Chapter Text
*Knock Knock Knock*
Three quick knocks interrupted Dess’ time sitting alone in her room acting cool.
“Ughhhhhhh, who is it?” She groaned out.
“Hmmmm, that’s a wonderful question… But a better one would be what do I want to tell you…?” A bitcrushed voice mocked from behind the door.
“Oh… Hi Eram…”Dess strained out. To be honest, it would’ve been one of the better ones on the ship if not for the fact it adored Gaster’s evil cat, who it seemed to constantly hang out and play with.
“Our Captain said to tell you that we will arrive soon… And that it’s your turn to feed the lightner!” It giggled.
It seemed like it was ALWAYS Dess’ turn to feed the random cop she kidnapped from TV World in place of Mrs. Dreemurr. At least Mrs. Dreemurr wouldn’t bite as often. But nooooo, that weird Angel trapped inside Kris just had to dodge all of her attacks and that purple monster girl just had to rush her and chip her sword and block her attempts at getting Toriel. To be fair, the girl was probably perfectly nice when you weren’t being demonized as some apocalypse-causing pure evil demon trying to kill everyone. And it was good that Kris had some friends aside from Noelle, even if one looked scarily close to a younger Asriel. Regardless, Dess grabbed the cop’s portion from the kitchen and brought it down to the ship’s lower levels.
“Heyyy Officer, it’s dinnertime again!” She called out, descending the stairs to the cyan fish monster.
“You LOSERS still haven’t explained why I’m here.” She barked out. Finally at a reasonable tone at least, seeing as normally she’d just yell and scream at whatever anyone did.
“Yes I did, you’re here because I kidnapped you.”
“THAT’S NOT AN EXPLANATION?”
“Close enough, now do you want food or not.”
“…FINE. But it better not be those gross onion balls from yesterday.”
“I- Wh- That Takoyaki was delicious! What do you mean gross!”
“It tasted like raw onion! If it wasn’t boiling hot I’d’ve wondered if you cooked it at all!”
“I should’ve brought you slop and stolen your portion if that’s how you were gonna react to it.” Dess glowered. Seriously, who did this lady think she was, throwing spears at her, and then insulting Norma’s cooking! Honestly, the nerve of some people.
“Whatever.” The cyan monster sighed, “But if you’re not gonna tell me where we are, can you at least explain that corpse over there? It’s been freaking me out.”
Glancing over to where she was gesturing was the Vessel, lying limply against a wall, with some loose bindings keeping it from flying across the ship.
“Oh that’s. Uh. The Captain’s.”
“The Captain’s… human corpse?”
“Yeah why not close enough.”
“Who even are you people? You still haven’t told me your name.” The cop bit out at her.
“Rory Nite.” Dess responded instantly. That was the alias she had been using with all the darkners she had met, just in case one slipped up and mentioned her to anyone.
“Roaring Knight, eh?…Well, you can’t keep me trapped here for long! I’ll break out eventually and when that day comes I’ll make you pay! NGAAAHHHH!!!” The officer shouted, straining against the rope with considerable effort.
“Wowww mhm I’m sure you will.” Dess deadpanned, leaving the food on the ground next to the prisoner and heading back upstairs, only to be immediately met with Friend jumping directly into her face once she was on the deck again.
“GASTER! GASTER GET OVER HERE AND GET YOUR GODDAMNED CAT!” Dess screeched, jumping back from it. To be fair, if it hadn’t been for the agonizing months of paranoia and fear and waking up with random near-unnoticeable bite marks, Friend would’ve probably been a perfectly nice creature. But she just couldn’t forget waking up in the dead of night, looking across the room and seeing a pair of mismatched eyes smiling back. The feeling of walking down the road to the shelter every night, as if possessed by some strange force to get as far away from those eyes as possible. The knowledge that something terrible would happen to her, to her family if she didn’t do something. Well in the end, something certainly happened, and she wound up falling through the bottom of the lake square onto a docked pirate ship. Regardless, it’s rather hard to keep perfectly calm knowing the creature next to you is capable of such terrifying degrees of psychological torture.
She just had to get through this. Then she’d be able to see her family, be able to see Noelle again. Just waltz around, throw swords at some teenagers, cause some weird roar-thing Gaster was excitedly explaining to her when she crashed down and got fitted with some janky armour, and then she walks free and everything can go back to normal. Honestly, she really wished Gaster had explained his whole elaborate scheme to her sometime after her ears stopped ringing. For a place with magic capable of fixing a scary amount of broken bones and what was definitely a non-recoverable amount of blood loss, you’d think they could fix a concussion a bit easier.
“You know I cannot tell it what to do!” The staticky voice called back from the wheel. “Get Eram if you must make it do something!”
God, she hated everyone on this ship.
Keeping an eye on the now-sleeping cat, Dess moved to the front of the ship and watched as the dark land ahead grew closer. It was a small island, one they visited often, particularly whenever Gaster wanted Dess to go hide in a closet and open a dark fountain for the lightners to find or to kidnap some other random lightner. So what if she was late that one time? Someone still wound up on the ship, and it’s not her fault she got sidetracked looking at how much her town had changed! There was even a new convenience store! And a new flower shop! It almost brought a sense of melancholy, seeing how far everyone had gotten in the time she’d been gone. Kris was so much older when they fought, hell they might’ve even been approaching the age she was when everything happened to her. She couldn’t wait to get to go back and talk to everyone again. Maybe Pizzapants finally got a new job! Maybe Father Alvin finally took up storytelling like Mr. Boom always said he wanted to. Maybe Bratty and Catty had finally realized how similar they were and stopped hating each other! Well, maybe that last part was a bit too hopeful. But still! Soon she’d be able to sit down in her living room and watch old Christmas movies again with her family.
“Don’t worry Noelle, I’ll be back soon.” She thought, as the ship finally slowed to a halt at the shore. “Soon. I’m almost there.”