Turns out I can't put the video out because it's too long... ( and I'm too lazy to edit the video to a shorter time frame. So I guess y'all going to have to read this yourself-
Melody walked through the slums of Cyber City. She was in aching pain, her forced smile throbbing. “Dad?, Da- [F-f-father’s day sale!-] COUGH! COUGH! HACK!” She grabs onto a pole and coughs out a green string. “Oh! Well that’s [GREAT GOODS!].”
She wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand, the green string dangling from her fingers like something that did not belong to her body at all. For a moment, the alley seemed to sway around her. Neon flickered overhead. The distant hum of Cyber City rolled through the slums like a tired machine that would never quite shut off.
“Dad?” Melody called again, softer this time, her voice cracking around the word. “Da—”
A weak, staticky sound answered her from somewhere ahead.
A shuffle. A scrape. Then the nervous clatter of something metallic falling and bouncing along the ground.
Melody turned toward the sound, her forced smile twitching painfully across her face. Between two leaning walls of scrap and broken signs, a tiny shape was half-hidden behind a stack of rusted junk. Only the glow of a pair of bright, panicked eyes gave him away at first.
Spamton was smaller than she remembered.
Or maybe he had just always seemed bigger in her mind, louder, sharper, more impossible to hold onto. Now he looked like a little wreck of wires and desperation, his coat hanging crookedly, his hands shaking so badly that he could barely keep them lifted. His glasses reflected Melody’s outline in stretched, warped colors. When he saw her fully, he froze so hard it looked like every gear inside him had locked.
Melody’s chest tightened.
“Dad…” she said, and this time it came out like a plea.
Spamton stumbled backward.
“W-WHAT IN [KROMER-LESS] HELL ARE YOU?!” he barked, though the words cracked midway into a frightened squeak. He threw one arm up over his face as if that might protect him from her. “DON’T COME ANY CLOSER! I-I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE! YOU’RE ONE OF THOSE [BIG SHOTS] THEY SEND WHEN THEY WANT TO—TO—!”
He could not finish the sentence.
His eyes were fixed on her height, on the long shadow she cast under the neon sign, on the way her body stood out against the narrow alley like something too large and too real to belong in a place like this. Melody took a hesitant step forward, and he flinched so hard he nearly tripped over his own feet.
“Dad, it’s me,” she said quickly. “It’s Melody.”
The alley went still except for the humming signs above them.
Then he gave a strangled, ugly laugh that sounded more like panic than humor. “THAT’S A FUNNY ONE! REAL GOOD! REAL [SELLING] JOKE!” He jabbed a trembling finger at her, voice rising into a shrill, frantic pitch. “MY BABY GIRL AIN’T A TOWERING [FREAK SHOW] WITH A FACE LIKE A BROKEN DISPLAY WINDOW!”
The words hit her harder than the pain in her chest. She knew he was scared. She knew that. She could hear it in every cracked syllable, see it in the way his hands shook, see how badly he was trying to put distance between them. But knowing that did not stop the sting.
“Dad,” she said again, smaller now. “Please. Look at me.”
“I AM LOOKING!” Spamton snapped, then immediately cringed as if his own volume had frightened him. He swallowed, then pointed shakily at her head, her shoulders, the awful height of her frame as though naming each feature would make them less impossible. “YOU’RE TOO BIG. TOO LONG. TOO—TOO MUCH! MY MEL! MY LITTLE STAR! SHE WAS—SHE WAS—”
Melody’s hands curled slowly into fists at her sides. “I’m still her.”
For the first time, he stopped backing away. He just stood there, breathing too fast, staring at her as if the answer was hidden in the cracks of her silhouette. The fear in his eyes changed shape. It did not vanish, not even a little, but it loosened just enough for something else to slip through.
Then recognition trying and failing to find its way home.
Melody took another step, careful this time. “You used to sing to me when I couldn’t sleep,” she said, forcing the words past the ache in her throat. “You called me ‘Little Lucky.’ You said my laugh sounded like a radio catching a good station.”
His hands lowered by an inch.
Melody’s voice softened. “You made me a paper crown once out of receipt scraps and told me I was going to rule the world someday.”
Spamton’s breathing changed.
It hitched, uneven and thin, like a tape being pulled too tight. His eyes flickered over her face again, and this time he did not just see a monster. He saw the shape of a memory he had buried under panic and pain. A tiny laugh. Warm light. Tiny hands trying to hold his finger. A voice calling him “Dad” in a room full of static.
Melody’s posture shifted, hope flashing through her like a spark. “Yes.”
Spamton backed up one step, then another, and slapped a hand over his mouth like he was holding in a scream. “N-NO, NO, NO—” His voice broke. “YOU’RE DEAD. YOU’RE—YOU’RE A TRICK. A BAD [KROMER] DREAM. MY BABY GIRL DON’T COME OUT OF THE DARK LIKE THIS. SHE DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT. SHE—SHE—”
He stopped, because now he was looking directly at her eyes.
The exact same eyes he remembered.
Fear began to drain from his face, replaced by something worse than fear.
Melody saw it happen in real time, and her own expression crumpled around the edges. “Dad…”
Spamton’s shoulders sagged like something inside him had finally given up holding them up. His voice came out tiny. “Mel?”
The name, spoken like a broken prayer, made Melody’s throat burn.
“Yes,” she said, and for the first time since stepping into the alley, her answer was steady. “It’s me.”
Spamton stared at her for one long, trembling second.
Then he made a sound somewhere between a gasp and a sob and covered his face with both hands.
“Oh, NO,” he choked. “OH, NO, NO, NO, THIS IS [THE WORST DEAL] I EVER MADE.”
Melody hurried forward before she could think better of it. “Dad—”
“DON’T TOUCH ME!” he yelped instantly, jerking backward so fast he nearly stumbled into a trash heap. “I-I-I MEAN—NOT ‘CAUSE OF YOU! NOT ‘CAUSE OF YOU! I JUST—YOU’RE SO BIG AND I CAN’T—MY HEAD IS—” He waved one hand wildly, as though trying to shoo away the entire moment. “I CAN’T FIT THIS IN MY [SHOPPING CART]!”
The pain in her chest flared again, but this time it was mixed with something gentler and sadder. He was afraid. Truly afraid. Not of her heart, not of who she was inside, but of the shape time had made her body take. Of how different she looked. Of how the world had changed her into something he did not know how to hold.
Melody lowered her hands slowly. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
Spamton’s eyes darted over her face. “THAT’S WHAT THE BIG ONES ALWAYS SAY.”
“IT IS FOR ME!” he snapped, then winced, as if the words themselves had cut him. He looked away, jaw trembling. “EVERYTHING AROUND ME TURNS INTO A [BAD INVESTMENT]. EVERYTHING. PEOPLE. PLACES. MY OWN—” He cut himself off, voice dropping into a hoarse murmur. “My own little girl…”
Silence spread between them.
Melody stood in it, breathing carefully through the ache in her ribs. Then she did the one thing she knew he might still recognize, the one thing she had carried with her like a secret for too many years.
She reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out a tiny, bent object wrapped in threadbare cloth.
Faded. Careful. Still holding together by stubbornness alone.
Spamton’s head snapped up.
Melody held it out, hands shaking a little now too. “You gave me this,” she said. “You said I was your biggest star.”
His eyes widened behind his glasses.
He took one step forward, then stopped, as if the air between them had turned to glass.
Melody’s expression softened into something almost unbearably tender. “I kept it.”
Spamton looked at the crown like it might explode.
Then he looked at her face again.
The fear still remained. The confusion too. But beneath both of those, something else surfaced with painful slowness, like a signal finally breaking through static. Not certainty.
His voice came out raw. “M-Melody?”
And that was when Spamton finally moved.
He did not rush into her arms. He did not suddenly become brave. He simply stood there, trembling all over, and reached out with one tiny, uncertain hand to touch the edge of her sleeve, as if afraid she would disappear if he pressed too hard.
His fingers brushed the fabric.
A strangled sound tore out of him, and all at once the fear in his body became grief, and the grief became shock, and the shock became a sob he clearly hated letting anyone hear. “THAT’S—THAT’S MY GIRL,” he gasped, as if he could not believe the sentence enough to finish it. “THAT’S MY—OH, SWEET [HEART-DRIVE]—”
Melody’s forced smile finally slipped away for real.
She leaned down just enough for him to see her face properly, even if it made her knees ache, even if every movement in her body screamed. “Hi, Dad.”
Spamton stared up at her, eyes wet and wild and shining with the kind of broken love that had nowhere else to go.
Then, very cautiously, as if he was still half-convinced this was all a trick, he lifted both hands toward her.
He touched her face with the reverence of someone meeting a miracle in the middle of a ruin.
“Oh…” he whispered. “You’re real.”
Melody’s own eyes stung. “Yeah.”
Spamton blinked hard, then gave a shaky, disbelieving laugh through his tears. “YOU GOT BIGGER.”
Despite everything, despite the pain and the fear and the years and the awful, twisted shape of this reunion, Melody laughed too. It came out wet and uneven and full of relief.
“Yeah,” she said again. “I did.”
And for the first time since she’d stepped into the slums of Cyber City, the noise of the neon, the ache in her chest, and the strings of panic in her throat all seemed to quiet just a little.
Enough to let father and daughter stand in the broken light and remember each other.