It was a couple days later when Papyrus woke up.
The day was extremely sunny and Alphys (after failing to convince me a couple
times) made me carry around a water bottle with me because it was too hot for both me and her. We slowly walked out of the the steaming hot 85° degree house into the 95° weather, and walked into the town.
"Y...you're sure you're going to get the right groceries, Undyne?" she stuttered as we
slowly made our way to the elevator to the underground. I laughed as she looked up at me, now in the long line to the elevator.
"Of course, Al!" I laughed at the pure fact that I, the great Undyne, would ever forget something as simple as a grocery list. She said she wanted some more ramen, and I needed more spaghetti for our totally strict noodle diet.
"O...okay Undyne," she gave me a questioning look, before I slowly departed to the hospital.
The hospital was located near the middle of the town where everyone congregated. It was on one of the sides of a big elevated square (made of wood, like everything else in the makeshift town), with a small garden in the middle. There was a small group of monsters and humans working together on some new stone sculptures on the corners, and a small clustered group stood around the middle garden. I quickly chugged some water from my water bottle, and made my way to the front of the hospital.
As usual, the room went quiet as I entered the room, and no one dared look the "absolutely violent" Undyne. Chara, over the past days made even more stupid rumors about me being a sort of dark overlord with the power to kill people with a snap, and I was just a disguise. And of course, whatever Chara says is what happens. Because everyone follows the oh so great Chara and his little human friends (who hate us almost as equally) because Undyne totally kidnapped Sans just so she could become more popular and become the heroine of the story. Which is totally not going to happen.
I mean why would I be the heroine? I couldn't even defeat the human.
Well, anywho, when I walked to the stupid ladies front desk, everyone shuffled away from me as if I carried the plague or something like that. There was a line at the front desk, so I stood behind a large lady in green and impatiently waited.
"Yo Undyne!" I heard a voice behind me. I swiveled around to see the orange and yellow monster kid bound up to me (tripping a couple times in the process) and stop right behind me.
"Hey punk!" I smiled back at the little monster's face. He was a teensy bit more bruised up than normal, which seemed to always be the case whenever I saw him, but he still carried the same smile.
"Why are you here?" he asked politely. I frowned and thought about changing the subject from something as gruesome as Papyrus' injuries, but then realized that the little kid would have to know. I slightly frowned as I continued the subject.
"Well… since Papyrus got hurt, and I'm supposed to go check on him…" I started saying when the kiddo suddenly got a super concerned look on his face.
"Why is the Great Papyrus hurt? What happened!" he started hammering me with questions as the line started getting shorter and shorter, suddenly looking concerned.
"He's fine… he's just been out for a couple days… and it was really confusing but all that I know he'll be fine…" I sighed at my former biggest fan. He used to absolutely adore my every move and trail me around as if I was Mettaton, but since the human came around, his fangirling turned more to Papyrus. And in a way I don't blame him, since of all that happened up when the human broke the barrier.
"Are you sure?" He looked at me with one eyebrow raised, his small bow bobbing.
"I'm positive. I was even hurt more than Papyrus and I recovered," I smiled to the kid. I looked to see that the line was nonexistent in front of me, and the lady was tapping her pen against the table impatiently.
"I'm here to see-" I started.
"RONALD THE FISH LADY'S HERE!" the lady yelled to the red haired man that was across the room. He grumbled as he stopped talking to another human, pocketed a paper he was holding, and walked over to open the door.
"Hello, Undyne," he smiled positively as I walked past.
"Hello Ron," I answered as we walked down the hallway.
"Is everything usual," he wondered, as I remembered that yesterday I told him about my usual routine.
"It's the same old thing every day," I sighed in annoyance. "I would really like to be helping out the monsters or mapping but since I'm still 'hurt' I can't do anything," I scratched an itch on the back of my neck as we continued walking. "I have to follow what King Asgore says, since I'm one of his main 'subjects', you could say."
"Really?" Ronald said, curious.
"Oh yup. He taught me how to fight when we were little. He suggested it when I was defeated by him one fighting class, back when we needed to know how to fight to claim more ground in the Underground. He's a pretty lax guy," I shrugged. "But he tends to worry a whole bunch about everyone's health and wont let anyone do anything when they're hurt or sick. Which is a pain, itself," I laughed. "I don't know, do you think Chara's like that or no…?" I asked, and Ronald frowned.
"W...we aren't allowed to share our opinions on the Great Chara," Ronald looked to the ground, and stopped as we got to the door. I frowned as he opened the door for me, and I walked in slowly.
"U… UNDYNE…?" I heard a voice from inside the room. Papyrus laid in his bed, fully conscious, while looking like a bulldozer ran over him. His eyes were droopy and it almost looked like he could fall asleep at any moment. I walked over to his bedside, and looked down at him.
"YOU'RE ALRIGHT…" Papyrus said slowly, and I nodded.
"I'm fine, punk. You just need to heal up a little bit more, and you'll be a-okay," I said to Papyrus. I noticed Ronald awkwardly slinked back to the office when I wasn't looking, and I frowned.
"WHERE'S… SANS?" he said, looking around. "I… I DIDN'T SEE HIM IN HERE…" he frowned as I sighed.
"Papyrus… your brother's been missing. We don't know where he is…" I said calmly to Papyrus. "W...we are sending out search parties for the past week looking for him, and there's been no such luck. We…"
"We don't even know what he'll be like when we find him. He might be that terrifying blob thingy again… and he might hurt people against his own will," I struggled to tell the whole story to Papyrus, scared that his innocent heart might be crushed by the news. Papyrus took it all slowly, and his eyes widened in terror.
"HOW LONG HAS HE BEEN MISSING?" he asked fearfully.
"A week or two. It's been two weeks since the incident, Papyrus," I said slowly. His eyes narrowed and he seemed to be much older than he was.
"DANG IT, GASTER..." he said silently under his breath. I frowned and quirked my head at Papyrus' weird comment, as he sighed. "YOU HEARD THAT, DIDN'T YOU?"
"Uh… yes…?" I answered Papyrus slowly. He sighed and shook his head.
"WELL I GUESS I HAVE TO TELL YOU THEN…" Papyrus frowned.
"A LONG TIME AGO WHEN ME AND SANS WERE JUST BABYBONES, WE WERE EXPERIMENTS FOR THIS GUY CALLED 'W.D. GASTER' WHO TOOK CARE OF US DOWN IN THE TRUE LAB. ALPHYS… WASN'T THE HEAD SCIENTIST… HE WAS. HE...HE WAS A BAD MAN, WHO DID HORRIBLE THINGS, OR AT LEAST THAT SANS SAYS, I DON'T REMEMBER…"
"THAT MAN… SANS TURNED INTO THAT MAN… I DON'T KNOW HOW… OR WHY…" Papyrus said, almost out of breath now since he was talking so much. I put my hand on his shoulder gingerly, and calmed him down, his eyes drooping a little more.
"Papyrus, calm down. We've got this all under control," I smiled half heartedly, still feeling a little bit uneasy from his giant speal. "We'll find Sans, and ask him about it, don't worry. Now… get some rest, okay? We all want to get the Great Papyrus better in no time."
"DONT WORRY UNDYNE! ILL TRY TO GET SOME SLEEP IF I CAN," Papyrus murmured as I started to walk out of the room. I was at the doorway as I heard a voice:
"UNDYNE…" he said.
"What, punk?" I answered, swinging my head around to face him.
"WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T HURT SANS… OKAY? HE'S MY BROTHER, AND I DON'T WANT ANYTHING TO HAPPEN TO HIM NO MATTER IF HE'S BECOME SOME BIG SCARY MONSTER OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT."
"ESPECIALLY FROM YOU, UNDYNE. YOU'RE A GOOD FRIEND AND IF YOU HURT SANS BY ACCIDENT... I DONTWANTYOUTWOTOBE" Papyrus started rambling quickly from his hospital bed, and he needed to stop.
"Papyrus." he stopped talking as soon as I spoke, wide awake as usual. "Dont worry. I won't hurt Sans in any which way unless he hurts anyone else." I reassured the tall skeleton with a smile. "He'll be fine."
"Get some sleep," I said before exiting the room.
"BYE UNDYNE!" He said with a smile.
I sighed when I exited the room, recollecting all that I learned just from that one meeting. Ronald was waiting in the hallway, holding his clipboard in his robotic hand as usual and scratching something down with his pencil (another human invention that we didn't really have in the underground… we really only had pens and newspaper).
"You're done? Most people take around an hour in the room," Ronald raised an eyebrow and clicked a button on his stopwatch.
"Where you timing me?!" I asked, surprised.
"No. You didn't see anything," Ronald gave me a mysterious stare as we started walking down the hallway.
"Oh… okay?" I said a teensy bit confused. We took a couple steps until I started off talking. "Um… so why does Chara not allow people to talk about him?" I wondered.
"I said… I won't… talk about it," Ronald smiled unenthusiastically, clearly trying to not break out of character and punch me against the wall or something. Oh that's how it's gonna be, then. Come and try to punch the Great Undyne… just try, I thought as we kept walking.
"Why won't you talk about it?" I asked Ronald, vaguely curious.
"Because it's against the law and society, Undyne," Ronald looked completely pissed off in as many ways possible. "Um… us humans…"
"... We don't really trust the monsters. Or at least as we hoped we would…" Ronald sighed in defeat. "Y… you all are kind of terrifying."
We walked silently down the hallway for a couple more steps, as I digested what Ronald said.
"Really?" I said. "We're trying our best to not come off like that," I frowned and shrugged. "But oh well, Chara really gave us a bad name, right? Or that's at least as it seems."
"Especially on you, Undyne. That's why I'm the one that's escorting you to Papyrus' room all of the time- because nobody trusts you and your instincts. 'Cause Chara says so, and I'm inclined to believe them," Ronald said, quietly so no one else would hear. I clutched my hand tightly so Ron couldn't see it, and continued to talk casually as if I wasn't affected by what he said.
"Ah, okay. That makes sense. He really doesn't like me for some reason- maybe he knows something that I don't know…?" I frowned slightly, and shrugged again.
"Please please please, for everyone's own good, don't tell anyone that I said that, okay? Cause if you do my life's on the line" Ronald looked frighteningly up to me. I nodded at the short man, and smiled.
"Your secret's safe with me, punk." I said quietly back to him. He smiled, and then frowned as we entered the room. He opened the door for me, and I briskly walked out of the hospital in the square, where a Snowdrake was puzzling over another one of those stupid spears. I laughed for a second at how stupid I must have been, thinking that humans and monsters would ever live in harmony, and then was jerked back to the real world and started walking to the elevator to the underground.
I have to tell Asgore about this.