by GR Griffin
The wheels of the heavy cart and each iron step sank into the earth. Even with the extra pullers up front being rotated every so often, the task seemed herculean in scope. Every effortful tug budged the cart by a foot.
“Pull, men,” Colonel Fisher barked from the side-lines. “Pull!” She could barely register her own voice under the jangle of raindrops around her helmet, which sounded like nails against a tin roof. Leftover morsels of grub ran down the canals of her soggy cape, piling extra weight onto her shoulders.
Knowing his colonel would not hear him – he could not hear his own thoughts – one of the pullers muttered, “That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one pulling.”
Thankfully, Fisher did not hear that. “Ten more minutes, then you can catch a breather in the service lift.”
Colonel Fischer glimpsed inside the solid cart at the prisoner in tow. Undyne sat snug, safe and dry within with one foot bent over her knee and her handcuffed hands resting behind her head. Never before had Fischer seen someone so confident in their capture, although that could be because she had the means to escape at any time, and since none of the troops could stop her even if they tried, they were essentially transporting a dragon in a bamboo cage.
Oddly enough, it was quite apparent that Undyne had gotten the better end of the bargain by being the prisoner. She was sheltered and the moist ground made the cart roll smoother than usual. Not to mention the troops were the ones escorting her while she got to kick back and relax, so this was a free ride for her.
Fischer approached the grated window. “Don’t get too comfortable in there, scum,” she said. A quick glance to her troops informed her that no one else was within earshot. “Seriously though, don’t get too comfortable. You’re in a prisoner transport, not a luxury carriage. At least try to look the part.”
“Oh, trust me, I’m fuming on the inside,” Undyne replied, switching her crossed legs. “I like the rain; there was only one freaking spot in the whole Underground where I could experience an imitation of it. Now, I’m in the middle of another fake downpour and I can’t even enjoy that from inside here. You have no idea how much this makes me want to punch someone in the face.”
“That’s good,” Fischer said. She pulled her visor up and pressed her lips between the bars. “Not the face punching part, that’s a five hundred cloud coin fine and a hundred hours of community service. Build that frustration. Display it. Remember, you’re looking at a hundred years of hard time in the castle dungeon.”
Undyne pulled her hands in front of herself; the shackles keeping the wrists an inch apart. “Gotcha!” she said, then proceeded to stand up, hunching to prevent herself from hitting the low ceiling. “You might wanna stand back for this.”
Without any warning, Undyne threw her shoulder into the cart door. Fischer fell back as the entire transport shunted to the side; the opposite wheels slopping out the thick muck which technically could not be called mud. The crash swung all heads over, along with fears of her escaping her hold. The cart stood balanced and motionless on two wheels for a couple of seconds before it fell back on all fours with a crunching jolt. Undyne punched, kicked, and threw obscenities around the cramped interior, rigorously rattling it back and forth.
All men stopped what they were doing and surrounded the cart, pushing on all sides to keep it from shaking and toppling. Undyne made a show of her defiance for a few minutes before going still and quiet, like a caged animal. Of course, if she really wanted to escape, she had the key, but none of them knew that – except for the colonel.
Breathing heavily, the soldier next to Colonel Fischer chimed in. “I’d hate to be the one to fish her out of there when we get to the castle.”
“I don’t even want to think about how she’ll act once we get her inside the dungeon,” another added, paying special notice to the large dents made from the inside. “Can the doors really hold her?”
“They better,” Colonel Fischer responded. Undyne’s outburst may have been a little overboard, but the colonel was confident she had made her point. “Snap to it, we’re almost there.”
Over the hill, the large rise of the elevator shaft stretched upwards, carving through the rock which hung below Highkeep Enclave. The large, rectangular entrance and ramp were within range, no more than five minutes away.
Reluctantly, the men stepped back from their perimeter around the cart, afraid that the captive might kick off again, and seized the reigns up front, continuing the hike.
“Hey, uh, Colonel?” a grunt beside Fisher got her attention. “Is it me or does this rain feel different somehow?”
Fischer rose her gauntlet and extended the fingers, feeling trace amounts as the raindrops landed against metal and chainmail. She unbuckled her glove and pulled it off, exposing her white-skinned hand and purple fingernails to the element.
She winced. The grunt was right. There was something different about the routine downpour today. As a member of the Monster Military, they strived on being one above the weather conditions. Whether rain or shine, day or night, the military were always on duty and at maximum effectiveness as a fighting force. Fischer, along with the rest of the troops, had been out in the rain more times than she could care to remember.
Today, the rain felt bitter, more so than normal. Harder. Fiercer, like the calm before the storm.
Perhaps this was the perfect weather for the rebellion to unravel their plans.
* * *
Meanwhile, in Haze’s hidden laboratory, his new guests were quite surprised at the turn of events…
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” cried Alphys, exasperated. “Fleck was right here and we missed them by a minute?” Stuck in her panic, she paced around the room, spiky neck frills gripped with sweaty claws. “If only we gotten here sooner…! If only… If only…”
“Hey. Relax and look on the bright side,” Barb responded, temporarily stopping the doctor’s panic. “A second later and I would’ve kicked you three to the moon.” This did not help. Alphys continued as agitated as ever.
The audience remained glued to their seats, talking amongst themselves and dumbstruck by what to do. Their chosen one had abandoned them, their means of salvation missing, and now the secret meeting – which no one else but a select gathering knew about – had been crashed by a trio of monsters claiming to be Fleck’s companions. In the realm of the Outerworld, it usually took a decade or two for the next strange thing to occur, and then, in this case, everything comes together within the span of ten minutes.
Alphys tried, but was unable to contain herself. Once more, Fleck, the child she was trying to find and save, had slipped from her grasp at the last second. If only, she thought. If only… I got here sooner. If only I held on for longer. What would Gori think? What would Tori think?
“The kid’s still gotta be close by,” Sans intervened. “Just point us in the right direction and we’ll…” – he reached into an inside pocket of his blue jacket and pulled out a red bottle with a picture of a tomato on the label – “ketchup.”
Ba dum pish!
The attempt to lighten up the mood was met with a slew of mixed reactions. Some monsters groaned. Some giggled. Professor Haze was as stoic as stone. Sam an’ Rita could not decide whether to laugh or not.
“Sorry,” Sans said, winking, “I couldn’t resist.”
“Reaching for the lowest hanging fruit, Sans?” Papyrus said, displeased at hearing more than the average amount of puns for one day.
“Nope,” Sans responded. “This fruit was already in my pocket when I reached for it.” He stuffed the bottle back and then pulled back the other half of his jacket to reveal a green bottle with a pickle printed on the face jammed inside the second inside pocket. “You know how much I relish a good joke.”
Ba dum pish!
That time, more groaning than laughing came from the crowd. His jokes were already overstaying their welcome. Someone better shut that short stack up before he pulled another bottle from out a sensitive spot.
/> Now, it was Alphys’s turn to shout out. “I-I-I swear, Sans, can you please j-just take this seriously for one—”
Professor Haze brought his cane down. “Enough!” His booming voice and the sharp clash dialled everything down to zero. “This talk is getting us nowhere. The paths leading out from here are innumerable; Fleck could’ve taken any one of them. Your chances of finding them on foot are slim, at best.”
“But you had them here just a minute ago,” Alphys said to the other monster of science and technology. “Surely, you have some way of finding Fleck again!”
“How else do you think I found them in the first place?” Haze already started shambling out the room. It was fortunate Barb stopped before she could kick down the perfectly functional door, although he had no plans on remaining there for much longer. “This way. Hurry!”
“P’fessor,” Rita called out, stopping Haze in his tracks. “Don’t mean to be a pain in the behind, but shouldn’t we be a bit more worried by our uninvited guests?”
Haze looked over his shoulder at the three monsters: a podgy, nervous train wreck of a doctor (the lab coat gave her away), a skeleton who could not take things seriously, and the other pile of bones dressed for Halloween who gazed fixatedly at the blaring stage.
Papyrus shouted in his outdoor voice, “You guys running a TV show here?” He spoke as if he expected Mettaton himself to strut out from behind the curtain and open his act with, from his album, song number seventeen powerfully and profoundly named: You’re a Lousy Worker, Burgerpants. Mettaton was sick that day.
Sam answered, “You could call it that.”
“Ah, wowie!” Papyrus rubbed his gloved hands together and rattled his bones. Some members of the audience cringed at the sound, having never seen or heard bones in their lives – except on television. “What’s it called?”
Haze responded dryly, “Never considered a name much. How about Commence Attack on Castle Highkeep otherwise we all Die in a Cataclysm of Devastation Proportions?”
Papyrus paused and squinted. A title like that does not roll off the tongue naturally. Thankfully, Papyrus did not have one. “Caochowadiacodp?” He pronounced it ka-o-chow-ay-de-a-cod-p. “Is that a one-off special or a pay-per-view?”
“It’ll only happen once and cost you a lot more than the contents of your wallet.” Haze replied, then gave Rita a scowling look while shaking his head. These uninvited guests – especially with subjects such as these – were the least of their concerns right now. And with that, Haze stormed out, returning to the solitude of his lab.
Barb was next, followed shortly after by Rita an’ Sam, then Rickard. Sans was the next to exit the stage room, ushering his associates to follow. The remaining audience were reluctant; the best they managed was to rise from their seats and form a blockade by the door. All eyes peered in at the cold, unloving interior that was Haze’s laboratory.
Professor Haze approached one of the many screens that littered the lab; only he knew what each of them was assigned to. Barb, Sam, Rita, and Rickard remained near him. Alphys, Sans, and Papyrus remained somewhere in the middle, soaking it all in.
The sight of the floors, walls, and technology spaced around reminded Alphys too much of her own laboratory, abandoned within the deepest, darkest, hottest recesses of the Underground. There was more to that place than just a few hundred hunks of machinery and some obsolete video tapes; it was the roots to her entire life. The Underground was her childhood; the place she was born in, raised in, and expected to die in. Her lab was where the highest and lowest moments of her life happened. Her biggest successes and greatest failures happened within those walls, away from the eyes of the world. What happened should have stayed in the Underground and yet they did not, for those monsters now roam the surface of the Earth for everyone to see and the experience would continue to exist within her memories and nothing she could do would ever change that.
After hooking his cane on the side, the professor dialled on the interface before him, scanning through feeds on the screen. Alphys had to guess that he had a surveillance system throughout these lands, just like the one she had to keep track of Fleck’s movements.
When Alphys glanced at her screen on that faithful day and witnessed Fleck exiting the ancient door to the ruins, she nearly choked on her frozen yoghurt. She nearly died a second time when the human child literally stared into the camera as if looking straight at her, knowing that she was watching their every move.
And she did.
“Don’t move, child,” Alphys whispered at the giant screen as she curled up in her chair and tucked her hands against her chin. The child was behind the lamp shaped like them, and Papyrus was… being Papyrus. “Oh my god, don’t move a muscle. Don’t let Papyrus catch you.”
“Let’s see. If the child moved a few steps forward…” Alphys had her head down, jotting down hastily on a piece of paper. The human had reached the invisible electricity maze, and she got to working out how to overcome it. “Then up, right twice, then straight down…” She looked up. Then they would – oh wait, they’ve already solved it.”
“No, no,” Alphys shouted and pointed at her monitor as if the child, now in Waterfall, would suddenly hear them. “Stand there and push four bridge seeds out! No, not there! You can do it!”
She needed to turn away from the monitor and go down into her laboratory. It was lunchtime for the Amalgamates. She was sure the task would be done before the human confronted Undyne. That she absolutely had to see.
Alphys stepped out of the elevator. Light on. She went to return to his computer… and there they were. The human. No longer on the opposite side of a screen, but standing in her path.
The rest was history.
Professor Haze scanned through the video feeds in the vicinity around his hideout, expecting to swiftly cross the child’s route in seconds. However, to his surprise, each camera turned out a haze of green and grey as it rushed past.
“What in Outerworld?” Haze blurted. He switched the screens only to find the same everywhere he went. He switched to the populated treetops to find the falling leaves at its worst. Monsters running for cover, seeking shelter from the blizzard.
The others were at the professor’s side, just as shocked as he was.
“What… is that?” Former Master Scribe Rickard muttered.
“It’s rainin’ leaves!” Sam said. “Leaves everywhere.”
Rita pointed. “Look at the bark! It’s turning grey! Has it ever done that before?”
Barb the Bounty Hunter shook her head. She knew every nook and cranny of these lands. “Never. None of us have ever seen anything like this…”
Haze shifted over camera after camera. “This is a little earlier than expected.” Everywhere he looked in the Forest, it all came up the same. At this rate, all the leaves would be at the dark floor and those thousands upon thousands of branches would be left bare and grey before the day was over. “What is going on here?”
Alphys looked around the laboratory that was not hers. About twenty feet to Haze’s left stood a chalkboard laden with rows over rows of white numbers. She recognised every single symbol. Judging by the fading in the lines, those writings had been up for quite some time.
“What’s these equations?” Alphys asked.
Without tearing his eyes away, Haze answered, “They’re my calculations on how much magic this world has until it runs out.”
Great. Even more bad news for Alphys to lug. “W-what do you mean this world is running out of magic?”
“There’s no time to explain, especially to any of you. Once the magic dies, so do we.” Professor Haze waved his free hand out as if grasping for an object that wasn’t there. “Just keep quiet and your hands to yourself while you’re here.”
All four of Alphys’s eyes scanned the digits, and it did not take long for her to spot an anomaly. Right then, she stopped thinking, stopped talking, stopped worrying, and simply acted. The board was high up, so she pulled up a conveniently placed stool. A f
ew nibs of weathered chalk rested in the holder; she took one and jumped straight in, replacing numbers and writing new ones within the gaps. She was once more the scientist, and the white lab coat on her back cemented that fact.
Sans followed her lead, drawing himself closer to the other side of the board. “Now that there just ain’t right.” Working up the effort, he grabbed himself his own piece of chalk and began work on a separate segment of numbers. A nod between himself and Alphys confirmed that they were both on the same page. Underneath his lazy demeanour and shabby presentation, lay a brilliant mind.
Papyrus, not wanting to be left out, grabbed two pieces of chalk and got to work on an empty spot in the bottom left hand corner, hunching his lanky frame down so that his head was between his knees.
Rickard watched as the three newcomers desecrated the chalkboard against Haze’s wishes. Should he tell the professor, or should he not? “Professor…? Those three are…” Then he realised there was little point. Haze was too engrossed in the cameras to care.
Meanwhile, a few cameras returned grey, mizzled static. “It’s no good,” Haze conceited, “I can’t find them. Cameras one-eight-two, three-three-nine, and seven-eight-four are down. This is most disturbing…” Haze turned away from the monitor in troubled thought and realised that the trio of strangers were slashing away at his delicate display of mathematics. “What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped, breaking the doctor out of her trance.
Alphys jumped and span around, her glasses slipped askew on her nose. Her claw fumbled the chalk piece and it broke in two upon hitting the ground; one half rolled beneath the board. Sans took his time finishing off a correction before calmly replacing his white marker where he found it. Papyrus continued to brush away with his two hands.
Doctor Alphys stuttered, “S-s-s-sorry, I-I saw an-an e-error and… and I just couldn’t help but—”