Canon Can't Catch Me Now

By contrast, Tenna was a mess from the very first moments they’d known him. He’d pushed them into playing his dumb games, trapped them in plastic balls, and, ultimately, had multiple breakdowns, leading to two separate fights… but that almost made him feel safer than his former owner. There was no wondering with Tenna. They’d already seen him at his worst, and were still learning who he was, at his best.

In the same night, Susie had censored herself for Toriel-- then been blindsided as the woman cussed right in front of her-- and insulted Tenna to his face, only for him to turn it into a joke. Maybe it wasn’t even that they were so far removed from one another, because the more Susie looked, the more similarities she saw: they were goofy. They were overbearing. They thought they knew best for her and Kris… but they were sincere in it. They wanted the best for other people, and to see their loved ones thrive. It was just that, sometimes, the need to see their loved ones at all [took priority idk].

They were both flawed, hurt, and incredibly kind people. Ironically, the one who tried to hide those parts of himself was more upfront with it all.

It's not mentioned in the outline itself, but my intent was for the Knight to appear at the end of Cyber World, thus kicking off that plot line, and for it to create a fountain in Card Kingdom-- thus turning King into the titan we fight, in this version of events.

Aaand here's the comment that inspired this whole thing:

ETA: the concept art for Princettia I felt compelled to sketch out, to justify the Omega Flowey comparison(s)

Her eyes were drawn to a spot of motion, and accidentally locked eyes with a robot. They narrowed their speaker awkwardly, quickly looking away to elbow one of their compatriots, which spurred the tallest of the three into motion. K_K looked over their shoulder, grimaced, then glanced back between Sweet and Cap’n before sagging at the waist-- but only for half a second, before they whirled around to meet the three of them halfway.

“Heya~” They [?], forcing a flat trill into their voice, “Whatcha doin’ all the way out here? You wanna learn how to salvage or somethin’?”

Beyond them, something passed between Sweet and Cap’n, and the former shoved the latter further into the scrapyard before marching up to flank their other bandmate. In the background, Cap’n set his hat right and slunk away.

“Eh, that sounds kinda rad, but we’re here to see the new darkner-- you know, help ‘em find a place and all that junk.” […]

They played a record scratch, as if to hiss inwardly without lungs, and Sweet leaned into their leg-- signaling that they’d take over from there. “No can do, you guys-- this one’s not going anywhere anytime soon. We’re trying to give Alphys the backup track she needs, but it’s not pretty out there.”

[…]

“Um. Wellll, when me an’ Sweet found it, we thought…”

[…] “I’m gonna level with you three. We found a body.”

[…]

“A body?” Susie echoed, aware of how stupid she sounded, but unable to stop herself.

Beside her, Kris straightened up-- giving them their full attention-- and Ralsei’s breath caught as he [clasped] his hands together with enough force to clap. “Is-- did one of the darkners from town get hurt?”

“I don’t think so? No one we know, personally.” Sweet [?] rolling their speaker up to seek their companion’s opinion. “Recognizable fa-- uh. Well, I recognized him, but just ‘cause he was a celebrity.”

K_K nodded, peering down at them without fully turning their head. “Didn’t know he was still around. It was a big surprise. A really bad one.”

Susie felt [dread] build up in the channels between her scales, itchy and uncomfortable, but couldn’t put a claw on what it was that had her hackles up. She got that the two darkners were trying to ward them away from the site of a tragedy, but something in her pushed against the well-meaning [?]-- the same thing that had fought, tooth and nail, against fate, unable to accept the [?] that the prophecy had laid out.

She took a step to the side, intending to circle around the pair-- and Ralsei reached past Kris’s back to catch her wrist. The light caught on his glasses, contrasting the shadow under his eyes.

“Susie, I-- I don’t think we should get involved.” He [?]-- then set his jaw as he mustered the courage to [?], “Especially you. I don’t really know what’s going on, but I think… I think it’s going to hurt you, if you go.”

“I gotta.” She croaked, [?] distilling into a guilty sense of dread, dripping down her spine. Damn. If it was just her, then maybe she could’ve believed she was just paranoid after all of the prophecy shit, but Ralsei too? He noticed more than her. There had to be something-- and if he was worried about her, specifically, getting hurt…

Susie thought she’d rocked most of what happened, leading up to the Roaring, but there was one thing she’d royally screwed up, and hadn’t forgiven herself for. At most, she’d allowed herself to forget-- and then felt terrible when she remembered, late at night.

She hadn’t noticed that something was wrong until the day after the festival. She’d only had a quick look into the Dreemurrs’ living room, and hadn’t been back until a full day had passed, so she hadn’t had a chance-- but it didn’t change the outcome. When she had walked in, exhausted from the day’s [?] and the dip into another dark world, she’d been confronted with an empty space.

There should have been a bulky, slightly dented CRT there, but instead, the stand had been bare.

When she’d asked, Toriel had said that she’d set it out after church, in case anyone else needed a TV; though Toriel couldn’t have understood the [magnitude] of what was going on, those words had given Susie some small amount of [hope]. Wasn’t that was Susie, herself, had promised? Wasn’t that even better? Wouldn’t Tenna prefer to be chosen, rather than accepted out of begrudging [?]? She hadn’t had the time to dwell on it; things had gotten [?] shortly thereafter, and there hadn’t been enough time or brainpower to spare.

But, when darkners manifested in the light world, and she hadn’t seen any sign of the exuberant host, doubt had worked its way under her scales.

It had been raining that afternoon, clear into the night. She kept coming back to that. Who would go all the way to the top of town for a walk in that kind of weather? How long could [?] casing keep the water out? Would it even feel cold, when he’d nearly died in the snow?

Susie messed up a lot, and she’d learned to accept that, and admit when she was in over her head-- but she felt she’d well and truly failed Tenna. If this was what her negligence had [wrought], she had to at least know.

She pulled her wrist away and leaned into an immediate sprint, headed the direction Cap’n had since vanished into. Something [?] at her heels-- but didn’t try to stop her. From the sound of the footfalls, she knew it had to be Kris. What were they thinking? He’d been theirs since childhood-- they’d been the one to seek him out and bring him to life. Knowing them, now-- the real them, and not just the soul’s puppet-- she didn’t believe their previous indifference.

[she spots Alphys first, which tips her off]

She barely needed to look toward the trash heap to find the [?] that had them so worked up. It was easy. All she had to do was look for the first flash of red.

As she skidded to a halt, Kris accidentally rammed into her back, and Susie didn’t even bother to scold them for it. She usually liked being proven right, but she would’ve traded that vindication in a heartbeat, if it meant she’d been mistaken. Just as Sweet had warned them, there was a body laying limp in the trash-- smaller than it should have been, and looking sickeningly fragile.

At first, the details melded into the cacophony of [?] that surrounded it, but bit by bit, Susie was able to pick them out. Arms hung loose, connective tape peeling and useless, held on solely by what was supposed to be a temporary [?] of wires, and at their ends, clawed hands rested on bits of discarded junk. The bent antenna was broken again, but beyond mending, now-- snapped where her hands had once rested as she took the time to wind tape around it. A spiderweb of cracks emanated from the corner of his screen. That had to have been it. He’d been hauled out here and dumped. He must have shattered on impact.

The red fabric caught her eye again, and her heart throbbed.

[…]

Susie knew the condition she’d left Tenna in. He’d been near death, but stable-- patched up as best she could manage, and just barely out of the snow. It didn’t match what she saw, now.

She never knew he had a second set of arms-- but she was sure he couldn’t have covered them with his severed suit sleeves. Not when he was out cold. No one had been around when she’d left his side to join Kris at the fountain, so it couldn’t have been another darkner, and since Toriel had unplugged him, then there wouldn’t have been a chance for him to have [?], in the time between.

Would a darkner even appear in the light world if they were already dead? The slain Titans and spawn hadn’t, thank god, but that wasn’t a great example, either way.

No. The more Susie thought about it, the more she realized that Tenna had been alive when he’d made it to the light world-- so… so maybe there was a chance that he was still…

Impulsively-- before anyone could stop her-- she darted forward and thrust a hand into the split between a shoulder and arm. She’d felt it before-- the tickle of a fading charge, halfway between electricity and magic-- and pulled at a wire, now, hoping to find it again. It should have warranted some kind of reaction; even when he’d been unconscious, Tenna had tried to buck away from her amateur repairs, unable to bear the pain of someone rooting around in his internal mechanisms, but today he stayed completely, agonizingly, still. Like he didn’t feel any of it.

Something buzzed against her fingertips, stronger than she would have expected. They felt tingly and numb by the time K_K snatched her hand away, looking it over for signs of a burn.

“S-Susie! You need to be more c-careful when you’re handling live wires!” Alphys [?], mortified, as she scooped the two halves up in her claws. She looked the pieces over, one eye scrunching in a sympathetic grimace, and plucked a piece of electrical tape from god-knew-where to bind the two. “You could gotten hurt! Or h-hurt him! The last thing he n-needs right now is a broken circuit draining power!”

“He’s alive,” Susie said-- half announcing her own findings, and half translating for her teacher-- and then looked to the two robots in her field of view. “But you said you found a body.”

Cap’n’s lip raised, baring a few teeth in concession. “Hey, I only found outta minute ago-- Sweet ‘n K_K were workin’ with the old info. Don’t blame ‘em for that. Findin’ this guy was was… tough on em.”

Sweet took a swipe at him, and K_K finally let go of Susie’s hand; between that and the [?] with which they’d received the group of three, Susie wasn’t convinced, but she guessed she wasn’t there when it happened. Everyone involved was a robot, in a junkyard, so maybe it didn’t carry the same weight with which a monster might find a pile of dust.

Distantly, she wondered what Alphys thought, when she got roped in. Had she seen something akin to an appliance-- something that had been thrown out from practicality, and not someone to grieve?

(I know Tenna's characterization is a touch odd in the above-- it's because it was meant to be backstory/help his character develop in this AU.)

There's also a tiny bit post-UT, but it never actually went anywhere:

So, when an outpouring of new residents-- darkners, they called themselves-- flooded the town, she did her best to accommodate their new neighbors. She didn’t let herself stare, wouldn’t speculate as to where they’d come from; if she was meant to know these things, they would come as a matter of course.

But there was this one…

If she wasn’t an honest woman, Toriel might have let herself believe it was just circumstance. The darkner in question stood out like there was a beacon on him at all times, towering above the likes of even Asgore, with a booming voice and easy cadence that naturally drew attention. He was a performer, even when there was no stage on which to act, and everything about him made that clear.

The fact that he didn’t have any permanent features, but a wide grin projected onto a television screen, made it even more obvious than the rest.

When she’d first seen him, Toriel hadn’t been in any state to make a connection; there were so many new faces to sift through, and she couldn’t find the one she was looking for. The dusty purple had caught her eye, but quickly been discarded in favor of renewing her search for Kris.

Looking back at it, there was a cruel irony in that.

The first she’d looked at the darkner and really seen him, she’d felt as though someone had dumped a bucket of ice water over her. She’d heard tell of other monsters meeting their personified possessions, but hadn’t thought she’d ever find herself in such a position. She was just a silly lady-- one who liked baking and a good book, and worried more than she ought to. What did she even have that might come to life? Surely not her cookie cutters or pie tins.

But then she’d looked a massive darkner in the face, and recognized their family’s [?] CRT. The one she and Asgore had been gifted after their wedding. The one that her new husband had immediately managed to dent.

The one that had sat in their living room, untouched, for years-- until it had finally broken, at which point she’d put it on the curb.

It was alive. He was a person.

God. She’d left him out in the rain.

Despite his size and relative [ubiquity], though, Toriel had yet to find a moment where she could approach the darkner. There was always someone else there, someone who needed his attention; in order for everyone to live together, there was an enormous amount of work to do, and as a leader, his input was vital. She’d only seen an opening twice, and both times, he’d made himself impressively scarce.

Toriel was no fool. She knew when someone was trying to avoid her, and wanted to respect that sort of boundary, but, in addition to everything else she was, she was also a very stubborn woman. They didn’t have to make this a regular thing. They didn’t have to be friends. She just wanted to know what kind of person she’d, unknowingly, lived alongside and-- if at all possible-- to apologize.

She wished she’d known. If she had, she never would have--

Well. At least she wasn’t alone in that [?]. Half of Hometown found themselves in a similar situation, confronted with animate objects of neglect.

But the kids. Oh, now that they were safe, the kids seemed to be having the time of their lives. She’d seen Kris and Susie tear by with what appeared to be a monster, but was purportedly a darkner prince, and run straight up to [???]. Berdly had honed in on a woman in blue, who’d promptly fled Noelle’s side, leaving her at the mercy of a band of bipedal audio equipment. There were even darkner children, who were attempting to befriend [???].

That was how she’d learned her darkner’s name. A [flustered/busy] Susie had blurted it as she rocketed across the town square, causing the TV in question to look over and brace for impact; what they’d discussed at the time, Toriel didn’t know. She’d been too preoccupied with the fact that he’d adopted Asgore’s hideous pun, mistaking it for an appropriate form of address.

At least there was some plausible deniability; it seemed he only actively used the last half, saving the given name for theatrics. By itself, ‘Tenna’ wasn’t awful. In fact, Toriel thought it suited him. It was only the full title, Mr. Ant Tenna, that made her want to vanish from the face of the earth. She would have hoped that Asgore felt even a shred of her embarrassment-- having been the one to christen their television set-- but she knew her ex-husband better than that.

By contrast, she was only beginning to understand her ex-TV. He was a loud, goofy thing, and made no attempt to hide that fact, reveling in the attention he drew. He was always eager to earn a laugh, even if it was at his expense; as long as it made someone happy, he seemed content. His size rapidly fluctuated with his moods, betraying just how big his emotions really were.

That fact made all the difference, when he’d once shrunk down and fled before Toriel could approach him.

He knew her intentions, and, it seemed, was avoiding her like a storm front. Apparently, she wasn’t any more subtle. After the second near-miss, Kris had dryly told her that Tenna was exceptionally good at dodging uncomfortable conversations-- even the ones he, himself, acknowledged had to happen.

Apparently they knew that based on a [?] interaction with his former fiance.

Toriel didn’t know what to do with that information: not the fact that her CRT had an ex, and certainly not the fact that her child was disconcertingly invested in said CRT’s love life. She supposed she could sympathize. She’d lost count of the bouquets that Kris had ferried from one household to the next-- then, belatedly, worried that all the flowers she’d thrown out had also been darkners.

How was anyone supposed to go about their life, knowing that anything they touched might have been someone, in another world?

-

His back was to her, screen fixed on [whatever]. Quiet as a church mouse, Toriel padded nearer, until she was in arm’s reach, and gingerly tapped as close to the shoulder as she could get.

The effect was immediate. Tenna dropped [whatever] and whirled around, hands clutching at either bicep, screen frantically pivoting too and fro.

[…]

“Hey,” Said a familiar, gruff voice, and a clawed hand reached up to knock against his frame. “You’re okay, and you’re gonna be okay, okay? No one here’s gonna hurt you. [something else].”

There was a juddering, static sigh. “Are-- are you saying that because you mean it, or because you wish someone’d tell you the same thing?”

“Both?” Susie said, pulling a face as she thought it over.

[…]

“Susie,” He said, before she could make it through the doorway, and-- when she looked over her shoulder-- added, “It’s gonna be okay, sweetheart. You’re already incredible.”

The set of her jaw shifted, and she offered a stilted nod before bolting away.

Toriel laced her paws together. That was a lot. More than she would have laid out, apropos nothing, but… Susie had accepted it. She hadn’t even breathed a word of complaint over the saccharine nickname. There was something there, which Toriel had seen in bits and pieces over the past [timeframe]-- a mutual understanding, or shared [?]. She couldn’t imagine getting that sort of response out of Susie, who always treated her so [not carefully but?].

That was one thing she still struggled to accept-- that, sometimes, the darkners knew them better than the other Hometown residents.

[...]

He glanced over, as though he’d forgotten she was there, and, with a measure of surprise the [?] didn’t quite call for, said, “Susie? Yeah, she’s a great kid-- first in my Hall of Fame! Haven’t had such a spirited viewer in--”

He stopped abruptly, and-- though he didn’t have any eyes-- she could feel the weight of his gaze flicker nervously to and away from her.

“Hah. Well. The specifics don’t really matter, when you get down to it. Kinda pales in comparison when her other claim to fame was saving my life.”

[idk how to phrase it, but ‘she picked you up off of the curb?’]

Tenna stayed silent for a beat, then gave a [?] perfect, clearly rehearsed laugh, “Two times, then! Chalk another victory up for Susiezilla-- how does she do it, folks?”

-

But, before they left for the day, there was one thing she had to know…

“Mr. Tenna?”

It was immediately met with, “Yes, Ms. Toriel?”

“Forgive me if this is taboo, but when, precisely, do darkners come to life?” […]

His namesakes swayed from one side to the other as he leaned dramatically in thought. “Depends on the darkner. Some of us are awake from creation, sometimes we have to bond with a lightner first, but most of us fall somewhere in the middle.”

She paused. She needed to be more specific, then.

“When did you happen to ‘wake up’?”

“Eh, somewhere between my box being opened up and getting plugged in for the first time. If I’m being honest, my first day was a little fuzzy. (But now I know that’s just part of being in a Dreemurr household!)”

Ah.

“Then… you are able to recall when Asgore and I would--”

“Yes.” He said, the tilt of his mouth suggesting that, if he’d had a jaw, it would have been clenched tight. “Couldn’t exactly, hah, look away back then. Just tried to really focus in on my work-- if a TV can’t even distract himself, what good is he?”

Something flashed across his face-- quite literally-- but it quickly blacked out, and was replaced with a stark white grimace. “I can, but I’ve never actually, heh, seen the Knight? Even when it-- my back was turned, y’know?”

Susie [grimaced] in answer, and took a hissing inward breath. “Yeah, okay. That’s fair. But maybe they looked different in the light world. Who’d you see in the living room back then?”

“You, Tori, and Kris…?” He [?] slowly, namesake twitching as he thought it over, “Just the way the Knight wanted it, not a-- not a soul out of place. Hah.”

[…] “…so how’d you know that, then?”

“I… looked?”

“Nah, not us. How’d you know what the Knight wanted if you never saw it? How’s it possible to make a deal with someone you never met?” […]

He laced his hands together and flexed them, so the fabric stretched over his knuckles. “Easy, you use a separate, dedicated channel.”

A different channel? Did that mean the Knight was able to broadcast its orders?

...she’d already known that, actually. How many times had they seen Tenna run off because he’d picked up on some kind of private signal? The calls connected directly to him, without any phone or foreign device. No wonder he didn’t have anything to give her; the instructions must have filtered straight into his head. That sounded awful.

With an explosive sigh for another dead end, she folded her arms over her chest-- and, belatedly, realized that Tenna’s screen was on again, but impassive, lacking a mouth with which to emote.

“What?” She asked, recognizing anticipation when she felt it. “I’m not mad, dude. If you didn’t see ‘em, you didn’t see ‘em.”

“I had a question, actually.” He said-- which was weird, since he didn’t put his full face back on until after he’d voiced it, “I was shut off for a long time. No idea how long, or what’s been going on in the house, but everyone’s so different, now. You’re-- you’re Kris’s friend. Do they seem… off to you, too, or am I just working with old news?”

Susie hesitated. Yesterday, she would have passed it off as Tenna’s bias, seeing Kris as the kid they’d once been, but now, she wasn’t so sure. Something was going on with them. Noelle seemed to think they were being weird, too, and Susie didn’t see it, but she didn’t know them as well as a childhood friend, or comfort object would.

“I dunno. A lot of weird shit is happening right now.” She finally said, “And it’s not like we’re not looking, but that’s why it’s taking a while to find you a new owner.”

Tenna nodded and folded his arms, trying to downplay the way his claws poked into the fabric. “I’d help you kids out if I could, but… well. You already know. Big electric box. Not even plugged into anything, anymore.”

Right. He was a big, electric box stuck in a closet, where he was staring at the [inert] light world forms of everyone around him. The only way he was getting out of that was if she or Kris actively moved him, but they had bigger-- bunker-- things to worry about; Susie was able to take him from one place to another when need be, but they couldn’t exactly lug a CRT around with them, just because.

But… Kris had used one of Noelle’s pencils the other day, like they didn’t have an entire armory on them. Susie definitely wasn’t carrying a [?] of hairbrushes, and she didn’t think they were, either. Maybe things worked differently for their equipment-- and darkners could become equipment. Or, at least, some could. As far as darkners went, Tenna was a pretty powerful one; there was no reason he couldn’t give it a shot.

“You could try being something else.” She said, and then realized how stupid it sounded, as Tenna’s expression went utterly blank. “I mean. Sometimes darkners decide to come with us. I don’t know how they do it, but they turn into armor, or weapons or something like that. It’s all magic, right?”

“Not-- not any magic I’ve heard about.” Absently, Tenna tugged one of his namesakes down, fiddling with the bauble at its end. “I don’t know if I can do that. Costume changes and scene transitions are easy enough, but I-- those aren’t permanent. They don’t change what you are.”

“Yeah, but it’s not that serious. The other guys turned into something they already had, and they can come out whenever.” In unison, Susie and Tenna glanced-- up and down, respectively-- to the [pin] that glittered at his lapel, and he raised a hand to cover it.

“C’mon,” She cajoled, jumping so she could catch and tug at at his cuff, “It’ll get you out of here, and until we find you a new owner, you can help us fight. Everyone gets somethin’ out of it.”

[…]

“It can’t be that hard. The weird puppet could do it, and you’re the Lord of Screens or some shit-- it’ll be easy for you.”

His antennae perked at that, and he tilted his monitor to the side. “Hah, uh, no? King of Hearts, actually.”

Huh.

“Whatever, I don’t really care-- all that crap just means you’re a super strong darkner. If you wanna, I bet you can do it.”

His fingers curled around the pin, and she saw his thumb slide beneath the fabric.

“C’moooooon.” She drawled, again, subconsciously baring her teeth in an eager smile, “I’ll even be nice and take you to see the lake. It’s not a beach, but it’s better than the closet, right?”

Tenna stayed quiet for another few seconds, holding totally still, all the way up to the tips of his sensors. It was a little weird, when he was usually so animated.

“You have to keep me with you.” He finally said, completely serious.

Susie breathed out a laugh, unsure what else she should have expected.

“You really think I’m talking you into this just to ditch you?” She asked-- then sobered when she remembered the state in which they’d found him, previous: half hidden under a sodden blanket, thrown into the rain by someone he’d loved. Which was to say nothing of the Knight’s betrayal a few short hours, prior. “Nah, man. I… I get it. Long as we’re in the light world, you’re stuck with me.”

His antennae [wilted] in what must have been relief.

“Then it’s a deal.” He said, strangely softly, and shifted to unfasten the pin from his suit jacket. As he knelt down, his demeanor changed by a matter of degrees, and he added, “Still don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing here, but I guess we’ll just improv.”

[…] “We had to fight the other guys first. Maybe you need TP to do it?”

There was a beat of silence, cut short as Tenna snorted. “For a smaller nose, maybe, but TP doesn’t really help someone like me. Just give me a sec here, superstar-- I’ll see what I can do.”

[…]

The pin backs were visibly loose, and when she moved to test one, it wobbled under her thumb. A split second later, her hands were empty and there was a TV in front of her again, clutching at a sleeve, looking stricken.

“Whoa, careful there! The arms are, ah, still tender.” […]

“Oh.” Susie said, lamely. “Sorry. Then how am I s’posed to put it on?”

Tenna’s mouth flattened into a straight line as he held the pin back out. “Well, now that I’m expecting it, I can take it long enough for you to put me on; just don’t go unclipping me all willy-nilly, alright?”

“Did… did it hurt?”

“No,” He said, after a second, “It was just pressure. I guess I jumped the gun when you touched it.”

“Good. You’re still healing, so you’ve gotta protect ‘em.” Susie [?], at which point the tension in Tenna’s form gradually lessened.

“…can we get a second take?”

She shrugged. “Go for it, man.”

With a deep breath that was purely spectacle, he began to reshape his darkness, and the massive body in front of her faded from view. The pin in her hand shone with an unnatural, internal light, and she felt something move against her palm. Gingerly, she lifted the edge to take a look, and found the two clasps had vanished, morphing into a single piece of metal that ran across its length; it wasn’t a lapel pin anymore, but a decorative hair pin. Any other time, Susie would have balked at such an accessory, but it wasn’t a frilly bow or some tacky, lacy thing. Yeah, it was still gaudy, but not girly.

“Hey, good idea.” She muttered, and wasted no time slipping it into her unruly mane. It was perfect, actually. He couldn’t just fall out, there-- she’d have to detangle him before he went anywhere.

“Don’t hear that often,” Kingpin quipped, from somewhere around her right ear, “Better revel in it while I can.”

It sent a pang dangerously close to Susie’s heart, and she huffed, “More like you better get used to it, doofus.”

There was a beat of silence.

“You’re a real sweetheart, aren’t you, Susie?”

“Shut up!!!” She [?], flushing maroon as she turned her back and stormed out of the room.

Her pin sighed, fond and dramatic, then fell silent.

Before she could form any coherent thoughts, though, the image rippled and flattened, turning into something else.

Right. That one. They hadn’t talked about it-- they hadn’t addressed most of what they saw-- but they’d found it in an out of the way corner or, really, a dead end. She wished they had acknowledged it back then, because she didn’t know what to make of it, now. Was it a bad omen, one more drop in the bucket labeled ‘fate,’ or was it a sick silver lining?

There wasn’t really any doubt who the Lord of Screens was, and yeah, the Knight had slashed Tenna-- but, while he’d been near death, he’d managed to pull through. It hadn’t ever touched his screen, which was a minor miracle, because Susie didn’t think she would have been able to help with that. The arms were simple enough. Hard to look at, but not that complicated. She had a feeling the actual CRT part would have been a lot more complex. He was alive, thus defying the prophecy, but they hadn’t known to--

…Susie hadn’t known to expect an attack. She didn’t know what she would have done, if she’d known, but it would have been something. Ralsei, on the other hand, did know. Susie knew that for a fact, not only because he’d admitted to having [early] knowledge of the prophecy, but because of what he’d said, back then.

"You've brought smiles, light into the Lightner's lives... so there's nothing to be ashamed of, if... that ever comes to an end."

Fuck. Damn it. He’d laid it out right there. If he’d known about this ‘Lord of Screens’ garbage, then he’d known time was running out, the closer they got to TV World’s Dark Fountain. It wasn’t an ‘if’ to him-- it was a when.

"Darkners... all become obsolete eventually."

[…]

She imagined swiping her claws through the image, shattering the depiction of a breaking screen, and-- inadvertently-- woke herself up cold.

Susie had been front and center when it came to patching Tenna up. She’d seen the wounds left in the Knight’s wake. They were clean cuts, sure, but--

But they weren’t made by a sword. She’d seen gouges, digging deep into the metal on either side of the severed arms. Claw marks, just like the ones she’d left in the imagined prophecy. If the injuries had been inflicted by one of the Knight’s sword-shaped bullets, then maybe that would have counted, but Susie had ripped into her share of [?] over the years, and never considered her nails blades.

Something hot and peppery rose in the back of her throat, replacing the cold sweat that she’d woken to. It didn’t match. She’d watched the Knight draw its blade-- a deliberate, intimidating gesture-- and by that point, Tenna had long since fallen into the snow. There had been two wounds, not one. The Knight only had the one real sword; it couldn’t cut in two places at once. And there was no freaking way it had messed up its aim, if its target was a giant CRT, who’d had his back turned.