Work Text:
It's been two years since Tenna was unplugged. Two years since TV Time finally lost all hope of Lightner viewers. Since Tenna lost his little window into the Light World. The Darkener viewers were still enough to keep the show afloat but… ah, who's he kidding. The ratings are dropping. They've been dropping since before he was unplugged. Tenna could plot the declining viewership on a graph if he wanted, pinpoint the exact moment this whole production will stop turning a profit. Not that he does want to. Doing that would just make him feel worse.
He leans forward, elbows digging into his desk as he presses his hands against his screen. Not for the first time, Tenna wishes he could sigh. It's always seemed like a satisfying action, when others did it. Instead, he drags his palms back and forth over his face, feeling the hum of static as it clings to his gloves.
The clock ticks onward from the corner of his office, unrelenting yet entirely too slow. It's grating for a moment, but then the frustration rolls past him and he slumps further. Today hasn't even been that eventful- Tenna doesn't know why he's so tired.
Of course, it's not long before the moment of quiet is broken. There's a rapid series of knocks from the door, accompanied by a thin voice.
"Um, Mr Tenna? Can you come look at this?"
There's a nervous tremor running under the question, a high pitched lilt towards the end.
Tenna allows himself one more moment of rest, before lurching back to his feet. On the other side of the door is a shaky looking Pippins and Shadowguy. They were huddled next to each other, as if appearing smaller might make Tenna less upset with them.
"What broke," Tenna asks, voice flat.
The Shadowguy tittered anxiously.
"You- you don't know?" Tenna exclaims, "how can you not know?"
The Pippins beckons, and the two start leading Tenna down the hallway.
"It's, uh, not something we recognise. We figured we should ask you what to do about it since, uh, you're the boss!" The Pippins stated- a bit too sweetly.
Tenna- very thoughtfully, mind you- refrains from grumbling. That effort becomes a lot harder to maintain when he recognises where the two employees are leading him.
Ah. The Z-Rank room. Of course. Tenna gets the acute sense that his day is about to get much worse, very quickly.
The door is opened, and Tenna is instantly hit with the heady stench of rust and mildew. It reminds him, viscerally, of an abandoned warehouse- corrosion eating at peeling metal supports and rendering machinery useless. Involuntarily, he chokes on his own cleaning fluid, nose wrinkling as he grimaces.
Angel, he hates rust.
"Did something die back here?" He mutters, squashing the urge to turn off his nasal receptors. Reluctantly, he steps further into the room- taking mental note of how the other two linger by the doorway.
Shadows swim further into the unlit room, fading into the eerie silence. It has been a long while since Tenna has been in the Z-Rank room. Somehow, it looks worse than how he remembered it; ripped yellowing wallpaper, dust coating the floor's tiles in a thin film. On the far wall, the harrowed mirror hangs crooked on its nail. Glass shards litter the floor around it.
For a moment, it's a bit like being flung back years into the past. The posters smile so brightly, and it sends old pain rippling through Tenna. Echoes of heartbreak, like an old record skipping the same scratch over and over again. He knows, if he turned, he would see the phone. He doesn't want to look.
Shaking himself out with a huff, Tenna clears the room in a couple long strides. "You said there was something in here? Well I don't- oh!"
The flinch that overcomes Tenna is completely involuntary, and so violent it causes him to step backwards. Suddenly, the source of the room's smell becomes very obvious. There's- a thing.
Huddled in the back-most corner of the room, was- it was- Angel, what is it?
Tenna doesn't know how to describe it. It looked like a sodden hairball, if a hairball was constructed less out of hair and more out of twisted scrap metal and fabric. A mixture of jagged edges and moth-eaten holes. It looked mangled. It looked like it had been ripped from a malfunctioning paper shredder. There's sickly brown corrosion in swaths over the metal, making it look… infected. The way it was positioned made it look like it had been dragged out of the open manhole on the floor. It probably had. It was- large, not as large as Tenna himself but definitely larger than most of Tenna's workers.
Wrongness emanated from it. Even in the decrepit Z-Rank room, it stuck out harshly as something that didn't belong. Standing this close to it, Tenna was almost worried he was going to get some kind of disease- like he was a protagonist of some cheap horror flick. As a robot, he'd always assumed he wouldn't have to worry about those kinds of things!
He laughed nervously, bringing his hands up close to his chest. "Okay! So, is this someone's science project, or someone's dumping grounds for their science project?" At the silence following the joke, Tenna cleared his throat. "We might need a bio-hazard team for this one, folks! Do we have one of those?"
"I don't think we do, sir," mumbled the Pippins from the doorway.
Tenna took a moment to cycle his ventilation system, hands hovering over his neck vents as though they could block rust particles. "Well- find someone willing to clean this up. I'll pay them well for it."
The Pippins and Shadowguy sprinted off- undoubtedly glad for an excuse to get away from the smell. Tenna himself finally turned off his nasal receptors. The click sounded loud in the hollow room.
Trailing off the heap were these bright green- cords? Wires? They seemed inexplicably tangled amongst the junk, sprawling over the floor and leading into the manhole below. Tentatively, Tenna leans forward- just enough to peer into the pit. It seems impossibly deep from this angle, the cords dropping into the darkness seemingly forever.
For a moment, Tenna could imagine himself pitching forward and falling into that darkness. How deep was it really? How long would he fall for? Would he eventually fall into wherever the cords come from? Where this thing came from?
Tenna straightens, purposefully looking away from the manhole. Throwing one more quick glance at the heap, he grumbles quietly and spins to leave the room.
"Stupid… junk. I probably am gonna have to hire a specialist, aren't-"
There's a sound. A deep, reverberating sound, a creak or maybe a groan, like the strain of a tired oil rig. Layered underneath is a series of soft clicks, a spinning of a bicycle chain in the wrong gear. It's a horribly large sound, made larger by the small room, the clicks trailing ominously in its wake.
Tenna stops talking and goes very still. Slowly, he turns back around, internal fans kicking on. Inexplicably, his gaze darts to the ceiling- as if he expects it to be bowed under pressure. The ceiling is unchanged.
He waits one long moment, and then another.
Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
Like tiles shifting against each other, ceramic chipping under pressure.
It's coming from-
It was moving. The pile of scrap, junk, it was moving. Shuddering and twitching like it was alive. The movements were nonsensical, uncoordinated in what Tenna can now see as flesh wrapped in the metal.
"Are you a darkener?!" The words rip out of Tenna, as abrupt as the occurring thought that this could be a person.
He doesn't remember walking back over from the door. He's barely aware of himself as his legs carry him closer to it, hovering nervously on the other side of the manhole. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice is screaming at him about common horror tropes.
Tenna squints at it through the darkness, trying, this time, to make sense of the form in front of him. Around the manhole, one step closer, two- there. Unmistakably, that is a hand. A bit knobbly and uneven, but Tenna can see it- long fingers spasming as if the individual nerves were being pulled. Ball joints in the place of knuckles, doll-like, skeletal, the tip of each finger curving into a wicked point.
"… Hello?" Tenna asked, quiet.
With one shoe, he carefully nudged the hand- flinching back when the hand recoiled. The recoil rippled, stutteringly, through the rest of the form. Discordant movements began to align, and suddenly Tenna could make out the vague shapes of limbs and anatomy.
"Oh, Angel," Tenna breathes out.
Then, there's a low groan, chopped as if forced through a grater- and the creature begins to stand. Its limbs unfold from its torso like a machine powering on, slow weighty movements in jagged arcs. Tenna can see arms, thin and lanky, leading to clawed fingers digging into the tile. Wings, seemingly organic in nature, unravel from the creatures curled position and stretching- primaries brushing the ceiling. It raises heftily onto digitigrade legs, poised. Shaking.
Tenna somehow didn't expect it to be so humanoid. To have a face and a structure similar to him. Maybe, if it were more alien, it would have been easier to look at. Because what Tenna was stood across from, was not some despicable unknowable creature from a different planet. No, this was a person- a person who had been mangled, horrifically, beyond all recognition.
Its face was white porcelain hooked on a black oil-slicked mass of what could be hair or feathers- crooked nose like a vulture's beak over a stretched gaping mouth. Its eyes were deep and sunken, bloodshot and crazed behind cracked mismatched glasses. When it breathed, air rattled out of shifting darkness in the back of its throat with a thin hiss.
The rest of its body was a mess. A hybrid between sci-fi and gothic horror, the ugliest tropes of both genres meeting in a mishmash of subversion. Muscle and sinew wound around the skeletal arms, while its legs seemed entirely mechanical. Only one of the legs was even plated- the other entirely exposed to the elements, revealing the mismatched parts and gadgets that made it up. Rust was built up in the miniature gears, causing them to squeak loudly when they moved. From the torso jutted out an inexplicable spike, like the sternum of a bird, metallic with chipped yellow paint coating it. In the gaps between metal plating, Tenna could make out the shifting of more flesh- translucent and pulsating to the time of its breathing.
When its head bobbed forward, its jaw swung as if loose on a hinge- colliding with the top teeth with a sickening clack, before swinging open again. It seemed almost lost, eyes rolling to peer around.
Tenna could pinpoint the exact moment it realised he was stood there.
Its focus suddenly zeroed in on him, tangible. The thin whites of its eyes were almost invisible as it looked directly at him. Through him. Its next breath sounded distinctly different- raspier. Adrenaline hit all at once, belatedly, and Tenna felt his screen click off. The realisation that he is completely and utterly cornered seems very significant all of a sudden.
"[[CAAA-A-AAAA-AATHODE]]," the creature stuttered out, voice hitched and peeling, strained over glitches in syllables. Its mouth did not move with the words, the voice resonating from its throat while its jaw continued to hang loose.
It took a single lopsided step forward.
"[[C-c-C-C- aAAA-]] AEAHEAHAHAEHAH," it laughed long and loud, loud enough to produce feedback in Tenna's antennae. "C4N YOU [[seeing this]]? CAN YOU [[look at me now!]]? [[Do you see the radiant light?]]"
Tenna was absolutely frozen. He couldn't move. It was as if his internal systems had all shut down. The being stumbled closer to him, until its nose almost brushed his screen. Its breath was a sickly warmth as it fanned over him.
There was a horrible pause. A pause that seemed to stretch for hours, the creature staring at him through those grimy lenses. Its pupils dilated and contracted in minute shifts, tracing the outline of Tenna's face. It stared, and stared, and then tilted its head very slightly to the left.
"DON'T Y0U RECOGNISE-"
"BOSS?!"
The squeal came from across the room- a shaky Zapper clutching a mop in both hands. At the intrusion, the creature whipped its head around to look- and then suddenly Tenna remembered how to move his arms.
Bracing his stance, Tenna swung a fist directly into the creature's face. A loud crack sounded in the room as metal connected with porcelain. The being snarled, hackles raising and feathers bristling- before it screeched as it was bombarded with glimmering white diamonds.
In the confined space, the Zapper's attack was an unavoidable wave of bullets, spraying all over the room and coating everything in dissipating magic. Tenna staggered from the impact, and rushed to stand beside his employee. He summoned a star in his own palm, readying himself to throw.
The Zapper fired again, another spread of bullets, and the creature fled- darting and diving back through the manhole with surprising speed. Tenna kicked the lid back on top of the gap, and it slid into place with a resounding thud.
It was over as quickly as it began.
The Zapper straightened from its bowed stance, still holding the mop. "Boss! Boss, are youse- ah, sorry for hittin' ya! I panicked, I did-"
Tenna waves a shaky hand, dismissive, "no, no you're fine I- you helped a lot. You're fine."
His voice is strained and pitchy as it leaves his speakers. Tenna sinks to a crouch, bracing his elbows on his knees. He digs his fingers into the sides of his head. The room is spinning. His head hurts. The creature barely touched him, yet Tenna feels like he'd had his insides torn out. Adrenaline still burns in his wires, sending trembles tearing through his frame.
"…Boss?" The Zapper says meekly.
Tenna knocks his fans down a gear, and forces his screen to turn on. The degaussing is loud as his screen blinks, once, twice, before staying lit. Vaguely he's aware of warning lights flickering in the corner of his vision. He straightens anyway, and turns to the Zapper with a plastered grin. He claps his hands.
"Let's get the [BEEP] out of here," Tenna grits out. He ignores the obnoxious censor sound that jolts out of him, instead spinning to speedwalk to the door.
The Zapper almost trips over itself to follow Tenna. As soon as they both leave the Angel-forsaken room, Tenna slams the door shut behind them. He fishes his keys out of his pocket and starts flipping through them.
"Do I still get tha' raise?"
Tenna can feel smoke wafting out of his vents. Fuck, his ventilation system had turned off at some point. He kicks it back on, and his vision clears significantly.
"What's your name?"
"Uh, Zistor, boss."
"Zistor," Tenna repeats, "do you know where that manhole leads? Any idea at all?"
"No, I don't," Zistor replies, "s'I meant to?"
Tenna finally finds the right key and clicks the lock shut, probably with more force than necessary. He cycles his ventilation system, then again, clicking his tongue when his temperature readings barely budge.
"Find me where that manhole leads, and then I'll give you a raise," Tenna snaps. He begins stalking over to his office, keys still clenched in his fist.
"On it boss!" bleats Zistor, already hopping out to the Green Room.
Tenna grips his office's door handle, once again cycling his ventilation system.
"HEY! ZISTOR!" He yells abruptly. Zistor pokes its head back into the hallway. "If you end up needing to go down there, take two- no, three people with you, at least. I don't want anyone dying down there, you hear me?"
Zistor nods rapidly, practically bowing with how forceful the motion is. Tenna nods back, and sweeps into his office, closing the door behind him.
He lurches forward abruptly, slamming his hands onto his desk. The keys rattle noisily. Explicatives are hissed through his teeth, muttered low enough to not get censored. He's shrunken a good few feet, his temperature readings are sky high, and he's starting to register the pain in his foot from kicking the manhole cover. Warning messages pester in his peripheries about pin 154. Disconnected again. All the action must have jostled it.
Tenna powers down his screen, lowering his head until it thunks against the wood.
…Fucking hell.