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In an ideal world, Tenna would have known everything happening around him at all times, no matter what. He could run his studio efficiently, if that was the case. He could snap at the pippins to get them back to work as soon as they started slacking off, he could approve or disapprove every shot the shuttahs took instantly, the moment they took them, he could regulate the zappers and ensure they were securing the premises well enough, he could keep the shadowguys moving, practicing, always the shadow cast and never the stars… there was a lot he could do. He could have even found the Lightners faster, if he could see every inch of his studio, if he could see out of every thing that featured his face.
It would probably be very overstimulating, too. Ah, but one could dream.
In an ideal world, Tenna would have known… what the hell just happened, too. It had all been so fast, his mind was whirling from the pace. He had been… talking. With Susie, and Kris, and Ralsei. It was the end of the line, they’d defeated him in battle (ugh, his poor suit was probably in tatters), and they’d shown him mercy despite his… well he didn’t want to call it a breakdown but it was a breakdown. Susie had promised him… promised him that he wouldn’t get thrown away. Dear god, he’d been so elated.
She had told him the only stipulation for not getting tossed was giving Toriel back (no she didn’t put it like that exactly, but he could extrapolate meaning). Then she would look for a new home for him, a home where people needed him still, instead of letting him sit and gather dust in the Dreemurr home or rot, broken, in the dump. Really, it was the easiest deal of Tenna’s life - of course he could give Toriel back, for being so incredibly seen… of course he could give Toriel back, for being shown how wrong he’d been about everything. Of course he could give Toriel back, as the start to a long, long laundry list of reparations he would have to do and say to allllll the people he had hurt along the way…
But Susie had smiled at him, and Tenna’s heart had soared. Toriel was returned to the Lightners, and then…
Well that’s when things started getting fuzzy. Something had- had hurt, something had ripped through him like fire. He had been falling, falling…
And now. He was… in the snow. What? Somewhere. Somewhere in his Cold Place. On his back? Propped up a little, maybe against a snow drift. His body burned, he tried to keep himself still, and his face felt like it was on fire. Had he been stabbed or something? His vision was weird, he could barely make out the world before him, covered in test colour lines that blurred details. He could see a little bit, though.
He could see the snow drifting slowly down, alighting gently upon his bright red suit. It was beautiful. Why was… why was he so tired? He’d been so excited, before.
Okay, well, he needed to get up. It didn’t matter how much it hurt him, he needed to find someone, preferably Susie and Kris. Clearly something had happened, and he needed to make sure his kids were okay. And show them that he was okay, too! He needed to find them. He needed to find them.
He leaned himself forward a little (god, everything burned. His joints had already started to get a little sore, though he tried everything in his power to fend off rust and wear. This was worse, this was so so much worse), slowly, easy, then reached his arm to the side to prop up his torso as he slid his legs out from under-
Whumf.
He was… back in the snow. …What? Why had he fallen?
Oh, he must have been a little dizzy, he didn’t keep his balance as he was moving his legs. Okay, take two, he just needed to roll onto his front, like so, with his legs behind him, knees under him, then push up with his hands-
His face scraped across the frigid snow as he only managed to shove himself forward into it. What the hell? Push up, he needed to push up, but his arms weren’t working. Why not? Did he pop a joint by accident, was that why he wasn’t getting any signals from them? Ugh, how frustrating. He just needed up, get up, get up!
He must have been flipping and flopping around in the snow for a while, because when he finally stopped, he was exhausted. Face down against another snow drift, all the evidence of his struggles likely next to and below him, he stared at the slowly falling snow again as it alighted on the ground. He felt a crack spiderweb it’s way along his beautiful screen, not deep enough to break him but just barely threatening to do so. Light above, no one would want him now! He- he couldn’t show his face to anyone anymore, no, no! He was weakened, he was fading.
Dying dying dying dying dying-
What was going on?! What had even happened, why couldn’t he feel his arms, where had-
…Where had everyone gone?!
Before, even with his limited vision, Tenna had still been able to hear… something, something happening relatively nearby. Voices, people calling out, maybe the starting of a fight. Tenna didn’t allow fights (real fights) in his studio, they made messes. Of course, they weren’t in the studio right then, so he supposed it was fine. They were in the Cold Place.
His Cold Place.
Upon the purple cliffs. The silence roared in his ears, swallowed up his thoughts, made him forget his last train of thought. Not many people came out here, but Tenna found peace here, sometimes. He didn’t usually get cold, because he ran so hot - it was nice to let out a little steam from his casing now and then. He watched the snow fall, lazily, drifting in and out of view.
…He wanted to get up, badly, but he was so tired. God, it was even getting hard to care about all the weird things. Why… why his arms were numb. Why he seemed to be so far away from where it felt like he had fallen. Where the people he’d been with had gone. What had… happened. He could see his antenna, one drooping over his face at an impossible angle, but he couldn’t see his nose, hadn’t been able to since he fell. His screen must have been more damaged than he thought… why didn’t that thought scare him more?
Nothing, there was nothing. An endless void of cold static snow outside the studio, interspersed with dust and shadows; and he was alone in it.
Man, it was kinda cold out here, wasn’t it? He… wasn’t as hot as usual, he could feel the lowered temperature out here now. He could feel the freezing tendrils of the snow wrapping around him, he could feel the cold trying to worm its way inside of him. Laying there, in the frigidity - no wonder his arms had gone numb. He felt like the rest of him would, too.
Maybe he deserved this. After all he had done, Susie had given him hope - wasn’t that all he was owed? Just a little bit of hope before the end? He remembered… years ago, someone muttering something about some sort of prophecy. He had wondered if he was in it, but when he confronted them (or anyone, really) about it, they’d sealed their trap and wouldn’t speak a single word more. It had been suspicious. So, so suspicious…
This might have been why. He was dying. Right? He had to be. For a moment, he was thankful that Susie and Kris weren’t nearby; he didn’t want them to see him like this. He wanted to say sorry, but… he didn’t want this.
Dying, from what? He had no clue, he just knew he was dying, dying dying dying dying dying…
Time blurred as his vision worsened. The colours grew brighter, the world’s details fuzzed further. Snowflakes started to merge together. Oh, they were so beautiful. So… so beautiful.
…What had he been thinking about? What was he doing out here? He- he needed to get up, find someone-
He hadn’t noticed footsteps, but suddenly someone was poking into his side. Tenna startled a little bit, and tried to look around before he remembered he was functionally blind now.
“H-hello?” he called.
The someone below him removed themselves from his side, and then Tenna lost them- oh! No, there they were, at his antenna, he heard them approach them, and there was their little face, peeking at him from the top of his screen. They were a little pippins. What colour? Hell if Tenna could tell. Probably red, so many of the pippins were red, just the one that wasn’t…
“Hello!” Tenna said to the little pippins. They looked distraught. How strange. “What arrrrrrre you doin-ing out here?”
Wow, those vocal disturbances were pretty bad. There was probably a lot of static and feedback in there, too, not that Tenna could hear it himself. Aw, he probably couldn’t do his signature stylistic spoken-word-art right now, that was kind of depressing. Hopefully these problems were only temporary.
Barely, Tenna heard the pippins reply, audible only just to his broken antenna. “Boss! What- how are- are you okay?!”
Hah, what a question. Tenna would laugh, but he didn’t have the energy. “Um. Probably not. It’s alright.”
“What?!” the little pippins squeaked. “‘Alright’?! No, it’s not, your arms…!”
Oh hey, yeah Tenna had been wondering about those too! “Yeah, hhhhey, did I dis-dis-dis-dislocate them? I cannnn’t feel my-my-my hands…”
Static washed over his speaker at the end as Tenna lost time, drowning out whatever the pippins might have replied with. For a moment, Tenna was awash in the sea of white noise, nothing but a ship sailing upon the waves, before he was brought back to himself by someone- the pippins, surely -fiddling with his antenna.
Ah, haha, like that would really do anything. Besides, why was this pippins trying to help him? Everyone had left him, in the end. Everyone had gone. He’d been… so terrible to them.
“-enna?” the pippins was yelling directly into the ball at the end of his right antenna, which made Tenna wince a little inside. “Can you hear me, Tenna? Tenna?!”
“Hereeee…” Tenna said slowly, the act of talking at all starting to hurt a little - his power must have been draining, he probably needed to plug in somewhere. “I-I-I-I’m here…”
Wow, this was really bad. He barely had the energy to readjust himself - he’d slid down a little when he’d lost time to the static, the snow blanketing his shoulders. It made him easier to access for the pippins, though, which seemed to be a good thing to the little one.
“Oh thank god,” the pippins sighed in relief. “I-I thought… well it’s fine now. I-I- I need to get help for you, there’s- there’s a search party looking for you!”
…What? “Why? H-h-h-hey, actuuuuuually, can you-you-you tell me what hap-p-p-ppened? IIIIII think I missed something.”
The pippins stared at Tenna like he’d grown a second head for a moment, then looked off somewhere to the side. They seemed to be searching for something, then they shook their head, spinning it and landing on a one.
“W-well,” the pippins said slowly, “what’s, um. What’s the last thing you remember, boss?”
“Boss! Hah!” Tenna heaved out the laugh, and instantly regretted it as his body burned, the aching from earlier becoming something much larger and overbearing.
The little pippins jumped at the sound - Tenna must have been too loud. Whoops. He tried to adjust his audio output, but he wasn’t sure if he was successful, everything felt so much, and yet not at all, consumed by the cold. Cold fire, yeah, that seemed like an accurate description to Tenna. He was covered in cold fire.
Before the pippins could speak, Tenna continued. “Sorryyyyyyy, I didn’t me-me-mean to be so loud-d-d. I remember…”
Hmm. What did he remember? Actually, he was losing a lot of things now. He had been… talking. With. Um. …Lightners! Yes, with Susie, and Kris- oh, dear Kris. Hopefully they were okay. They didn’t seem to have a lot of fun, but… well, he could hope. Yes, he had been talking with Susie and Kris and the little Prince of Darkness, Ralsei - hey, did anyone else notice how that little fellow’s name was an anagram of Asriel? Tenna had played too many word-based game shows not to notice that one. Haha, what a funny coincidence!
What had he been thinking about?
“S-s-sorry, repeat yo-you-ur questionnnnn?” Tenna asked.
The pippins looked up at Tenna with… despair. Tenna wilted under the look, wow that was terrifying to have levelled at him. Trying to wipe the look away, Tenna forced himself through a massive amount of sheer force of will to sit up a little bit.
“L-l-look, I’m ok-ok-ok-ok-ok-okay-” prove it by not glitching so hard, moron “-I swearrrr. See? I can get-get-et-et up-!”
Fwump, right back into the snow face-first. He’d tried to lean to the side and push up with his hands; right, his arms weren’t working. Did he ever figure out why?
Light above, the world was becoming so damn confusing, what the hell was going on?
Immediately, the pippins was at Tenna’s side, pushing his head to one side and trying to get him up and out of the snow again. They were so small, they could barely manage to tilt Tenna’s screen, but it was enough of an effort to help Tenna look at them again. So now, he was prone in the snow but at least his face wasn’t down in it. He could feel the cracks in his screen getting worse, could feel a pressure building up where his nose should have been. That… couldn’t have been good.
The pippins was probably saying something to Tenna, but he couldn’t process it. Instead, Tenna piped up again.
“…What happened to-to-to my arms? I cannnnnnnnn’t feel them, d-d-d-did I disloc-c-cate them again?”
“What?” the pippins asked, sounding desperate. “I-I, I thought I- you don’t know? Can’t you… feel the pain in your shoulders?”
Well now that they mentioned it, sure, the worst of the cold fire ripping agony across Tenna’s body was located at his shoulders, yeah. “They hu-urt, surrrrrrre. S-s-so? Dislocated or whaaaaaat-t-t?”
Now the pippins was refusing to look him in the face - was it really that bad? “You, uh…” they lowered their voice to a quiet mumble, but for some reason Tenna still picked up on it anyways, “damnit, why do I have to be the one to tell you? Shit…” what foul language! Then they raised their voice again. “Uh, well, you, um. Your arms are… gone.”
If Tenna could frown with eyebrows, he would be. He settled with tilting his lips downwards (or he assumed he was, but his display was pretty damaged, so he didn’t actually know if he was even projecting his mouth anymore). “What?”
“G-gone? Your arms are gone,” the pippins repeated. “Like… like severed. They were… ugh, they were cut off.”
Huh. Why didn’t that shock and scare Tenna as much as it probably should have? It certainly answered a couple questions, though. And it seemed to make the pippins sick to say. Still…
“Whatttttt happened?”
“What?” asked the pippins. They were looking off in that same random direction, searching for something.
“Why is-is-is everrrrrrrything so con-con-on-on-onfusing?” Tenna reiterated. “What happppppppppppened? Why can’t-t-t I rememberrrrr…”
He trailed off. What had he been thinking about? Where was that pippins looking? The colours were getting worse - Tenna wished so badly for his vision to clear up, but he couldn’t even smack the side of himself to try and force it back on track. There was an awful, keening whine that emanated… somewhere within him. His arms were numb- no, not numb. Missing. Gone.
“Who cu-cu-cut them offffffff?” Tenna asked, and he heard how quiet his voice had gotten this time.
Still, the pippins reacted to it, their little head whipping around to look at him again. “Uh. Um. You- you really, actually wanna know? It- it might hurt you too much right now-”
“I’m notttttt dead yet,” Tenna huffed, the action of doing so making something within his internal cavity burn. “Jus-s-s-st tell me alre-alre-already.”
The pippins’ face scrunched up, and then spun again after they glanced over their shoulder again, landing on a four - what were they searching for out there? “Um… f-fine, okay, it was the Knight. You remember the Knight?”
“The…” oh. That’s… horrifying. “What… wh-wh-wh-what about-!” panic spiked within Tenna as he lurched himself forward, pain be damned, so that he was kneeled over the snow, looming over the pippins. “K-Kris! Su-Su-Su-Su-Su-Su- fucking SUSIE! The Kn-n-n-night is danggggger-erous!! Are they- are they- a-a-a-are they-?!”
“They’re okay!” the pippins yelped hurriedly. “They’re fine! It’s you we’re all worried about!”
“Hurt- did they g-g-g-get hurt-?!”
“I said they’re fine, Mr. Tenna!” Something like terror was flooding the tone that the pippins used, but Tenna found he couldn’t fully connect the sound to a response that he should have, panic in every single circuit. “They- they had to fight the Knight, a-and they… um, but they’re fine! S-Susie and Kris came back to fix you up and close the Fountain, remember how they needed to do that? They’re looking for you now, I should really go and tell them where we are!”
Just as suddenly as it had come, the violent energy suddenly vanished, and Tenna was just in pain again. His core collapsed underneath him, and he folded like a crumpled tissue paper backwards into the snow again. Face-up, hitting the back of his head into the snowdrift with a horrible KUH-CHNK! that probably would have hurt if everything else didn’t also. At least… now he was watching the snow, right? Or the impression of it, behind the thick, bright colour that consumed his features. He could pretend like it was all fine, just another day, just him taking a bit of a break in… in the freezing cold…
“Tenna!” a voice echoed tinnily into his antenna, and Tenna flinched at it. “Oh thank goodness, are you okay?! That- that looked bad-”
“Pippins…” Tenna said slowly, trying his best not to break - the pressure in his face was getting worse. “What… is-is your… name?”
“M-my name?” the pippins asked, and suddenly there was the vague shape of a face in Tenna’s upper right corner screen. “Wh-why would you-?”
“I’m… sssssorry…” Tenna said.
The pippins’ face made a funny movement - Tenna assumed they scrunched their face up. “Don’t- don’t say that, not right now. Okay? I’m-”
Tenna lost more time. The snow blended together on his screen, feeling like it was hardly even melting anymore. Water ran down his slightly convex face, gathering at the edges where his screen met his casing. Maybe if some slipped between those, got into his wiring, he could short out before… whatever it was that was killing him slowly did so.
Before… before the Knight. Killed him. Once and for all.
Was that what the prophecy had been about?
Slowly, agonisingly slowly, Tenna came back vaguely into tune. He must have visibly turned off, because the pippins (damnit, he’d missed their name…) was crying something into his antenna.
“-lease please stay with-”
Tenna groaned, which seemed to quiet the pippins. “S-s-s-sorr-orr-orry… I di-di-didn’t-n’t-n’t…”
“No, no that’s okay,” the pippins said faintly (were they actually faint? It felt like they were screaming at him from the end of an extremely long tunnel), likely bouncing up and down where they stood, not that Tenna could see that anymore. “Just- just stay awake with me, okay? Please? Please?!”
“Okay-y-y…” Tenna hummed.
His mind felt like a sieve. There was probably some wire somewhere misplaced. Maybe… a lot of wires. No, no misplaced, pulled out… ugh, thinking was so labourious. Thoughts like derailed trains barrelled through his mind at light speeds, here one moment, gone the next, crashing into each other and spiralling his whole mind out of whack.
“H-here!” the pippins suddenly called, turned away from Tenna from the sounds of it. “Here, come this way, guys!! Here, come here!”
Their voice was followed by the rumbling of… something, through the ground. Lots of… bodies. Lots of bodies probably. Lots of… all the little bodies of his tiny little crew, so small compared to him, so quick. All the shadowguys, so very delicate, just wisps of darkness and sound - they were perfect for their jobs, they executed behind-the-scenes work mostly flawlessly the majority of the time. All the pippins, having migrated over time from the Card Kingdom Dark World back at the school in the Light World, little migraines who, once set upon a task, fulfilled it like destiny drew their movements. All the zappers diligently protecting the studio and Tenna himself, all the shuttahs who did their best to capture perfect shots and angles, all the… all the…
What was he thinking about?
It didn’t matter. The world went awash in static, and then nothing overtook the confusion, the fear, and consumed his mind.