Undertale: The Machine
Chapter 10
Moth to a Flame
Frisk clasps his skull and shakes his head! Nothing makes sense! These memories, that man's actions and words, these feelings, his memories, his LACK of memories! What's the point of even moving forward at this point? There's just probably a king or a queen at the end who will just want him dead anyway, there's no point to any of this, only suffering!
"Frisk…?" A timid, familiar voice lets out behind him. Frisk looks over with frustration and sadness over his entire being.
"Wh… Whimsun? What are you doing here?"
"Frisk… I… I did go back like you said, I went back to Snowdin town, and there I met a lot of people…" Whimsun says, landing near Frisk upon the orange burning stones of Hotland.
"Frisk… there are a lot of monsters out there, a lot of them are alive!"
"Huh? B-But… I haven't seen any… you haven't either!"
"I know, but that's because that man, that bone man… they called him Sans… he rebuilt Snowdin into a fortress and cut off all ties to the Ruins! But there is a river system that leads here, to Hotland! Frisk, there's hundreds of monsters waiting for you in the core!" Whimsun exclaims! Frisk merely looks down.
"Waiting for me, huh? To kill me?"
"Frisk, I don't know what happened in the past- and I know you don't either, but it doesn't matter! We can go back, there's no reason to move on! This queen they're talking about, she apparently rules with a fist of iron, and every monster here is under strict orders not to kill you, but to bring you to her!" Whimsun stammers, explaining these dark things to Frisk.
"Bring me to her?"
"Frisk, we have to go!"
"But what about that skeleton man, Sans?!" Frisk exclaims, standing up from the orange dust below, standing over Whimsun!
"He tried to kill me, that wasn't according to her order, was it?"
"I think he's on his own! Frisk, you and I both know that there's nothing good for anyone at the end of this trail! There is no Asgore, there is no freedom! Only… d-death!" Whimsun begs, trying to get Frisk to leave. But he merely shakes his head. He looks beyond a small bridge to a ruined building, and just beyond it is a tall elevator.
"Nothing makes sense, but whatever else happens, I'll at least get the truth at the end." Frisk says, walking on. To his surprise, Whimsun lands on his shoulder.
"Then I'm coming with you."
"It's going to be dangerous."
"Everything past the Ruins was going to be dangerous, but now I feel like I might be able to help if I come with you." Whimsun says. Frisk smiles.
"Thanks."
Frisk moves beyond the bridge and notices a ferry of sorts just downriver. There is no one on the ferry, but just in front of it is the elevator system. Frisk steps in it with Whimsun and activates it to go to R-3. They wait a small moment before popping out on the other side. Frisk walks just out of it and opens his eyes at what he sees.
"What is… that…?"
"I think… that's… the Core." Whimsun explains.
Plated with slabs of iron, torches of monster magic flickering and sparking, and at its base are dozens if not hundreds of monsters, all within suits of armor. Frisk gulps.
"How am I going to get in there."
"I have a plan."
"Halt. State your name." A guard asks, barring entrance.
"I'm Whimsun."
"And I'm… uh… Mothperson." Frisk says, his entire body covered in moths. The guard puts his hand to his chin and raises an eyebrow.
"Strange. I don't recognize either of you." The guard interrogates.
"We just came from the Ruins. It wasn't very easy, but we were looking to rejoin the Underground." Whimsun explains.
"The Ruins? That's been locked off for years! I'm sure the Queen would love a status report on the outer realm. Please, go ahead. The correct way through the core is four lefts and a right. Can't miss it. Don't deviate or you'll fall into a pit of spikes." The guard says casually. Frisk gulps.
Whimsun and Mothperson walk through the guard blockade and into the inner core. They pass through several dazzling military installations. They arrive at what they can only assume is the core, energy running down the metal walls into various directions. Frisk makes four left turns and one right turn, before arriving at a door, within it smalls like…
"Smells like… the surface." Frisk says. Whimsun looks over.
"The surface? You mean… we're that close to the castle?" Whimsun asks.
"Yeah. Not long now. Let's keep going." Frisk says, walking within the room.
However, there's someone waiting for him in there…
Rotation 10
It's been ten rotations, ten years. Frisk continues to rebuild the world looking for Asriel. I return every time with no memory, but this machine has stored what I have written onto it all these times. I have received very... very... interesting notes from Gaster 9. Zeroes and Ones I expected, but not so many Nines. The nature of our world being a program written in computer code was known to me, but I didn't know that the concept of Determination dabbled into such obscure things. Hundreds of pages of how the save point works, correlating new data with Alphys' old data.
But this... is inefficient. I need to find a way to condense all of this information down to the bare minimum, so that the next Gaster, Gaster 11, can read and understand it in less than a day. I have a plan to mess with the save point, but it will require me to utilize most of my year to change Toriel's house. After Frisk leaves the country, I will buy out Toriel's house under an anonymous name, give her a completely similar house nearby, hopefully Frisk won't tell the difference. By the time he comes back and resets the world, I will have changed the nature of this save point.
But what I do here will mean nothing if Gaster 11 doesn't work in time. I'll get to work on condensing Gaster 9's notes now, stripping it of all fat and still making it possible to learn everything, then I will alter Toriel's house and save point.