Chapter Twelve
~ S ~
They both jump at the sound. The rotary phone is nestled in the corner by the front door, and the receiver nearly vibrates with the force of the ringing. “Speak of the devil,” Spamon says, standing up. “Sorry, Ant. One second.” Tenna sighs, unable to hide his frustration. Spamton picks up the phone, idly twisting the cord with his finger, and greets, “Hey—”
“What are you doing?” [[Hyperlink Blocked]] says, cutting him off. Their voice is cold and furious, and it gives Spamton pause.
“Listen, I was gonna tell you at our next [Call Now]—”
“I told you this was an exclusive offer.”
“I know that, but what’s [The] harm an additional clause?”
“You've broken the terms of our agreement. Consider your employment terminated, effective immediately.”
Spamon feels himself go cold. “No… no, you can’t!”
~ T ~
That gets Tenna’s attention. He leans over the back of the couch to look at his cohost, who is frozen with the phone receiver pressed to his ear. “Spamton? Everything okay?”
Spamton doesn’t respond, the receiver dropping from his hand. It hits the floor with a crack, then bounces back up. He turns, his face as white as a sheet, eyes wide in terror. “I… I’ve gotta…” He doesn’t finish his sentence. Instead, he runs for the door, yanking it open and disappearing into the hallway.
“Spamton!” Tenna stands up, looking after his cohost. He hears Spamton’s shoes echo down the hallway before disappearing, but when he steps forward to chase after him, he hears a muffled voice coming from the phone. Whoever Spamton was talking to is still on the line. Curiosity overtakes him—maybe he can introduce himself, at least. He holds the receiver up and tentatively asks, “Hello?”
There’s a click, and the line goes dead. Tenna stares at the receiver for a long moment before finally heading out to follow his cohost.
Except Spamton’s gone. When Tenna checks with the bar, Ramb just shrugs and says, “Said it was urgent business. Didn’t say when he’d be back.”
Tenna sighs, smoothing his hand over his screen. “Let me know as soon as he is,” he orders, trying to ignore the hard feeling sitting in his chest.
~ S ~
He heads back to Cyber City. He can’t be in TV World right now. How can he explain this to Tenna? That trying to help him, share his success, may have just cost him everything? [[Hyperlink Blocked]] isn’t picking up the phone, and when he checks his account, there haven’t been any new deposits. His hands are shaking as he paces his room. “This is,” he says to himself, his voice skipping out. He tries again. “This is [Fine]. I just need to keep [Calling]. They can’t [Block] me forever.”
He tries to call Tenna the next day, but he gets an intercept tone. He tries to call every day after that, only to hear that damn beeping. After a week, someone calls him, but it’s not the person he wants to hear from. “Hey, Money Guy,” Queen says. “So Funny Story. You Missed Your Rent This Week.”
“Yeah, Queen, uh… [always listen to a] there’s a technical issue.”
“Debug Or Something. I’m Feeling Generous So You Have Until Tomorrow.” She hangs up, and Spamton stares at the phone.
He doesn’t sleep, so the phone call that comes through the next morning doesn’t wake him up. He picks up the phone and says wearily, “You’ve made your point.”
“There was one rule. You broke it.”
“[%$#@] you, man.” Spamton stops short, sitting upright. “…[%$#@]. [%$#@]! [%$#@]!” The word won’t come out.
The voice says, “There’s no need for that language.”
“He deserves to be [Another Satisfied Customer]—HAPPY! We both do! Y OU just gave me [The] boost I needed. I can make this work.”
“No. You can’t. My knowledge is wasted on him. And you were, and always will be, a puppet to fate.” The voice pauses. “…So perhaps you should look the part.”
Spamton doesn’t even have time to ask what that means before his whole body is torn apart at the seams.
~ T ~
“You haven’t heard from him at all?” Tenna presses. When the Zapper shakes his head, Tenna groans. “Fine. I’ll go to Cyber City and drag him back here myself.”
The Zapper pauses. “…You ain’t heard, boss?” Tenna groans, levelling the Zapper with the most derisive body language he can muster. “They took the laptop back.”
The words wash over Tenna like an ice bath. “…What do you mean, ‘they took it back’?!”
“They took it back to the library yesterday.” Tenna’s screen goes blank, and he desperately tries to keep his breathing steady. The laptop’s gone. And if the laptop’s gone, that means that TV World and Cyber City are no longer connected. If Spamton isn’t here… “Boss?”
“…Thank you. Just… keep an ear out. And when they bring it back, tell me.” Tenna leaves the Zapper to his duty and starts walking. Spamton’s gone. There’s no way for him to get back. He left. Tenna’s not even surprised when he finds himself at Spamton’s dressing room, opening the door. The receiver is still off the hook, everything still frozen like a Polaroid photograph. He stares into it for a long time before turning the lights off and leaving.
Two weeks pass. Asriel hasn’t brought the laptop back. Tenna has one too many drinks at the bar and staggers into Spamton’s dressing room. Still pristine. Still untouched. Tenna knocks back the last of his whiskey and chucks the glass as hard as he can. It crashes into the mirror, the sound of shattered glass filling the space. “Damn you!” he curses into the empty space. “How could you just leave like that?! Without a word!” His shoulders slump, and then so does the rest of him, kneeling on the floor. “Without me?”
There’s no answer.
~ S ~
Spamton fumbles along, hand pressed against the basement walls. Acid drips from his clothes, the result of a careless slip into the acid pool while he was running. He must’ve been in long enough to shrink a little, because he’s finding it hard to balance. No one ever comes down here. He’s safe for now. The Swatchlings are probably busy emptying his room, a forced eviction due to failure to pay. How could this all have gone so wrong?
His hand touches something different. Hard, metallic, cool under his suddenly-too-hard fingers. He pauses, looking up, and sees a multicolored thing. It hangs from the wall, wrapped up in dull green cords. Something shines in its chest, and he tentatively reaches out to it.
And as his palm touches black glass, h̴e̶
s̸͈̆e̴̬̐ĕ̷͔s̴̯̑
H̴̗̯̮̖̀̈́ ̵̡̠̳̂̈́̽e̸̻̅ ̵̠̤̦̌a̴̬͌ ̴̡̳͓̖͌ṿ̴̗̤̓͋ ̴͉̫̙͌̏̈́͛ę̷͂͒͝ ̸̥͋͠n̶̦̟̖̙̓́̔̆.̵̼̭́͘
The Swatchlings find him eventually, tossing him out of the mansion, their grace dried up at Queen’s command. He presses against a wall in an alley, trying to get his head on straight, but his thoughts keep going back to the thing in the basement. A body, big and powerful-looking. Maybe… that’s the answer to all of his problems. If he can just get back in there, figure out how to interface with it, maybe he can salvage this.
After the acid pool, his clothes are worse for the wear, so he starts scavenging. He swipes some glasses from the Color Cafe, a poor attempt to disguise himself. He systematically grabs new clothes from the Addisons’ stalls when they’re distracted with other customers—he barely manages to scamper away with the jacket. Time and time again, he manages to get in, but the Swatchlings, or worse, Swatch himself, always catch him before he can get too far. One time, he manages to make it to the basement door only to find that the staff of the mansion has locked it.
Along the way, he makes a home for himself in an unused, unoccupied dumpster. An ad of himself stares at him mockingly for a good few months before Queen has it covered up. Somehow, that’s not any better. He curls up with a discarded pillow, staring at the closed lid of the dumpster, and unadulterated hatred fills his chest. Damn the phone. Damn Swatch—Spamton was stupid to think that they were actually friends.
And damn Tenna, most of all. This was all because of him, wasn’t it? From the get-go, Tenna had wanted the secret to his success. He’d worn Spamton down, gotten past his defenses and his self-preservation. Made him sentimental. How could Spamton have ever thought that they had something? Was he really so deluded as to believe that it was love? No. It was always just business. Business with a side of fun.
Spamton seethes, slamming his fist into the dumpster. They’ll pay. They’ll all pay.
~ T ~
After six months, Tenna seals off Spamton’s dressing room. “Forget it’s even there,” he orders. Everyone seems to give him a wide berth now, but that’s fine. Surely they can understand that he’s a little stressed right now. His partner—business partner, he reminds himself, even if the thought makes him choke up for some reason—left him high and dry. After nearly two months of sweet talk and drinks and fooling around, Spamton had agreed to give him his secrets and then bailed.
All that time. All that energy. All the… happiness, and butterflies in his chest, and visions of the two of them taking TV by storm. All for nothing. But the show must go on, and he can almost say that things are back to normal.
Except on one Christmas Eve, December and Carol aren’t there. Tenna keeps an eye out for them, thinking that maybe they’re just running late, but no. They never show up. Rudy and Noelle still come by, but everyone seems to be in lower spirits than usual. Tenna just tries harder, then, making sure every Christmas special plays on time and without flaw. But December and Carol don’t come for any holidays after.
The next Easter, Noelle isn’t there. And that’s when the fighting starts. Barely-hushed yelling, Toriel and Asgore’s voices, faint echoes that Tenna hears when the TV is on late at night. Arguments. Whose fault is what, how she can’t do this anymore. And suddenly, Asgore’s gone, too.
“How can you just leave?” Tenna asks again, staring out at the Dreemurrs’ living room. It’s just Kris and Toriel now. When did Asriel leave? When did Rudy? Kris gets up to go to bed, their head hanging low, and Toriel stays up for a little while longer. But she’s not paying attention to Tenna. She’s reading something, using him as background noise. That’s almost worse than not being watched at all.
Eventually, she gets up and, with a sigh, turns him off for the last time.