Underground True Lab
"Hey lizard, I brought you some new playmates!"
Alphys looked up from the large circuit board she was working on, a large bandage covering her right eye. "What do she want now?" she muttered to herself.
Chara came walking out of the elevator dragging a struggling burlap sack and an uprooted flower. "I found these two while I was out and about, and I thought you might like the company while you were working. We wouldn’t want you going stir crazy, after all; you're my only hope of finding that comedian!" She threw the sack at Alphys' feet and tossed the flower onto the table. "Happy belated birthday! Go ahead, open it up!" the child said with a sadistic grin.
Alphys set down the soldering iron on the table and reached down to open up the sack, curiosity overcoming her fear and hatred. That curiosity was quickly forgotten and replaced with shock when she undid the knot. A child, just barely still innocent, gagged and bound despite their lack of arms... "Monster Kid?!" She breathed out.
“What kind of name is ‘Monster Kid,’ anyway?” Chara scoffed. “That would be like calling me ‘Demon Kid.’ Who would do that?” They thought for a moment, before shaking their head. "I'm going to be out for a bit, get along you three! Don’t hurt each other too badly!" With that they went back into the elevator and returned upstairs.
Alphys quickly kneeled down and undid the knot keeping the monster child quiet and helped him out of the bag. "Are you alright?" Worry was evident in her eyes, although there were no visible marks.
"Yo..." Kid muttered weakly. “Why… why didn’t they kill me? They killed Undyne without a second thought… But why not me?”
"Guess they didn't see you as a threat and wanted to keep you alive,” the flower remarked snidely. “It’s not like you had any way of attacking them anyway, other than throwing yourself face first into their knife. Howdy, by the way." Struggling to push himself into a position where he could see what was going on around him, he continued his verbal assault.
Alphys looked over at the flower and noticed the bare roots, quickly rushing off to grab one of the extra pots from her previous experiments. When she returned she saw Monster Kid shakily standing up with Flowey talking to him.
"You do realize just how dead we are right?” Flowey chuckled, then laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh. “I thought I was her BEST FRIEND, and look where that got me. The only one safe here is Alphys, and that’s only a temporary thing. When Chara has her finish whatever they wants her to do she's just as dead as us. Oh, and speaking of us? We’re just down here for Chara's amusement. The SECOND we become boring to them, we’re free EXP. Now do you understand how dead we are, kid? REALLY dead."
"What else can we do about it? Undyne was the strongest monster down here and Chara just killed her like it was nothing. Nothing! How can we even hope to beat them?"
Alphys chose this moment to cut in. "I might have a plan, actually." Both Monster Kid and Flowey turned towards the former royal scientist as she walked up to Flowey and put him in the pot, much to the flower's annoyance. "I’m going along with what Chara wants me to do, which is building a portal to get to Sans. However, I'm going to use it to get us out of here. I was planning on building a time bomb to go off after we had left so Chara couldn’t follow, but I think they would notice that."
Flowey just rolled his eyes from his spot on the table. "That’s NOT going to work. Have you ever noticed that Chara has the strange ability to arrive just before you are going to do something that would set their plans behind?"
Alphys blinked, "Yes, I have. I just thought that it was bad luck on my part, why?"
"It wasn’t bad luck. ...Well, it is bad luck that she can do this, but not how…” Flowey shook his head in annoyance. “Bah, just listen. Chara has an ability that allows for her to reset from certain points in time. So there’s one timeline where you actually DID do that thing that you wanted to. But Chara saw what you did, and reset time, and came back before you did it to stop you, and all that. The same thing was happening with Undyne, every time she would be killed, rather than staying dead, Chara would just reset and come back with the knowledge of what Undye would do. If it looked like she knew what Undyne was about to do, that’s because she DID. I saw her do it. She must have died forty times before she finally got Undyne's number."
Alphys just put a hand to her partially covered face. "So that's what she meant by having had this conversation multiple times,” she sighed. “That doesn’t make any sense though, there have been a couple of times where I've been able to pull off some sabotage without Chara interfering. This requires some research."
Canterlot Castle, Medical Wing
Sans' soul hovered in front of him. "huh, this is interesting," he remarked. The soul hovering in front of him was cracked in multiple locations, only being glued together by thin lines of yellow magic. "i guess we now know where i got my green eye from, light-blue and yellow makes green. my soul is literally being held together by celestia's magic. i'm kinda glad that my soul isn't actually kindness now, i'd hate to give up my fantastic attitude."
Celestia looked at Sans, confusion written on her face. "What does that mean, exactly?” Seeing the blank look on the skeleton’s face, she continued. “You keep using these words to describe souls. Kindness, Justice... what are talking about when you refer to them?"
Sans looked up from his soul, "oh, each color soul means that you have a specific trait that stands out. a yellow soul means justice is your most prevalent trait. my light blue-ish soul means i have a soul of patience. of course, all monster souls are mostly grey, but we still have the faint sub-colors. purple is perseverance, green is kindness, blue is integrity, orange is bravery, and red is determination. it’s funny how blue mode still makes your soul blue though. kinda confused on how that works, probably the same way asgore can have blue and orange attacks. don't really matter right now, though i do wonder if i get some of your power. soul splits are known to do that sometimes. not quite the same thing, but eh.”
Sans then pulled his soul back inside himself and summoned a bone, "let’s test that theory out. i’m curious now." After summoning the bone he snapped his fingers and the bone glowed in a golden fire. Sans chuckled, not entirely surprised. "nice, sun bones. not really how i thought my magic would work, but it works with me. looks like i've got some fire power now." 'i wonder if i can use solar blasts in my gaster blasters now? that’s for testing whenever i get out of the hospital and i'm alone.'
Celestia looked in shock at the wounded skeleton. "My powers? But... What? How?" She spluttered out.
"i'm guessing your magic healing me is fusing with my soul, allowing for me to use some of your powers. i'm not gonna have all of your powers but at least some of the basics. or, you know, i could be completely wrong in that and i had the power of the sun- something i haven’t actually even seen in my home world, remember- for all my life and never found it in my years of study. but i think that last idea was the bare bones of a theory. guess we just need to do some research on what’s happening here."