Mettatale

Chapter 2: The Fall

About 30 minutes into the hike, I felt kind of funny. The grass I had felt so connected with started to almost stare back at me.
"Guys," I said. "I think it's kicking in."
"Already?" Braxlynn replied. "You and your empty stomach, I swear!"
At this point, we had hiked pretty far. I took a deep breath as I lost all depth perception. I looked up to see a peculiar cave.
"Uh, guys?" I asked. "Am I hallucinating or do you see the cave too?"
"Yes!" Braxlynn said. She looked at Levi. "Levi, I dare you to go in."
"Oh god no," Levi said. "I double dog dare you Syma!"
I was barely able to know where the ground was. I also noticed I was feeling especially gutsy.
"Fine," I said. I trudged into the cave.
The cave was insane. I saw as the vines rippled and changed colors. There were rays of sunshine coming through the small cracks of the cave that seemed to dance when I looked away. I felt a warm sensation wash over me, and I felt pure joy.
"This is awesome!" I laughed. "Come on in! WHOO!"
Braxlynn and Levi started laughing.
"She is so gone!" Braxlynn laughed.
I started to spin around, still whooping. I felt absolutely amazing.
"Hey guys!" I yelled. I slowly ascended a rock. That was in the cave. "Watch this! I'm gonna jump!"
"Syma!" Levi yelled. "You're tripping so hard!"
"Hell yes I am!" I yelled.
I looked around, and then I jumped. I landed hard.
"See?!" I laughed. "I'm braver than you all!"
I began to jump around triumphantly.
"Y'all are little wussies!" I yelled. "I love this moment! This spectacular moment we are all-"
The floor came out from under me. It happened so fast there was no time to think about it.
"SYMA!!!!!" I heard Levi scream. I saw as the hole in the ground got smaller and smaller.
THUD!
The whole world went black. It felt like I had been out for seconds. I felt a poke.
"Human?" A voice said. "A human?"
I grunted. The voice gasped.
"Oh gosh, we haven't had one of these in years. Wow!" The voice said.
I opened up my eyes. It was a... yellow flower? A talking flower?
"What the heck?" I said weakly. "Am I still hallucinating or are you a talking flower?"
"I am a talking flower indeed! Golly, you must be so confused!" The flower said. "Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Flowey! Flowey the flower! Welcome to the underground!"
"What? The underground?" I said with confusion.
"Yeah! The underground!" Flowey said with a rather quirky tone. "Don't you humans read your history books anymore?"
"What?" I said. "So it's not just some kooky bedtime story?"
"Oh golly, no!" Flowey said. "But don't worry, you came at the right time! We actually can't kill you anymore."
"Why was that ever an option?" I asked.
"Oh yeah, the last human that came through here did some pretty messed up crap. They were not all that kind and ended up assassinating any possible leader. The king, the queen, anyone capable of leading us was either confirmed dead or missing. This gloating robot took over instead. He's so delusional," Flowey rambled. "Mettaton was our only star in the underground and that fame got to his head."
"Wait," I said. "I'm going to stop you right there. Metta-what?"
"TON," Flowey said. "MettaTON."
"Ok, that's great," I said. "I enjoyed your story and all but, like, how do I leave?"
"You can't!" Flowey said almost joyfully. "You're pretty much stuck down here. In order to cross the barrier that keeps us locked inside, you have to go to the palace. That's where the barrier is."
"Ok, if you're not going to kill me, can you lead me there?" I asked.
"Oh yeah," Flowey said. "I forgot to tell you about that. You see, I can't kill you, however I am legally obligated to do something else."
"What is that?" I asked. I was cut off before I could say anything else as I felt arms grapple me.
"F-Flowey!" I yelled. "What are they doing to me?"
"You fell down here," Flowey said. "Now you have to join King Mettaton's fan club! Have fun!"
I tried to kick and punch the arms from around me. I observed a grotesquely green forearm that had me in a sort of headlock, and I took a deep breath. I bit down as hard as I could on the monster's forearm. He winced in pain as he dropped me. I fell to the ground, and began to run through the only exit point I could find: a purple door. I ran and ran.
"Stop her!" I heard. I ran until I was greeted with spikes that went through the doorway. I looked around, when I saw three yellow switches on the long pink wall. I noticed that the first two switches were decked out in handwriting. I didn't have time to read it, but I naturally assumed these were the switches I had to pull. I pulled the first one when I heard the clanging of armor from down the corridor. I dashed to the second switch as the clanging grew closer. I grabbed the second switch and attempted to crank it. It only budged part way.
"Come on!!" I grunted. I continued to pull with all of my might, when I saw what looked like flames growing brighter from the dark corridor. As if some higher power was looking out for me, whatever was jamming the switch finally broke.
"Get back here, bro!" One of the guards said. "You don't bite my bro like that!"
I watched as the spikes finally went down, and I narrowly dodged the first guard's attempt at swooping me. He ran into the wall. I ran into the next corridor, but abruptly halted at the sight of a large array of spikes.
"Oh god," I muttered to myself. I went out on a leap of faith, and I placed my foot on the lower right spike set. They immediately went down.
"Come back here!" The first guard's voice echoed from the previous corridor. I placed my foot forward again. The spikes automatically went down. When I stepped over to the area where the spikes retracted, the spikes that originally were retracted went back to their starting position. I heard the clanging come closer as I stepped forward again. No good. I stepped to the left, and the spikes came down. The clanging of the armor continued to draw near. I stepped forward. The spikes went down again. I continued to play the guessing game, but about halfway through, I saw as both the first and second guard tripped over one another and fell on the wrong spike.
"Oh no!" The first guard yelled. He pulled up the second guard by his meaty green arm I had recently bitten. "Are you okay bro?"
"Yeah," the second guard said.
"Oh bro, I don't know what I would have done if you were hurt!" The first guard said.
"I love you bro," the second guard said. I took this opportunity to say something, as I knew that the two guardsmen wouldn't be able to apprehend me anytime soon.
"You guys are really close, huh?" I asked.
"I love him," the first guard said. "I didn't know what this room was capable of!"
"I'm glad you two have so much love for each other," I said. "Can I ask you why you guys were chasing me?"
"I may as well tell you," the second guard said. "Long ago, our ruler Mettaton was not king. King Asgore was. He was like, totally a wonderful king, too, even if he was a bit backwards and misguided. He was I guess killed by the last human that came through here, and all the other viable rulers went missing. I'm like? Not sure how I feel about that human killing Asgore though. That human was super nice to us and set us up on a nice cream date together! But it's like, weird. I don't want to think that human was bad, but like, why did everyone else go missing then? Whatever. My point is that King Mettaton took over. He made a new and like, really weird policy where all humans must join his fan club. And like, we will be in prison if we go against the King's wishes. It's nothing personal, human. We're being forced to do this."
"I can feel how afraid you are," I said. I could feel the terror in the souls of the two guards. "That's why I want to help you. Do you want things to be like this?"
"I'm like, only saying this because the king never actually managed to monitor the ruins," the first guard said. "We don't want this. We're supposed to act like we love it here. If we don't, we are imprisoned and tortured. King Mettaton is a dictator. He controls everyone with his TV show. We were stationed at the ruins because 02 and I were able to pretend to be brainwashed enough to be trusted!"
"I can feel that you guys want change," I said. "Instead of conforming, why don't we do something about it? Who alerted you guys?"
"That flower did," 02 said.
"And why would the king trust a flower?" I asked.
"I don't like lying, but you could always say it was a false alarm."
"Human," 01 said. "That is risky. We could be charged with treason!"
"Hmm..." I said. "You could maybe tell them that I fell on these spikes and crawled away to die."
"That could be believable," 01 said. "But bro, what if they ask for the body?"
"Do monsters not eat people?" I asked.
"Where the hell did you hear that?!" 02 asked.
"My bullies at school," I sighed. "Probably not a credible source."
"Fine," I said. "Stay here. Say you searched for me, but I bolted by the time you guys made it to the scene!"
"Ok, dude," 02 said. "But if we get in trouble and you get caught, you had better believe that we will like, haunt you and stuff!"
"Deal," I replied. "Now go, I've got your back!"
01 and 02 ran off. I spent another several moments solving the remainder of the puzzle. After what felt like an eternity, I finally made it to the other side. I progressed to the next room, where I saw a glowing star-like item. There was a table with a piece of cheese. I saw the hole in which the mouse had once lived. The cheese had been there for so long that it was stuck to the table and covered with small bits of mold. I could feel the pain for the mouse. The hunger it felt, and it's final moments likely thinking about cheese.
In that moment, I could feel nothing but EMPATHY.