章節 71: Chapter 71
Outside the bathroom, Inferno was waiting for Frisk because the latter did not want him to see him use a public urinal.
Inside the bathroom, Frisk had climbed to the top of the bathroom stalls and was sitting on the corner swinging his legs, texting, and waiting for a text message reply from Sans. His bladder was now emptied, but he was dealing with the other side effect of the coffee.
"You're alright, kid," Sans finally replied. "The coffee has given you a sugar rush. You're gonna be hyper for a while."
"No shit," Frisk replied while he hung backward into the toilet stall and typed upside down. "What am I supposed to do, Sans? I hate sitting out there. I want to help Papyrus and Undyne, but there's nothing I can do. The last time I tried Almighty King Jackass dumped me with a mad scientist. If I do anything else, he'll leave me with one of his jerk ass psychiatrists. It was easier when he just wanted to kill me. I wish he didn't want me at all."
Suddenly, Frisk heard knocking at the bathroom door.
"Frisk, are you alright?" Inferno said on the other side. "Uh, do you need help?"
"No, I'm ten!" Frisk yelled back. "I can use the bathroom by myself! Just give me a minute! Would ya?!"
"Right," Inferno said nervously. "Sorry…"
Frisk looked back at his phone and noticed that Sans was replying, so he texted, "Don't worry, Sans. I'm doing what I mentioned before now. We might not even need another plan. Well, we won't if the windows here work like they did on the surface. Thank God I was a street kid."
Frisk sat back up, stuffed his phone in his pocket, stood up on the walls of the stall, and started walking carefully along the tops of the bathroom stalls until he reached a skylight window in the middle of the bathroom. Once he reached it, he waved his hands pulling his nervous sweat from his brow and immersing it into the mechanisms of the window lock with his determination until the lock finally unlocked.
Frisk smiled until he pushed open the window with a loud creak. He froze in place fearfully for a second, but when Inferno said nothing, he pushed open the window, jumped, grabbed onto the side of the window, and pulled himself up as quickly as his arms could muster.
Once Frisk was on the roof, he sat up, silently thanked God for how much his determination had recovered, and replied to Sans and everyone else on the large group chat, "I did it! I'm on the roof!"
Sans quickly replied, "Well done, ya street urchin."
As soon as Frisk read that reply, Sans sent another text message, "But I think you have something going with the making yourself undesirable thing. Don't let yourself get caught, but if you do, we need to find a way to make Mettaton not want you as much as possible."
"But Sans, I've tried to fight him as much as I could, but he isn't giving up," Frisk texted. "What else can I do?"
"You've gotta find a weakness," Sans replied. "Is there anything he doesn't like?"
"Well, he doesn't like the sweater I'm wearing. He said it was too gothic."
"That could be something. Think about that, but for now, you should be trying to escape."
"Right, I just gotta cover my tracks."
Frisk tried pushing the window shut, but it wouldn't budge. He tried pushing it shut again, but it still wouldn't move.
In the room below, Frisk heard Inferno say, "Frisk, you've been in there for a long time. If you don't come out soon, I'm going to have to come in there!"
Frisk pushed harder and harder on the window, but the mechanism would not budge. In a panic, Frisk kicked the window as hard as he could, and it shattered. Glass flew everywhere including in the bathroom below. The noise brought back the memory of the other day and caused Frisk to freeze in shock for a moment.
"FRISK!" Inferno yelled as he pushed past the door and ran into the bathroom. "FRISK?! Is everything alright?! Where did you go, buddy?! What broke?!"
The yelling brought Frisk back to reality. He quickly pulled his foot out of the broken window and quietly backed away. He looked around on the roof and found a door leading to some stairs.
"Frisk?! Where are you hiding, son?!" Inferno asked as he quickly found the broken glass and the broken skylight window.
Frisk tried the door on the roof, but of course, it was locked. Frisk mouthed an expletive and looked for another place to hide. He quickly noticed a ventilation duct opening.
Inferno shot fire out of his hands to propel him to the roof. He looked around, but Frisk was nowhere to be seen.
"Frisk?" Inferno asked. "Where have you gone, buddy? You aren't in trouble. I just want to make sure you're okay."
That was when Inferno heard a loud thump from what sounded like the inside of the ventilation.
Frisk had fallen about 10 feet while trying to climb down through the inside of the ventilation shaft and lost 1 HP. He groaned in pain while rubbing his sore side.
"Frisk, you can't play in there," Inferno yelled from the opening to the vent. "Young man, you need to get out of there."
Frisk quickly got on his hands and knees and started crawling.
"Frisk, please come back!" Inferno yelled. "I know you're in there. I promise I won't tell Mettaton if you come back right now."
Frisk ignored Inferno's pleas while he continued crawling away in search of an empty room.
With no other option, Inferno jumped in behind him and used his fires to hover until he could reach the bottom of the shaft safely. Once he reached that bottom, Inferno saw a few blood drops from where Frisk had been. That sent the fire monster's fatherly instincts into a panic.
He looked ahead and only saw blackness, but as there was only one way to go, Inferno used his flames to propel him through the vent.
Meanwhile, Frisk's hyperactive energy allowed him to make progress but not enough progress. He stopped to catch his breath at a vent grating leading to a room filled with black cases.
"Frisk!" Inferno yelled. "Slow down! You're hurt!"
Frisk turned around and saw Inferno propelling towards him. In a panic, he turned back around and kicked as hard as he could at the grating causing it to quickly come crashing to the ground. Without much thought, Frisk jumped out of the grating and landed on a pile of black cases causing him to lose another HP point.
Inferno stopped at the opening Frisk made and looked down at the child who was rubbing his sore spot and struggling to get to his feet after his second rough fall of the day. Now that there was more light coming through the window, Inferno could see that Frisk had a cut on his cheek most likely from the broken glass on the roof.
"Frisk, you're hurt…" Inferno said as he jumped out and used his flames to make himself hover in the air above the wounded child.
"I'm fine!" Frisk spat back as he turned to run away. "Now, leave me alone!"
"Frisk, your cheek has a cut on it…"
"So, what?"
"We have to get that taken care of…"
"Who's we?"
"Frisk…"
"I'm not listening to you or to Mettaton."
"Frisk, please…"
"You work for the asshole who's trying to separate me from my family. How am I supposed to trust you? You don't really care about…"
"FRISK!" Inferno finally yelled causing Frisk to turn around in surprise. "You are going to sit down right now and let me look at your wound, so I can help you get healed! Is that clear, mister?!"
Frisk, surprised and dumbfounded by his suddenly authoritative fatherly tone, sat down on the ground, and said, "Okay."
"Good," Inferno said as he landed before Frisk. "Now, hold still."
Inferno shot individual flames out of his hands until the room was lit up. Then, he approached Frisk. Frisk sat down and trembled fearfully reliving the memories of past runs with monsters who fought with fire.
"It's okay, son," Inferno said as he crouched down in front of Frisk. "This might hurt for a second, but this will stop the bleeding. Trust me. My Dad was a doctor."
Inferno placed his thumb on Frisk's cheek. Frisk winced at the burning pain until Inferno moved his thumb away, and to his amazement, his cheek had stopped bleeding. The cut was healed.
Frisk and Inferno looked at each other not knowing what to say next for a moment before Frisk stood up and said, "Thanks for the help, but I've gotta go now."
"You know I cannot let you leave, human," Inferno said.
"You really going to be like that?" Frisk asked. "And I was just starting to think you were cool. You're worse than Mettaton…"
"What is that supposed to mean?" Inferno asked gently.
Frisk turned around, growled in frustration, and yelled while walking towards him, "God, do I really have to spell it out for you?! You're a sheep! You're a coward! You're worse than a bully! You're an apathetic asshole who allows other people to do shitty things because you're too weak-willed to do anything about it!"
Frisk's face was almost touching Inferno's. The former could see a faint trace of fear in the eyes of the latter. It gave Frisk a sick form of satisfaction.
"Stop it, Frisk," He said in his mind. "You don't need to survive by intimidation anymore. I know you're angry, but in your anger, you cannot sin…"
Tears formed at the corners of Frisk's eyes, and he quickly turned away in fear of his disturbing emotions and troubled memories. The change in expression was not lost on Inferno.
"Frisk, are you okay?" Inferno asked.
"No," Frisk replied with his voice breaking. "There's a sociopathic ghost-robot who's trying to replace my Dad and hurt my new family and there's nothing I do to help them or make him change his mind. It sucks."
Inferno looked at him thoughtfully as Frisk shed a few more frustrated tears. His thoughts were only interrupted when he felt his phone vibrate. He looked at it and saw that it was from Mettaton. Inferno looked at Frisk who turned away defeatedly and answered the call.
"Yes, Mettaton?" Inferno asked. "Oh, yes, Frisk is fine. He's just been a bit hyper is all. I took him to the music room to give him something to do."
Frisk smiled in surprise at Inferno's response as his eyes fell on the cases filling the room. Upon closer examination, he realized that these were all instrument cases. Inferno's conversation with Mettaton faded into the background as Frisk's eyes grew wide at seeing more instruments than he had ever seen in one place in his whole life. The flames still filled the room allowing Frisk to see how large the place really was. There were cases of all kinds lying around him. Big ones and small ones and even covered instruments shaped like pianos. They were countless. Frisk couldn't help but smile.
His eyes wandered back to the cases near him. Frisk looked at one of them and realized it was a violin case. He sat down, opened the case, and pulled out one of the most beautifully-crafted violins he had ever seen.
Frisk's mother had taught him to play. It was the only other instrument that he had been taught to play besides the piano and electric guitar. Frisk had almost forgotten he could play it. There was a lot that he had forgotten about.
Frisk smiled as the memories of his mother teaching him the violin filled his heart with happiness. He picked up the instrument and held it the way his mother taught him.
However, as he played the first note, a horrible dissonant note came out. The noise scared Inferno into dropping his phone, but it only made Frisk's face fall in disappointment.
"Crap," Frisk said sitting on the ground and starting to tune the violin like nothing had happened. "It's out-of-tune. Is there a piano around here?"
"What was that?!" Mettaton yelled through the phone. "What was that noise?!"
Inferno caught his breath for a few seconds before he picked up the phone and said, "Sorry, boss, that was Frisk. He was testing out a violin…"
On the other end, Mettaton interrupted, "Hold on. A violin? You mean Frisk knows how to play the violin?"
"Uh, I suppose…" Inferno replied.
"Has he mentioned being able to play anything else?" Mettaton asked.
"He said something about needing a piano to tune the violin so maybe…" Inferno said suddenly noticing that Frisk was out of his line of sight.
Inferno looked around in a panic until he heard a note on a piano. He turned around to see Frisk playing a newly uncovered piano in the corner.
"You sound in tune," Frisk said sitting himself down on the piano bench in front of the piano and picking up the violin he had set aside. "But I should probably test you out to be sure."
Frisk began playing a ragtime piece Inferno had never heard before. The melody played like a romantic waltz as Frisk's fingers ran up and down the keys.
Inferno stood there and watched feeling absolutely spellbound.
"Oh, my God!" Mettaton yelled. "Put me on speaker."
Inferno thoughtlessly obeyed while Frisk continued his performance.
Suddenly, a trapdoor opened, and Mettaton emerged through it and landed on the floor next to Inferno. He said nothing but quietly listened along with his employee while Frisk finished his performance.
"Alright," Frisk said to himself. "I guess this means you're in tune."
"Darling!" Mettaton yelled causing chills to run through Frisk's spine. "You never told me you could play."
Frisk quickly turned around and nervously yelled, "It was none of your damn business!"
"Quite the attitude," Mettaton replied walking past the other instruments to where Frisk was sitting. "But that doesn't matter. Talent like this cannot go to waste. I must get you in front of a crowd. I'll have you perform tonight. How does that sound?"
Frisk went silent and felt his heart skip a beat. He would have frozen if not for the caffeine making him jittery. Frisk couldn't believe what he was hearing.
Mettaton finally made it to Frisk, picked him up, walked away from the piano, and said, "Well, if you have no objections, let's get you a piano."
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