know that anyone can be a shooting star if they try hard enough, why I’d give you all my Serendipity if I could!”

“I came down here to see if you were okay Pinkie, I’m really glad that you are. I know I’m not really strong; all I can really give you is my Determination for things to turn out alright. I know I don’t talk very much, but I’m glad I’ve met all these monsters and you. I don’t think any of these monsters are truly bad, really strange, but not bad at all. Why do I suddenly feel a hundred little paws crawling up my back?”

“Quick touch the human while they aren’t allergic! Yay, we touch human, everyone gets a touch! We’ll give you our Enthusiasm!”

“My little sweet, if it’s Kindness you need then please do what you can for my children. I love you; just do your best as that’s all I will ask. We might be separated soon, but I won’t stop believing that we may meet again even if we do. I have just one more thing to say, the one thing that I know all of us have and that we are never without. My people what is our strength, what powers our bodies, what are we made of, what is every last monster and life in any world capable of? Let me here your voices!”

“We’re all capable of Magic!” Thousands of voices shouted.

(End music if it hasn’t already.)

Pinkie just blinked and opened her eyes; she was looking at three things on a circle of light surrounded by darkness. One was a pristine looking flower, one was a tattered looking red soul and the last one was a crying goat child that had her heart going out to him. She slowly trotted forward towards him and he shied away from her in fear.

“Leave me alone! You’ll ruin everything, why can’t you just let me be happy!” The child cried and clutched the soul and flower to his body; he stiffened when he felt a pair of hooves wrap around his torso.

“There, there, everything will be alright.” Pinkie patted the child on the back with a gentle hoof as she hugged him and brought him into her lap to let him start crying his eyes out into her fur. “Everything will be okay; I need you to trust me on this.”

“O….Okay… but what about… if I give up this power I’ll just become a…” Little Asriel clutched at the pony’s fur and shuddered.

“Don’t worry, just give up the power to me and I’ll take care of everything. Can you do that for me Asriel? I’ll need it all to help you, your brother, this poor flower and everyone. Can you trust me? I promised to help you and I’m going to make good on it now.” Pinkie gently lifted the little goats head so that he was looking her in the eyes, after a moment he nodded and she could feel the power surging through herself. “Good well that’s a load off of my mind, wow you had a lot of power in there! Now let’s see a smile, I’m about to make a miracles happen! Let’s see the barrier, the three of your souls, wow that flower really wants to hold onto its sentience, okay I can work around that. I’ll also need to restore all the monsters you took, Toriel will have to help the six human children because I’m going to be really tired after this… okay I think that will do it. Oh hey, I still have enough to help the amalgamate monsters! I guess I’m not going home after all, but at least the barrier will break since it’s no longer doing the absorbing like a sponge thing it has been doing for quite a long time. Huh, what’s happening?”

Pinkie felt a strange surge of extra power go through her body after Asriel had already relinquished his hold on all the other power holding his dark form together.

“You look like you could use a small miracle too and we’re sorry, for everything!” Little Asriel looked sad as a glow started to surround him, the flower and Chara’s soul. “Thank you.”

“It’ll be alright, I’ll even Pinkie Pie Promise that it will be. Cross my heart and hope to fly, I’ll stick a cupcake in my eye if it isn’t and I never break a promise. Glad I didn’t make any Pinkie Pie Promises that I couldn’t keep before I left Equestria huh? I just really hope Toriel doesn’t mind what I’m about to do though.” Pinkie closed her eyes and concentrated. “She’s going to be so mad at me when she finds out about this.”

The light died down and all the souls went quiet and Asriel’s body had disappeared; Toriel blinked and looked to Pinkie who slowly stood up.

“Its okay Tori… they’ve… er… finally let go… in a sense. Now a few things, we were kind of sharing a mind there for a moment so the barrier is going to fall in… about an hour, definitely less and you’ll all be getting magic from it, maybe with interest which should help out with the injuries. Plus all the monsters Asriel took will be restored and I might have had a little extra to help the amalgamate monsters out.” All the monsters gathered together at the barrier cheered at Pinkie’s proclamation that the barrier was coming down and that all the other monsters were going to be okay.

“I’m sensing a rather big ‘but’ in there.” Toriel felt her entire body droop, she was hopeful that her children were in a better place.

“Yeah, do me a favor and eat this cupcake and then I’ll tell you.” Pinkie pulled a cupcake out of her mane and Toriel took it tenderly before she started crying.

“You’re leaving aren’t you?” Toriel saw Pinkie’s tail slowly start breaking up and disappearing, she started eating the cupcake at Pinkie’s raised brow. Upon finishing it wrapper and all, Pinkie smiled.

“Yes, apparently Asriel, Chara and even Flowey used their own power to start the process of sending me back home. Oh, speaking of Flowey!” Pinkie took a step back and a flower raised its head to smile shyly up at Toriel having been beneath the pony as soon as she got up. “I actually managed to make Flowey a full blown monster like you guys!”

“Hi Goat Mom, please take care of me! Just know Asriel and Chara would be sad if you didn’t.” The flower said innocently, it wasn’t the twisted and evil flower he had previously been as he was a fresh and friendlier reincarnation of his previous demented self.

“Before I go Toriel I want a hug and a kiss from my Goat Friend, so put as much love in it as you…” Pinkie didn’t even get any further as she found herself stuck in Toriel’s embrace with a tongue already deep down her throat. She returned the love with fervor. Within a minute all that was left of Pinkie, was her head disappearing in Toriel’s hands. Before Pinkie’s face disappeared entirely, Pinkie only had a few words left to say. “I’ll miss you tori, I’ll miss all of you! We had some good times together; get those six souls back to the children and… I really don’t want to say it, but I have to so please don’t cry Toriel… good-bye everyone.”

Pinkie finished fading away and Toriel felt like a small part of her disappeared with Pinkie, she sat there and looked up at the six floating human souls.

“For the spirit to be willing, the flesh must first grow weak. Just long enough for soul in flight, to go from cheek to cheek.” With a glowing hand Toriel watched as the humans souls shot off towards their respective bodies and she clutched at her chest, why did losing Pinkie have to hurt so much? She felt a hand on her shoulder and she looked up to see Muffet trying to smile and she was failing horribly as tears filled her five eyes.

The monsters gathered around Toriel as she let out a wail towards the ceiling, which soon became a chorus of weeping monsters. They were missing their guiding light already, but they at least knew that freedom was assured.

Author's Note

Pinkie has left the building and a really upset Goat Friend behind.

Next is the Epilogue.

Underworld's Frisk is a fitting title as all the monsters were leaping to the cause and now they've jumped high enough that the barrier will no longer contain them.

Epilogue: Soul Mates

Toriel had a good cry and here she thought she was numb to it all, obviously not. She was going to miss the quirky, lovable, heart stealing equine. Sighing as she finally stood up from her sorrow, she decided to do something to get her mind off the pain and as Queen of the Underworld she needed to start organizing things. Goodness knows what would happen if she left it up to Asgore.

“Okay everyone, we need to get ourselves together. Mifty where were the Looxs, Astigmatisms and other monsters Pinkie’s befriended like a Pyrope or what was that one guys name Heats? Where were they when a lot of monsters were being absorbed by my poor dark twisted son Asriel?” Toriel could kind of guess why an Aaron didn’t show up; Pinkie never actually befriended one of them. She was curious as to what the other monsters were doing at the time as it was apparent that monsters that were close friends of Pinkie’s friends didn’t get swallowed by the wave of power unleashed throughout the Underworld.

The mangled Mifty spoke up, she didn’t have an ounce of waver in her voice and she was putting on brave face without wincing. How she was managed to keep a straight face with all the pain she had to be in was anyone’s guess, she was probably the toughest Froggit the Underworld had ever seen.

“Glad you asked, because I took initiative Queen Toriel! Let’s see I had some Pyropes and Astigmatisms making sure the core didn’t overload and explode without anyone watching it. I had several Loox looking into the farms, including the Blook family snail farm, making sure our food production wouldn’t get ruined.” At least Mifty had the foresight to make sure their supply of fresh food, water and power wasn’t destroyed, leaving them with huge inconveniencing problems. “Basically I had every other monster that wasn’t affected making sure our infrastructure didn’t immediately collapse; Gerson in particular is heading that task force. We’re not out of the woods yet, once the barrier falls we need to find resources around the mountain to make up for whatever losses that might have been incurred by this mess.”

“You are a godsend Mifty, you’ve proven yourself an invaluable and irreplaceable friend. Now rest and heal, I’ll have Gerson report to me on the possible problems with this hiccup in our infrastructure caused by a lot of monsters being indisposed.” Toriel gave a battered Mysteriously Informative Frog Thing a pleading look. “Is there anything I can do for you at all, if it’s within my power I will gladly grant it my friend. Well aside from the fact that you could use a lot of bandages and possibly medication.”

“Make me your biology teacher when you get a school up and running, I simply wish to work by your side milady.” You couldn’t buy loyalty like that from just any monster and especially not Mifty who would follow Toriel to hell and back, again given their location that wasn’t hard to imagine. “I will continue to be your friend and servant as you need me.”

“Hey, Pinkie left her stuff behind!” Looking to the entrance of the barrier room to the right of the late-to-the-party galleon that plowed a massive hole in the wall, Kid and a Woshua came forward. The Woshua was carrying Pinkie’s saddlebags towards them. “Also I wanted to help, why did you stick me with a babysitter? I could have done more to help like Frisk did!”

Ignoring Kid in turn for approaching the Woshua, Toriel immediately plucked and started clutching onto the bags and took a deep calming sniff of them. Under the goat ladies robes a tail started shifting back and forth. She was really missing Pinkie, who had incidentally left her saddlebags behind upon going home. At least she took her new shovel and Temmie Armor with her, Toriel was more than a little envious of the new shovel.

“Kid look at me and listen, you did help by not getting in the way and being hurt like I was. I was on the front lines of that fight and I’m going to need a lot of time to heal.” Mifty held up her right leg which looks relatively mauled like the rest of her body. “Also Frisk mostly stayed out of the fighting and she still almost got seriously hurt or killed. She’s a bright girl and you are a rash, random, runabout risk I couldn’t let get involved for your own safety. It was bad enough that Frisk insisted as did the Moldsmals that swore to protect her. Anyway it’s a little too late to complain now, so don’t worry about it.”

“Okay fine, I won’t complain. You know, that looks really painful… how are you still talking and moving around? Doesn’t any of that hurt?” Looking around Kid smiled as she saw Undyne giving Papyrus a slap on the back, it seemed the monsters were quickly getting over their sadness at not being able to say good-bye to Pinkie themselves. He turned back to Mifty who was looking at her swollen lower right eye on her belly.

“Yeah about that, after having studied so many monsters and their habits, including The Jerry’s habits which in fact still causes me no end of nightmares…” Mifty shuddered and she tried not to make eye contact with The Jerry, said monster was standing patiently next to the barrier waiting for it to fall so he could get a picture of it happening. “I did a study into my own biology and started learning something called biofeedback; I’m not going too deeply into the subject of biofeedback. Let’s just say it can allow you to do things such as turn off the ability to feel pain. The kind of pain I’m in takes quite some concentration to ignore, I’m actually far worse off than I actually sound or look. Why even letting my heart rate increase in a panic over that right now would probably kill me, so l am not going to try and fixate on that too much.”

“Whoa you’re as cool as Pinkie, Papyrus and Undyne!” The world Kid lived in had many heroes; he mentally added a few more to the list.

“Right you need immediate medical attention; I need a Vegetoid or any monster that can heal who is not dealing with the heavily injured over here immediately as my personal aide is running herself into ground and we’re already far down enough as it is thank you very much!” Rubbing at her forehead with a hand, Toriel was exasperated to hear that Mifty’s survival was not assured and that she was only now mentioning it. It was like Pinkie putting off that knife wound to the face and Mifty was the one to order the Vegetoid to look into the injuries of the other monsters first, so Toriel really shouldn’t really be surprised by this. “Now then Muffet can you get… oh great she’s asleep. How can someone so disturbing and creepy be that cute? Can anyone else get preparations for a party in order?”

“I’ll do it!” Nobody said anything against King Asgore planning the party celebrating the destruction of the barrier. It would keep him out of trouble, which was the reason why he volunteered as he didn’t want to ruin anything as Toriel looked like she had things well in hand.

Toriel already missed Pinkie’s smile.

Pinkie flopped to the floor on her face, it was somewhat bright and opening her eyes she looked around and stood up on three legs while shouldering Laughter’s Resolve with her front left leg. She looked to be in a cave of some kind and it looked rather familiar to her, like really tip of the tongue familiar.

“What does this place have to do with Gummy’s tongue or did you mean that Gummy turned into a giant tongue? It might take a while, but I would still love him even if he did turn into one.” Now was not a time for Pinkie to be silly and obtuse by talking to thin air, especially not when there are no ponies around to witness her being crazy or insane. “You know, you’re not exactly being really helpful right now.”

Said the mare who forgot her saddlebags, Toriel will surely love a keepsake of their adventure together.

“Oh darn, I knew I was forgetting something… well at least Rarity won’t find out about all the cloth I used up. At least Toriel has something to remember me by.” If only Pinkie knew Toriel cried her heart out minutes after Pinkie disappeared. “Did you really have to tell me that? Hearing things like that will really start bumming me out.”

Yes, just keep talking to the air as if it could respond to your queries you insane pony who should know where she is. Given Asriel, Chara and Flowey specifically stated that they were sending you HOME in capital letters if you didn’t understand the literalness of it all.

“….” Pinkie looked about at what were obviously some mining caverns. The crystalline structures, particular formations of the walls and wooden braces making sure the ceiling didn’t collapse were all quite recognizable if she would just ‘think about it’. “Oh… so that’s where I am. I’m in my thinking place back home on the rock farm, thanks Airy!”

If the air could say anything it would probably tell Pinkie, don’t mention it.

“Okay then, I won’t. It’s not like anyone other than Toriel and Sans would believe me anyway.” Just knowing that she always had a friend around was alright in Pinkie’s book. The pony just smiled at the air fondly in a strange manner.

“Hey, who’s in these mines? Whoever it is making noise in there better have a good reason for being down here as I’ve got a pickaxe and I’m not afraid to…” Limestone trotted into view and Pinkie watched her sister with aggressive tendencies freeze to just stare at her. Her grey pickaxe wielding sister blinked several times as if she were looking at something incomprehensible. Slowly she made her way up to Pinkie and wrapped her hooves around his sister and gave her a big loving hug and nuzzle while shedding a few tears. Then she wiped those tears away and pushed Pinkie back to glare her in the eyes. “Tell no one of this.”

“Our lips are sealed.” Returning the hug Pinkie gave a wink at the air, however thoughts of Toriel brought her happiness at being in Equestria down a bit. It was rather quite obvious that her angry sister missed her constant letters.

“Come on Pinkie, you’ve got some names on your Choosing Stone and we’ve been worried about you.” Limestone was about to turn around when her eyes fell on the shovel that Pinkie was holding. “Is that a shovel, Pinkie are you serious, don’t you remember what you do to shovels?”

“You know I never am Limey, so why did you even need to ask?” Proudly presenting the shovel was a happy Pinkie Pie, it hadn’t even got a single scratch nor were there any signs of fracturing, whatever it was made of it was one of the reasons she got up from having her soul shattered. “Besides this was a gift, one I think was made with me and propensity for breaking shovels in mind.”

“How many times must I tell you that I’m not one of those funny speaking ponies with the accents from the east that like scones and tea?” Eyeing the walls around them with a huff, Limestone looked around for something for Pinkie to strike. “Also a shovel you can’t break is something I have to see to even begin believing in. Oh there’s something I could use as a new tip for my pickaxe, it’s pretty worn down right so do you think you could break some of that diamond off over there?”

“Well I did want to test my baby out on the farm, Shovel Shatter!” Pinkie took aim for a large diamond and slammed the flat of her shovel against it as hard as she could swing it, the diamond fell to the floor and the shovel didn’t look dented or even damage for the effort and strength Pinkie put into the blow. “Wow, this thing was built to last if it can bust diamonds!”

“Holy… one of your fudge sundaes with sprinkles and sparklers…” To say she hadn’t expected the shovel to come out of that unscathed or even bust the diamond like it had so easily was an understatement of how little she thought of the rather goofy and colorful looking shovel, it was clearly perfect for Pinkie. Now Limestone was looking at the miracle shovel in Pinkie’s hooves before she started gathering up some good pieces of diamond that she could use. “Come on home sis, you looked like someone kicked a puppy in front of you a few times there. You can tell the family where you’ve been all this time and about those names on your stone, you must have met somebody incredible if they can keep up with you.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think I’ll ever see her again.” Pinkie drooped and Limestone gave her a worried look and threw a leg over her back as they walked out of the mine together, it was a little odd to Pinkie that Limestone would comfort her twice in such a short amount of time.

Pinkie already missed Toriel’s smile.

(Katamari Damacy - Lonely Rolling Star plays.)

Pinkie walked up the hill into the daylight with her sister and she gave a wan smile at seeing her family all gathering around her to give her a big snuggle, they weren’t the touchy feely kind of family either and this felt nice. They led her into the house taking in her slightly obvious depression with worry.

Toriel cuddled with a few little monsters and sighed audibly as she waited by the barrier with several other monsters, it was becoming weaker by the second. All these monsters were like family to her and needed more touchy feely sentiments. She was going to sit next to this barrier until it failed… wait she had forgotten to check on the six human children! She got up and ran from the room confusing a few monsters.

Pinkie was fed a good meal, she walked out of the house and found a good spot on the farm to watch the sun set, her sisters and parents came along with her to sit and witness one of Celestia’s splendors. It was beautiful, but she wanted to sit with a special goat and make her laugh while seeing something so great.

Toriel sat at the edge of the mountain watching as the sun set over the horizon, they were free and yet she still clutched at Pinkie’s saddlebags holding them to her chest. She would have wanted Pinkie to watch this with her. Several human children came up to her and huddled around her, her frown lifted slightly when Frisk came and sat down in her lap while calling her mom.

Pinkie sat on the roof of the house and watched the stars, a star streaked across the sky and Pinkie smiled faintly before making a wish.

Toriel sat at the edge of the mountain alone looking up at the heavens and saw a shooting star fly across the sky, she closed her eyes and thought of the future.

It was the next day and Pinkie was facing off against her sisters with her shovel, Limestone had a pickaxe, Marble looked slightly shy while wielding a large sledgehammer and Maud widened her stance slightly. Trixie stood off to the side looking a little confused at what was going on.

Then the four shot forward at each other and started rough housing and doing things that Trixie would have thought impossible, such as Maud stopping the pickaxe’s blade with her bare hoof without getting injured. Pinkie was by far the most impressive when she started putting the shovel she wielded through its paces. She was no longer stuck wielding gardening tools such as trowels, she was using a real rock farming tool now!

Though Maud was an expert in rocks and metals, even then she couldn’t figure out what the indestructible shovel was made of and it wouldn’t bend or break. She knew whoever made it was giving their all for her sister and it let her know that her sister had been cared for, now if she could only find out a way to get her sister’s Goat Friend here. She wouldn’t have been happy if she could never see Trixie again.

Muffet rappelled down the side of the mountain with a bit of webbing and a hard hat, she started to look around for something with binoculars and with a smile she started yelling up at Alphys and Undyne who nodded and ran off.

It was a few hours later that found Official Royal Guard Papyrus was kneeling before Toriel in area full of blueberry bushes. He gained an ecstatic look at something Toriel said and his boney cheeks glowed bright red as he started dancing around in a silly manner before bowing before Queen Toriel again. They heard a noise and looked up.

Tsunderplane and Glyde hovered above them and the plane created a smoke trail through the air that formed into an arrow pointing to a copse of fruit trees filled with pears and then they flew off towards the mountain, a lot of flying monsters would be sent out to gathering soon. Their supply problem caused by the battle of the barrier could be alleviated slightly, but they still had a lot of work ahead of them.

It had been two weeks and it was finally time for Pinkie to take a late night train home, she sat at the window staring at the night sky as the landscape passed her by. She was happy to be seeing her friends again, but she was having problems come to terms with being separated from at least three people who could have been perfect for her. She was a little surprised that Muffet was one of those people, but she accepted it readily as Choosing Stones didn’t make mistakes.

Alphys had to be making a mistake, Toriel’s cheeks swelled up and she threw up into the bucket again. She was more surprised than anyone to hear that she was pregnant and the morning sickness was a result of that pregnancy. She hadn’t touched a male since she divorced herself from Asgore.

A thought occurred to Toriel as she was told that the scanner wasn’t lying, the cupcake Pinkie gave her before she left came to mind. Toriel narrowed her eyes in anger and then they softened as she rubbed her belly, a small smile came to her face and then Alphys hit Toriel’s knee with a tiny hammer sending her foot straight into Asgore’s crotch. She burst out laughing until she was bleating as did Asgore even if he was in pain at that moment; it was like old times when she got a full physical from Wing-Ding the last time she was pregnant.

Pinkie walked through the quiet streets of Ponyville and looked down the street at her home away from two other homes, Sugar Cube Corner. She walked up to the door and didn’t know whether or not she should disturb the cakes, she raised her hoof and started knocking loudly on the door.

It opened and Pinkie was suddenly pulled into Sugar Cube Corner and squashed between the owners of the bakery lovingly. Pinkie their surrogate daughter had finally come home, they really needed her help and they had missed her zany antics.

Toriel sat on the bed alone having problems sleeping and she had to keep the nation together and running, not to mention taking care of several human children on top of her duties. She and Mifty were swamped with work. The door to the room opened and in walked Muffet in a cute maid outfit holding something behind her back with her four lower arms.

Bringing out all four of her arms Muffet thrust a large pink four legged fluffy toy into Toriel’s chest making her take hold of it. A broad smile came to Toriel’s face and she looked up at five blinking eyes that had a devilish smile beneath them.

Muffet turned around and walked out of the room and said something back to Toriel who nodded in response as she pulled toy close and laid back, soon she was sleeping comfortably.

Pinkie made her way up to her room, she’d pick Gummy up from Fluttershy’s tomorrow and she’d let them all throw her a welcome back party. Right now all she wanted to do was sleep.

She pulled something from the saddlebags that belonged to her sister marble; it was a small statue that she set on the dresser next to her bed. The statue was an expertly crafted one of a kind work of art; Marble did really good work with catching Toriel’s essence even though she had never seen Pinkie’s Goat Friend before.

After that Pinkie started pulling several more statues out, one was a ghost with headphones and another was an eight limbed menace and there were quite a few others. Marble just wouldn’t stop making them until she got every single one of Pinkie’s friends down just right. She stared at Toriel’s form smiling at her as she pulled her covers up and slowly drifted off to sleep.

===

A lot of things can happen in a year and Pinkie was currently helping her friends bring down Tirek, she had never felt this much power flowing through her since she left the Underworld. Her heart yearned and she had to promise her friends she wouldn’t pine away for Toriel to make them leave her alone about it.

They even tried to set her up with Cheese Sandwich and he was a really nice guy after their little party issue with each other after their first meeting, but she couldn’t put her heart into it with the stallion. At least Rainbow’s party was an enormously spectacular party cooperatively thrown by two party ponies of laughter.

She didn’t need an epiphany to get her key like the other girls did; she had always known that sharing laughter was a great thing to do. Hearing Cheese Sandwich’s story about her youthful escapades brought back some great memories of parties in the past and what they could lead too. Her mind came up to one party spent not running around trying to meet the needs of everybody else and it wasn’t her failed belatedly late birthday party either, it was the one where Toriel had her sit down and just enjoy things.

They had just sealed Tirek into Tartarus and even that reminded her of the Underworld and all the friends she made there, it seemed like a lot of things were reminding her of Toriel lately. She wasn’t pining away, but she couldn’t let it go. It was as if something deep down in her soul wouldn’t let her stop wanting a beautiful bipedal goats silly laughter, kisses or her tasty baked goods.

“Pinkie…” The pony looked up at her friends and they were all still glowing with the power of friendship, their hair was longer and their cutie marks seemed to spread all over their bodies, plus everything was sparkly and rainbows were everywhere. Twilight was addressing the pink pony, they could all feel each other’s souls right now and they could likely feel what was going on in hers.

“I’m not pining away am I? Besides, I gave Cheese Sandwich a chance, you all saw to that! I just don’t like him that way, I think we’re way too much alike and that I need someone calmer, smarter and with a good head on her shoulders… white fur, cute little horns and those adorable floppy ears.” Pinkie floated there glowing with the power of friendship with a bit of drool flowing out the side of her mouth as her mind went to other places.

“That’s not what I wanted to talk about, there’s just something off about you. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just strange. It’s like theirs something inside of you that’s a part of you, but not. I can’t exactly describe it.” Twilight felt something off about Pinkie’s aura, there was something of a fluctuation going on and it was getting stronger. Before they could do anything a rip opened in the air and what could only be described as an angry looking flaming goat demon with wings made of fire appeared.

Twilight and her friends prepared themselves for what looked like a new threat, while Pinkie was still off in her own little world not paying attention. In a blaze of power the demonic looking being disappeared and reappeared in front of Pinkie. The girls tried to get to Pinkie only for it to be too late as a loud smacking sound was heard.

“That’s for getting me pregnant and leaving without telling me about it!” Toriel screamed in Pinkie’s face which was suddenly bright eyed and grinning despite the large red mark slightly singed into her fur. “And this… this is for being so happy to see me!”

The flames died down and confusion ran among Pinkie’s five closest friends in Ponyville as Pinkie was lifted up and pulled into a searing kiss to the mouth. Large white fluffy wings wrapped around her body caressing her calmly.

“Am I hallucinating? Tori you’re here! Wait… how are you here?” That’s what everyone else was wondering, they still had to return the magic to all the ponies of Equestria, but they could wait because they had never seen Pinkie look so happy to be slapped by a flaming hand.

“Pinkie, you still have a piece of my soul lodged in you. Just like I have a piece of yours lodged in mine.” Toriel sat down Pinkie and crossed her arms to give the pony a stern look. “I’ll allow you to see your daughter Caring Heart when we can finally create a safe method to transport between our realms. We haven’t worked out the kinks to do that yet, the current method still sets me on fire. You’d be surprised by how much effort Sans, Muffet and Red are putting into this.”

“Does this mean we’re soul mates?” Then Pinkie’s mind caught up with what Toriel was saying. “Wait what was that about me having a daughter!?”

“Oh we’re definitely soul mates.” Toriel started to tap her foot impatiently, she looked at Pinkie’s five friends that were staring at her blankly and she tilted her head gesturing for them to go on. They did so quietly while Pinkie’s entire attention was completely fixated on her. “I gave birth to a healthy baby goat boy and a female earth pony. You have no idea how hard it was for me to pass Chara through my body, but she’s definitely you’re daughter! You wouldn’t happen to know the reason as to why I gave birth to a heart attack inducing adorable little foal would you?”

“I’m guessing a bit of my magic might have filled in the blanks in Chara’s tattered soul?” Pinkie rubbed at the back of her glowing rainbow empowered head. “Caring Heart sounds like a really nice name for her, I guess the change in gender is my fault too. Ah well, it fits pony naming conventions really well and at least Chara has a new lease on life.”

“Yep things are going okay back home, I’ve got plenty of free time with Muffet watching the kids and I’m going to spend it with you Pinkie. I would have been here sooner, but someone just had to slip me a magical pregnancy cupcake!” Picking up the pony and walking towards Ponyville. “Now come on and show me your world my little sweet. I want you to introduce me to everyone, your rulers, your family and all of your friends! I believe I just saw five of them flying across the sky spreading rainbows everywhere, what’s that all about?”

“I’ve got questions of my own, where did the big fluffy wings come from and did you finally get that school you’ve always wanted?” At Pinkie’s questions Toriel smiled broadly and they started talking to each other. They wouldn’t be separated by anything for the rest of that day.

In a different place entirely a zombie slowly marched towards the lawn wielding a red flag with a brain on it and as soon as it foot stepped foot onto the grass a flower popped up and yelled at it.

“Hey, you get off this human’s lawn this instant, you hear! Oh great now you got me talking like auntie Onion-san, my Bloom and Doom friends will kick your ass if you don’t turn around right now buster!” The zombie stared at Flowey with a vacant expression and then slowly took another step. “Okay that’s it, Pea Shooters!”

Multiple pea pods rose from the ground and various clicking noises was heard coming from them as they all aimed at the zombie, the several tubes extending from each plants mouth started to slowly rotate.

“I warned you, fire!” At Flowey’s words hundreds of little green spheres pelted the zombie. “I love my new job.”

Thend or The End.

Author's Note

Well that's it for this story, I'm thinking of moving onto writing a science fiction thriller starring Rarity, Ember and Gilda. That or I'll start a sequel to Twilght's Mane Passion, who knows.

Thanks for sticking around if your still reading the story, though I had to fix a few previous chapters of this story to make it all better. I'm sure there are plenty of thing I need to fix still, but overall I'm done.

Prologue: Misstep

The large red dragon had been spooked off by Fluttershy’s angry stare and now they were on their way back down the mountain, all six ponies talking about how their day was going so far and what they would do once they get back home.

The already noted protagonist of this entire story, Pinkie Pie the pony, gave a joyous shout as she bounced around in front of everyone. It was about how she was going to throw them all a ‘we survived a dragon and made it go away peacefully’ party. She was two tones of pink; her fur was bright pink and her hair was darker shade being more of magenta in appearance. Her mane and tail were filled with wild untamed curls that were first given to her by an exploding rainbow. On her flanks she had two blue balloons with yellow strings and one yellow balloon with a blue string, it represented her special talent for parties and making others happy.

Her five friends were all laughing about how she decided to deal with the dragon in the goofiest way possible, sure it didn’t work but the result of it did look funny. They came back to a point they had crossed over earlier in their journey that required an easy to make jump and looking to her pal Fluttershy, Pinkie couldn’t help but see that the beautiful pink haired pegasus looked squeamish about jumping the gap again.

Looking to her other friends pleadingly, they all sighed and nodded. Pinkie smiled gleefully as she started bouncing in place as she would get to cheer on Fluttershy again. For a pony with wings that could fly, Fluttershy sure was scared of heights and widths and even sometimes lengths.

“Come on Fluttershy, remember all it takes is a hop, a skip and a…” Pinkie had done her hop correctly, however her skip went wrong and she fell flat on her face. Given Pinkie’s body was generally heavier than normal mares because she ate a lot of sweets and how many times she previously jumped the gap between the two ledges, her weight suddenly slamming down hard into the edge of the ledge caused it to break off. This sent Pinkie, the mare who ate way to many snacks, falling with these last words to be heard by her friends. “Hey, are you calling me fat! Why you, when I get back from this fall I’m going to…”

Not only did those words confuse her friends, it took them five seconds to snap out of their stupors. It was because Pinkie didn’t go over the edge of the cliff screaming bloody murder like a normal pony probably would have in the situation where falling usually ends with a rather abrupt and exceedingly painful stop. Then again Pinkie wasn’t a normal pony and she went over the edge screaming to the sky about being called fat by nothing but air. Wouldn’t you be a little confused too? Considering she just fell out of shouting distance her friends should probably take some quick action before it’s too late, unfortunately for them it already was.

“Oh my goodness, we have to save Pinkie!” Her friend Rainbow shouted fruitlessly, she was quite fruitless as she had cloud with a multicolored lightning bolt on her butt. Applejack was the one with the fruits on her rear end and wouldn’t have done it fruitlessly and now being the sole remaining Earth Pony of the team by virtue of what just happened to Pinkie Pie she became far more noticeable, but it didn’t make her happy.

Rainbow leaps over the edge to be swiftly followed by Fluttershy; they didn’t see a falling pink speck and searched around the mountain looking for their friend. They didn’t know what thought was scarier, the fact that Pinkie might have just died in an accident or that they couldn’t find hide or hair of her body which was brightly colored and should have been relatively easy to spot again a grey backdrop of the mountain.

They would stir up a search party of at least thirty pegasi to fly around the mountain to find their wayward friend. And what a WAY she fell through an invisible WARD, one that ended up warping her to another realm entirely. Pinkie’s disappearance would puzzle them all greatly until one day in the distant future, but this is not their story. No, this is Pinkie Pie’s story and we’ve focused enough on the other elements which are now background noise to the plot at hand, or is it hoof? Well there will be hands so it makes just as much sense.

Light, that was the first thing Pinkie saw, a soft halo of light filling her eyes. She was slowly coming to her senses as she sat up on her exceedingly wide flanks.

“Hey, you just called me fat again didn’t you? Sure I’m a little pudgy, but I’m not fat!” Pinkie yelled angrily at the air again while shaking a hoof at the light above her having expected it to answer her with something other than the fact that she doesn’t recognize the true ‘weight’ of her problem at the moment. She should probably look around and take in her situation.

“No, I’m not moving on with this story until you apologize!” Pinkie once again addressed the air fruitlessly, because she also didn’t have Applejack’s tight flanks from working hard every day. Even Pinkie would have to admit that Applejack had some really nice musculature back there. That hot sweaty Applejack wiping her brow and letting her hair flow free in the wind was highly appealing to Pinkie’s sensibilities. “What’s wrong with having a little pudge in the rear? Seriously though, stop being so mean and trying to distract me with sexy thoughts!”

Pinkie was now highly flustered and now distracted with thoughts of Applejack’s flanks and blushing profusely from it; she did have a crush on the mare and had wanted to eat Applejack’s pie when she got back down the mountain. Of course Pinkie didn’t just have a crush on Applejack; she loved all her friends equally. Not that Pinkie would ever come out to the five mares that she wanted some sugar from them and there were a few stallions she had her eyes on, she was also interested in Gilda who she thought needed to calm down a lot and laugh a little. She was quite the pansexual pony. Due to these distracting feelings, Pinkie finally started taking in her surroundings and her situation instead of staring off into space.

“This isn’t over yet! Even if you can bounce a coin off Applejack’s flank, not to mention Gilda’s tail was really fluffy and long, then there's that really cute beak. Also stop making me so hungry with talks of pie and sugar!” Pinkie once again shouting at the air as she took in the small grove around her, she was sitting amid a pile of flowers that had luckily broken her fall without injuring herself too much, though her left hind leg was slightly bruised.

“Ouch, I couldn’t actually feel that until you mentioned it!” Pinkie was getting peeved at nothing again and decided to move on with her life by calming down. Sighing to herself and leaning her head forward with her eyes closed, she calmed down and then felt something was really off. It was at this moment that she noted her mane was not inflated to its full beautiful curliness and was now elegantly straight with a few fresh scented petals in it. “Wait, you really think my mane is… no, I’m not forgiving you even if you compliment me!”

Huffing audibly and crossing her hooves over her chest while sitting in her spot refusing to move, Pinkie slowly thought of why her mane and tail were flatter than a pancake after a steamroller went over it and why it was so straight. In all likelihood her hair popped in the aftermath of landing on the flowers, both of which helped break her fall. Speaking of which, the flowers she was sitting on were kind of digging into her coat. Her mane and tail couldn’t inflate back to their beautiful wildly curled state even if she wanted them to, even then her straight hair was still quite nice to look at.

“Oh yeah, well we’ll just see about that!” Pinkie once again addressed the air and looked cute while doing so. She put her left hoof in her mouth and blew into it, her hair flopped outward as air exited her ears. At that moment Pinkie took on a sad frown as she should realize what a relatively small problem this was, she was still the same adorable and friendly Pinkie even if her mane was popped. She should be more worried about where she’s stuck and the fact that her cutie mark is now gone, which was just as likely a reason her mane wouldn’t inflate.

“Wait… what!” Pinkie looked at her flank and saw that her cutie mark had in fact disappeared and she looked at it for no other reason than the fact that she felt something was off with her. She could already tell something screwy was going on here, as if it wasn’t obvious enough that she was imagining voices in her head. “You’re not a voice in my head, you’re the…”

Pinkie was quickly cut off from talking to the air by hearing some strange cackling in the only pathway leading forward, incidentally she couldn’t see any other way out and she doubted she could climb across the ceiling in this state to reach the hole she fell through. Especially given that almost all of her cutie mark powers have disappeared along with her mark, said mark which allowed her to do reality warping things like teleport when no one was looking at her.

“Pinkie noticed that her story is already getting off to a bad start with the fact that she’s starting off in a dark room with a strange source of light and hearing what sounds to be a demonic cackle ahead of her. Not to mention she’s now dealing with a rather big annoying pain in her flank!” Narrated Pinkie, who thought she really could ‘stand up’ to 'take a joke' about her habit of swallowing sweets whole without chewing. “Pinkie stood up and… ah fiddlesticks!”

Pinkie realized that she stood up and took the joke and after a minute she started giggling at her own actions, shaking her head with mirth she moved forward and realized she still felt a weight at her sides. She still had her saddlebags, even if she didn’t necessarily have her reality breaking powers to help her out of this mess, at least she still had the ability to carry things.

The pony moved forward down the hallway slowly and she heard a slight cackle and peaked into the doorway and saw some light and another small grassy spot with something on it. She didn’t know what to expect and she had absolutely no clue that she was in the underworld.

“I’m in the underworld?” Pinkie asked out of the blue clearly unsure of whether or not she truly was, since there was no way for her to possibly know that she was at this moment in time. “But you just said…”

Pinkie was a little confused and couldn’t finish her statement; only now did she finally bother to wipe away the flowers stuck to her cute bulky rump and the petals out of her now silky smooth mane. She moved forward feeling slightly aggravated for no reason whatsoever as if there was someone taunting her about how adorable she was when she gets angry.

Moving closer to the light Pinkie saw a small smiling flower looking up at her.

“Howdy there, I’m Flowey, Flowey the Flower. Welcome to the underworld.” This was said by the disturbing smiling flower of pure unadulterated evil that just giggled at the pony, just before he released a wave of invisible energy that washed over the area. Pinkie felt something wrench itself out of her body. It wasn’t painful at all, it just felt really weird. “Oh no need to tell me your name, how about we get this started?”

“See that heart? That is your SOUL, the very culmination of your being!” This was said by the exceedingly creepy evil flower that nobody wants to meet in a dark alley, especially because it would definitely stab you in the back multiple times and then throw salt and lemon juice in the wounds.

Pinkie felt entirely wary of this flower and hadn’t yet managed to say anything to it and was about to when the flower rudely cut her off before she could, even then she was standing there staring at the representation of her soul which was a large pink pulsating heart floating before her.

“Your SOUL starts off weak, but can grow stronger if you gain a lot of LV.” This was a blatant lie by Flowey who will continue to lie to Pinkie Pie. As far as Pinkie could already see, her soul was thrumming with power already, not that she knew that he was going to start telling blatant lies. Instead she stayed quiet and kept listening to this soul stealing flowers spiel, because she didn’t want to look like a crazy pony by yelling at the air again where her eyes were currently looking. “What’s LV stand for? Why, LOVE, of course! You want some LOVE, don’t you?”

Pinkie probably should not take the love this guy was offering or even trust him to have her best interests in mind; she should also probably start figuring out how to move her heart around at this point because having it floating outside her body like this was really quite dangerous to her continued health.

“No thanks.” Pinkie quickly said shaking her head and denying the flower, somehow knowing that the LOVE this flower was talking about wasn’t the friendly kind of love.

“Don’t worry; I’ll share some with you anyway!” Flowey said with a bright if creepy smile as he stuck out his tongue out and winked creating a sparkle of energy, he was not endearing himself to Pinkie since she could tell he was evil by having ripped her soul from her body to float in the air in front of her. The flower created five ovals of energy and moved them into the air to spread out. “Down here, LOVE is shared through little white friendliness pellets. Are you ready?”

Another blatant lie, Pinkie didn’t even need to be a mind reader to know that because this flower was acting quite sketchy and the odd music playing in the air wasn’t helping her building bad feeling about this either.

“Move around, get as many as you can with your SOUL!” Flowey launched the little pellets of pain and Pinkie watched as they enclosed on her heart with worry as she didn’t know how to move it out of the way.

Obviously if Pinkie knew that she could ‘DANCE’ two steps to the ‘LEFT’, then her heart would be out of the way of the firing pattern that the malevolent flower is currently attacking her soul with.

Suddenly and miraculously, Pinkie did a two step beat sideways trot to the left feeling rather skittish about the little incoming twirling orbs of energy. Her floating heart followed her short dance and flew out of the way of the five bullets that would have caused her pain and deal damage to her soul. One of the orbs passed harmlessly through her body, the attack was just meant to hurt her soul after all.

“Hey buddy, you missed them. Let’s try again, okay?” Flowey didn’t look very pleased that Pinkie had somehow figured out that he had ill intentions for her.

Pinkie was looking up at the air for some reason, as if asking what she should do next. She wasn’t watching out for her soul, which she should really be keeping a tight eye on throughout all the sordid affairs she was about to walk into. Especially if she wants to survive the next attack that Flowey was already launching at her.

The pony’s eyes widened and she tapped danced backwards and to the right, moving her heart out of the path of those bullets the flower had launched at her in her inattentive state. She had avoided the attack and noticed that Flowey now looked particularly mad at her and with good reason, he was evil and he so wanted to dupe her into believing his cheerful disposition was his actual nature. Then again who would trust a creepy talking flower that just pulled your soul out of your body for no good reason?

“Is this a joke? Is your brain working? RUN INTO MY BULLETS…. friendliness pellets!” They way Flowey’s angry face went back to a cheery smile really spooked Pinkie and this time the bullets were faster, but Pinkie still tap danced safely out of the way of them and back to the center of the invisible field her heart was trapped in that she didn’t know about. After that Pinkie started dancing in place making her heart do a cute jig and that made Flowey positively angry, as shown by the now positively evil appearance of his face which really scared Pinkie Pie. “You know what’s going on here, don’t you?”

“I have a pretty good idea.” Pinkie answered honestly as her eyes looked off blankly into space again, before focusing back on her heart to make sure Flowey didn’t pull a fast one. The cutesy music petered out and Pinkie looked uneasy about the situation as she should be.

“You do? Well fancy that, but you won’t live long enough to make me suffer your idiocy.” Flowey let off another powerful burst of energy and suddenly Pinkie’s floating heart was constricted in place as a sphere of glowing dots surrounded it. “DIE!”

The flower’s face morphed into a horrific visage and started giving off a bone chilling cackle as the sphere started slowly enclosing on Pinkie’s constricted soul. If this were a horror story Pinkie’s heart and soul would be swallowed by this evil little flower, Deus Ex Machina time! Nothing happened and no one came immediately to Pinkie’s aid. The sphere of glowing energy was shrinking further and further, Pinkie looked at the air in a highly panicked manner and then closed her eyes whimpering.

The flower continued its evil cackling and just as the sphere of energy pellets was about to touch Pinkie’s heart, a wave of invisible energy washed throughout the room and all the pain pellets immediately evaporated leaving Pinkie’s heart safe from the attack. The flower that just tried to take away the pony’s soul looked quite perplexed by this sudden change of events.

Pinkie opened one eye and then the other when she saw a figure standing in the shadows of the doorway behind the flower, obviously the one who just saved her soul from being ripped away. A glowing orb of fire formed and launched at the flower knocking it away into the shadows with a comically shocked look on its face. Then the one who had just saved Pinkie stepped out of the shadows as Pinkie’s heart automatically stuffed itself back into her body.

“What a terrible creature, torturing such a poor innocent soul. Ah, do not be afraid… um... what are you?” She was a bipedal figure wearing some loose purple robe of some sort. She had beautiful eyes, soft short white fur and some cute floppy ears. She was some kind of goat person given the two little horns on her head and she was highly attractive to Pinkie.

“I’m Pinkie Pie and I’m a pony, thank you for saving me!” Pinkie, when saying thanks, looked at the air above the as of yet unnamed goat lady's figure for some odd reason. Pinkie winked at the air trying to continue being subtle about nothing, then went back to looking over her savior.

Something about this being made Pinkie’s heart pound and she felt her face heat up the longer she looked at her. She just wanted to run up this being with the soulful eyes and kiss her on those tantalizing lips with the cute little fangs sticking out of them, but for some reason she didn’t as she was now glaring at the air again. The music that seemed to radiate around the nice goat lady sounded sad and somber in a way.

“I am Toriel caretaker of the Ruins; I pass through this place every day to see if anyone has fallen into the underworld. You are the first new soul I’ve seen in a long time; for a second there I thought you might have been human judging by how you’re soul looked. You are the first pony I’ve ever met and the most recent arrival I’ve seen in a long time.” Toriel seemed like the friendly sort and she looked it too, even if there was a somber sad air in the music about her that Pinkie just couldn’t quite understand yet. Nobody this pretty should feel this sad, though the fireball thing might have made Pinkie slightly wary of her. Even then Toriel had quite an inviting face and it felt like she had a personality similar to Fluttershy, plus Pinkie really wanted to cuddle with her. “Come Pinkie, I will guide you through the catacombs. This way please.”

The soft spoken lady said please, so Pinkie started to follow after the sweet sounding and pretty Toriel wondering what her future would hold. She was also wondering how she got here, but instead of focusing on that too much she was now staring at Toriel’s butt as she walked ahead of the pony and through the archway leading into the ruins.

Had Pinkie watched her step, she never would have met a new friend that she was inexplicably attracted to.

“I’m not attracted to her, so stop saying those things already.” Pinkie quietly hissed in denial to the air itself with notably red cheeks, as she followed that shapely posterior going up the stairs just ahead with her blue eyes.

Author's Note

Name: Pinkie Pie.

Class: Soul Necrodancer.

Species: Earth Pony.

Species Trait: Plus eighty health points to start with, increased heart size.

Alignment: Pacifist.

Titles: Element of Laughter, Party Pony and Master of Disguise.

Health: 100/100

The stats above are 'almost' meaningless.

6 - Pinkie Puzzles

It was a touching scene for Pinkie to see Toriel interacting with another monster, one who has been doing unhealthy things like smoking dog bones. She didn’t exactly understand why smoking dog bone treats was bad, but she tried to accept that it was in this context.

Toriel was tucking the dozing dog monster into three thick blankets and then she grabbed a little plush version of herself from nearby and put it next to Doggo’s nose, he quickly pulled it into his arms and started cuddling the toy.

“To think one of the still living guards is in such a state and still willing to go on. I will find someone to help him.” Despite the dogs sad state of existence, Toriel continued to rub Doggo’s head and he cutely snuggled into the affection and deeper into the blankets with his plush toy. He apparently had a small mattress in his guard post. “I remember these plush toys. Our dog troops, they loved them a lot and they especially liked the ones that squeaked. Apparently they’re still popular with the dog monsters that are still around.”

“Where can I get one? I think it’s really adorable that you have plush toys made of yourself to hand out to your troops. Goodness knows I’ll miss snuggling Gummy until I get back… oh no, how will my friends know what to feed him?” Pinkie wasn’t about to make fun of Toriel for her motherly nature concerning her treatment of Doggo despite his apparent adult age, the guy looked like he really needed it. Of course right now she was worried about her pet toothless pygmy alligator Gummy; she hoped the Cakes remembered how to take care of him in her absence.

“I would need the materials and some cloth since…” It took a moment for Toriel to get a huge blush across her cheeks and she became slightly shy after that when she realized Pinkie wanted a stuffed toy of her. Pinkie was very much like a child at heart, with such an optimistic mind for an adult and she cherished such a thing in the pony she got to know over a very long week. Pinkie was looking to her and she figured she might as well answer, especially to distract Pinkie from her concern for Gummy who she was told about as being Pinkie’s pet back home. “Oh… well… I made them personally and each one was special to the dog that got it in the K-9 division of the guards that I helped train. I wasn’t averse to sewing up little Toriel’s to make all the dog troops happy. I’m also quite sure you’re pygmy gator is okay, you have many friends and Gummy sounds like a very intellectual creature from the way you tell it.”

Twilight just stared at Gummy who was eating another of a highly invasive species of creature called a parasprite; at least they found a way to solve two problems at once. One of which was what to feed Gummy with Pinkie being missing since she fell off the cliff. The little alligator seemed to be a tad sad, like the rest of Ponyville without Pinkie’s exuberance to keep things brightened up.

The fact that the alligator could actually express emotions was a little odd to Twilight since he usually seemed vacant of life most of the time.

“You’re right; he should be able to take care of himself until I get back Tori.” Pinkie was smiling as she looked off into the air; shaking her head she turned to Toriel closing up the guard post to let Doggo have a nice peaceful slumber. “So about me getting one of those plush toys of you?”

“I’ll see about it when we reach Snowdin, until then let us continue onwards. I believe Doggo will be okay by himself, he’s lasted this long without my guidance.” Toriel led Pinkie forward onto a large icy patch of ground with a sign on it. “Hopefully, he’ll last a little longer in such a state.”

“Let’s see here, North: ice, South: ice, West: ice, East: Snowdin town… and ice. That’s a lot of ice.” Shaking her head Pinkie looked off the beaten path and went that way instead of the way they were supposed to be going, because she thought she saw something interesting.

Toriel would of course follow the pony to see a common individual in snowy area’s where monsters reside, it was a snowman. Pinkie sat there in the snow looking at it curiously.

“What is it?” Pinkie asked since it looked kind of like a snow pony only taller and rounder.

“Hello, I’m a snowman, I want to see the world but alas I cannot move. Would you be willing to help me out?” Seeing the nod from the pony the snowman coals for a mouth move into a smile. “If you would be so kind travelers, please take a piece of me and bring it very far away from here.”

“Okay, but I think I’m going to need a container for your snow.” Pinkie turned to Toriel who was already proceeding to scooped up some of the snowman’s snow into a jar and then she used some strange magic on it with a wiggle of her fingers. “What was that?”

“I’m just preserving the snowman’s snow in this jar with some magic so that it doesn’t melt. I’ll tie it to this loose strap like so…” Now Toriel had a jar of snow hanging from the strap of her backpack. “There, now he can experience the things we come across.”

“That magic, it feels cozy… are you by any chance Queen Toriel? Wow, I’m honored that you would allow me this chance to see the world in such a way, even if it’s looking through the glass of a jar.” The snowman’s smile stretched further.

“Nonsense, the honor is mine and my friends to have a new traveling companion... can you still talk through the disconnected snow?” Toriel was a bit curious as the jar lit up with the voice of the snowman coming from it.

“Yes I apparently can, now I can hopefully see the world this way. Thank you so much!” The snowman seemed very happy as he talked through the jar. “I want to see and experience so many things from that jar now!”

“Well come along then Pinkie, we must keep going if we’re to make it to Snowdin in a timely manner. At this rate it’ll take forever, but I don’t mind stopping to help those in need.” Toriel turned and started walking back towards the sign with a pink pony that had a skip in her step about making someone happy. She appreciated Pinkie’s goal in life as a noble cause; she never tried to force anyone to be happy and always tried to make everyone smile to the best of her ability.

Pinkie was back on the path to the east, she thought Toriel was really thoughtful in how she acquiesced to the snowman’s desire to see the world. If a snow pony had asked Pinkie if she could see the world, she would have had Twilight do something similar to what Tori just did.

The two stopped at a large open field, on the other side of this field was Sans and The Master Story Breaker of the Century Papyrus.

“I’m getting the idea that there’s a running gag going on here.” Pinkie muttered as she looked to the pair, her eyes sliding slightly upwards to the stuff about the Ever Amazing and Stupendous Papyrus. “Yep, definitely a running gag that’s likely to last the whole story… so wait, have you given up on calling me fat?”

Pinkie was losing enough weight as it is with all the exercise she was getting, there’s no point for her to be worried about her weight when she could ‘pay attention to the two skeletons already’ and stop being a pretty beautiful pony who’s hogging all the attention to herself.

“You think I’m beautiful?” Pinkie scuffed a hoof against the ground while looking away from the air with red cheeks and then went back to paying attention to Sans and The Super Impossible Papyrus Luigi Mario! “Alright already, stop doing that and move on to them talking!”

“Sans you’re so lazy; you were napping all night again!” The Indefatigable Unstoppable Papyrus shouted.

“I think it’s called… sleeping.” Sans answered flatly.

“Excuses, Excuses I say! Oh hey, look it’s the four legged pink creature! It’s time to set up my dastardly trap! In order to stop you my brother and I have created some puzzles I think you will find this highly shocking!!!” The Ham Bone of the Century Papyrus stated. “This space before you is the invisible electricity maze!”

“So how does it work?” Pinkie asked blithely of the Courageous Royal Guard in Training Papyrus.

“When you touch the walls of this maze, this orb I have here will administer a hearty zap!” ‘The Utter Calamity Papyrus was holding the spherical crystalline orb out in his gloved hand. “Sound like fun? Because, the amount of fun I think you will have is actually quite meager. Okay you can go ahead now!”

Pinkie looked to Toriel who was shaking her head no; instead of listening to the monster she was dating she took a single right hoof step forward towards the so called invisible maze. What happened next was the Overly Electrified Papyrus being violently electrocuted; it left him covered in a small amount of soot which he would quickly shake off and he now had a smell of ozone about him which he would definitely take care of later.

“Sans what did you do!?!” The Understandably Angry Papyrus stated while stomping his boot repeatedly into the snow.

“I think she has to hold onto the orb.” Sans was snickering slightly as he said this.

“Oh…okay!” Then The Ridiculous and Thoughtless Papyrus made his way through the maze leaving a safe trail marking the path out through the maze, where he came to a stop in front of Pinkie. He tossed the orb into the air so that it landed dead center on top of Pinkie’s head where it sat perfectly balanced with his amazing skills of orb tossing. He ran back through the maze while yelling to Pinkie. “Hold onto that please!”

“I really don’t know what to tell you Pinkie, he really doesn’t seem that bright. Why would anyone be dumb enough to carry that orb if it’ll just shock them for trying to walk through the area? Not to mention he already gave away the path to us.” Toriel was whispering to the pony and was already pointing out the obvious trail left behind by Papyrus in the snow.

Pinkie didn’t think following the trail was necessary or needed so she would ‘walk straight across without caring about the consequences’.

“Are you sure… I mean I’m with Tori on this one; couldn’t I just follow the path and be done with this? It’s silly enough already isn’t it?” Pinkie might have thought that following the path left by Heavy Foot Papyrus was the correct way, but she’d rather ‘walk straight across’ as a gut instinct told her it would have a funnier outcome. “Well… can you assure me no one will get permanently hurt, especially me?”

Why Pinkie was asking the air if anyone was going to get hurt would never be understood by any who could hear her crazily spouting off random gibberish to it. So she should just walk straight across without worrying about it, because she certainly wasn’t going to get hurt if she did that. Given that Pinkie breathes air all the time; she could obviously trust it with her very life.

“Well… it just seems like you’re trying to be a bit malicious to me right now.” Pinkie just shook her head and did it anyway, the pony moved over some of Grand Hilarity Papyrus’s footsteps but when she stepped off the obvious path… The Lightning Rod Papyrus got violently electrocuted once again and with each step the pony took he continued to get electrocuted until she came to stop next to him.

If only Pinkie knew that the air was not being malicious to her, it was being malicious to Papyrus since he didn’t like to breathe it at all. Air was meant to be breathed in which the skeleton was obviously not doing with all his shouting. She looked down at the scorched skeleton with something akin to worry until he stood back up slightly smoking, Toriel just safely followed Pinkie since she wasn’t carrying the rather shocking orb.

“Sans can you tell me what the heck is going on?!?” The Shock Absorbent Papyrus said with his bones slightly rattling in his anger.

Sans glanced questioningly at the air and moved over to the orb and looked it over for a bit until he found a switch on it. The switch on the orb had two settings; one was ‘shock maze’ which was clearly understandable given where they were with the invisible electricity maze. The other option was the one that the orb was set to that wasn’t understandable since it clearly read as ‘shock Papyrus, A LOT’, which led one to wonder why the orb even had such an option on it.

“I don’t understand why, but it has a shock Papyrus switch on it.” Sans answered with a slight chuckle in his tone because it sounded funny to him that such a thing existed.

“Well of course it has a shock Papyrus switch on it! I’m after all quite shocking aren’t I? I also happen to really like surprises that lead to me being shockingly happy. If I had known it would have backfired on me like this… well all I can say is that I’m quite clearly in shock.” The Highly Shocked Papyrus answered while taking on what he thought a regal pose looked like, he did a pretty good imitation of it despite his slightly scorched body. “Anyway, you solved this puzzle so easily, in fact I would say too easily! However, the next puzzled will not be so easy! You won’t get the next puzzle so easily, because it is designed by my brother Sans! You will surely be confounded by what his genius mind can come up with! I know I am.”

With that the repeatedly shocked tall skeleton known as Painfully Weird Papyrus flew off backwards towards the next area while cackling happily. Pinkie just shook her head and started laughing as did Toriel who was filled with mirth at the two brother’s actions; these two skeletons were just so horribly silly that it was hard to take them seriously anymore.

“Hey, thanks… my brother seems to be enjoying this. That and the amount of voltage he just received is probably making him loopier than usual, but what can I say when I have the best goofiest brother in the world?” Sans was smiling at them brightly. He was a little worried that Ultimate Goofball Papyrus would have hurt them with the invisible electricity maze, but now he wasn’t worried at all. “By the way did you see that outfit he’s wearing? We made that a few weeks ago for a costume party; he hasn’t worn anything else since… he keeps calling it his ‘battle body’. Man, isn’t my brother cool?”

“He’s the coolest Sans and I really like him. He seemed mean and aggressive to start out, but he’s just a bit simple and actually really silly. Come on Tori let’s see what Sans has in store for us up ahead!” Pinkie saw Toriel roll her eyes and then smiled down at her before nodding, the two moved forward.

They eventually came upon a strange stand on the path with a blue furred bipedal rabbit figure standing at it. His yellow shirt with a red stripe and red pants were interesting, though it was questionable as to why his stand had a yellow and red umbrella if it never rained underground where a lot of evergreen trees apparently grew.

“Um excuse me, but are you selling something.” Pinkie addressed the bunny man and he suddenly perked up at seeing two people approach his stand.

“Why yes I am, I just wish I could get more customers out here. This seems like perfect weather for nice cream, it’s the stuff that will warm up your heart. Don’t know why I’m not getting many buyers though.” The rabbit seemed to slide back into depression again.

“Maybe it’s your location? Moving to a more populated area might help; also I’ll take two Nice Creams young man. How much is that?” Toriel approached the blue rabbit and he stared at her for a bit and then a look of excitement crossed his face since he apparently recognized who he was looking at.

“You… you’re Queen Toriel, oh my goodness the queen herself came to my stand to buy nice cream! Wow, two nice creams coming right up!” The rabbit man gave them two nice creams, his sad disposition flipping on its head immediately with a big wide smile. The nice creams were promptly paid for by Toriel who watched as Pinkie unpackaged the treat and started licking it a bit to find the taste delicious. “You’re majesty forgive me for asking this, but why are you out here? I thought you were a myth, but here you are!”

“I’m traveling with Pinkie Pie here to make sure she stays safe and I am planning to go on a few dates with her as well… she’s become a close companion of mine.” Toriel stopped to eat some of her nice cream, before looking at the packaging it came in. “You studied magic to preserve the food you made?”

“Well yeah, I heard you were a magically gifted lady and I read up on how to do some magic personally myself. I use magic to preserve my stock of nice cream no matter the climate and it always guaranteed to come to you freshly made, I’m Blue Bunny and this is my nice cream stand!” The rabbit fellow sold four more nice creams for the road to be stashed away in Tori’s backpack and was happy to have finally done some business, especially with royalty as friendly as Toriel. “Thank you and good luck on your travels Queen Toriel and Lady Pinkie.”

“He was a nice guy, I like him.” Pinkie walked on and they came across Sans once again. “You know, I’m only now beginning to think he can do my teleporting trick. I’m kind of jealous that he can do it and when I currently can’t”

“I’ve been thinking about selling some treats too. Anyway, to continue on you go that way, but over here is two guard stations you would have missed otherwise if I weren’t here to point them out. I’ll see you at my puzzle when you’re done looking them over.” Sans waved them off.

They walked away towards the two out of the way guard stations that look as well built as Doggo’s was, but they were entirely empty of their occupants, one had a sign that said ‘his’ and the other said ‘hers’. What was really interesting was the sign between the two stations.

“Smell danger rating? Snow Smell is that of a snowman which has the white rating which can become yellow. Oh, gross… wish I didn’t understand that. Unsuspicious smell of puppy which is blue rating, equal to the smell of rolling around in the dirt. Okay… how does that one work? Weird Smell, Humans green rating… but it’s in red? Destroy at all costs! Toriel I’m a little disturbed about this, why is it written in red when it says green?” That’s the part that disturbs Pinkie? Seriously, I mean come on! What about the part that says destroy unfamiliar smells at all costs? You smell like a pony and are therefore unfamiliar, so you should know what that means… you know what, forget it. Moving on!

“It’s rather obvious if you think about it Pinkie, most of our dog troops in the K-9 division are in fact color blind like real dogs are. They can’t exactly see certain colors.” After a long winded explanation from Toriel while moving on after pointing out that the sign made sense to the dogs as they didn’t actually know what color they were writing it with. The goat lady would make for an excellent teacher since she could stand the rambunctious personality of Pinkie and even enjoyed and encouraged it while teaching her how a dog’s eyesight works.

The two came into the area and saw Sans with The Ever Increasingly Flamboyant Skeleton of Titles Papyrus.

“Hey… wait, what are you exactly? Anyway, I hope you’re ready for… where in the world is your puzzle? Sans I thought you said you had one!” The Highly Expressive Papyrus shouted at his brother.

“It’s right there on the ground. Trust me, there’s no way they can get past this one.” Sans stood there with a bright smile on his face as Pinkie went and picked up the piece of paper and looked it over.

“Wow, a word search! Toriel this has got to be the most serious puzzle I could have ever been given, please give me a crayon!” Pinkie held out a hoof to Toriel who crossed her arms looking indifferent about this.

“And what in the world makes you think that I have crayons?” Toriel said with a flat no nonsense look on her face.

“Tori, you know how much of a child I can be at times. As such you should always have something on hoof, or in your case hand, as to distract me when needed. It’s so that you can do something I probably wouldn’t like you doing that I will probably forgive you for later anyway. Since you were eventually probably going to do that thing out of a strong sense of love for me or at the very least for a good cause.” Now Pinkie was staring at her flatly and Toriel slowly started sweating under the stare and she finally looked away from the pony a bit nervous.

“Alright, what color do you want?” Reaching into her yellow backpack while sighing, Toriel pulled out a box full of crayons and gave Pinkie a bright cheery grin as she opened the box with her thumbs revealing sixty four different colors.

“I knew it, SCORE! You’re not only beautiful, but you’re also willing to feed my childish desires. Oh you know me so well Tori!” As her eyes filled with tears of happiness, Pinkie quickly plucked out a pink crayon and went to work on the puzzle while Sans and The Slightly Irate and Instigative Papyrus watched.

“Where’s the danger in this Sans?” The Suddenly Intelligent and Mindful Papyrus stated with a strangely obvious awareness that this wasn’t dangerous at all.

“You said bring a puzzle and I brought a puzzle, there was nothing in the contract that said it has to be dangerous though. It has her perfectly distracted.” After he finished talking Sans found Pinkie standing in front of him holding up the puzzle and he looked it over while Pinkie went to give the crayon back to Toriel. “Yeah that was definitely a typo for this word search that made it unsolvable by one word, so I say you’ve successfully circumvented this puzzle.”

“Sans, that didn’t do anything at all!” The Turbo Upset Papyrus stated.

“I knew I should have used today’s crossword instead.” Sans didn’t lose the smile on his face no matter how upset or angry The Indelible Papyrus was.

“What, crossword, I can’t believe you said that! In my opinion… junior jumble is easily the hardest!” The Opinionated Papyrus looked like he had an idea as to what would have been harder for Pinkie to solve.

“Really, that easy word scramble? That’s for baby bones.” Now Sans was addressing what Papyrus thought was hard.

“Unbelievable, whatever you are, help us solve this dispute!” The Attentive Papyrus was looking to Pinkie to solve this issue between brothers.

“I’m a pony and my name is Pinkie Pie, there, you now know who I am so don’t you dare pretend to forget it! Also I don’t know, that’s a really tough one...” The level of toughness between a crossword and jumble depended on how knowledgeable one was and Pinkie was put on the spot, the level of difficulty between the two varied vastly depending on the creators of such puzzles. “I’m going to go with jumble because crossword can be super easy if you know a lot of stuff already and you can even possible look up information to solve it. You really don’t have to decipher anything at all. While jumbles give you hints, they don’t help you solve the other jumbles.”

“That sounds fair actually.” Sans closed his eye sockets and nodded.

“See, she gets it… wow… she actually understands something about me and she’s so intelligent… right I have to go!” Something was off with Mega Ego Papyrus before he ran off; his cackling seemed softer and gentler now.

“Thanks for saying that, it appeased my brother and I guess I never really thought of jumble like that. It’s still super easy though; yesterday my bro got stumped trying to ‘solve’ the horoscope.” Sans shook his head and gave Pinkie a frown. “Not always the brightest crayon in the box is he? But he’s still my brother and I do love him so. See you guys real soon, spending this time with you two is always fun.”

Nodding Pinkie moved forward while looking back to see that Toriel was staring at her butt as she walked and she wiggled her cute rump at Toriel who smiled a little bit brighter as her cheeks went as pink as Pinkie’s fur.

In the next area they found several things, a piece of paper on the ground, a desk with a plate of spaghetti on it and a microwave balanced on top of a pedestal with a really small pillar. Pinkie had no clue what a microwave was, she also wouldn’t know how to use one even if it did have electricity to power it.

Looking at the piece of paper, Pinkie noted it was from Papyrus who had set this up pretty fast.

“Pony, please enjoy this spaghetti. Little do you know this spaghetti is a trap… so wait, the spaghetti is a lie? Aw and I’m actually hungry too as the nice cream wasn’t enough. Designed to entice you, wow he uses a lot of exclamation points… anyway continuing on from there, you’ll be so busy eating it that you won’t realize that you aren’t progressing. Does he ever go cheap on the exclamation points? Thoroughly japed again by the Great Papyrus, can he eventually stop abusing exclamation points? Also is that nyeh-heh-heh thing supposed to be him laughing? Why would he need to write his name on the end of this when I know it’s already him given he already wrote his name once.” Pinkie was a little aggravated that The Master of All Exclamation Points Papyrus couldn’t stop being so grammatically heavy.

“Yeah, I don’t think you’re going to eat any of that spaghetti Pinkie. Why don’t you eat some carrots?” Toriel reached into Pinkie’s saddlebags and pulled out few carrots. They both sat down in the area that was cleared of snow and ate some food at her behest.

“You know I’m still going to try it, he must have gone to a lot of trouble to make this spaghetti.” Pinkie having finished her carrots picked up the fork on the desk in her left hoof.

Stabbing the fork into the noodles and lifting it up. The pony watched as all the noodles left the plate and she smacked the spaghetti against the desk to find that it was frozen solid; she placed the noodles back on the plate and tried to twirl the noodles only for the plate to spin with them and she lifted her fork again to find that the plate was now stuck to the frozen wad of spaghetti much to her consternation. She slapped the plate back down and lifted again only to lift the entire desk off the ground which she had trouble holding with one hoof and she braced it with her right hoof.

Toriel sat off to the side munching on a radish with a look of humor filling her face as she giggled at Pinkie’s antics as she waved the desk about in the air trying to get everything to stop sticking to everything else.

Pinkie stopped waving the desk around in the air and set it back down where it was sitting before she lifted it up and stared at the frozen spaghetti. She finally decided it was probably better that she didn’t eat it like Toriel suggested in the first place, she heard the squeaks of a hungry mouse nearby and looked to Toriel.

“Say Toriel, do you have any cheese in that backpack of yours?” Pinkie wanted to help another hungry mouse out; she completely ignored the microwave that had nothing but spaghetti as settings on it.

“I think that mouse enjoys our present.” As Pinkie walked into the next area her ears twitched at the joyous squeaking noises, she felt good about assisting yet another mouse.

“Yes, I believe so as well.” Toriel couldn’t help but smile at such heartwarming thoughtfulness from Pinkie.

Pinkie was always finding ways to make Toriel happy just by being herself and she felt a bit more bouncy than usual, well at least until her soul flew out of her body again. In front of them was a growling bipedal dog wielding a shield and sword, it was raising its sword to prepare an attack on the pony.

A shrill whistle from Toriel stopped it in its tracks and it started whimpering as it dropped both the sword and shield, its tail immediately tucked between its legs. Pinkie’s pulsating pink heart immediately went back into her chest. Giving a short bird like whistle after that, the bipedal dog came up to Toriel panting and whining for forgiveness as he kneeled before her.

“Good dog. Now don’t attack my friend, do you understand me?” Getting a nod from the whining dog Toriel started petting it, its neck extended slightly and its tail wagged excitedly. “Pinkie I’m sorry he was about to hurt you, this is a lesser dog. In fact he’s one of the ones I’ve trained and I’m clearly upset that he tried to hurt you and I’ve made it well known to him that I am.”

“It’s okay, he’s a good boy. Did you hear that, who’s a good boy? You’re a good boy!” Pinkie started rubbing his neck with a hoof and the dog grew ever more excited and its neck began stretching again. “If he’s one of your K-9 dog troops, then can he follow us around?”

“I suppose he can help lead us into town, but can you stop petting him. There are problems with petting Lesser Dogs too much.” Toriel watched as Pinkie continued to pet the dog and its neck continued to extend upward.

“Nonsense, I don’t see a problem with it, his fur feels so nice and I want him to know that I forgive him for trying to hurt me because he never really got the chance to actually do anything.” Pinkie shoved her nose into his neck which started stretching at twice the speed as Pinkie nuzzled him.

“Pinkie you might want to stop…” The sound of something slamming into the dirt was heard and Toriel watched as the dogs head came out of the dirt fifty feet later and continued to rip through the landscape with a smiling face creating loops and arcs as it went.

“Why, he’s really cuddly and I don’t feel like letting go.” Pinkie cuddled the dog’s neck ignoring the fact that it was now stretching at three times the speed it previously had been and the top of its head was about a mile away now.

“Pinkie, can you please look up from the dogs neck for a moment. If you don’t, I may get highly jealous of it receiving so much attention from you.” Toriel started tapping a foot into the snow as Pinkie did as she asked.

Looking up, Pinkie started to follow the dogs neck around and into the ground and out of the ground, through several tree’s, a rock that was busted in half and off into the distant horizon.

“Wow… how did that happen?” Pinkie said obliviously to the fact that she was the cause of the dog’s neck growing out of control. Looking to Toriel she saw her flat stare. “Oh… I’m not stopping.”

“Pinkie, for his sake, let the dog monster go.” Toriel was trying to be stern and then Pinkie had to go and get her slightly miffed.

“Never!” Pinkie yelled and cuddled the dog even harder and then Toriel grabbed her trying to pull her off the armored bipedal dog. “Could you grab me a bit little lower Tori? Yeah, squeeze my flank or spank it I don’t care which.”

“Why you evil little pony, are you trying to seduce me by being ridiculous?” Toriel put her hands on her hip and glared at Pinkie.

“No this dog’s neck is ridiculous, ridiculously fluffy!” Pinkie was going to be here for a while, so we’ll just end the chapter here. “Also I’m trying to seduce you by being Pinkie Pie, is it working?”

Toriel just couldn’t stop laughing after that.

11 - Date: Tori

“So…” Toriel couldn’t get much further before The Window Breaking Papyrus leapt out through one of the windows from the restaurant spooking her and Pinkie as they were walking up.

“Ahah, no one expects the skeleton in position! My weapons are bare bones jokes, pillows, fun, party tricks, comfy chairs and silliness! Wait a minute…” The Lost Papyrus pulled out a script; he got an angry look on his face and stomped his right foot in anger several times before he walked off. “Sans, this isn’t one of my scripts for talking to a human at all! I was trying to introduce myself to the pony’s celebrity friend and now you’ve gone and ruined it!”

“Well he did surprise us by breaking through the window.” A giggling Pinkie watched as Toriel started gather the shards of broken glass in her magic. With a flaming glow coming off each hand, the goat woman made each piece of the shattered window start piecing itself back together.

“That he did, now let’s go inside.” Toriel smiled a bit at Pinkie opened the door for her. “Go ahead my sweet little pie.”

Pinkie slammed the other door as she stepped into the restaurant with an attitude befitting a southwestern cow pony. She looked around and saw various beings in this den of equity.

“Table for two…” Pinkie said seriously and in a drastic dark tone. Looking at the bartender she noted that he seemed to either be on fire or made of it, he simply just pointed out a booth. Nodding, Pinkie happily skipped her way to the table.

“Oh Pinkie, you’ll never cease to amaze me with how random you arrrgh…” Toriel had only taken about two steps into the restaurant before she ended up getting dog piled. Quite literally all the royal guard dogs they had met on their way into town previously were now all on top of her. Pilaf was the heaviest of them and squashing them all with his magic suit of armor and had a goofy smile on his face as he was doing so. “I love all of you to, now please get off of me as I think you’re love is currently crushing my spine.”

Dogaressa managed to lick Toriel’s face before wiggling out from under Pilaf and Risotto was trying his best to alleviate the queen of his brother’s massive mystically enhanced weight. Dogamy was the next to escaped following Dogaress back to the nearby table while getting in his own lick, Doggo managed to get in a lick or two before escaping leaving poor Risotto to take Pilaf’s weight all by himself, the little guy was having a hard time of it until Toriel manage to whistle the big guy off of herself.

Standing up and dusting her robe off, a happy Toriel shook her head and made her way for the table. She only stopped to stare at Pinkie who was now wearing a nice red sparkling dress that she hadn’t had on previously walking through the doors. It made her feel entirely underdressed for the occasion; it was also questionable as to where Pinkie could have gotten a dress from so fast. The pony’s saddlebags were sitting off to the side and she could see only the scarf sticking out of it. Getting a good long look at it, the dress was quite flattering to pony’s ‘well filled out’ curves.

“I’m going to let that one slide, because my curves are nicely animated thank you very much.” Pinkie said with an admirable amount of self control. “Say Tori, all the guard dogs see you as a mother right?”

“Yes, but why do you ask when you know that?” Toriel sat down and continued to stare at the pony wearing the dress, it was a little off-putting considering Pinkie ran around ‘sans’ clothes all the time. This led to the thought of Pinkie actually wearing Sans clothing and she held a hand up to her face snorted lightly at the thought.

“So would you say you’re their… Mom-ster?” Both of them started giggling at the bad pun, they were going to waiting before they ordered their food and Pinkie thought the best way to wait was to have a little fun. She had to keep her date entertained after all, aside from being herself she didn’t know what else to do.

“Oh you want to play do you?” Toriel leaned forward placing her elbows on the table while putting her chin in her hands to stare at Pinkie. “You know it must be so tiring for you.”

“What must be tiring for me?” Pinkie asked while tilting her head in confused manner.

“It must be so tiring, being adorable as you are all the time.” With a smile Toriel got Pinkie blushing and rubbing the back of her head with a shy smile, the pony certainly didn’t mind her flirting.

“Are those hearts in your eyes or are you just happy to see me?” Staring the goat lady in the eyes, Pinkie knew Toriel was slightly happy given her pupils were little hearts once more.

“I’ve been told that when I’m happy, others are happy. I’ve been wondering about something for a while so...” Toriel reached over with her right hand and poked Pinkie on the nose and she let out a squeaking noise. “Oh my goodness, that was cute.”

A throat clearing itself brought their attentions away from each other and to the flaming headed humanoid wearing glasses, a nearby lazy looking duck monster started talking.

“Welcome to Grillby’s, I’m the proprietor of this establishment Grillby. Would you like the grill or the bees?” The flaming headed man nodded to the duck that was being the voice for him. For someone who was made out of fire, the fine suit he wore wasn’t catching fire at all; he also seemed to be constantly cleaning a single glass.

“Oh no, not the bees, not the bees, I’ve got to protect my eyes!” Pinkie then covered her face with her hooves after peaking around for a moment she decided to add to the duck and the flaming head monster. “Look, don’t grill me about this or I’ll start to whicker, man! In all seriousness, what are your vegan options?”

“I’ll just put you down for some fries, with a browned bean curd, onion and spices burger. What would you like to drink; don’t ask for water as I don’t touch the stuff. I’ve got wine and other various forms of fruit juice, cola and some other things. Would you like ketchup and mustard with that order?” After chuckling dryly the duck motioned to Grillby who waited for Pinkie’s answer.

“Do you have apple, pomegranate, cranberry or raspberry juice? I like one or more of those mixed together, all three if possible.” The pink pony got what she thought was a nod from the flickering head and then she added. “I won’t say no to mustard or ketchup, also the food you suggested should be adequate enough for me.”

“I believe we do have at least one of those juices in stock. Now what do you want miss as I’ve already assisted you’re lovely friend here?” The flaming headed man looked to have run the restaurant almost solo and sounded to be rather friendly, if the duck talking for him was anything to go by.

“Well… snail in a garden salad with a carrot and pepper vinaigrette, some fries and a tin can if you have any.” Feeling a little silly about ordering a tin can, Toriel looked to Pinkie for her reaction and she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary on Pinkie’s face. “I would also like the pomegranate juice or apple, if not then any juice would be fine Mr. Grillby.”

“Right then, I shall be back with your order eventually. Also ignore my cousin if he comes in and steals a bottle or two of alcohol, he’s a bit of a crazy guy.” With the duck finished speaking for him, Grillby bowed and left them to converse. “That’s the Grillbz cousin by the way, not mine personally.”

“Really what does his cousin look like?” If one were to ask like Pinkie had, then you should expect an immediate appearance of said cousin.

“Like a flaming headed man, except he can actually talk. Also he’s constantly drunk and wearing western stuff and wielding pistols.” The duck monster answered lazily. “Hasn’t managed to shoot anyone yet and not for the lack of trying mind you.”

“Oh you mean like that guy?” As soon as Toriel pointed him out, every monster in the room turned towards the wild smiling flaming head wildly wavering around on his feet. The monster was holding an empty bottle, his face was a creepy flaming smile and he had two holstered guns on him.

“Yeah like… ah crap it’s Flame Face. Everybody sit completely still, he can’t hurt you if you don’t do anything. How did he even get in here into the middle of the room without any of us noticing him?” The duck didn’t so much as move after he finished talking and watched as the bandolier wearing monster stumbled around a bit.

“Trololololo… wait… where am I again? Ah right, booze run, wrestling… stuff… hey there’s a protagonist!” The flaming head monster stumbled about a bit, before he quite speedily pulled both his guns with a twirl and tried to fire them at Pinkie. This made Toriel dive over to the pony’s side of the booth with closed eyes to hear clicking noises. “Oh right… forgot to… what was it again? Reload, yeah I forgot my bullets again. Wow, I am sucking at defeating heroes. Oh right… booze!”

The flaming headed individual ran towards the counter and flopped over it, then he staggered to his feet with the spurred boots and grabbed two bottles of tequila and disappeared in a flash of fire. After a moment he reappeared.

“Right I fortress… forbearing… forget to… apple guise… Apollo demise… asshole lies… asking flies… acting dies… auto replies…. what’s that word with the A in it again? Sorry for… attacking the gato… no wait… too punk… skunk… pink right, she’s pink… she’s not even the right protagonist anyway!” With that the flaming headed monster with the freaky smile disappeared again leaving a few words drifting on the air. “I need to drink more; I’m starting to feel bad again.”

“He seemed fun.” The slightly wistful Pinkie said with a sigh. “He was a handsome bad boy too, what a bright cheery smile for such an evil constantly drunk flaming headed guy!”

“Well of course it was bright; his head is made up of living flames!” Toriel pulled Pinkie to her chest. “I’m so glad that he didn’t hurt anyone.”

“It’s alright Tori, no harm, no fowl to be had!” The two birds sitting at the bars counter squawked angrily at Pinkie. “Right sorry, that guy was all bark and no bite!”

Now all the dogs were looking at Pinkie flatly, it took Pinkie a moment to realize what the stares were all about. She gave them a wide cheesy grin that was sheepish in nature.

“I’m sorry to you guys as well, what am I supposed to say? He was flaming hot and I sometimes get tongue tied around hot people that I think would be fun at parties.” Pinkie noticed the goat lady across from her frowning while rolling two small fireballs around in her right hand. “Oh come on… you’re the hottest person in the room! You can’t possibly be angry with me over having an odd attraction to someone who attempted to kill me out of the orange!”

It wasn’t out of the blue because Flame Face was at the orange level of flames, which is weaker than Toriel’s bluish white hot meteor strike a few chapters ago. Now the attack she did was out of the blue, but it did help with making sure The Jerry stayed far away from all of this only to be mentioned consistently afterwards such as right now.

Toriel with a bland look on her face snuffed out the fire by clenching her hand and looked Pinkie sternly in the eyes for a moment. She then quickly leaned forward and pecked Pinkie on the lips before pulling back with a smirk on her face. The loveable queen with the shy blush on her face could see the pony’s ears sticking straight up and her tail lifted slightly beneath her dress.

“I think Grillby might take issue with that, but I certainly won’t.” Smiling, Toriel leaned back and waited to see what Pinkie’s response to that would be. The pony sure knew how to flirt perfectly well when she wasn’t having hoof in mouth disease. “So that story you told, it has two sides to it doesn’t it? The leaders and their advisers, if they had not the foresight to bring their advisers then they would have been left to those cold creatures. Even if they weren’t necessarily bad leaders, they came around and together in the end right?”

“You have to sometimes to accept the bad with the good. Sometimes you need the bad to balance things out and remind you of what you have and what’s important. Not even I can be perfectly peppy and happy all the time no matter how hard I try. My cutie mark is about make others smile with my antics, even when I can’t seem to find my own grin.” The food had arrived and was being placed on the table along with their drinks, Pinkie sniffed her burger curiously and her mouth started to water. She’d definitely wanted Grillby to meet Spike; the little guy could stand to learn how grill and barbecue with the best of them since this food smelled perfectly made.

Picking up her sandwich and after adding copious amounts of ketchup and mustard, she took her first bite. The pony chewed with a smile on her face as she gave off a happy hum. She was trying to ignore Toriel eating the fresh live snails and their shells in her salad; she was practically using the snails as croutons.

The goat lady’s tongue was licking the slime off her lips; it tasted as good as what the pony seemed to be getting in flavor judging by her messy face. She slowly slid her tongue along her upper lip and around the tiny little fangs she had, she was in thought about something as she stared at that messy face.

“Hope you don’t mind me doing this.” Toriel plucked a fry from her basket and swiped it across Pinkie’s messy face cleaning it up slightly; she proceeded to toss the lone fried potato chunk into her mouth to chew slowly. “Because I just can’t help myself when it comes to getting another taste of how sweet you are.”

“You’ve had a lot of practice at this haven’t you?” Pinkie asked after getting so many flirtatious maneuvers from the goat lady was causing her face to be as red as the dress she had on. She was happy that her goat-friend didn’t mind her messy eating habits.

“Oh I’m quite the ‘bleating’ heart Pinkie, when it comes to being romantic that is. Especially after I ‘goat’ to know you, you know instead of staying all ‘baa’ myself.” They both couldn’t keep a straight face after Toriel’s comments and puns, especially considering she actually bleated in a cute manner. They both were breaking out into a fit of giggles.

“I’m glad I can ‘stirrup’ these emotions in you Tori. I know being ‘saddle’ make you frown, but that’s just ‘bridle’ talk. Let’s say we get to the real stuff, ‘whinny’ going to talk dessert?” The puns came so easily off her lips as she looked at the hearts in Toriel’s eyes. The heart shaped pupils had grown to a larger size, seeing her that happy was letting Pinkie know that the date was going spectacularly. “Hey can you do fried nice cream Mr. Grillby?”

“I ‘foaled’; oh great now they’ve got me doing puns too!” Doggo caused everyone to start laughing as he tossed his card down on the table, the card game was running between the four guards in the background and Risotto was doing his own thing on the side. They couldn’t help but hear the pony making Toriel happy and were happy to see their Goat Mother being cheerful.

Outside Grillby’s at this moment Sans was looking through the window at Toriel oddly, he felt that something was off with his friend. Though he was certainly glad he didn’t have to pay for the damages Papyrus caused to his favorite restaurant, he felt a little uneasy about something. Toriel dating Pinkie didn’t bother him at all; something else however was tickling at the back of his skull.

Sans shrugged, he was sure that whatever it was, it wasn’t life threatening to anyone at this moment in time to warrant any worry. Now he had an important mission… to go plant fart cushion under someone’s butt! Possibly Papyrus’s for damaging the window in the first place, they sure did get it fixed rather fast this time.

Looking at the pony across from her the goat lady saw her enthusiasm to see new things, to push her boundaries and to try and improve the livelihood of at least one person within a given day. The food was good, the atmosphere was friendly with all their dog friends and this was a rather quaint restaurant.

Toriel felt a strong pulsing feeling in her chest; it was warm and inviting as much as having Pinkie’s soul inside her felt. At the time of having Pinkie’s soul in her, she felt conflicted and horrified. Now there was a fire burning inside of her and the warmth was far less horrific in nature and spreading through her body. She reveled in the feeling of the strong heartbeat she got around Ms. Pie.

Author's Note

I don't want to know how Flame Face got into my story, I'm just going to ignore that he managed it somehow.

Anyway the hint to what's going to happen next.

Half chapter for reasons of preparing for a twist to the Papyrus fight.

19 - Date: Napstablook

“So that’s your home, it looks all wobbly.” Pinkie tilted her head at the oddly shaped houses, one was grayish white and leaning to the left and the other one was a light red and leaning to the right. Each house kind of looked like a large sock wearing a paper hat that had a single visible window.

“Well come on in and make yourself at home in my cobbled together pile of junk I call a home.” Nasptablook was a bit of a downer, he always felt like garbage and he figured he may as well live in close proximity to garbage. “I hope you don’t mind the mess.”

“If you don’t mind that I ask, who’s your next door neighbor Nappy?” Pinkie was let into the home of a friendly if depressing ghost. There was a spider web in the corner right of the door past three books that were lying around, so he likely had friends who were spiders. He had a refrigerator despite the fact that ghosts shouldn’t need food, so it was probably for visiting friends to use. He had a television and Pinkie hadn’t seen much of one, but she had it explained to her as being a miniature movie screen. Then there was one of those computer things in the corner along with a set of headphones.

“Oh I don’t mind you asking at all, I’m just surprised that anyone as neat as you would continue to pay that much attention to me.” Napstablook was being a bit down on himself, even then the ghost floated over with a box of bandages he promised Pinkie Pie. The pony quickly went to work on patching her injuries after taking the proffered medical supplies. “Anyway, my next door neighbor is my cousin. He’s become rather famous actor in the Underworld, one of the only ones really. He goes by the name of Mettaton nowadays.”

“Well I bet he’ll be a meta-ton of fun! Hey a friend of mine talked about how much he enjoyed watching Mettaton do things, of course I didn’t get to date that friend because he was trying to figure out his sexuality.” At that thought Pinkie realized she forgot to say good bye to The Temmie Covered Papyrus after the top of the pirate ship exploded. She figured it was okay; Papyrus was a nice guy and seemed to be a very forgiving individual. “Anyway, if you forgot I’m Pinkie Pie and I thank you for letting me into your home to rest Nappy. I wonder how my goat-friend is doing; I hope she not too worried about me.”

“I think we may be lost…” It was an understatement of the century for Toriel as she looked around at the festive colorful area. “Oh I hope Pinkie is safe wherever she is.”

“Gee, what was your first clue, the giant trumpet playing chickens or the strange skeletons everywhere?” Gyftrot turned to a nearby skeleton with a mariachi band to ask for help. “Excuse me, have any of you seen a pink pony come through here?”

“Si, I am seeing your little pink caballo, she is falling down into the garbage filled area below after being chased by Undyne. Undyne is muy enfadado at not catching that loco caballo.” The skeleton looked to the left and saw what looked like a strange feminine looking zombie wearing a pink mask walking up to them wearing a chicken themed suit.

“Do you two need some help? I definitely have nothing better to do at this point and time whatsoever!” The chicken suit wearing zombie struck a wide pose that caused her to float into the air and a fanfare to be played by the mariachi band. “I am Tostada, guardian of a powerful mask! I am in this world looking for a fugitive who keeps stealing tequila from everyone.”

“Yes, we would like some help and we might be able to help you as well. I recently ran across a guy named Flame Face while at Grillby’s, which is a restaurant in Snowdin. He tried to shoot at my mare friend, but he forgot to reload his guns. Then he tried to apologize for trying, but he was too drunk to do so. I remember that he was holding some bottles of tequila before he left the restaurant.” The reaction Toriel got was a sudden look of fierceness in Tostada’s eyes as soon as she said Flame Face’s name, she liked this person already. “I take it you know him?”

The relationship between Pinkie and Toriel was something to think about. They really cared about each other, they both loved baking, they shared a love of jokes and they were both highly snuggly in nature. They even easily got lonely if they were ignored for too long.

Toriel seemed a whole level better at dealing with loneliness and depression than Pinkie ever could, given that she was still functioning pretty well despite all the stuff that has happened to her. On the other side of things Pinkie was better at staying social and not closing herself off from others, but she was easily broken if she didn’t have friends to keep her together.

The relationship of pony and goat was completely adorable from an outsider’s point of view, plus they were getting more and more comfortable about being intimate. Cuddling, petting and kissing was about as far as they were willing to go. The biggest thing they had in common was a love of laughter.

These were the things Pinkie was thinking of in her relationship with Toriel, it was like the two of them could share their lives together in endless misadventures and they’d never be bored of one another. They were a veritable duo of both childishness and intelligence mixing together brilliantly; only with Toriel being the more mature one of the two of them.

“No problem, it’s nice to know that you’ve met some of my cousin’s fans and that they were friendly. They usually are anyway; don’t like them when they aren’t.” Napstablook set down the orange cooler near the refrigerator, while Pinkie continued to bandage the wounds that she could see on her body. She eventually got to the knife wound marring her face and hoped that it didn’t scar, then again it would add authenticity to a pirate costume for Nightmare Night if it did.

“Say, are you male or female… you sound kind of between them at times.” Pinkie went over to the refrigerator as she waited for Napstablook to respond. It was easy to question whether or not Napstablook actually had a gender and was just referred to as a ‘he’ like Kid was a ‘he’ despite being a hermaphrodite. It was mostly about association to which gender you preferred to be labeled under. Napstablook for all intents and purposes was a genderless Pac-Man ghost and his mouth was seldom seen unless he opened it.

“I’m actually a ‘they’ or ‘them’, but you can call me a ‘he’ or even a ‘she’ if you want to.” Nonplussed about pronouns, Napstablook still sounded more masculine than feminine anyway and he was okay with that. Taking notice of Pinkie’s position Nasptablook made an offer as an amiable host to his pink pony friend. “Do you want some food; here let me get something for you.”

Napstablook took out a sandwich that looked transparent and held it out to Pinkie; she tried to take it only for her hoof to pass through it.

“Oh… I guess you can’t eat a ghost sandwich then. Never had this problem before, I guess I’ll eat it then.” Napstablook took a bite of the sandwich and slowly chewed it. “Sorry I couldn’t be of much help there.”

“Don’t worry about it Nappy, there’s food in the cooler I wanted to try anyway.” Pinkie opened the cooler that Napstablook helped to drag out of the waterlogged area.

Inside the cooler Pinkie found a packet of space food she wanted to try, it was strawberry, vanilla and chocolate flavors of freeze dried ice cream. It sounded odd to her and when she opened it up she saw three colors, all in conjoined rectangles that made the shape of a block together. She bit into it and hummed as she chewed the soft food that seemed a tad brittle. It wasn’t quite nice cream, but it tasted good and somewhat sugary. She missed the ‘Home Ruins’ and having access to an oven to make baked goods with.

The two continued to eat in silence, Pinkie was sure that being friends with Napstablook was easy for anyone. She noted he didn’t seem to be like all the other monsters in the underworld, unlike other monsters he seemed to operate to different rules. Of course this led to an awkward question on her mind that Pinkie really wanted to ask of him and she did so without tact.

“Um… if you’re a ghost monster, does that mean you can’t die like all the other monsters whose bodies are a bit more fragile?” It had been a bit awkward to think of, but from all the sad knowledge Pinkie had picked up it seemed as if ghost monsters were technically invincible and couldn’t be killed. “I mean, does that mean you’ll never be turned into a pile of dust like all the other monsters that die and can live on into eternity?”

“Yes, I suppose that’s the truth of my situation. Being intangible to harm or most things isn’t as great as it sounds. I can be physically hugged and enjoy things like everyone else, it’s just that the world is a bit muted to me. I like music though, it’s something that can touch you, but you can never touch it or at least I don’t think you can. You can probably touch on it I guess… ” The bed sheet styled ghost just continued to eat his sandwich after that thought in peace. After a few more moments of just chewing and swallowing parts of his ectoplasm sandwich, he decided to put the sandwich down to go put on some music. He picked up his earphones placed them upon his round head. “Here, listen to some music I made by myself.”

“That sounds like you’re theme music only simpler, so are you a DJ or a composer?” They were almost done eating peacefully together, if Pinkie didn’t know any better she’d swear this was a date. After a moment she decided to just consider it a date outright, being pansexual meant that she dated freely even if her heart kind of belonged to a beautiful goat lady. Well her heart had actually at one point belonged to the goat lady, Toriel just gave it back and worried about Pinkie’s health afterwards.

The thing with staying over at Papyrus’s house for some sleep wasn’t a date to Pinkie; it was more of a social gathering where the Font family was hosting a batch of weary travelers. Napstablook was trying his best to be accommodating despite his obvious problems of being a mostly ethereal existence; he offered her food and gave her a gift of medical aid. In her mind Pinkie found Nappy to be a cute guy and this time they were sharing together was definitively a date since it was one on one bonding. The only thing she didn’t like about him was his strangely depressive attitude and that repeatedly pressed her ‘need to make happy’ button.

“Yes, I’ve done some composing and I’m trying to get into DJ work. I haven’t really much use for the money I’ve earned really; I guess I could spend it on my friends.” It took a while for Napstablook to consider just how many friends he actually had; it was actually a heartwarming thought for him which was odd considering he didn’t usually dwell on the positives in his life. He would definitely count Pinkie among those friends now. “So, what do you do for a living? It’s been a while since I’ve used that phrase.”

“Well, I throw parties, bake baked goods, put up decorations, play party games and happen to be a decent party magician. I know I can’t do that forever, but I’m going to plan and enjoy parties for as long as I’m able. Making other smile is my special talent as much as it is planning parties.” Licking her lips of the crumbly bits of space food that tasted out of this world, Pinkie watched as Napstablook flopped onto his back having finished his food. “Um, what are you doing?”

“Well it’s kind of a tradition of my family. After eating a good meal we would lie down on the floor and feel like garbage for a while.” Sitting up and looking at his guess Napstablook thought it would be polite to address her. “Do you want to join me? I promise that it’ll be an interesting experience.”

“Sure, I need more rest anyway.” Pinkie crumpled up her empty food packet and tossed it in the cooler. She moved over to Napstablook’s side and rolled onto her back and snuggled up against him, the poor ghost started blushing at her fur brushing up against his odd body.

“So what are we looking for?” Pinkie asked as she stared at the warped ceiling.

“We’re not looking for anything in particular, just please follow my lead and don’t move very much.” Napstablook shifted slightly into Pinkie’s warmth. He couldn’t understand why he did it; all he knew was that Pinkie was rather pleasant to be next to. “I guess you can move when you’re ready to get up, but for now just stay still and breath. Maybe you’ll even see what I can.”

Nodding to his words, Pinkie snuggled comfortably against her ghostly rescuer and then stared blankly at the ceiling. She had to blink every once in a while and one time her large eyes slowly closed and she inhaled softly.

Slowly opening her eyes she tried not to make a sound as she was experiencing something wonderful, she almost let out a soft gasp in surprise. She slowly turned her eyes to Napstablook’s form next to her.

It looked to the pony that they were floating in the middle of space. There were hundreds of galaxies and stars, a shining comet flew by and there were asteroids forming smiles in this void. Through it all Pinkie stayed quiet and introspective trying not to break the illusion of what she was exactly seeing. Oddly out of all the objects in the room, the television was the only thing that had seemingly vanished aside from the building. Did that object even exist? Did space or time even exist here with Napstablook, is this why he was seemingly staring blankly at the ceiling?

“It’s something isn’t it? I really should do this with all of my friends; it’s been a while since Mettaton left to become a star out there. They used to do this with me all the time. Now I only do it with my closest friend, the spider that lives here. It’s been a while since I worked with Ms. Muffet, she likes baking too. She never spends much time around here though, but I’m sure you would have been good friends with her.” The illusion didn’t dispel at Napsta’s voice and Pinkie took that as a sign that it was okay to talk; moving right now was another thing entirely. “Do you think all my other friends would like this if I could talk them into it?”

“I’m sure they would love it Nappy. This is really quite beautiful. To think if I were less patient, I would have missed seeing such a wonderful sight as this.” Pinkie stared out into the beautiful expanse that looked like the universe shifting and moving to an unknown wind around them.

“Funny thing about you’re nickname for me. Metal Tonnage used to call me that all the time, either that or Blooky. I actually go to the ruins to be near nicer monsters as the ones throughout the underworld are losing their hearts to their anger, but your changing things as I’ve been hearing so much about you Pinkie.” This was a moment Napstablook was beginning to enjoy a lot, since he was spending it with someone who was taking their time to enjoy it with him. “Anyway, Mettaton is a nickname that became something my cousin made famous. They are always so busy, but I don’t dislike that they are. I’m actually happy that they are trying to keep spirits alive in all the other monsters who aren’t ghosts like us, Mettaton is a ghost in the machine and his heart is a lot stronger that most monsters. Some even say that he can separate his soul from his body as what happens with a human when a pull field is used.”

“You must be a pretty bad introvert, then again so is Tori. I realize that introverts need alone time, but I can’t help but want to make them smile. I want to show them that I’m always willing to be there for them, if they’d only ask like you did. Ask to just share a nice fleeting moment like this one.” A morose feeling overcame Pinkie until the ghost cuddled her making her feel a bit brighter and she turned to him to see that he was smiling at her. He was letting her know that everything was alright. “I wonder how my friends back home are doing. Goodness knows Twilight and Fluttershy are two ponies I’m always worrying about more than Rainbow, Rarity and Applejack. Even then Rainbow and Rarity have their moments of being shy too.”

“It sounds like you have a lot of friends that care about you. I can’t say I feel the same thing you do considering mine don’t visit me often enough, but my friends will always have me around if they need me. It comes with the territory of being a ghost. Sometimes the quiet and solitude lets us introverts see things that nobody else can, stopping to reflect on things will help just about anyone when they’re feeling down.” Happy to be relaxing with a friend by his side, Napstablook considered this to be one of the best times he’s ever had just staring into space. He felt Pinkie press her lips to his cheek and he blushed slightly.

“Thanks for showing me this Nappy, this makes for a wonderful date. You may seem like a sad ghost, but then people aren’t really looking at the real you are they? You always seem sad and depressed, what’s really going on is that you’re just a bit lonely. Maybe if you talked to your friends more often and told them how you feel, well, you wouldn’t appear so depressed all the time. You have a nice smile by the way.” A knocking at the door sounded and Pinkie almost didn’t want leave this wondrous sight. Sighing she decided to break the illusion and sat up the wondrous painted universe slowly disappeared from her vision as Napstablook also got up and moved over to the door to see who could be visiting him.

“Hello, can I help you?” Napstablook floated at the door and saw several more visitors to his humble abode.

“Yes, have you seen a pink little four legged being? I heard she was hurt and I heard that Undyne lived around here. I’m just worried that… Pinkie, you’re here! Oh and you’re… hurt.” Toriel got down on a knee and received a hug and nuzzle from the pony, she had tears in her eyes which were wiped away by a gentle hoof.

“I’m okay Tori, I told you I can take care of myself. So please don’t cry, they’re only flesh wounds. It’s nothing that a little time won’t fix. Hey I got something to show you, come on you have got to see this!” Pinkie went to lie down on the floor on her back and a curious Toriel looked at her as she motioned for her to lay down by patting a hoof next to her.

Soon there were four beings lying next to each other, Toriel was cuddling Pinkie as she stared at the vibrant expanse with wide eyes and an awed smile.

“I am seeing so many new things because of you Pinkie.” The wonder in Toriel’s eyes as she stared at the vibrant stars and nebulae’s around them was matched by her companions.

“I didn’t think I would ever be able to witness anything quite like this.” The snow in the jar commented as it started counting all the pulsars it could see in this strange contemplative place.

“Tori… you don’t mind that I like Nappy right? I mean I kissed him and we were having a good date until you arrived, not that I’m not happy to see you.” Feeling a familiar hand rubbing her tummy, Pinkie squealed slightly in joy.

Apparently Toriel wasn’t upset at all. If she hadn’t been upset with Shyren, why should she be upset now? She wasn’t going to get angry over the feelings of others and it was hard to do when the one you cared about was as lovable as Pinkie Pie was.

“I know what you mean Pinkie. Remember that I understand the meaning of Pansexual. Just being attracted to all kinds of people doesn’t mean you can’t be faithful or that you’ll stop being my friend.” Toriel leaned her head again Pinkie’s and then whispered into the pony’s left ear before flicking at it with her tongue. “And this is a rather romantic sight.”

Pinkie’s face became bright red and her whole body shivered; she nuzzled her nose into Toriel’s ear causing her goat friend to giggle as she returned the favor.

“It’s so nice to have guests around the house again.” Napstablook commented aimlessly staring into the vast expanse of space around him and the others.

Author's Note

I am not willing to make a 20% cooler joke about there now being a cooler in Napstablook's house.

34 - Red and Relaxation

Pinkie sat there in the room with the two doors that were still sealed. She looked to Mettaton who had ended his calls and had a few tears of oil leaking from his closing eyes as his battery ran dry, he had never been so happy to talk to a random skeleton before, much less his cousin and several other monsters. Metal Tonnage knew how to party but he was still involved in the destruction of one of Pinkie’s sixty two thousandth, five hundredth and ninety third shovel. Pinkie broke at least six thousand in a single day alone.

“Okay I admit that I have a problem with shovels, trowels are more compact and are harder to break and I’ve mastered them, but I want a shovel to play with that has my name on it and won’t break. Is that really so much to ask?” Pinkie didn’t like talking about the number of shovels she went through in a given day, much less the twenty thousand she went through in that week alone. “Please stop, I get enough trouble for it from my sister Limestone, I don’t need you doing the same too! Also if we’re in a sealed room how are we going to get out of here?”

“We have phones, duh!” Muffet stood up and held a catatonic Red in her three left arms as she made her way over to Pinkie Pie.

“Oh yeah, you still have my phone… wait… haven’t they been watching us all this time on a monitor? Can I get out of here so I can snuggle my goat friend sometime today please? I want to dig my face into her shoulder fur and breathe that earthy scent she always got going… it’s kind of like brimstone only sweeter I guess... hmm… isn’t Brimstone a cousin of mine? How does one get the ship in a bottle, especially without making it in there in the first place anyway? Is it really a good idea to sing the muffin man song in a village of sentient baked goods?” Pinkie was going to keep going into multiple random tangents if she was left to her own device and was soon interrupted from continuing further.

“Hey, give me a minute! I’m working on it to the best of my abilities here; I’ll meet you at the door to the back of the room so you don’t have to go back through the core. There’s an elevator there that connects to my lab that was locked up until now, Mettaton had the access thoroughly tied up until now since he’s out of power.” Alphys was heard loud and clear throughout the room, the sound of a keyboard clacked for a minute and then a loud ding noise was heard. “There, finally, I’ll be up there in a minute with a trolley to recover Mettaton’s body and parts. Don’t worry, I can rebuild him and he’ll be fine.”

“So… you sure she’s okay?” Turning to the form in the arms of her spider friend, Pinkie didn’t think Muffet’s special friend looked particularly talkative at the moment.

“She’ll be fine Mistress Pie; she’s just being a big wimp. As you can clearly see, she is in fact breathing.” Holding up the macabre faced puppet monster, Muffet showed that she was indeed breathing and quite raggedly at that. “I just kicked her ass all over the room, bruised her up a lot and then kissed her and might have, maybe, supposedly, seduced the ever loving crap out of her! My memory gets a little fuzzy after that, but I’m pretty sure the moment was pretty steamy even if we kept our clothes on.”

“Miss Pie, please don’t leave me alone with her. I fear for my sanity, as she is the most psychotic being I have had the misfortune to have ever met.” Red muttered weakly with barely any other look than horror on her face, in fact her face might even just be frozen like that. There was some life in her eyes but they were really quite dull. “I apologize for attacking you profusely. Just please, if anything, don’t leave me alone with her again… Red will be a good girl.”

“Aw… but we had so much fun together, why we even played together like old childhood friends! Why don’t you like me? I like you!” Muffet said cutely with a bright smile on her face and in her five eyes, Red’s whole body shuddered violently in her grasp. “Don’t be like that, I’m sure you’re maid uniform will be done before the day is out and then we will always be there for Mistress Pie when she needs us. Won’t that be special? Like our friendship and budding romantic love!”

“Seriously, save me from her…” Red still spoke in a dead tone of voice.

“Yeah, I’m not going to touch on any of that with a ten foot pole.” The air considered Pinkie to be very smart or at least wise enough to make that statement; the pony quickly shifted her thoughts to a partying and tried to make them stay far away from how creepy Muffet was. “I don’t know what Muffet did to you and I honestly don’t want to know. It was probably enough to make a creepy pasta look like a really good day where nothing could go wrong. You know the kind of day where I get the world’s biggest cake for me and all my friends to share at a large party where we can all talk, play fun party games and take the time to make new friends with everyone. I haven’t had a party in a long time, oh how I miss the smell of scented confetti, the taste of snacks and good food that everyone can enjoy. Some nice cream would really hit the spot right about now. Maybe party games like Red hoof, Green hoof and musical chairs. I’d always invite all my friends into having a good time, all the wonderful party decorations hanging across the ceiling and banners proclaiming who the party is for. I miss setting all that stuff up for others to just get a room brightening smile. I’d always be the entertainment or know someone who could entertain. Oh the surprised looks when the guest or guests walk into a room full of ponies they know to hear the words ‘surprise’ shouted loudly! Maybe I can just settle for a kiss from my goat friend when we see each other again.”

Muffet quickly dropped Red and pulled out a notepad from her backpack to start jotting down the things Pinkie was describing with fervor, it had went mostly undamaged in her fight with Red except the left shoulder strap where she took a hit from Red’s sword. She quickly wrote out the list as such.

Mistress Wants A Party.

Large cake, enough for a room full of mistresses friends.

Location, the recently renamed Particularly Overly Nice Yearlong Hotel or PONY Hotel for short, the spiders will have to help set it up. Call contractors to add necessary decorations to Dining Room Area.

Learn of friends mistress has met while traveling the Underworld, contact them discreetly to surprise her.

Establish contact with this goat friend and work up a rapport; find ways to get alone with them to discuss party games that any monster can play and will not cause any immeasurable harm to party goers. Goat friends is automatically worthy of servitude status given her relationship with mistress.

Establish caterers for food and nourishment for all involved in the party, it is essential that there are healthy food choices that everyone can be happy with.

Relentlessly tease Red; form close workplace relationship. Make her regret not thinking of Mistress Pie’s best interests if she ever even tries to hurt her again. If for whatever reason we are separated from mistress, in fact even if we aren’t, form wonky religion based around Misstress Pie anyway.

Seek out services of Napstablook for entertainment and music, possibly instate a variety show for any monster who wants to join in of their own accord.

Achieve relative happiness for all party goers; forcing smiles is optional but definitely not recommended.

Banner will depict Miss Pie’s image. What words to put on the banner? Figure it out later and ask for advice from goat friend.

No fire related monsters at party allowed unless absolutely necessary! Way too likely to set decorations, webbing and everyone else on fire. If they can absolutely control themselves, then they can come.

Muffet smiled to herself, looking over the list and tapping it with the pen, both of which were held in her middle arms. She pulled out Pinkie’s phone with her upper right arm to start copying down the contact list; she would need to find out the monsters that could make it to the party.

“All that stuff sounds nice… how did you even get stuck with Muffet?” Red’s dead sounding tone brought Muffet out of her planning and she looked towards Red and Pinkie. Red was standing straight up and in a mechanical fashion while trying to not look towards the spider monster; one could smell her sweating in fear if they inhaled through their nose just once.

“Oh that’s easy, I helped out the spiders and she heard how much money I made in a single round of running a bake sale with them and that incidentally helped her whole clan reunite. She was so impressed she immediately swore friendship after almost killing me. I still don’t think saying that she sold me her soul was exactly necessary, how does one own a soul or put a price on it anyway?” Pinkie was already on her way to making friends with another monster that almost killed her in cold blood. “She’s creepy sure, but I think she’s a really good person at heart… most of the time. At least I’m sure her heart is always in the right place!”

Muffet nodded to herself at Pinkie’s words as the royal scientist Dr. Alphys opened the door to the back of the room and pushed in the trolley and saw a deer monster helping her out. She would always have her heart in the right place, but her soul was Pinkie’s to do with as she pleases. Her sense of loyalty was well earned and her generosity would flow almost endlessly for it. If a party would make Pinkie happy and make her smile more, then she would be darn well getting one after successfully capturing Mettaton!

Twilight looked at the choosing stone, it looked like an ordinary rock. Of course it was said that it required an earth pony’s touch which was why she had Applejack with her to test it out. Applejack agreed to carve her name into the stone to see what happened and she wanted to study how one of these stones worked personally.

The first name to pop up was Cadence which made Twilight blush in embarrassment. Moon Dancer which made Twilight sad that she had forgotten about her after Celestia said to go make some friends when she already had some, in fact how did Celestia not know that she sometimes spent time with other ponies? Celestia which was a no brainer for Twilight, she always did like her mentor a little too much. Luna which was a little surprising for Twilight, then again being her savior probably earned her a lot of affection from the princess of the night. Applejack’s name appeared much to the farmer’s embarrassment about it. Rainbow Dash which made a lot of sense, considering loyalty was her thing. Fluttershy was always a bit obvious to Twilight since she liked her the day they first met and Zecora which really added quite a bit of knowledge to what Twilight was looking for in a significant other.

Thus far all the names had quite a few things in common. All of them were highly trustworthy to Twilight in some given way. They were all intelligent in their own unique ways and maybe Rainbow Dash had some hidden intellect behind her. They also all had colorful personalities that she could easily connect with, except maybe Moon Dancer. If anything the wild card of the names was Cadence of all ponies… then again the ‘Princess of Love’ would probably appear on anyone’s choosing stone provided they see her after hearing her name.

So these were the options Twilight had to her so far… not a single male name among them, which was somewhat disheartening as Twilight realized she didn’t have many male friends aside from Spike or Shining who weren’t already with a significant other. She always did like snuggling up to her five best friends a little too much… if what she knew of the stone was correct, one or more of these various names could work perfectly in tune with her. She would welcome forming a herd with any of them or just getting into monogamous relationship with just one and could actually see it happening, so these stones were spot on as long as you heard the name of someone who could be a good match for you.

“I reckon that these stones work pretty well. Whoever Toriel and those others are, at least we know one of them is looking out for Pinkie for us and probably loves her something fierce.” Applejack, after speaking with a whimsical smile on her face, suddenly started frowning. “You won’t tell Granny about my barn door being on your stone will you?”

“Huzzah, I have come to date you Twilight Sparkle, prepare yourself for romantic wooing and long hours of nighttime merriment!” The uproariously loud Luna said as she blew the door off the hinges and immediately burst into the library spooking both Twilight and Applejack to duck for cover. “I have brought you a gift of twenty boxes of chocolate; I hope it is enough to earn thy favor? If it isn’t then I shall go back and buy out the store with haste! If that isn’t enough chocolate, I will draw you a bath of it!”

Slowly Twilight’s hoof worked its way up to her face where it solidly smacked against her skull. She couldn’t help but feel like many alternate reality versions of her did this a lot. Applejack chuckled at the sight of Twilight performing an adorable slow moving face hoof as she came out from hiding.

Pinkie was filled with a nervous energy, completely unaware of a trend for finding good friends or significant others she kind of set off in Equestria involving choosing stones. The elevator ride down had her hopping halfway to the ceiling with each nervous bounce, she was excited to see her goat friend again and Muffet was excited right alongside her.

Gyftrot remained stoic through all the nervous energy with a small smile, he could see Pinkie was eager to be around Toriel again and she would definitely brighten Goat Mom’s day with that kind of exuberance.

Red cowered in the corner of the crowded elevator every time she could see Muffet’s broad smile turn even slightly towards her; she kept the trolley between them, even knowing that it wouldn’t do anything to save her should the spider go after her in such a confined space.

Alphys just had a dorky smile on her face; she was making all kinds of new friends and would be seeing to old ones too! Things were turning around for her and she had Pinkie to thank for that. Sure she was still a nerd, but she knew she was a well loved one and some of the monsters she had called had forgiven her already. She just needed to finish calling the rest of them.

The elevator gave a ding and the doors slid open, before it opened all the way Pinkie was already squeezing through them and on her way to bouncing right next to Toriel’s waiting wheelchair.

“Tori, can we cuddle? I want to snuggle please; I need fifty of what-you-may-call-thems stat!” Pinkie was stopped in mid bounce, looking down she saw Toriel’s arms underneath her and they quickly pulled her forward into a hug and she snuggled into the lovely goat lady with affection. “I missed you.”

“I missed you as well Pinkie.” Toriel had Pinkie pressing into her body and nuzzling under her chin, a smile just could not be wiped off her face unless something really terrible was to happen as she nosed the pony right back. Nothing terrible would happen in this moment and Pinkie seemed to be taking particular care to not put any pressure on Toriel’s still somewhat busted hip, which would heal in a day or two and she would have to take it easy afterwards.

“You… you’re Queen Toriel… milady.” Red bowed for Toriel immediately and shivered when Muffet walked right on by her and up to the queen of monsters without a shred of decency for the fact that she was in the presence of royalty.

“I can see why Pinkie won’t give me the time of day, you’re hot!” Muffet got Toriel to blush from her bluntness; it was either that or because Pinkie started to affectionately drag her tongue up Toriel’s neck and chin. Her mistress had good taste in dating the lovely goat. “Oh and you’re Queen Toriel to I guess. Nice to meet you face to face, I’m Madeline Muffet, but you can just call me Mad or whatever you want. Mistress Pie enjoys your company and you have the spirit of a loving mother about you.”

It was the fanciest way of calling Toriel a Goat Mom that the goat in question has heard so far. She let it slide as she was too happy to dole out affection to the pony crawling into her lap, one she called her mare friend.

Red Rider the mercenary was kind of loyal to royalty and would have gotten mad, if it had been anyone else who had talked to Queen Toriel like that. Instead she shifted slightly further away from Muffet, for about five feet, because twenty would have been a little more than slightly for Red.

“So… Pinkie… Toriel’s almost better, can we be friends?” Undyne asked hopefully with a gleam in her eye and a sadistic looking grin on her toothy face.

“You’re on a Pinkie Pie probationary period now, but okay!” Pinkie was in a very good mood at the moment and receiving a mind melting ear rub from Toriel, her body soon melted afterward when she felt Toriel moved to her belly. “We’ll burn down your house two days from now.”

“Looking forward to it, I’ll even bring marshmallows! Friends do that campfire thing together right?” Undyne didn’t care if she was going to end up burning down her own house, it wouldn’t be the worst thing that has ever happened to her home. She did stuff like it by accident or on purpose all the time.

“I’ve already prepared the combustible lemons; we’ll make a date of it.” Alphys had to make lemon scented floor panels somehow and she invented modified lemons with a sticky juice capable of acting like napalm for the occasion.

“Count me out of it; I’ll stay at the PONY hotel for that as I’ll probably have some business to do.” Of all the monsters in the room that missed the obvious tell in Muffet’s demeanor about how much she didn’t like being near fire, Red was that one as she was staring at strange distracting tall bird like monster amalgamate. “Say Alphys, Undyne, can I talk to you two alone for a minute?”

While the other were going to be busy talking, Muffet took note of the monster amalgamates and was rather curious about them. They would obviously have to be there for the party too. She couldn’t talk of her plans with Pinkie in the room, so she decided to get Alphys and Undyne in on her plan by attracting their attentions away from each other for the moment. She had plans in the works, it was all for a really good cause after all. Her mistress was in good hands and looked to be enjoying her goat friend after having been away from her for a while.

Pinkie had spent the next few hours with Toriel, they were cute together and it seemed like every other monster had vacated the lab. Even the monster amalgamates were not around making any strange random noises that they tended to do being a horribly sad mishmash of multiple monsters.

“After having been around you for a while, I can honestly say that you’ve been a lovely mare friend to me.” Toriel was as relaxed as could be, she had stopped fussing and worrying over Pinkie a while ago and the pony was relaxing on her. With a sigh, she huffed and Pinkie took notice immediately sitting up only to be forced back down into her laying position by a gentle hand caressing her neck. “I’m okay Pinkie, it’s just that quite recently I’ve gone through a painful headache and remembered a lot of my past with an old friend. He was Sans and Papyrus’s father, Wing-Ding Aster Font. His friends just called him Gaster.”

“So his name basically means Party? He was the guy that wrote that book I looked at back in Snowdin.” Pinkie stayed on her side and looked up at Toriel. “He sounded fun.”

“He was quite a lively person, before the incident that took his wife Calibri Calliope… though he had a habit of hurting himself for the sake of others long before that; it just got far worse after her death. She was a really nice monster; in fact I can see a lot of her in Papyrus given he has her boundless enthusiasm.” Toriel tried to keep Pinkie feeling good even if she was sucking all the fun out of their time together by bringing up touchy subjects. “He always had a good excuse for his injuries; he shared and learned much from what he did to himself. At some point many monsters thought he was only holding himself together for the sake of his sons. He had a will that hadn’t been seen before in monsters and had even designed a machine to extract some of that determination from his own body to give to other monsters. He never got around to making it, but Alphys apparently did and the end results are those poor monster amalgamates.”

“Why are you bringing this all up Tori? It’s kind of ruining the good vibe.” Feeling a hand run through her tail, Pinkie looked up at Toriel to see that her goat friend was rather sad. She nuzzled into her and got a few giggles for it.

“Because I have all these memories of someone I should have never forgotten and I wanted to confide in someone close to me. The memories just came back all of the sudden and it’s strange that so many monsters have forgotten his existence after the incident, it was like something tried to erase any knowledge of his existence from everyone who knew him. Only it didn’t quite manage it right, since I now remember it all and it hurts Pinkie.” Toriel continued to methodically tease Pinkie with her hands and she let Pinkie’s hair down from the ponytail. “It hurts that I forgot a friend like that… but I’m happy that I can remember now, it’s a bit conflicting but I’ll be able to move on eventually. For now I just need the company and comfort of my little happy slice of pie. Time seems to fly by when you’re around.”

“No one’s perfect Tori, even I have some problems remembering every name of ponies that live in Manehatten. I almost got all the ponies in Canterlot down perfectly and I’ve mastered the ponies of Ponyville… well except that I haven’t been there in a while and things might have changed a bit in my absence. So I guess it’s going to be a tad difficult if I go back.” Pinkie turned her head about and kissed Toriel on the lips. “Even I need a little reminder myself sometimes, but you remember him now so you’re definitely not going to forget him this time around! You can’t forget a friend for forever if you keep them in your heart.”

“Sorry to interrupt your three hour and apparently continuing cuddle session, but can I speak to your goat friend alone for a bit? Here, you can get to know Red better while I’m at it.” Muffet was wearing a frilly maid outfit as she came up to them carrying Red who was also in a maid outfit. The spider monster sat Red before Pinkie Pie after she hopped down from Toriel’s lap. “Red, make sure Mistress Pie is properly cared for to make up for my inconveniencing her in spending quality time with her beautiful goat friend.”

“I have seen things that can never be unseen...” Red stated simply with a blank look on her face before she turned to Pinkie. “Come along then, let’s find something else for you to do at the moment.”

After making sure Pinkie and Red were out of the area, Muffet smiled brightly at Toriel while leaning forward and clasping all six of her hands together.

“Lady Toriel, I have great need of your assistance and it will make your mare friend ever so happy!” Muffet then started to sell the idea to Toriel; she pulled out a list and showed it to an intrigued goat lady. It was her hope that Red could keep Pinkie busy for a bit.

Toriel hummed as she looked over the list, she would help with this and even endorse it.

Red was a mess mentally, Muffet had really done a number on her and she’d be much safer around Pinkie as she didn’t seem scary at all. Speaking of the pony, she figured she should talk to her to learn more about her. Starting subject should probably be the things going on between her and Queen Toriel.

“Aside from being mentally scarred on a number of levels… you and Queen Toriel, how does that work?” Red disparaged the fact that her tone was now constantly dull and flat thanks to Muffet, how had that spider monster managed to drive her to be like this?

“Really well actually, I think we have something special! She’s beautiful, she’s got a kind heart, she doesn’t mind my childish antics and most importantly she can bake with love! You have no idea how hard it is to find someone who can accomplish that last one.” Pinkie frowned as she looked to Red. “She was really sad before I came along and I’ve really got her smiling again. I can tell she’s been through a lot and it’s hard for me to admit this, but I know there are just some things that a party won’t cure. You see I’m a party planner; it’s my goal in life to make others happy and fill any sad lives around me with laughter. I don’t rightly know how I got down here, but I’m going to continue doing what I do best no matter what. It’s been working so far. Toriel is special to me, not just because all that stuff I mentioned previously, but because no matter what happens to her she tries to stay positive even when things are at their worst. I mean a lot of bad stuff happened to her and she even attacked me because she thought it would be a way to protect me, she doesn’t get violent unless she thinks she really needs to and the only time I saw her get really mad was when The Jerry was involved. I’m Pinkie Pie by the way; I don’t think we were actually introduced.”

“To be fair, The Jerry can annoy anyone that badly and until they die from an aneurysm. It took me a month to evade that monster and I spent most of that time trying to kill it. I swear it’s impossible and every monster has literally tried, I doubt even having the power of ten human souls would kill it.” It surprised Red that she actually wanted to open up to the pony, she chalked it up to Muffet’s influence and continued on anyway. “I don’t exactly know what to talk about really, I spent a lot of my time training myself to help the royal family eventually break down that barrier. I’m a mercenary sure, but my parents… were…. royal guards and I’m friends with the dog units. Those dogs absolutely love you and Queen Toriel. I wore the royal crest because I wanted to help capture another soul because it would free us… only I fell to you, by proxy at least, just like all the others. I’m Red Rider by the way.”

“Nice to meet you too Red, I’m going to lighten the mood now. What’s black and white, while read all over?” Pinkie received a glare from Red who was stuck in a maid outfit as her cloak and clothing had been stolen by an insane six armed sticky fingered bandit from hell. “Do you give up? It’s a newspaper!”

Red blinked owlishly as she was completely caught off guard, she was expecting something mean spirited and was pleasantly surprised. She snorted in a flat tone and once again wished she had never crossed Muffet at all. This maid outfit, which was cute and did actually breathe pretty well, was annoying. Oh great she was starting to catch the spider’s insanity and actually like the maid outfit… did it come in red? Why was she having these thoughts, she should hate Muffet’s sweet, loving, sexy evil demented guts!

… Red was far more messed up than she had previously thought she was…

“Made you snort!” Vibrantly exclaimed Pinkie as she moved up next to Red to hug her. “We’re friends now!”

Even Red’s sigh came out in a flat tone, seriously what had the spider actually done to her? Maybe it wasn’t something Muffet did, but Pinkie’s very presence. The equine radiated cheerfulness in every direction like it was an addictive substance; nope, it was still likely the spider monsters fault.

“I guess we are Pinkie, so what do you want to do? I’m sure your goat friend needs rest after giving you so much…. ahem…. extravagant attention.” Red blushed and looked to the floor, why was she being so awkward right now? She was an adult puppet monster for crying out loud and she was usually more proactive than this!

“Hold on, about the soul thing, yeah I don’t think that would have worked out. A friend of mine says that breaking the barrier through the use of human souls would be a really bad idea… she made it sound like destroy the planet bad or something like it.” Pinkie saw a strange constipated look cross Red’s face. “Anyway, I wanted to continue talking about all the friends you’re going to make by being my friend!”

“Okay, if that is what you wish Mistress Pie. Oh great, now I’m beginning to accept that I’ve gone insane too.” Red wilted like a puppet hung by its strings, she felt Pinkie’s hoof patting her on the back and felt a little bit better.

“Don’t worry about it. Everyone down here was already insane long before I got here... so don’t think it’s my fault that you’re a little crazy. Though I don’t think I’m helping matters much either.” Giggling Pinkie trotted for the elevator to Alphys’s upper lab. “Come on, I want to see what Gyftrot is doing and actually introduce you to him! So… starting off from when I fell down here my first friend was Toriel, followed by…”

Red followed Pinkie into the elevator as she started listing off the names of numerous monsters and she listened on. Maybe things wouldn’t be so bad after all; a small smile crept up onto Red’s face for the first time in a long while since having met Mad Muffet.

“So why are we going to the hotel again?” It had been a few hours later that Pinkie found herself with Toriel; her goat friend had been rather tight lipped as to why they were coming back here. She was sitting in her goat friends lap and they exited the elevator into a renovated lobby. Things looked vastly different than they had before, the obvious work of a million spider construction crew going full blast given the newly refurbished lobby. “Wow… Muffet’s people really know how to work.”

“That they do Pinkie, I can see they’ve even fixed Mettaton’s fountain so it doesn’t spray water all over the floor now.” Toriel made a mental note to herself to hire spiders for doing remodeling jobs on homes and places that needed renovations, they were really good at it and it only took them two hours. She had personally spent the last few herself distracting Pinkie. “Oh there’s Muffet; I think she has something that she wants to show us.”

Muffet was waving all six of her arms and she was standing outside the darkened dining room area and she smiled to the two as they rolled up in the wheelchair. Pinkie looked at the dining room area curiously.

“Mistress Pie, if you will follow me.” Muffet got Pinkie down from Toriel’s lap and taking a few steps forward the entire room lit up showing that there were hundreds of monsters waiting in the dark.

“Surprise, happy everything party!” Hundreds of monsters shouted in various vocal ranges. There were quite a few monsters from Waterfall and a few Pinkie had only briefly met around the Hot Lands. Some of the monsters were new though and she had never even met them before. The banner read ‘Happy Everything Party’ and even had a high resolution image of her on it.

Tears filled Pinkie’s eyes and she gained a broad smile, she quickly pulled Muffet down into a deep kiss and left a happy spider monster flopping to the floor in a boneless manner. The pony immediately angled herself for the giant cake.

Toriel just smiled and shook her head.

A chunky skeleton curled up into a ball and rocked back and forth next to a bench, sparks of black mist were shooting off his jacketed form and he was whimpering. He needed help, he didn’t want to hurt anyone and his entire body felt like it was on fire, he had to stay away from Pinkie and the others for their safety.

Author's Note

Sans is in the hidden bench area, a place that Papyrus likely doesn't know about.