Open Starter!

“I’d ask why bother lugging it, but I’m assuming you need it for your job?” Ace asked, pointing to the toolbox with a stick. Some sand had already fallen into the groove, though since it wasn’t too windy, it wasn’t changed much.

Ace shrugged, “In this area, common enough that I’d say to sleep lightly… but rare enough that you CAN sleep. I wouldn’t worry too much considering… well… how well you blend into the night.” Ace gave an uneasy laugh, hoping he wouldn’t offend the repairman.

“Yup,” the Repairman replied, idly brushing some sand off the toolbox. “Woulda brought my other one, too, but this was heavy enough.”

He nodded, considering his plan to get across unscathed. He hoped he put his cart in a safe place.

He gave a short, quiet laugh as Ace did.

“Yeah,” he replied, “I guess ink is good for that.”

Then he realized something. He turned to Ace, and pointed to his eyes.

“What about these, though? My eyes are often still visible…”

Before long, Bowyetta took a look out the window to see a strange dark shape just outside the house. She stared at it for a second trying to make it out, before calling for the cube-head. “Beepsumu! There is being something’s outside of our home!”

Beepsumu went to the window where Bowyetta stood. “Great, now there’s some kind of dimensional tear? I better go patch that up…”

Bowyetta stopped her. “Upon closely inspecting, this appears not to be a tear. It is appearing to be alive.”

Beepsumu looked even more irritated. “Oh no, it’s probably someone to take away Bonkakira… Come on, we have to cover for her until she gets back.” Beepsumu took Bowyetta’s hand and they went outside the house.

He continued approaching the house, hoping that by some miracle, he wouldn’t be seen. No such luck.

He saw a…candy cane…? …worm…? …garish Festivus pole…? through the window. It seemed to be staring at him. Not knowing what to do, he waved awkwardly. It seemed to shout for someone after a moment, and a cubed computer appeared.

The Repairman, granted, had seen some odd things, but a Technicolor plant and some kind of robot living in a house in the most literal use of “the middle of nowhere” ever conceived…did raise some questions.

As the two began to emerge, his mind was racing, in case things went south.

“Um, hello,” he said, as smoothly as he could manage, “Just checking up on a few things…”

He was mentally kicking himself. Really? That excuse never satisfies people!

E let their head tilt to the side at the question, eyes full of confusion. They weren’t sure what that mean. A game hunter? A ghost hunter? A monster?

Their appearance was strange, that was something E knew, but people never really asked. Those who did mostly assumed E was homeless, or a performer.

Vitiligo wasn’t common either and black eyes were seen as demonic almost everywhere.

Shaking themselves out of thinking E brought pen to paper again.

‘I’m more of a traveler. So nope.’

E pause before skipping a line.

‘What kind of hunter did you mean?’

“Ah.”

The Repairman had seen a lot, from a rapping dog who woos a flower to a wrestler who spends his days reading fan mail. An elfish-looking monster hunter with black eyes was not out of the question to him.

Still, he couldn’t help but wonder why so few questioned a two-foot-eight talking ink splotch.

He quickly stopped that train of thought before it could start again. He was fine!

“I meant, like, were you hunting monsters in there? Or rescuing someone? I almost never see any other reasons for people to wander around monster-infested caverns.”

He seemed to completely miss the irony of him saying that.

“Yeah, Sparky’s another one of the heroes. There’s ten of us, actually, thirteen if you count Red, Blue, Green and myself as separate people. I’ll go get him.” Vio walked away, vanishing after a few steps as he entered the ghostly ether the ghosts were inhabiting in their spare time.

Green bounced a little in place as he told Inky about Hyrule’s technological advances. “Yeah, cars and computer thingies and all sorts of mechanical and electric contraptions! It’s pretty cool, although I’ll admit I get pretty lost trying to understand it all.” He grinned at the repairman’s bewildered expression. “I guess to an outsider, all of us seem pretty close together, but hundreds of years pass in between our gaaaaaarand grand adventures, so it’s kinda a blink-and-you-miss-it thing for someone not from out world. Or at least I think that’s how it works.”

Before he could speculate more, Vio returned with a new Hero, presumably the one they had called “Sparky”.

“Uh, hi?” He waved timidly at the toon. “Vio kinda rushed the explanation, do you really fix the Fourth Wall?”

“Oh, okay,” he nodded. Made sense; more timelines meant more heroes. “Wait, ‘count as separate’…?”

But Vio was already gone. Ah, well.

“Hmm,” he said, turning to Green, “Makes sense. I’ve seen everything from the Stone Age to the far future, several times. I just didn’t expect this world to make such a leap, I guess…”

He realized how mean that sounded and quickly added: “I mean, a lot of magical worlds tend to stay the same. I guess magic makes a lot of ’em complacent.”

He idly looked around as he spoke, and as he did so, he saw Vio and a new ghost, presumably Sparky, appear.

“OH!” he exclaimed, jumping slightly. “Um, yes, that would be me. We were just talking about how much this place has changed…”

“We’ve been at this for 74 years, inky! We know what we’re doing. And we have good hunches of who started the rumors spreading, so we know who to ask!”

I snorted, “But as far as protection goes, you might need it! There’s worse things out there besides us, and whoever wants to frame you is probably dangerous. You’ll be….“safe” with us.“

-Smartass

"Uh-huh…”

He looked at his siren light, still peeking out from under his wig. The red flashes were well-concealed, true, but still noticeable if one took a closer look.

“…Out of curiosity, will we be stopping by the Nega-Verse? I gotta take this pretty soon…”

He was pretty sure that the Fourth Wall Breaker finally got up and did something for once. Oy.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the interdimensional void, there rested a small house, as strange as it may have been. Normally this house was quiet, but today…

“That is IT! I can’t stand for her actions anymore!” A girl with a strange, cube-shaped head stormed down the stairs, followed by a redheaded girl with sunglasses.

The redheaded girl grabbed the cube-head’s hand. “But Bonkakira only wanted to help those people. Lighten up a little, would you?”

The cube-head pulled her hand away. “Help them? You were HELPING them? Bonkakira, don’t you realize that we’re only allowed to stay here if we DON”T interfere with dimensions other than our own? Don’t you realize we’re not the only interdimensional travelers that exist?”

While this was going on, a tall, striped creature was watching from the other room. She somewhat resembled the others with her red hair, yet she clearly wasn’t human. At last, she stepped into the room to speak up, “Bowyetta is thinking you both should making up right now this moment!”

Bonkakira turned towards the bow creature. “No one asked you, you demented candy cane.”

“Don’t you talk to her like that!” The cube-head snapped as Bonkakira stormed out the door. “Hey, where do you think you’re going?!”

“Bonkakira is going somewhere she doesn’t have to look at you.”

Bowyetta followed Bonkakira out the door, only to be stopped by the cube-head. “Waiting just a second! Bowyetta is not thinking you should going out in there!”

“Don’t worry, Bowyetta,” The cube-head put her hand on Bowyetta’s “shoulder”, or rather what she had resembling one. “No matter how far she goes, she’ll find her way back here when she’s ready.”

“Bowyetta is hopeful that you are being correct about this.”

It didn’t take too long for the Repairman to go to the void. It was pure white, all around. The inkblot didn’t even cast a shadow.

He started to wonder why he wasted his time coming here when he heard the distant sound of a door opening. He turned to see not only a house, but a few of people emerging from it. One looked humanoid, the other two…not so much. Only one of them was leaving, apparently in a hurry. He could hear some hollering, but he couldn’t make it out.

Whatever it was, he felt like he should give a wide berth as he moved towards the house and fixed the Wall.

Oh this could be fun. E tried to keep there face clean of any mischief at play, only failing when they smiled, twirling the pen and started scribbling.

‘The caves are said to hold really odd creatures. Most of them very dangerous and will attack on sight. Not sure what would of happened to you if I didn’t find you and lead us out the right way.’

E just barley held back a string of giggles as they showed the message. While the caves were a danger, the worst that could happen is you get turned around and get scared if the dark wasn’t your favorite. The “monsters” were just added for a good horror story around a campfire- but E saw no reason to say that when they saw an opportunity to spook the repairman a little.

His eyes widened as he read.

“Oh,” he finally said. "Well, thank you! I hate it when I get attacked!“

He looked up at E, with some visible admiration. This soon changed into a desire for more clarification.

"So, um, are you some kind of hunter or…?”

@bonkakira-and-friends

The Repairman looked at his siren light in confusion. It was telling him to go… between universes? There was nothing there, to his knowledge.

Hmm. Maybe someone else was traveling and made an offhand remark.

Shrugging, he finished his job and left the odd, blue, technologically-advanced doghouse and headed to new territory… or no territory, come to think of it.

“Well,” I said, smirking at your obviously discomfort. “Now that you’re in disguise, we should probably go back and interrogate some toons”

I walked full circle around you and said, “I think it’s best of you stayed back, thinking on it. Stupid, psycho and Wheezy can watch you; you may have somebody who’s out to get you, and you’ll need protection”

-Smartass

“Protection, eh?” he echoed, sweetly. He did not ask if he would need protection from his protectors. He would just have to avoid eye contact, he guessed. Especially eye contact with the straightjacketed one, who the Repairman guessed was “Psycho.”

In any case, there was another issue.

“Interrogate some toons?” he asked. “But you don’t have any leads! It could be anyone, from that time-traveling horse to that hairy…orange…er, spoon, to—”

Suddenly, his siren light popped up, gently pushing his wig upwards.

“…someone in the Nega-Verse?”

E’s face scrunched up in confusion at that. They wanted to ask what a ‘forth wall’ was but there were other things they wanted to know first and knew the Repairman probably had his own questions, so they wrote before repeating the process of showing once more.

‘I am E, a wanderer. Your kinda lucky I found you you know.’

“Well, nice to meet you, E,” the Repairman replied, sticking out an inky hand.

“You’re right about that, E,” he chuckled. Realizing something, he continued, “Wait, lucky how?”

He hoped it was just the luck of not being lost in a tunnel. And not something more than that inconvenience.