Chapter Text
Doors swung open, slowly closed, and were pushed open again before they could shut completely as monsters spilled out of the movie theater. The sidewalk rapidly became a crowded mess with dozens of conversations overlapping each other. The addition of two more monsters and a dog barely registered to anyone.
“Best. Special Effects. Ever.”
The cat monster shook his head, looking around for any authority figures as he pulled a crumbled box of cigarettes from his pocket.
“I’m telling you Azzy, I saw a human hand on that raptor when the door opened just before the kitchen scene.”
“Okay, even if that was true, which I’m not sure you didn’t make up, the rest of the movie was fantastic. It’s hard to tell where the animatronics stop and the CGI starts.”
“Well of course you’d give it a pass, Asriel. You love dinosaurs so much you’ll probably marry one.”
“Hey, I have other interests. I like space stuff, that doesn’t mean I’m going to marry a rocket ship.”
“But if you did, you could go on a honey-moon.”
“Do you have to suck the life out of every single thing that other people enjoy?”
The cat monster shrugged. “No, it’s just a perk. It’s getting late, I better get home and start dinner. See you at school tomorrow.”
“Right. See ya.”
The goat monster waved as his friend walked down the sidewalk, then turned to the small white dog standing nearby.
“Well boy, I guess we better get home before mom freaks out and calls Undyne on us again.”
The dog yipped in apparent agreement, and started to trot down the street as Asriel followed.
“Do you remember last time? Ten minutes. Ten. Lousy. Minutes. And the police cruiser shows up out of nowhere, lights flashing and siren on. I actually thought we were going to get arrested for littering or something. Which, if we had, would have been YOUR fault-”
The dog, either not understanding or not caring to listen to the monster’s reminiscence, suddenly took off across the street, barking excitedly.
“What the-! Toby! TOBY!” Asriel sprinted across the street, dodging cars that slammed on both brakes and horn at his sudden appearance. “TOBY STOP!”
Toby the dog did not stop; hopping over obstacles and winding through narrow spaces, fences and alleyways, the dog ran like the proverbial wind, forcing the goat monster to follow, bumping into and stumbling over many of those same obstacles.
“TOBY CUT IT OUT!”
After climbing several fences and leaving the pavement of the town for grass, and running long enough to form a stitch in one side, Asriel almost fell to the ground in front of a smiling, sitting dog, who was panting heavily but also had the dopey smile of a Good Boy expecting a treat.
“You… you are… a shitty… shitty dog...”
Toby barked happily, and then proceeded to trot away from Asriel.
“No… we’re not doing… this again.” Asriel slowly walked after the dog, clutching one side of his chest. “Ow, ow...”
It took a moment for Asriel to realize that Toby had dragged him south of town, and was rolling around on the grass growing on top of… well, Asriel didn’t know what it was beyond the fact that his parents and teachers had told him not to play around it. A mound of earth with grass growing over concrete, and doors that were more rust than anything else.
“Well… this brings back memories. Remember when I borrowed dad’s shovel, and me and Temmie and Burgie tried to break in here because we thought there was buried treasure in there, because pirates always buried treasure underground? And I lost the shovel and had to go all over town doing odd jobs to pay for the new one? And of course Temmie and Burgie got off with a slap on the wrists...”
Asriel sighed and watched as Toby rolled off the edge of the grass and down the side of the little hill.
“Alright, you’ve had your fun, and I’ve had my exercise, now let’s go home before mom calls the national guard.”
The dog yipped again and ran down to the tree line south of the clearing, pawing at the trunk of one of the trees.
“Don’t tell me you came all the way down here after a squirrel,” Asriel muttered as he walked towards the dog. Toby stopped pawing at the tree and trotted over to Asriel, sitting down and wagging his tail.
“Oh sure, now you’re all fun and friendly, hoping I’ll forget all the bad stuff you put me through. Come on, let’s-”
Before Asriel could finish, Toby darted around him, and Asriel turned to follow the dog with his eyes… just in time to see the dog vanish through open doors, with the banging of metal that had to be paws against a metal staircase.
“...what the hell?”
Asriel slowly walked towards the doorway, eyes darting around the unfamiliar details. The doors opened inward, and there was an unlit incandescent light bulb suspended from a fixture just inside, covered in so many cobwebs that it might as well have been lit anyway for all the good it would have done. Yet there seemed to be light from below, along with… some sort of sound. Like an engine or some other machine.
Another series of barks, this time echoing, snapped Asriel out of his indecision. Slowly, he stepped inside, half expecting the doors to slam shut as soon as he was clear.
They did not, and the monster slowly made his way down a short staircase, into what looked like a hallway. Light bulbs, some of them still lit, sat in protective metal cages jutting out from above the doors in the hallway, some of which were closed and others of which were wide open, or fallen completely off their hinges. Boxes were stacked haphazardly against the walls, some stained by water damage, and the whole room was coated in a thick layer of dust, except for the tiny paw prints on the floor. From somewhere up ahead, Asriel heard Toby sneeze, and partly out of sympathy, partly out of the dust floating in the air, Asriel sneezed too.
“What the… what is this place? What was this place?”
Slowly, the goat monster walked forward, ears straining for any sound that might have been made, if not by him then by anything else that might be lying in wait. Open and closed doors alike caused him to hesitate, guessing at the risks, but his dog was still somewhere ahead and so he carefully persisted.
One room was very obviously a washroom; the sink and the toilet kind of gave it away. Another was lined with what looked like wires and breaker boxes. An overturned sheet metal filing cabinet blocked one open doorway, with the ruined door beneath it on the floor, and beyond it Asriel could see open shelves filled with cardboard boxes and another filing cabinet.
Other doors were closed, and Asriel did not feel willing to tempt fate by trying to open them to see what was inside.
At the end of the hallway was another pair of double doors, and the small paw prints that Asriel had been following lead right to the crack in between them. There was definitely light beyond them, and the sounds of machinery were louder than they had been; whatever was making them was probably on the other side.
Asriel licked his lips and tried to call for his dog, but nothing came out. Slowly, he pushed open one door…
“...whoa.”
It was massive. That was the first, most important impression that Asriel got from the machine. It was covered in giant vacuum tubes and Tesla coils, Jacob’s ladders and oscilloscopes, pressure gauges and volt meters and levers and buttons and lights and basically every Mad Scientist Movie Set Asriel had ever seen, rolled into one massive piece of hardware. For some reason he looked around, expected to see a table covered in chemistry glassware and filled with a rainbow of different colored liquids, or an old reel-to-reel computer tape drive.
There were, in fact, other tables and desks and workbenches in the room, some covered with papers and books, others with tools and tubes and wire and screws. Asriel walked over to one of the tables, wiped the dust away from some of the papers, and shook his head; they were pages of mathematical calculations that looked everything like they belonged on a professor’s chalkboard, but nothing like what he was familiar with in math class.
A barking noise from behind him causes Asriel to flinch and drop the papers, which scattered over the floor.
“Toby! Where are you?!” Asriel spun around to see the dog sitting down next to the massive machine, panting and wagging his tail. “What did you even find? Come on, we’re gonna be late as it is-”
Before Asriel could finish speaking, there was a loud clunking noise, and the machine began to light up. Fans slowly started to spin, metal inside the vacuum tubes started to glow, and the air was torn apart by electrical sparks.
“Shit! Toby, come on! We’re getting outta here!” Asriel sprinted towards the doors, pushed one open, and looked back to make sure Toby was following.
The dog was not following. Toby seemed utterly oblivious to the events going on around him, and Asriel said a word that his mother would absolutely beat him within an inch of his life if she heard pass from his mouth. Turning around, Asriel sprinted towards Toby, arms outstretched to grab him and carry him away from danger-
“...are you awake?”
“Nnf.” Asriel groaned, opened one eye a fraction, and regretted the choice instantly.
“Oh God my head.”
“It looks like you landed very hard.”
“Huh?”
“When you were transported. If I may ask, what is your name?”
“My… name…” Asriel’s head throbbed a little less, and he risked opening his eye again; somebody was standing over him, looking down at his face. “Uh. My name is Asriel.”
The person looking down at him blinked and smiled; they had some brown hair on top of their head, but none on their face, and it took a moment for Asriel to recognize them as a human.
“Asriel, you say? That is a nice name. Greetings, Asriel. I am Chara.”
“Hi, Chara. Uh. I don’t suppose you happened to see my dog? He was right next to me when… when whatever it was happened?”
“I just got here myself. The security sensors were activated earlier, but you were the only one on the landing pad when I arrived.”
Asriel blinked, then covered his eyes with his hand for a moment. “Well, that figures. Look, as soon as I find him, I’ll get out of your hair. I didn’t mean to trespass, I just chased after my dog is all.”
“...I believe you. But unfortunately, events are out of my hands now. We need to get you out of here, before the doctor sees you. Can you stand?”
“I, uh.” Asriel pushed himself upright, leaning precariously a few times before he caught himself. “It looks like it.”
“Good. Take my hand."
The monster reached out and grasped the hairless fingers of Chara, and let himself be lead through a pair of double doors.
“Stay in here,” Chara said as they pushed Asriel through another doorway. “Do not make any sound, and above all else do not let the doctor see you.”
Chara vanished behind a the door slamming shut, and Asriel winced as the sound echoed inside of his head. Blinking some more, he looked around the room to see a number of tables, desks, workbenches and chairs covered in books and technological gadgetry in various stages of disassembly. His further inspection of the room was cut short by the sounds of footsteps outside of the door.
“Chara! Chara, where are you?!”
“Right here sir-”
“GAH! How many times have I told you not to sneak up on me?!”
“I have lost count.”
“As have I!” There was an exasperated noise. “I just double checked, there was a power draw from the CORE just before the motion sensors were activated. There must have been a transport from Hometown.”
“Agreed, but when I arrived, the landing pad was clear.”
“...clear?”
“It may have been an animal that wandered into the Bunker. A dog, or a cat, or possibly some wild animal like a raccoon or squirrel. Unfortunately, I did not see anything when I arrived, and if it was an animal, it left no tracks.”
“...plausible. It would surprise me very much if the Bunker was still properly sealed after this long. Yet if it is a dog, we must locate it at once, before it gets into anything sensitive or vital.”
“Understood. I will begin searching here.”
“Which will give you ample time to finish the task of cleaning up the offices and storeroom that you did not finish cleaning last week, correct?”
“I see that I can conceal nothing from you.”
There was a chuckling noise and a number of footsteps getting softer and softer… and then, abruptly, the door was opened to reveal Chara.
“Come on,” they snapped, grabbing Asriel’s hand and pulling him along the hallway. “We have to get you out of here right now.”
“Wait, who was that? Where is this? Where’s Toby?”
“It will take Doctor Gaster twenty two seconds to return to the control room. If you are still on this station by then he will see you on the cameras and we cannot let that happen.” Chara marched up the staircase at the end of the hallway, dragging Asriel upwards so quickly he almost stumbled three times. So quickly were they moving that Asriel barely had a chance to recognize that there was no open set of rusty double doors at the top of the staircase, but bright and shiny doors that slid open as Chara approached them.
In a split second, all of Asriel’s questions were annihilated by the vista before him. A vast panorama of stars above, a glowing blue planet below, and white clouds snaking their way across the surface of the world.
Asriel felt like he had stared at the image for several minutes before he felt Chara yank on his arm, pulling him down the corridor and away from the window.
“Is this your first time on a space station?”
“Space what? I’m in space? How did I get into space?! I was underground!”
“Yes, you were.” Chara dragged Asriel through another set of automatically opening doors and down another staircase and into another hallway. “And now you are in space. At least, for the next few moments.”
Chara pressed a button and a door on the side of the hallway slid open. Asriel barely had time to see a chair before Chara shoved him bodily into the seat.
“I will send your dog after you as soon as I can.”
“Wait, what-” Asriel’s question was cut off as the door was slammed on him. The lights cut out and a split second later, the space was lit up by small screens powering on. There was a beeping noise and a static-filled synthetic voice spoke.
“Escape Pod Zero-Zero-Four activated. To avoid catastrophic injury or death during atmospheric entry and landing, please fasten your safety belts. Have a nice day.”
Asriel had just enough time to reach for the black straps on the seat and click them together across his waist before the seat dropped out from beneath him, and his stomach climbed up to somewhere in the vicinity of his throat. Lights flashed. Alarms beeped. Numbers counted down or up or back and forth on readout. The seat underneath him shook and twisted several times, until with a final crash, everything went pitch black.