A small bottle, translucent blue, was laying in the sand, waves lapping around it. Alphys approached, buttoning her coat against the winds coming off the ocean. She grabbed the neck of the bottle, wrenching it out of the sand.
She shook a few clumps of sand off, perfunctorily, uncorking it and tipping the vessel so the letter would fall out. Tucking the bottle under her arm she opened the letter, adjusting her glasses so that she could see the handwriting clearly.
As she read electricity began to build in her fingertips. Her pulse grew more rapid, and her seething magic couldn't be contained. She approached the end of the letter, and the sweet scent of burning overpowered the stench of the sea.
The letter browned and crumbled in her grasp, and she let the surf carry the fragments out to sea. Bit by bit, the massive ocean swallowed it whole.
She took the bottle in her hand, weighing it. Her snout curled into a snarl, the glass of the neck heating as her magic coursed through it.
Alphys hurled it as hard as she could into the waves.
And it came back. She watched it roll up in the froth. When she picked it up, her hand hurt from how hard she squeezed the bottle's neck. She threw it, hard.
And it came back. Again.
She snatched the bottle and flung it.
It came back, straight to her feet.
Alphys was turning red. The area around her began to dry out, and footprints scorched into the packed sand.
She launched the bottle with a herculean throw. And then she waited on it's return, tiny hands balled into fists. She didn't even realize that tendrils of electricity were leaping off of her body.
The Mew Mew Kissy Cutie theme began to play, an 8bit remix, specifically, from her coat-pocket. It jolted her back to, and she fished the phone out of her coat (which was thankfully shock-proof).
"Nyah-nyah Kissy Cutie SHUT-UP," Alphys mocked the tune as she held up the phone. She didn't even check the number.
"H-hello, this is Alphys' Repair Service," she tried to speak over the waves.
"Uh, yeah?" a low-pitched voice answered. "It's me?"
"Susie! I-I'm sorry," Alphys chuckled. "What is it?"
"Got a call from that Charles guy. I know you weren't supposed to be there for like…" Susie checked the time. "…another hour, but he just said there's like, gnarly black stuff coming out of the pump."
Alphys' thoughts scattered. "Black stuff?"
"Yeah, and there's been-" Susie broke off. "What is that noise? Are you on the beach AGAIN?"
Alphys covered the receiver on her end. "There. Better?"
"Yeah. Better," Susie relented. "Anyway, he uh… he said something about weird symbols. I'm guessing it's gonna be like last time. CORE shi-I mean, stuff."
Alphys let out a sigh, messaging her snout.
It was odd for Charles to ever need help. He was used to the operations of machinery, being a CORE technician, and often could fix things even Alphys couldn't. But whatever was going on was on the coding side, probably, and going haywire. She really wasn't looking forward to this. Most of the time the equipment he used couldn't be brought to the shop, so she'd end up having to figure it out on-site.
"You should go over there before they start… running in circles and screaming or something."
A cool object bumped into Alphys' foot. Without even looking down she realized it was that stupid bottle. A wave of wrath overcame her.
"….aaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"
Susie held the phone away as the screech crescendoed.
Lightning struck the bottle. Three times. The bottle burst into a hail of shards. Saltwater sizzled, and the waves already worked on revealing the fulgurite tubes.
Susie waited a minute, listening to Alphys pant from the sudden outburst. "You done?"
"I… Yes," Alphys gathered herself, and in a breathless voice informed, "I'll be at Charles' in a sec."
"Cool. Good luck." And Susie hung up.
Alphys trudged through the loose sand, her nose wrinkling as it tickled, stuck to her scales. On the sidewalk, thankfully, there was a little rinse-off station. She managed to get the majority off her legs and tail, but still, the sand had infiltrated every nook of her clothing, it seemed.
The beach wasn't going to be easily forgotten, she surmised grimly.
She hopped on her moped, taking off toward Charles' warehouse. She drove into town, and the roads were hers alone at this time of day. No one was really out in the noon-sun, save her and other ex-Hotland residents who doted on the scorching heat. A lot of monsters preferred to practice the art of the noonday nap, retreating into the comforts of their climate-controlled homes for lunchtime.
Alphys loved this weather, and her scales practically glowed in the summer sun. The sky was bright blue and large as when she'd first seen it, and a subtle breeze played through the trees as she rode beneath their boughs.
Way better than TV…
Her little purple moped zipped through the streets, humming brilliantly. She couldn't get over the handling now that Susie had tinkered with it. The girl had a real knack for vehicles.
Alphys caught herself smiling. Not even the clinging sand could steal this happiness. By the time she rolled up in Charles' driveway, most of it had blown off.
The 'house' she drove up on was more of a hole situated in the middle of an idyllic country clearing. Just outside of town the mole family could burrow freely without accidentally running into buried pipes or power lines.
A fuzzy mole, somehow even smaller than she herself, wobbled out of his burrow. He had a long snout and a pink nose protruding from underneath a huge hardhat. Bigger still was the smile on his face.
"Oh, thank the Lord you're here, Alphys!" Charles said. "You can park over there! Round by the diggers."
She pulled up near one of the many tunneling devices, careful to avoid the larger clumps of dirt as she locked the kick-stand of her moped.
"H-hey, Charles!" She couldn't help the stutter as she shuffled her devices around. She had a feeling she'd need all her equipment for this job. "So, where's the, uh, trouble at?"
"Trouble's in the bunker." Charles hobbled over to what were massive bunker doors. Alphys joined him.
"Situation is: I came in this morning and my CORE C-F was exuding this ooze. Dark stuff. It's still doing it, even when I shut it down. But see, thing is, it isn't shutting down. Can't get the remote controls to do anything, actually. If this keeps up the bunker'll flood!" he sounded quite alarmed, and rightfully so. "I didn't turn it on neither. Must've come on on its own! I've heard stranger things happening, but… that's just downright odd."
Alphys nodded, taking in the information. "So, how many hours had you, um, operated it before?"
"Oh, shoot. Probably around ten hours? Give or take."
"That's i-interesting…" Alphys took note on her phone. She slotted the figure beneath some others.
He poked with his nose at a simple tile puzzle, the lock to the bunker doors. He unlocked it in a jiffy, and the doors groaned open on heavy-duty hydraulics.
"Now, be careful. That weird LEAKAGE has been getting all over my PUZZLE and floor!" he lamented, shuffling down the ramp into the bunker below. "I put out a few platforms, though, so we should be high and dry!"
Charles hit the lights and the bunker overheads switched on, row by row, revealing an impressive depth. Impressive especially when dug by tiny mole-monsters like Charles (even if they were using digging machines).
"There she blows." His beady eyes looked to the monolith.
Occupying a decent chunk of the bunker was a generator tower from the CORE. It had been severed and made to operate independent of the whole. She still couldn't believe that this was possible. But who was she to wonder? She had a few pieces of the CORE herself back at her shop.
The tower was beautiful as ever, molded in metal alloy of a blue nature, detailed with chrome strips and motifs of the delta rune. She'd always been inspired by the craftsmanship; it was part of why she'd aspired to be a scientist… the Royal Scientist, even.
They stepped closer, careful to keep to the platforms. This section of the bunker had quite the spillage coating its concrete. While mostly harmless, the dark substance did have a bad habit of taking the 'color' out of things. Or rather, the magic…
Upon cursory inspection, the CORE tower appeared fine. But then she saw the 'trouble' oozing down in lazy rivulets. The color was leeched from the affected panels in splotchy patterns.
The dark stuff was a natural part of the world, in trace amounts, but too much and things would go gray and… bizarre.
Alphys slipped on a pair of gloves, and replaced her glasses with goggles. A precaution, hopefully.
"Anyway, as you can see, there's the gross stuff." Charles gestured to the residue. "Not sure WHY but it's been spitting THIS out instead of magical electricity! I think the brain of it's gone plain nutty!"
Eking from between the etched plates it was. It consumed light, unreflective to all sources. The substance seemed almost unreal, in that sense, like a graphical error in their world.
She fumbled about with one of the side panels, unhooking it with some guidance from Charles. She gingerly plugged in her display port, connecting to the brain of the machine. Symbols began to flash on the screen at once, shocking her eyes. The stream of characters were ones she'd seen before.
Old entries… in a cold, foggy room… lighting up the shapes of twisted creations…
She pushed the thoughts away. Not now. Right now, she had an infected CORE component to deal with.
"I checked all the filters and pipes for clotting and such, in case you were wondering," Charles mentioned, "couldn't find anything."
Alphys skewed her lips. "That's good, but that's d-definitely not the problem. Looks like it's… b-bugged."
"Bugged?" Charles repeated.
"Yeah…"
The best way to deal with this problem was to just wipe the slate clean and not even mess with treating it. She thankfully had portable copies of most of the CORE's modular systems, ones which she'd had Sans himself comb through and cleanse of this peculiar… quirk.
Alphys thought she knew the type of column this was, but double-checked its label.
"51-C-F, right?"
"Right-o!"
This virus… of sorts, was truly a pesky nuisance. She'd dealt with it in her own CORE generator projects. It essentially strove to invert the magilectrical output. Instead of taking energy and converting it to magical electricity, it converted it to this hardly useful byproduct. Normally, with production of normal magical electricity this byproduct was only a small fraction and could be dealt with via minimal filtration. But when this 'virus' kicked in, the processes went to overdrive, pushing out little magilectricity and buckets of the black goop.
Alphys assumed it was some sort of 'security breach' triggered 'virus' that all CORE modules came preloaded with, probably courtesy of sharing a majority of code. Essentially, it was a self-destruct with certain enigmatic criteria.
But at this point, with the CORE being dismantled… She liked to believe the breach was simply the act of being disconnected, and that it took a while for the virus to propagate its payload.
"Do you have this linked to any other systems, Charles?" Alphys asked, probing the back and taking care to not touch any goop, "any modifications beyond, w-well, the obvious?"
"All I suppose that I did that was strange was that I tried to link it to one of your tile puzzle pieces. Just to see if it could," he went over to a workbench as he talked, "you know how the CORE always was: swappable! But it just wouldn't register. The tile went dead and the C-F restarted."
Charles tilted up the dead tile. Indeed, it was gray now.
"A-and the connection was local?" Alphys made sure.
"Well, of course," Charles said, "you know it has to be."
She couldn't find a wireless device anywhere in the usual spots. They'd made a point of gutting those, but she wanted to check. The signal on her display was from the C-F alone. It kept on flashing symbols, faster than she could register now. Had it… sped up?
It didn't really matter, seeing that she had the key to unlocking this nonsense. A lot more than just blueprints had been left laying around in the lab…
"You haven't modified the brain in any way?" Alphys asked, more by protocol than anything.
Charles shook his head. "Couldn't if I tried!"
She chuckled and popped in a memory stick, loaded with what she liked to call the Red Buster, since the stick was… colored red… and all the malarkey that these CORE components threw at it, the Red Buster… busted them. Well, really it was just because Susie thought it sounded 'cool' compared to CORE_SAVES.
Using her display, she started the processes of the Red Buster, and it began to crack down on the mess inside the generator's brain. The process was playing out just like it had on her own CORE components.
Alphys spoke up from her tech trance, "it looks like it's, uh, going to work. I'm going to be reinstalling it in a minute. H-hopefully that fixes everything."
"Oh, REALLY?!" Charles was ecstatic. "I thought it'd… take a bit. Wow. You really are a miracle worker! "
Alphys giggled at that comment, trying not to think too hard about certain histories.
"Yeah, yeah…" She set it up for a full wipe, and waited for her own program to run its course.
"Man, the SO would murder me if she saw this mess! Good thing you got done so quick! We may have time to get this up." Charles observed the black ooze that had crept over a large portion of the floor. Thankfully a berm of shop towels had kept it at bay. "Gotta' get the brood to clean this up before she tunnels home…" He pulled a notepad out of his hat and wrote down a reminder.
"You're… d-do you need any help?" Alphys asked as she waited on the installation.
"Us!? No!" Charles drawled, "clean up of filters was just part of the daily gauntlet back in the day."
Alphys nodded. "Ah. Y-yeah. Guess you guys did handle a lot of that with the CORE."
"Indeedy!" Charles then reminisced. "I thought I'd never miss that, but…"
Alphys could feel a conversation coming on. She was a bit tired, but decided to not make it any more awkward. "I miss it all too, sometimes."
She didn't.
"Man, my wife… She tells me to just let it go. But I just had to get and restore this generator. I just had to!" Charles was seeking some form of approval from his fellow geek. "Now that no one's down in the Underground and they done turned it off, the CORE ain't gettin' taken care of. To think, no one will ever get to see it like it was…"
"Y-yeah. It is a shame," Alphys tried to sympathize, and a feeling of melancholy tugged at her.
It was true, the CORE had been shut down four (or five?) years ago. Alphys had been summoned to make sure the shut down procedures went smoothly among others like Charles. She was more of an expert on CORE functions than even she knew. Her broad understanding of the overall functionality as well as the actual processes was a surprisingly rare commodity.
"I just gotta keep the legacy alive. I want to be able to show my grandpups this stuff, you know?" Charles' normally chipper voice had turned somber.
He did have a few gray hairs peppering his coat of brown, now that she looked at him. The intermittent shuddering of the CORE as it reinstalled distracted her for a moment. She checked the display port, and it seemed to be conducting properly.
Charles grumbled, "why don't they build a new one up here? I don't know! Not like we're NOT struggling for magilectricity up here. The human's straight electricity is just too harsh!"
"It'd-It'd be hard to conserve the magilectrical current over s-such a long distance, even if we tapped the closest magma chamber," she explained, trying not to sound too exhausted.
"There's one near the mount, though," Charles said.
Alphys glanced over to Mount Ebott. It rose above the tree line ever-so-subtly.
She scrunched her face up.
"The gorge?"
"Yeah!"
"And r-risk creating some kind of-of magical volcano?"
Charles frowned.
"Humans thinking we're gonna bring on the apocalypse by drilling a few holes," he muttered, "but shoving an entire race in a hole isn't a problem…"
Alphys sighed. "They're not wrong. The apocalypse can happen."
"I know how you are, Alphys," Charles tried to calm his tone, "I know you like humans. They're not so bad…" but he couldn't help get animated, "but still! It's just annoying!"
"I know." She played along.
Charles shook his head. "Sorry for jawing at ya."
"It's OK." She offered a crooked smile.
The reinstall was complete, which meant she'd have to stop talking! Hooray! And as a bonus, the generator looked like it was taking nicely to the new installation.
"I'd love to see a new CORE-facility. Maybe we'll get to build one, one day?" she offered, trying to end this on a high note. "H-harness the sun or something!"
"What about hydro?" Charles counter-offered.
"And be surrounded by water?" Alphys raised a brow.
"Hey, it's not like you gotta be a turbine yourself!" Charles chuckled, and then asked sincerely, "…right? That's not a thing, is it?"
"No," Alphys replied with a snicker.
She took out the Red Buster and checked the generator core. She hit the off switch and the machine shuddered, powering down like a normal component.
"Oh! Is it off?" Charles was curious.
There was still seeping, but it seemed to have slowed already.
"W-well! It's shut down properly… I think!" she tried to sound sure. She was pretty sure, actually.
Charles then waddled over, checking for the gunk. "Let's wipe it down and see."
Alphys helped the short mole get the generator mostly cleaned. As he finished up, she checked the displays once more, and they were now calm and displaying legible characters.
After a good fifteen minutes of scrutiny, the CORE generator had most likely stopped producing the gunk and was really, truly off.
"Alright, it should be ready to reboot," she informed, "c-could you…?"
"Turn it back on?" Charles finished her sentence. "Already got the remote."
Charles turned the machine back on with a cute click of a button. The CORE C-F began to hum in tune, oscillating to a hidden beat. Its neon was aglow, drifting from red to soft orange, and pulsing like a racing heartbeat. Dots of blue fluttered on and off, highlighting the internal processes of the machine.
"Magnificent!" he remarked.
Alphys blinked at the dazzling display. The dark stuff had really taken its color before, hadn't it? Compared to now, it had almost turned monochrome.
"I know, I know. The restored neon was a bit pricey. But I had to!" Charles defended the blinking lights, quite aware of how stunned she looked.
"W-what? Oh!" Alphys offered another crooked smile. "I think they're great!"
Charles returned the smile, self-satisfied to boot.
He followed her out of the bunker as she put her equipment in the back of her moped. "Alright. What's the damage, Doctor?"
"Shouldn't be much," Alphys assured him. She pulled out a hand little attachment to her phone and wrote up a bill for her services. "Just charging you for the hour." She was done just like that, and handed him the paper. She was proud of how natural that was! She wasn't bumbling for once!
Charles scrutinized the bill, then her equally. "Let me go get it. Come on!" He gestured for her to follow, and he led her back to the hole that was the house.
It was a very modest steel hatch, with an ivy furnishing around its aperture. He quickly jotted through another security puzzle, and the hatch opened with a hiss and a squelch. The inside was surprisingly well lit for a domicile primarily made for moles. There were floor lights all the way back to the end of the great hall, and the beginnings of other tunnels could be seen all along its length. Alphys imagined it would be quite fun to live in such a twisty house, but maybe that was her more primitive reptilian nature coming out.
"Right, I'll be just a second," he told her, making sure she was through the hatch before it closed behind them. "Wait here."
She watched him shuffle off into the tunnels, disappearing into a side-hole that wasn't quite so illuminated. She stayed put in the entry-tunnel like he'd said to, right next to the tiny hat-rack and subterranean flower arrangement. A few moments passed and she caught herself fiddling with her coat, wrapping it around and through her fingers. Alphys' claws itched, yet she resisted the urge to get her phone out and check messages.
Alphys took a breath in, calmed as she singled out the various sounds reverberating down the tubular halls. The earthy aroma had a hint of patchouli-based potpourri to it, which played nicely with the fresh lemon oil and root musk she sensed as well.
Charles popped out of a tunnel, shaking a trace amount of dirt off his coat before waddling back up to her. "All right, here's the pay!" his voice was a loud shock in the relative quiet.
"Oh!" She realized something, readjusting her glasses hurriedly. "Oh g-gosh… did I f-forget to tell you to make the check out t-to-"
"Check? How about gold!" Charles smacked a pouch into her open palms.
"G-gold?" She looked at the pouch as if it were an alien life-form. "Uhm…" She swallowed.
"We do things the old-fashioned way here," Charles sounded amused by her reaction. "That's just the MOLE WAY! I will need a receipt, though."
"Charles, I-" She checked the weight. "This isn't at all what I-"
"Come on! You're a life-saver! And you came an hour early." He didn't seem inclined to take any of it back.
It was just going to be one of those situations.
"Go out and buy something nice for the shop, or your daughte-I mean, your apprentice! A new tool or some such," he encouraged her.
"Charles, p-please…" Alphys tried to be nice.
"Go on!" He pushed her toward the hatch, in good humor, of course.
Alphys stopped at the threshold. She looked him in the eyes, smiling warmly, if a little sheepishly. "Thanks."
"You're very welcome, Alphys," Charles said sincerely. "Besides, I have faith in your methods. You did get your own generators working, and the ones down in the gorge too, somehow."
Alphys nodded, placing the gold in a secure, buttoned pocket. "I d-did, didn't I?"
"Indeedy!"
She printed out a receipt, dating and marking it with her scraggly signature.
"Now, I'm sure I've tied you up for far too long." Charles walked her out onto the lawn. "Come on back sometime when you're not workin'. The pups miss ya."
"Aw, well, uh…" Alphys felt a bit of perspiration coming on. She couldn't remember any of the pup's names. Whoops! "T-t-tell them I miss them too!" Alphys got up on her moped.
"S-see you, Charles," she said, starting up the engine.
"Bye now!" he called as she rode back up the drive-way.
Once she'd hit the road, and had a fresh breeze in her face, she began to feel better. The feedback of the machine was far more natural to her than her own body. Maybe that feeling should've worried her, but at this stage in her life? Well…
The thrum of the engine and rumble of the road droned out certain pressing thoughts.
Like all that sand…
She wondered if she should call Sans. Ugh… she'd just go over to see him later. Right now she was just tired. So very tired. Her outburst on the beach had really taken it out of her, hadn't it?
She went homeward, straight to the northwestern edge of town. There, on a dead-end road, was their- well, actually just Alphys's… house. The home was a two-story country style with little nonsense to its architecture. Once, it had been cute perhaps, but now it looked a little damp. She needed to remember to prune the vines growing up the side and winding into the paneling. Later.
She pulled up the driveway, and found a spot amidst the various ongoing projects to park her moped in.
She still had some other matters to check on, namely a few computer cases, but first she needed that meal she'd missed at lunchtime thanks to pesky messages in bottles.
The shop was a new addition to a relatively old home, and as such, the two directly connected via a white porch door. She unlocked it with a pattern of magic unique to herself and shuffled inside.
The interior of the house was a bit cluttered, and kind of grossly lit. The walls were clad in old wood-paneling and the ceilings were coated in cottage cheese. She didn't even want to talk about the linoleum. The furniture was all probably third hand at the very best, and a film of junk mail, packaging, and mechanical equipment had collected on just about every horizontal surface.
But it was home.
She took a deep breath and smelled… ham?
Alphys could hear the soft din of an action anime in the kitchen area. Like a moth to a flame, she wandered towards it.
Susie was in the kitchen, eating a ham sandwich distractedly and watching some sort of ninja anime. Only naturally.
"Holy shit…" Susie remarked as one of the ninjas turned into a giant pile of hair and attacked another who was ninety percent neck.
It used to be rare for Alphys to have not seen just about any anime, but nowadays it was getting more common. Humans just kept releasing them, apparently! Which was good. But they just didn't have the same magic to her as they used to, oddly enough.
"What… is this?" Alphys commented.
"I dunno'. Ninja anime?" Susie said.
Susie, though she loved her, was about as helpful as a box of rocks sometimes.
"That… e-explains nothing," Alphys grumbled. "Oh wait. This is…"
This was one of… well, that other person who liked anime's old favorites. It had swords and fighting. Of course. Now Alphys knew why she'd tried to remove it from her memory.
She tried to tune it out as she grabbed for… well, all the pantry had was ramen, actually. The fridge was no better, yielding only a carton of milk, some sweet relish, and a gigantic ham that Susie had been carving away at for the week.
Alphys boiled some water, hydrating a rectangle of the noodle product, her motions so rote they were nearly mechanical.
"A-any other calls?" Alphys asked.
"Nah, just Papyrus telling me that his brother was prank calling people," Susie said. "Turns out the prank was getting Papyrus to call everyone and tell them sans would prank call them. Which Papyrus called everyone to tell them about. So I guess Papyrus got pranked twice. Huh."
They both chuckled at the skeletal hijinks.
Alphys tried to ignore the show and ate her ramen in relative quiet, besides slurping a bit around her overbite. Thankfully, Susie didn't care, or at least didn't make it known that the noise bothered her. Out of boredom, Alphys couldn't help but inspect Susie in all her purple glory.
She noted that Susie didn't smell like a leaf-pile, which was good, and she was dressing nicer now that Alphys had done a bit of loose outfit planning with her. Oh, and Susie hadn't tried to eat a face in… a solid year? Maybe two, even.
This was progress.
Alphys remembered the gold in her coat pocket. Almost all of that would go into the Top Secret School fund, for when Susie… well, Alphys imagined that if Susie was actually learning and becoming a good student now, she'd just want to learn more in the future! And Alphys was going to foot the bill.
Of course, it was at that moment Alphys noticed a giant knot in Susie's hair. Alphys couldn't help but reach out and try to gently un-tangle it. Susie griped and pulled away, patting down the snarl herself.
"Y-you missed a spot," Alphys mentioned.
"Ugh…" Susie shoved the entire latter half of her ham sandwich in her mouth. Alphys was endeared by the way Susie tried to get her hair to do anything other than be a wild mane. Finally, Susie gave up.
"We should get your hair cut." Alphys got up and took her bowl to the sink.
"Nooooooooo…" Susie moaned.
"Yesssssssssss," Alphys mimicked her. "we can go to the, uh, r-range after you get your hair cut. So you can actually see the targets instead of just bangs. That'll be fun!"
"…all right. You got me." She could see Susie's eyes soften, even under all that hair. "That's pretty fun."
"I'll have to remember to make an appointment then!"
Alphys rinsed the bowl and put it in the dishwasher. She was ever thankful for the invention, and honestly had no idea why it'd never struck her to make her own. Alphys was pretty sure Toriel was saying something with the gift, but… she really didn't care.
"'Kay," Alphys checked the time, and told Susie, "I'm going to go work on a few things. You got the phone?"
"Aye," Susie replied. "Oh, by the way, the hotfridge is almost done. The one we've been working on for the Holidays."
"Great!" Alphys was actually proud, but didn't want to… well, jump the gun. Susie had just started working on hotfridges in her stead. "Uh, let me know when you get it done done, O-OK?"
"Right," Susie said.
Susie stared at Alphys, and she could see the gears turning in that fuzzy, purple head of hers. Alphys wrung her hands out while waiting, subconsciously.
"Hey. Uh…" Susie cleared her throat. "You were at the beach, huh?"
"Y-yeah…" Alphys cast her eyes down to the scuffed linoleum, studying the marks.
Here it came.
"Get a letter?"
Alphys looked up at her. "No."
"Damn."
Susie sounded so resigned. Alphys hated it. This lying, again. Especially lying to Susie, but… It was better that she didn't know everything.
"It's been months. You'd think she'd send another."
"Y-yeah. You'd… think."
Alphys thought it was better. Last time she'd shown Susie what had been written… well, Susie had spent the next couple days learning how to patch drywall.
"Uh. Well." Susie paused, quiet. "See you in a few." She put the Styrofoam plate she'd been using in the trash and sauntered out the porch door and into the garage. Her walk was a bit stiffer than usual.
Well, that was that.
Alphys went to her computer room. Dozens of PCs were laid out, their wires crisscrossed into a nest. Tubs and tubs of components lined the walls, hanging over fold-out tables that were cobbled together into some form of work hub. Spools of cable sat atop dusty stacks of various CDs and externals. There was even a shop vac on one of the tables.
It was a mess, but it was her mess; her domain.
Alphys plopped into the resident office chair, a familiar pop emitting from the worn-out lumbar. Her feet didn't quite make it to the floor, so she hauled herself around by grabbing the lips of the tables. She pulled over to her primary display and brought up her CORE malfunction record sheets, closing out a 'fun value' doc to do so.
She logged in the data from today's haywire CORE component, eyes scanning over the entries and how they related to each other.
A pattern was emerging.
Alphys blinked.
Or was there…?
Ugh, she didn't know. Not enough data. And no matter how much she wanted to speculate, she had to stave off the temptation. She had a few PCs to reassemble, and perhaps some malware to destroy. Wasn't one of the computer's disk drives shot? She picked up a corresponding sheet, the details of what was going on refreshing her memory. She pulled over to her workstation, getting out the necessary tools.
Time to lose herself in the work. She felt at ease when it was just her and the machines. Feeling the pieces slide together with the expert knowledge that they truly fit; the repeat failures and the breakthroughs of success… such things were her joy.
Repairs were soothing, honestly. The thing started off broke, without hope, and came out the other end of the process working. And if it didn't… there weren't horrifying ethical complications! Compared to what she had been doing before, this work was stress-free.
Work was still work, though. Hours went by, and she had to take a break.
Alphys massaged beneath her glasses. Letting out a groan, she sat back and rolled her head, loosening her shoulders. She kept trying to fight it, the weariness, but…
…eventually her energy expenditures got her, and she fell asleep.
As though the universe were conspiring against Alphys, a scuffling on the wall outside roused her from her impromptu rest. Something twisted against the panes.
There was the rolling noise as the window was lifted up, and the snap of flexing vines as they slithered into the room.
"Whossit?" She lifted her head, a charger cable stuck to her cheek.
"Rise and shine, Doctor Alphys! Rise and shine…" A familiar voice drawled out what she figured was a poor country-fied impersonation of a famous video game character.
"Flowey….?" She turned, blinking. She couldn't see a thing. Oh no. Where were her glasses?!
She slapped about the workbench, sighing in relief as she clapped onto them. "I'm not… in the mood," Alphys tried to get the sleep out of her voice. She fiddled with her glasses. Making them rest properly on her face was a challenge when half-asleep.
"Aw!" Flowey slunk closer. "Do you need me to read you back to sleep?"
"…I will kick you out." Alphys growled, "can't you see…? I'm trying to-to avert a… an uh, tiny apocalypse…?" She gestured to the CORE data that was…
Oh gosh, it'd gone to a screen saver slide-show of her favorite anime pairings.
"Uh…" Flowey side-eyed the screen in all its tender, beautiful OTP-glory. "Oh my God, you ship THAT!? They're totally wrong for each othe-"
A bolt of electricity singed the windowsill.
"AAA-" Flowey's scream died in his throat. "Are you trying to set your house on fire!?"
Alphys glowered.
"OK. Chill," Flowey admitted, "ship and let ship."
Alphys turned around, mostly to avoid grinning at Flowey. Watching him panic was cathartic, in a sense, when she subtracted the complex emotions surrounding his very creation.
"You're in a terrible mood!" Flowey complained. "You were at the beach, weren't you!?"
"None of your damned business!" Alphys snapped. She'd had it with that today, and gave Flowey a stern point of the claw. "If you bring that up one more time-"
"Waitwaitwait." Flowey waved a few leafy stems as if they were hands. "Hold your horses. I actually am here to give you a HUGE heads up concerning a… well, a special visitor to our sleepy town! Heh."
Alphys scowled.
"They're gonna be here in an hour or so, and boy do we got planning to do!" Flowey snickered. "I'd usually go to my biggest fan for this, but I have a feeling with THIS person… you should get first dibs."
"What are you talking about?" Alphys shook her head.
"I am talking about a little… retribution on an old… 'friend' of yours." Flowey bounced a brow. "A… 'friend'. If ya know what I mean."
Alphys squinted at him. "Shut up." She swiveled the chair away, messing with a few computer parts in an attempt to ignore him.
Flowey's not-quite-natural aroma wafted over her as he crawled up by her desk fan.
Flowey sing-songed, "I read the letter!"
"The letter?" Wait, had Flowey… gone before her and…?
"What," Flowey tried to sound innocent, "you don't think a flower can read?"
"No, I…" Alphys balked.
If he'd read the letter then… Truth being told Alphys had gotten so mad she hadn't even gotten to the P.S. part of the message. Could it be true? Was she coming back?
The letter did sound a bit… reflective.
Maybe she was coming.
Alphys' gut turned. She felt sick. The urge to fight and fly hit her all at once, and she choked up.
"Papyrus and Sans were supposed to get a call too, but they were too busy tying up lines with prank calls and stupidity! So I felt I had to come tell you, y'know, personally. Flora a lagartija." Flowey mentioned, "oh, and I think YOUR phone is dead too! You haven't replied to ONE text message! And those aren't easy for me to type."
Alphys felt a tear roll down her cheek.
"Wow, this must mean a lot to you…" Flowey tipped his stem, narrowing his beady eyes at her. "I didn't think that it-"
"OF COURSE THIS…!" Alphys yelled, then controlled herself. Susie was around. "…of course, this means a l-lot."
"Well, we should probably get going, then! I said an hour… right?" Flowey counted his own petals. "They're probably going to be here early, if anything. Let me tell you, they're not one to miss deadlines!"
Alphys stared out the window, her gaze far away. "Of course not. 'They' never missed deadlines."
"So, what kind of prank are we gonna…" A great flash blinded him for a moment. Flowey glanced up and Alphys was gone, the desk chair spinning lazily.
She went and did it again! Bolting, quite literally, away from him.
"…crap."
Alphys was on her moped and off to the sea. Pier three, to be exact. That's where she'd walked in.
Alphys thought it best if Susie didn't come. (And especially Flowey, the little creeper.)
Alphys and her… 'friend'… would have to hash out a lot of things before Alphys even considered letting her come near the house again.
She also didn't have faith that Susie and her wouldn't cause sizable amounts of property damage. It would be best if they were reintroduced to each other in a wide open, natural environment.
Alphys realized she couldn't tell the difference between them and wild animals in that thought, so she stopped thinking.
The ocean stretched on forever. It was impossibly deep. There was no end to it. It cycled endlessly back into itself, all across the Surface.
When Alphys had first seen it, she'd been overwhelmed. The warm sands were pleasing, and the surf exciting. But the vast breadth of the horizon was too much for her to take in. Alphys had only been getting over the sky itself, and when this first met her eyes… Alphys had cried.
And she'd cried too. Tears flowing from a golden eye, slicking down her blue scales. She was the first monster to rush into the waves. They'd crested around her, framing her in pearly white. And there was that snapshot. Alphys could see her turn back, fangs bared in the most beautiful grin.
Now the beach was empty.
Alphys stepped over a dead jellyfish. With eyes scanning for broken shards of glass, she wandered the packed sand, letting the subtle waves chill her bare feet. It was freezing, but she didn't care.
It was really petty, but she hated it.
She hated the ocean.
That sounded so dumb to say.
But it was true.
She heard the gulls cry; the waves crash. The sour odor drifted in. There were cracks on a certain section of the sea wall. A certain section where they'd sat together, for the first time. Together.
The ocean just kept stretching on forever. Now the sun was setting. The sky was washed with colors, and amber rays outlined the shapes of clouds.
Alphys' lips curled. It stung.
The flower lied.
She sat with that for an hour, maybe two… three? Time was starting to become a haze. This day might never end.
Sometime after her revelation, she heard someone marching toward her, and the trousling of bones…
Alphys knew she must've looked terrible. Her sudden self-consciousness was a good thing, less time to think about the sad stuff.
Papyrus never hesitated to talk… unless even he could discern the mood. He watched the sunset, standing beside her. Quiet.
This was just way too strange.
"You can… s-say what you need to…" Alphys muttered, "I'm not going to… I-I don't know."
She rested her head in her hands.
Papyrus sat down in the sand.
"Sometimes I like to sit out here too."
Alphys was confused. She was… honestly not expecting this.
"It helps me process! And remember… certain things…" The bony ridges of his face drew up as he frowned.
"All that e-ever happens when I c-come here is that I get sad," Alphys growled, "…or-or mad! Or both."
"Maybe being here isn't a great idea, then," Papyrus suggested.
"I'm just s-so… stupid." She massaged her temples.
"Oh, I do know a thing or two about feeling stupid," Papyrus tried to sound a tad positive, "even the Great Papyrus makes mistakes!"
Alphys side-eyed him.
He glanced away from her, back out at the glittering waves. "Why, most of my day today was squandered warning the populace of a prank-calling epidemic! Only to find that that very noble act of my own was THE PRANK! Naturally, to make amends, I called everyone back again and told them that I had been pranking by proxy, which… now that I think on it… might have been part of the prank too! Wait a minute! Did I get pranked twice?"
"OH. MY. GOD." Her voice was strained.
"I… didn't think it was that bad." Papyrus was small.
"I AM SO S-S-S-STUPID!" Alphys burst out, raging, "The flower LIED! He lieeed to me! AND I FELL FOR IT!"
Papyrus' ever-smiling face was a little panicked. "Alphys, please! Calm down. I'm positive that it's a misunderstanding."
"MISUNDERSTANDING!?" Alphys rounded. "SHE'S NOT HERE!" She gestured wildly at the open expanses of sand and sea around them.
"She?" Papyrus asked.
Alphys was livid.
"Are you… talking about…" Papyrus said the word, "…Undyne?"
"YES! I'M TALKING ABOUT UNDYNE!" Alphys exploded. "WHO ELSE WOULD I WAIT BY THE OCEAN FOR IN THIS EXACT SPOT FOR SEVEN HOURS?! ON THE FAINTEST OF HOPES GIVEN BY A-A-A LYING FLOWER!? AND I'VE ALREADY BEEN HERE TODAY!"
"You've been here seven hours?" Papyrus was doubly concerned.
"YES! SEVEN WHOLE HOURS OF MY LIFE! WASTED!" Alphys continued her rage, "AGAIN!"
"You should… probably lay down and stop screaming!" Papyrus reached out to her, offering his best advice, "you look… quite zappy."
"I'm going home!"
"Alphys! Wait-"
She turned.
"I was… I need to tell you something. But you must calm down!" Papyrus was firm on that, standing. He waited for Alphys to stop looking so… electrifying. "Just… breathe. Please?"
Alphys breathed in and out, letting the frantic scattering of her magic coalesce. She opened her eyes and stared up at Papyrus. "OK. What?"
Papyrus let out a breath of relief. "Alright. I do not want things to get belligerent, so try to remain calm as I tell you this: there IS someone in town to see you, and they're at the diner-"
"She's at the DINER? Why didn't she come here first?! WHY DIDN'T SHE COME FIND ME?! OH MY GOD!" Alphys clutched her head.
"Alphys, don't-"
She zipped away, her body moving like an arc of lighting. Not even the esteemed distance jogger Papyrus could keep up! She was, in a pun, lighting fast.
"WAIT!"
He watched her bolt, helplessly behind. Papyrus just worried it'd be a repeat of last time she'd expended so much energy. Her magic was potent, volatile, but it didn't have much in the way of endurance…
"SLOW DOWN!"
Alphys couldn't even hear him anymore, what with the growl of electric energy and the growing distance. She peeled into the parking lot of the diner, angled perfectly to barge in. She came through the doors and skidded to a standstill in the center of the dining area. She was sweaty, red-eyed, and wore a twitching grimace.
Grillby's flames stilled to a candle's flicker out of shock. The family of rabbits all froze as well, one with a bite half-bitten. The waitress somehow ceased pouring mid-pour, goggling Alphys along with the rest of the monsters.
Alphys scanned the perimeter for her. But there wasn't a snatch of blue in sight. But what was in sight, was a snatch of pink.
A hideous squelching sound, like that of latex on synthetic leather, broke the silence. Completely unaware of the danger he was in, he wheeled around on the bar stool, throwing his arms open.
"ALPHY!" Mettaton's face lit up with a smile. "My dearest dearie! You look-oh wow. UM." His face fell as he noticed her heavy breathing and grit-encrusted clothes.
She glared at him, his sparkling aura dredging up a primal surge.
Mettaton gestured toward her limply. "The-you've got some… uhm… hi? Hello?"
Alphys just kept glaring.
He laughed, nervously.
Her nose wrinkled. Her claws curled. Static electricity built in the air.
Mettaton's eyes widened, and he leaned backwards.
And just before the air snapped, she did. Her legs wobbled and her head swam, vision darkening. The last thing she saw was the floor coming up to greet her.