In accordance with fanfic law, I must remind you I do not own Undertale, which is property of Toby Fox.

*RING*

*RING*

"Hey. This is the Hotland Royal Guard."

"Guys, this is Captain Undyne."

"Oh hey, Undyne! How did the, you know… the Snowdin thing go?"

"Papyrus succeeded in apprehending the human. After he did that he called me. Then the human, it asked that the King be the one to take its soul. Last requests and all that."

"I hear ya. Is there, like, anything you need us to do?"

"Well, I don't think I'll be able to stay in Hotland that long, so I'll need you to take it the rest of the way to the castle. Can you two handle it?"

"I'm pretty sure I can. What about you, brah?"

"..."

"Yeah, we'll be fine."

"Thanks, guys. We'll arrive in Hotland pretty soon. Meet us at the dock."

"Got it. See you then."

Undyne hung up her cell phone and turned to Frisk. "All right, brat. I'll be handing you off to two members of the Hotland unit once we arrive."

Frisk nodded, and resumed gazing blankly at the surroundings.

Aside from Undyne's phone call, neither of the passengers made a sound as the Riverperson ferried them away from Snowdin. Undyne did little more than watch the child for most of the trip. Frisk herself absently watched the scenery of the underground go by. Having never seen Waterfall before, Frisk allowed herself to drink in the scenery. It was absolutely beautiful, though she supposed it was a shame she wouldn't be able to fully appreciate it, what with everything that's happened.

"We're almost there."

Undyne's harsh voice broke Frisk out of her reverie and made her flinch. Now that she wasn't lost in her surroundings, she became aware that the temperature was steadily rising uncomfortably. It was here that Frisk started to be glad that she didn't take any extra clothing for her trip. Undyne, meanwhile, was starting to sweat a bit.

Oh yeah, she is a fish, Frisk thought. Of course she would hate the heat. That's what she meant…

Eventually they reached a shore, where the cave walls were bathed in a dull reddish glow, from the lava which wasn't too far away.

"Here we are," the Riverperson said calmly, as if s/he didn't care, or even notice that a mass murderer was his/her current passenger. "Welcome to Hotland."

Frisk stepped off, as did Undyne, who was clearly uncomfortable in her armor. Frisk could swear she heard sizzling.

As Undyne continued doing a pretty good impression of a fish stick, she noticed something.

"Where ARE those two? They should've been here by now. They're only stationed on the… *pant* ...next floor up…"

A couple minutes passed, and still no one. Frisk looked at Undyne's labored breathing and couldn't help but feel bad. Then, an idea struck her as she remembered something. Thank goodness for non-perishable monster food, thought Frisk as she began reach into the spacious pockets of her cargo shorts.

Undyne immediately noticed Frisk doing so, and instinctively reached to summon a spear, but then she remembered how Papyrus told her that the kid dropped their knife in the snow and handed over her only other weapon, a fighting glove. Then what's it doing…?

To her surprise, Frisk produced one of those specialty double popsicles they made in Snowdin- A bisicle, if memory served. Frisk broke it in half and held one out to Undyne. "I, um, noticed you were starting to roast alive in that armor, so I thought you might want some of this popsicle I got."

Undyne looked doubtfully down at the unisicle, then glared at Frisk, who was looking back up at her somewhat apologetically.

Undyne continued to glare.

Frisk smiled nervously.

Undyne's expression didn't change.

Frisk started sweating, and not just because of the heat.

Undyne's glare continued unabated.

Frisk withdrew the popsicle once she became aware of the hole being drilled into her soul by Undyne's remaining eye. "Well, uh… more for me, I guess," she said, pocketing one of the unisicles as she started eating the other one.

Suddenly the two of them heard two sets of armored footsteps barreling towards their location. They looked and saw two heavily armored figures who were built like bricks made out of smaller bricks sprinting towards them.

One of them, the one who appeared to have rabbit ears, stopped and caught his breath. "Sorry… we took… so long… to get here…" he panted. The other one- the one with the more dragon-ish head, didn't show any visible signs of fatigue.

"Well you oughta be," Undyne scolded, sounding equally out of breath from the heat. "What… kept you?"

"Elevator… was busted. Had to… go the long way… through the lab."

Undyne now felt a little guilty for yelling at her underling like that. Just a little. "Well, you should've... called me then."

"I totally forgot to do that. My bad."

The captain groaned in exasperation. They were competent fighters, no doubt about that, but when it came to official procedures and discipline, the two of them could be a bit… absentminded.

"Well, here's the human," she said irritably, punctuating it by shoving Frisk towards them (causing Frisk to accidentally drop her half-finished unisicle). "If it tries anything, you have my permission to use lethal force."

"We'll be fine. Right, bro?"

"..."

"Well, take care of yourselves," Undyne said as she reboarded the ferry that was politely waiting for her still. "Waterfall," she told the Riverperson.

S/he nodded, then turned to Frisk and the two Royal Guards. "Make sure you wash your hands," s/he cryptically said as s/he drove off with Undyne in tow. "Gardening is dirty work, after all."

Dr. Alphys rarely ever answered the door, but when two members of the Royal Guard needed to pass through her lab due to the elevator outage, she didn't refuse. She figured it was about the human child, and that they would come back through soon. And they did, but she wasn't expecting them to have brought the kid with them.

Alphys was keeping a close eye on Frisk ever since she stepped out of the ruins, and was keeping tabs on her as she cut a swathe through the Underground- partly so she could keep Undyne appraised of the situation, and partly because of her own morbid curiosity.

And then she saw the confrontation with Papyrus.

Alphys didn't know Papyrus personally, even though she did work with Sans once (though shortly after her DT experiments resulted in utter disaster, Sans up and quit with no warning). However, she knew what he was like from how Undyne talked about him.

"Oh, that goofball? I've never seen anyone more devoted to a cause in my life! It's kind of inspiring. I don't know if he'll make it, but with enthusiasm like that, he's bound to go somewhere!"

And so it was that she watched Papyrus staring her down with horrible anticipation, hoping against hope that Papyrus would survive this, and was simultaneously relieved and shocked when she saw the kid drop the knife and fall to the ground in a crying heap.

And she heard everything.

She forgot to let Undyne know what was going on, but even if she had, she would've left out the bit where they let the killer stay in the house. She didn't know what went on after that point, though. She didn't have the cameras set up everywhere. She still had standards when it came to privacy.

She happened to be away from her monitor at the time, heating up some dinner when the back door got a knock from those two Royal Guards, and as a result she missed both Undyne going to Snowdin and arriving in Hotland.

And now here she was, with the human in her lab.

Truth be told, having started the Human Fan Club a while back, she already had some respect for their kind from what little she was able to gather about them. And even with all that this child had done, she still understood, and had sympathy to a degree.

Finally she decided to speak up.

"So… um, you guys have the human? Didn't Undyne, you know… take their soul?"

The bunny-eared one summarized what Undyne told him, and Alphys nodded after he finished his story.

"Okay… The main elevator isn't close to being fixed, though, so you're going to have to take the long way up." In truth, she had deactivated the elevator as a precautionary measure to stall the human from reaching and killing Asgore. But now that that was no longer a concern, Alphys now wanted to stop the child from dying pointlessly. In spite of all that had happened, she still liked humans.

"Alright, thanks. We'll be headin' out now." The two guards started for the door, but stopped once they realized the child wasn't with them. The bunny-eared one panicked (the dragon-looking one was stoic as ever) but a second later they saw the human looking over Alphys's anime collection.

She turned to Alphys with a confused look. "How'd you get all this anyway?"

Alphys was startled that the human was actually talking to her. Quickly regaining her composure (or trying, at any rate), she replied, "W-well, sometimes this s-stuff falls in with the garbage that humans throw away, and it, um… it ends up here."

That made sense to Frisk. It would also explain why most of it was from the early 2000s at the latest, when anime was just starting to become mainstream in America. "Once you're all on the surface, you should look up this show called One Punch Man. I think it'd be right up your alley."

With that, Frisk turned back towards the two Royal Guards, and after confirming that yes, she was ready to go, the three of them started for the back door to the rest of Hotland.

And slammed into the automatic door when it failed to open.

"Huh?" Alphys uttered, confused. She went over to the door, and it didn't slide open like it usually did. She tried to pry it open with force. That didn't work.

She was about to ask one of the Royal Guards to try and use their sword to pry it open when the lights suddenly shut off. Alphys groaned. Now she had a pretty good idea what was going on. There must be a power outage. Maybe the Core's having problems again...

"Well, well," a booming, flamboyant, slightly metallic voice sounded from somewhere nearby, "Aren't we in a hurry to leave?"

Alphys froze. "Mettaton? What are you doing?" She asked hesitantly, with a bit of suspicion.

"Nothing you need to be worried about," Mettaton's voice answered nonchalantly. "It's just that in light of all that's happened, this may be my first, last, and only chance to have a real human guest star on my show!"

The lights went back on.

And Frisk was gone.

Hope you enjoyed Chapter 3! Don't expect every chapter to go up this quickly, as school just now decided to start kicking me in the pants with 3 essays and 2 tests within 1 week of each other. Hooray.

Just a quick confession to make: I hate Mettaton. At first, I didn't mind too much. I thought his gimmick of being a robotic entertainer was fun enough, and Mettaton EX was (and still is) one of my favorite boss fights of all time.

But somewheres around my third playthrough, I suddenly put together what the deal was with the statues. I realized the statue in Waterfall was the original statue in front of the Core, and Mettaton replaced it with a statue of himself and threw the memorial in the garbage. I have absolutely no sympathy for him after that and I was honestly tempted to kill him just once, but I held off for Alphys's sake. (She's my 2nd favorite character, just after Asgore)

Just as a reminder, I don't even have a plan for how this is going to go, I'm just letting the characters do their thing. One last question I want your input on: Should I give Those Two Guys actual names? Is that some sort of heresy punishable by death within the Undertale fandom? I know exactly what I'd call them, too… but you'll never know unless I put it in a future chapter!