Chapter Text
The middle of the night was always so dark and quiet, especially once everyone had gone to bed. Well, presumably, almost everyone, as Astro usually had to stay awake in order to command other’s dreams.
But tonight, no dream could keep one little toon asleep.
The nightlight in Toodles’ room flickered as she tried to fall asleep, but the moment the light went completely out, her fear set in. She felt her heart race as she looked around for any source of light. She got up despite her weak legs and felt around for the light switch. She tried turning the lights on, but it wouldn’t work.
It was a blackout.
Despite her fear, Toodles exited her room and walked across the hall. Thankfully, his room wasn’t too far, and she knew exactly where it was for situations like this. She knocked gently on the door and waited until she heard stirring from the other side to enter.
“Rodger?” She called out softly, trying not to wake him if he was still asleep.
“Toodles?” Rodger squinted at the young toon, eye not fully adjusted to the darkness of his room, “What’re you doing up so late? What time is it?”
He didn’t fully realise how dark it was until he remembered falling asleep with the lamp on. He tried turning it back on but to no avail.
“My nightlight stopped working,” Toodles explained, looking away in shame. She never did like to admit that she was scared of the dark.
“Oh, well, there’s no need to worry about that. I’ll go down and get things working again. For now, you can sleep here, okay?”
Rodger took Toodles’ hand and guided her to his bed. He sat her down on his bed and shuffled around for a few seconds before turning on the flashlight.
“There, will that be enough for tonight?”
“Yeah! Thanks, Rodger.” Toodles gave a sleepy smile.
“Good. Now, get some rest. I’m sure the power will be back on soon.”
With that, Rodger exited his room and closed the door behind him, leaving the younger toon to get some sleep.
Now, there was another problem for him to solve – who could he bring down to the lower levels this late at night?
Astro, of course, came to mind first. That toon was always awake at night. However, given that the last thing he needed was for Toodles to wake up from a nightmare and Astro typically needed to concentrate in order to get the dreams right, it was probably best not to disturb him.
He searched his mind, desperate to find another toon to go with him at this hour. It was dangerous to go alone, and he knew that, but everyone he could think of would be asleep and unwilling to help at this hour.
Well, except for one toon, who might’ve been awake.
Rodger always hated using the stairs, but during a blackout was especially difficult. Still, he used the wall and careful footsteps to guide him, trying not to miss a single step. Once he reached the bottom of the stairs, he took a minute to catch his breath from the stress before returning to his task.
He walked through the first floor’s hallway, squinting at each number on the walls until he found the right one – C-002 (nope, wrong side of the hallway), R-004 & R-005 (not waking Scraps or Goob. Though the latter may be willing to help, his enthusiasm might be a bit too much for this hour), R-002…
Rodger stood outside the door, wondering if he should really open it. He didn’t want to knock, given it might wake Glisten up if he was actually sleeping, so there was no other choice.
He opened the door a crack to peek into the mirror’s room. When he first spotted Glisten, who was curled up on his bed, he assumed he was asleep. However, upon closer inspection, he noticed the other toon was still in his normal clothing.
He stepped into the room, careful not to make any sudden noises, and approached the bed. It became more difficult as he got closer, as a trail of candy wrappers and other trash began to form, only getting worse as he traversed the floor. Finally, he reached the bedside and stared at the other toon. It was painfully obvious that Glisten had simply passed out instead of actually sleeping.
“Glisten…” Rodger first spoke softly, but once he realised that he had failed to get the other toon’s attention, he raised his voice slightly, “Glisten!”
Glisten spluttered as he woke up, not expecting anyone to be in his room this late.
“Rodger?” He said once he saw the magnifying glass, “What are you doing in my room at this hour?”
“Do you know what time it is?” Rodger replied.
“Well…no.”
“Neither do I. Now, there’s a blackout, and Toodles won’t sleep until we fix that.”
“Whoa, who’s we? I don’t remember agreeing to this.”
“Well, you’re the only one up at this hour.”
“I WAS sleeping until you came in here.”
“You passed out from eating too much.”
“Tch, I didn’t eat THAT much.”
“I doubt that. On my way to your bed, I stumbled upon two donut boxes, I’m assuming dozen boxes, five boxes of chocolate, four protein bar wrappers, two enigma candy wrappers…”
“ALRIGHT, I GET IT!” Glisten interrupted, hanging his head in both shame and defeat, “What do you want?”
“I already told you. I just need you to come down to the lower levels with me so that we can fix the blackout.”
“Ugh, alright, just let me apply some makeup.”
“You’re still wearing your makeup from earlier.”
“…It’s like you’re trying to embarrass me at this point.”
The two could feel the elevator moving as they stood on opposite sides. They had already agreed that two floors would be enough to keep the power going until daytime when it would be safer to go further down.
Just a quick “extract ichor from the machines and leave”. Nothing could go wrong, right?
The elevator hit the first floor they were set to extract from, and the door began to open.
They found themselves in one of the old projector rooms. Two of the machines were placed not too far from the elevator, making the job easy enough. Both of them kept an ear out for any signs of a twisted approaching. Rodger could hear a faint sweeping sound in the distance, hinting him towards the presence of a Twisted version of Tisha. He couldn’t hear or see anything that would point him towards any other twisteds in the vicinity, so he just focused on the extraction.
“Haha!” Glisten’s voice suddenly came from behind him, “I finished before you, and I bet I’ll finish more machines than you.”
As his accomplice laughed and walked away, Rodger didn’t really react. He needed to focus on extraction. He needed to fix the blackout. He needed to get back to Toodles-
A loud crash and scream came from the direction Glisten had run in, causing Rodger to stop his extraction to investigate. He peeked around the corner to see if he could find any clues as to what happened, but just as he did so, he heard a noise coming from behind him. He turned around to see Glisten, who appeared visibly shaken before collapsing on the floor.
“GLISTEN!” He called out, shaking his friend to see if he could get a response. The mirror only stirred in response. The magnifying glass gave his friend a bit of room to recover, letting him sit up properly.
Glisten clutched his head as he sat up. This, and the groan he gave, indicated that he was in pain. Rodger avoided eye contact, his eyes frantically looking around as if he was looking for something.
Glisten only figured out what his friend was doing when his vision finally stopped spinning, and he noticed that Rodger was handing him a protein bar with one hand and digging around in a medkit with the other. He took the protein bar, leaving Rodger’s now freed hand to also shuffle things around in the medkit. He watched and ate his protein bar at the same time until...
“Ah, I found it!” Rodger muttered, pulling something out of the medkit, a couple of painkillers, “Here, take these. I’ll see if I can find something for you to drink.”
Glisten took the painkillers from Rodger, then watched carefully as the magnifying glass stood up and began looking around for something. Eventually, he returned to his previous position by his friend’s side with a can of pop in his hand, which he offered to the mirror, who happily used it to take the painkillers properly.
“I shouldn’t have brought you down here…” Rodger sighed, leaning up against the machine as he waited for Glisten to recover.
“Mhm, you’re only realising that now?” The mirror teased in response.
“You didn’t let me finish. I was going to say I shouldn’t have brought you down here when you were obviously on an empty stomach.”
“Tch, you tell me off for eating too much, and now you’re telling me off for eating too little. Make up your mind, Rodger.”
“I’m worried about you. I’ve told you that I have a keen eye, so it was obvious I would notice your disordered eating behaviours.”
“I do NOT have disordered eating behaviours.”
“I’ve watched you not eat for hours, sometimes even days on end, and then you start eating a large amount of food, usually sweets, in a short period of time. I’ve even heard you vomiting sometimes afterwards, which means you’ve either upset your stomach or inflicted it onto yourself. That isn’t normal, Glisten. None of that is. You have a problem, and I think you should absolutely speak to someone about it. If you won’t talk to a professional like Cubic, then you know you can talk to me about it, right?”
Glisten sat there, staring at Rodger with wide eyes. Okay, maybe he did have a problem, and the fact that Rodger could see that easier than he ever could made him slightly uncomfortable. It was like the magnifying glass could reach into his mind and read every single thought, even the ones he had pushed down so far that not even he could access them.
“You stay here to recover,” Rodger stood back up, “I’ll work on the rest of the machines.”
“W-wait!” Glisten called out, grabbing hold of Rodger’s jacket, “C-can you stay here for a little while longer?”
“Don’t worry, I still need to finish this machine. It shouldn’t take long, but I’ll make sure you’re alright before I leave.”
With that, Rodger went back to extracting. Glisten continued to sit there, staring at him, wondering what else he knew about the mirror.
As he promised, Rodger checked in on Glisten before walking away from him. When he finally started looking for the other two machines they needed from this floor, he came across something on the floor.
A research capsule…but not a usual one.
No, he knew this research capsule. He knew what it meant. It was his own twisted in disguise.
That’s when it hit him – the sound of glass shattering followed by Glisten screaming – Glisten must’ve accidentally awoken his twisted. It would explain a lot that had happened earlier, especially why Glisten decided to use his teleportation ability to get away,
He left the capsule on the floor, knowing it was best not to bother with it. After all, one incident tonight was a bit too much already.
Finally, the last machine. It felt like it took Rodger forever to find it, but now he had finally gotten to it.
And, as luck would have it, it wasn’t too far from where Glisten was sitting.
He poked his head around the corner repeatedly as he extracted ichor from the machine. Glisten was still sitting on the floor, seemingly deep in thought. He could understand why. He did pretty much call him out on behaviour he probably didn’t want to be seen. He’d be lying if he said it wasn’t obvious, but sometimes things were just left unsaid.
As the machine got closer to full, Rodger decided it was time to grab Glisten’s attention and tell him to get off the floor. The mirror complied, slowly standing up off the floor to avoid making himself dizzy again.
Once the elevator opened, the two made a dash for it before they could grab the attention of any twisted in their vicinity, both panting once they reached the elevator and the door closed in front of them.
“Hello, you two!” A familiar voice came from behind the two, “I got some goodies on sale!”
It was Dandy, standing at the corner of his shop, which had opened up from the elevator’s floor, smiling at them with various items for sale. Glisten and Rodger just stared at the flower, dumbfounded at him being awake at this hour, especially with that much energy.
“So…no tapes? That’s alright, I’ll be back later.” The flower continued, pulling on the lever next to him to put his shop back where it belonged.
“…We both agree that it’s strange of him to be awake at this hour…and to have that much energy,” Rodger commented once Dandy was out of earshot.
“Mhm, totally,” Glisten replied, still staring dumbfounded at where Dandy was.