“What do you mean, don’t talk about it directly?” Vio questioned. He poked the Wall experimentally, feeling it flex and wiggle like a chu chu under his gentle prods. “It doesn’t appear to be very… sturdy in the first place. Not that I’m implying you’re not doing your job well!” he added hastily, hands waving in an attempt to preemptively placate the repairman “It’s just that I don’t know how well just hypothesizing about the Other Side will work. How would one even do that anyways?”
“You don’t have a name? That’s… a little bit sad.” Green frowned. “Do you have a nickname maybe? I mean, we could just keep calling you ‘sir’, I guess, but nearly everyone I’ve ever talked to found that awkward at some point.”
The Repairman reflexively tried to swat Vio’s hands away. Of course, it didn’t work; Vio was a ghost, after all.
He stared at Vio for a moment before sighing.
“Yeah,” he said, in a voice that tried to be casual. “You’re right; it’s not stable.”
“Anyway,” he continued, “you just…”
He gestured vaguely.
“…don’t look directly there, don’t talk over there, basically pretend that there isn’t here.”
“Oh, it’s not an issue,” he said to Green. “I’ve been called everything from ‘Mr. Repairman’ to ‘blob man’ to ‘Tinker.’ Call me what you like.”
He silently wondered why this was a sticking point for some. It wasn’t like a name did much for him. “Fourth Wall Repairman” pretty much said it all.
Green chuckles at the repairman’s shock.
“Well, yeah, we definitely didn’t see anything like this when we were alive. That’s probably a good thing though, or else we’d have had to deal with existential crises or something!” He cocks his head in confusion when the repairman asked him to describe what he saw. “What I saw? Can you not see through it?”
Vio had been watching the repairman work with curiosity. To the repairman it probably just looked like he was patching a regular old wall, but to the ghosts it looked like the various cracks were magically mending, and the bits of light and sound that had been leaking through were dulling to their original somewhat muted state. It was an interesting process to see! Vio blinked when he heard Green ask if the repairman could see through it, pursing his lips in thought for a few seconds before jumping back into the conversation.
“Well, his job is to fix it, Green, so logically speaking it’d have to be more opaque to him in order to do the job right. We broke the Wall because we can see right through it.”
Green nodded in understanding.
“Oooooh, is that true… uh… sir? Sorry I didn’t get your name. I’m Green and this is Vio by the way.” He waved in greeting, belated as it was. “Well… it looked a lot like our world, same sort of sky and trees and people and stuff… just no pointed ears anywhere, but it kinda weird, because we saw us in all these weird places. There’s these thingies called video games, I think, where you control this character with this plastic… thingy… and you see a changing picture on this magic screen… thingy… and yeah I’m not doing a good job, I’m old ok?” Green chuckles embarrassedly, hiding his face in his hands. “But yeah, it was weird seeing ourselves with this third person perspective.”
“Yeah, it was weird, a bit. I thought it was funny how everyone lumped us together with some of the other heroes as ‘Toon Link’ even though we’re from very different points in Hyrule’s history. Plus, we all look different! The art style was cute though, I have to admit.” Vio grins at that last sentence, wishing Blue or Wind were around, since they hated being called cute. Suddenly his eyes widen slightly as he realizes something “Wait… wouldn’t talking about the stuff beyond the wall break it more?”
The Repairman considered the green one’s point. Most characters he came across took it in stride, but, then again, some worlds were more Fourth-Wall friendly than others…
“Oh, it’s fine,” he said, half-waving and half-shrugging. “I don’t have a name anyhow. But, uh, yeah, I can barely see through it.” Under his breath, he added, “Sadly, I can still break it, though.”
He nodded as Green described the so-called “real world." That was about what he expected. Though… he never heard of these universes being seen in third person.
"No, no, I get it,” he said, encouragingly, “It’s mostly what I expected.”
He chuckled slightly at Vio’s comments about their art style.
“Shh,” he said, hastily. “Just don’t refer to the other side directly, and you should be fine. I think just talking about hypothetical things in other universes is okay.”
He didn’t know this mind, but it was always how he operated. Why stop now?
Green stopped up short. Fourth Wall Repairman?
“Oh… well ok, if you’re supposed ta fix it then… uh… carry on.” He watched as the repairman continued pulling tape off the Wall.
Meanwhile, Vio was completely baffled by the sudden appearance of the cart.
“kljsdf ;alksdf;a asff;lakjsdf;lkamdsfkjgkjs what? What??? Where did that come from??? I- what?????!?!?!”
Green looks at Vio, narrowing his eyes and clearly unamused with his usually rational ¼ths complete and utter mental shutdown. It was just a cart, yeesh. It’s not like they couldn’t pull stuff out of seemingly thin air… yeah magic was involved, but maybe this blob had magic too.
“I’m sorry if we offended you… we didn’t know there was someone whose job it was to fix the Wall! It seems like in our world when we die, we’re able to see the Wall and it gets kind of clear and gooey like jelly… or at least that’s how we see it. We kind of… didn’t realize we were breaking it until it started really coming down, heh heh.”
Vio finally recovered enough from his BSOD to add to the apology.
“We’re sorry. Is there anything we can do to repay you?”
The Repairman merely nodded slightly, still simmering a little. Let’s see, tape goes there, cement goes here…
The purple ghost’s surprise made him forget the offense for a moment.
“What?” he asked, turning around. “Never heard of hammerspace?”
He was about to remember that not everyone has the same name for Toony rules, but he then heard their apologies.
“Oh, that’s fine,” he said, shrugging, “I guess I don’t–”
He opened his eyes in sudden realization.
“Wait, you had to die to see it?”
Granted, Toons didn’t… cease, but most didn’t have to die to see it. A more cynical part of the Repairman’s brain chimed in: Too many don’t even strain to see it.
In any case, he never saw it as jelly or clear. In spite of himself, he was curious.
“You…could tell me about what you saw…”
The Heroes’ ghosts were trying to give the Fourth Wall a break- or more specifically- a break from all the breaking. With the next wave of DLC for Hyrule Warriors Legends not due for at least a month, and hype for Breath of the Wild in a lull for hopefully the rest of the year, it shouldn’t be hard to do. Being dead meant that all of a sudden they were quite aware of it’s existence, and the world that lay beyond it was just so tempting! But, with great power came great responsibility, or so they were told. And so, knowing the Wall was there in the first place for a damn good reason, they had tried to patch it up a little after all the abuse it had taken in the past few months.
Green and Vio came by for a routine check on the Wall, well aware that if it crumbled entirely baaaaad things would happen. Unlike most of their chekups, however, they were surprised to find an… inky… thing… ripping down the duct tape that kept their entire reality safe from certain doom.
“What are you doing!?!?! Do you know what that is? Stop! Stop or we’ll all be in terrible danger!!!” Vio screeched once the urgency of the situation registered over his shock.
Green didn’t waste time trying to reason with the thing, instead opting to grab the blob by it’s shoulders and pull it away before it was too late. Or at least, he tried. Stupid ghost physics!
“Of course I know what it is!” he snapped. The nerve! The Fourth Wall Repairman, not knowing what the Fourth Wall is!
He was about to turn around to face the speaker, when he felt a slight chill. Ghosts? He turned around and, yep, two ghosts were apparently behind this travesty.
“Oh, like how you endangered the Wall in the first place?!” the Repairman continued, unfettered by the spectral form of his apparent competitors. He made a show of pulling another strip of duct tape down. "As the certified Fourth Wall Repairman, I think it’s only right that I fix it!“
He pulled a cart from offscreen. It was old and beat-up, but it still moved quickly to his side. It had a red toolbox on the top shelf, and a blue one on the bottom. Both looked nearly as faded as the cart they sat on. The Repairman opened the red one, obnoxiously loud clatters emanating from it as he rooted for something. He pulled out a bucket of cement, a trowel, and a roll of duct tape. Putting all of them in one arm, he turned back to the Wall without a word.
The Repairman was not a complete stranger to Hyrule. He didn’t go there frequently, but he did pay a visit every now and again. He felt he at least had a decent grasp on this world.
Yet, he was surprised to find that duct tape apparently existed in this world. And was being used to fix the Wall.
The Repairman began to visibly redden as he began taking the duct tape down. One could barely hear him grumble “…tryin’ to take my job… duct tape… what a joke…”
He wondered who would constantly be breaking the Wall in Hyrule of all places. Clearly a bunch of charlatans, given their attempts to cover it up. The Repairman sighed, and made a mental note to get the cement, trowel, and some duct tape as he peeled off the so-called “handiwork” of some vandals.
Siblings-a-Fixin' 