"Hope the Alphys here is nice," Vivaldi mumbled, grasping Frisk's sleeve with her sweaty palm. The remaining walk from the Hotland entrance to the lab was short, but blazing hot enough to evaporate the cups the twins took from the water cooler as soon as they left it behind. "I'm thirsty again."
"Think she's got juice boxes?" Verdana mused, swinging his arms back and forth to clap his hands while switching between flesh and bone. Slap, clack, clack, slap!
"Juice is too sticky," Vivaldi said, sticking out her tongue with distaste.
"What about Nice Cream?" said Verdana, hopping on one foot and beaming. "We still got some, right?"
Frisk nodded, amazed as they drew the bars from their pockets that the 'frozen treat that warms your heart' had not melted at all. The slogan held true, too, since the wrappers were printed with nice messages, like 'Love yourself! I love you!' As Frisk handed Verdana a Nice Cream that read 'Is this as sweet as you?', they passed two knights guarding a side tunnel, their black armor a stark contrast against the burnt sienna cave walls. When Frisk bent to hand Vivaldi her Nice Cream, to their shock, Verdana broke away from them and skipped straight toward the guards.
"Heya! Aren't you guys hot?" Verdana said, giving Royal Guards 01 and 02 a friendly wave. The two guards matched in every respect but one: RG01 had longer, rabbitlike ears while RG02's ears resembled bat wings.
"Totally, kid!" replied RG01 on Verdana's left. "But our armor's, like, coated to deflect heat. So it's not so bad."
Smiling, Verdana gave his Nice Cream bar to RG01 and Vivaldi handed hers to RG02. "Here," the twins said. "Take this!"
RG02 made no sound but accepted the Nice Cream. "..."
"Like, thanks!" said RG01, his floppy ears perking up. He took RG02's bar and unwrapped it for him before handing it back to open his own. "Undyne, like, told us there was totally a human in the area. So, like, us Royal Guards are blocking off the elevators for now."
The twins stared at RG02 until he finally spoke. "...What?"
"Like, no way you're getting by us," continued RG01, happily unwrapping his bar. "But, between you and me, I think you could go through that creepy lab over there."
"Um, thank you very much," Frisk said, chuckling nervously as they prodded their children's backs to steer them toward the lab, leaving the guards behind to slurp their Nice Cream. Of course, once they reached a safe distance, Frisk ruffled the twins' hair out of sheer pride for their generosity.
A large, white building, clearly marked "LAB", came into view with a blocky appearance that struck Frisk as a bit sterile, but far more welcoming than expected. At first glance, Alphys' lab in this world starkly contrasted with her counterpart's dark dungeon littered with blood, dust, and scrap metal that Sans had long ago deemed a 'shithole'. Frisk's nose remembered its coppery smell. To the family's gratitude, the moment the lab's front door slid open and they all walked onto the blue, tiled floor, the space inside was cool, comfortable, and well lit with soft, cheerful light. To their left, a gleaming escalator hummed as it descended from a second floor balcony. Ahead of them was the messiest desk known to man or monster and, next to it, a television—?
Frisk halted, seeing themselves and their children displayed on the television's enormous screen. When the twins tried waving their hands in front of it, the video feed captured their every movement like a mirror and magnified them, making Frisk feel like they were wiggling worms under a microscope. Had Alphys been watching them this whole time? But that was impossible. It was not like there were cameras everywhere...right?
Suddenly, Frisk remembered spying an object shining within a snowy bush once or twice during their journey, and even once behind a waterfall. Their mind had been too full of other concerns at the time, between juggling the twins' safety and the strangeness of this parallel universe, to check what the objects were.
Lenses. Camera lenses.
The human wanted to kick themselves. How could they have been so careless? What if this world's Alphys found out their children were hybrids? Then, it hit them. The twins had already changed forms multiple times. Frisk had told them to transform! Of course Alphys knew! She had to know!
Had they come this far for nothing?
Transfixed, Frisk walked up to the screen and touched it with shaking fingers, failing to notice the soft tug at their pants and the hushed voices of their children.
"Mommy?" said Verdana, leaning on Frisk's hip. "Please don't worry."
"We'll be okay," murmured Vivaldi. "We promise."
All of a sudden, a loud screech echoed in the hall like that of a strangled chicken. As the trio turned away from the video feed, a squat, yellow dinosaur waddled in their direction, her eyes and nose streaming with tears and snot, though she dabbed at the latter with a clump of pink tissues. She then blew into the tissues and sobbed.
"Are you," whispered Frisk, looking the monster up and down in amazement, "Dr. Alphys?"
Instead of answering, a flood of slurred words and weeping flowed out. "Uuuuuugh y-y-yes I am but you—your family's so—s-s-so beeeeeeautifuuuuuuul!"
Viv and Ver blinked. "Huh?"
"Bathroom!" Alphys cried, turning on her heel and bolting toward a door marked with a yellow dinosaur sign. She promptly disappeared behind the door and slammed it shut.
Needing a moment to register what had just happened, Frisk settled into Alphys' swivel chair in front of her wreck of a desk. Several opened, partially eaten noodle cups were stacked high between beaten-up figures of anime catgirls. Seemed this Alphys and theirs had that much in common.
"Whoa, Viv, check out this cube thing!" Verdana cried from some place above Frisk's head. Another escalator on the right of the bathroom rose to the second floor; with Verdana's speed, it was hard to tell if he had teleported or merely run upstairs.
Frisk sighed. This was why mothers never sat down.
"Don't touch Dr. Alphys' things! We're in someone else's house," they called, following their son up the escalator. A conveyor belt sped them to his side in seconds, just in time to watch him push a hidden button or lever in the large, soft cube. Fortunately, the only consequence of touching Alphys' cube was that it popped open into a very easy to draw bed.
Vivaldi was busy checking out Alphys' bookshelves. She opened a book labeled 'Human History' and flipped the comic book inside to a page with a hideous android in a sailor uniform, running with toast in its mouth. Vivaldi read aloud, "'Oh no! Mizuki's going to be late for school, uwaa uwaa!'"
That did not strike Frisk as accurate.
"What's this goo?" Verdana said, hopping off the bed and scrunching his nose at an odd machine with a metal tube that churned out a constant supply of pink, goopy stuff. The boy dropped onto the floor to check out the machine's base when, suddenly, a shadow fell across him.
"S'posed to be ice cream."
It was Sans.
"Aah!" Verdana spun backward and nearly knocked over the machine.
Frisk gaped. Vivaldi dropped the other 'History' book in her hands—this one about a space pirate idol group in frilly maid costumes—and cried, "You're here?!"
"Said I'd bump into ya. Beyond that, want an answer that makes sense," asked Sans, with a shrug, "or the real one?"
"Uh, the real one?" Verdana said, sticking his finger in the bubblegum pink goop and sneaking a taste. He recoiled. It was much too sweet, even for him.
"Been running reports," Sans said, scratching behind his back. "Came here to verify 'em."
Frisk hummed in thought, and a sweatdrop beaded on Sans' pate. The human understood that?
"O-o-okay," Alphys said, emerging from parts unknown and climbing her escalator to rejoin the group upstairs. Her face and lab coat's collar were damp as if she had just splashed her whole head with water. "I'm okay."
"Heya, Alph," said Sans, with a slight wave. "Whatcha got?"
"Well, to start with," Alphys said, surprisingly unsurprised to see Sans, but crossing to where the twins now bounced together on her opened bed, "may I borrow those hair clips?"
"Wish you could," Vivaldi muttered, flopping onto her bottom.
"They won't come off," Verdana said, sitting beside his sister. He shifted from human to skeleton and clawed at his barrette without success.
"And they shocked me badly when I tried removing them," Frisk said, running fretful fingers through their bangs.
"I've seen what they do, and I know where you got them," Alphys said, looking down at her feet, her voice raspy. "Please, let me try."
Curious, the twins scooted to the edge of the bed and held still. Alphys reached both her hands toward the barrettes and touched the crystal buttercups at the same time. The clips unfastened and popped right off. As soon as Alphys stepped back, clips in hand, Frisk looked the twins over. No marks of any kind, not on their skin or skulls.
"You p-probably already guessed what these do. They tap into the twins' magic and amplify it," said Alphys, holding out the clips to shine in the overhead light while avoiding Frisk's gaze. "But you should know how I—the other me—how I made them. The crystals act as soul containers, in this case, for both human and monster souls. That's nearly impossible to do because most monster souls can't persist after death, but I must've found a way. All the souls had to be extracted and preserved—somehow," she said, glancing aside, her face burning with shame.
Frisk watched as Sans nodded along while Alphys explained what she could derive without a full analysis: the crystals' limitations in this reality, immense potential in their home world, and attunement with Alphys' soul, which told Frisk that Sans got the verification he was after.
"Each barrette conducts the souls' power and attaches it to a compatible being, meaning these can only attach to hybrids," Alphys continued, motioning toward the twins. Her voice wavered. "Most of this is conjecture, of course, but...I know something about souls. I'm sure the other me knows more. A lot more."
"It's okay, Alphys." Frisk stepped close and, offering her a gentle smile, reached over to pat her stooped shoulder. It was clear to Frisk that this Alphys was the polar opposite of theirs. "I'm not mad."
"Don't you get it? I didn't have souls just lying around. Plus, only your kids can wear these, and only I can take them off. Ever." Darkness fell over Alphys' eyes. "You should be mad."
"Not to interrupt you from beating yourself up across dimensions," Sans said, rubbing his skull, "but we were kinda hoping you knew how to get them back home."
"Oh! Right!" Alphys snapped to attention as sweat slid down her neck. "Um, the tricky part is the twins needed their power augmented to even get here, but that same power is super hard to control, and—"
Boom.
"Did you—?" Frisk began, glancing up.
Boom.
Alphys cringed. "—hear something?"
BOOM.
"Yup," said Sans, his eyelids drooping. A bit of plaster fell from the ceiling and landed in his hood.
Vivaldi and Verdana bolted upright. Whatever made that loud noise was drilling down through the ceiling, coming closer by the second.
BOOM BOOM BOOM!
"S-sorry," stammered Alphys, tapping her claws together. "I forgot to warn you about—"
The ceiling shattered as a metal block with a light panel for a face crashed through it and shot rebar dangerously close to Frisk as if aiming for them. The large block, apparently a robot, landed on Alphys' dusty work table and snapped it in half, which sent the chainsaw on top of it flying until it embedded in the nearest bookshelf. The robot hopped off the debris, extended a single wheel from its bottom, and then spun in place while sprouting a pair of arms, one of them clutching a microphone.
Alphys blushed. "Mettaton."