The feeling of eeriness persisted as Glen and Jake passed through the Core. The thrum of machinery was uninterrupted, though the metal-walled corridors made her footsteps echo eerily. Even more disturbing, however, were the piles of ash Glen knew she'd find; some along the corridor, some lying in adjoining corridors; all along the path. She didn't need Headache sensors to know they were the remains of monsters.
The thought that sweet little Frisk, the faerie-winged little girl who looked up to Glen as an aunt, could be connected in any way to the horror that perpetrated such a genocide was unthinkable.
"The way I see it." Glenda said, remaining alert, "I'm either in the wrong time or the wrong reality. It's the only two possibilities ... well, other than me just dreaming the whole thing."887Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQX9LtSfT4I
"Still," She said, glancing around. "This doesn't feel like the Dream Realm. My rune isn't shining non-stop, for one thing."
Jake didn't respond, being fully absorbed in his search. His monitor was so close to the ground that it occasionally scraped against the metal floor.
"So we're looking at time or alternate reality. God, I hope it's alternate reality; I am not in the mood for another time debacle. Knowing my luck, he'd show up again. Not that that'd be a bad thing; we had a lot of fun in that blue box of his. Y'know, I based the design of the CPD on ... Jake?"
Jake came to a sudden halt. After a few moments of intense sniffing, he let out a whine.
"Lost the trail?" Glen asked, putting a hand on the top of his monitor. "Eh, don't let it bother you, boy. You musta caught the trail she left when she came through here."
Jake's face looked annoyed as it returned to his monitor. Glen gave him a pat. "Yeah, me too. Still, it looks like she's already done all the damage there is to do down here."
Jake sat on his metal haunches and gave Glen a questioning look as the Dreamer paced back and forth across the corridor.
"Nothing for it." Glen said with a sigh. "She'll be long gone by the time we get back ... if she has any brains, that is. We're already this far; let's keep heading to the Lab. The sooner I know just what's going on, the better prepared we'll be to move ahead."
They continued on in silence, leaving the core and entering the hotel that separated it from the rest of Hotland. The hotel was empty, save for more piles of dust and a rather bizarre fountain that was spitting a steady stream of water onto the carpet. On impulse, Glen checked several of the rooms. Ultimately, she found nothing but dust, furniture, and a pile of slime next to an over-turned mop-bucket.
"No survivors." Glen said, approaching the tiny pile of dust near the front doors. She crouched down beside it, shaking her head. "I don't get it. I mean, if there were a few hostile monsters, yeah, but she was being thorough. She hunted each monster down. Why?"
Jake sat down by the pile of dust, a sad look on his face. Glen gave his head a few pats before rising to her feet. "C'mon; shouldn't be much further."
Indeed, it wasn't; the lift was right where Asgore said it should be. After some trial and error with the buttons, the lift doors eventually opened to reveal a massive white building labeled 'LAB'.
"Gee." Glen said, rolling her eyes. "Just guessing here, but something tells me that's Alphys's lab."
Jake barked and hurried out of the lift, Glen following behind at a light jog. She reached the sliding doors that led into the lab just a few moments after the robot dog.
"Alphys? Alphys, are you ..." Glen stopped, looking at her bare wrist. "Oh, right. I left it on Headache. Good thinking, Glen."
Sighing, Glen turned her attention to the console by the door.
"Ah." Glen said, "A password lock. Let's see; just letter keys and an enter button. Could be anything, I suppose."
Jake gave her a curious look.
"Well, it's probably a word." She reasoned. "Could be a place she's fond of or a type of food she likes, perhaps one of the animes she loves so much ..."
She allowed herself a grin as she typed in the letters. "Or maybe it's someone she cares for, like say, oh, I dunno ... Undyne."
Glen mimicked the chime of the console as her passcode was accepted and the doors slid open. Shaking her head and still smiling, she stepped through the door with Jake following on her heels.
"Alphys?" Glen called as she stepped into the lab. "Maker's breath, I thought her lab in Ebott was a mess."
A mess was putting it lightly; Alphys's lab was as organized as a Rimstakken workshop. Bits of half-finished projects lay around the place, most of which looked quite recent. Weaponry, it looked like; makeshift rifles, the beginnings of a mech-suit, something that looked like an attempt to make something akin to a UBT. None of the projects were complete; most looked to have only seen a bit of work, like Alphys had been too nervous to focus on one project for too long.
"Too nervous or afraid." Glen said, thinking to the signs of genocide she'd already passed. Shaking her head, she said, "Well, whatever; at least there's plenty here to work with."
She moved from pile to pile, harvesting bits of machinery from each. Alphys did some pretty impressive work, even when she was distracted. After a bit of poking about, she produced a small handheld device that looked like a pair of tongs, each half with a metal plate on the inside and a small monitor on the outside.
"All right." She said, straightening the wires. "Let's give it a go."
She clamed the tongs on her hand. The monitor displayed a series of waveforms of varying colors. She tweaked the small knobs along the handle until the waveforms were perfectly aligned, a small box on the bottom displaying the characters 'J-27'.
"Junacai twenty-seven." She said. "Good. That's a start anyway. Now, let's see about finding Alphys."
The lab itself was absent of life, but also of the tell-tale dust piles. After checking both the first and second floor, however, Glen was a bit stumped as to where to find the scientist.
"There must be something I'm missing." Glen said, standing across from a massive poster of an anime catgirl. It reminded her faintly of her wife, if only because of the ears. Her gaze eventually fell to Jake, who was sniffing around an armoire. With some difficulty, he managed to prod one of the doors open, only to immediately get buried in a pile of dirty labcoats.
Glen couldn't help but snicker as Jake fought his way free of the pile. She moved to help him, only to immediately recoil from the smell.
"By the Creator." She said, holding her nose. "How long has it been since she did her laundry?"
Jake stumbled away from the pile, only to pause a few feet from Glen. The monitor once again displayed a large sniffing nose.
Glen snapped her fingers. "Good boy! Sniff her out!"
Jake barked and took off running, Glen following close behind. They rushed down the escalator and right to the door labeled with a basic yellow figure that faintly resembled Alphys.
"The bathroom?" Glen said, scratching her head as she approached the door. "Ugh. Looks like another dead-"
She stopped as the door slid upon, revealing what was clearly the inside of an elevator.
"Clever girl." Shaking her head, Glen and Jake entered the elevator and pressed the only button there was to press. A brief rumble later, and they were going down.
After a strangely long ride, the doors eventually opened to reveal a dimly-lit room with a single hallway. A thick layer of dust lay on the ground, broken by several sets of footprints. There was only one path, so with a shrug, Glen headed down the hallway.
Jake followed behind Glen, his tail low and his face worried. Truth be told, Glen didn't feel much better; The eeriness of the earlier areas escalated to full-on creepiness at the sight of the flickering lights of the secret lab. It didn't help when the consoles installed along the walls would randomly activate, showing random datafiles. Glen ignored them; she was more concerned with finding Alphys than reading about experiments at the moment.
The corridor eventually came to an end in a small room with a large elevator. Two passages split off from either side.
Sighing, Glen called out, "Alphys? Where the hell are you?"
A short stooped figure wearing a lap coat appeared in the shadows of the right passage. She approached slowly, a worried look on her yellow-scaled face. "H-hello?"
"Alphys." Glen said, breathing a sigh of relief. "By the Creator, I'm glad to see you."
"Y-you're human."
"Er, sorta." Glenda rubbed the back of her hair. "Look, I know this is confusing, but I think I can answer a lot of both of our questions if you let me borrow your hand for just a second."
Alphys pulled her hand back, somehow managing to look more worried. "Why should I trust you?"
Glen took a deep Breath. "Your name is Alphys; you're the Royal Scientist, promoted after constucting a robot with a soul who went on to become one of the biggest musical stars of the Systems Alliance. You like ramen noodles, ice cream, and your favorite anime is Mew Mew Kissy Cutie, which is kinda funny seeing as its sequel is your most hated anime. You like the water, but don't know how to swim, and when you're nervous, you stutter. At the moment, I'm guessing that's all the time, but hey; given what's happened, I can't really blame you. You love Undyne, and your best friends are Bratty and Catty. You're favorite color-"
"T-that's enough!" She said, holding up clawed hand. "How do you know all that?"
"I'll tell you everything, just as soon as I run my little scan on you. It won't hurt." Glen assured her as she pulled out her tong-sensor device. "I just need to figure out the specifics of this situation before proceeding; to do that, I need a reading from someone who isn't me or Jake here."
Jake barked at the sound of his name. Alphys's gaze fell to the KEI-9 unit, her fear fading slightly.
"T-that's your dog?" She asked, crouching down to look at him. "Quite an impressive design! Did you build him yourself?"
"Jake?" Glen said, glancing at her friend. "Nah, he's on loan from a friend. I'd scan him with my little device, but that won't work because ... well, he's from the same place as me. I need someone else, so if you don't mind."
"O-okay." Alphys said, "But not here; it's not safe. F-follow me."
She shuffled down the corridor to the right of the lift. Glen traded looks with Jake and shrugged before following behind.
"How did you manage to insert your transmission into my coded audio-link?" Alphys asked as she glanced nervously from side-to-side.
"A bracelet with inbuilt transmitters."
"Can I see your bracelet?"
"You could if I didn't leave it with the rest of my gear up at Castle Dreemurr."
Alphys stopped and turned to face Glen. "Is K-king Asgore-"
"Perfectly safe." Glen assured her.
"And the human child?" Alphys asked.
Glen sighed again. "She managed to shake us."
Alphys didn't say anything for a moment. Shaking her head, she said, "C-come on; w-we're almost there now."
Alphys sped up as they drew near a large chamber. Glen could just make out a few beds when her foot came down on something and stuck. Jake approached, quickly trapping his front paws as well.
"What the ..." Glen tugged at her foot, but the goop was seeping between her toes, holding her fast. Jake whined and looked pitifully at her.
"I didn't do anything. Alphys?" Glen said, glancing up.
"Now!"
Figures leapt from every bed. Some short, some tall, some furry and some scaled; all were monsters, and all were armed.
There was one present who wasn't a monster; a tall android stood among the crowd. He boasted a fairly advanced design and an impressive set of legs, though he bore multiple signs of recent repair, the tell-tale marks of a sharp knife across much of its surface. He raised an arm that ended in some sort of energy blaster before it said in a static-filled voice, "Don't move, Darling."
"What is this?" Glen asked, her eyes on Alphys.
"I'm s-sorry, human." Alphys said, "But we can't take the chance that you aren't working with the human."
"Working with the ... you think I came to help Frisk kill everyone?" Glen said, not bothering to hide her incredulity. "Jesus, Alphys, I don't even know if this is my Frisk!"
"So you do know her." The robot said, giving Glen a dazzling smile. "Now be a dear, and hand over your weapon."
"This?" Glen said, holding up her makeshift device. "This isn't a weapon; it's a Dimensional analyzer; it reads a person's flux and indicates the standard reality code of their origin universe."
Most of the monsters took this in with looks of confusion. Alphys and the robot, however, seemed intrigued.
"Look." Glen clamped it on her hand again, holding it so they could see the screen. "Junicai twenty-seven. That's where I'm from. If I'm right, you could clamp that on anyone else in this room ..."
"Arf!"
"-Except Jake," Glen said, nodding. "And it's gonna give you a different reading."
"Why not Jake?" Alphys asked.
Rolling her eyes, Glen said, "Because he's from the same universe as me! Look!"
Glen clamped the device on Jake's tail, eliciting a yelp from the unsuspecting canine-bot. After manipulating the dials to align the waveforms, it displayed the same universe designation as before.
"It doesn't hurt, it just takes a few seconds. If it's the same, then I've somehow gone back in time." She rolled her eyes before adding, "Again. If it's different, then I've somehow slipped into a different dimension."
"So like what's the difference?" Asked a young woman with the face (and jaws) of a crocodile.
"Well, if this is about time, I've gotta be careful; actions I take now could affect my future. That's how I know you, Alphys; I met you and Undyne in the town of Ebott ... past the barrier. You two are married, you have a big lab with pretty much the only tech the town ever uses. "
That got the rest of the monsters whispering amongst themselves. Glen continued, "If this is a matter of being in the wrong dimension, it changes everything. I can help without worrying about altering the future."
"Can you bring back the dead?" Alphys asked, her eyes on the ground.
Surprised by the question, Glen could only answer with silence.
"Can you?"
"Not normally, no." Glen admitted.
"Then it doesn't matter." Alphys said. "If you're from our future, then it's a future that's already lost. Undyne gone; the human killed her."
Glen closed her eyes. Papyrus was bad enough, but Undyne fell too? It was almost unthinkable, especially considering that once again, it was little Frisk who was the killer.
"I'm sorry for your loss." Glen said, "Look, the dimensional thing can wait; what I really need is your help locating Frisk ... the human. There's something wrong with her, something not normal. I could use your help."
"I'm sorry." Alphys said, "I want to believe you, but we're the last monsters left in the Underground; we simply can't afford to take the chance. Mettaton?"
"No." Glen said as Mettaton took aim. "No, you don't have to do this. I can help, I can-"887Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ06oEqCV8xh
