Chapter Text
Things had been weird the past few weeks. At least from Battat’s point of view. Sure, part of it was because so much had changed recently– TV World simply not existing anymore and the subsequent getting used to that was a bit rough– but it also just felt a whole lot more quiet than usual. Maybe even a bit boring, honestly.
One might assume that boring might be a good thing, at least on the surface anyway. It was like a break of sorts, less responsibility, less constant running around, and less- well- pretending.
None of them needed to pretend anymore. Not really.
On its face, the quiet and weirdness of it all seemed almost perfect. Maybe if things were slightly different, Battat would agree with that assessment. But as it stood, he just couldn’t. He couldn’t bring himself to agree that things were better now. Because really, they weren’t. Not to him, anyway.
Tenna.
It had been a few weeks ago now when word began to spread that Tenna had been given away. That he’d managed to find a new home, and along with that; a new person to watch him. It was probably the best outcome for him, Battat reasoned. Better than being left to deteriorate in some closet, anyhow.
Like the rest of them.
Unfortunately, nobody was able to go with him when he’d left. None of the regular crew– the pippins, zappers, or shadowguys. Not Shuttah or Ramb– where was Ramb, actually? Not even the weather was able to accompany him to his new home, and those two had been with him since probably forever!
Worst of all though, worse than any of that, was Mike.
Mike was always there for Tenna. Always always always there, never not! But now? Well, Mike wasn’t there- or rather, wasn’t able to be there anymore. What if something happened? What if Tenna needed him and he couldn’t be there? What would happen to him? What would happen to Tenna?
Battat didn’t know what to think of the situation. So he didn’t think about it at all.
Honestly, it was probably better that way.
Shaking his head– not too hard to make it roll, of course– he sighed, letting his forehead smack a little too hard onto the desk in front of himself. Oh well. Can’t be helped.
Across the room, a questioning warble sounded out. If his eyes weren’t closed, he’d be rolling them.
“Yes, Pluey, I’m fine.”
He was pretty sure Pluey made some kind of noise that conveyed something along the lines of, ‘I don’t believe you,’ but he didn’t really care enough to listen and parse it out at the moment. If he were being truly honest, he was just tired. Maybe not in a literal sense, not really, but mentally at the very least. Emotionally? Probably, but that sounded stupid.
For a moment he found himself considering a nap right then and there. After all, It couldn’t hurt to get some more sleep– that’s what everyone always tells him, right?– even if it wasn’t in a bed, and even if he’d already been sleeping more than usual lately. Not that that really mattered that much, even if it was starting to drive him up a wall. Can’t get anything done if you’re sleeping, blockhead!
Whatever. Next to his head, a small tnk was heard. Pluey dropping off a glass of water, probably. Battat might’ve appreciated the thought a bit more if he wasn’t preoccupied with trying to nap. Or not nap, and work instead. Or whatever it was he was doing.
Really, there wasn’t any reason why the three of them still hung around each other. Lived together, technically. Jongler, Pluey, and himself. They only really stayed together before because of…well because of Mike. Or…because of Tenna, he guessed. The specifics didn’t matter, it was all the same anyway. Point was, there was no reason now for them to be together.
So why were they?
There was too much to think about, lately. Not that there wasn’t too much to think about before, but now it was worse somehow. It was different than what he had to think about before, but still so similar in a way that could nearly make him feel sick.
He dragged his head up off of the desk and took a sip of water.
It was almost hard to look at his corkboard, now. The one where all of his research was. His research for Mike. About Mike? He guessed it hardly mattered anymore. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about finding out who Mike was anymore, and it wasn’t that he didn’t care about Mike in general anymore, it was…kind of the opposite, actually. Battat was sure admitting as much would make him sound crazy, but really, it mattered more than he could ever hope to explain.
He supposed sounding crazy wasn’t especially out of the ordinary for him anyway.
It was just…hard to sift through. Maybe it was too much? But at the same time, maybe it was too little. It wasn’t like he had learned anything new since coming to Castle Town. Since Tenna left. Not really. Not really.
Battat could almost feel a migraine coming on. He took another sip of water, longer this time. Maybe it would help to eat something too, now that he thought about it. But truthfully, there was no time for that. There was really no time for anything anymore.
But technically, there was all the time in the world now, wasn’t there? Was there, though?
The thought really shouldn’t have been as overwhelming as it was. Maybe he really should take a nap. If nothing else, it would make the time pass quicker. Not that it actually worked like that, of course, but the effect was there nonetheless.
He jumped at a sudden trumpet noise from somewhere behind him. Pluey.
“What?” he snapped, likely a bit too forcefully. He wasn’t expecting Pluey to start chatting, and so Battat hadn’t caught what he’d said.
So, Pluey repeated himself.
“Jongler?”
A nod.
“What, you think they’ve been gone too long?”
Another nod.
He tried to think about how long Jongler had even been gone, but in all honesty he couldn’t remember when they’d left in the first place. What time even was it now? Late? Surely not. But he wouldn’t exactly be surprised if the day had passed by so quickly without him noticing. It wouldn’t be the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last.
He brought a hand up to scratch at the back of his neck. “I…guess it’s been a while? What were they out doin’ again exactly?”
Pluey began to explain, but Battat quickly found himself not listening. Not for lack of trying, not really. It just felt like there was too much happening to properly pay attention. Too much to think about, too much to consider. Too much…and yet, there wasn’t a whole lot of anything happening. That was kind of the point of the whole situation, actually. The boring-ness of it all.
Eventually, Pluey seemed to realize that he wasn’t making any headway on their rather one-sided conversation, and gave up on vocalizing in favor of doing…anything else. Probably something cat related. Beats him.
Not too long ago, Battat would have said he used to wish there was more time in the day to do things. Being one-third of the collective Mikes and also juggling his own hobbies– no, his own work– was already hard enough, but adding on the fact that he allegedly was supposed to ‘take care of himself’ and do things like ‘sleep’ and ‘eat’ just made everything so much harder. It never felt like there was enough time.
But now there was plenty of time. But for some reason, having a lot more time was somehow worse than having less of it. Now, there was just far too much time to think.
Thinking was an interesting thing. If he were a slightly different pippins, he might have thought having more time to think would be a good thing as well, but it simply…wasn’t.
More time to think meant more time to overthink. And overthinking was just never good. Not usually at least. Overthinking meant that his thoughts would go down paths that didn’t actually mean anything at all, paths that he would think led to things, but would ultimately end up being completely fruitless. Basically, he’d be stuck in a terrible loop of endless torment forever.
Subconsciously, Battat noted the sound of a door opening and closing. Probably Jongler returning, if he had to guess. But he didn’t really pay it too much mind. Again, there were just too many things to consider at the moment to really pay attention to anything going on around him, so he simply didn’t. That was, until he caught a whiff of something that smelled distinctly like garbage.
Almost confusedly, he whipped his head around to stare accusatorily in Jongler’s direction. Said remote quickly put a hand up in surrender before Battat even had the chance to say anything. He noted that in their other hand, they seemed to be carrying something, but he couldn’t quite get a good look at it from all the way across the room.
“Listen, boss,” Jongler began, “I’s can explain-”
Battat nipped back quickly before they could finish, “I would hope so! What even is that thing?” He pointed an accusatory clawed finger at whatever it was the zapper was holding, covering his nose with his off hand. He shook his head quickly, “You know what, nevermind, just- get it out of here, whatever it is, it reeks!”
Jongler didn’t even flinch at the abrasiveness. “No can do, boss,” they started, “I’m keepin’ it.”
Battat could only stare at them as though they’d grown an extra head. “What,” was all he could seem to manage as a response. It wasn’t that Jongler wasn’t usually straightforward, but they didn’t tend to go completely against whatever Battat told them.
“Yep, I’m keepin’ it,” Jongler reiterated.
Battat tried his best to ignore the fact that he still had no idea what ‘it’ even was, and moved on with the next most important thing. “Well…” He crossed his arms, “you’d better make sure it stops stinkin’ the whole place up or you’re not keeping it for long, I'll tell you that much!” For some reason, he knew his words didn’t hold much weight in this specific conversation.
That thought proved to be true with Jongler’s next response. “Right,” they said, “I was plannin’ on doing that anyhows, so yous don’t gotta worry about a thing.” They nodded, self assuredly. Battat had an inkling they’d keep it regardless, though.
“And what exactly is…it?” He asked them again.
“Oh, right,” Jongler began to walk closer, shifting the thing in their arms to be more visible.
Battat quickly hopped up, and began waving his arms around. “Okay, okay, hold it! You can explain from over there, if that thing gets any closer it’ll just-!” He made some kind of strangling motion in the air with his hands, “It’ll kill me!”
Jongler didn’t seem as though they believed that at all. “I don’t thinks that’d happen, actually,” they said. “Anyway,” they continued, holding the thing out with one hand, “It’s a puppet,” they stated simply.
And sure enough, it definitely was a puppet. A really ratty looking one, anyway. Its clothes looked to be torn in multiple places, not to mention how dirty they were. Its head and limbs ragdolled limply from its body, which didn’t seem to be in any better condition than its clothes. It honestly looked like it’d just been plucked out of the…
Well, out of the garbage.
At least the smell coming off of the thing was making a lot more sense now.
“I found it in the garbage,” Jongler stated as though Battat hadn’t quite literally already come to that conclusion. The garbage. Who does that?! “It just looked too sad,” they explained like it was the most simple thing in the world, “you’se tellin’ me you’d’ve left it there?”
In all honesty, yeah, he would have. He knew Jongler had some weird hobbies– a lot of them, as a matter of fact– but dumpster diving was definitely a new one. At the very least, he’d not heard of them doing it before now. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he hoped it didn’t become a regular thing for them. He didn’t know what he would do if they kept bringing home trash all the time.
“Yeah, why would I go around picking up trash off the ground-,” he paused for a moment, considering. “...you did get it off the ground and not the actual dumpster, right?”
“I don’t hafta answer that,” they replied matter-of-factly, heading towards the bathroom. To clean that thing up, Battat hoped. The smell was starting to turn his almost-migrane into a regular full-on migraine.
Hearing the door close behind them, he slumped his forehead back onto his desk once more. Less forcefully this time, however.
He didn’t even realize he had fallen asleep until he awoke to whispering and soft musical tones around him. Luckily, it seemed that the impromptu nap had helped his head some.
Sitting up, he turned to see what the others were up to. If it was late when Jongler came back, it had to be ultra late by now. Maybe it had even already wrapped back around to being early. Maybe not, though.
Both Jongler and Pluey were laying in their respective beds next to each other. It looked like they were just chatting quietly about nothing in particular before bed. At least, nothing particularly of note to Battat. Strangely, his attention was brought rather quickly to Jongler’s weird puppet, which was placed neatly upon their headboard. It was kind of an eyesore, and seemed to almost command attention to it.
The most noticeable thing about it wasn’t even its appearance, though, at least not right away. The first thing Battat noticed was that the room no longer smelled like, well, garbage. He supposed that whatever Jongler did to clean it had worked out well enough, as he didn’t really feel like he was going to toss his cookies from being in the vicinity of it anymore. Aside from that though, he was now able to get a slightly better look at it than before.
Besides it being obviously cleaner now, he couldn’t help but notice the interestingly colored glasses it wore. One of the lenses was pink, and the other yellow.
They were just like the ones Pluey wore on his Mike suit. Except smaller, of course.
He furrowed his brows at the fact. Something didn’t seem quite right about that. It just seemed too specific. But what kind of connection would there even be between Pluey and the puppet? Between the glasses? Maybe there wasn’t anything. It didn’t make sense for there to be a connection, anyway. It was just too random. And yet…
specific.
He never really considered himself to be someone afraid of puppets, dolls, and the like; but the longer he stared at it, the more it seemed to be staring back at him.
Pushing away from his desk, he stood up and reached a hand up to his head. By this point, Jongler and Pluey both seemed to realize he had woken up, and were quieting down a bit more. They probably expected him to go to bed– actual bed and not his desk– and ordinarily, on most days at least, he would fight that expectation. Tonight though, he trudged his way over to his actual bed next to the others and practically collapsed into it.
He had been tired before, and almost certainly more tired than he currently was, but it just felt…different, this time. Something about it. He didn’t know.
It was almost interesting, in a way, how little there was now. But also in the same breath, how much. Both to do and to think about. Nearly an impossibility, but still possible, because that's how things were now, he guessed. Things were weird now. Not quite boring, but almost. Maybe. Maybe they weren’t. Everything was happening too fast.
Thankfully, Jongler and Pluey didn’t seem to notice the sound of his own blood rushing to his head. At least not enough to comment on it.
He fell asleep with what felt like too many eyes on him that night.