THE ROARING FRAUD
Kris' return to TV World had ended up a disaster. Battat had been expecting it -- how good could it've been with the boss planning to kidnap Toriel? Of course it all went bottoms-up -- though she'd never figured some knight freak would show up and slice his arms off. Finding his half-scattered parts in the frozen wilderness beyond the borders of TV World had been the hardest part of it; of course Battat had written out a whole manual in her The Big Book of Tenna notebook, and Pluey's experience with tinkering meant actually fixing him hadn't been hard. It'd taken a few months of hard work, yeah, but with Mike directing everything the process had gone smoothly.
After that, they were moved. Kris and their Lightner friends took them to a place called 'Castle Town', and now Battat and the rest of the TV World staff were fitting in swimmingly.
She'd elected to take a stroll. Jongler and Pluey were intent on decorating their brand-new Mike Room in the castle and since they were way better at interior design than she was she'd left them to it. Then in the castle's dark corridors she'd overhead Tenna's familiar and frantic calls for Mike, so she'd sighed and slipped back to their room to pull the costume on. When she stepped towards the entrance now, she was spinning her dynamic mic by the wire and whistling.
"You rang?" he called out when he spotted Tenna moping by the entrance, and his appearance perked the TV's antennae up like puppy dog ears.
"Mike!" Tenna cried, and even though he was so used to it it swelled Battat's heart to hear the relief in his voice. "I was looking for you. We're in this swanky new place -- I need you by my side. Y'know?"
Mike knew. New situations stressed him out, and he needed familiarity to help him relax. Mike was happy to provide that. "You lead the way, Boss."
The castle had large, heavy wooden doors that Battat couldn't hope to move by himself, but they were generously held open to allow free passage to the rest of Castle Town. Mike made quick strides to make it up to Tenna's wide pace. The path laid underneath them was cobblestone and their heels clicked on the stone surface as they walked.
Compared to TV World and its studio lights, Castle Town was shockingly dark. Save for the lanterns placed at steady intervals Mike could barely see a few feet in front of him. Tenna's vision spread farther -- he was freakin' taller after all, and had more range than Battat could ever hope for even with his elevator shoes -- forcing the smaller microphone to trail after him helplessly. He would've hated if it Tenna wasn't equally as helpless.
They slotted together, two awkward peas in an ill-fitted pod. Them and Jongler and Pluey with their own weird idiosyncrasies and strengths.
"Y'know, you don't have to call me Boss anymore," Tenna started. Without looking Mike could hear the smile on his lips, but he glanced a questioning look anyway, his eyebrows knotted together in confusion. Tenna caught the glance thrown at him and shrugged. He waved his arms, emphatic even while moving. "I just mean, TV World is practically over. And we won't be able to return to programming here. So you don't work for me anymore, do you? We can all hang out as friends instead of colleagues."
Mike supposed he was right. It pinched at her to think that TV World was gone, but now they were in a different Dark World there was no way back. Though, the prospect of actually getting to know Tenna was far more tantalising than her usual schedule of running around, swapping outfits, messily coordinating with the others and yelling at Jongler and Pluey for their lack of effort. All of them getting together and doing something sounded way more --
Wait.
What had Tenna said again?
This time Mike didn't glance. He stared so hard he forgot what he was doing and stumbled. When he regained his footing he was still watching Tenna's receding head until the television realised something was up and turned around. Because something was up, because why was Tenna talking like there were multiple Mikes? There were multiple Mikes but the Boss wasn't supposed to know about any of that, he'd never even freakin' noticed it before, he was always saying the different outfits were just how Mike felt like dressing, why now --
"Hey."
A large gloved hand came down on Mike's head and patted him gently. Tenna was facing him now, crouched down so their faces were more level. His voice was soft. "There's no need to panic, okay? I already know it's you and your disguises."
Battat felt ice-cold, his limbs stuck in place like they'd been weighed down with lead. The only thing that could move was his trembling frown, and only enough to squeak out, "How?!"
Tenna straightened his lips into a hard line. "Er. No offence, but... Big Mouth Mike?
Jongler. It was always fricking Jongler. Oh if only Kris had promised to beat them up when Battat'd told them to!
“Haha,” Mike laughed as if he wasn't freaking out on the inside.
How long had Tenna known? Did anyone else know?
Had it been that obvious?
She'd thought they'd been doing a pretty good job, but now it felt like all their efforts'd been for nothing. There'd been no point in their specific costumes, no point in the tirades Battat had ranted in their room, no point in all their -- all their attendance to Tenna's every need.
(Well, the last part wasn't quite true. She'd gotten a sick satisfaction out of being at his every beck and call. She yapped a lot about it but truthfully, if she hated being Mike, she would've quit years ago and left it up to Jongler and Pluey. She wasn't about to admit that out loud, though. That was a secret that could never be revealed.)
When Battat's vision came back to reality, he could see his boss frowning. His electronically generated face drooped with unhappiness. "You're not mad, are you? I didn't mean to --"
"No," Mike replied quickly. Tenna was sensitive. He didn't take well to negative reactions. He threw him a grin. "No. Just... surprised. Er."
If the jig was up there was no point in keeping the disguise up anymore. Battat reached up and twisted the false head out of its seams, placing it between her arm and side. Finally, for the first time, she could look Tenna in the eyes. His screen was overly bright to the point it hurt to see him unfiltered, but she soldiered through it. "... I was gettin' freaking tired of wearing that thing. It's real stuffy, see?"
Talking in his real voice was even stranger. It felt like he was dreaming. When acting Mike he spoke deeper, he put a little authority in it -- his voice as Battat was squeaky and lame in comparison, even if it was how he naturally talked. For a moment he wished he'd kept the head on. Playing Mike was easier than being himself: Mike was liked, Mike was respected, and Mike got things done. But then his boss' mouth curved into that familiar, genuine stage smile and Battat forgot what he was so worried about.
"Plus, you four are always hanging out in the Mike Room," Tenna poked.
"That's 'cuz it's not the freakin' Mike Room, it's our room! You just waltzed in one day and told us you were lookin' for some fella called Mike!"
He would've never spoken to Tenna like that normally, and he was beginning to regret it before the television laughed out loud, hand on his gut. "Did I? I don't recall!"
Battat remembered like it was yesterday. She'd written all about it in her diary.
They kept walking. She finally could admit she felt a little lighter without the head on. They passed the few Darkners milling around the castle grounds; people who looked their way, identified them as the newcomers, and went on with their nights.
"Hangin' out," she muttered, mostly to herself. "I mean. Er. Me and the guys don't really do nothing that fun. We just kinda mess around." Really, most of their time was spent maintaining the Mike act and doing all of Tenna's errands. For the love of hooch, now they'd have to find something else to do in their free times. She'd have to get a hobby. "Pluey likes banging out the tunes."
"I know. I follow him on Soundclown."
"Right, right. Well, we host parties sometimes, when you're breezin' off. I guess you could come along to one of them."
"Well, you know my schedule." Tenna waved his hand flippantly, and Battat slowed down just to glare at him. "Get to it!"
The Pippins threw his free arm up in frustration. "I'm not freaking Mike!"
Tenna recoiled. His antennae flopped with rejection. "You mean -- you're not gonna organise my days anymore? Mike -- Battat, you know I can't do that myself..."
Stupid Tenna. Battat sighed as openly and loudly as he could. The ferocious urge to turn around and stomp back to the castle was there, but the TV was right: he was helpless. And Battat didn't have it in him to just abandon him like that. He might not've been Mike anymore, but some things never seemed to change. He shut one of his eyes in that trademark Pippins wink. "... Fine. And no callin' me Mike. Fine. I'll keep scheduling things for you."
The television perked up quickly again, as capricious and easy-to-please as a puppy. "And the massages? The shock therapy? And the late night--"
"Yeah yeah. I'll do it all."
What choice did she have? Jongler and Pluey couldn't do all that stuff nearly as good as she did.
She felt another groan coming on, but what stopped her was Tenna's sincere grin, and his soft-spoken, "Thank you, Battat."
"Cat's outta the bag," Battat was yelling before the door to their brand new Mike Room was even closed. He was yanking the suit jacket off and tossing it on the new striped sofa one of them had moved in.
"Mraow?" Pluey answered, still in his Mike fursuit. He never took that thing off.
Battat shook off the padded Mike trousers and slipped into his usual elevator shoes. "Yeah, it was Jongler. We should kill 'em." With his transformation back into a green Pippins complete, he stomped over to that sofa and jumped squarely onto the crumple of clothes.
From the far wall, Jongler called, "Heys, don't kill me. What I do?" They were clutching a floral curtain in their hands and wrestling with slipping it onto a curtain rod by the window.
"You're the reason Mr Tenna knows all about us!"
Pluey shrugged and let out an equally unbothered note before he went back to setting up beanbags in the corner. Battat pinched the bridge of his nonexistent nose.
"Well, Boss, it was bound ta happen anyways. What happened?"
She folded her arms and glared at the stone wall before launching into the story. "So Tenna was whinin' around the castle about Mike, so I put the costume on and go out to say hi. And he's sayin' we don't work for him no more."
She paused for dramatic effect, but nothing happened. Pluey didn't even blink. Layabouts. "So we don't gotta pretend to be Mike any more! He even wants to hang out with all four of us."
This time Pluey trilled and looked up, prompting Jongler to stop fiddling with curtain rings and pause too. "... Uhh... Four of us? Dere's only three of us."
"'Swhat I said. All three of us." But Battat was frowning even harder now, and he bothered to look over at the other two. All three of them. But he was pretty sure Tenna'd said 'four' of them, like there was another Mike.
A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead.
"Hey," he said too-casually. "Where's, uh, where's the corkboard?"
Pluey responded and pointed to a pile of boxes, and Battat made her way over to open the first and start digging through it. She's heard rumours of another Mike, one who definitely wasn't any of them. Possibly the original Mike, possibly the ghost of him, possibly something else with the way the other Pippins and Shadowguys talked about him in hushed whispers. Battat had been freaking sure she was the unofficial authority on Mike, but she couldn't just laze around while there was still a mystery afoot. She shoved aside a stack of papers in the box she was looting and found an old ball of red string. As soon as her fingers wrapped around it, a cackle burst out of her.
