Work Text:
The day begins like any other day, with Skateboard Girl (AKA: the coolest gal in town, Skate) and Fuku Fire (AKA: the hottest girl friend around, Fuku) settling into their favorite booth at their local diner. They’ve been coming here since they were in high school, skipping the first hour of class to enjoy tasty treats together. It’s always been fun, which is why they continued the tradition after they graduated.
Skate scoots in so Fuku has space to put her coat down without getting any of Skate’s slime on it, then picks up a menu. It’s a formality, of course. Their order is always the same.
Her usual staring at the menu routine is interrupted by a loud, drawn out sigh. Skate looks up to see… Catty, but goth. Strange, Skate doesn’t remember Catty changing up her image recently.
“Can… I take… your order… ?” the goth Catty asks in a monotone voice.
“Oh! I’ll have the regular, how about you, Fuku? The same, yeah?” Skate looks to Fuku, who nods.
Goth Catty gives them a look. “I don’t… know what that is. I don’t know what you order.”
Right, Skate and Fuku usually order with the other waitress. Oops. Skate relays their order (a ludicrous amount of drinks and baked goods), and when the goth Catty is gone Skate scoots in close to Fuku to whisper. “Hey, when did Catty turn goth?? Isn’t she, like, sunshine incarnate?”
Fuku stares hard at Skate. “That’s her sister, Skate. Catti with an I.”
“What, really? Man, I thought she was still like, little! But here she is, waiting tables!”
“Kids grow up just like us, Skate,” Fuku says, resting her cheek on her palm.
Skate leans back in her seat and sighs heavily. “Yeah, but like, she has a job? At our age we were delinquents. And look!” Skate gaped at Catti across the room, noting the sleek black device in her hands. “Fuku, she has a phone?! I didn’t even get a phone until the last year of school!”
“Yeah, because you were always with me, and I had a phone,” Fuku deadpans.
Skate waves her hand dismissively. “That’s not the point. The point is, kids are turning cool and trendy. Am I… Am I out of touch with the youth of today?”
Pulling out her hand mirror, Skate takes a long, hard look at herself. Her slime, which looked so great earlier today, now feels lackluster and dull. Her flannel, once a sign of comfort and fashion, now like something her grandmother would wear. Her head, once filled with memes, now only terrible puns and thoughts of taxes.
“Oh no, Fuku, I’m turning into a bitter adult. I have to stop it, I’m too young to think about taxes!”
Fuku gives Skate a look that could only convey ‘Pal, are you serious?’, but Skate is too far in her head, plotting to desperately feel young again. Skate pulls her cap out of her bag, and when Catti heads over with their order balanced precariously on a serving tray, Skate puts it on. Backwards. The ultimate in cool and trendy things that the youth do.
At first, Catti doesn’t notice as she’s putting plates down. However, when she straightens up and asks them if there’s anything else she can do, her words shrivel up and die on her tongue as she finally sees… Skate.
Skate sees the opportunity and grabs it. “Hello, fellow young person! You can see that I, too, am young and cool. Now, listen, what are the cool kids, like us of course, getting into around town? Give us the 4-1-1 my pal, my dude.”
“Dial it back a bit, pal ,” Fuku groans, shying away.
Catti looks at the two of them with a disgusted look, but perhaps remembering where they are and her role, she exhales and takes a seat across from them. “No one ‘cool’ is doing anything. Besides regular stuff. But Kris–they’re this weird kid in our class. Toriel’s kid. Quiet.”
Skate nods without understanding any of it. Of course. Kris. Whomst?
Catti continues, “I saw them the other day. At the lake. They were… talking to something? I couldn’t see too much but. I swear I saw it. Tentacles. And I think I know whose.” She pulls out a small black book and lays it on the table. Skate notes with amusement a wicked cat sticker with black makeup and strange symbols etched into the cover with a pencil or pen. Very goth. Very cool. Catti opens the notebook halfway and turns it so they all can see it. “I’ve been doing a bit of research. I think what Kris was talking to is actually… Cathulhu itself. You know, the beast of the underground. I’ve been researching the creature since I was a child. Trying to track it down. It’s elusive. Haunts my waking dreams. It’s like I can feel tentacles crawling in my fur. These wounds, they will not he– ”
“Okay, I think I get the gist. I’m in, let’s go hunt down this uh… couth-hulu??”
After a short reprimand on respecting the names of the Elder Ones, Catti sends them off with a shopping list of sacred items to get before the end of her shift. That’s how Skate and Fuku meet back up later outside the diner, with a sopping wet piece of fabric and–
“Dude, is that the freaking nail bat?” Skate asks incredulously. Fuku grins and adjusts her stance, taking the bat off her shoulder to slam it into the ground. From this angle, Skate can see that it’s her old school bat, still super awesome and very punk.
The bell above the diner entrance chimes and Catti steps out, clad in a black jacket with sequins lovingly glued on. She rolls her shoulders, casting off the fatigue of her shift, Skate guesses, before turning to the other two. “Did you get the items?”
Skate thrusts out her fabric. “I couldn’t get Ol’ Alvin to soak this in holy water, so I just ran it through the church’s sink water.”
“That will do. I guess. Fuku? The weapon?”
Fuku turns the bat in place. “I don’t really know what ‘the Blessed Cat Scent’ is, but I did cover it in some cat food and catnip that I found at ‘Sans.”
Catti snatches the fabric from Skate and immediately wraps it around her nose. “Good work, let’s go.”
The three of them leave the diner and start towards the lake. It feels good to Skate, to have an adventure to go on. It makes her feel just like she’s a kid again, climbing on rocks and harassing adults with slingshots. Catti is saying something, she thinks, but Skate is too caught up in the warm nostalgia of running from the local authorities after jaywalking across two lanes of traffic. Man, that was the best, maybe she can get Fuku to do that again with her some day soon.
Suddenly, Skate runs into Catti’s outstretched arm. She starts to groan in pain, but Catti covers her mouth. Skate, knocked out of her memories, looks around to get a handle on things. They’re on a different street than before, crouched behind some bushes, and in front of them is–oh, it’s Catti’s house. She sees the older sister, Catty, sitting in a lawn chair facing the neighboring house’s yard. Ukelele in hand, Catty glares at another monster, Bratty if Skate remembers right, as they shred some seriously wicked tunes at each other. It almost looks like it should be a fight except… they’re surprisingly in harmony.
Skate thinks it’s pretty cool, but Catti scoffs. “Let’s go. I don’t want my sister getting her nose in this. She doesn’t understand this stuff.”
They sneak past the dueling monsters without much issue, and they sneak the rest of the way to the lake. Skate can’t help but think about Catti’s comment about her sister. She knows what it’s like to be misunderstood. Maybe this would be a good adventure for both of them.
The lake is silent, as usual, and the picnic area around it, the same. Even the two masked monsters that usually hang around are gone. Although the water looks undisturbed, underneath… is a giant, horrifying, tentacle monster, she guesses! Skate looks to Fuku and Catti, catching the readiness in their expressions, and she prepares herself as well, maneuvering into a fighting position. She might not have a bat, but she has her fists!
…Are they even going to be effective against a giant cat tentacle monster? Guess she’ll find out.
“On my mark,” Fuku says, “Get set… Go!”
They all scream as they run to the lake’s edge. Skate does a bunch of cool karate moves, kicks and punches and even a few elbow throws, daring the monster to come out and fight. Through the adrenaline she hears Catti chanting to her right, Fuku screaming to her left, and the swoosh of her bat slicing through the air. But, through all this, Skate notes the distinct lack of any sea creature.
“Hey guys, hold on a sec. Where’s the monster? Where’s Cathulhu?” she asks, staring at the water.
The other two stop and look as well. The noise they made was guaranteed to wake up whatever was here, but the lake sits undisturbed. Skate gives the surface a little kick, and Catti tosses in some strange plants, but nothing. No monster, regular or scary.
Skate falls down to the ground, defeated. “Man, this sucks! I was so ready!” She hears footsteps and opens her eyes to see Catti sitting beside her, looking just as bummed.
“Sorry. This was a bit of a waste.” Catti looks away, but Skate catches the faintest hint of a smile. “Thanks though. For the adventure.”
The sincerity hits Skate like a birthday bullet card, and she can’t help but grin. “Are you kidding me? This was the most fun I’ve had in a long while! Definitely come to us next time you want to do something like this.”
Suddenly, Skate hears a small splash from the direction of the lake. Probably Fuku in the water… wait. “Fuku girl, what are you doing? Don’t hurt yourself, you’re made of fire.”
Fuku answers from a different direction entirely. “What? I’m right here.”
“Well, if you’re there, and I’m here, and Catti is beside me, then–”
The three look over to the lake in horror. A pale, thin appendage rises up from the water, and on the surface they can see something huge about to breach the water.
They don’t stick around to find out what it is.
—
The sound of screams hit Onion-san as he finally rises out of the water. He only sees the backs of the monsters as they run away in panic. Oh man, he just wanted to say hi…