He never wanted to move. To leave his home, let alone his country. It had all happened so suddenly when his Pa returned home late one night, his eyes wide, his face bloody and bruised, mumbling gibberish. He and Ma had spoken in private, and early the next morning, they packed what they could carry and made their way out of the rocky mountains to the east coast.
They never stopped, however. Pa wasn't satisfied with staying in America. They kept moving, crossing the sea into Europe, and finally they came to a stop in Germany a year later, in a town called 'Frankfurt'.
The children here, he didn't know. This part of the town was somewhat new, but it didn't interest him. There was nobody to play with considering he didn't speak their language and they'd often mock him without him even realizing it.
His Pa remained disheveled and paranoid, constantly glancing over his shoulders, jumping when someone entered a room, wincing when someone spoke. He had no idea why his Pa was acting like this, but his Ma remained silent about it all.
Instead, she spent her time trying to teach her son the German language while also learning it herself. It was due to this that he began to pick up on certain words the other children would say. It wasn't until months later, having been living in the country for half a year now, that he became somewhat fluent in it. He still had a ways to go, but at least he could hold up a conversation.
With the language down, he tried his luck with the kids again, and managed to make some friends. He taught them some things about his previous life, particularly about Cowboys and Indians. This didn't seem to interest the kids all that much, but they listened to him nonetheless.
He was obsessed with cowboys. He'd always dreamed of becoming some gang-running outlaw on the wrong side of the law for doing the right thing, but that was looking to be less and less of a likely outcome.
Then he learned about Mt. Ebott. The mountain that ate children, as the legend went. Nobody ever returned from it. A monster there would steal kids and devour them. They pointed it out to him, a distant mountain that rose into the sky, pale in the distance. It was certainly a hike to last many days, but it intrigued him.
He learned of the people that disappeared there throughout the years. Hundreds, apparently. So he decided he'd go there and solve the mystery himself, asking his friends along. They were terrified at the prospect.
So he went alone, packing food to last a few days and snuck out in the dead of night to make the dangerous trek. He'd made sure to snag a map from the local library, and was finally on his way, traveling through the vast forests of Germany, drinking the water of rivers he found, his food dwindling down into nothing, and he realized his mistake. He hadn't packed for the return trip, yet so close now... he couldn't stop.
He'd taken his dad's revolver, something he usually kept in his nightstand, alongside his trusty cowboy hat. If there really was a monster there... he'd put an end to its tyranny and allow the people to live without fear of Mt. Ebott.
Yet there was nothing. Nothing came at him on his journey around the mountain, and he found that it had all just been a story. A legend. Now he had no food, and was struggling to read his map, beginning to panic- before falling into a seemingly bottomless pit.
By some miracle, he survived. His fall had been cushioned by a bed of golden flowers that grew where the sunlight touched down into the cave he'd dropped in. A realization struck him- he'd entered the beast's lair.
Turned out, however, the "beast" was a kind old woman, though he was put off by the horns on her head, and her fur-coated body. He demanded of her the children she'd taken from the surface, and to his surprise, grief registered on her kind face. Her name was Toriel, and she told him the tale of five other humans who had fallen before him, and were all slain by Asgore, the King of Monsters.
