The Repairman was currently the only light source in the underpass. His siren light blinked red, giving him barely enough to see the mess of wires and switches in the panel he was fiddling with.
He had no clue why an underpass needed to be automated. Or electronic doors. Or, for that matter, multifunctional robot arms. He guessed it had something to do with a surplus of Toon inventors in this area.
Still, no time for speculation. He had a job to do, and he was sure Bruce needed to go somewhere.
“Um,” the Repairman replied, uneasily, “I’m not sure. The sparks came from this outlet labeled…”
He peered at the label.
“…‘Arm B-3 Control’.“
After a moment’s thought, he continued, "Well, I don’t think it’s an issue.”
He unplugged the offending cord, and squinted to look at all the other labels.
“I mean, I’m not sure what I expected from somewhere like this! You called it Toontown, right? Quite literally a cartoon town, hahah.”
The chickenlike bot couldn’t help but listen to their conversation, wondering why the Repairman would have to stick with Doris for a longer amount of time than originally thought. It couldn’t have been because of him, could it?
Scratch didn’t notice the Repairman cringing, and even if he’d asked, he’d still probably be confused.
“Ba-haaah, I kinda miss gettin’ paid! Wait, was I ever actuallypaid? Did Robotnik even have a salary for me?! If so, why can’t I remember gettin’ paychecks? Have I really been clonked on the head that many times?”
The Repairman looked back up at Scratch in surprise.
“You mean you don’t work for him anymore? Why are you hiding from Sonic, then?”
Doris chimed in, “If ya need pay, birdie, our firm is hirin’ alarm, roosters, and similar waker-uppers!”
“You and I have very different priorities,” the Repairman remarked, looking back down.
“Hey, mine are in order,” Doris shot back. “Don’t ya have a metaphor to maintain?”
The Repairman wanted to protest (to his increasing bafflement), but it was true. He did have a Fourth Wall to repair. Sighing, he pulled a can of glue from behind his back and threw its contents onto the fracture he caused here.
“I can imagine. Sometimes tools are randomly animate where I’m from, or things suddenly just become sentient for a short period of time and then stop doing that. It’s usually ‘only when it’s funny’.”
“But they barely ever have names! Well, other than ‘talking thingy’ or ‘living item’. But here, I’ve even seen some of the buildings talk! How does anything actually… get done around here…?”
“What you said pretty much says it all,” the Repairman replied, being careful about his word choice, “Things get done because it’s convenient that way. If they weren’t dramatic or convenient, they wouldn’t happen.”
He paused.
“…Or exposition, for that matter.”
He cringed, realizing he would have to make another stop on his way to that blank room he was told was used for TV commercial spots. Not that he really liked that room all too much, but he had a job to do.
“Looks like you might be staying with me a little longer,” the Repairman sighed, looking back at Doris.
“Eh,” she replied, nonchalantly, “I get paid by the minute anyhow. Speaking a which, you’re nearin’ six minutes.”
The Repairman, still lacking his previous times, had no clue how to react to that.
“Guess it’s pretty universal then!”
Scratch was going to say more, until he had been interrupted by the wheezing of the toon’s stopwatch. Now, even for living in such a toony world, that was a new one for a stopwatch. Usually they were oversized cuckoo birds. He had one once, actually. But sadly, it’d been destroyed one afternoon by anyone-could-guess-who.
“WO-HO-HOAH! What’s all that for?”
“Huh?”
The Repairman, having seen practically every artistic walk of life, found it easy to forget that others often have not. However, as he turned around, he noticed Scratch eying his watch.
“Oh, this?” he asked, holding it up so the Badnik could have a better look. “This is just a stopwatch I rented–”
The stopwatch coughed again, this time in annoyance.
“–temporarily hired to help me see if this shortcut works out. Sorry, Doris.”
Doris only let out a small “hmph” in response.
“Aha,” the Repairman continued, somewhat embarrassed, “I’m just so used to using inanimate tools…”
“Oh,” said the Narrator. “Information. Yippee.”
He fell silent, absorbing everything he had learned about this strange newcomer. “So,” he said finally. “You’re a cartoon… character. Pleasure to meet you. I myself am a character from the video game The Stanley Parable. I am voiced by British voice actor Kevan Brighting. Currently everything that I am saying or doing is being related through the social networking website Tumblr. I am in a work of fiction right now.”
The Narrator waited to see if his words had the intended effect.
The Repairman’s blobby form visibly sagged. It was going to be one of those jobs, wasn’t it?
Sighing, he continued taping the Fourth Wall. While it certainly wasn’t pretty, the absolute mess of tape would be enough to fix things. Soon enough, it wouldn’t even be noticeable.
“You’re not the first to do that,” he remarked. If he had teeth, he would have been gritting them, though it sounded the same.
He looked up at the ceiling. While narrators didn’t have places, per se, it felt right.
“In fact,” he said, somewhat louder, “I’d say that’s pretty uninspired.”
He hoped that would get this voice to knock it off. Their conversation already wasn’t doing the Wall any favors. There was no need to be blatant.
“Hah, really? Pretty classic stuff where I’m from, bah-hah-ha-haaa!”
After he’d stopped his odd chicken-y laughing, he also looked over at the painted wall.
It was his best one yet. He’d recently been thinking about getting into digital art, but… All of those programs crashed so much… Traditional art couldn’t crash, but it certainly could get ruined… Oh well. An arm for an arm.
“It’s certainly not the only trick I know, though!”
“Is it?” the Repairman asked. “Well, it’s classic here, too!”
He wasn’t too surprised that Scratch considered it classic. Many Toons were aware of this kind of gag. Even if those same Toons fell for it several times.
“If all your tricks are that classic,” he said, cheerfully, “you should fit right in here.”
Suddenly, the stopwatch coughed at him meaningfully. Taking the hint, the Repairman pulled a blue toolbox from the bottom shelf of his cart and began rummaging for his clipboard. He was pretty sure he still had time, but it’d be good to check…
“I see,” said the Narrator drily. “I didn’t include an inventory in my game,” he added as an afterthought. “I thought it would be too derivative.”
He winced as the Repairman began ripping up pieces of duct tape. The sound of the adhesive was, somehow, even worse than the staple gun. “By the way, what is a ‘Toon’ and why do you feel the need to capitalize it?”
“Hope Stanley never had to carry anything,” the Repairman muttered as he began taping cracks in the Fourth Wall.
“Oh, a Toon? Well…”
He pulled a projection screen out of his toolbox, with a noticeable vzzt sound. Despite the lack of a projector, the whirring of film could be heard as the screen showed a muted clip of Steamboat Willie.
“A Toon,” the Repairman began, “is a drawn, rendered, or animated character.”
The projection changed to reveal the word “Toon.”
“The word Toon comes from ‘cartoon,’” the Repairman continued, the screen continuing to change in time with his small lecture. “It’s capitalized so it can’t be confused with ‘toon, or cartoon. But make no mistake, video game, comic book, and other drawn or rendered folks are Toons as well.”
The projection flickered off, and the screen slid back into his toolbox. Well, that was how he understood it, at least. It would explain how some Toons he encountered weren’t traditionally…Toony.
Not that he cared whether it was “Toony” or not. He had a job to do, so he went and taped up some more breaks as if he hadn’t just gone a bit over-the-top.
“Yeah! Sonic! That pesky little guy. It’s really nuts how much destruction can come from a rodent only as big as that.”
If you think Sonic’s bad, you should meet Stitch, Scratch. Probably still only half the size and many many times more destructive. Entire cities!
“Wait, really? But how? I doubt I’ve seen you around before. Maybe I have and I just don’t remember… Oh, oh, do you like, wipe people’s memories of you after you’ve met or something? Those kinda guys give me the creeps.”
The mechanical bird shivered slightly.
“I’ve seen worse,” the Repairman said, thinking about Sonic’s Fourth Wall breaking (his main frame of reference for folks he hasn’t met), “but he can be an issue.”
The inkblot realized he shouldn’t have said anything as he listened to the chicken’s confusion. Though he did have a quiet chuckle at the “memory erasing” theory. First time he heard of that…or was it?
“You…” he ventured, trying to think of how to say this, “probably haven’t seen me. I only ever passed by, really, but I’ve seen you here and there.”
“Guess I should’ve brought a helmet. Or maybe I should remember I can tuck my head in like a weird turtle.”
He watched the cart pop back into its normal shape almost as if nothing had happened.
“So what’s gotcha wanderin’ around a back alley like this? Also, where’re ya from? I’m tryin’ to kinda avoid someone, a certain blue hedgehog… Howsabout you?”
The Repairman looked up. Grey clouds completely covered the sky. Here in ToonTown, where Toons everywhere came to meet, that could mean anything, from rain, to thunder, to tornadoes, to frogs falling from the sky.
“You’d probably be right to,” he said, pulling a rainbow umbrella from behind his back. He kept it ready as he listened to the chicken.
“Oh, I don’t know where I’m from,” he replied, casually, “and I was just looking for shortcu–”
His eyes snapped back to the robot in surprise.
“Wait, Sonic?”
He peered at the other for a moment.
“Yeah,” he finally decided, “I think I’ve seen you once or twice.”
He was still debating whether, since he usually arrived after a fourth wall break, he should admit he seldom saw this Badnik in one piece.
“Ba-hahahahaaah! I can’t believe you actually FELL for that!”
The mechanical bird crowed with laughter, pulling a string to reveal that the tunnel was indeed fakely painted on a wall.
The Repairman had been trying to take a shortcut through the backstreets of ToonTown this time, to see if he could fix the Fourth Wall any faster that way. The dimmer colors became a blur as he raced towards the tunnel ahead. The inkblot took a moment to look at the stopwatch in his hand.
BAM!
The push cart he was speeding with crumpled, and the stopwatch flew into the air as the Repairman’s blobby form flew face-first into the painted wall with a SPLAT!
As he slumped to the floor, somewhat dazed, he looked up at the chicken who was apparently responsible for this. He wasn’t sure of the reason the robot did this, or even if there was a reason. This was, after all, ToonTown, the hub universe for all characters drawn, animated, or rendered.
Still, the Repairman seemed to be in no danger yet (and his assailant didn’t look very threatening).
“Yeah,” he said, somewhat sheepishly, "I guess I should have seen that coming.“
Siblings-a-Fixin' 