KNOCK ON WOOD - Vault 66 2 (Ch.16) (Patreon)

Snowdin Forest - Vault 66 ???

Looking upon this monument to the hubris of man fills you with determination.

Frisk stepped around the Vault, looking for a way in. It was a good thing that all the trees in these woods were so thin, because the way they were all piled on top of each other made it difficult enough already to navigate.

Here there was an overhanging piece of the vault, and underneath it was the clearest path, so Frisk braced one foot on a thick trunk--

Schlup

Urgh. Their boot went right through; that felt more like mud than wood, why would it…?

“Look out!” Flowey threw himself to the side, dragging Frisk along with him. They staggered to the side, only barely keeping their footing. Where they had just been standing, a drop of water fell from the corridor above. It hissed alarmingly when it touched the ground.

Ah. Probably not water, then.

“Say, uh, Frisk,” Flowey said with forced cheer. “You said you were looking for, um, radiation.”

“Mhm.” Frisk was playing around with their Pip-boy. The clicking was getting annoying… but they probably shouldn’t look for a way to turn it off. That felt like a bad idea.

“What do you, uh, what does that mean.” Flowey turned his head a little too quickly trying to take in the vault piece all at once, and shook another petal loose. It drifted on the breeze until it landed in a puddle of acid, where it disintegrated instantly. “B-Because, uh, I know what radiation is, of course, but it’s not something you ever find Underground. And I might have thought that it was just something humans… made up? For their comic books?”

Frisk paused in the midst of climbing down to the ground, and looked over their shoulder to give the flower a baffled look. “N-No? It’s real.” They finished lowering themselves down and took a short break. “It’s gross and makes you feel bad… my sibling never seemed to mind it, but it always makes me uncomfortable.”

Flowey frowned, processing that statement. “You know, that almost makes it sound like it’s something common on the surface.”

“Yeah.” Frisk huffed. “Nuka-Cola doesn’t even taste good enough to make the rads worth it.”

Now it was Flowey’s turn to look baffled. Closer to horrified, actually, not that Frisk could see him at the moment. “You drank it?!”

“No? I just told you I don’t like the taste.”

“But you--!”

“I think this is it,” Frisk said, cutting him off.

It brought back bad memories. A stairwell provided a way in, sticking up from the ground where the impact had buried the section into the earth. Since they'd gone almost halfway around the thing, this was probably the only entrance that was still accessible; the rest would be buried underground.

The two of them peered down the stairs. The geiger counter screeched, and they both flinched. The lights were still on, and they weren’t even flickering like the tunnel in the Ruins had, but they weren’t going to see anything standing up here.

Frisk scratched their nose, annoyed by the prickle of rads. “I h-hope there’s Radaway down there, otherwise this is going to be really annoying…”

Flowey looked at them, eyes wide. He leaned around so they could see him. “You’re not going down there, are you?”

“Someone has to,” Frisk said. “I need to figure out what’s causing all the conta--con-tam-i-nation, and see if I can stop it.”

“Do you really?”

*Ding!*

Frisk pulled up their journal log so Flowey could see.

------------------------------

Investigate the source of the radiation completed.

New Quest!

This Is Rad

You followed the clicking of the geiger counter to a piece of the fallen Vault 66. Now you need to figure out what’s causing it and, if possible, put a stop to it. Otherwise it could spread even further and contaminate the Underground.

• Enter the Vault

-------------------------------

Flowey frowned at the message. “Well, what does a wristwatch know?”

Frisk shrugged. “Th-that’s what I said, but--”

“Okay, listen,” Flowey said. He crawled out of Frisk’s bag and started crawling down their side. “You can go down there if you want, but I’d prefer to live, so if you could kindly--”

The instant he touched the soil, his roots shied away from it and he hissed in pain. He tried again, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

After his third attempt, and looking green even for a plant, he climbed back into the bag and hunkered down. “Fine,” he said, reluctant. “Go. But I’m not happy about it.”

Flowey is now your companion, and he hates it.

Despite the situation, Frisk had to stifle a giggle. “I-It’ll be alright. You should be fine if you s-stay in there.”

Flowey didn’t respond beyond a quiet grumble, and Frisk went down the stairs.

-----------------

Stepping from a forest to the inside of a vault was jarring. It was sterile and completely lacking decoration, which made even a straight hallway disorienting. There was a harsh buzz, only just loud enough to be heard over the clicking, and as they walked by an open vent, the ducts settled with a loud bang that startled them.

It was unnerving, and if Frisk was honest? They were glad they fell into the Ruins. The endless purple was better than this, and at least they weren’t alone.

So… what were they looking for, exactly? Do you have anything to say, Pip-boy? Any instructions?

Uhhhhhhhh, I might have gotten ahead of ourselves.

No convenient dings were forthcoming, so Frisk sighed and kept walking. They came to a fork in the hallway, and though one of them led straight into the dirt and bedrock, the other had actual rooms along it.

The first room had a big window looking out into the hall, and the door opened without any trouble. The room was pretty complete, and full of machines and computers. Whatever the room was meant for, it looked pretty important.

Maybe they could figure out what was happening from one of the computers…

-----------------------------

FALLING…..BAWLING…..JACKSON

TERRIFY…..MAGNETS…..LACKING

MAULING…..NEGATES…..TAKEOUT

STACKER…..STICKER…..LICKING

-----------------------------

Frisk stared at the screen in blank incomprehension. It was just a jumble of random words and symbols… was it supposed to be like this? That didn’t seem like a useful thing for a computer to do. Maybe they never finished setting it up.

At a loss, they started pressing random buttons, but nothing they did made anything happen. One of the words, FALLING, was highlighted, but what did that mean?

Oh boy, I hate computers. Stupid magic boxes.

…Well, I can’t figure it out, but maybe you can. It’s a good thing I kept this in reserve. Ahem.

Through study and effort, your Intelligence has risen by one, for a total of five (5)!

*Ding*

Frisk ignored the sound, focusing on the computer.  Maybe… this was a security thing? Were these passwords? Frisk had to admit, a random mishmash of letters and numbers would probably be confusing to anyone trying to access it… it worked on them, after all.

Slowly, almost fearfully, they tapped the down arrow key, and the highlighted section jumped to the next line down.

>TERRIFY

Wrong. 1/7 matching.

One seventh. One out of seven? They moved to another word.

>BAWLING

Wrong. 4/7 matching.

Frisk sat back, crossing their arms. A squawk from Flowey in the bag had them leaning forward again, but still, they thought.

Four out of seven now. Each word had seven letters. Bawling had four letters in common with the correct choice…

…

>LACKING

…Password accepted.

Frisk grinned.

------------------------------------------------------

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Welcome to ROBCO Industries (TM) Termlink
Vault 66 Maintenance Workstation - M. HADDOCK

[Vault Intranet]
[M. Haddock - Logs]
[Memo: Reprogram Protectrons]
[Reactor Status - WARNING]

------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------

Frisk blinked. Reactor? Uh oh, that didn’t sound good.

------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------

[Reactor Status]

ALERT!

Maintenance required in main reactor. A leak has been detected.

Leak severity: SEVERE

Immediate repair required.

------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------

Frisk pushed away from the computer. “This… is not good.”

“What? What is it?” Flowey pushed his head out the bag and squinted at the screen. He paled. “Oh god, I’m gonna die.”

“You’re not gonna die.”

“I’m gonna die!”

“I’m gonna fix it,” Frisk promised, and then knocked on wood.

Flowey scowled at them. “Oh, of course, silly me. I should have known, I’m perfectly safe because a six-year-old it going to fix a radioactive reactor.”

Frisk outed. “I’m eight. Not six.”

Flowey scoffed. “I’m going to die and it’s all your fault.”

Frisk stuffed him back into the bag and tightened the drawstrings, ignoring his protests. If he wasn’t going to be helpful, he could at least stay quiet.

---------------------------------------

Snowdin Trail

Napstablook was nervous.

This wasn’t a rare occurrence of course. Napstablook had three emotions--nervous, sad, and self-conscious--and they oscillated between the three of them at regular intervals. But right now the nervousness stood out, because for the first time in a long time it wasn’t because they were expected to be in a large crowd or engage in social behavior or wear loud clothing at their cousin’s behest. They were nervous on behalf of someone else. The Underground wasn’t safe for a human child.

…and maybe a little of that nervousness was for their own safety as well. Ghosts can’t really die, but against an angry Boss Monster, Napstablook wasn’t willing to take that chance. N-Not that they actually thought Lady Toriel would do such a thing! Of course not! But that didn’t stop the thought from being there…

Oh… where was the human?

There were so many places they could be, and everywhere in these woods looked the same to them. They wished the snow was still there, because then they could follow their footprints.

But since the forest was so samey, they were instead following the trail. Hopefully they were sticking to the beaten path. Napstablook wasn’t holding their breath, though, and not just because they didn’t breathe.

The first sentry station was manned by the stargazer skeleton again. He was asleep, but he must have been feeling better than last time, since he jerked awake as Napstablook approached.

“snrk--ey.” He stretched in his seat and Napsta winced as his vertebrae clicked into place. “fancy seeing boo here. i really needed something to raise my spirits, so i’m glad you--” He broke off into a coughing fit.

Napstablook waited awkwardly until he stopped. “...are you… okay?”

“nah.” He grinned. “i’m bone-tired.”

“ha ha,” they said, politely.

“hmph.” The skeleton shrugged at the lackluster response. “tough crowd. hey, you want some soup?”

He reached under the station’s counter and pulled out a tall cylinder. And then kept pulling and pulling until the thermos was taller than he was before he was finally able to put it on top of the counter.

Napstablook eyed it, vaguely confused. “...uh…”

“yeah, i dunno where he finds these things. half-convinced he’s making them himself.” Another shrug, and he swung the thermos around to pour it into a cup. By all rights it should have banged against the wall, but it simply did not.

Napstablook accepted the cup without enthusiasm, but only because they didn’t have any. The skeleton watched them, grinning, as they took a sip. It was uncomfortably hot, but aside form that it was okay.

The skeleton looked surprised. “you, uh… how’d you like it?”

“it’s… nice?” The lie burned worse on their tongue than the soup did. “sorry. i can only taste ghost food…”

For some reason, the admission made the sentry relax, and he nodded to himself. “that makes more sense. name’s sans.” He held out his hand, and Napstablook gave him the cup back. “no, that’s not… nevermind.” He coughed again, and settled back into his chair. “so, what brings you out here? i know waterfall’s going through it right now, but i havent seen you around snowdin before.”

“uh. um. i’m looking for someone…” Oh no… They couldn’t say they were looking for a human, could they? That was probably a bad idea.

Sans gave them a curious look. “oh yeah? Who--”

“SANS!”

Napstablook flinched, but Sans just grinned and propped his chin up on his hand. “hey bro.”

Papyrus stomped the ground. “SANS, WHY ARE YOU INSISTING ON WORKING WHILE SICK? YOU HAVE EVERY EXCUSE TO SLACK OFF AND IT IS NOW THAT YOU CHOOSE TO WORK?!”

“what can i say?” Sans paused, looked to the side, and then said. “seriously, what can i say, i kind of blanked there.”

The taller skeleton sighed, pinched the bridge of his nosehole. “SANS, IT WORRIES ME. YOU ARE UNWELL, AND NOT UP TO YOUR NORMAL, ALREADY QUESTIONABLE STANDARDS. EVEN YOUR JOKES ARE LACKING!”

Sans blinked. “...did you just admit my jokes are usually funny?”

“I DID NO SUCH THING.” Papyrus slammed a hand on the counter. “NOW, WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE TO GET YOU IN A PROPER BED?”

“you could let me bring it to my station.”

“SANS!”

“oh…”

“OH?” Papyrus rubbed his eye sockets and squinted, staring directly through Napstablook. He leaned forward, rubbing his chin. “HMMMMMMM…”

Napstablook felt a bead of ectoplasmic sweat run down their back as this happened, confused and uncomfortable with the situation.

Sans’ eye-light flicked between them for a moment, before he coughed and said. “take a step forward, bro.”

Papyrus did so, taking a sharp step that brought his chest right up against Napstablook’s face, and the ghost flinched back. At this, finally, Papyrus’s eyes widened and he gave a shout of surprise.

“AH, NAPPER SPOOK!”

“its napstablook--”

“I THOUGHT I SAW SOMEONE THERE, BUT YOU WERE TOO INVISIBLE TO MAKE OUT.”

Were they? They didn’t think they were, but they put some effort into being opaque just in case.

“heh.”

“IT IS WONDERFUL TO SEE YOU AGAIN! ...IS THE SMALL MONSTER ALSO AROUND AGAIN?” he asked hopefully.

“oh… no… im looking for them too…” Papyrus’s face fell, and Napstablook felt themselves tear up in sympathy. “oh no… i disappointed you, im sorry…”

“AH! NEVER FEAR, MY SPOOKY FRIEND! THE GREAT PAPYRUS IS IMMUNE TO SUCH TRIFLING WOES! MY COOL FRIEND WILL SIMPLY HAVE TO MEET UP WITH ME SOME OTHER TIME.”

“oh…

Sans blinked, sitting up. “wait, hold on. pap, you made a friend?”

“SOME DAYS AGO, AS I PREVIOUSLY SAID!” Papyrus confirmed. Then he frowned. “DIDN’T I? I COULD HAVE SWORN…”

“i musta been out of it,” Sans said. “i doubt you woundn’ta said something. huh.” He grinned, looking vaguely proud. “good for you, bro.”

“YES, IT IS VERY GOOD FOR ME, AND VERY GOOD FOR THEM, TO BE FRIENDS WITH SOMEONE AS GREAT AS MYSELF. NYEH HEH HEH!” He struck a pose, and the wind swept up to make his small cape billow heroically. “THEY DID NOT OFFER THEIR NAME YET, BUT I AM CERTAIN THEY WILL IN TIME. I AM NOT SURE WHAT TYPE OF MONSTER THEY ARE, THOUGH. PERHAPS SOME TYPE OF POTATO PERSON?”

To their own surprise, Napstablook couldn’t help but snort at that description. Unfortunately, this reminded the brothers that they were there and put the ghost under Papyrus’s full attention again, which was daunting.

“OH NO! I’M SORRY, GHOST FRIEND. I HAVE BEEN MOST RUDE! YOU WERE SAYING--” Papyrus stopped, his mouth dropping in realization. “...YOU ARE LOOKING FOR THE POTATO MONSTER. ARE THEY LOST?”

They shrank back in the face of his exuberance; it was a little too much for Napstablook to handle.

“whoa, it’s okay bud,” Sans said, holding his hand up in a placating gesture. A flash of blue magic moved Papyrus back a few feet out of the ghost’s personal space. The taller skeleton yelped in surprise but didn’t resist. “it’s all good. now is this kid alright?”

“...they live in the ruins but they left without telling their… guardian, and she’s worried. she sent me to find them…”

Papyrus gasped, while Sans’ eyesockets narrowed. “NEVER FEAR, NAPPER--NAPSTABLOKE--”

“blook”

“APOLOGIES. Ahem. NEVER FEAR, NAPSTABLOOK! THIS RESCUE MISSION IS GUARANTEED SUCCESS, NOW THAT THE GREAT PAPYRUS IS ON THE CASE! NYEH HEH HEH! RIGHT, SANS?”

“hmm.” Unseen by either of them, Sans’s eye flashed. “Hmm,” he said again, brow furrowed. Then he appeared to relax. “you betcha, papyrus. you’ll find’em in no time.”

“NYEH HEH HEH! I WILL!”

And then he was gone, skidmarks in the dirt where he had been standing.

“heh. my bro is so cool.”

“...ha ha…”

“welp.” Sans stood, wincing as his joints popped. “i guess i’ll search too. don’t know what i’m looking for, but i’m sure its fine. good luck, spooky.”

He stepped out the door of his sentry station, and failed to emerge out the other side.

Napstablook was alone. “oh…”

Well… Guess they… kept looking. Napstablook turned around and started retracing their steps.

And then Papyrus came tearing back up the trail, hooked his arm around Napstablook, and swept them along. “COME, GHOST FRIEND! WE’LL SWEEP THE WOODS TOGETHER!

“AGH! I… oh no…!”

---------------------------------

Napstablook

HP: 84/88/4

Knows something.

Sans hummed to himself. Suspiciously vague.

Also, what was up with that red number?

Hm.

check

hp: .9/1/.1

Sans couldn’t move his mouth to frown, but his eyes lidded slightly. “huh. wonder what that means.”

-----------------------------------

Snowdin Forest - Vault 66 Reactor Wing

Flowey was sulking, Frisk thought.

If they were honest with themselves, the reactor wasn’t an unreasonable thing to worry about, but being hysterical wasn’t going to help anything.

You’re a weird kid, Frisk.

It was a daunting task, but they weren’t planning to repair the thing. There was no point since the vault was all broken up. No, all they needed to do was shut it off, and hopefully that would at least keep things from getting worse.

Though Frisk still expected that to be easier said than done. None of the computers in that first room had a convenient “shut down the reactor” button, so the only thing they could do was keep looking. So they were walking down the hall, exploring every room they came across and looking for anything that could be--

Frisk stopped with one foot in the air, pausing in the doorway. They stared at the room’s contents with wide eyes.

Most of the rooms weren’t well furnished. The vault was never finished, after all, and so only had the bare minimum in the way of furniture. What was there was typically bolted down. Those tables and computers were never meant to be moved. Frisk hadn’t really noticed the chairs much, but they had been tossed all over the place by the fall and ranged from mildly dented to being so mangled from their ordeal that Frisk could only recognize them as chairs because they were the same color as the others.

Those second ones weren’t very common, but there was more than one of them.

This room had evidently been one of the more furnished. The one table was still bolted down, but it had been bent nearly in half by the filing cabinet that had fallen directly on top of it. Papers were strewn everywhere because the cabinet’s drawers had all escaped it. The sole computer in the room was destroyed, its screen shattered by the can of water that had been flung into it. A lounge chair had been flipped with such force that the back had broken off. There was even a minifridge. It seemed like someone had spent a lot of time here during construction, enough time that they’d already started making the space their own.

And whoever that person was, they were still here.

“Hey, what’s the holdup?” Flowey complained, popping his head out of the bag. “Are we stopping this or n--oh, hey, that’s different.”

Frisk didn’t think they appreciated the wonder in his voice.

The person under the fridge, spine bent at a sickening angle, was thin and haggard and their skin clung to the bone like the world’s most awful shrink wrap. They--It--had shriveled up. Their eyes were gone, a pair of broken glasses on the floor nearby. They looked dry, and Frisk was suddenly reminded of a brief obsession Kris had with mummies, both in moves and in real life. More than a few dinners had gone uneaten because Kris was explaining about dead bodies. But thinking about Kris and dead bodies at the same time was very distressing at the moment, so Frisk elected to turn away and pretend the mummy wasn’t there.

Weren’t dead bodies supposed to smell? How did it still only smell like floor wax in here?

Flowey had other priorities. “So, that’s what happens to dead humans, huh? Wow. You guys get ugly.”

“Shut up.”

“Monsters get off easy, they just turn to dust. Although I guess this guy’s working on it, just really slowly.”

“Shut up.” Frisk reached back and swatted blindly, failing to hit anything. “There’s nothing there!”

“Yes there iiiiiisss~” Flowey sing-songed. His incongruous cheer was getting on their nerves, so they distracted themself by picking up the papers on the ground. They weren’t going anywhere near the thing that they were pretending didn’t exist, but there were still plenty of documents around.

Hey, that looks important. Look here.

Frisk glanced down at the sheet on top of their little stack. The title jumped out at them.

Vault-Tec Nuclear Power Technician, Employee Manual

Their eyes widened, and they scanned through it.

Frisk was a smart child, but they were still only a child, and had been mostly home-schooled. There were a lot of big words in the document that they didn’t know and couldn’t pronounce, and to make matters worse they hadn’t managed to aimlessly pick up papers in numerical order.

Luck check: 9. Failed.

Flowey got bored looking at the corpse and leaned over their shoulder. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

Frisk held it up for him, and he scanned through it. Very quickly his face fell into a focused grimace, eyes moving back and forth, and a few vines came up to pull it out of their hands and flip though the sheaf of papers himself.

“...thorium… oh, so that’s… jeez, why would they… What idiots, it looks like they actually built this thing to suffer regular faults for some reason.”

That didn’t make sense, but Frisk was focused on other things right now. “Anything about how to turn it off?”

Flowey flipped through again. “...Ooh, we’re in luck! This room is the control center, and it’s all controlled from that computer there.”

They turned to look at the computer, with its screen caved in by canned water.

“...” Flowey chuckled nervously. “Hey, you wanna… leave? Maybe I’ll survive if I’m at the opposite end of the Underground.”

Frisk walked over anyway. The computer was as destroyed as it looked, with its tubes mostly shattered from the can rattling around inside it. The can of pure water was mostly intact itself, though, so Frisk pocketed it.

You picked up PureWater.

When they pulled it out of the monitor, the can thumped against something, and the holotape drive rattled and spat a little orange card out onto the floor.

It had a blue ‘66’ on one side, molded into the plastic. On the other, ‘I.T. worklog’ was scribbled in black marker. Frisk wasted no time in inserting into their Pip-boy. The screen lit up and said ‘Dr. Irene Thomasson - Worklog 4/28/2076’ before the player clicked on.

“...stupid lights, flickering--why did they have to set up the experimental procedures so early? It’s hard enough working here without all the--oh, it’s recording, damnit.”

A woman’s voice, young-sounding, filtered through the little computer’s speaker, filled the room, startling Flowey and commanding Frisk’s full attention.

She cleared her throat. “It’s been three weeks since they dug into that cave system. Really freaking big one. We got some SaLTS in to map them out, but none of them worked. Kept returning garbage data the so-called expert couldn’t use. Damn Ralph. I told him speleology was a useless field, and now I’m proven right, you had one job--anyway.”

There was a quiet hum, and then a thud cut it off.

“God, I wish they’d let me drink. But no, the reactor needs constant supervision~. These things practically run themselves, but no, this one needs someone to tell it not to break once a week. They’re paying me to sit on my ass and press the ‘n’ key once a week. I went to college for eight years for this!”

“*sigh* I don’t know why I’m making these. Must be bored, I guess. All I need to do is sit here, go to the reactor core once a day to make sure the kill switch hasn’t been touched--as if we wouldn’t know--and that’s… sigh.”

“The Overseer is nuts. This isn’t what I was expecting when I was assigned to a Vault. I thought they were run on a tight ship, but the jackass is more interested in that stupid hole in the floor than in running this place. I feel bad for the poor schmucks who are going to live here.”

“...Oh fuck, wait, that’s me. Damnit! AND THESE FREAKING LIGHTS KEEP FLICKERING, WHOSE IDEA WAS THAT?”

Frisk jumped at the sudden shout. Flowey just smirked. “I think I like her. Too bad she’s dead. That’s an orange SOUL, I’d bet anything.”

“...Maybe I can get transferred to a different vault. Maybe one that actually has a real use for a nuclear safety inspector.”

The tape clicked to an end, and Frisk stowed it away in their bag. Then, keeping their gaze away from the corner of the room, they turned on their heel and marched out of the room.

“L-Let’s find that killswitch and then we can get out of this c-creepy place.”

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Flowey agreed. “Hey, can I take this water? Ha, I’m kidding, I’m taking it anyway. Bye, lady!” he called as they left the room. Frisk scowled.

--------------------

The reactor core was at the center of this section of the Vault. Frisk knew this because the Pip-boy’s map was filling in as they walked, and it could see through walls a little; they could tell when there was a hall or a room they couldn’t see nearby, and the wall opposite the corpse’s room had a really, really big room on the other side of it. The tricky part was finding the way in.

According to Flowey, it would be stupid for there to only be one way into the power supply, but Frisk wasn’t so sure. If there was one thing every child in America knew, it was that a nuclear meltdown was bad news. Kris once mentioned a meltdown drill the school ran, where if anything bad happened to the generator in the basement, the most important thing to do after evacuating was to seal off the affected area until the specialists could arrive to fix things. If that was how it was supposed to be, then maybe it would be safe to only have one entrance, so it could be sealed easily if there was a disaster?

Either way, they hadn’t found it yet. The hall they were in now was in pretty bad shape; it looked like it had still been under destruction, and the fall had thrown everything everywhere. Loose bolts and pipes littered the ground, and a stepladder was bent out of shape on its side.

Flowey slapped their head with a vine. “Look, down there, idiot.”

Between the walkway and the pipe sections, a metal sign had gotten wedged into the grate. With Flowey’s help they were able to pull it out.

Power =>

Cafeteria ===>

<=== Security =>

<= Maintenance 2

Frisk took a minute to parse that, then oriented themselves so that the sign in their hands had the Maintenance arrow pointing back the way they’d come.

“W-Well. That’s… simple enough.”

“Why would they put that in the middle of the halle instead of at a fork?!” Flowey growled. “Frisk this place is stupid.”

thunk

thunk

They froze. The lights flickered, almost in time with the sound echoing down the halls. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. A plodding, heavy rhythm that filled the space; an oddly familiar rhythm, actually, Frisk thought, but the metallic screech that followed interrupted that thought.

Frisk broke into a run down the hall, towards where they assumed the reactor was. The hall turned directly into a four-way intersection, and the last thunk echoed away into the distance.

Perception check: 3. Pass! Take some points.

Frisk looked around, trying to find the source of the sounds, but whatever it was was gone. They did, however, see the three long scratches in the wall to the east. Close together, all pointed in the same direction. Claw marks.

They might have missed them if they weren’t on the lookout, but now they might as well have glowed in the dark.

Hm.

Frisk pulled up their Pip-boy once more, and refocused on the geiger counter. It’d still been steadily clicking away, but at this point they’d stopped noticing it. Now however they would pay attention.

To the north, west, and back south the way they came, the clicks barely shifted, but to the east it suddenly spiked.

“This way.”

“That way?” Flowey parroted. “In the direction the scrapes are pointing?”

Frisk didn’t answer, marching ahead.

“Of course. Naturally. You know, if you’re so eager to get killed, could you at least wait until I'm not attached to you?”

Frisk broke out into a sprint, because the thunking was back and behind them this time.

Left, away from the mysterious sound. Right, following another set of scratches. Straight, past a series of doors that were never even built, just dirt on the other side.

You know what, I’m with the flower. This layout is stupid. You ask me, I’d have put the safety inspector next to the core room. Maybe even in it, not a mile away.

When they finally reached it, they almost ran right past it, because it was just a normal looking door with no signage or anything. Across from it was a security station. Frisk wouldn’t have looked twice and might have gotten even more thoroughly lost if it hadn’t been for the way the geiger counter squealed when they passed by.

They skidded to a stop and took a moment to catch their breath.

Flowey blinked, black-faced. “I have a question.”

Frisk looked over their shoulder, but whatever was chasing them had lost interest for now since they couldn’t hear it--or it was being quiet on purpose to get close, but don’t think about that.

“It’s just, I was thinking. Since that thing on your wrist detects radiation, and it’s been leading us here… What’s going to happen when you--”

Frisk opened the door, only half-listening, and then immediately double over, feeling ill.

-5

It was even kind of hard to see. The rads were doing something to their eyes, and it hurt. The Pip-boy was screaming at them, making it hard to hear Flowey’s own shouts of pain. The stick fell out of their hands as they reached up to cover their face.

Without much in the way of rational thought driving their action, Frisk pulled the sweater they got from Toriel up over their face, leaving only their hair exposed. And bizarrely, this worked.

LuvSweat - 5 DEF. Apparently also +10 Rad Resistance.

Made with love in every stitch, and also magic from Toriel’s shed fur.

It still hurt, and their stomach was turning flips, but they could think again, and also see through the fabric a little, so Frisk dropped the bag holding Flowey and charged in, face set in determination.

And then they ran back to knock on the stick thrice before running in again.

…Luck +1 (Ten minutes).

HP: 28/35/7

The room was big, and full of machines. Mostly big computer consoles all built into the walls. The screens were mostly off, and the ones that were on were fuzzy from the rads floating around. The center of the room was dominated by a pair of huge metal balls with a narrow catwalk between them. Several of the pipes leading in and out of them were bent, twisted, or broken off, with vibrant blue liquid dripping out of one.

HP: 26/35/9

Everything itched, but they didn’t have time for that. Ignore how red their skin was getting, what was here, what was here?

A gauge’s needle was pointing in the orange. Not quite critical but definitely not good. Another next to it was dead, needle not even twitching and at rest on the left. Since the green marking was in the middle of the gauge, that probably was also not good.

Killswitch. What did a killswitch look like? A button? A knife switch? Screen input? Frisk hoped not, not of the screens were on.

HP: 21/35/14

They could barely see anything through the sweater! What were they going to do? They needed to throw up, but they hadn’t eaten non-monster food in weeks. There wasn’t anything to throw up, but the urge was still there.

One screen was in fact working, and they found it in the corner of the room. It was glitching in and out, but what Frisk could see told them that there were two main problems. First was that the reserve of coolant was running low and had been functioning at half capacity. The second was that the pipe pulling the nuclear byproduct out of the reactor cores wasn’t connected to anything; Frisk figured it was being dumped directly into the earth below.

HP: 13/35/22

It was kind of hard to breathe, now, and Frisk was starting to panic. They were just thinking that maybe they should book it out of the room and try again later when they were better prepared like they probably should have in the first place when they ran smack into a metal column. It was a little taller than them, and atop it sat a box with a single, excessively large lever with a red rubber handle.

Frisk stared dumbly at it. It wasn’t labeled, because nothing in this godforsaken vault was labeled, but that looked like a killswitch if ever they saw one.

They had to jump to reach it, and their full sixty pounds weren’t enough to drag it down on its own, so they had to brace their legs against the column and pull with as much might as their little body could muster.

Strength check: 5. Fail… oh boy.

“Flowey!” Frisk yelled. “I need help!”

But nobody came.

HP: 8/35/27

Frisk heaved, bouncing up and down, pulling and pulling and swinging and pulling…

The lever wasn’t budging, but Frisk grit their teeth and p u l l e d.

Luck Determination check: 8. Pass!

The level jolted in place, and Frisk fell on their behind on the floor, and the hum of machines that had been so omnipresent it had barely been noticeable cut out. The intake pipes on top of the cores clanged, and one cavitated and popped off, crashing to the floor.

And finally, the light cut out, leaving them in pitch blackness.

The screeching of the geiger counter died down. Not to nothing, but to at least a much calmer click, and Frisk… still felt awful, but the itchiness went away.

Thirty seconds later, the emergency lights came on, and Frisk could almost see what was going on.

---------

“Friiiiiiisk?” Flowey called, and Frisk groaned. What now?

Aching and wobbly, they got to their feet and went to retrieve their things and Flowey. “W-what’s wrong?”

Flowey looked about as bad as Frisk felt, down to two petals that made it look like he had mouse ears, his stem all brown. Despite that, he managed to point a root down the hall, the way they had come.

Wreathed in the red lights was a rough humanoid figure. A single glowing eye peered at them from the center of its oddly-shaped (familiar) head.

It thunked towards them.

“Hsssssssssssss…” it said, voice crackling. It raised its claws and scraped them against the wall as it ever. So. Slowly. Approached…

…And Frisk couldn’t really find it in them to be afraid. Loox were also big cyclopses, and they were just goofy. And now that they could see it and its silhouette, they knew why the sound of it walking was so familiar.

“...It’s just a Protectron.” They were almost disappointed that they’d been scared of it.

“A w-w-what?” Flowey stammered weakly.

“A service robot.” Frisk picked up their stick and walked over, tapping it against the robot’s side. Then, they remembered the flashlight function on their wrist computer, and lit up the hallway in a cool green light.

It looked ridiculous. It might be scary if you only caught glimpses of it, but the Protectron’s ‘costume’ looked like something out of one of those cheesy B-movies Kris liked.

“Hey, can you talk?” they asked. The robot stopped and slowly turned to look at them, clearly unable to cope with them not running away. They stared at each other for a long few moments before it apparently gave up and walked away, slowly.

“Robots.” Flowey sounded incredulous, as Frisk gathered him up and started following the map back to the entrance. “You’ve got robots on the surface?”

“We did, yeah,” Frisk said absently, focused on the map. “The museum had one named Hawk that I was friends with. It looks like this one doesn’t have personality programming, though.”

“You have sentient robots?” Flowey asked again. “Since when?”

“Since forever? I don’t know.”

Flowey grumbled, not having the energy to sputter.

They left the Protectron behind pretty quickly, walking ahead of it.

“....” Its speaker hissed again in a half-hearted attempt at frightening them again, before falling silent.

They turned the corner ahead of it, and Frisk grimaced as their stomach turned again. “K-Keep an eye out f-for any--ugh--any medkits. White boxes with crosses on them. I n-need Radaway bad.”

“...Do you think it’ll work on me?”

“Uh. You’re supposed to take it as a shot, but we can see if watering you with it works--”

The repeated thunking behind them stopped abruptly, and they cut themselves off. Curious, Frisk turned back to see why it had stopped, and saw that the robot was gone. Vanished into thin air.

The two of them stared at where it should have been.

“...Let’s get out of here,” Flowey said seriously.

“Yes.”

------------------------------------

Snowdin Forest

The first sign that something was wrong was when Napstablook’s body turned… fuzzy. The hard and defined edges of their ghostly form suddenly became… not that. It was like looking at them through frosted glass.

-2

Also: ow. The ghost didn’t seem enthused by it either.

“WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS THAT?” Papyrus asked, wincing.

Napstablook’s eyes were wide and frightened. “oh no… oh noooo…”

The second sign that something was wrong was when they actually found Papyrus’s friend, and also Flowery, who was also Papyrus’s friend! At first, this had seemed like a good thing, until they actually saw them. Poor Flowery! Poor other monster! They looked terrible!

“WOWEE! YOU LOOK TERRIBLE!” he said, because they looked terrible. “WHAT WERE YOU TWO DOING THAT DID THIS TO YOU?!”

Flowery scoffed, trying to look cool and failing badly. Papyrus should know, as he is an expert on cool! But Flowery looked far too ill to be anything but pitiful. “Oh, you know, just saved Snowdin from an ecological disaster. No big deal. You’re welcome.”

Papyrus blinked, and set the ghost down in midair. “WOW! I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS BUT IT SOUNDS IMPORTANT! GOOD JOB, FLOWERY AND FRIEND!”

“My name is Flowey.”

“AH! SORRY!”

The little monster coughed wetly, and Papyrus froze.

“C-Can, uh… do either of you know h-how to give a shot?”

Papyrus pointed at them. “OF COURSE! THE GREAT PAPYRUS IS WILLING TO GIVE ANYTHING A SHOT AT LEAST ONCE! BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY, YOU! YOU TWO HAVE CONTRACTED SANS’S ILLNESS! THIS IS TERRIBLE!”

“Oh, uh… maybe?” The child exchanged a look with Flowey, who did not shrug because he was a plant with no arms but his facial expression nevertheless conveyed the action of shrugging. “But it’s fine, because--”

“Lady Toriel.” The ghost spoke quietly, but they reminded Papyrus of what he was doing.

“RIGHT!” He scooped the child up into his arms. “YOUR GUARDIAN IS EAGERLY AWAITING YOUR RETURN. FOR SHAME, YOUNG MONSTER!”

For reasons Papyrus couldn’t fathom, the little monster looked guilty at that, while Flowey looked smug. Weird!

-----------------

The third and final clue that something was wrong was when they met the strange, beardless Asgore-woman at the hole in the Ruins wall, and she thanked him for not turning the human in.

It was very confusing, because there had not been a human present, and she gave him a strange look when he said as much. People often gave him that look, and it usually meant that he was the one who had said something odd.

But he did not bother to puzzle through this conundrum, for he had to bid his friends goodbye first, and then bask in the satisfaction of a job well done.

It was only after Papyrus was home, checking up on Sans and pouring him a pitcher of spaghetti that the three clues coalesced together, and Papyrus realized what was wrong.

His friend… Their guardian was a Boss Monster! Was he friends with royalty?!

Sans jerked awake when his brother suddenly cackled in the kitchen. He was glad he was happy.

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Quest completed: This Is Rad

You leveled up! (Lvl. 5)

One Action Point is available.

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