Meanwhile, Rosalina exited out of the kitchen dome and returned with a tea on a tea plate in her hands. The star lady walked down the grassy steps until she made it to the area where the library and its dome were located, and that was then she spotted a fourth wall repairer, walking towards where her position was presented.
“Oh, I see you’re up already,” Rosalina noticed, “though I think you should take some tea before you proceed,” and then she crouched down and offered the repairer with a cup of tea.
“Oh, thank you,” the Repairman replied, taking the tea. Well, that’s one mystery solved; he was on this lady’s starship, probably because of his passing out.
“And thank you for taking me in there. It’s pretty nice.”
He looked around, seeing not only the vast reaches of space (ugh), but also several domes, each of which seemed themed somehow. He looked around his host’s ship until his eyes settled on a large fiery globe in the middle.
He took a sip of the tea, and immediately began to feel a bit better.
“Hey, what’s that?” he asked, indicating the globe.
Galanthus turned his attention from the cement to the repairman, drawn by the snap of his fingers. He watched as a bucket appeared and the cement plopped into it. It was about then Galanthus noticed the extra arm. Not exactly one for tact, he stared, “Do… do you do that… ummmm… whatever that was, often???” Galanthus asked, confused. He shook his head to clear off the confusion and his grump returned, “Was that all you came here for?”
“Eh heh heh…” the Repairman visibly shrunk back. “I…try not to do it. I know I don’t have the best form, but even that was a bit much for me…”
He blinked at the fairy’s second question.
“W-well, yeah,” he replied, glad for the change in subject, “that’s pretty much it…”
Pearson nodded. “That would be a big help.” Chad tilted his head in the direction of the main gate. Gulping, he walked through. “Im gonna take care of this.” “Take care of….?” Pearson looked through the gate. His eyes widened a bit. “…. If we’re gonna get that laptop we need to start moving. Now.” He ran to the left of the base, a large door opening up. He ushered the Repairman to follow him. “We’ll have to be snekky sneks.” He chuckled. “Think you can do that?”
The Repairman nodded, putting a purple cover over his bright red siren light. Hopefully that would dim it a little, should it pop up again. For now, though, it was content to stay in his head.
“So, where do you think that guy went?” he asked.
The arrow nodded. “Any friend of Bowyetta’s is a friend of ours too!” And he quickly scooped up the rest of the damaged arrows, neatly placing them in a pile in front of the two.
Beepsumu picked up another arrow, and continued speaking, though she seemed… Concerned. “A-anyway, that was when we found out we could travel between dimensions. We developed the mechanism inside our house to make it easier. We may not know exactly where we came from…” She trailed off there. “I-I’m sorry. I’m just… I’m worried. About Bowyetta, about her arrows, about you… We’re not keeping you too long, are we?”
“Thanks,” the Repairman nodded, grabbing another hurt arrow. He couldn’t help but smile at the fact he was now a friend to a six-foot-tall metal caterpillar monster.
“No, I’m fine, I have to do a bit of work around here anyway.”
He looked upstairs. “…I’m sure they’ll all be okay,” he tried to assure her, “they just need a bit of time. Maybe a fade to black if you want them to recover in a hurry.”
He winced before waving the welding torch up at the tiny fault he just made. Then it was back to fixing arrows.
“A poe? Where?… oh.” Blue hmmed a little as his gaze settled on the Repairman. “Oh, he’s not a poe. For the record, they’re usually too far gone to listen to even us, anyways.”
Light rolled his eyes at his descendant. “Perhaps if you were a bit less impulsive and didn’t assume the worst out of every stranger you meet, you’d have known that.”
“Hehe, I think everyone was just a little too um, energetic about this whole thing. Except Blue, for once Blue was the calm and reasonable one, haha.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, punk?”
Sparky completely ignores the irate Hero. “So how about we just start over and introduce ourselves properly, ok?”
The Repairman sighed in relief as “Art” sputtered back to life. He wouldn’t have to worry about any “resets” or “bad endings” or “vengeful ghosts behind him.”
“Yeah, I’m not a….” he chimed in, before realizing something, “what is a Poe, anyhow?”
At Sparky’s suggestion, he took a deep breath, before saying, “All right. I’m the Fourth Wall Repairman, and I was just here tonight to fix a break that someone had to…”
He coughed.
“I mean, that’s been under some stress lately. I haven’t been waking your friend up.”
He winced as the lawnmower, left unattended, plowed roaring into a wall.
“…Now, we don’t know for sure that that woke her up…” he attempted, giving a desperate smile as he knew that wasn’t helping his case, “…But I’ve only been here tonight.”
“I am Princess Zelda of Hyrule.” Her reply was automatic and curt. Not that she ment it disrespectfully; It was merely a forced habit. The court relished any opportunity to cry dishonor on unsuspecting souls. With that mindset, Zelda straightened up, running a hand through wind swept hair. It was going to kill her to lay aside her curiosity- The Repairman pratically radiated with mystery!- but she had to take care of business first. “I would like to invite you inside to rest, once the port- ah, Wall, is properly handled. You must be exhausted after your travels, Mister Repairman.” Zelda decided to hold off on any nicknames. She didnt think he’d appreciate the only one that came to mind, ‘Grumpy’.
“Oh, well…” the Repairman cleared his throat. His posture seemed to improve, and he tried to avert his eyes. "‘Scuse me, your highness.“
He risked looking at the Wall.
“That shouldn’t take too long, your graceful…um… holiness,” he decided, realizing too late he had forgotten a lot of formal titles (he did not meet up with royalty often). “I would be honored to stay here for a moment.”
He tapped his siren light.
“You’ll have to excuse me, your lofty televangelness, but I can’t–I mean, cannot say how long I can stay for. Mine is…an unpredictable business.”
He waited to see if it was okay for him to finish repairs.
Grabbing a roll of duct tape from the hammer space behind my back, I gleefully duct taped the Breaker’s mouth shut just in case we’d hear any unwanted chin music out of him.
I saw the Repairman give me a funny look as he and Stupid were both picking up the lumps that made up the Breaker and plop them around the wheelchair.
“Greasy! Psycho!,” I barked, “don’t just sit there with your thumbs up your asses. Go and find us some small boxes to cart this chump away!”
Wheezy produced several small boxes from his own hammer space and held them up to me. “Why’d you have those behind your back?” I growled.
“Figured we’d need them, so I found them.”, he replied, to which I said as I smacked them out of his hand, “Go find them again! Those are cheap over. I’ll be doing most of the work with arresting this guy! Least you three can do is get us better boxes!”
With that, I helped Stupid and the Repairman use a putty knife to scrape the remaining lumps of clay off of the floor.
-Smartass
The Breaker gave a muffled sigh as where his mouth would be was taped up. Both he and the Repairman idly wondered why this would matter, but the gesture seemed to be good enough for Toons.
As the other weasels looked for better boxes, the Repairman went over and grabbed the cheap ones. Hey, they could come in handy…
He turned to Smartass.
"Hey, if you don’t mind me asking,” he asked, out of idle curiosity, “What do you get out of all this?”
Vinny looked over the items. “Um, I’m not sure~ Usually we’d use a certain type of material we arrows produce ourselves… But Bowyetta hasn’t really had much damage occur to her lately, so we haven’t had to make any in a long time~” He finally decided to pick up the bungee cord. “It’s different than her usual, but it should work just as well~” He stuck his “head” into Bowyetta’s hair for a moment, and another arrow quickly joined him to attach the cord.
Already Bowyetta was starting to feel better- Well, sort of. At least she could see again, and her head stopped spinning long enough for her to get to her feet, though she was still a bit disoriented. Bowyetta took a moment to get her balance, then spoke. “T-thank you, Mr. Sir… Bowyetta is going to be laying down for a bit…” She then fumbled her way up the stairs.
Vinny turned back the the Repairman. “Thank you very much for helping Bowyetta, Mr. Sir~ She should be okay after she gets some rest~ But, I should go make sure she eats something~” Vinny then followed her up the stairs.
The Repairman watched the two go, before finally turning back to Beepsumu.
“Let me know when she gets a regular string,” he said. “I’d kinda like that cord back.”
With that, he called over the nearest good-condition arrow.
“Hey,” he said, bending the dents out of the arrow he was holding, “could you bring the other guys that were hurt?”
Fortunately the Wall wasn’t in any peril at the moment. This could take a while.
*distressed ghost noises*
“Art! Aaaaaaaaah INKY GO FIND SOME HEART FRUITS!!!”
“The grass! Go cut the grass!”
Blue just zips off to places unknown, returning a minute later as a wolf carrying a potion in his teeth, muttering telepathically about why he’s always the one running to get potions for incapacitated living Heroes and scaring the living daylights out of shopkeepers. He sets it down by the Repairman and returns to ghost form.
“Here, have him drink that!”
At Light’s screams, the Repairman jumped, flinging the roll of gauze quite some ways away.
He turned around in an instant.
“Heart fruit, got it wheredoI–?”
He wasn’t about to question cutting the grass to find some heart fruit, so he nodded and pulled an already-running lawnmower out of his toolbox and got to work.
Occasionally, a k-thunk sound could be heard over the roar of the mower, and it would spit something out. The Repairman would either cradle it if it was a heart, or just drop it if it wasn’t.
By the time he had about fifteen hearts, a wolf approached him with a red potion. When it turned out to be Blue, the Repairman snatched the bottle up.
“Of course!” he said to himself. Red potions were always good, right?
He dashed back to the physical Link and took a second to frantically look back and forth at the hearts and the potion. Which one would…?
No time! He stuck a funnel in “Art’s” mouth, dumping both the heart fruits and the contents of the bottle into it.
“Okay, c’mon, wake up, you shouldbeplentyhealthynow…” the Repairman rapidly begged, before descending into incomprehensible gibberish and finally falling silent.
“Ack! Gross your hands are getting in my mouth!”
Link continued to fight against the small blob creature. He didn’t want to hurt it at all, but he couldn’t help it and lost his temper. The young hero drew his tornado rod and held it above his head. With a wave, the propellers began to twirl and send the Repairman’s tools flying about in a strong gust of wind. The hero kept himself from soaring in the air by gripping onto the cracks on the wall. Before he knew it, everything came flopping back down in place as soon as the gales died down.
“Listen buddy, the sanctuary’s sacred grounds around here so I want an explaination. Tell me what this–”
CLANG
Before he could finish his sentence, Link was already lying flat on his face with an industrial duty wrench by his side. He didn’t move, but simply let out a pained groan. His fingers twitched slightly as if trying to grasp for something. Eventually he fell completely silent, not making a single sound or movement.
The Repairman did not have the grip of a hero. He merely had the grip of a blob of ink, so it wasn’t long before he was sent screaming into the winds.
He splatted on the ground just a second after. He reformed to greet Link demanding to know about the Wall.
He flinched as a rather heavy wrench landed on the kid’s head, causing him to collapse.
“Ah, geez,” the Repairman winced. “Are you…okay…?”
Nothing.
Okay, this was bad, this was very bad. He didn’t just…kill off a protagonist, did he? He knew death didn’t have a lot of meaning in most of the universes he visited, but even he knew a video game death was different. It was unpredictable. It could alter the world in odd ways. Besides, what would the Link ghosts say if they got an addition thanks to him?
“W-Wait right there,” he stammered, frantically running to his tool cart. He quickly pushed it closer, dragged out his blue toolbox and began digging.
Okay, somewhere in here there had to be different pickups from different game universes (C’mon, they were just lying around!). It took less than two minutes to find different healthy-looking things, but the Repairman felt every second.
Did he hear beeping…? He shook that thought off, and got to work.
He started by throwing a green spotted mushroom to Link. It somehow felt right, but it just bounced off with no apparent effect. Same lack of results with a pixelated turkey leg. And the oversized pill.
The teal medkit split open on the ground, scattering gauze, bacitracin, an ice pack, and several hypodermic needles.
Hey, that might work!
After a bit of struggling, the Repairman pulled the stretcher out of his toolbox and laid Link onto it gently.
Okay, so…just wrapping the bandaging around the head should do the trick, right…?
Siblings-a-Fixin' 