songs for the fallen

frisk meets a flower and has an existential crisis

The flower--Flowey--stares at them. It quirks its stupid eyebrows and tilts its petally head to the side and makes a clicking noise with its teeth, and they really don't think flowers should have teeth, but maybe it's really better if they don't question it. Flowers can have teeth if they want. Who are they to be so discriminatory? "Hmm," the flower says. Its charisma feels, somehow, practiced. "You're new to the Underground, aren'tcha? Golly, you must be so confused! Someone ought to teach you how things work around here! I guess little old me will have to do."

"Huh," Frisk says, not really able to formulate anything more articulate than that. They're convinced they're either dreaming or dead. And, honestly, given everything that's happened to them today, dead seems like the more realistic option. "Um...okay? Underground? Are you...are there other people here?"

"There sure are!" the flower says. "And I'm happy to teach ya just how to get along with them!" Without any kind of prelude or warning, it does...something to them, something they can't entirely describe as a process. Something they can only really explain as a result. The room around them snaps instantaneously to black, defining features removed and replaced with nothing but a colorless, high-contrast void. Flowey stares at them in black and white, quirking its petally head to one side as if to inspect them. "See that heart? That is your SOUL, the very culmination of your being!"

They are, in fact, looking at a floating red heart. It is, in fact, directly in front of them. They recognize it as themself, even having never seen it before, better than they recognize their own face in the mirror. As soon as they've seen it, the illusion is gone, and they're back on the floor of the cave again, head reeling from whatever the hell that shithead little flower just did to them. "Watch it with the fucking mind games, buddy!" they threaten, picking up a stick they found on the floor and brandishing it at the flower. "Tell me if you're about to do some freak-ass shit like that again!"

"Whoa, whoa, no need to get so violent!" Flowey leans back out of the way of their stick, giving them a confusing wink. "I'm just tryin' to help. Your SOUL starts off weak, but can grow strong if you gain a lot of LV."

"Levels?" they ask. They're somewhat familiar with the logic of video games--they've played their fair share on boxy family computers and arcade machines when they had spare change. LV means level, usually. Flowey, however, is looking at them like they're stupid.

"No. LOVE." It looks absolutely baffled. "You really don't know a thing about this place, do you?"

"Dude, I just fell through a bottomless fucking pit in a mountain. Sorry I don't have a fucking doctorate in acronyms." They shrug, sticking their hands in the pockets of their shorts and shaking leaf litter out of their hair. They didn't even know they'd gotten that messed up on their trek up the mountain. Not like they can ever keep their hair free of debris of some sort. They haven't brushed with anything more than their fingers in three years. "Can you just explain this shit to me without being all condescending?" Maybe they're losing their temper a little. Maybe they should be nicer. But they're still pretty convinced they're dead, and they don't want to accidentally make friends with the Devil. They've already committed a mortal sin by doing this to themself, if their few Sunday school sessions are anything to go by. They know their chances at redemption aren't great. They're doing the best they can.

"If you could just...stand still and listen, that'd be spectacular," the flower says, clearly losing patience with them by the second. They've made a few bad choices already today. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to just sit here and hear it out.

"Okay. Sorry," they say, the apology half-hearted and unconvincing. They aren't sure how to feel about this...guy? Can flowers be guys? In a people way? In a gender way? They weren't built for this kind of focus. "Go on and tell me about the, uh...the soul thing." They still haven't entirely processed that, aside from filing it in their mental folder of Things That Probably Make More Sense If I'm Dead And This Is Some Extremely Fucked Up Afterlife.