Ralsei, Susie, and Kris stood in the hallway, in front of the door that led to the Dark Fountain. Ralsei rubbed his hands together nervously. "Now listen, before you can seal the Fountain, Kris, I have to get everyone you haven't Spared out of Cyber City," he said. "Once the Fountain is closed this world will be destroyed." He stood there a moment longer, thinking. "I'm going to get Queen and Lancer and we'll lead everyone else out of here to Castle Town. You two wait here. When I return, you can seal the Fountain, Kris."

Before either Susie or Kris could protest, Ralsei was running down the hall as fast as he could go, his scarf waving around behind him on the floor.

Susie groaned. "Ugh, who knows when he's going to be back. Now we just gotta stand around here with nothing to do? Typical Ralsei," she grumbled.

Kris was staring at the floor. They slowly looked up and said, "there is something we need to do before we seal the Fountain."

Susie was intrigued. "What's that, Kris?"

"We need to go back."

"Uhhh... go back where?"

Kris's head fully snapped up and they stared at Susie dramatically. "Back to Queen's basement."

i"What?"/i Susie exclaimed. "There's nothing down there anymore except the broken robot." She shuddered.

There was a long, awkward pause. "Well, sort of," Kris responded. "Do you remember when the robot fell and Spamton gave me the Dark Crystal and his glasses?"

Susie nodded. She didn't like where this was going.

Kris stuck their hand in their pocket and gingerly pulled out a pair of round glasses, flat in their palm. One lens was magenta and the other was highlighter yellow. Examining them in the glow of the bright lights of Cyber City, Susie could have swore she saw what looked like a shadow dart across the lenses...

She snapped back to reality and glared at Kris. "What's the meaning of this? What even-"

Kris forcefully shoved the Dealmakers onto Susie's face. When she opened her eyes (she had squeezed them shut from surprise), she couldn't believe it. It was though she was looking into an alleyway and she could see the puppet Kris had been talking about. Noticing her, the puppet almost jumped onto the glass with an unbelievable amount of energy. She began to hear a tinny voice shouting into her ear. "HELLO? OH YOU MUST BE ONE OF KRIS'S [amigos] I SAW EARLIER WHEN-" The doll's eyes suddenly glazed over and Susie heard static for a few seconds. Suddenly, her ears began to hurt from the volume of his shouting. "HOLY [cungadero] IS IT NICE TO SEE A [LiGHTnER] FROM THIS [hell]. CAN WE BE [Friend Request Accepted]?"

The miniature Spamton pressed his hands and face up against the other side of the glasses obnoxiously, and Susie resisted the urge to throw them to the ground. She shoved them back into Kris' hands.

"What the ihell/i was that, Kris?"

Kris looked down at the glasses sullenly before putting them back in their pocket. "Spamton," they said simply. "When the robot fell, the puppet uploaded his consciousness to the glasses." Knowing that this simple explanation would not satisfy Susie's curiosity, they told her how they had uploaded Spamton to the empty disk earlier and placed it inside the robot shell after his incessant begging and pleading. "There might be enough scrap left over in the basement to... put him back together in Castle Town," Kris concluded.

"What did you do that for, Kris?! That... that thing could have killed us all! There's ino way/i I'm going back into that creepy basement to collect pieces of a cursed doll so you can play Humpty Dumpty with it later!" Susie exclaimed.

She turned to look at Kris, but they had put their head down and were already walking briskly in the direction of the basement. "Wait up, wait up, I'm coming!" she shouted. She shook her head while running after Kris. This situation was out of her wheelhouse but she'd be damned if she wasn't going to be there to make sure Kris was okay.

Susie and Kris shivered in the cold, damp basement, staring at the gigantic pile of scrap that had been left to rot at the end of their terrible battle just the day before. Susie whistled, a little impressed though she would never admit it. "Where do we even start?"

Kris had already begun crawling underneath the heap of brightly colored metal, looking for pieces of the original Spamton. "Come on, we're running out of time," they insisted, voice muffled as they went out of sight.

Susie stood in front of the behemoth with her arms crossed. "I don't even know exactly what we're looking for! I'll wait until you find something so I at least have a little bit to go on."

"Wait... I think I got something..." Susie walked in the direction of Kris's voice just in time to see them climb out from underneath the rubble. They were holding Spamton's head.

The eyes were closed, and the elongated jaw practically hung off what was left of its mouth. Spidery cracks were visible all across its face. Kris was holding the head by its greasy, matted hair.

Susie screamed loudly. "GET THAT THING AWAY FROM ME!"

Kris nodded and set the head slowly down into a reusable tote bag that Susie had somehow not noticed they were carrying. The totebag was bright teal, with the word "Addison's" splashed across it in neon yellow.

"If we work together," Kris said, "we can finish faster and get out of here."

Susie dove under the scrap without hesitation. "You have a point."

Much like Spamton himself, the pile was a chaotic mess. Working quickly, Susie and Kris found a heavily damaged torso, wearing shreds of a white turtleneck and tattered suitcoat, one leg wearing a surprisingly shiny white loafer shoe, and two arms. Oddly, the hands and an entire leg were nowhere to be found.

Shaking their head, Kris hefted the bag. It was surprisingly heavy. "Can you carry this, Susie?"

Susie rolled her eyes. "I guess so..."

They hurried up the stairs, the eerie silence a backdrop for their footsteps.

"Hey, Susie?"

"Yeah, what is it, Kris?"

"Please... please don't tell Ralsei about any of this. We can tell her something else is in the bag."

Susie thought about Ralsei's reaction at the end of the battle in the basement and shrugged. "Your secret's safe with me, Kris." She paused, narrowing her eyes. "I don't want to see or hear about this again, though. What you do back in Castle Town with this shit is your business."

"Fine."

With that, the rest of the trip back to the hallway was uneventful. Ralsei was waiting for them there.

"Where have you been? I figured you had been making one last look around, but I was starting to get worried!" He peered at the bag quizzically. "What do you have in the bag, Kris?"

Susie waved her hands frantically. "It's just.. just some souvenirs from the cyber cafe that Swatch gave us before he left with you!"

Ralsei shrugged. "Come on now, the Dark Fountain is waiting."

Kris and Susie stepped inside.