Undertale One Shot - Anime Isn't Real: A TED Talk

The Labs of Dr. Alphys were unusually devoid of her frantic studies this particular night.

Not uncommon, considering Alphys' recent schedule, trying to make time to visit Undyne over by the Hotland/Waterfall border between keeping her experiments caged up in the True Lab or working on some servo failures in Mettaton's new body; the poor lizard was overworking herself, and it finally fell upon Undyne to sneak her out for a drink at Grillby's to chill out and relax.

Now, the labs were dead silent, save for the occasional rattling of the vent systems keeping the rooms at an acclimatable temperature... or the occasional rat scrambling through the vents looking for food.

Except one particular vent line, where a shadowy figure was making a mad dash for the robotics wing, scaring away anything that crossed its path.

The rumbling of the vents gave way to a loud crash as the figure dropped down, smacking its face in the floor.

"OOOOOOWWWWWW!! WHO PUT THAT HOLE THERE!? USELESS, USELESS, USELESS! STUPID HOLE! YOU MADE ME LOOK BAD!"

The figure righted itself vertically and glared back at the open vent in the ceiling. The vent, through no fault of its own, could not glare back, as it didn't have eyes or a face to do so.

The figure was a dummy.

Not just figuratively, due to its diminutive stature or perpetually incensed outlook, but physically as well; it was a training dummy, a being of stuffing and stitches, beaten half to death by Undyne on a regular basis in her training for her Royal Guard position. And occasionally beaten by Papyrus as well, though he'd never admit it.

The Mad Dummy looked around anxiously at the room. There were tables, the vents, a few computers on desks, some filing cabinets in very disorderly array; the corkboards on the walls had diagrams it couldn't percieve of being any discernable information useful for its express purposes; not that it mattered much, he was generally too cross to discern anything but "whose face should be full of knives next" or "i'd like to jam a spear in Undyne's face and see how SHE likes it" or even the forbidden thought, "anime isn't real".

He rummaged around the room, looking for the door to the next room, or anything he could use to find his bearings, occasionally glaring at his reflection in a computer monitor and snarling when it glared back with equal disdain between the lines of assembly code which he couldn't quite understand.

His eyes caught a body laying on one of the tables motionlessly, and his interest was piqued.

His first instinct was to brandish a knife menacingly.

"I DON'T NEED AMBUSHES! I'VE GOT KNIVES!!!"

As he threw the knife at the table, it only ended up clinking uselessly on the legs and falling to the floor.

"...I'm out of knives."

The Mad Dummy waddled over to the table and picked up the knife. He brandished it menacingly at the body again.

"YOU DIDN'T SEE ANYTHING! USELESS, USELESS, USELESS!!!"

The body did nothing.

Nobody was pleased with this outcome.

It was about this time that the Mad Dummy noticed what kind of body it really was.

For starters, it was cute. Very cute. A catgirl of indiscriminate joy and livelyhood, face plastered in a pale serene smile, her eyes closed. She was in a cute pink dress with frills and was wearing her hair in pigtails from the top of her head, each tied off cutely in ribbons with giant bells decorating them.

She had the cutest cat ears on her head--and not even human girl ears on the sides, so she was a true catgirl by any means--and pink blush on her face.

The Mad Dummy was in love at first sight. It didn't care who the girl was, or where she had come from, she was simply the most adorable thing his neurotic mind had seen in the first place.

It was then that he noticed the girl wasn't moving. By all means, girls generally move when someone's staring at them, right? Girls do that, right? At least, in his mind, they usually do, and only because he's screaming at them or brandishing knives or siccing minions on them.

He gave a thought of poking her with the tip of the knife, but thought strongly against it; maybe she was asleep, and he certainly didn't want to HURT her.

Yet.

Instead, she lay there, almost comatose, as if nothing could rouse her from her slumber.

The Mad Dummy found a way to hop up on the table and look at her much more closely.

Upon second look, he noticed she had seams in her arms, with doll-like joints of quite recent sophistication in her elbows, knees, and hands. Her neck had visible segmentation, with what looked like two pivoting hydraulic bars on either side of her throat, and there was a gleaming gemstone on her collarbone like a light of some sort.

Well, certainly she was a robot, like Mettaton. Was Alphys designing Mettaton a new, girlier body? His body was already pretty girly from the photographs he had seen Napstablook show off. Why would he want something prettier when he was already the prettiest man at the ball?

The Mad Dummy glared at the robot catgirl.

It didn't cross the Dummy's mind until a half-hour later that this body might be...

...might be empty.

Heh heh, empty.

The Dummy waved a knife around playfully before dropping it to the floor in abject dumbfoundedness.

This catgirl robot was empty.

Damn the rules.

This catgirl body was HIS.

He motioned for the knife, which floated up to his handless body.

Now how could he do this without startling anybody... Oh, to hell with it.

The Mad Dummy tore himself to pieces with his own knife in a brazen fury, gleefully laughing as his spirit escaped the stuffing and stitches and flew into the catgirl, screaming joyfully as he did so.

The body lay there motionless for a few moments.

The gleaming green gemstone blinked to life on its chest, glowing softly in the dim light of the room.

Her eyes opened, revealing a serene emerald shining brightly.

Slowly, she righted herself upright, bracing herself with her arms. She moved clunkily and heavily, as if the spirit now inhabiting her body was unfamiliar with such new dexterity.

Smiling listlessly, she looked at the pile of wooden splinters, stuffing, and stitches that was now on the floor, the knife now lodged in its now eyeless forehead, the stitches in its belly forming a disparate smile of sorts.

The catgirl eased herself off of the table, and found she couldn't quite keep her balance at first, stumbling a bit before bracing herself on the table's side. Slowly, she made her way around to pick up the knife.

It was with newfound clarity in her eyes that she noticed the corkboard across from her with diagrams of her new body, with words unfamiliar to her. She never learned how to read, but her new body was translating everything for her: apparently it was based off of one of Undyne and Alphys' favorite anime, Mew Mew Kissy Cutie.

"Heh. Simps. They think anime is real," The catgirl said to herself, and she found that her voice in this body, while most definitely girly, was not without a certain rasp, a bit of gravel from its newfound host, like a singer who had smoked a few too many joints of Pineapple Express from Gerson's private stash with Sans and finished by chugging a bottle of hot sauce.

"Well, now I've got myself a new body..." She said to herself, picking up the knife, and admiring her reflection in it.

"...Now which way is the way out of here again?"