Chapter 30

Mew Mew carefully inspected her doughnut. She didn't quite enjoy the taste of spiders, a fact Muffet sometimes forgot. After she saw no spider parts to speak of, Mew Mew sank her teeth into the pastry.

For Muffet's friends, Muffet's tea parties were some of the finest one could ever be invited. Freshly brewed tea, pastries right out of the oven, and a soft chair in which to indulge oneself in these delicacies was always a guarantee. Muffet herself would entertain her guests as if she was their best friend.

As for those who were not Muffet's friends, they risked potentially being a snack for her pet.

That was the reason Mew Mew chose to meet with Muffet without the other guards. Muffet's friendship only extended to Mew Mew; the others were not promised such treatment if they were to come. Better safe than sorry, Mew Mew decided.

"Wait, let me get this straight," Muffet said, all six hands folded together. "Somebody hacked into the Core and purposely turned off the inner cooling mechanism? And you don't have access to correct it?"

"As crazy as it sounds, that's exactly what happened," Mew Mew replied. "Since the Core can't maintain its temperature anymore, it won't autocorrect anything when temperatures begin to rise. Like now. Nobody knows how to get back into the system."

"But who would do such a thing?!"

"I don't know." The image of the flower pin flashed behind Mew Mew's eyes. Even if whoever did this was trying to frame another, placing the blame on a monster who had been dead for a century made no sense.

Who would try to frame a ghost? Not a ghost like Mew Mew and her cousins Francis and Shelby, but a ghost who only existed in memories. Yet the pin had to have been left there on purpose. There was no way, or so Mew Mew desperately tried to convince herself, the hair pin was left behind on accident.

"Strange times we are living in," Muffet said, shaking her head. "This is why you need Mettaton's help, isn't it? You think he knows how to fix it?"

"It would be great if he did, but I don't think Mettaton would have cared enough in the first place to even learn the basics of how the Core operates." After Muffet agreed that such was true of Mettaton, Mew Mew continued, "However, he did know Alphys. From my understanding, they were very close when she was still alive."

"He was the last person she called before she . . ." Muffet didn't finish. It was around the time she and Mettaton met. Muffet had tried to take advantage of Mettaton while he was in such a vulnerable state to steal a great portion of his wealth. The fact their story started out as a scam only for the con artist to fall in love with her victim was an irony for the ages. Muffet hated rom coms, but Mettaton loved them.

It was something Mew Mew could smile about in this dire situation. Sobering, she went on, "Right now, we are relying on the hope that Alphys had documents of some sort with the information and passwords needed to correct the Core before we all roast alive."

"Mettaton has them all in boxes in his closet," Muffet said, taking the first sip of her tea. "I'm sure after you explain the situation to him, he will be all right with your going through Alphys's personal belongings."

"Speaking of Mettaton, where is the tin can narcissist?"

"Oh, he's preparing the set of his new special. He should be home by tonight." Muffet smiled, her own downcast mood lightening at talk of her lover. "The last time we had a human running around in the Underground was almost thirty years ago. Not to mention this here is the last human soul we need. This is an event we have to celebrate! We need this to be so memorable monsters will be talking about it for years to come."

"Just like you to play with your food," Mew Mew teased.

"Mettaton's the one doing the playing," Muffet replied. "I'm just giving him suggestions."

"I'll tell you what," Mew Mew began, leaning back in the chair and crossing her arms as she smiled at her proposition. "In exchange for Mettaton sharing Alphys's diaries with me, I will use my available resources to help you two capture the human."

"Oh, I would say that wouldn't be necessary, but Sans and Undyne protecting such a nasty creature really does drag me into a corner." Muffet muttered under her breath, possibly cursing Sans's and Undyne's names and the days they were born. "What should have been an easy job does require me to ask for help."

Muffet didn't like asking for help. The more she needed, the less likely she was to ask. Mew Mew was the same way. It was why she made the suggestion in exchange for Mettaton's help. Both had critical jobs that needed to be done. If either failed, life Underground could be wiped away before their very eyes.

"This isn't an ideal situation for anyone," Mew Mew muttered, eyes glaring at her half-eaten spider doughnut as if it was all the doughnut's fault. "We both have very important jobs to do – jobs that make the difference between life and death. Teaming up is the only way either of us are going to protect monsters and spiders."

"Yes, now Mettaton and I will be working with you." Muffet giggled, but it wasn't very convincing. "At least I will be teaming up with my bestie."

"We'll talk over details when Mettaton gets back," Mew Mew declared. "When everything's worked out, my men will be yours."

"Just as my eyes are yours," Muffet replied. "If Alphys's documents prove useless, there is one other person who might just be able to make a difference. Although I don't think he will help willingly, I'm afraid."

This was news to Mew Mew. "What coward might be able to stop all this but hasn't stepped forward?"

"One of the human's victims," Muffet practically hissed. "Sans."

"Get back up, punk!" Undyne snapped as she stood over Frisk, who was lying face first in the dirt.

"Everything hurts," Frisk whined, not even bothering to lift her head off the ground. Sweat covered every inch of her body, forcing her clothes to stick to her skin. It was bad enough the humidity of Waterfall caused her to sweat when all she did was sit still, and it was worse now that Frisk tried with questionable success to jog.

"It's supposed to hurt. Now get back up or else I will force you up."

With arms that felt to be made out of spaghetti noodles, Frisk pushed herself first onto her knees then her feet. When Undyne began jogging again, Frisk tried to match the monster's pace. She knew Undyne was going easy on Frisk, but that didn't mean Undyne was making this easy.

After they had traveled away from Tem Village and decided to make camp for the night in a nearby cave, Undyne told Frisk to get ready because they were going to exercise.

"I'm still not training you to kill Mew Mew," Undyne had said, narrowing her eye at Frisk, "but I'm getting really sick of looking at a skeleton wearing chalky skin. If we're going to be stuck together, I might as well do what I can to help you build some semblance of muscle."

"GO, HUMAN!" Papyrus cheered from the sidelines. He was the one man cheerleading team. Instead of jogging alongside Frisk and Undyne, he teleported ahead every few yards to keep cheering Frisk on. In a lot of ways, it was the sweetest thing anyone had done for Frisk in a long time.

Frisk tried to focus on Papyrus's shouts of encouragement. How she "was really good at not giving up" and "totally did not look like a drowned fish." Yet her legs and lungs were starting to get louder and louder.

Her steel legs were getting too heavy to pick up anymore. Her lungs screamed out, on fire from lack of oxygen. Frisk's eyes stung from the sweat that trickled into them. The salty liquid dripped down her chin in generous fat drops. It was a good thing Undyne timed this after Frisk had a small lunch hours before or else Frisk would have retched the contents of that up by now.

"Time," Undyne said, indicating that it was time for them to walk. Frisk could not have been more grateful. Undyne called the jogging for one minute then walking for two minutes interval training. Frisk called it a gradual death with breaks within the process.

"One more round of jogging," Undyne warned, her tone betraying no emotion.

However, the heavily breathing Frisk was still able to pick up that Undyne's sentence was only half spoken. "Then what?"

"Strength training," Undyne finished. "Squats, crunches, planks – all that fun stuff."

"You're not going to give me weights?"

"Your body and gravity are your weights." Undyne shook her head. "If I tried running you through my personal workout routine, you would have died already."

Frisk didn't doubt it was true. While Frisk was sure she really did look like a drowned fish, she was also sure the only reason Undyne broke a sweat was due to the humidity and not actually working herself all that hard. Papyrus began walking alongside them, telling Frisk that she could do this last jogging minute without falling to her face for the sixth time.

"Or maybe I'll fall over three more times," Frisk suggested, somehow finding it in herself to smile. "Be an overachiever."

"You may fall, but you fall wonderfully!" Papyrus exclaimed.

"I'm either going to be the best or the best at being the worst."

"No student of mine is going to talk that way," Undyne said, but she didn't sound angry. As Undyne was walking ahead, Frisk could not see the expression the monster was wearing. "No matter how good you get, I want you to keep learning and growing. Even if you become number one, think of yourself as number two."

"Why?" Frisk asked. "Shouldn't I want to have a number one mentality?"

"No," Undyne answered. "When you're number one, there's no more reason to grow and improve further. There's nothing left to achieve. You made it. If you keep thinking of yourself as number two, you will keep learning and growing and striving to be number one."

Frisk was curious. "Who would you say is number one right now?"

It was Papyrus who responded. "Undyne, of course!"

The bold declaration got Undyne to stop where she was and turned around. Her cheeks had a slight purple tint to them.

"What are you saying?" Undyne asked, the grin on her face appearing forced. "I thought the Great Papyrus would consider himself number one."

"As great as the Great Papyrus is," Papyrus answered, "I know I am no match for you, Undyne. You deserve to be number one, while I, the Great Papyrus, am number two."

Undyne didn't reply. Shaking her head, she looked back at Frisk and ordered, "Time to jog. Now."

"Everything hurts, and I'm dying." After returning to the camp – she and Undyne jogged back using the same interval timer after the strength training portion of the workout – Frisk collapsed on a bed roll and spread out her throbbing noodle limbs.

"Yo, you mind dying on your own bed then?" Mon asked, lightly kicking Frisk in the ribs. The human didn't move. "I heard humans don't turn to ash when they die, and if that's true, I don't want to sleep next to a dead body."

"That workout was nothing," Undyne snorted. "We weren't even gone an hour."

"Stop being so hard on Frisk," Alice said as she got the fire going. Papyrus was helping by digging through Alice's pack for canned goods. "She's doing the best she can considering she survived, oh you know, deathlust."

"Could we please stop talking about that as if it's my life's greatest accomplishment?" Frisk asked, cracking open an eye.

"Since nobody survives deathlust, it's the greatest accomplishment of anyone I know. No, Papyrus, save those for tomorrow."

Papyrus put back the ravioli and pulled out two green cans. "Do you want a side of spinach or a side of beans?"

"Green beans," Alice answered, accepting the can.

While Alice warmed up the food, Undyne set out the bowls. Mon and Papyrus fought over what the group was going to do before bed – Mon wanted scary stories, but Papyrus wanted to sing along to his ukulele. Agitated, Undyne yelled at them both to shut up.

"How about you, Frisk?" Alice asked, giving Mon the side eye as if daring her to say another word. "Anything you want to do?"

"Sleep," Frisk immediately answered. She sat up. "What we really need to do is plan what we're going to do once we reach the Core and decide how we're going to get in. The sooner we strategize a plan, the better."

"Now there's a soldier who knows what's up." Undyne tried to hold it back, but Frisk could tell Undyne was smiling at her.

Eyes traveling over the makeshift camp and seeing every monster prepare for dinner, Frisk frowned when she realized someone was missing. "Where's Sans?"

"Off doing something," Alice said, uninterested. The lack of reaction from both Papyrus and Undyne alerted Frisk that Sans already told them something about his errand. "Said he'll be back in time to eat."

Despite her best efforts not to, Frisk wondered what kinds of errands Sans would be running with Chara.

Sans teleported into the lab, and the automatic lights snapped on at his arrival. Waving a hand in the air, the holographic computer came to life. Quickly, Sans logged into the system and accessed the timeline files.

No New Messages

Sans anticipated as much. If anything, it was more terrifying to receive messages of any kind. Including spam. No. Especially spam.

Digging into the data, Sans compared the disruptions with those of the past century. His fingers flew over the transparent keyboard. His eyes read the information displayed as it raced past quicker than a blink.

Alongside these readings, Sans had the timeline with matching dates running on another screen. He read through that simultaneous with the first screen. Now that Sans knew Frisk was responsible for the resets, even if she didn't control them, he could now analyze decades old data with a new eye socket.

It all lined up. Perfectly. Too perfectly.

Sans dug back further, both in the timeline and in the readings. Still matching. Still connecting.

Then . . . nothing. Absolutely nothing.

"What?" Sans blinked. He went through all the information a second time, then a third. Sans created new files with the needed information for easy access. Everything else lined up. Why this was an exception, Sans didn't know.

But he knew exactly whom to ask.

When Frisk gave Sans the locket, he had no intentions of wearing it again. It wasn't that Sans disliked Chara, but he wasn't interested in the dead human's company either. Except now Sans had a question only Chara could answer.

Chara said nothing when he saw Sans. However, he must have been curious, because his eyes scanned every nook and cranny they could the moment he realized where he was. For a minute, Sans feared Chara would somehow recognize the place – not everything about Chara's past was a mystery to Sans, after all. Yet Chara quickly put that fear to bed.

"Where are we?" the human asked.

"That's for me to know and you to never find out," Sans answered, waving off the computer.

"I feel as if I am in a sci-fi movie."

Looking around, Sans saw what Chara meant. It was a clean white and gray lab, filled with clear technology and polished devices way ahead of Chara's time. No wonder the old man was gaping at everything like a wide-eyed child.

Which, Sans had to remind himself, was what Chara remained despite his chronological age. A child. Eighteen-year-olds might have thought of themselves as adults, but they were still practically babies.

"Listen, gramps," Sans said to get Chara's attention, "I have a very, very important question for you."

This got Chara to stop looking around the lab to turn his attention onto Sans. "You said 'very' twice. Must be a real big deal."

"You have no idea." Sans snapped, and the files he had created moments before appeared in front of Chara. He watched as the human looked at each of the files, read through them twice, and compared them to each other. Understanding shone in those reflectionless eyes. Perhaps Chara wasn't much of a baby after all.

His gaze locked onto Frisk's file, a picture of a smiling Frisk Sans pulled from the security cameras gazing back at him. Chara tried to reach out to bring it closer, but of course his ghostly fingers passed right through. He sighed as he dropped his hand back to his side.

"Where's my file?" he finally asked. To answer, Sans merely added it to the others. It didn't take Chara more than a second to read his. He almost sounded disappointed but not surprised as he said, "There's nothing."

"Interesting, isn't it?" Sans replied, waving his hand so all the files were now lined up in chronological order. "I can't tell if you're the least special human who has ever fallen Underground or the most."

Chara didn't respond. He probably didn't know how. Sans couldn't blame him.

"Perhaps you could help me make sense of this," Sans began, already certain Chara had no better answers than he but still tried regardless. "How come every human who has fallen Underground was able to reset, but you weren't?"