On dark cloudy days, Alphys liked to curl up somewhere warm, put on a show that she had already seen ten times before, and wait until it was time to fall asleep. Undyne liked to play chicken with the weather, showing the dummies in the practice yard a bad time until the rain started. Of course even then, there were plenty of things to do in New New Home.

She found her feet tapping, her leg jumping, her fingers wiggling together, all while Toriel, Asgore, and Alphys talked. She didn't really have business there-although she was one of the community leaders, issues of public health weren't really her area - not unless they were talking about EXERCISE and TURNING SHRIMPS INTO WARRIORS.

But this conversation was about medicine and illness, which aside from being completely out of her realm of experience (Undyne had never gotten sick a day in her life, especially not before coming to the surface) was pretty boring. Alphys at least looked like she was having a good time with it. Over the last few weeks, she'd been pretty worried. More so than usual, anyway, staying up late trying to figure out why so many monster children and adults were calling in sick.

"Oh it's just the flu" said the humans, Undyne recalled as she shifted on the big tub of anime figurines that Alphys hadn't found space for yet. "It's cold and flu season for us, you must have been exposed. It'll pass before you know it."

Well, it did start to pass eventually, but that didn't mean they weren't still at risk for being exposed to a lot of other illnesses. So every night it was like that. Alphys at her computer, clacking away, trying to figure out why this was happening and doubling down on meals wondering if something a lot worse was going to come along.

She sure looked better today, gesturing to the slideshow she stayed up late to make in Powerpoint. "S-so, so, what this means is, that although we-we're not susceptible to human viruses, monster bodies, b-being made of magic, are affected by - I mean, they affect - I mean, they're affected by - I mean, they affect and are affected by..."

Undyne flashed her a thumbs up. Her cheeks red, Alphys nodded and flipped to the next slide, continuing in a stronger voice. "-the magical environment around them. Uhh, in Mt. Ebott, since we had been there for so long, our bodies adapted to an increasingly m-magic rich climate, which was i-improved especially with the creation of the Core. B-but here, on the surface, we've been completely... well, we're out of our element. So.. um... that's... bad, and all."

Asgore sneezed into his handkerchief, punctuating Alphys' pause, his own little bout of illness still running its course. Queen Toriel frowned, putting her hand to her mouth. "Oh dear, do you mean to say that we are unsuited to surface life?"

"NO!" Undyne pounded her fist against her leg without even thinking, causing them all to jump. "No WAY are we going back underground!"

With a look towards her, Alphys smiled weakly and then pointed back to the slide. It showed two pictures of Mt. Ebott, one a luscious green and one snowcapped. "Th-there's no need to worry, you're majesty, I d-don't think that this whole thing is p-permanent. You see, from s-studying the progress..."

Five empty ramen cups sat on the top of Alphys' computer, stained in pale broth. Just like they sat there at the start of the meeting, just like they had sat there five minutes into the meeting, just like they had sat there ten minutes into the meeting, and just like they were still sitting there now. Undyne frowned, picking at her teeth with one webbed finger. Five seconds later, yep, still there. They could probably be somewhere other than the computer if there was a clean surface available in Alphys' lab. But there were empty cups, cola bottles, and well-read history books scattered as far as she could see from where she sat. A couple empty containers of General Tso chicken lined a set of shelves on the wall.

If Alphys picked up, she could probably unload the figurines from this tub and put them there. Then the tub could go to a better use.

Like what, becoming another trash can?

"...don't overdo it, plenty of f-fresh air and exercise to help with recovery-"

Undyne's fishy ear twitched. "HELL YEAH," she said, snapping her head back in the group's direction. "Just leave that to me!" She gave Alphys a big grin, and the Dreemurrs as well. They smiled in turn, not missing a beat.

"I'll make sure to schedule it; I'll have a message sent to Snowdout so they know to do that as well," said Asgore, with another hard sneeze and sniffle into his handkerchief. "Though, I imagine they are doing much better."

Toriel nodded, murmuring, "As for me, we already have a gym period in school. I hope that that will help."

"A-absolutely!" Said Alphys. "Just remember..."

Undyne's leg jumped and she pulled herself into another of several sitting positions tested on this tub. Alphys needed to get a few more chairs in this place, or at least needed to clear her ramen and chicken containers off the couch so more people could sit on it.

Or maybe some exercise equipment. That way Undyne wouldn't have to lug her own all the way from her house whenever she stayed the night, not that she ever minded doing that! It got her blood pumping for sure.

Come to think of it, some of the trash and crap gathering all over the floor was probably why Alphys ended up sleeping on that little pull-out bed instead of a proper one. Granted, not all of it was trash-lots of the things she heaped in piles were robotics parts and machines that she had to move up from True Lab in the underground. Which she hadn't put away yet.

"And d-don't overdo it, okay, Your Majesty?" Toriel and Asgore were standing up, as the meeting seemed to be over at last. Alphys shut off the projector, breathing a sigh of relief that only Undyne was able to catch. "A-and just let me know if there are any other problems, this isn't really my f- I mean, I- this hasn't ever happened to me before... really."

"We will be sure to keep you informed," said Toriel as she descended the escalator first. Tired and faint, she barely gave them a backward glance; Undyne shrugged her off.

After Toriel, it wasn't long before Asgore was gone as well. That left just Alphys and Undyne; she hopped off the tub, cracking her knuckles and stretching. "Hooooh, boy, what a speech. I bet you're glad THAT'S over with!"

"Yeah, huh, thanks for the help l-last night," Alphys said, and then she giggled, "You pretended to be Asgore really well."

"No sweat, me and Papy had fun," Undyne flashed a big smile and walked around the couch. She had to be careful not to brush her boots on a stack of papers right in her path, bounding over them. Old data compilations, the top looked like. She couldn't say anything about that, even in her head-she didn't own a filing cabinet back home either. Her broom closet? A MESS with old guard reports she didn't even NEED anymore.

"S-so... did you want to do something now?"

Hell, she had a bag on her. "Yeah!" Undyne took it out of her inventory, making a lazy beeline for the trash on the couch. "I brought over a couple of movies, the guy at the human rental place said that they're badass. Just give me a sec, I'll clear out a little space!"

"Oh-! Wait!" The moment Undyne had a cup ramen container in her hands, Alphys had grabbed her wrist, keeping it in place simply by virtue of Undyne's own surprise. "Y-y-you don't have to do that!" She sucked in a breath. "I was gonna take care of it anyway."

Releasing the ramen cup, Undyne laughed. Instead, she brought out two DVDs from her pocket as she spoke, unimpeded by the hand on her wrist. "Alphys, it's been weeks. C'mon, we should be able to spread out on this couch when we're watching these bad boys."

Alphys released Undyne, and watched with an increasingly red face as she put the containers all away in a bag. "Right... okay."

When the couch was clear, Undyne put a hand on her hip and eyed the shelves and other piles on the ground. "Hey, as long as I've got this bag out, you want me to take care of some other stuff?"

"Uh!?" She'd begun to sweat, the other monster, chewing on her thumb. "No, that's fine, t-that's not-I mean, I've pretty much got a system laid out for how I was g-going to clean the place."

After a pause, Undyne gestured to the laboratory surrounding them. "So... what system would that be? When's it getting put into action? I'm just saying, your lab is going to be pretty hard to move around in after a while. And you can't even unpack because of some of this stuff."

"I know, I'm taking care of it," said Alphys.

"If you want, I could take care of it now, though," Undyne said, as she put the bag back into her inventory.

Alphys paused, wringing her hands. Her cheeks puffed up, a little red, and Undyne raised an eyebrow as she muttered, "Well, it's. Well. It's not as though your house is always so clean, I-I-I distinctly remember we had to bring it up from the underground all b-b-burnt. And! Plus! the next day I found sauce and salt all over the floor."

"I fixed those things up though?" Undyne shook her head, her red ponytail swishing in a stream behind her. "Besides, I thought you wanted me to help you get into better shape. You're not gonna get there surrounded by trash all the time."

"You sure seemed okay with being surrounded by trash during our first date," Alphys said, shooting a look off to the side and chewing on her cheek.

"Uh, okay? That was completely different?"

As Undyne's voice rose, Alphys' did too. "I know! L-l-look, let's just stop talking about it, okay? I want to watch the movie or-or-or whatever we're doing, not talk about m-me doing spring cleaning or whatever this... turned into."

Just as Alphys sucked on her cheeks, Undyne did as well. But it passed, and she once again gave Alphys a big toothy smile. "Uh, right, so the MOVIES."

"R-right," Alphys sat down on the couch, with Undyne plopping down to follow suit once the first DVD had been inserted in the player. "What kind did you get?"

"This one we're watching right now has Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the cover, so I figure it's gotta be totally awesome!" Undyne said, pumping a fist, and Alphys smiled. She hesitated, though, while her lizardlike friend was flipping through channels. "Frisk was the one to tell me about the movie. Where the heck are they today anyway?"

"Oh, did you- uh. Did you want to invite Frisk too?"

Undyne pulled a full bag of chisps out from under the couch, where Alphys usually tended to keep them these days. Ease of access. Empty cookie packages were taking up space in her cupboards anyway. "Dunno, but I bet they'd like to watch it again."

"W-well, Frisk is actually with Sans today," Alphys murmured, switching on subtitles.

Although they were both sitting down, they could stand to be a little bit closer to each other... Undyne nudged herself over, just a tiny bit. "Yeah? What are they doing?"

"Sans got a little bit better recently." Alphys was adjusting her glasses-wiping them on her lab coat, eyes turned down from the animation on the screen. "And he finished fixing up his machine. So they're going to go v-visit that... other world."

"Oh, shit." Undyne pulled a face. Not that she had gotten to see much of the other world for herself, that parallel dimension or whatever from which strange versions of themselves had appeared. She mostly had hearsay to go on, in particular Papyrus' descriptions of that "poor pointy Sans" that had been such a delinquent over in New New Home for a while. Once or twice, she saw a monster that might have been the parallel version of her - but something felt way, way off. So she never got too close.

"...Yeah."

The only sound was the blaring of the TV, for a bit. Undyne eased herself a little bit closer to Alphys on the couch. Alphys had again looked down to fish for her own bag of chisps. As Undyne finally put her bag between them, she said, a little quieter. "Yeah, uh... I wonder how that's going."

Author's Note: God sorry that this was later than I thought it would be. Once again it's not lack of interest so much as difficulty finding the time. I've got plenty of ideas and I want to share them orz.

But ayyy I finally explained the whole illness thing from the first fanfic. Which you don't need to read to understand because it's pretty much spelled out here 0 0;

Just as I have to get used to Felldyne's perspective, I'm trying to get into writing Undyne Classic. It might behoove me to go look into some of her scenes from the game again.

Next Chapter: Today's the Day