Eight have entered the waters…

“Oh- I reckon that can’t be too hard. Though, I don’t really fancy the idea ‘f nosy humans proddin’ into m’ everyday life-” he began only to notice the other’s sudden, stranger noise. Bruce blinked, glancing up to see the suit filling with water, and the semi-formed repairman became less formed by the minute.

“Ah, need help gettin’ to the surface? Just give a nod or shake of the head.”

The Repairman looked up at the surface, then back at himself. Deciding he had time, he shook his head as calmly as he could. Gosh, his head was getting easier to turn. And was Bruce getting more distant? He looked out the remnants of the suit.

Yes, he was moving through a current.

He sheepishly looked back at Bruce and nodded faster than he knew he could.

“Well. Um. Years ago, our leader, the Chairman, triggered an invasion of Toontown with us Cogs and had our headquarters built on the edges of town, and so far nobody’s bothered to really make peace between the two sides. There’s just too much prejudice on both sides. Cogs rarely’ve ever ‘killed’ a toon: we can really only sadden them, and I’ll admit to my fair share of greening. But cogs? Just one toon can take out probably 80 of us at once, maybe even more. We don’t get backups very often: in fact, us bosses are the only ones since we’re the master software…”

He sighed, folding his hands.

“I was created post-invasion, I don’t know what Toontown was like before we existed. All I know about most toons are that they’re here to toss pies at me and knock me straight off the Towers.”

“Geez…” the Repairman replied, shocked. He had never sat down to talk to an MMO character, so he had never known their lot in life.

The Repairman put his clipboard away, considering his options. The VP certainly wasn’t wrong about the MMO aspect of his world. From what the Repairman could gather, he was talking to an “enemy”. As this was a game, all these enemies eventually respawned, most likely. But would the VP believe him? If the VP believed him, what would happen? Would it make his job worse?

He swallowed. This was not going to be easy.

The Repairman believed he knew the answer, but he asked, “Why would they knock you off the Towers?”

Eight have entered the waters…

The shark blinked, curiously hovering over the Repairman as he worked; binding and reconstructing a wall he had previously ignored or disregarded. But… how could one miss a giant wall in the middle of the ocean?

As the other began to depart, the great white hesitantly followed alongside, like a lost pup. “So… ‘ow does this… Toon business work?”

The Repairman looked back down at the shark. The look on Bruce’s face made the Repairman suddenly realize the effect he had on his entire worldview. He halted, despite the seawater trickling into his suit.

“Well,” he replied, apologetically, “We just… do what we normally want to do, I guess.”

“Toons are just drawn or animated characters,” he continued, now oblivious to his suit filling with water, “so, like I said, most of us can do what we like, as long as it keeps audience interest going. I mean, there are Toons I know who can blblblblb–”

That was strange. He was pretty sure he didn’t mean to say “blblblblb.”

He tried again, still saying “blblblblb.” Why was he…?

Oh.

His suit was almost completely full of water, and his inky body was beginning to mix with it.

He tried to sigh, crossing his arms. This was not how he wanted to spend today.

“Stanley… hmm…” The Narrator lapsed into silence, apparently in deep thought. “I… honestly, I don’t remember? I don’t think I remember. He was here, for a while, the star of the story. He knew how to make choices, or at least he usually did, and I suppose he just…” His voice trailed off, lost. “…disappeared.”

The Repairman considered this, though he tried to hide it. It seemed odd that this narrator would still be lurking around an empty corporate space after the main character went AWOL.

“Hmm. So what exactly are you doi–” The Repairman put his hands over where his mouth would have been, but it was too late.

Ask an innocent question, get more work piled onto you.

After quickly gluing the crack in the Wall that appeared next to him (all the while, muttering a number of reprimands at himself), he decided it was time to move further down. As interesting as this was, he still had his job to do. Maybe he’d listen to the tropes after all this was done.

He pulled yet another sign from behind his back that asked “So what are you doing, since he’s gone?” and took his toolbox with him, past the cubicles.

Eight have entered the waters…

He felt the hands- or hand like appendages- of the repairman push
him away from the screen and suddenly visible wall, a few sounds of
crackling stone falling apart.
“Ah, sure…” Bruce said with a frown. “I’ll ah…let you do yer stuff, and
I’ll just…wait o’er ‘ere.”

Pressed for time, the Repairman went straight to work, not even acknowledging Bruce any further.

A board here, some cement there, and nails a-plenty. The Repairman quickly became a flurry of tools, ink, and drilling noises. When he finished, the Wall was covered in plaster, boards, cement, and glue. It wasn’t pretty, but….well, it just wasn’t pretty.

Still, it quickly faded back out. The Repairman didn’t stay to admire his handiwork, though. He could feel seawater seeping into his suit from the tearing. He needed to surface fast. He started his way up, hoping he didn’t have to mix with the ocean.

“…Whatever business there is to do:
building more of ourselves, invading places, attending court cases,
handling money: you name it, we business it. Okay, that sounded kind of
dumb, nevermind. Our headquarters are scattered around the borders of
Toontown. Pccht, Toons, coming in here and killing us en masse like some
kinda Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.”

Cue a wallbreak.

Business stuff was all the Repairman noted, as he was too busy mouthlessly gaping at everything else the VP was saying. Toontown? Toons? Killing en masse? MMORPG?

He winced at that last one. At least his siren light was already up; he’d hate for it to be a huge surprise now. Besides, now he knew that this was a “Toons vs. Cogs” world, not a “business robot” world.

The Repairman began to squirm. He had to keep choosing his words carefully. He was a Toon himself, and he didn’t think this cog would take too kindly to the idea that he was one, as well.

“I can’t imagine,” the Repairman said, nervously.

Composing himself somewhat, he continued, “Why would Toons do a thing like that?”

The idea of a Toon-led massacre was foreign and unsettling to the Repairman. Aside from deletion and Dip, most characters just found a way of bouncing back (or respawning, or reincarnating, or something). There were very few Toons who actually killed anyone.

Eight have entered the waters…

The great white blinked. How could he have so easily overlooked the object? The screen? It
was as if it hadn’t existed until the stranger pointed it out, as if it
had merely been a figment in the shark’s peripheral vision.

“That… ain’t possible,” Bruce frowned, brows knit.

The Repairman looked up, out of his hands, at Bruce, then back to the Wall, which was cracking rather quickly. His siren light started to poke out of his head, and threatened to tear his suit. He had to act fast; mixing with other liquids was not fun.

He frantically swam towards the shark, trying to get his attention. At the same time, he was trying to pull his toolbox out of his hammerspace.

“Hey, no, it’s not, so maybe if we leave it alone it will go away pleasestoplookingIneedtofixitrightawaycomeon…”

“Here? Here’s Sellbot HQ. We’re one of four types of cogs, and we’re business bots.”

He
took out a piece of paper and scribbled down some symbols. A circle
with three bars in it. A circle with a dollar sign. A circle with a
gavel. And a circle with a tie.

“See, us Sellbots are the ones
who go out and do the advertising. Cashbots are the ones who handle
money, Lawbots are the ones who fuss over the legalities, and Bossbots
are. Well. Our bosses.”

The VP seemed to roll his optics at the last ones. He had contempt for them.

“I’m,
however, a special type of Sellbot in that there’s only one of me, and
I’m the Senior Vice President of Sales. You may call me the VP though.”

The Repairman pulled out a clipboard and began writing this down, with a few very rough drawings of the symbols and the VP.

Well, now he had a vague idea of where he was. A land ruled by corporate robots, by the looks of things. An odd place for fourth wall breaks, though…

“Um,” he began, trying to choose his words carefully, “so what do cogs do for business?”

“Er. Yes. Um. Are you. Are you… lost…?”

He made what
could be recognized as a confused expression. He’d never seen a toon
like this before. Was he even actually a toon? The critter looked more
like ink to the VP.

“If you’re here to recover an SOS, there’s nobody here yet. The day’s just barely started, you know…!

The Repairman sighed in relief. This giant clearly wasn’t going to be a danger to him. Still, the bot’s assumption surprised him. Was he used to seeing characters as small as the Repairman visit him?

“SOS?,” he replied. “No, I don’t even know what that is.”

He could see the confusion in the robot’s eyes. He looked down at his
blob form, and took a quick look around. As per usual, he didn’t quite
mesh with the world around him.

“As you can see,” he replied, shuffling his lower body, “I’m… not from around here. If you could tell me a bit about this place, that’d be nice.”

@sxllbotvp

The massive cog turned away from his paperwork for a minute or two, to
return to— oh what on Earth was that thing on his desk. "Hello…?“

The Repairman was used to traveling between universes. It came with the job, after all. But he would never get used to gargantuan characters or their environments.

So he had wandered on a desk, that much was certain. There didn’t seem to be cracks here, so the Repairman was looking for a way down to the floor and out of this…office?

And then someone spoke to him. The likely owner of this place.

He stopped dead in his tracks and slowly turned towards the binocular-eyed robot. Sheesh, even though this character was half covered by the desk, he still towered over the inkblot, who wished, not for the first time, that his siren light could be turned off.

“Um…h-hello?” he said, waving weakly.