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Undyne paced around and around the living room, hands bouncing off her sides as she wrapped and unwrapped her arms from around herself. She pulled occasionally at her flannel shirt, deep in thought as she wandered in haphazard circles here and there, nearly knocking the flower pot off the coffee table a few times in the process.
"Can you please watch where you're going?" Flowey griped to no avail.
"What if it's something dangerous though?" Undyne continued to muse aloud. "What if she's getting in over her head again?"
"Are you still on about that?" he scowled.
"She has a tendency to take on a bigger workload than she can handle," she continued to pace. "What if – what if she can't manage by herself?"
"Listen to yourself," Flowey deadpanned. "She's not even by herself, she's got the fatbag with her."
The electricity flickered and went out yet again for a few moments before clicking back on. Undyne pulled at her red ponytail in aggravation, as if it had just accentuated her point.
"I hate this," Undyne fumed. "I hate doing... doing nothing when I know she's working her hardest."
"The doctor is perfectly capable of maintaining her work," Flowey stated in a flat tone. "Quit being so distressed."
Undyne shot the flower a look of pure irritation so sharp that he flinched, looking away.
"And what do you know what Alphys is capable of?" she placed her hands on her hips before him, glowering.
"I guess you could say that I've spent a lot of time watching her work," Flowey hummed. "Probably even more than you."
Undyne's eye twitched.
"And who exactly do you think that she's doing all this for?" she stared him dead in the eyes. "You honestly think I can't put two and two together by myself?"
"No idea what you're on about," he lied. Undyne only rolled her eyes, flipping a lock of red hair from her face to better look down at him.
"Listen and listen good, punk," she said, utterly unamused. "Allie has been putting herself through absolute hell lately for you. The very least you could do is pretend to be just a little grateful. If you're even capable of that."
"Why, Undyne, I'm hurt," Flowey held a leaf to what might have been his chest. "You make it sound as if I don't appreciate the good doctor's hard efforts-"
"Don't give me that shit," she leaned down to eye level, making him shift uncomfortably. "You and I both know good and well that you've been treating her like last week's garbage."
"N-no I haven't-"
"So why is it that she gets all tense and irritable whenever you're watching her work?"
"Maybe it's that time of the month," he responded in a blank tone.
"You misogynistic little fu-"
Bang.
The both of them jumped at the sound of the basement door being kicked open, heads swiveling around to spot Alphys with her lab coat wide open and flapping behind her as she ran, safety goggles hanging around her neck and revealing her bloodshot eyes.
"We did it!" she cheered hoarsely, beaming from ear to ear.
"That's great!" Undyne grinned back. "... Did what?"
"The device is finally operational," she said breathlessly, rubbing her hands together gleefully. "We successfully swapped the minds of the test subjects!"
"It's-it's really working?" Flowey asked in a shaky breath, an odd look on his face. He stared at her with his mouth slightly agape, waiting impatiently. "It's finally ready?"
"There were a couple of... obstructions," she picked him up and marched toward the laboratory, Undyne close in tow. "Come on, I can't wait to show you!"
She descended the steps two at a time, closely followed by Undyne. Sans sat slightly slumped in Alphys's swivel chair, yawning sleepily.
"Show me," Flowey insisted eagerly, perked up and taking in as many details from the glowing machine that he could. "Show me show me show me show me-"
"Alright, alright, take a breather," Sans stifled another yawn. "Whoa, bag check for doctor Alphys, those bags under your eyes could be taken on a flight."
"You're hardly one to talk," she quipped wearily, carefully placing Flowey down on the examination table beside the covered body. "You look like death warmed over."
"As opposed to...?" he cocked one eyebrow. Alphys only shook her head and adjusted her glasses, motioning for Undyne to see their progress. Inside two separate cages were the lab rat and rabbit, both stripped of cranial wiring and looking much more comfortable from the lack of electrodes sticking to their heads.
Nothing happened.
Undyne adjusted her sleeves absentmindedly, looking back and forth between the test subjects and feeling as if she were supposed to be picking something up.
"So... how can you tell it actually worked, exactly?" she asked slowly. Alphys clapped her hands together eagerly, bringing up several graphs and recordings on her monitor.
"Glad you asked," Alphys responded eagerly, but Undyne could detect the exhaustion in her voice. "We did a number of EEG scans before, during and after the cognitive translocation experiment," she pulled up a new set of images showing the brain activity of the animals. "At first, we weren't even sure that we could maintain the mental structures of the subjects during transfer-"
"We weren't even completely positive that it was feasible," Sans interjected, earning a low nod from Alphys.
"But we managed to completely swap the minds and souls of both of them," Alphys continued excitedly. "We're so close to success, I can almost taste it."
"So..." Flowey nodded once. "What, exactly, is the holdup? When can we get my body back?"
Sans and Alphys shared an uneasy look, one that made Flowey very, very indecisive.
"We... hit a roadblock," Sans pulled out a pair of square spectacles from his jacket pocket, inspecting them far too carefully.
"What do you mean, roadblock?"
"The, um... the thing is," Alphys tapped her talons together nervously. "Transferring the minds and souls of two separate beings is one thing, but-but for this to work, we'll need to inject the host body with your consciousness and the artificial soul simultaneously. We can't be one hundred percent certain that this duplicate soul will even work."
Undyne had been silent the entire time, arms crossed loosely over her chest.
"So what's the problem?" Flowey frowned, looking back and forth between Alphys and the nearly snoozing skeleton.
"We-we aren't entirely sure that this will go accordingly-," Alphys explained hesitantly. "I mean, this is completely new fieldwork that we're doing, there's no guarantee whatsoever that everything will go as planned. So..."
"So run the diagnostics again," Flowey harrumphed. "That's your thing, right? Then do them again, and again, and again until you're sure that it will work."
"It's not that easy, kiddo," Sans rubbed his temple, matching the flower's frown. "Believe you me, I wish it were. If something happens to either your consciousness or the artificial soul in the process, then, well... we've got problems."
"What kind of problems?" he asked impatiently.
"Well," Sans sat up a little in the chair, eyeing him slowly. "We could lose the body in the cognitive transfer, for one."
"Speaking of which," Alphys interrupted, swiftly grabbing her umpteenth beaker of smoking purple liquid and pouring it down the open mouth of the prince's body. It shook violently, almost as if it were having a fit lasting a very long, uncomfortable ten seconds before dying down.
"Lose the body?" Flowey repeated numbly. "How?"
"It-it has to be injected with the concoction periodically," Alphys explained. "At least until it's been retrofitted with a working soul strong enough to keep it together."
"That makes me curious," Undyne drew everyone's attention, having barely said a word the entire time.
"A-about what?" Alphys blinked, cleaning her dirty glasses.
Undyne leaned against one wall, arms crossed and brows furrowed. She slowly, every so gradually looked back into the corner where the artificial soul lay dormant and glowing a dim porcelain white that reflected off the shining floors.
"... How, exactly," she began slowly, jabbing a thumb in the thing's general direction. "Did you manage to make a freakin' soul from scratch? I thought that was impossible?"
"It is," Sans grinned. "Unless you happen to be a genius. Which I am."
"Sans..." Undyne said dangerously. "What exactly did you?"
Sans's response was to slowly, deliberately raise his shirt. It took a long moment of staring before it finally clicked.
He was missing a rib.
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat-"
"Monster's souls gotta come from somewhere," he dropped his shirt, trying to appear nonchalant about it. "Had to start somewhere. Might as well have started somewhere good."
"... This is insane," Flowey held his petals to his head. "This is literally madness."
"Hey, think of it this way," Sans winked. "You can make so many 'put a bone in me' jokes-"
"LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" Flowey wailed.
"Alright, alright, stop tormenting us with your 'humor' please," Alphys shooed him up out of her swivel chair. "I've got some more tests to run first, and then-"
"Al."
"Hm?" she glanced back up at Undyne.
"Come get some rest."
Alphys blinked.
"But-but we're so close...!" she gaped.
"You had a goal," Undyne approached her. "You reached it. Take a break."
"But-but-but-!"
Undyne's response was to kneel down, grasp Alphys by the arms, and swiftly toss her up in the air and catch her to carry her sideways leaving the yellow dinosaur flushed furiously.
"Tomorrow night," Undyne pointed out the door with her free hand. "Sleep on it, you two. Get some rest."
"Almost get the feeling we're not wanted here," Sans chuckled as Undyne effortlessly carried the blubbering blushing girl upstairs. Flowey had a particularly nasty glower leveled at the back of Undyne's head, but nobody but Sans seemed to notice. They sat for a long while in contemplative silence, neither one daring to break the quiet. Eventually, Sans leaned forward and stretched his back until it popped, stifling another heavy yawn.
"Come on, squirt."
"Don't call me that," Flowey grumbled, but seemed to be fairly distracted otherwise. Had he been paying attention, he would have noticed that Sans had picked him up and had just snapped his fingers.
The void collapsed in around them, through them, drowning them in a sea of inky, crushing, howling blackness.
And just as quickly as it happened, it was over.
Flowey spasmed from the teleportation, eyes rolling madly as he struggled to take in the new surroundings. Sans stood ankle deep in lush green grass, swaying gently in the twilight.
They were standing in the city's central park, from the looks of it.
"What did you bring us here for?" Flowey stared at him, but he seemed to be slightly distracted. "Hello? Are you even listening to me?"
"Hush," Sans said, looking over the horizon as he took a seat on a nearby park bench, carefully setting the flower down.
"I'm serious," Flowey insisted. "We need to go back and-"
"Shh," Sans held a finger over his mouth, not bothering to hide his grin.
"Why?" he shouted, throwing his petals in the air. "Why did you drag me all the way out here? Why aren't we going back? What are you playing at? What-"
"Flowey."
Sans pointed over the horizon. Shortly after he did so, a few golden, sparkling rays of sunlight began to creep over the lip of the world, illuminating the park in a dimly glowing aura that shone on the morning dew.
"... Great, another sunrise," Flowey deadpanned. "Like those don't happen literally every single day on the surface."
"I think you take way too much for granted..." Sans folded his hands in his lap, struggling not to yawn.
"As opposed to, what?" he grunted. "Giving a damn about anything?"
"Do you really think I carried you out here, all the way out to see the sunrise, just to get on your nerves or something?" Sans asked softly, making the flower go suddenly quiet. "Can you really not appreciate anything at all anymore?"
"I doubt it," he scoffed. "I'm a flower."
"Can you even feel anything at all?"
Flowey didn't answer for the longest time.
He watched the giant orange ball grow larger and larger in the sky, parting the clouds and rising further and further. At first, he didn't speak at all. Eventually though he cleared his throat, his tone low.
"I feel... disgust."
"Go on."
"Revulsion," Flowey didn't look at him. "Anger. Irritation. Emptiness. Exhaustion."
"That... sounds an awful lot like depression," Sans stared down at his hands.
"Screw you, I'm not depressed."
Much to his chagrin, Sans didn't say anything. He only laughed.
"Man," he wiped an invisible tear with one finger bone. "You really are a rotten little turd."
"Why?" Flowey asked. "If you hate me so much, then-then why? Why all of... all of this?" he motioned toward the sunset. "Why help me at all?"
"Why would you assume that I hated you?"
"You've told me before."
"I don't remember."
"I do."
Sans looked down to the flower, uncertain of how to respond.
"... You're talking about-"
"The resets," Flowey stared up at the sunrise. "Sans... Look. I'm-I'm sorry. I'm just so, so... tired. I'm just so very tired."
"I get the feeling," he nodded once.
"No," Flowey frowned. "No, you don't."
"You think all of those resets didn't do a number on me as well?" Sans blinked.
"That's not what I mean!" Flowey scowled even harder. "You can feel them when they happen, but I remember the resets. Every single reset, be it mine or Frisk's."
"But there haven't been any more resets," he quoted Alphys. "Not since-"
"Since leaving the underground. But you don't get it," he closed his eyes, slowly taking a breath. "All of this, everything that we do, everything that we say is just one step closer to being erased. Just because there haven't been any resets for a while doesn't mean that they're never going to happen again. Just you wait. Sooner or later, we're both going to wake up in the underground like none of this ever happened. We're just going to wind up back in the same place, trapped in the same god awful cycle of doing the exact same things, saying the exact same things, and remembering the exact same things over, and over, and over again. And that's just a single link in the daisy chain of fucked up things that will eventually drive you just as far into the abyss as me."
Sans was left utterly speechless by the flower's tirade. He wanted to find the right words to say, something to comfort him, but wasn't even sure if he could do the same for himself.
Sans rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, letting out a long, uneven breath.
"I've... we've talked with Frisk a lot about the resets," Sans admitted, rubbing his hands together to ward off the morning chill. "Aside from you, there was nobody else that could cause those anomalies in the timeline, and she's-"
"Just because she made a little promise doesn't mean that she won't break it," Flowey stared up at him. "Just you wait. This isn't anything more than an extended dream, a fanciful illusion. What happens when she gets bored of us, hmm? I can't be saved. Nobody can."
"Look, kid-"
"We'll be thrown away," Flowey turned away from him, glaring off into the distance. "Tossed out like garbage."
"You have no faith in the kiddo," he shrugged.
"And you have too much."
"Ain't we a dandy pair?" Sans grinned, but it felt empty. He leaned back against the park bench, tucking his hands into his pockets and enjoying the brief silence.
"... Tonight is when it all happens," Flowey broke the uneven quiet at last. "Tonight we finally find out if this little project finally kills me or not."
"Bah, you'll be fine," Sans said without conviction.
"If you say so," he replied gibly.
"Come on, kid." Sans picked up Flowey and began the long walk back. "... Let's go home."
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