Tock.

Chapter 30: Rising Star

"Well, well, well." Mettaton greeted when I walked in. "Aren't you late."

"Show's canceled, Mettaton." I said. "Alphys said to stop."

"Well, good. Because I wasn't planning on dealing with Alphys anymore." Mettaton replied. "No, I shall become my very own rising star! Money, fans, power and fame! I'll have it all once I take your soul and cross the Barrier! I'll have it all, I tell you, all!"

He turned away, cackling. I got out the weird blaster again. But I also noticed a switch on his back. Without thinking, I flipped it.

"Alright. Let's hope for the best." Chara whispered. She rubbed her hands together.

"Let's hope nothing bad happens…" I replied.

Mettaton froze up. "Did you. Just flip. My switch." he asked. "Did you just. Flip. My switch."

"Yes I did, Mettaton. Yes I did." I held up the blaster towards him. Finish the fight before it even starts, hopefully. My other option was to wait it out. He had to have a power source or something.

"Well...this only means one thing!" Mettaton was panting. "There's a new show on the air, called Attack of a Killer Robot! Starring: You!"

Mettaton collapsed to the ground, where a cloud of mist emitted from his metal frame. I stepped back a good few feet, while an electric guitar played a few bars. Inside the cloud, I heard mechanical thunks as something was happening to Mettaton.

Then, a voice came out from the cloud. It sounded quite synthesized, but also very refined. Still a male.

"Oh, yes." the voice called. The mist faded to reveal a whole different robot.

Mettaton had gotten a full makeover. He was humanoid with a pink torso, and really, really big pink boots. His hair fell in front of his right eye.

Stage lights flicked on, one, two, three, four, swinging across our stage as they flashed in multicolored light, then focused on me and Mettaton.

"I'll make your death absolutely fabulous, darling." Mettaton said.

I reminded myself why I was doing this again, as stage lights blared down on my eyes and disco music started playing. High up in the air, a little screen displayed the current show's ratings and viewer count. They were at quite a low number.

"Now," Mettaton crouched down. "Let's dance."

He launched at me with a flurry of kicks, which I ducked and dodged under. I was getting pretty good at this dodging act, although I still needed brief moments to catch my breath. Luckily, he was a showman. And he wanted a good show. So he let me recover, thankfully. Sadly I had no idea what I was doing. Except...to put on a show. And attract an audience. Okay, maybe I did know what to do.

I spun my weird blaster around my finger a few times during one of Mettaton's downtimes, attempting to look cool while pointing it straight at Mettaton. Out of the corner of my eye, the ratings and viewer count crept up a little. Mettaton smiled. Chara went off to the side.

"Knock 'em dead, darling." he whispered to me while he feinted in for one of his attacks, before zooming past me, throwing little Mettaton-shaped robots. They whirled around me, shooting little heart-shaped blasts of magic I barely dodged. A few of them grazed my arms and legs, leaving light bruises. I turned my blaster on the little bots, and one by one, shot them out of the air. I twirled my gun like some western sharpshooter, and blew off imaginary smoke from the tip. Mettaton was impressed. And the ratings shot up even more. I swore, in the back, I saw Sans and Chara leaning against a wall, watching my...performance, I guess.

"Keep it coming!" Chara yelled.

I smirked and turned towards Mettaton. "You think that'll catch me, Mettaton? Just watch me." I scoffed.

"Well, then. Looks like I've got a proper one on my hands. You won't be the one who wins, darling!" Mettaton shouted back, raising up his hands. From there, he shot a hail of magical cubes at me, an array impossible to dodge. Maybe if I…

I raised my blaster up again, and mashed away at the trigger. Pew, pew, pew went the little gun as its yellow bursts of energy consumed the cubes and vanished. "Easy." I scoffed. The ratings skyrocketed again. Sans clapped a few times, and Chara...well, she looked like she was enjoying the show.

"Well, then. Prepare yourself for the next! This one's an essay question!" Mettaton threw a piece of paper and pencil at me, which I deflected, then caught, the paper and pencil easily falling in to place. Simple sleight of hand, but the ratings went up even more. This was...surprisingly enjoyable.

"What is the one thing you love most about Mettaton?" he asked.

Well.

I looked at his robotic body. I looked around, thought about it...then I had my answer. I scribbled a few things down, folded it into a paper airplane, and threw it back at Mettaton. He caught it and started reading it.

"Hm...arms, legs, hair, fabulous...yes, I am quite fabulous, aren't I?" Mettaton commented as he did a hair flip, causing the ratings to rise further. I could imagine Papyrus sitting in Snowdin, squealing in delight. He winked at me. I winked back. We were in this show act together, so at least we were on the same page. He then passed the paper to a cameramonster. "Well, now that you've shown me your heart, how about I show you mine?" He opened a release valve, and a white heart floated out of his torso as it lobbed cube after cube at me, me shooting the cubes down with precision. Mettaton after a bit of shooting put the heart back into his torso. The ratings went up a little more. He grinned at me. Then he pulled out some small bomb-like items and a lot of his MTT bots.

"Lights, Camera, Explosions!" he yelled, throwing a boy and a bomb directly at me. But I was ready for it. I started seeing his cues. I landed a nice shot on a bot, shot a bomb…

Or rather, shot a bomb and horribly miscalculated the blast, singing myself a little with magical fire. But now I was prepared. So, when Mettaton cued the next segment, by flicking his ankle, and me responding by spinning my blaster, we dashed in an elliptical path, me blasting down all of the bombs and bots he threw at me. When we passed each other, he stopped throwing bombs and bots as I threw my blaster in the air, both of us having three points on the ground as we skidded back, facing towards one another. I perfectly caught the blaster in my hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the ratings explode with my trick. Viewer count was sitting at a nice six thousand or so.

"I'm every bit the rising star you are, Mettaton." I boasted, doing a nice hair flip. Man, that felt good doing it. No wonder Chara had short bangs while she was my brother. It simply felt too good. The crowd loved it as well, as evidenced by the further increase in viewer count and ratings. In the viewer chat, I swear I could see messages such as "The only reason why I just gave this a 10 was because I couldn't give this a Metta-ten out of ten."

Well. That was a horrifying pun.

"A star's gotta dance, though." Mettaton replied as a disco ball lowered from the ceiling. "Let's see how you handle the dance floor!"

The disco ball started shooting beams of magic around, blue and orange, sweeping across the ground, forcing me to move. Mettaton and I leapt, twirled, and bounded between the areas of light, almost like a dance of sorts. I was at first a little rough around the edges, but a few second in I was already a master, with a few singes here and there from the searing orange magic. We ended the dance with one final heroic pose as blue shone on both of us, the ratings climbing higher and higher. Nine thousand now.

Then, Mettaton started picking up the pace. He probably was starting to try and kill me, as he threw bomb after bomb at me, forcing me to quickly dodge left and right in order to survive the blasts of the bombs and the cubes flying at me. I decided it was time to drink a Sea Tea, and a few of my injuries healed away as I was filled back up with energy.

Then a cube clubbed me in the back of the head. Ow. I looked behind me and saw all of the cubes and bombs that missed me on their first run coming back around at me. But Mettaton was already starting to shoot at me again. Great. I took a deep breath in, exhaled, and readied myself for both the bullet hell and the ratings.

Like some crazy gunfight scene from Equilibrium, I slammed away on the trigger at lightning fast speeds, blasting down cube after cube, quickly dodging under explosions. I didn't care about my light headedness; it was replaced with an adrenaline stronger than I had ever felt. And, just like Equilibrium, once the storm of cubes and such cleared, I stood in the famous stance Cleric Preston stood in for all of those badass action scenes he did, finger gun replacing the lack of an offhand pistol. I could hear the monsters, especially Papyrus and Undyne cheering. I actually saw Sans and Chara cheering. The viewer count went wild. Nine thousand, nine thousand five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred, eight hundred, nine hundred…

Ten thousand. Absolutely incredible.

I angled my head down a little and gave Mettaton a little smirk. But he as well was too engrossed in his new milestone. For a different reason. I calmly stepped out of my stance.

"Goodness, now!" Mettaton exclaimed. "We've reached the ten thousand viewer call in milestone!" He pulled out an old flip phone. "The first monster who calls in will have their phone call featured on TV! So dial away before I take the human's soul and leave for the surface!"

Almost instantly the phone rang. Mettaton immediately flipped open the phone and hit the speaker. "Hello! You're on camera!" he cheerfully announced.

The voice, however, was completely unexpected. It was a face I hadn't seen in a while.

It was Napstablook. And, after the first sentence, beginning with "Mettaton" and quickly turning into a series of whispers, Mettaton turned it off speaker, as the smile faded off his face.

And he listened. He was still on air, and the call still was, judging by how the stream chat was blowing up.

"Wait, Blooky!" Mettaton yelled, but Napstablook hung up on him. Then he looked at the stream chat. And fell to his knees as he read the messages that came, all of them directed towards the general purpose of trying to tell Mettaton to not leave.

Then he got back up unsteadily and slowly. "Well, human..." he started. "I'm not leaving anymore. Humans already have their stars and idols. But they-" he pointed at the stream chat. "They still need theirs. Besides, Frisk." I perked up at the mention of my name. It was the first time he mentioned me by name. "I think you've become quite the brilliant star already. I'll be shutting down in a few moments. The power consumption of this body is too high to stay this way, as much as I love it."

He raised up his hand in a fist. "Make your performance absolutely dazzling, darling." Then his body went limp. His batteries had run dry. Then, the door opened. Alphys stepped in, with the Amalgamates following her. I stepped away from the camera and the spotlight, and Alphys walked in. She looked ready to pass out, but she straightened up, motioned for the Amalgamates to walk in and face the camera as well, and cleared her breath.

"My name is Alphys. You know me as the Royal Scientist who made Mettaton. And I also, a long time ago, made these." she started. She spoke on and on about the DT experiments, and how the monsters fallen down ended up like this. Then she started on her apologies.

A cold, bony hand landed on my shoulder. I turned around to face Sans. Behind him was Chara, and a strange, wispy, almost ghost-like monster girl who was originally something like that monster kid from Snowdin, except with reptilian arms. She was drained of all color, and her form flickered in and out of existence.

"awesome show, but time to move, kid." Sans said. "i won't be following you. got some stuff to do. suzy will help ya out here." His bones momentarily glowed blue for a second, before his body elongated, him teleporting away in a flash of blue mist, leaving me with Chara and Suzy.

"A few more steps to go, Frisk." Chara said, placing a hand on my back. "We're almost in New Home."

Suzy opened her mouth to speak. But her voice was as quiet and fragile as a light breeze in the air. I dared not listen to anything else when she spoke, because I was afraid its quiet volume would simply vanish away when my attention was diverted. But her speech was not like the other...gray monsters I met. All the others followed typical ideas of how volume worked: the more noise, the less I was able to hear their voices. But when I listened to her, no matter how loud Alphys' sobbing at times, no matter the growling of the Amalgamates or the churning hum of the Core, her voice always remained at the same volume in my mind, always speaking. It was clear and intelligible, so long as I listened to what she had to say.

"Come this way. As Sans stated, I am Suzy. I was sent by Gaster to guide you on the final segment of your journey. This story is almost at a close." She held her hand up, and the door out of the Core slid open, spilling out brilliant white light. Chara and I covered our eyes as we walked towards the entrance to New Home.