//------------------------------// // Chapter 6 - Extraction Point // Story: Of Pony Princesses and Floral Friends // by SociallyAnxious247 //------------------------------// In a bright flash of light and a loud snap, Twilight appeared in front of the leafless tree. She took a deep breath. “F…Flowey?” she called. But nobody came. Flowey probably wasn’t home. That was fine, Twilight could just wait for him to come home. She shook her head and took a nervous step forward. Flowey would probably be fine with her waiting inside, right? She walked up to the door and, realizing it was slightly ajar, put her hoof on it. It drifted open, creaking loudly. As she stepped in, she heard noise from down a hallway to her right. She hadn’t been down there before, let alone really registered it as existing. She turned to walk down it reluctantly, already feeling like she was invading Flowey’s privacy, and approached the first door she saw. The noise seemed to be coming from the door she was in front of. She pressed her ear to the door to hear a little better, holding her breath. There was… some kind of talking- arguing, it seemed- and a sound she could only describe as whimpering. She was extremely hesitant to open the door, so she pressed her ear slightly harder against the door to hear what was being said. The door, not fully latched, came open and she fell to the floor. “What?!” Chara yelled irritably as she spun around. Twilight pushed herself up and looked around the room, tail tucked in shame and fear. “S-sorry, I just thought I heard shouting…” she mumbled meekly, not unlike Fluttershy. Frisk, standing next to Chara, held up a hand to silence the ghost and walked to Twilight, stroking her mane. The girl didn’t say anything, but guided Twilight to the bed, pointing at the person laying there. Twilight realized with a pang that it was Flowey who was making the whimpering noises. He was in his flower pot, sitting on the bed, doubled over, squirming very slightly, and sweating profusely. “What’s… happening?” she asked quietly. She made a movement to touch him, but Frisk held her hoof back, shaking her head. “His soul,” Chara said, floating beside her. “It is finally complete, but… I think he has too much determination for his body. Doctor Alphys is on her way.” “Is this… my fault…?” Twilight asked. Her eyes were welling up with tears already, legs shaking beneath her weight. “Probably not,” Chara answered. “No, I think it was mine, actually. I… talked to him this morning. The emotions he was feeling might have forced the soul to push for completion before it really should have. Either the trauma of having his soul back too early or the overload of determination caused him to be… like this. But we cannot know for sure until Doctor Alphys gets here.” As if on cue, Undyne burst into the room, carrying Alphys on her shoulder. The latter jumped down and rushed to Flowey. “O-oh… oh no…” she mumbled, already extremely nervous. “Speak of the devil,” Chara said. “What do you think, Doctor?” “He… he h-has too much determination i-in his b-b-body,” Alphys stuttered. “H-his soul must h-have st-started producing determination while he h-had the determination I g-gave him y-years ago… His s-soul doesn’t r-register the foreign DT, s-so it’s overloading him.” “How do we stop it from doing that?” Chara asked. “W-well… I’m not s-sure. B-but! If we c-can get him to m-my DT Extractor, I m-might be able to take the excess DT o-out of him. W-we need to hurry, th-though. I-I’m impressed he’s h-held on for this long.” “I can get him there in no time!” Undyne yelled. “I can get him there faster,” Twilight said, already charging her horn. “With everyone else.” She envisioned Alphys’ lab from what Sunset had shown her, then approximated the height and finally teleported everyone in the room there. “Get him to the True Lab!” Chara ordered, pointing to what appeared to be a bathroom. Undyne gladly obliged and grabbed Flowey by the pot, dashing through the door without waiting for it to open. Alphys led the way, her tiny legs carrying her body surprisingly fast, filling the dark, dirty hallways with the rapid pitter-patter of her padded feet hitting the metal floor. She turned a corner and almost slipped on some kind of white goop on the floor, but recovered quickly and showed them a strange looking device that seemed to be supported by several thick pipes attached to the ceiling. “Th-this is the DT Extractor!” she said, rushing to a tablet on the wall and pressing several buttons. A voice, probably coming from the tablet or some kind of PA system, said, “DT Extraction Machine, Status: Inactive. Requesting activation code.” Alphys tapped something in and a ding sounded out. “Welcome, Doctor Alphys. Status update: On Stand-by.” Alphys ran in front of the Extractor, a bridge to it extending as she stepped over the hole it was placed over. The two sides of the strange deer skull-like machine opened at her touch. Alphys grabbed a cylindrical glass container and put it under her arm. “Okay, put Flowey in the seat there,” she said, voice surprisingly stable under the pressure. As soon as Undyne put Flowey into the machine and moved out of the way, Alphys tapped a button on the tablet and the sides closed, obscuring Flowey from view. As she switched back to the main screen of the tablet, it said, “DT Extraction Machine, Status…” It paused for a minute as the data came back to it, causing a wave of anxious silence to fall over the small group, then, “Active.” Everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief. “That’s… a good thing, right?” Twilight asked. “Yes! As long as I can stop the extraction within a certain window,” Alphys said, “he will live. If I don’t, he might have a temporary DT deficiency. At the very worst- which, I can assure you, will not come to pass- it will take several years for him to fully regain his determination. The window is being calculated right now.” There was a silence that fell over them for a little while, then Alphys laughed. “Ah-ha! The window is calculated. If I stop the extraction in about… five minutes, he will have as close to perfect DT levels as we can hope for. I will set a timer.” Five minutes later, Alphys’ timer went off and she stopped the extraction. After warning everyone to stay a respectable distance away from the Extractor due to possible burns, she pressed the button to open the machine. The sides of the DT Extractor opened with a loud hiss, releasing billowing clouds of steam that were too thick to see through and a wave of scalding hot air. “Flowey?” Twilight called into the machine, leaning forward slightly and squinting at the steam as if that would help her see through it. Whatever response there was, if there was one, was drowned out by a loud, metallic crash as the pipes disconnected from the machine and hung limply by the sides. How the machine itself was being held up without the pipes, none of them- except maybe Alphys- knew. More steam came out of the disconnected pipes and the slots they went into. “Is that supposed to happen?” Chara asked nervously.