Chapter Text
You snuggled into the soft substance beneath you, groaning softly as your body made you aware of how sore you were. You didn't remember feeling this sore last night, and you hadn't done anything particularly strenuous. Even so, your bed was particularly soft and sweet smelling this morning. Were your sheets always this nice? It was almost like you were laying on-
You opened your eyes slowly, blinking to adjust to the light. It was difficult, because while there was a blinding amount of it coming from directly above you, the surrounding area was incredibly dim. The first thing you noticed was that you were in a bed.
But it wasn't a sleeping bed, with a mattress.
It was a flower bed.
* You were laying in a bed of golden flowers.
They were like buttercups, only tens of times bigger than any buttercup you had ever seen. Some of them were the size of your palm, while others were as big as a chair seat! They grew thickly together, their bright yellow petals overlapping, making you question how the sunlight even managed to hit the thick green leaves beneath. Somehow, with their combined power, they were able to support your full weight, suspending you a good foot and a half off the actual ground.
You sat bolt upright, coming to full consciousness faster than you ever have before in your life, looking around frantically. You were not in your bedroom. You weren't even in a house from the look of it, the walls around you looking to be made of stone. Were you in a cave? The stone was grey, darker on the walls than on the floor, but that could have been an effect of the lighting. The area you were in was reasonably sized, and it looked like there was a narrow tunnel leading away, deeper into the darkness. Above you was the single source of light: a hole in the alarmingly distant ceiling of the cavern, from which the midday sun beamed down, illuminating you, the flowerbed, and a portion of the cavern around you.
You sat there, at a complete loss for words. The last thing you remember was pulling on your favorite comfortable pajamas and booting up your computer for another long night of online gaming. You distinctly remember pulling on your cheep headphones, fussing with it so your hair sat comfortably under them. Admittedly, you had never had the best memory in the world (most of your brain clung to useless information like various character dialogue, dungeon layouts, and the steps you had to go through to perfect your preferred character build), but even for you it was unusual to forget how you fell asleep the night before. Admittedly, it wasn't the first time, and knowing you, it probably wouldn't be the last, (and if you were honest with yourself, on a normal day you wouldn't think twice about it), but combining that with your current predicament, you were understandably alarmed.
Forcing yourself to remain calm, you curled up in a little ball and thought about all the things you knew about surviving. The first thing that came to mind was, 'if you get lost, stay where you are until someone finds you.' Admittedly, that advise was aimed more for children (and you hadn't been a child for some years, thank you very much), but as you eyed the dark passage warily, you decided that waiting was the best idea. There was no knowing what was waiting down there, and you didn't have a flashlight, or shoes to protect your bare feet. If you stepped on a jagged rock and cut yourself you were screwed, because you didn't have anything to disinfect an injury or wrap it up to minimize bleeding.
Nope, waiting for help sounded like a very good idea.
Sitting quietly, of course, wouldn't do you any good, so you started screaming. Cupping your hands around your mouth to try and project up to the only opening to the outside world you could see, hoping against hope that someone might hear you, you cried out, "Hello?! Is anyone there?! Hello?!?!"
* You called for help.
* But nobody came.
At some point you couldn't bring yourself to shout anymore. You lay back down, fighting back a whimper. You got comfortable again on the soft surface of the flower tops, letting their silken texture sooth you. Panicking would get you nowhere, after all. As you lay supine on the flora, staring up at the brightness of the sky that peeked at you from the distant opening, you wondered if your aching body had something to do with falling down from a great height...
You couldn't help but think that this whole scenario was oddly familiar.
The thought did not sit well with you, so you closed your eyes and forced your mind to go blank. You don't know how long you lay there: perhaps it was minutes, perhaps it was hours. You started to feel the ache of hunger, but you didn't have anything to quell it with, so you just ignored it. The pessimist in you began to take hold of your errant thoughts, and you heard your voice whisper back to you that this was how you were going to die.
You ground your teeth. You didn't want to give up, not really. But you knew your limitations, you had no delusions about what you could and could not do. You were physically unfit, you were ignorant of most survival skills beyond the obvious and the self-evident, you had no supplies, and you were completely lost. What hope did you have?
Your spiral into self depreciation and nihilism was interrupted by a high pitched greeting of, "Howdy!"
You looked up, turning this way and that to find the speaker. The word nagged at the back of your mind, alarm bells and red flags going off that you couldn't quite understand as you pushed yourself into a sitting position. You ignored them (stupidly), too relieved about finally being found to pay them any heed. "Hello!! Oh, thank god, someone came by! I have no idea where I am and- uh, where are you?" You turned this way and that, but you saw no sign of anyone.
"Down here!" The voice called again, from somewhere a little below your seat on the flowers. You looked down. At first all you saw was a sea of yellow and gold, but then one of those flowers moved, pulling your eyes immediately. The plant in question grinned overly sweetly at you- yes, grinned, it had a face on what looked like a large flat surface around which its six golden petals were attached.
All the blood rushed out of your face as the reality of what you were seeing hit you like a hammer to the face. It wasn't the fact that there was a ginning, talking flower now eyeing you with curiosity and deep interest that had your blood running cold and the hair on the back of your neck standing on end; no, it was the fact that you recognized this flower, it was the fact that you knew exactly what it was about to say.
"Howdy! I'm Flowey. Flowey the Flower!" The little plant said cheerfully. it hummed to itself as it regarded you more. "You're knew to the Underground, aren't you? Golly, you must be so confused."
But you weren't confused anymore. You knew where you were, although you had never been here before. You were in the Underground. You were in a video game. You were in 'Undertale'. And in front of you was a psychopathic magical flower that killed for shits and giggles. You had been confused, yes, but now? No, you weren't confused, you were terrified.
"Someone ought to teach you how things work around here! I guess little old me will have to do." Flowey grinned incrementally wider at you. "Ready? Here we go!"
Frozen in fear, you couldn't bring yourself to move before you felt a strange tug at your chest. You started to panic, because you had a very good idea of what that feeling meant, and it wasn't good. Sure enough, that tugging feeling grew stronger until you felt something snap, and out popped a sizable cartoon heart, glowing brightly in a lovely shade of- not red.
It wasn't red. It wasn't red! You felt your heart drop into your stomach and lodge there, making you so nauseous you were sure you'd get physically sick. You were intimately familiar with the meaning of color in the lore of this, one of your favorite games, and you knew the prehistory of the game like the back of your hand: long story short, you knew that of the seven traits human SOULs possessed, only red DETERMINATION had a snowball's chance in hell of surviving. It was written in stone that every other color to fall Underground would be killed.
It was preordained. You were going to die.
You didn't even hear the spiel Flowey was giving you about SOULs and LOVE. You did, however, see his iconic 'friendliness pellets' coming for you. You felt your pulse quicken, and you rolled off the flowerbed and onto the cold stone floor of the cavern, dodging out of the way just in time. You knew better. You knew exactly what would happen to you if those hit you. If you were going to die, you were going to go down fighting.
"Hey buddy, you missed them," Flowey said flatly.
You didn't listen to him, sprinting towards the passageway you now knew led to the Ruins, one of the five major prefectures of the Underground. You were almost there when you smashed into an invisible wall. It thankfully didn't hurt, but try as you might you couldn't take even one more step forward.
"Let's try again, okay?" Flowey continued, and you spun around just in time to see the little white projectiles flying for you. You jumped to the side again, thankful that they didn't move particularly fast. Flowey started to get irritated for real now, as you knew he would. "Is this a joke? Are you braindead? RUN. INTO. THE. BULLETS!!! friendliness pellets." Flowey tried to correct himself as he sent another wave of white projectiles your way, but even if you hadn't already known what he was going to say, you would have heard him clearly enough anyway. Those were bullets. Those were attacks. You had known that, but hearing it confirmed just made it seem more real.
The irony wasn't lost on you as you ducked under this, the final wave of your bullet hell.
You looked at Flowey as you panted, panic and the sudden physical activity making you sweat. You saw his face morph and twist into something terrifying, fangs making themselves known as his eyes glowed brightly in sunken sockets. "You know what's going on here, don't you?" His voice took on a deeper, more sinister aspect, sending shivers down your spine. "You just wanted to see me suffer."
You were hit with a strange sense of claustrophobia as dozens of pellets surrounded you in a circle, tightly packed together in a ring so there were no openings to escape through. Flowey screamed at you, commanding you to die, and as if that were a signal, the circle around you began to constrict from all sides. You tried to make yourself as small as possible, but you knew it was no use. In the game, this attack was unavoidable without help, and nobody was here to save you...
Except...
You knew it was a long shot. This room was further away from the Ruins than the one you met up with Flowey in during gameplay, but you were out of options. You had to ACT if you were going to ever have a chance, even if it would only prolong the inevitable. So you took a deep breath, and screamed as loud as you could, "Toriel!"
Flowey's face changed to one of obvious confusion. You heard the pound of footsteps in the distance, getting progressively louder. You just caught sight of a figure in the dark, a flicker of fire and white fur and purple cloth, before the pellets struck you. You howled in agony, crumpling to the floor as you saw your useless, pathetic SOUL break in half. You heard a voice, distant and muted as though you were underwater, and saw something step in front of you right before your vision went black and you took your last, shuddering breath.
Then you were on a bed of golden flowers.