//------------------------------// // 2 - Ruin Nation // Story: Underworld Frisk // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// 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.