Flowey hid in the woods in Snowdin this time. He didn't expect it to help, but he hoped. Oh, how he hoped.
Sure enough, there was Frisk. They found him again. Still wearing that stubborn, stoic expression. Still not listening to a word he said. Holding one end of a rope, with on the other end -
"You brought a goat?!"
"Well, I know boss monsters are not quite goats, but you have to admit, the physiological differences -"
"Please shut up. I don't want to hear it."
"It's worth a try, right?"
Flowey shut his eyes. "What is, exactly?"
"A soul transplant. I looked it up. Goat souls are right here, under the pineal gland." Frisk traced a finger over the goat's fur to point out the place. It noticed Flowey, and gave him a hungry look.
"Keep that thing away from me!"
"They last four or five minutes before they dissipate," Frisk continued, unperturbed. "Should be enough."
"You're just going to kill it, in cold blood, right here, right now?"
"Thirty seven thousand tonnes of goat meat are produced every day, Asriel. One more dead goat isn't going to make a difference. To make an omelette you need to break some eggs."
Deep inside the CORE, behind a circular hallway and a loose panel, was a room everybody forgot. Half the wiring was exposed, next to a lost bag of tools that had laid there for decades. Flowey was the only one who had ever found it.
Gears whirred, and the wall gave way, revealing Frisk.
"Asriel! I figured it out! I cracked the puzzle!"
"Stop calling me that."
"When you lost your soul, you lost your compassion. That's the problem, and that's where the solution is."
"Is this going to be like the goat again?"
"I had no way of knowing goat souls are the traditional catalyst for creating shoggoths. Perfectly ordinary mistake. Could happen to anyone. Now, listen. We can't use someone else's soul because then they'd have no compassion, and then we'd have to find them a soul, and so on. Chicken and egg."
"What is it with you and eggs?"
"But if we take a soul from someone who already has no compassion, you know, a sociopath, but worse, and then revive them, you have a soul, but they don't lose out!"
"I told you two things, Frisk! Two things! Don't kill, and don't be killed! Why is it so hard to understand?"
"No, it all cancels out, see? You have determination, they have a soul. We stop their heart, take their soul, and put them on ice. Then we give the soul to you, we extract the determination you had, and we put it in the dead body to revive it. Nobody loses!"
"Frisk-"
"I guilt tripped Alphys into helping. She has all the equipment we need. Come on."
Being a plant, legally speaking, meant Flowey could travel by mail. It was uncomfortable, but that was the price he was willing to pay for privacy.
His package was opened, even though it was not due to arrive for another three days. Flowey was not surprised. Just disappointed.
"Asriel -"
"I'm not listening."
"Come on, are you going to let a small legal misunderstanding like that get in the way of our work?"
"You're wanted for organ trafficking!"
"After we got him running on the spare determination he didn't need biological processes to support life, he didn't need organs. A kidney is a kidney. Do you know how much you can get for a healthy kidney? Do you know how many malaria victims you can save with that money?"
"You were excommunicated! Twice!"
"I didn't know the reason that guy didn't feel love was that he literally didn't have a soul. It was gone when I got there. I resent the claims that I 'stole his essence,' or 'destroyed the sacred bond with the absolutely infinite,' or 'created a soulless mass of shambling flesh.'"
"He was literally a soulless mass of shambling flesh when you were done with him."
"Aren't we all? Now, look. I made a list of drugs that might help. Some people live with similar conditions. Drugs can be life-changing - you won't believe how much I've been getting done since I started taking modafinil. We'll try the prescription stuff first, but if that doesn't work out, I know a facility where they keep experimental substances. The guards are hardly armed at all."
Flowey was waiting when Frisk turned the corner. The way he had waited so many times before. The barrier was back. The underground sealed. Toriel would be here shortly, to check if anyone had fallen down.
"Well, I hope you learned something."
Frisk thought for a good minute. "Don't mess with the pharmaceutical industry?"