Chapter Text
You’re depressed. There’s no sugarcoating it. The days were starting to bleed together, and most of those days followed the same exact routine, ‘get up, watch TV while you eat breakfast, work, make/order food, watch TV, go to sleep, repeat’.
The only saving grace of the cycle was your CRT TV. You’d gotten it from a nice older monster woman, Ms. Toriel, when you had moved into Hometown a few months back, when you were talking about how it seemed that you and her kid were the only humans in town, which she confirmed with sympathy. You personally didn’t care if your neighbors were monsters or humans, but she seemed to take it personally for you, immediately apologizing, even after you explained that you didn’t mind at all and there was nothing she could do about it. You assumed she took it personally since her kid, Kris, was the only human in Hometown, which must have been a bit isolating when they were growing up, you assumed. She was quick to offer the big TV to you, explaining in a mournful tone that no one watches it anymore, and that if no one takes it she would probably have to just throw it out. With an unnecessary amount of sympathy for the poor, forgotten tech, you accepted it.
It was an old thing, presumably from around the 70s-80s if you had to guess. It showed its age, dents and scratches were all over its plastic frame, it had obvious burn-in from some channels logo on the corner of its screen(it looked like it was from a kids channel of some sort), the whole screen was tinted a strange color you couldn’t quite pinpoint, and it had a few stickers stuck onto its frame. A red heart on the left side towards the top in the front, right next to the screen, which seemed to be the oldest and was now a faded pink, a yellow star on the right side, and on the side of the TV itself, towards the back, which also seemed quite old and was definitely a brighter yellow at some point, and one you had added yourself, a classic yellow smiley face that someone had given to you when you had first arrived here, which you had placed right smack dab in the center on the top of the CRTs frame, right in front of its antennas where you liked to give it appreciative pats. You knew that meant that it too would fade and lose its bright yellow color eventually from the continuous touching, but you found yourself looking forward to that, hoping that this TV would stick with you for a good while..why did that thought make you feel so warm and fuzzy inside?
There were a few other stickers that had been scattered across its frame when you first got it, but they had completely lost their color, having been reduced to unidentifiable white blobs. You had decided to scrape those off. When you had accidentally left a small scratch on the frame from the spatula you had been using(you couldn’t find anything else in your ‘just moved in’ state) to rid your TV of its unidentifiable white blobs, you, in shock or something, had left a small, chaste kiss where the scratch was. To this day you swear you heard a small, static pop as you pressed your lips against the scratched area, but that was impossible, the TV wasn’t even on! Very quickly regretting it and wondering why the hell you did that, your face was red as you pet the scratched area and mumbled apologies to the object that couldn’t even hear you.
At the last place you lived, you had a small flat screen TV in your room that only had streaming services, which was all fine and dandy at first, but you could only watch Setflix originals and MyTube commentary for so long before you get bored. You had come to miss the days of cable, VHSs, and DVDs, so, as luck would have it, you have a giant, boxy CRT now! Yay! And it was the only thing keeping you sane. Boo.
You aren’t quite sure why you had gotten so attached to the thing, maybe it was just the pure nostalgia of it, or the fact that you’re about 50% sure it’s either haunted by some sort of friendly entity, or sentient somehow, like the computer from that one weird niche 80s romance movie that you had watched on the family CRT as a kid that stuck with you for whatever reason. It would turn off and on at will at times, usually being off by the time you woke up if you went to sleep watching it, and it’s comedic timing was impeccable at times, but you knew that old TVs like this were a bit erratic. You weren’t quite sure what to think of it, but if it was haunted or sentient in some way, it didn’t seem malicious at all, although it did make the time you smooched it very embarrassing, you would get flustered any time you thought about it to much.
In any case, the only thing you really looked forward to these days was watching TV and sometimes scrolling the internet mindlessly. Jeez, when did you become so addicted to technology? Oh well, it’s not like it’s the technology’s fault!
You got up from where you were sitting on your couch, stretching your body, hearing a bone crack made you flinch. You had a long day at work and had immediately sat your butt down onto the couch to watch some TV while you ate your takeout.
You looked around, searching for the remote. Weird, you could’ve sworn you put in on the arm of your couch, it’s probably just stuck in the cushions or something. With a huff, you lifted up one of the cushions. Okay, not there. You checked under the other one, not there either. You checked under the couch, using your phone flashlight for light, nothing. Where the hell could it be? You had work in the morning, you didn’t have time for this.
Quickly growing frustrated, you stomped on the ground like a toddler. You didn’t have time to feel embarrassed about your little tantrum however, as you were suddenly blinded by a bright light, and a violent gust of wind flew up from the ground, and just like that, everything went dark.
You woke up with a start, quickly realizing you were not in the safety of your home anymore. It was so much chillier, and you were on the cold, hard ground. You got up and tried to take in your surroundings, but everything was so dark, it was very hard for your eyes to focus on anything.
Alright, if you couldn’t check around you, you could always check you. You quickly looked down and patted yourself down, quickly realizing that you were in fact not wearing your pajamas like you had been before this whole fiasco. It looked and felt like you were wearing..some sort of military uniform? After a moment, you suddenly realized the heavy helmet on your head, realizing that you were indeed wearing a soldier uniform. What the hell was going on?
You quickly started to panic, your breaths getting quicker and your eyes started to tear up. You tried to use some coping methods, taking deep breaths, closing your eyes, assuring yourself that this was just some fucked up dream that you’d wake up from soon. Yeah, this was just a dream! Nothing to worry about! But this didn’t feel like a dream, it felt real, so real in fact, you suddenly tripped as you started to pace around, falling flat on your face, your metal helmet causing that to hurt like hell, more tears pricking your eyes, causing a few to run down your cheeks as you let out a pathetic whimper. That was definitely going to bruise and leave you with a killer headache, the latter of which you got a painful confirmation of.
You got up with a groan, cradling your head as you got your bearings. You looked behind you to see what you had tripped on and it was..a large pin? It was about the size of a football, the bright red color standing out amongst the darkness. You took a step forward, only for the pin to start rolling in the other direction, causing you to pause as you, dumbfounded, watched the ‘inanimate’ object roll away on its own. Your head started to hurt even more. This had to be a dream.
Before you could look around once more, maybe find some kind of landmark or something, you finally heard something that you could discern. Someone was calling out..your name. It was a pretty masculine sounding voice, although very high pitched with a very obvious accent.
“___? ___!? Where are you?! I know this is all probably really confusing, b-but everything’s going to be okay! ___?!” You felt the ground tremble below you as the voice got closer and closer, and you saw a square shaped white light in the sky, fastly approaching. Now, you did the only thing any sane person in this situation would do. Scream, really loud. The light stopped, but not before two massive yellow shoes slammed down onto the ground in front of you, the light, which seemed to be attached to whatever massive giant wore these shoes, was suddenly shone onto you, causing you to cover your face and cower in fear.
“___? Is that you?? You’re so-w-wait-!!” Before the massive creature could continue its sentence, you finally started running away from it, only for it to start chasing you, the ground shaking violently with each thundering step, quickly catching up to you, and you were very quickly engulfed into what you could only assume was its hands, gloved hands, given how soft and plushy they were. You took zero time to start struggling and screaming your lungs out, the muffled sounds of the giant shushing and cooing to you making its way through your giant hand prison.
“Shh shh shh, it’s okay! You’re safe now! No need to struggle, just-just let me explain, alright? P-Please?” But before you could let it explain, you blacked out, either from fear, or suffocation from the creatures massive hands, you weren’t quite sure.
You woke up with a start. Again. You hoped you didn’t pass out again soon, this was already getting old. You let out a yawn as you rubbed your eyes. Despite passing out twice, you didn’t feel all that well rested, and if you were in a more comfortable situation, you would’ve fallen right back asleep onto the cushions beneath you…cushions?
You took a moment to fully take in your surroundings, and, even though it was much more bright here, you were even more confused of your surroundings than when you were left in the dark. The first thing you noticed, besides the soft thing you were laying on, was that you were trapped in some sort of..ball. The top side was clear, and what you could see of the bottom side was solid red, and you couldn’t see through it. Upon investigating the white ‘cushions’ underneath you further, you realized that it was a giant plush hand...It was actually probably a giant glove, now that you thought about it for more than a few seconds. It took a few more seconds for you to realize it was one of the same gloves that had trapped you earlier.
So, a giant..thing had caught you and put you in a weird plastic ball. When you looked around to see where you actually were, it looked like you were in an office of some sort, although you couldn’t make out much of the details besides the fact that you were on the desk, and the many(what looked like) movie posters that lined the walls that you couldn’t make out even if you tried, even if the top side of this ball was see through, it was very cloudy, and it was hard to see anything beyond blobs when it came to anything that was beyond the desk you were placed on.
You tried to move the ball, but it was glued down onto the desk or something and you couldn’t move an inch, you were thoroughly trapped. You felt like a broken record thinking ‘what the hell is going on’. You shivered, remembering stories from your childhood about giants kidnapping and eating little humans and monsters. But if this giant really wanted to eat you, why did it care enough about your comfort to literally put one of its clothing items in the ball it was keeping you in, seemingly for your own comfort and nothing else? Thinking like this was making your head hurt, worse than before, causing you to groan and put your head in your hands.
Suddenly, you heard a weird..honk? It sounded like an instrument of some sort. You looked in the direction of the sound and saw..well you couldn’t really tell what it was. All you could make out was a black cat-shaped blob with one yellow eye and one pink eye(or they were glasses of some sort, you genuinely couldn’t tell), as well as something red around it’s neck. It made a few more honking sounds, and you were pretty sure it was the sound of a saxophone now that you heard it a few more times. A giant cat monster that made saxophone noises, cool, sure, whatever. You were starting to think your takeout was drugged and you were just having a really bad trip. The cat giant left through the door behind it with another saxophone noise, you could’ve sworn it was saying bye to you, but you couldn’t be sure, and you weren’t sure you even wanted to know what it was saying.
You tried to move the ball you were trapped in once again to no avail. Since there was no one around and you were thoroughly stuck, tears finally started to fall down your cheeks, quickly turning into sobs. You held your head in your hands once more, just letting yourself sob into them, you deserved a good cry after all of this-It wasn’t even after, it was still happening! You curled up into a ball, facing away from the door as your tears fell onto the giant white glove underneath you as you shook with sobs.
Eventually, you heard the door open again, you squeezed your eyes shut as something approached. “___..?” You heard the same giant from before say your name once again. How did it even know your name? No matter, you were probably about to be eaten, or worse. As you sobbed, you felt your ball prison be jostled around a bit, you dared not to look. Suddenly, you felt the ball you were in lurch violently, causing your back to hit the top(?) of the ball, making you scream. The giant gave you stammered apologies.
“Sorry sorry sorry!! I knew we shouldn’t have glued it down..oh, sweetheart I’m so sorry, you must be so scared!” No shit you were scared! “C-can you look at me? Please..? I promise I won’t hurt you-I-I would never hurt you, I swear it. I just want to want to make you happy, that’s all I’ve ever wanted!”…What?
Your sobs died down as the giant soothed you, but you just got more and more confused as it(they?) kept talking. Did you know this weird giant? You’re pretty sure you would’ve remembered having a giant as an acquaintance, especially if they cared this much about you. Well, if they weren’t planning to hurt you, then it(quite literally) wouldn’t hurt to look. After hastily wiping your face of your tears, you cautiously opened your eyes, looking up and through the clear part of the ball, finally getting a good look at your massive captor.