The Infamous Top Hat of Doom
It was your average day in a secret government warehouse storing stuff area 51 would have been jealous of, if it had known it existed. It was an average day, except for the fact that Claudia was playing with the warehouse computer system's bios. True, this was fairly normal as well, but one key element was in play which changed everything. This element was that Pete had accidently spilled soda on the keyboard and wiped it up without telling anyone. Due to this accident, the N was sticking. Claudia typing as fast as she did, failed to notice that in the new line of command she was writing to increase the efficiency of the gooery, neutralizer had been entered as eutralizer. Having great faith in her typing abilities from years of practice, she didn't check her work and went back to the main desktop. Thanks to this, she wasn't sure which line she'd been on. This was the main reason it took half an hour to get the gooery running again. No serious damage had been done. Or so everyone thought…
During this incident, Pete had been playing table tennis against McEnroe's racket, which moved to hit the ball on its own and occasionally began to yell at you for making certain plays. When the now all too familiar alarms and stormclouds began to gather, he remembered procedure and headed towards the gooery, hoping to find and fix the issue before Artie's prediction came true and Mrs. Fredric's countdown voice got "really annoying". McEnroe's racket continued to yell and briefly followed him, unnerving him with some of its less expected exclamations, which caused him to auto-pilot to the route they'd used last time, which, unfortunately, led through the dark vault.
He realized where he was after a moment and kept himself from bolting by reminding himself that the backups hadn't failed yet. Against his fortunes, this wasn't true, as Claudia's efficiency overhaul had included the backup systems. He carefully avoided going near Sylvia Platt's typewriter, just in case, and had almost made it out when he thought he heard something. He turned around. There was nothing there but the artifacts. He tried to leave again, but it assailed him, louder this time. He could make out what it was now. It was a song. It was deep and powerful, and sounded like musical theatre. It drew him back. He turned again, and saw what he hadn't known he was looking for. It was a top hat of respectable quality, beaten a bit by the years, but still in excellent condition considering it was nearly 175 years old. As Pete approached it, the voice grew louder, and the song more distinct and Pete could discern it as 2 separate songs, one about stars, and one about a moral dilemma. The hat seemed to be calling to him with these songs, and he felt an uncontrollable desire to put it on. No. Not a mere desire, a burning need. Pete stood there some time grappling with himself, but the song and the hat won out eventually, and he slowly lifted it from its perch to his brow.
Shortly after he put it on, the alarms stopped, and Mrs. Frederic's recorded voice complimented the warehouse agents on a job well done. He looked at his watch and realized this exchange had taken half an hour. He'd left his bag back by the tennis table and ignoring McEnroe's racket, headed back and placed the hat inside it. When they looked back on that day, Artie, Myka and Claudia all initially said that nothing had seemed off about Pete's behavior, but on further recollection, each of them remembered that that bag hadn't left his side the entire day.