A Tale of Consequences

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Chapter 6

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"W-we s-should t-tell t-the k-king!"

...Alphys was suddenly hit with deja vu. Had they had this conversation before?

Impossible. She'd only barely met him when his brother became a sentry. She'd seen him in the cameras, but she'd seen many people through the cameras.

"I already plan to tell him after I check a few things." Sans' smile didn't change at all, but a shiver ran down Alphys' spine anyway. She eyed him from the relative safety of her desk, trying and failing to come up with a dignified way to crawl out without embarrassing herself further. She'd kinda assumed the worst when she'd heard footsteps in her lab. Everyone else had been evacuated. Imagine her embarrassment when those fuzzy pink slippers stopped right in front of her. Sans didn't seem to care that he was apparently talking to thin air. He continued. "Think about it Alph. How many monsters they'd killed. None of the other souls had nearly this much LV. Figured the lab was the safest place to keep 'em. We don't know how it would effect the king, y'a get me?"

She flushed. Oh. Well. Um. He...had a point. One she desperately tried to think about rather than the amount of people they'd—The research on LV wasn't very thorough considering the yellow soul only managed to hit about 5 LV before the royal guard managed to take them down. A—a little time for diagnostics wouldn't be a bad thing necessarily… Maybe they shouldn't rush it...couldn't risk the king after all. Sans always—static—had been the one to think about details like that.

"H-how d-did y-you e-even get h-here anyway? I h-had t-the e-elevator l-locked d-down—"

It didn't even occur to her to ask how Sans knew about this place. His presence seemed oddly familiar here. Like a puzzle piece she never noticed had been missing. She almost felt silly for being afraid of him. Almost. She was still utterly mortified though.

"Oh, you know, just a shortcut." Something nagged at her about that. But it was fuzzy, and slid through her grasping claws like water. God Alphys pull yourself together. Take a deep breath and pull yourself out from under the desk like a reasonable monster, not literal garbage.

She couldn't bring herself to move.

"Sorry for breaking and entering—didn't want to let the human die and risk the soul, you know? It's the soul good thing to come of this nightmare."

...that was a terrible joke. But still, it made sense in a way. She even managed a nervous smile. "I-j-just...be careful p-please. You haven't seen what they did."

"...trust me Alph. Eye've seen enough." That frozen grin never failed, although the eyelights were barely pinpricks, "They won't be going anywhere in that state, much less hurt anyone. Talk about a captive audience, ey?"

"I-I g-guess I c-can go find the extractor n-notes." Alphys mumbled, hunching her shoulders and wringing her stained sleeve as she chewed on the idea. "I-if there is a w-way to separate the DT from the LV it would be safer for the k-king. I-I wish I h-had the blueprints..."

"You might have some luck checking the spare office." The skeleton offered with a tired shrug, and a lazy handwave, "You know, the one with the broken latch?"

T-that office? With the w-weird letters on the door?

"Ya. It's...uh...wingdings. I'm not surprised you can't read it."

Oops. She hadn't meant to say anything.

He seemed to sway on his feet, those dim pinpricks of light slowly drifting from her hiding spot to the right, to her—"Hey, mind if I steal your bed for a minute? Stopping a maniac takes a lot out of you, if you know what I mean."

"G-go a-ahead." The words tumbled out of her mouth before she realized what she was saying. She shook her head rapidly, finally working up the courage to drag herself out from under the desk. Of course he couldn't sleep. They couldn't leave that thing alone down there.

A gentle whirring sound, and Alphys stood to find to skeleton sprawled out on her suddenly unfolded cube bed, dead to the world. Her fists curled, trembling.

What good is an exhausted guard anyway? A thought that sounded uncomfortably like U-undyne snarked back. Let 'im sleep while the human's still unconscious.

R-right.

About those notes.

She shuffled down the hall, doing her best to focus on the task at hand and not on the terrorist being held alone down in the lab. She needed to round up the amalgamates. They were curious, and she didn't want them anywhere near that thing.

Focus.

LV was dangerous. Strengthening one's soul through the suffering of another was an act that every young monster learned was wrong. It...changed people.

Would absorbing a tainted soul have the same effect?

She could tell the king right now.

She should tell the king right now, Sans' request or not.

Freedom was so close.

But if she—Sans—was right...

The underground was devastated.

They couldn't afford to lose the king too.

Her world had been torn apart.

Her best friend was d-dead.

The one she l-l-lo—

Don't cry, Alphys darling.

But...maybe she could make the world a little better for those left behind.

"There's s-still something you c-can do…" She whispered to herself, shuffling down the dusty hallways, hugging her arms tight. Gripping her stained coat, "K-keep w-walking. If you s-stop y-you w-won't w-want to s-start a-again."

She just wanted to find a roomy garbage can to crawl into. Undyne would have kicked her out of it.

She had to make sure this worked.

For Undyne.

"I-I love you."

The whispered word echoed back at her in the empty hallways. She stopped, took a deep breath, and then started walking again.

She stopped in front of the office, raising a claw and tracing the weird symbols on the nameplate.

Sans had called them wingdings. They'd always been a bit weird, but they'd always been there. Alphys barely ever gave them any thought. They were in comprehensible, but they were familiar. That same script dotted the lab. Both levels of it.

She wondered what they said, and had a sneaking suspicion she'd known once.

-static-

Steeling herself, she pushed the door open.

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"I—I'm not sure if this is okay, Sans."

He glanced up at her from where he had the research notes spread out across the floor of the upstairs lab. She understood shuffled nervously, stealing glances to the monitor behind him. "I—I mean both of us u-up h-here. T-they've h-healed m-mostly. W-what i-if they w-wake up?"

"Ey, it'll be fine." San's dismissal didn't do much to dispel her misgivings. She worried at the sleeve of her coat, kneading the stained cloth and smoothing it out again. Scrunch. Smush. Scrunch. Smush. "Your warning system is pretty cool, no need to be so alarmed."

She giggled nervously. Was it nervously? Did it sound a little hysterical? Aaah she didn't know what to do she couldn't think—

"Alph." The skeleton was suddenly in her face instead of across the room. "Breathe."

She did it.

Oh.

Well.

That was better.

"Good. Don't need ya freaking out on me doc. " He nodded, winking. A pressure on her back eased as he drew back. She blinked. Bewildered. Standing up a little straighter.

Had he just…

"hey, don't worry. We'll know the moment they wake up." He lazily motioned toward the monitor at his back.

"B-b-but…" She couldn't let go so easily. "W-w-we don't know what LV does to humans. In monsters i-it has a t-tendency to i-increase physical s-strength s-significantly. I-if t-they m-manage to b-break o-out—t-the e-elavator…"

"It would set off every alarm in the lab, plus the timer on the stove for good measure. It'll be fine."

"A-a-and there's n-n-no way w-we c-could m-make it i-in—"

Blue. Yellow.

Alphys flinched as one eyesocket went dark, the other blazing with magic.

And...then gone.

Sans was gone.

She spun around. Bewildered. Lost. Where did he go? Where could he go? She'd just been looking at him—

Alarms blared, sending her scrambling for the monitor. Just the motion alarm thankfully, maybe the human had just rolled over or something—

She just stared.

Sans was nonchalantly standing in front of the containment chamber, waving up at the camera, his eye still flaring blue.

No. Not blue. She couldn't believe she hadn't noticed it before.

Cyan.

Cyan magic.

Some monsters were really fast. Some, like ghosts, could just phase through solid objects. Both of those were impossible here. Blue magic was the manipulation of gravity...Was cyan magic the manipulation of space? It, along with Muffet's purple magic was a fairly rare magical affinity, and Alphys didn't even think she'd even seen a scan of it before. Oh god it was so exciting she needed to convince him to let her study it. She could just imagine it, it—it was like when Mew Mew meets the new enemy in season 2 and—and—

"Teleportation." She breathed. The moment anything happened he could be down there. Another flare of magic, and he was gone again, Alphys muted the alarms, counting the seconds in her head, One...tw—

She spun as gracefully as she could on her stumpy legs. Which, to be fair, wasn't very graceful all all. Sans stood near his previous placement, grin unchanged, although the magic faded from his eye. Near but not quite the same. Not just a straight up swap then. "Less than two seconds…" Astonished. Why hadn't he used it during the fight with the human? Surely it would have been over quicker.

"It tires me out too quick," Wait, had she said it outloud? Her cheeks burned in embarrassment even as he shrugged. "P—my bro wanted me to train with him when he was preparing to join the sentries. We found out fast I can't take too many shortcuts."

"Oh, you know, just a shortcut."

The atmosphere suddenly wilted, the weight of the situation all but killing Alphys' sudden enthusiasm. She...hadn't known Sans' brother well. Just through U-undyne's rants and occasional praises of the boneheaded skeleton with too much heart but an admirable amount of fiery passion. They'd met once, but she really didn't want to think about it. She really didn't want to think about it.

Didn't want to think of a lone winter's night in Snowdin. Being dragged along as U-u-undyne's +1 was a dream come true even if she knew it was just as a friend. She didn't want to think of how proud the tall skeleton had been, serving up a plate of near frozen spaghetti. How U-undyne had caught him in a headlock, loudly demanding everyone give a round of applause for Snowdin's newest sentry. Not that there were many people. Just Alphys. Undyne. Papyrus. And...

"Long time no see, Alph."

Static.

"Breathe." The suggestion snapped her out of it. The skeleton wasn't even looking at her, seated cross legged on the floor. He tapped a finger against one fuzzy pink slipper, the other hand carefully sifting through the pile of documents before him. Alphys didn't even know where he'd found them. She'd always used the computer to record her findings—it was so easy to lose paper and it was so messy...

bone white hands holding a clipboard, floating free...taking notes in a series of symbols she recognized but even now still had difficulty reading.

...the extractor schematics had been handwritten, hadn't they? She'd been pouring over them all night, found in that same back office written in those same weird symbols as the name plate. Wingdings.

The beginning of a headache was building behind her eyes.

"T-tests. I should r-run the s-scans." Turning her back, she fled.

Not that she could go very far.

The monitor was only a few meters further away, but those meters allowed her a little more space to—breathe—relax. She pointedly ignored the camera feed that took up the majority of the main screen—the alarms would tell her if anything happened—and instead the keys clattered as she typed a few prompts into the command line. Another screen appeared, covering the live feed partially, although if she squinted she could still make it out through the semi-transparent window. She didn't want to though.

The human's soul was a tiny heart in the corner. The magical profile matched the red magic, but she searched for the records from the more generalized diagnostic equipment on a side monitor. To her surprise, they'd been activated longer than she expected. The records stretched at least four hours before Sans had approached her. Given the readings, it was a good thing. The human would have died within the hour if the container's healing aura hadn't been activated. It'd taken over half a day for the human to stabilize as it was.

But...

This wasn't right.

She'd built that machine. She'd built it in an attempt to stabilize the amalgamates, pumping harvested green magic through an amplifier to try and support their failing bodies.

Not even the king knew about it, a-although she had planned on making the commands more user friendly and releasing it to the public. Eventually. The coding was a mess.

Sans always had been good with machines...

Static.

...right?

"...you okay?" She looked away, Sans hadn't moved, but she could feel his eyelights prickling her spines.

"I—I—" She took a deep breath again. Despite the details not adding up, something was still telling her to trust him. Somehow he knew what she'd done. And that knowledge was both a weight easing from her back and yet another noose around her neck.

She balled her claws into a fist. Did she ask? Did she dare? Could she summon the courage to stop with all the lies?

"I-it's j-just...weird." She finished lamely, deflating. Of course. If she couldn't even tell Undyne about it, why could she tell essentially a complete stranger? "I-I'm looking at t-the DT l-levels r-recorded since you brought it in. I-it...changed, see?"

She tensed as she heard the shuffling of cloth and paper, but still didn't turn, hyper aware of the approaching footfalls as the skeleton leaned over her hunched shoulder. Her claws shook as she pointed out the trend, plotting the array of numbers onto a graph. Ups and downs. Ups and downs. She wasn't entirely sure why she was explaining. No one else really knew about DT—she was the only one left of the team who studied it.

...team?

"A-a-anyway. H-human s-souls s-shouldn't do that. I-I have the baselines f-from the o-other six souls. T-they have a b-base DT rating, usually b-between 7 and 8, depending on the strength of the s-soul. M-monsters can get as high as 2 safely—" Oh god I'm rambling stop it Alphys breathe at least it's Sans not Dr— "b-but this... i-it's g-got a below a-average b-baseline, o-only 6, b-but it's d-dipped a-as l-low as 5 and s-spiked a-as high a-as 9 a-at times."

Sans' sharp intake a breath startled her, but he didn't really seem to want to say something so she continued, "I-it c-could be t-that s-souls stabilize to t-their b-base DT o-once t-they are e-extracted—this is the f-first t-time I-I've s-scanned a s-still l-living one. That t-the levels change at all is fascinating, if human souls are more flexible than o-originally t-thought—I w-would h-have t-thought they b-be m-more r-rigid—"

"Do you have the data for their LV too?"

Alphys mentally smacked herself. She'd gone on a tangent again. They weren't here to study the DT. She nervously shook her head. "I-I—we—I-it j-just w-wasn't an area of r-research we have m-much data for. I—d-during the w-war o-one of the previous scientists m-managed t-to create a s-scale to q-quantify LV gain in m-monsters, b-but it never w-was a priority research on the human s-souls a-after w-we w-were trapped. U-unless w-we can figure out how to isolate the LV in s-scans, e-even if the DT readings are promising signs t-that a human s-soul is f-flexible e-enough to s-survive the r-removal…"

"If I show you the pattern, think you could copy it doc?"

She stopped. Froze. And then finally turned around. And squeaked. She hadn't realized he was so close. Here snout was mere centimeters away from the fluff of her jacket. Sans hadn't been looking at her, although his eyelights did flicker in her direction and he took a step back to give her more space. His shoulders were still slouched. His posture still relaxed. Skull grinning that same old grin…

… but for some reason it just made her even more nervous.

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A/N: Edited for readability 10/20/16