No-one really remembered who built the DT Extractor, or for what purpose. It might have been used to study human souls, or to harness determination as a power source, or any number of things.
It was most certainly not, Gaster mused, intended to be hastily fixed and broken again after a last desperate attempt to separate writhing white mistakes, the melting forms of monsters who had fallen asleep and woken up to a fate worse than death.
It was meant to be a place of discovery, of experimentation, and hopefully of triumph. Not the dank, shame-filled cavern that it opened in his successor's heart each time she looked at it.
And yet she was here, darting and tinkering around with a determined look in her eyes as she prepared the machine that maybe, just maybe, would save her friend's life.
Alphys' expression darkened as she cleaned sticky ectoplasm off the plate where the patient would lie. The shadowy appendage Gaster reached around her shoulders seemed to go unnoticed, of course. That was how things always were for him.
It didn't mean the sting he felt inside became any less sharp, but that wasn't important right now.
What was important was the meticulous concentration that Alphys displayed as she adjusted the laser, pointed right at Undyne's soul, and the nervous breath she held as she walked a safe distance away...
and activated the machine.
- - -
Her last coherent thought had been "No".
"No" what? She didn't know. Maybe it had been "no, I can't have killed them." Or maybe, "no, they can't have killed so many others." Part of it, she felt, had been "no, I won't let them kill me too."
"No, I have to brave the pain."
"No, I have to remember my name again."
"No, I have to stay determined."
All she knew was those words. She held onto them with all her rapidly waning strength as she felt herself slipping and melting and boiling in her own magic.
"Stay determined."
The burn grew hotter.
"Stay determined."
Her hands melted until they were half stuck to whatever it was she was trying to grip, and half dripping uselessly into nothingness.
"Stay determined."
She was faltering.
"Stay determined."
She was failing.
"Stay determined."
She wasn't strong enough.
She was just about to give up, when a ray of ice-cold light pierced through the darkness.
- - -
"I think it worked!"
"She's stopped melting!"
"Undyne? Undyne, can you hear me?!"
- - -
Undyne.
That was...that was her name.
That was her name! She was Undyne, and she'd stayed determined, and she was strong enough, she knew she had been strong enough, because now the burn had stopped, and the pain that still thrummed in her bones was dull, distant, almost soothing.
It made her realise just how tired she truly was.
Undyne sank into the vague sensation of something soft beneath her, and slipped quickly into a comforting, dreamless sleep.
YOU ARE READING
Justice or Vengeance (Undertale)
FanfictionUndyne had always hated humans. They'd trapped her people and left them for dead, only to destroy their beacon of hope as soon as they'd discovered it. Humans attacked what they didn't understand. Humans didn't need love, hope or compassion to exist...
