Royal Blue

Smoke Damage (Chapter Thirty Seven)

It's odd to see that kind of dread —a visual, mortal terror that Zero had faced damn near every time he woke up and made the terrible mistake of looking in a mirror— on others; especially monsters that he cares about so much.

Alphys's brow furrows, her scales shiny with the clam of a cold sweat. Her claws twitch. Zero cant tell if it's her wanting to write things down, or just a nervous tick.

Asgore and Toriel look shockingly similar how they did when they were far younger, freshly terrified for the war to come.
Only this time they do not find strength in each other, or hope in denial.

They only find weariness, an aching lethargy Zero can feel grinding in his joints. An ache he'd felt far too many times, one of 'not again. Oh great stars above. We promised this would never happen again'.

Yet another promise broken.

Zero wishes he could laugh.

"So that's...." Undyne says, her ears falling slowly, eyebrows raised and body stock still.

Zero steadies himself, then nods, slowly.

It's a little odd, seeing her go from posturing and thrustful, to that... almost childlike expression. To someone small, wilting and fearful, in the face of something far larger than herself.

Something in Gaster's soul tugs at the familiarity, for seeing another young, warrior's soul, caught on the sands of this bloody tide, once again.

Zero doesn't look at Papyrus.
He can't bring himself too.

"The sensors've all been checked," Zero says, "this is current stuff," he confirms to the totally dead air.

He doesn't say by who.
And they don't ask.

"Do we know that they mean harm?" Toriel asks weakly. 

She wants to believe in peace; she's clinging to the hope.

But even she knows that they would not come in such numbers without reason. Even she knows the base tactics of the first flush of war.

"Even if they do not," Asgore says with a low shake of his head, his ears fallen and eyes indescribably dissonant, "we cannot take that kind of risk."

His tone is steady, even when his paws are not.

He's a good man, Zero thinks. Maybe that's why he's so pained by this. Maybe that's why this affects him so badly.

Zero is mildly glad, for that moment, he has no such affliction. He isn't a good person. He doesn't have to feel that way.

Shockingly enough, and perhaps too tied up in her own internal moral conflict: Toriel says nothing.
She only brings her child closer to her.

Frisk tucks themself into her arms, quiet in a way that Sans had learned to pay attention to. And thus, Zero watches them closely.

The distraction is enough for a shadow to creep from the corner- or maybe from within him, and-

"Sadly, that's not it," Zero says, his tone deeper, slippery; and only a second later, does he realize the words were not of his own volition.

He pauses a second, closes his eyes and sighs.

Gaster is right, of course. To keep things moving, he has to actually keep going. Keep talking.

"When the core short circuited, it nearly took the whole underground with it." His armor clinks as he shifts, turning on his heel.
"And I don't mean like the power outages we've been dealing with. I mean like... boom."

Zero turns toward the screens before he can see the way Alphys flinches.

"Not a hundred percent sure why it didn't," he says with a huff, looking toward the screens, almost glaring at them. Squinting into the sour bright.

He shakes his head, turning back. Doing his best to think in the third person. Think generally.

"Whatever Sans did, it kinda, for lack of a better term, reset the Core to it's original functionings."

He watches Frisk's eyes widen at the term. Watches them, for a moment, completely caught off guard.

"And.. And I'm not just talking the full Core," Zero says, doing his best to stay on track. To hold on.

"I mean all the wayback to some of the first functioning generators and prototypes. Things that the Doc used before we were even sealed underground. And hence...."

"H-Hence, it c-connecting back to the old t-tech outside the mountain a-as well," Alphys completes once again. Zero nods at her intrigued, yet oddly distant, cold look.

"So... it's really connecting back with the soul sensors from the old war?" Asgore asks quietly.

"Pretty much," Zero says, "or at least the ones still functional, which are surprisingly, a lot."

He walks over to the screen, tapping a few keys and zooming out on the map. Ignoring how his bones grind with lethargy. His teeth ache and sockets burn as he stares into the bright streen.
Most sections of the map are steadily illuminated and pulsating.

"So I guess that dumb old royal scientist was able to build something worthwhile, huh?" Undyne mutters with a grimace, folding her arms.

Zero kinda wands to laugh at the sheer amount of swearwords that Gaster is emanating right now.

"So we do still have a couple blind spots in the few that have decayed beyond repair," Asgore hones in.

"Which ones?"

"The north quadrant, here," Zero uses the cursor to point at the top of the screen, "and two west, here and here, are out." He points.

"Technically, there is a path the humans could take that would barely be sensed on, giving us almost no forewarning and very little time to react," Zero says slowly, "but it's rather winding and odd, and there's no way the humans would be able to detect it,-"

"U-Unless they knew pr-pretty precisely what the-the sensors looked like," Alphys says, "an-and what they-they w-were looking for."

"Exactly," Zero confirms. Alphys looks at him, almost smiling-

A chill runs up his spine when a specific pair of eyes lock on him.

"Er, at least, that's what Sans told me." Zero says, rubbing at the back of his neck. It's barely a cover-up, let alone a good one, but it's something. And quite frankly he's too damn exhausted to come up with anything better.
"I'm really not that into this stuff."

Undyne squints at him.

And Zero feels like he's made the first of several, fatal mistakes.

-----------------------

Hey there fam!!! How's it going?
Welcome back to Angst Time!!

Just remember: It only gets worse from here :)