And all the kids cried out,
"Please stop, you're scaring me"
I can't help this awful energy
Goddamn right, you should be scared of me

"Oh no," says Alphys. "Move over, I, let me check the recordings, maybe we can tell where they went."

Sans gets out of the chair and pulls over another one. He grabs his papers as he moves out of the way for her. "Right. You got another terminal? That pattern match to the timeline should still be going- and I guess we're going to have to build a file system with what we've got. We need to look at those locations. I should be able to get that set up."

Alphys waves further down the bench. "There's another station over there. Uh, there should be a sticky note with the login somewhere near it. The tools for handling what we did manage to capture should be right there. Um, which file is this camera saving to, uh, here it is. Okay, hopefully I had the time lapse set to something useful..."

"Okay, yeah, got it," Sans finds the note easily enough and uses that login to the system. "Yeah, I see this. Won't hurt anything to be looking for matches at the same time as we build the file system, will it? And, uh, will this let us use the given timeline to extrapolate later timestamps? Should probably check out what happened when Undyne first showed up, too, if I can find it."

"Yeah, shouldn't slow anything down," says Alphys, not even looking over at him. "We've got enough computing power to... well, more than enough to do that. It's still gonna take some time... uh, check the settings, you might be able to prioritize certain locations. It'd help more if we knew what was at those addresses, but, uh, we don't. Okay, okay, here's me leaving the human, gonna watch from here."

Sans tucks his list of painstakingly-decoded locations in front of the keyboard, and starts up the analyzer. "Okay. I mean I think we all know their final destination, but that's not gonna help much with catching up with them. Lot of ways to get there from here." He loads the dump from the kid's soul in, and starts sifting through the options. Finds something that looks promising, or at least something that lets him plug in the values he's got. The program doesn't object when he tries to put it through, so fingers crossed. He lets that run and pulls the search against the timeline back up. "That's running. Let's see if we've come up with any other timeline matches. How're the cameras coming along?"

Alphys leans in toward her monitor. "Okay, they printed something. That, uh, that could be useful. Let's see what else we have on camera first. Moving forward, moving forward... okay, nothing weird here..."

"Printed something? Was that computer unsecured?" Sans scrolls through the timeline; a fair few matches are starting to get populated in but with time this short he's not terribly inclined to look too hard into moments where he doesn't know what exactly was going on at the time. He adjusts the parameters of the search there, using the known timeline to start placing the state of the kid's soul against time going past the end of his readings. "Okay, got the bit with Papyrus matched up, I think. All of this stores backwards in the soul? Is that just humans, or us too?" Maybe if he can keep her talking technical, she won't panic. Plus, he is curious.

"I, I, it never occurred that I'd have to! I picked a great show, I thought it would keep them occupied. Oh god, it's not my fault, is it?" She runs her hands over her head, and gets back to work. "Uh, watching the show still, uh, I mean, yeah, your soul's got everything. Humans just, just store more in it 'cause of the determination. It's kinda like how hard drives pretty much all go at the same speed. Bigger ones are faster, but there's more storage so the net increase in speed is negligible."

Sans opens up the soul data for that slice of ten minutes or so and starts separating out the information pulled from the snapshot. "Geez," he says, pulling windows around. "Okay, we've got a few dozen streams here. I see some of them are labeled? I guess that's what the extra time reading gives us?"

"Um, y-yeah. Among other things. Okay, they're getting up after about a half an hour. They watched the whole episode! Um, yay? They're taking off the hoodie."

"'Kay, keep going," says Sans. He sifts through the readings, looking for something with data other than baseline. "All right, this is the first time I know for sure the kid, like, the kid kid asserted themself. Gotta be something- wait, Alphys, pause that and come over here. Tell me what we've got going on with this?"

Alphys pushes over, chair-wheels squeaking on the ground. "Okay but we don't wanna waste time on this. We, uh, maybe don't want Undyne and Papyrus to be the first ones to find out the human's gone- oh my god. Uh, uh, yeah I guess we can't be sure what specifically this is, but, uh, it's a complete smash-and-grab is what it is. Y-yeah, you can label those over there and they'll persist, we can probably call these our identity and memory functions, maybe we can figure out which set is which. Uh, one's got holes, the other's wiped a lot more clean. I bet that's the... uh, yeah, double-click on the blanker one, it should expand into a stack."

Sans exhales as he opens that one up. He starts scrolling through the data, sinking feeling only growing as he sees whole bits of- something wiped out, erased. "Okay, uh, wow, this is definitely- I don't know what it is. We're gonna have to look separately for what the other soul's doing and match to this time too, aren't we? Let's just assume the other one's doing this erasure. So, what, getting forced out of control maybe, trying to do as much damage as it can on the way out? It seems, uh, pretty localized. Goes to straight noise on this one line after, let's see, this point. That's probably the binding. So let's call this the name processing function. We'd need the other soul's data, see what it's doing at this moment to be sure, and, uh, you know, there's other stuff that's liable to be as much or more useful. What's the progress on finding those addresses..." He clicks over to check, and shakes his head. "Still nothing yet. Okay, I've got time to look for the bit with Undyne, then. Thanks, Alphys."

"R-right." She pushes back over to her station, and goes back to the video data. "Yeah, um, okay, they went out the right door. O-okay, that's kind of the long way... but there's less surveillance that way, too. Um, one of Mettaton's sets is there though, I can get access to his cameras, it'll just take a few minutes, it's not on my network."

His timeline covers a long enough period that the system doesn't object much to just slapping timestamps going forward from there. So he zooms out and scrolls forward, mousewheel spinning as he zips through the dates. He finds the day Undyne showed up and directs a priority expansion there. That'd been a busy day, with the other in control for at least some of it. And a hell of a fight for that same control later on, before other checked out. Long enough period that he's got some time to do some other work. "You said if I label these channels it'll persist? Would that go for that partial soul from the start?"

"Should," says Alphys. "Okay, I'm into the network. Looking for those cameras now. Um, what did I call them, it's been ages since I set up this network for him, uh..."

Sans finds the channel and tags it, then flips back to the incident with Papyrus. Yeah, it's still present there, continuous this time right up until... he lines it up with the erasures. Yeah, it breaks down again, slightly after that happens. Theory? The work from erasing and binding was a majour setback to its ability to take full control again. But with that damage done, it would have bought time to recover. Sans checks on the later date. He keeps his attention on the channel with the incomplete soul, skims it over throughout the day. Yeah, here it overtakes the kid's, once for a good long chunk early on, and it comes close a lot of other times. They're wildly out-of-phase, too. What that means to a soul, well, it's not like he's sure, beyond that it's probably not good.

The partial soul surges, as expected, and one of the unknown memory-or-identity lines starts rallying. Then the other does too, though the name functions stay overwritten with noise. To be expected. He keeps moving forward, watching that extra soul, matches it against the kid's. Watches the kid's overtake it, but there's something- "Alphys, I know you're busy, but one more over here. Just... just take a look and tell me what you see. I don't wanna be wrong about this."

She pulls back over to eyeball Sans' data, leaning in to read it. "Uh, looks like a lot of struggle, right up until, huh. It's not any real surge or anything, the partial soul just kind of drops out and hangs around. Can't see a reason why. Goes a bit quiet but it looks like it's coming up really close against the complete soul. When are we looking at?"

Sans bumps the timeline forward, right up until the end of the analyzed portion. "Yeah, uh, that's supposed to be when Undyne tried to fight the kid. Right where they 'woke up', if I'm reading these lines that suddenly go live correctly."

Alphys stands up, takes a step back. "Wait, I thought you said that as far as you could tell the other, uh, occupant went dark when that happened?"

"As far as I could tell at the time, it did."

"Well, it didn't."

Gotta move quick. Gotta get a good head start, 'cause they know they're gonna get chased as soon as someone realizes they're gone, figures out where they're going. Doesn't know how long it'll take for them to notice. Tall skeleton and fish-lady distracted by show, sure. But dunno how the soul testing thingie works. Squints at the paper with the directions. Says there should be a conveyer belt they need to ride. That might be fun maybe? Steam wooshes all around them, big fluffy puffs of it everywhere.

Glad they left the hoodie behind. Would have been way too hot. Still, easiest to think about things like being hot. Worry about being hot and trying not to get lost. Don't worry about anyone looking for them- why would anyone look for them?- or trying to stop them.

Hops on conveyor belt, holds out arms to stay balanced. Tries to figure out why they'd want to stop them. Freaked out, sure, but both the skeletons don't seem to want them to do it, and the dinosaur didn't look like she thought it was a good idea, either. And of course the fish-lady. Arms wave around and they still wobble trying to stay standing. Trip when the conveyor belt ends, nearly lands on their face. But they get up and they're fine.

Watch an airplane in a hat zoom by. They try to wave at it but they just hear a 'hmph' as it zooms off. Airplane monsters, wowie. They watch it fly away before they remember they're rushing. Check the directions again. Says something about steam vents and warnings about skirts. Wearing pants so don't pay attention to that part.

Vents are easy to find, and after staring at them for while, they just hop right on and woosh right over, like a big long jump. They giggle a little as they land and only stumble a tiny bit. It's like going on a ride. Follow the directions and hop hop hop. Then a run up a hallway with lots and lots of tubes, and there's a big word for this area that starts with an m that they can't really understand so they just go through it until they find more of the steam rides. Should just need to go straight, so they woosh over and through the door, then a bunch more all at once. Giggling even more than the first time, when they pull out the directions.

Tiptoe through a kitchen. Not sure why there's a kitchen here but they see cameras around. Not sure if they're on or off and dunno what to do about them anyway. Tries to stay out of sight as best they can. They get to the end of the kitchen floor, right back where it turns to rock, when they hear weird smashing sounds behind them. Turn back, look real quick-like, and see all the cameras smashed, a weird quick-moving flash of green vanishing into the ground.

"Howdy!"

They turn back around, slowly. Look down. Down at the flower, that smiles up at them. "Go away!" they say, stepping backwards. No, no, have to go forward. It's just a flower in the way. Just a flower. But a flower that can do things.

Flower laughs and laughs and laughs. "Well, you're sure not any more polite than before! Gee whiz, I just wanted to say hi! Isn't that what friends are for?"

Stays put. Tries to figure out if they can run past. Should be another hallway past, for, for cooling, the directions said. Then an elevator. Has a floor to get off on and everything. Just a flower in the way. A flower with vines that can smash cameras, that also shoots bullets. "Not friends." Comes out as a growl. "Don't have friends."

He leans back, petals turning up toward them. "Golly, are you sure about that? Well, maybe it's just you who's not anybody's friend." Flower starts inching backward, ground melting around his stem. They move along with him. Going the right direction, at least. "Well, that'd make sense, right? Leaving all those people behind? Gosh, what a jerk!"

Glare at the flower. "Said go away. So either get lost or-"

Flower keeps moving. "Or what? Ooh, you gonna try and pull something? Why start with me? We've got allllll kinds of people we could go in on, y'know. You weren't such a wimp before!"

They don't stop walking. Flower picks up the pace, stays just ahead. They glare at him. "Not a wimp. Not gonna start again. Won't. Wanna. But not gonna." But their hands are balled up tightly into fists. They look down at them, making the fingers uncurl. "Wanna doesn't mean gotta. Can doesn't mean have to. Not gonna. Doesn't matter what you say."

That smile changes to something else, but then it comes back. Something different about his eyes. "Then why come out all this way by your lonesome?" Sees something big and tall towering in the distance. They don't look for more than a second, just keep moving. Hot and sweating now. Flower doesn't seem interested in stopping them. Just keeps talking. "You sure weren't interested in going anywhere before when my friend was still around."

Hands flex, ball up again. "Not your business," they say. One foot in front of the other. Decides to tell him anyway. "Going to see the king."

Flower grows eyebrows just so he can raise them. "The king?" Face changes shape. Looks sorta like... no, doesn't wanna think about that. Doesn't look much like her, anyway. Doesn't know who it really looks like. "What d'you wanna see that old goat for?"

Getting closer to the elevator. Can see it. "Soul. Gonna give it to him. Break the barrier, everyone goes free. King's supposed to destroy all the humans after that. Said that, anyway."

The flower stops short, and they nearly trip over him. And the flower starts laughing again, high enough to hurt their ears. He sprouts leaves, even, like he's holding his sides from laughing so hard. "Oh, wow! Wow! I always knew you were a big fat idiot but this- but this really, it really takes the cake! Ahaha, you wanna know why? I'll even tell you! Just tell me what you did with my friend, and I'll tell you!"

They look down at the flower, frowning. One foot slides back. Shouldn't give him the time of day. Should just keep moving. Just walk around and ignore him. No. "Didn't do anything. Said it knew where it wasn't wanted. Said it was leaving. Been gone ever since."

That just makes the flower nearly vibrate from laughing so hard. Shaking all over and laughing and laughing and laughing. "And you believed them? You really are an idiot! Ahaha, oh. Oh, this is too good. I almost wanna just let you go!"

"Say it!"

Flower calms down to giggles, and starts moving for the elevator again. "Oh, wow. Wow, this is amazing. To actually get to see someone this stupid live and breathe in front of me... that was their plan! Well, kind of. We didn't need the king for it, but that's not my problem, is it?"

Don't even think about it, just move. All their weight in it, fist flies right for that stupid flower's stupid jerk face. "You're lying!" Flower leans back out of the way, but they're mad now, and they follow up with a second punch. "Stop it, stop it, don't lie, stupid asshole flower!"

That doesn't even make the flower stop laughing. "Wow, where'd you learn language like that? What good's lying? You can't give me the only thing I want! Hahaha, unless I let you go, maybe. Now I get it!"

Tries to hit the flower again. Just getting madder, still missing wildly. Smaller target than people. Better at getting out of the way, too. "Public school!" Tears coming out their eyes now. Maybe could reach and grab the flower, shake the truth out of him that way.

"Wow, you just get mad enough and all that stuff about 'wanna doesn't mean gotta' just goes right out the window!" Flower has to stop laughing just to breathe now. Didn't even know that flowers had to breathe. "Hah! Here I was all worried about my friend, but now I see what they're doing... I should be thanking you! Now I've got the chance to win one!"

They shove their hands down to their sides, hold them there. Fingers twitch and shake. They start walking again, faster, moving for the elevator. Doesn't matter whose plan it was. Still the right thing to do. Still right. Gonna prove the stupid flower wrong. "Go to hell," they say.

"Too late," says the flower, following them now. Face is all twisted and sour now. "Okay, enough fooling around. I'll just go with you. You'll never get to the king by yourself without help, not if the people who think they're your friends are trying to stop you. And if you get there- well, we'll just have to see what happens, won't we? You told me their plan. I'm not telling you mine!" They get to the elevator; another vine smashes a camera above the doors.

They lean up and mash the elevator button until the doors open. "Just stay out of the way." Pauses, adds as an afterthought, "And don't hurt anybody. Rip your petals off if you do."

"Find those cameras." Sans takes the mouse back and just doesn't move for a second. Tries to think of what he should be doing. "You've got a direct line to the king, right? Would you be able to maybe call him, tell him not to take the human's soul?" Looks like they are starting to get files in at certain points... just not the ones he was told to look for. He pulls one up, just sees a lot of garbage data. Same for another. Third one... password protected? He copies that one off, puts it aside so he doesn't lose it.

The sound of furious clicking comes over from Alphys' workstation. "What, what would I say to him? I don't- I don't have a live feed! They're off the network! What's going on, tell me it had time to upload anything at all, come on, where does it upload to!"

Sans stops, takes a breath. "Just, just tell him the truth? I mean, if the kid's doing this because, what, there's some weird other influence going on- maybe let's not tell him that there's a possibility it's the still-persisting remains of the soul of his own adoptive kid- and that it's probably not safe to take the soul until we figure out what's happening here... I mean, he'll take an excuse to not do it, you know that." The first file he was told to look for pops up. He opens it, sighs when it comes up just as unreadable than the others. "Tell me you've got a hex editor somewhere... never mind, found it." It's only marginally more readable, but it gives him some direction. He grabs a paper and a pen.

"Okay. Okay, you're right. Uh, no service down here though, so I'll call right after I head up," says Alphys. "No, no, the last timestamp on this footage is hours ago. What do I do, what do I do, okay, calm down, we know which way they went. We know where they're going. Uh, um, let's look further up the way, maybe I can see something, on the elevator, maybe."

"So, uh, before we move on," Sans says, still scrolling through the file, looking for anything at all that sticks out at him, "you're going to tell me there's a way to separate these souls, right? You're going to tell me that right about now." Oh, damn it, he sees what he's going to have to do with this. And it's a terrible idea. Someone reached out to him across time and space only to tell him to do possibly the stupidest thing he can possibly think of. Great.

Alphys goes quiet. Too quiet. Even the sound of the mouse moving across the bench stops. She says, "Um. Remember, uh, what I said about how souls repair themselves? Um. I'd, uh. I'd have to look for sure. It, maybe it's different because it's just souls and not bodies. But, uh, souls are pretty fluid. I mean, if you pour orange juice into apple juice, I mean, you've still got a mix of orange juice and apple juice, sure, but what you've got is a glass of juice."

Sans rubs his hand against his forehead. "Great. Just great. And I need to have to figure out how to flip bits, manually, inside a live human soul. Which should allow these innate data recovery functions to kick in, maybe even de-erase their name. I do that and I think the kid'll be able to pop the bindings on their own, safely. Right now I think they're the only thing preventing the other's identity from just gushing in. Okay. So. So, what then? You actually see people like this all the time. What do we even do here, assuming all of this even works?"

"Okay, I've got these cameras rerouted to just stream directly to an address I can access. Not seeing any sign of the human. Um." Alphys stands up, walks to lean over Sans' shoulder. "Well, uh, we need to get these back in phase. That's your rejection right there. There are a few around here... they, um, weren't able to maintain coherence. Physical coherence, let alone mental. I mean, I don't think that's a risk here because of the nature of the situation. But an antigestalt is not sustainable; if the souls are too invested in fighting each other off then that just loops until they're entirely consumed by that struggle and there's nothing meaningful left."

An idea occurs to Sans, and he starts mapping out a diagram on his paper. But that bit's concerning, and he can think of two things at once. "So, what, we just need to make them... what, sit down and make friends? Mentally speaking?"

Alphys waggles a hand back and forth. "Uh, not exactly. I mean, that's the ideal, Endogeny was the first one to stabilize and I'm pretty sure it's because they came to an easy accord. Some of the others, uh, not so much. Lemon's... uh, well, nobody's friends there. But there does need to be a measure of, uh, I don't even know what you'd call it. Acceptance? Unity? Just not fighting anymore?"

"Great. Just great. Well, that part we can worry about later. I know what I need to do with these addresses, then, but I'm going to need them all to come in." Sans keeps scribbling on the page, mapping out power-flows. "So what you're going to have to do is head up, get Papyrus and Undyne, and head after the kid. There's three of you, so you should be able to cover enough ground to find them. And call the king. I need to work this thing out. You can get a message to me down here from up there, right? You just can't do it via the cell networks. If you find them before I finish, great, just hold onto them until I show up. I finish first, I'll catch up."

"Uh, y-yeah. Yeah, I can remote in from my phone, let you know when we find the human." Alphys gives Sans a wobbly look. "Are, are you sure you wouldn't rather let me do this, whatever it is?"

"I wish," says Sans. "But unless you can write and execute a high-precision PJI junction through your own body and directly manipulate values in a soul, it's gotta be me. And, I mean, that's a serious question. Can you?"

Alphys wipes her hands down on her coat. "I could help write it, maybe. Execution, uh, the j-justice segment, maybe. Patience and integrity, uh, they're not really so much what I, um, do. I mean, I could design a circuit that'll do what you need. That would be easy."

Sans leans back in his chair. Lifts both his hands, rubs at his sockets. Takes a deep, deep breath. "That would be a great idea, if we had more time. Just fabricating a prototype alone... no, I have to do it myself. You can handle the rest. But, uh, before you go."

"Okay," says Alphys. "Okay, what is it, I can do this, I can t-talk to the king, I can talk to your brother and U-Undyne."

And here's the dangerous question. "Say I needed to know the formula for figuring out determination toxicity in a monster. You wouldn't happen to have, you know, worked it out? And be able to tell it to me?"

"Why do you need to know that?"

"Because," Sans says, drumming his fingers against the bench. "Because at the levels of precision this is going to require, I don't know if I've got enough oomph to do it. And because I don't want to die from experimenting. Do you have a formula? I won't go over a quarter what it says the toxic amount is. Pinky swear."

Alphys' shoulders slump. "Yeah. I have it memorized, even. Give me that paper, I guess." She takes the page that Sans pushes over, and the pen, and scrawls down the formula he needs. "I mean, there's not... it's not a set value, it's gonna give you a range. Here's the constants, and these are what you'll need for variables. I, I guess you'll know this stuff, it'll all be pertinent to you personally. Height, weight, the esoterics. The reserves are located... uh, geez, you're gonna need the passkey to get into that storage room, here, and here's the room number. Be careful, okay?"

Sans looks down at the formula and does start notating his information before turning his attention back to the junction. "I'd like to say I'm always careful, but, uh, here we are. But I will be, with this. Trying to think of if there's anything else I need to ask you. I don't think there is."

"Oh." Alphys takes a few deep breaths, then does her best to straighten. "I guess I should get going. We'll... we'll find them. Um, I'll check the computer, if I can find out what they printed out, that'll be a good lead."

"See?" says Sans, turning to face her so she can see the full force of his smile. "You've got this. Between the three of you, you'll find the kid in no time flat. Probably do it before I'm halfway done getting all the addresses I need to modify. You pull that off, and we can go for the electronic solution instead of raw magic."

"Y-yeah," says Alphys, taking a few steps back. She breathes deep and wipes her sweaty palms on her lab coat again. "Yeah. Yeah, we'll do this! But, uh, just in case... good luck, Sans."

Sans lower his head back to the page, pen scrawling its way through the spell. "Thanks. Luck's always useful. Same to you, Alphys."

She turns, hikes up her coat, and runs without so much as another word.