Five minutes had passed since Blue Sans had knocked on the door, and yet there was no reply from inside. He shared a glance over at Frisk, who sighed heavily; having met Alphys before, she was expecting some kind of behavior like this. He gestured to her at last, and then towards the entrance with no doorknob or handle. "uh, you wanna try?"

The first time that she ran into this lab, she was forced to get in through a side entrance, one that she would never have noticed if it weren't for Flowey's help. That side entrance was since boarded up a few days ago, again something that she was told from Flowey. Frisk didn't know what to do to get Alphys to actually answer her door, and so could only shrug at Blue Sans. At the same time, surely her Sans must have done something to get in. She folded her arms. "Maybe you should knock again." And then, after a second of thought, added, "You should probably put the coat back on too."

"i'm gonna roast in this," Blue Sans said, regarding the furry hood with disgust.

"Her lab is air-conditioned. And Sans never took that off, even in Hotland."

She couldn't help but grin again when his frozen face turned into a grimace. "really? what a masochist."

"What's a masochist?" Frisk asked, inclining her head, and her only reply was for Blue Sans to knock on the door louder and harder than before. There was still no answer, although both of them thought they heard a rustling sound from beyond that solid door.

There was no peephole, keyhole, or window to clue them in to what was going on in there, but knowing Alphys as she did Frisk had a hunch. The rest of the building was plain and ordinary, scorch marks and soot aside. It was a big box-shaped lab colored slate gray, featureless save for two tubes that ran through the wall, and a small black circle that was higher up. A big shiny circle.

When Frisk was littler and went into a public bathroom for the first time, her roommate told her that there were secret cameras everywhere in every device on the ceiling, through which creepy men were watching and waiting for her to pull down her underwear. ... As a consequence of that story, she ended up holding in a huge bottle's worth of water.

More reasonable adults laughed the concept off later, but the memory stuck with her. Especially right now, looking at that black circle on the building. It didn't look like a window. Frisk pulled her lips into a tight line and squinted at the ground. She then whispered to Blue Sans so that nobody else could hear, "I'm going to leave. You start yelling at her to open the door."

Blue Sans was quick to pick up on her plan, or at least she hoped so, mumbling just as quietly, "got it."

"This is a big waste of time," Frisk said then, raising her voice. "I'm leaving."

Blue Sans also spoke louder, "aw c'mon, kid..." But she was already marching down the broken rock path, making it clear with a loud huff that she was not interested in anything else he had to say. She heard him sigh loudly.

She didn't hide too far away, nestling herself behind a rocky outcropping in the room with the intersection, one foot on the stairs. From this distance, she could just hear the yelling from Blue Sans. It startled her; when he was talking this way, he sounded almost exactly like her Sans. "HEY! smalphys! do you think I like waiting out here for you to screen visitors!? open the fucking door!"

Frisk blinked, unaware until this point that he was even capable of talking like that. There was silence following it; or at least, something that she couldn't hear. Blue Sans continued, "okay well the human isn't HERE, are they? ...i'm going to give you until the count of three and if the door isn't open by then, human or no human, i'm gonna-"

His speech cut off right there, and it quick-started Frisk's pulse. There was no time to waste, so after taking a quick look around at any potential monster challengers the child dashed over the walkway to Alphys' lab.

As she suspected, the door was already open and Blue Sans was standing just inside it, preventing it from closing again. Alphys herself was also standing near the doorway, illuminated by dark florescent lights in the lab behind her. Not interested in stopping until she was inside, Frisk barreled into her when there was no other space in the doorway left.

He stepped in after Frisk and the door closed behind him, leaving them at the blessed mercy of the AC in the lab rather than the boiling heat outside. "you really like jumping on people, don't you kiddo?"

Frisk merely brushed herself off and reached for her pan while Alphys was chattering a few feet away, trembling violently and hissing periodically at her. "Y-y-y-y-you y-y-you're th-th-the- why-y-y-you lied to m-m-me o m g-"

Her lab coat was buttoned- or, at least, one of the buttons was done on it; it was still possible to see the red and black striped dress she wore underneath. Her crooked and dirty glasses- which to Frisk always made her eyes look a little bit crazed and confused- were even more off-kilter on her face, and she was wearing dripping red gloves. While the monster struggled to straighten up her appearance, stammering, "o m g you l-lllliteral s-s-scum-," Frisk wondered what kind of work she was doing that they interrupted.

"you doing okay, buddy?" Blue Sans said, eyeing her warily. Frisk stepped back until she was beside him again.

"You k-kNEW," Alphys screeched, and Frisk's pan was already out. Blue Sans had put another hand on her shoulder, but she wasn't going to put it away this time. "You KNEW that h-humans are- oh god I'm so t-t-t-triggered-"

Blue Sans looked over at Frisk, and she rolled her eyes. So Blue Sans looked back to Alphys with as sheepish an expression as a skeleton could make. "uh, look, is this gonna take all day? i gotta talk to you about something important."

The effect that this sentence had on her was almost immediate. The stammering stopped, and so did the violent shaking, Alphys raising her head from where she had been rubbing it all over with the red gloves. It was reduced only to a light shiver, one that was punctuated by a glance over at Frisk; since Frisk was content to snarl back at her, she kept her eyes off of the child and instead kept staring at Blue Sans.

Her eyes narrowed, and she clacked her pronged teeth together, before she finally whispered, "-Why do you sound like that?"

Somewhere on the second floor there was a buzzing noise, and then the lights flickered. Frisk flinched, but Blue Sans only narrowed his eyes back at the scientist. "i dunno. why do you think I sound like that?"

"Oh no," was all Alphys said.

Blue Sans' grin became significantly less than happy when his eyes became skeletal slits. "so i guess the answer to the question of 'did you help my other self kidnap me' is... yes?"

"You weren't-" Alphys breathed, backing away. "You w-weren't s-supposed- to- WAH!" and then the next moment she turned and ran across the dirty lab floor, nearly tripping over the black end of her dress.

Before Blue Sans could disapprove or hold her back again, Frisk took off after the other monster with a loud growl on her lips. As though she was channeling Greater Dog, she tackled her opponent to the floor and bit into the sleeve of her lab coat. While Alphys wrestled, Frisk pressed the handle and end of her pan into her stomach, as strongly as possible while she kept squirming like this, and tried to use even her minor weight to pin her down. The whole while Alphys was screaming incoherently, swinging her large tail and snapping at her with sharp buck-teeth. She smacked the child in the face with one gloved hand, and with her grip on the sleeve broken Frisk bared her canines at her, instead.

Channeling Greater Dog was fun; she started gathering saliva into her mouth and foaming it through her teeth like she'd seen rabid animals on TV do, growling loudly.

However, like always whenever she got the upper hand it came to an end too fast. She'd been menacing Alphys for all of thirty seconds before her own SOUL turned blue across her chest and she lifted into the air, right up to the ceiling. Underneath her, she could see Blue Sans with his hand up; he slowly drew that hand in an arc until he was pointing sideways, and the child was dumped gently on the floor next to a gigantic TV monitor- one which was currently showing the back of her head.

"that's enough," he said, glaring her way.

"You weren't su-supposed to be able to come out here," Alphys whimpered, standing back up and wiping slobber off her face. "I mean-! No! It-it wasn't my idea! It was all his idea! He forced me to!"

"calm down lady, i'm not a complete animal," Blue Sans said, although still glaring as he turned his gaze to her. "unlike my partner over here."

Frisk tried to get back up, but could feel the increased force of gravity pushing back down- her SOUL was still blue. "Let me go! This is all her fault!"

"Th-that's not true!" Alphys wailed, inching away towards a back wall. "He told me that if I didn't help him he would rat me out to A-a-asgore, I didn't w-want to help him! I didn't even think that he would succeed! It was a dumbass plan anyway!"

"You still did it," Frisk barked, getting to her feet with difficulty.

Blue Sans sighed heavily, rubbing his temple and shutting his eyes for a moment. "i don't care, I just need you to tell me what you did. he destroyed the machine and i can't fix it."

But even as he said that Alphys was shaking her head, glaring at them. "I-I wouldn't want to help literal sc- look, um, you don't understand." She pulled off the red gloves and tossed them to the side, on top of the computer desk that was already covered in trash. Trash which had grown in number since Frisk's last visit- torn and water-damaged comic books, TV dinners both open and shut, glass bottles, ripped open snack packages, paper, and now the pair of gloves.

Alphys snatched one of the glass bottles off the desk and pried the cap off with her claws, taking a long swig of the yellow liquid inside. "If I help you get back, he's going be so angry, sooooo no."

Blue Sans just grinned at her. "why are you worrying so much about him when you should be worrying about me?"

"Ulp," Alphys stared at him.

"like, for example, i heard from some people that the sans of this world couldn't do magic attacks. but i-" he punctuated his point by summoning the dog cannon- what he had called a Gaster Blaster- in front of Alphys' face. "-have no such problems. it's not really something that i want to do, but, buddy," the Blaster became three. "i'm really tired at this point."

Frisk folded her arms and huffed, even while Alphys was trembling hard. "Oh, so you won't do it to save me money but you'll do it to intimidate her?"

Blue Sans turned a bewildered expression her way. "uh, come again?"

"... Nothing."

Back in front of him, Alphys gulped at the three Gaster Blasters staring her down the glowing eyes, watching their motionless forms from over glasses. She gave a crooked, wavering smile over at the two of them and said, "I-I-I-I-I'll get the schematics we used."

She turned and scrambled to the other side of the lab, running through a door that led to what Frisk originally thought was just a bathroom.

No sooner had she left than Blue Sans started to glare at her again. "what the hell is your problem, kid?"

It startled her; he hadn't gotten mad at her even when she used him to get away from Undyne. Getting queasy again she looked in the direction Alphys had left and crossed her arms tighter, her face turning red. "...She's usually way worse than that."

"why? how many tallies does she have?"

The child twitched, and out of the corner of her eyes viewed him. The question was an earnest one, the anger on his face gone while he looked. But then he shook his head, studying her trembling vision. "none, huh?"

Her Sans and this one both had that same way of reading her mind. Frisk just examined her fraying shoes, rubbing scratched arms. "It's more like... it was never her specifically. But..."

"jeeze." Blue Sans made that sigh again, and she couldn't help but think of how differently both Sanses breathed. "oh well. can't expect this alphys to be different from the trend."

Finally, she put her pan away. "What's your Alphys like?"

"oh, she's real sweet," Blue Sans said, closing his eyes. "we're kind of buds, although she spends most of her time online, uh, since she has trouble communicating with real people. which, i get. but still, she's real sweet- she chats with my bro a lot too."

"She sounds dumb." Looking over the cracks in the tiled floor under them, the words came out before Frisk even realized it.

But he just shrugged. "nah, she's actually pretty smart. smarter than she thinks she is."

"Um," was all Frisk said in return.

The two of them were quiet, while elsewhere in the lab they heard numerous clashes and clangs. After several minutes of it passed, Alphys finally reemerged holding several rolled up papers in her arms, schematics and blueprints. With a sour expression, she laid them down at Blue Sans' feet, huffing and trying to fix her glasses better on her face while he slowly scooped them up. "There. That's everything that we made together while we were working on it. If you're half as smart as he is, I'm sure that you can figure it out yourself, although if you can't then don't come crying to me, scumlord." The last word she said while glaring over at Frisk. The child stuck her tongue out at her.

"holy crap," Blue Sans said as he unfurled one of the papers, keeping the rest tucked under his arm. "this isn't... anything like my original design."

"It isn't?" Alphys laughed, the obnoxious laugh that Frisk suspected was intentional on her part. She waddled over to stand right next to Blue Sans, nudging him with her hip, and she peered over at the designs. "Well we've made a lot of modifications this month. And last month too, come to think of it. It was originally designed as a time machine."

Frisk couldn't help it; thumbing one of the comic books that she found tossed over the desk, she barked out a laugh, "Hah!"

She went ignored. "what changed?"

And Alphys took off her swirling glasses, wiping them on her dingy coat. "Well for one, we finally got it to do something. It just- it wasn't what he thought it would be. I'm sure even you can guess what it is, right?" Before anybody could answer her she went forward anyway, and quickly, "Instead of reaching another time period, the machine picked up the state patterns of other dimensions. These modifications were in order to reach those dimensions physically."

"How do you manage that?" Frisk spoke up, flipping through the faded, heavily inked pages of the comic book.

She wasn't done wiping her glasses, having to spit on them and searching for a part of her coat that wasn't too oily, "It's not my job to tell you. Go educate yourself, brat. ... And put that down," she added once the glasses were back on, eyes red and irritated.

"think of it as a matter of zigging instead of zagging, kiddo," Blue Sans called while he rolled up one blueprint and went to studying another. "but wouldn't you also figure that, well, once you've proven the existence of other worlds, it'd be easier to go to them in that machine than it would be to go back in time?"

Frisk slapped the comic book back on the desk. Going back in time was easy. "So does that mean you can fix it?"

"... yeah." Eyes tired, but smile on his face, Blue Sans sighed less heavily at that. "gonna be a lot of work though. not my favorite thing to do." Rolling the next paper up, he then looked meaningfully at Alphys. "maybe you should help me with that too."

Alphys, scooting away from him, curled her lip and looked back at Frisk. "Why should I?"

"Because I'm very tired and feeling nauseous," said Blue Sans, the pupils in his eyes vanishing. While Frisk avoided eye contact the lizard monster shivered at the sight, taking several steps back; at that he relaxed. "uh, look, if i could pay you back some other way that'd be good too. as long as it's actually something i can do."

Now she appeared surprised, the hostility falling away from her face. "Oh? ...Are you- are you telling me the truth?" She stammered out.

"'m not much for lying," he nodded. "... our meeting aside."

Sharp fingertips touching, Alphys looked away. "If you r-r-really mean that. There is... something... to be honest."

"yeah?"

"Uh, oh-" She looked at Frisk, who scowled. She wrung her hands. "M-m-maybe we can discuss it later. I-I promise i-it's not much, but, as someone from another world, y-you... um, yeah, you know."

If Blue Sans was as suspicious about this as the child was, he didn't show it. Frisk, personally, was curious why Alphys was so quick to change her tune for 'literal scum'. "cool. so you're gonna help me?"

Holding her hand out after just a moment of hesitation, the scientist firmly nodded. Blue Sans took her hand with his own, and they shook without another word in the way.

"heh. good." He then put his hands in his pockets, grinning. "hey, maybe that means i'm almost done with this place."

Frisk, sitting down on the only clean chair available, wasn't so sure about that. It wasn't just Alphys who had changed her tune; even the music that played here in her head, usually on constant repeat, had... become something new. The song that played instead filled her with a sense of foreboding, and after all the sweat from Hotland was gone she shivered under the AC of the lab. While Blue Sans started talking to Alphys in earnest, she reached out to again hold her pan in her hands.

But she didn't feel any safer.


Author's Note: UF Alphys is harder to write than I thought. I have a specific interpretation of her and it's hard to get across.

Next Chapter: There's a Benefit to Getting Some Sleep