"Tra la la. Where would you like to go today, girls?"

'What.'

'How do they know???'

"I know many things," said the River Person mysteriously. "Don't worry, I shan't tell anyone."

"Thank you. We need to go to Hotland. Or where ever the royal scientist's lab is."

"... Hotland, here we come."

'Thank dog.'

'Time to learn a bunch of stuff that'll be super helpful but make very little sense... why is the river person so annoyingly cryptic.'

"Tra la la... Did you ever hear the song of the void? The prince's stars will light your way, tra la la."

'Prince... they probably mean Asriel...?'

"Tra la la. The observatory has many secrets. Humans, monsters... Flowers."

'What...? I'm so confused.'

"Come again some time. Tra la la."

'Well, this is where the lab is. Let's go ahead and find the Royal Scientist. We can talk to them about this timeline crap... if they haven't noticed what is probably a massive anomaly in the space-time continuum, then we'll just have to pretend it's all hypothetical.'

They walked up to the door and knocked, and shortly afterwards, a six-tailed Kitsune opened the door.

"Oh! H-hi!"

'Oh! It's Saki! I know her! She was a good friend of mine when I was younger... then the Resets started happening.'

'Remember, this isn't our own universes.'

"Sup."

"I-I need to show you the graphs. They're li-literally off the charts. Something really big just happened, and I feel like you might be able to help me figure it out, Snow."

'Huh. Snow. It's a nice name.'

'Yeah, I can live with it.'

"Umm... could we go into the lab?"

"Okay, just give me a minute to tidy up... it's a mess!"

"Don't worry about it, w-I don't care. It's probably nowhere nearly as bad as my room, hah."

"St-still!"

"This... this is really important, okay? So important that I couldn't tell my own sister about it."

"Fine. I know that you tell your sister most everything, so if you're trusting me instead of her, this must be very important."

"Yeah, it's a bit of a life or death situation. Plus I just really need your help."

"Okay. I'll try my best!"

"I wouldn't ask for anything more," said Stella, reassuring the nervous Kitsune.

"Here, have a seat!"

They sat down at a paint-splattered counter, and the Kitsune settled next to them.

"Now, tell me what's up."

"Promise to listen to the whole story before asking any questions?"

"That makes me a bit nervous, but okay."

"Alright. So, this is probably going to confuse the heck out of you, but I have to start with this... I'm not your Snow. My name is Stella. It has to do with a lot of multiverse stuff, and it's really weird... I can't really explain it, I don't know enough."

'Ugh, does this even make sense?'

'We should tell the story from the beginning, I think,' said Eira within their mind.

"So, it all started when I found myself in a dark, empty space. It was really weird, and I heard someone call out. I returned her cry, and we began to talk. I learned that her name is Eira. Everything then flashed super bright, and we lost consciousness. We woke up again in another dark place, but this time there were several other people there. They were all really strange, and one of them gave us the most basic of explanations for what had happened. Now she and I are currently... kinda just sharing a headspace? It's really weird and confusing, that's for sure. It turned out that our original worlds merged into one, and now she and I are stuck like this."

'Eira, do you have anything to add?'

'Yes, actually. Don't forget, it's mainly my magic that we've been able to use so far. Plus, don't forget to ask her if we can look at the cameras- we need to find the flower. And if we can't find him on any of the cameras, at least we'll have some points to shortcut to. Most especially the Ruins door. We might need to talk to Tori. Plus, there's a high chance that the flower is in there.'

"Eira wanted you to know that so far, we know that we can use her magic for sure. We need to see the cameras too- there's one other being in the underground who's probably in the same boat we are, possibly worse, and we need to find them before they get into trouble."

"C-can I ask you some questions now?"

"Of course. We'll answer them to the best of our ability."

"Thank you, now, follow me. I want to run some tests on you... oh dear. The equipment might not be here..."

"Don't worry, we know about the amalgamates already. You might not remember them, but Eira's dad/my mom were the former royal scientist. They fell into the core... most people can't remember them now."

"Okay... that makes me feel a bit better. But that's not what I'm talking about, although it's part of the problem. The equipment is at the Observatory."

'Wait...'

'Didn't the Riverperson mention some sort of Observatory?'

"We've got time. If you have a camera showing somewhere near or inside the place, we might be able to speed up the journey, unless our shortcuts are broken..."

'We haven't tried them yet, have we?'

'Nope. This might be a problem...'

'We should test them before we try taking passengers, right?'

'Yeah.'

They shortcutted over to their room and right back to the lab.

"Good news! Shortcuts work!"

"W-what was that?!"

"We just took a shortcut home and back here to check that they still work. don't worry about it."

"You TELEPORTED?! THIS IS GROUNDBREAKING! HOW DID YOU DO IT? —SCIENCE SCIENCE SCIENCE—!!!"

"Later, bud. You wanted to check some stuff, right? Show us the cameras."

"Oh! Yeah! And I never told you my name, did I? I'm Lune."

"Good to know."

"Aw, darn. I was hoping it'd be Saki."

"Err, what was that? I didn't quite hear you."

'Umm... did she just hear me?'

'I think so.'

"I'm pretty sure you just heard Eira."

"Interesting... alright, these are the main screens. I'll switch over to the cameras nearest the Observatory."

Lune tapped in several sequences on the keyboard, and the main screen switched from some colorful falling block game (Tetris, it's called Tetris, Stella.) to several panels showing various locations in the kingdom.

"The one you want is in the top right."

The panel was showing a mostly dark room, sparsely lit by glowing lights.

"Thanks, Lune. You have anything you need to take with you there?"

"Nothing that isn't already there. Actually, wait."

Lune snatched up a tablet off her desk.

"Now I'm ready. Just know this, the Amalgamates haven't been fed yet, so we'll probably have to do that or else they're going to get in the way and be irritable."

"Okay."

"I was just wondering, how are you taking this so calmly?"

"I'm actually not even remotely calm... I'm doing my best to remain composed, but that's not important right now. I'm a scientist, I have to take this and run with it! I saw how weird the timelines were, so I have no choice but to accept this as a side effect and try and find out as much as possible."

"Ah. That explains a lot, hah."

"Now, are you ready to take us to the lab?"

"Yup. Take my hand, please. I need physical contact to shortcut with passengers."

"I'm really going to need to study your shortcuts later," muttered Lune before taking their hand, her six tails twitching excitedly.

They disappeared from the lab and reappeared in an dark, eerie room. Lune swiftly punched in a string of numbers to a glowing keypad on the wall, and they heard mechanical whirrs from the ceiling before a something began to move, letting in a sliver of light. The light brightened the room, making it much less scary. As the ceiling continued to shift, Lune scampered around, grabbing tools and firing up other machines.

"Y-you guys still have only one HP, r-right? I don't want to accidentally hurt you b-badly," said Lune nervously.

'Yup, we still only have one HP,' said Eira.

"Yep, we've only got one."

"I-I'll need you to-"

One of the amalgamates had walked into the room, over to Lune, and it was now poked her gently with its gooey beak.

"Ms. Drake, I promise, I'll feed you guys after I get this set up."

"Could we help you out? Tell us where their food is and we'll feed them."

Then the amalgamate- Mrs. Drake- turned to them, whispering in a multilayered voice.

[Yᴏᴜ... ᴡE ᴋNᴏᴡ ʏOᴜ... SᴛᴀR ᴅᴀUɢHᴛᴇR... HᴀᴠE ʏOᴜ... sEEɴ... SᴛᴀRRʏ. . ?]
{уєѕ... єιяα... тαкє gσσ∂... ¢αяє... σf hιм...}
[OᴜR... ʟɪTTʟE... SᴛᴀRs...]
{тαкє... ¢αяє σf... уσυяѕєℓf... тσσ...}

"Mrs. Drake?! Is... is that you?!" Eira said quietly.

{ωhσ... єℓѕє. . ?}
[...Tᴀᴋᴇ ᴄAʀᴇ... ᴘLᴇᴀSᴇ. . ?]

"Huh? Oh, you're talking to Mrs. Drake. W-wait what?!" Lune blinked, unsure if she was actually seeing what she thought she was seeing. Where Sn- Stella and Eira had been was a small black dragon quietly whispering to the maternally inclined amalgamate.

"Ummm... are you two a dragon now or am I hallucinating?"

"Wait what?! How?!" Eira looked around at herself and purred, happy to be back in control.

'Guess I'm in the backseat now?' Stella thought calmly, somewhat glad. Eira had been low-key panicking in the back of their mind and it had been giving her a headache.

'Sure seems like it. I dunno how that happened.'

"Huh. Seems like we are. I'm Eira. Nice to actually meet ya, Lune," said the small Frost Fury.

"I... I am so, so confused. But the amalgamates' food is in the storage room over there," said Lune, pointing at a door.

———
"How very curious. I was not expecting this sort of result when you fused the worlds, Lady Destiny."

* You can never tell how exactly such things will turn out, my dear Chronicle. Particularly when not two, but three worlds are being fused. Add in my sister's meddling, and we could've had a recipe for disaster. They were very lucky indeed.

"ꌩꍟꍏꃅ, ꌩꍟꍏꃅ, ꀤ ꁅꍟƬ ꀭƬ. ꈤꂦꅏ ꉓꍏꈤ ꅏꍟ ᖘ꒒ꍟꍏꌗꍟ ꀸꂦ ꌗꂦꎭꍟƬꃅꀤꈤꁅ ßꍟꌗꀤꀸꍟꌗ ꅏꍏƬꉓꃅ Ƭꃅꍟꎭ? Ƭꃅꀤꌗ ꀤꌗ ßꂦꋪꀤꈤꁅ!!!" (Yeah, yeah, I get it. Now can we please do something other than watch them? This is so boring!!!)