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Rodger straightened his jabot as the elevator descended down, listening to the various clicks and hums of the machinery in the shaft. Solo runs were always a bit nerve-wracking, but as long as he kept them relatively short it was sometimes nice to get some peace and quiet from the other Toons, especially today. It was a long night, and he'd gotten a splitting headache merely from the commotion in the kitchen earlier that morning, he hadn't been particularly enthused about going on a group run.
Not that he didn't like the other Toons — far from! — but it was sometimes easier to be quiet and certainly much easier to hide when he was alone — nobody to accidentally drag the attention of a Twisted from the distractor and lead them to him while they're fleeing.
…only sometimes.
The elevator opens onto one of the warm Rainbow Room floors — a welcome floor given the onslaught of warehouse floors prior — and as Rodger steps out he hears a familiar voice.
“Hey there, Detective.”
The magnifying glass tenses his shoulders, inhaling quietly as he hears the lilting, mocking tone in which the mirror that steps out from around a wall says that little nickname.
How did he even know someone was going to be on this floor?
He looks over at the twisted form of Glisten, his eye narrowed in slight suspicion at the broken and dirty frame grinning at him. He knows that it isn't the Glisten that he knows anymore, but it doesn't stop that sharp twinge in his gut at seeing that split torso and shattered face.
“Evening,” Rodger replies curtly, his eye scanning side to side for other threats, shifting his bag of supplies and research on his shoulder.
“Well, I can always count on you to tell me what the time is, hm? I was thinking it was the middle of the afternoon,” Glisten says, shrugging as he falls into step beside the detective.
This was their routine, it seemed. When Rodger did a solo run, somehow the mirror always seemed to find him at some point. More often than he did when Rodger was in a group of other Toons. He never says how, but Rodger just assumes he can hear the elevator as it comes down the shaft when he happens to be nearby. And then he follows him around the floor for a while, sometimes disappearing someplace, and then watching from a distance when the detective has to leave.
“How many floors has it been this time? Ten? 13? Lucky number 7?”
“I've gone down to about 18 or so.”
“Ooo, going for the big numbers today, are we? Feeling bold?” Glisten snickers, folding his hands behind his back.
Rodger sighs, not dignifying the tease with a response.
He dislikes how his former friend is now — cocky, and not in the tolerable way he'd been before everything; mocking; a compulsive liar; likely wouldn't even bat an eye if someone were to get attacked right in front of him, except perhaps to save face. Didn't seem attached to anyone at all anymore. Gone were the majority of his kind and caring personality traits that made him him.
…but at least he isn't always outwardly homicidal towards Rodger and the other Toons, so that's something to be noted, he supposes.
Rodger fills up a machine close to the elevator in a corner, leaving it about halfway full, before setting off to wander the blue halls, the Twisted beside him the whole time, his singular red eye looking between him and lazily drifting about the area.
As they come to a little center room with a machine in the corner, Rodger hears a quiet noise somewhere to his left, something like a vaguely musical hum. He sprints behind a crate, watching as — surprisingly — the usually nonchalant mirror quickly crouches down beside him, glaring over the box as they both watch the tall form of Twisted Astro amble by just as they're hidden.
“It must have just gotten onto this floor, it wasn't here earlier…” Glisten mutters as he watches the corrupted Main Character walk around a corner, its footsteps padding softly across the yellow carpet, “I hate that moon. Too quiet.”
Rodger blinks, watching the mirror glare daggers at where Twisted Astro had disappeared down a hallway, surprised at his Twisted companion's vehemency towards the larger Twisted. When Glisten stands up and angles his head towards a machine, Rodger carefully walks over to it and kneels down to start extracting.
“On the bright side, there's only the spirit and the tragedy besides us and the Moon on this floor, so unless you've gotten dumber since the last time you were down here you should be fine,” Glisten sighs, leaning on a wall next to the detective.
‘Connie is the ‘spirit,’ obviously,’ Rodger thinks, trying to remember what titles that Glisten's given to various Twisteds and Toons, ‘...and ‘tragedy’ is Razzle and Dazzle, most likely. Comedy and tragedy. Right…’
In this state, the Twisted can't seem to remember names all that well. Even when Rodger tells him, they're usually forgotten within minutes and he's reverted to calling others by little nicknames he's made up. He would have assumed, with Glisten's retained intelligence, that this wouldn't be an issue, but at the very least he has consistency in what he calls everyone, so there's no need to constantly figure it out through context once Rodger figured out who was who.
He finishes the machine and stands up, setting off again with Glisten on his heels. Rodger doesn't think he's seen him nervous before, although even calling it that was a stretch. It's the only way he can describe his eye moving around side to side, looking over his shoulder discreetly every few seconds, however. Nervous.
The pair come across a little side room with two machines in it, Rodger making his way to one. Glisten watches the machine for a moment, looking between it and the detective. The mirror's hand twitches, and he has an urge to reach out and pull him back for some reason, but he stomps that down easily.
“...Say, have you been getting any sleep lately?” he asks with a poorly veiled smile.
“Plenty,” Rodger says brusquely, “Why?”
“Oh, no reason, no reason…” Glisten waves a hand dismissively, muttering the word ‘liar’ under his breath.
The magnifying glass’ eyebrow raises suspiciously as he watches the Twisted lean against the wall, keeping his eye on him as he kneels down to spin the valve.
Just a moment too late to see the blue flash on the machine, and by the time his hand grabbed the valve and felt it move on its own, it was too late to back out as he felt a cold hand scratch roughly against his head and a ghostly blue face scowling at him. The face soon disappears into thin air in a puff of blue smoke, leaving the detective startled and the mirror giggling.
“Aww, what's WRONG, Detective, you look like you've seen a ghost!” the Twisted crows, skipping over to Rodger and grinning down at him, “Honestly, you're usually the first to notice her… pity, PITY! You've either lost your touch or lied to my face about being tired~”
Rodger grumbles up at the mirror, ignoring the hand he’d stretched down to him as he stands back up, dusting himself off and returning to the machine, a hand raising to his face to feel where a split had formed from Connie's attack.
“Bad idea to get distracted, Detective, you know better than to let your guard down here.”
“Astute advice as usual,” Rodger clips, his eye moving between the valve and the Twisted beside him.
“Always here for life–saving advice. I'm full of good tips~!”
“You're full of something, but it isn't good advice.”
Glisten snickers at that, but doesn't retort as Rodger finishes the machine and moves on to the one behind him. The detective is… uncomfortably aware of how close the Twisted has moved to him, peering over his shoulder at the machine slowly filling up. He stinks of decay, along with a salty, acrid smell.
“Really, though,” the mirror murmurs, “With how much you focus on these old things, you should pay more attention to your surroundings, hm?”
He rarely says things like that just to waste air.
Rodger stops working on the machine for a moment to listen, moving to be hidden by the desk to his right as he hears soft footsteps down the hall, just barely not being spotted by Astro as he walks down the hall. The detective watches Glisten tense up as the taller Twisted walks past — nothing incredibly noticeable, just the tiniest clench of his hand and the shoulders rising. But they still don’t go unseen, and the tension only leaves once Astro's disappeared down the hall.
“...are you alright?” Rodger asks, returning to the machine.
“Perfectly.”
A deceitfully cheerful chime and a green light, and the two move on. Another mechanical tube completed in a back room, and one found hidden in a corner behind boxes, likely safe from the sight of Astro.
The tricky part? It's within the ring of ribbons from the fused twins, Razzle and Dazzle, currently sleeping and rocking back and forth within the circle. With a wary look to his companion, not buying the bored and unnoticing look on the other's face for a second, he tiptoes through the circle to the machine, frequently pausing to check behind himself just in case.
When the machine was nearly halfway done, he checks behind himself.
Glisten had disappeared.
He goes on high alert, trying to see if he'd missed him standing in a corner. Rodger didn't like when he wasn't able to keep regular tabs on the mirror, he couldn't know what he was up to or whether he'd gotten bored and left.
He was not fun when he was bored.
Turning back to the machine, still peeking over the wall of boxes to his right and behind him, Rodger wanted to hurry and finish up as soon as possible to find what the rotting pest was up to. And after that, just finishing up the one by the elevator and he would be out of here.
One more chime.
A quick pair of footsteps.
One second too late of a reaction.
As the tube finished filling up, Rodger saw a blur speed past the doorway, now hidden on the other side of the wall, and just as he was about to step out to investigate he heard the rattle of bells, the twins springing to their feet and locking onto the detective. He froze for a second before bolting, his slow speed allowing just enough time for the ribbons to shoot out from the perimeter and stab into his ankle. He stumbled and fell, managing to scramble out of the ring's perimeter just before being struck again. Rodger watched with a wide eye and laboured breaths as Razzle and Dazzle eventually settled down, sinking back into their nap.
Only then did he allow himself to hiss in pain, leaning forward to check the damage — punctures from where the dagger-like ribbons had pierced clean through his ankle and out the other side, ichor slowly dripping out from the injury.
“Ooo, that looks like it stings.” That voice has returned. He must not have been too far away to have come back so quickly. Rodger's eye glares up at the face leaning over him, and for once the half-mouth isn't pulled into a grin. Just mildly disappointed as he sucks in breath through his sharp teeth.
“I leave you alone for not even two minutes and you've already gotten yourself hurt..? Honestly, not noticing the spirit earlier and now this, how you haven't gotten yourself killed already is, frankly, incredible.”
“Well, Razzle and Dazzle don't just randomly wake up, so I wonder how that happened,” Rodger says, grabbing a bandage box from his bag and pulling his leg up, looking around to make sure Astro isn't anywhere nearby. They've had remarkably few encounters with him. All the better, in his opinion.
“You must have been too loud for the tragedy, Detective.”
“Hmm, no, I can't say I was doing anything that would disturb them, but I did see something out of the corner of my eye running past, right through their ring.”
The mirror makes a noncommittal noise, walking around to Rodger's front. While the detective is busy putting the rainbowed bandages on either side of the wound, the other bends down and picks up the box, pulling out one of the bandages and twisting it around between his hand and thumb.
Rodger knows that the Twisted had run through Razzle and Dazzle's circle. And he's certain that Glisten knows he knows. He's probably been able to make others believe that he didn't do anything to directly cause them harm, make them doubt what they saw or heard, but never Rodger.
“So you're not going to admit to it, then?”
“Admit to what?”
“You know exactly what.”
“Do I?”
Rodger grumbles while Glisten cocks his head, playing dumb.
“I could have died there, you know.”
“And what a shame that would've been, Detective — aren't you glad you didn't?” Glisten asks, peeling off the liner on the bandage in his hand, poking at the sticky adhesive. Perhaps, Rodger realises with dismay but not surprise, that that was a useless attempt at trying to appeal to any sort of guilt left in him.
“God, I– why are you like this??” Rodger hisses, “You are the ONLY one who's twisted and not become a mindless animal, and yet you will ACTIVELY lie to myself and other Toons’ faces about anything and everything. AND YET STILL you follow us around, pretending like you care, making your little quips and comments as if you're still–…”
He trails off as the other looks down at him, expression unreadable.
“As if I'm still what.”
. . .
“... nothing. You're just… you're what you are. You're an enigma to make sense of.”
“How cryptic,” Glisten huffs in response, crumpling up the bandage in his hand into a tiny ball.
“Why don’t you and those friends of yours ever just tell me to leave, then, if you don't trust me, hm?” Glisten asks, poking his finger on Rodger's chest, “Always letting me tag along, chit-chatting even though I'm supposedly so conniving? Wouldn't it be easier?”
“I–”
Glisten pokes roughly at Rodger's face.
“Ah-ah-ah. Still talking, Detective. If I had wanted you all dead wouldn't there have been more carnage you'd see from me by now? Honestly the fact that you willingly let me follow you alone, and you keep going back up to your little ol’ fancy lobby with your dumb little friends and useless ‘research’ in one piece instead of scattered across the floors or killing them yourself should be enough proof that you can just trust me.”
. . .
Rodger stays silent at that. He runs a finger over the edge of the plaster on the punctures while Glisten holds his head up as if he'd won the conversation.
Unfortunately, it's true that Rodger has no SOLID evidence that this Toon who used to be his friend and pretends to be such is still sane and passive. He's never personally seen, without a shadow of a doubt, the taller Twisted do anything malicious, if he doesn't count the ever common snappy insult thrown at someone. But he knows, doesn't he? He knows there's something. He just has a gut feeling of something being so, so wrong with that walking corpse. Besides the obvious. Maybe it isn't so hard to make him doubt what his mind is screaming at him, if it's taking him this long to come up with a response.
“It's not as if you have anyone else who fully knows their way around here to watch your back, in any case.”
What happens when ‘watching my back’ turns into a knife in the back, though?
Glisten leans forward, narrowing his only eye and grinning in smug satisfaction.
“Tell me, R– … Rha…” the Twisted struggles, then growls frustratedly, shaking his head, “...Detective. If you don't trust me at all, then why do you always end up staying with me instead of running away at first sight? For a while you almost seemed relieved whenever I popped up. You supposedly sound like you hate my guts, that I'm just another of those idiots that chase you blindly, and yet you keep coming back down here. With no backup. To find me. Am I getting all this right, Detective, or is this somehow some entertaining little scheme of yours, hm?”
. . .
“... correct. I do always end up coming back to you,” Rodger mutters.
“Not really one of your best decisions yet, is it, Detective?”
Rodger looks off to the side, tapping his hand against the strap of his bag.
“...I suppose it isn't. But make no mistake, this isn't about you. You know what I am, what I'm trying to do. It's research that I return for. Conveniently, you're just one of the few that allows one to be close enough for proper observation.”
It stings a bit, referring to the one he used to care about so deeply as if he's just another animal for observation, but he has to regain some control in the conversation, and isn't that all he really does with him now? Observe him and his behaviours? It's how he came to the conclusion that he isn't so innocent in the first place… although the comment doesn't seem to phase Glisten much, as he makes a disbelieving hum.
The detective stands up, gingerly testing his foot and being relieved to find that the bandage was slowly beginning to numb the pain, at least for a while until it could be properly healed. He should really call it a day and head back after this floor…
“You are still a liar, and dangerous. That's not speculation, it's fact. You may not be so obvious on the surface, but I know your game better than you think.”
“You wound me~”
Rodger rolls his eye skyward while Glisten snickers, tossing the box behind him carelessly. Just one machine left, and he's out. The two make their way back towards the elevator, and into that little room in the corner where the last machine sat, waiting. As Rodger's about to grab the valve, he's roughly shoved towards his side against the wall, his beginning protests silenced with a glare and jerk of the Twisted's broken head.
“Moon.”
Rodger glances quickly from around the corner and watches Astro stand in the middle of the carpet, looking around with a glazed expression in his eye and swaying from side to side as if in a trance, those quiet wails coming from him all the while.
“Can you go and-?” Rodger begins quietly before trailing off, leaving the question in the air.
“Not a hope for you on that,” the mirror says lowly, “I am not subjecting myself to dealing with that voluntarily, you know as well as I do what it does.”
“Aren't you Twisted yourself? Hypothetically you should be immune to him, no?” Rodger blinks slowly, starting to turn the machine's valve and cringing at the creak of the old tech — thankfully the Twisteds almost never alerted to these things unless someone messed up a skillcheck.
“‘Hypothetically.’ I just don't like dealing with it. Too exhausting. Sooooo sorry that I can't do everything at your beck and call.”
“That’s not what I–” Rodger starts, before exhaling sharply, “Oh, nevermind, you're impossible… that's fair enough, I suppose, it was just a request if you could, not a demand.”
They lapsed into silence for a few moments while the mirror poked his head around the corner again, tapping the floorboards quietly with his foot.
“It's still there, it's just standing there, why won't it move,” whispers the Twisted. His mouth stretches open in a brief yawn before forcibly clamping shut, shaking his head as he crouches down to Rodger's level. The thick, miasmic rot smell wafts into his sense of smell again from the proximity. “Hurry it up..”
“Just a moment, I don't want to be here any longer than you do,” Rodger placates. His eyelid closes for a second too long, nearly missing a skillcheck as he filled up the machine a tiny bit more.
“Well, it sure feels like you're taking your precious time — tick tock, tick tock.”
“Perhaps because I DON'T want to run out to the elevator when I'm certain that Novalite would catch up to me easily from this distance??” Rodger throws his hands in the air and off the machine, leaning out to check if the Twisted was still there before ducking back in. There was an almost pained expression on Astro's face as he stared at the elevator. “He's acting abnormally today, I don't want to risk anything.”
“You're overthinking,” Glisten retorts, “It does that sometimes, it's just weird — you'll be fine. Honestly, sometimes I have to babysit you to keep you on task, you get so distracted.”
'Says the one that can't stay focused unless it's specifically entertaining to you,' thinks the detective, watching the Twisted beside him stifle a yawn again.
Although, perhaps you're not only bored this time.
There's a thickness in Rodger's mind that keeps incrementally growing with every moment, the longer that Astro Novalite is in the vicinity. One that slows his thoughts like thick syrup. He doesn't even realise he's zoned out, staring into space while Glisten was talking, until—
“DETECTIVE.”
Rodger's head jolts forward, the Twisted having shoved it from behind roughly.
“Were you even listening to me? You're only proving my point, it's almost hilarious timing.”
“Don't shout at me, you could've just—!”
“Please, you were off spacing out and left me talking to myself,” Glisten cuts in, poking Rodger in the chest, “You weren't being particularly responsive to anything else!”
“That was not about me being UNRESPONSIVE,” Rodger replied with barely restrained hostility, glancing between the doorway and the Twisted, “It's about YOU yelling as loud as an airhorn!”
“I wasn't even that loud, you're just being dramatic and—”
Glisten's speech halts in its tracks as the two feel a sharp prickling sensation, one that they know is a pair of eyes on someone that padded over quietly from hearing the commotion, watching them from the doorway. The fog in Rodger's mind gets heavier the longer that Astro's eyes linger on them both, and it takes almost all his effort to keep his eye from shutting right then and there.
“Oh, wonderful, just fantastic, now look at where your zoning out got us,” Glisten mutters quietly, his hands tensing on the ground. Rodger wants to incredulously snap back at the implication that this somehow being HIS fault, but can't find the energy to, now that Astro's abilities are aimed directly at them — not even the Twisted can shake off the more powerful fatigue from the Main, either, as he leans against Rodger involuntarily.
Rodger's head falls forward against the machine, looking at the faint, tired reflection of himself; the broken face beside him; and the tall, red-eyed figure in the doorway behind them, and his eye slowly shuts even as he faintly hears Glisten speaking, and that too fades to a dull buzz in his head.
♤~~♡~~♤
The detective's head spins as he slowly begins to wake up, woozy from… what was it again?
...oh right… Novalite… Twisted floors…
He cannot believe himself for succumbing to Astro's abilities so easily, he's just glad that he wasn't found while knocked out—
…Just knocked out. Not killed. Not Twisted, judging by the fact that it feels like all his mental faculties are in order.
When the detective opens his eye a crack, his head is lolled against the wall, looking towards the last machine with its red light still glowing in the tiny room. Nothing hurts besides the dull throb of his ankle still, unchanged from earlier. Astro hadn't killed him. He sits up, attempting to feel around for any other wounds that he perhaps isn't feeling, before he bumps into something in front of him.
. . .
He freezes.
…Right. Glisten.
The aberrant mirror is staring at him, not even five inches in front of the detective's face, his head tilted to the side at an alarming degree. His red eye bores into Rodger's as the pair stare across at each other. His face is somewhat blank, but watching him intently as if studying him.
...is he going to attack?
. . .
“You mutter in your sleep, you know.”
. . .
Internally, a sigh of relief that the detective didn't get lunged at. For the moment, at least. Rodger’s almost surprised that he wasn't the cause of his demise while the detective was unconscious.
“I– yes, I've been– I've been told that, before,” he coughs, “Many times, in fact.”
“Mm. You should work on that. Never know what slip of the tongue might happen when you're passed out.”
Rodger gulps hard and nods, pushing himself to his feet slowly and turning back to the ichor machine. It was all primed and ready to be activated, and Astro was nowhere to be seen nor heard.
“Plan on sticking around for a few more floors?” Glisten asks innocently.
“I'd– … I don't think that I'll be risking my neck again tonight.”
That had been too close of a call. How he didn't get murdered in his sleep by one of the two actual threats on the floor was a wonder.
“Pity, we could've continued chatting about your silly little ‘theories.’ You're always in such a hurry.”
Rodger says nothing as he turns the wheel for a few seconds, looking over his shoulder to watch the Twisted behind him until the last drop fills the tank, prompting a loud chime and the sound of the elevator opening close by.
“Well, I'll see your face around soon, Detective — try not to get any more scratches~” Glisten hums, walking with Rodger to the crates in front of the elevator.
“And unfortunately, I have no doubt that I will see yours. And I will try not to,” the other sighs dryly, hoisting his bag higher on his shoulder and stepping forward onto the elevator. Just as he's about to hit the button to close the doors, he feels a thunk against his ankle that makes him stumble.
He looks down and sees an ichor capsule had been thrown at his feet. He looks up and sees the mirror with his head tilted to the side. Wordlessly, he picks up the capsule with a nod to Glisten, pressing the button on the elevator walls as he watches his Twisted companion wave with a grin while the door slams down.
Idly, Rodger drags a hand roughly down the outer edge of his head to shake off the last dregs of Astro's fatiguing effect, and when he pulls his hand back the shining black streaks of ichor cause him to hesitate.
Glisten's smile drops into a frown as the lift closes. He reaches a hand up to wipe around the cracks of his face, clenching it in disgust at the black liquid that came off, leaking from the gaping black holes and staining where his head had been pressed while asleep.
He hates that stupid detective.
He hates that something stirs inside his body besides malice toward him. Something that makes him mostly keep his instincts at bay, compared to others that he's satisfied those bloody urges with before. No matter how many opportunities he's presented with and that he's created on his own to do so. Something that makes him hesitant to finally seize his chance to leave the Toon broken on the ground.
Rodger misses the mirror.
He despises what Glisten has become, that he's like this, that he's so conniving now. He misses that kind Toon that he used to spend hours chatting with at night, without a constant fear of getting torn to shreds. He wishes he could have the will to dodge away from him whenever he showed his broken face, but more than that he wants to be with what was once his friend again. What was once so special to him.
They hate that they care for eachother, despite everything they are and despite everything that's changed.
10% Glisten Research.