Underground, forgotten by all who lived on the surface, there was a door. In front of that door was a short, yellow reptilian monster. This monster was nervously shuffling her feet, a clipboard clutched in her claws, her lab coat swaying with her movements. After a moment's hesitance, she knocked, a polite, dainty knock on the door to the Royal Scientist's office.
The door opened, but instead of the Royal Scientist, two pairs of hands greeted her. They were skeletal hands, with long, white finger bones, but unlike human skeletons, the palms consisted each of a single bone with perfectly circular holes in the center of each, as if cut out.
Of the four that hovered in front of her, two of the palms were vacant, the hands hovering at her eye level, where she could clearly see them, while the holes of the other two were completely black, save for a small white pupil in each, focused on her mouth and shifting to get a clear view of her words.
Alphys, knowing assuming that her superior would be annoyed if she turned her head as she tended to when talking to people, as it would mean for him to have to move his hands to face her to read her lips and speak with her, trained her eyes to the space between the hands as she spoke.
"I-I've brought the reports you asked me to compile..." she stuttered, handing the clipboard to the two eyeless hands. One took it, then deposited it on the office desk, where a number of hands were working on a set of blueprints, then return, and in unison with its partner, signed to thank her. They then went on to explain how the data would be used, ideally, to help with the creation of artificial human souls. The scientist explained that he would being with the creation of a monster soul, to test the ideas he had been working on.
"Y-you want to make a monster soul artificially...? Wouldn't there be complications... Like, eth-ethics... how the... um... if..." She trailed off, wringing her claws, but found a place to trail back onto. "Doctor Gaster... You're talking about making a person. Are you, um... Are you sure about this?"
The hands seemed amused, in as much as hands could express amusement, at least. They told her that he had thought it through already and explained that it was little different than having a child. He explained that he and his wife had agreed to use their own souls as magic donors for the process, using the magic to create a body for the soul as, unlike human souls, monster souls could not endure without a body, and that they would raise the child as their own. Papyrus would be delighted to have a sibling, and the kind young skeleton wouldn't judge them for having been born in a lab. For the human souls, which he pointedly noted that Alphys did not ask about, he knew that there was a weight of responsibility to be borne there, but had decided that it was preferable to having to kill every human who fell down in the Underground. One of the projects he was considering and researching would be housing a human soul in a way that would allow it to live a proper life, an artificial body of physical matter rather than magic.
Alphys, though still wary, did not question him further. She left, wondering where the doctor was this time.
In Hotland, a flurry of hands were busy aligning, assembling, and monitoring, the construction of a massive structure. They worked in coordination with a small group of monsters who were also using their magic to levitate, weld, attach, and affix various pieces. But the Royal Scientist was not with them.
In the Capital, four hands were assembling and preparing the ingredients for a quiche. Another hand in the next room was entertaining a small, energetic skeleton, while the babybones' mother watched over them. The Royal Scientist was not their either.
In Snowdin, two dozen hands hovered around in groups of three. Of each group, one hand read, one hand held, and one hand turned pages. They floated above heads, reading at a moderate pace. But the monster to whom those hands belonged was not there.
In Waterfall, a ring of hands stared at the shining stones embedded in the cave ceiling. They couldn't compare to a true night sky, but they were beautiful nonetheless. Furthermore, if the origin of Waterfall's flowing water could be found, perhaps it was not covered by the Barrier, and could be widened. Even if the barrier did surround it, perhaps, just perhaps, monsters could see the real night sky again. But the man looking for this opening was not there.
Deep underground, even further down than most of the Underground, was a laboratory. Most of the rooms were filled with machines of the Royal Scientist's design, none in operation. There wasn't much light, as most of it came from candles lit by fire magic. But soon, that would be changed. Soon, the real science could begin. Because there, was W. D. Gaster.
A/N: Oh, look, another Gaster story. I like these, so I wrote one. I also joined the Echo Gaster project and that is very very cool.