Consequences and regrets

by Mossy_Gargoyle

Summary:

This will get dark, I’m using my headcannon that the toons are copys of the toons that were made after they died to the experiments, Dandy is aware of this and is slowly become enraged by the clones existance, right before the experiments started the CEO of gardenview let off the toon handlers. After failing so many experiments, they finally succeeded with dandy who stays in the elevator pretending they are still alive, watching and rewatching the tapes for some form of sanity trying not to be consumed by the Ichor flooding his mind.

This is a work in progress I am not very good at writing but want to try to put some of my ideas together into a coherent story for people to read and enjoy. If you have any tips to help it would be greatly appreciated. Note that some chapters may be incomplete for a bit I struggle to focus and will try to continue writing when I can. This is my first time writing a fic so it won’t be perfect but I will try my best.

Notes:

The first chapter will be a prologue to the story laying out basic information about the characters and story.

Chapter 1: Normalcy

It was a relatively calm day in the Gardenview Center. The toons were idly chatting with each other as the center closed up for the day. “hey Dandy!” he turned around to see Poppy skipping over to him “I was wondering if you wanted to join me Boxten and Looey, we were going to see what Sprout and Cosmo were making!” he smiles before responding “sure Poppy, I was going to check on everyone anyway, it was quite the busy day after all.” “great!” she said as she began walking towards the kitchen “Looey and Boxten are waiting in front of the elevator-“ “WHY ARE YOU HERE” “oh hi Shrimpo do you want to join-“ “NO I HATE YOU AND I HATE WHEREVER YOU’RE GOING” “. . . oh ok” she turned and started walking towards the elevator again before dandy chimed in “you shouldn’t let him treat you like that, you don’t deserve to be spoken to that way” she looked back at Dandy before responding “its ok, really, that's just the way he is.” she smiled before turning back towards the elevator “besides Looey and Boxten are waiting for us” as they approached the elevator Looey and Boxten who were idly chatting before they saw the two walking towards the elevator. “Oh there you are Poppy! Glad you got Dandy to join us. I think he needs a bit of social interaction after being in his shop all day!” Boxten jumps in stating “we probably want to get going, don’t want to keep them waiting too long.” Dandy smiled before saying “that sounds good to me!” as they all stepped into the elevator. Dandy felt as if something was wrong. The amount of people here today far rivaled the amounts in the past and many of those people were buying Plushes and other merchandise. He also noticed that the toon handlers hadn’t been here since last week. The handlers loved the toons, so why would they all leave at once? He will have to talk to the others about this later for now let's focus on the good.

. . .

The elevator came to a stop as the toons walked towards the door “oh were here! I hope Sprout and Cosmo are finished, come on let's go see” Poppy doesn’t even finish her sentence before she starts running over to the kitchen “Poppy! Wait for us before you start running off!” as Poppy and Boxten run into the kitchen. Dandy is walking with Looey before he begins to voices his concerns “so I’ve started to notice that more people are coming in for longer recently” he pauses for a moment before saying “I’ve also noticed that the toon handlers have been gone for over a week now, and they wouldn’t disappear for no reason” as Dandy talks Looey tenses visibly stressed he stares at the ground before saying “the handlers were let off.” Dandy stares at Looey before responding “what do you mean?” Looey looks up at Dandy before stating “the higher ups have something planned for us, and from what I’ve heard it's not good. They fired the handlers so they wouldn’t ask questions, so that they wouldn’t be able to help us.” Looey looks towards Poppy and Boxten who are running ahead of them before stating “they don’t care what we feel, to them we are just tools for profit” Dandy and Looey are snapped out of their conversation as they hear Poppy’s voice “come on I can see Cosmo and Sprout! Ooooh, they're just taking the cookies out of the oven! Come on you slowpokes!” she smiles making Looey smile softly “alright Poppy, be right there.” as they entered the kitchen they see Sprout taking the cookies out of the oven as Cosmo grabs some icing bags “oh hi there, Cosmo’s just getting the icing for the decorating, we still have to wait for the cookies to cool before we can ice them” as Sprout is talking Cosmo enters the room “for some reason there were a lot more kids today than usual so we’re having to remake some of our stock” as Cosmo brings up the kids Dandy and Looey stiffen as they remember their earlier conversation. As Cosmo begins to mix up the icing for the cookies he starts to look at the icing before he sighed and said “I wish Ginger was here, she was always better at color matching than I was” Dandy knows how he feels he wished that the higher ups didn’t lock away the christmas toons the rest of the year, he always liked the friendly competitions that him and Bobette had, Coal and Pebble also liked the playdates that they set up during the season. Before the mood could get any sadder Sprout chimed in “well there's only a month and a half until they come back!” Cosmo smiles and respond's “you’re right, I’ll be looking forward to that.” “so what-” before Dandy could finish his sentence he gets cut off “LOOEY THERE you are! I’ve been looking for you EVERYWHERE!” Looey turns towards her “hi Yatta” Looey says laughing slightly “I did tell you I would be in the kitchen right?” Yatta responds immediately “YES YOU DID that's why I have been WAITING FOR YOU!” as Yatta is talking to Looey, Poppy starts talking “has anyone seen Tisha? She was supposed to meet us here almost 10 minutes ago and she’s never late.” as Poppy finished voicing her concern Tisha ran through the door slamming it behind her before blocking it with a chair. As Tisha turns towards the group fear clear on her face she says “something is wrong with Shrimpo.” “What do you mean?” Boxten said now visibly stressed “nope” they hear as they see Connie phase through the wall “I’ve seen him mad but never this mad.” she turns towards the now tense group “we need to get out of here now.”

Chapter 2: Fear

As the group runs down the hallway away from the door that Shrimpo is clawing and banging at. They manage to make it about halfway down the hallway before they hear the door being ripped off of its hinges. Then, they hear him “I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU, I HATE YOU!” they hear Poppy shriek as she looks behind them seeing the state that Shrimpo is in. they keep running, they don’t want to look back, not after Poppy’s scream, not after seeing the look of horror plastered on her face. They just need to keep running.

 

. . .

 

They didn’t stop, not until they could not hear him anymore. As everyone was catching their breath Poppy who is now the most on edge notices something. “Guys, where’s Tisha?” they freeze, eyes darting across the room. Tisha was not here. Before anyone could really panic at her disappearance Looey states “we need to find the others, we need to make sure that they are safe.” Despite the fear that everyone feels, they know he’s right. “I’ll scout ahead, with my ability to disappear from sight I should be able to check if anyone is in a room and” she pauses “if they’re dangerous.” Connie states. Everyone agrees, now they have a plan and they start heading towards the toon rooms. They are going to the elevator in the projector room when they see Tisha cleaning “Tisha there you are!” Boxten states excitedly. But as the group looks at her something seems off. “BOXTEN WAIT-” as Dandy called out Tisha turned around. The group looked on in horror as they saw ichor spilling out of her. Boxten froze, he went to run, but he was too late, Tisha hit him in the head with the handle of her duster. Boxten fell to the ground bleeding out, “what a mess.” Tisha stated looking down on the now unconscious Boxten, “messy, messy, messy, so very messy.” as Tisha went to grab Boxten she heard something that grabbed her attention “BARK, BARK” the group looked over to see Pebble barking at Tisha trying to grab her attention away from Boxten “filthy pup, get back here!” Tisha stated before running after Pebble “Sprout come on!” Cosmo said running over to Boxten as Sprout followed in toe. The two were patching up Boxten who was now slowly becoming conscious again they were helping Boxten to the elevator when they heard Pebble yelp. When they looked over they saw why Poppy had screamed before, Shrimpos jaw had been torn off almost completely, how he managed to talk before in this state is unknown. What they do know, they need to get out “PEBBLE!” Dandy yelled out at the sound of his cry “PEBBLE COME, WE’RE GOING IN THE ELEVATOR!” worry and fear were clear on Dandy’s face as he called for his pet. His worry turned to relief as he saw Pebble rounding the corner before jumping into Dandy’s arms as he closed the elevator from the control booth. Everyone was silent as the elevator ascended. “What does this mean?” Yatta said, breaking the silence and being unusually quiet. “I don’t know” Boxten said “but whatever it is, it can’t be good”

 

. . .

 

As the elevator stopped the group became tense, ready to run from anything that was outside. The door opened and they saw Gigi and Flutter chatting in front of the elevator when it opened. “Oh hi! Woah hey are you alright?”Gigi started up as she saw the group exiting the elevator. “Shrimpo and Tisha-” Cosmo started before looking down, on the verge of tears “???” Flutter stating her obvious confusion. Before they can say anything else, they hear someone call out “Boxten what happened to your head?!” They look over to see Astro running over to Boxten. Connie, now the only one of the group willing to talk, explained “It was Tisha, she hit him over the head with the handle of her duster.” As Connie finishes her sentence, Gigi, Flutter, and Astro look at her in shock as the group behind Connie becomes visibly uncomfortable with the topic of conversation. “We should take Boxten to rest, we don’t want his injury to get worse.” Astro said, helping Boxten to his feet. As Astro was walking Boxten to his room Sprout and Cosmo went to get the medkit that was in the kitchen and take it to his room to get him patched up. As Boxten was getting his injury wrapped Astro walked out and saw the group in the lounge, as he got closer he saw the group tense, jumping at the slightest noise. He’s seen how Shrimpo and Tisha act, Shrimpo may be a bully but he would never resort to actual violence, much less Tisha who is alway patient and kind with everyone. Well, maybe not Vee, but mostly everyone. As he approached he tried not to startle the group. “Hey” Astro said quietly “I can try to see into their dreams tonight, see if they are conscious at all or if they are completely gone, if we’re lucky we might be able to save them.” Astro looked hopeful to the fact that they might be able to save them causing the group to look slightly less deflated. Not too long after Astro approaches the group Sprout and Cosmo come out of Boxtens room “we’ve done what we can to stop the bleeding and patch up the wound.” Sprout said “he’s asleep now, it's best we leave him be, he needs some rest.” Cosmo states “we should also get some rest, we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.” They all agree with Cosmo and head over to their rooms and try to get some rest,  before they figure out what they can do about the newfound dread looming over Gardenview.

Chapter 3: Dreams

As the toons fell asleep Astro knew that they would have nightmares if he didn’t interfere. As he began to shape their dreams he saw the state that Shrimpo and Tisha were in. every one of their dreams were of the horrific events that happened that day. He tried his best to give them some peace in their dreams, but those horrors were always lurking nearby. Once he knew that they would be alright, especially Boxten who appeared to have the image of Tisha’s face frozen in his memory. He went to check on the two that had gone missing. It wasn’t them anymore. They were gone. Nothing more than mindless killing machines. The only parts of them they seemed to remember was Shrimpo being a bully and Tisha being obsessively clean. They didn’t even remember any of the toons, just the fact that they were either a target or the cause of a mess. He decided to go back to the toons when he noticed that Boxten was no longer asleep. When Astro went to check on him he was gone, his room was a mess, things were thrown about everywhere, his rug was dragged towards the door. He was taken. How was he going to explain this to the others? Before he was able to go to anyone else he saw that Boxten was asleep again. Astro rushed to check on him. But when he got there, Boxten was acting just like Shrimpo and Tisha except for the fact that he was crying out in pain. He wasn’t gone yet, but he would be soon. What was he supposed to do, he didn’t know how to help him, all he could do was try to comfort him before he was completely gone. As Astro approached him all he could hear was Boxten’s cries “it hurts, why. Why am I alone? Where did everyone go? Did they leave me here? Did they think that I was like them? I don’t understand” Astro put his hand on Boxten’s back, when he did he saw Boxten’s head whip over to him “Astro? Is that you?” as he looked at Astro, pain clear in his eyes he began again “why am I alone? Did you leave me behind?” Astro responds immediately, calm and clear he states “Boxten no, someone took you and I didn’t realize you were gone until it was too late.” he paused looking Boxten in the eyes “I’m sorry that you had to go through this. We will continue to try and find a way to reverse this, until then, please try to hold on, we will try everything we can to fix this." As Astro spoke he saw Boxten start to lose himself to whatever this is, but he noticed that his eyes weren’t as clouded over as Shrimpo and Tisha’s were. He just hopes that Boxten will be ok.

 

. . .

 

 

As the toons began to wake up for the day and exit their rooms they saw that Boxten didn’t come out of his room “he’s probably resting, he did have a pretty significant injury.” Sprout said “I’ll go check if he needs anything.” Cosmo says as he walks over to Boxten’s room. Just as Astro wakes up and walks out of his room he sees Cosmo entering Boxten’s room he knows he will have to explain what he saw “he’s gone.” Astro said before Cosmo could open the door more than a sliver “what.” Cosmo says, freezing in place. Astro sighs before starting up what he knows will be a difficult conversation “last night he disappeared and when I could see his dream again he looked just like Shrimpo and Tisha.” as he stated the two names the group froze thinking that they lost Boxten the same way they lost the others, but before they could panic more Astro continued “when I talked to him he was in pain, but I do think that he is at least a little more conscious than Shrimpo and Tisha. He recognised me when I talked to him although he did seem to lose himself it didn’t seem as bad as the others. He might be able to recognise us.” as Astro finished speaking they all felt the same way. If Boxten was still there then they need to do everything they can to get him back.

Notes:

Sorry for the shorter chapter I was struggling to write this one for some reason

Notes:

me: makes unique fonts for each character
Ao3: how about we put it all arial
me: but I-
Ao3: ARIAL