General Undertale Fanfiction Thread

Many years later: Mt. Ebott, 201X.

...

Legend said that nobody who climbed the mountain ever returned. But, yeah, whatever. The surroundings looked ordinary more or less. Really it was hard to believe that a small child would make their way up here. The climb was too much for the average person.

He wore plain yellow, and his gloves gleamed a bright, powerful red. His cape billowed as he stood there, staring at the hole in the mountain’s surface. A vine slithered around his foot but he ignored it. Then he examined it closer, noticed its odd shape. He followed it with his eyes and saw the vine creeping out of the hole. At the bottom of the descent he noticed a bed of yellow flowers, and a small child, lying face-up.

“I’m with the Hero Association.”

“Please Mr. Caped Baldy, my child’s disappeared!”

Wordlessly, the bald hero took a step forward and dropped into the hole.

He scooped the kid up in his arms then proceeded to jump straight to the top of the hole and out of it, landing and sensing the child beginning to stir. He gently lowered the boy and set him down away from the mischievous weeds. The child sat up, took a few glances around, and stared.

“You okay kid?” he asked.

The child nodded. He asked what had happened to him.

“Well I just got here but,” said Saitama, grabbing a handful of the vine next to the hole. “My guess is you ran up here and got your foot caught on this thing, see?” He messed around with the vine a bit, showing off how slippery it was. “Anyway, you need to be careful. What are you even doing all the way up here by yourself anyway?” Saitama tried to listen patiently but couldn’t help but notice how creepy this kid was. He seemed to be paying attention but he never opened his eyes. Saitama wondered what was up with that, but pushed it to the back of his mind. The kid told him his name: Frisk. Local legends had made him curious about what was up at the top of Mt. Ebott, and he scratched the back of his head. If Saitama hadn’t come along when he did the boy might have gotten trapped down there.

A tear showed up on his face, and Frisk wiped at the tear with his sleeve, frightened. Saitama shook his head, “Look, don’t cry okay, I’m no good with kids. Just run home and tell your parents you’re okay. And make sure you tell’em a handsome, cape-wearing hero performed the rescue!”

Frisk nodded that he understood. He’d stopped crying but his face looked even more worried.

Saitama’s ears tingled. “Monsters?” he parroted just to know if he’d heard right. “You’re saying those legends you heard about claim that, that there’s a bunch of monsters living underground?”

The boy answered, and Saitama’s fist wobbled with excitement.

“If they’re all just hiding out down there,” he exclaimed with a big grin, “they’re probably gearing up for some kind of invasion!” He saw the boy looking back at him with uncertainty. “What’s that look for? Look kid, I’ve seen and fought my share of monsters. Trust me; heroes fight monsters all the time, simple as that!” He knelt until he was at the boy’s height. “Come on kid, head on home. Don’t get lost, I don’t want to come out and find out a monster ate you while I was gone.”

With a struggling look of determination, Frisk shifted in the opposite direction of Mt. Ebott. He took a final, steady glance at Saitama, and did as he was told. He ran, all the way back home. Saitama made sure to watch him descend from afar until he couldn’t see the back of the boy’s shirt anymore, until the purple material and pink stripes disappeared. Now only jungle, foliage, and some crackling leaves remained in the vicinity. Saitama was alone.

As Saitama began to face the hole leading into Mt. Ebott, a feeling overtook him. He almost didn’t know what it was, until he faced the direction the boy had run in once more. Seeing that boy alive, running and full of energy like that after surviving what was such a huge fall that no ordinary human should’ve survived, filled Saitama’s heart with determination. He considered it a pleasant feeling.

Jumping into the hole with warmth in his heart, fearlessly, boldly, Saitama’s mind lingered on a single question he’d forgotten to ask. He’d thought the child he rescued was a boy, but looking at the mental image of the child again, was it a he?

Oh well. He supposed it didn’t really matter.

...

The bottom of the hole hadn’t changed much. Not that Saitama truly expected it to. Sometimes video games changed what their areas looked like based on what choices the player made over the course of the game, but if Mt. Ebott had been a level in a video game, Saitama doubted his actions would have any real effect on his current surroundings. Especially given that it was pitch-black all around him.

He’d landed with no trouble, but upon doing so realized his first mistake. A circle of light peered through the hole in the ceiling and that was just about it. He could make out a short path just a few meters forward and a door sitting on the other side. The only reasonable explanation was that he was standing inside some kind of ancient ruin. Maybe the inside of Mt. Ebott belonged to an ancient super-race of monsters who had burrowed underground long ago.

Saitama felt... that was a rare occurrence. Sure he tasted and smelled and touched just like ordinary people, but he didn’t crave the way they did, didn’t react the way they did. He felt compelled to walk down this path despite the darkness. Even as he gently pushed the old doors, fearing they would collapse from the slightest contact in what was likely years, he saw no reason not to go forward.

On one hand the feeling was a rush, a sensation. Anything could have attacked him in that devouring darkness: bats, giant spiders, or giant flaming spiders with bat wings. The mere thought of a decent challenge made his legs push forward.

But as he breached the doorway and the doors sank shut behind him with an audible creak, something was wrong. Saitama could feel that too. Almost as if something had drawn him deeper into THE RUINS against his own will. He awaited the monster that would face him first; threaten him with some kind of hypnotic pheromone or maybe a spear that fired magic lasers.

Another circle of light cut through the darkness and revealed another path, and another set of doors. And in the center of that column of light, a flower greeted him.

“Hi there, my name’s,” said the flower. Just an ordinary, talking sunflower. “My name is...”

The flower stuttered, confusion on its lips.

“My... you are—“

This was officially the weirdest day of Saitama’s life.

“A talking flower?” he said, flustered. He threw his arms outward and snarled. “What kind of joke this!?”

“Wh, what the hell are you!?”

Saitama blinked and stared at the flower, affronted by the fact that a talking flower questioned his existence.

The flower wobbled and its eye twitched. “You... you’re not human. Are you?”

Saitama flexed his right eyebrow. “Me?” he said, pointing at himself. “Ah, pretty sure that I am.”

“NO YOU’RE NOT!!” The flower screamed at him in a voice that didn’t sound like a voice a talking flower should have had, or at least not to greet or ask people questions. The flower shook and regarded him fearfully. Its eye wouldn’t cease twitching. “You, you’re... you’re TOO STRONG!”

Those words hit Saitama harder than he’d ever been hit in his entire life.

“You’re different. There’s something way wrong about you. Regular humans don’t come down here with this much LV!”

Saitama tilted his neck. “LV? What’s that?

The flower shook rapidly and put on a smile. “Um, sorry, yeah, you don’t need to worry about that.”

“Hold on a second here, a second ago you were bugging out over how strong I am. But how did you know that, we haven’t fought yet?”

A bead of sweat fell down the side of the flower’s face. Since when could a flower sweat, let alone talk?

“I-I don’t want to fight you,” it spoke cordially. “Ha hah, no, no, nothing of the sort. My name’s Flowey! Flowey the Flower! You’re new here aren’t you?”

At least the flower’s mood seemed to have improved, Saitama supposed.

“I was just a little surprised by your physique. I can tell you have a lot of power. But down here in the Underground your SOUL is what determines how powerful you are, not your muscles.”

Saitama said nothing and listened, brimming at the flower’s words.

“Your SOUL is that thing in your chest! See? No it’s not that thing that pumps blood. Close your eyes and look down at your chest. See it?”

Complying, Saitama closed his eyes. The world darkened and, at the center, his SOUL was there. He opened his eyes in shock and closed them again. When he looked down at his chest with his eyes closed, there was a heart; a big, rounded shape. He moved his head upward, and he noticed something else; something that was definitely not a flower.

Opening his eyes, Saitama caught the flower’s cheeky grin. “Now you see your SOUL,” it said, “if you want to get stronger you need to eat some of these little white pellets.”

A line of white orbs sparkled out of the blackness around the flower, appearing on command. They floated in place in an arc, near, but not quite touching the flower. “...friendliness pellets,” the flower continued. “They’re full of LOVE. LOVE makes you stronger down here.”

“No thanks.”

The flower’s expression twisted.

Saitama folded his arms. “You said it yourself, I’m already too strong.”

“B-but I-“

“Look, I don’t know what your game is here, but I’ve got a feeling you’re not being honest with me here. I came here to rescue a kid and fight monsters, not talking flowers.”

For several moments the flower didn’t respond. Then, the flower’s face mutated. The little white orbs sparkled, and multiplied into an encircling formation. Teeth sprang from Flowey’s mouth. Black pits rose from his eyes as his mouth twisted and grinded, and the grass around him began to bend to an unseen wind, and shriveled into a deathly gray.

“So you know what’s going on here, huh!? Fine!”

Saitama’s jaw started to drop. “I mean, you’re obviously not exactly what you appear to be,” he said.

The circle of sparkling orbs squeezed and moved close to him.

“Fine, you don’t want to be friends? Then you can die!” The flower cackled. “Die, die, and die you freak! Down here, it’s killed or be killed!”

Saitama could feel the orbs smash into his shoulders, arms, knees, and face; his muscles and bones would tear and break from the force. These “pellets” slammed him from every side. They thinned and raced through the skin.

“NYEHAHAHAHAHA!”

And then they popped, releasing a fierce hiss of light. When the dust cleared, the flower couldn’t have looked more shocked. The strong shoulders, the buckled knees, and the shredded cape all rose from the smoke. The garish yellow uniform had taken more of a hit than the person wearing it.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” shouted Flowey.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” said Saitama, also. He examined the new tears and damages to his suit, and glared at the flower. “I didn’t bring a spare down here with me you asshole!”

“Shut up! What the hell are you!?” The darkness filled with more sparkling orbs. “Doesn’t matter! I’m going to kill you with ONE FINAL ATTACK!”

A row of teeth jumped together in the murderous flower’s mouth it cackled, and a hand extended from the darkness, releasing a ball of flame onto the grass next to it. Flowey noticed it too late; the grass caught aflame, and erupted. The fire ended almost as soon as it started, and left a black scorch mark behind where the evil, uniform-ruining creature previously was. Saitama spied the white, fur-covered hand that had killed Flowey in that fiery explosion. The hand wobbled briefly before finding its mate, folded across the front of a tall (well, about average heighted) figure in a purple apron.

Now Saitama had seen everything. A giant rabbit approached him. Her face radiated a different kind of innocence. Her teeth weren’t pointed, and the fire in her hand had gone out. Concern moistened her eyes. “What a terrible creature. Are you alright?”

Saitama watched her. “Are you one of those monsters I’ve heard are living down here?”

“Please, oh, do not be afraid, my child,” she said, making him raise a brow. “I am Toriel, caretaker of the Ruins.”

...

ONEPUNCHTALE

(to be continued)