Undyne’s Arena
It was one of the best fights he’d ever seen. Not that he’d seen many up to that point, but still, the grace and skill with which the armored monster thoroughly thrashed their opponents was somehow both terrifying and mesmerizing. Spears of a strange purplish light would materialize in the air around them, and with a flick of the wrist they would be flung at top speed towards the enemy, or sometimes the armored monster would flip through the air, as easily and lightly as if they wore none of the heavy looking and sounding plate armor, and as they soared they would catch hold of their spear and strike as they landed, knocking their opponent back. Every now and again one of the fighters would turn to look up, out of the arena towards a fancy sort of box built into the higher part of the seats with curtains hanging down in front of the windows, veiling whoever was inside. “That’s the Royal Box,” Monster Kid replied when Fang asked him, refusing to even take his eyes off the fight for even a moment. “Sometimes the King and Queen come to see the tournaments.” And sure enough, Fang could see the very faint shadowy outline of a figure with some kind of pointed crown on their head. But there was only one shadow, and if there were two people behind the curtains, he couldn’t see them. Only one of the royal pair had come to see the fights. With a roar, the armored monster bodily slammed her opponent into the ground, knocking them out. The crowd leapt to its feet, cheering and screaming, though some few were booing. It was the happiest Fang had seen anyone down here in the entire two days he could remember. The monster whipped off their helmet and he saw a flash of blue scales and what at first he thought was vibrantly red and somewhat spiked hair. After a moment he realized that it really wasn’t hair at all, but a collection of long spines that covered the top of her head and down the back of her neck, as well as a very large fin that sagged slightly from its own weight out of water and mimicked the general shape of a ponytail. It wasn’t hard to figure out who she was. Pretty much everyone was on their feet by now, chanting “Undyne! Undyne!” Monster Kid was right along with them, stomping his foot excitedly. Fang stood too, mostly so he didn’t stand out among the crowd as much, though he also wanted a better look at the famed Captain of the Guard. She wasn’t much like anything he’d pictured. In his head he’d been imagining the Captain as being incredibly stern and angry, sort of like.... well... a lot like Papyrus actually. But Undyne was grinning wickedly with utter delight as she basked in the cheers, waving the glowing electric spears. Now that he could see them, Fang realized the color wasn’t exactly purple. It had more of a red tinge to it, and was deeply muted in its coloring, like a poisonous shade of mauve. The shape of the spear was interesting as well, as it was covered in long thorn like appendages and its tip was like an irregular six pointed star, with two large points, one of them pointing upwards and the other melding into the handle, while four smaller points jutted out, two to each side. He watched as she ran round the edge of the entire arena, enthusiastically fist bumping any monster close enough, and decking one in the face when he said something they couldn’t hear that she clearly thought was worth the hit. The crowd only laughed when the monster went down, and despite the incident, Undyne’s shark toothed grin never even wavered once. Really it was actually a little frightening, her smile. It felt like a sort of manic energy, something that kept going and going until everything else collapsed around it. Finally she ran back to the center of the arena, where her final opponent had come back to consciousness and was just laying there despondently on the ground with a glum expression, not even bothering to pick himself up. In a sort of mocking way she leaned over him, making a show of exaggerated concern. Then she gave him a vicious kick in the ribs and laughed as he doubled up in pain. She wasn’t the only one laughing, many in the crowd joined in as well, jeering and throwing insults down at the losing monster. Fang felt slightly sick. But there was nothing he could do about it right now, and Undyne didn’t seem inclined to actually kill him. She was letting him half limp half crawl out of the arena. Since they’d missed a lot of the earlier fights, Monster Kid had only been interested in seeing Undyne herself fight, the tournament was more or less over. There was an archery competition that was being set up, which many monsters were staying for, but Monster Kid didn’t seem very excited for it and Fang was more than ready to get away from the stadium, so they left and began to wander over the wooden walkways that spiderwebbed across the vast swamps and lakes of Gan’Eden; the constant thundering of the falls echoing through the caves, growing fainter but still easily heard no matter the distance they got from the waterfalls themselves.