A/N: I don't know if anyone noticed, but I tried to stick to a schedule where I'd post a chapter a month, the day before the previous one. So since the story was last updated on the 19th in June, this was supposed to go up on the 18th of July.

As you can see that didn't happen. At first I just didn't write for a few weeks since I wasn't up to it, and then some inconvenient events occurred in rapid succession, which deprived me of spare time, internet access, and will to write, causing what some might refer to as, a 'delay'. But enough excuses, time for a chapter. Happy new years, everyone.

Hotland

Leaving Waterfall was like passing from one bizarre circle of hell to another.

I picked up a few things about Hotland before I got there, complements of my handy ghost guide companion. It's one of the most technologically advanced areas in the entire Underground, second only to the CORE, which from what I've gathered is some kind of giant electrical plant/residential area (and don't ask me how that's supposed to work). But what I should have paid attention to, as I sauntered past the 'WELCOME' sign, was the goddamn name. Hotland.

Then I moved far enough to leave the relative cool of Waterfall, and I understood why the place had its name. Suddenly it was like I was back in the Mojave. An uncomfortable heat returned like an old friend, roiling and omnipresent. It came up from literal rivers of lava a dozen stories below, casting a dull orange glow on the sandy rock spires that jutted out of the molten river to form bridges and platforms, creating rocky walkways that seemed to wind on forever in the sweltering haze.

Like I said, bizarre circle of hell. Idly, I wondered if any of the monsters had fallen off one of the ledges before.

"No, it doesn't work that way," Chara appeared at my side, chatty once again. "There are railings, they're just invisible 'cause they're magic."

And maybe I really am going insane because I didn't question that sentence for a second. Out of nothing more than curiosity, I stuck one hand over the edge and felt a push, the way you might feel when trying to join two magnets together at the same poles. Magic railings. Sure. Why not.

Chara shrugged. "Monsters, man. I don't know what else to tell you."

You could start with where we go from here, I suggested.

"There's an elevator ahead and to the left, and-" they trailed off, staring into the distance. "What is that?"

I followed their eyes. Jutting out of the rocky soil sat one of the largest intact buildings I had ever seen. A blocky structure that seemed to stretch into the ceiling, with pipes and wires running across its upper floors, lights dotting every side. All of it, made out of a shining silvery material that must have been a composite of concrete and steel. If I saw it in a picture I wouldn't have been able to tell which side was the bottom or the roof. But there was no mistaking the word painted above the front door. 'LAB'.

"That's new," Chara said once the shock wore off. "Or at least, this wasn't around when I was here."

I wondered, idly, how long ago Chara had lived. Considering that in the time between then and now, the Monsters had enough spare time and resources to create a massive laboratory in a place that wasn't forgiving to anything but the most sturdy of architectural and engineering projects.

Then I brushed the curiosity aside. We had been delayed enough as it was, and coming from me, the biggest offender of being sidetracked, that means it's time to move.

"I don't think this changes anything," the kid continued, "The elevator is still your best bet, for now."

And I saw it, too. Just to my left. One big tower of metal, extending all the way up into the ceiling and probably beyond even that. For all I knew, Hotland was partitioned into multiple floors, and after what happened in Waterfall, I didn't feel like exploring every single inch of the place. Chara was probably right, the elevators were the best option at getting out of here.

The problem were the two guards standing in front of the entrance. Particularly, the one that just caught sight of me and tapped the shoulder of the other guard, pointing out where I was.

"Uh, hey! You!" began the sentry with the- were those rabbit ears? -on his helmet. Temporarily labelled Guard-01, pending a better name. "State your business!"

Chara regarded them for a second, then turned to me. "Kill them or lie to them, but be careful. These guys are some of the elite Royal Guard, you can't get past them easily."

We'll see about that.

"Just passing through," I nodded politely at 01. "Is the elevator working?"

"Whoa dude, we're asking the questions around here," said 01. "Why weren't you with the rest of the evacuees? We finished getting everyone out of Waterfall like, a while ago."

"...Not everyone," said the other guard. There weren't enough distinctive features on him for a nickname. Fuck it, he's Guard-02.

"Right, but like, what held you up? Did you see any suspicious people who could have been humans out there? 'Cause we're like, supposed to be on the lookout for any, and I'm not really sure what a human looks like." said 01.

"...Two legs. Two arms. Something about red eyes. I think."

"Bro, there's no way! Like, how are we supposed to tell apart a human from any other monster like that?"

"I take it back," said Chara. "You can definitely get past these two with ease."

"I had to stay behind and look for my child," I answered, betting on the classic technique of sidestepping one question while answering the other with a half-truth. "He must have run through here, did you see him? Short, striped yellow shirt?"

Judging by how the tension leaked out of 01's frame, it was the correct response.

"Oh, that was your kid? Sorry man, didn't realize. Uh, we sent him on the elevator and told him how to get to the shelters in New Home, but you can't follow him from here."

"Why?" Chara and I asked.

01 scratched at his bunny-eared helm. "Well like, this elevator is closest to Waterfall, so everyone who was coming in from there was using it. But like, we're pretty sure this one elevator wasn't meant to carry everyone from Snowdin and Waterfall all at once, so now it's busted until we can get someone from the elevator company to come out here and fix it."

I looked over his shoulder, and sure enough there was a little plastic 'out of order' sign hung across the elevator doors, at an angle that wasn't visible from the main road. Dammit.

"Well that's just great," Chara groused.

01 looked about as sheepish as you can get while head to toe in plate armor. "Sorry man, you'll have to go around to the R1 elevator on the other side of this floor. Head through Alphys' lab, she'll help you out. It's the big white building right next to us."

I cast a glance at the lab in question before giving the duo a nod. "Alright. And thanks for your help," I added.

02 nodded politely. "...Ma'am."

01 flashed a thumbs-up. "Like, no problem, dude-"

"HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!"

All four of us turned.

There, floating three feet off the ground and made of stitches and cotton was a dummy. It looked exactly like the one in the Ruins, save for the murderous and very-much alive look in its eyes.

"You!" The dummy screeched at me, and the whole thing isn't even strange enough to faze me, how fucked up is that? "You're that rude human who's been making a mess of things! What were you THINKING?! Killing monsters! Driving everyone out of their homes! Ignoring my cousin! Well?! Explain yourself!"

...Is this a monster?

"No," said Chara. "I'm pretty sure it's a ghost-"

"Whoa, calm down, dude," 01 stepped between us. Chara looked irritated. "These are some serious accusations, this monster hasn't-"

"That's not a monster, DUMMY!" it screamed, making the guards take a step back. "Look at it! It's a human!"

02 turned his attention to me.

Oh for fuck's sake, please don't.

01's eyeslits took a moment to narrow. "Wait a minute… two arms, two legs… bro, are you thinking..?"

02 drew a sword. "Red eyes…" he muttered.

God dammit. I still didn't want to kill any of these things.

"Uh, hey! Alleged-human! In the name of King Asgore's Royal Guard, we're going to have to ask you to come with us for questioning- hey, what are you doing?"

"Here we go again," Chara murmured as I palmed an incendiary grenade, and I might have been imagining things but the kid sounded almost eager.

Then the Dummy dashed towards me, the guards raised swords, and that thought was swept aside.

Fuck it, I thought, pulling the pin and eyeing the dummy. Ghost or not, I bet it's flammable.

Three seconds and a lot of screaming later, I won another bet.

"No, no- come on!"

Alphys paced back and forth in front of her desk, feeling more nervous and helpless than ever before as she stared at the new alert flashing across her phone's screen. Undyne had missed all seven of her calls, didn't open any of her 23 text messages, and failed to respond to her 12 private messages on UnderNet.

Not good. Not good at all. Undyne was hardly glued to her phone at all times, but Alphys had never known the captain of the Royal Guard to be hard to reach, ever.

It struck her for a moment how strange it was, that after everything she had done to get away from answering phone calls, allowing her mail to pile up in heaps of letters, and in general seclude herself from the rest of Monsterkind, she was now wishing more than anything that the monster on the other end would pick up the phone.

Then Undyne didn't pick up on the eighth call, and the thought was replaced by the more pertinent and familiar oh my god oh my god please be okay please pick up please, please-

Alphys took a deep breath and grabbed the edges of the desk. She stayed that way until her breathing leveled out. Calm again, or close enough to it.

"Okay," she sighed to herself, then focused. What could she do to fix the problem? Logically, one part of her mind told her, the first step was to evaluate the issue and go over what options she had.

There was no way to communicate with Undyne if she wasn't answering her phone. And since the Royal Guard's only real presence in Waterfall was Undyne herself, Alphys couldn't call someone else in the area to go looking, which limited her to the precious few cameras in the region that still functioned.

It would have to do, she reflected grimly. Alphys tapped her keyboard to wake up the computer, then tabbed over to the CCTV program. She squinted at grainy footage, panning each camera back and forth until she was certain there was nothing of note on the screen. The pond outside Undyne's house, more still and silent than ever before. The road to Hotland, just in case Undyne had tried to make her way- wait, were those footprints on the trail?

She cursed the camera's low resolution before switching to the more up-to-date surveillance grid of Hotland. That was better. There was definitely a set of footprints, and the size could have been from Undyne's boots, but…

Alphys frowned. Undyne didn't usually wear her armor in Hotland, so why were the tracks so large?

The front door started to slide apart.

In an act of of swiftness honed by the countless times Alphys ran to the bathroom to make it look like she wasn't home, she ran to the bathroom. Making it look like she wasn't home. The scientist pulled out her phone as soon as the doors closed behind her, pulling up the feed from the few cameras in her lab that could see the entrance, and by extension, whoever had-

Oh.

OH.

"Eep," she managed in a sound not unlike a mouse being squeezed, because really, how else was she supposed to respond to seeing it on-screen, knowing it was just a few feet from her spot?

The thing that had set off every alarm from Snowdin to New Home.

The creature responsible for the state of emergency across the entire Underground.

The human.

It was big, that was the first thing Alphys noted about it, her mind automatically switching into analytical mode. The thing had to be least as tall as Undyne by the way it towered over her lab equipment, forcing it to bend down and inspect it all, and wasn't that a little strange! It paused in front of the monitors and her computer, mask gazing at every detail with an odd mix of speed and thoroughness that just seemed downright creepy.

And yet, Alphys couldn't help but keep observing as it started to interact with her computer, moving the mouse and tapping keys because- well, when was the last time anyone had ever seen a human? All issues aside, there was immense scientific data just waiting to be collected right in front of- oh goodness gracious they were moving again.

Alphys stood paralyzed with her phone at her side for a moment, then reached for the door button, fumbled it, and walked into the main room, just like she had practiced earlier. Except for real this time.

"Oh. My. God."

She glanced nervously from side to side, hoping the human would be fooled, wouldn't realize it was all a charade to buy time.

"I- I didn't expect you to be here so soon! I'm hardly dressed, I didn't shower, I…"

The human stared. Alphys fought down a gulp. There was something entirely different about seeing the human right in front of her and not on a screen, a quality she couldn't put into words. Tall, clad head to toe in a coat and armored plates with a dull bracer that bore countless scratches yet seemed more foreboding than even Undyne's suit of armor. And those eyes… they glowed an immutable red that Alphys swore could see through her soul.

"U-um, hi!" she squeaked out. At least she didn't have to fake the stammer. "I-I'm Dr. Alphys! The, uh, Royal Scientist! Uh, but, I'm not one of the 'bad guys.' You probably didn't notice b-but, I've been watching you since you left the Ruins! Your encounters, the puzzles you solved…"

The human didn't react at all. It just kept staring.

Alphys' nervous grin wavered.

"Ah, b-but I didn't quite see everything in Waterfall, the uh, cameras there don't cover everything. You're okay, right? Did Undyne slow you down?"

"No," said the human, startling her.

"Oh. W-well good!" Hopefully Undyne would be calling soon then, assuming they were telling the truth. "Well um, I was originally supposed to capture you, but you know, watching someone through a screen… it really makes you start to root for them! A-and with my expertise, I can guide you through all of Hotland with ease!"

"Thanks. But that's not necessary," said the human. "I just need to know how to get to the 'R1' elevator. That's all."

Alphys frowned. Rejection aside, they sounded… well, like nothing at all she had ever heard before. A neutral tone that wasn't quite gravelly or synthesized, but set her on edge all the same.

"W-well, you might still want my help!" She gave the wall a glance. "The thing is, a long time ago, I made a robot named Mettaton. As an entertainer, I mean. A robotic TV star. You know, like in anime!"

"...Like a what?" the human sounded genuinely confused. Maybe they weren't aware of that part of their culture?

"Uh, nothing. Point is, he was mostly just a performer! Until I uh, added a few anti-human combat features? And when I saw you coming, I tried to take them out but- ah, this is a little embarrassing, I only succeeded in turning him into a bloodthirsty killer robot, you see…"

Alphys braced herself, preparing for at least an outburst, only for the human to… relax? "I see. That's fine. But can you please tell me how to get to the other elevator on this floor? The one outside is… out of service."

Oh. That wasn't- not exactly the reaction she was expecting. Hopefully Mettaton was in position by now. "Um, yes. H-here, take this phone, I've um, already set it up so it has my contact info and everything. I can help guide you with it from here," she said, passing over a spare device. The human turned it over in their hands silently.

Alphys coughed once. "Um, you can keep that! I just- I have lots of cell phones lying around, you know, Royal Scientist. I get a discount on them. Just um, head through the exit on the other side of the lab, and keep heading east. I'll guide you from there. And with any luck, we won't run into Mettaton," she said, casting a quick glance at the wall.

Come on, come on.

The human nodded at her, made to move and then-

Clang.

-Stopped. They turned their head and looked at the wall.

Alphys' heart skipped a beat. "U-um, did you hear something?"

CLANG.

Alphys gave the signal. "Oh no."

Every light in the lab went dark, save for a pair of glowing red dots.

"OHHHHH YES! WELCOME BEAUTIES," a voice rang out, synthetic and booming from every speaker in the room. "TO TODAY'S QUIZ SH- HEY, WHAT'S GOING ON?"

"Huh?" Alphys asked. That part wasn't in the script! "Wh-who are you talking to?"

"WELL, YOU, DOCTOR. OBVIOUSLY," Mettaton huffed an electronic sigh as the lights switched on again. "WHO ELSE?"

"...The human?" Alphys offered.

"WHAT? WHERE?" Mettaton rotated his chassis from left to right. "ALPHYS, IF THIS IS A PRANK, IT'S NOT VERY FUNNY."

Alphys looked to her left, confirming the human was there, staring at Mettaton, motionless as ever. Was his heartbeat sensor not functioning properly? He should have registered at least something was there. "It's not a prank! The human is standing right-"

She pointed, then did a double take. The human was gone.

"That wasn't a robot," said Chara. "I mean, yeah, it was a robot body, but the actual mind in that thing was a ghost."

Like you? I thought, slipping through the lab's other exit, unseen by the freaky Securitron or the scientist. I took the time to give the phone she gave me another glance. It was a flat rectangular thing, glassy and thin. Nothing at all like my Pip Boy. I didn't like it.

"No," and this time Chara's voice grew dark, the way it would when they were mentioning something that bothered them more than the ghost child wanted to admit. "Not like me. To start, it's almost certainly the ghost of a monster, not a human. But that aside, did you think there was something 'off' about Alphys?"

You noticed that too, huh? I thought, walking over rocky cliffs and conveyor belt sidewalks.

I thought there was something strange about her. I mean, what kind of person had a giant folder on their computer that required a password to access? Someone with something to hide, that's who. I didn't know what 'Hentai' was, but I was going to find out.

Chara's cheeks turned a shade of color I couldn't pin down. "It's- uh, not important."

Clearly it is, why else were they so well-encrypted that even I couldn't access them?

"Look, don't worry about it. It's an anime thing."

There's that word again! What the hell even is an 'anime'?"

The kid glowered. "A mistake. Look, seriously, don't worry about it. It's not important. For now, just focus on these puzzles."

Fine.

As usual, that's not a very difficult request. Much like everything else in the Underground, the puzzles in Hotland could be solved by a ten year old in about six or seven minutes. The only difference between them and any other region though, was the puzzle itself. Lasers that, according to a phone call with the dubiously-truthful Doctor Alphys, wouldn't harm a moving target, and lasers that could only harm a moving object. Steam vents that could propel me, in all my armor and laden with all my equipment, exactly the right distance to get from one rocky plateau to another.

Chara had shrugged once again. "Monsters."

As usual, I didn't question it.

Honestly, the real question was, 'is this how Monsters live?' Every time they need to go somewhere, did they just consider the puzzles as an important part of the journey? Or were they just switched on for me? Why would they even go to that trouble? Does someone have to reset all these once they're solved?

These are the sorts of deep philosophical musings I have when left alone for too long in an Underground maze that constantly makes me question my sanity.

"That reminds me," my ghost-child companion said as I dutifully went to solve the puzzle required to open the 'only door that linked one half of Hotland to the other for some-fucking-reason'. "Any luck on figuring out how you ended up here? In the Underground, I mean."

It's a very good question, one that I still can't answer, though not for lack of trying. All I ever got when trying to recollect was a hazy blur of walking, through so many different places and trails that it was hard to tell which memory happened before the other. But what I had definitely been able to piece together—over the course of my surreal little journey—was that I had been on the move with a purpose, trying to get somewhere, and then- and then…

I frowned. Why had I ended up in the Underground? It's not like there was anything up there that could have scared me into thinking jumping down a bottomless hole was the better option. And I had spent a good chunk of my life dodging everything from heavy artillery to the poison stingers of mutated super-wasps, all with only some scratches to show for it. I doubt my reflexes failed me to the point where I tripped and fell by accident, which only made Chara's question more frustrating. Why indeed had I fallen down?

I was so lost in thought I didn't even realize I solved the puzzle, walked through the door, and into a dark room. I just switched over to nightvision without even consciously realizing until the lights came on.

By the way, it's common courtesy not to turn the lights on when someone else has their NV gear up. Just throwing that out there for future reference.

"You okay?" Chara asked after I was done swearing. I gave a nod. It wasn't the first time that happened, and probably wouldn't be the last, but goddamn if I wasn't sick of- wait.

Why were we in a kitchen?

"Oh no," Alphys' voice buzzed in from the phone.

"Oh for fuck's sake," said Chara. I was tempted to echo them.

"OHHHH YES!" said Mettaton, rising from behind the kitchen counter. The robot was shaped like some strange cousin of Mr. House's Securitrons. Two tube-like arms and a single wheel connected to a rectangular chassis made of metal and adorned with a gaudy screen that never stayed one color for long. Unlike the Securitrons however, the so-called 'entertainment robot/killing machine' didn't seem to possess the pods on its shoulders that its more deadly siblings used to house their missile tubes, favoring a microphone instead.

Also, it was sporting a chef's hat.

"WELCOME, BEAUTIES, TO THE UNDERGROUND'S PREMIER COOKING SHOW!" it boomed in a synthesized screech as a banner dropped in. I didn't bother to read it. I was growing tired of this shit already, and wasn't in the mood to sneak past it again.

"Good, same here," Chara muttered.

"PLEASE WELCOME MY LOVELY ASSISTANT THIS EVENING, A REAL-LIVE HUMAN!" said the robot, this time pointing at me. "AND DON'T THINK YOU CAN WEASEL YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS ONE, DARLING. MY VISION MODES HAVE BEEN UPGRADED TO SEE THROUGH YOUR TRICKS!"

"That's alright," I said, feeling along my belt for- ah, there it is. See, it's times like these that hoarding a good variety of grenades comes in very handy. "I've dealt with killer robots before. Catch."

"...I BEG YOUR PARDON?"

The pulse grenade I threw hit it with a metallic clonk!

Surprisingly, the robot's arm shot out, grabbing the offending device out of the air and staying upright.

"Uh," Chara paused and glanced at me. "Was that supposed to explode?"

"WELL!" the machine huffed. "THAT WAS RUDE! I TOLD YOU AT THE START, THIS WAS A COOKING SHOW! THE ATHLETICS SEGMENT ISN'T SCHEDULED UNTIL-"

That was as far as it got before the pulse grenade went off.

Mettaton's whole body stiffened. Half the lights on his front blew out, and all of them went dark. My own helmet dimmed for a second, vision flickered, but held. The military-grade equipment was EMP-hardened, and the pulse from that grenade was well below what was required to fry the internal electronics. The same could not be said, I noted, for Mettaton.

I reached out and tapped it on the front. It swayed back, internal gyro's compensated to swing forward, but whatever software was meant to keep it upright had gone down when every circuit got blown sky high. Mettaton wobbled and crashed like so much shattered glass and metal at my feet.

"Huh. Nice work, didn't realize they made handheld emps," Chara said as I sidestepped the broken machine. "Though that might have ended up upsetting Alphys. You should probably think up an excuse."

Hey, I'm not the one who sicced a killer robot on someone else for no reason, I thought. Also, it's an electromagnetic pulse grenade. E-M-P.

"Right. Which spells 'emp'."

Whatever. I wasn't in the mood to argue the point, but I did see the logic in giving the doctor a call about her robot. It took me a second to dig out the phone I had been given. At least it was sturdy enough to survive the EMP blast as well. The whole thing lit up, and I looked at every side again to confirm that there were no buttons, just a screen. Before I could figure out how the hell to even use something like that, the screen changed.

INCOMING CALL: Dr. Alphys

A green symbol of a phone—an actual phone, not the flat rectangle I'd been given—appeared next to a red symbol. I tapped the green one.

"Hello?!" Alphys shouted. I kept the phone away from my ears. Tinnitus isn't a joke. "All the cameras went down, j-just when you two were talking. What happened?"

I wonder how you say 'I killed your robot, don't worry he had it coming', but diplomatically.

"There was an incident," I said.

"What?"

"I said-"

"Hello? Hello?! Is th-... -even working?.. lo-?"

The phone went dead in a burst of static. I looked at the screen. Completely blank.

Forget what I said earlier, the EMP really did a number on it. Are all 'cell phones' made this flimsy?

…

Chara?

I looked around, and only then did I notice where I was. Between the edge of the kitchen set piece and the welcome sight of an elevator ahead. I wasn't nearly so relieved to see it as I thought I would be. Partly because I realized the kid was gone, and partly because I saw who had taken their place.

"You," I muttered.

It was the kid. It wasn't the kid. Spikey, striped shirt, but there were a few discrepancies. It was a familiar monochrome gray-white, and the eyes were deader than Mettaton. It was some kind of Monster, and not the type the Underground was full of.

But something else happened that further cemented the event as 'extremely fucked up'. The light and sound started to die down. Even the glow of the lava was reduced to a soft orange tint that barely lit up the ground. It put the rest of the world into total darkness, save for the backdrop of a great machine of more pipes, metal, and wiring. It loomed over us, so enormous it was impossible to tell how I hadn't noticed it at first.

"Well here we are," the Thing spoke at last. "It's an honor to finally meet you again, Courier."

That sentence was all kinds of fucked, and not the least bit because of 'finally meet you again.'

"Haha…" it didn't even move when it talked. "More than you know. But I suppose you haven't met me before, but you've met Me. Do you remember?"

Yes, I thought. But I was keeping quiet about it because I thought it would be kind of funny.

"We met, and We talked, and We came to an understanding, as you'll soon recall. Did you not pay attention to the terms?"

Fucking enlighten me.

"You will find out on your own in time. For now, I bear a message from the Doctor."

I imagine you're not talking about the same doctor as the one I was just calling on the phone.

There was a noise, something that could have almost been a hum or a purr, that seemed to make the whole world reverberate in the most unease-inducing way possible. It took me a second to realize the noise was coming from the not-kid. It took me another second to realize it might have been laughing.

"You must stop," it said, and there was something charged in those words, something that made the light and the machine pulse in and out of focus. "You think you are here to escape. You think that getting past the barrier will set you free. You are wrong. The only way out-"

It flickered, collapsed as reality suddenly remembered to get back in place, but not without depriving the thing of a parting goodbye.

"You cannot trust. Please don't forget this, too. You'll regret it."

...What the fuck did any of that even mean?

"What did what mean?" asked Chara. They were at my side again, looking as if nothing had ever happened. As if the world hadn't briefly gone to hell for a minute or two.

I made to answer—and held my tongue. Call it a gut feeling, instinct, or a subconscious message, but there was something preventing me from answering the question. Something told me that letting Chara know what had happened would be very very bad.

So I came up with an excuse.

The phone, I deflected. It died before I could reach Alphys. I was wondering what she meant.

"Oh," the kid looked thoughtful for a moment. "Well, who cares. I'm sure we'll find out sooner or later. At least the elevator's right here."

Right, I thought, stepping into it. All the buttons were laid out before me, but only a few were lit up.

Only way out is forward, I thought, and felt a little surprise when Chara asked why I was muttering that to myself.

The cameras in Hotland were still down.

Alphys sighed. Nothing was working ever since Mettaton tried to broadcast the human on his cooking show. Even her phone wasn't working! How was that supposed to make any sense?

Alphys sighed again before she started the long and arduous process of rebooting the system; she walked to the other side of her desk and unplugged her computer. She waited fifteen seconds, then plugged it back in before turning her phone off and on again. She drummed her fingers uneasily on the desk as the startup logos appeared on the monitors.

Well, she reflected, at least the day wasn't all bad. She had actually gotten to see a real human up close, and lived to tell the tale! Granted, there wasn't much to tell, but already there was so much knowledge the scientist was eager to put into records. There were legends, of course, and a few anecdotes from some of the old-timers, but when was the last time anyone had ever recorded a human's problem-solving skills, or given a firsthand report on their psychology?

And speaking of, for a threat to all the Underground, the human didn't really seem that bad, she thought. Granted, they were a little creepy, but maybe that wasn't intentional, and it was hardly fair to hold them accountable for little things like that. Besides, had they really done anything wrong? Now that there had been time to calm down, Alphys wondered at what charges were being held against the human aside from the fact that they were… well, a human. As she recalled from the emergency announcement, Undyne had only been wary after a sentry called in an alert and her friend wasn't picking up his phone, and there were plenty of reasons why that could happen. Maybe he had just forgotten to charge it.

Plus, Undyne had read her text messages, and (even if she had yet to respond) that had to count for something!

Alphys chuckled to herself. "Maybe I am just being paranoid," she mumbled as her computer finally displayed her desktop. She opened up the surveillance programs and unlocked her phone. Maybe she could tell Mettaton to ease off on-

The door on the west side of the lab slide open in its distinctive whoosh.

Alphys reflexively turned around.

Seconds later, she screamed.

A/N: Imagine. This chapter took me literal months to write. I started it, scrapped it more than twice, and wrote it painfully slowly, bit by bit. And I can guarantee you that not only are most readers going to breeze through it all in about ten minutes, but it's probably full of grammatical errors that you just can't see when you're trying to check for them at 6 in the morning.

Well I hope you'll forgive me for the wait. Maybe this year will have frequent updates. New year, new me, right? I hope 2018's been kind to you so far. Believe it or not, earlier today, I beat Getting Over It, With Bennett Foddy. Who knows what the future holds? Another chapter, that comes out in less than two years? An actual improvement in my writing style? We will have to wait and see.

Lastly, please continue to supply me with reviews, as they are my only means of knowing what I do right (more like write, haha I hate myself) and wrong, and getting to hear you, yes you, the people, is truly the highlight of writing on this site.

Or don't leave a review. I am not a beggar.

Cheers,

-Swimmingcop