Title: Today's Experiment

Rating: K+

Feat: Papyrus, Gaster, Sans, the Justice Human

Word Count: 3,072

The child awoke in a dark place after a long fall, yet again.

The first time it happened, they hadn't been in a place like this. It was someplace nice, covered in flowers and gentle ruins, their opposition weak and easily cowed with intimidation. The first person to greet them in those ruins had been kind, even if in the end they were only wasting the child's time. Not long after leaving that place they couldn't help but feel some regret, because none of the other areas that they fell into since were as pleasant. None of the other people who greeted that child were nearly as kind. It was only by having their trusty tools at their disposal that they were able to make it through.

But the consistent effort that it took to get through took a toll on them. And now they were in these dark surroundings with nobody there to greet them, monster or man, and almost no space in which they could move. Just trying to get up, they banged their head against a low ceiling. Trying to go forward, they hit their face against cold metal bars. They could not stretch out their arms or legs, or see through the darkness. Several sticky things were on their stomach underneath their shirt, of a nature that they did not know- only aware that they were laying on top of wires. All of it was confusing, with no illumination of any kind. Still as the human came more awake, they didn't need light to know what was going on.

It was like a carrier box, one that they might've used to house their own dog back at home, which they were imprisoned in now. That was why there was very little room to move around. They were naturally quick to pick up on this and already exhausted, sighing and lying down against the cold floor of the carrier beneath them. They already knew there was no point trying to break out. Their weapon, their weapon was gone from their person, along with all the food they had been stockpiling in their pockets. And they were still weak, health low and hungry. Something in their midsection might've been broken.

They didn't care what happened next, so this time the child just went to sleep and hoped that it would bring a bit of that health back.

But when they were startled awake, by the sound of blasting and booming magic, it hadn't recovered that much.

Still, going back to sleep right now would be much harder. For one thing there was a lot more light, when their eyes opened again, then there was back when they woke up for the first time.

There was a lot more noise too. Once the blasting faded, the child could swear they heard talking. A lot of it, in a familiar voice, was a bunch of words that they couldn't understand, a bunch of words that they had never understood. It fizzled and pulsed like so much noise, the only way they were able to distinguish it as speech was the deliberation by which that familiar voice made each word. Whatever it was, it gave the child a headache- although they already had one, for obvious reasons. Some of it, though, was in another voice that was not as familiar and yet, at the same time, more understandable.

Although the child couldn't catch most of what was being said, their ears clogged as though they were underwater.

Ssshzoowm!

Sssshzoowm!

The sound became louder, but they weren't scared.

Through the bars of their makeshift prison, some of the light poured in along with a view of the larger room beyond the carrier. There wasn't much to look at. It was a gray floor, a gray wall as far as they could see, and several scorch marks supposedly at random all around alongside bones that stuck out at odd angles.

Somebody was standing not too far from the carrier, with chalk white feet. The child didn't need to guess what it was- they already knew what it was. It didn't surprise them anymore. Maybe it was from the owner of those feet that this loud, almost intelligible voice was coming. "DON'T WANT TO DO THAT!"

The child blinked slowly at the white feet. With one small, sluggish hand they rooted under their own shirt for the wires they lay on top of. Too much effort was required to pull the sticky things off, and all that resulted in was the child laying on top of their own hand, dragging it back out... just as the carrier began to shift.

The tug on the carrier that pulled the carrier foreword wasn't just on the carrier, but also a tug that the child felt within themselves. The child struggled weakly and groaned with discomfort at the sensation, but regardless of what they did or tried to do they soon found themselves much closer to the white feet in the room. The completely unintelligible voice boomed on overhead, and the feet were so close, close enough that the child was sure that they could hear the figure if they would just speak again.

They knew that it wouldn't work, that it would accomplish nothing. But still, the child started to drag themself forward until their nose pushed against the bars of their prison, and they raised their voice to speak. What came out was soft and hoarse, the kid fighting to make themself heard over their own low health. All they wanted was to ask for help, ask the being if it could let him out. All they did was insist that they just wanted to go home, that they didn't want to hurt anyone.

"IS THERE SOMETHING ALIVE IN THERE?"

Evidently, their speech reached the figure somehow, even if only a little. They did not stop trying to make it reach more and more, even if ultimately the level of volume in their calls remained the same. The told the figure that they were trapped, they tried to ask him where they were, who the other person was, if they could have some food- all pointless things, words that spilled out in little whimpers until there was no more voice in the child's throat to speak with.

The shouting going on above the carrier drowned out the rest of it, anyway. The white feet moved in agitation, stamping, no longer facing the carrier, while the voice to which they belonged screamed at someone else. His words were muddied in a fog while the child groaned again, desiring to drink water but not expecting any at any time soon.

Each time that loud voice spoke, the unintelligible odd one rebuked him, all at the same level of volume. The child did not understand, but it gave up wasting energy to think about it a long time ago. The voice of the white feet simply was sparring with the voice of odd non-words.

Until eventually his arguing got to a feverish pitch while he screamed at that person, and while the child didn't care to pay attention to all these words they couldn't ignore them anymore, once so loud. "YOU CAN'T MAKE ME, I'M NOT GOING TO KILL ANYTHING!"

The child disagreed. Anyone could be driven to kill, if it was necessary.

"I'M NOT, I'M NOT, I'M NOT!"

So loud, so loud. His voice was getting so frantic and shrill- it could only end badly.

"I WON'T!"

The human tried to bury their face in the floor of the carrier, gritting their teeth.

"I WON'T... I'M... I...

"I..."

At first, when Subject 2 faltered, Dr. Gaster believed that he might be able to press him into completing the task after all.

In his grasp he could feel Subject 1's utter terror, his soul shaking as hard as the rest of him while the bone of his attack just barely scraped against the bone of his skull. Like this, if even a little of his magic were not under his control, he could turn the little skeleton to dust in an instant. He knew that, and so did his two subjects- keeping that in mind, it would be better for 1-S to stop shaking quite so hard like he was doing.

There was nothing else for 2-P to do. Gaster knew that there was no earthly way he would let his "brother" die; the concept seemed to frighten him more than anything else on this laboratory. In order to keep his brother from dying, he would need to destroy the carrier with his new attack, regardless of his own squeamishness at taking an insignificant life. It was inevitable- so much so that even his breath was caught waiting for it, expecting it.

But...

2-P didn't move.

His eyesockets were squeezed shut against Sans' inevitable transition into dust, tears running down his face. His voice was utterly broken, but all Gaster could hear him say was, "I'm not going to do it, I'm not going to do it... I'm not... going to do it..."

Gaster's chest seized up. The only sound in that testing room was whimpering, whimpering from every other living being from him.

Too much time passed with nothing happening, and he finally let out the breath he'd been holding. Gently, to prevent any unnecessary damage, he set 1-S back down on the ground, releasing the hold he had over his creation's SOUL. 1-S trembled in place, wrapping his arms around himself, and it looked as if he was about to collapse from the strain of his ordeal. 2-P cracked his eyes back open, and Gaster glimpsed immediate relief on his face to see his brother intact.

"It seems," he said, his voice flat, "that we now know how little you mean to your 'brother', Subject 1."

2-P began to tremble, as hard as 1-S was now. "I... I... DIDN'T WANT..."

"That's enough." With a wave of his hand and a solid grip on 2-P's SOUL, he carried him back onto the observation deck beside the other subject. "There will be no more testing today. Come with me, you will be returning to your rooms." So saying, he led both of them after himself with two magic hands, appearing as if summoned out of the air and immediately brushing them forward.

For once, 1-S did not have any snide commentary to give at the end of the test, nor did the brothers speak any words to each other on the way back to their cells. There was still a little bit of whimpering from behind, from one or the other, but he didn't turn back to check on them.

He didn't waste any time getting them back into confinement, shoving them quickly inside the dark little room that comprised of their cell at the end of a much too long and dark hallway. Right before he left, he was unable to avoid catching a terrified look from 2-P, the subject turning around where he stood. His eyesockets were as of yet still filled with tears, unimaginably wide for someone with such a narrow face. 1-S, on the other hand, did not turn around and only stared at the opposite wall, arms still wrapped around himself.

Gaster paid them no more attention and silently walked away down the hallway. He did not see as both skeletons crumpled up together by their miserable excuse for a bed, 2-P pressing his face into his knees to conceal his sobs.

Not that there was any reason to with the testing over, but he couldn't deal with them right now. He had a specimen to handle that was at the moment of higher priority. So he returned to the testing room where the carrier was still sitting, mentally calculating how long it might take to clean off all the scorch marks from 2-P's intensified magic attacks.

The carrier was making no more noise. Gaster took a deep, steadying breath when he entered deeper into the room, stepping into his repurposed firing range. Keeping his magic at the ready, he knelt down next to the barred box and listened, still hearing nothing. So then, deciding that for the moment there was no danger, he unlocked the carrier and summoned disembodied hands to take out its cargo.

The cargo being the human child.

The second to fall down into the Kingdom of Monsters, and the first to have the misfortune to almost literally fall right into his grasp.

Slowly, Gaster dragged the human out of the carrier- first by the hair, and then by the back of their shirt once it was within reach. The wires threaded through the back and attached to their chest didn't want to cooperate with first getting caught on something, and so it was only with a few hard yanks that he got that little body all the way out. The whole time, although they were gripped by glowing disembodied hands and in an unfamiliar, threatening environment, they didn't resist.

That didn't mean, however, that they weren't awake. Their eyes were open, albeit not all the way. They stared at Gaster with a weak, clouded gaze, more so as he rolled them off their stomach and detached the wires he'd taped to their chest- it wasn't necessary to keep track of their vitals anymore. The whole time the human specimen only made weak, cursory movements that spoke of a discomfort with being touched, but there wasn't any energy left for them to struggle.

Their eyes were the strongest, that cloudy look at getting clearer as time went on. The expression they made was easy to read and easy to expect, burning holes in him or at least trying to.

Since the experiment did not progress the way he had hoped, he would have to take up these measures by himself. With a physical hand he reached into the carrier and removed the prototype capsule he had rigged up, open as if expectant. All the while the specimen kept staring at him, not saying anything- probably not able to.

The look in its eyes at this moment was just the same as... That of the first human.

Dr. Gaster kept the capsule in place and took a step back, no longer seeing a point to sharing eye contact. Using his disembodied hands, he took the child by the neck and snapped it.

Sitting down at his desk later, beside him a capsule containing a bright human SOUL, Gaster typed up a new entry.

"Today's experiment was a mitigated success. I was successfully able to transplant a new, more powerful magical attack onto 2-P with no apparent side effects or immediate loss of impact, using the high-intensity magic emitters. Quantification of the strength of the attack will be a job for another day, however. 2-P was too resistant to using his blaster on this occasion. Perhaps I will have more success after attaching the emitters to 1-S.

"However," he continued, glancing towards the capsule. "I will need a new specimen with which to help appraise their blasting power. I could not risk leaving the human alive any longer. At the least, I have also had success with my capsule prototype. It has safely contained the SOUL of the specimen and left it at no risk of absorption. Tomorrow I will present it to his Majesty. I imagine I will need some form of cover story for how I acquired it, but I'm sure regardless he will be relieved to have not done the deed himself."

The constant typing paused for a moment, as he sighed briefly. "If it was up to me, he would not have to do any of it. But it's difficult to predict what the circumstances will be for the next humans to fall down." And then out loud, he said, "... If any more humans fall down."

To the entry Gaster added, "Although I wish to dispose of the human's remains myself, I have a feeling that King Asgore is not just making coffins for fun." There were freezers in True Lab that he could use, if he could just drag one into this hidden part of it, that should slow the decomposition process human bodies went through. It was going to be an awful pain, but better to be safe than sorry.

"Their personal effects, however..."

With one hand he slid open the drawer of his desk, pulling out the small toy gun and hat that he had taken from the child several hours earlier. He opened the chamber and emptied the gun of its BB pellets.

"...May as well go to the dump. They are of no use to anyone now."

Author's Note: I've been mostly posting ASL Aftermath stuff, but I've had the urge occasionally to write stuff in the Handplates AU set before Gaster fell in the core. (If you don't know what the Handplates AU is, check it out at Zarla's deviantart 0o0) this one obviously is an interpretation of some things happening in an existing Handplates comic, specifically "Today's experiment was a…"

It's intentionally open to interpretation whether or not Papyrus went through with destroying the carrier, and I personally like to interpret him repeatedly saying "I never want to kill anyone" at the end as his way of trying to tell Sans that he wasn't refusing just because he didn't care about his brother.

I figure that the creature in the carrier had to have been one of the fallen humans since Gaster talks about storing its SOUL in a "prototype capsule" like how the human souls are stored in the game. I picked the Justice human just because I liked the idea. (I don't believe the order in which you find their belongings necessarily denotes the order in which they fell.)