No One is Happy with This (Undertale)

74 ~ Working Condition

February comes and goes, and March nearly draws to a close, and still you've made no progress on summoning your fauchard. You can't manage more than a few red sparks, much less summoning those ghostly red blades. Undyne insists you're not trying hard enough, but you think maybe you somehow broke it with that first time you made the blades. Maybe it was a "rune blowout." You've heard Gaster mumbling angrily about those amid a flurry of words-you're-not-supposed-to-know, both Common and Hands.

Eventually, on one day of your spring break, you and Undyne decide to go ask Gaster about it.

As the pair of you are walking up to the lab, you see Matt and Elise walking away from the doors, and getting into a car. It looks like Elise came to pick Matt up for lunch- and it also looks like Gaster was right about Elise. Her belly has steadily become considerably rounder as of late. Apparently, her due date is early June.

You wave a greeting to them as you walk to the doors of the lab, and they wave back. Then you're entering the lab.

It takes you a while to find Gaster. He's in one of the lab rooms dedicated to some of the finer inner workings of the CORE, shoulders hunched over a desk as he uses fine-tipped pliers and a soldering iron to work on some piece of delicate machinery.

"Gaster." You call to him as you approach, not wanting to startle him (not that you're even sure you could, as he's so frequently told you how his Voidiness has made him so aware of space.)

"...Hmm...?" He replies after a moment, absentmindedly.

"I think my staff is broken."

It's a long minute before he responds. "...I highly doubt it."

"But," you complain, "I've been trying for almost two months, and I can't get it to work!"

"...Frisk, I assure you-... it's unlikely the fault is in my craftsmanship." He seems more focused on the little machine on the desk than you.

"What're you saying?" Undyne slaps her hands on the desktop, making it shudder a little. "That Frisk's not trying hard enough?"

Gaster blinks a little. Then he looks up, looks at Undyne, looks back at the desk, then back at Undyne. "... You shook the table." He almost seems shocked.

"Yeah? What about it?"

Gaster looks back at his work, a frown furrowing his brow. "It wasn't supposed to be-... crap. Now that's going to relay over to-..." He hunches back over the piece of machinery, his mumbling becoming increasingly more irritable. "Maybe it's still- salvageable-... can't do that, it'll-... -just going to make thing worse-..." He slips into Hands, foreign syllables hissed between his teeth.

Then, suddenly, he lunged out of his seat, grabbing you and Undyne by the shoulders and pulling you to the floor, simultaneously shouting "EVERYBODY DOWN!"

Apparently this was a relatively frequent occurrence, because every single monster in the room dropped what they were doing and hit the deck. And not a moment too soon, as an instant after Gaster had shouted, there was a POP from the thing on the desk, followed by a louder BANG! and the explosion was big enough to set off a chain reaction, the next two things nearby blowing up, too, and the things next to that, and next to that, until very little of the work in the room remained undamaged.

As some ventilation system kicked in, clearing out the smoke, everyone around the room rises slowly, surveying the destruction. You hear a lot of murmurs of "Oh, come on," "you've gotta be kidding me," and "I've been working on that all week!"

Gaster gives Undyne a dark look. "That is why you never. Shake. The table."

Under Gaster's withering stare, Undyne just nods.

Reaching up to pinch the ridge of his nasal bone, Gaster sighs angrily. "You are lucky, Undyne, that you don't work here, because if you did, you wouldn't anymore!"

Undyne laughs a little in an attempt to alleviate Gaster's fury. "Hey, well at least it was a cool explosion!"

"Yes, one that obliterated months of work!"

Undyne doesn't seem to have a response to that.

Gaster sighs again, then, still frowning, turns to you. "What did you want, again?"

You hold out your staff. "I can't get it to work anymore."

He runs his fingers over it for a minute, fingers running over the shallow grooves of the runes. "... No, it's perfectly fine. There are no mistakes in the runes, and none of them are damaged."

"Then why can't I get it to work?"

"I don't know, you're probably using it wrong!"

"So how are they supposed to use it?" Undyne interjects, coming to your defense.

Gaster gives her a Look. "What, do you want me to show you?"

"That's not a bad idea!"

Suddenly, Gaster gets a funny look in his eyes. But it's not a humorous funny look, it's a strange, wild look. "Sure, why not?"

And suddenly, the three of you are all in the park. You have to assume Gaster teleported you all there, as he's the only one of you who doesn't look confused.

"Well, then, Undyne? Are we going to get down to business or not?"

"Huh?"

Gaster grins, but it's a strange, angry grin. You're not sure you like it. "Oh, right, of course, silly me. We have to establish a few ground rules, first. You may attack with any weapon or method you see fit to use. Spears, Green Magic, whatever you have at your disposal. As for me..." He sinks into a ready crouch, hands wrapped around your staff. There's a purple flicker around his hands, then suddenly, the double blades of the fauchard blaze into existence- but it's not just the blades that glow purple, the entire thing it bathed in a deep amethyst light, flickering with ghostly fire of Gaster's Magic.

He meets Undyne's gaze, wild grin widening. "As for me, I'll be proving this staff works just fine."

§

A/N

Sooooo, uh... It's been a while, huh? Sorry I've been so busy lately, not to mention still under the effects of writer's block!

Anyway. I hope you guys all had an awesome holiday, and a great new year's and no I totallyhaventbeenslackingoffonupdatesbecauseiwasplayingBreathoftheWildandwatchingFreeman'sMindshushwhatareyoutalkingabout-

-ANYWAY-

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! Comments and votes are my Favorite Things, and every notification I get makes my day!