Monster Age

by GR Griffin

  Just like in the Underground, Fleck was once more at the mercy of this sentient flower. With every action, Flowey was watching from the side-lines, scheming and plotting, waiting for the opportune moment to show that this flower had thorns. Fleck just knew that this reveal was all just another part of an insipid plan.

  Fleck grimaced, clenched their fists around the weapon handles, almost activating them unintentionally, and demanded to know if Flowey had anything to do with Juhi's death.

  Flowey responded quickly while Brute waggled his finger. "No." Fleck saw the look in those black button eyes as he answered, serious and unwavering as they stared back into theirs, and Fleck knew from that moment that he wasn't lying. "I'm not the reason why people die, Fleck. Juhi was an old, old man well beyond his time. He died on his own, I had nothing to do with it."

  Fleck wondered how this was possible that Flowey of all people ended up here. How he happened to find them in the middle of this maze of bridges and boardwalks.

  Flowey said, "Of course you want to know." After that, his assistant turned around and faced down the length of walkway that lay ahead. The Advisor nodded forward. "Let's take a walk. I'll explain along the way."

  Fleck was reluctant, but decided to go along for now. They stepped up beside Brute, to the side which he held Flowey, and altogether they walked side by side along those never-ending paths of timber against timber, taking it nice and slow. Fleck feared that Brute could kill them if he so much as tripped and fell on them. They passed the nearest trees to find more trees behind those. From out the corner of Fleck's eye, Flowey was smiling. Whether it was out of actual contentment remained to be seen. Nonetheless, it was clear that he had no intentions of causing harm… yet.

  Fleck shot a nervous glance over their shoulder which Flowey picked up on.

  "Don't worry, none of those guys from the rebellion will catch us," Flowey said, following Fleck's gaze down the path behind them. "They're too busy with other stuff."

  Fleck brought their head back around to meet Flowey's gaze. He knew about the rebellion?

  "One question at a time please," the golden flower chastised, Brute waved appropriately. "How did I get here? I think it'll all make sense if I start from the beginning. You see, shortly after you left, I stopped being Asriel and turned back into this, into soulless Flowey." Brute motioned with an open palm at the flower. "I didn't regret my decision. I fully accepted my fate, it was what I deserved after everything I've done… but I was so afraid – afraid of living out the rest of my existence alone. For three days, I stayed on that flowerbed and cried, begging for something… anything… and then…" He drew his eyes upwards.

  * * *

  The claustrophobic gathering of trees reminded him of the enclosing rock and soil. The meagre traces of light shone down. The tightness nipping the air that made every breath lacking. Flowey had tears in his eyes, alone, nothing but Chara's dead silence from six feet below to comfort him.

  His thoughts – the only thing he had left – were of everyone else besides himself. He wondered where Chara was, whether it was nice, and if they would meet again someday. He wondered what Fleck was doing, and what adventurous escapades they were getting into with their new family. Flowey could only imagine the fun they were having in their life, in the sunshine, with those two wacky skeletons, and that one-eyed rageaholic and basement-dwelling loser who gave them life, and the two who he once called his parents in his past life.

  These black, crumbling faces, he had already counted and memorised. The single patch of sunlight rose from the west before setting in the east. At night and on those rainy days, all was shrouded in darkness. His dreams were as empty as his future. On that day, it was especially cloudy and especially rainy. Thin waterfalls poured around the abandoned flowers; the drops sploshing against his petals was the closest he would ever get to experiencing real rain. Waterfall could replicate it by so much. The insentient plants around him danced to the rhythm, perfectly content in their unconscious harmony.

  This was his life now. This was the punishment he deserved. This was justice. There was no room in this world for him, a creature who did not have room in himself for love, and showed no empathy for what he did and tried to do. But, it was all worth it, knowing that every other monster had gone free. Because of him, every monster had their souls back. Because of him, every monster had a bright future. It was a great final deed he could be proud of and carry for the rest of his empty life.

  But still… he was so lonely. Accepting that hard fact did not make it any softer.

  Asriel…

  Flowey's head swung up. Who said that? He turned in every direction and saw no one. He thought it might have been his imagination playing with him. It had created an imaginary friend to stave away a lifetime of solitude. It could at least get his name right.

  Or do you prefer Flowey…

  There it was again. A soft, womanly voice. It came from above.

  You don't have to be alone…

  Not anymore…

  Then, it happened so suddenly. One minute, all was quiet, cloudy grey, and miserable. The next, the sky itself parted and down reached a blinding shaft of light. It encapsulated him, pulling him off the bed of flowers by his roots. He dug deep into the soil, trying to escape, but the more he grabbed, the stronger it got.

  The ground around him crumbled and, before he knew it, he had dragged up a chunk of earth with his vines. He flew up and out the Underground, into the cold air above the ground.

  * * *

  "I was chosen," whispered Flowey. "This world chose me, Fleck. They wanted to test that Transporter of theirs, but they didn't know where or on what." Brute began to pace left and right as they walked, embellishing Flowey's words with the correct amount of hand gesturing at the correct moments, and Fleck realised what was going on between them. These two, the flower and the giant, had achieved synchronisation as if they were one person. If Brute was the body then Flowey was the brain. "They needed to find something or someone that was safe to take without endangering everyone in the Outerworld, and the only other place where they knew fellow monsters existed was Mount Ebott. They scanned over the mountain for something to find, and through a tiny crevice, they found a bed of flowers, and I was one of them.

  "At first, I was so scared; I thought I had died. When I opened my eyes, the first person I met was Juhi, and then his son, then that pen pusher of theirs. The surprise on their faces, when they realised this flower could talk, was priceless." He giggled to himself. Master Scribe Rickard couldn't make enough notes on that day. "I became a guest of honour within the castle, even got my own flowerpot. It was a good thing I pulled up some soil when I did, otherwise I wouldn't have survived very long in this place. Fake soil and real flowers just don't mix, you know.

  "Anyway, in this new land, I thought that I could use my Determination once more, but this time, purely for good. I was excited: I had been given a second chance in this new world with new monsters, new scenarios, and new ways to do right. I wanted to follow in your footsteps and do for this world what you did for the Underground, and I promised myself that I would never go back to my old ways. I made a new save, then began by trying to fix the bond between Emperor Juhi and Prince Zeus. Things didn't go quite so well the first time, so I reached my save file to go back and try again." He frowned. "Only to be immediately thrust back where I was."

  Fleck looked upon Flowey's face and searched deeply for any signs of deception to which there was none. Everything he said was genuine, every single syllable. He too was having a little trouble with the save feature he exploited to no end once upon a time. How unfortunate for it to fail now when he attempted to use it for noble deeds and not the countless times when he subjugated it for diabolical desires.

  The golden flower went on while his assistant's gesturing complimented his words. "Again and again, I tried to reach my save point, even reset a few times, and every single time I glimpsed the past only to be thrust back into the present. I was so confus
ed. I didn't understand – couldn't understand – what was wrong. What was happening to me? Was I hesitating? Was there someone of greater determination than me somewhere?" Flowey found his smile, Brute found his. "That was until I fell asleep. At first, I didn't know what I saw seeing. Cloudy images and random words. And on the next day, those dreams began to appear. You know what I'm talking about, don't you?"

  Fleck nodded. They had nothing to say and no way to argue back on anything he said.

  "I quickly realised that I had lost the ability to go back, but Determination always finds a way. It reached forward instead, glimpsing events yet to come. Using this power, I began to see things before they happened. I was able to solve issues before they became problems. Managed to offer sound advice to those who needed it by saying and doing the right things at the right time. Juhi interrogated me constantly about the Underground. I told him everything. Well, almost everything. I did a great job – too great a job, because one week later, he appointed me as Royal Advisor. I wasn't too surprised…" He chuckled. "I already saw it coming from a dream I had."

  The three followed a path as it spiralled downwards around the thick bark of a thicker tree trunk. For one moment, Fleck though, hoped, that they caught sight of a single, rogue thread of light from up high. No such luck.

  "I spent every moment I could grabbing as much sleep as possible. Powernaps. Afternoon siestas. Early nights and late mornings. I've seen everything by now, Fleck: every path we can take; every route we can travel; everything we can say; everything we can do. That's how the Outerworld knew where you were when they kidnapped you, and that's how I found you in this maze."

  They passed an aged carving of an upside-down heart in the tree's skin. Fleck focused on it, wondering how long it had been there.

  "Fleck, do you want to know why your Determination isn't working? Why you can't reach your save point? Why you can't go back or reset in this world? Why you can only see forwards?" Together, Brute and Fleck came to a halt. Flowey already knew how much leverage he held over the human just by judging the yearning in their look, the need to know. "It's because this isn't a videogame. We're in a fanfic, Fleck."

  Alright, Fleck believed that Flowey was telling the truth the last two times, but the third time was not the charm, sounding like the most ridiculous explanation ever conceived. He meant to tell them they were in a world where plot holes were more common that spelling mistakes and every original character was either perfect, wanted to get freaky with the main cast, or both? That was one heck of a big pill to swallow. Fleck sighed and shook their head, having none of it. If this was a joke, it wasn't very funny.

  "I know, that's the stupidest thing you've ever heard, but you'll believe it too," Flowey said. "This world we're in is not shaped by pixels, sound effects and lines of code, but with words and letters within pages, paragraphs and chapters. A written story. A book if you want to be generous…" He stopped to scoff and roll his eyes. Brute shrugged at the same time. "Nobody's ever going to find this in their local librarby. While in the Underground, in a videogame, you were able to reach your save file because that was how the game worked. Whenever you saved, you could load back to that point. If you reset – had you reset – you would've started the game all over again. Then you were able to change things because the mechanics of the videogame allowed for different choices and outcomes.

  "But here… every time you loaded your save file, you just flicked back a few pages, returned to the beginning of the chapter. You can do things differently in a videogame, but in a book, you can't. No matter how many times you read a chapter, or start from the very beginning, nothing changes, it always remains the same. Every time you went back, you and the world around you just repeated everything done up until that point: the same actions; same thoughts; same feelings; same lines of dialogue; you did everything exactly the same as before. Surely you must have felt different as you went about your adventure…"

  Fleck had never given it much thought, they had no reason to until now. The human recalled their adventure under Mount Ebott, then ran parallels to the Outerworld, comparing the two worlds based on what they felt. They had to admit, everything did seem different now, but it was hard to explain. Roaming the caverns where the monsters were banished to, they felt free somehow, notwithstanding the fact that they were trapped in the same boat as the rest of the population.

  Here, it felt like they had been dragged along a track, as if they had been racing toward an end goal by the strings of some unseen entity. A bad feeling rippled through their soul as they realised that maybe their actions that got them out alive on several occasions were not their own. Maybe their beliefs and feelings and behaviours were being controlled by an entity unknown.

  Brute moved further down the spiralling path. Fleck followed.

  "In fact, if anyone were to be watching us right now, they can go back whenever they want. They're the ones who truly understand what it is like," Flowey said with a snicker, taking a queue or two from the one he called Smiley Trashbag, laughing at how powerless he was to this revelation. "To follow a story but have no power over where it leads. To read their favourites again and again and arrive at the exact same conclusion every time. You and I could've had this conversation a million times and yet we act like this is the first."

  Fleck was on the verge of laughing like a lunatic with the flower. If what he said was true – and that was one mighty big if – then it meant that their entire life was fictional. This world was a land crafted out of imagination. The already fake trees and fake food and fake grass in their midst were just as artificial as the stuff waiting on Earth. Their friends, family and everyone they've met? Constructs created for emotional support and conflict. Fleck latched at the one thing they could: denial.

  "Tell me: do you remember your parents?" Flowey asked. "I don't mean Asgore and Toriel, I mean your actual, human parents. What do they look like? What were their jobs? Where did they live? Why did they let you go? Can you answer any of those?"

  As if their head was suddenly going to be filled with memories of their real mother and father, Fleck dove into the recesses of their mind, hoping for something new, but ended up in the exact same rut as always. No names. No faces. No clues. Them walking in the park on a rainy day, under the protection of an umbrella, their tongue cold against the cone of cherry ice cream with a sprinkled crushing of peanuts.

  Flowey shook his head, not surprised in the slightest. "Of course you can't…" He said, grinning. "That's because they never existed."

  Fleck slammed their boot soles down hard. What?

  "Your life began the second you awoke on that flowerbed," Flowey looked at them from out the edge of his black eyes as he spoke. "You have no past, no real family – they were never created in the first place. You were just a nameless, emotionless character to be controlled to advance the game to its conclusion, nothing more. Your past. Your memories. Your personality. These were all left open for certain… speculations."

  Speculations? Fleck was plummeting deeper down the rabbit hole. As they thought they reached the bottom, the white rabbits had burrowed a little deeper.

  "Did you honestly think that they make only one copy of a videogame, and only one piece of fanfiction exists in the world?" Both the advisor and his assistant shook their heads in unison. Fleck's cheeks went red; he was disappointed in the human. "I learned this after I was finished exploring every path this world had to offer. Instead of reaching forward with my Determination, I reached out to the boundaries of this universe, and do you know what I found?" Silence. Just as he thought. "You won't believe this: more universes! This world isn't just one, but thousands of alternate timelines, beginning and ending. Worlds stopping and starting from different places and points in time. Before the Underground. During the Underground. After the Underground.

  "I stumbled across maybe a thousand timelines that told a different origin story of you, Fleck. So many ways and reasons why… Missing from field trips. Explorations gone wrong. Abandonmen
ts. I quickly grew bored of abusive parents. All the same, so angry for no reason other than they're supposed to be, causing pain for the sake of causing pain. They think they can easily shock me? Not after all I've done."

  The human's past remained a blank slate. Could what the flower, formerly known as Asriel, be saying was really the truth? Fleck tried to imagine their parents as the not-so-friendly, punchy type and yet still came back as successful as viewing them as loving and successful. As the trio stepped onto a straight, interlacing between upper and lower bridges, Fleck found they could not accept Flowey the Flower's explanation. They needed to believe that there was a real family out there somewhere who gave them life and that their birth was more than just opening a stupid computer file.

  Flowey eyed the expanse beyond to avoid looking at the child. He couldn't see them, but he knew what they were thinking. He said, "You have been curious, haven't you? What would've happened had you reset. How differently another path through the Underground could have gone." Flowey conjured a 'friendliness pellet' from his small supply of organic soil within his foundation. The petal turned whilst hovering above his head. It looked like a regular bullet but it was coated red, the colour of Determination. "Here, let me show you…"

  As the bullet hovered closer, Fleck impulsively stepped away, holding both holstered weapons up for defence.

  "It's okay, it's okay," Flowey comforted with his assistant gesturing softly, impressive for a monster of his bulk. "It won't hurt, I promise. This bullet contains the visions from another timeline. Touch it and you'll get to see them."

  The red bullet span end over end before Fleck, who remained cautious for a few seconds. Fleck waited for the petal to move, to shot into their chest, but it did not. The crimson bullet wasn't moving at all, waiting patiently for the child to come to it rather than the other way around. Fleck lowered their arms, then slowly reached out.