Chapter Text
Both Clover and Dalv went up to the counter to order.
“W-Welcome to the Honeydew Resort! (Was that the line?)” the shopkeeper said, visibly nervous.
“Hello there. Could me and Clover get 2 orders of pancakes please? You do still sell those right? I apologize, I haven’t been back here in a while.” Dalv asked her.
“Of course we still do! It’s our most popular item after all! Oh, um by the way, I think I remember you! Y-You were the one who would sit and watch the band all the time right?”
“Uhh… yes that was me.” Dalv found those days embarrassing and wished she didn’t bring those up.
“Well it’s g-good to have you back! (What am I doing with myself?)”
“Here Clover, I’ll get the bill. It’s the least I can do after all.” Dalv turned to Clover and said.
He preceded to put a decent amount of G on the counter and received 2 plates of pancakes from the shopkeeper. Dalv thanked the shopkeeper and brought the pancakes back to the table. Him and Clover began eating the pancakes. “This stuff is good, I can see why this is so popular.” Clover said in between stuffing pancakes into their mouth.
“It’s sort of been the main thing people come here for. It’s nice to see that they’re still as good as I remember.” Dalv said.
Clover finished all the pancakes at an incredible speed. Dalv stared in amazement as all the pancakes were gone in less than 2 minutes. He really didn’t know much about humans after all.
“That was good, partner. I’ll pay you back when I hopefully get more G.” Clover said.
“…no, Clover, it’s fine.” Dalv managed to speak.
“Well, I’ll be waiting for ya outside.” Clover said as they got up and walked out the door. When they stepped out into the snow, they were greeted by a familiar friend. “Howdy pal! Hope you didn’t forget about little ‘ol me hanging out with the town weirdo.”
“Don’t be mean Flowey. He’s helping me get to the king.” Clover defended Dalv.
“Im just kidding buddy! But it might be worth saving here, just in case anything happens.”
“Yeah, sure.” Clover saved Before turning back to Flowey. “By the way, how come you never show up whenever someone else is near me? I’m sure Dalv would like to meet you too.”
“I’m just a little nervous around other monsters Clover! You’d understand if you were a plant like myself. Monsters like count introvert over there aren’t usually the kinds of monsters you want to be around.”
”I guess I can’t argue with that, but you really should come out and meet some new people some day Flowey. Ya know, get out of your shell -er stem?”
”Maybe someday buddy, but today is not that day. The weirdo is coming back now so I’ll have to see you later.”
Flowey went back into the ground. A few seconds later, Dalv came out of the resort, having ate his pancakes and ready to continue onward. “Ok Clover, I’m ready to go now.”
“Uhh… Alright partner, let’s go.”
The two walked past the resort and into a more secluded area where a strange bridge with moving parts could be seen. Clover looked at the strange contraption and turned to Dalv. “Is this one of the guards puzzles?”
“Looks like it, doesn’t seem too hard though. Just time it right.” Dalv told them.
Dalv went first and past the first 3 moving planks relatively easily. Once he got to the fourth though, he tripped and fell on the bridge. thankfully, that fourth was the last moving part of the bridge, so Dalv didn’t fall through and successfully made it to the other side. Clover carefully timed 2 of the planks before realizing that they could just jump over the gaps rather than timing it. So they just jumped over the last 2. Dalv wondered why he didn’t just think of that in the first place, but at least they were both past the puzzle now.
“Ya know, I sorta expected these puzzles to be more difficult.” Clover said as the two kept walking.
“Well, they were probably built by only 1 guard. They don’t expect humans to come down to this part of Snowdin, they only really expect you to be at upper Snowdin.” Dalv responded.
“Seems weird to do that, I was expecting this place to be more dangerous. It sorta just seems like a normal town, even if it doesn’t have a lot of buildings.”
“That was exactly why I lived here, it was a peaceful life.”
“I can see how it would be, I personally wouldn’t live anywhere this cold though.” Clover admitted.
The two came across another puzzle locked gate like the one they were near at the beginning of Snowdin. “Another one? I really don’t wanna do these things. Do you have anything that can just bypass these Dalv?” Clover asked.
“Well… I might have something.” Dalv aimed a lightning bolt at the gates locking mechanism. Once he threw it, the lightning bolt completely destroyed the puzzles inner workings, but it did allow the gate to be freely opened by hand.
Now past the last puzzle, there was nothing stopping the two from leaving Snowdin. At least, that’s what they thought until they came across Martlet, who fell asleep in her kiosk. “Ok Clover, same plan as last time. I’m going to distract her, you sneak past the kiosk.” Dalv whispered to Clover.
Clover nodded and hit behind Dalv’s over large coat, which did wonders for hiding them. The two walked over to the kiosk, the noise of the snow crunching underneath them making Martlet wake up. “Oh, uh, Hello!” Martlet suddenly stirred awake and said. “Oh, hey! it’s you again! Hello mister Dalv! Did you need help finding where to go?” Martlet asked, now recognizing who was in front of her.
“Actually yes, I did. I was wondering if you knew any easy way to get to Hotland?” Dalv responded.
“You bet! There’s a few different ways to get there actually.”
Clover took this chance to crouch low to the ground and carefully sneak around the kiosk while the two were talking. Once they made it past the kiosk, they got back up and began slowly walking to not make any loud footsteps. They looked back as they walked to see how Dalv was doing. Unfortunately, one of the poffs of snow was deeper than they expected, and they tripped into the snow, making a loud crunching sound.
“What the?” Martlet peeked her head out of the kiosk to see a human that had stumbled onto the ground. Martlet gasped in excitement. “Is that a?!” Martlet tried to speak before pulling out her guard book to read a page. “It is! It’s a human! Oh my goodly goodness, I have to take this opportunity!” Martlet said as she came out of the kiosk and towards Clover, who had now got up from the snow and was just blankly staring at her.
“Hello human! I am Martlet of the royal guard, and it’s my job to apprehend you!” Martlet said with enthusiasm.
“Uhh… well can ya not do that?” Clover asked.
“Nope! Sorry! protocol and all. You know how it is.” Martlet tried reasoning.
As soon as she got ready for battle, Dalv quickly stepped in front of the human.
“Umm, sir. You’re standing in front of them.” Martlet told Dalv.
“I know. I’m sorry Martlet, but I can’t let you have Clover.” Dalv said in defense.
“Really? But that’s…”. Martlet began frantically looking through her book for a page on this. “Protocol 4, in the event that a human has a companion helping them… ignore protocol 1 and apprehend both of them.” Martlet read from the book.
“I’m really sorry about this Dalv, but I have to take both of you in. Protocol 2, my attack!” Martlet said as she summoned multiple feathers that hovered around her for a bit, before targeting Clover and Dalv.
Clover ducked down into the snow to dodge the feathers while Dalv tried to quickly dash away. it’s been a long time since Dalv has been in a fight, and it certainly shows here. As hard as he tried to dodge, one feather did get lodged into his coat.
Clover decided to act, determined to not fight Martlet.
*Martlet ATK 8 DEF 10
*A little scatterbrained.
“?” Martlet wondered why the two were not fighting back. She summoned another barrage of feathers and aimed it at them. Dalv had an idea this time however. When the feathers began targeting them, he summoned lighting bolts around him and Clover, burning the feathers on contact.
“Wha- hey! You can’t do that!” Martlet yelled out.
“We won’t attack you Mrs Martlet, but we also aren’t going to let you win.” Dalv said.
Martlet huffed in annoyance and decided to change strategy’s. She began to flap her wings and fly over Dalv and Clover. They were confused as to what she was doing until she began dropping a bunch of random junk that they didn’t even know she had on her. Nails, snow globes, bowling balls, you name it. Clover wasn’t expecting the random objects and got hit on the head with a snowglobe, knocking them to the ground. Right as another one was about to hit, Dalv swooped above Clover and took the hit instead, taking some of his hp.
Martlet was now beginning to feel extremely bad.
“Hey, you guys can attack back. I can take it! I swear!” Martlet offered.
“Not happening.” Clover said as they got back up from the ground.
“You are really making this difficult to do ya know.” Martlet replied.
She then proceeded to summon and throw tool boxes that exploded on impact when touching the ground. Clover managed to shoot one out of the sky with their toy gun while Dalv summoned balls of electricity and collided them with the other 3. It was clear this fight wasn’t really going anywhere.
“Uhh, oh! Last week. I apprehended this girl! She didn’t attack me exactly but she got real aggressive when I captured her like ‘what are you on about?! I’m not a human. Clear the feathers out of your head!’ Can you be aggressive like her to make this easier?” Martlet asked.
“Uhh, sure? Your uhh… boots look bad.” Clover said, they didn’t really mean that but it was the best they could think of.
“There you go! What kind of royal guard wears boots like these right? It’s not like I spent months trying to find ones that fit or anything. Haha…”.
Martlet began summoning feathers again, though this time she made them spin around in a tornado like fashion, Dalv was going to burn the feathers with lightning bolts again, but the feather tornado caused enough wind to blow Dalv back a bit. Now clover had to face the tornado without Dalv’s help. They managed to nearly dodge 2 of the feathers, but unfortunately, two got lodged into clovers arm. This made Clover immediately collapse to the ground and yell in pain.
“Clover! Are you ok?!” Dalv ran up to Clover and asked.
“Ughhh. Yeah I’m good partner.” Clover grumbled.
“Here Clover, you need this.” Dalv pulled out a pancake he saved and gave it to Clover, this healed back the hp they lost.
“Thanks, Dalv.” Clover said, getting back up from the snow.
Martlet felt like the scum of the earth. She always knew she would have to do this as a part of her job but she was banking off the idea that a human simply wouldn’t show up or just go to a different area. As exciting as this opportunity was, she really didn’t want to fight a kid who wouldn’t even fight back.
“Alright. Let’s continue.” Clover said with determined look on their face.
Martlet mustered up the courage to summon another attack. This time, she opted to only target Clover with boxes and feathers. Clover had managed to dodge most of the feathers, but they ended up getting hit in the chest with one of the boxes. This caused Clover to grunt in pain again. Martlet couldn’t take the pressure anymore, she didn’t want to see this kid get hurt even more than they already were.
”I’m ready for your next attack.” Clover said through pained breaths.
“Actually, I don’t think I want to do this anymore.” Martlet admitted.
“What? Isn’t this your job?”
“It is but… I really don’t want to hurt you two, you won’t even fight back and… it just doesn’t feel right anymore. There has to be another way to do this.” Martlet was in deep thought. Then she got an idea.
“I know! If the royal guard doesn’t know your here, then they won’t know I broke protocol! We just need to get you home before they notice!” Martlet said, pointing at Clover.
“So you’ll help us then? Well that’s great! We can use really any help we can get.” Clover said.
“Yup! Speaking of, you said you needed to get to Hotland right Dalv? I have a boat that can get us there. Follow me!”
Clovers luck was really amping up. They now had 2 allies they could hopefully rely on to get to the king. They followed Martlet all the way up to a dock where a small boat could be seen.
“Ohh… the boat is too small to fit all 3 of us.” Martlet realized.
“Well can’t you fly over there while we ride the boat?” Dalv asked.
“I technically can, but i shouldn’t stay flying for that long. Getting tired mid flight could be really bad for me, wouldn’t want to fall on something.”
Dalv thought for a second and realized that Martlet would probably be better to take Clover home than him, being a royal guard, she likely knew the underground better than him. He could probably find another way to them anyway. “Ok Clover. I don’t think all of us will be able to continue together. don’t worry, I’ll find another way to reach you, but I should ask… do you trust Mrs Martlet enough to go with her?”
Clover looked at Martlet and tried to decipher any possible bad intentions. But frankly, they couldn’t see any malice on the bird. She genuinely did seem like she wanted to help. “I trust her Dalv. I’ll see you in a bit partner.”
“Very well then, I hope you two make It there safely. Dalv said before walking away, likely to go back to the resort.
“Don’t worry Clover. I’ll guard you with my Soul! We should get going though, wouldn’t want the guard to find us!” Martlet said.
“Alright partner, let’s go.”