"And you're absolutely sure you can't fix me before the show?"
Walter Worker Chelsea sighed.
"For the millionth time, Spine, I'm absolutely sure that I can't. You're just gonna have to do this show without singing."
"But—But I've never done a show without singing before!" The Spine sputtered indignantly. "It's been one hundred and four years, I can't just start now! I—Ack—" Roughly three seconds into his spiel, the silver automaton broke down into a series of dry, painful sounding coughs that rattled his chassis and sent steam spilling out from the vents on his back. Shaking her head, Chelsea grabbed a bottle of water and thrust it into his face.
"Drink."
He pouted, but acquiesced, groaning pitifully as he set it back down after gulping down enough water to put an end to the coughing. Chelsea gave him a very pointed look.
"Fine," he grumbled, slouching. "But I still don't like it."
The Spine hadn't miscounted when he stated that he hadn't missed singing at a show for the past century or so. He'd been "sick" during shows before, yes, whether with some minor rusty parts or malfunctioning bits of circuitry, but he'd never had his voice box damaged to the point where he could barely speak at a normal volume, let alone sing. Then again, there was a reason for that.
"This is your fault, you know," Walter Worker Camille piped up unhelpfully from the adjacent dressing room, reminding him of the very stupid reason. Spine groaned again and let his head flop down onto the plastic table.
Unfortunately, Camille was right. He had literally no excuse. Rabbit had dared him, and then Zero had joined in because one of his favorite pastimes was enabling Rabbit, and then Q.W.E.R.T.Y. somehow picked up on it and… Well…
"To be fair, it wasn't even the glass that did it. It was the Captain Crunch."
Now both Chelsea and Camille were leveling him with unimpressed looks, although they were both clearly trying hard not to snicker at his expense. He scowled.
Yes, The Spine—the Mature One, the Responsible One, the Smart One, The Spine—had thought it would be a good idea to see what would happen if he tried eating actual shards of broken glass mixed in with Captain Crunch. It was stupid, but so were all the rest of Rabbit's ideas, and really, why had he thought it so necessary to appease his sister and take her up on her dare in that moment? Robots weren't designed for eating, and they definitely weren't designed for eating glass. Or Captain Crunch. Actually, for that matter, The Spine was convinced that no one was designed to safely eat Captain Crunch. Those sugary nuggets must have been engineered specifically to cut the roof of the mouths of any damned soul who tried to eat them. Long story short, it all ended badly, poor Peter Walter VI was forced to spend roughly an hour picking shards of glass and cereal out from his artificial esophagus, and now he had been going on a week and a half unable to talk without sounding like a human who had smoked for forty-some-odd years. Or sing… at all. And now, here he was: thirty minutes from going onstage, voice modulators busted, unable to even sing backup, and with two Blue Matter engineers laughing at him.
He definitely deserved it.
"Look, it'll be fine." Chelsea tried to placate him, clearly noticing his surly attitude. "You can still do all the runaway bits you want to pad out the set. You guys are good at that."
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Whatever you want it to mean," Camille quipped easily, snapping her gloves on.
"Look, everyone knows the fans come for all the talking." The Spine paused, then tacked on an addendum to that declaration. "And 'Honeybee'."
"I don't know, something tells me they'll miss your songs, too, Mr. 'Diamonds'," Chelsea countered, smiling. She glanced at her phone, then sobered up once she saw the time. "We need to get to the merch table, Spine. You'll do great; Rabbit and Zero will help you out. Besides, there's always another show." The Spine looked up at her reassuring face and let out a long breath of air he hadn't realized he had been holding in. She was right; the Walter Workers always were.
"You're right," he relented, voicing his thoughts out loud. He smiled back at the two sisters and nodded at them. "Good luck."
"You too," Camille replied, and the blue-haired ballet dancers strode out into the lobby where fans were no doubt lining up. No sooner did they leave than Zero popped his head in.
"The Spine?" He called curiously, then brightened upon seeing the taller robot sitting in a chair just slightly too small for him. "The Spine! Hi! How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine, Zero," he said, and this time he was being honest. There would always be other shows, just like Chelsea said, and besides, they could at least make a good bit out of this—not that the audience needed to know it was anything more than just a bit, though. He stood up to join his bandmates in getting in a few more rounds of practice before the concert began, strangely looking forward to it despite his shot voice.
All in all, the Leap Day Concert had been a success. They had gotten a lot of laughs out of the audience (Mostly at The Spine's expense, but really, how was that different from most shows?), and the whole crowd had been all too happy to sing for him on "Captain Albert Alexander". Their new set went off without a hitch, and The Spine was definitely flattered by all the well-wishes expressed in the autograph line post-show. The night was great, would have been perfect— If only Rabbit hadn't taken great joy in starting to call him "Captain Crunch". Oh well. She still didn't know that he had made a deal with G.G. to have the tiny metal demon of a giraffe crawl into her room via the air ducts and be her personal alarm clock at all hours of the night. He always had the last laugh.