A Tale of Consequences

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Chapter 5

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Click.

Click.

Clack.

Claws nervously tapped against the desk, careful to avoid the keys that would change the view. She'd already done it. Twice. In the last half hour. Leaving the human alone and taking a nap-even in one of the reinforced containment cells -was madness! What was Sans thinking? He's seen what it did! He'd stopped it. Saved the king.

Stopped it.

Should have killed it. The nasty section of her mind whispered. It killed mettaton and undyne and undyne. No one can kill undyne, but it did. One shot, and she was already dead. She was just too stubborn to die.

Poor beautiful stubborn determined undyne. That determination killed her.

Alphys shook her head furiously, arm lashing out against the onslaught of despair threatening to crawl up her spine and overtake her, reducing her to a quivering crying heap of garbage. Plastic cases clattered against the floor, thrown from the desk in her desperate swipe. She stared at them for a moment, before it clicked and she gasped, scrambling on the floor to clean them up. N-not… N-no.

She'd...been packing. Those were the ones U-undyne Undyne watched with her. No. No. No.

She clutched a copy of The Seven Sailor Samurai to her chest. She couldn't see the box art anymore. It was...too...blur…

Sniff.

Oh No.

Something wet tickled her hide. She hurriedly wiped it away with the dirty sleeve of her labcoat. No. No tears. No.

Don't cry Alphys darling. I'm going to burn the brightest I can be to light your way to safety!

She shuddered against the memory of Mettaton's final text. She'd kept the monsters barricaded in the True Lab even as the demon proceeded to exterminate those she hadn't been able to evacuate, ushering them through the emergency elevator to the capital where the king had arranged with the ferry guides to scatter them amongst the underground. But there had been so many and the demon would be on them before they'd gotten them all through. And she couldn't keep them in the lab. Not with the Amalgamates and the high levels of DT down here.

Mettaton had bought them time.

Don't cry Alphys darling.

Undyne hadn't sent her anything. Why should she? She never once believed she could fail. Mettaton had known he would. He known he would-

Don't cry.

Don't cry.

Don't…

Tell blooky I-I'm sorry. For leaving.

Napstablook hadn't been part of the evacuation. She wasn't even able to fulfill her friend's dying wish.

It was all that demon's fault. Everything.

...everything.

Her phone lay on the floor, a black spot against the blinding white. The incoming message light blinked up at her. Transfixing her tear-blurred gaze. She wasn't crying. Not yet. It wasn't crying until they fell. She wouldn't let it. Mettaton told her…

And Undyne never did like crybabies.

Everything.

She reached for the phone.

The motion sensor on the monitor screamed at her, startling her half out of her hide and sending her diving under her desk. Head down and eyes covered and trembling. She cowered there for a moment before she managed to get her erratic breathing under control enough crawl out. Scolding herself for overreacting.

Skittish little Alphys. Jumping at alarms you set yourself. What would Un-

Her throat tightened, threatening to suffocate her.

Focus. You set that alarm for a reason!

Claws dug into the desk's rim as she pulled herself off the floor. Focusing on the movement of her chest as she pulled in air and exhaled. Forcing it passed the lump in her throat.

The pulsing warning symbol still flashed in the corner, although she quickly hit the keystrokes to mute the audible alarm. She didn't need that grating on her already frayed nerves too.

The human hadn't moved. It was still huddled in a pitiful looking ball against the glass. She quickly pulled up the feed from the monitoring instruments in a separate window. A quick glance showed that everything looked normal. So what had set off the sensors-

The amalgamate again. She shuddered as it materialized inside the cell. Her claws left grooves in the edges as she clamped down again in her panic. No. No. Get out. They may be her personal nightmares, but there were innocent. Innocent! They didn't deserve what the demon would do! She'd herded the others into the generator room as soon as she'd noticed Sans and his...prisoner arrive. How, she didn't know. She hadn't heard the palace's elevator activate, and last she saw them was in the judgement hall...

But a door wouldn't stop the tall one. Just like the glass didn't. Alphys didn't see it very often. She tried to remember who it had been, but it was old. One of the first. Name and face and history fading into static. It was just tall, smooth and willowy. She resisted the urge to cover her eyes, yelling at the screen and hating herself for not having installed a PA system. "SANS! SANS! WAKE UP!"

She grabbed her phone, barely glancing at the text. The King. Before running. Sprinting as fast as her awkward frame could take her toward the elevator. She didn't have the skeleton's number. What would U-u-un-she do?

What else? Go protect those she'd wronged.

"Saaaaaaaans!" She burst through the door, wheezing and gasping and coughing from the dust her flight had clicked up. Then she stopped.

The amalgamate was outside now, its long deformed arm slowly tucking a dark blue blanket around the exhausted skeleton's shoulders. It didn't seem to notice her at all. Pat. Pat.

Once. Twice. It's long white hand lingered against the smooth bones of Sans' skull. And then it faded away.

The skeleton hadn't so much as twitched at her shout, or at the amalgamate's attentions. Sleeping like the dead. It was only the gentle bobbing of his skull that told her he was alive at all.

She took a step. And then another, peering into the semi-opaque green glass.

A matching blanket was tucked around the demon inside the cell.

Alphys trembled. Her claws clattering against the metal of her phone.

They couldn't stay here.

The king would know what to do.

He would deal with the demon for good.

And then t-they w-would be free.

J-just like...U-undyne w-would w-want...

"Doc…"

She froze. A single blue-ringed eye was regarding her from over the faded blue blanket, "What have you done, doc?"

A hand came out, the blanket slipping off his shoulder and into his lap. The magic engulfing his eye burned brighter, a small blue flame in one single eye socket. She scrambled back-w-why was she a-afraid of S-sans o-of a-all p-people?

"T-the king deserves to k-know." She managed to sputter, the phone clattering to the floor from her suddenly sweaty claws, message sent blinking up at them both in the dim light, "W-with t-that s-soul h-he'll s-save u-us a-all."

"My bad, kid. It'll have to be 31."

He jerked his fist up, Alphys flinched, curling in on herself to protect from the attack-

The bones erupted from the floor of the cell, piercing the human's chest.