A few moments later, the Repairman came strolling down. He seemed unusually cheerful, bobbing his head from side to side and humming “Who Stole the Kishka” to himself.
“Oh hey,” he called out, waving to Beep, Light, and Albie. “How are you guys—”
He stopped, realizing two things. One, Beepsumu was in a tear in the void, and wasn’t part of this world anyhow. Two, the break in the Wall he was coming to fix was amongst all of them.
“…All right,” he sighed, “what happened?”
//shit, who do I reblog this from?
“Um, I don’t know, but maybe we should be going now…”
//and pass up all this nonsensical fun? Ha!
“Um- I don’t think that’s a good idea!”
//Mun chucks a pile of lit firecrackers into the group. Also, there is a copious lack of chicken dancing going on. Light, entertain me!
“No”
//too bad!
Light starts chicken dancing, as do all the other ghost heroes with aversions to certain bird species.
It was then that Susumu realized she could do anything that she wanted.
“Hey, Misfits! I feel like making a dance group, and you’re gonna join me!”
“Sorry, Susumu, I’d love to, but I’ve gotta fix this tear…”
“TOO LATE”
It wasn’t long before Susumu and the Misfits were back in their Heishi outfits, dancing about to some sort of J-Pop music.
He said nothing for a moment, until a mysterious table walked up to him and handed over a card. The Repairman nodded as the table also left a large bottle labeled only “XXX”.
As the table disappeared just as oddly as it had arrived, the inkblot pulled out a yellow rotary phone and began to dial the number he just got.
“…Hello? Is this Cyriak’s Home for the Suddenly Surreal?…Yeah, hi. This is the Fourth Wall Repairman…No, I’m not checking in just yet…Listen, a few friends of mine have suddenly started acting…odd, and I was wondering–Oh? Okay…”
He held the phone up for a moment, so the clerk on the other end could hear everything.
“…So how bad is it?” he asked, after putting it back up against the side of his head. “Oh. I see…no, you’re not getting an address– Look, I can’t just send them there…”
He sighed, and picked up the bottle.
“…I understand,” he finally said. “If I can’t fix this, I’ll call you after the hangover…Yes. Thank you. Yes. Yeah. Yep. Goodbye.”
Click.
“And don’t look at ME like that!”
Galanthus shot back, still making sure to float above the blob so he can
look DOWN. “Considering I didn’t even know it was there until just a
moment ago, and I’m clearly not strong enough to break it, I think it’s
rather safe to assume I didn’t do it. Which leaves the mysterious being
who only appeared AFTER it was broken but BEFORE anyone ELSE knew it was
broken to repair it.”
Galanthus flew a little closer to the
repairman. “That seems mighty suspicious if you ask me.” He backed off
and gave a shrug, “Not that it really matters to me. As long as my
flower is safe.”
If the Repairman had a nose, he would be pinching the bridge of it at this moment.
“No, no, it doesn’t work like…”
He shook his head, taking a moment to think about how to put this.
“Look, if you don’t want me constantly putting cement over your flower, I need to know what happened. Before I came over here, did you say or notice anything…weird? Like, meta-ish?”
He really didn’t want to break the Wall here. Not with a fairy who has a very short fuse.
“Eep!” Shinko was slightly surprised when the siren popped up, glancing up at it before looking down at the Repairman.
“Uh… we didn’t accidentally make a crack already, did we?” she asked with a sheepish smile.
As it turned out, Crystal was currently chatting up with Belial at the Akuma Cafe about Belial’s old flames.
“…you might have,” the Repairman mused, after taking a quick moment to figure out where the problem was. He smiled cheerfully.
“Guess now’s as good a time as any, huh?” he said, making his way towards Akuma Cafe, cart in tow.
“BE STOPPING OF THIS!! RIGHT NOW!! BOTH OF YOU!!”
Bowyetta
had had quite enough of this. She could put up with her aching legs and
an imposter wanting to chop her up… But finding that one of her best
friends had been lying to her was more than she could handle. She
turned on the Repairman first. “You… You are finding Bowyetta to being a
monster? You are… Wanting to kill her…?”
She then turned to
“Bowyetta”. “This is what you thinking Bowyetta is wanting?! You are
thinking Bowyetta to being THIS horrible?! You are not being ANYTHING
like Bowyetta. You will NEVER being of ANYTHING LIKE BOWYETTA!” Tears
were streaming down her face. “Bowyetta… IS NEVER WANTING TO BE SEEING OF YOU EVER AGAIN!!”
But,
“Bowyetta” only went silent for a moment. “…Nyu hu… Nyu huhuhuhu…” The
aura around her began to grow, until it started to cloud the entire
room. “If this is how you are feeling…”
Bowyetta screamed, and
then the darkness cleared from the room. She and the imposter were
nowhere to be found. Rather, in the center of the room was some sort of…
blob-like creature. Its body seemed to be liquid, yet was also
metallic, and full of swirling colors. It had an odd face, with
window-like eyes and a mouth that seemed to be stitched up. It had a
single arm protruding from the top of its head, that seemed to be
holding some kind of striped object… But where was Bowyetta?
The Repairman leaped into the air, intent on cutting that arm off the shadow’s head with a buzzsaw. As the real Bowyetta screamed for him to stop, he came to a halt in midair, with the sound of a tire screeching. Upon the first “you”, he fell to the ground with a plop, looking at her with a mix of shock and confusion. As she questioned him, his eyes widened, and he unconsciously dropped both tools.
“N-no…I was talking to that thing…wasn’t even going to…”
He trailed off, his eyes tilting towards the floor. This was not how it was supposed to go at all…
He couldn’t even muster up the energy to cheer for Bowyetta as she went off on her imposter. As he quietly put the tools away, he felt her last shout was going to apply to him, too…
He turned to leave, but noticed the aura as it passed him. He turned back as Bowyetta screamed, only to find an enormous creature of liquid metal where the two were. And it looked like it was holding…
“Bowyetta!”
Frantically, he looked around, digging into a scrap pile until he found a comically oversized saw, a lump of metal, and a large, heavy steel dome.
“Hang on!”
Quickly, he set up the seesaw and hoisted the dome. It took some doing, but he was able to lift it. Sweating profusely, he stood on one end of the saw, and hurled the weight to the other.
He was flung into the air, right above the creature’s head…
“Uwa… B-Bowyetta is thinking so… We must be leaving quickly, Mr. Sir.”
However,
Bowyetta” was absolutely furious. She grabbed Bowyetta’s wrist, and
quickly turned on the Repairman. All the fake sweetness had disappeared
from her voice. “You having lied to Bowyetta? You not wanting to help
her at all, are you?! You are not finding her to be beautiful. You are finding Bowyetta to be horrible, disgusting, repulsive, a monster!”
“But, do not be worrying. Mr. Sir~” Her false sweetness had come back. “Is all going to change, now that you having given her to me~” She then began dragging Bowyetta towards the center of the room.
The Repairman was also quick to lose his fake affection.
“You’re right,”he snapped. “I do see a monster! And cutting up my friend is not going to help that.”
He quickly pulled out a buzzsaw and a power drill and began to pursue the fake Bowyetta.
“Come here,” the Repairman called out, in pursuit of this thing, “and I’ll show you the problem!”
He wasn’t going to kill her, no. But he did plan to remove everything that clearly didn’t belong to this abomination.
I… thought we WERE joking…? *her previous grin turn into a frown* Wasn’t the point to all this to have fun? *she looked confused, had she hurt Blobert’s feelings somehow?*
“…Yeah…” the Repairman replied, laughing humorlessly. “I guess it is funny…”
He turned to leave, slowly shuffling before stopping to turn around. He looked about three seconds away from running away to quietly sob in a tent somewhere.
I just stared as the Repairman pushed a small, silver radio/CD player through the back window.
“Well
it’s unusual for sure, but I dunno about cruel. Unless you set it to
the country music station!”, said Wheezy, laughing as he snuffed out two
spent cigarettes on the underside of his pork pie hat.
“We gotta think of something perfect for this bulky!”, cried Stupid. “But what’s good enough for him?”
“I’ll tell you what’s good for me, you glorified ferrets!”, snarled the Breaker, “Letting me out of here!”
“Quiet!!”,
screeched Psycho, shaking the box roughly, “Or Wheezy’ll put out his
cigarettes on your face! You wouldn’t want your play doh puss to melt!….
Wheeze…Would you mind?”, he whispered, sotto voce, to Wheezy, who
opened the lid and dangled his lit cigarette over the Breaker’s face.
The box was quiet for what turned out to be the whole trip.
-Smartass
The Repairman couldn’t help but chuckle at Wheezy’s comment. However, he had to cringe a little when he heard the threats of burnt cigarettes. Yes, the Breaker would be fine in the long run, but still.
Awkward silence followed after that, until they reached their destination.
As the inkblot opened the door to leave, he stopped.
“Hmm,” he mused, noting his opposite’s laziness, “is ‘breaking rocks’ still a thing?”
That would be a fitting punishment, he felt.
“I don’t think Play-Doh is fit to break the bank in his current contrition!” I say, snickering a little bit as the blob stepped out of the passengers side door.
“Where do se drop him, Mr. Repairman?”, asked Stupid. “Golly, you’d know better than us! Police station? Toy store?….uh….police station?”
-Smartass
“I mean, he is still a Toon…don’t know why my Nega-self is stop-motion…” he noted, cringing as the Wall cracked next to him.
He shrugged.
“I dunno, police station, I guess?”
Beep shook her head. “Well, this should be the last one… Sorry, my plan
didn’t exactly work out as I’d hoped…” She looked a bit sad. “But, uh,
yeah, Bonk’s doing okay. She’s upstairs in her room right now, if you
want to see her. Why, is everything okay? Nothing happened to her, did
it?”
“No, I don’t think so, I was just wondering.”
He looked at the recently repaired arrows.
“You guys going to go see Bowyetta?” he asked. “And how’s the food going?”
Green couldn’t help giggling when his hand made contact with Inky’s.
He wasn’t sure what exactly he had been expecting the Repairman’s body
to feel like, but it wasn’t that.
“Whoaaa, that is weird!”
he giggled. Suddenly he realized that that might have been offensive,
and rapidly verbally backspaced a clarification. “Not like a bad weird,
though! A good weird! I mean I kinda expected you to feel like a chuchu
but you don’t quite have the right consistency, you feel like sticky
water if that makes any sense? Well I mean I guess ink feels like sticky
water sort of oh hey! My hand is all black now! That’s so neat how do
you do…” Green trailed off, realizing he’d been rambling and was
probably embarrassing Inky or something.
“Uh… sorry. I’ll shut up now.”
“…”
The Repairman was unable to blush, but if he could, he would have gone crimson by this point. As it was, he became runnier than normal, and started to withdraw from Green.
He was not at all used to anyone talking about his form like this. Usually people were indifferent, mistaking him for something else, or weirded out. This excitement was just something that seldom happened.
After a moment, he pulled a Stetson from behind his back and put in on his head. He pulled on the brim until the hat seemed to consume him with a slurping sound before gently landing on the ground.
A muffled “…it’s…okay…” could be heard from the hat after a moment.
She rolled her eyes. “Believe me when I say, I think they appreciate
the interruption. When I first got here, everyone was asking me
questions about who I was, where I came from, what I was created for…
makes a Toon girl feel a bit existential, ya know?”
Shinko let out
a small sigh before giving the Repairman a small smile. “Trust me,
they’ll be interested in you. And when you do finally swing by, I’ll try
my best to catch up to you as soon as I can so I can show you around!”
“Existential, huh?” he echoed. “Heh…Something tells me I’ll be there a few times, then!”
He winked at Shinko.
“…Better not hear of you intentionally breaking the Wall for lil’ ol’ me, though!” he joked. In truth, he wouldn’t have minded so much, just the one time.
Speaking of the Wall, his siren light suddenly popped up like the last surviving mole in an arcade. Apparently the Repairman was needed somewhere.
Siblings-a-Fixin' 