Guiltale

Chapter Nine: The Shocking Debacle and The Snowy Treats

"G-Grace-Grace! What are you doing!? Mom said to avoid monsters but now you've... made a promise with one? What the merde?"

"Hey, language!" I said, walking forwards towards the first new SAVE point I'd seen in a long while. "It doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Plus, if I'm double crossed, it will not be because I was the untrustworthy one!"

"UUUGHH!" Chara folded her arms, refusing to read the flavor text of the SAVE point.

"Don't you think you're overreacting? Considering what aunt Toriel and you have said about monsters thus far, I'm not all that worried about dying. Getting hurt maybe, but I don't think monsters really want to kill me. I think they feel like they have to."

Before Chara could respond, a large bird seemingly made of snow waltzed in my path. They were quite short and looked like a young teen.

Icy bullets flew into me as they fearfully approached, inexperienced and clumsy in their attack patterns.

"Ice jokes are 'snow' problem!" they punned desperately.

I giggled a bit. Oh man, is the entire underground like this? This is great!

"It says, 'Snowdrake is pleased with its "cool" jok- OH!" Chara was distracted by me dosging to the ground. Instead of getting up, I lay on my side, hand on my chin and a leg up with a grin.

"Hey kid, you're pretty good." I winked. "But, can you stop 'hitting on' me, please? You're gonna give people the wrong idea!" I laughed as Snowdrake's eyes widened.

"You... like terrible puns, too!"

"Yeah, that's just about all I do well, haha."

"Well, you know what they say about people who like bad jokes – they're trustworthy. Alright, I'll leave you alone."

As soon as the monster teen left, Chara gave me my stats.

"You got 12g from that one – maybe they're trying to apologize?"

I shrugged. "As long as I can continue to support myself out here, I'll be good. Oh, what's up here?"

"Grace!" Chara called after me as I went down the left path.

There was a thin river up there, with a fishing rod affixed to the ground...

"Guess I'll 'bite'. Let's see what this is about?" I'll spare you Chara's moaning. All that was attached to the end was a photo of a weird-looking monster and a note:

(Call Me!
Here's my number!)

"Yeah, not happening." Winding the line back into the river, I went back to the only other interesting thing around: a box and a sign.

*(This is a box. You can put an item inside or take an item out. The same box will appear later, so don't worry about coming back.
Sincerely, a box lover.)

"Huh... so it's some kind of magic or technology that monsters made that connects a bunch of boxes over a great distance? – I bet the mail system is amazing here!"

"Oh yeah, I don't think anything came late – not that we expected it to," Chara was inspecting the sign, too. "I thought it was because of how small the underground is, but we never received anything later than 'on time'. How are you holding up, by the way?"

"Oh, the cold doesn't bother me (snrk). I think my burns were healed by the last SAVE, and I haven't been hurt too badly by anyone except Toriel, so I think I'm doing great! I just hope we make it somewhere warm to sleep in time for me to pass out..."

"Yeah, that'd be for the best I think. Hey, you wanna use that box?"

"Well... I don't really have much yet. I opened my backpack to CHECK. Most of my camping supplies were left with Toriel, since I wouldn't really use them, but I kept my water purifying bottle, lighter, scissors, and fireproof gloves. Food-wise, I was okay but I could still carry more: