Alphys was halfway through her third bowl of instant noodles and a quarter of the way through the 25th episode of her favorite anime when there was a knock at the door. Pausing the show, she hopped off her bed and took the escalator down to the main floor.
It was strange, but not completely unusual, for people to visit her; she did live far away from most other monsters, and not many people could tolerate Hotland's trademark heat. Undyne and Mettaton were about the only two who visited on a semi-regular basis. This time it was the latter.
The mechanical door slid open to reveal the eccentric robot giving a small wave.
"O-oh Mettaton... I uh... wasn't expecting you." Alphys said, suddenly aware of how dingy she must look in an old sweatshirt that functioned as her pyjamas. "Um... can I help you?"
Mettaton managed a nervous smile before opening his mouth. "Bonjour Alphys! J'ai une petit problème."
"What."
"Désolée! Je ne sais pas qu'est qu'on s'est passé, mais j'ai besoin d'assistance."
"What?" Alphys sighed, "Mettaton, what happened?"
"Eh... je ne sais pas exactement."
Alphys led the robot inside, trying to figure out what her friend was even saying. "O-ok, you can understand me correctly, yeah?"
"Oui." Mettaton nodded.
"I'm gonna take that as a yes."
Over the next several minutes, Mettaon attempted to describe what had happened through a long and increasingly-complicated game of charades. Alphys got the gist of it, at least she thought she did; something about a snowball being thrown at him. Or maybe he fell in the water. She wasn't 100% sure on the details, but it seemed something had somehow messed with his language settings.
"D-don't worry Mettaton. This is probably just a software problem. Should be n-no problem to fix." She gave her best encouraging smile to her friend who was now dramatically draped across her desk, weeping.
"C'est la fin! Personne ne me comprend! Je ne comprends pas moi-même! Ma carrière- non- ma vie est ruinée!"
She hooked him up to the computer and started up Mettaton's customization program, instantly realizing that this was a bigger problem than she had originally suspected. Whatever had happened to her friend had not only translated his voice, but his code and programs too. None of it made sense and it seemed that while Mettaton could certainly speak this different language, he couldn't actually read any of it
Instantly realizing that this was going to take longer than she thought, she called up Undyne and asked her to come over. Maybe she would be a bit better at deciphering this; it never hurt to have another person helping.
Through random clicking of buttons, and quite a bit of guessing at what words meant, Alphys managed to get to a screen featuring what looked like a map dotted with little colorful rectangles. Alphys narrowed her eyes, trying to figure out what this was showing and why Hotland didn't seem to be labeled and- oh... this was a Surface map. Wow, did it really look like that?
Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door- well, it was more of a harsh pounding that almost dented the metal. Alphys went to the door to let Undyne in, surprised to see that she was accompanied by Papyrus and Sans.
"Uh... come in?"
"Sup Alphys!" Undyne said with a grin, "Hope you don't mind that I brought extra company. Papyrus arrived for his training right when you called and insisted on coming to help and Sans... wait, aren't you supposed to be at work?" She glared at the shorter skeleton.
He responded with a light shrug "i'm on break."
Undyne grit her teeth, preparing to berate him on his laziness. Fortunately for everyone, Papyrus stepped in to defuse the situation. "ANYWAY, WE HEARD THAT SOMETHING HAPPENED TO METTATON AND ALL CAME TO HELP OUR FRIEND FIND A SOLUTION."
Alphys couldn't stop the shy smile that appeared on her face at being called someone's friend. "Y-yeah! I'm sure that w-we can find a solution together!" The Power of Friendship always solved problems in her show, maybe it would help here too.
"NGAHHH! That's the spirit!" Undyne shouted, grabbing the first thing closest to her and hoisting it over her head in victory. Unfortunately, the thing that was closest to her happened to be Sans.
While Papyrus tried to convince Undyne to not suplex his brother, Alphys returned to her desk. Mettaton had calmed down somewhat, but was still sulking when the group friends eventually followed Alphys over. They all crowded around the monitor as Alphys explained the situation as best as she could, with Mettaton making occasional interjections that nobody still understood. Everyone was quiet for a moment.
Undyne broke the silence. "Wait, how did this glitch thing even happen? Why is something like this even in his code in the first place?"
Alphys could feel her face heating up. "W-well... uh... when I was building him, I t-tested out some different potential voices f-from my a-anime discs and, um, those are all d-dubbed in different languages. S-so I guess I kinda just um... f-forgot to remove those from his code when I finished it and now it's just kinda... stuck there... yeah." She turned her attention to the map on screen, hoping the glow would mask the blush that was certainly creeping onto her face. She chanced a glance at Mettaton, looking away quickly when he was the judgemental stare on his face.
Through some debating, the group decided that the strange map probably had something to do with a language selection. Alphys had identified the strange colored rectangles as flags after remembering one of her manga books talking about how different groups of humans had different types of banners to tell them apart. The problem then became figuring out which flag to click.
"WHERE IS THE MONSTER FLAG?" Papyrus squinted at the screen, thinking that he must have missed a piece of this puzzle.
"i don't think there is a monster flag on here, bro."
"WHAT? NO MONSTER FLAG? THAT'S OUTRAGEOUS! WELL... WE COULD UNDERSTAND THE HUMAN JUST FINE. AND THEY CAME FROM THE SURFACE, SO ONE OF THESE HAS TO WORK."
"Hey you're right!" Undyne's grin faltered slightly. "Only, we don't know what flag belongs to them." They all went silent for a moment, no one had been able to get in contact with the human for a while.
"welp, might as well just start trying some of these out." Sans offered, gaining nods and noises of agreement. Mettaton just shrugged.
Alphys moved the mouse, clicking on a flag with black, red, and yellow stripes. "Here goes nothing."
Undyne clenched her fists in anticipation. "So, did it work?"
The turned to look at the robot as a pensive expression appeared on his features. "Nein."
"NINE?" Papyrus looked hopeful.
"Nicht 'neun'; 'nein'."
Well that wasn't right.
The next half an hour or so was spent clicking on random flags, hoping that they would be able to understand one of them. Some of the languages held more familiar sounds and words than others, but none of them could be actually understood.
Undyne clicked on a white, blue, and red flag on the top right side of the map. "How about this one, Mettaton?"
"Нет."
Sans perked up a bit from where he was dozing on a stack of papers "i think that's russian."
"NONSENSE SANS, HE WASN'T TALKING THAT QUICKLY."
Sans had a hard time not breaking out laughing.
"Это безнадежно."
At one point Alphys attempted to code an automatic translator, but all it produced was a jumbled mess of words that could barely be called a sentence.
"Wait, this one seems a bit familiar, maybe." Alphys said, mousing over a flag off to the far right.
Undyne peeked over her shoulder and grinned. "Woah, click that one! I know I've seen it somewhere!"
Mettaton too seemed to recognize the flag, but apparently had an idea of where he had seen it. He frowned deeply and attempted to say something to Alphys. Of course nobody could understand him, but he didn't seem too happy.
The white flag with a red circle in it was clicked on and Mettaton immediately clammed up.
"HOW'S THAT, METTATON?" Papyrus asked.
He refused to speak.
"Aw, c'mon man, work with us here." Undyne clapped a hand on his back, causing him to stumble a bit from the force behind it.
"At least give us a 'hello' or something?" Alphys said.
Mettaton sighed, bracing himself for their reaction. "Konichiwa."
Alphys' eyes lit up. "Oh! Guys I know this! W-well, ok I don't really know it, but I know some of it!"
Realization soon dawned upon Undne's face as her mind made the connection. "Wait, Alphys, isn't this what all your human history documentaries are in?"
"Yeah! This is how they speak in my anime- er- history films!"
Mettaton rolled his eyes.
"wow man, don't look so ja-pained."
Papyrus rolled his eyes.
The next minutes were spent with Alphys- and to a lesser extent, Undyne- attempting to hold a conversation with their small knowledge of broken japanese; Mettaton getting more and more frustrated as it went on, much to the amusement of those watching. It eventually devolved into a game of "Hey Mettaton, how do you say _?" that was something even Mettaton was enjoying.
"Wait wait one more!" Alphys said in between breaths. It had been a while since she had laughed this hard. "How do you say 'you're cute'?" She shot a glance at Undyne who turned to hide her blush.
Mettaton smiled slyly "Baka."
"Mettaton no!" Alphys cried "I know that doesn't mean 'cute'."
"Even I know what that means!" Undyne said "Isn't 'cute' it something like 'kiwi' or whatever?"
"Kawaii" Mettaton corrected with faked exasperation.
While Alphys and Undyne were chatting away about the correct pronunciations of japanese words, Mettaton went to stand by the desk and look at the map. Papyrus was currently sitting in the chair, mousing over the different flags that they had yet to click on. He glanced around for the shorter skeleton, finding him asleep on top of one of the bags of dog food lying around the room. He still had no idea why she kept those bags around. Shrugging, he turned his attention to the taller skeleton sitting at the desk.
"OH, HELLO METTATON. HAVE ANY FLAGS YOU WOULD LIKE TO TRY OUT?" Papyrus offered up the mouse to him.
Mettaton took it with a smile, wracking his database for anything else Alphys had "accidentally" left in his code because she was too lazy to remove it; maybe something there would give him a clue of what was the right answer. Something briefly flickered in his memory and he moved the pointer to the center top of the map, hovering over a flag of red, white, and blue in a somewhat intricate cross pattern. Heaving a sigh that everyone else understood as a way of saying "well, here goes nothing," he clicked it.
The room was silent, waiting for him to speak.
"Um... hello?"
The room cheered.
Mettaton beamed "Oh yes! It's so nice to have my voice back!"
"Um, Mettaton?" Alphys tapped his shoulder.
"Yes love?"
"What's up with your accent?"
"What."
Translations (in order):
French:
"Hello Alphys! I have a little problem."
"Sorry! I don't know what happened, but I need help"
"Um... I don't really know."
"Yes."
"This is the end! Nobody understands me! I don't even understand myself! My career- no- my life is ruined!"
German:
"No."
"Not 'nine'; 'no'."
Russian:
"No."
"This is hopeless."
Japanese:
"Idiot."
"Cute."
If I made any errors in my translations, please don't hesitate to correct me