Toriel covered her muzzle to muffle the tearful gasps that tried to escape her, her vision somewhat blurred as she watched her husband and child embrace. The other mortal monsters slowly creeped out of their hiding places to stand to the side awkwardly as her family gave a few more sniffles and rose from their crouched positions on the ground to see the rest of the Underground smiling at them. Asriel laughed, rubbing his eye as an embarrassed smile curled his lips. He looked back up at his father before he ran and grabbed Sans and Alphys, tugging them forward.
"They brought me back," the prince repeated, his eyes gleaming with happiness, "I wouldn't be here without them." Alphys laughed awkwardly.
"W-well, S-sans did a-all the work. I-I mean-"
"she means that she's the real main reason asriel's here." The scientist made a strange noise and began to shake her head rapidly.
"N-n-no! I-" She was cut off abruptly as the three of them were lifted into the air in a crushing hug, strangled sounds escaping them as the king's booming laughter resonated around the bar. The monsters surrounding them chuckled too at trio's plight. Alphys's face turned a cherry red as she was squished against both the skeleton and the king while Sans struggled to breathe, his face forcefully mashed into the large boss monster's chest, his bony appendages tugging feebly at the tough meaty arm wound around him.
"Dad, you're suffocating us here," Asriel coughed out with a smile, his voice strained. Asgore laughed, muttering a quiet apology while he set them down, only to hoist Asriel onto his shoulder and tearfully gaze at the smaller monsters still recovering from his affections. The queen's ghostly apparition drifted closer, her throat feeling as if it were closing as the faded form of her hand passed through the head of her son. She turned her gaze next to the monsters that had returned Asriel to the realm of the living, a fond look flitting onto her face.
"Thank you, for all that you have done for me." She had spoken the words as they escaped her husband's lips, their mouths moving in unison. Asgore's eyes crinkled up and Sans's eyelights shrank in horror into pinpricks of light when he realized what was bound to happen next. Alphys gave them both a strange look.
"as mash as i enjoy hugs your highness, you're gonna have ta ex-squeeze-"
Asgore got to him before he could have a chance to react and, again, both the scientist and the skeleton found themselves six feet above ground being slowly crushed to pieces by their lovable king as the prince gave sharp laughing bleats.
"Let the festivities begin!" The larger goat exclaimed as the rest of the Underground cheered, the only exception being the wheezing duo encased in an almost life-threatening embrace. Toriel sighed, finding herself unable to reflect the joyful sounds of the mortal half of her home.
"It sucks doesn't it?" The goat started at the sound of a defeated voice, quickly whirling around to find the Captain of the Royal Guard floating behind her. "Being here. Being dead." The warrior's gaze was locked onto the struggling forms of the Royal Scientist and the Royal Judge, jealousy and longing burning hot in her eye as faint remnants of magic sparked in the empty socket on the left side of her face.
"I-I beg your pardon?" The queen stuttered, flinching back from the scathing look the fish flung at her response. Undyne released an irritable snort, her arms crossing as she turned her glare back to the jovial monsters as Sans and Alphys were again set back down.
"They look so happy," she spat harshly, "don't they?" Toriel frowned, anger beginning to bubble behind her scarlet eyes.
"Well, yes, they do. Is there something wrong with such?" The captain gave a cold barking laugh.
"Oh no!" She exclaimed mockingly, "they're happy! They're celebrating! It's just so great how they all just seem to have forgotten everyone who'd DIED!" Toriel was taken aback by the stinging words and was about to make a heated retort when an abrupt peal of laughter suddenly pierced the air, grabbing the spirits' attentions. The Royal Scientist was clutching her stomach as she fell to the floor in giggling fits while Sans hovered over her, bony hands clutching her forearm while he struggled to keep his own laughter in check. The bright flare of pain in the warrior's eye did not go unnoticed by the mothering goat as her rage cooled, understanding and calm relaxing her expression.
"Are you telling me that they do not deserve happiness? After all they have been through, it is not your place to be jealous of-"
"I'M NOT JEALOUS!" Toriel's floppy ears flattened at the deafening shout, but the calm did not recede from her face.
"I understand how you must feel, Undyne. You wish to be with her, as I wish to be with my family again. Yet we cannot, for they live on without us," she murmured forlornly, her gaze falling to the floor as a frown again marred her brow, "All we can do now is watch over them, and pray for their happiness and that we will not go unremembered." Undyne grit her teeth, folding her arms as she turned her glare away from the queen. She didn't care if the goat was royalty, they were dead therefore titles held no importance anymore. But regret for her action came swiftly the moment the warrior saw the gaze of her mortal love, a dreamy mist over the lively hazel of her eyes as they rested on the skeleton's amused grin. She turned back to the queen, swallowing the bile that had risen at the sight.
"Do you love her, Undyne? You want her to be happy, do you not?" She felt a sting behind her nose and her vision began to blur.
"Yes...I want her to be happy." Her voice was a shuddering whisper through her clenched teeth, a weak little sound she hated with every fiber of her existence, as minuscule as it may be.
"Then watch over them and protect them and let them be happy. God knows they all deserve happiness." The silence at followed seemed resonate throughout the entirety of the Underworld, a noiseless cloud that deafened the jovial atmosphere.
"...I will."
Neither of them noticed the dark empty gaze that peered at their faint forms, hidden by the embrace of a little yellow lizard.
Many hours later.
Alphys sat leaning against her desk, idly scrolling through the contents of the fan fiction posting site. She'd finished her portion of the day's paperwork, most of which were reports about the Core's maintenance. Thankfully, the problems brought up, were incredibly minor and were already on the lizard's overflowing bucket list of things to get done. She sniffed, a scowl marring her brow when her eyes caught sight of a ship she disliked before she skipped over it with a disgusted scoff.
Without Core workers to help her out, Alphys had been struggling to repair the damage the genocidal human had done upon waltzing through a year ago. Apparently, they thoroughly enjoyed smashing every button they saw, breaking the traps, and somehow slicing open heavily protected electrical wires, all of which increasing the duration of Alphys's stay in the boiling hot hell hole. Without reliable air-conditioning. Thankfully, she'd finished repairs relatively quickly and had headed onto working out kinks that hadn't been looked at since her predecessor met his unfortunate end. As of now, the Core droned on as smoothly as a well-oiled machine, perhaps even better, generating enough power to sustain the Underground for centuries to come, and Alphys couldn't have been more happy about her accomplishment.
For the first time in a while, she felt she had done something great. But now it was time to move on.
She sighed, closing the browser with a click of her mouse only to go through her private documents to pull up a picture of a half finished blueprint she'd found in the True Lab's old files. The real blueprint had been too old and faded to do much except take a picture and make an attempt to salavage it. Her eyes scanned the screen, dancing for a moment on the faded title.
PROJECT #146: Artificial Soul (Human)
Six circular points were stationed around a large heart-shaped center, small lines of garbled text ineligibly scrawled around the dominating drawing. From what she could tell, it was written in Wing Dings, a terrible habit of the late Royal Scientist's, as he and Sans were the only ones who could understand the foreign combinations of pictures and gestures. Grunting in displeasure, she made a note to herself to drag Sans over to translate. Was he going free sometime tomorrow? Probably. He's always had a flexible schedule, so he should be able to work something out. She paused in the action, stopping to think for a moment as her pen remained poised over her notepad.
"An artificial soul…" She murmured to herself, squinting at the screen, "Sans is gonna flip his shit."
"Sans, something has been going weird with my magic." The skeleton glanced at the young prince out of the corner of his left eye, before turning back to the spaghetti he had been making for the kids' dinner. Asgore had asked him if Asriel could stay over for a while, as he had work to finish up and he didn't want to leave Asriel home alone. The prince had been all too happy to stay, and Sans couldn't blame him. As many things Asgore was, a cook was most certainly not one of them.
"would you care to elaborate on that subject?" Asriel gnawed on the inside of his cheek, reaching a paw back to awkwardly scratch the back of his neck.
"I can't…I can't do what I could before. L-like…I can't summon fire as well as I used to," the prince explained meekly. Sans frowned, his hands busily stirring and adding spices as his mind churned in various directions at once.
"your soul isn't complete, asriel. it's not a 'true' soul."
"Why?" Sans hummed in thought.
"to create a true monster soul, two monsters would need to combine special forms of magic created from their love for their significant other. what most monsters don't know is that in that process of creation, they are giving up a portion of their own souls to make the new one. i wasn't able to recreate your soul with both your mother and your father's soul shards. so, i had to improvise by collecting several different physical items from your father, as well as add in my own magic to bond in all together. when ya add it up together, you've only got half the place you can store and channel your magic in. your mom's soul shards," he said as he tapped the stirring spoon against the rim of the pot to remove the sauce that still clung to it, before he set it aside to place a glass lid over the container. He fell silent, lost in his own thoughts until the kid coughed to regain his attention.
"So, you're saying that without my dad's and my mom's souls, I can't perform magic very well?" The skeleton shrugged a shoulder, "but didn't you say you used your own magic too?"
"well. yeah."
"So wouldn't a part of my mom, my dad, and you be inside my soul?" Sans raised a non-existent brow.
"that...could be possible...i guess?" Asriel humphed and gazed towards the ground. A short silence passed before the prince clucked his tongue and spoke again.
"Well, that explains why my breakfast was levitating this morning."
"what-" Sans's phone buzzed in his pocket and the skeleton sighed and dug it out, flipping it open to answer the call, eyeing the sheepish goat with a glowing blue eye, "hello?" Asriel leaned forward, ears twitching as he strained to make out the words of the caller.
"Sans...need...True Lab...come...found something...know…"
"'kay, i'll be there soon. gotta get the kids food first." He shut the phone with a flick of his wrist, raising his other hand to poke the prince's muzzle as a pen and paper raced to the table, "we'll chirp about this later. for now, no magic and i'd better not hear a peep 'bout it outta you 'til i bring it up. an' the both of you buggers better be in bed before ten, no exceptions, capiche?"
"Yes sir."
"atta boy, now lug zach down here and set the table for three. i dunno if your pops is gonna drop by any time soon, but just in case 'cause he might be hungry. And damn can that guy eat."
Well… To say her prediction was accurate would be mostly true, even if the outcome was entirely different than what she expected. In other words, to be spun around in dizzyingly happy circles by a skeleton who, at the moment, was acting very un-"Sans"-like, was something she never would have expected. His brother must certainly have rubbed off on him, even if this overjoyed state had appeared over a year after the younger skeleton's "fall". Such was the only reason she could come up with as she gracelessly stumbled into a warm embrace, her mind groaning at the action while her body instinctively returned the gesture. How many times has she been hugged today? She couldn't remember.
His words came quick and chipper, in great contrast to the natural softness of his tone she'd grown accustomed to hearing, her mind slow to register the onslaught of apparent excitement that streamed from the other monster. One word was all it took before Alphys finally managed to wrap her head around what in the world her friend had been chittering about. At the same time, Sans halted his show of enthusiasm to give the yellow lizard a studious look of worry. Her movements were sluggish and clearly involuntary, a far away gleam in her eyes which abruptly flashed away the moment he gained her attention.
"Freedom," she muttered, blinking hard. Sans sweatdropped and sighed through his grin.
"yep. your spring cleaning saved the underground alphie."
"What?"
"nothin', now where're the blueprints?" Alphys gave thoughtful hm's as she trotted over to her computer to pull up the photo. She sat in her seat as he leaned over her head, planting his hands on her chair as his eyesockets squinted at the screen. After a moment, she asked what the symbols meant, to which he dutifully replied, slowly so as she could promptly record it into her composition book. Upon her finishing, Sans popped his knuckles (somehow) and dragged the lizard scientist off to the True Lab, the frown that came over his features becoming lost in the shadows of the hallway.
His eyesockets darkened as a sudden chill swept over his spine.
Transparent hands ghosted over rows upon rows of data, stopping for a moment to linger on a shuddering group of megabytes of character data. The hands drifted closer to inspect it carefully, one of the pair curling itself into a fist of energy in preparation for an execution whilst the other contented itself to reading the delicate coding. Abruptly the first hand ceased its movements as two solid white hands brushed it away, only to join the other in inspection. Its crooked smile widened.
Ah…yes, of course it is him.
Who else was gifted enough to see past the lies of this little game?
One solid hand curled itself around a handful of zeros from the character data, its thumb changing the numbers as they gently brushed over the delicate data.
He'd always wished for answers...perhaps now is the time he finally received them…?
…
What do you think?
Okay, I was gonna update two weeks ago, but I got grounded by my dad because I didn't do something. Which I forgot... Also, school starts in a few days and I've already been prep'ing for highschool volleyball and I really want to be on varsity! I'm also taking classes way above my grade level and that's gonna really suck. So yeah, workin' hard to balance it out. Anyway! I hope that you guys don't hate me too much! And, uh, R&R and feel free tell me what you think about the story so far, give advice, or throw in some ideas for me to chew on! All is munch appreciated!
Responses!
[KaidaShi: Woah! Are those split personalities or different people speaking? Not actually sure seems more believable. So, uh...
Kaida: Yesh, I tried to make it sad...but everytime I look back at it I scrunch up a bit inside because I know there's a way to make it more sad but I'm not good at writing sad stuff so... *sad face*
Shi: Yeah...I find it funny how I saw this after I had written that part. So cookies and milk for you, 'cause you got it! Woo!
Whoever "Me" is because I don't know what to put instead: As much as I want Sans and Papyrus to reunite, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to keep them apart, no matter how much it tears me up inside. *sniff* I'M SORRY PAPY! I also really like that theory and have created my own using parts of that and parts of other theories as well, but that's an explanation for another time, or another story, whichever comes first.
Kaida: In the timeskip parts, let just pretend that's what they're doing. I mean, what else can they do? They're dead.
Shi: Yeah...I know...
"Me": Yay! Updating! Which almost never happens at reasonable times because I'm a terrible person!]
Lovesbugsalot: Those words alone are a compliment in itself. Here's a virtual hug! And virtual bug! Because I love your name!
Fern of the Clouds: FEEL DEM FEELZ! And thank you so much! I tried really hard to tone it down and give it some more realism, but with Undertale, there's not a lot an amateur can do. I'm sure you could spot the few parts where it gets iffy and out of it, but I hope they still at least somewhat fit into the story as a whole. Unless I'm being overly critical and those parts are unnoticeable by many except me. But I'm not reading the story for the story, I'm reading it for the mistakes and things I could or should've changed. Thanks again! And I'm glad to hear that!
KaidaShi (lol, again): Okay, I'm gonna make this easier for me so... Thanks Kaida! I try to update as often as I can, but with my schedule, it's hard to fit in time to sit down a write. But! I'll continue in my efforts to the best of my ability! Kaida is not being rude at all, Shi. Or maybe she/he/it/idonteffingknow is and I'm too happy-go-lucky to even bother noticing. Interesting notion I must say! I shall definitely digest it for later thoughts!
