Undyne and Alphys were eating lunch together when the latter's phone rang. She didn't recognise the number. Her claw went above the answer button, hesitating to press it. Her girlfriend put her cool hand on her shoulder, giving her the courage to go ahead and answer the phone.
"H-hello?"
"Hello, is this Doctor Alphys?" asked the voice on the phone.
"Yes, it-it is!"
"Hi! I work at the children's shelter and Valari Torres broke her special glasses and she says you can repair them? Also your number was written on the inside of the arm. The arm of the glasses, I mean."
"Of c-course I can d-do it, I made them", Alphys explained. "I'll t-try to make them st-sturdier this time…"
"Great! Can you pick them up later today? Would three in the afternoon be alright with you?"
"Hum…" the lizard hesitated.
She covered the speaker with her hand and quickly explained the situation to Undyne, who nodded heartily.
"Yes, we'll be there!" Alphys said.
She and the person on the phone ended the conversation.
"Did you say 'we'?" her girlfriend asked.
"Hum… well… I-I just said it without th-"
"Hey, it's cool! I wanted to come anyway."
It was right before three in the afternoon that Undyne and Alphys showed up at the shelter. They were barely in the building when Valari rushed to meet them like a brightly-coloured bolt. Undyne was about to pick her up when the man at the front desk intervened :
"That's nice of you to visit her again, but please be careful. Anyway, you're here for the glasses repair, right?"
"Y-yes", Alphys replied. "We'll j-just take them back to my lab."
The man left the front desk to stand beside Valari ; they signed to each other briefly. The girl suddenly looked sad and disappointed.
"She wants to go with you, but I told her I can't let her leave again."
"Why not?" Undyne argued. "She already spent a few days with us when she was sick and everything went alright."
"Yeah, I know you two are trustworthy. But you know. The rules are the rules, and they've been broken enough already."
Valari took the broken glasses from her pocket and handed them to Alphys. They looked like someone had stepped on them.
"It'll only take m-me a few minutes to repair them", the scientist stated while putting them in her own pocket. "Don't worry, Valari! We'll be b-back in no time."
The man translated for the child, whose smile finally came back.
"She seems to really like you", he commented. "I wish we could let her stay with you, you know… Well. Not everyone can be Frisk Dreemurr, I guess."
Soon enough, the couple was back with the as-well-as-new glasses. Alphys had made sure to reinforce them so they'd be more difficult to break.
"There you go", she said to Valari as she gave her the glasses back. "It should w-work even better now."
The lizard said some random words aloud to test the speech-to-text ; the little girl gave a thumb up when the spoken words were transcribed inside the lenses.
"Try not to break them this time, punk!" Undyne smiled while patting the child's head affectionately.
Valari seemed confused by the friendly touch at first, then she started smiling.
"We s-still should learn h-human sign language though", Alphys pointed out.
They kept talking together a while longer, the man at the front desk translating the child's signs for the two monsters.
The latter couldn't stay forever though, and eventually had to say goodbye.
"D-did we…" Alphys started once she and her girlfriend were outside and ready to get back into the car. "I-I mean, hum… we s-sorta accidentally adopted her… Well, n-not officially or a-anything but…"
"I guess you're right", Undyne agreed, opening the car door for her girlfriend. "Or rather, she adopted us. Had someone told me three years ago I'd want to take care of a human child someday, I would have laughed so hard! FWUWUWU!"
They both climbed into the car but didn't start it right away.
"I-I d-don't think I'm r-ready t-to raise a child! I b-barely c-can t-take care of myself! I-"
Undyne took her girlfriend's hand in hers.
"I know we'll be able to rise to this challenge!" she declared. "She'll be so much better off with us than with her human parents or at the shelter, I can feel it in my SOUL!"
She put her other hand in a fist on her chest to illustrate her words.
"Her p-parents k-kinda set a very low bar…"
"STILL! I know we can be such great mothers every other kid will be jealous of her!"
"If you say so", Alphys smiled.
She squeezed her partner's hand tighter.
"Well, at least we have t-time to prepare since, hum, we can't officially adopt humans yet…" she pointed out.
"And that's bullshit, honestly! We treat their children better than they do!"
They kept talking a bit longer, still holding hands, before they finally drove back home again.