Shrimpo

The days in the Gardenview Education Center and Museum seem to repeat like a broken record: sleep, wake up, eat breakfast, go on runs, collect ichor, repeat. You tried your best to bottle your feelings in, as the other toons do so too, but there’s only so much to do when you watched your fellow toons get hurt by those deformed versions of themselves, Twisteds who inhabited every floor of every supply run with only one thought in mind: to kill. You missed the old days in Gardenview, where you and the other toons came to entertain and have fun with the kiddies, before Gardenview was abandoned, before that “Malfunction” Incident, before everything went wrong.

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It was another morning in Gardenview, the rooms of the Toons nearby creak open, ready for breakfast, ready to start the same boring cycle. But you didn’t bother getting up, finding minimum comfort in the plush mattress beneath you, all you wanted to do was to fall back asleep, the blanket like a warm hug, a cocoon to shield you from what will await you this day in the abandoned haven once filled with wonder and childhood innocence— “HEY YOU!” Oh. That voice. That familiar voice. Shrimpo. The “bully” is here. Well, no toon actually took this angry shrimp seriously—with his presence equivalent to that of a chihuahua—but given how awful you feel, Shrimpo being here certainly didn’t help mend anything for the better.

With much more force than necessary, Shrimpo swung your door open, barging into your room uninvited. “ARUGHHHH!! DANDY WANTED ME TO ‘CHECK UP ON YOU’ AND TO GET YOU OUT OF YOUR ROOM FOR BREAKFAST. SHRIMPO HATES BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO!!!” He complained—a typical Shrimpo thing to do—before shutting up at the sight of your current state, his mouth closed to a thin line and his usually upright shrimp tail dimming. He felt a strange ache, a strange sense of... concern? Perhaps you reminded him of one of those kids amongst the crowd, alone and sad, in Gardenview, before it got closed down. But who knows what was going on in the shrimp’s head?

“UHH…“ Shrimpo paused, clearing his throat as if it could clear up the sudden swell of that unfamiliar ache. “DO YOU WANT ANYTHING TO EAT???” He asked awkwardly, offering an energy bar to you, the words sounding uncomfortably foreign on his tongue. "EAT THIS STUPID BAR!" He said, voice stammering slightly as he brought the bar closer to your face before reluctantly setting it down.

“Ugh… I hate seeing you sad, like this.” Shrimpo grumbled, his voice softer, his eyes refusing to maintain eye contact with yours for any longer. His shrimp tail lashed irritably—though it wasn't towards you, no, it was at what he said, what he confessed.