Undertale

Chapter 10: Dummy!

"It sounds like it came from over here... Oh! You've fallen down, haven't you... Are you okay? Here, get up... Chara, huh? That's a nice name. M y  n a m e   i s . . ."

I woke up on a bed of golden flowers. They must have broken my fall. It was really quite incredible that of all the places I could have landed, it was on this little patch of flowers. Where was I, anyway?

I was half hoping that I'd been dreaming. Most dreams end with a fall. But no. I had fallen, again, and somehow, I'd landed on a bed of golden flowers, again. The flowers were growing out of a reletively shallow, foul-smelling pool of water, and there was a large, wide waterfall next to me. I was surrounded by broken chunks of boardwalk. At first I tried to walk along the broken boardwalk, but eventually, I had to wade chest-deep in the water. I passed huge piles of trash. That was probably what was giving the water its awful smell. There were quite a few brands I recognized in the trash piles.

The waterfall here seemed to flow from the ceiling of the cavern... Occasionally, a piece of trash will flow through... and fall into the bottomless abyss below. Viewing this endless cycle of worthless garbage... It fills me with determination.

I waded past more piles of trash. I rested my hand on a rusted bike. Its horn wheezed a honk of despair. There was a beat-up desktop computer. The inside was empty. There was a DVD case for an anime. Desperate claw marks covered the edges. There was a cooler. It had no brand, and showed no signs of wear... Inside were a couple of freeze-dried space food bars. They didn't seem as though they'd been touched by the filthy water. I took one. I figured that because I had died so many times, I should probably try to get all the food I could.

There was a regular training dummy, like the one I "fought" in the Ruins. I didn't really feel like beating it up, though. I stared into its eyes for a moment. I walked on. Suddenly, the dummy turned orange, and its eyes became alive and angry. "Oh, God..." The dummy began shaking violently, popped into the water, and then popped back up in front of me. It floated above the water's surface, in midair. "Wh—what?"

"Hahaha... too intimidated to fight me, huh!?" the dummy said. "I am a ghost that lives inside a dummy. My cousin used to live inside a dummy, too. Until... YOU CAME ALONG! When you talked to them, they thought they were in for a nice chat. But the things you SAID...! Horrible. Shocking! UNBELIEVABLE!"

"What? All I said was 'Uh...hi?'!" I cried, figuring that this dummy could only be talking about the dummy in the Ruins.

"It spooked them right out of their dummy!"

"Well, sorry... but that's not..."

"HUMAN! I'll scare your SOUL out of your body!"

My SOUL floated out in front of me. The dummy turned red, its different cloth parts separating and shaking violently. "Feeble. Feeble! FEEBLE!" said the dummy. Suddenly, I was surrounded by little white dummies. They sent dust balls at my SOUL. They were surprisingly difficult to avoid, but when I managed to avoid them, the dust balls would hit the Mad Dummy instead of me. "OWWWW! You DUMMIES! Watch where you're aiming your magic attacks!"

"That's magic? I thought it was dust."

"Hey! You! Forget I said anything about magic!!!"

"Well, all monsters are made of magic," I said, trying to avoid more magic dust balls.

"I'll defeat you and take your SOUL!"

The dummy started to slowly float from side to side. "Spare! Spare!" I said, though I figured it would do no good. I was caught in a storm of dust balls.