[A nearness he only tolerates, still sore, still waiting for a careless shift to displace organs with eggs, doing nothing to encourage the contact. And though he permits Mettaton his hand, he doesn't return his grasp, and only stares at him. Warily, humorlessly.]

Given that your first impulse was to detail some nonsensical business plan, with all else a distant consideration, [As he readily assumes that this was Mettaton's priority, given that it was what he immediately pressed on, after putting out the idea of combining their shards.] no. I won't have you become distracted or change your mind half-way through the request, wasting all I've collected.

[Which was even assuming that shards could be pooled, which was in itself an assumption... and with no feedback from the Crystal itself likely, would a failure mean it wasn't possible, or just that there wasn't enough, even combined? But it didn't matter, in the end; he'd expected to do this on his own, and that hadn't changed. He was just more annoyed over it.]

I'll handle what's important to me myself.