Of Pony Princesses and Floral Friends

by SociallyAnxious247

Chapter 4 - Of Undying Fish and Fallen Humans

Twilight found herself wading through shallow water, garbage floating around her. Surprisingly, it was fairly comfortable, with little to no stench and only the distant roar of a waterfall for ambient noise. It was a soothing experience for sure.

“So, what are we looking for?” the princess asked, looking at a pile of trash from a distance and wondering what hidden treasures were waiting for her to uncover. “Books?”

Flowey shrugged, out of his flower pot and planted in the marshy ground. “I don’t really know,” he admitted. “Sometimes there’s books here, but they get soggy quickly. I usually come here and find some discarded human anime or video games. And there’s always a chance you could find weird devices and electronics around here. I give them to Alphys for repairing or general usage, since she’s the one and only techie in the Underground.”

“Oh. How does one go about finding the good stuff?” Twilight asked. She pawed at the pile of trash she had been looking at. There was an unsurprising amount of mud in the pile, coating the front of her hoof in the thick goop. She groaned, placing her hoof back into the water and shaking it clean.

“I just look around until something catches my eye,” Flowey said. “But everything new is usually not on the piles. Ooh, take a look at this!” He held up a strange plastic rectangle with his vine. “I wonder what it is.”

“There’s a picture on the front,” Twilight said, walking to him and examining the shallow plastic container. “It looks like… me.”

“No way,” Flowey gasped as he flipped the thing around and held it up next to Twilight’s face. “You’re right, it does look like you! There’s words here. ‘My Little Pony: The Movie’? Did you star in any movies recently?”

“I’ve never even seen a filming set in real life before,” Twilight answered, trying to make out what the text on the back said. “It looks like the back card is falling apart. I can’t read anything on it. But the other creatures all over the front are familiar too. That’s Rarity, Fluttershy, Pinkie, Rainbow, and Applejack. In the background, it looks like… Tempest? The Storm King, Celano, Capper… and that’s definitely Queen Novo and Princess Skystar.”

“Jeez, there’s a lot of people here,” Flowey said. “And you know all of them? You really do have a lot of friends.”

“Friends is a strong term for some of them,” Twilight laughed. “Especially the Storm King. He’s more of an enemy. You know, I should introduce you to my friends. I think you’d like them.”

Flowey popped the plastic case open to reveal a disc of some kind. “What’s this?” he said, looking down at the disc.

“Do you hear something?” Twilight asked suddenly, leaning down to Flowey as her ears fell flat against her head.

“Huh?” Flowey paused and listened. Sure enough, there was talking coming from farther down the cave. It sounded like a lot of people. “Yeah, I hear it. We should check it out.” He tucked the plastic case into his flowerpot, which was on Twilight's back, and followed Twilight as she moved to see what the noise was.

Twilight rounded a corner, Flowey popping up next to her, and came face to face with a short yellow lizard.

“O-oh, um, hello there,” the lizard stuttered in an incredibly nasally voice. “S-s-sorry. I d-didn’t mean to bump into you…”

“It’s quite alright!” Twilight said kindly. “I don’t believe we’ve met before. I’m Twilight.”

“A-Alphys,” the lizard responded. “I’m the royal s-scientist. M-my wife is over there showing our ch-children around.”

Twilight looked at where Alphys was pointing. There she saw a tall, scarred fish lady wearing a black sleeveless tee, ripped jeans, and red rain boots to match her vibrant red hair. The lady was surrounded by six children of varying sizes and ages, though they all looked human.

“Hello!” Twilight called.

“Hey.” The fish lady waved to her and walked over, crouching next to Alphys. “What’s up, kid? You need a hand?”

“Oh no, I just wanted to say hi,” Twilight said. “I’m from a different multiverse, so I’m new here. My name is Twilight, Princess of Friendship amongst other things.”

“Call me Undyne,” the fish said, a wide smile stretching across her heavily scarred face that showed off her sharp, yellowish teeth. “Former Captain of the Royal Guard, before the king disbanded it. Looks like you’ve already met my wife.”

“Yes, she’s very nice,” Twilight nodded. “You have beautiful children. Are they human? They don’t look like monsters.”

“Yeah, we adopted the little tykes from Queen Toriel since she didn’t have the room to take in any more traumatized children,” Undyne explained, only somewhat joking. “These two are Christopher and Clyde, that’s Anita, over there is Nicolas, here is Elizabeth, and on my shoulder here is Percival.”

“I died once!” Clyde yelled with glee, running around Twilight’s legs and splashing in the water, Christopher following his example.

“We all did, actually,” Percival said matter of factly, glancing up from his notebook to look at Twilight. “Pretty.” He reached out and stroked her muzzle with his free hand.

“Oh, thank you, Percival,” Twilight smiled. “How old are you?”

“9 years,” the child said. “Momma says I’m really smart because I’m good at math at such a young age. I like thinking about logical problems.”

“Do you like to read?” Twilight asked.

“Yes.” He turned to Undyne. “Mom, are all horses purple?”

“No, hun, this one is special,” Undyne responded in a surprisingly soft, patient voice. “She’s got a horn and wings, so she’s not just a normal horse. She’s magical… probably.”

“That’s right!” Twilight said. “I’m the Princess of Magic, actually. My mentor took me under her wing at a very young age after I passed a test that was designed to be failed. It’s complicated.”

Undyne paused. “And your mentor was…?”

“Princess Celestia, Princess of the Sun and diarch of Equestria,” Twilight said proudly. “Equestria is the nation I’m from.”

“So you were also taken in by the ruler of your nation to be taught a skill that would end up being one of your main strong suits today?” Undyne asked.

“Well, I suppose you could put it like that, yes.”

“Huh. Same thing happened to me,” Undyne said. “King Asgore taught me how to fight. Now I’m the former Captain of the Royal Guard.”

A new person jumped out from behind some piles of trash, asking in a very excited but not forceful voice, “DID YOU LOOK UP TO THIS ‘PRINCESS CELESTIA’ BEFORE SHE TOOK YOU IN?”

Twilight flinched, startled by the new person, a tall skeletal monster wearing very strange clothes that she didn’t want to ask about. “Yes. Who doesn’t?” Twilight answered. “From my world, I mean. You probably wouldn’t look up to her if you’ve never heard of her before.”

“SO YOU MEAN TO SAY THAT ALL THREE OF US HAVE ONE THING IN COMMON,” the tall skeleton said. “THIS THING BEING WE WERE ALL TAUGHT BY SOMEONE WE REALLY LOOKED UP TO!”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right, Papyrus,” Undyne nodded thoughtfully. “Oh, this is Papyrus. I’ve been training him to fight and cook. Even though I… kinda suck at cooking.”

“YOU DON’T SUCK, YOU JUST NEED MORE PRACTICE!” Papyrus said, patting the fish on the back.

“U-unfortunately,” Alphys interjected, “her ‘practice’ usually ends up burning the h-house down. Which is why I’ve b-banned her from my lab for the t-time being, so she d-doesn’t blow it up like l-last time.”

“That’s… kind of relatable,” Twilight said. “I’m terrible at cooking, myself. I usually have to get my friend Starlight to cook for me or I have to order something from Whinny’s. That’s a restaurant in my world,” she added quickly, seeing the puzzled faces staring back at her.

“Anyway,” Flowey said, putting himself back into his plant pot, “we’d better get going if we want to get to the Capitol any time today. It’s nice seeing you, Undyne, Alphys. Take care.”

“Wait, you need to get to the Capitol?” Undyne asked.

Twilight nodded. “Flowey was going to introduce me to his family there,” she said. “Why?”

“Need a lift?” Undyne gave Percival to Alphys, who was standing nearby. “I can get you to the docks in no time.”

“Oh! Uh, sure. If you don’t mind, that is,” Twilight said. “I don’t want to interrupt your family outing.”

“It’s alright. I’ll be back before they know I was gone,” Undyne smiled. “Ready?”

Twilight nodded again. Suddenly, she left the ground and was moving ridiculously fast. She squeaked in surprise, trying once to catch Flowey before realizing Undyne had him in her other arm. How this fish was lifting her with one arm, carrying her like a bag of potatoes, she didn’t know. The strange, scary sensation of being moved without actually moving her limbs passed within seconds as Undyne placed her on the ground.

“W-where are we?” Twilight asked, spreading her wings to balance herself.

“The docks,” Undyne said. She rubbed the back of her neck while placing Flowey on the ground. “Sorry, I should’ve given you more warning than that. I’m used to running around carrying Alphy without really needing to explain.”

“It’s okay,” Twilight said. “Thank you for bringing us here. I hope you have a nice day!”

“See you around, princess,” Undyne called back, already sprinting in the direction she came from.

Twilight laughed for a minute, then placed Flowey on her back. “That was eventful,” she sighed. She turned to a cloaked figure riding a boat on the nearby river. “Excuse me, are you the Riverperson?”

“Yes, I am,” the figure answered. “Care for a ride?”

Twilight nodded and stepped onto the boat carefully.

“Where are we going today?”

“The Capitol, please!”

The Riverperson sat down and patted the figurehead on the front of the boat, which was shaped like a dog’s head. The entire boat raised out of the water and galloped away, barking.

Twilight knew to expect something like this; Sunset told her about the strange boat that ran on water. She was surprised at how smooth the ride was. The Riverperson said something strange and cryptic, but she wasn’t really listening. Instead, she was thinking about all the wacky adventures she would probably end up going on in this new world.

Author's Note:

This part took me a while, so I'm very sorry about that! I wasn't entirely sure how Undyne and Alphys (and the fallen humans) would interact with Twilight until I just started writing it out.

In other news, yes, the fallen humans (not including Frisk and Chara) were adopted by Undyne and Alphys in this story. I like it better than Toriel adopting them because it breaks up the characters a bit more, so it makes for more interesting and less cluttered dynamics. I acknowledge that there are ways to write them in a scenario where Toriel adopts them, but I'm not confident I can write any of those ways well.

Yes, Twilight and Flowey did find a DVD version of MLP: The Movie, and yes, this does take place after that. Speaking of which, there's probably going to be a lot of references to a lot of different things that have happened at a lot of wildly differing times. I'm not entirely familiar with the complete official timeline of either of these worlds, so you probably can't place an exact time for this story to take place. That's because I'm not putting in the effort to make the story fit into any timeline, official or otherwise.

FInally, it might be explained later but for now, my headcanons about the fallen humans are below.

Hope (this is the red soul; if you want an explanation, please ask me): Chara Dreemurr; 19 years old | Frisk Dreemurr; 14 years old
Bravery: Christopher; 10 years old
Justice: Clyde; 10 years old, slightly older than Chris
Kindness: Anita; 18 years old
Patience: Nicolas; 19 years old
Integrity: Elizabeth; 12 years old
Perseverance: Percival; 9 years old

There are more things about them that may be revealed later, but these are the basic things you might want to know.