The Moon, Intermission

From Napstablook's perspective, it went like this.

It was dark when the screams erupted through the air. Though Waterfall was almost as remote as you could get, every single monster in the underground heard it in their ears and in their hearts. The screams of one body but many souls, coming from the dark, water filled region. No one was there to see what caused the screams, nor what caused the pain that the screams owed their wails to. Not even what caused the flash of light that lit up Waterfall like no other light could, and shot into the air, piercing the rock above and destroying the barrier. The ceiling and walls that kept the underground trapped evaporated as the setting sun's light blinded the residents, who knew about it's grace only from fairy tales. And even then, the screams continued.

Waterfall suddenly started to get pulled into the very water it was named after. From the middle of the region, the land slowly began to sink into an unending dark sea. Monsters that frequented the area, depending on which side of Waterfall they were on, fled either to Hotland or Snowdin as their homes were swallowed by the howling waters. The sky suddenly turned black for a minute straight, before turning into gray and black static that resembled what you would see on a television without a signal. At that moment, the screams were coming from more than just Waterfall. Panic struck across the entire underground as monsters from every area screamed in confusion and fear. Their wish of the barrier breaking given to them, but they were not expecting this to be the cause. Nor did they expect what came the next day.

Hundreds of monsters fell to the ground, face down and paralyzed. More screaming reverberated through the air as they were taken into the sky, floating high above the ground. The screaming was unbearably loud until in an instant, a flash of light blinded the world once again. The bodies were gone, and hundreds, if not thousands of floating, white hearts hovered in the sky, without a single owner to their name. Gray ash fell from the sky and blanketed everything below. The only ones who weren't dying, or already dead, were in the core. Only about 50 monsters survived in full, Napstablook being one of them due to his status as a ghost. The remaining monsters left the core in search for a way out through the barrier, the only exit being behind the king's throne. They made it to the door at the end of the barrier's hallway, and upon opening the black, rune ridden door, they found an elevator. One that supposedly led to the surface, and to an area unexplored far below the earth. The group split up, one group being sent up to the surface, and one sent further down. Napstablook was sent down, with a few other monsters, including a scientist named Alphys, and a robot named Mettaton.

The first contact with the Sea of Mistakes was when they reached the bottom of the elevator shaft, and learning that their entire world was captured inside a monstrous steel cube that was hung in the air below an endless dark sky. It was held by chains above a blue sea that seemed to go down forever. The group came back up the elevator with their findings, but were forbidden to take the elevator up any further by a shaken and paranoid king named Asgore. They were never told why. Going back to what remained of the underground, they built a boat that could fit Napstablook, Alphys, and Mettaton, but could still fit easily inside the lift. Mettaton was carrying the boat back to the elevator when the explosion hit.

Alphys guessed that it was the core erupting. Everyone made it back to the elevator, but the entirety of the core, the king's throne room, and Hotland fell to the earth in a mess of twisted metal and lava. Only a small outcropping in Mt. Ebott remained, overviewing the catastrophe that took place as the sun's bottom hovered just above the horizon. Mettaton described it as “Morbidly beautiful”. The group, complying with Asgore's orders, descended to the sea once again. Alphys stayed behind, saying something about writing a note of warning, and made an excuse about her being more vulnerable because she wasn't a robot nor a ghost. Once in the boat, they began sailing away, Mettaton using thrusters on his arms to propel the boat, and began to travel the sea. When Napstablook caught a glimpse of the elevator ascend back up into the cube, the pair in the boat suddenly felt extremely alone. Alphys was never seen again, nor was they ever see anyone else from the underground. Whether Alphys abandoned them on purpose, or the elevator was called up by someone else, they would never know.

Mettaton and Napstablook sailed for hours, maybe even days, before stumbling across an array of rusted buildings that looked like they were built ages before the cube had ever appeared. Napstablook had decided to sail to the one that looked the least run down, and told Mettaton that they should probably stay there until help arrived. Mettaton did not answer, simply hanging over the side of the boat, lifeless. Napstablook tried to get him to respond, but nothing was working. Once he had stopped using his thrusters, his body had shut down completely. Whether it was the machinery or the soul, the thing that gave him life was now vacant. And now, Napstablook was alone in an unfamiliar and terrifying sea.

Below the building was a small dock that lead to an elevator. Napstablook explored the building for a while, only to find that almost everything he wanted to do would require him having an actual body. It didn't take long before he came to the unfortunate conclusion that he would need to possess Mettaton's body. He begrudgingly did so, feeling intense guilt for using the corpse in such a way, but understood that if he wanted to be saved, he would need the place to stand out. And so, after the course of many failed attempts and many re-reads of the maintenance manuals, Napstablook turned the power on and waited for any sort of rescue. This wait would prove useless, for no rescue ever came.

Though, two living beings did come to visit.

The first was Alphys. Her body was badly beaten and bruised within an inch of her life, but she was somehow still able to speak to Napstablook when she arrived on a large, flat piece of wood. The things from the moon had gotten to her, but they had left her alive to send a message to him. After explaining all she knew about the moon beings and how they were conducting tests in the metal box the underground had been teleported into, she told him that they knew about his whereabouts, but would not take any action as long as no living being would go anywhere near the elevator shaft. Once the message had been transferred, Alphys slowly evaporated into dust that settled on the sea's water. This dust would not be the last of it's kind to touch the water.

It had been months, according to the calendars inside the building. Months of massive piles of dust, ash, and miscellaneous discarded things falling from the sky. Anything from bodies to monster dust to parts of buildings could fall from the sky. Presumably, Napstablook thought, from failed tests. Every once in a while, they would drop gigantic, featureless bodies into the sea who's flesh would rot and fall into the water, making the entire area smell of death for months. The flesh, debris and ash formed mounds and islands in the water, the only semblance of solid ground that seemed to exist in this sea. Bodies would sometimes wash up on the shores of these islands that hadn't turned to ash. Napstablook disliked the thought of their bodies not being laid to rest, so he would gather the bodies he found in the boat, then use a high powered oven in a part of the machine rooms to cremate their bodies. The resulting ashes were spread out to sea. He knew they deserved better, but there were no better options for them.

The second visitor showed up on one of these mounds, which Napstablook mistakenly took for yet another dead body. That's why when a young, purple dragon girl started screaming when she saw him, it shook him a little bit. It took quite a lot of convincing for Susie to get on Napstablook's good side, considering he was basically asking her to trust a robot who had a bunch of bodies on his boat, but he explained to her the situation he was put in, and eventually Susie came around. Napstablook let her stay in the residential area. Since Napstablook didn't need sleep, she was able to sleep wherever she wanted. When she woke up, she seemed to have no memory of anything before she was found on the beach. She had just assumed that she had always lived there with him. As the years went on, the pair connected more, and became rather good friends. Susie was desensitized to the death within a couple years, and Napstablook got a little better at talking in general, although his stuttering still needed work. The strangest thing about Susie, though, was that with all the years she had been with him, she hadn't aged physically. They both just assumed that since she was most likely created and not born, she could very well not age at all.

They counted eight years before the calendars ran out. Give or take a few days, since the sky was eternally dark here, and there was no way to judge what time of day it was since all the clocks had stopped working who knows how long ago. Time has, more or less, stopped mattering a long time ago. Nothing outside of the routine of general upkeep of the building and body cremation has happened that had been of any note. And maybe, they thought, that was for the best.

But then, another Susie arrived. Now, she knew that the home she loved so dearly was fabricated. Everything was a lie. She was fake. Almost everything was. The time when things were real had far passed her. All that was left was this sea. Hell, she could be on a completely different planet for how little she knew. But she couldn't let that get to her. She could still fix this. She just had to figure out how. Susie knew now that these beings had a lot more power than she thought. The power to sculpt worlds and create people out of thin air. She was hoping the seed that cloaked figure gave her would help as much as it needed to. She then realized that seed was only in a small metal box in her coat pocket. It could've easily been knocked out of there and floated away.

“Blook, when you took my clothes off, did you find anything inside?”
“No, not that I saw... why?”

Susie let her head fall to the ground. She felt the hope inside her die just a little bit.

“... Nothing. Let's go back inside, it's freezing out here.”