Well, this came out fast.
The power of Charisk compels me, I guess.
"Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…"
"…Chara, are you okay?" Asriel asked, standing in Chara's doorway and watching them groaning on their bed with their face in their pillow.
"Nooooo…" Chara's reply was muffled as they still had their face buried deep in their pillow. "I'm such an idiot..."
"What?! That's not true!" Asriel said, before adding, "So, uh, what did you actually do anyway…?"
Chuck had come up to see what was going on. He looked at Asriel curiously. Asriel just shrugged in confusion.
"I don't wanna tell youuuu… It's too embarassingggg…"
Betty and Charlie (who appeared to be a boy at the time) had also arrived and started peering into the room from behind Asriel and Chuck.
"What's going on here?" Betty whispered to Chuck.
"I have no idea." He whispered back.
"Do you… want to give us – I mean me – some hints?" Asriel asked. Normally a slip up like that would've totally given away the fact that it wasn't just him there, but Chara seemed too preoccupied to notice. Actually, normally Chara would've noticed just by listening to the sound of the footsteps that someone was approaching. They could even tell who it was most of the time. And normally Asriel wouldn't even be allowed to talk to Chara when they were upset. So, basically, this whole thing screamed "Weird and confusing."
"…Not really…" As Chara replied, Macy and John appeared as well. It seemed all of the Dreemurr's extended family had a sixth sense when it came to finally being able to catch Chara doing something embarrassing. Or at least hearing about them doing something embarrassing. Chara had so much blackmail on almost all of them, and had used it to make them do so much stuff for them; it was no surprise they all wanted to get back at Chara.
They wouldn't be that cruel, though. Probably. Anyway, back to the conversation.
"…Could I guess at what happened, then?"
"…" Taking their silence as a "Yes" (although he knew it was probably a "No,") Asriel started trying to think of what could've happened to make Chara act the way they were. It looked like the rest of his siblings were thinking hard, too. Aaren, the only one of the Dreemurr children who had yet to arrive, did so then.
"What are-" They began, but were cut off by everyone else (except for Chara, of course) shushing them. They looked over the crowd of people by the doorway and saw Chara, and seemed to at least partially understand what was going on. But not completely; no one fully knew what was going on at the time.
Betty suddenly whispered, "Ask them if it's about the new human." They all agreed that it was an excellent idea.
"Hey, Chara?" Asriel started. Chara let out a grunt of acknowledgement. "Is this about that new human?"
"Haha, no, of course not! Where would you get that idea?!" Chara jolted upright and replied in a shrill voice that made it obvious they were lying. Suddenly, they noticed that it wasn't just Asriel standing at the door – it was their entire family minus Toriel and Asgore. Chara narrowed their eyes.
"Oh shit. Everyone, SCATTER!" Chuck yelled, and they all ran off laughing as Chara screamed at them incoherently from their room.
"OhgodChara'ssohotIthinkIlikethembutwhatiftheydon'tlikemeback-ohgodwhatiftheyDOlikemebackohmygodI'msoconfusedsomeonehelpme."
I think I should be the one asking for help in this situation. The Hunger commented dryly as Frisk rambled while pacing back and forth in Alphys' lab, and eventually just leaned their head on the wall and groaned.
"Uh… are y-you okay…?" Alphys asked, looking at Frisk worriedly.
"Nooooo… I'm notttttt…" They replied miserably, with their face still on the wall.
"…Do you want to talk about it?" Alphys's curiosity was overriding her normal aversion to any sort of socialising. She honestly had no idea what was going on, but it seemed like a situation that would be in an anime, so she was quite interested.
Frisk thought for a bit. Do I want to talk about it? With Alphys, I mean? I could just talk to the Hunger instead...
Please don't. The Hunger replied.
Why not? You already know about it. Also stop reading my thoughts when I'm not talking to you. Nonetheless, they respected the Hunger's request and decided to talk to Alphys.
"…Okay. Where should I start?"
"U-um… how about you start with just telling me what's going on?"
"Right. So I met Chara a couple days ago…"
*One rant and a bit of exposition later…*
"…and they're just too fucking hot! I don't know what to do!" Frisk finished, after about fifteen minutes of ranting. The only thing they'd left out was the fact that they'd killed Chara twice, as they didn't want to explain that. Both Alphys and Frisk were now sitting down and leaning against the wall with cups of instant noodles in their hands.
"I know how that feels. It's not much fun." Alphys sighed. She seemed to have warmed up to Frisk a bit after listening to the rant and was no longer nervous, which also meant her nervous stutter had disappeared.
"Oh really? Who could you possibly feel that way about?" Frisk teased Alphys in a voice that made it clear that they knew exactly who it was.
Alphys was saved from further teasing as Frisk heard heavily muffled a noise coming from behind the door they'd seen the last time they'd been in the lab, the one that said "Approved personnel only." They doubted that they'd have heard it had it not been for their enhanced hearing.
"What was that?" They asked curiously. They'd already been curious about the room, seeing as they weren't able to get into it the last time they were there, but now they really wanted to know what was in there.
"What was what?" Alphys sounded slightly relieved and slightly confused. It seems she hadn't heard the noise, which was reasonable.
"The noise that came from in there." Frisk pointed to the door. "It sounded demonic." They didn't sound concerned in the slightest by that fact.
"Wait, you haven't heard about any of that stuff by now?" Alphys seemed surprised.
"No, what stuff? I need to know!"
"You know, they say curiosity killed the cat. But I'm probably allowed to let you in, as long as you're aware of what's in there."
"But what is in there?!"
"Wow, you sure are eager to go into dangerous places. Alright, here's the gist of it: Sans, Betty, and I all went to the king and queen to ask for approval to do research on human souls. They approved it, and we got to work. Keep in mind, this was when we had only six humans working on breaking the barrier; we needed one more. We extracted and identified a material from inside the human souls we already had that we call Determination, or DT for short. We thought 'This must be the thing that helps human souls survive after death, and what makes them so powerful. So, what if we use it to make some monster souls more powerful?'"
"This seems like some sort of mad scientist type thing so far."
"Yeah, it pretty much was. Anyway. We released our research so far to the public on the queen's orders, since we were already asking for monsters that had 'fallen down' by then, to see if we could help them. Their bodies came in while they were still comatose, not long before they turned to dust. We injected DT into them."
"Well that sounds like a perfectly safe thing to do, doesn't it?"
"We thought it was a good idea at the time. After a while, the bodies hadn't turned to dust, which we thought was good at the time. We told the families of the monsters that the experiment seemed to be working, but that it would take time to tell. After a long while, during which Betty and I finished up Mettaton's first body, still nothing had happened. We decided to inject them with more Determination."
"I imagine that went as well as I expect."
"One of the bodies opened its eyes."
"Oooh, spooky."
"And then, just like that, everyone that had fallen down had woken up. They were all walking around and talking like nothing was wrong. We called all of the families and told them that everyone was alive. But we never could've predicted what happened next…"
Huh. Alphys is actually pretty good at dramatic storytelling. The Hunger commented.
Probably from all the anime. Or just from spending too much time around Mettaton. Frisk replied, before tuning back in on what Alphys was saying.
"We found out the hard way that monsters don't have enough physical matter to take those concentrations of Determination. Their bodies started to meld and lost what physicality they had. Pretty soon, all of the test subjects had melted together into… Well, you'll see soon. We're still working on a cure to it, but if we think that we can't get it done we'll just send them to live with their families as they are. As it is, they spend some time out of the lab with their families already, and the families often come to visit as well."
"Cool, cool. I mean, it's sad, but interesting. Can I go into the place now?" Frisk really was eager to go into a dangerous situation, since they were no longer hungry. They were a bit of a danger seeker (as long as they didn't think anyone else would be in danger because of them), which was one of the main reasons they had ended up the way they were.
"Yeah, yeah. Alright. If you want to that badly." The both of them finished off their noodles and got up from where they were sitting, before heading over to the locked door. However, just as Alphys was about to open it, they were startled by some voices that came from behind them.
"Hey, Alphys! I'm back! Chuck came to say hi on his way to Undyne, as well." Alphys and Frisk swivelled around to see Betty entering the lab with Chuck tagging along behind her. "Oh! Uh, hey. You're the human Chara's so worked up about, right?"
Frisk turned bright red while Alphys muttered "I ship it."
"Oh gosh, Chara's worked up about me? I mean… Uhhh… Um… Y-yes? Maybe?"
"Yeah, they were being all flustered in their room and stuff. Hey, what's your name, by the way? I couldn't get it off of Chara before they yelled at us to leave." Chuck smirked.
"O-oh. It's, uh, Frisk. My name's Frisk."
"Cool. I'm Chuck. Hey, Alphys. Have any messages for me to deliver to Undyne?"
"Uh, no. Not today." Alphys glanced away briefly.
"Alright. Maybe another time." Chuck seemed to be reassuring Alphys about something. It was probably to do with Undyne and her. "Anyway, I should be heading out now. Catch you all later."
They all waved goodbye to Chuck and Betty turned back to Alphys while Frisk recovered from their embarrassment.
"So what were you two doing before we got here?" Betty asked.
"Frisk wants to see the amalglamates for some reason." Alphys told her.
"Ooh, that's a weird name. Can we see them now?" Frisk was practically bouncing with excitement.
"Do you actually genuinely want to see them? Jesus. Are you attracted to creepy, supernatural things or something? First Chara, now this…" Betty was judging Frisk pretty hard, but they didn't notice because they were too preoccupied watching Alphys open the door. As soon as it was open, they zoomed in.
They looked around disappointedly. It was just a lift. "Aww. This isn't spooky at all."
Betty rolled her eyes at them. "That's because it was built as a safety precaution to keep anything that may be dangerous confined to the true lab. But don't worry, it's very spooky down there; the amalglamates are always messing the place up and after a while we stopped trying to clean everything up, unless it's important."
Alphys pressed a button and the lift started going down, and then she added to the conversation. "We mostly only use the true lab for keeping the amalglamates and trying to fix them, now. All the other stuff we can do upstairs."
The elevator doors opened. Frisk grinned in excitement as they rushed out into the derelict lab, taking in all of the creepy things all around them.
"I feel like I'm in my element here." They laughed. "I could live here. That would be fun. No sun, no garlic or onions, no people to accidentally try to eat… Actually, hey! How's that blood substitute going? Not that I need it currently, I already… I… uh, nevermind."
Frisk looked away in embarrassment as they trailed off. Betty had a huge grin on her face, which did not bode well for Frisk.
"Ohohoho… So that's what both of you were so flustered about!" Before Frisk could deny it, they heard an ungodly screech come from deeper in the lab. They turned around in excitement, completely forgetting the embarrassing conversation, and rushed off to where the noise had come from. Alphys and Betty both shared a look of bewilderment as to why Frisk was so enamoured by danger, before shrugging and heading off after them.
I swear, there's something seriously wrong with you… The Hunger complained.
I thought I told you not to swear? Frisk joked. Besides, I could say the same about you.
2 spoopy 4 me