#;dc

Mad Scientist Serif (Serif being the standard name for all my fem!Sanses) is the de facto Royal Scientist Extraordinaire of her Underground.

She’d been in the midst of walking away from science altogether after the incident where the former scientist was wiped from the memory of all but her and the lost followers - but her departure left a power vacuum. Already moving into Snowdin with her sister, more than willing to fade from the public eye in favor of other hobbies and supporting her sister, she happened to check her phone after a late night at her favorite local bar.

... One long, rambling, drunken voicemail from her old lab coworker and current potential new hire as RS later, and she was taking every shortcut possible through the Underground to try and beat him to the castle.

Past the latenight wandering couples in the crowded capital, past the Guards, drowsily shouting after her to come back in the morning, past winding halls and a golden hallway she didn’t like to think about-

Ribs heaving, she burst into the secreted away room containing the souls collected so far - only to find every last one missing.

In the end, she caught up to her old coworker, her once friend back in the Lab in Hotland. In a panic, Alph tried to make excuses, stammering but bartering, telling her he could fix it all, he’d worked it out, found these old blueprints that gave him a headache but made enough sense, he’d already hooked the souls up, it’d break the barrier-

The fight that ensued destroyed the entire lab. Exposure to the raw power of the souls and the faulty machines that had already taken the former Royal Scientist from this reality had left Alph surging with too much power to keep proper form, and as it all backfired, Serif was only able to save one soul from the explosion -

The soul of Perseverance.

Lying in the wreckage, another monster wiped from memory and this timeline, Serif knew she was the only one who could bear this cursed position - the only one who had a chance - she was only a little unstable after so much soul exposure-

In the end, the Queen happily gave the former shoe-in the position. No one quite recalled the old Royal Scientist, or the lizard-like monster hopeful. They shrugged it off, mind slipping to more real things with a hazy smile - and dwindling hope. For some reason, all but one of the souls had been lost in the accident at the Hotland Lab....

To sum up the next several years, Serif kicked ass. If it was a little strange no one could quite account for when she squeezed sleep into her schedule, if it was a little strange that she could appear behind someone with no sound, and with an eerily amused answer to countless difficult scientific struggles, if it was a little strange that she always carried the remaining soul around with her...

Well, who would say anything? Singlehandedly, she’d advanced monster technology tenfold in a handful of years.

With the loss of so many human souls, she’d proposed to the Queen that the focus for the short term should be extreme increase in living circumstances and ability and quality of life for all monsters Underground; considering where they stood, the Queen agreed. The Capital now is a solarpunk dreamland, with a healthy dose of cyberpunk; technology ran on magic and geothermal energies and a perfected, safe version of nuclear fusion that had a miniature star hanging above the castle, lighting their Underground like their own proper sun that provided infinite energy to every denizen. Lightrails expanded safe places to live Underground, overcrowding eased, new strides were made in cultivation of unique plantlife that sprouted from dwellings humming with magitech-

If a few monsters that started to grow restless for the real sun disappeared... well, no one noticed. Where could they all go, without waiting for more humans, after all? Life wasn’t so bad down here, not anymore.

Serif continues her work in the new lab built in Snowdin, hard to reach, harder yet to attack. The Perseverance Soul is never more than a few feet from her - and more often than not, it’s strapped to her back.

Her final experiment, her final development is well under way. It may take a few years... But she’s certain she’ll be able to get her breakthrough soon enough. She doesn’t sleep, after all.

She’s got her own personal cheerleader strapped to her back.

See, her nuclear fusion isn’t quite perfect. It needs just a little... more. The miniature star powering the Underground will die eventually. Sooner than is ideal, really. And when it does, well, it’ll die just like any other star will.

Perhaps it was a little mad to make something that would go supernova. She’s got time though. All anyone had down here was time... she just sped up the timeframe a bit. But gave them all everything they could ask for in tech. Kept countless monsters from falling. Gave them hope, just by improving their lives.

... Perhaps it was more mad that she had surveillance on all parts of the Underground. For safety reasons, and maintenance... of course. She had a lot to do if she wanted to be lazy with her sister again some day.

It was like the old King always said... Even if monster breached the Surface, they wouldn’t survive the war with the humans that would come.

Serif was going to make sure that wouldn’t happen... and that no one would try and break the barrier before she at last combined her soul with that little purple on she kept so close, acclimating to it’s power. She’d walk through herself, like no ruler had dared do, despite the answer being right there in the legend.

Just a little more time.