DETERMINATION

True Lab

You were out cold. The giant explosion that occured after beating Mettaton knocked you unconscious.

Your clothes were burnt, the damaged fabric charred black. Your skin was covered in ashes. That explosion was strong. It went very close to killing you. Funny how the closest thing his 'true form' did to harm you... was to die.

Your eyes slowly opened. You winced in pain from the burns. Honestly, you were slightly impressed by power of Mettaton's explosion.

It was then that you heard a familiar voice in your head. Chara.

You felt your burns begin to heal as Chara's DETERMINATION flowed through you. Now you were definitely getting jealous by how easily Chara was tapping into the DETERMINATION that was once yours. It took you fighting someone as powerful as Undyne to use your DETERMINATION to heal yourself, while Chara was here doing it whenever she pleased.

Eventually, once your wounds were healed, you stood up, Flowey groggily waking up as well as you did so.

"Ugh... what happened?" Flowey asked, glancing around the lab that was currently in ruins from the explosion.

You checked on the locket that Flowey gave you, it was, thankfully, perfectly fine. A bit dusty, but not damaged.

"Mettaton decided to have one last laugh at our expense and decided to blow himself to smithereens instead of accepting his defeat with what little pride he had left." You sneered, looking around the lab. It was then that you remembered something... the bathroom that Alphys disappeared into. You had your doubts that it was a bathroom.

After all, someone as smart as Alphys wouldn't just run off into the bathroom after being told to escape.

"I think I know where to go next." You said, walking over to the door, unlike with Alphys, the door refused to open on its own.

Too bad.

A knife materialized in your hand and, with a single slash, the door went down, revealing an elevator behind it.

"Hmmm, guess that's what's behind door number one." You said, walking into the elevator and pressing the button.

The elevator proceeded to descend.

And it kept going.

Still going.

"Ugh... this is taking too long!" You said, you were impatient to finally snuff out the light from the one who's been working against you for a VERY long time.

Thankfully, shortly after you said that, the elevator came to a halt, the door of this floor opening.

You stepped out of the elevator and were fairly surprised by what you were seeing.

Unlike the clean, almost sterile look of the upstairs lab, this place was a mess. Covered in dust and cobwebs, junk and papers thrown around the floor.

"And here I thought scientists would be cleaner than this..." You grumbled to yourself. Something felt odd about this place. It felt... wrong. Everything about it was sending all the bad signals.

Flowey seems to have picked up on it, too. "I don't like this place... we should go." Flowey said, he was always a bit cowardly, but he seemed genuinely scared of this place.

"Not until Alphys is dead." You said, choosing to ignore your instincts and push forward.

But as you took a step forward, the lights went out. "Damn it! The power's out." You said, Chara's SOUL emerging from your chest, emitting a soft, red glow. It wasn't much, but it at least let you see a little bit.

One of the papers on the floor looked different from the others, you crouched down to read it.

"In case of power outage, find different color keys and place them into their specific places to unlock the power room."

Huh, very conveniently located instructions.

You looked over at the door near you, on it, multiple lights could be seen, all of them turned off. Green, yellow, blue and red.

Those must indicate the color keys you have to find.

"Alright then, guess I'll have to find them if I want to keep going." You said to yourself before continuing to walk. As you walked, you noticed various panels on the walls, you began to read them.

The entries first spoke about SOULS. How their power can be utilized in many ways, but that they're not likely to last long after death, which makes experimentation limited.

The next entry theorized about a way to preserve the SOUL after death by using something that most SOULS lack. DETERMINATION.

The next entry speaks about sick people, people on their death bed, arriving to the lab to be experimented on. Whoever wrote this entry theorized that by injecting them with DETERMINATION, they may survive their conditions.

This is a direct quote from the next entry:

"I've done it. I've injected the DETERMINATION into the first patient. His body has reacted well to the injection, for now. He's even managed to get out of bed today! I'll see how the others react to the injection."

In the next room, there were no entries.

It was a long hallway with a shower at the end of it. You walked up to it and behind the shower curtain, you found the green key.

After getting the key, you started roaming the lab once again. You found the next entry.

"Oh, no. No, no, no, no, NO!"

That was all this entry said.

A few feet away from it was the next entry.

"The patients... everyone I've injected... they started melting. Turning into a white, gooey substance. Several of the patients have molded together after this. What will I tell their families?"

You felt your blood freeze at this entry. Just what the hell was Alphys doing down here?

You started trembling. You felt as if you couldn't move, even if you wanted to. You don't know what bothered you so much about this. You've killed countless, why were a few unethical, immoral experiments bothering you so much?

But you needed to keep going. Now was hardly the time to freeze up like this.

You took in a deep breath, the stale air filling your lungs, making you feel as if you weren't even breathing.

You needed to keep going.