I'm not one of you <Frans>

CHAPTER 2: The Pickup

J u n e   1 s t:
1 week before the tragedy.

6:05 a.m.

I awoke with messy hair and a stiff back from my cheap, used bed. My sheets were thrown about the place, not quite on the bed anymore from my abnormal sleeping positions.

My phone was ringing loudly next to my clock that red about 6 o'clock in the morning. Great. I reluctantly roll over in my bed, lazily grabbing my phone and squinted tiredly at the very bright screen, contrasting to the darkness of my curtains. The sun hasn't even rose.

I look at my mystery caller. My Roomate. 3 missed calls; I must have been out. I click the answer button with reluctance and the rolling of my eyes. "What?" I snapped from my stomach position on the bed, laying horizontally and unmoving. "I don't get up for another hour, you asshole!" I grumbled once more. My tried eyelids felt like they had weights attached to them, I was practically closing my eyes at this point.

"Watch your potty mouth, you lazy piece of Shit." My Roomate grinned from the other line. I could feel it. "Be glad I woke you up, you aren't the morning person. It takes an hour for you to even begin to move." She laughed from the background. "Listen, I need you to pick me up." She said, her laughing was ceased, and her voice got more serious. "Like... now." She said. "And before you say anything with your sleep-deprived brain of yours, no. I am NOT home."

I wasn't going to ask that anyways. . . What a stupid question!
Damn it she knows me too well.

"Why?" I asked, squinting at the date of my calendar that was hanging up on one of the walls in the far corner of the darkness in my room. There was no way in hell that I was going to get up and walk over there. "Aren't you still on your little experiment-thing?" I asked, it coming back to be for split second.

"You're impossible to talk to when half asleep." She grumbled. "Frisk, just come and pick me up before even more press gets here." She said, grumbling. "You know how much I hate people and especially the press." She spat, grumbling loudly.

Then it hit me, as if I had known it all along. I have known it all along. Slowly through my half-dazed mind, the weeks of waiting we're finally over. Today was the day my Roomate got out of the underground, well, was supposed to get out. There's going to be press everywhere. "Oh Shit! I forgot!" I sat up, my messy, short, hair hanging in my face and eyes. "What did you find down there?! Those radio waves I found emitting from Mt. Ebott were going berserk! I almost went down there myself than to get the head chief of our team!" I said, excitedly.

"Just shut up and get me before they get there. I'll tell you everything, but only if you make it here before the countdown is over." She warned, threatening to leave me alone in the dark. She would do that, she's evil. "Five." She said, jokingly.

"I'll be there in 10." I said, ending the call on my phone and jumping out of bed with a new found energy to start the day. I grinned enthusiastically, while rushing to get on my jeans, sneakers, and usual sweater with blue and magenta stripes. I tied my hair back into a ponytail and found my ID keycard for work, where I would be dropping us both off at the laboratory. "Ok!" I said excitedly, grabbing my keys and a pencil to jot down anything revolutionary that my Roomate might spill to me.

It was my discovery! Without me, we might have never found the whole other world that existed under that mountain! Why couldn't I go and check it out??

Hopping in my fairly new Toyota, I started up the engine and turned on the radio. Driving down the road seemed like forever. Those ten minutes went by as if weeks followed behind them. I wanted to know what I found. I wanted to know everything! That's why I became a scientist of course, to work on the anomalies of life, and to engineer new items for everyday use.

Pulling up near the bottom of the mountain, multiple cars and news crews came to try to interview the first human in the uncharted territory. Reporters kitten down notes, and paparazzi's took photos of my roomate, who abruptly held up her hand to the crews and flashes of light. She was working her way through the greedy crowd, when I honked my horn twice.

She looked up, sighing in relief, and took a full sprint towards the car, reporters following her at the same pace. They crowded the vehicle as she hopped inside my car, sighing and practically screaming in frustration. "Drive. Drive. Drive. Drive!" She pressured me, reaching for the gearshift to change it from parked to drive.

"You didn't punch any press this time, did you?" I asked, grinning as the muffled questions and screams sounded from outside of the car. "You'd think they would stay away from you after that?"

"That was one time, Frisk!" She said, throwing her arms up. "One time!" She exclaimed, pouting in the seat, and crossing her arms like a child. I laughed and she relaxed her position, sitting upright and looking at the gas petal. "We going to go, or what?" She said, sarcastically.

"Answer my question first." I said, holding up my nose. I took a pencil out of the top of my ear, and flipping open a small notebook with starred eyes and a new adrenaline rush. "What did you find down there?!" I said, excitedly. "Was it like a whole different world??" I said.

"Hm.." she thought, grinning a bit at her multiple answers to tell me. She looked at me with her crimson eyes, grinning slightly less, she was hiding her wide smile. "Nothing but dust to see." She picked at her nail, stiffling laughter came from her clenched teeth. "There's nothing to see anymore. It was a desolate place." She said.

My reaction to the entire thing just flew out the window. My grin became a frown, and I looked down at my blank notepad. "Are you sure?" I said, trying to get my hopes up. "I swear I detected life under there! There had to be an entire civilization!" I exclaimed, my hopes were falling once more as she shook her head even further.

I never have miscalculations! Never! I swear the readings read that life lived under there. Living, breathing organisms, made of a completely different substance than we humans are made of!

"Nothing but dust." She grinned. "I just barely got out of there." She said, laughing. "It was so dusty, of course. My lungs are probably filled with it." She grinned, looking out the window to the smaller crowd of press. "We can go now, yes? I answered your question." She smiled. "You got your lab coat with you. Are you just heading into work?" She asked.

I guess. I have the break the news anyways.

"I was planning on it. I don't know what I'm going to say to the chief when he figures out that this was all just... a miscalculation." I gulped down that word that every scientist hated. A miscalculation. "Okay. Seatbelts on." I said, hearing the satisfying click of her seatbelt click on my right side.

Switching the car into drive, I just had to make sure. "Hey, Chara?" I asked, getting her attention. "Are you sure there was nothing down there?" I asked, looking at her with two hands on the wheel.

"Not anymore." She grinned.