Chapter Text
Undyne had always been suspicious of Mettaton.
At first, it had been for Alphys’ sake. Even before the two had started dating, Undyne was uncomfortable with Alphys’ mysterious “friend”. Maybe it was partly jealousy over how much time they’d been spending together, but she was worried that the robot was taking advantage of her crush’s meeker nature.
Even now that Undyne and Alphas were dating, now that Mettaton had apparently learned a little about how selfish he’d been…Undyne couldn’t shake the feeling there was something off about him.
So, needless to say, she wasn’t thrilled that her best friend was such a fan of him
“PLEEEEEEASE, UNDYNE?” Papyrus begged over the phone, “SURELY YOU COULD TALK ALPHYS INTO GETTING ME A BACKSTAGE PASS?”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Undyne said, trying to hide a groan, “But you owe me big for this!”
“THANK YOU UNDYNE! WOWIE, I’M GOING TO MEET METTATON!”
“You’ve already met him, Pap.”
“I’M GOING TO MEET METTATON WITHOUT GETTING ATTACKED BY A FLOWER RIGHT AFTERWARDS!”
—
As the soft rumbling of fans leaving the theater faded in the background, Papyrus was practically bouncing in place while Undyne knocked on the door to Mettaton’s dressing room. The door creaked open to reveal a slightly oil-spotted Alphys.
“Undyne! Papyrus!” Alphys greeted, “H-how’d you like the show?”
“SPECTACULAR! FANTASTIC! AMAZING!” Papyrus exclaimed, as Undyne breathed a sigh of relief that he was doing the talking, “METTATON’S SHOWS JUST GET BETTER AND BETTER!”
“H-he’ll be happy to hear that. I’m doing some small repairs on him now, d-do you wanna say hi?”
Papyrus didn’t even bother answering (unless one counted his squeal of joy as an answer) as he dashed into the room. Undyne gave her girlfriend a small kiss on the head before following the hyperactive skeleton.
Mettaton was seated on a work table in the middle of the rather spacious dressing room. He was tapping his foot impatiently when Papyrus caught his attention.
“METTATON!” Papyrus said, “YOU WERE FABULOUS! YOU WERE MAGNIFICENT! I DON’T EVEN THINK THOSE WORDS ARE BIG ENOUGH TO TELL YOU HOW WONDERFUL YOU WERE!”
“No words are, darling,” Mettaton replied, “Say, you’re Undyne’s friend, aren’t you? I’ve heard a lot about you from Alphys.”
“WELL,” Papyrus said, a hint of pink suddenly blooming on his cheekbones, “THERE IS A LOT TO SAY ABOUT THE GREAT PAPYRUS!”
As Papyrus and Mettaton began to stroke each other’s egos (figuratively, much to Undyne’s relief), Alphys placed a claw gently on her girlfriend’s arm.
“Un-Undyne?” Alphys whispered, “Are you okay?”
“Huh?” Undyne answered, “Yeah, I’m fine, babe, why do you ask?”
“Y-you look kinda annoyed.”
“Just putting up with Ego-bot for Papyrus’ sake."
“H-he’s not that bad once you get to know him.”
“He’s your robot, couldn’t you, I dunno, make him less of a jerk?”
“That’s,” Alphys stammered, going a little pale “Th-that’s not how it works, Undyne.”
“Hmph. You know, if he hurts you or Papyrus, I’m gonna turn him into robo-shish-kebab.”
“You’ve told me that about a dozen times, Undyne. The Papyrus part is new, though.”
Undyne focused her attention back on Papyrus and Mettaton. Mettaton had just signed a photo Papyrus had brought, and the skeleton eagerly accepted his newly-signed memorabilia. He looked at the photo and his cheekbones turned an even deeper shade of pink.
“WOWIE, IS THIS…?”
“I’m available anytime, cutie,” Mettaton answered with a wink, “Well, except primetime on weeknights, of course.”
Papyrus ran over to Undyne, barely able to hold in his excitement.
“UNDYNE!” he shrieked, “METTATON JUST GAVE ME HIS PHONE NUMBER!”
Undyne stared in silence, but in her head, she was screaming.
—
A MONTH AND A HALF LATER
“Sans, c’mon!” Undyne groaned over the phone, “You gotta back me up on this!”
“sorry,” Sans replied, and Undyne could practically hear him shrug, “but my brother’s really happy. i don’t think i’m gonna ruin it.”
“You…you can’t think of anything wrong with Mettaton? Nothing?!”
“he’s gotta huge ego, but so does papyrus.”
“NGGAAAAAAH!” Undyne shouted, hitting her head against the nearest wall.
“you okay? you sound a little gill-tempered.”
“UGH, talk to you later, Sans.” Undyne ended the call and flopped on her couch. She opened Undernet on her found in an attempted distraction. Unfortunately, her feed was filled with several dozen photos Papyrus had uploaded from a date the night before: Papyrus posing in front of a mirror to show off a new outfit, Papyrus picking up Mettaton in his convertible, the two posing in front of a restaurant, Mettaton feeding Papyrus a forkful of spaghetti…
Undyne turned the app off. Maybe she’d play that cat-collecting game Alphys had installed on there the week before.
As if someone knew she was about to get comfy, there was a knock on the door. Undyne stomped over to the door and flung it open, to see the one person she least wanted to at the moment.
“The hell are you doing here, Mettaton?” she growled.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed your…attitude towards me,” Mettaton said, “I’m here to make peace. For Papy’s sake.”
Undyne winced at Mettaton using a pet name for Papyrus. She was tempted to just slam the door in his face, but another part of her brain realized this was a good opportunity to find out just what kind of person - or robot - Mettaton really was.
“Come in.” she sighed, “One wrong move, though, and you get a spear up your ass.”
“Let’s get to the point,” Mettaton said, as he lounged onto the couch, “Why don’t you like me?”
“I don’t trust you. I saw how you treated Alphys the first time she brought you over to my place in the Underground. You treated her more like an assistant than your creator! And she told me about the time you tried to embarrass her on your game show!”
“Darling, that was a long time ago. I’d like to think I’ve improved since then. Especially regarding Alphys. I kept forgetting how much she’s done for me, how hard she worked on building this body for m—“
Mettaton stopped in mid-sentence.
“What’s that mean?” Undyne asked, “You only grateful for that body? You know how hard she worked on your old box body? How many times I called her to make sure she was getting sleep at night? You oughta be thankful she made you at all, you jerk!”
Mettaton tensed up. If he had flesh and blood, his knuckles would be turning white.
“You have no idea what she’s done for me,” he hissed, “Besides, this has nothing to do with my relationship with Papyrus.”
“Oh, I’m getting to that! You know why I never let him in the Royal Guard? I knew he was strong, but I also knew he was too innocent for battle! You really think I want someone like him being with someone like you?! Any day now, you’ll get whatever you want from him and toss him aside!”
“THAT’S ENOUGH!” Mettaton shouted, rising to his feet. He was a little taller than Undyne, but neither that nor the look of righteous fury on his face intimidated her. She glanced down at his hands, which were sparking with magical energy.
“I’m warning you!” Undyne growled, summoning a magic spear. Mettaton raised one of his fists, but before he could do anything, Undyne thrust the spear at him.
She had been aiming for the arm, but realized she’d made a slight mistake when the spear crashed through Mettaton’s chest.
“That…that wasn’t supposed to…” Undyne stammered.
Mettaton crumpled to the ground. The noise his voice made was too glitchy to understand. Then, there was no noise, except for his systems shutting down.
“Oh…crap,” Undyne said, “Oh God, Alphys is gonna kill me for this. Papyrus is…oh God, oh GOD, I’m screwed. Wait, no, Alphys built him, she can probably repair him…”
“You don’t know what you’ve done, do you?” a soft, yet familiar voice asked. Undyne looked around. There was no one else in the house, except…
She saw a faint pink shape form over Mettaton’s body. As the shape became clearer, she recognized the ghostly being hovering near the robot.
“I suppose I have a lot to explain,” the ghost sighed.