A collection of drabbles and oddities exploring some of the events referenced in various other Undertale things I'm working on. If there's ever anything in one of those stories that you want to know about, let me know, and I'll see if I can dig up a Monster File about it. Updates on this one will be a bit sporadic as I work around other projects.

There are a lot of formatting tricks in this one, and though I've done the best I can, this site really doesn't like them. I'm posting it here too because I know there are people who like this site exclusively, but I want to add a disclaimer that it's actually a much better read on A03.

The door to the new office opened off a damp, claustrophobic alley. To reach it, Cartwright had to navigate his way through shards of glass that glittered like caltrops on the concrete. The door stuck, partly because it was old, and partly because of the heavy steel reinforcing it. As he forced it open, he frowned at the stain it left on his suit. He understood that this assignment was supposed to be discrete, but there was low profile, and then there was this. Small wonder they'd called him in to take over for the clown who used to run this operation. Anyone who let their base of operations get this run down didn't deserve the responsibility.

He was pleased to see that it wasn't quite so bad inside. The walls had been painted recently enough that there was still a faint whiff of it in the air, and the desks and filing cabinets were orderly and free of dust. His subordinate snapped to attention as Cartwright entered the room.

"Lee, I presume?" Carwright asked.

"Yes sir." Lee rose to shake Carwright's hand. "Glad you could make it, sir."

Nodding, Cartwright moved to the empty desk and began rifling through the files scattered across it. "I'm counting on you to get me up to speed. I want all the relevant information on my drive, ASAP."

"Understood, sir." Lee hesitated, and Cartwright raised a brow. His face reddening, Lee continued quickly. "If I could ask, sir… what do you make of the whole… monster thing?"

Cartwright eased himself into the chair, folding his hands on the desk as he pondered the question. "I think that this is a country of freedom and opportunity for everyone," he said at last, and pulled one of the files toward himself. "But I'm too much of a pragmatist to believe that any creature with the power to take a human soul isn't going to use it at some point. Nobody needs that kind of power."

Flipping open the cover of a file, he tapped a finger on the photo within. "And this ambassador of theirs… she's key. If we're going to figure out what their agenda is, it starts with her."

Lee nodded, and glanced at his computer screen. "I'll send you some of the… erm, anomalous files we flagged to start with."

A few clicks of the mouse, and the files became visible on Cartwright's terminal. He blinked, and shot a glance at a very sheepish Lee. "That's it?"

"Sorry, sir. We've got taps on all their accounts, but no matter what we try, we're finding that most of the data gets…. weird."

"Define 'weird.'"

"I would if I could, sir. Sometimes it just vanishes, sometimes it comes out complete nonsense - not encrypted, just… wrong. Sometimes we intercept what we know is an e-mail about policy and get a recipe for spaghetti bolognese. Sometimes it just wipes everything on the system and sets it back to factory basic."

"All right, all right." Cartwright frowned, looking down at the dossier on the desk.

DREEMURR, KATHERINE ANNE (HRH)

alias: FRISK

alias: KATHERINE ANNE (KATIE), [SURNAME REDACTED, BIRTH RECORDS SEALED]

AMBASSADOR OF THE KINGDOM OF MONSTERS

AMBASSADOR OF HUMANITY

OF NOTE: FIRST IN LINE TO THE THRONE OF THE KINGDOM OF MONSTERS. FULL DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY. PROCEED WITH CAUTION. DO NOT ENGAGE. HIGH RISK OF POLITICAL CRISIS IF INVESTIGATIONS ARE DISCOVERED.

"Kingdom of Monsters? That's seriously what they called it?"

"Apparently their King's not very good with names," Lee said.

Scanning quickly over the file, Cartwright blinked and glanced over the monitor at Lee. "Has any of this been edited?"

With a rueful twist of his mouth, Lee shook his head. "No, sir. Just the formatting, a little. After a while, all the fonts got unbearable."

"Fonts?"

"Yes, sir. It's, uh… it's a thing."

Cartrwright rubbed the bridge of his nose. Clearly, this was going to be one of those assignments. Sighing, he gave his full attention first file in the folder, and got to work.