J u n e   1 s t:
One week before the tragedy.

7:45 a.m.

As we pulled up to the giant laboratory in silence, the sun was beginning to rise up over the tall, mountainous horizon line. I rolled my car up next to the 'Staff Only' space, reserved in my own parking number. There were other cars scattered across the parking lot, but mine was one of the fews inside the 'Staff Only' section. I could recognize the dark green Jeep Wrangler of the Chief scientist in my department. In other words, my boss.

He's here this early?! Why the hell do I have to avoid him this early in the morning?!

"Wow." Chara said from the passenger seat. "You're NEVER here this early. People are going to think this is a rookie taking your spot by accident." She joked, sarcastically. "I think we should put a 'scientist in training' sticker on your bumper. Maybe you'll get towed." She laughed again, poking at my shoulder.

"Ha. Ha." I said. "Very funny." I said, turning off the car with a sigh and taking the keys out of the ignition. "Now come on, you need to give us a better report than a bunch of dust." I said, lowly. "Did you at least take any samples so I could analyze them?" I asked, hopefully.

"Was I supposed to?" She grinned, asking innocently. I sighed loudly, and hopped out of the car in a huff. I took my bag and put on my lab coat on top of my sweater and started walking at a rather fast pace away from Chara before my anger got the best of me. "Hey! Wait up you jerk!"

How did she NOT get any samples?! How careless! Another world! An uncharted cavern! There could be ancient writings along the walls! Preserved for thousands of years! New plant life that might have adapted inside to steer away from photosynthesis!

"Honestly," I said as she caught up to me with a slight trot. "And you call me irresponsible." I grumbled. "Not taking samples!" I repeated. "Careless! This could be another type of ROCK that has yet to be discovered in the layers of sediment in the earth!" I ranted to partially myself. "I wanted to know what was giving off those weird frequency waves!" I sighed. "And I really hoped that it was life." I looked down, opening the large glass door with a swing once my keycard was accepted on the frame.

"Listen, I'm sorry! Okay!" She tried to reconcile. "I don't know what to collect when there's only dust everywhere!" She said, hitting somewhere in my chest. She had repeated all she had seen was dust three times now. At I was at my last nerve.

"How the hell did you graduate at the third spot of our class if you can't even grab a sample of a mission YOU were supposed to fill! Not the person who discovered it or anything!" I walked past the receptionist in a blaze of heat, my sneakers squeaking across the marble floors of the large facility. I was heading towards our department.

"So is this what it's about?! You not being able to go there?" She said. "To be quite frank, I think you would have gotten bored with everything down there! There's only dust and fairytales that you've made up in your mind!" She said. "You're not the judge here. Only one person is, and it's him." She said, pointing to the office door of the chief scientist.

I huffed, holding my tongue, as the scientist came out of his office, stunned for quite a moment as we were mid argument. "Frisk!" Dr. Hudson exclaimed, looking at his watch. "You're early." He said, narrowing his eyes. "Chara! You're back!" He said, turning to her with excitement. "How was the experience?"

"Yeah. I was just leaving." I grumbled, walking away, hearing the faint conversation of Chara and the Doctor talking about her recent activities in 'the underground'. I looked back slightly, he was nodding his head, and ushered her into his office to talk more on the subject.

I walked over to my lab area, sitting down at my computer and logging onto my desktop. "I guess I'll have to just find something else to do in the meantime." I sighed, thinking about what would possibly be beyond that gaping hole in the mountain. It was blocked off for security reasons.

I wonder if I could get in by the way Chara had existed the mountain. It's best that I get to it as soon as possible, before the military gets involved. Or all of the new things have been taken.

I looked at my device that I had used to detect the frequencies of Mt. Ebbot. I looked at the correlating heat signatures on my computer that I had previously seen a few weeks ago. Nothing. I saw no sign of anything conserving heat. There was a mass of increasingly hot temperatures towards the end of the mountain, where Chara had come out of, however, it was deep below ground. It could be close to the core of the earth.

If the core of the earth was that easy to find, then Chara wouldn't have survived walking through the underground. She would have died, even if it were magma inside the mountain. It could well be a volcano for all we know.

"You look deep in thought." Chara said from behind me. I looked at her and out my head down, rubbing my temples in attempt to massage them.

"Just thinking." I said, closing my eyes and trying to figure out this mystery. To the very left was increasingly cold temperatures. Enough to be freezing, which is normal for a cave, however, the collide in temperatures don't make any sense! I need to find it myself!

"You're still not hooked up about this whole 'underground' thing, are you?" She joked, sitting on the desk lazily. She sighed as I didn't say a word back. "Listen," She said, sighing and rolling her eyes. "I can tell you this." She said, reaching into her lab coat pocket. "I managed to get some of that dust." She rolled her eyes, showing me a small, clear vile of what seemed like ordinary dust. Her red eyes started into mine.

My eyes lit up, and I snatched the vile from her hand, squealing. "Ohhh my god!" I yelled, standing up, excitedly. "Oh my god! Help me set this thing up!" I said, shoving some cords into her face as she giggled a little bit, letting out a wide grin. "Here! Hold this!" I exclaimed, getting a devise I had made precisely for this moment.

I had worked on a devise that could analyze the irregularities of certain items, telling what precisely it was made of, testing it on water, it was programmed to say Hydrogen Di-Oxcide. And so on. "Don't get too excited. I need it back." She said, huffing.

I knew you were hiding something! I knew you wanted to take all of the credit! Just confront her now! Your chance!

I sighed, looking firmly at her. Her red eyes make me sink back down to what I was doing, avoiding eye-contact at all costs as I scramble to put the pieces together to test the sample, as I did to test the strange region of Ebott. "Okay. Place it here." I said, pointing at the spot I wanted the vial to be placed in. She grunted in response and placed the vial there reluctantly, knowing she needed my equipment to gain any sort of analytical data from it. All she had was a sample and a computer. I had the tech.

It was more like a small box with antenna on it, there were three nozzles on it, with a screen. Once nozzle was the adjustment for a size, aka, a focus. And the other one tuned another focus to see how I can get the makeup of the object. The third one, however, doesn't work yet. I was programming it to detect liquids and gasses.

I looked at the small device, looking at the dust carefully. It wouldn't stay in place, frustrated, I moved my hand to keep it in place, noticing I couldn't use the focuses on the control. "Chara! Come and hold this!" I said, letting go of the dust, and watching the vile roll off the platform I wanted it to stay on.

Chara reluctantly held the tiny vile in place, thus having me to re adjust the nozzle of the device for it to read the entire thing. I look back down at the screen, appalled. "C8H11NO2 + C10H12N2O + C43H66N12O12S2!" I said, barely believing what I was seeing. "And LOTS of it!" I said, grabbing the vile from Chara and zooming in further. As quickly as the readings came, they vanished. "What?" I breathed, confused and worried. "I... wait a minute." I said, fear rising up.

"Looks like the readings are gone. What's that even stand for again? I can't remember." Chara said, lazily. "That's a whole lotta Hydrogens for my taste." She joked around.

I turn towards her, once again, my machine doing bonkers with C8H11NO2 + C10H12N2O + C43H66N12O12S2. I look at her with confusion and astonishment. "How can I be so stupid! You were IN there! You're a LIVING sample!!" I said, happily, measuring myself, making sure I didn't read the same thing. Nothing.

I pointed it back at her with a smile of excitement, jotting notes down as I go along. "Frisk! What does that chemical formula resemble?!" She yelled, getting me out of my thoughts.

This is so weird! It's like she's got the entire makeup of it on her! It's incredible! I'll have to tell Dr. Hudson of this as soon as I can!

"It's so weird!" I laughed. "It's the chemical formula for LOVE."