Chapter Text
Okay.
This has to be some sort of bad dream.
The migraine Tenna had all afternoon and evening yesterday must be giving him nightmares. It's the only explanation for the face looking back at him out of a puddle, gaunt and haunted.
"WHAT THE [[50% off]]?"
Tenna freezes.
That's not what he meant to say.
That's… not at ALL what he meant to say.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING?" he tries again, and that one comes out the way he wanted. The jaw of what he's now realizing is a puppet doesn't quite move in sync with the voice coming out, which is far from Tenna's—and yet… not unrecognizable. "SP—" The voice sputters. "SPAMTON."
Okay. Why's there a creepy puppet replica of Tenna's… well, WHATEVER Spamton was to him? And why's it almost convincing, if not for the… everything?
Tenna "woke up" in a dumpster. If there's even a chance this isn't a dream…
He… well, the best word is scurries over and, with difficulty (and the aid of a crumpled cardboard box he found in the alleyway), clambers back inside.
He noticed the pillow earlier when he was lying on it, flattened and oily. He noticed the blanket, ratty and full of holes.
He didn't notice the papers.
There's loose papers everywhere. They're covered in inarticulate scribbles, because this puppet body isn't the most… dexterous. The thing that catches Tenna's attention most, though, is the drawings. They're messy, sure, but that's, unmistakably, Spamton's art style. A black rotary phone in the margins on every page… But the one at the back…
"SPAMTON NEO," it says in big bold letters. It's a rudimentary blueprint of a bigger puppet… or, no, a robot (same segmented joints). Next to large wings, it says "Heaven."
Tenna doesn't want to believe it… but a little voice in the back of his head says it has to be.
He's Spamton. And not the Spamton he knew, who had to be a good six inches taller and who had skin instead of plastic. Something Spamton became after he left TV World (after he left Tenna).
So what HAPPENED?
Spamton was fucking right. He KNEW that headache last night was suspicious. He's a puppet. He doesn't hurt.
Because… this isn't his dumpster, or even his alleyway, or even his Dark World. He recognizes those red walls, a few shades lighter than the matching red suits he and Tenna used to wear.
BUT.
This bed should be giant.
So why's it the perfect size for Spamton?
He stays perfectly still.
(Surely not.)
The craving for coffee's nothing unusual, except for the fact there's a perfectly good kitchen at his disposal (because that part definitely is).
That's a place to start.
(Spamton refuses to look down.)
Coffee in hand (familiar mug)… that's better.
He half-expected the room to feel bigger standing up. (It doesn't.) If he reached up right now with his free hand, he could probably touch the ceiling.
…alright.
Spamton's not stupid.
If the answer to this riddle is what he thinks it is. Well.
The mirror is right where he remembers it, even if it's a lot closer to his height than it's ever been before. Enter from stage left, eyes closed.
Now or never, salesman.
Oh.
Oh.
Spamton raises a dazed hand to his face to check he's absolutely not hallucinating.
Yeah. That's Tenna.
"What the fuck?"
He almost jumps when Tenna's voice comes out, even though that's the LEAST surprising part of all of this.
"Fuck," Spamton says again, slowly. "Oh. That's fucking bizarre." 1) Spamton gets to hear Tenna swear. 2) Spamton gets to swear.
So he's in Tenna's body. He's positive he's not Tenna. (Well, only 98% sure.) Spamton memories. Spamton vocabulary. Tenna.
So… what HAPPENED.
Tenna's lost.
If Spamton had ever asked Tenna to go to Cyber City with him, Tenna would've gone. Spamton, touring Tenna around his hometown? Sounds like a dream come true.
And it's not like he hasn't been here before!
But he hasn't been… here before. This part of the city is all narrow streets and back alleys, by some small mercy well-lit. But light's all he's got to go off of, and the small legs of this body can only go so fast.
Finally, the street he's on opens up into a bigger… what is this, an avenue? …doesn't matter. There's people here.
"HELLO!" he shouts. (This voice's default seems to be a shout.)
The Orange Addison jumps… and then stares. Tilts his head just slightly. "…Spamton?"
Oh.
This is someone he's supposed to know.
Tenna tries to remember what colors of Addison Spamton's siblings were, but it's difficult considering that Spamton barely mentioned them.
"IT'S ME!" he says instead, banking on Orange providing more clues.
Orange stares some more. "We… we thought you were dead." His voice shakes a little on the final word.
(Spamton hasn't gone home since he left TV World?)
"I'M [[hard-to-get-rid-of stain]]," is what comes out of Tenna's mouth in an attempt to say something… Spammy.
"Can I just…" Orange takes a step back, into the open doors of the storefront he's advertising in front of. "I'll be right back."
Tenna has just enough time to wonder what Orange is doing before a Blue Addison comes running.
"Oh prophecy," she swears. "He wasn't kidding." She looks Tenna up and down as she slows to a half-jog. "Orange called. He said—"
"Spamton?" A Pink Addison appears around a corner. "I mean, Yellow wanted to—you know how Yellow can get—she said she was busy but SHE WANTED to come—"
Is this how family reacts if you learn your loved one is alive?
(Is this how the Holidays would act if…)
Tenna's foot lands in the gutter, and he realizes he took a step back.
"I'm… sorry," Blue says, as stiff as can be, even while her face proves she means it. "We didn't know you were in trouble! We would've come to help you."
"And then we heard you got evicted," Pink blurts. "We thought you were being a 'Big Shot' who didn't want to talk to us, which was fine, really." They speak quickly, like if they don't get it all out now, it won't ever see the light of day.
Orange steps back out onto the sidewalk. "You're one of ours." (They're closing in.) "We look out for one another. Always have."
"What happened?" Pink asks.
"There's room at my apartment, if you need it," Blue offers.
"I'm sure I speak for all of us, even Yellow, that we all have space, and you can stay as long as you like," Orange adds.
This is too much.
Tenna barely registers as the Addisons shout Spamton's name. He's already halfway to the other side of the street.
He's so busy fleeing he gets clipped by the bumper of an oncoming car as he barrels out of the way, and he winces. (Tries to.) It doesn't hurt. It probably should. Instead, he suspects something's dislodged—the hinge of his jaw doesn't feel quite right. (He expects one of the Addisons to scream, he almost got hit by a car. Nobody does, and he doesn't look back over his shoulder as he flees back into the dark, tangled alleyways of the poorer side of Cyber City.)
Despite the puppet body, Spamton breathes—that's what Tenna learns as he finally hurtles to a stop once he's sure nobody followed. Part of him wonders morbidly if that means the puppet body has lungs. The rest of him tries desperately to catch his breath. Tenna never needs to run. He's so big that he can jump into a light jog and outrun the competition by miles… but he's not Tenna right now.
(Whose lungs are these…?)
As Tenna catches his breath and the burning of his lungs fades, he becomes aware of his jaw again. It still doesn't hurt, doesn't even twinge. Tenna may be mechanical, but his body has always been in sync with its experiences. This is… something else.
Hey. That's…
"NOT GOOD," he says, feeling around with his fingers. There's a dent where the car hit him, and if he's not imagining it, a slightly uneven hang to the way the jaw sits on his face. To make matters worse, the moment he lets go, it goes limp. "[[$&*%.]]"
Well! Tenna's established that Spamton doesn't need to move his jaw to talk. It doesn't line up, so hopefully… haha… this won't be a huge problem! And he'll make sure it gets fixed later. Hopefully. If it… can be. (He really hopes it can be.)
He's worse off than he was before. He has no idea which direction he came from before running into the Addisons, and he can't go back the way the Addisons were, because then he'd have to answer for not being Spamton. He's even more lost than he was when he woke up in a dumpster that morning, and the train station feels further away than ever.
"WAIT FOR ME," Tenna says. He'll be there as soon as he can.
"GOOD MORNING!!!" Spamton shouts as he sprints down the studio hallway, this time because he has the choice. (This feels fucking fantastic. So what if the smaller Darkners have to duck under his feet as he passes? So long, suckers.)
And then he kicks someone he knows.
"OW!" Elnina shouts.
Oops.
"My darling droplet, are you alright?" Lanino cries, and Spamton remembers why Tenna hangs out with these people. (It's the drama.)
Elnina squints up at "Tenna," holding her face. "Did you double up on coffee again?? You know you don't do well when you do that."
"Uh. Yeah," Spamton says. "Totally. Whoops. Silly me."
Actually… he might've. The, uh… the mugs in Tenna's cupboard for Tenna-sized hands… lot bigger than the mugs Tenna used to keep for Spamton-sized hands.
Well! Too late now!
"What's on the schedule today??" he asks, trying to emulate Tenna's bright tone.
"Did you sleep badly last night?" Lanino asks. "We went over this yesterday." It's not even mean or biting, just… polite.
"Oh. Yeah. Well. I forgot!"
And then, to Spamton's amazement, it happens. In big letters in the air, "SORRY," with a little 😥 on one side and a 💔 on the other.
Shit. That's funnytext. That's TENNA's funnytext.
And then it fades back into the air on its own.
Spamton's Tenna. SPAMTON's got funnytext now.
Lanino sighs, rubbing the bridge of his… does that count as a nose if he doesn't smell through it? Elnina puts a hand on his shoulder, and he looks at her with that sickeningly adoring gaze they always had for each other. "We have a live performance from ten to two. The actors know their parts, you're giving direction during the ad breaks when you think they need to change something. Just like usual." Her smile up at Spamton seems like it's trying to be reassuring, but all he can think about is how her face is probably going to bruise from where he kicked her.
"Sorry," Spamton says as he realizes: he never apologized for kicking her. In the face. He kicked Tenna's friend in the face. And never said sorry.
"Accident," she literally waves him off. "I'll be alright! I can go see an Ambyu-Lance after work." (Lanino glares at him for hurting his precious raincloud or whatever he'd probably call his wife.)
Oh, yeah. That's a wedding ring. He hadn't noticed, but he'd noticed. They definitely weren't married before. (Good for them.)
Tenna ABSOLUTELY third-wheels. (And Spamton would bet he doesn't even notice.)
"Anyway!" …which way's the set again. "C'mon, let's gogogo!"
"…Tenna."
"Hm?"
"Wrong way."
In conclusion: thank the prophecy Tenna's red chair has "TENNA" written on it in the loudest golden bubble letters, or Spamton probably would've walked past that too. As it is, he found it okay, and someone hands him… well, that's not really a script. That's a packet.
"That's a lot of words," he mumbles. (Yay! Mumbling!)
He's never been more relieved to not be on camera.
He was on camera sometimes. Before he signed the contract and became Tenna's OFFICIAL co-producer, Tenna would bring him on to cohost episodes of his gameshows, and that was fun.
Acting's probably fine. Spamton can probably act. He's never tried seriously, but how hard could it be?
Dramatic improv, though (because that's what it'd be when he doesn't even know what movie they're doing) sounds like a nightmare. He could do a rehearsed pitch as well as anyone, and he could banter off of Tenna anyday, but having to figure out what movie he's in, who he's playing, and who the fuck that means everyone else is… He shudders.
"Tenna?"
"Hm?"
When Elnina doesn't respond, Spamton turns his head to find her directly behind his shoulder. "Aren't you going to…"
"Oh, right!" He almost swore. Would've blown his cover. "Action!!"
Spamton can't sit still.
Not on 7 gallons of coffee (okay, exaggeration).
He taps Tenna's foot. He tries NOT to tap Tenna's foot. And then he taps Tenna's foot some more. Nobody tells him he needs to stop… so it's PROBABLY fine?
He barely makes it to the first ad break.
Thankfully, Spamton doesn't have to call the ad break, the little red light just goes off and everyone disperses. He didn't normally sit around during live shows that weren't the comedic or talent show ones, but he's absolutely wishing he had. Instead, he was always off waiting in Tenna's dressing room for Tenna to kiss him during breaks, and pretending like he wasn't waiting by doodling in the margins of the script for the next scene he had to design a set for.
Spamton's tempted to head back to the bar when one of the actors, a Pippins in a historical dress, hurries up to him. "Um, Mr. Tenna? Was that… good?" She bites her lip. "It's my first time on live TV! I mean, YOU know that, but, uh, you also know… how I can be better?"
"Well," Spamton says slowly, playing for time, "your character's the, uh, daughter, right?" She nods. "Between you and me:"—she leans in—"I'm not the MOST familiar with the script. Yeah, I know, terrible, I approved it! But, uh, you're doing good." She smiles hesitantly. "I think… the daughter should be less… glooby, though."
"Really?" She frowns in concentration.
"Yeah!" Spamton says, made more confident by the fact she didn't laugh in his face. "Sure, it's a hard decision she has to make! But it's hers! And she hasn't gotten to make a decision like this before! There should be… confidence, too, I think," he finishes lamely.
"You're right," she says, and he half-wonders if she's just sucking up. "Thank you, Mr. Tenna!"
"Get back out there," he says as the staff start coming back in. He sends a wistful glance over to the bar and sits back down.
"Good advice," says a voice over his shoulder, but when Spamton looks, Lanino's already started walking away. Lanino catches his eye and gives him the "I'm watching you" signal, and Spamton gives a very awkward thumbs up.
The Pippins took his advice to heart. Spamton follows along with her in the script, and she hasn't changed even a single word, but there's a shift in the way the character ("Rebecca"?) feels. She's doing good. (While Spamton's been off scrounging around in dumpsters for his next meal, Tenna's been cultivating the talents of the next generation of up-and-coming actors. Huh.)
Ad break #2, and Spamton leaps to his feet. The sitting is REALLY getting to him. He jogs a little circle around his chair, ignoring the looks. He sits down again. And then he leaps to his feet, throws both arms in the air, and whoops.
He sits down again.
Spamton suddenly remembers he can make funnytext, and there's still three minutes before they're back on air.
He has an idea of what would be funny. It would be fucked up. It would amuse him.
…
But then it WORKS.
"Oh, no," he says out loud, which has the unfortunate side effect of making people look. Someone screams.
"TENNA?" Lanino shouts.
"Shit," Spamton blurts.
"This is a PG-13 movie—?!" Elnina says.
"Shit, shit, shit, sh—" Spamton continues to say, waving his hands in the air frantically like it'll make the pixellated cartoon penis go away.
"THAT IS NOT FAMILY FRIENDLY," Lanino says, sounding like he's at his wit's end.
"—it, shit, shit, shit, s—" It finally begins to fade, and Spamton continues flapping his hands at it like that'll do anything to make it fade faster. The Pippins who thought he was a good mentor figure is absolutely reconsidering Tenna at this moment. "Sorry, everyone," he lies loudly. "That was an error, that was NOT what I meant to project." He watches Elnina and Lanino exchange one of their married-couple glances where they have a whole conversation in one second, and he doesn't like the look of this one.
"Mr. Tenna?" a Zapper asks.
"What…" Spamton replies, face in his hands.
"Is youse okay? Youse is smaller than youse-ual."
Oh.
"Fine!" Spamton says, forcing a smile onto Tenna's screen. Get. Bigger. Again. "Embarrassed."
"Happens, boss," the Zapper says. "Youse said it was an accident, so's it's all good."
"Thanks," he says, finding that he means it a little. "I'm okay."
"Got it," the Zapper says. "Be over here if youse needs me."
And they're back on air.
Spamton can hardly focus. It was hard enough before, but making a massive fool out of Tenna in front of most of Tenna's employees… not ideal! ONE person might've believed him, but Spamton has a hard time accepting the intense side eye from half the people in the room as the looks of people who believe him.
…Tenna.
Wait a damn minute.
Where the FUCK is Tenna?
If Spamton woke up this morning in Tenna's body…
Oh.
Oh, shit.
Shit. Okay.
Just sit still until the next ad break. He can do that! It's only…—he checks the countdown and nearly groans—another 27 minutes away! That's survivable! For Spamton! (Even if Tenna is out there somewhere in Spamton's tiny, defenseless puppet body—)
Deep breaths. Deep fucking breaths. Elnina shoots him a look. Ignore her. Deep fucking breaths.
The minute the red light goes off, he doesn't waste another second.
"LANINO! ELNINA! I need to, I just, I gotta go," Spamton says un-Tennalike. "Please, and bye!" He's already halfway down the hallway by the time they start moving.
"We can't leave him like this," Lanino says.
"No, we can't," Elnina agrees. "Hey!" she calls out to the nearest Darkner.
"Me?" a green Pippins asks.
"Yeah, c'mere? What's your name (again)?"
"Battat…?"
"Well. Battat." She hands him her clipboard with a heavy pat on the shoulder. "Listen, we gotta go!"
"But," Battat splutters, "with Tenna gone—"
"I know!" Elnina says. "Just… do your best, we can always run a 'remake' of this movie if things fall apart." She flashes him a thumbs up. Lanino takes her free hand, and they start sprinting after Tenna.
"Oh."
Battat looks at the clipboard, looks at the bar, and makes an executive decision.
"Shot of… I don't care, anything heavy," he begs Ramb as he plops down heavily on a stool. "THANK the prophecy," he mumbles as he downs it.
"Good luck, luv," Ramb says.
"Thanks. I'll NEED it." Battat clambers back to his feet, tucking the clipboard under his arm. Across the room, Pluey sends a concerned look, and Jongler sends a confused one. "Alright, people!" Battat calls as the countdown to go back on air drops below 60 seconds. "Back in your places!"
This'll be a disaster.