Even though the Repairman’s swat went through Vio instead of touching him, Vio still jerked back away from the Wall. He grinned apologetically at the Repairman and respectfully stepped away from the Wall to let him do his work.
“So I can call you whatever?” Green asked, forefinger tapping against his lips in thought. “How about… oh! There’s this one game that I saw over there with these ghosts that you kinda remind m-” Green flinched as a fresh hairline crack appeared on the Wall “-ah… crap. This is harder than I thought. Sorry! Uh… Inky, how about Inky, because you look like… this one ghost… and you’re all black like ink, and yeah.” he finished lamely. Leave it to a ghost to nickname someone after another ghost!
“Yeah, a lot of people have issues with it,” the Repairman admitted through what would be gritted teeth. Even himself. “Just…try not to be so direct.”
He considered the name for a moment. A finger seemed to sprout from his hand to tap on his “chin.”
“…Well,” he mused, “I am ink…”
He also felt flattered to be compared to a character who went places. Though he said nothing about this, his eyes shone a bit more.
He jerked up a little.
“But isn’t Inky orange? Or was that the pink one…Oh, I could never remember…”
As he thought about it, he began smearing the newly-formed crack with cement. As he wasn’t looking, this was a very imprecise operation.
“Good!” I said, glad that you shut yourself up before I had to do it for ya. “Now, the first thing we gotta do in cases like this is pretermine if you got any enemies.”
Walking back and forth, completely in charge, I whipped around to the blob and asked, “is there anyone who don’t like your work? Anybody who constantly breaks the fourth wall and don’t clean up after hisself?” -Smartass
The Repairman nodded as he started tapping at the already-hardening cement with a hammer and chisel. He hated when that happened.
Constantly breaking the Wall and not cleaning up? he thought. That really narrows it down.
Out loud, he said, “…No one comes to mind…”
Oh, sure, he could name vandals, but he felt unclean implicating others to a Dip conspirator. Besides, he didn’t think any of them would want to frame the Repairman.
“Out of curiosity,” he asked, looking up, “how’d you get that report?”
“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.
Ace shook his head, “A wall repairman? In the desert?” Ace seemed confused, and with good reason. He had never heard of a wall repairman let along a fourth wall repairman, OR a Toon; but, he didn’t want to pry into his guests life. “Name’s Ace and I’m headed to my home village.” Ace fidgeted then checked on the cooking meat.
“No,” the Repairman replied, shaking his head, “A Fourth Wall Repairman…in a desert.”
He noticed the other’s confusion, but wasn’t sure if he should clarify just yet.
“Ace, huh? Well, thanks, Ace. I needed a rest.”
He looked at the fire idly.
“So, uh, where’s your village?”
“Damn straight we had our reasons!” I snapped. “This town used to be everything we hated!” After a long pause, I sighed bitterly, saying, “But that’s troubled waters under the bridge. We had our reasons, but don’t feel that way no more.”
With a smirk, I sneered, “We went from chaotic evil to chaotic neutral. The thin grey area between gangster and cop. And this law reforcer don’t like the way you’re treating him! So unless you wanna spend a night downtown, I suggest you quit the chin music!”
I exhaled, calming myself down, “now….do you want our help with this or not?” -Smartass
The Repairman jumped back at the outburst. He made a soft squish sound as he landed. Oh, great. He was stuck in spilled cement with a Toonicidal weasel in front of him. He found himself shaking a little.
At least, until the weasel started to calm down a bit.
The Repairman could only nod hopefully as the weasel said there was no more of that Dip issue.
Still, he thought it best to clam up, like the other said. He nodded frantically, hoping not to see the weasel’s current punishment methods.
“Erm,” he finally replied, “y-yes, that would be nice. Thank you. Yes. Please do–”
He quickly slapped a hand over where his mouth would be. He didn’t need to dig himself downtown, after all. He just needed peace of mind, and that wouldn’t come from annoying this guy any more.
I was taken aback for a second. How could this blob not know who we are if his own job was so important? “Lemme ask you this, chump…. You ever hear of the time a certain bunny got framed for the murder of Marvin Acme?” -Smartass
“A bunny….” he mused. “Hmm…”
The Repairman thought back. He didn’t pay much attention to… well, anything except the Wall for decades, but he did vaguely recall something…
“I remember talk of a framed rabbit saving Toonkind from a Dip conspiracy in the 40s,” he thought aloud. “A conspiracy caused by some kind of rubber-faced rotoscope and a gang of questionable…was it ferrets, minks, wea—”
His eyes suddenly widened, looking back at the weasel in front of him.
“Aha,” he said, slowly shrinking back. “I-I’m sure you had your reasons…”
“It’s just what we’ve been hearing, chump! Don’t shoot the messenger! But if you’re gonna get hot under the collar like that, I’m gonna have to take you downtown for assaulting an officer!” -Smartass
The Repairman hesitated, backing up somewhat.
“W-wait,” he stammered, more out of confusion than fear, “You’re an officer? Where’s your badge?”
He thought it best not to mention the ink stains on the weasel’s suit. It certainly wouldn’t help his case, either way.
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?
“Well we’ve been hearing rumors all over that you’ve been breaking them to get more money to fix them. It’s just what we heard!” I barked. “Now, unless you prove otherwise……” I trail off. “You don’t wanna know what the rest of the sentence says. Let’s just say it involves pie in an unpleasant place.” -Smartass
The Repairman, having little to no discernible anatomy, could only stare blankly in response to the weasel’s threat.
He shook himself, and got right back to being offended. He dropped the bucket and moved inches in front of the weasel’s face.
“For your in-for-MA-tion,” he said, emphasizing each syllable with a hard poke in the weasel’s chest, “I don’t even get paid for this. So why would I willfully make my own job harder, hmm?”
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.
Siblings-a-Fixin' 