Underverse: Steven's Tale Chapter 3

Steven looked down the long hallway and gulped. Toriel left him, saying that she wants him to walk down the long hallway by himself, but with all the encounters he had face, he was kind of anxious at what could pop out. But he balled up his fists and started the long trek through the hall. It was a super long and suspenseful walk, soon he even started running. After several paces, he came up to a pillar along with a doorway. He stopped to look into the doorway, then suddenly, someone slowly walked out from behind the pillar.

“Congratulations, you made it. It’s okay Steven, I was behind this pillar the whole time.” Toriel reassured, coming out from behind the pillar.

“O-Oh, Toriel… I gotta say, that was a very long walk…” Steven rubbed his shoulder.

“I know, I just wanted to see if you can do things by yourself. I’m glad you passed, now, I have some stuff to take care of, please wait here so I can get everything ready. Here, I’ll give you this phone.” Toriel said, giving him a phone. “So we can keep in contact.”

“O-Oh, thank you.” Steven said, now remembering that he didn’t bring his own phone with him.

“Now, stay here, it’s very dangerous to go off on your own.” Toriel said as she walked through the doorway.

Steven blinked and looked at the phone, he kept wondering if he could be able to call his phone. He breathed in, and dialed up his number and waited.

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Frisk woke up to the sound of a phone’s ringtone. He looked at where he was, still in the temple, but in Steven’s little room/alcove. He stared ahead at the thick TV, and a few plush toys that were sitting on the bed, up against the wall. Frisk turned his head and took the phone from the bedside table and swiped to answer.

“Hello?” Frisk flopped his head back onto the pillow and listened.

“F-Frisk? Is that you?” Steven asked.

Frisk’s eyes widened and jerked up in bed with the phone to his ear. “Steven! A-Are you okay? You’re not hurt, are you?”

“I-I’m fine, just kind of freaked out… A flower tried to kill me, but then I met this nice lady named Toriel.” Steven said.

Frisk’s eyes widened. “Y-You’ve met Flowey and Toriel already?! W-Where are you right now?”

“I’m in some type of ruins. Toriel just made me walk through a long hallway.”

“Okay, well, you’re gonna have to trust me, you have to keep going through the ruins, it’ll be long, and the puzzles are tedious, but nothing extremely dangerous.” Frisk explained. “Oh, and monsters are gonna try and kill you too, so you have to not fight them, get them to be friendly with you.”

“Yeah, I know that, but Toriel told me to stay here.”

“She told me that too, and I was impatient…” Frisk sighed. “Look, whatever you do, don’t let Flowey get to you.”

“I won’t. How are Connie and the gems?”

“The gems and Connie… They’re so heartbroken over you, they want you to stay safe.”

“Tell them I’ll be home soon, and don’t worry.”

“Will do. Oh, and whatever you do, try to make friends with everyone, and if you get to a room where a pile of leaves leads to two paths, go straight and donate to the spiders before you go the other way.”

“W-What? Did you say… Donate to the spiders?” Steven asked, raising his eyebrow.

“Just trust me on this, Steven, it’ll be all relevant in the long run.” Frisk reassured.

“Okay, I’ll talk to you later.” Steven nodded. He hung up and walked out of the corridor and into another hall.

Frisk on the other hand hung up, and sighed. He got up and stretched. “You know you guys are very hard at hiding…” Frisk said looking down at the sofa where Connie and the gems were sitting.

“I’m glad to know that he’s okay…” Connie said, smiling.

“But we can’t do anything to help him but give him advice…” Pearl said, frowning.

Amethyst sighs. “Man, this bites!”

Frisk looked at them. “I have a question… How did you guys know about Mount Ebbot and the Underground?”

Garnet looked at Frisk. “We don’t trust you enough to tell that story. You’ll have to earn the right to hear.” Garnet said almost bitterly as she walked into the temple. Everyone watched as she walked through the door.

“She is right about that…” Pearl said. “You did send Steven away… Even if you didn’t mean to, you still did.” Pearl got up and went into the temple as well.

Amethyst looked at Frisk and shrugged. She yawned and flopped down onto the couch, leaving Frisk and Connie unattended.

“So… you want me to show you around Beach City?” Connie asked, offering a hand.

Frisk looked at Connie’s hand, smiled, and took it, following her out of the house and out into Beach City.

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Steven walked into a passage that had a table on the right of the hall. On the table was a piece of cheese, which made Steven’s stomach growl.

“Ooh… I haven’t eaten at all today… Maybe I can eat this to tide me over?” Steven said out loud to himself as he took hold of the cheese and tried to walk away, but he was pulled back toward the table. Upon closer inspection, he saw the cheese was stuck onto the table. As Steven sighed and hung his head in disappointment, behind him, forming on the wall, was a door, it silently opened up showing a face in the darkness of the door. It peered at Steven from the doorway.

“*| \&~\ =[ *\ !~=\ `$” There were no words, just quiet murmurs and sounds that surrounded the face. Steven suddenly felt a chill up his spine, so he turned around fast, ready to throw up a bubble, but he saw nothing there.

“W-What was that just now?” Steven said quietly to himself, as he walked out of the passageway. But as he walked away, the area of the wall where the door had been, glitched a bit.

Steven continued to walk through and he came across a pile of leaves with what seemed to be a white sheet covering it. He approached the leaf pile to see that the white sheet suddenly opened two eye holes as he approached, it was a ghost!

“A-Ah!” Steven yelped, which made his pink heart show over his shirt. The ghost floated up and yelped as well, but from the ghost eyes formed tears.

“I-I’m so sorry that I scared you… I… I didn’t mean to…” The ghost whimpered and began crying, tears falling and going towards Steven.

“A-Ah! No, i-it’s fine really! I should have watched where I was going.” Steven said, dodging the tears. “I-I’m Steven, what’s your name?” It was no good, the ghost was too busy crying.

Steven looked at the ghost, and noticed it had a music player. He had an idea, he pulled out his ukulele, and began to strum a few bars. This caused the ghost to open his eyes, and gradually stop crying. Steven sang the song as he kept strumming. The ghost blinked and floated over to him.

“T-That’s a very sweet song…” he softly murmured to Steven.

“Thanks, hey, you stopped crying, I’m glad. I didn’t do anything to upset you did I?” Steven smiled.

“O-Oh no no no! I thought I upset you…” the ghost avoided eye contact.

“Nope, you didn’t. I’m Steven, what’s your name?” Steven smiled.

“N-Napstablook…” The ghost said. “It’s nice… to… meet you Steven… Oh, I have to go… Umm… bye.” With that, Napstablook faded away, leaving Steven alone.

“U-Um… bye Napstablook…” Steven said, he walked up and saw a fork in the path. He remembered about what Frisk said, and went straight. In this small room was a sign and two cobwebs.

“Hmm…‘Spider Bake Sale, proceeds go to real spiders?’ Spider Donut, 7 Gold. Spider Cider, 18 Gold.” Steven walked over to the smaller cobweb of the two, and put 7 gold pieces into the cobweb. Spiders suddenly crawled over the web and snagged up the gold, while other spiders came from above to give Steven a doughnut.

“Wow, thank you!” Steven said to the spiders, as he walked out of the room, and headed toward the other path. He blinked and realized, he didn’t know where to put the doughnut, but further in, he looked up and strangely saw his Cheeseburger Backpack.

“Huh? Backpack? What are you doing here? I didn’t bring you here with me… did I?” Steven thought aloud to himself. Come to think of it, he didn’t know where he got his ukulele from when he played for Napstablook. But he shook his head, put on his backpack, and put his ukulele and the doughnut in separate pockets, and kept on going through the ruins.

Soon, he made it to a room with multiple cracked floors, he saw that the way was spiked up ahead, so he was thinking about where a switch could be. He suddenly had this feeling about one particular cracked tile. It was like something was telling him to go to it. He walked over to it, then he stepped on it, making a hole as his foot, then his whole body tumbled down. He fell, but was bouncing because his bubble suddenly kicked in. He got out of the bubble, and looked around, and found a red ribbon.

“Huh, I wonder who this belonged to… Maybe there are other humans down here?” Steven said to himself, putting the ribbon on his wrist. He looked to the wall, and went up a tiny ladder, coming out one of the slots above the cracked floor. Steven went out of the slot and checked the other holes, finding a lever in the hole next to the ribbon hole. Steven gripped his backpack tight, and walked on.
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Frisk walked with Connie up the boardwalk of Beach City, he was amazed by the horizon, and the multiple buildings that made up the city. They had already visited the arcade, and now they were going to the Big Donut.

“This place has every kind of doughnut flavor. I’ll buy us some.” Connie said, which made Frisk shake his head.

“N-No, I wanna buy it, I wanna pay you back for giving me this tour.” Frisk insisted.

“Tell you what, we’ll go to Fish Stew Pizza, and you can buy some pizza for both of us.” Connie offered.

Frisk chuckled and nodded. “Sounds fair.” He walked in after Connie went in, and he bumped into a tall young man, with a ginger puff atop his head.

“Oof! Hey, what’s you’re going, shortstack!” the young man hissed down at Frisk.

“Lars! Leave him alone.” A young woman barked from behind the counter, but she was a smaller woman with blonde hair and a sweet smile. “Hey Connie, sorry about Lars. What can I get you?”

“Hey Sadie, I would like two Double Death by Chocolate Fudge doughnuts please.” Connie ordered as she pulled her money from her wallet.

“Alright, that’ll be $2.10.” Frisk looked at Sadie, and she gave the look back. “Connie, who’s this? And where’s Steven?”

“Oh, this is Frisk, and… Steven… umm, it’s a long story… But, he’s not in Beach City at the moment.”

“Oh my… I hope he’s okay…” Sadie said, covering her mouth.

“Me too, Sadie. Well, we gotta go, thanks again for the doughnuts.” Connie waved and walked out with Frisk, who waved back to Sadie. As he followed, Frisk looked around and saw the TV in the top corner of the shop. When he glanced at it, he suddenly got a flashback of what happened right before he escaped the barrier. He saw this grotesque plant creature with a TV for a face, and a laugh that could scare the devil in a silent room.

“N-No… stay away… P-Please…” Frisk whispered to himself.

“Frisk? Are you okay?” Someone asked, Frisk looked up, and thought he saw a young girl wearing a faded ribbon in her hair, and carrying a toy knife, but he blinked and saw the image was replaced by Connie.

“Y-Yeah, I’m fine…” His lie was so obvious, Connie frowned, but she quickly tried to make light of the situation.

“Okay… well, let’s go ruin our appetites! Oh, my mom is gonna kill me…” Connie chuckled as she walked to a bench. Frisk rubbed his eyes, and shook the memory out of his head as he caught up with Connie. But that flashback, after the frightened shock of the laugh, he could have sworn he heard a faint, familiar voice.