Happy late 1-year anniversary for Narutale and I thank all those stayed with me, and I'll hope you'll stay longer:)

Chapter 20: The Core

'So this is it, huh?' Naruto stared at thick glass double doors that would lead him to the Core, he pressed his hand on the glass, sighing. 'Let's get this over with…'

*BEEP

*BEEP

Hoping it would be Alphys calling him back, Naruto wrangled out his phone and stuck the small device on his ear. "Hey what's—"

"HUUUUUMAN!" Mettaton's voice. He contemplated on hanging up right then and there, but decided it probably wouldn't end up nicely if he had.

"What is it?" Naruto snappily replied.

"By this time you should've made it to my own glamorous hotel/entertainment center, riiiiight?" He cooed. 'It usually takes a chapter or so for him get from place to place anyways…'

"Uh, yeah, I'm here. So what? And why are you so happy, Alphys' still gone, isn't she?"

"Hmmm, not sure, I left the lab a while ago, so I'm guessing she'll pop up...eventually."

"I understand...oh, hey, I gotta...question."

"What is it, hon?"

"Do you...no, never mind, forget it, just…" He sighed. "Mettaton...you really hate me, don't you?"

"For what? Frankly, there's a lot of things to hate you for."

"For...for me leaving the underground!"

"That sounds a bit self-centered, don't you think?"

"I'm serious Mettaton...I mean...wouldn't you hate me if I left the underground and then I came back empty-handed with no idea what to do. I know they all expect me to find some crazy answer that'll get all the monsters out of here, but you know, sometimes I wonder if I'm alive because I survived or if I'm alive because everyone pitied me."

"Well, I personally think it's because you're really strong, human. There were a lot of humans like you, nice...extremely obnoxious to the point where I wanted to rip their heads off their bodies—and I did on several occasions—but they were all pathetically weak. I'm telling you right here and now you're alive because you're strong enough to overcome our hate and if you could do that...then you can certainly help us get out of here. Specifically me, that way I can achieve my lifelong dream of blah blah blah..."

'No...if I can't help these monsters then everything I ever did would've been all for nothing, I won't let that happen.' "Wait a second, Mettaton, when did you become such a motivational speaker?"

"Funny you should ask actually, after Alphys left I realized that I probably wasn't the best to her,"

Naruto snorted. 'Probably?'

"So I've decided to better my attitude in time Alphys returns, and now since I won't be able to fight, I mean you're practically in the core already, I might as well give you my monologue now. But perhaps we'll get to fight in a different timeline, or you can wait for me~"

He quickly hung up on Mettaton, then pulled open the thick glass doors. 'I'm coming, Asgore, just wait a little longer.'

XxxxXxx

-The Core-

Naruto stepped inside the Core, his footsteps bounced off the towering machines enclosing him on all sides until they dispersed into the cold air. Never, not even in his dreams, would he of imagined such a vast terrain comprised completely of machinery. It was amazing yet terrifying at the same the time, but more than anything, it felt isolated.

"Konoha's not looking so cool anymore," Naruto said to himself, treading carefully as he was painfully awry of his new metallic environment. He stopped finally at a 3-way fork in the road. 'Damn, which way do I go?!'

*beep

*beep

'Mettaton, again? What does he want?' "What the hell are you bothering me for this time?"

"Oh...di-did I call at a bad time?"

"...Alphys." Naruto's mind went totally blank in shock of hearing Alphys' voice again after so long, and for what seemed like forever, both ends of the line were dead silent.

"I'm just going to hang—"

"N-no!" Naruto mustered up, clenching the phone, he mustered a few more words. "What...what happened to you..where were you?!"

There was a short pause before Alphys finally said, "I was in my...lab. I-I thought I was just going to stay there forever, a-all the mistakes I've made, I couldn't face anyone anymore, I couldn't even face myself. But then when I got all these messages from you, Undyne, and even one from Mettaton, I decided to call you because I don't want to make another mistake by not helping you."

"...oh..."

"I'm going to make this right again, I promise, and...and human, next time, I'll say when I'm leaving."

"...Don't say that you're leaving, just say goodbye so I know that you'll eventually say hello to me again!"

"R-right, ok...let's-let's do this. Looks like you're in the first section of the Core so...I would um...try the elevator."

"Alright," He jammed the elevator's button—didn't budge. "Are you sure this is the right way to go?"

"No it is, but I guess the Core isn't working properly. You'll just have to go the long way, take the right entryway instead I guess."

"Got it." Heading to the right, he went through a dark opening and into a winding, blue platform encompassed by three mechanic pillars and an overwhelming amount of darkness. Naruto was curious as to what laid down there, but not that curious to jump down there or something crazy like that.

He looked back up to another door that a monster was blocking. 'Huh? How come I didn't notice that monster there before?'

"A-Actually that won't be the first, for some reason there's a lot of monsters in the Core...even though they're not supposed to be here."

"It be too easy if they—"

Without a word, or even a purpose, Madjick tipped their hat and crosses came tumbling out. The crosses floated around in the air, circling around Madjick's sneering face until they all spiraled towards Naruto. Effortlessly dodging them, he snatched a cross as it narrowly missed the left side of his cheek and threw it back with ten times the force at Madjick, pinning them to the mechanized wall.

Naruto walked up to them, his heel clicking on the cold, metal ground. "Don't interrupt me while I'm talking to someone, you got that you little…you little...you little thing!"

Madjick muttered arcane swear words as Naruto walked off with his head glued to his phone.

"Wh-whoa, that looked like a move from one of the anime ninja show I watched yesterday."

"Huh? An anime ninja kid? That sounds lame."

"Yeah it is..."

"So now what?"

"Just keep on moving forward until I don't know...you can't." And he did, until there was a laser blocking him from going any further. Alphys offered to deactivate it, but he simply just jumped over it and kept on going, stopping only at yet another crossroads.

He squinted down the right path, going forward meant he'd face another laser blocker, and for some reason, the path going up was too dark to see past. "Which way should I…"

"You should keep on going!" Alphys spurted out. "Or no m-maybe...up?"

"Which way Alphys?"

"U-Up! It's definitely up."

Doing as told, Naruto found himself face to face with a towering monster clad in armour and wielding a fearsome mace; Good Morningstar. He sighed. 'Not another weapon holding monster!' Naruto plopped down on the floor seeing several maces emerge from the wall as if the wall itself was made of butter. They shot out with the speed of bullets, but he was able to grab one just before it merged back into the wall.

Knight knight opened up her left hand, in it was a miniature version of the moon, it dispersed in reaction to the dead air and large drops of rain tore down from the ceiling. Acting quickly, Naruto slid under Knight Knight's legs and pushed her to the center of the room where she got pelted with rain drops.

Thanks to her armour, Knight knight was sheltered from the rain, but also thanks to her armour it was a pain to move with the rain accelerating the rusting of her already old joints. "Later!" Naruto called out as he laxly walked away from her.

"I'm r-really sorry about that, I totally just gave you the wrong directions there."

"No, it's cool, who's gonna get mad a two mistakes, anyways?" Two mistakes soon turned into three, then, four, and suddenly Naruto wasn't so sure of Alphys judgement, he'd been lead to seemingly every single monster, every single trap, and every single dead end teeming within the Core.

He reached the final door after what seemed like hours of tripping up and it slid open. "I-I...really did not help at all, did I?" Alphys said.

"...n...no." He entered through into a spacious, but strangely empty stage. "Whoa, what is this place?"

"Alphys? Are you listening to me?!"

"H...E․․․L․․․P."

"Huh?"

"H…"

"E-"

"S...sorry, I was, uh, doing something."

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"...Nothing, never mind, can you tell me where I'm at already?"

"Oh that's Mettaton's stage thing...y-you haven't seen him by chance, have you?"

"No, he called me earlier and said he left the lab a while ago."

"So...that's why he isn't here…"

"Oh and, he also said he was going to not to be a jerk to you anymore."

"Wait seriously, he said that?"

"Yeah, crazy isn't it? Hey wait, where are you anyways, you sound really…"

"Close? I'm...uh...I'm actually in the Core right now."

"Wait why? How? I thought you were in the—"

*beep

*beep

Not too long after she hung up, Alphys came waddling to Naruto. It felt unreal seeing her finally but he was happy none the less and a big smiled sprawled across his face the moment he saw her. Naruto ran up to her and held out his fist. "I'm glad I get to see you again!" He proclaimed, motioning for her to punch his fist back.

She weakly bumped fists with him, then started twildinling with her fingers, a habit Naruto noticed she picked up whenever she got nervous. "Welp...let's get g-going."

Alphys followed Naruto to the stage exit and into the long hallway that would lead to Asgore's castle. "S-so you're about to meet A-Asgore, huh?"

"Yep."

"I bet you're pretty...pretty excited...huh?"

"To fight him? I'm kinda pumped to finally fight the guy."

"N-n-no...I mean...to go...h-home!"

"Uh...yeah, I guess. Seeing the sun won't be so bad, but the people I can miss." Naruto reached the elevator door and gently pressed on the button.

The door opened. "W-wait!" Alphys yelled out. Naruto stopped. "I...I….I….I've been lying to you about everything. I purposely told you all the wrong directions because I didn't want to tell you the truth...but we're here now...and I have to tell you."

"...what?! Tell me what you were trying to hide!"

"A human soul isn't strong enough to pass through the barrier alone. Lucky for you, you're a jinchuriki so you have the soul of both a human and a monster, but...the only way for you to go home is if you let the tailed beast inside of you take control and when that happens...someone will die."

"...I'm sorry…" She finally said.

Naruto dwelled on Alphys' face, just for a second, before he quietly said, "Me too."

"H...E...L...P..."

"M...E..."

A/N: So these chapters as you can tell are getting a bit sappy and that's just me wrapping up this arc on a semi-good note and me because I'm a dork for sappy endings with long motivational speeches, just pumps me up, you know?

Also, I know the core might of been underwhelming, but I honestly had nothing planned for it. What I did have was Naruto falling down into the core and meeting Gaster then going through all these different AUs, but then I thought that sounded really stupid and I've been waiting the entire year to get to Asgore's castle soooo, next chapter Asgore's castle here we go.