Chained Puppet

Who's Stalling Who?

Marvin still had Anti on his side until dinner. Even when the glitch woke up and whined, Marvin forced him to take it easy, making him promise not to glitch or run around the rest of the night.

Anti was hesitant but promised to try for him.

Dinner was odd what with it being so quiet but most of them were accustomed to silence. This just made Marvin more tense, though. Paranoid.

He knew Jackie liked to go out sometimes at night to check up on crime hot spots so he had to be careful not to alert him and watch out in case someone decided to follow him.

"You sure you are alright, Anti?" Henrik was pestering Anti, having heard of his energy problem earlier from Chase, "You shouldn't be so reckless"

"Yeah, dude" Chase agreed, "Need to keep yourself going. No overdoing things, yeah? That means less 'lessons' with Jackie if need be"

"Aw but it's fine!" Anti whined again, "I'm fine now! No worries! Stop freaking out"

Even Jackie looked a little disappointed but didn't argue with the others.

"They're right, Anti" Dark intervened, "You shouldn't work yourself too hard in case puppeteer comes out of nowhere"

"Yeah, yeah. I get it." he stuffed a bunch of noodles in his mouth with a roll of his eyes.

Henrik rubbed his head suddenly with a light grunt and JJ stared at him, 'Speaking of taking it easy, Hen.'

"Oh hush. Who is zhe doctor here?!"

"You sound annoyingly like Dr. Iplier" Dark snorted but Hen only glared at him.

When dinner was over, they hung out for a while in the living room save for Dark. He chose to walk around the house to make sure nothing was out of order. That, and he'd call Host to make sure things were still alright back home.

When it got too late, the others went to bed, handing over the couch to Dark for the night. Marvin would have been worried but he already had a plan.

Once he got to his room, he took a breather and swallowed, hyping himself up. He knew it was dangerous but he had to do it. He had to at least see if the TV was still there and if it was, he needed to bring it back with him.

Rolling his sleeves up, grabbing his wand and phone, he slid open his window. He was on the second floor . . . . . and he had never done this before to his knowledge. But how hard could it be?

Taking a leap of faith, he tried to land in the bushes at least but it wasn't what he expected. He would never be doing that again.

"Thought cats were supposed to land on their feet?" he wanted to slap himself for the lame joke but didn't waste any time, taking off to the apartment.

Anti stared at the ceiling of his room. He didn't want to go to sleep.

After Marvin shot him into the wall, something must have knocked loose in his brain.

Something terrifying. He couldn't place it just yet but he KNEW it was bad and it was slowly coming to the forefront of his mind. Puppeteer had been so confident that when he regained his memories back, he'd come crawling back to him. But he didn't want that. He was so happy here. Why would he leave now? Everything was different now, right? No matter what had happened between them in the past, it was recovering. Right?

He was terrified of finding out. But the more you sleep, the more the brain heals. The more he'll remember. That's how that worked, right? He didn't want to fall asleep.

But his exhaustion was winning.

He only briefly closed his eyes but it was enough.

He had his knife. He wandered the halls. He knew this place.