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Confidence has never been his strong point. Or courage. Or anything that required him to stand up to anyone or anything.
So why he’s the only one who’s…. right ….is a mystery to him. Wouldn’t Henry be better at finding things? Sammy would be way better at fighting. Wally….who knows. Probably he’d be good at distracting the not-right ones. Heck, anyone would be better than him. All Joey can do is run away. That’s always been the one thing he can do well, and probably the only thing that he’s really decent at.
He’s certainly been doing a lot of it lately.
Currently he’s attempting to shut the door to an old office that, by the looks of it, belonged to the accountant. The scribbled numbers on the wall give it away. It’s not working very well. He’s gotten it halfway shut before he hears footsteps and scurries under the desk to hide.
Just in time, too, because the door suddenly slams open. He can’t see anything from under the desk, but he can certainly hear what’s going on. He’s not sure who it is, but judging by the careless throwing of objects, it’s probably Shawn. Shawn always did throw things a lot. He was never quite sure why. It seemed pointless, just like how Shawn and Sammy always fought when they saw each other. It just hurt people in the end.
His guess is proved right when Shawn speaks. “Aw, c’mon….I know you’re in here! Just come out.”
There is no way in the entire region of hell that Joey would come out from under the desk. He knows Shawn can’t fit under the desk at his current height, making it one of the few spots that he can’t get into. And since it’s a big desk and Joey’s at the back of it, Shawn can’t reach.
That’s assuming that cartoon logic doesn’t come into play here. It hasn’t ever in the studio, though, so he’s not particularly worried.
Of course, the desk isn’t particularly sturdy, which is why it breaks when Shawn throws a pipe at it. Joey curses and runs out the door.
Running again. Because that’s all he can do. He’s not strong or brave or clever. He’s just Joey.
~~~~
He eventually climbs inside the vents, when he thinks he’s safe enough to take the time to. He’s got a little nook in one of the corners. It’s fairly deep into the vents - there’s not much danger of anyone but a Searcher finding him, and the Searchers are kind of dumb, to be honest. He’s furnished it the best he can, with one of the blankets (admittedly, he stole it from the infirmary) and an old soup can that he put a candle inside of. It’s not much, but it’s his, and that has to count for something, right?
Joey curls up on top of the blanket with his tail pulled around him and considers the vent wall. It looks...off, somehow. Just like the rest of the studio. He’s not sure why it looks off, but it does. Wrong, just like the people.
Well, he’s not sure most of them are people anymore. They’re just….blobs of ink, Searchers and Lost Ones. He’s seen the Lost Ones around; none of them react to him passing by, so he assumes they either can’t see him or don’t care.
Sometimes he wonders why he cares. But he does, and he can’t turn his emotions on and off on demand, so he doesn’t question it too much.
The bigger question is what happened to his friends. With them, it was like they’d been corrupted, turned into monsters who only wanted to kill. And kill they did. But Joey wasn’t a monster, and he wasn’t a blob of inanimate ink, so what was different about him?
He doesn’t know, and he isn’t sure he wants to know.