Chapter Text
This year, it was not your year. Your luck had taken a most graceful swan dive into the deep end of the pool of misfortune and misery. You had hit rock bottom and were somehow still falling. You were half convinced you had ticked off some elder god or something because it was just ridiculous how quickly your fate had turned bleak and barren.
Firstly, your mother had decided that, since you weren’t getting solid A’s in college, she was going to go back on the deal the two of you had made and use the 50% she had saved towards your tuition to go on a winter cruise. You had attempted to reason with her. After all, this was not high school, you were an adult juggling a job, an apartment, and your classes. And it wasn't like you were failing. This conversation went about as well as the one where you told her you were going to school for Industrial Design rather than Business. Which meant you were left with a payment plan you couldn’t afford, and a bank that didn’t particularly care that you were already struggling to make ends meet.
Secondly, your loser roommate forgot to pay their half of the rent. This led to you living out of your tiny scrap of a car in the dead of winter. Your heater barely worked as it was and you swore the gas tank was holding itself together with nothing but wishes and duct tape. Once it finally died, you were giving it a funeral.
Thirdly, your company decided to downsize. Lucky you.
But, despite your troubles, you had survived. You had managed to eke out a passing grade by the skin of your fingertips. You’re crazy old neighbor with an unhealthy obsession with breakfast cereal and cryptids had offered you her spare room, free of charge, as long as you handled the things her bad back wouldn’t let her do anymore. This mostly meant tending to her assortment of semi legal plant life (and keeping your mouth shut about it), picking up the groceries when they were delivered, and doing the laundry. An excellent deal you were not going to pass up on.
Nor was the offer of a few thousand dollars to play cryptid hunter.
Your neighbor/roommate/landlord was an elderly monster who had spent most of her life in the underground city (aptly named Underground. It was very original) and swore up and down and on her husband's grave that there were cryptids in those old ruins. And she had spent her whole life searching for them.
Now, she was too old to make the hike, let alone wander the Underground by herself. So she employed you to do so. And for three thousand dollars, you were more than willing to take a thirty minute hike, have a week-long vacation in the woman’s old home, and take scenic pictures in the name of science and insanity. I mean really, a rent free week in a log cabin, and enough money to last you three weeks of groceries? In this economy? You hit the jackpot.
As such, you loaded up your backpack with ramen packets and powdered drink mixes, charged your neighbor’s state of the art camera, and packed your favorite comic books. You were going Underground!
~~~~~~~~~~~~
You hadn’t been expecting the Underground to be so… dusty.
It was everywhere. Dust all over the ground, dust mixed in with the snow, dust clogging up the air, dust settled in the trees. There were piles of it, just sitting there. Which was really really creepy, given what little you knew about monster biology. (look, you were working night shifts, and morning shifts. You had to cut some classes, and frankly, it wasn’t like you had any interest in any sort of medical field.)
…you were charging the old woman extra for emotional distress. You deserved a whole batch of cookies to yourself. The thin, crispy ones with the chopped up chucks of chocolate inside them. And more of those stories she loved telling. (that monster had been just about everywhere)
You crunched through dust and leaves, pulling back a low hanging branch to reveal the town you had been making your way towards for the past few hours. From your position above the area, you could see the winding streets and cozy looking homes of Snowdin, the place you'd be staying at while you went about taking pictures of the area in a half-hearted bid to find the cryptids your landlady was certain roamed the area.
Only, it was empty.
The whole town was empty. No one walked the dust filled streets. No lights shown from the windows of houses or establishments. It was still and eerily silent.
And, directly in front of you, was your only company, standing over a suspiciously large pile of dust.
Said company involved a sketchy looking skeleton who you estimated was roughly one too many feet of nope and way too many bright colors to be sane.
He smiled, just too wide to be friendly. The words on his glasses glitching out for a moment. “Wassup.”
Like a sane person, you bolted.