#then transform back to root mode so she can be thrown again. its their favorite game

[th3e-m4ng0]

just twitch having a little afternoon fun with the uncle

[the-river-person]

Any interesting world-building tidbit that wasn't included in your tales? This is a very interesting world you've got

I have three major bits that I desperately wanted to include in the story but never could find the right moment for. 1. (This hilarious dialogue snippet from Gaster and Alphys that never made it into the story but I decided was too funny to not save.) Alphys: (laying on floor) I’m nothing. Not a scientist. Useless. I’m just garbage. Gaster: (glances down at her briefly, looking thoughtful).... you’re recyclable. Alphys: !?!?!?!?!?? 2. I wanted to better explore the area below Waterfall, the deep pits that all the falls plunge down into, where once Alphys stood and considered throwing herself down into. The concept of it was a sort of transformation for Alphys and Undyne. They return to this place that might have been a place of tragedy, and they make it the start of something amazing. The cliffs below were riddled with caves and openings, an entire city carved straight into the rock, with grand staircases that lead down, and elevators that see a lot of use for those who don't want to walk (or can't). Can you imagine the place? Beautiful caves where every window opens up to the underside of the cascading, thundering waterfalls. And because they had hundreds of years to develop it all, the Lower City had gardens and fascinating landmarks to visit, a gallery devoted entirely to the art of Alphys' favorite animes (and oh boy were there some truly gorgeous works there. For some reason there was also a portrait of Mettaton as God and Alphys as Adam in a lovely oil painting that is a sort of imitative transformation piece of Michelangelo's very famous "The Creation of Adam". Nobody really knows who painted it, nor why, but the gallery director informed the public that it was donated anonymously as a gift to commemorate the gallery's Grand Opening.) Because Undyne had a huge part in the City's inception, there ended up being several small schools for various physical activities such as: Wrestling, Ballet, Clogging, Modern Dance, Taekwondo, Spear fighting, Sword fighting, and Water Aerobics. Also one very tiny school for Piano that consisted of Undyne herself and whoever she was teaching to play at their lessons three times a week. Down below are the Depths, the deepest and darkest part of the Underground's caverns. A massive lake that the falls plunge into. Most of its life has been spent without light of any kind, and even now it's still very shadowy. The Lower City of the cliffs sort of spills out between waterfalls to drift around the shore of the lake. But even 300 hundred years later it hasn't all been explored and the Lower City hasn't expanded much more (even with the Underground populous trying their best to spread out, they can't possibly fill every space. I'm working with an upper limit of 1,400-2,000 monsters total in the Underground, with a lower limit of 322 for the souls visible coming from Asriel in the game when he breaks the barrier. Due to the fact that Ghost Monsters were excluded from the soul snatching event, and the fact that there is literally no way to estimate how many spiders are in the Underground, both have been excluded from this counting.) At the far end of the dark lake a lonely outpost sits, home to a very very few monsters who either prefer the total solitude and darkness, or have come there for reasons of science. To study the pools of super-heated water and geysers, or the aquatic life somehow managing to thrive in the pitch black lake that is swimming with garbage from humans and monsters alike, or even geological strata that possesses very interesting formations this far down. There are numerous guidelines in place that prevent Monsters from staying at the Outpost for more than two months at a time for Mental Health concerns. Both Royal Scientists tried (separately) to use their position to override this rule. Undyne was sent to retrieve Alphys and bodily carried her back despite protests, and Queen Toriel herself came to order Gaster back to the Upper Underground (there were fireballs thrown before he finally gave up). 3. And finally, I actually fully intended to have a scene in the story where Sans demanded that Gaster tell him exactly how long they spent trapped down there, after all, he's the only one who kept track of it if you recall. But I completely spaced it when it came to writing those last few scenes. So I'll tell you my final calculations here. We know that Determination had a strange effect on the magic of the Barrier. Whenever a Reset happened, time in the Underground would move a tiny bit slower than time outside. The time spent inside the Barrier, counting both the truly ridiculous amount of time wasted in resets by both the Human and by Flowey, as well as the 300 years afterward that this story covers, comes somewhere around the area of 51,967,952,715 years. Or Fifty One Billion, Nine Hundred and Sixty Seven Million, Nine Hundred and Fifty Two Thousand, Seven Hundred and Fifteen. An insane amount of time. What’s my explanation for how the minds of various characters remained intact? Well, Gaster spent long long periods of time sleeping. He wasn’t fully himself yet as his assistants hadn’t managed to collect enough pieces of him. So unstable and having a warped perception of time kept him from actually going insane, instead letting him sleep for centuries at a time. Sans actually didn’t start to become fully aware until quite a long ways into the resets, and then spent a while trying to figure out what was going on, fought with everything he could for a while in endless genocide routes, and then eventually lost hope entirely and sort of... went on automatic for a long time before he woke up enough to change something (a single question was all it took). And Flowey stayed in a similar state for thousands of years, quietly repeating the exact same conversations, the same actions, the same patterns. The only times he was even aware enough to notice the passage of time was when something new happened. These are not in any way realistic ways of reacting to such a vast period of time. From what science we understand about the brain, it would barely last more than a couple hundred years at the very most, but probably less than that. And that’s if you can keep it in perfect condition without any decay. Memories would begin to go long before that, only fragments remaining and the brain keeping only what is relevant to you now. But lots and lots of old stories depict supernatural and magical beings as sleeping for centuries in forgotten temples, under castles, in sealed magical caverns, in caves on beds of treasure, and a thousand other variances. So I wanted to explore that in the way of a part of the Monster Soul that would act as a self defense mechanism to the Mind of the Monster who was somehow living and living and living without possibility of dying and needed to be able to stay sane throughout that. So it either makes them sleep, or in severe circumstances it can put them on a sort of automatic mode where they repeat a sequence ad infinitum. Both have their roots in folklore, but the way it works is my own interpretation of the idea. Outside the barrier, however, is a different story. The full total of time that has  passed out there is 10,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000,​000. Known as Duotrigintillion, or also as one Googol. While the Underground got slower and slower and slower, the rest of the Universe continued on at its usual pace. The planet earth was destroyed by the Sun going into its Red Giant Phase, and then it became a White Dwarf. Then a Black Dwarf. Galaxies and super-galaxies went slowly dark, matter was dissolved or eaten by black holes, even black holes eventually began to decay due to Hawking Radiation. And because the light, garbage, and air being let into the Underground were the exact same stuff that was being let in at the beginning and was just on repeat forever, the Monsters never noticed. It was only when a run went on a little longer than usual, when the Barrier started trying to correct itself by syncing up time again, when you could see the darkness beyond. A darkness without stars and without life. Only cold and shadow, forever. The absolute and inexorable Heat Death of the Universe. Is it the only Universe in the Multiverse that has lived its full possible lifetime from beginning to end? Possibly. Ink would know. Whatever the case, its certainly a very very old Universe indeed (It probably is one of several branches off the original Universe, a stray timeline become a Universe in its own right).