Chapter Text
The Lord of the Screens cleaved red by blade.
That is how this story ends. The glowing display erupts with jagged lines and its detestable grin never returns. Never to quip, never to laugh, never to sing.
The clock began to tick when the revving of the Queen’s chariot reverberated through the walls of Spamton’s filthy coffin, where he had lain limp with the rest of the recalled, broken products. Then came the footsteps, and with them a likeminded individual who wanted to shear through some heartstrings. In an instant, the ticking became secondary.
It no longer mattered what fates would be doled out to his betrayers, because he would no longer be around to see them unfold. He was to soar on technicolor wings until the shadows they dwelled in were nothing but shapes cast by the light. He would tear his strings straight from the [Heaven]s and let them pool at his feet.
NEO was exhilarating. A vessel born from dreams so strong that they drowned out the despair. Whatever pitiful, broken wretch he had been reduced to prior was erased.
Only, it wasn’t.
It is the doll that remains, its segmented joints stiff with accumulated grime. Worse off than ever before, because the promise of something better still tingles at the edges of his senses. The strings pulling at his back feel like they could still lift him off the ground.
He now knows that they were never going to bring him high enough. Any altitude he gained was to be the distance he would plummet back to unreality.
The steadiness afterwards was foreign. There was no scheme to plan, no mountain to climb. A puppet’s two states of existence are strung up and lifeless, so peace is a pipedream, but he felt stillness. He could rest.
Then there was that damn voice, pattering on about his supposed grooviness and making a pivotal, emotional moment between the Lightners about himself. The hourglass kept spilling.
Tenna’s screen didn’t shatter, at least not initially. His raised arms splitting from their sparking sockets was not a part of the prophecy, nor was the heavy thud of his oversized head smashing against the frigid ground. The impact is what broke his screen, with a whole spider’s web fracturing the fluorescent color bars.
CRTs don’t take well to the cold. It was just an objective observation, but with it came the slightest tug on the puppet’s mangled strings, as if his middling thoughts were interesting enough to draw [Answer the phone]’s attention away from the battle fought by Kris’s heart-shaped retainer.
That rapt focus— once so lauded, once seen as the answer to a half-pint salesman’s family-sized prayers— was a curse, and he ought to be relieved to feel his strings go slack again. Yet it was the manner of [Answer the phone]’s quick dismissal that filled him with a fury hot enough to melt through this plastic body. Like flicking away a particularly persistent mosquito, as if to say You haven’t learned a thing, have you?
He did learn. He hasn’t made a deal with a party who could plausibly outmaneuver him so utterly ever since. Negotiating with the [SOUL] may have been toeing the line, but he was decently confident it couldn’t act beyond the limits of Kris’s very human body.
And Kris! That little sponge took the newly-instated “no strings attached” policy further than he ever could have hoped! Was it a futile effort? Absolutely! But the funny thing about plummeting sales is that they come in a 2-for-1 deal with plummeting standards, and a single generosity could have sent him over the moon.
It could’ve been something as simple as a warning before his lumpy mattress got deposited in the back of a garbage truck with him still lying on it. Maybe access to the nifty digs in the basement that no one in her majesty’s mansion was even using. Anyone answering a phone call, even just to curse him out and hang up, or a single former friend who wasn’t all too willing to pretend he never existed.
So for them to try? Even as their own strings wove their body through the NEO-body’s blasts? What a steal!
The bulky, empty-headed box lying in the snow gave him no such courtesy. Whatever star quality Tenna once saw in Spamton wasn’t bright enough to warrant the effort of a manhunt.
Despite that, Spamton waits until the Lightners are pursuing the Knight through the unattainable [Heaven] before nudging the [Dealmaker] out of their grasp. He has learned: he may lend strength to their quest to reclaim their own reigns, but he will not make any further attempts to replicate it.
NEO was a failed experiment. In the grand scheme of the prophecy, his ascension was hardly a blip, nothing that could alter the tides of fate as the pursuit of it altered him. The show is over. In [Heaven]’s shadow, only obsolescence awaits for Darkner kind. For both of them.
He was created with a role to fill. White hair, green pants, perfect smile. When given the chance to define himself, to set himself apart, Spamton looked to Tenna.
Spamton might as well close the deal.
Pixels rearrange themselves into digitized matter, forming a battered shell to peer through the dual-toned lenses. He follows three trails of footsteps away from the scene of the battle, back towards the asinine skyscraper-sized Christmas tree.
Even lying on his side, even with so much snow still between them, Tenna looks taller than he remembers. Somehow.
It’s a stupid thing to think about someone who could go from a towering powerhouse of entertainment to a fellow half-pint when depressed. Did the naive proclamations of Kris’s axe-wielding friend make Tenna stand that much taller before he was cut down to size once and for all, or is Spamton just that much smaller?
There is no answer. It doesn’t matter, anyway. Tenna’s gone. He was always going to be. His spare parts will soon scatter through Spamton’s old unauthorized rental properties, and Spamton will only wish Tenna could be alive enough in such a state to realize that his deepest fears had come to life. Only then might that traitorous ray-tube understand what it was like to have nothing to his name but the very phone that dragged it through the garbage, and to press the receiver against his skull waiting for any sign that his old partner didn’t change his number.
The prophecy says nothing about poetic justice. It just says the CRT dies.
“S— Susie?” An all-too-familiar voice emerges from the howling wind. “Is that you? Did you come back for me?”
Only, he didn’t die.
Snow freezes Spamton’s feet to the ground as Tenna’s screen flickers back to life. A crater in the middle keeps anything more than static from creeping across the display. No nose, no stupid grin.
“Ralsei? Kris? I could—” a sharp buzz cuts him off— “use a hand here! Seeing as I…misplaced mine. Haha.”
That was bad. Even for him. A terrible performance for a terrible joke.
Once NEO crashed from the sky, there was no possibility in Spamton’s mind that Tenna would live. That body was once both of their way out of the prophecy, back when Spamton’s rosy cheeks weren’t painted on and all of Cyber City screamed his name. His initial plan for leveraging TV World at all specifically included not getting too attached to the tall, charming gameshow host, but after some sweet talk that got chucked out the window faster than a puppet trying to steal a robot. He could have enjoyed their chemistry while it lasted and resigned himself to being a future widow– the sob story might have even boosted his sales for a while– but he was already rising so far beyond his predetermined station. What harm could a little more do?
What good was any of it if he got to the top all alone?
…Funny how things turn out.
Each footfall in the snow crunches like broken glass. Every step forward is the breaking branch that reveals his presence. He clenches his jaw tightly, lest one unwanted ad break spill out from grinding teeth and enlist him in Mr. Ant Tenna’s impromptu quiz show.
“That’s you isn’t it, Kris?” Tenna asks, hope and desperation all tangled together. “I knew you loved TV deep down! I shouldn’t have ever doubted you!”
Being mistaken for Kris suits him just fine for now. A quiet marionette rather than a ventriloquist dummy. Not one for conversation. That’s good. [Answer the phone] never gave him a point of reference for how to bargain with a talking headstone.
He’s close enough now to see Tenna shivering. Frost creeps into his empty arm socket and pricks loose wiring. Spamton half expects an eye roll from [Answer the phone], but there’s nothing on the other line. Not even garbage noise. [Answer the phone] has better things to do than patronize a simple puppet now.
“Please. I don’t…I can’t be alone again. I don’t want to be thrown away. Just a little help and we can have fun again! Promise!”
NEO was a failure, but he has always had a tendency to dream too [Big]. He could never settle with small successes. From broke to a billionaire. Garbage to godhood. Both too good to last.
He may never rise above his station, but like the nutty little degenerate he was predestined to be, he’ll take a red marker and scribble all over that damned prophecy.
Keep [Answer the phone] distracted, Kris.
He unbuttons his blazer, slings it over Tenna’s shoulder, and runs for the Christmas tree. This— perhaps more than selling things at this point— is his element: rooting through junk to scrape together some semblance of living. Unraveling Christmas lights and deconstructing gift boxes. Harvesting whatever tape still has strong enough adhesive.
In this desperate scramble, he catches a glimpse of himself in a glass ornament. Tenna always liked him in red. He’d say that was only because Tenna felt some sense of ownership over the color, so when Spamton wore red, then—
The smashed red shards don’t scatter satisfyingly in the snow. They just sit there in a fragmented clump. The reflection doesn’t go away or change. It only multiplies.
He’s not going to talk to Tenna. Not after wiping foam off of his glasses. He’ll do his graffiti on the flow of time, then he’ll return to the comfort of Kris’s linty pockets. To the clown who claims to be sleeping for another millennium, yet spent the majority of the Lightners’ time in TV World gleefully exclaiming “YOU FUMBLED, FUMBLED!”
Spamton grinds the glass into smaller pieces under his heel and kicks snow on top of it.
He runs back to Tenna with armfuls of flattened gift boxes, loose pieces of tape stuck to his fingers, and a long string of Christmas lights that drags through the snow. The sound of his own plastic teeth chattering is grating enough that he wedges the edge of a box under his chin to force his jaw shut.
“Kris?! You came back!” Tenna exclaims. The remnants of static tears streak down his display. “Oh, thank goodness. You sure gave me a scare!”
Spamton can almost hear his own voice playing over Tenna’s. It’s a memory, but not one that played out tangibly enough for him to reap its rewards. A dream perhaps. Or a hallucination conjured when it was soon enough that he still kept trying to call Tenna, but late enough that his sanity was spilling from his eye sockets. Better yet, it is a train of thought clipped directly from the day prior, when Kris returned to his storefront with the key(gen) to a salvation he never had the good sense to abandon.
With how he’s laying, Tenna’s broken antenna is the one closer to the ground. Spamton drops the rest of his makeshift supplies in a heap and scurries over to it. He straightens the antenna out with one hand, peels loose ends of tape off of his hands with his teeth, and wraps them around the antenna. Any electrical or duct tape would be much better, but this should stay so long as Tenna doesn’t start doing twirls and splits. Spamton suspects that will not be a problem so long as his arms stay detached, but if Tenna manages the acrobatics anyway then whatever happens is his own fault.
“It is pretty chilly, isn’t it,” Tenna remarks, always one to fill the dead air with another program. Another temptation to draw viewers back to him. His jolly little siren song. “You can take your scarf back. I’ll be okay, really!”
If his screen wasn’t broken, Tenna’s nose would have a family of icicles growing off of it. The blazer-posing-as-a-scarf stays.
Pro tip for residing in a dumpster or otherwise inhospitable hellhole: cardboard doesn’t get as cold as metal. Or snow. In fact, a top layer of cardboard can make a usable mattress out of anyone’s trash, whether they’ve deigned to bless the landfills of Cyber City with a whole bag of expired mashed potatoes or a knife collection they abruptly lost all interest in.
One measly puppet isn’t nearly strong enough to push Tenna onto the Spamton G. Spamton Official Gift Box Gurney™ without help, but after Spamton presses his entire body against the old cathode’s chest, Tenna takes the hint. The gentle whirring as Tenna carefully rotates onto his back is a page ripped straight from the past. The throbbing of a hangover while those servomotors woke up. A glowing screen that never seemed blinding for something so bright.
“Oh! You’re really giving me the five star treatment here,” Tenna says. Spamton rolls his eyes. Of course he is. No other salesperson could come up with a gurney that good for that cheap. “I’m touched!”
The monochrome snow coating Tenna’s display flickers. Then again. Each time it takes longer for the screen to come back on. Loose wiring at his neck sparks dangerously.
The last time Spamton climbed Mount Television was under very different circumstances. He had no qualms about taking a handful of Tenna’s shirt to pull himself up. His joints didn’t stutter their way through the motions. Most crucially, a Limited Time Only oasis awaited him at the top, where not even the ringing of the phone could reach him. The water has since dried up. With a copper rope of Christmas cheer clenched in between his teeth, Spamton hoists himself onto Tenna’s chest.
He knows the risks of getting his hands in Tenna’s circuitry. At a time, he invited the little jolts of electricity, and with them the barely-stifled laughter when his hair stood on end. It still would, not that Tenna could see, but if he yelps at the shock, then an indecipherable cacophony will tumble from his mouth. Tenna will not be too keen on a walking virus– an overly small unidentifiable thing twisting its grubby fingers in his wires. [Answer the phone] will see Spamton trying to save over this story’s outline, gather a fistful of strings in slender white fingers, and slam him against the doors to Tenna’s studio until his heart pops out.
With some precise finagling, the sparking stops. Now he just needs that award-winning screen to stay on.
The threat of his latest, somehow-tamest middle finger to the [Heaven] that rejected him going awry still looms, but not any larger than the shadow cast by the past. It is his own murky silhouette painted over Tenna’s body. His hair is more unruly in the back now, and a little more exposure on the film would turn this vintage romantic comedy into a horror movie, but the starlight has little interest in changing the color grading. Before he was licking his wounds and snapping his own joints back into place behind Queen’s mansion, he was in the same position he sits in now with a can of compressed air. If they were ever going to make it big, his super star had to be in top shape.
“You, uh. Sure know your way around a CRT,” Tenna says. Getting thrown at steel doors might not actually be that bad. “I didn’t know you were a mechanic.”
“I sell cars,” Spamton had replied, back when Tenna was addressing him. “If you talk [Big] with nothing to back it up, people think you’re a hack.”
“Well,” Tenna said, “are you?”
Spamton sprayed the compressed air into his smug face.
That would have been preferable to drowning in insulation foam and getting licked clean by a clown (“HANDS OFF THE [[Officil Merchandise]]!!”). Jevil’s nuisance was missed as soon it was over though, because then all he had was the realization that that was his last chance. To do what, he isn’t sure. To demand an apology. To explain why he ran away. To scream at him. To break that stupid screen himself, just to get it over with, and crawl inside there never to emerge. Then at least they’d be together.
He traces the cracks fracturing the face of someone he’s supposed to hate. Whose name he cursed and whose demise he was to revel in. And then Tenna said he wished Spamton was there. That he was low enough to wish Spamton was there, even when all that anger came from the fact that he wasn’t. The darkened screen becomes a fractured mirror.
"You...aren't Kris, are you."
The screen burns his fingertips and Spamton backs away from the flame. His breathing comes out harsh and quick, like crushed plosives through a crappy mike. Tenna still can’t see him. So long as that nasty crack remains, Tenna still can’t see him.
“A-and that’s fine! Don’t— please don’t leave,” Tenna says. “That was nice! Being patched up. It, uh. Feels kinda like the good old days, you know! Like a holiday special!” He loved nothing more than a holiday special. If he was a star on a normal day, a holiday special made him the sun. “Haha, haven’t had someone do anything like that in a good long while. Not since…”
As Tenna trails off, Spamton clamps a hand over his oversized mouth and watches those droopy antennae perk up into a heart. A sad, glooby heart, but a distinct one nonetheless.
He’s thinking about his mailman.
“TENNA! WHERE ARE YOU?”
A girl’s voice, rough and determined. A colorful trio appears in the distance. The Lightners. Spamton throws himself off of Tenna and thinks small. Pocket sized. Easy to lose by accident. To discard. To abandon. Pixel by pixel, he folds himself back into his bright lenses.
He hears Tenna yell back to them. And then, softer:
“Thank you.”
An inanimate accessory in Kris’s inventory can’t dwell on how cloyingly easy it would be to wipe the accumulated grime from their shared history if Tenna just kept talking to him like that.
A certain salesman intimately knows and vehemently loathes his own weakness to such a generosity.