[Log Date 3:48AM 7/14/19]
She’s so very tired. Penny wanders the hall of the space station, trying to find the engineering lab, so she can find things to do instead of sleeping. She runs her hand along the wall as she walks, noticing the worn out bolts as they scratch against her fingers.
There’s footsteps behind her, she turns around as she lets out a yawn, not surprised to see Denny standing there, their eyes burning red. Denny wasn’t usually one to show emotion like that, something must have really set them off. Something that Penny probably knows.
Penny opens her arms up, and tilts her head as she lets out a little laugh, “I guess you’re here to talk about the Accident.”
Denny walks at a slow pace towards her, not saying anything. Penny’s smile turns into a frown, she expected some witty comeback, some sort of hurt and devastated Denny.
“C’mon, aren’t you going to say something. Say how you’re hurt by me? Say how much you hate me for what I did to your stupid brother-”
Denny finally reacts by pushing Penny into the wall by her shoulder, and Penny is back to smiling, “finally something, so what are you gonna do? Threaten to kill me? Make me relive my worst nightmare? Keep me preoccupied while your friends come?”
“I’m going to arrest you.”
“Wait what-” Penny is actually starting to freak out here, struggling to get out of Denny’s grip, “Nonono, say you aren’t doing that, say you’re doing something else here.”
Denny cocks an eyebrow as they move to zip tie Penny’s hands together, “would you rather me kill you.”
“YES,” Penny finds herself frantically tugging against the restraints, “you don’t understand, I have brain implants from Blacktron, if they find out I’ve been arrested they will sanitize my brain.”
“Sanitize your brain, what are they going to do spray lysol on it?”
“They slowly and painfully burn off my neurons until my brain turns to mush and I become a living corpse.”
“Well how will they find out, your arrest is going to be highly confidential,” Denny tugs Penny forward towards the space bay.
“You idiot, I’ve been a spy the whole time, I have a live camera-” her eyes widen in shock as the next few words stuttered out, “that’s been recording this whole conversation.”
And then she feels a slight shock in the front of her skull, and she falls to her knees, Denny almost losing their grip on her, “[shit] it’s starting,” her breathing grows rapid as Denny attempts to lift her up.
“Stop being over dramatic,” Denny rolls their eyes, and goes to moves Penny only to find she was burning through her space suit.
Penny looks up to Denny tears starting to form, “please,” she doesn’t understand what she was doing, why was she asking for help here, but her whole body was in cased in panic so she couldn’t stop herself, “do something.”
Denny leans down to the crying traitor, and shakes their head, not saying anything no matter how much Penny begged.
The process lasted several hours, and Penny lived through every horrifying second of losing her consciousness.
And then she woke up. She had passed out in the hallway, she raised her hand to her head, as she realized to get once again formulate thoughts, and starts crying out tears of joy.
But not to long into her crying she notices someone approach her and she quickly rubs her face to try and hide away her tears. She turns to face the person, only to lean and let out in confusion, “what the [fuck].”
The man doesn’t really seem to address that, just holding out some high tech equipment to her, “Jenny’s busy right now so she wanted me to run some errands, and uh get you some repair equipment so you can fix the telepathic synthesizer.”
Penny is much more concerned with the complexion of the man standing in front of her than whatever he was saying, “you don’t have a [fucking] face.”
He seems kind of surprised by that statement, or at least his body movements made it seem he was surprised, his shoulders raise a bit, and he raises his hand to his face, it phasing through before it dawns on him, that he does in fact not have a face, “oh yeah, Jenny has gotten me into the habit of not wearing my helmet, and she acts pretty normal around me so I forget I don’t have a face.”
“Wait, are you, Rex Dangervest?”
“I go by Risk-Man now, or Risk.”
“Are you like a ghost? Are you the ghost of Rex Dangervest?”
“I mean, kind of? Also, again, don’t call me Rex.”
Penny then goes to stick her hand into Rex’s face, it phasing through completely. Rex is quick to slap her hand out of his face, starting to get a little pissed off, “okay lady, I think I’m going to go now.”
“Wait,” she scrambles a bit for composure, “if you’re really Dangervest, why are you living on some nobody’s couch? Weren’t you a fierce space captain responsible for destroying countless fleets?”
“Do you want a lie or the truth?”
“The truth?” Her answer is hesitant, and she finds herself shaking as the phantom figure steps closer, towering over her.
“Well the truth is reality is a lie, our reality is based upon toy bricks being built by some middle aged man in a dying marriage and his two bickering kids. And nothing I do really matters in the grand scheme of that so why bother, might as well just relax and enjoy life.”
Penny squints her eyes, not responding to that, and Rex laughs, “oh you don’t believe me. That’s cute. But just think about it, your silly world doesn’t make any sense. You were all just toys bought in the 80’s, and I mean one of you was defective, the pink one, probably why he wasn’t played with a lot, and when he was it was usually to be made fun of, that caused some serious psychological damage. And Kenny, the one that the man upstairs thought looked funny, well that made him the joke of the group, and Jenny? Well she wasn’t always Jenny that was she-”
Penny shoves Rex into the wall, he was surprisingly light, like he was just a suit with nothing in it, “I don’t know why you’re getting off to making fun of my friends like that.”
Rex just laughs at her, “they’re your friends? The man upstairs didn’t think that when he took you and placed you into the Blacktron set before locking up your friends in storage for a good number of years, good thing they were master builders and they were able to get out, right?” He lets out another smaller chuckle, “but you wouldn’t know anything about being a master builder would you.”
That statement makes her grip soften, shock in her eyes, “what are you implying?”
He shrugs, “I’m implying that I know a lot of things I shouldn’t, perks of seeing into the other side. I see that you caused Benny’s accident, I see that you’re set up to be the antagonist of this story, and that you’re internalized issues with maser building prevented you from ever learning it yourself. That’s big oof from me, man I bet if you had accepted that about yourself you wouldn’t be so alone.”
Penny’s shaking now, letting go of Rex as she steps away from him, “I don’t understand-”
“Oh well let me give you the end notes, reality is fake, you’re a bad guy, and uh also a master builder.”
“I can’t be a master builder- wait who cares about that, this is all a trick to mess with me.”
“What would I get with messing with you asshole?”
“Satisfaction of seeing someone else suffering.”
“Sorry Risk-Man is going through his redemption arc, I don’t do things like that.”
“You can’t just say you’re going through a redemption arc, that’s not how social development works,” she tells him, still backing away.
“Pfft, that sounds like someone who hasn’t tried going through a redemption arc.”
“How do you even go through a redemption arc?” Penny asks trying to point out how stupid that sounds. But instead she just sounds like she’s genuinely interested.
“You treat others how you want to be treated, apologize that you hurt others even if you don’t feel bad for it, don’t do more bad things, and you know don’t be an asshole,” Rex then shoves the electronic he’s been holding for awhile and starts heading out, “well I got to jet, Jenny’s probably wondering where I went, so take that thing and fix the telepathic machine so you stop having shared nightmares with the other astronauts.”
She watches Rex walks away holding the mechanism, the words of his statement sinking as she yells out much later, “SHARED NIGHTMARES?!”
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