the star, the person who's on the mic, always gets seen

by mouseyblue

Summary:

Pippins have a reputation around the studio as troublemakers. Dice can hardly be faulted for being unpredictable—but one Pippins is determined to set himself apart by proving his worth as the boss's trusted assistant.

Or: Pippins feels very strongly about Tenna.

Notes:

Title by Skepta.

Thanks to lacrimalis for helping with the summary.

Chapter 1: the walls are breathing

Tenna had had another breakdown as soon as the Lightners stopped watching and he was free to leave the stage. 

You had been close enough to the show—having no part in this particular program, but being curious enough to stand at the edge of the curtain regardless—to hear that Tenna had slipped up and made an aside directed at a certain mailman who, obviously, wasn’t there. You had also been close enough to see him yelling at another Pippins as soon as he had left the stage, and had quickly made yourself scarce.

Tenna hated to talk about the mailman, whoever he had been. Even mentioning whoever it was tended to send Tenna into either a depressive state or into a fit of anger that he took out on his employees—yourself included. 

But, before you had left, you had heard something. Among his ranting and raving, Tenna had once again called for Mike. He had been doing that often as of late, though few, if any, of his demands were ever met. Sure, sometimes things happened after Tenna made a request of Mike—lights dimmed, sets changed, commercials and B-roll began to play—but most of you were under the consensus that Tenna himself was doing these things. Mostly, this was because you were all pretty sure that nobody named Mike had ever been an employee of Tenna’s.

Mike, being ever-absent as always, hadn’t helped Tenna’s mood, but it had caught your attention. So, to avoid your boss's temper, you kept from being underfoot by indulging in your curiosity. 

Mike’s room was off-limits to everyone but Tenna. To go there was to break the rules. You couldn’t help this, supposedly. Being a rule-breaking Pippins, sneaking into the mysterious Mike’s old room was par for the course. And what else could you do but lean into the expectations everybody levied against you for being a Pippins? Your every move would be scrutinized for wrongdoing anyway, regardless of the truth.

Because you were a Pippins—because you were curious, you ventured to the place where Tenna begged after the ghost of someone few of you, if any, had ever known. 

The code to Mike’s room was the same as one of the parental locks set by Tenna’s Lightners. The numbers had long since been passed around by ill-meaning Pippins like scripture, because Tenna couldn’t seem to imagine any numbers being harder to crack than those of his family's choices. 

He really needed to upgrade his security.

You entered the empty room, longer than it was deep, and peered around, finding nothing but four walls and a hallway. Even so, you walked to each wall, feeling along the surfaces, wondering at the previous owner and why Tenna seemed to care more for the opinion of someone long gone than any of you. 

But, as you explored the empty room for any past sign of life, you were interrupted by the telltale sound of the code being entered on the door’s lock. It was a door that could only be opened from the inside and automatically relocked itself once you were in. You had it on good account from another curious Pippins that the door was always locked behind Tenna when he entered. 

You didn’t think twice before bolting down the hall at the edge of the room, only slowing once you realized just how dark the hall became the further you went down it. You only stopped when you could no longer see your hands in front of your face. 

The door creaked shut. You heard the sound of Tenna’s particular long-legged gait as he walked through the room. 

Once he came to a stop, he was quiet for a long moment. Then he heaved a sigh like TV static, and you jolted in place and stumbled a few more steps down the hall, trying not to give yourself away. 

“Mike?” Tenna called into the empty room, his voice pleading and quiet. “If you’re there…”

You stood in the dark of the long hallway, sure that Tenna couldn’t see you in this strange, artificial dark, even with his screen illuminating some of the passageway. Was he looking down the hall, or was he just peering around the main room? Either way, you count your lucky stars that he seemingly wasn’t planning to come any closer. 

“Mike, the Lightners are getting harder and harder to make shows for,” Tenna spoke into the room. “The kids are growing up, and the parents just keep fighting over every program I put on… I just want to know that they like it, you know?”

The walls hummed with something, as if in response. You had the strange, terrifying thought that maybe that noise was Mike. Then, feeling cold down your spine, back pressed against the wall, you tried your best to dismiss that notion. 

Slowly, you moved further down, reached out into the dark until your hand hit the wall with a soft sound. You felt along it as you took small, careful steps, but no amount of feeling around revealed an exit. Why would Tenna have a hallway that went nowhere? Why would Mike?

Tenna must have heard your movements, because he called Mike’s name again. Then he paused, as if expecting an answer. 

Besides whatever was causing that odd humming in the walls, you had been unable to find anything—or anybody—else as you felt your way along the deep, dark corridor. Mike, whoever he was, wasn’t here. You didn’t know how long this had been the case, because Tenna liked to act as if he had never left, but you had never seen the guy, and he clearly hadn’t been in his room anytime recently. 

Who was Mike? Nobody had ever been able to give you anything close to a satisfactory answer. Only Tenna seemed to know, and that lonely knowledge made him so pathetic you couldn’t stand it. 

There was something about Tenna you found impossible to hate, even if he was a terrible employer—even if he controlled every aspect of your life and tried to squeeze every second of time and effort out of you—he had a tenacity you had to admire, and a way of putting his contestants at ease that you couldn’t even imagine replicating. 

You were jealous, really, of the way he so masterfully weaponized his own faults to get himself further. After all, you were just a Pippins. A troublemaker. A rule breaker. And the best you could do was to sneak into rooms you weren’t allowed in.

And there was something when he was sad—on and off set—that was so genuine that you couldn’t help but feel something like pity when you looked at his sullen, shrinking form. 

“I’m here,” you blurted, hidden in the dark, pressing against the wall. 

“Mike?” Tenna gasped, hopeful and hesitant. You heard footsteps, though he seemed unwilling to fully approach you, stopping at the mouth of the hall. You tried not to think about why he refused to step down the hall where you had sequestered yourself away. “Is that you?”

You couldn’t get a handle on Tenna. He acted so presumptuous and haughty, but whenever his suspicions were confirmed, or something went right for him—even if he manipulated it into happening—he always acted like it was the first time he had ever been treated kindly or pleasantly surprised by anything in his life. 

You knew what he wanted to hear, but you didn’t know how Mike would say it.

But what did it matter? Maybe Mike had been gone so long that Tenna himself didn’t remember. Or maybe there was never a Mike in the first place, and all you were doing was filling a void. 

Maybe if you pulled this off, Tenna might stop looking so sad every time he went looking for Mike. And maybe he would stop berating all of you for not being him.

Besides, you were one in a million. That is, you were one of many Pippins who looked just like you, to the point that you were nothing more than a face in the crowd—a voice in a roaring audience. Pippins liked to use Tenna’s inability to tell you all apart constantly—to get out of things, to get into things, to pawn off or take shifts for someone who looked indistinguishable from you. 

You hated it, but the anonymity was useful. If Tenna saw that he was being tricked, all you had to do was run out of this strange, empty room, past Tenna, and make your way to a group of Pippins to blend in until Tenna didn’t know who to be cross with. Piece of cake.

Worst case scenario, Tenna would be angry with the lot of you—something that would happen anyway if Mike were to stay absent.

So you talked. “It’s me,” you lied, and then, at a loss for what to say, you ran your mouth, throwing out anything you could think of, and then some. And with every word, as you tried to convince Tenna that his hopes had been answered, and tried to offer up anything you thought he might ask next, you dug yourself a deeper hole. “It’s been a while, but it’s really me. I know you’ve been needing my help, and I just couldn’t stay gone when I knew you needed me here! But you’ve really kept up the programs while I was gone, haven’t you? The cast had grown so large—“

“Mike,” Tenna exclaimed, delighted. “We’re quite the motormouth today, aren’t we?”

Mike must have been quiet, then. At least, he must have been quieter than you. 

But Tenna didn’t seem suspicious. Maybe it had been long enough for Mike to change—or perhaps Tenna was so desperate for the company that he didn’t care that the details didn’t quite match up. Maybe Tenna wanted Mike back so badly that he wasn’t willing to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

You were one in a million. Feeling a little hysterical, you wondered if this could be your differentiation. 

“Sure am,” you said cheerfully. “A mic is made to be heard!”

“You sure are!” Tenna exclaimed. Then, more hesitantly, he asked, “Are you here to stay?”

You hesitated. Even if you decided to keep following up with this ruse, he would want to see you at some point. He called for Mike on the stage often enough for the issue to arise. 

How far were you willing to go to commit? You needed to decide quickly, and—

An idea occurred to you—crazy, insane. But it helped you make your decision. 

“I won’t be staying right away,” you answered vaguely, because you didn’t know how long it would take you, but you suddenly found that you wanted to dress up like Mike. You could make some sort of costume. If only you could find a picture of him… “But I’ll be coming back. And… then I can stay.”

“You’re… but you’ll be back,” Tenna repeated more quietly, as if reassuring himself. “Can I see you?”

“Well!” You panicked, leaning back against the wall. You could feel the vibrations of its deep rumbles in your very soul. “It was, uh, quite the trip to get here! That’s why I came to my room first. So… I dunno that it’s a good idea for you to see me just yet!”

“… When were you going to tell me you were here?” Tenna asked. And fuck. Was he asking if you—Mike, that is—were going to return, just to avoid him? You didn’t know the guy, and sure, Tenna could be horrible, but even that seemed kind of mean-spirited. 

You almost found yourself asking why Tenna wanted the attention of someone who would purposefully ignore him, but you stopped yourself in time. Because that was Tenna’s whole job, to reach out to people who didn’t care to watch him in hopes that he might draw their attention back.

Sure, Tenna’s programs were doing okay at the moment, but you got the impression that it was due to stress in the Lightners’ lives forcing them to seek out the TV as a form of escapism.

You hadn’t been around long, relatively speaking. Sure, it had been a few years since you were lost in the dark and came out the other side in TV World—you had been swift to agree to a contract, because even a discriminatory workplace seemed better than the wastes—but you weren’t around for Tenna’s real performances. You weren’t around during prime time, when the whole family and even some friends gathered around. 

You hadn’t been around to meet Mike, or that mailman that Tenna sometimes talked about. You had missed out on a lot. But, regardless of what the real Mike would have done, you knew what Tenna wanted to hear. 

“Of course I was going to see you,” you promised. “But I look a mess right now! I’m not at all ready for any kind of show!”

“It can just be between us,” Tenna pressed, and you watched the light of his screen as he hedged about the doorway of the hall. “Some faces just aren’t meant for TV! I wouldn’t—”

“All the same,” you interrupted. You swallowed. “It’ll have to be next time!”

The wall was rumbling so deeply and loudly that it was giving you a headache. You wanted to let your head spin to clear your thoughts, but you couldn’t let up for even a moment, or else you risked Tenna catching on. And you couldn’t step away from the wall, and it's terrible, tooth-shaking, low noise. Even in the impossible darkness of the hall, you risked Tenna sensing you in his light.

So you persevered, feeling dizzy as you withstood the electrical hum. 

It… must have been where electronics fed through from the stage. It would make sense if Mike’s room had some electronics running through it. 

You thought it would have made sense, anyway. You just didn’t know.

“Next time,” Tenna echoed finally. Then he made a soft, excited noise like the humming of a TV, and you felt something twinge in your chest. You reached up to rub at the odd pain. “Of course! I can’t wait for it!”

“It’ll be soon,” you said. Even with the false bravado of TV’s best host, it was so very easy to clock Tenna’s anxiety. “But I need some time to—” think, think, “—set up.”

You waited a moment, listening to his cheerful agreement. You watched the light of his screen as it bobbed about as if he were moving in place. You could imagine his nervous, hopeful expression all too easily. 

He wasn’t good at taking hints. The wall was near deafening. You needed him to go, now. “If you don’t mind.”

“Oh?” he asked. It obviously took him a moment to catch your meaning. “Oh. You, er—“

“I’ll need the room.” You had to be gentle with him. 

“O—of course,” Tenna stuttered. You heard him begin to walk, the soft thudding growing softer as he moved further from the hallway. Then they stopped, and his voice sounded a bit more distant. “Are you sure? I’m certain I can help with whatever—“

“Very sure!” you struggled not to snap, raising the uptilt of your voice to try for something that sounded more excited. You didn’t think you could deal with him trying to come back. You couldn’t have him find you now! Not when you had made a promise—not when you had a plan, as shoddy a plan as it was. “Mike will be back on set and ready to help get this show on the road! I just need to get ready!”

“Right,” he said, voice just this side of unhappy. You worried for a moment that he was going to change his mind, but then he exhaled, the sound loud with static. When he spoke again, it was with forced energy. “I suppose I’ll leave you to it! It’s great to see you again Mike—well, hear you. You know what I—“

“I do,” you urged. “I’ll be seeing you, Tenna.”

There was a pause, like Tenna wanted to say more. Instead, he walked. The door clicked, signalling his departure, and you waited for it to shut before you finally breathed, staggering away from the wall.

As soon as you weren’t touching it anymore, the rumbling hum stopped completely, leaving you with a loud, deafening silence that rang in your ears. You stood in the middle of the hall for several minutes, catching your breath and warily staring into the darkness. 

Feeling haggard, you finally turned and made your way back into the light of the empty room. You shook your head rapidly from side to side, trying to clear away the ache and the cobwebs in your mind, self-soothing until you felt better. 

Finally, you looked around Mike’s empty room with some mixture of exhausted dread and trembling excitement pumping through your body. 

What exactly did you get yourself into?

Chapter 2: i need you like a hole in the head

The next several days were comprised of asking questions, planning your outfit, exploring more of Mike’s room, and nursing an ever-present headache. 

You had asked around in the past, but nobody had had any answers regarding Mike. And now that you were pushing and asking for details, nobody wanted to be involved in whatever scheme you were cooking up. 

Not that you could blame them. If Tenna found out what you were doing, that you were pretending to be Mike, it would break his heart. 

And then he would break you. 

Of course, your efforts weren’t totally fruitless. 

“Mike, luv?” Ramb asked, peering down at you with a quiet sullenness. Their voice was accented in a way you had only heard on Tenna’s programs. “I can tell you one thing for certain.”

“What is it?” You leaned forward, standing on your toes to see him over the bar.

You disliked Ramb for being so insubordinate. His obstinance only served to upset Tenna, who then took it out on everyone else. However, the same thing could be argued about you Pippins, and your trickery. If he knew something… Well, Ramb had been the only one not to claim ignorance or turn you away. 

Ramb hummed, idly stacking a glass. Just when you were going to open your mouth to prompt him to go on, he finally spoke, a small smile pulling at his face. “I don’t think Mike exists. I don’t think he ever did.”

You let out a frustrated huff at this answer. You had come to this conclusion yourself in the past, but there was a certain energy present in Mike’s room. There was something real. You were sure that that room had belonged to someone, once upon a time. 

Ramb gave you a wan smile. “Not the answer you were wanting, huh? I know it ain’t much, so I can’t exactly blame you… Look, I’ve been here since Kris dragged me home, and they were little, back then. And in all that time, I’ve never seen Mike.”

Ramb was one of the few Darkners besides Tenna you had heard talk so adoringly about the Lightners—like Kris and Asriel had been people that Ramb had truly known. Kris this, Kris that, everything Ramb did seemed to be for Kris, like their entire existence in TV World only mattered if they could be of some use to the children the rest of you had only briefly known.

Sure, you were thankful to Kris for bringing you home and playing with you—making you real. They were a weird kid, using cards and extension chords like toys. But you felt like it had scarcely been a few days before you had gotten lost under something and wound up in TV World. 

“Had anybody else seen Mike?” You pressed, watching him intently. “Surely you asked around when you realized…” You trailed off, glancing around warily. 

“When I realized that ol’ Tenna was talking to nobody,” Ramb finished for you, fearless of reprisal. “Everybody asks around at some point. Only the…” he paused, looking to the side. “No, nobody else seemed to know who Mike was, even back then.”

That pause. Was he lying to you?

“So you have no idea, either,” you said flatly. 

“My idea is that Mike has never been around,” Ramb corrected. “At least, not that I’ve ever heard of. It could be that Tenna knew someone from before Kris’s family bought him. After all, I’ve heard he’s been talking about Mike since the wastes.”

“Do you know what he might have looked like?” you try, though it was quite a long shot. “If he was real? Did anybody have any guesses of who to watch out for, or…?”

Sure enough, Ramb shook his head. “No idea. But… I’m figurin’ between the name and the stage, he was supposed to be the one in charge of the microphones.”

Again, that wasn’t exactly any new information. When you first arrived and heard Tenna talking to that mysterious person, you had thought that there was truly someone in charge of microphones—or maybe someone in charge of anything electronic. Tenna tended to ask Mike for so much more than just microphones. It had been an embarrassing amount of time before someone had seen fit to let you know that there was no Mike. 

As far as they knew, anyway. 

Offering them a distracted thanks, you stopped bothering Ramb, leaving them to their task of overseeing the bar and keeping their shopkeeper's hands off the points. 

Nobody seemed to know what Mike looked like. And given Tenna’s immediate acceptance at hearing your voice, you suspected it might not matter. You were sure that whoever the original Mike had been, you didn’t sound like them. 

Still, you wouldn’t want to choose something too off. So you planned and plotted and scoured through the backstage costumes, picking through them for what you could reasonably take without raising notice. 

And, as you crafted, finding yourself a smart, dark suit—one that could blend into the shadows of a stage, if that was ever needed of you—you found yourself falling reluctantly in love with the idea of a costume. You liked the idea of looking like someone other than yourself. 

Mike could be someone respected. Someone that Tenna noticed. You would stand out. 

You would be someone.

(You wouldn’t be a Pippins, anymore). 

Mike’s room didn’t offer any answers to your questions, even as you searched through it for something resembling a style. But there were no clothes, no decorations, and nothing to indicate that someone with any personality or interests had ever lived in or used the room. If anything, it was decorated more like the backstage areas—impersonal. Corporate. You wondered if it had always been that way, or if Tenna had removed every trace of Mike from it over the years.

You found nothing else in the barren room, and the hall remained a mystery. 

You brought some lights into it when you had time, searching into the impossible darkness, but when you were able to penetrate the dark enough to light it up, all you found was a dimly lit dead end. 

The walls still rumbled regardless of whether anything electrical was happening on stage. More than anything—though it made no sense—they seemed to react to proximity. Whenever you strayed too close, they began to drone on and on until you had to take a break. It was a difficult balancing act when you were spending so much time loitering about in that room.

You were sure it was just you being paranoid, but… You gave the walls space when they seemed at their loudest. Otherwise, it gave you a headache. 

Well, it worsened your headache. That throbbing pain in your pips hadn’t subsided since it had first started up, back when you had decided to lie to Tenna from that hallway. It was some sort of karmic retribution, you were sure. 

Pained, you held a hand to your head, and—

The walls seemed to grow even louder. You pushed further away from the terrible noises, poring and sweating over your sketches where you were devising your costume. 

You almost had it, you just needed to make a few decisions—finalize colors, details, accessories, and figure out a way to make yourself a false head that wouldn’t be hard to speak or hear out of. You needed something with mesh.

You needed to cover all of yourself, and you needed it to hold up.

You titled the page, staring at your drawing from a new angle, and flinched as the walls grew deafeningly loud. You could feel the vibrations of it in the floor. Impossibly, suddenly, you found it hard to breathe past the noise, unable to even hear yourself think. 

Your trembling hand pressed pencil to paper and spasmed. Your head throbbed. Your eyes hurt. No amount of shaking your head soothed you anymore. 

“I—” you began, but the wall drowned you out, the noise catching up your words and stealing them from your mouth. 

You banged the floor with the hand holding the pencil in frustration, and the broken lead went flying. There was no way you were going to be able to focus in this room. There was no way you were going to be able to even stand being in here. Not if it was just going to get louder and louder, and everything hurt—

“Just give me a hint!” you yelled at the wall, feeling useless. “I’m trying to help him.”

And, like an answer to your prayers, the wall went silent, though no hints were forthcoming. 

Unnerved, you scrambled to your feet, clutching your notebook close as you stared at the wall. You stepped back from it toward the doorway, slowly at first, and then quickly, until you were practically sprinting from the room in your haste to leave. 

Once free, you pulled the door shut as quickly as you could and ushed down the hall, trying to put as much distance between yourself and the wall as possible. 

As you turned the corner, you ran into a tall pair of legs and fell back with a grunt. Your notebook went sprawling. The pages flipped open, and you let out a panicked yelp, falling over yourself to close it and pull it close to your chest. 

Above you, Tenna scoffed, his mouth pulling into a frown. He seemed more annoyed than anything. Luckily, he hadn’t noticed what had been on those pages. “What’s with the hurry? Don’t tell me someone caught onto one of your—” 

Hurt at his accusation, and too panicked to respond, you pushed yourself back to your feet. Tenna yelped in surprise as you shoved your way past him, ramming into his leg for a second time in your haste to get out of there. 

“The nerve of some people,” Tenna muttered distantly, his voice growing faint as you ran. “Well, maybe Mike will have…”

You missed the rest of what he was saying. Slowing down, you grimaced. 

Tenna had been in and out of Mike’s room a lot recently. You had been in there just as much, if not more, working to keep up the illusion of Mike working in the darkness of that hallway to appease Tenna. 

You had practically been eating and sleeping in that room, stowing everything you had away in the darkness of that horrible, haunted hallway to avoid anything being noticed before you were ready. 

It was hard spending time in that room when you were trying to find out information on Mike, but you made the most of it, working on putting your outfit together and making sure everything was easily hidable while you waited for Tenna to come knocking. And whenever Tenna was busy, you put yourself to work talking to people and collecting materials. 

Not that Tenna knocked. He owned the place, and seemingly nothing could stop him from waltzing in as he pleased. Keeping him pleased took time and effort, and everything lately had had you panicked and on edge. 

So far, Tenna hadn’t been left in there alone since you had started up the charade. You knew that you hadn’t missed him because he had been so happy the last few days. He was less easily annoyed and slower to anger, more likely to tend toward redirection instead of the half-empty threats of docked pay. Instead, he had been tending toward bribes— bonuses and prizes if someone were to listen to him. 

You were doing good as Mike! At least, you had been doing good. 

Until now. Tenna would walk into that room to visit Mike, and he would be left alone in silence. 

You regretted not being there for him now. You didn’t know if he planned to air out his latest grievances or if he just wanted to talk, but now he couldn’t do either. He was going to be heartbroken when he returned from Mike’s room, realizing he had nobody there to listen to him. And it was all your fault.

But what could you do? You couldn’t risk trying to sneak past him in such a barren room. He would notice you. And…

Your head throbbed dully. 

You didn’t exactly want to go back, just yet. 

Notes:

A bit of an in-between chapter while Pippins gets things rolling! Hope you enjoyed!

Chapter 3: hell is other people

Sure enough, Tenna was spitting mad following his departure from Mike’s room. It hadn’t taken him long at all to realize that he had been in that room alone, and now he was storming about the studio like someone had pissed in his coffee, snapping at every Pippins, Shadow Guy, and even Zapper that got in his way. 

You had hoped for even an hour of leeway to calm your racing heart and nurse your fading headache, but even that was too much to ask for. When you had tried to find someplace out of the way of Tenna’s wrath to calm yourself down, a handful of other Pippins with a similar idea in mind had rather forcibly joined you. 

“What’s got him so worked up?” a fellow Pippins asked, panting as they crowded in at your side. Apparently, they had only just avoided being yelled at for scamming people in the S-rank room. 

“Me,” you said miserably, hunching your shoulders and staring at the floor in your guilt. 

Another Pippins laughed in your ear. “You and me both!” they said, throwing an arm around you. You pulled away. “Touchy,” they teased. “You can’t claim all of Tenna’s rage when the rest of us are in trouble, too!”

“Not as much as me,” you sighed.

Your statement, of course, was taken up as an argument among your fellow Pippins, and the lot of them began to fight over who was most at fault—some combination of gleefully taking credit and angrily pointing fingers until all the focus was once again off of you. 

They were so caught up in each other that nobody noticed when you stepped back, slipping through the small gathering to take your leave. Or maybe it was that none of them cared. There were already enough Pippins gathered that Tenna would have a difficult time figuring out who to be mad at. 

None of them called after you when you left. 

While Tenna was known for his tantrums, most of the studio had figured out the causes of them, if only so they could be more easily avoided. Some of them couldn’t be anticipated—Tenna was often upset over things only he knew about from the Lightners’ world—but most of his upsets had clear indicators. Nothing had happened on stage recently, as far as you knew. It had been a bit difficult to keep up on the news, considering you had been spending most of your time backstage recently, but Tenna likely would have told you— Mike —if something serious had happened. 

If they didn’t have anything else to link it to, everybody was going to know, or at least suspect, that Tenna was upset because of Mike’s most recent absence. It wouldn’t be unusual, except that you had been making him so happy by being there for him—happy enough that you were sure some Darkners suspected that something was going on. 

Tenna hadn’t told anybody about Mike being back, but the timing of his recent happiness coinciding with his visits to Mike had to have been noticed by someone, and with the way you had been going around asking after Mike, you were sure it had to be top of mind for some of the Darkners around here.

You really, really hoped that nobody was going to connect the dots and figure out that you had been up to something, just like the sneaking Pippins you were. 

You felt kind of sick. But… at least your headache had lessened. 

What you really needed to do was go back to Mike's room and either lure Tenna there so you could talk him out of his funk, or somehow finish your outfit in record time so you could cheer him up face-to-face. But neither of those options seemed very feasible. 

You shuddered at the thought of returning to Mike’s room. Maybe you were just being superstitious, but you were sure that there was something there. Someone had responded to you when you had gone and decided to yell at the wall for no reason.

Or maybe it had been nothing. 

You shuddered, feeling cold. It had been nothing. It had to have been nothing. Nothing at all. 

It was just a coincidence that the wall had gone silent when you had addressed it. Just like it was a coincidence that the sound and the headache had seemingly followed you everywhere, existing in the back of your mind—until now, leaving you with shudderingly empty silence. Just like it was a coincidence that it had been loud and droning and deafening whenever you had been in the room with it, a noise that was completely isolated to Mike’s room. You hadn’t heard anything like it anywhere else in TV World. 

Tenna didn’t act like he could hear it. Even when you felt like you had been yelling over it to speak to him, Tenna hadn’t commented. 

Maybe Mike’s room was just like that. 

Looking for some place to hide, you began to make your way toward the different sets, figuring you could hunker down in some curtains while none of them were in active use. You skirted around the edge of the Green Room, not wanting to garner attention from Ramb, whom you had seen Tenna yelling at earlier. 

Regardless of your thoughts about the plug, you still felt guilty for inadvertently subjecting him to Tenna’s wrath. Unlike you Pippins, there was only one Ramb, and he had a job with a specific station and was often stuck in one location. If Tenna were to decide to pick a fight with him, there wasn’t much Ramb could do but stand there and take it.

Or worse—Ramb could decide to argue back, and that never ended well for anybody in the nearby vicinity. 

Once you successfully made it around the Green Room without attracting attention, you slipped into the hall at the base of the room near the couches. From the door south of the halls filled with Tenna’s screens, it wasn’t far at all from the movie sets where you could mourn your bad decisions in peace. 

But, of course, nothing in TV World loved you. 

“Where exactly are ya headed?” a Zapper asked, stationed between a gilded Tenna statue and a vending machine. 

You froze in place, sweating, immediately failing in your effort not to look shifty. “Uh,” you said anxiously. “Nowhere?”

You just wanted a moment to yourself. As much as the noise in Mike’s room had been driving you insane, you had been spoiled by the privacy afforded to you by the lock on the door. 

“Likely story,” he said, looming above you. 

“I’m allowed to go this way.” You looked past the Zapper, trying not to look like you were as anxious as you were. Not because you had done anything wrong, but because everything was your fault. “The hall ahead isn’t off-limits unless Tenna changed something.”

“Nobody’s allowed da’ go this way right now.” The Zapper made a quietly annoyed noise, but you got the feeling it wasn’t quite at you. Tenna must have changed something. “Mr. Tenna’s orders.”

You sighed heavily, rubbing at your eyes before you looked back at the Zapper. “Really?”

“... Mr. Tenna’s orders,” he repeated. He stood back, not quite looming so much. And, as he moved, you caught sight of something—or someone —squirreled away behind the vending machine. 

You stepped to the right, and the Zapper jolted in surprise, hopping in your way again, but he was too slow. For a brief instance, you caught sight of another Pippins hiding out behind the vending machine.

“Why does he get to be back here?” you asked, jealousy tinging your voice. Judging by how he had tried to block your vision, the Zapper obviously knew that the Pippins were there, but he hadn’t gotten the third degree!

“That Pippins ain’t causin’ any trouble,” the Zapper replied, tone defensive. 

“I’m not causing any trouble, either!” You threw your hands up in the air before you pointed past the Zapper, where the Pippins was stepping to the side, eyeing you. “For all you know, he’s been back there stealing points from the machine!”

“I know he hasn’t been doin’ anything,” Zapper said tightly, his voice growing louder as his volume increased. “But you need da’ leave.”

You glanced anxiously at the doors to the Green Room, hoping nobody would hear. You realized only seconds later how suspicious the action had been. You must have looked like you were fleeing from someone.

The Pippins strode forward, standing next to the Zapper as the two stared at you. You expected to be called out on—on something, even though nobody knew what you had done, but then the Pippins tilted their head, something softening in their gaze. “You’re the one with the bulletin board,” they said. 

You startled and nodded, and guiltily found that you couldn’t place the Pippins talking to you because you never paid mind to your own people unless they were getting you in trouble. “You’re, um.”

“You look like you’re about to have a panic attack,” they said, kindly ignoring your uncertainty. “Want to hide behind the vending machine?”

You nodded rapidly enough that your face turned, the pips blurring as they moved across your surface, and the self-soothing motion calmed you slightly as you stepped past the suddenly permissive Zapper and, at the Pippins’s suggestion, wedged yourself into the cramped corner.

They both left you behind the vending machine, and you listened as the Pippins very kindly changed the topic of conversation to something unrelated—whether Tenna was going to change up any of the current programs that seemed to bore the Lightners—and the Zapper hesitantly lowered their volume to add their own two cents. 

As you listened to the easy camaraderie, you realized, with something like amazement, that they did this often. That one of the Pippins was rushing off to spend time with a Zapper who seemed to enjoy their company. They weren’t even causing mischief. They weren’t distracting the guard, so another Pippins could get away with something. They were just… having a good time. They were just talking. 

If a Pippins and a Zapper could be friendly, you wondered if you were being too harsh in your judgments about the others. However, you quickly dismissed the thought. One changed Pippins wasn’t enough to prove anything, and the way the rest of them had crowded about sharing excerpts of their mischief earlier had certainly been damning. 

As you calmed yourself down, sitting quietly and nodding to the Pippins when they checked on you twice, you jealously decided that you wanted something like this peaceful, secret camaraderie. 

You could have something like this with Tenna, you thought a little hysterically. You had something like this with Tenna, as long as he thought you were Mike, indulging him from a dark hallway. You could keep it up. You could meet Tenna face-to-face, hidden behind a mask. You could have everything. 

Nobody else came out into the hall, so the Zapper and Pippins weren’t interrupted until you finally emerged, expressing your thanks and distractedly promising not to say anything before you marched back into the Green Room and passed by Ramb without looking at him. 

You were going to go back to Mike’s room, and you were going to finish that outfit, regardless of what that haunted wall thought!

Notes:

something something "green pippins has internalized the mistreatment of himself and other pippins and thinks lesser of everybody else regardless of if its true and criminalizes others actions in his heads without giving them the benefit of the doubt" whatever who cares

DOES ANYBODY ELSE CARE ABOUT THE DOOMED(?) YAOI BETWEEN THE ZAPPER AND PIPPINS BY THE VENDING MACHINE???

Anyway if you think Tenna is being too mean to his employees, I have thoughts about it!!! It's purposeful. Just let me cook.

Chapter 4: fill the void in your chest with nylons and scarves

The room was silent when you entered it. 

You crept inside, slowly but surely edging your way in as the lights flickered on. Nothing happened. Even when you touched the wall, no sounds began or droned on and on, as if they had always been there in the back of your mind, just waiting for you to pay attention. 

There was nothing there to meet you but an empty, blissful silence. 

Mustering up as much bravery as you could, you made your way to the center of the room, standing between the four walls and staring down that dark hallway. You waited. Seconds turned into minutes. 

Feeling foolish and self-conscious, even without an audience, you glanced around the room. “I really am here to help Tenna,” you said to nobody.

And nobody responded. 

You waited another long moment before you walked down the length of the hall, going so far as to brush your knuckles against the wall as you went, trying to prove to yourself that nothing was there. And if there was something there, you would provoke it and finally be faced with tangible evidence that, uh… 

Maybe you shouldn’t do that. 

You whispered an uneasy apology and stepped further from the walls, doing your best to stay in the center of the hall until you collected your clothing materials from the dark end of it. Upon your return to the light, you glanced over your shoulder frequently, as if you might be able to catch something lurking in the dark.

You didn’t. 

Once you had your outfit where you could see it, your attention quickly turned from the creeping unease to focus. You had a mission.

You sat on the floor—you really needed to start bringing in furniture—and began to work on putting more of your outfit together. 

You had most of the pieces, and you had finished the mold of your head. The real next step was trying everything on, piece by piece, to ensure that everything would fit how you thought it would. It also needed to properly cover you.

Most of it did, with a few exceptions. As you worked, it became clear that you needed to borrow a few more items from the costume department to finally achieve your vision. You didn’t need much. Some more padding for the pants and shirt to make it look less frumpy, some different gloves, something besides the necktie you had decided on before that just looked tacky, now. 

Just a short trip and you would be set.

With a sigh, you regathered your items and made the slow trek back into the dark of the hall to stow them away. Luckily, the walk up and down the hall was uneventful, and you made your way back to the door without issue. 

You hoped your trip to the costume department would be just as boring.

It wasn’t a long walk, but it was tedious looking out for stationed guards. Pippins and Shadow Guys sometimes tried to steal costumes from certain sets, so it wasn’t out of the ordinary for Tenna to station someone on the paths near the outfits. 

To avoid any potential guards, you crept about the halls, nearing the rooms where the spare clothes were kept, definitely looking suspicious to anybody who might have seen you. Still, nobody tried to stop you, so you took the opportunity to enter one of the rooms, ensuring it was empty before you got to business.

You opened up a few of the boxes that were easily accessible on the floor, and rifled through them for anything you thought might be good stuffing for your outfit. Old scarves, socks, stockings, anything that didn’t seem particularly valuable but was nice and soft and easily squished into place. And anything you found, you laid out in a wider scarf so you could carry everything in one go. 

If you were in charge of costumes, you would have organized them better. Why were there hats in with piles of coats, being crushed beneath everything?

In a box full of scarves, you managed to find a nice, thick pair of velvety gloves that would hide your hands decently. The other pair you had found prior just didn’t work, stretching awkwardly around your palm. But when you pulled this pair on, they fit like a dream. The thickness of them also served to round out your hands, obscuring how stick-thin and sharp your hands usually were as a Pippins. 

After finding those and putting them with the other materials, you kept going, looking around for something to replace the tie. You wanted something that would pop and really bring the outfit together. You wanted something red like Tenna’s coat.

And there, in the wide closet attached to the room, complete with better lighting and several mirrors, you spotted a box labeled bowties up above everything else, on a shelf you had no way of reaching. A bowtie would suit the outfit better than a tie, you thought. It would fit the rounder aesthetic you were going for.

You sighed as you cast your gaze about, but there were no ladders in the room. There was a chair, but it was relatively short and low to the ground. The next best thing would be to try and stack a few boxes together, though you weren’t sure that that was the best idea, given how flimsy some of them were.

You tried it anyway, piling a few of the sturdier, fuller boxes on top of each other to try reaching the topmost shelves. You only managed to get three stacked together before they were higher than you could feasibly reach, and as you stood back to admire your shoddy handiwork, you found that the height of the boxes was nowhere near tall enough for you to reach that box of bowties. 

You rubbed your face, stepping back. You could just keep looking through the other boxes for something else. It didn’t have to be a bowtie, you just—

A trill of music sounded behind you, and you whipped around, startled at the appearance of a Shadow Guy and a Zapper. The Shadow Guy was right behind you, and the Zapper was further back, blocking the doorway.

Fuck. You weren’t supposed to be back here. 

You took a step back, and the Shadow Guy cocked his head to the side, eyeing you questioningly. When you didn’t respond, the Zapper moved closer.

“Ya’ don’t speak Shadow Guy?” they guessed, seemingly taking pity on you.

And, well. You didn’t. 

While Zappers and Pippins were discouraged from spending time together—because Tenna didn’t want Zappers to go around being soft when they were supposed to be guarding areas and doling out sentences for the studio’s dungeon—Shadow Guys could spend time with whoever they wanted. You often saw a few Shadow Guys when you passed by your fellow Pippins gambling in groups, but you had never really spoken to any. 

You weren’t the most social of Pippins.

“I don’t,” you said, heart pounding. You didn’t know what he had said, but the fact that he was here with a Zapper didn’t bode well for you. “I just—”

“He wants da’ know what you was looking for,” Zapper translated. The Shadow Guy made a gesture. “Did ya’ need help reaching somethin’?”

You pressed your hands together uncertainly, finding it a bit hard to breathe in the cramped, crowded space of the closet. “The bowties.”

They both looked up, eyes landing on the box. 

The Zapper looked back down, looking at the boxes you had stacked on top of each other. “Were you gonna to climb that?”

“Yes,” you said, voice pitched up with stress. “No? Look, I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I’ve got what I was looking for. Really, it’s nothing bad, I just—”

You cut yourself off before you could say something incriminating. 

“Don’t have hair,” the Zapper muttered, looking back up at the box, but they said nothing else. 

You hated this. You hated getting in trouble. You did everything as close to the books as you could. But you wanted a bowtie. You wanted something. Needed something.

You needed to get out of here without getting in trouble or being banned from the dressing rooms. You needed to be able to get back in here later, when you needed more materials for your costume. 

The Zapper was quiet, and you felt yourself panicking more the longer they went without saying anything. You were so tense that you startled, yelping and flinching away when the Shadow Guy hummed and stepped past you, just barely brushing against your side. 

“Oh,” the Zapper sighed. “Don’t do that. C’mon. Dat’s dangerous—”

The Shadow Guy ignored them, grabbing hold of the shelves and swiftly climbing his way up until he reached the box. He made a note of music, and the Zapper hopped closer in anticipation, holding out their arms and catching the box when he pushed it down. 

The Zapper backed up with the box. “Will ya’ be—?” and cut themselves off with a disgruntled noise of surprise as the Shadow Guy landed on the floor, having jumped off from the highest point.

Maybe you would make it out just fine, because the Zapper would be focused on sending the Shadow Guy off the the dungeons for doing insane stuff in front of them. 

“Want da’ sit down?” the Zapper asked, looking at the Shadow Guy with a faintly perturbed expression. It took you a long moment to realize they had been talking to you. 

You nodded, slowly, so your face wouldn’t spin and disorient you, and stiffly followed them out of the closet as the Zapper made their way out into the main part of the dressing room. The Shadow Guy followed behind you with another trill of a music note, and you trembled with anxiety, confused and upset.

You couldn’t take the suspense. “Aren’t you going to send me to the dungeon? For stealing?” 

“I’m off duty,” the Zapper said simply. “What did ya’ want from in here?”

You stared at them. As if their being off duty meant anything. You had been accosted by any number of Zappers for not being where you were supposed to be, or for your anxiety making you look suspicious—on duty or not.  “... A bowtie?”

The Shadow Guy mimed laughter and gave a sharp staccato of saxophone notes. 

“I mean, which one?” The Zapper set the box on the floor and pulled it open. They nodded to it invitingly when you made no immediate move to look through it.

You crept forward uncertainly, finally kneeling on shaking legs so you could look through the box. You didn’t know why you weren’t getting in trouble. The Zapper was being lenient with the Shadow Guy, but it must have been because they were friends. There was no reason that the Zapper was being so lenient with you. 

Looking at them reminded you of the Zapper and Pippins you had seen together earlier. Another Zapper that had been softened by having friends. Friends. The Shadow Guy and that other Pippins had someone to look the other way—someone who could vouch for them. How often were Zappers being befriended by residents of TV World who wanted to avoid being stuck in one of Tenna’s Punishment Cages?

Making a friend sounded useful. You might have tried it if you weren’t so sure that the whole Mike thing would take up all of your potential friend time.

The Shadow Guy hummed, once again startling you as he brushed against your trembling side. He looked into the box, rifling around, his arm pressed to yours. Your skin prickled uncomfortably at the proximity. Your shoulders ached from how much tension you were holding in them.

You didn’t move away.

“You’re just going to let me take something?” you asked, voice weak. You couldn’t be weak. You were going to be Mike. 

“What do ya’ want it for?” Zapper asked.

You needed to stop asking. You were just going to annoy them, and then you really would be in trouble. 

“I can’t tell you.”

The Zapper shrugged. “Okay.”

“But,” you hesitated. “Why?”

The Shadow Guy gestured with his hands, but you had no idea what he was trying to convey. 

“If I arrest ya’ now, you’re just gonna come back by yourself when ya’ get out,” the Zapper said. “Right?”

You nodded guiltily.

“And you’re just gonna get yourself hurt ‘cause you’re goin’ it alone. What were you gonna do if my buddy wasn’t here to grab it for you?”

“... Give up?”

“Oh,” the Zapper said. They paused for a moment. “Well, now you don’t have da’ give up.”

“But you don’t even know what I’m going to do with it!”

The Zapper peered down at the bowties. You stared at them. “You ain’t gonna hurt anyone with a buncha bowties, and ya’ don’t seem like that kinda person.” 

The Shadow Guy frowned and made a complicated series of waves and motions with his hands. 

“Right,” the Zapper agreed with whatever had been said, sounding a little concerned. “You sound like you want to get in trouble.”

“I don’t!”

“Oh, good,” the Zapper relaxed. “So, are ya’ gonna hurt anyone with dese?”

You shook your head in a clear no. You didn’t moderate the speed this time, and the shaking caused your head to spin, different numbered pips flying past your vision as your head took all of your body's anxious trembles, giving the rest of you a break. 

When you came back, what could only have been seconds later—though it felt like a lifetime—the Zapper was quietly staring into the box, and the Shadow Guy was still close enough to lightly bump against your side as he all but pawed at the bowties. 

You wondered if you had missed something. Some question or gesture between the two of them, but when you resumed digging through them, neither of them commented. 

Finally, feeling a little calmer, you found that you were able to look through the box a little more carefully. With your mind clear of any immediate panic, because the Zapper wasn’t doing anything and the Shadow Guy was clearly a troublemaker who also wasn’t being sent to Tenna’s dungeons, it didn’t take long for you to finally find the bowtie you wanted—something soft and rounded and red. 

You took it out, examining it from every angle until you were satisfied both in its condition and its color.

“That the one you want?” Zapper asked. You nodded, and they made an effortful noise as they stood up. “Ya’ need help with anything else?”

Yes, you wanted to say. You absolutely needed help. You didn’t know that any of your hard work was going to pay off. You didn’t know if Tenna was going to see through your disguise or not. You didn’t know how you were going to keep making it in and out of Mike’s room quickly enough and without anybody noticing. You didn’t know how you were going to predict Tenna’s schedule enough to help him whenever he needed it. You needed someone to help you.

But, again, you weren’t a very social Pippins, and you wanted Tenna to yourself.  

“No,” you managed, finding your voice. “No, I’m fine. Thanks for the help.” You paused. “What’re you gonna do with the box?”

“Uh,” the Zapper scratched their head and looked at the Shadow Guy. “Do you think you can…?”

You turned to look at him as well and watched as the Shadow Guy, still sitting on the floor, smiled and leaned back on his hands as he shook his head serenely.

“Right,” the Zapper sighed. “Guess we’re leavin’ it on the floor ‘til we can find a ladder.”

“Right,” you said, glad they weren’t asking you for anything else. You stood, brushing off your coat, and stepped back. “Thanks again.” 

And without waiting for a reply, you bundled up all of the items you had found in the scarf you had laid out and ducked out of the room with them before the Zapper could comment on how big your stash had been.

Notes:

Pippins, that isn't what friendship is about...

THE OTHER MIKES ARE HERE!!! They just aren't other Mikes... Yet. Please be nice to be about the accent. Toby Fox is writing one in the dialogue and I thought it would be fun to try since I don't usually but writing accents is hell.

Also why does Tenna have a DUNGEON with PUNISHMENT CAGES filled with Pippins?????

Notes:

The other Mike's will be coming in later!

My twitter is @mouseyandblue and my tumblr is @mouseyblue-ao3! Feel free to follow/message me if you want to talk about a fic or see occasional fic updates/snippets!