The day after my soaring success, just about every Capital City newspaper featured me on its front page. The moment I stepped out of the lab, I was swarmed by people.

I can't say I didn't enjoy the popularity; then I would be lying.

I would also be lying if I said everything worked well from there. You see, all my fame made quite a few of the other scientists jealous. And the idiots began to tamper with my work when I wasn't looking.

That was also when I learned it was important that I wear a lab coat in the lab. One day I had neglected to put it on, and one of my favorite pairs of pants was utterly ruined. Someone had switched a chemical I was using with a mild acid. Had I been wearing a lab coat, it would have been the coat and my pants that were burned. But since I was not wearing a lab coat...

If I still had legs, which I do not, here in the Void, I would have scars from acid burns on my tibiae and fibulae. There were quite a few days where I couldn't walk, and nearly a month where it was excruciatingly painful to do so.

I wore a lab coat after that.

Regardless, they kept tampering with my work. After the incident with the acid, the jealous idiots were more careful to cause no harm, but that didn't mean the things they did weren't slow and tedious to fix.

Eventually, frustrated, I went to Firhaur.

"The morons won't stop!" I hissed furiously in Hands, my gestures wide and wild. My anger made it difficult to think far enough in Common to speak it. "They just keep messing things up! Intentionally!"

"Well," Firhaur responded coolly, "what do you recommend I do?"

I paused, scowling. Then, slowly, a malicious smile crept up on my face.

"Gaster. No. I'm not going to harm any one of them, no matter how funny it might be. There's no need for violence, especially not here, among monsters. Think of something else."

The grin fell. "...Fine. Can't you just kick them out of the lab or something?"

"... Hm. Possibly. We'll see."

In the end, he did not fire the idiots as I would have liked, or, indeed, done myself in later years, but he did kick them out of that particular lab.

He had gathered up all the scientists who worked in the same room as me. "Alright, listen up. You're all being reassigned to different projects, not in this room."

There were several murmurs of protest, all of which were cut off by Firhaur's sharp look.

"This room is becoming the lab belonging solely to Dr. Gaster. Entering it and, Annoying Dog forbid, messing with his work are both grounds for expulsion. So you come in here, you'll get fired. Understand?"

There were some noncommittal murmurs.

"Do you understand?"

"Yes, Dr. Wyngblaise," was the collective answer.

"Good. You'll all find that I've emailed you your new assignments. Go, get to work."

They left.

Firhaur turned to me. "Good?"

"Well... Not what I woulda done, but it works."

"Okay, well, what would you have done?" He snorted.

"Fired the lot of them."

Firhaur just laughed.

A few days later, I found myself in the laboratory cafeteria, eating lunch, when Firhaur walked up beside me.

"WD stands for Wingdings, doesn't it?"

I just about choked on my mouthful of food. After taking a moment to regain my composure, I signed to him in Hands, "Now what gives you that idea?"

He snorted. "Well, first that you just ch-"

"Hands, please. There's a reason I don't tell people my name."

Firhaur looked amused, but complied, his deep bass voice switching to Hands. "Firstly, you just about choked on your food, and secondly, it doesn't take a detective to realize that all skeletons are named after typography fonts, and there aren't too many fonts that could easily be turned into WD as an acronym. Either Wingdings or Webdings."

I couldn't help my frown. "Webdings is an even worse name than Wingdings."

"Why's that?"

"Because Web is an idiot. I swear I will never understand my cousin."

Firhaur let out a rumbling chuckle. "Your cousin is also named after a dingbat font?"

I gestured a little. "Nearly the entire Gaster family, actually. There are only a few exceptions."

"So why do you hate it so much?"

I gave a bitter chuckle. "Have you heard it? I mean, in Hands it sounds alright, since the entire language of Hands was based on dingbat fonts, but in Common, it just sounds ridiculous."

"I don't think it sounds so bad."

"You're not the one who has to live with it."

He laughed. "That is true. I suppose you don't want me calling you that?"

"No. I don't."

And that was the end of that.

I quickly grew acclimated to working in my own lab. It was nice. I pretty much lived in there, emerging only for food and sleeping at my desk or wherever. Firhaur often joked that we ought to bring a bed in for me, and eventually a folding cot took up a permanent residence in one corner of the room.

I also met with Dagiel quite often for lunch, when he was off-duty. It was through him that I learned about the humans, some several months after I acquired my lab.

He said there were four of them, here in the capital. Negotiating.

"But it doesn't sound like negotiating." He told me, hunched over a table at Burn's, nursing a drink, voice low so the other bar patrons wouldn't hear. "The humans just keep making demands. 'Surrender now,' type deal. 'Course, King Relgore isn't about to just surrender to them and let us become human slaves or whatever. He's actually tryin' to negotiate. But politics have never been the poor guy's strong suit, and he can't get a word in edgewise. Every time he even so much as looks like he's gonna protest, the humans ramp up the demands, just make everything harsher."

"So what will happen?" I murmured in response, lifting my own glass to my mouth.

He shrugged. "Dunno. At this rate, the humans will just keep making impossible demands 'til they get fed up with King Relgore's refusal, and leave."

"And if they are not making empty threats?"

"Then they come to beat us down, but we kick their rears instead!"

I laughed. "That sounds good."

It was only days later that the humans declared war on monsters.

For as much as I wanted to beat the humans, this new war didn't affect me much. I just kept working. Sure, the defenses around the city got tighter, but I was a monster. They let me in. I heard stories and news of battles in other areas, towns and cities far from here, but everything was peaceful at the Capital City.

The trouble didn't come until one day I was testing a new flyer, and I crashed outside town. I was walking back towards the city when I had a run-in with several humans.

They attacked me, of course. There were four of them, two Magic-wielders.

I am not bragging when I say I put up an impressive fight. I'm sure I knocked down at least two of them, and broke a few noses. But even I cannot fight four humans alone, especially not when half of that number can use Magic so proficiently as I.

When I went down, I had no time to get back up before there was a boot slamming into my skull.

So, of course, I was not awake for what happened next, but Firhaur later told me that he had come looking for me, and found the humans dragging me along the road. They had planned to take me hostage after seeing my flyer, and either make me work for them, or give them monster plans. So Firhaur attacked just to get them to let go of me, then he grabbed me up and flew away.

As I'm sure you've gathered by now, waking up in the Capital City hospital was not unusual for me. From crashed flyers to those acid burns to any number of other catastrophes and mistakes, I came to the building frequently wounded, or was brought there, unconscious.

The time I woke up then, though, was the worst yet. My head hurt. My ribs hurt. My shoulders hurt. My legs hurt. My arms hurt.

In short, I hurt.

It took a little while, but as I woke, I recognized the bed I was in. The hum of the nearby equipment fans, and the soft, repetitive beeping coming from the monitor connected to my Soul. Yes, I was in the Capital City hospital, lying on a gurney, barely able to move, hardly able to think through the pain.

I had never really liked humans. I always thought them to be loud and arrogant. They thought themselves better than everything else, and, going off the way they were always picking fights with their own selves, better than each other, too. And they always seemed too ready to destroy something, just because it had no use, or they didn't understand it, or they couldn't tame it, or it scared them.

I did not like humans. But as I laid there, my body beaten by a human, I realized I hated humans. And I decided then and there, that if humans were declaring war on monsters, than I would declare war on humans.

Of course, it would be a while before I could do anything with this declaration. I had two broken ribs, four cracked ribs, and a number of other pretty badly bruised or fractured bones, not to mention I had been pumped full of painkillers and had a rather fogged-up mind.

Perhaps I would not have made such a declaration had I not been on so many drugs.

Nonetheless, I would do my best to follow through with it.

§

A/N

I swear, if I knew Gaster was going to be such a jerk about being written when I started this book, I don't know if I would have-...

No, who'm I kidding? I totally still would have written it! It's too good an opportunity to pass up.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! Votes and Comments are
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