Chapter Text
It’s cold.
That is the first thought that crosses the mind of a toon blearily awaking to the still frosty air of… when is it? The toon grumbles, claws coming to paw at their eyes as they take a glance around the room that they had ended up falling asleep in. Right. His own room.
It’s a bit of a mess. He hates messes. He hates a lot of things, actually! Messes are just one of the varied things he is skilled at hating.
Did he mention he hated the cold? It’s far too early for it to be this cold. Or is it late. He needs to get back to checking, but he hates waking up, too. A quiet “bad morning” is uttered to the air.
Theres littered holes in the walls as Shrimpo glances around to check for his alarm. His usual punching bags are just as broken as the walls, laying on the floor like he is. His bed is totally wrecked, too.
Everything in this room is some level of broken. Speaking of broken, his eyes finally land on the state his alarm clock is in. Battered and bruised, the screen faintly illuminates the total darkness of the room, making it hard to spot and even harder to read, but he’s skilled at this. He’s skilled at everything he doesn’t hate, which isn’t much.
4:32 am. He was right, then. It’s far too early for the world to hate him with this cold. But the ac in his room has been busted as long as it’s been busted in everyone else’s rooms, so he can’t complain. He hates not complaining.
He takes a few moments to let out a grumble, an odd little sound. He’s tired. But maybe he can just go get some snacks, right? Nobody will notice anyway. Nobody but that flower, and he’s been gone as long as the rest of them. Why sell to ..
Nevermind. He’s hungry.
Paws patter against the floor as he uses the wall to stand, letting out a long stretch. His carapace crackles a little, but in the sort of way he doesn’t hate THAT much. The floors cold on his paws, too. Damn. At least the pawpads help, to some degree. He’d hate it more if it was any colder. Hed just prefer to lay down and sleep through the weather, as hungry as he’d be in the morning. But he’s already up.
The walk through the hallways to the kitchen is silent. Nobody’s making noises in their rooms, nobodies listening to movies on the theater speakers in the dark, and nobody’s getting a midnight snack.
Except him, of course.
Ah, here we go. The kitchen. The drawers are already open too, so he leans down to look through the various containers and boxes of food and resources. Most of these boxes are empty, left inside the drawers and cabinets after the garbage filled up. But he can make do.
He taps his chin, tail flicking behind him for a moment as he deliberates, eventually grabbing a box of plain uncooked pasta to crack open and start chewing. Dandy used to refill these every once in a while, even after it all shut down. He’ll need to figure out how he did that eventually. Or he could just go grab and strangle the toon.
He wouldn’t be too opposed to that solution, but he’s sure dandy would, even after he found him again.
The food is shitty, bland, and gross. He lost his sense of taste ages ago, which helps at least to just eat whatever he can find. But he hates food, and he hates this kitchen. But he keeps putting it in his mouth all the same. He’s gonna run out soon. He knows it, and he hates it. The elevator is the only real way he’s been getting restocked food, for now. Shrimpos eyes squint as he glances through the kitchen one more time.
Everything’s a mess. That stupid strawberry would likely dangle him in the air and throw him into the train tracks if he knew he let this place become such a shithole. Or maybe he’d say something stupid and idiotic instead. “Of course you’d let it get like this, you’re shrimpo!” Yeah, he’s shrimpo. He’s awesome, and fuck you actually. He’s the only one left. By default, that makes him better than that stupid berry.
He places the box of pasta down, closing the cabinet behind him. It’s the only cabinet closed in the kitchen when he leaves, but he doesn’t care. He has other things to do today, and he’s already awake. He might as well just get started.
…
The elevator is loud, annoying, and dreadfully droning on his nonexistent ears. It took ages to figure out how to operate the thing on his own for expeditions. He would have had a better experience just climbing down the elevator shaft, with how the clanking and whirring makes his head spin with displeasure. His ears are still ringing as he sits behind the little table dandy always sat in, rummaging through the crates and containers left behind by that bastard when he ditched them all. He leaves a few tapes where he always does in “exchange”. The pile grows bigger every day, the table now half heartedly full with unsorted tapes that are of no use elsewhere. He only really started doing it …
Doesn’t matter. He pops a handful of gumballs into his mouth and starts chewing. He tries, at least. He never ends up using enough to make an actual taste in his mouth. He even used 8 that time. Next time will have to be more, but he doesn’t really actually care.
He puts various other things in his mouth as he descends, not really caring about the drain on resources. They’re going to be getting more soon anyway so it doesn’t matter. He hates being bored. And he hates chewing. When the elevator finally clicks back open where he left off, he spits the wrapper of some sort of candy bar out of his mouth and scrambles to jump over the bar to head outside. He checks the floor number before exiting, tapping the little light as it flickers uncertainly before it desplays a proud “floor 52”. Ugh. Haha, he doubts any of them have ever even made it this far down! Good for him, at least. He doesn’t have to deal with any unwanted visitors. Well, moreso than usual.
He hums a “fuck you” of a good morning (or bad morning) as he watches a faint wisp of blue descend from the ceiling to pester the shrimp the entire day. Despite having no real business to be so deep underground, the blue ghoul has taken a habit of following him through the lower floors. He HATES floating toons. He hates HER. Annoying and loud and obnoxious. It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t talk anymore. It doesn’t matter that he never sees any speck of life behind her pale white eyes. She’s still just as annoying, and he still hates her just as much. And he hates it when she-
He lets out an annoyed grunt as she does exactly that. Enter a machine right in front of him like he couldn’t see her do it. At least twisting makes them incompetent and stupid. Haha, or maybe she was always that dumb. She sure acted like it.
The shrimp rolls his eyes as he moves to grab a different machine instead, picking up any spare items he sees along the way. Another packet of gumballs is tossed into his mouth, along with an assortment of candy bars, tapes, and some odd looking wires that he’s seen Rodger use before, back when he wasn’t a jar of goop. He fiddles with it for a bit while trying to do a machine, ignoring the loud blares and alarms from doing something wrong. He’s far too used to the sound anyway to care. Not like /boolensky/ can hear it going off. She’s busy aimlessly floating around. And yatta never follows him this far down. Not when he bribes her. He may hate their guts, but he knows how to get around here. He had to learn eventually.
There’s a faint click as he pokes SOMETHING right, the little cables connecting and making a loud FZZZT as the machine finally stops blaring warning sounds. A faint little happy ding echoes out of it instead. Good enough. The rest of the machines go as poorly as the first one without the help of the little cables. He hates doing machines. He hates going down these floors. He hates it when the little blue bitch floatsies right through his body, filling him with a frigid chill that he thought he left behind in the bed this morning. But whatever. Whatever. He can work through it, because he’s shrimpo! And fuck you! He gives the last machine a swift kick as he finishes it up, a faint squeak echoing out as he hops back to the elevator in pain. He plops onto the floor with a dismayed grumble. Ugh. He hates kicking things. And he hates machines.
The next few floors all go the same. It’s monotonous repetitive and BORING as hell. It is every day. He only makes around 3 floors worth of progress before his haul and spoils is debatably enough to make him through the next few days. Every day he goes down, eats a bunch of shit, then grabs more shit for the next day. That’s how it works. He only loses a few candy bars to refill yatta every day so she doesn’t pester him all day. And boo bitch stays in her lane as long as he doesn’t touch her machines she likes.
It’s dreadfully boring. He used to pester dandy, at least. He stuck around for a while after all the other toons got themselves blown up in spectacular and unexpected ways. Sometimes they’d kill each other after they twist, sometimes the bums would try and “save” the others. But dandy just dipped at some point.
Some point that he now has to deal with. No instructions on the elevator, no “heres what you can do to help, buddy!” In that swirling handwriting that he would have admittedly ripped up into pieces and thrown away anyway. He’s pretty sure he’s dead. Maybe twisted, but he’s never seen dandy or a lookalike down on the floors. He does tend to stick to the lower floors, where there’s nobody left…
A loud and repeating tapping sound fills the elevator as shrimpo’s foot rapts against the floor. He’s going to have to check on the other floors just in case again, isn’t he. It’s not like he really cares for the corpses left above, he’d just much rather not dying if a new threat pops up that he never gets a warning for.
He tends to check the upper levels on the way up most days anyway, the only exception being days where boolensky rips him up enough from his own mistakes. Hmph. Shrimpo taps his foot one last time as he moves to hit the lever, watching the indicator slowly tick tick tick back up the floor levels. 52. 51. 50. He sort of blanks out after a while, only to jump as a loud alarm blares at floor 10. Shit! He flounders for the lever, yanking it backwards with all his strength as the elevator crrrreeeaks with the breaks.
Shoot. Floor 9. He was going to check all of the floors with twisteds on them, but… whatever. He doesn’t actually care enough, and he can just check later. Floor 9 and before it is. There’s not actually going to be anything to deal with, anyway.
