Alphys took a deep breath, steeling herself for what was to come. She adjusted her coat, closed her eyes, and reached down, picking up king ASGORE's crown. Her hands shook as she looked down at it. It was such a small thing. Trifling, even. In truth, it meant nothing. And yet it was the message that it carried that really had an impact for her. When she put this crown on her head, she would be the Queen of the Underground.
She'd insisted that neither Sans nor any of the other monsters be present for her self-coronation. She knew that Sans would be with her, helping her every step of the way, through every trial and tribulation as Queen.
This was one challenge that she wanted to face alone. She wanted to prove to herself that she had the courage to commit to something like this, to do something selfless for the sake of the whole Underground.
She was not going to let everyone down. She wasn't going to sully Undyne's memory by wasting the opportunity she had given all of monster-kind. Alphys found it hard to imagine herself ruling the Underground, but...
Sans believed in her. And if Sans believed in her... then she believed in herself. She lifted the crown to her head, let out a deep breath, and lowered it slowly down, placing it between her spines. The sense of finality was staggering.
She wondered if this could have gone any other way, but quickly pushed those thoughts out of her mind. This was no time for speculation. This was a time for action. She merely didn't know what course of action to take.
"Sans! Come in here! Immediately!"
"what's wrong, your majesty?"
"Ugh. I'm j-just joking with you, S-sans. I... need help. Of c-course."
"with what?"
"I'm the Q-queen. Whatever you w-want to say about A-ASGORE, everyone can agree on o-one thing. His g-greatest failing was inaction."
"aha. if you're gonna be the queen, you wanna be the queen."
"Yes. But I don't know what to do."
"well, there are... a lot of empty jobs now. you could delegate tasks to individual monsters. surely you're smart enough to make better decisions then they are."
"Y-you're probably r-right. B-but..."
"don't wanna argue, eh? you're the queen and the scientist here, alphys. you're smarter than i am. what's the problem?"
"I... I d-don't want to v-violate their freedom of c-choice. I'm a Q-queen, b-but... I d-don't want to be remembered as the d-despot that saved the monsters. I'd... I'd rather be r-remembered as the just ruler that tried. It's better to die happy then to live miserable."
"not sure if i agree with that one. but you can handle this, fair ruler or not. if you don't think you need to be a dictator to save them, then you don't need to be a dictator to save them. this is all you, alphys."
"Thanks, Sans. I... I know what we need to do."
"see. i told ya. you don't need me for everything."
It was only about thirty hours later that the Underground was working in full swing. Burnt buildings were being rebuilt, food was being grown, the dead were being given proper funerals, and the monsters were too busy to be unhappy.
Alphys had, of course, been worried about the consequences of forcing the Monsters into manual labor. But it had to happen, and Alphys made sure to keep things as free as possible. While each Monster was required to spend 55 hours a week working for the mutual benefit of all Monsters, they could choose what their temporary profession would be and also choose when their work would take place, presuming they put in 155 hours every 3 weeks. She also made sure to do her own fair share of manual labor, proving to the monsters that she was not the kind of queen who would spend all her time giving orders. Even with all her precautions, though, Alphys was extremely worried that the monsters would resent the relatively heavy workload, and that she was somehow defying their rights by forcing them to work.
But, despite all of Alphys' fears, things turned out better than she could have ever hoped. The monsters were happy.
They were working hard, feeding themselves, and, most importantly, accomplishing something. Under ASGORE, it had seemed like nothing ever got done. But now, with Alphys in charge, the monsters were taking their fate into their own hands for the first time that anyone but Gerson could remember.
The old kook constantly talked about it. How the monsters had never really worked for themselves since Chara and ASRIEL had died. Honestly, since the Barrier went up. He said that monsters had always relied on someone else. For ASGORE or Undyne or someone to collect six SOULS and free them. They just sat around in complacency and let everyone else do the work.
But now, under Queen Alphys, the Underground was vibrant and self-sufficient again. They had to be, of course, but for some reason Gerson was sure that, had ASGORE still been in charge, the monsters would have lived half-starved in Alphys' basement for a long time. But it wasn't like that now.
Gerson wasn't the only one singing Alphys' praises, either. The whole Underground, despite the dire circumstances, seemed as pleased as they could imaginably be. They were sure that ASGORE's successor would be able to succeed where he had failed. Despite Alphys' original lack of confidence, they all believed in her 100%. They thought that if anyone could get them topside, it was Queen Alphys. Everyone was on her side.
Well, almost everyone. There were a few who were... less than pleased with her coronation. The Monster Kid, for instance, seemed to hate her with a passion rivaled only by his nigh-worship of the late Undyne the Undying. He seemed to feel that, by putting Alphys in charge of the Underground, ASGORE was sullying Undyne's memory. He felt that she was the very opposite of what the Underground needed, and that ASGORE should have continued ruling, considering that he was as close as someone could get to being Undyne. He thought Alphys a coward and a weakling, and did everything he could to get his point across.
Flowey, too, resented Alphys' rule. Despite his lack of monsterhood, he still held the deep-rooted belief that a DREEMURR should always be the ruler of all monsters, as it had been for over 10,000 years. He saw ASGORE's retirement as an act of cowardice, and the forced manual labor an act of injustice. He didn't care about the other monsters, but he still felt that Alphys was doing absolutely everything wrong.
Grillby's granddaughter, Fuku Fire, resented the fact that Alphys was making it difficult to run her late grandparent's business, as Alphys focused most of the work on Hotland, Waterfall, and the Capital, rather than Snowdin. Only a few patrons ever dropped by Grillby's, and Fuku found it hard to keep a profit going. Unlike most of Alphys' haters, though, Fuku had nothing against the Queen's constant companion, Sans the Skeleton, also her most regular patron. She could expect Sans every single day at 3 o'clock sharp, the moment he stopped his work and wanted lunch. They could talk for hours about her grandfather, and what the Underground had once been. Grillby Fire had often told her about the skeleton brothers, and she had gained an admiration for Sans before she ever met him. She commiserated about his brother, he commiserated about her grandfather, and he finally started paying off his tab.
On top of those major three, a few other monsters did object to Alphys' reign. But the number was surprisingly small. Her rule was more popular, not to mention successful, then she could have ever imagined.
But in just a few days, that mentality was going downhill. The monsters were tired, Sans was tired, and Alphys was tired most of all. Although her job seemed like an easy one on the surface, it was clear that it was getting to her more than one would expect. She solved disputes, ordered the workers, and worked herself. She spent all her time either thinking or working, and between those two activities, she was both physically and mentally exhausted, in a way she wasn't at all used to.
None of the monsters were. And as their levels of energy went down, their mood did too. Grumbling was heard, and a few more nods of agreement were seen every time the Monster Kid launched into one of his furious rants. The kid was surprisingly well-spoken for someone as naive as he was, and managed to sway an impressive number of monsters to his cause.
Alphys, exhausted and distressed, slumped down in her throne, having just come home from a day of hard work and hatred from the Monster Kid, who'd followed her the whole day. She dared not take action, lest the Underground pity him and turn against her. This, of course, was her greatest fear. That the monsters would decide that she wasn't the great ruler that Sans thought she was.
"you ok, alphys?"
"Y-yeah. I'm... fine."
"alphys. snap out of it and talk to me. you said you were gonna let me help you, but i can't if you won't talk to me."
Alphys closed her eyes and cringed.
"S-sans, I c-can't handle this. I... I've been l-lazy my whole life. I've n-never d-dealt with criticizm, much less d-death threats."
"alphie... the only one sending you death threats is a kid who doesn't even have arms."
"N-no, Sans! J-just today, Comidrake, the bird comedian... he came up to me, and he was s-screaming. H-he said... he said it was my fault that his s-son was dead. T-that his wife was... what she is. He... he just l-lost it, S-sans! And the worst part of it is... he's r-right. It is my fault, and..."
"calm yourself, alphys. these are hard times, but you've gotta think about it logically. was it your fault the human fell?"
"... N-no."
"well then, snowdrake would have died regardless of your mistakes. and wasn't snowy's mother fallen down before she ever got to you?"
"... Y-yes. S-she was."
"well then, all you did was save her life. sure, maybe you should have brought the amalgamates into the light sooner, but you did it when it really mattered. snowdrake would be in the same position that he is now with or without you, and his mother would be dead if it weren't for you. you saved one life, and you didn't destroy even one. it's not your fault, alphys."
"It's... it's not j-just that. E-everything I've ever done has been either a failure or a lie! The A-amalgamates were a d-distaster! F-flowey was all my f-fault, M-mettaton wasn't a robot with a S-SOUL, he was a ghost inside a robot! T-the only person I t-think I've ever loved d-died before I ever had a chance to s-say what I felt, and the m-monsters are still stuck down here! My whole life is one massive FAILURE! And y-you, you've... you've only ever set out to do one thing, Sans, and you succeeded! You're the h-hero here, n-not me! You're too perfect, S-sans! W-why are you... why are you so damn perfect..."
Alphys collapsed forward out of her throne, landing on her knees as she started crying uncontrollably, looking up at Sans.
"W-why do you have to be so p-perfect?"
Sans shuddered once, before his left eye ignited in flame. His smile faltered for a moment.
"there's no determination left in the fridge, alphys."
With that, he disappeared into thin air once again.
Alphys felt a sudden catch in her breathing as she realized what he meant, what he'd sacrificed, and what she'd just said. She held her head in her hands as she sobbed harder and harder.