Onwards to Hotland

They were still tense, now with fear instead of anticipation. There was nothing they could do. Frozen in fear, they retreated inwards as they cried and accepted their fate.

A sharp pain shot through their chest, then they felt nothing. They couldn't feel their arms or legs. They couldn't feel their heart beating. They weren't drawing any breath. They must be dead for real this time.

Somehow, their thoughts persisted even though their body was gone. It was just the remains of their consciousness in the middle of nothing. Maybe this was their brain shutting down. It wouldn't be long now until they were gone completely.

A distant, deep voice rumbled in the distance. "The future of humans and monsters depends on you! Don't lose hope! You cannot give up just yet… [REDACTED]! Stay determined."

They couldn't make out the name. Whatever it was, it wasn't theirs. That voice was calling to someone else. They weren't needed. They could just give up.

The whisper that had been quiet since Snowdin came back. "You have to get up. You have to stay determined and keep fighting!"

They didn't want to. They knew that they'd be better off dead, so why shouldn't they just stay that way?

"You don't really want to die, do you? Who cares what others want, it's your life!"

That was one way to look at it, but even if they wanted to live, what could they do?

"Stay determined. Find the path through. Try again and again until you get what you want. Determine your own future."

A strong feeling welled up from where their soul should have been, and they suddenly found themselves in front of the passage again. They looked around and couldn't see Undyne. Was that some sort of hallucination? Or some sort of magic psychological trap that they wandered into?

It felt like they had died, but if they had actually died, then they'd be dead right now. The could see their body, feel their heart beating, breathe deeply enough to hurt their stomach. They were definitely alive right now.

"You were dead. I helped you come back." The whisper told them.

They shuddered. The whisper brought them back? How was that supposed to work?

"Red souls are special. I'll tell you if you manage to find me."

They were being followed by some deity or demon or something. It scared them. Who or what was it? Why was it following them? Most importantly, what did it want? Was there something special about them that it needed or wanted? Was it because being a freak made them susceptible? Did it want to possess them?

Those questions might never have answers. The only thing that they really knew was that it wanted them alive. For now, that would have to do.

If they weren't able to or allowed to die, then they had no choice but to find a way forward. They wiped the tears off their face and got ready.

Undyne jumped down and the fight started again. Her spears flew quickly and with great accuracy. They were barely able to avoid damage to their soul, but the magic spears still tore holes in their new shirt. It made them angry, to think that something that the Tems had made for them, simply because they were a kid who needed clothes, could be so easily destroy without a second thought. Undyne thought that justice was on her side, that they deserved to die because monsters were trapped.

Determination flooded through them. They would show her that killing them was futile and pointless. If they were going to come back, then she would know the despair that came from endlessly trying to accomplish the impossible.

"Unless you learn to face danger head-on, you won't last a second against me!" Undyne called to them.

They didn't need to be told twice. They let out a scream and charged at her. Maybe they could knock her over. Best case scenario, she'd dodge and they'd keep running.

Undyne thrust another spear at them. This one was longer than the others and didn't leave her hand. As it slashed through their soul, they didn't feel any pain. Instead, they were stopped, as if they had just run into a wall. One look at their soul showed them that it was now green and had a small spear held in front like a barricade.

They struggled for a moment to move. All that accomplished was moving the spear around their soul. A volley of spears came at them from all directions. They felt pain, and it stopped. They heard the distant deep voice again, before finding themselves at the beginning of the fight once again.

It was just like the whisper had told them. They had to keep trying. They weren't allowed to die, so they had no choice but to keep fighting until they won.

They couldn't realistically fight back. The crappy toy knife in their pocket wouldn't do anything against Undyne's armour. Their only option is to stay alive long enough to find an opportunity to run away. It was everything that Undyne hated about them, but it represented every bit of the coward that they were.

They were afraid to talk to their parents, so they ran away into fiction. They were afraid to go to that camp, so they ran away to a mountain. They were afraid to go home, so they ran away to a hole in a cave, where they believed they'd fall to their death. They were afraid of Papyrus who offered them safety, true or not, so they ran away from the relative safety of Snowdin and into the territory of the captain. They were afraid of being a burden, so they ran away from Tem village and Napstablook.

Now, they couldn't run away. They first had to face their fear head on. Every time, Undyne would slash their soul and turn it green. They learned through many deaths that the volley of spears could be reflected by the small spear around their soul. They learned that she tended to repeat the same attack patterns, like this was a time loop instead of an endless battle of attrition. She would kill them, they'd come back, they'd last a little longer until they were killed again.

After an unknown number of deaths, they were almost accustomed to the flash of pain and disorienting reappearance at the start of the fight. By now, they could perfectly reflect all of her spears. It was muscle memory, almost like a dance. Entranced in the motion, they twisted and twirled in place, dodging and reflecting every projectile aimed at them. They could be patient. The anger at their circumstance, at Undyne's relentless attacks, kept them calm. They honed their anger into a cold, sharp needle, biding its time to poke a hole in her offense.

Soon enough, the opportunity came. For a moment, Undyne stopped hurling spears at them and their soul flickered back to it's bright red hue. They took this moment to dash past her, into the passage that held their salvation.

They made it a short distance into the cave before Undyne caught them and turned their soul green again. This time, her barrage of spears lasted for a very short time before her hold on them failed. They continued the catch and run strategy, reflecting all of her attacks, until they came upon a hot, dry cavern and a sentry station overlooking a lake of lava. A large flashing sign was welcoming them to Hotland. They'd made it.

Sans was sleeping at the sentry station, and somehow this one had a snowy roof too. Undyne paused to yell at him while they continued their sprint across the bridge. They needed to cross it before Undyne could cut this one from under them too.

The heat was exhausting though. When they made it to the other side of the bridge, they were panting hard and had a stitch in their side. There was a water cooler off to the side. They walked towards it and collapsed beside it. Their hair was becoming wet with sweat and it was getting difficult to properly coordinate their muscles.

They saw Undyne approaching from the bridge. They could see her shambling slowly as well. Perhaps the heat was too much for her too?

As Undyne reached the edge of the bridge, she collapsed as well. They were safe. Now that they had the opportunity to really look at her, she looked like a fish monster. Was her armour full of water so that she could breathe? Probably not, since no water came out when she fell over. They couldn't discount magic keeping the water inside though.

Or maybe she didn't need to be in water al the time if she was in a humid place like Waterfall. It didn't really matter. What mattered at that moment was that she was stopped, and they were safe from her. They took the opportunity to have a glass of water from the water cooler.

Upon drinking it, they immediately felt cooler. They could still feel the heat form the lava below them, but the heat wasn't oppressive anymore. It was similar to the way that Snowdin had felt cold, but they weren't frozen. Now they could feel the heat, but they weren't overheating anymore. It must be magic water.

They had the choice to be a good person and pour some over Undyne's head, but that would probably just lead to them being captured. They knew that they could fight her again and escape, but they really didn't want to. They'd been fighting her for hours without pause, and just wanted to get away from her. They faced her head on, and now they were free. This wasn't running away anymore, this was claiming their prize for victory. Just ahead on the path was a fork in the road and another glowing star at its centre.

They walked over and compulsively touched it, just as they had with all of the other stars. They felt better than they had just before the fight had started. It was nice. They looked down at their shirt and inspected the damage. It surprised them to see that their shirt was completely intact. There were no tears or holes from the many spears that had cut and pierced them. It was completely whole. It looked like they had never been hit at all. They examined their arms, legs, and other visible body parts. No scars or cuts or any of that. They didn't even feel the itchy feeling that came from magical healing.

Undyne had hit them and killed them multiple times. There should be evidence of this, but there wasn't. They were even able to regain their stamina fairly quickly, despite having been fighting for hours. They felt as though they'd only been pushing themselves for several minutes. This didn't make any sense.

"I preserved you at the moment in time where your determination surged. I brought you back when you were damaged." The whisper told them.

It really was a time loop. One that was thankfully over. At least they weren't super tired thanks to it. Each time they were revived, they were restored completely. Did Undyne know that they were being looped? Was their determination to show her the pointlessness of continuing and endless fight worth nothing?

"It wasn't worth nothing," The whisper said, "Without it, I would have had a hard time bringing you back."

So it was a lie omission to get what it wanted. Fine then. They got what they wanted to, in the end. They made it past Undyne and closer to the king and the barrier.

Looking around, there were three paths. One was blocked by a guard, which they were definitely going to avoid. One led to a river and had an empty boat station. That's a dead end. The final way was a large building labelled "LAB." They could either guarantee a fight with the guard, or they could try to sneak through the lab without getting caught.

They tried the guard first. If they were able to get past Undyne, the guard captain, then they'd probably be able to get past a random guard. To their surprise, the guard didn't engage in the fight. The guard told them that Undyne had ordered guards to block the elevators temporarily until the human was caught.

Apparently the guard didn't know that they were human. They were shooed away and told to go home instead of bothering the working adults. There wasn't enough space to dash around the guard without being grabbed or pushed into the lava lake, so they had no choice but to try to sneak through the lab.

The doors opened automatically as they approached, like the doors at the grocery store. Unlike the grocery store, this building was dark inside. It was creepy. There was an ominous glow from a large monitor up ahead. Little else was visible.

When they looked at the monitor, they saw the back of their head. This place was being monitored. They darted forward, hoping to find an escape somewhere up ahead. Just as they started running, the lights flickered on a yellow lizard in a lab coat came through another automatic door.

Upon seeing them, the lizard started freaking out. "Oh my god! They're here! I didn't expect you to show up so soon! I haven't showered, I'm barely dressed…" She chattered on to herself for a little bit before introducing herself, "I-I'm Dr. Alphys, hi… I'm Asgore's Royal Scientist…"

Dr. Alphys shook her hands with anxiety while they waited for her to do whatever she was going to do. If she was a scientist, she probably had some sort of knockout gas or net cannon to trap them or maybe even a killer robot designed to capture them and steal their soul. At least they knew that dying was only a minor inconvenience for now. As long as the whisper wanted them alive, they could afford to be killed to gather some info.

"Ahhhh I'm doing this all wrong!" Alphys began, "I'm not one of the "bad guys" here, I've been watching you! That sounds creepy, um I mean… I was told to use the Underground surveillance network to track you so that the Royal Guard could capture you… Come on Alphys, that sounds terrible!"

She seemed like a pretty incompetent worker. Her job was to track them and capture them, but just stood there and tried to convince them that she was on their side. Maybe if she was actually convincing, then trying to lure them into a false sense of security could have worked as a plan. Stuttering and tripping over her words made her sound like she was lying or trying to hide an obvious trap.

Alphys wrung her hands and continued, "I've been watching your journey, your fights, your adventure! And watching someone triumph against the odds kinda make you want to root for them? S-so I kept it a secret when you were hiding out in Temmie Village for a few days, and when you stayed overnight at the inn in Snowdin. I d-didn't want to hurt you, you know?"

She started pacing back and forth as she described her contributions to preventing their capture. Mostly it came down to lying about broken cameras, or a lack or surveillance in some area or corrupted footage or something along those lines. Why she didn't use the excuse that she was busy working on something a scientist should actually be doing was kind of odd though. She was describing a security guard's job, watching the cameras for shoplifters or whatever. If she was a scientist, she should be inventing stuff or something instead.

"I even know a way right to Asgore's castle!" Alphys exclaimed. She seemed excited to pretend to help them for some reason. Maybe she thought she was fooling them because they weren't calling her out on her lies? "There's just one tiiiiiiiiiny problem. A while back, I made a robot named Mettaton. Originally, he was supposed to be an entertainment robot, you know, like a TV star. I made him using a state of the art AI and the DT left over from… I'm getting away from the point.

"Anyways, recently I was told that he needed to have some more practical features. Because, you know, he's a robot and it's not like he's going to care about what exactly his body has or does ha ha…" Alphys trailed off. She looked guilty about something. Maybe she was getting stuck in her lies by adding too much detail? She really was bad at this, "Like, um… anti-human combat features? Unfortunately I may have made a teensy mistake while doing so and now he's and unstoppable killing machine with a thirst for human blood?"

Killer robot. They called it.

"Um… hopefully we won't run into him?"

With their whisper restoring time for them, it wouldn't matter if they did. It wouldn't even matter if they never saw Alphys again after this. She told them what they needed to know. They didn't need her anymore. They'd find their way on their own, even without her telling them the way to the castle.

Suddenly, the wall exploded and there was a metal box on a wheel rolling towards them. If this was the killer robot, it didn't seem too intimidating. Alphys could have at least modelled it after someone who was actually terrifying, like Undyne or the king.

Though, for all they knew, the king did look like a box on a wheel. They doubted it, but it was technically possible. Magic monster world and all.

The robot showed up and started speaking like a TV show host. Before they knew it, Mettaton had pulled them into a battle. Surprisingly, instead of attacking, he just kept talking.

"Before I can defeat you, the audience must get to know more about you! Otherwise they will not be sufficiently invested in the tension of our clash of wills! And so, darling, it is time for a pop quiz! Answer wrong and you'll be electrocuted, so make sure you do your best!" Mettaton explained.

What was even going on right now? If they were being filmed, would the audience even be able to see the bullets and stuff in the battle? They had assumed that others didn't see the monochrome world unless they were directly involved in it. It wouldn't make sense for the world to change colours for everyone whenever two monsters had a fight or the guards were training.

Mettaton asked question after question, his bullets shaping into buttons that they could press with their soul to indicate an answer. This all seemed so unnecessary.

On top of that, they questions didn't make any sense. They weren't asked any personal questions, and most of them were questions that they had no way to know the answer to. Like, what was Mew Mew Kissy Cutie and who cares what dessert she likes? Also, how would they know who Alphys has a crush on? They met her literally five minutes ago.

They made guesses, got them wrong, and got shocked. The electrocution hurt, but it wasn't so bad. After Undyne, this hardly registered as pain.

Fortunately for them, it seemed like Mettaton's purpose was to either tease or humiliate Alphys, and maybe in front of a TV audience. Despite what she said about robots not caring, maybe Mettaton held a grudge about her changing his body without his consent.

That was a sentiment that they could empathize with.

"My my, how conceited can you get? Seriously? I love it! And while you are completely wrong, you at least deserve some credit. I've seen her watching you on her computer screen. Smiling when you succeed, shrieking when you fail. And always whispering. Very similar to your own behaviour in some respects." Mettaton monologued. Perhaps his AI made him ramble on because he was supposed to be an entertainer. Or maybe his AI was advanced enough to have developed likes and dislikes, and he just liked the sound of his own voice. "In its own way, is this not love?"

If stalking was considered love down here, then sure. Though they didn't believe Alphys liked them. They just picked that box because it confused them. Instead of a name, the button had some strange corrupted text. They didn't know that that was supposed to be their name.

Though they probably should have guessed. Any time they tried to say their name since they fell Underground, their throat has locked up and prevented them from speaking. Something, maybe the whisper, was stopping them from saying their name.

It wasn't something that they'd thought much about before, but a name was a part of an identity. It's like this place was trying to cut them off from whoever they were before by keeping their name locked away. Without a name, they couldn't say that they were themselves, could they?

They weren't sure. It was a strange, empty feeling, thinking about a lack of a name. They'd just have to come up with something to call themselves while they were down here then. Some name or word that represented them, at least until they could go home and start using their name again. The name that they never really connected with, but the name that belonged to them. Their parents gave it to them, so they should be grateful for it and use it.

They'd have to come up with something to call themselves. Even if they were close to the castle and almost at the end of their journey. They should probably still come up with a name just in case.

"Well, with Dr. Alphys helping you, the show has no dramatic tension." Was she helping them? Oh, she was pointing to the correct answers. That could have saved them a couple of shocks if they'd noticed, "We can't go on like this. But! This was just the pilot episode! Next up, more drama! More romance! More BLOODSHED! Until next time darlings, ta!" Mettaton waved to the far wall and rolled away. Was that wall where the camera was hidden? They couldn't see it, but knowing it was there could be helpful for the future if they needed to avoid being seen.

Alphys turned to them and started talking again, "That last question… he wasn't supposed to ask that one… S-sorry about that! Let's keep going." She started walking towards the far end of the lab. They were going to go that way anyways, so they followed for now.

She suddenly stopped before the exit door. "I… I just remembered. I can't actually go with you, um… Royal Scientist and all. I'm pretty busy, but um… I know! Let me give you my phone number! That way, if you need help or anything you can just… call? Actually, texting me is better." Alphys held out her hand expectantly.

They handed over their phone. It wasn't a big deal if she destroyed it or stole it. Toriel blocked their number and they didn't really care to hear from Papyrus. Losing the phone wouldn't matter, so handing it over posed no risk. Compliance here could save them later on.

"Where did you get that phone? It's ancient! It doesn't even have texting! Wait a second please." Alphys exclaimed. They figured that monster society just hadn't progressed that far with technology yet. Instead, it seemed like Toriel might have been old-fashioned or just behind the times.

Alphys disappeared into a side room. They heard some mechanical sounds before she came back. The phone looked different. Maybe it wasn't even the same phone.

"Here, I upgraded it for you. It can do texting, items, it's got a key chain… I even signed you up for the Underground social network! Now we're officially friends, hehe!" Alphys seemed excited.

Maybe she was just happy about switching their old phone for something newer looking but also with weird magic or technological features meant to hinder them. They still had Toriel's number saved in their contacts and the call log containing Papyrus's phone number. It might be their old phone with an upgrade, but transferring contacts, call logs, and text logs was easy and fast on phones nowadays, so she might have just sent their data over to a new phone without telling them to try to gain their trust.

They could guarantee that this new phone had a tracker, unlike the one from Toriel. It took them a while to test, but they had eventually determined that Toriel was not tracking them by their phone when they lived with her. Alphys is a scientist though. There's no way that she wouldn't have installed a tracking app or a physical tracker into this phone.

Alphys seemed to be expecting an answer from them. They had been too lost in their own thoughts to pay attention to what she was saying. They nodded and turned back towards the exit.

They wondered what name Alphys had given them on the social media app. She had no way to know what their name was unless she could decipher the garbage script on Mettaton's button earlier. They decided to check the app. If nothing else, maybe the name she gave them could help them figure out what to call themselves.

Their profile picture was a generic white dog and their name was set to "Human." While calling themselves "Human" would be appropriate and distinguish them while they were Underground, it felt wrong to call them by their species name. This was no help.

They'd just have to think on it a while longer.