Hey Everyone!
Nope, still not Toby Fox, owner of the amazing Undertale.
I pace back and forth. Why is this taking so long? I mean, come on, I know they were scared, but...seriously, humans? You're freaking out over a pair of kids? I mean, yeah, newly awakened magic can be...wild, but hey! Alphys locked it down, and if there's anything my girl knows, it's SOUL dynamics.
A figure in blue pushes open the swinging doors to the main hospital. FINALLY! SOMEONE TO oh, wait. They're just grabbing another patient. NEVER MIND, BACK TO PACING!
"U-u-undyne, would y-y-you please sit d-d-down? You're making the h-h-humans nervous."
I huff, but...well, she's probably right. I plop down in the seat beside her, the couch groaning under the stress. TOO BAD! I try sitting back for a while, but...okay, I last about three seconds before I get bored. I peer over her shoulder, trying to see what my girlfriend is fiddling with now. It looks like that portable SOUL scanner thing she's been working on. There's an image up on the main screen, but she's fiddling with some kind of sensor on the back, muttering to herself about polarity and voltages. I don't really get it, but at least it's better than thinking about...yeah, distraction time.
"So, nerd, what're you doing there?" She flashes me a nervous smile, then looks back down at her work.
"I told y-y-you about my idea for a p-p-portable scanner, right? So humans and less-powerful monsters c-c-could look at a SOUL without h-h-having to ENGAGE," I nod, and she seems to pick up on the movement, "Well, that's this. I t-t-tried it on the older child, s-s-since I wasn't sure what k-k-kind of magic they would have, but...well, there's no way for th-th-these readings to be right! So, I f-f-figured I must have messed something up w-w-with the scanner."
She slumps. Oh no, can't have that! I pull her into a noogie, "Quit beating yourself up, nerd. Being perfect is for LOSERS!" She slumps further into her seat. Okay, new approach, "C'mon, those readings can't be THAT weird; after all, you designed the thing."
She lets out a sigh, "If only that were t-t-true," She flips over the device and hits a few buttons, making a fuzzy image of a monster SOUL pop up on the screen. I squint at it. It doesn't seem all that different from the SOULs I've seen - maybe a little longer and narrower, but that could just be the screen. It's a fuzzy orange-yellow...I smile. Bravery and Justice, huh?
"I don't get it nerd, what's so weird about that?" She looks up at me, then back to the device, fiddling with a knob until a sciency readout takes over the screen. I scowl - just because I help out in the lab sometimes doesn't mean I understand the gobbledy-gook.
"You n-n-noticed the fuzz, right?" I nod, "Well, that shouldn't be there. According to these readings, the b-b-background magical seepage sig-g-gnature has a higher q-q-quotient of Bravery and P-p-perseverance than it should, and the l-l-levels of Kindness and P-p-patience are far too low…"
I grab her cheek, turning her adorable, scientific face towards my own. I let a grin slowly spread across my face, and shout, "GIVE ME ENGLISH OR GIVE ME FRISK!"
She flinches, and then a smile ticks up the corner of her mouth. She knows, at this point, it's more a joke than anything else, "Well...think of it like...a m-m-map of where someone came from? Monsters pick up t-t-traces of magic from the SOULs around them...the more powerful the SOUL, the stronger the trace. You can t-t-tell where in the Underground someone lived...monsters from the C-c-capitol picked up a lot of P-p-patience from Asgore, those near the C-c-core have Justice and P-p-perseverance, and the people from S-s-snowdin have a lot of Int-t-tegrity and Bravery…"
That...makes sense, I guess… "So, maybe they spent a lot of time in Waterfall? Y'know, right between Hotland and the edge of Snowdin…" She shakes her head.
"Waterfall r-r-residents have a lot of Bravery, it's true...but the...um...mumble mumble mumble."
"Sorry, what was that?" I give her another grin. This is going to be good, I can tell.
"I...they...theypickedupalotofDeterminationfromyou," I let the grin harden on my face. She keeps telling me I have too much Determination for a monster, and I keep telling her no. Why won't she just...I shake my head. We don't need to argue about this.
"So...not Waterfall then."
"That's j-j-just it! There's nowhere in the Und-d-derground that has a signature l-l-like this...it's almost as if…" She gets that thoughtful expression, the one that Frisk calls 'a wild surmise had appeared'. I wait...nothing.
"AS IF WHAT?!" Several people nearby shoosh me, and I scowl at them. Rude people, don't they know not to interrupt someone else's conversation?
"Well...I mean...um…" I grab her shoulders and, with utmost delicacy, shake her like Greater Dog with a chew toy. She appears to notice, "Um...maybe they...didn't live in the Underground?"
As I turn an incredulous stare on my adorable girlfriend, a short, dark, and mysterious figure flings open the ER door, their entrance accompanied by a flash of lightning. We turn and stare.
Just before the door closes behind them, a much taller and thinner figure grabs it, heaving it open with one hand as the other cradles a bundled lump, "SANS, YOU LAZYBONES, I THOUGHT YOU WERE GOING TO HOLD OPEN THE DOOR!"
"So, let me get this straight," I lean on the back of the chair, eye focused on the sweating skeleton before me, "You two were on your way to Frisk's birthday party, THE SAME ONE WE WERE GOING TO, and yet SOMEHOW you managed to get lost," Sans nods glumly, "While lost, you heard this INCREDIBLY LOUD SCREAM, and when you looked over, TWO LITTLE...what were those things again?"
The skeleton shrugs, "no clue. they look like what a turtle might imagine if you were to describe a dragon to them. got a good taste in bone structure, unless, you know, they actually wanted to fly. scales thick enough to...well, thicker than yours. big foreheads, small eyes. the bigger one's tangled up in some kind of hunting trap. bigger one's SOUL didn't look...right. perseverance, but...not even a trace of kindness. little one's justice and a smidge of determination."
I stare at this incredible speech from the normally quiet skeleton. Not only did Sans not make A SINGLE PUN, but… "WHY THE...HECK DID YOU ENGAGE THEM IN A FIGHT?"
He tries to back away, the sweat rolling off of him, his eye lights darting back and forth...no escape presented itself. He sighed, "didn't need to."
I frown. Well, then how could he-
"W-w-wait...you can see SOULs?" I can practically hear Alphys' eyes widening in shock. The increasingly blue skeleton in front of me nods, his eye lights dimming...then they brighten. I wait for the joke I know is coming...unfortunately, it arrives.
"Oh my, I hope you all have not goat into too much trouble?" Oh no. Two of them. Papyrus, I hope that paperwork is going to take a while.
The list of...well, what are we going to call them? The new monsters? The kids who appeared without any kind of an origin?...whatever, the list of them is growing by the hour. Six pairs so far - always two of them, always a species of monster none of us has ever seen before, although no one has managed to get a hold of Asgore or Gerson yet, so who knows?
Toriel brought in a pair of...well, Alphys thinks they might be based on the human legends of will-o-the-wisps, or maybe it's the other way round. Patience and Integrity, respectively, although they're probably twins. Seems they wandered into her house...she caught them trying to open the door to her oven. They looked half starved, although I suspect they got at least one slice of pie out of the former Queen before she brought them out here.
The Nice Cream bunny and Burgerpants came in with two sets - some kind of gryphons and a pair of...bird-snake hybrid thingies. The gryphons were Bravery and Justice, the snakes Perseverance and Kindness. The gryphons crash landed in Ronnie's stall, and since he doesn't have a car, he called Burgerpants. Seems the bird-snakes were curled up in the back seat, trying to stay warm.
Napstablook, Shyren, and Mettaton brought in the last two, the oldest looking of the lot...remind me a lot of the fairies from Sleeping Beauty, actually. Light Blue and pink...Patience and some kind of Determination hybrid? The battery of Alphys' scanner died half an hour before those two arrived, and Sans...said something about checking up on Asgore before heading out the front door. Papyrus is still here, so he can't have gotten far...can he?
The quiet hospital is turning into something of a mess. Frankly, they don't have enough staff to deal with even a normal flow of patients, let alone this mess. I might feel a little more sorry for them if they weren't SO DAMN RUDE ABOUT IT!
So far, none of the kids has been able to give any kind of an explanation about where they come from or who they are...and it's really starting to get on my nerves.