No One is Happy with This (Undertale)

87 ~ Smart Mistakes

The drive home from the Underground is a mostly quiet one. As Gaster predicted, the sun has long since set, and it seems that only Papyrus and Gaster are the only ones who don't feel remotely tired. As it is, Gaster surrenders to Papyrus's insistence that he drive, so Gaster's in the middle seat again, with Sans, who is completely asleep, half flopped in his lap, despite the seatbelt.

You, yourself, are feeling kind of tired. It's been an exciting day, after all, running up and down and back and forth and all about the CORE. You still honestly have no idea how it works, but you still had fun.

As you settle down in your seat with the intent to maybe catch a short nap on the way home, you realize something, and sit back straight up. "Hey, Gaster?"

"Hmm?" Comes the quiet response. He may not be tired, but he's certainly calmed down quite a bit.

"I meant to ask you earlier this morning, when I first came over to the lab: did you ever find out what exactly made the new CORE prototype blow up like that?"

"That wasn't a prototype, Frisk, it was going to be one of the interior mechanisms for the CORE 2.0. But yes, it was just some faulty circuitry."

You frown a little. Not only is that significantly less exciting than you were expecting, but you also feel it's a little... well, a little underwhelming for all the drama it caused. "Just some faulty circuitry? That's all?"

Gaster nods. "Mmhm. A few wrong wires in the right places can make all the difference in an explosion or not, Frisk. The thing shorted out, but because of it, just a few sparks hit an open rune circuit in the just right place, and overcharged one of the more delicate rune systems of it, causing the explosion."

"A few wrong wires in the right..." you trail off. "But why were the wrong wires in that specific right place to cause that in the first place?"

Gaster gives a one-shoulder shrug (so as to not disturb Sans, as he's half slumped against Gaster's other shoulder). "Just a careless mistake."

And that still seems too coincidental to you. Sudden coincidences don't just cause massive life-threatening explosions like that. Well, maybe they do in the normal world, in real life, but your life stopped being like that when you fell Underground.

"You're sure it wasn't sabotage?"

Gaster gives a small laugh at that. "Frisk, every single person who had access to that circuit is currently in this car. Are you really accusing one of us of sabotaging our work?"

You think about that. After seeing Gaster's excitement in the original CORE, you're absolutely certain Gaster wouldn't do that to his own work. And you know Papyrus would never deliberately do something like that, nor would Sans.

Alphys... well. She did have that whole thing with lying about the Amalgamates; that's why she wasn't officially the Royal Scientist anymore when you broke the Barrier. But she wasn't trying to hurt people, and you can't imagine her trying to hurt people, much less deliberately moving the wires.

Besides. Monsters can lie and fight and even sometimes kill, but ultimately, you realize, they never do really want to hurt people. Because that completely goes against what they're made out of- hope.

And that's everyone in the car except you, and you sure know you didn't do it.

"You're sure no one else had access to it?"

"Certain. All the most important bits of the machinery are protected by runic barriers, keyed to only let certain Magical signatures through. And considering I'm the only one with enough knowledge about runes to make such a barrier..."

You see what he's saying. No one else had access to it, and none of the people who did would have sabotaged it.

"So it really was just a mistake."

"Mmhm."

You narrow your eyes at the Royal Scientist. "But I thought your the oh-so-smart Royal Scientist who doesn't make mistakes."

He gives you a Look. "Frisk, we've been over this. I don't never make mistakes; I am wrong occasionally. I'm just almost always less wrong and more right than everyone else, because I'm the Royal Scientist, and I'm smarter than everyone else. Even the mistakes that I do make, when I make them, are smarter than your average mistake."

"So what you're saying is that blowing up half your work and almost getting yourself killed was a smart mistake."

"Well it was a rather spectacular explosion."

You can't help but laugh at that. Trust Gaster, of all people, to get caught in an explosion, sacrifice himself for his son, and almost get killed, only to admire the grandeur of the explosion and subsequently use that grandeur to support his egotistical argument for his own intelligence.

Not much later, Papyrus is pulling the car into your driveway and parking. You hop out with a quick thank you to Papyrus for driving (at which Gaster comments on the lack of a thank you to him for allowing you to come on the little adventure), and head inside, where Toriel is waiting. Thankfully, it looks like Papyrus was thoughtful enough to let her know where you were all day, though she still gives you a short lecture on the importance of telling her where you are when your plans change unexpectedly so that she doesn't have to stay up late worrying that you got hurt or something.

Eventually, after an exceptionally late dinner and a shower, you make your way to bed. As you enter your room, you find Flowey, sitting in his flower pot on your desk, just as you left him. He gives you a scornful look. "Well, it looks like someone had a fun day. Without me."

You just chuckle a little. "You wouldn't have wanted to come anyway, since I was with Gaster the whole time."

"Hey!" Flowey retorts. "I prefer being around him to all the other soft-hearted crybaby losers of monsters." He looks away, annoyed. "At least he doesn't expect me to act like Asriel. Or offer me sympathy."

You laugh again. "Well, okay, if you like getting roasted in arguments that much..."

Flowey just lets out an annoyed harrumph noise as you climb into bed.

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A/N

I had, like, three and a half different things I wanted to say here, but I couldn't decide between them, so which one do you want to hear?

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!