Papyrus had been silent. He knew he had been silent. He'd avoided every tripwire, every motion detector, and every squeaky door. So how was it that Undyne was waiting for him at the door to supply room #108?
"What did you do this time, Papyrus? Trip down the stairs and snap your collarbone? Trip off the dock and lose a toe? Trip over your morals and slice your integrity in half?"
Papyrus hid his wince under a shrug. His friend (even if they were legally supposed to be trying to kill one another at the moment) was clearly getting sick of his go to lie for things like this. Tripping wasn't that common occurrence, after all. But he thought she would let him get away with it just a little bit longer. Apparently not.
"would'ja believe me if I said it wasn't for me?"
Undyne's mind quickly jumped to a conclusion.
"What did that maggot-colored, glue-stick carrying, goodie two-shoes of a monster do to your brother now?"
The insult was spoken with a complete lack of interest. Papyrus wondered whether the piscine scientist was coming up on her heat cycle. He always had a hard time with complex emotional games when his was happening.
"alphys taught him about muffins yesterday, although i think the recipe she was using is more commonly used as cake batter."
He smiled hopefully. It would be really nice to see his best friend able to forgive the Captain. He knew getting along would be a much harder journey, but forgiveness? He thought he could manage to bring about forgiveness if he tried.
Undyne did not look like forgiveness was in the cards for today. She did, in fact, look pissed.
"You tell me what's happening or I'll inject you with fire ants. I hear they're very painful. Extremely, even.
Papyrus gulped. He'd had fire ants fall into his eye sockets once. He'd not like to repeat the experiment.
"a copy of our dimension hopper crash landed in the basement. There was a smaller version of my brother inside. he looked like he'd barely come out of one of her majesty's "tea parties" with his life. we got my brother to agree to helping the poor guy, but he just won't stop bleeding."
Undyne's eyebrows had stayed down though most of the spiel, but right at the end they shot up in horror before the reaction was quickly repressed. But she did turn around and unlock the triple wards and a new deadbolt Papyrus hadn't seen before. She then turned her back to the door and pointedly ignored him. Overjoyed at his friend's sympathy and generosity, Papyrus slipped into the storage room with a grin.
That grin quickly evaporated when he saw just how little supplies were in the room. Almost every shelf had been emptied completely. There were maybe five boxes in the entire room. He could still remember the days when it was so full a clumsy person couldn't walk around without bumping five or six boxes off the shelves. He could remember filling these boxes; not long ago there was a platoon of interns who did nothing else.
But then Her Majesty, filled with the wisdom of a broken toothpick, had declared that any monster with less than 80,000G to their name was to be hunted down, dusted, and their possessions brought to her to be stored up for the day that whatever remained of their dying population would follow her up through the Barrier to the Surface.
About a third of their population was that poor. Sentries and interns were especially hard hit. A few survived, as Papyrus and Sans had, by combining households. But when the guards arrived at doors across the Underground, they found houses empty and monsters gone.
The Royal Scientist, just elected and extremely young, had taken one look at the order and rebelled. Undyne had taken almost two hundred monsters under her care. Most were old. Some were children. All were desperate. All fled into the True Lab while Undyne locked the doors.
As the weeks went by, many Fell Down from the cramped conditions, sparse food, and lack of hope. In desperation Undyne tried to bring them back. The Amalgamations were the result. Few monsters outside the Lab knew of them.
Papyrus and Sans we among these, for Papyrus had teleported food from Muffet into the Lab as soon as he could. Now the Spiders snuck through tunnels and ventilation shafts to bring fresh, healing food on a daily basis. Partly this was due to Undyne's fury at the brothers' refusal to leave the Queen's service. They refused to leave either population, the Queen's or the Scientist's, without a method to communicate with the other.
This empty storeroom made it clear to Papyrus that he needed to get more medicinal ingredients "dropped" into the Scientist's domain. Muffet had plenty; her spiders did not have the knowledge and ability to combine them. Then maybe Undyne would be less acerbic the next time he needed medical supplies.
He grabbed two of the congealants he needed and teleported out.
When he arrives back home it's to a pair of empty sockets lined in blood. Not his brother's, although that little detail escaped him. Their guest looked close enough for his imagination to spiral out of control.
Papyrus felt the tremors in his hands starting at the same time he noticed his phalanges clutching at his chest. His breathing was already faster. The sockets before him were starting to dissolve in static.
But before things got further than that he heard his brother's voice shout, "OH FOR THE STARS' SAKE-"
Muffet interrupted him. "Papyrus, what is seventeen to the thirty-second power?"
17^32? Well, 17^32 was the same as (17^2)^16. 17^2 was 17*17, or 289, which made 289^16, or (289^2)^8. Then 289^2 was 83,521, so you got (83,521^2)^4, and then 83,521^2 was 6.9757*10^9 ish. You put that in and you got (6.9757*10^9)^4, or 6.9757^4 * (10^9)^4, which became 2,367.831 * 10^36. Clean that up and you get 2.367*10^39.
About halfway through the calculation Papyrus recognized that his would-be panic attack was over. He finished the calculation anyway, though, because he knew firsthand how Muffet could get if he didn't. Also, you never knew when that kind of mental math might come in useful.
"Two point three-six-seven times ten to the thirty-ninth."
No one was looking at him. No one acknowledged his effort, not that he expected them to. They knew he could do it already, so why waste time listening. Even in here, the Underground's motto still rang true. He hated it.
Muffet was using the first bottle of Slime-be-made™ on the other Sans. It's mottled green soon showed on every inch of the foreign skeleton's neck and chest areas. After the most dangerous wounds were sealed (or at least beginning to seal) she dabbed a few splotches around the breaks in the arms and legs. The missing spans of bone would need to be regrown inch by painful inch. At least this time it wasn't him.
When the wounds were wrapped up to her meticulous satisfaction, Muffet sat up and let the obviously frail skeleton collapse on the couch. He still wasn't moving, but that was fine. Papyrus wasn't ready for his brother's double to be speaking yet. He could barely handle him existing; speaking would be too much.
Papyrus was just beginning to process what having their guest would mean.