I set up two security cameras I had lying around (don't ask how I got them) in the room, and hooked the footage up to an app on my phone, so I could check on the progress of the leaf while I was out. Genius, I know, nyeh heh heh. But the big problem was that a huge running joke with my household was taking each other's phones, snooping, playing keep-away, browsing their web history, and even hanging off of the banister with their legs, almost like a bat, and watching what others were doing over their shoulder. Dad did that a lot. He liked scaring people. One of our humans, Nami, even managed to figure out a way to use a goddamn selfie stick to take photos of people's screens over their shoulders! Big violation of privacy, sure, but we all found it funny anyway.

Another problem was that Sans and another human friend of ours, Kaito's big sister named Viola, always managed to crack my phone code, no matter what I changed it to. I had to be sneaky with how often I checked. Since I had already spent an hour down here and it was now almost two in the morning, I decided to head home and get some sleep, but not before writing a lab entry. I booted up one of the digital entry boards on the walls and started to talk into the speech-to-text program.

"Entry Number 1: Took the leaf sample from Flowey. It should grow back before he wakes up, knowing how fast he grows. It's already growing a vine of its own, which is very impressive. I'm using my phone to monitor its growth when I'm not around, hopefully everything will run smoothly. There's no going back from here... I've gotten myself into this mess, and I don't know if there's a way out of it." Perfect. I stopped the speech-to-text, watched as it loaded up what I said as text, then took Flowey and left.

Once I made it back, I was relieved to see that everyone was still asleep. I took off my lab coat, hid it back in Dad's closet, crept back up the stairs, put Flowey back in Frisk's room, then had a sudden urge to check on the humans. I shrugged and went to check on Viola, older sister of Kaito and the oldest human here at 14 years old — only two years younger than me. She had the same rare condition that Kaito had that made her skin grey, like a robot, almost. It didn't affect her health, though, which was, of course, a good thing. I opened the door a crack and peeked into Viola's room.

She was awake, surprisingly! She was using a book light to read a book. She quickly noticed that I was there and looked up. "Hey Paps," she said drowsily, reminding me of my brother. "Need anything?" I shook my head and smiled, having prepared an excuse ahead of time in case I was spotted awake at this time of night. "Just checking on everyone. I can't sleep." Viola turned off her book light and walked over to me. "Neither can I. I think I'm gonna try, though." She stood up on her tiptoes and gave me a hug, and I gladly kneeled down to hug her back. The ones I shared the lab with were like my family. I would do anything to protect them. I once impaled a human on a bone-shank like a shish-kebab when they tried to throw a knife at my father... I still regret that, but I'd rather lose them than him.

Even though Viola and I had had a rather... bloody fight before we became friends, back when we didn't know she was Kaito's sister and she was still trying to kill everything she saw, we were as close as best friends, partially because I felt really bad about mortally wounding her back then. It was all in self-defense, at least that's what Sans told me, but I still couldn't forgive myself for hurting a living soul so badly. Hell, if the others hadn't been spying on us while we fought, she probably would have bled out and died right in front of me, which only made the thought worse. Thank god for Sans always carrying bandages...

I ruffled Viola's hair. "Goodnight, human," I said softly. She smiled up at me, bumping her forehead against mine softly. "Night, Papyrus. Sweet dreams." She walked back to her bed, put a bookmark in her book, put the book on her bedside table, then lied down and snuggled up under the blankets. I smiled, closed the door, went back to my room, and was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

The important thing is that we're friends, and now I won't let anyone hurt her, or any of them. Not on my watch. Not on their watch.