Underworld Frisk

by Darkonshadows


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.