Chapter Text
He woke up with a pounding headache, desperately trying to make sense of his memories as he squinted against the blinding light above.
{Am I dead?}
He hoped he wasn't dead; he still had to get back to his sister and his friends.
...
His sister.
{PEARL!}
He shot up, and almost fell back down as pain shot through him, but he didn't care; he had to get home. He couldn't leave them.
He quickly sorted through the last things he remembered,
{I was working near the Rift, and I decided to take a nap..}
{..The Rift. But how could I have accidentally fallen in? I was sleeping, for gods' sakes!}
As he pushed himself off of the ground, the pain faded.. oddly quickly, considering he hadn't eaten anything to heal. Looking around, he saw that he was surrounded by cave walls, and the blinding light he had seen was the cave's opening, and the soft texture below his wings had been a bed of golden flowers.
He supposed he'd survived fall damage using weirder methods, so he wouldn't question it too much.
He tried to check his inventory for blocks, but found something that was completely alien to him instead.
"GRIAN"
LV 1
HP 20/20
AT 5 (3) EXP: 0
DF 2 (0) NEXT: 10
WEAPON: W. Sword
ARMOR: None
MONEY: 0
What the hell did any of THAT mean? Why didn't he have any of his armor?! He could have gotten his inventory cleared, but then why did he have a wooden sword?
He decided to worry about the strange interface later; without access to his inventory - if he even still had it at all - there was no way he would be able to make it up to the surface from here. The only way was forward, it seemed.
Looking ahead, he saw an ornate purple doorway which, despite his initial hopes, looked far too old to be a sign of any kind of civilization currently being around.
(If only he knew.)
He had barely stepped through the arch, when-
"Howdy!"
It was at that moment that Grian knew he was in for a very, very long day.
Gods, he missed the others..
—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—
Flowey had been expecting this run to be the exact same as all the others: Frisk would rush through the Underground, either sparing or slaughtering everything in their path. (Usually the latter.) At least when he had the RESETS, he was creative with them!
Regardless, Flowey immediately knew something had changed this run when a full thirty seconds passed without Frisk entering his little "stage."
...
Then a minute passed.
...
Then two.
...
Flowey was beginning to think that Frisk somehow hadn't survived the fall this time around, when finally someone walked through the archway, and Flowey noticed three things, in a very specific order:
This was not Frisk, this was not a child, and this was not a human. Or, at least, not entirely.
The human..-like creature had huge parrot wings sprouting from its their back. Finally! Something interesting happens around here!
"Howdy!"
Flowey knew that an adult human..bird..thing.. wouldn't be as easy to manipulate as a child.
"I'm Flowey!"
He couldn't let his mask slip for even a moment, or else he could be ripped from the earth.
"Flowey the Flower!"
He didn't actually know if that was something adult humans would be capable of, but that was exactly the problem: he didn't really know anything about what adult humans were capable of.
Chara had never wanted to talk about it.
"Golly, you must be so confused!"
Truthfully, the human(?) looked more like they had a really bad headache.
"You're new to the UNDERGROUND, aren'tcha?"
Their headache seemed to get worse with each word Flowey spoke, but they did perk up a bit when he mentioned the UNDERGROUND. Good, they were at least partially listening.
"Someone ought to teach you how things work around here!"
Flowey continued to act oblivious to the hu.. person's apparent migraine. Either from the fall, or he was just pissing them off that much.
Maybe both, actually.
"Guess lil ol' me will have to do!"
He wondered if an adult human SOUL - assuming this person had a human SOUL - would look different from the ones he had seen. He wondered what kind of power it would give him.
"Ready? Here we go!"
"Ready for wha-?"
Oh! They could speak! Flowey hadn't actually been certain on that.
Flowey watched in amusement as the person gaped at the familiar (to him) black-and-white scene. He then turned his attention to what he was REALLY doing this for.
"See that heart? That is.. your..."
Flowey wasn't even able to finish his sentence, because what the HELL was that THING?! It was a SOUL, certainly, but it was far from being human.
The vaguely heart-shaped, glitchy blob of.. mass, was as dark as the Amalgamations' stand-ins for eyes (he'd know), with a constantly shifting purple outline. Flowey got the feeling he was being watched.
For the first time in a very, very long time..
..Flowey felt true fear.
This wasn't worth it. He needed more information before he could try to take this thing's.. Angel, he didn't even know if it counted as a SOUL!
Flowey burrowed away, leaving the voided being on its own.
If he had bothered to look back, he would have seen that the SOULs' owner was as ashamed of it as he was afraid, and "afraid" wasn't a word that Flowey used lightly, considering it was something he shouldn't be able to experience at all.
As he watched the Goat Lady approach the inhuman being, he couldn't help but wonder to himself..
{What WAS that?!}
{Well, at least I didn't get burned this time..}