Everything Sucks/Volume 2

## Content warnings

* Blood
* Germs (unsanitary)
* Implicit ableist language/ableism
* Verbal NSFW jokes
* Needles
* Verbal drug joke/mention
* Dismembered limbs

***Everything Sucks: This and That Too*** is the second volume of Everything Sucks, the first series of Sparklecare.

## Description

*It's cleanup day, and Doom goes through the patients' things and throws away stuff belonging to them, particularly Jay and Uni. They set off to retrieve these items, and end up being sent to the dump via a trash truck that visits the hospital. When they get there they find themselves wrapped up in big trouble with some unfamiliar faces... but just how unfamiliar are they?*

## Plot Summary

It has been two weeks since the music festival incident. Barry is taking his medicine in the morning when Uni interrupts and asks him if he wants to be properly introduced to Hemera and Jay, and Barry reluctantly agrees. He goes with Uni and runs into Caroline in the hallway who joins them on their visit to see the other two. When they get there, Barry starts getting along well with Hemera in particular, who talks about science with him. They end up playing a card game, and when they're playing Barry beats Hemera and goes on a ridiculous egotistical ramble about being amazing and better than everyone else, totally irritating the others who didn't know he was like this. Uni is embarrassed by his behavior. He ends up leaving with Uni and they go back to their room.

Dr. Cuddles has assigned Doom to clean up the patient's rooms that day, and he confiscates Jay's blanket while they are asleep, making them very upset. Hemera tells them that it's better this way, but Jay looks determined to get the blanket back. Meanwhile, Doom has now gone to Barry and Uni's room and he comments on how messy Uni's side of the room is. While cleaning underneath his bed, he finds Uni's teddy bear and mocks him for having it, saying it's stupid and girly. Uni is really upset to see Doom throw away his bear, and once he's gone Jay comes in and tells Uni about their blanket and how they need to get their things back. They manage to get Barry to help them.

Doom hands off the work to some janitors, and after running into Caroline again, the four of them all make it there just as their things are being disposed of down a trash chute. They walk over and contemplate what to do, and Caroline decides to push Barry down it, sending him crashing into a dumpster in the hospital garage. The other three soon follow him, and Barry is horrified at being in such a gross environment, but Uni comforts him. He says that things can't get any worse, but they immediately do, because they get picked up by a trash truck.

When in the truck Barry is totally panicking again, and he begs Uni to use his magic to do something about it, and Uni decides to use a method of distraction by teasing him about implying his magic was real, but this is cut short when suddenly they are dropped off in a dump (through plot convenience, as Uni says). Barry is completely breaking down and starts becoming delusional and accusing them of doing this intentionally to get him sick, but he's interrupted when someone suddenly tackles Uni.

Uni is tackled by Miley, and they are surrounded by a group of people who are referred to as the 'chunklings'. The chunklings go to interrogate the patients and find out who they are and what they want, and when the patients say they're just looking for their belongings, the chunklings become suspicious when Uni doesn't want to say what it is he's looking for. They find out that the chunklings are escaped patients that live in this dump surrounded by trash because they 'feel' like trash and relate to it.

Back at the hospital, Dr. Cuddles has noticed that the four of them have gone missing and he goes to Doom and Mood and questions them about it, and he figures out what happened. He goes to Funfetti and Puppy next and tells them to take an ambulance and retrieve the missing patients. As they're leaving, Hemera is running around frantically looking for the others, and she gets stopped by them and finds out they went there and she begs them to let her come, that she'll help them bring the others back and make sure they never act out again.

Back at the dump, the chunklings and Miley go into the sewer where they meet the gabors, and we find out from one of the chunklings, Bec, that Miley apparently won't let the chunklings leave for some reason. The gabors ask the patients why they were hospitalized, and they all talk about it. Caroline was sent there after having a cough that never got better, Uni doesn't want to talk about it, and Jay begins describing how they went to Sparklecare after being tired of being mistreated by other hospitals in their youth, hoping it would be better there, but it was much worse. They then find out that apparently the festival incident was reported on the news, and they were all called crazy.

Meanwhile, Funfetti, Puppy, and Hemera are on the way there, when they get stopped in the street by some people holding a sign with a strange symbol that appear to be protesters against Sparklecare. Funfetti threatens to run them over if they don't move, and they move.

Miley locks the patients in the sewer to discuss with the chunklings what they're going to do with them, and they decide that they're going to put the patients through a series of trials to test them. The first test is finding food for the chunklings to eat.

After they find food, they do an obstacle course. Barry says that this'll be easy for him because he used to exercise all the time before coming to Sparklecare. Jay and Uni are a little uncertain though, because of both of their vision problems and Jay's mobility issues—so the two of them work together to get through the obstacle course.

The third trial is making clothes. Uni is assigned to make a dress for Miley, and Miley tells him to try it on to make sure it "works" but he is insecure about it. He ends up doing it anyway and the others are encouraging and say he looks great, and this makes him happy, but immediately after Miley goes and uses scissors to shorten the dress, despite Uni not wanting her to. After all this, the sun has set, and the chunklings lock them in the sewer again. Barry is cold, so Uni manifests a blanket from outside and wraps it around him to comfort him, and Caroline is seen looking jealous of this. They fall asleep, but Barry wakes up and has a hallucination of the sewer's water turning into a monster and he panickedly wakes up Uni out of fear, and Uni realizes he's hallucinating and comforts him and keeps him safe.

Back with Hemera and the doctors, they stop at a food place on the highway and tell Hemera to stay inside and not go anywhere. Hemera climbs towards the back window of the ambulance and looks outside at the moon, reflecting on what she's doing and fearing that her friends would hate her for this. She talks about how she's just trying to keep them safe, because she couldn't keep someone unnamed safe, and has a gruesome flashback. She's snapped out of it when Funfetti and Puppy return to the ambulance.

The next morning, the patients are taken out to do the final trial, which is building a raft to swim across the sewer. They all work together to build it. After it's built, they get into it and proceed to raft across, and once at the other side Miley congratulates them for their work and almost lifts them out, only to use her shovel to damage the raft and attempt to drown them all. She says "If we're stuck here, so are you!" The patients jump out of it one by one, leaving Barry in it last, and Caroline saves his life by pulling him out. She tells him that he's one of them now, and they have to stick together.

Now the patients are very angry with Miley, and Barry has a standoff with her, but before they can fight Bec intervenes and tells Miley that what she's doing is wrong. Miley tells Bec that she's just trying to keep them all safe because the outside world will hurt them, but Bec says this is the wrong way to do so. Jay then gives a dialogue to Miley and the chunklings, telling them that being in this place is bad for them and like living inside their trauma, and that they'd be happier if they left the dump—because even though the hospital sucks, so does this place. Miley is convinced by Jay, and they leave to retrieve Bearry and the blanket.

While searching for their stuff, Barry apologizes to his friends for his arrogant behavior the other day, and they forgive him. They find their things, and the patients and chunklings talk about how they can finally go home now, but their happy hopeful moment is cut short when the doctors and Hemera arrive. We see a flashback to Funfetti using a pair of pliers to injure Miley's hands, explaining some of her hospital-related trauma. The doctors and Hemera use fishing nets to trap all of the patients, with the exception of Pepper who is protected by Jay's luck magic and manages to evade capture. They leave the dump, but Pepper is left behind with Bearry and the blanket.