#deltanom

he wants to be noticed (hard to ignore from in there), he wants to serve a Lightner as per his purpose (and I can make many arguments for why vore still counts XD), he's desperate for that emotional connection and the amount of trust his prey'd have to have (no seriously I think he'd start ugly crying at the tiniest amount of even platonic intimacy)

plus he can shrink. :3c I don't think you understand how badly I need to monch, force him to take a break, hold and care for HIM for a change, switch off that frantic "I gotta perform to entertain the audience!!" mentality

gets all mopey and shrinks, so you go to comfort him - either he stress-eats you out of sheer bpd clinginess, or is so incoherent in his request that you just keep patting his shoulder and nodding along without comprehending the subject change and then *GULP*

..... I'm not the only one who had their vore brain Activated by that "evil" pose, right? told myself I wasn't gonna ditch Email Guy and yet as soon as he snapped "Until you LIKE it!" I was ready to yeet myself past those fangs - I feel a bit better since they're definitely exes

also between "robot" and "Darkner magic (aka power of Lightner will)" I ain't gotta justify why/how it would be safe. Dude's the Boss Monster of his realm and capable of altering reality to a specific extent, so there :P

Bless Toby for allowing us to save him without ruining our Weird Route.

... does it date me that I grew up with a CRT television? and that my sibling remembers all the quirks of those things?

-----------------

You pick up the novelty glasses you’d found in a shop. They were just sitting on a shelf with a ton of other junk, so you had held them against your face while you sent a selfie to your friend.

//Spamton cosplay when? 😛//

It was actually a little weird how much they looked like they’d popped directly out of the game: one lens yellow, one magenta; opaque looking in, nearly transparent looking out.

Only a couple of dollars, so why the heck not?

-----------------

You scrunched your eyes, not wanting to wake up. Fumbling for your phone, you squint to see what time it was. No signal. Ugh, had the tower gone out again? The battery was getting pretty low, too, so you sat up with a grumble and opened your eyes.

Um. This didn’t look like your bedroom, or your house at all. Everything was lit by the blue light of a computer screen, as if you were in some cyberpunk dystopia.

You stood up and cracked your knuckles. This was absolutely a dream, so why not make the most of it?

Something was taking up space in your pocket, you noticed, phone not wanting to go all the way in. With your free hand, you rummaged through the mess. What the heck was all this stuff? You started to pull your hand back out, surprised by the window materializing in front of you. It looked not-all-there, kind of like menu options in VR.

'Inventory', it said, listing a fair number of items. Hey, you recognized some of those!

Freeze Ring

> Devilsknife

A small charm in the shape of a colorful scythe, about the size of a keychain ornament, appeared in your hand.

Was this dream based on a video game? Deltarune was an odd choice, if so.

So. Your subconscious based the dream on Chapter 2, Cyber World's Snowgrave route. A first-person visualization of the map was absolutely beautiful, and you wondered from what your mind was drawing to flesh out the dream.

Glancing to your right, you saw a large dumpster, surrounded by bags of printer sheets. You stood on your tiptoes to peek inside it. That weirdo NPC vendor Spamton had abandoned it when you triggered his breaking into the Castle, you remembered; had he left anything behind?

No, just the pillow that showed in the flavor text of any dumpster you checked. At least it was behind a clothing store, otherwise the smell would have been overwhelming. Oh, and some twist of fabric on top of the pillow.

Yoink! Like any good RPG player, you picked up everything Just In Case.

Puppet Scarf was added to your weapons.

Why was it in there, though? It was the reward for defeating Spamton NEO through violence, or else finishing the Snowgrave route, so either the player character or the final boss should have it.

It was a really interesting NPC, everyone scrambling with theories and headcanons; nobody could have guessed ‘battle theme remixes are canon’. The obligatory 'Gaster did it' featured, of course, but you couldn't keep up with all of that.

Maybe you should follow along, staying out of sight in case Berdly hadn't been Frozen yet. You didn't know if you could die here, but you weren't taking that chance. You felt a little chilly, so you wrapped the scarf-weapon around your neck. Much better.

There had been a SAVE point around here somewhere... There! A flickering blue-white four-pointed star. You touched it eagerly, wondering if it would say 'Kris' or else the character name you'd picked before the first chapter.

Blank. Guess you got to pick your own name. As you focused on the menu, it changed to the keyboard screen, a transparent cartoony hand indicating the first character slot, which was empty. The next five, however, were filled.

_ASTER

You tried to move the pointer to the other slots. No luck. Shrugging, you selected the blank space. The hand flew down to point at the letter 'G'.

You sure as hell weren't picking that one. What would happen to you if the game crashed?

Just like the name field, you couldn't move the hand to any other letter.

This was a dream, right? You were already lucid, so why not try to control it? Squinting your eyes at

SELECT

ENTER

you willed a third option into existence

SELECT

ENTER

> delete

... Are you sure?

You nod your head curtly.

'G' disappeared from the keyboard, leaving a darker hole in an already dark background.

Well, you still couldn't change character position, but you needed a first letter. Something nonsensical didn't sound any fun. 'M'? 'E'? 'C'?

'F', you decide, reaching for the symbol.

MISS

"‘Taster’? That's stupid," you scoff as it confirms the name and returns to the SAVE screen.

You followed the trail of recently-living ice sculptures, passing a mini iceberg. You tried to avoid looking at it, feeling guilty for the quasi-Genocide Run.

No one - not even the fearful NPCs - spotted you as you slipped into Queen's Mansion. The door to The Basement was right there, the one with the scratched-out panel.

That rapid teacup ride was annoying, but you descended unscathed even though your thoughts were filled with questions, not just 'how did I get here?' but also ones such as 'what will I find down there?'. In your own save files, you'd had to restart the Pacifist Playthrough a few times in order to SPARE Spamton NEO with a full inventory, because the double-secret dialogue cracked you up.

Able to enter the basement, you weren't certain if the discarded robot had been activated. Kris sealed the Cyber World Fountain immediately upon freezing Spamton NEO, so it couldn't have been defeated and progressed past already. The door was blocked when you entered the Mansion in-game, because Spamton had already taken it over. So where was the antagonist NPC?

You crept through the basement, taking a single step into the end room where the robot was stored, all the way at the very end. You could just barely see it from here.

The Empty Disk wouldn’t be in there, would it? Snowgrave didn’t have that quest; your character never formally met him since you indirectly helped by clearing the way. You wanted it, though, if you could still turn it into the Loaded Disk and then definitively bring both bosses with you to the next chapters.

A sapient - or sentient, at the very least - floppy disk? Lancer's flavor text was funny enough, but the glitchy NPC's dialogue was completely novel. Toby Fox had really outdone himself, using Chapter One to trick you and other players into thinking choices at best only altered a few lines. Jevil was completely optional and gave one piece of equipment; Spamton NEO was optional normally but also the final boss of Deltarune's 'Genocide Route' equivalent.

Adjusting the Puppet Scarf around your neck, you reached into the cavity of the machine and fished out the glasses.

DEALMAKER was added to your wea

Was added to your

added to y

[ERROR]

404 [STYLE] Not Found

"What the [BEEP] was that?" you muttered. Starting to fold the earpieces together, you paused and - on a whim - decided to put them on. Maybe it would wake you up, a sort of double negative?

Hmm. Nope. You bet you looked stylish as hell, though. Time to go find a mirror!

You were wondering if you could hack somehow the Mannequin into your inventory, get the full set of secret-second-boss-themed equip. Those Addisons didn't have full-on shops the way Gerson, Burgerpants, Seam, or Roulx did, so you couldn't simply collision box glitch your way in. Were they one of the enemies you froze while grinding to get Spamton's Thorn Ring? Eh, you'll check on your way back out.

The background music was really starting to set you on edge, though. The Basement was inaccessible during Snowgrave after you'd hit enough internal flags. But the Genocide Route music - Flowey’s slowed theme - featured. It was spooky, making you feel like you were being watched. All the NPCs were either hiding, locked up, or deadfrozen.

A low rumble shook the room and you wobbled for a moment, arms flailing. Was that Giga Queen? You didn't actually fight her in Snowgrave, though. The Spamton NEO fight? That happened outside the mansion. Better hurry and get out of here.

You heard the rumble again, but this time the floor remained steady. Turning around, you called out - perhaps foolishly - "Who's there?"

Something scraped against the far wall, a metal-on-metal sound that threw off a shower of sparks not quite bright enough for you to see what had made it.

Backing up slowly, you panned your gaze back and forth in the gloom. This was quickly going from 'quirky dream' to 'outright nightmare'.

You caught a blur of motion and tilted your head up and up, and up even more, your eyes adjusted to the dark enough to trace the outline of the towering figure seeming to coalesce from the shadows, two large circles flaring with the illumination of a non-existent sun.

Oh bleep, you think to yourself, automatically self-censoring. The Spamton NPC had been smaller than all four of your controllable party characters, and those were schoolchildren. The abandoned robot was roughly Queen’s height, and the optional boss Spamton NEO had been between two and three times Kris’ height.

But this? This thing? It was colossal, and almost bulky compared to its vibrant buggy Slenderman aesthetic in-game.

You finger the Devilsknife in your pocket before firmly grabbing its handle and swinging it out in front of yourself in a defensive stance. You realize it’s the same battle posture as the Kris character, though Susie was the only one you could equip the bonus boss’ item to. You were glad you’d taken the violence option in Chapter 1, originally because it blatantly implied you were bringing said boss along with you, but now because it gave you a sharp object to cut the wires of this boss.

As you did so, your surroundings spun away, replaced by the arcade style background of the Battle screen. The dissonant notes of 'Deal Gone Wrong' played under the echoes of Spamton NEO's battle intro.

"HOLY [Cungadero] DO I FEEL GOOD. ...HERE I AM!! [Player #1]!! IT'S TIME FOR A LITTLE [Specil Tour]!!"

Was that his normal dialogue? It sounded familiar, but you didn't think it was strictly accurate. Time to put your Mad Gamer Skilz to use; hopefully those translated over to the dream.

In your playthrough, the videogame boss had a set animation pattern, only 'looking' in a direction based on its attack. Even when firing off various projectiles, its head and gun arm always pointed in the exact same position per cycle.

But the very real creature - person? machine? - shooting very real bullets at you was tracking your every movement. Though you strafed and jumped - something the top-down 2D game definitely didn't allow for - Spamton NEO followed you with no delay. Freaky.

Your arms were so sore, completely unused to the weight of such a heavy scythe. It giggled uncannily as you whipped it through the air, fortunately encountering no resistance, but your hands were covered in sweat and struggling to keep your grip on the handle. The impact of the Pipis fragments - whatever the blue bouncing eggs were supposed to be - wasn’t doing you any favors either.

And then it happened. Lungs burning, you swiped at a Pipis you were too tired to dodge, whiffing entirely. Rather than colliding in a burst of pain and depleting HP, it exploded on contact into a tangle of wires just like the ones holding the machine up, though yours were blue instead of green.

"TIED [down] TO A [loan] YOU CAN’T REPAY? [Die now] AND SEE IF YOU QUALIFY FOR [forgiveness]."

The cartoon heart beating in front of your chest dimmed - no, was changing color - and you felt a surge of emotion. Was this the Determination mechanic from the first game? A green light flashed in your vision, accompanied by the beep of health restoration.

"THERE'S A NEW [palette] TO YOUR [facial glow]... GETTING YOUR SECOND WIND, [Player 1]?"

There it was again. The boss was supposed to address your character as ‘Kris’, except for when ‘you whispered Noelle’s name’. No such thing as ‘reading too much into it’ here: too vivid to be a dream, too much pain to be a hallucination.

With each pulse, the orange heart became darker and darker until it glowed green. That wasn’t a feature in this game, unless it would be a mechanic in the upcoming chapters: kindness and shield mode. You didn't have a shield from Kris' DEFEND action, nor the Spear Of Justice from the Undertale fight with Undyne.

"THIS [final boss] HAS A [limited time only specil] JUST FOR YOU!"

"Shut up! Shut up!" you yelled, "Your voice lines are even more annoying than that other secret boss, how do I skip your dialogue!?"

Your wires tightened, lifting you into the air until you were dangling at a level to look Spamton NEO in the eyes from across the battlefield. The words

(Wrong choice...?)

floated before you. According to the wiki, Spamton and Jevil were rivals, so you probably touched a nerve.

"NOW IS THAT ANY WAY TO TALK TO [your old pal] SPAMTON? AFTER HE’S [offering] YOU SUCH A SWEET SWEET [meal]?"

Wait what. This sounded sketchy as frick. "You’re just a computer program, what kind of ‘deal’ could you offer me, a real person?"

Bitcrushed yet cacophonous laughter echoed and you winced, unable to reach your ears to cover them. You couldn’t look away from the grotesque mouth gaping in a maniacal cackle, stretching almost up to the glowing bichromatic lenses. They gleamed in turn, like when you were playing Undertale’s Neutral Route and had to fight Asgore, and you prepared to dodge... however that would happen without Muffet’s webs to hop and your SOUL green instead of purple.

"AN UNFORGETTABLE [never] IN A LIFETIME DEAL."

"What if I don’t like the sound of your deal?" You were blushing; you knew what you’d heard, as much as you'd like to pretend you didn't.

"ARE YOU REALLY GOING TO TURN DOWN THE CHANCE OF A [very specil tour]?"

You mentally cursed your heated cheeks, probably as bright now as the hue of a Determined SOUL. You were pretty well cornered, with so few options. Right on cue, an ACT prompt materialized.

CONCEDE

DENY

Good thing the menu screens didn’t require your physical body for interaction. How could you lie? The truth was evident.

> CONCEDE

DENY

"But I used Incognito Mode!" You protest. The exact outcomes of dialogue selections were difficult to predict, but you weren’t going to complain about this one.

"HA HA HA. YOU THOUGHT YOUR USING [the Google Bing] WAS [blockchain encrypted]!?"

The rooms in Queen's castle were supposedly personalized based on the various NPC's web searches in Hometown, giving you clues into their backstories, but how would your real world searches be scraped? The original file name of Deltarune Chapter 1 seemed to mock scam programs, but it couldn't really be a Trojan or something.

It didn't make sense. Actually, it made total sense but should have been impossible.

"Well... Yeah," you admitted, adding suspiciously, "I want to know more about this deal of yours: what are you demanding in return?" Acting interested at first was how you SPAREd him in the Normal Route, so it couldn't hurt to hear him out as your HP blipped back to full.

The noises of the Basement returned in a deafening rush and Spamton's wires - no, yours... No, both of yours - dragged you closer together, battle screen below you vanishing as well.

"I mean, this is a video game; you're a boss NPC and I'm not a character at all!" What did it want from you? What could it possibly want?

His ever-present grin turned sharklike, sensing a captive potential customer as certainly as smelling blood in the water.

"[Player 1]! I WANT. THAT SHINING SOUL. YOU HAVE. THE [determination] OF A PERSON [level grinding] TO REACH THE HIGH [leaderboard]."

Yeah, no. Not happening. You didn't fancy dying in a dream, even one as weird as this. "No. Absolutely not. You can't have it. I kinda need this to, you know, live?" You dipped your head to indicate the vulnerable green SOUL.

His wings arched forward, as if reaching out to you. They cast twin shadows over the whole room, but stopped just before crossing the halfway point.

"WHEN I'M OFFERING YOU A [free cruise] FOR [hot singles in your area]?"

You just narrowed your eyes, remaining silent.

Spamton NEO shook his head reproachfully. "I KNOW I CAN'T [alt-tab] MY WAY OUT OF [the most dangerous game] BUT WITH YOUR [no background check required] [cheap rental] SOUL POWER I CAN STILL. BE BIG. SO VERY VERY BIG. SEE PAST THE DARK."

He knew it was a videogame, that you were a real person and he just a program. What sort of implications did that have for Deepest Lore? It seemed Spamton just wanted control over the game itself, unlike Chara, who wanted both the game and reality. You could live with this on your conscience. Hopefully it wouldn’t ruin the SAVE files of whoever’s computer this was.

"THIS OFFER IS [for a limited time only] UNTIL YOU [ctrl-alt-del] BACK TO [aren't you tired of working a boring 9-to-5 desk job?]!"

"So... Temporarily? I'll still own my SOUL. And not die?"

Silence. Just for a moment. And then he bowed, one hand behind his back and the other extended in the classic 'let's shake on it' deal stance.

Your vines descended, unraveling and falling to the ground in loops at your feet.

What had that stuffed cat NPC said after you beat Jevil? "He started saying bizarre things that didn't completely make sense - But didn't completely not make sense, either."

Time froze again, even the flicker of the nearby Dark Fountain reflected on Spamton NEO's massive teeth. You glanced at the small menu in front of you.

AGREE

REFUSE

You hovered your ghostly disembodied finger over the damning words before drawing in a nervous breath and firmly pushing

> AGREE

REFUSE

Your arm stretched out - almost without thinking - placing your right hand in the robotic puppet's. It was so small by comparison, your entire hand barely covering even one of his fingertips.

Spamton's too-broad grin widened - somehow - even further, carefully pinching your hand between thumb and a single index finger, giving it the tiniest shake.

You smiled hesitantly, emboldened by the gentle contact and what appeared to be a warm cast to the glowing lenses. That smarmy stereotypical 'used car salesman' expression was so hard to read; you had to make wild guesses from his posture and the area around Spamton's glasses. He didn’t seem the slightest bit hostile anymore, and Mercy +100% had flashed the moment you picked to agree to his deal, so you felt you could trust it.

Facial expression unchanging, he released his hold on your hand and, barely a second later, lunged forward with his own, wrapping all three fingers around you in a firm grip. You couldn’t tell if Spamton NEO stood back up or if it was the wires tugging him upright; searching for the answer was rather low on your list of priorities right now. Instead, you were hyper aware of just how high up you’d been snatched, and that you were staring directly into the eyes of a giant who’d just agreed to EAT you.

Struggling wouldn’t do you the least bit of good; while you would certainly survive a fall from that height, you couldn’t possibly limp away fast enough. You were pretty sure your SOUL was still green, anyway.

The boss seemed content to study you placidly, and you swallowed nervously, hoping the hammering of your heart wasn’t too obvious. It gave you a better view as well.

The Saw-like red dots on his cheeks from the original body were gone, leaving a uniformly shiny bone-white surface. Spamton NEO’s plating and wings, on the other hand, were incredibly garish, but also weirdly pleasant to look at; the tiny animated figure on your computer screen simply did not do the character justice.

You could faintly see a pair of thick carats on his face behind the glasses. Hadn't the Addison shopkeepers mentioned he'd been one of them, 'just a little unlucky'? That was certainly support for the theory. You also thought you could see your reflections twinned in pink and orange staring back apprehensively, you were so close to his face.

Even if it wasn't a dream or hallucination, nobody in the real world would know about this. It's not like you'd ever had a vore dream, so you didn't want to look this gift horse in the mouth. Though, you were looking him in the mouth, worried about just what lay behind those gleaming teeth. How would this even work?

Uneasy didn't even begin to describe your emotional state right now; all the vore scenarios you'd read and seen heavily featured trust, something untenable at the moment. You had to fight against the very human response that was cringing in fear, failing entirely when Spamton NEO opened his mouth. Was this the Money Vacuum attack? It looked like you’d been betrayed!

Except... You didn’t hear battle music, not a single one of the many themes. Instead, you were popped unceremoniously into his mouth the way a person might toss back a TicTac, or perhaps a breath mint.

You lifted your head to watch the shrinking window of light, vanishing fully with the creaking slam of a garage door. No backing out now; the deal had been sealed behind you as surely as his teeth.

Everything was dark. So, so dark. The Battle Menu had been the only light source besides Cyber World's Dark Fountain, and now you had neither of those. You didn't really want to move around, what if you fell? The texture you were on was too smooth to be fabric, but had too much give to be metal. What else could there be in the robot body?

You started to stand up, deciding that maybe exploring was a good idea after all, when something large knocked into you, causing you to fall back over again. Pushing yourself awkwardly to your knees, the whatever-it-was bumped you again, far more cautiously this time.

Huh. The robot had a tongue. Not too far fetched of an idea, you thought. It gently pressed against your side, almost like an affectionate dog, if dogs were slightly damp and had the faint odor of ozone.

Deals go both ways... 

You obligingly leaned on it, gradually transferring all of your weight. Apparently taking that as permission, it slicked up your arm, halting just below your head.

If this thing - you really needed to be fairer and treat it like a person, as a ‘he’ and not an ‘it’, since the NPC seemed to be fully sapient - knew about your frequently-cleared search history, then he would also know you didn’t like the harsher and more violent types of vore.

A professional salesman might make underhanded deals, but it would be a poor salesman indeed who failed to deliver on those shady promises.

It felt weird to think of yourself as ‘tasty’, but that was clearly Spamton’s opinion, tongue insistently scooting you to the smooth inside of his weird teeth and starting to cover you all over with whatever its equivalent of saliva was. Maybe your hitting the wrong letter on the SAVE screen was some sort of Freudian slip, or the game giving you a sly nudge and a knowing wink.

The average - the sane and normal - person would consider this to be a living nightmare, but you? You were loving this. You let out a contented sigh and finally allowed yourself to fully relax. The warmth and steady pressure was doing wonders for your acquired aches and pains.

Aches and pains that Spamton NEO had caused, beating the absolute crap out of you in your battle.

Were you the equivalent of a boss encounter, one where you needed to FIGHT to lower the enemy's willpower? You certainly never would have admitted to this otherwise...

He absolutely owed you a massage for that. Not really the best start to a business relationship, now was it?

His jaw creaked open just enough for you to see back out through it. When had he traveled to the Dark Fountain? Eh, didn't really matter.

You were tipped very deliberately over the row of teeth, tucked safely down in the confines of Spamton's cheek pocket.

"AND NOW. [Player 1]. WITNESS THE [alternating current] OF SPAMTON [NEO] EX."

'Ex'? You hoped you weren't about to be in the middle of an explosion.

You waited expectantly, practically seeing the

(* . . . )

scroll in the text box.

"MY [power level], IT’S STILL NOT [over 9000]!"

The words were pretty well garbled - he was clearly trying very hard not to hurt you - but they were laden with helpless anger. You actually felt bad for Spamton; seemed a real person was insufficient, or perhaps incompatible with the wherever-you-were. In the game’s Normal Route, he hadn’t attacked your party until noticing he was still trapped by the computer cables masquerading as puppet strings.

The crackle of TV static failed to mask what was clearly a wail of utter despair.

At a loss for what to do, you wriggle one arm free and pat the cheek surface. Hopefully he could feel it, your attempt to offer some measure of comfort. You’d tried. You’d really really tried, and even wanted him to succeed.

A knot twisted in your stomach; you’d never felt such strong emotion towards a simple videogame character. Susie’s words to Kris in the beginning of Chapter 1 when the game wouldn’t let you pick a dialogue option echoed in your mind - ‘Your choices don’t matter.’ Seemed that had been directed at you and the other players after all, not the in-game character Kris. All you’d done was give him false hope.

"FINE." Sure didn't sound 'fine' to you. "FIREWALL ACTIVE. ALL [sales] FINAL. [Frequent flier miles] NOT ELIGIBLE FOR REFUND." Intensely frustrated, but not angry. Or at least, not angry at you, fortunately.

Working his jaw awkwardly, he fished you back out and swished his tongue over you one last time before propelling you to the rear of his mouth. You’d have been fibbing if you’d said this next part didn’t make you even more nervous.

You were over the edge before you knew it, unable to so much as yelp in shock as your entire world collapsed into a tiny cylinder.

Tight. So tight that you could barely draw in even a half breath. The 'gulp' of a swallow sounded more like a 'click' followed by the 'whirr' of whatever was squeezing you down his throat. Despite trying to take shallow breaths, you felt dizzy. Or was that just the blood rushing to your head?

You almost didn't notice when you'd left his throat, since the stomach-analogue was similarly lacking in space. The only real clue was the cessation of dispassionate swallows.

Once you were fully inside the thankfully-much-drier chamber you heard what sounded like a semi truck's air brakes. Was that a sigh?

Even though your end of the deal was just loaning the Power of Determination found in human SOULs - or rather, attempting to - you were still kind of glad Spamton had enjoyed eating you. After all, your favorite scenarios involved the predator character being just as pleased as its prey, a mutual satisfaction. ‘Vore as a comfort mechanism’, the meme went. Even if he didn't get the resultant power he’d wanted, at least he’d scored a delicious ‘snack’ out of it.

You realized you were blushing again; seems you really were ‘vore trash’. You knew you’d be hyper-critical of every piece of vore media you found from here on out. tHaT's NoT hOw It WoRkS, you thought with a grin.

Resting your head on the pebbled-but-yielding material, you realized that neither of you had so much as mentioned duration. Not that you minded being in-

Um... Where exactly were you?

How long had it taken him to swallow you? It felt like forever, but couldn’t have been all that long; the robotic neck hadn’t looked nearly so thin from the outside.

If it was indeed Mettaton had drafted this body with Swatch - probably in Paint, going from how tastelessly the color scheme clashed - then you have serious questions about that NPC; what exactly was a depressed ghost that wanted to be an attractive robot thinking, making something like this!?

You took in a breath of air that tasted alarmingly like fried circuits, ready to ask just how long Spamton planned on holding you, and if he knew how to get you back to your world, then a pleasant breeze tousled your hair. Oh good, no worrying about oxygen; you would neither suffocate nor asphyxiate.

Totally safe, the only enemy with higher HP than his NEO form was the Giga Queen, and he could boost his Defense to an insane level at the end of a Snowgrave Route, so all you had to worry about was if Spamton experienced the coding glitch equivalent of a psychotic break and tried hurting you.

Now, if only you had the room to stretch out...

"[Dial up] CONNECTION ESTABLISHED." Wow, now that sound was a blast from the past.

The walls around you suddenly crackled with static, some remaining black - their cathode tubes probably burnt out - while most displayed the old test card bars, like pixels, countless miniature TV screens forming the surface of his stomach.

All but a couple, comprising two circles - just a few feet in diameter - directly in front of you shut off. They looked like his glasses... Could he see in here!?

The circles swept up and around, back and then down, evidently focusing on you.

"It seems I'm too broke[n] to [afford] a spacious [apartment]."

There it was, the semi-lucidity after a battle’s end. Chapter 2 had the most minor of Easter eggs regarding Tasque Manager and Jevil, so it was highly unlikely you or any other player would learn what had twisted either secret boss’ mind.

"You don’t hear me complaining." You curled up, managing to twist yourself the other way so you were reclining rather than laying down at an angle. "It’s pretty nice in here." ‘And you handed me my ass in battle,’ you decided against saying.

"[Some assembly required.]" A dry critique.

"Hey, um..." You watched as several screens dimmed to static and back to dull coloration, Spamton apparently struggling to get his new body's glitches under control. "I'm really... I'm sorry."

The yellow oval moved upward a few inches while the magenta one stayed put. You thought that was like raising an eyebrow.

"I didn't deliver on my promise. You gave me everything I asked for, but you couldn't use SOUL power at all. Even if that wasn't going back on the deal, I'm still sorry."

Everything went dark again and you startled, not sure if you were concerned more for yourself, or for Spamton. But the screens came back to life right away... was that a blink?

"I WAS NEVER IN IT FOR THE POWER. FOR THE [Kromer]. FREEDOM. THE FREEDOM TO MAKE MY OWN [download now!]. MY OWN CHOICES. AND. I FOUND ANOTHER SATISFIED [customer]!"

You chuckled. "Me? Or you?"

There was that annoying laugh again. "A SUCCESSFUL [meal]."

Yep. He meant himself. You didn’t mind in the slightest; in fact, you were probably more happy even than you were embarrassed.

You reached out your hand, as filled with the Power that was surely Determination as you had been when making your 'Taster' SAVE file, and tapped the space between the colored ovals. "I don’t know where ‘here’ is in relation to the real world, if it’s an instance on someone’s computer or what, or whose computer that would be, but just in case... I’ll make sure to send Kris by."

What if you played a new Snowgrave route, but stopped at the final SAVE point before fighting Spamton NEO, pulled that save file and move it to a secure position on your computer in an entirely different folder? That would be as close as you could get, in reality, to fulfilling the NPC’s quest. Hopefully you’d remember when you woke up from this really-not-half-bad dream.

"I WON'T FORCE YOU. I CAN'T. I CAN'T FORCE YOU. BUT. A VALUED [customer] MAKING A [comeback tour]? MY [clearance special] WILL HAVE A [membership card] ONLY ON [layaway]."

"Got it. I’ll keep that in mind." This was all so stupidly bizarre, you wanted to blow up a friend’s phone with DM notifications, but would they honestly believe you’d had such a strange and vivid dream? Far too good to be true, so it definitely had to be a dream. 

-----------------

You blinked your eyes out of sync. Had you fallen asleep? If so, that was one [Holy Cungadero] hell of a dream. Super weird, too, though the details were fading quickly.

You sat up and yawned, stretching your arms over your head. You were so sore; napping at your desk hadn't done your back any favors.

Hang on, what was that in your hand? Oh, just those silly thrift store glasses.

... Did they always have that paper price tag on it? Fastened with instrument - looked like guitar - strings? There was writing on it, too.

//THANK YOU, VALUED [Taste Tester]! YOUR FREE TRIAL HAS [frozen]. Please purchase a subscription in order to [Reload] for the low low price of [$19.97] per month!//

... You are never going to toss these.

-----------------

A/N:

I headcanon that the stomach in Spamton's NEO form is actually up in his chest cavity, and the yellow triangle is a screen that displays the SOUL of any Lightner prey.

“the Google Bing” physically hurt me to type out

(G)ASTER was originally just going to be a jab at Theorists, but it wound up being significant

The dialogue - especially Spamton’s - is not up to my usual exacting standards, but I think it’s good enough for this little project.

'>delete' and '...Are you sure?'/'(Wrong choice...?)'/'(* . . . )' were supposed to be two different fonts separate from the main font