Ruins (Sans X Alphys)

Rise, Fall, Repeat

Alphys stepped back into her old lab and looked around. She was having trouble handling the events that had occurred over the last few days, and the worst part of it was that now she was doing it alone. She hadn't seen Sans in almost a full 48 hours, ever since she'd chased him off in her distress and rage.

She couldn't rule the Underground like this. It was true that there were only about 25 monsters in the Underground who legitimately wanted someone other than her to rule, but that represented almost a third of the total head count. Worst of all, she feared, it was possible that Sans was among them.

She had been wrong, she now realized. Sans wasn't perfect, but when compared to her imperfection, he appeared that way. Sans was the only one left who she cared about, and now he hated her too.

She had nothing left. The only thing that kept her going was her responsibility to the survival of the Underground. And even that was slowly going out the window as more and more monsters decided that Queen Alphys wasn't the miracle worker that ASGORE had apparently believed she was.

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"You can't honestly believe that she's the one who deserves to rule."

"fuku, it doesn't matter who deserves what. the fact is, of all the monsters alive, the only one who could possibly pull the underground out of this hole is alphys."

"She's a coward. She's never accomplished anything in her life. Her greatest achievements were all lies. She ignores the needs of her people and simply forces the monsters to obey her every whim. She may be smarter than most of them, but that doesn't give her the right to dictate their every action."

"actually, she does have the right to dictate their every action, because she's the queen. on top of that little piece of information, she isn't dictating anyone. she's forcing us all to work, sure, but we get to choose what we want to work at and when we want to work, and the simple fact is that she doesn't have a choice. the underground has to get rebuilt somehow."

"Well, apparently Snowdin doesn't."

"you can't grow food in snowdin."

"You can't grow food in Hotland either."

"Somebody's gotta run the CORE, and you sure as hell can't do that from snowdin."

"Stop being so reasonable."

"not gonna happen, fuku. alphys is the queen that we need. you can't argue with her results. despite the fact that 90% of the underground's homes were destroyed, there is not a single homeless monster down here. it's been six days. nobody's starving, the undernet is back up, and the CORE was running at 60% capacity last time i checked, which was a few days ago. she's actually getting things done. i'm sorry that your business is hurting. nobody loved this place more than me, and it hurts to see it dying like this. but the fact is, these are dire times. the same human that killed my brother and your grandfather also mortally wounded the entire underground. alphys is a miracle worker. she's bringing this place back from the brink. but you can't expect it to happen in a day, you can't expect it to happen in a week, you can't expect it to happen in a year. but it will happen."

"You... really do believe in her, don't you?"

"yeah. i do. even if she doesn't look like, alphys should've been made queen years ago. sure, she's scared, and sure she's made mistakes. but it's the things you don't hear about that prove she's the one we need. sure, she didn't build the CORE, but she turned it from a building-sized heat sink that might as well have made electricity as a side-effect to a massive complex that powers the entire underground and has plenty of energy left over. sure, she didn't really make an artificial soul, but that distracts from the fact that she did make the most advanced and powerful robot ever created. sure, the amalgamates... didn't work out too well, but nobody mentions that she successfully brought dozens of monsters back to life after they fell down, and she successfully revived another monster years after he died. alphys is a genius, but the only thing anyone focuses on is her failings, not her successes. she's got real guts and real brains. unlike us, i guess."