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Spamton's luck had run out. Like a moth to a flame, he'd flown too close to the sun, and with his wings melted. He came crashing back to reality, to a world where no one wanted him. His benefactor on the phone had abandoned him a while ago, all over his relationship with that ant from TV. Without the phone, he was nothing but a useless moth who had altered and wiped away any semblance of who he was before he became a big shot. He did everything the voice wanted him to, but of course the moment he pursued something he wanted, everything fell apart.
When eviction day came, he tried to fight it. He pleaded for just another chance to fix things, he just needed another month to get back on his feet and pay rent. Just another month. But he'd used up all his chances, and now he was faced with the reality of his things being carried out of his apartment by the swatchlings. At first he screamed and begged for them to stop as they carried his entire life out and sent it through the trash chute, but eventually he no longer had the energy. Instead of watching helplessly, he fluttered to the bar of the Color Café to waste what little funds he still had on booze.
He focused entirely on the drinks, as if he were to shift his eyes in the direction of the other patrons of the café, he'd only meet with pitying stares that darted away awkwardly when they made eye contact. He wasn't even drinking for fun, just to numb himself so that he didn’t completely crumble into a heap on the floor. Hours passed, every drink making him feel more weightless and dizzy. It was as he was resting his face on the cool countertop of the bar that he felt a large, firm hand jostle him awake. He opened bleary eyes and the shifting figure behind him.
"It's time, Mr. Spamton." Swatch said in a tone that was both firm and professional, but had a softness to it, as if feeling empathy for the bug.
Spamton clutched the bottle still in his hands tightly, knowing that his fate once he stepped outside this mansion was one worse than the life he had as an Addison. He had nowhere to go, no friends to stay with, no job to get back on his feet. There was absolutely nothing left out there for him, and now he was sitting here, clinging to the last few strands of the life he'd dreamed about, stalling just to have a few more milliseconds in that dream.
"Spamton?" Swatch pressed again.
"I'm going I'm going..." he relented as he slid down from the bar stool. "Just... can I take one more look at the free pool?"
Swatch found this request to be an odd one. He knew deep down he should escort the man off the premises right away, but Spamton had once been a good friend of his, and against his better judgement, he'd dignify the man with one more look around the mansion before he was banished from it indefinitely.
"You have 10 minutes. But I must have you out by midnight." Swatch murmured as he turned his head and fidgeted with his glasses.
"You were always a real one, easels." Spamton said as he made his way out of the cafe, dragging the bottle behind him.
The hallway with the acid pools glowed a sickly green, and were utterly silent aside from the fizzling of trapped bubbles as the corrosive substances gently sloshed along the walls and banks of the miniature villages. He always wondered if people actually lived in those tiny houses, or if they were just decor, like those Christmas villages the Lighteners liked to put out during the holidays. He supposed he wouldn't get the chance to find out now.
He stepped close to the edge, seeing his reflection in the glowing liquid. He looked like a mess; his hair tousled, his clothes disheveled, and the bags under his eyes looking heavy from lack of sleep. This wasn't the person he was hoping to become, he didn't even recognize himself. He berated himself for letting things go this far, waves of regret and self hatred crashing over him like a tsunami. Sobs escaped his throat as he grieved the life he lost, the weight of everything that he'd done finally shifting and crushing down on him. He didn’t want to feel this like this, he didn’t want to face the impending future ahead of him. He just longed for silent oblivion.
He sniffed and wiped his face of the tears and snot dripping down into the acid. He lifted the bottle and chugged the last bit of it as a courage boost. He slammed the bottle to the ground and stared into the bottomless pool. He wasn't going to leave this mansion alive.
After a few hesitant breaths, he let his body go limp and plunged into the pool.
...
...
They say survivors of suicide attempts recall immediately regretting their decision afterwards. After all, it's often an irrational decision brought on by strong emotions and desperation, and as they plunge into the abyss, the survival instinct kicks in as they panic and beg that somehow, they are saved from this terrible choice they made. The ones who make it out in one piece are the lucky ones, but Spamton's luck had run dry.
The battery acid immediately started to bite at his skin as soon as he dove in. Searing pain flooded every part of his body as he was surrounded by the corrosive liquid in every nook and cranny it could seep into. It burned his eyes and went up his nose, setting the inside of his face on fire. Like being dosed in ice water, Spamton was immediately jolted out of his stupor and back into harsh reality.
Despite holding his breath, he couldn't resist the instinct to scream, allowing acid to enter his mouth and choke him. He couldn't breathe, and he was burning from the inside out. Every single part of him was alight with pure agony. He thrashed under the acid, trying to find a way to get back to the surface, but not only was any movement exasperating the pain he was already experiencing, but the acid was starting to corrode his compound eyes, and the world was growing darker and fuzzier. Through blurry shapes, he could see his wings burning away into stubs. His flesh was flaking off and floating towards the surface, with large chunks of exoskeleton sloughing off and eaten away. He felt his leg go blissfully numb as the tendons melted into thin strands before disconnecting from the rest of his body completely.
His right eye was the first to completely lose sight, in fact, the entire right side of his face seemed to be completely missing, his teeth becoming exposed as his jaw was burned away. The orb full of pockmarks and burns scars eventually detached and floated up with the rest of his decaying parts.
Spamton slowly came to terms that he would not be one of the lucky ones. Even if by some miracle, someone dived to the bottom of the pool and fished him out, there'd be nothing left to save. He was too far gone, too damaged. He'd no doubt go into shock and die minutes after surfacing. Death was approaching, and he had to accept that. It was his choice after all… and somehow, that alone brought him comfort. But oh, what an excruciating way he'd chosen.
“█▇█▍▅■▂▇▂█▍▅■▇▂█▅▍■”
What?
“▙▋▏▍▂■▇▍▅▂▋▙▂▅■▇▍█▋”
That voice… no… why here… why after abandoning him?
“YOU ARE DYING…” the voice finally whispered clearly, as if inside Spamton's head. “BUT IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO CHANGE THAT…”
What did they mean by that?
“I CAN GIVE YOU A KNEW BODY… DO YOU TRUST ME?”
Spamton felt the presence of something new. His eyes had long since burned away, leaving him trapped in an endless void of darkness and static, yet his mind still conjured the visual of something bright and round in front of him. He reached out blindly to touch it.
It almost looked like… a pipis?
…
…
Darkness and peace were the last things Spamton remembered. But remembering explicitly implied existing, meaning he was not dead yet. But long gone were the burning pains and suffocation. He gagged on a thick, viscous liquid that entered his mouth that almost tasted like… egg yolk?
Coming back to his senses, Spamton tried to move and get some spatial awareness of his body, but his legs kicked hard against a solid wall. He pushed out his arms and felt along the sides and felt that the walls were smooth, rounded, and surrounding him on all sides. With a little force, the capsule he was trapped in rolled with gravity.
Pausing, he began to come to a startlingly bizarre idea. Testing his theory, he punched at the wall repeatedly, until he could hear the walls begin to crack and give away. Soon his hand burst through the thin barrier, allowing light to flood in and illuminate the capsule in a dim blue hue.
No way…
With the rest of his body he started bashing at all sides of the shell, breaking more and more of it until it shattered into several pieces and spilled the man onto the cold concrete sidewalk of Cyber City. Having used a significant amount of energy to get out of the egg, he laid on the ground wheezing and trying to catch his breath. He needed a minute to process what the hell was going on. He remembered everything. The searing pain of his flesh burning away, the consuming darkness of death… and yet he was still here. Was this [heaven], the afterlife? No… this just looked like ordinary Cyber City again, with all the grime and trash that accompanied it. In fact, it reeked as if he was lying in the middle of the trash zone. The rattling of roller coaster tracks above confirmed that.
The breeze from outside was starting to bite at him, and he shivered, still wet from the yolk inside the pipis. He pushed himself off the ground and immediately noticed something off. The coat of fine, pearlescent, chitinous fur that used to coat his body was gone, replaced with a smooth exoskeleton that showed every harsh seam of his joints. He turned around to see the same was true for his abdomen which was thinner and more narrow, and his once large wings coated in pink and yellow scales were replaced with a single, translucent, membranous pair that tingled pleasantly as they were pumped full of blood. He felt along his face, and was startled to feel unnaturally sharp and exaggerated features along his cheeks and jaw. His teeth felt bigger in his mouth, and he was able to feel long, sharp fangs with his tongue.
“im alive… how a̶m̷ ̴i̷- KKKHHSSSST SHAKDBSLZJZNAO [save on live bait at] M0TH3RF U CL1NG [get your deals on eggs, milk and- and- and- and-]” Spamton's body started to convulse in a mess of colorful pixels and broken speech. “AUGH WH4T THE [@#%$]!!” His voice sounded bit-crushed. The glitches that sputtered through his body and were nauseating. He hit his head repeatedly to get them to stop, but he only managed to get the pixels settle for gentle flickering of light.
He stood up to get his bearings and finally process what was going on. He took a look around and realized that not only was he standing in the trash zone, but he was amongst an absolutely massive pile of his belongings that had been tossed from the mansion, not that it mattered. The trip down the trash shoot broke most of the items and made them unusable.
Not only that he was quickly starting to realize that he wasn't just walking through abnormally large piles of trash. He was abnormally small. He had already been a short addison before, but now he was smaller than a Maus! He caught a glimpse of himself in the fragments of glass in the shattered mirror, and was startled to see his appearance. He was shorter and uglier, looking like some sort of plastic doll exaggerated cheeks, a fat stomach, and stumpy legs. He blinked through large, bug-eyed pink and yellow glasses that he didn't recall ever owning, and worse than that, they refused to come off. No matter how hard he tugged, they remained glued in place, as if they were fused to his exoskeleton.
He couldn't help but let out a weak, hissing laugh… “hae… HAEHAE…. WHAT IS THIS S0MEKINDA [impractical jokers]?!” He shouted through glitched speech to no one in particular. “WHAT DID U DO TO [its me! SPam]?!”
He turned back to the place he hatched from for some sort of clue. His eyes traced the shattered shell pieces to a silk woven pouch it had rolled from. The outer layer had ripped open, allowing the other pipis inside to roll out and shatter in the ground. The ones that remained unharmed flickered with unstable colors and pixels. A swarm of Virovirokuns buzzed around it, eating the remains of the eggs that had broken, and poking at the intact ones with their cursors in an attempt to break them open.
“HAY!!” Spamton shouted! “G3T AWA Y FROM MY [pipis] U D1RTY [scavenging animals]!!” He ran over, flailing his arms to try to scare them off. “SH0O!! SHOE!!”
The virovirokuns hissed as they scattered in different directions. Spamton stopped to inspect the pipis they were attacking. It was full of tiny ‘click marks’, pixel sized holes in the shell where yolk was starting to ooze out. The pipis was completely infected with their virus, with its colors jittering unnaturally. They must’ve been drawn to the smell of food when several of them broke open. Which meant there was a strong possibility that the pipis that regenerated his body was also infected.
“GR34T!! JUST [peachy]! YOU GAvE ME A [seconds ticking!][this is your last chance] IN A [maniquin] RIDDLED WITH [500 viruses detected on your system]!” He ranted before glitches wracked his body again. He groaned as the rogue code stung at his muscles and caused them to cramp up, sending him onto his knees. “[Ow ow ow]” He hissed as he wrapped his arms tightly around himself. He took in deep breaths, waiting for the spasms to pass on their own. He’d been sick with viruses before, but this one was particularly bad. It felt like it was deeply embedded into his system. His new body was formed around corrupted code.
Fuck… He should have just let himself die…
As he sat there, his stomach started to growl, and hunger pangs rang out. This new body must need food, but he wasn't exactly eager to eat anything out of the trash. Cannibalizing these pipises were also off the table. Augh, but his wallet was in his pocket when he jumped in the pool! IDIOT! He'd try to scrounge for something to eat closer to main street where things are at least fresher. Once his wings were dry, he attempted to fly into main street, but quickly found himself overwhelmed. The city was as busy as it always was, with traffic jams of honking cars and the side walks filled with darkeners moving around, but he was so much smaller now which left him at risk of getting stepped on or crushed.
He stayed back a bit, weighting his options when a plugboy turned off the street in his direction. As they passed by the insect, Spamton caught a whiff of the sweet electricity that was flowing through their veins. The smell was so potent that he started to salivate, drool dripping down through the gaps in his teeth. He couldn't believe his own senses, was he really craving blood right now? Another growl confirmed his fears. His instincts to feed were overwhelming, and he found himself following his prey unconsciously. His fangs quivered as the desire to bite down grew stronger. The plugboy was too busy rushing to their next destination to even notice when Spamton landed on them.
Spamton bit down into the plugboy’s flesh, a jolt of electricity shocking his mouth before it filled with coppery blood. Warm blood washed down his esophagus and filled his abdomen, causing it to bloat. It swelled up like a balloon, the platelets between each segment separating and revealing the translucent membrane that glowed neon red with supercharged plugboy blood.
As he drank, he caught flashes of memories that were not his own. They were from the plugboy's perspective. He saw them waking up in the morning, heading to work, being startled by a werewire, the password to their bank account. Delicious data flowing into his body. It tingled as it seemed to repair his own missing or corrupted data, causing the glitches that ailed him to slow down.
This discrete feeding session didn’t last long though, as the plugboy twitched with the sudden itchiness and pain on their neck, reaching up and swatting at the intruder. Spamton felt the presence of the hand before he saw it, and in less than a second, he’d detached his teeth from the plugboy and flew off.
“Ow! Wh̶a̷t̵ ̶t̴h̷e̵ heck?!” The plugboy started to glitch as they rubbed the wound. “What just b̸i̷t̷ ̸m̷e̷?̸”
The poor plugboy immediately turned green in the face and started sneezing arcs of electricity of their mouth, all the while their form started to flicker in various colors. “O̵u̴g̶h̸, I don’t f̴e̷e̸l̴ ̶v̷e̶r̸y̴ good…” They said with a sickly, stuttery tone to their voice as they hunched against the wall.
A passing Ambyu-Lance happened to see the situation unfolding and immediately its lights spun up. “WHEE WOO WHEE WOO! We got a virus alert!!” It shouted, garnering the attention of a couple more who also peered into the alley way. Spamton hid away behind a trashcan as the Ambyu-Lances descended into the alley.
“Don’t worry civilians! We will handle this!” Another one rallied as he lifted a large net. “Remain calm. You must be escorted to quarantine.”
“Wh-” Before the plugboy could protest, they were captured by the net and carried off, presumably to the nearest hospital.
Shit… did he cause that? Spamton thought to himself. He just spread a virus like a common-
“Virovirokuns… There must be some around here causing trouble. Let's split up and eradicate any we can find.” One of the remaining ambyu-lances said to the other.
Shit! He had to get out of here. He made an attempt to make a quick getaway, but the sharp, high pitched whine of his wings alerted one of his pursuers.
“Ack! A mosquito!!” One shouted.
“Where? I got it!” The other sprang into action by throwing a large, comically sized pill at the insect.
Within a split second, Spamton was caught between an unstoppable force (the capsule careening towards him) and an immovable object (the wall) before he even had a chance to duck out of the way. The force slammed him against the wall and caused his small, fragile body to burst open in a cascade of acid-green blood and viscera. If he had bones, the impact would have broken his spine and ribcage, but instead his torso simply popped like a grape, splattering against the brick and staining it as he slid to the ground.
“Oh wait, is that a darkener?” one of the ambyu-lances finally questions upon getting a better look at the twitching, broken creature on the ground.
“Oh uh.. hmm.. I don't really know about that one.” The other one stared with a puzzled expression on their syringe-shaped head.
“You think it's still alive?”
“Uh…” the other squinted. “Definitely not, look, its guts are spilling out. Gross.”
The voices became distant and muffled as Spamton was losing consciousness, and his vision went dark.
He awoke again in a familiar position. Curved baby blue walls, fowl smelling yolk. Deja vulnerable. He busted out of the pipis with more force this time, letting out a growl as he spilled out of the egg still in this awful new body of his. And then it hit him.
As long as he had pipis around, he couldn't die!
“Ha… hEAHEAHEHAE-! S0 TH4TS THE [gameshow] U WANNA PLAY HUH?” He lashed out towards the sky. “TH1NK YPUR A REAL [clown around town] TH INK U CAN TAKE 1 LAST [pot shot] OL [bugsy][g spamton]?!”
He crawled to his feet pointing at the sky accusingly. “YOU GOD[$#@%] [low IQ] YUU ALR3DY SH0WED YOUR [trump card]. YOU ALL READY SHOWED ME [Hyperlinked Blocked]. AND WHEN I G3T [big] AGAIN IM COMING FOR UR @$$!!”
And he knew exactly how to do it. This city was full of absolutely delectable data he could sink his fangs into. He just had to figure out where to start.