Royal Blue

The Only Easy Day is Yesterday (Chapter Sixteen)

Zero's scream.

It was a horrific thing to witness.
Shrill and overwhelming, it was the kind of sound that just reaches right into your brain and rips it apart.

Even now, nearly an hour later, it still echoed in Alphys's mind.
And, if she were honest, she still wanted nothing more than to... to just jump in a hole and pull the ground in over herself.
To curl up in a burrow somewhere and try to pretend none of this had happened.

To try to pretend that she hadn't just massively fucked up when toying with a monster's Soul.

Again.

Would she ever learn from her own mistakes?

Now here she was, the low, even beep of machines echoing within the damp walls of the lab, monitoring Zero's magical flux, monitoring everything she could bare to.
Just in case.

After the initial blur of panic, they'd managed to shut off that damned machine and move the armored monster, carefully, using Papyrus's blue magic, from the examination room to one of the several beds.

And now...
Now all they could do was wait.

Alphys had resigned herself to examining the results of the tests, trying to figure what little she could from the data she had; such as to make sure this whole thing wasn't just another failure, a waste of everyone's time and energy and faith in her.

She leafed through the results again and again, her brow furrowing further each time.
None of this was right... hell, it shouldn't even be possible.

His stats... over the few minutes she'd had an eye on them, had seemed to... fluctuate. Dramatically.

DEF, ATK, HP, even LV flickering somewhere between hundreds, and only one.

All of these numbers were incredibly concerning, though for wildly different reasons.

The only thing she could think to answer this would be the machine's malfunction, but... She'd expressed this confusion to Undyne earlier, and instead of the expected confusion, her girlfriend had only grimly nodded.
Then explaining her check during their 'sparring' earlier in the day.

Alphys grimaced at the notes that were slowly being engraved into her brain at how many times she'd read them over.
It didn't make sense.

It seemed no matter what they did, this whole thing just got stranger and stranger.

Undyne had decided to go upstairs to make tea; something to settle everyone's nerves. And returned only minutes later with the three mugs clinking in her hands.

Papyrus accepted his tea with a thankful nod, Alphys stuttering out her own thanks as they all settled to silence once more.

They all just sat together like that, watching Zero's chest-plate rise and softly fall. Fearing the unknown. Fearing that any moment, it would stop.

"DOCTOR ALPHYS...?" Papyrus asked, his posture still stiff.

"Y-Yes P-Papyrus?" Alphys asked with a slight startle, finally looking up from the papers. Undyne looked up.

"A-ARE YOU SURE THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO? CAN'T WE TRY TO HEAL HIM?" Papyrus asked, his hands folded in his lap, tight and neat.

Alphys ran a hand down her face, then adjusted her glasses.