“I didn’t mean it like that, Inky. You’re obviously doing a good job, since it hasn’t come crashing down yet ~~even with all the abuse it gets from us~~. It’s just I’ve never met someone made of ink before, and it’s kinda a novel concept.” Green pauses and starts to grin mischievously. “Does this feel like a ‘bunch of pixels’ to you?” he snarked, poking the Repairman rapidly in the sides.

“Green, you’re a ghost.” Vio reminded his rambunctious brother. “He can’t feel you anyways!” Turning back to the Repairman, he continued their earlier conversation. “Ah I see. Well then, what’s this Toontown like? We’ve got some pretty different people and creatures here in Hyrule, but I can imagine you’ve seen an even wider array!”

The Repairman replied, “There’re a lot of folks made of ink out there, lemme tell ya.”

“A-are y-ou sh-sure, V-Vio?” He shivered. Small spots of frost were visible where Green poked him.

He fetched a dark green scarf from one of his toolboxes and wrapped it around himself. Somehow, he seemed to shiver less already.

“Oh, Toontown? Yeah, there’s quite a variety there. You’ve got folks from most every universe hanging around. And the sights…”

He sighed. He liked going there.

“Used to be just farmlands and big cities, but now…” he chuckled, “now you can find pretty much any scenery there.”

He quickly looked around, to ensure he was using “scenery” in a non-interfering way. As he was about to continue, something occurred to him.

“Hey, I’m surprised you haven’t been there. There’ve been gaming folks hanging out in there since…”

The Repairman paused to think. Frequently traveling between universes had a way of messing with your internal clock and internal calendar.

“…the eighties?”

He offhandedly rolled some Scotch tape over that crack.

@silentandtested, continued from here

Watching the other in front of them move so suddenly had them tensing up, but despite feeling like a wound up spring they didn’t move when the other came closer. Their face scrunched up in an odd mixture of amusement and confusion when they could see paper in their hand. E was no threat to anyone, but even so what could paper do?

Seeing as this strange looking man was of no major threat to them, E forced themselves to relax and followed the others lead and walked the rest of the day just on the edge of the light and stopped, giving a little wave.

The inkblot reflexively shuffled back a bit once he saw someone in the light. However, seeing how nothing scary or even suspenseful had happened, he relaxed and waved back at the humanoid.

“Um, hello,” said the Repairman, putting away the paper. He tried moving closer to the other. “You happen to know a way through here? This is my first time in this worl–er, area…”

I frowned, seeing him split himself in two. “Well pull yourself together, bub!” I barked. “We ain’t got all day to solve nothing if you’re gonna split!”

I muttered to myself as he tried to pry his lower half out of the cement. “You want help with that? Usually it’s a gangster’s job to put a guy in a pair of cement shoes; not take them out! ”

-Smartass

“No, no, I got this,” he replied, producing a spoon. As he scooped up ink and smoothed it back onto himself, he realized something.

Still scooping up his lower third, he looked up and asked, “Wait, gangsters? I thought you were cops…”

He decided not to bring up any mention of “protection money,” or the fact the pink weasel still hadn’t noticed the ink-stains the Repairman accidentally left on his suit.

“Ugh, I can’t see a thing!” the Repairman said, to no one in particular. Wherever this universe was, it was dark! Not seeing another soul around, the Repairman slowly drew out a gas lamp and lit it. There HAD to be more to this world than near-pitch black…

The old tunnels were left to rot decades ago from what the locals say, and the entrance was overgrown. Walking inside was fairly easy though, as a spot that lacked any plant life served as their way in. Either by local teenagers or wildlife they weren’t sure what actually made the hole they didnt know but they were thankful for it. The way they were going lead directly into the next town over if they walked far enough.

E wasn’t expecting a voice, and definitely wasn’t expecting the sudden flicker of light up away’s ahead. They stopped dead in their tracks, bare feet digging into the dirt floor as they thought about what to do. From here they couldn’t see much from here and curiosity was spiked on what another person was doing here.

So despite the caution E walked forward. They hoped they could just get a look then sneak by without getting noticed. Unfortunately their footsteps fell on a twig and broke easily under the weight with a loud and crystal clear ‘snap’.

The Repairman turned around faster than any inkblot had a right to. He couldn’t see past the lantern’s light, yet he found himself trying to quickly scan the darkness. He knew that a twig snapping was either someone benign or a monster who would chew him up and spit him out.

Despite being ink, and a Toon, the latter idea did not appeal to him, so he pulled a rolled-up newspaper from behind his back.

Shaking a little, he began to move towards the source of the sound. Oh, he did hope that if it was a monster, it would somehow be allergic to paper or ink or something…

Open Starter!

Ace dropped the fourth wall subject. He still didn’t understand… did he repair every fourth wall he came across?

“No problem. It’s always best to be warm while resting… my village?” He looked at the sky for a second before pointing off to the left. “It’s over there quite a distance… another day… maybe day and a half.”

The Gerudo tended to navigate by stars to make up for the indistinct and inconsistent landscape, sets of flag poles would mimic constellations and so serve as a marker for those who knew they way, but was no help to those who couldn’t navigate the desert. Ace direction was a little off though; while he had invited the repairman to sit at the fire, he didn’t quite trust the blob enough to tell him exactly where his village was.

“Ah,” the Repairman nodded.

He looked in the direction Ace pointed with casual interest. If there were folks there, he might have to visit someday.

“Yeah,” he mused, patting his toolbox, “it would probably take that long lugging this thing around.”

He idly looked back towards where he came. He certainly left an odd trail, with one continuous groove from him and several rectangular prints from his toolbox. He wondered how long it would take for the trail to be blown over, and how long it would take for him to get back to his cart.

“Um, when you said ‘bandits,’” he asked, suddenly concerned, “just how common are they…?”

“Inky’s the turquoise one actually, but, details. If you’re made of ink, then Inky’s as good a name as any.” Green chuckled. “Wait, you’re made of ink? Really? Why would a repairman be made of ink?”

Vio, meanwhile, was still more interested in the Wall itself. It was a little bit bizarre, watching the repairman scoop up and smear the cement, and then seeing the Wall magically weave itself back together. Based on his previous comments, Vio was pretty sure that what the repairman saw was not what he did.

“I have a question, Mr. Inky! What does the Wa- um, it look like to you while you’re fixing it? Oh! I’m guessing you get to visit other worl-…” Vio cut himself off again and groaned. Dear Nayru it was exceedingly difficult to talk about something without directly talking about it! “…augh! I’m guessing you get to travel quite a bit for… work. What are some of the other places you’ve seen like?”

“Eh, fair enough.”

The Repairman looked at himself. Sure, he wasn’t much to look at as far as Toons went, but being ink had nothing to do with that. Many of the finest Toons were ink and paint.

“Does it matter?” he asked, somewhat defensively. “If a bunch of pixels can save a kingdom, a blob of ink can maintain a wall.”

He didn’t seem to notice the crack that formed behind him.

He turned to Vio, somewhat amused by but mostly cringing at his attempts to avoid the topic directly.

“No, you can mention other universes, just try to avoid…“ he moved his head vaguely towards the wall, “that.”

Pulling out a roll of Scotch tape, he continued, “But yeah, I’ve seen a lot of worlds. ~~Most of them are too self-aware for their own good.~~ There’s Toontown, a place where folks from every universe can meet. Pretty nice there.”

He thought as he began taping over the cement and the newer cracks.

“There are universes that you might feel at home at, with magic and swords and all that. Others still have futuristic technology, or dinosaurs, or horrifying abominations, or…”

The Repairman stopped, gasping for breath, after a full minute of rambling like this.

“On second thought, could you narrow it down a little?“

Stupid pressed on, “but why can’t we see them till they’re broken? And why don’t we bump into them if they’re everywhere?”

I was about to tell him to shut his pie hole….but Stupid actually brought up a good point for once; to get to the bottom of this, we have to understand what this little blob /does/, extractly as he does it.

“Yeah…,” I began. “How does this whole thing work anyway?” I asked, getting closer to the repairman, almost right up in his face.

“I’m curious about this. If we know how this works, we can help you better,” I added, trying to make this less stressful for him. Especially considering it was /us/ he was dealing with.

-Smartass

“Well…er…I…”

As he tried to answer the fat one’s questions, the Repairman forgot all about being stuck in a dried puddle of cement. This quickly became apparent as he tried to back up slightly, away from the pin-suited one, and the top two-thirds of him detached from the lower third with a quiet shlup.

Well, at least he could move now.

As the weasel tried to reassure him, the Repairman looked back in the cement, seeing if he could recover his ink.

“Oh, um,” he continued, still focused on digging the rest of himself out, “I think it has something to do with…metaphors…metaphysics…metagaming…erm…basically, you only see it as the plot demands it.”

He winced. He knew he’d have to clean that up, too.

“Same thing for working with it., I think. I mean, I could bump into it, but that’s my job.”

‘ AND IT TALKS!!! ‘

Yes, he’s shouting but he doesn’t even realize! The whole situation, the surrealness of it all – IT WAS A TYPICAL THING THAT HAPPENED EVERYDAY FOR TICK. He just has this way of over exaggerating ever situation.

‘ D-DID CHAIRFACE MAKE YOU?

Use his laser beam to create you ?’

The Repairman grimaced. This had “long day” written all over it.

“Yes,” he said, evenly, “I talk.”

He stared at this man for a moment. Chairface? Life-creating laser beams? Granted, the Repairman had seen stranger things, but coming from this guy’s mouth, he wasn’t sure what to believe.

“…No,” he finally replied, “I think I would know if I was made by this Chairface person. Who is he, anyhow?”

“We got friends in high and low places.” I say, with a slight smirk.

“It was easy for us to get the gossip from Toontown’s Underworld. Unfortunately, we can’t find out who started the rumor. We know a lot; but we don’t know everything,” chimed in Wheezy, blowing a puff of smoke into the Repairman’s….would you defer to that as a face? I guess…his face.

I said, “It’s tough, ya know? But we do what we can. And don’t you worry none about our work for Doom. That’s all in the past. We do good around this town for a hefty fee, and that’s all that matters to us.”

Still pacing, I light up a stoagie I had in my pocket. “No enemies, huh? You ain’t met anybody in your travels fixing walls that didn’t want you to do it?”

Stupid cut in, “I got a question! What’s a fourth wall made of?”

-Smartass

The Repairman, despite likely not needing to breathe, found himself coughing and sputtering from all that smoke. And, on top of that, the blue one’s actual breath…

He nodded, still uncertain, but he felt it best not to question that issue anymore.

“Well,” he replied, tentatively, “I have known a few, erm, ‘repeat offenders,’ but most of them were fine with me cleaning up after them…”

He paused to consider who might have wanted to stop him, and whether or not he should report them.

His train of thought was interrupted by the fat weasel.

“Oh,” he said, absently, “probably made mostly of cement, fiberglass, and electrician’s tape at this point.”

tick-or-treat:

‘ EGAD!!!

IT’S A SMALL BLACK BLOB!!! ‘

@askthefwrp

❤’d

The Repairman jumped as he heard someone shout behind him. He turned around to find a huge blue insect man gawking at him.

The inkblot found himself feeling a little self-conscious. Was he really so out-of-place that even the strangest-looking…superhero?…alien?…character could point and stare?

Out loud, he said, “Yeah, and he appreciates not being shouted at on the job.”