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THIS LETTER IS ADDRESSED TO WILBUR SOOT. IF YOU ARE NOT WILBUR SOOT AND HAVE RECEIVED THIS LETTER IN ERROR, DISPOSE OF IT IMMEDIATELY. FAILURE TO DO SO MAY RESULT IN FEDERAL PUNISHMENT EVEN UNDER FOREIGN AUTHORITY.
~
YOU’RE INVITED!
QSMP Resident Wilbur Soot is hereby requested by The Federation to perform at the QSMP Election Dinner on 27th July of 2023. Ticket enclosed.
~
Wilbur quickly stuffs the letter back into his pocket as a Federation employee approaches him, the sound of its footsteps nearly invisible beneath the chatter and laughter coming from the dining hall. His nervous energy almost causes him to fumble the book the employee hands him, but he manages to catch himself.
“YOU WILL PERFORM IN THREE MINUTES,” it reads.
Wilbur nods and gives the employee a shaky smile. It leaves without reacting or saying anything else. He sighs, drumming his fingers, trying to calm his anxiety.
Wilbur hadn’t told anyone he was coming. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to come back to the island, it was just that… after putting off his return for so long, even after his tour ended, he didn’t have the courage.
And now he’s here, about to perform for god knows who. He’d been ushered backstage before even getting a peek at who might be in attendance, so Wilbur is left frantically guessing as the seconds count down to the reveal. Will Phil be there? He hates events like these, but he may have been forced to if it was an island event. What about Quackity? Most likely, if there was good food and drink. If.
And Tallulah. Wilbur’s trying not to think about Tallulah, but he can’t help it. It’s pretty late, so she’s most likely in bed, but what if she isn't? What if she’s here? What if she’s–
The service door creaks, and Wilbur’s head snaps up, and his stomach drops.
Standing there with one hand curled around the doorframe is his daughter. She’s beautiful, her hair glowing, her eyes sparkling with curiosity. She’s every memory he’d dreamed of in his long months away.
Torn between pure elation and something unidentifiable, Wilbur stumbles to his feet but hesitates to approach her.
“Tallulah…!” Her name slips between his lips. “What are you– why are you here? Not that I– I mean–”
She ducks a little behind the doorframe, shy, unsure. Wilbur forces himself to breathe again. He’d pictured a more glamorous reunion than this, sure. But none of that really mattered now that he was finally, finally with his daughter again.
“I missed you,” he tells her, holding out his arms.
And she stands there, and doesn’t move.
“Tallulah…?” he asks after the silence had stretched too long. His smile wilts. He hears the fluorescent buzz of the lights with sudden clarity.
“Who are you?” she signs.
Wilbur blinks. For a few seconds he thinks she must be playing a prank, but her face never splits into a smile. She doesn’t laugh. There is no light of recognition in her eyes.
All at once the world starts to tumble. She’s still staring at him, her hands still by her sides. The buzzing of the lights crescendos into a deafening ring. He’d say his life flashed before his eyes, but that only happens when you’re dying, right?
A robotic voice splits through the trance.
“YOU WILL PERFORM,” it says. Wilbur can see a bit of its white fur out of his periphery, but he remains frozen until Tallulah ducks back through the door and is gone, gone, gone. Even then it takes the wet pop of bubbles against his cheek to free him from paralysis.
“YOU WILL PERFORM,” the employee repeats now that he’s looking at it. It holds its bubble blower up and playfully blows a few more into his face.
Wilbur just nods.
“Okay,” he says, weak and raspy. “Okay. I’m going.”
His guitar weighs a thousand pounds in his hands and is simultaneously light as air. The employee opens the stage door for him. Wilbur doesn’t hesitate, he just walks through, trance-like. Voices roar when he steps into the spotlight, hot and bright enough that he can’t see through to the darkness of the rest of the venue.
He takes a mechanical breath, leans down to the microphone, and strums the first chord.
A scream pierces the haze. The spotlight above him abruptly shuts off, plummeting him into darkness for the ten or so seconds it takes his eyes to adjust. Chaos has erupted around him. People are running, some he recognizes, most he doesn’t. Swords and axes and giant reaper scythes split the air and in the middle of it all Wilbur is once again frozen where he stands.
Tallulah. It’s Tallulah again, but she’s levitating above the crowd, and her skin is crawling green and black with code. Then Chayanne is there too, and he’s slashing and stabbing not at any enemy but at his friends, at his father.
Philza makes eye contact with Wilbur over a dozen heads screaming bloody murder. There’s a deep well of cold determination there that lingers in Wilbur’s vision even when he turns his back and cuts a wound through his son’s chest.
Someone takes his hand — it’s Fit, Wilbur recognizes. His brain fixates on his mouth, the words he’s screaming at Wilbur that he can still barely hear.
“That’s not Tallulah, Wilbur! And that’s not Chayanne! They’re fakes! C’mon, we have to go!”
Fit basically drags him away. Wilbur’s memory goes blurry then, and everything between running off the stage and dropping to his knees outside the building bleeds together like watercolors. It’s all Wilbur can do to watch through the glass dome as Phil and Tallulah dance death together.
“It’s not her?” he asks weakly.
“No,” Fit says. He takes a photograph out of his pocket and presents it to Wilbur. It’s Tallulah and Chayanne, both tucked safely into bed. “Phil went and checked. These are the real ones. Those are…”
Fit hesitates.
“...Some demons we’ve been dealing with.”
Wilbur nods, clutching the image of the photograph in his mind like a lifeline. His daughter was impersonated and had transformed into a demon.
He should be horrified.
Fit’s still talking. Asking things like why he’s here, when he came. Wilbur just mutely hands him the letter he was sent and continues to watch.
Phil has slain his daughter — the imposter of his daughter. Now he and Chayanne are dueling, a half-dozen spectators in a ring around their arena.
He should be horrified, staring at the facade of her corpse.
“Who are you?”
All he can feel is relief.